>>58409169
>What Prehistory tropes do you guys hate?
The idea that prehistoric societies had gender equality because somehow christians invented gender roles at the start of the middle ages.

File: EC8764C1-991D-4C69-8597-0(...).jpg (29 KB, 450x253)

29 KB JPG

Posting images to set the tone.

>>58409169
>Which classic fantasy tropes can be morphed to fit a prehistoric vibe?
Dragons are dinosaurs that somehow survived.
Dwarves are a race of Pygmy headhunters who dwell deep within the caves.
Replace wizards and sorcerers with shamans and druids.

>>58409200
I agree, if only because it makes those few lone warrior-women characters stand out as total badasses.

File: 29FABD92-38EF-477D-9D0B-4(...).jpg (457 KB, 1920x1082)

457 KB JPG

>>58409223
Yes, yes, yes.

>>58409200
Another trope i dislike
>prehistoric tribes are very spiritual and live in harmony with nature

I'd say Barbarians of Lemuria would work well with this kind of setting, even if it is more bronze-age oriented
It's simple, while it has the potential of being pretty gritty, does have magic but not loads of super-powered sorcerers and deals well with strange prehistoric beasts
Then again, I love BoL, so I might be biased

>>58409312

Ouch. *Some* form of what would nowadays be considered spirituality is very likely, but the "harmony with nature" people don't seem to realize that nature rarely gets along with ITSELF. Living the natural way means engaging in a daily war for survival.

File: 2181046F-DE5B-4731-AF36-D(...).png (2.08 MB, 1056x723)

2.08 MB PNG

>>58409312
This, I picture settlements as being set within the middle of boggy, blackened wastelands. Hundreds of tree stumps and discarded animal carcasses that have been stripped of all useful materials.

>>58409352
Exactly. Prehistoric hominids were "in harmony with nature" in the sense that they killed and ate almost anything that was unfortunate enough to cross their path, and they were very knowledgeable about their environment by force of habit and necessity. Basically, just evolved primates inside a greater ecosystem (as opposed to modern humans that shape and create exclusive ecosystems for their use and benefit)

>>58409352
Humans hunted mammoths and probably other megafauna to extinction.
Would be easy to call them shortsighted from a human perspective, but when there's a strong competition for hunting grounds, your tribe keeps growing, you're not gonna let the children starve, so you just keep going until there's nothing left.
>>58409383
Well, one thing to keep in mind though is they didn't have a big population compared to sedentary civilizations. Cutting down entire forests would be difficult.

>>58409420
> from a human perspective
I mean from a modern perspective

>>58409351
I honestly have 0 experience with the game, what sort of system is it?

>>58409420
Sure, not entire forests, but I like the idea that you’d know you were approaching a camp due to the trail of destruction emanating outwards.

File: otziimgp0413.jpg (478 KB, 966x1514)

478 KB JPG

>>58409169
>What Prehistory tropes do you guys love/hate?
That they were not as smart or resourceful as humans are now.

>Otzi the iceman master race in the house.

I think you need to do tech levels in your game within reason of course but the characters with time should be able to become quite elite.

File: DFE216AB-B2F5-45C8-98F4-5(...).jpg (66 KB, 640x400)

66 KB JPG

>>58409499
A progression system based on technological advancement could be fun, or at least an “innovator” class that outfits and equips the other players.

>>58409537
You should do a little survivalist study like what kind of stuff works best at doing things like best wood to burn and what wood is best to make bows and arrows out of. It would help flesh out the world the setting is in.

>>58409312
They lived IN nature, rather than in harmony with it.

That said, you'd recycle metal, cloth, pottery and all those sorts of things as much as you could because of how labor intensive it was to make them.

>>58409537
Oh god no, the idea of some cunt acting like a genius because he watched primitive technologies on YouTube and is now the smartest caveman is unbearable.

Never let your players be 'Inventors' because they're not actually inventing anything. It's as unbearable as that guy who decided to 'invent' guns for your fantasy setting, who thinks gunpowder works like fucking c4 and wants to build a machine gun.

>>58410225
Hah agreed, but if it was class feature based and all the “innovations” were layed out in advance you could curb that kind of behaviour.

Guy who played in one of my campaigns a while back bought 100 bags of cooking flour, because he’d heard that it was flammable. He wanted damage bonuses to his fire magic whenever he threw a bag into the flames as a move action...

File: D261D39B-3817-483A-A34E-3(...).jpg (250 KB, 1131x707)

250 KB JPG

>>58409807
That’s a great idea, I’d maybe change the name of reaources to match the primiritive language as well. Black Rock, South Stone, Ghost Bark etc...

>>58410414
I discovered something really obvious but also totally interesting when I went to Stonehenge visitors centre.

Different types of stone are valued differently for their different properties. A boss stone king might have beads and tools made of a rarer stone as a symbol of prestige. The Stonehenge rocks are notable because that kind of rock isn't found in the area.

It's weird because to mist people rocks are rocks. A primitive game might get really in depth about different materials - animal hides having different uses, ritual and practical. I'm not saying it should be mechanical but knowing those things would help you to flavour the setting.

>>58410503
Did not know that about Stone Henge, that’s pretty incredible.

With the fantasy element you could lean into that “different materials have different properties” vibe as well. Perhaps certain rocks resonate with spiritual energy as well as having different mundane properties. That way different party members would place alternate values on resources.

