Everyone knows what a barbarian is: a
large, stupid, half-dressed warrior who
grunts and hacks his way through life,
subduing a succession of beautiful,
stupid, and undressed women.

Wrong. A real barbarian is much more
complex, talented, and — most importantly — much more fun to play in a fantasy game than the character described
above.
Right?

Most fantasy role-playing game systems allow for the existence of barbarians, either as player characters or part
of the milieu of a specific game-world,
but the only reference many players and
referees employ is a particular strand of
fantasy writing of which Conan is the
best (or perhaps the worst) example.
With such a limited picture of what a
barbarian culture really is like, the referee and players will have great difficulty
getting the most out of an adventure or
campaign in which barbarians play a
part. Drawing from historical sources,
this article presents background material on the social structure, physical culture, and mentality of real barbarian
tribes.

What exactly is a barbarian culture?
The word barbarian is derived from classical Greek, and it carries with it an
ancient prejudice: barbarians were called
that because they babbled languages
sounding like “bar bar bar” instead of
speaking Greek like all real people did.
The peoples originally given this catchall label by the Greeks were the disparate
tribes who lived in and on the fringes of
classical Europe: Celts, Persians, Scyths,
and so on. Later, the label was used for
any tribe with a similar lifestyle, such as
the Franks, Huns, and Goths.
Still later, at the beginning of modern
times (when the Europeans invaded
America and Africa), the same label was
applied — with the same old negative

connotation — to the native peoples of
the newly discovered lands. To the explorers and those who followed them,
using the word barbarian to refer to the
Iroquois and Sioux, or the Masai and
Yoruba, was a good way to justify exploiting those groups, just as the Romans
conquered and exploited the Celts. The
conquest, of course, was supposed to
bring poor “savages” the benefits of civilization, but if you believe that, I’ve got a
bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.

The barbarian way of life
All these disparate peoples do have
certain traits in common, enough so to
justify talking about a “barbarian way of
life.” In general, barbarian cultures are
more or less successful social adaptations to living conditions in wild forest,
scrub land, veldts, or jungle edges —
land that’s unsuitable for sedentary, intensive farming as the Greeks, the Romans, and later the Europeans practiced
it. Though many barbarians do farm,
they obtain the bulk of their food supply
from animals, either livestock, wild game,
or both. A population that doesn’t rely on
agriculture to feed itself must meet two
requirements: The people need a lot of
open land in proportion to the population being fed, and the people need to be
mobile. Barbarians rarely have cities or
towns, merely villages and camps, if they
have any permanent settlements at all.

Almost all barbarian tribes have devised (unconsciously, of course) a primitive but effective means of population
control: the glorification of war. And
since life in a warlike society in a semiwilderness is dangerous, barbarians organize their social groups on the basis of
blood-kin—the clan, family, and triberather than on abstractions such as the
city or nation state. After all, you can
trust your kin, but who knows what some
fellow citizen might do to you?

Finally, barbarians have an oral culture, not a literate one. Being illiterate,
however, does not mean barbarians are
stupid, as evidenced by, for example, the
elaborate poetry of the Celts. Priests and
singers keep a fully developed mental
and intellectual culture alive in almost all
barbarian societies.

Highs, lows, and in betweens
Since so many different cultures fall
under the barbarian label, this article
restricts itself for simplicity’s sake to
three historical barbarian societies of
Europe, one for each general type of
barbarian culture.

The first type, the
“High Barbarian” culture (a term coined
by the archeologist Stuart Piggot) such
as the Celtics, is far from primitive. Since
it includes enough agriculture in its
economy to produce a food surplus, it
has a well developed material culture,
including elaborate jewelry and sophisticated weapons technology. (The Celts
invented horseshoes and chain mail,
among many other things.)

Low Barbarian cultures, sometimes
classed as “savages,” depend primarily
on hunting and gathering, supplemented
by stock raising, and thus have a poorly
developed material culture. The early
Germans are a good example.
Finally, there are the Nomad Barbarians, such as the Scyths, who have no
fixed settlements and live entirely by
stock-raising. Depending on the lushness of the grazing lands they and their
livestock occupy, the material culture of
nomads is either rich or poor; the Scyths,
used here as an example, had many luxuries obtained by trading horses to the
Greeks and Romans.

