I would like to see a medievil RPG without any kind of magic

[chrisbeddoes]

edit
And no bandages you say ? The ancient mummies were full of bandages .
/edit

From MIT university

http://classics.mit.edu/Hippocrates/fractur.1.1.html

On Fractures

By Hippocrates

Written 400 B.C.E

Translated by Francis Adams

Table of Contents

Part 1 Go to next

In reating fractures and dislocations, the physician must make the extension as straight as possible, for this is the most natural direction. But if it incline to either side, it should rather turn to that of pronation, for there is thus less harm than if it be toward supination. Those, then, who act in such cases without deliberation, for the most part do not fall into any great mistake, for the person who is to have his arm bound, presents it in the proper position from necessity, but physicians who fancy themselves learned in these matters, are they who commit blunders. There is no necessity for much study, then, in order to set a broken arm, and in a word, any ordinary physician can perform it; but I am under the necessity of giving the longer directions on this subject, because I know physicians who have the reputation of being skilled in giving the proper positions to the arm in binding it up, while in reality they are only showing their own ignorance. But many other things in our art are judged of in this manner, for people rather admire what is new, although they do not know whether it be proper or not, than what they are accustomed to, and know already to be proper; and what is strange, they prefer to what is obvious. I must now state what the mistakes of medical men are, which I wish to unteach, and what instructions I have to give as to the management of the arm; for what I have to say regarding it, will apply to the other bones in the body.

---------------------------------
part 2 ( it has many many parts)
On Fractures

By Hippocrates

Written 400 B.C.E

Translated by Francis Adams

Go to previous Table of Contents

Part 2 Go to next

The arm, then, for that is the subject we were treating of, BLAH
BLAh BLAH BLAH BLAH

and and index of Hippocrates books that we know ( most were lost)


http://classics.mit.edu/Browse/index-Hippocrates.html



Works by Hippocrates

On Airs, Waters, and Places
Written 400 B.C.E
Translated by Francis Adams
Read discussion: 1 comment

On Ancient Medicine
Written 400 B.C.E
Translated by Francis Adams
Read discussion: 5 comments

Aphorisms
Written 400 B.C.E
Translated by Francis Adams
Read discussion: 4 comments

On the Articulations
Written 400 B.C.E
Translated by Francis Adams
Read discussion: No comments

The Book of Prognostics
Written 400 B.C.E
Translated by Francis Adams
Read discussion: 1 comment

On Fistulae
Written 400 B.C.E
Translated by Francis Adams
Read discussion: No comments

On Fractures
Written 400 B.C.E
Translated by Francis Adams
Read discussion: 1 comment

On Hemorrhoids
Written 400 B.C.E
Translated by Francis Adams
Read discussion: 2 comments

On Injuries of the Head
Written 400 B.C.E
Translated by Francis Adams
Read discussion: 2 comments

Instruments of Reduction
Written 400 B.C.E
Translated by Francis Adams
Read discussion: No comments

The Law
Written 400 B.C.E
Translated by Francis Adams
Read discussion: No comments

The Oath
Written 400 B.C.E
Translated by Francis Adams
Read discussion: 32 comments

Of the Epidemics
Written 400 B.C.E
Translated by Francis Adams
Read discussion: 1 comment

On Regimen in Acute Diseases
Written 400 B.C.E
Translated by Francis Adams
Read discussion: 1 comment

On the Sacred Disease
Written 400 B.C.E
Translated by Francis Adams
Read discussion: 2 comments

On the Surgery
Written 400 B.C.E
Translated by Francis Adams
Read discussion: 2 comments

On Ulcers
Written 400 B.C.E
Translated by Francis Adams
Read discussion: 1 comment

 

[Constipated Craprunner]

A la my Gilgamesh game?

