Tendencies and motivations in a medieval fantasy world

#1
Hello,
I am wild lurker looking for some advice on character motivation.

Rant:
We all know the score, the corrupt church plans to overthrow the goverment or calls for a crusade.
The ambitious nobles are embroiled in inner conflict over the rights of succession or push for a invasion of the neighboring nation.
Or atleast I am pretty certain that most people would jump to that conclusion while I see things a bit more varied.
A small group of radical nobles could pull along the traditionalists to invade a nation due to old claims on the land.
The upper echelon of the church could be forced to start a war due to the very radicals they produced.
Because I get caught up in those possibilites I have a hard time deciding which behaviours to adopt.


So I want to ask your opinion on  which tendencies should be prevalent,
in a typical and reliatively stable medieval fantasy world?
The setting is intentionally vague to avoid preconceived notions of the motivations just as I mentioned above.

I am giving a few examples but feel free to add your own motivations or further groups:

Adventurers and Mercenaries:
(unable to be admitted into guilds and to poor to become merchants)
Captured due to a lack of perspective or misfits and brutes  that found their outlet?
Eager to enrich themselves or careful to bite off more than they can chew?
Saving for retirement or wasting their money on booze and women?

Those who dabble in Science:
(people who spend all their wealth or try to  obtain funding for their own projects)
Driven by pure curiosity or by ambition?
Pioneers that genuinely try or a bunch of scammers that give the exceptions a bad name?

Artists and Artisans
Impatient and Self-important or driven by love to their craft?
Hesitant to pick up new methods or eager to advance the mastery of their profession?

(local/small)Merchants:
Driven by money and ambition or integrated into their city or the towns they visit in their route?

(bigger)Nobles:
(small nobles would inevitably be unable to maintain much decorum)
Fueled by ambition or by tradition?
Illiterate Brutes which maintain the public order with a iron hand?
Or mostly Scholars and Administrators with a genuine appreciation for the arts?

The "christian" Church (with genuine godly powers):
(christian is rather directed at the structure rather than the believs)
A rotting upper echelon which brainwashes their base to hide their shady deals?
A ambitious leadership which try to get their grasp on wordly power?
Or a bright organization which is just as benevolent as the teachings they follow?
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RE: Tendencies and motivations in a medieval fantasy world

#3
My views on how these would usually play out:
Adventurers and Mercenaries:
(unable to be admitted into guilds and to poor to become merchants)
Captured due to a lack of perspective or misfits and brutes that found their outlet? - both. Types would mix and match, there's no reason why one sort of motivation would prevail here.
Eager to enrich themselves or careful to bite off more than they can chew? - Again, these are too varied. I would suggest that most non-nobles would be more cautious due to the inherent dangers of life, but those in a dangerous profession tend to have dangerous attitudes.
Saving for retirement or wasting their money on booze and women? - They might save at first until they realise their life expectancy. Those with dreams might put aside money, but when a big payment comes more will be spent on booze than retirement.

Those who dabble in Science:
(people who spend all their wealth or try to obtain funding for their own projects)
Driven by pure curiosity or by ambition? - Ambition. Look at alchemists - rewards are the primary drive of scientific advancement (immortality, base metals to gold).
Pioneers that genuinely try or a bunch of scammers that give the exceptions a bad name? Generally the latter. They would genuinely try, but building upon false assumptions they believe to be true would cause any advances to be fundamentally flawed. They would also be a closed group, guarding their information zealously, fearing that their life's work should be stolen by a mere glance.

Artists and Artisans
Impatient and Self-important or driven by love to their craft? Generally love of their craft, else why would they be artists? Those among noble courts will tend to pick up the mannerisms and indulgences of their patrons though.
Hesitant to pick up new methods or eager to advance the mastery of their profession? Given the interconnection between arts and politics/religion (religious sculpture, stained glass windows, portraits of lords, etc), they will generally be hesitant to move beyond 'normal' techniques - i.e. ones that have been practised for centuries. Many would probably love to, but fear of reprisal and a lack of support holds them back. Given that the only people who can afford art are the wealthy and the church, an artist without a patron can't be an artist at all.

