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

[wingsandsword]

meh. D&D is medieval based because the game started out heavily influenced by LOTR (in spite of what EGG said)… the basic appeal of the game was 'hey, you can play an elf and fight orcs in this vaguely medieval world'... the nice thing about D&D is that it's bendable enough that if you don't want to use a medieval setting, you can make up something you do like...

I think LotR was only a minor influence to Gygax himself. . .Gygax seemed as much or more influenced by Robert E. Howard, Jack Vance, Fritz Lieber and Poul Anderson, and Michael Moorcock than by J.R.R. Tolkien.

. . .but Tolkien was more popular and influential than the rest of those authors and later authors and players drew more heavily from Tolkien than others in their own campaigns and works, meaning that it's influence on D&D grew rather quickly.

Hence before long D&D became largely a Tolkien pastiche typically set in a fantasy version of western Europe with elements of the other authors and inspirations grafted on, like Vance's magic, Moorcock's concept of law and chaos, Anderson's paladins, Lieber's thieves, Howard's barbarians, Monks from Kung Fu movies, Clerics from the Crusades etc.

 

[Oofta]

To a certain degree, you also just have to have a common language and default technology level.

I mean, I can replace "king" with "jarl", "sultan", "caliph", "emperor" and it doesn't really matter all that much. Styles of dress, armor and weapons ... also based more on assumptions of a relatively advanced metallurgical technology.

There needs to be conflict for there to be heroes, so there are going to be wars. Given the other assumptions of technology you're going to have castles. The climate is, for the most part, vaguely temperate.

But that's about all. The default set dressing is more-or-less European but doesn't really resemble medieval Europe all that much. The technology is wrong, polytheism wasn't a major factor, the church's power is minimized in most campaigns. Last time I checked there weren't roving bands of orcs wandering around France.

If it seems to resemble medieval Europe it's largely because that time period wasn't very well understood so any setting that does not call out specific social norms, gods or other set dressing gets filled in with what most people are familiar with.

 

[Garthanos]

I am found of Ancient Celtic era legend and myth ... just as we are seeing Ancient Greece all over right now would love and purchase something of that sort.

 

[Zardnaar]

What you’re doing is taking a given event that is bad, and applying it to entire centuries as if the whole 100 years of history was that event, to satisfy your pessimistic bias.

Couldn't you say the same thing about medieval Europe?

Sure things like Crusades happened but WW1, 2, Stalin/Hitler/Pol Pot/Mao/Pinochet etc. Maybe ye olde Monarchs etc weren't that bad.

 

[Garthanos]

Couldn't you say the same thing about medieval Europe?

Sure things like Crusades happened but WW1, 2, Stalin/Hitler/Pol Pot/Mao/Pinochet etc. Maybe ye olde Monarchs etc weren't that bad.

I have seen convincing estimates of percentages of human caused deaths over the course of history and prehistory... its gone down seriously over the course of time (pure numbers have gone up but when taken as percentages of CoDs they have gone down. Which is interesting given how many non-human caused deaths we have averted with science recently its still a pattern with a few spikes. Shrug.

 

[FlyingChihuahua]

I have seen convincing estimates of percentages of human caused deaths over the course of history and prehistory... its gone down seriously over the course of time (pure numbers have gone up but when taken as percentages of CoDs they have gone down. Which is interesting given how many non-human caused deaths we have averted with science recently its still a pattern with a few spikes. Shrug.

You see, to me, I've always seen people saying stuff like that as basically going "Things could be worse, so stop being depressed" which I hate with a passion.

 

[Garthanos]

You see, to me, I've always seen people saying stuff like that as basically going "Things could be worse, so stop being depressed" which I hate with a passion.

No it means things are getting better does not make them perfect... nor does it mean to stop trying to make them better it means do not look at the past with rose colored glasses And think you want things the way they once were.

 

[Zardnaar]

No it means things are getting better does not make them perfect... nor does it mean to stop trying to make them better it means do not look at the past with rose colored glasses And think you want things the way they once were.

Also don't look at the past so negatively.

I don't think medieval Europe was much worse than now in terms of things like warfare. It's been reasonably peaceful last 50-70 years.

What would have sucked is things like pandemics and wondering if you're going to get enough rain that year or worrying about crop failure.

Day to day life.

Even then still may have been better than latter on when things like reformation happened which collapsed the social security net such as it was when they seized church lands etc and people moved to the cities.

 

[The Green Hermit]

There were actually a lot of good things about feudalistic societies if you had a good lord. It was when you had a bad one that had a lengthy life, or a string of bad ones where things got dicey.

 

[Zardnaar]

There were actually a lot of good things about feudalistic societies if you had a good lord. It was when you had a bad one that had a lengthy life, or a string of bad ones where things got dicey.

Varied by country. People may have eaten better than 18th century but less variety.