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Why Fantasy? Goin' Medieval in D&D
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<blockquote data-quote="Ixal" data-source="post: 8589333" data-attributes="member: 7030132"><p>Why medieval fantasy? Because most people don't know much about medieval history apart from some, often wrong as they often think of much later time periods than whats generally defined as medieval, tropes so it is very easy to project stuff into the game. Especially when you also add fantasy.</p><p>It is especially true as a escapist power fantasy. The medieval world was, at least according to the tropes, lawless and allows the PCs do whatever they want while the fantasy part allows the hero to fight through hordes of enemies and make Robocop look like a nonviolent philosophical movie in comparison.</p><p></p><p>In Science Fiction you often have to deal with with pesky modern problems and concepts which limit what the PCs can believable do (why doesn't the police show up) or otherwise makes it harder to write adventures as there are so many more things the GM has to think off ("lets just SciFi google it" or "sue them"). Also when you want to escape reality, SciFi is often still too close. Which is also why many people react negatively when people try to make medieval fantasy more historic/realistic which often includes adding mundane real world problems to it the players want to escape from.</p><p></p><p>As for why monarchies, they are one of the tropes entertainment has told us are part of the medieval times. According to tropes, medieval = knights in armor, king in a castle and pesant on fields. And its not that they are wrong with that. Most places, no matter where in the world had a monarchy at that time. Heck even today we have a lot of autokraties just without all this nobility and divine rule stuff.</p><p>But its not as if medieval fantasy players (maybe also the authors) have any clue how feudal or monarchic systems work nor have they spend much thought about all the different variants of monarchies that existed in history. The understanding of monarchies in most RPGs does not go beyond what you see in Disney movies. Not that this is limited to monarchies in RPGs you are more likely to see US style democracies than historic republics like Venice or Milan.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ixal, post: 8589333, member: 7030132"] Why medieval fantasy? Because most people don't know much about medieval history apart from some, often wrong as they often think of much later time periods than whats generally defined as medieval, tropes so it is very easy to project stuff into the game. Especially when you also add fantasy. It is especially true as a escapist power fantasy. The medieval world was, at least according to the tropes, lawless and allows the PCs do whatever they want while the fantasy part allows the hero to fight through hordes of enemies and make Robocop look like a nonviolent philosophical movie in comparison. In Science Fiction you often have to deal with with pesky modern problems and concepts which limit what the PCs can believable do (why doesn't the police show up) or otherwise makes it harder to write adventures as there are so many more things the GM has to think off ("lets just SciFi google it" or "sue them"). Also when you want to escape reality, SciFi is often still too close. Which is also why many people react negatively when people try to make medieval fantasy more historic/realistic which often includes adding mundane real world problems to it the players want to escape from. As for why monarchies, they are one of the tropes entertainment has told us are part of the medieval times. According to tropes, medieval = knights in armor, king in a castle and pesant on fields. And its not that they are wrong with that. Most places, no matter where in the world had a monarchy at that time. Heck even today we have a lot of autokraties just without all this nobility and divine rule stuff. But its not as if medieval fantasy players (maybe also the authors) have any clue how feudal or monarchic systems work nor have they spend much thought about all the different variants of monarchies that existed in history. The understanding of monarchies in most RPGs does not go beyond what you see in Disney movies. Not that this is limited to monarchies in RPGs you are more likely to see US style democracies than historic republics like Venice or Milan. [/QUOTE]
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