Early dark ages setting

>that's the whole point of the Middle Ages. Most things stagnated.
Seriously, shut the fuck up and stop pretending that you know anything about what you're talking about.

>Terry Jones
>Barbarians
Is it as good as Medieval Lives?

Old Veeky Forums was also bad, don't get nostalgic. People are at least helping. There was an attempt. And possibly, by seeing every subsequent poster go "Augh!" and dive off the side of the boat, might be motivated to go learn some stuff, even it's just to "prove us wrong".

Just wait until you get to the Byzantine Edition.

Step one, use a different set of arms and armor.
More spears, axes, maces, shortswords and the occasional broadsword. Shortbows, javelins, and slings, no crossbows. Unarmored, boiled leather, gambesons, and mail shirts. Calfskin and wooden shields. No stirrups equals no knights. Hobilars and mounted skirmishers.

Step two, warfare, culture and politics.
Most places were tribal in nature and people swore fealty to a particular man, not a particular title. If that man died, typically their things were divided amongst all the sons which means building up kingdoms and empires over generations was a constant uphill battle. This means smaller titles in general, a lot more petty dukedoms and petty kingdoms.

Few large cities, and few fancy castles. A lot of small hamlets and villages. More wattle and daub and wood and less brick and stone. A lot more earthen walls, ditches, wooden palisades, and the occasional stone towers, and a lot less of everything else.

A lot more raiding for cattle or slaves or prisoners to ransom. More ambushes. Less setpiece battles.

Laws were mostly not codified affairs but varied significantly from place to place, and person to person.

Religion and superstitions were rampant and church power was limited and fragmented. Magic was to be feared and respected, as it was the domain of the gods.

Literacy was rare, and reputation was king.

>There was an attempt
That's no excuse. Spreading misinformation and objective falsehood under the guise of "helping out" is only damaging.

Shit son, lemme at it. Amma roll myself a ruler

Rolled 90 (1d100)

Alright, this time without being retarded...

I try not to ascribe to malice what can easily be explained by ignorance, even on Veeky Forums.

Spreading misinformation is annoying, but to one extent or another, we're all guilty of it. The best we can do is develop better fact checking methods and cite sources. At least user was eager to help.... even if he missed the mark a bit.

Aww yeah!

Places were still pagan and the Christian/pagan divide was huge in a way it's difficult to recognise even in moderately later periods. You're talking about pre-Charlemagne.

Oh, fuck me with a spoon. I'm just using a digital roller for the next rolls.
>90
>49
>90
>29
>1

Which gives me:
> It was only to be expected, in view of his character, manners and appearance, that he should have been incapable of maintaining the affections of his subjects.
> Never had any of his predecessors inherited so desperate a situation.
> He died, in the most characteristic way he could have died, bravely but unnecessarily.
> All that she managed to obtain was the recall of her husband; if failure was now inevitable, she was determined that he should not carry the blame.
> Here he spent the summer in an intensive programme of tactical training, testing his own generalship and building up the stamina of his men.

Alright, end result:
>An incredibly stubborn, arrogant and foolhardy king inherits the Byzantine empire in a time of great crisis where it is attacked from all sides. Everyone with half a mind recommended him to make peace, but he insisted on waging war on all fronts. He trained himself and his men extensively and then made his way to the Balkans to charge at the enemy, even though his advisors had already made peace behind his back. He and his men charged straight into a shieldwall, he died, nobody really cared, everybody 'ad a giggle and peace between the Balkan tribes and the Byzantines persisted. His wife, caring deeply for her incompetent husband, decided to shift the blame on his advisors and create the popular image of a brave king who died fighting a ferocious enemy until they were forced into a white peace.

This is fun!

>I try not to ascribe to malice what can easily be explained by ignorance
I don't think he was intentionally malignant, I'm saying that he spreads objective falsehood and that it is only damaging. His intention might have been to help, but that doesn't change what he actually did.

>I try not to ascribe to malice what can easily be explained by ignorance, even on Veeky Forums.
Napoleon, pls stay, we need you!

Fug. So much better than the standard fantasy shit.

Makes me almost want to play a historical game.

RIP Belisarius.

...

That's... pretty typical, to be honest. Hooray! The system works!

What about fem-napoleon?

Get on my level faggot

muh dick

I've been playing Age of Charlemagne recently, can anyone tell me what's with all the duchies?

