I'm busy getting ready to run a historical game in Heian japan that I am going to pretend is actually a fantasy setting and see how long I can get away with it.
There are lots of diaries from the period, it seems that it became fashionable particularly among court women to keep a literary diary that was written to be shared and admired for its prose and poetry, so there is a lot of well written first hand accounts of court life, a lot of it by very sad and clever women.
Just started Sei Shonagon's. There's this story about the palace cat: everyone liked it so much the emperor gave it an official title and a special noble's head dress, and then he had a dog beaten and banished for attacking it.
They will start calling you out your magical realm when you start refering to the Genji Monogatari, that's for sure.
Also they aren't going to like the Adventurer's Guild handing out missions in every provincial armoury and they'll probably go "Are we the baddies??" when they realize that delivering anything more than the head gets them point deductions for producing an unnecessary additional bother.
I was being facetious about trying not to get discovered but honestly I think I could pull it off. Just tell them we are playing in a fantasy setting. Look at this shit. These are approved colour combinations for layers of clothing for different times of year and occasions. If even one of your layers was a slightly wrong shade everyone noticed, it was a scandal. Only certain ranks of nobility were allowed to wear certain types of embroidered patterns. Nobles sat around composing poetry at each other all day, sometimes a page had to run back and forth between a man and a woman he was seducing four or five times a day with poems and their response poems. People are always obsessing about divination and portents and won't travel in certain directions on certain days. A woman of good breeding only talks to you through a few layers of screens and curtains. You do a special dance at the emperor after he is done addressing you in an official capacity, the kind of dance depends on the occasion. Noblemen have multiple wives who pretty much never meet each other. The emperor's wives have entirely separate mini courts of their own that are competing for their husband's favour.
I think my friends would be too confused to worry about the morality of it all. Unless they have a problem with extreme wealth disparity. Thinking about running it straight but then adding monsters so they have something less confusing to do.
>Thinking about running it straight but then adding monsters so they have something less confusing to do.
Cosmology of Kyoto would be worth a look then, I think. Would be more fun if you'd add kegare and make the warrior caste's assumed immunity against divine taint real.
>Thinking about running it straight but then adding monsters so they have something less confusing to do.
I dunno man, "People don't want to talk to you because you attacked an apparition and are currently supernaturally tainted as a result. Also attacking it did nothing because the appartion has not actually been appeased through a fetch quest or a proper rite." would probably be pretty confusing.
Just have them do headhunting of people who didn't react to letters of court summons or something. It's the Heian period, the privatization of the constabulary/military police was a fact at that point.
Add man-eating tigers at your leisure, because it's fantasy anyway and liberally quote the Water Margins because there's not much difference between the Mountain Kings and the Samurai clans who had fortified mountain tops, aside from the seemingly further reach of central power. Heck, the folks of the Kanto-plains probably haven't been properly japoinified yet, never mind the actual border regions.
>never mind the actual border regions.
I bet if you make everyone in the capital talk about the Emishi right, players would just assume they are goblins or something.
>You do a special dance at the emperor after he is done addressing you in an official capacity, the kind of dance depends on the occasion.
The bard players will go very far while the warrior can rest at ease that they will not be called upon to do anything unless there's a fight.
>Today, I watched the gentlemen being given their appointments. There was a man there, most uncouth. GRUGimitsu, my lady in waiting told me. >When the time came for his appointment he received a position as a Middle Captain of the Imperial Guard. How clumsily he performed the ceremonial movements! Stumbling and gesturing, waving his baton like a club. How shameful! >My ladies told me he was raised in Tosa Province, but even that is not excuse. Those raised in the stables prove themselves to be more graceful and elegant gentlemen when their time comes at the festival. >Surely, the men envied the ladies who could at least hide our faces behind fans for embarrassment. I felt nothing but admiration for the Emperor, forced to stand there and recieve such a display gracefully. This man must have come on the highest of recommendations of his merit for such a fellow as this to receive an honourable posting. How shameful it all was!
