NB: This is a setting discussion thread, please leave system/mechanics talk at the door.

I'm not really much of a homebrewer when it comes to settings (as much as I like to hack systems to fit my purposes, I tend to use existing settings/properties), but circumstance has forced my hand. I can't seem to find a genuinely sword and sorcery setting that fits my needs closely enough to be worth starting with.

At its fundament, what I'm after is deliberately low magic, humanocentric and non-medieval. Lots of things that D&D isn't, and divergent from the vast majority of settings that are out there. Even settings that aren't closely aligned to D&D still seem to draw heavily on its tropes and assumptions, thus me throwing in the towel searching and doing it myself.

Now I know some people might be thinking "why not just play Conan" and have done. Unfortunately, Conan comes with baggage and negative connotations I can't undo in the minds of my group. But if I do something of my own (as I understand is a time-honoured tradition with sword and sorcery anyway), at least I can avoid some of those things. Besides, it means it could be a setting to discover together.

S&S settings are often done in broad strokes, so in a way that suits my purposes quite well. I don't intend to define and describe an entire world in detail, just lay down some of the ground rules.


Bronze Age?

First up, Bronze Age is my means to avoid all the medievalisms of D&D and it's ilk. Societies can be settled or not, but the key societal structure is the tribe. There's no such thing as a nation; there are city-states and occasionally empires, but no national identity exists. Large tracts of land belong to no one, barring the wild peoples who inhabit and roam around those spaces, answering to no one but themselves and their tribal leaders. Even urban folk still trace their connections and heritage to tribes, which are the default organising structures for collective activity.

City-states trace their influence as far as their citizen-militias can march and defend communities allied to them. Most major commerce is carried out on water, for while there are pirates and tempestuous weather to contend with, it's faster and safer than by land.

Most physical conflict is at the skirmish level. Few city-states are rich enough to mobilise their militias for long, or keep standing units of mercenaries ready to respond to things. Most tribes are experienced raiders and more than willing to pick up a weapon to enforce their will. Social convention and bonds of clientage, not "town guards" keep the peace in settlements.

Slavery is ubiquitous, with freedom and citizenship being a condition prized even by the lowliest citizen. Most of those slaves are foreigners and tribal people taken in conflict, but there are also those forced to sell themselves (or sold in bulk by their city) to pay debts.

Bronze is the most common metal, used for everything. Unlike in the real world, tin is plentiful. Most critically (for a later point), iron is almost completely absent, barring whatever falls from the skies in meteors in small quantities.


Races

The only sympathetic, sapient, mammalian species on the entire planet is humanity. That's right, no elves, dwarves, orcs or the rest, and non-humans aren't playable.

I haven't given them a lot of thought yet, but any non-human sapients will likely be reptilian, and maybe include amphibian or avian types too. They are all violently opposed to humanity. There is no great peaceful coalition of species to be built in this setting. Every sapient species competes with and hates every other.


Magic

This is still a fantasy world with an inherent level of magic about it, but the fundamental truth is this: humans have no magic. None at all, they are not born with a spark of it, they can't learn it with careful study and dedication, they are magically inert.

All magic is unnatural and alien to humanity, and there is only one way they can get access to it: pacts with Outsiders. Those pacts are fell bargains where you trade a piece of your soul for power, irrevocably initiating your descent into corruption. Sorcerors are reviled and feared, not welcome anywhere.

Magic is a living thing, associated with biological processes and connections to the world itself. As a result, it cannot be invested in inanimate objects. There are no "magic items" in this world. There's flora and fauna with magical properties which last a short time after they are harvested/hunted, but nothing permanent.

There might be gods, people certainly worship various entities. But they don't grant magic, aid their followers, nor for that matter actually provide any evidence for their existence.


Outsiders

The main source of non-ambient magic and a significant threat/antagonist source are the Outsiders (this is a placeholder for a proper name). Rather than a myriad of alien types, I want to go with just one, and rather than demons I'm currently thinking the Fae. Faeries of the Exalted brand of wierd things of chaos, not the Disney good/evil fairies.

That's why the absence of iron is significant, they and their magics are relatively safe from the touch of iron because it's so rare. Bronze weapons will hurt them, insofar as enough physical harm will force them to abandon a material form, but they don't bleed or take any permanent damage from it. By contrast iron burns and can permanently end them.

They are the source of pacts that sorcerors make to trade humanity for power that humans are not supposed to have. Pacts are thematically a big thing for Fae, easily as much as demons. They feed on emotions and souls, leaving their victims mindless husks if they drink their fill.

They sometimes take humans as consorts, producing half-Fae changelings who are shapeshifters with a small measure of magical ability.


