How does one go about barbarian tribes without going full merciless destructive force...

Reading that the Picts and the Caledonians were generally okay with Hadrian's Wall being built was the most bizarre thing in the world to me.

Holy shit i knew the mongol empire was huge but not that huge

Define themselves by something else than their primitiveness. Everyone is relatively primitive to someone else.
That's not too say, don't make them not primitive, just focus on what makes them, them, like their religion, style of warfare, culture, etc. Like the brits you had in pic had a very vibrant oral culture, with the training of a bard consisting of them being trapped beneath a rock until they had their songs, poems, and epics memorized.

They didn't give a fuck, just meant the Romans weren't coming any further north. Cool, they can fuck off and I can go back to fucking about naked

yeah too bad it lasted as long as Alexander the Great's Empire - which is, to say, until the founder ate it then it immediately Balkanized

Eh, this map doesn't show you the subdivisions the empire was in. Not too say they weren't impressive conquerors, just that all of that stuff was not under one government, but rather multiple, who held together because of sense of mongolness.

The vast majority of it was empty space.
And it didn't last very long. The Mongols were great conquerors, but pretty shitty rulers.
And each time a Khan died, they all had to pack their shit and run back to Mongolia to elect a new leader before setting out again.

>Alright guys, it took 5 weeks but we finally got here
>Bad news, the Khan bought it and now we must go back

Imagine being that guy

"Can we just pillage a little before we leave? Let's just say some Muslims held us back. We wouldn't be lying."

What about usually peaceful traders that go full /k/ when shortages and/or war happen?
What about nomadic herders who turn into hordes occasionally?
What about just a foreign guy but all he's saying is 'bar bar bar' to you?

> how do I [thing] without [factor I want to avoid]
Don't include the thing you don't like.
That'll be $50.

Just look up some history. "Barbarian tribes" are the state most of humanity was in for 95% of its existence. Just look up the Celts or Germanic tribes on Wikipedia and read the parts on specific cultural details, or read some Roman historians for more primary (but biased and romanticised) sources.

I don't know why it seems to be popular knowledge the Mongol Empire reached its maximum size and then immediately broke apart with the death of Genghis Khan. It practically doubled in size over three more generations of leadership until it effectively broke apart over a succession crisis at the death of Möngke Khan. I don't know if it's confusion with the somewhat similar Macedonian Empire, the Mandela effect, or what, because for the longest time I also thought practically all of the conquest was done by Genghis and the Empire split into four right when he croaked.

Visigoths

That's when they're raiding abroad. On home turf, they're just the Goths.

The year is 50 BC. Gaul is entirely occupied by the Romans. Well, not entirely... One small village of indomitable Gauls still holds out against the invaders. And life is not easy for the Roman legionaries who garrrison the fortified camps of Totorum, Aquarium, Laudanum and Compendium.....

See that picture you posted? Do that, do exactly fucking that. Even Caesar deemed the Gauls semi-civilized.

Nobody ever heard of Donkey Kong or whatever. It's "known" because people never learned the actual facts. People aren't very well versed, if you are to ask them to name khans, they would know Genghis, Shere, and maybe the guy from Star Trek.

>It's "known" because people never learned the actual facts
Let's tell the flip-side of the story: how important is the Mongol empire really from a Western perspective? Not really, especially since their legacy didn't go past "conquer a lot of shit", most of said shit being outside of Europe. It takes niche interest to read up on the specific details of the Mongol empire. It's not exactly the same as being ignorant on the Roman Empire or Napoleon or the World Wars.

>muh empty land
China was not, Persia was not, a good chunk of central asia was not

>muh shitty rulers
They were pretty good at it actually.

you cant buttsex a dragon
its a lizard
you can only cloacasex it

"I like this guy, he gets my vote!"

Focus on things other than warfare (or lack of) as their identity. Religion, family structure, hunting, farming, trades, laws, homes. Have any raiding be opportunistic or deeply steeped in a complicated history with the other side instead of mindless malice.

