KhorasForum

What you're describing sounds a lot like Rogue-like gameplay elements, with things like perma-death and serious consequences for even minor failures. That would be pretty fun, I think, to experience, since most D&D-type fantasy RPGs are basically just power fantasies writ large. I especially like the idea that players would be more concerned with avoiding injury and surviving battle than with doing damage and winning encounters, because that's how real combat in the real world works, especially in the past when melee weapons were the primary armament of most soldiers, and getting injured, even slightly, in combat could be lethal even if you walked away from the field of battle victorious.

It's especially annoying to me that PCs will generally, in very little time, have more HP than a freaking horse, as Dave once commented. If the excitement of combat in RPGs is the perceived danger combined with the feeling of triumph when, against apparently overwhelming odds, you succeed, then how much more exciting if death is that much more to be feared, and tactical prowess, good planning, and mastery of one's weapons and abilities are that much more crucial to one's success?

And it's funny, then, because you best believe that I fought that Lust Demon and saved the kid. I take my hero complex seriously. XD;

Finally, some real payback. I like it.

One question, though. What ever happened to Nassan? Did he leave/die, or did you just neglect to include him in the list of current party NPCs?

Tolkien is certainly not the worst example of the idea of a degrading world, though his passion was especially large for Germanic mythology (he was the world's foremost scholar of Beowulf during his lifetime, and he was familiar with the Ring of the Nibelung and other Germanic myths), though that's not to say that he was unfamiliar with or uninterested in Greco-Roman mythology, or even later Medieval Christian stories.

And that's really a pretty great point you made regarding the teleology underpinning Modernism being reflected in ideas like tech trees in game design.

One thing I do want to say is that, while you're certainly right that anti-moral behavior would probably qualify as evil in the D&D sense, amoral actors can just as easily do "evil" things. I think a good comparison here would be Hannah Arendt's idea of the banality of evil. Writing about the trial of Adolf Eichmann, Hannah Arendt put forward this idea that, while we usually think of evil as being the work of "monsters", quite often if we actually look at the people who do evil things, their evil is more of a sort of thoughtless disregard of the considerations necessary for morality than an outright denunciation of goodness. So in that sense, perhaps anti-moral behavior might be similar to what we think of as monstrous evil, while amoral actors, being unconcerned with morality in general, could act in both "good" and "bad" ways, because their behavior isn't tethered to any moral system, and we might further conjecture that they might be more prone to acts of "banal evil".

As to your conclusion regarding the different interactions, between the person, the person as player, and the character, I think that's a really good way to look at it.

Addenda:

1) The video game you were playing wouldn't happen to have been Dragon Age: Origins, would it?

2) If you search YouTube, there are some good videos on the Bronze Age Collapse, though they're in English so I don't know if they'd be ideal for you as a non-native English speaker. The channel Extra Credits has a recent series of videos in their "Extra History" series about the Bronze Age Collapse that aren't too difficult to watch, with lots of fun animations, or, if you're up for something a bit more dry, I can link you to a YouTube video of a lecture on the topic by a professor.

If nothing else, you can always go to Wikipedia and fall down a rabbit hole.

Lol. Unfortunately, I'd say we're far closer to a global systems collapse than we'd like to admit.

I really like your comment about fantasy worlds being set, typically, in a somehow degraded world. It fits in really well with the Greek conception of Ages, starting with a Golden Age, and then moving through Silver, etc. to the present, decayed world of everyday humanity. And tied up with that, I think you might find it interesting to read a bit about the Bronze Age Collapse and the ensuing Pan-Mediterranean Dark Age. We often refer to the Early (or Low) Middle Ages as the Dark Ages, but the Early Middle Ages were actually far less awful than we typically imagine, and Europe, while not attaining the level of development of the Muslim world and the Far East, was actually quite stable and functional by the end of the High Middle Ages, until the Black Death swept through and killed everybody, destabilizing and depopulating the continent. The Dark Age that succeeded the Bronze Age Collapse was the most significant setback in human history, and it heavily affected the myths and legends of the later Mediterranean cultures.

Given your idea of "standing on the shoulders of giants", especially with the great magic of the past (a great thought, btw. I'm already beginning to feel some interesting ideas forming regarding my views on typical medieval fantasy), I think that would be an excellent point of reference for you.

