What if you like the aesthetics, tech and architecture of the middle ages but not the society? Feudalism and the like

What if you like the aesthetics, tech and architecture of the middle ages but not the society? Feudalism and the like.

Take pills against your autism and do whatever the fuck you want with your setting then?

Worst case you can just pretend that west Rome managed to unfuck its public horse stipendium and created an actual knightly class.

Go to one of the city-states in Italy.

Most fantasy settings is very much only medieval/feudal in aesthetics and not in how it actually functions.

I know that's a shitty non-answer but games like DnD don't even make an attempt to keep to the three class system, highly orderly society with a lot more rights and freedoms to the lower classes then people think but a lot less then you'd hope.

Make your society an anarchosyndycalist commune?

Most fantasy games are already renaissance-level society with middle ages aesthetic.

Terrorize the peoples of NYC with your warhorse and crusader armor.

Well, you could always use Imperial Free Cities, Dithmarchen's peasant republic, the Italian city-states, Novgorod's Veche, a Trade League, or implement any number of religious changes, incorporating pagan elements or cathar/hussite heretics, a reconquista or crusade, dispute over inheritance... Really you can do any number of things to upend the society, and without OP explaining more what about the society/feudalism you don't like, it's hard to recommend more.

Apart from some of the Republics, we had Feudal Lords in the past. The figure of the so-called "Signorotto" implies the existance of local nobility and serfdom up to the 17th century

I prefer urbanization, professional armies and an existing middle class. What is almost absent in feudalism.

>What if you like the aesthetics, tech and architecture of the middle ages but not the society? Feudalism and the like.
Alternate history in which Charlemagne united the West Roman Empire, had non-retarded succession law, launched an invasion of England and drove kebab out of North Africa.

Centralized empire is born, feudalism is unneccessary, a winrar is you!

>I prefer urbanization, professional armies and an existing middle class. What is almost absent in feudalism.
Absent in the feudal countryside, sure, but there were many cities, whether city-states, free cities, or otherwise, in the middle ages with both urbanization and an existing middle class.

Try not to be a faggot?

I've been thinking about running a setting where there was no bronze age collapse. Society just softly switched to iron, then steel. So you have antiquity-style empires that can field armies of millions of soldiers with renaissance/early early modern period tech.

Which means that there just isn't enough steel to deck everyone out in fancy armours. Which means the anachronistic fantasy tendency to have all kinds of armours across time existing in one moment makes sense from an economic sense. And armies will literally be so big, no one gives a shit about giving everyone proper armour.

After all, the reason why common soldiers in medieval times were so well armoured was simply because people were more expensive than steel.

Why are you so autistic, OP?

If you don't like feudalism, you can literally just enforce a Republic like Rome in the Empire's days.

Or you can literally, and not figuratively, enforce a city state based society.

Or whatever else you like, you stupid OP. But for the love of god, do not enforce Democracy. Democracy was the second biggest mistake ever made in the history of humanity, right after Communism.

What are you memeing about? The merchants were the middle class in feudalism. Or not? Maybe I'm just retarded lmao

>antiquity-style empires that can field armies of millions of soldiers

Pump your brakes, there, Chuikov. There's an upper limit to how much food can be grown at any tech level, and even assuming your societies possess the raw agricultural capacity to sustain that sort of population, they still likely don't possess the logistical capacity to handle it all if they're pre-industrial. It's one thing for all the towns and cities of a land to grow their own food and transport it maybe a few tens of miles to feed their own populations, but an army on the move is entirely different.

Just look at Napoleon's Grande Armée--arguably the pinnacle of pre-industrial warfare in terms of raw numbers and logistics. Even they never broke the million-man barrier because those sorts of numbers are simply unsustainable when the only means of carrying bulk cargo is via horse and cart. Up until the advent of railroads, every army had to rely on foraging and pillage in order to sustain itself while on the march. Even then, they were vulnerable to breakdowns in the logistical chain, just like the Grande Armée starved when the Russians took to scorched earth in the face of their advance.

If this is the route you're going, and that number wasn't just hyperbole, I'd urge you to reel back the numbers a bit, or come up with some contrivance to justify the ease of logistics in this world of yours--either some special crop which grows and transports easily, or some magic or something which serves the same mass-transport function as the railroad.

This OP
Most fantasy is a lot more modern than you want to think about, unless your DM is very specific about feudal details or bey anal about the "details" they want to die on.

>Classical/Brass equivalent hit enlightenment before advancing in tech.
>Gods decreed historically realistic culture is dumb and advanced to modern 90s thinking.
>The elves or whatever built democracy, it spread a long time ago.

Make whatever reason you want. No matter what you think of some ass will nitpick it anyway, so do your best and try not to play with douchebags.

>Democracy was the second biggest mistake ever made in the history of humanity, right after Communism.
Considering you conveniently left out the second biggest killer of the 20th century, I'm going to assume your a fascist?

>and then the anti-pol brigade found the thread and shit it forever and ever after
>the end
Let's just skip the shitposting where you call anyone that disagrees with your communist views a fascist and get to the end right away. So grab a rope and kill yourself or close the tab.

>the anti-pol brigade

It's always hilarious to see how /pol/ somehow thinks they're not a minority, even on this site.

wait you are pol? It actually doesn't matter, pol and antipol are cancer, so fucking die

You just described most fantasy settings. Medieval aesthetics, medieval tech but with magic, and a highly idealized less-authoritarian culture.

There is some metaphysical magical plane manifesting as a maze or labyrinth that can be used for 'warp' travel.
So transport lines can be shortened, if no magical monsters wander in your supply line.
Also, global trade since the stone age, when the plane was discovered. Potatoes, oranges, casave, bananas, coffee, whatever, you can get pretty much any food if it is in season.
Also, it is a bit hyperbole.

underrated post

I'm new to the conversation but I'll play devil's advocate: like it or not, politics are frequently relevant to Veeky Forums. Nobody ever tells you to leave Veeky Forums for discussing weapons or armor or history or foreign cultures or the logistics challenges of exploring ancient ruins.

So, there are definitely times when Veeky Forums is completely off-track and everybody needs to gb2/pol/.

But I've also seen good polite discussions that HAPPENED to deal with the nature of human power struggles, and then they get shat up by people saying "NO NO NO HE'S A TROLL DON'T RESPOND TO THAT TROLL /POL/ /POL/ /POL/ REEEEEEEEE"; that's the anti-/pol/ brigade.

Isn't that like every fantasy game?

That's what I said.

Personally I like to do medieval tech and medieval architecture and then all the culture is based on 80s metal.