Paleomythic: Role-Playing in the Age of Stone and Sorcery

Role-playing games (also known as tabletop games or RPG's) have always been a favorite activity of mine, having played Dungeons and Dragons way back in the late '70s before it became cool. Since then I have branched out into Traveller and Call of Cthulhu with small asides to The Morrow Project and It Came From The Late, Late, Late Show.

Unfortunately, due to progressive hearing loss, my role-playing days have gone to the wayside much to the chagrin of the small cadre of faithful players I have accumulated over the years. Yet, that may soon all change.

Having been to an audiologist, I am in the process of getting hearing aids and my hope is that by the end of September/early October, I will have raised enough money ($7,000.00) to purchase them and end my exile from indulging in one of my favorite past times.

Recently I purchased a new RPG that came out of Osprey Publishing. Paleomythic: A Roleplaying Game of Stone and Sorcery is a beautifully illustrated, but bare-bones role-playing system, that emphasizes play and storytelling over rules. With a nod more toward Conan the Barbarian than Lord of the Rings, the advertising blurb for the book says:

Paleomythic is a roleplaying game of grim survival and mythical adventures in the land of Ancient Mu, a harsh prehistoric world full of mysterious ruins and temples to explore, huge and terrible creatures that roam and spread fear across the land, and nefarious mystics and sorcerers who plot dark schemes from the shadows. It is a world of biting cold winters, of people hunting and foraging to survive, and tribes that wage relentless war.

The game is clearly meant to be fantasy, but it does give a casual nod to archeology, especially the late Pleistocene era, about 12,000 years ago.

And as I work my way through the Paleomythic RPG book, I'm fascinated they missed one fascinating aspect of the time era they selected. In the late Pleistocene era, modern man (Homo sapiens) could theoretically have rubbed shoulders with "hobbits" (Homo floresiensis), and "dwarves" (Homo neanderthalensis) and if I can stretch the timetable a little, I can even introduce "orcs" (Homo erectus). I think this would have made J. R. R. Tolkien squeal with glee.

More and more I am becoming excited to be able to rejoin my role-playing gang and in our imaginations plumb the mystical and mythical worlds of the Pleistocene.