Bronze Age FRP Gaming

The metal in your weapon and armor is money.

RuneQuest (by Chaosium) burst into my hobby life at a time when I was searching for a game to advance role-playing as I knew it through D&D/AD&D to the next level. Role-playing had become the centerpiece of my gaming hobby, having replaced historical miniatures and edging out board games. RQ's bronze age setting is focused on myth rather than heroic or high fantasy and this came as a bit of a shock - it would require years of mental adjustment to more fully appreciate the game's bronze age mythical setting (Glorantha) for what it is. The bronze age differs in so many respects from later periods of human development and the "golden" metal swords and helmets are among the least of these differences. Society, culture, religion and world outlook are vastly more important differences than those of metallurgy and technology.

RuneQuest is a game of myth - and people's relationship to the world as interpreted through mythical beliefs. The PC's relationship to their gods, to their culture and to the "spirit" world are what essentially define each character in RuneQuest Glorantha. For many years time this was a lost concept for me as I dived into the combat mechanic with its strike ranks, hit locations, individual weapon skills, and parrying routines without paying near enough attention to how RQ differed from D&D in scope and emphasis. My mechanical approach continued as I explored the RQ magic system wherein any and all characters may cast "spirit" magic. I did note that magic spells in RQ are more limited in power and not so "flashy" as in the FRP systems I had started with. (There are no Fireballs in RQ.) 

Along came RuneQuest 3rd edition and somewhat to my relief the RQ system mechanics were separated from its default setting of Glorantha allowing one to play RQ in a fantasy European setting (the default for the new edition) or using just about any other setting one liked. The basic mechanics of the game were also published by Chaosium as a separate game around this time and simply titled Basic Role-Playing or BRP. The BRP "engine" has proved quite popular over the years and has powered many games including Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu. Starting with its third edition (published jointly by Avalon Hill and Chaosium), RQ would be divorced from bronze age Glorantha and adapted to fit a variety of more traditional fantasy and historical settings. 

The third edition quickly replaced second as my preferred version of the game which I ran using a variety of medieval based fantasy and quasi-historical settings for a number of years to come. It was not until I had experienced renewed interest in historical miniatures wargaming - this time with an emphasis on the ancient period - that I came to an appreciation for the bronze age roots of RuneQuest's original setting in Greg Stafford's Glorantha.

Fantastic role-playing in a bronze age setting would not remain the sole purview of RuneQuest however. Once the potential of a setting based on bronze age principles had been demonstrated by RQ, others started to bring their design talents and fantastic visions relating to that age to the tabletop. Perhaps the first to follow RQ was Palladium's Valley of the Pharaohs published as a boxed set in 1983. 

Blood & Bronze is a more recent "indie" tabletop RPG that draws heavily from a bronze age "mythic" Mesopotamia for its inspiration.  Like Palladium's older Valley of the Pharaohs product, Blood & Bronze benefits from being lavishly illustrated with black and white images that help the reader become immersed in the look and feel of an ancient period. Blood & Bronze is what might be called old school adjacent with respect to mechanics. Advancement is based on acquiring wealth and therefore encourages tomb raiding and mercenary behavior on the part of the PCs. Dice rolls are made using d20  saving throws verses an ability score or with a pool of d6s based on an ability score and looking for 5s and 6s for success. Magic in B&B is linked to either religious ritual, black lotus drug use, or by tapping into the spirit world. Monsters and creatures are inspired by the mythical beasts from Mesopotamian lore. The various tropes including ziggurats, hanging gardens, a view that all writing techniques involve "magic", a number of unusual Mesopotamian monsters, and a roughly historical map of the Tigris-Euphrates region, results in B&B definitely having the look and "feel" of something different from Greyhawk D&D.

A recent FRP game offered by Osprey Publishing is Jackals. Like RQ, Jackals uses a d100 skill based system to power game play. My introduction to Osprey Publishing products was through their extensive line of historical wargaming reference books and it should come as little surprise to anyone familiar with Osprey Books that Jackals is set in a world that is instantly familiar to anyone who has studied eastern Mediterranean civilizations of the historic bronze age. Like most "fantasy" settings, that found in the pages of Jackals goes by different names, but borrows heavily from earth's historic peoples for inspiration. Found here are fantasy cultures highly suggestive of Egyptians, Greeks, Canaanites and Bedouins (as can be seen by a quick glance at the cover illustration). 

Somewhere along my journeying in this hobby, it has dawned on me that even the traditional FRP game has little resemblance to the actual historic European middle ages beyond inclusion of medieval trappings such as the familiar suits of metal armor and fighting with swords and mounted lances. Kings and queens exist in the fantasy realms, but aside from certain niche RPG systems such as Chivalry & Sorcery and Harnmaster, there is virtually no effort among FRP games to represent feudal obligation or the role of the medieval church in any way remotely resembling authenticity. The World's Most Popular Role-Playing Game in its default out-of-the-box state has always represented a modern world view as held by contemporary American society.

So what sets bronze age fantasy apart from traditional or "medieval" fantasy? For me the answer is found in the "bronze age" deification of various aspects of the environment as epitomized by the sun god, the earth goddess and the implied tensions between spheres of influence, gender and so forth. Spirits are ubiquitous and inhabit forests, rivers, mountains, etc. and may be encountered when visiting the mystical places they inhabit. Societal conflicts often center around the ascending role of patriarchal priest kings and their efforts to subjugate various earth mothers and nature spirits. Forces greater than the player characters take an active interest in the happenings of the world and the PCs do not exist in a vacuum. They are encouraged to form ties within the society, as well as to the deities and perhaps to various spirits and cults - all factors that can enhance the richness of role-playing in a fictional setting.