Here's a goofy tidbit:

In Forgotten Realms setting is Lands of Intrigue, a sourcebook I'm reading about two major southern countries of Amn and Tethyr. Inside they state how Amnian trade cartels and hyper mercantilism, along with colonial conquest of parts of Maztica, now leaves goods costing 300+% the PHB price in the major cities. Tethyr, it's neighbor, 'suffers' from this colonial largess and the hot trading between their neighbor Amn and Calimshan (another gigantic trade power). The result is its major cities are enduring 150% cost increases, with lesser 130% or 110% PHB item cost in smaller communities.

Basically trade is normalizing the influx of colonial and cartel mercantilism wealth, but causing regional price inflation for PCs as a result.

They then go into lengthy discussion of currency, coinage, the die's heraldic meaning, its history, metal content, and conversion rates with neighbors.

All delightful filler to use or toss at GM discretion. But actually useful if the GM wants to ground the economy in something more than abstract "gold pieces." I'm sure there are similar 3e or 4e examples out there, but like anything it takes a core recommendation to spotlight why such details are important and not just 'fluff.'

As i said way back - Inflation will happen if you flood an economy with a large influx of external funds.

Quote from: One Horse Town;638312As i said way back - Inflation will happen if you flood an economy with a large influx of external funds.

My main game is much more Age of Reason,  but with Magic replacing much of technology.  So there are trading cartles and syndicates, and banking exists.
But it was sort of funny when the PCs rolled into a small village recently..they were thrilled how low many of the pricing was, though the selectin was bad...until they realized that there was no office for the Bank of Stenron and their writs of worth were worthless.

Quote from: The Traveller;637579This would be the same Church that not only allowed but overwhelmingly encouraged the greatest series of lootings and pillagings in medieval European history, aka the Crusades? Doesn't get much more honourable than a sanction from god almighty.

Infidels were a special case.

QuoteYeah, you know who was in charge at Agincourt, and hence was responsible for the preceding rape/slaughter/pillage-fest? King Henry V. The same King Henry V of Shakespearian play fame.

These lads weren't out for a genteel picnic in the French countryside when a gang of loutish Frenchmen came upon them, they were committing what by any modern standard would be called war crimes, then coming home to boast about it. Of course it was honourable. Had they lost it would have been less so.

In the first place, it wasn't a war crime, it was an English king trying to recover the territory that was his by right.

Second, regardless of what actually happened, had looting been "honorable" then Shakespeare would certainly have penned a scene in Henry V where Henry would have been all "Fuck yeah, looting!!", and not one where he was hanging looters and singing hymns of thanks after the battle.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;638583Second, regardless of what actually happened, had looting been "honorable" then Shakespeare would certainly have penned a scene in Henry V where Henry would have been all "Fuck yeah, looting!!", and not one where he was hanging looters and singing hymns of thanks after the battle.

Shakespeare wasn't a historian, he was a playwright, whose only prerogative was to entertain audiences. If you're looking at that for evidence of anything you're looking in the wrong place.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;637723Methinks you have a very white-washed view of the realities of warfare.

No, I don't.  The rest of you, however, have a typical post-modernist cynical view of what western civilization was saying.  You want to imagine Grim'N'GrittyWorld where no one gave a fuck, scratch that, where they though you were awesome, if you stole relics, slaughtered choirboys, or fornicated with the frenchman's goat.  And that was NOT how it was. That was not what society considered good, that was not what was suggested in the rules.  The fact that it happened anyways is beside the point of what I'm talking about here.

RPGpundit

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;637726Welcome to the modern world. Virtually every modern critique of the past consists of hating our ancestors for not holding the same ideological positions or cultural beliefs we do. (Or falsely believing they did believe the exact same things we do, just so we don't have to hate them.)

I call it chrono-centrism, it's ethnocentrism towards people in the past.

and both of these are exactly what's been happening in this thread.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;637731I didn't mean to imply you were committing chrono-centrism. (Even though I see now I totally did.) "Hatred" couldn't fairly be used to describe your position or statements.

Apologies.

There are various forms of "hatred".

Quote from: deadDMwalking;637723I still have to question your basis for this claim.  

Providing comfort for your enemy is dishonorable.  By depriving your enemy of food and supplies (as well as valuables), you decrease their ability to wage war.  

If you had an army and you found a dozens chests of gold in a village you had just 'captured', what do you do with it?  Leave it there?  

That money will just be claimed by the other side to hire more mercenaries.

Not only was looting EXPECTED, it was considered honorable in that it made your side more likely to win and the other side less likely.  The problem, as it were, was that the church wanted to discourage fighting among 'Christian Princes'.  

That wasn't an issue with the crusades (since the enemy wasn't Christian) and it wasn't really an issue after the Reformation (when the Church was actively encouraging Catholic rulers to go to war with Protestant rulers).  

Methinks you have a very white-washed view of the realities of warfare.

