historical supplements

[howardfanatic]

Barring a Conan MRQ, how about a series of books allowing play in historical settings- Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, Rome, the Celtic Golden Age, 1000 AD-- that sort of thing.
Several companies did these for the D20 boom and the books were always interesting and usually well done. You could even use a Rome or Celt book as a support item for the Slaine game.

 

[steffworthington]

Isnt 'Slaine' set a thousand years before Rome?
It was in the comics anyway...

 

[lastbesthope]

If you dig around in an FLGS you might find an old copy of OGL Ancients

LBH

 

[howardfanatic]

I did not know Slaine was set so far before Rome. I have only recently gotten the first TPB and just started reading it. I still think you could use a Celtic sourcebook to flesh out common life in the age of ancient Celtic Britain/Ireland/Scotland.

Personally, I love the ancient tech more than the DA or medieval tech. Like Harlan's Shadow of Ararat stuff or Howard's Bran Mak Morn (or Hyborea! Conan now!).

Also, a Beowulf supplement- based on the epic poem or Crichton's Eaters of the Dead, not the Crom-blasted bile of cartoon movie- would be very cool. I know that is a tangent, but I really love Beowulf.

As for the OGL Ancients. I'm sure it's a great supplement for the D20/OGL system, but I do not like pdf's and I loathe the D20 system. That's why I bought MRQ!

 

[klingsor]

Slaine is a fantasy game, the setting is not historical – or it is about as historical as the older Arthurian films. It makes U-571 look like The World At War. Great stories though and inspired by the myths but not historical.

However I too would be very keen to see some more historical settings. Green Ronin does some though they are D20 now and will be ported to True 20 while I would prefer Runequest. A good solid Early Iron Age Europeans game would be very nice as would Vikings (AKA early modern Scandinavians) or Greeks and Wild West.

The best historical supplants are probably those by Steve Jackson Games for GURPS . Even if you do not play GURPS, and I have not since roughly 1990, the supplements are still very good as there is a lot of useful material in them. The art is usually dire, but they are not alone in that, are they?

 

[howardfanatic]

I am aware that Slaine is fantastical, not historical. I was saying that many of the ideas in Slaine would translate well into a historical setting and vise versa.
Mainly, I like centurians and barbarians far better than knights and kings. Slaine has that vibe, and I'd like to see more of it.

 

[klingsor]

Sorry, I must have misread your post.

I have been buying some of the Warlord Games plastic Celt and Roman miniatures and making terrain for them so this era is once again of interest to me - which feeds back into RPGs. I see an Amazon shopping spurge on 'research' in my immediate future.

 

[howardfanatic]

Chaosium has Cthulhu Invictus (and now it has a second book in that series) that expands Cthulhu Dark Ages to play in Roman times, but I wasn't very satisfied with the book.
I'd really like a historical Rome/Celtic Britain setting that provides good culture and history.
There was a company that produced such for the D20 awfulness. They did a Celtic, Viking, Romanian, Egyptian, and Aztek (among others). Atlas or something like that? They had terrible cheesecake covers, but they did do a good job of providing info on the settings. They did a whole series, but the best one was the Celtic Age sourcebook. If you want to do some research, I'd recommend them as a cheap, simple start.
Green Ronin's Rome sourcebook left a lot to be desired. It focused almost exclusively on mechanics and offered little to no culture/history.

 

[klingsor]

Green Ronin I think. I bought some of them and was fairly impressed though the GURPS books are still much better in no small part because they have more room to cover the material.

One book I found both interesting and potentially very useful for scenarios for historical, fantasy or modern horror is Life and Death of a Druid Prince by Anne Ross and Don Robins. It covers the discovery of a bog body and some speculation of how he got there and the world he came from.

I borrowed it from the library after reading the Man in the Moss by Phil Rickman which has a heavy (acknowledged) debt to it.

The BBC series Landscape Mysteries is jolly useful as well and ties in nicely with the Druid Prince book as well on celtic Gold.

http://www.open2.net/landscapemysteries/tv_summaries.html

 

[howardfanatic]

It was Avalanche Press. Took me all day to remember that...
They did a pretty good job, especially with the Celtic Age sourcebook. Alas, that is was that crappy D20...