Humpty Dumpty

"For me, one of the biggest shifts [in marking papers] has been the way that I relate to polish, to students being able to produce things that are perfectly grammatically correct and have elegant turns of phrases — that used to be something that delighted me. Now, sometimes it's something that makes me suspicious, and I find a comma splice, I find some awkward syntax, and I'm relieved... because I think, 'Oh look, here's someone who has indeed done this work themselves, who is struggling to figure out how to say something.' And I'm a lot more generous..."

"One of the biggest things I'm struggling with as an educator — and I don't I'm alone in this — is how do I let go of valuing perfection and instead focusing my valuing my students' process: giving them a chance to make mistakes, accepting work that may not be grammatical perfect. I want my students to know that they can be authentic... but that involves me accepting their imperfections."

— Canadian Professors on How A.I. Is Changing Education

Listening to this last night, I burst out in laughter that ran for about five minutes. I'm still tittering about it now, because it gets to the heart of a fundamental error that has ingrained itself into educational thinking since the 19th century, and perhaps earlier: a problem that has been insurmountable until apparently now, when an existential threat to post-secondary institutions has forced the ground to move against the will of those who would otherwise hold that ground comfortably until their deaths. It is a question that every student of every subject other than English Literature has asked: "I am studying Geography... why does it matter if I spell the word 'defence' incorrection in my essay."

I burst out laughing because for me and for millions of students, the clouds opened up and the sun shone down because for the first time, a professor got a stick out of their ass, thinking maybe this stick didn't need to be here when it was put here in the early 19th century by everybody who had the same stick up their ass.

The only thing capable of removing that stick was the demonstration that grammar is a tool that can be managed like a computer program. It is not a human trait, and the demands that humans need kowtow to this arbitrary requirement is, will be and always fucking has been pedantic and insupportable. Not that the type of person who becomes a professor, by sucking up to other professors, would ever have admitted that until they were forced to.

More to the point: grammar is not a trait that separates one human being's value from another. That historical period is done. No teacher, professor or self-righteous pundit can ever claim again the sorting mechanism, grammar, is a legitimate soruce of judgement for human worth, intelligence, diligence, seriousness or fitness.

For this, the sacrifice of the entire artistic community is a fair exchange. Though of course, we haven't done that. Like bad writers, who could preen themselves on their grammatical prowess, we've emasculated bad drawers and painters, who preened themselves on being able to draw a straight line. It's the same for the same.

Naturally, not every professor is going to accept that which the two quoted above are moving toward. The context, beginning about 18:30 to 20:00 in the linked video, does not include an acknowledgement on the professor's part that perhaps "elegant turns of phrases" never did have anything to do with the work; that their personal pleasure in this comes from the worst task in education, the marking of essays and exams. A turn of phrase gives a momentary dopamine hit amidst a disaster of poor student writing, which sustains an educator — which yet only suggests that the fundamental quality of a paper's value is how entertaining it was for the marker in comparison to the work of other students. As a student, my papers tended to be heavy with argument, strange off the wall propositions, even jokes (as I got more experience with newspaper writing on the university newspaper), so that my B or B+ grades usually included a note at the end that read, "I enjoyed this," "A bit off the mark, but a good read," or words to that effect... which enabled my 3.3 average out of "four-point-oh," but really had fuck all to do with my university education. That did not stop professors from exposing their humanity in ways they shouldn't have. Not really.

The multiple choice exam was invented, I believe, though I refuse to research it because I can't be bother, because it was just easier to mark it. I remember in school when we were told that computers were going to mark our exams in future, which is why we were given a particular kind of green computer paper that we needed to fill out with a specific number-2 pencil, so the computer could read it so the teacher didn't need to. We were told things like how we had to "fill in the whole box" and not to "write lightly" and stuff, because any mistake on those lines would cause the computer to read the answer incorrectly. Naturally, it ended up that the teachers, or someone, had to double-check the computer, because that's how it goes. Nonetheless, the answer was obviously to alleviate teachers, in at least some part, of the horror of having to mark exams.

It stands to reason that at some point teachers will realise that A.I. enables them to side-step marking altogether, at which point the entire profession would HAIL the arrival of the program as the son-of-a-bitch they've been looking for all these years.

This is the pattern with all technological innovations. Everyone hates the motorised horse for how dangerous is it, expecting someone to walk ahead of the vehicle with a red flag, until it becomes evident that the horse dung will evaporate from the streets as the horses are all replaced. Naturally, the car creates other problems, but no one — except Robert A. Heinlein, who made a point of still arguing the horse-and-carriage in science fiction stories into the 1970s — has ever seriously suggested we should go back to a world that smells like horseshit. Film is despised until it turns out all the actors, designers and producers who can't get work in the theatre industry have a place to go. Television is despised until all the actors, designers and producers who can't get work in the film industry, again, have a place to go. The internet sucks... until it turns out that people can actually meet each other online and communicate with friends, whereupon it's immediately embraced. It is always the same thing. An innovation's usefulness must hazard this resistance... it's the only way we know for sure whether or not it's "good." And the longer it lasts, the more evidence it compiles towards that conclusion, the better it is.

Humpty Dumpty, in the form of many industries right now, has fallen off his wall. Humpty Dumpty is the metaphor that everyone should be using. The old world died in 2022.

But see, the phrase, "And all the king's horses and all the king's men" does more than simply say, phenomenal amounts of strength and power are not enough. It also says, or at least this is how I always heard it, that the king's horses and the king's men tried and failed. They didn't just look at the problem and throw their hands in the air. They refused to believe that they couldn't just put Humpty back up there.

This is where we are. We're stuck between those who are afraid of it, those actually stoking the fear because for the grifter it's a tremendous opportunity to vouchsafe panic about something only a comparative few understand or even need to understand, and those who are defending institutions, like Big Publishing, Big Business and Big Church, whose pasts have already put them on the veritable ground beneath the wall, trying to put their own Humptys back together again. We're seeing something amazing here, and between all the grasping at straws and the crying into handkerchiefs, we're missing it.

Between 1908 and 1910, going back quite a way, it was possible for an ordinary person to obtain for a price, about the cost of say a computer laptop, a projector that would cast pictures on a blank white wall. If the individual had access to a space large enough for thirty people and could get together a number of cheap chairs to sit on, then it was just as possible for the projectionist to charge people to attend their "theatre," and expect people in a small town, where there was very little to do at the time, to attend. This was a very simple time, when film theatres did not exist, where virtually no one had seen a film of any kind, who would come just to see because the alternative was... well, sitting in a park.

There were nickelodeons, but they did not exist in thousands of small American towns and they consisted of individual machines that solitary persons bent forward to look into, to show films. Most had never been seen by a person outside of a big city, or had been seen only when they went to the big city. The projector provided a very different experience. In the beginning, it didn't need a predesigned building. An empty room, without any features at all, was sufficient.

Further, the projector was easily movable. If you owned one, you made a deal for a few films which you could show; at the time, these were not plot-driven, though such films did exist. The bulk were things like watching people play at a beach you were never going to see, or walking along a street you were never going to visit. The sort of performance a clown might perform on a vaudeville stage you'd never in your life visited. That was enough. You could then move from small town to small town, remaining a few days until everyone had seen your product, then moving on. You made so much money, and were so able to move, you could avoid the law catching up with you to make return the films you'd been granted the right to only for a few weeks, while benifitting from them for months.

It is difficult for us to fully comprehend how shattering the experience of film was for people who would never see Coney Island in person, never see a woman in the sort of ballgown typically displayed in early film, never imagine seeing a trainrobber actually pointing a gun right at you, as was the case in the 1903 film The Great Train Robbery. It was unimaginably desirable for the "customers," who were ready to pay and pay and pay again for the experience, even if it meant the same film over and over. There was nothing at the time to compare with it and the effect was socially catastrophic for anyone in an entertainment field that was not the explosively developing film industry.

