Alternative Lords & Ladies Settings
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Since we have a long running discussion about gay characters in a lords & ladies setting, I figured a constructive thread discussing ways to do a server that is open to alternatives for lords & ladies would be a good idea.
Let's start by establishing a baseline. The bog standard L&L setting is heavily patriarchal, is monogamous or polygynous, has political power held entirely or almost entirely by male characters, and has bloodline being tied to political power.
As the central conceit of the lords & ladies genre of MU*s is that there is a class-system in the setting, suggestions should aim to maintain that aspect of the lords & ladies veneer, meaning that a peerage exists within the setting and that the right to rule is somehow maintained in a verisimilitudinous/believable manner. An idea for a server with a classless society would not fit with the discussion; though, it might still be an interesting server idea to pursue.
Discussion should be constructive, as this is not the Hogpit, and should focus on how suggestions could be made better, on inconsistencies, on interesting offshoots or elaborations to an idea, on the verisimilitude/believability of the system, on blindspots the the writer might not be aware of in their idea, etc.
I'll start. These will just be quick rundowns rather than full explorations of the ideas.
Matrilineal, non-matrimonial society. Political power and titles are passed down solely through mothers to their children. Marriage doesn't exist. No one cares who your father is. A prince could become the king because his mom is the queen. His children won't inherit his political title all. His sister's children would. The prince, as a king, would not have a queen consort.
Matrilineal, matrimonial society. Same as above but there is marriage, likely only for political reasons. A prince could become the king because his mom is the queen. The king consort might be his father or might not. Maybe his father was the hunky stablehand the queen had a dalliance with before she was married. It doesn't matter. The prince, once he is king, could marry someone, male or female, but the ones who will inherit his title would, again, be his sister's children not his.
Spouses and consorts/concubines. Spouses are partners who are peers or are peers of roughly the same rank. Consorts/concubines are partners who are commoners or commoners and peers of significantly lower rank. Children of spouses have the highest legitimacy to inherit, but children of consorts/concubines also can inherit if there are no spousal children or perhaps can inherit in other circumstances to be defined by the setting. Heirs can be adopted and take the same rank as children of consorts/concubines.
Authority equals ass-kicking. This is the most metal/badass option for a lords & ladies game. Might makes right...to rule. The king/queen doesn't wear a crown; they wear a title belt. The king/queen isn't the king/queen because of who their parents are; they're king/queen because they kicked the ass of the previous king/queen and no one else has been able to take the title from them yet. No one cares who marries who or whose children are whose. This might work in a shonen lords & ladies game or maybe a very high magic setting where the king/queen is the strongest sorcerer in the land and all the dukes/duchesses, counts/countesses, and barons/baronesses are progressively weaker wielders of magic.
Ceterum autem censeo Carthaginem esse delendam
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@ominous This is a cool idea, thanks for posting it. I'll be back with thoughts.
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@ominous said in Alternative Lords & Ladies Settings:
Matrilineal, non-matrimonial society. Political power and titles are passed down solely through mothers to their children. Marriage doesn't exist. No one cares who your father is. A prince could become the king because his mom is the queen. His children won't inherit his political title all. His sister's children would. The prince, as a king, would not have a queen consort.
This is how I structured my nomad society character. Matrilineal, nobody cared who your dad was, sexuality was open and encouraged.
The particular setup there confuses me, though. How would the prince become King if there were female daughters of the queen who could then become queen? And if there are no female daughters, wouldn't it default to his daughter inheriting, not his sister's kids?
Racism isn't Tinkerbell. It doesn't need you to believe in it for it to exist.
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@derp said in Alternative Lords & Ladies Settings:
@ominous said in Alternative Lords & Ladies Settings:
Matrilineal, non-matrimonial society. Political power and titles are passed down solely through mothers to their children. Marriage doesn't exist. No one cares who your father is. A prince could become the king because his mom is the queen. His children won't inherit his political title all. His sister's children would. The prince, as a king, would not have a queen consort.
