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Wag
 
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Last Login: Sunday, August 29, 2010 3:49 PM
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I have been pondering Dagdan society structure a little the past few days and have a question to put to you all. Hopefully there will be someone out there with a better idea of demographics than I have...  As you should know, Dagdan culture is divided into 3 groups (they are called castes even though they aren't which I know is silly but no one has yet been able to think of a better and more appropriate name). These are the Warriors, Shaman and Crafters. Now, the question I have is this: What proportions of the average Dagdan population will be from which group? I am aware that some tribes will have more or less of a particular group based on what they are and do (i.e. the Branfech have more Shaman, the Llygoddil have more farmers, the Cadenaiad have mostly warriors and so on) but I am only looking for a general figure here. My current thoughts are that the Shaman will be the least numerous, maybe as low as 5% of the population while the others will make up the rest with Crafters being more numerous than warriors. However, not sure what the exact numbers should be. Any thoughts?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Whispering God is your friend... trust the Whispering God... Waypoint: Head referee (also Lugnan, Dr Solon, Johnathon Cross...) Riftworld: Formerly Neven (AKA Dr Thaddeus Brown), now high priest of the Whispering God cult and therefore crew... Blood Red Roses: Sir Phillipe De Richlieu, Knight Inquisitor of the Blessed Order of Our Lady of Sorrows, the Knights of the Bloody Tears Artificer: Karl du Pont, Master Alchemist, Militia Special Investigator M&M: Sir Joshua Hartley
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Wag
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I'm not convinced it would be as low as that. Dont forget the caste of shaman will include those who were chosen as potential shaman at aged 10 but failed to pass the shaman tests at age 15 to go onto be a 'real shaman'. These must still be shaman because they cant be anything else...
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Wag
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Last Login: Sunday, August 29, 2010 3:49 PM
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| I still think it will be low. A failed shaman is a useless member of society who does nothing but still uses resources. Many of the failed ones will retrain as something else - one of the crafts. A farmer, even a bad farmer with no prospect of being a master crafter farmer, is still more useful than a reasonably good academic who couldn't quite cut it as a Shaman. The ones who don't 'drop out' will hang around, acting as assistants to the 'qualified' shaman until they manage to pass the test. However, the way I also see it is that you don't get that far unless you are good enough to be a shaman. None of the castes recruit anyone who is not got a good chance of a role in thier organisation. Intake for apprentice Shaman will be low anyway and the number of failures therefore relatively low. I originally considered a figure of 10% for shaman but realised that this was still something like 100,000 active shaman assuming a population of 1 million continent wide (yes, Bowker has a low population density - this is why it is still very green...). I think that is too many.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Whispering God is your friend... trust the Whispering God... Waypoint: Head referee (also Lugnan, Dr Solon, Johnathon Cross...) Riftworld: Formerly Neven (AKA Dr Thaddeus Brown), now high priest of the Whispering God cult and therefore crew... Blood Red Roses: Sir Phillipe De Richlieu, Knight Inquisitor of the Blessed Order of Our Lady of Sorrows, the Knights of the Bloody Tears Artificer: Karl du Pont, Master Alchemist, Militia Special Investigator M&M: Sir Joshua Hartley
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Wag
Group: System Moderators
Last Login: Sunday, August 29, 2010 3:49 PM
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Sarah here, one day David will learn what the Logout function does.  Dont forget shamen also do things like tell tales and teach children and so on. There may be a lot more of them than people see...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Whispering God is your friend... trust the Whispering God... Waypoint: Head referee (also Lugnan, Dr Solon, Johnathon Cross...) Riftworld: Formerly Neven (AKA Dr Thaddeus Brown), now high priest of the Whispering God cult and therefore crew... Blood Red Roses: Sir Phillipe De Richlieu, Knight Inquisitor of the Blessed Order of Our Lady of Sorrows, the Knights of the Bloody Tears Artificer: Karl du Pont, Master Alchemist, Militia Special Investigator M&M: Sir Joshua Hartley
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Squire
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The way i see it, is that there are lots of subgroups within the castes, for example the warriors have a lot of hunters, etc that do that particular job, under shaman, you will hvae those that rae totally whacked out, gate tech sort of guys, the failed shaman i would have thought would be storytellers, teachers, etc etc. Some dagdans will be little better than Farmhands but they will still be crafters by caste.
