GM says setting is inspired by early modern sweden

>GM says setting is inspired by early modern sweden.
>I have no clue about early modern sweden.

What is interesting about early modern Sweden?

Depends on what he means by early-modern. Renaissance? Started out as a piss-poor backwater, modernised in somewhat sudden jumps until it suddenly found itself capable of being a royal pain in the ass to the Holy Roman Empire. But a small population meant little staying power, and unending wars left the economy in shambles, so the whole thing came crashing down in the end.

The struggles of Vasa's sons might be interesting, after the first modernisation jump. He had four legitimate sons. The oldest got the crown to start out with (Erik), the rest were set up as powerful dukes with semi-autonomous lands. One was plain insane (Magnus) and never amounted to anything. Power struggles followed, and eventually the oldest succumbed to paranoid psychosis, was deposed, and died conveniently fast (tradition claims yellow pea soup laced with arsenic). Second (Johan III) was an unhappy king, not being terribly happy about daddy going protestant. Had a kid with a Polish princess, eventually died. kid became king (Sigismund I), eventually kind of Poland too (Sigismund III). Mostly stayed in Poland, was a bit of a papist. Uncle saw his chance, managed to have him deposed, took the crown as Karl IX, somethign which would see Sweden and Poland go to war against each other every now and then for the next century.

Of course, his idea of early modern Sweden may not fit actual history, so fuck knows.

After the 30 Years War and for about a century afterwards Sweden was one of the most powerful states of Europe.

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And don't forget going up against bonaparte and losing hard. Getting their king, priesthood and other royality killed and in their place were frenchmen put.

The current king of sweden is an old french noble line.

>not a single bomb
Not that it really matters, but if anyone wonders we actually did get bombed by the Russians on two occasions. The first was up north in 1940, probably just a navigational fuckup. The second was around Stockholm in 1944 and much more extensive, possibly Stalin making a point.

HERR MANNELIG HERR MANNELIG TROLOVFEN I MIG

Thanks! I learned something on the internet today!

outside of all the history/culture/politics stuff, if your campaign has any amount of combat, this is a super interesting setting for it. In this general area and time you are slowly transitioning from renaissance era warfare to more modern gunpowder focus warfare. This means you still have large amounts of pole arms, big swords, and armored combatants (all of which are highly developed at this point), while also incorporating firearms, artillery, and professional armies. It's the best of both worlds when it comes to armament!

I always wondered why this period of technology was never explored more since there is so many rp options and interesting possibilities (ie pike and shot, pistol wiping armored knights in "three-quarters" plate, etc).

"Learned" might be a poor choice of words.

Assuming that your GM is talking about the 1600's -ish when they say "Early Modern"

What the fuck have you been smoking? The Napoleon wars are ahrd to make "early modern", we barely fought the French at all there (we ended up fighting the Russians), no one went killing priests, and Gustav IV made it through the war unharmed (dunno if he ever saw battle even) to be deposed by a military coup and forced into exile, where he lived the rest of his life as Colonel Gustafsson. Bernadotte was eventually chosen by the Swedish parliament (well, mostly by the military officers behind the coup really) to take over on account of being what Gustav IV wasn't: competent. He kept being such as king, managed to become quit popular in the process, and his loyalty to Napoleon was such that he forged the Sixth Coalition against Bonaparte, and led the northern army against him with good success.

Rapid modernisation of the government structure, but most people live like in the middle ages. The state church is everywhere, keeping track of people and preaching propaganda. Heavy tax burdens and plenty of people conscripted into the armies (the majority never to be seen again) due to all the wars. Things improve a bit towards the end as Karl XI gets some peace going and starts rebuilding the place.

I'm pretty sure the conditions were modestly better than the middle ages, but i'm not an expert on the period so don't quote me on it. I know at least feudalism pretty much ended by then. Either way, as a setting I think its very interesting combat wise.

>early modern
so 1500-1800?

I suppose the change from catholicism to protestantism is interesting, the wars about it.
IIRC Gustav Vasa took a lot of wealth from the catholic churches.


There's some funny wewuzing.
For example the current king is called Karl XVI, but there haven't been 16 swedish king called Karl.
Historia de omnibus Gothorum Sveonumque regibus was released in 1558 and covers a fictional line for the swedish kings with several made up Karls.
Starts with a biblical figure, covers some mythical kings, mythological heroes and even one son of Odin.

I've been on a few excursions looking at old historical sites, and we've had protections for those since the height of the empire because they wanted them protected, so they could one day be used to prove that Sweden actually was the true site of Atlantis, or even Rome.
I think the prevailing theory of those stone fences was large scale pastures, used to produce leather to sell to the romans, since they fell out of use with the decline of rome and because of roman coins ending up in sweden at the time.

Linné and some kings are interesting I guess.
The age of liberty.

>I'm pretty sure the conditions were modestly better than the middle a

Tell that to the German.

Again, I'm no expert on the subject so I'll take your word on it.

get ready for claim war, and religious war, and conquest war, and well lots and lots of war, also beware of small citystates with unusually competent militaries .

Out of all the "we wuz " shit european nobility got up to the middle-ages, the swedish one is my favourite.

Feudalism was never very strong in Sweden. Our nobility was a relatively small part of the population, with far less of a stranglehold on power (military, economic and political) than down on the continent. This may be why our nobility was turned into cogs of the government machine (as bureaucrats and officers) as smoothly and quickly as they were. Compare with Denmark, where that transition didn't really start to happen until Sweden forces were shelling Copenhagen, and in control of everything else.

The "little ice age" in the 17th century was bad news for people in general, as well s semi-regular plague epidemics. Obviously this goes for all of Europe. In Sweden life in the countryside probably didn't change much (apart form the disasters) until the land shifts started in the mid 18th century. Before then we have villages surrounded by fields, and every family owns slices in every field. The shifts shifted to a modern split instead where you had a few larger pieces of land instead. This also resulted in most villages being split up as everyone moved out to their new properties. Though you probably start seeing literacy climb quite a bit in the 17th century, people gotta be able to read their catechism (Luther's little) after all.

Herregud! It all makes sense!