This is something that SHARK's thread about Bards got me thinking about.

One of the quirks of the D&D class system is that the classes occupy a middle ground between a general skillset and a defined profession. This is definitely a strength of the game, as it allows for some versatility of character concepts, within a pretty limited set of options. But it isn't applied evenly across the classes. The fighter, for example, is a very generalized class, and can fit anything from a bandit to a king. The cleric and the paladin on the other hand, presume membership in some kind of established religion. The monk and the druid take this a step further,  presuming membership in either a monastery or a very specific religious group. Even the ranger is often written with the assumption that it is a set profession, with a hierarchy and an assumed role in society. You can write your way around this, of course, but I think it's fair to say that the way the classes have been written over the years makes this kind of assumption. A major piece of evidence I would cite would be class languages like thieves cant or druidic. You wouldn't get secret languages without there being some kind of at least loosely organized group.

The point of this post, though, is the idea that if the classes bring assumed social roles with them, those roles imply differing levels of status, and that's potentially one of the major benefits of playing certain classes. A cleric might be anything from a mendicant friar to a bishop, but you'd think if they're a priest of a respected religion, they'd get a certain level of courtesy regardless of their rank. If a paladin is a member of a prestigious knightly order, you would expect certain social doors to be open to them just on the basis of their class. If bards are going to be respected lorekeepers and lawgivers, they might even outrank paladins under the right circumstances. Contrariwise, thieves should be invested in hiding their class whenever they have to engage with respectable society. Wizards are a bit of a weird case, in that some settings place them right at the top of the pile, as respected academic elites, and some settings make them mistrusted outsiders.

I know some games like Lion & Dragon make this explicit, and some games have separate social class mechanics. But for those of you running just regular D&D (whatever edition), how much is this a feature of your campaigns? Do you run it so that each class has an assumed role in society, or do you not want to hand out social status to a player right at character creation?

This is an interesting and important topic!

The default social status I use is Adventurer, which is somewhere around free peasant and common soldier. Why is a paladin wandering around with a rogue or cleric of another god? Because the party are outcasts and misfits. There are reasons the characters do not enjoy their presumed social status. In actual medieval times, everyone had a home and wanderers were viewed with suspicion and hostility.

Games that directly reference social class like Lion and Dragon and Aquelarre add a whole dimension of game play that bog standard D&D cannot approximate without serious home brewing. It can be quite interesting and rewarding. I've had players in Aquelarre solve problems by using their social status, through blackmail based on status, etc. It really is worth exploring these rules and borrowing from them if not actually playing those games.

Social status embedded in class is probably one of the things I like about D&D the least.  It's right there with culture embedded in race.  However, the main thing I don't like about it is that it interferes with the way I like to modify things.  There's basically two approaches with class-based games (and subtle variants of those two):

A. Class as mechanics and archetype and social status all tight.  When you want to modify it, you just make another class.

B. Class as mechanic, archetype and social status something you either layer on top with setting/roleplaying or provide from another mechanic.  The class tends to not get modified much, but the archetypes and social status float more freely with the setting.

There's nothing inherently right or wrong with either approach, but each one has pros and cons, both in who uses them and what they do with it.  If, for example, you are the kind of person who likes to build "your setting" and then use it for decades with multiple campaigns, the first approach is really helpful. Classes become ways to easily express the things that are settled in that setting.  I'm on the other extreme.  I sometimes reuse settings, but the campaign comes first.  This means that archetypes are very much not settled in my games, only within campaigns in the same setting.  So for me, it is much more useful to have the class as strict mechanics, nailed to the floor, and thus freeing the archetype to move.

In my own, kind of like D&D game, I have social status as an explicit thing, generated randomly, and largely separate from class and other mechanical adventuring widgets.  Yep, it's a bit less approachable than D&D in that respect.  On the other hand, your "wizard" could have started anywhere from a destitute street orphan to the first child of minor nobility.

Quote from: rytrasmi on December 30, 2022, 01:00:08 PM
The default social status I use is Adventurer, which is somewhere around free peasant and common soldier. Why is a paladin wandering around with a rogue or cleric of another god? Because the party are outcasts and misfits. There are reasons the characters do not enjoy their presumed social status. In actual medieval times, everyone had a home and wanderers were viewed with suspicion and hostility.

