I want to run a sword and sorcery game based more in an antiquity style setting than traditional medieval European fantasy.
Aside from there being no elves and dwarves, what can I do with imagery/narration/etc as a GM to make the game feel more sword and sandals and keep from accidentally falling back into generic medieval not-Europe fantasy?
Have lots of tanned white-skinned people in place of actual dark-skinned people.
>>45686095
What civilization that was advanced enough to be notable in the time and location classified as antiquity would have been black?
Lots of involvement from the gods.
No real sense of national identity i.e lots of city-states that don't give a fuck about anyone else.
Less smaller races such as goblins and more big monsters.
Everyone is called Papadopolous and smells of soup.
>>45685699
One boobed lesbian amazons
Gods amongst the mortals areliterallyfucking things up
Everything is a fucking trick and fate is constantly fucking with you just because
>>45686175
Im sure the persian empire had blacks.
>>45685699
Everyone is really gay and likes to rape babies
>>45686175
Well Nubia for one. Also Axum, depending on the specific part of Antiquity you're going with. Oh and possibly Numidia.
Steal from China and Korea. I've never seen it done well in stories from /tg/.
Also, a nice trick is to copy the Celestial Bureaucracy to muck with the players. If they are Murderhobos, you can have the next generation of Murderhobos go after them to avenge their wrongs.
>>45686242
>Im sure the persian empire had blacks.
Extremely small minority in the most peripherical region you can imagine, in one of the most diverse empires in history. Not to mention that those blacks had nothing to do with persians or their empire since that's not how ancient empire work, being in the borders of the empire didn't make you persian like being the USA make you american.
>>45686314 is a way better awnser since it provides actual black advanced civilizations.
>>45685699
Make it diverse as fuck. Even small differences in stuff like cuisine or dress are considered important. A city and it's surroundings can be a nation. Family and extended family are extremely important.
Actually, I'll say that alternative races is more of an ancient concept than medieval. You have dog people, people without heads, people with one eye, etc. and the medievals copied all that from the ancients.
>>45686314
Okay, beyond that, when were they portrayed as white?
>>45686602
Well, they haven't. But I think that anon was referring to the fact that Egypt tends to get whitewashed by Hollywood.
The Egyptians weren't black, but they also would not, by most modern people, be considered "white" -- at least, not white like they often tend to be in movies, like that one 2014 Exodus movie. They were brown people, lighter (obviously) than the Nubians to their south, but also darker than the Semitic peoples to their east (and probably marginally darker than modern Egyptian Arabs and Copts).
>>45686175
All the northern African/Middle Eastern bits of the Roman Empire at its peak, and the various civilizations further inland that influenced world events and trade.
>>45686759
>modern Egyptian Arabs and Copts
This is mere speculation, and genetic testing has actually concluded that they are the closest living descendants of ancient egyptians, with very little change. The only blood that was significantly muddied was the royal line.
>>45686826
>African
>Middle Eastern
>Black
I Don't Understand Geography: The Post
>>45685699
Here's some imagery:
http://imgur.com/a/mhnk8/all
The factions and their units of this mod should give some ideas:
http://www.europabarbarorum.com/factions.html
Here there are gods, creatures, races, mythical islands and lots of inspiration:
http://www.theoi.com/
>>45686872
The meme only works if the civilization in question wasn't actually black. Unless you're saying Nubians and Axumites weren't in which case my goodness that's a new one.
>>45686181
More of this. Definitely more culture and society.. though. now I realize I need to research the Mediterranean type geography/ecosystem more.
>>45687183
Swords & Sorcery-style centaurs would be be mountain-dwelling carnivores who regularly raid settlements.
>tfw no Antiquity-inspired High Fantasy where the Minotaurs are a proud race from a devastated civilization, forced to wander as pirates and mercenaries as they slowly die out
>>45685699
This depends on when you run your game, I'm assuming you'll go for the traditional Greco/Roman themes.
>the past was shit, now is better
Medieval fantasy likes ancient magical relics of a more advanced age. This thematically doesn't work in sword and sandal settings, the advanced age making incredible things that will be considered powerful artifacts later is the here and now in sword and sandal. If you're going to use magical mcguffins that aren't straight from the gods they should be advancements from the distant east.
>antiquity was a very sexy time
The population sizes in antiquity are huge compared to early medieval populations especially in cities Rome at its height had a population of a million people a feat not matched until the 18th century, as such the armies are massive compared to a medieval army. Greece and Rome have the logistics to import food on a scale unimaginable to medieval people. This isn't as important of a detail since most settings ignore this kind of detail.
>>45685699
Goodbye longbow. Hello, slings, flaming javelins and composite bows.
Huge polyremes. Some real-life ones were ridiculously big.
