What are some good quest ideas for a bronze-Age campaign?

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Mythic Fantasy.

>>52356991
much the same as regular fantasy. But no one has any iron.

I always thought it was weird that DnD and the typical fantasy games are based on feudal europe rather than the bronze and iron ages..it's also weird that almost every fantasy setting is polytheistic thought he medieval europeans were christians.

When I think of 'adventurer' Odysseus and Perseus come to mind, no medieval figure. Also plate armor is just anti-adventure. Can't jump a chasm or climb a robe when you're dressed like that. Cyclops, colussus, hydra, minotaur...medieval europe just has the dragon? And there's more seafaring adventures than in medieval settings, that's for sure.

There's lots of good quest ideas, but one thing i think is true is that your ideas don't need to be as good/clever in such a setting. You can literally just have 'achilles is badass and kills a bunch of people' and 'you have to defeat this minotaur/cyclops/medusa/whatever that's terrorizing our people. Literally you just have these creatures living in a cave or a dungeon or a labyrinth or whatever it is.

And dont' forget the middle eastern stuff from the same time period.
When your story takes place in a place with all these independent city states plus 1 or 2 powerful empires...adventurous quests feel 'normal' to me somehow.

Feudalism feels too constricting

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The Rape Goddess has just sent The Bull of Heaven to annihilate the City, and only the Party has enough collected Demi-God-ness and whoopass to bring it down!

>>52357037
Or this, no joke.

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>>52357150
>The Rape Goddess has just sent The Bull of Heaven to annihilate the City, and only the Party has enough collected Demi-God-ness and whoopass to bring it down!

And if that doesn't work, she'll tear your fucking walls down with magic and sorcery, and grind your priests' bones to dust under iron boots.

Evil Villain stole all the bronze!

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>>52356991
Underword god has kidnapped a goddess

Are you a bad enough bunch of dudes to literally go to hell and get her back?

>>52357548
>Sumer and Akkad
Shit son, the Middle East at the time was pretty depressing. Didn't the Epic of Gilgamesh state that the afterlife is so utterly shit that the dead envy the living? Their worldview must've been "be happy with what you got, because in about 60 years it'll get A LOT worse".

>>52357765
A culture that believes in paradise after death is probably more desperate

>>52356991
There is a comic called Age of Bronze. May help you to gain ideas for your campaign.

I’d like to play Glorantha, but all the rulebooks are out of print and 13th age is vaporware.

What system would you guys use for a bronze age type setting?

>>52357184
Remind me why we worship the Rape Goddess again?

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>>52358113
It depends, but BRP or Runequest are very good for that feel of high adventure but high mortality/maiming, it's the best imho for sword and sorcery kind of games.

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>>52358160
Because you don't want her to get pissed off with your tribe of course.

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>>52357110
Late plate armor harness was lighter and easier to move in then most previous armor types, and is far less uncomfortable and restrictive then chain, quited fabric or scale, with some types of scale being among the heaviest armor that humans have ever engaged in combat while wearing.

It's heavier then clothing, but lighter then modern plate carrier armor with auxurllery protection for groin, deltoids, ect.

>>52358113
GURPS handles it really well and there's a sweet brutality to bronze age combat, where you can do battle with staff and sling or a spear and you are a serious threat rather then a joke.

>>52356991
For a non-mythic game, maybe play up the gift exchanges that were part of many bronze age cultures? To keep the peace between your people and a nearby city you have to escort a great white bull to their temple.

Start with an attack by a poor tribe that wants to steal the sacrifice for their own god to give some good fights to start the story off, then follow up with some politics, a person from your people trying to convince you to sabotage the gift exchange because the city is weak at the moment and vulnerable to attack. Better to raid them for as much tribute as you can carry then seal an alliance. Make the players chose between wealth and honor.

>>52358160
She's pretty hot

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Glorantha is a good setting for what you want.
Even if only as something to get inspiration from.

>>52357851
Have you checked Chaosiums website? Most Glorantha related stuff can be bought there, even if only as PDF.

>>52356991
Raid Egypt
Raid for other people's cattle
Try to negotiate a deal for lumber with a king in an ancient country who has little to fear if he decides that it's more convenient to just rob you and feeds you to his dogs
FIGHT CHAOS BY SPREADING YOUR DOMINION OVER THE KNOWN WORLD

>>52357110
>Tolkien is based of feudal Europe
>all fantasy is a ripoff of Tolkien
>all fantasy is based of feudal Europe
Simple as that son. There isn't a lick of originality left in this entire genre.

>>52358113
No one mentions Savage Worlds enough

>medieval "fantasy"
>God hates you and nailed his son to a cross also praise the pope
>bronze age fantasy
>are you a bad enough dude to bone the goddess of sex and then chariot race away from her jealous god boyfriend in time?
it's really no contest

>>52359779

Tolkien is based off of pre fuedal Northern Europe.

>>52359849
>are you a bad enough dude to bone the goddess of death and ask her to race against your neighbours' cows once she's right and proper pregnant?

>>52359779
But D&D rips from Howard and Vance more than Tolkien

>>52359908
I've never read anything by Vance, but D&D doesn't rip off Howard in the least, except arguably the Barbarian class, which I suspect was also based on the Arnold movies.

Read the book of Judges in the Bible. It's good some good adventuring ideas.

>>52359861
Correct. Specifically Germanic myths

>>52359997
how much damage would the jawbone of an ass do in DnD or Savage Worlds

>>52360061
1d8. But you forget, Samson had a MASSIVE strength bonus to hit and damage and a rage bonus to boot.

>>52359849
upvoted

>>52359951
Spell slots are ripped straight from Vance

>>52356991
anything from the book of judges (maccabees). seriously, there's even a chapter where a rebellious Israelite stabs a king who was so fat that dirt came out instead of blood. seriously, this king is the only one in the text that is actually described as being "a very fat man."

every military victory comes about because God intervened in some way (this is very fitting for bronze age campaigns). even down to just because you doubt my power I will have a woman completely show you up and kill your enemy for you.

the other books in the text also have some great plot hooks. the description of the Israelites under Joseph makes for a great description of a militaristic society on the move and the customs and traditions they're likely to follow.

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>>52360109
be gentle it's my first time baiting
thanks for the (you)

An Assyrian Prince does something that pisses his father off. In punishment he sends him on a massive redemption quest.

1. Tour the entire Empire and take stock of the reality on the group and clean up corruption.

2. Make diplomatic contact with the great regional powers and asset Assyrian interests (Egypt, Hitties, etc...)

3. Asset dominion over vassal states

No one actually thinks the prince will survive this mission but he does it anyways because Assyrians are headstrong. He brings his war chariot as well as his closest sworn brothers. Here you have other PCs that can take different roles from fighting, trading, religious priest, envoy or even scribe.

If you really want to up the difficulty, have it take place during the bronze age collapse and having to adventure through destroyed and ransacked lands where roaming war bands of sea peoples hunt you down.

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S E A P E O P L E S

>>52360539

The Bronze age facilitated a great deal of international relations and trade.

Tin and precious stones from Afghanistan was found around the mediterrean.

All to dust and ash, as the sea people tribes ended city after city.

>>52360676
Assuming they're the cause, and not the symptom.

Some have suggested there were major famines going on, and that the Sea Peoples were essentially just people lacking food, going to raid for more, and the whole thing snowballing from there.