This is how I structured my nomad society character. Matrilineal, nobody cared who your dad was, sexuality was open and encouraged.
The particular setup there confuses me, though. How would the prince become King if there were female daughters of the queen who could then become queen? And if there are no female daughters, wouldn't it default to his daughter inheriting, not his sister's kids?
Matrilineal societies have existed; it boils down to the mother's bloodline is bleedin' obvious, but the father's not so much.
If you have to have a King, you need a man. But given that you can't guarantee that his kids are his, it's his sister's kids who inherit because you can guarantee that her kids are hers. So the new Queen is the King's wife, but her kids won't inherit because she's not of the bloodline and you don't know if her kids are. Her kids will inherit from her, instead.
It's a neat solution to a lot of problems, but it does mean that the king's own kids aren't - can't ever be - his heirs. For some reason a lot of people dislike that idea.
Marrying your sister also solves the problem, but most of us would consider that an extreme solution. That never stopped the Ancient Egyptians, though, or the Hapsburgs.
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Right, I'm not saying that they don't. I created one too.
What I'm saying is that the specific example has a flaw, I think, in that the example says that the king's children won't inherit a title from him, his sister's children will.
But if the king has a sister, why would he be king at all, since she would be the one entitled to inherit in a matrilineal society? Wouldn't he only be king if he didn't have any female siblings to inherit ahead of him? And in that case, what happens when the king dies? When a queen regnant died, her firstborn and/or male issue would inherit regardless of parentage, even though queen regnants were not the preferable situation through most of history.
So.
Anyway, hopefully that makes it more clear. If there is a King Regnant, then presumably there are no female siblings, so 'his sister's children inherit everything' makes no sense.
Racism isn't Tinkerbell. It doesn't need you to believe in it for it to exist.
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@derp Matrilineal doesn't matriarchal.
Matrilineal, the bloodline - and inheritance - goes through the women to the children. If the King doesn't have a sister, well, it's his grandmother's line you start looking at (same as with male primogeniture, if there are no sons you start looking back up the generations until you find one).
Matriarchal, the woman rules.
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@Grayson beat me to it. The -lineal suffix is about lineage, patrilineal being lineage through the father, matrilineal being lineage through the mother. The -archy suffix is about rule: monarchy, autarchy, anarchy, patriarchy, matriarchy. Something being matrilineal says nothing about the rulership. It could still be a matrilineal patriarchy with men holding the political power inherited through their mother's line, so instead of inheriting from your father, you're inheriting from your maternal uncles. The Albions in the Kushiel setting work this way from what I recall.
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How I am doing Atharia's stuff:
Rulers (not all L&L games use King/Queen): 1 of the 4 kingdoms prefer male leaders. It has nothing to do with males being superior/better/whatever it is simply tradition and there are outlier cases of females being leaders but because it is not traditional they do have to work harder to prove themselves. Another kingdom is matriarchal, same as for males but females are the leaders and males are the outlier cases. Another kingdom, regardless of gender, leans towards eldest child being the next ruler. The final kingdom has no preference on gender or age just who has proven, to the current leader, that they should be their heir. Whether its true or not is open as they could be the worst leader ever but they have the current leader thinking otherwise.
Spouses: The rulers can have up to 3 'spouses', technically, but only 1 person is the 'true spouse' and holds the same title as the ruler (AKA King and Queen). This match is typically political. Commoners can't marry up, my hard rule on this. HOWEVER, their Consorts are the 'loves' of the ruler, they are noble or common. The 3rd Spouse is basically the Concubine (We call them Supporters). Their relationship has little involving politics or love. They are typically taken on because, for whatever reason, there is no heir. The Supporter is considered on par with, I think I said princess and prince (in the case of kings and queens) but I'd have to double check. HOWEVER, Supporters job is to give heirs to the ruler. There is no love or political matches involved. They are expected to be with the ruler only and only rulers (AKA title holders) can have a Supporter.
