In rural Germany, Inns had additional tasks, for example they would keep records of the people that stayed there and had to report these to the local Lord. If it was a remote village, the innkeeper would also often serve as a kind of local authority, and decide minor quarrels of the village if the next court-day when the Lord visited would only be in a long time. In these cases, the Inn would often be the place where court would be held.
@@robinrehlinghaus1944 You do know that, even while being able to speak French, i was reading [ And thinking ] like this. *-"Intirrestante"* , wait , what?! [ Then, i get it , it's in French. ] And dont worry i bichslapped myself three times for this...
@@sleipnirodin2881 "interessant" is also simply the German translation of "interesting", and given Robin's name, that's probably the more likely language being used ^^
Fun fact, quite a few cities tried to fend off their travelling king. Charles the 5th subjects in Flanders once spread a rumour the plague was in town to make sure he would not visit, because the cities could not bear the coasts of the king staying over for a prolonged period of time.
Staying with people also partially explains the penchant for scaring and maiming as punishment. If thieves get their ears cut off or a T branded on their faces, it effectively bars them from finding accommodations. This is another role playing possibility. What if the fighter gets a facial scar and suddenly everyone thinks he's a criminal. Or what if the thief gets caught and the local lord threatens to brand him unless the party does a quest.
Exactly to avoid possibility to mistake brave warrior for a criminal scaring was very specific. It was not just "cut of nose of ear". It was kinda tearing of parts of nose.
Well there is a historical court record of a englishman requesting, to a doctor, a letter to prove it to have lost his ear to an accident. In fact, that doctor had it cut because of infection after the accident, so he was a valid witness. The doctor presented the letter to the court to receive the lord's seal, so it would be legally accepted everywhere, than we have this record today. I think it was around 1300 to 1350 or so.
I remember an anecdote of a traveler in Norway in somewhere in 18th century who planned only to stay one night at a remote farm before wanting to cross a glacier, quite late in the year. But then the weather turned and he had to decide to stay there the entire winter. So he just stayed with that family for 6 months and nobody seemed to make a big deal out of it. It's really interesting how welcoming strangers in your home was such an essential part of society and culture in the olden days.
MAKE NO MISTAKE, HE WASNT THE DUDE ON THE COACH LIKE PPL DO TODAY! HE WAS CUTTING WOOD, HUNTING, FIXING FENCES, FIXING ROOF, ETC. ETC. ETC. HE PUT WORK IN THE WHOLE TIME. EVERYONE DID; OR YOU DIDN'T SURVIVE.
It was a little different when you were basically only in the home to eat the evening meal and sleep. It wouldn't have felt like someone was imposing on your privacy as much as today. Having a guest was essentially like having an extra farmhand.
In certain areas of Russia, inns were basically a particularly large house "owned" by a family, who sold the dining room of their home to be slept in. And if people wanted to pay extra, they they could sleep in the beds and bedrooms of one of the family members, who would sleep in the dining room instead. Their was also things called slop houses in certain port villages, where a tavern would buy/build out a few sheds nearby for people to walk to after drinking to sleep in, and these sheds were often split up and had multiple large beds as well. All in all, people got pretty creative when it came to providing accommodation for travelers, and loved to reward patrons for telling stories. This idea of telling stories in return for accommodation was likely where the idea of the travel bard came in, and there were even lots of norse myths focused around the telling of these stories, which is part of the reason why there are so many records of their heroes and their glory in combat.
Sharing a house sounds like the family get-togethers of my childhood, except no money exchanged hands. If you (as a child or teenager) were the only visitor, you'd get a bed. If Great-auntie arrived for a visit, she'd get the bed and you'd be given a blanket and the living-room sofa. If half a dozen cousins were there, you'd probably all be sent out to sleep together in a tent out back, while the older relatives got the beds, sofas, and carpeted floors indoors.
I experienced the monastery thing in the modern days. We were travelling across the country by car, around 3000 km, and we reached a city up north at a very unfortunate time, there was a local event going on and there was no room on any hotel, we walked around and a local guy pointed us to the local convent and surely enough, the nuns took us in, let us sleep on a nice room with beds for everyone and even offered us breakfast. My dad gave them a donation because he felt guilty receiving all that hospitality for free. We paid for worst places before. 10/10
In Europe it's kinda normal, but we've still pilgrim routes which have often such "Houses" on them in which you can stay for free and snack a little bit before you go on.
I actually slept in mosque quite a lot. Slept in a church once. And balinese temple a twice. The balinese temple experience is the worst since most really is not designed for it...hell quite a lot have no wall. I really do it only because of rain that won't stop.
@@MatheusVenti If you're on a Pilgrim, you don't have to be "religious". It isn't about "being religious", it's about "finding yourself", "making your head clear", "meet people in a way in which everybody has the same goal kinda", "helping each other" etc. Also, Buddhists, Mosques and most Churches - especially to their holidays - often give you free food / organize feasts. Outside of the USA, at least, its in Catholic and Evangelic Churches, moderate Mosques and Buddhists Temples primarly the "Community" itself which counts. An Iman of a Mosque near me actually fed some Schoolkids regularly because he saw that they hadn't any School Lunch nor buyed one. So he came and brought Sandwhiches and alike for the whole Class (So that he didn't shamed the two kids directly). No questions asked, no preaches.
Interestingly, in Gaelic Ireland there was a tradition where the local lords would have to provision and maintain at least one inn (Bruighen) in their territory, usually at some sort of crossroads. It was free to stay at and was a reflection of the hospitality of the local lord
I've also been told that hospitality overall was very important in Early Medieval Ireland. You could stay as a guest even in a regular household for three days, I believe.
@@pavelstaravoitau7106 hospitality was a huge deal in medieval Ireland, but maybe not in the sense that most people think of it. It was more of an obligation than a right, so it would usually take the form of a Lord imposing himself on his vassals to demonstrate authority rather than weary travellers being taken care of by the Lord.
I can top THAT: the Ottoman Sultan(?) would post government-run inns at one-day intervals along his country's stretch of the Sill Road, which were called "caravanserai." From dusk to dawn, if you stayed there, you were under the personal protection of the Sultan. In order to encourage trade further, instead of levying taxes on trade, the government sold insurance!
Shad: An entire room for a single bed? For a single patron? What a waste! You could fit up to 10 people in there! AIRLINES: " WRITE THAT DOWN WRITE THAT DOWN!"
They kind of do that with train compartments. But I'm expecting airplanes to end up with 4 long benches, with a walkway between two long benches, with the walkway small enough for your knees to touch the crotch of the people in front of you. And if they're at it, they might as well do without the above-head luggage storage, and have you hug your luggage instead, or place it under the seat. At least for ultra-economy seats.
@@SapioiT I've flown on C-141 cargo/troop transport planes and there is a row of bench seating along both sides of the cargo area. Sometimes they'll install regular seating in the front of cargo area for O6 and above officers. I was on one flight and a colonel and his family had regular seats and the rest of us sat on the bench seating next to the cargo, rank has its privileges.
So a lot of video games get inn design wrong, Starting with Dragon Quest to Elder Scrolls and everything else. Has there ever been a (video) game where the inns in a medieval setting had been done right?
Canonically, the Prancing Pony actually has separate buildings for the inn and eatery/alehouse. They’re just owned by a single person and treated as one business. Plus each “room” has enough room for many travelers. Paying for privacy (like many of the Rangers, Gandalf, Frodo and his friends, and other richer travelers) was also an important feature of his business appeal.
not to mention, the people seen in the prancing pony werent acctually comon townsfolk from bree, they were travelers aswell, a group of horseman from the north if im not mistaken, a few people who they were sharing acomodations with were spies from the enemy
Yep, I came here specifically to say this. The movie even shows the party sleeping (or not for Strider) in a different building than the bedroom assaulted by the wraiths.
@@grandadmiral_dk3424 most were travelers from the south. as well as a group of dwarves i believe. there were locals as well. Bree is a small town so meeting place for locals helps Butterbur make ends meet. Its established that while there is still traffic through Bree it had fallen off greatly over the years so having it also be an Ale House for locals would help him make ends meet.
interesting enough in reference to Shad the Lord of the Rings Bree chapter does start off with Sam asking if they should try to find lodging with one of the local hobbit families in Bree.
Focus on making quests more engaging in your next game. Talking to someone and then them telling you to talk to more people is why it's taking me so long to finish Kingdom come.
In my fantasy story, written over 10 years ago, the protagonist undertakes a long journey and his lodgings are varied. His budget is limited, so he sometimes stays with farmers, sometimes in monasteries, and occasionally has to shelter beside the road under a bush. Many of his lodgings, however, are arranged by the fact that his grandfather had been a well-connected military officer and wrote letters to his old war buddies who lived along his grandson's planned route. The protagonist would, on arriving in a town or village, ask the locals about the addressee of the letter, who would sometimes be there to give him lodging, but sometimes would have died or moved elsewhere.
I remember one time playing DnD our party entered a small village to wait for a few who fell behind. as to avoid getting split up any longer we were going to stay at the local inn to wait. When we asked the DM where the inn was he just went "There is no inn or tavern." This was followed by baffled silence to which he answered "They're broke I dunno what to tell you."
I was in a game that had a likewise problem caused by a pack of Hill Giants "passing through... and back." Needless to say, My Mountain Dwarf wanted to hunt the five surviving giants down. We did encounter a wounded one days later. One of my best double critical rolls ever. Knocked him out with a throwing mace in the first turn. Sure, he was already wounded in the foot from stepping on a cooking fire. Sure, I'd launched the last ranged attack behind an assassin's dart and a magic missile at second level. But I took it from half health to four points, and hit the nose! Then we charged him (wagon) and I leaped forth sword forward and finished the giant with a mighty prostate stab!! (Though that wasn't my target.) It squelched and kicked and gurgled dead. Then he crapped on my boots.
@@jacobhealy8376 yeah but if you use internet scenarios for a dm. Why even have a d&d session in the first place and get rid of the other characters with bots as well??
I feel like Shad's neighbours wouldn't be surprised if he erected siege artillery in his garden at one point. Or fought a small battle with others using real swords, shields and armour
Like one of them wakes up to the sound of bagpipes rolling over the list covered hills while the ground shakes from boulders landing nearby? Or maybe a "damnit, Shad, you've got to stop putting flaming arrows through my living room windows".
Well my neighbours have no issues with us pulling out the bows or any of the weapons we have in the house for training. In fact, the window cleaner is the only person who has ever done a double take when I was off work one day cleaning the swords and spears and didn't notice he was there.
Why'd you have to go and make things so complicated? I see the way you're acting like you're somebody else. Gets me frustrated. Just admit that you love the videos I make, my dear ej
In the case of the Prancing Pony, it might be quite deliberately modelled on English coaching inns built in Georgian times and still operating in Tolkien’s youth. After all, Bree quite literally was the border between a Shire modelled on late Victorian Warwickshire and the rest of post-apocalyptic Arnor.
I don't know much about the real-world time periods you mentioned (Georgian and Victorian), but Bree serving as a gateway between the posh, well-to-do Shire and the largely desolate lands that were Arnor is pretty spot-on.
@David Fellner The Shire may be well-to-do, but it's not posh, I wouldn't say. The Hobbits are your various types of yeomen- freemen of various stations in life and levels of possessions. Country stock, some of them squires and/or gentlemen. No lords or ladies that I could discern, anyway😁
@@rheinhartsilvento2576 Yea, established might be a better term. The only semi-posh ones are the Tooks and some other secondary families like the Brandybucks and maaaybe the families like the Baggins if we're stretching it a bit. And even the most aristocratic of them, the Tooks who have their own clan militia, are clearly more like yeomanry or gentlemen than actual nobility.
"Are you French?" At this point I was expecting to hear "your mother was a hamster, and your father smelled of elderberries. Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time"
I think Inns as we see them in D&D are a direct result of the existence of Adventurers as we see them in D&D. Adventures are largely a class separate from peasants, merchants, or nobles. Adventures have gold to burn, but are such a pain in the ass to deal with that no one wants them in their house.
It's also the fact that most fantasy worlds are unbelievably hostile to humans (if you calculate a death rate then most fantasy worlds need to have families with about 20-30 children just to sustain the population), and the ones in the greatest risk are the outlying villages, keeping a good inn and tavern to attract adventurers would most likely be the difference between life and death for the entire community.
How you deal with the openly ahistorical concept of adventuring bands is up to you as GM... If they existed and behaved as players do on average, fair enough, they might have trouble being let into town, let alone getting a place to sleep. But the crimes of other players, or even the same players in different worlds, need not follow your players. It might be merciful. For that matter, even if you have an adventuring party, doesn't mean adventuring parties are generally a thing. Middle Earth basically had one attested "D&D-style" adventuring party in its entire 6000 year history, so the dwarves and their burglar could potentially get away with a lot.
Hm that would be a good explanation as to why many of these inn's and Taverns are run by retired hardcore adventurers and their friends themself. Because they know exactly how that kind of people behave, what motivates them and of course how to deal with them if they start to make trouble xD
@@Mnnvint I think The Hobbit portrays "D&D style" adventuring parties as a bit more common than that, although perhaps still not common. Not only are 'burglars' a recognised role in a group, but the dwarves tell Bilbo that "some of them" prefer to be called 'expert treasure hunters' and there's a dedicated rune which you can write to advertise your services as a burglar. And the dwarves initially seem to assume Bilbo has made a career of being a burglar. While not something you'd find in every village, especially in the more "civilised" areas, they do seem to exist.
When you described how occupants would share beds and rooms, it made me think of the term "bedfellow," as in "Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows."
Tolkien notes how the Prancing Pony was so exceptionally nice and luxurious for an inn. It seems pretty basic by hotels standard, but was actually intended to be amazing for the era, and hence why it was so iconic for the Shire. Bree was a very wealthy town also, having an ale house - inn combo was unusual. Note this is a natural progression - the hotel became a public house and bar.
Now that is proper world-building - the inns and alehouses are there because there are the demand, and resources, and infrastructure for them. It's an organic evolution.
@@WiggaMachiavelli It was actually popular only with the hobbits who lived in the Buckland, east of the Brandywine River. Other hobbits (which was the majority of them) would not do something as outrageous as going outside the Shire into a human town. The Brandybuck clan members were just adventurous weirdos like that. The hobbit minority native to Bree doesn't count as they are not citizens of the Shire.
@@Ambar42 That's weird, because the German language seems to have a word for everything you can imagine. Backpfeifengesicht, for example (a face that needs to be punched). Just the other day I was talking with some co-workers, and one of them described something (I forget what) and asked if there was a word for it. I said the Germans probably have a word for it.