You are not talking about the same thing as the RPGPundit is. You are right, looting and all the other ills of warfare happened. However the society of the time (and even in prior eras) did not approve of it and tried to eliminate or minimize whereever and whenever they could?

Why because of enlightened self interest. It the whole reason that the rule of law developed. It why the earliest legal codes were so draconian. People did not want to live in a dog eat dog world.

But starting with the Neolithic agricultural revolution and the expansion of human population humans being playing catch-up. The evolution of religion, philosophy and law are the some of the responses folks have come up with.

The deep time of history has shown many periods where life was nasty, brutish, and short. But what people forget that when those occurred the folks tried like hell to change things to live a better life.

The laws of warfare and what considered honorable conflict was part of that. What happened in the Hundreds Years War was that a weak French Crown, allowed a well organized English society to take advantage of the situation. But the Hundred Years war wasn't constant warfare but rather various scattered campaigns that occurred over the hundred years that the English crown was actively pursuing their claim to the French Throne.  The English Kings wanted to rule a intact France so it was their interest to limit the looting and not have English soldiers roam like a pack of lawless brigands.

There are rules for living within your 'society', but that term can be loose and amorphous.  Throughout the medieval period in Western Europe, those 'outside' the society were expected to have terrible, terrible things happen to them.  The 'infidels' weren't only near Jersusalem.  Campaigns against the Germans and later Poles and other Eastern Europeans had this same impetus.

But even 'cattle raids' were a interesting feature of Celtic society.  Depending on whether you want to consider any portion of the 'dark ages' as the medieval era, stealing cattle from your neighbors was not only fun and diverting - it was honorable and celebrated.  

So, if you really don't think looting was 'honorable', let's play the game of picking a time and place and finding out if we can find examples to support either position.  If we're focusing on Henry V's battles in France, I can find examples where looting was considered Honorable.  

I could also provide examples for Edward 'the Black Prince', but this line between 'acceptable' and 'honorable' (or 'dishonorable) seems pretty thin.  If everyone accepts it, encourages it, and celebrates it, that seems like 'honorable' to me.  Agree or disagree?

Quote from: The Traveller;638591Shakespeare wasn't a historian, he was a playwright, whose only prerogative was to entertain audiences. If you're looking at that for evidence of anything you're looking in the wrong place.

WRONG. Shakespeare's plays provide considerable evidence of what was considered the "morality" of their times.  
In a similar way to how watching "The Patriot" will tell you next to nothing useful about the events of the American Revolution, but will tell you a tremendous amount about late 20th century American mainstream values.

We can certainly infer from Henry V that:

a)looting was common enough that no one pretended it didn't happen.
but
b) it was the conventional moral value of the times to consider looting an immoral act, and not something Honorable people would do or condone.

You seem desperately determined to keep trying to twist my argument to something it wasn't: I never claimed looting and pillaging wasn't very much a reality of medieval warfare. I am, rather, refuting YOUR claim that it was seen as honorable, or indeed even acceptable.

RPGPundit

Quote from: estar;638698Why because of enlightened self interest.

When you have an entrenched noble caste alongside an untouchable religious caste, the self interest of the vast majority of the population doesn't come into it because they didn't get a say.

I mean what do you and the Pundit imagine, comely maidens dancing at the crossroads with summer flowers braided in their hair, dashing young knights and wise old kings guffawing at the antics of the much loved court jester? They don't call them fairy tales for nothing.

It absolutely was a dark time for most people. Not unrelenting oppression every hour of the day, but racism, misogyny, and violence were part of the routine alright. Why does it strike you as so offensive then that looting and pillaging was encouraged at a high social level? One social more is different to the other?

And to head off any further exclamations about modern sensibilities, I don't hold these attitudes against the people of the time, as I've already said. That's just how things were.

Quote from: estar;638698The laws of warfare and what considered honorable conflict was part of that.

Yes, and the thirty years war buried almost half of Germany.

Quote from: RPGPundit;638703WRONG. Shakespeare's plays provide considerable evidence of what was considered the "morality" of their times.  
In a similar way to how watching "The Patriot" will tell you next to nothing useful about the events of the American Revolution, but will tell you a tremendous amount about late 20th century American mainstream values.

Really, that's... demented. Shakespeare was no more a moral demagogue than he was a historian, he was an entertainer. His plays were meant to entertain, in the same way that 'The Patriot' and 'Braveheart' were meant to entertain. What he chose to focus on towards that end was entirely at his own discretion.

Several posts in the thread have already pointed out that looting was in as many words an organised affair, in fact most armies couldn't have existed without it, given the almost nonexistent understanding of logistics the knuckleheads had.

