Btw, I’m not dead yet and I currently have grown up and run a pret2a uo freeshard, Rebirth Reborn

- Bones

I once saw a claim of taro cultivation supporting 80 people per acre, which sounds insane, but if anything could do that, tropical wetland tubers would probably be it. Don’t know how much labor it took.

Anyway, a warm well-watered valley with good soil can support a dense population with a lot of non-farm labor, while still being surrounded by nearby hills that support primitive raiders.

Magically low-effort permaculture like year-round fruits and nuts might be the result of innovation, rather than an inhibitor of it; good for old elven societies. No one wants to think of Tolkien elves as wheat farmers…

There are other literary sources than Merlin and Gandalf. Medea, Circe, witches in general, various Asian practitioners or beings. You generally find less magic missile or fireball and more shapechanging, curses, flying or buffs. (Benefit of Excalibur, or its sheath: not bleeding to death through your wounds. Some tabletop RPGs can model that but not that many.) Granted, those may be hard to do well in a MMORPG, either at all or without being overpowering (flight).

Gandalf could kill goblins or wolves, with fire or preferably Glamdring (hey, a sword) but yeah, his power was usually veiled; they were meant to inspire, not throw down with Sauron.

Important caveat! Are those providing equivalent levels of protection? A typical suit of mail from some earlier time might weigh less than the plate, but does it cover as much, and does it block blows as well? One can wear thicker layers of mail, for more protection, but more weight; I’ve been given to understand plate’s lighter per protective ability.

As for popularity: I don’t see why brigandine and splint would be better in weight distribution. Mail gets worn over padding, so it’s not metal right on flesh vs. blunt blows. (Of course, that’s more weight.) Mail’s labor intensive to make, but can be kept up well over time, and resized for new soldiers, and repaired easily, and basically just accumulates over the years. Some of all that might be true of brigandine, but I think mail might be lighter, actually. Non-overlapping plates or scales means more chance of crits, overlapping means more weight, vs. the somewhat holey yet continuous mail.

Of course, a balkanized society with orcs and bandits lurking in the hills may be more gameable, but even so you can probably have a denser and nicer society due to infrastructure investment and higher cultural trust levels, and much of the infrastructure you need for civilization is Stone Age in material requirements.

Also I rather doubt the classification of women peasants as unproductive.

There’s very likely to be social expectations of gender roles, women raising kids and doing jobs consistent with watching kids (textiles) and having only defensive if any military role, but how rigid those roles are for ornery females is a cultural variable. Some cultures may legally enforce chatteldom, others may just frown a lot at a woman taking male roles. Even in medieval Europe, women seem to have had more freedom to buck the system than in early Victorian times, when roles were codified. Other societies have had ways to be considered a member of the opposite gender. You don’t get a modern Western society, but you don’t get stereotypical medieval either.