One example of a real-world time abyss I'm fond of is pointing out that Cleopatra was born closer to the moon landings than to the construction of the great pyramids.

What I learned today: Matthew Colvile should read audio books.

That phrase "fruitless victories" reminds me of a Basho poem: A field of dry grass; all that's left of soldiers' dreams.

One of the most chilling moments in any campaign I've played in. We're touring these catacombs alongside an effectively immortal sorceress. We come into these tunnels and she's rattling off all these facts and name dropping important figures. Until she stops dead in her tracks and whispers "Now what's this...?" At the bottom of this endless labyrinth was an abandoned city. And she had no knowledge of it at all. It was either totally new, or impossibly old (turned out the latter, naturally.) And it made all four of us playing look at each other and go "Jackpot. This is where shit goes crazy." And boy did it.

When Matt calls LotR a Romance, the medievalist in me gets all excited.

There so much great inspiration and world-building to be found when we imagine the worlds of Dungeons and Dragons as a lightly-veiled post-apocalyptic setting. This idea is so deeply engrained in the DNA of the genre. It's part of the mystique, and it's been there since Conan and Vance.

It's also worth noting that Tolkien was Catholic and acutely aware that he was writing a book about a bunch of Pagans. No *real* victory, Tolkien believed, was possible before Christ. For instance in the Appendix we learn that Arwen--being an elf and therefore lacking a soul--goes to oblivion. Aragon tells her "we are not bound forever to the circles of the world, and beyond them lies more than a memory." He has a sense of something that may come to mend the broken world, but he does not know what...or who...it might be,

How I have missed your lectures, O Magnificent Moorcockian Lion Man.

I always saw it as a transition from greatness to goodness. The people of Bree weren't as great as the empires before them, but they were good. Aragorn's Gondor won't be as great as that of his predecessors, but he's learned to value kindness and individual life in a way 'great men' rarely do. Maybe I was projecting my world view, as well.

I *love* that you mention that the D&D world is Post Apocalyptic. It was kind of an interesting realization I made independently (and I think we talked about before on Discord), though I extrapolated from Chapter 1. The nonsensical demographics that the DMG implies in its mapmaking section, when combined with the default world assumpstions, "The World is Ancient," and, "The World is Wild," paints a pretty clear picture that there was a great power before the world was shattered, and the people who exist today are simply survivors picking at the scraps of it.

I never thought of the existence of dungeons and ruins as a post-apocalyptic event, that is a brilliant insight

Current campaign is called “Thöll: Autumn of Empires” and it is the fall of one such regime. The characters are, in essence, witnessing that sort of event. What they haven’t found is the previous Empire from a long time ago... and it wasn’t human. It wasn’t even humanoid. I can’t wait for that reveal. 🤘😈🤘

Am I the only one who really wants to hear a Matthew-Colville narrated audiobook of LotR? Or, for that matter, anything?

Another thing to note, which you slightly touched on but didn't fully mention, is that those past empires should definitely be different than the current ruling culture and possibly even of differing arcane and technological advancements. Perhaps the reason a Holy Avenger can't be made nowadays is simply because the forging method and blessing ritual have also been lost to time, or the God which imbued the Holy Avengers with their powers has ceased being worshiped. Magic has changed over time, no longer allowing for the creation of eternally tangible effects or enchantments on objects, at least not by modern arcane practitioners or of that immense quality.

This may be lost in the sea of compliments, but I want to thank you Matt. You have inspired countless people to take the dive into and swim deeper into the wondrous depths of D&D. Your bountiful wisdom with our beloved game does not go unnoticed. You have even inspired me to begin my own D&D channel on KZfaq. Once again, thank you. PEACE...OUT!

As someone who started DM-ing actively after about 20 years of no DnD, you have no idea how effin MUCH your series helped me. Please, for the love of those who are new/shotty at DM-ing, never stop doing these.

Term of the day: "Pale echo".

