Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;899113Most aristos are, and were, arrogant bastards.  And very conscious of their own power and class.  And class based societies are not nice if you're not on top.

That's where Americans tend to get it wrong.  Say "All men are created equal" to King Henry II of England and he'd stare at you for a while, and then burst out laughing.

Wat Tyler tried that and was killed for his trouble,

That said while they can be arrogant, cruel, power hungry and bad most aristocrats are keenly aware of the responsibility they have. They have quite a lot of important  things to do.A medieval aristocrat had to provide military, law, obey custom and a host of other things by custom and he was bound though in different less onerous ways than freemen or serfs

Later idle rich aristocrats or imperial ones (like the globalist rich we have now) do often forget these things though, they retain the arrogance though. Also the presence of Communism among other cultural trends tends to reduce the amount of social display the aristocrats do. They are less ostentatious and many pretend to be regular folk, Grey Men in parlance. The occasional  Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian or their male counterparts used to be much more common . There were obligations to look well, dress well and display wealth that we see much less off,

Quote from: Haffrung;899239One thing that people overlook (probably because it's offensive to our modern sensibilities), is that medieval aristocrats were superior to common people in most respects. They were healthier, stronger, more learned, more cunning (they had to be), and exhibited more self-control than the common folk. They had far superior diets and healthier upbringings than peasants toiling in the fields or working in tanneries. The men trained for war relentlessly from childhood, and were as superior to a common man in feats of arms as an NFL player is superior to a guy who plays flag football on weekends with his buddies. Those raised to rule had to understand a host of complex matters, from agricultural and livestock practices to money management to military tactics to diplomatic protocols. If they were weak they would soon be toppled by a ruthless neighbour or family-member.

The notion of aristocrats as lazy and incompetent buffoons is an emotionally-satisfying narrative for egalitarian cultures like ours, but has little basis in reality.

It's really easy for modern people to underestimate the horrible effects childhood malnutrition has on adult health. If you don't eat right when you're a kid that's a heavy malus to your stats right across the board and in a lot of pre-modern farming cultures people ran  low on food most springs before any food had grown and after the winter stocks of food had run low. Also even if there was enough food eating rehydrated peas and little else for weeks on end or the local equivalent isn't going to do much for mental or physical development.

A lot of the standard image of aristocrats is based on the time when they had been reduced to mostly obsolete parasites. Back in the Middle Ages the local baron would have acted far more like a gang leader than a fop exclaiming about dinner forks. Think hardass grasping bling-dripping sons of bitches.

Quote from: Daztur;899362It's really easy for modern people to underestimate the horrible effects childhood malnutrition has on adult health. If you don't eat right when you're a kid that's a heavy malus to your stats....

Truth.  Nutrition in the first 5-7 years of a child's life has a HUGE impact, and not just on the physique.  It actually affects their brain functions.  Not disparaging anyone's economic situation or upbringing... but there's a reason that in impoverished communities there are more children with poor grades and learning disabilities or other mental challenges.  These children grow into adults, and... well... let's just say 'stupid peasant' might not have just been something they said to make themselves feel better back in those days.

Quote from: Daztur;899362It's really easy for modern people to underestimate the horrible effects childhood malnutrition has on adult health. If you don't eat right when you're a kid that's a heavy malus to your stats right across the board and in a lot of pre-modern farming cultures people ran  low on food most springs before any food had grown and after the winter stocks of food had run low. Also even if there was enough food eating rehydrated peas and little else for weeks on end or the local equivalent isn't going to do much for mental or physical development.

A lot of the standard image of aristocrats is based on the time when they had been reduced to mostly obsolete parasites. Back in the Middle Ages the local baron would have acted far more like a gang leader than a fop exclaiming about dinner forks. Think hardass grasping bling-dripping sons of bitches.

Not entirely true. Peasants were not constantly starving and malnourished for one though famine was not unknown  and in many nations, not all of them when a Lord failed to do his job, there would be a lot of trouble or even rebellion.

We moderns mainly because of the Enlightenment assume aristocracy or knowing your place is a bad thing. It isn't, neither commoner nor aristocrat were without a purpose or place in the world and most peasants didn't really want to change that. Some did, city air is free air after all but folks than were rooted in ways that we cannot understand since modern societies are mostly designed to produce consumer units not a "people" and our ruling class considers that a threat and prefers to see people as cogs

That said a few  of the older aristocrats are still around, old money in the US and nobles in Europe.