As to the apparent barbarism of past cultures, or raiders like the Vikings, a few things to remember are that much of these peoples' comfort with what to us is horrendous brutality comes from the very different circumstances of their lives. For one thing, there were no slaughterhouses, so people grew up from a very young age raising and butchering their own livestock, and their diets were poor enough that eating less meat often wasn't a viable option, so gore and death were much less foreign and shocking to them. In addition, injury and disease tended to have much more severe consequences, so personal familiarity with even human death was much, much more common, and these people were forced by necessity to find a way to accommodate that psychologically, meaning that suffering and death were much more normalized and, frankly, unavoidable than they are today, with all of our technological advancements in things like agriculture, industry, and medicine.

Add to that the far more decentralized and unstable nature of the political institutions of the day, and warrior cultures focused on honor, courage, and the attainment of personal glory were far more important to the survival and protection of the common man, and it was far more likely that an individual person would need to be able to defend themselves, even if they weren't called to use that skill in their lifetimes. Many pagan religions included war gods, such as Athena and Mars, further glorifying the role of conflict in society, though Ares was a notably unpopular figure with the Greeks, since he was associated not so much with war in the sense of strategy and victory as he was with war in the sense of carnage, butchery, and terror. Plus, some pagan religions, such as that of the Germanic peoples (including the Norse), included some degree of human sacrifice, making the killing of humans for various reasons far less morally problematic than it is for us, with our largely Judeo-Christian values (they might have taken on a more secular flavor of late, but Western culture's value system is intrinsically Christian at heart, with some Greek, Roman, and Germanic values thrown in).

One word of caution, though: despite what we tend to think of earlier cultures, the idea that life was cheap isn't entirely accurate. People still mourned their losses just as we do, even if they were used to a far higher proportion of suffering and violence relative to our "normal". But they also weren't that different from us, it's just that their thresholds were different. Remember that public hangings were a fixture of American culture, at least in the West, right up until the turn of the 20th Century, and lynchings and hangings were common in various culturally Western regions until much, much more recently. And these are very much aspects of Western culture. The Japanese in WWII had very, VERY different views on what was acceptable behavior, and the Allies' imposition of war crime trials in some ways represented an imposition of Western values over a "backwards" society.

I guess the point I'm making is, I don't blame anyone for not wanting to play a psychopathic butcher, or wanting to, for instance, throw infants and toddlers in the air and try to catch them on their spear-points after raiding a village like historical Vikings sometimes did, but I do think that those sorts of decisions are made more sensible and easier to grapple with when you have a strong sense of historical context, and by that I don't mean the sort of "medieval Europe was horrible and cruel" or "ancient people were mindlessly violent" kinds of revisionist ideas of "context".

Having said all of that, I agree with Dave; I have a very humanistic, Judeo-Christian value system influenced by ideas from ethics, psychology, and a lot of other sources, and I just plain prefer to play "Neutral Good" sorts of hero-complex type characters, and that's what most of my characters tend to be: paladins, in the sense of being shining examples of goodness, rather than the actual class (I've never been too fond of the Paladin class, actually).

Yeah, that's how I'd do it, myself. Using actual processes that really function the way our world's processes function just leads to a fuller and more believable world, to my mind. It's kind of like the old adage about good science fiction starting with just one or two changes to the real world, and then following those to their natural conclusion, except you're starting from a much, much earlier point in history.

I do think, at least for me, that's a really enjoyable way to do it, too. I like the science surrounding things like plate tectonics and climatology, so getting to design a planet I can visualize on a deeper level would be cool to me. Of course, my real interests lie in history and other humanities subjects, so the whole thing just gets more fun once the sentient creatures show up, but still, the physical aspects would be a nice addition to the experience.

Tanis here, coming to you from everyone's favorite contemporary dystopia, the US. I'm really happy you brought this up, because it is a really tough topic, and it's also a theoretically relevant concept for world-building and RPGs that I think is too often ignored, especially because contemporary culture and values are so intrinsically at odds with the sorts of world we might want to create.