    Barbarian society can be loosely defined
as a democratic aristocracy. Every
free person in the tribe has a say, or even
a formal vote, in decisions that concern
the whole tribe, such as declaring war or

leaving old territory for new. Although
tribes contain nobles and leaders, in no
sense are they considered inherently
superior to other tribe members. If a
leader insists on acting against the will of
the tribe, he or she will be deposed or
simply ignored. The one truly fixed social
division in the tribe is between the free
and the unfree. Only a small minority of
the unfree are outright slaves; these are
usually prisoners of war and their subsequent offspring. Most of the unfree are
criminals, debtors, and the dishonored,
who have lost their tribal rights in such a
way that those rights cannot be restored.
The unfree survive by binding themselves
to free families and performing menial
work, such as serving in the house or
tilling the family’s fields.

Among Low Barbarians like the early
Germans, there are no social distinctions among the free. Every member of
the tribe lives in the same fashion and
possesses about the same amount of
wealth. Everyone raises stock, which is
collectively owned by families — not
individuals. Men hunt game and women
gather wild plants or do a little gardening
to supplement the food supply. Most
people can perform the various necessary handcrafts (woodworking, sewing,
and so forth), which is what they do to
occupy their spare time. Even priests
and shamans raise or collect their food
rather than being supported by the
community. Since the tribes are small,
everyone in a tribe knows everyone else
well enough to be able to choose the
wisest persons to be leaders for the
leaders’ lifetime.

However (as the Roman historian
Tacitus pointed out), as wealth accumulates in a primitive society, power tends
to be concentrated in fewer and fewer
hands. Moreover, the wealthier the society is, the more it can support specialists from priests to craftsmen. The High

barbarians and wealthy nomads thus
have a social hierarchy. Those at the top,
the nobles, have surplus wealth (usually
measured in livestock) and personal influence (measured by their character
and their achievements). Although nobility runs in families, mostly because
wealth tends to perpetuate itself, a barbarian nobility is by no means a fixed
social class by birth. A cowardly noble,
for instance, will be scorned and ridiculed no matter who his ancestors were.
Likewise, the tribe retains the right to
choose its leaders from among any of
the noble families. Hereditary succession of “kingship” or chieftainship is
unknown among barbarians. When a
chief dies, a great deal of electioneering
— or even open warfare — takes place
among and between the great clans to
see whom the tribe will declare its new
ruler.

Wealth and how to get it
Wealth is defined very differently in
barbarian societies than in civilized ones.
A man’s wealth means not what he owns
and hoards, but what he can afford to
give away. Nobles are expected to give
gifts to tribe members who need or
deserve them, as well as support a large
household or a riding-group of warriors
and retainers. Whenever a Scythian
chieftain made a good horse trade, for
instance, he immediately threw a large
party and gave away most of the luxury
items he’d obtained. A chief who didn’t
do so lost face and standing in the tribe.
Similarly, a Celtic chief was expected to
reward bards and craftsmen lavishly for
their skill and to give away horses and
weapons to every deserving warrior who
asked for them.

Maintaining such an outpouring of

generosity requires a source of things to
give away. Sometimes these things are
obtained through trade, but more usually through warfare in the form of battle
loot, which supplies weapons, horses,
and even stolen cattle from a neighboring noble. Beyond these rather commercial motives, however, war is also considered the highest form of activity for a free
man, and therefore warriors are the
cream of a High Barbarian or nomadic
society. A barbarian noble makes war on
another noble for the flimsiest of motives;
if no motive is available, he raids his
enemy’s livestock and creates one. This
constant raiding and warring rarely affects the tribe as a whole, however,
because it’s considered a personal matter between the combatants. Only if
some extreme danger threatens, like a
foreign invader, does the entire tribe
mobilize for war. Among Low barbarians, only a very extreme danger can
cause a true war; most fighting takes
place between individuals or individuals
each supported by a couple of friends.

