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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jdrakeh" data-source="post: 4007006" data-attributes="member: 13892">I would not. D&D, despite borrowing some cosmetic elements of medieval history, has much, much, more that is not borrowed from medieval history. Spell casting warrior priests as the default clergy? Magic nipped from The Dying Earth? Kung-fu monks clearly inspired by Hollywood's take on the Shaolin? Tolkien-eque Elves and Dwarves? The Great Wheel of the planes? Giant underground mazes as commonly occurring phenomena? Entire civilizations of sea dwelling or subterranean races? All of this and more would need to be ditched for the game to resemble anything remotely similar to the historical dark ages. The good news is that it's largely a matter of ignoring certain things. The bad news is, the few things that aren't a matter of deliberate ignorance are a royal pain to rebuild -- lay clergy who don't wield crazy Vancian spells, studious as opposed to cinematic martial monks, magic that isn't Vancian in nature, etc. Ultimately, making D&D into a historical medieval recreation is a lot of work -- fantasy systems exist that do this thing better, with far less necessary conversion.[Edit: In D&D, I could overlook things such as the low lethality of combat and eternally escalating character competency for the sake of heroism (which arguably also exists in historical Europe) but the other elements listed above are specific to Fantasy.]</blockquote>