Friendly reminder Minamoto Yoshinaka kicked the shit out of the Taira, liberated Kyoto and then went on to:
-show up in Kyoto with a bunch of badass warrior chicks
-Getting hammered drinking out of the ceremonial drinking vessels in the Imperial shrine
-Demanded an audience with the Emperor in his undergarments
-Fell out of his oxen carriage
-On one occasion spend half an hour laughing at some official because the guy's name had "neko" in it
-got killed by an arrow, inspiring his retainer to commit suicide by putting his sword tip between his teeth and jumping off his horse mid-gallop
Absolute fricking legend
2 years ago
Anonymous
>On one occasion spend half an hour laughing at some official because the guy's name had "neko" in it
that it is like some one first name being cat in English though
2 years ago
Anonymous
2 years ago
Anonymous
It was part of the guys last name IIRC, something along the lines of "Nekoma"
They will start calling you out your magical realm when you start refering to the Genji Monogatari, that's for sure.
Also they aren't going to like the Adventurer's Guild handing out missions in every provincial armoury and they'll probably go "Are we the baddies??" when they realize that delivering anything more than the head gets them point deductions for producing an unnecessary additional bother.
Late Antiquity, especially the, well, later two centuries of the period, are really interesting, even more so if you manage to look further than just "Rome".
You have an empire collapsing in on itself, barbaric tribes from the north, before little more than raiders at the borders, settling down and forming proper kingdoms, like the Franks, Vandals, and Ostrogoths, often right on top of the remains of the withered former superpower, while some still cling to their barbarous ways, migrating and raiding, and a massive incursion by horseriding nomads (whether I mean the Huns or the Rashidun Caliphate I leave up to you).
Hell, if you want longship-sailing raiders and conquerors from the north, you don't even have to wait for the Vikings, since the Saxons alreadydid that shit it long before the Norse.
Not late antiquity, but currently running a bronze age Mediterranean campaign. It may actually go into Classical and then late antiquity and into the middle ages. Generations of the same families of characters and seeing their rise and fall as families and changing of the world.
I love Parthia and the Roman-Parthian region that was ruled by a Roman appointed by and agreed upon by both sides.
Tell me more
I'm running a game about getting railed by muscular nuns, anon.
All antiquity is much more interesting if you look further than Rome. There are tons of 'barbarian' cultures that are overlooked by the average romaboo that were actually immensely interesting and ripe for inspiration.
The Celts/Gauls for example are a goldmine for inspiration, politically, technologically, and socially. Same with Germanic peoples, widely considered mud-eating morons by romaboos. Parthians are absolutely kino as well.
Personally, I really like the period just before the punic wars. You get to play around in the cold war scenario between the two powers in the western mediterranean, even more tribes, which usually are in a quite good socio-economical state at this point, all of the diadochi sucessor empires still intact all the way to india, the maurya revolution and you get to see the effects of the crumbling of the han dynasty over in china
There are series for kids, such as Alix and Jugurtha. There also was a pretty decent webcomic about the all grown-up illegitimate son of some Emperor dealing with issues of his adoptive family.
What a fricking brainlet meme image. Most of the takes are completely contradictory, and the politics of whoever made it are all over the fricking place, not to mention how moronicly anachronistic it is to try and apply labels like "right" and "left" to antiquity.
It's a sad period, in which the Romans gave up on achieving military victory and ignored that achieving cultural victory would saddle everybody bordering their realm with a -20 to research.
Because late antiquity is for nerds what World War II is for Bud Light dads.
If I'm gonna take inspiration from old shit it's gonna be when men were gay as frick.
History is a funny thing. There was always crazy shit going on, non-stop 24/7 all the time for all of human history, but we as individuals so often find a time and place that speaks to us.
>background is grey and browns
If you plan on running that kind of setting it'll go much better for your players if you use pictures with equal amounts of color distribution in the locales.
