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Yora
2017-01-15, 04:10 AM
I really like the idea of playing in a setting that is more wild and barbaric than the common 15th to 18th century inspired fantasy worlds. While I have a pretty good hang of doing stuff with forests and beasts and facing the challenging environment, I am still not really feeling sure about adventures in the "civilized" areas of a campaign. I could really use some ideas on how to bring the settlements of a roughly Iron Age inspired setting to life.

What I mean by "Iron Age inspired" is a technological level and social organization similar to the Gauls and pre-classic Greeks, but also Huns, Vikings and Mongols, (though actually medieval).
That means no professional soldiers but warriors who get paid with a share of the loot in war; leaders who rule because they have the support of their followers and not by birth; alliances of clans led by an elected leader instead of feudal "states" in which the king owns the county; fortified towns and villages around a leader's stronghold and no cities with wage laborers and rented homes; and visitors stay as guests of leading families instead of renting rooms in an inn. Religion is based mostly around nearby sacred places where shamans and druids each do their own thing without a larger governing church body and magic the domain of witches instead of arcane scholars with big libraries and laboratories filled with astronomical and alchemical devices.
I think most people should have a rough idea what kind of soceity I have in mind.

I am not much interested in acurately portraying any of the cultures I mentioned as examples, but I would like to make the parts of the campaign where the party is in town to get supplies, assistance, information, and the occasional quest between expeditions into the wilderness also come to life as a unique and interesting world.
Most published adventures assume an urban society that is very much 19th century Europe, but I want it to feel different in my campaign. Any ideas how to get this done in practice?

Talakeal
2017-01-15, 04:16 AM
I really like the idea of playing in a setting that is more wild and barbaric than the common 15th to 18th century inspired fantasy worlds. While I have a pretty good hang of doing stuff with forests and beasts and facing the challenging environment, I am still not really feeling sure about adventures in the "civilized" areas of a campaign. I could really use some ideas on how to bring the settlements of a roughly Iron Age inspired setting to life.

What I mean by "Iron Age inspired" is a technological level and social organization similar to the Gauls and pre-classic Greeks, but also Huns, Vikings and Mongols, (though actually medieval).
That means no professional soldiers but warriors who get paid with a share of the loot in war; leaders who rule because they have the support of their followers and not by birth; alliances of clans led by an elected leader instead of feudal "states" in which the king owns the county; fortified towns and villages around a leader's stronghold and no cities with wage laborers and rented homes; and visitors stay as guests of leading families instead of renting rooms in an inn. Religion is based mostly around nearby sacred places where shamans and druids each do their own thing without a larger governing church body and magic the domain of witches instead of arcane scholars with big libraries and laboratories filled with astronomical and alchemical devices.
I think most people should have a rough idea what kind of soceity I have in mind.

I am not much interested in acurately portraying any of the cultures I mentioned as examples, but I would like to make the parts of the campaign where the party is in town to get supplies, assistance, information, and the occasional quest between expeditions into the wilderness also come to life as a unique and interesting world.
Most published adventures assume an urban society that is very much 19th century Europe, but I want it to feel different in my campaign. Any ideas how to get this done in practice?

I am currently playing in a game based on pre-roman Celts, and it is super lame.

Everything in the society is so regimented that it is incredibly stifling, everyone has a rank and position in society and everyone is extremely superstitious, everything we do has to be done in a ritual manner with the approval of the groups spiritual leaders.

Basically, railroad city. Not sure if that is "realistic" or merely the DM, but it does ring true with my understanding of how ancient cultures functioned (although admittedly most of my knowledge of primitive societies comes from Jean Auel, so...)

Kiero
2017-01-15, 06:26 AM
The Iron Age covers the height of the Roman Republic/Principate, the Hellenistic age, and so on. During that time, southern Gaul was pretty well-organised and centralised, not "wild" by any definition of the word. You're going to need to be much more specific about which bit of it you want to draw from, because pre-Classical Greece is bordering on the Bronze Age.

Yora
2017-01-15, 07:18 AM
I don't want to accurately portray any historic culture. I want to run adventures in a world like I described.

I am not so sure that prehistoric life was highly regimented. Compared to today it's certainly true, but it would have been the same in the Middle Ages, probably even much more so. In a pre-state society it really comes down to what you can get away with. When you break a rule it really depends on whether your supporters still stick with you and how much people will want to remove you from power for that offense.
Things get a bit more dangerous when you do something that is considered to be angering the spirits or the gods. In that case supporters might be much less confident about your ability to shrug it off and more willing to switch to your opponents.

I think including some major social rules for interacting with NPCs sounds like a very good idea, but I think it's probably best to keep it to a handful of simple rules. The PCs are assumed to know all these things while the players don't, and they should be able to figure the important things out very quickly.
Hospitality always seems to be really important. As I understand it people are obliged to give shelter to travelers (since usually there aren't many of those) but they will get really angry with you when you misbehave or overstay your welcome.
Another thing that regularly comes up in stories is vengeance. If someone is assaulted or killed, relatives will go to great length to get either revenge or compensation to make really sure you're not doing it again and nobody gets any ideas to try it too. You don't have to win in a feud, you just have to make sure nobody wants to ever attack you again.

