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Best unexplored historical settings

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Interesting in people's views as to what great historical times/settings for crpgs (or other setting-heavy games) haven't been used, or at least have been woefully underused, even in analogical form (e.g. a reluctant war between culturally related nations, bringing the entirety of their civilisation into a calamitous conflict where they realise it could be the destruction of their civilisation but feel helpless to stop it, with old enemies who they'd once united to defeat waiting at the sidelines and meddling to maximise the war's casualties - might count as 'ancient Greek Pelopennesian War', even if you set it in some fantasy 'not-Greece').

My pick would be the first historical dark ages. I.e. not the post-Roman one, but the far bigger/darker one that occurred between the fall of the Mycenaean empire and ancient Greece. I'll put the full explanation in spoiler quotes, as it's lengthy:
It makes the Roman collapse look like a soft landing, mostly becuase it was likely caused by the worst possible harbinger of a dark age - massive raiding/pillaging culture arrives and burns everything with no interest in preservation (just ask the Chinese Empire post Mongols). We don't know much about the Mycenaeans, but we do know:
  • they could smelt iron - yes, iron - for weapons and buildings, centuries before the beginning of the bronze age;
  • they had advanced literacy and records;
  • they were sea-farers, not as good as the later golden era of Ancient Greece, but beyond anything thought capable during the early years of the Greek renaissance;
  • their meticulous record-keeping extended to the number of ships that each Mycenean city sent to fight the Trojans, and the later Greeks took those records so seriously that they used them to settle major disputes over territory - as in, one side would present evidence that their ancestor city gave the bigger contribution to a battle in a particular spot, and the other side would just accept it as the outcome of arbitration, even when they had enough military superiority to press their claim by force.
  • until really quite recently, all of these records were viewed as purely mythological, until a series of self-educated archeologists - not recognised by the academic establishment, and simply 'too ignorant' to know that it was all myth, began digging in the places where the records showed towns, battles, etc should be, and found records showing those city's names....despite the fact that those city's were considered 'missing' during Ancient Greece, and had to precede the Greek civilisation.
  • prompted by this, more 'ignorant' self-taught archeologists ignored their wiser peers and excavated a bunch of evidence that was mostly consistent with the relative power relationships indicated by the 'mythological' records of contributions to the war effort
  • The dark ages hit so hard that all literacy was lost. Humanity (at least in that part of the world) had to reinvent literacy from scratch. People reverted to oral histories, ala Homer, mixing in hard facts (like listing in incredible detail the number of ships and soldiers each city contributed) with tales of Gods and heroes. Yet the Greeks had a very clear idea of what they thought was real history - they never settled disputes by talking about bullshit myths of Heracles, but whenever the epic poems talk about precise lists of ships, or stipulated the landmarks delineating political boundaries, they treated that as fact, and wrote them down again once they reinvented literacy.

  • The loss of literacy means that there's no way of knowing how much science the Mycenean's had that was lost - but again, seafaring people who could smelt iron centuries before the bronze age began.

Then you look at all the mythology of Ancient Greece - whilst there's no doubt that (iron-smelting aside), advanced Ancient Greece was almost certainly far more advanced than the Myceneans, the Greeks always had this cultural memory of a time when men lived longer, had greater weapons, mightier kings, alchemists that could perform magic but treated it like science...a persistent memory, carried over from the darkest of all dark ages, that (at least compared to the dark ages where the myths began) there were greater men that came before them - men powerful enough to face the Gods themselves.

I'd love to see an AoD-style post-apoc game in that era. One where you're from an illiterate tribe during the dark ages, long after the pillaging hordes have come and gone, reduced to primitive nomads. You hear the oral myths of a greater past, and dream of rebuilding what was lost, but without even knowing what it is that you've lost, because you don't know what's myth and what's real. So you leave your tribe to pursue your dream. On a high-int build, you might rediscover literacy by deciphering the fragments of tablets that remain, and go on a quest to bring your people into the light of science, learning how to smelt good weapons and infiltrating other factions who are guarding their own fragments of past knowledge. Eventually you'd get the knowledge of sea-faring, find maps of the outer islands, and end the game sailing to reach a deserted island with a library of written knowledge. On a combat build, you might instead fight to unify the tribes back into one proto-city-state, re-establishing the security needed for commerce and economic regrowth.

