This started as merely a way for me to understand D&D better, and make a more convincing world for myself and my players but I offer to you my understanding of history, as it would happen in a D&D world.
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 labor, 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 Hieroglyphs 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.
The revolutionary expansion of the territory of a society is 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 height 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 nase 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 with 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.
This is incomplete as far as details go, but to be honest, I really could not be bothered with /everything/ so yeah. And besides, there should be room left for people who like this to put some flavor.
I may do another one, from Slavery to Feudalism if this one gets a decent reception. However, see: http://boards1.wizards.com/showpost.php?p=11780771&postcount=89
Two very important modifiers you are leaving out.
The first is age. There is only so much you can learn in a given period of time. Human civilizations will naturally have short lifespans between generations, limited time to learn, and limited time to accumulate and pass on knowledge and expertise.
On the other side, dwarves and elves have huge amounts of time to accumulate a knowledge base and base on that knowledge to multiple generations. An elder elf hitting a thousand years old could conceivably have ten generations of adult offspring alive below him, all able to take advantage of the knowledge and expertise he has assembled through his career, and advance from the standpoint that the elder has achieved, not starting over from basically scratch.
Thus, while it might SEEM to take elves and dwarves generations to advance, the fact is that the elders of the races with longevity hold massive amounts of both wisdom and advancements/achievements which they can pass on to their offspring/family, they can accumulate the new tricks that their people learn, and they have the time to do research and experiment, even by serendipity, and discover things that someone with much less education/life experience couldn't possibly do.
Thus, elves and dwarves will accelerate up the progress side of things very quickly, which will in turn accelerate societal development. Thusly, they rapidly overcome many of the impediments to other cultures that require each generation to constantly relearn/rediscover the lessons of those that came before....because the keepers of those lessons are still around.
===Aelryinth
Thus, elves and dwarves will accelerate up the progress side of things very quickly, which will in turn accelerate societal development. Thusly, they rapidly overcome many of the impediments to other cultures that require each generation to constantly relearn/rediscover the lessons of those that came before....because the keepers of those lessons are still around.
That is in fact the reason I set it up for generations. Except where you look at the capacity for holding gains in knowledge, I see it as the capacity for holding tradition. The capacity for holding tradition was assumed to be the same (relatively speaking) among all the races, just as the ability to advance was assumed to be the same (again, relatively speaking) among all the races. However, I would edit the post in the following way:
Wis bonus has the effect listed for Wis penalty, and Wis penalty has the effect stated for Wis bonus.
I say this because along with the Wis stat being declared (among other things) for common sense, I see common sense as traditional knowledge, gained from the past...
Modern anthropology, especially the empirical traditions by for example Yale professor G. P. Murdoch, would state that different cultures show very varying rate of progression from basic stone-age conditions. So much so, that it is practically impossible to try to discern any laws about which discoveries are made in what order or how long it might take.
There are also assumptions, especially about gender and economics, that I find problematic as well. Economy first. Engels, being of the political views that he had, definitively may be said to have had an agenda here. OFPPS - among other things - tried to trace the origin of the idea of private property within this "ideological setting".
Archaeological evidence as well as anthropological studies today show that things didn't always develop in the manner or the order Engels thought.
Today of course, one may choose to accept the idea of historical determinism even though there is not much empirical evidence for it (and much against it) because the idea of an overarching set of laws (or at least systematics) makes it easier to handle the concept in world building. But then one should also allow the different assumptions to be permutated a lot more. (They aren't necessary for the laws to "work", since in fact they don't work anyway...)
One of the things I would then argue for, is that magic - divine as well as arcane - should have a much bigger role in development. Instead of economics as the major driving factor, magic should at least be in the co-driver's seat.
It only stands to reason, that magic which could at least partly fill the same role as work (creating food, items, or facilitate their production) would have at least the same importance.
The other - maybe more obvious - objection I have is the gender bias that Engels reasoning also shows. It assigns definitive gender roles that - in some cultures - may have been about what he make them out to be. (The ideals he assigns to history, most closely resembles the ideals of western Europe in the 1800s, since that was the time he lived in. Again modern history says the evidence is against him.) In others they didn't exist or at least didn't behave the way he made them out.
