What real world elements show up in D&D the least?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

IME, it's ordinary babies and children. Ride through the Endangered Hamlet on your way to meet with Beleaguered Burgomeister, you'll see smiths and innkeepers and buxom young women but ... children? Babies? Never -- unless they turn out to be evil monsters later on.

Likewise, no one in D&D worlds ever seems to have to go to the bathroom. Combined with the baby thing, I'm starting to wonder if adventurers aren't all Ken dolls.

What real world elements do you see the least of in D&D, for good or for ill?

 

[AbeTheGnome]

Hmm... Pigs, goats, cattle, stray dogs. There's also very little emphasis placed on agriculture. Sure, you may meet a farmer, but what does he farm? Oh, and too little sex... far too little sex. Maybe all adventurers are just anatomically incorrect.

 

[Prince of Happiness]

The environment. After a couple levels, it just doesn't matter anymore. No dangerous fights on a thin ledge hacked into a cliff, no battles with winged apes on 300' cliffs trying to hold onto a thin rope, no racing against the tide to avoid being pummled to a pulp against crashing waves and rock.

Road maintenance crews. No matter how fierce the storm is, there will be *no* downed giant trees crossing the road the day after. They must work *really* fast and no monsters ever attack them.

Civil engineers. Someone has to maintain those sewers, and given the numbers of monsters, murderous thieves' guilds, and deranged cultists, they can't be slouches either.

 

[Aeric]

Weather. Unless it's part of an adventure, I only ever see general temperature (cold in the winter, hot in the summer) mentioned. No rain, no hail, so high winds, no snow. Storms only happen at sea, apparently.

Food. I've had characters hang on to the same week's worth of rations for 12+ levels. I know why this is so; I did play in a game where we marked off a day of rations every game day, and it made for tedious bookkeeping.

Equipment distribution on the body. Just because you have a 22 Strength doesn't mean you have room to hang two swords, a morning star, a long bow, and a half dozen daggers on your person. I run into this challenge a lot, since I tend to draw the characters in my games. As someone who goes to Ren Faires in full garb (costume), including sword, I can attest to how much encumberance a single medium weapon is, much less 2-4.

 

[Storm Raven]

The environment. After a couple levels, it just doesn't matter anymore. No dangerous fights on a thin ledge hacked into a cliff, no battles with winged apes on 300' cliffs trying to hold onto a thin rope, no racing against the tide to avoid being pummled to a pulp against crashing waves and rock.

More to the point, it rarely rains, snows, hails, or gets foggy. There is never a drought or heat wave. None of these things happen unless important to the plot - and if they do, it cues the characters in that something is up.

Civil engineers. Someone has to maintain those sewers, and given the numbers of monsters, murderous thieves' guilds, and deranged cultists, they can't be slouches either.

This is actually a humorous part of the recent Girl Genius storyline.

Another one concerns the passage of time: most adventures seem to take place in a perpetual early spring. The seasons don't pass (unless it is important that an adventure take place in the dead of winter), various festivals and feats days seem to occur unpredictably for the sake of plot, and only for the sake of plot, and so on.

 

[Mallus]

Physics?

(not that there's anything wrong with that)

 

[Dragonbait]

More to the point, it rarely rains, snows, hails, or gets foggy. There is never a drought or heat wave. None of these things happen unless important to the plot - and if they do, it cues the characters in that something is up.

I think that the Red Hand of Doom featured a heat wave that had nothing to do with the plot.

So it looks like: seasons, weather, and superfluous flora, fauna, and folk.

 

[Clavis]

Filth.

The real-world Middle Ages were filthy on levels unimaginable to modern Americans. People stank, the streets stank like garbage and horse dung, and the division between barn and home was pretty fuzzy. