Sorry, by early medieval, I'm talking prior to Charlemagne. Or at least not all that far past him.  A strong retainer can distinguish himself in battle, get knighted, be given a fief, etc., all in one generation. As the years pass, it's still possible, but it becomes a multi-generational thing. 

Of course, depends on how you look at it.  Big cities are great levelers in that regard, though there is still a ceiling of "really influential commoner" instead of titled.  There was of course considerable social mobility in some ways in the aftermath of the black death, though that was more about survival than anything.  That is, When everyone is being brought down a peg or two, the survivors seem to be moving up in comparison.

Quote from: Chris24601 on May 09, 2025, 04:56:32 AM

Quote from: Omega on May 08, 2025, 10:08:46 PM

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb on May 08, 2025, 11:06:13 AMSigh. I really miss the use of forum emojis at a time like this.

So what amazing rpg are you playing that ignorant plebes like myself do not appreciate?

Reads like Fantasy Wargaming. You are either a noble or a peasant and if you are a peasant you have practically no rights. What excitement! Hurray!

And then there's a shock when the people in power have a playerpeasant revolt.

Except they dont, because they can't. Or they try... and get massacred.

Quote from: HappyDaze on May 09, 2025, 09:33:51 AMI also have to wonder why IRL, people from Britain aren't all badass monks/martial artists since they can't carry weapons or use magic. I mean, clearly they're being depowered otherwise...

Wait? They arent all badass monks/martial artists?

ahem.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on May 09, 2025, 11:39:11 PMSorry, by early medieval, I'm talking prior to Charlemagne. Or at least not all that far past him.  A strong retainer can distinguish himself in battle, get knighted, be given a fief, etc., all in one generation. As the years pass, it's still possible, but it becomes a multi-generational thing. 

You might be right there as regards the very early period, really the "migration period", before knights or fiefs are really a thing. It don't know that we have a very clear picture of how those societies worked, but it's plausible that the simpler social organization meant less stratification, and it does appear that there were more freeholders of land and potentially higher ranks in the official hierarchy which a commoner could rise to. I don't know if it was any easier for a common man to become ennobled, though.

As far as I know, by the time knighthood became a recognizable institution, it was already confined to the hereditary aristocracy. I know the English origin-word "cniht" originally meant a mounted retainer, but it's not clear if there's a verbal confusion at work there (like how "Equite" in ancient Rome both referred to a class of people and was also a generic term for a cavalryman), or if those retainers would have been assumed to be aristocrats. At any rate I believe the possibility of a soldier being knighted for extraordinary service remained viable (though never common) throughout the middle ages.

It is an interesting thought experiment though, if we want to be serious and not just fling shit at Keiro (as much fun as that is). Historically, people couldn't just carry around weapons because the city didn't want lethal fights happening all over the place, and lords didn't want to get suddenly stabbed (they preferred being stabbed by appointment in set-piece battles, where possible).

But when you have guys running around with magic missile and fireball and quivering palm or whatever - does it really matter if there are a few more swords hanging around? It'd be like banning handguns in Bosnia in 1995.

In AD&D1e, the best way to make sure the DM lets you keep your swords is to say, "Great, I look forward to using the unarmed combat rules!"

So I'm curious.  The PCs are in town where they aren't fully armed and armored, and there's a fight anyway.  Where is the line between "screwing the players over" and "providing an interesting change of pace?"

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on May 10, 2025, 02:07:26 AMBut when you have guys running around with magic missile and fireball and quivering palm or whatever - does it really matter if there are a few more swords hanging around? It'd be like banning handguns in Bosnia in 1995.

I was wondering about that.  If there are a signification number of casters about then maintaining order is going to be impossible without a countermeasure the authorities can deploy against spells, which doesn't really exist in D&D.  How can you maintain a civil society when any random nutjob may have the equivalent of a concealed bazooka in his pocket?

Quote from: Mishihari on May 10, 2025, 02:21:37 AM

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on May 10, 2025, 02:07:26 AMBut when you have guys running around with magic missile and fireball and quivering palm or whatever - does it really matter if there are a few more swords hanging around? It'd be like banning handguns in Bosnia in 1995.

I was wondering about that.  If there are a signification number of casters about then maintaining order is going to be impossible without a countermeasure the authorities can deploy against spells, which doesn't really exist in D&D.  How can you maintain a civil society when any random nutjob may have the equivalent of a concealed bazooka in his pocket?

You don't.

Have you read much on the implied post-apocalypse of AD&D's implied setting by population density, and humans on the random encounter tables?

It makes 4E's "points of light in a dark world" setting look positively optimistic. Civilization hangs by a thread, vast ruin-littered regions inhabited only by monsters, bandits and barbarian tribes seperate city-states, fighter and wizard towers from each other.

The whole world is near as empty as the American frontier during the pioneer days. They don't care about things like social class... what makes you someone of import is that you have the capability to hold off the darkness.

The PCs are the gun-slinging drifters straight out of the Westerns. Far from disarming you, a town is more likely to be trying to put the equivalent of a sheriff's badge on you and insist you go take care of the raiders who've been plaguing them because you clearly have the skill and equipment they lack to do it themselves.

As someone stated previously, the default assumptions of early D&D are that it's actually a Western, just with medieval trappings.

Which is why it works so wonkily for trying to emulate more genuinely medieval or ancient settings. The Fighter's class abilities back then were literally better attacks and saves and the ability to use better weapons and armor than anyone else (including that the magic tables included better magic swords that only fighters could use and better heavier armor that was also exclusive to fighters). Stripping them of those would be equivalent to every city being completely covered by an antimagic field.

Also, by class title, even a first level fighter is a Veteran. They aren't meant to be seen as a country bumpkin, they're someone who is seen as qualified enough to have carried arms in battle under someone's banner. They're a man-at-arms... someone of modest import even at level 1.

By level 9 their title is Lord. They are expected to be one of society's nobility through their achievements in reaching that level. You might limit the size of his retinue that you allow in the city, and perhaps ban his steed and lance, but disarming a Lord of his sword? Do you want to lose your head to that very blade?

It's a very poor system fit for genuinely historical settings where, among other things, magic is only very subtle or nonexistent depending on your assumptions about the supernatural world. There you might insist a man-at-arms, knight or lord (ie. Fighter equivalents) be limited to brigs or gambeson and carry only his sidearm (i.e. a sword; historically almost always a backup weapon in the same way a soldier has a pistol, but their primary weapon is a long arm) while city guards can be in full armor and bearing polearms... because there is no one carrying a loaded bazooka or three (and that's about the least bad option they could have up there) prepared in their brain you also have to worry about.

But with D&D tier magic you want as many people with pointy things who know how to use them around as possible. A bunch of well trained and armed fighters could try to lay siege to the lord's fortified castle and kill some guards... but that's a fightable threat and it's easy to keep track of men wearing armor in a city.

By contrast a single spellcaster dressed as an anonymous everman could come into a city, learn the lay of the land and then just fly invisibly into the lord's castle and proceed to mind control the lord and/or his guards into opening the gates to all manner of enemies or hold the citizens to ransom, etc. As stated, dropping fireballs is actually one of the least bad things a wizard could do... any town with its thatched roofs is going to have experience fighting a fire.

So in D&D Land it's better to be friendly with all the stab-capable potential heroes around so that the evil wizard can be dealt with quickly and not have all the weapons locked away where only the mind-controlled guards have access to them.

Quote from: Mishihari on May 10, 2025, 02:17:11 AMSo I'm curious.  The PCs are in town where they aren't fully armed and armored, and there's a fight anyway.  Where is the line between "screwing the players over" and "providing an interesting change of pace?"

What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Whatever restrictions are in place should be enforced equally on PC and NPC alike, with penalties likewise.  Or not enforced/ignored in certain cases that the players can discover.

If the players aren't fully armed and get into a fight, the fight should be with people similarly situated. If the opponents are more heavily armed than that, then they are outlaws (outside the law, literally)--which means that anyone nearby and capable should be helping the party, and in the aftermath the powers that be aren't going to hit the party with some smarmy charge of it being their fault. Or maybe those powers are corrupt and had it in for the party for some reason--which itself should be detectable, and at least foreshadowed enough that the players could perhaps decide to not go there in the first place.

Basically, the GM doesn't get to pull a bait and switch. The society has written and unwritten rules. Those should be fairly well understood by the PCs--maybe missing a nuance here or there for the more unrefined characters interacting with polite society, but even then with some leeway.

Magic doesn't change this outline, just the particulars. The same thing would be true of, say, vorpal swords and the like. Anything that can skirt the rules that way tends to have more restrictions, and when it can't be easily detected/restricted, has corresponding higher penalties for abuse.  You sneak a great sword into town and get into a fight with the local guild toughs, they fine you pretty heavily. You use a fireball on the local guild, they fine you then exile you for a decade or more--if the locals didn't mob and hang you first.

Likewise, it doesn't always go to outright restrictions.  Sometimes it is conditional restrictions. For example, one I like to use is the temporary militia or automatic deputy however you want to categorize. You come to a frontier town a little back from the wilderness, where they are starting to put in place some minor restrictions but still suffer from occasional but serious attacks (e.g. the "wererats in the sewers" thing mentioned up thread).  Alright, they don't take your weapons when you come into town, and don't have a place to store all of them if they did. Instead, the guards instruct you that by coming into town you agree to show some restraint. In return, you are temporarily deputized to help deal with attacks. For the handful that don't agree, they'll store your heavier equipment in a small vault in the armory. A caster who doesn't agree is told not to cast any spells that are direct or indirect attacks without prior approval from an authorized leader while in town, or suffer expulsion.

Not that I see all that many problem players (who tend to show themselves in other ways long before this kind of thing arises in play), but that last bit tends to take care of it. If the players were getting into the world and trying to fit in, then "Hey, you can keep your stuff if you help us defend the town," is a no-brainer. It only sticks in the craw of someone that has an attitude of I'm the PC and no one can tell me what to do, ever. 

