Worlds of Design: What State is Your State?

Countries were originally characterized as progressing through several states to “civilized.” This is not in favor today.

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

"Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable. Every step toward the goals requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals."- Martin Luther King

Though not common today, in the 19th century and earlier, scholars and philosophers sometimes proposed stages that every country “naturally” went through in the “progress” from a indigenous grouping to a “civilized” state. Arnold J. Toynbee (1889–1975) in his 12 volume A Study of History was the most recent well-known proponent of this idea. Another was Oswald Spengler's (1880-1936) The Decline of the West.

When you are serious about building a world for your RPG (or fiction), you may want to adopt some form of national/country progression, if only to help you organize your history. I tried to come up with a set of polity stages that might help organize your world. I’m not presenting these as “progress” that should be desired, though this is certainly how those 19th-century folks thought of it.

The Progression​

Here is the “progression”:

• Tribe: Frequently governed by a sort of vote. Population of dozens, covers a few square miles. Shamanistic religion, mob military. Subsistence (hunter-gatherer or agricultural) economy
• Tribal State: Frequently a form of monarchy. Population in thousands, area hundreds of square miles or less. Single religion. Not much military organization. Agriculture required. States require surplus production (usually from agriculture) to have an actual government and religious hierarchy (sometimes combined). This leads to...
• City-State (Autocracy, Oligarchy, Monarchy, Democracy): E.g. common in Mesopotamia, later in ancient Greece and Renaissance Italy. Population tens of thousands to a few hundred thousand, hundreds to a few thousand square miles, population heavily concentrated in one city. Have a state religion, political leader is usually religious leader as well. Organized military, may even have generals though political leaders are also the military leaders.
• Independent State/Country: All kinds of governments, but monarchy is most common, though the Roman Republic was not a monarchy. Populations can range in the hundreds of thousands or even more, area can be similar to city state or much larger. Religion may support but not be part of the government, or is part of the government (Roman state religion). Military has its own institutions often separate from politics.
• Nation-State: At first I listed this as “nation”, but “nation” actually refers to a people of similar ethnicity and language – who may be in separate countries (Italians in both Italy and Switzerland), or may not have an independent country at all. We can think of a “nation-state” stage arising from countries. A strong example is revolutionary/Napoleonic France. This stage won’t necessarily occur, but often has occurred historically. Another is the coalescence of many German principalities into one state.
• Industrialized Country: You might add one more stage to this, what might be called a modern country or industrialized country. These are usually democracies or autocracies. They may be secular (nonreligious) or closely aligned with some religion, or perhaps with some political ideology. Armies are highly professional, with the entire state providing manpower in wartime (the draft).

Out of Favor​

Toynbee was a tireless cheerleader for his ideas, but after he died they fell out of favor. A major reason for failure was the many exceptions to his progression that he had to try to explain (yes, I read some of his work long ago). There are no doubt exceptions to my explanation above, as well.

Your Turn: How do you classify your world's countries?

 

[Celebrim]

ERB was a supporter of eugenics who openly called for the extermination of “moral imbeciles” in a column he wrote for the Los Angeles Times - before Hitler made a similar demand.

This is the sort of broadbrush ahistorical innuendo which I guess passes for historical rigor on modern society, but which is in fact merely disinformation and dishonesty. The reader of your remark is not left with greater understanding of the situation, but less. The context of his remarks are nothing that you claim, nor are explicable to a modern reader without some context regarding the words and the stakes at debate. The "moral imbecile" in question was a white man, and his race had nothing to do with ERB's feelings on the matter. Indeed, ERB's primary feelings - the substance of the argument being made - was not race or eugenics at all, but rather the insanity defense. ERB was trying to distinguish between people who were insane and therefore pitiable and those who were merely unable to distinguish right from wrong despite otherwise rational modes of thought. Today we might use a term like "sociopath" but ERB doesn't have that language readily at his command, so he's using what in the context of his day was clinical scientific terms not meant as trigger words the way "imbecil" is now after long use on playgrounds in much the same way the "r word" has degraded to a slur. ERB is merely upset at what he sees is dishonest use of the insanity defense by someone who is not actually qualified to receive it despite he admits being not a normal person, in the sense that he doesn't think any normal person would stoop to such immoral behavior. That's the context of the debate he's entering into and the language he's using, not a pretext for racial genocide as you imply.

