Have you guys played in a bronze age fantasy setting? How did it went? Which system did you use?

Don't you mean as good as iron? Steel is much stronger, or has the potential to be, because it's not like you can't make really shitty steel.

It was as good as steel for a long time. Like, until the Renaissance.

I have to admit I don't know much about the history of steel.

I don't know history. I only play fantasy and sci-fi. And Romans and Egyptians make them better.

Yeah, but Iron Working makes everything worse. The Bronze Age was fucking wild.

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Show me an iron age story as badass as the Illiad then.

The Punic Wars, but that's besides the point.

I'm still fuckin salty about Carthage

youtube.com/watch?v=mpaR6Sx3ZRg
Carthageaboo?

That's what happens when you put merchants in charge but don't leave any mechanism for men of action to seize/be granted executive power.

Pros of Bronze - it's easy to shape, it lasts ages and it holds a pretty good edge

Cons of Bronze - it's expensive because you need tin and copper to make it, and those two metals are rarely found near to each other, and it's heavy so you can't make long blades out of it

Iron is cheaper and lighter than bronze, but it's soft and it rusts. With the right techniques though you can turn iron into steel, and steel is pretty damn good. It's a time consuming and therefore expensive process mind but being able to make longer weapons and lighter armour is massively worth it

Alexander's conquests?

The Punic Wars may be an interesting study in strategy and tactics, but nobody wrote any immortal literature about it, and it's a really shitty source of inspiration for PnP.

is that guy dressed as a tree?

Hrolf Kraki's Saga
The Nibelungenlied
The Mabinogion
The Spring and Autumn Annals

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Not as salty as the land around Carthage was once the Romans were done with it...

Looks like a whole forest to me. Like I said, the Bronze Age was wild.

Grand for sure, but sort of lacking in dramatic personalities (and comparable literature). Alexander may have been a drama queen and awesome army commander, but the Illiad is filled with colourful characters. Maybe if you include the wars of the Diadochi, but then you have too much shit to study.

If you go for your typical dungeon fantasy, nothing really changes. Maybe the dungeons get smaller due to primitive engineering.

If not, technological differences can play a role, like the anons before said.

Also, Bronze Age is the age when nations and religions formed. Living prophets doing their wonders, whole tribes settling down and forming kingdoms, conquerors forming unrivaled empires, mythical heroes doing mythical stuff and getting recorded into myths. All sorts of badass stuff.

It can be really cool to play a Bronze Age campaign and then another one in your typical late Middle Ages in the same setting with a good DM, only to see the aftermath. I participated once. The party Wizard became a prominent figure in religion, his spells overblown to epic wonders by generations of storytelling, Fighter became a legendary king, hero to some, tyrant to others, ancestor of the current ruler. Rogue's name (mine; bastardized but still recognizable) is used as a curse and to scare children so they behave, and the Druid became the reason people don't go to a particular large forest the size of a small country, he might as well be still alive after nearly two thousand years.

My Homebrew is bronze-ageish. It's more Antedeluvian/Lost Golden Age, but takes lots of inspiration from the Old Testament and ancient Near Eastern cultures.

Yeah, but Alexander is the dude that, wanting to invade a island, decided to turn the island into a peninsula.

Still beats ordering his army to stab water.

>Maybe the dungeons get smaller due to primitive engineering.
Dude they built the Great Pyramid of Giza around 2,550 BC.

He also seriously thought he could just fight his way to the edge of the Earth. He almost did, in his own mind, too.

The numbers the classical sources list for the Indian armies always seemed ridiculous though.

Hey me too, except it's the entire world and it's a mix of Bronze and early Iron Age. Does yours have dinosaurs/other wacky prehistoric beasts?

I think a good rule of thumb is to divide all ancient era troop estimates by about ten.

Building aboveground stuff is one thing, underground is another.

The internal politics of Rome between Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus and Tiberius Claudius Nero?

Is it?

That's a small dungeon.

Compared to what?

