Me? I like primitive societies, mostly because Bronze age weaponry is appealing to me.I think that if even low powered magic did exist in the setting, that too would interfere with a lot of different technological advancements.
>>96648903I find it sad that for a lot of us, even a Bronze age civilisation would be beyond our capacity to produce if we were transported back in time.
>>96649705I often find myself wondering how primitive processes worked because we've refined the process and specialized everything so much.How do you even discover metalworking though? Banding a rock to a stick to make a longer bonker seems obvious, but what is the catalyst to start smelting tin and copper?
>>96649705All societies are a few people who get shit done and set the status quo and then innumerable hangers-on
>>96648903Okay. What system are you playing your bronze age adventures in?
>>96649705Only because we're lazy+don't need to. If you knew you were going to travel back in time permanently in a week and couldn't tell anyone, you could swiftly put together enough information to jump some technologies by hundreds of years or more.In much the same way, a lifelong serf working the farm might not be able to perform stone age survival either anyway. Modernity makes us soft, but it's also the whole point lol. We like soft.
>>96649755Heating sticks just right makes better stabbing sticks, ought to work with rocks.
>Me?Who asked?
>>96650038Arguably the average stone age man or medieval serf couldn't perform modern survival either. They'd probably be illiterate, they wouldn't know about the dangers of electricity, machinery, and common household chemicals; they wouldn't know how to stay safe around traffic or what laws to obey, and in all likelyhood they'd be unemployable. You might counter that they'd probably be caught up by social safety net agencies, but these aren't entirely modern, so it goes both ways. In the middle ages fools and orphans were sometimes taken care of by the church. IIRC ancient kings were sometimes seen as having the duty of protecting vulnerable people like foreigners and orphans.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Poor_Laws
>>96650109Its a pseudo confrontational posting style largely borrowed from click bait and radio shock jock techniques to create an immediate tension or argument point while simultaneously positioning as confident first, which is often enough to fool many. >This shocking new OP technique harvests (you)! It did too.
>>96648903How do you feel about traditional games?
>>96650109Oh sorry I should have phrased the thread>am i the only oneSo you could get mad at me asking if anyone else shares an opinion instead of me just stating what I like
>>96650292How would you feel is you hadn't played traditional games this morning?
>>96650292What setting...?
>>96648903>Me? I like primitive societies, mostly because Bronze age weaponry is appealing to me.Bronze age societes were the first ones that developed a complex trade routes. Tin for a bronze that was cast in Egypt came from as far as British Isles
>>96648903>low powered magicFor Bronze age settings, druid/summoning/eldritch magics would suit it well. Basically Conan the Barbarian.
>>96650537Actually, I think it's kinda nice you contributed to your own topic; too many fags on this board start a thread without offering their own thoughts, and then don't answer anyone who gives an earnest contribution.I just feel it's weird you started a thread acting as though you were prompted, without including the post who asked you. It's like sitting in a reading circle, and suddenly someone just blurts out "me? I happen to like grilling" without anyone actually asking about grilling, cooking implements, or saying anything at all.It's just strange, so I figured I'd ask you who asked, since it wasn't made apparent.
>>96653937>Actually, I think it's kinda nice you contributed to your own topicThanks, I agree.And thanks for your earnest contribution earlier, you're a big part of keeping this board afloat. You know, the back and forth of discussion.
>>96648903>if even low powered magic did exist in the setting, that too would interfere with a lot of different technological advancementsWhat if the understanding of magic is as primitive as the weaponry? Like shaman rituals are a simplistic application of mystical arts, akin to the sling being a simple use of projectile motion kinetic energy
>>96648903Have you got a setting of your own? I prefer historical settings in general
>>96649705Humanity's evolutionary advantage is that we can pass on advancements to the next generation. We took over the world precisely because we're capable of creating advanced systems without needing to start over from scratch every time. Don't be sad, it's our superpower.
>>96649755>How do you even discover metalworking though?Native copper, silver, and gold can be worked cold and in some areas was literally just sitting on the ground. At some point people got copper hot, and figured out it was easier to work. Just left it in or by a fire.Sometimes you want a hotter fire (like for firing pottery), and eventually you leave the right type of rock in there that happens to melt into metal-like stuff. You play around with it a while and eventually figure out how to smelt tin and lead from ore. Now you know some rocks can turn into metal. From then on you just start throwing any new weird rocks into your hottest fire, and sometimes they become metal. Develop better, higher temperature, fires, and you can melt new rocks. Mix the rocks/metals and you get new metals.