Of all the RPG tropes with inns, I think I find the "you stay at a church/whatever they call it in this setting to regain HP and save" even more than the boistrous tavern full of fun and music. and now I find out that is much more authentic, except not literally the same building/room as the pews and everything, but instead the monastery.. which makes total sense. those guys are already into communal living and caring for the poor, you're just making it more convenient by crashing with them.
@@KairuHakubi if the character is a paladin it makes much more sense for him to stay at a monastery where he can also pray, or a hospital where he can help the sick, rather than go to a decadent tavern.
Hallways are another modern invention. Four poster beds were intended to give your privacy in your own bed as servants walked through your bedroom when moving through the palace
Finally, someone explains why hospitals are called hospital when the word hospitable has a total different meaning and is not related to the sicks. Thank you Shad!
And if you actually knew how to use the Internet, you would have found this as early as 15 January 2005 on WIkipedia. And before that, these things made of paper called dictionaries held such information for the last 200 years. This world is really screwed.
@@tommissouri4871 and not everyone is as privileged as you to have so much free time to read through so many papers and Wikipedia as you have said. Thank you.
My Grandma told me stories of how they accepted soldiers on their way home from WWI into their home for the night since back then, the government brought them back to the east coast, gave them some travelling money and let them loose. Some soldiers preferred to make their way slowly back home, seeing the country.
My great-grandfather was homeless when he got back from WWI and flipped a coin to see if he would go east or west. He ended up in California and worked on the L.A. River when they paved it with concrete.
@@lizzy-wx4rx you are correct the (only 2 were alive I miscounted) but 2 were born before WW1 started, they would be well over 100. My parents are both over 60 so there is that too.
I live in Suffolk and I got talking to a Dutch cyclist 4 or 5 Summers ago who had been cycling around the west of England and was heading back home. He was looking for a hotel or hostel so I put him up for the night. He was a lovely chap and I had a great conversation with him that evening. I came down in the morning to find he'd already left and left a TY note with £20 to get myself a drink later. Two years ago I was up in the west of Scotland and asked somewhere where I could find a B&B and that person put me up for the night. This stuff still happens......
Among the cycling community I think they even have websites where you can register yourself as open to accommodating others. I had a friend who did this. Only once she did have me come hangout and spend the night. She said he made some comments about wanting to drink with her and she felt he assumed sex would be on the menu. He never pushed it when I was there. But that was one time out of a few.
I've had that happen to me as well! I was hiking through Scotland and on the way there I missed two ferries across the channel. Got chatting to a family who was crossing as well and they invited me to their home so I wouldn't have to find my way through London in the middle of the night. They were way too nice. Even let me stay another night so my voyage home would be less stressful. I will never forget that.
Thank you....this needs to be thumbed up more so it's at the top of the page. I really hate how the defaulte comment sorting is for "most popular" now instead of recent.
Having observed the open air sleeping (as opposed to in tents) of the Homeless Community, it is true that they perffer to sleep next to each other. When people lay out their bed role there is seperation, but as the night goes on, they move together. It is very often an unconscious choice.
The difference between an “inn” and a “pub” or tavern was explicit on British Maps of my youth….and may still be. An Inn to be called such had to offer accommodation to travellers and could continue to serve beer etc to “guests” AFTER legal “closing times” had closed pubs and taverns for the night. The Inn had to have at least 1 guest room but could, at closing time, just lock the outer door. In fact these we called lock ins.Of course.A grey area of the law appreciated by one and all.
Hell, communal sleeping happened into the 40s. My grandmother showed me where she grew up, and it was a house with one bedroom, two beds, a den, and a kitchen. The parents would sleep in one bed and ALL FIVE KIDS would sleep in the other. and both beds were bigger than a twin, I'll give it that, but not by much
Communal sleeping is still very common in poor countries. Slums where houses are basically 1 or 2 rooms that serves all needs communal sleeping is a must.
Luciano Alencar It’s certainly not unknown in expensive US cities like San Francisco, New York, Honolulu, Los Angeles etc. People will get a studio apartment & sleep 3,4 or 5 in the room. For poorer folks, it’s sometimes the only way to make ends meet.
Yep. just one of many problems in the modern day that were unheard of for the entire history of existence but now are unquestioned and unilaterally enforced on everyone despite it being utterly contrary to human nature.
Yeah, my mom was born in 1946, one of ten kids in a very poor rural family, and she remembers the farmhouse being basically one big open room, with only some curtains strung up to separate kids and parents. They'd get dressed next to the stove in the kitchen area, since they had power but no central heating (which existed but was hugely expensive). They had a shower but also an outhouse. The house was really just where you slept anyway, you did your chores and played and spent most your time outside.
The Canterbury Tales gives a little peak of what life was like back then. A group of strangers who gather together, all heading to the same location. It is unlikely that this group would have ever stayed in an Inn on the entire journey. It has probably been three decades since I last read that series of stories so please correct me if I'm wrong.
Look up Margery Kempe. She was a pilgrim for religious reasons, but there's a certain amount of entertainment involved. She wrote a book about her life. It's been years since I read it, but I think she annoyed one pilgrim group so much they went on without her, and her husband was very long-suffering. I remember getting a vivid picture of that really annoying person on your tour or bus or train who loves traveling, but has just one topic of conversation and is uncannily able to do what she wants regardless of custom or authorities. Which is a useful skill to have....
"Bless me Father for I have sinned...." "OK, your penance is to go on pilgrimage...." "Wow, this'll be like a holiday...:)" "...a pilgrimage with Margery Kempe." :(
@@superdave8248 So I met this dude, and I told him about this one time my buddy got a hot iron up his asshole, and we met another person who told me about the time they stayed over at some MILF's house and he totally tricked her into banging him. best holiday ever. Yeah, makes sense. Human nature does not change.
Bold and wise move Shad, I would walk away from the 2nd cousin, daughter, ex-wife, dagger hidden in pants person as well. Also I'm not staying in that castle or town, I'm sleeping in a tree.
Significant reason to combine the inn and the tavern in fantasy, especially RPGs, is that it cuts down on how many locations and characters you need to introduce and keep track off.
But Shad, your own video proves that the classic D&D fantasy tavern is accurate. You say that most travellers stay in the house of someone of similar social class. What social class exists in D&D but not in the real world? Adventurers! What do 90% of adventurers do when they retire? Run a tavern! The inn those players are staying at is actually just a house of another adventurer.
they retire from adventuring themselves but want to continue hearing the stories of adventurers, and what better way to hear a story than with a good drink
Heh, just like Lina Inverse's sister in the series Slayers. She was so powerful she was the first choice to save the world... but she replied that she's done with the big stuff and to just get her sister, Lina, instead (Lina is so powerful she can easily cast Dragon Slave, basically a nuclear-level spell, or rapid-fire Fireball spells. Said sister scares her so much that she rapidly made a pyramid then sunk it to hide from the LETTER from her sister telling her to help save the world.).
Also the extreme influx of adventurers that either die or get rich and ALL need lodgings means there's a definite market for it, so the inns and taverns with lodgings would spring up to accommodate that market!
@@bradmiller2329 Growing up in germany in the 80´s, if there was a big family gathering, say, grandma got 70, and all the aunts and uncles would meet and bring their kids, usually all the kids would get one room (basement, ususally) padded with matresses for the occasion, to sleep in, so we were kind of used to it even later, when visiting groups of friends, and such, or partying in shared flats. Being assigned a guest room still feels unusual to me.
Studying colonial American history, inns would put a couple of men* in each bed. Traveling companions or strangers? Who knew? These establishments would usually offer food and drink downstairs. * Female travelers? Protected by male family members, OK. Otherwise, be careful. The story of Tom Jones indicates what could go wrong...😎
So in South India, Especially in the state of Tamil Nadu, traditional houses had this raised verandah outside the house. Just an elevated structure flanking the main door to the house. In daytimes its used for socialising etc but in the night, any traveller through the village or town could stay in that place. It was so well used that what was originally just a stone slab like structure became very well polished by people constantly using it!
@@Arkylie Yeak, a lot of modern architecture is hostile - to human beings in general. But the way the homeless fit into society was also quite different from for ex the US today. I doubt a person would be allowed to stay in the verandah indefinitely .
I know for a fact I'm not the only one that feels like this but you sir make every Saturday morning a good Saturday morning. Thank you for everything that you do for your community
Hearing about Shad’s kids piling into the same bunk of a triple tier bunk bed is the cutest thing I’ve heard all week. You keep on being an awesome father Shad.
"Your religion requires you to house the poor, right?" "Well yeah, but-" "Great. Paladin, I'm giving you all my money. If you don't charitably give it back tomorrow morning I'll weld your armor shut."
@@LuckySketches Expecting the Paladin to go through with a scheme to skirt around laws and religious beliefs is like expecting a pig to fly. Next morning the church will have received a generous donation.
Alehouses and Inn's were sometimes connected, so they could share the kitchen ... kept the costs down, it did. Also, often Inns, and taverns for that matter would allow people to sleep on a mat in the common room, for a low price. And some small towns, could have an inn, if they were a high traffic intersection, to accommodate stage coaches, and messengers and so on.
As a DM with a big soft spot for historical precedent, I always try and keep fancy inns with one or two single person beds per room reserved for capitals and places where privacy is more valued. Most taverns i make i tend to give four beds per room simply due to modern mindsets, but when i wanna get deviously historical, i put four sets of three person beds in the room, one is empty, and one has a single occupant, so two unlucky SOBs have to spend the night with "Kessler the traveling Cobbler" who insist on making small talk about the other provinces of the empire, and asking general questions about the adventuring lifestyle.
@HelenaCross DnD groups usually include four or more players. The fact that he specifically mentioned that one bed was empty and another already had one person in it leads to the logical conclusion, that the remaining two beds are already filled. Given this scenario, there have to be five player characters which would result in two of them having to share a bed with "Kessler". TL;DR: Four beds with space for three each. Two beds fully occupied. One bed with one of its three spaces occupied. One bed empty. Five characters seeking a place to sleep. --> two of them have to share their bad with a stranger
@@DH-xw6jp i don´t see how the data is incomplete here. It´s 4 beds for 3 people each. One has 0/3, one has 1/3. The other 2 are not explicitly stated. But if they were not full, it would not be necessary for 2 of the travel group to share a bed with "Kessler", unless ofcourse the group is larger that 5, namely 8 or 11 people. It is a fair assumption that the not mentioned beds would be 3/3, because it makes sense for an innkeeper to fill one bed before renting out the next (from an economical standpoint).
There's a famous story about King Alfred fleeing the Danes after the battle of Chippenham in 878 and staying in a peasant's house without telling her who he was (probably so she wouldn't be tempted to turn him over to the Danes for a reward). She gave him a piece of her mind when he carelessly let some cakes burn that she'd left him to watch. Even if the story is made up, I think it does show how normal it was for travelers to stay in peasant's houses back then.
The party must find a place to spend the night. Why do I feel like there'd be a sign at the castle gate of a village without an inn saying "No lepers, no blades longer than a hand AND NO BARDS!"
@@1Maklak Played in a group whose party was like that. One of us eventually came upon an item that turned into a Keep when the enchantment was activated.
@@mothafraker There are multiple utility spells for that: create food and water, rope trick, little hut, all the way up to one-use mansion with invisible servants.
In Ancient Greece they had the law of Xenia, where you had to provide hospitality to any traveler and/or guest who humbly presented themselves to you, or face the wrath of Zeus. Also you couldn’t steal from your host, or else face the wrath of Zeus.
I've read one of the reasons for this custom was the belief that the gods used to travel incognito, and that any guest you refused hospitality to might be Zeus Himself....
In the D&D campaign I’m running, the players are currently in a town called Vestia, which has a population of around 2000 people. It’s not common for people to go there or go through there on their way to someplace else (essentially, it was at the end of a dead-end road), so though there are several taverns, I decided to have no inns there. Any merchants and such who came would typically stay with family or somebody else they knew when in Vestia. The town does have a castle in the center (with its own walls around it), but it’s been converted into a school for magic, though the leader of the town is still stationed there. As part of that conversion, they switched to keeping any prisoners in gatehouses instead (the town has walls to protect it from the many fey nearby). They converted the dungeon rooms into places for more important visitors to stay in, and the party is currently occupying two of those rooms. I suppose it would have been more historically accurate if I hadn’t made it be three single beds in each room, but I’m glad to know that many of the other aspects of what I’ve done are supported by history!
If you are looking for a meeting place the local ale house is still an option (you just can't sleep there afterwards). If you want it more relaxing you could also choose the local bathhouse (usually found at the backside of your local bakery), also useful if you want to make sure no one brings hidden daggers.
You meet at a Dwarf's House just outside of town. He is retired from Adventuring and the Mercenary Life. At his door you find a passed out Goblin, a stoned halfling, and a Gnome with a hangover.
Here's something interesting I learned about Shad's point about people staying in stranger's homes. Although note this happened in the Renaissance so not precisely medieval but still relevant. There's a story about Leonardo da Vinci on how he found his model for Jesus in the Last Supper. In a quest to find a model, Leonardo decided to hang out in the local market and search for faces. Eventually, he found a potential person for it. So he approached the man and picked up a conversation. Leo didn't tell him he was considering this guy for a painting (he wanted to examine his face under normal circumstances) so he just kept things basic and friendly. The two talked for some time until the male invited Leo over dinner and to say the night, which of course he accepted. I've always found this interesting because you would never see this happened today. At least in most places. Inviting a person into your home THE DAY you met them for DINNER and staying the night is so unheard of. Maybe Leonardo's fame played a role in that (it's unknown to me if the guy knew of him or not) but still, this really tells you how different standards are from yesteryear.
I agree. We tend to judge the pass with current perception/value too quickly. We need to take as much circumstances into consideration, even minor one. People now tend to judge without putting foot into other's shoe.
we wouldnt do this today because the gross descrepancy of wealth today is spread closer to home. you are more likely to live next to someone of significant wealth difference today then probably any time in history. this has led to great mistrust added to millions of people interacting in very small areas. the chances of meeting a theif today during the day everywhere are greater then ever before due to condensed and diverse living and working zones
It's not that uncommon among young people. If you host a party/afterparty, the understanding is usually that at least some people will stay the night, even if you only just met them
Always been fascinated by Inns and Taverns within medieval fantasy, just found them so interesting as a general concept, a place of socialising, travellers etc. Fantastic video!
Reminds me of levying your personal retinue and those of your vassals and you all park on one county in crusader kings... *Supply limit: 6k* *Total troops in county: 16871.7 (how the hell can you have .7 of a man?)* *Total monthly attrition: 17.90%* Fuck
similar to a practise in thailand. Refusing to look after a white elephant was an offense that carried the death penalty, but looking after a white elephant would bankrupt you.
