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#1 robespierre Jun 17, 2007 18:11:47

As a Dialectical-Materialist I see the history of all civilized societies as the history of class struggle. This struggle was always between the Oppressed and Oppressor, but not always between the Exploiter and Exploited. I also see all of history as the history of property: from tribal property to communal property to private property in land, slaves, serfs and now capital. Understanding history as such I feel the need to offer a history in opposition to those presented by the various campaign worlds. **For a more complete exposition of this in reguards to real world history, see Engels' OFPPS** It is merely a way for me to understand D&D better, and make a more convincing world for myself and my players. Before I get started: If a race enters the world civilized, they start at a given stage of development and develop normally from there. If a less developed group conquers a more developed group, like a tribal group conquering a slave-holding group, the conquerers implant themselves as the new aristocracy. For simplicity, I have left out most races, I include only: Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, Gnomes, Orcs, Hobgoblins, Goblins. The first stage is the tribal. A tribe is made up of two or more /Gentes/(singular: Gens), each with its own name. Occasionally a Gens will get too big and will split in two. The new Gentes will then be part of a /Phratry/. The Phratry will take the name of the original Gens, and the second Gens in that Phratry will get a name. Example: Tribe (A) has two Gentes: Hand and Foot. Foot gets too big and splits. Now there is the Phratry: Foot. The Gentes within it are Foot, the mother Gens, and Toe, the Daughter Gens. Now, what is the purpose between the Gentes? Marriage. One cannot marry within ones own Gens. One can marry within the Phratry. The tribe was made up of males=Warriors and Adepts, females=Commoners and Adepts, the serious divine casters become Druids Each Gens elects its own leader for times of peace and a chief for times of war. The Leader was hereditary in that it had to be filled when it became vacant and granted the officeholder a seat at the tribal council, whereas the chief could be vacant for some time. The Leader had to be from within the Gens, the Chief did not and both could be deposed at will. This was done in the same way as they were elected: The whole gens, male and female, however the tribal council can depose the Leader even if it is against the wishes of the Gens. The son of a Leader was never succeeded to office, at this stage it was his brother, or his sister's son was often elected to office. The authority of the leader within the Gens was purely moral, he was followed because he was leader. There was no means of coercion at his command. Up to a certain stage Mother-Right prevails, that is, decent through the mother. It also corresponds to the stage where property is passed down through the mother line. Property: Men hunt, women gather: so, hunter-gatherers. As the tribe advances, people stop hunting, but rather follow the animals. This in turn becomes leading the animals. The men no longer hunt, they tend to the livestock, the women still gather. But over time this changes. Eventually the tribe grows too big to wander. It settles. When it settles it has its immediate territory and hunting territory further out. Beyond that is the 'barrier land'. It may be a thick forest, a purposefully desolated area, it doesn't matter, the fact is, it is neutral land. Between tribes that speak the same language it is not too big, but it gets larger between tribes that speak different languages, and bigger between different races. As the population grows it fills up the area. The land which was formerly held in common is now parceled out to individual households, re-divided every-so-often. This re-division becomes rarer and rarer as the population grows until finally the plots become the de facto property of the household. But now the man is in control: He deals with the animals, the woman with gathering and the house, and until animals are used as instruments of labour, the woman was firmly in control of the house: once the herd animal pulls the plow, the man reigns. Soon after, Father right comes in. It isn't violent or anything. Until now, marriage had been mostly group marriage: your Gens was married to everyone in the other Gens and not to each other, but that has been disrupted since the Gens split, now you have pairing marriage: two people just get together. Quickly now,property is established, once established it can be taken away: mortgages flourish, sometimes with the owner as collateral as well. Just as quickly as this happens, in the same measure does unrest come. The Leader soon becomes obsolete as an executive, and the Chief, with his retinue of volunteers, originally only around for a battle, now more-or-less always around is starting to become more dominant. We see a confederacy of tribes, like the Iroquois confederacy, the Etruscans, Latins, Dorians, Atticans, Macedonians, Gauls and Germans And as soon as this is solidly in place, a few generations at most, the Chief becomes executive. Still elected, but can no longer be deposed due to the permanent retinue. He is now REX, not king in the medieval sense, but rather a permanent executive with full military and some limited judicial power. The council of the whole tribe still exists, it becomes the Senate. Now we see the transition from NPC class: Adept to PC class: Cleric as the religion organizes itself, and the tribal-commune becomes a city. For Clerics, at least Heiroglyphs are needed. Until they are developed, only adepts and druids will exist. With the growth of the city we see wars of conquest. Before, when the tribe defeated another tribe, it absorbed the survivors, now, it enslaves them. Not only that, but trade develops. People no longer live exclusively within the area of their own tribe, and traders are now living in the territories of the other tribes in their confederacy. Till now the conquering tribes had built up into an aristocracy, but now some of the conquered had built up enough wealth in land and coin. The old aristocratic system doesn't work anymore. They remake the whole system. The tribes are remade to be territorial, but over time these gain the look of decent, the phratries become purely religious and the Gens just family. The aristocratic reaction is harsh, they have Clerics, and as soon as sorcerers are able to control what they do and formalize arcane magic, wizards come, and the old order is done away with. A new aristocracy comes about. Thales of Miletus was the first real life philosopher, he was a merchant and was on the side of the democracy. His counterpart in D&D would be the first wizard. No, the counterpart to Homer would not be a Bard. He would just be an Aristo, maybe Aristo/Cleric, either way, he maxed out Perform: Epic Poetry. Instead of hoplite