A Geek History of Time - Episode 22- Jeffersonian Agrarianism in D&D (Part 1)

Episode Date: July 20, 2019

To start in on this topic, Ed and Damian share their own opinions on the “Edition Wars” of Dungeons and Dragons. Ed laments the poor toolbox granted to Fighters in 1st edition AD&D.

And we begin with good day sir! Geeks come in all shapes and sizes and that they come into all kinds of things I was thinking more about the satanic panic by the scholar Gary Guy-Gakse Well wait, hold on. I said good day sir not defending Roman slavery by any stretch But let him vote fuck off. When historians, and especially British historians, want to get cute, it's in there. OK. It is not worth the journey.

No. This is a geek history of time. Where we connect Nurtury to the real world. My name is Ed Blaylock. I'm a world history teacher here in Northern California at the seventh grade level. And I have been a geek since birth, really. My father has admitted that had Dungeons and Dragons existed

when he was in high school. He probably would have played it, but it didn't exist when he was in high school. So instead, he tried out for the baseball team. And I gotta say, the geekiest thing about me, I'm gonna throw this one in here, is the first live concert I ever actually saw in my life, was as a 20-something.

Let me guess, let me guess. Weird out. Yep, yes, as a matter of fact, weird out in the anchovic. And how about you? I'm Damien Harmony. I am a Latin teacher, and next year, Yes, as a matter of fact, we're the only Ancubic. And how about you? I'm Damien Harmony. I am a Latin teacher, and next year, also a world history teacher.

Welcome back to the club. Yeah, yeah. At high school level, though. So you get to do more stuff from them. Much more than I want. Yes. Actually, they told me you're going to have to take a social science on.

I said, OK, do you want parent phone calls? They said, no. I said, then don't give me government and economics. I said, for that matter, you probably don't want to give me US history, because when the Nazis are in color photos and wearing suits and ties, I'm still gonna call them Nazis,

at which point they said, shit, you're probably right. Yeah. Why don't you take world history? I said, yeah, there are black and white photos there. It's probably right. Yeah, why don't you take world history? I said, yeah, they're black and white photos. There is probably safe. Yeah I've been a geek most of my life as well and actually I would say that baseball is a geek sport You're essentially doing a lot of math to keep up with a bunch of players who fail a majority of the time Yeah, well stats stats being what they are baseball fandom being what it is. I would argue it's a nerd sport

Oh, okay, maybe not maybe not necessary. I'm sure there are people who who would qualify as baseball geeks Sure, we find a few of them. I'm sure they have fascinating stuff to tell us well and with the advent of fantasy sports of all kinds It's in the name. This is true. Yeah, this is true. What's your reading? I am right now I have picked back up and going back at how the Scots invented the modern world, the true story of how Western Europe's poorest nation created our world and everything in it by Arthur Herman. And it sounds desperately showvinistic. And in a way it is, but he does make a compelling case for a very great deal of the philosophical underpinnings

of the enlightenment coming out of the conflict and the specific economic developments that took place in Scotland at the beginning of what we would consider the early modern era. I can see that. So it's a fascinating read and as somebody who you know identifies strongly with that part of my heritage and where's it killed, it's kind of an ego stroke as well. How about you? I'm gonna go out on a limb here and recommend the complete collection of Gary Larson's The Farside. All right. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and recommend the complete collection of Gary Larson's The

Farsight. All right. I'm reading it with my children as bedtime stories. It is so fun. Yeah, and you are gonna screw them up so hard. You know, like just thinking about that right now, the first cartoon that jumps into my mind is the one because he loves cows. He loves him some cows.

And it's the two cows staring at the third cow who's standing over a barbecue grill and the one cow pointed out, I'm just saying, you're sick, Harvey. Yes. Sick, sick, sick. See now, in one of the games that I played when I was younger as an adult, sometimes with degenerate into discussions of what really is art, and other times to generate into just saying captions to each other from the far side. And so we've like bummer of a birthmark, and we don't laugh.

That's the best one. And somebody would be like, hey everybody, I'm a cowboy. Howdy, howdy, howdy. You know, and we just, back to work. Yeah, that's awesome. My favorite of them all was, because Gary Larson was a master of the single contained one. But everyone's wild, he'd give you two or three, one. Yeah, yeah.

This was a six-parter, all in the same frame. And it's a man standing there. He's a UFO. It lands. A monster, an alien comes out, punches him, gets back in and takes off. And at the bottom it says, Harold never knew what hit him. Yeah, oh, he was great. It is my favorite. Now, now here's the deal.

I'm about to tattle on my father because my dad was an airline pilot. Okay. And Lars and really really wrote a few really good cartoons about the bad airlines. One of the one of my dad's favorites was a gigantic baby on the tarmac with with two guys in in pilots uniform sitting on its back and one turns the other and says, all right. Let's get this baby off the ground. My dad got a big check out of that one but the one that he had to admit to finding less funny than he might otherwise have. I know

what you're gonna say. You're viewing the airplane from from the front and the pilot says into the intercom. Uh-oh, looks like we got some turbulence up like that. And one frame with the airplane, zanging wildly left, another one zanging wildly right, then another frame with the pilot and the co-pilot, both laughing themselves sick, and the last frame is the co-pilot wiping and tear out of his eye, getting back on the intercom and saying,

uh-oh, looks like more turbulence. Because we don't have time for the whole story, but to a lesser extent, that actually happened. My father actually witnessed that. Yeah, so. All right. And someday I'll have to share that story. So everybody isn't completely freaked out about flying,

you know, moment carriers, but yes. So yeah, no, Larsen, you're screwing your kids up, but in the best way possible. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's so much fun. You know, my daughter loves the puns, my son loves the slapstick. It's good fun. Well, the man who's a genius is a genius. He's not dead, but he's retired, But yeah, no, he's truly a master of the form. Gary Larson, if you're out there and you decide to make an app, we would happily shill the app for you. I would even pay for the app myself,

a one a day far side app. Oh, totally. On a phone. I'd be all over that. Yeah, so. Not so much the family circus. No, I want funny. But yeah, but yeah.

But far side, Foxtrot, I'm a Foxt yeah, but yeah, but far side Fox strut. I'm a Fox strut fan. I'd pay for I'd pay for one. But if you have any kind of an app like that that you want to find somebody to chill it for you. Even Mary Worth. Okay. Yeah. It's fully 50% of us would pay for Mary Worth. Oh no, I would want to get paid for shilling. Oh, oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. We're Mark Trill.

There you go. Yeah. We will do that. We are open to that. We are actively, you know, hoping for sponsorship. So whatever you got. This would be where it was. This would be where we would do that ad.

Yeah. All right. You have a bevy of books in front of you. Yes, I do. Wildly familiar. Yeah. They, they, one of them certainly show them. I know.

So I'm going to ask you very quickly. Sure. Because I know, I know that our experience is different in regard to our introduction to this, to this particular branch of geekery. But I think it, it would be good for our audience to know it as well. Your first role-playing, tabletop role-playing game experience, and your longest running tabletop gaming as two separate questions.

You sure? So, very first one I was eight, maybe seven. Okay. And it was Dungeons and Dragons. Okay. Eight maybe seven puts me in 1985. Okay. Or so? Yeah.

