Vikings and pirates are awesome adventurers but bandits are crossing the line? What kind of fuking logic is that...

Depends on the Bandit.

It's in sense of style, and bandits have none.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajduk
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_bandit

>mfw this motherfucker starts talking shit

Robin Hood is no mere bandit.

Doesn't have to be a "mere" bandit. He's proof that you can make bandits fun and exciting.

WHAT

ARE

HIGHWAYMEN?

It's about having a goal and an ethos. You can be bandits, you just can't be chuckle fucks robbing people just to get by.

You gotta be muscling out other bandit groups, paying off corrupt towns to let you enter to sell your loot or to ignore your predation on merchants.

You have to be selling protection to caravans in your territory, confiscating the good stuff but leaving enough for them to make it worth more trips.

You have to fight off private forces hired to take you out and track down their employers, or fortify your territory so that they can't threaten you.

You have to avoid causing enough trouble to have the kingdom send in the military since they can just overwhelm you. Possibly even being useful by keeping down monsters or fighting off orcs.

You have to deal with internal power struggles. Possible spies or saboteurs sneaking in as recruits or camp followers. Heck, eventually you have to deal with your men bringing in women and having children.

Eventually, you have to achieve some form of legitimacy and now you're no longer bandits. You're your own entity, a local mercenary force and de facto law enforcement although your laws might not be just or fair. You're collecting taxes not tolls or bribes, you're organized and consulting with other leaders about treaties and obligations.

So yeah. You can start as bandits, but you can't remain bandits or else you'll eventually get crushed once you become a big enough problem.

Everyone knows Vikings and pirates are assholes, you do know that right? All of them are scum.

Pirates are considered enemies of all mankind for gods sake and Vikings are well known to have been violent marauders.

guys that ride up on contemporary conveyance, rob you from atop or next to their conveyance, often armed, and stereotypical wearing those eyes only masks or bandanas.
examples; Dick Turpin, Australian Bushrangers, Train robbers & ghetto nigs.

Well, the Mafia would be more like a thieves guild, while bandits are basically just common muggers, as they're much less organised.

Two words :
Robin Hood.

Why is this a thing now? Did someone diss bandits and now everyone has to post about them?

seafaring raiders take other people's stuff

bandits are just the asshole locals that fuck with the others because they're worthless losers

Victorian-era romanticism. In reality all were scum for the same reasons, but we never depicted bandits as wearing horned helmets and cool capes or whatever.

When I went to Genoa a tour guide mentioned that they beat the living shit out of an army of pirates off the coast of Genoa in like the 9th century. It took me a while of him talking to realize that he was talking about Vikings, they just hadn't bothered to draw a distinction. The punishment for the captives was even the same, they cut their hands off and then whipped them over the border into Germany, where all blonde people go.

underrated post

You know that's not what he's talking about you contrarian chucklefuck.

It's not like they have an entire CLASS devoted to them or anything...

>vikings weren't just northern-european pirates
>piracy isn't just maritime banditry

This is what laypeople actually believe.

No, it's actually from treasure island

Pirates would still have a sub-culture though, like all sailors used to

what about Gentleman Highwaymen?

Gentlemen don't rob people

Vikings and Pirates have ships, and ships are awesome.

Most pirates didn't yar; the stereotypical pirate voice is actually a corrupted Cornish accent.

Robber bands ARE romanticized though, in more then one culture at that.
You either are employing really weak hyperbole or you just don't know nearly as much about the subject as you think you do.

The horns were to make the guy look more evil in a Victorian era play.

So be FARC?

Fun fact: The Planar Cant from Planescape is actually piratical jargon from the 15-17th century pacific pirates.

As I recall there may have been some confusion with some of the the ancient Gauls (Rome's old enemies) tribes of which worshiped Cernunnous.

Lots of the former roman empire pulled in the imagery of the 'horned pelted invaders from the dark-cold lands' as your generic barbarian.

What would be a good system for a M&B-like game?

>attack unarmed people
Vikings and Pirates both attacked heavily fortified fortresses.
Chinese have some cool romanticized bandits tho.

Chronicles

OP made the point that they are basically the same thing, and asks why bandits don't get the same love that pirates and vikings do.

Insert snarky comment about people not reading properly here

I was trying to agree with OP, but it didn't work out so well

>Every national border in Europe marks the place where two gangs of bandits got too exhausted to kill each other anymore and signed a treaty. Patriotism is the delusion that one of these gangs of bandits is better than all the others

>Is it because they don't have boats?

Indeed seafaing adds a romantic connotation and an adventure vibe that sitting in a highway cannot give.

This is why the bandits that are portrayed as awesome are normally also rebels against an injust power. That has romantic vibes too.

Blackbeard was no mere pirate. It's no mere X that make the X interesting by association.

That's a nice head you have on your shoulders.

I've always wanted to run a game where the player are members of a border reaver clan.

