We've all seen medieval fantasy cultures based on Britain, Germany, France, Russia, and so on...

What system can be used for a Blood Meridian esque campaign?

I've always wanted to run a western fantasy game, as opposed to a fantasy western game. Not a western with fantasy elements, but a fantasy with western flavor.

A little known fact is that the best sword design in the world was devised by none other than George S. Patton himself, and that during the early years Americans fielded pikemen, while a few individuals were still wearing plate (though doing so was looked down on as "cowardly").

If nothing else, I'd say they'd have high quality weapons (a-la Japan), but not an awful lot of armor, and a heavy reliance on light cavalry. Mobility warfare would be key, and their main shtick would be having non-noble cavalrymen making up their main heavy hitters not unlike the Mongols or Huns.

>Medieval United States

The problem there is "medieval" tropes aren't applicable to the US's culture.

What is one of the main tropes of medieval fantasy? Nobility. Whether it takes the form of knightly orders, scheming lords, or kings ruling over it all, these don't work in a US-inspired setting. We burgerlanders historically hate the concept of nobility. The Constitution explicitly states the government can never grant anyone a title of nobility. There are no Knights in America. No lords, no vassals, no dukes, no earls, no kings.

You can argue there are roundabout analogues to those, like landowners, politicians, entrepreneurs like Rockefeller, but these are only superficially similar. George Washington did not sit on a throne, and that was by conscious design.

I dunno, some medieval "kingdom" where the castle is occupied by an elected ruler who peacefully abdicates after two terms feels really weird.

How can you say you love America if you want to mash it up with shitty old world things like nobility?

...

>All these people thinking royalty exclusively ruled in medieval and renaissance times
>What are elected monarchy (A la Scandinavia)
>What is oligarchy (A la Venice)
>What is theocracy
>What is a council of nobles/landholders running things
Etc

Play D&D, but have everyone think Dwarves are cool instead of elves.

Yes, but when one thinks of "medieval Europe", they do not think of Scandinavia or Venice.

>The United States was never cucked by having Royalty
>There are no Knights in America. No lords, no vassals, no dukes, no earls, no kings.

>americunts actually believe this shit
LAND OF THE FREE
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>best sword design in the world
For what? According to whom?

None of those things still have any real analogues to the US's culture.

While there are valid criticisms about money in politics, things like wealth and landownership are not prerequisites for governing.

The closest you get is Venice, if only because it's similar to American mafioso rule than the actual government.

Again, economics and politics in America can only be equivocated to actual nobility in the most rhetorical sense. There has never been a literal king with literal landed titles or knights in America. American politics don't translate to medieval fantasy, and the politics of American capitalism certainly have no analogue for a traditional fantasy story.

Yes, because what medieval fantasy needs is MORE bland France-Germany-and-UK-are-literally-all-of-Europe settings. You don't even have to go full Eberron or Dark Sun, just take inspiration from beyond the bog standard.

>lols butthurt,
>jealous that he doesn't have a country based upon natural laws and the rights and freedoms of men.
>thinking america is the only nation that has rich people.
>has history of being cucked and is now currently cucked.

atleast we had our glorious moments, I can't say the same for you guys.

fuck them then.

pattonhq.com/sword.html

Admittedly, he had 2000ish years of accumulated knowledge to work off of and the reason it's one of the greatest is likely because it was also one of the last designs, but that's not a bad accomplishment for what was in essence an amateur's work.

>America invented republics

>>jealous that he doesn't have a country based upon natural laws and the rights and freedoms of men.
user, please. I can only laugh so much.

OP's not asking for a "Scandinavia or Venice-themed medieval setting" He's asking for an America-themed medieval setting. And America still isn't anything like medieval Scandinavia or Venice.

Your concept of nobility is in many ways far more contemporary with Washington than with the middle ages.

In many cases a noble title wasn't yours by birth until death. Instead there was a contract between you and whatever lord granted you that title. You'd provide a certain amount of military assets (usually starting with yourself) and in return you didn't need to pay taxes. You might also be granted land, and over time some fancy names for these people popped up.

If you couldn't live up to your end of the bargain, it's back to being a commoner.

This then slowly mutated into a more hereditary system, with granted lands for example starting to be seen as belonging permanently to the vassal, with services rendered to the lord being more a thing of "that's just what you do".

