D&D 4E How much history/ real world action do you like in your 4E

[Jib]

How much historical flavor do you like in your 4E D&D? Do you like a game that is closer to "low fantasy" or throw out all the stops and get away from the real world as possible with "high fantasy"?

 

[SigmaX0]

Our group has dabbled in real world campaigns back in 3E, we did one campaign set in slightly mythological ancient Greek times, and one in Constantinople 555 A.D. Currently our 4E campaign is in a fantasy world, although we almost always do low-magic campaigns.

Personally I don't like the idea that every other person is some fireball-spewing epic saviour, you feel more special as a PC in a low magic campaign IMO.

 

[Jhaelen]

How much historical flavor do you like in your 4E D&D? Do you like a game that is closer to "low fantasy" or throw out all the stops and get away from the real world as possible with "high fantasy"?

If I want historical flavour I play Ars Magica.

I play D&D when I don't want to think about historical accuracy for a change. Actually, when playing D&D I don't want to think about _anything_ too hard. It took me a while to realize but that's when D&D is the most fun for me.

 

[TerraDave]

I ran an alternate earth D&D campaing for years, but, partly by coincedence, started using a new fantasy world for 4E. It had is ups and downs. There is a link in the sig somewhere.

One thing I learned is that you can take a lot of different things from "real life". In the last campaign, it turned out that using real life place names (or archaic versions thereof), regions, religious elements, and the ocasional picture or map of an actual place made the campaign more accesible to the players and of course was a great resource for me the DM. Trying to tie in historical events, or details like coinage, period weapons, etc was a little more work, but OK. Though I think I wise not to do more on this front then I did.

Also, I really had to emphasize "alternate" with an alternate history, fantasy locations, archaic names for many places, etc, so the players new that this just wasnt earth 1450, were only their wizard could cast fireballs.