Again referring to Murdock and his work, the data base of almost 200 cultures he and his colleagues built up shows that even though a majority of the covered cultures showed marked gender roles, the individual tasks and roles associated with the genders differs between the different cultures.
Even if this had not been so, had the gender stereotypes really been universal, there would of course be no reason to bring them into roleplaying anyway.
What of a more Chinese model? Various warring groups are conquered and united by a powerful military force headed by a ruthless genius; then rule is consolidated by top-down government which coordinates development over a very wide area between groups that remain very culturally disparate. Stability and development continue until the top-down government collapses from bloat and corruption, you get civil war, and the cycle continues. This didn't quite occur in Europe due to geography, but we'd have to take that into account.
Still, very nice article. I like it; you should work with Thomar of the Magic, Multiple Fortitude Saves, and Mithral thread. A unified model for realistic world creation would rock.
[QUOTE=Robespierre;12388896
Two very important modifiers you are leaving out.
The first is age. There is only so much you can learn in a given period of time. Human civilizations will naturally have short lifespans between generations, limited time to learn, and limited time to accumulate and pass on knowledge and expertise.
On the other side, dwarves and elves have huge amounts of time to accumulate a knowledge base and base on that knowledge to multiple generations. An elder elf hitting a thousand years old could conceivably have ten generations of adult offspring alive below him, all able to take advantage of the knowledge and expertise he has assembled through his career, and advance from the standpoint that the elder has achieved, not starting over from basically scratch.
Thus, while it might SEEM to take elves and dwarves generations to advance, the fact is that the elders of the races with longevity hold massive amounts of both wisdom and advancements/achievements which they can pass on to their offspring/family, they can accumulate the new tricks that their people learn, and they have the time to do research and experiment, even by serendipity, and discover things that someone with much less education/life experience couldn't possibly do.
Thus, elves and dwarves will accelerate up the progress side of things very quickly, which will in turn accelerate societal development. Thusly, they rapidly overcome many of the impediments to other cultures that require each generation to constantly relearn/rediscover the lessons of those that came before....because the keepers of those lessons are still around.
===Aelryinth
I find that bit of a stretch. Long life does not always equal a life well spend. Your average human wizard will have achieved the same basic level of knowledge/ability as far as D&D is concerned at the age of 23 as an elf of 145. In fact by the time a typical elf has just started on his adventuring career, the human probably already has great grandchildren who are just as able/knowledgeable as the elf is.
There are other issues too. Suppose we have some great thinker from Rome here now. He invented the aqueducts. How much good does his knowledge of aqueducts do now? How much does he have to learn to be able to pass on knowledge more completely than a well written book?
By that same token, a long life span doesn't assure that skills are kept. Someone who lives to be 90 has often forgotten a good deal of skills/knowledge. Heck, I've forgotten pretty much everything I learned about Spanish because I never use it. But if I had written what I know in a book, it's available to anyone, in fact that book can be copied and reach many times more people than I could reach in person and divest all the knowledge it contains too.
While having the "elders" around is sometimes useful, it's not a great benefit as long as knowledge can be preserved via other means. There's a reason we write stuff down over pure oral tradition or memorization.
Thus, elves for example, might have a culture with the same values as they did for 4000 years ago, but they will have a much larger base of knowledge to take research from, than humans who have lived 4000 years and lost much knowledge.
They are chaotic - so even at the height of civilisation they value individual efforts, loyalties and desires over law and precedent.
They are usually good - so they are slightly more moral than humans are in general.
How might this affect their history? They may never go through a slavery phase. There is no real reason why they should go through a feudalism phase.
Furthermore there is no real reason why any societal form should be considered, necessarily, a progress from the previous one. A Venetian Republic, The Republic of San Remo (A democracy very similar to the modern US system which it inspired), Rome (A theocracy) and various monarchies all existed in Italy at the same time - they did not progress from one to the other.
D&D style magic would also have another effect - namely heightening the power of the individual. In history an individual could influence nations and the world stage by leading others. A powerful wizard could influence nations on it's own.
A primitive tribal culture with lots of druids and sorcerers (perhaps due to genetic disposition for sorcery), could defend itself from (and even conquer) a far more culturally advanced culture (assuming that wizardry is reasonably rare). This is good for a campaign because it provides a rational reason why say Celtic tribes, might coexist with Renaissance style societies, medieval style knights and all kinds of other "anachronisms" (anachronisms if the setting was our world, but reasonable in a fantasy world).
