"kinda sorta europe" + fantasy

[Particle_Man]

I have decided to take this idea from the other end of the telescope. Start with a humans + animals + vermin setting with no magic, psionics, spell-like abilities, supernatural abilities, etc. I assume that as a baseline could duplicate "kinda sorta Europe".

Now, what fantasy elements (spells, magic items, monsters, etc.) could be added that would keep the setting as "kinda sorta Europe"? I know that certain things can change it into a whole different thing and there are threads for that. I am wondering what sort of magic/monsters would not change it that much, if any.

[Elderand]

I have decided to take this idea from the other end of the telescope. Start with a humans + animals + vermin setting with no magic, psionics, spell-like abilities, supernatural abilities, etc. I assume that as a baseline could duplicate "kinda sorta Europe".

Now, what fantasy elements (spells, magic items, monsters, etc.) could be added that would keep the setting as "kinda sorta Europe"? I know that certain things can change it into a whole different thing and there are threads for that. I am wondering what sort of magic/monsters would not change it that much, if any.

Probably a lot of things that people believed existed at the time.
An exemple I have in mind are the fair folk and witches.

[Flickerdart]

Kinda sorta Europe...when? And where? Because Norway circa 867 AD is a very different place from England in 1066, which is again very different from Greece in 1453.

[AMFV]

There is actually a setting for this. Green Ronin released a Mythic Vistas setting for medieval stuff, which should have the balance better and what not than a simple conversion of 3.5 might.

[Elderand]

There is actually a setting for this. Green Ronin released a Mythic Vistas setting for medieval stuff, which should have the balance better and what not than a simple conversion of 3.5 might.

I'd advise against allowing the theurge class if you really want to keep a medieval feel to it. That class isn't any weaker than a sorcerer. Worse in fact since it's not limited to arcane spells.

[AMFV]

I'd advise against allowing the theurge class if you really want to keep a medieval feel to it. That class isn't any weaker than a sorcerer. Worse in fact since it's not limited to arcane spells.

I do see now that is has magic stuff, I haven't actually ever read the setting, I just remembered that it existed, it may be a good starting point nevertheless.

[Elderand]

I do see now that is has magic stuff, I haven't actually ever read the setting, I just remembered that it existed, it may be a good starting point nevertheless.

The other magic classes are fine, the cunning can only do a few things, the natural magician is limited to lower level spell by virtue of the fact that the event that allow the preparation of higher level spells only occur once a month or less.

I'd advise against allowing the priest class too, it might be a stripped down cleric but it still get access to 9th every day.

[Neknoh]

Thing is, a lot (a lot-lot) of medieval fantasy is set in "Kinda-sorta-europe" with varying ammounts of magic and the phantastical thrown in. If you don't want to design a system from the ground up, or learn a language such as German or Swedish (both have language-unique RPG's set in their medieval times), I'd say the easiest way to go about it is as follows:

Pick up your choice of fantasy D20, be it Pathfinder or D&D or something else.
Now, second stage is to decide what elements you don't want.

First of all, remove asian and middle-eastern mythos such as nagas and other snake people (basically, if you find it in japanese paintings or in Sinbad, it's probably out.)

Don't want demon-magicy-stuff? Don't use the Demon-based monsters. Witches might be better represented by druids.

And this is how you go about it. Deep dark forests and trolls? Trolls, ettin and other such things will fit right in. A witch-hunt by the inquisition? By all means keep the demons previously mentioned, bury them in the sewers of a stinky city.

Basically, stick to what you know and be selective in what you want to include. Tell us more of what you want, do you want knights in shining armour, longswords, cannons and dragonslaying saints? 15th century germany. Do you want chainmail, spears, large shields and longbows? 12th century france, throw in non-flying dragons deep in the woods and some celtic based lore and druidic tales. Do you want a good mix of not-too-fancy-armour, swords and shields, tabbards and knightlyhood with deep, dark forests filled with trolls and old, forgotten gods? 14th century scandinavia. The fair folk and the tales of arthurian legend? Well, either 10th or 15th century England would be your best bet.

These countries and time periods all give you different aspects of "Medieval Europe" and delving into the mythos and folklore of those places will net you a good understanding of what to bring as a GM.

