How to do a feudalism right?

Incest and murder.

Not possible

Stagnant country with no real cultural drive to improve things before you die.

You don't, Feudalism was completely opaque and organic; not this pre-defined shit you see in high-school history books.

>>48824659
There's a strong chance feudalism didn't even exist except for a tiny period of time:
http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic1350026.files/Brown-Tyranny-of-a-Construct.pdf

That only higher classes have rights, doesn't mean anything by itself.
Because in some ways, its a society without laws. And even then, there is a big difference between a society with formal laws, written core laws(an eye can't be paid for with more than a eye), laws existing but only the read can use them, and the total anarchy between city states.

>>48824714
>>48824704
>>48824696
>>48824674
doesn't fucking matter. this is a fucking fantasy setting
>>>/his/

>>48824659
these pyramids always ignore the bureacratic aparatus that the clerus provides the king.

Is anyone going to aknowledge the fact aristocracy seems to be magically shitting food ?

>>48824812
They also ignore that trading can belong in either of the 3 bottom classes.
Or that there is large differences between peasant and farm owner.
Or slavery and permanent indention

>>48824812
On top of the fact that style of feudalism wasn't nearly as widespread as people think, yeah the priests being considered lower class is incredibly silly. The priests were the scholars and physicians of the time, they hardly were on the same level as farmers.

>>48824659
What do you even mean by "right"?

>>48824832
Yeah why the hell would food be going down? Farmers make the most food, they're farmers after all.

>>48824812
A country becomes Protestant
But: Priests are still THE LAW until almost 1900s

>>48824856
>The priests were the scholars and physicians of the time
Uh, barely.

>>48824659
>implying the church shouldn't be at the top

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This is clearly the most stable form of government.

>>48824890
Its certainly more stable than city states.
But not really.

>>48824882
I think we've had wars over this.

>>48824659
So I get how knights provide protection to peasants (hypothetically), but how to the landed lords provide protection to the knights? And what's to stop this whole system from breaking down the second some fuckwit gets a bunch of other fuckwits with swords together to kill everyone above them and establish a new nobility the answer is nothing. Feudalism as it's described here is basically a propaganda piece, put it into practice and you get a society that is 100% Heinlein's principal.

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>>48824890

>>48824832
And how to landed nobles provide protection to knights whose only job is killing motherfuckers? Surely the average knights' protection comes from banding together with like-minded individuals under the assumption that they'll watch each other's backs, and the "noble" is just one of them chosen to be in charge based on largely arbitrary criteria.

>>48824773
>doesn't fucking matter

Why ask, then?

>>48824890
kys

>>48824659
does the second knight have two heads?

>>48824659
You can't

>>48825091
There's a serf fucking a monkey, and that's what you notice?

>>48825111
why would I pay attention to serfs?

>>48825048
So if each noble can supply 10-20 knights, those knights supply 5-10 soldiers when they come along.
Then a regional prince can supply 20-30 knights.
Essentially: Its a gamble on if the next part of the system will bother to do fuck all.

>>48825020
Actually the lords played a HUGE role in forming armies, whether levied troops or simply from paying taxes which would then raise armies. Throughout a large amount of English history, for example, the Kings had trouble trying to continually tax the nobles to pay for wars.

It is important to note as well that peasant rebellions often failed to do much. Whether that was because communication between villages was actually fairly difficult in that age, or because most people simply adjusted to their lives, the simple truth is that in Europe peasant rebellions didn't succeed very often. In fact, peasant rebellions that were successful often resulted in simply putting up another form of feudalism

>>48824659
>priests that low

>trying to merge a complex set of relationships in a single pyramid

>no god above the king

Holy fuck.

>>48824832
The nobles take food from the peasants and give it to their retinue.
>>48825020
The knights weren't actually important outside of war, but in general I assume the picture refers to the fact that knights were often bound to serve lords and the like, and get a castle's barracks or a nice fort to live in.

>>48824856
>The priests were the scholars and physicians of the time, they hardly were on the same level as farmers.

Depends on the place. In some places, you had priests who were serfs in all bur name, with fields to till and obligations to fulfill to their earthly liege. And you're confusing priests with monks in terms of being scholars and physicians.

>>48825209
Ah yeah, sorry, I did misplace priests with monks. In general monks were the scholars and physicians, though.

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>>48824659
GM is kind, players are Lords, PCs are Knights, NPCs are Peasants.

ALL TTRPGS ARE FEUDAL, FIGHT ME REVOLUTIONARIES!

>>48824659

Stop thinking of it as pre-revolutionary proto-capitalism. Or, to put it in other words, step away from Karl Marx and GRR Martin and remember that things working right rarely make the papers or the history books.

Farmers want to farm and will happily follow someone who will arrange for the goods to be moved and provide for their protection. Professional soldiers will happily follow people who pay them to protect things. Competent nobles will happily be followed, incompetent nobles tend to suffer hunting accidents and strange illnesses. Throw in a handful of entertainers and a preacher and you've got a pretty stable system as long as everybody keeps their head down. That's "feudalism" when it works and as long as you don't mess with it, it's one of the best self-sustaining, self-repairing systems in history.

You will, however, be tempted to mess with it. A BBEG noble or a peasant revolt or a secretly corrupt church or a greedy sheriff or anything else. It seems like free plot points. Do not do this. The system fails hard, publicly, and messily when trust between the players broken and things go to hell until people run screaming into a new system trying to get their stability back and the cycle renews.

So: just don't do that. Beef stew for the workers, pheasant for the knights, venison for the king, and pretty girls singing pretty songs right after evening prayer and you'll have a town where the lowest serf will gut you with a pitchfork before they'll let you "liberate" them right into starvation. That's when it works.

>>48824659
Early, High or Late Middle Ages?

>>48825297
This.

In a world where gods are real and magic can help cure plagues and hopefully smallpox/TB/etc, there is a LOT less death and superstitious bullshit cures.