Also patriarchy is not a necessary development, modern Western society is moving away from it for example. In primitive societies it was brute strength that established patriarchy, and later cultural constructions that kept it in place.
In a world where Int (wizardry), Chr (sorcery), (Wis) clerics and so forth are as important (maybe more important) in combat and war than what might be considered male advantages (str), there is no reason why patriarchy should take over. There is also no reason why it would develop in societies where war was not common. Some of the first human cities were matriarchal (in what is now modern Turkey for example) in their power structure and were more advanced than many patriarchal societies that were their contemporaries.
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.
Philosophers = wizards is something highly debatable. Philosophy is not strictly based on Intelligence ability score as Wisdom in D&D represents "a character’s willpower, common sense, perception, and intuition." Freedom of tough and creativity can be encountered in any D&D class that favors Wisdom or Intelligence, as these individuals have more chances to develop the other. Rogues or Rangers make great use of these two ability scores.
Wizards are definitely not the people more opened to the world, they spend much time mastering the mechanics of magic.
Greek philosophers were discussing about atoms, and were most of the time great scientists, when they were also concerned by religion, ethic, moral, laws, and so on.
And I'm not agreeing with your views about the school of magic choices. D&D has forces represented by outer planes and Conjuration (summoning) is very interesting for philosophers, and conjuration also allows travels to gather knowledge and contact with different cultures. Evocation and transmutation are very good tools to learn about physics and biology.
I really don't know why you restrict the philosophers as being wizards, as much of them would be experts.
Something like a wizard would find more development support as a military man than as a philosopher, and sorcerers would not waste their time to develop wizard's spellcasting type and normally would have a wider choice of PrCs as they would be there a long time before wizards.
*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.
Druids and adepts are offsprings of oral traditions and your vision of polytheism is tainted by your modern view about religions. Why would casters have other restrictions than access to spells related to scribing ? Not being able to write does not make people stupid, they can still know which effects can help them. They were not stupid in the past, it was more difficult to have access to education. And we know that education doesn't protect from stupidity. People with oral tradition have a far better memory. To be able to write is good for a lot of things like recording knowledge, but it has a dark side, like everything.
If you think that casters in the past had less imagination, just read the different mythologies and compare them with modern religions.
You will face major problems to compare "D&D history" to the real one as you are trying to do.
- There are more than one intelligent race, so no one can consider its race as being the center of the universe like humans in the real world.
- Races with different lifespans. Races with short lifespans sacrifice their lives more easily than races with longer lifespan that renew their population more slowly. Then experimentation and information gathering progress faster for short lived races, but if they share knowledge with other races, all the concerned races will progress faster than any of them would without the others.
- Racism between members of the same race would be far more rare.
- Magic can place women as equal to men in physical confrontations.
- Polytheism, so feudalism as we knew it won't exist.
- Magic. The intelligent races are able to alter the world sooner than with science.
- Good and evil forces. They exist as independent concepts. You can perceive them and use them. If someone tells you that life is composed of shades of grey, you can ignore it in D&D.
- People can come back from the dead. It means that rich people most often die of old age. It means that no one think about death like people in the real world.
I stop there.
Exceptions in a magical world can radically change its history. A devil can learn wizard magic to a child in a barbarian tribe, for example. You forgot the influences beyond the "normal races". Dragons, feys, outsider magic-users, and even gods, can dramatically influence history too.
My opinion is that you cannot think about a magical world history the way you have done it.
This gives longer lived races a huge advantage. With older people, they might both remember those higher 'technologies', or even have people who can still use them and pass them on.
I am agreed that cultures who pass on oral skills develop a massively efficient memory to do so. Furthermore, the 'learning curve' for any specific person may move up, but if we compare long and short term races, what happens is that the older, experienced hunter ignores and forgets all the stuff not useful to his job, i.e. hunting. he thus passes on the best level of knowledge to the young, who also are not taught the useless stuff. The young thus have a higher starting point. Someone with centuries of huntinig experience will, from a realistic standpoint, be a superbly efficient hunter who has probably instructed dozens, even hundreds of descendants, who are thus learning the hunting skills a human might develop only after decades.
