Quote from: Christopher Brady;903715"They say that every society is only three meals away from revolution. Deprive a culture of food for three meals, and you'll have an anarchy. And it's true, isn't it? You haven't eaten for a couple of days, and you've turned into a barbarian."

Civilization is a thin veneer at best, at least amongst the great unwashed masses. Hunger sold the Russians on Bolshevism, iirc, Marshall said "Hunger Breeds Communism", or something like that.

Quote from: daniel_ream;903716This is incorrect...

No, it's just me being facetious, however, with the amount of irrational strawman arguments against me, I'll take the liberty to say what I want.

Quote from: Bren;903487Or we could assume that the PC who grew up in an aristocratic society would actually do a better job of holding their tongue, kowtowing, knuckling under, and hiding his objections than would the average American young adult suddenly presented at the game table with a noble who expects proper respect from his social inferiors.

It seems to me - judging from fiction and fact -  that all those rugged self-realised chaotic individualised Americans (young and old) are quite capable of behaving well at court. A court that has someone in a raised chair at the front of the room who controls when and how people may speak and with punishments for those who step out of line: a Court of Law.  That's a court where society has agreed that someone has a privileged position, recognised by the special clothes they wear and people alter their behaviour accordingly. A court. Not so alien after all?

Quote from: dragoner;903694Where are his sources? The only sources are mine.

Your source disproved your claim.

Quote from: dragoner;903695So just admit you are wrong then, or just an idiot. I don't care either way, I promise that. Your argument is a weak semantics quibble.

I admitted to caricaturizing your idiotic notion that the peasantry was in a constant state of revolution for thousands of years. I believe I said that. But your uncaricaturized notion is also wrong. Several examples of disproof have been provided. You have provided not one bit of evidence to support your wacky notion.

• Try actually responding to the things we are saying.

• Try finding support for your claim that the usual state of affairs for the typical peasant in most locales was a life in active revolt against the aristocracy.

• Or just admit you were wrong about the peasants constantly being in revolt.

Quote from: daniel_ream;903716This is incorrect; it's a misunderstanding of how life expectancy is calculated for populations, especially third world ones.  Life expectancy is a mathematical average, which means infant mortality and deaths from war, famine and disease all drag the number down (especially infant mortality, which is why there's some debate about whether it should be included).  30 would not have been considered "old" throughout the European Middle Ages.  Death rates once past infancy just weren't high enough for that; it took the two Great Plagues to depopulate Europe seriously enough to change the demographics.

Mighty dragoner doesn't care about your puny facts or your nerdish mathematics. Mighty dragoner has ideology and family stories.

Quote from: dragoner;903675Wrong. "Let them eat cake."

BTW Sugar is sugar, chemically, whether in fruit or sugar cane.

You think the French Revolutionaries were starving peasants? The French Revolutionaries brutally massacred the actual pro-Royalist peasants in the Vendee.

Quote from: Anselyn;903724It seems to me - judging from fiction and fact -  that all those rugged self-realised chaotic individualised Americans (young and old) are quite capable of behaving well at court. A court that has someone in a raised chair at the front of the room who controls when and how people may speak and with punishments for those who step out of line: a Court of Law.  That's a court where society has agreed that someone has a privileged position, recognised by the special clothes they wear and people alter their behaviour accordingly. A court. Not so alien after all?

That's a good point.

I think the difference is that in court, smarting off to the robe wearer in the big chair can get you fined or jailed and may increase the likelihood that you lose your case or are convicted of a crime. Whereas at the gaming table, some players are engaged in wish fulfillment and are willing to have their character behave like they grew up in the wild raised by wolves.

Quote from: Bren;903731Try actually responding to the things we are saying.

The onus for me to be civil was removed once you showed your ass, cretin. All you have are strawman arguments, and I'm not about to respond to some fucking moron, why would I? I am right, and you of course, are wrong.

Quote from: S'mon;903732You think the French Revolutionaries were starving peasants? The French Revolutionaries brutally massacred the actual pro-Royalist peasants in the Vendee.

Who gives a fuck? You fucking morons are multiplying like flies.

