D&D 5E What’s So Great About Medieval Europe?

[Fenris-77]

Lol. Primal thule conan territory. Thats a funny way of putting it.

Not really. Howard is probably the most visible and influential fantasy author to imagine an ancient pre-history of Europe that involves metal working. I'm just going to assume you weren't talking about a Stone Age tech level, so pre-1700BC and metal working and you've veered very much off the 'historical Europe' bandwagon. Nothing wring with that of course, but the 'history' element is essentially gone at that point.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

For the record, herms is theorized by anthropologists to be one of the first proper deities (not a modern form) to emerge from middle to late animism and was worshipped long before writing was invented.

The only reason that THAT is known is because of oral traditions and collaborative reconstruction of indo european beliefs paired with taking the cuktures that worshiped him and establishing a reasonabke projectiom of roighly when he was likely invented.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

Not really. Howard is probably the most visible and influential fantasy author to imagine an ancient pre-history of Europe that involves metal working. I'm just going to assume you weren't talking about a Stone Age tech level, so pre-1700BC and metal working and you've veered very much off the 'historical Europe' bandwagon. Nothing wring with that of course, but the 'history' element is essentially gone at that point.

Ehem. No. I just thought it was a funny way of describing what you were trying to describe. I wasnt saying conan describes what i run.

Its very much not a perfect reconstruction of historical europe. But its strongly based on it.

See the herms comment.

 

[Fenris-77]

I wasn't suggesting you run a Conan game. Do you run Stone Age tech level?

 

[Son of the Serpent]

I wasn't suggesting you run a Conan game. Do you run Stone Age tech level?

Here is what i do.

Cosmically its temporally variegated to a degree.

Planarly its not.

Ive used the nordic and indo european idea of a multi world cosmos (which is actually a part of their myth that stretches wayyyy back but in varying forms) to create a scenario in which some planes are in the stone age and some are in iron age as well as somenin between.

The gods (and entities somewhat similar to that) also have some of this effecting them.

Entire campaigns are sometimes innjustbone continent on just one plane. Sometimes not.

Ive used this way of world building to gain advantages of variegated play while being able to completely cut those hallmarks off as well.

Takes a lot of work but its worth it.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

8 course meal. Not a salad. Not a melting pot basically.

 

[Fenris-77]

That sounds neat, but the connection to Medieval Europe look pretty slim. A little bit around the edges depending on how you handle the bronze and especially iron age stuff I guess. How Iron Ages in you iron age? Would I recognize Jastof culture and the emergence of bog iron as the primary resource for metallurgy? Do you have agriculture (like with ploughs?) which doesn't actually really take off in Scandinavia until the Viking Age ca. 800 BCE? This isn't supposed to be a quiz, I'm legitimately curious.

 

[Voadam]

Let's say I wanted to do an oriental culture. Awesome. Well ... hmm. Now we have the first problem. What do we do about religion? Assuming Christianity and Islam are no-goes we have Buddhism, Confuscism, Daoism. Religions that have been around for thousands of years and are still being practiced.

I mean, if I were Catholic and someone had a world where Catholicism was the main religion ... I'd be a little hesitant. It would hit too close to home. That may not be true for everyone.

Do you have similar issues with Roleplaying in modern settings like World of Darkness where there is Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, etc.?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

There's the Nordic Bronze Age from 1700 BC to 500 BC, then the Classical/Iron age from 500 BC to 500 BCE. Anything earlier than that is either Stone Age or veering off into Primal Thule Conan territory.

I really want an ancient world DnD setting. Give me city states inspired by what we know of Ur, inspired by the OG Tiamat lore and by Gilgamesh and by early Semetic mythology.
I want;

• rules for improving the life of your people and gaining benefits from that
• for gaining access to new technologies (mostly magical, but some just plain old metallurgical advancement is also welcome)
• better rules for developing new (ie crafting) magic items, but an expectation that you won't ever find magic items in old ruins (with very rare exceptions, for maybe fewer than 5 locations in the entire setting that are analogous to something like the Sphynx in Egypt, where it was ancient to the ancients)
• optional variant rules for spellcasting, where you learn fewer spells and have to develop spells during downtime or through dangerous experimentation, and first learn them as rituals you can perform during a rest or something, and then release, but eventually gain them as per the phb. Something to make it feel like you are inventing the magic that later generations will take for granted.
• a sense of discovery. maybe large swaths of the setting are undefined, and the expectation is that you'll use the rules in the new book to build the setting out via play, and each ancient world game will be different from any other.
• Optional rules for making one campaign impact the next/playing a legacy campaign where the heroes of the last campaign have change the world, and you play in that changed world, with direct player input on what the aftermath of thier PC's actions are in the world. (ie, the order of holy warriors I founded with my sister has become more esoteric with time, and is the military backbone of the city of Kuro, and as a result the city itself has become a haven for esotericists and philosophers)

 

[doctorbadwolf]

So ... what you're saying is that you want this thread shut down because your implementation of orcs is different than mine? Although I do agree. They don't have to be evil, I just choose to do it. There are already too many humanoid non-evil races running around for my taste (dwarves, elves, gnomes*, halflings, half-elves, half-orcs not to mention aarokarca, tieflings, warforged ... the list goes on).

I mean, I guess everybody has to have a goal.

*never mind gnomes. Gnomes are evil.

No, I don't want my own thread shut down, and I'm not sure why you keep trying to angle anyone who disagrees with you toward that.

But the way you word your responses consistently paints the choices as "evil orcs" vs "orcs that are just humans in rubber masks". That dichotomy doesn't exist.