Does D&D even have a component of "midieval" anymore?

[gizmo33]

Personally, I think Third Edition's near-complete abandoment of all pretensions of "medievalism" was one of the best decisions WotC ever made.

I can think of about a thousand things that haven't changed in 3E, paladins, familiars, Vancian magic, etc. How in the world did a few un-medieval (and clunky IMO) additions (like nose-rings to the artwork) to an otherwise unchanged base consititute a "near-complete abandonment"? In fact, AFAICT the designers appeared to mostly not know (or not care) what the medievalisms really were that they were adopting from 1E/2E for the new game.

 

[pawsplay]

So my question, is there any reason why it should be medieval?

Because medieval is a little bit nasty, yet also something you can romanticize a bit. It provides a logical underpinning for sword combat and riding steeds, the existence of castles, and a general worldview that encompasses ogres and dangerous imps. It's a place where a man who can take on a whole platoon himself, or incinerate it with a snap of his fingers, can potentially stare down a king. It also has a strong social division, to which wandering adventurers represent a sharp contrast. It's a place where killing a dragon is legal claim to its hoard. Killing a king can be a legal claim to his kingdom, if you can hold onto it.

 

[gizmo33]

It seems the vast majority of opinions are the D&D is not really medieval, and perhaps never was.

From what I can tell on this thread little effort has been made to determine what would constitute "medieval". There were "swords" in the Middle Ages, and there are "swords" in DnD. Nobody has given that a point value to weigh it against the degree to which something like a money economy, or whatever, would stack up against it. Most people who wish to be pedantic in this would rather show off their knowledge of the differences in Medieval vs. DnD rather than provide relatively obvious and trite examples of the similarities.

Plus there's the faction that treats this issue as a proxy battle for the edition wars - hardly a good environment for subtlety or restraint. If people want their nose-rings and mohawks bad enough, anything goes.

So for example - without the historical Middle Ages, you can't explain familiars, or even where the term comes from. I could list these elements all day, but I'd be wasting my time as the burden should have been on one of the many people saying "X is nothing like Y" to at least establish their criteria.

So IMO the "vast majority of opinions" aren't shedding any light on this issue. A is like B, and A is not like B. It's simple, however nuanced, and apparently just outside the grasp of what this thread seems capable of.

 

[Piratecat]

The paradigm shift took time - and you know that it did. Your "day and date" crap is just a smokescreen you use to make yourself look like you know something special, when all you are really doing is demonstrating the paltry nature of your argument.

Personal attacks are never okay here. Storm Raven, please don't post in this thread any further.

Remember, folks, best to walk away from your keyboard for a while if you feel yourself getting really angry at a thread.

 

[Celebrim]

So my question, is there any reason why it should be medieval?

Depth. Drawing inspiration from an historical setting is almost gauranteed to produce greater depth than any act of world building you or anyone else could possibly do,. Granted, you've got to do research to understand the setting, but assuming you've already done that, knowing about real world cultures can vastly shorten the amount of world building you do to obtain a particular level of detail. For example, you don't have to detail 'elven tea ceremonies' if you want to have them but base them largely off Japanese tea ceremonies.

Comfortable alienness. It's IMO barely interesting to have a 'fantasy setting' in which the basic assumptions of society are the same assumptions of the modern setting in which we live. Too often people that complain about how the assumptions of medievalism are unrealistic for a given fantasy setting are the same ones in practice defaulting the culture of thier campaign world to modernity (and present modernity at that). By rolling back the culture to the middle ages, you get the nearest truly different Western culture to the modern. I think this is something of best of both worlds. You've a well documented culture (compared to say antiquity, mourn the library), and you can somewhat relate, but it does require you to think in the somewhat alien terms of your 'role'. This is sort of like the advantage of having dwarves, elves, etc. They are alien, but they aren't so alien that you can't grok them. You've got a frame of reference. Sure, 'dwarf' and 'elf' are 99.99% human, and it might be cooler to have truly alien unique races, but could you really roleplay them?

On top of that, there are reasons to think that feudalism would actually be a stronger and more enduring cultural institutions in D&D universes than it would be even in our own.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

I don't think Dungeons & Dragons has ever really been very medieval - it may have started out as an adjunct to a medieval wargame, but once Gygax and Arneson started building worlds that operated like their favourite fiction settings, that became the dominant influence - and Leiber, Vance, Howard, Lovecraft, and Tolkien were not writing stories set in an analogue of 13th-century western Europe.

