Quote from: LiferGamer;1143536...and makes it especially meaningful when you're given the ok to ditch the formality.  It also can communicate what the person values most - the youngest brother of the king in my Folia campaign has a set of titles the length of your forearm, but asks simply to be called Lord High Architect - because he's obsessed with building.  

Meanwhile, his brother's recent proclaiamation opened with: King Thomlen Herdan The First, Being chosen by the Gods themselves as King of Braesenia, Lord Protector of Blaenavon, Guardian of the Civilized Lands, Keeper of the North, Defender of the Faith, Blessed by the Guidance of the Council of Twelve...

On the other hand, there is the conventional wisdom in the corporate world today that the longer your executive  title, the less important you are.

Standards change.

LOL I'm never going to deny that doctors didn't bust their asses getting credentials. They absolutely deserve their titles and if they want to be referred to by those titles - they will absolutely get that from me in a professional manner.

Spoiler

Where I draw the line is when a doctor, or anyone else for that matter, believes their title somehow confers some omniscience about topics outside of their wheelhouse. Doctors trying to debate with me about database systems, enterprise architecture, governance methodology etc. can politely fuck right the hell off. But yet it happens routinely that they think their titles have the same meaning in nearly all circumstances. It's a cognitive defect of many other intellectual disciplines. It just happens to be popular phenomenon among doctors - especially surgeons. This is the same sort of thing as having Noam Chomsky a semiotics professor pontificating about global politics.

It's most fun when PC's get titles and as a GM you get to introduce them into the "club" of privilege. I love testing their moral and ethical compass with their new peers - some are noble, other's aren't. And I like to see how the PC's define themselves in that arena. It's always amusing to see PC's that believe their characters are good, suddenly start reveling in their own corruption. It takes shockingly little effort to begin that dark slide - and it always makes for entertaining gaming.

Quote from: tenbones;1143553LOL I'm never going to deny that doctors didn't bust their asses getting credentials. They absolutely deserve their titles and if they want to be referred to by those titles - they will absolutely get that from me in a professional manner.

Spoiler

Where I draw the line is when a doctor, or anyone else for that matter, believes their title somehow confers some omniscience about topics outside of their wheelhouse. Doctors trying to debate with me about database systems, enterprise architecture, governance methodology etc. can politely fuck right the hell off. But yet it happens routinely that they think their titles have the same meaning in nearly all circumstances. It's a cognitive defect of many other intellectual disciplines. It just happens to be popular phenomenon among doctors - especially surgeons. This is the same sort of thing as having Noam Chomsky a semiotics professor pontificating about global politics.

It's most fun when PC's get titles and as a GM you get to introduce them into the "club" of privilege. I love testing their moral and ethical compass with their new peers - some are noble, other's aren't. And I like to see how the PC's define themselves in that arena. It's always amusing to see PC's that believe their characters are good, suddenly start reveling in their own corruption. It takes shockingly little effort to begin that dark slide - and it always makes for entertaining gaming.

This.

This is why keeping the PCs "pore and starvin' forever" is such a bad idea. You leave so much good gaming out of reach.

Quote from: Ghostmaker;1143462In defense of said doctors, a lot of them busted their asses for those titles. I have absolutely no problem with taking correction if I miss one.

If you default to formal forms, there shouldn't be a problem. It is reasonable if titles are in use to expect them used, including using your adult "Mr." or "Ms." + Family Name. Familiarity in modern American society is negotiated.

A PhD that's insistent on your using their title but expects to call you by your first name is sort of asking for it.

There's a realm in my setting that actually has a horrible reputation precisely because it DOESN'T acknowledge noble titles.

They threw off a tyrant about a dozen years back and the popular leader of the rebellion instituted a Republic where everyone was a citizen and has a vote (an idea he got while spending half a decade in exile living among the egalitarian barbarian tribes, even marrying into one of the tribes and converting to their religion) for their Warden (mayor and Ward representative on the Warden Council which in turn elects the "First Warden" as chief executive from among their number), Sheriff (chief of law enforcement within a town or city) and Justice (judge of the Ward).

Its a small enough realm in absolute terms (35,000 people... which makes it a major realm given the state of the world) and fairly centralized (due to the proximity of monsters there aren't any villages to speak of, instead there are walled towns and small cities the people walk to their fields from at dawn and return to the safety of at dusk) such that each citizen can pretty easily meet their elected officials (each Warden represents about 5000 people, Sheriffs and Justices range from 2000 to 5000 people).

