What's Veeky Forumss opinion on setting a fantasy campaign in a deliberately anachronistic...

There's actually a fair sized mythology surrounding King Solomon, mostly in the form of Jewish and Islamic folktales and morals. That's where some of the ideas commonly associated with him that aren't in the bible (e.g. that he was a sorcerer, had an army of jinn, traveled to the underworld, confronted Asmodeus, etc.) are from. He's been depicted in pretty fantastic terms as being the ruler of an almost dreamlike domain of magic and divinity, stretching from Africa to Asia, of unimaginable wealth and power. Like Arthur's Camelot, it's simply taken for granted by said stories that with his death all the magic just went away and the Middle East returned to being a sandy bronze age shithole.

There was a d20 supplement called Testament, I think. It was all about gaming in a semi-historical Middle East with magic

Yeah, this sounds like fun.

What would the mythology be? The middle east is crawling with gods. Gonna go pre-Islamic Henotheism? In that, there's a distant perfect creator god that only the Jews are weird enough to try to worship directly, and lots of more immediate (but still mysterious) gods of sky and healing and war and all that. So you could still have cults of Isis and Orpheus and all that good weirdness.

>Jewish knights
But knights need virtues...

>DMPC who is always right and whose only weakness is dat ebony ass and his obsession with pounding it.

>and the Middle East returned to being a sandy bronze age shithole.

The Near East where he ruled was very much defined by dense green mountains at that point in time.

A weakness as any other, I'd reckon.

>Make him a several magnitudes less great Cyros of Persia.
>have his court writers critfail at geography

Jokes aside, could be a cool idea if you go full mythical. So make him a demon summoning warlock.

>being a sandy bronze age shithole.
That is mostly because local forests were cut down for building material.

Imagine if biblical characters were PCs in God's game, how Solomon's character creation must've looked.

>But knights need virtues...
The nine worthies, the examplars of the Middle Ages, included three Christians, three Pagans and three Jews.

>expecting a /pol/tard to know anything besides stale memes
You fucked up.

I'm assuming those are the arabs in the middle?

Those are the Jews. On the left are the ancients, the middle ones are biblical figures and the other three are euro noblemen.

>Three Christians, three Pagans, three Jews
How did you even get that idea?

Left to right
>Hector
>Alexander the Great
>Caesar
>Joshua, David and Judas Maccabeus, I don't know in what order they're standing because I don't recognize any of them
>Arthur
>Charlemagne
>Godfrey de Bouillon

The figures seem to be roughly chronological, so going left to right I would assume Joshua is the one with the spear, David the King of Israel wears the crown, and Judas Maccabeus is in lorica hamata with a short sword.

What a missed opportunity. Maccabeus was named for his warhammer (the word is literally Hebrew for "Hammerer"), should've drawn him with it.

Solomon would have been the WIS, CHA, INT powerhouse and permitted to have this clearly OP as fuck build by the DM in exchange for playing him as genuinely flawed and prone to making truly abysmal decisions in relation to his personal life. Which the player totally does to the benefit of the story and continuation of the setting and misery of their character. Class would be some sort of Sorcerer with a few levels in Cleric. He is the party money bag but not face after the last encounter with Queen Sheba.

Samson would be the party Barbarian. Low WIS, high STR (with extra buff so long as his hair is long but nerf if cut) and high CHA. He hits things and then they die. Improvised weapon, dirty fighting and unhanded fighting and Favoured Enemy (masonry).

Elisha. Druid with a few ranks in Ranger. He can summon bears. High CON, high WIS but low CHA.

Solomon's the guy who bribed the GM with pizza to let him play a class he previously explicitly forbade, claiming it'd allow for "deeper roleplay".

He then went on to use his class abilities to overshadow every other PC, steal an achievement that should've been the crux of one of their personal stories, and fuck a ton of women.

The GM approved.

...

Probably the last place on Veeky Forums you could discuss something like that in peace.

