>There are tribal savages living right next to a settled civilization

>>53737081
>wouldn't the savages eventually figure out that indoor plumbing is preferable to shitting in a hole
If India is any example to go by, they really wouldn't.

>>53737081
And that's why Gruul are the worst guild.

>>53737081
>wouldn't the savages eventually figure out that indoor plumbing is preferable to shitting in a hole and wiping your ass with leaves that may or may not give you an infection you can't treat because there are no doctors?

Muslims.

>>53737081
Mongolia still exists OP

What if the advanced civilization refuses to share any of their advanced technology and kills any savages that wander over yo keep them from getting any ideas?

>>53737081

It's a fantasy world. It does not absolutely adhere to the laws of reality, and has no need to do so.

I might have an explanation, I might not. Either way there's no problem.

>>53737081
Invisible dragons keep entire fantasy settings in check by making all these cliches come true every day.

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>>53737081
>Tribal means retarded

How do we stop this assumption?

>>53737081
Nature Preserve.
NEXT!

The tribal savages have to live somewhere. What, is there supposed to be a semi-tribal buffer between the two groups?

>>53737081
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amish

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>>53737081
>What are Degar/Hmong
Or a gazillion other examples.
Turns out that empires are often tyrannical and some people prefer the freedom of savagery to the slavery of civilisation.
Consider taking a look at the book 'The Art of Not Being Governed'. It's an interesting look at this subject.

>>53737081
Happened in real life OP. Early Russian empire shared borders with samoyedic tribes, Chinese had semi-nomadic people surrounding them in parts of their history, medieval African kingdoms had ooga booga land ten steps away, etc. Sure, the more settled always had an advantage and tended to win out, but its still relatively realistic. It more or less depends on WHY the savages choose not to settle as to how it can be utter bull.

>>53737254
Coming from Brazil, yes it does.

>>53737111
Or Kansas.

>>53737254
because fuckton o' guns> most tribal weapons
This leads to the assumption that those that cannot protect themselves are in need of care, which denotes that they are children that need to be taught, and as we all know children are little shits that don't know how to do anything and deserve to be put in their place, and therefore cannot possibly fathom the man with guns reality without using drastic action.

>>53737356

None of which applies in a fantasy setting

>>53737311
That is an excellent book and I'm pleased someone else on /tg/ has read it.

>>53737343

You mean Ar Kansas.

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>>53737505
>Ar Kansas
That sounds like some faux-Arabian kingdom. Funny how just splitting up a word can make such a difference.

>>53737328
How come?

>>53737254
We burn Rome to the ground

Again

>>53737271
Historically there almost always is as border villages populate before steppes or 'wilds' and almost any 'empire' in history had a pretty sizeable buffer zone of a few dozen miles before known habitations would contain hostile peoples. Most medieval cities were actually charnal houses of death with much lower life expectancy than the surrounding countryside (living in London was hellish).

Realistically savage is a political term and not one that accurately describes people up until the industrial revolution and then it really just means 'people who are not in the industrialized economy'.

Separating people with indoor plumbing from people without really just describes infrastructure. Where are they getting the copper pipes, exactly? The irrigation channels? The outboard access to water so that it will flow away from their village?

Like you could set any of that shit up without money or training.

>>53737328
No one here in America would make that distinction. Your entire continent are our tribal savages. The term is local, political, and inaccurate.

>>53737505
>left out ya idjit

4/10

>>53737715
But we did that already

Can't we go burn down those other guys who keep saying they're romans?

What about those other guys in the south?

>>53737081
>wouldn't the savages eventually figure out that indoor plumbing is preferable to shitting in a hole and wiping your ass with leaves that may or may not give you an infection you can't treat because there are no doctors
It's fantasy. Maybe it's a tribe that has a form of plumbing and their own doctors, but otherwise stick to a traditional way of life.

>>53738107
Like japan! Keep your hole, just add sewers.

>>53737081
How far would you consider "right next door"?
My current campaign is revolving around a group of tundra savages, but there is real civilization a couple of hundred miles to the south, which is where the players are from originally.

>>53737081
Many great empires were surrounded by (near) useless lands so they lived just next to literal tribes.
The Roman Empire after the conquest of
Gaul.
The chinese empire and all their barbarian neighboor except Korea/Japan and in a lesser measure the south.
All middle-eastern empires being oasis of civilizaions surrounded by sand nomads.
The mesoamerican civilizaions just next to jungle tribals.
Heck even western europe and eastern europe for a long moment.
Ect...

>>53737356
No wonder they hated neighboring countries

>>53737134
They should have been more like neo-Luddite ecoterrorists who are trying to "reclaim" the land but just end up blowing up stuff.

>>53738308
This post is using tribe and steppe nomad interchangeably. The people inside the korean empire and just outside of it would be indistinguishable from each other.

Other than lines on a map once you're out in rural villages there is basically nothing that separates one from the next. They're all tribes. A roman in a village is the same as a germanic person in one of their villages.

Also, none of them EVER had plumbing. That wasn't anything but a ludicrous luxury outside of a tiny number of cities under mountains until the industrial revolution.

>>53737343
You're thinking Soutwest Florida (namely swamp lands where plumbing is a bitch to install). Kansas is just boring middle class farmers.

Basically Kansas is the agriworld of the US.

>>53737081
Have you ever heard of the steppes m8
The mongols were rather close to people who lived in walled cities.
Sure there were some states between them and the fuckhuge chinese empire or kingdom or whatver, but those states in-between were way more civilized

>>53737186
>It's a fantasy world. It does not absolutely adhere to the laws of reality, and has no need to do so.
here we go again with 'its fantasy lol I dont need explanation for anything wheee' bullshit.

>>53739609
>'its fantasy lol I dont need explanation for anything
It's true tho
if you want everything explained perhaps fantasy isn't the right genre for you?

>>53739609
I'll explain if it's relevant. There's no need to explain the exact processes behind every single thing in fantasy fiction. You don't need a four page essay on why a dragon is able to achieve flight. Reasonable people will accept that the dragon is flying and leave it at that.

Unless of course they are turbo fucking autistic without even the barest shred of suspension of disbelief and/or eager to prove how "smart" they are by picking apart every little fucking thing. But most people leave that know-it-all middle schooler routine behind and actually try to have fun without irritating everyone around them with pointless, obnoxious pedantry.

>>53739701
just because magic, a traditional part of the fantasy, often has unexplained origin does not mean that you can insert whatever lolrandumb shit and don't have to justify it.
Think of it this way: when you read LOTR the appearance/nature of Balrog and Gandalf's ability to defeat it both present themselves as unexplained magical things. However the setting knows what Balrog is, why does it appear where it appears and a relative powerlevel between Balrog and a Maiar.
Just because some things are magical does not mean they also defy logic.

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>>53737081
>How do you even justify this?
You don't, the trick is to keep thm Tribal, but drop the Savage part and actually give them a cultural identity and some sort of civilization, like the Iroquois Confederacy, or the Cherokee before Jackson ran them out. They keep the tribal identity and many of the more important aspects of the culture, but at te same time you just make them another civilized group of people that just so happen to look, speak, and believe different things and would much rather not deal with people who aren't them.

Even the Germanics had villages and some form of early political organization, and the Scandinavians despite being the poster child for surely savages were civilized and organized and had to deal with politics (hence the reason why Jommsborg both rose and fell)

Basically, make them an actual people rather than just the stereotype gained from marauding Scythian tribes that the Greeks had to deal with.

>>53739701
Magic does not excuse a setting from having internal consistancy. Those that attempt to handwave how and why the magic actually exists and effects the world, and instead use magic as a shitty writer's convinience tend to be shit writers without a single creative bone in their body.

Magic should not make things not make sense and sweep the shitty writing under the rug, it should be a tool that helps make things make sense by saying how the magical/fantastical elements are making the otherwise impossible possible.
Sure, its good to have some suspension of disbelief, because no one can write perfectly, but as with all things there is a limit one can go before realizing that the handwaving "a wizard did it" cop out is just stupid and only there because the writer is a hack.

People wiggling fingers and saying gibberish to shoot fire from their eyes? Sure that's fine. Fighters swinging swords so hard they create DMC air waves? Sure if there's the precedent. Completely ignoring all logic though is retarded

>>53739845
>just because magic, a traditional part of the fantasy, often has unexplained origin does not mean that you can insert whatever lolrandumb shit and don't have to justify it.

why not? Its magic, I aint gotta explain shit.
>lotr
I did not give 1/10th of a fuck about where the balrog came from orwhat it was. It was a cool scene and that's all that mattered.

>>53739845
Yeah, because Tolkien never went back and explained and elaborated on things long after the fact.

>>53738381
Isn't that exactly what the Gruul do though?

>>53737081
Ask the Native Americans.

Answer, no, they can't figure it out until educated by said civilization. That doesn't happen until they are conquered. Just ask the actual Indians. They still shit outdoors after hundreds of years of colonization trying to bring civilization.

Only conquering works.

>>53739792
If you don't think through why the borders are there and why the civilisation and tribals don't mix, you'll likely miss or fuck up relevant details (like presence or absence of trade, level of hostility to strangers etc). Then when your PC make some trivial move like importing a shitton of weapons and arming a tribe to spark a war of unification you'll either have to handwave a lot of bullshit or admit that the whole balance of your region was hinged on noone ever doing some fairly simple and logical things. Both options suck.
It's somewhat fine to go 'this region is like that, if you ever go there I'll detail out the reasons why', although this approach leads to global inconsistencies -- but to start with 'you don't need an explanation' is shit.

>>53739863
>why not? Its magic, I aint gotta explain shit.
I hope I'll never have to play with you.

>because Tolkien never went back and explained and elaborated on things
That's cool, although suboptimal. Tolkien, however, didn't go full retard like the anon above declaring 'itz magic I aint gonna explain shit' for every thing that happened.

>>53739863
>why not?
The only functional difference between magic and science is that magic doesn't exist. Hence, you can make your own rules for it. However, from an exterior point of view, magic needs to function as a science. Predictable, follows set rules, doesn't contradict itself and doesn't come out of nowhere. Narratively, if someone could just wave a magic wand and fix anything, then it's bad storytelling. Having magic viewed scientifically within the world is also bad storytelling as it can destroy the mythos and aesthetic.

