A few random thoughts on process and development

[Snargash Moonclaw]

I've been noticing as I work on Panisadore how my basic perception of the setting changes and develops. Most distinct is a sense of modernity. I see a similar trend in some other works as well, where modern social concepts and institutions begin to show up as seeming anachronisms at first glance; what seems like a medieval or renaissance setting (technology wise) demonstrating religion, government, philosophy, economics, arts, etc. - largely social "advances" more in line with 20-21st century developments. The most obvious factor (at least in Panisadore) being that magic replacing physical technology simply holds back certain developments without effecting others (at least not as much) so that given sufficient time/history other fields have continued to levels of our "present day" thinking when technological sciences have apparently stalled.

Examples: the Malenorian Empire shows sufficient hallmarks to be considered fascist, a distinctly 20th century development (although clearly rooted in older totalitarian concepts). I didn't really realize this until my boss at work pointed it out (he has a background in philosophy and psych and e have some fasciating discussions). Partly by nature of the geography, global thinking is rather commonplace at higher levels of govt, education, finance and market, etc.

Much of this then leads me to start thinking about undeveloped portions of the setting in more modern terms at their inception. Of course some things aren't particularly modern, even tho they may seem such in our minds, e.g., the system of legal advocacy, or principles of espionage are ancient - it's really just the tech toys used that have changed, etc. (A friend of mine had a country which practiced trial by combat - the best lawyers were minotaurs and the state court system also oversaw licensed betting, including odds making, on the outcome of scheduled trials. . .)

This also prompts me to consider in which ways technological sciences would advance. In the absence of an industrial revolution and combustion engine development, I expect sailing technologies to advance well beyond the point at which they did historically - optimum usage, etc. I also wonder how the guild system would actually change, in a different fashion than here. Simply keeping the system in place for centuries longer demands some form of evolution - nothing stays entirely static and survives. Not replacing them with industrial labor unions also doesn't mean that some form of labor unions wouldn't develop separately in unskilled labor fields.

I'm curious as to what trends others notice as you develop your settings.

[Ra-Tiel]

Not being familiar with your setting, I'd still like to provide my comment on your basic concept: fantasy and modern concepts.

I find it somewhat sad that in only a very few - if at all - settings the impact of magic on society and science is dealt with. There's so much to be had that could provide additional depth and interesting features to a setting.

Eberron is perhaps the most prominent DnD example for a setting that tries to deal with that topic. However, imho, it fails terribly. In Eberron, magic is used to clone modern technology (lightning rails == trains, airships == helicopters/zeppelins, magic platforms == cargo lifts, etc) instead of using magic to create a unique and distinct way of dealing with certain situations.

Lifting and cargo handling, for example. Instead of having magical lifts, why not create gloves that project an effect similar to one of the bigby's hand spells, allowing a single worker to handle huge amounts of cargo with ease? Or create plates that are keyed to a control plate and affect the cargo crate they are attached to with a shrink item effect.

Lighting things up. Instead of having everything plastered with everburning torches and permanency'ed daylight spells, why not have the roads enhanced so that they provide everyone within a certain radius of them (say, like 30 ft) with darkvision?

Travel and transportation. Why in all Nine Hells would one build magical "trains" or "airships", when you have teleportation magic, or ring gates, for that matter? Teleportation circle or gate should play a major role in long-range transportation. The expense of having such a system established would pay off almost immediately by allowing instant transportation and travel.

These are just a few examples where I find that currently available settings fall short. :-|

[LordVreeg]

From the Celtrician PB wiki---the effect on magic on the development of a world, in terms of thinking and the direction that is moved into.

[ooc][With all of those deep and fantastic storylines, it is vital to grasp that the Celtrician setting is a world where the presence of magic has slowed the growth of technology to a crawl.  The curious and intellectually superior explore the laws of magic, instead of science, and have dicovered ways to bend physics to their wills.  Artificers are paid to create a town clock that can be seen on top of a temple, Earth and Animist mages create the Marcher Breed of cows that average 8 gallons of milk a day, and Fire and Air mages dominate a battleground... of what use is science here?  Through the ability to channel power and structure it from the eleven sources, daily jobs are made easier, and even miracles can happen.[/ooc]

Quite a while ago, I realized that my 'modern' thinking was influencing the Celrtician experience, so I tried to take those things that I know would bleed in, and give them reasons.

and n example of the effects of racism and culture, and (frankly) an example of a comment on racism and the effects of same masquerading as slow-developing acculturation.