>>58409200
do people actually think that? I know the belief that hunter gatherers were perfect gender equal and classless utopias and that agriculture brought forth the patriarchy and economic inequality is relatively popular, but I've not heard what you described before. then there's also Gimbutas' gynocentric "Old Europe" idea which is also quite popular, but that's very specifically about two agrarian European cultures from a few thousand years before Christ
>>58409312
this is honestly quite understandable, even if it is annoyingly overused and oversimplified. we take the truth of them being less destructive towards nature than us and conflate it with them actively trying to be that way when in reality they were likely doing their best to tame nature as much as possible. I mean hell, pre-agricultural hunter gatherers burned down woodlands as well. the two main differences being they didn't then turn it into farmland and deplete it of all nutrients, and their numbers were small enough that they didn't leave much of a permanent mark when doing that.

>>58412291
Hunter and gatherer are really two roles that require focus to complete. You can't stroll around hunting and gathering at the same time, odds are you won't find what you're looking for. So you need hunters and gatherers. Or if you're going by gender based skills, men and women.

>>58412291
>do people actually think that?
I've never seen a single example of it. I assumed anon was just trying to start an argument about females reee.

>>58409169
Cool praxians bro.

>>58412417
>Or if you're going by gender based skills

Gathering is compatible with carrying babies, hunting is not. It's really that simple.

File: stone age man from Sungir.jpg (110 KB, 633x747)

110 KB JPG

>>58409169
>What prehistory tropes do you love?
I love the freedom of it. We don't KNOW what happened then, so speculation and fantasy can leach their way in without ruining the setting

>What trope do you hate?
Ooga booga, rocks n shiet

>Which fantasy tropes can be morphed?
The idea of earth magic or alchemy being very real. Like they knew how to make healing salves and potions from the plants, understood how to nurture a wound or animal in ways we could never now, etc.

>Which systems work well for this kind of low tech?
No clue, friend. Sorry

File: flint knife.jpg (25 KB, 900x606)

25 KB JPG

If you've never heard of this battle, look into it. Early Bronze Age civilizations gathered to fight using large armies

File: Bronze age Europe.png (78 KB, 720x800)

78 KB PNG

>>58415780
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/slaughter-bridge-uncovering-colossal-bronze-age-battle

Forgot to post the link

File: Sumerian village.jpg (213 KB, 1312x1088)

213 KB JPG

Early villages seem comfy

There is actually a rpg about this theme. Its called Wurm, I think.

>>58415803
The Fuck is the deal with the R1b people.

File: bronze rapier.jpg (519 KB, 1167x1563)

519 KB JPG

>>58415966
They carried big swords

>>58415966
A love of Mustaches seems a constant.

Any systems you can recommend for prehistoric games?

>>58416361
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/181454/Wolfpacks-and-Winter-Snow

File: 1312373009308.jpg (602 KB, 597x842)

602 KB JPG

>>58409431
>I honestly have 0 experience with the game, what sort of system is it?
Not that anon, but it's a very rules-light system that runs on 2d6.

Here's a copy if you want to check it out.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/nae98w6bbl4xjvb/Barbarians+of+Lemuria+-+Mythic+(v1).pdf

File: dino.png (1.07 MB, 1316x637)

1.07 MB PNG

Bumping for interest, I could use more stone age/ice age/prehistoric stuff

>>58415513
no reason why men cannot carry babies.
with many modern hunter gatherer tribes men and women hunt.

Pygmies for example sometimes just drop the baby were they stand and run to attack with their spears.

File: totem.pdf (326 KB, PDF)

326 KB PDF

>>58419796
>>58409169

This is a very good system for stone age games.

>>58412291
>do people actually think that? I know the belief that hunter gatherers were perfect gender equal and classless utopias and that agriculture brought forth the patriarchy and economic inequality is relatively popular, but I've not heard what you described before. then there's also Gimbutas' gynocentric "Old Europe" idea which is also quite popular, but that's very specifically about two agrarian European cultures from a few thousand years before Christ

The idea that humanity once lived in a state where they lived in harmony with nature, didn't have to work hard, and spent all day enjoying the fresh air in Miyazaki paintings and eating fruits and berries is OLD AS FUCK. It's basically what the Garden of Eden was. It's what Greeks called the "Golden Age" before human civilization, greed, ambition, etc came and ruined everything.

File: Capture.JPG01.jpg (60 KB, 718x402)

60 KB JPG

>>58409169
>- What Prehistory tropes do you guys love/hate?
Pretty much anything and everything as long its humanly possible to keep it consistend.

>- Which classic fantasy tropes can be morphed to fit a prehistoric vibe?
I like that the social hierarchy is much flatter and you don't need to visit every ruler in his manor and it's more of a part-time job, even more so for smaller clans.
Meeting "Rolaf the strong" for the second time as wandere, but now you don't get invited to the clan hall because you are no longer strange wanderes, the farmer just points up a hill and says something a long the lines "dude is in his stable and checking his cows".

- Which systems work well for running this kind of low technology setting?
If you like balls to the walls fantasy there is heroquest glorantha which comes with a bronze age setting.
Personally i would prefer more narrative systems, like HQG, because i can't be bothered for the party to find a "bronze dagger +2", just feels like it kills the magic.

>>58409169
>- What Prehistory tropes do you guys love?

Very different cultures coming into conflict with each other and the exchanging of very different ideas.

>hate?

That just because you don't have a particular technology (wheels or paper) or work with a particular material (like iron/bronze), that your culture/politics/trade/craft can't still be rich, complex, creative, beautiful, etc.

>- Which classic fantasy tropes can be morphed to fit a prehistoric vibe?