Harry Potter having magical loopholes save him every other fucking book is bafflingly dumb and makes everything up until that point seem meaningless. Magic is never clearly defined and only given the faintest of passing details (oh you need to do this specific motion and incantation, except when you don't). As such when it does magical bullshit nobody can declare it defies any rules, because there aren't any established fucking rules.

>>53737081
If you walked out of your house and saw a big futuristic metal dome in the distance, you'd probably be scared, confused, and maybe a little curious. You'd probably ask around with those nearby, trying to see if anyone knows what it is, before you go find the smartest person in town or the leader of your town to see what you should do about it.

It'd probably get decided that someone should get a closer look. We'll assume that you're the most competent one for the job, so you head out to this big futuristic dome. As you get close, you note it's the biggest thing you've ever seen. Near the base is an opening, two figures in futuristic armor standing guard. You try talking to them, but they don't seem to speak the same language. One of them beckons you over, laughs about something, and hands you a fistful of rare gemstones before shooing you off.

That's about how it would look to some barbarian tribe who comes across a walled city and their scout is handed some shiny beads.

Yeah, they might assume that life inside is better, since these people seem so advanced and apparently the average guard has that sort of pocket change, but it's tough to say what they should do about it? Throw themselves down to try and beg for work so they can get more beads? Try and attack them to get their wealth? Try and learn their tongue to enter as equals? Or remain wary and fearful and avoid these strange people?

Even if the barbarians figure it out, it doesn't necessarily mean that the city will have them, nor does it mean that all the barbarians will agree on the same course of action.

>>53740031
Not him, but I wouldn't really agree with that. You look at something like Lovecraft's stories,(most of horror, really) or things like Norse mythology or northern European folklore stories, and magic DOESN'T follow any particular set of rules, and is inherently chaotic, in a big bad world that can never be understood no matter how hard you try.

It's not really something that meshes well with the current cultural zeitgeist, but it's hardly inapplicable.

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>>53739863
So what you're saynig is you have the attention spand of an 8-year old? Most of us are a bit more mature and intellectual than that, and if something wierd happens its generaly considered good writing t at least attempt to explain why it happened, even with magic.

Say the reason why X thing works is because of some magic. Okay, that's fair enough, but how is the magic just making things work? Is it a kind of spell? A Ward? Protection from a deity? What is the magic actually doing to makeit work?

If the magic is workig purely because "lol its majik dun haf t expran it XD" Then why does the story exist to begin with? If magic can break logic and everything, why doesn't Gandalf just snap his fingers and teleport the One Ring into Mt Doom? Or dunno just tn the ring into a jar of natty peanut-butter and eat it? Since we're operating under "lol its magic" then there would be no reason why he couldn't just do this, meaning there would be no point to LotR actually happening

In order to have a cohesive story and narrative that doesn't collapse in on itself the moment you actually start thinking, you need some rules and background logic to build around, which is doubly so for any fantasy setting that prominently features magic since you need to actually have a way of explaining how and why magic does what it does. When done smartly, magic can be an excellent tool that allows you to build a vibrant world more fantastical and vibrant than ours, but when mishandled and abused as a convenience, then the whole thing just turns into eitherschoolyard children going "Nuh-uh, I'm the super and your dead!" make believe games, or a poorly butchered Monty Python sketch that was made by a fan who had no idea what he was doing. The setting stops being an actual fantasy setting and instead becomes a shitty parody of itself, much in the same vein as when tv and things make shitty spoofs about Dragon Ball Z, or becomes just an unfunny slog like a Seltzer and Friedburg movie.

>>53739893
Or indigenous people in the Amazon, although many are using modern goods, even if they use them to live in the jungle and fish/hunt better.

Some of them are much more primitive.

Or like, those random guys in the Indian Ocean who throw spears at anything that approaches and scream bloody murder, etc. It's not clear they have a solid grip on fire, or somehow use it less than you would think. Something like that.

They live on a shitty little rock and it's easily accessible by modern boats, it's just nobody wants it that much or to bother with them because they try to kill you with spears and rocks, so they haven't been personally studied

>>53737081
when that "civilization" is brazil its pretty easy.

>>53740076
The difference is that even in those settings and stories, magic tends to have at least some rules or warnings to them, and tend to follow some patterns. While they are mystical, you still get the sense that the magic is limited and follows some internal logic, even if it is inexplicable to mortals.

Take Norse like you mentioned. Runic magic and Oaths had power to them, and that much was understood as well as the inate rule that unless you were a God, and even then only on occasion, there was some give and take in how magic worked. Odin had to sacrafice himself and hang to gain the pwoer of runes, The Well required you to give up what you hold most dear to drink the water, Balder was immune to nearly all harm but not from weapons not made of metal, etc. While the rules are never truly explained, and the magic is mythical and mysterious, there is still a sense of underlying consistency in what magic can and can't do, and how it somewhat works and has its affect. There remains an internal consistency and sense on how things happen, and the magic is used to explain the how and why, rather than just using it as a shitty cop-out of "lul its magic I don't have to explain shit XDDDDD :^)"

>>53737081
As some who has never lived next to Indians but has talked at length with a lot of people who have I would say you are wrong.Indoor plumbing is not that big of improvement to sanitation if the population one know how to bury the poo in a safe way, and two has a low population density. A lot of people forget that waste water is a issue that can become deadly if plumbing gets broke.

>wiping your ass with leaves that may or may not give you an infection

This may come as a shock but people did find out safe things to clear their asses with before TP was a things. If they live like that and are in their home region they will know what leaves will not cut their asses when using it to clear up. If they do not get a cut in their neither regions a infection from that act is unlikely.

>>53739850
>internal consistancy.
Internal consistency does not mean explaining in gross detail the mechanics behind every fantastical event. Shit even Star Trek knows when not to go too far explaining how everything in the setting works. But then you go on to defend suspension of disbelief using examples of shit that defies conventional explanation. So I don't know where you actually stand on this.

If you're saying that the setting should not contradicting its own set precedents, I agree with you. If you're saying everything needs an encyclopedia volume on the why and how, I do not.

>>53739950
"Why don't the barbarians have plumbing and electricity" isn't hard to explain, if it needs to be. Shit, there are places in Kentucky and West Virginia that illustrate that point quite nicely.

But that doesn't mean I don't agree with what >>53737186 said. I can tell my players that's the way it is and leave it at that until it becomes relevant. If we never delve so deep into barbarian culture as to need to know why they're still shitting in holes, then that's fine. If we do, that's also fine.

What I take issue with is this idea that world building means creating an entire detailed alternate history and science from the get go. Too far in that direction and you're attempting to come up with several entirely new and distinct languages for every culture, economies, tax policy, the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow. It's madness.

And yet every time someone says "you might not need to go into detail explaining that" it's met with the same baseless reactionary contempt.

>>53740031
>Predictable, follows set rules, doesn't contradict itself and doesn't come out of nowhere.
That's not entirely true. Magic is not science and can actually be unpredictable random chaotic monstrous thing that does whatever it wants, appears and disappears randomly and defies explanations. It's just so hard to create good stories with a premise like that, most of the GMs will never be able to pull it off, falling instead into the lolrandumb territory. Also, it detracts from what fantasy want to be -- a conflict of good vs evil.

Examples with 'magic' like this: Roadside Picnic (the novel STALKER is loosely based on) and from the same authors 'Definitely Maybe' where magical events impede the scientific process of humanity.

>>53737081
Have you heard of the inner city?

>>53737254
>this is what anprims actually believe.

>>53740244
The inner city likely has plumbing and computers, chief. Your sarcasm would be better served using a rural area as an example.

>>53740223
>And yet every time someone says "you might not need to go into detail explaining that" it's met with the same baseless reactionary contempt.
Never seen that. It's always, as illustrated in this thread, the "ain't explaining anything it's magic" crap, or it's lolfun cousin "the Ugly King is a gold dragon polymorphed into a cow! It flies around breathing fire! Because it's alcoholic and does whatever it wants!"

The fractal approach to setting (no details until you zoom in) is a reasonable thing, although you should know who the Ugly King is and why does he hide in the ruins long before the PCs reach the throneroom.

>>53740227
Not entirely, but as I said, if something comes along and solves the plot and isn't explained or set up, then it's bad writing. You absolutely can and SHOULD have magic seeming impenetrable to the scientific lens. Magic isn't "dont have to explain shit", it's "I can't explain shit." That's what makes it magic.

A better way to state it is that science has laws we obey without knowing them, magic has rules we don't completely know. And some rules can be broken, sure, but working within the rules you know is prime fantasy and magic lore.

>>53737081
Africa had 50 millennia to stop being niggers and start acting like Europeans. They didn't. The reason here is because negroids a different species and CANNOT think or reason in the abstract like caucasoids.

If you are going to have this in your setting, you'll have to make them different species, too. Notice that orcs are near-universally tribal and at a lower technology level than humans and elves. The inbreeding that games say is possible ignores is a jewish lie. The real-world genetic problems when going between the species collectively called "humanity" can't be ignored.

>>53740223
>. So I don't know where you actually stand on this.
That's because you haven't been paying attention to the argument moron. No one is saying that magic can't be used to allow crazy things. The point we're trying to make is that it shouldn't be used as a cop-out like this chucklefuck>>53739863
>>53739701
>>53737186
Is trying to advocate.
I have no idea where you get off trying to defend him, but you seem to be retardedly making assumptions about what we're arguing for and against, and kep assuming and fighting against this strawman thattheonly other alternative is "explain EVERYTHING!" when no one is arguing for that.

Again, see>>53739850
Magic should be a tool to hlp allow for fantastacle elements., however its existance and some basic rules and reasons should be established so that the whole thing doesn't crumble under the weight of its own plot holes. It doesn't matter how vague or specific they are, as long as there is a precedent that allows crazy stuff to happen, then you can go as far as you want with it so long as you remain consistent.

