In August 2023 we presented the Historica Arcanum Bundle featuring the historical-fantasy Fifth Edition campaign settings from Turkish publisher Metis Creative. The Historica Arcanum timeline spans many centuries. In the 13th Century of Empires of the Silk Road, the Silk Road is a lifeline for the exchange of goods, ideas, religions, and technologies among empires and peoples across Asia and eastern Europe. But in this alternate world, magic is dangerous, unstable, and tightly controlled. North of the Road, the Khanate of the Eternal Blue Sky is rising; to the west, impoverished Crusader Kings covet the Road’s treasures; between them, in the Sultanate of Persia, the warlock Hasan Sabbah and his Hashashin Order pit kingdoms against one another in a deadly game. And in the alternate 19th-Century Istanbul (not Constantinople!) of The City of Crescent, capital of the crumbling Ottoman Empire, rooftop chases atop coffee parlors lead adventurers to bustling bazaars, through mighty palaces, and down to deadly catacombs. (Metis Creative fills out the timeline still further in their third Kickstarter, Era of the Crusades.)
Historica Arcanum is an enchanted rework of real-world culture and history. In this sensitive time, with cultural appropriation a flashpoint, the Metis Creative designers (Sarp Duyar, Doğa Can Sayılkan, Duru Berkman, Mehmet Onur Kart, and Fatih Şahinbaş) addressed the topic in their highly successful September 2022 Empires of the Silk Road Kickstarter campaign: “Ignoring the world’s cultures, due to fear of contributing to stereotypes, is just as dangerous as the stereotypes themselves – because those cultures are not accessible to the players who genuinely want to immerse themselves in those worlds. Nobody, quite frankly, dares to make content for these amazing cultures, and consequently, players don’t get exposed to anything new other than what the current perspective deems ‘safe.’ This is the status quo we want to challenge.
“The world of Historica Arcanum is an authentic and well-researched guide to these cultures, written by people who live there – helped by great historians and anthropologists who have been passionately researching these diverse geographies. You can use Empires of the Silk Road and Herald of Rain to introduce your table to the cultural settings of the Silk Road without fear of misrepresenting.”
Beautifully illustrated and handsomely presented, the Arcanum line brings lots of regional flavor to 5E. Empires of the Silk Road features an Overhauled Land Travel system, rules for plagues, 12 new subclasses (djinnbound barbarians, College of Scent bards, Chaos clerics, Fire Sage monks, Mirage Seeker rangers, Stone Scribe wizards, and more), new professions (Beast Tamer, Ecclesiastic, Grave Robber, Tinker), and a bestiary with 40+ monsters inspired by myth and folklore. The City of Crescent Profession customization system adds an extra layer of narrative depth to player character backstories.
But none of that is the line’s real focus. Notwithstanding the range of materials in each Historica Arcanum product line – excellent maps, virtual tabletop tokens, event cards, soundtracks, and The City of Crescent even has a cookbook chapter with actual kitchen recipes – the published scenarios focus tightly on individual characters. Metis Creative’s ambitious founder, Sarp Duyar, wrote about the company’s character-centered approach (among many other matters) in a candid October 2022 blog post, “For Those Who Want to Publish TTRPGs and Be Decent at it“: “You don’t need 20 villages, five cities, four countries, and a million playable dungeons to make a great adventure. The great adventure starts with your NPCs. After the dust is settled, NPCs and their interactions will be what your players remember. […] For us, the [NPC] can’t ever be the generic Middle Eastern guy with the long face and the nose, who appears in every goddamn movie and says to a cast of European/North American characters, ‘Welcome, my friends!’ in a very thick accent. You need memorable NPCs with rock-solid motivations and world-views that may change through the campaign with player input.” Once you have these, he says, the game writes itself.
This all-new offer presented the entire Historica Arcanum line for an unbeatable bargain price. In magical counterparts to real landmarks, meeting historical figures and fighting legendary monsters, you’ll solve mysteries, intrigue among factions, and shape the arcane history of the Historica Arcanum universe. Hide your inhuman features, whisper incantations, delve ancient ruins to uncover artifacts of raw power, and plot the downfall of empires.
Note: Though our friends at DriveThruRPG host many of our offers, none of these Historica Arcanum titles are available on DriveThru. The links below lead to the Metis Creative website.
There were three sourcebooks and campaigns in our Historica Arcanum Collection (retail value $70) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks, including the 259-page Empires of the Silk Road campaign setting, along with the maps, tokens, wallpapers, and soundtrack in its Digital Library; the 226-page Silk Road campaign Herald of Rain; and the 413-page Istanbul city sourcebook The City of Crescent, along with its Map Pack, Wallpaper Pack, and Soundtrack Album.
