Illness, the legality of openly carrying certain weapons and sumptuary laws.

Quote from: CRKrueger;949107Check out the Special Editions swords on Albion, it links to a site where they sell special designs.  You might get a kick out of the Lindsay sword Discerner and the Lady Vivamus from Glory Road.

WTF is up with the "Discerner?"  I mean, it's a nice sword, but I don't get all the folderol.  It's an arming sword or estoc depending on how you slice it.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;949062Don't forget the rise of the Universities in the late 12th and 13th centuries, which were drawing students and faculty from across Europe at times. One of the University of Paris' greatest professors was a German ... and his most glorious student was an Italian.

And the University of Northampton was banned by Henry III, I think, because it was too powerful a rival to Cambridge University.

Paris University was probably pre-eminent in Christendom, though.

I think the biggest problem for modern people is understanding how our post-Westphalian State System shapes society at all levels, and how this differs from a society of competing power centres. I think people actually can grok tribal & clan societies, and classical/Ancient World imperial & city-state societies, more easily than they can grok the feudal/guild/religion based medieval societies. "D&D medieval" tends strongly towards a world of competing nation-states with defined borders which is highly inconsistent with feudalism. Eg I'm running a classic D&D game around the Grand Duchy of Karameikos and it's striking how inconsistent the feudal tropes are with the author's nation-state assumptions such as standing armies, cash tax revenue, defined borders et al.
Whenever I run games set in any sort of feudalistic milieu, after a while I see issues emerge organically such as conflicting vassal loyalties - a PC (or NPC) lord has various domains gained through marriage, conquest and other means, and those different domains are sub-enfeoffed from competing higher lords, who may often come into conflict. So the vassal lord then has to decide which higher lord to serve, or how to balance these conflicting allegiances. A normal part of feudalism, but alien to nation-state thinking.

Wow.  Arrested and killed for carrying a sword, the fact that travel was very dangerous without the presence of monsters, wanting of diseases and starvation...

Oh yes, this is going to be very game-able.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;949144Wow.  Arrested and killed for carrying a sword, the fact that travel was very dangerous without the presence of monsters, wanting of diseases and starvation...

Oh yes, this is going to be very game-able.

I'd think there should be gameable campaign ideas, given that D&D "adventurer" doesn't really work for pre-modern eras. Noble household Game-of-Thrones style is an obvious one. Pilgrims & Crusaders, possibly. Brigands, mercenaries and outlaws in certain periods.

For a medieval game I definitely would like to see Gambeson, Mail, Brigandine and Plate armour types (though obviously not mail & full plate in the same period), and no leather, studded leather, bandmail, or splintmail. Short one-handed warhammers as armour penetrators, and swords that do lots of damage vs the unarmoured but are crap vs armour. Scholagladiatoria type stuff, basically.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;949122WTF is up with the "Discerner?"  I mean, it's a nice sword, but I don't get all the folderol.  It's an arming sword or estoc depending on how you slice it.

Heh, it's Excalibur from the 1981 John Boorman movie starring Nicol Williamson, Helen Mirren, Nigel Terry, Liam Neeson, Patrick Stewart and Gabriel Byrne.  I guess the mystery is that the sword is kind of an in-between style also because even though the design of the sword from the movie exactly matches an oil painting and drawing of the sword, no one remembers who designed the sword, and there's no reproductions of the family painting in any books that they are aware of.  So it's kind of a fun little mystery.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;949144Wow.  Arrested and killed for carrying a sword, the fact that travel was very dangerous without the presence of monsters, wanting of diseases and starvation...

Oh yes, this is going to be very game-able.

Well, it's begun.  I wonder how much more wailing, gnashing of teeth and bitter tears (not to mention predictions of economic ruin) we'll be subjected to?  Anyone want to start a pool?

It occurs to me that very few roleplaying games actually focus on being a person who ****s within a functioning society, to the point I wonder if many roleplayers cannot conceive of how to go about it.

Quote from: Tristram Evans;949152****s

Ok, weird, anyone know whats up with that? I wrote "l-i-v-e-s", and the forum auto-censors it. Glitch?

Hmm, it's blanking out "l.i.v.e." and "s.t.r.e.a.m.".  Wonder if it has anything to do with all those spam messages about the various l.i.v.e. s.t.r.e.a.m.ing fights.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;948951While this is HIGHLY accurate, given what we know of history of that time period, it also means that adventuring is not an option.

I'd say adventuring just requires a lot of preparation. What I've often done is to have one character setup as a noble and the rest of the party as his/her servants, hirelings, relatives, etc. If you want social access and mobility this is an easy way. The noble may have fallen out of grace (effectively a mercenary), may be on a quest, seek revenge, search for someone, participate a wedding, etc. A landless knight is just asking for trouble.  

