What else is there for a game? Intrigue. Politics. Exploration. Economic expansion. Societal evolution. Ideological conflicts. The possibilities are vast.

Whatever you may think of the European powers and their foreign policies in the 16-20th centuries personally, you must admit that there is a lot of adventure material in the stories of the British and Dutch East Indian Trading Companies, the Spaniards’ trade in South American gold on the Spanish Main, the struggles for power over the High Seas and for the ancient kingdoms of Egypt, Assyria, Persia, India, China and Thailand, and so forth. Yes, battles are cool, but the trade negotiations, the explorations of new lands, the thrill and romance of exotic liaisons, the confrontation of different customs, ideas, religions, strategies, and even technologies are what predominates all the great tales and sagas. THESE are the meat and potatoes of adventure.

But you of course know this already, hence your post. What you need is resources. I feel that real-life history is MAJORLY underutilized in RPGs. A lot of people simply don’t like to read, and in these kinds of games, that reluctance really holds people back. But history books are chock full of ideas to draw upon, and since most of the stuff happened in reality (yes, I know, most history books are flawed and biased to a certain degree,) you know that the story-line can’t be too fantastic or unbelievable and will have a built-in sense of continuity.

As an added bonus, most of this info is free. Just look online or at your library. Chances are those books are not checked out already, too. And while most parents will balk at buying their kid role-playing game books even as gifts, they will usually go all out if you ask for books that are more academically inclined (it makes them feel proud to have such a ‘smart’ kid.)

Most players who don’t read history books will be amazed at your seemingly endless amount of creativity, and even those who do recognize elements will be impressed at the level of realism and depth of preparation in the game. You’ll get lots of “Raah! That guy is just like Saladin!” or “Hey, this is like the battle of Badon Hill!!” and they will be all the more interested, because it is something they can relate to.

As to which books? That depends on what you want to explore. First, however, I would start off with asking yourself the following questions:

1 What kind of setting do I want?

Try to think of real-world equivalents (or ones that are closest to them) of your created homeland (where the characters are from) and the foreign lands (where they will travel to.) There are many to choose from: Europe, India, Asia Minor, the Orient, North Africa, West Africa, East Africa, pre-European North and South Americas, etc. These are just templates from which you will draw the general ideas about your created lands. Deciding this will provide you with a number of useful tools such as:

– Basic outline of the land’s cultural practices

– Common political structures

– Realistic problems that the land faces (i.e., war with neighbors, natural challenges, civil issues, etc.)

– Type of religion(s)/myths/predominant philosophies (great details for cleric PCs)

– Technology levels/styles

– Terrain types.

– Cool and exotic languages and runes (if different from your own, of course)

– Cool (yet often obscure) historical events that you can modify and use as background history for your lands.

– Cool historical figures you can use as a template for your NPCs.

– Resource for names (both personal and place names.)

If you want RPG supplements, understanding what type of land you want will help you determine what kind of supplements to buy. If you play Dungeons and Dragons, 2nd edition has many culturally-specific resource books and campaign materials for almost any culture you can think of, from Eskimos to Zulus, from Aztec to Bedouin, from Japanese to Hindi. You name it, TSR or a clone company probably came out with resource materials for it.

Unfortunately, 2nd edition has been out of print for a while now, so you’ll have to go to conventions, second-hand shops or even E-Bay to find them. Also, the game rules need to be tweaked a bit if you wish to use 3rd or higher editions. But they are like gold to a world-building DM. As time goes on, I’m sure the flexibility of the generalized d20 system Wizards of the Coast developed will allow indie companies to explore the current vacuum in this area of game supplements.

For demi-human cultures, you have 3 different recourses,

– Make them up from scratch. Tailor made but a pain in the…

– Base them off of another culture you think they are similar too, making necessary adjustments

– Use well-established fantasy authors for resource material, of which the tons of Tolkien books and supplements are the most useful (for elves, dwarves and nasty orcsies.) Tolkien even went so far as to develop languages and alphabets for these races, with some having multiple variants.

2 What time period do I want?

Much like setting, time periods are valuable things to consider. This is especially true for you, as you mentioned that you wanted to deal with issues of technology transfers. A side issue to explore would be what sorts of impacts these transfers have on the PCs own land (socially, technologically, economically, and perhaps even philosophically.) This will also give you an idea of what types of equipment to allow as well as what classes are appropriate in any given region. From what you have listed it looks like you are shooting for a pre-medieval time period, perhaps along the lines of the Persians or the Roman Empire circa 500 BC to 500 AD? As above, with time periods, using a similar real-world culture as a model will give you an idea as to which items are appropriate and which are not in any given historical era and/or region, especially if concurrent lands have significantly differing levels of technological development.

