The Dark Ages

[Spongly]

Not really Hyborian Age related, but I'm thinking of running a game set in a fantasy version of Dark Age Britain and have been trying to think of a rules system to use. Conan sprung to mind because of the gritty combat and relatively uncommon magic, and so I've been thinking of modifications to use:

Races: Britons, Picts, Saxons, Gaels, Romano-Britons. Basically these will be done similarly to the existing races - Conan already deals with multiple human races.

Classes: This is the big change. Most of the Conan classes are a bit rare or exotic so I've been thinking of a change to one of the following:

Warrior (potentially a noble or a retainer to one, a professional fighter. Lots of feats, limited selection of skills.)

Freeman (a normal free person, could be a farmer and part time warrior, a hunter, a bard etc. Lots of skill points and a wide selection of skills)

Magician (could be a priest or just an unaligned witchy sort. Magic, plenty of knowledge skills)

Feats would be used to determine noble status, priesthood and so on, so that, for example, you could make a priest as a freeman with plenty of knowledges and the "priesthood" feat, or you could choose to be a more magical priest by playing a magician.

My other option is to use some classes and tweak others - this is more specific and perhaps gives people a more obvious role in a party but is perhaps more limiting. An example class list might be:

Warrior
Thief
Borderer
Priest/Magician
Barbarian?

Combat:

Armour would be rarer, more limited and more expensive, with a mail shirt and open helm being about the top of the range. Similarly most polearms and two handed weapons vanish from the list. I was thinking of allowing one-handed spears to operate as reach weapons - an advantage, but one that should serve to make spears the common choice of primary weapon, as they were in the dark ages.

Some added feats might include something to make you more effective with a shield (+2 to parry bonus with a shield?) - without much armour this will be very important.

I've been looking at some good feats from the Slaine RPG by Mongoose as well, including the ability to disarm someone by catching their weapon in your shield, and the ability to catch thrown spears and hurl them back.

Magic:

Magic would require a fair bit of work, but again Slaine has plenty of appropriate spells. Other than that the magic works wuite well, with sacrifice or ritual required for more powerful workings.

If anyone has any ideas or feedback I'd be grateful...

 

[Trodax]

Warrior (potentially a noble or a retainer to one, a professional fighter. Lots of feats, limited selection of skills.)

Freeman (a normal free person, could be a farmer and part time warrior, a hunter, a bard etc. Lots of skill points and a wide selection of skills)

Magician (could be a priest or just an unaligned witchy sort. Magic, plenty of knowledge skills)

This setup reminds me of how the classes were done in True20. Have you considered using that system?

 

[Oly]

Not really Hyborian Age related, but I'm thinking of running a game set in a fantasy version of Dark Age Britain and have been trying to think of a rules system to use.

Sounds like a great idea and I also think that the Conan system would work pretty well for it.

One thing I did notice was that you put Bard as something an ordinary person might be. Bards were a lot more than that, they're often regarded as apprentice druids. I'd therefore group Priest, Magician and Bard all under some form of the Scholar class.

As for magic itself something I found very interesting was the idea that you're not actually sure if it's there or not. The "Scholar" classes would achieve a lot more via psychological effects on people, people would hold them in great fear and could quite literally be scared to death.

I'm not quite sure how to make that work in practice. Varieties of enchant and curse spells I guess. Scholars would boost their power among the people by holding rites, be they Church services in which they invoke the name of God or pagan rituals of the old faiths.

Have you read the Warlord series of books by Bernard Cornwell? They present a great "realistic" vision of Dark Ages Britain. A whole lot of ideas with the country's Roman past fading into memory and followers of the old and new God(s) struggling with each other.

 

[are]

Sounds like good ideas. A feat giving a bonus to parry with shield should either be +2 and not be able to stack with the "parry" feat, or be stackable and +1, perhaps being able to be taken twice (with "shield parry"*2 and "parry" the total would be +3, together with +4 to parry for a shield that would be really effective.. I would think twice before implementing it.)

 

[Auggie]

I thought "Pendragon" was a good game....

 

[Oly]

I thought "Pendragon" was a good game....

Pendragon's a great game both in terms of content and system but it's based around the Arthurian romances rather than trying to be even remotely historical. It certainly doesn't feel like a dark ages setting, well maybe the Uther period at the start does but it soon shifts.

As an aside I might well be running a Pendragon game this year alongside Conan, Conan's got the gritty side covered and I want Pendragon because it's something other than that.