Conan
Also
>Peace loving native americans
You know that some tribes had to invent a form of ritual combat because they were killing eachother too much, right?

Read more books. The latins in particular should be illuminating.
Protip: bookstores have stuff even outside the genre shelf.

Donut steel

Make them, you know, people. Just like the civilised ones. It's just that in some fields they are somewhat behind technologically, they are overall less wealthy, no real cities to speak of, and with a slightly more primitive social organisation. Less bureaucracy, more personal relationships.

How the FUCK is this in nay way difficult?

Pretty simple, actually.

Have them being like any other kingdom, with customs and stuff, but lower tech level. That's it, that's all.

Imagine movies rohan, but instead of town with castle you have a smaller tower, made of rock over rock, on top of a hill with houses like huts around, and maybe some wooden palisade around.

Instead of soldiers covered in armor, you have soldiers with bracelets, and maybe the higher ups with a scale cuirass.

Instead of a king with a crown, you have a king with lots of bling, and the royal hall doubles as dining hall and planning hall.

Oh, and the cities don't have much of a pavement. So people probably isn't that fond of dresses, they would be kinda impractical.

Barbarians are literally just "not my people". It derives from how the ancient Greek would use the term "bar bar" as an onomotopeia for meaningless babble AKA the fuck language you speaking over there you non-Greek fuck?

So a Bar Bar-ian was literally just anyone who couldn't speak Greek to Greek dudes.

So here's the thing. Your barbarians can be literally anything, as long as they are an unfamiliar culture/language to the "imperial" or "core" culture you'll be pushing.

Understand how humans actually work is a good start.

Jesus fuck open a goddamn history book.

>Have them being like any other kingdom, with customs and stuff, but lower tech level. That's it, that's all.

Literally this.

I always thought it was kind of cool how the Barbarian tribes from Diablo were the first ones to develop steel in their setting. Gave a nice sense of them actually being technologically advanced in metallurgy and other war-related industries while not breaking out of the dark-ages fantasy mindset.

Why lower tech though? What about barbarians actually implies that they're technologically backwards? All I think of is an excessively savage warrior who gives into battle rage.

The origin as the tribes and kingdoms and assorted people north of the roman and hellenic world, which were in fact technologically inferior (if possessing nifty things like ring armor and beer)

please tell me you dont only know the word "barbarian" from DnD

no one calls themselves barbarians, a barbarian culture is a less cultured, less advanced and less civilized people than who ever is calling them that

You could do something similar to the Vikings. Observe from the annals of history:
>Norse shipbuilding is fucking amazing in the 8th century
>Their kings and wealthy warriors wear byrnies (shirts of maille, a direct precursor to the hauberk) when they can afford them
>By the 10th century, Norsemen are revered as mercenaries, having served the Byzantine Emperors as bodyguards for some time
>Around this time, some Norsemen led by Rollo (aka Duke Robert I of Normandy) settle in Northern Francia and their descendants are referred to as Normans
>By the 11th century, Normans have armed their noble warriors in Hauberks, given them horses, and armed them with lances. Thus the knight was born
>October 14th, 1066. Knights charge into Saxon lines at Hastings and not even their mighty housecarls can stop them.
>The rest of Europe takes note
Pic related is a high-quality replica of a sword that may have been used by a king

By reading a history book.

No, if I did only know it from DnD you think I'd be automatically assuming it was a lower-tech culture.

You summed it up, it's an outside culture that the "in" culture views as less civilized or less cultured. I've seen plenty of times where cultures that are technologically advanced are considered "barbaric" by the view point of the speaker. Sometimes this is because they are actually cruel due to the whole "advanced tech madness" stuff that goes on, other times it's because the tech-advanced culture's ruthless logical behaviour clashes with the morals or ethics of the "main" culture.

