Slayer Lord
2016-08-07, 09:06 AM
I've been expanding an old campaign setting that's a mish-mash of ancient cultures, centered mostly on the Classical Greece-expy. Last time I used this setting we had a blanket list of weapons and armor types that could or couldn't be used. Short swords and spears are okay, halberds and spiked chains aren't, allowed longswords to slide because we had Norse and because it's Hades' favored weapon in Deities and Demigods.
This time around I thought about adjusting that list so that certain weapons are considered martial in places where they're commonly used, but treated as exotic everywhere else. For example, a dwarf from pseudo-Scandanavia would consider a longsword or greataxe a martial weapon, but a Greek hoplite would need special training to use them. On the one hand I feel this could add some extra depth to the setting, but on the other hand it might be making things needlessly complicated. Plus there are some weapons where my research is a little fuzzy (i.e. the Romans adopting the spatha (could be considered a longsword in D&D terms) from Celtic neighbors, but would the Greeks have knowledge of this hundreds of years earlier; or how Bronze Age Ireland did produce polearms of a sort, but how would those translate into D&D polearms, etc.) Or maybe I'm being too obsessive over a setting (and a game) that's pretty anachronistic to begin with? Any thoughts?
The cultural expies used for the setting are: Classical Greece, New Kingdom Egypt, classic Norse, Chaldean/Neo-Babylonian Mesopotamia, and pre-Christian Celts (particularly in the British Isles, think Cu Chulain). Thanks in advance for your assistance.
This time around I thought about adjusting that list so that certain weapons are considered martial in places where they're commonly used, but treated as exotic everywhere else. For example, a dwarf from pseudo-Scandanavia would consider a longsword or greataxe a martial weapon, but a Greek hoplite would need special training to use them. On the one hand I feel this could add some extra depth to the setting, but on the other hand it might be making things needlessly complicated. Plus there are some weapons where my research is a little fuzzy (i.e. the Romans adopting the spatha (could be considered a longsword in D&D terms) from Celtic neighbors, but would the Greeks have knowledge of this hundreds of years earlier; or how Bronze Age Ireland did produce polearms of a sort, but how would those translate into D&D polearms, etc.) Or maybe I'm being too obsessive over a setting (and a game) that's pretty anachronistic to begin with? Any thoughts?
The cultural expies used for the setting are: Classical Greece, New Kingdom Egypt, classic Norse, Chaldean/Neo-Babylonian Mesopotamia, and pre-Christian Celts (particularly in the British Isles, think Cu Chulain). Thanks in advance for your assistance.