I've met a few old money, very polite, very ritual bound people and peculiar and of course self interested but hardly ogres,  I found them quite ordinary

Quote from: 5 Stone Games;899365Not entirely true. Peasants were not constantly starving and malnourished for one though famine was not unknown  and in many nations, not all of them when a Lord failed to do his job, there would be a lot of trouble or even rebellion.

We moderns mainly because of the Enlightenment assume aristocracy or knowing your place is a bad thing. It isn't, neither commoner nor aristocrat were without a purpose or place in the world and most peasants didn't really want to change that. Some did, city air is free air after all but folks than were rooted in ways that we cannot understand since modern societies are mostly designed to produce consumer units not a "people" and our ruling class considers that a threat and prefers to see people as cogs

That said a few  of the older aristocrats are still around, old money in the US and nobles in Europe.

I've met a few old money, very polite, very ritual bound people and peculiar and of course self interested but hardly ogres,  I found them quite ordinary

Didn't say they were starving all the time, just that there was often a bit of a gap between when the food stored up for the winter started to run out and when new food started to have enough time to grow and be available. Even a few weeks going hungry a year is going to cause problems with childhood development and when there was plenty of food in the spring it was often very monotonous and not fresh (of course) so you could have malnutrition even if there were plenty of calories coming in.

As far as people having roles in society that fit together, I don't really see that. More just gangsters demanding protection money.

For modern old money types, a lot of people don't really get them since they really move in their own circles. They often imagine rich people the know just more so, when real old money is quite different like you say. Most rich people are really focused on acquiring status while old money often just doesn't give a shit since they were born with it. They're generally much less uptight than people imagine since they take their status too much for granted to be touchy about it.

Quote from: Daztur;899370As far as people having roles in society that fit together, I don't really see that. More just gangsters demanding protection money.

Kinda wish there was some way to figure out the actual percentage of benevolent VS tyrannical lords in history. I've seen this debate play out before, with the individual's position on the matter usually hinging on whether they perceive the feudal world as a pragmatic system harshly misrepresented by modern sources or an avoidable nightmare we should have emerged from sooner.

Quote from: Haffrung;899320Our pop culture attitudes about history and government have a huge blind spot when it comes to the dread of anarchy that every civilization in history felt. Maybe it's because American culture is built on a myth of homesteaders free of state meddling. But yeah, the alternative to a powerful state was typically marauding bands of bandits and rape gangs, the breakdown of trade and agriculture, ensuing famine, and basically a horror-show of common folk  desperately trying to live day to day in a world of unrestrained predation where peasants are the bottom of the food chain.

I think there's a much more pertinent factor: compared to most polities, over the history of the world, the United States has had a run of tremendous stability.  There's not only never been a coup, there's never been a serious attempt at one.  The presidential succession has never been broken, threatened or really even questioned beyond handfuls of fringe whackdoodles.  Our one civil war was a short one, and caused little change beyond a strengthening of the central government.  Barring the Japanese occupying a handful of island territories (totaling an area half the size of the municipal limits of Jacksonville FL), it's been been over two centuries since a foreign army was on American soil, and it's been over a century since there was an actual raid across our borders.  We have never suffered a significant diminution of our sovereign territory.  There's never been a "Time of Troubles" or any manner of interregnum.

Of course we don't fear anarchy.  Beyond images on TV sets or the memories of veterans serving in war zones, no native-born American has the faintest idea what anarchy looks like.

Quote from: Daztur;899370Didn't say they were starving all the time, just that there was often a bit of a gap between when the food stored up for the winter started to run out and when new food started to have enough time to grow and be available. Even a few weeks going hungry a year is going to cause problems with childhood development and when there was plenty of food in the spring it was often very monotonous and not fresh (of course) so you could have malnutrition even if there were plenty of calories coming in.

As far as people having roles in society that fit together, I don't really see that. More just gangsters demanding protection money.

For modern old money types, a lot of people don't really get them since they really move in their own circles. They often imagine rich people the know just more so, when real old money is quite different like you say. Most rich people are really focused on acquiring status while old money often just doesn't give a shit since they were born with it. They're generally much less uptight than people imagine since they take their status too much for granted to be touchy about it.