What matters most was the money being made. It literally poured in. For the price of a projector, listed earlier as equivalent a computer laptop, you could expect to raise enough money in a six month time period to buy the equivalent of a modern Porsch Cabriolet. People tried to contain this. The Patent War over the camera is a long, fascinating history of very rich people trying to ensure they would be the only ones to get rich. It failed. The money was so easy to make, so immediately translatable into one's pocket, that there was no hesitation to use whatever chicanery necessary to obtain the films to show them. When the films could not be obtained, people rushed to make their own. Those who were best at it rushed all the way to California to escape the Patent War. That's how we got Hollywood, which was built mostly on ignoring the laws surrounding the use of the equipment and content. In the end, the law caved. It realised that it was better to regulate the industry than to stop it. Humpty had fallen off the wall. The Film Industry was free to define itself, regardless of what the powers that existed before that time wanted.

I am NOT using this as a metaphor for A.I.  If we compare the start of the film industry, which came well before 1908... let's say, 1896 as a round figure, when rumblings began to reshape filmmaking in France, then we today with regards to A.I. are in about the year 1900. No one in 1900 could have guessed the effects I've just described above, or the evolution of story logic, comedy, the social ramifications of scandal around Fatty Arbuckle, the sexualisation of artistic representation, the studio system, the Hays Code... and on and on. It's just too early.

I am saying that when something is too valuable to suppress, it does not matter how many are hurt by it, or how many industries fail, or which rich people's lives are destroyed, or what some might think of the culture as it used to be, Humpty is falling and he's going to fall. That's the lesson here. We can scream in panic, we can cry over the broken shells, we can bemoan the loss, we can try with all our might to rebuild the good old fella... but the reality is, Humpty is gone.

The change wrought by film affected those with agency in two ways: there were those, as described, moaning over the Humpty model... and there were those who, like the two teachers quoted at the start of this post, realised that the time has come to change what we're doing, because the old model isn't working.

This is not a post that says, the old way is dead, suck it up. Oh no. It is a post that says, look at the opportunities ahead of you. Yeah, poor Humpty, but hey, look at all this that's happening. Look at how an archaic, dead approach to teaching is being wrested into a form of teaching that respects the students' thoughts and ideas OVER the diction of grammatical inflexibility. Look at the opportunities to obliterate the old ways that are in the way of new ways that are going to be a whole lot better. Consider the opportunities for artists who will make livings based on their imagination and not their finger dexterity. Consider the educations bestowed on students who will be rewarded for new ideas, ideas that may change the world, because those ideas will be fed and supported, and not cast aside because of occasional bad spelling. Consider the hope the future offers.

Stop crying. This is actually pretty fucking fantastic.

Which is what people thought as they sat watching people dance on the sand at Coney Island. They were not thinking at the time how this was going to kill vaudeville.

Enjoy the Ride

Let me deviate from this series a moment. I had a conversation this morning and I want to get it down before I lose it.

I'll start with some ancient history. In 1988, CD sales surpassed those of vinyl LPs, and in 1992, they surpassed the sale of pre-recorded cassette tapes. CDs did, at the time, feel better; they were easier to handle, we weren't aware of their degradation rates (which are awful), they're smaller and in general the newer, niftier way to listen to music felt cool.  But it would be stupid not to note that one reason that CD sales surpassed other formats was because the same persons responsible for selling the CDs made those formats.  And as everyone pointed out bitterly at the time, we were being forced to buy a lifetime of albums over again as CDs. It was a terrific moneygrab by the recording studios... and when asked about it, they said a lot of bullshit that amounted to, "fuck the customer, we're doing this."

Between 1988 and 1991 in Canada, it was not possible to buy a vinyl record at a mainstream music outlet. The only option was to buy CDs.

And eight years later the music industry was shafted by the launching of Napster, which their clever format change enabled.

If the music industry hadn't make the push into digital media in the late 1980s, the entire timeline of personal audio digitization would have slowed by several years, maybe even a decade. Much of the early commercial incentive to produce affordable CD drives, blank discs, and digital-to-analog converters came directly from the consumer audio market — the desire to play and copy music. Without that mass market, CD drives would have remained a professional or data-storage niche. Companies like Sony, Philips and Yamaha developed consumer CD-R technology largely because music buyers already owned CD players, and record labels were selling billions of CDs. That base of hardware justified R&D for writable discs and affordable burners.

If vinyl had remained dominant, there’d have been little reason for households to own optical drives at all until data-heavy computing needs (software, multimedia, backups) grew enough to sustain the market independently, likely not until the early 2000s. Audio piracy would then have taken a very different path — slower, perhaps remaining tape-based well into the decade, or moving laterally into mini-discs and other analog-digital hybrids. File sharing like Napster relied not just on digital formats but on standardised, already-ripped audio libraries sitting on hard drives. Without the CD revolution to normalise that digital music layer, the infrastructure for ripping, compressing and trading songs online would have been delayed, possibly until broadband and solid-state storage made digital music independently attractive.

In short, the labels’ forced digitization didn’t just accelerate the CD market — it created the hardware ecosystem that made their own downfall technologically inevitable.

This is old news. This is not what my conversation was about this morning. I'm including the above for context.

Between 1997 and 1999, a series of artistic programs flooded into the market that identified themselves as "artistic assistance" or "instant-aesthetic" tools: CorelXara, MetaCreations Bryce 3D, Poser 3, Kai’s Power Tools and Kai’s Power Goo, Synthetik Studio Artist, Microsoft PhotoDraw and others. These programs marked the first time that software openly promised to bridge the gap between imagination and ability. They didn’t just give users digital brushes or palettes; they offered to do part of the creative work themselves. A person with no training could drop a mountain into Bryce, smooth a human figure into existence in Poser, or warp a photograph into surreal fluidity with Kai’s Power Goo. The selling point wasn’t mastery—it was transformation. The computer became a kind of collaborator, quietly taking over the technical or aesthetic parts that used to demand skill. What had once been a slow apprenticeship in technique was now a series of sliders and presets that made beauty achievable in minutes.

As the 2000s progressed, the things you could do with these programs grew by leaps and bounds, until the line between artist and operator began to blur completely. Each new version added smarter automation, richer presets, and more “intelligent” correction tools that could compensate for nearly any weakness in composition or draftsmanship. By the mid-2000s, programs were no longer just assisting creativity — they were manufacturing it, translating vague gestures into polished, gallery-ready output. What began as a set of digital conveniences evolved into a creative prosthetic: filters that could mimic entire schools of painting, renderers that could light a scene like a film set, and interfaces that promised to make anyone an artist with enough clicks. The underlying message shifted from "learn to create" to "let the software create with you," and that shift quietly redefined what it meant to make art at all.

Untold thousands of children grew up with access to these tools on their parents computers or were introduced to them in grade school, so that by the early 2010s, we had created an entire community of "artists" who self-identified as that, but had never actually committed any art they'd ever created without the help of a computer... and that subtle distinction — between those who used computers to express something and those whose expression only existed because of the computer — became invisible almost overnight. What emerged was a generation fluent in aesthetics but not in craft, people who knew how art should look without ever having learned how art was made.

But it didn't matter, because the demand for generated art by 2015 was monstrous. Those who graduated from an art school with the right papers found themselves in a ready made career — and the irony is hard to miss. We’re talking about a considerable number of late-teen and twenty-something young adults making oodles of money as “artists,” their actual job title. For the first time, the label didn’t require struggle, gallery shows, or a patron—it came with a salary, benefits, and a workstation. These were kids who’d grown up surrounded by digital tools that turned experimentation into creation, and creation into a marketable skill. What had once been an unforgiving, unfulfilling, failure-ridden aspirational vocation was now counted alongside the coder, the data analyst and the technical research. A hipster in the richest salon in New York City might be an "artist" working for a company no one ever heard of, but with the money to pay for a $900 do. Being an artist had arrived.

Then Covid happened.