 

[Spongly]

Pendragon is good, but the combat rules in Conan really favour good tactics and feel quite dynamic, whereas in Pendragon it all seems a bit static - whaling away at your opponent's armour until they fall over.

As for the thing with bards, the idea was that it could cope with the "minstrels" that would have been common - like the Saxon poet Widsith who doesn't seem particularly magical, and you could also make a bard with the magician class who is a bit more like Taliesin. Feats would cover the "bardic immunity" which means that most people won't try to harm you.

As for magic, I wasn't going to go too realistic with the magic level - I wanted something a bit like the Mabinogion or Beowulf where players could find themselves hunting a giant boar-god, battling witches and giants, and ripping the arms off swamp trolls, as well as pillaging Roman ruins and fighting shield walls of savage barbarians.

With religion I was thinking of going with the idea of the fading pagan past slowly giving way to the age of saints. I was going to do a few spell lists for:

Saxon Magic
Pagan Celtic Magic (British, Irish and Picts would use this)
Christian Magic (as used by saints)

and maybe a few ideas for Roman magic, for the few Mithras and Bacchus worshippers left lying around.

I was also going to up the damage for thrown weapons so that most people would carry a few to open a battle, rather than the fairly useless wastes of encumbrance that they seem to be in the game at the moment. I mean, a throwing axe, d6 damage? I wouldn't much like being hit in the face with a francisca I'll tell you, and that seems wimpy to me. Throwing a weapon should really give it a hell of a lot of force.

 

[Scorpion13]

Well, if its a D20 game, Id suggest you check out Legends of Excaibur.

Its heavily Mallory based Authurian gaming, but it has rules for everything you mention, and with only minimal tweaking, it would work almost exactly like what youre decribing.

I got it and its great. Really well done.

 

[windman]

Sounds cool.

You could find a lot of inspiration and colour for your game from Bran Mak Morn and other Howard tales form the The Weird Works of Robert E. Howard collection, like Turloch (sp? dont have the books with me).

Also the Dreams of Eagles books by Jack Whyte and Sarum.

I would definely inlcude the little people, the pre-pict race of the british iles imagined by Howard in Worms of the Earth and other stories. Driven to a suberanian existence and evenutally mutaing into something serpent/goblinoid-like.

 

[toothill man]

try slaine it is the best celtic feel game ever and with the comic material as source has alot of information to use also deals fully with druids and bards

 

[Oly]

Pendragon is good, but the combat rules in Conan really favour good tactics and feel quite dynamic, whereas in Pendragon it all seems a bit static - whaling away at your opponent's armour until they fall over.

Pendragon is a much lighter on the rules than D20, however there's still a fair few choices in combat rather than just hitting each other. It isn't as nearly as detailed as D20 though, but in return it's faster.

As for the thing with bards, the idea was that it could cope with the "minstrels" that would have been common - like the Saxon poet Widsith who doesn't seem particularly magical, and you could also make a bard with the magician class who is a bit more like Taliesin. Feats would cover the "bardic immunity" which means that most people won't try to harm you.

A "minstrel" type of non magical bard could be handled by some equivalent of the scholar class in the same way that a non magical priest can be handled in Conan.

"Immunity through fear" could then be a class feature of scholar, some mechanic based on the CHA stat might be nice. Truth be told if a good system could be made for that then it could be ported back to the Conan game itself.

I was also going to up the damage for thrown weapons so that most people would carry a few to open a battle, rather than the fairly useless wastes of encumbrance that they seem to be in the game at the moment. I mean, a throwing axe, d6 damage? I wouldn't much like being hit in the face with a francisca I'll tell you, and that seems wimpy to me. Throwing a weapon should really give it a hell of a lot of force.

I think at least part of the low thrown weapon damage is flavour, it's to get people into hand to hand combat rather than throwing their weapons at each other from a distance. I'm not saying that they don't need a boost but you might end up with lots of ranged combat rather than HtH.

 

[quigs]

I have a PDF of a book from Green Ronin too, from their Mythic Vistas line of books that deals with Medieval campaigns called the Medieval Player's Manual.

I like GR's books in this regard as they rely mostly on the core d20 rules and add in extras to guide you on how to keep the campaign's theme alive but yet still playable as a game.

 

[Scorpion13]

I have a PDF of a book from Green Ronin too, from their Mythic Vistas line of books that deals with Medieval campaigns called the Medieval Player's Manual.

I like GR's books in this regard as they rely mostly on the core d20 rules and add in extras to guide you on how to keep the campaign's theme alive but yet still playable as a game.

