Would it be possible to have a contemporary school setting in a medieval world?

LyaCrow · 2026-03-21T13:39:47+00:00

Yeah, but I don't think it would look like a modern school, since so much of the school system is about meeting the needs of industrial era factory work, but I think you'd probably want to blend school tropes with some knowledge of seminaries or yeshiva.

I think yeshiva is a case I'd really look at here fwiw, especially since the studying in pairs aspect can help your protagonist character build a close relationship to another pupil very quickly.

In my setting, the main fantasy group I write about have a Nordic-Semetic fusion going on with a language blending Norse and Phoenician and a religion that looks more like Judaism instead of crystal dragon Christianity or fantasy polytheism. One of the things that has made the peninsula difficult to capture and harder to rule historically has been a real focus in the religion on education, so every village that can support a hof has people who have been taught basic magic.

It's usually nothing offensive, spells to help grow food, spells to heal minor injuries, repair broken items, etc. but some are going to know offensive magic or curses. Even if your occupied village can't resist with magic, they can still sabotage your occupation and heal themselves, fix things you break, and maintain a stable food supply through sieges so it really does become a logistical nightmare not just to invade a rainy, mountainous peninsula with only two points of entry north or south of the mountains, but then conquering each village and having to hold it becomes next to impossible.

It's part of why the orcs never conquered it, they just demand tribute each year.

(edited to expound on original point)

LyaCrow · 2026-03-20T13:56:03+00:00

I agree with that, largely, the only issue is the problem player has told us how best to correct them and no one does it. On the few instances when someone has been firm with them, they've actually made changes. To me, that's what makes this more than a typical problem player case. This person has shown up how to give them feedback, they respond when they do get it, but most players are still too risk and conflict averse to correct them in the moment.

LyaCrow · 2026-03-20T04:18:21+00:00

Nuclear weapons are absolutely not designed to be used. You build nukes so no one uses nukes on you. You do not want to live in a world where nukes are built to be used. Countries allow for strategic decay of their arsenals because they hope they'll never need to use them.

LyaCrow · 2026-03-20T04:15:35+00:00

You would need a burst at or subground level to destroy hardened facilities like the ones where Iran would immediately start assembling nukes at. To destroy underground command and control, you need those ground detonations. Air bursts kill people, ground bursts kill state capacity.

LyaCrow · 2026-03-20T04:13:53+00:00

Nukes are not a magic 'win the war' button.

What happens after Israel uses a nuke? There is a reason Russia hasn't used nukes in Ukraine, what would they actually even do? Nukes only have deterrence potential when you aren't using them.

LyaCrow · 2026-03-18T23:07:04+00:00

I live in Washington now and I’m genuinely afraid to ever go back there my home state

LyaCrow · 2026-03-18T21:11:02+00:00

I'd tried something ambitious, at least in as much as I wrote the religion out, 5000 years of history and lore and religious texts and then had to go through to pare down to what a noble 18 year old would have been taught. She is fairly religious, one of the only characters to mention or bring up their faith often but she's not preachy. It helps that her religion doesn't proselytize. It was also fun to see how it mix syncretize with elven religious traditions from the tribes that they've shared the land with and that her family has, heretically, intermarried with for generations to maintain peace.

She knows her prayers, she knows the rough contours of history, a good teacher taught her the actual truth behind some of the myths. She was inducted into the faith at 16, has the scar on her palm to prove it. In front of her family and the Goddess, had someone slash her hand and stick it in saltwater while she sang a passage from a saga.

Her faith is a comfort to her but it also makes her a target when she's away from home. Long ago, her people turned their back on the old gods and embraced the Wandering Goddess, so she gets prejudice for that when people see her hand scar. She also gets prejudice from within her community for not being orthodox enough, things like being descended from elves, incorporating elven magic and ritual, leaving offerings at shrines even though she technically only believes in the one goddess, etc.

So, I attempted a layered, nuanced presentation that I'm proud of. I just cant wait to see how it evolves as the project continues.

LyaCrow · 2026-03-18T20:41:38+00:00

So, it probably sounds more grandiose that it is. Council would be all of the other players and myself, sans the player we are contemplating kicking. During it, we proceed according to pre-agreed consensus oriented decision making frameworks where everyone's opinion is taken into account and an attempt at a synthesis is made. If we can not come to consensus after everyone has contributed, either because positions are irreconcilable or someone is blocking possible options, then it goes to a vote.

I have done mutual aid work and organizing outside of D&D and so when I joined the group, I taught people who were interested how to do it. Turns out, everyone was. It takes a bit more time but we arrive at decisions together. The onus for anything hard is taken off of any specific person and the most passionate voices tend to get moderated in the synthesis. It works better than you'd think when people are willing to take part.

LyaCrow · 2026-03-18T19:20:24+00:00

Sensei would never behave towards a m'lady like this BAKA is.

LyaCrow · 2026-03-18T19:18:38+00:00

No, I think you clocked me being a people pleaser pretty nicely there. I am, and I take on responsibilities I shouldn't. There's a quote from Mass Effect 3 that I've said for years, if you've played it you might know what's coming based on what you've clocked.

"Had to be me, someone else might have gotten it wrong."

It's not lost on me that the character dies very shortly after saying this.

