Why don't many ancient civilizations beyond Rome and Egypt get used as inspiration for fantasy settings? In many ways...

Why don't many ancient civilizations beyond Rome and Egypt get used as inspiration for fantasy settings? In many ways, they aren't that far from medieval technology and tactics.

>Mesopatmian game
>Play party made of demi-god nobles
>Be under the gods but able to tangle with their creations
>Form deep bonds
>Go on Epic Quests
>But die as mortal men do
Lammasu are cool as fuck as well

the egyptian were highly hellenistic, and actually would have used heavy hoplite formations, they didnt run around with sickles and kopeshes

The Greeks and Persians get used plenty.

That absolutely depends on what period you're talking about.

You make it sound like the only Egypt that's existed was Ptolemaic Egypt.

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As mentioned, Persians are used moderately often, as are Mesopotamians. Chinese are hit-or-miss, but often times any Fantasy setting that involves them revolves around them (ex: You might see a Fantasy setting where one of the factions is Not!Egyptians, but if there's Not!Chinese the entire setting is probably built around Not!China or they're there because it's something like the WHFB setting and somebody's going to ask about an entire landmass).

That said, my guess is familiarity. While even sub-par school curriculums generally touch upon ancient civilizations from throughout the world, most of them do so for maybe 1-2 weeks tops before tapping out and focusing on the "big" ones. You could do a lot of interesting things with Aksum, as an example, but if you go to a hobby shop looking for players you'll likely find only 1-2 players who've even heard of the Kingdom and most probably not as their primary focus at that time.

The one major exception would likely be the absence of Grecian settings (since almost every Roman Empire curriculum is preceded by a couple weeks of the Grecian city-states and literature). But since a lot of people see Ancient Greece as the beta version of the Roman Empire it's understandable why a bunch of people eventually just go "Fuck it we're doing it Rome".

>they aren't that far from medieval technology and tactics.
Depends. Assyrian siege tactics were practically on par.

On the other hand, Huns for instance, wouldn't really work in any game involving a castle.

In many cases, this is because we know fuck all about the actual cultures.

...

Because everyone has heard of Rome and Egypt, maybe some game designers have heard of Assyria, Babylon, and the Hittites in high school or something but most of them didn't go to college to study ancient history so they know nothing about them.

Bollox they wouldn't. The Hunnic horde was a force to be reckoned with on the field and in a city. They did not make it as far as Gaul by being bad as sieges.

>Attila the king of the Huns marched forward from Metz and ravaged a great number of cities in Gaul. He came to Orleans and did all he could to capture it from the Romans through the construction of battering rams ... [the bishop and population pray for help, which actually does come] ... The walls were already rocking under the shock of the battering rams and were ready to collapse when Aetius arrived. With him were Theodoric, king of the Goths, and his son, Thorismund.

The Huns were good at fighting. When they absorbed other steppe peoples and various Germanic tribes on their way to Central and Western Europe they took on a great deal of warriors and useful guides. Any of them could have knowledge of siege warfare to lead/teach the Huns.

I'd give my soul for some decent greco-roman inspired fantasy art.

>Aksum

Why wouldn't Huns work with castle settings? They were proficient siege tacticians, adopting tactics and machinery from the Romans, Middle East, and Asian regions. They even went massacre happy one inside a city surrounded by walls.

Might not be exactly what you're looking for.

I gotchu

And I got this thing

yeeeeah, that is my Jam. Anyone got more lightly-armored stuff like this, maybe with a shield/spear or bow/arrows?

Because most tabletops are based on medieval european culture, and while roman and egyptian culture is different, its still similar and popular enough for people to get it, unlike any prehispanic or even asian cultures. That being said there could totally be more on african stuff.
also there needs be more on prehispanic americas

Huns and their weird elongated skulls. Kinda creeps me out.