>oh, you want me to take rosewater for my headache?
>that priest said a few words at congregation and my syphillis is gone
>try harder buddy

Coincidentq that's why fantasy realms shouldn't advance fast in science if they have widespread magic usage.

>>48825308
Slavistan, Scandinavia, Italian City States, Western Europa or Brittain?

>>48825189
>The knights weren't actually important outside of war
>what is a feudal juidicial system?

>>48825297
>feudalism had no abundance of nobles abusing their power over the peasantry
nice fanfiction, bud

>>48825337
This.

>>48825370
Technically most things people write about feudalism is fanfiction in the first place because the word feudalism is used to describe a shitload of different kinds of governance in a shitload of different time periods that in many instances didn't resemble the pyramidal structure we're taught in schools at all.

Do the same thing reactionary authors like Tolkein did.

Have a common enemy, an evil and irredeemable outside force. This legitimises the nobles role as protectors, and if they are obviously the bad guys nobody scrutinises their opposites so much

Have Divine Right be the objective truth. The rulers are descended from a race of men gifted with wisdom, a prophecy details how a King of Dynasty X will save the world, the Gods are in open communication with their faithful and appear to approve of feudalism and the current nobles. Many ways to do this.

>>48825020
>And what's to stop this whole system from breaking down the second some fuckwit gets a bunch of other fuckwits with swords together to kill everyone above them and establish a new nobility
The current bunch of fuckwits has it okay and doesn't feel like risking this status quo unless you can promise more than the current fuckwit with your wealth, diplomatic connections, personal military might, political influence and cultural kitsch. In which case you get your classic dynasty sucession.

>>48825351
You where nobles upheld laws in their domain? Or the Kings upheld laws in theirs? Or perhaps in which (granted, Late middle ages) actual courts were held?

Knights weren't actually judicial. They provided fighting service in the middle ages. Maybe they had political power in some obscure legends such as King Arthur's knights, but in reality that was during a time of political upheavel in which military might was the law.

In real life knights were mostly cavalry, albeit with greater rewards. They didn't actually do judicial work, and any 100 level history course that talks about feudism would teach you that.

On the other hand for fantasy worlds, go wild. Huge precedent for it in literature, and it's a cool trope regardless.

>>48825383
The textbook pyramidal structure is a simplification, since pretty much all the actual systems tended to evolve into a convoluted system of shittons of classes and sub-clases tied by branching and looping obligations. The pyramid portrays the key principle of all these systems - numerous and underpowered working class supporting the noble administartion/military, in turn morally tied with the head of the government.

The first thing you learn about studying 'feudalism' as an undergrad is that it didn't exist how people think it existed, it changed and differed everywhere you go and is closer to a system of interdependent contracts over land possession that outlined rights and responsibilities each party would obtain, usually overseen by a third, usually ecclesiastical, party.

>>48824890
>all countries are ultimately ruled by ageless beings like elves and dragons

Best fantasy goverment.

>>48824659
Simple. Just remove the unfree element of society. In many ways, Feudalism, as seen in high medieval northern France, is a fairer and more effective way of allocating and controlling land possession that we see across the world today. The only reason people bitch about it is the unfree serf aspect which, quite frankly, is not necessary to run the system and emerged out of a consolidation of powers by a dedicated military aristocracy after the collapse of the Carolingian kingdoms.

>>48825531
But a numerous and underpowered working class supporting a head of government that asserts itself as a moral authority basically describes every form of governance outside of a direct democracy.

>>48825571
Even if it's a direct democracy, unless the franchise is universal, it's still as you described.

>>48825571
>Build enterprise
>Get workers
>Each workers earns 2-5x his wage
>1-4x the workers wage to to the company
>Maintenance and insurance fund eats most of that
>Still massive profits due economy of scale

>Be Media company
>Literally leech of the people to exist

>Be Government
>Tax Enterprise, Corporations, Goods and Workers
>Literally exist on economy of scale

>>48825587
What does that have anything to do with what we're talking about.

>>48825493
Well, I can't speak for other countries but here in Germany (HRE), the landlord had juidicial powers in case of lesser crimes (Niedere Gerichtsbarkeit). In fact, it was a relevant source of additional income for those landlords, as they retained part of any compensation payments.

>>48825545
Yes, the middle ages are a patchwork and the further back you go, the more patchy it becomes. But generalizations can be made.

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>>48825265
>GM is kind

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>>48825209
>>48825245

Monks and monasteries were basically precedents for corporations and shareholders - monks would generally have to "buy into" a monastery and in turn receive literal "shares" of the monasteries produce and supplies.

This is why the breaking of monasteries was fairly common throughout the medieval period - a feudal kingdom could control or even manage a monastery like it would any other institution in medieval times short of wipe the damn things out, even repeatedly murdering several abbots only increased the shares available to the other monks and allowed more junior monks to climb up the monastery's ranks. Which meant that when the local monks started raiding local villages for wenches and goods the local rulers would have a nasty choice between burning the monastery down before the peasantry did (which might lead to repurcussions from the church) or trying to pay off the monastery to stop ransacking shit or pay off the church to fuck the monastery up for you before it causes trouble.

>>48825934
"couldn't control" even.

Aren't feudals basically landlords who make peasants plow their fields and ship some crops, goods and sometimes peasants to higher ups?

That's how I do it anyway.

>>48824659
How the fuck do knights provide food to the serfs?

>>48825571
Your description skips the landed nobility class, which largely defines feudalism.

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Feudalism was, at it's core, the functioning of three separate societies (the sacred, the martial, the economic) that were united by a trifunctional leader that kept the whole system running.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trifunctional_hypothesis

>>48825335
>In a world where gods are real and magic can help cure plagues and hopefully smallpox/TB/etc, there is a LOT less death and superstitious bullshit cures.

I doubt that this would be true. I mean even today bullshit cures exist for stuff that can be healed/treated with modern medicine and people buy it. And bullshit warding charms might even be more common because they actually can see some of the "super natural" stuff.