>

Is it true he took naps during battles?

>My little utterly amoral and limitlessly ambitious career soldier can't be this cute!

Around then, I think most keeps were still timber motte & bailey designs. In general castles would have been basically just a big tower called a keep. I don't think the couched lance charge was a thing (neither were real destriers or true heavy cav). Armor was rare and expensive, primary weapons were spears, primary protection was a shield and a helmet. Swords were for richfags. Axes were also popular. The shieldwall was still the go-to infantry formation.

That's me trying to remember and probably being wrong though.

The world is changing at a brake neck pace. The imperial system is broken, and christianity is more divided then ever. Demonic warlords, endless waves of invaders and the fall of ancient cities makes life unsure to an almost apocalyptic degree. Great migrations transform the cultural make up of regions, forcing both the rulers and the ruled to adapt or be replaced. No time for chivalry to be sure.

My flying buttress argues otherwise.

>The world is changing at a brake neck pace. The imperial system is broken, and christianity is more divided then ever.
I thought you were talking about the present day until I realized that "imperial system" doesn't refer to a system of units.

it depends. in the germanic tribal areas there were no castles at all, no cities (until cucksianity came).

swords weren't for richfags that much. if a farmer worked hard for a while he would be able to afford an ok sword. langseaxes were like the machetes of the day, everyone had them, so swords weren't that rare, it was just easier to use a langseax for fighting and for working than just having a sword for fighting.

everything else is right.

one small correction, crossbows date back to before the Romans and where used as a hunting weapon throughout, they may not have been purpose built but you can guarantee presents picked them up in wartime, also metal fanged maces were not invented until the 1000s

>Cheesecake

Well according to the new Transformers movie they had plate armor and trebuchets.

What were you rolling from?

c coinsandscrolls.blogspot.com/

Many thanks friend.

But more specifically: coinsandscrolls.blogspot.ca/2017/06/table-of-rulers-byzantine-edition.html

That was in the post I directed him to, I was shilling the whole of your blog for you ya' dingus.

No it wasn't. That one ->is my Historia Francorum version. This one is my Byzantine history one. And if he didn't spot the table in the original post, he was going to need to look through the whole blog to find it.

Under no conditions will I put on any underwear that has not been chosen by Shirou.

>what sort of standard conventions would be good to change

For good worldbuilding, Try to use the "Shadow Tounge" Paul Kingsnorth created for his book "the Wake"

Could you please elaborate for those of us who don't know what that is?

It's a book written by paul kingsnorth. Good novel, but It's main appeal is the damn thing is written in a hybrid of old and modern english.I.E

the night was clere though i slept i seen it. though i slept i seen the calm hierde naht only the still. when i gan down to sleep all was clere in the land and my dreams was full of stillness but my dreams did not cepe me still
when i woc in the mergen all was blaec though the night had gan and all wolde be blaec after and for all time. a great wind had cum in the night and all was blown then and broc. none had thought a wind lic this colde cum for all was blithe lifan as they always had and who will hiere the gleoman when the tales he tells is blaec who locs at the heofon if it brings him regn who locs in the mere when there seems no end to its deopness
none will loc but the wind will cum. the wind cares not for the hopes of men
the times after will be for them who seen the cuman
the times after will be for the waecend

That's pretty cool! Is that the "Shadow Tongue"?

byzantinemilitary.blogspot.com.br/search/label/Europe
byzantinemilitary.blogspot.com.br/search/label/Black Death of the Roman Empire
byzantinemilitary.blogspot.com.br/search/label/Danube Limes
Through focused on the byzantines, it has a lot of information, the above are just a sample.

deremilitari.org/articles/
deremilitari.org/primary-sources/#rom
deremilitari.org/primary-sources/#em
deremilitari.org/2014/01/the-imperial-roots-of-merovingian-military-organization/
Another one to binge read. It's unfortunate that the primary sources for your time period are few here. The articles provide more.

medievalists.net/2015/01/early-medieval-cutting-edge-technology/
medievalists.net/2014/07/transition-late-antiquity-early-medieval-period-north-etruria-400-900-ad/
academia.edu/2533645/Soldiers_to_Warriors_Renegotiating_the_Roman_Frontier_in_the_Fifth_Century
medievalists.net/2011/12/relations-between-the-late-roman-world-and-barbarian-europe-in-the-light-of-coin-finds/
historyoftheancientworld.com/2012/12/taxation-in-the-later-roman-empire/
historyoftheancientworld.com/2011/09/roman-gold-and-hun-kings-the-use-and-hoarding-of-solidi-in-the-late-fourth-and-fifth-centuries/
medievalists.net/2015/07/christianization-of-early-medieval-societies-an-anthropological-perspective/
historyoftheancientworld.com/2011/01/the-huns-and-the-end-of-the-roman-empire-in-western-europe/
This one is endless.

