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A Civilization is a Society with functionally interrelated sets of social institutions.
1. Class Stratification, each stratum marked by a highly different degree of ownership or control of the main productive resources.
2. Political and religious hierarchiescomplementing each other in the administration of territorially organized states.
3. Complex division of labour, with full time craftsmen, servants, soldiers, and officials existing alongside the great mass of primary, peasant producers.
-Professor Robert M. Adams
Of course this invalidates a Utopian Commonwealth of equals where everyone produces their own share and governs themselves as a civilization.
Robert Adams is clearly an advocate of the Capitalist Civilization. A more generous view of civilization would be simply a society with a code of laws, unity, and culture. (Not made up: can be found here.)
Marxist societies back in the running.
Civilization is mearly the art of living in cities ie the art, culture, law, and penalties of doing said living complete with all its advantages and penalties.
Civilization does not predetermine what codex of rules, niether norms nor mores that any group living in cities will have, but in all civilizations there are commonalities which are points of interest.
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Civilization is mearly the art of living in cities ie the art, culture, law, and penalties of doing said living complete with all its advantages and penalties.
Civilization does not predetermine what codex of rules, niether norms nor mores that any group living in cities will have, but in all civilizations there are commonalities which are points of interest.
So you will never be a Civilization untill your urban populace turn on each other. Catal Huyuk went five thousand years before it abandoned a commonwealth bound in equality and commonly approved of Laws, super-family centric productivity and government participation, and non-centralized religion commemerating ancestors.
Then they abandoned that and achieved all aspects that "define a Civilization" and it fell overnight.
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Ideas to Address when Creating your Campaign Civilization
1. Multiple Large Urban Centers
This is going to be VILLAGE or better.
2. A Writing System
It could be simple Pictograms, Marks identifying an individual family, or images describing a larger spoken story.
3. Specialist Labor
Certain people become valued for their skills in certain areas. They become Artisans, Priests, Leaders, Slaves.
4. Social Intergration
How do your Slaves get along with the other specialists? Does your ruler even look on them or are they kept out of sight.
5. Trade Networks
The development of Trade networks linking communities.
6. Mass Trade
How is surplus produce collected and traded.
7. Religious and Political Art
What have your Artisans created to prop up the religious and Political Authority of your civilization?
8. Important Structures
The Palace, The Grainaries, The Temples, The Monuments, Mass Irrigation Systems, Water Supply, and Drainage.
9. Authority Figures
These are your Priests, Your Kings, your Special organizations like the Kings guard, the Merchant Guild.
10. The Bureaucracy
The rise of Mathematics, Geometry, and Record Keeping.
11. The Ruling Elite
More than just authority, these are the families of the rulers. They have access to material goods and special education.
12. A Legal Code
The development of Writing for expressing Laws and rules.
hehe nobody says it was easy; the word is Roman in origin, Civis
Civilization is mearly the art of living in cities ie the art, culture, law, and penalties of doing said living complete with all its advantages and penalties.
Civilization does not predetermine what codex of rules, niether norms nor mores that any group living in cities will have, but in all civilizations there are commonalities which are points of interest.
So you will never be a Civilization untill your urban populace turn on each other. Catal Huyuk went five thousand years before it abandoned a commonwealth bound in equality and commonly approved of Laws, super-family centric productivity and government participation, and non-centralized religion commemerating ancestors.
Then they abandoned that and achieved all aspects that "define a Civilization" and it fell overnight.
yellowdingo's gaming ideas are good for a typical city, but there are lots of other models you can follow for flavor; his is very codified for a lawful bent.
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hehe nobody says it was easy; the word is Roman in origin, Civis
yellowdingo's gaming ideas are good for a typical city, but there are lots of other models you can follow for flavor; his is very codified for a lawful bent.Civilization is mearly the art of living in cities ie the art, culture, law, and penalties of doing said living complete with all its advantages and penalties.
Civilization does not predetermine what codex of rules, niether norms nor mores that any group living in cities will have, but in all civilizations there are commonalities which are points of interest.
So you will never be a Civilization untill your urban populace turn on each other. Catal Huyuk went five thousand years before it abandoned a commonwealth bound in equality and commonly approved of Laws, super-family centric productivity and government participation, and non-centralized religion commemerating ancestors.
Then they abandoned that and achieved all aspects that "define a Civilization" and it fell overnight.
We cant all be living in a Commonwealth of Equals.
2. A Writing System
It could be simple Pictograms, Marks identifying an individual family, or images describing a larger spoken story.
You don't need a written system to have a functional, complicated civilization.
Politeness, teabags, nice crockery and cream cakes.
Politeness, teabags, nice crockery and cream cakes.
Now that's civilized
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You don't need a written system to have a functional, complicated civilization.
2. A Writing System
It could be simple Pictograms, Marks identifying an individual family, or images describing a larger spoken story.
Yes you do: Every Civilization has some level of written language even if it is a couple of images to remind them of what happened on Saturday after they all got drunk and slept with the sheep.
Yes you do: Every Civilization has some level of written language even if it is a couple of images to remind them of what happened on Saturday after they all got drunk and slept with the sheep.You don't need a written system to have a functional, complicated civilization.
2. A Writing System
It could be simple Pictograms, Marks identifying an individual family, or images describing a larger spoken story.
No they don't. I have a geneelogy that goes back 23 generations. If you average 20 years a generation you are looking at over 4000 years of tracking ancestory. It was not until the nineteenth century before one of my ancestors wrote it down. There are over 10000 lines of verse in the kumulipo, a creation chant which mentions life emerging from the slime of the ocean and "evolving in to the current life forms. Such things were committed to memory, a near impossible task by modern litierate minds. Missionaries were surprise to find that some of my people could commit the entire new testement to memory. Such feats arre no longer required today because of the written word.