Because most RPGs are made by westerners, whose civilizations are tied most closely to Rome, the Greek city-states, and Hellenistic Egypt prior to the rise of Islam and the ruination of near eastern civilization.

boy wait till you see the south american ones then

Trying looking up peltasts. They're the lighter armed soldiers of Hellenic/Roman times. Syrian/Abbasid archers are also near that category.

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the ruination of near eastern civilization was caused by the mongols, not islam

That's a matter of perspective. The rise of Islam did pretty much end Hellenistic and Roman-influenced culture, and replaced with with Islamic culture. In that sense, near eastern civilization was ruined. The Mongols would just more literally ruin it in a 'rape and pillage but not build shit back up' way.

And I also got this thing

...

t. Ahmed Al-Islami

What are the Three Kingdoms?

And yet until the first crusade half of egypt was coptic christian. Greek was the language of science in the middle east like it was before and arabs weren't too keen on converting because of tax breaks.
It was the t*rks that fucked everything up.

>Chariots
>Drawn by donkeys
>Donkeys

As others have pointed out, Egyptian civilization existed for a period of something like 6000 years. There was room for both sword-swinging and hoplites in that time frame.

Most fantasy settings don't really draw on Egypt all that much.

>implying Romance of the Three Kingdoms is not a popular setting

There is Conan.

Too late a time period. Qin dynasty a best.

>But since a lot of people see Ancient Greece as the beta version of the Roman Empire it's understandable why a bunch of people eventually just go "Fuck it we're doing it Rome".
Which is so staggeringly wrong it's heart breaking. Bronze Age Greece is very different from city-state Greece which is different from the post-Alexander era as well.

I wish more people had an active interest in Greece separate from Rome.

Wait how does this guys linothorax work? I see the breast part connecting as normal to shoulders, but how his left side goes underneath the breast and skirt?

I think it's an illusion created by the shadow, or the artist just flubbed a little.

It could also be that the piece was attached to the chest piece underneath, and the chest piece is thicker than it?

Even most depictions of Rome are a bizarre pastiche of various elements of the Dominate, Early Empire, and late Republic. There's rarely much there besides "far-flung empire with marble collonades and legions."

It's a damned shame, because no matter where or when you were in the ancient world, customs and practices were utterly alien to ours. I think sometimes we focus so much on shared humanity--and I get it, reading Sappho or Martial or Aristophanes is a wonderful window into the collective experience of our species--that we ignore how insanely, delightfully weird day to day life in the ancient world was.

Because rome was the fucking tits, son. It's hard to exaggerate exactly how fucking baller rome is.

Post Roman-influenced art.

iirc there is some evidence on chest piece being connected underneath to make double thick armour, but even then there should be way to eliminate the now hanging left side.

Bloody annoying to have badly fitting body armor in modern day and I bet even back in the day.

I love Rome, buy you're doing yourself a disservice if you limit yourself to it. At the very least, you need to know about other relevant powers to understand
Roman civilization. Etruscans, Punics, Persians, Greeks, Gauls... all fascinating and worthy of study and inclusion.

Because I, as a DM who is interested in Worldbuilding and doing things that are different from standard Medieval European Fantasy, am the only in the group who gives a shit.

Players don't care about the setting. They want a challenge, mechanics, and loot. Nothing more.

What, you don't like donkeys? They might not be as fast as a horse, but they're tougher and more reliable.

>Lemon needs to make a Hellenistic-inspired House
I'll bitch and beg in each and every thread I see until we have this.

>tfw you studied Classical Civilisations at school
>tfw your friend-group has Cicero and Iliad related in-jokes
>tfw despite doing a STEM master-race degree, your two best friends are reading for Ancient History degrees

It's a good feel.
I wish I could run a game with all the innate alienness and surprising familiarity of antiquity.

That said, badly done ancient settings trigger me like nothing else

Anyone got any good reading for this sort of stuff?

North-Eastern Iberians for the win.

Thorikitai>Any other kind of classic infantry.

Posting some Gladiator armor than some dude posted a while ago.

