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

[doctorbadwolf]

I've thought about that a lot recently, and wondered if if it should become a blog...

Now, for intelligent humanoids (drow, duergar) it's a bad idea to have them be inherently evil. Even predominantly evil has its issues as they're classically dark skinned. I think we've seen a move away from that in recent editions. Duergar and drow are a medium grey now, and much more light skinned than in the past.

But this gets harder with more "savage" humanoids like goblins or orcs. The question of whether they're inherently evil and uncivilized or if that is the product of upbringing. If they're just the humanoid equivalent of "undomesticated", like wolves or foxes, and no amount of careful raising will prevent them from being a wild animal.

There's no easy answers here. It's horrible all the way down.

If it's nurture, then all the humanoid civilizations have a long history of oppressing goblins and orcs. There's shades of colonialism and systemic abuse. And adventurers going into orc/goblin villages and killing everyone are perpetrating hate crimes and ethnic cleansing.
And man is that not a good take.

If it's nature than it avoids the above. Orcs may not be inherently evil, but they're inherently chaotic: irrational monsters that you can kill for the good of innocents.
However having it be their nature invokes some pretty horrible real world analogues, where certain peoples were considered less advanced or evolved. How orcs are seen is a little too close to comfort with how people of African decent were seen just a hundred and fifty years ago. (If not even more recently.) This can be really upsetting for some people.

This makes it really awkward to have disposable action scenes. Because it is still a game and you want to have the occasional combat. For some players, that's their main reason for playing.
There are some inherently evil beings (demons and devils) along with beasts and undead. But even then things get fuzzy. There are good vampires in D&D. Who hasn't seen the druid try and tame or negotiate with an owlbear? Should the pack of wolves be murdered because they're hungry: they have just as much right to live.
It can works with regular humanoids, but even then it's because no one stops to question the bandits or ask if the minions of the Evil Overlords were volunteers or conscripts (or victims of propaganda). Let's face it, if any PCs ever stopped to ask why someone became a highway man, the answer isn't going to be pleasant.

As such, I'm still inclined to have it be "nature" in my world and games. Because of the needs of the game. You need to accommodate some level of murder-hobo behavior and it's preferable to have easy action without moral consequences. In the same way Buffy the Vampire Slayer purposly chose to have vampires lose their souls, to avoid questions of whether vampires could be redeemed and if slaying them immediately was good or bad.

What we do in my group is, disposable action scenes are; self defense, kill nazis*, defend a town/caravan/etc, or fight a known villain and/or their agents, where it’s already well established that they aren’t going to change sides or listen to reason.

Another thing we do, is show mercy. We bind and heal those who haven’t bled out, some got put down with nonlethal blows to begin with, etc. NPCs make death saves just like PCs.

As for cultures, we aren’t quite Where I feel we should be. My buddy’s world has goblins as basically nomadic vermin people, and orcs were bred from them with humans and others to make super soldiers. Minotaurs and centaurs are from the same steppe as goblins and eat goblins as a normal thing. I really don’t like it, but my buddy is pretty proud of it and I don’t wanna be a duck about it.

 

[Minigiant]

Relinking for ease of reference:

Buying power has very little to do with it, because RRPs are irregular sources of income. It's small one-time purchases.
Keep in mind, people 16-25 likely have jobs, even if part time. So buying $150 of books is not impossible.
And groups only really need one person with the books to play, and might even pool their funds.
And people <20 likely don't have rent or other expenses and obligations sucking up money.

And that's without considering allowances, Christmas and birthday gifts, stolen PDFs, or even playing with parents. Or grandparents...

"But even so, my point is Gen Z is still too young to have the buying power to influence the game, push designers, and create content."
Tell that to Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, which hit #1 on the Amazon charts. Tell that to all the organized play games, that are shifting focus to be less tactical problem solving and more narrative. The people speaking in character for long periods and drawing fan art rather than reading optimization guides.

It's the Millennials and Generation X that have less influence on the game.
People working jobs with long hours that limit their opportunity to play, or are starting families and have to worry about childcare.

Here you go. Prepare for shock!

WotC - Comparing EN World's Demographics to the D&D Community's

WotC released some figures this week. I thought it would be fun to compare them to the demographics of our own little community here on EN World for the same period (2019). WotC uses a metric it refers to as 40,000,000 'D&D Fans', but that's not defined. For the purposes of this, I assume a fan...

www.enworld.org

Well color me shocked.

My views are probably more biased as I have many Gen Z in my various games and they've spent more on dice and minis than actual books.

 

[Minigiant]

I think one reason we stick with Medieval is due to not working harder for more modern weaponry combat. Although I've heard some folks like the firearm rules in the DMG...

Which is more due to a lack of trying. More than 1 TTRPG melds Medieval swords, Renaissance guns, and Classical magic.

The European part, I think people have sort of pounded on that topic here on this thread a bunch, I don't have much to add at this point. Except to ask - is it "European" or "Feudalism" / "Colonialism" that's at the heart of D&D?

Well that's the question.
Especially since D&D is not a single setting game.

