Cultural Variation and Changes in Honor Over Time

[mj6373]

Hey, guys, I had an interesting discussion in my campaign not that long ago that I've been thinking about ever since, and wanted to share my thoughts with y'all.

 

It all started when I was running the Gorbuduc part of the Sauvage Quest, headed by a Jewish PK trying to rescue his son and foster daughter from the Sauvage King. We hit the part where the commoners were getting whipped harshly by Gorboduc's bandits, and PKs do a Just roll and are told on a success that it's okay for peasants to be treated that way, and my player immediately shot back, "Nope. Maybe that's Just for Christian knights, but Jewish culture has always placed a high value on taking our history with persecution as motivation to help other persecuted groups. *My* high Just score should *compel* me to intervene, not prevent it." And I agreed with the logic (especially considering Judaism has Just as a religious Trait in Pendragon, per Books of Knights & Ladies, so it'd feel especially off to rule following Jewish codes of justice as Arbitrary, even if a Christian knight might think of protecting a peasant from the whip as an Arbitrary action), but it did get me thinking about the ways the tenets and characteristics of knighthood could be interpreted differently or change across time and place, especially with regard to treatment of commoners.

 

For one thought I had based on this, I recalled that the Honor loss for kidnapping or raping a woman, or attacking unarmed people, only apply to those of noble and spiritual status. This seems entirely fitting with the "commoners are barely even people" mindset of the Uther and Anarchy Periods, but I feel as though Arthur's concept of noblesse oblige should expand which targets of cruel violence cause Honor loss in the later Periods. Not like commoners should get *rights* or you should stop losing Honor for doing manual labor or anything crazy like that, but just as the rise of Arthur and Guenever mechanically incentivizes knights taking up better moral Traits and putting women on pedestals instead of seeing them as breeding stock with the Chivalrous and Romantic Knight mechanics, I think noblesse oblige should get some extra mechanical weight by making unjustified harm to commoners (or at least those within your own land) cause comparable Honor loss to doing so to nobles and clergy.

 

What are you fine folks' thoughts on this? Do you have any of your own examples you've used in your games, or disagreements with either my ruling in the Gorboduc situation or my idea for changing Honor loss based on Arthur's increasing standards for knightly behavior?

[Morien]

IMHO and YPWV and all that...

Whipping peasants without a good reason is Arbitrary, not Just. They are not slaves. They do have right and obligations, and even in Uther's time, there are law courts, county courts, sheriffs... The difference is that in Uther Period, many knights are Arbitrary. In Arthur's reign, they are Just and hence beatings/whippings only happen when there is an actual crime that merits it. And yes, I would imagine that Arthur is revising some laws to make them less whip-happy. Also, Merciful is another Chivalric trait, so even within the laws, the knights under Arthur might be looking for reasons to downgrade the punishment or at least go for the lower end of the sentencing, etc, whereas in Uther's time, I'd expect most knights to be closer to the Cruel side of things despite Christianity's traits.

That being said, I think that there would still be a two-tiered view on things, with crimes against commoners being judged less harshly than those against fellow nobility or clergy, even during Arthur's times.

[mj6373]

Well, it wasn't about whipping the peasants being a Just action. Rather, per p. 109 of the GPC, Gorboduc's foreman is whipping serfs, and when the players roll Just, the game says the treatment is harsh, but *not* unjust (aka, by the GPC's standards, that treatment alone shouldn't be considered sufficient reason for a highly-Just knight to intervene). Sorry for the confusion.

[Morien]

3 hours ago, mj6373 said:

Well, it wasn't about whipping the peasants being a Just action. Rather, per p. 109 of the GPC, Gorboduc's foreman is whipping serfs, and when the players roll Just, the game says the treatment is harsh, but *not* unjust (aka, by the GPC's standards, that treatment alone shouldn't be considered sufficient reason for a highly-Just knight to intervene). Sorry for the confusion.

Oh, I see. Well, given that the very next sentence is offering choices of attacking or talking to the lord, it is certainly not enough to stop the PKs from intervening if they want. Also, they have the prophetic dream and Merlin's words to spur them on, too.

(As a sidenote, I disagree with the whipping of serfs being simply 'harsh' even in the Dark Ages*. Slaves, sure, whip away, but serfs have some rights. Free men even more so. If a serf mouths you (a knight) off, sure, punch or kick the cur, but if your foremen take to the fields and start whipping people willy-nilly, you will get either a general flight or a peasant revolt in a hurry.
* I suspect that this is a reflection of some of the older material in GPC being written before Greg got really serious about researching Medieval society, and/or wanting to go hard on the Brutality of the society in pre-Arthurian era. Gorboduc the Devil appears already in The Boy King, published in 1997. There is also a difference in the Pre-Arthur periods in Boy King and GPC, where it is supposed to be more Dark Ages, and the Book of Uther, which is basically a Norman English early 1100s society.)

[ArkSvid]

There is precedent for other cultures following different Honor rules. The best example I can think of is in the book "Saxons!", which is set as playing a campaign on the Saxon side of Pendragon. No honor loss for killing priests; after all they have some of the best loot. But not proudly boasting about your ancestors to everyone you meet? Unacceptable, lose some Honor points.

[Oleksandr]

The last point reminded me of something. We have interesting examples from viking sagas, like "Saga of the Greenlanders", when Freydís Eiríksdóttir order her husband and his men to attack rival settlement. They kill only men but refuse to kill women, so she had to do it herself. Another example from "Njáls saga", in which during family feud farmhous of one of the clans was burned by their rivals, who allowed women to leave, and offer to spare elderly couple and their young grandson, but they refused.

Was it early christian influence, or some sort of germanic honor code? Could something like this be applied to their kin, saxons?🤔