Given their reach and influence on history, how come Mongolian culture...

Given their reach and influence on history, how come Mongolian culture, folklore and mythology aren't more prevalent in the world of RPGs? (e.g. there are a whole bunch of games set in ancient Rome or Greece, but very few I'm aware of set in Mongolia)

Because less people know of this cultural folklore and mythology. I am a huge sucker for the stuff and I never heard of the stuff. Also the Romans and Greeks are relatable for a majority of roleplayers (europe).

>Given their reach and influence on history
[404 CITATION NOT FOUND]

Slanted eyes

Uh, the Mongolian Empire stretched all the way to Estonia you know.

I don't think they ever really made it a point to force those they conquered to adopt their culture.

>Uh, the Mongolian Empire stretched all the way from nowhere to some other unimportant place that didn't become a center of cultural cosmopolitanism until almost a thousand years later

OK, that explains why I don't know anything about them.

Yeah, the mongols were a mixture of Mongolian animists, buddhists, Christians, and Muslims. The first thing they decided was that conquest was more important than forcing religion on someone.

>I don't think they ever really made it a point to force those they conquered to adopt their culture.

No, they just fucking murdered them instead. The Mongolians fucked the Muslims so bad, they have never fully recovered 1000 years later.

Are you american?

Don't use that kind of ableist language around these parts, pardner.

Well while they had extremely impressive accomplishments, the empire only lasted eighty years. Plus a lot of their accomplishments came from simple common sense. Promotion on merit, focus on career soldiers over warriors, and adapting the local technology (ships, siege weapons) when they came across new problems. Stuff that to today’s audience I don’t think makes them seem very unique.

That said nomads played a very important part of medieval life, and I think is a good way of making a culture unique when compared to standard feudal Kingdoms. More nomads who make great warriors who live on trade or pillage and live in the most barren empty regions should appear in settings.

The first Mongol empire lasted only a few years, but it's successors existed for much longer.

What influence? The most influence they had was destroying things or make people react to the possibility of getting conquered by them. Whenever they had a chance to change the cultural landscape of a country they conquered, they rather assimilated themselves into their culture. Mongolians are overrated.

I really like the legend of Prester John. He was said to be a mythical king that ruled over the only Christian kingdom in the fast east, surrounded on all sides by the hordes of muslims and asian non-believers.

So one day, during Europe's crusade against the Muslim kingdoms, there came news that a strange, new army from deep within the east was fighting the Muslims! No one had any idea who these new people were. Eventually, people came to the conclusion that the legend of Prester John was indeed true and the mythical kingdom of long lost Christian warriors from the far east had finally come to join the fight against the Muslims with their European brothers.

It turns out that Prester John was actually Genghis Khan.

>Far East
Isn't Prestor John associated with Africa?

>Isn't Prestor John associated with Africa?

Originally, but the Europeans retconned it to Asia because it sounded much cooler and matched the current events of the time if Prester John was Genghis Khan.

Isn’t it the other way around? They thought it was Asia but then the Portuguese discovered Ethiopia?

>Are you american?
Great rebuttal, you really provided compelling reasons for why anyone should care about Mongolian culture, folklore and mythology.

Maybe? Things were pretty fuzzy back then. I learned that he was originally NOT in Asia, but placed there after Genghis was discovered.

>what is the entire history of Eastern Europe

The way from "nowhere" to "place you take pride in being ignorant of" just so happened to include the regions which, back in the day, included most of humanity (numerically speaking) and the most advanced and richest civilizations of the era.

Eastern Europe didn’t exist untill 60’s. Before Soviet induced nivelization it was bunch of places with wastly different culture, history and level of industrial development, most of it practicaly untouched by Mongol hordes. Parts of Eastern Europe were even members states of Holy Roman Empire a quintessential catholic power.

>Eastern Europe didn’t exist untill 60’s
Yup, American

The Mongols had a few years in history where they fucked things up and were utter assholes to everyone. Unlike Greece or Rome that contributed to the backbone of our Western Civilizations, Mongolia just stole shit and raped people. Then their empire quickly collapsed.