This is a 'metagame' effect, not a direct test of Skill DC's. It means that over the long term, elves make far better hunters, but a human with the same skill ranks might be just as good in the short term (equal to the average elf hunter two hundred years older!)
This is also the Tolkienesque view of elves...they were better then Men simply because they were so much older then Men, but without the physical frailties of age.
Also remember that declining memory is a part of old age, but old age might take five hundred years for an elf...and there is no magic in our day to fight against that.
And, like the above poster, all of this ignores catalysts of evolution. Things like divine gifts, the knowledge of angels and devils and fey, trade between species with different gifts, all these make a society leap forwards.
In a magical world, it seems that the only real advancements are made in magic. The tech level of most D@D worlds has been 'stuck' at a certain level for thousands of years. Only in Eberron do we currently see a rise of magitech and real magical incorporation into society, and even there it's not as pervasive as tech is in our own.
===
One last thing. In a magical society, chaotics can take hold, exist, and thrive for a very simple reason...character levels. In a magical world, the will of the one can very, very definitely outweigh the will of the many. All it takes is enough power behind it.
This was the case in our own world as well, where you could easily rule a society by military force, because of the training and armaments required to equip such a force. Once firearms came around, everything equalized...minimal training needed to train someone to kill, not years of work to make a master swordsman, and you could do it at a distance. Someone with no training and willing to die could kill potentially ANYONE.
Doesn't quite work that way in a universe with character levels. Chaotics and their influence on civilizations would be an unpredictable force of evolution.
\====Aelryinth
For instance, deities. Gods influence D&D worlds far more than they could ever influence the real world. An entire civilization can change radically in less than one generation if the avatar of their main deity shows up and gives them the Ten Commandments-equivalent. In D&D entire societies are completely shaped by the whims of their deities (example: the drow, whose society would not work at all if Lolth wasn’t there calling the shots all the time).
And then you have monsters. Dragons, outsiders, giants... all those need to be dealt with by the primitive tribes, which lacking powerful magic and equipment, are very poorly-equipped. This probably means that the early history of most humanoid races is one of hiding in the badlands, or slavery/servitude to more powerful creatures. Or one of following the heroes, the mightiest druids and barbarians around, the only guys that can keep them safe from cannibal ogre tribes or power-hungry dragons.
Finally I question your interpretation of non-human “generations”. Actually long-lived races like dwarves and elves are physically mature at around 25. And in a very stressful, highly competitive environment they can hardly afford having those mature adults subject to 100 years of adolescence or even 25 years of apprenticeship (notice that even now the drow send their children to training academies at 25, not at 100, like the other elves subraces). Primitive elves and dwarves probably put their kids to work, fight and producing more children much earlier than the later, more civilized elves and dwarves did.
You will face major problems to compare "D&D history" to the real one as you are trying to do.
- There are more than one intelligent race, so no one can consider its race as being the center of the universe like humans in the real world.
- Races with different lifespans. Races with short lifespans sacrifice their lives more easily than races with longer lifespan that renew their population more slowly. Then experimentation and information gathering progress faster for short lived races, but if they share knowledge with other races, all the concerned races will progress faster than any of them would without the others.
- Racism between members of the same race would be far more rare.
- Magic can place women as equal to men in physical confrontations.
- Polytheism, so feudalism as we knew it won't exist.
- Magic. The intelligent races are able to alter the world sooner than with science.
- Good and evil forces. They exist as independent concepts. You can perceive them and use them. If someone tells you that life is composed of shades of grey, you can ignore it in D&D.
- People can come back from the dead. It means that rich people most often die of old age. It means that no one think about death like people in the real world.
I stop there.
Exceptions in a magical world can radically change its history. A devil can learn wizard magic to a child in a barbarian tribe, for example. You forgot the influences beyond the "normal races". Dragons, feys, outsider magic-users, and even gods, can dramatically influence history too.
My opinion is that you cannot think about a magical world history the way you have done it.
I don't see why magic is necessary to even out the differences between men and women in dnd. Women are just as strong as men are! This fact alone should alter the precedents of any development of civilization to such a degree that you cannot really use our world as an example.
Sapient: Where have I, or Engels for that matter, ever talked about determinism. All this is, is a sketch of the early development of mankind (in Engels) appropriated for a 'magical' world. Engels took almost all of his information from Morgan (he says this, where the first chapter is pretty much all Morgan.) Morgan had, as far as I know, no political leanings, and his Ancient Societies is a work with no political lessons to be gained from.
