Why are there no caveman settings?

I feel like there are a few? I just can't remember their names right now.

Lots of settings have stone age tech level regions within a larger area that also had higher tech levels. Even real life has some stone age peoples still around.

Though, since I studied anthropology for three years, I am bound by forsaken rituals of academia to tell you that the concept of "stone age people" is entirely stupid.

>>51366369
What's a more accurate way to describe things? Did humans never live in caves and use clubs?

>>51366337
I swear to god, there was one called quest for fire, but for the life of me I can't find it

>>51366337

there is GURPS one i guess.

I suppose it's because the setting doesn't lend itself well to roleplaying. Limited language means there's less non-hostile interaction between players and NPCs and limited technology/magic means that you're less able to pull reasons for things happening out of your ass which makes it more daunting for middling to poor DMs (like me)

>>51366369
You mean the whole "unga bunga" grunting, club wielding caveman shtick?

>>51366369
>Though, since I studied anthropology for three years, I am bound by forsaken rituals of academia to tell you that the concept of "stone age people" is entirely stupid.

So, any good sources we could correct our common misconceptions from?

>>51366337

Dude, check out Wolfpacks and Winter Snow, made by a regular over in the OSR General, it's well done and gotten some nice reviews.

http://the-disoriented-ranger.blogspot.com/2016/05/review-wolf-packs-and-winter-snow-ice.html

>>51366369
>the concept of "stone age people" is entirely stupid.

So the idea that people used to use stone tools is stupid? Is this some kind of academic deconstructionist hipsterism?
Or did you mean "the concept of cavemen," which actually is stupid?

>>51366369
>>51366417
>>51366506

No sources off the top of my head right now, it's been a few years.

But basically, it's just an overly simplistic and misleading view of development. There are a lot more ways for a society/culture to advance than what material they use in their tools. A "stone age" culture could, for example, have much more sophisticated social, economic or agricultural structures/methods than would come to mind when you think "stone age".

"Caveman" is also misleading because the vast majority of humans and hominids probably didn't live in caves, caves are just where their remains were most likely to survive long enough to be discovered.

I know, it's pedantic. I said forsaken rituals, didn't I? You get runes carved into your back by a shark tooth, see how it goes for you.

>>51366369

If you really did, you'd probably be sufficiently intelligent to not give a shit, like adjusted people do.

>>51366337

OG
Land of Ice and Stone
Wurm
Cavemaster

I only played OG which is pretty fine for what it does.

>>51366720
>caves are just where their remains were most likely to survive long enough to be discovered
...how the fuck have I never caught something that obvious.

Also, I'd still love the sources if you remember/find any. Just post and I'll read the thread at some point before it disappears.

>>51366720
True dat, but different cultures come into different parts of the stone age at different times - I think /tg/ wants something fairly specific.

Something set in a period and place with Upper Paleolithic to Early Neolithic humans discovering civilisation, and also coming into contact with other now extinct hominids and megafauna; there's potential to have a game set in a still Neolithic hunter-gatherer backwoods when other more distant cultures have reached a city-building Chacolithic state - this gives us the option of introducing "scary future-men" with strange technologies like pictographic writing, legislation, body armour and copper and gold mining.

>>51367003

>muh lovecraftian technopriests

Don't want to diss your idea but they probably wouldn't give a fuck per se. I mean, they WOULD give a fuck if they come as an army/colonization effort out of the blue, but I don't think IRL "savages" tought tech per se was something mystical, at least when we have such a smaller gap. Native americans for example were puzzled by things like air-compressed rifles, but that's a whole different level than going scared from "so you can grow shit out your house? Well, neat, might be worth considering".

What REALLY scared/amazed "primitives" was our material wealth. And that's probably not even that amazing for a sumerian and a north-european individual of that age, unless the first is a noble or something. Agricoltural people weren't necessary richer as individuals, but they were more.

