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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jeremy Ackerman-Yost" data-source="post: 398388" data-attributes="member: 4720">Re: Re: Re: Re: Dwarven Worker UniteOriginally posted by Chrisling Communism must be international and (I believe in a fantasy world) interspecies for it to be valid. That attitude is why nobody's gotten it to work.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  That's the dream of people who forget that when you don't see and know the people whose lives your decisions impact, you are decreasingly likely to keep their best interests at heart.  It's a sad but true fact that as soon as you give someone decision making power, you need to keep a close eye on him and make sure his decisions aren't controlled entirely by self interest.  That's the basis for elected officials in a republic, and that's why Jefferson wanted people educated, so they could police their representatives and vote them out when they screwed up.  The fact that we don't do that is another case of human nature mucking up the system."I've never read anywhere that dwarvish greed is clan motivated -- not that particularly improves things.  I mean, isn't greed for your clan's one of the prime motivating factors in orcish psychology?" As often as not, that's the why I've read it.  A dwarf will need magic, money, etc. so that his clan can reclaim their ancestral hall/eliminate the goblin threat/avenge the death of their king/etc.  Clan includes all dwarves within a mountain hall or what-have-you because they recognize familial relationships that are so far apart we would call them unrelated.  A wandering dwarf who runs into a member of his clan who he never met before will still treat the guy like a brother (or at least a cousin).  As for the orcs, they all want to lead the clan, and will kill each other to do so.  That's a self-motivated situation.  Dwarves just want the clan to prosper, and perhaps kick some orc tail while they're at it.  They don't care who's leading as long as the trains run on time, the beer is cheap and plentiful, and the goblins, orcs, etc. are kept outside the gates. I've never, ever grasped how a clannish culture can honestly be said to be lawful.  I associate lawful with large bureaucracies, and centralization, not family governments in dispersal. I've always accepted the Lawful = society first, Chaotic = individual first version of the Lawful-Chaotic axis.  There's a hierarchy, elders first, etc.  There's an order and cohesiveness to it, with respect paid to the law of the clan, because if you don't obey the laws of the clan, the clan will exile you, and a clanless dwarf is nothing.  It's actually a LOT more orderly than bureaucracies.  Bureaucracies ALWAYS induce clutter and competition between bureaus.  I would argue that bureaucracy and centralization, while Lawful on the surface, ultimately lead to a Chaotic outcome.  Look at the U.S. government or any university.  They are HEAVILY bureaucratic, and ultimately it takes 10 times as long as necessary to get things done because of all the red tape and petty officials who need to generate extraneous paperwork so they can pass it in circles to justify the existence of their jobs.  There are entire departments in the government (not to mention universities) that do nothing but pass paper in a big circle.  That's all they do.  The papers don't appreciably change, and only one of the 10 forms shuffled around is actually needed by someone in another department.  But all those people need to keep their jobs, so they invent reasons to create more forms, which have to be filled out, moved around, and filed.  And then you don't have enough people to do the job.  So they hire another person to take care of the excess.  And then that person realizes there isn't enough for him to do, and there's a department review coming up, and if he doesn't have enough important-sounding jobs, his position could be cut.  So he invents ANOTHER form for people to fill out.  A superficially "orderly" structure built on a Chaotic premise.Also clans aren't dispersed.  An entire city would be one, maybe two clans.  And if there was more than one clan, they would choose one leader, because that keeps the trains running more efficiently, so they can keep working and improving the lot of their immediate family and clan."However, even if their greed is clannish, this will lead them to wars with other people in order to increase their clan's power.  True communism is completely international and I strongly suspect it would also be interspecies -- in a fantasy setting, communists would not say "working dwarves of the world unite," they'd still say, "workers of the world unite."  Including humans, elves, halflings, etc."I didn't see anyone inviting the beavers, badgers, and reindeer into a communistic society.  Why would dwarves do it for humans or elves?  And any people who actually followed the ideals behind communism (or democracy, for that matter) wouldn't go to war with ANYONE unless that group was interfering with their self-sufficiency.  Besides, I'm not arguing that Dwarves are actually Marxists, just that the structure of their society is closer to the Marxist ideal than anyone ever got here."So, so long as there is greed, you have the motivation for conflict."Agreed.  But the more people I value in addition to myself, the fewer people I will conflict with, yes?  And if I'm part of an isolated dwarven mountain hall, the only people I will ever come into contact with are my clansmen, all of whom I value highly, and with whom all resources are shared.  Where's the problem?  Simple answer- There is none until a threat comes knocking at the door.Originally posted by Oberton They may have more time to "hang-out”, but this has to be spent protecting their food and following the prey!  Remember that hunters are dependent on prey and must chase it about as it migrates...   This has always bothered me about orcs in fantasy settings.  They would have very predictable migration routes and such, but I have never read anything of this sort in any supplement… Protecting their food from what?  Most predators leave humans alone.  Separate groups of hunter gatherers never shared the same territory for long (one group wiped out or drove off the other ASAP).  In fertile areas, they often weren't particularly nomadic, perhaps having a winter site and a summer site.  They only moved around to hunt or gather, and both of those things were readily available in the immediate vicinity.But we're not talking about the real world here.  Orcs don't fit the model because there are always too many of them in far too developed a landscape.  But at least the mechanics of an orc back up their in-game role, unlike elves.</blockquote>

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