I think. And when you say Dungeons and Dragons, are we talking about the box set? I don't know. My parents had the box. Okay. And we played in theater of the mind. Okay. Although my dad was a minis head head so I had a few miniatures

I forget exactly what I played. I might have been a cleric or I might have been a fighter I don't remember which okay. I remember being upset that clerics would only use maces Yeah, couldn't use sharp weapons But I don't remember if that changed what I was gonna do okay, And then there were some NPCs that my dad added for us. Yeah. And they tried to get me into it. And I, you know, back then it was the, the Halcyon days of save or die sometimes.

Yeah. And yeah. And I remember we... That's a divisive mechanic to this day. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I remember dying at the hands of several

lizard men. Alright, so that would be a vivid memory to carry from that age. Yeah. Okay, so now that's your first experience. First experience. Now, your longest running one, though. Ooh, might set a record at the table. Okay. Uh, started playing. I started playing Alcatim D&D second Ed. Okay. It turned to third Ed. Like 3.0 KM. All right. All right.

We converted it. Uh-huh. And then 9-11 happened. Uh-huh. So this was 99 to 2000 to 2001. Okay. 2000 to 2001. Yeah, 2000 to 2001. Yeah, 2000 to 2001. It might have been 2000 to 2001. Yeah, 2000 to 2001.

Yeah, 2000 to 2001. And the game master did not feel comfortable playing Al Qadim. Okay. In light of that happening. Interesting. It was odd. Yeah. You know, people react the way they're going to react at that moment.

Yeah. So, I think the game petered out shortly thereafter. I think maybe he had to go back to school or something like that. A bunch of us really enjoyed playing. Yeah. And we decided, hey, why don't we play a different game? And I suggested West End Game Star Wars.

The best and forever, the truest, I think, to the feel of the movies. Agreed. Version of the Star Wars role playing game. Just gonna get that out there. Uh-huh. So it was October of 2000, no, it was February of 2002. Okay.

Because joke was I had till March. Okay. So it's February 2002 and we played that game until 2015. Same game, same characters, same story. At our 10th anniversary, I commissioned an artist to do up our group as a photo, as though it was a snapshot taken during the actual story. Oh, very cool. I'll show it to you after. And then at our final game, the Game Master,

now the guys I played with, in case they listened to this, Rich, Logan, and Martin, myself, and on a case, and if you other people would bounce in and out, Rich, the Game Master, he'd done it for years, he contacted the guy, I think his name was Nick Capsion or something to that effect, contacted that guy who had written the original West End Games edition rules. Yes.

Contacted him, sent him three or four first edition books. Got that guy to personalize a message to each one of us and gave it to us on our last game. Wow. Yep. And so in his... I have done that last part I had not known. Wow, I'm envious.

And in his downstairs game room, he has with a light focused on the picture, the picture that I gave us. Nice. Very cool. Yeah, that was the longest game. All right. So that gave gave us. Nice, so. Very cool. Yeah, that was the longest game. All right, so that gave me through two marriages, by the way. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and after the second one of those happened,

there was the very brief game you were running that I was in, the less said about that, the better, because I still feel morally uncomfortable with the choice that essentially I made. I really want to revisit that game too. I really do because I really want to think harder about how easily I made the choice I did order order 66. Yeah. But that's not 1666 yeah But that's not I wanted to bring that up sure because Tabletat role-playing games are something that those of us who are involved in them

Mm-hmm. They are a way of connecting with our friends for a very long period of time. Yes They are a way of maintaining continuity and friendships When other stuff in your life changes, marriages, children, forces, whatever, when you are able to maintain that connection to people, it's a way of maintaining that connection. And so it's something that people get very passionate about. And my own first experience was Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Okay. As I've mentioned on previous episodes before, through an enrichment program, actually at the private school,

I wound up attending in Hawaii. And also probably the longest running group that I have played with is the group of folks that has, it's the same dungeon master I had when I was starting from my freshman year of college. Well one now of my college roommates and I are essentially the original throughput on the ship of Odysseus. I'm trying to remember what the, where, it's a philosophical question about how many parts of something can you replace

and still claim it's the same thing. I want to say ship of Odysseus. We're kind of the original spine of that ship that is carried on. There's other people that have come and gone, whatever. And so we have even moved through editions of the game. We started out playing second edition AD&D. And right now they, I am not with them because new parent,

but they are currently playing in first edition AD&D. And there are some very significant arguments online. The statement that I just made, I'm gonna go about West End Games' version of Star Wars. Right. Would be less controversial amongst Star Wars players than if I were, were for example to say that Fifth edition D&D is the best

Playing experience For Dungeons and Dragons if I were to go into a chat room online right now and type that up I wouldn't even get to the point of hitting send Before somebody else somewhere else on that same chat room would Psychically sense that I was about to express that opinion and I would be buried under a mountain of hate From people who carry the torch for first edition second edition third edition 3.5 Mm-hmm If it wasn't a D&D specific platform, I would have pathfinder

people jumping on me. The whole formation of Pathfinder was born out of the edition wars. Because fourth edition came along. It was a radical departure from what third and 3.5 had been. Yeah, it looked like they tried to world of warcraft D&D. They did. They did. And here's the thing. I genuinely enjoyed it. It was very different. Yeah. And the limitations of what they were trying to do became clear very quickly. Yeah. But I had a lot of fun with it.

I really liked the way they were able to make classes work. And I'm one of those guys who goes around talking about, no, look, I'm a paleo gamer. I've been doing this longer than most of the people at the table have been alive really, in some cases, depending on where I am. And I enjoyed fourth edition. I was not willing to be the standard bearer

in the edition wars, because I also, I like all of the incarnations of the game. I am a fan of all of them in their different ways and What I'm gonna be talking about today has to do with one of the quirks of first edition AD&D. Okay See where as I with the additions is Similar to how I am with my children. I have enjoyed every stage of their development thoroughly. Yes. I don't want to go back.

Yeah. I enjoyed the heck out of its viewpoint. I've been a parent long enough. I totally understand what you mean. And some people like, I miss when they were that age. I don't. I don't. And I mean, I don't miss when they were five and seven.

And when they were five and seven, wasn't that radically different when they were six and nine? Yeah. And believe it or not, yeah, that does work because one of them's two and a half years older than the other. Yeah. But like, I love 5e. I couldn't imagine wanting to play 3-5 now. I loved 3-5.

I couldn't imagine wanting to play two. Yeah, I loved two. Couldn't imagine wanting to play one. Yeah. But I understand that love set. Here's my thing and and this is gonna earn me all kinds of hate and you know what I will I will feed on that hate I really yeah at each play lock Twitter you can you can flame me all you want to or at geek history time or at geek history time you can hit me up there too.