No, there’s more to it. They reinvigorated the Silk Road which was dying off before they conquered everything, renewing ties between the east and west. In fact, those renewed trade links is what caused the Spanish to hire Christopher Columbus to find a route to China across the Atlantic.

How much of that stuff being traded on the Silk Road was originally from Mongolia or Mongol culture?

Because they got rid of some of the powers between them. The silk road was just a side effect.

not really
they were kind of protective of trade to and through their lands

They were inferior savages so they were the ones to be influenced by their conquered peoples, not the opposite. The influence of mongol culture in the world is laughable.

Maybe the only empire more safe than Vlad's Romania.

Genghis Khan is the most influential single person in human history (possibly barring mitochondrial Eve, or Adam) and the world did in fact quake in his passing.

As one American to you shitposters, you should do some actual research (just kidding, you retards should just use fucking Google) instead of bitching about not being spoon-fed quickly enough.

He's the reason Christendom survived. He's the reason you've never heard of Kwarizum. He's the reason for the Conspiracy of Silence, the Black Death, and by association hastened the industrial revolution.

Unless you're British, the Mongols conquered more territory in a single generation than your shitheel ancestors did.

All of them, ever.

Why are Europeans such obnoxious trash?

>stretched all the way to Estonia you know.
>watch map
>it doesn't stretch to Estonia

This only makes his failure at cultural influence even more laughable. Compare it to british cultural influence. Fuck, compare it to fucking dutch or portuguese cultural influence. OP never asked about war.

because they weren't that interested in actually influencing people, they just wanted power and money
as much as they like to think of themselves as not the typical Asians, it's a very Asian attitude
what's not so typically Asian is them going a step further actually adapting themselves to outside cultures

Oh, also the mongol empire wasn't conquered during single generation. The empire of Genghis is actually not much larger than other nomad confederations of the area. His sons and grandsons conquered the rest.

If somebody's actions cause you to change your own course of action, they've influenced you. Genghis Khan is considered one of the most "influential" men in history because in his time, from China to France, he's managed to get the greatest empires of the world to make his actions a major consideration when planning their own. Without ever reaching Western Europe or North Africa, he's had a massive effect on the politics there, because his empire reached far enough that their every conquest sent political dominos throughout the entirety of Eurasia.

>it's a very Asian attitude
>Han china procedes to basically eat and destroy every culture from siberia to Indochina and from the himalayas to the yellow sea
>japanese proceed to all but exterminate ainu culture
The mongol attitude is certainly not an "asian" thing. At most a Central Asian thing.

There is good reason to believe that Mongolians going to war is the reason your country today (whatever your country might be, actually) doesn't speak Arabic. How's that for "cultural influence"?

They didn’t.
The Mongolian “Empire” only was one in the loosest possible sense and it broke a lot of “rules” we tend to associate with expansionistic empires. In some ways the Mongolian Empire culturally actually resembled small-scale tribal warfare blown up to full-sized national proportions with huge armies in play.

Basically, the original mongols were super into killing your guts and taking your stuff, but when it came to the actual ruling and administrating of things they generally weren’t very interested, which meant a lot of the individual Hordes became absorbed into the cultures they ended up conquering to a greater or smaller degree.

Not a single drop of this influence had anything to do with their culture, folklore or mythology which are the three things OP is calling influential.

>Maybe the only empire more safe than Vlad's Romania
Not even an empire...and his rule was completely unstable.

>Genghis Khan is the most influential single person in human history
No one can be this retarded.

>As one American
Wait, there it is.

Because americans are a bunch of braindead retards.
East Europe was not a soviet invention. There are mentions of it since the medieval age

OP said "culture, folklore, and mythology". The Mongols warred with Muslims, sure; just like the Soviets warred with Nazi Germany; but that doesn't make either of their "cultures" anything more than barbaric kleptocracy.

