More Amusing Historicisms

I promised I would follow up on the last post I did exploring interesting historical anecdotes that can be used for gaming, in order to both provide fuel for scenarios and help build a world that feels different than our own. Here's that follow-up.

As always, these topics have more depth than I can cover in a single post, and anyone looking for more information is encouraged to do so - I only provide a rundown for the sake of context, and ways these subjects can be explored in games.

Literacy

It's commonly understood that the majority of people in medieval Europe could not read and write. Unless you were from a wealthy family or a monk working in a scriptorium (these things are not mutually exclusive), there was little reason to bother learning - that takes time and effort, and you can grow crops just fine without being literate. I rarely see this explored in games; most DMs just assume that all PCs and NPCs are literate (at least when it comes up). And while there's something to be said for this - after all, it streamlines things, and cuts out what could be a tedious process of needing to get someone to relay any written information to a character - there was a great amount of infrastructure that sprung up to deal with this issue, and that offers some intriguing opportunities for games.

Some of the images we so closely associate with the Middle Ages arose out of necessity in order to communicate information to an illiterate populace. The colorful, descriptive names of taverns grew from the need for each establishment to have a distinctive, memorable sign so that travelers could tell them apart ("meet me at the Bull and Lion," for instance, told someone to look for the building bearing a sign with a bull and a lion on it). The elaborate stained glass windows of cathedrals depicted images from the Bible or the lives of saints so that people who couldn't read could understand the stories. These are compelling images that have survived to this day, to the point where many of us are unaware of their origins.

Other things, however, haven't survived as long - and this lends them well to livening up game worlds. Consider the town crier. In order to communicate news to illiterate townfolk, many towns would designate an official to walk through the streets ringing a bell or beating a drum, calling out important announcements, such as upcoming events or the proclaimations of nobles, or reminding people of laws. When the adoption of the printing press made mass production of written works possible, people often got news from broadsheets that were printed and pasted on the walls of buildings, but when literacy was rare, they would have people tasked with standing by these broadsheets and reading them to people who stopped by. Having a town crier in your game could be a great way to inform your players of plot points and adventure hooks, as well as providing exposition on local laws or customs of the city.

Furthermore, the fact that most people couldn't read books made plays a popular form of entertainment. These often took place at festivals or other public events, and were performed by traveling troupes or by local guilds. Religious stories or the commedia del'arte were both popular, and sometimes overlapped (The Second Shepherd's Play, while ostensibly about the shepherds present at the birth of Jesus, is largely a secular comedy until the angel shows up at the end). Having a play take place while the PCs are in town could be a fun bit of local color, and perhaps the party could even get involved in filling in for one or more of the actors.

In low-magic settings, illiteracy also provides a convenient answer to why magic isn't more widespread and influential in society. Even if magic is powerful, it traditionally requires long and careful study in order to harness that power, and much of that information is written down in books and scrolls. If we assume most people are illiterate, that restricts its availability to people who have the resources and time to pursue its study, like the wealthy or the clergy - which maps quite nicely to arcane and divine casters. For most people, learning magic simply wouldn't be worth it. This helps keep magic feeling rare and special without needing to change much about the magic system itself.

Lastly, if one wishes, it could even be possible for PCs themselves to be illiterate. Obviously, this would have a significant impact in what that character could and couldn't do, and this would have to be taken into account, but it could lend itself to some new, and interesting, challenges. It adds another step to any quest involving secret messages or arcane manuscripts - now, the party will have to find someone capable of reading any texts they find, and preferrably that should be someone they can trust!

Adventure Seeds

• Looking to spread discord, an enemy force feeds false information to a town crier so that the public will be misinformed - perhaps ahead of an attack, or to sew dissent. Can the PCs figure out the plan in time?
• A wealthy but illiterate patron has come into possession of a manuscript, and requests the PCs to decode it. When they find it contains arcane secrets or directions to hidden treasure that the patron would covet, will they do the job, or will they keep those secrets to themselves?

Oaths

In many historical societies, swearing an oath - whether it was one of alliegance to another party, a dedication to perform a certain deed, or to represent oneself truthfully when questioned - was taken very seriously. This still survives to some degree in the concept of purjury, but the way we view oaths today hardly approaches the gravity and importance with which our ancestors viewed them.

Oaths were often taken with a particular ritual involved, which could be as simple as making a specific hand gesture or as complex as making proclaimations during a feast or ceremony. In any case, it was viewed that these weren't simply promises, but vows to be appealed to the gods themselves - they would remember what was said, and they would enforce that such orders be carried out. To break an oath, then, would be considered to disobey the will of the divine. Oathbreakers were often punished severely, as their actions were seen as endangering the entire community. And even in cases where the law wasn't necessarily involved, it was believed that great misfortune would befall anyone who failed the gods this way.

To a modern eye, it might seem ridiculous that such matters were, ultimately, dependent on the honor system - but the belief in the power and sanctity of oaths made it possible to enforce complex matters in an era where the infrastructure needed to directly impose the will of a government over wider territories simply didn't exist. The entire concept of feudalism was dependent on oaths - vassals swore fealty to their lords to provide for them, and in turn, those lords were bound by their obligation to protect those subject to them. An easy way to add historical character to a setting, and to make it feel otherworldly and exotic to modern eyes, would be to work oath-taking into the practices of everyday life. When people start making oaths and depending on them with their lives, even when there's no real legal authority to enforce them, the world certainly seems less familiar.

