TL 0 campaigns?

[PTTG]

I've been vaaaaguely considering running a short campaign in and around TL 0, or possibly TL 1. Has anyone had an enjoyable campaign with that general tech level? I'd love some advice or stories.

Here's a few thoughts I had:

- Cave Fantasy: It's the dawn of time. The gods' first children are set loose upon the world to find their places. Magic is wild and powerful, and the nights are terror beyond the firelight. Players are a group of these first mortals (maybe a generation or two removed from the absolute first people), on a quest to do something appropriately mythical, like taming magic, stealing fire, or freeing humanity from the god's slavery. Downsides: Might not really count as TL 0 if there is magic or mythical societies. The mythical scale this setting implies contrasts uncomfortably with being starving, but maybe that's fun?

- Historical Fiction: Really, really, really research paleology and then play a non-magical campaign set then. I'm not sure about the exact quest or direction, but food and water supplies, warmth in the night, and other such realistic concerns would be a critical part of it; in fact, just surviving might be the goal. Downsides: How do you respond to a player determinedly making gunpowder and other such anachronisms? On top of that, I don't think my players want to do that much research, as much as they like the theme.

- Psudeohistorical Fiction: Specify that the players, though at TL0, aren't in Earth's past, and that there are legends of a time "before," though vague enough that it cannot be distinguished from myth. Even common knowledge about useful plants and normal animal behavior isn't useful here, because the threats and resources are alien to our own experience. Downsides: have to invent a habitable alien ecosystem full of explicable resources. Not sure what the direction will be.

Responses? Ideas? Your own plans?

[AlexanderHowl]

Paleolithic Mythic is another possibility, with Path/Book Ritual Magic and Powers, with the ancients using their magic and gifts to survive.

[whswhs]

As it happens, I'm running a fantasy campaign set in a TL1 world.

In my setting, there are seven different races that we would call Hominidae, and perhaps Homo. All of them are slightly interfertile, though to a more or less limited degree: They often don't choose to interbreed, they have low fertility when they do, and the offspring are often infertile. On the other hand, magic can help with that.

Only two races, dwarves and nixies, are actually "civilized," in the sense of building cities, though one of the nixie cities has been conquered by men, who now rule it. Only nixies have invented writing, and only dwarves have come up with bronze, glass, or porcelain. Nixies have the concept of money, meaning primarily silver, but not coinage—they use scales to weigh ingots, nuggets, or dust.

The supernatural in this world is mostly animistic; there are spirits of trees, animals, bodies of water, and various other things. Magic largely involves asking the help of the spirits; I used Path and Book magic for this.

My campaign turned out to be about a long-distance trade venture, funded by two ghouls, a nixie, a selkie, and a troll, and using the first deep sea ship to be crewed by nixies. Currently the PCs are sailing home, carrying a tiger pelt, semiprecious stones, parrots, exotic foods and spices, tobacco, and various other goods.

[Flyndaran]

Sounds almost like Traveller: Argonauts edition.
(Always love hearing about how very unique your campaigns are.)

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Paleolithic Mythic is another possibility, with Path/Book Ritual Magic and Powers, with the ancients using their magic and gifts to survive.

Hypercompetent Paleolithic is something I'd like to try someday. Mostly realistic but with characters of high enough point level as to be unrealistic in competency.

[PTTG]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Hypercompetent Paleolithic is something I'd like to try someday. Mostly realistic but with characters of high enough point level as to be unrealistic in competency.

Ah, a culture hero game.

I love the color of whswhs's campaign... for my purposes though I probably wouldn't want dwarves-and-fey stuff.

I'm still going back and forth on having any supernatural stuff at all... There's a lot to be said for the freedom it offers players...

[Flyndaran]

You could use real hominids or at least versions of historical hominids. Orcs are neanderthals, hobbits are Homo floresiensis, etc.
Weirdly, you could make modern humans the elf equivalent, living longer, agile, tall, lean, and unusually wise in comparison.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

You could use real hominids or at least versions of historical hominids. Orcs are neanderthals, hobbits are Homo floresiensis, etc.
Weirdly, you could make modern humans the elf equivalent, living longer, agile, tall, lean, and unusually wise in comparison.

One of the subtexts of my campaign is that each of the races is modeled behaviorally on a nonhuman mammal species. Dwarves are naked mole rats, elves are, well, sort of like gibbons, ghouls are hyenas, men are horses, nixes are sort of beavers and sort of otters, selkies are sea lions, and trolls are bears. Not an exact fit in any case, but there are definitely hints.

[DanHoward]

Jean M. Auel's "Clan of the Cave Bear" series has plenty of ideas that could be turned into a neat campaign.

[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. ;)