>Thinks Iran, ME and China are irrelevant
Anyone with basic knowledge of history would know that what he said is bullshit

Americans being retarded doesn't make you not a cunt.

No, it isn't. The muslim world was a decadent unstable shithole before the mongols. If anything, it's after the mongols that we see great muslim empires capable of threatening Europe again (Ottomans, Mamluks). The main strike on muslim territory by mongols was felt in Persia and Mesopotamia, two territories that were never a significant threat for Europe during the muslim era.

Because even the term “Mongolian” is something of a misnomer.
There were actually a ton of nomadic tribes and cultures in that general area of the world, it’s just that Temujin’s tribe (the Mongols) absorbed by conquest every single other one in the area until they were all “Mongols” despite a lot of them even speaking completely different languages.

Kleptocracy imply that they're corrupt people stealing from the people, they were not. Right of conquest legitimated their rule

>The muslim world was a decadent unstable shithole before the mongols.
Not really. Most of the arab intellectual work was done during this age

>Right of conquest legitimated their rule

Not an argument, moron

Any other answer besides we're westerners and are taught western history is just a meme. Come on, guys.

Arthurian legend is the framework and foundation of D&D (I would even go so far as to say the entire fantasy genre), which informs everything else.

Right of conquest is like the least legitimate rule. Even the flimsiness ideologies do better in the long run

That's what the people being conquered said before they were butchered for their insubordination.

Naw. You're thinking of Tolkien. Most rpgs aren't particularly Arthurian. Because lotr wasn't Arthurian in any particular way, aside from knights and swords.

Conquest is great at killing people, but it's fucking terrible at actually maintaining anything without attaching some sort of ideology to it. If anything it just creates a void for some random religion to take hold

Define "this age". Because the middle east met by mongols wasn't exactly peaceful or safe. Long gone were the glory days of the Abbasids.

No, you're the one memeing. Mongol "culture and folklore" are largely anecdotic and irrelevant in China, the Middle East or India as well.

arthur is probably why fantasy has a wizard and knight fetish and is very anti-gun however

Knights aren't really the preferred nomenclature in terms of DnD shit though, and it's not like Tolkien or Conan was pro-gun.

The Mongols interacted with important bits of Europe exactly once.
They showed up, took everything, and left.

Not much, but it was Mongols who were collecting the taxes from it. I’m not trying to argue there’s much to Mongol culture other than common sense, being really good horse archers and yurts, I’m saying the Mongol Empire did have a significant impact on world history outside of rape and pillage.

Their religion also helped. They worshipped nature spirits, but they figured all their spirits lived in Mongolia, hence they didn’t really care if Chinese or Russians worshipped them. Compared to the monotheists of the world who preach their God is concerned with everyone, and their worshippers are super special and junk.

At the same time however, the razing of Baghdad is seen as the end of the Islamic Golden age, and the point when the Muslim Nations turned inwards and stopped sciencing (which continues on today).

the Mongols didn't export their culture or values. They did establish a system of laws, which generally got absorbed into the locality. The problem is they didn't write any of it the fuck down, and kept it a secret, so we only have conjecture and second hand sources. It's a long list so lets start.

>"It is ordered to believe that there is only one God, creator of heaven and earth, who alone gives life and death, riches and poverty as pleases Him—and who has over everything an absolute power, a different version states that there was liberty to worship God in whatever way suitable (Plantagenet Somerset Fry).
>He [Chingis-Khan] ordered that all religions were to be respected and that no preference was to be shown to any of them. All this he commanded in order that it might be agreeable to Heaven. {al-Makrizi}
>Leaders of a religion, lawyers, physicians, scholars, preachers, monks, persons who are dedicated to religious practice, the Muezzin (this latter appearing to be from the later period of Khubilai Khan unless this was further translated there had been no specific reference made to any Muezzin and cities including mosques were levelled), physicians and those who bathe the bodies of the dead are to be freed from public charges. {Al-Makrizi}
>It is forbidden under penalty of death that anyone, whoever he be, shall be proclaimed emperor unless he has been elected previously by the princes, khans, officers, and other Mongol nobles in a general council.
Forbidden to ever make peace with a monarch, a prince or a people who have not submitted. [It is apparent they presented certain proposals to the different states or kingdoms that existed that they should participate with them.]