Interesting.

I think the point about medieval times is missing a big piece. Most communities were suspicious of outsiders who come in and settle in their area looking for a profit. I'd call these "profiteers" rather than the ambiguous term "adventurer". However, many medieval communities were very welcoming of travelers of known purpose, and had a code of hospitality for welcoming them. People like bards, pilgrims, priests, merchants, tinkers, and others were welcomed and asked for news or trade from their travels.

I've rarely had PCs as homeless profiteers. In most of my campaigns, they're usually travelers who have a respected social class in their original homes.

Sometimes, I have all PCs in the party have some special social status. In my current campaign, they are all working for an Ancestor-King of the Solar Empire -- i.e. a dead emperor who now engages in more spiritual pursuits. (In Incan culture, the emperors were all immortal, but when their body passed on their palace became a tomb and they ceased to actively rule. But they still were respected and had servants within their former palace.) So they have a respected spiritual status, but outside of the usual hierarchies of church or state. They can't command everyone, but are treated with great respect.

In my previous campaign, all the PCs were on a common mission to find and restore a great lost temple. So they were again respected for their common mission, but they weren't part of any army or hierarchy. The one before that was an apocalyptic one, so social statuses had little meaning since civilization had crumbled and everyone was just trying to survive.

Quote from: jhkim on December 30, 2022, 03:32:54 PM

Quote from: rytrasmi on December 30, 2022, 01:00:08 PM
The default social status I use is Adventurer, which is somewhere around free peasant and common soldier. Why is a paladin wandering around with a rogue or cleric of another god? Because the party are outcasts and misfits. There are reasons the characters do not enjoy their presumed social status. In actual medieval times, everyone had a home and wanderers were viewed with suspicion and hostility.

Interesting.

I think the point about medieval times is missing a big piece. Most communities were suspicious of outsiders who come in and settle in their area looking for a profit. I'd call these "profiteers" rather than the ambiguous term "adventurer". However, many medieval communities were very welcoming of travelers of known purpose, and had a code of hospitality for welcoming them. People like bards, pilgrims, priests, merchants, tinkers, and others were welcomed and asked for news or trade from their travels.

I've rarely had PCs as homeless profiteers. In most of my campaigns, they're usually travelers who have a respected social class in their original homes.

Sometimes, I have all PCs in the party have some special social status. In my current campaign, they are all working for an Ancestor-King of the Solar Empire -- i.e. a dead emperor who now engages in more spiritual pursuits. (In Incan culture, the emperors were all immortal, but when their body passed on their palace became a tomb and they ceased to actively rule. But they still were respected and had servants within their former palace.) So they have a respected spiritual status, but outside of the usual hierarchies of church or state. They can't command everyone, but are treated with great respect.

In my previous campaign, all the PCs were on a common mission to find and restore a great lost temple. So they were again respected for their common mission, but they weren't part of any army or hierarchy. The one before that was an apocalyptic one, so social statuses had little meaning since civilization had crumbled and everyone was just trying to survive.

"Profiteer" works. Adventurer is just what I call them. The NPCs might know them as travelers, pilgrims, bandits, mercenaries, robbers, whatever. The players decide through action.

I agree though, someone like a traveling priest will, at least initially and without other factors, be accorded high status. However, if his companions are different sorts or his behavior is not befitting his class, the locals will begin to wonder.

Status isn't fixed either. A group of merchants who behave like thugs are going to lose status. Your examples are interesting. I imagine your servants of the Ancestor-King would have to behave in the expected manner lest they lose status. Of course, there is probably a baseline that they could not go below (or a ceiling they could not exceed) without unusual circumstances.

Quote from: ForgottenF on December 30, 2022, 12:36:03 PM
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I know some games like Lion & Dragon make this explicit, and some games have separate social class mechanics. But for those of you running just regular D&D (whatever edition), how much is this a feature of your campaigns? Do you run it so that each class has an assumed role in society, or do you not want to hand out social status to a player right at character creation?

In my experience unless you make it explicit, and have the PC's social class matter in the game world, the players will ignore it.

Standard D&D from Oe to 5e re-enforces this behavior.

