During the Middle Ages, how common was literacy among peasants...

Considering the frequency of at least some war on continental europe, that's not a whole lot of time. Especially considering that you didn't even need to be a party to the war to be a victim of it. If you simply happened to be in the way when an army travelled through, you were the one that they foraged from for supplies. And since you might not be their peasants, which were the only ones that anyone actually give a tiny bit of a shit about, things could get pretty ugly.

>Considering the frequency of at least some war on continental europe, that's not a whole lot of time.

Medieval warfare was a very restrained sort of warfare compared to say, the early modern or late antiquity style of war. Even foreign observers, like the envoy of the Mongol Khan Rabban Bar Sauma, that witnessed some battles in Italy and France, noticed how little it effected the non-combatants and found that odd enough (and laudable enough) to mention it in his book.

Before or after the Gutenberg bible?

>Really? What do they spend all of their time doing if they don't go to towns or anything.

Working in the fields so that they wouldn't starve to death when winter came.

Wait, seriously? That's pretty crazy. What influences lead up to warfare changing and affecting non-combatants then?

> foreign observers, like the envoy of the Mongol Khan Rabban Bar Sauma, that witnessed some battles in Italy and France, noticed how little it effected the non-combatants

The Mongols literally built mountains of the skulls of non-combatants. At Samarkand they marched the entire population of the city out into the plains outside the city, slaughtered all of them, and raised a pyramid of their severed heads as a monument to their victory.

Their impressions of European war being light on non-combatants are pretty meaningless given their own definition of what constitutes little effect.

Change of the type of wars (small feuds of nobles to larger scale things due to the rise of nation-states), decline of the military aristocracy due to technology and lots of other things, decline of the feudal system (hence just taking the title to the land wasn't enough - the very nature of conquest now involved the common man too), technological innovation (easier to kill lots of people), increased military organization (hence larger, standing armies of military professionals). those are the things i could think of off the top of my head.

user's point that war in the middle ages didn't really affect the common man beyond crop yields or armies actually passing through your area is pretty true though. Also, the time required of military service of peasants was pretty small every year and would rarely be a large portion of the village population.

Except even the Saracens noted the form of limited warfare the Europeans engaged in during the Crusades. The most you really got in Europe was chevauchee, fire raids that would burn through crops but were more intended to lead to breaking the morale of the enemy through starvation than a direct slaughter of its people. Medieval warfare only lead to the kind of slaughter seen in other eras when two things were at play. 1, religion, and 2, resistance to the last in a siege.

The heightened number of civilian casualties in the Late Renaissance and Early Modern period compared to early eras is sharp and noticeable.

Warfare still sucked, but it sucked a whole lot more in later eras.

What this guy said:

Even then local disputes didn't wind up with very high death counts. Usually the losing sides would run away with most of their soldiers left so they can fight again for another battle. Since the entire point of feudalism was that peasants paid taxes so that landowners would defend them if peasants ended up with massive casualty lists in most wars the entirety of feudalism would have broken down much faster since there would be no benefit for peasants to even pay taxes if the landowners don't defend them like they are sworn to do.

18 posts in and no "WE WUZ", well done Veeky Forums.

That's a really good point. Movable type printing in the West caused a massive expansion of literacy in Europe as books became much cheaper.

That didn't really happen in the middle ages, however. The fall of Constantinople or the contact with the new world, depending on who you ask, marked the beginning of the Early Modern Period.

Race politics usually don't set Veeky Forums off unless they're too heavy handed, as it's not really something that comes up in tabletop groups that often.
Women, however, strike a very sensitive nerve.

During the early Middle Ages literacy wouldn't be that common outside of churches/aristocracy. A good portion of books were written by monks and read by monks.

I have no idea why.

This shit's been exploding for a while on Veeky Forums, you'd think people would chill the fuck out and stop being mouth-breathing retards. Closest we had was the -4 Str meme, occasionally the GM's Girlfriend being a valid cause for group disruption, and so on from way back, and that was as far as it went. Why the fuck is this kind of discussion all I seem to see on Veeky Forums now?

This

the Clergy was the most common source of literacy. Lots of stuff was written in Latin though.

Gamergate stoked a fire about women in nerd hobbies.