I usually write such a region into my homebrews. Something very romantic about a no man's land between two perennially warring kingdoms where strongmen carve out a fief and play both sides against the middle.

Alot of "mafia culture" is shit they adopted from Hollywood, plus the usual group defense measures common to all organized crime.

Now MS13 reviving aztec rituals of human sacrifice? There's some culture for you.

A lot of people don't know that neither Coppola or Puzo knew or bothered to research the actual mafia subculture, they just did what seemed best for the story

The movies grew so iconic the actual mafia started imitating the characters

youtube.com/watch?v=_hk41aq2Klk

You know, you bring up a good point and it's something I've never thought about until basically right now.

It does seem contradictory. How can a bandit game seem so unappetizing when we all love folk characters like Robin Hood or Jesse James? I don't think it has anything to do with the idea "land pirates" is less romantic.

I think it has more to do with changing connotations on the term bandit. Nowadays, what do most people think of when they hear that word? Petty thugs who kill people for their stuff. Those fuckwits you murder by the hundreds in Skyrim. Guys your GM throws at you so you're not just walking down a road all the time. "Bandit" as it stands now is basically just a slot on a random encounter chart in the minds of most GMs and players. They're XP-bags who might have some decent treasure on them, and they have no more thematic gravitas than hobgoblins or skeletons.

If you're interested in running a banditry game, then just sell it as an "Outlaw Game".

>all were scum

You better not fucking shittalk me landlubber.

Vikings never attacked any fortresses you idiot in fact the fortified towns built by Alfred the Great proved successful in dealing with viking raids.

In Spain they did, specially after the Gov fucked them (rape of the loved ones, rescinding family lands etc), and then they took guns and big knifes and robbed the taxing people and that stuff. We even have novels, comics,movies, tv series and cartoons about them. But then Spain has been guerrilla country since ever so is normal.

If it helps, I think both pirates and vikings are scum too.

I'm even Norwegian, and the romanticisation of Vikings annoy the hell out of me.

I see, so he meant a noble title, not a description of how a person conducts himself?

Several reasons.
First, it is the cultural sactionment within the source population itself. Norse raided each other and theirs non-Norse neighbours since forever, in their memory. It was totally natural and ok for them. If you go behind the sea and instead of stealing your neighbour's goats you go and take actual RICHES on HIGH ADVENTURE beyond the seas, even better. Within their own culture, they were totally justified, it was state-sanctioned, even kings of major northern kingdoms took part in it. Bandits don't have this thing, they were always considered scum even by their own folk, because, well, they prey mostly on their own.
And there comes another thing, that is, dehumanization of the alien. Until recent, more enlightened ages, the "foreigner" was never worth any compassion. The farmer beyond the sea was "alien". Not your equal human being like your neighbour. And if he additionaly believes in different god(s)? Oh boy. This is the same reason for which other groups were romanticized, despite being basically atrocious agressors. Romans on their conqueran spree, Crusaders, conquistadors (well, those two suffer a backslash in recent times, mostly because their victims were exclusively non-white which is a very BAD thing in modern world), or basically any group of conquerors in history. Because they only attacked the "other". How is taking someones land and freedom by force better than taking his material goods?
Third is the "legal" part. Pirates and bandits are obviously criminals, but vikings? Those were acts of international warfare, and "international law" didn't exist back then. And by the laws of the Norse themselves, that was totally OK.
Fourth, vikings had entire culture behind them. Nation, lands, religion. While pirates and bandids were outcasts and outlaws despised by their own kin.
Few od this makes sense on rational ground, but feeling of sympathy is rarely governed by rationality.

That would make sense if their own sagas didn't mention blood feuds and duels weren't banned because of assholes abusing the system. They really weren't above killing the guy next door beause he insulted him.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Paris_(845)

Plz l2history

Whole one incident are you fucking retarded? Explain why bridges built in Frankia were enough to deal with them and why they didn't sack burhs

I'm sure the guys who avoided England for 40 years after being defeated near Jarrow and France after losing Battle of Leuven and who also made sure the villages they sack are undefended would storm ''heavily fortified fortresses''

too bad there are no records of it

I bet you also believe in le ebin berserkers

>You will never be THE MONITOR
Just fuck my strewth up cunt

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cynwit

such fortress takers

Didn't they conquer a whole swathe of northern Iran, including several large cities?

For your sake I hope you meant Ireland not Iran.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caspian_expeditions_of_the_Rus'

Technically Vikings who had been living in Russia and Ukraine.

Because few guys of the ruling class (who intermarried anyway) were Scandinavians that makes Rus as a whole vikings?

So by that logic Americans are niggers because of Obama.

I had thought most of their warrior elite were Scandinavian, and those would've been the ones sailing and conquering.

You could just you know...read about the Rus on the very site you linked me.

My mate.

>"It never happened"
>evidence to the contrary
>"omg u so retart m8"

Not saying they were apt fortress takers. Quite the contrary. But it did happen.

