rust

Continental Europe has little use for such commodities in 1200, and the Hanseatic League is not yet the economic power that it will become in the Renaissance.

I thought so, too, and therefore did a little research, with a result that really surprised me. If

the sources are correct, the colony could even charge higher prices for some of the goods it

has to offer.

To quote Wikipedia:

Some medieval Europeans believed narwhal tusks to be the horns from the legendary unicorn.

As these horns were considered to have magic powers, such as the ability to cure poison and

melancholia, Vikings and other northern traders were able to sell them for many times their

weight in gold.

And an especially nice example for the use of walrus ivory:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_chessmen

When I started working on this setting, I expected that the economy would become a major

problem, forcing the colony on Thule to remain a quite miserable and poor place to live. How-

ever, looking at the Harnmaster price lists, this is not the case - in fact, the colonists obvious-

ly can lead comparatively comfortable lives, although in a harsh environment.

Harnmaster gives a price of 150 d for a walrus tusk and about 750 d for a narwhale "horn"

(and a lot of man-days of food for the carcasses), and for example 24 d for a seal skin.

On the other hand, the resources the colony has to import are rather inexpensive. Iron costs

only 2 d per 20 pounds, charcoal 3 d per 50 pounds, salt 8 d per 20 pounds (at about 150 %

of the normal prices for these commodities). A crossbow comes at 60 d, a sword at 180 d, a

(non-illuminated) manuscript at 30 d, a sheep at 12 d, a riding horse at 360 d.

Well, and wood, the rarest resource, can be had for free on the "Forest Coast" (Labrador),

four days by sea from the colony.

Even with some more changes to include the costs of the transport by sea and the profit mar-

gin of the merchant, sealing and whaling obviously is a sufficient (although somewhat dange-

rous) way to keep the economy of the colony going well.

Hi I'm Simon,

been lurking.

Hi Simon, welcome here.

I have now finished the first draft of the "campaign plan" with the background events from 1240

to 1250. It seems there will be quite a lot of action going on in the background, with the battles

on the Newa and on the Peipus Lake, the Mongol invasion, and all that.

The first major uprising of the Prussians also falls into these years, and this one could become

an adventure, for example with the characters escorting Prussian settlers from Thorn to Danzig

through an area mostly held by the Prussian insurgents - definitely not an easy task.

Another adventure will probably happen in 1246, the year when the Pope will finally decide to

dissolve the order, its Grand Master and his remaining followers will be imprisoned by the Teu-

tonic Order, and the characters will have to rescue them and to take them to Thule.

Over there on Thule the campaign will include the first hunting expedition for walrus ivory, in-

cluding the first encounter with the natives of Thule, and another first expedition to the Forest

Coast (of North America) with an opportunity to discover the ruins of a Norse settlement there,

and thereby the fate of the Norse settlers of Thule (relocated to North America and there killed

by the Naskapi warriors).

Have you been able to get into the work ground yet?.... other were having issues with the password I have written the Admin

I have just tried it, and I also have problems with the password.

My plan is to lump the concept of citizen in the Romano-British background skills and have it reflected in the skills. How does that sound?

As far as the citizen concepts of Hierarchy I feel it can fall under Scholar, Merchant or Noble

Yep, this should work if your definition of Noble includes the bureaucratic positions that are not

hereditary.

As for the Backgrounds, I would add the (post-) Roman "citizen", which would include the civic

officials in the Roman tradition that - as far as I know - still existed in parts of Britain at the ti-

me.

After some more research I think the best date to start this campaign could be 1240 AD.

The Pope in office at this time, the one who sends the inquisition to investigate my setting's

order, would be Gregor IX - the perfect man for the job, because he indeed created the Pa-

pal Inquisition, persecuted what he considered heretics, and condemned those Franciscans

who followed the teachings of Joachim of Fiore. After this Pope's death there was an inter-

regnum, and in 1243 Innocent IV became Pope. He more or less continued the same policy,

making it plausible for him to dissolve the order later in the campaign.

The other historical personality that could become very important for this setting would be

the King of Norway, and between 1240 and 1263 this was Hakon IV Hakonsson. During his

reign Iceland signed a treaty with Norway to become a part of the kingdom, and Greenland

also accepted the Norwegian rule - again a perfect fit for the setting, requiring only very few

modifications from real world history to alternate campaign history.

How does the the insurgency campaign going?

Unfortunately it has been shelved, I was unable to convince the players to try this somewhat

military campaign. In fact, we have currently a "No More SF" climate here, and after some

smaller Call of Cthulhu settings and thelike our next real campaign will almost certainly be a

pseudo-historical medieval one, the Thule campaign I am currently working on and that is

described in another thread.

I hope that the Insurgency and some of the other settings I have been working on will one day

be completed and played, but this is unlikely to happen in the near future.

First of all, there were no lay governors in the Amber Coast. All newfound colonies were under the rule of Prince-Bishops, each of which appointed by the King of the colonizing nation . Why should Thule be an exception?