To accompany him in his constant
warfare, the High barbarian or nomadic
noble maintains a warband — a group of
younger, poorer warriors who pledge to
fight in return for being armed, horsed,
and fed at their lord’s expense. The warband is fanatically loyal; each member is
expected to risk his life to save the lord’s
or (if need be) to die avenging the lord’s
death. If a noble does something that
shames him, the warband feels shame
along with him. Becoming part of a warband is usually marked by a ceremonial
oath and a ritual event, similar to the
knighting ceremony of later times. The
lord is obligated to defend each member
of the band, and to give each a share of
any battle loot (as well as his ordinary

maintenance expenses) in return for this
blind loyalty.

In wealthy barbarian societies, other
classes of the free also have a high social
standing, particularly skilled craftsmen,
singers, and priests. Since barbarians
have a great love of beautiful objects,
those who can weave, make jewelry, and
— above all — make good weapons are
highly regarded and well paid. Many
craft workers live as part of a noble’s
retinue, receiving his support and protection in return for producing goods
only for him and those he favors. Other
craftsmen set up independent workshops
and take apprentices. Women as well as
men can become independent owners of
such a workshop.

Singers, priests, and shamans
Singers, such as the Celtic bard or
German scop, are far more than entertainers. They are the oral historians and
guardians of the traditional wisdom lore
for their tribes. In their memories, in the
form of poetry, are the genealogies of
important families, tales of past battles
and events, and a kind of lore called
gnomic, which is part good advice and
part primitive science. Using poetic
stanzas, gnomic lore preserves wisdom
such as “a faithful wife is better than a
fine horse” and “dark clouds, yellow
leaves — winter is coming.”
Among Low barbarians, each camp or
village has its own part-time singer.
Among High barbarians and nomads,
most singers have a place in a noble
lord’s retinue, but some wander from
group to group within their tribal territory. Whenever they appear, these wandering singers are fed, sheltered and
treated with respect by those they visit.

Barbarians have two kinds of holy men
and women, whom for convenience we
may call priests and shamans. The priest
or priestess knows the lore of the gods
— who they are, their deeds and attributes, and what they require from mankind in sacrifice, rite, or law. In a settled
barbarian society, priests are attached to
temples of shrines of their particular god
or goddess. Among the Low barbarians,
this shrine may only be a holy tree,
spring, or other natural feature. Among
nomads, priests carry the sacred images
or totems of the gods as the tribes roam
the grazing lands. Priests and priestesses
serve their gods the same way a warrior
serves his lord — out of personal loyalty,
not with a sense that holy things are
superior to the mundane. Priests also
guide and advise the nobles, and are
skilled in interpreting omens and deciding which days are lucky or unlucky.
Shamans, as opposed to priests, are
those who actively seek out direct experience of the gods and the places where
the gods live by what are commonly
called “magical” means. This magic is a
set of techniques that induces trances
and visions, from which the shaman

learns secret knowledge from dwellers
in the spirit world. By using their secret
lore, shamans can make powerful charms
and spells that bring them personal
power and influence over others.
Although barbarians respect shamans,
they also live in terror of this secret lore.
Shamans are said to curse more than
bless; the very objects they touch are
said to be infested with spirits and thus
dangerous. In some game systems, barbarian player characters automatically
look upon player characters who use
magic as dreaded shamans, and thus
shun them. In other game systems, magic
and shamanism are an accepted part of
life in barbarian society. The referee
must make certain decisions about the
nature of shamans based on the rules of
the game being played.

Women in barbarian society

It’s necessary to treat the position of
women in barbarian societies in some
detail, simply because so much nonsense has been written about it. Some
writers maintain that barbarians treated
women as equals; others, that women
were chattel.

The truth of the matter is far more
complex. Certain barbarians, like the
Brythonic Celts, gave women full civil
rights in every sense of the word. Others,
like the Goidelic Celts, reserved these
rights for a certain class of noble women.
Still others, like the Germans, treated
women as “second-class citizens.” But
— and here is the important point — no
barbarian tribe can afford to treat all
women as chattel in the fully restrictive
way that the Romans and later the Christians did. In a small tribe living under
harsh conditions, all members have to
pull their own weight from the time
they’re five or six years old. Helpless,
fluttering women who must be protected
are big nuisances and little else. Only the
wealthiest men can afford one or two
slave women or concubines, and even
these women are expected to weave,
spin, or make some economic contribution to his household. Because they contribute, even they are protected by tribal
laws.