Of all of the additions. I think 3.5 was the one eventually, mechanically, I least enjoyed play. I would agree. When it first came out, when 3.0 first came out, there was a lot of stuff in it I really liked. And then it was a much needed reboot. Oh yeah, yeah. And then within several years, Wizards had developed a new business model for the way they were doing the game that I think doomed it mechanically. And it basically was every five months, every six months, we're gonna come out with a new supplemental hardback book. And in every supplemental hardback book, there's gonna be new feats and a new prestige class and new this and new that. And my college roommate, who is part of the longest running campaign group that I've been in, is the

kind of collector and the kind of... Is it completionist? Nick, I love you to tears. Understand this when you hear this, but I gotta be honest. He's the kind of manic, obsessive rules lawyer that when we would level up in a particular campaign I'm thinking of he would be paralyzed for days. Yeah, that's you. Because he needed to try to figure out

what the best way was to optimize what new feet he was gonna take because he would carry two backpacks with him to go to our game to carry all of the books that all of that stuff was in. I understand the draw for that. I have almost all of the Wag books for Star Wars. Yeah. Almost all of them. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. So I get it. So but the thing was, you know, after a certain point, trying to keep track of the math and the modifiers and everything was something that like we couldn't all do. Sure. And so anyway, back to what I'm talking about. So you're talking about first edition. We're going back to first edition.

And this is first edition, AD&D. This is not the box set. This is 77 to 79. This is GuyGax's baby. OK, so Dungeons and Dragons was mostly designed by Gary GuyGax with a lot of input and a lot of help from Gary Arnison. They're not Gary Arnison. Dave Arnison.

Dave Arnison. And they wound up, they both wound up founding TSR and they both wound up being part of Dungeons and Dragons. Okay. They are both secular saints within the community. And the game is a whole like I said, they work together to develop the game. And Arnison moved on to take on the mantle of handling the development of the basic game, the boxed sets. Uh-huh. Guy Gaxx elaborated the rules out to the lower planes and back for AD&D.

Okay. the rules out to the lower planes and back for AD&D. You was like, okay, we got this basic structure. That's awesome. Now, let's drown it in frosting. We've baked a cake. We've got a good cake. Let's drown it, son of a gun in frosting. Okay. David Lee Roth, there's an analogy. David Lee Roth used to use talking about doing a rock and roll show. Uh-huh. His idea was if you can get one guy out with a guitar, play a good guitar, play a good song, that's bacon and cake.

You gotta be able to bake the cake. Right. Once you can bake the cake, drown that son of a bitch in frosting. And that was Guy Gaxx with AD&D. All right. The basic game stress, simplicity, playability, AD&D was much more about detailed rules

and more options for play. So now, D&D came much more about detailed rules and more options for play. Now, D&D came from people who had been miniatures gamers with lots of rules about measurement and this and that and the other because they were sound truly simulationists. Yes. Right? Yes. And if I'm stepping on your toes, stop me.

No. And so the simulationists got to the point where they're like, well, this is all cool and I can out-mouth you, but what's that one guy's story right there? And so then they kind of got into the theater of the mind type stuff. So it came from simulationism. Yeah. And that fed a large part of it.

Hence all the tables, every five pages. Well, and the index, the back of unearthed arcana with a detailed description of the difference between a foushard and a foushard fork and a guisearm voluge, which... All pull arms. They're all pointy bits on the end of a stick with different characteristics depending on who you're trying to kill with them. Right. You know, and so in both systems, there are some underlying assumptions that actually have less to do with rules

and have a lot more to do with world building. And what I'm gonna talk about tonight has to do with the world building involved in AD&D. Now, the rule books themselves are setting agnostic. You can take the AD&D rules and you can play them in a clone of Jack Vance's dying earth. As a matter of fact, Jack Vance's dying earth was one of the major influences for a lot of what the game looks like. You can take those same rules and you can play them in a clone of Middle-Earth, which is what most everybody does. You can take them and apply them to

Westeros. I mean, you know, it's largely, it is setting Agnostic is what I'm trying to say by that. Okay. And I think it's worth pointing out that, that the world building in the books involved a description of an economy with, you know, gold pieces, silver pieces, copper pieces, you know, that this is, and in your own world, you're encouraged to say, okay, well, you know, here in this kingdom, a gold piece is, you know, a sovereign, right? Silver piece is a half crown. Whatever you want to call. Yeah.

But, but, you know, on your character sheet, on your character sheet, it's a decimal system whatever. And I'm not here to poke holes and suspended disbelief because there are all kinds of things, especially in first edition that we can point to and go, you know, if you're actually trying to extrapolate that out and build a real economy that will fall apart in weeks. Well, and I like that people want to like kind of poke holes in that. Yeah. When they're standing next to a dragon.

Well, yeah. You know, you're accepting dragons. Yeah. You can accept a decimal based economy based on a speciesacuracy. You well, yeah, you can. Yeah, it's okay. Yeah You're obviously gone past the this isn't real part. Yeah, like chill. Yeah Oh, yeah, well, there's always there's always gonna be somebody and and I'm friends with several of these somebody's who Is going to take a look at the way the rules are written

and as the game master, you're going to say to him, okay, look, this is what the situation is. And they're going to try to dig into, okay, I'm going to extrapolate from a, what about b? Okay, well, the way that works is this. Oh, okay, well, if that's how that works then I've just figured out how I can manipulate this weird loophole in this

reality we've created. And so that's how that lines up happening. Most of the time its players going, I got to figure out how to get one over on the DM and you know figure out how it becomes adversarial. It well yeah yeah. And which goes back to the miniatures. And the way GuyGax originally wrote the rules and if you read what he wrote about being a dungeon master, GuyGax was adversarial. GuyGax had the opinion that if you're not trying to kill the player characters, you're not doing your job.

Wow. Arnison was the, no man, we're all playing a game. We're all here to have fun You know, we want to do stuff You know, in front of storytelling. Yeah, proper storytelling so but Again What I want to look at here is Specifically related to level advancement

Mm-hmm in first edition AD&D and attraction of followers. Okay. It's pretty niche. It is. Yeah. But it says something very telling about the mindset of the game design. Say you have a fighter.

Okay. Okay. Now in first edition AD&D, if you are playing with unearthed arcana, you have a fighter. It is the most bone, simple class in the game. The only primary requisite you have as a fighter is that your strength has to be 9 or above. Is this the 3 to 18 scale? Yeah. Yeah. 3 to 6. You got to get a strength score of nine or above. You got to you got to have at least average strength. Okay.

Best of your stats, whatever the rest of them look like, done matter, that's that's that is it. It is literally the lowest bar. Right. Almost the lowest bar anybody has to has to meet. Okay. Thieves, not Rogues, an important thing, thieves, to my dying day, I'm gonna make this argument. Oh Lord. If you're gonna play a thief in D&D, don't say Rogues, say thief, you are a professional with a set of skills and a lot of training. Take pride in what you do. Okay. A rogue is somebody who can't be trusted. If you're doing your job the right way is the party thief, your comrades should be able to trust you. If they can't, you're going to get dry gulched in a ditch somewhere in the underdark for the drow.

Anyway, sorry. Moving on. So a fighter. So you got a fighter. Again, you're basically, you could be the peasant boy who has run off with a knife. You found the sword, stuff in the middle of your lock. Yeah, you pulled it out there. You got that in the morning. It'll wind up being a cavalier.