And that's about all I have for now.

Very nice. I'd use shades of Sláine in there too if you're leery of Conan. While Sláine does routinely beat Ukko his dwarf, an argument could be made that he richly deserves it. Generally speaking that's a good series of comics if you want to go stone age/bronze age, or take a look at the Mythological cycle as interpreted by Jim Fitzpatrick, a unique style.

Sounds very cool, Kiero. Especially as i am thinking about running almost the same thing atm
I hope you keep posting your setting development here.

As an aside - Have you looked at this product? I think it comes as close to what you are looking for as possible (from all the published stuff i know that you have not explicitely excluded in your OP)

Atlas of Audhüm

I'm also tinkering with a Bronze Age humanocentric S&S setting.
 
As you are settling on some sort of Fae for the Outsiders, then I also think a vaguely Celtic style setting would be best. A very small group of professional warriors (mounted on chariots) and backed by a militia of free clients, serve a king. Many such kingdoms are small and alliances of several petty kings band together around a 'big king' for large conflicts – but these are rare, and most conflict is small scale raiding by the professionals. Women have more rights and power than in many societies and this includes the right to bear arms as a warrior.

Of course, in the real world these sort of societies didn't have cities, which is why I'm looking to rip off Mesopotamia, and using the empire of Sargon of Akkad for inspiration for the political background, and use the Nephilim for intelligent magical foes.

But if you stick a 'Camelot' and an anti-Camelot or two into a Celtic setting, then you can have a sort of 'Irish Arthurian' setting. Many of the traditional themes of Celtic myth are still embedded in the Malory-era Arthurian legends: cuckolded older leaders with adulterous younger wives, trips to the underworld/fae lands/mystic places, even magic weapons – all appear in early Celtic myth.

In Irish legends the chariot driver often comments ironically on the hero warrior's actions, and acts as a conversational foil to the hero. If your group is into that kind of thing, a player could have a warrior PC, but could also play the charioteer of another player's warrior.

Of course the setting wouldn't be Ireland, but could take inspiration from all Celtic societies from Ireland to Continental Europe. I've sometimes thought about running a 'London-before-London' Bronze Age game, with the heroes living in reed houses in the wetlands of the Thames, which is dominated by King Lud's fortress on his hill above the river. Descended from Trojan refugees, King Lud's boys were...  

And The Traveller's suggestion of looking at Sláine is a very good one. Reptilemen will fit just great into a Sláine-style setting

Except for the Magic part, you just described Glorantha.

Funny how attractive this is.

My secondary, d20 seting is a bronze age version.
And with only human types, though I do have different human racial strains.

I like your idea of the outsiders, and pacts for magic.  Very S&S.

Quote from: The Traveller;597342Very nice. I'd use shades of Sláine in there too if you're leery of Conan. While Sláine does routinely beat Ukko his dwarf, an argument could be made that he richly deserves it. Generally speaking that's a good series of comics if you want to go stone age/bronze age, or take a look at the Mythological cycle as interpreted by Jim Fitzpatrick, a unique style.

I've never really paid much attention to Slaine before now, but I'll take a look.

Quote from: Anglachel;597351Sounds very cool, Kiero. Especially as i am thinking about running almost the same thing atm
I hope you keep posting your setting development here.

So maybe this isn't such a dry vein of influences after all? Hope it's going well with yours.

Quote from: Anglachel;597351As an aside - Have you looked at this product? I think it comes as close to what you are looking for as possible (from all the published stuff i know that you have not explicitely excluded in your OP)

Atlas of Audhüm

From the preview, the author has some strange ideas about the transition from Bronze to Iron Age (civilisation as we'd call it is a Bronze Age, not Iron Age invention...), but it's an interesting one nontheless.

Quote from: Gruntfuttock;597360I'm also tinkering with a Bronze Age humanocentric S&S setting.
 
As you are settling on some sort of Fae for the Outsiders, then I also think a vaguely Celtic style setting would be best. A very small group of professional warriors (mounted on chariots) and backed by a militia of free clients, serve a king. Many such kingdoms are small and alliances of several petty kings band together around a 'big king' for large conflicts – but these are rare, and most conflict is small scale raiding by the professionals. Women have more rights and power than in many societies and this includes the right to bear arms as a warrior.

Of course, in the real world these sort of societies didn't have cities, which is why I'm looking to rip off Mesopotamia, and using the empire of Sargon of Akkad for inspiration for the political background, and use the Nephilim for intelligent magical foes.