The unique village/town/city-state of the week. Since the setting lacks nation-states, you don't see as large a swath of land with a singular people, history, language, etc. Many populations living in close proximity to one another may very well have very different traditions, languages, etc.

>- Which systems work well for running this kind of low technology setting?

I like the Silhouette System, but that's because it's the system for Tribe 8 which is basically a neo-primitive post apocalyptic setting. The best way I can describe it is Clan of the Cave Bear meets Mad Max with a hint of Hellraiser.

File: david-edwards-15186760476(...).jpg (415 KB, 1920x973)

415 KB JPG

>>58415825
Yeah but that's bronze age not neolithic.

>>58415966
Pretty sure those are the Proto-Indo Europeans, the ancestors of near all the western world.

>>58421748
still prehistoric in a sligthly broader sense.

File: nihms801601f7.jpg (102 KB, 551x750)

102 KB JPG

>>58415966
I got you senpai. they were the Indo-Europeans. quick prehistory of Europe. pre-agriculture Europe was a collection of homogeneous darker skinned and blue eyed hunter gatherers. people from Wales, Spain and Finland would all be more similar genetically than they are today and they'd have overwhelmingly blue eyes and dark skin (as an aside, not black skin like that recent "reconstruction" of Cheddar man, there were already some light skin mutations that had happened 10s of thousands of years before him, but still darker than the darkest ethnically European today)
then agriculture happened in the Levant and spread through Anatolia to Europe at a currently estimated rate of 1km/y taking more than 3,000 years to make it to northwest Europe. in much of southern Europe the hunter gatherers were completely replaced by the Anatolian farmers, while elsewhere they mixed with them. modern day Sardinians are the most similar genetically to the Anatolian farmers with almost 90% of their dna coming from them (the Anatolians brought another light skin mutation with them since grain based diets didn't provide enough Vitamin D as pre-agricultural fish heavy diets)
then enter the Yamnaya around 3,000BC. a nomadic horse based people living on the steppe of modern day Ukraine and southern Russia. they likely domesticated the horse which helped them spread quite far. they spread both R1a and R1b, their language and their religion through Europe to the west and Iran and India to the east. they were genetically quite similar to the other Europeans, but they had a slight east Asian component that still sometimes pops up in modern day Europeans. that Asian component was related to the ancestral population of the Native Americans, and that sometimes leads to modern day Europeans having some Native American ancestry on dna tests.
>>58421472
well they didn't have to work as hard as farmers. the benefit of farming wasn't less work or more nutritious food, it was more food per acre

File: bearslayer_by_pelycosaur2(...).png (332 KB, 852x938)

332 KB PNG

>>58421748
There's actually a middle ground period at the end of the neolithic where people had small amounts of bronze and copper to work with.

>>58421684
>That just because you don't have a particular technology that your culture/politics/trade/craft can't still be rich, complex, creative, beautiful, etc.

There's evidence that neolithic tribes traveled as far as from Germany to stone henge to trade.

>>58412291
>perfect gender equal
Lolwhat?
>Yeah let's send our women hunting too, not like we need them for sustaining our community or anything

>and classless
People shitting on each other isn't something that started to happen with the coming of currency.
Pretty sure that even stone age tribes had memes about the Chad Hunter and the virgin berry picker.

>>58415904
There is a prehistoric RPG I've seen but not played where you speak in character using grunts and etc. Not called Wurm though. Sounded like a fun beer kind of game.

File: og.pdf (4.55 MB, PDF)

4.55 MB PDF

>>58422858
here it is

>>58409169
>Rhino cavalry
All my boners.

>>58409169
>Native American people’s
>African rhino cavalry
This triggers the autism

File: free-wildman-hd-desktop-w(...).jpg (846 KB, 1920x1130)

846 KB JPG

>>58409169
a shame this was never made...

>>58409312
Harmony with nature = Work smarter not harder
Why waste your precious calories building something from scratch when you can look around and find something natural that's already usable?
Also, its harder to claim "HFY!" when you're not at the top of the food chain.

I've actually been toying with a racial mentality aspect of this.
Humans
>"How can we modify the local environment to better suit our preferred lifestyle?"
Elves
>"How can we modify our preferred lifestyle to better suit the local environment?"
Dwarves
>"We agree with the humans, but we prefer quality>quantity. Let's take one small area that's already predisposed to suit our lifestyle and modify the heck out of it."

I also remember watching some show about pre-contact America that speculated about the different strategies for land-management. Basically, while old-worlders domesticated animals and modified the land to support their livestock, the Americans, failing to easily domesticate animals, resorted to modifying the land to support more wildlife for hunting. (including controlled fires, erosion prevention and timber management)
Thus we have the native nature-lover stereotype because they literally depended on maintaining a healthy ecosystem in order to support their own populations.

>>58426586
So what you're saying is we contract humans to lay the groundwork then contract dwarves to make the improvements all while the elves become on-site entertainment for the crews to survive?

How would you have a Neolithic or near Bronze Age people but still in a typical Late Medieval fantasy setting?

>>58426586

I would assume with the elves it's less that they care about their environment and more that they care about having lots of beautiful natural Vistas surrounding their stuff. It's like those Japanese villages where they have lots of modified and sustained ecosystems around them. In this case though it's done purely for vanity.

I would also assume that elves fall closer towards dwarves in that they will make the most efficient and best use of a given thing. Considering how long they live in most settings in some cases even being immortal, they probably prefer to make things that last. If there's one thing people hate its change lack of reliability.