[ooc]
The Gartier question is a very complicated one. Of all the Ogrillite families, the Gartier are the most difficult to grasp and the most tortured. When created in the beginning of the Age of Heroes by Anthraxus, they were bred to lead. For thousands of years, almost every humanoid tribal band has been either led by a bugbear or bugbears, or they were the brains behind it. When asked about their near worship of irony and sarcasm, they often reply with a variation of, "You spend hundreds of generations trying to tell every bloody goblin and gnoll which hand is for eating and which is for ass-wiping, and unsuccesfully mind you, you'd be a little jaded too". Strong, smart, and hardy, they were the perfect captains and generals for the other ogrillites...except they were too smart, and too clever, and for generations they looked in at the civilized world, and hated it for not being able to be part of it. Every gaertier for thousands of years has, internally and mainly subconsiously, despised themselves for being a barbarian and being outside civilization. The gartier hatred of culture and civilization was not the orcash or ograk mindless hatred whipped by priests and zealots, it was the deeper mirror of hating what they could not have but knew they were worthy of.
So, to understand the civilized gartier, on the surface all self-reliant and sarcastic, you have to take what was has been passed on from parent to child for years about how soft and unworthy the civilization of towns and cities is and what they have perached to their near-idiot followers, and add that to a near 75 years, just over one lifetime, of being allowed to partake in this civilization, and stir in the very-prevalent racism and prejudice of beings generally weaker and stupider than yourselves. Then add in all the tribal gartiers sneering at you for 'going soft' and 'being a hobyt-lover'...now maybe you can understand a tiny bit of the Gartier mentality. On a good day, they hate the rest of the world more than they hate themselves.
To circle back to the question about their mercenary appearance, I think it is that very solitary nature you are seeing. Julian, The Horn-minister in Waiting in Igbar, has actually taken it under advisement secretly to create a situation that would speed the acceptance of the gartier, due to the possible benefit and also the posible backlash.[/ooc]

[Lmns Crn]

To an extent, I feel like keeping everything "in step" in terms of historical development is unnecessary. Unless you are designing a setting with the intent of emulating real-world history, anachronism is not something you really have to worry about, is it?

For example, why not talk about feudalism and petroleum refinery, two concepts obviously separated by a great deal of time in their real-world development. If I were to write a piece of real-Earth historical fiction that put petroleum refineries in the middle of a feudal or pre-feudal Europe, my story would have an obvious and glaring anachronism.

But if I'm writing my own fictional world and I want to have a society develop the technology to refine crude oil before they get past feudalism as a form of government, why not? There's no reason a fictional society has to come up with ideas in the same order that historical earth societies did. Anachronism in a fictional world should be judged against the yardstick of that world's own internal consistency, rather than a comparison to historical Earth developments.

It's really not that unusual, I think, for setting writers to juxtapose 20th century social ideas against medieval- and renaissance-era technology. For example, think about how many worlds (including my own, and possibly yours as well) are often surprisingly forward-thinking with regard to gender equality issues. If your setting is designed to resemble medieval Europe, it's "anachronistic" to give females the option of making any decisions of consequence for themselves, but it's very easy and common to overlook this "inconsistency." After all, it's not as if the discovery of electricity is any kind of necessary precursor to women's suffrage or anything.

[Stargate525]

To be completely forward thinking on this, true Feudalism (and its accompanying manorialism) is dead in every setting that isn't a grim and grit shades of evil setting simply because of our modern perceptions of good and evil.

In a feudalistic society, the peasant population were slaves. Period. They were expected to work, and if they didn't produce the correct amount of payment, they would be punished. In a great majority of the world, the judicial system was a corrupt and disjointed mess, there was little to no international trade, nations were often at war with themselves, etc.

The first response of most people, if given these facts without any context, would conclude that this society is evil. But if you want Feudalism, this was the norm. In my opinion, the closest thing you can get is an enlightened monarchy, complete with rights and a working, moderately uncorrupt judicial system.  

[Polycarp]

But if I'm writing my own fictional world and I want to have a society develop the technology to refine crude oil before they get past feudalism as a form of government, why not? There's no reason a fictional society has to come up with ideas in the same order that historical earth societies did. Anachronism in a fictional world should be judged against the yardstick of that world's own internal consistency, rather than a comparison to historical Earth developments.