Oddly enough, you mention Star Trek, and ironically its scifi technobabble is actually the least agregious thing about it. Looking on the surface, the series lays and introduces some ground rules on how their magic bullcrap works, and at least tries to pretend that there in an in-universe consistency even as they make shit up. Even if its never explained, the fact that there are boundaries and rules as to what can be done is eluded to enough that having suspension of disbelief is a non-problem regardless replicators, nutrino fields, warp-factors, and tachions. Really, the only thing that even gets close to threatening that sense is thier idea of how a semi-post-scarecity society works, but that's an unrelated topic

>>53737081
The settled civilization is basically East St. Louis.

So to sum-up
>Magic=Good/Cooler setting
>Mysterious Magic if fine, as long as its either consistent or has a reason for why it be
>You don't have to explain everything, just have precedents or reasons.
>"It just werks!" is for lazy idiots with no attention span or creativity
>The is a noted difference between "lel Empire last forever because MAJEEK" and "Using magical forms of mass-communication and enforcement of laws on leaders via Geass, the empire was able to remain stable". Learn the difference, it just might save your life, or at least ensure you don't look like an idiot 3rd grader

>>53740400
>t. /pol/lack who failed biology and has no knowledge of how phylogeny works
Learn the difference between species and sub-species retard

Also, West Africa Ethiopia would disagree. Hell, those guys enslaving and selling their less-civilized neighbors to Muslims was how the Slave Trade that much of Europe's colonies relied on.

>>53737081
Check history. Extrapolate from it if you want.

The tribal land has terrible diseases only the locals are immune to, or know how to treat. Civilized individuals dying in their lands is taken as proof that their way of life is righteous.

They live in places unsuitable for the agriculture of civilized peoples. Arid steppes, deserts, swamps full of peats and bog iron.

Put some mountains between savages and settlers.

They have plumbing made of wood and druids are, among many things, doctors. One of them recomends those leaves because they have antiseptic properties.

The western clans disdain of those conforts for they produce effeminates. See how weaklings manage to reach adulthood in cities of stone? And some of them bed a woman without having to gift her with a wolverine's pelt?

They actually spend less time getting fed than settled ones. The forest provides those that knowt it.

>>53737594
The tribes and tribals we have here are massively retarded, like in most everything they do.

I remember awhile ago some rather large settlement was given for some illegal logging/government racism. Several million US. Not even joking their leaders spent all of it, even extending credit, on cars. Nothing but cars.

>>53740695
If that was exclusive to brazilian tribals, the entire world would be a better place.

You're mistaking a human trait for a regional one.

>>53740737
When has a non tribal community spent all their money on frivolities? Never heard of it.

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>>53740478
1. Ethiopia was originally caucasoid, as any source will tell you. It was overrun by negroids.
2. "HURR MUH SUBSPECIES" excuse which ignores every single piece of scientific data ever recorded. Pic related, it's your "argument" being shat on from 5000 miles away.

>>53740409
>I have no idea where you get off trying to defend him
I agree with his point of a detailed explanation potentially not being necessary. And even in his original post, he said that if it needs to be explained it will be. Very simple. You should be able to get that at least.

>>53740815
Well this thread has gone down the shit hole anyway now that we've gone full /pol/ pseudoscience.

>>53737081
Former nomads who had society based around holy pilgrimage, but their holy sites have been destroyed so now they've just given up and settled down somewhere. Technology hasn't quite hit them yet, will in the next decade.

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>>53740858

Because we ride out and crush the tribes if they unite, sometimes we pay them fight or raid each other

>>53737081
Well it's happened historically, most often because the tribal peoples' geography and/or demography made settling in large numbers difficult.

>>53737081

Most tribes are actually descendents of runaways and outcast who rejected civilisation and degenerated into tribal states.

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>>53740400
>Africa had 50 millennia to stop being niggers and start acting like Europeans
Europe was hardly relevant to anyone but Europe until the Renaissance
Europe had to use said africans because they couldn't survive in Africa
Blacks ran Mali, which owned Timbuktu which was the learning capital of the world after Baghdad got Mongol'd and before the Renaissance.
Not only was the richest man who ever lived black, but his predecessor knew the Americas were across the ocean due to science, he just died before he reached them.
If said rich black man didn't go on vacation across the sahara white people probably wouldn't have had their little Renaissance and have stayed irrelevant to everyone but white people.

And in a more tangible tech level thing, most of Subsaharan Africa was iron age despite not being able to trade ideas and technology like Europe, Asia, and basically the rest of the world. Savages don't basically figure out iron and fucking carbon steel blast furnaces of all things,
Source: https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1916&dat=19780914&id=MOogAAAAIBAJ&sjid=SG4FAAAAIBAJ&pg=1193,3647298 and revolutionize their agricultural systems by themselves

>>53737728
This is good post.
Especially that last bit about infrastructure. 'Civilisation' doesn't just suddenly happen because you want it to happen.

>>53740642
Had something similar in the game. Only tribes were living in mountains and treated those who lived on plains and in cities with disdain. They traded with them but never intermarried because plainers were considered too weak and untrustworthy. Also not many plainers could go through a ritual of maturation that called for a man to catch a mountain goat without any ranged weapons.

Orc tribes who too lived in the mountains were actually considered much more respectable than humans of the plains.

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>>53741195
If that's your case, you may want to see this then:
http://hariragat.blogspot.com.br/2014/05/highland-southeast-asia-for-your.html

>A Tradition of Defiance
>The great hook for FRPG worldbuilders to use Zomian concepts, I think, comes from the scholars’ central hypothesis about this ‘ghost’ region: that the highland peoples are who they are, and live the way they do, as a conscious act of refusing to assimilate into the lowlander-dominated nations surrounding them.

If you squat when you shit, your butt cheeks and anus and sphincters all line up so that minimal wiping is required. The sitting posture is really not ideal for human defecation ergonomics.

>>53737111
No but like india is a great example. On one side of the country you have one of the most cost effective missions to mars out there, while on the other you have literal tribal warfare, with some nice dead people in a freezer who are totally alive for religious reasons in between.

>>53741184
God damn you are fucking retarded.

>>53741338
>this triggers the /pol/

>>53737254
anon, when you are shitting in the woods and geting ticks all up into your asshole when there is a perfectly good and clean toilet not so far from you, you are retarded.

>>53741184
>Timbuktu which was the learning capital of the world after Baghdad got Mongol'd
You do know that Baghdad was still the learning centre of the world after the Mongols as the Hulagu strongarmed the city into becoming an economic powerhouse?

>>53740400
>Africa had 50 millennia to stop being niggers and start acting like Europeans.
I love seeing this because its completely retarded and hangs on the rickety bridge that is " A black kid bullied me in dschool" dehumanisation. No you retard, the majority of africa didnt progress because africa is a shit place, with little safety for free time and shit nutrients for brain growth. Europe and china however both are literal edens. Bustling in resources and agreeable temperatures.

Like shit you probably think inteligence is genetic instead of based on variables like culture and food.

6/10 bait made me respond.

>This thread

>I will give up a certain amount of suspension of disbelief for the sake of fantasy.
>EXCEPT FOR INDOOR PLUMBING REEEEEEEEEEEE!

You all have autism.

>>53741184
O boy African history revisionist troll is here.

First all, the richest man in history was not Mansa Musa, it was King Solomon who was literally recieving 25 tons of gold a year in tribute. (Inb4 Solomon wasn't real, the amount of historical evidence for Musa's and Solomon's wealth is the same, nearly zero.) Secondly, one African tribe learning how to make a blast furnace speaks nothing for the state of the rest of the continent.

>>53741472
>Europe and china however both are literal edens.
Africa has more potential resources than Europe and China combined for ancient Kingdoms. Yet, Africa managed to neglect to domesticate one plant or animal on their own, or really use their natural wealth in any meaningful way to join the other world superpowers. I mean, Musa's been mentioned above, and he bankrupted his entire treasurey to go on pilgramage to Mecca. "The richest man in the world" literally did the modern equivalent of being "nigger rich" in the name of bling.

>>53737728
This. /pol/ memers and retards think 'progress' is a linear arrow and works just like a videogame.

>>53737328
Of course a fucking retard from Brazil doesn't know shit.

You know how much money the pharmaceutical industry puts in cataloguing shamanic knowledge from jungle tribes so they can use that to find new kinds of naturally occuring medicine?

>>53737312
True. Notice that in your example, it's typically a civilized nation in fertile lands, bordering "primitive" people living in arid lands.

No point in conquering empty steppes or deserts.

>>53740400
Africa is the same size and has the same landmass as all of Europe, China, and the US combined.

It's not one large contra, it's a fucking huge ass landmass on the scale of Russia, except with less accessible natural resources.

>>53742440
>king solomon
>real
Hahahahahaha, get out of here creationist scum.

>>53737728
>>53741194
>>53742440
Reminder that it took THOUSANDS of years for farmers to gain the same quality of life that nomadic hunter-gatherers had.

You can't really blame hunter-gatherers for not jumping on the farming bandwagon when for most of existence farming was a horrible choice that people had to be forced into through societal and religious rules.

>>53742440
The animals in Africa don't domesticate. Most of them are murderous. They manages cows, and that's really all they did domesticate....because the fucking LIONS and HYENAS EAT DOMESTICATED ANIMALS.

As for resources....diamonds? Why bother. Wood? That's a laugh, the wood there is fucked up shit that comes in boules and lumps when you're lucky and takes such massive effort to cut down and hew that it takes entire work gangs to take down one tree without modern equipment - mahogany is the hardest wood known all on it's own. Steel? Not in a fucking desert without volcanic activity to provide the basic materials for smelting.

Yes, lots of resources, but you actually have to put infrastructure in place to take advantage of any of it, and they didn't have the infrastructure to do that with because they were too busy dealign with killer animals and surviving on what can grow in the desert when it's not monsoon season.

>>53737268
That was legitimately the case in the book "the Eye, the Ear, and the Arm", which was a book about three private detective mutants in indistinct future time Africa. Arm was my favorite: he was a spindly elongated man who was deceptively strong.