Loved this video but with my newest setting, I’m experimenting with having a world only 1200 years after springing into existence. It’s an interesting creative challenge to think through why each dungeon and set of ruins specifically exists. So far so good

Just wanted to reiterate your point on your fallen empire paying dividends. I made an abbreviated timeline with the goal of fitting it on one sheet of paper. Afterwards my first thought was "this is the most self-indulging, worthless thing to the players I've written." Yet doing that simple thing led to an organically evolved set of empires that would have just been a burden for players to need to know about. Building your fallen empires, even just vaguely, pay dividends immediately after you sit down for your first session prep in the campaign setting and realize that you now need a reason for this dungeon or "dungeon" to be here full of shiny objects.

Oh boy, here we go. Tolkien did indeed serve at the Battle of the Somme, and in that battle, he and others all faced death. Not just their own possible deaths, but the deaths of many others-- of friends, of fellow soldiers, the enemy. Tolkien lost ALL of the friends he'd made in the army in that war, and very much yes, he saw that First World War as a 'fruitless victory', because what was earned in that war? It is oft said that World War I was a needless war, and it nearly destroyed an entire generation: Tolkien's generation. And it is no doubt that Tolkien used that in, first, the Hobbit, with the Battle of The Five Armies, as well as in how he shaped Elrond's history in The Lord of the Rings. He's seen entire swathes of youths and good men die. Saying that, regarding your vid this week, Matt, it's another great addition. I love world building videos, and the creations of these old kingdoms helps so much with immersion. It can be daunting to stop and write about them without getting too lost, but I think the questions you stated for us to ask ourselves is a great starting point that isn't too boggling. Congrats on your new offices! Can't wait to see your games when yall start filming, and even bigger congrats on your book! I'm eager to see how it comes out.

Hi Matt, As i hot glue the ancient cardboard stones of my pyramid together, i think to myself wile watching this video: "i wonder if i should ask in the doobbley doo when to expect that awesome book ive been waiting for?" To find that not only have you answered my question at the end of the video but this very video its self is a relevant tool for my current campaign and the task i am currently working on. Thank you so much for your hard work staying up late to provide us DMs with your wisdom. Curly

This is one of my favorites out of the series. This "Dead Empires" idea is critical for homebrew worlds. In mine my old dead empires were monster based, ie Abolath, then mind flayer and then beholder.

I had actually started designing a character who was mindful of the last in a similar way; a ancestral guardian Barbarian whose connections to the sprits (and his strength in general) is a product of magical tombs of history, culture, folklore etc. his family had been protecting for centuries after an evil empire had destroyed civilization in this continent. Glad this video came out; it’ll help me with his character I imagine.

Thanks for still uploading despite the load of work you have to do, much appreciated

I used to live on the edge of Birmingham, right in the area that Tolkien took inspiration for the mills, swamps and towers in the books.

I got my copy of Beren and Luthien, Chris Tolkien's last book, and I noticed Elrond's quote on this video is cited in the preface. Can't help but wonder if Matt got the idea for this video after reading that book!

Hearing Elrond's passage about "Fruitless Victories" makes me reanalyze that smile he gives during the end of Return of the King, at Aragon's coronation. Obviously, yes, he's happy for Arwen, but it's likely he's finally truly realized that the victories in the War of the Ring don't seem to be fruitless. (Don't mention The Returning Shadow, that doesn't count!)

There is a line during the final battle between Turnus and Aeneas at the end of the Aeneid where Vergil describes Turnus easily lifting a boulder that "twenty men of the kind the earth now produces would not be able budge", and yet this war in Latium was clearly intended as a pale echo of the grander war Aeneas had already fought--and lost--in his native Troy, the last glorious gasp of a Heroic Age--and it likewise ends in a wimper: Turnus, driven mad by the furies, simply stands there and lets the rock that had been aimed at Aeneas's head slide harmlessly to the side, falls to his knees and begs for Aeneas's mercy--mercy that Aeneas was too world-weary and cynical to grant. The epics and romances upon which so much fantasy is based take very seriously the classical presumption that the farther back in history you go, the more important every event was and the more awesome every individual person participating in it was.

