Running a Bronze Age Campaign – Part 1

[Don Jones]

This is the first in a series of posts on running a campaign, or writing a story, set in the Bronze Age. From the first days of role-playing games, most fantasy games were set in what was basically a Medieval European setting, with fantasy elements thrown in. Although it didn’t take long for gamers to start homebrewing campaigns set in other cultures or earlier times, quite often a lack of research or information resulted in these games still having the feel of the typical Middle Ages setting, with just a little window dressing thrown in. When we created Netherstorm, we wanted it to have the feel of a true Bronze Age setting. Hopefully, these posts will give game masters and writers the information they need to bring some authenticity to Bronze Age settings, regardless of what system they are using.

The first subject we’re dealing with, weapons and armor, is actually the least important. However, it also happens to be the first topic people tend to jump to immediately when speaking about a Bronze Age setting. Let’s start by dispelling a myth. The earliest iron was not significantly superior to bronze. Bronze is a much denser metal than iron and is easier to work, due to a lower melting point. Yes, steel is superior, but it didn’t show up until later in the Iron Age. The iron that the Hittites were extracting from ore and working circa 1,500 BCE wasn’t necessarily much more durable than the far more common bronze weapons.

There are differences, though, and it would affect the weaponry available in a setting. For one thing, bronze tends to bend more bendable. The blades tend to warp over a period of use. This means that the blades for swords tended to be smaller, from 12 in. to 24 in. (30 cm to 60 cm), or roughly a dagger to a short sword in size, and have a thicker spine running down the center of the blade. We did include things such as long swords and two-handed swords in the Netherstorm rules, but if a game master wants to run a truer Bronze Age setting, large swords simply don’t exist. There were battle axes early in the Bronze Age, the halberd came to be used somewhere in the early to middle Bronze Age, and the spear had obviously been a staple weapon since the Paleolithic times, so there are two-handed weapons available other than swords. Extremely large two-handed hammers and maces are highly unlikely in this setting however, because bronze is significantly denser and heavier than iron, so actually wielding something that heavy in combat would grow tiring and difficult.

As for ranged weapons, bows existed in the Neolithic period, but it wasn’t until the middle of the Bronze Age that the compound bow was developed. Standing armies with specialists, like archers, didn’t really exist until the middle part of the Bronze Age, after cities like Uruk were already established. Sargon of Akkad was one of the first rulers we know of to need a standing army for conquests in circa 2,300 BCE. While bows weren’t uncommon, spears and javelins were also commonly found, having been used widely for hunting since Paleolithic times. At one of the best preserved early Bronze Age battle sites, a massive number of oblong bullets for slings were found, showing that the sling was also a commonly used weapon in the early part of the period. Depending what part of the period the game or story is set in, characters should be just as likely to use other ranged weapons as bows.

Iron armor doesn’t exist in a Bronze Age setting. In fact, bronze continued to be used for pieces of armor, such as helmets, right into the Roman period. One of the reasons for this is that it was difficult for Bronze Age technology to make iron into the thin sheets needed for armor.

Unless they hail from a larger city-state, a warrior in the early Bronze Age would have trained not so much as a soldier as having been an experienced raider. As people moved away from hunting-gathering to agrarian communities, raiding became common, so that even the average peasant would have some ability and combat to protect the community against raiders. Later in this period, walled cities became more common, although there are examples from centuries before. As city-states and empires began to form, the professional soldier started to become more of a reality. In the middle Bronze Age, chariots began to play a more prominent role, and an archer from chariot or horseback was a valuable commodity.

For Part II, we will look at the structure and politics of Bronze Age societies.