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  1. Trias Valravn

    Trias Valravn New Member

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    Civilians fighting in a war

    Discussion in 'Research' started by Trias Valravn, Feb 1, 2020.

    Hey, I'm writing a fic where thousands of gamers were sucked into what looks to be an MMORPG, but with some minor\major changes, and I was wondering what the psychological effects be on them when they have to fight others in a war in a medieval-like setting.

    And I'm referring to actually, fully being there, not like .hack or SAO.
     
  2. Naomasa298

    Naomasa298 HP: 10/190 Status: Confused Contributor

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    Same as non-civilians. Quite often, men fighting in wars were civilians, at least for a lot of the year. Depending on the time period, standing armies were rare, and armies were raised from the civilian population as and when needed.

    A man-at-arms might be somewhat inured to death, but seeing your mate get eviscerated is still pretty traumatic, more so for those unused to it.
     
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  3. Trias Valravn

    Trias Valravn New Member

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    Alright. I just want to make sure I get as accurate as I can with peoples' reactions to the setting and its long-term effects.
     
  4. Madman

    Madman Life is Sacred Contributor

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    I would be more worried with all the practical skills they would need. Do they know how to make a fire? Hunt and prepare food? Care for wounds? These issues would not be exclusive to gamers, but to most factions of modern humans drawn back into a medieval-like setting.

    Interesting concept, by the way.
     
  5. Trias Valravn

    Trias Valravn New Member

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    I hadn't even thought of that. Thank you for pointing that out! :3
     
  6. Mikelindo

    Mikelindo Member

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    Are these people aware that they're in an MMORPG? Also, what are the RL consequences of death/pain within the game? If in-game death/pain = RL death/pain, then I'd have to agree with @Naomasa298 and say that the psychological effects would be similar to non-civilian fighting; aka PTSD, psychological disorders, flashbacks, etc. However, if they know well that they're trapped inside a video game - and that no true harm can be done to them, I'm guessing that the effects would be less intense.
     
  7. newjerseyrunner

    newjerseyrunner Contributor Contributor Contest Winner 2022

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    My major question is why would they fight each other? As violent as humanity is, during times where resources are plentiful, humans are fairly peaceful. If they're suddenly thrown into a world, they'll feel very little loyalty to their rulers. My guess is that it'd be total chaos. Without some sort of structure, no real war could possibly take place, only minor skirmishes here and there. If you live in Whiterun, why should you give a crap if someone attacks Falkreath? In fact, you'd be much more likely to simply reenforce your own defenses than lend a hand to a neighbor. Are there treaties, pacts, economic relationships that would motivate one group to fight for another or align behind a single leader? I'd bet the best analogy to real world would be Hellenistic Greece.

    Also, I imagine the warfare would be very different than it really was during the medieval times. I mean, wouldn't these gamers take modern tactical knowledge with them? Medieval wars tended to include lots of large armies marching around trying to find each other while keeping favorable ground, then attacking by clashing armies. The object was the destroy the enemy army, which basically was the way it worked until mid WWI. Army clashed against army, butit's actually much easier to have an army destroy itself than to destroy it yourself. Medieval fights had wide fronts and ground was gained in small parts at a time. If an outcome looked bad, your army would retreat to the next hill, if it was going well, you'd go to the next and redeploy your artillery. Personally, I'd have none of that. I'd set up a lightly defended front to prevent the enemy from flanking, then instead of having my guns shoot across the front, I would have literally all of the weapons I have in range fire simultaneously and continuously at a very narrow point in their defense. Once that section is softened up, my cavalry would form a column and smash right into the softened point in the line. But, counterintuitively, they would not fight the enemy, but continue straight through the line and keep going, behind the enemy, the spear pointed directly at their supply lines. Cutting the enemy in half, and rampaging behind them tends to incite chaos in the enemy, with some of the officers wanting to stand their ground, some of them wanting to hit my own weakened line, and some of them wanting to chase the rampaging cavalry and horse-drawn artillery. Both George Patton and Erwin Rommel started their careers on horses, so I would expect the tactics of modern militaries to still work with medieval tech.

    France in 1940 may not have quite had the strength of their previous self but they were still a formidable army. Blitzkreit allowed the Germans to conquer it in just over a month. 50 years later, the USA employed the same tactics in Iraq. In Desert Storm, the Iraqis had just gotten done fighting a more static style of war against Iran and were expecting the fight to happen over most of the border and last months. Iraq knew they couldn't beat us, but they knew if they dragged it out, we would back down. Instead of capturing and securing every point as they went, the Americans instead put their tanks in columns and went straight for the jugular, ignoring almost everything else in it's path, ending the way in essentially one major offensive. Gen McMaster once recounted a story when a captured Iraqi officers asked why a US tank had a picture of a nazi inside of it and the driver reportedly said something along the line of "if you'd studied Rommel, perhaps you wouldn't be our prisoner."

    Also, what exactly do you mean by medieval-like? That period lasts a thousand years. I imagine the psychological implication of fighting and killing an enemy with a lance/sword in hand-to-hand combat is much different than that of someone holding a flint-lock a hundred yards from the enemy.
     
    Last edited: Feb 3, 2020
  8. Trias Valravn

    Trias Valravn New Member

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    Medieval-like because the setting of Elder Scrolls hasn't really progressed past catapults and ballistas.

    As for what's making the three Alliances fight is that something happened to eight of the Nine Divines and now they're corrupted, with Akatosh being the most corrupted and wanting to watch the mortals kill each other in creative ways since he already killed the original inhabitants.

    Yes, they would bring future knowledge with them! :D I'm pretty certain someone's going to invent armored catapults or something.