>Maybe
>Yes
>No

Never change Veeky Forums

...

Can you repeat the question?

A proper, Jewish answer.

That's not the definition. A rabbinical answer is a very specific kind.

Please elaborate.

Rabbinical discourse includes several, highly iconic characteristics. The most well known (i.e. the only one non Orthodox Jews know) is that of the "Rabbinical Answer", that is to say, to respond to a question with another question. (a famous joke goes "A student asks the rabbi: "Rabbi, why do you always answer questions with more questions?" Answers the rabbi: "How else would I?")

uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Why?:Answer_a_question_with_a_question?

Seems pretty Zen.

For some reason I find that hilarious. Must be source of much frustration.

I would play in this. Feels very Conan the Barbarian. I'd check out some of RE Howard's conan stories to get some inspiration for how to do anachronistic history well.

>Feels very Conan the Barbarian
>Jewish Conan
>Cohen the Barbarian

10/10

>Cohen the Barbarian
Someone beat you to it

...

His was presumably just a heavy hammer. A "Maccabet", in Hebrew.

Now that I think of it, Hebrew has a strange amount of words for hammer. Patish, Kurnas, Maccabet...

You can never hammer too hard

hammervshitler.com/

I am Charles the Hammer and I approve of this message.

If you're the Hammer then why are you wielding an ax?

The opposite side of the poleaxe is a hammerhead

'es a complex character.

Could it refer to a metaphorical hammer, the act of destruction? You know, like "hammer" in Hexenhammer doesn't refer to any actual hammers

IIRC, he was among the very first members of the rebellion against the Romans, who may not have had access to a lot of proper weapons. It would've made sense for him to be using a hammer, especially if he was a blacksmith or a mason or something.

You just named three pagans, three Jews, three Christians

Aka exactly what he said but in a different order

Also Hektor is best Paladin

>Aka exactly what he said
He said Arabs, bruh. There are no arabs in that list.

>Also Hektor is best Paladin
Best boy in general. Reminder that the "hero" Achilles only won because Athena is a conniving bitch that can't stay out of a fair duel. Goddess of justice, my ass.

Pretty sure for Achaeans justice only applied between two of the same kind and of the same station. Hektor was too foreign for justice

Well, let's be real, Hektor never had a chance against Achilles because he was invulnerable, and Hektor knew it. The fact he went out anyway was the kicker

Wasn't the invulnerability a later addition?

i've always wondered why charles martel is always depicted with an axe

You could do it using 3e's Testament RPG. IIRC there's even stats for King Solomon

And annoyingly, IIRC he's a cleric, not a wizard. Dude supposedly wrote the literal book on that one.

Well the reason why he's a psalmist instead of a wizard is because for Testament arcane magic is badwrong for Israelites

Jewish mysticism is surprisingly lenient on that in real-life. In theory, magic is bad in Judaism - but as in all things, the legal and theological precedents are tied up in a convoluted historical debate (for example, it is often agreed that Job performed magic in his book by giving people objects which gave them good luck - basically talismans - and Job is explicitly stated to have been righteous). Thus, many factions within Judaism actually consent that magic can be acceptable so long as it's used by a meritorious person for righteous reasons. Hasidic Jews, for example, are big on charms and amulets of all kinds and often consult diviners about important decisions. A "Ba'al-Shem" (Master of Names, thus called because their power is derived from studying the true names of angels) is a magician who is nevertheless considered holy and a respected member of the Jewish community.

And so it was for Solomon.

Yeah but in my opinion it's something that shouldn't exist. Judaism has gone too far with mysticism

>but as in all things, the legal and theological precedents are tied up in a convoluted historical debate
Reminds me of the joke about debating rabbis, where one keeps saying stuff like "if I'm right god will make this river flow backwards" and it keeps happening, but the other rabbis just keep saying >not an argument and god's happy with that

The punchline is that this story ends with God himself stepping in and stating his opinion, only for the Rabbis to say "Not an argument" and keep arguing.

