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Again, I am just observing that many players want to be free from daily obligations and complications when they sit down at the table. Empire of the Petal Throne exists, so does Bubblegumshoe and Worminghall and Aces and Eights, so #notAllPlayers.
Well I think you can (with the right structure) do this in a way that is more about giving opportunities and options to the players and maybe the occasional plot hook, without burdening them with obligations. So a bit of a tweak on the historical but a bit closer to the reality.
And yes, I’m well aware, more realistic or historical type play is a distinct minority, but I’m noticing some chatter about it.
I think many people would be interested in a campaign about journeymen on their Wanderjahr in the same city, or settlers in a new free town, especially if you add some SF / fantasy element behind the scenes. Give the players who want to misbehave opportunities to misbehave while giving the ones who like engaging with the world problems and opportunities with guild memberships and lovers and relatives and disputes over land rights.
Yeah that is precisely what I am trying to do. I am creating a world in Central Europe which is basically historical, except adding in the supernatural elements that people of the time believed in; saints have real powers, the Leshy or the Wilder Mann lurks somewhere out in the woods, dangerous spirits congregate around the fields during harvest time, the Magus can summon demons, and the cunning woman can cure ailments and wounds, or make a talisman for you to improve your odds in a sword fight.
Check out the rules for exiting combat in 1e AD&D.
I don’t have those rules handy nor time to look them up. But even if they banned it (which I doubt) I think 1e AD&D was incomplete and uneven enough that everyone house-ruled at least a little. My groups usually had at least a few wargamers, many ex- and current military, and plenty of people who have been in real fist fights and brawls in their actual life, not to mention fencers and martial artists; so we all had a concept of what disengagement meant and what the hazards and challenges inherent to it were. Sometimes retreating was as interesting as fighting (such as using bounding cover etc.). But everyone knew, and every person with any knowledge of history or experience of the real world knows, that sometimes you have to run away from a fight.
In other words, the details may be fraught, but I don’t think the basic concept was ever controversial. The fact that it seems to have become so is bizarre.
I think one of the problems of 3.5e and 4e were that they tried to turn tabletop gaming into a copy of a MMORPG, rather than taking advantage of the things that are possible face to face but hard or impossible to code. Its easier to code an endless stream of random fights to the death than political intrigue over who will become the next mayor or negotiations with the gnolls to beat up the bugbears together.
Agreed, and I can’t really blame them, World of Warcraft, Everquest etc. were hugely popular for a while, and making far more money than any RPG. But they almost ruined it, I think what kept it all viable was the OGL / D20 contract which allowed a lot of third party variants to thrive. This led to Pathfinder and the “Old School Revival” I mentioned up above, which proved the viability of alternatives to the existing path Wizards was going down.
The thing is today, 5E is very successful in it’s own right, and I think maybe while keeping some video game elements, they have figured out that it’s also worth emphasizing some things that table top RPG’s do well and video games do not.
Also by the way, mentioning that any particular version of DnD is similar to a video game is forbidden talk on gaming forums right now. I’m about to get banned from one for even hinting about it.
Opponents with mind-control magic are rare in most games! The way many players object to lack of agency is something observed, not a theory. I
Well here I have to disagree – if you look at the 3.5 or 5E Monster Manual there are plenty of monsters, including some of the most popular (Vampires, for example) with all kinds of Charm and Suggestion magic. The only difference is that along with the rising ubiquity and routine nature of magic in these games, they have also nerfed the effects somewhat, so for example the durations are shorter (again I think video game influence here).
In our games the party got captured and enslaved pretty often to avoid a TPK (or just locked up for sundry felonies) but that requires trust. And there were a lot of player-character deaths (so many deaths!) I think I ran one campaign where players reached about 5th level in D&D.
Sounds like your games were a lot more like my games, and therefore there are at least two of us still out there who understand that RPG’s can be played a different way than this carnival ride version they are emphasizing.
How could ‘running away’ not be a viable option in the rules? That is the most ridiculous thing I ever heard. Anyway, I make the rules for the books we sell here. Running away is “A+OK”.
As for loss of agency, given the number of charm, suggestion, and similar spells in the repertoire of DnD spellcasters and monsters alike, I don’t see that as a good excuse either, though I know there are many gamers who will make it.
But if players are used to attack attack attack, getting them to use less lethal options is tough.
Yeah I’m learning that this is a really entrenched style of play, essentially an endless series of more or less rote encounters, balanced precisely to the players abilities, with an unwritten but firm contract that the players can’t die. I’ve never played that way. I’ve played in games where there is almost no combat, but instead it’s about solving a mystery and / or engaging in a lot of social drama, and games where there is violence but it’s kind of rare and intense (like a Clint Eastwood Western as distinct from a John Wayne Western), and games where it’s almost continuous (ala Mad Max or one of the Resident Evil films).
What kind of creeps me out is that everyone seems to play now in one specific manner, ala dungeon crawl that is essentially like one of those haunted house rides in an amusement park that is guaranteed harmless and literally on rails.
The bottom line for me is that DnD is supposed to be a ‘gateway drug’ of RPGs, so people who play it should always have the option of playing a wide variety of ways. As in, almost no combat or a lot, or very lethal or safe as a pillow fight if that’s what they really want.