Free barbarian women have to have
the means of supporting themselves and
their children, because they are likely to
be early widows. The glory of war doesn’t
come cheap: Archaelogical evidence
shows that the average death-age of
barbarian men is twenty-four, but of
women, over forty. No tribe can afford to
have a large number of widows dependent on a small number of grown men.
Thus, what free barbarian women earn
by their labor is their property, not their
husbands’; they can make legal bargains
and contracts in their own right; they are
trained in food-producing skills like stock
raising and farming. Even when they
have no vote in tribal affairs, they are
expected to hold a place in the tribe and

offer advice and counsel to the menfolk.
Noble women are trained to run a fort
and hold off sieges while their husbands
are at war. In many barbarian tribes, a
woman can be a leader in her own right
or can inherit her husband’s position
when he dies.

Not surprisingly, the barbarian tribes
that gave women full rights were those
where women could be warriors, such as
the Brythonic Celts. Even among the
Germans and the Goidelic Celts, women
who wished to be warriors could escape
from the second-class standing of most
women and take part in the full life of the
tribe. These women warriors are well
attested to by eyewitnesses among the
Greeks and Romans. Tacitus, for example, repeatedly says that barbarian women fought alongside men as a matter of
course, and that the Roman soldiers
found them much more frightening than
the men. Good women warriors could
even be generals, as was Boudicca in
Britain.

In a game world, then, free barbarian
women are never mere dupes for handsome adventurers, but are independent
persons capable of demanding respect
— often at sword-point. Male gamers
whose fantasies run to harems should
establish them in civilized areas with the
food surplus to support such whims. A
woman gamer who wants a character
who is primarily a warrior should consider giving her creation a barbarian
background if the game rules allow. Not
only will a barbarian woman have the
right social conditioning to be a warrior,
but she will also have a height advantage
over her civilized sisters. Probably because of their almost-all protein diet, all
barbarians are very large, as the grainfed Romans learned at their own expense. Men range from 6’ to 6’7” in
height, and women from 5’9” to 6’2”.
This fact can be a decided advantage for
barbarian types in games like Runequest
where size is a factor in determining
character abilities.

Habitat: how they lived
High barbarians are most likely to be
found in fertile open land not too far from
forests. Although most of the territory is
in pasture for livestock, around the tribal
settlements are fields, farmed by the
unfree (on land belonging to nobles), or
by independent free farmers who also
herd livestock. The typical settlement,
built behind an earthwork wall and ditch,
contains 6 to 12 round wooden houses
with thatched roofs. The largest house

belongs to the village noble or chief. The
greatest chief in the tribal area, the sort
of man often erroneously called a king,
lives in a dun or fort, usually at the top of
a hill, behind a stone wall laced with
timber. Within the dun is the chief’s
round house, a stable, storage sheds, a
well, and a few huts for the unfree who
serve him. If High barbarians live near a
civilized area and trade with it, there may
be a town, located along some major
road or river, surrounded by earthwork
defenses and containing 100 to 200
houses aside from the chief’s fort. If
more than one of these towns exists in
the same large area (a rare occurrence),
they will be separated from each other
by an expanse of at least 90 square miles.
Low barbarians live on poor land, to
where they have been pushed by their
stronger neighbors: clearings in forests,
marshes, or hilly scrubland. They live in
villages of 5 to 10 rectangular wooden
houses surrounded by a palisade of logs.
If the village is in fairly open country,
small fields will be planted around it,
worked in common by the village, and
there will be a common grazing ground
for livestock. If the Low barbarians live in
a forest, most of the ground they’ve
laboriously cleared will be used as grazing area for livestock or for a few small
patches of vegetables. Forest tribes live
almost entirely by hunting and gathering; some have no livestock except for
dogs, who are beasts of burden as well
as hunting animals.