I mean, the Dying Earth stories take place in the impossibly far future . . . Howard's stories in the legendary, ahistorical past. Leiber and Tolkien were both disconnected from medieval social realities, even as we understood them at the time - neither Lankhmar nor Minas Tirith are particularly realistic! Lovecraft's stories were either set in an ahistorical legendary past like Howard or roughly contemporary (at most, within the early modern period). Even Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions is set in more of a fairytale milieu than anything approximating history, and its protagonist is a legendary medieval figure!

I don't enjoy D&D games where it's assumed that the world operates like high medieval Europe did, simply because such an assumption seems to me to be essentially contrary to everything I like best about fantasy. I like strange worlds and weird tales, not leaden rules about plausible social structures.

 

[EditorBFG]

From what I can tell on this thread little effort has been made to determine what would constitute "medieval".

Fair enough.

I wanted to see what medieval was. Now, I flatter myself that I know a good deal of history, but I figured I shouldn't just count on my personal knowledge. So, I went to wikipedia and punched in medieval, and I got redirected to the Middle Ages, where it said:

The term "medieval" (traditionally spelled "mediaeval") was first contracted from the Latin medium ævum, or more precisely "middle epoch", by Enlightenment thinkers as a pejorative descriptor of the Middle Ages.

So Medieval just equals Middle Ages. The European Middle Ages specifically, which is what we're all talking about, right? Default D&D ain't Rokugan, Nyambe, or Caliphate Nights. Now, if we try to define the Middle Ages we see that it pretty much starts with the fall of Rome.

The Middle Ages in Western Europe are often subdivided into an early period (sometimes called the "Dark Ages", at least from the fifth to eighth centuries) of shifting polities, a relatively low level of economic activity and successful incursions by non-Christian peoples (Slavs, Arabs, Scandinavians, Magyars); a middle period (the High Middle Ages) of developed institutions of lordship and vassalage, castle-building and mounted warfare, and reviving urban and commercial life; and a later period of growing royal power, the rise of commercial interests and weakening customary ties of dependence, especially after the 14th-century plague.

The best ending year seems to be 1453, which is both the fall of Constantinople and the end of the Hundred Years' war.

Now, I'm gonna make an assumption and say that most of us aren't thinking too much of the Dark Ages per se-- elements of the Dark Ages may flavor our medieval idea, but traditional D&D and "a low level of economic activity" ain't never gonna go together. The Dark Ages ran up to about 1000.

So, we're talking "Medieval" from approximately 1000-1453. According to the above, we got "developed institutions of lordship and vassalage" (feudalism), "castle-building and mounted warfare," "reviving urban and commercial life", "growing royal power", and "the rise of commercial interests" ("weakening customary ties of dependence" is fuzzy, so I'll x that out).

So, medieval (as wikipedia has it) is:
Feudalism
Castles
Mounted Warfare
Cities
Royal Power
A Merchant Class

I'll try using this as a starting point for analysis.

 

[EditorBFG]

Working with the above factors constituting what is "medieval," let me see what makes sense to me:

Out of Feudalism, Castles, Mounted Warfare, Cities, Royal Power, and A Merchant Class, D&D neither implies nor denies most of these. I think Mounted Warfare is in D&D (the feats), and there has been a lot of new stuff on cities (and by cities, we mean significant urban centers-- as in, more than just a big fort with stuff around it). And say what you will about the "magic item economy," it definitely implies a strong class of merchants. But there is no social system implied in D&D, at least none that is feudal or involves royalty, and there aren't many rules on castles.

Now, what is decidedly not medieval? Lots. Plate armor is pretty much post-medieval, as is the rapier. Druids were on their way out as soon as Caesar hit the scene-- although, expanding the definition a bit, there were still pagans the Christians had not conquered well into the High Middle Ages. That said, monotheism dominated Europe during this time, so the traditional cleric ain't too medieval-- although they do have a bit of a Hospitaller/Templar feel because of their martial nature. I suppose the barbarian is just anybody from outside the whole Euro-Christian thing. The spellcasters... well, people believed in witchcraft, and since magic isn't real (sorry folks), let's just accept sorcerers/wizards as medieval cognates of an eternal archetype.