I.e. many multiple paths, that all end with the bitter-sweet realisation that yes, you've started something that could one day bring civilisation back to the world (which the player recognises as the beginnings of Ancient Greece), but that all your efforts are just the first step on a journey that will take 100 years or more (but could have taken 1000 yrs if not for your efforts), and that you'll be long dead by then, and nobody will remember your name. In fact, the later point could well be the C&C tradeoff - you can choose between achieving power and prosperity for your tribe as the mightiest amongst the ruins, with slaves and power that will last your lifetime but crumble soon after vs being the forgotten hero that took the first step out of the dark ages.

Second choice would be the Chinese Empire, just before the Mongol Hordes arrive.

You're in an advanced bureaucratic culture - the kind where the standard way to 'get ahead in life' is to sit the public service exam and work your way up a public service (whether in military, trade, espionage or governance) that is very much like the modern world in structure.

Yes, there's crazy nay-sayers and scoundrels stirring up the peasantry by claiming that it's all an arrogant facade, that China has become too reliant on the life of milk and honey, and it will all be swept away the next time a real threat arises. But any respectable gentleman like yourself knows that's rubbish - we have the Great Wall, as much a symbol of our unrivalled engineering and bureaucratic efficiency as it is an unparalled defensive structure.

We live in the age of science, our swords and ships are made with such cutting edge technology that those barbiarians may as well attack us with toothpicks. And that's not even taking into account the wonders that all good gentleman know are just around the corner, as our research in gunpowder is soon to make battles as we know it obsolete. Even now we have enough knowledge of explosives and firearms to defend our major cities without risking the injury of melee warfare.

Those fearmongers and fools protest that this is making us weak, but they're seeing a world that no longer exists. Conquered territory is a liability now, not an investment - that's why our enlightened government chose not to expand past the culturally chinese regions, and our 'almost' respectably civilised rivals in India know it as well as we do. Yes, the spice market is going through a temporary rough patch, what with those troubles our Indian trading partners are having with some luddite savages in their remote territories - 'Mongols' I think they call them. Never mind, the Indians have always been a bit tardy at regional government - it will take them a few months to get a proper army out there to clean things up, and then things will be back to normal. The future is in trade, not warfare, books not swords. How could this possibly go wrong.....
 

JarlFrank

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My first choice for this has to be ancient Mesopotamia. Sumeria, Babylonia, Assyria, the great ancient cultures of the near east, the inventors of writing, a time when myth and legend was part of everyday life (literally everything was believed to have some connection with the gods).
Also, beer was considered sacred and people regularly got smashed on it.

My second choice would be... any other culture in the bronze age because seriously, bronze age is criminally underused. History and mythology are almost one in that age about which we only have partial knowledge, and during which most societies still believed in gods walking the earth.
You could have a game set in the Trojan war, with bronze age Mycenean and Minoan warriors fighting against Anatolian Kingdoms. You could even have the mythic Amazons.
And they'd all wear those awesome fucking lobster cuirasses.
Also, war chariots. Goddamn.
Or why not bronze age Italy? Etruscans, Samnites and others being the dominant forces on the peninsula, when Rome was just one city among many, far away from reaching its later glory.
Bronze age Egypt, with the Pharaohs and all that cool shit.
Bronze age Britain/France/Germany, with the Celtic high cultures of antiquity.

Like... seriously. Just the fucking bronze age, anywhere.
I'm a huge bronze age fanboy (especially Mesopotamia during that era) and there are so, so very few games set in that era. Everyone who does antiquity does either classical Greece or Republican/Imperial Rome.
There's just no love for the bronze age out there :(
 

Ninjerk

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Bit of a tangent, but earlier in the year I did quite a bit of reading about Neolithic Scotland and Ireland and there seems to have been a push, resisted by incumbent academic archaeologists and perhaps beginning with Alexander Thom, of outsiders into archaeology using tools and techniques archaeologists had never and would never have considered. Thom, an engineer by trade, speculated that there was what has been referred to as a "megalithic yard" thanks to a great number of measurements he took of stone circles (going to far as to sail to islands where little known circles stood) that appeared to cluster around integral values.