Between throwing off a deeply unpopular monarchy and living for over a century as an "elven protectorate" where they were a discriminated against in their own lands by a foreign power that was a theocratic caste system the people have a deep and abiding disdain for noble titles and go out of their way to NOT use them or show a noble any more deference than they would a regular patron (if they want to throw money around, you're as popular as anyone else throwing money around, but if you think your title entitles you to special service or reduced prices... "Sod off" is the customary reply). That the laws also don't show any special favoritism to nobility (if anything, its probably a net negative if dealing with a local citizen) has also led to a number of, let's call them diplomatic scuffles.

A dozen years on this is a known quantity so you won't see nobles in the stocks for striking a citizen because they insisted he pay the same rate as everyone else for an ale (at least not too often), but its still fresh enough that gossip in neighboring monarchies about the latest "indecency" allowed in the Free Cities is commonplace (Did you hear they allow trolls and malfeans to own land? They allow peasants to have authority over highborns there! I hear their leader is a vile warlock who consorts with the demons of that barbarian religion!) and standard practice is to send stewards or other lesser officials to handle any business there if it simply must be done.

They also tend to give citizens of the Free Cities a harder time when they come to their realms (again often using non-noble intermediaries)... though not TOO hard. The First Warden had the Godzilla-sized wreckage of the Dreadnought Golem he and his allies destroyed while freeing the Free Cities from the tyranny of Malcer the Mad turned into a statue that graces the entrance to the harbor of their capitol. The "statue" doesn't actually have a name, but when you start to see the top of it above horizon from 18 miles away the political message is quite clear.

Quote from: Chris24601;1143561The First Warden had the Godzilla-sized wreckage of the Dreadnought Golem he and his allies destroyed while freeing the Free Cities from the tyranny of Malcer the Mad turned into a statue that graces the entrance to the harbor of their capitol. The "statue" doesn't actually have a name, but when you start to see the top of it above horizon from 18 miles away the political message is quite clear.

"Give me your tired, your poor;
Your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free..."

Tekumel does this in spades. In the Tsolyani language there are, what, 22 versions of the pronoun "you," all carefully graded by relative status, profession, and degree of intimacy. Only the most anal GM would actually require players to know them and use them correctly, but in general, etiquette is very important in all social interactions.

Quote from: RandyB;1143567"Give me your tired, your poor;
Your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free..."

It was deliberately selected as an homage to that Statue, yes.  The unofficial name for it among my playtesters though is "The Statue of Donfukwitus."

That wrecked titanic golem and "Castle Blackspire" being the bottom 24 floors of a once 100 story skyscraper (and home to about HALF* of Blackspire's population of 15,000) are part of establishing the sort of wonders lost in Cataclysm that might yet be found in the multitude of ruins surrounding the tiny realms in the default campaign region.

That said, I'm modelling the Free Cities a lot more on the Republic of Venice than the United States (with the fallen Praetorian Empire being a very strong analogue for the Roman Empire). The top level of the government is basically a parliamentary system with the elected heads of each Ward electing a First Warden from among their number as chief executive (there are also no set terms, members serve until a vote of no confidence is made then new elections are held... none of my realms are meant to be pristine perfect places, they all have problems and the Free Cities main one is they haven't had a successful peaceful transfer of power in their entire 200 year history).

Keeping this on the topic though, another factor playing into the use of titles in my setting is simply the relative newness of the realms. There was a truly civilization ending cataclysm (as in the global population went from about 8 billion to around 8 million in the span of a year and has had to rebuild from there) just about 200 years ago and so the oldest realms are only about that old.

It's long enough that some realms with real advantages and strongmen willing to seize them have had established aristocracies for seven to eight human generations, but NOT long enough for the populations to have reached the need for many layers of nobility to manage a realm (we're talking Europe AD 600 relative to the collapse of Rome levels of aristocratic stratification).

For example, I used a population growth of 1% (due to ongoing monster predation and general nastiness) so a realm that started with 4000 initial survivors might have 30,000 people after 200 years. That's maybe 150 knight's fees and, at best, one layer of nobility between those knights and the monarch. So even in an established kingdom you're probably looking at King, Lord and Knight as the only actual noble ranks (with squires as young lords and knights in training)... but also a world so devoid of population that younger sons are going to see clearing out the borderlands and claiming the land for the crown as the most effective way to gain a knight's fee for themselves.

Give it another 400 years (i.e. more akin to AD 1000) and you'll see a LOT more stratification, but for now "Lord of X" is about as sophisticated as most titles even get.

* I used the Sears/Willis Tower with a solid core (one of the reasons it partially survived) for the size and the 24 remaining floors work out to just over a million sq. feet. The populace basically just built a medieval village on each floor (each is about an acre with 300-500 people living on it) with hanging gardens on the east, south and western faces. Fields extend about 4 miles out with wagons of farmers leaving the city walls at dawn and returning at dusk.