Baz
CP - Miyagi Roshi of the Hei Ravni
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Wag
Group: System Moderators
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| I do know what the logout function does. I just don't use it so I don't have to log in again every visit. You can always log out yourself, you know... Ok... those who think 5% is too low, how high do you think it should be? It may be worth working out the sub castes at some point... certainly an exercise to do for the rewrite.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Whispering God is your friend... trust the Whispering God... Waypoint: Head referee (also Lugnan, Dr Solon, Johnathon Cross...) Riftworld: Formerly Neven (AKA Dr Thaddeus Brown), now high priest of the Whispering God cult and therefore crew... Blood Red Roses: Sir Phillipe De Richlieu, Knight Inquisitor of the Blessed Order of Our Lady of Sorrows, the Knights of the Bloody Tears Artificer: Karl du Pont, Master Alchemist, Militia Special Investigator M&M: Sir Joshua Hartley
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Apprentice
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| It could be argued that Crafters and Warriors be about a fifty-fifty split actually of the remaining population - Crafters would include people who actually make things, using genuinely refined skills and techniques to produce from raw materials, but 'Warrior' could be expanded to include anyone whose role takes them into regular life-threatening danger to complete their duties - from fisherman and hunter to actual warrior, or even some sorts of less militant professions like miner and courier, on the social theory that a 'Crafter' represents a considerable investment of training for the society at large, whereas a warrior is 'more expendable' (read : more honourable, it's the same thing). It all depends really upon how you define a 'warrior' and how you define a 'crafter', since both roles require a degree of physical risk and ingrained skill. Using failed shaman to teach 'preschool' level children and perform other low-prestige but high-necessity tasks also makes good sense - after all, the biggest single problem facing Dagdan culture as written would be maintaining knowledge levels in their 'secret' groups. Historically, organisations that treat certain technologies and knowledges as 'guild secrets' have invariably lost them to either attrition or revelation - necessitating some sort of hidden but stringent 'university' system of shared knowledge within the various groups, whether taking the form of people exchanging information or a hidden holographic computer network.
---------- When I want your opinion, I'll read it in your entrails.
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Wag
Group: System Moderators
Last Login: Sunday, August 29, 2010 3:49 PM
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| I have always seen the crafters as being 'professionals'. i.e. a builder is actually an architect or, at least, a buiding site foreman, rather than a 'brickie'. The actual real work is done by warriors with spare time. So, yes, a lot of training is not wasted... The idea behind the Dagdans is sort of like Switzerland. They have a very small standing army but in theory every single one of them can fight if threatened. The 50:50 split between crafters and warriors does make sense... Incidentally, I am toying with the idea of some warrior 'secret societies' with a stricter honour code than the average warrior and access to more skill choices (for example, they can access Master and Great levels of tactician with greater ease as well as higher levels of dodge and strength). You get this in exchange for greater IC restrictions on your character. For example, you find it harder to flee from battle. Still thinking through the details, though. The basic idea is something like Samurai with the normal dagdan warriors being akin to Bushido. Currently there is 'the samurai' group who are strictly honourable frontline warriors, the hunters group who know the secrets of the woods and the strange group of alchemists and bombardiers who cross over from one of the craft groups who dabble in black powder (but who still see its use in battle as dubious).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Whispering God is your friend... trust the Whispering God... Waypoint: Head referee (also Lugnan, Dr Solon, Johnathon Cross...) Riftworld: Formerly Neven (AKA Dr Thaddeus Brown), now high priest of the Whispering God cult and therefore crew... Blood Red Roses: Sir Phillipe De Richlieu, Knight Inquisitor of the Blessed Order of Our Lady of Sorrows, the Knights of the Bloody Tears Artificer: Karl du Pont, Master Alchemist, Militia Special Investigator M&M: Sir Joshua Hartley
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