Medieval diets were not that badly balanced though light in protein and vitamin c. The  only ones we are certain about though were monastic and are probably different than standard diets . That said migration era people were generally healthier than medieval ones and medieval ones were far more healthy than early industrial era ones.

In some sense until recent times , the 1930's or so things often got worse

As for protection racket, not any more than paying property taxes is now. I'd argue they had no less legitimacy than any modern state, probably far more to the average person. Seeming them as "gangsters" I am afraid is kind of a product of Cultural Marxism /Enlightenment Ear thinking

I do agree with you on the old money issue, I might argue in fact " Nouveau Riche" and tech billionaires and such aren't aristocrats anyway . Some are but as society in general is going through a decedent stage, you'll get a more decadent aristocracy anway. So whether you get decadent elites or vital ones will depend on the setting

In my fantasy games I tend to   use both, YMMV of course.

I think we're crossing a few different issues.

My main point is that Middle Ages lords would have a lot sifferent demeanor than a Regency drama aristocrat or your asshole boss. In many times and places their basic demeanor would be closer to a mob boss than anything else we have these days: ostentatious and vulgar displays of wealth, housecarl or the local equivalent who were basically the drinking buddies of the guy in charge and how personal everything was. A lot of portrayals of aristocrats seem to draw more on modern upper class twit stereotypes when back when they were actual warrior class they were far more dangerous and rough (often illiterate until quite late, etc.). So so many modern ideas of what aristocrats are like spring from AFTER they stopped being a warrior class and a lot of the same goes for samurai.

That's quite different from arguments about how evil or illegitimate feudal systems were. Personally I think in pre-modern societies a much better way of organizing things was to have a large yeoman class with land tenure tied to military service. Gives you a lot larger body of (semi) trained manpower and a lot larger body of people with a stake in the existing social order. Pre-modern societies with lots of yeomen tended to be more plesant places to live ina number ways.

tl:dr I DO think feudal lords were a bunch of vicious parasites but my main point wasn't about how moral they were but about their demeanor.

Quote from: Ravenswing;899141RIGHT HERE is why most gamers get this wrong: the general paradigm that PCs are the lords of creation, and that they're not merely above petty trifles like laws, taxes, customs and monarchs, but society pretty much exists by their sufferance.  In such a paradigm, A GM can play aristos as arrogant as he pleases, and your average player reacts with bemused laughter.  Why wouldn't he?

The way I figure, the rulers always have more power than the PCs.  That's why they're the rulers, and the PCs aren't.  Power structures survive by defeating challenges to their authority, not by cowering before them or ignoring them.  If the PCs refuse to pay taxes, obey laws or respect customs, then they're liable to be stomped.  If they resist stomping, the rulers just send a larger army.

Seriously, think of a standoff in your hometown.  What would happen if the band of desperadoes shot it out with the police, and won?  Would the government say, "Oh, that's alright then" and ignore them, or would the ante be upped to the tune of two hundred police, with armored personnel carriers and units of the army in their wake?

Without changing that paradigm first, how one plays aristos is of no more moment than how one plays slave NPCs.

Feudalism is very different from the modern unicentric State system that emerged around the end of the 17th century. In Feudalism, disparate power centres are the norm. The system is designed to co-opt competing power centres rather than crush them. So when I run feudalistic D&D the rulers normally seek to find a place for the PCs within the existing power structures - land, titles, glory et al. Pre-3e handled this pretty well with the explicit transition to Lord status at 9th level. Problems arise when you have the trappings of an 18th century aristocracy without the power to back it up - naturally the PCs will revolt.

One common way for rulers to co-opt powerful potential rivals is through marriage - the princess's hand in marriage for 'saving the kingdom' integrates the princess-marrying PC into the existing power structure, and gives him a stake in its welfare.

A good example of this is my Karameikos campaign - the PCs fight for Karameikos because to a large extent they ARE Karameikos. Count William (MU12) married to Princess Adriana Karameikos, their eldest son Baron Bravery Karameikos (F10), Baroness Alexandra Vorloi (F9), Roseanna the White Dame of Highreach (Clr 11)... only the newest PCs, like the Dwarf Cael Thoradan (Dwarf 9) have yet to find a firm place in the power structure.

Quote from: jeff37923;899176I love the comments about nobles have ALL the power and may use that power with impunity. That may have been the case in medieval times...

