1609: An Alternate Past

[Yougottawanna]

Though this setting was inspired by the events and personalities of seventeenth-century Europe (and beyond), it is not, nor is it intended to be, historically accurate. Think of it as an alternate past, with all of the mysteries and possibilities that implies. First, some background:

Pike and Shot

http://historywarsweapons.com/wp-content/uploads/image/Tercio.JPG

It is the age of the pike, the musket and the cannon. The tercios of Spain and the well-drilled armies of the Dutch model march across the battlefield like deadly hedgehogs, clad in helmet and cuirass, switching to the sword when the lines collapse into chaos. Massive star forts dot the map, each requiring months or years of siege to capture. Both melee and musket can change the course of battle – as can a well-placed collaborator inside the opposing walls. There's no shortage of work for a man handy with pike, sword and shot, or for entire itinerant mercenary armies.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y158/Exequy/18944691.jpg

The Renaissance

Europe has emerged from centuries of darkness, and seeks to regain the lost knowledge of classical times. Scholars and treasure-hunters search for the ruins of ancient Roman and pagan cultures; the valuable and deadly mysteries of antiquity lay buried in the wilderness for those with the knowledge and daring to find them. But beware, for such knowledge is precious to commoners and the powerful alike.

http://longstreet.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83542d51e69e201156fb262f0970c-500wi

Religious Struggle

http://talesofcuriosity.com/v/Tudors/i/PopeClement.jpg

The Church of Rome dominates the religious life of its continent, and some of its priests are blessed with the ability to perform miracles both great and small, curing the afflicted. Agents of the Inquisition hunt down heretic cults and eradicate the stubborn pockets of rural paganism – but the cults and pagans are not without power of their own. Meanwhile, across northern Europe pockets of the new Protestant faiths oppose Rome in both theology and politics.

http://www.huguenotsociety.org/Persecution.jpg

The Occult

http://www.technoccult.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/guiborgblackmass.jpg

Church doctrine holds that all power not granted by God must have come from the devil, and the Inquisition constantly hunts practitioners of witchcraft or the dark arts. But this is not enough to deter the curious or the ambitious. In the universities of the capitals scholars secretly map the geography of ley lines; observatories high in the mountains seek clues to the conjunction of the spheres in the elusive code of the night sky; synagogues and remote monasteries practice strange mysticisms; heretics summon infernal beings with profane liturgies; in the rural countryside pagan folk traditions are still quietly observed; alchemists in their laboratories seek the legendary philosopher's stone; genealogists attempt to trace the patrician bloodlines of ancient Rome, and the strange powers they seem to grant, through the centuries to the present day.

http://eustox.com/images/occult_diagram.gif

The Drums of War

http://www.s9.com/images/portraits/5506_Charles-V15000000-15580000.png

Europe is dominated by a single family – the Habsburgs – who control both the throne of Spain and the fractious princes of Germany as united under the Holy Roman Empire. Opposing them are the houses of Bourbon in France and Stuart in England, as well as the newly formed United Provinces of the Netherlands. Farther south, the nascent Papal State seeks to extend its control over the rich but divided cities of Italy. And in the east, the Turkish menace looms, a mighty Sultanate built on the ruins of the Byzantine Empire.

http://www.euratlas.net/history/europe/1600/1600.jpg

The High Seas

http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~vaucher/Genealogy/Documents/Asia/Ships/Batavia.jpg

Dutch ships bring the riches of the East Indies to the markets of Christendom. The Hanseatic league of German merchants seeks to dominate trade in the North Sea. Barbary corsairs capture European ships and sell their crews into slavery in Africa and the Middle East. Spanish galleons bring back the riches of the New World, while marauding English privateers seek to relieve them of their ill-gotten gains.

http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~vaucher/Genealogy/Documents/Asia/Ships/China_Route.jpg

The Concert of Europe

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Cosimo_ii_de%27_medici_adn_two_.jpg

Behind the scenes, power players vie for every advantage they can find. The great banking families, the Fuggers and the Medicis, pluck purse strings that extend across the globe. Foreign spies move among the nobility, brushing shoulders with scheming courtiers and ambitious second sons. Trade guilds jealously protect lucrative monopolies while diplomats work to keep the entire continent from collapsing into war. The line between the aristocracy and wealthy tradesman has begun to blur at the edges, and even those of low birth have a small but tantalizing chance of ascending the social ladder – especially if they're willing to get their hands dirty along the way.