Please do not dismiss Engels because of his political views when the work in question is merely an adaptation of another's work (with the economic content thrown in, of course). If you do not take the very qualifications of the author whose work I base mine on, you are being literarily dishonest (that said, if you had not read OFPPS, and only extracts or criticisms of it, you may be forgiven, though in any case I recommend Morgan. Great writer.)
OFPPS - among other things - tried to trace the origin of the idea of private property within this "ideological setting"
No, it was Morgan who did that. Most of the book is either a rewording of Morgan or the use of more evidence to support the view developed in that book.
While we are on stuff by Morgan, the family stuff was Morgan too. (In case anybody is wondering, I am not throwing everything bad onto Morgan, I love the man, he came to great conclusions just by studying the life, property and social organization of the Iroquois... I am just explaining that OFPPS is a work which heavily references Morgan, and before one can properly criticize OFPPS, one should read the 'original').
(
The ideals he assigns to history, most closely resembles the ideals of western Europe in the 1800s, since that was the time he lived in. Again modern history says the evidence is against him
Actually, he doesn't assign 'ideals' to anything, rather he tries to describe how such ideals as existed at various times may have come about.
different cultures show very varying rate of progression from basic stone-age conditions
This I address(in a very abstract way, assuming equal resources access in each of the basic terrains). The reasons for such drastic differences in advancement among the various peoples and regions on this planet is due to varying access to resources. The way I addressed this was through the terrain mechanic. While this ignores what may be present, such as easily accessible iron deposits, local cereal crops, and various game or draft animals, it was only meant to be an abstract. That said, my oversight is no reason to dismiss Engels.
The fact that cultures vary in the time it takes to advance to the next 'stage' is proof that this is correct. That variations from the norm are to be found, I do not deny. The question as to why these variations are present should be asked. The fact that in your post-modernist 'anti-structuralist' stance you do not actually try to correct me, but instead only say that I am wrong shows that such a stance is void of any worth.
But anyway, why are these variations to be found?
I would put forward two possible situations: either contact with a more advanced culture has modified the aberrational culture under consideration, or the culture was formally at a higher stage of development but has since regressed(why is has regressed may be asked, but I am sure people could work that out).
One of the things I would then argue for, is that magic - divine as well as arcane - should have a much bigger role in development. Instead of economics as the major driving factor, magic should at least be in the co-driver's seat.
It only stands to reason, that magic which could at least partly fill the same role as work (creating food, items, or facilitate their production) would have at least the same importance.
See the second part of that quote, you are saying that magic would be part of the economy. If I did not say such in the article, I apologize. Yes, magic, playing part of the role of normal, non-magical technique (as opposed to technology...) is part of the economy, and insofar as it impacts the economy, it impacts the development of society as a whole. So far from it being in the co-drivers seat, it makes up a large part of the main driving force.
Now for the Taoist
This seems a rather eurocentric model of history, although this is too early for the big differences.
If by 'eurocentric' you mean the areas that would be most successful would be those with easy access to raw materials(mostly metals), so that they could take over the areas with the less easy access, then yes. If however, you mean to say that I focus on European development, well, I may have made a large number of references to European situations, but the material I got the general outlook from studied the Iroquois, drew out the similarities of them with early Roman and Greek history, and with the state of the Australian Aborigines of the time. The stuff I had to work with was hardly eurocentric, and the method of description I use should not detract from whether it is good or not(unless it was exactly that which made it not...)
What of a more Chinese model? Various warring groups are conquered and united by a powerful military force headed by a ruthless genius;
Do you mean the lovely romantic myths, or the reality?
Gemstone: I take the view that such long lived species would have the same rate of progress, but because they live longer, that same rate leaves them behind, culturally. In fact, one may see (as I do, but I didn't include it in the mechanic) that longer lives races will actually be more conservative, less likely to take up bigger innovations...
Werral:
First, I like to ignore alignment in situations like this because I do not want to start an argument about alignment, and because I, as I have said in the charisma thread, do not believe in the intrinsic alignment system. I tried to stay within the rules as much as possible, but sometimes something was just not going to work.