There's a lot more available in that vein if you dig around (e.g. they appear to have knowledge of a number of platonic solids, their agriculture-focused diet caused them to shrink compared to their hunting and gathering ancestors), and I would probably like to see some speculation about that period in history.
 

Kahr

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Definitely the colonization of Siberia. Either the early one or the building of the Trans-Siberian Railway.
I want to have "Easterns" with lawless cossacks and primitive but noble Savages. (Evenks, Tuvans)
Maybe even with shaman magic.
 

deuxhero

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Meiji era Japan.

The rapid modernization, nationalism, people clinging to tradition to their death, and the civil war are just perfect material for a setting.
 

Neanderthal

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I could list loads i'd like to see but lets be real, who the fuck'll make em? Rare as rockin horse shit for a dev to set a game in an unusual setting, even more rare to see an authentic un, and when it comes to details an unpleasantness o setting you'll not find a dev whose got balls to implement it. Established pederasty o Spartan state, rape o Viking raiders, any o real sick shit that you read about bein done in Middle Ages that makes Game of Thrones look tame in comparison.

No vast majority o players don't want an historical setting, neither do devs, they want modern world wi a bit o flavour, an cutesy Joss Whedon characters bantering wi each other while laughing peasants feast an make merry in their perfect world.
 

HeroicBloodshed

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Ancient persia would be interesting as fuck.

RwkU0hF.jpg

o2i9ZG4.jpg

mdtuRdo.jpg

Place was filled with sprawling mega-structures, huge cities, conquests, civil wars and scheming j00s.
There are also really interesting mythologies pre-Zoroaster.

Also this is when it was filled with aryans and wasn't desert wasteland.
 

Mr. Pink

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PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
You're not going to start with the downfall of the Minoan civilization at the hands of Mycenaean? :decline:
minoan_680_4.jpg

Knossos_fresco_women.jpg

Women wore robes that had short sleeves and layered flounced skirts. The robes were open to the navel, allowing their breasts to be left exposed.[57] Women also had the option of wearing a strapless fitted bodice. The patterns on clothes emphasized symmetrical geometric designs. Given the fragility of organic materials, other forms of dress may have been worn of which no archeological evidence exists.

:M
 

Mr. Pink

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PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I'm disappointed that there is no good RPG/strategy heist game. The mechanics of pulling off a heist are conductive to fun games; each member has a specific job/specialty, objectives to complete, point system for unnecessary destruction, dangerous NPC law enforcement, buying gear, ect.

 

sullynathan

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Wasn't prince of persia set in ancient persia? Could have sworn that the first Ass Creed game was also in the middle east.
 

Hoodoo

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an xcom type cold war game where you control a cell? tactical group? variety of different types of spies that have to deal with inter departmental intrigues while doing ops would be cool
 

Kev Inkline

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A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Kev Inkline
Isn't that Clandestine?
Thanks for the tip :). It seems almost there, but not quite. As I think cold war was at its most calm state at mid 90s, and also I would like the technology be less advanced - think of late 50s to early 80s technology.
 
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sser

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Pre-1950s "Gangster" strategy games. Basically, more of Gangsters: Organized Crime, but perhaps with its characters better fleshed out -- like they grow and get better, you gain an inner circle, etc. Gangsters had a little too much anonymity. Omerta failed me so hard it still stings. :|

Western, but more precisely, in a Strategy-RPG vein with an emphasis on realism. My dream game is something akin to a mix of Fallout and Jagged Alliance 2. I've thought about it enough to where I've essentially designed it already. If I ever win the lottery I'm 100% jumping into development :lol:

Vietnam War games also seem lacking. I think the Red Orchestra 2 guys are making one which is pretty cool, but I'd really like to see some strategy games.

WWI is lacking. Battlefield 1 does not count.

I'm disappointed that there is no good RPG/strategy heist game. The mechanics of pulling off a heist are conductive to fun games; each member has a specific job/specialty, objectives to complete, point system for unnecessary destruction, dangerous NPC law enforcement, buying gear, ect.



There's a few strategy heist games on Steam, but they're all pretty mediocre. You could also go old school and play the SWAT2 "terrorist" campaign. It's a genre that definitely feels untapped as far as strategy games go.
 