Low Magic / Low Fantasy, and Historical or Historical / adjacent games seem to be popular based on the chatter I’ve been reading on RPG forums and Social Media in these last few weeks, but it’s clearly a niche. Some of the people into that type of game seem to be more drawn to the “Old School Renaissance” variations which are out there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_School_Revival
Codex Martialis handles violence, including grappling, very well but it also makes it quite a bit more dangerous, especially if you are using the recommended Hit Point cap. So the “standard” 5 combats per session is probably a bit much. Using Codex rules, you probably want to plan a fight as best you can, and try to maximize your advantages as much as possible. When I ran games using Codex, serious fights were fairly rare, maybe one every session or even every other session. More inconclusive skirmishes might happen a bit more often than that.
As for bandits robbing heavily armed travelers – actually yes they did that quite a bit, I have numerous (primary source) anecdotes from the 15th and 16th Century where exactly that happened. In one case, a group of 40 knights and supporters were accosted by robbers in Germany and the bandits only backed off when they revealed every one of them had a loaded crossbow ready to shoot. In another case, Henry Bollingbroke of England, the future King Henry IV of England, was robbed, kidnapped, and ‘shamefully mishandled’ by Robber knights in Mecklenburg while on his way to Crusade in the Baltic with an entourage of about 80 men including mounted knights and longbowmen in his party.
In a High Fantasy game where you are slaughtering gelatinous cubes and ogres and orcs all day, perhaps a Conquer or Perish mindset makes sense, but if you are playing in a more Low Fantasy or Historical setting then I think the constant slaughter / never retreat / no quarter asked and none given, makes a lot less sense, and you don’t have to be entangled in guild relationships or feudal obligations for that to be the case. We don’t gratuitously kill people like that in real life or in even moderately plausible genre shows (unless they are zombies or something).
That said I don’t think there is anything remotely bad about your character being in a guild or having feudal obligations, I think that sort of thing makes the game more interesting. It’s pretty much what this whole website is all about – bringing the history into the role playing (and as context into HEMA).
I agree with you that murdering people with smallswords is decidedly not somehow more civilized than throwing them down in an armlock. Sydney Anglo just has that Victorian horror of the medieval which is still quite common.
Captivity and ransom can create all kinds of story hooks and opportunities for drama and adventure. Being captured doesn’t necessarily mean languishing in a gaol with nothing to do for multiple sessions, nor does it mean you’ll be fighting with sticks and bare hands when you do try to break out. As soon as you overcome the first guard you’ll have a real weapon to use.
Captivity and ransom create many opportunities for entertaining mischief. Go help somebody pay a ransom. Go rescue somebody. Go rescue your own people. Coordinate a jail break. Capture the some of other / enemy group and arrange a hostage exchange. There is a ton of fun that can be mined out of this kind of thing, that can help take your game beyond the routine ‘hack through another mob of orcs’ type of gameplay. If you want to.
It also gives your party something else to spend their money on. Saving some cash for the possibility of paying a ransom is a good idea.
Another thing common in the real medieval world is the cash fine. Though we tend to assume all crimes were punishable by death, nobles and towns and Church leaders were just as wary as everyone else of making their neighbors mad, so they often erred on the side of caution, and the fine was by far the most common form of punishment. You could indeed be broken on the wheel if you committed some heinous crime, but if you got in a fight and the authorities weren’t sure who was really responsible, at least in Central or Northern Europe, it was common for them to just issue a fine. The fine could be pretty steep, or it could be moderate or token, that depended on a lot of factors (including the ability of the accused to argue their case, which gives more opportunities for using those social skills).
Sure, and it’s appreciated.
I agree about Victor Davis Hansen, I also see the same kind of thumb on the scale (on the flipside) by people like Jarred Diamond.
I am interested in what that median level really is as well, and you have a good point about clothing (textiles were one of the most expensive things and also one of the things everyone spent money on).
The average medieval artisan would look at the poor quality, low thread-count, mostly monochrome fabrics in my house and on my person and think I was on Alms.
But you are also right they didn’t have things like bridges made of iron, which are commonplace today (the same guy would be astonished by that!).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victual_Brothers
The Victual Brothers were organised as a brotherhood or guild. Their main naval enemy in 1392 was the powerful Hanseatic town of Lübeck, which supported Denmark in the war. Apart from Lübeck, the Hanseatic League initially supported the Victual Brothers. Most of the Hanseatic towns had no desire for a victory for Denmark, with its strategic location for control of the seaways. For several years from 1392, the Victual Brothers were a strong power in the Baltic Sea. They had safe harbours in the cities of Rostock, Ribnitz, Wismar and Stralsund. They soon turned to open piracy and coastal plunder. In 1393 they sacked the town of Bergen for the first time and in 1394 they conquered Malmö. They occupied parts of Frisia and Schleswig. They also plundered Turku, Vyborg, Styresholm, Korsholm and Faxeholm castle at Söderhamn in Hälsingland.[4]
At the climax of their power, the Victual Brothers occupied the island of Gotland, Sweden, in 1394 and set up their headquarters in Visby. They also operated from the Turku archipelago; Knut Bosson, who was the chief of Turku Castle from 1395 to 1398, had allied himself with the people of Mecklenburg, which is why he supported the hijacking activities of the Victual Brothers and allowed them to operate in the area
Prices of Hanseatic cargo from Philippe Dollinger. These are per “last” – a maritime unit of measurement ranging from 770- 1000 kg depending on the time and place.