tactics taking over, wizards would. The magic of this time would be practical, as they would start off as merchants, researching the arcane. It would also be rather low level, as story XP awards alone might get you to levels 6 or 7, but not likely over 10, this goes for all classes, including clerics. *A note on Clerics, Druids and Adepts: they would have to figure out how to formulate their prayers in order to make the divine spells, so their magic would be rather restricted to their purpose: priests of strength and war would not yet focus, but rather /only know/ the strength enhancing, weapon enchanting prayers, In fact, it would not be too much to say that they would not know too many prayers outside of those in the domain lists of their gods* At this time gods with the following domains would be the most dominant, though local peculiarities will surely exist: Community, Nobility, Weather, Evil, Good, Sun, Law. War: war would be dominated by wizards, I have already said that, but their power would not be that great, because A: they have not yet acquired the range of spells that we find in the high-feudal period, and B: they do not war much at this stage. The more practical spells, /Magic Weapon/, /True Strike/, /Bulls Strength/, that sort of thing will be cast on the warriors, constantly. Mages will be among the fighting-men. As in real life the Greek Battle-Leaders stood in the front line as an example for the troops, so here the Battle-Mage stands in the front, casting protections and enhancements on the troops, and acting as one himself. The offensive capabilities of the mage have not yet been unlocked. The Slave-Holder's State is now well established. It has a democratic politics, though not for the slaves. The great philosophers of antiquity are instead the first mages, as I have said, and the schools of magic will correspond to the schools of philosophical thought. The natural-materialists will generally be transmuters, while the later idealists, like Plato and Aristotle, will be more likely to be Diviners, the math-cults, necessary step in the development of idealism will definitely be Diviners, never-the-less, they are the only two schools to be very thought out, though there might be individuals who might defy this trend. At this stage all Wizards are specialists. With the beginnings of the Slave-Holder's Republic we see the emergence of small cults to gods of knowledge. That Is the End of Part 1: Gentile-Tribal to Slavery. Just a few notes at the end of this part: 1: War. War, the revolutionary expansion of the territory of a society it most successful when it is still in transition from one stage to another. For instance, a tribal society which has just made a confederacy will shortly expand. While the opposite is also true: A societies wars will be least successful when it is about to change. For historical analogies: When mainland Greece had attained the hight of its Slave-Holding society and could only advance to feudalism it became weak. At the exact same time, the Macedonian tribes had successfully joined and Father-Right now predominated, it got stronger. What happened? The rising Macedonian Aristocratic-State expanded at the expense of the ossified Greek Slavery. They took over and the Macedonian Aristocracy was co-opted into the Greek style and raised themselves to Slavery. In time, that too grew stale, it was bound to, as it only changed the location of the Slave-Holder's domination. This was in turn overtaken by the rising Roman Merchant-Slave holder's Republic, and when the Roman society was on the brink of feudalism, it was in turn taken by the Germans, and in certain parts of the Greek world, the Eastern Empire suffered the same fate later at the hands of the Arabs. Also, Russia and China to the Mongols. 2:Progress. How long does this process take? For D&D we shall assume, due to magic, that it takes 20 generations for a society of average intelligence(+0 int. modifier) on land of average fertility. A generation is here considered to be the average age at which a race reaches middle age, this for humans, it is 35 years. This also assumes constant population growth. If there are any wars which deplete the population significantly, this should be taken into account. Thus, Humans and Elves living on the same land would take the same number of generations to advance, however Elves have longer generations, so would take more years. Also, one has to note not just intelligence, but rather the ability of the race to survive so use the following modifiers to create a number. Multiply this number by (20+ the number of generations destroyed by war) to get the general number of generations it would take a society to advance an epoch. Int: each +1 gives -0.5 to the number of base generations. each -1 gives +0.5 to the multiplier Con each +1 gives -1 to the number of base generation. each -1 gives +1 to the multiplier Wis each +1 gives -0.5 to the multiplier of base generations each -1 gives +0.5 to the multiplier Terrain: River< -2 to the base number of generations Plains +0 to the base number of generations and multiplier Desert<< +8 to the multiplier Forest +2 to the multiplier Hills +1 to the multiplier Mountains +5 to the multiplier. Tundra +4 to the multiplier <: Rivers also count as coastal areas, and are counted with the type of terrain the coast or river is on. Rivers and Coasts don't stack. <<: By desert I mean both hot and cold, Sahara and antarctic. Trade: trade doesn't matter as a modifier until there are others who are at least at the tribal-confederacy stage, and they have to have access to the society concerned, unless they are the society concerned. No trade: +2 to the multiplier Low trade: +0 to the base number of generations and multiplier Moderate Trade: -1 to the base number of generations Heavy Trade: -2 to the base number of generations Example: Dwarves in mountains worth no trade: 20-2x(5+2)=126 generations... Certainly gives me a new take on dwarves... It takes them 15000 odd years to go from tribalism to slavery. Nearby, Humans in the hills with no trade: 20x(1+2)=60 generations, 2100 years and further down, on the plains near the coast, the Orcs: 20-2x(2+2)=72 generations, 2160 years. The Elves in the forest: 20x(2+2+2)=60 generations, 10500 years, almost as long as the Dwarves... Thus: the Drow in their underdark(treated as mountains) take 20-1x(2+5+2)=171 generations, or, almost 30,000 years to advance, no wonder the women are still so highly respected among them, they have not yet developed property enough to need to worry about inheritance. I guess the whole point holding this thing together is the idea that magic, like all forms of productive technique, did not exist for all eternity complete, but developed over time. In short, people actually had to figure out how to cast magic missile, and there had to be a need for it. To paraphrase Marx: Man had to eat, have clothes and a house, in short, had to live before he could contemplate living, making philosophy &c.