Had Rome, for some reason, come across the Gauls with fucking lightsabers but otherwise acting like Gauls they'd still have called them barbarians.

A tribal society is best described as a small town community writ large, with no greater power.

It's a whole bunch of families, each trying to survive and improve their status. A husband gains status by how pretty his wife is, how fertile they both are, how popular and competent she is, and how respected his children are. A wife is the same but in reverse. The children should be strong and numerous, because they are both the future, a labor force, and a military force- Cleetus and his six strong sons are incredibly valuable both as food producers (or whatever they do) and as warriors, because in a tribal society every man is a worker, a soldier, and a politician.

Who is in charge? Whoever the tribe says is in charge, because they lack the mental tricks and social complexity for loyalty to institutions to exist- the King or chief's power exists only insofar as he can draw on personal loyalty. Loyalty is gained by generous gift giving, by past history, and most of all by seeming to be strong and competent. People want to follow someone who will keep them safe- and a tribal society is much closer to danger at any given moment than a more organized one. Famine is always dangerous, disasters have to be responded to by neighbors because there are no police or firemen, and without a military beyond whatever men you can convince to leave home and fight a leader HAS to hold respect to get anything done. So the ruler has to seem strong, he has to seem prosperous, he has to seem virtuous, and most importantly he has to seem successful. The less of each of these he seems, the less people will want to follow him.

And remember that in a tribal society currency is little utilized- folks don't do things for pay, they do them as favors or in barter.

Pretty much what happened to the ones that tried to invade Eastern Europe,they were winning battles and then had to go back for choosing the new khan. Must have been a real pain.

So the king gives gifts of wealth to his supporters- he gives gifts out in public, he feasts them in his hall, he gives them honor and shows he respects them. And in return, when he calls them up, Cleetus remembers that last season the king gave him a fine silver armband in front of the whole hall, and thinks to himself "what a great guy, he's defending us, I've got to go and help protect everyone/kill those bastards threatening such a great guy." And so Cleetus grabs his spear, tells his six sons to grab their spears and shields, and gets ready to head off. His neighbor Johnbob sees Cleetus going, and remembers how often Cleetus complimented the king, and that the king rewards folks who do him well, and that he likes Cleetus, so he grabs HIS spears, and gets his cousin and his two sons and his cousin's four sons, and heads off too, because he's not going to let his neighbor seem more a man than him, and because he wants wealth from the kings hand too.

And so the King has 15 more men, and more besides. And when your warband is 200-600 men at best, that's a lot, all because he seemed cool and gave a gift. Doesn't matter if he's a drunk or beats his wife- he's respected, he wins, and following him is profitable.

But maybe Cleetus beats the enemy chief and his four personal bodyguards in combat, and it was a battle that nobody will ever forget. Folks are cheering Cleetus in the king's own hall louder than they cheer the king. This is bad, because the king is in charge because folks think he is. So the king can be a shit and throw Cleetus out- or give him a gift, make him his honored bodyguard, and bind Cleetus even closer to him.

The same general shit applies to EVERYONE- religious leaders are in charge because folks respect their powers or connections to the gods. Elders are in charge because the current generation is their kids. Warleaders are basically quarterbacks. It's all pretty simple.

youve hit it on the nose with the Romans likely still calling them barbarians, its less about technology really and more about not conforming to "civilized" norms
but....all i can think is
>Gauls with lightsabers

Have you tried reading some ancient histories, anthropological texts on pastoral tribes, or a well written fantasy like Malazan?

you want a modern example?
look at the small rural towns in the middle east, looks at the small fringe ethnic groups

they arent somehow magically different than others but they dont conform to modern civilization, have distinct cultural beliefs and live on a lower overall technological spectrum beside what they can manage to find, trade or steal

Death to all who oppose the Horde.

Read Tacitus' Germania.
gutenberg.org/ebooks/2995

Pff, the Huscarls were holding themselves just fine- it was an archer that killed Harold and doomed the Saxons. Hastings could have gone either way.

