Best unexplored historical settings

[pippin]

Every medieval bestiary is crazy as fuck, crpgs would strongly benefit if they used those instead of your average d&d monsters.

 

[xxxCatholicKillahxxx]

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

Check out Unrest and Kim although both are set in times different from the ones you mentioned. Don't know if you fancy the gameplay.

 

[pippin]

Unrest is more of a CYOA than a crpg if I remember correctly.

 

[JarlFrank]

Every medieval bestiary is crazy as fuck, crpgs would strongly benefit if they used those instead of your average d&d monsters.

This is from a travel novel, the Travels of John Mandeville, written in England (I think original language was Latin) and translated into many European languages because it was quite popular.
This here is a German translation.

This was presented as an actual travel story. As in, some guy related his journeys to the holy land, as well as stories of countries beyond that, further to the east.
The book mentions many insanely weird things, but all of it is presented as fact and all these fictional countries are presented as really existing.

The text in this picture says (rough translation of the High Middle German):
"In another corner of the country Dodin there are people who have no heads, and their eyes are under their arms. And on their chest they have a mouth in the shape of a horseshoe. Also there you can find people without a head who have their eyes and mouth at the back of their shoulders, above their back."

Then there's also motherfucking dog-people:

Also dragons

 

[warpig]

RUS inspired setting with some fantasy mixed in

 

[Neanderthal]

I wunt mind playin as a young Armenius in Rome, holding tight to his hatred, learnin all the Romans tricks and seemin like a good dog until one bloody day in Wald of Germania.

 

[Kahr]

I wunt mind playin as a young Armenius in Rome, holding tight to his hatred, learnin all the Romans tricks and seemin like a good dog until one bloody day in Wald of Germania.

Ich mag'n Hermann. Der hat's den welschen Hunden so richtig besorgt.

 

[Neanderthal]

Erm, donke miner stollen?

 

[an Administrator]

لا اله الا الله

 

[muds_animal_friend]

It is the 7th century AD. It is a time of darkness. Devastated by bubonic plague and over two decades of warfare, the crumbling Byzantine and Sassanid empires are helpless in the face of a rising evil. For out of the accursed wastelands of Arabia pours fourth an endless tide of Darkspawn Muslims.

Mohammedan Age: Origins
Just when you thought the Dark Ages couldn't get any shittier​

 

[JarlFrank]

I wunt mind playin as a young Armenius in Rome, holding tight to his hatred, learnin all the Romans tricks and seemin like a good dog until one bloody day in Wald of Germania.

Play Teudogar

 

[Zero Credibility]

It is the 7th century AD. It is a time of darkness. Devastated by bubonic plague and over two decades of warfare, the crumbling Byzantine and Sassanid empires are helpless in the face of a rising evil. For out of the accursed wastelands of Arabia pours fourth an endless tide of Darkspawn Muslims.

Mohammedan Age: Origins
Just when you thought the Dark Ages couldn't get any shittier​

I'd play that, or any game about ERE in general. The last remnant of Roman civilization, surrounded by traitorous papists and vicious kebab.

Also:

Truly they were giants that came before us, civilization is forever diminished by their loss.

 

[Santander02]

Iberian Conquest of the Americas, Expeditions: Conquistador is the only game I know of that takes place in that setting...and then they went and decided to make the sequel be about Vikings. Bah!

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

I assume you never played Seven Cities of Gold then.

 

[J1M]

How about any fantasy setting before the emergence of man.

 

[Ravel myluv]

A few ideas:

- The rise or fall of an African dictator in modern times. We could play as the main henchman. Many examples to take inspiration from, like emperor Bokassa.
- The industrial age period, but NOT in England. I swear every game set in that period has to take place in London....
- The Jeanne d'Arc reconquest of France. Similarly the reconquista in Spain. Many messianic vibes in these settings that would make great games.
- The Aeteca empire: could be first contact with the spanish, but then again exploring the civilization would be fascinating in itself.

 

[Severian Silk]

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

Any game set in the Middle East would bore the shit out of me.

