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[SirHoneyBadger]

If it were up to me, I'd give the ability to tag children (yes, children) as either military or civilian.

I know it's an extreme viewpoint, but this isn't something that anyone would force you to do. It would be a choice to make, with benefits, and sometimes strong temptations, but also with serious penalties.

Now that doesn't mean the children themselves would ever have to fight. Children would still do whatever they wanted. It simply means that you'd choose which broad area the child would be groomed for, once that child reaches adulthood.

I don't understand why Urist McSoldier should have an unhappy thought about mining for a living, or about being a soldier instead of a miner. Both are highly dangerous trades, and these are dwarfs, living on the frontier. If they aren't atleast willing to grit their teeth and occasionally fight for survival, they shouldn't have left the Mountainhome.

And they (the relatively rational ones, anyway, and primarily the ones that show up before you get a working economy) should have some sense of that.

What I *do* understand is that, from the point of the middle ages back, with Sparta being a well-known starting point, it was fairly typical for there to be a military elite that would be holistically trained in the deadly arts (including various social skills, making that portion of the game suddenly make a little bit of sense), basically from birth.

As uncomfortable as it may make some of us, it's what happened, and it makes sense in terms of the nature of the game. By "tagging" such children for the military (or "warrior caste", whatever you want to call it), you'd both benefit from their lifelong training, and be handicapped by the economic and social burdens that come with them.

In a sense, they'd all be Nobles. They'd have special needs and elite social status, as well as military status. You'd have to plan for that, and also plan for years of training (they might even take years longer simply to reach "adulthood" than your civilian children, representing more closely an active apprentice-program), along with all the maintenance such a warrior caste would require.

Switching those warrior caste dwarfs over to permanent civilian status, or possibly giving a civilian identical status and rights, depending on the particular societal structure in place, could (and should) cause immense social upheaval, starting with unhappy thoughts and quite possibly ending with rebellion, or even a military coup.

Think "The Last Samurai".

[KenboCalrissian]

I don't think I'd call them nobles... personally, when we get around to Apprenticing children, I'd like to see a separate screen devoted to detailing your apprentices and their needs.  Military apprentices, to me, fall under the same umbrella.

I could see the manner in which the children are trained could vary from civ to civ.  The methods of training children for war run the gammut from brutal punishment (because you mentioned Sparta, the scene from 300 where the boy is fighting a lion by himself, and all of his scars are plainly seen, comes to mind) to simply requiring that the children study and spar with one another like a regular recruit.  I could see evil civs, like goblins, doing the former and "better" civs doing the last.  I won't say 'good,' because I wouldn't consider dwarves 'good' when they routinely use their babies as shields in combat.

I have a feeling something like this will be possible when apprenticing comes around.

[Safe-Keeper]

Of course in the modern Western world you don't have child soldiers and children working their butts off in factories, but this is DF, set in a different time. Has anyone read Oliver Twist (Victorian England), or, heck, even Free the Children, which depicts the plights of child workers around the world today?

Sorry, but in DF's days, children were soldiers and workers. That simple. It's not an "extreme viewpoint" at all, it's a fact of history. If there's anyone who shouldn't be fighting in DF, based on real history, it's females.

[Arrkhal]

Both of the above posts should, ideally, be covered in the apprenticing system.

Who did most of the work around, say, a blacksmith's shop?  Not the big bossman blacksmith himself, that's for sure.  The more successful smiths could have maybe a dozen children apprentices doing the grunt-work, while the blacksmith only handles the more technically demanding tasks.  I.e., to forge a plow or a hoe, it would be an apprentice swinging the hammer, while the blacksmith says where to hit.  Even with a poorer smith, it'd be his sons doing the majority of the muscle work.

Apprenticeships were pretty common when parents couldn't really afford to feed their kids (which was also common).  16, 18, or more hours of hard labor per day, in exchange for a dirt floor to sleep on, maybe a thin layer of hay if they were lucky, and a meal or two of thin gruel.  But it was either that, or starvation.

[Derakon]

Keep in mind that DF isn't actually 1400's Europe, hence the elves, goblins, unicorns, etc. There's numerous areas where there are opportunities to pick a position on the sliding scale of realism and idealism, and it could well be that Toady has decided to idealize DF's world(s) to not have child labor.

Arrkhal:I think you may be swinging a little past realism towards dystopianism. Of course, I don't know what it was actually like, but what you say sounds off. If you have a source for your statements, I'd like to see them.

[Arrkhal]

Can't find that specific of a citation at the moment (read this stuff years ago), but here's a thing that starts with a brief account of some poor guy's apprenticeship in 1640.  http://www.lni.wa.gov/TradesLicensing/Apprenticeship/About/History/default.asp

For more modern times in third world countries, you could read "The Story of Ali," which describes a kid who was sorta-kinda an "apprentice," at a hotel.  The kind of work a kid could expect to find if they were an orphan, or their parents couldn't feed them.  http://www.himalayan-imports.com/faq/Sunrise.htm

Those kinds of things were (and are) far from rare.  Life was cheap back then.

You also have to remember that the more formalized apprenticeships of the 1600s grew out of much less formal arrangements, with no written contracts, no guarantees of providing anything, etc.  Basically just a kid would help out in hopes of gaining some skills, and having a place to sleep and some stuff to eat.

[Pilsu]

I don't think you can dismiss child slavery just by claiming it would make the game grimdark

[BlazingDav]

I wouldn't call it slavery =/

Labour yes, but saying that the masters could afford to look after their apprentices better does not sound that much more likely to me personally,

1. They could easily have gone through that and so could sympathise
2. Even if they are cruel an apprentice is still an investment on their part and them just dying would waste it

Arguably to pull it to idealism without losing alot of realism you could just add a civ ethic relating to the care of apprentices and then leave what happens to the personality of the master. Or even outlaw the abuse or negligence of one's apprentice.

[Arrkhal]

Well, you know, like Derakon said, DF is not 1400's Europe; even if the tech level is arbitrarily restricted to that, the sociological level is not.  Of course, on the other hand, life was so cheap in the middle ages that seeing an infant thrown into a manure heap was actually a very common sight, and women were constantly trying to figure out how to have abortions (try googling the phrase "nutmeg lady").  The entire term "dystopian" is just modern-propagandist bullcrap.  There is no such thing as a "dystopia."  Any atrocity, any misery, any low point that mankind could possibly reach without total extinction... we've already been there.  We've got the T-shirt.  We have several of those shirts, worn in layers, plus a cape and 3 cloaks.  You don't want to know what the cape and cloaks say on them.  But we've survived.  Progress marches on.  "Dystopia" is an utter myth; hope may ebb and flood, but it's never extinguished.

Actually, I'm working on a pen and paper RPG campaign based around that.  The technology is pre-renaissance, but socially they're basically identical to the 1950's, due to a conspiratorial cabal of magic-weilding nobles who have been consolidating power for centuries by suppressing the use of technology.  But now the underground of technology users have finally perfected their explosive powder...  A conspiracy-revolution-steampunk game, basically.  It should be fun.

But anyway, back on topic, Dwarves are potentially a bit more "civilized" than early (and modern) humans.  Actually, like I pointed out on a different suggestion thread, a guy's idea sounded more like a Chinese court than European feudalism.  But that's not necessarily a bad thing.  Dwarven society could easily be slightly more like very early China (they got pretty weird the last few centuries, though).  The Qin dynasty (around 200 BC!) had a megaconstruction that's visible from outer space.  That's pretty damn dwarfy!