In a low-fantasy story I'm writing, there is a seasonal village for explorers of these supernatural caves. In this village, there is a fortified longhouse that, during the day, provides food and a communal cooking space. At night, everyone who can't afford or find a bed elsewhere pushes the tables against the walls and sleeps on the floor or tables. It's thanks to videos like yours that I've been able to get good information about how these sorts of living arrangements worked in real life.
yeah. shads discussion was a bit odd in that. "inns with taverns." well, no, they are usually taverns.. with rooms for rent. its the other way around. now, I have no idea if that was much of a thing.. but it lines up with the initial premise. A traveler would make a deal with a local trader, etc, to stay in their home.
I’ve been worldbuilding for several years now, a world I’m very invested in, with characters, concepts, geography and stories I’m in love with, and your videos REALLY have helped me so much with all the minor details to really give my world a realistic setting. I know that might not sound like that big a deal but your videos really mean a lot to me, I love who you are and what you do. You’re also SO entertaining. Thank you so much Shad
I think a lot are based on a fondness for Tolkien who is intentionally writing either a kids story or an epic based on anglo Saxon folklore. Thus the folklore / fantasyness is carried through and imprinted on modern writers.
Yeah, beds (or at least multiple beds, and living space in general) has long been more of a luxury for almost all of history. Just looking back to the homes I've seen from the pioneers coming to Utah, so many of those feel SMALL and cramped. No way they were fitting several rooms with beds for people to spread out. Many people couldn't afford to make big, nice houses (sure, some could, but exceptions are called such for a reason). Heck, some I still wonder how they had any kind of bed at all!
When you really break down medieval fantasy you realize that it is only aesthetically based on the medieval age when you start to look at details like this you realize that other than the technology level it's almost entirely based on/in colonial times in Europe and early America.
Well much of it isn't medieval fantasy, but more Renaissance fantasy. People just like to simplify it to medieval, even if the author straight up says they take more influence from the European Renaissance Era. Part of the reductionism of book genres.
the problem is not just period but locale. I'm a colonial America 'enthusiast' ... with family ties to pretty interesting events... my father's family was here in Calhoun County Alabama before it was legal for British subjects to 'settle' here. ;) they were Daniel Boone before Mr Boone was even born. ;) so some folks' ideas of 'where the wilderness was' and 'There Be Nothing But Indians Out There!' is incorrect by even modern historians' standards. the corner public-house where Shad keeps saying pub or tavern is a late LATE 1700's into the Victorian era London and English city/towns business. the Victorian Era joke goes, 'You can't swing a dead cat in London without hitting a public-house.' if it was 'zoned commercial' somebody tried to run a public-house on that street-corner.
Imo D&D style fantasy has a lot of influences from Wild West movies. The whole traveling hero that saves the innocent towns people is not really a medieval Europe thing. But even when we think medieval times, we often forget that nearly 1k years (roughly from 6th century to 15th century) is not the same as a decade and that nothing stayed the same over such a long time period. Without a clear reference of time and place, we probably just mix up late medieval times with early modern times and call it „historic“ enough for fantasy.
David Gantenbein I read a lot of manga and many of the settings in the fantasy stories are early renaissance with a few being a mix of roman era and stereotypical medieval Europe with the odd region being edo period Japan
This concept of sharing a bed offers a lot of opportunities for D&D... who might you be sharing a bed with? Is it thieves? Assasins? A creep? Someone who has news related to the story? Just some ordinary a hole? I like it... adds tension to what is normally a moment of calm. Would take some figuring to work out how much a private room would cost...
maybe the bed is a mimic ;) (would sleeping in the same bed with certain characters give buffs, stat boosts, debuffs,...? I've never played D&D, btw, but I played a many RPGs... jrpgs, mostly, lol)
this is the reason, why black forest farmsteads where these huge buildings with everything under one roof, and the family sleeping in one room above the stables: The cows would provide extra warmth, and you could hear through the floorboards if a cow (your most valuable posession) got problems. I once stayed in a very old farm for a couple nights, and it had 1 oven, in the kitchen, and the beds were upstairs. All 7 of us slept in one room, and boy, were we glad we were close together, because it was like 7°C at night.
This. My buddy’s dad died and his mom left to go live with her mom. He was 15 at the time, I was 17. He just stayed at the house but the power and everything got cut off. We were a bunch of dirty skateboard kids so we would all go to the house to party, and would all sleep in the same bed. Had to stay warm. It was a king or something so there’d be like 4-5 of us in it. They were good times, but looking back so fucked up at the same time.
Considering sleeping wit strangers in one large bed: This is basically the way it is still done today when you are hiking and sleeping at a hut in the mountains, at least in the alps where I live. At the most basic price you don't get a room or a single bed for yourself, especially if the hut is in a very secluded place with limited space and where it is difficult to transport materials for constructing beds. Instead of a bed for yourself, you often get a place in a bed camp, which basically is a portion of the floor which is a bit elevated and then padded wit a large mattress, often reaching from one end of the room to the other. On one hand this saves you a lot of time, money and work for transporting wood for the bed construction to the hut, on the other hand it is far better to accomodate more people if needed. If a thunder storm starts and the hut spontaniously has to accommodate more people, everyone just moves a bit closer together. So on the same space that could accommodate maybe six or seven people in single beds, you very liekly can accommodate 10-12 people in this communal bed.
It's basically the same situation in the Appalachian Mountiains/Trail... and most of the towns that are along the route, since it's such a commonly-hiked trail in America, have a large number of hostels and even just regular people that let hikers stay in their homes for a night... but mountain-traveling-culture has always been somewhat rooted in the understanding that traveling is freakin' hard and everyone just wants a warm dry place to sleep haha
Yes! I often go hiking in the french mountains during summer holidays, and the "refuges" we sleep in are exactly what's described here. Most of the time you can have a single bed with someone above/bellow and many others in same room, but some of them still have the huge beds where you basically sleep right next to a stranger. That's in my opinion something everyone should do at least once in one's life to understand today's modern life is just one glimpse in history, and the relativity of what's "normal" and what's not.
I can totally imagine an ale house answering like this: you can stay the night at the fire place. Here's some hay and a blanket. Well wake you before we open, then you need to leave.
@@mixter1257 Even further; in RPGs where I am grinding in a certain region, I basically am literally just busking by being the unofficially hired monster exterminator. I am essentially an indirectly contracted worker and I pay taxes by going to the inn/local potion shop or whatever My gad...
Another thing to add to about multiple beds per room is even if you were royal or noble, you'd have some sort of entourage with you of servants and possibly guards, who would be sharing the room, too. So even they wouldn't be sleeping alone even with the money to do so.
I think the main reason why single beds in a single room idea is so popular among the roleplaying community is because most of the players are murder hobos who then project that everyone else is also a murder hobo just waiting for them to fall asleep so that they can murder them and even worse - steal the loot they stole from other people.
Oi...my first experience with D&D 5e had one of them guys..a nice table top shop I found does free teaching games for 5e, same plot every time to make it easy if someone has to take over as GM because the person that night couldn't come in. Anyway one of the players was just itching to kill..like it was bonkers..we had to infiltrate a crew to take a job for a local crime lord Beholder and we could get rid of the competition any way we wanted..one of them was a girl who was in it for the money so she could give it to the orphanage she was raised in so my idea..as a rouge, and a Tiefling one at that..was to pool our gold together and give her enough to leave the job..and what does this nut job do? He threatens her with burning down the orphanage with everyone inside, cause he's a spellcaster with a fire spell so of course he wants to burn something...and after an effort by the other sane members of the crew..of which there were only two out of a group of 5..so me and two others..who I had to convince..we left her with the gold and crying before she ran inside because the nutso burns a tree in the front of the orphanage to ash before we leave..that little side venture got me the nickname "Hellboy" by the whole group..especially because as we were leaving I had my character apologize for my rather insane trigger happy comrade.
@@ShinKyuubi Nah, that's not a muder hobbo. That could just be roleplaying a psycho. Murder hobbos are only in it for the loot and xp. Unprovoked robbery and murder of everyone and anyone.
@@Shenordak Ah, see I have interest in TTRPGs but only one place I can go as where I live not many people are into them..or if they are they already have their own groups and don't talk to many outside them. With the lockdowns and everything I couldn't go to the table top shop for quite some time and I don't know if they picked up their campaign they had going..they have the teaching game but also a long on going campaign that is kinda hard to slip into cause it's usually packed full already.
@@ShinKyuubi Murderhobo identifies a type of character who could not really exist in the real (or fantasy) world, even if they were a sociopath with no feelings for other people. It's usually the result of the players not understanding roleplaying at all, and only going by hard data available to them in the rulebook and on their character sheets. They don't care about being good or evil or anything in between, they see that killing things gives them XP, so they kill things. It's like playing a video game with someone who doesn't care about the plot at all. Even sociopaths have a goal, something to strive towards. Murderhobos just want more gold and XP, and have no long term plans at all other than watching numbers on their character sheet get bigger. The closest character I can think of that fits the archetype is Lina from Slayers (an anime from the 90's which does not take itself seriously at all), but even she is much more fleshed out than the typical murderhobo, and she doesn't kill everything she sees. She just doesn't care about collateral damage.
@@gamermanzeake I actually got the 'rona and one of my friends grandma died from it. It's slowly burning through rural communities here, killing the elderly.
@@gamermanzeake I know what you mean, I live in NYC and I only know one person who caught it , she was fine in a few days and said it was like a mild flu. Seems to me like it's more about control than safety. After all the average survival rate is 98.5%.
@@korbetthein3072 So is the flu. And heart disease... and cancer. The elderly die. Its natural. We shouldn't lose our rights because they MIGHT die sooner than they would have.
@@Ash2Flame116 Actually it was milk, crackers, and pork. They were just a place for resting, eating, drinking, and getting out of the rain reguardless of age or class.
Fun fact: the first European hospital (in the modern sense) was the Hotel-Dieu, in Lyon, but there have been nosocomiums in places like Rome and Cesarea. Would love to see a video on the history of medicine (including human dissections if possible)
In a fantasy setting where treasure-hunters and adventurers are common I think inns would be a lot more common than they were in real history. I also don't imagine that treasure-hunters and adventurers would be very welcome as guests in houses.
Depends on how realistic you wanna make it. You could also go the rout of some inns being more geared towards adventurers (having healing/mana potions available, weapon sharpeners, black market guy hanging in the back alley, etc), while others "just don't want any trouble" and turn them away. Possibilities...
Incidentally, there IS a part of history where treasure hunters and adventurers were at least more common than any other time. In the generation or two following the Bronze Age Collapse, with many cities closer to seas having been fully abandoned (and usually fairly burnt down by the Sea Warriors or each other), and the loss of the comparatively advanced technology of the Bronze Age at its final heights, there were no doubt individuals who braved the lower lands to scour the ruins of the bronze age for valuables (including, yes, bronze things). Lost, abandoned, ruined remnants from a past civilization? All the excuse an adventurer needs to seek out wealth and maybe occasionally glory? Check.
Fantasy in many cases depicts a world with more "exotic" dangers, like orc clans, dragons and such. Which also explains why weapons are much more common. And not the woodsman's axe or the multifuctional knife. So a world with much more armed people running around would give a good reason to also have more inns where you leave the weapon while in town.
A weary traveler stops in at a monastery in the early afternoon, asking for shelter. Since this is early in the day and the man doesn't seem too haggard, the monks agree, on the condition that he helps cook dinner. As the man enters the kitchen, he sees one of the monks with a bowl of cut potatoes slowly being deep fried in a splattering pot of oil. Being as he's a smartass, the traveler says to the monk, "so, are you *the friar*?" and smirked at the pun he just made. The monk, also a bit of a smartass, counters, "No. I'm the *chip monk.*"
Potatoes weren't introduced to Europe untill about 1540 and wouldn't have been widespread until about 1600, it would have even been later than that before it would be expected to be a common meal in a monastery.
As a standup comedian in Europe, it's actually quite common for us to bring in other standups for the night, even if we don't know them well. We joke around and gossip, and it helps build relationships in the community and for our careers.
As some people have pointed out, inns were often separated by sex. Imagine playing a warforged in that scenario. "Are you a man or a woman?" "I'm a construct." "Yeah but what's in your pants?" "Magic."
Many UK castles and stately homes have a King's/Queen's room which the monarch never used - but you could never not have one just in case - several built an entire new wing when the monarch did descend on them, as they brought the entire court with them, usually swamping the household, and often significantly increasing the local population while they stayed, sometimes overnight, but sometimes for months ...
Sounds like your typical house project: Get a conservatory built, or set up a room for guests or as a workout environment, but then it never gets used.
Hearing your explanation about hospitals: Looks like us German speakers have it more accurate. Cause hospital is Krankenhaus in German, which is literally translated to house of the sick. Though usually people say Spital, at least here in Switzerland.
Interestingly, hospitals were often outside city walls. They were sometimes the only accommodation for travelers arriving after the closing of the gates. Or for people who could not find accommodation within the city walls before the gates were closed, because if found by the night guard and could not name their accommodation, they would get arrested.
Another reason people tended to sleep communally back then was, they didn't have central heating and they needed to keep warm through the night somehow.
Makes sense, yet a lot of video games set in medieval setting seems apply more or less modern ways of doing things, especially with inns, from Dragon Quest to Elder Scrolls and everything in between. No one seems to know how they should be like or haven't consulted historians, both even.
To be honest, I thought most inns would operate by having a large communal room with a fireplace, and people sleeping around the fireplace, not in separate rooms. Though maybe it was more of an early-medieval thing, and communal bedrooms more of a late-medieval concept? Dunno.
@@Tennouseijin That fire will go out if someone's not tending it all night. It's just more efficient in those low-tech settings to let people keep each other warm by sharing body heat.
That was actually a pretty common thing over the years. Boarding houses, where people would stop for a meal and lodging for the night, just like a tavern or inn. Even, places like block houses/taverns in the early American Colonial era.
There was the freeman and the bondman. The bondman was a man bound by his vow to his lord, until the lord releases him from it, to serve his lord. In exchange, he got to rent land to live on, farm on, and perhaps do a trade on. The freeman was a man who rented land from his lord but did not have any duty to serve him. He just paid rent in either wheat after harvest or in coin.