Relationships: There is no expectation of Chasity, no expectation of fidelity (unless that is what the couple wants), no gender preferences for who marries who (Anyone can have a child, male or female. Don't think to hard on how it would work, I don't). So, A man can marry a man, a woman can marry a woman, man to woman, trans to man, etc. Whatever gender can be with whatever gender they want.
Racism: Skin color has zero matter. two white parents could have a native child and people just know it is theirs, some how. Basically, the parents can be any RL race they want, as can the child. Sure, it might make no sense if you do how genetics work RL. Atharia has meddlesome Gods, so the 'blooded families' can be any RL race they want. NOW, there are some 'race features' specific to each kingdom, nothing to do with RL. Like one kingdom is glowy, one kingdom is Elfy, 1 kingdom is ghostly, 1 kingdom is 'orcy' (as in their skins are something like shades of blue, green and purple I believe, I forget what ranges I specifically said off hand)
These are things done with just my staff present. Some of it might change with players while interest is tested in certain aspects of the game.
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I suppose you could just eliminate gender as a concept. Have everyone functionally capable of both ends of procreation. Tends to draw a very female-body-oriented kind of playerbase, but.
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I've always wanted to adapt the Ten Houses from Michelle West's House War series. As the series names indicates, it's not a happy fun lords and ladies setting, at all, but it's also not hereditary. The way it works is:
There are ten major Houses, who are more like empowered Guilds than traditional 'noble families'. They are the Empires nobility, but run entirely on a type of meritocracy - you can work for the House, or you can earn the 'House Name' - the right to call yourself Johnny <House>. House name doesn't necessarily get you noble privileges or wealth; there are servants who have earned their House Name, but it does indicate that you are valuable and protected by the House. Generally you get housing, protection, salary, etc. People can work their whole lives to earn a House Name, and just being married or born to someone doesn't get it for you. You can be disgraced or give up your House Name, but no other House would ever take you in that case, even as an unnamed servant.
The most powerful/prestigious people in the House typically form the House Council, who advise the House leader. The House leader is theoretically chosen by the last House leader and accepted by the Council. In practical terms, the House leader can name whoever they want, but the Council almost always goes to war after the leader's death and the winner succeeds to become the head of house.
And, of course, the Ten are constantly politicking against each other, with various degrees of murder. You get all the good stuff (for me) about Lords and Ladies - the politics, the intrigue, the dealmaking, the power, without any nonsense about marriage or babies.
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@pyrephox so you're saying this is another book series i should read
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I also like the idea of a kind of Demon/Magic Realm L&L game, whether the tone is full on anime or what. Vampires and orcs and fairies and elves, demons who are either monstrous or suspiciously human looking in appearance; friggin... cat people or whatnot. Could be fun.
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@saosmash said in Alternative Lords & Ladies Settings:
@pyrephox so you're saying this is another book series i should read
I mean. Yes? But also...maybe. It is a DOORSTOPPER of a series which got so long that it is no longer being published by traditional publishers. It starts with Hunter's Oath/Hunter's Death, which primarily involves another part of the world which another interesting take on hereditary nobility (where the hereditary noblemen adopt commoners to be 'huntbrothers' and grow up with them as nobles throughout their lives, because the duty of nobility is to take part in a Sacred Hunt every year, and one of them - nobleman or huntbrother - will die horribly on that hunt), moves down to a very patriarchal and restrictive land in the southern part of the continent.
There's also a fair amount of difficult content - the protagonists of the House novels, for example is a child thief whose found family is comprised of children she rescued from a brothel. So. Yes, it's very good if you like epic magic, epic politics, and very LONG plots - but it also hits some painful content along the way.
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I still have permission to set a game in West's universe. ^^ I doubt I'll have energy any time in the foreseeable future, but it's still something I think about a lot.
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@sunny said in Alternative Lords & Ladies Settings:
I still have permission to set a game in West's universe. ^^ I doubt I'll have energy any time in the foreseeable future, but it's still something I think about a lot.
