D&D General "Red Orc" American Indians and "Yellow Orc" Mongolians in D&D

[UngainlyTitan]

No, they're building tiny hamlets in the middle of an expanse of untamed wilderness filled with dangers and are periodically raided by savage humanoids.

Yeah, they're flavored Medieval Europe or Ancient Greek or whatever, but there's clearly an Old West-by-way-of-the-movies influence there.

Just being prepping a one shot Candlekeep adventure and the village in it has isolated and widely scattered housing more so that one would find in modern Europe and the complete opposite to the huddled togetherness of old villages that I am familiar with. Not even as close together as old western towns from the older movies.

 

[Maxperson]

No, they're building tiny hamlets in the middle of an expanse of untamed wilderness filled with dangers and are periodically raided by savage humanoids.

That's stupid, and if you look at settings and modules, generally isn't true. Generally the frontier is at the edge of civilization where beyond lie monsters.

Yeah, they're flavored Medieval Europe or Ancient Greek or whatever, but there's clearly an Old West-by-way-of-the-movies influence there.

Not that I can remember seeing, and I'm an American who loved and grew up on old west movies.

 

[Maxperson]

Just being prepping a one shot Candlekeep adventure and the village in it has isolated and widely scattered housing more so that one would find in modern Europe and the complete opposite to the huddled togetherness of old villages that I am familiar with. Not even as close together as old western towns from the older movies.

Sounds like one of those mutt villages I was talking about that isn't old west or anything else specific.

 

[Mordhau]

In D&D:

The Two big generic settings (Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk) are clearly based on maps of North America.
Early D&D settings contain huge amounts of wilderness, and it specifically North American wilderness (It's definitely not Australian or Central Asian). There is often huge spaces between settlements. In Forgotten Realms you can get a job as a caravan guard between lots of different regions, so far apart and so dangerous is the land in between. In Forgotten Realms again huge sections of the world are actually very oddly depopulated, as has been remarked for decades, it resembles a frontier that is being newly populated (even if that's not always the history). The major parts of the Forgotten Realms are not so much a setting that has a frontier. It is almost nothing but frontier.

In early D&D it was an assumed aspect of play that your perfectly ordinary common Fighter could find an area of land inhabited by 'monsters', 'clear it out' and establish yourself as a lord. Now calling yourself a lord may be vaguely Medieval/Early Modern, but the rest of it is all manifest destiny and claiming the frontier. (And completely at odds with any medieval conception of nobility).

One of the most iconic adventures ever, by the games creator, involved a Keep. It is on the Borderlands. Beyond the Keep there are monsters. It was a model of how you play D&D for generations.

Armed groups of common people who are complete strangers can arrive in town and walk around with their weapons and it's apparently ok, and they don't get bailed up for being brigands or vagabonds.

If you want to claim that there's not huge Western influence, then I think you also need to stop claiming ever that D&D is medieval or that D&D setting are medieval. Because, they are less medieval than they are western.

 

[billd91]

In D&D:

The Two big generic settings (Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk) are clearly based on maps of North America.
Early D&D settings contain huge amounts of wilderness, and it specifically North American wilderness (It's definitely not American or Central Asian). There is often huge spaces between settlements. In Forgotten Realms you can get a job as a caravan guard between lots of different regions, so far apart and so dangerous is the land in between. In Forgotten Realms again huge sections of the world are actually very oddly depopulated, as has been remarked for decades, it resembles a frontier that is being newly populated (even if that's not always the history). The major parts of the Forgotten Realms are not so much a setting that has a frontier. It is almost nothing but frontier.

Not very different from Middle Earth, in other words.
Look, I'm not going to deny that there's an aspect of the American frontier to it all. But other big fantasy template worlds like Middle Earth and Narnia probably figure into it as well.

 

[Mordhau]

Not very different from Middle Earth, in other words.
Look, I'm not going to deny that there's an aspect of the American frontier to it all. But other big fantasy template worlds like Middle Earth and Narnia probably figure into it as well.

I strongly suspect though that part of the reason that Middle Earth is so much of an influence is because it can be fitted easily onto familiar templates.

And of course no one has ever claimed that there were not other influences.

 

[Faolyn]

That's stupid, and if you look at settings and modules, generally isn't true. Generally the frontier is at the edge of civilization where beyond lie monsters.

I have looked at modules and settings, particularly the earlier modules from Dragon and Dungeon. And it is true. Lots of modules assumed some little village with nothing around it but wilderness. It wasn't until places like the Realms became bigger that every little space started getting filled up and there was no frontier left over.

Not that I can remember seeing, and I'm an American who loved and grew up on old west movies.

And yes, I--also an American--can very easily see it.

It's not like there's huge neon signs that say THIS IS THE OLD WEST! But there are enough signs to point to there being an influence.

 

[Mordhau]

R.E. Howard specifically based a bunch of Conan stories with the Picts on American frontier adventure stories of frontiersmen dealing with Indians. Gygax cited Conan as one of the inspirations for D&D. He included Boot Hill western crossover advice in the 1e DMG. Murlynd the gunslinger mage/paladin was a character in his campaign that he turned into a quasi-deity for Greyhawk.

It interesting. A while ago on one site someone started a poll asking what period of history the Hyborian Age most resembled and I was bemused that the 18th and 19th centuries weren't even an option.

Yes. You can see the specific form of influence there. The Pictish frontier is inspired directly by Hadrians wall and the Roman British border, but is interpreted through very much an American frontier Western lens.

One of the other big influences on Howard is Kipling, the Raj/Afghan Frontier and the stories of the great game which were important for the pulps and still I think more of an influence for early Sword and Sorcery* perhaps even up to the 80s but seems to have dropped away.(I think Thieves World has more than a hint of British empire occuption of India to it, with a Roman Empire equivalent standing in for the British as is not unusual). The Hyborian Age has a rough equivalent to Medieval Europe, but the vast majority of the stories actually don't happen there.

*And especially some of the artwork for early D&D which is filled with minarets.

 

[Malmuria]

D&D General - d&d is anti-medieval

http://blogofholding.com/?p=7182 I've been on a dnd and classic history kick lately and ran into this blog entry. The premise is that dungeons and dragons do not follow the medieval model. I'm of the belief he's pretty much right (it draws as much on the classic western as any medieval...

www.enworld.org

 

[Scribe]

D&D General - d&d is anti-medieval

http://blogofholding.com/?p=7182 I've been on a dnd and classic history kick lately and ran into this blog entry. The premise is that dungeons and dragons do not follow the medieval model. I'm of the belief he's pretty much right (it draws as much on the classic western as any medieval...

www.enworld.org

From the article, something I find interesting (Canadian btw).

Intentional or not, OD&D represents a milestone in American fantasy – and maybe the last un-muddled example of the genre it inspired. Most of D&D’s thousands of imitators, in game and fiction, preserve the game’s democratic bones (cash economy, guns for hire, rags to riches stories) while overlaying a medieval-European skin. The combination is not fortunate. Gygaxian levelocracy, where a villager can rise to become a baron or a “Conan type”, is fundamentally incompatible with the European fantasy typified by Lord of the Rings, in which no fellowship can alter the fact that Sam is by birth a servant, Frodo a gentleman, Strider a king, and Gandalf a wizard.

OD&D’s American strain of fantasy didn’t even last within TSR. In 1980, Gygax himself reworked the World of Greyhawk into what looks, from its cover, like a supplement about Arthurian Knights.