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Message: <blockquote data-quote="J-H" data-source="post: 8831272" data-attributes="member: 7020951">+1 to this.Your setting doesn't have to have tons of nuance and pass review by 5 sensitivity readers and 3 editors for professional publishing.  You don't risk a Twitter mob for your home or FLGS game.But you want to dig into it anyway, because you're someone who starts at least 6 threads a year on game settings.  For that - what makes history in D&D different from history in real life?1) Magic.  Especially in first edition, where there are no sorcerers, you are stuck with a few caster options.  #1, especially for making magic items, flying cities, and wiping out enemies en masse, are wizards.  Wizards require literacy, written education, and special supplies to function.  How likely is a typical barbarian tribe (any species) to have this available enough that their supply of education + wizardly instruction + scribing components actually gets matched up with the members of the various tribes who actually have the talents to become a wizard?  They don't have the SAT or IQ test or whatever to determine that the Urbag son of Gorbag the Latrine-Digger is the only one in the tribe who will ever be able to cast 5th level wizard spells.#2 is druid magic.  I think in 1e you had to multiclass to get this, and it's hard to be a druid.  There's also instruction from existing druids needed, and again, if you're not part of civilized society, you don't have an in to get this.#3 is clerical magic of various sorts.  This, they have.  But the city of Xdale has 3 temples with a high priest, lesser clerics, and acolytes, and can call on other temples/chapters for more students or replacements.  A tribe of 500 may have one head priest with two or three apprentices... but it's rare to find more than that in any depiction.So the Barbarians end up inferior in access to battle and non-battle magic, a differentiator that does not exist in RL.2) the godsRemember how drow society should collapse based on infighting?  LOLth keeps it alive and in more or less stasis?Go look at Gruumsh and his teaching.  Or Maglubiyet.Like the orcs in Warcraft, they're invading partly because their deific patrons encourage this specific behavior.  There's active encouragement of organized war, and active discouragement of settling down and being a peaceful, self-sustaining farming people.Settling down and having agriculture is part of how you support cities, which is part of how you get more specialized clerisy, blacksmithing, intellectuals, etc.... so if you want to blame any one factor or person, blame the orcish gods the most.Want nuance in your orcs?  Have a religious split behind the difference in cultural values.Then it's "Orcs who worship Gruumsh are bad, but the guys flying the Red Hand of Ilneval are okay as long as you don't mess with them, and they keep their deals and don't raid over the border."</blockquote>

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