It usually is better than Veeky Forums, but no anonymous board has quality control on who comes in, right? It's the whole point.

"A life of Charlemagne" by Einhard is another great piece that describes a great character of the time. Charlie did quite a bit for Europe and Western culture in general. His Frankish empire would end paganism in Central Europe and give a boost to scholarly knowledge and Church power. It'd be a great way to pull political and courtly ideas for the setting.

When groups migrated from Eastern Europe to avoid encroaching cold and other tribes, they kept a domino effect going. Groups that originally were distant but related soon came in very close proximity to one another. The Franks were no different. The two main groups of them were Salians and Ripurarians. Those groups themselves were different Germanic groups that were forced westward together by other migratory peoples. The Sicambri and the Ubii come to mind.

Anyway, if you want a setting to be like the "Dark Ages" there would be an oddly cosmopolitan feel to it. Although everyone in a city or town can understand one another, accents and even dialects would be all over the place. Districts would be clear to the locals, but to travelers it'd all look the same. Gaul saw a huge influx of Germanic peoples seeking new lands to live in as the Huns formed a monstrous army of other steppe peoples and Germanic peoples who chose to join rather than flee. Britain had a small Roman elite that kind of watched their Empire die from afar. All of a sudden, Angles and Saxons from Central Europe show up and spread like wildfire across southern and central England. Spain saw Goths from as far as the Balkans and Crimea settle into large kingdoms after smashing Roman garrisons. North Africa had fucking Vandals from the Baltic make a 200 year pirate kingdom. It was a time to be alive, OP

...

...

yep

Kings would carry legends with them. Christianity brought a divine power to kings that came directly from God. Paganism had the same idea, but it had the opportunity to be more diverse. The Merovingian dynasty unified the Franks and became the conquerors of Gaul during the mass migrations. They claimed to be descended from the legendary Merovech. He fought alongside Aetius against the largest threat to the world at the time: Attila. Merovech's ability was attributed to his relation to the god of the sea. He might not have existed at all... but his legend alone (human and/or demi-god) gave a dynasty nearly three centuries of legitimacy to the people and nobility.

The kings of your setting should have such a back story. Or be the guy who will give his great-great-great-great grandkids the legitimacy to rule over hundreds of thousands of peoples' lives.

archmagev.com/2nd_Ed/TSR 9425 - HR5 - The Glory of Rome Campaign.pdf

archmagev.com/2nd_Ed/TSR 9323 - HR2 - Charlemagne's Paladins.pdf

All the moving and grooving done by people would fuck up normally set boundaries. Little rivers could suddenly be the major divide between two warlords in a region.

Some peoples stayed put and watched as strange new neighbors rolled in

Fantastic

It's also an insane time because some of these massive groups destroyed Romans wherever they found them. Some actually destroyed Rome - a few times! A little time passed and the grand-kids of those destroyers looked around and were in awe. Aqueducts that brought fresh water for miles, fountains, urban planning, forums, large scale architecture, and libraries filled with strange tales from afar completely shifted their cultures. The Franks turned from loosely confederated tribes of pagans to a centralized kingdom of Christian feudal nobility in the blink of an eye (historically speaking). Latin, the language of the evil Romans just a century before, became the scholarly language that all kings, scribes, scholars, and religious personnel had to know.

...

>His Frankish empire would end paganism in Central Europe and give a boost to... Church power.

That was actually a VERY bad thing. Christianity, and the ideology it promoted, was a total disaster for the European people.

And I'm not just saying this to be edgy. Europe could have had an industrial revolution 100 or 200 years earlier if the Catholic Church didn't threaten and silence men like Galileo, Copernicus, Leonardo Da Vinci, etc.