IRL you only ever see that with a conquered and subjugated people. Central/eastern European aristocrats were so bad because they were often Teutonics ruling Slavs. Most nobilities put a good deal of effort into keeping the peasants onside, or at any rate the most important elements of the lower orders - you might eg have a free yeoman class that provides the soldiery used to oppress the subjugated peasantry, but that usually happens when the yeomen and peasants are of different ethnic groups.

In my Wilderlands setting, which is closer to the Iliad than Disney Medieval, the 'aristocrats' are typically PC types, and behave very similarly. Eg they confront most challenges with extreme violence - and right to rule derives mostly from personal power and that of their immediate warband of fighting companions. Heroic duels are common as the 'aristocrat' dispatches challengers. Older or less physically powerful rulers rely on their Weaponmaster, a kind of lieutenant/executive/champion, but a disloyal Weaponmaster may well overthrow the ruler.

Quote from: Spinachcat;899178Agreed. Different settings, different expectations.

If you assume nobles are ex-PCs who rose to name rank, then they've got some skills and toys to back up that swagger.  If each noble in OD&D is 9th level or higher and has a loyal retinue of 6th-8th level dudes with magic goodies, then they are going to be at least a match for mid to high level PCs.

But what about those nobles' non-adventuring spoiled brat kids?

Either the brats become powerful adventurers themselves, or you marry them off to the next crop of powerful adventurers. Or both.
What tends to happen in my Karameikos game is that the first generation of ca level 9-15 rulers have kids who are not spoiled brats but don't face the same level of challenges, and top out around level 6. Some of these kids are married off to other noble families to cement alliances, but others marry high level non-noble adventurer types, including PCs, creating a solid basis to perpetuate rule into the future.

Quote from: Haffrung;899239One thing that people overlook (probably because it's offensive to our modern sensibilities), is that medieval aristocrats were superior to common people in most respects. They were healthier, stronger, more learned, more cunning (they had to be), and exhibited more self-control than the common folk. They had far superior diets and healthier upbringings than peasants toiling in the fields or working in tanneries. The men trained for war relentlessly from childhood, and were as superior to a common man in feats of arms as an NFL player is superior to a guy who plays flag football on weekends with his buddies. Those raised to rule had to understand a host of complex matters, from agricultural and livestock practices to money management to military tactics to diplomatic protocols. If they were weak they would soon be toppled by a ruthless neighbour or family-member.

The notion of aristocrats as lazy and incompetent buffoons is an emotionally-satisfying narrative for egalitarian cultures like ours, but has little basis in reality.

Very much this. The 18th century French aristocracy became decadent because they had already lost all their power to the Crown in the previous century; they were rent-extractors who no longer performed a function. Modelling D&D aristocrats on them is stupid unless you are planning a French Revolution type event, and/or the aristocracy is just the atrophied appendage of a powerful centralised state. The real 'aristocrats' of 18th century France were the bureaucrats. Look at who actually has the power in the State - who do people look to and obey? Those guys are rarely buffoons; not for very long. If they fail it's usually because they keep doing X, when X was what brought them to power & kept them there, but now X is obsolete and they're unable to start doing Y because their identity is bound up in X. Sometimes they do actually succeed in negating Y and keeping X going a long time. The Tokugawa Shogunate is one case. The European Commission is certainly trying manfully to follow its example.

Quote from: Daztur;899418My main point is that Middle Ages lords would have a lot sifferent demeanor than a Regency drama aristocrat or your asshole boss. In many times and places their basic demeanor would be closer to a mob boss than anything else we have these days: ostentatious and vulgar displays of wealth, housecarl or the local equivalent who were basically the drinking buddies of the guy in charge and how personal everything was. A lot of portrayals of aristocrats seem to draw more on modern upper class twit stereotypes when back when they were actual warrior class they were far more dangerous and rough

Have you actually met 'upper class twits'? These are dangerous guys! They are far more ready to fight than are the bourgoisie (sp?).  They love combat and if they don't actually serve in the regular military, they are the first to volunteer when war breaks out.

As for 'mob boss', Dark Ages warlords and modern warlords in (eg) Africa fit that paradigm pretty well. More secure/entrenched nobilities tend to start behaving a bit differently. But I agree - actual mob bosses tend to show a lot of decorum and noblesse oblige type behaviour, along with the joviality and menace. They tend to be much loved by their 'peasants'.