Culture wars are happening again so people are use it as an excuse to shitpost. Just ignore the two sides like I do , or sometimes use it as an opportunity to shitpost like I do.

I'm guessing it's the current political winds leaking over. Even though /pol/ is supposed to be containment board for all things political, there's bound to be leakage. Then, games will reflect reality as they always will, whether you intend it or not. Art imitates life, the saying goes.

That's not medieval anymore, matey. The Gutenberg bible was written in the 1450s.

What the fuck is Gamergate?

(You)

You lucky bastard.

Even during the high middle ages it wasn't uncommon for even clergy members to be illiterate.

In terms of those who were literate, it was limited to most of the nobility, high clergy, monks, and a few merchants. Outside of that though pretty much nobody. So realistically looking at

WE

Nobody's samefagging, retard. Now answer the question.

What?

It's videogame politics, and it almost ripped this site in half. It's potentially one of the causes as to why moot left.

look it up. just some media controversy that's too pointless to explain besides tldr: 'gamers are evil sexists preventing women from being gamers'. hence some (imho well deserved) ill-will towards the feminists that bitched about it and perhaps a feeling of being the victim by a lot of 'nerds'.

It's incredibly shitty videogame politics where both sides are fucking stupid. Don't listen to because both sides have legitimate grievances but they've become so radicalized who the fuck can even remember what those grievances even still are.

OK, so, what does this have to do with Veeky Forums? If it's a vidya thing, the /pol/ cucks can take it to /v/ and leave us alone.

God, this sounds so retarded.

WUZ

They want to fight against an imaginary feminist boogieman who they feel is invading all their hobbies, including traditional games.

>almost
it did. there's a lot more /pol/-esque shitposting on most boards since a few years back (Veeky Forums is pretty decent in this regard).

how did i post something biased? i just pointed out which side started it. i guess i failed to mention that the 'nerds' reacted in a pretty idiotic manner.

because Veeky Forums hobbies were included too, not just vidya.

As a person who wasn't there for GamerGate, but was pretty interested in the fallout of the whole story, let me sum it up shortly as I see it.

/v/ uncovers biased videogame journalism, and tries their best to get the journalist in question fired and change the "whole 8.8, it's okay - IGN", where reviews are bought with nepotism, money and sexual favors.
The journalist in question - a girl who literally slept with people so that the games get good reviews - uses feminism as a shield, calling /v/ mysoginistic bastards (which is kinda true) who are unjustly slandering her (which is absolutely not true). She involves her entire clique involved in media and journalism to defend herself and slander /v/.
This, in turn, gives unplanned traction to the online-feministic movement who are happy to get publicity, which in turn involves online-MRA movement, and then it kinda snowballs from there.

tl;dr the very real issue of shitty videogame journalism turned into a contest of ad hominem and a platform for promoting one's political views.

Well, fuck, how do we get rid of it?

Because I want my old Veeky Forums back.

Because people refuse to contain modern politics to /pol/ or /news/, and the mods can only do so much.

There has been general push for left wind ideologies (critical and gender theories, mostly) onto "nerdy" hobbies. Video games got the biggest load of it, in a massive push spearheaded by Anita Sharkesian's "Feminist Frequency" a "critical" channel that speaks about how games are terrible and sexist, but the motion quickly generated a lot of momentum on all fronts. Obviously, an equally as large counter momentum emerged, as A) vitriol leads to vitriol, and B) controversy makes money. The biggest and most "organized" movement against these left-wing ideologies was Gamergate, which started as a demand for more transparent practices in gaming journalism, and ended up as an army of angry idiots just sending everyone rape threats, discrediting the original idea, and eventually became the boogeyman representing all the evil sexist nerds for left wingers.

As for what it has to do with Veeky Forums, Veeky Forums and /v/ share a lot of user base, and the whole left wing push was actually aimed at all nerdy hobbies and activities, not only video games. Plus, as it immediately proved itself to a guaranteed way to provoke strong reactions out of people, shitposters and cunts got a hold of it and immediately ran wild, trying that shit everywhere they could. Including Veeky Forums, which proved itself to be pretty susceptible, because the issue was already existing here (tension between more "liberally" oriented and very "conservative" types of nerds existed here prior all of this).

