2019-04-20 Barbarians

Gundobad is at it again. This time he writes about barbarians, and more specifically, about the Goths under Alaric, and suggests to run a campaign where you’re leading your people into an empire, you need to fight, but you also need to make yourself useful, find allies, and so on.

=> about barbarians

I’ve long been eyeing the possibility of having an army of 5000 mercenaries “back from the war” or a group like the Goths. I’ve always imagined them hanging around, moving back and forth across the sandbox, and my players mostly avoiding them. Surely we would find something interesting to do eventually. But at the beginning, it would just be the background to explain migration, starvation, other bands of bandits mobilizing, or orcs, or what have you, governors looking to hire muscle to defend their towns, to spy on the foreign army, all of that.

Now that I’ve read Gundabad’s blog post, the other role would be just as interesting. Here’s the sandbox. You need to settle your 5000 people and find enough allies or Caesar will show up with two Roman legions in spring kick you out like he kicked the Helvetians out of Gaul and forced them to return to their homeland where they had burned their own towns... Harsh! (Thus began the Gallic Wars. I recommend reading a translation of Caesar. He is very readable.)

=> Gallic Wars

Anyway, all campaigns need large scale destruction and upheaval and such elements of the Völkerwanderung make for a great campaign I’m sure.

=> Völkerwanderung

​#RPG ​#Old School