The “Men-at-Arms” series by “Osprey Publishing” is an excellent series of books that briefly sketches out the common tools, equipment, weapons, outfits/uniforms, tactics/organization, and other military-relevant info on practically every culture, nation and time period you can imagine. Everything from Modern Turkey to Feudal Japan is catalogued. They are also nicely illustrated with color plates and drawings by artists who specialize in working on historical subjects.

With a scanner, basic paint program and a printer, these would make really nice pictures to show your players as to what kinds of people they encounter, both in terms of their cultural differences (clothes types, weapons, etc.) and even racial/phenotypical differences.

I’ve used these books extensively. Their webpage is www.ospreypublishing.com. They are a British company and can seem somewhat expensive for their size at first (as well as difficult to find locally if you live outside the UK,) but well worth the effort in getting.

3 What areas of roleplay do I want to focus on?

This stuff you’ve already got a handle on, as you’ve listed them. But look at what you’ve mentioned:

Quote:

They will be asked to travel to bordering kingdoms to build relations and trade routes. To create strong alliances with friends, and to declare war and survey the armies of enemies. To help to build a market for imports, and exports. To find and bring strange creatures and objects (including such things as horses, great eagles, crossbows, composite longbows, magical items, advanced divine and arcane magic-being clerics and mages) back to the kingdom. They may even fall into touch with the government and press for reforms, or even overthrowing the king himself.

You’ve touched on a number of points here:

• Politics
• Diplomacy/Intrigue
• Economics/Trade
• Social evolution/revolution
• Military Adventurism/Expansion

To deal with any of these issues, I would strongly suggest building an at least rudimentary understanding of each of these elements. To do this there are a number of authors who can help. But rather then going off to buy and read Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” or Clausewitz’s “On War” I would suggest going to a university bookstore and checking out the freshman undergraduate level Political Science, Philosophy, Economics and History book sections. Sociology and Social Psychology books can offer some more advanced resources, but often have very specialized terms you would need to get familiarized with before using.

The 100 level books of these subjects are best since these books tend to cover a lot of theories in compact form. This makes research cheaper, easier and takes far less time. One caveat however, go to the university bookstores only to look for titles, but don’t buy them there. These bookstores have monopolies on textbooks for students, so their prices are usually outrageously expensive (though textbooks are pricey in general.) Go online or to an off-campus used bookstore for better deals. Or, if you are a college student yourself, wait till around early June and late November and put up fliers in the respective colleges (esp. the Business and LAS colleges) stating your willingness to buy certain books. Students will flock to you trying to unload their books, and if you offer even $5 more than the bookstore, they will be happy to sell them to you.

Below I have broken down the sections of interest you had mentioned and have given some authors you might want to check out for more in-depth research. But unless these things interest you personally, I would only get the condensed student versions of their works.

Politics

Yet another reason to choose and research a real-world example, as there is usually an abundance of literature dealing with such political issues of the land in question that you can draw from for resource material. Some nations are better documented then others, but most will have at least a cursory exploration of such things as the political organization of the region. Is it a constitutional republic or a hereditary monarchy? Is it tribal, feudal or confederated?

To deal with these issues, you will really need to brush up on political theory. Since you have already expressed an interest in this issue, it shouldn’t be too dry for you. I suggest finding authors that are local to the region you are interested in. But for more general theory, try Aristotle’s “Politics” and Plato’s “Republic.” Machiavelli’s “The Prince” and “Discourses” are good books to give you an idea of what works in monarchies and republics, respectively. Guys like Hobbes talk about the realities of government and Locke deals more with ideals of what they are ‘supposed’ to be like.

Then there are the social revolutionaries. These guys come in all stripes: Voltaire, Rousseau, Paine, Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson, Marx, Lenin, Mao, Guevara, etc. Some are more theoretical, some more practical, some more revolutionary. All offer various insights on the realities and ideals of various political systems.

Politics is a multifaceted area, one that can encompass all the other areas below. But in order not to get bogged down with tons of books, I would suggest going to a university bookstore and checking out the undergraduate PoliSci books that usually give really condensed “Reader’s Digest” versions and selections of these guys, as well as some of the prevailing critiques and analysis of what they were talking about, intended for someone who doesn’t have either the time or money to invest in reading a library’s worth of books.

University bookstores are usually insanely expensive, so just go there to find good titles and then look off campus for the discount/used textbook stores, or go online. June and November are good times to pick these types of books up cheap from graduating freshmen who want to unload their textbooks. This source is less reliable, but often REAL cheap as the bookstores usually give them virtually nothing for end of semester sellbacks.

