D&D General Why Do You Prefer a Medieval Milieu For D&D? +

[Reynard]

Call me a pedant, but I really hate the use of the term "medieval" to describe Tolkienesque fantasy.

Ok, pedant.

Honestly, while technically valid, this post doesn't really accomplish much besides potentially derailing the thread.

"Medieval" doesn't have a mysterious or misleading meaning in the context of this thread or D&D broadly. Everyone knows what it means.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Ok, pedant.

Honestly, while technically valid, this post doesn't really accomplish much besides potentially derailing the thread.

"Medieval" doesn't have a mysterious or misleading meaning in the context of this thread or D&D broadly. Everyone knows what it means.

I think it is misleading, at least when it comes to real world history. There are plenty of people who think "Medieval" means "like D&D". And frankly, getting real world history wrong matters more than getting D&D wrong.

 

[Unwise]

Once you leave medieval, you open up the question of where it stops.
If people have firearms, do they have steam engines? If they do, do they have trains? If they do, do they have factories? Are we in the Victorian era now? If so, do we have lightbulbs in high-science areas? If you don't lay all that stuff out clearly, it makes it hard to PCs to get into the world and know how to engage with it.

I was in a game once, where the PCs heist was foiled by people using a telegram to tell the next town over what we had done. We had no idea such technology was even in the world. It was just one of the many things the GM had failed to mention. They saw their vision of the world clearly, but we couldn't.

Personally, I like lower tech, but that just does not work in seafaring campaign. We need galleons and cannons for that to fulfill the necessary fantasy. So if I am inland, it is medieval all the way. If on the coast or sea, early Age of Sail.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

In the middle ages governments were, on average, weak enough that a small group of armed heroes could conceivably change the political landscape. Once you start getting into modernity you have states consolidating power with things like absolutism, westphalianism and colonialism, which makes it hard to imagine a group of five armed people changing the world unless they were otherwise government stooges, and that removes player agency.

A D&D style adventure requires lawlessness and the easiest ways to do that are a psuedomedieval setting, a postapocalyptic setting (which, to western Europeans, was basically what the middle ages were) or a colonial frontier like the Wild West, the latter of which is very untenable these days.

That being said, my own personal RPG setting is explicitly modern rather than medieval, the closest analogue I could compare it to is probably Disco Elysium; it features single-shot firearms coexisting with an internet made out of cloned psionic brain tissue and battery farming for unicorns because the pharmaceutical industry demands their horns to make analgesics.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Personally, I like lower tech, but that just does not work in seafaring campaign. We need galleons and cannons for that to fulfill the necessary fantasy. So if I am inland, it is medieval all the way.

This is what I mean. Medieval had galleons and canons. What you really mean is pre-medieval. What we used to call the Dark Ages.

 

[Reynard]

Wild West, the latter of which is very untenable these days.

It isn't the idea of a lawless frontier that is "untenable" -- and the lawless frontier is applicable in any era.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

It isn't the idea of a lawless frontier that is "untenable" -- and the lawless frontier is applicable in any era.

The "western" is the most dominant form of frontier narrative in human history, it's impossible to tell a story about a lawless frontier that doesn't draw on western tropes. I've literally studied Koine Greek and done a translation of Digenis Akritas and if I wanted to publish it today it'd still owe something to Bonanza.

 

[Reynard]

The "western" is the most dominant form of frontier narrative in human history, it's impossible to tell a story about a lawless frontier that doesn't draw on western tropes. I've literally studied Koine Greek and done a translation of Digenis Akritas and if I wanted to publish it today it'd still owe something to Bonanza.

Okay. But what makes it "untenable"?

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

Okay. But what makes it "untenable"?

I fear that getting into it in detail would probably call the moderators down on me, but simply;

D&D and games derived from it is ultimately tell the story about going into someone's home, using violence, and taking their stuff. That's also the story of "how the west was won." If you want to tell a culturally sensitive story about the wild west or a similar frontier, D&D is not the medium to tell that story in.

The only alternative is to have some sort of "virgin land" frontier that was never inhabited by people before the arrival of the players, which significantly limits gameplay.

 

[Aldarc]

I really love the idea of bronze age tech being the default with pockets of "super advanced" civilizations with plate armor here and there near higher-threat dangers.

It doesn't even need to be bronze age - which is often actually Iron Age Fantasy in TTRPGs - it could just be the early Middle Ages. Put that plate armor on extraplanar monsters.