Wow, I really hadn’t thought much about that... certainly there is still much that needs to be done for my campaign, thank you so much, I can’t believe how much I have improved and how much I will continue to do so thanks to your videos :)

There is an excellent anecdote from Persian history: one of the Persian emperors found a city, greater than any of Persia'a, that had been deserted and sacked long ago. He had no idea who left or who sacked it. It was an Assyrian city, perhaps their capital. Imagine the awe, being the king of the four corners of the world, king of kings, and seeing walls taller than yours, seeing a city that stretches further than you could hope to build. The tombstone for a greater empire that has been forgotten

A video under 15 minutes? Who are you and what have you done with Matt?

This is arguably my favorite video that you've done so far. It made me look at the world I'm crafting for my players like new. It's like laying down in the forest for the first time and seeing the trees are so much taller then first assumed.

Listening to you read is always wonderful. If you didn't have so much on your plate I would almost suggest you should narrate books.

Any video you shed light on Lord of the Rings and uses it to teach us how to "write" fantasy by exploring the larger concepts and how to evoke these emotions is on my top favorite list. Thank you for teaching me how to be a much better DM. I never heard my players say "dude, you're an awesome DM" up until I started "studying' your Running the Game series. Thank you, Matt Colvile. I wish I could have been part of the kickstarter here from Brazil.

Sovereign : The pattern has repeated itself more times than you can fathom. Organic civilizations rise, evolve, advance, and at the apex of their glory they are extinguished. The Protheans were not the first. They did not create the Citadel. They did not forge the mass relays. They mere found them - the legacy of my kind.

In my Campaign setting, there was a great cataclysm 18 hundred years ago( this is when by the way people began to keep track of time) and it spelled the doom of one such empire. The thing is most of the conflict of 2 great nations comes from an entrance to the underdark when the players will go in there they will find A lot of why the cataclysm took place and what or who made it happen. It will be great!

"Time is a flat circle... like one ring" - Tolkien, probably

For a second I forgot I was watching a Matt Colville video and instead listening to a Matt Colville audiobook. Those few chapters you read of Priest were 10/10, by the way.

Your latest video just made me realize how freaking meta my current campaign is... After not playing for 30 years, I've finally convinced my wife and daughter to start playing in a world which could only be described as 'Druids against the Undead'. They don't know it yet, but the Empire of Magic is on the verge of a great collapse, the great Lich-Queen having made an incredibly powerful wish 40 years ago to seal the memory of the Goddess of Life and Healing from the world of men. That means 'Cure Disease', 'Healing Spells' and Clerics who can make Holy Water or Turn Undead don't exist anymore! The evil Queen then created diseases such as Widow's-Blight where the widows of soldiers who've been animated into the Lich-Queen's Army of Bones wander off into the sea in their sleep to die, Spell-Blight (which causes magic-users to lose Constitution points equal to the spell level they cast against the Undead should they fail their save), the dead rising as zombies if they're not buried with Grave Salt, and all other sorts of wonderful curse-like maladies... Oh yes, and no resurrection. The Lich-Queen Kahliel seeks to turn my fantasy world into an Empire of the Dead, which is how we working adults feel some days, the excitement and Imagination of our youth being trampled underfoot by a relentless Army of the Dead; i.e. a mortgage, bills to pay, sixty-hour work weeks, etc... My players are helping me keep that wonderful world alive, should they be able to spare the time amidst Girl Guide camps, their first job, softball, school, volunteering, and so on.

