Other user was too lazy to make a thread edition.
Tell us about your Bronze Age games, Veeky Forums. Do you prefer with or without magic? Are you strictly historical, mythic fantasy, or do you play in a strange world like Glorantha?
What systems do you use? Gritty realistic, fluffly narrative, and mythic high adventure are all welcome.
inb4 GURPS
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inb4 anything other than GURPS
I was running a game in a setting that's barely coming out of Bronze Age, but it's on hiatus now.
Ran it using GURPS. Worked very, very well. There was some magic (mostly naturally occurring, herb lore, drugs, etc.) and mythic creatures, but PCs were just some slightly above-average dudes stuck in the middle of a larger conflict.
I'm actually putting together some rules to use GURPS in Glorantha. Haven't had a chance to playtest yet, but hopefully will sometime soon.
I don't understand, is there something wrong with using GURPS, I thought it would handle Bronze Age stuff quite well and actually was wondering if you might have any advice on how to best use it for a bronze age game. Would GURPS work better than rune quest?
This is parallel to the point of the thread, but how would you - could you, even - have a bronze age civilization(s) in the same setting as iron age or even medieval civilizations?
>why would you do that
I like a lot of real-world cultures, and there are a lot of cool things about a lot of historical time periods. It would make things interesting for a setting to actually have a little technological variance depending on the region, rather than every region having the same stuff. It's also a good way to highlight differences between races, if your elves live in Sumerian-style cities while your dwarves have Roman legions fighting against Carolingian humans.
It's just a Veeky Forums meme, user. GURPS is a fine game, especially for gritty fantasy. Get Low Tech and the Basic Set and you'll be set for quite a while.
GURPS can have a more detailed combat system than Runequest, but it depends on how into the weeds you go. I personally like the extra detail and nuance that GURPS gives you, but it might not be to your taste. The big difference is that player skill plays a big factor in the outcome of a combat, whereas Runequest is still mostly at the mercy of the dice.
>how would you - could you, even - have a bronze age civilization(s) in the same setting as iron age or even medieval civilizations?
Probably have it during a transitional period, one civilization has figured out ironworking while the others don't, and the bronze civs are trying to catch up the iron civ, trading goods for iron weapons and armor, while the iron civ goes about being their version of a big conquering empire.
Sort of like the setup for Tyranny I guess
The blue guy looks really cool,looks like Ravana.
Iron coexisted with bronze for a long time. There are a couple of things to remember:
One, advanced bronze weapons are better than early iron weapons.
Two, even when something better comes along, society doesn't instantly drop their old ways. Societal inertia is a thing.
Finally, Late Bronze Age civilizations knew about iron and it's working, but they had this bronze thing figured out and it was working well enough, but quality bronze production requires a certain level of societal sophistication and trade, a certain level of civilization, if you will, to extract copper and get tin and make the bronze. Large Bronze Age civilizations had the capability to do so, but smaller, poorer, more warlike civilizations lacked the capability to make good bronze, so they had to make do with iron, because once you figure out the trick to iron, you don't need much civilization to get it going, it's everywhere, don't have to dig deep, don't have to alloy it with anything. For people to move past bronze, a collapse of the old ways was needed, a Bronze Age Collapse, as it were, only then did societies that could not make bronze well got going with their shitty iron and worked towards better iron eventually.
Basically, a setting where Bronze and Iron age societies coexist, the Bronze Age guys are remnants of advanced empires who built stuff that the modern Iron Age tribes consider stuff made by gods (look up the origin of the term Cyclopean Architecture).
What´s the best way to portray bronze age gods? Should I just go with animalistic/shamanistic remnants from the stone age, go with civilized humanlike forms or mix the two up like in egypt? Normally I go with what culture I´m transplanting into a setting this week, but the bronze age is kinda to broad for me to do that.
For starters, don't think of the gods themselves, think of the society that worships them.