Harbors defended by towers with sun-absorving crystals which become beacons and solar rays at night.
Vampires are being hunted to extinction because their ashes greatly improve concrete.
Many nomad peoples, not only mounted archers, but also tribes like the Cimbri.
Lots of bronze automatons with clockwork.
Dragons are more like giant snakes.
Orc berserkers with falxes.
>>45687666
The pic make them look like spartans. I like the idea of spartan centaurs, no more being killed by archers.
>>45688062
>Medieval fantasy likes ancient magical relics of a more advanced age. This thematically doesn't work in sword and sandal settings, the advanced age making incredible things that will be considered powerful artifacts later is the here and now in sword and sandal.
the greeks/romans had their own version of this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_Man
>>45688062
>>45689216
>Medieval fantasy likes ancient magical relics of a more advanced age. This thematically doesn't work in sword and sandal settings, the advanced age making incredible things that will be considered powerful artifacts later is the here and now in sword and sandal.
Dude almost every civilisation has an Atlantis or other precursor myth in some where.
On that matter it you were trying to do the peso real world protro history 'Hyborian Age' style back ground (i.e. real world but so far back you can still just make things up) how far can you reasonable set a 'sword and sorcery' story before it just becomes ''sticks and shamans'?
>Lots of gigantic bestial monsters, not so much le humanoid armies of evil
>Gods actively get involved in people's lives
>Lots more God(dess)-on-Human sex
>The line between civilization and barbarism is clearly defined, no semi-barbarian successor kingdoms to be found
>Lots more sea travel and island hopping than just plodding across a continent
>Non-humans are more like lesser nature gods than "races"
>>45690641
>how far can you reasonable set a 'sword and sorcery' story before it just becomes ''sticks and shamans'?
A little over four-thousand years ago, when writing catches hold. I think that's where you'd want your hyperborean age to be. It had city-states, plenty of religions, some crop diversification, divisions of labor, currency, weapons, job-specialization... it's a good place to set it. Outside the city states you've got villages, nomads and hunter-gatherers with customs that seem bizarre and barbaric, posing a constant threat and potential source of wealth in the form of trade. You've got doctors, priests, farmers, potters, sailors, weavers, scribes, fishers, shepherds, even a few iron-workers.
>>45689216
Did you actually read the link you posted? While those ages do have something to do with things becoming shittier over time looking back the start is a golden age of everyone living in an eden like paradise not an age of technological advancement from which things have degraded.
>>45690641
>Dude almost every civilisation has an Atlantis or other precursor myth in some where.
Yes but the difference is when medieval people talk about Rome as a precursor civilization that was super amazing they can see the aqueducts, walls, and other marvels of engineering around them. In a fantasy setting this can easily be expanded to the kind of magical weapons players are more interested in. When the Romans talk about the Trojans as their precursor civilization they don't talk about them as having better technology they talk about them as more advanced than themselves.
>>45685699
No.1 Consider that /tg/ doesn't actually know all that much about history. I always find history discussions on /k/ to cringy as fuck, because most here have a very superficial understanding on the subject. That having been said...
>>45691177
This seems good. If I had to make this call I'd set it nominally around 1300BC-900BC, depending on how deep into the post-bronze-age-collapse dark age you want to set it, and which cultures you want the major players to be, do you want iron or just bronze, do you want your nomads to be chariot or horseback riders, etc. etc.
In tgeneral I find the idea of 1000-2000bc sword and sorcery setting metal ass fuck and heartily endorse what your doing.
>>45692621
...also, inb4 the whole fucking thread turns into a spergwar about racism or the details of a gladius used by some fuckheads who aren't even remotely in the period intended, or something...
>>45692621
>In tgeneral I find the idea of 1000-2000bc sword and sorcery setting metal ass fuck and heartily endorse what your doing.
I'm going to have to be careful in looking for weapons and equipment for that.
>>45693161
On the subject of weapons, bronze weaponry actually wasn't very common by the times of Roman Republic and steel had definitely supplanted it by then.
Not that you couldn't find cultures using bronze weapons mind you, but by then trade and such had spread knowledge of steel-working to pretty much everywhere.
>>45686175
Kush, Nubia, and Axum, all south of Egypt. Also while we're on the subject, southern (Upper) Egypt would have had a notable black minority population.
>>45692621
>1000-2000bc sword and sorcery
That's not quite as far enough back, for me.
Right after the collapse of the Akkadians, as the city states are re-emerging and vying for power. A bunch of hill people laid siege to the entire civilization, conquered it, and were then kicked out. New city states emerge and vie for influence, claiming to be the rightful rulers of the shared, cultural heritage of the old empire. An ethnic divide between the old empire that conquered and brought the common language and makes up the ethnic majority, and the ancient, noble line who claim to be the progenitors of the culture.
