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

[Son of the Serpent]

Toning down: and bowing out of this thread with the following:

During the Satanic Panic in the 80's and 90's a group of people had very strong "opinions" as to what wasn't appropriate content for RPG's.

The pressure brought to bear by this social minority caused TSR to "remove references to demons, devils, and other potentially controversial supernatural monsters from the 2nd Edition of AD&D."

To this day the people behind pushing Dungeons & Dragons as a Satanic game, imposing censorship, and wanting to control what content was appropriate for RPG’s are reviled by the greater RPG community.

Gamers had a technical term during the satanic panic for people who want to control what is appropriate for RPG’s: The Bad Guys.

Today a similar pressure is being applied. While the Ideological paradigm of this group is different, the goal is the same: To control what is and is not appropriate content for an RPG. And not only to control and censor appropriate content, but to also dictate who can even create it.

At what point did people who want to control what content is appropriate for RPG’s stop being the bad guys?

As for the Orwellian Angle:

By the posters’ own admission in post #176, his argument stems from the concept of Cultural Appropriation. Which is itself a branch of Marxist Critical Theory. The ideological paradigm of his “opinions” are deeply rooted in Marxism. The socioeconomic theory created by Karl Marx, who wrote those cornerstones of modern socialist philosophy; the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital.

1984 is an explicit critique of the natural results of embracing Marxist socialist philosophy. And it was a very prescient novel, given what we now know what when on in the USSR, Communist China, North Korea, Cambodian Khmer Rouge, Cuba, East Germany, etc…

And if you feel that I am making a ridiculous logical leap between someone advocating restrictions of what content is appropriate RPG material based on them espousing the Marxist dialectic of Cultural Appropriation, and their willingness to go full 1984 on people who disagree with them if they had the chance...

Look at what the poster said they would like to enforce in “appropriate” game design. Then contemplate the level of control that would be required over the RPG industry, retailers, and hobby, to make that desire reality...

You may also feel free to completely ignore everything I've just said. This is just the crazy internet after all.

I second this.

 

[Tallifer]

What is so interesting about the (very much pseudo) medieval tableaux that keeps the community stuck at that well?

 

[Minigiant]

Getting away from a lot of topics talked about in this topic.

Before running my running game as DM, I tried to do something new and design a new setting to the new table. Each culture and class availability would be based around a terrain. Kinda like a popular TCG. There would be:

• Plains Culture
• Mountains Culture
• Other Mountains Culture
• Islands/Coastal Culture
• (Temperate) Forest Culture
• (Tropical) Forest Culture
• (Artic) Forest Culture
• Swamp Culture
• Desert Culture
• etc

Then as I mapped it, plotted cites, and designed trade routes, I realized that some areas would have less access to trade goods like Earth. A few cultures would be like Earth ones and have less access to metals, bronzeworking, and ironworking tech.

Then I read the PHB and realized that D&D Fifth Edition still doesn't have a class that supports Strength based Warrior-style characters that don't have access to metal armors and threw my (old) PHB against the wall. Because the entire base game is based on the cultures with access to the Eurasia trade routes.

So I'm making homebrew fighter subclasses.

Why the heck is there only one flat AC bonus for shields? That's wild for real.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Any description or explanation of the thing observed. Not sure why you went on that wild ride in the rest of your post, so I’ve no idea how to respond to it.

That makes zero sense to me. If somebody makes an insightful observation, I see no reason why they would be likely to "butcher" putting that observation into words.

Now, if one were skeptical that they actually made an insightful observation, then it would make sense to be equally skeptical to how they describe it.

But I'll refer you again to de Tocqueville.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

also can i just point out that you hilariously say "nothing is simple IME" at the very start of your post and then further down the post you hypocritically (not just an ad hominen you can hand wave away. You literally do a full reversal so it quite accurateky describes the nature of the action.) say about something else, "no...its really simple". Did you forget your earlier statement in the span of the same comment? Hah!

You’re very impressed with yourself, but it’s hard to see why.

And...you don’t seem to know what hypocrite means.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

That makes zero sense to me. If somebody makes an insightful observation, I see no reason why they would be likely to "butcher" putting that observation into words.

Now, if one were skeptical that they actually made an insightful observation, then it would make sense to be equally skeptical to how they describe it.

But I'll refer you again to de Tocqueville.

De Tocqueville can kick rocks, tbh.

Edit: There was supposed to be a laugh emoji, there.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

That makes zero sense to me. If somebody makes an insightful observation, I see no reason why they would be likely to "butcher" putting that observation into words.

Now, if one were skeptical that they actually made an insightful observation, then it would make sense to be equally skeptical to how they describe it.

But I'll refer you again to de Tocqueville.

I didn’t say “description of the observation” I said “of the thing observed”. So, yeah, I’m saying that it is quite rare for genuinely insightful observations that aren’t already being made by those inside the culture to come from outside of it.

the outside objectivist theory of cultural study is, at best, deeply flawed.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

I didn’t say “description of the observation” I said “of the thing observed”. So, yeah, I’m saying that it is quite rare for genuinely insightful observations that aren’t already being made by those inside the culture to come from outside of it.

the outside objectivist theory of cultural study is, at best, deeply flawed.

You do realize system self measurement and measurement of systems by components of said system are generally accepted to be less capable of accurate measure than systems measured by a thing wichh they are not a part of right? In science, its fairly accepted to say the opposite of what you are saying is usually true. Because a system has inherntly more problems measuring itself.

This is of course only a general rule.

But yeah. I think we pretend it applies to sociology a lot less often than it actually does because we got it in our heads "humans are special"

 

[Guest 6801328]

the outside objectivist theory of cultural study is, at best, deeply flawed.

Any citations for that claim?

 

[Minigiant]

I find it ironic the image used for the Fighter on D&D beyond is a dark skinned man with an African style shield, a spear, a longsword wearing scale mail.

Is this homebrew Fighting Style good?

Shield Guard
While you are not wearing any armor, your Armor Class equals 14 + your Dexterity modifier. You wield a shield with a length at least half your height to gain this benefit.