Is it possible to make an interesting (steppe) nomads setting? (There are no sedentary civilizations.)

No

I mean you can make the setting based around steppe nomads but literally no civilizations removes most modern developments including metalworking and growing crops. Put simply your entire diet will probably consist of milk, meat, and whatever people can scrounge up while wandering around (some fruits, nuts, wild vegetables, or mushrooms). Honestly even animal domestication is somewhat unlikely.

A better solution (besides saying "fuck logic this is a game") is to make the setting be based around the steppes but still having some non-steppe cultures. So there might be some fertile river valleys where civilizations have started and mountains that the nomads mostly avoid because there is little reason to go there but the only continent is a single very flat continent.

Of course you might still want a justification for such widespread nomadic lifestyles to which the answer may be as simple as "not enough trees to build long term settlements in the steppes outside of small trade outposts and forts."

Essentially the way I see it there would be three main types of civilizations.
>Steppe nomads who control 95% of the planet and make up like 80% of the population
>River valley civilizations who control 5% of the planet and make up like 20% of the population
>Random trade outposts that help restock tribes and make up a tiny fraction of the population

You're aware that for most of human existence there was no sedentary civilization right?

Of course it is.

Yeah, and it took them a long time to discover the benefits of sedentary life.

Yes, set in the era of the great game with the players as agents of either the British or Russian governments (one side for the team) they start slowly having to deal with local warlords trying to extort their outpost until proper forces can reinforce them. Eventually moving up to removing them, setting up infrastructure and fighting with agents of the opposite government and dimplomacing the different nomad tribes. Eventually a far greater threat as a long dead legendary nomad lord rises from the grave and must be stopped.

Most likely demographic pressure forced them to.

Nomads lived better lives than peasants most of the time.

Steppe nomads have horses man.

They ride to some place where they are trees or else make everything outta horses.

A horse contains more or less everything you need to make a tent anyway, you just need a few.

>Nomads lived better lives than peasants most of the time.

Not really, some areas and eras peasants had it quite good, same true with nomads.

>Most likely demographic pressure forced them to.
What?
>Nomads lived better lives than peasants most of the time.
What???

Nope, it's a constant trend all the way to the industrial revolution that nomads had better lives

>diseases spread much more easily in permanent settlements
>most farmers relied on a single crop
>if a blight contaminates your crop, everyone dies
>if there's a drought crops dies everyone starves
>if there's a flood you lose your crops everyone dies
>no nutritional variety whatsoever
>nomads, depending on their location had a much more diverse diet
>if there's too few of an animal they can hunt something else
>if there's too few of a specific fruit they can gather something else
>also less vulnerable to wars, if an aggressive enemy is nearby they can leave
>farmers need to defend their farms no matter what or else they starve

Nomads are generally much healthier than you probably think. PDF related.

We don't know for sure that it was demographic pressure that led to the agricultural revolution, but it's a strong hypothesis

Hunting and gathering can only feed so many people, and if the population of a tribe keeps growing, it eventually splits off into another tribe that needs to find new territory to exploit.
At the time of the agricultural revolution happened the entire planet was covered with hunter/gatherer groups though, so either human population would stop growing at that point, or humans would find another way to feed more people.

So you are just obtuse and fail to read what I wrote? Notice how I said different areas and eras? Peasants didn't always rely on single crops, had sufficient irrigation and hygiene. Look at the Incans and Egyptians.

Nomads also didn't always have enough food in areas, just look at what happened to the Sioux when the railway company's put a bounty on buffalo, or even further back in the Quaternary extinction event. As for disease you do realize the black death spread out of Mongolia?

You do realize most steppe nomads ate food produced by sedentary people? Mongolians all ate rice grown in China.

>diseases spread much more easily in permanent settlements
and someone is more likely to know how to treat it in a proper settlement than in a nomadic group
>most farmers relied on a single crop
Most farmers relied on a rotation of crops based on the season
>if a blight contaminates your crop, everyone dies
The Irish are still around
>if there's a drought crops dies everyone starves
The same drought that would kill the nomads?
>if there's a flood you lose your crops everyone dies
People have a general idea of where it floods
>no nutritional variety whatsoever
more than nomads would have had
>nomads, depending on their location had a much more diverse diet
meat, possibly dairy, and whatever they could steal vs meat, fish, grain, fruits, dairy, and vegetables
>if there's too few of an animal they can hunt something else
only if other animals were there to be hunted
>if there's too few of a specific fruit they can gather something else
see above
>also less vulnerable to wars, if an aggressive enemy is nearby they can leave
smaller population means if they encounter an enemy they can either fight and take massive losses or hope they can find somewhere else to set up camp before they starve
>farmers need to defend their farms no matter what or else they starve
Not really. You can just farm somewhere else.