For certain diseases like the plague or smallpox there are most likely not even enough clerics to outheal the amount of people who get infected everyday. They might be able to prevent an outbreak in the beginning but that would take a huge amount of logistic effort.

And even if we assume that the clergy does not use their healing powers to gain money but use it to help, they would still need some very strict rules when to apply it. Because if they just sell it for a couple of silver and then someone dies, the clergy would get all the blame and people might start to resent them.

Obviously that stuff only applies to settings were people with magic abilities are rare.

>>48825989
well, for peasants it was basically a trade off of security (from muslims, vikings and hungarians) against liberty. (anyone reminded of the NSA and all those organizations that "only want to protect us" here?)

unfortunately, things have a tendency to get out of hand over time, so the landlords started to abuse their positions of power ever more.

a cautionary tale.

>>48826147
>unfortunately, things have a tendency to get out of hand over time, so the landlords started to abuse their positions of power ever more.

Things had a tendency to get worse in the same way a democratic society might occasionally elect a demagogue or mismanage the funding for essential public services.

Kingdoms and empires were typically safer and more stable for the common man than democracy.

>>48826167
>a democratic society might occasionally elect a demagogue or mismanage the funding for essential public services
More often than anything else they get annex'd by their less liberal neighbors, who are better at war thanks to more centralized administration.

See Athens vs Sparta, Novgorod Republic vs Muscovy, Polish-Luthuanian Commonwealth vs all of their neighbors.

Prior to the introduction of a robust Norman bureaucracy and legal system, the petty barons were more or less independent. The system of vassalage is actually not one of barbarity in the wake of Roman Empire collapse but actually a complex network of interlocking obligations that requires a civil service class, which the Normans brought to England and Wales.

>>48826828
I'd completely disagree with that assertion. Prior to the Norman Conquest, England was perhaps the most rational, organised polity in Western Europe at the time; while of course below the levels of the Eastern Roman Empire, but by the size of territory controlled, far more organised than their Norman counterparts. Indeed, this is what allowed such a rapid transfer of power, as well as making the territory so attractive to foreign conquerors.

Is it automatically feudal if ruled by a military aristocracy?

>>48824664
Who said Shakespeare was dull?

>>48825265
Why does she have no cleavage

>>48827088
No. In the broadest strokes possible, feudal describes a society where property and obligations are linked and people are socially structured in accordance to whether or not they have the means and legal right to perform military service.

>>48827097
People who don't read Shakespeare or only have it taught to them in schools by bad teachers.

>>48827229
Or people who read all of the Shakespeare and see he's been regurgitating the same shit over and over again.

>>48826167
Well, everybody who disagrees with me is a demagogue.

>>48827248
Guy needed to pack the theatre to make sure he gets his people paid and needed to appease the authorities so they let him stay open. A lot of his repetition is due to the fashion and tastes of his audience at the time. Not to mention that at least his stuff's decent even when he repeats.

>>48825614
We still live in a world where the small doesn't have as much rights as the big.
Its just not as bad, since the economic power of the Invisible Hard do remove some of the worst edges.

And even in Direct Democracy its still true: If you can afford to pay for commercials, ads or promotion campaigns, you have a lot more influence than a nobody. That makes it extremely unequal.
It grows even worse with larger nation, simply because the barrier to enter is higher as price for a total campaign increases.

>>48826141
>Because if they just sell it for a couple of silver and then someone dies, the clergy would get all the blame and people might start to resent them.
You are bringing Modern Capitalism into the picture. Stop that.
You can't get them to buy those services, because they don't have money. Nor do you have any real way to use that money.
Money in pre modern societies is more like.... a rarity. Its like medals, collections of postal stamps, or you are actual merchant.


Look at it this way: You can't trade healing for money. But you can trade it for tax burder, or a more modern variant: Lease/subscription on healing
You heal Grandma. She trades in goods when the tax season arrives. If she dies before that, she doesn't trade.
This also changes the trade dynamic. Its like if you wanted a custom furniture. You would maybe have to pay a commission fee upfront, but you won't pay for the actual furniture until its arrived, and its checked for flaws.
But image that, for every single service and goods. Because you can't just buy something, money is worth far less. Because nobody can just buy your stuff, you can't just trade. Because you can't just pay wages, money is not useful as a barter tool for employment.
But the Feudal economy is even more complex than that. Its certainly alien if you haven't studied it.

First, go play Crusader Kings 2 for about fifty hours.

Then come back and remember that like Mornington Cresent, the only rules to feudalism is making people think there are rules to feudalism.

>>48825046
KENDER GO IN EVERY OVEN.

>>48824659

Reading first Marc Bloch's La Société féodale

>>48825370
>I have no proofs but I must post

>>48825531
This is foolish marxist revisionism, the underclasses did not support the nobility.

>>48824659
By not doing it at all. Also, this: >>48824674

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>>48828971
>Being contrarian just for the sake of it

>>48827088
No, a society defined mostly with military aristocracy is likely to look like an ordenstaat or junta.

>>48827132
welcome to 4chan

>>48827088
No, that's just yet another oligarchy. Or junta, if things are more toward military and less toward nobility.

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>>48829003
>Implying I'm being a contrarian

>>48829039
Contrarian at least assumes you are doing things on purpose. If I call you uneducated cunt, that would instead assume you simply sprout bullshit, because you don't even know it's bullshit.
So as far as my personal book goes, it's better to be contrarian than uneducated.

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>>48829064
Woah, it's like, I'm just an uneducated person who like, doesn't even know what's good for me so I act against my own interests by reinforcing the ruling class

>>48824659
Not possible. Try fascism next time.

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>>48829140

>>48824664
t. GRR Martin

>>48825297
This is sounding dangerously close to some "dark enlightenment" monarchist shit

I don't know what country you come from, but I'll have you know that my country fought a war to be free from kings thank you very much.