Okay, but anyway. So as a fighter, you really don't get a lot. The game does not give you a lot of toys. Oh, back up. If I'm a peasant boy who grabs a sword out of a stone, yeah, I'm able to open people up. You will, yeah. Anytime I hit them with it right? Yeah. So my cleave landing will make me a cavalier. Thou mercen merchant. I've decided I'm not gonna hit him with Victorian tones of disgust anymore. I'm gonna use Elizabethan insults. You should really just have a major. I do somewhere. I don't have it. I just don't have it in front of me. But now Merkin merchant

scruffulous. I like that in response to my cleave landing Cavalier joke. You sound like King James. I like that in response to my cleave landing Cavalier joke you sound like King James I'm not even no because he would have been handed the sword by a lady of the lake Or actually came James probably would have been handed it by a young boy with you know pretty eyes, but Anyway, that's that's James for you. And by the way his Bible sucked Says the Catholic in the room not take all right You know what you know what if you want to talk to any biblical scholars anywhere in the world the translation is the worst one That's ever been done it is it is a point of agreement by everybody who is not a fundee Anyway moving on by everybody who is not a fundee. Anyway, move it on.

So, as a fighter, you don't get much. Okay. You have more weapon proficiency slots. You can start the game knowing how to use more tools to beat people up. Sure. You can double up with a couple of those weapon proficiency slots to say I am specialized in using this one weapon,

which means that with your attacks with that weapon you act in some ways though you are several levels higher. Okay, you get a plus one hit and a plus two to damage with it which is a big deal. Pretty big. At low level it's a very big deal. It's a 5% extra chance of hitting. Yeah and depending on what die you're using it's an even higher bonus to your damage. So it's specialization, doesn't suck. Now here's the deal. Your cavalier buddy who has much stricter ability score requirements in order to qualify gets all kinds of toys.

He's still basically a graduate of fighter college. He's still basically the guy who swings a sharpened piece of metal to open people up. But he reflects the idea of the feudal night and especially the later period feudal night in really heavy armor. Okay. The Chinese.

Yes, the, yeah. And cause we're talking about with unearthrookana available as opposed to before and their third can was published and So he gets all kinds of bonuses now in the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon. Yes, you may remember the character Eric the Cavalier there Yeah, he was one of the shield played by Donnie Donnie most really yeah Ralph mouth That makes makes sense. So much sense, right? I'm never gonna unhear that.

Yeah. So, by the way, with your boys old enough, I will happily lend you the discs. My daughter is plowing through them. Do we need to wait till my son is old enough? No. Okay, because I have a massive big, soft squishy spot in my chest for that show.

So, but you'll remember his magic item was a shield. Yes. Because one of the things that Cavalier could do in first edition before it became a mechanic for anybody anywhere, was you could say this round, I am choosing to parry. Okay. And you would be able to increase your armor class

by whatever your attack bonus was. Okay. You could, you could. Oh, very nice. So, make it a lot harder than it should. You could tank that much harder, right? In modern world of work craft terms. Sure.

Whereas the fighter was just, I'm standing here and all this armor come at me, bro. Right. I got a detail. You may land. You may land, you may not. So, everybody else gets toys. The Cavalier gets that.

The thief has all of his professional, highly trained skills. The wizard gets spells. And of course, the fighter's advancement is linear or power, the power curve for fighters is linear. Power curve for wizards is logarithmic. When you look at the access to the spells they have access to, when you're a ninth level fighter, you've got a lot of hit points. You have a lot more, you've got a lot more hit points

to everybody else, you're durable, you probably got really good armor, you're hitting pretty hard, but the wizard has the ability to stand behind you at a ninth level below the ever-loving daylight out of companies of soldiers at a time with a delayed blast fireball or a lightning bolt or at higher level spells like Cloudkill and eventually wish. Right.

So you know wizards, again, it's a logarithmic fighters. If you survive long enough. Yeah, if you survive long enough, you get to unlock the secret. You get to use fighters as bodyguards. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. And clerics. Okay. To a lesser extent kind of the same way. Clerics have have powerful they get some very powerful attacks bells. Sure. They get flamethrike. They get blade barrier. They're kind of they're they're biblically thematic. Right. And they have

all of all of the healing spells are clear thing. With Perry I just want to make that happen. Does that work only in melee or can that work if somebody's throwing improvised weapons at you? I am trying to I believe it is I am it's essentially I'm holding my shield up I'm taking defensive stance like and so if you're fighting like a group of free m masons or roofers, you could, I see it coming. I don't know what it's gonna be,

but I see the look on your face. So you could say be a, you could declare a Tyler Perry. Oh yeah, I need to get that matrix. Good days, sir. I'll just have to fall back on that. Sure. So, if somebody's throwing felines at you, it could be like a catty peri.

Catty peri. Yeah. I'm not proud of that one. You shouldn't be. No, I'm ahead on points on that one. That hurts, but that was a not good technique. That was a cheap move. Yeah. That was a cheap move. That was a cheap move.

So, oh, God. Just littering the place up with those. So, the one thing you do get as a fight, because as a fighter, you have sharpened pieces of metal, the sharpened pieces of metal get bigger and more magical as you find them. Okay. You hit more often than other people, but your Cavalier buddy uses the same attack table

you do. So he has all the bonuses he's got. Plus he has the ability to train and increase his stats. Over time, every time he gains a level, his strength, his dexterity, and his constitution. He can, because he's like, why can night, he's constantly training on a daily basis. So every time he goes up a level, he actually gets to roll dice to see how much

those stats go up. Is everybody else just static? Yeah, really? In first edition, your stats didn't change unless you got a wish spell or a magical item of some kind, wow, you do that. Okay. So that was a big deal.

So you were, it's a Calvinist of game. It is, it really is. Yeah, what you are at the start, I hadn't even thought of framing it that way, but you're totally right. What you are at the start is what you're going to be at the end, minus whatever grace the DM decides to give you. And the important part is how you use what gifts you have. Yes. So, wow, that's. Well, and you use what gifts you have. Yes.

So, wow, that's... Well, and you're all doomed to die. Well, yeah, that's gonna happen. There's no way for anybody to know which of you are gonna reach glory and which ones aren't. Right. Sorry, I'm going into... I'm stuck on Calvin's predestination.

I'm still... I'm looking at it more as like a American... Yeah, American mythos. Like, we're gonna get into that further here in a moment. Okay, do it. I had not seen that aspect of it, but you're not wrong. Yeah.

So, you're all so theoretical. You're all so theoretical. Yeah, the one thing you get, the one glorious thing you have to look forward to as a fighter in first edition AD&D. Let me guess. Let me guess. Hang on. Let me think. It would have to be like the ability to kill things. Well, that increases linearly. Yeah. Okay. Hang on. So the thing you get that would set you apart from all the rest as a fighter. Yeah, would be You get items to imbue with magic

It like like all the things that enable you to dance and other people's yards seem to be item-based and inventive-based And you don't get to go up in stats unless you're Cavalier So to as a fighter you And everybody has hit points. You just have more. Yeah, so as a fighter, you, and everybody has hit points, you just have more. Yeah. So as a fighter, you, you get extra attacks. You do. Okay.

You do. But that's not, that doesn't differentiate you from your paladin buddy or your tabular buddy. Okay. Alright, let me think. Your paladin buddy, they're like, they're like you only with other abilities. Other questions. Other powers, another cool toys. Is it just just that you your linear progression is quicker than theirs? Well, you you don't require has been experience points to get higher levels. Oh, there is that you know that reminds me of that board game dungeon

Where to win as a this as of that as this as of that you had a higher score. Okay, so your progression is shorter, and therefore you get more powerful quicker. Yeah. Okay, so what would you get? I'm stumped. Everything I can think of is just item based. Okay.

