PCs lack of respect for the 'caste' system of your typical fantasy society

[S'mon]

Re: Re: Re: PCs lack of respect for the 'caste' system of your typical fantasy society

Well at least you're all more likely to even understand that such a concept exists as nobility.

I honestly don't think most Americans even have a simple grasp of it. Self likely included to a large degree.

So I don't expect players to be good at roleplaying it. But I wish they'd at least try.

I agree with this entirely. We Brits may resent/disagree with a class system, but we understand the concept, so we know we _ought_ to defer to the pompous windbag noble, even if we don't _want_ to. This may change in British society - they effectively abolished the House of Lords recently - but IMO it hasn't yet.

 

[Willtell]

Many players simply don't comprehend the medieval class system and end up getting into all kinds of trouble because they refuse to "defer to their betters." They think just because they can kill an orc king they can kill a baron in their homeland. Sure, they could, but it would be murder and they would become hunted fugitives under sentence of death... Similarly, you can't (barring some juicy blackmail or other advantage) argue with, humiliate, insult or threaten the nobility. If you do, you get "thrown in irons" at best and get "the chop" at worst. These people are born into power and expect to be treated with courtesy and respect for their position. It's all they've ever known and "the way it should be." Anyone who barges in and upsets their apple cart will have the

The major problem with is that when the pc's play the hero's the town mayor comes to them to solve his problems, the baron comes to them to solve his problems, the king comes to them to solve his problems.

Why should they defer to the mayor, the baron, the king - would you if the mayor, the baron, the king kept there positions of power because you saved there asses?. Why should'nt you be the mayor, the baron or the king?.

 

[Kichwas]

Why should they defer to the mayor, the baron, the king - would you if the mayor, the baron, the king kept there positions of power because you saved there asses?. Why should'nt you be the mayor, the baron or the king?.

Because it's a class-based social system where you were brought up to believe those people had a natural place to authority just as much as you were brought up to do your business in the outhouse rather than on the kitchen table.

The mere idea of presuming yourself outside of your station would be as abhorant to you as the idea of presuming you could have a bunch of slaves would be to a 21st century westerner.

There is no concept of 'I deserve this or that because you came to me for help' in this kind of society. There is rather a gratitude for being picked out (at least publicly) and shown to be a 'good doggy'.

You might get granted some kind of minor title (knighted for instance) for your deeds. But you would never presume you had the right to demand such a reward. And getting more than such a minor title would be absurd.

The cases of such presumptiveness on any large scale are rare enough in the historical record. They tend to result in things like the French Revolution or the American Revolution.
On a smaller scale they result in people cast out as bandits or 'food for the gibbet'.

This concept of 'I deserve to be ranked by merit of my abilties' is modern and is generally not present in fantasy. It tends to completely rip apart any social system based on nobility or class by birth.

A society where adventurers started getting this idea into their heads would very quickly find itself rent apart in social chaos until a new order was put together without any nobility.

 

[eXodus]

i would have to agree with most of what has been said. some of the people i have gamed with over the years have had the problem with only giving due respect to npcs that they felt could kill them. nobility not really playing too much of a role.

i am quite fortunate now, as the group i am dming is very good about it all. theo ne exception being the barbarian from an entirely different culture that does not quite grasp the caste system that surrounds him. but still it is highly within character of him to be this way.

one of the pcs is even an adopted son of a baron so he is very good about it all. but despite his noble upbringing he has no titles, deeds, or anything.

well there are my two coppers.

 

[Black Omega]

I can easily see how this pops up and not just from reading KotD One thing that can help to a degree is the GM showing how things go both ways. In my Rokugan game there are currently two, soon to be three, Samurai. Peasants bow low, often grovel, and do as they are told. There are only minor exceptions to this. The old lady running the Samurai's house is not to be messed with. When you give the PC's people who bow andscape for them, it's sometimes a little easier to let them meet their 'betters'. ,My group's only met one Lord, the Daimyo the two Samurai are sworn to. And that's gone pretty smoothly. A couple of the PC's met another Lord weho wasn't as friendly but they still remained polite.

 

[Tsyr]

While I agree with the concept -that there should be a class structure in place, and that the pcs should know of it, and at times follow it...