Holy shit. That would be AMAZING.
I don't know how anyone would do it, though. It's so high fantasy and there's so MUCH. It's also so--there are so many genuinely hard IC choices to be made in that world, and so many MU* players are not capable of dealing with difficult choices. I feel like it would be a horrible disaster.
But man, I would play that disaster for as long as I could.
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@squirreltalk said in Alternative Lords & Ladies Settings:
I suppose you could just eliminate gender as a concept. Have everyone functionally capable of both ends of procreation. Tends to draw a very female-body-oriented kind of playerbase, but.
The discussion is less about procreation and more about maintaining castes and right to rule. See my authority equals ass-kicking example for an idea that has absolutely nothing to do with procreation as a means of passing on titles.
Assuming your genderless/sexless idea also requires inheritance of titles through offspring, how would you design the social norms? Would children inherit the title of the person who birthed them? Would there be a sort of dominance aspect, like with sea slug matings, where the lower socially ranked person has to bear the children of the higher ranked individual who would pass on their titles to the offspring? Do they reproduce asexually?
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The Ten Houses kind of sounds like how the peerage works in Monarchies of Mau. I wonder if the writers of the game borrowed a lot from the series.
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@ominous Possibly! Although it's also likely that both of them took inspiration from other sources - the Ten are basically highly formalized merchant guilds when it gets right down to it. The Empire has a hereditary monarchy, but it's VERY strange. (The Twin Kings rule; they are the sons of the gods of Justice and Wisdom. They take human wives, who the gods of Justice and Wisdom then procreate with, and those god-born children become the heirs, who take wives...etc. But half-god children are fairly common in that setting, and generally can talk to their celestial parent, etc.)
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Yeah, gonna toss in $0.02 and nerd out a bit as a completely amateur history dabbler.
Because, really importantly, I think it's important to know that the neat and tidy patrilineal primogeniture thing tends to be significantly overstated in terms of "how things were." It's a very simplified sort of set-up for our fantasy fiction. (Which, in fairness, it really has to be simplified if you want to have a game or fictional worlbuilding that doesn't require an undergrad degree to untangle.)
Plenty of places had a king (or equivalent) who was selected in ways other than inheritance. Election or acclaim by the nobility was a popular way in a lot of cases. Rome had a couple stretches were any competent general who came out ahead in a campaign could get his soldiers to name him Imperator and kick off another round of civil wars. More than a few countries, at some point, found they'd run out of kings and just asked someone with a sufficiently royal bloodline to come and rule them please. (This went on until at least the 1860s.)
I mentioned Rome, and I also think it's worth bringing up about them that adoption wasn't just as valid as blood relation, it was (in some ways) even more so. A great man was, obviously, obligated to treat his son as his own, and a natural-born son was obviously entitled to the benefits of that, but a man who'd been chosen as an heir was someone who obviously earned it. That's how a will turned a patrician named Octavius into Gaius Julius Caesar, until he decided to rename himself Augustus.
Nobility, meanwhile, are just rich people. In a society where 90% of the population needs to make their job "food production" or everyone starves (which, between the first and second Agricultural Revolution, is every society everywhere) the distinction comes down to the people who produce food and the people who have people to produce food. Mostly the money/land is heritable to some degree, because people generally want to be able to keep their wealth to the people they know, but it doesn't really have to be, and certainly not by oldest son primogeniture sorts of ways.
Real life nobility tended to get messy. Really messy, with the titles and ownership always disputed and shifting. Less "I own this contiguous area of territory, handed down by my forefathers into my care, to be passed down intact" and more like the portfolio of a major corporation--"I have the three core territories, some holdings on the border that are contested, have my eyes on some acquisitions I'm looking to make, and a couple things I wound up with that are frankly too far away to be worth their while so I'm just hoping to trade them off for something I can use."
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@ominous I'd assume they'd inherit the title of whichever person involved in their procreation had the title, and marriage would still be important, but admittedly I haven't thought through the gritty details.