The cities are massive temple complexes (the ziggurats), surrounded by huge courtyard houses, then mud-brick homes and eventually reed shacks around the rivers. So there's nice social stratification going on, and megalithic structures are still getting built. One empire that retreated into the hills, the good-ole-days of the common-people's previous empire, and the ancient empire it all stems from with the upper class that invented language.
Plus plenty of foreign trade to throw in the mix, if that ever gets boring.
>>45693161
You don't, really. You've got spears, swords, knives, bows and axes. That's it. And, despite it being called the bronze age, iron was widely used. For swords you've got the characteristic sickle-swords of mesopotamia, and the kopesh of egypt (which was an axe, really, but D&D teaches us to call it a sword).
>>45692621
> Iron Age
> Metal as fuck
Kek
>>45689100
>Vampires are being hunted to extinction because their ashes greatly improve concrete.
I don't know why, but this sentence is incredibly entertaining to me.
They've hunted vampires almost to extinction not because they're dangerous and prey on people, but because you can make cool shit out of them.
>>45685699
I think the major things to distinguish it from typical western fantasy would be to remove the standard tropes, like elves and dwarves as you said, but also you've really got to crank the mythology up to 11.
Kind of like the Trojan War, where the gods are fucking around with everyone for shits and giggles, and their behind goddamn everything. One of the bigger parts should be that all mortals are the playthings of the gods in someway, and the PCs have to accept or fight against their fate. The monsters could be local things, but many of them from the legends and myths are caused by curses from the gods, like Medusa and the Minotaur. The monsters should have some dark history behind them as to why they were made.
At least, that's the kind of stuff I'd expect from a game placed in that kind of setting. THE GODS DID IT is the answer to everything, or at least that's what people believe.
Something fun I found out about Punic war era Rome was that due to there inexperience with ship maneuvering but good mele skills, they had to innovate.
And so they made a sort of spiked bridge that would fall onto the enemy ship so they could get into glorious mele with the enemy.
I'm on mobile so you gotta look it up.
It's called the Corvus
>>45693770
Makes you feel proud to be Human.
>>45694351
What's interesting is how all that Punic Wars shit went down and the context it went down in when it came to naval stuff.
You have to remember, this is all happening after the Bronze Age collapse kinda wiped out any large-scale civilization in the area for some time: we think of great powers of at least knowing of and understanding of navies, but the Romans literally, not figuratively but LITERALLY no idea how to build one or use one in battle.
Boats? Sure, they knew boats.
But in the Italian peninsula they were the ONLY civilization within their cultural memory to even have the infrastructure necessary to even build naval warships. In fact there's records enough to indicate that the Punic Wars were probably the first naval engagements of any significant size almost anywhere; most of the highly developed nations of prior eras were inland and thus kinda didn't need strong navies.
The Romans first figured out HOW to built warships when, and I shit you not, they salvaged a crashed Punic ship and went "Oh okay, so that's how that works".
>>45686175
Nubia Carthage Egypt Persia Ethiopia etc
>>45687771
I once did a setting where Minotaurs were proud Warlords who dominated their own far away lands wherethey kept humans and other races as slaves via their magical addictive semen and will sapping musk
>>45694351
>>45697178
This is correct, though the Corvus was only effective once and Rome's "grand Navy" kind of sputtered out. History of Rome podcast does a pretty good job of covering this
>>45685699
I heartily recommend history of Rome podcast!
>>45697203
>Carthage
Phonecian colony, phonecians are a Semitic people not niggers.
>Persia
Sandniggers are not regular niggers.
>>45697178
Depending on your definition of significant size, I think you might be forgetting about the naval traditions of the Greeks and Macedonian successor states in the Mediterranean. I don't think you can say that the Greek diaspora of Southern Italy and Sicily (and even Massalia) were outside the Roman cultural sphere.
>>45697178
What the fuck are you talking about? The Bronze Age collapse is 13th-11th centuries bc and even then places like Egypt never fell. The first Punic war is 3rd century bc. Places around the Mediterranean had navies for fucking centuries after the Bronze Age collapse. The Persians had navies, the Greeks had navies, Macedon under Philip and Alexander had navies, the successor states to Alexander had navies, the Phonecians had navies.
>>45697178
Nothing here is correct, but particularly not:
>In fact there's records enough to indicate that the Punic Wars were probably the first naval engagements of any significant size almost anywhere; most of the highly developed nations of prior eras were inland and thus kinda didn't need strong navies.
Maybe "particularly" is the wrong word. But that's a level of wrong and dumb that strikes the strongest chord, for me.