I thought about this, but I am still not sure how to handle it, because there seem to be two pro-

blems: The Thule colony does not really have a colonizing nation as its background, the Grand

Master acts without any authorization or mission, and since these knights of the order are un-

der suspicion of heresy, it could be quite difficult to find someone able and willing to appoint a

bishop - who then would immediately come into conflict with the order, the Pope, or both.

As it is, the Grand Master probably could declare himself the prince of an independent state on

Thule, where the land is currently not owned by anyone else (although Norway probably has so-

me claims), and then start to look for a (not too) powerful monarch as the colony's protector.

Since Thule is a bit far from the Holy Roman Empire, the King of Norway could be a better choi-

ce than the King of Germany or the Emperor, and this would also avoid a conflict over potential

Norwegian claims on Thule (and offer an excellent opportunity for a diplomatic adventure to

hammer out the details of the treaty between the colony and Norway).

Thank you for the idea with the City Law, perhaps a Colony Law or "Thule Law" would be the

solution here.

For my Thule setting I took a look at some roleplaying material for the design and description

of medieval societies, to complement the RuneQuest II Empires supplement I intend to use as

the setting's "background metagame".

Two of the sources I found seem good enough to mention them here, because they could be

useful for others too.

The first one is "A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe (Second Edition)". It was written

for the d20 System, but almost all of the ideas and informations are generic enough to be used

for all systems, including BRP. And it truly covers every element of a medieval society that co-

mes to my mind, from the manor to the kingdom, including magic and religion. A part I espe-

cially like is the building system in the appendix.

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=55417&filters=0_0_40050_0

The second one is "Grain Into Gold". It deals with a medieval / fantasy economy, from the sta-

ple food up to the costs of goods and services of all kind. It is completely generic, a tool to build

a plausible economic system from the basic informations about a setting. The text is sometimes

slightly dry (economy tends to be ...), but the charts in the back also contain all the necessary

informations (including an almost endless example of a price list), just without all the explana-

tions.

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=13113&it=1&filters=0_0_40050_0

If you are interested in the details of a medieval society and its economy, and how to design

some for your games, I would recommend to take a look at these two PDFs, at least for my

little project they already proved to be quite useful - in the case of "Magical Medieval Society"

even extremely useful.

Actually, this is a very, very interesting "what if" scenario ...

Thank you very much.

While still seeking for ways a wise Grand Master could choose to make conflicts between the

order and the Baltic settlers somewhat less probable, I also thought of symbols, in this case

of a symbol that underlines that the order is an important part of the colony, but it is not the

colony.

One way could be to use different coats of arms and flags for the order and for the colony.

This could also help if the order should indeed be condemned as heretic and dissolved by the

Pope (according to my campaign timeline, this will almost certainly happen), the order would

"disappear" and a "state" with a similar, but different symbol would "appear".

This could also reflect a distinction between a leader of the order, the Grand Master, and an

administrator of the colony (the Governor ?), who "only" happens to be a member of the or-

der.

The coat of arms of the order is in a previous post, the one below could be the coat of arms

of the Thule colony.

Another, minor but helpful fact could be that the German craftsmen of the order will have to

accept the children of Baltic settlers as apprentices, simply because the colony will need more

craftsmen and therefore apprentices than the German families alone could provide, especially

since the children of the noble German knights will hardly learn a craft.

And then there is the "education system". With the heretic Franciscan Spirituals that accompa-

nied the order to Thule, the colony has the "manpower" for a (very) small monastery, including

an equally small school for (some of) the children of the colony, including Baltic children (pro-

vided their parents can be persuaded to send them to this school).

Finally there is the "constitution" of the colony (I do not know a good medieval sounding word

for this), which could give at least some rights and power to a Baltic "colony elder" elected by

the Baltic settlers.

Again, just some ideas, not written in stone, for what could come to the mind of a prudent lea-

der of the order.

Anyway, there's an easy compromise: a list/table from which character gifts can be randomly rolled, hand-picked, or assigned as the GM pleases.

Indeed, and in the end my favourite method would probably be something like "Roll two and

choose one of them".

Thanks to the many excellent ideas from the people here on BRP Central my Thule setting does

begin to look like something useful.

The biggest remaining problem I am aware of is the one pointed out by RosenMcStern, the fact

that the pagan Baltic peasants are not very likely to accept the rulership of the Christian German

knights for ever.

Low taxes and the promise of their own land for all Baltic settlers, the need to cooperate to cre-

ate and run a viable colony in the harsh environment of Thule and the existence of a real or as-

sumed common enemy can help to suppress that conflict, but they are no real solution, and a

wise Grand Master of the order should have a better plan.

Such a plan could be to adopt at least some of the Baltic settlers into the order, for example to

make each of them who made an outstanding contribution to the development of the colony a

knight and member of the order.

This would also help to keep the number of knights on an acceptable level and to bring fresh

blood into the order - with a very literal meaning: The children of the new Baltic nobility of the

order could marry the children of the German knights, which would prevent inbreeding among

the few German noble families and create a more acceptable leadership of mixed descent with

a steadily increasing Baltic element.

