Pre-Modern Armies for Worldbuilders, Part I: How Societies Shape Their Military Systems
By
Bret Devereaux
Summary
This article explores the relationship between pre-modern societies and their military systems, offering a framework for worldbuilders and fantasy writers. Rather than analyzing a specific fantasy military, the author provides a general historical overview of how different social structures produce different types of armies. The piece examines the motivations and organizational principles behind pre-modern warfare, serving as the first part in a series aimed at helping creators build more realistic and coherent fantastical societies.
Source
Hacker NewsPre-Modern Armies for Worldbuilders, Part I: How Societies Shape Their Military Systemsacoup.blogKey quotes
· 3 pulledThis week I want to try something a little different. Rather than taking apart a particular fantasy military system, I thought I might try to lay out a more general sense of how military systems tend to map on to societies.
Both because such general historical frameworks are handy for thinking about the past, but also because they make useful rules of thumb for imagining fantastical societies.
So essentially here we are asking: how do societies end up with the sort of armies they have?
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