>>96654112Actually I had been thinking about primitive magic, about how it develops from first seeing things in nature and wanting to recreate the same effects. But also how it develops in terms of how different tribes approach it in their culture and sort of diverging practices.
>>96648903My favorite genre of primitive are tribes in a sci-fi setting who still mostly use early modern technology. So black powder jezzails, riding mounts, bespoke swords, etc.
>>96649800that was debunked
>>96655595By who? College professors who pay other people to buy their groceries?
>>96655602that's the sort of people the great man theory flatters
>>96650227I would like to say that medieval peasants would be fast to work but truth is that we have millions of middle eastern and african medieval peasants roaming in europe without work.
>>96649705That's not really surprising. As primitive as it was from a technological standpoint, Bronze Age civilization required remarkably complex organizational structures that would make it almost impossible for a single person to replicate, no matter how smart they were.Because you need both tin and copper to produce bronze, metals that do not naturally occur close to one another, you need a robust system of international trade if you want to have usable supplies of bronze.
>>96653910>Basically Conan the BarbarianNot a bronze age setting in any way
>>96655903A huge difference now though is the existence of aluminum bronze. Processing aluminum is complex but if you were to study it bauxite is very common so you could easily make bronze without trade routes. It's just much harder to develop the electrolysis process than to make a trade route.
>>96648903Which system?
>>96650537Actually what you should have done is not post at all since you have nothing of value to contribute.
>>96655611No it isn't, and the theory is correct.
>>96648903What do you think of Exalted 1e?
>>96649705I certainly don't know anything about bronze but I think I've read enough about bog iron to be able to eventually get a working method through trial and error and half-remembered tidbits. The harder part would be getting accepted by a society, overcoming the language barrier, and convincing them to let me spend a lot of time screwing around with making bloomery ovens, poking around in swamps for material, and wasting scandalous amounts of fuel.
>>96649755>but what is the catalyst to start smelting tin and copper?Post 1/2One of two methods; both probably happened. For a very long time, it was assumed that people discovered it by accident using kilns to fire clay.Incomplete combustion creates carbon monoxide, which grabs oxygen from the ore. Other anions are either grabbed by said carbon monoxide, or by oxygen.Any kilns easily gets hot enough to melt tin, so it'll gather at the bottom of the kiln. Good kilns get hot enough to melt copper, so the same thingSo, you make a kiln. Either you use certain rocks to build supports inside the kiln, or you use clay with certain rocks in it. When you clean out the kiln in order to add new fuel, you find a layer of neat shiny stuff on the bottom.While anthropologists are sure that the above method was done, there's another way too. Basically, humans have been heat-treating stone tools for a very long time (70,000+ years). Humans like certain ores to work with - for example, malachite is a common copper ore and it has a pretty green color, and so was often used for jewelry and beads and shit. Cassiterite is a pretty hard, very shiny tin ore which is often found in alluvial deposits. Etc.Continues
>>96649755I think metalwork probably started with lead.
>>96649755>>96661769Post 2/2Iron took longer to discover because it has a relatively high melting point, which is only achievable by the most advanced Stone Age kilns (but is achievable in the Stone Age! Honestly, kiln design didn't change much from 10,000 years ago until 500 years ago). Iron is also much harder to work, being both hard and brittle, and it cannot be cold-worked like copper. It's important to note that humans were smelting iron way before the Iron Age; the Iron Age is defined as the period when iron replaced bronze as the more common metal. The switch probably occurred for economic reasons: tin is fairly rare, whereas iron is the most common metal on Earth and the second-most common metal in the crust after aluminum, which is impossible to smelt before the 17th Century and impossible to smelt at scale without cheap electricity.Some places with no easily available tin went straight from stone and copper to iron.Also at this point I should note that none of these Stone/Bronze/Iron Ages are definitive and discrete. Copper was increasingly common in the late Stone Age, but people don't usually count a "Copper Age" because copper's relative softness meant that it never completely replaced stone. Wherever bronze was discovered, it also coexisted with copper and stone for several generations. Similarly, iron did not replace bronze overnight, instead typically taking a few generations. The only place where the transition happens very quickly is when an iron-using civilization encounters a bronze- or stone-using one. For the former, iron is SO MUCH cheaper that it eliminates bronze production fucking overnight (though bronze tools linger for a while). For the latter, iron is so much better than stone, AND cheaper that it replaces stone overnight.Yes, iron is cheaper than stone: not all forms of stone are appropriate for tools, and working stone requires an enormous amount of skill. Smelting abundant iron ore and then casting tools is much easier.