Here are a few more thoughts:

QuoteThe knights were drawn to battle by feudal and social obligation, and also by the prospect of profit and advancement. Those who performed well were likely to increase their landholdings and advance in the social hierarchy. The prospect of significant income from pillage and ransoming prisoners was also important. For the mounted knight Medieval Warfare could be a relatively low risk affair. Nobles avoided killing each other, rather preferring capturing them alive, for several reasons—for one thing, many were related to each other, had fought alongside one another, and they were all (more or less) members of the same elite culture; for another, a noble's ransom could be very high, and indeed some made a living by capturing and ransoming nobles in battle. Even peasants, who did not share the bonds of kinship and culture, would often avoid killing a nobleman, valuing the high ransom that a live capture could bring, as well as the valuable horse, armour and equipment that came with him.

There's your nobility. Or as Falstaff put it in regard to peasant levies:
FALSTAFF. Tut, tut, good enough to toss; food for powder, food for powder. They'll fill a pit as well as better.

Quote from: The Traveller;638706When you have an entrenched noble caste alongside an untouchable religious caste, the self interest of the vast majority of the population doesn't come into it because they didn't get a say.

While nothing like the freedoms we enjoy today, the peasantry was not as benighted as you are making them out to be. They would not use as sophisticated terms as the clerics or the nobles but there was an expectation that custom will be followed and if repeatably not followed there were consequences for the nobles.

Again while not merrie olde england of poem and song it was not the mud splattered nasty brutish and short society of Jabberwocky either.

Quote from: The Traveller;638706I mean what do you and the Pundit imagine, comely maidens dancing at the crossroads with summer flowers braided in their hair, dashing young knights and wise old kings guffawing at the antics of the much loved court jester? They don't call them fairy tales for nothing.

The were times where there were wise old kings, dashing young knights, and maidens dancing at teh crossroads with summer flower in their hair. That imagery was not developed in modern times but a product of the people who lived then.

But you are right that was not the normal circumstances, for  most it was a mix of the good, and the bad. The situation much like today. While the slums of inner city Detroit with the half of the home vacant and crumbling exist, poke around the rural byways you still will find a Mayberry. But for most the places they live is a mixed bag that for the most part filled with people who abide by the law.

Quote from: The Traveller;638706It absolutely was a dark time for most people. Not unrelenting oppression every hour of the day, but racism, misogyny, and violence were part of the routine alright. Why does it strike you as so offensive then that looting and pillaging was encouraged at a high social level? One social more is different to the other?

Because based on the people writing at the time and the archaeology what you say it not the whole picture. It is a partial view as inaccurate as stating that the United States of the present era was like inner city Detroit.

Racism, misogyny, violence, poverty, and disease flourished in all time periods, and it only since the enlightenment that we have developed the sense of humanity as a whole as having worth.  But despite that people lived, played, loved, had kids, created beauty, and even prospered at all levels. In short they lived the life of their time as fully as we live ours. We wonder how they managed but the fact remains they did and thrived.

And if you look at the sweep of the history the dark times are memorable  because of the contrast of the eras preceding them and those that come afterwards. One benefit of the technology of the modern era is the diversity and ease that scholars can share their finding. As a consequence we learned there is a Carolingian Renaissance, that the rapacious Vikings contributed important elements of our legal system, the High Middle Ages of the 12th and 13th century were not a benighted dark age as population and the economy expanded beyond those of Rome at its height.

Quote from: The Traveller;638706And to head off any further exclamations about modern sensibilities, I don't hold these attitudes against the people of the time, as I've already said. That's just how things were.

Except that not just how things were. It was more than what you are stating it was to be. And by doing present a misleading picture of how it was back then. Again there was the bad and there was good.

Quote from: The Traveller;638706Yes, and the thirty years war buried almost half of Germany.

And the reaction was the sovereignty of the nation state, and near disappearance of religious war from Western Civilization. When they sat down and hammered out the Treaty of Westphalia their intent was to prevent a repeat of the horrors of that war. And by and large they succeeded, wars of religion became a thing of the past for Europe.

Of course as time went on people found other reasons compelling enough to wage total war.

Quote from: estar;638715Again while not merrie olde england of poem and song it was not the mud splattered nasty brutish and short society of Jabberwocky either.
....


Except that not just how things were. It was more than what you are stating it was to be. And by doing present a misleading picture of how it was back then. Again there was the bad and there was good.

I know a fair amount about 'day-to-day life' in the medieval period.  And you're absolutely right - it's not always that bad.  But we're not talking about 'general life' - we're talking about warfare.  

If you happened to live in a time and place where an invading (or traveling) army came through, you should expect bad things to happen.  Not the least of which is that any valuables that you have that are not well-hidden enough will be confiscated.  

You will not have legal recourse, nor would you expect any different.  If you were on the opposing side, you'd do the same and feel much better about it.

Looting is really celebrated by the side doing it.  As the Muppet Treasure Island observes:

'Now take Sir Francis Drake
The Spanish all despise him
But to the British he's a hero
And they idolize him
It's how you look at buccaneers
That Makes them Bad or Good'