Also anyone of you guys has made a setting were Gladiatorial combats are important? Like in Dark suns.

...

>You will never fight for money, fame or liberty while fucking Roman noble women left and right while recuperating from your fights.

Sexiest Gladiatorial kit right there.

And the end of the mini dump.

I've been running an Ancient Near Eastern homebrew setting since 3E now. The general idea is that Giants and Dragons ruled the world until various gods and spirits from outside slapped their shit down and established their own civilizations.

Players were champions of their respective civilization (generic psuedo-zoroastrianism theocracy city-state empire) and went around OT style converting/conquering primitive peoples and subverting/overthrowing burgeoning cults of enemy faiths.

In an effort to not get drawn down the Roman hole, I purposely left out any overt Greco-Roman society. I try to draw more influence focus more on the Sumerians, Levant cultures, Persians, Egyptians, pre-islamic Arabic tribes, Nubians, Minoans, and even some Mughals.

And to keep my players from thinking they need to be an expert in all these cultures, I tend to describe everything outside their homeland as strange and mysterious and have a very poorly defined map. They don't feel entitled to know everything because most nobody else in the setting knows what's going on beyond their own city-state, in the upper echelons of their priesthood, or in the unexplored wilderness either.

I like to some that they're essentially playing Star Trek in Biblical times.

>Retiarius
>The sexiest kit
Yes, user. This is correct.

I'm interested in the conquering/conquered cultures, I'm thinking to run a campaing like this but with the PC being from the same tribes and in a more travelled setting, but with lots of little nations and cultures.

>>I'm interested in the conquering/conquered cultures

I leave most of that in the background. I've had a couple campaigns where PCs were interested in commanding armies, but for the most part, I try to steer them in the direction of heroes/prophets.

Usually they'll travel for several days in some region, then happen upon a village or camp of the day. There'll be some interactions with the locals and they'll learn a few interesting cultural facts, and then they'll learn that the people are being plagued by a monster, or at war with another tribe, or have lost their sacred so-in-so, or live in fear of the local spirit-god that's gone mad.

It then falls upon the PCs to solve the local issue, become heroes (usually with feasting and local women being thrown at them), preach the benefits of being a member of the greater empire, and set things up so that they can later summon for a proper Imperial envoy or military detachment to arrive as they head off to the next area.

Long term plot threads have included rival empires (one ruled by Yuan-Ti and another by Genies/Genasi), the re-emergence of dark gods once thought sealed away conspiracies within the Empire, and of course the dark sorcerer and his army of demons/undead/tribal hordes that could pose a threat to the Empire itself.

Well I'm not doing anything that can be described as inspired by the Bronze or Iron ages, though I think playing a campaign a la Gilgamesh would be amazing, but I am making a homebrew campaign inspired by the Crusades.

Its a bit of Umberto Eco meets Aladdin and the Bartimaeus trilogy. Its complete with not!Byzantines, Crusaders locals think are barbarians, some Arabs who worship Djinn and an Egypt which is half stereotypical and half Hellenistic. Theres even different religions I'm playing it more as a sort of alternate universe historical fantasy. Play testing it soon should be interesting.

Pls no bully ;___;

If I may ask, why do the not!Crusaders think the not!Byzantines are barbaric? From an irl perspective that wasn't the case. Sure, uncultured heretics, but not barbarians. What are your in game reasons?

Are there any feudal Japan games? Maybe with some cool mythological creatures?

You could try Legend of the Five Rings. I've never played it myself but I have a friend who enjoys the system and runs it every now and then.

Cool, I'll check it out, thanks.

People who grew up in western countries tend not to give a crap about them.

In that case, I reccomend Ancient Israel/Judea. Their military wasn't as powerful as Assyria or Greece and even at their peak they weren't quite empire-sized, but they more than made up for it with culture. The Israelites were a combined force of 12 tribes, so each one had their own sub-culture and trade.