(local/small)Merchants:
Driven by money and ambition or integrated into their city or the towns they visit in their route? Integrated. They might hold distaste for the peasants they are dealing with, but said peasants are literally their lifeblood, and they wouldn't endanger that relationship outside extreme circumstances. There are always more merchants eager to take their place should their clients betray them. I imagine some bitterness that the more powerful merchants (mostly nobility) are so far out of reach - they've dragged themselves just far enough to realise how far is left to go.

(bigger)Nobles:
(small nobles would inevitably be unable to maintain much decorum)
Fuelled by ambition or by tradition? - Both. For an ancient noble, one cannot exist without the other, and indeed they are practically one and the same.
Illiterate Brutes which maintain the public order with a iron hand?
Or mostly Scholars and Administrators with a genuine appreciation for the arts? - Mostly the latter, for late generation nobles at least. They would have people to do the iron handing for them. And the ironing for that matter. The immediate reprisals would be left to their vassal knights, who are only a few steps off the peasants.

The "christian" Church (with genuine godly powers):
(christian is rather directed at the structure rather than the beliefs)
A rotting upper echelon which brainwashes their base to hide their shady deals? Definitely. The sheer amount of money and power flowing through one organisation corrupts its upper echelons completely and entirely. Especially if they have access to magic. The only thing that would keep them in check would be internal struggles and the fear of losing the people's support.
A ambitious leadership which try to get their grasp on worldly power? - No. They already have it, as all land is given by the church to the kings and other rulers. They would instead ensure that this grasp of power would never lapse, by ensuring each and every king is baptised and indoctrinated into the system. They would fear those that threaten destruction to the system, because that is the only way their power might be broken. That's where the crusades come in, to rally their followers to destroy the outside threat they have no control over.
Or a bright organisation which is just as benevolent as the teachings they follow? - On the lower levels, yes. And that's the church's greatest trap, that the face they show to the outside is bright and hopeful, while concealing the swollen body behind it.

No offence against religion, really, I just have little respect for a religion which attempts to control the flow of power at every step. Or any organisation which does so for that matter.
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RE: Tendencies and motivations in a medieval fantasy world

#4
@bubbleduck
I am quite intrigued by your perspective.
I expected a bit of protest or thoughts on me lumping together adventurers and mercenaries aswell as artists and artisans...
Though I guess I should have used craftsmen for the latter ¯\_( '_' )_/¯

Aside from that it is quite interesting that you seemingly did not consider grim perspectives on artists and nobles.
That Tradition and ambition are one and the same to you is rather odd. For me quite a big element of Tradition is knowing one's place while I would attribute ambition to scheming for more land.

You also attribute a lot of power to the church. I mean the Authority to distribute all lands as they see fit is quite something.
The lords did indeed get their legitimization from that but its not as they would accept the church messing with them.
Historically there were quite some conflicts with decisions of the pope (he had a lot of influence but little direct control)
Did you assume that because of the (genuine godly powers)?


PS:what I specifically meant with grasping for wordly power would be assuming direct control by getting their bishops appointed as lords (something which did happen in the Holy Roman Empire).
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RE: Tendencies and motivations in a medieval fantasy world

#5
If you glance at  history (with a bit of generalizing of course) then bubbleduck's take on your questions (which I also find very relevant) is fairly accurate. Though there are a few too black-and-white alternatives and I think in truth there would be a little more of everything, and more middle grounds. Can't really expect every individual from an entire social category to act the exact same way, unless it's justified by the plot or something.

Regarding the distinction between artists and artisans/craftmens, in fact in the middle-age it didn't really exist. Art and craft industry were kinda seen as the same thing and most works were often anonymous (you have to wait for the late middle ages/early renaissance for artists to gain recognizion and a higher status, I think - correct me if I'm wrong)

About the power of the church : medieval life revolved a lot around religion, so that wouldn't be surprising. It's a very complicated matter but the grasp of the church shouldn't be underestimated, again looking at history ; even the first medieval universities were teaching theology and thought systems to deal with religious questions, and even laic people attended because it was the pinnacle of cool... Well again I'm vulgarizing but what I'm saying is that it's a different mindset altogether.
If said church has real godly power, then it would surely hold even more influence.