[Yougottawanna]

I've always wanted to play a game in a setting like this, but never got the chance – so I'm trying to make one myself. It isn't meant to be a historical recreation – instead I want to use history as a background while introducing carefully rationed fantasy elements and a reasonable tolerance for anachronism.

Fantasy elements:

This period of history predates the enlightenment, and during this time even the educated nobility believed in various superstitions – the premise of this setting might be described as “what if these superstitions were true?” What if there really were witches in the woods? What if Masonic lodges really did keep arcane secrets? What if Catholic saints really did perform miracles, and sacred relics really did have miraculous powers? What if the various magical powers of Jewish mysticism were real? What if the French royalty really did perform black masses to aid in their machinations at court?

What's more, Galileo's Sidereus Nuncius wasn't published until 1610 – which is to say in this setting it may not be published at all. The cosmology of this setting may be more in line with that of Dante or Catholic lore rather than Heliocentrism. Perhaps in this setting the secret to curing diseases really is in the manipulation of the humors, and perhaps alchemists really can create magical concoctions using Aristotlean four-element theory. Belief in alchemy and astrology during this period was widespread enough that even the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II was a firm devotee of both.

Getting the flavor of the supernatural elements right is crucial. Magic should be rare and it should be weird. It's not the sort of thing you do in public, unless you want to be hunted down by the Inquisition or burned at the stake by a mob of angry peasants – but it does exist. I'm not sure I want to tie this setting to a specific ruleset, but in the case of d20, here are some possible justifications for various classes:

Cleric: Certain members of the clergy may have the ability to actually perform miracles, such as curing the sick or infirm. These are sometimes referred to as “vessels” and are thought to be conduits for the holy spirit. A cleric PC could be one of these – perhaps one who has since left the church or become an itinerant friar or monk. These “vessels” would be relatively rare – perhaps one out of every twenty clergymen has ever performed a miracle (and perhaps a second out of every twenty has faked one for the purposes of advancing his career).

Wizard: A member of a masonic or hermetic lodge or secret society – probably a member of the nobility or a wealthy tradesman – who might refer to him or herself as a “natural philospher” or the like. He may also be an alchemist or astrologer, kept at a royal court somewhere, or an apprentice to the same, or a student of a Jewish or pagan mystical tradition.

Sorcerer: Sorcerers are often thought to be the product of bloodlines, and that idea can be used here. Roman aristocratic (patrician) families sometimes claimed to have been descended from gods – for example, Julius Caesar claimed to be the direct descendant of Venus, and later Roman Emperors were deified upon death. What's more, the Roman tradition provides the semi-mystical concept of Imperium as a kind of hereditary power. Sorcerers could be the long-lost descendants of patrician families, or of Celtic or Germanic chieftains.

Psion: Almost every religion, including Christianity, Judaism and Islam, has some sort of ascetic or ecstatic mystical sect. A psion might have been raised in a remote Fransiscan monastery, or be a student of the Jewish mystical tradition that includes kefitzat haderech (a type of teleportation or magical travel) or the animation of golems (the legendary golem of Prague supposedly made its appearance sometime around the turn of the seventeenth century).

Just how much magic use is allowed and what types are allowed would be up the discretion of the DM. The above are intended as examples of fluff options, not mandatory parts of the setting. But I would hope that if you want to roll a magic user for use here, a prerequisite would be to come up with some cool and unique fluff to justify your choice of class, either by drawing from period folklore or by inventing your own.


Dungeon, Quest and Campaign Hooks:

These are myriad, just browse through wikipedia a while and you'll stumble across a dozen.

Dungeon hooks: Archaeology was just finding its feet as a field of study during this time, with the works of Renaissance “humanists” such as Ciriaco de'Pizzicoli, leading the way. Universities or noble patrons (perhaps with a hidden agenda) could send groups of treasure-hunters off to explore a Roman catacomb, a Celtic burial mound, or a Phoenician necropolis to uncover some ancient secret or artifact from the mists of antiquity. I'm open to introducing all sorts of creative license to classical history – maybe the Roman Empire fell due to a combination of religious strife, economic unsustainability and barbarian invasions – or maybe it fell due to some kind of magical catastrophe which facilitated the above?