Saffron 7,040
Ginger 1,040
Pepper 640
Wax 237.5
French wine 109.5
Rice 80
Steel 75
Rhenish wine 66
Oil 60
Honey 35
Butter 30
Hungarian iron 21
Trave salt 12.5
Herring 12
Flemish salt 8
Wismar beer 7.5
Flour 7.5
Flour 7.5
Wheat 7
Rte 5.75
Barley 4.2
Ash (woad) 4.75It’s true that of course you could find isolated and poverty stricken regions where people had very little, and you don’t have to go way out to the Faeroes or Iceland. Wllachia, Albania and a lot of the Balkans, especially after the Ottoman conquests… up in the Pyrennes and much of Granada, most of Ireland (though they could afford colored cloth – especially saffron / yellow) and many areas in England and Scotland, certain rural parts of Germany, Sicily, certain parts of France and some southern regions of Italy, a lot of Russia especially the part under direct Mongol control. And so on and so forth.
So when people say “if you look hard enough you can find a place and time that fills almost every Trope” I guess that is true but it’s also kind of meaningless. I can find people living in my own city today who live like cavemen, I pass a handful of them on the way to work every day.
But I still think the Trope is misleading and even destructive. It does not really portray the era in question, especially the towns. The thriving, clean, bustling, lively, vibrant, self managed medieval town is almost never portrayed in any of the millions of outlets of genre media (TV, video, computer games, tabletop RPGs graphic novels, etc. etc. etc.) which depict these eras which we seem so fascinated with. It’s always the filthy, ignorant, benighted caveman. And yet, where is the facility where they build all that plate armor the knights are wearing? Where is the organized group of people who built the Cathedrals, castles and great buildings? Nowehre to be found apparently. Just a bunch of wretched cavemen.
And yet there were thousands of thriving, vibrant towns and even small market villages like that all over Europe. I can find them in every country and region. (Ok maybe not in Iceland or the Faeroes but you know what I’m saying…)
It would be like if at some time in the future you did shows or games about the 20th or 21st Century and every scene was in a favella, a refugee camp, or a shanty town. Sure they do exist, and sure even in the US we had the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl where for a while in the 30’s it was fairly widespread… followed by World War II when so much of the world was smashed, broken and burned up. Even today you could go to a War-Torn place like Syria or Congo or a place in extreme economic deprivation like Venezuela or North Korea. So if you looked hard enough you could find that Trope, yes.
But this is hardly a universal or even common condition in most of the world this period, today. The point I’m making is that it wasn’t the most common condition in the Middle Ages either, in fact quite to the contrary. The last 300-400 years of the Middle Ages is basically when there was such an incredible surge of culture and technology that “Western” culture went from being roaming barbarians to pulling ahead of the rest of the world.
I think we have to question everything we think we know from this period. We need a wholeseale flushing of the Victorian and Cold War era meme’s and tropes, and to start all over again from scratch.
Also, my comment on cobblers wasn’t to ridicule the occupation or to advocate a modern ‘disposable’ consumer culture, it’s just for context- cobblers were considered a marginal craft in most towns and were relatively low in the hierarchy- usually part of the ‘grand guild’ which was a catch-all for the lesser crafts.
Here are a few images of artisans workshops from the Balthasar Behem Codex (Krakow 1505)
Crossbowmaker’s workshop
A cutler’s workshop
Carpenter’s workshop
None of these give the impression of a tiny one-room booth or that they are lacking in personal property, tools of their trade, clothing or furniture. The crossbowmaker can afford glass windows and his wife can afford ink and paper to do her books in a ledger instead of on wax tablets. They even have flowers in a vase. And both the proprieter’s and their apprentices or journeymen are clad in colorful attire with multiple fabrics.
Here you can see what are supposed to be apprentices and journeymen ‘shooting the popinjay’ quite a bit more colorfully attired in what we can asume are some of their nicest clothes, wearing sidearms and bearing crossbows, overseen by bored guards (town watch, also probably young artisans) with their requisite armor and some pavise shields.
I have read inspections from the 17th Century complaining of tenants building bathtubs into their kitchen stove in these places.
For context, this is a housing project from early 16th Century Augsburg. The units are smallish but not just like a one-room booth type house. And these are for paupers / people on alms. Rent is still paid by the original 16th Century Fugger endowment (tenants pay 1 Euro per year)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuggerei
Most of the units are modern, but they maintain two of them in their original early 16th Century configuration, with typical accoutrements (again, this is for someone on alms).
Again, not luxury by any means but not quite the destitution you are kind of implying. And far better than what you would see in many dwelling places in some place like Cairo or Rio dei Janerio today, or London in the 18th-19th Century.