For example, think about how many worlds (including my own, and possibly yours as well) are often surprisingly forward-thinking with regard to gender equality issues. If your setting is designed to resemble medieval Europe, it's "anachronistic" to give females the option of making any decisions of consequence for themselves, but it's very easy and common to overlook this "inconsistency." After all, it's not as if the discovery of electricity is any kind of necessary precursor to women's suffrage or anything.[/quote]

Firstly, I think this in particular is done out of practicality more than anything else.  Game companies in particular and DMs with female players specifically don't want to offend anyone, and even if women aren't participating some people don't want to be wrestling with serious issues like sexism or racism in a game.  Many players, I'm sure, question the idea of inserting such topics into escapist fantasy gaming, on the basis that it just isn't necessary to have a good time.

Secondly, and more specifically, electricity isn't (and historically, wasn't) a prerequisite for feminism, which predates mass electrification, but what makes you think that societal trends aren't closely linked with scientific ones?  After all, feminism is at it's heart a product of the Enlightenment, which came in large part from the application of scientific thinking to social concerns.  Mass movements in general have technological prerequisites - can you imagine a mass movement of any kind (like feminism, or socialism) without the printing press, for instance?

I'm not trying to start a big debate on the origins of feminism or anything, I just mean that things are often linked more closely than people realize (even things that seem quite different, like electricity and women's suffrage).  Again, depending on your historical outlook and your ability to suspend disbelief, this may or may not matter.

[Polycarp]

To be completely forward thinking on this, true Feudalism (and its accompanying manorialism) is dead in every setting that isn't a grim and grit shades of evil setting simply because of our modern perceptions of good and evil.

At the risk of sounding like a pedantic git, "true Feudalism" has nothing to do with peasants; the status of the lower classes is irrelevant to Feudalism.  Feudalism is the specific (and largely military) relationship between lords and vassals and the exchange and holding of fiefs.  A feudal society could have very free peasants who live comfortable lives in enviable liberty, and it's still feudal as long as feudal obligations exist between lords and vassals.

You are talking about Manorialism, which is the system of dependent farmers that sometimes coexisted with feudalism and sometimes did not.

[Stargate525]

At the risk of sounding like a pedantic git,

Don't worry, you don't.

"true Feudalism" has nothing to do with peasants; the status of the lower classes is irrelevant to Feudalism.  Feudalism is the specific (and largely military) relationship between lords and vassals and the exchange and holding of fiefs.  A feudal society could have very free peasants who live comfortable lives in enviable liberty, and it's still feudal as long as feudal obligations exist between lords and vassals.

True, but feudalism is a direct cause of the militaristic issues of the society, namely, wars with itself.

You are talking about Manorialism, which is the system of dependent farmers that sometimes coexisted with feudalism and sometimes did not.

Hence the 'and its accompanying manorialism' bit. To those of us not as well versed on the nuances between economic and militaristic sides of a political spectrum, I lumped the two together in what I believe the common man would envision as a feudalistic society.

[Polycarp]

Hence the 'and its accompanying manorialism' bit.

True, but feudalism is a direct cause of the militaristic issues of the society, namely, wars with itself.[/quote]
This is a chicken/egg thing.  One could just as easily say that feudalism is a defensive response to a violent environment.  After all, there were many non-feudal societies around the same time that were far more violent and just as prone to internal strife (the mongols come to mind).

[Lmns Crn]

To me, refineries and feudalism are unlikely to be internally consistent because they aren't just discreet "ideas" that happened to be developed at different times; rather, they are logical and understandable steps along a historical course of action and reaction, of necessity and invention.  We talked about this some time ago in a campaign thread about having WWII-era planes in an otherwise medieval environment; as I said in that thread, things follow from other things.  There were conditions that created feudalism and conditions that led to industrialization and oil refining, and unless a good explanation is put forward it's hard for me to suspend my disbelief.

Firstly, I think this in particular is done out of practicality more than anything else.  Game companies in particular and DMs with female players specifically don't want to offend anyone, and even if women aren't participating some people don't want to be wrestling with serious issues like sexism or racism in a game.  Many players, I'm sure, question the idea of inserting such topics into escapist fantasy gaming, on the basis that it just isn't necessary to have a good time.[/quote]Secondly, and more specifically, electricity isn't (and historically, wasn't) a prerequisite for feminism, which predates mass electrification, but what makes you think that societal trends aren't closely linked with scientific ones?  After all, feminism is at it's heart a product of the Enlightenment, which came in large part from the application of scientific thinking to social concerns.  Mass movements in general have technological prerequisites - can you imagine a mass movement of any kind (like feminism, or socialism) without the printing press, for instance?

