Very Low Tech

[eiladayn]

Way, way back there I owned a campaign set of books based upon the "Thieves World" book series of fantasy edited by Robert Lynn Asprin and Lynn Abbey. It had a Traveller section for conversion or characters and technology etc. I'll look for it and it may help some. The series was set in a medieval tech level town named Sanctuary (called Thieves World by its rulers).

Pappy

 

[Flynn]

OT: I used to have that set. Inherited it from a friend's collection... then years later, lost it when my RPG collection was stolen from storage. Been rebuilding ever since...

Thanks for the memories,
Flynn

 

[kaladorn]

I also have a copy of Thieves World. If there is anything of particular interest there, I'll try to help out too. It was neat to see all the fantasy system representations of key people, and then see Traveller right up there. That was pretty cool. Interesting low tech place to visit... and hey, magic works! Can you say RED ZONE!?!

 

[CarlP]

As far as combining Traveller & D&D, I did something like that many years ago.

In the Traveller campaign I was running, my players took their scout ship and landed on a low-tech planet and looted a castle.

Several months later, I was running D&D, and realized that I had a very familiar situation. After a little tweaking, my players discovered that a mysterious flying craft had descended from the heavens and was looting the castle that they called home.

For an off-the-cuff adventure, it actually played out pretty well. And it gave them a feeling for what they had put the natives through the first time.

carl

 

[Jame]

Two things.

1: eiladayn, did you ever find that Robert Asprin thing?

2: The non-T20-rules that dealt with this didn't take scale mail into account, or much on how to deal with low-tech cultures. Probably 'cause the PCs were supposed to either make an obscene profit (often in more ways than size) or run away...

 

[Tucker]

I got the TW box set as well, decided to use the setting in IMTU as a THE PLACE to get krrf, a very popular narcotic among the Imperial elite along the Rim. Sanctuary had a D class downport, and some IISS personell to keep the traders on the Preserve and within TL restrictions.

The drug was legal to buy onworld, you just can't sell it legally anywhere. I think some enterprising Aslan had a bodyguard service there, it's been a long time since I even thought about the late 80's so bear with we.

I have used my Harnworld stuff for Traveller and found it great for a low-tech environ. A richer and more detailed setting out-of-the-box I couldn't name. Come to think, I put Sanctuary on Kethira, just to make life easier.

The other bit I should mention, one of the Challenge zines had a decent article on low-tech weapons and combat skills for MT; included some armor and shield types, a variety of melee arms, and some new skills for using them. It was part of a low-TL adventure in the same issue I think.

 

[TKalbfus]

I'm doing a setting that occurs shortly after the Terrans discover Jump Drive, I'm assuming they discover Jump Drive late, say at TL 12 and start with Jump-1, Jump-2, and Jump-3 all at once, there advanced fusion reactors allowed this to happen and when the pieces of the Jump drive fell into place, they discovered they had the capacity to build jump drives 1 thru 3 once they discovered the principles of how the Jump drive worked. Surrounding Terra is a bunch of low tech worlds populated bu humans and a Vilani outpost. The tech levels range from 0 to 4 with the Vilani at TL 12 the same as terrans, the main difference is that the Terrans were confined to Earth for TLs 8 through 11 while the Vilani weren't. The Vilani were also spread out over a large region of space and communitcation was slow, slowing advances in technology while Earthlings had the World Wide web and its scientists easily communicated their findings so that technologically the Vilani and Terrans are on equal terms, thet's the only way to have a war in any case, otherwise one side overwhelms the other. I'm developing the Planet Prometheus as a medeaval society at low TL 2, and the planet will even have fire breathing intelligent talking dragons, but no magic. Other than that the dragons are much like D&D dragons, except that they are grey, and have no particular propensity towards Good or Evil, instead they get hungry and like to cow the local human villages into feeding them, they like to collect shiny gold coins and jewels as well and they can live for thousands of years. I use the Traveller classes, Barbarian, Mercenary, Army, and Rogue at TL 2.

 

[Rodina]

Another low tech twist I saw was when a group of PCs tried to arm TL1 guys with TL5 weapons --- they trained them in their use, and that could be done -- but when the shooting started TL5-armed primitives lost their morale roll because of all the racket from assault rifles, whereas the TL1 hordes with bows and stuff made theirs, so the PCs -- even with a handful of laser carbines and such -- had to run like hell to get away from the natives.

