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Message: <blockquote data-quote="willpax" data-source="post: 402238" data-attributes="member: 1602">Like Greybar, my "European with a twist" has a twist involving the inversion of symbolic categories: in my case, black/dark is associated with life, fertility, and power, and whiteness is associated with death, sterility, and weakness. This basic symbolic opposition finds parallels in politics (where the dominant empire is dark-skinned), agricultural theory (black soil is best), theology (the earth is the source of power, not the sky), and all those little areas that our metaphorical prejudices insinuate themselves into.There is one other little change: no horses. Any herd-type animals in open areas were hunted to extinction by dragons. If you've read _Guns, Germs, and Steel_ (or other books on ecological history), you will already be familiar with the wide ranging impact on society. The population is  much less advanced overall (because a greater portion of the population is needed in food production, despite divine aid). Travel and trade are more expensive and dangerous, creating a further brake on development. Military tactics tend to depend upon a small group of well-armed and well-trained elite soldiers backed up by masses of untrained militia (think The Iliad without the horse-drawn chariots). Overall, it has more of a "dark ages" feel (say, Europe around 800) than the higher middle ages that is the closest analogue to the D&D assumed world.</blockquote>