Some 25 years ago my grandpa heard that some travelling workers were "housed" with a neighbor some 4 houses away in our village. They were sleeping in the barn, on hay. We had plenty of free rooms, so my grandpa offered to house them for their remaining days. I was very young and found that very weird. Didn't think how normal this used to be
I love both how educated shad is on these topics, but also how very passionate he is. At times, he trips over his words or speaks very quickly, not because he's a poor speaker (He's quite great actually!) but because he's so excited to say things, because they're so interesting and enjoyable to him it picks his pace up like a nice tune puts pep in your step. He knows things because he independently studies, he accepts the efforts of his peers and colleagues, and actively tests and innovates in both accurate and fun 'what if' ways, and brings a great amount of fun to education. Media might portray the middle ages as grey and dirty, when in reality it was as bright and colorful and exciting as the energy this man brings to his videos, which is why I've been a subscriber for years. if you see this, thanks for all the hard work you put in to such a great show, Shad! Maybe next time you can tell us more about the world in your book, and how certain real life elements inspired it or how you kept fantasy elements based in reality for a more immersive experience; sort of like your castle tours!
Speaking of staying in strangers houses, when I was a kid/teenager I would go "camping" in this isolated beach (i lived in an island in southeast Brazil) only accessible by boat or a 3h hiking. I say "camping" because I didn't exactly camp. I would ask around if I could say in someone's home. I would usually sleep in a hammock, a pile of fish nets or, more often, in a canoe. I would earn my keep by sharing food they usually wouldn't have around, because they were generally poor. I would specially bring treats for the kids, who truly loved me for that and coffee for the grown ups (who otherwise couldn't afford the luxury of drinking strong coffee that we are accustomed here) and booze, typically bad cheap wine. There were quite a few of these isolated communities in the island and it was always great to get to know those folks a little bit more up close and personal. But all that is gone now. From what I gather, the place now has hostels, wifi and all that. Turism is a bit more developed and I don't think they would host me the way they used to. I mean, they wouldn't do it for free.
I also live in southeast of Brazil. My family is from PR and I'm at this moment living in SC. At some point of my father's life, he worked in this isolated city, where they did exactly what you described. And as far as I know, they are still a pretty isolated place with not even wi-fi. They have to call for boats all day to bring goods for they citizens, and only a few really live there. You lost your place back then, but I can assure you that there are still a lot others for you to find. =)
I just love how thanks to this video I understqand how accurated is the serie Spice and Wolf about medieval things, they sstay in a monastery during a storm and use this as an opportunity to get information and even work, they stay in an Inn but the food is buyed outside, they actually go to Ale hpuses and tavern, and even buy some food in the central market! amazing
@@arnvonsalzburg5033 Spice and Wolf is a great series, you should definitely check it out! It's about a traveling merchant who meets a wolf spirit/goddess, and they travel the land together not only for his business, but to get her back home as well.
I'm re-reading the fantasy series The Deed of Paksenarrion, and in the second book she goes to an inn that has different accommodations based on how much you're willing to pay: a silver piece for the common loft, a gold for a private room, and two golds for a suite. Having just obtained a lot of treasure, she can afford a private room. Breakfast is included, but stabling and care for horses is extra.
I love Paks! That series really goes into details I would never have thought of. The military stuff in the first part kinda put me to sleep, but I'm glad I powered through to read the rest because it became my favorite adult fantasy series of all time. And I adore Master Oakhallow -- so much wisdom, so much patience, with just an edge of danger to keep you on your toes. I love how even in her worst state, Paks was able to trust him and be nursed back to health -- physically, psychologically, and even spiritually.
@@Arkylie It's my favorite written fantasy trilogy too, and like you, I found some of the military stuff in the beginning boring the first time. The chapters in Oath when Oakhallow heals Paks are my favorite part of the series. However, Oath also contains the only scene in any book that ever gave me nightmares. You know the part. I did not like the sequel series Paladin's Legacy at all and would never re-read it. But that doesn't keep me from loving Deed, so that's as far as the series goes for me.
I work at a hospital. 67% of our patients pay more than they probably should, because the other 33%, who often need the most care, and the most expensive care, pay nothing at all. If you want to argue that those who can't afford medical care should be turned away at the door, feel free to do so. Until then, hospitals are extremely expensive. If you want them to exist at all, someone is going to have to pay for them.
@@MazrimTaim How do you define "The medieval Catholic Church?" Wealth attracts the unscrupulous, but it's difficult to imagine large numbers of extremely corrupts abbeys, monasteries, hospitals, and chapels. The medieval Catholic Church was a theocratic government, and as corrupt as all governments are, but like most governments, only a very, very few working within the government got wealthy be doing so, legally or illegally.
Apart of the "cliche" aspect, I think is for the simplification and "economy" in the fantasy' stories: it's easier to mix inn + tavern in a single building than make the story happen in the tavern and then going to the inn to sleep. Something similar to how the story rarely explains the maintenance of the weapons except if adds something (a moment of calm, to give to the characters something to do) to the narration. Nonetheless, great information as always Shad.
It also means less work for the game master. And this is also true for computer games. Further simplification can be done as in Bauldur's Gate where several merchants shared their inventory.
That, and the ubiquity of them makes sense because the party needs a place to sleep in whatever towns and villages they might happen to end up in for the night. Or longer. I imagine most GMs would probably rather put them up in an inn than put up the whole party in somebody's house, make a hospital, or have them camp out somewhere.
@@andymac4883 Yeah, just kind of ruins the immersion where the party stays in an inn at the ass end of nowhere. At a crossroads? Makes sense. Site of a holy relic? Sure. Bordering a swamp 3 days journey from civilization? It's probably a trap. If it's not a trap, it's just silly.
Shad is overstating the case here. It wasn't entirely uncommon for inns to be drinking and eating establishments, either because some settlements could not support separate establishments, or in some cases like the Borough of Southwark where legal privileges encouraged the growth of a vice district. The Tabard, the inn the pilgrims stayed at in The Canterbury Tales, was in fact one of these establishments in Southwark.
Another cliche aspect is how every wood worker is called a carpenter. Carpentry is an extraordinary and specific craft for making wooden building parts. Other types of wood workers were turners, coopers, wheelwrights, cabinet makers, etc
It's interesting, until recently, early 20th century it was common in America to let strangers stay in your house or barn. For the simple reason you couldn't leave someone out in the wilderness and there wasn't anywhere else to go.
Hospitality is a virtue of cultures around the globe. For many cultures, since you may not able to identify the King or lord or mythical or religious figure, you would want to treat a guest with greater honor than a member of the house. It's reflected in myths from divers as scandinavia, Japan, the middle east and Meso America. However you wouldn't have the need for the myths exhorting hospitality if it was something humans did naturally.
It used to be the same in Scotland up until Victorian times, you didn’t turn away someone seeking shelter and in turn they could do you no harm while under your hospitality. It’s how the glencoe massacre happened - nobody expected to be betrayed mid-winter while hosting.
I can imagine a scene in DND: the travellers pay for a night at the inn, and one of them lays down in his bed. out of the darkness, a voice next to him: "hey, how's it going?"
Or have the innkeeper say "you're lucky, we have $partySize spaces left!" then the party gets to the room and it's just one large bed they have to sleep together in.
In rural Germany, Inns had additional tasks, for example they would keep records of the people that stayed there and had to report these to the local Lord. If it was a remote village, the innkeeper would also often serve as a kind of local authority, and decide minor quarrels of the village if the next court-day when the Lord visited would only be in a long time. In these cases, the Inn would often be the place where court would be held.
Very interesting. This type of post is what makes this part of youtube great. Thanks for taking the time to write it 👍
Interessant
@@robinrehlinghaus1944 You do know that, even while being able to speak French, i was reading [ And thinking ] like this.
*-"Intirrestante"* , wait , what?! [ Then, i get it , it's in French. ] And dont worry i bichslapped myself three times for this...
@@sleipnirodin2881 "interessant" is also simply the German translation of "interesting", and given Robin's name, that's probably the more likely language being used ^^
schultze?
Fun fact, quite a few cities tried to fend off their travelling king. Charles the 5th subjects in Flanders once spread a rumour the plague was in town to make sure he would not visit, because the cities could not bear the coasts of the king staying over for a prolonged period of time.
"Aw drat, the fatass is back. JOACHIM, BRING OUT THE LEPERS!"
That's amazing 😂!
Imagine being so unbearable people pretend they're sick to keep you away.
@@Vedlom "Lord Fat Ass approaches sir!" Lolololol! I laughed so hard at that I scared my pet rabbits.
@@Vedlom I just pictures a bunch of decrepit half-rotting fellows shuffling out of the hospital to dance to thriller.
Staying with people also partially explains the penchant for scaring and maiming as punishment. If thieves get their ears cut off or a T branded on their faces, it effectively bars them from finding accommodations. This is another role playing possibility. What if the fighter gets a facial scar and suddenly everyone thinks he's a criminal. Or what if the thief gets caught and the local lord threatens to brand him unless the party does a quest.
Exactly to avoid possibility to mistake brave warrior for a criminal scaring was very specific. It was not just "cut of nose of ear". It was kinda tearing of parts of nose.
If being a warrior is your job you probably do have some riches that could be used in such situations
Well there is a historical court record of a englishman requesting, to a doctor, a letter to prove it to have lost his ear to an accident. In fact, that doctor had it cut because of infection after the accident, so he was a valid witness.
The doctor presented the letter to the court to receive the lord's seal, so it would be legally accepted everywhere, than we have this record today.
I think it was around 1300 to 1350 or so.
@@carloshenriquezimmer7543 huh, that's pretty cool
That's an awesome plot element! I'll remember it for future projects.
I remember an anecdote of a traveler in Norway in somewhere in 18th century who planned only to stay one night at a remote farm before wanting to cross a glacier, quite late in the year. But then the weather turned and he had to decide to stay there the entire winter. So he just stayed with that family for 6 months and nobody seemed to make a big deal out of it. It's really interesting how welcoming strangers in your home was such an essential part of society and culture in the olden days.
MAKE NO MISTAKE, HE WASNT THE DUDE ON THE COACH LIKE PPL DO TODAY! HE WAS CUTTING WOOD, HUNTING, FIXING FENCES, FIXING ROOF,
ETC. ETC. ETC.
HE PUT WORK IN THE WHOLE TIME. EVERYONE DID; OR YOU DIDN'T SURVIVE.
@@nodruj8681 raaaaciiiism!!!!
It was a little different when you were basically only in the home to eat the evening meal and sleep. It wouldn't have felt like someone was imposing on your privacy as much as today. Having a guest was essentially like having an extra farmhand.
@@YELLTELLdude why are you preaching in caps
@@YELLTELLit's just like going to a monastery, they give you shelter but you have to work
In certain areas of Russia, inns were basically a particularly large house "owned" by a family, who sold the dining room of their home to be slept in. And if people wanted to pay extra, they they could sleep in the beds and bedrooms of one of the family members, who would sleep in the dining room instead.
Their was also things called slop houses in certain port villages, where a tavern would buy/build out a few sheds nearby for people to walk to after drinking to sleep in, and these sheds were often split up and had multiple large beds as well.
All in all, people got pretty creative when it came to providing accommodation for travelers, and loved to reward patrons for telling stories. This idea of telling stories in return for accommodation was likely where the idea of the travel bard came in, and there were even lots of norse myths focused around the telling of these stories, which is part of the reason why there are so many records of their heroes and their glory in combat.
Kinda like a makeshift bed and breakfast
Gonna try the storytelling at a Hinton's once the pandemic is over.
Imagine having to wait until a man named Netflix came travelling into your town so he could tell you stories in bed.
Sharing a house sounds like the family get-togethers of my childhood, except no money exchanged hands. If you (as a child or teenager) were the only visitor, you'd get a bed. If Great-auntie arrived for a visit, she'd get the bed and you'd be given a blanket and the living-room sofa. If half a dozen cousins were there, you'd probably all be sent out to sleep together in a tent out back, while the older relatives got the beds, sofas, and carpeted floors indoors.
I experienced the monastery thing in the modern days.
We were travelling across the country by car, around 3000 km, and we reached a city up north at a very unfortunate time, there was a local event going on and there was no room on any hotel, we walked around and a local guy pointed us to the local convent and surely enough, the nuns took us in, let us sleep on a nice room with beds for everyone and even offered us breakfast. My dad gave them a donation because he felt guilty receiving all that hospitality for free.
We paid for worst places before.
10/10
Amazing story
In Europe it's kinda normal, but we've still pilgrim routes which have often such "Houses" on them in which you can stay for free and snack a little bit before you go on.
I actually slept in mosque quite a lot. Slept in a church once. And balinese temple a twice.
The balinese temple experience is the worst since most really is not designed for it...hell quite a lot have no wall. I really do it only because of rain that won't stop.
I am totally not a religious person and still would be very pleased for a experience like that!
@@MatheusVenti If you're on a Pilgrim, you don't have to be "religious".
It isn't about "being religious", it's about "finding yourself", "making your head clear", "meet people in a way in which everybody has the same goal kinda", "helping each other" etc.
Also, Buddhists, Mosques and most Churches - especially to their holidays - often give you free food / organize feasts.
Outside of the USA, at least, its in Catholic and Evangelic Churches, moderate Mosques and Buddhists Temples primarly the "Community" itself which counts.
An Iman of a Mosque near me actually fed some Schoolkids regularly because he saw that they hadn't any School Lunch nor buyed one. So he came and brought Sandwhiches and alike for the whole Class (So that he didn't shamed the two kids directly).
No questions asked, no preaches.
Interestingly, in Gaelic Ireland there was a tradition where the local lords would have to provision and maintain at least one inn (Bruighen) in their territory, usually at some sort of crossroads. It was free to stay at and was a reflection of the hospitality of the local lord
Source?
@@GnarledStaff trust me bro
I've also been told that hospitality overall was very important in Early Medieval Ireland. You could stay as a guest even in a regular household for three days, I believe.
@@pavelstaravoitau7106 hospitality was a huge deal in medieval Ireland, but maybe not in the sense that most people think of it. It was more of an obligation than a right, so it would usually take the form of a Lord imposing himself on his vassals to demonstrate authority rather than weary travellers being taken care of by the Lord.
I can top THAT: the Ottoman Sultan(?) would post government-run inns at one-day intervals along his country's stretch of the Sill Road, which were called "caravanserai." From dusk to dawn, if you stayed there, you were under the personal protection of the Sultan. In order to encourage trade further, instead of levying taxes on trade, the government sold insurance!
Shad really knows the Inns and outs of medieval hospitality :-)
It's very innteresting, no doubt
@@allenwilhelm7799 Inntruiging, so to speak.
Quite innteligent humor there
Go get your coat
No! Stop that! Shame on all of you!
Shad: An entire room for a single bed? For a single patron? What a waste! You could fit up to 10 people in there!
AIRLINES: " WRITE THAT DOWN WRITE THAT DOWN!"
They kind of do that with train compartments. But I'm expecting airplanes to end up with 4 long benches, with a walkway between two long benches, with the walkway small enough for your knees to touch the crotch of the people in front of you. And if they're at it, they might as well do without the above-head luggage storage, and have you hug your luggage instead, or place it under the seat. At least for ultra-economy seats.
lol
Going to conventions be like "how many people can we stuff in one hotel room?"