>>52360539
>bronze age civilizations were powerful and stable
>literally destroyed by starving peasants in boats

>>52356991
Isn't that cRPG Tyranny a bronze-age setting?

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>>52358160
This >>52358304 tbqhwy senpai

>>52359951
D&D literally uses Vancian magic...

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>>52357851
Bro. Heroquest Glorantha is in print, and both the new Runequest and 13th Age in Glorantha should be released by the end of the year.

>>52356991
anything out of conan basically

just play MYFAROG

>>52360893

yes

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>>52361839
>vargposting

>>52360121
I thought that that was a euphemism for the king shitting himself when he died.

>>52356991
>Some thief or neighbouring people have stolen your temple's idol, and now your crops/herds are failing
>The local ruler is heirless, and promises his land to someone who can undertake some great task. there is much competition from other gangs of adventurers and claimants.
> some hideous beast stalks the hills, eating villagers.
>A blind prophet declares that the current plague is caused by some great sacrilegious pollution in the area. you need to determine the source and cleanse it.
>there is a war in heaven, and people are taking sides.
> your lands have been ravaged by strange invaders, and you must undertake a great journey with the survivors to claim a new kingdom.
>because of impudence, a sorceress has cursed you, and you must complete tasks for her amusement in order to lift it.

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Chariots need to be included at some point.

>>52358160
Because our civilization is scared as shit of her so we designated some sect of whores to do ritual bullshit or something to appease her, but eventually they forgot what the reason for their existence and started doing it honestly.

>>52362493

Post collapse all the way to early iron age would be interesting as well. Because there are these huge cities just kind of lying around abandoned.

"[T]hey marched... to a great deserted fortress (which lay over against the city), and the name of that city was Mespila (3). The Medes once dwelt in it. The basement was made of polished stone full of shells; fifty feet was the breadth of it, and fifty feet the height; and on this basement was reared a wall of brick, the breadth whereof was fifty feet and the height thereof four hundred; and the circuit of the wall was six parasangs [~15 - 18 miles]. Hither, as the story goes, Medea (4), the king's wife, betook herself in flight what time the Medes lost their empire at the hands of the Persians. To this city also the king of the Pesians laid siege, but could not take it either by length of days or strength of hand. But Zeus sent amazement on the inhabitants thereof, and so it was taken. "

-Anabasis

Imagine walking by a place, bigger and grander than anything you or yours have built. "Yeah, god fucked that city up a while ago." It's just kind of sitting there abandoned. That experience was common enough that it rated a paragraph in a travelogue. Admittedly one where they were fleeing for their lives.

>>52363356
In all honesty we've kinda been relying on the sect of whores to distract the king when he decides being king means he gets to bend everyone over. We've found it hard to keep a city going for very long without getting some crazy high-born bitches organized to distract the crazy high-born men.

>>52358243
holy shit qt alert

>>52363311
What features of ancient timesy war meta caused chariots to be so good and then stop being a viable strat? Dumb phrasing, serious question. I like chariots but if I understand them better I can put them in stuff without it being stupid.

So, ideas for Bronze-Age 5e D&D

Races:
Humans (naturally)
Centaurs
Satyrs
Amazons (human subrace, or entirely new?)
Goliaths
Demigod?

New Archetypes for Classes:
Bard (College of the Sacred Prostitute)
Cleric (Prophecy)
Fighter (Charioteer)
Wizard (Astrologer)

>>52364204
Bigger horses.

They started breeding programs so that they could have horses capable of carrying heavier armour, so that cavalry would be more useful.

>>52364204
Sea peoples eschewing expensive horses and charioteers for hordes of naked javelin tossers

>>52364237
>Amazons (human subrace, or entirely new?)
Entirely new. They're women, except not incompetent.

>>52364204
>>52364317
Not him but to add to that...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Przewalski's_horse
This is the closest living relative of the early wild horse from which most domesticated breeds are descendants. These horses are absolutely tiny. You can't really imagine a dude in full armor sitting on its back, can you? Those tiny beasts dragging a chariot also looks a lot less impressive than modern horses dragging a chariot like in modern day movies and vidya. Imagine how silly the race scene from Prince of Egypt would look with itty bitty horses.

>>52358113

How about Barbarians of Lemuria?

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>>52361747
Isn’t Thed supposed to be goddess of rape?

Isn’t this one more like goddess of cultural marxism?

>>52364718
Yeah, some people have weird ideas on the Red Goddess, but she's just a goddess of illumination, glamour, cosmos and chaos.

>>52357110
Greek mythology is the best kind of setting for DnD.

My DM typically bases his campaigns on it and it's generally super fun, if a bit insane sometimes.

I am still mad he ended up not doing a daughters of Thespius-like quest because he thought it'd be too magical realm-y.

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>>52364718
I mean Teelo Estara was raped by Wakboth before she became Sedenya, so...

>>52364793
>Yeah, some people have weird ideas on the Red Goddess, but she's just a goddess of illumination, glamour, cosmos and chaos.
>just a goddess of illumination, glamour, cosmos and chaos.
>JUST
She is Gbaji returned.

>>52360823
>literally destroyed by starving peasants in boats
sic semper tyranus...

>>52356991
>good quest ideas for a bronze-Age campaign?
you play a band of phenician warriors-merchants tasked with retrieving a royal artifact on a archipelago of small islands

>>52365601
>phenician

>The life giving river has dried up, you have been tasked to find the cause of it and fix it.
>The holy cattle that was gifted to your people by the gods are gone. Find them and whoever took them.
>Strange foreigners with equally strange gods have come to conquer your people. Fend them off.
>You are the ones invading a faraway strange country with strange gods. Loot and conquer!
>By order of your King/God you have been tasked to steal a magical item/creature from a monster/rival city/rival god to bring prosperity and glory to your people.
>You are merchants/explorers/warriors setting out to travel beyond the borders of the civilised world to find what lies beyond. Meet alien civilisations both human and not, discover ruins from before time and challenge monsters guarding untold treasures.

>>52364237
desu the cleric divine domain system is already perfect for pre-medieval stuff

that's the one thing about these medieval fantasy games that's very bronze age rather than medieval, the religious stuff

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>>52360539
More like
S A R D N I G G E R S

>>52366733
Yeah, it's a very suitable class. There is the question of what to use for magic users, Favoured Soul would work nicely for some. Others might be more suited for warlocks.

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>>52356991
Look at ancient hero myths like Perseus, Theseus, or Odysseus. There's some good shit in Egyptian and Mesopotamian mythology as well.

Also look at history. Your players could be ancient Egyptians dealing with the Sea Peoples or you could have the BBEG be a Rome/Assyria proxy that have iron while the PC's nation is still stuck with bronze.

Also, check out pic related. It's a Diablo-esque RPG that takes place in ancient Greece, Egypt, Babylon, and China. It's got a lot of cool shit, and some quests that would probably work for what you're describing.

>>52360539
>Those fucking colors

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>>52356991
>>52367029
Age of Mythology might give you some inspiration as well.

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>>52360121
>maccabees

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What are the best intelligent monsters for a Bronze age game?

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>>52367686
Trolls.

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>>52367712
Neat!

captcha: limit roman
Whaaaat?

>>52367686
Centaurs, Satyrs, Harpies, Sirens, Sphinxes. Cyclopses, Hecatoncheires, Gorgons

>>52367111
PROSTAGMA?

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>>52363824
She can tend my flock any time.

