Why is there so little fantasy set in times analagous to Antiquity? The traditional narrative of a group of heroes wandering the land and fighting exotic beasts is much more similar to the myths of the early Middle East and Greece, yet the vast majority of fantasy instead patterns itself off of a bizarre gestalt Medieval Europe.
Because the aesthetics and pacing stem more from germantic folklore and king aurthur style tales. Greek and Roman myth is about largely unknowable and unquantifiable forces and beings fucking over humans for their hubris or vanity, which is kind of at odds with games focussed on exploring and defeating the unknown. And as far as abrahamic and even more ancient religions and myths go, it's basically just "here are rules to follow to not get murdered by your neighbors or god"
If you're already set in antiquity, what do the "ancient ruins" and "forgotten temples" look like?
Caves?
>>47430221
Basically. Unless your setting used to have civilizations that failed so hard they were mostly forgotten. Maybe some awful super plague destroyed them
>>47430018
Pretty difficult to do anything at all without players crying about being railroaded
>Players forced by Fate itself into something
Railroad
>Players told by an actual god to do something
Railroad
>God threatens players to do something
Railroad
>God punishes players for insulting or refusing to listen to it
Railroad
It's really difficult to have a campaign with powers that are flat out superior to players, and most traditional narratives have the protagonists listening to gods until they become as powerful as gods themselves, if that.
>>47430221
Well, if playing in a game based on the height of Greek power, you have the ruins of older Mycenaeans, Knossos, Troy, etc which were nearly a thousand years earlier...
Plus there's always Atlantis, Thule, and other mythical prehistoric societies from which to have ruins.
My group had a short lived but fun game set in antiquity. It was a mashup of Greece, Rome, Egypt, and Babylonia with lots of fighting monsters and demigods. 3rd ed Champions rules iirc. Worked nicely with the power level of the game. All of the characters were demigods themselves, each with some sort of divine gift based on their immortal parent.
>>47430018
Bronze is boring. Steel is cool. Medieval settings let you have steel plate and mail. Antiquity lets you have bronze plates and brass plates, and no mail.
>>47430431
>no mail
Hey now.
http://www.messagetoeagle.com/vindolanda-wooden-tablets-ancient-military-and-private-correspondence-left-by-departing-roman-troops/
>>47430221
Consider that by the time the Greeks reached the height of their civilization, the Great Pyramid was two thousand years old.
>>47431150
Wrong kind of mail.
>>47430018
Because the typical fantasy narrative is based on medieval romances, which incorporated the Classical period into themselves.
>>47430221
The Greeks had the myth of the previous "ages".
So there was The Golden Age, when men were giants made of golden who never got sick and weren't idiots.
Then came the Silver Age, when men were slightly smaller giants and didn't get sick.
And they were living in The Bronze Age, where everyone got sick and where idiots.
You've also got to remember that antiquity happened 3000 years after the egyptians had first got their civilisation together just in time to see the desertification of the sahara happen, around about the same time that babylon and enelil were still coastal cities, before the coast moved away.
Honestly, a game set during Greek Antiquity would be fun as shit. The fact yhat we would all inevitably die due to making a god upset doesn't make it worse to me at all.
>>47430018
The cat inspects the bread.
>>47431755
>And they were living in The Bronze Age, where everyone got sick and where idiots.
Man not even. The Bronze Age was the age of mortal heroes, but heroes nonetheless. Achilles, Hector, Odysseus, Agamemnon, those were the legendary Bronze Age Greeks. But Homer wasn't writing the stories about them until they had already faded into myth, and by then they were living in the Iron Age, where man had been utterly forsaken by the gods.
>Set in Antiquity
>Therefore the gods (Greek specifically) are real and hate you
>>47430298
Dude.... What. I don't even know where to begin. Just.... Just fuck.
>>47430221
Egypt.
Egypt was ancient even in comparison to other ancient civilizations.
>>47430018
The traditional narrative is based on a bizarre Gestalt Medieval Europe because Arthurian is the narrative tradition.
There're similar mythologies but nothing that's so firmly lodged in the idea of a bunch of good guys going around and hitting bad guys. There's a balance of mystery and mysticism and mastery, a sense of romance and a focus on values that're mostly relatable no matter which cultural background or period in time prior or after.