Nomads, of course, live only in open
grasslands. Each nomad tribe or clan
requires a lot of open ground, because it
takes roughly 25 acres of pasture to feed
one cow, or one horse, or seven sheep,
for a year. Nomads travel in small groups,
because of their need for so much land.
Each tribal group of 4 or 5 extended families or clans needs about 30 square miles
of land, on which they graze about 100
head of cows and horses, or 600 sheep
and a few horses, per family. Nomads set
. up camp near a water supply, stay about
two weeks, then pack up and move on to
fresh grass. In camp, they shelter in
round tents of either leather or felt, averaging about two tents for each extended
family. The chief may have as many as
five tents, to house his warband and
other retainers. Nomads carry these tents
and their other gear in wooden-wheeled
carts, usually laboriously carved and
brightly painted. Once or twice a year,
several of these tribal groups meet at a
river to trade and exchange news, but
these big camps only last for a few days,
because their combined livestock soon
eats the area bare.

Possessions: the things they kept
Whether a tent or a house, the internal
layout of most barbarian dwellings is
similar. In the center, beneath a smokehole in the roof, is a main hearth or fire
with andirons and chains to hold the

cooking-pots. Most of the life of the
household takes place around this fire.
Off to the sides, wickerwork partitions or
felt hangings and carpets divide small
areas off into private sleeping areas for
couples and unmarried adolescent girls.
Everyone else who shares the house or
tent sleeps in a heap around the fire —
warriors, servants, children, and dogs.
For furnishings, nomads have storage
chests and jars, cushions, and saddlebags lying more or less neatly around
the tent. Low barbarians have few possessions in their houses — a prized
wooden chest, some storage barrels,
perhaps one stool for the head of the
family to sit on. On the walls they hang
weapons, cooking equipment, and what
few pieces of extra clothing or gear they
have.
High barbarians have many more possessions per household. Even common
people have chairs, a set of shelves to
store equipment, and wooden chests
and barrels to store food; they may even
have a cloth hanging or an ornate lantern. The nobles, particularly the great

chief with a dun of his own, have proper
beds rather than blankets spread on the
floor and may even have a table for the
chief and his warband to eat at. A truly
great chief may have a broch, a two- or
three-story round tower. The entire bottom floor of the broch is the chief’s hall,
used exclusively for cooking, receiving
guests, and conducting official business.
The servants sleep on the floor of the
hall; the chief’s family and retainers have
bed-chambers upstairs. Even if a chief
has a broch, with the privacy it could
offer, he still receives guests and makes
his legal judgements in the midst of a
crowd — the warband drinking beside
him, the servants busy at the cooking,
the members of his family and tribe
standing around and watching. Privacy
is an unknown concept among barbarians of all classes.
All barbarians wear as much clothing
and jewelry as they can afford, or their
rank allows; in every sort of barbarian
society, personal adornment is a sign of
rank and status. The standard costume
for European barbarian men is a pair of

loose trousers, a simple loose tunic, and
an elaborate sword-belt. Women wear
long, loose dresses, also belted, except
for women warriors, who dress like men.
Members of both sexes use a long,
hooded cloak in bad weather.
High barbarians make their clothing
out of fine wool and linen, woven and
dyed into bright-colored checks and
plaids. Both men and women wear rings,
brooches, and jeweled belts, while the
men also wear gold armbands or torques
at the neck, and the women have combs
and other hair ornaments. Low barbarians make their clothing out of leather
and what cloth they can acquire in trade,
dyed in simple blues and browns. Most
persons have a single piece of jewelry,
usually a copper or bronze pin set with
glass. Sheep-raising nomads have wool
clothing; other nomads wear leather,
except for heavy horse-hair felt cloaks
and boots. All nomad clothing is heavily
decorated with embroidery or felt-work
applique. Nomad bands typically have a
goodly amount of elaborate jewelry, acquired through trade.

Weapons: how they kept them
Among the three types of barbarians,
weaponry differs strikingly. The primary
armament of High barbarians is the
spear, which comes in several varieties:
a short throwing javelin, a long thrusting
battle spear, and a stout heavy hunting
spear. Among the battle spears, there is
a type called variously a gae bulba or an
angon, which has metal barbs along the
edge of its leaf-shaped steel head. These
barbs do further damage to the victim
when the spear is pulled out, and the
referee should allow for double damage
according to the rules of the game system being used. In any group of High
barbarian warriors, 25% will carry this
sort of barbed spear. Besides a spear,
each warrior carries a sword of the slashing type, with a rounded tip that cannot
stab. Referees will have to adjust for
these inferior swords by lowering damage points and eliminating critical hits in
systems that have them. Although High
barbarians also have axes and hunting
bows, they rarely use missile weapons in
combat, because they consider striking
from a distance to be cowardly.

