Truth, Justice and all Those Dumb Things

Something I've noticed about Lloegyr... Fundamental Attribution Error is in full swing, and I love it.  As characters get drawn into conflict, the players get into wars of words, and the rhetoric starts to fly.  Most of the time, players get drawn into their own IC justifications, believing what they're saying... and that's awesome.  Really... it's how real people work: we make up rational arguments to justify our feelings.  So if you really want to be king, you argue you would be the best king, and start believing it... because you want to be king.

But...

There's a slight problem with the rhetoric sometimes, and it causes people problems when dealing with NPCs.  It's when the rhetoric appeals to the modern Americans we are, and not the fictional Heorots and Aels and Vincians and Kraki we pretend to be.

There's a lot of people who are preaching "peace" to NPCs, and to think of the country (I stopped counting at ten PCs using this argument in the past week... so I'm not talking about you, I'm talking to everyone).  Telling a Heorot to work for peace is like telling your typical American to work for accurate and straight-forward food packaging... most will agree it's a good cause, but they just don't give a shit.  Telling an Ael to think of their country is like telling U.S. citizen to think about "North America..." no one gives a shit about their continent.  Peace and patriotism are more modern concerns, and your traditional Heorot cares about family and honor more than anything else.

I don't mind players having more modern values... I think it makes the game more tragic.  Just realize that making an argument for peace is like making an argument about calorie labels... even if you're right, the people you're talking to (i.e. the NPCs) might not care.

Heorot Men Marry Late, and the Primacy of Player Decisions

First, the actual setting material.

Heorot men typically come of age in their mid-teens, when they are physically capable of battle.  The Heorot rite of passage is typically a test of mettle: the month of Geor is typically reserved for all kinds of tourneys and games, and when a boy competes in his first games, he is considered a man.  Coincidentally, this seems to be about the same age that women begin menstruating, and so both men and women reach maturity about the same time.

However, Heorot men typically marry relatively late, particular since the Guth War.  The heroes of that generation... Castus, Burgred, Finn, Oswulf, Walder... all started their families relatively late in their lives (in their late twenties).  The first legitimate child born to one of Castus' close friends was Aldred, who was born when Burgred was already in his mid-twenties.  The King himself was 28 when his son was born, and Ala, the King's only legitimate child, was not born until the King was 35.  The reason for this was relatively practical: until it seemed that Castus had a legitimate chance of winning the war, having heirs was of secondary importance.  Even then, there was a general sentiment that the kingdom should be won before children be had, and most men of this generation delayed starting a family.

This sentiment was passed down, in a manner, to the current generation.  The general attitude amongst Heorot noblemen who are old enough to remember the Guth war, but not old enough to have fought in it, is that one should accomplish something before he marries.  As such, the many heirs of this generation... Aldred of Timber, Nulte of Lothan, Lud of Kenton (generally those of age to have fought in the Merov War)... are unmarried.

While this was a cause for concern amongst the Earls for some time, with the death of Nulte of Lothan without issue, this has quickly become a common topic of discussion in Heorot Halls (when they're not talking about rebellions, succession, and murder, of course).  There is a prevailing attitude that it is time for the eligible Heorot bachelors to find themselves wives, and get to making new bachelors for the decades to come.

From a meta-game perspective... all of this background is about twenty minutes old as of the time this blog was published.  The facts have always been true, but there has never been a reason given for why the named characters of the setting married so late.  Instead, the dates came about from players all picking their ages independently, and when I put them on a timeline recently, some demographic information became apparent.

There's some thematic elements of this game I try to hammer home (i.e. honor), because they're vital for the tone of the game.  If players do not understand or address Honor, or hospitality, then the storyteller has to reinforce that element.  Other elements, however, I try to leave alone, and justify in the game.  This is one of them... the ages at which your characters marry and have children might not strictly reflect the source material, but in the end, it's better to allow players to define the setting, and use it to come up with interesting additions to the setting.

Cities in Lloegyr

I had begun to write about Caerlot, which is the setting for the next series of games and an important setting element.  However, a comment by a player suggested that I need to revisit the idea of "town" and perhaps establish the sort of society that exists in Lleogyr.

One my major struggle when dealing with anachronisms is not actually technological.  It doesn't matter very much to me if you want castles with gatehouses and moats, or stirrups, or heraldry.  You can have all of that.  What I need to maintain is the proper sense of society, and that requires me to maintain a "proto-feudal"society... one that has not yet progressed to manoralism.

