Worldbuilding, nonhumans, and the inaccurarcy of Earth parallels

[Kid Charlemagne]

The O.P. asks a legitimate question: how could this have developed in a world where humans have to compete with monsters and demihumans for resources, and where monsters are obviously going to create too much chaos and instability for any advanced societies to emerge?

To which question I reply: so that means that our all-human world has been full of peace and happiness? I see no reason why the presence of monsters and demihumans means there will be more war.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

Someone who is interested in this topic should take a look at Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs & Steel. There he lays out pretty well what is required for a civilization to advance to a number of different levels and a number of different technologies.

One could use this book and its ideas in a game setting to place a limit on certain civilizations by removing from these civilizations key elements. For example, a civilization without good domestic herd animals will have a really hard time devoting resources to anything but survival, no matter what metal objects they can create. For another example, a civilization in an area where only low calorie food plants are grown will have to spend more time harvesting food per person and will have to keep their population down.

If there are waves of destruction in places, this may "set back the clock" to an earlier stage of civilization. (This is something I'm using in one of my current campaigns.)

 

[Ambush Bug]

Someone who is interested in this topic should take a look at Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs & Steel. There he lays out pretty well what is required for a civilization to advance to a number of different levels and a number of different technologies.

Great book, great resource. In the same vein, the book 1491 by Charles Mann is a handy one for world-building. It looks at how the Americas grew and changed in the time before Europeans and their diseases showed up. It works as a setting bible for low-metal games, and it also gives some neat ideas for more traditional D&D play. Inca Dwarves and battle llamas, that's where it's at.

 

[fusangite]

To fusanigite again, what I mean by "scientific progress" I mean that the countries had, by and large, ceased to be plagued by large-scale banditry, powerful nobles who could defy central authority, and things like that.

The thesis that technological advancement is dependent upon a post-feudal centralized state is one that I think is made on little evidence. While it is true that recent spurts of industrial and technological development have been coupled with post-feudal nation states, it is a mistake to generalize this backwards and assume that periods of technological development have been associated with the same political conditions.

Prior to the 18th century, we don't see such a correlation. In the first phase of the Scientific Revolution we find Kepler, Galileo and Copernicus outside of the emerging monarchical absolutist states. Spain, England and France were not the states that powered the pre-Newtonian phase of the Revolution.

Similarly, the development of the heavy plow and water mill took place not during the stable High Medieval Period but during the so-called "Dark Ages" because one of the key forces that powers technological development is sudden shortages of cheap labour, something the Darkening of the Sun and barbarian invasions produced very effectively.

So I just don't buy the idea that because our current phase of technological development has taken place in stable nation states that one can read this backwards into the historical record. Archimedes was a Greek living in a peripheral colony, not a Persian living in a powerful state.

Doesn't mean that international wars or internal civil conflicts didn't flare up, but a certain amount of civil order was established, which had to have made it easier for scholars and scientists to do their thing without risking being massacred by invaders.

There is no doubt that political stability is a factor in scientific and technological development but I would suggest that it is not only not a sufficient condition; it's not even a necessary condition.

As governments gained greater control of their territories, they also developed firmer economic bases, and their patronage obviously helped out as well.

So why was there more technological development in the three centuries following the fall of Rome than during the three centuries preceding the fall?

I'm talking about your typical barbarian/Viking cultures in a fantasy milieu, which generally seem to go by the view of "might makes right", and monarchy based on combat prowess, rather that any stronger social contract.

I agree. It's a shame that the contractual nature of Germanic societies is minimized in fantasy worlds.

 

[fusangite]

Someone who is interested in this topic should take a look at Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs & Steel. There he lays out pretty well what is required for a civilization to advance to a number of different levels and a number of different technologies.

Diamond's reasoning is deeply flawed.

He argues for over-arching rules based on single unique cases. He is essentially saying, "Because it happened this way this time, this is the way it must happen."