As for shields, High barbarians use
one of two types. The more common is
round, made of wood reinforced with
leather and set with a central boss. The
other is a long oval, overlaid with a thin
sheet of bronze and decorated with jewels. Although a great chief may have a
shield decorated with gold, most of his
men carry wood-and-leather shields
painted with whitewash. Their armor is
finely wrought chain mail or studded
leather. Again, the chief may have golden
or decorated armor. Few High barbarians wear helmets, contrary to the popular image; they shun them because they
cut down a man’s ability to turn his head

freely. Instead, they specially prepare
their hair before battle by packing it with
lime, which bleaches it white and turns it
as stiff as straw. The resulting mane is
combed straight back and out.

Low barbarians’ lack of metal-working
skills and lack of surplus products to
trade combine to keep them poorly
armed. Although they too carry spears
as their primary weapons, these are likely
to be nothing more than heavy wooden
poles, sharpened on one end and hardened by fire. These wooden weapons,
which cannot pierce any kind of metal or
metal-reinforced armor, will do approximately half the damage of a regular
metal spear. In any game system that
takes the parts of the body into account
when reckoning damage, the game referee should remember that Low barbarians will be aiming for the enemy’s head
and shoulders with the wooden spears.

More formidable weapons exist in Low
barbarian society, but not in great profusion: 25% of Low barbarian warriors
have metal-headed spears, and 5% carry
swords (of the type described above).
Each warrior carries a long knife and a
hand axe for hand-to-hand combat. Low
barbarians are proficient with slings, and
have often been known to pick up rocks
from the ground and throw them at the
enemy for want of any better missile
weapon. Their round wood-and-leather
shields also provide a thrusting weapon
of sorts because they build up the central boss to as sharp and long a point as
possible. The only armor most Low barbarians can afford is their outstanding
courage in battle, but 10% will be decked
out in leather breastplates and perhaps a
leather cap.

Although nomads also use spears,
particularly throwing javelins, their favored weapon is the bow. Nomad horsearchers are highly trained to fire accurately and fast from horseback and to
perform complicated maneuvers. Often
they sweep up to the enemy, fire one
volley, then turn their horses with their
knees while firing another volley as they
sweep away at a tangent that makes
them very hard to hit with return fire.
Nomad spearmen use long thrusting
lances, but they stab overhand rather
than cradling the spear under the arm for
a direct charge. Most nomads also carry
a slashing-sword, sometimes with a
curved blade for greater efficiency of use
on horseback, and a dagger, but they
use the sword only if the spear is broken
or their arrows exhausted. Archers carry
no shields; spearmen use a light wooden
oval, of minumum weight and encumbrance, that can be slung over the left
arm. Nomad fighters depend on their
maneuverability and their long-distance
wounding ability rather than hand-tohand force in a battle. Their armor is
usually studded leather, but 25% of all
nomads have chain mail that they have
obtained in trades.

Barbarian fighting styles
One of the main contributions any
kind of NPC barbarians can make to a
campaign is in acting as mercenary
troops and personal bodyguards to
player characters. Roman and Byzantine
emperors drew their personal guards
from among barbarians under their rule,
because barbarian guards would never
betray their lord — something which
could not be said for their more civilized
subjects. Barbarians are also eager to
hire out as mercenary troops — for the
chance at battle-glory far more than for
the pay. Usually they prefer to swear a
formal oath to their new leader, just as
they would to a barbarian lord, and fight
for their keep plus a share of loot rather
than wages.
Barbarian mercenaries generally ride
to battle and dismount to fight, but
among High barbarians, 20% will be
proficient in fighting from horseback
and the rest will be willing to train to do
so. Low barbarians are more conservative and will balk at any changes in their
usual fighting style. Nomads, of course,
fight as cavalry and will balk at the idea
of fighting dismounted. Nomads also
have incredible endurance, which allows
them to transmit messages at great
speed. As long as they have fresh horses,
they can stay in the saddle for twenty
hours a day.