Diplomacy/Intrigue

Henry Kissinger wrote a book called “Diplomacy” that is a real good (but kind of long) history of the art of diplomacy. The political science section of any decent bookstore should have this and other similar titles. History books also abound with famous examples of cool diplomatic coups that can be good resource material.

Here too, it becomes necessary to have a firm understanding of what your realms’ political and social systems are, as diplomacy and intrigue are the manipulation of political and social systems by individuals and groups. If you are unsure of the norms of the court, how can you manipulate or influence members of that court, let alone encourage the players to do so?

Economics/Trade

Here again you might want to stick with history books, as most economic theory is quite involved and largely useless to the medieval fantasy gamer. Some authors I can think of that might offer some relevant info would be Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations,” Karl Marx’s “Capital, vol. 1,” David Landes’s “The Wealth and Poverty of Nations” and maybe Max Weber’s “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.” The reason I mention these titles is because they deal with the evolution of economies from medieval to modern, and why some nations did better than others. The points of interest for you would be the earlier sections on critiquing the medieval economies and means of production/manufacturing techniques (giving a more solid idea of technological issues and limitations) and the inevitable social issues these economies and their changes wrought. Again, I would suggest the condensed versions. Unless you’re a hardcore economist, Smith and Marx are hard as hell to read and pretty involved.

Social evolution/revolution

The fields of sociology and anthropology (for ancient cultures) would be good here, as well as history again. The biggest problem with this is that most books written specifically about certain social revolutions tend to be highly partisan, but can still be useful if you can get past the rhetoric. Studying the American, French, Russian and Chinese revolutions are especially useful to a DM. Machiavelli’s works, “Prince” and “Discourses” are good too.

Here again the classic philosophers are good, but can get quickly overwhelming. A good general sociology or anthropology book on the region your realm is to be based off of would be useful. The earlier mentioned Men-at-Arms series also has some good condensed social breakdowns of the various cultures, as does the various 2nd edition AD&D campaign supplements.

What sorts of social ranking systems are used? Are warriors like Samurai, very high up socially but virtual slaves to their lords? Or are they like the Vikings, where each warrior of a family or clan swears loyalty to a chieftain or king, but still has rights and a measure of equality with his leader in some things?

These things matter. They will set up the relationships between PCs and NPCs, which will go far in establishing the mood of the land. Another reason to establish clear rules for social norms is to drive home the differences their land has with the foreign land(s) they explore and try to establish contact with. Have the players play a few games in the PCs homeland so they get used to its norms. Then let them leave to the new lands. They will naturally act upon their learned social norms. When the foreign peoples act differently, conflicts and other challenges arise often over trivial matters, driving home the point that they are in a different land, and the foreign feel of the place will be established. This alone offers tons of opportunities for roleplaying.

Military Adventurism/Expansion

This is an area I myself am trying to get a better understanding of. There are two things to consider, basic tactical theory and more specific military organization based on region and era. Again, the Osprey Publishing Man-at-Arms series is a phenomenal help. They offer common strategies and tactics of the armies in question, pictures, drawings and artifacts (if ancient) of common weapons used by them and often even diagrams of the more famous battles. As I said before, they are expensive (usually around $15) but small (approx. 40-50 pages) but well worth the price and effort of finding.

Another idea is to get in touch with the ROTC guys at your local college. They won’t let you take any of their courses unless your ROTC, but you can usually still buy their materials and books. Here you are usually limited to what the campus bookstore has to offer.

Literature in this area is often hard for mainstream people to get. You usually have to look among the ‘Soldier of Fortune’ crowd to easily find military science resource materials, though the war-gaming people at conventions usually have some excellent materials. Other places to check out are Paladin Press and Delta Press. Both have color catalogues and their own websites. Just skip past the junk that doesn’t interest you and head straight to the military science sections. These publication houses often buy stuff directly from militaries across the globe. The downside is most of it is usually modern theory and written in the language of the nation that the book comes from. Still, the basics of military tactics is somewhat universal.

And of course, you can always return to the classics. Machiavelli’s or Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” are good, easy readings (esp. Tzu.) Von Clausewitz’s “On War” is useful but dense. Military analysis on the American Civil War is an area overflowing with titles. Despite its relative modernity, it is a good resource for understanding how troop movements interact with terrain. I swear every hill and streambed of Virginia and Pennsylvania must be charted out and diagramed because of that war.