>>53742518
What's more plausible? That two real figures were raised to a mythical status in history, or that atrributions of their wealth should be taken as literal? Both have evidence for existing, the question here was about their legends.

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>>53737081
Like it's hard to imagine civilization alongside grabby Barbarians in real life.

>>53742616
>The animals in Africa don't domesticate.

No animal is easy to domesticate. What, you think people just put a leash around the 9 ft tall ancestor murdercows and "tamed" it? No, it took thousands of years of selective breeding and captivity to get modern domestic cows.

>Lions and hyenas.
No other continent had predator animals? Humans nearly wiped them out on every other continent BECAUSE they fucked with their domestic animals.

>Africa is all desert
You clearly have no idea what you're talking about. Africa has every natural biome somewhere on the continent. Resources were never an issue, and if they were, they could have traded for them like every other culture that lacked a specific resource.

>Lack of infrastructure.
So are you implying Africans can't into infrastructure? That's racist man.

>>53742676
You need to seriously compare a globe and compare africa to any other country in existence. Yes, it has every biome, spread out over a 1/3 of the earths entire landmass.

1/3 of the fucking earth sans ocean, anon. It took Russia millennia to catch up to Europe and they have only three biomes.

>>53742702
>Russia
If you wanted to make an argument about a culture that shouldn't have resources, domesticated animals, or infrastructure it would be Russia. Russia is a cold, inhospitable, nutrient lacking armpit. Yet it has had some of the world's most powerful nations come out of it.

All I'm saying, Africa doesn't have an excuse.

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>>53742645
he said assuming the former isn't conquered by the latter

>>53737081
in fantasy, tribal savages often have just as much magic as civilized people, or more, in their own way. they don't need doctors when they have witch doctors who can actually heal people.

>>53737751
MY TRUCKER HAT

Central Africa's problem is that its peoples were too spread out and concerned with their own basic survival. The few with ambition easily fucked over the others but it never tended to go very far. Europe became the powerhouse it is because a bunch of people were mashed together and constantly trying to kill each other. North Africa did a lot better on that front; they were cutthroat enough to get their shit together.

Not that there weren't some murderous motherfuckers down there, but they were the exception and - no surprise - some of the ones that were the most historically relevant.

>>53742738
>All I'm saying, Africa doesn't have an excuse.

It does tho. Increased disease/parasite load selects for rapid reproduction, equatorial heat means zero selection for higher IQ; in combination, Africa creates a dumber gene pool. Sub-Saharans have an average IQ two standard deviations lower than the Western/European average.

Africa has had iron-age kingdoms and the occasional organized empire or federal body, but it takes constant upkeep from the sane 10% on top to keep the dumb people from ruining it all.

I like primitive cultures. You can conquer them with no remorse.

>>53738381
>>53739886
they are that and also rage hobos

>>53737081

Some people like to live in different ways. My dads really into this show where a bloke married an Eskimo woman and now is living eskimo life with her and her family. Weve reached a stage of civilization where we dont feel we need to jump on top of these people, maybe fantasy worlds can too.

>>53739893
>What is trade?
>What is cross cultural pollination?
Herp derp deus vult

>>53740815
Funny thing is, your pic just says that Bantu Africans are closer to Eurasio-caucasoids than Aussieborigines.

And all 3 so-called different 'species' has the same scientific name: H. Sapiens. Which meant they're actually the same species. Idiot.

>>53742932
It's no use trying to talk to him. I doubt he understands anything in that image, he just copied it off /pol/ because it "proves him right."

>>53742616
>Steel? Not in a fucking desert without volcanic activity to provide the basic materials for smelting.
You know they recently discovered how sub-saharan africa had steel, right?
It was almost lost forever because the only people who remembered the process were old men who learned it in their childhood.

>>53740031
Harry Potter having magical loopholes save him every other fucking book is bafflingly dumb and makes everything up until that point seem meaningless. Magic is never clearly defined and only given the faintest of passing details (oh you need to do this specific motion and incantation, except when you don't).
It's not that bad if you keep in mind that Harry Potter always told the story from the perspective of three pupils who had one to six years of magical education. Two of them were notoriously lazy and Hermione had the tendency to memorize her schoolbooks and consider everything inside them to be the complete and absolute truth, in addition to being unable to learn from her parents. Have a quantum physicist or chemistry professor read through a schoolbook and they will call every second sentence wrong or inaccurate, but it's presented as scientific truth since the authors don't want the students to ask why they should learn it if it is not completely accurate, much less explain it to them.
Add to that that the professors generally only taught at a very basic level meant to not even leave the most retarded behind and were rarely asked outside of class. That Dumbledore, who was the most competent mage in a somewhat close relationship with them, was a secretive and manipulative old faggot who didn't bother explaining shit except where it suited his purposes, and even then you couldn't know whether it's true or just another scheme. That the wizarding world in its whole is rather secretive and keeps much advanced knowledge within the family. The trio never had access to a proper family library except the Black one, which was too focussed on the dark arts for their liking.

If you keep all these aspects in mind, you'll find that Harry Potter is less about handwaving to avoid needing proper storytelling, but instead about three young mages with no clue how magic works stumbling through a world in which most don't really know it either while trying to survive.

>>53742676
>>53742847
Africa is a overheated shithole and anyone starting from scratch there is doomed to be fucked over. Its only thanks to modern infrastructure (which isn't even thanks to ONE culture) that its habitable.

Ancestry still have nothing to do with brain development. Because who'd guess, insolation causes divergent minor mutations.

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>>53742616

>>53743746
>Africa is an overheated shithole
>Africans are not dumber but are still too dumb to leave the "uninhabitable" overheated shithole

>>53737254
We can't westerners on average literally cannot fathom why someone lives in a tribe or the fact that because they live in a tribe it does not mean they're pouring boiling water up their ass to clean it

A better assumption would be that

Westerners = Retarded

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>>53742616
Yeah that was the point that the picture was trying to make.
White people like to go "Why wasn't Africa rich with all this stuff like diamonds and good lumber??? Check mate negros" But you just explained why.

And they discovered steel working blast furnaces all over sub-saharan Africa.

>>53741405
It was definitely one of the learning capitals though, people don't know about it for no reason.

>>53742738
Sub Sahara Africa has a really fucking good excuse, in that for most of history it had a population lower than western Europe spread out over one of the largest continents on the planet, and that trade past the saharan desert was fucking impossible because it was nearly impossible to navigate and most beasts of burden you'd use to do so, such as horses, fucking died after that point.
Even European colonists basically let Africa manage itself until industrialization made the European life easier because it was fucking impossible to get in there

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>>53741338
>No arguments

>>53742626
>Evidence that Musa's wealth was real include first person sources
>Solomon's real because "muh bible"

>Bankrupted the country
Also not true, since it functioned perfectly after said pilgrimage, enough so that on the way back through he bought the gold back to fix the economies he wrecked

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>>53737081
>How do you even justify this?

Asked no American ever.

>>53737186
>confusing internal with external consistency
Why is /tg/ full of so many retards?

>>53740858
>WAAAAAA IF IT HURTS MY FEELINGS IT'S PSEUDOSCIENCE WAAAAAAAAA IT CAN'T BE RIGHT IF IT GOES AGAINST MY BRAINWASHING
Fucking kill yourself. Reported.

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>>53742515
Irrelevant to the discussion.
>>53742465
Nope, that's liberals.
>>53742616
Hi, Jared Diamond. Everything you have ever said has been proven wrong. Kill yourself.

>>53745114
Yes, you have absolutely no arguments and no evidence for anything that you said. You've been proven wrong decades ago.

>>53745328
>Trained the same thing as domesticated.
You can train fucking anything see >>53743840
What you can't is domesticate them where they train themselves. A domesticated animal saves time because you don't have to retrain it again and again every generation.
If you have a dog and you get a puppy, that puppy will learn how to fucking behave. You have a zebra and get another zebra, you have to stop and train that new zebra.

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>>53745328
>Domesticating and taming are the same thing
>Implying even today, zebra-horse hybrids aren't deemed useful due to having the zebra's temperament
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebroid#Physical_characteristics

This is tantamount to pointing to a circus bear and asking why grizzlybears aren't common housepets in Alaska.

>>53745341
>Literally everything in the picture is sourced, cited, and has picture evidence.
>The blast furnace thing links to a source and is one of the easiest things to look up on the internet.
>"Hurr durr you got proven wrong a decade ago because I said so. Y-You're just brainwashed."
Fuck your stupid.

>>53745416
Circus bears aren't even domesticated they're just trained, at least a zebrahorse has half of a domesticated animal.

>>53745328
The size of Africa is really fucking relevant see the third point >>53745091

>>53739120
yes and a lot of places in pajeetland suffer from water shortage which makes plumbing kinda ineffective.

>>53741472
Not that anon, but last time I bothered reading up on heritability intelligence is actually pretty darn dependent on genetics. I don't know as it lines up with race but stupid parents do have stupid kids independent of nutrition.

As for Europe, some of it is definitely perfect for civilisation but bear in mind that in a lot of it the ground literally freezes part of the year. Once you can store food you're fine but until then you're gonna have a bad time.

>>53745465
That's what he said.
Circus bears are trained/tamed. Bears are not domesticated.
That zebra is trained/tamed. Zebras are not domesticated.

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>>53737081
Tribal migrations happened all the time. One tribe gets pushed up to the borders of a civilisation by another or by disease/famine. It would usually end in them over running cities or allying with the civilisations. Either being forced into an alliance or arranging a more equal deal between the two.

As for not advancing in technology, it's because they're proud and don't want to change. Indians still use designated shitting streets after all.

>>53737081
>How do you even justify this?

Native Americans and abbos, at least for a little while.

> Even assuming the former isn't conquered by the latter, wouldn't the savages eventually figure out that indoor plumbing is preferable to shitting in a hole and wiping your ass with leaves that may or may not give you an infection you can't treat because there are no doctors?

Native Americans and abbos never did.

>>53745496
Ah i'm just retarded then

>>53745539
You're better than the /pol/lack who thought his picture was proving something.