In any barbarian warband, 10% of the
male warriors take a formal berserker’s
oath which requires them to go into battle naked except for a shield and sword
belt. Since nakedness in battle is a male
prerogative, women warriors are never
berserkers in this sense. (Illustrators,
take note!) True berserkers work themselves up to such a high pitch of fury and
blood-lust that they commonly perform
prodigious feats in battle. For berserkertype barbarians, the referee should allow
them to fight at a higher level in a game
that has proficiency levels, or to attack
and parry at higher percentages in a
game that uses percentages, while they
are in the berserk state. In other cases
(such as spontaneous tavern brawls),
the berserker has no special advantages.
The very courage and battle-frenzy of
barbarian warriors has certain drawbacks
in any organized battle. No barbarian
warband, unless under exceptionally
strong or magical leadership, makes a
strategic retreat to save either itself or
the battle. No matter what the reason for
giving way, barbarian warriors prefer to
die rather than be thought cowards.
Basic tactics like keeping a wing in
reserve are also beyond them. Barbarians know only one way to fight a battle:
They assemble at the field, scream horrifying insults at the enemy, and work
themselves up to a pitch of fury. Then,
with the berserkers in the lead, they
charge helter-skelter full into the enemy
ranks. Once the battle is underway, they
seek single combats and cannot form

shield walls or use other team tactics. On
the other hand, a large group of barbarian warriors can play havoc with an
enemy’s morale. In game systems where
morale is a factor, the game referee
should always penalize those forces facing barbarians.

Playing the barbarian honorably
Players who are drawn to create barbarian characters might consider actually role-playing their character rather
than inventing a rather standard warrior-type with exotic clothes and a limited
vocabulary. Role-playing a barbarian
requires a certain shift of mental attitude, but the result is some highly exciting gaming. The most important thing
for the player to understand is the heavy
barbarian emphasis on personal honor,
which is the warrior’s most prized possession, the driving force of his or her
life, and a matter of constant emotional
concern. Barbarian honor is the sort
known as heroic honor — a consideration of personal worth without any sense
of social responsibility. Warriors keep
their honor for their own sake, not for the
sake of the tribe or even for the sake of
their battle-companions. If a warrior
breaks his honor, he feels shamed no
matter who tells him that it’s all right, and
he keeps his honor no matter who suffers
from him doing so.

Heroic honor is at the same time a personal quality and a code of behavior. The
code is basically simple: A warrior must
always be brave, generous, truthful, and
stubborn, forgiving to the weak but harsh
to his or her equals. Those with honor
must never do even the smallest action
that conflicts with this code. Compromise, mental flexibility, the little white
lie, a give-and-take attitude — all are
signs of weakness and disgrace, not
desirable social skills. Thus we have the
Frankish barbarians, Roland and Vivien,
who insisted on dying at their posts in
battle even though their friends begged
and their commanders ordered them to
retreat; and Cuchulain, who kills his
beloved foster brother in a battle neither
wanted, simply because his honor bound
him to do so.
The honor-bound warrior is also determined to fulfill any pledge or promise,
even an idle one, no matter what the
cost. If a barbarian idly promises someone her best horse, she will hand it over
even if it’s her only horse and she needs
it to save her life. Before a battle, warriors engage in a ritual usually translated
as boasting, but that word with its shallow connotation is the wrong one. These
battle-pledges are really like a deadly
version of declaring a contract in bridge.
If a warrior pledges that he will kill five
men and bring their horses home, he is
expected to do just that or die trying. If
he lives without fulfilling the pledge, he
is shamed in the eyes of his warband and
his tribe. Barbarian player characters

should make these pledges either just
before battles, or at dangerous junctures
in an adventure, and then try to live up to
them — and remember, if you pledge
that you won’t come out of a room until
you’ve killed four men, there had better
be four bodies on the floor when you
leave.

