User:Downzorz/Tome of Steel/Styles of Nations

Styles of Nations

Iron Age Nations

This has been touched on in the Dungeonomicon, but there is more to say.

D&D is styled, in large part, around Iron Age myths and stories. However, it tends to deviate in the area of nations. The nations of D&D are more reminiscent of medieval kingdoms, or perhaps the late Roman Empire. These tend to be what people understand, as they are more present in fantasy literature and media. However, the nations of the Iron Age were far different from that. Most Iron Age government was in the form of city-states. Ancient Greece was a geographical area and culture, not a single nation. There was Athens, Sparta, Macedonia, Thebes, and various other powerful cities, but there was no government of "Greece." Iron Age Greece was similar to medieval Europe: they would unite against a common enemy (the Greeks worked together to fight off the Persians, Europe to fight the Mongols) but aside from that, they did not have any political unity. The great empires of late antiquity were closer to medieval nations, but they still retained many Iron Age ideals. When Alexander drove the Persians out of an area, he didn't have to pacify most of the cities- they fell in with the Macedonian Empire, because the people were loyal to their own city, not to Persia. That doesn't mean that cities will abandon an empire in time of war for no good reason; it just means that nobody thinks twice about the fact that they are sending their boats to fight for Persia one day and Macedonia the next.

Most D&D settings are written this way because it is more intuitive to people, and they are far easier to write. The overlapping spheres of influence from a dozen city states are rather difficult to map, and determining the political allegiance of a village halfway between Sparta and Athens is a headache. It is far easier to draw a line and say, "Everything on this side is Goblin: Everything on the other side is Elven." Though it is not thematically appropriate for the mythological basis of D&D, and it creates a complex situation with social values of classical antiquity conflicting with a political setting from a different era... for the purpose of actually playing, it really doesn't matter. The conflict of Classical values with medieval politics is irrelevant to the players, unless they are playing a deep-roleplaying game that explores concepts that are, to many people, boring.

However, if you really want to make your nations as straight-up Iron Age as possible, that works. Here it is- most people in the world owe allegiance to a city, not a nation. People from Athens are Athenian, not Greek. Smaller cities that fall under the direct influence of a larger one will pay monetary or resource tribute and lip service to whoever can kill them, but will basically retain self-governance. Areas are "ruled" by the largest city taking stuff from the smaller cities, and the extent of a city's power is determined by the reach of their Fireballs. A powerful creature can simply walk into an weak area, put up a tent, go around demanding tribute from nearby cities- and the cities will comply, unless their leaders are certain that they can defeat the creature without being destroyed.

The larger-scale cultural similarities come into existence when threatened by a different, outside force- two Human cities may not get along, but they all band together when Orcs encroach on their territory. This is scaled up as the differences become greater: Pretty much everything will band together to battle creatures from the Negative Energy Plane, as they hate life everywhere. The same goes for undead. Aberrations, vermin, and oozes are hated by pretty much everything else- humanoids, monstrous humanoids, fey, magical beasts, and even dragons will band together to fight them. Aberrations are hated because they are a mockery of pretty much everything that exists, and oozes and vermin are hated because they eat everything, and have no culture, intelligence, or productivity to justify it. Smaller races will band together to fight off dragons and giants, though some of the more sagacious of the smaller races may ally with dragons, and the more monstrous ones may ally with Giants. Generally, though, the smaller races would rather be ruled by someone their own size. Fey and magical beasts get along, and are generally beloved by the more "civilized" humanoids, but they war with the more monstrous ones. Constructs are usually unintelligent, but intelligent ones are almost universally discriminated against. Monstrous humanoids will fight humanoids, though they might ally with the more monstrous of the "regular" humanoids. Outsiders are wildcards, with their level of acceptance varying from the LG outsiders that are summoned to serve as judges, to the CE ones that are killed on sight.

Medieval Nations

Medieval nations are the ones most familiar and intuitive to D&D. They have fairly definite boarders, and you can pretty much guarantee that unless France and Italy are at war, you won't see units of French pikemen on Italian soil. The rule is more centralized, which means that smaller villages are more likely to get screwed- crushing taxation of already-poor villages was an invention of the Middle Ages, as a result of the fact that the King had to do everything himself to keep power, and this meant that he didn't have time to consider the needs of individual settlements. This systematic inefficiency was a result of increasingly autocratic governments and a feudal economic system. So Medieval nations are pretty crappy places to live, unless you are in the nice district of a big city.