Obviously, not everyone who plays D&D or other tabletop games is going to hold the most en vogue set of values, but in general, tabletop players are in my experience more socially conscious than the average person, and thus it tends to be uncomfortable for them to RP as characters with fundamentally un-modern values and mores. However, I think that, as you've kind of suggested, especially in medieval fantasy settings, the base value systems should be quite different from our modern ones, and often those differences will result in clashes between the values of the setting and our own values as players.

I think that were I to try and run a more realistic campaign, I would start off by letting my players know where my mind is at with the in-game value system, what I'm trying to achieve, and why I think it would be interesting to explore. Then I would see if they were likewise interested in those ideas, and whether they'd be willing to try to play characters with different basic values, with the goal being to consciously set aside our real-world views in order to play in accordance with the views of the setting.

If done in this way, everyone gets the option to opt out if they don't think they'd find that kind of experience interesting or enjoyable, and you can get everyone thinking along the same lines as you on the topic, so that there's less squeamishness when something unpleasant happens. I also think that it's fine to have characters who question that value system, especially if their questioning of those values represents something different from our contemporary modernist worldviews. Plenty of people in the past thought that literally beating your wife was horrendous, even if they didn't think that women had the same social standing and rights as men, and that they were meant to be subservient to their husbands. If people didn't have views on the subject, no one would have ever thought enough about the topic for people to disagree and begin to change the values of their society. So having people who question things like social roles, hierarchical social institutions, etc. might work great, if you can get players doing that questioning in a clever and inventive way, not directly informed by humanistic beliefs about things like natural rights, and suchlike.

A good role model might be older pulp fantasy stories, like Conan the Barbarian. The characters in these stories don't function with the sort of morality we hold today. Conan is an amoral figure in many ways, viewed from our perspective. He represents archetypes like those of the heroes of the ancient Greeks and Romans, the Norse, and other pre-modern warrior cultures, as well as things like the Byronic hero, far more than he does the sort of Carolingian Paladin/Knight of the Round Table sort of ideal that we tend to play with so much these days. He's the scion of a subjugated tribe who rises to become a king and conquering general through his wits, skill-at-arms, and strength of will, and he believed that glory and fame were the keys to greatness, as well as morally good in and of themselves. He frequently defeated opponents that we would consider evil, and that he thought were worth stopping, but the goal is never purely to "do the right thing."

Of course, all of that said, the best way, I think, for this to work is to have a group whose knowledge of pre-modern culture is deeper than the sorts of stereotypes that we as modern people typically have about older paradigms, and the best results will probably come when the players aren't playing barbaric brutes, but nuanced, human characters who merely have different values than we ourselves do. Regardless, it's certainly a topic that I think is interesting and valuable to consider when dealing with RPGs not set in societal conditions similar to our own. If you want to deal with "liberal" values which are held up while being actively corroded by the actually dominant hyper-capitalist paradigms of modern society, then cyberpunk is a much better setting, in my opinion.

Well, Drul, at the end of the day, the goal is great stories. 

That certainly sounds like a fascinating campaign. If you end up running it, I'd be interested in hearing how it goes.

It was either that or a comment about towels.

And not even so much as a, "So long, and thanks for all the fish!"?

Hell of a lot of good they were. XD

Thanks for the wonderful and in-depth reply, Dave!

Well, the short answer is that I don't really think it's an either/or sort of question.

I don't see any reason why you couldn't imagine a scenario like you're talking about, though I would argue that something similar to how science fiction tends to work might be a good guide for application and development of such a concept, i.e. that you start with just a few simple changes to the existing world, then try to remain consistent with the consequences of those axioms, as well as with all the unchanged rules of the setting.

I think it depends on how ubiquitous you want powerful magic to be, and what limitations you think magic would have to have to make sense in the world, and ideally not completely break it by being overpowered.

But it's certainly not something I couldn't imagine you justifying.

Thanks! I'll be looking forward to your full response.

And that's absolutely the example I had in mind. I think you're right that it's one of the best and clearest examples of what full-on Khorasian warfare would look like.

Hmm...