What hardships do they face? What is their environment like? What brings them joy in life? Which parts of their lives are easy and which parts are hard?
Society and environment has a very large influence on the kind of gods that are worshiped in a region.
That aside, you are right that "bronze age" is too broad, since you can trace virtually every religion on earth back to some bronze age religion one way or another.
I guess a few things to keep in mind is that religions in the bronze age depended a lot on rituals and offerings, and gods were often non-personal (they didn't give a fuck about you until you offered them something, and even then it was questionable) and rulers often derived their power from the gods, either from their ability to appease them (Pharaohs masturbating into the Nile to bring on the next harvest, for instance) or claiming authority. The Gods themselves often had aspects to them, like an element, or stuff like war or fertility, or were associated with a certain geographical feature (mountains and rivers).
Also many people worshiped many gods at once, those that were relevant to their lives. Many civilizations worshiped the same gods under different names, and gods often merged with gods from other civilizations to form entirely new gods (for example, some people claim that Mars is a mixture of Greek, Etruscan and Hittite gods of war).
For each nation, work on a pantheon of various gods. They can have overlaps with each other, which'll typically be "the same god with two different names" or whatever.
Then, within each nation, assign each god to a city. That city is the god's home, their sphere of influence determines the city's industry and virtues, their god's rivals become the city's rivals as other cities.
user, that's terrible.
But it is more or less how it worked in the Mediterranean.
Only instead of "their god's rivals become the city's rivals" it was the other way around.
For example the Old Testament and the Torah have a bunch of references to names of other gods in the area in the context of them being evil. These same "evil" gods were worshiped by peoples who fucked over the Hebrews at one time or another.
Egypt also went through this process, but much earlier and instead of cities it was Lower and Upper Egypt.
in during TROY WAS IN BRITIAN
Troy and the Trojan War location has been found and the battlefield completely reconstructed from the scattered but very detailed information given in Homer's Iliad.
Troy in England, however unbelievable, is fully explained in this amazing work which provides in depth information and evidence of all kinds including geographic and linguistic evidence as well as countless archaeological finds.
The war was not waged by Greeks and not caused by the abduction of Helen. The real reason was access to tin in Britain, a precious metal which was essential for the production of bronze, a key war material of the time.
During the second millennium BC, it was the custom of illiterate Sea Peoples migrating from western Europe to verbally pass on history, that's how the tales of the greatest war of prehistory, the Trojan War was first recorded.
Previously, Hissarlik in Turkey was thought to be the location of Troy, but no traces of the Trojan war have been found near there.
You will discover this work clearly demonstrates that the Iliad, however poetic, is based on real historical events in Bronze Age Western Europe.
troy-in-england co uk
Bronze is pretty good, better than iron (but clearly inferior to steel) in armor and can make a good sword. If you make a cheap source of tin Bronze based civs would be plentiful a longer time, one of the reason people switched to iron was because was cheaper. Bronze is also very easy to work with, specially casting. With enough resources you could make casting axes or swords in the hundreds or thousands a day.
Yeah, but it works. You get patron deities of cities all the time.
Look at Mesopotamia:
Ur (Sin, the moon god)
Sippar (Shamash, the sun god)
Nippur (Enlil, lord of winds)
Eridu (Enki, the creator)
Uruk (Inanna and Anu)
Babylon (Marduk)
Or how about Egypt?
Khmun (Thoth, so much so that the Greeks called it Hermeopolis)
Memphis (Ptah, god of crafters)
Shedet (Sobek, also known as Crocodilopolis)
Nekhen (Horus, Hierakonpolis)
Thebes (Amun)
Cities having patron gods was pretty damn common, and those gods are shaped by, and shape, the cities and their peoples.
Go to bed Wilkens, even Zangger has better evidence for his wacky theories.
MOON GOD
Here's a question for you people running Bronze Age games, one which I struggled with myself.
Are there pants in your setting?
