Quote from: Cole;461690If you are looking mostly at how a society arrived at a certain form of rule, I think the best approach is to take a particular example and look at its history and make it fantastical. So if I have one country occupied by another, I might take Cordoba as my starting point and draw on say Moorish Spain by Fletcher. When it references another society being interacted with, pick a likely candidate on your map to supply that interaction and play "what if."

That is an excellent suggestion and something I started doing this morning.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;461650Harnmanor, for example, is a materialist text. It is concerned with the manor as economic unit and only covers the relationships of people in the manor's community as necessary to accurately track the flow of money through it. I actually really like Harnmanor for totally deromanticising the manor and village, but if you think that it does not have a political viewpoint of the manor (and one strongly influenced by Marx and the other economic historians of the 19th century for that matter), you would be incorrect.

Just to add, the latest edition does have a section devoted to generating the individual household along with a yearly generation of events for each household. Many of these events require decisions on the part of the PCs to resolve.

Quote from: estar;461693Just to add, the latest edition does have a section devoted to generating the individual household along with a yearly generation of events for each household. Many of these events require decisions on the part of the PCs to resolve.

Just to add, Harnmanor is awesome.



Some more suggestions for BB:

De Administrando Imperio by Constantine Porphyrogenitus
The Discourses by Niccolo Machiavelli
The Athenian Constitution by Aristotle

The constitution of the Athenians is a treatise of the evolution of the Athenian city-state over time. It's more specific than the Politics, and a little easier to draw inspiration from as a result. The Discourses is Machiavelli's actual politics, and is an interesting discussion of how realpolitik for republics works. De Administrando Imperio is a one-of-a-kind book by a Byzantine emperor for his son about how to run the empire, and is filled with interesting insights into his concerns and considerations.

Imperial China 900-1800 by F.W. Mote
Military Culture in Imperial China edited by Nicola Di Cosmo
Sanctioned Violence in Early Chinese Culture by Mark Lewis

Full disclosure, I haven't read Sanctioned Violence in..., but it's on my list of books to get. It's about the formation of the early Chinese state and the evolution of the rationalisation of violence against domestic and external enemies. Military Culture in... is a collection of articles about how the army worked at various points in Chinese history. Imperial China is a giant one-volume survey of the post-Tang to post-Ming Chinese state, and does an excellent job dealing not just with China proper, but with the various frontier states surrounding it. I cannot recommend it highly enough if you ever want to portray a culture derivative of China in a game.

For Pseudo, Community College apparently never ended...

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I found the following (plus their ebooks and the links off to related sites) to be very handy when settling into a feudal based society with a healthy dose of manorialism thrown in: http://www.prismnet.com/~sjohn/demog.htm

Quote from: RPGPundit;461792For Pseudo, Community College apparently never ended...

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... says a flake teaching mumbo jumbo.

Are you done threadcrapping yet?

Quote from: loseth;461602I have a copy annotated by Napoleon

I'm getting a visual of the bad guy's library from The Ninth Gate. I guess some evenings you say what the hell, enter the security code and take it out to muse over a bottle of cognac frapin cuvee 1888?

Quote from: The_Shadow;461876I'm getting a visual of the bad guy's library from The Ninth Gate. I guess some evenings you say what the hell, enter the security code and take it out to muse over a bottle of cognac frapin cuvee 1888?

Well, generally a Stella 2011. But it's still good reading.

It's a shame they don't print the Nappy-annotated version in English, cause it's seriously cool reading one of the world's greatest evil political geniuses instructing you on how to take over the world, while having little footnotes written by one of the world's greatest evil military geniuses about his personal experience of putting the instructions into practice.

Quote from: loseth;461916It's a shame they don't print the Nappy-annotated version in English, cause it's seriously cool reading one of the world's greatest evil political geniuses instructing you on how to take over the world, while having little footnotes written by one of the world's greatest evil military geniuses about his personal experience of putting the instructions into practice.

I've got a Portuguese edition of the Napoleon-annotated version, and it's not particularly enlightening (more along the lines of "yeah, that's true" or "I did this once for the lulz, hurr durr"), but a fun read nonetheless.