Late antiquity being crisis of the third century? Closest thing i've got at the moment is a campaign set in the Theros setting in DnD. I'm currently DMing and I always make sure the players are informed of current events by an Orator who's based off of the News Person from Rome.
>All mockery of Setessans and their matriarchy is to be kept to an appropriate MINIMUM.
I'm running a game about psychics and black ops in the 1990s.
too busy taking inspiration from the end of the industrial age and ww1
I'm running a game about getting railed by muscular nuns, anon.
Tell me more
seconding
TPBP
Sauce?
About 451 AD anon.
No inspiration for a lady knight
Good, I hate female warriors. They're all pagans or they're, may St. Nicholas intercede for my forgiveness for uttering this word, Arianists.
who must i ask to intercede to the Holy Trinity for me when i confess that i wish to take a painted barbare for a wife?
There is no forgiveness for barbarian enablers. Barbarian assimilators on the other hand...
You don't want to try 'blood eagle' or 'ride Odin's horse', trust me.
I'm busy getting ready to run a historical game in Heian japan that I am going to pretend is actually a fantasy setting and see how long I can get away with it.
I remember you from the other thread. This sounds based. What are you reading to prep yourself? Any history books or period literature?
There are lots of diaries from the period, it seems that it became fashionable particularly among court women to keep a literary diary that was written to be shared and admired for its prose and poetry, so there is a lot of well written first hand accounts of court life, a lot of it by very sad and clever women.
Just started Sei Shonagon's. There's this story about the palace cat: everyone liked it so much the emperor gave it an official title and a special noble's head dress, and then he had a dog beaten and banished for attacking it.
I was being facetious about trying not to get discovered but honestly I think I could pull it off. Just tell them we are playing in a fantasy setting. Look at this shit. These are approved colour combinations for layers of clothing for different times of year and occasions. If even one of your layers was a slightly wrong shade everyone noticed, it was a scandal. Only certain ranks of nobility were allowed to wear certain types of embroidered patterns. Nobles sat around composing poetry at each other all day, sometimes a page had to run back and forth between a man and a woman he was seducing four or five times a day with poems and their response poems. People are always obsessing about divination and portents and won't travel in certain directions on certain days. A woman of good breeding only talks to you through a few layers of screens and curtains. You do a special dance at the emperor after he is done addressing you in an official capacity, the kind of dance depends on the occasion. Noblemen have multiple wives who pretty much never meet each other. The emperor's wives have entirely separate mini courts of their own that are competing for their husband's favour.
I think my friends would be too confused to worry about the morality of it all. Unless they have a problem with extreme wealth disparity. Thinking about running it straight but then adding monsters so they have something less confusing to do.
>Thinking about running it straight but then adding monsters so they have something less confusing to do.
Cosmology of Kyoto would be worth a look then, I think. Would be more fun if you'd add kegare and make the warrior caste's assumed immunity against divine taint real.
>Standard male MC in Heian romance fiction
>Thinking about running it straight but then adding monsters so they have something less confusing to do.
I dunno man, "People don't want to talk to you because you attacked an apparition and are currently supernaturally tainted as a result. Also attacking it did nothing because the appartion has not actually been appeased through a fetch quest or a proper rite." would probably be pretty confusing.
Just have them do headhunting of people who didn't react to letters of court summons or something. It's the Heian period, the privatization of the constabulary/military police was a fact at that point.
Add man-eating tigers at your leisure, because it's fantasy anyway and liberally quote the Water Margins because there's not much difference between the Mountain Kings and the Samurai clans who had fortified mountain tops, aside from the seemingly further reach of central power. Heck, the folks of the Kanto-plains probably haven't been properly japoinified yet, never mind the actual border regions.
>never mind the actual border regions.
I bet if you make everyone in the capital talk about the Emishi right, players would just assume they are goblins or something.