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>>52367847
skee pan

>>52367111
Atlanteans OP, pls nerf Citizen

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>>52367920
[ANGRY DOG NOISES]

G I L G A M E S H
I L G A M E S H G
L G A M E S H G I
G A M E S H G I L
A M E S H G I L G
M E S H G I L G A
E S H G I L G A M
S H G I L G A M E
H G I L G A M E S

>>52367029
>>52367111
Also Dwarf Fortress' world generation is sick.

It has an 'age of mythology' where civilization is weak and there's tons of powerful monsters (many of which are from bronze age mythology).
If, during history generation, a significant amount of monsters die as civilized population grows (and heroic historical figures become famous because they slew some of these monsters), it enters the age of legends, and if this goes even further, it enters the age of heroes, and then when tehre are almost none of these 'megabeasts' left and the world map is covered in civilizations it enters 'The Golden Age'.

Age of Mythology = Ancient crete, the minoans, palace of Knossos, etc., the entire history from this era is steeped in myth after being passed down orally. Dwarf Fortress simulates this historical effect by making it so that era in a randomly generated world actually did have those monsters..and a few heroes who slew them
Age of Legends = Myceneans, Trojan war stuff, mroe heroes like Achilles and Odysseus, more magical monsters dying
Age of Heroes = at this point historical events are more recent relative to the classical Greeks who decided to write all this shit down. way less mythical monsters and stuff, more war heroes stories. Also civilizations have become bigger and there's more warfare to talk about, for example Marathon and Thermopylae

Golden Age = hellenistic period and the Roman empire. No more magic, just politics and war.

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>>52356991
Horse riding was rather new then. Chariots were a way to make two to four small horses into a unified engine. Larger horse breeds emerged in places and allowed a single rider to a single horse. This higher mobility and number to the mounted core of warriors made for dangerous raids by swift soldiers. Settled places were great because they either moved only a few miles to chase the ever changing river banks or remained on the banks of a much larger, permanent river. These men wielded lassos and bows on horse back. Arrows to drive the infantry phalanxes into denser and denser blocks and lassos to snag stragglers or disrupt the battle line


>Go to the city of Ur'Anshah
>Claim to know a way to stop them, roll to accomplish
>Get in, tell the guards to take you to the king
>Tell him you can help stop the beast men in exchange for grain and women
>Fuck wenches, acquire currency

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>>52368415
Seeing this shit almost makes me want to devote a few weeks/months creating an alphabet for my players to decode in-game while diving through ruins.

Almost.

>>52369155
Let's file that under "things DMs think are good ideas that will make their players kill them in about five minutes."

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>>52357110
>>52364811
Either of you Greek guys have love for the Hellenistic Era? You've got the remnants of a dead empire, Scythians and/or Sarmatians in the wilds of the north, the Carthaginian trade dominance and it's conflict with upstart Rome, Greek colonies and cities all the way from Spain to Tajikistan, Pirates all over the place, abundant opportunities for mercenary work.

Shit's badass.

>>52369249
Hence, almost.

>>52369551
I was just affirming your very correct decision.

>>52369249

Alternately, "Things DMs think are good ideas that will instead crush their soul when the dead language they spent a month crafting is ignored in seconds for a skill check."

>>52369477
Hellenistic era feels a little too advanced, what with all the iron tech.

>>52369590
Gotcha.

>>52369606
>Hellenistic era feels a little too advanced, what with all the iron tech.
Then go with Mycaeneans/Achaeans. Bronze axes, horned helmets, raiding your neighbours for cattle, massive colonization on the Agaean, trade empire on Crete and so on

>>52369878
That's what I was saying.

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>>52364204
>>52364317
>>52364390

It wasn't really the size of ancient horses. Breeding a bigger horse is fairly simple, and something which ancient peoples would have been capable of, and very likely engaged in when it was suitable. (also, even a modest sized horse can still carry a man). Much more difficult is breeding horses with the correct temperament to be ridden in combat. Animals tend to not like having other animals (such as hoomans) sitting on top of them, and they definitely don't like it when there are hoomans sitting on top of them while there are also other hoomans trying to kill them.

Like, a person technically CAN ride on top of a rhino or a bull or whatever, but that doesn't exactly mean that they make for good mounts. War elephants existed for a long time, and have been utilized by many peoples, but they've never been more than a meme. They were pretty much always for showing off rather than as an actual effective weapon, because elephants are extremely uncooperative as battle mounts. Early horses would have had a similar attitude, and it took perhaps 2,000 years for this to be bred out of them.

Also, without a tradition of horse riding, it's not all that intuitive to begin doing so, even if you had a big horse. Lindybeige can be cringeworthy, but his video on cavalry is pretty good.

Some info: the domestication of horses occurs around 3,000-2,500 BC, but the earliest evidence we have for cavalry dates to only 800 BC. It's almost a certainty that cavalry existed earlier than this, and that people were riding horses long before they were fighting upon them, but the length of this gap, and the fact that no other animals have been EFFECTIVELY utilized for combat should be pretty instructive.

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>>52367087

Dude, the Bronze Age was wild.

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>>52367087

(actually, pre-modern people of all ages and places tended to dress and decorate very colorfully. For some reason*, modern media likes to depict everyone as wearing only black and brown)

(*GRITTINESS!!1)

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>>52367087
What, do you prefer the hollywood leather, mud and shit look? People back then loved gaudy stuff, specially the military. Heck, until the first world war soldier wore the prettiest stuff if they could afford it. Clothes were sure way to display statues and the like.

>>52373222
But anon, ancient means primitive and dumb!

>>52373222
I'm sure it was related to wealth

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>>52373553
In general rich people wore the most expensive colors like purple or blue if they could afford it, for bragging rights and disdain for plebs.
In war is was used to scare enemies, that's why people wore exotic furs,feathers, pelts and the like, to appear bigger, fiercer or whatever, be it an achean or a Polish Hussar it worked.

>>52373553

Absolutely, certain dyes would be pricier, patterned cloth might be more expensive than solid color cloth, and prints and embroidery could be costly. But simple embroideries or a small band of more expensive fabric/dye on a simpler garment would not be prohibitive.

Of course wealthy people would be dressed more elaborately, but this doesn't mean that only the rich would be dressed colorfully and everyone else would be wearing potato sacks. Actually, modern movies and TV shows go beyond this, where we see even aristocrats dressed in black and brown. Oftentimes in weird leather.

>>52373606
>In general rich people wore the most expensive colors like purple or blue if they could afford it, for bragging rights and disdain for plebs.

Purple dyes were apparently quite expensive across all times... not so much blue. Vivid reds (as opposed to orangish red) were pricier than blue, but thats only in dark ages Britain, can't say about elsewhere. Admittedly, I'm not sure why reds and blues couldn't be mixed to create purple... perhaps it was only a specific shade of purple which was so exclusive, or maybe a specific purple dye which was particularly vivid and fade-resistant.

Apparently yellows, oranges, and greens were the least expensive besides earth tones, but again, that's only the North Sea region in the Dark Ages.

>>52373786
Yellow and orange are fairly easy to make from many plant pigments and minerals, I think. I know at least tumeric is very common and stains a vivid yellow, so it would be available for dying but maybe in a different region. I decided to look it up and got https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_dye which says that green was actually relatively uncommon when compared to reds and yellows. Also, it seems that mixing colors was a bit harder than it seems.