 

[Spazmo]

I mean that the whole healing problem would be greatly simplified by simply ignoring the nastier aspects of it--infections, disease, broken limbs, etc. There would still be substraction of hit points, and there would still be the problem of finding a way to heal it without making your character rest for ten years after every battle. That's the thing. In an RPG, you need either magic or technology to make things work. If you have neither, it doesn't work.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Chris,

You do know that the Greeks and Egyptians were also more advanced than the people in the dark ages, right? The Greeks, for example, knew the Earth was a spheriod, and even had the circumfrance of it calculated. Yet, many centuries later, the people of Europe thought the earth was flat, and the only way to India was travelling East.

As for fractures, of course they knew they existed. However, that doesn't change the fact that fractures still took weeks to mend. Hippocrates was also a lot more advanced in medical thought than the people of the dark ages as well, considering most malodies in the dark ages were thought to be caused by demons.

 

[Sol Invictus]

So reload

Then what's the point of having a realistic game if you can throw out all of the realism that the game has by simply reloading?

So-called 'features' that force you to reload a game make for a very unpleasant experience. And while 'death' in games should always exist, things like that are annoying enough, and having even more 'features', like unrepairable broken limbs that force you to crawl through the game don't really add much to the game.

It's one thing to be able to break your arm, and repair it, and cause your character to have a limp. That's a nice touch, but only if it doesn't impair your character too much. It's not worth putting into the game if you can simply reload. Features like these, could, however be implemented into a game as an optional setting, in say 'ironman mode', which I play Jagged Alliance 2 in. It's fun having your character shot in the shoulder an lose a few points of dexterity. It makes the game all the more difficult, and challenging, but not ridiculously so, so I don't reload.

 

[Sol Invictus]

A semi-realistic RPG in a medieval setting might work if it is set in Arabia, China or with the Templars, certain monastic orders or in the Pyrenees with the Cathars. A realistic RPG wouldn't be fun to play at all, since it'd take weeks and even months for you to heal from a wound, among other thigns.

Europeans were more likely to drill your head to cure your fever than to apply herbal salve or anything like that, since they had absolutely no knowledge of medicine and were highly superstitious.

There's some proof that the Cathars knew how to perform a quasi-modern day form of abortion and had some limited knowledge of antibiotics to prevent sepsis from occuring in wounds. The Arabs too had some of this knowledge, and are after all the fathers of modern day chemistry.

Most of Europe didn't possess any of this knowledge and those who did were persecuted as witches and other stupid things. Even so, the extent to the knowledge which these so-called witches supposdly possessed is highly questionable. THe 'reputable' doctors just performed bloodletting in lame attempts to cure sickness and ended up killing people.

All of the medical knowledge belonging to the Templars, they learned from the Arabs. Stitching up wounds included.

In any case, most sick people just died due to lack of sanitation no matter where they lived.

Hell, England only learned how to cure that horrible gum disease with lime and lemon (vitamin c) 300 years after the Dutch knew of it.

 

[Walks with the Snails]

Why do people keep talking in extremes here? It's either magic solves everything or leeches and exorcisms, nothing in between. It doesn't seem like it would be that hard to create a world with a general medieval technology and social structure but that happens to have a fairly solid grasp of medicine, at least as much as the Greeks and Romans, quite possibly more. Just because they had more advanced medical knowledge didn't automatically mean they had to be at our level of civlization or technology, either.

What's so bad about really making combat just an option, though, and making you seriously consider if it's worth it? Yeah, I wouldn't want to play your typical dungeon crawl with serious injuries that are not easy to treat. Adventure games get a little irritating, too, when I start to wonder, "Okay, why do I need to talk to the spider to get the bone to lure the dog to chase that menacing tiger away when I could just train a little with the local militia and then club it over the head when it's sleeping?" Ideally you wouldn't need a reload fest. Since JA2 was brought up, you could also bring in more or less expendable heroes, rather than the fate of the world rests on the young boy's shoulders, and if he dies then nobody else can ever accomplish the task. Yeah, when your main character died in JA2, you could reload, and I often did, or you could deal with it and hire a new merc to replace him. Why is it so important that when the starting character dies, it's game over? Don't like your warrior who got crippled by orcs and don't want to reload, why not just have him hang up his shield and pass the torch. Dark Sun actually did this pretty well so that it hurt a little but wasn't the end of the world when a character died, because you had backups to fall back on that you still created and probably had at least played a few games with, and that should have been of a similar power level if you planned things on the assumption that death was a very real possibility for any character.

