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Old 05-07-2023, 01:17 AM   #11
Inky
 
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Default Re: [Low-Tech][Social Engineering] Social gaming in nomadic societies

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Originally Posted by Michael Thayne View Post
But I'm very unsure how to model this in games where PCs are regularly doing social interaction involving, and perhaps even leading, such groups. Thoughts?
How do you mean, model? Are you looking for something specific rules-wise, or are you just looking for information about how nomadic societies work?
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Old 05-07-2023, 02:45 PM   #12
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Default Re: [Low-Tech][Social Engineering] Social gaming in nomadic societies

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Originally Posted by Michael Thayne View Post
I'm not so interested in people literally living like apes.
Certainly low TL nomads and pastoralists will behave differently from apes, but the basic social and survival problems they face will be the same. That's why I suggested the idea.

Nomads are going to have all the social interactions you'd expect from an extended family or inhabitants of a small village, as well as concerns about whether they should leave an area and where to go to if they do. There are also very real "opportunity costs" to any decision to move, do we go to Valley A to hunt or Valley B? "The herds are migrating right now, they've got an equal chance of using either valley, and if we guess wrong we might not have enough meat for the winter."

Any move means that goods might need to be abandoned or cached. Shelters will need to be rebuilt or set up at the new location and vulnerable members of the group might be at greater risk when the tribe is on the move.

Given that there are no formal laws, the leaders' ability to exert control over their subordinates is limited by their perceived authority. In many cases, that authority is nothing more than, "I can beat the snot out of you in a fight, so do as I say."

Young men looking for status are going to instinctive challenge the existing leadership, which means Politics. They might split from the main group, depriving the larger group of useful hunters/warriors while putting themselves at risk due to lack of numbers.
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Old 05-07-2023, 03:08 PM   #13
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Default Re: [Low-Tech][Social Engineering] Social gaming in nomadic societies

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You underestimate social taboos.Those can be all dominating, requiring for instance that all members of a tribe take responsibility for the deeds of a few.
Social taboos take the place of formal law, at least to start. The ability to punish violations of taboos is purely informal, however. The group has to collectively shun the violator or physically drive them out for the punishment to work. Where there are oral law traditions, there are issues with finding qualified, neutral judges and potentially issues with choosing a suitable "law speaker" or judicial champion if one of the parties isn't able to defend themselves.

One traditional tribal enforcement mechanism is collective punishment for entire families, since that forces family members to police each others' behavior. Weregeld and similar economic punishments only work if both sides are willing to settle the case, however. Otherwise, bad feelings can last for years, with simmmering low level conflict between the two families.The system can also break down if a particular family "goes rogue" and are willing to lie to protect each other or gain the means to pervert the course of justice. In such cases, blood feud is the traditional method of attempting to deal with the problem. Such conflicts are endemic in most mobile or semi-mobile low tech cultures, particularly those where every man has warrior training.[/QUOTE]
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Old 05-07-2023, 03:29 PM   #14
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Default Re: [Low-Tech][Social Engineering] Social gaming in nomadic societies

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I think that equating tribal existence to libertarianism is more likely to cause confusion about both.
Agreed, poor choice of words.

Tribal societies certainly don't live in anarchy. There are social rules and taboos and often oral law traditions. In many ways it can be a very rule-bound society. Survival demands that group members collectively support each other. Since I'm not familiar with anarchism or similar political philosophies, I can't speak to similarities between modern political philosophy and ancient and historical tribal culture.

On the other hand, there's no concept of citizenship or a state and very little coercive "state" authority. As long as they don't violate local taboos or laws, people are generally free to act as they wish, limited only by the necessities of survival. Leadership extends only as far as the leader's personal reputation. Dissidents are free to reject their tribe's taboos and laws and strike out on their own. While that's likely to be a fatal decision for an individual or small group, tribes can successfully split into smaller factions if a large minority group is dissatisfied with the status quo or if population density demands that some group members migrate.
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Old 05-07-2023, 07:35 PM   #15
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Default Re: [Low-Tech][Social Engineering] Social gaming in nomadic societies

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How do you mean, model? Are you looking for something specific rules-wise, or are you just looking for information about how nomadic societies work?
I'm interested in things on a rules level. It seems to me that a nomadic existence might impact how things like Claim to Hospitality, Patron, and Rank work, but I'm unsure of the details. Oddly, the Dungeon Fantasy series may have some of the few rules specific to nomads I've seen—Guilds mentions that if you make an Assistance Roll to get accommodations from a tribe, you may have to travel with them even if the roll is successful. It also mentions penalizing the frequency of appearance roll when calling in favors owed to a PC by the tribe. Pretty thin but more than I can find in other books.
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Old 05-08-2023, 07:44 AM   #16
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Default Re: [Low-Tech][Social Engineering] Social gaming in nomadic societies

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Originally Posted by Michael Thayne View Post
I'm interested in things on a rules level. It seems to me that a nomadic existence might impact how things like Claim to Hospitality, Patron, and Rank work, but I'm unsure of the details. Oddly, the Dungeon Fantasy series may have some of the few rules specific to nomads I've seen—Guilds mentions that if you make an Assistance Roll to get accommodations from a tribe, you may have to travel with them even if the roll is successful. It also mentions penalizing the frequency of appearance roll when calling in favors owed to a PC by the tribe. Pretty thin but more than I can find in other books.
I think this is a really interesting thread. I agree both that I'd love to model nomadic ads/disads and social engineering confidently and that the references are fragmented as it stands. The economics of nomadism - what wealth level or cost table do you use if you have 100 cattle but little else? - and prestige-comes-from-giving-away-wealth for the (non-nomadic) Kwakwaka’wakw or the Atlas Berbers I would personally advocate for also.