Skull shaping was a thing too. The Huns and some of their neighbors did it along with ritual scarring. It very well could be Roman and Byzantine exaggeration of their "barbarous" enemy... but the skull shaping is definitely a thing. Many of the Germanic peoples who fled or joined up with the Huns copied this tradition. Not all cultures did it, and it was not necessarily something one had to do if they were nobility.

also this

archmagev.com/2nd_Ed/TSR 9376 - HR3 - Celts Campaign.pdf

If you really wanted to do this right, I would recommend that you consider the nature of the times back then. With the decline of the Roman empire, antiquity was out and the early middle ages were in. The whole "dark ages" thing is a misnomer, but it was definitely a period fraught with uncertainty and big changes. Civilization (or the one that the subjects of Europe knew) had collapsed and a new order was rising. There were mass migrations and demographic shifts, with tribes such as the Franks and Anglo-Saxons coming to dominate much of western Europe. Germanic pagan traditions were fusing with Latin christian culture in a way that would shape the course of the entire middle ages.

Basically, emphasize the fact that this world you're portraying is entering a new age. Focus on the contrast between the migratory pagan tribes and the civilized imperial folk they've come into contact with.

Additionally, I would recommend you look at the clothing and weaponry of the period to get a feel for what things ought to look like. Firstly you should search "Anglo-Saxon dress" as well as the clothing that the Franks, Visigoths, Byzantines, and other peoples might have been wearing during the 400 AD - 850 AD period. This is an area where you can portray the culture clash by showing how your characters dress.

Some additional details to consider:
>Swords were a sign of prestige and wealth in Germanic cultures because they were hard to make (so only nobles had them)
>Free men would usually have daggers/short swords for everyday tasks and self-defense (the Anglo-Saxon "seax")
>There were a lot of old Roman ruins in England and France that were allowed to decay or were co-opted by the new ruling tribes
>All of the tribes converted to Christianity but they maintained a lot of their pagan superstitions and customs (IE, the days of week in English being named after the old gods, Easter originally being a festival for the fertility goddess "Ostara"

Although I don't think you are completely wrong, I feel you exaggerate when you say "total disaster". Christianity early on was a social and political glue in a time of turmoil. Monasteries became a great resource for book production and preservation. Charlemagne used them under royal sponsorship to reproduce many old manuscripts onto fresh parchment. Then those were spread around until eventually libraries were formed in several parts of the Empire. The Church did lose its way later on, but to say it was a "total disaster" seems to discount the early benefits.

I would highly recommend this book, it's the most engaging historical fiction I've ever read.

Here is a "common" soldier or warband member as an example

>checked
And the Seax that was a fantastic sidearm

The church became a disaster when it tried to increase and become a temporal power. If they had stuck to ministrations spirituality and not tried to make laws and rule kings they'd be ok. It's because of this through disregard for their own writings and morality that chrisianity is a complete and total joke.

And here is some law code manuscripts:
leges.uni-koeln.de/en/lex/lex-ribuaria/
leges.uni-koeln.de/en/mss/codices/bamberg-sb-jur-35/ (click on the link associated with the digital imaging if you want to see the actual pages)

These traveling peoples had an urge to not only record, but also standardize the oral law codes passed on to the by their forefathers. With Latin scholars present, they could finally get the process going. Of course this raised all sorts of turmoil and might make an interesting setting where the party has to escort a member of a noble family to the negotiation where laws are being finalized into one giant compendium

>I feel you exaggerate when you say "total disaster"

But it was, especially after Martin Luther and his Protestant movement set off almost 100 years of sectarian violence in Europe. There's even a D&D campaign book about that time period.

dnd.rem.uz/Advanced D&D (unsorted)/HR4 - A Mighty Fortress Campaign Sourcebook.pdf

Nigga that's just straight-up wrong. Monasteries during the early middle ages are why old Greek and Roman texts are still available to us. If it wasn't for monks tirelessly copying down manuscripts and studying them, academic and scientific progress would have been severely stunted.

Furthermore, the old polytheistic religions weren't nearly as versatile or powerful as Christianity. The framework of the church meant it was organized and had written rites, whereas Germanic paganism (for instance) was not. It also presented rulers with a connection to the power and wealth of the Christian world if they baptized (as well as to the legacy of the Roman empire). The Anglo-Saxon and Frankish kings abandoned the old ways because Christianity offered them so much more.

t. wrote a research paper about why the early Anglo-Saxon kings converted to Christianity

Also take a look at the kind of swords that were being used during this era. Look up the kinds of axes, seaxes, and spears the Anglo-Saxons (and other Germanics) would have been using. It was more of a North Germanic thing, but also look at the Vendel-era swords being used in Sweden at the same time.