At this point in time "feudalism" is little more than a pecking order between very large gangs.  There's a king, and he has lords, but power dynamic is very much determined by individual personalities.  The earls each have a space, and they stay out of each other's territory, and they each obey the king to varying degrees.  However, their influence is primarily martial... how many soldiers can they send to the king.  Likewise, the king's influence is primarily martial... what happens if you disobey him?  Taxes are still in the form of tribute.  There's not a great deal of centralized administration.  Most importantly, Earldoms are not held in the name of the king, and subdivided into regions of smaller administration.

There are Thanes and Reeves, of course, but there's not the sense that every parcel of land is an economic asset, and each parcel has to be used and directly managed.  The Heorots are not that sophisticated (yet... and the Vincian's are, so this will likely happen in a generation or two).  When land is managed in this manner, a noble can only directly manage a relatively small area (about half a day's travel from his manor), and will have to subdivide the land.  When this happens, the lord's manor becomes the center of economic and political life, and has tremendous importance.  This is also when large-scale towns begin to develop.

Lloegyr isn't at this point yet.  Towns do exist, but they are uncommon, because they have yet to become a necessity.  The towns that do exist are generally (with some exceptions in the Heartlands) political and military centers, and have that sort of character.  

This is to say that that there's probably no "tavern" in most towns.  There's a brewer, probably a number of them, and you can go to his home to buy beer, and these are probably social centers.  However, this is still a friend's home.  Similarly, inns are a relatively rare phenomenon, as travelers in small numbers aren't that numerous.  You're not going to have many shops yet.  A town like Caerlot or Senton is a unique thing in that they have a number of establishments, instead of a central market, simply because they have enough trade to support such establishments.  

Now... Caerlot is a large city.  Lothan is larger.  Farpont and Senton are both capable of having these establishments, and Bessex and Kenton are getting there.  Lamark is practically Vincian in this regard.  But apart from these places, there's probably no "Inn of the Prancing Pony," because if there's an inn there, it's just "the Inn."

No Knights In Lloegyr

So, questions about feudalism and chivalry have come up, and this blog gives me the perfect space to answer them.  Sometimes, the wiki isn't the best place for information, but a properly tagged blog can give you access to the "gee-whiz" information.

That said, on this specific question, your intrepid story-teller has to talk about something not on the wiki.

Namely, you won't find the word "knight" anywhere... at least nowhere in the setting information.

That's because there are no knights.  There are no fiefs, either (although there are lords and vassals).  You see no mention of feudalism.  The reason?  All of these things are anachronistic, and far more dangerous to the campaign than the pictures of castles players choose for their character's homes.

We have a lot of anachronisms in the game.  I'm generally 100% cool with these, because they don't really affect the story, and we're not going into meticulous detail on the exact time period.  In a thousand years, there might be people on a holodeck playing a game set in the 1980s... complete with iPhones and the internet.  It would hard to realize it's an anachronism.  Real quick... how many people can tell me when men started wearing wrist watches regularly?  While some might argue every vampire character who has a pocket watch should know this, but the level of detail is unnecessary (we don't want to go Diana Warrior Princess style, but that's another story).

However, while technology anachronisms don't bother me... value anachronisms do, because we're trying to emulate a specific mindset. And one sure way to undermine the setting is by adding the values of courtly love, chivalry, and "knights in shining armor."

Chivalry is a particular warrior's code, but not the one that would fit in Beowulf.  For one, Chivalry seeks to limit the knight... it is a collection of prohibitions and motivations that explain why this rich, heavily armored warrior with a small army of thugs should chastely love a lady at a tourney, as opposed to what typically happens when you have a small army of thugs and nigh invulnerability when on a battlefield.  It emphasizes obedience to your lord, for example, which fits into the monarchist world-view that looked back upon previous eras and defined "chivalry."  In actuality, the power of a king was much less than what we might think, and depended largely on his or her power or personal charisma.  So chivalry was a control... a moral code that told knights it was wrong to use their superpowers of armor and horses and money for their own personal gain.

The warrior code of the North is far different.  In this society, the characters are not superheroes, they're flawed human beings in a dangerous society, and constantly faced with choices between what is safe and comfortable, and what is dangerous and "right."