Overnight, the machinery that kept the creative industries running locked up. Studios couldn’t access shared servers or asset libraries, licensing contracts became tangled in jurisdictional and insurance questions, and managers who had built entire workflows around in-person oversight didn’t know how to function without seeing people at their desks. Overnight, the constant churn of projects—film previsualizations, ad campaigns, game assets, UI design—just stopped. Even though the artists themselves could have kept working from their bedrooms, the bureaucratic systems around them couldn’t adapt fast enough. Deadlines vanished and approvals stalled. But Covid sucked for everyone. And the processes that enabled working from home was slowly managed, so that by 2022 the atmosphere was clearing, the work was ramping up again, the business was getting on its feet and there was a sense that this "work from home" thing would be something that companies would just go on doing once the fog lifted.

And then... A.I.

All the fast-tracking of computer generated artistic production under the human hand over the previous two decades had been flying along. "Art" was less drawing and more "generally sweeping your hand over what you wanted changed."  Work that would have taken a really gifted physical artist in 1985 a week to do could be done in a couple of hours by anyone with a reasonable understanding of the computer tools available. The entire digital art ecosystem had evolved toward efficiency and manipulation rather than construction. The skill had shifted from creating an image from nothing to knowing how to command and correct what the software could already generate. Artists had become conductors of process rather than builders of form — editing, refining and directing outcomes instead of producing them stroke by stroke.

It is any surprise that all A.I. really had to do was lift the "conductor" out of the loop?

When seen this way, with the changes in artistic design that we've seen, A.I. isn't that big a leap forward. It's the next obvious one. Just as the sort of writing quality that's needed to produce an advertisement for a car can be easily generated — there are hundreds of thousands of car ads written by human writers that can be digitally pulped and recast — it's just as logical that the sweeping movements of "artists" could be likewise assigned without the real people any more. And no, I'm not kidding with those quotes. None of these people were ever an actual artist. Most of those in 1999 were... they took their experience and applied Synthetik Studio Artist to it and made some fantastic things. But that's because those older horses had learned not only how to use pencils and paints in two years of art class, but had spent forty years learning the actual language of art.

The youths of today who played with the toys in the 2010s, who are now crying because their careers are shattered, were never really artists. They were just a different kind of coder, who got a chance to make a lot of money because they hit the market at just the right time. There was no such market for 20-something visual coders in 2001, and there won't be one again for visual coders in 2026. Because that's the speed at which our technology moves.

What I'm saying is that they're not special. They're taking advantage of a self-styled label that they didn't earn, while actual artists who did actually earn that label right now AREN'T crying because they're not affected. A.I. can't recreate their art because there's no mountain of content for A.I. to re-pulp. I write articles that A.I. can't conceive of, because I think of things that no one else has thought of. That's how I stay ahead of the curve. It's how all artists do.

Those who are getting eaten alive?  Calling yourself an artist doesn't make you one. If you're an artist, then do what artists have always done. Find a way to make yourself relevant, stop pretending the world owes you a free lunch. You've had all the free lunches you're ever going to get. A lot more than most get.

Why did I start this post with that business about compact discs?

Without wasting our time talking about whether or not change is good, we need to realise that change always begets more change. The fat cats at Capitol and Sony though they were controlling their market, making tons of money, until someone got creative with their little tech development and came near to flattening their entire industry. A few brilliant programmers thought it would certainly be convenient if programs could do more than let people draw on computers... what if, they asked, the computer could help? Made sense. But obviously nothing ever stops at the property line. Someone, somewhere, is always figuring out how to make this thing better, how to get something out of it that hasn't been thought of already... how to shake the pillars of heaven, as it were. That is never going to stop. Forget complaining about A.I. Not only is it here to stay, it's already fast becoming... in someone's imagination, we don't know who... a thing it isn't right now.

And we have no idea what that's gonna be. So get a grip, find a place from which you can navigate yourself... and enjoy the ride.

The Face Underneath a Monarchy

The hardest struggle surrounding the tech/development structure I'm designing is with my imagination; it literally feels like I am squeezing my brain to separate the juice from the pulp, to produce as much detail and content as I'm able.

It's a good thing that I'm well-read, otherwise this task would be insurmountable.  I'll propose a question, one for which the answer was posted on the blog about two years ago.  How is it that the presence of animal husbandry changed the shape and status of house building?

If you're a long-time reader, you'll hit on that immediately.  But three years ago I'd have had no idea myself; I'd have needed someone to explain it to me.  But I read and continue to watch documentaries, which steadily expand my perceptions about things past the usual associations we make.

If you want the answer, and some kind soul doesn't rush to put it in the comments, write me an email at alexiss1@telus.net.

Let's take another example.  What associations do you make with the development of Monarchy?  Right off, the reader should connect the presence of a monarch with a more united kingdom, the rise of an aristocracy, the presence of a court, the inevitability of joint foreign policy and quite probably the creation of some kind of elite military, "the king's guard."

To put it another way, an organized government, which a less developed region would not possess.  We should be able to think of lots of examples of inward-looking social organizations, without a system of government, where the rules of law came down to what your neighbors believed or what people accepted as tradition.  Homesteaders in 19th century America, well ahead of the government, or large parts of Africa or the steppes of Eurasia, where tribes and clans vied with each other for resources but had little relationship with the outside world.  The whole history of Australia, before the arrival of Europeans. 

The arrival of a monarchy on the scene sets up a conflict with tradition; a government is there to arrest, manage or instigate change, depending on what is needed ~ whereas a traditional framework opposes change categorically.  Once a "state" has begun thinking for itself, those beliefs previously held by the population are now under siege.  The monarch has ideas of his or her own; and those ideas are not "traditional" much of the time.  Largely because the problems a monarch faces are not traditional, but the necessity of event: disaster, increases in population, decreases in food supply, the incursion of foreign powers and so on.

These things, however, are very general ~ and they don't affect a party of player characters much.  The point of the structure is to give effect to the actual campaign, not propose a history lesson on how the development of monarchies changed social structure.

It is easy to become enamored with the big picture and lose sight of that point.  If the players don't feel a difference, there isn't one; it doesn't matter if the region has a monarch or not if there are no visible signs that compel the players to view the environment differently.  So let's back up and ask, how does the monarchy affect ordinary people, here on the streets, who would probably never meet the local king or queen, nor attend court a single time in all their lives?

Well, the presence of the monarch does tend to bind together people: when the king is crowned, everyone parties; when the king dies, everyone mourns.  When the king is unwell, everyone worries; and when the king is married or has a child, again, there is a huge celebration. The various aspects of the monarch take on the aspect that we sometimes identify with celebrity culture; it seems to matter that an acting couple has split up or a famous comedian dies ... this is a small taste of the sort of intensity people once had for the reigning family when there was little else outside of their worlds to seize their imaginations.

A second element to consider is the law.  There are a series of effects now to consider associated with the way the local constabulary deal with crime.  When the law is managed by locals, according to tradition, there is room for patience and mercy that are obliterated when the people in charge owe fealty to a power that is distant and removed.  Now, the constable can't just "let you go," because there would be questions to be answered and responsibility to higher authorities.  This makes the overall visitation of the law upon individuals a colder prospect.  You're not dealing with a "man," you're dealing with the power of the state ~ and that power doesn't care that you're stealing bread to feed your family.  You're stealing.

In many different ways, matters of culture are now cut that fine.  Whereas the elders of the village or the town council might make room for you to pay your taxes when business improves, now there's an official, and outsider, who is there to ensure that everyone is paid up and in full.  Taxes are no longer a matter of give what you can; it's been decided that all persons of a certain rank and capacity will give such-and-such, no matter who they are.  The law has become faceless ... and frightening.

But players are far more familiar with a faceless law than the reverse, so that's not much of an adjustment for them.  It is harder to make a group of players understand a law system that isn't faceless than one that is. That is a part of why films like The Wicker Man hold a fascination ~ because we find it difficult to relate to sweet, kind people apparently being able to live together and peace and harmony, yet able to burn outsiders to death because it's a necessity. We, living in the world we do, automatically identify cruelty with institutions, not individuals.

We need more, then.  How else does the monarchy affect daily life apart from a drunken bash now and then and a tax collector that needs side-stepping?