This points out an interesting difference that I noticed in the shift between 2nd edition and 3rd edition D&D. In the earlier editions, magic items could still be made, but the process was difficult, and ultimately not worth it (you had to spend a point of permanent Constitution loss, for example, just to cast the Permanency spell that would finalize a +1 sword). Pretty much all the treasures you were likely to find were the leftovers of an earlier era, mighty and mythical stuff often found just lying around in random lairs (ala the cave of the trolls in The Hobbit). Compare and contrast with 3rd edition, where everything was boiled down to money and (sometimes) time. Not only were there detailed rules for making everything in the treasure lists, the PCs could actually make that stuff themselves if they were of a mind to go through the effort. Very often, I noticed in my campaigns with those systems, an epic magic item found in a dragon's hoard would count as a curiosity that could be converted to cash, so that the PC could then commission somebody to make the truly awesome item they *really* wanted, tailored to their specific needs. The difference in tone is quite extreme, from the fantastical wonders of Tolkein and Vance, leftovers from a bygone era that would never be repeated, to the cutting edge of Eberron's mage-punk, where the greatest magic items are being made *now*, to the exact specifications of their users. Bear in mind, I am not calling one or the other of these two ways of viewing the world as better or worse, just pointing out the difference as a way of letting people consider their pros and cons while designing their own worlds. Oh! And one last thought: this video is awesome because it points out the critical truth of worldbuilding for a game: don't infodump all the work you did in making the world on the players, but you *should* do all that work all the same, even if they never see a part of a fraction of everything you've prepared. If you do, or if you don't, the players *will* notice, and it *will* affect your game, for better (if you did) or for worse (if you didn't).

I tend to approach my worlds with the understanding that whatever happens, the world will survive and eventually flourish anew. My current setting is explicitly post-apocalypse but the Blood Moons that caused it never stopped, the world has survived and adapted and now all that's left is to reclaim the old empire. People still make magic swords, a lot of techniques have been lost but more are being devised all the time. We will pick up the pieces, and the more robust and well made those pieces are the faster that process will be. If my players fail and an ancient evil scourges the world of all life, something will survive and ten thousand years from now our story will continue.

I was listening to a video recently on the history of Warhammer 40K's Tech Priests sending out small armies to recover what were basically lost blueprints for ancient technology. If you replaced technology with magic, I think that describes this "Dead Empire" concept quite well.

This video represents the best of what you do because it makes me think about how to approach my game/my world building, so thank you for that :) It made me reflect on my favourite parts of Skyrim, which is the Dwemer/dwarven ruins. These ruins are filled with automatons and machinery and show the clear hallmarks of an "advanced" civilisation. But pretty much all of these ruins are overrun with Falmer, the dark, twisted versions of elves who remain underground. It's analogous to D&D in the way that ancient ruins are populated by monsters who are nowhere near as advanced as the civilisation of the ruins they now reside in. I think part of what I most like though is that the disappearance of the dwarves is left as a mystery. There was a great event at some point in history that people recognise as the disappearance of the dwarves, but no one really knows how or even why. Something like this could be a more interesting plot hook than just describing how a previous empire fell due to war, pestilence or the incompetence of rulers. Maybe nobody knows why they fell? Maybe some scholars are trying to figure that out? Maybe you can go on a quest to fill in some of the gaps?

Your insights are extremely valuable. I love how you know the history of the book, the writer and real life events that happened during writing. I love how you can read “between the lines”. I also loved how you read that part. Nice pausing, and intonations!

I was literally just thinking about when the next one of these were dropping :)

This is instantly one of my favourite videos that you've done. It came at such a right time too, as I'm just starting to flesh out the ancient empires of the setting I'm preparing. Thank you so much for your insight and the information on Tolkien's perspective, it sparked a lot of light bulbs in my mind!

The first dungeon I plan on having the players explore, will be a multi-layered time capsule sort of thing. The dungeon is from one time, inside there will be corpses of dead explorers from another, who were carrying items from yet a third. It should be interesting to see how they get things identified. And as what. After all, in Buck Rogers, someone thought the hanging lamp was an electric salad bowl. Lol.