 

[TKalbfus]

Which goes to show you not to substitute morale rolls for common sense. If you trained a primitive how to fire a gun, that primitive would have to fire the gun in practise and get used to the sound it makes, they should easily realize that this is a more effective weapon than a bow. Native Americans were TL0 when first encountered, but they readily picked up a rifle and learned how to use it without problems, it didn't mean that they could make a rifle, but to shoot one, sure. Technology such as firearms is deliberately designed to be easy to use. A primitive should have little problem learning how to fire a laser rifle, how ever it would be considerable more difficult to train a TL 15 person to use a bow, or hurl a spear effectively.

 

[Straybow]

Unless the racket from all the rifles impaired their hearing of orders, and opened the door to panic. Happened enough with 20th century humans.

 

[Tucker]

I get this mental image of The Last Samurai-- it's very possible, besides the racket, that the fact the other guys aren't peeing their pants at the sight of you is scary enough.

Straybow's right, morale rolls are an abstract way to make a fair decision of a troops reaction, not a good way, just a way. People mad enough to kill you are scary, even if you're better armed and your intention is to kill them as well. I don't use them, but some folks like'em, but I can see why the random element can be entertaining or useful.

 

[Falkayn]

An interesting set of novels on this sort of issue is Eric Flint's 1632 and 1633 (available for free from the Baen Free Library.

He has a 6 mile diameter chunk of modern America (West Virginia to be precise) end up in their own past in the middle of Germany in the year 1632 - slap bang in the middle of the Thirty Years War.

He has them following some interesting ideas, including 'gearing down' so that they have a sustainable TL, still above what the locals have, but below the modern TL that they just cannot maintain themselves (little problems like lightbulbs not being able to be manufactured). Then he mixes in the Thirty Years War's nasty religious politics and you get a very interesting background!

 

[robject]

I've thought a low-TL campaign could be a real swashbuckler. Steal the polities from the Bronze Age Mediterranean and you've got lots of fun to play with:

1. A desert culture, thriving along the banks of a major river, with a solidified power base and a reasonably charistmatic oligarchy. Their recorded history goes back millenia.

2. A maritime culture, centered on a few large islands, which dominates all sea trade. Their recordings are used for balancing their books.

3. A few coastal, nearly illiterate cultures made up of occasionally antagonistic city-states. Half barbarian, half civilized, their merchant class rubs shoulders with the maritime culture in hopes of learning from them...

4. A polychrome agrarian culture made up of very loose confederations of villages with a common ancestry. Usually owned by one empire or another.

5. A couple of competing cultures with relatively high-tech weapons and organization, but not an overpowering urge to expand, usually.


You've got all the plots from pulp movies and TV shows to pull from: Xena, The Scorpion King, Harry Hausen films, The Ten Commandments, Spartacus, Ben Hur... an able party of hardy adventurers can start all sorts of mayhem in this setting.

The campaign can be ancient. The players can be people from this archaic world -- probably they will be heroic characters.

The campaign can be OTU -- the players can be survivors from a crash, on a world that is too out of the way to be contacted or colonized. A world just inside the Rift, for example. Or an interdicted world. Or the Rule of Man is collapsing and there's noone to help for a thousand years. In this case, the players may have advantages natives don't -- flex armor, for instance, and a cutlass like a Ginsu blade. That, and knowledge that low-TL cultures don't have. And broad-spectrum immunizations.

 

[Jame]

Oooo, I like it! I may just have to "borrow" it...

Actually, I've been looking for some reference material for the real Bronze Age, like pre-Rome and preferably pre-Greece to. Does anyone have any suggestions?

 

[robject]

Executive Summary:

An Atlas of the Ancient World would be best.


Long, Rambling Version:

Head to the library and look for those few books about the Minoans. And be careful to sift out the dreck.

And of course, there is just the opposite problem with the Egyptians: too much real data. Gotta sift in reverse there.

Books about the Mycenaean civilization probably has a wealth of info, too. They were the Greeks who assumed control of the Minoan trade system around 1400BC -- sort of the Rule of Man effect where an efficient bureaucracy was replaced in time to usher in a Long Night.

Books about the Philistines, Assyrians, Persians, and Canaanites might be helpful, too.


Although, probably you wouldn't need a book on each. Surely there's an "Atlas of the Ancient World" that gives useful and plagiarizable blurbs about all we know of the Bronze age Mediterranean.


