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That term again. WTF is a medieval trapping????????? And Dragonlance couldn’t be more American if it dressed in Stars and Stripes and sang the star spangled banner.

So, not D&D then. Lets look at a few things: Medieval Europe: monotheistic religion dominates politics. D&D: multiple polytheistic religions scrap with each other but rarely have significant political power. Medieval Europe: climate mostly cold and wet, largely forested. D&D: climate...

If you don’t know what a medieval trapping is, how do you know if a game has them or not?

What is a “medieval trapping” when it’s at home? And why can’t I have it in my imaginary world?

I suspect that if I ran a Dark Sun game with cannibal halfling as a player option, I would get a 100% halfling party.

So what’s the difference between fantasy medieval and fantasy imaginary?

Which part? Pretty much everything I have said is matter of fact, not of opinion.

Maybe they were doing their best, but our understanding of history has changed since the 70s, and American education has always been pretty sketchy on anything that happened more than 400 years ago.

The OPs argument is invalid - they claim it was medieval (which it never was) then they list a bunch of things that have always been part of D&D, and for some unaccountable reason call them Steampunk.

One thing worth mentioning: Ed Greenwood was a hippie (and still is). Ergo it's unsurprising that FR is more influenced by Tolkien than other settings (apart from Dragonlance).

Of course it's useless, because the OP clearly has no idea what steampunk means (or medieval for that matter), and appears to be using it as a catch-all for "stuff I hate". But they as for an explanation of why they are wrong, which is simple - the stuff you are talking about has nothing to do...

Tolkien was like 100 times more popular than D&D in the US in the 70s. It just wasn't comparable. LotR was a cultural phenomena, D&D was an obscure spin off from wargaming.

Nah, LotR was largely unknown in the US until it was embraced by hippie culture in the early 70s and became suddenly massively popular. It went from there into D&D, not from D&D into the US.

It should be by pointed out that waistcoats and pockets are in the book, not just the movies. Bilbo’s outfit is directly based on Tolkien’s own drawing. But even more telling is Tolkien’s illustration of the hall of Bag End, which has an aneroid barometer (invented 1843) on the wall.

D&D was largely inspired by Burroughs, Howard and Lovecraft, but at around the time of the commercial publication of D&D LotR suddenly became hugely popular in the US, so some Tolkien stuff was added in, in pretty much the same way that stuff from Harry Potter, Fourth Wing etc have been added...

A very quick summary: Q) Is current D&D medieval? A) No. Q) Did D&D used to be medieval? A) No. Q) Is D&D steampunk? A) No. Q) Is D&D D&D? A) Yes.

If you look on the TV there was a detective with a classic car thing going on in the 80s - Bergarac, Morse. And I guess that was influenced by 70s US TV - Starsky and Hutch, Magnum. These days, detective drives an old banger seems to be the standard trope (but Columbo did it first).

A couple of things that happened in these editions is, in 2nd more professional artists were being used, and by 3rd the printing went into colour. Now, professional artists use reference material, and that becomes even more important with colour. So those artists were drawing what they could...

If you use monsters with 14 hp or less as minions they can be reliably cleared out with fireball in the first round. Something I sometimes use when designing encounters.

The aesthetic changes continually, as you would expect for something 40 years old. But my point is it was never "medieval", and the original aesthetic certainly wasn't.