Quest hooks: The equivalent of an “adventuring party” in this setting could be a noble or university-sponsored group of dungeon divers who in the process get wrapped up in all sorts of power plays. I imagine that the lost arcane knowledge of the Greeks and Romans would be useful to those trying to gather power and influence – and the same could be said of the new discoveries of proto-enlightenment thinkers such as Edward Kelley or John Dee. What's more, there was no shortage of conspiracies and plots during this time – the Main and Bye plots aimed to put this or that person on the English throne, the members of the various Habsburg branches were constantly scheming against each other, and the Catholic Church set its sights on becoming a political as well as a religious power.

Campaign hooks: There's also no shortage of wider conflicts. There's Habsburgs vs. Habsburgs, Habsburgs vs. everyone else, Fuggers vs. Medicis, Dominicans vs. Jesuits, Catholics vs. Protestants, Protestants, Catholics and Calvinists all vs. each other... And if you want to raise the stakes even higher there are various pretenders to the English and French crowns, each with their foreign sponsors and interested parties, and even the Muslim world (the Ottoman Empire at this point was still near the peak of its power) vs. Christendom, or the Franco-Ottoman alliance vs. the Habsburg-Persian alliance. On a smaller scale, the minor German princes still occasionally waged private warfare on each other, and could use religious disagreements as a convenient excuse to expand their domains, while the independent city-states of Italy maintained long-simmering rivalries.


Cosmology:

Generally I imagine this setting as having four planes, or spheres: the terrestrial sphere (Earth), the celestial sphere (inhabited by angels, broadly representing order), the infernal sphere (inhabited by devils, broadly representing chaos), and Limbo (the formless void). In an idea shamelessly plagiarized from the Witcher universe, sometime in the second century AD a metaphysical catastrophe (brought about by the Roman Empire) caused a “conjunction” or “interpenetration” of the spheres. Divine beings from the monotheistic tradition displaced the former pagan inhabitants of the celestial sphere and banished them to Limbo, where they exist in a semiconscious state.

http://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/dante3.jpg

In my brainstorming at the moment, the catalyst for this event was an attempt by a Roman Emperor (Marcus Aurelius? Commodus? A fictional one?) to deify himself while still living via some sort of incredibly complex and costly ritual. According to the Catholic Church, the attempt went catastrophically wrong, and the conjunction of the spheres (and subsequent fall of the Roman Empire) was the divine retribution for this sacrilegious act. According to various heretic cults, he was successful and in effect became the being now worshiped by Christians.

To the faithful, inhabitants of the celestial sphere are divine and benevolent, even if they work in mysterious ways. To skeptics (who do well to keep their opinions to themselves, except amongst a friendly audience) they may be flawed just as humans are – or even metaphysical reflections of human emotion. One (fictional) philosopher in particular holds that the various spheres are essentially reflections of each other, and that divine beings hold no inherent authority over mortal ones (this is obviously a blasphemous belief to the church).

A possible variant would be to remove the infernal sphere, and to have chaos represented by Limbo instead.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/24/Ptolemaic-geocentric-model.jpg

I leave the details deliberately vague – much like revealing the monster in a horror movie robs it of its menace, I feel like the mystery of the divine might be diminished by explaining it in too much detail, or by giving theological disputes a definitive answer. The inhabitants of the infernal and celestial spheres, as well as Limbo, are meant to be alien and unknowable. But the conjunction of the spheres is the phenomenon that shapes the supernatural elements of the setting.

[Yougottawanna]

Any thoughts or ideas are welcome... I'm hoping that this can be a versatile setting, where DMs can use or omit elements of it as they please.

[Sodalite]

A question, how are the remainder of Asia, Australia, Polynesia, and the Americas involved in the setting? Given the ever so slightly eastern, or rather hindu, flavoring of psionics and incarnum, the Indian subcontinent especially may be of import. In general, though, it currently seems fairly eurocentric, which I suppose is to be expected, but is this intentional?