It only came to me a couple days ago:  the answer is fashion.  The monarchy creates fashion the same way it creates the law.  Whereas in a previous time, people wore what they would, the presence of that celebrity cult, the same way it does for us, induces people to grow interested in new clothes, new ideas, new habits ... and the most evident of those habits, the one that the players would most likely notice, is the presence of etiquette.

We normally associate etiquette with the 19th century (we do if we're westerners), but it goes back much further than that.  Confucius, 2,500 years ago, is all about etiquette: right speaking, right acting, correctness of social relationships, correctness of justice and sincerity and so on.

I've often found myself in a position as a DM where an NPC is conversing with the player and the player is acting like a complete boor.  In my mind, it's clear from the first sentence out of the player's mouth that they have just insulted everything that the NPC ought to hold dear ... and I've let it pass because I don't want to hold the player responsible for a clumsy attempt at role-playing.  After all, the player isn't there; the player can't see the NPC as clearly as I can, and for that matter doesn't identify clearly the whole scene.  If that same player were to find themselves transported to the Palace of Versailles in the 16th century, the player would rightly shut their mouth in terror of saying something wrong, particularly if they understood the consequence might be the experience of being whipped like a dog down a long hall full of mirrors, until falling into the hands of four or five guards, who would then drag the beaten victim into a cold stone cell for a few years of unreasonable punishment.

Players don't understand consequences like that.  Why should they?  They have no experience with the sort of non-egalitarian thinking that would condemn an individual to death for speaking rudely.  Players retain their modern sensibilities with these things ... they just don't get that the local townspeople would demand a polite speaking voice and a careful choice of words because that's what the king does, and we all like the king very much and want to be like him.

As D&Dites, we're still dealing with players who answer resistance on the NPC's part with sword blows in broad daylight, followed by the sort of swaggering pride in their action like we would expect from Mad Dog Biff Tanner:  "Look at me, I'm a bad ass."  A moment like that in D&D needs someone stepping up behind the character and hitting them blind with a shovel.

We might try explaining to the players that living in a monarchy means there are now consequences for failing to speak politely, even to goodwives, even to beggars ... and everyone in the town is ready to step up and quietly see that those consequences are delivered.  Save the rudeness for a democracy.  We do not put up with that shit around here.

Justifiable Homicide

When I was no more than five or six, I remember my parents taking us three kids to a little strip mall in the northwest corner of Calgary, where there was a pet store, a model shop and a Simpson's Sears.  Circa 1970.  I can see the looping letters on the side of the brick building, my first experience with a department store.  But of course, that was just a place for the uncomfortable experience of having my mom fit me for shoes and pants and stuff.  Not a place for fun.

At six, the pet store was the fascination.  Though nature shows existed on television, it was all black and white - whereas fish tanks were rich in vibrant colors, along with scurrying hamsters, snakes, spiders, lizards, puppies and kittens.

Within a few years, however, towards eight or nine, it was the model shop.  Begging my parents for three bucks for a P-38 or a model of the Missouri battleship, wishing for the unimaginable $78 box for a two-foot long model of the U.S.S. Constitution ... oh lord, how I did spend many hours fiddly bits of plastic and the smell of glue.

That little strip mall was eventually enclosed and expanded, becoming "North Hill Mall," repeatedly enlarged over the decades, revamped, reimagined ... I out-grew modelling about the time the model shop closed forever.  Video and computers became my fascination, as they did for everyone.  A first-class video arcade opened in the mall, expanded ... only to slowly diminish, then sit empty, then disappear.  A blockbuster video rental store appeared, expanded ... then diminished, sat empty and disappeared.  Technology enables, then destroys.

The mall itself is an example of that.  In 1970, Calgary had 389,000 people.  As people rolled in, filling new suburbs, indoor walk-through malls proliferated and appeared everywhere.  As the suburbs grew larger and further apart, the inner city malls lost their customers to huge, outer city box store parking lots.

North Hill mall has always been an anathema.  Placed between the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology and the University of Calgary, it has always been empty.  Except, perhaps, for a few weeks every Christmas.  There's nothing to buy there.  There's nothing to see.  There's the Sears, still the mall's anchor, but the rest of the mall is a desert of faux-fashion clothing stores, cell phone outlets and assorted crap that appears and disappears with yearly regularity.

And now, Sears Canada has officially died, amidst a flurry of corporate greed, corporate idiocy and a blatant denial that it is no longer 1970.  It has taken a long, long time for Sears to die ... but those of us in Canada who have been here to witness the event knew it was coming 35 years ago.  It only goes to show how deep the pockets were.

Sears here is dead because the owners, despite their wealth, refused to believe that technology enables, then destroys.  And most who have lived on the earth more than a few decades still haven't learned that lesson.  Everything that we know, that exists now, in the form that it exists, is already on its last legs.  In a few decades, it will all be dead, dead as video arcades and video rental shops.  Dead as video tape itself.

But don't worry, it will be replaced by something better.  It always is.

I'm happy that Sears is dead.  All that land, all that empty parking lot space, all that empty mall hallway without people in it, all those shitty shops appealing to three people a day (and I have known counter people working in the mall who would testify to those numbers), can all die forever, to be replaced by a product that arrives at my door in three or four days, and I will feel nothing.  Because that mall was ugly.  That mall served no purpose.  That mall needed to die.

Those people who just can't get this; who can't believe that their cherished nostalgic memories of model shops, pet stores and even black-and-white television; they will chafe and complain and resist the change with the last marrow in their bones ... but they won't go to the malls or buy enough pets or sustain a business still trying to keep video tape alive.  They won't hesitate to buy on the internet and fail to buy at a counter.  They will bitch, but they will carry themselves along with the changes that technology brings because it is better.  It is more interesting.  It is more fun.

The least opinion of value in the world is the one that claims that the way we used to do things was better.

Tools, Treasure and Improvements in Tech 5 Culture

I'd like to finish my description of primitive culture, or tech-5, with this post.  I have three things to talk about: tools, treasure and improvements.

Tools & Treasure

Several members of the clan will carry a stone blade for cutting and general purpose work.  This won't be as sharp or as balanced as a dagger and probably half its length, so think of it as 1d3 for damage.  The primary weapon for most warriors will be either a spear with a stone head, flint axes or stone hammers, neither of which will be good for throwing (they will do full damage for these weapons, however).  Spears and javelins will be rare in desert cultures but there will be enough wood to make effective flint axes.  No one in the tribe will be armored in any way, including a lack of shields.

The density of population in these areas is so low (and most dangerous beasts as well) that there's no practical value in carrying a shield for months on end with the chance it might be used.  Even if armor could be made of leather, the same argument carries.  These are not peoples who gather together for the purpose of war; even interpersonal conflict is rare, usually occurring only when individual clans of separate tribes may chance to dispute over a campsite (more about that in a minute).

Certain persons in the clan would carry certain tools that would double as treasure (the weapons above would also be treasure of a sort).  This would include a steel and flint, drums, the clan's standard (which might be ransomed to the rest of the tribe or to any survivors), found mushrooms and any boats for fishing that may exist.  Beyond this, most of the tribe will carry a zahato, also called a bota bag or goatskin bottle (similar to a wineskin), the nozzle of which will be made from horn.  Some may carry hatchets made of bone (for cutting soft wood) or bone scoops used for digging.

The value of these things will be unremarkable.  A more valuable treasure will include the fur or buckskin that every member of the clan wears (desert clans will wear fleece gathered from killing wild sheep or goats), which will have some value when sold in bulk.  Some members of the tribe will carry gold, silver or copper nuggets, gathered from rivers (placer deposits) and sometimes beaten flat into rough jewelry.  As superstition and mysticism are central religious ideas, as mentioned by kimbo on another post, there would be a number of pieces that would be traded or possessed for purposes of enhancing one's social status or prestige.  This might be small idols shaped like people and animals, rattles, flutes made of bone (not especially musical), carved disks, attactive stones, crude cups, parts of animals (teeth, patches of hair, pieces of horn) and fairly anything else that might be imagined.  Most of these things would have moderate value if sold in the nearest market - but some would be very valuable to a collector in a part of the world far from where such objects could be found (said collectors would reside in places of exceptional tech level, where universities would be located).