So we can quite easily take the wealthy of the early US and turn them into medieval style nobles. They simply start providing armed forces instead of paying taxes. Then come up with some new title for it, and there you have it.

I'm not sure how marshals and sheriffs and whatnot worked either, but you could probably turn that into somethign pretty feudal too without much work. You take a big piece of land out on the fringes, put a guy in charge of making sure shit doesn't blow up there, let him keep part of the taxes he collect so he has the resources to do this and recruit some men and so on, and when he starts getting old, well, his son will have learned the craft by then, so just have him take over. And there's your fief.

>Witnessed.

Probably something clan or other kind of pocket federation of disparate city states.

US is pretty divided as a country due to large geographical size.

Honestly wild west with swords instead of guns would be how I would imagine "midieval" US

Start with the roman Republic, make all the patricians merchants and all the slaves black. That's your ye olde murrica.

>The dual party system
> State of Deseret
> The CSA during its brief stint of existence

Aside from a monarchy, the US has experienced all those forms of government in some form or shape. Ask yourself this: when was the last time a non-wealthy land owner became president? And of those, which of them wasn't a former military official (ergo the most common way someone became a noble if they weren't rich to begin with)? Heck, when was the last time a senator and/or congressman wasn't a landholder?

This can work, but there is one problem:

> Instead there was a contract between you and whatever lord granted you that title

The way American politics works in theory and for the most part in practice is that contract you sign is between you and the people you rule, rather than some guy above you. American leaders are granted their power from the governed.

But how you suggest it is the closest you'll get to a medieval America. Though you still need to find a way to reconcile Burgerlanders' obsession with personal freedom with the concept of a central ruler.

>inb4 more "lol Amerifats Wall Street runs you, you have no real freedom, and you're stupid if you disagree" retardation from self-hating Americans and buttmangled Eurofags.

Wide swaths of wilderness infested by all manner of cryptids and demons; things the natives have always had lurking around and the horrors that were brought during the Exodus from overseas.

A Kingless people who for a time bowed to a King, held servants indentured, and were pilfered of their wealth to pay Noble Houses overseas. They cast down their old master, and when he tried to suppress them they showed that they were willing to fight dirty and without honor to ensure that they would never serve a foreign master.

The Kingless seek often to anoint their Military Leaders in places of power, but for fear of reprisal from others they step down after eight years. The Commander's Cabinet is made up of each of the colonial states military leaders who choose from within from candidates that the Kingless seek to see in power. These candidates are always secretly chosen to be isolationists, as the Cabinet fears that a foreign war may hurt them beyond the point of recovery.

The Kingless and the Natives do not trust one another due to years of atrocities committed as a colonial power. Every chance for diplomacy always ends in betrayal against the Natives; yet grouping them all together as barbarians and savages feels like the propaganda the Old Masters used against the Kingless during the war. It is a problem without an answer.

The Kingless have taken to using slaves shipped over from the Southlands, but there is a divide among the Western Commander's Cabinet (which is far from the coast and seldom receives the slaves, so it needs them not) and the Eastern Commander's Cabinet (which uses them exclusively for their agriculture). It does not help that much like the Kingless, they brought in their own horrors and demons when their culture came to exist here.

Technically speaking, and im Speaking as a resident of Utah, when the Mormons first settled here the territory was part of Mexico. It bece part of the states after the war, then the government came in and built some forts and Deseret as an independent entity ceased and it became just another part of the United states as the territory of Utah. So while you can say that was a government system that existed on the north American continent, I dont know that you can say it existed in the USA.

Doesn't mean it can't be done.

>State of Deseret
"Move in here and take care of the Indian problem before we come in and take over" isn't really analogous to a separate nation.

I won't argue most career politicians in the US are similar to medieval nobility. A hard reality is running for office is expensive, and will only get more expensive as time goes on because voters are obsessed with idiotic advertising and masturbatory campaign rallies.

But the point I make is there is no formal rule at any level of US government which says "You must have X amount of land or have Y title in order to run for office". And the culture here reflects that, even if reality doesn't always do the same.

Though I agree with here. I think the best way to make an America-themed medieval setting is blend the Old West with 16th century Japan. American outlaw culture is very easy to replicate in any setting and the lack of any real central authority has precedent in the US.