>>52373786
Bright reds like that were either made from mercury sulfide or insect shells. Around the Mediterranean they were quite popular, as the insect shell pigment last a long time in wool or silk.

>>52373786
>I'm not sure why reds and blues couldn't be mixed to create purple
Up until the invention of acrylic paints in the 1930s, colour mixing usually always resulted in brown.
>perhaps it was only a specific shade of purple which was so exclusive
This. It was a dye made only from the shells of one kind of crustacean from one bay in the Mediterranean. Lilac was a common colour, but was counted as pink. Some blue dyes could fade to a dull bluish-purple over time, but the vivid "imperial" purple was the only "real" purple

>>52367686
Human sized intelligent ants.
Reptilian warriors grown from dragon teeth.
Giants whos appearance can range from what you expect to straight up bizarre.

>>52358113
AGON

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>>52356991
Shitting all over some Gauls and then some cool political intrigue followed by civil war.

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>>52375895
fugg, wrong image

>>52375506
I read somewhere that the shell that produces the purple became extinct recently or is endangered due to climate change and sea poisoning.

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The ancients had style compared to the ugly dress uniforms of todays soldier.

>>52376033
>"When I asked you to go to town and get some head..."

>>52376033
Modern military dress uniforms still look smart, but yes not as flamboyant or flashy and certainly quite plain.

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>>52376033
>>52376163

Depends on the country

>>52376366
>when you adopt the worst parts of all the cultures that influenced your nation

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>>52375895
Ironagefags pls go, this thread is for bronze only

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>>52376386
At least they whole-assed it, rather than half-assing some silly hats onto a regular uniform

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>>52373222
>checked

>>52368415
Chariots wree actually pulled by donkeys before the domestication of wild horses, assuming Silverberg's Gilgamesh takes that fact strait from the epic.

>>52377161
I think bulls were used at some point as well to pull chariots

>>52356991
You guys know some good games, books or shows to get inspiration from? Rome, Greece and Egypt are almost too cliche for me in this setting and don´t know all that much about Mesopotamia.

It´s probably time to crack open the hystory books...

>>52361885
M'lady

>>52377325
It depends on what you mean by Greece...

>>52357837 is a great recommendation. I'd also say the 2014 Hercules movie isn't too bad, with some great actors, and the main characters are a perfect adventuring party.
Hercules - Fighter, Amphiarus - Cleric, Autolycus - Rogue, Atlanta - Ranger, Iolaus - Bard, Tydeus - Barbarian.

>>52360823
>>literally destroyed by starving peasants in boats

This pleases the Bannon.

>>52377375
The mythological one before the bronze age collapse.

>>52356991
Going on a raid in another village.

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>>52377413
Ah right, it's just when some people think of ancient Greece they think of the Spartans of 300, or the Athenian city states and philosophers in toga.

>>52377479
Pardon me, but wasn´t ancient Greece littered with city states and a few countrys in between?
I think Sparta ruled over an area named Lacedonia, the other city states also a few villages near them. Macedonia was the only country in a modern sense I´m familiar with in that area. They all identified themselves as one ethnic people though.

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>>52377538
Yes but they were very different things back in those days.

The greek city states, the Polies, only developed after the dark ages. They had the whole fundamental rights for free male citizens and all that stuff, even if the actual government was a tyranny.

This is in comparison to the Bronze age, where things were ruled by kings (or anax) things were a lot more tribal, and the later acropoli were citadels, where people would go to if the city was invaded.

And that's why I also mentioned they were the Spartans of 300. Which were around 500 years in the future, during which time Sparta changed a lot.

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>>52377740
Here's a potentially useful map.

>>52379702
Strange how neatly that does fit, I might be wrong in this but looking at this it honestly looks like, from left to right:
>Bard Fighter Barbarian Sorceress Wizard Paladin

You could probably consider the chick either a full on Sorceress or a Cleric honestly.

>>52360539
DELETE THIS

>>52380044
KoDP lampoons the standard composition of a generic adventure party in one of its events.

>>52380044
You were almost right about the composition.

The "Bard" is a Scribe which I'm not entirely sure where it falls in DnD terms. The "Barbarian" is a Shaman and the "Sorceress" is more like a Cleric.

The others are pretty spot on with what they can do.

>>52357837
Yes. That was a good comic.

>>52375506
>crustacean
A mollusk, actually.

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>>52380621

Fuck now I want to play RuneQuest/Mythras.

>>52381413
Yeah, tell me about it.

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>>52381277
The whole thing. Its especially funny if you for some reason decides to give them hospitality.

Always had an idea of a grand campaign set in ancient Mesopotamia where the party went around killing gods and old legendary rulers, eventually becoming gods themselves. I've never undertaken a campaign of that size though.

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>>52381968
Sounds really fun desu senpai

But you definitely gotta have a real investment of time for that, or rotate through players to keep the party intact even if people drop out.

>>52376366
look at the pompom shoes

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Remember, describe everything to be colorful as fuck.

>>52381968

What mechanical system would you use?

>>52384107
I am unsure, maybe a very homebrewed AD&D 2E. I've certainly never played a system made for ancient historical play. I wouldn't use D&D post-2E, GURPS, FATE, or any of the d20 systems.

>>52381968
Would the party consist of fighter Elyon, healer Eshmun, sorcerer Hadad and sneaky git Yahweh?

>>52367853
'Flock,' or..?

>>52369600
>What do you mean I can't roll to decipher it?
>I spent a week MAKING the fucking language, you can't spend ten MINUTES trying to figure it out?

>>52384311
Elyon and Yahweh were two different gods?

>>52363356
It's interesting that there are multiple examples throughout history of priesthoods forgetting what exactly it is that they're worshipping with their rituals.

>>52364973
No, she's Nysalor returned.
Gbaji destroyed Nysalor, you damned Stygian!

>>52376548
They look very excited about the choices in life that have led them to this.

>>52387822
I mean that's normal I would think. Something I think we often forget about ancient history is timescale. The United States has been around for less than 250 years. Individual Egyptian dynasties lasted hundreds. It took tens of thousands to get to the neolithic era, thousands to get to the bronze age, a couple thousand to get to iron age, centuries to reach the middle ages, centuries to reach the renaissance, and the 'modern' era is only a few centuries old.
Meaning these ancient cultures went on for a VERY long time compared to modern cultures.
Consider, for example, the fact that we still celebrate Christmas. Which existed to worship somethign else entirely before Christianity was even a thing. Now many of us still celebrate it without even believing in god.
The traditions/rituals are way more dear to us than the beliefs.
And the ancients practiced these traditions for many more generations than we've practiced ours, so they're going to forget even more stuff.

>>52387883
Arkat did nothing wrong.

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>>52356991
>No Mazes and Minotaurs
Has no one heard of this? It's a game based on old-school D&D created as a what-if scenario where Gygax liked Greek myth more than medieval Europe. It plays up the fantasy elements with quite a bit of tongue-in-cheek humour, but I think it does a good job embodying the period if you like that style of game.

If you want ideas for a Bronze-Age campaign the guy's website has a small campaign and bunch of adventures for the system that could help. In general though Ancient Greece is well suited for episodic games where each session has the party visit an new mysterious island.

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>>52387883
Not even the Dara Happans buy that one, buddy.

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>>52389868
Actually they do.

I mean you had reactionary periods, but given Nysalor was a god of light, and Arkat was darkness monster who destroyed the bright empire, I don't blame them for thinking Arkat was the devil.