I'm not trying to start a big debate on the origins of feminism or anything, I just mean that things are often linked more closely than people realize (even things that seem quite different, like electricity and women's suffrage).  Again, depending on your historical outlook and your ability to suspend disbelief, this may or may not matter.[/quote]had[/i] to have the printing press. Still, the absence of a printing press in a setting doesn't preclude similar movements on smaller scales, or global movements united by other means of communication (particularly if we let magic get involved to unfetter the process.)

[LordVreeg]

yes.  Internal consistency is the key.  

And a long time ago I decided that my setting would be used to allow the players to deal with some reflection of real world problems.  I enjoy dealing with fantasy racism, and in the historical context of my setting it was the spread of magic (mirroring the spread of technology) that allowed first the female elves to gain some rights, then the Stunatu (the Working Folk) to become less subservient, and the rise of mercantilism has allowed some of the tribal groups to become acculturated.  But there must be root causes that allow these things, and most importantly, things are always a work in progress, in motion.

But the cause and effect thing has to be monitored the other way, as well.  I specifically limited any type of teleport magic, and made most counter-magics easier than the spell type themselves (e.g., it costs less and is easier to foul up someone's scrying than to scry) so as to avoid internal inconsistencies.  Earth magic aids the speed of of crop growth and Animist spells can divert many predators, but this is needed die to the fantastic array of marauding creatures in the setting.  Most of our fantasy settings are more deadly than the real worls and more filled with danger, accurate and specific counterbalances must be in place.

[Nomadic]

Oh boy do I know that. I though do think that a society can develop differently in another world. Just imagine if the romans had decided instead to say "hey lets give this steam engine thing a try instead of slaves for a change." Many real world societies have made choices that greatly decided how they would develop on from that point.

So taking it from the realm of the realistic (i.e. - no biplanes flying over groups of spear men during a battle) we can adapt anachronisms just fine. There is not much necessarily stopping a culture from developing a printing press, or a rocket (powder rocket not the modern stuff), or anything else that would seem an anachronism. Indeed all it requires is a group wanting to figure out something, or stumbling upon something, and it becomes a chain reaction.

Take the roman example above. Had the Romans developed into mass use a steam engine, society may well have been pushed many years forward in technology thanks to the increased productivity. Slaves would have been of little use outside of daily chores around the house, decreasing the need for them. And there are even more side effects (some we probably can't imagine). Further on this leads to new developments sooner than normal and a much different world.

So in that sense I think a culture could indeed have anachronistic ideas and items within certain bounds thanks to the choices it decided to make.

[Polycarp]

So in that sense I think a culture could indeed have anachronistic ideas and items within certain bounds thanks to the choices it decided to make.

Except it is very seldom in the pre-modern era that conscious choices had anything to do with advances.  The original steam engine, the Aeolipile, was invented in the 1st century, but never caught on because there was no use for it.  Even had the Romans (collectively?) decided to copy it, it wouldn't have gone anywhere.  It was precisely because the Romans had slaves that such things would never have caught on.

We are used to living in a "research society" where governments and companies actively pursue new technologies and try to think up new and more efficient devices, but this is a very new phenomenon.  Government-sponsored research did sometimes exist in the pre-modern world, but it was really never theoretical - more like Roman generals saying "improve this catapult design."  It was really the development of the scientific method, together with the founding of the modern bureaucratic state, that enabled such a mindset.  Without those things, a culture doesn't seem to have much "choice" in the matter of science and technology; rather, these things are influenced by its environment, its culture, and so on.  Unfortunately, all that is rather hard to extrapolate theoretically; it's hard to say, for instance, exactly why some technologies were discovered at a certain time, or why they weren't used until some time later.  Ultimately it's the same old question of whether it's believable to the players.

[sparkletwist]

Game companies in particular and DMs with female players specifically don't want to offend anyone, and even if women aren't participating some people don't want to be wrestling with serious issues like sexism or racism in a game. Many players, I'm sure, question the idea of inserting such topics into escapist fantasy gaming, on the basis that it just isn't necessary to have a good time.

I agree too, but on the other hand, it can be fun sometimes, provided your players are open-minded and realize that none of it is real. Sort of the same fun that comes from playing a really evil bad guy. :D

[Polycarp]

Saudi Arabia? :D

Saudi Arabia isn't feudal, since the Saudi princes don't give the King their military service in exchange for fiefdoms. :)  Just having nobility doesn't make your society feudal, just like Great Britain isn't feudal right now.