Maybe it would be Norman.

Problems within the Kingless lands come from upstart militias, nightmare creatures from three people's races, the fear of what lies beyond the misty mountain borders that need to be traversed, and the fact that not all of the Kingless bow to no king. Some secret away funds and weapons for Royalist infiltrators who pervert the cause of the fledgling power.

The woods are wicked. There are no fair folk here. The native fey are strange, they till the land like man does, give you a drink and you sleep for fifty years, they laugh and they mock and they cream their corn.

More people come to this new land for asylum, bringing more of their monsters with them. The Kingless have taken to some evils of their own within the Cabinet. Sending plague blankets to shanty towns under the guise of charity; drowning individuals who have magical potential possibly great enough to rival their own, and worshiping the Azure Serpent of the Ziggurat; an eldritch abomination that grants them a third eye which lets them see into the hearts of others for the purpose of determining their lusts and desires. Some say a reptillian spawn of the Serpent lurks in the Cabinethall of Boltonroost; slashing away at women in the night because it needs to eat their sweet meats.

But that's all just conjecture.

I don't see them claiming it was the best.

Which is good for them. It's a ridiculous thing to state. Just as claiming that this is the best gun, or that is the best car. If someone tries, you know he doesn't have a clue.

Now if you want a sword to fight with, unless you are like Patton and have extensive sport fencing experience that you'd like to try and make fighting relevant, how about a sword that's been designed to kill form the ground up, instead of a piece of wepaonised sports equipment? For any actual fight, Patton had guns and tanks, the sword was for amusement.

As for cut or thrust, we've had swords for either, or both at once, since the bronze age. Had it been truly superior to heavily favour one, we'd have known long before Jesus got nailed.

Out of curiosity what informs that view of the historic events? I remember hearing it differently, but the guy who told me was admittededly biased.

>you still need to find a way to reconcile Burgerlanders' obsession with personal freedom with the concept of a central ruler
Most medieval kings and emperor weren't any more powerful than the US president. Most of the time, those who really had power were the small nobility, who had the power to apply laws and deliver justice.

>This thing happened within the geographical area of a country
>therefore it is applicable to the entire nation
How much of Europe counts as caliphates then?

The best way to do it would be to base it on colonial but pre-US America, or the wild West.

>they were willing to fight dirty and without honor
MEMES
Most battles were fought VERY conventionally during the American Revolutionary War. The Brits lost thanks to sending too few troops and some retarded generals.

>A military junta
No.

>Secret isolationists
M8 for the first 150 years of its existence the USA was incredibly expansionist. The war of 1812 was basically fought for the the hell of it.

>The Kingless and the Natives do not trust one another due to countless atrocities by both sides and bitterly fought battles.
Don't go acting like the Natives didn't kick some ass and hit back MORE than hard enough.

The slavery debate gets a little stupid without Industrialization but w/e. I guess you could always paint it as a religious divide.

> Most of the time, those who really had power were the small nobility, who had the power to apply laws and deliver justice.

See now we're getting somewhere, because you can capture American culture really well with this dynamic. Especially if it's an Old West-style setting somewhere out in the hinterlands.

Just replace the Sheriff or the Mayor with Lord Whatshisname and you can have cowboys with swords pretty easily.

Why even bother making them Lords?

Corporations would be kingdoms.
Employees would be serfs.
Middle/upper management would be lords/knights.

Government falls and is replaced with a handful of huge conglomerates fighting over power. Build their own armies and go to war with one another. Alliances form only to maximize profits. Etc...

So people will know we're medieval now. The sheriff of Nottingham isn't enough to stand up to all the wild west stuff.

Militarism, a former (or current) slave economy, bipartisan politics, and multiple houses of senators plus a ruler independent of the senatorial houses with the power of veto. Also: a heavy religious bent, large industrial cities (much like medieval Venice), lots of urban poor, and farmer migrations.

>M8 for the first 150 years of its existence the USA was incredibly expansionist.

They were only really expansionist by virtue of wanting the rest of their part of the continent. After they reached the Pacific, the US didn't really bother jumping on the same colonial train Europe was running. We didn't even start any overseas wars until the ass end of the 19th century and we smelled Spain's blood in the water.