>>53739792
The more in-depth you can get on how a dragon flies, the more you can be consistent about when and how the dragon flies. Ergo instead of all the crits on the dragon hitting vital organs that are also parts of humans, you can also have criticals hit the dragon in it's "flight bladder" causing it to plummet from the sky, or in a "Fire Sac" which could detonate explosively in it's throat or something.

It makes the adventure more dynamic. This goes double for magic - deciding on how magic does magic makes everything feel more real, even if you don't give the players your 12 page essay on how Mana cells multiply caloric energy to supercharge your hand to throw thunder.

>>53737081
Never underestimate the power of tradition and ideology. They might fully recognize the practical benefits of more advanced technology, but still reject it for other reasons. Their reasons may not make sense to outsiders, but from their own perspective it's a perfectly sensible basis on which to reject the

They also might not understand the practical benefits of the advanced technology, because a lot of the time those benefits are not actually that obvious. Especially when you consider that in the context of fantasy settings, we usually aren't talking modern-day tech right next to tribal primitives, but rather something more along the lines of Renaissance-level or maaaybe early Industrial Revolution stuff as the more advanced side. Renaissance-level medicine wasn't all that much more dramatically effective than the traditional medicinal practices of more primitive societies. If you really looked closely and did a rigorous study, you might be able to demonstrate better outcomes, but (1) the overwhelming majority of people aren't going to bother with that kind of effort, and more importantly (2) rigorous statistical analysis of that sort isn't a technique that existed at the level of development even the more advanced of the two societies is at -- nobody would even have the concepts and tools necessary to do such a study if they tried.

>>53744782
When most people migrated it was because the temperment is better at the Sahara wasn't a desert, so some people spread out and others stayed. Then the world went weird, the Sahara dried out, Africa got hotter and the line was drawn.

>>53742932
>they've been named the same species as a polite fiction so they must obviously be the same species in reality
Not him but that's an obvious conflation of map and territory.

>>53746015
>As a polite fiction
I mean, I'm not a genetic scientist, but if a genetic scientist says "They're the fucking same thing" then there's really a lot more proof than "nuh-uh" that a "redditpilled" /pol/lack has to provide.

>>53746081
Genetic scientists can't afford to ignore politics regardless of how much one believes in the purity of science.

>>53746103
>They're not agreeing with me and a bunch of other literal nobodies on the internet so they MUST be following politics
That still counts as a "nuh-uh" anon.

>>53746081
What about if a genetic scientist gets blacklisted for saying the opposite?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/01/dna-james-watson-scientist-selling-nobel-prize-medal

>>53746121
If marginalizing people who disagree with you allows you to sleep at night then that's fine; just don't pretend the authorities you appeal to are as objective as you make them out to be.

>>53740695
>The tribes and tribals we have here are massively retarded, like in most everything they do.
Well yeah, they're Brazilian.

>>53737081
Simple the tribals live on lands which are not suitable for establishing more organized societies given the current tech available.

>>53746180
Believe it or not I'm not marginalizing, it's just that /pol/ doesn't have much in the way of genetic scientists. Even /pol/'s surveys of itself say they're all blue collar workers, which would be the definition of "literally who" in the field of genetic science. Just like how you don't grab someone random off the street to perform brain surgery.

>>53746130
After reading that article, the man in question who was ostracized didn't say anything in a scientific sense. He didn't say "Blacks are genetically dumb, here's the proof." He basically just said "dumb negros didn't do the job right. Everyone agrees right?"
No science in his proof, just extreme backlash for standard issue racist comments, just like if Trump was caught saying "Stupid niggers" live on television. inb4 Trump derail,
you get the point.
The article you linked even says "he nicest irony is that genetics – the field he founded and Watson transformed – is precisely the subject that has singularly demonstrated that race as a scientific concept holds no water."

>>53742488
>big pharma looking towards third-world retards to find new ways of duping first-world retards
Yes, and?

>>53742488
>understanding why something does X and understanding you can use this something to make even better things
>same as a retarded tribal who just rubs some leaves on his hemorrhoids

>>53746317
>you disagree with me so you must be /pol/
Nah.

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>>53737728
>hahaha yuo are the savag in our view :DDDDD
Fuck off. There is a ton of distinction between a native american living in a brazilian reservation buttnaked, and some american. There isn't that much of a distinction between an urban middle class brazilian and an urban middle class american. Other than that the latter is more likely to be a fat ass.

>>53746392
Well you said "marginalizing people who disagree with me" but the only person I mentioned in the post that you were responding to were /pol/lacks so who else could you be?

>>53746421
There are more people in the world than just the ones you find on 4chan, yeah?

>>53737081
Indoor plumbing and doctors who can actually cure disease are recent developments, Anon. For most of human history, the main attraction of cities was the amount of interesting stuff going on giving you a kind of high.

>>53740815
>Comparing on the basis of completely different criteria

You, uh, don't really science, do you?

Seriously, you can't compare genetic distance on the basis of one kind of measurement (SNPs) with other kinds of measurement (mitochondrial DNA). The last two lines of that very table demonstrate this quite clearly: The genetic distance between chimps and bonobos is wildly different on the basis of autosomal DNA as opposed to mitochondrial DNA. These are completely different measurements, so comparisons between them prove nothing.

As >>53742932 says, the only thing that table shows is that Bantus are closer to Caucasians than Aborigines. You can't go any further than that, because there's nothing else in the table that uses the same kind of measurement.

>>53746317
>The article you linked even says "he nicest irony is that genetics – the field he founded and Watson transformed – is precisely the subject that has singularly demonstrated that race as a scientific concept holds no water."
And the medical community would strongly disagree with the author on that.

https://www.organdonation.nhs.uk/about-donation/organ-donation-and-ethnicity/

>>53746317
>The article you linked even says
You can't separate fact from opinion in an article distinctly labelled "Opinion"?

>>53737148
Muslims were some of the greatest pioneers of medicine in history, though.

It's almost like the character of your society is more important than your religion or something.

>>53746521
>Ethnic group the same as race
Not quite. Ethnic groups and race are two different things
For example, the black ""race"" in America actually has a lot of the french and irish ethnic groups in its dna, even if they're primarily of the bantu and songhai ethnic groups

The reason that that cite sited was that donors from a similar ethnic background as yourself make better donors. This is true for the same reason your brother or father is a better donor for you than anyone else.
In short while most admit that genes do differ from group to group, they're not enough to say that they're of different races, and especially not different species as race gets confused with on certain sites.
Source: http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-experts-03-02.htm

>>53746602
Then why link it as a source if only specific parts of it are valid?
That's not how sourcing an argument works.

>>53745091
>trade past the Saharan desert was fucking impossible

What are camels?

Yet Timbuktu is still a center of learning despite this Saharan desert being in the way?

I mean the Muslims have been raiding Sub-Saharan Africa for only how many hundreds of years now?

The Saharan has been growing for thousands of years, it wasn't always this giant natural barrier. Even during the times it was, people still regularly traveled around or through it to get what they wanted.

>>53746649
>links to an example of backlash against a genetic scientist for his statements in order to demonstrate the possibility of backlash against genetic scientists for their statements
>But look, even that article says [backlash against the genetic scientist for his statements]!
You sure are fucking dumb.

>>53746607
Didn't Islam cause a huge dark age for the middle east once it got popular?

I think it's fairer to say arabic people were great scientists rather than "Muslims"

>>53737312
Don't forget the cossacks. If you have the choice between being a serf in a civilized feudal society or a free man on the unforgiving steppe there's always some who choose the latter, for one reason or the other.

>>53746725
Mongol invasions caused a dark age, then radical islam took hold and it's been a shitshow ever since

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>>53746677
You'll note that I said "past"
People could get around and through the desert just fine. The jungles and highlands though? Those were a pain in the ass, to the point where the best raiders for slaves and the like were the aforementioned Mali and Songhai empires, and Timbuktu was the capital of the former and still a great city of the latter.
It was not easy to get into sub-saharan africa. People did it sure, but not for trade. It wouldn't be worth it unless you were straight taking shit.

>>53739863
>I did not give 1/10th of a fuck about where the balrog came from
They explain that part though.

Hence the delving too deep meme that's attached to dwarves.

>>53741338
>God damn you are fucking retarded

A masterful counter-argument.

>>53746725
OG Islam fucking loved math and science because they wanted Islam to be the next christian rome, plus stuff like navigation and astronomy were important so that you could face the right direction when praying.
For a good period of time the muslims loved shit like science and math because it was "uncovering gods wonders"
Like if they were the ones that discovered that Earth is just inside the suns hospitable zone, they'd then say "Only god could get something so perfect, praise allah!"
Then the mongols happened.

>>53737254
I cannot tell if you're legit in believing this garbage or just retarded. This thread seems filled with tards or trolls

>>53738266
Basically op is retarded and you are in the right here anon

To explain why a bunch of barbarians of savages don't just get "Wiped out" by civilization in a fantasy world
You need 2 things (and in some cases you don't even need these)
A reason why the heroes have to be the ones to do it
A reason why nobody else can do it and i mean legit "Nobody" else
The explanation is usually what becomes act 2 of your campaign when you realize the government/ high level NPC's are dealing with bigger shit

>>53746707
I mean, you either have to treat the whole thing as fact, or treat the whole thing as an opinion piece. That's how scholarly reporting works. You can't just go "Oh, the part that I want is relevant but the part I don't is irrelevant unless you have other sources that let you say "but this part is incorrect because..."
But since you didn't, the whole thing got treated as fact.

>>53742488
It's almost like these third worlders subject themselves to some horrendously immoral medinical practices that would never get green lit in the first world and so big pharma uses them as guinea pigs in testing random herbs and chemicals.

>>53742738
Syberia is a fucking powerload of resources, man

>>53740077
>muh writing
are we talking about books or RPGs?
Who cares about whether the fact that there is a group of barbarians next to civilized empire is explainable or not? It's not going to change anything.
If there's a desert next to a glacier, and the explanation is "a wizard did it", that's bad writing, sure. It's not gonna affect your game in any way whatsoever.

And going "magic doesn't have to explain anything" doesn't mean the game is automatically gonna be "lol so random", despite what you autists keep insisting. And inversely, the setting of the game can be the most realistically created possible, but the game can still be lol so randumb anyway.