As a fighter. Yeah. The PHP first off, it needs to be noted, the player's handbook originally only covers advancement to 11th level for fighters and clerics, 12th level for everybody else. So at 9th level, so by the time you get to 9th level, you are really close to, okay, we've gotten to max level and we're going to have to start a new campaign now. Okay, this is before anybody, this is before the idea of epic level D&D had become a thing. Right. Okay. What the rulebook say is past this point, you get two hit points every level, you require 100,000 XP per level going up here, everything is fixed from this point out.

And that's it. And that's it. And it's really not. Yeah. So, you know, you could have a 20th level fighter, but he would be, you know, 25, 30 hit points stronger than a 12th level fighter. And that would kind of be it. Yeah. Um, what you get at ninth level as a fighter that nobody else gets.

No one else gets this, okay. Is that you have the option of establishing a freehold. Yeah. You get property? Yeah. Let me explain how it works. No, wait, who gives a fuck? Like, you can't take it with you, literally. And now you're married to that spot.

Like, ooh, adventure time. Like, I'm going to go administer Mount Vernon. Like, with the shit in this. We've somebody else behind to do all the lording. You get to go off the night and do what you do. We're 10 sovereigns. Well, hold on. OK.

Yeah, hold on. So here's the deal. Step one. Uh-huh. Go out into Wollard to someplace. Build a stronghold. Go out. Go out.

You have to roleplay this? You can. OK. In most of the campaigns that I played in playing AD&D, it was. You unlock it. You just, here you go. Okay. I got to build a stronghold.

Step two, now this is where you get to the point that we're talking about, okay, you are a ninth level fighter in a campaign that only goes up to, you know, 11th level. Right. You have all of your buddies with you who are now, you know, the Wizards probably 7th or 8th level because of his advancement. It takes longer.

Your thief buddy is probably a level or two ahead of you at this point because he requires even fewer XP to go up and level. Talk to my buddy Nick about how our DM tried to keep him in line with the rest of the party. I'll have a double order McSpector shake and a side order of whites please. Yeah, because you used level training. Level training on dead. And also they had like certain spells you cast had to cost you XP or like you had to make scrolls.

Yeah, you had to spend, yeah, to put in your scrolls. To spend XP to make scrolls. Roads didn't have thieves. Thieves didn't have to worry about that. No, no, no, this was, you see a box in the middle of the room. It's latch with an elder, it's sigil. Everybody in the room is like, uh, yeah, I think I think we know this, this is not going to be good.

Right. My buddy Nick says Ryan to our DM, I'm turning around and walking down the hall the other way, Ryan. Okay, is anybody going to open the box? Three or four people back and forth, Nick, from the far end of the table from the DM. Ryan, did you hear me? I'm walking away. I got to be at least 15 feet away from the door by now, Ryan. I'm walking away. We open the box.

Ryan goes, okay, and now rolls a die. The specter flies out of the box that had been imprisoned in and goes after clatter, clatter, clatter. Ryan, do you hear me? I'm running down the hall goes after Nick Because we knew it was coming because he was right right ahead of the party. It was so transparent It was ridiculous. Oh wow But so anyway your thief buddy is probably at least a level ahead of everybody else at least you have Ryan mercury for your

DM yeah, hi Ryan how you doing Uh, thank you for listening Ryan. Yeah, thank you for listening. Please direct all criticism. Yeah, please. Yeah, please. At the age playlock. But that's just such a great story. I had to share it. So step two, uh-huh. Get your wizard buddy, your range buddy. Now your thief buddy. Mm-hmm. Is the only other guy who's able to attract any kind of followers. So he might not want to come along with you. His way of attracting followers works differently and probably sounds more fun. He's in a city somewhere nearby building his own crime syndicate.

He's busy forming a guild which is to say a mob. That's how he gets followers. That's how he gets a revenue stream. Where's Gary Gagax from? The Midwest. That sounds about right. The urban area with high populations, where the politicians are housed,

crime syndicate, and, and, and Al Capone, right, well, Timony Hall was New York. I know, but the urban experience, right? Yeah, yeah. I'm just thinking of like, yeah, folk, low guy of power, whereas like, you're going out into the wilderness.

So, you know, you're upstate New York, or you're, yeah, the prairie. Right, gonna get to that. Oh, so step two. Okay. Again, with the help of your cleric buddy, your ranger buddy, your wizard buddy. You need their help. You probably will because your next job is you've got to clear a 20 to 50 square mile area of So all the bug bears, all the goblins, all the orcs, all hob goblins, cobalts, if they're there, a dragon, if it's around. So to get property in a world that will never really

need that property as part of the game, you need to take the religious leaders and the frontiersmen with you and get rid of all the Indians. You're making the jump before I plan. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. No, you gotta go out, clear the area of monsters. Monsters I apologize. Yeah, well, yeah. So, so step three, after you've done that, so you've established your your freehold. Okay. You've you've you've built a fortress Whether that's a wooden keeper or stone castle or whatever you work out with your own DM But you built your fortress. Sure. You've cleared the area of monsters. You have effectively now

Established your dutchy Barrony whatever you want to call it and Step three and I'm gonna read read this from the textbook. Okay. Win a fighter, I love how it called it, the textbook from the Ph.B. I didn't get that. Yeah. What a teacher I am. Because we're teachers. Yeah. Win a fighter at the ninth level, your title, by the way, at this point, was Lord. Well, that's telling. He or she may opt to establish a freehold.

This is done by building some type of castle clearing the area in a radius of 20 to 50 miles around the stronghold, making it free from all sorts of hostile creatures. Now, the way this is written is important. Keep all of this in mind. Okay. Whenever such a freehold is established

and cleared, the fighter will one. Automatically attract a body of menadarms led by an above average fighter. These men will serve as mercenaries so long as the fighter maintains his or her freehold and pays the menadarms and step for profit. Number two, collect a monthly revenue of seven silver pieces. Remember again, we're talking about that decimal economy

for each and every inhabitant of the freehold due to trade tariffs and taxes. Okay. Now, here's the question, who are these people? Like you've gone out in the wilderness, right? You have your highly elite band of, you know, fighters, extrajudicial killers that you've gone out with. Right. Your friends who you've gone out with and you have

established a fortress. Uh huh. You have cleared the area of, you know, bug bears, like I said, all the above, I said, monsters of whatever kind, griffins, wiverns, whatever. And, um, who, who, who is it? So you attract these fighters, presumably because, you know, have a reputation as, you know, I have, I have this freehold

established, I have this territory, I'm this warlord guy. Right. They're like, well, you know, if you pay, I'll hit people for you. So they show up. Okay, we know who they are. But who are the other people who show up? Like, there are assumptions baked into this. That it's like, right. Who are these people?

And all of these are taking all of these assumptions, are taken straight out of feudalism. Lord, again, is the title you get at ninth level. Sure. The fighter PC and his household soldiery presumably have the job of keeping the freeholds secure from Orkson goblins, whatever other nasties there are, out in the murky haunted wilds, Vikings. Okay. Yeah.