But if you stick a 'Camelot' and an anti-Camelot or two into a Celtic setting, then you can have a sort of 'Irish Arthurian' setting. Many of the traditional themes of Celtic myth are still embedded in the Malory-era Arthurian legends: cuckolded older leaders with adulterous younger wives, trips to the underworld/fae lands/mystic places, even magic weapons – all appear in early Celtic myth.

In Irish legends the chariot driver often comments ironically on the hero warrior's actions, and acts as a conversational foil to the hero. If your group is into that kind of thing, a player could have a warrior PC, but could also play the charioteer of another player's warrior.

Of course the setting wouldn't be Ireland, but could take inspiration from all Celtic societies from Ireland to Continental Europe. I've sometimes thought about running a 'London-before-London' Bronze Age game, with the heroes living in reed houses in the wetlands of the Thames, which is dominated by King Lud's fortress on his hill above the river. Descended from Trojan refugees, King Lud's boys were...  

And The Traveller's suggestion of looking at Sláine is a very good one. Reptilemen will fit just great into a Sláine-style setting

I'm leery of going too Western with influences, something more like the Mediterranean/Near East is where I'm drawing most heavily from. Helps to counter the charges of potential bigotry, and besides which I wouldn't invent my own world only to have exactly the same assumption that everyone is Caucasian that many published settings seem to settle on.

Got no problem with having some Irish-style barbarians in the spaces between places (after all in classical times Celts more generally were a successful and well-developed people), but not as the assumed central/dominant culture.

Quote from: silva;597361Except for the Magic part, you just described Glorantha.

Well, the magic is hardly a trivial thing in Glorantha. And besides, no duck-people here.

Quote from: LordVreeg;597362Funny how attractive this is.

My secondary, d20 seting is a bronze age version.
And with only human types, though I do have different human racial strains.

I like your idea of the outsiders, and pacts for magic.  Very S&S.

Yeah, I really wanted to get away from the assumptions of easily available magic for PCs. Indeed the assumption is no magic at all for PCs, since I doubt anyone is really going to want to play a sorceror.

QuoteWell, the magic is hardly a trivial thing in Glorantha. And besides, no duck-people here.

Well, one actually could call it trivial in the sense that its everywhere and everyone makes use of it (as much as anyone in pre-modern times made use of charms and spells for everyday concerns like luck, fertility, peace, sucess at work, etc. making it trivial for day-to-day life). About the duck-people, you will have amphibian and avian peoples too, no? Thats no different really. The point is that all non-human races are utterly alien to humanity (instead of humans with different morphology, as is the case with D&D settings).

By the way, nice descriptions there Kiero. I would play it in a instant.

Quote from: Kiero;597378I'm leery of going too Western with influences, something more like the Mediterranean/Near East is where I'm drawing most heavily from. Helps to counter the charges of potential bigotry, and besides which I wouldn't invent my own world only to have exactly the same assumption that everyone is Caucasian that many published settings seem to settle on.

There's a surprising amount of multicultural influence to some of the earlier cycles in Irish myth and legend, for example the story of the Tuatha De Dannan was that they fled the country or were driven out, wandered the Middle East and much of Asia for a few generations learning sorcery and the arts of war, before returning to find their sacred homeland occupied by the Fir Bolg. By some translations their name means "people of the water" or "sea people".

In my wanderings I once happened to play some traditional Irish back country hey-fiddle-diddle for a group of gentleman which left them weeping into their drinks with nostalgia for their homeland; which, as it turned out, was somewhere to the west of the Nile Valley.

Anyway the long and the short of it is that when you go back that far the cultures can be almost completely alien to modern western sensibilities, so accusations of being close minded are meaningless. Yes, Irish myth has a dude with a cyborg arm hurling a meteorite through some guy who shoots lasers from his eye, and the holy grail was in fact the cauldron of life.

Although I'm not sure exactly who would be accusing you of bigotry, or why...

Quote from: LordVreeg;597362Funny how attractive this is.

I think the problem with Bronze Age fantasy is similar to the problem that science fiction has as a genre in role-playing games, which is that there is no singular vision of belongs or doesn't belong in such a setting and everyone seems to have a different idea of what it means and what should or shouldn't be included.  On the most basic level, the Bronze Age will look very different if you focus on Northern Europe, Egypt, the Mycenaeans, the Hittites, the Minoans, Akkadian Mesopotamia, or Shang China.  It will look very different if you focus on the mythological or realistic.  It will look very different of you focus on the earliest parts of the Bronze Age or the Late Bronze Age.  

