Chris Lehrich has a couple recent entries in his LJ about creating "accurate" cultures for fantasy games. One concentrates on Magic & Science while the other is more generally about the benefits (if any) of Simulating Cultural Phenomena. Eventually Chris might write some articles on these things if we're lucky, but in the meantime I've been making some mental notes on other subjects that would be worth comparing how they're covered (or ignored) in RPGs versus what we know about them from historical or anthropological study.

I'll probably keep adding stuff under the world-building and culture tags. Mainly it'll be a list o' stuff. I'm going to be brainstorming and shooting from the hip. Questions, comments, and corrections are very welcome; references to sources or studies especially so--even if I don't get around to reading them, others might benefit.

So the stuff for today:

Slavery

Where do modern fantasy gamers get their conceptions of slavery? Largely from depictions of the antebellum South, Roman history, and sword & sorcery fiction. S&S seems to feature slavery more often than does medievalesque high fantasy. I think that depictions of slavery in high fantasy usually place it as a property of "exotic" or "evil" cultures. Oh, another source: The Book of Exodus (or at least The Ten Commandments, and for individuals from observant Jewish households, the Passover holiday. Areas for investigation: the normalcy and pervasiveness of slavery in some cultures (e.g. Rome), the variability in the opportunities for obtaining freedom for oneself and one's family, variability in the rights of slaves (owning property; admissibility of slaves' testimony--in Rome, a slave could only testify under torture; types of slave work and work conditions; marriage--only with other slaves? who gives permission? what happens to the children?; how one becomes a slave--through raids on peoples considered "inferior", or through warfare between cultures viewed as "equal", or by selling oneself, or by being sold by your family, or by birth into slavery, or as a penalty for committing crimes, or by virtue of belonging to a persecuted group such as Christians under the Seljuks and Ottomans, or even theoretically free blacks in some antebellum US states; military slaves like the Mamlukes, the Janissaries, and the army of the Visigothic kingdom. Slaves owned by the state vs. slaves owned by individuals. A funny thing happened on the way to the forum. Often overlooked sources: Greece and the Hellenistic world prior to the Roman conquest; Biblical Israel and the ancient Near East aside from the book of Exodus. China? India? Africa? New World civilizations? Comparative unfreedoms like serfdom and indentured servitude. Modern slavery under totalitarian governments, penal systems, criminal enterprises (prostitution rings), and vestiges (?) of traditional slavery.

Citizenship

In the modern world it's easy to forget the difference between being a citizen and being a subject. Both imply responsibilities, rights and privileges. In premodern societies these might crisscross in different ways, as e.g. one might be a citizen of a given city, mainly enjoying rights and privileges WRT that city, and simultaneously a subject of a given sovereign. People might or might not swear oaths of loyalty to their lord, or otherwise think in terms of "He is my lord/king/emperor." Or the lord might be acknowledged as having territorial authority only, or authority only over certain institutions but not over the individuals comprising them. "Naturalization" may be impossible or irrelevent; there may be recognized classes of resident foreigners with distinct responsibilities, rights, and privileges. It may be almost entirely impossible to integrate foreigners into the system--they may be effectively non-persons, casteless, or untouchables. Individuals might enjoy multiple citizenships or rights of passage. Citizenship may not be a birthright, or may only be a birthright for certain individuals. Obtaining citizenship may require prior service, payment of a fee, or have property qualifications. In general, citizenship and subjectitude could usefully be dissolved and viewed only as constellations of responsibilities, rights, and privileges, then reconstituted as a variety of statuses in relation to to society, institutions, and individuals.