TL 0 campaigns?

[JoelSammallahti]

Man, I'd love to play in any of those. (I'm a sucker for anything prehistoric, and there's a real dearth of good entertainment set back then.)

I've run a couple of TL 0 one-shots a few years ago. In one, the PCs were vaguely Melanesian-ish canoe people looking for a good spot to start a village after splitting from a bigger band that had invented authoritarianism. In the other, the PCs were teenagers undergoing their initiation into manhood: hunting, psychedelics, and goofing around. It was great until one of the players suddenly got food poisoning and cut the session short! Bit too realistic, then. :D

I also started my current vampire campaign in chalcolithic Central Europe. I remembered reading about dogs being buried with grave goods like people, and archeologists speculating about their status as group members, so one of the one-off PCs was a dog! He was a super valuable party member too, and fun to stat up.

Anyway, I think when it comes to research, prehistory's a lot more forgiving than later eras because there's so much we just don't know. Especially when it comes to the paleolithic, we pretty much know what kinds of stone tools people made, and a little bit about burial customs and what little we can guess about diet and lifestyle from skeletons. So you can invent all the rest without stepping on the history nerd players' toes too much.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

Any TL0 campaign I run would be fairly urbanized - Çatal Höyük, Jericho, pre-Dynastic Egypt, Inca Empire, pre-Columbian Iroquois Confederation, etc. This wouldn't be a "straight" TL0, as each of these is often considered TL1 or better in some respect (commonly agriculture, architecture, and/or mathematics), but clearly lacking knowledge of how to smelt copper, gold, silver, tin, and other soft metals as well as limited to pure muscle power for a lot. I may permit stuff like domesticated woolly mammoths and whatnot, though. ;)

GURPS Low-Tech says quite explicitly that even though bronze is the signature technology for TL1, a society can count as TL1 if it's advanced enough in other ways. Agriculture, pastoralism, urbanization, full-time craft workers, literacy, some form of money, and state-level political organization all are relevant. Of your examples, I'd say the Incas have enough of those to be considered TL1; probably the others don't.

[sn0wball]

For TL 0 alternative history, part 1 of Stephen Baxters Northland triology, Stone Spring, would be a great inspiration (apart from being a great novel). If nothing else, it shows how a few individuals can completely reroute history during the stone age.

[The Colonel]

I recall reading the (?3e) GURPS Ice Age which seemed useful for this sort of thing... and can be had quite cheaply on WH23 if the idea interests you.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

I recall reading the (?3e) GURPS Ice Age which seemed useful for this sort of thing... and can be had quite cheaply on WH23 if the idea interests you.

Important bits from it went into GURPS Dinosaurs, and other important bits (with some overlap) into the original edition of GURPS Low-Tech, and into the 4/e GURPS LTC 3.

I must confess that one of the books I've daydreamed about writing is GURPS Tribes, which would be a guide to how to run campaigns set in TL0 societies and worlds, including suggestions on "primitive culture construction" akin to the alien race and planetary design rules in GURPS Space. In my current TL1 campaign, though, I did the culture design by eyeballing it. . . .

[Apollonian]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Important bits from it went into GURPS Dinosaurs, and other important bits (with some overlap) into the original edition of GURPS Low-Tech, and into the 4/e GURPS LTC 3.

I must confess that one of the books I've daydreamed about writing is GURPS Tribes, which would be a guide to how to run campaigns set in TL0 societies and worlds, including suggestions on "primitive culture construction" akin to the alien race and planetary design rules in GURPS Space. In my current TL1 campaign, though, I did the culture design by eyeballing it. . . .

I'd buy that in a hot second.

[JoelSammallahti]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I must confess that one of the books I've daydreamed about writing is GURPS Tribes, which would be a guide to how to run campaigns set in TL0 societies and worlds, including suggestions on "primitive culture construction" akin to the alien race and planetary design rules in GURPS Space. In my current TL1 campaign, though, I did the culture design by eyeballing it. . . .

Shut up and take my gift economy

[ericthered]

I've played in a play by post game that did TL0. It was fun when we had an aim, but the GM struggled with that.

Some source books are fascinating to read but difficult to play, and I think I've found TL0 to be like that. Though I'm sure if I set my mind to it I could make it work.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I must confess that one of the books I've daydreamed about writing is GURPS Tribes, which would be a guide to how to run campaigns set in TL0 societies and worlds, including suggestions on "primitive culture construction" akin to the alien race and planetary design rules in GURPS Space.

Yes, please.

I've played a TL0 game, not under GURPS, and it was immense fun. It really makes you focus on essentials.

[The Colonel]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Important bits from it went into GURPS Dinosaurs, and other important bits (with some overlap) into the original edition of GURPS Low-Tech, and into the 4/e GURPS LTC 3.

I must confess that one of the books I've daydreamed about writing is GURPS Tribes, which would be a guide to how to run campaigns set in TL0 societies and worlds, including suggestions on "primitive culture construction" akin to the alien race and planetary design rules in GURPS Space. In my current TL1 campaign, though, I did the culture design by eyeballing it. . . .

Sounds useful ... and, as per Iceage, some detail on how to do shamanism well wouldn't go amiss given the prevalence of animism in many human starter cultures. I know thaumatology touched on it, but there was more elsewhere in previous editions IIRC...