Only for filthy barbarians
So I have to basically have something like Athena and Ares or Poseidon and work my way up from here? Then I should give, say, Poseidons city a heavy fisher and sailors focus for example?
Weren´t they developed somewhere in the stone age? Though the people back then seemed to not really favor them, instead going for kilts and toga like stuff at least around the levant I think. I hope they at least had underwear.
>Then I should give, say, Poseidons city a heavy fisher and sailors focus for example?
or horses or rivers in a desertic land
>Pseudo Mongols worshipping Poseidon and fearing not!Zeus.
Sounds interesting and accurate. Gives me an idea for a city state in setting.
How many purviews did the gods have back then? I tend to forget a few of them, since they´re mostly associated with one big thing and a few small ones.
Yeah, two of Poseidon's cities were Pylos and Thebes (a different one to Egypt's Thebes. Or the one near the Troad. Or the one in Thessaly. People liked calling cities Thebes)
It depends on if you're making a new pantheon, or using existing ones.
>How many purviews did the gods have back then?
there's no average it depend of the importance of the god
As many as they needed. Apollo was god of the sun, the arts, healing, disease, prophecy, archery, protection, and shepherds.
You generally won't need to go that far, just two or three.
...
Veeky Forums should create a Setting based on what Jack Chick actually believes.
>nazi witch (male)
Sounds like a fun character to play.
>Having a website instead of being published in a peer-reviewed journal
You don't even have to check to know this is bullshit
Well since this has officially become a Glorantha thread I have some things I've been pondering about.
Could a woman be initiated to Vinga without an Air rune?
I know any woman can become part of the cult temporarily but I'm talking proper full time Vingan without an Air rune. Like if a girls element is Earth but she has a really strong connection to Movement and becomes a Vingan through that?
Would Illusion be the rune of art? Like in the more modern sense of paintings and sculptures rather than depictions of historical and mythological events like most in-universe artwork is.
It's possible from what I've heard. They'll generally be focused on the motion rune.
And as for artists, I'd say that comes under illusion, because you're making something that's not real real for a moment with your art.
Yes, a woman can be initiated to Vinga without an Air rune. At least according to the Heroquest rules, you need to have only one rune in common with the deity in order to become an initiate.
It's also stated, in fluff rather than in rules, that women often dye their hair red and become temporary initiates when the clan needs warriors. By implication, Vinga has some less strict rules about her magic.
Art's a bit trickier, and tying down such a mushy concept to a concrete ideal like a rune might be an exercise in frustration. I think it would just depend on what your view of art is: revealing the Truth of something through representation, or hiding it through an Illusion.
Thanks a lot anons.
I thought similarly but I wanted some feedback.
Sure thing. Remember Vinga is either the daughter of Orlanth and Ernalda, or Orlanth in female form. Pick and choose which you like best, or use both for different situations. Glorantha's good like that.
I think it depends on the climate? A toga is less useful in the frozen north.
The part that really doesn't work for me is
>That city is the god's home, their sphere of influence determines the city's industry and virtues
What industry has the city of sun god? Sunscreen?
Depends on the sun god.
Apollo's city of Delphi was focused on his aspect as giver of prophetic visions.
Others could be devoted to other aspects of sun gods. After all, just because a god is the sun, doesn't make them only the sun.
I hate to ask, but does anybody have any of the Runequest books in pdf? I don't know where to find any of them and I'm interested in the setting and the system
mediafire.com
>muh, guis, britain is still relevant, yo
>guis? hellooooo?? for serious
Damn, thanks dude. Much appreciated.
No problem, it's a setting I like, so I want to share it with folks.
Treaty bump
...
How large is the surface of Glorantha compared to surface of real life Earth?
How much of it is habitable?
It's smaller
The northern continent is only the size of North America.
Dragon Pass is the size of the Kingdom of Northubria according to the designers.
Pamaltela is pretty fucking huge. Most of it is jungle or plains, though.
...