Adventurers and mercs... I don't know about that. The regular rpg/high fantasy adventurer trope always feels weird to me no matter how often I see it. In my mind an adventurer would be someone who does... adventure. Exploring stuff like Marco Polo, etc.
But if you think of adventurers as guys who get paid to do various jobs, then it's not that different from sell-swords, right ? In the first case they're either loners or bound by a guild, in the second case they're under contract with a band, but both take on jobs and requests for money and/or fame. Pretty similar in the end.

Though in the end it doesn't have to follow historical trends, it's up to the writer and as said above, the world building.

RE: Tendencies and motivations in a medieval fantasy world

#6
@brostigno Loving the productive discussion. Makes me really want to write a more historical/logical fantasy.

I would roughly divide adventurers and mercs by who they fight against.
Adventurers would in accordance to their high fantasy definition fight monsters or scout out lairs.
-Actual adventuring would of course not be possible for them. Large scale explorations would require a ton of funding from a noble or rich merchant. But such a party would end up with mostly local adventurers in the end.
Mercs would deal with Robbers and Bandits aswell as being hired into wars.
Having a adventurer guild makes little sense as it would undermine the lords position to have a independent organization that carries arms.

So it would still be good to split the both since they require vastly different skillsets. Adventurers would need a lot of knowledge about local geography and monsters in particular. They probably wouldn't use swords but instead use bows for small monsters and carry spears or atleast spearhads to make traps and wound bigger monsters.
Thinking about it a bit more it kinda makes sense that adventurers end up so well off in Fictions even though for different reasons. Afterall they could also work as hunters without a lot of risks while Mercs would be much more constricted to their profession and could at best fight goblins or smth.
-Leaving magic professions out of the mix because magic can be anything.

About the church with true powers:
It could also make the church a bit less believable.
If they could really heal or bless stuff people would be less inclined to believe in claims they make without proof.
That is of course very dependent on the direction the Author/I would take... but for example if they could physically feel or see a blessing then most people and infact the lower priests and monks would question why smth like letters of indulgence do not have a similar effect.

If incense could really ward away evil and sickness some rich merchants may just aswell laugh behind the back of the church while peasants keep dying from the black death.

Hmmm even though some more perspectives wouldn't be bad I would also be perfectly be happy to continue this train of thought...
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RE: Tendencies and motivations in a medieval fantasy world

#7
Hmm... if you're going full historical, 'adventurers' don't exist. I imagine them rather similar to lower-scale mercenary bands though, hunting down a few bandits in a forest or perhaps a small beast which may threaten a town. It also depends upon the common people's access to magic - if it exists then adventurers would become a lot more powerful and prominent since they can become stronger than their poor equipment and training might suggest.

As for artists/artisans, I assumed you meant the same thing - sculptors, painters, creators of fine works that would be sold to the rich and powerful. If you're including those of a small scale, and assuming that guilds (baker's guild, etc) didn't exist, you would see a lot of people driven by love for their craft. These 'lesser' craftsmen would be happy to take up new techniques, but I doubt they would be intelligent/knowledgeable enough to discover them except by chance unless they're minor improvements.
Any craftsmen related to the military - blacksmiths, fletchers etc - would have much higher access to work and generally be better off.

And my view about the church is that they didn't need to mess with or replace the lords. They had all the power over the common people that they needed. And if they were threatened by a king they could excommunicate him or have him... replaced by a more suitable successor. Direct confrontations would often go in the king's favour but I can't imagine the church backing down after a simple lost argument.
Of course there would be exceptions, like the holy roman empire, where the church tried to seize land for themselves. But given that a church received a cut of every farmer's crops from every kingdom that supported them, they hardly needed to put in the extra effort.

