Old-School Roleplaying at the Dawn of History: First Principles

In this post, I'll be sharing some thoughts on running an old-school campaign set in prehistory, about participating in the very beginning of a people's cultural memory and guiding it forward. In a few words, I would describe the main design goal as follows: a game that feels like a deep dive into the first 10 turns or so of a game of Sid Meier's Civ. I want a game that plays like how the opening cinematic of Civ 5 made me feel when I was a kid.

Civ 4's opening is strictly better because of Baba Yetu, but doesn't evoke the feel of this view.

Dealing With Deep Time

There is a fib at the heart of this concept. The fact is human history is not a 4X game. We did not spawn in a random hex with a settler unit a warrior. The period in focus here, the end of the Neolithic, was preceded by unnumbered generations. Those that lived in this period of time knew the land around them very well and had long oral histories already. For this reason, the goal is not a depiction of real prehistory. Instead, it is a depiction of the mythic history that many cultures have placed at an indeterminate time in their past. The Before Time. The player characters, at least the first generation thereof (more on that later) are the mythical first heroes of the world. They are as Oduduwa, as Manu and Yemu, as Durin, those that named the nameless hills and dells. They don't need to be of the very first generation, they may still have ancestors, but not many, and fewer of great import.

Realistically, we're talking about the red area of time, that's a lot of thousands back there. Chart is from Wikipedia.

Stages of Play

I would posit, as many have before, that an archetypal game of old-school D&D consists of 3 rough stages of play. The first is characterized by dungeon exploration. In the second, the characters strike out into the wilds. In this, they begin dealing with much larger groups of monsters, likely with a small retinue at their backs. Finally, in the third stage, they establish their domain, either by force of arms or land grant, and rule. When the players grow bored of ruling, it is common for them to begin again by playing lackeys of the lords they made.

In this game, however, there are no tomb complexes to loot, those are for you to build and buried in. There are no Cyclopean ruins of ancient cities. Hell, there aren't even any cities (yet). Dungeons, in the traditional sense, do not exist. What, then, are the intended stages of play?

I would say that there are still three. The first is exploration of the wilderness, rather than a dungeon environment. During this stage, the characters come to understand the area. They discover resources for future use and make contact with other peoples. This stage also includes the establishment of a settlement as the characters' people end their wandering. This may be only semi-permanent, if the people are pastoral, or it may mean the dawn of agrarianism, depending on the preferences of the players.

Once the settlement has been founded, the second stage begins. This is the domain game, and it begins at much earlier levels than it would in a typical game of B/X. It also has a more limited scope. The domain is a band going-on tribe of perhaps a few hundred, rather than a feudal fief. During this stage, the characters lead their people and continue their exploration with greater resources and purpose. They interact with their neighbors and clear the region around their settlement. They carve out a distinct territory or continue a pastoral lifestyle and begin to grow their population.

Finally, the third stage is what I will call the "legacy stage" and occurs when the players grow ready to begin again. The reign of the characters will likely last many years, but only a few are going to be played out during the domain game. In the legacy stage, the players collaborate with the referee to determine the rest of their legacy and its long term implications. This stage is much more free-form than the other two, as well as shorter, and serves to set the stage for the next go around.

Next, a time-skip occurs of length agreed upon by the players, and the first stage begins again. The new group of characters range farther from their homeland and carve out their own dominion as their ancestors did. One may take a page from Pendragon and have these be direct descendants of the previous characters, but this isn't strictly necessary. They can be anyone with an urge to strike out into the wild. This is repeated for as long as it is fun. These iterations will, hopefully, form an organic history of the gameworld. This may eventually lend itself more to a different style of campaign as the dawn of history gives way to its midmorning and beyond.

Character Advancement

It's clear by this point that XP for Gold isn't going to work. Hell, people probably don't even know how to smelt the stuff yet when the game begins. Moreover, currency isn't going to become relevant as a concept for a long, long time. This is fine, there are no dungeons to delve for gold anyway, and thus no need to incentivize their delvification. So what should advancement be based on?

Well, the answer is what we want to incentivize. In this case, that would be exploration of the wilderness in the first stage and growth of the settlement in the second. A progression system will be needed that encourages both. The first is easy, XP for hexes (or other abstraction of land area) explored, peoples contacted, resources found, et cetera. The second is a bit trickier, but can be answered by deciding what types of growth are most gameable. The goal is not an irrigation canal building simulator, it is the characters becoming cultural heroes and leaving their mark. For this reason, the parts of running a domain that are most fun should be incentivized with XP. Making war and alliances, building monuments and discovering new technologies are the vehicles for advancement in this stage.

That's one way to go about it anyway, there's a lot of approaches that would serve this game better than XP for Gold. A boasting system akin to Luke Gearing's Wolves Upon the Coast comes to mind as one option. Another is a system of social advancement like Glory in Pendragon or Prestige in Würm.

Conclusion

This premise is one that I plan on eventually putting into play for a game of my own, and along the way I will likely share other thoughts on it. That doesn't necessarily mean this is a series, but it may be a revisited subject in time.