 

[chrisbeddoes]

Why do people keep talking in extremes here? It's either magic solves everything or leeches and exorcisms, nothing in between. It doesn't seem like it would be that hard to create a world with a general medieval technology and social structure but that happens to have a fairly solid grasp of medicine, at least as much as the Greeks and Romans, quite possibly more. Just because they had more advanced medical knowledge didn't automatically mean they had to be at our level of civlization or technology, either.

What's so bad about really making combat just an option, though, and making you seriously considers if it's worth it? Yeah, I wouldn't want to play your typical dungeon crawl with serious injuries that are not easy to treat. Adventure games get a little irritating, too, when I start to wonder, "Okay, why do I need to talk to the spider to get the bone to lure the dog to chase that menacing tiger away when I could just train a little with the local militia and then club it over the head when it's sleeping?" Ideally you wouldn't need a reload fest. Since JA2 was brought up, you could also bring in more or less expendable heroes, rather than the fate of the world rests on the young boy's shoulders, and if he dies then nobody else can ever accomplish the task. Yeah, when your main character died in JA2, you could reload, and I often did, or you could deal with it and hire a new merc to replace him. Why is it so important that when the starting character dies, it's game over? Don't like your warrior who got crippled by orcs and don't want to reload, why not just have him hang up his shield and pass the torch. Dark Sun actually did this pretty well so that it hurt a little but wasn't the end of the world when a character died, because you had backups to fall back on that you still created and probably had at least played a few games with, and that should have been of a similar power level if you planned things on the assumption that death was a very real possibility for any character.

This is an excellent idea .
You could just play from the perspective of more that one character.

But anyway even with a single character you just have to be careful.

Think about it .

With no magic no more mages . So no more physical weak characters.
Without magic no more monsters . And small animal usually run in the sight of humans.
The real enemies other humans !
And with other humans you can use diplomacy , persuasion , bribery , and stealth . You do not have to fight them .

And if you do fight them real human
a) Take prisoners
b) Surrender
c) Beg for their lives
d) Run for it .

They are not like stupid monsters.

Like in Fallout 2 . You were wearing power armor had BOZAR in you hands and 3 bandits with knifes assault you in a random encounter.

Well guess what ! Real people are not like that . In real life those bandits would never assault someone in the real equivalent of power armor a small tank .
They would run or surrender or play friends or whatever.


And you do not like reload ?

Lewd me ask this .
How many times you died and had to reload in Fallout 1 or 2 the <b> First </b> time that you played that ?

Me about 50.

________________________--
<b>EDIT</b> . Should be a new post but someone has complained so

And hunting parties in the medieval times used you know what ?

They used dogs .
They used dogs as scouts . They used dogs to kill small creatures.
If the dogs were killed they became extremely careful.
And in medieval times the had trackers also .
From the footsteps of animals and by observing they could tell exactly what animal or human had passed and how long ago .

Even in medieval times people were not helpless.
Remember that humans used to hunt a lot more then . They even hunt for survival not as a sport that we do today.

So such a rpg could allow you to use dogs as combat , scouting units , horses as transportation , pigeons as messengers , hawks as "the eye of the wizard" ( Arabs used hawks very extensibly to hunt )

People never had magick .
But that never stopped them from hunting or killing .
They had knowledge , animals , preparation and fear to help them .

They never had magick.

Only because we have forgotten this knowledge that is why we need
"this magic " to succeed.

Guess what . People did not need it. They never used it because it never existed.

We are not superior to people in the medievil times .
And indeed if the oil runs out soon and it will and we do not find a replacement energy source well only a few of us will survive and they will have to rediscover the knowledge of medievil times to do so.


They will have to use animals ,slaves , fear , affinity with nature in order to survive.

NOT MAGIC

So a medievil rpg does not need to have magic.