    The consequence of death is that they can't stay dead, but they do feel the pain of their method of death, and then feeling it in reverse.

    As for them being in ESO, I want to say that the Tamriel they went to is a different reality, and they were all teleported there by Corrupted Akatosh using the game as a sort of conduit to teleport them there. I feel it would give me some leeway to make changes that the game world itself wouldn't let me do.
     
  9. Naomasa298

    Naomasa298 HP: 10/190 Status: Confused Contributor

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    I suggest watching "Zero kara hejimeru isekai seikatsu" (Re:Zero − Starting Life in Another World). The protagonist gets killed multiple times, and slowly suffers the effects, getting more and more anxious, stressed and eventually cracks.
     
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  10. Xoic

    Xoic Prognosticator of Arcana Ridiculosum Contributor Blogerator

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    How about language? If this is a medieval world, what language is being spoken, and how can the moderns understand/speak it? Though I suppose that's been accounted for if it's designed to suck them in and they need to be able to function there.
     
  11. Trias Valravn

    Trias Valravn New Member

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    Alright! :D

    Language...hmmm...I hadn't thought of that, but I can probably fix that up with a bracer that's enchanted for translation. It's already being used to allow for long-distance communications.
     
  12. Naomasa298

    Naomasa298 HP: 10/190 Status: Confused Contributor

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    A bunch of sedantary modern humans will have real difficulty in a medieval world.

    That alone will cause stress and shock amongst a good proportion of them. Many won't be able to adjust. And any who have pre-existing conditions such as Aspergers (which I would guess a higher proportion of gamers will) will be overwhelmed.
     
  13. Thorn Cylenchar

    Thorn Cylenchar Senior Member

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    If medieval setting: People from our times would be repulsed by the smell, and by repulsed I mean violently, physically ill. Medieval cities stunk. You had no toilets, people dumped their chamber pots and food waste in the streets. Horses, cows, donkeys, dogs all deficating in the street. Even the nobles only bath maybe once or twice a month, lower classes bath in the river, or the whole family uses the same bathwater starting with head of family down to youngest (this is why you have the saying throwing the baby out with the bathwater, by the time you get to the baby, the water would be so filthy that you might not be able to see them).

    This is also why when you read about medieval times they will mention the nobles having rushes put down in the dinning hall-this was to mask the smell.
     
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  14. Thorn Cylenchar

    Thorn Cylenchar Senior Member

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    I would also suspect many gamers/otaku if they suddenly found themselves fighting in a war would end up going into shock, getting violently ill, especuially the first time they kill or see someone killed.

    Most also would not know how to get food for themselves. A large portion has probably never been hunting. Even if they had, guns or modern compound bows are not even remotely similar to recurve or long bows in terms of the strength and skill needed to bring down an animal with it. Then, how many would know how to skin, gut and clean the animal? Start a fire without a lighter or match?

    How many would know what plants are edible? You know some fool is going to wipe themselves with poison ivy.

    So you may want to come up with some way for them to be implanted with 'basic' knowledge so they don't all starve to death.
     
  15. Naomasa298

    Naomasa298 HP: 10/190 Status: Confused Contributor

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    That's not really true. Medieval people knew it was important to keep clean.

    Those who couldn't bathe in a river would use public baths, if they were available. Otherwise they would rub themselves down with a wet flannel.

    And they didn't crap in the streets. They had cesspits for that.
    https://www.ancient.eu/Medieval_Hygiene/
     
  16. Trias Valravn

    Trias Valravn New Member

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    Hmmm....I'll be writing down some of those questions and figure something out. Thanks for pointing these things out. :D

    And for Aspergers, I'm...honestly not sure how to write that. Got any ideas or suggestions? Should I include it?
     
  17. newjerseyrunner

    newjerseyrunner Contributor Contributor Contest Winner 2022

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    Wait, you contradicted yourself. You said all of the original inhabitants were dead, so who makes up these alliances? I assume you mean MOST of the original inhabitants are dead? That still doesn't why these GAMERS want to fight. What is their individual motivation? It sounds like these gamers are kidnapped slaves, and that would be a much more powerful psychological driver than anything. If thrown into a battle, they would do the bare minimum amount of fighting to keep themselves alive. Without time to build any sort of comradery, it's every man for himself. And allowing thousands of captured people the time and access to build that sort of comradery, they'd very quickly come to understand that most of them were kidnapped and recognize the real enemy. That'd be like if The Confederate States of America decided to train and arm all of it's slaves during the civil war.
     
  18. Trias Valravn

    Trias Valravn New Member

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    Ok.

    All of the original races are technically dead, as their bodies got turned into horrific flesh atronachs. There are other beings that were created for the sole purpose of prodding the gamers into battles. Race of dog men to act as guards and to quell any thoughts of rebelling against the corrupted Divines, insect-like beings to act as merchants and cooks and a race of critters that look like a cross of dog, squirrel, and raccoon.

    The gamers sucked to there had one month to get used to everything before being sent to Cyrodiil. And then it'll being another month or two before they actually get into a real battle with other people.

    Once those first few battles happen that don't meet Akatosh's expectations, though, he'll probably put out some incentives.
     
  19. Maggie May

    Maggie May Active Member

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    Individuals with Aspergers are not typically in awesome shape either. They don't do well in organized sports, teams.... You may have to figure out how you can tweak their brains and give them brawn.
     
  20. Trias Valravn

    Trias Valravn New Member

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    Ok!
     
  21. Friedrich Kugelschreiber

    Friedrich Kugelschreiber marshmallow Contributor

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    So it's basically a Hunger Games scenario?
     
  22. Trias Valravn

    Trias Valravn New Member

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    Boiling down to its bare bones, yeah. But for thousands, not just afew.
     

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