>>47430221
Turkey & Syria have some very impressive 11,000 year old prehistoric temple sites that far pre-date the Greeks and Egyptians.
>>47430018
I'm currently building a Bronze Age setting that will be played using the Burning Wheel system heavily based off of Mesopotamia. The players for the campaign I'm going to be running will either be merchants, soldiers for one of the southern city-states, or mercenaries.
I would argue that it's because many people have a hard time empathizing with the heroes of that era. Hero in that period simply meant someone who does great (not necessarily good) deeds.
By modern standards we would not call most of the Greek heroes heroic. Sure they fought monsters and accomplished challenges but we're also drunkards, prone to seemingly irrational bouts of violence, rapists, adulterers, murderers, and generally not good people.
>hurr just like most PCs durr
That isn't the point. Westerners view heroism as actions of sacrifice, defending the weak, vanquishing evil and so forth.
Most people simply do not look at attempted genocide for personal gain as heroic today.
>>47434848
>Most people simply do not look at attempted genocide for personal gain as heroic today.
>>47430431
The Romans are the ones who popularized chainmail in Europe buddy.
>>47435009
>implying it wasn't the Celts
>>47430221
There is always something more ancient.
>>47430018
>Why is there so little fantasy set in times analagous to Antiquity?
You may as well ask, why is there so little "anything that isn't medieval European fantasy". It's just a quirk of gamers and game designers that they are strangely opposed to change. It's why cyberpunk never really caught on big except for Shadowrun, which is literally just Dungeons and Dragons with guns.
I don't really know why, there are probably some actual reasons for it, but I wouldn't worry about it. A fantasy game set among the Greco-Roman myths could be awesome. There's nothing inherently anti-rpg about it. Go for it and have fun.
>>47434848
I would argue it's got jack all to do with that, because knights being bad people or King Arthur murdering every child everywhere to kill his incestuous son did nothing to dissuade Medieval Fantasy from becoming the norm, and most people don't remember Perseus or Achilles as "that drunken rapist who I think wore a guy's skin once?"
Even modern heroes aren't heroes by modern standards, but that doesn't stop anyone: They just play up, justify, or alter the grit as they see necessary.
>>47430221
Caves with rock art.
Henges.
>>47430431
Medieval settings lack Corinthian helms.
Check and mate, sir.
>>47435028
Popularized =/= invented
The celts may have invented it but they didn't produce it at the same quantity like Romans did. By the Marian reforms every Roman soldier has a set of chainmail compared to only Celtic nobility and their retainers.
>>47430221
Megalithic monuments like nuraghe in Sardinia, talaiots in the Balearic Islands, and the temples of Malta.
>>47434848
I think that you are the kind of person that thinks when a politician says we, he is talking about you and himself, and not just him and his own.
A lady is not every woman and has never meant that.
Just like most papers from old that spoke of men, actually meant men of a certain status and age, and slaves, serfs, peasants that didn't own land, bastards, people of different religious beliefs or ethnicity and women were certainly not men.
>>47437008
I think this guy has it right. It's all just inertia.
Apparently the first runner-up behind Ebberon when they were trying to come up with the 'new 3.5 setting' was going to be an antiquity/bronze age setting. Doing that instead of fantasy 1922xRenaissance might have been better for the genre as a whole.
>>47438142
I don't want to live in a world without Eberron.
>>47430282
There is always the apocalyptic route. Technically, from the perspective of people living at that time, the fall of Rome could have seemed like the fall of all civilization. So any setting in roughly the same time period as the Middle Ages could be seen as a post-apocalyptic game.
>>47438142
Wait, huh? I thought the first runner-up wasBurlew'sthing.
>>47441073
The Bronze Age Collapse was even more apocalyptic than that. Rome didn't fall so much as crumble, there were lots of states claiming to be Rome's successors and holding their literary and cultural ideas for the future. 472 is thrown out as the 'End of Rome' in modern writing but people living at the time considered Rome to still be a thing for hundreds of years afterward.