>>58427271
>the most efficient and best use of a given thing
But that's what it means to modify your lifestyle to suit the environment. The end result is similar, but the mindset and methodology is different. Instead of being all, "Yeah we're totally gonna dominate this landscape!" they'd say "Hm, lets see what we've got to work with here."
Why waste time and effort turning the tundra into a forest, converting all our favorite crops into cold-hardy varieties and retrofitting our old treehouse designs for the cold, when we can just adapt our lifestyle to the environment, efficiently utilize the resources that are already here and enjoy the new scenery?

Another way of putting it:
Humans >"When life gives you lemons, declare war on life and burn all the lemon trees."
Dwarves >"When life gives you lemons, build an anti-lemon barrier and live safely in your lemon-free utopia."
Elves >"When life gives you lemons, make lemonade."

>>58409169
There's a LotFP based game called Wolfpacks & Winter Snow made by a local ca/tg/girl. It's an old school styled homebrew thing, so I realize it's not to everyone's taste, but it at least's got some good prehistoric based rules. It's also the best morphing of an osr ruleset into another genre.

>>58426586
>Thus we have the native nature-lover stereotype because they literally depended on maintaining a healthy ecosystem in order to support their own populations.
Mostly they didn't really think about it. They just didn't have the means, like the population and technology, to affect the environment as heavily as the colonists.

>>58409312
This. If anything the prehistoric man hates the nature or at the very least is full of his shit while trying to not complain for fear of being bullied.

File: Monster_hunter_freedom_2_(...).jpg (77 KB, 535x600)

77 KB JPG

Nothing about a prehistoric style Society has to be primitive and under developed when fantasy is involved.

If things like monsters exist with potentially superior materials equal to or even possibly better than steel... why wouldn't they take those things and learn how to refine them? I always pictured such a society looking awfully similar to Monster Hunter.

And even ignoring fantasy animals, things like ironwood or other naturally-occurring magical phenomenon would provide a host of different elements these people's could use during their development.

>>58427941

>like the population and technology

How can one man be so wrong

>>58428514
If society consists of hunter-gatheres it is bound to be primitive.

If they are not primitive they do not fit label of pre-historic society.

>>58428597

Hunter gatherer still made tools, weapons and most likely had forms of armor made from leather or hide as well as shields of a similar nature.

You can't make sweeping generalizations like that. Primitive in what way? They were certainly capable of carvings and art and other things.

>>58428720
Yeah, yeah. Every culture is beautiful. We all are advanced in our own way.

>>58409200

Basically this. I mean, every successful society had classic gender roles!

File: oluk3pcdqryz.jpg (45 KB, 750x741)

45 KB JPG

>>58409200
devil's advocate: if we're talking in a specifically roleplaying setting, having a more gender equal society makes it easier for women to play

it's fantasy anyways

>>58409169

Here's an idea. In the prehistoric era, there are multiple tribes, but there's a tribe called the Blood Men who are incredibly, insanely cruel. They practice cannibalism, and their evil might actually be caused by kuru or other diseases picked up from their obscene practices.

To a Early-Man-era tribesman, the Blood Men would basically be demons. (They might be slightly more advanced, having crafted armor from bone and so on.) The PCs are either captured, or must gather an army to venture into the heart of darkness and kill these fuckers.

You could leave it ambiguous as to whether there's a biological explanation (they're insane from cannibalism or something like a precursor to syphilis), a magical explanation (they worship demons and are in thrall to the devil) and so on. Remember, in this era, a weapon made of crude metal is basically a magic sword.

Hell, fearsome predators like rhinos, tigers and so on are effectively boss fights.

>>58409312
Well actually, the Australian aboriginals lived exactly like this, only hunting what they needed and migrating from place to place to not exhaust resources. Of course, not every culture is going to be like that, besides, your not gonna get those nice bronze respecting the environment are you?

>>58428720
>Primitive in what way?

>Lol there is no such thing as progress.
What a lame argument. It's not unpopular though.

>>58428720
Do you really believe it anon? Its the Same the Jibaro culture to the Nazcan or Moche one for example?

>>58409223
Races are different proto humans
Dwarves > H. Heidelbergensis
Halflings > H. Floresiensis
Orcs > H. Neanderthals
Elves> H. erectus
Humans > H. sapiens

>>58415513
>>58420972
Wait. By carry baby do you mean in their arms or in their belly aka pregnancy?

>>58428771

>muh dung covered anglo sheepfucker ancestors couldn't possibly be worse than anyone else's

File: Haplogroups_europe.png (752 KB, 743x764)

752 KB PNG

>>58421802
R1a predates R1b.

>>58428597
Look up Ainu. Guys were hunter-gatherers chilling it out with the Japanese. They were selling hides for rice and metals for centuries until the Russians came along and Japan decided if they didn't colonise them, Russians would. Which happened in the 17th century.

So yeah, you've got a a stone-age hunter-gatherer group in obvious contact with feudal society spanning centuries.
Their numbers remained small and Japanese didn' go there because they knew that even if they went there, they'd only be able to support a similarly small population. The island couldn't grow rice. That spelled the end of population expansion and everything that went along with it. Stuff like mining metals is nice and all and they knew! what those were, but they simply couldn't provide food for people who'd spend their time bashing on rocks instead of hunting and foraging.

>>58421472
>nd spent all day enjoying the fresh air in Miyazaki paintings and eating fruits and berries is OLD AS FUCK
Well, yes, but it was actually Rousseau who first actually claimed it being rational knowledge, until then it was always seen as a purely symbolic, mythological imagery.
Rousseau, being an absolute fucking drooling retard, actually pushed the idea that it actually did happen, and what is worse, that we are actually obligated to renew such state of "primary happiness" again. Thus setting the ground for all absolutely retarded ideological utopias - particularly Marxist ones.

