Chained Coffin Questions

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DrShevek
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Chained Coffin Questions

Post by DrShevek »

I recently picked up the Shudder Mountain adventures on Drivethrurpg and I love what I am reading so far. I have a few questions though.

As I read it, I am having a hard time envisioning this as medieval fantasy. Guys in heavy Armor and shields just doesn't feel right. I have also picked up Black Power Black Magic and think that may be a better fit. I would toss in some coal miners and some tribal folk to round it out.

Still, if the setting works fine with standard DCC, I will stick with that. How does the game feel thematically when run in Plate mail and the like? Do people feel the need to work in medieval conventions? (Feudal lords, castles, etc)
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Nerdwerfer
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Re: Chained Coffin Questions

Post by Nerdwerfer »

Trudging through the mountains in plate armor would be a pain, however... though the Chained Coffin is inspired by the stories of John the Balladeer and the Appalachian Mountains, while prepping for my Shudder Mountain campaign, I also felt the need to look for some medieval analogies and came across this article about Swiss life in Alps, what follows is an expert form a longer article found here: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... ean-badass

Feudalism, that hierarchical system of social organization, required the ability of elites to dominate the means of production... If you could dominate the local population, you could control the local wealth. Domination could be direct (“give me”) or indirect (“if you give me, I will protect you from the others”) but usually a combination of both. Of course this mostly applied in agrarian areas, where people were tied to the land. In the Alps, not so much.

Not entirely, but to a big degree, the pastoralists (read: “Sheep and Cow herders”) of the Alpine valleys were never subjugated to deep feudalism because, at the end of the day, they could always just shift valleys and there was not squat that any overlord could effectively do about it. Build a castle in one valley? Fine, I’m leaving for the next one over. That sort of negates the ability of an overlord to amass enough wealth to build much of a castle in the first place. So what you had in a lot of what is now Switzerland was free men who were bound by families and personal and commercial affiliations, not feudalism. This mattered. (NOTE: This is also a gross exaggeration of a very complex situation, but enough to give you the gist.) In the early 1300s enter inroads by external powers, feudal powers, trying to exert their own authority over segments of Switzerland, or more accurately the sub-states that now make up Switzerland. Places like the Gotthard Pass were coveted by these external forces. These feudal powers thought that their armor and knights would put paid to the peasants of Switzerland. Bad bet.


Just think of the valleys as hollers and there you go. So a culture similar to that of the Shudder Mountains would, could and did exist in a medieval environment, and it could be said that the volks of the Appalachian mountains, at least up until the 1930's, had preserved in its folklore a way of life and worldview not too different from the late medieval mindset. There was even the theory among some linguist that the dialect spoken in the insular mountain communities was a preserved remnant of 16th-century (or "Elizabethan") English. (Varmint is a 16th century word btw) So maybe not so much plate mail but a gambeson made from the hide of Hellbender Salamander would fit nicely.

As a side note, movies like Valhalla Rising, The Revenant and The Witcher video game series, for me at least, helped with visualizing something more than the typical world that comes to mind when thinking medieval. (Cobblestone, stone buttresses, tight pants, plaster stucco walls and syphilis)

Also, one of the things I like about the Shudder Mountains is the naming convention, though it is fashionable in fantasy rpgs to derive names that sound exotic, Totlichwald and Mordor for example, these would to the local ears be heard as Deadly Forest, and Black Land. You can have your Skadedyr-dal but I personally prefer Varmint Holler, easier to remember and pronounce, if you're an Arkie like me anyway.

Commence to Shuddering!
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soulcatcher78
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Re: Chained Coffin Questions

Post by soulcatcher78 »

Nerdwerfer wrote:Trudging through the mountains in plate armor would be a pain, however... though the Chained Coffin is inspired by the stories of John the Balladeer and the Appalachian Mountains, while prepping for my Shudder Mountain campaign, I also felt the need to look for some medieval analogies and came across this article about Swiss life in Alps, what follows is an expert form a longer article found here: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... ean-badass

Feudalism, that hierarchical system of social organization, required the ability of elites to dominate the means of production... If you could dominate the local population, you could control the local wealth. Domination could be direct (“give me”) or indirect (“if you give me, I will protect you from the others”) but usually a combination of both. Of course this mostly applied in agrarian areas, where people were tied to the land. In the Alps, not so much.

Not entirely, but to a big degree, the pastoralists (read: “Sheep and Cow herders”) of the Alpine valleys were never subjugated to deep feudalism because, at the end of the day, they could always just shift valleys and there was not squat that any overlord could effectively do about it. Build a castle in one valley? Fine, I’m leaving for the next one over. That sort of negates the ability of an overlord to amass enough wealth to build much of a castle in the first place. So what you had in a lot of what is now Switzerland was free men who were bound by families and personal and commercial affiliations, not feudalism. This mattered. (NOTE: This is also a gross exaggeration of a very complex situation, but enough to give you the gist.) In the early 1300s enter inroads by external powers, feudal powers, trying to exert their own authority over segments of Switzerland, or more accurately the sub-states that now make up Switzerland. Places like the Gotthard Pass were coveted by these external forces. These feudal powers thought that their armor and knights would put paid to the peasants of Switzerland. Bad bet.


Just think of the valleys as hollers and there you go. So a culture similar to that of the Shudder Mountains would, could and did exist in a medieval environment, and it could be said that the volks of the Appalachian mountains, at least up until the 1930's, had preserved in its folklore a way of life and worldview not too different from the late medieval mindset. There was even the theory among some linguist that the dialect spoken in the insular mountain communities was a preserved remnant of 16th-century (or "Elizabethan") English. (Varmint is a 16th century word btw) So maybe not so much plate mail but a gambeson made from the hide of Hellbender Salamander would fit nicely.

As a side note, movies like Valhalla Rising, The Revenant and The Witcher video game series, for me at least, helped with visualizing something more than the typical world that comes to mind when thinking medieval. (Cobblestone, stone buttresses, tight pants, plaster stucco walls and syphilis)

Also, one of the things I like about the Shudder Mountains is the naming convention, though it is fashionable in fantasy rpgs to derive names that sound exotic, Totlichwald and Mordor for example, these would to the local ears be heard as Deadly Forest, and Black Land. You can have your Skadedyr-dal but I personally prefer Varmint Holler, easier to remember and pronounce, if you're an Arkie like me anyway.

Commence to Shuddering!
I think you have just convinced me to pull the trigger on the boxed set. Thank you :)
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Nerdwerfer
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Re: Chained Coffin Questions

Post by Nerdwerfer »

I think you have just convinced me to pull the trigger on the boxed set. Thank you :)
Good deal! The more Shudfolk the merrier :D
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