A guy is a king not because of some noble birthright class division nonsense, but because he is rich and has an army. Period.

This is due to the early assumptions of transitioning into domain play, which in later editions is re-enforced by the HP zero to superhero progression at high levels. You're literally able to fight gods - no king is better than you...

This is why for me D&D is bad at emulating other fantasy genre's. D&D does D&D fantasy. Too many baked in gaming assumptions in its rules set to do anything else.

My system divides what D&D has as classes into a background (noncombat) and class (combat only). Backgrounds have implied social status (arcanist, aristocrat, artisan, barbarian, commoner, entertainer, military, outlaw, religious, and traveler), but classes do not (fighter, mastermind, mechanist, mystic, theurge, and wizard).

This allows for tailoring parties to particular social standings while still having a wide array of options both in the background (each background has enough options that 3-4 players could share a background even into high levels and have no overlap in traits gained from the background) and in the class options (a party of five fighters could each have completely different mechanical abilities and combat roles to differentiate themselves).

So a low social standing game might focus on barbarians, commoners, outlaws and travelers. A game that focuses on the upper tiers could use a mix of aristocrats, military (first generation knight who earned their title through combat... every noble house started somewhere) and religious. Arcanists could probably show up in either.

That said, my setting does have a set of foundational myths/legends called "The First Adventurers" who at the dawn of civilization freed the world from the grip of the Demon Empire. Stories throughout the ages since tell of bands of disparate heroes who banded together like The First Adventurers to face crises that threatened the lands.

Thus, so long as a party's goals are noble, there is a great deal of cultural inertia behind the concept of the adventuring party as a force for civilization that gives heroic parties far more standing than their respective social classes might otherwise indicate.

D&D has an implied frontier setting that is not Medieval Europe but closer to West of the Mississipi during the wagon trains and indian wars with fantasy medieval technology (probably because it was created by folks in Wisconsin). In that wild frontier social status didn't mean a whole lot. The implied social status of where they came from might be something, but out in the frontier Paladins, Barbarians, and Thieves team up all the time.

There's a big point regarding social status that I've observed. A whole lot of GMs tend to have NPCs act superior to the PCs in most circumstances. I think because the GM is seen as in charge (high status) out-of-game, that often bleeds into how GMs play NPCs. This often leads to a dynamic where the PCs disregard NPCs and act over them, rather than respecting in-game social norms -- i.e. act like renegades or outlaws.

On the other hand, if NPCs do defer to PCs, then players are more likely to respect the social norms. (Though sometimes they have renegade habits built up over years of the former sort of play.)

Quote from: rytrasmi on December 30, 2022, 04:21:18 PM
Status isn't fixed either. A group of merchants who behave like thugs are going to lose status. Your examples are interesting. I imagine your servants of the Ancestor-King would have to behave in the expected manner lest they lose status. Of course, there is probably a baseline that they could not go below (or a ceiling they could not exceed) without unusual circumstances.

I agree that how they behave affects how NPCs treat them - but I think of respect as being different than status. Status is mostly fixed, but different people will have different reactions / respect. There might be a duke who is a complete asshole that everyone hates, but everyone agrees that he's still a duke, even if they are trying to oust him.

I think Gygax said adventurers were generally drawn from the gentry because the peasants don't have the social mobility and the nobility are too tied to their roles.

Personally I like looking at the starting wealth roll as indicative of social status.  Though, of course, a thief may have just stollen it five minutes ago.

I should have been more specific in my answer.  The randomly generated social status that I use is the status of the parents--or in the case of wards, orphans, etc., the status of the household.  Since my setting is more early dark ages than late medieval (in most ways), with some fantastical elements thrown in, there is more social mobility than one would expect in a typical medieval world.  Not least because of guy with an armor that carves out another enclave of civilization on the border gets the status that goes with that.

But then I'm more interested in using the social status to tell the players something about the setting they inhabit than I am in using the status to explain why an NPC is giving orders.  Adventurers are useful to some powers that be in the setting.  Thus, an NPC could have almost any reaction with a big difference in status, from snob to polite, rude to friendly, and so on.  Where it will bite is the people that join the PCs as allies and hired help.  Some of them are conscious of status, whether trying to climb by attaching themselves to the PCs or deferring to others, possibly against the wishes of the PCs.

