Non-Middle Age "traditional" Fantasy settings

[Maccabe]

I saw a previous posting on this site and was curious if anyone has ever run a setting that wasn't a classic "middle ages" type game?  Maybe a fantasy world that involved a setting from a novel or series of some sort that was fantasy in nature but not set in our real world and not using real world middle age history?   (Chronicles of Narnia comes to mind.)

[Chris Goodwin]

I once ran a couple of sessions of a Fantasy Hero (1e) game set in Robert Asprin's Myth Adventures series. 

 

A couple of times I've done modern urban fantasy with magic publicly known. 

[DentArthurDent]

I played in a game set in Ancient Rome. The history and tech was about 3rd Century AD. There was some political back and forth with the Senate, and Celts and Egyptians, but the main foes were wizards, giants, trolls, etc. There was also an island in the Mediterranean full of orc pirates. We learned to hate the pirates. A white-hot, burning hate.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Fantasy Rome sounds like a great setting.  I'd love to do a very ancient Mesopotamian early bronze age low magic fantasy game.

[Steve]

I enjoyed running a campaign in the Legend of the Five Rings setting.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I did play a fantasy medieval Japan game for a while at the Game Alliance of Salem.

[unclevlad]

Haven't been in such a game, but Victorian England, or just generally the gaslight era around 1900, has an awesome atmosphere.  This is probably my ideal period for Vampire, actually, but it's definitely got strong occult/esoteric leanings.  Crowley was initiated into the Order of the Golden Dawn in 1898.  For those less familiar:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleister_Crowley

 

And hey, to push a book series I'm *greatly* enjoying:  Dan Willis' Arcane Casebook series.  The series is set in New York, loosely based on history...but magic exists in a couple forms.  It starts in the early 30's;  the Depression is very much in force.  The downside might be...there's 3 types of magical practictioners.  Runewrights (the MC is one) create runes that can produce a very wide variety of effects...but they're all temporary.  Alchemists can brew potions, but that's pure NPC stuff...it's very slow, very tedious, and requires serious attention.  Last, there's the sorcerers...quite powerful, but they're *few and far between.*  And they're massively influential, because their power often has enormous reach.  One of the support characters is a sorcerer, one of the New York Six (yep...only 6 sorcs in the New York area, total)...and he operates a broadcast electrical system built with his powers, that serves a large chunk of the city.  Another built the mass transit system.  Yes, we're talking 15 point wealth perks, MAJOR public figures. 

 

But hey, it's still a good series, and might make for a reasonable campaign setting with only moderate tweaks.  The series is moving slowly forward in time...as the clock slowly ticks towards WW II.  Yes, the Germans are moving behind the scenes, and they're the long-term opposition, but there's plenty of other things going on.

 

Last...Marion Harmon's Wearing the Cape, and Drew Hayes' Villain's Code series, are general superhero series, with magic being one type.  The key here is the worlds have an EVENT that totally changes everything.  Before...normal, mundane, more or less use history intact.  Then the EVENT...and Pandora's Box is flung open.  In VC, it was in the 40s and a science experiment went haywire and produced completely new elements with *wild* properties...and powers.  People gain powers basically accidentally.  What they get, how strong they are, any nasty consequences...not under anyone's control, by and large.  Power scales from neighborhood to OMFG, but this can be capped of course.  Late 40's to early 50's would still be pretty interesting period, IMO.  WtC, the EVENT (and yes, all caps is used) was a 3.141596..... second universal blackout.  With, as you can imagine, massive repercussions...a plane taking off or landing in those 3 seconds is potentially in Deep Trouble.  Or a surgeon's hand, about to make a cut....?  UGLY.  What started to happen tho...people experiencing extreme stress started to exhibit powers.  And that's largely been the case ever since...about 1 person in 1000, exposed to something urgent and compelling, or some exceptional factor, get changed.  Again...no necessary say on what you get.  One thing I love, as a gamer...the trigger event is the centerpiece for your character.  The powers you get tie to the event that's triggering you, and your mindset and response patterns...which is awesome for character building.  And this could be organized to be heavily magic, perhaps with some physically oriented types...the Shadowrun physical adept basically channels magic to enhance his body.

 

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

I think a Victorian era urban fantasy game could be loads of fun, easy to do with the Victorian Hero sourcebook.  I could see the fantasy setting very heavily pulling from Celtic and Gaelic mythology, lots of little people and witches and curses.