I've always held the opinion that as a general rule (Paladins and most clerics probably accepting) PCs are sort of... outsiders, if you will, in daily life. Adventurers in my world tend to be very much the black sheep of a society... people who never grew the common sense to sit down and stay put and farm corn 'til they die. While they exist in, and to some extend contribute to society, I've always played it so that they are sort of like a... an undesireable aspect of it. A sometimes loved undesireable, as strange as that is as a concept. People far and wide might sing balads of Ragnagar The Mighty and Telian The Wise, but in their home towns people whisper things like "Oh yeah... I grew up with that guy... always a bit wrong in the head he was. Never rightly saw that we hads us a good life here on these farms...". As such, in terms of dealing with nobility, it would be... tense, probably. I mean, you are talking about (as I see it) people who exist almost outside of the society they rule anyways, and add to it the fact that they probably hold the power to hack their way out of the castle after having killed the king if they chose to (In my world, nobels very rarely are retired adventurers with tons of levels backing them up)... and, well, formality is just that... formality. It might be obeyed, but there is no spirit behind it. But it isn't even always obeyed. If the nobel wants to hire adventurers, he will just have to deal with it.

 

[drnuncheon]

I was going to make a big long post but it seems that Tsyr said most of what I was going to.

Adventurers, in many cases, are outsiders* - unless you're playing in a very structured society like in Pendragon or L5R, adventurers are going to be people "set apart" from the normal folks.

A great example of this can be seen in the classic Chinese novel Outlaws of the Marsh - as outlaws and members of the "gallant fraternity", the protagonists generally have very little respect for the people they "should" have respect for. Instead, they have their own subculture that respects martial prowess, personal honor, and filial piety.

I think players need to clearly know what kind of game you're running, because otherwise the unspoken assumption that it's a game of the second type is going to be there for most settings.

J
* - non-SKR-approved word usage

 

[ninthcouncil]

It is right to say that the class deference thing has largely died out in British society. There is some "folk memory" which seems to manifest itself as a reluctance to complain about stuff that actually matters - on the other hand, we Brits are champion whiners about trivial things

One of the reasons the British class system survived for so long was its effectiveness at co-opting potentially disruptive elements. Similarly, if player characters do become very powerful, and get into the situation where they are being called on for assistance by the great and good, it isn't unreasonable to expect them to be ennobled. This isn't just gratitude - it's less socially upsetting to have to depend on the (player character) Count of Ftunch and his (player character) chaplain and (player character) court wizard, for monster extermination, than it is to constantly have to grovel to a rabble of smelly adventurers. If the feudal hierarchy fails to be react in this way, especially in a D&D world skewed towards progress by adventuring, it rapidly finds itself losing control of its own destiny. Ultimately, it's all about power, not about blood - getting too hung up on nobility as its own end leads to stagnation and decay.

 

[Willtell]

This concept of 'I deserve to be ranked by merit of my abilties' is modern and is generally not present in fantasy. It tends to completely rip apart any social system based on nobility or class by birth.

A society where adventurers started getting this idea into their heads would very quickly find itself rent apart in social chaos until a new order was put together without any nobility.

That indirectly was my point. You cannot have bob the baron visit joe the pig farmer, have joe the pig farmer kill the dragon and save the barony and expect joe to keep a "medieval" view of his social station vs. the barons social station. The baron had better do something to earn his political and social position - being the last barons son wont be enough.

 

[Jezrael]

Another problem specific to D&D is polytheism, none of the nobles can definitively declare the divine right to rule...there are too many opposing gods. One of the reasons people back in the day were deferential was that kings were ordained by God and nobles ordained by kings, thereby ordained by God by proxy. The Church was a big deal back then and helped greatly in keeping the peasantry properly deferential.

It wasn't just the fact that Bob is king, it's the fact that God "appointed" Bob and all his ancestors to be king (at least by most commoners perceptions). Religion can be a powerful motivating force, but the tenor of such relations changes when the gods come down to earth in avatar form and start arguing about who exactly should be king. It can give rise to a "nobles is just normal folks too" mentality; though it doesn't have to of course it is your world after all.