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Old 11-28-2016, 07:55 AM   #2
McAllister
 
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Join Date: Jun 2013
Default Re: Different Tech Levels

Warfare: the two questions to ask about the TL4 people are, are they at the point where they can produce in appreciable quantities one of the guns on p. 93 of Low-Tech, the muskets? If so, they probably use pike and shot, described on p. 55. Next question, are they comfortable enough with firearms to have thought to put bayonets on them? Because that's a force multiplier, it really is.

And a follow-up question about their neighbors: have they been getting shot at for a while? And are they unusually brave, or unusually quick on the uptake? Because a formation of guys with muskets who are ready to fix bayonets if they're charged is a formidable application of force, but it's also terrifying. Conversely, if a larger, perhaps faster force can sustain losses and close with them, they really just have somewhat awkward spears, so outnumbering them should be bloody.

Ideologies: sedentary societies are based on the creation of surplus goods and the division of labor, where nomadic societies do neither. This reflects strongly in their ideologies, more than you might think. Sedentary people will have people of faith, which leads to religious hierarchy, and religion making an active effort to keep people engaged, where nomadic people work fine with some flavor of pervasive but low-impact animism. Ethics? Nomads trust each other, because even if they don't personally know everyone in their community, it's too tightly-knit for anyone to be able to get away with transgression. City folk don't, because they don't know who their neighbors are, and if they're found dead in a gutter with their purse gone, well, there's just not enough to deter the desperate sorts that cities attract.

Fashion: uh... guns cause armor to go out of style, armor going out of style causes swords to get thin and stabby, which changes the aesthetics a lot? Not sure what to say, really.

Morale: cities tend to be shitholes, man, and I don't know which TL people stop emptying their chamberpots onto the sidewalk at, but they've been getting cleaner ever since we invented them and they're still not all that great. I'm inclined to say that nomads will be the happiest, then feudal nobility, then serfs, then urban citizens, then slaves at the bottom. In broad, broad strokes.

Relationships with other communities: sedentary people want to expand, take more land, and optimize its use. Nomads want to circulate across a great deal of land, tending to it somewhat, but not a great deal. It tends to end poorly for the nomads, but before it ends, they can be expected to become quite xenophobic (and rightly so).

Economics: ****, especially this one? Well, furnish me with whatever details you have about the peoples and I might be able to take a stab at it, but it's one of those things where a lot of different kinds of conditions might prevail.
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