As to what would make the best historical setting in an RPG? That would probably be a prehistorical setting. (Pick a continent, it's all good.)

 

[Filthy Sauce]

Any non-human setting period, in fact. One of the reasons I liked AvP2 so much is that you play as the Alien, and it is a breath of fresh air to play a non-human that actually feels like a non-human: you move at impossible speeds, you lunge across half the map, you run on walls, etc.

Playing as an actual animal is so uncommon it's the main reason I remember extremely obscure game modes like the arena you unlock when you beat Dino Crisis 2 on PS1. I even used the otherwise useless shapeshifter spells in Gothic 3 just so I could play as a wolf or velociraptor for a change. There have been a few competitive and survival games that dipped their toes into it lately, but otherwise even mediocre games like the Shelter trilogy end up being "good" only because they are in such a dead market.

I agree. I think more heads would turn towards such products if they ditched the artsy fartsy approach and replaced with something more darker and adult. Making a RPG where your a bunny sounds gay, but put it in a 'Watership Down' or Secret of NIMH setting and you have something very intersting.

Even the dreaded animaly humans can avoid the fur fag stamp of approval if the setting is done with care. Wind and the Willows come to mind as an unexplored setting.

EDIT } oops. just noticed the thread is for historical setting.

 

[Severian Silk]

Even the dreaded animaly humans can avoid the fur fag stamp of approval if the setting is done with care.

Impossible. They've got their dirty paws in everything.

 

[Azazel]

- Mongol invasion of Georgia, during which its long-warring cultures were finally united as the modern Georgian state.

- Spain under Moorish rule.

- The dying era of Ani, capital of the Armenian empire. An ancient city, filled with a thousand churches, now fallen into ruins. Lots of potential for Eastern Orthodox awesomeness:

- Bronze Age Collapse / Invasion of the Sea Peoples.
- The fuckin' Punic Wars.
- Hanno the Fuckin' Navigator

 

[Snorkack]

19th century Gentleman's Club Expedition Team simulator. Jagged Alliance meets Jules Verne.

 

[Jick Magger]

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..

Mine'd be the crisis of the third century, also known as "Shit is just FUCKED: The Century". Interesting period in which basically everything conceivable that could go wrong for the Romans, went wrong. Generals were being proclaimed emperor left, right and center for the most trivial of accomplishments, plunging the empire in to civil war, the empire was beset on all sides by hostile Germanic tribes in the west, and the Sassanid Empire in the east, decades of coin devaluation lead to hyperinflation and the economy basically collapsing, the Cyprian plague (re: small pox) broke out and killed thousands, including at least one emperor, and to top it all off, the empire finally split in three under all the civil strife, before Aurelian managed to take back these territories and claw the empire back from the precipice of ruin.

It's also an important transitional point between classic and late antiquity. The Pax Romana was now well and truly over, cities had to become smaller and wall themselves in to be able to withstand barbarian invasion, decline in trade networks and commerce forced individual provinces to become more self-sufficient and far more openly hostile towards imperial tax collection, the city of Rome itself began its steady decline in to cultural irrelevance (Diocletian famously chose to rule from Nicomedia instead, and only visited the city once just before his abdication), and the balance of power in terms of affluence and stability shifted decisively from the Western Roman Empire to the east.

 

[Lady_Error]

- Traveling the ancient silk road (like in Realms of Arkania with random encounters, survival mechanisms, etc.)
- Byzantium during the dark ages in Europe
- Assyria, Babylonia, Ancient Persia

 

[baturinsky]

19th century Gentleman's Club Expedition Team simulator. Jagged Alliance meets Jules Verne.

You mean like Renowned Explorers?

 

[Sjukob]

Definitely the history of eastern contries , since nobody gives a shit about them .

For example Russia and neighboring countries being occupied by the golden horde during 13-15 centuries .

Time of troubles 1598-1613 in Russia .

And the prerequisites and the creation of the USSR from 1901 to 1953 and how it affected the other easter europe countries . I chose this period since it was the most ferocious one .

I am sure you can find something interesting in the history of Middle-East , China , Japan and India , but I don't know anything about them .