I was thinking of running a campaign on a setting inspired by ancient civilizations: rome, persia, greece, egypt, and so on. Is there a setting like that? And what are your ideas for a homebrewed setting with that concept? As a player, what you it take to make such a setting interesting and fun? What are your ideas for plot hooks and adventures? That's a lot of questions but I hope you guys can help me with some inspiration, thanks
ConsumedReality wrote:
Some things I'd want to see in this kind of setting:
- Spectacular stonework buildings. The kinds of places other adventurers encounter as ruins, but in good condition. Massive pyramids, ivy-covered facades, towering aqueducts, etc. None of it made with brick and mortar, but instead rope, elbow grease, and gigantic rocks. Make them palaces and fortresses, testaments to the genius of ancient engineers without technology.
- Large "lost" stretches of terrain. Like how "deep Africa" used to be portrayed, or India in the Indiana Jones movies. Deep jungles, canyons, and so on, with bizarre creatures. Make the players feel like they're in a world where much remains untouched and undiscovered by humanity, and for all they know, the wilderness continues forever in every direction, and just gets weirder and more dangerous the further out you go.
- Iinstead of encountering a mountain goat or something and telling the players "your characters don't know what this is," introduce fantastical creatures that they actually haven't heard of. I'm thinking of the monster montage from 300, and the elephants from LotR.
- Make magic a big deal. Sorcerers tend to become kings of nations, witches live in the wilds and can grant any wish for a cost, and the court wizard is the real power behind the throne. Magical elements may be part of life (like alchemical options and such), but magic is still a deep mystery, and no one knows what it's true potential is or where it comes from.
- Also, make magic work differently. You don't just buy a wand at the corner store and start casting, because it's not down to that level of "science" yet. People use sacrificial rituals, blood magic, big orrery-like contraptions to capture magic from the sun, and rudimentary glyphs to perform magic, usually. Player characters would be different of course, but there should be a reason for that (they found a rare focusing gemstone that they fixed to a stick or staff, they were given their implement by a spirit, their god branded it's symbol onto their shield in a burst of light, etc).
Great! that's gonna be very usefull 
I would do a "Black Company" type campaign with that kind of setting. Real gritty and down in the mud. Get in touch with the ancient pagan aspects of Rome. Lots of history there.
So, I've been thinking and came up with some ideas.
In this world each culture have its own pantheon of gods, their gods often visit the material plane and fight for influence against other gods, with clashes between cultures often representing theirs gods war for influence.
I couldn't decide between having rome or greece as the main hub for players characters, so I mixed the two. There were state cities that used to fight each other in the recent past, but a foreign tribe has defeat them all an established peace through a treaty called the pact. The pact created a new city that serves as a capital, each state city appoints some of their citizens to represent them in the capital's senate, the senate tough is headed by the pact keeper, who descends from the conqueror tribe. The senate and the capital city will represent rome while the states cities are still very independent and will include a spartan like city and an elfic athens.
The area outside the pact is full of dwarven celtic tribes and dragonborn kingdoms based on germanic culture on the north. To the east I was thinking of a great tiefling empire that ressembled cartago and persia. That tiefling empire could be the main menace to the pact, kinda like in both thenpersian and in the punic wars.
I'm thinking of basing my adventure in Red Hand of Doom, with the PCs protecting the frontiers of the pact from a horde of barbarians.
I will definitely try to follow Macv12's and Noctaem's advice.
What do you think?
Sorry for any misspelling, english is not my native language, and this is only my first thread.
Carthage's gods were monsters - descended from Phoenecian deities which had inspired a powerful reaction in Biblical personages - and the Romans did not know what to make of them. That would make a good fit for a tiefling-run empire.
Testament (3.5 Biblical themed supplement) has a chapter on Philistines, which were a pre-Greek-based culture. Also Phoenecians / Canaanites, if you want an exotic local culture to visit.
"Carthago est deletas" - the final war between the Pact and the tieflings will be a World-Shaking Cataclysm which can only end when one party or the other is utterly destroyed. (Lay siege to city until inhabitants have eaten all stockpiles of food and must catch rats / bugs, house-to-house / room-by-room warfare, city buildings torn down so not one stone stands upon another, rubble moved into streets, every inhabitant killed down to the smallest babe, set fires to scourge ruins, farm fields sown with salt, every tree cut down, temples ritually desecrated, bones of human sacrifices given a decent burial.) Of course that also ends the campaign.
Green Ronin printed a supplement based on Illiad and Odyssey, for some mythic inspiration for your world's legendary figures. I think called Heroes of Troy, but I could be wrong.
There are very old (AD&D?) softcover supplements for Power of Rome and Glory that was Greece, giving flavor for the cultures you want to work with. Again, my memory of titles may be faulty.