I do think the Wild West model makes more sense for D&D than a period-accurate medieval one. There some good examples of the western vibe being applied to other time periods, too. There's the whole Chanbara genre of Japanese movies, of course. Also The Witchfinder General, which is an English Civil War period piece, but even the director said it was basically a western. The Solomon Kane movie is set around the same time and is also a bit of a fantasy western flavor. You could even say something like the Three Musketeers is more D&D-like. Those guys are soldiers, but they go around Paris armed and have plenty of their own adventures.

It does raise the question of where the sheriff and the posse are. If you're going to be true to a Wild West theme for D&D, then every frontier town should have at least a handful of mid-level classed characters whose job it is to deal with traveling vagabonds who get out of hand.

I'm fine with Wild West on the real frontier. What was allowed there wasn't the same as what was allowed back in St. Louis, which wasn't the same as what was allowed in Cincinnati, which wasn't the same as Philadelphia, which wasn't the same as New York. And then on to London and so on.

Plus, your average country baron, not long established, is going to tend to be more open and lenient about manners and such compared to a long-established duke or king.

Quote from: ForgottenF on May 10, 2025, 11:08:17 AMI do think the Wild West model makes more sense for D&D than a period-accurate medieval one. There some good examples of the western vibe being applied to other time periods, too. There's the whole Chanbara genre of Japanese movies, of course. Also The Witchfinder General, which is an English Civil War period piece, but even the director said it was basically a western. The Solomon Kane movie is set around the same time and is also a bit of a fantasy western flavor. You could even say something like the Three Musketeers is more D&D-like. Those guys are soldiers, but they go around Paris armed and have plenty of their own adventures.

It does raise the question of where the sheriff and the posse are. If you're going to be true to a Wild West theme for D&D, then every frontier town should have at least a handful of mid-level classed characters whose job it is to deal with traveling vagabonds who get out of hand.

Greetings!

Excellent points, ForgottenF. As I discussed in a previous post, elements of the "D&D World" are extremely different from anything we recognize as real-world history. In theme and flavour, yeah, "D&D World" is much more like a post-apocalyptic American Western. While I tend to think every settlement and town would have a Sheriff and some kind of militia, the "D&D World" is really so dangerous, constantly, that virtually every settlement is always in desperate need for armed and ready adventurers. The all-powerful State is unusual if not rare, and in many regions is likely to be a pipe-dream and total fantasy. The vast world is swarming with evil hordes everywhere, seeking to enslave or devour Humans, constantly, day and night.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: SHARK on May 10, 2025, 11:43:41 AMAs I discussed in a previous post, elements of the "D&D World" are extremely different from anything we recognize as real-world history. In theme and flavour, yeah, "D&D World" is much more like a post-apocalyptic American Western. While I tend to think every settlement and town would have a Sheriff and some kind of militia, the "D&D World" is really so dangerous, constantly, that virtually every settlement is always in desperate need for armed and ready adventurers.

Yeah, you sort of have to view it that way in order to make sense of the default structure of the game. All those ruins gotta come from somewhere. Described that way, the closest fictional parallel to "D&D world" is actually Vampire Hunter D.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on May 10, 2025, 11:37:32 AMI'm fine with Wild West on the real frontier. What was allowed there wasn't the same as what was allowed back in St. Louis, which wasn't the same as what was allowed in Cincinnati, which wasn't the same as Philadelphia, which wasn't the same as New York. And then on to London and so on.

Why Cincinnati?

I didn't think anyone outside of Ohio even knew that city existed.

Quote from: Chris24601 on May 10, 2025, 08:11:12 AMBy contrast a single spellcaster dressed as an anonymous everman could come into a city, learn the lay of the land and then just fly invisibly into the lord's castle and proceed to mind control the lord and/or his guards into opening the gates to all manner of enemies or hold the citizens to ransom, etc. As stated, dropping fireballs is actually one of the least bad things a wizard could do... any town with its thatched roofs is going to have experience fighting a fire.

Which leads me to conclude that magic-users would end up either ruling the world or being exterminated. Maybe severely isolated and controlled, as in something like Dragon Age.  They're just too dangerous to be integrated into normal society.

Quote from: ForgottenF on May 10, 2025, 06:03:32 PMWhich leads me to conclude that magic-users would end up either ruling the world or being exterminated. Maybe severely isolated and controlled, as in something like Dragon Age.  They're just too dangerous to be integrated into normal society.

That's certainly how the Coalition in Rifts sees them. The Coalition are not good people, but they're not entirely wrong on this.

Quote from: ForgottenF on May 10, 2025, 06:03:32 PMWhy Cincinnati?

I didn't think anyone outside of Ohio even knew that city existed.

At the time of the Wild West, it was a noted migration point.  I almost used Chicago instead, but it's probably the exception that proves the rules for the point I was making.