D&D General Good resources for real-world technological advances on D&D?

[Big J Money]

Does anyone know of any articles, threads, videos or other resources that cover medieval - rennaisance level technology effect on a D&D campaign? This can be from any edition, it doesn't have to be recent or apply to 5E.

I'm hoping someone will know of a fairly thorough treatment of this, as surely it must exist out there somewhere. As an example I'm thinking about how one would compare a D&D compaign both with and without the presence of a printing press. Something that would cover that and many other major technological advances similar to that.

The default D&D setting sort of "cheats" for the DM and players by allowing its charcters to possess educational skills they would not actually have access to in a medieval society (or at least to possess in a modern form, when they should be in the medieval form) but this is a very deep an involved topic and I'd like to see what has already been covered by others.

 

[Big J Money]

Quick add: By campaign I mean one set in the default D&D campaign, which would be either Greyhawk or Faerun depending on your edition (or a generic campaign foundation that is similar to those, from which a DM can build a similar setting).

 

[generic]

I've made many, many homebrew rules for this, for use in my current campaign setting, but they're too numerous to list here. As for resources, here is one which I have heard is well-done:

Medieval Firearms

 

[aco175]

I find that a lot of the advances are not recognized or not needed for an adventure. While cool to learn things like a heavy plow is not something a campaign is based on. The plow did lead to greater crops since it could dig deeper in the ground. The problem was that oxen could not use it well and horses were needed. This led to horseshoes and the harness which is another great invention similar to the stirrup, that was made but not a big attention grabber.

Coffee houses were an invention that could be a good thing to insert in a campaign. In America is is believed to a factor in the Revolution in that gathering later in the evening in places allowed discussion and arguing and that the caffeine led to staying up later to discuss items. Taverns could fill this role, but a coffee house feels like a bit more academic or suited to some classes over others.