>>96661788Lead or copper; it often happens at about the same time. The thing is that lead is too soft to make useful tools out of, and it oxidizes quickly enough that its utility for ornaments is limited. So even though societies discover it, they mostly don't do it much.Interestingly, it isn't until about 500BC that we see lead sling bullets or lead weights added to javelins despite lead having been produced for 7,000+ years by then.
>>96661789Btw, re: ages not being so discrete, it's worth noting that bronze and even stone tools were often superior to early and even less early iron tools. Hell, to this day the sharpest knives we have are made from stone - see obsidian scalpels).But I really cannot overemphasize how cheap iron is compared to bronze and good stone tools. Iron is also more resilient than stone, and easier to repair (in that you usually can't repair broken stone tools at all).
>>96655903Personally, the really interesting thing about that map is that there is no tin in the middle east, apparently, yet all my mental shorthand for the bronze age is essentially the fertile crescent and Egypt (throw in a bit of Mycenaean Greek if I'm feeling generous). I'm assuming that those early 'Celtiberians' (yeah I know...) didn't leave many surviving records - or they're just not exotic enough for school/'pop' history.
>>96660820the theory is as retarded as you are
>>96662162That map is incomplete. There were small (but large enough) tin mines in Upper Egypt, Anatolia, and the Zagros Mountains (=the mountains on the eastern border of Iran). The provides convenient enough tin for the Sumerians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Hittites, etc.
>>96662289cope :)
>>96649824Not him but there are two prime Bronze Age sistems. Mythras/brp and Barbarians of Lemuria, if you don't want one of the thousands DnD derivatives.
>>96654246Not Op, but my own setting is basically the Magic Mediterranean + Atlantis, adding as many cool cultures/tribes as I can and taking inspiration of folklore along Hiborian/Jack Vance stuff, apart of Tolkien of coruse.For games, Glorantha (everyday a bit less as I find neo glorantha sucks), Dominions 6 and Morrowind style are my main inspirations, and if mangas count, Nausicaa and Mushishi inspired me a ton (mushishi kind of magic with the mushi is just perfecct, subdued, wierd and with its own internal logic).
>>96655595it's correctit's just that the people who get shit done are never actually rewarded for it and the hangers-on put them down and exploit them
>>96664460there's too many people who get shit done for it to be a good description, it doesn't matter that there were ten thousand people who did nothing for every one person who gets remembered because there's still also a hundred people who did amazing things but were not remembered
>>96665967101 vs 10,000 isn't a great ratio desu
>>96662289The theory is the ultimate midwit filter, because faggots will see it and immediately go>me! Im a shit-get-doner! I have a job! I acquire resources! Im an exception!No bitch. If the actual get-doners weren't around, you'd already be dead of exposure.
>>96649755If had to spend your entire life outside of society that didn't require you to figure this stuff out you would eventually figure this stuff out. Or you would die, which is essentially how it worked back then too.
>>96665988great man theory is 1 vs 1000000, not 100 vs 10000
>>966659881% of millions and billions is a significant population. It's larger than many countries.
>>96649705I'm actually a fully accredited Blacksmith believe it or not.
>>96667230lol...meaning hwut exactly?
>>96667241I did an apprenticeship for 5 years.
>>96667230What kinds of stuff do you know how to make?
>>96649800
>>96667702It's always fun reading about how some random volcanic eruption led to famine and revolution.
>>96648903>>96649705I dunno, don't you think bronze is too zeitgeist-y?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O6jbZ_fdrY
>>96649705You just go and join a tribe that looks like they need extra hands. It's the Bronze Age, they'll nust assume your civ got Sea People'd last week.
>>96667471Basically anything wrought, knives, fences, gates, axe heads etc.
>>96670231You're American, aren't you.
>>96670598either that or a woman