>>51366435
Yeah, an old school "Dinosaurs and Neanderthals and dinosaur people and THE EVIL CIVILIZED EMPIRE WITH METAL WORKING" one, "Gurps Land Out of Time". Also has an arbitrary mechanic that says "you liked that gun? Too bad. Breaks down unreasonably quickly in this setting. Learn to throw a spear DogFace Mc Veteran. Which is extra painful because you still pay the extortionate rates for having a weapon multiple TL's above the campaign TL. And it will invariably break or just run out of ammunition anyways. Although, you could possibly spend character points through the nose to make it a signature weapon with a bond and have some means of "Ammo forever". But it would be really expensive. The basic assumption is "No guns for you in the long run". To fairly subvert that would entail making it so expensive it would really cut down on your versatility. But hey, if your character concept is "I'm fucking Ash Williams in Land of the Lost, and This is My Boomstick" alongside some gadgeteering with your fucking shitty car, and other stuff, then fine I guess? A smart GM would of course, give you shit with all the primitive screwheads sensibly using their standard tactics of "Throw object at you from ambush and in a squirrely, skirmisher fashion", moreso because you are scary and your Thunderstick deals death at unreasonable ranges. It would be pretty funny in a comedy campaign to get pantsted because some guy who doesn't even know how to make a spear brained you with a lucky rock from behind a bush. Or if a fucking monkey person proto human missing link did.

Also has scads of stuff to do other kinds of TL 0 campaigns in Low Tech, it's supplements, and like other stuff. But the shamanism type things in that supplement are probably fairly solid for the kind of magic you would have in that sort of setting. (It supports both actual magic, and "well, he's a fucking charlatan" options, too. I think Horror also has stuff for "fake ass motherfucking fake" spiritualist guy)

>>51367288
>I don't think IRL "savages" tought tech per se was something mystical

I dunno. Medieval europeans thought blacksmiths were pretty magical. It's not like they were trembling in awe but there are a bunch of old superstitions about blacksmiths and forges and so on.

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>>51366337
/k/ is a caveman setting, the fuck you talking about?

Must be a berry picker

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>>51367690

>>51367690
>>51367703
>cave gun

Excuse my TvTropes, but there's something about bamboo technology that always just gets me.

Then again I watched KND as a kid, so. Any systems good for putting together stuff like your pic and actually having it work?

>>51367690
>>51367703
>cave paintings
>on stone thrower
leave cave.

Savage Core is a minis game set in the prehistoric era

>>51366689
>So the idea that people used to use stone tools is stupid? Is this some kind of academic deconstructionist hipsterism?
>Or did you mean "the concept of cavemen," which actually is stupid?
I think he means that pre-metalworking peoples were often far more ingenious than the title "stone age" would imply. Look up Göbekli Tepe.

>>51367566
That's because they had superstitions about everything. The important it was, the more superstitions became attached to it, so of course farming, smithing, and construction would have the most.

>>51367970

Yeah, but "stone age people" isn't about their intelligence or general ingenuity -- those have been roughly the same since Homo Sapiens Sapiens arrived. It's about their overall level of technological development, and is only a broad category used as a rule of thumb.

Is the english version of Wurm ever coming out, or did it get stuck in kickstarter hell?

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>>51367003

>"scary future-men" with strange technologies like pictographic writing, legislation, body armour and copper and gold mining

Romans?

>>51366337
Kingdom Death could count as a caveman setting if you look past the erotic lewd women in your settlement tribe and the lewd sexist fashion those sexy cave women wear during ceremonies. That and the horror themed monsters that you hunt for food.

>>51368938

More like Hittites or Sumerians. Romans were a bit beyond the bronze age.

I want 'cavemen' meets Monster Hunter. They take down supernatural beasts then forge arms and armor from their remains, blessed by shamanic rituals.

>>51366337
GURPS goes all the way back to TL (Tech Level) 0, which is caveman time.

>>51366944

There were probably thousands of little statelets and unions and 'empires' who simply didn't make it into the record because they were made of wood with pictograms at best. Even if we restrict that level of societal development to Humanity, that's 12,000 years of agriculture and around 70,000 years of modern behavior. Heroes and villains and beasts we'll only have the tiniest inkling about because maybe one day someone might find a carefully placed body in a cave or the fossil of some big bloody koala that was slain.

>>51366337
Because it's actually quite boring.

>>51366337
I had a pretty good setting thread a while back. Primal Survival in an Ice Age world, except with Shamanistic Blood Magic harnessing the power of Lovecraftian Behemoths that roam the world. You play as the hunters and warriors of your village. You must protect your people, gather resources for them, and help your village to survive.

>>51370575

See

>>51369020

Chronicles of Darkness has a stone-age setting in their "Dark Eras" book. The focus is on early mages in central Europe.

>>51368292
It's out

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I ran a game set in a slightly fantasy-fied Pleistocene Extinction time-frame.