Tarzan and John Carter are subversive superheroes whose beliefs and choices are subtle and sometimes not so subtle attacks on the aristocratic Anglo cultures that they are drawn from. John is a White Virginian who fought for the South, not because ERB is in any way sympathetic to the Lost Cause, but to deliberately undermine that idea of how a Virginian should behave. I'm not in anyway claiming the man is perfect, but you are badly misunderstanding him by going full Godwin's Law on him here.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

Tarzan and John Carter are subversive superheroes.

Tarzan’s moral compass - his innate capacity to determine right from wrong - is entirely a function of his “superior” genetic heritage; white and aristocratic - and he is finally reconciled with his gentility to boot.

Burroughs was entirely capable of, at times, subverting/inverting the assumed role of his protagonists - as was Twain - but this does not belie the underlying perspective.

I don’t think that euthanising sociopaths is a morally justifiable stance, regardless of their ethnos.

I don’t think that you and I are likely to agree on this, so I’m letting it go.

 

[aramis erak]

Regardless of their personal politics, most authors of the first half of the 20th C were pretty racist and genderist by modern standards.

When it comes to worldbuilding, many elements from bad men's pseudo-science make for fun games.

 

[Joerg Baumgartner]

If I assign such classifications, it works more along something like tech level or Universal Planetary Profile as inherited from Traveller.

Countries are useful shapes on the map but don't really are the units that define cultures or cultural advances. Language families for instance are shared by cultures.

In fantasy, magic and deities/pantheons play a role in defining cultures and phenomena like presented in the "cultural progress" list, although they may be shared by rather different cultures. There can be immortal demigods/sorcerers/monsters ruling over a variety of followers which may heaviily influence their cultures.

Postapocalyptic settings will have ancient magic or technology that may influence current technology, although in limited availability or functionality.

Primary production (food through hunting, fishing, herding, horticulture, agriculture, hydroculture) will still be a dominating factor for "building" a culture. Agriculture and some pastoralism tend to be the norm, but may come in varying intensity (e.g. terracing of hillsides, irrigation, artificial islands, vertical agriculture or horticulture, co-dependent crops like beans/maize/squash) or practices (e.g. transhumance sending the herds into distant pastures, or semi-nomadic ranching with huge herds sent into steppes or other such wildlands. Magical methods may come into play.

Magical forestry might turn forests into highly productive nutritional sources, typically associated with elves, dryads, or other "in-tune-with-nature" species and cultures. Likewise, aquaculture may be driven by aquatic or amphibic species with high productivity.

Underground civilizations are somewhat problematic with regard to food and air supply (and water drainage), for whichever real-world-unobtainium is used to keep the underworld habitable.

Access to magical countries (other planes, pocket universes, highly magical spots, whatever) will also defy simple classification.

Military organisation and what can be mobilized (for internal defense, for out-of-territory missions/campaigns, as source for mercenaries) are another yardstick for these cultures. This includes all manner of magic, whether of direct military use, for intelligence, for healing or possibly resurrection, or for logistics. Low technology units (e.g. slingers) can be highly effective, even in advanced warfare if provided with high technology (or magical) ammunition or other such equipment, or as scouts and partisan forces in wilderness.

Availability of beasts (as steeds, for transport, or possibly as defensive or offensive units) may change the rating of otherwise apparently mesolithic cultures.

The mix of species and subspecies in the cultures may make classifications like in the original post obsolete, too. Depending on the domesticated beasts available, there might be nomadic cities of high sophistication. Mechanically inclined cultures (e.g. D&D gnomes or RuneQuest Mostali dwarfs) might have mobile fortresses or cities or factories.

Traffic opportunities play a big role in the evaluation of cultures, too. Control of a navigable river remains important even in SF settings, and more so in fantasy settings for modern or historical or prehistorical analogs. Road networks (and maintenance thereof, if required), possibly magical roads, possibly canal networks, possibly railways, cable car lines or tunnel highways, maybe even cargo and passenger-capable letter chutes may alter assumptions about sustainability of populations. Magical (or high-tech, possibly ancient high-tech) portals creating shortcuts are rules-changers, too.

MMORPG-like dungeon economies might be a factor in world-building and evaluation of cultures, too.