Thanks so much Matt!. Surely there is still so much I have to learn about dming and crafting a story from my head, but you, as well as the wonderful Matt Mercer, have taught me quite a bit. I am confident that even if everything goes horribly wrong with my party, your influence and the act of playing D&D have changed my perspective on things and is something I'll never forget. Just this video has given me a multitude of ideas on how to increase the depth of my world, how to add a "time abyss", and to make it feel real. Like I said I have a long way to go, but yet again thank you for guiding me and other aspiring DMs along the way.

I cannot believe the timing on this video!! My campaign currently left its last session with the party being cut off from the surface by a cave-in (of their own doing), with a singular tunnel leading deeper into the earth their only path onward. Unbeknownst to them, there is a vast, ruined Dwarven complex inside this "dead" volcano, which I have just started fleshing out in detail, and I have planned on it being a fallen fortress city that will be key to resolving the conflict with the BBEG. Great ideas to keep in mind, definatly makes me want to make sure I really consider just why this city fell, and why the current denizens have taken over. Keep up the great work, and I can't wait for the actual book! Playtesting the modules is only making me want it (and the minis...) more!

Thanks so much for this video! I'm currently running Lost Mines, and I'm planning on stopping slowly pulling away from the module and into a Fey-tie heavy campaign. But this is a great notion of how the fey are so sprinkled about the world, and its because in the way way long ago, they ran the world. thanks!

Interesting analysis. Tolkien once described the LoftRings as a Catholic work (in a letter to a priest). I think you argue correctly that his legendarium was influenced by the politics and culture of his time. He often said in his letters that we live in a 'fallen' world and there was a greater past we only have a dim memory of as a species.

Remember, we are closer in time to Cleopatra then Cleopatra was to the building of the pyramids.

I absolutely love these videos. It amazes me that this would be your topic as I literally write about an ancient empire in my homebrew game

You are AWESOME, can't tell you the amount of epiphanies I've had watching/listening to your videos. Thank you!

The point you bring up about treasure is a good point that I, and I think a lot of other DMs don't really focus on for our games (for the most part) that i think we should since it enriches our worlds with life and history. One thing I dedicated hours to working on were two things in my game; A world history, and an active calendar. These two things give the rest of my campaign so much more richness and depth because my players can ask "What day of the month is it?" or "How long has the known world been around?" and I can give solid answers. It's a great feeling and you can rope in all sorts of cool plot lines based on unresolved conflicts from previous ages in your world.

Matt, I'd like to thank you for doing these. You got me back to playing D&D after many years away.

Listening to this series this week has been such a pleasent experience.

When making my current DnD setting this was something I was consciously trying to construct. One thing I found very helpful to evoke this feeling of lost ages was have the ruins of the former empires part of modern settlements as well as in the dungeons. That way the past is always nearby, not just confined to hidden abstract dungeons.

For my ancient empire in my current arcanopunk setting, they were around almost 20,000 years ago, they united the entire planet and their original language is still the base for the common tongue today. They were neither a good nor an evil empire, they were an empire of people some were good some were evil but they fell apart because of the struggle of maintaining a global empire that was won through the use of magic and a United goal, but was left to its own devices after. Their remains are long since plundered, some secrets still remain and that most precious resource of elemental iron still lurks in the darkest corners of the long forgotten and lost tombs of the First Empire, but in the ages since many empire have risen and fallen throughout the world, and great tombs and forgotten holdfasts litter the world. And while the ancient elemental iron might be rare now, the power of magic and the variety of its use has only grown