...

...

This just in: Veeky Forums is rabbis

I must kill the jews said user
no user, you are the jews
and then user was a rabbi

This actually explains why /pol/ visits every once in a while. Also
>no user, you are the jews
Not an argument.

Oh Lord. The guy in the red chair is even quoting the rulebook. And look at the GM smugly taking away all the dice until the players relent.

Dude on his side is either dying of laughter or just plain dying.

it seems like he's saying "enough already"

>steal an achievement that should've been the crux of one of their personal stories
Which one's that? My Old Testament knowledge a shit.

Well, there *is* the Kingdom of Shem, with it's Shemite peoples referenced a few times.
In fact, Belit, the Queen of the Black Coast, is originally from there.
(So yes, to film the short story your casting department would need to put a call out for two dozen big black guys and a nice Jewish girl.)

Man, Joss Whedon is so witty.
>leaves
>comes back
I was being sarcastic.

Pfft, fair payback after Paris got his ass saved by Aphrodite not that long before.
But yeah, there's a reason that Hektor's on the list and not Achilles.

He built the temple instead of David. The GM (God Man?)'s flimsy excuse was that David, what with being a war hero, had blood on his hands and thus not pure enough to do it.

Well, there was also that one time he essentially orchestrated Uriah's death so he could take his wife, but, you know.

Solomon stole nothing. Everyone likes to say how David was somehow "shunned" from building the temple, when he was the first person that actually thought about God Man before himself. And how he was amazed at David, which is why he said he'd keep David's dynasty forever.

>Well, there was also that one time he essentially orchestrated Uriah's death so he could take his wife, but, you know.
Solomon did nothing wrong

Exactly, because Uriah's murder was under David, not Solomon.

What Solomon did was worship all kinds of other deities thanks to his canaanite wives, from Ishtar to Moloch, and tried to murder Jeroboam.

But that was cool because God gave him carte blanche to do anything ever on the day he was crowned.

No he didn't

He named him his favorite ever human. Anything Solomon did was, morally (from God's own point of view) better than any other human. If he worshiped idols, acted like a tyrant, tried to murder anyone, took multiple wives or consorted with demons, that was all cool because it just meant everyone else was that much worse by comparison.

That was never mentioned, and all the sins that he committed were not absolved in any way until he repented and turned his whole actions away from those things at old age. He set standards for him to follow.

1 Kings 3:14, "And if you walk in my ways, keeping my statutes and my commandments, as your father David walked, then I will lengthen your days."

And again in 1 Kings 9 4-9,

"And as for you, if you will walk before me, as David your father walked, with integrity of heart and uprightness, doing according to all that I have commanded you, and keeping my statutes and my rules, then I will establish your royal throne over Israel forever, as I promised David your father, saying, ‘You shall not lack a man on the throne of Israel.’ But if you turn aside from following me, you or your children, and do not keep my commandments and my statutes that I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will cut off Israel from the land that I have given them"

Then after Solomon sins, it is said in 1 Kings 11,

"So Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the LORD and did not wholly follow the LORD, as David his father had done."

and,

"And the LORD was angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned away from the LORD, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice and had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods. But he did not keep what the LORD commanded. Therefore the LORD said to Solomon, “Since this has been your practice and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes that I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you and will give it to your servant. Yet for the sake of David your father I will not do it in your days, but I will tear it out of the hand of your son."

Don't get me wrong, Solomon is one of my favorite figures in the old testament, but let's not pretend he was a perfect human being, or that God gave him a free pass to do whatever he wanted.

I wonder how all this maps to whatever cults were prevalent in any given moment in historical Israel and Judeah

If I recall correctly there's a lot of evidence of polytheism around those territories, mixing the Israelite god with other surrounding deities and all that, with some things hinting towards monotheism (maybe). It's only after the exile that monotheism was properly founded and no heresy was going on

>Caesar
>virtues

disgustedcato.jpg