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

[gizmo33]

Pluck & luck had a lot to do with it. Any ties to nobility that he had were tenuous or outright propaganda.

Agreed. One of the themes of the thread is what makes for a "medieval" role-playing game. While no one has really come up with a definitive list, I think the social mobility topic should be on the list somewhere, and in that case, though there are exceptions, I would think that it would be in keeping with medieval mythology to require that you be of noble blood in order to rule - otherwise chaos is rampant, crops fail, etc. In fact in many cases I think that medieval mythology should trump medieval reality for purposes of the game.

 

[Prince of Happiness]

Agreed. One of the themes of the thread is what makes for a "medieval" role-playing game. While no one has really come up with a definitive list, I think the social mobility topic should be on the list somewhere, and in that case, though there are exceptions, I would think that it would be in keeping with medieval mythology to require that you be of noble blood in order to rule - otherwise chaos is rampant, crops fail, etc. In fact in many cases I think that medieval mythology should trump medieval reality for purposes of the game.

Yup, or as I've been an advocate of, utilizing the history to spice up the setting. Nothing like getting those Bluff checks going by claiming that "No, really, I do have blood ties to the last western Emperor Gaius Unfortunatus. Really! Haven't you heard any of the songs that the bard-who-I-have-not-adventured-with-ever, Perwain has been singing?"

 

[gizmo33]

The problem is that "Tolkienesque" isn't a genre. The genre is fantasy. If a setting is "Tolkienesque", it's a fantasy setting that is borrowing heavily from Tolkien. That's cool with some people, obviously, but I for one have seen way too much of that kind of thing, already.

What? Aren't you tempted to provide some foundation for the argument? Is there a W3C genre standards board somewhere that I'm not familiar with? - you could have saved me the trouble of raising this obvious objection by just hyperlinking to it.

Short of something more substantial, I'm going to continue to call "Tolkienesque" a genre. Because my understanding of a genre is that it's just a set of conventions within which you are creative. There's nothing fundementally uncreative by operating within a set of conventions - for example the way that elves and dwarves look and act - even if those conventions are the result of someone else's innovation. This is certainly the case with genres of music.

 

[gizmo33]

Yup, or as I've been an advocate of, utilizing the history to spice up the setting.

One of my points of confusion on this thread has been where to draw the line in terms of "medieval". As has been pointed out, Earth's history is mostly an accident of chance, geography, etc - so expecting an exact replica of Europe 1200 AD to exist in an imaginary setting I think is a bit shaky. On top of it, there are the differences between history and mythology (ie. ideal vs. reality), and which is more "medieval".

Then there's a question of how much non-European culture should/can be used - the whole archetype of the wizard in DnD IMO seems to borrow much more heavily from Renaissance conventions (spell books, alchemical labs) than from more "Dark Ages" sources. And the sort of garbled view of Renaissance science that comes through in the trappings of a wizard probably have their origins in medieval Islamic culture. Does any technology that existed on any place on Earth in 1200 AD constitute "medieval"?

So I don't know where the boundaries belong. I know for purposes of my game that the printing press, gunpowder, nose-rings, mohawks, 50% representation of women in government, progressive ideas about poverty and taxes, assembly-line factories, paper money, and such things are "anachronistic" (for lack of a better word), but this is somewhat arbitrary. Nevertheless - I do think my decisions have some basis in a common DnD culture and that simply adding these elements into new versions of the game willynilly I think is being a little too willfully ignorant of DnDs basic conventions.

 

[Prince of Happiness]

One of my points of confusion on this thread has been where to draw the line in terms of "medieval". As has been pointed out, Earth's history is mostly an accident of chance, geography, etc - so expecting an exact replica of Europe 1200 AD to exist in an imaginary setting I think is a bit shaky. On top of it, there are the differences between history and mythology (ie. ideal vs. reality), and which is more "medieval".

Then there's a question of how much non-European culture should/can be used - the whole archetype of the wizard in DnD IMO seems to borrow much more heavily from Renaissance conventions (spell books, alchemical labs) than from more "Dark Ages" sources. And the sort of garbled view of Renaissance science that comes through in the trappings of a wizard probably have their origins in medieval Islamic culture. Does any technology that existed on any place on Earth in 1200 AD constitute "medieval"?

So I don't know where the boundaries belong. I know for purposes of my game that the printing press, gunpowder, nose-rings, mohawks, 50% representation of women in government, progressive ideas about poverty and taxes, assembly-line factories, paper money, and such things are "anachronistic" (for lack of a better word), but this is somewhat arbitrary. Nevertheless - I do think my decisions have some basis in a common DnD culture and that simply adding these elements into new versions of the game willynilly I think is being a little too willfully ignorant of DnDs basic conventions.

You bring up a very good point. Part of my own perception of D&D's "tech-level" is very much shaped by my early experiences with the red boxed set which had a more 9th-12th Century Byzantine & Northern Italy feel (hello Karameikos & Thyatis) and the 2E Forgotten Realms boxed set explicitly stating that it was more or less equivalent with 13th Century Europe. From that point on, it's been pretty firmly locked in my head that that's the baseline to play with and then extrapolate from there.