By bringing this thread back on to its subject.

One thing that always pisses me off when it comes to talking about the Middle Ages is that everyone keeps parroting the "medieval people never bathed" misconception. The whole lack of bathing thing was really only at the tail end of the Middle Ages. Communal baths were a thing at some periods in the Middle Ages, and we know communal baths were used pretty often during those times because we have letters from prudes writing about how pissed off they are that men can see each other's willies.

and the evil gamer boogieman isn't imaginary? be serious here, both sides are looking for something that isn't there to vent their political angst.

this.

the old Veeky Forums will never be back until the real life culture war ends. as mentions, both /pol/ and anti-/pol/ have contaminated this site.

good thing is, Veeky Forums is probably one of the least affected boards, and this whole gamergate thing has blown past.

Old Veeky Forums is dead and gone. Veeky Forums is little more than an extension of /pol/. Getting rid of /pol/ would leave the board pretty close to empty.

/pol/ will go away when the SJWs that have infested Veeky Forums go away.

Better have an empty, but on-topic board, than off-topic board full of shitty people.
InfinityChan successfuly created containment boards for /pol/ and heavily moderates their Veeky Forums (admittedly, I wasn't there for a long time, so maybe something changed), why can't we do that?

You can't, most people first board is now /v/ or /pol/ where complaining about people who want to destroy the white race/SJW/jew etc... is ok. So they think all of Veeky Forums is like that and when they go on other board to shitpost with that and somebody tell them to fuck off they think it's the "ennemy" because they can't understand that people just want to discuss a subject without having to deal with "we wuz king" and "muh SJW ruining muh hobby" shitposting in every fucking thread and that it has nothing to do with their political view.

It's way less silly and blatant in a stage production than a film, you have to admit.

From what I have read, this isn't quite true. People commonly went on day and overnight trips to neighboring villages to see friends and family, as well as to larger villages or towns for regular market days. There's also a fair bit of travel in pilgrimage, which was a common activity for all social classes. The poor or those bound to the land may go on trips to local churches or relics, and the wealthier go on longer trips to big centers of pilgrimage which functioned like modern tourist destinations, including overpriced tourist traps and cheap souvenirs. That's not to say that literacy was required because of this travel. Most stores, as mentioned, had signs indicating what services they offered, barkers to advertise, or were located in one particular area of town so you know where to find them all. Maps weren't a big deal and weren't particularly intended to be accurate or give accurate directions, so verbal instructions and directions were necessary.

A peasant may, however, be literate enough to recognize and sign his own name for legal purposes, so they can better figure out ledgers and records kept on the Manor.

Anyone who wants a good, solid, pop history introduction to life in the later medieval period should read a book called "The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England." It covers all of this stuff, at least surrounding the 14th century. Obviously all this changes over time, and a high medieval village is not like a migration era village which is not like a late medieval village.

>Veeky Forums is little more than an extension of /pol/
this is a pretty ridiculous exaggeration.

no, /pol/ just won't have anything to bitch about.

see and ;
at this point, the board culture has simply changed. you can't start a discussion without idiots spamming memes from those boards, and you can't tell them to leave without becoming their boogieman.

>Better have an empty, but on-topic board, than off-topic board full of shitty people.
Not from the business perspective. Traffic brings money, remember? Also, given just how far the hysteria goes, any bigger movement to change things, moderate harder etc. will result in MASSIVE outcry of shitheads taking this as a personal crusade, and dealing with all the fucking doxing and spamming and shit isn't fun for anyone.
So the mods are leaving as it is. /v/ is essentially completely unmoderated, Veeky Forums only lightly, because as it turns out, that is the best way to increase traffic in the long run.

No, fuck that, go back to /pol/ or whatever, just leave my 40k and D&D talk alone. If they want to make it all about the patriarchy or misogyny or whatever, then we'll tell 'em to fuck off too, but goddamn.