>>53737254
This guy's right by the way.

Depending on what time period your in, civilisation doesn't have a whole lot of benefits to plenty of tribal people. Really the main one would be trade, not "plumbing" (which is something that's only an issue if you're in civilisation to begin with...).

You're all stuck thinking medieval or Roman civilisation is analogous to modern western civilisation. It's not.

>>53740409
>however its existance and some basic rules and reasons should be established
>magic should have rules!

No, no it shouldn't. Holy shit, what's the point of having magic if it's just science with a different name?

>>53746975
Also, plenty of civilised people just wouldn't have plumbing.

>>53742738
Also, Russia had good contact with a raider culture of vikings and fucking Eastern Roman Empire, then unifying ideas like "Third Rome" and all that messianism in philosophy after Byzantian culture and writing passed to them with christianity, then hordes of wild infidels to spook them that force them into unity.
Africa didn't have so much contact with Rome and its successors.

>>53746920
If you have the infrastructure for arctic mining operations.

>>53746992
Magic rules != science rules.

In fact, "science rules" in their colloquial use aren't actually science. They're materialism, which is what science discovered to be true IRL; but in a different setting, essentialism may be how the world works.

>>53742738
...There are some pretty powerful African nations, anon. And people are basically waiting for central Africa to stop being a grimderp military shitstorm before things really get going.

Honestly, there's a reason most of these kinda complaints run on ignorance. Those charity commercials you saw as a kid aren't a good thing to base your view of Africa on.
>>53742440
kek

>>53746774
>People did it sure, but not for trade

>Posts trade routes of sub-Saharan Africa.

???

>>53747112
Not a single good work has been written with lobotomised magic, which is what you're explaining.

>>53746883
>link to an opinion piece commenting on a factual event to illustrate one facet of said factual event
>You have to take the entire article at face value! There is no use–mention distinction!
Idiot.

>>53747136
No he didn't. Not in the way he was talking about it, anyway.

>>53737081
IRL in these cases tribal savages are usually nomads, often with a cult of "strength through hardship" asp part of their culture.

>>53747120
>There are some pretty powerful African nations, anon.

Are there? Or are they just satellite nations to actual powerful nations?

>>53747177
There's a lot of satellite nations, but they're mostly satellites to...the African regional powers. Nigeria has the biggest dick.

>>53742676
>No animal is easy to domesticate. What, you think people just put a leash around the 9 ft tall ancestor murdercows and "tamed" it? No, it took thousands of years of selective breeding and captivity to get modern domestic cows.
This is true. Zebras might be harder than horses, but nothing it's easy to domesticate.
>>53742440
>domesticate one plant or animal
Pretty sure they got yams
>>53744866
>Westerners = Retarded
This.

>>53747163
>Slave / ivory / gold / gemstone / exotic animal trade never existed!

I think you're full of shit.

>>53747197
You want to read >>53745091, the original post. You can see he's talking about before those times.

>>53747143
There is a huge gulf between "magic shouldn't be arbitrary asspulls" and "magic should be lobotomized" and I get the feeling you're just trying to bridge this gulf in order to excuse your lazy writing.

>>53747239
That's a strange feeling to get anon. How'd you reach that conclusion?

It's like you're assuming if you don't establish rules for magic you have to use it as an asspull.

>>53746992
I'd like you to look up hermeticism, alchemy, and a variety of real world magic systems that functioned as scientific endeavors. Magic as a science is fucking old. The other systems of magic were more social sciences, about dealing with invisible sapients with their own wants and needs and how to get them to help you.

Magic has always had rules, and has always been studied and figured out. It's just that many times you were dealing with invisible people and not a cut and dried repeatable phenomenon.

>>53747265
If you don't have some sort of internal ruleset for magic in your setting, whether they be scientistic or not, then, yes, you are by definition pulling it out of your ass.

>>53747305
Not at all. You can deliberate how you use magic without establishing rules.

>>53747325
How might you accomplish this?

>>53745328

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOmjnioNulo

>>53747356
Use it as seems fitting without having to reduce it to rules. Think about how magic works in myth and legend.

As an actual African from actual Africa it's so great watching white people argue about my continent in general and my country in particular and how amazing they're doing, which is obviously why everyone who can leave leaves including me.

I love claiming absolute knowledge of places I have never visited, too.

>>53737081
Because of culture. You don't just abandon it to go live in a village full of strangers.
There are many people now a day that choose to live like that, it isn't something impossible.

>>53747378
By what means do you decide what seems fitting?
Myth and legend don't make very good examples when we get down to brass tacks. They're packed to the brim with asspulls.

>>53747284
This the difference between chemestry and alchemy is just how good we've gotten at "magic".

You can have a set of rules, and still make things fantastic or wonderous.

>>53747400
>They're packed to the brim with asspulls.
Anon if you're gonna shit on Homer then I have zero problem with you shitting on me ;).

>>53747400
>They're packed to the brim with asspulls.
This.
As cool as some old supes are, stepping as an at had come a long way.

>>53747415
>>>/d/

>>53747379
fuck off we're full

>>53747426
this is an english-language website
>>53747379
I hope you don't think people think living in Russia is amazing, anon.

>>53737081
Fanatic spiritualism.

>>53747426
Jesus phone posting.

>>53747401
>This the difference between chemestry and alchemy is just how good we've gotten at "magic".
Not even fucking close. I don't see science going on about Hermes and all that shit.

>>53747415
Homer isn't renowned for his skill at describing the supernatural. The human in face of it, certainly; but not the supernatural.
Asspulls aren't a bad thing. Just don't pretend they're anything but.
>>53747510
Because approaches that didn't work, such as those involving Hermes, were deprecated. This is what happens when people get better at things.

>>53747170
In a game system/setting with character "levels" strength through hardship can be actually a true statement and savages just could not be beaten conventionally by their neighbours without great loss in resources and people. Because they have higher average level and can kick your ass.

>>53747541
What, exactly, do you think an asspull is?
>Because approaches that didn't work, such as those involving Hermes, were deprecated
Anon there was a serious amount of philosophy/theology involved. Don't pretend that's the same thing as science.

>>53747564
Philosophy and theology happen in the wake of science. At the very end of the chain, actually: we learn, and then we reason, and then—some of us build; some of us have to cope. "Serious" nothing; the only contributions of theology to science come in the form of occasionally dialing back its eternal obstructionism.

>>53747379
I'd apologize for knowing more about your continent and "civilization" than you do, but I'm not sorry. You had a chance to be something; you chose to sit in mud huts and rape and enslave each other. You deserve genocide.

>>53747557
>levels existing within the setting
>>>/syosetsu/, nobody wants to hear about your shitty isekai harem here

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>>53747667
Not him but remove yourself from the gene pool.

>>53747696
The fact that isekai uses levels doesn't mean that worlds that have possibility of individuals to progress much higher than in our world are part of it.

Many works involving magic or supernatural powers have this in them. There is no actual levels but you can see a clear progression of character power. For a good example of that you can look at Dune. Freemen could be annihilated by orbital strikes but in more conventional combat they wreck their opponents. Drop the tech level to a medieval one with magic and make freemen to live a desert and you got your savages with higher "level".

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>>53747664
You have no idea what you're talking about.

Philosophy and theology are not inherently related to science in any way. I wasn't talking about theology's contributions to science, in any case, and you should be worried that you assumed I was. I was talking about the fact that hermeticism is "a religious, philosophical, and esoteric tradition" (wikipedia).

But you're wrong there, too. Have you even ever heard of Raymond Sebond?

>>53747557
Actually a realistic idea.
Not in terms of levels but more in terms of classes.
In most nomadic tribes every man (and sometimes woman too) is a warrior with skills way above those of a hastly drilled peasant militiaman or citizen-soldier of more "civilized" culture.

>>53747719
>M'Banza

>Mid 1500's village
>still looks worse than pre B.C. townships.

Shame.

>>53737081
Is it some racist joke about Africa?

>>53747843
>In most nomadic tribes every man (and sometimes woman too) is a warrior with skills way above those of a hastly drilled peasant militiaman or citizen-soldier of more "civilized" culture.
...No. Maybe some shitty Chinese peasant levy, but definitely not a citizen-soldier.

>>53747854
Looking at the thread if it wasn't that's where it went.

>>53747853
It just looks like a town, anon.

>>53747814
Not relevant. All that matters is it died out because reality didn't meet expectations, so people moved onto different expectations; i.e. science happened.

>>53747882
>Not relevant
What, the fact that alchemy had a complex theological and philosophical system is irrelevant to the conversation we are having about whether or not alchemy was JUST science before we knew anything?

Irrelevant doesn't mean inconvenient, anon.

>>53737081
Present Day Africa. You have cities that look like anything from the 60s to present day, and it's a short drive into mud huts and spears land. Every nation and culture through out history has always had it's version of the backwards, back woods, primitive red neck types.

Speaking of red neck types, sometimes the primitives are literally your next door neighbors living in your city.

>>53746992
How does your wizard reliably cast Fireball or your local setting equivalent?

Wizards study, m8. That's been a thing since before Tolkien was a sperm. Ergo, Magic must have rules of some sort, and through the act of having rules, science can be applied to it.

That doesn't mean the people in-setting have to apply science to it, but it does mean that having those rules down as a GM and decided on makes your magic more consistent and thereby better for your game.

>>53747907
Yes. It doesn't matter how complex or how delusional it was; it all comes about initially from a core of knowledge followed by layers of ignorance and stagnation. We've just gotten better at shedding the layers of crud and acknowledging that it is indeed crud before once again moving on.

>>53747944
>How does your wizard reliably cast Fireball
He doesn't because that's retarded arcadey bullshit.

Obviously retarded gamey bullshit is a fuckload of fun, but in such a situation you don't bother much about the setting.
>Ergo, Magic must have rules of some sort
It's funny you think this, given much magic relies on mysticism.