So tell us what you want and we should be able to help you cobble together a perfect setting.

[Particle_Man]

Lets try for a gunpowder-free version of Arthurian type knights, but with a less depressing ending. :smallsmile:

[Neknoh]

Are we talking Ivanhoe or Full plate?

http://i13.tinypic.com/2cntq46.jpg

or

http://i759.photobucket.com/albums/xx234/Mezzanin9/lain%20lain/arthur_in_legend.jpg

to be broad

[Calimehter]

I did use some D&D 3.5 rules to simulate a Dresden-style adventure in post-bubonic Prague not so long ago.

I did allow a fair bit of spellcasting and such, which if taken to "Tippy" extremes would have produced a very different society than pseudo-Europe, but in the context of the setting kept the spellcasters from going too nuts. The gist of it was:

- E6, with no 4th level+ spells or spell slots allowed (no, not even then)
- Generic classes from UA (I gave out some extra skill points and put some extra restrictions on spell lists allowed)
- No magic mart of *any* sort, and excessive "magic" behavior tended to draw loads of unwanted attention from folks that you didn't want to deal with, both mortal and supernatural.

I also added the Vitality/Wounds system from UA, but that was really more for flavor than it was for restricting magic.

This setup still required some understanding with the players not to break the setting, rather than relying 100% on RAW, but it functioned quite well and the (fairly simple if far reaching) rules changes that we made really helped establish the feel of the setting.

[Coidzor]

Well, even with a wound points system, you still need magical healing, IIRC.

[Naanomi]

Ever played the old PC game 'Darklands' (if not you can probably get it free somewhere, it is old)? It had a really good 'Europe, but with what people believed' vibe to it.

Alchemy and some ritualistic saint-based cleric magic was present, and there were some evil 'witches' here and there; but might be a good place to start.

[Particle_Man]

Are we talking Ivanhoe or Full plate?

http://i13.tinypic.com/2cntq46.jpg

or

http://i759.photobucket.com/albums/xx234/Mezzanin9/lain%20lain/arthur_in_legend.jpg

to be broad

Lets go for full plate.

[Neknoh]

Ok, for full plate, look into the War of the Roses era of england for inspiration on what flies when it comes to weapons and armour, all of this can, due to the fantasmal setting, of course be enchanted with whatever buffs you want, so +2 swords can still drop etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wars_of_the_Roses

To extrapolate further from that, you can look up general 15th century imagery and weaponry if you want to go into detail.


For the mythos, if you want king arthur, you'll want dragons, welsh and celtic myths are good sources for fantasmal beasts and you could even look into the movie Brave for some rough inspiration or "I need to look that up."

Of course you'll want witches of the more druidic conviction, or shadows and darkness and night, not so much demonic pacts.

You'll want fair folk/Fae/fairies and you'll want people transformed into animals against their will. Stone giants, nature elementals and many more things can be had, Hellboy 2 might have something suitably celtic or brittish to tickle your tastebuds.

Wraiths and ghosts and ghastly ghouls and other such things are big plusses, swamps are nice.

Once people start becoming ridiculously powerful, look into Beowulf for inspiration on what they could do.


Basically, look to the above for cool stuff you'll want in your setting.
Find the corresponding cool stuff in the sourcebooks of PF or D&D and use only or mostly that.
Now have character creation, begin playing with encounters mostly with brigands and keep the fantasmal sparce, perhaps set the knightly adventurers off on a treck deep into the woods where they end up finding a lonely troll guarding a magic stone or similar.
Escalate.
Enter the Wyrd or dreaming world or something else.
Kill ancient, waning gods.
Find the grail.
End.

[Calimehter]

Well, even with a wound points system, you still need magical healing, IIRC.

Vitality points come back pretty quickly. You only need magical healing if you've taken a crit and/or if you expect a lot of fights in a row.

Granted, those exceptions cover a lot of situations, but not all of them. I ran a small group with no magical healing (low levels), and it only really came up once, after a particularly nasty critical hit to one of the party Experts. They had to take shelter at a nobleman's estate for a while, but it cost them nothing in the long run.

[Neknoh]

You can work with magical healing both of the divine and the more natural variety, just don't describe it as bursting rays of light and similar, there are plenty of "miracles" and "witch brews" from the european middle ages to warrant keeping magical healing in a low-magic setting.

