WIP Ancient Civilisations Online Thread

This is a composite of the first novel, plus a series of introductory short stories which will be collected and published as The Beta Tests. One of the shorts may be going into the LitRPG YA anthology, some of the rest will go onto Royal Road and Book Brawl.

Currently working on the shorts, and researching and planning the novel.

BTW I'm a Brit so it will be British English! So don't start with the spelling!

A bit of info about the world.
It is based on earth circa 1200BC, but I've taken a bit of creative license.
So, the Hittite Empire hasn't fallen.
There is a triangle of city states competing against each other in the Middle East, so conflicts between Babylonia, Persia and Assyria.
The Israelites are trying to gain a foothold in their promised land.
Rome is a small kingdom fighting against the Etruscans.
Troy has fallen, and the Greeks are still in the Bronze Age, so they aren't yet democratic city states.
The larger nations are Egypt, Phonicia/Carthage, the Olmec in south America, the Vedic Empire in India, and the Chinese.
There are small settled villages and nomadic tribes scattered throughout the rest of the world.

At the start, not all of these civilisations will be available, a lot will be added later as expansions.

This time period was a bit brutal, so slavery will exist in the game, for both players and npc's. The player will be required to make some choices, and if they don't like the choice they have made, the only option will be to delete and recreate the character. For example, they will have the choice to turn the following slavery option on, non consensual sex, abuse, torture for purpose of training a slave.
Linked to the above will be nudity options.

As far as younger players, there will be age restricted content. For example, there will be bluring of certain body parts/player and npc actions, also white noise filters. Also under age players will not be able to turn on certain features without written parental consent. All of these are covered in the detailed character creation. I have been discussing this at length with Eden Redd (lol).

I can see guilds buying guild members out of slavery, and guild villages and towns growing up.

So I'm hoping that there will be interest and support for my WIP.

 

I like the idea!

 

Well, an advantage is that I studied Ancient History and Archaeology at university.

 

What about the Celts? Honest question.

 

Celts will be classed as small settlements, however Celts would be one of the smaller geographical groups. The Gauls, Iberians, steppes nomads and american Indians would be larger numbers. And yes, one of my shorts would be set in the European tribal area.

Actually I have a piece of flash fiction in the In A Flash anthology which is set in the Roman time period, which is Celt/Gaul based. It's called The Sacrifice.

 

The Celts were the Gauls and Iberians,those are actually tribal names,many actually think Macedonians were Celtic. You can also trace the expansion of the Greeks to the east as a result of Celtic pressure from the west.

 

Oooh, you've chosen a great time to set it in, Bronze age collapse is a really interesting time.

Some other civs and cultures to consider: indus valley civilization, minoans, srubna and andronovo in russia, late jomon in japan, kingdom of kush.

 

Unless children players are going to be a part of the story I would think just nixing them from the game would be an easier way to go. Since its a full immersion pod it would be easy for the company behind it all to just decline anyone under age, which from a company point of view would make a certain sense as it cuts off potential lawsuits before they ever begin.

 

Which can also give you a fun-subplot of people who hack to get around age restrictions.

 

I'm researching the Indus Valley. Minoans are part of Greece. Kush is Egypt I think. Trying to find information on the Russian side, so pass me the names of any good reference material.
Now Japan, that I have absolutely no information on, so any book references would be a great help. I have some research on China. I had briefly considered the civilisation which created Angkor Wat, but they are too far out of the time period for this.

As to the Celts, I've been taught that the term refers to the groups related to the p-celtic and q-celtic languages. Namely Welsh, Breton, Cornish, Manx, Irish Gaelic and Scots Gaelic. I am Welsh.

As to the child side, at leastone of my short stories will be have a YA focus, so I have to consider that angle. Also taking into account that this game could be used for teaching history of this time period, so perhaps teachers might be encouraging their students to try it.

I'm also considering at least one story with a definite 18+ rating, in fact Eden is looking forward to it.

 

Russia - Srubna and Andronovo will likely be similar - Expedition Magazine | “Timber-graves” in Southern Russia - might want to style them as early Scythians/Sarmatians since the written record is scant, particularly for Srubna culture. The Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture I believe has a very short section on Srubna, but probably not worth it for the cost. Most of the information online seems to be the same thing reworded and recycled in a hundred different ways. For Andronovo History of Central Asia: 1 by Baumer might contain some of what you're looking for. Although it contains other stuff as well.
Japan - Ancient Jomon of Japan by Habu, or Prehistoric Japan: New Perspectives on Insular East Asia by Imamura. Habu in particular, looks good, although it spans the entire 10k of the Jomon...

 

Thanks, you can never have too much information, only too little.

 

Age of Empires II (the best one) was my life when I was younger, haha, same with Age of Mythology, Rise of Nations, and Rome Total War I (the best one). So excited that they announced AoE IV recently

 

Unsure how to do this without looking like an asshole.
Minoans,um they were not Greek,as far as I can find out,in fact they were called the Sea Peoples by the Eygptians after Thera blew up..and became the Phonecians and later the Carthaginians.(pardon my shitty spelling).
The Celts did eventually become the peoples you spoke of but at the time you are talking about they covered most of Europe and were on the verge of becoming Iron age,the most prominent is usually referred to as the La Tine culture/civ. The Celts came from the steppes of Russia,seems most wanted to leave that place then. The two major precursors to The Celts were the Bell Beaker people,known for how they buried folks and some structures. They were followed by the Battle Axe people,also known as the Kurgans(thus there was a joke about heritage in the original Highlander film).

As far as reference I would start with Will and Ariel Durant series on history and then expand to Toynebee and his work,though both are Euro-centric,it makes a good begining and jump off point before tackling specialist points.

 

Minoans came from Crete and according to the Iliad, their king was Odysseus. Carthage had already been founded at this point in time. I will not deny that there could have been the odd colony of Sea People on Crete however.

I agree at this point the tribes in Europe had many names, but there is evidence that the Beaker folk were already trading with the tribes in what would become the UK in this time period. However I do not believe that the Celts were in Russia in the Bronze Age. My partner who is French had some interesting comments on this point. He is of the opinion that he is definitely not of Celtic descent, but Gaulish.

I remember covering the LA Tine culture in my Archaeology lectures at university. Unfortunately the big fat reference book I had from then got misplaced somewhere during my many house moves, and is probably out of date. Perhaps I should ask my old professor for an up to date reading list?

However, I had already stated that I would not be creating a totally accurate copy of our world at this time period, as in order to have the necessary conflicts, and interest, some civilisations would be tweaked, and I would prefer to use more familiar tribal/area names for the comfort of my readers. For example, Assyria would have almost totally declined, Babylon was in power, and Persia hadn't really become powerful at all, but I will have all three in existence, fighting for dominance in my game world.

Another example is that in later books, players would be able to travel from Europe to America by boat, this as far as we know didn't become possible until the Vikings! Well apart from some old Welsh legends that tell of Gog and Magog travelling to Patagonia. It will be the Viking routes that would be used, unless some brave parties want to try travelling via the Azores! I'm going to have more than enough material in the first few books without including America, India, China, etc.

 

The Celtic tribes would have druids, the civilisations who had them would have shamans. The Persians who followed Zorocastrian faith had magi, who were learned men. They had divination, healing, etc. The priests of any religion would always claim to have magic granted by their god, of course.

So as to fantasy type magic, not really, or extremely limited.

The game would be skills based rather than class based, so if your character wanted to become say a druid, then you would have to somehow acquire the necessary skills to get apprenticed to a druid. Now what a druid would want an apprentice to know, finding that out could be a first quest!