A sense of scale
>glorantha.com
Romans without magic accomplished more than Lunars who have magic. Are Lunars stupid and incompetent?
>Crocodilopolis
dope
Both at the same time for extra funtimes when the priest needs to explain something
Salt, salt would be a fitting industry for the Sun god.
>Bronze Age
Okay.
>Glorantha
Oh fuck, please no. That's one of the worst settings ever to persist.
You got anything better? We could also draw inspiration from Theros and other bronze age settings like Mazes and Minotaurs or the actual bronze age.
We simply don´t have much to work with when it comes to fantasy settings there, since so few have been done.
What don't you like about it?
>You got anything better?
Glorantha has always just been a bad imitation of Hyperborea, written by a guy more interested in crafting boring fake histories and fake mythologies than building a world that's worth exploring and adventuring in.
So no, you don't?
I mean, I'm a big Glorantha fan but even I want more general bronze age stuff in here (I loved the thread on the Bronze Age Collapse and the Sea Peoples the other day)
But if you don't want Glorantha here, provide us with something else, rather than just complaining about it.
Autocorrect. Hyboria.
We had civilzed city states and kingdoms back then, living next to nomads and tribal societies. Would it make sense, somewhat, to have a few people still living in caves? They obliviously wouldn´t be the majority and be forced to either adapt or be subjugated. I think it needs to be really early for that, not sure though.
I would like to have them as a sort of foil to the city states and their civilisation.
Stone age cultures survived until today in isolated regions like New Guinea, but on the other hand, the "cavemen" meme is itself false and stone age humans never widely used caves as dwellings.
Either way, relative isolation (until maybe, very recet times) is the most obvious, and possibly only seriously valid reason for such situation
Well, they did construct housing out of bones, mud and other stuff and used natural dwellings as living places, caves where just one of many.
So, I basically have to put them at the very edge of the map or isolate them somehow well enough that bronze age cultures aren´t all that aware of them?
The isolation part should be the easier option then.
Caves were mostly used way back in the stone age when people were living off the bounty of the sea. Easier time finding caves on the coast.
They could live in some valley in the mountains that was only joined to the rest of the world by an unaccesible pass, which could be just discovered recently. Maybe because of change of conditions, some natural catastrophe shaping the path so it is now easier to traverse.
And by recently I don't mean "yesterday" but up to a generation or two, cultural and technological diffusion isn't exactly instant thing to happen
You could make them somehow different enough that they would have difficulty becoming like their civilised brethren, mabe even have a revulsion to it. Mabe the're kill on sight for supersticious purposes.
You could play on Enkidu and the medieval wodewoses and make them hirsute, that would certainly be different
Did you read the article you posted? The answer is literally right there.
Could also use them as a basis for euhemerized satyrs.
It would be great if we could have a RuneQuest/Mythras general.
Does RuneQuest 6th Edition have a core book setting or do I have to pick the Glorantha setting book for that?
You mean a primitive people that basically have a perchant for wild partys as pretext for worshipping whatever gods they have and adorn themselves with goat bones and hides? Maybe as sign of worship for their patron deity.
No. There's no setting information in Runequest 6, which makes the ridiculous size of the rulebook even more silly.
Are there no kangz in the bronze age?
Benin, Yoruba, Ethiopia, Somali, Kush, Mali, Abyssinia are all fine places for the parties to fuck shit up. Also their gods are pretty diverse.
Fucking everyone and their grandfather is a king in the bronze age as long as they can kick a lot of ass. I think it's pretty telling that Lugal (sumerian name for their kings) literally means "big man"
There's really not enough interest for that.
It's niche upon niche. Even people bringing it up now and then is a bit of a surprise, because it's not even in the top 50 of roleplaying games, and barely in the top 100.
Even the GURPS general routinely falters, and that's in the top 10.
Wasn´t Mali the only one of note, due to having the richest man who ever lived as their king? Wait, that wasn´t bronze age, my bad. And Ethiopia was one of the successor kingdoms to good old Alexander? You could spin it as "we wuz greek kangz" or something.