I don't know about the church having genuine powers reducing their authority, although there is a possibility that they would have to rethink the ways they demonstrate their power. Your point about magic only protecting the rich is a good one... although if I know anything about the church, they're very good about blaming any problems on the demons and claiming that if people were truly faithful, they wouldn't be affected by their problems. Or calling things trials from god.
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RE: Tendencies and motivations in a medieval fantasy world

#8
I thoroughly enjoy these questions you have set forth here and the questioning perspective. Medieval Fantasy is the setting I primarily dabble in, so I was amused when I realized that some of those basic ideas and plots were incorporated somewhere in my world. I guess I wasn't really consciously aware of it since my perspective when developing these ideas and perspectives, as you have laid out, is somewhat different than how you are tackling.

First, I think it is important to establish that you can craft whatever situation or environment in this world that you wish. It can be the typical as you described or something in-ordinary.  Anything you want exist in whoever way you want it - you are not limited by the reality of this world. The key being is that the existence for the situation is justified. Now, this seems rather obvious, but from my observations, establishing the foundation of settings and the climate is something that many overlook.  In practice, any of those situations, behaviors, motivators (whatever you wish to categorize them as) can be justified and presented as reasonable action so long as they logistically flow with the environment you have developed in your world. It is your world after all, the rule book is yours alone to edit.

A well written story, in my opinion, allocates thorough attention to developing the foundation for the world that allows for the scenarios in their story to exist and thrive. Now, that doesn't mean endless exposition and info dumps. I find the process of simply developing all this information behind the scenes, as deep and wide as possible, is extremely helpful and progressing your narrative. Naturally, the clearer idea you have on what happens and WHY it happens, the better it shows in your writing such that a well written piece will have logical elements that prove valid existence present.  In other words, developing your world and justifying why and how things happens makes building a flow so much easier. It is the hope that natural flow shines through and emphasizes your ideas and sets them apart no matter how idealistically similar they may be to others.

Now, while I enjoy the questions you have posed, I would not start from there. The reason being is that my developmental approach  to interactions and motivators is three-fold. The firs step, the most important one in my opinion, is to establish the environment.  Now, what does that mean exactly? That means to build the foundation of your world. You can start with simple questions and elaborate and go deeper from there. Is the country rich or poor? Then you can ask, 'how is the wealth distributed?' Then you can ask, 'how is wealth obtained?' and so on. You keep asking these types of questions to develop your world. It is important to have a firm grasp of what it is and just as important to understand why your world is the way it is. If you deem your country to be rich, why is that? Why is the wealth not distributed unevenly? Why is the major economic activity farming? These questions may seem irrelevant to the story and plot. In fact, these questions may completely be irrelevant to your plot. But they aren't irrelevant to your world where your story takes place in.  This may seem obvious to you and if you have already done so, then great.

This is where I diverge from you a bit. You went straight into questioning how collectives would act in this basic setting. I find this presumptuous for two reasons in particular:  actions and motivators is intrinsically tied to setting of the world even on a most basic level which is almost completely variable and that you are skipping over the more basic components of these collectives and groups which is the individuals that comprise them.

Individuals and people are one of the most basic units in societal structures such as this. You can't have an organization of merchants without the various merchants that constitute it. The reason it is important to note this is that the wills and culture of a collective may not necessarily overlap with the motivators and desires of any given individual. This is why you can't just skip over and assign cultures or identities to organizations or groups without first establishing the identities of those who make up the group. Ultimately, the group is nothing without the members that comprise it. Even though organizations can develop their own culture which can influence and impact characters, the reverse is also true where the personalities and motivators of individual characters can impact and establish the foundation of these upper-level societal groupings.

So, while I admire trying to answer these questions and establish some layer of foundation, I can not answer these questions as posed because they way I think and develop my world is fundamentally different. I can't answer 'which tendencies should be prevalent, in a typical and relatively stable medieval fantasy world' because what should and ought to be is determined by how I forge and develop the world, not preconceived notions and thoughts on what should and ought to be. If there is overlap, then fine, otherwise I don't worry about it so long as my world and the way it is, is justified.  I work off the idea that the Environment (the world), Characters, and Organizations (or societal groupings), are all separate, independent  entities that influence each other in a dynamic manner. However, I do make an important hierarchical distinction that (generally), Characters can not exist  without an environment or world, and these societal groupings (as you have outlined) can not exist without characters or the environment . So, although all three of these groupings can and do impact each other, understanding their relative importance to each other is crucial to determining the scale of cause and effect.