>>58429370
You might be a LITTLE over-idealizing the relationship between the Ainu people and the Yamato people. Also, Ainu sure as fuck weren't hunters-and-gathers exclusively. The main reason why we see them as hunters-and-gatherers is because they were pushed into the highly inhospitable environment of Hokkaido and Sachalin islands where - at the time - you did not have that much options BUT to hunt and starve.

>>58421812
Thanks, anon, it's very informative

>>58429201
Wait, do Hungarians are not the same haplogroup as Finns?

>>58429475
Magyar tribes were a nomadic civilisation. The Slavs all around the place were all agricultural civilisations.
They were assimilated with some tiny pockets of insular communities here and there. It's a touchy subject for them, but the modern Hungarians are indistinguishable from the groups on their periphery.

>>58429443
>because they were pushed into the highly inhospitable environment of Hokkaido and Sachalin islands

They reached outwards, yes. However, I'm pretty sure the ones on Honshu were assimilated into Yamato while the ones on Hokkaido and what-not are native to the island.

>>58428803
>it's fantasy anyways so lets throw all logic to the bin

>>58429595
The whole point of fantasy is to be able to throw any piece of logic into the bin. Doesn't have to be all of it, but it can definitely be.

File: Cosmos in Collision - The(...).pdf (2.78 MB, PDF)

2.78 MB PDF

>>58409169
this book should be some great inspiration for anyone in this thread

>>58429567
They produced the Emeshi which were driven to cultural extinction as more Yamato pushed them into the highlands.

>>58427249
By just having them?
Mostly like it happens and happened in real life, they life somewhere where the lager civilizations don't (jet) bother to go because it's far away or just a shitty place for them.

>>58428597
>If they are not primitive they do not fit label of pre-historic society.
Those are fighting words son

Also bronze and early iron age still count too prehistoric.

>>58428803
It's not like it was super rare and basically witchcraft for women doing jobs considered to be manly, mostly just unusual and/or temporary.

Kinda annoying if people try to push the gender roles from the industrialization onto everything.

>>58409200
I mean, those roles exist for a reason. Can't exactly run around stabbing elk when you're 8 or 9 months pregnant.

>>58428865
Although, it's been theorized that they burned pretty much the entire continent to the ground to exterminate the 20-foot-long death lizards. Might just be meme science, though.

>>58422632
>Pretty sure that even stone age tribes had memes about the Chad Hunter and the virgin berry picker.
kek'd hard

More about the subject, I think the relationships between the tribes would be very interesting. They would be all pretty far away from each others, but probably still with some exchanges. Like, a handful of travelers travel two hundred kilometers or so every month to trade with the nearby tribe. That makes for a nice quest.
Also, domesticated dinos

File: Homo erectus.jpg (45 KB, 474x621)

45 KB JPG

>>58409223
Considering that Neanderthals used an awful lot of Hematite iron ore, maybe the dwarves would be Neanderthals adapted to life underground and figured out how to smelt iron. There's also an ancient Neanderthal flint mine somewhere in Bulgaria, i recall.
>>58429101
>Elves> H. erectus
U wot

>>58415979
>Stibbidy stabb :-DDD

>>58430538
That's how Basic D&D did Dwarves, but the underground bit and magic resistance came after thy got irradiated after a nuclear war.

>>58430801
Did Shannara do that first?

>>58430486
>Might just be meme science, though.
It is. There's no archeological evidence to suggest that the Indigenous Australians hunted megafauna, while we have plenty of evidence for mastodons and other large mammals being hunted by Americans and Europeans.

>>58430538
I mean, the various human species would be awesome. Make a me said we kinda crossbred them out of existence.

File: Dmanisi skull 5.jpg (27 KB, 400x388)

27 KB JPG

>>58431559
To me, it would make more sense for Elves to be a more evolved species of Homo than erectus, which had pretty small braincases and more Orc-like features. Case in point, pic related (H. georgicus is now regarded as a regional variation of H. erectus).

>>58430257
people pretending men and women are identical are more annoying desu

>>58429370
No one ever uses the Jomon period in Fantasy.

>>58432311
There's not much to do with it. The fantasy game which got the farthest into Japanese history would be Okami. Jomon would essentially be that, except without the Chinese architecture or characters. Not much to extrapolate the human fantasy aspect from, sadly.

Older settings tend to be underused but there's several reasons why.

>>58422925
Thank you!

File: Jomon Japanese armaments.jpg (641 KB, 1856x1794)

641 KB JPG

>>58432311
I got some stuff to sate your interest... or grow it

File: Jomon weaponry.jpg (337 KB, 750x1117)

337 KB JPG

>>58434695

File: Jomon armor set.jpg (3.16 MB, 3648x5472)

3.16 MB JPG

>>58434720

File: Yayoi Japanese vs. Jomon (...).jpg (87 KB, 640x480)

87 KB JPG

>>58434746

>>58429567
>They reached outwards, yes. However, I'm pretty sure the ones on Honshu were assimilated into Yamato
Only a small portion was assimilated, majority of them were slaughtered and gradually pushed north, and once the Yamato Expansion reached north of Honshu, they basically herded all the remaining ones there and locked them up, leaving them to fucking starve to death there.

The relationship between Ainu and Yamato were for the absolute majority of the time and concrete instances extremely hostile.