I mean, shit, the Saxons were actually more centralized and organized than the Frenchmen- Harold had a united army, marched it across the country twice, beat the shit out of the Norse, and THEN marched down and lost. The whole of England was under his command, despite his "dynasty" barely being established. And the Normans knew it, which is why they kept so much of the Saxon rules in place. That's why the Normans wound up ruling half of France with command of England while the Kings of France spent huge chunks of time barely able to get the parts of France they actually ruled to listen to them.

Pragmatic - respect for nature is respect for resources they need.

If they had higher technology, they would beat the civilized lands and call them stuff, then they would become the civilized lands, and the other guys further south, north or wherever are the barbarians.

Because you see, you kinda need civilization to have state-of-the-art technology, and sanitation, and engineering works.

the battle of Hastings swung in the way of the Norman due to a mix of things, Norman forces keeping the Saxon army pinned while their archers wreaked havoc on their back lines, and in the confusion (partly due to Harolds death but also due to general death and chaos) heavy armoured Norman cavalry taking advantage of the confusion and driving them from the field

it was a combined arms victory that the Saxon werent really equipped to combat

higher level of technology doesnt mean you win all your battles
otherwise Rome never would have fallen or had a hard time in central europe to begin with
If the gauls had better tech they might have done better but likely would have still been subjugated, eventually, because of Roman superior logistics and orgnaisation

and again what counts as "civilized" is subjective

You say that and yet magic and lost-race tech are regular features in games that could easily shift the power balance or result in them suddenly having better tech while being a smaller presence in world affairs and not actually being all that cultured.

And you're right, those northmen probably do think that people who shit inside their own houses where they sleep and eat and don't rigidly defend their honor with just combat and who will kill an approaching beast and not strip it of all its valuable resources are the barbaric ones, regardless of whether they're actually in a position of power or not.

Barbarians are just the outsiders to your culture.

That's literally it.

The second is great if players more or less are the only capable warriors in the tribe left and now are running damage control. I played a woman from such a tribe - she lost her husband during war and basically out of everyone left she was the best fighter. Others were either too old, too young or were lacking in the limb department.

A tribe went from a pretty reasonable local power that had it's own large village/town to a bunch of cripples working in a mine and trying to sustain their children while their shaman, who was too young for his role, was stuck with dealing with there obnoxious tribe spirit that was constantly nagging him.

Simple, traditional, salt of the earth people living with (very) extended family, ruling themselves, just wanting to get by and be left the fuck alone

>uniornically using Vikings except when describing if people were raiding or trading
>the Normans were Norse not Norman and/or Norman French
>not knowing it was the several feigned retreats that won Hastings and showed William as the superior king

Also
>imply the knight isn't the greatest impact Charlemagne ever had by enfoeffing his paladins thus enabling an almost constant supply of mounted infantry

>by enfoeffing his paladins
Please user, this is a blue board!

First, not every society thinks they are the be-all of civilizations. Some actually think the pasture is greener on the other side, and copy whatever they can. The romans did that with the greeks, the greeks with the egyptians, and the goths with the roman.

Second, barbarian is not synonymous with savage. It is fundamentally rooted on the gauls, germans and other tribes north of the greco-roman world. You cannot deny that heritage when using the word.

Thirdly, even if higher technology and paved cities and stuff is not an assured victory, it skews things in favor of those possessing it. Civilizations do fall and are conquered by the barbarians, but it is not the norm. And several times, the conquerors just called themselved civilized, copied the customs and pretended nothing happened, but with them in charge.

Fourtly, lost-race tech is lost for a reason. You don't have a thriving civilization with lost tech, you have scraps here and there, and the key thing is that the hight-tech savages do not have the necessary organization, bureaucracy and institutions to produce, distribute or otherwise make real use of said technology, beyond the barest things.

Were it not so, they would not be the barbarians, they would be the empire.