The question is whether to allow the players to pick their gifts or assign them randomly. I think I'd go the latter route myself.

I think I would let the players choose such a gift. A gift of that kind could make some difference

for the early life of a character before the start of the campaign, and a random determination

could therefore well collide with the player's character concept.

Also, I never heard the names Livestonia and Talmark.

Kalevala is also a somewhat uncommon name for Finland, I think. As far as I know it means

"Land of the Heroes", but it is normally only used for the Finnish national epic, not for their

homeland.

The survivors could well lead the Order back to the settlements in order to refound them.

As it stands now, I have the abandonment of the settlements as a mystery - the Norse settlers

"just disappeared". The story behind it is a conflict with the Inuit of Greenland that finally made

the already difficult situation unbearable and caused the last Norse settlers to relocate to the

North American coast, where their last settlement was destroyed by the natives there.

This introduces a mystery that should make the player characters nervous (what happened to

their "predecessors" in this strange new land ?), includes the option to use the Greenland Inuit

as enemies if the characters fail their attempts at diplomacy and trade (in fact there are two

Inuit cultures on my Thule, a more peaceful and a rather aggressive one - the characters will

hopefully learn "who is who"), and gives the characters something interesting to discover on

the North American coast (the destroyed settlement of the Norse).

However, this is very much still a work in progress, so things may still change.

Thank you very much for these informations.

It seems that the pieces of this puzzle begin to fit very nicely, and that I have to rewrite the

real world history much less than expected to get the setting I imagined.

The biggest changes remain my fictional Pruthenic Order with its colony on Thule, made pos-

sible by the early abandonment of the Norse settlements there, and these changes seem to

be at least somewhat "pseudo-historically plausible", within the "bandwidth" of a possible hi-

storical development.

Of course, this is not really important for a roleplaying setting, but as a lazy referee I prefer

to stay close to the real world history, because this allows me to use much of the available

sources unchanged and so prevents me from re-writing major parts of history and making

all the unavoidable blunders this usually includes.

Probably way later than CoAC, but still interesting (and nicely drawn!)

If the red lines are borders between independent political entities, it is not that much later

than CoAC, because the Principality of Chernigov became a part of Lithuania at the end of

the 13th century. Moreover, I do not see Lithuania on this map, and not long after CoAC

it had absorbed so many of the smaller Slavic principalities that it should be there.

Anyway, thank you for a nice map.

So, we've got the following conflicts:

...

I think you could also add a conflict between those Britons who cherished the Roman "lifestyle" and

institutions, probably mostly in the previously Roman cities, and those Britons who preferred the

traditional "old ways" and wanted to re-introduce them, probably mostly the somewhat more rural

nobility.

..... duh I feel like a dunce now.

Welcome to the club, not so many pages back I had to ask what the Y Gododdin was, because

my brain strictly refused to provide an information it surely had stored somewhere ...

A good idea, but unfortunately my players would probably not buy it. Therefore I will not go

that far, only a part of the way: The Norse settlements on Thule were abandoned after a

conflict with the natives there caused the survivors to move to North America, where they

expected to find better conditions - not knowing that the natives over there were a lot more

advanced and better organized than those of Thule, and easily eradicated the new Norse co-

lony.

Does is treat the Quadrivium as a single skill that replaces the four mathematics? And does the Trivium do the same with Law, Medicine and Theology?

The Quadrivium is one skill that covers Mathematics, Geometry, Astronomy and Music, the

Trivium is a second skill that covers Grammar, Rhetorics and Dialectics, together they are the

Septem Artes Liberales / Seven Free Arts taught as the basic scientific education at the medie-

val universities.

The Quadrivium also covers the basics of physics, architecture and engineering, the Trivium

includes the basics of diplomacy and literature.

Law, Medicine and Theology are three more and different skills, because they were taught ei-

ther as a higher education after the Quadrivium and Trivium or at specialized schools.

What is missing are sciences like biology or history, but they are covered by the various non-

scientific skills that were not taught at the universities, for example Nature Lore.

The classic description of the Hero's Journey or Monomyth is this one here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth

If you want to add a bit more cultural diversity in Thule, you could simply reduce the extent on Viking activity and still have some Gaelic traders around.

This should not be too difficult. If I understand it right, the Lordship of the Isles was a vassal

state of Norway during the 13th century, and the people of the Lordship of the Isles were of

mixed Gaelic and Norse descent, so the Scandinavians could be depicted as not interfering

much with their relatives' sea trade.

The Hanseatic League, on the other hand, could well come to dislike their trade on the North

Atlantic, a nice potential source for a maritime conflict endangering Thule's sea trade routes,

especially as the Hanseatic League always had a tendency to start wars with its Scandinavian

neighbours.

Another major advantage of Gaelic traders on the North Atlantic would be that they could re-

place the rather unhistorical Portuguese explorers I wrote into the early part of the setting,

a point I always disliked without seeing a convincing alternative.