I was watching the show about the dark ages a while bach, and a historian made the remark that in reality, most knights were more like Tony Soprano that Sir Lancelot.

Your average knight may have paid lip service to "chivalry" but in reality he was a thug, a thief and a terrorist. He terrorized the local peasants into bowing to his lord, and often raided the peasants of neighboring lords for whatever he could steal. He was basically like a mafia enforcer, shaking down shopkeepers and farmers for tribute.

Does anyone run realistic medieval settings where knights are more like the real McCoy than their romanticized, fictional counterparts?  I just can't help laughing at the idea of "Sir Tony Soprano"....

I think that many rpg's run that sort of game but not intentionally as a realistic recreation.  

When I studied Medieval History one of the courses was using literature to identify how people might have acted at the time. As a for instance he showed scenes from the Godfather 2 alongside textual readings from The Song of Roland. Its not surprising when you consider that a lot of the medieval society and mores arose to justify the oppression and extortion practised at the time.

The point of the course wasn't about criminal behaviour and knights but about the traditions of paying respect to the social leader together with their obligation to distribute largesse to their followers and the acceptable/codified use of violence.

In regards your point I think it would be difficult to run such a game properly without it becoming the kind of gaming parody I mentioned at the start because that social mindset is very alien to people in the West today - its not just about the violence and the extortion but the context in which it operates. In the Sopranos and similar programmes, the actions of the protagonists are always cast as criminal and wrong, no matter how much we may like or admire them.

In the medieval period a genuine knight who shook down his peasants would only be seen as 'bad' if he also failed to protect them in time of need (invasion) and if he was wealthy enough hoarded the profits instead of giving many of them away. Although it does raise a good point about how much this was practised. As with criminal gangs today, the people at the top probably did hoard the wealth and pay out a comparative pittance to their followers, who were then kept indebtted to them and also ready to do more violence in the hopes of further reward.

Unless the players were going to buy into the whole package I think it would fall apart. What I would do is focus on the parrallels with something like the Sopranos where the emphasis is on giving your word, honour, respect and the rewards due from position as well the consequences of not giving and receiving within the medieval period and be pretty close.

We were playing Pendragon once and one of the players said "We're just a bunch of thugs, aren't we?" We all agreed, and went on with the game.

For something a little more modern yet alien, the yakuza genre of Japanese film often portrays the gangsters as the upholders of traditional samurai values.

Ioften play knights in the manner described. I am exceptionally fond of "I am so good it hurts you" approach. Meaning I take a belief and make it the absolute measure of good. So, for instance, the king's word is law is a fav of mine. Essentially, I am a kind and understanding knight of the realm as long as you do the king's will. Oppose him and there is no limit to the outright evil that I will perpetrate on your butt. Mind you, the whole time my character will protest that he is doing good. Obviously, there can be no compromise with evil and evil is so well defined. No, he is not the judge, your actions are. Silly extremes like that can be interesting RP experience.

Likewise, I am sure such knights did not think of themselves as thugs. They thought they were enforcing the natural order of things or some such. Only in stories will you get the villain who rubs his hands together and twirls his mustachio. I think part of the draw of such characters is my desire to explore just how the rationalization can be achieved.

That, IMO, makes for a great adventure.

Bill

My World of Greyhawk campaign centered on the Bandit Kingdoms assumed that armed thuggery was the order of the day.  There was one paladin lord NPC that believed in chivalry, but one PC killed him and married the dude's daughter to get his estate.

Gene Wolfe's novel, The Knight is a fantastic take on taking concepts of Doing Good or No Retreat, No Surrender to their logical extent, and also what happens when young aspirants' idealistic notions run into the hard brick wall of facts On The Ground.

Knights are great to create emotional tension re: what you should do vs. what the book/oath/thingy says vs. what the boss says.  Of course, the boss is either more/less holy, more/less ascetic, more/less laissez-faire than the character.

And it's just a frickin awesome book.

A lot of my medieval fantasy gaming has been in the Harn campaign setting, where it's pretty much assumed that ostensibly virtuous knights are also often cruel, violent, petty tyrants.  That said, it is a fantasy setting written near the end of the 20th century, so there's little doubt that there are probably more "good" knights and rulers (by our standards) on Harn than there were in the real Middle Ages.  But that's really all in the interpretation, and as with any setting a GM can easily dial the tone of the campaign to "more vicious" if they want.

Quote from: Dominus NoxYour average knight may have paid lip service to "chivalry" but in reality he was a thug, a thief and a terrorist. He terrorized the local peasants into bowing to his lord, and often raided the peasants of neighboring lords for whatever he could steal. He was basically like a mafia enforcer, shaking down shopkeepers and farmers for tribute.

Does anyone run realistic medieval settings where knights are more like the real McCoy than their romanticized, fictional counterparts?  I just can't help laughing at the idea of "Sir Tony Soprano"....

I've had players try to run Jedi Knights like that, unfortunately, but not Medieval knights.  

Pete

Hah. After watching the prequels, that's exactly my conception of Jedi Knights.

Another tidbit on Medieval Thuggery: the Knightly Tournament wasn't the pristine and civil affair we envision. Many knights actually made their living off tournaments--no, not by prize money, at least not officially. They did it (usually  bushwhacking a weaker opponent) by forcing other combatants to yield in exchange for their horse, armor, lands, or whatever they could get from them. A steel-plated version of "your money or your life."

Those were colorful times, no doubt. But nice they weren't.

Peace,
-Joel

Edited to add: That book does sound awesome, Reimdall. I'll hafta check it out.

My players Cavilers tended to stray into the Soprano mindset and they bitch slapped more than one business owner for not showing the proper respect due a noble.

That's not surprising.  Gangsters and their ilk are the contemporary echoes of the old stylings of oligarchy and empire.

Quote from: MelinglorAnother tidbit on Medieval Thuggery: the Knightly Tournament wasn't the pristine and civil affair we envision. Many knights actually made their living off tournaments--no, not by prize money, at least not officially. They did it (usually  bushwhacking a weaker opponent) by forcing other combatants to yield in exchange for their horse, armor, lands, or whatever they could get from them. A steel-plated version of "your money or your life."

If anyone has seen the excellent movie Excalibur, they show an excellent rendition of the knightly tournament near the beginning to see who gets the right to draw the sword.  Pretty brutal.  

Pete

Huh. I have seen it, I don't remember the tournament scene. I'll have to re-watch it.

Incidentally, that movie helped my friends and I coin the phrase "doing it Uther style." :hehe:

Peace,
-Joel

I've always enjoyed the parallels between organised crime and the knightly orders.  But instead of playing up the thuggery and gitfaced-ness of the knights, I've always preferred playing up the out of time aspects of modern organised crime.

Given that what would Pendragon be like for running a gangster game?

...are the "warlords" we hear about so much these days from Outer Utterscrewedupistan.  Your modern warlord with his AK-47 wielding followers and machine-sporting technicals is just an updated version of a baron operating in similiar political conditions of atomised political power and "might makes right".  

   However, I wouldn't call medieval knights "just" a bunch of Tony Sopranos in hose-and-doublet.  Becoming a knight was a heck of a lot more of a buy-in than becoming a made man in the Mafia.  Those arms, armor, and warhorses didn't come cheap.  Neither did the years of training as a squire in terms of time.  And in the end, for all a knight's thuggishness and extortion towards his serfs, those serfs would be the first ones to shout out for "help" when Ye Olde Viking Horde came rumbling down the pike.  Then the officious git in the battered hauberk suddenly looks like the soft option.