Creating a Post-Roman Empire/Dark Ages setting

What would be the most important components of creating a campaign setting based around the time of the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the High Middle Ages (circa. 400 - 1100 AD)? My players have always played in settings based around the High/Late Middle Ages, so I'm trying to do a change of pace for the next semester when it's my turn to DM for the university's tabletop club.

Depends on what your are going for and what you want to portray. The biggest thing to get down I suppose if you are playing barbarians is the type of society so read Beowulf , Saxon Maxims and the Words of the High One.

How hard it was to obtain supplies, there was a 200 year period after the fall of western rome where the majority of western europe had a near total collapse of trade with the eastern empires.

What primary setting are you going for? 5th century Sweden? 10th Century Normandy?

To piggy back off this go for a campaign set 500-540AD shits still settling from the germanic invasion, people are still trying to immitate rome, land owners are trying to stake their claim. Generally an interesting ass time for a bunch of dudes to be prowling around what would be france today.

Pagan Gothic/Frankish Western Europe. Rome’s been plundered to the ground and everyone’s fighting for control over what’s central Germany/France. With my players’ record track, they’re either gonna either try to carve out their own independent kingdom or create the fantasy version of the HRE two hundred years early.

Cool, you got everything there from Martel to Pagans to Moors, remember to put in Church at this point they had some degree of influence. And if you want to go Biblical you can use the early splits in the Church to go for playing the Book of Revelations. But yeah if you want to get down right the North Germanic barbarian read Beowulf.

The Migration Period is not so different from the migrations that happened in prior centuries(Third Century Crisis and of course the Great Migration Period of the 4th Century). Germanic tribes that had fled or allied Attila sought new lands for their people. It is all pretty same-y everywhere; they split up when they reached new lands, they settled in Roman cities, converted to Christianity and warred against their fellow tribes-people because the thing that had really brought them together(Attila and the Huns) were no longer a threat.

Charlemagne stands out as it was the first time since the Romans that a definite western European power came into being. It is also what could be argued the birth of the Medieval period.
The idea of the Knight probably came into being at this time as certainly most armies were disorganized peasant levies with cavalry packing the punch. Mass conscription was the military theory they adhered to.
Trade existed but wasn't "global" in scale as that of the Roman Empire.

Small fiefdoms or duchies all fighting each other, things never change. Take England for example, up until the Danelaw there were several "kingdoms"; Mercia, Northumberland, Wessex, East Anglia, Sussex, Essex, Kent and Wales. Even under Danish threat they were uneasy to ally.

Noble society was highly structured, Duke>Marquess>Earl>Viscount>Baron and they all answered to a king, unless they were a Duchy or Earldom(never heard of a Marquess, Viscount or Baron being autonomous). The rise of 'lesser' nobility that did not own land, i.e. Knights.

>North Germanic Barbarian
Got any reading tips for anything more within central Germany? I'm trying to make very distinct differences between the Scandinavians/North Germanics and ones that are more inland. And I'm kinda stuck on the fact that they have the same pagan pantheon (Odin/Wodan). Essentially, a more clear cultural difference other than the archetypal image of vikings/norsemen vs XYZ.

If your game takes place in the 6th Century(and is set on Earth, not pseudo-Earth) don't include Scandis. They didn't start moving until the 8th Century.
Northern/Central "Germans" were very much the same, maybe they had a difference in what God they favoured most, but that's really it.
Southern Germany Christianized at this period, perhaps some parts of central/central-west as well. I don't think it led to much fighting though, Pagans weren't so picky with what you worshiped and Christians were yet to use force as a method of conversion. That being said, there were still loads of conflicts during this time as the Pagans employed slaves and cattle raids were a thing.

The Central and Southern Germanic's after a time will have a much greater economy than their northern counterparts. As such militarily they should field larger and better equipped forces, and as a society should have greater cities, infrastructure, and should be more open to cultural exchange.

That sounds fair enough. So once my players have settled down in establishing their kingdom, what's the biggest threat on the horizon other than infighting? The Huns are already on their way out by the end of the 5th Century, so I need something larger than rival kingdoms or insurrections to threaten my players once they think they're safe.

>Better equipped forces
Can you be a little more specific? Is it something in their metalworking, or a particular weapon of choice that makes them better than their northern counterparts in that regard?

