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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3553806" data-attributes="member: 4937">Depth.&nbsp; 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,.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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).&nbsp; By rolling back the culture to the middle ages, you get the nearest truly different Western culture to the modern.&nbsp; I think this is something of best of both worlds.&nbsp; 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'.&nbsp; This is sort of like the advantage of having dwarves, elves, etc.&nbsp; They are alien, but they aren't so alien that you can't grok them.&nbsp; You've got a frame of reference.&nbsp; 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&amp;D universes than it would be even in our own.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 3553806, member: 4937"] 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. [/QUOTE]

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