D&D 5E What’s So Great About Medieval Europe?

[Minigiant]

I would argue it's never been Eurocentric - it's always been US-centric, with Europe as this sort of "looming presence" (which has indeed declined over the years), which is very much in keeping with a lot of modern vampire stuff.

None of the other World of Darkness books is Eurocentric either - Werewolf is violently US-centric, in fact.

What about other big RPGs? Shadowrun is US-centric, but very "worldwide", and always with a strong Japanese influence. CP2020 is similar, and indeed barely acknowledges Europe exists beyond the Eurodollar being the currency. Earthdawn was a pure fantasy world. HERO/Champions was US-centric. GURPS was deliberately world-wide. Palladium stuff tends to be US-centric and then go world-wide, and so on.

WOD is very US-centric.
I'm saying lately, theyve been killing or cloistering all the old Euro kindred.


Surprise! Noname werewolves killed everybody. Your campaign must be in the US, Canada, or Africa now.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It's only going to appeal to a niche slice mostly America/Anglosphere/Western Europe.

Given the massive influence it had in Japan and Korea this seems like a weird thing to say. JRPGs, K-MMOs and so on as we know them, simply wouldn't exist without D&D. Unless you consider them the "anglosphere". It also seems like RPGs are growing a lot in Eastern Europe and have had popularity there since they've actually been available. I suspect lack of translations together with fewer people speaking English as a second language is the main limiting factor there.

Newer players are playing differently if course but they didn't grow up with ye olde Disney cartoons or Grimm's brothers and Weddings etc.

Who did? I mean, I'm British, I've never read Grimms, never had it presented to me. Don't really know anyone who did. I'm familiar with the stories second or third hand, usually via cartoons or the like. What even is "Weddings" referring to?

What is a "newer player"? Under 50? That seems to what you're getting at. That seems like a bold definition of "newer".

They tend to view what the west calls cultural appropriation as cultural APPRECIATION/enjoyment/admiration/enthusiasm.

I think the issue is that cultural appropriation is problematic in two ways:

1) It can promote racist attitudes and racial stereotyping, whilst misrepresenting cultures. This is the "Oriental Adventures" problem.

2) It can take stuff from marginalized, powerless or weak groups/cultures, and misrepresent it and indeed take it away from those groups, when it may be part of what very little they have. This is a problem particularly with indigenous peoples like the Native Americans. Ironically because these cultures/people are so marginalized, this tends to attract less attention unless it's really grotesque.

What I think won't stand the test of time is claims that like borrowing stuff from India/China/Japan is "cultural appropriation" in a meaningful sense. All of these countries are cultural powerhouses, which constantly draw culture from other cultures and re-work it. None of them are really "being oppressed" by the West (albeit this absolutely wasn't true 100 years ago for India/China).

Lindsay Ellis on YouTube has a pretty good video on this. I think it conveys how cultural appropriation (which is technically a neutral term) can become a problematic act.

 

[Minigiant]

Handling any kind of culture has a real-life analog can cause PR issues due to the current hyper PC culture. While some existing settings have using real-world analogs, these were mostly done before the internet outrage could occur. If WotC were to produce Kara-Tur, Mazteca, or Al-Qadim today, there would instant outrage of "culture appropriation" and "mis-characterization of the culture," no matter how they did it. Instead WotC (and 3rd party products) create larger settings that can include some analogs, so long as they either keep it very vague or detailed enough to differ from the analog.

It's a PR because of how it was handled in the 80s and 90s

A lot of the nonEuropean elements in gaming in the 80s and 90s and some of the 00s were

• Extremely insensitive
• Blatant Pandering
• Low Quality
• Poorly Balanced
• Obviously Uninspired
• Horribly Misrepresented

This coexisted with a lot of the bad game design of the time.

With the popularity of the internet, even the stuffy upper management types now know that quality nonEuropean and nonMedieval RPG element boost sales. Look at Creative Assembly. They showed Game Workshop that if you actually give a hoot about "nontraditional" factions, people love them. GW killed the setting and squatted factions in the new game. Then they were surprised when the minor faction were extremely popular after CA put some effort into design (not bugfixing obviously though) and brought it to an American audience at a reasonable cost.

 

[Hoffmand]

It will.
the 2e books were terrible. Thats the problem.

D&D has a special problem for decades. It has designers who don't care about things they design since they personally don't want to play them. It was a big problem in gaming altogether.