There was a high level of literacy among the Norse, but I do not know if it carried on through the high medieval period

EMPRAHS AND SHIT

>and the evil gamer boogieman isn't imaginary?
Never said it wasn't. My statement was just about how there are people here lashing out against perceived threats that aren't real.
There are popular "SJW" tabletop games like Apocalypse world, an explicitly queer post-apoc roleplay game that has all the buzzwords you want to throw at it, but for all its popularity it does jack shit to prevent the existence of and popularity of Kingdom Death. Which, for all it's "Boutique Nightmare Horror" is filled with so much actual (male empowerment and scantily clad females/female abuse) fetish content that when you finally do get to the horror, 90% of it /d/ will say been there done that to because it's still more fetish than horror.

Also see . literally fucking lol at the idea of there being SJWs on Veeky Forums

>literally fucking lol at the idea of there being SJWs on Veeky Forums
I've ran into plenty of people push agenda's here, but the obvious problem is Poe's Law. As is with the entire movement and it's impact here on Veeky Forums.

Even before the whole gamergate shit, Veeky Forums held up Anders Breivik as the modern day version of a LG paladin. Veeky Forums hasn't changed in that regard.

> "people on MY IMAGEBOARD don't WANT me to say NIGGER"

INFILTRATORS

>literally fucking lol at the idea of there being SJWs on Veeky Forums
>implying there isn't

> Veeky Forums held up Anders Breivik as the modern day version of a LG paladin.

> implying he isn't

CAESARED.COM
"Poor little Gaul Boy 43"

>Kingdom Death
>empowerment
?

>prevent the existence of
do people actually care so much about other people's hobbies? if you don't like a game just don't talk about it or play it.

is this from a DnD book?

>thread starts with a legitimate question and kind of baity image
>first posts are all constructive, trying to answer the question
>someone comes in and says "GOOD THING THERE'S NO SHITPOSTING IN THIS THREAD"
>suddenly everyone is only arguing about bullshit that isn't Veeky Forums and ignoring the question

If you actually want a thread to stay good, don't post about how surprised you are it's good. Keep posting good content.

its definitely Veeky Forums to talk about Veeky Forums. also
> arguing
where?

No. It's like jihadist groups all accusing each other of being mutazilites (a branch of Islam that emphasizes reason) in an attempt to discredit their rivals and get all the recruits. In reality, none of them are mutazilites, and there very idea that any of them might be is patently ridiculous. It's just a label that they throw around in arguments when someone disagrees with them on anything, the equivalent of calling someone a double nigger.

>is this from a DnD book?
5e Player's Handbook

That's actually a pretty good analogy.

Corellon being hermaphrodite is a thing since at least 2e.

>Hermaphroditic gods are a SJW idea
Kill yourself and hope you are reborn in 1950

This is why politics is a forbidden subject at my gaming table. Anyone that keeps bringing it up is permanently expelled from the group. If a person lacks the willpower and self discipline to restrain himself from doing so, he is typically a shitty player anyway.

Every fucking thread these days has to involve someone running in and shouting as loudly as possible so everyone in the room knows exactly what their political views are.

What if players discuss politics in character

i'm pretty sure he's referring to the wording. granted having the choice of your sexual orientation isn't anything new, but its mostly been something that's up to the group to decide on, the way its phrased somewhat implies that the GM has to make gender or sexual discrimination not a part of the game.

Yeah, Corellon was what bothered me most about that snippet...

Empowerment is probably a bad word, but I remember seeing a few models from Kingdom Death that were literally bored men sitting on women in bondage being used as furniture.
I haven't really seen much of KD beyond the really early models that predated the release of the game, so maybe it's gotten better. Not reserving any hope though.

>do people actually care so much about other people's hobbies?
Less that, and more the /pol/ mindset being that somehow the existence of SJW-types in the tabletop community suddenly means they're all actively campaigning in unison to destroy traditional roleplay and replace it with mandatory genderfluidity for all characters or something, even though quite clearly traditional tabletop and traditional tabletop perversions aren't going anywhere (and in the case of KD, are even wildly successful).

>/v/ uncovers biased videogame journalism

I didn't know /v/ was responsible for that guys angsty blog about his ex.

If it's part of the game it's an obvious exception. Although, if they project their own political views in character, like they brought a fucking soapbox wih them, then they get their opinionated ass thrown out.

Learning to shut the fuck up about your political views at every social occasion is part of being an adult. It's also surprisingly easy to do. If you can't do this then I wont view you as an adult and I want nothing to do with you.

that's not men's empowerment, that's someone's fetish fuel.