Oh yeah, thats a reall good one too. lots of different types of medival magic based on myths and whatnot. And the divine magic is treated really well too.

Its good stuff.


I also noticed talk about a minstrel class. Legends of Excalibur has a couple of classes like that, most of which rely solely on thier own class abilities rather than Wiz/Sor spells.

You have the Fool, Skald and Minstel.

I guess it all comes down to how realistic you want the game.

 

[Bregales]

Not really Hyborian Age related, but I'm thinking of running a game set in a fantasy version of Dark Age Britain and have been trying to think of a rules system to use. Conan sprung to mind because of the gritty combat and relatively uncommon magic, and so I've been thinking of modifications to use:

Races: Britons, Picts, Saxons, Gaels, Romano-Britons. Basically these will be done similarly to the existing races - Conan already deals with multiple human races.

Classes: This is the big change. Most of the Conan classes are a bit rare or exotic so I've been thinking of a change to one of the following:

Warrior (potentially a noble or a retainer to one, a professional fighter. Lots of feats, limited selection of skills.)

Freeman (a normal free person, could be a farmer and part time warrior, a hunter, a bard etc. Lots of skill points and a wide selection of skills)

Magician (could be a priest or just an unaligned witchy sort. Magic, plenty of knowledge skills)

Feats would be used to determine noble status, priesthood and so on, so that, for example, you could make a priest as a freeman with plenty of knowledges and the "priesthood" feat, or you could choose to be a more magical priest by playing a magician.

My other option is to use some classes and tweak others - this is more specific and perhaps gives people a more obvious role in a party but is perhaps more limiting. An example class list might be:

Warrior
Thief
Borderer
Priest/Magician
Barbarian?

Combat:

Armour would be rarer, more limited and more expensive, with a mail shirt and open helm being about the top of the range. Similarly most polearms and two handed weapons vanish from the list. I was thinking of allowing one-handed spears to operate as reach weapons - an advantage, but one that should serve to make spears the common choice of primary weapon, as they were in the dark ages.

Some added feats might include something to make you more effective with a shield (+2 to parry bonus with a shield?) - without much armour this will be very important.

I've been looking at some good feats from the Slaine RPG by Mongoose as well, including the ability to disarm someone by catching their weapon in your shield, and the ability to catch thrown spears and hurl them back.

Magic:

Magic would require a fair bit of work, but again Slaine has plenty of appropriate spells. Other than that the magic works wuite well, with sacrifice or ritual required for more powerful workings.

If anyone has any ideas or feedback I'd be grateful...

King Arthur Pendragon sounds like your game. Based on both the medieval writings on the legendary king of Britain & etc., but also accepting any other influences the GM feels fit to include, it is of course a game where the players play knights in post-Roman Britain, being invaded by Saxons, Irish, and the Picts of the North, but you can be as historically accurate and dirty or as Romantically, flavored in your campaign as you wish. it gives a lot of info to go on, but makes an assumption that you're playing a game where eventually Arthur son of Uther, brother of Aurelius Pendragon, becomes king and so skills, passions, personality traits, & etc are built upon a dark ages to medieval view of knights, chivalry & etc. It's my favorite game besides this Conan game from Mongoose of course. The 5th edition current releases don't have magic spelled out (they're in production a/o this post) as are advanced character generation (the basic game assumes you're going to be a vassal knight from Salisbury, Logres). But if you want to start sooner rather than later the 4th edition book from the now defunct Green Knight Publishing and Chaosium releases of the 4th edition of the game have everything you could want.

Please note that this game is VERY different from d20. Personality traits & passions, statistics (physical abilities) and skills are important in this game. Intelligence, & etc are decided upon by the player, not statistics like in d20 games. The various editions of KAP have chain mail at least up to plate armour, but for my current campaign I put them back before Uther is kinged and had them wearing leather jacks, having just incorporated studded jackets in the last session. You can reasonably deduce such armour by looking at the scales for the various forms of chain vs hunting leather, compared to plate.

Anyways if you'd like to go that route, I'd recommend giving it a look. At the very least, in the interests of self-promotion, I'd recommend checking out my listmania page of products for this game (I also have two for the Conan game and one for the other companies' releases of Conan rpgs) at: http://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/listmania/fullview/R17XP937EBRDM6/002-4317356-0617631

 

[Oly]

King Arthur Pendragon sounds like your game. snipyou can be as historically accurate and dirty or as Romantically, flavored in your campaign as you wish.