Most of all, I find it interesting how you propose a question on character motivation and accidentally develop the conversation into one of these upper level, wide-spread blanket cultures and motivators. Advice I can give is to just pick out a character a two. Ones you deem important. And flesh them out. It is reasonable to assume important and powerful characters can drive societal groups and organizations, so, while you can tangentially develop the history and motivators for a group, you can work on superimposing the wills of these nuanced individuals to create a dynamic relationship, one that is unique and sets itself apart despite a simplistic set up or idea.

Now, if the true question is how to develop the motivations of characters, then that is something I can talk about forever. Your world itself is an environment, and within your world can be an infinite number of smaller sub-environments. Your characters motivations can come from how they were raised to where they were raised to what happened in their life to how their innate personality and being interacts with the world around them to develop who they are as a person. Some characters may have no motivation. No ambition. Some may have a strong desire to burn the world. The question is, why? You can start from the end. start from where you want your character to be, and just keep asking why they are like that and how they are like that and delve deeper into that character and flesh them out even if none of those roots see the surface. Or you can start from who the character is and build them up. Ascribing a natural history and development to a character will lay the foundation for growing those motivations, desires, aspirations,  and tendencies you may be looking for.

I apologize if this was a bit winded, I had a rather lot to say on the matter (I ascribe great importance to detailing my thought process and reasoning). Now, this is just the way I choose to tackle and look at this specific topic. Feel free to ask if you have any questions on my thought process or reasoning.

RE: Tendencies and motivations in a medieval fantasy world

#9
@Z10728
I can see where you are coming from. But I did not makes those question to learn about worldbuilding.
First of all -writing about something always helps reflecting on it- and I had some great time making and responding in this thread, you just can't see 99% of my thought process.

The questions have 2 goals.
1.Probe what the "Standard" fantasy setting is for ppl on this website: A D&Desque world with mainly good alignment? Or rather a more or less grim and dark World caught in Medieval Stasis. (purely out of self interest)
2.Reflect on my own prejudices and get some more impulses/viewpoints.

I also don't think the canvas is as white as you think it is.
We all have a moral compass and prejudices which help us orientate ourself in that empty canvas.
That is also why works of Literature can be very much split into categories by era and school of thought.
The notion that anything is possible and we don't need to align with any direction is of course a relatively new one and perhaps a bit too simplified...
While fantasy elements and circumstances of the story can very much allow us to change almost anything about the enviroment of the characters they can't substitute what we believe to be human nature, although they might subvert it.

Lord of the Rings is a especially good example of that. The Hobbits live a live without struggle, in comfort, something otherwise unrealistic in Tolkiens world.
I would argue the reason for them is not because Tolkien is turned on by big hairy feet but instead because he wanted to create a funny character wich his children could still understand (The Hobbit originally being a kids story) perhaps also because he wanted to keep humans a bit more realistic.
- a great example of morals/identity shaping a story instead of circumstances.Meanwhile people applaud him for crafting one of the most immersive and detailed fantasy worlds aswell as shaping our idea of Orks and Elves.

I don't need to carry on, do I?
If I need to, just look at fables. No one asks why a fox can speak or is cunning in those yet they are very much consistent in which way characters are presented without the need for any realism,backstory or circumstances to make them "more complete".

So thats why I am asking wether you think nobles are evil,merchants greedy and artists arrogant
I hope I could throw a bit of similarly longwinded light on why I made this thread.
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RE: Tendencies and motivations in a medieval fantasy world

#10
I think I grasped the idea of what you were getting at, but somewhere in my long ramble I answered the questions in an unrelated manner. When people just tend to ask for opinions or advice, my mind just tends to gear towards a sort of analytical response like that and I didn't realize what you really were asking.