Also, real!Aristarchus proposed heliocentrism way back in about 270 B.C.E., so having the Earth not go around the Sun would have slightly greater repercussions than you seem to imply. I'm not sure if they would outweigh the repercussions of true miracles and magic, though, so that might already be covered by the level of willing suspension of disbelief established by the other fantasy elements.

I don't mean to inflammatory, and I am wholly interested in the setting, which is why I bring up the previous two points.

[Yougottawanna]

A question, how are the remainder of Asia, Australia, Polynesia, and the Americas involved in the setting? Given the ever so slightly eastern, or rather hindu, flavoring of psionics and incarnum, the Indian subcontinent especially may be of import. In general, though, it currently seems fairly eurocentric, which I suppose is to be expected, but is this intentional?

Also, real!Aristarchus proposed heliocentrism way back in about 270 B.C.E., so having the Earth not go around the Sun would have slightly greater repercussions than you seem to imply. I'm not sure if they would outweigh the repercussions of true miracles and magic, though, so that might already be covered by the level of willing suspension of disbelief established by the other fantasy elements.

I don't mean to inflammatory, and I am wholly interested in the setting, which is why I bring up the previous two points.

I focused on Europe in part because I know it's history best, in part because I didn't want my post to be unmanageably long, and in part because in my ideal campaign you'd spend levels 1-10 or so in Europe before setting off to the wider world in later levels, though that could easily be reversed. You could start your campaign in the Ottoman Empire, or China, or even the New World.

As for heliocentrism vs. geocentrism, it's actually not an essential part of the setting. I was playing with the idea of the conjunction of the spheres including the planetary spheres, so that (for example) each sphere could correspond to its classical God. But if I wanted to commit to geocentrism I could just claim that in this world, Aristarchus got his calculations wrong or something.

[sktarq]

Hmmm.
I'd realy have to make the case of playing this in the Pathfinder system.
Familiar enough but the bases classes work very well.

Core class Spellcasters
Ranger: There are non spellcasting varients which I'd recomend
Paladin: If ever there was "vessel" this would be it in a half plate nutshell
Bard: This one is something odd.
Cleric: What about evil clerics? Christan Devil? How about the Muslims in this world? Differnt Domains? Do differnt orders have different domains? What about those pockets of old gods? Are they all adept/druid/witch types or does Thor or Zoroaster or Odin or Isis still have servants?
Druid: Old earth mother and nature dieties seem an easy link here.
Wizard: I think you nailed it above
Sorcery: See wizards but if you like that then I'd recomend you play up the old Celtic/Germanic/Norse leaders too because that is an option you want to preserve for players I think
Advanced Guide Base Classes
Inquisitor: I don't think I need much expaining here-The different styles could come from different factions of the Church
Summoner: I see two easy ways you could play this off the top of my head. One would be that the eidolon is some form of djinn or mini genie and give them only to the ottomans regions (gives a stronger "wierd" feel. The other is that the eidolon is a deamon-possibly make them have a non-good requirment to give you a very different "bad guy".
Alchemist: ummm. another easy one here - direct translation
Witch: I think you have a lot of room here. In comunion with spirits, Devil worshipers or do they just have a bad rep? I rather like the spirit option, I see Gypsies being mixed in here.

Also Pathfinder has guns and a gunslinger class.

That's my argument for Pathfinder then

[Yougottawanna]

Pathfinder makes sense to me, especially with its support of firearms and I also like the Alchemist class.

If you've ever read the Locke Lamora books, they kind of get the flavor I'd like, particularly in their use of alchemy. I imagine that every noble worthy of a retinue would keep and alchemist in it, and that alchemy would be the one type of "magic" tolerated by the church.

Instead of "vessel" for miracle-working priests, I should've used the word "thaumaturge," the theological word for someone who works miracles. It was on the tip of my tongue when I wrote the OP but I couldn't quite remember.

[Mephibosheth]

I love this idea! Alternate histories are among my favorite settings; one of the games I remember most fondly was in an alternate history set in Al-Andulus. I definitely think you're off to a good start.

