If race and class were tangible social constructs in a setting

[aesir23]

Originally Posted by Sunrunners_Fire

How to put this ... farming only apples is a great way to starve.

Only if you belong to a society with no trade or commerce. This has rarely been the case for the last 10,000 years.

Hell, if the apple farmer makes a tasty enough hard cider, he or she can probably trade for all the meat and grains he wants.

This is why many many people DO farm only apples, or grapes, or pigs or whatever.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Dangerious P. Cats

For a while now I've had an idea for a setting where society collapses and the only people to survive are are re-enactors and role-players. While the re-enactors are off deviding themselves up between kingdoms of the SCA and metal weapons groups the roleplayers who survive build their society as though it were a roleplaying game (a very particular roleplaying game) and so devide everyone within the society is given a race, class and level. I'm trying to work out how this affects people socially. What insitutions would be formed around class and how would being a level 12 farmer be better for you than being a level 7 farmer? Also I'm trying to work out what classes might need to evolve to make such a society work? You need to have craftsmen, farmers beuracrats to keep a society going, and since everything in the society needs to have a class you need to have classes for them (people without a race/class/level are deemed to be a "monster" and have no rights in the society).

They could simply go with classing farmers as all being commoners and hence unleveled and below the PC classes. That was how D&D worked once upon a time.

But if they wanted to class everyone, then a low level Farmer would just be an agricultural labourer. The first few ranks would just be different pay grades. After that you get into the Farmers who actually own a little land and the more land you owned, the higher your level would be. Eventually the only way you'd be able to progress is by switching to the Prestige Class of "Noble".

They'd probably want a Mechanician class. Also Soldiers, Bards, Clerics, Merchants...

[Nemi3e]

Well, assuming the laws of reality weren't skewed, I suppose that it would be something like a caste system. Where your level is how effective you are at something/how much money you make. There might be tests or strict declinations. Might work into their tax system too.

Actually, I remember something I read a long time ago about historical measurements. Basically they divied up land according to what would support a knight for a year. Or something like that. So it might be 10 acres of farm land, or one acre in fine wine country.

They might use units like that. And tax accordingly. Or it might be by how much you make, Two farmers, neighbors, have the same amount of land, one makes more money because of the crop choice, he's higher leveled. But is he a higher level farmer, or does he get a level in some other class?

Doctors would have tests for ranks, and be paid accordingly.

If they manage to survive for long enough, some farmer who makes a lot of money and has many minions might loose his farmer levels and become "Corporate Suit level 5"

[AJediIAm]

There are actually many good reasons to divide humans up into classes or races. First, let me start with classes:

Belbin for example has made a classification system for balancing teams. A society could benefit form having a structure based on something like this.
- Shapers: The ones who challenge the team to improve.
- Implementers: the ones who get things done.
- Completers: Finishers who see the things through and take care of the small details.

- Coordinators: The ones who take the leader role.
- Team Workers: The ones who support others.
- Resource Investigators: The ones who explore the available options.

- Plants: The ones who comes up with new ideas.
- Monitors: The ones who evaluate and analyze ideas
- Specialists: The ones who have specialized knowledge

A person could be classified and graded in each of these 9 classes or professions. One should distinguish a primary from each of the 3 categories. When doing a task, one should look for classes to balance the team and society could even promote breeding of rare or highly specialized classes.

When I look at races the difference can either be physical qualities or cultural differences but that would not be really interesting...
When we discussed this topic at the role playing society where I'm currently at, we concluded that I would not be classified as human. I think they would classify me as a goblin. This is largely behavioral. (Lots of mad scientist tinkering and crazy ideas.)
Taking myself as an example I should look back at my heritage: My father is a chemical engineer with a postdoc in chemistry. My mother is a house wife (by lack of change mostly) with many creative hobbies. So I guess it works! take chemistry and explosives and mix it with creativity and you get goblins!
Looking farther back I cannot see any real relevant racial traits except physical and cultural aspects which I obviously inherit from my parents.

So, we have social group work as a classification, physical and cultural background and educational background. All of these form a strong base for a person.
One could be a west-european beta-breed kindergarden teacher which is a bit of a weird carrier choise for a beta-breed as you get a +2 on Wis and -2 on Cha. And because teacher professions go on charisma, one could better take the prestige class to physics teacher which allows you to replace Cha with Wis on all teaching rolls.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Rocket Man

Of course, the GURPSers might have a Social Stigma as heretics. "Set aside your delusions of class and level! With time and study, ALL may become heroes! And the warrior and the wizard shall lay down together ..." (Thunk)

And the GMs carefully developed world goes, splat! And the PCs have had no experience other then how to be modern Westerners with different TLs.

To prevent this, why not impose mandatory CoH, SoD, or Honesty?

[martinl]

Originally Posted by Dangerious P. Cats

For a while now I've had an idea for a setting where society collapses and the only people to survive are are re-enactors and role-players.

That is a curiously specific collapse, that is.

[Qoltar]

Okay, Maybe I'm slightly confused here.

Is this meant to be a GURPS topic or a Roleplaying in General topic?

The idea has something possibly interesting for use in a post-Apoc setting.

- Ed

[Dangerious P. Cats]

Originally Posted by Qoltar

Okay, Maybe I'm slightly confused here.

Is this meant to be a GURPS topic or a Roleplaying in General topic?

The idea has something possibly interesting for use in a post-Apoc setting.

- Ed

To put it in context I'm working on a setting where society collapses and most of the people who survive and rebuild are either larpers (and paper and dice roleplayers), members of the SCA or metal weapons re-enactors. Each settles in a different region and set up their own society based on their particular hobby. The SCA establishes the greater kingdom of Scadia, a large and wealthy kingdom dominated by pagentry and political intrigue. The metal weapons groups for squabbaling fiefdoms in forrested mountains, mainly based on viking age society (but with two handed swords and some other later period stuff for extra masculinty), who fight with each other and occationally raid Scadia or Larpa Empire. The Larpers form a society built around organising people by what they do and they creating heirarchies based on how well they do it, essencially a type of fiercy heirarchical meritocracy. Scadia and the metal fiefs are fairly easy to work out but how the Larpa Empire structures itself is a little more complex. I'm liking the idea that one's level as a farmer or artisan dictates how much they are paid/can charge for their goods. Likewise it would impact how much say one gets in decision making, since no one is going to listen to a level 2 farmer about land management but a level 20 farmer will be able to dictate policy for an entire region.

Also I can't come up with a name for the lands controlled by the metal weapons groups.