I've just started using ACKS for campaigns set in the early days of Greek mythology, when Cadmus came from Asia to found Thebes and the acropolis of Athens was a castle whose kings were snake-men (eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecrops_I ). I'm using primary sources (Homer, Diodorus Siculus) for chronology and the fantasy elements and modern, archaeology-based ones to fill in the details. For example, King Egyptus from Greek mythology (brother of the culture hero Danaus) is Ahmose who reunified Egypt, which makes this about 45 years after the Hittites sacked Babylon.
I'm treating the plains of Mesopotamia, the majority of the Levant, Egypt and Crete as civilized hexes. Greece itself, where the PCs are currently trying to clear Attica of wolves and bandits, has a Wild West/Robert E. Howard feel, with civilization radiating out from the hexes of Lavrion in Attica, the port towns on the isthmus of Corinth, and Argos-Nafplio. At this early period, kings are based at hilltop castles at Argos (Larissa), Sikyon and Athens (Kekropia). The whole map stretches 32 hexes N-S and 38 E-W. Some of the monster lairs are 24 miles from a city or port town. Given the domain rules on page 125, what issues should I be aware of while making this map? Giving the kings very few NPC vassals so they don't civilize everything?
I'm also wondering about economic issues if PCs choose to secure a domain here. Most of Greece is poor soil for growing grain, throwing off the assumptions about domains quickly attracting peasants who produce a large surplus for the lord. The most economical crops are wine and olives, but the latter are a minimum five year investment. Should I push any PCs who set up Greek domains to go into the wine industry?
What an amazing concept for a campaign! Spectacular.
In designing your map, I would just keep in mind that "king" as a title used in history and "king" as a game mechanic don't necessarily always match up. King as used in ACKS represents a domain ruler controlling a very large area. But king as used in history often refers to the independent ruler of a city-state. Those are (historical) kings but you wouldn't model them as king-level domains.
As far as Greece's soil etc., it really depends how much you want to play around with economic simulation. At some point in Axioms (my Patreon) I will write some more detailed rules for this sort of thing, but as general musings or ideas:
- Have investment returns delayed. If you spend 1,000gp in Month 1, you get 1d12 peasant families in month 13 (one year later).
- Have low land values that increase as the region becomes borderlands and then civilized.
- Have low land values that increase each time the domain's settlement's urban income increases (at the different market class breakpoints). This would represent the rise of markets that efficiently allocate resources, as well as improved irrigation, roads, and warehousing that increases yield and reduces spoilage and transporation costs. spent.
I would just headcanon handwave it as that there are a lot of short-term industries that get set up and yield a profit for coincidentally the exact time it takes for the long term stuff to get going. Things like shallow metal veins that can be mined for a few years, a small population of skinnable animals, that sort of thing.
PCs don't really control what industries their domains get into anyway.
In designing your map, I would just keep in mind that "king" as a title used in history and "king" as a game mechanic don't necessarily always match up. King as used in ACKS represents a domain ruler controlling a very large area. But king as used in history often refers to the independent ruler of a city-state. Those are (historical) kings but you wouldn't model them as king-level domains.
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Crusader Kings 2, while not always perfecetly historically accurate, often has good insights. In it, they refer to independant Duke level rulers as "Petty Kings". Thus, the "kings" in ancient greece might have domains the size of what the in-game rules might classify as a duchy, but because they're not swearing allegiance to a king, they themselves are a king.
There are only a handful of "kings" in mechanical terms, I know. Pharaoh is one, of course. If you hex map the Nile Delta, the number of 24-mile hexes works out to about 20, the historical number of nomes. So a nomarch has a domain as big as the king of a city-state, and is modeled as a vassal of Pharaoh's vassal the Lord of Lower Egypt. Babylonia and Mitanni in the plains of Mesopotamia are the only other huge kingdoms (the cuneiform sources indicate the Hittite domain was in anarchy at this time).