>>48825297
>Reactionary Fantasy: The Post
Kill yourself

>>48830504
>>48830913
>portraying the typical social structure of a game world as other than a dystopian hellhole
>reactionary
Must we really act like the past is a prison that we've recently escaped from? Someone can accept that less liberal forms of government are still liveable for even the lower classes while recognizing the alt right as an alt blight.

>>48825297
Actually serfs/workers would only eat meat on special occasions, like the local lord inviting his favorite peasants to Christmas dinner. The lower class lived off a diet based on grains, dairy, and maybe eggs until the agricultural revolution. Also, the system's stability (as well as the average standard of living) could vary depending on several factors, ranging from implementation to climate to population.

Of course, in your game's world, all of these factors can be optimized via technology and magic to make everything much better or far worse than it really was.

>>48830504
>but I'll have you know that my country fought a war to be free from kings
Thats.... Switzerland?
And mostly because they used Swizz as a transportation region, meaning all wars just passed trough, without there ever being war INSIDE Switzerland.
Seriously, read Wolfsmund. For a historical manga, it manages to capture the essence of why Switz didn't want to be part of Hapsburg Empire. Or some shitty Italian city state.

Outside of that, there is terrible few countries where they kicked out their King, and didn't replace said king with Monarchy/Aristocracy.
Especially before Modern times.

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>>48824659
Like most political systems feudalism isn't a blueprint. There's not a king telling a country "Alright guys, now here's how the government is going to work." The very concept of defining HOW a government "works" is a relatively modern idea. Feudalism is more of a rough description of how power structures tended to work in decentralized preindustrial societies, particularly those on the fringes of "civilization". When a bunch of city states or minor nations decide they really ought to band together under one king feudalism is what you naturally get. The states maintain some vestiges of independence (politically and socially) that slowly fade with time and development. The alliance (as embodied by the king) leaves them to manage their lands and in exchange the pact requires them to give financial and military support to the whole alliance, run by the king.

There isn't really a way to "do feudalism right" as in make it a stable and everlasting form of government. Now, if you just want to accurately represent a period of social development then I suppose the way to "do it right" would be to highlight the period as a time where loosely organized peoples learn to become a proper state. It should involve the nascent but growing concept of the rule of law, the strange new wonders brought by organized instead of haphazard trade, and the development of a national identity.

>>48824773
Fucking magic then you giant whore.

>>48827132
Even the Chaos Gods understand DFC.

>>48825493
Hello buddy, in the Netherlands, Knights could sit at meatings of the vierschaar, the regional equivalant of a lawcourt. They also had the right of pits and gallows if they controlled lands themselves.

Aside from the fighting, most of the time most knights were either employed in bureaucratic positions, or in managing positions, they either owned or held land that needed managing.

This was also the case in most of modern Belgium, Lower Germany and at least the northern parts of France.

Sources on this are the dutch book Ridderschap in Holland, roughly translated that's: The Knightly Class in Holland.

>>48825493
Knight have always held land anon, from the inception of the Knightly class under the Franks till the end, most knights were well to do and owned land to support their horses and armour. Sure some only owned the horse and the armour but those are in the minority

>>48831626
Fuck you for your apologetic rant. I know you would love to twist the history to suit your needs, but your lies at lies.
Have you ever read about life of the common men written by someone who didn't effectively own them? Then you would know how shitty their life was.
In my country serfs were not only obliged to work 11 days at the lord's fields, but with money they managed to get they also had to buy vodka produced by him.
Oh, that was late feudal. What about early feudal, when a horse costed 20 years of pay of an average peasant?
Do I need to remind you that one of the reason to call for crusades was that petty nobility acted as bandits, attacking peasants and other nobles so commonly it became unbearable? Or maybe I need to remind you that the whole reformation shit started due to how indulgent the church was, amassing wealth and spending it on literal orgies?
Sure, it was a system that worked for some set condition, both military and economical, but to claim that it wasn't a system of exploitation is a blatant lie. It was a system where masses were slaves in everything but the name and it, fortunately, became unsustainable after the modes of production changed.

>>48832683
>in my country
I said that the standard of living varied, and it just so happens that in cold, remote, northeastern regions it was much worse.

I fully understand that peasants couldn't afford horses, if they could they would be called freemen. It was possible to keep oneself living in mild comfort, though certainly no degree of luxury, without horses.

>>48825493
>You where nobles upheld laws in their domain?
Look at it this way: Nobles only uphold law in Knight v Knight or Well Connected Merchant v Knight or similar.
Generally, beyond that, Knights own the land, they are land owners, and can do basically whatever the hell they want to.

People do get confused over this, because a lot of fiction is set in War of Roses. Or "war only" scenarios, where ignoring how conscription works is common.
Other common things is ignoring how demographics in pre modern times looked, and how different they was for different parts of society.

>>48832951
edit: just realized you're probably romanian, so neither cold nor northern
My horse argument still stands, as does the fact that eastern peasants were worse of than western.

>>48833043
You know why western had it better? Because they got hit by the plague way harder. People who owned means of production (that is, land) died and it was free for redistribution. It changed the game for centuries in the west and kicked off the whole renaissance thing.
On the other hand, in Netherlands they had different system - in which peasants would get so indebted to the bourgeoisie they had to work for them basically all the time if crops weren't good.
Feudalism was a system of exploitation. Every system where workers are denied any form of control of the means of production will turn into one because humans are greedy and need to stay competitive.
Funny thing, again, from my country - Poland. In late feudal peasants were denied any form of law protection. The only place they could voice their concerns was their lord's court. With their lord being a judge.
Once fucking again: fuck you for lying.

>>48832683
>What about early feudal, when a horse costed 20 years of pay of an average peasant?
If you know how history worked, you wouldn't care. Because big super strong horses wasn't a thing.
Modern horses are super strong and super big.
Ancient horses was ponies.
And you don't sow fields with ponies, you do it with oxes. Or peasants. Or pigs(for the truly desperate)

Paying for Vodka doesn't really matter either, when literally all peasants drink is going to be moonshine.
Bonus points that being peasant didn't turn horrible until kingdoms became larger, and gunpowder artillery was a thing.