>also less vulnerable to wars, if an aggressive enemy is nearby they can leave
Where'd all the Nomads go then?

And yet they never did get as tall as the modern Dutch, perhaps the most tightly packed area to ever exist.

Yeah but Allen's rule.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen's_rule

Compare Europeans to nomadic groups in similar climates.

Semi permanent, nigga. Winter hunting, summer farming. Ask the Wendat/Huron people about that dope-ass fly shit, my dude,

Nomads lived better lives than sedentary people as a rule, exceptions don't counter this

Nomad lifestyles can't sustain large populations

Doctors couldn't do much more than the average medicine man until very recently

Most of the calories ingested by the typical peasant depended on a single crop, such as wheat in europe, and corn in mesoamerica

Yeah the irish are still around, but a population of nomads would never have gone through something comparable

Peasants can't move their fields. If there's a dought or flood they just lose their crops. Nomads can seek greener pastures.

Nomads did have more nutritional variety. I'll just admit that steppe nomads less so than most nomads.
Also you seem to think that nomads didn't eat anything vegetable for some reason.

Sure i guess it's possible that one species of animal was in dire straights and so was another, but that's two things. For peasants if the one crop you depend on is in trouble you're fucked.

Steppe nomads bullied the shit out of sedentary civilizations despite vastly smaller populations before gunpowder became widespread.
But for them, having to move to escape an enemy isn't nearly as troublesome.

They can't just farm somewhere else. If they lose one harvest, they already risk starving. They can't just say "oh well i'll plant somewhere else next time"

they left

>Doctors couldn't do much more than the average medicine man until very recently
So it's to the brain aneurysm then?
>Nomad lifestyles can't sustain large populations
They've also mainly been beaten by sedentary people.
>Yeah the irish are still around, but a population of nomads would never have gone through something comparable
Quaternary extinction. Ice age. I'm sure there's others.
>Peasants can't move their fields.
Yes they can, it's just a pain in the ass.
>If they lose one harvest, they already risk starving.
Granaries are ancient user.

Less people. Like, a lot less people. So few people that I would imagine coming across another nomadic tribe would be a pretty rare occurrence. Adventures and "quests" where the players are involved with the dealings of other humans would not be the norm. I also doubt people would have this notion that they are the "dominant species on the planet." Even wolf packs would have greater numbers and more agency in the world than your average nomad band.

>So it's to the brain aneurysm then?
?
>They've also mainly been beaten by sedentary people.
Yes. Better living doesn't mean they'd win.
>Quaternary extinction. Ice age. I'm sure there's others.
That's a global event, not the same thing, every species on the planet was affected.
>Yes they can, it's just a pain in the ass.
Not without losing a harvest
>Granaries are ancient user.
And most of them don't move. Their existence also draws aggressors who are greedy or hungry that would most likely ignore nomads.

>They can't just farm somewhere else
Only true if you live in areas that aren't generally hospitable for farming. Somewhere like Egypt? Yeah, you're going to have some issues. France or Italy? So long as you don't have problems with the local nobles then it's quite easy to do.
>Doctors couldn't do much more than the average medicine man until very recently
Minus surgeries, preventative medicine, and having something a bit more effective than wearing a necklace of worms to cure warts.
>Also you seem to think that nomads didn't eat anything vegetable for some reason.
That would fall under 'whatever they could steal.' Your counter argument about nutrition amounts to 'they just ate better guys, I swear,' so I can't say I expected much thought put into things.

You seem to cling to this notion that "quality of life" is quantifiable and comparable and has a uniform definition that spans the entirety of human history.

People's lives have always sucked, user. It's a short, brutal existence of toil and violence just about anywhere and any way you live. There is no "best option" for conducting a civilization. It's just a multitude of tiny advancements that add up to what people can agree to be a better way to live.

