Concept: an RPG setting where the ruling class consists of talking spiders with a penchant for fancy hats. Not anthropomorphic spiders – just regular-looking spiders, about the size of a largeish dog, that are sapient and capable of speech. The setting isn’t a horrifying arachnid dystopia or anything; it’s actually a fairly conventional high fantasy milieu, except that all the royals, most of the hereditary nobility, and a fair chunk of the gentry are spiders, with all the cultural strangeness that implies.
(Stairs are considered lower class – the spiders climb, of course – so wealthy humans build multi-level dwellings with no stairs and develop their free-climbing skills in order to imitate their eight-legged neighbours. The spiders, for their part, pointedly ignore the handholds cunningly disguised as decorative moulding, because it’s rude to draw attention to a person’s disability.)
But what about the servants? How does the human maid get upstairs to dust Lord Huntsman’s rooms?
Two options:
1. The servants’ passage have stairs, obviously – but of course, no gentleman would be caught dead rubbing shoulders with the help.
2. The setting has made great strides in folding-ladder technology. (Just don’t leave one sitting out in plain view – so déclassé!)
So my understanding of medieval history and society isn’t the best, BUT to my knowledge, feudalism and the social hierarchy of the time was at least partially an answer to the question of how to fund, maintain, and equip heavy cavalry. (And heavy infantry, and castles,and share power..). Okay, it’s way more complicated than that, but the interesting thing for us about the spider upper class is
1. Did (at least some of) the spider nobility historically fight as knights and ride horses?
OR
2. Was the development of spider nobility due to some other useful development, militarily, socially, ect.?
As fun as it is to imagine spiders riding around horses it seems a bit impractical? At least in the sense that it’s hard to imagine a spider holding a lance like a knight. But maybe they’re really good scouts. Spiders are probably naturally attuned to defending, if not managing, a castle, as it’s all one big death trap. So it’s not impossible that they have a similar role to human nobility.
I guess it also depends on what species of spiders we’re talking about, but that could lead to some regional/national flavor. Why people lead by bird-eating spiders developed differently than say black widows, or jumping spiders, will be the subject of historians and sociologists, even pop books such as Guns, Germs, and Silk.
That’s an excellent question, and one I’m going to toss back to the crowd as a prompt: how did spiders end up dominating the ranks of nobility in this setting?
There was very little central authority among the humans as in the not too distant past a great empire had fallen leaving the largest human nations as petty kingdoms.
The spider take over however was not by force but was economic. Spider silk is incredibly strong. Cloth woven from it is as strong as a Kevlar vest. Once the most intelligent spiders noticed how useful the silk was to humans it wasn’t long before they began to sell it. Spider armor and ropes dominated the markets allowing the spiders to transition to other goods, notably arms.
By this point high ranking and rich spiders were entering the human nobility. Some were gifted titles in return for service, others simply bought their way in. After this it would only take a couple generations for the spiders to begin consolidating new spider centric Kingdoms.
Of course it was not the great noble spiders that were making silk for the market. That “honor” belonged to the spider commoners, who before the adoption of human hierarchy served because they were smaller than the soon to be nobles and did not want to be eaten.
I think this one is my favourite because it posits a hierarchy among the spiders themselves. Historically, hunting was often a privilege reserved for the nobility (hence the development of “heroic poacher” myths in the mould of Robin Hood et al.); here, that practice is reflected in the non-web-building hunting spiders lording over their web-building subordinates. Presumably webs function as an analogue for argriculture in this scenario, with web-building serfs tending their hunting masters’ “crops”. Many high fantasy settings feature giant, non-sapient insects – perhaps the weavers raise them as livestock? What would a spider noble’s hunting preserve look like?
(I’m picturing differences in fashions as well. The “noble” hunting spiders would be as described above; the weaving spiders, conversely, would on average be about the size of a hefty housecat – with adorably squeaky voices to boot – and, rather than the high, stiff hats of the nobility, would favour soft cloth and knit caps in a variety of patterns. Can you picture a housecat-size orb weaver spider sporting a beanie or a cabbie hat?)
Now here’s a fun one: if there are spider commoners, how did the respective species’ social classes integrate – or not, as the case may be – following the spider nobility’s economic takeover of the human petty states?
I don’t know but all I can think of now is the idea of spider commoners starting a revolution to seize the means of production…because they are the means of production. If that doesn’t already upset the idea of the huntsmen spiders being in charge in the first place.
An important rule of RPG setting design: if there’s a class revolution in the offing, position your timelines such that it doesn’t boil over into open war until after the player characters have had a chance to get invested. If at all possible, arrange matters in play so the inciting incident can somehow be their fault.
(Honestly, if you’re not interested in affording your players the opportunity to be personally responsible for kicking off the Arachno-Communist Revolution, what are you even doing here?)
I’m fan art-ing someone’s basic concept for an RPG.
“I say Mr. Weaver, you are terribly behind quota this month.”
i'm very gay. i'd like a few dollars. 