 

[chrisbeddoes]

Yes this is a new post . Complain all you want.No edit

From here ( i found this in random)

http://arwann.www8.50megs.com/
Bard - Another class with respect in most Tuatha, run out of some eastern countries.

Cleric- A rarity in Arwann, but with much more godly influence on spells allowed to cast.

Cyveraeth- A limited class of elite soldiers from the mystical Athlone Isle, they are able to manipulate time.

Druid- The clergy of Arwann and very important socially, with no level limits and each Deity grant a variety of spells

Elementalist- Another very important class in Arwann, a mix of magic-user and druid.

Eoghain Warrior- This is a mystical warrior class from the Maynooth Tuatha. (fight/illusionists)

Fighter- Weapon specialization is determined by region trained and is a must.

Magic-user - The spell casting sytem has changed, now possibly the most powerful class even at mid levels.

Paladin- A rarity and considered extremist in all but a few Tuatha.

Ranger- A very noble class and is treated with utmost respect by all.

Scather- A sub-class of Elementalist, deals with other planes and spirits.

Thief- Can any world exist without pick-pockets or con artists?
_____________
_____________
My comments


So how these classes existed in the real medieval times ?

Bard . Someone who tells stories boost moral entertain people and knows a lot of things .
Today these people are called journalists and they can even have web sites.
Boosting morale and entertaining people to stop the boredom is a very good way to support a group of 10 people . You also must know how to fight.


Cleric . Since the church ruled in medieval times such a person was more like you average today politician.
Cannot heal of course but can give courage to a part.
I would say that a big part could use a priest even in the real medieval times.

Druid Ahh this is very important .
The real equivalent someone that can train and handle animals.
Extremely important in medieval times.
Someone that could train horses , dogs even hawks and bears . Someone that knows the behavior of animals . A tracker . An extremely important class. A big party could use more than one.

Fighter . Yes . You definitely need fighters in medieval times . They use no magic.


Paladin : Paladin did exist in the crusades . Highly trained soldiers maybe know a few more tricks like giving courage or a few medicines.
Faith is very powerful force . You don’t need magick to fight more stronger courageous and elective with a paladin on you’re side . Faith will do the trick as well.

Ranger . Yes . Such a thing existed . More like a scout and a tracker but also someone else that can use animals and nature very effectively. He does not need magic just knowledge that is fast being forgotten.


Thief . Well . No magick needed. And he/she can lay traps also and remove them

Oh and a saw no mage on the list I copied from that website.


So mage .
An old man that no longer fight but from his experience can help the others fight better. Someone that can use a lot of devices effectively to create effect that others do not understand .
Primitive grenades existed in the medieval times. Very unreliable but they did.

The Chinese knew explosives for more than 2000 years .
And of course nobody would explain how they did it.


You really don't need magic for a medieval rpg.
My opinion only.
So what is your opinion ?

 

[Rosh]

A lot of the time period also made combat a prime factor of interaction, and unfortunately it's an aspect that must be included to appeal to a wider range of audience.

Now, I didn't think I would have had to say that, but let me clarify since I'm not meaning it in a Bishop Sawyer Cattle Appeal definition.

For playability and different playstyles, even Fallout and Arcanum offer pure combat as a viable means for some paths. Couldn't get through everything that way, but it's a playstyle thati's an option. Even I like to try the large brute character and see how it was allowed in the game.

Combat at that time, unfortunately, let to very nasty wounds that could end up a soldier healing for quite some time. So it's very hard to make combat a viable option without some deus ex machina for quick healing. Knowing how to treat wounds is one thing, but I'm also guessing some of you haven't really seen how long a good laceration or injury lasts. As it stands, get a broken bone from a mace impact, you're far from combat ability for quite some time.

 

[chrisbeddoes]

A lot of the time period also made combat a prime factor of interaction, and unfortunately it's an aspect that must be included to appeal to a wider range of audience.

Ok . I just want one game without a lot of combat for the player character .
I do not want all the game developers to remove violence from the games .

I want just one game with much less combat and a lot more human to human interaction.

Now I am only guessing here but I believe that such a RPG game would be liked a lot by a segment of the population that is now ignored .
Females.