>>52390342
Oh they like Nysalor all right, but that's not the point in contention. The statement was that Sedenya is Nysalor reborn.

>>52359849
I think the reason most people don't go for it more is that most people don't get it.

Even if you pay attention to Greek myths, you're probably learning Arthurian legend alongside them. And you're still not learning about most other ancient peoples - so much of history is European-focused, because that's what most people are interested in.

And even aside from that, while I'm not sure most people today care about 'paganism,' I don't think most people get it. They'd rather something more like familiar monotheism and medieval Europe than strange and unfamiliar ancient Mesopotamia, where you've gotta sacrifice animals and shit to the gods otherwise you'll get trounced by other gods.

And it's not like you lose much by going generic fantasyland anyway - most people work in the ancient stuff anyway. Medusas, minotaurs, centaurs...

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>>52390382
Ohhhh right.

Well no and yes.

Nysalor was an avatar of Rashoran(a) god(dess) of illumination. Who was a previous incarnation of the Red Goddess.

When he's not an incarnation of Yelm.

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>>52390410
It's not helped by the more personal gods of fantasy RPGs. Most people would pray to whichever god was most appropriate at the time.

It's surprising that one of the few RPGs I've seen to take that route is 4e D&D

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>>52390430
Part of the reason I've enjoyed WFB so much is it seems to get polytheism more right, even if not completely. I think it's weird for a lot of modern folk to think that at one point, polytheism and acknowledgement of multiple deities was the norm - along with a ton of different other cultural focuses and ideas about morality. It's really hard to wrap your head around sometimes if you don't water it down or relate it to more familiar concepts.

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>>52390430
Bane?

>>52390620
He's a god FOR YOU.

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>>52387981
They're border guards, they need to front on eachother

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ0ue-XGl9c

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>>52360539
obligatory /pol/ warning about refugees

but seriously, Sea Peoples are the best, true total warfare society because they had nothing and nowhere to call home. They are quickly pacified when they start to settle again and/or are defeated/enslaved by dick chopping Egyptians etc

ALSO see attached, Heavy Metal mag story about a group of warrior women sent into a defeated city to root out the god king while their king sacks his city (corn beard guy)

some sex, an amount of violence, also: I'm not saying it was aliens but...

>>52363527
don't forget 'Cyclopian' archetecture is so called as the Greeks thought that early Bronze Age cities must have been made by the Cyclopes because there was no way mankind with it's current technological level could ever have made anything so grand and impressive

>>52393685
Fuck, learning about those cities was a treat. Most were designed with warfare in mind - one of my favorites had a large ramp at a 90 degree angle to the entrance, where any enemy troops would have to go up...but because of it, soldiers (who at the time would have carried their shield in their left hand) were leaving their right sides vulnerable to arrow fire.

>>52390415
Lunar propaganda. The true Yelmites revolted with Janisor and were defeated. Those that are left are occluded by Sedenya.

>>52393685
Is there any evidence on how they where really build? I looked it up, but google and wikipedia don´t seem to have a clue.

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I'm running a campaign based on the Deluge myth. The whole world is a few large islands and lots of tinier ones based on Bronze/Iron Age kingdoms like Greek city states, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Phoenicia and Carthage. So far it's been a monster and pirate hunting adventure. The PCs have killed a kraken and a basalisk so far.

Nest big creature I have planned is a kind of behoemeth protecting a forest that the BBEG will trick the PCs into killing, but is actually protecting a map to a MCGuffin that BBEG will use to grant himself immortality but will submerge the world to a second flood.

>>52359861
Which is why it always pisses me off to see supposedly Tolkien derived fantasy set in high-medieval worlds. Tolkien's world was a medieval world barely out of the iron age, not a medieval world with full-plate and feudalism.

>>52373707

There's a recent British adaption of the Three Musketeers that has them striding around the court of Louis XIII in what looks like the 17th century equivalent of biker leathers. The producers obviously thought that a modern audience would consider them a bunch of girls if they appeared in the flashy and elaborate costume's that they would have actually worn in the royal presence.

>>52373222
All those serene graceful white marble columns and statues and shit from the ancient Greco-Roman culture?

Yeah, those were covered in incredibly gaudy, loud, colorful paint. The paint just came off over time. Ancient Rome looked like an explosion in a skittles factory, palette-wise.

>>52397304
The paint was still on'em when they were dug out, but the gay german faggot Winkelmann completely cut them from his writings because colour went against his a e s t e t h i c.

Never trust anyone from /fit/.

Anyone here that can recommend a bronze age civilsation north of Sumer and/or Greece? The closest I got where Scythians, who where apparently proto-steppe nomads, not exactly living north of them. Need it for a setting.

>>52397304
Really? I thought they where sculpting masterworks intentionally left white.

>>52397507
>Really? I thought they where sculpting masterworks intentionally left white.

They were coloured and their eyes were set with mother-of-pearl and crystals so that they could stare at people.
Coloured sculptures are the absolute standard across all human civilizations, with our couple of hundreds of years of bare statues being a huge and wierd aberration that will defy any attempt at finding a sensible explanation.

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>>52397507
>Anyone here that can recommend a bronze age civilsation north of Sumer and/or Greece?

Hallstadt. Mash them up with the Fanes saga and you got a pretty sweet setting.

>>52397507
Thank the Victorians for that. Bunch of pricks that would scrub paint off of statues because they thought they looked better blank.

REMOVE ASSYRIA
REMOVE

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>>52397614
>>52397507
>>52398390

The paint had been worn off for centuries when the Victorians were around.

The matter of master sculptors deliberately working in pale marble is from the Renaissance, where sculptors like Michelangelo created works intended to never be painted, inspired by the Roman and Greek sculptors that had been painted once but by the Early Modern Period had been bare stone for hundreds of years.

So everything artist did in the Renaissance? Supposed to look like bare marble.

Greek and Roman stuff that inspired them? Supposed to be painted.

>>52398390
Victorians scrubbed the medieval armor clean and shiny, all the shit from antiquity had long since become barren stone.

>>52399684
>>52399743
I'm pretty sure the Victorians scrubbed off some statues that hadn't been exposed to the elements for years, but I can't find the picture sauce so fuck me.

>>52399952
Victorians did fuck up a lot of old art.. But Greek and Roman statues would be at least 1350 years old by then. Unless protected from oxygen the paint used in Roman statues would be dust and gone, save for traces of things like mercury sulfate* and lapis where once there was pigment.

*Romans LOVED cinnabar red.

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>>52356991
>You are part of a stone age tribe travelling far away and meeting one of the first great bronze age civilisation.

This sort of thing probably somwehat happened at some point or another. The guys probably shat their pants witnessing those gods with shiny weapons.

>>52397507
Well, you could use the Hittites.

>>52356991
Stop Not!Ghengis Khan
Always a good campaign.

>>52384253

Would Riddle of Steel or Song of Swords work?
I bounced the idea off another GM and he suggested RuneQuest or HeroQuest and perhaps even Reign for macroscale play.

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>>52404986
You might consider AGON, which is about Greek demigods killing monsters.
http://www.agon-rpg.com/

Heroquest might also be another good option. Runequest is more for gritty combat, so it might not have the heroic vibe you're looking for.