Do you really need to make the river civilisations and steppe nomads different cultures?

You could have the sedentary people supporting each other. Sedentary produce plants and manufactured goods, and trade these with the nomads. You can have a world setting where very few places support large scale sedentary living.

You really overestimate the quality of medicine before Germ Theory.

In fact, medicine was so dodgy, the British forgot how to cure scurvy during the mid 19th century.

idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm

>So it's to the brain aneurysm then?
A variation of the dialogue between Westly and Humperdinck from the princess bride.
>That's a global event, not the same thing, every species on the planet was affected.
Shifting the goal posts there, if everyone is affected it's even more applicable to comparing the two.
>Not without losing a harvest
And? That's where granaries, allies or a variety of other food sources come into play.
>And most of them don't move. Their existence also draws aggressors who are greedy or hungry that would most likely ignore nomads.
And again moving the goalposts, the same is true of nomadic tribes with lots of game n their area or horses. A sedentary people have better capability to raise a standing militia or army as well.

>Quality of life for sedentary people varies depending on the area and era.

Why do we keep coming back to this?

Cities have always had a negative population growth among residents, even during the good times, like the glory days of Rome or Chang'an at the height of the Han. They have to constantly attract immigrants or there'd be no people in the city. Sure, the upper classes had it good. But the vast majority of people in any city are the working poor, and they had worse life expectancies than settled country folk and nomads alike.

You win, had an aneurysm.

You have the opportunity to invent some really interesting reasons for nomadic lifestyle.

What are they following? What are they avoiding? Why can't they settle down? What do they have that makes nomadic life better than settled life?

>Cities have always had a negative population growth among residents
Now THIS is retarded.

The point isn't lack of fertile area.
The point is that you plant something somewhere, you can't just run off and not give a shit, you need to constantly care for it, and if you need to abandon it, you lose the work of months, and then you starve because you can't take your granary with you.

I'm gonna stop talking about nutritional variety because you're really focused on steppe nomads and i don't know what they eat in particular. But hunter gatherer nomads do have a greater nutritional variety than the average peasant.
omicsgroup.org/journals/food-consumption-among-peasant-agriculturist-societies-in-bc-2167-0358.1000e119.pdf

I'm considering greater nutritional security and lower vulnerability to disease as "quality of life". The average nomad was a lot less likely to die of starvation or plague.

>There are some variations so you can't establish a pattern
Why do you keep coming back to this?

Does that mean we're allowed to compare modern urban life to modern nomads?

Sure if you want, but i don't what point that would make.

How is that relevant to the post you're responding to?

>Nomads lived better lives than sedentary people as a rule
stopped reading your post here

t. anthro major

Modern Inuit, some of the least diverse diets, shortest and worse life spans in the modern era. Yet they're nomads.

Yet if you place this on a longer historical frame this situation will be an exception.
Sedentary civilizations only got ahead thanks to modern medicine and sanitation.

>modern medicine and sanitation.
Produced by skills available to sedentary civilizations.

Is technological and cultural stagnancy for a more even distribution of living conditions really so good?

No, i'm glad sedentary civilizations became the rule.
I'm just saying that, for most of history, being a peasant sucked and being a hunter gatherer was slightly better.

Focus on the strengths of the setting, use those to your advantage.
Horse combat, politics both within the tribe and with different tribes, kill shit that's been killing your animals or ruining the grass, find the tombs of great men or the ruins of sedentary people, consider having inuit or tibetan herdsmen or desert people or island savages as other playable races, have a compettition of either wrestling or have an archery compettition that combines your stats with actually having to throw at a dart board, piles of wood or stone that mark an important location or how long it will take to reach the next pile, consider having pcs create or become an influential figure in a clan, prove someone to be a piece of shit either with proof or fighting or pining their death on an enemy, find an explorer of a more technologically advanced people and get them to reveal their secrets.

Sure, why not?

This man knows the meaning.

Civilization started when we settles down, you sperg.

Nope. Civilization started when nomadic tribes cooperated to build communal religious structures. Keep up-to-date on breakthroughs in history, dumbass.

Hot water, good dentishtry and shoft lavatory paper.

So not being british?