Also, since the kingdom of Israel was mostly built on religion, prophets and heroes were very common in times of need. many of Israel's kings were crowned by Prophets, and nearly all the heroes and prophets were normal farmers plucked from their day-to-day life by other prophets or God direclty.

Prophets also wandered a lot to reach as many people, so that works too.

Israel was also sorrounded by other empires (Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, etc.) and there's a lot of interaction with other factions.

This honestly looks more renaissance Italy to me

Its the other way around. Thr not!Byzantines not!Arabs and not!Egyptians all think the Crusaders are violent barbarians. Meanwhile the actual king of not!Jerusalem is an intelligent man who has to deal with the bellicose dickery of many of his subordinates which destabilizes the Crusader states with bickering and in fighting. The not!Byzantines also resent not!Catholicism fot crowning a
>not!>Holy>Roman>Emperor whereas the Arabs resent losing Jerusalem

Thr Egyptians in this setting are largely evil because I intend on sharing it so other DMs can run. For a standard campaign for players who eant heroism the Egyptians are the bad guys. For people who want difrerent plays types it can be different but they're still kinda dicks. I'll probably post the final campaign when ive written it right now it's a work in progress

Okay,
>Its complete with not!Byzantines, Crusaders locals think are barbarians,
sounds like the Crusaders thought the not!Byzantines were the barbarians. Totally aware that Western Franks were seen as blundering uncultured murderers to the other regions, Syrian Franks, and even the Italian traders.

When you say Egypt will you be basing it completely off of real!Egypt or will you be mixing things in from other cultures? Interested in seeing how you make them evil.

Like Stygians? Evil Magicians than plot using underhanded means to weaken they enemies, from badmouthing to assasinate and hiring bandits for example.

More settings need to have the Assyrians or an equivalent as the bad guys.

Too right. Neo-Assyria is brutal.

“I flayed as many nobles as had rebelled against me [and] draped their skins over the pile
[of corpses]; some I spread out within the pile, some I erected on stakes upon the pile … I
flayed many right through my land [and] draped their skins over the walls.”

“I felled 50 of their fighting men with the sword, burnt 200 captives from them, [and]
defeated in a battle on the plain 332 troops. … With their blood I dyed the mountain red
like red wool, [and] the rest of them the ravines [and] torrents of the mountain
swallowed. I carried off captives [and] possessions from them. I cut off the heads of their
fighters [and] built [therewith] a tower before their city. I burnt their adolescent boys
[and] girls.”

You could also look into the Dacians. They have a rather unique culture and weapons.

Psuedo-monotheistic followers of a prophet called Zalmoxis who died was buried and rose from the dead to teach his people about the paradise in the sky before 500bc.

Later they were taught by another prophet who banned alcohol and tore down idols around 44bc, radicalised the population to fight so fanatically the Romans under Trajan exterminated the entire nation completely.

Also one of the few threats that forced the Roman legionaries to change their armour due to the Falx blade, a forward sickle shaped sword that decapitated and dismembered with ease. It also split the Roman shields in half due to the sharp tip.

The Huns could use some love in settings. If Hunnic peoples every get used, its as a gloss to paint over Orcs or Gnolls or some other kind of monster race. Hunnic culture, particularly after it absorbed Germanic peoples, would be a great faction in a setting that wasnt just simply evil.

Do you think horrible human beings deserve some love?

What we really know about the huns? They binded heads and were considered ugly be the Romans, and they were from the steppes but I don't remember much more apart of the deeds of Atila.

Read Terry Jones's Barbarians. He puts forward an
idea that the Huns were one side in a Cold War style conflict between powerful nations in Europe.

One side were Civilised, the other Barbarian.

History is written by the victors.

Well then what was it effective afainst?

The phalanx actually was effective against the Roman maniples and later legions. The later Diadochii kings used it Very poorly.

Pyrhhus of Epirus had the closest army to Alexander with Hydaspides along the flanks of an unbroken Phalanx formation and marched to a few miles from Rome.

