"Progress" in your setting

[Tonguez]

And Newton would probably end up as a Transmuter or Diviner.
.

Of course irl Newton was an Alchemist and Natural Philospher, he was not a Scientist (because they hadn't been invented)

You raise interesting points. Others have already addressed the problems with science and technology. So I'd like to make a point about the stagnation of societies.

However, this can be chalked up to the fact that in fantasy worlds metaphysics and religion are very real, carved in stone kinds things with lots of obvious empirical support. For instance, as a society it can be very difficult to move to a system of government other than feudal monarchy, if the king actually rules by divine right.

Theres also an argument to be made that in a World chock full of antagonistic monsters commoners will gather together offering tribute and service to high level 'heroes' in return for the protection. Such Heroes might choose to settle down and build a castle to oversee his 'charges' on a permanent basis (when such Heroes include Druids who can expand crop yeilds and clerics who can cure disease, the commoners have even more reason to support their leaders)

ie Feudalism may be not only the natural state, but the necessary state of a DnD world.

Also Disease is DnD has nothing to do with Germ theory - all Diseases are caused by evil (it says so in the DMG)

 

[Imperialus]

I'm a history major so I tend to try and develop logical working histories for the cultures in my games. In one for example I had humans in a setting where technology progressed relatively slowly just because the area where the campaign was set was relatively resource poor. Winters were long and cold making it difficult to do much other than try to harvest enough in the summer that you could survive the winter. This alone doesn't leave much time for creative thinking or real advancement. Iron, coal, and even metals like bronze and copper were difficult to mine and therefore few artisans had the surplus resources to experiment with. GP's were iron coins and a great sign of wealth simply because they were made from such a useful and relatively rare resource.

 

[caudor]

I'm perfectly comfortable with anachronisms in my setting. For this reason, I never refer to my game as "medieval fantasy" or anything of the like, because, in reality, the seting is a blend of medieval, renaissance, victorian, and modern concepts. I have made some attempts to explain why certain aspects of society (such as technology--my setting is about Eberron-level in this respect) aren't more developed, but, IMO, comparing a fictional world to the actual world can only negatively affect verisimilitude.

What he said.

 

[S'mon]

Our modern concept of progress only really dates from the 18th-19th century, when the technological achievements of our civilisation began to approach and in some cases finally supercede that of the Romans, two thousand years previously. The more traditional views are those of the cyclical nature of history, favoured by the Greeks, and the Romans' focus on 'decline and fall' - they were talking that way centuries before the western Roman empire actually fell. With this in mind, history, including technological and magical history, is more one of cycles of growth and decline than of uninterrupted progress. Things change, knowledge is lost, things get worse. For instance, IMC the Albine Empire had accomplished armour-smiths who could make Full Plate Armour; the Empire is gone and the ability to make such armour is fading fast. Interior plumbing and flush toilets, likewise!

This is hardly unrealistic to someone living in London - the Victorians seem to have been easily able to accomplish feats that are well beyond the capacities of modern Londoners, such as building efficient sewerage and rail systems. Progress is a state of mind, not a law of history.

 

[GrumpyOldMan]

I’ve recently been reading a couple of very interesting threads over on the HârnForum on similar topics. What started off as a discussion on locks and lockingng mechanismmse rapidly moved to a general discussion on medieval society and the concept of privacy. The consensus seems to be that, even though it’s a lot more ‘medieval’ than most fantasy rpg’s Hârn is still far removed from medieval reality, especially regarding personal space and privacy.

To go through your points.

The lack of a cohesive history, with cultures using the same weapons and armour as they did millennia ago is simply down to laziness on the part of the world designer. Hârnic weapons and armour are at, approximately, the ‘post norman’ level. No full plate, and limited plate pieces. But remember that the Romans had chain mail and partial plate, and so did the Normans, and there isn’t much difference in manufacture (though helmet styles changed dramatically). That gives a thousand years of ‘similar’ armour (very broadly speaking). Similarly, medieval folk used to gamble, there are plenty of games of skill and chance to be found. Without relying on poker and blackjack (which require card manufacturing technology). Why not use skittles, darts, nine mens morris or draughts (that last is ‘checkers’ to the yanks I believe).

On Hârn, gunpowder does not explode, but magic works. Unlike here, where, unfortunately, the opposite is true. That’s an easy solution to the guns & fireworks issue.

There is an alternative to ‘grunt labour’ available for certain tasks. Hauling things requires a man, or an animal to do the work, but milling, fulling and crushing can be done by mills.

 

[pawsplay]

Gunpowder? Owning and operating a cannon would be a nightmare in a world of magic. Mephits in the powder, invisible saboteurs, wind wall, arcane archers with the darkness spell, illusory target decoys, and so forth. I would hire a hardbitten elven warmage in a heartbeat.. if he dies, at least I don't have to pay to replace him!

 

[GrumpyOldMan]

…the Victorians seem to have been easily able to accomplish feats that are well beyond the capacities of modern Londoners, such as building efficient sewerage and rail systems. Progress is a state of mind, not a law of history.

All hail Sir Joseph Willam Bazalgette and Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

 

[Rothe]

There is actually progress in my setting. People were less technologically and magically advanced in the past. For example, it took millenia to discover magic and then advance it to the highly refined and "predictable" state of the present. This went in cycles with advances and set backs, but the present is the state-of-the-art. There are of course myths of a "golden age" before history, who doesn't have those.

So, even assuming the scientific method was developed, people are trying to build such things, it just takes a long, long time before it happens, as in the real world. Add in a little subtle influence of magic (that, e.g., makes gun powder a pretty firework but not a good explosive) a strange increase in entropy as the number of moving parts in a device increases, leading to high failure rates for complex devices, and many things can be contained. It's not like those in power don't know of other worlds where these things work but magic doesn't. In fact it's an active area of research by sages as to why there are these differences. Most rulers think it's a waste of time, better to spend you effort increase the power of magic, which has proven benefits. some also fear/hope that if technology can be made to work the magic will go away.

Since I have a fairly "hard to use magic" campaign where only 1 in 1000 or so have what it takes to even begin training in arcane or mystical arts, the "best and brightest" typically fill the magic using ranks and have a vested interest in keeping magic around. Some species such as elves and dwarves don't know if they could even exist in a world without magic. The fet know they can't as well as many other species. So their are many powerful forces that want to maintian the magic status quo. Sure renegades exist, and they are usually secretly put down before they can get very far.

 

[Desdichado]

My game isn't very much like medieval Europe--and I'd argue that neither are most anyone else's either--but mine explicitly is not. I consider it more of a mélange of Pirates of the Caribbean, Sergio Leone, Charles Dickens, H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Part of the whole point of that is that you can't have an anachronism in a world that is patently not Earth; who's to say what belongs in time when the development history of technology is not the same as on our own world?

 

[Ry]

In my campaign, progress can be lightning fast with the help of magic, and regression into a dark age can be lightning fast with the help of monsters. So there's a lot of variety; sometimes a culture will have incredible advances in a few ways but be very backwards in others, such as the Buoyant Armigers (Zepplin-riding nomadic desert warriors).