@@SapioiT I've flown on C-141 cargo/troop transport planes and there is a row of bench seating along both sides of the cargo area. Sometimes they'll install regular seating in the front of cargo area for O6 and above officers. I was on one flight and a colonel and his family had regular seats and the rest of us sat on the bench seating next to the cargo, rank has its privileges.
So a lot of video games get inn design wrong, Starting with Dragon Quest to Elder Scrolls and everything else. Has there ever been a (video) game where the inns in a medieval setting had been done right?
Canonically, the Prancing Pony actually has separate buildings for the inn and eatery/alehouse. They’re just owned by a single person and treated as one business. Plus each “room” has enough room for many travelers. Paying for privacy (like many of the Rangers, Gandalf, Frodo and his friends, and other richer travelers) was also an important feature of his business appeal.
not to mention, the people seen in the prancing pony werent acctually comon townsfolk from bree, they were travelers aswell, a group of horseman from the north if im not mistaken, a few people who they were sharing acomodations with were spies from the enemy
Yep, I came here specifically to say this. The movie even shows the party sleeping (or not for Strider) in a different building than the bedroom assaulted by the wraiths.
That kind of accuracy is the most Tolkien thing I've read all day
@@grandadmiral_dk3424 most were travelers from the south. as well as a group of dwarves i believe. there were locals as well.
Bree is a small town so meeting place for locals helps Butterbur make ends meet. Its established that while there is still traffic through Bree it had fallen off greatly over the years so having it also be an Ale House for locals would help him make ends meet.
interesting enough in reference to Shad the Lord of the Rings Bree chapter does start off with Sam asking if they should try to find lodging with one of the local hobbit families in Bree.
1:43 yes.. yes... we are game developers, so this video is for us!
Still waiting, guys...
Focus on making quests more engaging in your next game. Talking to someone and then them telling you to talk to more people is why it's taking me so long to finish Kingdom come.
Keep up the great work fellas! Can't wait to see more from Warhorse Studios!
Please, never stop being awesome and making awesome games!
KCD2 when? Im quite Hungry for a sequel
In my fantasy story, written over 10 years ago, the protagonist undertakes a long journey and his lodgings are varied. His budget is limited, so he sometimes stays with farmers, sometimes in monasteries, and occasionally has to shelter beside the road under a bush. Many of his lodgings, however, are arranged by the fact that his grandfather had been a well-connected military officer and wrote letters to his old war buddies who lived along his grandson's planned route. The protagonist would, on arriving in a town or village, ask the locals about the addressee of the letter, who would sometimes be there to give him lodging, but sometimes would have died or moved elsewhere.
I remember one time playing DnD our party entered a small village to wait for a few who fell behind. as to avoid getting split up any longer we were going to stay at the local inn to wait. When we asked the DM where the inn was he just went
"There is no inn or tavern."
This was followed by baffled silence to which he answered
"They're broke I dunno what to tell you."
I was in a game that had a likewise problem caused by a pack of Hill Giants "passing through... and back."
Needless to say, My Mountain Dwarf wanted to hunt the five surviving giants down. We did encounter a wounded one days later. One of my best double critical rolls ever.
Knocked him out with a throwing mace in the first turn. Sure, he was already wounded in the foot from stepping on a cooking fire. Sure, I'd launched the last ranged attack behind an assassin's dart and a magic missile at second level. But I took it from half health to four points, and hit the nose!
Then we charged him (wagon) and I leaped forth sword forward and finished the giant with a mighty prostate stab!! (Though that wasn't my target.) It squelched and kicked and gurgled dead. Then he crapped on my boots.
I love this story.
this is either a shit dm or a fake dm, didn’t propose an alternative place to stay and wait
@Mike Dalby whats the dm even there for then use internet scenarios lmao
@@jacobhealy8376 yeah but if you use internet scenarios for a dm. Why even have a d&d session in the first place and get rid of the other characters with bots as well??
I feel like Shad's neighbours wouldn't be surprised if he erected siege artillery in his garden at one point. Or fought a small battle with others using real swords, shields and armour
Like one of them wakes up to the sound of bagpipes rolling over the list covered hills while the ground shakes from boulders landing nearby?
Or maybe a "damnit, Shad, you've got to stop putting flaming arrows through my living room windows".
Well my neighbours have no issues with us pulling out the bows or any of the weapons we have in the house for training. In fact, the window cleaner is the only person who has ever done a double take when I was off work one day cleaning the swords and spears and didn't notice he was there.
@@radaro.9682 I don´t think Shad would use flaming arrows. If i remember correctly, he made a video on that.
See also: The Pennsic War.
This is how these things get started.
"Sweetie, Shad's at it again"
"Hrrmm" *flips newspaper to next page* "That's nice"
"Honey, the neighbour is shouting at the wall in the yard again"
Why'd you have to go and make things so complicated? I see the way you're acting like you're somebody else. Gets me frustrated. Just admit that you love the videos I make, my dear ej
You think the neighborhood kids ever come and try to assault it?
@@AxxLAfriku shut up
@@AxxLAfriku WE LOVE YOU AXXL! *GAGAGAGAGAGAGAGA!*
@@gigastrike2 Yeah, snowball fights < Snowball Sieges!
In the case of the Prancing Pony, it might be quite deliberately modelled on English coaching inns built in Georgian times and still operating in Tolkien’s youth. After all, Bree quite literally was the border between a Shire modelled on late Victorian Warwickshire and the rest of post-apocalyptic Arnor.
I don't know much about the real-world time periods you mentioned (Georgian and Victorian), but Bree serving as a gateway between the posh, well-to-do Shire and the largely desolate lands that were Arnor is pretty spot-on.
Yes Olde George Inn in Christchurch , the boundary between Dorset and Hampshire.
@David Fellner The Shire may be well-to-do, but it's not posh, I wouldn't say.
The Hobbits are your various types of yeomen- freemen of various stations in life and levels of possessions.
Country stock, some of them squires and/or gentlemen.
No lords or ladies that I could discern, anyway😁
@@rheinhartsilvento2576 Yea, established might be a better term. The only semi-posh ones are the Tooks and some other secondary families like the Brandybucks and maaaybe the families like the Baggins if we're stretching it a bit. And even the most aristocratic of them, the Tooks who have their own clan militia, are clearly more like yeomanry or gentlemen than actual nobility.
"Are you French?"
At this point I was expecting to hear "your mother was a hamster, and your father smelled of elderberries. Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time"
I fart in your general direction.
It's a salty taunt. It basically saying your dad is a drunk and your mom is a breeder
@@HosCreates Yep. It's also from Monty Python and the Holy Grail
@@RemyJackson I know but many people don't understand the meaning behind it.
@@HosCreates I for one, didn't. Good show, Monty Python.
I think Inns as we see them in D&D are a direct result of the existence of Adventurers as we see them in D&D. Adventures are largely a class separate from peasants, merchants, or nobles. Adventures have gold to burn, but are such a pain in the ass to deal with that no one wants them in their house.
It's also the fact that most fantasy worlds are unbelievably hostile to humans (if you calculate a death rate then most fantasy worlds need to have families with about 20-30 children just to sustain the population), and the ones in the greatest risk are the outlying villages, keeping a good inn and tavern to attract adventurers would most likely be the difference between life and death for the entire community.
How you deal with the openly ahistorical concept of adventuring bands is up to you as GM... If they existed and behaved as players do on average, fair enough, they might have trouble being let into town, let alone getting a place to sleep. But the crimes of other players, or even the same players in different worlds, need not follow your players. It might be merciful.
For that matter, even if you have an adventuring party, doesn't mean adventuring parties are generally a thing. Middle Earth basically had one attested "D&D-style" adventuring party in its entire 6000 year history, so the dwarves and their burglar could potentially get away with a lot.
Hm that would be a good explanation as to why many of these inn's and Taverns are run by retired hardcore adventurers and their friends themself. Because they know exactly how that kind of people behave, what motivates them and of course how to deal with them if they start to make trouble xD
@@Mnnvint I think The Hobbit portrays "D&D style" adventuring parties as a bit more common than that, although perhaps still not common. Not only are 'burglars' a recognised role in a group, but the dwarves tell Bilbo that "some of them" prefer to be called 'expert treasure hunters' and there's a dedicated rune which you can write to advertise your services as a burglar. And the dwarves initially seem to assume Bilbo has made a career of being a burglar. While not something you'd find in every village, especially in the more "civilised" areas, they do seem to exist.
Not only this but also most fantasy civilizations are very old. And bed technology does not break anything conceptionally. It is not strictly medieval
The Riverwood trader is always open for business!
Heh, you found it! I’m going to put this back where it belongs, you’ve done a great thing for me and my sister!
The claw on the table is shiny!!!
Funny, seems smaller than I remember...
Show those thieves what happens when you steal from Lucan Valerius!
Take the shiny claw! Use the bucket!
When you described how occupants would share beds and rooms, it made me think of the term "bedfellow," as in "Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows."
th-cam.com/video/kq7LM4rOcV4/w-d-xo.html
Tolkien notes how the Prancing Pony was so exceptionally nice and luxurious for an inn. It seems pretty basic by hotels standard, but was actually intended to be amazing for the era, and hence why it was so iconic for the Shire. Bree was a very wealthy town also, having an ale house - inn combo was unusual. Note this is a natural progression - the hotel became a public house and bar.
The Prancing Pony then became a template for other fantasy inns.
Now that is proper world-building - the inns and alehouses are there because there are the demand, and resources, and infrastructure for them. It's an organic evolution.
Nitpicking: Bree isn't in the Shire
@@hrotha Nobody said so. It was iconic for (famous in, popular with the folk of) the Shire. This doesn't imply that it's in the Shire.
@@WiggaMachiavelli It was actually popular only with the hobbits who lived in the Buckland, east of the Brandywine River. Other hobbits (which was the majority of them) would not do something as outrageous as going outside the Shire into a human town. The Brandybuck clan members were just adventurous weirdos like that. The hobbit minority native to Bree doesn't count as they are not citizens of the Shire.
Bedfellows is the word for the people you'd share a bed with. That's where the saying "war makes strange bedfellows" comes from
So does marriage.
@@Myrdden71 especially political marriages i assume :D
@@erayergi then Political Marriages designed for War is better?
Seems to be an English term, I can't think of a German equivalent (neither for the saying).
@@Ambar42 That's weird, because the German language seems to have a word for everything you can imagine. Backpfeifengesicht, for example (a face that needs to be punched). Just the other day I was talking with some co-workers, and one of them described something (I forget what) and asked if there was a word for it. I said the Germans probably have a word for it.
Side note: The Knights Hospitaller originally operated a hospital in Jerusalem for pilgrims to stay at, hence the name.
Of all the RPG tropes with inns, I think I find the "you stay at a church/whatever they call it in this setting to regain HP and save" even more than the boistrous tavern full of fun and music. and now I find out that is much more authentic, except not literally the same building/room as the pews and everything, but instead the monastery.. which makes total sense. those guys are already into communal living and caring for the poor, you're just making it more convenient by crashing with them.
@@KairuHakubi if the character is a paladin it makes much more sense for him to stay at a monastery where he can also pray, or a hospital where he can help the sick, rather than go to a decadent tavern.
All I know about the Hospitaliers I learned from Assassin’s Creed.
Hallways are another modern invention. Four poster beds were intended to give your privacy in your own bed as servants walked through your bedroom when moving through the palace
In addition, servants normally walked around behind the tapestries to stay out of sight.
Quite a few older houses have a backdoor and second staircase for the servants.
Plenty of hallways in old minoan and roman palaces
@@HappyBeezerStudios Norse and Norman houses, primative.
Finally, someone explains why hospitals are called hospital when the word hospitable has a total different meaning and is not related to the sicks. Thank you Shad!
I as today years old...
And if you actually knew how to use the Internet, you would have found this as early as 15 January 2005 on WIkipedia. And before that, these things made of paper called dictionaries held such information for the last 200 years.
This world is really screwed.
@@tommissouri4871 and not everyone is as privileged as you to have so much free time to read through so many papers and Wikipedia as you have said. Thank you.
My Grandma told me stories of how they accepted soldiers on their way home from WWI into their home for the night since back then, the government brought them back to the east coast, gave them some travelling money and let them loose. Some soldiers preferred to make their way slowly back home, seeing the country.
You mean WW2 right?
My great-grandfather was homeless when he got back from WWI and flipped a coin to see if he would go east or west. He ended up in California and worked on the L.A. River when they paved it with concrete.
@@Highly420 my grandparents were all alive as children in ww1 and I'm only 27. Probably a similar age
@@Charlie-dx6bv If your grandparents were children between 1914 - 1918, they would have to be at least 100 years old today.
@@lizzy-wx4rx you are correct the (only 2 were alive I miscounted) but 2 were born before WW1 started, they would be well over 100. My parents are both over 60 so there is that too.
"There's alot of misconception about the medieval pesantry."
Future video shad?
THIS^
How are your aunt and uncle Luke. I here there rather hot😏
Probably pretty much like Tattoine peasants but with crossbows instead of blasters.
I bet there's also a lot of misconceptions about the medieval pleasantry."
@@harperthegoblin *they're
The most important thing I got from this is that the "there was only one bed (for them) and they had to sleep together" trope is historically accurate
I live in Suffolk and I got talking to a Dutch cyclist 4 or 5 Summers ago who had been cycling around the west of England and was heading back home. He was looking for a hotel or hostel so I put him up for the night. He was a lovely chap and I had a great conversation with him that evening. I came down in the morning to find he'd already left and left a TY note with £20 to get myself a drink later. Two years ago I was up in the west of Scotland and asked somewhere where I could find a B&B and that person put me up for the night. This stuff still happens......
This stuff still happens that remote native tribes use "summers" to measure time. 😉
Among the cycling community I think they even have websites where you can register yourself as open to accommodating others. I had a friend who did this. Only once she did have me come hangout and spend the night. She said he made some comments about wanting to drink with her and she felt he assumed sex would be on the menu. He never pushed it when I was there. But that was one time out of a few.
@@mikerentiers It's funny you mention that as I originally got talking to the guy because I'm a cyclist too, I've not heard of this website though.
I've had that happen to me as well! I was hiking through Scotland and on the way there I missed two ferries across the channel. Got chatting to a family who was crossing as well and they invited me to their home so I wouldn't have to find my way through London in the middle of the night. They were way too nice. Even let me stay another night so my voyage home would be less stressful. I will never forget that.
Not in America...
0:01 Skit
1:37 Sponsor (Campfire Blaze) [Check it out. Legit.]