Quote from: dragoner;903736The onus for me to be civil was removed once you showed your ass, cretin. All you have are strawman arguments, and I'm not about to respond to some fucking moron, why would I? I am right, and you of course, are wrong.

All hail the mighty dragoner whose mighty breath destroys countless armies of straw men!

:rolleyes:  :rolleyes:  :rolleyes:

Now where were we before the comic relief flew in to inflame the thread?

Ah yes...

Quote from: Christopher Brady;903574Which to be fair, Robin Hood and the Knights Errant is a EUROPEAN creation, which sort of gives us Westerners across the pond an obviously incorrect sense of how things worked, where as in Japan, it's pretty much clear that being a 'free man' isn't something to be celebrated, but to be feared.

Interestingly in anime the hero is often an individualist or rebel against a traditional society.

Quote from: dragoner;903737Who gives a fuck? You fucking morons are multiplying like flies.

Stay classy, dragoner.

Quote from: Bren;903742Ah yes...
Interestingly in anime the hero is often an individualist or rebel against a traditional society.

Modern Anime is actually an outgrowth of another more recent medium, the Disney Cartoon (As per the father of Astro Boy, Osamu Tezuka once mentioned in an interview), and occurred after American values of freedom and free speech were imposed on Japan after the latter's defeat in the Second Great War (AKA World War 2), but historical evidence suggests (or perhaps was imposed, as History is always written by the 'winner' which may not always be as obvious as the conquering force would like to imply), that in the Far East as it was once romantically named that individualism and free thought were frown on.

Now, that's not say that they didn't have their own individualists, like the Wuxia warriors of China, wandering Martial Arts heroes, to the Hwarang, or Flowering Knights of Korea, but Japan was unique in that the Ronin was not romantic except in their favourite dramatically tragic method.

But in Europe, we've clearly had examples of Heroes Going Their Own Way for much longer, and Dungeons and Dragons cites one of the premier examples of what I believe the Unknown Armies so cleverly (And I mean that sincerely, it's a very good name for the archtype and trope) managed to cement, The Masterless Man, Conan of Cimmeria.  He is/was the epitome of the wanderer, beholden to no one but his own council, leading others, but never being led.

So for ME, this whole 'realistic aristocrat' thing in an RPG, especially one what uses Conan, Robin Hood, Knights' Errant and other individualistic characters from any medium you wish to claim, needs to be tempered with freedom of choice.  Not all Aristocrats are controlling pricks, but on the other side, if you're going to use some of the feudal states caste system, you need to allow for some structure and order to settle.

In other words, some times, Adventurers are not welcome everywhere, but they are welcome somewhere.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;903746Now, that's not say that they didn't have their own individualists, like the Wuxia warriors of China, wandering Martial Arts heroes, to the Hwarang, or Flowering Knights of Korea, but Japan was unique in that the Ronin was not romantic except in their favourite dramatically tragic method.

There are Japanese examples though, Miyamoto Musashi for one, someone who remained popular enough. Japan pre-shogunate, was fairly chaotic, this is before the bushido navel gazing and highly stylized armor and weapons that evolved with a strict caste system.

Quote from: dragoner;903686Nowhere do I state that there was "TOTAL PEASANT WAR!!!!", if you have to extrapolate it that far just to be right, you are fairly ignorant. Then again, you are saying that everything was fine, in a time of incredible cruelty, ignorance and superstition, where being 30 was old, and watching your entire family die of a fever in your one room shit shack.

Quote from: dragoner;903586There were constant peasant uprisings, Europe, Japan, where ever.

Jesus H. accordion-playing Christ in a gorilla suit, you're a fucking asshole.

There is constant tonguing of my pee hole, by you.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;903752Jesus H. accordion-playing Christ in a gorilla suit, you're a fucking asshole.

Wait, you're alive? Here we thought you were dead. If I offended your delicate sensibilities, this I will promise, I don't care. Face it, facts are facts. People living in misery are going to rise up, it doesn't take a genius to figure that much out. Though your pals will probably make room for you in their twee little "he-man women haters club".



Then you can stay out of conversations for grown ups.