Because again, the feudal system was originally cod you know, codified as a way of saying, okay, look, I'm giving you this territory control. When the Viking show up, I'm gonna call you to show up on a horse Right at high speed with however many other guys you've got to help me fight them off and you know, a mutual protection All this I'm the guy in charge, you know, the whole way this too. You can More like the frontiers. Yeah to veteran soldiers. Yes, yes, the colonial. Right. We're from all of our ideas of colonialism, essentially, we're here.

So again, there are a host of questions, this begs, but I want to look at the underlying assumptions Gag Act may. Okay. First, this is, as I just said, straight up feudalism, right, with a pioneering Yankee twist to it. Specifically, it's European feudalism. Okay.

Because Japanese feudalism still had the, I'm giving you land in return, you come fight for me when I call you, but there was a different underlying set of circumstances involved. There are important differences. This is very much the European beast. Like everything in the starting materials for the game, its baseline default is a fantastical recreation of futile Europe tossed into an anachronism soup. I want to take a minute to talk about the anachronism involved in the game. If you look at the variety of equipment that you can pick up as a first level character, there is no time period involved. It is not only world agnostic, it is time period agnostic. That way you can get all the cool shit. Well, you can get, well, yeah. Cool one. And it's a fantasy thing, but the thing is they're imposing a very specific socio-political

overlay onto technologies and tools and even cultural ideas that don't mesh up. And if you are in a long enough running campaign and you have enough devilishly creative people working on it, you wind up having to figure out ways to stitch everything together and make it work. Right. Um, and, and so Guy Gaxx made a very, very big deal about being inspired by Jack Vance and, and the Dying Earth. Cugal, the clever. Okay. None of this. Okay.

No idea. So in D&D, for example, biggest example, wizards have to memorize the spells they're gonna cast every day. Right. And they cast the spell and the active casting spell and the magical energy that they're exerting basically causes the spell to leave their head and they've got to remember as the spell.

That has taken straight out of Jack Vance's science fiction fantasy writings. The dying earth, I'll take a moment to segue about dying earth for anybody who's not familiar, it is well worth the read, it is a ripping yarn, I mean it all dates back to the 50s and 60s. So there are a lot of, you know, cultural underpinnings and assumptions that don't age entirely well. Okay. Just go into it knowing that. But the main character of most of the books is Cugal of the Clever. Okay. Of the novels anyways, QGelda Clever, who is a thief? And the landscape through which he travels is earth, millions of years in the future. When the sun is almost at red giant stage in the sky. Okay.

Technology and science have begun to break down and eldritch weirdness has crept into the world. And some technology has become so advanced that it's already indistinguishable for magic. But it's been so long since it was invented that nobody knows how it works anymore. Like we just know we post the lever we go, you know, that kind of dark age kind of mentality. Like we just know, we push the lever, we go, you know, that kind of dark age kind of mentality. So it's this wonderfully compelling setting. And it's really clear, Geigax was a huge fan of it. If you look at the black more adventures and that part of the Greyhawk setting,

it is straight out of Jack Vance. It is, it is, we're gonna take Ray Guns and throw them at Gothic Barbarians or Renaissance Nobleman and have this mash-up, fantasy sci-fi kind of thing. Sure. So it's wonderful. Although, although Gaiax loathed to admit it, though, every he and everybody playing his game, we're playing out scenes much more often inspired by Tolkien. Right. Okay. Yeah. One of the central themes of Tolkien, if you're paying attention, is a deep-seated distrust of technology and industry. Saramon is a bad guy. Right. The scouring of the shire causes all kinds of environmental destruction within the shire.

Uh, the ants tearing apart Saramon's works at Orthank. Nature reclaiming itself. Nature reclaiming itself. And the idea of the rang as an allegory for a super weapon. I mean, and in talking about Tolkien, we talked about he didn't write it as an allegory, but it was. It was an allegory. It was there in his subconscious. It was. Yeah. Okay. The the assumption in a very token-esque way, the assumption is that the people paying taxes to our player character fighter are happy peasants and townsfolk working in an idealized set of circumstances under the

presumably benevolent authority of our fighter. Okay. Because again, there's no role playing involved. You don't actually have to sit around because who really wants to sit around acting as an administrator when what you really want to do is hit goblins in the head with a sword. Right. But that leads to the assumption that, well, you know, they're doing their thing and I'm doing my thing and because I'm the Lord, I'm collecting these taxes. And presumably, these people have shown up in this freehold to live their voluntarily to get their own land and opportunities.

Right. So what does it sound like? Honestly, it sounds like a couple different things. But it sounds like the mythos that Hitler was drawing on Okay, and the Mussolini was drawing on mm-hmm, which is go back to the yeoman farmer of Rome mm-hmm and that ideal okay, so you have Your noblesse oblige like you were talking about feudal Europe, you know

and essentially yeah, and and so you will get rich as a gentleman farmer, a gentleman farmer, and even in Rome, that was a myth after a very short amount, well, not after a short amount, I don't think about 500 years to get there, but essentially after the Second Pianic War, that ceased to be, it became Latifundia. Well, yeah.

So yeah, that's what I'm feeling right now. Okay. The Yomin farmer mythos. Okay, Yomin farmer mythos. All right. So, yes, Roman conquest of barbarian peoples is one of the examples that I've got here. Uh-huh. Going out into the wilderness, killing off all the Celts, subjugating the ones you don't

kill off, rendering them no longer a threat. Yes And then establishing your colonial Uh-huh, and you have your Imperial retired imperial soldiers taking their their land and then exactly and then The assumption on the part of the Romans was that other Romans would then head out there to the assumption on the part of the Romans was that other Romans would then head out there to establish themselves and expand Latin culture into the barbarian wilderness. And so again, this is when you get to ninth level, the game tops out at 11th level. So this is, I finally made it and now I've got one last quest to etch my name into the annals of history.

Yes, and then presumably you would start your next campaign with a first level character, with a group of first level characters, likely starting in the freehold established by the characters in the old campaign. Oh, it's smart writing. Okay, well, yeah. So now, how about Westward expansion of the US

Draws on the same mythology. Yes. Yeah, yeah Jefferson was crazy for it claiming Yomin farmers would civilize. Oh Would civilize the Indian And at the same time Absolutely looking out for the efforts and Economic sanctity of the Latifundia farmers by using that mythos. Yes.

Now, I'm going to point out there might be some people here when I talk about feudalism who might want to talk about the Norman Conquest of England. This does not parallel that because the Norman Conquest was the top down imposition of the Norman fighting class over the Saxon commoners with very little driving out. Okay. Now the great heathen army might be a better parallel out of English history or out of British history, where the Vikings showed up. Uh-huh. And the Vikings said, well, you know, we really like it here.

It's kind of nice. And it's not as cold as back home, and the soil is a lot better. So yeah, sure, I think we're going to settle. And in the process wound up killing a whole bunch of sacks and taking over their land. Much of guys named Oli. To go back to our wrestling episodes because I just I still can't get over seeing anybody named Oli as a bad guy, but they were. He was an asshole.

And so the great heath of the army is a little bit of a stretch, but not a big one. But what you have to see if you look at it for half a second is part of what we're doing here. Yeah. With this whole podcast is the Fighters career culminates in colonization. Yeah. The underlying assumption is that this is good, happy farmers colonization with literal monsters being the only ones put out. But clearly the template is the same as the historical examples above. Mm-hmm.