Fantasy settings offer some especially interesting means to handle oaths, which we can see when we look at the folklore surrounding these proclamations. Throughout the world, there are many legends that speak of oathbreakers being punished with curses for failing to abide by their agreements to the gods, or of oaths being supernaturally enforced in other means. For instance, the Norse god Baldur was only able to be killed by mistletoe because it was the only object that didn't swear an oath to never harm him, and one
Greek folk song speaks of a man rising from the dead in order to fulfill his obligations to his mother. Oaths, evidently, are powerful things that transcend even the laws of nature.

In a universe where magic and gods exist, it may make more sense for oaths to hold the power they do, and it provides an easy way to introduce conflict into your stories. There are many monsters that can be justified as being spawned to punish oathbreakers, or even as the transformed oathbreakers themselves, and it's easy to work an oath broken by some ancient ancestor into the backstory of a cursed village or a misfortunate family. Perhaps even the PCs would need to swear oaths, and attract ill omens should those oaths be broken...

Adventure Seeds

• Long ago, a noble's ancestors swore an oath that they would never bear arms in the neighboring fief. The family has upheld the oath for generations, but now the fief is under attack, and they're powerless to provide aid. Can the PCs help?
• Before a difficult voyage, the PCs must swear an oath to the gods that until they return, they will not eat the flesh of their sacred animals - which, as it so happens, are the primary food source in the region they'll be traveling. They'll have to manage their resources carefully if they don't want to attract the wrath of the gods.

Slavery

I suspect this section is going to be a controversial one. To a modern reader, the very idea of slavery carries strong negative connotations, and that isn't surprising when the system is associated with some of the most notorious human rights abuses in history. This philosophy tends to get carried into the works modern-day authors produce. But for better or worse, almost every major historical civilization owned slaves, and they were a key part of society. One of my favorite bits of historical trivia is that the ancient Greeks had all the knowledge and technologies they needed to mass produce the steam engine - the reason they didn't was because they already had slaves to perform such tasks, so it didn't seem necessary. That should give you an idea of the role of slaves in the ancient world. And in a setting grounded in history, it makes sense for slaves to be present.

Part of the stigma around slavery in games comes from the fact that when most people today think of slavery, they think of chattel slavery, as exemplified the colonial-era Atlantic slave trade - an especially brutal and dehumanizing system that was controversial even at the time. However, this is far from the only form slavery took. One prominent example is ancient Rome. Although Roman slaves did not have the rights of citizens and were subject to the whims of their masters, they were allowed to hold and use their own property (in Greece, slaves could even run their own businesses), could become citizens if they were freed by their masters (whether that be due to personal choice or the slave buying their own freedom), and in later periods were even allowed to bring up charges against their masters in court. There was no association with race; although many slaves were prisoners of war, others were enslaved as a sentence for a crime, and citizens could sell themselves or their family members into slavery to pay off debts. Often there was little to visually distinguish slaves from citizens - which was in part by design, as the Romans feared that if slaves could recognize other slaves it would be easier for them to organize a revolt.

In medieval times, slavery was generally practiced in the form of serfdom, in which the workers who inhabited a plot of land were seen as part of the property; if the land came under new hands, the serfs would too. There was immense variation in this practice alone over times and places, but largely, serfs owned their own property and worked their own fields, but were not allowed to leave and would be obligated to provide service for their master as well, in addition to paying tithes. This was a part of life that everyone expected, and played a part in the functioning of the feudal system. In fact, by some records, medieval serfs had more time off of work than modern laborers, as many lords knew that overworking or mistreating their serfs would make them less willing to provide the services they depended upon.

All of these, of course, are still unethical by modern standards, but there's no reason they have to be by the standards of your game world. Having slavery in a setting, and having it be accepted as normal and not worthy of outrage, would certainly make the setting feel less like modern times. Of course, this is something you shouldn't commit to if you don't know your table. Many players are used to slavery being exclusively the domain of villains, and they may be unwilling to trust NPCs who own slaves even if they're only mentioned as a bit of background color. More importantly, some players may find the presence of slavery without it being treated as unethical in-universe to be offensive, and since games are supposed to be fun, it's never worth compromising your players' enjoyment for the sake of worldbuilding. But in a group that knows to expect slavery as a part of the setting, it offers plenty of areas to explore. If the players are so willing, slaves of the PCs could become recurring characters and could earn their freedom over the course of the campaign; one PC could even be the slave of another. And for a more treasure-focused campaign, an escaped slave in search of gold to pay for their freedom would make for a compelling PC backstory.

Adventure Seeds

• With apologies to the Anglo-Saxons: A runaway slave has stolen treasure from a dragon's hoard in order to buy their freedom - and now the dragon is attacking!
• After a feudal lord has gained control of a new fief, its serfs are unhappy with the new management, and are planning to rise up. Will the PCs aid them, or will they quell the rebellion?

With that, I've presented a number of historical phenomena that can be used to help your game worlds feel distinct from the modern day. I'm interested in hearing what other DMs have done with these ideas or others. What do you do to challenge the expectations of players used to more modern norms and ideals?