4:00 Introduction
6:32 Notions of Accommodation
7:08 Hospitality to Strangers, Class Relationships, & Refusing accommodations
12:13 Hospitals & the "Unwanted"
13:59 Monasteries
17:43 Inns (context of beds, cost, & use)
24:21 Misconceptions (Taverns)
27:38 Inns & Additional functions & Closing
Thank you....this needs to be thumbed up more so it's at the top of the page. I really hate how the defaulte comment sorting is for "most popular" now instead of recent.
Is Campfire Blaze for free, though? It would be a huge help for me in making my story as a whole
Nice
glory to you and your house
Doing God's work
"People have this innate instinct to sleep with other people."
-Shad the Scandalous, 2021
He is also known as: Shad the Chad
So did houses of disrepute also count as accommodation?
@@Shammoria - I don't see why they wouldn't.
Having observed the open air sleeping (as opposed to in tents) of the Homeless Community, it is true that they perffer to sleep next to each other. When people lay out their bed role there is seperation, but as the night goes on, they move together. It is very often an unconscious choice.
*laughs in asexual*
The difference between an “inn” and a “pub” or tavern was explicit on British Maps of my youth….and may still be. An Inn to be called such had to offer accommodation to travellers and could continue to serve beer etc to “guests” AFTER legal “closing times” had closed pubs and taverns for the night. The Inn had to have at least 1 guest room but could, at closing time, just lock the outer door. In fact these we called lock ins.Of course.A grey area of the law appreciated by one and all.
Hell, communal sleeping happened into the 40s. My grandmother showed me where she grew up, and it was a house with one bedroom, two beds, a den, and a kitchen. The parents would sleep in one bed and ALL FIVE KIDS would sleep in the other. and both beds were bigger than a twin, I'll give it that, but not by much
The kids laying there hearing mum and dad make another sibling 😂
Communal sleeping is still very common in poor countries. Slums where houses are basically 1 or 2 rooms that serves all needs communal sleeping is a must.
Luciano Alencar It’s certainly not unknown in expensive US cities like San Francisco, New York, Honolulu, Los Angeles etc. People will get a studio apartment & sleep 3,4 or 5 in the room. For poorer folks, it’s sometimes the only way to make ends meet.
Yep. just one of many problems in the modern day that were unheard of for the entire history of existence but now are unquestioned and unilaterally enforced on everyone despite it being utterly contrary to human nature.
Yeah, my mom was born in 1946, one of ten kids in a very poor rural family, and she remembers the farmhouse being basically one big open room, with only some curtains strung up to separate kids and parents. They'd get dressed next to the stove in the kitchen area, since they had power but no central heating (which existed but was hugely expensive). They had a shower but also an outhouse. The house was really just where you slept anyway, you did your chores and played and spent most your time outside.
"Pilgrimages were quite popular...it was like a holiday of the time." Makes sense, holiday comes from holy day.
The Canterbury Tales gives a little peak of what life was like back then. A group of strangers who gather together, all heading to the same location. It is unlikely that this group would have ever stayed in an Inn on the entire journey. It has probably been three decades since I last read that series of stories so please correct me if I'm wrong.
Anything to get away!
Look up Margery Kempe. She was a pilgrim for religious reasons, but there's a certain amount of entertainment involved. She wrote a book about her life. It's been years since I read it, but I think she annoyed one pilgrim group so much they went on without her, and her husband was very long-suffering. I remember getting a vivid picture of that really annoying person on your tour or bus or train who loves traveling, but has just one topic of conversation and is uncannily able to do what she wants regardless of custom or authorities. Which is a useful skill to have....
"Bless me Father for I have sinned...."
"OK, your penance is to go on pilgrimage...."
"Wow, this'll be like a holiday...:)"
"...a pilgrimage with Margery Kempe."
:(
@@superdave8248 So I met this dude, and I told him about this one time my buddy got a hot iron up his asshole, and we met another person who told me about the time they stayed over at some MILF's house and he totally tricked her into banging him. best holiday ever. Yeah, makes sense. Human nature does not change.
Bold and wise move Shad, I would walk away from the 2nd cousin, daughter, ex-wife, dagger hidden in pants person as well. Also I'm not staying in that castle or town, I'm sleeping in a tree.
Myself I am a dagger hidden pants person, but looking at that person I guess it's nothing personal, just like a lot of consent violation... 😬😅
That’s the most Wiccan lesbian adventurer thing I have heard in a while
'In' a tree? How is that possible?
@@ΦίλιπποςΖαχόπουλος If the tree is large enough, you can make a shelter inside the trunk by hollowing it out.
@@Samu2010lolcats that's too much effort
Significant reason to combine the inn and the tavern in fantasy, especially RPGs, is that it cuts down on how many locations and characters you need to introduce and keep track off.
Or, a good excuse, and a historical one, to create more poi's. I love it.
But Shad, your own video proves that the classic D&D fantasy tavern is accurate. You say that most travellers stay in the house of someone of similar social class.
What social class exists in D&D but not in the real world? Adventurers!
What do 90% of adventurers do when they retire? Run a tavern!
The inn those players are staying at is actually just a house of another adventurer.
they retire from adventuring themselves but want to continue hearing the stories of adventurers, and what better way to hear a story than with a good drink
Makes sense, kinda.
Heh, just like Lina Inverse's sister in the series Slayers. She was so powerful she was the first choice to save the world... but she replied that she's done with the big stuff and to just get her sister, Lina, instead (Lina is so powerful she can easily cast Dragon Slave, basically a nuclear-level spell, or rapid-fire Fireball spells. Said sister scares her so much that she rapidly made a pyramid then sunk it to hide from the LETTER from her sister telling her to help save the world.).
Also the extreme influx of adventurers that either die or get rich and ALL need lodgings means there's a definite market for it, so the inns and taverns with lodgings would spring up to accommodate that market!
Really? I thought adventurers just became city guards after taking an arrow to the knee? LOL
The whole story of Moby Dick started out with two people sharing a bed in an inn, and that was way past the medieval period.
Growing up in South America (1960-1970s), all the children at large social functions were bundled into one bed, like puppies.
@@bradmiller2329 Growing up in germany in the 80´s, if there was a big family gathering, say, grandma got 70, and all the aunts and uncles would meet and bring their kids, usually all the kids would get one room (basement, ususally) padded with matresses for the occasion, to sleep in, so we were kind of used to it even later, when visiting groups of friends, and such, or partying in shared flats. Being assigned a guest room still feels unusual to me.
@@paavobergmann4920 Sounds like one of my family reunions! Wall-to-wall carpet of sleeping relatives on the floor :)
@@bradmiller2329 well we slept on the floor so yours was way better
Studying colonial American history, inns would put a couple of men* in each bed. Traveling companions or strangers? Who knew? These establishments would usually offer food and drink downstairs.
* Female travelers? Protected by male family members, OK. Otherwise, be careful. The story of Tom Jones indicates what could go wrong...😎
You can't just explain medieval politics in a single sentenc-
"Shes my 2nd cousin you see , also my daughter and my ex wife."
Her name is Cleopatra. So a little late for medieval...
CK2 reenactment.
Ok, that explains Hapsburg politics.
@@Pfisiar22 The Austrian Hapsburgs at least kept enough alternate dna. The Spanish Hapsburgs on the other hand, go look up Charles II.
Uh.. divide by two... carry the one...
Um. Ew.
So in South India, Especially in the state of Tamil Nadu, traditional houses had this raised verandah outside the house. Just an elevated structure flanking the main door to the house. In daytimes its used for socialising etc but in the night, any traveller through the village or town could stay in that place. It was so well used that what was originally just a stone slab like structure became very well polished by people constantly using it!
Nice to know that they had a better attitude toward the homeless than a lot of modern cities do (hostile architecture and such).
@@Arkylie Yeak, a lot of modern architecture is hostile - to human beings in general.
But the way the homeless fit into society was also quite different from for ex the US today.
I doubt a person would be allowed to stay in the verandah indefinitely .
Shad the chad out here making your role play more fun with facts and logic.
Shad destroys medieval misconceptions with facts and logic!
The "There is only a double bed in this hotel room" fanfiction trope is real.
the more expensive inn should have
And also there are 3 other people in it :P
@@veelogation3890 Two of them are orc barbarians.
@@smuganimegirl769 hey no need to kinkshame
And i love it, tbh
I know for a fact I'm not the only one that feels like this but you sir make every Saturday morning a good Saturday morning. Thank you for everything that you do for your community
Hearing about Shad’s kids piling into the same bunk of a triple tier bunk bed is the cutest thing I’ve heard all week. You keep on being an awesome father Shad.
The cleric: well we could just stay in the monastery.
The party’s warlock: nervous laughter
"Your religion requires you to house the poor, right?"
"Well yeah, but-"
"Great. Paladin, I'm giving you all my money. If you don't charitably give it back tomorrow morning I'll weld your armor shut."
Jokes on you, it's a Celestial Warlock and they're embarrassed about seeing their patron again.
The party's bard: Don't worry, guys, I'll entertain them all night for free lodgings
@@LuckySketches Expecting the Paladin to go through with a scheme to skirt around laws and religious beliefs is like expecting a pig to fly. Next morning the church will have received a generous donation.
And the warlock gets burned for his oath to evil.
Alehouses and Inn's were sometimes connected, so they could share the kitchen ... kept the costs down, it did.
Also, often Inns, and taverns for that matter would allow people to sleep on a mat in the common room, for a low price.
And some small towns, could have an inn, if they were a high traffic intersection, to accommodate stage coaches, and messengers and so on.
As a DM with a big soft spot for historical precedent, I always try and keep fancy inns with one or two single person beds per room reserved for capitals and places where privacy is more valued. Most taverns i make i tend to give four beds per room simply due to modern mindsets, but when i wanna get deviously historical, i put four sets of three person beds in the room, one is empty, and one has a single occupant, so two unlucky SOBs have to spend the night with "Kessler the traveling Cobbler" who insist on making small talk about the other provinces of the empire, and asking general questions about the adventuring lifestyle.
Historically accurate and it gives you a way to weave in adventure hooks via NPC rumours. Very nice.
@HelenaCross DnD groups usually include four or more players. The fact that he specifically mentioned that one bed was empty and another already had one person in it leads to the logical conclusion, that the remaining two beds are already filled. Given this scenario, there have to be five player characters which would result in two of them having to share a bed with "Kessler".
TL;DR:
Four beds with space for three each.
Two beds fully occupied.
One bed with one of its three spaces occupied.
One bed empty.
Five characters seeking a place to sleep.
--> two of them have to share their bad with a stranger
@@firekeeper1870 and that is how you extrapolate on incomplete data to reach a reasonable answer, by George!
@@DH-xw6jp i don´t see how the data is incomplete here. It´s 4 beds for 3 people each. One has 0/3, one has 1/3. The other 2 are not explicitly stated. But if they were not full, it would not be necessary for 2 of the travel group to share a bed with "Kessler", unless ofcourse the group is larger that 5, namely 8 or 11 people. It is a fair assumption that the not mentioned beds would be 3/3, because it makes sense for an innkeeper to fill one bed before renting out the next (from an economical standpoint).
@@Tyarrk "the other 2 are not explicitly stated"
Exactly. Incomplete data.
Im not disagreeing with your assesment at all.
There's a famous story about King Alfred fleeing the Danes after the battle of Chippenham in 878 and staying in a peasant's house without telling her who he was (probably so she wouldn't be tempted to turn him over to the Danes for a reward). She gave him a piece of her mind when he carelessly let some cakes burn that she'd left him to watch. Even if the story is made up, I think it does show how normal it was for travelers to stay in peasant's houses back then.
The party must find a place to spend the night. Why do I feel like there'd be a sign at the castle gate of a village without an inn saying "No lepers, no blades longer than a hand AND NO BARDS!"
I am so stealing this.
Plot twist: PCs are being their usual selves and put off so many people that they have to sleep in the wilderness.
@@1Maklak Probably they would make a "area of silence". Because trouble makers are more common than you think especially in drinking places.
@@1Maklak Played in a group whose party was like that. One of us eventually came upon an item that turned into a Keep when the enchantment was activated.
@@mothafraker There are multiple utility spells for that: create food and water, rope trick, little hut, all the way up to one-use mansion with invisible servants.
In Ancient Greece they had the law of Xenia, where you had to provide hospitality to any traveler and/or guest who humbly presented themselves to you, or face the wrath of Zeus. Also you couldn’t steal from your host, or else face the wrath of Zeus.
I've read one of the reasons for this custom was the belief that the gods used to travel incognito, and that any guest you refused hospitality to might be Zeus Himself....
@@Kartissa : Christians have the same with entertaining angels.
Wrath of Zeus was a big deal back in the day....
@@Skye_Writer With Zeus it's either his wrath or his cock.
@@Skye_Writer Since they didn't know that copper/ bronze tip spears function as lightning rods.
The lord's good daughter Eloise is broad of shoulder and tall as an oak. Imagine the warrior sons she could bear you.
Or, apparently lacking a womb, probably not
Especially with the "dagger" in her pants.
@@SvendleBerries lmfao im dying
His "daughter," in this case, also just happened to be both his "ex-wife" as well as his "2nd cousin". *YIKES!*
@@XpaceTrue she promises many generations!
In the D&D campaign I’m running, the players are currently in a town called Vestia, which has a population of around 2000 people. It’s not common for people to go there or go through there on their way to someplace else (essentially, it was at the end of a dead-end road), so though there are several taverns, I decided to have no inns there. Any merchants and such who came would typically stay with family or somebody else they knew when in Vestia. The town does have a castle in the center (with its own walls around it), but it’s been converted into a school for magic, though the leader of the town is still stationed there. As part of that conversion, they switched to keeping any prisoners in gatehouses instead (the town has walls to protect it from the many fey nearby). They converted the dungeon rooms into places for more important visitors to stay in, and the party is currently occupying two of those rooms. I suppose it would have been more historically accurate if I hadn’t made it be three single beds in each room, but I’m glad to know that many of the other aspects of what I’ve done are supported by history!
😒🤚 - "You all meet at a table in an inn"
😏👉- "You all meet in a shared hospital bed"
If you are looking for a meeting place the local ale house is still an option (you just can't sleep there afterwards). If you want it more relaxing you could also choose the local bathhouse (usually found at the backside of your local bakery), also useful if you want to make sure no one brings hidden daggers.
@@DeHerg Why a bakery? Because of the ovens?
@@Torvik40 basically, yeah. The fire used for the ovens could also be used to heat water.
You meet at a Dwarf's House just outside of town. He is retired from Adventuring and the Mercenary Life. At his door you find a passed out Goblin, a stoned halfling, and a Gnome with a hangover.
@@stephenmckee3235 Love it!
Here's something interesting I learned about Shad's point about people staying in stranger's homes.