Now it's interesting to see this showing up in escapist fantasy, because it offers a window into our own national identity and our own values. Why did we revolt against Britain to take this in possibly an unexpected direction, but probably not after we've had this discussion just immediately. Why what what was the ultimate the ultimate big issue that led to revolt from Great Britain? So you don't mean the catalyst. Do you mean the main underlying force? I mean, the underlying force.

Yeah, underlying force. Well, they they cried taxation without Well, they cried taxation without representation. They cried taxation without representation. That is, that is the ideological philosophical thing. But there was a specific limitation that parliament placed on the colonists. There was a specific circumstance that led to soldiers being

boarded in colonists houses throughout the colonies, the military presence in the colonies in the first place, even before rebellion. Well the colonists kept picking fights westward and the Brits had to keep saving them, the lobsters had to keep saving them. Yes. And then they were like, all right, now you gotta pay for what you've done. And the colonists were like, no, man, I'm at college, I'm living my life. Like, just say what you do, just say the check, dad.

So yeah. Yeah, the ultimate answer here is, we, our ancestors wanted to expand beyond the Appalachian mountains. Right. And the Brits had said, no, no, first off, the French owned that. We fought a war over it.

We don't wanna find another one, no, you can't do that. Second off, you keep wanting to expand into these territories. And like you just said, we keep having to send troops to save your bacon and you gotta pay for that somehow. We gotta feed these guys. We gotta keep a roof over these guys's heads. You got to pay for that so So we wanted our ancestors all those

Ulster Scott who'd been kicked out of Britain Wanted wanted to expand because we'll dumb it. I'm too close to all my neighbors I can see their house from here. It's too bloody close. They wanted to expand. Well, other than, real quick, a lot of the people who wanted to expand were finishing their seventh year of indigent servitude.

Yes. And there was no land for them to have, because all the good shit got taken by the rich who came in, cleared it out and set up their own freehold. Yeah well yeah the Virginia Company. So yeah and so you have. Jefferson. Yeah. So you have. Sorry. Madison. Sorry.

Yeah. Got to go with the constitution. Yeah. But you have a whole bunch of people who, this is their only shot at actually getting the land that they came out there to get. Like they put in their seven years, they survived. And now, I mean, Daniel DeLewis gave a wonderful speech to Madeline Stowe about this very thing in the last of the Mexicans. And they bumped right into the French.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, and they bumped right into the French. Yeah, yeah. So, and the Indians. It's a smack right in your mouth. So, you have people who historically had been dispossessed back in the aisle, then come over. It's like, hey, by the way, you've got to give seven years of free labor because I paid your way over here.

Okay, fine, I'll do that. But then I am my own man. And there was this fundamental idea that every man had a right to his own homestead. Yes. And now we get into talking about Jeffersonian democracy and that whole yeoman myth. So Jefferson and the early Democratic Republicans had a mad on about farmers. Oh boy, howdy. They believed that the merchant class was inherently corrupt.

Yes. Being divorced from the land, meant that all you ever dealt with was money, money, money, hubba hubba hubba, booty trust. Not real estate. It's a cool jack Nicholson, not real estate, but just liquid money. Assets.

Yeah. And so merchants were corrupt, bankers were even more corrupt. They believed that crafters and factory workers couldn't be trusted because they were dependent on merchants and bankers. And so the only people that you can trust to run a republic are farmers because they're self-sufficient. Okay, let's back it up. Because they live on the land. Let's back it up for a second.

Okay. There's a religious component to this too. Splendid. These are Protestants. Yes. Oh. You cannot trust Catholics. They're the ones that stay in the cities.

You can't trust bankers. Those are the Jews. Mm. There is a... There is a... There is a... Deceated religious Okay, I had I hadn't spotted that parallel. Yeah, I'll say that's probably part of it as well

Because I'm just thinking about like the religious makeup of the United States. Yeah as the early colonies Yeah, most of your Catholics were in the northern colonies well, most of your Catholics were in Maryland, Georgia. They were not Georgia. Maryland. No, they got booted. Yeah. They don't. Maryland in Rhode Island. Yeah. Yeah. Generally speaking, it was it was a lot of the Mid-Atlantic states. Yeah. Because they got permission from the crown to be definitely there. Yeah. Because farther up north, well, no, we don't want any we're building the city of God. Yeah, we're not no We don't but by the time the 1700s roll around there are more of them there

Yeah, they're able to move up and down and they are more city-born than they are they yes They do a skew urban. Yeah, yes, and and again money lending had been Yes, and again, money lending had been kind of assigned to the Jewish population. It was the one way they were able to make a living. Right. In a world where Christians were not supposed to charge interest on money. Right. Yeah. So, and so that's going to happen in urban centers as well.

Yeah. Because it's also just going gonna be more cosmopolitan. Yeah. Also, the more landed you are, the more English you are, and then the further west you go, the more Scottish you are. Because the more urban you are, the more Netherland Dutch you are. And I am. I am.

You know, there's a few other groups. Yeah, I see the direction you're going in. I think when we start getting into the Netherlands Dutch part, there may be a little bit more analysis than... Well, just because those are your merchants at that time. Oh, yeah. At that time. Well, yeah.

But, you know, John Hancock was about as English as you can get. Yeah. And, you know, I mean, I'm just, I don't wanna, I don't wanna end up over-imphasizing that. No, I'm just saying that is. That is, yeah. Those are certainly factors. I will say something that I just thought of

listening to what you're talking about is, there's a very significant regional prejudice involved. Yeah. In that, your merchants and your bankers and your factory, very, very very very nascent beginnings of factories all of your You know all of those folks anybody working in manufacturing. Yes They're all in the north. Yep, whereas Jefferson and Washington and Madison and all of them are the southern colonies Which are all intensely agricultural, intensely

plantation. And so there was an added level of motivation to continue this mythology because of their regional interests. There's also another aspect of that that we probably want to look at is that every city still depended on surrounded farms. Oh yeah. The surrounding farms did not depend on all the cities. No.

There's this us versus them thing. There's this purity of the land versus the dirtiness of the and therefore your fighter goes out and clears it, good honest work, your thief goes into the town and sets up a crime syndicate. Yeah. He's emergent, ultimately, trading his skills for monies. Yeah.

Whereas you own land and you magically get seven silver. Per head. Per head. Per head. Important to say, every man, woman, and child. Per head. Now, early in the nation's history, there was a minimum property ownership requirement

to be able to vote. Yeah, okay. This was based on the essentially a grary and idea. But if you didn't own land, you didn't have to. You didn't have to. You were susceptible to manipulation by a landlord or employer, and so your vote couldn't be trusted. Right. If you didn't have sufficient property, you didn't really have the gravitas or sufficient education to make those kinds of decisions.

And these are the same people that came up with the three fifths of the press. Yes. Yes. Just yeah. Yeah. Telling on themselves. Yeah. And so now it's interesting Jefferson had such an idealized view of Yulman farmers. He wasn't one. No, he was squeezing them out of business. Yeah. No. In his estimation, however, planters like himself, which is to say plantation owners were lying on slave labor, could be trusted just as much as Yoman, because, you know, self-sufficiency, right?