>>48833181
>No laws for slaves
Sounds about right.
Inb4 you confuse slaves, debtors, freemen and other social classes.

>>48824659

Why does that one knight have two heads?

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>>48833216
>ancient horses were ponies
Here, have Camarague horses. According to genetic studies they are the closest thing you will get to prehistoric horses. Are they smaller than modern horses? A tiny bit. Are they ponies? Fuck no.
You are either lying or showing your incompetence on every single point, just like with those horses. Stop making fool of yourself.
I'm going to sleep and you can go fuck yourself once again.

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>>48833400
>Mongol war horses thats left in wild to become wild again
>Prehistoric horse

>>48824659
Remove the peasants and serfs and replace them with zombies and skeletons.

Remove the Knights and replace them with death knights, wights, other intelligent undead, necromancers and evil aligned clerics.

Remove the lords and replace them with vampires, liches and mummies.

Remove the king and replace him with a god of undeath.

There a perfect feudal system.

> implying medieval europe wasn't a shithole compared to modern standards.
10/10 nostalgia'd hard.

When shit is so bad that the FRENCH of all people have to invent a code of honour based on the Norse list of 9 virtues you know you dun goofed.

>>48833499
Wouldn't a society with vampires among the lords need a significant stock of living people (presumably other than valuable magic-users) for them to drain of blood at their leisure?

>>48833588
they take those from the neighboring living kingdoms, let them replenish themselves and then repeat.

>>48833588
Depends on vampire population. They could live on raids or war.
Remember: Feudalism + city states = war everywhere, permanently

>>48833486
Penguin is based.

>>48825265
>>48825046
>>48824890
>posting stale old memes

The easiest way to post a normie who just found 4chan. I bet you'll dig out Fuklaw and Angry Marines in just a sec.

>>48828518
That gives me an idea
>long ago, the trickster god grew jealous of his siblings creations.
>and so he created kender, a race that would perpetually work at the destruction of all other races through their creators way of wrath.
>leading to a enmass genocide of this race.
> there is now a holiday for the extintion of the kender, and it is a ritual to burn a small effegy in an oven

>>48824659
Like, in a game, or in real life?

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>>48830504
>>48832683

>portray any form of government that isn't the commonly accepted first world democratic liberty-focused as anything but demonic
>People respond to you like this

It really fucking sucks being a historian.

>>48833216
>>48833400
>>48832683
Ancient horses were for travel and war, as were early medieval horses. War horses have always been and will always be incredibly expensive, the Roman Empire had an economic class called the Equestrians, literally meaning anyone who wasn't a Patrician but was still rich enough to afford a horse. The equestrian class inevitably evolved into the knightly class of the middle ages when horses were bred to be strong enough to bear armored knights. When horses became bigger and stronger they needed more food, and thus became even more expensive. Add to this the fact that the only use of a horse also required very pricey armor, and the knightly class was stratified from the peasantry very much by accident. There was no evil oppressive order trying to keep wages down (most independent farmers became serfs upon being unable to afford horse and armor) it was just that the essential defensive constructs keeping away raiders from the north, south, and east required a large amount of the wealth be concentrated in dressing a small number of people.

Most people today, countering for technological advances and the lack of vikings/saracens/magyars, don't have it much better than serfs. The vast majority are tenants with landLORDs, and (at least in the burger belt) are in a lot of debt from various sources. People don't own their means of production; they get money from their jobs at BigCorp tm and proceed to buy mass-produced food at chain stores which was grown in factory farms/Monsanto fields.

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>>48836326
>lack of saracens
>implying

>>48827132

Webbed boob.

>>48824659
My setting has a !Hanseatic League! that's like a feudal America but with less antimonarchial sentiment, (their alliances with the nobility keep the trade steady.)

>>48836326
This. Life is shitty for most people on this planet no matter of what system you live in. Technology and accumulated material wealth in global society improves the standard of living but the gulf still remains.

>>48836488
America only came about due to an alliance with monarchies (France, Spain).

>>48824773
FUCKING MAGIC THEN YOU WHORE

>>48824659
In my opinion:

>God Pantheon
>its High Priest/Prophet
>King/Queen/Royalty chosen by God Pantheon through High Priest/Prophet
>Other priests of same pantheon
>Other wealthy landowners with contacts to any above
>Heroes/Commanders/Exceptional well-known People
>Merchants
>Craftsmen
>Peasants
>Dogs
>......
>OP

>>48833899

>shitting on /tg/ history
>lol ur mehmehs r stale

/v/ plz leave

>>48835234
>It was so good that by XI century only ~30% of freemen in Britain could live above sustenance level off their land, because the rich bought it off:
http://www.economics.ox.ac.uk/materials/papers/4235/BekarReed79.pdf

>>48839013
>Other wealthy landowners with contacts to any above
Wealthy isn't worth shit. Half the reasons the Hanseatic League had its foothold, and became as large as it did, was that they bothered to have a army.
And they bothered to sack city states and enemies, if their merchant diplomats where not treated fairly.
On the top of that, they bought out land, and got their own areas in cities, or owned whole cities.

And all of this, would be worth nothing, if not for a standing army, and a conscription base.
And thats also what Feudalism allows: City states and officials are free game, if you got an army. But without that army, you can't force them to do their obligation.


Bonus point: The decline for the Hanseatic League was only that the Kingdoms in the area started becoming real solid states.
And on the top of that, each Hansa city/trade port started getting looser.
So once Kingdoms started doing their own dedicated merchanting(i.e Dutch and English merchants), the decline got heavy.

>>48827229
>>48827248
Or people who saw Shakespear staged.

>>48831692
>Outside of that, there is terrible few countries where they kicked out their King, and didn't replace said king with Monarchy/Aristocracy.
That would be Switzerland, Russia and USA and... I got nothing lasting more than a century and/or relevant.