Although note this happened in the Renaissance so not precisely medieval but still relevant. There's a story about Leonardo da Vinci on how he found his model for Jesus in the Last Supper. In a quest to find a model, Leonardo decided to hang out in the local market and search for faces. Eventually, he found a potential person for it. So he approached the man and picked up a conversation. Leo didn't tell him he was considering this guy for a painting (he wanted to examine his face under normal circumstances) so he just kept things basic and friendly. The two talked for some time until the male invited Leo over dinner and to say the night, which of course he accepted.
I've always found this interesting because you would never see this happened today. At least in most places. Inviting a person into your home THE DAY you met them for DINNER and staying the night is so unheard of. Maybe Leonardo's fame played a role in that (it's unknown to me if the guy knew of him or not) but still, this really tells you how different standards are from yesteryear.
I agree. We tend to judge the pass with current perception/value too quickly.
We need to take as much circumstances into consideration, even minor one. People now tend to judge without putting foot into other's shoe.
Nah, Da Vinci totally hit that :P.
we wouldnt do this today because the gross descrepancy of wealth today is spread closer to home. you are more likely to live next to someone of significant wealth difference today then probably any time in history. this has led to great mistrust added to millions of people interacting in very small areas. the chances of meeting a theif today during the day everywhere are greater then ever before due to condensed and diverse living and working zones
It's not that uncommon among young people. If you host a party/afterparty, the understanding is usually that at least some people will stay the night, even if you only just met them
I had a dnd campaign that had a brothel Inn called “Inn and out”
That is beautiful and I shall add it to my world
how inn-teresting
Ahhh yes, let us retire to "Ye old Inn and Out"! I hear they haveth a special going on.
But did you get a double double with animal fries
Is it down the road from Five Knights?
Always been fascinated by Inns and Taverns within medieval fantasy, just found them so interesting as a general concept, a place of socialising, travellers etc. Fantastic video!
"Your mother was a HAMSTER and your father smelt of elderberries!"
lol exactly what I thought.
I fart in your general direction.
Wondering why he didn't call him an English kinnigot as he walked away as well..
@@spencerhansen8374 I would assume only due to copyright
Now go away, or I shall be forced to taunt you a second time.
If the King didn’t like a lord he would visit for a extended period and bankrupt him. The lord had to feed all his retainers.
Dirty politics indeed...
Sounds like a good reason to assassinate the king.
Reminds me of levying your personal retinue and those of your vassals and you all park on one county in crusader kings...
*Supply limit: 6k*
*Total troops in county: 16871.7 (how the hell can you have .7 of a man?)*
*Total monthly attrition: 17.90%*
Fuck
similar to a practise in thailand. Refusing to look after a white elephant was an offense that carried the death penalty, but looking after a white elephant would bankrupt you.
@@JBGARINGAN That .7 of a man perhaps lost a limb or something
In a low-fantasy story I'm writing, there is a seasonal village for explorers of these supernatural caves. In this village, there is a fortified longhouse that, during the day, provides food and a communal cooking space. At night, everyone who can't afford or find a bed elsewhere pushes the tables against the walls and sleeps on the floor or tables. It's thanks to videos like yours that I've been able to get good information about how these sorts of living arrangements worked in real life.
yeah. shads discussion was a bit odd in that. "inns with taverns." well, no, they are usually taverns.. with rooms for rent. its the other way around. now, I have no idea if that was much of a thing.. but it lines up with the initial premise. A traveler would make a deal with a local trader, etc, to stay in their home.
I’ve been worldbuilding for several years now, a world I’m very invested in, with characters, concepts, geography and stories I’m in love with, and your videos REALLY have helped me so much with all the minor details to really give my world a realistic setting. I know that might not sound like that big a deal but your videos really mean a lot to me, I love who you are and what you do. You’re also SO entertaining. Thank you so much Shad
Lindybeige's vid on medieval woods was a big eye opener for me. I don't think fantasy stories are set in the past so much as they're set in childhood.
What a wonderful way to put it
I think a lot are based on a fondness for Tolkien who is intentionally writing either a kids story or an epic based on anglo Saxon folklore. Thus the folklore / fantasyness is carried through and imprinted on modern writers.
@topher nolastname he cribbed heavily from folklore and the epic poems. He was translating them in his work as a profesor
@topher nolastname you'll find a bunch of parallels between the two
So...the "there's only one bed" trope is rooted in history. Fascinating 👀
Yeah, beds (or at least multiple beds, and living space in general) has long been more of a luxury for almost all of history. Just looking back to the homes I've seen from the pioneers coming to Utah, so many of those feel SMALL and cramped. No way they were fitting several rooms with beds for people to spread out. Many people couldn't afford to make big, nice houses (sure, some could, but exceptions are called such for a reason). Heck, some I still wonder how they had any kind of bed at all!
When you really break down medieval fantasy you realize that it is only aesthetically based on the medieval age when you start to look at details like this you realize that other than the technology level it's almost entirely based on/in colonial times in Europe and early America.
Well much of it isn't medieval fantasy, but more Renaissance fantasy. People just like to simplify it to medieval, even if the author straight up says they take more influence from the European Renaissance Era. Part of the reductionism of book genres.
Renaissance is pretty interesting too so it's sad that it often gets ignored.
the problem is not just period but locale. I'm a colonial America 'enthusiast' ... with family ties to pretty interesting events... my father's family was here in Calhoun County Alabama before it was legal for British subjects to 'settle' here. ;) they were Daniel Boone before Mr Boone was even born. ;) so some folks' ideas of 'where the wilderness was' and 'There Be Nothing But Indians Out There!' is incorrect by even modern historians' standards.
the corner public-house where Shad keeps saying pub or tavern is a late LATE 1700's into the Victorian era London and English city/towns business. the Victorian Era joke goes, 'You can't swing a dead cat in London without hitting a public-house.' if it was 'zoned commercial' somebody tried to run a public-house on that street-corner.
Imo D&D style fantasy has a lot of influences from Wild West movies. The whole traveling hero that saves the innocent towns people is not really a medieval Europe thing.
But even when we think medieval times, we often forget that nearly 1k years (roughly from 6th century to 15th century) is not the same as a decade and that nothing stayed the same over such a long time period. Without a clear reference of time and place, we probably just mix up late medieval times with early modern times and call it „historic“ enough for fantasy.
David Gantenbein I read a lot of manga and many of the settings in the fantasy stories are early renaissance with a few being a mix of roman era and stereotypical medieval Europe with the odd region being edo period Japan
This concept of sharing a bed offers a lot of opportunities for D&D... who might you be sharing a bed with? Is it thieves? Assasins? A creep? Someone who has news related to the story? Just some ordinary a hole? I like it... adds tension to what is normally a moment of calm. Would take some figuring to work out how much a private room would cost...
maybe the bed is a mimic ;) (would sleeping in the same bed with certain characters give buffs, stat boosts, debuffs,...? I've never played D&D, btw, but I played a many RPGs... jrpgs, mostly, lol)
Sleeping together in the same room and even bed makes it warmer to sleep in, which is useful when there's no modern heating.
Three dog night.
Also during most of the middle ages it was the little ice age. It lasted roughly 1000 years from the 9th century to the 19th.
this is the reason, why black forest farmsteads where these huge buildings with everything under one roof, and the family sleeping in one room above the stables: The cows would provide extra warmth, and you could hear through the floorboards if a cow (your most valuable posession) got problems.
I once stayed in a very old farm for a couple nights, and it had 1 oven, in the kitchen, and the beds were upstairs. All 7 of us slept in one room, and boy, were we glad we were close together, because it was like 7°C at night.
This. My buddy’s dad died and his mom left to go live with her mom. He was 15 at the time, I was 17. He just stayed at the house but the power and everything got cut off. We were a bunch of dirty skateboard kids so we would all go to the house to party, and would all sleep in the same bed. Had to stay warm. It was a king or something so there’d be like 4-5 of us in it. They were good times, but looking back so fucked up at the same time.
@@krispalermo8133 - I slept with three dogs once, cost me everything.
Considering sleeping wit strangers in one large bed: This is basically the way it is still done today when you are hiking and sleeping at a hut in the mountains, at least in the alps where I live. At the most basic price you don't get a room or a single bed for yourself, especially if the hut is in a very secluded place with limited space and where it is difficult to transport materials for constructing beds. Instead of a bed for yourself, you often get a place in a bed camp, which basically is a portion of the floor which is a bit elevated and then padded wit a large mattress, often reaching from one end of the room to the other. On one hand this saves you a lot of time, money and work for transporting wood for the bed construction to the hut, on the other hand it is far better to accomodate more people if needed. If a thunder storm starts and the hut spontaniously has to accommodate more people, everyone just moves a bit closer together. So on the same space that could accommodate maybe six or seven people in single beds, you very liekly can accommodate 10-12 people in this communal bed.
It's basically the same situation in the Appalachian Mountiains/Trail... and most of the towns that are along the route, since it's such a commonly-hiked trail in America, have a large number of hostels and even just regular people that let hikers stay in their homes for a night... but mountain-traveling-culture has always been somewhat rooted in the understanding that traveling is freakin' hard and everyone just wants a warm dry place to sleep haha
Yes! I often go hiking in the french mountains during summer holidays, and the "refuges" we sleep in are exactly what's described here. Most of the time you can have a single bed with someone above/bellow and many others in same room, but some of them still have the huge beds where you basically sleep right next to a stranger. That's in my opinion something everyone should do at least once in one's life to understand today's modern life is just one glimpse in history, and the relativity of what's "normal" and what's not.
@@Flarestar79 I agree, and yes, it´s the same in scandinavia.
@@Flarestar79 a really precious comment
Ngl as an American, this sounds awful.
I can totally imagine an ale house answering like this: you can stay the night at the fire place. Here's some hay and a blanket. Well wake you before we open, then you need to leave.
As opposed to today's alehouses. "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here."
@@SimuLord Who are adventurers in the villages if not homeless people? :D
Upvote this comment if you want to see Shad in full armor and sword take on a Cassowary in a fight to the death.
@@mixter1257 🤯
@@mixter1257 Even further; in RPGs where I am grinding in a certain region, I basically am literally just busking by being the unofficially hired monster exterminator. I am essentially an indirectly contracted worker and I pay taxes by going to the inn/local potion shop or whatever
My gad...
Another thing to add to about multiple beds per room is even if you were royal or noble, you'd have some sort of entourage with you of servants and possibly guards, who would be sharing the room, too. So even they wouldn't be sleeping alone even with the money to do so.
I think the main reason why single beds in a single room idea is so popular among the roleplaying community is because most of the players are murder hobos who then project that everyone else is also a murder hobo just waiting for them to fall asleep so that they can murder them and even worse - steal the loot they stole from other people.
And so they can have sex
Oi...my first experience with D&D 5e had one of them guys..a nice table top shop I found does free teaching games for 5e, same plot every time to make it easy if someone has to take over as GM because the person that night couldn't come in. Anyway one of the players was just itching to kill..like it was bonkers..we had to infiltrate a crew to take a job for a local crime lord Beholder and we could get rid of the competition any way we wanted..one of them was a girl who was in it for the money so she could give it to the orphanage she was raised in so my idea..as a rouge, and a Tiefling one at that..was to pool our gold together and give her enough to leave the job..and what does this nut job do? He threatens her with burning down the orphanage with everyone inside, cause he's a spellcaster with a fire spell so of course he wants to burn something...and after an effort by the other sane members of the crew..of which there were only two out of a group of 5..so me and two others..who I had to convince..we left her with the gold and crying before she ran inside because the nutso burns a tree in the front of the orphanage to ash before we leave..that little side venture got me the nickname "Hellboy" by the whole group..especially because as we were leaving I had my character apologize for my rather insane trigger happy comrade.
@@ShinKyuubi Nah, that's not a muder hobbo. That could just be roleplaying a psycho. Murder hobbos are only in it for the loot and xp. Unprovoked robbery and murder of everyone and anyone.
@@Shenordak Ah, see I have interest in TTRPGs but only one place I can go as where I live not many people are into them..or if they are they already have their own groups and don't talk to many outside them. With the lockdowns and everything I couldn't go to the table top shop for quite some time and I don't know if they picked up their campaign they had going..they have the teaching game but also a long on going campaign that is kinda hard to slip into cause it's usually packed full already.
@@ShinKyuubi Murderhobo identifies a type of character who could not really exist in the real (or fantasy) world, even if they were a sociopath with no feelings for other people. It's usually the result of the players not understanding roleplaying at all, and only going by hard data available to them in the rulebook and on their character sheets. They don't care about being good or evil or anything in between, they see that killing things gives them XP, so they kill things. It's like playing a video game with someone who doesn't care about the plot at all. Even sociopaths have a goal, something to strive towards. Murderhobos just want more gold and XP, and have no long term plans at all other than watching numbers on their character sheet get bigger.
The closest character I can think of that fits the archetype is Lina from Slayers (an anime from the 90's which does not take itself seriously at all), but even she is much more fleshed out than the typical murderhobo, and she doesn't kill everything she sees. She just doesn't care about collateral damage.
"Everyone in the village is sick." Mood.
It has been a year! And the village is still sick!
It has been a year, and I know no one effected by this world-ending illness we all need to lose our individual rights for!
@@gamermanzeake I actually got the 'rona and one of my friends grandma died from it. It's slowly burning through rural communities here, killing the elderly.
@@gamermanzeake
I know what you mean, I live in NYC and I only know one person who caught it , she was fine in a few days and said it was like a mild flu. Seems to me like it's more about control than safety. After all the average survival rate is 98.5%.
@@korbetthein3072 So is the flu. And heart disease... and cancer. The elderly die. Its natural. We shouldn't lose our rights because they MIGHT die sooner than they would have.
I was just waiting for the French guy to start hurling insults about Shads mother being a hamster
Haha yeessss
And smelled of elderberries!
Monty Python was the best, still the best.
@@GuitarsRockForever I'm honestly kinda sick of monty python references, they are kinda like jojo references.
@@Zadamanim NANI ?!
The intro was genuinely comedic and made me literally laugh out loud. Love it, Shad
Every tavern in the middle ages had a children's menu. That's a very important detail.
Lol
Bruh.....
It’s beer
@@Ash2Flame116 Actually it was milk, crackers, and pork. They were just a place for resting, eating, drinking, and getting out of the rain reguardless of age or class.
@@rachdarastrix5251 it's always beer, it's never not beer
This is a joke
Everyone commenting about the intro but let's give a compliment to the actual content of the video too! I love the medieval misconception series
That intro had me thinking "I fart in your general direction, your mother was a hamster and your father smellt of elderberries" anyone else?
Yes!
About time someone mentioned it!
