D&D General d&d is anti-medieval

[Umbran]

The part the player actually interfaces with is still based on exchange of physical currency.

Yes. That's the point.

"5e claims, in the PHB, that most wealth is not actually exchanged in the form of coins..." - that's an overall setting detail, not an expectation of how PCs will manage their own wealth.

 

[Oofta]

I don't really see the point to the blog. It's not medieval, there are dungeons to be looted and dragons to be slain. Saying it's not medieval is kind of like saying my phone isn't a toaster. The game rules were simply not concerned with society at large, that was left largely to the DM. OD&D did make some minor nods towards feudal society and social power but it was never a focus.

Most campaign worlds seem to be more geared towards renaissance or early industrial sans gunpowder and steam power.

Which is fine. It's modeling a world that has never existed.

 

[Fenris-77]

Obvious conclusions continue to be obvious, that's the moral of this story.

 

[Nebulous]

5e claims, in the PHB, that most wealth is not actually exchanged in the form of coins, but rather exchange of trade goods for the peasantry and the exchange of land and titles in the nobility - it’s really only adventurers who regularly deal in coinage, which they plunder from the dungeons they adventure in. That said, in my experience it doesn’t really work this way in practice. The player characters deal in coins, which means for practical purposes the people they trade with need to do the same. A cow may have the buying power of 10 gp, but no player is going to sell the suit of plate armor they crafted for 150 cows.

D&D also seems to suggest that the common peasantry deals in copper and maybe silver coins, but prestigious gold is left to the venue of heroes and nobles and kings. Although goddamn I would love to see the paladin buy a suit of plate with 150 cows.

 

[David Howery]

it's about as medieval of LotR…. looks sorta medieval, acts sorta medieval, but some whopping differences. And D&D actually takes a step further away from LotR/medieval by having lotsa pantheons of deities, instead of one big one...

 

[Charlaquin]

Yes. That's the point.

"5e claims, in the PHB, that most wealth is not actually exchanged in the form of coins..." - that's an overall setting detail, not an expectation of how PCs will manage their own wealth.

It seems like we may be talking past each other here. I did not mean to assert it wasn’t an overall setting detail...

 

[Shiroiken]

Upon reading the blog, it's obvious that the author acknowledged the fact that OD&D was deliberately written to be setting neutral, and that upon the 1E DMG a variety of government and ruling styles are suggested. However, they seem to believe that this was somehow a bug, rather than a feature. The original Roleplaying Game was far more Game than Roleplaying (Gygax even defined Role-playing as taking on the role of the class, not the individual character), and it was left to the DM to determine how to implement any non-game related add-ons. Social structure, geographic features, even the gods themselves were up to the DM to create or ignore as they saw fit.

 

[aco175]

I don't really see the point to the blog. It's not medieval, there are dungeons to be looted and dragons to be slain. Saying it's not medieval is kind of like saying my phone isn't a toaster.

Great, now I need my next cell to be able to heat up a pop-tart. Love technology.

 

[Oofta]

Great, now I need my next cell to be able to heat up a pop-tart. Love technology.

Well, they're probably introduce an internet enabled "smart toaster" at CES right now so it's really not that much of a stretch.

 

[DND_Reborn]

d&d is anti-medieval

You can be forgiven for thinking that OD&D is a medieval European fantasy game. After all, Gary Gygax himself says so. He describes the original D&D books as “Rules for Fantastic Medi…

blogofholding.com

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 trappings), but seeing if it is based on mostly the beginning, I'm asking if editions of dungeons and dragons are more or less similar and why?

D&D is as medieval as you want it to be. A lot of games are more fantasy-oriented that ours is and personally I prefer a grittier, more true-to-reality feel (less magic, easier dying, etc.), but I've played in a lot of games that were extremely fantasy-oriented!

In our campaign, the PCs are doing things for the King, clearing a territory of monsters and hoping to establish a fiefdom. The "treasure" we collect and the payments we receive are often goods, weapons, armor, and such, or services in return (healing, research, retainers, etc.).