>>53747944
>zards study, m8. That's been a thing since before Tolkien was a sperm.
Not him, but can you actually cite to some pre-Tolkien (or even in Tolkien) people who fit the DnD wizard bill as having no particular virtue except for their study of the arcane? I can't think of any offhand; usually people with supernatural powers are descended from supernatural beings or do the bidding of some god or demon, and they aren't people who studied their way into it.

>>53747952
No, anon, it doesn't. You realise that theology and philosophy are very definitely not science, right? Like you can't just say learning = science, which is irrelevant in any case, because we're talking about when people WERE using alchemy.

>>53747970
Mysticism is science by another name. Even the occult has rules.

>>53748010
>Mysticism is science by another name
No.
>rules
Science isn't the concept of rules you mong. Anyway, the idea of there being rules in some abstract sense is actually different from magic systems having rules. For example, in The Worm Ouroboros magic presumably has some form of rules -- talismans are made to ward certain other magics, summonings require a strict list of ingredients, &c. However, none of this is *actually* a rule. The summoning must be made, and it must be convoluted, and the manner in which it is convoluted is not laid out and logical -- it doesn't actually exist.

>>53747993
I don't know why you keep bringing up window dressing as if it's relevant to the discussion at hand. The core of it is that the rules we thought we had back then turned out to be woo-woo. That's why we don't work by them anymore and came up with new ones; i.e. we got better at doing things. The idiots on the sidelines don't weigh into this at all.

>>53747866
Sure, in most cultures that used citizen-soldiers there were heavily armed, armored and disciplined elite units formed out of nobles or wealthy citizens, but they were always few in numbers. Even "middle-class" soldiers weren't that much skilled - after all they only dedicated few days per months for mandatory training. Goplites were so effective on the battlefield because of their discipline and formations, not personal skill.

>>53748071
>window dressing
It's not window dressing.
>The core of it is that the rules we thought we had back then turned out to be woo-woo.
No it isn't. That's not even what we're talking about.
>>53748077
And they would fuck up some tribal shitter. They DID fuck up tribal shitters.

>>53747879
That's a capital of the Congo people, I assume since its labeled and in Portuguese.

>>53748159
Okay.

>>53748126
It is window dressing, even if it hurts you to admit it. "Esotericism" is just a modern term we use to describe arcane shit that we used to believe back in the day. People didn't think of it as "esotericism" at the time; people just thought of it as what they knew about the way things were, and when it turned out to be wrong they dropped it like anything else.

>>53748126
>And they would fuck up some tribal shitter. They DID fuck up tribal shitters.
They did fuck up INVADING tribal shitters.
The problem with citizen-soldiers it that they can only go to war for a short time before they have to go home and earn their living. That's why tribal shitters kept coming and get their asses handled to them but city-folk never tried to invade and enslave them.

>>53748188
>It is window dressing
No, anon, it was a fundamental part of the whole system. It WAS the whole system, really.
>as what they knew about the way things were
So? That doesn't make it "science".

Anon, do you actually know what science is?

>>53748225
...we still have people that believe in psychics and dark matter...

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>>53742676
>>Animals in Africa don't domesticate
>No animal is easy to domesticate.

No, but the ones in Africa actually are significantly harder - and less useful than the murdercows.

Domestication is a pretty intense process, so there needs to be a clear tangible benefit and there needs to be either a precedent or an ease to the process to get things started, and africa had neither. It was easier and more productive to remain tribal in most instances.

Specifically though, to leave tribalism behind you need draft animals (horses, cattle, and the like) which can pull plows. Africa didn't have anything even remotely suited for that - Not to mention most of the animals around there are quite hard to tame anyway, and we still haven't domesticated most animals anyway.

>No other continent had predator animals? Humans nearly wiped them out on other continents!
No other continent had predator animals that had evolved alongside us and tribalism, no. So lions were a bit more dangerous to the Tutsi than megasloths were to the forerunner of the Iroquois. That is, they knew what humans were on an instinctive level and knew how to hunt them, which made it harder to get a good enough handle on food to start thinking about other things like metallurgy and government.

>Africa isn't all desert.
This is true. Africa has one of the biggest deserts but it isn't all desert. However, of note is that the continent is mostly vertical, especially subsaharan Africa. That makes it really hard for any crops that do get domesticated to spread, since they'll likely be dealing with wildly different biomes. Contrast Europe, which was mostly arboreal and coniferous forests and some grasslands separated by mountains. Very easy for someone to look next door and steal some wheat and expect it to grow under the same conditions.

>infrastructure
It's not so much that they can't, and more that the early levels of infrastructure aren't very helpful when the other three above all apply.

>>53748216
Right, so the militia would at least be equal with the tribesmen.
>city-folk never tried to invade and enslave them.
Anon, are you saying that city-based civilisations never conquered tribal ones?
>>53748256
Okay. Hermeticism was still a huge part of, who guessed it, hermetic alchemy. And do you know what science is?

>>53748225
Ex-post-facto justifications for what seemed to work and what seemed not to do not comprise "the whole system". We have idiots today who philosophize about whether publishing certain scientific data is "morally correct", who theologize about what the discovery of life on other planets might mean for the future of belief in Yahweh the Iron Age blood god; we've just gotten better at keeping them in the sidelines.

>>53748267
GG&S is derided for a reason.
>>53748283
>Ex-post-facto justifications for what seemed to work and what seemed not to do not comprise
hermeticism.

I'm willing to bet you've never read a single hermetic work.

>>53747814
>Philosophy and theology are not inherently related to science in any way
If disagree with that. Philosophy and science are inherently linked. They're both ways of trying to discover truth and how the universe works.

Philosophy is just hampered by the fact that the things is trying evaluate and understand are hard to quantify.

Kind if makes me wonder what sort of "hard" philosophical science would spring up in a setting where main can affect things like souls and good and evil are actual quantifiable forces ala dnd.

>>53748306
>you have to rub your nose in shit to know it smells
Stop.

>>53748277
>Anon, are you saying that city-based civilisations never conquered tribal ones?
No. I'm saying that city-based civilization that does not have a professional army never conquered nomads.

>>53746840
And the Turks. The Muslim world wouldn't of been so poorly off if the Ottomans hadn't banned The use of printing presses until the late 18th century.

>>53748320
>They're both ways of trying to discover truth and how the universe works
Philosophy attempts to discover truth, science attempts to discover things which are true. Anyway, I meant with regards to what he was saying -- philosophy doesn't follow science, and science doesn't follow philosophy, except re: science needing to be justified by philosophy.
>>53748321
It's generally expected to have some basic knowledge of what you're talking about, yes.

>>53737545
Dann you ali pasha!

>>53748399
>you have to rub your nose in shit to have a basic understanding of it
Stop.

>>53748320
>Philosophy is just hampered by the fact that the things is trying evaluate and understand are hard to quantify.
That's because study of everything that could be quantified or evaluated was initially covered by the philosophy but eventually branched out into some useful science leaving modern philosophy as a useless remnant that still tries to do something on inertia but achieves noting because it no longer have any purpose.

>>53748421
>hazy ideas gathered from popculture give you an adequate understanding of anything
I'm glad you've stopped.

The savages are vassal of the civilization, they are still savages because the civilization is keeping them weak so they don't rise up.

>>53748426
>it no longer have any purpose
Anon that statement is itself philosophical.

>>53746725
Your thinking about the Mongols. Early Muslims caused a golden age of math

>>53748426
>useful
>achieve
>purpose
"lol why do people still do philosophy???"

That said a lot of modern philosophy is pretty shit.

>>53746725
...Anon, the Arabs were literally whos until Mohammad united them.

>>53748333
Not to mention the conflict of philosophical schools of Ash'ariyya and Mu'tazila, which the latter lost.

>>53748399
Again, that's not relevant to the discussion. The central point is that we've gotten better at magic, which we have. We've discarded the crap surrounding it—who cares? We overwhelmingly practiced and practice magic for what it can do for us, not because of some philosophical or religious woo-woo. Savages in Africa levy accusations of witchcraft against each other not because they find it philosophically repulsive but because they fear the actual effect on themselves and property, whether well-founded or not. It's the same thing today for pretty much everyone except dipshit philosophy majors, and no amount of indignation at the irrelevance of your brand of window dressing will change that.

>>53748324
Kievan Rus conquered Karacalpaks

>>53748606
>The central point is that we've gotten better at magic
No. That's not even remotely the point. The point is that you think alchemy is just science without all the facts, even though it clearly involved a hell of a lot more, despite your delusions that this was just "surrounding" it.

>>53748606
>they fear the actual effect on themselves and property
Because of their philosophical beliefs, yes. Do you think a stoic fears the same thing?

>>53748638
The stuff they used in alchemy was "fact" it at least believed to be factual. Whether it was demons or blood pressure trepanning worked.

As more was discovered theories change.

The only real difference was that modern science is more methodical.

>>53737216
>Invisible dragons keep entire fantasy settings in check by making all these cliches come true every day.

>Invisible dragons

>Not a bouncy ball

http://baldursgate.wikia.com/wiki/History_of_the_Last_March_of_the_Giants

>>53748638
I never said that alchemy was just science without all of the facts. Sure, there was a "hell of a lot more" which was more than just "idiots on the sidelines"; but the "hell of a lot more" that wasn't "idiots on the sidelines" just boils down to "wrong facts".

>>53748706
See:
>for pretty much everyone except dipshit philosophy majors
Please don't conflate lay philosophy with philosophical discipline. Most people aren't so disconnected from reality.

>>53748710
>The stuff they used in alchemy was "fact" it at least believed to be factual
Okay.

Again, anon: do you know what science is? If you did, you'd know why your comment is inane.
>Science[a][1]:58[2] is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe
This is of course wildly different from reason, the foundation of philosophy and theology.
>>53748752
>just boils down to "wrong facts".
How the fuck is a philosophical and theological belief system "wrong facts"?

You seem to believe science = any belief system ever. I'm sorry, anon, but that would be a wildly useless definition, which is why it isn't the definition.

>>53747814
I mean, we might still have the Library of Alexandria.

I don't think Seamus McStumbly binge drinking his way from one end of Europe to the other getting his ass kicked exactly makes up for burning the single largest repository of ancient knowledge in existence.

