D&D 5E What’s So Great About Medieval Europe?

[Fenris-77]

I like to think of D&D as what would happen if Aragorn and Gimli went on an epic drinking and looting binge with Conan and Elric.

 

[MGibster]

Cultural appropriation is a somewhat sensitive topic so I think we should all tread lightly and treat one another with respect.

 

[Al'Kelhar]

Sir, you taxed our tea so highly that we ceased drinking it and switched to coffee out of spite. For 250 years!

And if anyone has ever had the misfortune of drinking American coffee, you'll understand exactly how much spite that is...

Cheers, Al'Kelhar

 

[Coroc]

If you look at dark sun or some Ravenloft domains you will find that other cultures and ages are also well represented and always have been in D&D.

If you look at greyhawk and distinctive Baklunish, Suel and Oeridian humans derivating from some of RL phenotypes and read up canon on how they spread out over Oerth and how they intermixed you will find out, that your main protagonists, if human, are much more likely to look like at least Caucasian or even Asian than typical north European folks. So they will look much more like people would look like in todays multicultural world than like in Europes medieval RL past.

FR has all sorts of non european cultures.

Planescapes Sigil population would resemble Star Wars Mos Isley Canteen guests more than any of LOTR or other eurpean medieval tavern.

D&D shamelessly (luckily) pilfered from any fitting source of history, genre literature , fairytales and other sources. It is somewhat much more diverse than reality ever could be. There is no reason to complain about RPGs being stuck somewhere despite some settings having major portions of them looking like what normal folks believe to be medieval Europe.
In fact like others in this thread already pointed out most settings tech levels are rather renaissance w/o gunpowder.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Well, it’s my cultural history. Other cultural histories are available. It’s not better than them, but it’s pretty awesome (and also awful, in its realism, but we’re creating fictional fantasy worlds).

I’m not really up for role playing “regular cleaning/bathing rituals” though, sorry. Not my bag.

No one suggested you should roleplay bathing. Please don’t put words in my mouth.

Same reason that fantasy itself dominates the RPG scene: familiar tropes aid role-playing.

We live in a diverse world full of readily available media. We can expand what’s familiar. We have done. Most young people are familiar with a much broader range of story than medieval

Most D&D campaigns don't even pretend to be medieval. Most are anachronistic messes of early renaissance to age of sail with random items tossed in from the dawn of civilization to steampunk victorians. Not to mention settings that aren't historical at all,like Dark Sun, Eberron, Planescape and Spelljammer. I guess if you are looking at high fantasy campaigns you get more medieval elements but that's less about history than it is about Arthurian influences and Tolkien.

The game still treats those as deviations from a norm, however.

Given that the Middle Ages spans a thousand years of history, I could turn the question around and say, "How could you have an RPG that isn't medieval?"

Easily. There are many other thousands of years, and places that aren’t Europe.

Is there some reason you feel Medieval Europe gets more than it’s due?

I’m not sure if I’m asking the right question though. Or phrasing it properly. There are some genres or settings I don’t care for (zombie apocalypses). And there are some I love (Wild West, Dark Ages). At the same time there i genres I don’t normally care for but maybe someone does one so well that I love it. And there are genres and settings I love but they implement it so poorly I hate it.

So is it that you just don’t see the appeal, personally? Or is there an animosity?

Neither. I wonder why it’s so hard for so much of the community to move away from an assumption of a Medieval base for the game.

It's kind of like the Old West in that a lot of people have at least a passing familiarity with the setting and can go into most games and be able to figure things out rather quickly. If I'm playing a game and you tell me we're sitting the court of the satrap there's a good chance I won't know what that is. But if I'm in the court of a count, well, hell, I know what a count is. I can't help but think the influence of fantasy fiction played a large part in that as well.

How much do you think most people know about what a count is, in any given medieval region’s context? I figure pretty much the name, and that it’s isn’t super high in the hierarchy, like a Duke would be.

I could write an adventure where the local aristocrat is called the Glenn, and his liege is the Varnun, and show what those titles mean with maybe a handful of sentences over the course of the adventure, and the players would have a bette idea of that court structure than they would if I said “you’re before the Count, act accordingly”.

 

[Zardnaar]

No one suggested you should roleplay bathing. Please don’t put words in my mouth.


We live in a diverse world full of readily available media. We can expand what’s familiar. We have done. Most young people are familiar with a much broader range of story than medieval

The game still treats those as deviations from a norm, however.

Easily. There are many other thousands of years, and places that aren’t Europe.

Neither. I wonder why it’s so hard for so much of the community to move away from an assumption of a Medieval base for the game.


How much do you think most people know about what a count is, in any given medieval region’s context? I figure pretty much the name, and that it’s isn’t super high in the hierarchy, like a Duke would be.

I could write an adventure where the local aristocrat is called the Glenn, and his liege is the Varnun, and show what those titles mean with maybe a handful of sentences over the course of the adventure, and the players would have a bette idea of that court structure than they would if I said “you’re before the Count, act accordingly”.

It's what people like and want.

Of they moved away from it they would lose customers.

If people want chocolate ice cream don't try and sell them something to exotic.

 

[Minigiant]

Here is the list of land Medieval Era units in the popular video game Sid Meier's Civilization 6

• Skirmisher
• Warak'aq
• Berserker
• Samurai
• Khevsur
• Crossbowman
• Crouching Tiger (cannon)
• Domrey
• Pikeman
• Impi
• Courser
• Black Army
• Knight
• Mamluk
• Mandekalu Cavalry
• Winged Hussar
• Keshig

Except the cannon and the elephant, D&D should offer me an effective way to play all these archetypes 5 years in.

You can't even be a proper Jaguar or Eagle warrior for Huitzilopochtli's sake.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Why are we still stuck in this era?

I'm not, why are you?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Tolkien.
Robert E. Howard
Robin Hood
King Arthur

Howard isn't pseudo-medieval - his stories are set in an imagined pre-history, and have more similarities to the Greco-Roman period and the world of the Old Testament than the medieval. Basically the beginning of the iron age.

Tolkien drew on several periods of history. The Shire is based on the England of his childhood, Rohan is based on what would have been classed at the time as "Dark Age" rather than "medieval".

The well known fictional Arthur stories where written in the medieval period, but they are based on much older myths.

 

[cbwjm]

I like a medieval-like setting. It feels familiar to myself and my friends. It doesn't mean that it is the only setting we'll run in but, more often than not, it will form the loose framework of the campaigns background setting.