To keep it from being overly simulation, I described it to my players as a "kind of Raquel Welch" kind of setting, more fur bikinis , primitive mysticism and tribe rivalry than just a fight for survival.

We ended up going full retard and using D&D for the game, but it still managed to be fun.

The secret, I think, to running a good game in a setting that is largely speculative is to drop your preconceptions and run something your play-group can enjoy.

>>51366433
>quest for fire

That's a movie. And a pretty good one at that.

>>51375062
And a pretty sick Iron Maiden song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ppwIZ0EnXg

>>51375133
>And a pretty sick Iron Maiden song.
No! Bad Anon! Bad!

Less-than-knowledgeable people might listen to that and think that Iron Maiden are annoying and shitty. Quest for Fire is literally my least favorite classic Maiden song, bar none.

Here's some good Maiden to clean your ears of that filth: https://youtu.be/71TJitXU8Z0

>>51366337
Check out the game 'Totem'.

>>51366337

Fireman hard to balance with stickman or rockman, shaman only man who stand even with fireman even though no one know what a sha is.

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>>51377929
The biggest issue is how overpowered fist-size rocks are. They punch through mammoth-hide armor like a pointy stick.

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In addition to the two games mentioned, Wolfpack & Winter Snow and Totem, there's also Grunting: the Race for Fire, and Og Unearthed Edition.
Fantasy Craft has a stone age setting in its adventure companion, too. It's all about heroic native american tribes in a desperate fight against the might of a demon-worshipping Aztec empire that's using blood magic to conquer the world. Pic related.

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>>51366369

Pic semi-related?

>>51378253
I'd like to conquer her world.

>>51366337
Real shitty loot table.

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>>51378275

>>51378328
1 Rock
2 Small Rock
3 Big Rock
4 Handful of Pebbles
5 Stick
6 Bent Stick
7 Broken Stick
8 Pointed Stick
9 Dirt
10 Some Leaves
...

>>51378584
Stick of Always on Fire

>>51367566

We have still some superstions about black cats, but we don't think they're magical. Well, maybe in the middle ages was the reverse, everyithing was "magical" to an extent, but you get my point.

Also, my point was more on the fact they tought "civilized people" to be equals with more wealth, usually.

>>51371790

Would it be?
I guess you kinda would have to make the game about the cavemen themselves, oddly enough. A game about the group and their relationships. Oddly enough, you would probably be good with AW without kewl vehicles and weapons.
I dunno if a "monster slaying" thing could work. Per se it would, I guess: DND with spirt worlds instead of dungeons. But probably it would be realtively stale and seem derivative, and I'm not sure you could come about many interesting monsters. I'd use them as only a part of the problems in the lives of the PCs and NPCs, I guess.

GURPS Fantasy II (Madlands) is good about all the tribal mindset and is already fantasy if you wanted a caveman-fantasy.

Because they're caca. Doo-doo.

SHIIIIT.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfY6DxhnfKo

All joking aside, doesn't All Flesh Must be Eaten have a prehistoric campaign? And Cadillacs and Dinosaurs had a RPG, too.

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Stat me

>>51367690
Wait, how does the launch/trigger mechanism work? Do you just lift the peg, or pull the sling off the peg? Would've that be annoyingly cumbersome to fire?

>>51367690
How effective is this?
It looks cool but seems obviously outclassed by slings and bows

>>51379146
That has got to be the dumbest thing ever.
And I want more of it

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>>51366337

Actually, this gives me an idea for a D&D campaign that the players think is NOT a D&D campaign..

Players create cavemen characters using standard D&D character creation rules (except for class and race, have to be human). The players will think it is the ice age on earth. After some time fighting off dinosaurs and general survival, I will start to creep in strange encounters with stranger and stranger creatures. Like wild boars, then saber tooth tigers, then tyrannosaurus Rex and then finally a beholder! Which they only see for a moment at a distance and then it vanishes.. to get the players weirded out. Finally the coup de grace when the players and their tribe get attacked by a man on a flying black horse wearing strange red and black clothing firing rays of fire from his hands slaying all the tribe before the players eyes. Dungeon master then appears and the players finally pick their class..

>>51379359
>And Acrobat!

>>51378584

You am loot table am a shit;
1 1d12 knapping rock
2 1d12 flint
3 1d12 striking rock
4 1d6 stick
5 intestines
6 hairy patch of skin
7 1d8 inexplicable chicken feathers
8 1d20 trade rocks
9 1d4 trade shells
10 1d6 knapped arrowhead

>>51378199
>rocks are almost as good as pointy sticks
>this makes rocks overpowered!
So pointy sticks aren't overpowered?