One group has an escaped criminal that just arranged to get "rescued" by the group, and is using the PCs to lie low while she determines what to do next.  She might eventually reform and become a valued companion, or she could run off at the first sign of trouble.  We'll see how it goes.

Greetings!

Yes, ForgottenF, very interesting! As for Character Classes having a real or implied social status, in my own campaigns I tend to have the "Character Classes" largely an Out-of-Character dynamic, not necessarily an In-Game, In-Character title or reality. Social class is essentially divorced from Character Class. Certainly, there are Wizards, Paladins, Cerics, and soon, but their general social status would likely be as "freemen" or simply general Adventurers. Obviously, Adventurers must possess some means so as to have gold, armour, weapons, horses, and more. However, a more specific social class is highlighted by an individual's lineage, personal wealth, accomplishments, honor, glory, and other achievements.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Jaeger on December 30, 2022, 05:31:42 PMThis is why for me D&D is bad at emulating other fantasy genre's. D&D does D&D fantasy. Too many baked in gaming assumptions in its rules set to do anything else.

This is true of the rules, but it's also true of the mindset of Western society. We like to pretend there are no social classes, whereas they're actually quite rigid. So a billionaire will say, "call me Elon," but if you displease him you'll be out that day, and he'll ensure you never work in the field again. We've removed the style of aristocracy while keeping the substance. But in a consumerist society, especially an internet consumerist society, people focus on the style.

Players, then, will find it hard to really wrap their heads around why, for example, it's simply inconceivable that the head of the Templars would sleep with the Queen of France and raise his blade against the Pope's person as in the Netflix show Knightfall. They see that sort  of nonsense and emulate it in game.

So even if we use GURPS or something and put social class solidly into the game's system, most players will simply ignore it. They're wannabe anarchists.

You think you're dealing with just one set of social statuses?  Bruh, do you even worldbuild?

A good sweeping campaign should see the PCs in multiple soceities, with multiple sets of status for them.  For instance, you could drop the PCs into a martial dwarven culture where their habit of going into dark tunnels, killing monsters, and acquiring loot is viewed as laudible, and they are treated as pseudo-aristrocracy, and then move then one mountain over to a mining and religion focused clan, which views their activities as perilously close to grave-robbing and tomb desecration and barely gives them the time of day. 

In general, a world with adventurers as a thing is a world that needs a sort of carve-out exemption from standard class dynamics, because if a 12th-level peasant hero Fighter gets beef from a level 6 Knight and his entire force of dozens of level 2-5 men-at-arms, then that knight and their entire military force is going to get wrecked.

In our world, it's vitally important to coordinate people in medium-to-large numbers and get a percentage of elites on your side, because there is a relatively low difference in capacity between what the average, good, great, and exceptional can do.  In a D&D world, high-level adventurers aren't people, they're forces of nature.  When a high-level rogue can take a week off and assassinate every significant mid-level administrator in a city, especially the ones whose magic and personal abilities make them crucial and irreplacable, then soceity does not get to decide what the rogue's social class is; the rogue gets to decide whether he is happy with his place in the soceity, or if he wants to flip the table and take his luck carving a chunk out of the wreckage.

And then you have the archetypal wizards who fuck off to isolated areas and raise towers with pure magic, who focus on esoteric enchantments and spell research, whom you can't stop or even find unless you have a wizard of your own because they fucking teleport hundreds of miles in a few seconds, and can, e.g., bombard your merchant ships with fireballs and lay waste to your crucial farmlands with unnatural weather and swarms of monsters.  They are literal microstates in and of themselves; they have no real social class, nor do they require it, but soceity at large needs a way to work around them when they do show up or else society stops existing really, really fast.

Of course, you can also get a lot of storytelling milage out of nobles who haven't exactly worked out that making enemies of people whose specialization is trekking through enemy territory undetected, killing a bunch of them including a powerful leader and their immediate hierarchy, looting everything, and making it back out will certainly keep your campaign world interesting and dynamic.

Gygax had a little article on it and according to him the PCs were lower upper class. Enough to have some money to buy gear. But not so so wealthey as there's no need.