>>58430138
Emishi is just a Yamato word for "Ainu", the word they called themselves.

>>58433709
We know more than you'd think about Yomon, it's just that it was largely a bronze age society that did not know written language, nails or handloom, so people generally don't find it all that attractive.

>>58430465
I wonder about less fertile races though. Would elves and dwarves really feel the need to leave the women at home and be babyfactories, since they're only likely to get pregnant once in any given decade if they're lucky?

>>58435593
are their women as fit as 13 years old boy?

>>58431559
>>I mean, the various human species would be awesome.
I used to think that, then I realized I hate most of the races that exist currently and that'd only be worse if there were literal cavemen in our midst.

>>58434720
That's from an Edo period manga though.

>>58430538
I picked Errectus for Elves because they were lanky, agile, and good at climbing trees. None of them are very good fits, except obviously homo sapians for humans.

>>58434764
So the Jomon were Caucasian?

>>58436115
Kind of Siberian proto-Asian

>>58436115
>we wuz samurai

>>58430538
Peoples who don’t mine or smelt iron use stone or maybe bronze, but their truly legendary weapons are made from chunks of nickle-iron meteorites, hammered cold into shape and harder than any other known substance.

>>58435713
Seeing as female gymnasts and runners exist, I'd say yes. Not saying they'd be on-par with adult male warriors, but they could at least hike through the woods and stab an elk.

File: Seven-Samurai.jpg (78 KB, 770x472)

78 KB JPG

>>58436115
Are you a Chink? That guy looks Asian as fuck.
Think the lead guy in Seven Samurai.

>>58431047
The megafauna went extinct shortly after humans reached the continent.
There is no material evidence they were hunted, but it's also pretty safe to assume it happened.

>>58429167
I meant carrying in their arms, but Aka women have in fact been observed hunting while eighth months pregnant.

Btw, Aka fathers are within reach of their babbies 47% of the time and even let them suckle.

So yeah, possibly the example of the most sexual egalitarianism in work division I can think of, and they are hunter gatherers obvs.

tribes which adopt agriculture are more gender segregated and this is even more true for nearby bantu who have done so for a longer time.

other cool detail: the aka have crossbows.

>>58434695
Oh, nice thanks!

>>58433709
Well true, but that's why this is the best chance to do something with them, prehistoric and all that.

File: 1391193553447.jpg (214 KB, 467x650)

214 KB JPG

The tribes of the Northwest Coast sometimes used wooden armor. Another neat thing to know is that they understood how to work with copper - it's a metal that doesn't need to be smelted to work, you can work it cold if you're careful. So they had copper daggers and things like that.

File: 1441986800934.jpg (166 KB, 476x776)

166 KB JPG

Also boar tusk helmet from...Mycenae, I think?

File: O3hQtLL.jpg (737 KB, 1355x995)

737 KB JPG

There's also a lot of different kinds of art that can be done - sure, we all know about cave paintings and the little statuettes, but look at this shit. It's pretty good for being fourteen thousand years old.

>>58438486
Oh fuck yeah, bud. Definitely using this.

File: chin-cowrie-lot-1.jpg (91 KB, 620x454)

91 KB JPG

And if you still want to have currency in your games to make things a little easier than always bartering, there are options beyond coinage - lots of cultures used shell currency in their most ancient days.

File: Roudier-Chroniques-Lémuriennes.jpg (175 KB, 709x1001)

175 KB JPG

>>58409351
I'm having to much fun with that game, in my country, the published edition is far better than the english version, it got quality illustrations, new premade story to play in and a really good context expansion with a gm screen, a maps and 5 varied scenariis

File: 06_Guerre_du_Feu_T3 1 Emm(...).jpg (415 KB, 1022x1358)

415 KB JPG

>>58439116
Emmanuel Roudier has also done some god tier quality comics (the war of fire, neanderthal and another one I never remember), shame I don't know if its translated to Eng, I'm tempted to post it here in /tg/.

>>58438559
>no chest protection survived so they never wore any

>>58437022
nah, I just meant that comparing the half-faces, the guy on the right seemed to have rounder eyes and a more pointed, chiseled nose.

>>58430465

You know they probably could though. Assuming decent nutrition, these people would be fit as fuck. Olympic gymnast-level women can be pregnant a day not even realize it.

On the gripping hand, look at uncontacted tribes. How do they do gender roles I wonder?

>>58422632
There's a sort of myth around that ancient people were perfectly egalitarian before evil towns and organised religion subjected them to hierarchical organisation. Its pretty much false, the only actual evidence that human beings actually form any kind of functioning social unit with no kind of formal hierarchy is in tribal cultures like the Hadza, the functional unit of which is a very small (10-30 individuals) band that ranges over a decent sized area occasionally interacting with other groups, and as soon as you start having functional social groups large enough that individuals cannot know every other individual well enough to trust humans start developing mechanisms such as hierarchies of authority to enable continued social function.
But then, its also kinda important to remember that groups like the Hadza are not actually stone ages people, they are modern people, they just seem to have changed less.

File: Stèle_aux_vautours_38_Fac(...).jpg (1.5 MB, 2288x1520)

1.5 MB JPG

>>58440845
It's based on the stele of the vultures.

They're shown without torso armour, although the phalanx is either interpreted as with shields, or an armoured cloak.

>>58442082
>social groups large enough that individuals cannot know every other individual well enough to trust
Seems like I read somewhere that the cut-off point was ~100-150.

