Hi Dark, I don't know about setting it in Spain per say, but the time period of the High Middle Ages is an interesting one for a lot of reasons.
In 1099 we have the first of several crusades in an attempt to take back the Holy Land from the Islamic Empire. Anyone who was anybody fought in the crusades and made a name for themselves before coming home to rule. The next couple of centuries or so would be one constant invasion after another until crusading fell out of fashion. Naturally, because the crusades played such a heavy roll in the High Middle Ages that is generally what most people associate with the High Middle Ages, but it is actually the least interesting part of that particular period in history. Personally what I think makes the high middle ages interesting is we see the rebuilding of society in Europe. During the Dark Ages plagues, warfare, and down right bad weather pretty much killed off most of the population. What remained was scattered over Europe and the majority of the people lived in rule areas. In the high middle ages we see a massive migration to cities and towns all over Europe. As a result we see a major increase in the labor force where there were more bakers, weavers, tailors, blacksmiths, etc than there had been in the prior five centuries. A long with the people came the concept of public schools, and eventually universities. All of these things would not only bring Europe out of the Dark Ages, but lay the groundwork for the Industrial Revolution to come. At the same time the power of the Catholic Church was growing and becoming more a part of daily life. WE have St. Francis who founded the Franciscan Order, and the Dominican Order was also founded in the High Middle Ages. Thomas Aquinas, who wasn't fully appreciated in his day, revolutionized Christian philosophy and is still widely regarded and well read today 800 years after his death. Point being, that while most people remember the High Middle Ages as a time of war fair and conflict between Catholicism and Islam there was a major social reformation and evolution at work in Europe not seen since the fall of the Roman Empire. Peasants were no longer working for a specific lord, but were able to apply their craft in a way that would help his or her community in general. Towns were growing, people were offered some sort of education, and the Catholic Church was changing in several ways as well. It is an interesting backdrop for vampires, werewolves, etc simply because despite better education, employment, and fair weather most people were still highly superstitious and frightened of things such as a black cat which people assumed to be demonic. That said, if I personally had to pick a time period it would be during the 1300's which effectively ended the High Middle Ages. People were dying in droves from the plague, people were living in extremely unsanitary conditions, the societal structure built up during the High Middle Ages was braking down, and the weather turned cold and nasty causing massive crop failures and resulted in people actually freezing or starving to death. Not surprisingly the Catholic Church blamed all the problems on Satan and most people assumed the bad luck was do to witches placing curses on people. Not true of course, but it does open the door to any kind of fantasy game environment where perhaps one might assume the witches, vampires, werewolves, etc were actually real rather than the frightened ravings of a superstitious group of people who knew nothing about germs, viruses, how the weather works, or anything else. Cheers! On 9/4/12, dark <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi tom. > > i would still suggest a medeval time period in history for the game, similar > > to spain or italy around the time of the crusades and wars with the mours. > > Indeed, the b15th century might be a night point, sinse you could still have > > paladins, nights, archers etc, plus perhaps classes who use muskits (albeit > > that they'd take forever to load), as well as priest or even alchemists, but > > have a completely believeable setting and a historical backing for the > vampire. > > for example, suppose you called your vampire brutus, with the idea that he > was around sinse Roman times, had his little empire in spain that was now > threatened by the unification of the country and the expanding power of the > > church. > > he could have roman armor and weapons, perhaps even some shrines to nastier > > roman gods such as pluto, ut would also be a man of his time, perhaps with > his own army, merciaries etc. > > i often think indeed that with vampires and warewolves, history before! the > > 19th century gets rather ignored in a lot of ways, sinse after all the real! > > count vlad tepes dracula was quite an interesting character, and is still > regarded as something of a national hero in parts of rumania because of the > > way he fought off the tirkish empire, including his brother who was raised > in the tirkish court, was defeated, but then came back to take back his > country from the tirks at the head of any army he'd managed to raise from > the neighboring kingdom. > > At the same time however, he was just as brutal with criminals and those who > > disagreed with him as history says, with him being vlad the impailer, > although from his own perspective impailing was seen as a correct punishment > > for those who trangessed the lore of god and of God's devinely appointed > nobility. > > (there was a really nice recent Doctor who audio dara drama all about the > historical Vlad tepes, which made him out to be an incredibly fascinating > character and made me do a little extra researc, another thing of course > that is good about Doctor who). > > Beware the Grue! > > Dark. --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. 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