hehehe... Oh this amuses me greatly, less than 8 hours ago I was doing this sort of ancient world building for my campaign setting. Setting up the origins of the world and explaining in game why all of these ruins exist for adventurers to delve in and ferocious monsters to turn into lairs. There is only so much mad wizards can explain, and especially given that thousands of years of adventurers have been looking for ruins to explore, how are there so many that they haven't all been picked clean? It could easily be handwaved, but I liked to have at least some explanation for my own benefit if nothing else. Amusingly the history of my world is that the current races are but a pale shadow of their former selves. My world was created by a race of literal world builders who created it out of the raw stuff of magic. Not unlike the Titans from the Warcraft world, but more powerful and unknown. They created five races to guard over the world, each given stewardship over one aspect of it. And those races still exist... but they are not the same, and they are aware of that fact. When created they were noble and good and they went on to found great civilizations. But they were corrupted by an evil deep within the world, some of each race turning twisted and evil. They fought among and against each other, as cooperation between races turned to suspicion, then hatred. And over an unmeasured but lengthy war, they destroyed themselves until there weren't enough left to go on fighting without dying out entirely. Their once great civilizations lay to ruin by their own hands, and the Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Dragons and Tritons of the world live knowing they are but a fraction of what they once were, and can never again be.

Amazing video. Once again Matthew Colville helped me realize in what things I am in the right direction and in what things I could fix things. :)

I can always guarantee that I get a few good hours of DM planning whilst watching and pausing one of these episodes. So much creative juice, every time ;)

Always great when a new video of yours hits.

GREAT summary and analysis of some important themes that have been staring us in the face for 40 years. Bravo!

As someone whose players are currently directly interacting with the remains of a dead empire, I loved this video!

Keep up the great work Matt. You've helped give my game more life!

Hey Matt, long time subscriber but this video encouraged me to flesh out the ancient history of my homebrew world and create a once great empire that faced extinction from another ancient race. I don’t need to lore dump my homebrew world here but this was a great help in figuring out how to “justify” these magic items and dungeons in my world. Thanks for the consistent hard work you do!

This is one of those videos, which feels a lot like your earliest ones, where I feel like watching it actually brings me back on track worldbuilding-wise. It makes me stop thinking about names, geography and cultural quirkes for a moment and actually get back to the core parts of the world that I want my players to experience.

Thanks for this video. I've put weeks and years into developing my campaign setting (3.5), and I've really found your stuff helpful. Keep em coming

The computer game Kenshi does a great job of this. Your real reward for facing off against legendary characters and going into dangerous ruins is learning what happened in these places, digging up lore and trying to piece together what happened in the Second Empire. There are even echoes of the first empire being even greater, though almost no information exists about it even though its influence can be seen everywhere: skeletons, orbital lasers, and the scraps of lost technology littering the landscape.

Wow. This video, having given me a gold mine of ideas for my campaign, has convinced me to marathon your entire series. I'm a new player and have been dabbling in the idea of running a campaign, but now I'm sure I'm going to make it happen. Thank you.

Fantastically put, as always Matt. Always happy for new uploads.

Heh, I didn’t even know I had one of these in my campaign, but my setting lines up perfectly. Invented it without realizing it was necessary to my world :P My guys are trying to hunt down 5 super powered Runeblades from an ancient order of knights that everyone thought were just a myth. Turns out they were the reason the great cataclysm of my world stopped; they locked up the big bad with the sixth Runeblade, empowered by the previous five, to grant a Wish to seal a Godeater. Of course, doing so had consequences, and basically wiped all northern countries off the map for hundreds of years. ‘Course, my players haven’t figured out that the Sixth Blade can only grant one Wish at a time... I’m gonna have a good laugh when they try to use it and unleash a reality-devouring child that all gods fear.

OMG!!!Matt i loved this video SOOOO much. And i think that i am going to use this and the other running the game videos you have made to make my own world and campaign

Oh man, I have only just stumbled on you, and I am truly loving your DnD content. You have a very similar mentality to DM'ing to me, and you clear and thoughtful approach to talking about it makes me extra glad I somehow got here! I have to ask if you would also be interested in doing more content along the lines of the segment where you talked about looking into Bilbo's poem at Rivendell. You have a fab voice and great cadence (I'm guessing DnD has trained you well but even beyond that!), and I'd love to hear you unpack... basically anything in this area actually now I think on it! A big thanks for your work, its a wonderful listen!