File: 11brazil.jpg (591 KB, 2000x1234)

591 KB JPG

>>58427249
You don't need to justify it, its more "realistic" than most things about medieval type settings.

>>58442351
There is modern psychology research data that suggests an absolute limit that is around 160, but the most solid ethnographic evidence for functioning egalitarian society that I am aware of is in the 20-30 range.

>>58412291
>and their numbers were small enough that they didn't leave much of a permanent mark when doing that
not always.
Australia would covered in a lot more woodland if not for the regualr burns the Aboriginals did, it was also likely a major factor in the extinction of megafauna here.

File: asdghh.jpg (4.76 MB, 3600x2400)

4.76 MB JPG

>Prehistoric tribes
>Not all dying at 33
>Not just communally banging the (often very young) women every day
>More than 1 baby out of every 10 living to maturity
>Not dying from the littlest thing like a cavity
>Weapons that endure through generations instead of probably breaking or falling apart during their first use.
>Everybody is buff instead of chronically malnourished
>Not spending the winter months simply huddled in a cave staring at each other hoping you don't freeze to death
>Probably never encountering another human tribe

>>58410414

Are those Homo sapiens fighting neanderthals? Fucking nice. This is what I want.

Wasn't there a video game for the original Xbox that was kind of fantasy prehistoric? I think it was called BC? I remember reading about it and that and Morrowind are what made me get an Xbox.

Sad it never released though

>>58443376
oh cool, you altered the dark ages meme to work for prehistory!

>>58420972
no. but until very recently a baby had to be around mothers most of the time.
The father could be around as well, but the had to be. Or the baby would die, before formula and bottles the only way to feed a baby is breast feeding, and new babies especially need feeding every couple of hours.

the gender roles evolved from simple practicallities for hunter-gathers.
Its more practical for the baby to be with the gather and its needed for the baby to be with the mother. so women are gatherers and men are hunters, which are specialised roles because specialists are more efficient than generalists.

>>58431559

>ayo hol up
>ayo, you sayin...
>*smacks lips*
>you sayin...
>ayo, you sain they was other types of people n sheet?
>an they was genetically distinct with regionalized differences?
>das raysis
>blacked.jpg

>>58438702
I like the idea that items from animals were valued based on how difficult/dangerous that animal is to hunt. so puffin beaks are less valuable than boar tusks not because they don't look as nice, but because they weren't as difficult to obtain
slightly related
https://www.livescience.com/61743-rich-paleolithic-burials.html

File: Inca Bronze Star Axe-Mace.jpg (22 KB, 500x470)

22 KB JPG

>>58438486
Also, the Mississippian tribes had coppersmithing. And in Peru copper and a small number of bronze artifacts have been dated to 700AD, not to mention that the Incans had bronze maces/axes as fairly common issue.

>>58428597
Most of the bronze age would like to speak with you.
Hell, those guys have government systems that wouldn't be rivaled again until the industrial revolution.

>>58428801
We had gender roles before we could even walk upright...

File: whoa mama intensifies.jpg (20 KB, 549x640)

20 KB JPG

>>58430066
>the authors have pinpointed to within a statistical certainty the original home of modern humans on the largest of Jupiter’s moons, Ganymede
>By “to within a statistical certainty”, is meant that a zero probability event or probabilistic miracle would have to have occurred for anything other than what the authors are proposing, to have happened.

I have no idea where you found this shit, but this is amazing and thank you for the campaign idea. This would be a great document to hand to the players as a huge twist. Maybe I need to give Unknown Armies another look.

>>58441805
>Assuming decent nutrition, these people would be fit as fuck.
you can't assume that though. a hunter gather lifestyle wasn't easy and was often a struggle just to not die.
yes a pregnant woman epuld be capable of hunting. But she wouldn't generally be as effective as a man, and her getting killed bigger loss for the tribe (since you're technically losing two people and reducing your tribes population growth). Not using your best and most disposable hunters legitimately be the difference between survival or death.

>>58447353
People write papers all the time touting how superior the hunter gatherer lifestyle was to early agriculturalists. How they had more calories, lived longer, better teeth, fewer injuries, etc.

I just don't know if it's all a meme or not.

>>58447473
if it was overall better it wouldn't have been replaced, if the hunter gathers were universally better off than the early agriculturalists they would have out competed and replaced them.

Agriculture wasn't overall better either, a narrower diet could have malnutrition issues. But agriculture provided reliability and stability in food. You could better count on having enough to get by, even if it was less than the times of plenty for hunter gatherers.

it is a bit of a meme, an idea thats been taken to far by people pushing the paleo diet nonsense or subscribing to the "our ancestors were one with nature" crap.

>>58447353
All I know is from what I've seen of hunter-gatherer tribes that still exist in Africa, they're fitter than the average person but they're not exactly Olympic runners or gymnasts. Its more their experience and learned skills that matter.

>>58447473
I think it's a meme because I've read the opposite. I remember seeing a program showing the bones of an ancient hunter gatherer and he was estimated to be 40-something but his bones were fucked by arthritis from the many injuries he suffered from having to hunt dangerous animals so every movement would have been agony before he died. And their teeth would have been in terrible shape because they would have been worn down quickly from coarse unprocessed grains.

I wouldn't doubt there are some benefits to the lifestyle, but you can't ignore the myriad of severe drawbacks that are associated with the lifestyle and period. They also didn't have internet or tabletop games which I think we can all agree outweighs everything right there.

>>58447750
oh yeah they'd be fit. i just meant you can't assume they're all pro athlete level fit and swole.