Furthermore there is no real reason why any societal form should be considered, necessarily, a progress from the previous one. A Venetian Republic, The Republic of San Remo (A democracy very similar to the modern US system which it inspired), Rome (A theocracy) and various monarchies all existed in Italy at the same time - they did not progress from one to the other.
I know nothing of San Remo, so without knowing the history, I cannot bother to answer. However, both of these are far out of the time frame I dealt with.
What I can say is this: You are confusing government with economy and the social structure it creates. While it is generally the case that the states of a particular ruling class(in this article, the only ruling class dealt with is the Slave-Holder class) will be similar, not only particular customs and laws be different, but the state-forms may be different based on local conditions.
This may help explain it...
The reflection of economic relations as legal principles is necessarily also a topsy turvy one: it happens
without the person who is acting being conscious of it; the jurist imagines he is operating with a priori
principles, whereas they are really only economic reflexes; so everything is upside down. And it seems to
me obvious that this inversion, which, so long as it remains unrecognized, forms what we call ideological
conception, reacts in its turn upon the economic basis and may, within certain limits, modify it. The basis
of the law of inheritance--assuming that the stages reached in the development of the family are equal--is
an economic one. But it would be difficult to prove, for instance, that the absolute liberty of the testator
in England and the severe restrictions imposed upon him in France are only due in every detail to
economic causes. Both react back, however, on the economic sphere to a very considerable extent,
because they influence the division of property.
Werral:
I know nothing of San Remo, so without knowing the history, I cannot bother to answer. However, both of these are far out of the time frame I dealt with.
What I can say is this: You are confusing government with economy and the social structure it creates. While it is generally the case that the states of a particular ruling class(in this article, the only ruling class dealt with is the Slave-Holder class) will be similar, not only particular customs and laws be different, but the state-forms may be different based on local conditions.
In a world without levels such as it is, power, as developed by people, goes to those who can manipulate the largest number of people and men...which will generally be lawful types who can command and control an army/civilization.
Chaotics have little to no enduring power in such a society. the will of the many will ALWAYS dominate the will and power of the few. To understand this, go try to fight city hall!
In a world with levels, Chaotics share EQUAL power with lawfuls. You have an army on your side? So what? Chaotics can have drive and passion and can BURN down armies...something utterly impossible in our world.
Single people can make a huge difference not by being in the right place at the right time with the right people...but simply by being incredibly personally powerful.
What you are going to is the 'font' of Chaotics possibly transforming a society over time to them being able to force a society to change right now. Even if the lawfuls have equal power, it doesn't change the fact that the chaotics are now on equal footing.
This would cause a huge change in how societies develop. The will of the one can more then overcome the will of the many. Even given equal weight, the effect of such power being now available on both sides of the equation would cause some very radical changes in how societies evolve over time.
===Aelryinth
What you are saying is that the apparent social hierarchy is simply a reflection of economic divisions? But if say a Communist leader, a Corporate CEO and a Divine Emperor have the same level of power then aren't those societies basically the same (a dictatorship?) Yet the first two are modern creations while the third is an ancient form of rule.
Without getting into the theory which I believe would be rather unappreciated by our gracious hosts here, I will say that underneath it all, yes, it is a dictatorship. the question is this: who is it a dictatorship by, and who is the dictatorship over.
The divine emperor, depending on the stage of development could be the representative of a slave-holding class or of a feudal one. That much is obvious. One may try to establish themselves in a capitalist society, but capitalism constantly destroys the material basis of religion, no matter how much it may create the ideological basis for it. If such a character were to exists in capitalism it would most likely be in a situation where there is a strong feudal hangover where capitalism has been largely imported and has no strong material basis, such as japan until WWII.
The CEO, well, that is not really a dictatorship, as there is no state power being looked after, the CEO is the leader of a capitalist enterprise, not a capitalist state, so that is not really a relevant example.
I will not talk about the communist leader for the reasons outlined above (besides, my planned article was only going to trace development through to the emergence of capitalism and its corresponding state forms in the infancy of its state power: Italy in the 1400's, england in the 16-1700's and France from '89 through '39 as examples).
I still don't really believe in a necessary "progress" from one form to another. It's an interesting observation from the hindsight of history but I don't really dig it for world building.
Don't think of it as progress of the sort that one sees in the evolution posters, with the tribe down the bottom, slavery, feudalism then capitalism finally with the white man sitting at his computer, no.