They want the gm and player to build their own world from the ground up then? At least other lines have a setting included...
Shit. I had no idea. I've gotta dig into my Mesopotamian history book that I bought soon, all of that is interesting to me. The epic of Gilgamesh got me hyped as fuck when I read it. That's kinda what I want from my story, but with more people.
Just some larger than life, demi-god buddies going around, beating the fuck out of big supernatural monsters, pissing off gods, and having a fun time doing it.
Do you think that mesoamerican lore like the Aztec and Mayans could find a way into a bronze age setting. Their gods and their mythology are pretty spooky.
Aztecs are a bronze age culture set in the wrong time
The idea is that a setting reduces the consumer appeal; they hoped to increase sales by making it generic.
Does it? DnDfags clamber for a setting with their games, and I imagine the casual crowd has no interest in having to build their own world just to run a couple games
>Wasn´t Mali the only one of note, due to having the richest man who ever lived as their king?
Ethiopia was "woke" as fuck. They fought Arabs and extremist Jewish kingdom of Yemen which was in the process of genociding the local Christians. I think they also had a lot of beef with the Ottomans.
It's more of that particular setting reducing consumer appeal. Glorantha is hardly pulling crowds in.
I'm not arguing one way or the other. I'm simply presenting the author's reasoning as I understand it.
I happen to agree with you, though. But I would also suggest that the people who play Runequest 6/Mythras are not likely to be "casuals", as you put it.
No, but it's doing better than it ever has since the heyday of Runequest.
myceneans and cretans BEST bronze culture
Pfft, cretans.
Can't trust them, they're all liars.
That's more to do with 3e and 5e D&D greatly expanding the general RPG market. There's simply a lot more players now, and by that I mean a LOT more players.
So why are they playing Glorantha instead of D&D?
This really isn't a fruitful argument. Glorantha now has a lot more players and exposure than it has had for a long long time. Are you really trying to argue that that has nothing to do with the setting?
It's probably cause of this
Saying "It has more players now then it did in the past" is just noticing that just about every game has more players now then it did in the past, even more obscure ones (though that's largely thanks to the internet being able to distribute those games more easily).
That's very likely the only reason it's not absolutely dead and forgotten. Which is strange, because it's not a particularly good game and hasn't aged well. I'm still a little baffled that it did well with its IOS re-release, but those numbers dropped as soon as the fad passed.
Well I had a lot of fun with it...
So the player base is increasing, when if the setting was turning people off, it would decrease, or stay the same.
>Hyboria
>Bronze age
Not to be an asshole, but the Hyborian Age has never been a bronze age setting. That misconception exists because the only visual media we have as a reference is based on the Schwarzenegger movies. Most of northern and western Hyboria (Aquilonia, Nemedia, Nordheim, etc) is at a tech level similar to Europe ca. 9th - 14th century. Even the southern kingdoms were technologically late iron age at the absolute worst, with Turan being the equivalent to Mamluke Turkey.
With my autistic spasming over and done with, I'll agree with you on Glorantha. The art is bangin', but the setting never really did anything for me.
If the rest of the industry sees huge jumps in numbers, and a few only see a modest rise, it leads people to believe that those few may be weaker franchises, even if they are doing better than they were previously.
Also, if the initial numbers are particularly low, it's not a particularly high bar to beat those numbers.
I've never said Glorantha was a mainstream setting, nor have I suggested that it's performed anywhere close to D&D.
All I've said is that Glorantha has grown a lot in the past ten years, which means that something about the setting is attracting new players.
Here's a little sneak peek for the Gloranthan Sourcebook currently in the works.
Bro! Fucken sick!
What if they do one of these for each of the six elements?! That would be super awesome.
I always pictured Maran Gor as the fat one of the three sisters, but I kinda like her skinny. She's super sexy. Dinosaur warrior woman when.