And I also believe that females are more than males ( 51% versus 49 % ) and that they spent more money than males .


__________________--
____________________
EDIT

Also another cool idea that anybody that reads this can get for free. ( My opinion only)
Instead of starting as a leader of the group or a party you could start as a follower.
You could be a low level in an RPG party that had many high levels and lots of cool equipment and slightly rise your way to the top of the group ( by doing second rate tasks) and become high level without exposing yourself ( player character) to mortal danger.
You goal would be two-fold
a) Become the leader of your group
b) Kill or join the bad guys by using the resources of your group and after you find who the bad guys are or even indeed prove it

That way would work in real life also


/EDIT

EDITTWO
You are not the chosen one . You have proven that you must be the leader by your performance .And after the old leader dies you take his place . Or you challenge him for it if your party is evil.
And maybe instead of choosing npc you have to choose from 3 parties to join.
One good party, other evil party other chaotic party


/edittwo

EDIT3

You can be Sherlock Holms instead of Conan the barbarian. Maybe Conan needs magic. Sherlock Holms does not need magic. And neither Joan of Ark needed magic.

/EDIT3

 

[Constipated Craprunner]

Okay-
A) No diseases. Mayhap you can witness the Black Death, but for the most part this would upset game balance. Primarily because dying on the sword of a Turk is fun. Dysentery is not. I don’t know; make up some plot element that excuses this.
B) -5 Health- Unconsciousness, loosing some items. Most likely used in non-important death situations, i.e. Bandits.
- 20 Health- you spend 3 weeks in a Monastery/Palace/Church. During a rather important battle, fighting off Umayyad, or something.
-50 Health, crippled body part- 4 Months in Monastery/Palace/Church.
Uberly crippled body part- Amputation.
- Something health, but is in area surrounded by enemies- Sanctuary, a la Darklands
Beyond- Death.
Thank you Wasteland!
C) It depends on which part of the medieval period you are referring to. If this were the 7th century, than I would doubt that the above would work outside of Byzantium/Saracen territory, but during the 14th century I would find it hard to believe that they would know nothing on the subject of medicine. Our main source on Hippocrates is the monastic tradition of course. Well, that and the 4th Crusade.
Why not handle it in a Morrorwind way, save the annoying running skill. You can walk, but you can pay a Byzantine galley to let you off in Rome at the same time.
Yeah, my main reference on medieval medicine is The Name of the Rose, if you must know.
The male of our species is more common than the female due to the heat of the mother's womb.

 

[Rosh]

Okay-
B) -5 Health- Unconsciousness, loosing some items. Most likely used in non-important death situations, i.e. Bandits.
- 20 Health- you spend 3 weeks in a Monastery/Palace/Church. During a rather important battle, fighting off Umayyad, or something.
-50 Health, crippled body part- 4 Months in Monastery/Palace/Church.
Uberly crippled body part- Amputation.

Yeah, so much for the story. You'd need something watered-down like Daggerfall for that to work, and so much for any party cohesion, either.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Why do people keep talking in extremes here? It's either magic solves everything or leeches and exorcisms, nothing in between. It doesn't seem like it would be that hard to create a world with a general medieval technology and social structure but that happens to have a fairly solid grasp of medicine, at least as much as the Greeks and Romans, quite possibly more. Just because they had more advanced medical knowledge didn't automatically mean they had to be at our level of civlization or technology, either.

My point is that if you make leeches or excorcism actually work for healing at a significant rate, that's basically magic, because those things didn't really work very well at all.

Even apothacaries, with their special tea berb mixtures, didn't work much beyond the whole placebo thing. In other words, you'd end up with health potions!

It's just be hard to justify that the game is, indeed, "magicless", when most aspects of medical practice at the time were rooted in superstition, but somehow miraculously managed to work in the game.

Even more advanced things, like stitches, didn't work very well because the concept of disinfection hadn't been developed yet. Joey Lister wasn't around until the early 1900s, 500-600 years to late for this. Even without disinfection, you're down for a couple weeks while that wound healed.