[LoneWolf]

I ran a magic based 1920 campaign.  The characters were a few more points than the typical Fantasy Hero campaign in points. It had gangsters and vampires along with a lot of other really strange things.  Lot of very strange things happened.  The most memorable was when one character summoned holy piranha to eat the aquatic ghouls. 

[Gauntlet]

That was a great game. You should think about running it again.

[Old Man]

Yeah that sounds pretty damn awesome.

[DentArthurDent]

I’ve been working on a short campaign set in 1923, off and on for while now. But somehow it never occurred to me to include holy piranha. 😆 What an awesome idea!

[LoneWolf]

The holy piranha was the player’s idea.  He had a variable summon so applied the holy template to a school of piranha. None of the character breathed water and the ghouls were guarding a location the characters had to get to.  There was also an explosion in a warehouse holding mostly fruit imports that led to the world’s largest fruit salad.  

[DShomshak]

None of my Fantasy campaigns were ever nearly that cool, or that divergent from bog-standard heroic Fantasy. Furthest I went was that in my alternet-history "Fantasy Europe" campaign, gunpowder was present and had been for centuries. In the second campaign, there was an arc about searching for sulfur to make enough gunpowder to blow up the neo-Aztecs' giant pyramid-carrying barge. It led to a sort of magically created pocket land within one of the volcanoes in the Lesser Antilles.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Christopher R Taylor]

The thing is, the reason most people like quasi medieval fantasy settings is that it feels the most familiar and we've read lots of books in that setting and want to imagine ourselves in it.  I like the idea of lots of alternate settings and variants, but in the end, that's always going to be the most popular, at least in the west.

[Gauntlet]

I have found that the two most liked FH versions are Quasi Medieval Fantasy and Tolkenish Fantasy. 

[Old Man]

49 minutes ago, Gauntlet said:

I have found that the two most liked FH versions are Quasi Medieval Fantasy and Tolkenish Fantasy. 

 

It's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem.  If you want to play medieval/Tolkienish fantasy there is a large existing fandom from which to draw players.  If you want to play fantasy set in the late 16th century Ottoman Empire then there kind of isn't, and the barrier to entry will be a little bit higher.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah that's part of it, but the main appeal of dragons and fairies and elves and wizards is that its part of our cultural heritage, we grew up with fairy tales set in this genre, we have movies and books and made up stories with all these elements.  If you throw in something really alien like the more unusual game settings, then you're starting from scratch with no built in familiarity and affection for the setting.  That can be great, but its harder to sell and harder to get into.

[Gauntlet]

47 minutes ago, Old Man said:

 

It's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem.  If you want to play medieval/Tolkienish fantasy there is a large existing fandom from which to draw players.  If you want to play fantasy set in the late 16th century Ottoman Empire then there kind of isn't, and the barrier to entry will be a little bit higher.

 

Then maybe someone should write a campaign book for a 16th Century Ottoman Empire Campaign setting. I am working on three other book (which my ADHD makes it take forever for me to complete) so there is no way I am taking on another book.

[Steve]

One of my dream campaigns would be to run a semi-historical mid to late Renaissance-era setting where the Fae are active and vary between benevolent and malevolent, having an active hand in politics rather than being hidden behind a masquerade. Perhaps in the city-states of Italy or maybe France during the time of the musketeers.

[Old Man]

1 hour ago, Steve said:

One of my dream campaigns would be to run a semi-historical mid to late Renaissance-era setting where the Fae are active and vary between benevolent and malevolent, having an active hand in politics rather than being hidden behind a masquerade. Perhaps in the city-states of Italy or maybe France during the time of the musketeers.

 

I feel like 7th Sea would get you 90% of the way there.

[Steve]

1 hour ago, Old Man said:

 

I feel like 7th Sea would get you 90% of the way there.

White Wolf’s Mage: The Sorcerers Crusade likely would get a pretty high percentage of the way there too since it’s set in the late 15th century.

[Gauntlet]

Have any of you played Ars Magica? It has to have the absolute best magic system of all role-playing games. Of course, in that game the Magi are overwhelmingly more powerful than every other character type.

[Steve]

9 hours ago, Gauntlet said:

Have any of you played Ars Magica? It has to have the absolute best magic system of all role-playing games. Of course, in that game the Magi are overwhelmingly more powerful than every other character type.

I own pretty much the entire catalog of books for the last couple of editions but have never been able to run it as a campaign.

[Doc Democracy]

On 8/20/2024 at 3:04 PM, Steve said:

I own pretty much the entire catalog of books for the last couple of editions but have never been able to run it as a campaign.

You are probably on the majority of Ars Magica owners!