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>>52402126
there are a handful of well-preserved statues or architectural ornaments which retain fragments of their original paint coat

couldn't find a picture of that so here's a fresco

also worth pointing out that while things were colourful, they weren't "insane crazy neon garish" colourful people seem to describe it as. maybe it just seems that way to us because as moderners we are use to everything being muted, gray, brown. cities are concrete and steel, almost everything about modern design is white black or grey. these people were much closer to the natural which, which guess what: is colourful. bright green grass, blue sky, blue water, reds, yellows, flowers, berries, birds, etc.

they are the normal ones, we are the ones which a strange and unnatural sense of colour.

sorry for ranting, I know this isn't bronze-age

>>52406702
also, minerals and precious stones have always attracted the human eye, and those are very vibrant colours. jade, turquoise, lapis, gold, etc

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>>52406702
Plus, it's entirely possible that those garish colors >>52383191 are just the primer that they used to undercoat the statue. I think it's very likely that the statues showed a more nuanced sense of shading and color than what's been implied.

>>52360766
This post might be a little late to the party but a massive earthquake and tidal wave destroyed the Mycenaean society. Combined with a volcano erupting that fucked over the climate and you had a recipe for disaster

>>52377161
Yeah for the longest time horses were considered barbaric and below the noble donkey

>>52406989
Not enough mentions of the top tier WILD ASS itt

>>52393649
Daily reminder that you are missing half of your teeth and one of your royal guard has a sharpened stick for a weapon. Welcome to the early bronze age

>>52407648
I have a feeling that their teeth would be better without all the shit we put in to our food and drink today barring some kind of impacted tooth

>>52406702
Those paints were done in quite expensive but long lasting mineral pigments. They dull over time, but can last a VERY long time. Many of the ones preserved were saved by being literally buried in mud or built over by stucco, siutations where the art was saved from UV light, water and oxygen.

99% of stuff was done in brighter and cheaper natural pigments, but.. those only last a few years, especially when exposed to sunlight.

>>52407740
You'd be super wrong. Fluoridated water, basic oral hygiene and routine filling of cavities mean that people with access to modern dentistry have much, much better teeth then their ancestors. High acid and sugar foods are bad for teeth and were more rare in most areas, but even people that have very low sugar and acid diets and no dentistry now have bad teeth.

>>52407813
also grit in your milled food from the mill stones and much harsher unprocessed grains and cereals to grind the enamel away.

Wisdom teeth are not there to annoy you, they are there to give you one last change to chew your food after the rest have fallen out in the first 20-30 years of your life.

ALSO late tribal/early palatial societies and inbreeding - image ancient aliens guy meme with INCEST as a caption

>>52408257
>after the rest have fallen out in the first 20-30 years of your life.

Um, no. Prior to modern medicine, people may have had band teeth (although paleolithic people had quite good teeth), but people weren't toothless by 30. That's just silly.

Not sure if this is the angle you're taking, but on a related topic- when we hear about "ANCIENT PEOPLE HAD LIFE EXPECTANCIES OF ONLY 25-30 YEARS ZOMG!!1" that's due to high rates of infant mortality. Actual statistics vary greatly across different places and time, and among social classes, but for instance during the Roman Empire, nearly half of all children would die during the first couple years of their life. Meaning that if there is a stated life expectancy of only 25, a 5-year old child probably had a life expectancy of about 40-something. If a child could survive to adolescence, their life expectancy would increase further- probably to around 50-60 in a stable, prosperous ancient society. There are places on earth today with life expectancies lower than that, and yet, if you go there you'll still find plenty of people in their 50's, 60's, 70's and some in their 80's and above.

>>52397716
Uhm, sorry for my ignorance, but what is the Fanes Saga? I have never heard of it. Is it some obscure Norse saga or is it a more recent work?

>>52408566
>Is it some obscure Norse saga or is it a more recent work?

It's a ladinic saga. Basically some oldass ethnic minority group in Southern Tyrole happend to have preserved a bronze-age saga about dwarfs slowly being driven into the mountains for good.

>>52409099
Okay, that sounds pretty good. Where can I read/buy/steal it?

>>52409114
Google it. But it was also featured in one of the Time Life series books. That version's a good bit more fantastic than the one I could find via google and will probably make for better RPG-fooder.

>>52361824
13th Age will be released never

>>52364390
They would be Tarpans though

>>52373222
I remember reading an article by a biblical scholar which was fairly convincing in claiming Goliath was a Greek mercenary.

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>>52358113
Perhaps a system based on a mythicized version of the bronze/early iron age, with detailed rules for combat with period weapons, based on IRL testing?

>>52360766
> he wuz a good philistine he dindu nuffin
get out libcuck

>>52376548
>Annual meeting of the Indian and Pakistani Ministries of Silly Walks

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>>52360766
like Bronze Age Tyranids

>>52384311
> sneaky git Yahweh
Imagining the Judeo-Christian God as a rogue class that just went epic nova in a time immemorial is actually pretty badass

>>52411358
Hah, no way. They still rampaged about, destroying cities.

I'm just saying it could have been a massive cataclysm, kind of post-apocalyptic, and the sea peoples were the bronze age band of raiders on motorbikes.

>>52409293
They're starting to collect info from backers. Books should be on their way soon.

>>52406780
Don't suppose we have a good example of what these statues might've looked like in their prime?

>>52414151
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/true-colors-17888/

>>52406425

Is RuneQuest the system where each physical location (on the body) has its own HP?

>>52419136
Yep. It's compatible with Call of Cthulhu too. the Cthulhu now supplement even lists limp HP for all the monsters.

HP reaches 0: location is crippled
HP reaches -x (x being full health): location is maimed or severed

If an arm or leg, roll 1d3
1-severed at the wrist
2-severed at the elbow
3-severed at the shoulder

From then on if an enemy attacks the severed limb by accident, you roll 1d3 to see where the blow lands. If you get 1 and the limb was severed at the elbow, the attack misses.

this can make battles drag on for too long so I only use the full system during boss fights and duels. also most humans should just surrender or run away when a limb is crippled.

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>>52419136
Not just hit points, but armour as well.

Which means if you're attacking soldiers who don't bother wearing greaves, you can go for the legs to cripple them.

Here's an old character sheet.

>>52419485
>>52419522

Whoa.

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>>52359779

Maybe I'm nuts but I always pictured LOTR in my head as looking more like the Late Antiquity/Dark Ages era than the high middle ages the moves looked like. I mean Gondor for basically the whole trilogy is where Rome was at in the 400's

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>>52422066
The 70's were a different time.

>>52359908

DnD is mostly a rip off of Fritz Leiber if anything. I mean Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are more similar to a mixed class DnD adventuring duo than any other fantasy creation

>>52360539

It was famine and changing climate, not sea people who were pretty much just ornery refugees that doomed the bronze age (sound samiliar?)

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>>52356991
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/slaughter-bridge-uncovering-colossal-bronze-age-battle
>Fucking BATTLE
>Involving thousands of men
>In a time where a few thousand PEOPLE was a city state alone
>People from across Europe showing up for this
>The elite are clad in copper and bronze armaments, with horses and squires to support them
>The lower soldiers still use fucking STONE arrows and wooden bats
>Die by the thousands
>No record of it
>No mention of it

It's amazing and horrifying to think how big this event was... hell MIGHT have been. For all we know this could have been a skirmish for some ancient empires were know nothing of. Just takes some basic elements of Bronze Age stuff OP and run with it. There is enough mysteries about the time period that almost anything could seem "fitting"

>>52393649
name of story?