Terrible goblins they can't get off their minds indeed.
>You do a special dance at the emperor after he is done addressing you in an official capacity, the kind of dance depends on the occasion.
The bard players will go very far while the warrior can rest at ease that they will not be called upon to do anything unless there's a fight.
>Today, I watched the gentlemen being given their appointments. There was a man there, most uncouth. GRUGimitsu, my lady in waiting told me.
>When the time came for his appointment he received a position as a Middle Captain of the Imperial Guard. How clumsily he performed the ceremonial movements! Stumbling and gesturing, waving his baton like a club. How shameful!
>My ladies told me he was raised in Tosa Province, but even that is not excuse. Those raised in the stables prove themselves to be more graceful and elegant gentlemen when their time comes at the festival.
>Surely, the men envied the ladies who could at least hide our faces behind fans for embarrassment. I felt nothing but admiration for the Emperor, forced to stand there and recieve such a display gracefully. This man must have come on the highest of recommendations of his merit for such a fellow as this to receive an honourable posting. How shameful it all was!
Sign me up.
>And up next is a quality warrior of the highest merit, only mildly moronic.
Friendly reminder Minamoto Yoshinaka kicked the shit out of the Taira, liberated Kyoto and then went on to:
-show up in Kyoto with a bunch of badass warrior chicks
-Getting hammered drinking out of the ceremonial drinking vessels in the Imperial shrine
-Demanded an audience with the Emperor in his undergarments
-Fell out of his oxen carriage
-On one occasion spend half an hour laughing at some official because the guy's name had "neko" in it
-got killed by an arrow, inspiring his retainer to commit suicide by putting his sword tip between his teeth and jumping off his horse mid-gallop
Absolute fricking legend
>On one occasion spend half an hour laughing at some official because the guy's name had "neko" in it
that it is like some one first name being cat in English though
It was part of the guys last name IIRC, something along the lines of "Nekoma"
They will start calling you out your magical realm when you start refering to the Genji Monogatari, that's for sure.
Also they aren't going to like the Adventurer's Guild handing out missions in every provincial armoury and they'll probably go "Are we the baddies??" when they realize that delivering anything more than the head gets them point deductions for producing an unnecessary additional bother.
Late Antiquity, especially the, well, later two centuries of the period, are really interesting, even more so if you manage to look further than just "Rome".
You have an empire collapsing in on itself, barbaric tribes from the north, before little more than raiders at the borders, settling down and forming proper kingdoms, like the Franks, Vandals, and Ostrogoths, often right on top of the remains of the withered former superpower, while some still cling to their barbarous ways, migrating and raiding, and a massive incursion by horseriding nomads (whether I mean the Huns or the Rashidun Caliphate I leave up to you).
Hell, if you want longship-sailing raiders and conquerors from the north, you don't even have to wait for the Vikings, since the Saxons alreadydid that shit it long before the Norse.
Not late antiquity, but currently running a bronze age Mediterranean campaign. It may actually go into Classical and then late antiquity and into the middle ages. Generations of the same families of characters and seeing their rise and fall as families and changing of the world.
I love Parthia and the Roman-Parthian region that was ruled by a Roman appointed by and agreed upon by both sides.
Thirding. Come on anon.
All antiquity is much more interesting if you look further than Rome. There are tons of 'barbarian' cultures that are overlooked by the average romaboo that were actually immensely interesting and ripe for inspiration.
The Celts/Gauls for example are a goldmine for inspiration, politically, technologically, and socially. Same with Germanic peoples, widely considered mud-eating morons by romaboos. Parthians are absolutely kino as well.
Personally, I really like the period just before the punic wars. You get to play around in the cold war scenario between the two powers in the western mediterranean, even more tribes, which usually are in a quite good socio-economical state at this point, all of the diadochi sucessor empires still intact all the way to india, the maurya revolution and you get to see the effects of the crumbling of the han dynasty over in china
That's a pretty bold assumption of you.
