I'm looking to make a campaign in D&D 5e based on the bronze age...

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Lots of killing guys with rocks in the Iliad.

Guy looks like a fucking golden tin can

youtube.com/watch?v=5kH0Bag0akc

But apparently the murdered people dressed that fab.

Slings are the bomb. There's a reason why people kept using it well into the medieval period.

Sea Peoples appear. Everybody dies.
Really tho good luck, the Bronze age is the best age.

Linen and fleece armors can be useful against arrows

many of the same armors would exist so would some of the weapons. The main difference is that the metals would require much more work and be softer. you could have the weapons and armor loose a point or go down a dice every encounter, or every adventure. which ever works for you. could also be on a fumble that some part breaks or bends etc.
the banded armor people have been posting should have an even worse penalty to acrobatic checks worse than platemail. also take a -5 move penalty. sheesh that looks awkward
Iron weapons and armor exists but mostly it comes from meteoric iron so it is stupidly rare and expensive. Hell maybe it can have some special quality or magic to it.

I have my own bronze age setting OP. I got rid of anything chain and plate related, although I need to work in that big time can suit of armour people keep posting in the thread.

There's another setting based on Bronze Age and Conan, called something Thule by Sasquatch games. I nicked their armours, such a leather cuirass (light armour, AC 13, +2 limit from dex). I'd recommend getting that book or pdf and having a look through. Hell, it's a pretty damn good setting so I'd also just recommend running that.

I'd suggest you look into Runequest , it's latest version is Mythras. It's literally a bronze age fantasy roleplaying game and is far better at simulating the era than 5E.

As for a few pointers -

Contrary to what you might believe bronze and iron produce weapons of similar strength. Bronze however is a lot simpler to manufacture than Iron and this was mostly why it was so prevalent in the period. Bronze also don't let you as easily make the likes of long or great swords.

Steel on the other hand is far tougher as well as lighter than both but requires knowing how to add carbon to the process.

A meteorite then can literally be a source of a carbonised steel weapon and makes for a cool thing to mark a character out as a hero. A 'magic' item sent from the god's.

As for armour plate and chain don't really exist. Breastplates and half-plate are your main heavy armours with shields being vital for survival as well.

Players in general don't like receiving nerfed gear and I think it would do a disservice to the world if your heroes weapons still felt weak. So I'd suggest you keep bronze weapons much the same but make the differentiation in the strength of other weapons such as 'magic' and very very rare steel as well as the weakness of more common weapons such as clubs, staves, even stone weapons. Which is give -1 damage and the ability to break if you roll a 1.

Remember that the age before the bronze was the neolithic so a great theme can be a clash of old Vs new with small hunter gatherers tribes still existing but being pushed out by bronze age expansionism who now have the likes of bronze axes to cut down forests etc.

>Cont

Be careful not to make the world too much like classical Greece, city states would not have been well developed. The Iliad and the Odyssey are your best quasi-fictional accounts however they were written from an Iron age civilisation looking back into the bronze age era. From a historical perspective look up the history of bronze age Crete, the palace at knossos and the Minoans and Mycenaeans for some inspiration.

Note the Greek word for hero basically meant Lord and these were the men who actually had weapons and armour. The states hadn't moved to conducting mass warfare with one another and instead war was effectively skirmishes between groups of nobles . Which actually fits really well for the smaller scale of an RPG. The game can be centered around the players who are nobles protecting the peasantry from monsters, rival settlements and roving warbands which is good classic D&D fare and actually makes the players feel heroic and powerful.

We know that many of the great bronze age civilisation fell from some kind of cataclysmic natural event, likely a volcano , which can be a good climax to a game. Depending on whether you want to play in early, mid, or late bronze age.

It's also worth noting that literacy levels across the board are rare. We know that scribes used writing for beaucratic duties from the linear a and b tablets but theres little evidence of writing beyond that. As always oral is the way the world likes to communicate it's history.

Rituals and religion are obviously incredibly important as well. There's obviously the likes of animal sacrifices to the gods as well as the psychedelic induced rituals of the elysian mysteries. One main findings from the era are the huge variety of tombs of nobles buried with numerous beautiful grave goods. This is ripe for d&D fare with tomb raiding being lucrative but gravely sacreligious. Consider also players defending tomb complexs against raiders too.

Hope that's food for thought.

Not OP, but thanks for the info. Do you know anything about ships, boats, and maritime activities? Obviously Minoans and Phoenicians are the best sailors.

Don't forget the secretive not!Hittite empire with iron weapons.

Evidence shows that these nations were actually relatively peaceful , making their wealth from robust trade links with Egypt , Asia Minor and Syria.

Main trade exports would be fish, in particular tuna was rather sought after, grapes, olive oil, wine, woollen cloth, timber , fine pottery and the more esoteric such as medicine, magic and 'ideas'.

The islands would import tin, copper, told, silver , emery, grain, fine stones and ivory. They had little in the weigh of tin and copper deposits so we're reliant on trade for arming themselves. Likewise their land is pretty ropey so they'd likely be relying on grain from Egypt especially on a bad season.

Their ships were effectively curved, long boats. Think the 'egyptian' style of boars. They were made from cypress trees and constructed using bronze tools such as drills. Some used the power of rowing alone others had sails.

They were fairly small, single mast, fixed oars.

The standard ship would have a crew of about 50 with the majority rowing(40 or so) . Others could have crews of 5-10.

These were type of ship designs the later Greeks would have thought of when discussing ships like the Argonaut or Odysseus sailing ship.

There's evidence of the Minoans building warboats as far back as 1600 bc. They were thinner in design likely for streamline speed and had a ram at the front but weren't as heavily built as the later triremes.