Improvements

An 'improvement' is a permanent change on the wilderness wrought by the culture and there wouldn't be many of these.  However, as the clans would follow along behind wild herds or denude the immediate area of forage, there would be pressure to move from place to place, seasonally or sometimes over a period of years.

Certain tribes, made of a half a dozen clans or more, would occupy vast areas of the region and would travel over the same ground year after year, generation after generation.  As a result, a series of regularly used campsites would be used by these clans, sometimes once a year and sometimes only in years where usual food supplies were thin.  As the clan members do not herd or ride animals, nor employ vehicles, the only necessary path connecting these campsites would be a narrow trail.  As a trail like this would only be cleared at the convenience of the clan passing through, it may be difficult - even for a ranger - to follow the trail if individuals were unfamiliar with it.

In deserts, the 'trail' would be a series of recognized features in the distance or 'boundaries' made by the edges of stone or sand fields that must be circumnavigated to reach the next oasis or well.  A stranger that did not know yon pile of rocks was the best way towards a water source could wander in a desert until death while unknowing that life was a mere two miles to the right or widdershins.  Thus the importance of obtaining a pathfinder (possibly from a clan) who would know the way to go.  Such 'obtaining' might prove interesting when dealing with a close-knit culture that doesn't use or appreciate traditional wealth.

These routes or trails would be important improvements for these peoples.  The campsites above would be tailored year after year until they were quite comfortable.  Crude wells (little more than deep holes dug in soft earth, subject to regular collapse) and ditches would be redug, certain familiar trees used for building larger shelters for long stays and last year's growth would be cut down and cleared away to make a safe, open site.  Pits would be built of stones for fires and there would be existing tree stumps, logs and stones that would be used for sitting and work by a dozen generations.  The camps themselves would be picked for their defensive value, so that one side of the camp might be a defensive outcropping of rock, the edge of a cliff, a waterfall and pond (with fish!), a loop of river or a mound giving a good view of the surrounding distance.  Large flat stones may be employed (and improved over time) as slaughtering tables, tanning or speaking podiums for when whole tribes gather.

Each camp would have a feel of 'coming home' for the clan.  Each would be different in its own way - small and cramped or expansive and convenient for two or three tribes.  Where a 'settlement' appears on one of my maps, the 'campsite' is so convenient and practical that there is almost always a few clans spread within a dozen yards of one another.  This is an opportunity for boys and girls to meet (allowing crossbreeding between clans), share fetish articles and other treasure, trade for a better knife, compete in games of some kind, access the rare shamans and elect new tribal leaders.

Some camps would encourage some clan members with artistic skill to carve art into the stone or carefully paint stones protected by caves.  These artworks would develop a sort of fetishism of their own, so that specific campsites might be travelled to specifically to see these works - in the way of a primitive pilgrimage.

A party might come across one of these campsites - empty - and wait for months before a single clan showed up (though a clan might appear the next day, too).  If a clan has just left such, the locale will be denude of all forage and the hunting extremely poor - even a high level ranger will be hard put to come up with so much as a hare.  The food has simply been eaten, the herds driven further upstream or downstream by regular hunting.  The 'dead spot' may be as wide as ten or twenty miles, depending on the size of the clan and how long they remained in the area - remember, these clans would know perfectly well the location of every berry patch, every beehive, every nest, every good fishing pond and so on.

I think this experiment has been useful.  I have some ideas for posts in the immediate future that might prove valuable for most readers in helping describe for their players environments such as these mentioned above.

Shamanism

I stumbled across the idea for shamanism a little more than a year ago when working on sage abilities associated with mushrooms and fungi (before I started putting these on the wiki).  Since, the idea of wild magic practitioners has been in the back of my mind . . . and lately it's obvious that for lower tech levels, I need a sort of clericish fighter (not multi-classed) that can fulfill the important role as clan-leader.

My original proposition was that a shaman could 'connect' with the subtle magical world (without spell-use) through the hallucinogenic effect of mushrooms:

". . . from hunted mushrooms, [the druid can] produce a powerful, chewable ball that will grant both hallucinogenic effects and the ability to see into the ethereal plain and speak with intelligent creatures there.  The practice requires the employment of a drum, rattle, gong or pipe, as well as a brief period of dancing and singing (10 rounds) following a hour of meditation.  Once accomplished, the druid is able to speak directly to a companion that has recently died but remains within the time span of being raised from the dead (a period of no more than 29 days).  The shaman may also ensure fertility in a woman for a period of one day or relieve a curse for the space of one week (without permanent effects) . . . Shamanism may not be practiced more than once per week and will drain 10% of the druid's maximum hit points."

I think in principal this still works, hallucinogenic included.  I think it might be expanded to include a wide range of hallucinogenic effects, including starvation, isolation, substances other than mushrooms, near-death experiences and anything else that might disrupt the traditional working of the mind.  Actual power gained would be limited in a number of ways.  Any effect that resembled a spell or cantrip would, by definition, be impossible through shamanism.  And I would like a precedent from some existing cultural tradition (the 'powers' I describe above - pregnancy and curses - have holistic traditions) associated with practiced shamanism.  I think it is all bunk, of course - but it is an important part of human development and if we are going to accept the existence of magic, I can make room for shamans in my world actually being able to do the things they promise.

On the fungi page linked, I defined shamanism as an expert-level sage ability.  That's higher than any of the other abilities I associated with tech-5.  I think this means that most clans would not possess a shaman - we might suppose that such an individual would be present at the tribal level (several clans together make a 'tribe', as clans get together at specific places and times to share knowledge, materials and mating practices).   It still means that the shaman would have to be part of one of those clans when they weren't actually meeting as a tribe.

We could define the chance of a shaman as 40 minus a d8 - and if the result is equal to or less than the number in the clan, it defines the clan as large enough to protect the shaman.  From there, we might propose a 1 in 2 chance that this clan, and not another large one in the tribe, actually has the shaman this year.

I feel once again I need to make a point about the practicality of defining a clan of persons to this degree.  After all, the party is just going to kill them all, nyet?  Yet I wonder if the party would be able to recognize that, after killing a random hobgoblin in the bush, that they would realized the individual was only collecting mushrooms for their clan.  If that hobgoblin turned up to have a flint and steel, would the players wonder how the remaining hobgoblins will light a fire that night?  Will the players look at the age of the hobgoblin and make a connection about this being the clan's best forager?  What if they find a drum - will they realize this poor dead fellow is also the clan's entertainer?  Will they feel bad about killing him?

I doubt it - particularly thinking of the semi-munchkins among my players.  They would probably enjoy the notion that the poor hobgoblin children will go to bed that night without the soft rattle of Uncle Ook's drum.  "Be good for them," they'd say.  "Toughen them kids up."

Nevetheless, I feel I'm on the edge of some discovery here - so we'll keep at it.  Even if it doesn't pan out today, I may have some epiphany five years from now and remember when I went through this experiment.

Distributing X.P. Among Clan Members

Rest assured, I'm coming back to the shaman and the clan.  I just want to take a little detour first.

On the tech 14 post, I included the table on the right.  Now I'm rethinking that table somewhat - not because there are too many levels at the high end but because the bottom end is light.  If I use the number as given, there's a high probability that my proposed clan of 25-40 persons won't have any levels in it at all.

That makes it boring for any party above third level.  What is perhaps a better way of doing it?

Way back in the day, I was playing with different kinds of leveled persons and seeking to develop a system that would tell me how much experience that persons of a given social status should have (to make a relation between age and level).  I imagined that individuals would draw up a certain number of experience per year.  Let's pull up the relevant table from that post and have a look at it:

old table, old colour scheme

Quoting from my old post,

An adherent would have the adequate skills to be leveled, without possessing extraordinary abilities; they would adhere to their class structure, serving as functionaries such as parish priests, city officials, laboratory workers and so on. A zealot would be an adherent who has adopted a particular political or religious calling. An adventurer would include persons who explore or who serve as freelancers. A celebrity, or hero, would be an adventurer who has had notable success. A title holder would include the nobility, or persons who have risen to the highest rank in their profession, such as admirals, bishops, marshals or guild masters. Finally, a liege would include masters of primary political divisions, of religious groups or class-based organizations.