Well, a few thoughts in response to your question, Drul:

First off, pre-modern warfare had certain typical characteristics. For one thing, battles and wars, in general, were much smaller and more like what we would think of as skirmishes, as alluded to above. And, as you suppose, battles were fought at much shorter range. Even with things like bows and slings, which have quite good range, they were typically used at much shorter ranges than we imagine, because of the need for projectiles to retain sufficient energy to penetrate even light padding (btw, padded clothing is a surprisingly effective and historically ubiquitous form of armor, and it's a pity we don't see more of it in fantasy settings, since it was kind of the default armor for poorer/lighter soldiers for thousands of years). There's very, VERY little historical evidence for the sort of arrow volleys we see in movies, and English longbowmen, a la the Agincourt campaign, were actually trained to fire at ranges closer to 30-70 yards, just to have a chance of penetrating plate armor.

So your assumption that magic would make a difference isn't unreasonable. But then again, it seems to me that, despite the siege-engine power of certain spells, there are still considerations needed about aiming at moving targets and similar things. There's more than one reason archers fired their arrows at such short ranges, after all. If you don't hit anything, it doesn't matter how much energy your arrow has.

There's also the consideration of siege engines themselves. Much like mages, siege engines would probably be somewhat rarer than we imagine. Even in the classical era, where siege engines like ballistae and torsion catapults were reasonably common, they were still rare enough and difficult enough to build, maintain, and deploy, as well as vulnerable enough if attacked, that they were largely used the same way that medieval cannon artillery was: you saved them for cracking the toughest nuts, like fortified cities and castles, and didn't use them regularly for anti-personnel purposes. They were of enormous strategic value, but had very little tactical usage, and the men associated with their employ were usually a small handful of skilled specialists who, like the machines they operated, were typically employed rather conservatively, so as not to risk their unnecessary loss at an inopportune moment.

Probably, mages would be similar in this regard. They would certainly be of greater tactical value, and be more widely employed, but real magical skill is still, even in the most magically gifted realms, rare enough that armies aren't going to be comprised of battlemage regulars, but of something more like a magical corps, with a few units which can be fielded in battle, and some auxiliary and support forces added in. Not, I should think, all that unlike Duthelm's Black Sorcerors, a paramilitary organization which participates in combat, but is primarily involved in support roles when it goes into battle. Duthelm would suffer a huge strategic blow if the Black Sorcerors were ever to lose a significant portion of their members in one attack.

And additionally, how close would a mage have to be in real life to ensure that their fireball spell, or whatever, didn't miss its target completely, expending valuable energy for no tactical advantage? Could they really function like snipers, with near-instantaneous effect at anything less than extreme ranges, as long as they were focused on an artillery-like role? Or would they have to rely more on weaker pinpoint attacks like magic missiles to have much anti-personnel effect at range?

Now, having said that, I do think there are aspects of fantasy combat that would make rapid, blitzkrieg-style attacks more effective than they would have been in medieval or classical times, such as the ability to teleport a force somewhere, or flying mounts/Kalimuran airships/levitation, etc., but these would be relegated to small-scale tactical uses in the context of generally more medieval- and Renaissance-style land and naval battles, rather than even Napoleonic-style modern combat, with its focus on battlefield artillery, or late-19th and 20th Century combat, with its mechanized forces and enormous firepower.

Now, as for visibility, well, even today it's extremely useful to be able to visually distinguish friend from foe, as well as being able to interpret command structure, it's just that with modern weapons, as you said, it's much more dangerous to do so with vibrant colors and clear insignia. But this is, at least in theory, a setting which is heavily focused on the sort of single and small-unit combat of armored men-at-arms or high-medieval and Renaissance mercenary companies, plus, as you said, having a party of PCs be a small, tight-knit, and elite unit makes more sense from a mechanical standpoint. Because of that, I think, perhaps, the best option would be to take hints both from pre-modern combat and contemporary special forces units, without trying to focus TOO much on either conception, taking what works well for the actual unit in question.

And, finally, at the end of the day, it's a game. If the PCs want to be black bag assassins a la SEAL Team Six (which isn't, btw, part of the Navy SEALs at all, it's just a cover name for a completely unaffiliated black ops hit squad) then have at it. If they want to be a medieval mercenary company focused on winning as much loot as possible, without much in the way of modern tactical considerations, then that's fine too. Either way, if the players are having fun, and the story that's emerging is satisfying and exciting, then you've done your job.

Good question, Drul. I'd be interested to hear the answers to those questions myself.