Renaissance

Men in breastplates with swords, spears and muskets. Hey that sounds kinda familiar...

The Renaissance is a period of time and history which had it's origins in the 1300s in Italy and would gradually spread across Christendom and beyond. The word roughly means "rebirth" in English, more specifically it refers to the revitalization of Civilization after the Medieval Period. Various Italian City States gradually grew in wealth and prominence through maritime trade as well as connections with Byzantium and the Middle East and banking. The merchant princes of Italy would invest that wealth to make more money, but also into grand architecture, the arts, literature, engineering and academics ranging from studies of the Classical Period to natural philosophy. Things which were seen as noble pursuits in their own right but they were also as signs of wealth and prestige and ways of currying favor with other influential figures ("The Cardinal would be glad to back your bid after your magnificent assistance on the new Cathedral"). Eventually ideas from Italy would begin to spread out and took root elsewhere in Europe. Citiies once again began to grow across Europe.

This was fine and dandy in of itself, but in coincided with other big changes. Kings began to consolidate power for themselves with a mind of keeping the squabbling vassals in line. Guns were making an increasing impact on the battlefield. In Spain the Spanish managed to drive the Muslims out of Iberia in the Reconquista and emerged as a new powerful European state. Not too long after that thanks to improvements in ship design and navigation methods Vaso de Gama sailed around Africa to India and latter an Italian guy named Columbus set out sailing west across the Atlantic to prove to the ignorant masses that world was round that you could get to India by circumnavigation without starving to death first and ended up finding the Caribbean, thus beginning the colonization of the New World began by the Spanish and Portuges at first, followed by the French, Dutch and English latter. Add to that some religious upheaval which shook the foundations of Christendom in the form of the likes of Hussites and eventually the start of the Protestant Reformation and you got a turbulent period of upheaval to say the least, ultimately culminating in the Thirty Years War, which was the first time people not directly victimsed started realising that maybe this war thing isn't all that good (it took a thorough ass fucking of the continent and the lesson didn't stick).

The broad strokes of the Renaissance wars were that the Protestants and Catholics hated each other,each side bringing in more and more forces until the entire continent was ablaze. As a result the Holy Roman Empire was a shitstorm for most of this time. The French had their one okay king who refused to die, and the English would fight anyone anywhere anytime (including themselves). The Spanish colonized everything,found a literal mountain made of silver and built the biggest overseas Empire ever seen. They then proceeded to lose it all due to Dynastic inheritance problems and the fact that no one had yet understood the problems of inflation. Attempts at post-monarchical government began to appear with Parliament taking control of England and the Dutch provinces uniting into a republic. Towards the end of the Renaissance the first modern corporations would appear, typified by the East India Company and the VoC (more about them in the next era).

In the east, the Renaissance contains the part of Japanese history most people care about., the part where they cut eachother to pieces with swords (as opposed to the other parts where they cut eachother to pieces with older swords and rifles, and the part where they cut others with swords and guns). The late Sengoku was heavily influenced by borrowed European technological advancement. In particular Oda Nobunaga would turn the gun into the main weapon of the solider, developing tactics that would be used till the invention of the metallic cartridge.

Notes

• For the average peasant in the Renaissance the changes were as a rule not so great. As far as they were concerned beautiful paintings, fine statuary and magnificent architecture were all well and good and they'd admire them if they had the opportunity to see them but for all of that the grain still needed to be harvested and the cows still needed to be milked just like in their grandfather's day and as their grandchildren would do after they passed. They were more likely to be conscripted into a new army if war came, but this was hardly a world shattering event.
• Infantry returned to prominence during this period. New weapons such as arbalast crossbows, matchlock arquebuses and pikes played a role in this, as did cheap munitions plate, but more importantly than that armies became more centralized and systematic than the old feudal systems as the beginnings of standing armies began to take shape. The nobility generally resisted this when they could since it meant that the crown could boss them around more, but the general trend was well under way because these forces were just better at fighting wars. Cannons also played a role in the process, as did navies.
• Feudalism began to decline as the idea of the Nation-State started to take root. Nationalism would become more prominent in the early modern period to coincide with the Enlightenment, but for now modern countries were starting to take shape, as people began to think of their homelands as distinct cultural-geographic regions instead of the property of ever-changing noble families. At the same time though, this was when the infamous Habsburg family would come to power and control a good chunk of Europe, owning Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, Austria, and all territories owned by those states.
• While many classical texts had been lost in the West, many had been preserved in the East, with some advances in the sciences provided by scholars under Muslim rule. These texts returned to Europe due to increased trade with the East, which started with the Crusades. If you wanted to be educated, you had to be well versed in Greek, Latin (which at this point nobody spoke anymore) and even Arabic.
• The printing press made its debut, ensuring that all those rediscovered classics spread very quickly throughout Europe as the first modern universities took shape.

The appeal of the Renaissance

The Renaissance is the closing of the middle ages. A lot of it's mechanism were still in place in various forms, but shifts were in place. There were knights in Shining Armor and they were still formidable battering rams, but they were facing new competition from pike squares and arquebusiers in a rather distinctive combo. Chivalry was gradually on the wain even as plate was forged proofed against shot. All the while there was a lot of shrewd political scheming and intrigues. Why mobilize a thousand levies and and a hundred knights to kill someone when a few drops of poison or a well placed stilleto could accomplish the job cheaper and with far less fuss?

At the same time mechanics and engineers were tinkering contriving a wide variety of new machinery. If one was to ascribe a heroic ideal to the Renaissance it would be the Renaissance Man reflected in the likes of Leonardo Da'Vinci, a brilliant Engineer, Scientist and Artist all rolled into one. On the battlefield the men of power were beginning to take notice of these new novelties and so active patronage of inventors was encouraged. At the same time explorers and conquistadors carve their place in history by finding new lands, settling them and conquering Bronze Age societies. For those who want to see what Da Vinci could’ve accomplished if he was more of a mad scientist (I.e. if his tanks and other war machines were actually built), Clockpunk has you covered.

In general if you like your medieval fantasy to have a dash of the modern in it, the Renaissance is where you look for ideas. Besides, the stuff associated with this period is frankly pretty. This period is listed as an art history thing more than anything and it did provide plenty of classics. William Shakespeare operated at the tail end of this period as well, though since he was a big classics nerd many of his plays dealt with earlier time periods.

Renaissance inspired Games, Factions and Settings

• The Empire
• Virtually any Japan analog as nobody, not even the Japanese, cares about pre-Sengoku Japan as a setting and nobody makes settings modern enough to have a post-sakoku Japan analog.
• Golarion edges closer to renaissance than straight middle ages.

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Historical Time Periods
Deep Time:	Prehistory
Premodern:	Stone Age - Bronze Age - Classical Period - Dark Age - High Middle Ages - Renaissance
Modern:	Age of Enlightenment - Industrial Revolution - The World Wars - The Cold War - Post-Cold War