I also want to echo Sodalite's suggestion that the setting would benefit from the inclusion of some non-European tie-ins. I'm not criticizing; I always end up making settings with South and Central Asian flavors because that's the real-world historical and cultural setting with which I'm most familiar. So I thought I'd contribute a few things along those lines to your endeavor.

North India:
In 1609, the Mughal Emperor Nur-ud-din Muhammad Jahangir Badshah Ghazi (better known as Jahangir) was in the 4th year of his reign after forcefully assuming the throne eight days after the death of his father, Akbar. He, to a large extent, continued his father's policies of tolerance and incorporation of Indian elites into the governing structure of his empire. The Mughal Empire at this time incorporated most of what is today Pakistan, northern India, and parts of Afghanistan.

South India:
In southern India, the Sultanates of the Deccan (a semi-arid plateau in central India) were beginning to expand their influence in territories claimed by the declining (but still powerful) Vijayanagara Empire based in Hampi. Golkonda, Bijapur, Bidar, Ahmadnagar, and the other Deccan Sultanates were allied against Vijayanagara but rivals in all else.

Indian Ocean Trade and Geopolitics:
In 1608, the British East India Company had begun docking ships at the port of Surat on the northwestern coast of India and had sent envoys to the Mughal Court. The Portuguese, the previously-dominant European participant in Indian Ocean trade, were on the decline but still held important ports, especially on the western coast.

All of this took place in a period of close connection with other parts of the world via overland and (especially) maritime trade routes. Communities of merchants on India's coasts exchanged goods with traders from China and island Southeast Asia to the east and Arabs and Africans to the west. Europeans formed a growing part of these maritime networks with factories in strategic ports throughout the region. Other than the Europeans, few of these traders made long ocean voyages. Rather, they specialized in one leg of the trade, for example, from India to the east coast of Africa or from China to Indonesia. A large number of port cities, trade hubs, and localized trade networks enabled goods, people, and ideas to pass from China and Japan into Europe and the Americas.

Central Asia:
The geopolitics of the early 17th century in Central Asia was dominated by competition between large empires on the periphery of the region. The Persian Safavids, the Indian Mughals, the Ottoman Turks, and the Khanate of Bukhara. Safavid Persia, under Shah Abbas, faced conflict with Kurdish tribes and territorial disputes with all of its neighbors but was nonetheless a significant power in the region and a major player in broader trade networks. Shah Abbas sought European help against the Ottomans, though the Spanish possession of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf remained a stumbling block to the establishment of this alliance.

I hope this helps. Obviously this is a vast oversimplification of an extremely dynamic and complicated period of South and Central Asian history. But it should give DMs a few ideas for games set in this region. I'm happy to answer any questions or expand on anything. Again, interesting beginning to a setting! I hope it continues.

[OzzyKP]

While a totally different time period, you might be interested to see what we're putting together in this game based in the Roman Empire. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=256168) It will begin right during the great fire under Nero's reign.

I love combining history with D&D. 1609 definitely sounds like a good time. Something in the New World would also be especially cool. Pirates and Spanish conquests and lost cities of gold.

[Yougottawanna]

Thanks for the replies. I had hoped to include a wider world in the setting, and the Mughal angle offers many possibilities.

I've always suspected that fantasy fiction has some roots in the various travelers' tales that made their way into the western tradition - having a codified Mughal (or Ottoman, or Chinese) world where some of these travelers' tales are true could make for great storytelling.

The setting can also work in reverse: for example, if play starts in India, then Europe could be the exotic, menacing place full of strange terrors.

[Sgt. Cookie]

Nice, I like it. Be sure to have a lot of Dragons around the British Isles. Lots of folklore and possibilities there.

[Zireael]

I love the idea!

[Yanagi]

1609 is also at the swell of the second wave of the Atlantic slave trade; Europe's boom is directly tied to the triangle trade and the goods produced thereby. The Spanish encomienda system implemented in the New World is not explicitly slavery, but amounts to much the same from the perspective of the natives forced to work mines for the sake of increasing the bullion shipments to Europe. Both the English and Dutch East India Companies have formed, but neither has established the strangleholds in Asia (and brutal power systems) that make them wealthy and powerful.