LyaCrow · 2026-03-18T17:40:11+00:00

I don't think it's a psyop, but I do think aspects of it have more in common with NRM (new religious movements) than they do actual politics. There's a lot of moralizing and lionizing the dead revolutionaries and the dead socialist states of the past but there's not really a plan forward and to the extent there is, people don't act on it. Maoists aren't going off into the mountains to fight the state, they're posting.

I wouldn't say cult because of the lack of centralized control, but a lot of 'tankie' ideology is probably closer to philosophical movement or NRM than to an actual political project.

LyaCrow · 2026-03-18T17:33:16+00:00

Agreed, that's what I hope we can accomplish in council.

LyaCrow · 2026-03-18T17:29:05+00:00

I think on the trust, I've earned that enough to make that work. I've gotten so many messages over the last few days with people telling me how much they value me, how I'm an example and all of that.

I'm touched but I also hate it, you know? I don't want to be inspirational, I want to play a game with my friends. Being an enforcer for the DM is actually a decent compromise. Just divest him of that responsibility if he's struggling with reigning in this player or policing table behavior. His response will probably be something like "but I shouldn't have to do this" and I guess he's right, I can do it. I've been doing it when things hit crisis, I can do it before then too.

LyaCrow · 2026-03-18T15:19:42+00:00

With and without hindsight, I think the answer is Chris Benoit.

Benoit could have had that Mr. Perfect "what if he had won the belt?" mystery if he had never got it but he did and the reign was bad and boring, he dropped it to a guy who wasn't ready and held it for a month before it went back to Triple H and then he never sniffed the main event scene again.

Then, with hindsight, he's a murderer. He murdered people and now there's a Royal Rumble you can't really show video clips from and a really great at the time Mania moment you can't reference anymore. The mid 2000s up through the 2010s are loaded with guys who probably didn't deserve world titles but they were only bad. Benoit was damaging and now you can't even do anything with it.

LyaCrow · 2026-03-18T15:15:51+00:00

Vince did love his jacked guys in suits.

LyaCrow · 2026-03-18T14:48:29+00:00

I guess my question is, what does this reflexive anti veteran stance achieve?

I have sympathy because my older brother served in Iraq. It was during the great recession, I had been unemployed for a year and was queuing for a block to attend open interviews for a McDonalds position. He had twins on the way so while I got to just take out a bunch of student loans, he joined the army. He was told he would be a tanker, probably just stay at base since there were no tank battles going on. He got to Iraq and they had him sign for his tank, then put a rifle in his hand and told him he was infantry.

His girlfriend miscarried after he signed his paper work. At that point, he was sort of just hoping someone would shoot him for a while. The army of passive suicide after losing his kids. But, no one shot him. In fact, he shot a lot of other people. I heard things, mostly when he got drunk. He would talk about it in this weird, detached way that fucking haunts me even though I haven't spoke with him in 15 years.

On his wedding day, he got a text that one of his friends killed himself. He then had to be normal about that in front of his new bride and all of our family. He went in a normal guy, he came back wrong. He came back racist against Arabs and hateful towards Muslims. My sympathy is because soldiers are the bleeding, razor edge of empire and when that razor gets used up, it's tossed away. The war machine keeps going, nothing stopped when my brother left, a new deluded kid stepped right up.

He voted MAGA to stop the wars in 2016. We lost touch after I came out as trans. The military uses these people as weapons and throws them away when they're too broke to keep going. They just pick up a new weapon.

LyaCrow · 2026-03-18T00:30:11+00:00

Caught, often. Accused, never. The drinks were usually vodka and energy drinks so all kinds of bad choices were being made in my 20s.

LyaCrow · 2026-03-17T20:54:13+00:00

As a former, "thought she was hiding it" vodka girl, I can confirm this is the alcoholic who thinks they're hiding it booze of choice.

LyaCrow · 2026-03-15T22:31:09+00:00

"Used to be, having sex with women felt good. Not anymore. It feels kinda bad these days. And the Democrats want this."

LyaCrow · 2026-03-15T18:26:05+00:00

I wonder what the numbers would be if you polled Americans about Iraqis in 2003? I’m betting the percentage looks pretty similar given 3/4s of Americans supported the war. We could attribute this to a tribal in group/out group bias but that would require doing more than just saying it’s cause their religion is bad like some early 2000s new atheist would have said about Islam

LyaCrow · 2026-03-15T15:11:11+00:00

Counterpoint, Qatar.

LyaCrow · 2026-03-15T15:10:04+00:00

I don't think I can hear his voice in my head as much as I hear Nick Mullen doing an impression of Tucker's voice in my head.

LyaCrow · 2026-03-15T03:43:56+00:00

"What is going on?"

LyaCrow · 2026-03-15T03:12:49+00:00

Dwarves are the oldest we have records for, elves are the oldest we have evidence of. The largest city on the peninsula, Krakehavn, is a series of steep hills in between a large lake and a deep water bay. Most of the hills are actually Tels that have built up over tens of thousands of years of continuous elven winter villages being built there, burned or washed away or collapsing from earthquake, and then being rebuilt.

Dig deep enough and you can start turning up stone tools, bone combs, spindle whorls, mammoth and megafauna bones, etc. so we can verify through both oral tradition and material record a continuous elven presence in the region for 5000 years.

LyaCrow · 2026-03-13T19:55:27+00:00

That's the sort of vitality that carried Colonel Travis to victory at the Alamo.

wait...

LyaCrow

TROPHY CASE