Total War had the idea of a family tree with leathers, heirs and more.
I wonder if it would be fun to have such a family in this game. Your tribe could become destabilized if the leaders died, for example. Intermarriage with other tribes could be a means to form alliances or end conflict.
It would be neat to have names for the people and their information (like habits, etc). This is common in many simulation games, and would be lots of fun.
Your little tribe would hold ceremonies to wed people, coming of age, anoint leaders, etc.
I could be wrong, but I believe they have already planned villagers to have their own characteristics, so I don’t think these ideas would be too hard to implement. As an offshoot idea, wouldn’t it be kinda cool to have “bad” villagers who are more likely to hoard and steal resources - I mean, this had to have happened in real life, right?
It is funny how a discussion that started out talking about family turned into a discussion about immoral, treacherous people
Anyway, beside the politics, family is also a great tool for creating the impression of a real tribe and real citizens interacting among each other. Parents caring for their children, for instance (, although one says that it takes a village to raise a child).
I really liked to track certain families in Children of the Nile. You were able to see the occupations that the family filled during the generations. You could track the downfall of an artisan family becoming beggars, wealthy merchants becoming noblemen and villagers from elsewhere becoming simple farmers in your city. It was just kind of nice to know and to follow their exploits.
This is a phenomenon that is often observed today. (Unfortunately) This is also the problem in mmo’s. A large number of civilized players build a nice game. Then come a handful of spinners and explore the abysses of the game mechanics. So they destroy the best game, preferably still with cheats or even account hacking. Our society obviously produces black souls …
I see your point. But at some point, people need to be held responsible for their actions. Since this is the internet, there is no real accountability (except for banning and penalizing hackers) so this is where toxicity comes to thrive.
Right. This is just the balancing act between freedom and total surveillance. People are the way they are. (This, by the way, is a good basis for the behavior of NPCs in the game) The question in the future will be how to deal with destructive potential. This is a bit late for the Internet. It was clear that abuse would take place. In real life, a form of chaos will probably accompany our lives. Basically this was always so, the technical possibilities are only threatening close to the individual.
Technically, yes. But that’s stretching the term political. Exogamy has been practiced buy many tribal societies for thousands of years and is quite commonplace. It’s not so much of an arranged marriage for political cohesion, more of a marriage which results in increased cohesion
A problem might a rise if the family got into power. There was an article on how after time a certain generation does not have the same courage, leadership, or other need ability’s to lead. This would lead to insurrection. This would be a very interesting dynamic to the family life. (Some families would end up leading.)
You are thinking of a form of hereditary monarchy? Did you think so far before the Bronze Age began? Think, that was very patriarchal, the “elders” have thought together about the appropriate leaders. I imagine that as with the Indians.
That’s pretty much how I’ve made it in my writings, but I’m not sure that we can really say that we actually know that to be true. It’s just a good hypothesis based on comparative analysis of other cultures. My guess is that there would be a common structure of governance, perhaps a group of Elders, but more exotic scenery is probably existed too. At any given point, there were probably thousands of tribes throughout Europe, and thousands of years of time. While one strategy or another may have been the most common, my guess is that there would have been many other more exotic forms of governance, though perhaps not common or indicative of their culture as a whole.
Answering both of your message in the same place, as they appear to be linked. Not sure if that’s the best way to do, but well…
I agree. A lot of plausible systems of governance may be thought to: a council of Elders, a council of family heads, or a more restrictive council of family heads (then later on a solider council, or the richest families council, or a big (wo)man system, or even a “democratic” or “monarchic” theocracy, etc.)
It should be fairly common to switch from one governance system from to another.
For instance, if you have 5 families in your tribe, 4 of those families being represented by the oldest male member, but in the 5th family there’s no older member, this family could ask to have one member at the council, being either the oldest man even if he’s 20 years old, or the oldest member (meaning either man or woman), or the family head.
Then this means you’re leaving the Elder system to either a family head system, or a family council – as the direct implication is that what you decided a few years ago is used as an example in similar situations later on.
This invented little story is an example only, but this is how I think our tribe society should evolve, slowly, with passing generations to another.
And when speaking of “norms”, I don’t have any preference: the most important is to keep fluidity in the game, to have to deal with various situations and try to react accordingly to your past choices and what you think the best at the moment.
But there may be “norms” though: the game can’t handle everything for any tribe on the world map like it will do on your own map (so no family trees, for example) – for an obvious reason of computing power.
But it would be perfectly reasonable to imagine that, from time to time, other neighboring tribes randomly change their governance system (and various other things) depending on triggers (population, economical situation, etc.), passing slowly from some forms to other ones, more adapted to their current situation. This way the world keep changing around your own tribe and be dynamic.
And if the neighboring tribes end up with 90% of big man system but you decided to stick to an Elder council, then you’re not in the norm, meaning more difficult relations as you’re basically considered as “those strange guys there that never do like anybody else. Oh yeah, they’re nice, and they make great bows for hunting, but they’re very strange nonetheless…”
It would be nice to have possible matriarchal systems of heredity, as well possibly even an occasional female elder. It may not be common, but it certainly happened in recorded history.
As far as I know, there’s no reason to don’t have a matriarchal system being possible.
Probably what happened in history is that men took power one moment or another because of their supposed higher implication in defending the villages and tribes when facing external opposition, and probably using either persuasion or violence inside the society to do that. (As a side note, that’s the same story with the birth of feodality in Western Europe, when some people used their fighting abilities to be “elected” as protectors of the villages).
But if your tribe is in peace with every neighbor for a very long time, some other considerations could be taken into account: either personal charisma, family prestige, personal capacities to lead instead of a supposed higher capacity to fight, or even the fact the chief divinity is a female god whose priestess is highly revered and she keeps her medicine secrets to retain a growing social predominance, etc. Then this could lead to a growing tradition of women having the power within the tribe.
This falls into the domain of plausability I think.