I hope we can all agree the monk ain't medieval anything?

Maybe it is best to leave the mystical elements alone (turning undead-- where did Gygax get that from? Dracula?), since most does not have a strict historical analog.

Stuff like the double-sword is of no time period. Ditto the repeating crossbow, which is kind of in that clockwork/steampunk vein. Or something.

Now, I am only talking rules. The art direction... I got nothing. It is what it is. It sells books.

As for how medieval D&D should be... well, since D&D is a fantasy game, fantasy fiction is a much bigger source for it than history. Logically, though, you and I know fantasy owes a lot to real world history and historical folklore. So, how medieval are the sources of D&D?

Tolkien? Lots of forts, many castle-ish. Mounted warfare, though it mostly reads like vikings on horses and not real-world cavalry. There are cities and kings. There does seem to be a merchant class, but only around the Shire. A lot of talk about armor, but I don't remember too much specifics, so I don't know if there is plate. Religion is much less prominent on Middle Earth than it was in Middle Europe.

Dying Earth? Set in the future, it's hard to say. I remember liking it, but as I write this all I can recall now is everything being "prismatic." Heck, it was really just the model for the spell system, let's move on...

Elric? Sort of meant to be prehistoric. Basically, everyone is a slave of Melnibone or they're not. There are some kings and titles. The tech (weapons and armor) is decidedly medieval. Not castles as we know them, I don't see much of a merchant class. Mounted warfare, there is some. there are certainly cities. A lot of polytheism.

Lankhmar? Lots of cities and merchants, but pretty low on feudalism. It ain't about knights or kings, but it has a gritty feel some of us associate with that medieval. The tech here is medieval too. Polytheism, but not of any period-- the gods in/of/around Lankhmar are just plain weird-- Religion works a lot like D&D.

Conan? Never meant to be medieval. Medieval elements, sure, but really just prehistoric stuff.

So, is D&D medieval? Well, there's not much implied socially by D&D itself, and a lot of defining the period seems to be about social systems. D&D does imply polytheism, which is decidedly non-medieval. A lot of medieval elements are in there (like someone above pointed out familiars), but it is alongside a lot of renaissance stuff (plate and the rapier being the big ones). It seems to imply that in default D&D there are remnants of the world's medieval past, but things have moved on to be more like the Renaissance.

Then again, there's a lot of stuff that is not of any Earth time period, like the Repeating Crossbow. Oh, and obviously magic and other races (like elves, who use rapiers), which never existed, though these elements are assembled from folklore all over the place.

 

[Imp]

The repeating crossbow is a historical Chinese weapon, you know. Though the D&D interpretation of it is not really accurate, surprise.

 

[T. Foster]

Chainmail Fantasy Supplement (i.e. proto-D&D) Intro:

Most of the fantastic battles related in novels more closely resemble medieval warfare than they do earlier or later forms of combat. Because of this we are including a brief set of rules which will allow the medieval miniatures wargamer to add a new facet to his hobby, and either refight the epic struggles related by J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, and other fantasy writers; or you devise your own 'world," and conduct fantastic campaigns and conflicts based on it.

Dungeons & Dragons (1974) Box Cover:

Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns Playable With Paper and Pencil and Miniature Figures

OD&D vol. I, p. 5 (SCOPE):

...DUNGEONS and DRAGONS will provide a basically complete, nearly endless campaign of all levels of fantastic-medieval wargame play. Actually, the scope need not be restricted to the medieval; it can stretch from the prehistoric to the imagined future, but such expansion is recommended only at such time as the possibilities in the medieval aspect have been thoroughly explored.

D&D, at least in its earliest incarnations, was absolutely meant to be based at least superficially in the medieval, or at very least the anachronistic "fantastic-medieval" of Howard, Leiber, Tolkien, Fox, et al. Later editions (and even Gary Gygax's own later-period work -- Living Fantasy, Yggsburgh) have moved away from that, towards a more Renaissance or even Enlightenment (with magic replacing steam and gunpowder) model which I, at least, tend to find much less interesting and inspiring.