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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 4024062" data-attributes="member: 54707">Well, I don't know how rare this is.The world we use, the one I DM and have for a long time (when we get to play that is, as assignments and work allow) is the Byzantine Empire (Constantinople is the base of operations) circa 800-850 AD. I don't know of any RPG books about it as a setting, though I have some Osprey and other books I consulted, but we use it as an historical base and play the game in the real world as it really was at that time (as much as we can know about it from history anyways) and I used perhaps dozens of historical texts to recreate it. So we employ Byzantine weapons of the period, reference real historical events, people, places, etc.The advantages I and my players see to this are the following: the Byzantine Empire was the de facto end of the Silk Road in the West, it was the true remains of the Old Roman Empire, it was in contact with the West, Greece, Persia, North and Eastern Africa, Spain, the Black Sea, Eastern Europe and Russia, Palestine and the Middle East. So the adventuring parties often visit these various places. So it was a sort of crossroads to most places in Europe, the Middle East, and some places in Asia and Africa. The also had  a very  good if small Navy. The were excellent merchants and they were immensely wealthy and the repository of most of the knowledge of the ancient world as well as Christianity and much of Judaism (both treasures taken from Israel and Jewish literature and scriptures). The Byzantine Empire was the intersection point between Christianity and Islam as well as between Christianity and European paganism. It was a linguistic, cultural, and ethnic melting pot and it was probably the single most technologically advanced place on the face of the Earth overall, for that time period. They had an excellent if truncated military. There was much political intrigue and a great deal of spiritual intrigue, and well as progress.The caveats in our game are these: there is no arcane magic in our world, only thaumaturgy, which is divine magic, or miracles. There are also no monsters, our world is inhabited entirely by humans and the animals natural to it. However, there is another world just like ours in geopgrhay and terrain which has no humans upon it but is rather populated by what in game terms would be called elves and dwarves and giants, creatures of that kind. There are also native animals and flora in that world, as well as monsters, each one of which is unique and has been accidentally created as a by-product of the use of arcane magic, which in that world is used in the same way we use technology in our world. As a matter of fact arcane magic is the technology of that world. But it is dangerous and has come to be recognized as causing biological alterations in both advanced creatures, and in animals. In our game creatures like the Hydra and the Troll and so forth actually originate in this world and tend to be animals or creatures transmuted either intentionally or accidentally by arcane magic. These "monsters" though are unique, there usually being only one of them, and most are extremely dangerous because they can be extremely vicious, and because of the way they were created, naturally filled with arcane magic or magic like abilities. So even the Troll is tremendously dangerous, and the Goblin is vicious, murderous, cunning, able to camouflage itself, and tough. No monster is easy to kill.For some reason unknown exactly to anyone in either world these two worlds can bleed into one another from time to time, transporting men to the other world, and loosing monsters into ours. My players are actually divided into two teams. One party originates in the other world and has transported into our world in secret, attempting to hunt down monsters and beasts and criminals and rogue wizards and sorcerers which have escaped into our world. The other team is a Byzantine party investigating all of the strange disturbances occurring in our world as a result of these bleed-overs.As I said I don't know of any RPG milieu set specifically in the Byzantine Empire, though there may be. But that's what we use.But if you are interested in creating your own world of some era then I would suggest using the best historical texts, both modern and ancient, that you can find as well as doing a good religious, cultural, political, military, mythological and folklore study of wherever you want to place your players. Then build that world as you want it to function.</blockquote>

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