>The ruling that divides men of the army into tens, hundreds, thousands, and ten thousands is to be maintained. He put leaders, (princes/bogatyrs/generals/noyans) at the head of the troops and appointed commanders of thousands, hundreds, and tens. {al-Makrizi} This arrangement serves to raise an army in a short time, and to form the units of commands.
>The moment a campaign begins, each soldier must receive his arms from the hand of the officer who has them in charge. The soldier must keep them in good order, and have them inspected by his officer before a battle. He ordered his successors to personally examine the troops and their armament before going to battle, to supply the troops with everything they needed for the campaign and to survey everything even to needle and thread, and if any of the soldiers lacked a necessary thing that soldier was to be punished. {al-Makrizi}
>Forbidden, under death penalty, to pillage the enemy before the general commanding gives permission; but after this permission is given the soldier must have the same opportunity as the officer, and must be allowed to keep what he has carried off, provided he has paid his share to the receiver for the emperor.
>He ordered that soldiers be punished for negligence; and hunters who let an animal escape during a community hunt he ordered to be beaten with sticks and in some cases to be put to death. {Mirhond or Mirkhwand} (may appear excluded from some accounts, can be a more restricted Siberian-originating practice, but seems genuine).
>To keep the men of the army exercised, a great hunt shall be held every winter. On this account, it is forbidden any man of the empire to kill from the month of March to October, deer, bucks, roe-bucks, hares, wild ass and some birds.

>Forbidden, to cut the throats of animals slain for food; When an animal is to be eaten, its feet must be tied, its belly ripped open and its heart squeezed in the hand until the animal dies; then its meat may be eaten; but if anyone slaughter an animal after the Mohammedan fashion, he is to be himself slaughtered. {al-Makrizi} [Women were not supposed to slaughter animals this way, possibly due to being weaker, there is no prohibition in the Yassa.]

>It is permitted to eat the blood and entrails of animals though this was forbidden before now.

>Every man who does not go to war must work for the empire, without reward, for a certain time.
>The man in whose possession a stolen horse is found must return it to its owner and add nine horses of the same kind: if he is unable to pay this fine, his children must be taken instead of the horses, and if he have no children, he himself shall be slaughtered like a sheep. {al-Makrizi} In the versions where the provisions appear the method of execution is likened to sheep therefore as in accordance it may be presumed with the law for the slaughter of animals [it is unclear in another version as of when their bodies should be cut in two parts] For lesser thefts the punishment shall be, according to the value of the thing stolen, a number of blows of a staff-seven, seventeen, twenty-seven, up to seven hundred. But this bodily punishment may be avoided by paying nine times the worth of the thing stolen. [Another older version mentions no punishment for thefts under the value mentioned, it is not so specified.]

>No subject of the empire may take a Mongol for servant or slave. Every man, except in rare cases, must join the army.

>Whoever gives food or clothing to a captive without the permission of his captor is to be put to death. {al-Makrizi}

>Whoever finds a runaway slave or captive and does not return him to the person to whom he belongs is to be put to death.{al-Makrizi} The word translated as "slave" means "captive taken for labor", the opponents of the Mongols were usually regarded by them as facing a punishment for resisting the universal principles/the Mongol system, or what it aspired to via its codes and measures, the concept was passed on also to their descendants, based on concepts of sedentary populations who degrade the people and criminal tribes, criminal already often simply by their concept of resisting to the above-referred Mongol system, the word is "bo´ol", linked to modern "boolt", band for tying, "booch" (ch as in chaver in Hebrew) is in the modern Mongolian both associated with the type of binding and process used in capture as a verb where it is translated as meaning "slave". However other lands differ in meaning of "slave" though allied.