The Hittite and the Mycenaean civilizations ceased to exist. Empires that had lasted 500 or 1000 years. Just. Plain. Gone. All of the cities in coastal areas of Anatolia and the Levant were raided, and most of them were destroyed by the raiders. Egypt almost got wrecked just as hard, but managed to get enough early warning that Rameses III could levy every single adult male into the army. They still suffered a collapse 50 years later, since every one of their trading partners had disappeared. Trade routes that had reached from Babylon as far as Britain faded completely in less than a generation.
You could make a pretty sweet murderhobo or high adventure or even dynasty-building game in the Bronze Age Collapse.
Also, it helps if you don't have races that are crazy long-lived. Living witnesses to history make that history seem less distant.
>>47441385
He got some traction, but he wasn't first runner-up.
>>47432852
I have read the greek tales of the bronze age heroes.
Everyone got sick and were idiots.
>>47430018
Probably because you're required to have some level of historical interest to understand why it was an interesting era and a lot of people think history is boring because school. Then there is the popular opinion that the real world is boring, humans are boring, by extension that makes history boring, but magical humans with pointy ears or human midgets with a beard is a huge improvement over boring humans that lives in a boring real world.
Also, a lot of people just have shit taste.
>>47441957
what and why is this picture
Why is there so little fantasy set in times analagous to the Information Age?
>>47444172
that's just urban fantasy, and there's loads of it
>>47441492
Upon further research, apparently I was wrong about this. But I'm 100% sure I read an interview/article around 2007 or so which stated that one of the more popular proposals was an antiquity setting with a much more limited spell list since Melf & Bigby & Tensor & other important mages hadn't invented their spells yet.
>>47444172
Isn't there like 8 Harry Potter movies and they are about to make more?
>>47444267
>>47444940
I understand, but I'm talking about a fantasy world different from ours in the information age, not stuff like Harry Potter or Shadowrun
>>47445125
It's a lot easier to make shit up for a style of world people are not directly familiar with.
>>47444154
bunch of artists were taking random ad-lib prompts.
Think that one was "blushing, roman legionairre"
this one was "awkward, sharks, pauldrons, indian"
>>47430298
stop GMing, now
>>47430018
Fucking D&D popularity squashes them and D&D is too scared of losing that popularity to try a different setting as it's main line.
>>47434172
They don't hate you.
Well, they might hate you specifically if you piss them off, but mostly they just don't care about the mass of people. Sacrifice every now and then, don't make a big deal of it when the gods want to bone your virgins, and it's all good.
>>47441474
You could have civilization-ending events that only affected 20,000 people.
But honestly, you don't even need ruins. I want a campaign with Sea People, where a bunch of people can show up from literally you don't know where and wreck your shit.
>>47430221
It's great for Lovecraftian themes though.
Elder species in ruins, forgotten gods, technology totally unknowable. Spooky cults are a good cliche for that as well.
The sparse nature of tribes makes for good unknowns and can up the creep factor. One of my favorites was a prologue campaign of cavemen fairly successfully defeating an abomination that came up in other segments. My original draft was that abomination being the dark and fire was the ward, but explained in character to sound super eldritch, the people they would fight would've been a rival tribe with a radically different culture, making them seem alien.
>>47452061
The BPRD and Hellboy comics play with this all the time. Cavemen vs lovecraftian abominations is actually a recurring plot in BPRD after one of the modern agents became possessed by / turned out to be the reincarnation of one of these ancient warriors.
>>47441474
>there were lots of states claiming to be Rome's successor
Yeah, but with the exception of the Eastern Roman Empire, most of those claims were kinda bullshit.
>>47452202
The Abyss of Time is a good start for that story, if you're interested.
>B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth - The Abyss of Time 01 (of 02) (2013) (digital) (Son of Ultron-Empire).cbr
http://www79.zippyshare.com/v/OflcqJKL/file.html
>B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth - The Abyss of Time 02 (of 02) (2013) (digital) (Son of Ultron-Empire).cbr
http://www79.zippyshare.com/v/t4a2EP20/file.html
>>47452202
>>47452318
That looks pretty awesome. One of my favorite things about that time period is that power levels are stagnant with magic or divinity being a massive boon or obstacle.
You can also make it much more brutal, visceral, and all around more mysterious while still retaining creative problem solving because you can't just blow up a house or fort with a fireball.