[Particle_Man]

Ok, for full plate, look into the War of the Roses era of england for inspiration on what flies when it comes to weapons and armour, all of this can, due to the fantasmal setting, of course be enchanted with whatever buffs you want, so +2 swords can still drop etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wars_of_the_Roses

To extrapolate further from that, you can look up general 15th century imagery and weaponry if you want to go into detail.


For the mythos, if you want king arthur, you'll want dragons, welsh and celtic myths are good sources for fantasmal beasts and you could even look into the movie Brave for some rough inspiration or "I need to look that up."

Of course you'll want witches of the more druidic conviction, or shadows and darkness and night, not so much demonic pacts.

You'll want fair folk/Fae/fairies and you'll want people transformed into animals against their will. Stone giants, nature elementals and many more things can be had, Hellboy 2 might have something suitably celtic or brittish to tickle your tastebuds.

Wraiths and ghosts and ghastly ghouls and other such things are big plusses, swamps are nice.

Once people start becoming ridiculously powerful, look into Beowulf for inspiration on what they could do.


Basically, look to the above for cool stuff you'll want in your setting.
Find the corresponding cool stuff in the sourcebooks of PF or D&D and use only or mostly that.
Now have character creation, begin playing with encounters mostly with brigands and keep the fantasmal sparce, perhaps set the knightly adventurers off on a treck deep into the woods where they end up finding a lonely troll guarding a magic stone or similar.
Escalate.
Enter the Wyrd or dreaming world or something else.
Kill ancient, waning gods.
Find the grail.
End.

Cool! Now is it possible to have all that without the universe getting made into "not much like europe at all, really" by spell or magic item or monster creativity? Or is that a pipe dream?

[Neknoh]

Don't have other races than humans as the PC's
Most NPC's who aren't mythological in nature (fair folk etc.) should be human.
Don't have magical effects described as big and blatant balls of fire or swords causing enemies to burst into flame.

You can keep lightning striking from the sky (not people's hands), you can have the ground open up and swallow people, forests devouring armies etc. etc. All of this is very much in line with old folklore and mythical tales of strange things happening.

Keep the magic with nature as focal points, healing with natural magic is about finding the proper herbs and putting them on the wound, drawing symbols in blood on the body and uttering the magic words rather than pointing a wand at them and open wounds automatically healing.

Likewise, you can move a forest, you can cause a mountain to split, just don't have the magic focused on the characters, but rather have the characters persuading nature to do these things.

Keep the forests dark and deeps, keep the winter cold and remember to keep a lot of humans around. Supernatural, hostile foes should keep a level of terror to them, always keep it scary and unnatural. You don't want players to wade into a nest of trolls or a dragons trove going "Oi! You!" (unless they are high enough level to wander in, push the trolls feeding on some sheep up against their sad little rockbeds and go "We want information.")

It's basically about giving the players a feel, staying away from the big and flashy that isn't nature-based or monster based (giants in a thunderstorm, their bodies rising high above the treetops is cool, players flying on their own and using rope tricks to rest is not (in this setting)).


EDIT: Furthermore, just keep it medieval, keep it knightly (not necessarily chivalrous), you can go Game of Thrones with it if you'd like, you can go Arthur Myths, even Tolkien's works stick close to medieval europe, especially so if you take out the fantasmal races.

[Gavinfoxx]

When full plate is on the scene, you have LEFT medieval and entered RENAISSANCE.

[Calimehter]

Cool! Now is it possible to have all that without the universe getting made into "not much like europe at all, really" by spell or magic item or monster creativity? Or is that a pipe dream?

Yep, it works. You do have to have a quick chat with the players with regard to not rooting around specifically ruin the setting, but the restrictions I mentioned above do a great job of keeping players from breaking it accidentally.

The only thing I think I forgot to mention was adding some extra XP penalties for creating magic items, just to prevent *loads* of them from showing up and/or being created by PCs and then finding their way into the setting.

[Neknoh]

Depends on the plate.
Depends on the place.
Some would argue that early gothic armour in germany is not part of the rennaiscance of Italy (migration of knowledge etc.)
Also, full plate IS available (although different from the one depicted) before the end of the 14th century in large parts of western europe.