D&D 5E (2014) What’s So Great About Medieval Europe?

[Ace]

It's the banana slug in Washington.

Nasty things those.

 

[Derren]

That's not the kind of stuff I was thinking about. I was thinking more of the constant wars, raiding, the many flaws of the feudal system.

D&D only pays lip service to the idea of feudalism. Basically it uses the term the same way Disney does. You have a king and royal family with all the glamour people associate with that title, but completely ignores how a feudal society is structured and the actual feudal contracts between liege and vassal.
More often than not the king is a absolute ruler which is far from actual feudalism.

 

[Bawylie]

D&D only pays lip service to the idea of feudalism. Basically it uses the term the same way Disney does. You have a king and royal family with all the glamour people associate with that title, but completely ignores how a feudal society is structured and the actual feudal contracts between liege and vassal.
More often than not the king is a absolute ruler which is far from actual feudalism.

That’s for narrative convenience. We all grew up with fairy tales so these concepts like King and Princess are memetic (if you’ll allow me some license on the term). The day to day governance of land and people isn’t important - what is important is that the local authority wants the adventurers to restore order by returning the next-in-line to the crown. We all get parents and kids. We all get crowns and castles and rescues and dragons. We don’t need accurate feudalism for what we’re doing here.

 

[Tonguez]

D&D only pays lip service to the idea of feudalism. Basically it uses the term the same way Disney does. You have a king and royal family with all the glamour people associate with that title, but completely ignores how a feudal society is structured and the actual feudal contracts between liege and vassal.
More often than not the king is a absolute ruler which is far from actual feudalism.

Most of history ignores everything except the Royal Court and its misadventures

 

[fearsomepirate]

What D&D really needs are wars of succession when the local deformed hemophiliac dies without an heir.

 

[Guest 6801328]

D&D only pays lip service to the idea of feudalism. Basically it uses the term the same way Disney does. You have a king and royal family with all the glamour people associate with that title, but completely ignores how a feudal society is structured and the actual feudal contracts between liege and vassal.
More often than not the king is a absolute ruler which is far from actual feudalism.

Thank god. If I ever want a realistic simulation of feudalism in my RPGs....I think I'd have to drink bleach.

 

[humble minion]

Thank god. If I ever want a realistic simulation of feudalism in my RPGs....I think I'd have to drink bleach.

Hah, fair! But I think there IS still interesting scope for an intrigue-heavy or politics-heavy campaign in a setting with powerful barons, a king constrained by convention and lack of ability to compel, codified responsibilities when it comes to raising military levies, difficult succession issues etc. Players who like sandboxes could have a ball. Mind you, succession issues tended to play out historically over spans of time vastly greater than the average campaign covers in-world, but hey, this is fantasy, if it's not fun, tweak it.

Though of course, historically the rules of European feudalism were underpinned by a monolithic church as a cultural unifying factor and highest moral authority[1] which is very much not the case in most D&D fantasy worlds.

[1] subject to the usual sectarianism/schisms/puppet popes/internal corruption/doctrinal disputes etc that religions are prone to have when you don't have the option of simply spooling up a Commune spell and asking your god what the right answer is...

 

[HomegrownHydra]

Thank god. If I ever want a realistic simulation of feudalism in my RPGs....I think I'd have to drink bleach.

Yeah, I don't play fantasy games because I'm interested in realism.

 

[Fenris-77]

Yeah, I don't play fantasy games because I'm interested in realism.

No, but it's nice for stuff to make sense in the context of the setting. A lot of fantasy writers sometimes don't do this very well.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

True. The primary difference is that the land was less tamed then.
But still looking back on history, things like the first crusade were a huge mess that make the era out to be awful.

Yep, and I'd hate to live in Jeruselem or it's surroundings during a crusade.

I mean, I'd hate to live even 50 years in the past, if we're really being realistic, much less before modern showers and vaccines and toilets and refrigerators, but if we're pretending that the present isn't just objectively better to live in than the past in every meaningful way, the Middle Ages have plenty of years and places that would be fine to live in, or even exciting and cool in a non-adventuring way.

Depending on what body you're born into.