To begin with, I would need to establish which players were to participate, and in what capacity. The roles they played would span a hundred millennia, so playing a mortal character would be difficult, and I wasn't keen on inventing new characters for every time period they might visit. We therefore collectively concluded that the players each take one persona, each that of an immortal or reincarnating god-spirit. At each point of crisis that I designated, they would be summoned by the tribes, who would present them with a political, religious, or socio-moral quandary.
I was insistent that there should be no easy answers; this was not to be a traditional puzzle game, easily solved by a thorough investigation, the right spell, or clever battle plans. These were to be cultural tipping points, crises between large forces: religion vs science, discipline vs freedom, tradition vs invention, war vs trade. Every choice the players made should have far-reaching consequences.
With consequential choices as my starting point, I ruled out certain categories of Event. I would never ask the players to settle an argument that didn't matter, or seek to preserve the status quo. During this phase of human migration, I would never present them with a literal crossroads, asking if Og the Clever should lead his clan north or east. If the lands north and east could each sustain a human population, I reasoned, then either Og or his competitors would eventually fill that ecological niche. What mattered more was the nature of Og's people, and how they adapted culturally and physically to their surroundings.
Besides, asking the players to do something so dull as to choose directions on a map wasn't particularly gripping. It would be a choice, sure, but it wouldn't be a world-building choice.
Among the Events I considered was the thorny issue of technology. I did want some of the Events to revolve around the significant milestones of technological development, but there were two questions: could I allow the players to advance the technology of a culture prematurely? and could I permit the players to use their modern, 21st-century knowledge to influence their decisions?
To answer the second question first, I decided there wasn't any realistic way to prevent the players from being 21st-century people with a baseline education. They'd never be able to immerse themselves so fully in the role of a thousand-century-old caveman to forget all they knew about physics, chemistry, economics, meteorology, plate tectonics, astronomy, forms of government, machinery, history, or mathematics. It's ingrained. Why fight it?
That said, there was no reason to permit them to embed new technology into a culture that wasn't prepared for it. A civilization that's mired in the swampy river delta isn't going to find much use for the Wheel; a civilization with only wood furnaces won't be able to produce the necessary heat to cast iron. Culturally, too, a civilization may not need or want certain inventions; to name one example, writing was historically invented and maintained as a way to track debts and transactions. A culture without trade is a culture that has no pressing need to perpetuate writing — they're probably too busy looking for their next meal!
Any technology is an investment of the culture's time and effort. The classic example of handing gunpowder to Alexander the Great would require the Madedonians to spend vast amounts of time and energy smelting steel, mining lead, rifling barrels, gathering saltpeter, machining interchangeable parts, mixing the powder, manufacturing copper jackets, and assembling the shells. Merely building the factory capable of building a rifle requires first inventing tools to make the tools to build the factory. Gunpowder is a quantum leap forward in results, but it comes at a fantastic increase in labor, resources, and expertise. In the time it would take Alexander to mint one Spencer rifle, his quartermasters could have made ten thousand swords.
So now I knew what kind of Events they were to face: cultural milestones, political tipping points, technological breakthroughs, and key military battles. I could therefore give the players roles defined by the challenges they'd face. Broadly speaking, those roles were Leadership, Philosophy, Culture, and Invention. Leadership would include warfare, military expertise and tactics, administration, and charisma — the Captain Kirk of the Star Trek triumvirate, if you will. Philosophy would include the soft sciences: herbalism, biology, medicine, mysticism and religion, magic spells, and symbology — Dr McCoy, the conscience. Invention would cover the hard sciences and crafting: invention, engineering, carpentry, blacksmithing, and mining — Mr Spock. Last there would be a role for Culture — art, lore, storytelling, law, history, music, all the roles of the various Muses rolled into one. Culture, we decided, would be an NPC (non-player character; I would control this character if and when its input was ever needed).
The roles were set. The players were ready. You'll meet them in the first round.
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