While I run the occassional Disneyesque dungeon crawl, I like running games with established characters that are fairly competent. Thus collecting experience points, feats and loot is not the object of the game. The "character" of a character, we are told by Robert McKee and others, is revealed in conflicts. I try to lure the players to express the beliefs and attitudes of their characters, and then challenge those beliefs and attitudes during game (I haven't played or read much Burning Wheel, but I guess it sort systemizes this). PC's success raises admiration and envy. Their deeds are rewarded in the (secondary) world by reputation which leads to connections and opportunities — and risks. Their actions result in reactions, counter-actions, and rumors they cannot control. The idea is that you cannot do just one thing.

Then there are vast realms outside the organized society: borderlands and hinterlands where the feudal or other hierarchies are lighter. The areas are not power vacuums, of course, and the beliefs the characters carry with them are challenged again. Then there are characters that have ambiguous status. Quite often noble characters are faced in a situation where they have to take action that is contrary to the player's beliefs but totally congruent to those of the character.

I'd like to run a game involving a religious order or a merchant guild, but that requires a lot of preparation. I sketched out, but never  ran, a campaign around young teenagers who encounter strange and brutal things in their medieval city. Again, it required a lot of prepared NPCs, tensions, and background work. I guess if you want the player actions and success to have a meaning (i.e., if you want success in the (secondary) world instead or in addition to success in the rule-system), it comes with a cost.

A thought experiment: Consider four young lads returning from the wilderness with yuuuuuge sacks of treasure. Why would the local baron or bailiff not confiscate (or at least severely tax) these riches? Who would oppose him (and why)? How credible are testimonies that they were "found in a lair"? Any amount of gold in the hands of commoners is suspicious.

In a world partitioned into spheres of privileges, any change is likely to crash with an existing entitlement. When barons and earls are virtually absolute rulers within their domains (with certain exceptions), how does one become rich without benefitting that ruler?

Quote from: soltakss;948957So, a lot of people did travel and travelled a long way.

You are correct, though I am not sure what you mean by "a lot of people". Some people certainly travelled, but mostly people did not venture further than the closest market town. Those who travelled farther, sought safety in numbers and travelled in groups. And so on.

I don't want to turn this into a citation fest, but in Europe they coined a verb for robbing people on the public roads. I guess it was that frequent, although that is only one of the dangers on pre-modern roads.

Online Etymology Dictionary waylay (v.)
"to ambush," 1510s, from way (n.) + lay (v.), on model of Middle Low German, Middle Dutch wegelagen "besetting of ways, lying in wait with evil or hostile intent along public ways." Related: Waylaid; waylaying.

And wars were also certainly dangerous, yet there were a lot of them.

My point is that poor roads through unpopulated areas created friction. If you were in power, you could not maintain troops with ease, you could not move or supply troops with ease, you could not gather or distribute information with ease, so you could not impose your will very far without considerable extra cost (and even then your grasp might be tenuous).

Quote from: Christopher Brady;949144Wow.  Arrested and killed for carrying a sword, the fact that travel was very dangerous without the presence of monsters, wanting of diseases and starvation...

Oh yes, this is going to be very game-able.

I suppose it all depends on what you want in a game.

Thigh-slapping Robin Hood is as good a theme as Game of Thrones or dying of dysentery.

Quote from: jahud;949209You are correct, though I am not sure what you mean by "a lot of people". Some people certainly travelled, but mostly people did not venture further than the closest market town. Those who travelled farther, sought safety in numbers and travelled in groups. And so on.

Students, Merchants, Journeymen (The clue is in the name ), Pilgrims, Lords, Royal/Noble Courts, Tax Collectors, Friars, Lepers, Crusaders and Bandits, to name but a few.

Quote from: jahud;949209I don't want to turn this into a citation fest, but in Europe they coined a verb for robbing people on the public roads. I guess it was that frequent, although that is only one of the dangers on pre-modern roads.

Online Etymology Dictionary waylay (v.)
"to ambush," 1510s, from way (n.) + lay (v.), on model of Middle Low German, Middle Dutch wegelagen "besetting of ways, lying in wait with evil or hostile intent along public ways." Related: Waylaid; waylaying.

And wars were also certainly dangerous, yet there were a lot of them.

The very fact that there is a word for it means that there were travellers, enough for them to be waylaid fairly often.

Look, I am not saying that everyone travelled, far from it, most serfs were tied to the land and were not allowed to travel. However, travel was not such a rare or uncommon occurrence.

Quote from: jahud;949209My point is that poor roads through unpopulated areas created friction. If you were in power, you could not maintain troops with ease, you could not move or supply troops with ease, you could not gather or distribute information with ease, so you could not impose your will very far without considerable extra cost (and even then your grasp might be tenuous).

Yet, the Norman and Angevin kings maintained kingdoms that were quite large and involved a lot of travel. They fought wars all over their kingdoms and beyond. Sure, it cost a lot and they were not always popular, but they happened.