That's my point. If you make these things work, then they'll end up working like magic.

 

[Rosh]

Oh but eating food to heal isn't magic because magic isn't food and food isn't magic and if you eats you heal and get all better and healed and your HP go back up to the top you are healthy now because of a t-bone steakoloLOLOLO!!111!!!

 

[Constipated Craprunner]

The best solution in any game to that problem had to be in Max Payne.
I still wonder how many bottles of pain-killers that guy could chug without killing himself. My best was about 9 in thirty seconds.

 

[Megatron]

Anyway

The problems could easily be solved by using the same kind of mentality that fallout uses. These cures work, old women with pets are evil and if you dont visit church on sunday god will eat your brain.

So have some kind of realism, then put a blanket of beliefs over it. So they'd still be the peasants in the streets, people throwing shit into the street and rich kings living in castles. But then you'd add what people believed like monsters, magic, cures (that worked) and all the other stuff.

Your main character could be the son of your brother and you're the apprentice of a priest who sends you out on 'holy quests' to steal him barrels of mead, gather prostitutes and steal him a corpse so his doctor friend can study it.

 

[thathmew]

So have some kind of realism, then put a blanket of beliefs over it. So they'd still be the peasants in the streets, people throwing shit into the street and rich kings living in castles. But then you'd add what people believed like monsters, magic, cures (that worked) and all the other stuff.

Find and play the classic Darklands. Set in 14th century germany. Magic is based on the alchemical beliefs of the time and prayers to saints. Healing is generally very slow. Great historical "realism." Really tackles a lot of the issues brought up in this discussion.

-m

 

[Constipated Craprunner]

A true.
Who can forget Darklands? It was the first game I ever purchased.
"We shall be as the gods, knowing good from evil".
I still cant figure how one town who says that turns out to be good.
Anyway, good point to bring up Darklands, though that does have several fantasy elements. Though the great thing was that it fit into the context of the place- in Mideval Germany, there was belived to be Demons and Dragons.

 

[Rosh]

A true.
Who can forget Darklands? It was the first game I ever purchased.
"We shall be as the gods, knowing good from evil".
I still cant figure how one town who says that turns out to be good.
Anyway, good point to bring up Darklands, though that does have several fantasy elements. Though the great thing was that it fit into the context of the place- in Mideval Germany, there was belived to be Demons and Dragons.

Nice way of ripping off a review or summary of the game.

http://rpgcodex.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=1423#1423

Either you can't make up your mind about your fictional past, or am I talking to Craprunner 1 or Craprunner 2 right now?

 

[Constipated Craprunner]

The first game I ever bought.
I could not get it to work for some odd 5+ years.

 

[Rosh]

The first game I ever bought.
I could not get it to work for some odd 5+ years.

Riiight, considering you'd have more luck getting it to work on an older computer.

 

[Constipated Craprunner]

I was 6.
I got it working on a 233 P2/WIN98 crappy micron fine when I was 11.
Great game, though a little on the easy side.

 

[Odin]

I did not misspell anything in that post.
I should know. I use spell check on all of my posts these days.
Yeah, I know, pathetic.
Anyway, explain this to me-
You flamed Odin for only posting on DaC to pimp NMA, but at the same time your sig is a link to DaC?

right, he only posted to say VISIT NMA!

Riiiight....

 

[DBL27]

Here's the problem I see: to de-empasize combat, you need to emphasize the aspects you mentioned, like interaction with NPCs, diplomacy, etc. I still have not seen any way to make this aspect of the game fun or challenging, because the difficulty of programming an engine to even apporoximate basic human interaction is well beyond the hardware and abilities of technology today. Because you are forced to choose from at most 5 or 6 responses in each branch of a dialogue tree, it is too limiting to base most of a game on this. That is why PnP can get away with adventures without combat altogether, because a good DM can make up responses to just about anything the players come up with (although even that can be pretty challenging, and is a lot harder than a combat adventure to run).

It is extremely frustrating to have four ideas that would potentially work in a situation and not being able to use any due to dialog limitations.