>It is because straigh-up bandits rarely get some romanticised bullshit
Robin Hood

What's that?

Once. And you conviniently ignore the second siege when they were defeated.

Once is more than never. In fact, the original post claimed they never attacked fortresses, never mind successfully taking them. Which is blatantly untrue. They attacked fortresses a lot. They just sucked at it.

>a lot

source would be nice I even read about every battle from this list

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Battles_involving_the_Vikings

to check out if they actually attacked them often

seems like they did not

>Highwaymen are pretty romanticized.

youtube.com/watch?v=aFkcAH-m9W0

The simple answer OP is that bandits do get awesome adventures and get romanticised like pirates and vikings. Examples:

Robin Hood
Dick Turpin
Jesse James
Billy the Kidd
Ned Kelly
Ronnie Biggs

>No less than twenty-six Ingvar runestones - twenty-four of them in the Lake Mälaren region of Uppland in Sweden - refer to Swedish warriors who went out with Ingvar on his expedition to the Saracen lands, an expedition which probably aimed to reopen old trade-routes after the Volga Bulgars and the Khazars no longer proved obstacles. A stone to Ingvar’s brother indicates that he went east for gold but died in Saracen land.

>As for the Rus, they live on an island ... that takes three days to walk round and is covered with thick undergrowth and forests; it is most unhealthy. ... They harry the Slavs, using ships to reach them; they carry them off as slaves and…sell them. They have no fields but simply live on what they get from the Slav's lands.

>I have seen the Rus as they came on their merchant journeys and encamped by the Itil. I have never seen more perfect physical specimens, tall as date palms, blond and ruddy

>Another source comes from Liutprand of Cremona, a 10th-century Lombard bishop who in a report from Constantinople to Holy Roman Emperor Otto I wrote that he had met "the Rus whom we know by the other name of Norsemen.

But those had to be organized and done for a reason.

You could attack the guy next door if he insulted you. But you needed to be insulted and kill him openly.

Vikings even had pretty strict rules against raping Viking women. And that included wives brought back from conquest.

If you just want to kill someone, take there stuff and rape their women you do that over there.

Vikings have pointy hats
Pirates have bandanas, eye-patches and wide-brimmed, plummed shit

What sort of head gear do bandits have?

>but they didnt pillage unknown lands

Do you not know what a fucking viking is?

>vikings didn't attack fortresses
They sacked Constantinople.

No, they didn't

While it's true that Robin Hood was a highwayman, the story goes that he was best friends with the king and while the king was away at war, the corrupt sheriff was abusing his power and oppressing the people. So Robin Hood was a vigilante, which is another kind of criminal that get's romanticized a shit load.

>cucking his ancestors

you sound more like a swede to me

One of the only cool things Australia has ever produced.

no, they were hired by the byzantine emperor as mercenaries

What pointy hats?

His ancestors were propably peaceful farmers anyway where did this retarded
>le all norsemen were vikings

meme come from?

Viking raiders were farmers who took piracy as a side job most of the time.

I know who vikings fucking were but still not every average Bjorn even bothered with raids.

The vikings were somalis before the somalis.

Villages and wealthy farmers organized expeditions for profit, sail off, do a bit of trading, loot the fuck out of some easy targets if they present themselves, return home with a nice tan, rowing muscles and some silks for the Gunnhilds.

So no, not every norseman did the viking thing, but the ones who did were pretty normal.

>Butthurt

Oh come off it. It's not like vikings were particularly bad compared to a lot of people they plundered.

Everyone were assholes, so there's no need to single out a specific group to be extra cranky about.

Vikings proved themselves to be oathbreakers so they were scum by the standards of their own culture.

Oaths made to those not of your clan were never binding.

Even Jews knew that.

Honor was for fellow warriors and friends, not for strangers.

Oh so they were not only cowards but also liars? Good to know.

Welcome to survival in the frozen fucking north.

>Frozen fucking north

wow you clearly take your historical knowledge from Skyrim

pic related the harsh, unforgiving north

So in many post apoc settings bandits and raiders are often rather large and surprisingly semi-organized groups that roam the wasteland atop vehicular steeds mad max style, looting and pillaging and raping at will, while survivors and small governments try just to fight them as best they can. Whenever the survivor governments do form a decent and coherent military the bandits tend to avoid direct confrontation and resort to hit and run tactics.

Is it acceptable for this to be replicated in a fantasy setting? Massive raider and bandit groups that near dominate the countryside, with survivors huddling in fortified townships and castles just trying to survive. Maybe rogue mercenaries, maybe mongol inspired, or what have you.

>butthurt
>extra cranky

Why do you go around assuming completely fictional things from other peoples posts?

It is obvious to anybody with reading comprehension that I was just correcting OP for asking a dumb question. Everyone knows the Vikings were assholes which is the point, no need to jump to their defence.