What Do Your Fantasy Societies in D&D Get For Their Taxes and Tithes?

[RobNJ]

I completely ignore the whole problem.

After all, it's not Taxes and Levies, it's Dungeons and Dragons.

Or as my PC in one game would put it when people argue about what route to take or how to dispense wealth or any other mundane thing, "I don't care! There's no way this is going to make it into the stories."

 

[S'mon]

I'd rather be living in 21st century western Europe than 14th century western Europe, but I'd rather be living in the pre-industrial 14th century (or, better, the 10th, before increasing populations caused regular mass disease epidemics) than the 17th-18th, with Enclosures, mass displacement, famines, the emergence of conscript armies to get me killed in, and STILL no public sanitation until the later 19th!

 

[Irda Ranger]

RobNJ -- Of course, to each his own, but I DM a city based campaign with a lot of politics and roleplaying. So stuff like this does make it into the story, if only in the background. Makes the civilization more fleshed out for my PCs.

S'Mon - I would have to completely agree with you. I would rather have been at the Battle of Agincourt or the Norman Conquest than the Charge of the Light Brigade, or the 18th century British Navy. Not that I fancy being shot with arrows, its just slightly less brutish, dirty and short Hooray for High Fantasy!!

Irda Ranger

PS - S'mon, I would argue that the US has never truly faught in a Clausewitzian style, not when things were really on the line. However, since I really don't want my own thread to go "klunk", please email me if you want to discuss it.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

An Apology

It is, of course, completely correct that the Feudal system of obligations does not apply to serfs.

Large scale serfdom does not show-up, however, until after the Black Plague and is primarily limited to Eastern Europe.

Peasants are included in the system of obligations, something which is particularly apparent in the dark ages and and early to high middle ages. Or in England, France, Spain, and areas of Germany after the plagues.

The peasant revolts and the less national elements of the Reformation are very often reactions by the peasants against forces which were enfringing their growing power.

I've got nothing against Sweden and would never argue that a peasant is better off than a modern Volvo factory worker in a general sense. There are comparative advantages. But one could argue that such things show up in any comparison of systems. I wouldn't.

I don't think I'm romanticizing the system. Feudalism was a large and varied idea with a long history. I'm merely pointing out that no system that is as popular or successful as Feudalism was has existed without bringing real benefits to all the people in it. Particularly in time periods that lacked the technology or moral framework to make totalitarianism work.

Certainly calling it a system of large scale slavery would a distortion of the truth at least as egregious as if I had said that were blessedly protected and the nobility lived lives of constant warfare on their behalf.

Further, actual systems of large scale slavery are often much worse than even the serf system of Russia or Prussia. A noble might effectively be able to ruin a serf, but it is very difficult, legally, for that noble to remove the serf from the land he works and the family who raised him. Whereas, someone who was owned by an American farmer from Virginia was a proud member of the estate of mobile property and could expect to be sold away from his or her family and to have every expect of life at the mercy of arbitrary whim, with no real recourse to revolt.

Peasants can very effectively work to make a local lord's life and office untenable, where else do bandits or someone like Thomas Becket come from?, but slaves have no such similar strategies to work with.

As to my research, well, I would recommend the documents from Lateran Councils I-III, any English Book of Days, and any number of scholarly documents dealing with peasant revolts under Richard the II. These are all available in English and, absent the presence of a good professor of medieval or church thought, history, literature, philosophy, economics, or technology, are a fine means through which to approach the primary sources of the period.

Plus we were talking Lawful Good, were we not?

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Subsistence?

I'm not certain how you are dealing with the idea of subsistence.

If you mean that medieval peasants could suffer at the hands of natural disasters, then yea. If you mean that peasants couldn't afford a second home and a vacation in Ibeza, then yea.

But I think the basic fact is, that no system of taxation was going to change the fundamental realities of medieval farming. A lot of hard work was going to get you enough to live on and a little bit extra with which you could invest in the incredibly expensive process of raising animals or owning clothes. Despite all that, peasants did have a little money. Look at all the people in the Canterbury tales Miller, Summouner, Friar, etc. who make their living fleecing peasants.

You can't get blood from a stone.

In terms of comparing medieval to modern tax systems. Most of the world's nations feature a substantial subsistence population, so, I would imagine that they're taxation systems do leave them in a subsistence level setting.

 

[Chrisling]

We're only sorta talking lawful good.

While my original question was particular directed at lawful good, neutral good, lawful neutral and neutral societies, it was certainly ambiguous enough that I won't complain at any comments.

 

[Chrisling]

Comments from the peanut gallery

This has been really interesting to me.

I hadn't realized that most gamers actually did base their governments off of feudal societies in Western Europe; that seems to be the paradigm.

I also didn't realize how much the added energy that magic would put into a society is basically ignored by so many people. In my games, I am fascinated at the way that the various spells affect the societies that they are in.

Thanks for the responses, everyone!

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

wait wait

I didn't say I ignore magic in my settings.

I love bits where the local town cleans its streets with a tame gelatinous cube or where all the best homes own a continual light spell or two.

Exalted and Kalamar both do very good jobs of integrating magic into general human social organization.

In Exalted magic makes the world work the way animistic and pagan societies always thought it did. Sacrafices to the local farm spirit do make the crop grow better and so forth.

Mind you the spirits are often corrupt and will take payment without delivering and so forth.

Kalamar simply points out that cities are a lot nicer than they were, populations are larger, and the campaigning season is a lot longer than it would have been since farming is easier and there is a lot more to fight.

A neutral good society?!?

They'd split their taxes between helping puppies and reforming Kobolds and their continuing crusade against every bad thing ever.

Kalamar also posits that the population is both larger and takes up less room since life expectancies are a bit higher, but exterior threats are a lot greater.

 

[Happy Monkey]

A lot of the taxes would go on corruption.

Or patronage if you will.

Depending on the ruler/govt, a lot may go on extravagance like palaces, magic items.

Tributes to stronger kingdoms.

Armies and navies are not cheap.

Tax evasion would be rife, no tax codes and central computers to monitor individuals and guilds.

Infrastructure, if financed properly can chew up heaps. I'm talking about roads, sewage, water, bridges, courts, ports+++ The ongoing maintenance as well as the initial setting up.

Even the vestiges of a welfare state would be expensive, if so inclined.

Building up a reserve to deal with war, natural catastrophe etc...

(Incidentily, Elizabeth I (in 16th century England) had an income of +/-300 000 pounds per year. This was her personal income from her own estates and she was supposed to be self sufficient. This could not hope to cover a war and that was parliaments role, to decide on and deliver taxes.)

All this does depend on the type of govt, the size of the state, the personalities, the people governed + more. It really does depend on your campaign world I'd think.

 

[seasong]

Re: Comments from the peanut gallery

I hadn't realized that most gamers actually did base their governments off of feudal societies in Western Europe; that seems to be the paradigm.

I think that this has much to do with the fact that D&D is ostensibly based off of just such, and that the question seemed to encourage looking at the issue from the D&D perspective.

Plus, Gygax chimed in on that other thread, and his adherence to feudal Europe probably had a sizable influence!

I know that I, personally, chose to fit into the thread by excluding all of my non-feudal campaign settings, and I'm inclined to believe that most of us here are doing the same.

I also didn't realize how much the added energy that magic would put into a society is basically ignored by so many people. In my games, I am fascinated at the way that the various spells affect the societies that they are in.

To do it right would require a detailed, well-thought analysis, something which no one has done thus far. I play with it occasionally, but it is difficult.