This would probably be grouped with 'Societal Structures' along with 'Status of Women', and such stuff.
Societal Cycles:
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The notion of cycles in history fascinates most everyone. Cycles offer a glimpse into the future, and warn of impending disaster for the nation or the world. But, they have more advantages than is commonly understood. One problem for Future Historians is how they make their histories too smooth, without sudden zigs and zags. Cycles can help. Another advantage to cycles is they can help you understand history far better. And once you understand History on a 'almost lived it' level, then you're a more capable world creator and gamemaster because you can take those scenarios from the past, refurbish them, and use them. And they will feel real, because they were based on a solid understanding of history.
Isaac Asimov based his Foundation Series on the Decline and Fall of Rome. The Dominic Flandry series is based on the conflict between the Medes and the Persians even as its set in space with Lizardfolk battling Humans. If award-winning, bestselling novelists do it, then maybe you should too. Mine History, and one of the best tools is an understanding of cycles.
One set of cycles, I've used twice. For my "Hide From the Evil Day" project (not yet finished) I wrote up four hundred years of future history leading to a superpower conflict on a landlocked moon across the galaxy. In "Starsong Systems" a Transhumanist game setting, I also wrote up four hundred years of future history leading up to a society of human cetaceans, and human trees, and human commando-forms, and a whole lot else (including the kitchen sink) for a society of a trillion humans spread over nine planets, and many asteroids. I used the Strauss and Howe Cycle of History for this.
You can read about it in "Generations" (OOP), or in "Thirteenth Generation". I am simplifying here.
It is a structure of four stanzas with two eruptions that are forty years apart. The whole takes eighty years. And then it repeats.
There are four generational types:
1. Teamplayers--Sharing, conformity, and a focus on the material tend to be their life.
2. Finetuners--They seek to make the world safer, smoother, fairer, more precise.
3. Fireborn--Cries of individuality, of furious morality, of the need to shake off the corrupt world abound.
4. Hardcore--Actually more individualistic than the Fireborn. They try to put society back together again, and to survive.
In their youth, the Teamplayers fight a Phoenix War. The old world order is destroyed, and made new. They then live in plenty, and create the glories of a new modern world. Airports of towering pre-stressed concrete spring up where corn and log cabins once stood. The Finetuners come, and make their harsh and material world with its sudden judgements and its unfairness a much more pleasant and kindly place. And then the pampered children who have been given everything they ever asked for arrive. They see the glorious world their parents made, and consider it the normal baseline. Towering airports are nothing to them. Instead, they see a world of corruption, and materialism. They seek a new relationship with the Divine. In some cycles this is a Missionary Awakening, and in others its Flower Power. The Teamplayers fold before this furious onslaught that they don't understand, and retreat to splendid retirements. Suddenly the spirit-minded change, and go forth to seek money and status avidly, but they carry their values inside them, and they preach them loudly when they may. And society begins to change from the inside out as their Fire burns everything.
"We didn't start the fire" one rock singer claims, but his generation sure fanned those flames as hard as they could.
Unnoticed, frequently despised, the Hardcore arrive in a world that doesn't really like children anymore. They see a world that is completely falling to pieces. Even the most basic elements of society are on the verge of total collapse. They teach themselves how to survive, and start trying to fix things to general revilement.
Everyone remembers the Norman Rockwell picture of two parents looking in on their baby safe in his crib. Those parents are adult Hardcore. They are protecting what needs to be protected. Its interesting that this picture, and Norman Rockwell in general draws scorn. This picture draws scorn because a lot of people don't want to focus on the basics the way the Hardcore know down deep in their bones that you have too.
By this time, the Fire is ready to burn the world. The Teamplayers have been reborn. A new generation of eager, kindly, cooperative children are young adults. The children are Finetuners who realize that the adults are about to do something dreadful, and they should keep quiet. The Hardcore control most of the positions of power with their steely-eyed gazes. The top-most positions, and the seats of the visionaries, are held by the old prophets and seers, the Fireborn. And the Fireborn have been telling everyone for the last forty years that certain values need to be enforced.
Fireborn who once were all about choice and diversity and tolerance. Fireborn who in their youth protested against war will now call in a loud voice for WAR. Another Phoenix War is upon the world. And the world is about to be shaken by the tail, dumped upside down, and totally changed.
Before the Spanish Armada, Spain ruled. After, not so. Before the Civil War, America was a Republic with slaves and not slaves, with a co-equal agrarian and industrialized sectors, after it, slaves were gone, the agrarians were under the yoke, and the Republic had become the Nation. Before World War Two, there were many powers. After it, there was America and the Soviet Union and MAD.
Whats the next Phoenix War? In my Starsong future history, I postulated an invasion of China by America in 2025 or so. And defying the so-called 'Rules', America wins. And after that...the near solar system is opened. People in 2040 will look back on us the way people in 1950 looked back on 1910. It will be a different world, not just in relations between nations, but in so many different ways that it would be hard to catalog.
How can you use this?
1. Create a Future History with some jags, and zigs to it. History twists and turns, and is full of plot twists. Who from 1951 would have predicted Woodstock? Who from 1981 would have predicted the Fall of the Berlin Wall?
2. This short intro may help you to see into history a bit more clearly. Sometimes, the reason someone is angry at another one is not class interests, or philosophical differences, but one man might be of another generation than the other. If a forty-year old Hardcore attains power amidst a group of twenty year older Fireborn, its almost certain that nothing he does will make them happy.
3. While this Cycles will be most useful to Near-Earth timelines, those events in history can be used after appropriate cover from metaphors as Space Wars, or as battles between the White Order and the Legions of the Abyss.
4. You may find that you can also just use small generational differences in certain conflicts. The new lord of a castle is as in #2 a Hardcore. All his advisers are Fireborn. You've just set the stage for court conflict, possible treason, too aggressive tactics by the young lord, and general revolt in the land as forces pull one way or the other.
5. This may be of use in Non-Player Character Creation. At one time, cartoons which featured teams of heroes usually had one hero with the personality 'Woman'. That is, they might have four guys ('Cowboy', 'New Yorker', 'Scientist', and 'Brash Enthusiast') and 'Woman'. Nowadays, many such shows have more complicated female characters which is good. But, in desperation, you can certainly make a group of people by rolling 1d4...Joe is a Finetuner, Mary is a Fireborn, Sam is a Teamplayer, and Kevin is Hardcore. Add a few more traits from the Three V Non-Player Character Creation chart, and you might have in the space of three minutes something approaching real enough people.
6. I've found also that this schema is a useful outline to hang history on. Because, knowing dates does not get you very far. You need to see the forces and the patterns flow in order to get a clearer understanding.