In Medieval nations, national allegiance is a Big Important Issue. More than it is in pretty much any other era. Since a king's power base is built on a pyramid of followers that themselves have followers that own the serfs, having everyone fall into line is important, and it becomes more important further up the chain. A serf doesn't really care about nations- life for them sucks no matter who is their boss. However, the local barons are more important, and will be whipped for wishing that he lived with the Orcs instead of the Goblins. But this is usually where it ends, as if the King loses a local baron, all they are losing is some resources. Mid-level nobles, on the other hand, are far more dangerous, and the turning of one of them means a loss of a part of the King's army. The highest-level nobles can frighten the King by even talking about switching sides, and intelligent (as opposed to egotistical) rulers would seriously consider letting them leave, as opposed to fighting such a difficult conflict. If a treacherous vizier is disposed of, it has to be done thoroughly. This means that everyone who could possibly be with the traitors has to be exiled at best, and probably killed.

Colonial-Era Nations

Renaissance and colonial nations are mostly based on money. In real life, these nations still held together by the tradition of European kingdoms. In another world, however, a colonial nation might consist of a single city and a great number of colonies. Generally, there are two parts of a colonial nation- the "real" nation, which consists of the old part of the nation that takes the materials taken from the colonies; and the colonies, which both produce raw materials for the nation they support and purchase finished materials from them. This model is held together by areas that are undeveloped but resource-rich, and areas that are developed but resource-poor. This happened in Europe because thousands of years of empires had stripped the area of any natural resources, and they had the power to overtake the resource-rich Americas, Africa, and southern and eastern Asia.

The model of a colonial nation, however, is hard to sustain in the long term. First, there is a limit to how far the power of a colonial nation can reach, and overreaching themselves can easily lead to rebellion. Rebellions can come from either an oppressed group, like India's rebellion against the British, or from the group that founded the colony. The reason that colonies will want to separate from the mother country is usually a cultural separation- many colonies are formed to get rid of radicals or minorities that do not fit in well with the mother country. But even if the colonies are filled with loyalists, they eventually develop a cultural difference, usually because of the physical and economic distance.

Neo-Modern Nations

Probably the second most popular fantasy nation type, next to the medieval nations, are the neo-modern nations. In these nations, magic fills the roles of technology that make modern styles of government feasible. The classic example of this is Eberron- magic trains make transportation simple, skyscrapers are built with magic supporting them, and there are "houses of healing" that are the magical equivalent of hospitals. These nations also seem to have a more modern culture, with fairly cosmopolitan cities. These nations are used because they are as intuitive to most fantasy readers as medieval nations, if not more. They tend to use magic as a plot device, to emulate modern technology, but leave it at that point. There are magic trains, but people still fight over resources that can be gotten from a single wizard chain-binding genies. There is nothing wrong with this from a gameplay point, but if you are into heavy-roleplaying these circumstances either remain gaping plot holes, or have justifications that are almost inevitably contrived. However, if you want to throw causality to the wind and just assume that people feel like mining iron as opposed to casting Wall of Iron, that is within your rights as a DM or player.

Magical Nations

Magical Nations take the idea of a magical world to the logical extreme. These nations are mostly run on the Wish economy, with the essentials of life provided for by powerful creatures. There are really no serfs in the Magical Nation- there is nobody starving to feed the upper class. Since the power of magical nations is mostly drawn from magic, that means that there is a strong social incentive to study the magical arts. However, since being a spellcaster requires being above-average in one area, only a small portion of people in the world can do it. For a simple example of this, let's assume that regular people are built off a 3d6 dice roll. This means that the average ability score is 10.5, meaning a 10 or 11. This suffices for casting cantrips and first-level spells, and while they may be impressive to peasants, they are unimpressive in a magical nation. To be able to cast 9th level spells by level 20, a 1st-level character must have an Intelligence score of at least 14. The chance of a character having this score, on a standard roll, is 16.2%. This means that less than a sixth of the population is even capable of reaching the pinnacle of arcane power. And that is the chance of reaching it by level 20- being able to cast 9th level spells when most characters get them is 9.25%. And the chance of a standard commoner having adventurer-level scores, ones that surpass the bare minimum for casting, is even lower. Assuming that no self-respecting adventuring spellcaster would enter their class with a score of less than 16, the chance of a common NPC having these scores is 4.26%. That means that less than one out of twenty common people have the aptitude to become even moderately powerful spellcasters. This, combined with the difficulty of finding a spellcaster for training when everyone wants to use magic, means that the field of spellcasting is highly competitive and the upper echelons are very, very elite. The driving social force between almost everything people do in a magical nation is to acquire more magical power or knowledge.

That describes the social landscape, but a question remains: what does a magical nation look like? And this is a question that is near-impossible to answer, simply because there is no real-life analogy to these kinds of nations. For inspiration, look to sci-fi- the strange, utopian societies of speculative fiction attempts to show what the world would be like with the addition of a transformative technology. Magical nations are the most at the mercy of the DM, as the standards are few and varied. Really, anything goes in this setting.