Grainger
Explorer
Has anyone tried using the rules in 5E D&D for other time periods or era? The game nominally has a 10th or 11th century technology and social level, aside from various anachronisms. Has anyone tried something along the 15th century (limited guns, different society) or 19th century (lots of guns, very different society) and so forth? How did it go? What are your thoughts?
I actually run my game in an 12th-century world, and I'd say a game of vanilla 5e is more typically high medieval, with one or two Renaissance and Ancient World anachronisms, than 10-12th centyry, but of course it depends more on the game-world than the rules.
For example, in the 12th century, there wasn't much of a cash economy, and D&D assumes this. You should also lose nearly all the armour types (keep the chain, and call "leather armour" gambesons or cuir boulli; the other types are either later inventions or pure fantasy). Likewise, you wouldn't have that many bludgeoning weapons around, which came into their own in the era of plate armour. The 12th century also wasn't anything like as urbanised as a typical D&D campaign, and which the prices and details in the PHB seem to suggest.
But D&D is anti-historical for any medieval period, in many ways, not just the 11th and 12th centuries. You have to have large areas of land for farming that are basically safe from monsters, otherwise the peasants would be killed off, and the economy and society would collapse. There also wouldn't be nearly as many warriors (knights, men-at-arms or mercenaries) around as in a typical D&D campaign world; but I suppose if you have more monsters around, you need more troops to defend civilisation. You also wouldn't have "law enforcement" agencies in anything like the same way that most players and scenario writers assume.
I'm of course not getting into the presence of magic, which would make for a massively different society anyway (and that's why my game-world doesn't have that many magic-using NPCs).
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