Opportunities for Roleplay:

Every concept we use in Traveller applies to the low-tech, regional setting. Each concept below is actually two: one for land, and one for sea.

(1) Merchants. Imagine the patrons a ship might find, good, bad, and strange.

(2) Piracy. Even more so, since it's proven to have worked well back then. Think Pancho Villa. Or Sir Francis Drake.

(3) Army/Navy. Conquer by training, equipping, and marching thousands of troops against enemies.

(4) Mercenary. Plenty of opportunity, plenty of backstabbing too. A small group could make a big impact. Don't forget "The Magnificent Seven."

(5) Pocket Empires. See #3.

(6) The Rebellion. Be there when a big, strong empire blows into little bits.

(7) The Darrians. Greek fire, Chinese gunpowder, the stirrup, the phalanx, the windmill.

(8) Dragons to slay. 'Nuff said.

(9) The Ancients. Chances are that all of the civilizations there are built on the ruins of previous ones... shades of "Gamma World" there...

(10) Raiders of the Lost Ark. Even extinct low-tech cultures have cultural relics worth an empire. And low tech doesn't mean 'harmless'.

(11) Divine Right. The Bronze Age had fortifications, kings, class systems; maybe not quite feudal, but an approximation wouldn't be out of the question, and it might be familiar to people. Stop into the tavern, have some ale, attend a jousting match (assuming there are stirrups...)

 

[robject]

Ah, I forgot my favorite low-tech setting: a world named 567-908.

Also known as Shvreeyiyi (or something like that), it's home to a low-tech race of critters who had two large empires in the past, and are just coming out of a cultural recession. And the players have made the first contact with them since the pre-Maghiz Darrians.

Their civilizations never reached TL 3, and maybe not even TL 2. Their first empire, called "The Sun Worshipper Empire", centralized agriculture, worked distant mines for bronze, and lived on extensive grassland plains along the northern shore of a vast, shallow sea. Running their history, from large groups of warring nomads to the famine and final collapse of the empire, could be a memorable epic. Players could play key heroic figures through each phase of civilization, or could play it as a strategy game where they build up competing city-states and eventually manage the entire shebang, seeing how long they can avoid disaster. Perhaps Mesopotamian.

The second empire, which came much later, could be played in the same way, though with more of an Iliadic twist to it: survivors from the first empire struggled on for generations before planting the seeds of the new, improved empire across the waters. This one would be more rugged, with a more challenging existence, for it lived in more mountainous regions and had to carve a niche between the mountains and swamps for survival. This empire also progressed farther along the tech tree, and had superior watercraft, giving a completely different feel to the game -- more like Greece than Mesopotamia.

But wait, there's more! The Retreat offers yet another opportunity for adventure. After the second empire fell, the last vestige of civilization is the Retreat, a self-contained community in the mountains, the last vestiges of a faded culture. This plays more like a Dark Ages setting, where resources are spent on preventing barbarian hordes from destroying the last city. More than ever, heroic quests can restore the morale of an embattled community. There are enemy leaders to overthrow by cunning or open warfare, potential allies beyond the walls, and tokens from the former empire -- out there, somewhere -- to help restore faith and unity of purpose.

Ah, and finally, there's the Contact setting, which you can lift right out of Adventure 10, Safari Ship. A group of hapless adventurers agree to crew a safari ship for a wealthy businessman, and end up discovering the an unknown alien race. If they play their cards right, the players could end up becoming viceroys for the entire system, set up their own little starport, complete with a few token defenses... and end up changing the entire political demographics of District 268 in the process.

 

[clementk]

Assuming you mean pre-Greek Classical Age (Mycenaean being okay) here are some good and fairly easy to find sources. * indicates very useful books.