"It's okay that we burned all these super important books because we saved a couple"

>>53748306
What are the flaws of GG&S? I'm curious.

>>53748804
Just because you can type "philosophical and theological belief system" over and over again doesn't mean we have to swallow it all as one pill. We can separate it into parts: the correct facts, the wrong facts, and the part of it which for the purposes of this discussion are window dressing.

To answer the OP; military power. The trials exist because they haven't been conquered. Less civilized people usually had more military strength on a per capita basis, and everyone has a home turf advantage defending (disease, local knowledge, mobility). So, ya know, maybe the Empire tried invading the great swamp 200 years ago, but it was a big disaster where they couldn't even find the enemy and most of them died of yellow fever. And maybe the Empire has rationally decided to stop at some point, because lands further can't be profitably goverened. AND every once in awhile the primitives push in the faces of civilized people that have gotten too soft and decadent.

>>53748833
>we might still have the Library of Alexandria.
Nobody knows why that got destroyed IIRC. There's loads of conflicting accounts 'cause nobody wants to take the blame.
>>53748856
Science doesn't mean facts, sorry anon.

>>53748426
>purpose
Get a load of this guy philosophing and shit.

I wouldn't say is without purpose. I think learning about the basics is important to teach people how to evaluate ideas and abstract concepts. Modern politics is indecipherable without some basic philosophical concepts.

>>53748917
It doesn't, but facts are relevant to the discussion while window dressing isn't.

>>53748856
>We can separate it into parts:
I'm with you.
>the correct facts
Okay.
>the wrong facts
And you lost me.

>>53737081
>How do you even justify this?
The tribal savages have Germanic genes.

>>53748959
Build a truth table.

Love, /sci/.

>>53748959
Shorthand for "assertions of fact which turned out to be correct" and "assertions of fact which turned out to be incorrect". We can lump those together into "assertions of fact" instead, if you like?

>>53748936
>I think learning about the basics is important to teach people how to evaluate ideas and abstract concepts.
Already covered by the methodology.
Just like I said everything useful that one was covered by philosophy is now it's own science.

>>53748942
You seem lost.

We're determining whether alchemy is just primitive science, and therefore whether magic can be just a sort of science. Given it involved many complicated belief systems which obviously are not science, it is obviously not simply science.

Philosophy isn't window dressing just because you disagree with it.
>the spirit that stands by the naked man in the book of moons defend ye
All that science.

>>53748936
Philosophy is there to teach you that modern politics is for plebs.
>>53748982
>Already covered by the methodology.
Explain yourself. You don't think "we should pursue a cure for cancer because it would benefit the human race" is a scientific statement, do you?

>>53748804
I don't think you know the words philosophy or theology of you think they're that divorced from science.

Alchemy was an experiment based system. It tried to get things to work based on assumptions. Someone's it worked, despite flawed base assumptions. We know know that aether isn't a thing or phlogiston. The only separation between alchemy and modern science is more effort is dedicated to evaluating core assumptions.

>>53748976
Yeah, I prefer that, though I'm not one of the active participants in the argument.

>>53749037
>Alchemy was an experiment based system
Okay.
>despite flawed base assumptions
Right. And you just want to discard the system which formed these "flawed" assumptions?

Anon, you can't ignore something just because you personally don't like it. It still existed.

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Poor OP.

>>53749029
>Explain yourself. You don't think "we should pursue a cure for cancer because it would benefit the human race" is a scientific statement, do you?
Sure I would not.
Cancer by definition can not be cured - only destroyed, as it's not some alien pathogen but part of the organism.

>>53749005
Well, let's look at that phrase you're so fond of: "complicated belief systems". We can drop the "complicated" since it's irrelevant, leaving us with "belief system"—systemized collections of beliefs. Again, we can divide these beliefs into two categories: expectations of physical reality, i.e. working with facts, and otherwise, i.e. working with subjectivity, i.e. not relevant to a discussion about us being better—more efficient; more effective—at magic.
>Philosophy isn't window dressing just because you disagree with it.
I'm not saying philosophy is window dressing because I disagree with it; that's a strawman. I'm saying philosophy is window dressing to the subject at hand, which is our efficacy at magic.

>>53738266
How far away are hundred of miles in medieval times, anyway?

>>53749158
You thick fuck, the point he's making is science provides means while philosophy provides ends.

>>53737081
Tribal groups that live near civilization isn't all that uncommon. Some prefer the more unrestricted nature of tribal society, even when they've lived in the more civilized areas.

Ben Franklin once wrote about how much better some of the native's ways were than the white man's.

>>53749176
Imagine how far it would be if you had to walk.

>>53739701
Most retarded mindset ever made. How do we stop it? There is always an asshole with this dumb ass mindset.

>>53737081
>wouldn't the savages eventually figure out that indoor plumbing is preferable to shitting in a hole

You assume the civilized people would let them in. They don't have to.

>>53749212
That's my point.

>>53749195
It provides too much of those ends and cares not to find out which one is true.
For this reason I prefer ends provided by science.
Simple, brutal, honest ends.
I prefer to derive mine from the evolution theory.

>>53749176
If it's "a couple of hundred miles" in modern European terms it's a full country or two away, so it'd be quite a fair distance in medieval terms.

>>53749343
Ends don't have truth values you edgy simpleton.

So, you know, the Chinese and their northern neighbours?

>>53749378
Communism is not the same thing as tribal savagery, Anon.

>>53741382

For the vast vast vast majority of human history, civilization didn't bring perfectly good toilets to you, civilization meant being someone's slave in a fucking crowded city where the streets are all covered in shit and piss and there is a famine every few years. Living in a more dispersed population in the woods could easily a healthier living and better diets.

Good sanitation is a very recent invention and even then it's not available in much of the world.

>>53749212
Not really that far. Day march distance is 10 miles for normal march (aka you can march all day and still fight at evening) or 30 miles for a forced march (aka you march all day with reduced rest periods and drop deadly tired at evening). It almost doubles with good roads.

>>53746677
Dromedaries were only used in significant numbers in the area of the maghrib after the muslim invasion. Before they existed in small numbers and belonged mostly to breeds that had difficulties at crossing the Sahara. Notice how all those great and rich "ancient" african trader empires bordering the Sahara are actually medieval kingdoms.

>>53749401
Its actually pretty similar. The production means are sized by the community.

>>53746725
Lots of muslim scientists were not arab at all.

>>53749474
Maybe in theory.
In practice production means are seized by pseudo-aristocratic partocracy.

>>53737081
happened in the US of A.
And I do believe Ben Franklin himself wrote that civilized people were defecting to the indans in droves while no indians defected to civilization.

>>53745613
But Flight of the Dragons was a fucking awful movie. There are much better ways to make an adventure dynamic than reducing every fantastical element to an awful mundane parody of reality.

>How do you even justify this? Even assuming the former isn't conquered by the latter, wouldn't the savages eventually figure out that indoor plumbing is preferable to shitting in a hole and wiping your ass with leaves that may or may not give you an infection you can't treat because there are no doctors?

Because it actually happened in nearly all of human history and with good reason. I just read a book about it called "The Art of Not Being Governed" so allow me to explain.

We are taught to think of the history of humanity in terms of the history of civilizations, while completely ignoring all the people who lived in the periphery outside these civilizations or in the semi-ruled buffer between stateless regions and states, when those people were in fact the vast majority of people who have ever lived. Even as late as a thousand years ago, about half of the total human population either lived outside the rule of states at all or in regions where they didn't really know who was ruling them These stateless peoples did not exist independently from civilization: There was a constant exchange of goods and constant migration between civilized and non-civilized societies, both being co-dependent on one another.

The reason why so many people preferred to avoid civilization for so long is because up until the very recent history civilization fucking sucked. You think there was indoor plumbing in ancient Greece? Fuck no, the streets were covered in piss and shit and garbage. You think tribal people had "no doctors"? They had medicine about as developed as their civilized neighbors, but they were lucky to live in a dispersed bands or small peasant communities where diseases have difficulty spreading, whereas crowded cities with little proper hygiene are perfect for the spread of viral disease and parasites. Not to mention the massive famines every time a harvest went bad.

Civilization only got good in the last ~200 years or so.

>>53749591
Exactly like communism.

>>53749915
>Arisotcracy seizing shit is communist
More like feudalism or capitalism.

Magic that can be studied, explained and repeated is not inherently bad. Fuck everyone who says otherwise with a rusty rake.
>But muh mystic wonder
You can still have some of that in a world where typically magical concepts and ideas are capable of being understood and even automated to some degree. This idea that magic can only be good if its vaguely defined and super rare is a damned pox and everyone who spreads it is a cancer. You narrow minded bastards.

>>53749886
>TLDR

>ACCCkTUALLY!
>Most people weren't city folk.
>Most people were rural agriculturalists!
>Did I blow your mind?!

>>53750573
I believe they are both rights, my cum gargling anon.

In a game, like D&D, it's kinda expected for magic spells to be "X always does Y", because otherwise people would constantly get mad that their shit spells fumble.

But the argument that doing exactly that destroys the wonder of the world is literally true. Magic was suppose to be mysterious. Was suppose to go "woah" in your head as a mage reveals its memetical secrets. D&D destroys that.

Both arguments are fine. One works better in games, the other one in literature.

File: fuckingdegenerate.jpg (88KB, 402x402px) Image search: [Google]

88KB, 402x402px

>>53749840
I've never watched that movie, but having real reasons for things happening in your setting doesn't mean you have to explain everything to your players in minute detail.

Which is exactly what I said in the post you quoted, so thank you for proving why Mysticfags are cancerous.

>>53740371
>You absolutely can and SHOULD have magic seeming impenetrable to the scientific lens.
>SHOULD
Gotta disagree with this. Why can't it be the case that wizards are studying magic in a scientific fashion, but have only reached the level of scientific understanding correlating to, say, the Renaissance?

>>53749090
Magic doesn't exist, yet we're discussing the potential existence of magic.

If magic led to those same assumptions, but created an environment in which they weren't flawed, then what would make it not a science?

>>53737081
nigga you think that shit just grows on trees? they have no viable infrastructure to support that kind of construction