A Christian King hellbent on conversion and subjugation

It is better wealth and large iron deposits(which allows for more practice and hence better smiths). They will be using the same type of equipment, but more of them will have mail armor, helmets, swords, etc. The central germanics will also have access to horses for cavalry.

>If your game takes place in the 6th Century(and is set on Earth, not pseudo-Earth) don't include Scandis. They didn't start moving until the 8th Century.

Yeah, Scandinavia was devastated by the Justinian plague and the associated years of famine. This seems to have resulted in political upheaval (with things like the burial mounds at Uppsala being the new powers asserting themselves, perhaps also having part in why Tor isn't the high god like Zeus). This was then followed by a period of rapid internal expansion as people re-settled land left unoccupied by all of this, and its when this process is complete that young roosters start looking for riches elsewhere and we get the Viking raids.

Depending on how pagan the party goes, that may end up working. Push comes to shove, I could always reverse that into a Pagan King trying to reclaim their lands if the majority of the party is Christian. Could make for an interesting dynamic between the party if they’re all worshiping different deities and need to decide what to do.

Hmmm...the Byzantine Empire is still looking to Rome. Belisarius’ campaign to reconquer the Western Empire could give him ambitions to try for Germania.

Vikings fear the cavalier, huh. Makes enough sense, even if I can’t kick off the Viking Age for another...200 or so years. Unless their ships are the same, in which case I may accelerate the start of that to throw another wrench into their plans.

>What would be the most important components of creating a campaign setting based around the time of the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the High Middle Ages (circa. 400 - 1100 AD)?
That's a period of 600 years, mate. That's a pretty tall order. Here's the shit we've seen happen in that period of time
>Clovis conquering Gaul and converting to Catholocism
>Fall of the West Roman Empire
>The explosive expansion of Islam and its subsequent halt at Poitiers
>The rise and fall of the Carolingian Empire
>The formation of the Heretical Germanic Confederation
>The beginning of the end for the East Romans at Manzikert
>The Islamic invasion of Southern Italy
>The Norman invasions of England and Southern Italy
>The First Crusade

You might want to narrow things down a little. If you want to narrow the "post-Roman" thing down to one or two centuries after the fall of the empire in the West, I think a good thing to emphasize would be the idea of hopelessness and darkness. The greatest empire the world has ever seen has collapsed, all order has disappeared, feudalism is basically a bunch of barbarian crimelords demanding protection money from farmers, cities are being abandoned in exchange for overwhelming subsistence farming... a great age is gone, and those who live are now experiencing the fallout. It wouldn't be surprising if many people at the time saw this as one of the signs that the Endtimes were truly coming (this is a tad bit earlier but Atilla the Hun was called the Scourge of God after all). Let's not forget that, assuming you're playing in Frankish lands, there are heathen hordes just next door and Northmen raids. In the 600s we also see Islam blitzing through 2/3s of the Christian world and almost taking Francia itself.

These are dark times, and I think a campaign in this (or a fantasy equivalent) setting should emphasize this darkness, with the prospects of a Carolingian renaissance being a bright candle of hope in a dark and windy night of despair.

The concept of "homeland". For the older NPC's in the campaign, they could talk about the warm times back East. For the children and people who came after the conflicts they would think they spoke of fairytales. Also Roman ruins would blow the minds of migrating people. Going from villages containing a few thousand people to finding cities capable of housing a hundred thousand would be insane. Shocking.

Also, do not forget how "diverse" Christianity was back then. Many different strains of theology and thought were floating around then. The traditional style of the Chalcedonian Church, fiery teachings of Arius (Jesus is a demi-god and the Holy Spirit is like physical miasma), to the strange teachings of Mani that came out of the East (Manicheans took Buddhism and other Eastern faiths into a blender with Christianity). Could give some flavor

They had been making clinker ships since the stone age. "Viking" period is just the high point of that ship design.

Burly men taking a break after a day of pillaging to read their poetry to one another.
i.e. The Wanderer, Deor, Beowulf, Nibelungenlied, Sonatorrek, etc

Mind you that most liberal estiamte of christians under Constantine's Rome is about 15% A lot of people beleived the majority of the populace was Christian during the time of Cosntantine but this is not accepted by academia.

OP, did you see the new Total War Saga?

>Heretical Germanic Confederation

heh

Yes, thank you for that note, user!