*Ancient Iraq by Georges Roux - recommended overview of the early cultures in the area
Biblical Dictionaries and similar sources
D.B.A. & D.B.M. rulesets with Army Books I & II along with the corresponding old WRG "Armies of" books. Yes dated, inaccurate, and just plain wrong in spots but great overviews and servicable drawings that many miniatures makers use for their figures.
Gurps Celtic Myth - one of the better Gurps books for source material
*Gurps Egypt - lots of info in one book; Egypt is a difficult subject to handle due to the vastness of material out there; this book boils a good chunk of it down to one book designed for gaming
*Gurps Low-Tech - covers Gurps Tech Levels 0-3 (Stone Age to 1450) in great detail
The Illiad by Homer and books on the Illiad - needs no introduction however do take a grain of salt to it
*In Search of the Trojan War both book and tv show - great intro book and series
The Kingdom of the Hittites by Trevor Bryce - details one of the more important but more obscure powers of the time
various Osprey books across their series lines including: Qadesh, New Kingdom Egypt, Scythians, Assyrians - good general books with excellent color plates
Runequest Second or Third Edition (and Heroquest if you can stomach it) - Bronze Age roleplay at its finest; Heroquest uses the same original world setting with totally different rules by the same author; both capture the Bronze Age mindset very well; Runequest is now OOP however 3rd edition was published by Avalon Hill and shouldn't be hard to find
Warfare in the Classical World by John Warry - first chapter especially; well written and the artwork is very helpful
Warhammer Ancient Battles and the Chariot Wars period supplement for it; good notes on the period and lots of excellent drawings and pictures of minitatures. Also the Chariot Wars book summarizes and uses a new dating scheme that is only availble otherwise in a very expensive book.

If you include post-"Dark Age" Greece it breaks down into two main period Classical Greek and Hellenism (Alexander the Great until Cleopatra's death). Oodles of source for both periods though the focus has always been on Classical Greece. There are DBM, Osprey, and WAB books that cover those periods as well for example. In particular I would recommend the Osprey books on the Persian Empire, The Western Way of War by Victor Davis Hanson, and *In the Footsteps of Alexander The Great by Michael Wood (book and tv series).

The above list is very Occidental-centric with a bent towards military and political matters. I would suggest at least skimming some general history texts of India, Asia and the Americas for more ideas and a broader range.

HTH,
Casey (LH(F) 0w|\|z j00)

 

[Jame]

Originally posted by Casey:
Assuming you mean pre-Greek Classical Age (Mycenaean being okay) here are some good and fairly easy to find sources. * indicates very useful books.

That's exactly what I mean. Thanks, it helps!

If you include post-"Dark Age" Greece it breaks down into two main period Classical Greek and Hellenism (Alexander the Great until Cleopatra's death). Oodles of source for both periods though the focus has always been on Classical Greece. There are DBM, Osprey, and WAB books that cover those periods as well for example. In particular I would recommend the Osprey books on the Persian Empire, The Western Way of War by Victor Davis Hanson, and *In the Footsteps of Alexander The Great by Michael Wood (book and tv series).

The above list is very Occidental-centric with a bent towards military and political matters. I would suggest at least skimming some general history texts of India, Asia and the Americas for more ideas and a broader range.

HTH,
Casey

This latter portion should help as well, though I was thinking more along the lines of southern and eastern Mediterranean stuff. What are WAB and DBM, aside from publishers?

 

[clementk]

Originally posted by Jame:
This latter portion should help as well, though I was thinking more along the lines of southern and eastern Mediterranean stuff. What are WAB and DBM, aside from publishers?

DBM is the De Bellis Multitudinis wargame rules put out by WRG (Wargames Research Group) in the UK. DBA is a smaller tournament in an afternoon set of rules requiring far fewer miniatures. There is a free online version of DBA fwiw. WAB is Warhammer Ancient Battles . Another ruleset (tho based on Warhammer Fantasy Battles 5th edition). Pricy but worth at least a look instore. The Perry Brothers know their history and are excellent illustrators, sculptors, and painters.

Note these are comments on the books as reference material not as games. That's a whole different matter. Both games are mentioned in my previous post.

As for Asia (including India) one source is the book used in a History of Asia class I took, A History of Asia by Rhoads Murphey. For a single volume book it did a good job covering a wide range of topics and cultures. However I learned more from the professor's lectures in that class. As always YMMV.

I would be remiss if I did not point out the excellent Zozer Games which has several free Ancient period games/documents and on the main page articles on bronze casting and slings. (and a Traveller Task system article to boot)

[EDIT] * Herodotus' The Histories (or the History of Herodotus) which should be available in any library or online (Part 1, Part 2 ). While nominally about the Greek-Persian Wars Herodotus writes a lot about what went on before and covers all the known (to the Greeks) world. Written as a multi-faceted "story" instead of a linear politcal or military narrative.

Here's one version of the Iliad online.

Casey

 

[Jame]

Thanks, Casey!

I actually have a Penguin-published copy of Herodotus's Histories, but just couldn't get into it.