Think of it as real evolution. These are societies that are compelled by their economic circumstances to develop in a certain direction: if a village-commune is running out of land for the population that has grown over th last few generations, it will attack its neighbors to get more land (like Rome, for example). If the local system has been made so solid by this sort of interaction that almost no one can expand within the given area, colonies will be sent outwards (like Greece).
If a desert tribe has been made wealthy through trade over the centuries, but now reliable boats are able to get the goods quicker and cheaper to the destination and thus the tribes are avoided, within generation they may experience a scaling back of development, so much so that they may go back on the scale, or they may be stronger than the port cities and may be able to take them over.
One individual might change whole cultural landscapes as religious and revolutionary figures have in the real world. Imagine if Lenin or Alexander the Great or Napoleon had been 20th level spellcasters. Even if there are other balancing figures a small cabal could take them on.
'one individual' has never changed 'whole cultural landscapes'. unless it was the individual who pointed in the right direction. Lenin did nothing but direct (and more than occasionally yell at) his party, which directed the workers and peasants (who were already doing most of the stuff he was advocating).
Alexander directed the healthy early slave-holding (Macedon was in an early stage of slavery, and as I say in the article, that is when a society is most energetic) Macedonians against Greece (well, sure it was his dad, but the person is not important, it is what they embody) and then against Persia, in a state of decay. The tribes north of the Danube may have been able to be easily defeated, but even if they had, after his death they would have broken free again. The Persian possessions and beyond broke free soon enough because there was no economic basis for the unification. This is not to say that the individual plays no part in the overall scheme, just the opposite, the right individual can have an immense amount of influence over history, emphasis on the history. Alexander sure did create a big empire, and the history of the region thereafter had to take this into account, but the economic structure of the societies is a different question.
With Napoleon it is similar: he came to power in th consulate (or rather the consulate came to power) because the newly victorious capitalist state could not hold its own internally against the sanscullotes. Every time there was a military setback the (small) bourgeoisie would have to appeal to them, the heart of revolutionary fervor. But there came a point where keeping the French Jacobins down while on the offensive, but keeping the Italian Jacobins in power when attacking Italy became to cumbersome, the thermidorian directorate collapsed, the French bourgeois republic was on its knees, unable to direct the contradictory forces within it. Thus Napoleon. Now he did change the life, the very economic basis of all Europe up to Russia. He extended bourgeoisiedom so far and so thoroughly that even the restoration did not reinstate feudalism in France, and only incompletely everywhere else.
But that was because feudalism in Europe was already on its last legs.
Napoleon once said that while history needed him, no army in the world could stop him, once he was no longer needed a feather would suffice to destroy him... Hegel called him 'the world soul on horseback'. There was more truth in these than either could have dreamed (even Hegel...)
Hmm what is your source for this. I seem to remember that the early agricultural societies were matriarchal too (Robert Graves book on ancient Greece, a documentary on the first cities were only the women ate domestic animals). I think it had more with establishing bloodlines - matriarchal societies only recognized the female bloodlines so kings couldn't pass on to their sons, only queens to their offspring.
In any case these roles may be reversed in other races, so gnomish clans move from early patriarchy to matriarchy later on.
Source? No idea, may be Engels or Morgan, though it could also be any other decent history I have read... Sorry, will have to go over my stuff for that one...
The bloodlines were a result of mother-right and the system of group marriage. As long as group marriage existed it would have been impossible to establish paternity. Property passes from the male to his oldest brother (of course, brother here is someone sharing the same mother, not father as later becomes possible), that is, uncle, on through the brothers by age, then to the male offspring of the sisters. At the stage of mother right, there were no kings as we know them. There were tribal chiefs, formally elected, and their brothers were elected when he died, so it generally was (at a given stage of development) kept in the same family, though there was the 'legal' possibility of getting rid of such a person and replacing them with someone completely different. re: Rome and the last Rex
The gender which is burdened with child bearing would be the one to 'stay at home' and be the gatherer. If seahorses evolved to sapience it would (well, it might, I shouldn't make categorical statements about things like that...) be the females who hunted and thereafter the ones who had the position that males hold in civilization.
Whether it would be so with gnomes... They are close enough to humans that we can assume that it would be roughly the same.