Quote from: The Butcher;461933I've got a Portuguese edition of the Napoleon-annotated version, and it's not particularly enlightening (more along the lines of "yeah, that's true" or "I did this once for the lulz, hurr durr"), but a fun read nonetheless.

Yeah, I agree. I was underwhelmed at Napoleon's commentary; it's just cool that it's him!

"Constructing Social Theories" by Arthur L. Stinchcombe.

There is no "way medieval cultures are constructed".  Because you have to remember that the medieval culture is essentially a long-term post-apocalyptic culture.   It is the survivors of the Roman Empire, trying to recreate some semblance of a political hierarchy, in a collapsed civilization.  

So basically, here's the first and only thing you really need to know about creating a medieval society: A medieval society would not exist unless there is first a Roman Empire to collapse, for that medieval society to be eking out an existence in the ruins of.

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Quote from: RPGPundit;462241There is no "way medieval cultures are constructed".  Because you have to remember that the medieval culture is essentially a long-term post-apocalyptic culture.   It is the survivors of the Roman Empire, trying to recreate some semblance of a political hierarchy, in a collapsed civilization.  

For the couple of centuries post-Rome, perhaps, but once you reach about 1000AD then the societies are based on their own laws and hierarchies, with virtually no references to Rome, except when trying to justify something.

Quote from: RPGPundit;462241So basically, here's the first and only thing you really need to know about creating a medieval society: A medieval society would not exist unless there is first a Roman Empire to collapse, for that medieval society to be eking out an existence in the ruins of.

Middle or High medieval societies have virtually no connection to the Roman Empire. Sure, Roman Catholicism is important and based on Rome, and the Holy Roman Empire claims it is a successor, but they are so far removed from the Roman Empire that they can't really be seen as being built on Rome. Certainly feudalism is a concept that is not dependent on Rome, or it's fall, and feudalism drove much of medieval society.

A few things fed the development of (early) medieval society while the Roman Empire was still around rather than being raked out of the ashes:

Status differences
in 212 all free men in the Empire were granted citizenship (not by Marcus Aurelius as played by Alec Guinness in an act of political wonderfulness). The effect was to remove the status distinction between citizen and non-citizen and instead entrench one that had been brewing for a century already between 'honestiores' and 'humiliores' (ie "the better sort" and "the more humble folk". The old legal privileges (including how roughly you can be treated and what sort of execution you are entitled to) graft to these statuses which are basically between rich and poor. This two-tier system sits behind the medieval distinctions of nobles and commoners.

Christianity, or more particularly, the power - including significant wealth - of the church. Nuff said - but well under way before the collapse.

Town and country.
The aristocracy move their power base to the countryside and out of the cities, which become increasingly irrelevant except as market and religious centres. Its these country seats that get commandeered by barbarians and form the basis of aristocracy, while towns pursue a separate development, no longer the "urbs" or "asty" with its connected territory.

There are loads more - including the idea of peasantry tied to specific lands (the colonate) and the substitution of tithes and service for state taxation. The big new invention of the post-Roman era is primogeniture, which is a game-changer. Slavery never went away - but once you subject the peasantry to serfdom you don't need it, so it just withered. All these things are interesting to think about when world building (IMHO).

In short, 'classical' Rome collapsed and something new came out way before Rome actually collapsed. Not to say it wasn't traumatic when it happened.

Quote from: soltakss;462412For the couple of centuries post-Rome, perhaps, but once you reach about 1000AD then the societies are based on their own laws and hierarchies, with virtually no references to Rome, except when trying to justify something.

Middle or High medieval societies have virtually no connection to the Roman Empire. Sure, Roman Catholicism is important and based on Rome, and the Holy Roman Empire claims it is a successor, but they are so far removed from the Roman Empire that they can't really be seen as being built on Rome. Certainly feudalism is a concept that is not dependent on Rome, or it's fall, and feudalism drove much of medieval society.

But its not a structure or system that would have emerged without the fall of Rome.  Essentially, I would argue that Europe is basically a post-apocalyptic society from the 5th century until about the 15th.  Only then does the concept of nations start to emerge, which is where there's a real shift from the essentially broken society that was "living in the rubble" of Rome.

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