More interesting, but not as badass. I mean, the Illiad is about dramatic personalities and detailed descriptions of men and armies being hacked to pieces, and while it's not exactly the most intellectual story of all time, it's amazingly exciting.
If we're talking huge underground complexes then we're usually talking wizards or impossibly sturdy mine tunnels, anyway. And above ground dungeons are cooler anyway.

The Persian Wars kinda have that.

>Hey me too, except it's the entire world and it's a mix of Bronze and early Iron Age. Does yours have dinosaurs/other wacky prehistoric beasts?

Of course. Sabertooth cats, aurochs, terror birds, megafauna, dire wolves/bears/lions and whatever else too.

Most of the world is probably closer to stone age, but the existence of living gods among the people results in some socieites being super advanced with shit like steel/mithril/adamantine while most

Campaigns have basically been players venturing out into the frontier in order to explore strange new lands, seek out (and convert/conquer) new tribes/civilizations, and go where no man/woman from their society has gone before. Or they play a bunch of tribesmen and strike out against the encroachment of corrupt and/or decadent civilizations. Or they go rogue and try to carve out their own kingdoms.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derinkuyu_underground_city

Time and workable stone.

Lots pyramid tunnels are really small.
It would be a literal dungeon crawl. Even then, the burly barbarian might not pass through

That period features three civil wars, one war with Roman allies in Italy, Ceasar in Gaul, Pompey in Asia, Crassus in Parthia...

And those are just the really big ones. Even before you get into the small scale intimate murdering that went on.

Not exactly underground, but under mountain.
They literally carved it into the mountain side

I will always think that Alexander the Great was the saltiest man in human history.

It is the only motivation strong enough to make a man do what he did. Lust for power or even revenge isn't enough. It has to be good old fashioned salt.

Yeah, but there are wars all the time everywhere, the Trojan War just has the most awesome stories written about it. It's not like the war itself is comparable to say, the Punic Wars.

He was just mad his dad basically did everything actually impressive, so he had to go for pure shock value to become famous.

Dude thought he could fight (and beat) everyone from west to east of the world. He almost did.

I've been wanting to do a campaign with the typical 'trapped in an MMO' plot, but with a mythological Greece vibe, complete with not!Sparta and not!Athens as the Red and Blue player factions. Trouble is coming up with interesting campaigns and plots for that style of game.

My evil Beastmen empire is pseudo bronze aged. The Beastmen are naturally stronger and taller, so bronze is fine for long hook tipped swords.

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How do you even make a city on the sheer cliff of a mountain?

Saltier than the ruins of Carthage.
Well he was a better commander than his father, just not a better ruler. Come to think of it, Karl XII reminds me of him: inherited an awesome military from his father, who was a competent ruler and reformer (especially militarily), inherited the kingdom at a young age, spent his life in the field, was a great tactician who won the loyalty of his men, and never came back home. Of course, Karl XII was sort of defeated by the Russians and failed to maintain the Swedish Empire where Alexander had to turn back because of his men's morale and died before his empire fractured, but still pretty close.

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His Empire didn't even have to shatter as horribly as it did if he just flipped a coin to decide who should take his place instead of saying "to the strongest".

I mean, it was fucked no matter what. Large empires need a ruler nobody is going to dispute to function, but it probably would have hung on a bit longer.

There's a pc game that come out recently, Tyranny, that's all about the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age. Give it a look.

It's annoying because the stories are there.

Caesar and Pompey in Egypt. Pompey had been to Ceasar friend, family, and ally. They turned against each other in a civil war and Caesar triumphed over Pompey. Pompey sought asylum in egypt where Ptolemy XIII and his advisors determined that they would kill Pompey to curry favor with the triumphant Caesar.

Unfortunately for them, the Ptolemies are a corrupt and degenerate dynasty, and they don't know how Caesar's mind works. "Caesar arrived at Alexandria just after Pompey's death. When [Ptolemy's advisor] Theodotus came to him with Pompey's head, Caesar refused to look at him, but he took Pompey's signet ring and shed tears as he did so."