In some ways, I think the Mazes and Minotaurs game has the right idea, which is to draw on Hollywood influences as source material, which helps provide the Cliché aspect of S. John Ross' Five Elements of a Commercially Viable RPG Setting.  Hollywood has a serious issue portraying the Bronze Age without throwing in iron and elements from the Classical and Medieval periods because they want to show things like sword-fighting, but the players might want that, too.

If the goal is simply to avoid overused Medieval clichés for something a little different but also familiar, one could get workable results drawing inspiration from Hollywood's Sword and Sorcery and Sword and Sandal "ancient world" mashups seen in shows like Hercules and Xena and movies like the Conan movies, The Scorpion King, Kull the Conqueror, Jason and the Argonauts, the Brad Pitt Trojan War movie, and so on, which would still let players have ubiquitous sword-fighting, horses with stirrups, and pants instead of trying for anything too authentically Bronze Age.  ADDED: In other words, don't worry about having people using iron, steel, and other anachronistic things in your "Bronze Age" setting.

I posted a lot of thoughts, sources, and images for my take on the (Minoan and Mycenaean focused) Bronze Age in this thread a while back, which you also participated in, so I wanted to add a pointer to that here.

The Traveller - Wow, that art is really nice. I never heard the artists name. Thanks for showing it to us.

Kiero - Another setting that i totally forgot about is Early Dark. It's relatively new (Kickstarter in 2010, i think) and by a small company, so I think the chances that you have had it on your radar are slim. It has magic in it but the world is very pre medieval and mythic. Also, the only playable races are humans. IIRC, the authors (or at least one of them) have degrees in anthropology. Here's a link, if you are interested:
Early Dark

I was also working on a Bronze Age OD&D setting a couple years ago. I focused on Sumeria, Babylonian and Assyrian influences and avoided anything European or Greek especially since I already play Mazes & Minotaurs.

The campaign focused on the ascension of the first human God-King and his creation of a paradise in the afterlife. The "old faiths" were all animal worship and a demon infested wilderness where humans encountered could be more dangerous than any wild beast.

Quote from: John Morrow;597420I think the problem with Bronze Age fantasy is similar to the problem that science fiction has as a genre in role-playing games, which is that there is no singular vision of belongs or doesn't belong in such a setting and everyone seems to have a different idea of what it means and what should or shouldn't be included.  On the most basic level, the Bronze Age will look very different if you focus on Northern Europe, Egypt, the Mycenaeans, the Hittites, the Minoans, Akkadian Mesopotamia, or Shang China.  It will look very different if you focus on the mythological or realistic.  It will look very different of you focus on the earliest parts of the Bronze Age or the Late Bronze Age.  

In some ways, I think the Mazes and Minotaurs game has the right idea, which is to draw on Hollywood influences as source material, which helps provide the Cliché aspect of S. John Ross' Five Elements of a Commercially Viable RPG Setting.  Hollywood has a serious issue portraying the Bronze Age without throwing in iron and elements from the Classical and Medieval periods because they want to show things like sword-fighting, but the players might want that, too.

If the goal is simply to avoid overused Medieval clichés for something a little different but also familiar, one could get workable results drawing inspiration from Hollywood's Sword and Sorcery and Sword and Sandal "ancient world" mashups seen in shows like Hercules and Xena and movies like the Conan movies, The Scorpion King, Kull the Conqueror, Jason and the Argonauts, the Brad Pitt Trojan War movie, and so on, which would still let players have ubiquitous sword-fighting, horses with stirrups, and pants instead of trying for anything too authentically Bronze Age.  ADDED: In other words, don't worry about having people using iron, steel, and other anachronistic things in your "Bronze Age" setting.

I posted a lot of thoughts, sources, and images for my take on the (Minoan and Mycenaean focused) Bronze Age in this thread a while back, which you also participated in, so I wanted to add a pointer to that here.

Much of my interest comes from a certain academic background, though I am sure there is a certain level of pop culture, etc, sitting in my head.  
Though I do have bronze and breakage/dulling rules (as well as rare steel items, becasue I could not resist).  Similarly, the terror of the night and strange cults are a focus, as well as the effects of fate.

Quote from: Kiero;597378So maybe this isn't such a dry vein of influences after all?

No, it really isn't - I've seen 10 or 15 people talk about their bronze age campaigns/settings since I started my own several years ago and started paying attention to such things. I'm not sure why this never translated into a published setting by someone - Age of Treason seems to come closest.

Quote from: Thalaba;597445No, it really isn't - I've seen 10 or 15 people talk about their bronze age campaigns/settings since I started my own several years ago and started paying attention to such things. I'm not sure why this never translated into a published setting by someone - Age of Treason seems to come closest.

yes, I really enjoyed your earlier notes.