New Worlds: Can You Spare a Coin
The practice of begging came up in passing back in Year Four, when we discussed charity. I want to loop back around, though, and look
Tag: worldbuilding
New Worlds: Faithful (and Unfaithful) Servants
Servants and aristocrats: wildly different on the social scale, yet often found together.
New Worlds: Blue Bloods
Ah, aristocracy. It would be the best form of government . . . if only it were humanly possible to implement as originally conceived, instead
New Worlds: The Social Pecking Order
Having spent last week talking about the specific differentiations between class, status, and caste, I’m going to attempt to avoid all those terms this week
New Worlds: Class, Status, and Caste
When talking about the divisions within a society, we tend to toss around terminology with a lamentable lack of precision. But it’s useful to pay
New Worlds: Once and Future Systems
If I followed the general pattern of this Patreon, I would write an essay that gives an overview of different basic economic systems. But as
BVC Announces New Worlds, Year Six by Marie Brennan
Enter a land of infinite possibility . . .
New Worlds: Visible and Invisible Hands
If you’ve ever taken an economics class — or possibly even if you haven’t — you’ve probably encountered the notion of the “invisible hand” that
New Worlds: Who Owns What
“It’s mine!” All of us probably uttered that sentence at some point in our childhood — probably many, many times. One of the jobs of
New Worlds: Sources of Wealth
Where does wealth come from? The answer to that question has changed over time, to a far greater degree than you may realize if you’re
New Worlds Theory Post: Magic as Culture
My original title for this essay was “Magic and Culture.” But that makes those two things sound separate, like they exist side-by-side, and the point
New Worlds: Death Sentences
Our previous tour through physical punishments, back in Year Four, stopped short of a rather crucial one: execution. (Content warnings for basically every form of
New Worlds: Torture
I was originally going to title this essay “We Have Ways of Making You Talk,” but I decided that was too flippant for the subject