A great man, a former friend, and a great Roman being murdered by the Egyptians, when perhaps Caesar himself was seeking reconciliation, did not sit well with Caesar, and he decided over the next few days: "Hey, Ptolemy I'm going to fuck your sister and put her on the throne. Choke on it you inbred hick."

There's epic poetry there; it just passes into dry history for want of a poet.

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Yea, we used AD&D. We were playing as ex-roman auxiliaries. It went as swimmingly as all 2e combat goes when you're low level & out numbered. We all died.

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What I really would like to know is what exactly everyone present and in the running thought when he said "to the strongest". What went through their minds just after he uttered those words?

Probably "oh shit".

Fo' sho'. Thanks.
That's the kind of stuff I want to work into a story as a GM, but even if I do I know my players will complain since it'd make them feel like side characters (which I honestly think PCs are better suited as given how I'm not about to start letting them control any kingdoms and armies because fuck switching between those levels of management).

There was the time where Caesar needed to cross the Rhine as well.

All the tribes he was against seen the Rhine as a natural barrier that he could never cross. Tribes friendly to him offered to provide boats to cross it, but he refused.

He refused because he wanted to show them that Rome could reach them no matter where they went, so he ordered his engineers to build a bridge. After they went across, and realised that they fled, he had it knocked down.

When he wanted to go back over a couple of years later, he had them build it again.

Then there is the more bizarre shit like when he decided the most effective way to capture a city was to basically double it's fortifications, so he could be under siege while laying siege.
He was a strange man.

Considering they were mostly older and less fucked up than him, probably something like "not this fucking shit again".
Followed by scrambling for reasons as to why they are the strongest.

>most ancient epic battle you hear about were just clumsy clashes between about as many guys as could fill the stands at a high school gym
>hardly any fatalities directly in battle

Feels bad man

Then suddenly Cannae.

"Who can I count on, what can I take, and what can I hold?" With the smarter ones thinking "Make nice with his retard half brother, controlling that idiot will help."

I think that those events can be worked in as inciting incidents for a campaign.

For example maybe have that scene at the start and have the party sent to capture Theodotus. Or have the party working for a particular king, come back home only to find the kingdom is now seriously and unfortunately involved in the political struggles of a massive empire, much to its detriment.

Also, the guys who are supposed to have killed Theodotus? Brutus and Cassius. Who, as you may remember from high school English, had a hand in another political assassination. Gods, if a Homer, hell if even a Herodotus had only been around...

Wasn't steel as we know it in modern times extremely time consuming to make and rare before industrial smelting, like almost magical even?

Battle of Aleisa. If anyone hasn't heard of it go watch this now: youtube.com/watch?v=SU1Ej9Yqt68

There really are some things that can't be taught, and the creativity to create strategy like Caesar did is certainly one of them.

I dunno, Alessia always struck me as one of those things that could have totally failed and Caesar would have been forever known as a idiot who tried to do the impossible. I think it speaks more to his faith in, and the quality of, his troops.

He rarely pushed them past what they were capable of though, that shows he had a clear understanding of their limits.
What helped him greatly was that unlike other commanders, he REALLY knew what their limits were. He knew how to get more out of people what what they think they could get out of themselves, and what some people considered impossible, he knew could be done.

Someone doesn't order the construction of a fort around a city, in a situation where the enemies help could arrive at any moment, unless they are damn sure their men can be pushed to build it on time.

That's pretty much Ceasar's entire career though. From getting elected Pontifex Maximus by getting himself into ruinous debt ("Today you will either see me as Pontifex Maximus or go into exile") through to managing to keep Clodius on his good side, and his reputation more or less intact, through a cross-dressing sex scandal, living through the Cataline conspiracy, and a lot of his military victories. In all cases a few lost votes, a misstep, Cicero deciding "Fuck it, Ceasar is in on this and I have the power of life and death, he needs to go", Pompey's cavalry being a little more diciplined, or his improvised spearmen being a little less, and that's the end of him.