Fun fact: the first European hospital (in the modern sense) was the Hotel-Dieu, in Lyon, but there have been nosocomiums in places like Rome and Cesarea.
Would love to see a video on the history of medicine (including human dissections if possible)
Info about medieval everyday travelling life.
Just what I’ve been waiting for! :)
In a fantasy setting where treasure-hunters and adventurers are common I think inns would be a lot more common than they were in real history. I also don't imagine that treasure-hunters and adventurers would be very welcome as guests in houses.
"Your covered in trolls blood and have a human skull on your bag no you can not stay here!"
Depends on how realistic you wanna make it. You could also go the rout of some inns being more geared towards adventurers (having healing/mana potions available, weapon sharpeners, black market guy hanging in the back alley, etc), while others "just don't want any trouble" and turn them away. Possibilities...
Incidentally, there IS a part of history where treasure hunters and adventurers were at least more common than any other time. In the generation or two following the Bronze Age Collapse, with many cities closer to seas having been fully abandoned (and usually fairly burnt down by the Sea Warriors or each other), and the loss of the comparatively advanced technology of the Bronze Age at its final heights, there were no doubt individuals who braved the lower lands to scour the ruins of the bronze age for valuables (including, yes, bronze things).
Lost, abandoned, ruined remnants from a past civilization? All the excuse an adventurer needs to seek out wealth and maybe occasionally glory? Check.
@@SephirothRyu another time in history where adventurers and treasure hunters were common would be the Age of Discovery/Age of Sail!
Fantasy in many cases depicts a world with more "exotic" dangers, like orc clans, dragons and such. Which also explains why weapons are much more common. And not the woodsman's axe or the multifuctional knife. So a world with much more armed people running around would give a good reason to also have more inns where you leave the weapon while in town.
A weary traveler stops in at a monastery in the early afternoon, asking for shelter. Since this is early in the day and the man doesn't seem too haggard, the monks agree, on the condition that he helps cook dinner.
As the man enters the kitchen, he sees one of the monks with a bowl of cut potatoes slowly being deep fried in a splattering pot of oil. Being as he's a smartass, the traveler says to the monk, "so, are you *the friar*?" and smirked at the pun he just made.
The monk, also a bit of a smartass, counters, "No. I'm the *chip monk.*"
😂
Ugh. But I still laughed.
Ahhh... ye old ancient dad jokes
Grease MONKey
Potatoes weren't introduced to Europe untill about 1540 and wouldn't have been widespread until about 1600, it would have even been later than that before it would be expected to be a common meal in a monastery.
As a standup comedian in Europe, it's actually quite common for us to bring in other standups for the night, even if we don't know them well. We joke around and gossip, and it helps build relationships in the community and for our careers.
As some people have pointed out, inns were often separated by sex. Imagine playing a warforged in that scenario.
"Are you a man or a woman?"
"I'm a construct."
"Yeah but what's in your pants?"
"Magic."
Do warforged even need to rest?
Rest yes. Sleep no.
@@1Maklak They kinda "power down" but they're still conscious. They can rest and stand watch at the same time.
Well they say gender is a social warforged.
@@erikrungemadsen2081 I want to play a gregarious warforged bard and refer to him as "a social construct."
the Elector of Hessen had room specificaly built to recieve the Emperor of the HRE . Only for him to never show up.
Many UK castles and stately homes have a King's/Queen's room which the monarch never used - but you could never not have one just in case - several built an entire new wing when the monarch did descend on them, as they brought the entire court with them, usually swamping the household, and often significantly increasing the local population while they stayed, sometimes overnight, but sometimes for months ...
Better to have and not need than to need and not have.
Sounds like your typical house project: Get a conservatory built, or set up a room for guests or as a workout environment, but then it never gets used.
"I'm gonna stop by the Prancing Pony for a block of cheese and an apple." - Thorin Oakenshield, probably
Hearing your explanation about hospitals: Looks like us German speakers have it more accurate. Cause hospital is Krankenhaus in German, which is literally translated to house of the sick. Though usually people say Spital, at least here in Switzerland.
I was thinking the same thing. When he explained how they actually worked, it clicked in my head: "That's why it's called Krankenhaus."
Interestingly, hospitals were often outside city walls. They were sometimes the only accommodation for travelers arriving after the closing of the gates. Or for people who could not find accommodation within the city walls before the gates were closed, because if found by the night guard and could not name their accommodation, they would get arrested.
"She's my second cousin, and my daughter, and my ex-wife" is the best thing I've heard today xD
if not for being french, i'd say that the lord of the castle was a habsburg.. :)
Pay no attention to the dagger in her pants
The smack got me 😂😂
Alabama intensifies
"Right! To the disease ridden village!"
Another reason people tended to sleep communally back then was, they didn't have central heating and they needed to keep warm through the night somehow.
Makes sense, yet a lot of video games set in medieval setting seems apply more or less modern ways of doing things, especially with inns, from Dragon Quest to Elder Scrolls and everything in between. No one seems to know how they should be like or haven't consulted historians, both even.
@@whitewolf3051 True, but it would be weird for a modern gamer to have their character spend the night sleeping in a bed with a couple of strangers.
To be honest, I thought most inns would operate by having a large communal room with a fireplace, and people sleeping around the fireplace, not in separate rooms. Though maybe it was more of an early-medieval thing, and communal bedrooms more of a late-medieval concept? Dunno.
@@Tennouseijin That fire will go out if someone's not tending it all night. It's just more efficient in those low-tech settings to let people keep each other warm by sharing body heat.
That said, I'm totally willing to gloss over such things if my players would prefer to have their own rooms at the inn in D&D.
That was actually a pretty common thing over the years. Boarding houses, where people would stop for a meal and lodging for the night, just like a tavern or inn. Even, places like block houses/taverns in the early American Colonial era.
Now we need a full video on the types of peasants.
@no or maybe yes Peasants tier list oh hell yeah.
serf, freemen, crafts/tradesmen, yeoman (minor land owners, pages, squires, guardsmen of the noble house, and...)
Now that would be a very long thing he'd definitely have to focus on either a specific country or give a general list for a specific region
There was the freeman and the bondman.
The bondman was a man bound by his vow to his lord, until the lord releases him from it, to serve his lord. In exchange, he got to rent land to live on, farm on, and perhaps do a trade on.
The freeman was a man who rented land from his lord but did not have any duty to serve him. He just paid rent in either wheat after harvest or in coin.
Some 25 years ago my grandpa heard that some travelling workers were "housed" with a neighbor some 4 houses away in our village. They were sleeping in the barn, on hay. We had plenty of free rooms, so my grandpa offered to house them for their remaining days. I was very young and found that very weird. Didn't think how normal this used to be
I love both how educated shad is on these topics, but also how very passionate he is. At times, he trips over his words or speaks very quickly, not because he's a poor speaker (He's quite great actually!) but because he's so excited to say things, because they're so interesting and enjoyable to him it picks his pace up like a nice tune puts pep in your step. He knows things because he independently studies, he accepts the efforts of his peers and colleagues, and actively tests and innovates in both accurate and fun 'what if' ways, and brings a great amount of fun to education. Media might portray the middle ages as grey and dirty, when in reality it was as bright and colorful and exciting as the energy this man brings to his videos, which is why I've been a subscriber for years.
if you see this, thanks for all the hard work you put in to such a great show, Shad! Maybe next time you can tell us more about the world in your book, and how certain real life elements inspired it or how you kept fantasy elements based in reality for a more immersive experience; sort of like your castle tours!
That’s the reason I keep coming back to his vids!
Speaking of staying in strangers houses, when I was a kid/teenager I would go "camping" in this isolated beach (i lived in an island in southeast Brazil) only accessible by boat or a 3h hiking. I say "camping" because I didn't exactly camp. I would ask around if I could say in someone's home. I would usually sleep in a hammock, a pile of fish nets or, more often, in a canoe. I would earn my keep by sharing food they usually wouldn't have around, because they were generally poor. I would specially bring treats for the kids, who truly loved me for that and coffee for the grown ups (who otherwise couldn't afford the luxury of drinking strong coffee that we are accustomed here) and booze, typically bad cheap wine.
There were quite a few of these isolated communities in the island and it was always great to get to know those folks a little bit more up close and personal. But all that is gone now. From what I gather, the place now has hostels, wifi and all that. Turism is a bit more developed and I don't think they would host me the way they used to. I mean, they wouldn't do it for free.
I also live in southeast of Brazil. My family is from PR and I'm at this moment living in SC.
At some point of my father's life, he worked in this isolated city, where they did exactly what you described. And as far as I know, they are still a pretty isolated place with not even wi-fi. They have to call for boats all day to bring goods for they citizens, and only a few really live there.
You lost your place back then, but I can assure you that there are still a lot others for you to find. =)
Olá!!! Qual o nome da ilha, por favor?
@@lizzieborden8180 Ilhabela, litoral norte de SP. A história que eu tava contando era sobre a comunidade na praia do bonete, no sul da ilha.
Apocalipse 14:12 12 [a] Aqui está a paciência dos santos: aqui estão os que guardam os mandamentos de Deus e a fé de Jesus.
I just love how thanks to this video I understqand how accurated is the serie Spice and Wolf about medieval things, they sstay in a monastery during a storm and use this as an opportunity to get information and even work, they stay in an Inn but the food is buyed outside, they actually go to Ale hpuses and tavern, and even buy some food in the central market! amazing
Now I have to check out the series :-)
@@arnvonsalzburg5033 Spice and Wolf is a great series, you should definitely check it out! It's about a traveling merchant who meets a wolf spirit/goddess, and they travel the land together not only for his business, but to get her back home as well.
Today on Shadiversity: The Ins and Outs of Inns.
Oh, the pun-ishment!
I'm re-reading the fantasy series The Deed of Paksenarrion, and in the second book she goes to an inn that has different accommodations based on how much you're willing to pay: a silver piece for the common loft, a gold for a private room, and two golds for a suite. Having just obtained a lot of treasure, she can afford a private room. Breakfast is included, but stabling and care for horses is extra.
Awesome series.
I love Paks! That series really goes into details I would never have thought of. The military stuff in the first part kinda put me to sleep, but I'm glad I powered through to read the rest because it became my favorite adult fantasy series of all time. And I adore Master Oakhallow -- so much wisdom, so much patience, with just an edge of danger to keep you on your toes. I love how even in her worst state, Paks was able to trust him and be nursed back to health -- physically, psychologically, and even spiritually.
@@Arkylie It's my favorite written fantasy trilogy too, and like you, I found some of the military stuff in the beginning boring the first time. The chapters in Oath when Oakhallow heals Paks are my favorite part of the series. However, Oath also contains the only scene in any book that ever gave me nightmares. You know the part.
I did not like the sequel series Paladin's Legacy at all and would never re-read it. But that doesn't keep me from loving Deed, so that's as far as the series goes for me.
Medieval Hospitals:
"Oh sure you can stay here no charge!"
Modern US hospitals:
"Oh, you sneezed? Well, that's an extra 100 dollar charge!"
Well, they didn't have pharmaceutical tycoons to make inexplicably rich. However, they did have the Catholic Church...
@@MazrimTaim The Catholic Church is the world's largest charitable organization.
@@strategicgamingwithaacorns2874 And the medieval Catholic Church was the world's most corrupt organization. Read some history...
I work at a hospital. 67% of our patients pay more than they probably should, because the other 33%, who often need the most care, and the most expensive care, pay nothing at all. If you want to argue that those who can't afford medical care should be turned away at the door, feel free to do so. Until then, hospitals are extremely expensive. If you want them to exist at all, someone is going to have to pay for them.
@@MazrimTaim How do you define "The medieval Catholic Church?" Wealth attracts the unscrupulous, but it's difficult to imagine large numbers of extremely corrupts abbeys, monasteries, hospitals, and chapels. The medieval Catholic Church was a theocratic government, and as corrupt as all governments are, but like most governments, only a very, very few working within the government got wealthy be doing so, legally or illegally.
Apart of the "cliche" aspect, I think is for the simplification and "economy" in the fantasy' stories: it's easier to mix inn + tavern in a single building than make the story happen in the tavern and then going to the inn to sleep. Something similar to how the story rarely explains the maintenance of the weapons except if adds something (a moment of calm, to give to the characters something to do) to the narration.
Nonetheless, great information as always Shad.
It also means less work for the game master. And this is also true for computer games. Further simplification can be done as in Bauldur's Gate where several merchants shared their inventory.
That, and the ubiquity of them makes sense because the party needs a place to sleep in whatever towns and villages they might happen to end up in for the night. Or longer. I imagine most GMs would probably rather put them up in an inn than put up the whole party in somebody's house, make a hospital, or have them camp out somewhere.
@@andymac4883 Yeah, just kind of ruins the immersion where the party stays in an inn at the ass end of nowhere. At a crossroads? Makes sense. Site of a holy relic? Sure. Bordering a swamp 3 days journey from civilization? It's probably a trap. If it's not a trap, it's just silly.
Shad is overstating the case here. It wasn't entirely uncommon for inns to be drinking and eating establishments, either because some settlements could not support separate establishments, or in some cases like the Borough of Southwark where legal privileges encouraged the growth of a vice district. The Tabard, the inn the pilgrims stayed at in The Canterbury Tales, was in fact one of these establishments in Southwark.
Another cliche aspect is how every wood worker is called a carpenter. Carpentry is an extraordinary and specific craft for making wooden building parts. Other types of wood workers were turners, coopers, wheelwrights, cabinet makers, etc
It's interesting, until recently, early 20th century it was common in America to let strangers stay in your house or barn. For the simple reason you couldn't leave someone out in the wilderness and there wasn't anywhere else to go.
Hospitality is a virtue of cultures around the globe. For many cultures, since you may not able to identify the King or lord or mythical or religious figure, you would want to treat a guest with greater honor than a member of the house. It's reflected in myths from divers as scandinavia, Japan, the middle east and Meso America.
However you wouldn't have the need for the myths exhorting hospitality if it was something humans did naturally.
It used to be the same in Scotland up until Victorian times, you didn’t turn away someone seeking shelter and in turn they could do you no harm while under your hospitality. It’s how the glencoe massacre happened - nobody expected to be betrayed mid-winter while hosting.
@@alexandermorton471 In America it was acceptable to lock your guest in the barn at night for that reason.
I must say Shad continues to pump out inn-teresting videos.
I can imagine a scene in DND:
the travellers pay for a night at the inn, and one of them lays down in his bed.
out of the darkness, a voice next to him: "hey, how's it going?"
Or have the innkeeper say "you're lucky, we have $partySize spaces left!" then the party gets to the room and it's just one large bed they have to sleep together in.
My players always have to share beds
Except the Goliath, he gets his own bed. Tell him otherwise I dare you lol