Like most of the ideas I have, this one got shelved.  It isn't so much that it doesn't work, it's just that - like the clan experiment I'm playing with right now - it didn't consequentially add to the effectively describing my world in the actual game.  Still, it's sort of useful now, as I think I can adapt this to propose a different way of calculating out experience for each tech level.

Suppose I take the X.P. per year and multiply that by 0.2%, giving us this table:

new table, new color scheme.  numbers are rounded, so a zero indicated
may yet provide some experience over several years.

Then we can adjust the level form from titles designed for obviously higher tech levels and apply them to the sort of people that represent the clan.  Here's where I have to stretch somewhat, as I did not come up with these titles originally to apply them to very primitive cultures - so if the reader will forgive me, I'll drastically change some of the above.

The liege becomes the chief and title holders are shamans.  Celebrities and adventurers are those warriors in the tribe with varying commitment to wandering about on their own outside the immediate group.  The zealot becomes the aforementioned sea dog, the tribal drummer, the mushroom hunter and so on.  Adherents, then, are everyone else: the workers of the tribe.  I'll republish the table with the change in titles:

Better?

 

Obviously, no worker will ever reach second level.  Moreover, I've been holding back on a system idea I have for starting all untrained, inexperienced youths (age 14 and less) at -1500 x.p.  To get to be combat trained (something that affects morale) a non-level must obtain reach -1000 x.p. through combat or be rigorously trained by a fighter (a sage ability I haven't written/designed yet).  Individuals must gain that second thousand experience to reach 1st level (zero experience), where the players start their characters.

This means that in the above table, all the members of the clan would have to gain a base 1500 experience just to be leveled.  Since the maximum experience in a lifetime a worker would obtain on the table above would be 73 x.p., no worker can even be combat trained.

Our skilled worker (mushroom hunter) is limited to a lifetime maximum of 194 x.p..  Ordinary warriors are limited to 516 x.p.  The quality warriors could gain 1377 x.p., enough to make them combat experienced.  The shaman (who is a fighter, remember) could rise to 3,671 x.p. (making 1st level) and the chiefs are able to reach 9,789 x.p.  This just gets them to 4th level (subtracting 1500 x.p. off the bottom).

Of course, we could always play with these numbers, make them a central average, so that the young adult warrior could earn from 1-28 x.p. per year instead of 14.  This might enable 2nd level shamans, the occasional 1st level quality warrior and more combat trained ordinary warriors.  I'm working on a random table that would produce this sort of result.  Here are rolls for 10 quality warriors, 

And we could create some sort of random chance for a big bonus gain, so that we might actually get a combat trained worker, showing total x.p. based on their ages (with how much they earn at each age range for comparison):

Combat experienced warriors will have at least -1000 x.p.
Leveled characters will have 0 or more x.p.

The way I've designed it, being oldest doesn't necessarily mean the most experience.  H is 70 and yet has 674 x.p. less than E, who is a 1st level fighter.  Obviously, though, being younger than 26 is a serious handicap regarding experience.

I'm not entirely happy with the table above.  The original table concept from 2010 was based on the lowest level form getting 1 x.p. per day; perhaps that premise is too low for what I want to do with it now, and needs to be adjusted.  I'm good with the 1,500 x.p. needed for levelling; this has worked very well in play with my campaigners raising up followers and men-at-arms.

Anyway, just a bit to show where my head is.  I'll get back to the breakdown of the tech-5 clan with my next post.

T5: People & Abilities

I have no idea if anything listed below will actually become useful in my game.  At present, this post is going to apply more to the meta game - talking about D&D rather than designing it - than to my campaign.  Still, something might come of out of this . . .

I've been trying to get a better handle on tech 5 culture.  I would far rather be working on tech 9 or 10 culture, since that's where one of my parties is at the moment, but it's easier to start at the most primitive culture and work my way up, rather than try a stab at the middle.  As I progress through each tech, like I did with the descriptions I wrote for the blog, I can assemble more elements and features that help describe more precisely how that tech works.

The easiest way to express my thought process here might be to describe the tech-5 clan as a sort of anthropological experiment.  This is a single unit of 25-40 humanoids.  It might be humans, hobgoblins, gnolls, goblins - for this experiment it doesn't matter.  My purpose will be to break down the unit into its composite persons, skills, habits, effect on its environment and probable treasure.  Most every social aspect of tech-5 life will derive from this most common unit's normal daily life.

Demographics

To create the unit we should roll 5d4+20, giving us the range noted above.  Children, as I described on my tech 5 post, are discouraged - so our clan should include from 0-2 infants (age range 0-2), 1-2 children and 1-3 youths.  I'm defining the difference from 'child' to 'youth' in terms of their practically defending themselves, but if it makes the reader more comfortable, they might consider a 'child' someone between 3 and 7 and a 'youth' between 8 and 14.  I've been playing around with mortality rates of primitive cultures and I'm comfortable with the conclusion that more youths would be present than children due to the larger age range (7 years versus 5) and the likelihood that some youths might be collected from other clans defeated in battles or as foundlings (children being less likely to survive on their own).

As the reader can see, if I'm going to get this detailed about everything, then this is going to be a long post - or series of posts.

So, let's use convenient numbers near the average and say that our tribe has 34 members with 1 infant, 1 child and 2 youths.  This leaves 30 adult men and women.  I'm calling the ratio of males to females at 1.5:1 (there's an argument for this number but I'm not going into it now; the reader is free to do their own homework regarding primitive cultures) - so out of each 2.5 persons 1 will be female.  This makes 12 women and 18 men in our clan.

Incidental Skills

So what does each member of the clan do?  Well, I have a combination of my sage abilities and the actual tech levels to help break down that problem.  Let's start with skills or abilities that various members of the clan might have.  For no particular reason I'll start with incidental skills, those that won't define a specific 'role' that provides status.

These incidental skills include swimming, aiding rest, recognizing beasts and binding wounds - all of which I've covered on the wiki.   Although in my system characters gain these abilities through experience and levels, I've been careful not to define these things as dependent on level.  A 1st level character in my world begins with no experience and yet will have points in various sage abilities.  Therefore we can have ordinary persons who have no levels and yet have abilities. Obviously, these abilities are very limited at tech-5.

Not everyone in the clan will be able to swim.  The actual number will depend on how much water there is.  Desert dwellers will have no swimmers at all; a few may be able to paddle around in an oasis but chances are there'd be no reason to do so, since most lakes and oases in deserts are very shallow.  Infants and children who might swim naturally would forget the habit as they grew older.  On the other hand, in a boreal forest where crossing rivers or fishing is very common, as many as 1 in 4 persons may know how to swim.  Everyone would at least be able to keep their head above water well enough to be dragged across a watercourse without drowning (those who couldn't have already drowned).

Aiding rest would be something that was picked up by the more nurturing members of the clan, more probably women.  Binding wounds would be done with whatever came to hand - and arguably the members of a tech-5 tribe might be less susceptible to wounds (but I'm not going there for the game).  And recognizing beasts would be something people began to do as they got old.  Overall, the older a particular member of the clan was, the more likely they would be to have any of these skills.

Fighter Skills

Then we have a set of more defining sage abilities.  I've broken these down into their associated classes - but I wish to point out that the only 'class' that exists in a tech-5 system is fighter.   In every case for the below, the skill described is part of cross training, something that I've presciently had occur at random on my character background generator.

The most fighter-like of these abilities (beyond skills associated directly with the class, like proficiencies, strength, hit points, etc) includes standard bearing that I've described on the wiki and light fire - which I'm thinking deserves to be an amateur ability that fighters, paladins & rangers possess.  Hm, I may let druids light fires too.  Maybe.  It's harder than it sounds, requiring a flint, 'steel' and tinder - and we all know plenty of people who cannot start a fire with matches or a lighter.  I kind of like the idea of clerics, mages and bards having to wait for the fighter to get the fire started.