"Geneneral?"
Yes, for convenience's sake.
Interesting spelling.
The convenience is me not going back to correct it.
My sword and board characters are always invariably some spin on your average legio comitatensus or legio limitanei
Because I like to imagine things, especially things that are impossible or improbable, instead of studying history.
>I'm a brainlet
kool
Because if you aren't on time you miss out.
/co/bros what are some good comics about rome that arent coombait like eagles and caligula?
For the Empire is fun, but gets continuously tripier as it goes on. So it might not be for you if you're looking for historical content.
There is a manga about the second Punic war, whose name I can't recall atm.
its Ad Astra
and i already read that
A creature 10 times his weight and 35 times stronger? That’s the equivalent of hitting a lego house with a sledgehammer.
A dumb uncivilized hammer hitting an IMPERIAL lego house.
There are series for kids, such as Alix and Jugurtha. There also was a pretty decent webcomic about the all grown-up illegitimate son of some Emperor dealing with issues of his adoptive family.
Source?
search "Mitton bande dessinee". Dude made a career of drawing historicistic rape porn, more or less.
Good lord, this image just reeks of Classical History student facebook meme page.
What a fricking brainlet meme image. Most of the takes are completely contradictory, and the politics of whoever made it are all over the fricking place, not to mention how moronicly anachronistic it is to try and apply labels like "right" and "left" to antiquity.
Because it’s boring compared to the high medieval age.
I prefer Archaic and Classical Greek inspiration to late antiquity.
No you don’t
It's a sad period, in which the Romans gave up on achieving military victory and ignored that achieving cultural victory would saddle everybody bordering their realm with a -20 to research.
Early antiquity has more room for slavery and that's my fetish.
>That time when Rome pulled the Lincolnite trick and extended both suffrage and slavery to the whole population.
Heh
Men invented br*nze.
Nothing has felt right since.
Because late antiquity is for nerds what World War II is for Bud Light dads.
If I'm gonna take inspiration from old shit it's gonna be when men were gay as frick.
This time period doesn't inspire me very much.
History is a funny thing. There was always crazy shit going on, non-stop 24/7 all the time for all of human history, but we as individuals so often find a time and place that speaks to us.
In the current campaign I'm in, two people are playing barbarian brothers with a history based on the Varangian Guard.
That’s based and cool, but that’s just regular medieval era stuff.
That's not what anything in late antiquity looked like.
Because we're doing an 18th century European fantasy setting.
>background is grey and browns
If you plan on running that kind of setting it'll go much better for your players if you use pictures with equal amounts of color distribution in the locales.
Late antiquity does not have cutey native americans or robot dinosaurs
Funny looking mud huts
Most of rome were mudhuts tho. Pic is like what 10% or 15% of rome was
t. never lived under THE Avgvstvs
>There is no civil war and I am not killing friends and romans because I say so.
The Avgvstvs cope
Late antiquity being crisis of the third century? Closest thing i've got at the moment is a campaign set in the Theros setting in DnD. I'm currently DMing and I always make sure the players are informed of current events by an Orator who's based off of the News Person from Rome.
>All mockery of Setessans and their matriarchy is to be kept to an appropriate MINIMUM.
Roman cities look more modern from the ruins being excavated, even finding apartment buildings.
Nordicuck detected. besides there's nothing wrong with mudhuts.
NTA, but why would Nordics who themselves are proud members of mudhut gang shit on mudhuts? Hell, why would Germans?
Why would anyone? The problem is wattle-and-daube cucks being mad about rammed earth wall chads.
Mods are romeaboos confirmed.
Romans will never be your ancestors.
>late antiquity
too over done.
I'm tired of the late antiquity period.
Why aren't you playing games, OP.
I have an idea for running a lawful neutral/evil, millenia-old elf triari. I would only speak latin in-character.
I also had an idea to play a nature cleric modeled after the Rex Numorensis.