What are you expecting from a bunch of /pol/tards? Actual knowledge of history?
Don't make me laugh, user.

>Civilizations do fall and are conquered by the barbarians
>First, not every society thinks they are the be-all of civilizations

Yours apparently does

Then people shouldn't spout off shit. He wasn't crying that westerners didn't bother to study Mongolian History 101; he was griping that everyone parrots shit mindlessly without checking it out.

If you don't know what you're posting about, don't post. If people followed this simple rule, the board's quality would skyrocket overnight, but no, everyone's got to repeat shit like GURPS is calculus, D&D5e is sterile trash, 40k is getting the AoS treatment, and other retardation that they saw someone else post once.

they raid because the harvest have been poor and the winter is harsh. They must take what they can in order to survive and hope that next year is better.

>The Ancient Greek name βάρβαρος (barbaros), "barbarian", was an antonym for πολίτης (politēs), "citizen" (from πόλις – polis, "city-state"). The earliest attested form of the word is the Mycenaean Greek 𐀞𐀞𐀫, pa-pa-ro, written in Linear B syllabic script.[4][5]

>The Greeks used the term barbarian for all non-Greek-speaking peoples, including the Egyptians, Persians, Medes and Phoenicians, emphasizing their otherness, because the language they spoke sounded to Greeks like gibberish represented by the sounds "bar..bar..;" this is how they came to the word βάρβαρος, which is an echomimetic or onomatopoeic word. However, in various occasions, the term was also used by Greeks, especially the Athenians, to deride other Greek tribes and states (such as Epirotes, Eleans, Macedonians, Boeotians and Aeolic-speakers) but also fellow Athenians, in a pejorative and politically motivated manner.[6][7][8][9] Of course, the term also carried a cultural dimension to its dual meaning.[10][11] The verb βαρβαρίζω (barbarízō) in ancient Greek meant to behave or talk like a barbarian, or to hold with the barbarians.[12]

Hmm, nope, the term doesn't actually derive from the Romans nor refer specifically to either northern tribes nor specifically "uncultured" people. It was used as an insult at times, but at others merely meant "not Greek".

So yeah, shove it. Barbarians do not need to be some primitive low-tech back-country hicks. They just need to be foreign and strange to your main focal culture, whatever it may be.

Because I'm assuming that is what the OP is trying to imply with their use of "barbarian"

>a barbarian culture is a series of subbjective labels that another culture puts on them

I agree completely.

Actually it is. The Mongol empire has about as much relevance to modern society as the Roman empire and Napoleon. World Wars I can agree on, because they really fall under the band of modern warfare and the rise of America as a global superpower, and have a lot to do withthe political structures of today, but the average person can get along just fine knowing exactly jack shit about literally any of those topics.

Considering he wants to go about barbtribes without invoking "unga bunga sharp rock" I would think that the (actually not all that) novel idea of a barbarian tribe which isn't low tech and backwards is in fact precisely what OP might be looking for.

I hate it when normies like that user try to talk about history only through sweeping generalizations that they assume is true.

When he said "unga bunga sharp rock" I thought he meant people who were literally retarded. I have 0 idea what kind of "barbarian" content he was invoking so I concluded his use of "barbarian" is the popular image the majority of people use it for.

Fair enough, I'm certainly not against the idea of low-tech barbarian tribes. I'm just against rigid notions applied to what is actually a rather loose term and archetype, so as long as we don't think "must be low tech or not at all" then I don't really mind.

I neither understand your point, nor its relevancy.

So, there should not be discussion on barbarians, since it can only and always mean foreigner? Is that your argument? Is that the hill you want?

Then, I might ask, what the hell are you doing here, discussing this? Just say "barbarian means foreigner, close the thread" and be done with it.

I, meanwhile, will keep saying and claiming that the association with the word barbarian is tied with the people of europe who were not greeks or romans, even if that is not the origin of the term.