>>48835234
You forgot
>the specific administration of the last 10-20 years for said first-world democracy.
Because 3 or more presidents before people lived worse than in the middle ages.

>>48841191
That was the result of the technological level of the time and how it affected agriculture, industry and means of administration, not the inherent flaw in the form of government. Also the specific implementation of said administration.You can't build a stable and egalitarian society if the only possible sources of well-being for the society are lots of unqualified labor and good weather.

>>48824773
fucking magic then you fucking whore

>>48841493
Are you implying that something big changed between IX and XI century in agricultural production?
If you read the paper they made a point it was just because freemen could sell their lands. Just this much.

Also, let's look at a different time period yet - wake of 30 years wars, again caused by extreme inequalities. For example, at that time in Hungary 50 families owned 41% of the country. It wasn't just a problem for serfs (XVI - XVII century is the age of the second serfdom, when changes that steamed from the black death got finally reversed), but also for "the middle class". In Bohemia number of knights fell by third in 50 years before 1618.
It isn't surprising that it was also the time of popular revolts - biggest ones since the German Peasants War.
I'm sure you will tell me they rebelled for sports, though, and they had it good, and if they didn't it was just because of the fault in implementation of policies not in the system itself.
I'm sure communists say the same about the great famine and neonazis about Holocaust. Whoopsie.

>>48825048
Any high nobility could crush a knight's holdings with ease by sheer weight of numbers. They couldn't fuck with a knight without fucking with their lord, however.

Knights weren't noble and lacked a lot of privlages and legal protections. Their lord watched out for them.

>>48825020
Legitimacy was a huge matter. Modern people might think it's absurd that a leader was chosen by god but at the time someone that seemed illegitimate or an outsider would face outright rebellion from the commons that didn't think they were a real king. It helped that other kings, even ones that didn't like your king very much, would step in to stomp the shit out of any lower order that got uppity.

>>48841493
>That would be Switzerland, Russia and USA
1. Switz is the only relevant one

2. Russia happened far into modern times. And if Russians wasn't Ivan, there is a good chance it would never have happened

3. USA is colony independance. I am not sure it even counts

4. I want to say.... France? But I also know thats wrong for very many reasons, including successive emperors.
Which partially disqualifies France copycats

>>48831692
>Outside of that, there is terrible few countries where they kicked out their King, and didn't replace said king with Monarchy/Aristocracy.

Ancient Republican Rome, duh,

>>48841825
>I'm sure communists say the same about the great famine
Most communists say that the great famine was implemented under capitalism, not communism -- not faulty implementation, but a total lack of implementation. The rest think it was a good thing.
>and neonazis about Holocaust
Neonazis think it was a good thing, too.

This shouldn't surprise you. People don't pick an ideology and then just defend it to the death. They look at all the facts (they're aware of) and then choose an ideology based on this.

For presenting feudalism, look at what players will actually experience.
So a noble lords manse probably isn't going to be a fortress surrounded by a bunch of villages that each have a mayor and formal judges. Most lords lived in essentially fortified manor houses or 2-3 floor towers depending on the region.

Politically, the steward is hired by the lord. And below the lord is the reeve, hayward, and warden.
Then the estate has a priest who doesn't quite have to listen to the lord or his men.

Change it up depending on time period, your settings culture or the location. The key point is to look at how villages and towns are ran. That will make your setting feel realistic much more than worrying about the macro scale.

>>48842986
>People don't pick an ideology and then just defend it to the death.
A lot of the people that I know that pick an ideology, do exactly this.

>They look at all the facts (they're aware of) and then choose an ideology based on this.
Apart from idealist.

>>48842055
England after Charles I - monarchy got so chastitised it could as well keep being a commonwealth. Also pretending that monarchy after French revolution resembled the old is rather far fetched.

The thing is, popular revolts almost never had enough power (due to, surprise, how wealthy the nobles were) to change the system. If masses could overthrow a ruler, there were other countries all around them afraid it might happen to them if they won't act.

>>48842986
Marxist-Stalinist tankies will claim it was due to natural causes - and most of neonazis still don't praise Holocaust. A lot of them claim Hitler didn't know anything.

>>48831692
>Thats.... Switzerland?
Switzerland never had a king to begin with.

>Seriously, read Wolfsmund.
Nobody older than 18 should read that teenage edgelord shit.

>>48836326
>the Roman Empire had an economic class called the Equestrians, literally meaning anyone who wasn't a Patrician but was still rich enough to afford a horse.
That's wrong. They were the class that recieved wellfare so that they would show up with a horse. Of course they pocketed the money and bought enough votes so that the law was changed and they never had to. Rich people gonna parasite, no matter the generation.

>>48824659
heres some of my thoughts
show it as a system created to bring some semblance of order in the chaos left by the collapse of a large civic administration falling apart
where warlords gave favors to allied tribes and families to carry out their will in far flung areas

where the common man will settle for living under the rule of the nobles enforcers who while capable of brutality are better then the barbarians who will most assuredly raid you all season for the year

the clergy fits into this in that its ecclesiarch gave legitimacy to the dynasty that set the foundations for the system by defending the flock

>>48841976
>Knights weren't noble and lacked a lot of privlages and legal protections.
There were unfree knights, but they were called "Ministeriales". At least for a few hundred years. Generally though, a knight would likely be a free man and thus enjoy the same class-based rights in court as any other free man.

>>48842918
Rome also has the reverse example.
ALL HAIL GOD EMPEROR CEASAR

>>48843316
>Switzerland never had a king to begin with.
Switzerland was a colony/vassal state.
It show cases all the symptoms of a peasant rebellion.
But it also shows a succession into a non monarch that success, unlike what the French even got.

>>48843872
>Switzerland was a colony/vassal state.
I hope you are a space alien or some insect person from non-Eurasia, because holy shit.

