Are there serfs in your medieval fantasy settings or is that too grim for your games?

Are there serfs in your medieval fantasy settings or is that too grim for your games?
A bit D&D-centric but you understand what I mean, what would be the Alignment of endorsing serfdom? And the one of being against it? I kinda think that this kind of elements doesn't fit really well with that kind of morality.
Would you allow one of the players to play a former serf who illegaly left the land he was bound to because fuck the Lord, he wants to be an adventurer?

They have a lord that they provide labor to and the lord is 90% of the time a cool guy. They don't really have a reason to leave so the whole "leaving land you are bound to" doesn't come up. In general, people are free to leave whenever they want and travel as they please. They are just pretty content so travel in villages/farms doesn't happen enough for lords to be like "hey, I'm running out of bread."

I don't really have serfs in my games. Generally they're just peasants working the land: it's hard labor, but generally they're free and have decent pay that allows them to not starve and afford minor luxuries on the side (like a cold one once in a while). Basically poor, but not on the brink of starvation.

>what would be the Alignment of endorsing serfdom?
Russian style "your lord owns you, you need special permission to ever leave your farm" kind? I'd be inclined to say Evil.

>And the one of being against it?
Depends on what way. I'm probably just being a product of my time here, but I'd say this kind of construct is acceptable if the peasants in question are theoretically free to stop whenever they please, are paid decently and not actively put in harms way (safe working conditions). But of course it's always possible that the BBEG uses the abolition of serfdom to win support from the lower classes.

>Would you allow one of the players to play a former serf who illegaly left the land he was bound to because fuck the Lord, he wants to be an adventurer?
Who would refuse this kind of character? Honestly, who'd tell you not to play that? It's standard to the point of being cliché.

So many serfs! It's wall to wall peasants. Every bit of land is owned by someone and usually has peasants on it.

>Would you allow one of the players to play a former serf who illegaly left the land he was bound to because fuck the Lord, he wants to be an adventurer?
That's like 3/4 of the starting options. You could also be a knight, or a priest, or something. And it's not like "being an adventurer" is an option; it's just "I am in the right place at the right time to make a lot of money very quickly."

Anyway, feudalism is kind of my shtick, so I've got lots of content. Ask away.

>because fuck the Lord
Might not be the best idea. See, it's far easier to work within the system.

The majority of humanity are either serfs under Elvish or orcish rule or Barbaric cave men.

Dark elves capture and sell them but never have serfs for themselves (no use for it).
City elves justify having slaves by implying they saved them from a primitive and dangerous existent also saving them from orcs, use them mostly as serfs.
Orcs justify nothing, humans are citizens of their empire with a job...which is plowing fields and mining ore. Also only one who think of humans as 'Equal', which is even more problematic to orcs cause it means that nearly 70% production of their empire is held by humans.

Humans are on the rise though; turns out that simple human creativity is mostly enough for them to do alot of good, so many buy their freedom and now find themselves free citizens (even if second class).

>Are there serfs in your medieval fantasy settings or is that too grim for your games?
Yes, in the parts of the world that were so fucked up by the fall of the not-westernromanempire that their entire society became based around subsistence farming.

>what would be the Alignment of endorsing serfdom? And the one of being against it?
serfdom is give and take, yeah on paper having to do shit for some noble sounds pretty shitty but the noble isn't some random faggot who lives in a huge castle. Your local noble is your neighbor, someone you go to church with. And those nobles are the ones expected to fight and die when it comes to defending you. If he's successful enough to have a castle that's where you're going if shit gets bad.

>Would you allow one of the players to play a former serf who illegaly left the land he was bound to because fuck the Lord, he wants to be an adventurer?
Yes, but he'd start with at best a war scythe made from his former farming equipment and a regular axe.

In some countries, yeah. Not-rome is facing the same problem as real rome and actual slaves are running low, so they make freemen into cottarii.

Especially since in time of peace all those soldiers with their own patch of land want someone to work them.

>I don't really have serfs in my games
do you have knights? nobility? where does their income come from?

>I kinda think that this kind of elements doesn't fit really well with that kind of morality.
Serfdom in itself would be neutral, I think. DnD alignments are the result of cosmic forces; the planes don't care about how human societies implementing feudalism or not.

Serfs up haha

>serfdom too grim
but murder is ok?
great snakes, why do I feel old?

Mostly the free peasants I referred to though the "main" realm is an aristocratic republic rather than a feudal monarchy. Did I goof up? Is such a system unsustainable with free and willing labor?

No, but it makes it harder to collect taxes. You'll need systems to account for people and the taxes they owe, rather than tax the land itself.

Can you please elaborate on how serfs make this easier and how free workers make this harder? My worldbuilding mistake may or may not have the potential to become the source of an interesting crisis.
GRR Martin, eat your heart out

The biggest difference is that a freeman rents his land from the lord, a serf merely works the land in return for the securities and obligations being under a lord brings.

When it comes to taxation, would you rather have to deal with each individual farmer whose circumstances could be wildly different, or a few lords who could 'average out' the ups and downs of each individual serf farmer and create a more steady income stream for you?

There's also the issue of labor flight. Freemen can leave and cripple an economy already hurt by war, blight, or famine. Serfs are not allowed to, and generally lack the ability to really take anything with them like a freeman can.

That said, freemen tend to work harder, be more innovative, and be more invested in the system (for good and ill). Nationalism doesn't happen with serfs as well as it does with freemen, because to a serf being conquered generally means new lords, same toil. To a freeman, it means a change in the system they are part of, rather than under.

Yeah, the hobgoblins in my setting are big fans of serfdom. Because of their militarized society, they see it as beneath them to tend the fields, so captured humanoids end up bound to work the land
>what would be the Alignment of endorsing serfdom?
Lawful Evil, as far as I can tell. Even in the middle ages, people didn't like serfdom, and they overthrew it when they could.

Yea we have peasents in my setting.

Most of them have good lives, really depends on the lord of the land.

Regardless it's a system that works, but not every country abides by it.

Actually, Serfdom wasn't nearly as oppressive as people make it to be until its end in Eastern Europe. For the most part it fell apart because of deaths due to plagues.

Yes most people are serfs out side of the cities. Serfdom is a form of protection from other lords and bandits more then a form of slavery.

>Alignment of endorsing serfdom?
TN. You souldnt apply modern day ideas to alignments of a medieval setting.

>For the most part it fell apart because of deaths due to plagues.
Yeah, that happened because there were fewer people, so the nobles didn't have enough bargaining power to force people into awful arrangements like serfdom on the basis that labor is cheap and laborers are replaceable.

SERF'S UP!

Is it a thing? Yes. Absolutely. That also sounds like a great player background, though don't expect it to be a huge thing where your lord sends an entire army to come grab your dirt farming ass. Maybe one of their knights comes across you and recognizes you or some such, maybe if you make it big you can have a big ole emotional moment by returning home and trying to buy your family's plot.

That said I'm not going to heavily emphasis serfs in my games, because inevitably someone like yourself is going to come along and think the mere concept of serfdom is some dark and edgy grimdark thing they need to fight. Next thing you know, and you have someone try to set up an underground railroad, or go full legalized gay marriage in their attempt to sidetrack whatever it is the campaign is about. Oddly enough none of these people tend to like the realities of a poorly thought out people's rebellion when they try to start one.

D&d alignments are shit to begin with, but trying to assign an alignment to someone solely because the support a completely normal and mundane aspect of feudal society is some modern moralizing shitstain of an idea. Are you going to start having every peasant ping as evil because they expect their children to help in the fields and child labor is wrooooooooooooooooooooong? Fuck off with that.