Shame is the worst thing that can
befall an honor-bound warrior. The main
reward of honor is respect in the eyes of
others; to the barbarian, the opposite of
respect is ridicule— and this is crushing.
The error of being shamed is the source
of the well-known barbarian quality of
“touchiness,” which is not at all similar to
vanity as we think of it. The slightest
joke, the slightest wrong word or even
just an offensive look drives a barbarian
to challenge the offender, usually to single combat. If the insult is bad enough,
the barbarian strikes first and challenges
later. If a town-dweller insults a barbarian character, that town-dweller should
promptly have a fight on his hands. Even
a barbarian’s friends or other members
of his party won’t be exempt from these
challenges if they insult the barbarian
badly enough, but in such cases the barbarian will be content with weaponless
combat rather than spilling the friend’s
blood. The barbarian has a double standard where insults are concerned, using
the fear of shame to keep up his or her
party’s courage in tight spots — both by
appealing to their honor or by outright
taunting and dares.

There is a ritualized form for single
combats brought on by questions of
honor. In Irish, for example, it’s called fir
fer, which translates literally as “fair
play.” The basic rule is equality in the
fight — one against one, each with the
same weapons of the same quality at his
or her disposal. After the challenge has
been given and accepted (and no honorbound person can turn down a formal
challenge), the combatants assemble
their weapons and go to the agreedupon place. There they face off and
exchange boasts, the challenger first.
These boasts, an important ritual act,
have three parts, in order: a statement of
the boaster’s genealogy; a brag about
his or her personal prowess; and finally,
a reviling of the opponent, with as many
nasty taunts as possible about the opponent’s base ancestors, nasty habits, and
shameful disposition. After the boasts,
the fight is on to the death.

Barbarians take taboos seriously
Another important part of the barbarian mentality is the idea of personal
taboo, or geis, as it was called among the
Celts. A taboo is laid upon a person by a
priest or shaman; it isn’t a quest or something that must be fulfilled, but a prohibition, usually of an irrational nature, that
the person must never break on pain of
causing his or her own death or some
evil for the tribe. One Irish king, for

instance, could never drive his chariot
around Tara from left to right; another
could never kill a bird, even by accident.
Every person in a barbarian world will
have his or her personal taboo, sometimes consisting of a single thing, but
often, especially with warriors, a long list
of them. All societies which have taboos
believe in them so implicitly that a person who breaks one will fall ill and die if
he or she cannot make ritual amends for
the deed.
The game referee should impose taboo
on any barbarian player character, either
as part of the character-creating process
or in the person of some priest or shaman NPC. The referee should remember
that the taboos must be irrational and
somehow in keeping with the barbarian
lifestyle. Some examples: The character
must never draw a sword with the left
hand. He must never eat pork before
sundown. She must never kiss a darkhaired man. He must never ride a gray
horse. She must never enter a tavern
door last. If the character does break
taboo, the referee should make sure that
amends are made in the form of ritual
tasks or quests to restore purity, such as
visiting a certain holy place or bathing in
a certain river. If the character cannot or
will not perform the ritual amends, he or
she should suffer a grave penalty, such
as losing a certain percentage of either
his or her strength or battle proficiency
until he or she either dies or makes
amends.
 

A well-played barbarian character or a
group of NPC barbarians add drama and
excitement even to the routine parts of a
game scenario. At first the other characters (and their players) might be puzzled
or even alarmed by the barbarian’s flamboyant personality and actions. But
they’ll soon find that they can have no
more loyal a friend — or bitter an enemy
— than a real barbarian.

Selected bibliography
Herm, Gerald, The Celts, St. Martin’s Press.

Herodotus, The Histories — A good
translation is that of Penguin Books;
the best single source on the Scyths.

Homer, The Iliad — Be sure to read the
Richmond Lattimore translation
from Chicago University Press;
anyone who wants to understand
honor has to read The Iliad.

Ross, Anne, Everyday Life of the
Pagan Celts, Batsford/Putnam.

Tacitus, On Britain and Germany,
trans. by H. Mattingly, Penguin
Books.

The Song of Roland, trans. by
Dorothy Sayers, Penguin Books;
Roland and his gang are technically
Christians, but this epic provides
another good crash course in heroic
honor.