I think this can work supremely well with a West Marches game. We imagine it as a wilderness exploration game, but there are magic items out there, meaning _somebody_ was here before. An empire that collapsed so supremely that we barely even have record of it.

I feel fortunate that my 1st rpg was Gamma World. I almost always think in terms of fallen civilizations when world building.

I have my current and first major campaign existing in the ancient era that will be the ground work for a future campaign. They have easy access to any magic item of their choosing, the Gods have assisted with the progression of technology (reaching a bit steampunk), and all in the name of destroying Demons. There is a prophecy that is said to be the end times that is coming soon, and a portal to the Abyss is slowly opening at the center of the continent. Demi-Gods are trying to hold it off while all my players are running around as essentially up and coming heroes of this era. The plan is that they will become the backstory to every single other story to my campaigns. The magic items they used and seen get used are the ones that will be found in the future. The cities they've saved will be ruins that act as foundations to bigger cities that share names. I liked the idea of the players living the story of the end of the ancient era. Yes there are more ancient eras to them, but it's equivalent to the Egyptians and the Roman Empire. They aren't a foundation to each other, but they do still have the stories to tell and keep around.

Wonderful reading, Matt. Tolkien adamantly denied that the Trilogy was an allegory for World War I or a reflection of his experiences as a soldier. He asserted that his influences were epic tales such as Beowulf and the Icelandic Sagas. I think we should take him at his word. Sometimes a story is just a story.

Much of the history in my world revolves around dragons, I’m glad you made this video because I honestly had no idea how to present that to my players. Basically when the colonizers of the land they find themselves in arrived they came in conflict with and killed off the dragons. (Or so it is thought) your time abyss explanation is a perfect, it will have happened so long back that dragons are only legend, but when they do find the very few solitary dragons that are left they will see just how powerful they are and understand just how much stronger humanity and their technology was back then.

Maybe my favorite video yet. Something I've thought of in passing about my campaign, but really need to dig more in to.

Once again you have sparked a creative energy in my mind. Brilliant observation. Also very inspiring.

Tolkien was a genius!

Praise the sun! New running the game! And a good one!

I'm re-watching your series and its reminding why I subbed to you so long ago. You're awesome Matthew because of your videos it helped me make my own world and I'm going to be starting a campaign, playing Warhammer fantasy second edition. Keep making videos Matthew hope everything is going well!

Great video, Matt. Perhaps a point worth considering about Tolkien is that he was born/raised under the Pax Britannica and lived through the great disillusionment that came with WW1 and its aftermath. His lionization of the pastoral, pre-industrial aesthetic and wistful call for the past shouldn't come as any great shock. Thank you again and keep the excellent content coming.

For me, this is your best video so far, and definitely the best i've seen. Very inspiring for me ! Now i know how to make Icewind Dale a richer place, Dead empires are fascinating there.

I'm running a numenara game and this is really useful

There's so much you end up teaching me without, it seems, even trying. Thanks for being awesome Matt, keep at it :)

Wonderful stuff as always, Matt. For people interested in this notion of "dead empires" and the antiquity of the ancient world, I highly recommend Dan Carlin's podcast "Hardcore History". In particular, the series entitled "Kings of Kings" covering the rise and fall of the Achaemenid Presian Empire. For my own world-in-progress (my players are butting heads with Strahd Von Zahrovitch while I work out the kinks), I've stolen the idea from 4e that the Dragonborn and the Tieflings had the first great empires, followed by some pseudo-Roman Human empire. The campaign is (or will return to) a kind of combination of the Holy Roman Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. That is, quite a bit of progress has been made since the fall of the last empire, but things are still not yet on such a grand scale.

