D&D General d&d is anti-medieval

[David Howery]

Robert E Howard was from Texas and spent his early life amongst real Cowboys, his influences were Jack London and Rudyard Kipling as well as Norse and Greek Mythology and his stories combine Texas sensibilities with the Weird fantasy genre.

I'd bet he read ERB and HR Haggard as well (one of the Conan stories practically duplicates a scene from one of the Quatermain novels)…

 

[TheCosmicKid]

And as I recall, we know from his letters that Tolkien was aware of Howard's fiction, although does not seem to have given a whole lot of thought to it.

EDIT: Robert E. Howard - Tolkien Gateway

 

[Henry]

Which is interesting, given that many of the tropes of Westerns come from other sources. Fighting off bandits? That's The Magnificent Seven, which comes from The Seven Samurai. Fighting off the local evil Sheriff is totally Robin Hood.

Lenina Huxley: Oh, and the joyjoy way you paused to make a glib witticism before doing battle with that strangely-weaponed Scrap, it was so, so...
John Spartan: (losing it) Hey, this isn't the Wild West! The Wild West wasn't even the Wild West!

 

[ProfessorDetective]

But yeah, your standard D&D setting is basically the VERY early Rennasaince by way of Tolkein, Vance, Howard, Lovecraft, Eastwood, and Lee. With Eberron adding in Hammersmith and Haggard, Dark Sun grabbing some Burroughs, Spelljammer pulling from Roddenberry, and Planescape putting all of that into a blender.

 

[Umbran]

... putting all of that into a blender.

I'll have one Genre Frappe, please!

 

[oriaxx77]

The setting is usually medieval, but players usually act like it is a superhero setting. High level adventurers does not fit. They are usually above the law like Superman or something. It is hard to accept to bow to a noble when you are a 20 th level hedge witch with disintegration memorized. Or to leave your vorpal sword when you enter an audience chamber. But do not expect any serious play when half the party either half orc paladin or hobbit warlock. D&D is not meant to be played as a serious RPG. You should find seriousness and historical accuracy? elsewhere.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Lenina Huxley: Oh, and the joyjoy way you paused to make a glib witticism before doing battle with that strangely-weaponed Scrap, it was so, so...
John Spartan: (losing it) Hey, this isn't the Wild West! The Wild West wasn't even the Wild West!

I've just realized that I saw Demolition Man so many years before I read Brave New World that the name of Sandra Bullock's character never occurred to me to be a reference. It's in giant bold letters the size of the Hollywood sign!

 

[MechaTarrasque]

I'd bet he read ERB and HR Haggard as well (one of the Conan stories practically duplicates a scene from one of the Quatermain novels)…

Howard's biggest science fiction story, Almuric, is very ERB-esque. Too much so in my opinion, it didn't feel like REH was adding anything to the story. He did better with later writing--his Yellow Peril style stories had a more distinctive REH take on them. Despite the topic, there is a very different feel from a Sax Rohmer Fu Manchu story, almost a Daniel Craig James Bond vs. Roger Moore James Bond difference.

 

[gyor]

It's very simple I've seen a lot of folks confuse feudalism with the middle ages, they aren't the same thing. Not that all of D&D is feudalistic of course, it has other types of government too. But nothing like the middle ages accept occasional window dressing.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

ffs, people argue that D&D math is hard. You know, adding and substracting 2 or 3 single digit numbers.

And now we should calculate plate armour price in 27 cows, 3 silver bars, an emerald, 7 days of plowing fields and 9 carats of ruby dust.

Not even going into the joys of bartering, I don't think many players would actually wrap their mind around simple concepts of real world use of coins, like "not decimal" (Lsd system but any other exotic multiple system would work in any world before the French Revolution and their strange decimal obsession...) or the idea that the valuation unit was not the monetary unit (you worked hard to use a 20 and 12 system? Here is a guinea, worth... 21 shillings). (Is there any published settings where the authors used that? Usually they make up calendars, but don't venture into monetary systems...)

There you can gain titles and such, but it is strongly hinted that you are taming/settling the frontier or new lands by building a stronghold and such.

Europe overall had people building castles, but in many ways taming the land and wandering through the wilderness was more of an American ideal.

Not disagreeing with you, but taming the wilderness was more the province of monks, draining swamps, clearing and deforesting land, than one of the secular lord, but it was not totally outside the MA mindset.