>>48843917
Literally on wikipedia:
>With the rise of the Habsburg dynasty, the kings and dukes of Habsburg sought to extend their influence over this region and to bring it under their rule; as a consequence, a conflict ensued between the Habsburgs and these mountain communities who tried to defend their privileged status as reichsfrei regions.
LITERALLY Vassal

>>48844211
>LITERALLY Vassal
Not even figuratively.
At best you could paint them as vassals of the Emperor, being Rechsfrei and all. And even then you'd have to be supremely ignorant of the legal reality of the middle ages and early modern period to construct a direct link of suzerainty between them and Maximilian I.

The Reichsfreiheit was their right, not Maximilian's. He could not just declare them vassals to himself personally and muck around with their rights as he pleased, that's not how it worked.

>>48844464
>He could not just declare them vassals to himself personally and muck around with their rights as he pleased
Thats the joke of feudal realpolitik.
He could if he wanted to, and the reality is that he tried. But in the end, he failed.

>>48841825
>Are you implying that something big changed between IX and XI century in agricultural production?
Yes. A lot of things change to affect this. Without modern means of logistics and communication certain technologies and practices fall out of use in entire areas due to decay of knowledge, illiteracy, and banal poverty coming out of bad weather crops, dirty warfare, crime, epidemics and incompetence on the prt of specific authority figures. Economy doesn't work like "implement measures X at any time and any context and suceed".

>I'm sure you will tell me they rebelled for sports, though, and they had it good
They had it awful, as they were literally robbed of their livelyhood, but an argument could be made that said extortion was necessary not just for the luxury of the higher class but for the survival of nations. And no argument can be had over the fact that without said extortion the emergence of empires and eventual industrial revolution and transition to capitalism would be impossible. It was was a system not fundamentally condemnable because it was a system fundamentally inevitable for the mankind. Do I need to remind you that your nation got up on it's feet with a crutch of slavery?

>and if they didn't it was just because of the fault in implementation of policies not in the system itself
And are you arguing tht implementation plays no role, and every king was a scourge upon his nation just because he's a king?

>I'm sure communists say the same about the great famine
As a certified commie I say that the effect of great famine is significantly exaggarated via the contribution of a simultanious malaria and typhos epidemics to it, and even then it kinda only seriously affected the areas that were pillaged and desolated as Russia took THE LARGEST MILITARY AND CIVILIAN DAMAGE IN THE SECOND MOST DESTRUCTIVE CONFLICT IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND. And THEN suffered more in the second most bloody civil war in history (after the Chinese one).

>>48844672
(cont')
But surely - half the nation being literally in ruins after two and a half decades of non-stop full-scale warfare in three revolutions and a World War trudding over it's territory spreading typhos and malaria with moving armies and hordes of refugees from the Black Sea region has nothing to do with anything - since as we learned here, the society is a result of a pure Idea and Will birthing themselves into the world, with no possible interaction with anything as dumb as reality.

>>48842986
>Most communists say that the great famine was implemented under capitalism
It started under Military Communism, which is just a fancy way of saying "institutionized extortion", and proceeded under Stalinist interpretation of Leninist interpretation of Marx's idea of Socialism, which can be described as State Capitalism or Centralized Socialism, both through a command-administrative system aka totalitarian dictatorship, which is quite vague as Marx and Engels themselves described Socialism as not an opposite of Capitalism, but it's form before the transition to Communism via dictatorship of proletariat.

You know that the great famine happened before WW II?

Yes, feudalism was more or less inevitable - that's why it evolved in very similar form in many places. That's also what Marx wrote. But to claim that it was in any way moral, desirable, "natural" is just fucked up.

It wasn't just implementation. Through it, of course, you could get better or worse results - but for a common man it was always shitty, so, yes, every king was a scourge upon his nation, because he was the very embodiment of an oppressive system.
It's like arguing that Marxism-Leninism just depends on implementation, and the next revolution will surely work.

>>48844978
>You know that the great famine happened before WW II
Yes, that's why is psecified "SECOND most destructive confict in history". Russia took the highest civilian and litary losses in WWI, and western territories were hit especially bad. And that;s BEFORE we take into an account the revolutions of early 00's, the February, the October, the Civil War...

>But to claim that it was in any way moral, desirable, "natural" is just fucked up.
It certainly isn't moral by today's standards, but to claim that something inevitable is unnatural and immoral is to perverse the concept of marality into something abslutely detached from society and reality at large, which is insane. It's like condemning the immorality of the concept of death.

>It wasn't just implementation
Certainly. Every measure needs to be an adequate response to the environment to be effective, and it's that adequacy that must be used in our judgement, not some arbitrary spectrum of perfection that just so happens to put the conteporary system as the eternal perfection with certainly no bias and interested parties at all.

>but for a common man it was always shitty
A working-class man's fate has long been - and largely still is, and wil be for quite some time now - nothing but suffering and struggle. His morality and freedoms surface in what he does with his cross. This approach can be empathised with, and stands at the core of romantism surrounding the time period. You are no judge to condemn an entire age along with the very people whos suffering you use as a justification for it.

>>48844978
>It's like arguing that Marxism-Leninism just depends on implementation, and the next revolution will surely work.
To just claim that it won't is to go against the principles of scientific methodology and to appeal to a concept of common sense that may or may to have been purposefully created by media in an ideological standoff through the last half of the 20th century.

>>48845151
Then why year 1931 saw good crops in Poland that went through almost the same shit? Great Famine was engineered by Stalin to genocide Ukrainians. No noteworthy historian will claim otherwise.

You use a lot of words to say "shit was tough, they had to be shat on, there was no other way." It sounds exactly as what corporate management say to their workers while they raise dividends.

>>48845326
What "scientific methodology" are you talking about? Because, as far as I know, you don't make experiments if there is no theoretical basis for them.
You know the part about Leninism that makes it unusable? It's the one where the caste of revolutionaries have to lead the stupid crowd. It creates a new power struggle between led and leading not unlike between bourgeoisie and proletariat.

