Izurich
Half Pint
DecentlyOkay
djarin
Otreas
Noctis
Hello and welcome to my food for thought. I'm not quite sure if this is just a random idea I've been having, a true interest check, or just a process right now for gaining feedback, but I've been toying with an idea for a prehistoric story or roleplay for quite some time, and I'm looking for insight, thoughts, advice or even just wondering if anyone would be interested in something like this.
Now when I say prehistoric, I'm not exactly talking about dinosaurs, Jurassic Park or anything like that, as I feel like those kinds of stories have already been played to death. But I was thinking along the lines of something more original, like a story that takes place during the Cenozoic era after non-avian dinosaurs have already gone extinct. I'm drawing my inspiration from movies like 10,000 BC, or the movie Alpha, or the older classic movie Quest For Fire and things like that. I want to make a story that takes place during the Late Pleistocene epoch, or a time during the Quaternary Period roughly corresponding to the Tarantian Age when early modern humans coexisted with extinct monsters and other primitive human species such as homo erectus and homo neanderthals.
I'd like to have a more realistic, historically accurate RP story which would require the participants to have some fairly good knowledge and education about the time period. I was thinking of naming it the Tarantian Age, or the Age of Giants, or something catchy to that effect. Of course, the Tarantian Age does include a very large timespan from around 130,000-12,000 years ago, and it's a little difficult trying to narrow that down to a single century or decade to use as a reference point in order to make things easier.
I find this entire time period to be fascinating and so I find it difficult trying to decide if it should take place during the Last Ice Age or during the warmer Early Stone Age before the last glacial period. Maybe we could have a map that includes both hotter and colder regions in order to include both variants for the characters to adapt and interact with. Of course this also makes it difficult for me to pick a specific continent or location for the story, as part of me would love to include the whole Earth in general, but if it's too spread out, that might make it difficult for all the characters to interact with all the different species of humans, plants and fauna in a single lifespan and so we might have to adjust the story to include some minor historical inaccuracies for the sake of gameplay just to make it more fun and exciting.
I was also thinking about giving players a choice of which tribe they would like to start with, sort of like when you setup your characters during a RP video game by picking your class beforehand to determine what abilities and skills you will start out with. Only in this case, you would have a very simple choice between being a neanderthal or a homo sapien. The neanderthal class would be larger, stronger, better equipped to survive in the extreme cold whereas the human class would be faster, smarter and better adapted for extreme heat. Both tribes could be mortal enemies in order to add a sense of drama and conflict to the story. I think that would be kind of neat for a roleplaying session.
For an added challenge, there would be a whole myriad of different carnivorous predators and megafauna that both tribes would have to face, both in water and on land, in the mountains, forests and caves they encounter during the story. There wouldn't be any non-avian dinosaurs, but there could be some equally terrifying reptiles, giant birds, aquatic life and large mammals that would actively hunt and prey on both species. Both tribes would have a language that only they could understand. If we get some skilled creative writers, we could even reconstruct some archaic languages for them to speak rather than just having them grunt like stupid cavemen and using primitive sign language, which isn't very fun or realistic to be honest.
Give both classes some very similar but slightly different technology for building weapons, clothing and shelter, slightly different tactics for hunting, etc. and I think it could actually turn out to be a pretty exciting story. Again, this is really more of a thought experiment at the moment rather than an official interest check, but I guess it could be considered close enough, if we can get some feedback and more ideas on how to make it better or even just give it a more solid foundation that we can start building upon to make it an official roleplay.
I don't know, tell me what you all think. Yay or nay? Would you want to join in a story like this? Or is it too boring? Does anyone have any ideas on how I can make it better? Or would anyone like to volunteer their creative skills to work on this RP project? If so, feel free to get involved and just share your own thoughts and opinions. I'm not much of a good game master, I generally just let the players govern themselves and see where it goes. So, let's see what happens. The stage is all yours. Let's hear it. 🤠🤷♂️