Urthor

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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
India probably counts. Mughal conquest, rise of the Sikhs, pretty much all of it has barely even been touched ever, even in historical fiction, outside of that one Total War expansion afaik
 
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an xcom type cold war game where you control a cell? tactical group? variety of different types of spies that have to deal with inter departmental intrigues while doing ops would be cool

Have you played Hammer & Sickle (game in the Silent Storm engine, same great combat, but with a much greater crpg element, with huge C&C). You're a Russian agent sent across the Berlin demilitarised zone to investigate intel on nazi subservices operating in the US occupational zone. For all you know, it could be the US behind it, or the French, or the West Germans. One of your first joinable NPCs is a US medic, and she's as clueless and disturbed by the news as you are. You end up gathering a party of various national alliegences, plus a few revolutionaries and crooks for good measure - but all of you are either operating under cover of plausible deniability, or by having abandoned the chain of command, and so every military in the divided territories of Berlin is hostile unless you're well disguised (and beating a military convey head-on is every bit as crazy-hard as it should be).

After the first few areas, you realise that you have a finite time limt (time passes when you travel or rest) to solve a conspiracy that aims to play the various powers off against each other and create a nuclear WW3.

It's refreshingly difficult to win without spoilers, despite having multiple paths to victory, and multiple paths around most solutions. And the difficulty pretty much always makes sense - it's very rarely 'you forgot to put the rabbit foot in the foot-shaped hole back in Bavaria' type of adventure-game logic - just a cruel time limit, limited resources that make it difficult to just rush through, and an actual mystery you need to solve that you won't beat simply by getting led by the nose from one region to the next.
 

Hoodoo

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sounds great. was imagining pretty much that except with maybe a little Delta Green thrown in.
 
Joined
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Pre-1950s "Gangster" strategy games. Basically, more of Gangsters: Organized Crime, but perhaps with its characters better fleshed out -- like they grow and get better, you gain an inner circle, etc. Gangsters had a little too much anonymity. Omerta failed me so hard it still stings. :|

Western, but more precisely, in a Strategy-RPG vein with an emphasis on realism. My dream game is something akin to a mix of Fallout and Jagged Alliance 2. I've thought about it enough to where I've essentially designed it already. If I ever win the lottery I'm 100% jumping into development :lol:

Vietnam War games also seem lacking. I think the Red Orchestra 2 guys are making one which is pretty cool, but I'd really like to see some strategy games.

WWI is lacking. Battlefield 1 does not count.

I'm disappointed that there is no good RPG/strategy heist game. The mechanics of pulling off a heist are conductive to fun games; each member has a specific job/specialty, objectives to complete, point system for unnecessary destruction, dangerous NPC law enforcement, buying gear, ect.



There's a few strategy heist games on Steam, but they're all pretty mediocre. You could also go old school and play the SWAT2 "terrorist" campaign. It's a genre that definitely feels untapped as far as strategy games go.


Far enough removed from the era that I can leak this without fear of anyone caring enough to trace me and sue. But just in case, I'm a known bull-shitter, talking about a purely hypothetical situation.

When I first graduated, I spent my articles year in the 'big commercial law' shite. It was nepotism more than talent - my grades were impeccable, but the same could be said for at least 200-500 applicants, considering these fims hire from entire hemispheres. I'd been in a play, as the younger love interest of a woman who could have been really something if she'd started acting before her mid-40s - too talented for community theatre, and she must have been stunning in her day, still very 'Mrs Robinson' then (and I'm talking from the perspective of a 22 yr old - my tastes have aged with me, and no doubt I'd find the equivalent person straight-up hot at my current age). She'd taken a 'sort-of-permanent-vacation' from Big Law, but giving up her civil litigation senior partnership in favour of becoming their HR recruiter. Yes, she stuck her tongue in during the kissing scenes, despite my condascending explanation that you don't actually need to do that on stage, because the audience is watching your hands and body pressing together, not your actual kissing. I've always been half-poised between thinking its egotism and obviousness to conclude that that's why I got offered a spot there without having put in an application.