 

[Ambush Bug]

Diamond's reasoning is deeply flawed.

He argues for over-arching rules based on single unique cases. He is essentially saying, "Because it happened this way this time, this is the way it must happen."

Hm. That's not how I read it. I thought he was saying "It happened this way this time, because of these factors, and these factors made it likely that it would happen the way it did happen." It didn't read like a deterministic book to me.

Which doesn't have much to do with roleplaying, except as a reminder that GMs shouldn't railroad players. You never know what evolutionary steps the PCs will climb.

 

[taliesin15]

the original poster wrote:

In real life, humanity has never had to compete with other sentient races... Related to this point, humanity has had the world to itself.

I'm not sure science would confirm this premise. Recent archaeology suggests that Neanderthals were present in Europe and Asia, and probably other humanoid "missing link" species were around at some point, wiped out by genocide countless millenia ago. Some wonder whether stories in mythology concerning gnomes, elves and so on aren't based on some kind of memory or legends handed down about rival humanoid types. Same deal with dragons (possibly dinosaurs?). The show The Naked Archaeologist has some interesting thoughts on the topic of Giants in the Bible, for example.

In any case, its relatively recently, like the last century or so, that people have come to the realization that people of different ethnicities are the same species. It wasn't all that long ago that various ethnic groups were seen by others as lower, other, or subhuman. Even Louis Farrakhan has suggested that my ethnic group, white people from Northern Europe, are the descendents of an experiment by a mad evil wizard, or some such hokum, and as his evidence, says that no person with blue or green eyes has ever been a great spiritual leader.

 

[taliesin15]

I'll make another point; magic is a staple of fantasy gaming.

There are many people around the world now who would fervently dispute such a notion. It largely depends on what exactly one means by "magic."

 

[Ruin Explorer]

There are many people around the world now who would fervently dispute such a notion. It largely depends on what exactly one means by "magic."

Staple is probably a reasonable word, but there's definately some apparent fantasy with little or no "magic". Magic is very popular in fantasy gaming and fiction, but there's fantasy which exists without it. People sometimes call it sci-fi or speculative fiction (which actually covers both), but it usually gets put with the fantasy for it's non-earth and pre-20th century setting. An example would be KJ Parker's Engineer trilogy, which simply doesn't feature any magic, yet has a pre-20th century (seemingly around 1700-1800 minus gunpowder) setting in a "fantasy world".

Other fantasy settings have no spells or wards or the like, but some kind of more subtle, psychic-power-like "magic", or only have magic via the presence of supernatural beings, not as a force manipulated by mortals (indeed I believe you could argue LotR as the latter).

 

[Andor]

I take a simpler approach:

Gunpowder does not work. Period. An industrial revolution is not possible. It would run counter to the laws of the universe.

(Yes, I ban tinker gnomes.)

Gunpowder and industry are unrelated.

Raise your hands everybody who knows how the first factories and mass production lines were powered? Yes, in the front row? Steam engines? Wrong. Gas, electric, diesel? Wrong. Dorky guy in the back? Water? *ding* We have a winner.

All you need for industry is a wind or water wheel. Same things that have been driving mill stones, lumber mills, trip hammers and stone saws for the last several thousand years. The idea that mechanized tools are a modern invention is a purely ignorant notion. The saws we used to cut stone blocks would not surprise an ancient egyptian.

And frankly in a magical world there is no need for steam or electricity when you can use a decanter of endless water or a golem or a team of skeletons to turn the mill wheel anywhere you please.

Which is not to say that modern mass production is an inevitablility. Economies of scale are only meaningful on a large scale after all.

Further the forces driving innovation will push in different directions depending on need. Any culture that uses cotton will tend to invent the cotton gin for example. But why invent a tractor if farmers can plow behind a bull shaped iron golem or a skeletal triceratops?

Gunpowder and plastics and television are all matters of chemistry and physics that can be added or removed from a setting at a gm's whim but yanking water wheels?