This gives me some great things to think about. You just really helped me to connect what I wanted to do with some basic game mechanics.

For me the hardest part of building these dead empires is knowing how much to let the players/readers know and how much to leave to their imaginations, what I've realized about myself recently is that I'm very much the kind of person that wants to have my cake and eat it too, I want to know everything I possibly can about the Kessel Run but the moment you show it to me in it's entirety I'll wish I hadn't seen it. I guess the ultimate goal is to let the players/readers have half of the cake and eat the other half? Now I'm hungry.

The Fallen Empire I know of was the Netheril Empire that had floating cities that fell from the sky when Mystryl killed herself to prevent Karsus from using her power after he stole it from her. That was used to explain why the magic system changed between editions of D&D

The battle of the Somme lasted 141 days. That’s nearly five months of death and bullets. Imagine waking up to gunfire on Halloween and it not being over until Valentine’s Day. Over 32,000 people died in the first day. By the time this one battle was over, over 300,000 soldiers would have lost their lives. That isn’t even counting the wounded and maimed.

In my campaing my players recently encountered the remmenants of a fallen dragonborn empire that rode into battle on the backs dragon turtles. They encountered the last most ancient of these dragon turtles and learned that he was a "pale echo" of his ancestors (he was the size of a large hill) and that current dragon turtles were a pale echo of the turtle they saw. My players paused the adventureand spent the rest of the session trying to learn about the world. Nice knowing that there is a phrase for that.

I did this with my old homebrew setting! I need to bring it back and update it. Great video.

I couldn’t decide what era to set my world in, so I put my first party of players into the center of my world on day 1. They traveled there Narnia style, & much of the world was in an inhospitable state. Doing this was super fun because the time abyss was in reverse-they weren’t explicitly told that it and everyone in it was born yesterday. Now I can’t wait for future players to hear an ancient legend of these players who were there & helped shape the world itself. The best was having a player turn into a young red dragon in order to save the planet at the end of the campaign-which was totally not my idea, but the players’! I may jump around in eras for future campaigns, but I’m pretty sure every player who plays in my world will at some point hear of, or meet this old/ancient red dragon, the Lord of Fire!

My current campaign takes place several hundred years after a golden age that ended in a three-way war between the greatest civilizations on the continent. It went on for decades. The empires got desperate and started turning to progressively darker and more heinous forces. Which means, not just the old temples and dungeons and magic items came from the empires, but also most of the monsters did not exist before the war. They were INVITED by the empires, desperate to win. In the end, everybody lost. That war four hundred years later is called The March of Splinters or sometimes The War that Broke the Roads. The world got smaller after the March. The most civilized you get are city-states and tiny fiefdoms made from the shattered remains of a once-great empire. The descendants of the three great empires are still around, but all three of their territories are pitifully diminished and their cultures are all in one way or another in decline. The players come from a small city-state far to the north ruled by...let's say she's an Enlightened Despot. She's hired the player characters to be the first expedition of her newly formed explorer's guild. They're to remap the continent, see what is still out there, help people where they can, spread mercy and enlightenment to places that haven't known it since the March. They're supposed to be like the strong right arm of a fantasy Renaissance. It'll be a while before I even have to mention, "Hey, you guys know there were people BEFORE the Three Empires, yeah?" That's a good idea though. I like the idea of the time abyss. Will probably steal it.

i really love the more "extemporaneous" type videos matt used to do. this video fucking owns. this is definitely a video at the end of that era- a nice edited down video of matt rambling is SO compelling to me

Another lovely video. We're all just walking in the husks of what stood before. Nihil novi sub sole, etc. I did find myself chuckling at 'good empire' sometimes, though. An additional thought: Consider what these previous cultures created and specialized in, and what their fixations were. (Obviously that's sort of silly because cultures are not monoliths, but still) It's really valuable to consider, and so fun when players put together what kinds of items this ancient culture made versus this one.