>>58447652
What you write is a meme. Reliance on narrow numbers of crops made it a less reliable food source. Famines were much less likely to happen for hunter gatherers; they would just easily switch to another food source. It's impossible to do that when your primary cereal or whatever suddenly dies because of a thunderstorm in late July.
But on good times it allowed for accumulation of surplus that could be "redistributed" to new elites - who usually, at least partially, were soldiers and thus were able to raid neighboring hunter gatherers.

>>58438628

Some of the cave paintings get surprisingly detailed and anatomically accurate. They cared a lot about what they hunted and kept so of course pour a lot of effort into capturing it.

File: fraal.gif (80 KB, 300x360)

80 KB GIF

>>58429101
>H. erectus
>Not Ancient Aliens.
Yuck.

>>58448713
Well. if you are going that direction why add Bigfoot to the list of ancient species that can be used as an PC or NPC race. The +/- attributes for the races could be made quite interesting.

And m/f characters should be given different traits for skills like hunting and gathering based on gender since this is actually based on facts, but this is just my opinion of course.

>>58442602
To be fair, stone age would b more believable than bronze, as latter required ridiculous trading networks

>>58449113
probably do it as starting skills.
Less about bonuses and penalties but more a male PC will usually be a better hunter mainly because they've started off with more experience at it.

How badly would underdeveloped Metallurgy prevent you from developing housing structures and Engineering projects like forts castles and so on? Assuming you had a workable stone quarry and readily available wood.

>>58449999
You'd probably be hard pressed to make a fort in a few hours, the way Romans did it. But housing can be made without nails or metal tools and for fortifications look at so called "cyclopean architecture" from bronze age Greece

>>58450451

Would Ashlar style walls be possible in a fantasy bronze age society?

File: Perfectwall.jpg (89 KB, 450x600)

89 KB JPG

>>58450613
Well, the Inca pulled it off with stone, copper, and bronze tools.

So why not?

>>58437200
Actually its been proven humans have been around in australia thousands of years earlier than originally thought and coexisted with the megafauna for a long time

>>58443376
>Not all dying at 33
Yes. Life expectancy was 33 but it was because of high infant mortality, if you survived past 5 your life expectancy jumps to 70+
>Not just communally banging the (often very young) women every day
Marriage exists in pretty much all primitive societies ever studied.
>Not dying from the littlest thing like a cavity
They didnt eat sugar so they didnt get cavities
>Everybody is buff instead of chronically malnourished
You can see from modern hunter gatherers who persists on the worst land available that they are quite buff and but have low body fat. Before most of the best land was taken for agriculture hunter gatherers were even more fit.

Rest is possibly true.

>>58453147
maybe it was the incoming of new tech/sufficiently large human population that triggered the extinction, while prior to that it was stable ?
kind of like current megafauna, standard fauna and actually everything that isn't dependant on human to live is going extinct

>>58448407
Swole is bollocks anyway, you'd get very very few body-builder types back then.

You'd get big guys but a lot of it is a lean wiry tendony sort of muscle rather than Captain Abs n Biceps.

File: 1280px-Diprotodon_optatum_(2).jpg (110 KB, 1280x755)

110 KB JPG

>>58453659

When it comes to the extinction of Australian megafauna my money is on the human-caused climate change explanation. The Abos didn't necessarily hunt down every last one of the Mister-Maggo-looking motherfuckers but the slash-and-burn techniques that turned the continent into even more of a hellscape desert than it already was probably made it impossible for such large animals to get enough food.

As for the fact that megafauna continued to live on for thousands of years after the first arrival of humans, I don't see that as contradicting either the direct hunting or indirect human-caused climate change theories. It could just mean that it took humans a while to finish the job, which would make sense given the low population levels at the time. The same thing happened in Eurasia; humans have been there for tens of thousands of years and yet it was only maybe ten or twelve thousand years ago at the beginning of the holocene (when both the human population and its impact on the environment really took off) that the mammoths started getting killed off in numbers they couldn't recover from.

>>58453240
>They didnt eat sugar so they didnt get cavities

Even animals get cavities.
They'd have a smaller chance to develop them overall, but they would be just as much of a KO as anon described.

>>58428801
>every society ever had some form of gender roles!
There, i corrected your stupid false flag statement.

>>58428803
PCs are always exceptional, they can be special snowflakes and break the norm.
There's no need to hold back on world building.

>>58409383
Now you're going too far to the opposite end Anon.
I'd say have one or two tribes that are each like that, and the vast majority somewhere inbetween.

>>58440845
Apparently, the greeks/macedonians of Alexander's time used paper armor, similar to a papier mache. Given the materials they likely used for it, it was probably pretty damn tough.

>>58447652
I would argue that grain agriculture in particular caused civilisations to emerge. Consider wheat. Aside from planting growing harvesting, there's storage, transportation to a mill - which was typically kept away from the village due to danger of exploding and which had characteristic architectures and technologies - then to refine the flour, separate mills for grading and sifting, which could then be priced at differing levels for social hierachies. Which, of course, means markets and money, distribution, not to mention beers and what goes into that

>>58461449

I'm guessing you're talking about Linothorax. Nobody can agree to what exactly it was or how they made it but the most common guess was sheets of linen glued together.

I remember they built some based on one possible interpretation on an episode of Ancient Inventions/Discoveries (I highly recommend that series for worldbuilders) and it was pretty damn tough.

>>58462316

Sorry, I meant Ancient Discoveries/Impossible. Ancient Inventions was a third, not directly related show with Terry Jones.