Designing for the Dark Ages

Designing a game inspired by the Dark Ages presents a range of challenges and rewards. Chief among these is that we know very very little about it. What people do think often comes from our much later notions of nations, power identity and more

In this post I am going to talk a bit about how I have tried to bring some of the "history" into FEUD, a system-neutral adventure module that will be live on Kickstarter September 18th. Follow now to be notified when it launches!

Some of the books that influence FEUD

It's not the Dark Ages

There are many names for the dark ages, but I use the term Migration Period. For me this name captures better the realities of this period. It covers around 300 - 600AD (definitions differ) and covers events from across all of Europe, the Mediteranean and North Africa. 

It is the time when the Western Roman Empire changed and eventurally fell, the empire of Atilla the Hun, rose and fell, new kingdoms emerged and fell. Throughout it there was change: people moved. They moved for the same reasons as today: climate change, warfare, new opportunities and more. Among all of this the seeds of the later medieval period, and large swathes of the modern world, were scattered and started to germinate. 

The region I am most interested in is northern Europe and Scandinavia. This the time that the poem Beowulf is set in. We might think of these people as the Vikings before the Vikings and the English before England. However, this thought is not really right, as I discuss below. 

FEUD has migration throughout it. One of the major factions of a cult is made up of people from all over the wider world. To the north a rival group's crops are failing and their eyes turn the players home. An exile group from far to the south and east have arrived and been forced to live in only a meagre swamp.

My cat helping me with research

It is the Dark Ages  

We know almost nothing about this period, especially in this region. Our meagre historical (non-archaelogical) sources are all written centuries after (or before) this period. They were also written in different places or by people belonging to totally different cultural settings, often with their own agendas. (I recommend Archaeodeath on TikTok who talks about the archaeology and the absurdity of peoples' misrepresentations of the time).

Therefore, we know next to nothing about the humans who lived there. We don't understand their politics, their beliefs, their values, their identities, their gender roles, sexuality and so on. 

Unfortunately people pour into this darkness their own bigoted perspectives and impute onto the past the idea of a "people" - an ethnically homogenous, homophobic, racist, misogynistic, nationalist fantasy. 

All modern notions of nationalism, racial identity etc. cannot be applied to this time. Unlike many "medieval" games - it isn't just a representation of the modern world but cars are replaced by horses and the internet by wizards. 

In order to admit that we know nothing I have tried to keep the characters as loosley defined as possible. There is almost no gendered language within the book and even where there is some (such as the word "lord"), the characters who fill this role can be any gender. There is also almost no physical description of what characters "look" like - there is no generic norm which people should be fulfilling. As you play the characters can, ultimately as in all games, be any kind of person you choose. 

The source of FEUD

An interesting set of documents we have that relate to this time come from when Charlemagne and his dynasty were conquering swathes of Western Europe in the 8th/9th centuries. In doing so they made their people write down their laws, albeit in Christianised, Charlmagne-ised terms.

I barely know anything about these but one thing that is interesting is the emphasis (as in Anglo-Saxon England) on wergild, the body-price. Individual crimes of violence against different levels of society are carefully enumerated. There is sense that the laws are so comprehensive out of fear of something: feat of the blood-feud.

Blood-feud is often mentioned as something that "used to exist". In depictions of it, for example in Beowulf both with Grendel and their mother and among people, such as the fight at Finnsburgh, feud is a purely destructive power. Whole halls and citizens are obliterated by the fulfilment of feuds. These are not battles of conquest or power; they happen simply to enact the feud. 

In FEUD I imagine that this is a time while blood-feud is still a part of law codes. Not only that but the law is adamant that the feud must be endlessly destructive. There are very few instructions in the book, but the one I get closest to is in a repeated phrase: "the Feud must grow". We hear this in the voice of the god who narrates the book, the voice of characters, we even see the extract from the law quoted in full. It is the guide for the terror of the world, the feud must grow. 

Hints of real groups - The Heruls

There are scattered mentions of groups of people in the history that relates to this period. An intriguing term is that of Heruls. Variously interpreted as a specific kingdom in the Hunnic empire, a royal family, or a name for mercenaries/pirates (like Saxons or Vikings). There is a fascinating bit of history where the Heruls split around 508AD and one group "returned" north to Scandinavia, from their home around where the Danube meets the Black Sea (perhaps modern day Romania/Ukraine). 

This group might be the origin of the word "earl" or "jarl" (emphasis very heavily on the might - the first advocate of this idea was writing with very dodgy intentions). Whereby they became seen as synonymous with military leaders. They may even, alongside the wider changes of the Migration Period, have implemented more modern ideas of nobility and ushered in a pre-cursor to the feudal system began to be influential at the end of the Migration Period. 

In FEUD the Heruls are a small group who have returned to an ancestral homeland only to be maligned by the current rulers and essentially condemned to live in a cursed and haunted bog. Using their skills in politics, and their modern sense of ambition, the noble leader of the Heruls is angling to ensure his people a more secure future. 

Forgotten Gods 

There are three gods in the region but they are all nearly forgotten and unworshipped due to the power of the cult called The Friends of Yng. This group, the main antagonists in the feud, worship at ancient standing stones,  believing them to be the place where their god Yng, died. 

Yng (or Freyr) is still remembered today as part of the supposed pantheon of Norse gods. There is almost no way we can say that this pantheon existed at all. Our only sources on the religion come from Tacitus in the earliest part of the millenium and much much later writers (Snorri Sturlson) who were more obviously influenced by Christianity and the classics. 

I personally feel that pantheons of gods present a miserly perspective on faith and spirtuality. They seek to limit more animist beliefs to a model that monotheists can understand. Therefore I have slightly relegated Yng to a secondary position versus my more animist gods and spirits. 

In FEUD Yng is worshipped by a Swede group who have connections with the Swedes beyong the region. This is because of the idea that Yng (Ing or Freyr) is seen as the head of the Ynglingar, the ancient family of kings of the Swedes. There is also an association of Yng with a figure of migration, movement and fertility, features that fit with the themes of the adventure. 

There is far more littered throughout the game that comes from my readings of this history and other folklore, to actually go through it all would require more words than the game itself. So I will wrap up here! 

Let me know if you have any other questions and I will see what I can say. 

FEUD is Kickstarting for a print release of the 60-page zine from September 18th. It is illustrated throughout with hand-cut lino prints that I did on my kitchen table, the originals of which are available as add-ons.