The standard being carried will likely be a very simple thing, but long enough for everyone to see.  It might be the dried carcass of an animal that proved hard to kill or the dress of a great warrior carried on a stick.  One person would be responsible for carrying this.  There might be only one or two flints and pieces of metal in the clan and specific persons would possess those.  Obviously, the flint and the steel would be treasure found on those bodies.

Druid Skills

Here are four skills that it would seem everyone might possess but which would, in fact, give one person or another a lot of status: detect land, mushroom hunt, locate self and locus infrastructure.

As tech-5 includes fishing, now and then a fishing boat will get out of sight of land - even if the participants would cling to land with all their might.  In such a case, those in the boat will depend most upon the 'sea dog' that possesses the greatest skill in getting them home.  I don't see the sea dog as a 'captain' - that would be too much infrastructure in the clan and it's likely that the chief might not even be out fishing when the danger arises.  Every skiff or boat, then, would have an eldest fisherman that acted as the group's sea dog.  There might be three or four of these in a clan and they'd all likely be older than 50.

The mushroom hunt depends on an individual being able to tell the difference between edible and dangerous mushrooms.  A clan may not even possess a member with this ability - but those clans that did would be better fed and probably bigger.  So we might say that the chance of such a person is 40 minus a d12 - if the result is equal to or less than the number in the clan, there is one person who possesses this skill.

Finally, the ability to locate self and identify the lay of the land is definitely a chieftain ability.  Robert Winston makes the point again and again in this series that the chieftain was the individual most able to locate food and lead the tribe; this makes knowing where one is in relation to things like the next probable camp or where we found food last near absolutely the province of the leader.  This is what makes a leader: knowing where we are.

Ranger Skills

I haven't even discussed these before - but this exercise is certainly helping me understand what a lot of those ought to be.  Some of these would also be possessed by the leader; but a few may be known by elders or by specific family heads (there would be about 5-10 groupings/families inside the clan, depending on the number).

Foraging - A substantial number would possess the ability to find vegetables, roots, fruits and nuts in the environment, by knowing where to dig, knowing what was poisonous and what the best source of food was (instinctive knowledge of calorie counts).  Most probably, this would be the five or six eldest members of the tribe.  The opening of this show is a good example, where a group of older women seem to be keeping a good find to themselves.  Foraging ability would double the amount of food normally found - or enable food to be found where inexperienced persons would starve.

Hunting differs from foraging in that it can produce no results for several days before yielding a great deal of food all at once - meat that must be eaten in a relatively short time or left to waste.  Where a clan relies heavily on hunting they can suffer from periods of starvation and an inadequate diet.  A select few from the tribe will be chosen as hunters and will be gone for days - these will typically be led by a sub-chief, or else the sub-chief will be left with the main group.

Pathfinding is a chieftain skill.  If the reader has ever found themselves in the bush and been forced to backtrack to find another route through, pathfinding would be the skill that made that less necessary in strange untracked areas - the person would just have a sense for which was the best way to go when attempting to cross a valley, desert or a river, climb, circumnavigate a feature, etcetera, in terms of distance travelled in a day.  We could call it an improved distance of 30% distance travelled over normal effort.

Sheltering chooses the best place to rest and avoid the elements.  It mitigates the effects of storms, lessens the chance of an encounter, locates the camp closer to fresh water, etc.  A person with this skill could tell from the lay of the land what the best place to shelter would probably be.  This is again a chieftain-type skill.

Make fire.  Different from light fire, this would be actually making the fire using dry tinder and friction.  One or two persons in the tribe would probably be able to do this.

Water discipline.  This is very important in desert cultures.  It is the skill of knowing when to drink in order to avoid dehydration; it is best to drink in steady amounts throughout the day and not waiting for thirst to force the person to drink.  This takes experience and skill and would probably be a chieftain skill, telling everyone in the tribe when to take a drink of water.  A few others may also have this skill.

Avoid encounter.  This might be a savant skill possessed by anyone in the tribe.  It is simply the ability to sense - by smell, detail or environmental features - that a particularly dangerous creature or monster may be in the vicinity.  This helps the clan avoid that creature.  The players may fit into this category, so that the avoid encounter ability would help the tribe avoid a confrontation with the party.

Bard Skills

Let me emphasize again that there are no bards, druids, rangers or clerics among the tech-5 clan we're describing.  Nevertheless, the creation of drums as instruments for the purpose of communication was common long before music became a thing, so I'm including it here.  I see drumming communication becoming a sage ability for bards, enabling signalling and communication between groups separated by distances up to 60-360 yards.  I know the movies like to make it distances of miles, but I don't see that working well for game purposes.  Perhaps I will figure out a way to measure the distance for different terrains and density of vegetation.

Cleric Skills

I'm going to end this post here without talking about the last ability on my list.  It is all wrapped up in religion and that's something I'd like to push into the next part of this series (yes, it's a series now) which will discuss the 'professions' of the clan.  I've already indicated what a lot of these would be but it won't hurt to sort them out and give the individuals titles.

After that I'll want to talk about improvements made to the land, tools and treasure.  Hope it all retains the reader's interest.

Technology Map for 5, 6 & 7

Green = tech 5.  Blue = tech 6.  Purple = tech 7.

I don't know if I'll do this again for higher tech levels - it takes a lot of time.  But I did want to play a little with the map, just to highlight at least some of the pattern the tech level ideal makes.  Obviously, the above means that most of what's shown is a tech level higher than 7 (except, of course, places where desert exists, appearing white on the map).

Technology 18

This is the last in a series of posts intended to provide a technological framework for my world. The purpose of this framework is to create unique, regional settings for player interaction. A realistic simulation of the actual world is not a goal of this system and will not be given credence when approving comments.

Regions with a technology of 18 will have an average population density of 990,001 or more per 20-mile hex. This includes the following regions, shown on this table:

10 regions. This technology accounts for 1.0 hexes of my world, occupied by 2,546,345 humans.

Available Technologies

Scientific Method.  Strange to think of this being applied to the creation of magic, but that's how I choose to see it.  In Earth's history, it sparked off an invention craze, as the process empowered individuals to see the value in testing ideas methodically.  It isn't the name of the process that matters, but the fields in which it can be applied.  If magic existed, then surely the method would expand possibilities where the creation of magic items was concerned.

I don't want to give the impression that every magic item that exists in my world came from the above ten places.  At different points in history, there were different collections of persons, different opportunities for the necessary density to create the tech level necessary for the production of rings, wands, staves and so on.  For example, Balkh in northern Afghanistan, prior to its being completely destroyed by the Mongols.  Or Alexandria in Egypt, at the height of the Hellenic period, when the library was filled with thousands of scholars.  This sort of thing may explain the making of wonders throughout the world (I don't know yet exactly how to manage this sort of thing - I don't want to compromise the system I've been building so far).

At the exact time of my world, however, there would be some considerable advances made in the mastery of magic, I think, in the above places.

Economics.  Long before clarifications made by Adam Smith, developments in banking, trade and the open door policy of some regions towards money began to create a sense that money - more than legal writ or religious morality - made the world turn.

My world taking place in 1650 sits right at the dawn of this idea: Holland, that would rise to become the worlds first maritime economic power, was climbing out of 80 years of devastating war and political strife; Germany, likewise, had just experienced the 30 Years War.  France was still at war with Spain, which was broke.  Italy was in decline following the destruction of its Mediterranean trade by the Atlantic-Indian Ocean trade route.  England was in the midst of its own time of troubles as it sought to reunify the country during the English Civil Wars from 1642 to 1651.  In just 20 years, however, several of these regions would expand radically in trade and commerce, launching the colonization of Africa and Asia that would lead to the French and English wars of the 18th century.

