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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(Psi)SeveredHead" data-source="post: 6308439" data-attributes="member: 1165">The social dynamics are more important than the technology. Maybe nobles have flush toilets... that are actually magic items that teleport the waste. Druids hate those! Elementalists also hate them if they're sending things to the Elemental Plane of Water or the Elemental Chaos.A feudal society involves a new king giving local military and civil power to trusted friends because the king cannot directly rule more than a few days' travel from his palace. The position of king and noble are inherited. (In some societies, the king had to name each noble, but in general named the heirs of the previous noble.) Alas, over the generations, these friendships don't always last. Just because King William was friends with Duke Robert of West End doesn't mean King William IV will be friends with the 4th Duke of West End. They might even be hated enemies!Because King William's demesne (directly-ruled land) is small, he can't support a large or permanent army. If King William needs to raise an army, he has to go to the nobles and ask them to raise their own troops, then lead them in combat against that rival king, or powerful monster, or whatever is needed. Needless to say, King William cannot risk upsetting too many nobles, or at the least he can't allow them to get too friendly with each other.Finally, just because William I was a skilled badass doesn't mean William IV is. William I earned the kingdom. William IV inherited it. William IV might be heavily reliant on advisers who actually run things for him. William IV might get kicked off by Bob I. And then the cycle starts again.Fantasy imposes at least two big changes:1) Communications. With easy communications, feudalism puts the king in a stronger position, and local nobles might not even need to exist. Even today, there are local managers and so forth, so hierarchies would remain, but if the "local" army takes orders from the king and not the Duke of West End, then the duke doesn't even have a private army and is much less of a threat to the king.Depending on the setting, even magical communication might not be enough to empower the king. In Eberron, you can use the gnomish Sivis Guild to speak to your armies... but naturally this means letting the gnomes know your every command. There's only one such guild, so you can't try to split up the messages. Really secret commands have to be hand-delivered, or get a loyal wizard to use the much less efficient Sending spell or ritual.Even if communication is easy, you still have the "medieval western fantasy" tropes. It just means noble backstabbing doesn't really work as a plot and you have a strong king system rather than feudalism. The king still needs military commanders who might hire adventurers to deal with threats that they can't handle.2) There are new power groups. In the medieval world, power groups already included nobles (who were really military leaders, if indirectly), the church, and merchants.In a fantasy setting, the church is more powerful and arcane magic may be politically organized as a guild of sorts. The trope of court mage already exists, but I always add "confessor" to my games. The "confessor" is the priestly equivalent of the court mage, and the king or noble keeps one or more around because healing magic is handy. Of course, the confessor has their own religious agenda and tries to influence the king. D&D generally has many gods, so the confessor has competition. In other words if the king doesn't like dealing with the priesthood of one god they can switch. Religious warfare could be going on "behind the scenes", even if there are numerous gods sharing portfolios and/or alignments!Mages take more careful handling. In some settings (eg Dragonlance) wizards are an open political power, formed to avoid repression, witch-hunting, and so forth. As wizards are virtually never common, they have to work hard to maintain unity. In DL, good and evil wizards openly worked together on things such as stopping witch-hunting, and presumably dealing with spell or ritual components. At meetings, violence was explicitly forbidden. In the Kingpriest era, a religious army took on the wizards, and fought them to a draw.In other settings, wizards are generally individuals who survive by personal power and striking alliances with nobles or kings. As wizards are rarely loyal to their lords, they're seem more as skilled contractors. They might be indispensable as a group, but you can always fire one and hire another if they betray you in some way, or just if you don't like them.And some settings may have both. Every once in a while, a charismatic wizard comes up with the idea of creating a local political group or guild, and find's it's difficult to get strong-willed intelligent people with very different opinions to work together. The most skilled guild leaders would restrict their leadership activities to things that all wizards hold in common - the need for magical resources (spellbooks, spell or ritual components, etc) and, if necessary, fighting off political persecution. A gathering of wizards naturally creates suspicions from locals, so many wizard guilds might be shadowy or not officially exist.Some players and DMs think that a quasi-feudal system cannot exist in a world where wizards have access to mind control and charms. I disagree. That's one reason why I like the idea of a confessor. This character has a church backing them up, skills such as Arcana or Spellcraft and Insight or Sense Motive and spells or rituals such as Dispel Magic, Break Enchantment or Remove Affliction. Items (including magic bedrooms) that protect the king would be common. Naturally this leaves the rulers dependent on the confessors while possibly also being dependent on wizards. Instead of "wizards rule the world" it's the king rules, but has to spend a lot of effort balancing the needs of the wizards and clergy.</blockquote>

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