>The law required the payment of a bride price. Though not mentioned in other sources, it may be that this is a dowry reference, given that the bride price is usually a custom restricted to specific Mongol tribes (but that may have appeared later). This may have been practiced earlier, while Chinggis Khan himself had never followed this custom, nor is it much (if at all) referred to in the Nuvs Tobchaan Mongolyn. The bride price might have been considered as a useful deterrent to trade in women, or simply a modernizing experimental inversion from a dowry; however, the Tatar neighbors traded in women (which was prohibited it is reported by the Yassa) and that marriage between the first and second degrees of kinship is forbidden. A man may marry two sisters, or have several concubines; however, under Buddhism and shamanism there was a progressive tendency for a marriage ceremony. Some Buddhist forms revived some casualty without marriage. The women should attend to the care of property, buying and selling at their pleasure, specifically in another version "Os Mongóis" by a Portuguese publisher of summarized histories of culture, the law is quoted as defining trade as their sphere, there is no exclusion from military participation, but this was reported more popular among Tatars as according to Islamic law which was only possible to follow via Sufism. Men should occupy themselves only with hunting and war.

>Children born of a concubine are to be considered as legitimate, and receive their share of the heritage according to the disposition of it made by the father. The distribution of property is to be carried out on the basis of the senior son receiving more than the junior, the younger son inheriting the household of the father. The seniority of children depends upon the rank of their mother; one of the wives must always be the senior, this being determined chiefly by the time of her marriage. After the death of his father, a son may dispose of the father's wives, all except his mother; he may marry them or give them in marriage to others. All except the legal heirs are strictly forbidden to make use of any of the property of the deceased. {Vermadsky}

>An adulterer is to be put to death without any regard as to whether he is married or not. {al-Makrizi} The Yasa prescribes these rules: to love one another, not to commit adultery, not to steal, not to give false witness, not to be a traitor, and to respect old people and beggars. Whoever violates these commands is put to death. {Mahak'ia] Here are the laws of God which they call Iasax which were given to them [g288]: first, that they love one another; second, that they not commit adultery; not steal; not bear false witness; not betray anyone; and that they honor the aged and the poor. And should perpetrators of such crimes be found among them, they should be killed." {Grigor of Akanc}

>If two families wish to be united in marriage and have only young children, the marriage of these children is allowed, if one be a boy and the other a girl. If the children are dead, the marriage contract may still be drawn up.

>It is forbidden to bathe or wash garments in running water during thunder.

>Whoever intentionally lies, or practices sorcery, or spies upon the behavior of others, or intervenes between the two parties in a quarrel to help the one against the other is also to be put to death. [al-Makrizi] (Intentional liars being included in this section in one of the versions however it is not as definable in practice, and may refer to methodical lying which also appears in areas of earlier Asiatic influence in Europe, but becomes particularly defined together with a Germanic version which may have legal undertones, and a Latin practicality, it is a version intended to cause grievous harm to people and damage them and further particularly as a means of sabotage, but this is not completely clear. It can also have an aspect of those who practice lying with frivolous purposes.)

>Officers and chieftains who fail in their duty, or do not come at the summons of the Khan are to be slain, especially in remote districts. If their offense be less grave, they must come in person before the Khan."

>Whoever is guilty of sodomy is also to be put to death [al-Makrizi]

>Urinating in water or ashes is punishable by death. [al-Makrizi]

>It was forbidden to wash clothing until completely worn out. [al-Makrizi]

>He forbade his people to eat food offered by another until the one offering the food tasted of it himself, even though one be a prince and the other a captive; he forbade them to eat anything in the presence of another without having invited him to partake of the food; he forbade any man to eat more than his comrades, and to step over a fire on which food was being cooked or a dish from which people were eating. [al-Makrizi]

>One may not dip their hands into water and must instead use a vessel for the drawing of water. [al-Makrizi]

>When the wayfarer passes by a group of people eating, he must eat with them without asking for permission, and they must not forbid him in this. [al-Makrizi]
It was forbidden to show preference to a sect, or to put emphasis on a word.