The protestant wars being so violent had less to do with religious differences than it did with power dynamics. The church was losing its political power and they responded by coming down hard on any elements that represented possible insurrection (IE, priests like Jan Hus and academics like Giordano Bruno). Protestantism was appealing to rulers because it offered them a political opportunity to seize church lands and manage their own affairs independent of the papacy. The theological ideas at hand were a moot point because it was all about the changing power dynamics at the end of the middle ages.

>if the Catholic Church didn't threaten and silence men like Galileo
The Church had no problem with Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to Two New Sciences.

They hated Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems.
Not because he said that the sun causing the tides was proof that the earth went about the sun (read that book by the way, it's hilarious),
but because of how he said it. Frankly, Galileo shouldn't have expected to get away with calling the Pope a simpleton 46 times.

>wrote a research paper about why the early Anglo-Saxon kings converted to Christianity
Not disagreeing with you, but post it.

pastebin.com/pxUk2UdF

I wrote this when I was a first-year student in uni. It's far from my best work. I wasn't able to make it as in-depth as I wanted to because the prof had some stupid stipulations about scope and content.

The Wake is great but, fair warning, it's hella hard to read if you speed-read. It literally made me nauseous.

Very good though, but it's not for everyone.

Nice work!

Also handy.

Am a phd candidate on late antique history, focusing on Roman remnants but still.

I always wanted to see a late antique, not classical (none become popular but they exist), not medieval (i.e. generic fantasy), not renaissance era (1st ed forgotten realms, pillars of eternity) setting. Even bronzeage has golarion.

late antiquity is such a rich era I do believe it is heavily underrated. We need fantasy version of peter brown

It's a little later than you're looking for but there was a neat CRPG vidya that came out recently called Expeditions: Vikings.

Imagine having to paint that. I magine having to paint every single motherfucker in that picture. You'd get sick of it.

Are there not contemporary reports from the Christianized Romans themselves that they destroyed hundreds of pagan temples, libraries, and killed thousands of philosophers and priests?
Not saying you're wrong, you're certainly more educated on it than me, but still.
Yes I got that from a Varg video but I'm not a total paganaboo so pls no bully

>thousands of philosophers and priests
What

I may have misquoted there.

You don't know about the legendary viking and germanic philosphers? We wuz kangs, you know?

Not Germanic ones, Romans and Greeks.

t. uneducated pleb

Go to YouTube and just watch some documentaries, OP

>Crusader quest is dead

Repeat after me: Veeky Forums is better without quests.
We may not question the mandate of chinkmoot, the eternal godmod.

There was more development during the Early middle ages in a large portion of western Europe than when Rome was dipping their dick in it.

A lot of crazy things were going on with the Romans in the period of 450-650AD.

Wasn't Western Europe mostly worthless to the Romans, its conquest partly being Caesar's vanity project and partly being the easiest way to subjugate the Gauls and secure its borders? Hispania had a lot of mines and Britain was rumored to be full of riches (it ended up being a disappointment) but the real wealth of the empire was always in the east. That might explain why so little of worth in terms of development happened there under the Romans.

That mostly explains it. The exploited the West for resource only to an extent but barely made any actual civic or social changes. Most ruins in Britain consist of private villas for rich men and Legion fortifications and culturally Roman settlements are isolated from the surrounding territories.
They mostly left the tribes and people outside the towns and cities alone as long as they paid tribute.

It was all resourcefully useful.

It is, though. So glad you fags got kicked out.

>It was all resourcefully useful
Only in Iberia, where they mostly mined for metals, it was also a major grain producer and there are well established colonies dating back from Phoenician expansion.

Further north, well Gaul was mostly a tax farm due to the amount of tribes paying tribute. Britain and even Germania minor was more of an extravagant excess. There was really nothing there that they couldn't find in greater numbers somewhere else and as says, most of the wealth and riches comes from the east and the Mediterranean trade.

Oh yes you are edgy my child

Very biased. It's basically anti-Roman with clear allusion to Anti-American.