Personally I feel that Pendragon works best if you play it fairly romantically, that is not very historically at all. If you strip too much of that away then a lot of the benefits of the system and game are also lost. You're also paying a lot of money for background fluff which just isn't appropriate at all. A whole lot of the book would be unusable.

Before I had Conan I dabbled with a semi-accurate dark ages campaign (i.e no plate armour, knights, stone castles or feudal system) and I did it with Stormbringer, Pendragon just didn't feel right for it at all. Now having got Conan as well I think I'd go with that system over and above Pendragon.

If you do decide to go the Pendragon route then have a look to see if you can find the Saxon's book. It uses the Pendragon system for a culture that's closer to Dark Ages Britain than that given in the main books.

This isn't a sleight on Pendragon. I think it's a great game and as said will probably be launching a Mallory style campaign with it this year.

 

[Spongly]

I do actually have Pendragon, the Saxons supplement and the very defunct Land of Giants supplement that detailed Scandinavia and the Beowulf saga in Pendragon terms. I was just looking for a game with a more dynamic combat system.

 

[Bregales]

Well that's fair, especially if you play the 4th edition game which is set at the height of King Arthur's reign. But the 5th ed. starts at 485, the year in game that Uther is poisoned and dies, and then you have until 510 before Arthur draws the sword, then wars against the kings and wars of unification before the Round Table gets set up. (My group I started in 470, a couple years after Aurelius Ambrosius came to England, did away with Vortigern and was elected High King by the Supreme Collegium. ~In this game I had them wearing leather, just introduced studded leather as a sort of homage to those tales of them so dressed from the early writers. I do not have romance, tourney skills, or heraldry. I've made it darker, more like "Braveheart" if you will, and just when Aurelius is making some headway he'll be killed, then Uther will be a fire-and-brimstone kind of leader till his demise, then chaos until Arthur unifies the main lands.

The reason I'm writing this is just to offer that it can be made more dark ages. But Romantic, of course, the game celebrates Arthur as the enobler of fashion, the bringer of justice and human rights, the nobility of the knights as a chivalrie et courtesy, all that; very true.

And I definitely agree with you, Saxons would be a great book to get if one is so inclined to take the route Spongley proposed for a dark ages game. I also think Beyond the Wall (dealing with the picts in the north lands (aka Scotland) and Pagan Shores (dealing with Ireland) would suit too.

 

[Oly]

Well this is a bit accademic since Spongly has the books but while we're here.....

Well that's fair, especially if you play the 4th edition game which is set at the height of King Arthur's reign. But the 5th ed. starts at 485, the year in game that Uther is poisoned and dies, and then you have until 510 before Arthur draws the sword, then wars against the kings and wars of unification before the Round Table gets set up.

Uther dies in 495 in Pendragon 4 and 5. The suggested start year for a campaign is 485, that's also the year that the released campaign starts. You've then got 10 years of Uther and 15 years of Chaos before Arthur draws the sword.

The reason I'm writing this is just to offer that it can be made more dark ages.

Yes it can but I feel that you would end up taking so much out of the game that it's just not worth it.

By the time you've taken out the weapons, the armour, the fortifications, the NPCs, the maps, the nations, the settlement details, the city details, the economic system, the feudal system, chivalry, the provided history, the bestiary, the over-the-top effects of failed passions, many of the skills, squires, knights on horseback and more than likely even the very idea of knighthood there's not really an awful lot left behind to suggest that someone buy the game.

All that Spongly would have left is bits of the character generation system and the combat mechanics. Given how he wants something crunchier than Pendragon there's even less for him there than there might be for others.

Pendragon's a fantastic example of a system driven around the game concept rather than a generic system. What it does, Mallory style Arthur, it does brilliantly and with incredible flavour but it's not that portable.

It might actually make a great system for an alternate fantastical medieval setting but for a true feel for the dark ages it just doesn't seem right at all.

 

[Etepete]

Correct me if Im wrong but surely Pendragon (this great game) is based on the rather anachronistic jumbling of 5-6th C. events with high/late medieval Chivalric Romance (reflecting the time when it was put to paper) and 19th C. Romantic sensiblitiies (refleceting the time when these stories where put in the forms those of us not in scholarly pursuit would have read them).

A game that digs deeply and imaginatively into the early post roman age would be severly hampered by such "Chevalresque" notions, whom would be utterly wrong for the setting. At this time, a "Miles" is a romanised warrior, not a knight, and a Dux is a general or warlord, not a duke.