There's an ecological subtext to my sandbox, that the reason traditional peoples believed that monsters dwelled in the land until culture heroes killed them and yet no historical records document this is that civilization changes the environment. Farmers can't produce the surplus to support a class of scribes until the magical and most dangerous creatures are killed, and over time even natural megafauna become locally extinct.
"Have low land values that increase each time the domain's settlement's urban income increases (at the different market class breakpoints). This would represent the rise of markets that efficiently allocate resources, as well as improved irrigation, roads, and warehousing that increases yield and reduces spoilage and transporation costs. spent."
Oh, I really like this idea! A Lord could pompously declare the main settlement in their 24-mile hex "a polis", when it really starts as some subsistence farmers around a trading post, and the low land value increases at each market class breakpoint until it really is a city. :)
Heh, that's a good point. Newly-settled land that's poor for grain but good for olive trees was probably already wooded with wild trees, and the domain income would start as 100% pelts and forest products and end up 100% olive oil after a decade or more.
Whatever you decide, please do publish your map somewhere! Your campaign idea sounds awesome!
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Thank you. Mapping and writing up settlement descriptions and adventure hooks is going to be a huge project. Mythic Greece is the tip of the iceberg. PCs have access to the whole Eastern Mediterranean, and some day I'll open up new areas populated by the folk and monsters of other cultures (eg Slavs dominated by vampires and liches like Koshchei, Germanic tribes in contact with elves and dwarves). I will try to publish it in parts!
I love this! The ancient Near East is a favourite period in history for me, which is mall wonder as I live in the Near East myself, a few hours' drive at most from the various historical sites, though some are less accessible nowadays due to modern politics and wars. If I understand correctly you are talking more or less on the biblical period, in which I also have an interest.
I'd also love to see a map of your campaign setting and also I'd love to see your take on Assyria/Babylon, another mighty empire of the day. And also the lands south of Egypt, some of which were a serious military threat to the Pharaohs.
Yes, I am talking more or less the period of Exodus.
"In ancient times a great plague occurred in Egypt, and many ascribed the cause of it to the gods, who were offended with them. For since the multitudes of strangers of different nationalities, who lived there, made use of their foreign rites in religious ceremonies and sacrifices, the ancient manner of worshipping the gods, practised by the ancestors of the Egyptians, had been quite lost and forgotten. 2 Therefore the native inhabitants concluded that, unless all the foreigners were driven out, they would never be free from their miseries. All the foreigners were forthwith expelled, and the most valiant and noble among them, under some notable leaders, were brought to Greece and other places, as some relate; the most famous of their leaders were Danaus and Cadmus. But the majority of the people descended [... with] one Moses, a very wise and valiant man..." -- Diodorus Siculus 40.
The way I'm interpreting this is that Ahmoses ("Egyptus") has as henchmen younger brothers named Danaus and Phoenix. After the fall of Avaris, Danaus is briefly Lord of Lower Egypt, while Phoenix is placed over the princes of Kanana who acknowledge Egyptus (the Greeks gave this explanation for the Caananite coast being called Phoenicia). After a year, Danaus invents the pentaconter (50-oared ship) and takes off for Argos with his daughters when they refuse to marry their cousins. Meanwhile Phoenix is rearing children named Cadmus and Europa and a Semitic slave from Avaris is destined to give birth to Aaron, Miriam and Moses...
I did say that the next set of cultures I'll be writing up are those south of Egypt. As for Assyria... this is a particularly interesting time for northern Mesopotamia because it was conquered by Hindu warriors called Mitanni. So within a conveniently short distance, you have Egyptian, Caananite, Assyro-Babylonian and Hindu pantheons to interact with.
Here's my current list of game regions/cultures PCs can choose. Next I'll add the Red Sea region, with Kushites, Punt, misc. African tribes and proto-Arabs (who eke out a living amongst djinn and winged serpents).