• Is mimicking European Feudalism the heart of D&D?
• Is the favoritism of Japanese elements due to Japan's feudal history?
• Are the sprinkles of North African and Middle Eastern elements in rules and lore in the game soley due to the closeness of geography of the Middle East and North Africa to Europe?
• Are the low amounts of Native American, South Asian, Pacific, and nonNorth African elements in rules and lore in the game soley due to the lower interaction to Europe to these areas in the Middle Ages?

 

[gyor]

Exactly. Star Trek is American.

Old Star Trek is American, new Star Trek is Canadian.

Discovery was shot in Toronto Canada, Short Treks is short in Toronto Canada, Section 31 will be shot in Toronto Canada, hypothetical Pike series with be shot in Toronto Canada, Starfleet Academy hypothetical series will be shot in Toronto Canada, a good chunk of the casts of these shows are Canadian as well, even Picard which at Sir Patrick Stewart's request is shot in California, had a scene with Captain Riker on the bridge of a ship that was shot in Toronto Canada. The crew on the shows is mostly Canadian as well.

Mr. Kurtzman who is the overlord of Star Trek now, has said all Star Trek except Picard is going to be shot in Toronto from now on.

This should not be seen as an attack on American Star Trek, Deep Space Nine is my favourite TV show of all time. Nor is it political, it's just an interesting factiod.

 

[fearsomepirate]

If it's nurture, then all the humanoid civilizations have a long history of oppressing goblins and orcs. There's shades of colonialism and systemic abuse.

That doesn't at all follow. There's no general principle that a warlike, aggressive culture is a result of conquest by more technologically advanced empires. More often than not, an empire arises in a process of one tribe gaining some kind of decisive advantage and stomping out what had been normative, constant violence.

If you're lucky, whoever's doing the stomping isn't the Assyrians.

 

[Morrus]

Old Star Trek is American, new Star Trek is Canadian.

Discovery was shot in Toronto Canada, Short Treks is short in Toronto Canada, Section 31 will be shot in Toronto Canada, hypothetical Pike series with be shot in Toronto Canada, Starfleet Academy hypothetical series will be shot in Toronto Canada, a good chunk of the casts of these shows are Canadian as well, even Picard which at Sir Patrick Stewart's request is shot in California, had a scene with Captain Riker on the bridge of a ship that was shot in Toronto Canada. The crew on the shows is mostly Canadian as well.

Mr. Kurtzman who is the overlord of Star Trek now, has said all Star Trek except Picard is going to be shot in Toronto from now on.

This should not be seen as an attack on American Star Trek, Deep Space Nine is my favourite TV show of all time. Nor is it political, it's just an interesting factiod.

I wasn’t talking about the shooting location.

 

[gyor]

I wasn’t talking about the shooting location.

It's more then just shooting locations, it feels very different in many ways from American Star Trek and there are ALOT more Canadians working on these shows then just actors Shatner and James Doohan and beloved Anti-hero character Michael Eddington. Canadians are all over the new Star Trek TV shows and you can see the influence on the show. It's still owned by the American company CBSViacom, but it doesn't how Canadian they are now. Plus the Canadian and Ontario governments have foot a large amount of the bill via tax credits.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

What we do in my group is, disposable action scenes are; self defense, kill nazis*, defend a town/caravan/etc, or fight a known villain and/or their agents, where it’s already well established that they aren’t going to change sides or listen to reason.

Another thing we do, is show mercy. We bind and heal those who haven’t bled out, some got put down with nonlethal blows to begin with, etc. NPCs make death saves just like PCs.

As for cultures, we aren’t quite Where I feel we should be. My buddy’s world has goblins as basically nomadic vermin people, and orcs were bred from them with humans and others to make super soldiers. Minotaurs and centaurs are from the same steppe as goblins and eat goblins as a normal thing. I really don’t like it, but my buddy is pretty proud of it and I don’t wanna be a duck about it.

Something I need to move away from (although the APs make it hard) is to NOT have goblins always be eaters of sentient beings. But it's so fun to do the high goblin voice and say "Yeah, your friend, we've got him in our hideout. He'll make good eating". It does get the players motivated...

Ok, while we are on the topic of "evil" sentients. What exactly is it that makes someone evil? Isn't it in the eyes of the, ahem, beholder?

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Which is more due to a lack of trying. More than 1 TTRPG melds Medieval swords, Renaissance guns, and Classical magic.

Yes, that's what I was alluding to. DMG has some slight rules (which I should probably go read again if I continue to talk about it in this thread), but my recollection is they are pretty hand-wavey. Which could be ok for some games/settings, for others maybe not so much.

 

[Morrus]

It's more then just shooting locations, it feels very different in many ways from American Star Trek and there are ALOT more Canadians working on these shows then just actors Shatner and James Doohan and beloved Anti-hero character Michael Eddington. Canadians are all over the new Star Trek TV shows and you can see the influence on the show. It's still owned by the American company CBSViacom, but it doesn't how Canadian they are now. Plus the Canadian and Ontario governments have foot a large amount of the bill via tax credits.

By that logic Star Wars and Game of Thrones are British (or Irish).

I’m talking about the stuff in the show. Starfleet uses American traditions, structure, and terminology. The ships are even called USS (though the meaning of that is changed). It’s America in space.

Nothing to do with who foots the show’s tax bill.