In which Jim and Steve discuss some of the problems and advantages to running a military style campaign, and a few details about the modern American military that may help make your campaign more realistic.


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Great episode! I have one quibble, though, and it regards something not on the main topic, and that is that evolution (for humans) is not dead. Selective pressures have changed. While anthropologists are generally engaged in discussions about what is selected for and against, I would like to point one out the things that I see as likely being selected for. Social intelligence is very important these days. If you can't manage to talk a mate into the sack, you aren't reproducing. (In some cultures, past and present, this is mitigated by arranged marriage. We will also discount rape, as that is socially unacceptable but can result in offspring.) That's a form of soft selection (it's not do or die) and sex selection (what potential mates look for).

Regarding hard selection (oops, you're not going to make it) Jim referred to the practice of killing obviously deformed or disabled babies and the lack of medical technology to support such people in previous times. I would like to point out that first, if you don't reproduce, you're an evolutionary dead-end, and a lot of folks with severe disabilities do not reproduce. Second, mitigation of certain hard selection is probably helpful in some ways, in that some potentially beneficial traits linked to some deleterious trait could be preserved. As long as sufficient technology is maintained to preserve such people's lives, I don't think we're running off some evolutionary cliff. If the technology were to go away, however, there would be a pretty rapid selection process, and things would work out in nature's brutal way.

I read an article a few years ago talking about a study done by a sociologist or evolutionary biologist that had been published. The hypothesis of the paper was that human evolution will be linked to societal traits and the way humanity evolves in the future will not be due to environmental pressures. The most interesting bit was that the author put forth the idea that it's possible humanity will split into physically dimorphic social classes because of these differing pressures. It had something to do with the fact that the mate selection process was now focused on social characteristics (such as wealth) and that the people with lots of wealth tended to be very intelligent and were picking very physically attractive trophy mates. Repeated through generations, this could potentially result in a highly intelligent and physically attractive social class of wealthy people.

I don't think it's going to go that way, there's too much variation in the mate selection process, but it was an interesting hypothesis and could make for a really interesting science fiction story.

I haven't given this one a listen yet, but thank you.

I actually agree, Nanoboy, but didn't want to derail the discussion on military campaign's to go into it. Further, I understood the gist of what Jim was saying - hardcore selection by dying because you can't keep up, is no longer the law of the day. At least not for the majority in developed countries.

But I've read some interesting articles on how evolution cannot ever be avoided, only the selection criteria can be changed. Further, "smart = get mate" has been true for a long time, it's just not the only criteria. If anything, it's becoming more true than it once was, at least for certain places and situations. I honestly suspect that social capital is also growing as a very desirable trait - so being able to work with many varied people in varied and complex arrangements is becoming critical to be considered successful, and 'success' is always attractive. So, who knows? Maybe someone'll get laid based on their Facebook friends list.

Isn't that what Freemarket is about?

I got the impression that you did (especially since you have a very good understanding of evolution for a non-biologist) and I appreciate why you smoothed it over.

And, hey, I definitely learned something about military structure from listening to this podcast. I did want to add something else to the discussion on that, too. When a group has a hard time selecting a leader-- and let's face it, the GM is usually the one to embrace the leadership mantle in that group of people to begin with, not a player-- a military game is a good option, as it will thrust the position onto some player, possibly elected during group creation.

I really enjoyed this episode.

Interesting. It never occurred to me that there would be sex in Freemarket. I mean, it totally makes sense and I don't believe there's anything preventing or even discouraging that. It's just never occurred to me.

For some reason, or so I hear, making food is big though. Perhaps baking a cake is a sublimation of sorts?

On the topic of military games and sergeants and NCOs I can recommend Terry Pratchett's novels, especially the Night Watch ones and the "Monstrous Regiment", where we have this classic situation of an experienced sergeant and a rookie pencil-pusher lieutanant. In this situation they have a justification - they are literally running out of man.

Another kind of "paramilitary" rank system would be the sailing ship campaign where we have the captain (and possibly admirals above him) who declares |we're sailing to Barbados", the skipper who tells the navigators and the sailmasters what to do, the boatswain who orders the crew to do their duties and the ordinary pirates.