My point is that when someone is asking "how should I tackle Barbarians outside of [insert most common stereotyped fantasy Barbarian cultures here]" it is helpful to know exactly how widely you can cast your net when coming up with an angle to tackle your Barbarians with, without being narrow-minded.

The answer is "you can cast that net really fucking wide, so be open to the ideas that can spring up from other anons".

If OP likes the idea of the Barbarians as Gaulic, that's fine. As long as the core conceit of the Barbarian Tribe is its foreignness then any concept he is happy with is a good concept.

So like Vikings? I like my Barbs to be like Vikings. Worshipping pagan gods, have a culture built around raids and honor, living as nomads in small shitty animal hide tents kind of like how I imagine mongol tents.

actually, yes they do
while they might covet some aspects of other cultures its usually only as a curiosity or luxury, such as importing exotic foods
it also happens as "barbarian" cultures are assimilated and their old beliefs conform to better fit civilization

but the point remains societies believe they are inherently right and that their values are somehow more moral than those of a society that doesnt conform
as a society grows, it will diversify and develop subcultures that nonetheless conform to the overall Societies values

and just because we dont call them barbarians it doesnt mean we dont look down on other cultures that arent US today.
just look at how America looks at any country that isnt them or others view them

Try reading some historical sources. I'd recommend Julius Caesar's Gallic War. It's the reports he sent back to Rome during his conquest of Gaul. In it he describes both various celtic tribes aswell as some germanic ones.
A key note is that barbarian is really just a word for foreigners. In fact the spartans didn't even use the barbarian-label.
If you want surprisingly sophisticated barbarians go read up a bit on the celtic peoples. They were actually quite advanced in terms of metallurgy and trade, aswell as in other areas without loosing their barbarous warrior appeal. They also had really cool hill forts.

If you want a quick overview of early roman empire understanding of germanic tribes check out Tacitus' the Germania.

Herodotus can also be a fun read.

exactly, each of those points i mentioned is just a metric by which the "civilized" society judges them

It's a sliding scale, really.

Some cultures (surprisingly few, in fact) don't even consider those beyond their tribes even human, while others readily adopt just anything that crosses their borders.

Saying that every people on earth has the mentality of "everyone else is primitive and uncultured" is as much a stereotype as any else.

Of course, the more you approach the core values, the more likely people will claim superiority of some sort, but for people beyond the USA and some asian countries, it is really hard to imagine that an entire culture might think "see those guys over there? They're awesome, we should be more like them."

*For people INSIDE the USA and some asian coutries.

Crossed a few wires there...

dan carlin recently did a six hour podcast called the 'celtic genocide' about the roman invasion of gaul. lots of neat cultural anecdotes in there.

Reminder that the Romans were barbarians to the Greeks and that the Greeks were barbarians to the Persians.

>mounted infantry

...what about like human beings with a less sophisticated way of life?

>Village chief
>Village drunk
>Village idiot
>Village troublemaker
>Village badass
>Village slut
>Village funny guy
>Village genius
>Fiesty old lady who's everyone's grandmother
>Village beauty
>Village foreigner
>Village shaman/priest
>Village philosopher/wise man
>Village outcast
>Village buffoon

So on and so forth. Maybe they enjoy small scale endemic wars with other tribes over farm animals, but remember that they're people.

>ask them to name khans, they would know Genghis, Shere, and maybe the guy from Star Trek.
Well played.

What about barbarian tribes that were forced to settle down by a stronger power and got reduced to mouthwash drinking depressed alcoholics?

Abbocunts need to learn to like what they got.

Like this.

Most of Europe?

So lying

Leave native americans out of this

Just make sure none of them speak Greek, and you’re done.

>just look at how America looks at any country that isnt them or others view them.
This right here. Speaking as a european we have a very condescending view of americans. We basically look at them as cultureless primitives who's state is afforded begrudging respect due to their military might.