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Played in a pseudo-Bronze Age game in Mutants&Masterminds
It was based off of equal parts old Conan comics, an amalgam of Marvel and DC Greek myth, actual Greek myth, 80's fantasy art, some choice heavy metal album covers and Clash of the Titans

The players were all Heroes people who did some awesome shit and got equally awesome powers or loot because of it and Demi-Gods those born of the Gods of the setting or in some cases other powerful supernatural creatures

It turned out pretty cool, a highlight of the campaign was fighting the super vampire son of the god of the underworld who tried to lead a revolt against his father after taking over what amounted to Tartarus if it was filled with dudes too badass to keep in the regular underworld

>>52360092
Not to mention a god was assisting him.

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Sword bump

>>52359779

>Tolkien is based of feudal Europe
Is it? City states everywhere, no landed knights, the few kings that exist have no vassals with their own sub-realms.
Only thing in common is temperate climate.

>all fantasy is a ripoff of Tolkien
Only in some things. Tolkien does not even HAVE organized religion, for example. And large amounts of changes have happened along the way.
By now, DnD can be said to have a larger influence, due to the many books that were specifically written within its settings.

>all fantasy is based of feudal Europe
Eberron is late Renaissance/early Rise of Nations.

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>>52422966
Interesting stuff anon. Thanks.

>>52424983
>kult of athena
barfingorlanthi.jpg

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>>52425084
I know but I grabbed it off Google

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>>52426239
I'm pretty sure Rome is Iron Age, anon.

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>>52426840
I'm pretty sure I don't give a fuck

>>52411318
>mostly incomprehensible writings of a church burning Nordic murderer

is Varg some sort of modern day wizard?

>>52426239

Is that Vercingetorix?

>>52428189
It´s the famous picture of his surrender to the romans.

>>52428189
No, that's his brother.

>>52427088
Have you actually played the system, or are you just basing your opinions off of what that review on metalsucks.net (undoubtedly one of the greatest tabletop gaming review sites on the web) told you?

Okay. So, who of you fucks wrote this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tollense#Historic_traces

>>52422966
It's very strange how historians quoted in this article say they used to think Bronze Age was a peaceful time. Are they naive or just stupid?

>>52422966
And found a different take on this:
oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2015/07/tollense-battle.html

The tone is a bit authoritative, but I think it's fairly plausible as an alternate theory

Destroy the sea peoples

>>52422966
>northern germany
This is the Bronze Age, anything outside of the eastern mediterranean/fertile crescent is irrelevant.

>>52429966
You´ll first have to find out from where they came. My bet is either the Latium tribes from italy or Myceneaen Greeks.

>>52430014
One theory is that they are related to Sardinians.

>>52356991
stuff based on the illiad and other ancient quest-like stories? it's not hard famalam.

Isn't Glorantha bronze-ageish?

>>52429561
Only reason farming took off was to feed the walled cities required to keep late stone and early bronze age raiders out...

>>52430095
I don´t think you got the chronology right buddy.

>>52422966
Troy was in Western Europe, not the Aegean. All contemporary evidence points towards it, only modern archaeology and the later Greek centre of the world mindset moved it to modern Greece and Turkey. The Early Greeks were refugees who brought their stories with them from Europe

>>52430148
Citation needed

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Everyone rides chariots instead of mounting horses.

State manages agricultural produce and politics is basically all about it.

Metal weapons are expensive and harder to come by. Things like slingers are a lot more common instead.

Many metalworkers suffer from arsenic poisoning for making bronze alloys from arsenic rather than tin.

Nomadic/semi-nomadic lifestyle is very common, but nomadic clans are typically very unorganized.

Given the apparent interest in the era, would anyone here be open to create a setting in thread?

>>52430035
Reading up on them now. They either where the sea people themselves or a colony after the failed invasion of egypt. Sounds interesting.

>>52430148
The greeks founded colonies all over the mediterranean and elsewhere not the other way around. The correct location of Troy is still disputed. Some think it´s in modern day turkey, some don´t.

>>52429561
Actually, before the 90s, a lot people thought that "war" didn't exist outside the great eastern empires. That doesn't mean there wasn't violence or conflict, but that it didn't go above skirmishes, cattle raiding and blood feuds.

Granted, that may not be what the guys in the article meant, but it was a pretty common point of view.

Thread theme.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=QpxN2VXPMLc

>>52430290
Pot WW1 archaeology did start to find traces of warfare earlier, even to pre physically modern human species, however it was tainted by the wartime experiences of some of the researchers who concluded, perhaps too quickly, that bones and graves looked very like the violent deaths they had witnessed first hand, so they were not as followed up on as other established research. Also at the same time Marxists got involved trying to prove the theory of peaceful egalitarian pre capitalist societies. F'ing commies messing it up.

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>>52426239

>>52379702
Lhankor Mhy Scribe, Humakti, Eurmal?, Ernaldan Priestess, Dara Happan/Lunar Sorcerer and Orlanthi Runelord probably considering all the swirling air FX and shit around him.

>>52430123
Citation needed

>>52431226
Pretty good, senpai.

The "Eurmali" is actually a Praxian high llama rider.

>>52422131
absolutely satanic

>>52430148
Except they found multiple Troys built on top of teach other in the same location in western Turkey?

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Since this is Glorantha general, can somebody explain to me how come Fonrit didn’t collapse already?

>90% of population are slaves, so they are inherently unproductive, doing the bare minimum that keeps lash off their backs
>even soldiers are slaves, worked great for turks, didn’t it...
>whole place is splintered into inficting factions, each dividing into many subfactions seeking to backstab one another
>they worship demon gods, what could possibly go wrong
>vampires and vadeli are runing amok among the people of Fonrit
>last but no least, the place seems quite overpopulated

What magic is keeping the place together? It should be post bronze age collapse wasteland of ruined cities already.

>>52431408
Yet it is in the wrong location for the journey from Greece, as detailed in the Iliad and the later Odyssey journeys. Homeric Troy was in northern Europe.

>>52431655
The answer to your questions is the rise of the Hero Wars, when all such magics come to ruin and the world is remade.

You make a lot of unfounded assertions in your analysis, though. Slaves are productive, and if I remember correctly they also make extensive use of undead servants. Slave soldiers worked pretty good for the Ottomans, or seems to, since they lasted a good long while. The whole point of worshipping demon gods is that they give you power, and vampires and Vadeli offer their own unique advantages to a ruling class.

Fonrit is also fairly self-sufficient and isolated, with trade being its primary contact with the outside world.

>>52431655

90% (actually 100%) slavery does not mean they are all forced labor from Colonial America. A lot of slaves in Roman times were pretty much independent people who gave part of their income to their masters.

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>>52431655
Slavery keeps it together.

The entire society is resolved around the fact that everyone is a slave.

Fonritan society can be divided into castes:
kaddam - The chattel slaves, most blues are kaddam, and they serve the:
yad - still low ranking, they at least own one slave, making them higher than the kaddam. This also includes slave soldiers, who are better than other yads. Above them are the:
masarin - called free, they are still slaves to the gods, serving the divine as their own mortal slaves serve them. The jann is drawn from their number.

And of course this continues with the gods, where each god has their own slave gods, and their own masters, until you get to Ompalam, the great god, the unowned master.


Because of this there are chains linking society. Kill a slave and you risk offending his master, who may go to his own master to seek restitution, who will arrange with your master how to deal with your crimes.