Only stayed there 12 months before fleeing to hippy-commune-Legal-Aid-law, and I was far too junior (for that kind of firm - one reason why I went to the small end of town is that you actually get to do real cases, straight away) to do anything but sort documents into files, marking them as 'relevant evidence', 'privileged', etc and occasionally bringing something to the attention of my supervisor (and yes, in those places it really is 'supervisor' - it's cubicles and internal supervision, where even the mid-ranking partners get shitty offices worse than what a small firm would give their newbiest of noobs).

I worked on one case involving a lawsuit from a bank, against its provider of electronic and human security and intel. You see, very few bank robberies take place guns-a-blazing these days - not with all the bullet-proof glass, the auto-shutting doors that spring from the floor and trap everyone until the police arrive, and the time locks on safes that don't even carry real cash anyway because that stuff is off-site or underground with nothing so obvious as a 'safe' to give its location away. So modern bank robberies don't immediately invite police or media attention, unless the banks report the money as stolen.

And why the fuck would they? Their entire business is in keeping your money secure, and their liquidity beyond doubt. If someone actually manages to pull off a heist, they sue the security company under cover of binding confidential arbitration agreements, if that - usually they'll just lt go, and maybe take 'other' steps to recover their money if they know the culprit (not even illegal steps - just make business really really hard, because nobody anywhere wants to take their deposits or give them loans for some reason, unless of their own kind generosity they donate back roughly what was taken.

But the case I worked on, was one where the thieves flat out got away with it, in a manner that I thought simply didn't exist anymore. The basis of the lawsuit was that the security company had ultra-leet (lasers, human guards, one-way mirrors, heat detectors, motion detectors, shit that makes Deus Ex look backwards...and all of it was aimed at keeping people out. If you were already inside the bank when the doors closed, you could theoretically avoid tripping any alarms until you reached the exit doors.

Ever seen the movie 'Inside Man'. Hypothetically, from a known bull-shitter, who can't even remember such an old case to give any reliable details about it, and was far too junior to know anyway....yeah, that film, Inside Man...:)
 

Hoodoo

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not a historical setting but any game where you start off as a grunt and have to rise in the ranks in a military would be cool
vietnam setting would work well actually

lots of chance for c&c in moral or tactical situations. interesting combat with a variety of terrain. maybe you dont start off as a grunt and be a green officer leading your a squad, but, screw up too much/be a pussy and your platoon frags you. or, be a grunt fng, fail too many charisma checks and get fragged. maybe you make a faux paus and have to facedown some Killer in camp early-game, but you cool so instead being fragged you gain a mentor. mostly i would enjoy a game with the arbitrariness of military life mixed in with all the regular c&c stuff. have a good char, 2nd tour, seen some shit, uh oh fell into a spike pit, looks like your bad dude shouldnt of fragged that smart fng who was looking to be a promising scout, even though he got Denis killed. or have napalm called down on you. or catch a stray for a crit. or your gun jams and you get sent back home to end your life as a degenerate amputee heroin addict. or, friend(s) die to shitty leadership of some uppity nco fresh out of westpoint, squad comes to you saying we want to frag him. what do? if you arent a bad enough dude can you survive a court martial cause your a smartypants? are you an insane ear taking psycopath or can you benefit your squad with jokes for morale while being an excellent scout? do you loot bodies, even with that uppity nco around? r&r's coming up soon. do you kill women, knowing from previous playthroughs that sometimes they will shiv or kamikaze your squad? your radio guy gets exploded and with him goes your comm and maps, your lost, low on supplies and deep in gook territory; the fng you have is freaking out, crying, wailing at shadows, do you kill him? do you take debuffs from the psyche trauma of the act? what kind of events happen on r&r?
if you balanced the psychological dynamics of a military squad with the merciless nature of warfare could make a cool game.
maybe something like expedition: conquistador except not shit
 

WhiteGuts

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Roman era, maybe with a preference for Caesar's rise to power/end of the republic. Ever since watching Rome it's kinda my favorite under exploited setting..
 
Self-Ejected

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Wasn't prince of persia set in ancient persia? Could
have sworn that the first Ass Creed game was also in the middle east.

Even the idea of Ass Creed was inspired by an local assassin group in Iran.


Ancient Persia is interesting only if you add fantasy elements of Shahnameh to it. There are giants, dragons, weird flying creatures and lots of cool stuff like this
250px-J.F.Bertuch-Fabelwesen2.JPG

07KHAN.jpg
 

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