>>48845449
>Great Famine was engineered by Stalin to genocide Ukrainians. No noteworthy historian will claim otherwise.
You and your 'noteworthy' historians are crazy

>>48845490
Read Stalins' letters

>>48845490
Yes, because the only truth is the one you hold. All the mainstream historians mean nothing to you, you know better than, say, Norman Naimark, James Mace and, of course, you've seen more than Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
I fucking hate our times. Nothing is simply true anymore. Every fucker can claim "no" despite piling evidence and get away with it. Global warming is fake. Autism is caused by vaccines. Hitler didn't know about Holocaust (that actually didn't happen). There are chemitrails on the sky. Mass effect 3 is a masterpiece. We just need to build a wall tall enough to stop Mexicans and everything will be fine. Stalin didn't order his army to steal food from Ukrainians. Poles never prosecuted Jews.
I'm so fucking tired.

>>48845548
You do know that famine hit other regions outside Ukraine?

>>48845701
>Yes, because the only truth is the one you hold.
Back at you. Also >>48845702

You guys are so cute.

>>48845722
Holy fuck, even United Nations recognized that the great famine was directly caused by Stalin.
But for you it means nothing. You know better. That's the very anti intellectualism of our times.


They wrote about it better than I could:
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/12/how-technology-disrupted-the-truth

>>48845825
>United Nations recognized that the great famine was directly caused by Stalin.
When? There was report in the 90s on that matter but US and Russia refused to recognize it

>>48845449
>Then why year 1931 saw good crops in Poland that went through almost the same shit
Nothing even near that, as the frontline went through it rapidly and remained to wreck Ukraine and Belarus. Plus Poland wasn't busy exporting grain for industrialization, which came back to bite them in the ass magnificently in 1939. And I'd like to hear about historic pools of malaria in Poland.

>Great Famine was engineered by Stalin to genocide Ukrainians. No noteworthy historian will claim otherwise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor_genocide_question

>It's the one where the caste of revolutionaries have to lead the stupid crowd. It creates a new power struggle between led and leading not unlike between bourgeoisie and proletariat.
But there's nothing like that in Lenin's works.

>>48845701
>Yes, because the only truth is the one you hold.
No. I question what deserves condemnation and what deserves praise. You, meanwhile, know everything exactly as it was.

>you've seen more than Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
Solzhenitsyn was born in Kislovodks,.spend the Holodomor years in Rostov, and was imprisoned in a soft-regime camp for political dissidents, where the bloodthirsty regime even saw fit to allow him to work a back-breaking labor of mathematicfian, and then even provided him with surgery and recuperation for his testicular cancer. His works are novels in historical genre based on his own hearsay (since he had no relation to holodomor or actually deadly labor camps, and never conducted any actual historical research), and are never even claimed to be scientific publications - they are works of ideological and historical speculation.

>>48843316
>Nobody older than 18 should read that teenage edgelord shit.

Punishments in the middle ages were very cruel and imaginative. Also very very public.

>>48846125
> they are works of ideological and historical speculation
Disclaimer - some of them are even GOOD works. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is a great novel. It's not, however, a solid piece of historic research on the everyday life of labor camp prisoners. Solzhenitsyn himself was never imprisoned in any institution even nearly like the one descrned in the book.

>>48844658
The joke is that frankly once bestowed making ammends to existing agreements could not be done unilaterally. And the folks who recieved those rights were perfectly within their rights to interpret them themselves, which bestowed them with considerable leeway. Worst case, they could even shop around for somebody else to guarantee their rights for them.

For example the Tyrolians basically fucked him and his descendants sideways after he and them had formalzed the then novel future terms of their military service. Effectively the Habsburgs got nothing out of it and the Tyrolians were freed from all military service outside of defending their home province.

>>48845449
>Then why year 1931 saw good crops in Poland that went through almost the same shit?
Ivan, the true curse of being slav is not land. Its that your public moral is so fucked up, that you couldn't get gold out of a gold mine if it was public.

"Muh Poland is stronk" is a hillarious part of this.
The truth of the matter is that Poland has everything it needs to be strong, but the Slavic spirit means it can never manage public property with success. And to be a strong state, you need to maintain good public properties.
When people can't even be arsed to fix their collective hallways, between their apartments, what hope do Ivan have of making Poland great?
The answer is: None.

>>48847081
>And to be a strong state, you need to maintain good public properties.

AAAAND there goes all the Koch brothers money you could have ever wanted.

>>48847502
Tell me Ivan, what do Koch brothers even have to do with maintenance of your buildings? Your parks? Your common areas shared in buildings?

>>48847740
Don't call a pshe Ivan. It offends me.
.t Ivan

>>48847926
You've got the same damn problems.
The fact that you're not technically the same, or that you don't view each other as the same, doesn't mean you're not functionally identical from the perspective of everyone else.
The curse of the slavs is one of culture/attitude, and you share it whether you want to be friends or not.

>>48848408
>and you share it
Not really, except for alcoholism. /int/ is not your deep cultural understanding provider.

>>48824773
go back to your filthy mmos
>>>/v/

>>48847011
Christ where was that story of the levied archer having an obligation to fight "with bow and arrow" shooting one arrow then going home? That's the sort of valid and absurd legal interpretation that can be made.

>>48848499
T. Ivan
T. Pole
T. Stalker
etc
Just admit it
You slavs are all the same.

>>48841825
>look at me i'm so smart
>what's the agricultural revolution?

>>48824659
Don't use it as a political device for pointing out how ebil right-wing economics are or a plot device for muh sex and treachery

>>48849598
>or a plot device for muh sex and treachery
Right, because the fact that a popular novel/TV show does it means it doesn't have historical basis (it does btw.,) and that it can't be fun (it can; that's why it's popular,) because your contrarian tastes dictate that just because lots of people think it's fun then we should all hate it and pretend nothing like it ever happened.

That's completely fucking reasonable m8

>>48841825
>Are you implying that something big changed between IX and XI century in agricultural production?
Uuuuh dude I have news for you

>>48824882
Implying that kings actually listening to the Church or caring what it had to say was actually a thing 99% of the time.