>When talking to someone, do not speak to them with a title, calling them by their name. This applies to even the Khan himself. [al-Makrizi]

>At the beginning of each year, all the people must present their daughters to the Khan so he may choose some of them for himself and his children. [al-Makrizi]

>Also that minors not higher than a cart wheel may not be killed in war.

>Also abduction of women and sexual assault and or abuse of women was forbidden punishable by death.
>In cases of murder (punishment for murder) one could ransom himself by paying fines which were: for a Mohammedan - 40 golden coins (Balysh); and for a Chinese - one donkey. [Mirhod or Mirkhwand]

>The Khan established a postal system so that he might quickly learn about events of the empire.

>He ordered his son Chagatai to see that the Yasa was observed. [al-Makrizi]
Verkhovensky reports that the Yassa begins with an exhortation to honor men of all nations based on their virtues. This pragmatic admonition is borne out by the ethnic mixture created by Genghis Khan in the Mongolian medieval army for purpose of unity (Ezent Gueligen Mongolyn), the United Mongol Warriors. The origin of the word Mongol, "mong", means "brave". Thus, at the time, it may have meant as much an army of "the brave", as an army from or made up of people from Mongolia.

>Forbidden, to cut the throats of animals slain for food; When an animal is to be eaten, its feet must be tied, its belly ripped open and its heart squeezed in the hand until the animal dies

God damn thats metal.

I barely remember Mongolian culture ever being mentioned in school, anything was either Greek, Roman, or Egyptian.

Mongolians never wrote shit down

Greeks, Romans, Egyptians wrote everything down

you mean hobgoblins?

>Settled peoples who record their history are well studied and influence culture
>Nomadic peoples who record little/nothing are ineffectively studied and have minor cultural influence

Thread solved.

Time to die, Lincoln. (Genghis Khan declares war!)

I think it’s more accurate to say it’s hard to study the impact of cultures that didn’t write stuff down. It’s easy to look at something like the Iliad and see how it influenced future stories.

For contrast the incans and lacked a writing system (though they used knots for record keeping) but had a very complex culture and society that we have a real hard time figuring out.

That said the mongols did have a writing system they invented right about the time of ghenghis,

>That said the mongols did have a writing system they invented right about the time of ghenghis,

It's true, though Genghis specifically is the one who requested it be made, after capturing an Uyghur scribe. The real problem is that not only did the Mongols not have a literary tradition, they were actively anti-literature. There is one book ever written in Mongol, "The Secret History of the Mongols," and it was, literally, secret. They threw books away when sacking cities. They only used Mongolian script for writing on the occasional monument and transcribing foreign works.

Yeah, definitely American.

He kind of is correct. Everything from Poland to Hungaria was part of central Europe until the Soviet-US compromise split it and created a not-any-longer-part-of-Europe stretch of colonial dictatorships there.

What manner of beast are those? They look neat with all their shaggy fluff.

Mongolian yak I presume

They're adorable.

Irreverent?

Try a different group. We played an *extensive* Not-Mongolian game. Was basically a Genghis Khan RPG.

Tell us stories, user.

This is fascinating. Can you suggest a source to read more about this?

Poland is still central Europe, the same way East Germany didn't become eastern Europe just because the commies ruled

>Poland is still central Europe
Toppest kek. The borders of the Cold War are still inside everyone's head and heavily inform politics. That won't change before everyone who experienced the period is dead, it seems.

Try “irrelevant”

This map is for once correct - it shows that russia was backwater of mongols emiper

Russia was backwater for most of its history.

Even today

No, it's one of the worlds most powerful nations.

Why are you so hostile towards americans mate?
I wonder how different history would have played out if the mongols had been defeated by the muslims, or outright never made it outside of ghengas khan's original conquest?
Imagine how it would be if they never stop conquering and no one or thing had stoped them?