So, with economics, we have a sort of edge technology.  I choose to think of it thusly:  that the embrace of all peoples associated with the 17th century is augmented by the free movement of money as well.  The above city states will all establish themselves as banking centers, with opportunities for free trade unprecedented in any other part of the world.  This is complimented by the development of:

Corporations, the method by which many rich persons with a similar view of the world gather together to combine their wealth towards a common goal - whether to promote trade or to rework the political landscape of Europe.  These are spectacularly wealthy persons, sitting atop a complex arrangement of trade houses and guilds, associates, bribed officials and sympathetic monarchs.  And because it's bound to be loads of fun, the substance of these corporations will be the same as those underground organizations discussed at tech 14.  My world can then possess groups like the Illuminati, the Freemasons or anything else I may choose to include (though I admit I have a strong sentiment towards a certain Steve Jackson Game).

Naturally, this justifies the presence of the literal Gnomes of Zurich, which I once referenced in the online campaign.  But where are those gnomes found?  Obviously not Harnia and obviously not Zurich.

Conclusion

So, in the end, the last technologies are sort of evil and malevolent.  Rich bastards taking over the world.  Still, I'm not shooting for a realistic simulation.  These are just foils for very high level parties who need more to worry about than a simple army or two.

I suppose some may be disappointed with the high level cultures described.  After all, on the surface, Frankfurt in Germany (above) won't seem that much different from Mantua in Italy (tech 15), though they're separated by three degrees of technology.  The only differences will be that the average citizen in Mantua won't have two weapon proficiencies, won't easily break morale, will be somewhat more prejudiced and disliking of strangers and ultimately not intimately linked to a group like the Semi-conscious Liberation Vanguard ('front' sounds too modern).  That's a nuance that could be easily lost on a lot of players.

It is that nuance, after all, that lets us overlook most backwardly technological cultures.  They still raise and love their children, they still struggle for food and they imagine themselves to be aware of the world - even if those people in Dirtsville do believe in God and that he gives a shit about them.

So, what comes next?

Not sure about that.  Applying the actual tech levels to the actual territories of the world seems in order, along with fixing limitations to available character classes and resource development.  For those people who feel that one tech will leak into another, that much is obvious - but how, exactly?  Our culture has leaked like crazy into the developing world but anyone can tell you that's been there that the result never quite changes the way people in those parts think.  Now imagine 'leaking' that's limited to information brought by horseback and wagon, without moving pictures or recorded sound, and without instantaneous discourse between regions (except, reasonably, between high-level spellcasters, who would have very little interaction with the lower orders).

This 'leaking' that people describe is greatly hampered by a culture that takes a month to travel 300 miles over rough country - or that can't afford to travel 30 miles at all, what with fees and threats to life and limb.  We vastly overestimate the interaction between cultures in times before our own.  We simply can't imagine that the people living over there in the next valley - or the next street - would have so little discourse with us that we could easily hate them and have them hate us for centuries.

Sharing is something we've only lately learned to appreciate.  It's what very intelligent people do.

Technology 17

This is the thirteenth in a series of posts intended to provide a technological framework for my world. The purpose of this framework is to create unique, regional settings for player interaction. A realistic simulation of the actual world is not a goal of this system and will not be given credence when approving comments.

Regions with a technology of 17 will have an average population density of 409,531 to 990,000 per 20-mile hex. This includes the following regions, shown on this table:

I should say that many of the places in the previous tables probably deserved to be described
as 'urban' on those tables rather than 'parkland.'  I admit that the distinction had not
occurred to me until just yesterday; but then, this tech thing is a work in progress.

A mere 8 regions.  This technology accounts for 6.7 hexes of my world, occupied by 5,357,634 humans.  There are no non-humans.

This works out to an average of 2,311 persons per square mile.  For a little perspective, this is a little more than twice the density of a typical urban fringe in America.  It is about the density of a tight suburb, the kind that show up around Riverside and San Bernardino counties in Southern California or English boroughs like Eastbourne in East Sussex or Epsom & Ewell in Surrey.  It is nowhere near as dense as we're used to in a modern city (compare with this chart).

Despite what most depictions of medieval/renaissance cities show, in fact they were much more open than the reader might imagine.  Greenspace, large yards for raising a few animals, private-yet-communal parks and wide city squares offering plenty of elbow room were common.  Most towns were surrounded by wide spaces, inside the city walls and yet used for plowing and grazing.

Available Technologies

See tech 16.

I think the reader should laugh at the tiny area this tech level actually represents in the my world.  Players could easily walk right by such an area and fail to consider it worthwhile investigating - particularly since nearly 2/3rds of the area is in one part of India (mentioned in an earlier post).

Yesterday's long and meandering post was an attempt to discuss the Liberalism of the tech 17 culture - along with Constitution and Democracy.  But, one at a time . . . and for the record, I'm just going to incorporate my post conclusion with the last one:

Liberalism.  For each of these I have to pick and choose elements of the philosophy that best fits my world.  I see the entities listed above (and those of tech 18) opting out of the militarism of tech 16 while retaining a more nuanced form of the mandatory service.  Rather than every person of the realm (city state) being required to commit themselves to the armed forces, there are opportunities for the people to apply and serve their time as members of the civil service, the foreign office, the advancement of culture, expeditionary and exploratory ventures into the unknown and so on - creating a more rounded and flexible viewpoint on the responsibilities of the individual towards the state.  At the same time, combat training can still be obtained by everyone - but pure military service, for many, is a three-month affair rather than something lasting for two to three years.  In kind, the expectation may be as much as four or five years of civic duties - and in the case of some of those duties, ultimately more dangerous than military service.

Constitution.  While tech 14 incorporates Nationalism and Divine Right as a means to bring together members of the region as a single people, those technologies do fail in some degree because they are dependent upon sentiment - either the sentiment of the general population of the sentiment of a single monarch.  The technology of a constitution is an effort to see past sentiment, to see past the circumstances of the moment and to unite the present with the future of the nation - to ensure that the sentiment that people feel today does not compromise the overall welfare of the state for the next generation.  By codifying the principles of National Character and Social Responsibility, a nation strives to achieve a greater stability over time.  This in turn makes the people view the state as a living, corporeal entity, one that demands the individual put their faith in the state itself rather than in individuals who run that state.

Democracy.  This is the hardest philosophy of all, because it says, unlike every technology that has gone before, that everyone is worthy of inclusion in the state.  Not just the majority, but the minority as well.  Not just the domestic representative population of the state, but all populations, of all states.  The American constitution does not state, "All Americans are considered equal" but that "All men are created equal."

(now, that is an issue, since at the time the English language was constructed in such a manner that the masculine declension of the noun was used to refer to all persons, something that both genders inherently understood, even though of course we know there was a fail where it came to assigning the vote to one of those genders.  We can get into this for a very long time, but the sentiment I'm going to argue would be fundamentally unchanged if the Constitution correctly stated "all men and women are created equal - okay?)

The passion expressed in those words applied to all persons, everywhere, regardless of nationality - because the American colonies at the time of the constitution recognized that the people dwelling on the Atlantic's western seaboard had come as a mix from many places - a great many of the soldiers or citizens who fought or died for American freedom and ideals were not born in America.  Similar passages in other constitutions gave acknowledgement that the point here was not to selectively choose a group of people based upon their nation but upon their humanity.  That is what Democracy strives to do - to establish an understanding that a human being is entitled to certain rights and respect based upon their personal level of need, will to live, degree of suffering or the level to which they deserve sympathy.

I don't happen to think any of those things includes the right to have a personal opinion respected - which is why I go after personal opinions freely, like a pit bull.  I do believe, firmly, that the physical person that an individual possesses is inviolable . . . that every person deserves to eat, deserves education, deserves health care, deserves recognition by the state, deserves the right of innocence and ultimately deserves to choose which battles they will fight for or against.

I see this recognition as a very high level of intelligence (in the tech system, a 17 intelligence) - one that, it can be observed in the public discourse daily, just doesn't exist.  When I refer to people as fucking stupid, it is because I am prejudiced towards respecting every individual human's comfort level on the basis I've described, to the best of our ability as a species - and I am well aware of the number of people in the world who are quite ready to let other people starve and die because this is just too expensive and too much trouble.

But I digress.  I'm proposing that 6.7 hexes (7.7, including tech 18) of my world are societies prepared to put in a constitution that they believe this vision as well.

My world is, after all, designed for fantasy role-play.