... good fucking question OP
>>47430282
>>47430221
Remember, Xenophon visited the ruins of Niniveh, and was insanely impressed by these fucking huge walls that no one knew who built.
Anabasis is a fucking adventure if there ever was one.
>>47450295
Literally kill yourself
>>47430298
I don't know if this is bait or not. I hope it is.
>>47452273
>Muh cultural essentialism
What makes a successor state legitimate? That it be formed on the same land as the old state? That the people who live there speak the same language as the old? That the new state be formed with the blessing of the old regime? That the people of the new state observe the same religious practises as the old?
Legitimacy is all in people's minds. If you have the power to remind your subjects, over and over, that your rule is legitimate, then it is legitimate.
>>47457787
The eastern roman empire wasn't a successor state though. It was the old state. Kinda like how Taiwan isn't a successor state to the Republic of China, it is the Republic of China.
>>47458443
By the time it died, there was no trace of anything left we would call Roman - they didn't speak latin, they didn't revere polytheistic gods, and practically nothing of the culture remained.
>>47459992
The culture of the state changed, but the state itself remained. Does it matter what language they spoke? No-one in Ireland speaks Gaelic, not even in the Gaeltacht. Does that mean that Ireland is no longer Ireland?
>>47430221
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOZK4MiIMZM
>>47459992
>there was no trace of anything left we would call Roman
Maybe if you know jack shit about Rome you fucking faggot. Roman law, Roman citizenship (do you even edict of Caracalla?), everyone around them still called them Romans, they were the half of the empire that kept going until the 15th century and even before the west fell they were the important half.
>>47461438
>everyone called them romans
Man, completely forgot about that. To this day, arabs and turks call the greek orthodox church the roman church.
>>47430341
>Thule
?
>>47457787
>If you have the power to remind your subjects, over and over, that your rule is legitimate, then it is legitimate.
If you're the same person as >>47459992, aren't you contradicting yourself?
>>47452202
"reincarnation" isn't exactly correct - more the caveman version sort of astrally projected forward to be both the caveman and the BPRD agent at the same time, and then the modern agent touched the magical vrilmetal weapon that the past incarnation weilded and the modern BPRD agent gained the blood echoes of the part incarnation, but is also sort of the same
>>47460867
Note that that is the opposite of what anon was asking - a lot of hollywood movies from that period operated out of a desert lot in california where hollywood studios built disturbingly accurate recreations of the ruins that currently exist in southern europe and the middle east... so they could film on those fake ruins for movies set during periods of antiquity when the ruins wouldn't have been ruins.
>>47461438
>>47462263
Yeah, the orthodox church was the original roman christian church, and confusingly the roman catholic church was the schismatic heretics who broke off from that and spread out northwards into the pagan areas of europe while the rest of the former roman empire stayed orthodox.
>>47462533
>the roman catholic church was the schismatic heretics who broke off from that and spread out northwards into the pagan areas of europe
Those were Aryans not Catholics.
>>47464383
No, the catholic church also broke off from the orthodox church. There's been more than one hersey in the history of christianity.
>>47464728
By the time Catholics are there own group the majority of Europe was Christian, either Nicene or Aryan.
>>47464751
I think what they meant was they expanded into the areas that used to be pagan? I dunno.
>>47430298
I refuse to believe this isn't bait. It's too good 8/8
>>47452318
That was awesome!
Any more of those story arcs?
>>47444172
because smart phones and modern technologies are hard to deal with, and that many commonplace tricks with electrical devices require a PHD to understand.
Basically, the modern age is too complicated for a writer, so only stupid fantasy writers try.Plenty of good horror and dramas, though.
>>47462488
I'm not.
>>47460439
No longer the SAME Ireland, anyway.
>>47461438
The Romans, as I recall, weren't dick-chopping pederasts.
Because it's easier to look good in mail and a surcoat than in linens and sandals.
what up
>>47432852
that ain't Homer, that's hesiod
>>47444172
Most fantasy uses magic or other fantastic trick to help exchange of information. Most often don't dwell on medieval mores and lets people have modern views.
Most fantasy is written because people like castles, knights and maidens in pretty dresses not because they actually like medieval culture as it is. In a sense, they are in information age.
I'd argue that the wandering heroes is based on the errant knight theme, which is actually post-medieval.