At some point you either have to say this guy either had some deity rigging the game in his favor, or was just that fucking good and could see where what looked like playing the long shot was actually the best option.

>the first jewish exile took place

daily reminder that there is literally zero evidence for an exodus or even any jews living in egypt at that time, the bible is not an acceptable source

No. The problem was that you could only really make steel in small batches at a time. You'd find steel used in weapons and armor extensively, especially in weapons as iron is typically too soft on its own, but you wouldn't find it used for construction until mass production became possible.

Is it good?

Fucking beat me to it.

Suck my circumcised diick, goy!

His not entirely unpredictable end makes the whole thing even harder to determine.

It was a testament to both Caesar's brilliance and the outstanding discipline and resistance of the legionaries. One would've failed without the other. If the commander was a bit less shrewd or the troops even slightly more brittle, the whole battle would've gone south, and quickly. Every part of the roman military was at it's best and the engine was totally synchronized, firing on all cylinders.

Yeah, I've read people theorizing that Caesar was aware of the plot but was just kind of sick of everything and figured he'd rather go out bloody than go out like Sulla. It may be invention but here's Plutarch describing how Sulla spend his last days "[consorting] with actresses, harpists, and theatrical people, drinking with them on couches all day long. For these were the men who had most influence with him now: Roscius the comedian, Sorex the archmime, and Metrobius the impersonator of women, for whom, though past his prime, he continued up to the last to be passionately fond, and made no denial of it. By this mode of life he aggravated a disease which was insignificant in its beginnings, and for a long time he knew not that his bowels were ulcerated. This disease corrupted his whole flesh also, and converted it into worms, so that although many were employed day and night in removing them, what they took away was as nothing compared with the increase upon him, but all his clothing, baths, hand-basins, and food, were infected with that flux of corruption, so violent was its discharge. Therefore he immersed himself many times a‑day in water to cleanse and scour his person. But it was of no use; for the change gained upon him rapidly, and the swarm of vermin defied all purification."

Again, that sounds a little like moralizing, (by his moral corruption his body succumbed to the worst physical corruption!) but if it's even close to true Ceasar would have been hyper-aware of it, given the extent to which he was following in Sulla's footsteps as dictator.

Of course he could also just have come to believe his own hype. Or maybe he really didn't just read the fucking note warning him about the assassination, and it was just bad luck catching up at last.

>hurrdurr no record.

Three words as to /why/ : Bronze Age Collapse

Go eat a baby, Molech-lover.

Two of the four of those took place in the Bronze Age.

Nibelungenlied is arguable because it probably was first told when iron first replaced bronze in the Germanic regions, but still originated in the Bronze Age.

It is the truly brilliant commander who knows -exactly- what his troops are capable of, and has enough faith in them to push them to that exact limit without holding back.

there isn't any archeological evidence either. not a shred of a reason to believe that the israelites lived in egypt or were exiled in ancient times

and I'm not some "gas the kikes race war now" stormfront-idiot, the reason I point this out is that I actually used to be a christian and was surprised to find that the entire "history" of jews in egypt has largely been fabricated by religious interests. even the wikipedia page on jews in egypt pushes this nonsense, while mainly using scripture as a "source", check the talk page on the article. I am by no means a history buff but if you have some other reason to believe that jews lived in ancient egypt then I would be interested to see it

Supposedly there's an actual genre of ancient literature that's the "war history," a genre that doesn't exist anymore, wherein the numbers represented things like "how well prepared and equipped our army was" and "how badly we kicked their ass," rather than actual men on the field. Makes a lot of those numbers make a lot more sense.

hatshepsut's mortuary temple is not in the valley of the kings

And there was no archaeological evidence that Troy was a real city - until there was. And (a bit closer to home) there was no external evidence a king named David existed - until there was.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.