And once we got Cuba, Hawaii, and the Philippines we basically dropped the imperial angle. Barely anyone wanted to join WWI and even fewer wanted to join WWII. We had to be pushed into those.

So no, the US was never totally isolationist but they generally avoided getting involved anywhere else in the world until after World War II.

Eh, I think one of the main things you need to do to keep it American is to retain the "cowboy" who is in essence the knight archetype only instead of being a noble is in essence a special type of mounted militiaman. They'd offset their lack of heavy gear with guns, or if you don't want them to have those, really good quality swords and lances; all their funds go towards superior weaponry, and /everyone/ is armed.

>infested with cryptids

I'm begging my GM to let me play a sasquatch and you can't stop me.

Hey, I'm just trying to come up with rough fantasy America tropes that don't devolve into FREEDOM LIBERTY HONOR fappery. A vaguely democratic military junta with issues involving how to deal with anybody who isn't them in a land where the rules of the Old World need not apply seems interesting to me.

I find the best "pre-America" comparison to cowboys is Sengoku-era ronin. There's a reason those Samurai movies in the 50s translated so well to cowboy movies.

Dogs in the Vineyard.

Not really? Cowboys were usually cattlehands far before they were fighters. More survivalist (with monetary obligations to his cattle) than warrior.

The popular image of cowboys is the Western outlaw. There were plenty of guys like that, most of whom were Confederacy veterans who were shut out of any legitimate work because of their military history. Outlaws seem pretty ronin-esque to me.

Many American cavalrymen were cattlehands before they became professional soldiers (and returned to such after they were discharged), so it sort of goes both ways.

>They were only really expansionist by virtue of wanting the rest of their part of the continent.
You mean the parts that were owned by other countries, native americans, and that multiple wars were fought over?

Guess we don't even need to talk about all the fuckery in South America, the Mexican-American War, and the Monroe Doctrine.

>Barely anyone wanted to join WWI and even fewer wanted to join WWII. We had to be pushed into those.
So a 30 year period of isolationism defines the entire history of a nation?

WOWIE ZOWIE OOPIE I THOUGHT THEY DID WHAT OH MY BAD HAHA SILLY MISTAKE

After the End, the Crusader Kings 2 mod. Amercanist cult(founding fathers are demigods), Mormon Kingdom, native resurgence, Emperor of California, Pope in St. Louis, Holy Columbian Confederacy, etc.

I mean, looking at your system of "welfare" and general lack of education, I can see how you'd make that mistake...

/thread

It doesn't really matter I think. You can call them Lords and Knights or landowners, what really amtters is there is no powerful central authority. You could have a King or Emperor or President or Whatever of Acirema, what is really important is that he and his direct collaborators have no way to keep an eye on everything, probably because the territory is too big. So on a local scale the King-President has to delegate most of his functions to Baron-Executives and Knight-Sheriffs.
If I come to run a game in America-but-Medieval I think I'd use noble titles, if only because "Knight of America" sounds cool as fuck.

>WE WUZ WARRIORS N SHIEETT

I'm simply saying by comparison to their peers, the US was fairly isolationist and there was a significant political movement demanding more isolationism. Marching across the continent is expansionist, but they didn't go much farther than that.

France, Britain, and Spain were running empires which spanned across the entire world. The US was basically confined to its current borders by around the 1870s, a time when Britain ran half the planet.

America didn't even have any holdings outside of its hemisphere until the turn of the century.

It sort of does, in the same way that Switzerland is defined as uberneutral and France has to deal with those damn monkey memes even though both events make up only a fraction of their respective countries' histories.

If I remember correctly my History classes, during the 19th century the US wanted to reclaim the whole of America (north and south) as its own.
Even if they didn't succeed, that sounds pretty damn expansionist to me.

And America's actions since WW2 have absolutely no impact on this despite being far longer and far more influential in the way the world sees the US.

Colonialism doesn't just take the form of literal land-holdings, user. America has been making plans to make Cuba a state since the 1830s, the Mexican-American War, the Panama Invasion, the War of 1812, the War in the Phillipines, the taking of Hawaii and (on a less violent note) the purchase of Alaska from the Russians, not to mention the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the collapse of the Qaddafi Regime or even the funding of Opium warlords and mujahideen in the Soviet-Afghanistan war...