Set piece battles that reputedly show the dominance of Roman manipular formation are always against poor phalanx set up (Magnesia by elephants and Pydna by terrain).

*Hypaspists not Hypaspists

Hypaspists not Hydaspides

Auto correct

>The barbarian tribes moved in and took all the civilized areas
>written by the 'victors'
I fucking hate that phrase.
In order for it to always apply, you have to stretch the definition to the point where it's basically pointless tautology.
It would be more accurate to say that it's written by the 'survivors', but even that's not really true.
In the end, history is written by any asshole who says that they're writing history.

> Because people dont want to march around in desert ruins that smell like camel poo?
saged

The History that survives is 'the truth' which is why we are taught how awesome the Greeks were for standing up to Persian tyranny.

Yet the US Bill of Rights is based on Persian Law of the Cylinder of Cyrus (yet left out the banning slavery bit under Zoroastrian teaching) and not the Laws of Lycurgus.

The rest of Persian history went up in smoke when Alexander burned Persepolis.

Same for Rome and Carthage. All we have of Carthaginian literature is a book on farming.

Yeah, people want to march around in mountain ruins that smell like guano.

>are always against poor phalanx set up
Yeah well that was the whole point. Even the greek Polybius said the phalanx was shit because it was too hard to properly employ and too ineffective when improperly employed.

Are you faggots everywhere?

But conan has everything going from germanic tribes to greek city states to the ottoman empire.

That's why I love it desu

>Yet the US Bill of Rights is based on Persian Law of the Cylinder of Cyrus
Literally what? It wasn't even discovered when bill of rights was written

Oh, without question. People see "Both stretched back to the Bronze Age" and "Had similar gods" (some the exact same or mostly the same with details filed off) and "Mediterranean" and "Had famous people who conquered nearby regions" and go "EH, CLOSE ENOUGH" but if you actually know anything about either polity you know (even without getting into the nitty-gritty of their various eras and reigns) that the differences couldn't be any more stark.

If someone wanted to appeal to "Familiar / have some foreknowledge" but also make their setting "Different from the mean" then some form of Ancient Greece would p-much be perfect.

Dam, you're right. Slip up on my part. Jefferson based it on Xenophon's Cyropaedia.

"People like Thomas Jefferson, who drafted the Declaration of Independence and became the third president of the United States, had to rely on Xenophon's Cyropaedia as a reference for the life and leadership of the Persian king...
He added that the copy of Cyropaedia displayed at the Freer and Sackler Galleries is testament to Jefferson's thorough examination of the book."

If you want to look at an ancient culture completely out there try the Moche civilisation.

Pre-Incan Andeans who worshipped a giant spider thing that craved heads. Archaeologists just called it The Decapitator.

Same reason most elves are Tolkien elves, and most orcs are Tolkien orcs. People just take their spin on what can easily be found. Also for the fact that Egypt is well known with lots of artifacts, Assyria is kinda known but it's artifacts are kinda getting destroyed, and Indus Valley language isn't understood and popular mention of it is 'the role of women in the Indus Valley, which leads people to shy away from it

Mules my negro.

Mules are sterile, so you need a healthy mule baby and then 2 healthy donkey and 2 healthy horse babies to ensure numbers stay up, all donkeys is easier for ancient era logistics

My gentleman how many war chariots do you think there were?

I think you could do something really interesting with a game where the party are fixers for the Achemenid Persians. The shopkeeper wants to make sure things run smoothly above all else. So when people start talking ancient this, and terrible awakening that, and rising from the other, the party gets dispatched. They might wind up anywhere between India and Egypt if they're lucky, or freezing their assess off heading up past the black sea on the trail of some hyperborean nightmare that's causing serious problems for the Amber trade.

Ancient logistics were rarely sustainable, Caesars lack of payment is one of the reasons he deserts

They and Thureophoroi are the most underrated ancient infantry.