>actively campaigning
to be fair, its reasonable to be scared that your hobby (or more realistically, the publishers of the books and such) get regulated for this sort of silly shit. but unless there's been a change in the proportion of 'sjw games', i agree - Veeky Forums isn't going anywhere.

That was just a meme. The difference is now we have Stormfront migrants or people indoctrinated by Stormfront memes, who only know how to relentlessly shitpost about SJWs, which they believe is anyone who isn't a white supremacist.

If they weren't so relentlessly dull and easily triggered, it wouldn't be a problem, but they literally can't help themselves from turning everything into their personal fucking politics blog.

Maybe if SJWs were going around and doing the same thing it would be different, but you just don't see genderqueer otherkins dumping their blogs onto Veeky Forums in the same volume that the Stormers do.

Actually, I wonder if it's a slow backlash from the stream of ill considered left-leaning nonsense the furries used to post.
Nearly ten years ago now, but even as a commie woman-loving cuck I found that shit intolerable.

I wrote this. I did. I warned you all. And here you are, arguing about SJWs, immigrants, Nazis, and all that good shit. Didn't I warn you all?

I think people are still kinda getting what is the big deal wrong. It has never been about the individual instances. It's like when /v/ threw a hissyfit about that one transgender character in the new Baldur's Gate expansion:
It's not about that one character, or that one "SJW" tabletop. It's about the fact that more and more companies openly endorse what is a political and social ideology: a strong stance about how world is and how it should be.
There is a massive amount of shitheads that blow the whole thing out of proportion. There is a massive amount of shitheads that do it because they simply enjoy the conflict and think they are "master trolls". There is no doubt about it.
BUT the root of the problem, and the general uneasiness surrounding it is not entirely unjustified. I actually do believe this is something that should be talked about, and something that people should be weary about. As much as a cheap shot comparison it will be: it's not that far from seeing anti-semitism being displayed and endorsed in media, games, table tops. Sure, that one character or few lines in rulebook about how jews are trying to take over the world is not going to spoil the whole medium for you: but it's still something that should not be just waved your hand about.

I actually think this shit should be discussed. I just wish it could be done in a reasonable manner. It's the level and format of the debate, and the actual (lack of) erudition on the subject that is the problem, not the subject matter itself.

Veeky Forums had problems with politics before /pol/ became a mainstream board. I remember that we used to have the daily debate regarding if rape was amoral or not for at least a year.

Fair enough, i agree it should be talked about (though yeah, between trolls and crybabies/ragers on both sides, thats never going to happen in a reasonable fashion). and yes, its not unjustified to be worried that your hobby will have to change for the worse due to external forces, and that the quality of games will suffer.

That sort of stuff is on any board really, and its not a big deal - conversations are bound to become tangential and rape shows up in tabletops. The issue is when people spam memes from /pol/ instead of making any coherent point. That sort of behavior, scapegoating and various other types of flaming are the issue, as far as keeping Veeky Forums a decent place goes, imho. and i'm pretty sure its not just me who's noticed a lot more shitposting about politics instead of simple arguments, in the last few years.

Oh neat, a racebaiting thread!

*dangles some Mexican on a hook*

Am I doing it right

/pol/ memeposters are pretty much always shitposters. They just want to waste other peoples time for fun. Politics doesn't factor in to it a whole lot. They are just here to annoy you.

>18 posts in and no "WE WUZ", well done Veeky Forums.
So then you have to go ruin a good thing and mention it. Well done.

But gay people are just people, women do deserve some respect and trans people aren't carnivorous mutants. Anti-Semitism is by and large delusional.

You know that noise that Sideshow Bob makes when he treads on the rake?
We used to have some stupid fucking threads.

I'm glad we've moved beyond that in our literate modern era.

>But gay people are just people, women do deserve some respect and trans people aren't carnivorous mutants.
Which really does not have anything to do with the ideology, despite them trying to claim otherwise. The theory of conflict, on which the entire left-wing "progressive" ideology is destructive, devastating even. Assuming that gender identities are products of conflicts of power is frankly no less sick than claiming that there are race-based conflicts of power. It's equally as delusional.

...

The strawman is strong in this post. This has to be b8