America has involved itself with boots on the ground PLENTY of times all around the globe, and when it hasn't it's done its work through funding and supplying the enemies of its enemies. Often with disastrous results a few years down the line.

Cuirassiers?

Are you TRYING to bait the ">implying welfare is good" /pol/acks?

A vast land dotted by increasingly westward farming communities and the occasional large port city.

The people on the agrarian side of things live and die by their own efforts, fostering a culture of self-reliance and needing to exploit the (admittedly large amount of) resources, and hospitality towards those few you might encounter so far on the frontier. Unless they're pagans, devils, or servants of the High Priest in the Eternal City.

To the east, the great port cities drink deep of commerce and political shenanigans, as the leaders of men seek office through speech and slander. Vast catches of fish and timber flow forth from the industrious cities of the North, while the southern reaches pull the most valuable of plants out of the soil with hands of the unwilling.

Faith is altogether important, as it's the only thing holding back the witches and pagans that are known to stalk the lands. It's also far more divergent, as the land scorns high priests and their ilk. Magics most vile are held in scorn, even as enterprising alchemists peddle their snake oil.

>Magics most vile are held in scorn, even as enterprising alchemists peddle their snake oil.
Outside of the prestigious eastern colleges of magic. Meanwhile hedge mages and innovative tinkerers are common and held in high esteem.

That's 10/10 though.

This is a good post. To add on:

Splintering religious factions/churches.
Geopolitical/Cultural separation across the North/South, East/West, et cetera.
Isolation from the other major powers of the world by sea.

>missing the most obvious sarcasm

Don't forget the not-Oregon Trail.

>You will still die of dysentery.
>It's not even going to be magical.

Just dont give them strong centralized government, make them like dirty scotts clans always crying about "muh freedoms" except they actually have said freedoms

I'm thinking city-states.

America damned near made George Washington their king.

America is plenty cucked by its government.

Trips for the trip god

U S A
S
A

>Everyone is armed

This is important. One of the foundations of the 'frontier justice' culture that developed in the Old West was that *everyone* could have a gun.

You'd have to find a way to replicate that in a medieval fantasy, and that's going to be tricky - even if everyone owns a sword, you can wear platemail and now you're a leg up on the arms race. And having everyone wear platemail 24/7 is obviously impractical.

if you do alternate history it's easy, just give Europeans better ships and more regional cohesion a couple hundred years earlier

Wasn't plate-mail ridiculously expensive though?

Like, part of the reason everyone could have a gun in the Old West was because those Winchester rifles and Colt revolvers were actually pretty cheap.

I don't think the armor gap presents too huge of a problem.

Technically speaking, platemail actually did a good job against protecting from the sort of guns they wielded at the time provided it was properly made, but it was simply viewed as cowardly to wear.

Simply keep the stigma that being a tincan is considered dishonorable.

That's my point - everyone in the West could afford to be lethally armed, because it was cheap.

Everyone in the West couldn't afford platemail, because it's not.

If you try to do swords-and-sorcery Old West, you've got to ask yourself: what happens when a tinned up knight wanders into Old Shitsville? Everyone's got a knife, but he's in full plate. He unbalances the equilibrium that frontier 'equality' is centered on.

Would over the garden wall count or is that to colonial.

Simple, armor is uncomfortable for most environments and has tons of inconveniences.

A simple cuirass is enough for a wealthy traveler going through hostile lands, but add on the rest of a suit of mail and he's going to be sweltering, slowed, and a HUGE target for any group of bandits or thugs.

They just cucked themselves by selling out to users.

Crossbows or recurve bows would be the answer IMO. A strong tradition of mounted archery in the frontier areas and a few guilds of crossbow makers in the cities that flood the country with cheap and adequately deadly weapons.

>Medieval Wild West is Mongolia with Dusters
Perfect

>Cowboys
>That literally came from "vaqueros"

>this word used to mean this one thing, but then later it was used to mean this other thing, and then these other guys started using a different word based on the later meaning of the other word

Great contribution user, really moved the thread forward.

I know.

Problem about "medieval" fantasy, based on the USA is... they never had any medieval age, like in europa.
But maybe, it would be something similar to the "Tyranny of King George Washington" DLCs from Assassins Creed 3.