 

[Zoatebix]

Whereas the elements from other historical eras and locations are by and large either later additions or deliberate anomalies (such as the monk and druid and sci-fi technology from other planes), the "Wild West" aspect as you describe it is absolutely fundamental to the game and has been present from the very beginning (and, like the medieval element, was I think stronger then than it is now). What you're really getting in D&D, then, are the trappings and appearance of the "legendary medieval" superimposed atop the social order of the "legendary Wild West," a combination of quintessentially European folklore with quintessentially American folklore. No wonder D&D is so appealing! (And as much as I'd like to give Gygax and/or Arneson credit for this brilliant fusion, I suspect the actual innovator was Robert Howard, and that D&D was just following naturally in the path he set out via his Conan stories.)

I've lost the post now, but someone up-thread said something about "going medieval". I never thought that "killing things and taking their stuff" was particularly characteristic of the Medieval (a la capital R Romance), the Wild West, or even Epics - though a lot of passages from The Hobbit (e.g. about the Dwarves' and Smaug's fascination with wrought and unwrought gold) suddenly made a lot more sense to me after I read Beowulf and to a lesser extent The Iliad for the first time.

I've just totally lost my train of though. I'll check back later.
-George

 

[Hussar]

What? Aren't you tempted to provide some foundation for the argument? Is there a W3C genre standards board somewhere that I'm not familiar with? - you could have saved me the trouble of raising this obvious objection by just hyperlinking to it.

Short of something more substantial, I'm going to continue to call "Tolkienesque" a genre. Because my understanding of a genre is that it's just a set of conventions within which you are creative. There's nothing fundementally uncreative by operating within a set of conventions - for example the way that elves and dwarves look and act - even if those conventions are the result of someone else's innovation. This is certainly the case with genres of music.

Buh? So, The Beatles are now a genre? Elvis is a genre? Justin Timberlake is a genre?

Gimme a break. Tolkien is writing in the High Fantasy genre, but, the High Fantasy genre, despite protestations to the different, doesn't begin or end (well, possibly begin ) with Tolkien.

If I write music that sounds exactly like the Beetles, am I being innovative and original? Not terribly. Can I be popular doing that? Certainly, but, that's not the same thing. Terry Brooks' Shannara series begins as a complete rip-off of Tolkien. There are endless middling to bad fantasy novels where the races are pretty much Middle Earth races and magic looks a lot like Gandalf.

That's not being original. Nor is it in keeping with genre. That's simply trying to ride the popularity of someone else.

Tolkienesque, which is sloppy shorthand for a certain kind of high fantasy is not a genre. At best it's a description of a subset within a genre. But, within the larger genre of fantasy, there are many, many other options which can be explored and haven't been beaten to death over the past half century.

It would be pretty difficult to have a Western without cowboys. Possible, but, difficult. But, Louis L'Amour is not a genre. He's a major player in the genre and his work certainly influences many others, but, he's not a genre in and of himself. In the same way, Tolkien is seminal to the fantasy genre. No one will dispute that. But, having had more than my fill of Tolkien look-alikes over the years, I'm more than happy when settings and other RPG books look to some different inspirations.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

So by the same token if you play in a Wild West setting that still has cowboys and saloons then it also shows a lack of creativity?

Not necessarily, but for God's sake there was a lot of fantasy before Tolkien and a lot of non-Tolkienesque fantasy after him, so why are you assuming that wanting to play a fantasy game with Dungeons & Dragons necessarily involves bloody Tolkien?

The real equivalent to your question is "Does always playing the Man With No Name a la Clint Eastwood in a Western game also show a lack of creativity?", and my argument there would be that yeah, it probably does, although I make room for the possibility that a really solid, committed exploration of the idea can be creative in its own right.

Do you really think that most Tolkienesque games of D&D are solid, committed explorations of the ideas in his novels?

(This goes for historically-obsessed D&D games, too. "Creativity" can't really be defined as "shuffling historical elements into a paper-thin replica of a low-grade understanding of history", can it?)

 

[T. Foster]

Do you really think that most Tolkienesque games of D&D are solid, committed explorations of the ideas in his novels?

I don't think most games of D&D are (or should be) solid committed explorations of the ideas of anything, Tolkienesque or otherwise.

 

[fusangite]

Labeling something as "Medieval" has the effect of exaggerating difference.

That's true. In fact, labeling anything exaggerates how different it is from things similar to it. That's a problem embedded in the very nature of language.

Now, we could decide never to label anything again. But we wouldn't be able to keep having this conversation, or any other, for that matter.

In some cases, the exaggeration reaches a point of essentializing something.

It is true that terms can be misused. But the solution is not to stop using any word that is misused. How could we ever talk about any subject where terms' meanings are routinely used to reify, essentialize or otherwise distort? Not only would history be off limits but theology, politics and sexuality would certainly be out the window. I mean just think of the danger of the term "bisexual!"

Medieval people weren't dumb, nor was the culture of that era stagnant.

Is anybody in this thread actually saying this?