However, it wasn't really wasted as I feel I answered the questions in a round about way. As I said somewhere in that probably, I just don't think in a manner that can appropriately answer. When you ask me the typically tendencies of a group of merchants or anything, all that happens is I ask myself a million other questions trying to figure them out. All I can really say is that 'it depends...' Since I put so much weigh to these alternative factors in my own writing and thought process, I'm sorry to say I can't really answer them in a manner you may want. Perhaps my way of thinking is just strange. Maybe there are some preconceived notions, how I feel they should act, but I can't think of them. I might have a bias one way or another, but I don't know if I can figure that out myself! I might look back at my writings to see if I can figure something out now. I might have an idea or two, but meh.

And im not sure where you get the notion that I think anything is possible. The qualifier I attach is that anything is possible so long it can be reasoned. When reasoning, all these different factors, logic, prejudice, understanding, etc, are all considered and weighed when crafting something. So when I write, everything there must have a reason. If there is no reason, there must be a reason there is no reason. And so on. I wouldnt say my canvas is blank nor is it filled. It just is. Perhaps the way I think is different. I may still be having some trouble understanding what you mean or perhaps im not conveying myself correctly. I may prescribe to a school of thought, or I may not. I don't know and frankly I don't think it matters. Perhaps I do see the canvas as completely white. Even if you call it 'simplistic', I think I'd rather see it that way. There is value in understanding these schools of thought, but I'd rather not subscribe and constrict myself with those prejudices and views and adhere to them as some sort of standard or guideline. I believe it is from nothing that everything is born.

Im sorry I wasn't much help! I tried to think of ways to answer your questions after I understood what type of response you were looking for., but I can't think of a straight forward answer that would help.

RE: Tendencies and motivations in a medieval fantasy world

#11
Oh well, I tried to answer your questions from a purely medieval standpoint - how a completely average person of that class would act and think in a standard medieval setting with minimal fantasy elements, only available to the upper classes.
I think this site would sway for more towards the dnd-esque, adventurous sort of worlds with infinite possibility for social advancement (sometimes, even to the point of gods) and widespread access to magic.
My (Science) Fiction - Desolate Stars.
And historical - Out of the Motherland.
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RE: Tendencies and motivations in a medieval fantasy world

#12
@Z107288
See I think we are very similar in regards to perfectionism but take different approaches.
You build the characters from the world while I want to try building the world from the characters.

The qualifier that things must be reasonable is very much meaningless.
Afterall the entire world can be shaped like you want it. You can make proverbial flying pigs ... because of any reason you want.
Why shouldn't pigs be able to fly in the first place when a pegasus can?

In the end you have to ask yourself the question is your story about the journey or about the world that journey takes place in?
Another question in that context is the evolution/depth of characters - do they need to change or learn of their journey?
Take for example the Odyssey - one of the defining works of western literature.
Odysseus learns nothing from his journey, he gets back home after 20 years of his journey, murders everyone that tried to get their hands on his wife and gloats about him being awesome.
So basically the same thing he did to polyphemus and what got him into trouble with poseidon in the first place.
A ton of the misstakes on his journey happen because he was too lazy to explain the advice of the gods to his crew or because he didn't stop them regardless.He even listens to the Sirens - because he is irresponsible as hell.

And despite having no character development it is a great story, purely because of the fantastic details of the story.
The biggest irony of course being that Odysseus himself may just as well have spent 18 years with Kalypso and made up the exact story that makes him look like a irresponsible jerk. Something that is even hinted at with the ton of lies Odysseus uses both troughout the part he narrates and the surrounding story.



@bubbleduck:
And it is very much a type of response I wanted.
Should the people act different just because they are in a world of high adventure?
Well perhaps if there is a class bias... But if a lvl 100 Stonemason would be able to create perfect stones with just a couple of strikes with his Hammer and Chisel or a lvl 100 Accountant could calculate with just a glance I reckon most ppl would prefer stable jobs over decimating local wildlife
Now if we could only get a D&D lover in this thread ;^)
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