Sounds like a well thought out setting. Having the city states still bickering amongst themselves would be good. Even though the Pact calls for peace, if you are a spartan in athens, better watch your back. Personally I'd try to reduce the amount of gods in the setting. Make just the ones most needed, like the king of each pantheon, the war god, and the fertility god. Toss in too many gods and the players and even yourself can lose track of them. It just isn't as impressive if every other week a god shows up. Make it rare and it will blow the socks of the players.
thanks for the input, BRJN, I will definitely look for that material. Daphnesweets, altough I did tought about the bickering between the city states, I didn't realize that the amount of gods could become a problem, thank you for calling my attention to that. I think I should just start small, designing only the few essencial gods for each culture, and only expanding those who interest my players and are important for the history.
TakeoRZM wrote:
^ to throw another wrinkle in their, you could extend the double naming beyond Greek/Rome. Perhaps the Norse/Celt/Egyptian/Persian name for the god of war refers back to the same diety. The diety know this, but it is not public knowledge among mortals. Also many minor dieties with regional flavor makes a lot of sense. You and the players may have a hard time keeping track of it all, but that would be the reality of the situation.
My daughter is facinated with Greek & Roman culture. I may borrow heavily from this thread to create an adventure for her...
CCS, I will still make one pantheon per culture, I'm only saying that I will not design every god for each pantheon before I start playing, because it could be too much effort without actually being usefull. I think the characters shouldn't have a vast knowlegde about the gods of regions they don't actually have been to, so I will expand each pantheon when characters have a chance to learn about them, or when it becomes relevant to the campaingn, and about the expansion of the empire, that was kinda what I thought as well. About roman and greek gods, since the pact unifies their nations, it could represent the union of their pantheon as well, explaining whay there are more than one name for each god.
ark71, it's nice to see that this thread is being usefull for other people as well. About your suggestions, the idea of extanding the double naming beyond greeks and romans would contradic the idea of different pantheons fighting for influence, so I don't think it's very interesting. On the other hand, the idea of minor deities for small and isolated cities is very nice, especially if you consider that those deities might not be deities at all! They could be monsters or even mortals taking advantage of the innocence of the natives. I can see dragons being worshiped by dragonborn as if they were gos, or an evil mage manipulating his worshipers to ascend to true divinity, lots of potencial for adventures there!
No worries - I was thinking more along the lines that the clerics from the different pantheons fighting for influence while the gods sit back and watch. The war god might be especially involved, sowing seeds of dissent while gathering more supporters from every camp along the way. That probably works for more of an inner pantheon struggle than competing pantheons, now that I think of it.
To build a pantheon, you only NEED a deity to handle each of the Cleric Domains (Thor = Tempest). Some can double-up, of course (Apollo's complete portfolio is huge!). There can be other gods who show up in the legends (Venus), but do not affect adventures.
Minor deities? The Romans held that every house had a 'spirit'. (4e Primal Power for this mindset.) The many gods of the houses could rise up together against the god of war to help defend their homes during a siege. (The myth has him fighting a swarm of vermin, I suppose.)
And on that tangent: Some of the myths should be symbol-icized retellings of historical events. At mid-to-high levels, a Researcher PC may have to collect the legends and lore of his people to help figure out "what happened" a long long time ago. If the god of War was swarmed by vermin who bit his hand and he dropped his sword, there may turn out to be a mausoleum near the old ruined city in question, which holds the remains of a successful General ... and his magic sword that was buried with him.
BRJN wrote:
This is a map I drew for the main continent where my campaign will take place. What do you guys think?
Don't mind what's written in the image, it's only a few notes for me to know where each kingdom is gonna be, I've numbered them so I can translate them to you.
- Hyperborea, it's another continent to the north. The greeks believed it was a perfect place, where erevyone was happy and lived a long life.
- It's where a viking inspired collection of tribes will be
- It's where the germanic tribes of dragonborn live
- the place for clans of horseman inspired by the huns
- celtic tribes
- where there are a few greek-like cities that are already under the rule of the tiefling-persian empire
- the tiefling-persian empire
- tha pact
- the amazon's island
- phoenician/cathage
- babylonia
- sumeria
- ancinet india
- minoan (the city of the minotaur)
- egypt
- kingdom of Aksum, it was ans african kingdom that existed in the current region of ethiopia
Looks good. I'm intrigued.
For flavor, you may want to put the "Vikings" IN that big fjord-looking bay on the north coast. Or the islands to the NW; this means the PCs have to persuade some imperial government to build a Navy in order to permanently deal with waves of Viking raiders.
Have the Huns be living on a large area of steppe / plains that touches several Imperial areas. This provides land-based communication plus allows for diffusion of technology/magic. For instance, Germanics use lots of elemental spells but Persians like flashy evocations while Babylonians prefer to illusion you into going away. A Hun spellcaster could introduce some variety (and a chase to read his spellbook) when he uses a spell that nobody around HERE has seen before.
Are any of these empires rising / declining? In stasis / equilibrium? How do they relate with each other (diplomacy)? Would one of them try to manipulate other powers into doing the dirty work for them, Byzantine-style?