But it is changing. Faster in video gaming. Video game devs now know that quality new ideas sell big. Tabletop is lagging behind.

African, Asian, and American inspirations was always part of D&D.
Implementation was often terrible though.

The 2E books were gold lightning in a bottle.

 

[MGibster]

How much do you think most people know about what a count is, in any given medieval region’s context? I figure pretty much the name, and that it’s isn’t super high in the hierarchy, like a Duke would be.

The point is most people have heard of a count and they're comfortable with it even if they're not intimately familiar with its incarnation in every setting.

I could write an adventure where the local aristocrat is called the Glenn, and his liege is the Varnun, and show what those titles mean with maybe a handful of sentences over the course of the adventure, and the players would have a bette idea of that court structure than they would if I said “you’re before the Count, act accordingly”.

There's still going to be a learning curve and it's going to require some effort to buy into it in a way that something familiar will not. If we're talking about published settings that means more work on the part of the GM and player base which might have an impact on sales. I love a lot of non-European settings like Dark Sun, Legend of the Five Rings, and Al-Qadim, but, man, it can really be tough getting players to switch mindsets with a game like L5R.

But you have a valid point. I think one of the reasons D&D is so popular is because it really doesn't go too far out into the weeds so far as medieval/early modern Europe is concerned. Which might explain partially why games like HarnMaster or Pendragon aren't as popular.

 

[humble minion]

I think one of the reasons D&D is so popular is because it really doesn't go too far out into the weeds so far as medieval/early modern Europe is concerned. Which might explain partially why games like HarnMaster or Pendragon aren't as popular.

Yeah, I'd agree with that. There's certainly not very much actually historically medieval about most D&D other than the tech and (sometimes) the aesthetic. In fact, you can almost argue that after 40-ish years of D&D settings, the main inspiration that modern D&D settings are built on is ... other D&D settings. For most D&D games, from a metagame point of view, you want ancient mysterious fallen empires (so there's lots of ruins and dungeons to explore) and limited strong central government (so that the PCs get to be the ones who prevent the looming disaster, rather than the govt just saying 'we got this' and activating plan 152c that the Looming Disaster Prevention Department drew up years ago). You want lots of fights. You want no real cultural taboo against looting tombs etc (cos that's what adventurers do all the time!) and you often want a fair bit of social mobility so that PCs who start as farmkids can get involved in politics or become nobles or rub shoulders with rulers at 15th level without getting shunned or have the weight of tradition/religion/caste fall on their heads. You generally want a polytheistic pantheon in which some members are actively mortal enemies of others (rather than sort of bickering families like the Greek pantheon, for instance) because that's the way you can have your PCs fight against bad guy clerics.

Not to say there aren't settings that ignore some or all of these. But these are kind of the base assumptions that make a D&D campaign easier to run, and most D&D sourcebooks are written with them assumed, consciously or unconsciously. I think what we see as the 'conventional' D&D settings like FR, Golarion, and Greyhawk etc are basically the result of game designers applying the metagaming requirements above with a Western set of cultural assumptions, Western formative media influences, etc etc. And that's not a bad thing! It'd just it'd be interesting to see what you'd get if someone brought up with a completely different set of cultural assumptions/influences put together a setting...

 

[Nellisir]

I'd argue D&D settings are more than a little influenced by North American culture as well. Faerûn and its Sea of Fallen Stars is just as reminscent to me of the US-Canada boundary waters and great lakes region as it is of Afro-Eurasia around the Mediterranean.

I've heard FR called "American" medieval fantasy.

 

[Morrus]

I've heard FR called "American" medieval fantasy.

Oh, definitely. D&D feels very American to me. More so, I think, than it used to; but I might be misremembering.

 

[jasper]

And if anyone has ever had the misfortune of drinking American coffee, you'll understand exactly how much spite that is...

Cheers, Al'Kelhar

You sir made me spit out my Coke. And owe me a key board.

 

[Reynard]

Oh, definitely. D&D feels very American to me. More so, I think, than it used to; but I might be misremembering.

The whole "great man" action hero who came from nothing aspect is very American. You'll notice in more traditionally European fantasies heroes tend to be nobility or aristocracy. Aragorn versus Conan. Alan Quartermain (EDIT: Alan Quartmain was not an aristocrat. huh.)versus Indiana Jones. Being an American invention, D&D embraces that, and to its benefit I think.