There are definitely academic resources out there; I might recommend Nomads and the Outside World, Fields on the Hoof, Muslim Society, The Nuer, The Foraging Spectrum, Before Western Hegemony, Stone Age Economics and even The World Until Yesterday before The Dawn of Everything. But also fair enough I get the impression we're beyond the scope of a thread to settle these questions - when does Low-Tech Companion 4: Nomads, Chieftains and Foragers come out? ;-)

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Old 05-08-2023, 09:25 AM   #17
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Default Re: [Low-Tech][Social Engineering] Social gaming in nomadic societies

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Originally Posted by muduri View Post
I think this is a really interesting thread. I agree both that I'd love to model nomadic ads/disads and social engineering confidently and that the references are fragmented as it stands. The economics of nomadism - what wealth level or cost table do you use if you have 100 cattle but little else? - and prestige-comes-from-giving-away-wealth for the (non-nomadic) Kwakwaka’wakw or the Atlas Berbers I would personally advocate for also.

There are definitely academic resources out there; I might recommend Nomads and the Outside World, Fields on the Hoof, Muslim Society, The Nuer, The Foraging Spectrum, Before Western Hegemony, Stone Age Economics and even The World Until Yesterday before The Dawn of Everything. But also fair enough I get the impression we're beyond the scope of a thread to settle these questions - when does Low-Tech Companion 4: Nomads, Chieftains and Foragers come out? ;-)
I agree. The internal governance of Nomadic peoples is fascinating to me, and looking at it from a gaming context has a way of solidifying questions.

I started looking around for resources and rapidly came to the conclusion that I needed to pick specific target societies, and that I needed proper books rather than internet research: The list you just gave is awesome. Do you know of anything beyond that good about Berbers, Bedouins, or central Asian nomads? You seem to have a fair number of resources off the tip of your tongue.
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Old 05-08-2023, 10:11 AM   #18
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Default Re: [Low-Tech][Social Engineering] Social gaming in nomadic societies

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Originally Posted by muduri View Post
I think this is a really interesting thread. I agree both that I'd love to model nomadic ads/disads and social engineering confidently and that the references are fragmented as it stands. The economics of nomadism - what wealth level or cost table do you use if you have 100 cattle but little else? - and prestige-comes-from-giving-away-wealth for the (non-nomadic) Kwakwaka’wakw or the Atlas Berbers I would personally advocate for also.

There are definitely academic resources out there; I might recommend Nomads and the Outside World, Fields on the Hoof, Muslim Society, The Nuer, The Foraging Spectrum, Before Western Hegemony, Stone Age Economics and even The World Until Yesterday before The Dawn of Everything. But also fair enough I get the impression we're beyond the scope of a thread to settle these questions - when does Low-Tech Companion 4: Nomads, Chieftains and Foragers come out? ;-)
Thank you for the book recommendations—I will check some of these out when I can.

For societies where gift-giving is important, Low-Tech Companion 1 has some notes on gifting economies. Also, frankly, I suspect generic social engineering rules for bribery may work quite well. That may sound crude but AFAICT the societies that most of us here on the forums live in are unusual in their notions about bribery. Historically exchange of lavish gifts has been a normal part of diplomacy, and in many countries it still is, to the point that there are countries where visiting US diplomats sometimes find designer handbags full of jewelry in their hotel rooms. Rather than try to return the gift (possibly giving offense), the procedure is to hand the stuff over to the State Department.

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Originally Posted by ericthered View Post
I agree. The internal governance of Nomadic peoples is fascinating to me, and looking at it from a gaming context has a way of solidifying questions.

I started looking around for resources and rapidly came to the conclusion that I needed to pick specific target societies, and that I needed proper books rather than internet research: The list you just gave is awesome. Do you know of anything beyond that good about Berbers, Bedouins, or central Asian nomads? You seem to have a fair number of resources off the tip of your tongue.
GURPS has a lot of very generic rules for sedentary societies and I suspect it's possible to come up with similarly useful generic rules for nomadic ones. One idea I had—if you take a group as a Patron that splits and reforms on a seasonal basis, maybe it could alternate between function as "low frequency of appearance, high resources" and "high frequency of appearance, but lower resources" on a seasonal basis? I'm not sure of the details—"Patron resource value" in GURPS isn't very fine-grained. But could potentially cover a lot of situations.
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Old 05-08-2023, 10:59 AM   #19
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Default Re: [Low-Tech][Social Engineering] Social gaming in nomadic societies

What does Lands Out Of Time do about this? Are the Ice Age people in that nomadic?

It seems like, it's often not clear what you're supposed to do with Contacts, Patron, etc. in circumstances where they or the PCs are likely to be travelling such long distances that they may be too far away to get to you in time, which comes up in a lot of things besides with nomads. Maybe that's just supposed to be indicated by a lower Frequency of Appearance.
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Old 05-08-2023, 02:12 PM   #20
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Default Re: [Low-Tech][Social Engineering] Social gaming in nomadic societies

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Originally Posted by Michael Thayne View Post
Pretty thin but more than I can find in other books.
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Originally Posted by Inky View Post
What does Lands Out Of Time do about this? Are the Ice Age people in that nomadic?
I was actually going to suggest checking Ice Age, but then I read it real quick and it's absolutely useless for this.

Not that it presumes agricultural/sedentary groups, it doesn't, but it also really doesn't delve too deeply into anything even resembling social crunch (probably an artifact of the time it was written in).

You might still give it a skim Micheal, it does talk about how migratory groups tend to operate, but eh... if you're reading other works already and don't have Ice Age, it's not worth buying (unless you want to see variant human write-ups)
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