How would you handle a prehistoric game? What kinds of adventures can paleolithic characters have that isn't hunting mammoth or forage berries?
already a grug thread up anonthe catalog is your friend >>>/tg/catalog
>>96543741Actual prehistoric or fantasy prehistoric?Because the latter could have plenty of fun delving into cave systems filled with creepy proto-humans, conducting rituals or enacting quests to obtain divine aid, negotiating with (or subjugating) the spirit of wolves (or dinosaurs) to tame dogs (raptors) for your tribe.Look to mythology for inspiration, particularly the tribal cultural myths explaining why the world is the way it is, Anansi stories or Aboriginal Dreamtime tales for example.
>>96543741>Shaman sends you on quest to fetch McGuffin flower for ritual>Come home from hunt to find rival tribe has taken your women folk, go get them back>Cannibals in the forest want to crack your bones open and eat your marrow, what do?>Party trips balls on the McGuffin flower seeds and have to fight the mythical lionman in your shared hallucination (he shares his secrets only with the strongest)
>>96543741Surviving predators that really, really like human meatGetting matesGeneric spirit quest bullshit WarsGetting access to rare resources (Obsidian)Managing to go the Great Neckbeard Clan festival half a continent away, and return Knowledge ("how do these guys make fire?")Relocating the tribe after a disasterAlso, hunting great beasts is a pretty damn big adventure anyway.
>>96543741Take far cry primal and translate it to your thing
>>96543741The very environment is a challange.Every year, you need to make sure you have enough for winter (remember, no farming), and probably to relocate seasonally.When Wise Old Grug (or Grugette) says signs in the spring point to a particularly bad winter coming, that means along with the shorter term goals, you need to just get everything you need to survive the coming frost.>There's actually a damn good digital solitaire board game called Frost where the whole shtick is you're a pre-agriculture tribe venturing through tundra where it's always snowing. It's bizarre, and it FEELS like a digital implementation of a physical card game, but it's not.
>>96543790I don't see it
>>96543741Why do mammoths always get portrayed as being taller than trees?They were the size of Asian elephants, meaning smaller than modern day African elephants.
>>96546523Most people don't know that and assume 'ancient extinct animal=giant'
>>96546523Those are bushes.
>>96546523Didn't steppe mammoths mog elephants? I think the woolly mammoths were a bit smaller though.
>>96546523They were larger than Asian elephants, and most were larger than African elephants.
Go watch gennedy's primal first season. The second season gets completely waylaid but a weakish plot but the first season is pure masterwork of cave man and t rex go on adventures
>>96543741There is a lot of stuff you could do. Become paleolithic/chalcolithic monster slayers. Have PC's fight against blood cults and cannibal tribes. Depending on how much magic is in your setting you could have your BBEG be a wizard or some shit. Let them be tribesmen who eventually stumble upon the very first cities.Also maybe throw in some gonzo alien/Old One weirdness to spice things up.
online fags don't want to play in my caveman sandbox
get all those old d20 System shovelware books about prehistoric animals.supposedly they were actually quite well-researched, and the statblocks made sense.
>>96543741>Tribal elders send the group lead a hunting party against giant beasts (dinosaurs pretty much) that have been terrorizing the tribe and find out what happen to the eastern tribe that the western tribe been trading with, to find them slaughtered while the women and children been taken by Neanderthals raiders>Fight off Neanderthals that have come to the region to take your food for the winter, find out they were also running away from something worse to the east, to later find the BBEG shows up to be a warlord who he and his warband wields iron while everyone else wields wooden clubs, flint, copper and early bronze weapons/tools>Demands complete subjugation of the tribes within the region after he slaughtered last of the Neanderthals, the elders betray the group as part of a deal with the warlord who views them as a threat in return the tribe be granted some autonomy to live somewhat comfortable and not be sent to the iron mines deep, deep underground. If the players losing and sent to the mines that they must revolt and break free or kill off the elders and become the new leaders of the tribe and wage a war against a superior foe
>>96543741Crunchy low power systems seem like the only way of actually embracing the setting and not just using it as a backdrop to just play reskinned DnD, you should genuinely be afraid of a smilodon pouncing on you during a rest and dragging you off into the darkness and things like that
>>96561476>you should genuinely be afraid of a smilodon pouncing on you during a rest and dragging you off into the darkness and things like thatEnough with this anti-Smilodon propaganda!Fellow hominids, if we don't let large cats with oversized teeth inside our villages our species are doomed to extinction!
>>96543741I’m presently signed up for a stone age game about a tribe of stone age warriors on a quest for an artifact stolen by a strange tribe with shining metal (bronze) tools. Its not far off from a standard ttrpg premise, but being so low tech effects what gear we can actually use and there being large predators about will make travel more dangerous. Beyond this premise, I think adapting the movie “Quest for Fire” would be fun in a crunchy ttrpg.>>96561476Agreed. We’re running this one in GURPS, and I expect that the rules for first aid, infections, ect are going to be really damn punishing. The detailed survival/foraging/flintknapping rules are also pretty great.