Altair_the_Vexed
2017-01-15, 09:21 AM
If you strip out or ignore the specifically Tolkien / Middle Earth material, The One Ring and it's D&D 5e version Adventures in Middle Earth have almost exactly this sort of flavour, and the rules to support it.

Khedrac
2017-01-15, 01:41 PM
Most of Glorantha (the RuneQuest and HeroQuest/HeroWars game world) should fit this.
The West is more medieval, and the Lunar Empire is a bit roman, but the rest of the world should work (Sartar and Dragon Pass are usually described as bronze age, but they feel more iron age to me).

How free you are to do things really depends on how the DM sees the setting that the setting itself.

Max_Killjoy
2017-01-15, 03:21 PM
I am currently playing in a game based on pre-roman Celts, and it is super lame.

Everything in the society is so regimented that it is incredibly stifling, everyone has a rank and position in society and everyone is extremely superstitious, everything we do has to be done in a ritual manner with the approval of the groups spiritual leaders.

Basically, railroad city. Not sure if that is "realistic" or merely the DM, but it does ring true with my understanding of how ancient cultures functioned (although admittedly most of my knowledge of primitive societies comes from Jean Auel, so...)

My impression of her work is that Jean Auel isn't portraying (pre)history, she's grinding an axe.

As for your campaign, no, that's either the DM fundamentally misunderstanding the setting they're trying to portray, or using it as an excuse for being heavy-handed.

daniel_ream
2017-01-22, 02:51 AM
Unfortunately, the time period you're describing was called the Dark Ages for a reason.

If you want something that the average D&D player can still get their head around, but lacks the 15th-19th century technology and sensibility of vanilla D&D, allow me to suggest a good history of Anglo-Saxon Britain. You're going to want to focus more on the social history than the political and military, because that will give you a better idea of what day-to-day life was like.

I suspect your biggest challenge will be getting the players to ignore their ingrained assumptions about how the default D&D world works in favour of the Iron Age social conventions. Perhaps you could sit them down for a movie night of The Thirteenth Warrior and the 2004 King Arthur.

I would actually not recommend most of the RuneQuest stuff as it's based on Bronze Age Mediterranean and Near Eastern cultures. Harn, on the other hand, is a bit later and more Norman, but it has incredible detail on fiefs, homesteads, towns and social custom.

Airk
2017-01-23, 02:00 PM
Depending on how historical you want to be (sounds like "not very" which is why I am mentioning this) you might want to look at Circle of Hands; It's a pretty specific sort of Iron Ageyness, and it's definitely not very historical, but it definitely targets a certain type of fiction that might be up your alley. There's an excellent sort of "bullet points" rundown of the setting (page 1) and the game (page 2) here: http://adept-press.com/wordpress/wp-content/media/CoH_Rundown.pdf

GungHo
2017-01-24, 10:19 AM
One of the things that started occurring culturally with the start of the Iron Age was the widespread burial of bodies as opposed to cremation for most. This could result in the emergence of many types of undead into your world and a (small r) renaissance in necromancy and abjuration as people (good, bad, or ugly) start to explore the resource (and possibly determine what a horrible idea it is).

Magic itself could also be changing as writing as a skill becomes more widespread and less "glyphic" in general. You move beyond shamanism, sorcery, druidism and witchery into more regimented wizardry and clericalism, and the general "social bias" that learned casters have for naturalistic casters may go the other way. Religion would also be undergoing some formalization beyond basic animism and personality cults, possibly to the resentment of of those cults.

Monsters would be truly frightening and the leaders of burgeoning city states would grant great boons to people with the capability to forge lines of trade between the building communities or free up farm lands, mining claims, etc, because stationary agriculture is a thing when you have an iron plow. It's one of the times when the random encounter tables and monster contracts from the king would actually make a lot of sense because the monsters would be holding civilization back rather than make you think "how the heck could we be in the (big R) Renaissance with monsters eating all the farmers".

In most worlds, if you have them, the cultures of the elves and dwarves are well on the decline with humans, orcs, and halflings filling the void, but we aren't there yet. They may be just on the edge of falling over or at the height of their powers. You may be able to play out just why that is or deal with the immediate aftermath. The elves and dwarves are usually played as (sometimes reluctant) allies of humanity in general. Here, with humanity finally touching in places they shouldn't (see the magic expansion above, particularly necromancy), they might be hostile and serve as enemies when encroached upon or when a necromancer's experiment goes awry.

If you're a little bit farther along in the time line (not at the beginning of the iron age but near the middle or end), then the above has happened already and humanity is experiencing its first great empires (and the excesses that lead to their decline). Humans, instead of looking outward for enemies, are now looking in. Wizards hold great power in society and may have very formal structures governing their training (and may be on the edge of the apocalypses that lead them to be reviled/distrusted in many game worlds). The elves and dwarves may have retreated by now (taking their knowledge -- and restraint -- with them), lessening pressure against the orcs and goblins, which are breeding, expanding, and now filling the abandoned mountains and deep forests.