4 How will I represent this stuff in the game?

Here are some things that will be useful:

• Miniatures
• Scenery
• Maps
• Pictures
• Background Info
• A dedicated website
• Other props

Miniatures are great because not only are they tailored to the individual PC, but they also require the player to invest some time and energy into their PCs development. This will go a long way in preventing the player from just trying to get his character to commit suicide because of some trifling inconvenience the PC is burdened with. They are also great visual cues and markers for many types of actions, not just combat. The Warhammer line of products offers great help for both miniatures and scenery. Here is their webpage: http://www.games-workshop.com/

Scenery is awesome, but often involved. Our group is still struggling to make better use of it. You can buy this stuff pre-made for you, but it is usually expensive as hell. Even the products the gaming companies offer are still expensive and limiting. For truly excellent scenery building, look outside the RPG community and over to the miniature wargamers and the model railroaders. These guys are usually older, more experienced and more than willing to answer any questions you may have. And their experience will save you time and money.

Maps are easy to make and really facilitate game play. All you need is some paper, color pencils and perhaps a protractor if you want to get really fancy. Or you can use a simple paint program to design them. One bit of advice, reference real maps to get an understanding of how different types of environments interact with one another to make more logical and realistic settings.

Pictures are also a real help, as Turbo pointed out. No matter how good you describe something verbally, a picture can add a sense of depth mere words cannot. But avoid common pictures and attaching names all the time. Too often just using a picture out of the monster manual gets players thinking about stats, rather than environment and experiences. If you want to use the pictures, scan them from the book and crop out the extraneous text. Wizards of the Coast also has art sections from their books here: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/arch/ag. The internet is chock full of pictures to use. Not just from other RPGs either. Lots of cool landscapes, structures and people can be found from artists, from modern to ancient. And period/regional art will help add authenticity and mood to the game.

Background info is useful not just to the DM, but also for the players as well. They will more likely roleplay if they have some info to work with. Write out histories and prejudices that the people of a realm would have and present these as facts to the PCs. Give some background history and tenants of the major religion(s) of the area. Environment, too, will shape their attitudes. Extreme climates often produce extreme cultures. Rugged, isolated climes produce rugged, independent-minded types. These are just templates of course, PCs are free to be who and what they want (within your discretion,) but if you give them stuff to work with, they will try harder to immerse themselves into the role. Keep journals, too. History of action offers many plot hooks for the DM and adds to a sense of continuity for the players. Also, history can justify consequences suffered by the rasher players.

A dedicated website is a useful repository for information. Maps, rule alterations, background info, pictures, game journal entries and even personal sections for the players can be stored here. There are a number of servers you can use. I personally use Yahoo Geocities. Its free, secure, well-built and has minimal ads. All you need to do is sign up for an account, which is also free, and requires no other email address, credit card number or anything like that. Here is their site: http://geocities.yahoo.com/home/. There are a number of other free sites too, this is just the one I use and feel confident enough about to recommend.

Other props can be cool, or can just get annoying. Music sets good mood, if it’s done right. Stay away from the edgier, loud modern stuff and anything with understandable lyrics. Music performs two functions for the DM, setting up ambient mood and drowning out background noises or real-life. But if the wrong music is used, it will only create distractions, not buffer against them. Classical or Dark Ambient (a form of electronica-type genre) are best, especially for D&D. Video game and movie soundtracks offer music designed to do just that. Using mp3s on a computer allows for great flexibility in this.

Lighting needs to be good, but not too good. It’s hard to get people who are sitting in a sunny, well-lit living room in overstuffed chairs to imagine themselves in a dank, dark dungeon. There are too many outside distractions fighting against their imaginations. Isolated rooms where there is little traffic is best. Only have enough light so that people won’t either go blind or trip and break their neck, but lots of shadows around them forces them to focus on the game and adds to the mood.

Avoid weapon props, but stuff like homemade parchment, pictures, maps, coins, gems and other props can work even if they just lie around. To make parchment, just take regular paper (without lines is best) and soak it in coffee for about 30 seconds then set it out flat to dry. When it is dry, rip around the edges for that rough look. When you get good enough, you can use a cigarette lighter to further ‘age’ it, but that requires a bit more skill.

I know there is tons of reading I am suggesting, but it will save you time and effort in the long run. Because you want to get away from hack-and-slash, you need to develop everything that your players will interact with. It’s hard enough to just learn about a new society, but you have to build one. More than that, you have to build at least two, the PCs homeland, and the foreign one they travel to. If you don’t make use of the elements that real cultures provide, you’ll just have to make them up yourself. And that is even more work, as well as being in danger of being inconsistent. This doesn’t mean you can’t innovate or change. These are just template societies, not strict laws of what can and cannot happen in your lands.

One last time, history books are a creative world-building DMs best friend.