Define self. Define... And Jefferson died in debt, so define sufficiency. Well, you know, but it was gentlemanly debt. Well, it's a good point. He died surrounded by his size of a library. That's true. And his mansion that was constantly under construction,

which was, by the way, the reason he died in debt, all that, and he didn't have much of a head for business. But, you know. I have such a problem with Jefferson because he, and here's my problem. It's so love hate Oh, he's he's an odious human being In so many ways douchebag. He's such a jerk and also he's the first and only red-headed president I love that's where you go first. Yeah, okay, and secondly, and this is probably, you know, less laugh worthy and more interesting

on a lot of level levels. Many people have gone back into history and looked at the record of him and said, dude was on the spectrum. Yeah. So he's kind of our first autistic president. Neurodivergent. Yeah.

And non-neurotypical yeah and yet he's a shithead and I'm like dammit yeah dammit yeah well you got to you gotta remember that he was like everybody is he was a product of his time he was a product of his class and that's true because John Adams owned that's right none yeah well and again I'm gonna say, product of his region, product of his time, when we were talking about wrestling and the lost cause, talking about the religious differences between the North and the South. This is before the Great Awakening, but it is worth noting that even at this early day, the Northern colonies were, of course, all

ideologically affected by the Puritans who were, you know, intentionally Dutch Protestant, whereas everybody in the Southern colonies was what we today would call Episcopalian. They were Church of England through and through. They were not non-conformists in any way. And so they still carried all of the Church of England ideas about class structure, nobility, even though we didn't have anybody with titles over here in the United States. Oh, they totally set up nobility. If you were a planter, you were a feudal lord. Yes. A territory.

I mean, that's what I'm saying. You didn't call it that. Yeah. Because everybody who came over here were second second sons so almost none of them inherited the property that that went to their older brothers bad The old country it should also be noted of course Well, I'm talking about this that the guys who had the capital to form the companies that made up the founders of Virginia the Caroline is in all those colonies got that money because they came from the nobility in the old country so that mentality came with them over here.

They recreated. So England recreated its class system in the South. In the Southern colonies, that's what happened. Yeah. And the only reason it didn't happen in the North was because it was founded by seditionists and religious fanatics. So you win some... And merchants.

Yeah, well, yeah. Because that's the Massachusetts area, about like the New Amsterdam area. Well, yeah. Those are merchants. It's very cosmopolitan. So, you win some, you lose some on all sides. But again, Jefferson and the planters had this idealized view of themselves as being, you know, Yoman farmers writ large. Right. Like, no, we're not, we're

not going to say we're Yoman farmers. No, obviously, we're not going to get our hands dirty actually working in the soil. Right. That's peasant's work. Right. Sorry. I mean, slaves work. You know, but, but, you know, it's just a matter of scale. Mm-hmm, right? Mm-hmm. No, but to them. Yeah, no, in their eyes. Yeah. In their eyes, I do not need the infrastructure of the mercantile system in the city.

I don't need all of them. More importantly, I supply them with what they need. Yeah, I am the ones who like them. I'm crucial to them. Yeah, I am crucial to them. They need me more than I need them. More importantly, I supply them with what they need. Yeah, I am the ones who like them. I'm crucial to them. Yeah, I am crucial to them. They need me more than I need them. Yes. Thus, I am independent, thus I am self-sufficient.

Yes. Never mind the fact that what Jefferson Group, Monticello, was all cash crops. Like, like, he bought all of his food. He didn't grow, I mean, some of the food. You got here in the local garden, yeah. But, but, you're right. You know, staple crops, the stuff that you fed to his slaves It bought a lot of it and most of the money he did make even though again he died in debt

It was all cash crops. It was tobacco. It was yes mostly tobacco at this phase and in colonial history So in his mind he's still counted counted, like I said, as a yeoman writ very, very large. Oh man. Similarly, the rest of his class were to him intrinsically pure Republicans with a small r, than anybody from the industrial Isaac or merchant driven north. So at this point, what is your takeaway right now?

Well, I think it's kind of telling just based on the questions I was asking, where's Guy Gax from? Where did he grow up? Because I'm a big believer in regionalism. I'm a big believer in the people that settled that area, dictated the culture of that area, and you do have some mutation and some diffusion, but by and large, it's locked in.

And so him being from the Midwest makes perfect sense to me because he's from the area that was settled by people who pushed and dealt with that tension as a part of the culture and as a part of the creation of their statehood. Yeah. So to me, if Gary Gaggach's had been born in, I don't know, Massachusetts, it would have been a different system. Yeah. I think if he'd been born in Florida, it would have been a very different system. If he'd been born in the coast of California or even up in Seattle, it would have been different.

Um, I think this is a very midwestern game now that I think about it. Yeah. I also just a little aside. How funny is it that the memorizing of the spells thing? Yeah. It's still a mechanic. I think for for for balance purposes. Balance purposes. But it's also it's I think it's baked in in such a way that nobody questions it. Oh yeah, they've created other classes to deal with it. Yeah, well, they've created other classes to deal with it. Other role-playing games that have come after this one have found other ways to deal with it. Right. One of my favorite again the Segways the fun part is Ars Magica in which all of the most important player

characters are wizards. They just do away with the idea that, you know what? Look, everybody else is an also ran. The wizards are the ones who are important. And so they said, here's the deal, you don't, of course you don't memorize your spells. If you forgot your spells, you know good as a wizard. They're what makes you a wizard. And so it has less to do with memorization and more to do with do you perform the spell

properly every time, it's a dice roll every time you do it. And so it's a sacral business. Yeah, essentially, but it is very clearly a game designer's response to the system. And it just reinforces how seminal D&D is to everything that has come after, no matter what genre you're working in, no matter what other area you're working in, you're always responding to this the same way fantasy writers are still responding to Tolkien. Right So my ultimate takeaway here is this

Because he grew up in an area that was expanded into yeah because he grew up in an area because he lived in an area that was Expanded into it because Gary Guy Gax lived in kind of the first place that the expansion the Westward expansion happened. Yeah his the first place that the expansion, the Westward expansion happened. Yeah. His focus on the game was ultimately very shaped by that. And the first place that, I mean, Thomas Jefferson did Louisiana purchase. Yeah. He expanded us Westward.

Yes. And he saw that as, okay, now we're gonna try this yeoman farmer thing I've been trying this whole time. Yes. And he saw that as, okay, now we're going to try this Yomin farmer thing. I've been trying this whole time. Yeah. And if you look at the schools out there, I think is Oberlin College in Ohio? I want to say yes. Okay, I'm going to, I know it's midwestern. There's another, their mascot is the Yomin. Yomin. So it's a big deal. Yeah, um, so it's just like this idea of Yomin farming. I mean hell even the men and I It's went there for it. Oh, yeah, you know, so it just again if he had been 100 miles further west. Yeah, he'd been in Kansas. I think you'd see a different game

I don't know if a hundred miles further west would have done it. Part of what I have in my notes here is if instead of an American wrote this game, a European had written this game. I'm interested. It could be very different that way there. Okay. And I'm going to get into that a bit. We're going to spend some time in the next episode talking about talking more about agrarianism

and how it affected governmental policy. Cool. In our history. Sorry. Well, I can't wait to hear it next episode. Next episode. So for a geek history of time, I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blaylock, and remember, keep rolling those crits.