Post/Author/DateTime	Post
technodemon 09-16-03, 11:00 AM	Hi all, I need help. My DM have given the task to come up with a description of where my character's home is and what looks like. The only little tibit I got from the DM is that is similar to Italy. Now I do have an idea what my character's city might be like but need some info. The type of place I have cosen of what my character's city might be like is Italy in the Renaissance Age just before gunpowder was invented. Now I need know if this still in the same era or a diffent age? There is a good amount of clockwork invention and similar technology but no true gunpowder as of yet. Any thoughts or ideas?
Tzor 09-16-03, 01:13 PM	Well technically there is a big difference among the major areas of culture in Renaissance Italy, but since you are not trying to capture a specific location in Italy, you can match features of Rome with features of Genoa, as much as you like, and few will notice. The key to understanding, (in the abstract) Renaissance Italy is to understand the abstract results of the crusades. They came, they saw, they didn't always conquered, but they loved what they found. Spices, silk, coffee, and other great stuff. On the way there and back they passed by the cradle of an old civilization and found arts and science and foreign languages and other fun stuff. Learning and trade made the bulk of late medieval and early renaissance evolution, and paved the way to a real D&D economy! Clocks were invented by monks, because sundials don't work at night, primitive clocks needed constant monitoring, and because they created prayer schedules that required praying at various times in the middle of the night. Monks also worked on arts and science as well, developing techniques for getting better results from crops. Some monks even studied the heavens. Government was exceptionally regional, with small city states fighting (sometimes through warfare) for the best share of the economic pie that was a result of the silk/spice trade. Even religious centers were not immune to local city state warfare. The exact historical development of gunpowder isn't necessary in this brief exercise of history. Leonardo Da Vinci's bronze horse, never finished was eventually made into a bronze canon, but the economic conditions for the most part remained the same. Nobles, middle class, and religious all fought for the same piece of the economic pie in their own way.