>>51379983

Pointy sticks aren't ranged weapons, though. Rocks are, and that's part of why they're so OP. This is why DMs should be sure to limit the player's access to rock technology, or the whole OSR playstyle will break down and turn into Pathfinder.

>>51366337
Fighter too weak when arms so few.
>equipment list
>weapons
>club
>dart
>great club
>rock
>sling
>spear
>staff
>stick
>stone
>armor
>cloth
>bark
>hide
>leather
>shield
Not enough power scaling for fighter.

>>51380308
>Forgetting stone knife

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A anon once posted his or her orcs, big gorillas which grew bone as scar tissue. The things never used tools or even fire, cared only for eating anything edible plus iron to incorporate into its bones and scars, and were necrogenic.

>>51380106
>pointy sticks
>not ranged
>rocks
>ranged
Did you hit head on cave.

>>51381394

Hey, I don't make the rules. To make a ranged pointy stick you'd need to tie a sharp rock to the end, and then you've basically just made an upgraded rock.

>>51381419
You can burn pointy stick to make it more pointy

>>51381394
Rocks have a trivial to-hit penalty as missles.

Pointy sticks have NASTY on-hit penalties as missles, even at close ranges!
And they're too valueable to waste on attacks beyond the first range increment.

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>>51366337
Orcworld might be along those lines if you can still find it anywhere.

I wanna play a zeno clash rpg.
Fishguns, the local presence of a race being about the size of a family, skullbombs, giant clams for chests, occasionaly stone cities, strange symbols and devices noone really knows the full story of, giant crabs, a forest filled with deranged and unorganized people who arent allowed in the cities, people taking decades to realize that a single hermaphroditic featherless bird (father mother) could not possibly give birth to children that look like everything except for eachother or their supposed parent.
Plus, it's soundtrack begs to be the background music of a campaign.

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>>51381873
pic related

Woooo.

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>>51381887

>Zeno clash

>nobody's even shooting an arrow over a turtle

>>51366665
Seconding this one, it's easy as fuck to learn and very good!

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>>51366337
Because pic related

>>51366337
You mean an extremely simplistic rpg marketed towards the single digit iq crowd?

I do believe that 5E has been out for a while now and is exactly what you are looking for.

>>51378253
Anybody have PDFs for the systems mentioned in this post?

step 1: take any setting
step 2: adapt it to stone age technology

a hunter/gatherer setting would be fun for a quickie I think, there isn't too much to do other than hunt or gather. at best you could have a tribal conflict go down, or maybe start the players off as upper-paleolithic h/gs at the edge of emergent neolithic/bronze age civilization.

literally use any setting, even 5e works. just have everyone be barbarians and gut everything magical/non-earth canon.

>>51390153

Wolfpacks is pay-what-you-want on DTRPG. The others should be up in the PDF share thread's archives.

>>51367433
I think he means GURPS Ice Age.

>>51390185
>step 1: take any setting
Shadowrun
>step 2: adapt it to stone age technology
Hmmm, could be interesting.

>Thog am Path Pounder, gud with any thunk-sticks
>Ugga am Magic Man, make head lots hurty
>Krog am Tamer, tell long-fang pet to eat enemy
>Drok am Trancer, go in trance and make enemy trip

>Watch own back
>Throw straight
>Keep stones
>And never, ever deal with dinosaur

Out of all the options that everyone listed which one do you guys think is the best one so far?

>>51371474
best figures ive seen put the development of agriculture at -8000bce

>>51367690

>Feral Ork shoota.jpg

>>51381394
In order to be an effective ranged weapon, a stick would need to be straight, big, sturdy and pointy, and the chance of all of those coinciding is less than the chance of Thog finding his pebble under a pile of pebbles. Even though Thog is good at finding pebbles, it would be a fruitless endeavor (because Thog would have to spend all day sorting through pebbles and have no time left for finding fruit). Sure, the perfect stick is out there somewhere, but that's high level shit right there, and by the time you're ready for that particular quest, chances are you've already got a +1 Stone of Bonking, or even a Rock of Sharpness. And, I mean, it's not like you can *make* these things. Not unless you're some kind of wizard, and I'm pretty sure those haven't been invented yet.