Hot answers tagged historical-settings
23
There's two ways that I can think of.
If you want a really simple solution? Declare that "Common" is a common second language. It's by no means universal - and as you move further away from major borders and trade routes it can completely disappear - but it's common enough that almost anyone could know it without straining plausibility. In mechanical terms, ...
17
Latin (and to some extent Greek) used to be the lingua franca during the middle ages. Later on, French became the language of diplomacy and nobility. Everyone that mattered [1] speaks a local variation of said language which should still be understandable by another speaker. For example, Quebecois and French or American and English.
So, you could have ...
12
Some background: languages are shared only as far and wide as they can be communicated. Any farther than that, and variations start. Soon you have comprehensible dialects, then incomprehensible dialects and other languages. As you say, technology is what made entire countries speak the same language. Example: BSL is the British Sign Language. There's one ...
12
I live in São Paulo and think it is a great city, and Brazil overall has been improving a lot these past few years. But as another poster wrote the negative aspects and exaggerations can be put to good use to provide a cyberpunk flavor. So here's a few select facts for São Paulo, followed by how you could use them in the setting:
the city is very vertical, ...
9
My go-to solution for this is to dig up scans or reproductions of old catalogs. I like the Sears catalogs quite a bit, as you get a nice cross-section of what people would have been buying at the time. There's several sites online, but here's one with the 1937 Christmas catalog. It's toy-focused, but there's some early electronics and kitchen appliances and ...
8
You might want to take a look at the various, already extant adaptations of the Norse theme. Examples include Midgard, Midgard, and, to mention a non-D20 product as well, Yggdrasill.
You might also want to check out the various online threads dealing with the topic along with some great free resource sites (like this, or this, for example, but google is ...
8
(Disclaimer: I'm a Brazilian)
Most fictitious representations of Brazil exaggerate on some of the negative aspects, specially relating to the violence and corruption (which are quite high, but not as much as seen in some movies). This exaggeration can be used to your benefit if you consider that in most cyberpunk settings, the worst aspects of a society ...
7
The 1930s section of the (rather old looking :)) The People History site (found via google) appears to have somewhat brief yet interesting, relevant info on the era.
Note (and check) the links to the individual years in the middle of the right column too.
There are quite a number of other (imo poorly designed, yet quite) informative-looking, minor sites ...
7
Other people have already discussed keeping Common around as a 2nd language, so I'll describe another approach.
Consider modern Europe: The average person speaks their native language fluently, and anywhere from 1-3 more languages with anywhere from crude skill to fluency depending on how often they use it. The more tightly-packed the language regions are, ...
6
A great place to start is to get a copy of Age of Mythology which features the kind of inter-faith interactions you want. It will help you put together ways to consolidate the different mythologies. It is also a great game.
With or without that. Consider the fact that these kinds of gods tend to be very different from the D&D/Pathfinder gods. The kind ...
5
You wouldn't need to change much, if anything, about São Paulo to make it the perfect setting for a Cyberpunk game. Since you're playing Max Payne 3 you've already got a head start in conveying the flavor of the city. This article on the Rockstar Games website lists some movies that they used as inspiration for the game. Anthony Bourdain filmed some episodes ...
4
I've run several games based in medieval Europe, with varying degrees of historical fidelity (gotta use that history major for something, right?), ranging from low magic "simulationist" campaigns to epic fantasy. Out of this experience, I'd recommend keeping a couple of things in mind as you design the setting.
First, I would say unless your group is filled ...
3
Rome: Life and Death of the Republic is very historically accurate. I found it useful for a Roman-style game I ran earlier this year (although I added in some details from the history series In Our Time and mythology).
2
It's a world with powerful magic at play. Common might exist because of that. For example, it could be the gift of some appropriate god, like a trade god or a god that's all about peace and unity. Or I suppose a god all about conquest and ruling conquered territory.
If so, it can work however you want it to work, including being more limited than a real ...
1
Ok first thing you need to know about Brasil: it's a really REALLY dangerous place to be. If you step out of the tourist place, you can get kill, robbed, raped (or all of them )and nobody will ever know about it. Your body might be found by authorities but they could not report it because the paperwork is a pain in the *.
Rio has one of the biggest favelas ...
1
Mythic Iceland is written to support gamers looking for a purely historical Viking-Age setting, as well as a mythical Viking World that includes rune magic and creatures from Nordic mythology and Icelandic fairy-tales.
1
There are only 3 situations where I think language ought to matter in a game:
You can't communicate at all.
You can communicate, but there's a single word or phrase you don't recognize.
You can communicate without any difficulty.
Here's what we've used in our campaign. (And it's worked quite well for us.) Language names are changed, of course.
All the ...
1
I've always viewed 'Common' as the 'Human language of the area'. So not 'common' in the sense that its specifically a 'shared' language that is common among races, but 'common' in the sense that its the everyday, 'most common' language of humans in the area. (assuming a human-centric world)
So with that, the Common in one area is different from the Common ...
1
Realism in language diversity can become a major impediment and shift the focus from the characters & plot to the intricacies of the setting. Keep a Common language in the game to facilitate play (and fun). As noted here, it need not be fully known or ubiquitous.
As a suggested mechanic: If you're interested in linguistics and the players aren't very, ...
1
Personally I go read books from the era; Rex Stout's mysteries are set in the 1930s and quite amusing to read. Also Raymond Chandler was writing at about that time. They tend to cover things from that era in the same manner as they would be using it (i.e. a violent one). Noir movies are also good for this.
Examples of things I've learned from these books:
...
1
Do your own mixing of history and Cthulhu Mythos
Take a look to the historical facts of that decade and try to figure out which ones can have some Cthulhu Mythos cult behind.
There was some unknown Cthulhu Mythos knowledge behind the Cold war?, which of the important characters of the epoch were Mythos cultists or were influenced by some Mythos ...
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