"Ancient thru Ren ImagiNations" Topic

Ideas?

Would you like to expand further on your question……?

Robert E Howard created an imaginary continent called Hyboria . it contained nations based upon many ancient and mediaeval cultures. Tony Bath who arguably created the Society of Ancients wrote a book about Hyborian wargames campaigns which may still be available from their website, soa.org.uk

Many years ago I was associated with a company called "The Companions". they published a series of fantasy game supplements. Stuff you could use for any RPG or campaign system.

Anyway, one of their storylines was set in a mythical continent called Islandia. One of the first rules we used regarding terrain construction was to not reinvent the earth. Alter it, but make certain that the geography works as it's supposed to.

So, when it came time to create an Island "continent" they took a topo map of the state of Maine and simply flooded it by 100'. We took blue markers and found all the proper topo lines, marked them, then colored it in. Worked brilliantly.

I'd do the same thing were I recreating an ancient ImagiNation. That gives you large land masses but lots of waterways, coastline, and makes shipbuilding for commerce and navies as important as land forces.

I've done a lot of miniature gaming and RPGs around my version of Ruritania and it's neighbors. I originally used this in VSF games but then wondered what the countries would be like at different eras in history. This branched into Pulp and Weird War II but I went back to "Clockwork Pulp" and ran a campaign in the 17th century. Here's some pictures:

link

More recently, I ran a convention game set in the 1st century that pitted the Romans against the Ruritanii. A report can be found here, scroll down a bit for pictures and a description of my game:

link

I've included Graustark and Transbalkania which were also products of 19th century literature as well as the two countries from the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup, Freedonia and Sylvania. I posited that Sylvania had been a Venetian colony during the Middle Ages but haven't run a game set around that.

I have a personal imagination greek city state called lancedemmnos

One of the first rules we used regarding terrain construction was to not reinvent the earth. Alter it, but make certain that the geography works as it's supposed to.

So, when it came time to create an Island "continent" they took a topo map of the state of Maine and simply flooded it by 100'. We took blue markers and found all the proper topo lines, marked them, then colored it in. Worked brilliantly

Consider that idea *yoink*ed!

I might go the other direction, though. Drop sea level 600 feet and you'd be amazed at how much things change!

Absolutely agree. 600' is pushing to the boundary of the Continental shelf. For fishing and other foods, your societies likely wouldn't have any lobster, shrimp or other deep-water fish. You could haul in all sorts of whitefish, especially shark, but the crustaceans would be too deep to harvest. So supporting industries like traps, etc, wouldn't be around.

Also, if you go with a 600' reduction in sea level, you have to consider whether the wheel would have been invented in those areas. The wheel, for transport, works best in reasonably level flat areas. With what you are proposing, you'd likely be more like the Incas and/or Mayan and be using lots and lots of pack animals and slaves to do your transport work.

Neat idea, though.

V/R

I'm thinking of a version of the HRE, taken to its superbalkanized extreme.