RPGaDay2025 - 5 Ancient

#RPGaDay2025 - 5 Ancient

In the real world, we consider “ancient times” to be the era before the dark ages, so probably 2000 years ago  to the Romans, 2500-3000 years to the Ancient Greeks, 3000-5000 to the Egyptians…and that’s not even including the Sumerians and other cultures of the earliest historical eras. But when we look at most settings in TTRPGs, “ancient” means something quite different.

In Warhammer 40K, known history stretches back 40,000 years. Even the great war when the Imperium almost shattered was considered recent history when it occurred 10,000 years ago in the setting.

The recorded history of Middle Earth is said to be around 20,000 years, with the first age stretching back into a pre-historic era over 70,000 years in the past.

The recorded history of D&D’s Forgotten Realms is said to span 35,000 years, with human civilisations recording their rise and fall over the past 3000 years.

It’s similar with countless settings. It feels like the writers need everything to be more epic, so they magnify everything. The dangers are worse, the treasures are more magnificent, the times of peril were more dangerous, the old empires are even more ancient, the heroes of the past are even more dramatic.

The ancient is the bedrock for a setting, the old rests on it, and builds the context for the stories of the present. World.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Guide to Geomorphs (Part 1)

Image
After numerous requests to get back to map tutorials, it's time to start our new series. This time focusing on the concept of geomorphs, modular map fragments that can be mixed and matched. We'll start with a couple of theoretical tutorials before sinking into a few more practical posts. I'm predicting a dozen or so posts in this sequence, but let's see how long it lasts.
Read more

A Guide to Geomorphs (Part 7)

Image
A working computer and scanner...that means it is time to get back to work on the geomorph sequence. A lot of the discussion in this set of tutorials has been focused around square geomorphs. They're the easiest for most people to wrap their heads around.  But my preferred form of geomorph is based around the hexagon, these tend to produce more organic and interesting shapes. This is true for natural environments, but it's no less true for urban environments. The example set of geomorphs above as a simple two-phase system. One edge type is plain, the other edge type has a road piercing the centre. There could be dozens of combinations and permutations for each of the two phases around the hexagonal edges, but a quick look at the variety of buildings and road shapes shows that there could literally be hundreds of possible options when drawing these map fragments. But you certainly don't need to create hundreds of designs for the system to be effective. Usin...
Read more