If you are found wrong, your master may take your slaves away, reducing you to one of the kaddam, no better than a blue.

It's an absolutely terrible society, but one that enables them to survive.

For now.

>>52431655
>>even soldiers are slaves, worked great for turks, didn’t it...

People who used slave soldiers
>Arabs
>Turks
>Spaniards

People who conquered large parts of two continents
>Arabs
>Turks
>Spaniards

Such a terrible and unworkable idea indeed.

>>52431655

I think I remember reading somewhere that one of their gods give them the power to magically kill any of their slaves.

>>52431677
The false assumption that Troy and the Trojan War was waged near Hissarlik in Asia Minor (Turkey), where no traces of the Trojan war are found, dates back to the eighth century BC when the first Greeks settled on Turkey's west coast.

The Greeks did not know that the Trojans who once lived in that area were migrants, as the collective memory of this fact was lost during the Dark Ages (1200-750 BC).

Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology - finds on display
A small example of finds at
Cambridge University Museum
From 1180 to 1100 Hissarlik was indeed inhabited by a non-local people. They were the survivors of the greatest war of prehistory, when Troy on the Gog Magog Hills in Cambridgeshire, England, was destroyed. Here, countless bronze weapons and other remains of a major war in the late Bronze Age have been found.

>>52432135
The great migrations of the second millennium BC brought the Achaeans, Troy's enemies, from regions along the Atlantic coast of the Continent to the Mediterranean where they caused the collapse of many civilisations.

The name 'Achaeans' means 'Watermen' or 'Sea People' (the Gothic 'acha' for 'water' or 'stream' is cognate with Latin 'aqua'). The Greek historian Herodotus (fifth century BC) confirms that Pelasgians ('Sea Peoples') had settled in Greece long before his time. They founded Athens, renamed places, merged with the local population and adopted their language.

>>52432135
>>52432157
Oh, so it was you in >>52429547

>>52432247
Sea People did 9/11

>>52357184
And don't forget that she's there because she wants to fuck one of the PCs, but he said no, and when she asked why, it's because he said that he didn't want to get her nasty STDs, so she asked her dad to raise an army of zombies to kill them all, but he said no, so she whined until he let her take the bull of heaven out to kill everyone.

>>52358160
Goddess of Fucking and the Joy of Fighting your Enemies. That make her seem more appealing?

>>52359951
1st and 2nd ed rip a lot from Howard. It all got lost in 3rd.

>>52357184
You bitch don't talk shit about my Inanna. She's a pure maiden at heart.

>>52390620
Yes, that god has existed in DnD for a long time.
You merely adopted the meme; the Forgotten Realms was born to it.

>>52432135
>Gog Magog Hills in Cambridgeshire, England
The book Where Troy Once Stood argues that the ancient city of Troy was in fact located in the Gog Magog Downs; however, this is not taken seriously by scholars.

>>52433268
>>52432135
>>52432157
WE WUZ TROJANS AN SHIET

>>52431655
Chaos.

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You guys made me discover that artist. I spent the last couple of hours collecting and sorting all the images i could find.

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>look up Glorantha 'cause you nerds won't stop hyping it and what little I've seen seems to be up my alley
>setting guidebook is $240

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>>52436781
Anon, it's $180 on Chaosium's website.

Plus you shouldn't buy the Guide as a newbie because you will drown in information.

Get Heroquest Glorantha, or Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes, either of which should run you around $40, and will have more than enough info to get you started plus a bunch of sweet adventures.

I got my start in Glorantha by playing King of Dragon Pass, which is like $12 on Steam and teaches you a *ton* about the world.

>>52436879
>Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes contains everything you need for a HeroQuest campaign set amongst the storm-worshipping tribes of Dragon Pass
>HeroQuest Glorantha is the HeroQuest 2 rules system specifically tailored for Glorantha.

Why do they have two books for the same setting in the same ruleset

>>52437000

Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes is from back when they were trying to use Heroquest as a generic system.

>>52437000
Same reason Shadowrun has country- and city-sourcebooks?

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>>52437000
Because one was published ten years ago, when Glorantha didn't have the pull it does today. They couldn't afford to make Heroquest a setting-specific game and tie it directly to Glorantha, so they published it as a generic ruleset and then released a supplement for Sartar. It was only a year or so ago that they were able to release Heroquest Glorantha as a setting-specific game.

>>52437076
Alright if you're going to be a vague asshole then this setting can go fuck itself.

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>>52437102
He gave you a perfectly reasonable answer, and you got two others.

Have you tried considering that you're the asshole in this scenario?

>>52436781
Check out the pdfs:

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/t6b6c56ftb3i3/Heroquest_and_Glorantha#t6b6c56ftb3i3

Is there any news on Runequest Glorantha? I always liked that better than Heroquest.

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>>52438404
Have you looked at the Designer's Notes on the Chaosium website?

http://www.chaosium.com/blog/designing-the-new-runequest-part-1

how would a 5E game of ancient greece/turkey would go? I think using the character options from the 5E middle earth book could fit

>>52439344
5e D&D?

Sure, sounds like it'd work. The Pantheon's in the book (even if some of would probably need alignment adjustments from pop culture versions)

There's a lot of ancient greek weapons with D&D equivalents.

>>52431785
It's baaaaaack....if it ever truly left, that is.

>>52431677
>>52432135
>>52432157
Stahp shilling shit, you bong.

how would a game set in roman republic look like?

>>52439344
You could pick up Ultramodern 5 for character creation options. It allows you to diversify a single-race party nicely
Essentially the only weapon that completely and totally didn't exist in the pre-medieval world is greatsword, for all the rest you could find an analogue
Somewhere last year I made a replacement armor table for a bronze age 5e game, even posted it here in 5eg. Though I'm pretty sure I lost when my hard drive went down, but I'll look for it

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>>52439982

>>52440198
but what if I want to run those maniacs to the tarpeian rock?

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>>52440178
This one?

>>52440405
Oh wow. Yeah, that one.

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>>52440405
Turns out it's not the latest version.

Notes:
As you can see, there's a DEX limit on both armor and shields. You use the worst one. That kinda means there's no point to use a large shield without also wearing heavy armor
Helmets are there to be a sacrificable piece of equipment and possibly to be a separate magic item. If you don't like the (very boardgamey) Sacrifice mechanic, you can get rid of helmets as a separate thing and just give this 1 AC back to armors.

New tags:
Sacrifice X - you can destroy this your piece of your equipment to mitigate some or all of the incoming damage on one attack
Parry X - when missed by an attack, you can use your Reaction to deal X+DEX damage to your attacker if he's within reach
Aegis - at the start of your turn choose an adjacent ally. As long as this ally is adjacent to you and you didn't change the designation, they get +1 AC

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Thread's dying, but this might be vaguely interesting.

>>52409350
Finklestein (2002) would be that paper

>>52441365

Fresh bread when?

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>>52441781
Here >>52442063

Get in and post, you lazy fucks

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>>52425079
You're welcome

>>52429561
It is strange, but like other anons said: war was not common then. Large scale, organized warfare is expensive and takes men and animals away from fields.

>>52429644
Thanks anon, very interesting to see another take

>>52429995
Irrelevant? Anon people were organizing warfare there. The very thing that the histories in Sumeria and their descendants all talk about

>>52430148
Fun theory anon but.... gonna need some source material or at least a crack pot website to giggle at

>>52429644
>Bases his theory on old people and children bones found
>No mention of those bones anywhere else