Bronzing the Game

There's no question that paraphrasing history is something of a drug for me.   Since my post on the 18th, I've worked on the chalcolithic period and started the early bronze age, with supportive work on separate Egyptian and Mesopotamian pages.  There's no need to go look at those unless you have some knowledge of history and are interested in how I might have described it all.  Rest assured it's a lot of work ... but of course, it's nothing compared to what a complete history before 1650, the time of my game world, would require.

'Course, I could just stop with the early bronze age and chuck my present world, building a whole new one that took place in, say, the year 1224 BC.  Ramses II has just died, the Kassite Babylonian empire and the Hittites are on the skids, the Mitanni kingdom's in ruins, and the Hebrews are but scattered hill peoples.  It's a great time for a campaign, as bloodshed and chaos are reigning all over, while there's just enough government left to allow trade and some order in places.  It's not nearly as bad as history gets a hundred years later, after Egypt's completely collapsed.

Let's see, what would I need to consider?  Starting with character classes ... there'd still be the fighter of course.  Some kind of "priest class" is possible, as the gods have made their presence known by then (remembering, the gods are real).  The concept of "holiness" hasn't been invented, so the paladin's out; we might replace the ranger with a "hunter" class, stripping out any druidic elements, especially the ranger's perceived identification with animals.  That ditches the druid class too, obviously.

All the introspective religions haven't come into being yet so there goes the monk too.  We can keep thieves (I said "thieves," not rogues).  The assassin's arguable either way.  I'm absolutely not considering any of the nonsense junk classes introduced with the UA or anything after.  That leaves the mage and the illusionist.

I've argued the magic is a technology, something that has to have been developed over time, with various researchers building up the spell list one item at a time, just as player characters are encouraged by the books to invent their own spells.  Given that the early bronze age already lacks quite a lot of those classical scholarship traditions that haven't been invented yet, magic has to be awfully crude and limited.  It think it'd have to be an entirely rebuilt system, perhaps focused on making large-scale things happen at precise moments in time, according to astrological star charts or some such.  An "astrologer" class, if you will.  Imagine the astrologer and the rest of the party organising materials and acquiring a specific space for an astronomical event about to take place 7 months from now ... but if everything is set up just so, and the astronomer is able to "cast," then the effect is causing some sort of environmental change (a disaster, the transformation of desert into a land of milk and honey, whatever) or acquiring unnatural creatures as minions or some such.  Day to day, however, the astrologer's "magical" powers would be for the most part rather, um, weak.  So that most of the time, the astrologer is some kind of intellectual thief, stealing "intelligence" about the world from other people's minds.

How about weapons?  These are bronze, naturally.  The specific gravity of iron is 7.85, while for ancient bronze it's 8.76 ... so about 11% heavier for everything (obviously, I'll still be using encumbrance).  Bronze weapons ought to break or bend out of shape more frequently, so that a fair part of the game for fighters involves reforging or acquiring new weapons a lot of the time.  I'll make the heavier swords do slightly increased damage, adding a +1 to each hit (instead of 1-6, 1-8 and 2-8, it'll be 2-7, 2-9 and 3-9).  That's in addition to strength bonuses, which don't need adjustment.  A spear will cause the same damage and last about the same amount of time as the medieval game, so players will keep spears as back-up for those periods when they're looking for a good bronze blade.

Shields are heavier but they give the same effect.  Armour is a combination of leather and bronze metal components at best, with "scale bronze" being the best possible armour (AC 5), the heaviest and the most durable.  Leather & bronze might give the same AC, but it would tend to more readily fall apart in battle.

Still plenty of opportunity for  mythical beasts and such; in fact, the whole lexicon can still be present, except that any non-human races would have to be really, really remote, so until the players actually explored into distant realms (and it's a long, long way to Scandinavia, Russia or Central Asia), I'd insist on human player characters only.  Later, if they actually went to a place with gnomes, elves, dwarves and such (and those races are in my world in 1224 BC) for anyone to actually start as one of those races.

That's how I'd play it, anyhow.

I think that as an imaginative DM, I'd be able to produce a very different experience for persons in Egypt versus Mesopotamia.  The former would be a patient, structured setting, filled with criminal activities but generally intellectual and problem solving.  Adventuring emphasis would be on exploring surrounding areas, encountering what was out there, trying to secure some valuable from them and establish a sharing of technology and trade.  Dungeons, I think, would be very few and far between, and highly driven by the discovery of some creature the players might let loose on the world for the very first time.  Say, for example, there's no such thing as a ghoul anywhere in Africa ... until the players unearth a bunch and fail to kill them all.  Imagine being responsible for unleashing ghouls on the world.

Mesopotamia would be a much looser campaign, with any sort of travel being fraught with danger from other human groups, from other city-states.  Brutality against the lower classes would be much more common, along with the presence of slaves, with the players being constantly threatened of this fate if they don't win this battle or convince this group of "true believers" that they're believers too.  Strong parties would organise gangs of supporters and set out to dominate others, in a world where being smart means very little if one isn't also pretty strong and untouchable.  It's great if you can get this small area under your heel; it helps keep you from being under the heel of other slightly larger areas.

I think, however, that players would feel compelled to leave all civilisation behind ... at least at first.  There's a vast wilderness in 1224 BC ... not so much full of treasure but certainly with food and equipment hard enough to come by that seizing both could be transformed into an experience-giving benefit.  Apart from killing Polyphemus with a spear in the eye, there's all his sheep to take as booty, which is enough meat to feed a whole tribe ... who, grateful, might grant the characters special status and therefore a small army of tribesfolk to play with.

Bits of artwork, too, like bead necklaces, figurines, pieces of blown glass, decorated pottery and such could also count as experience-giving treasure.  Remember, this is the bronze age; there are no coins, no yet, anywhere.  They haven't been invented yet.

I think that by balancing a certain historical accuracy, along with the players still maintaining their agency in deciding what to do and where to go, the bronze age could yet be a very captivating game experience.

If that's the way I wanted to go.