Elsewhere in the world, the Mughal Empire is almost at it's greatest extent of dominion, and has just lost its most liberal and enlightened leader, Akbar the Great (d. 1604). The new emperor Jahangir is of similar disposition, and largely maintains a good working relationship with the Hindu regional rulers, but it's rumored his wife Noor Jahan makes the important decisions. In China, the Wanli Emperor of the Ming Dynasty is in the last decade of his rule, and in spite of his earlier successes, the bureaucracy's efficiency and the nation's influence are beginning to droop. Tokugawa Hidetada has succeeded his father Ieyasu as shogun, and is still shoring up the policy of the Edo-based bakufu. The sole trading outlet of the "closed" island nation is the brand-new, exclusive trading relationship with the Dutch East India Company.

The New World has been repeatedly ravaged by epidemics--smallpox, diptheria, influenza--reducing natives populations by as much as 90%. In North America, the Iroquois Confederation is the dominant political force, and are at war with the French and the Huron over control of the fur trade. There are no equivalent native powers left in Cental or South America--military defeat, attrition from illness, and a conscious program of destroying remnants of native culture have virtually wiped out the Inca, Yucatecan Maya, and Mexica (Aztecs).

In Africa the Gold Coast is rapidly becoming a series of fortified European settlements as the Dutch, Portugese, and British attempt to monopolize access to the interior and the flow of slaves. The Saadi dynasty of Morocco has overthrown the Songhai Empire and controls Mali (1591), but now is in civil war. The Oyo Empire under Abipa fails to conquers Dahomey (Benin). East Africa's politics are dominated by relations, beneficial and otherwise, with Portuguese traders (and their coins and muskets). Angola is allied with Portugal, while Kasanze and Kongo are growing more resistant; new Ethiopian emperor Susenyos I has just converted to Catholicism and is toying with making it the state religion (setting himself up for a reign punctuated by rebellions of his Ethiopian Orthodox Christian subjects).

Russia is experiencing an interregnum after the finale of the Rurik Dynasty (that won't be settled until 1613 with the incoming Romanov Dynasty). In the last four years the elected tsar Boris Gudonov and his son have both died, a "false" Rurik heir has been crowned and murdered, and the new Tsar Vasili IV is a wily usurper backed by Swedish allies. And speaking of Sweden, they've just had an upheaval of their own, casting out the Polish-Lithuanian rule in 1600.

The Ottomans under Ahmed I are experiencing a series of setbacks--an unsatisfactory conclusions to their war with the Hapsburgs, a grinding ongoing conflict with Safavid Persia, and another revolt in Anatolia by irregular troops protesting the taxation system and taking up banditry. Persia under Shah Abbas the Great is ascending, by contrast--retaking territory lost to the Uzbeks, the Turks, and the Mughals, moving the capital to Isfahan, and experiencing its own little Renaissance of religious tolerance, artistic endeavor, and diplomatic outreach.

---

You don't have to take this "advice," but if I were doing this setting myself I'd thumb back through history and start annotating where magic might make events go a different direction. In my opinion, what makes or breaks alternate history settings is how to integrate the weird/supernatural such that it makes an interesting, distinct timeline rather than just "coincidentally, everything happened the same, but magic."

[RossN]

1609 is also the very earliest stages of the Ulster Plantation in Ireland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulster_Plantation). Ireland as a whole would make an intersting (if grim and gritty) setting since it is just recovering from the Nine Years War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Years%27_War_%28Ireland%29) and there is a lot of ex-soldiers wandering about and baditry going on. A lot of Ireland is still near wilderness at this point unlike most of western Europe.

[Laserlight]

Weapons for this era: pistol and sword, sword and buckler, halberd, pike, arquebus, lance, plus others. I wouldn't want to take pike or arquebus in a small party, but sword and pistol would certainly work.

[ForzaFiori]

For your event that led to the old gods being banished to Limbo, I believe it was Nero that actually tried to have the Senate deify him while he was still in power. Maybe Caligula...

Either way, the timing would be great. Christianity was JUST starting to make really big waves, and both Caligula and Nero had a habit of persecuting them. If they had tried to deify themselves in a ceremony, it would be completely plausible for someone from this new religion to try to screw with it - having a brand new god who you know hates you can't be something anyone wants. This could lead to the overthrow of the old gods.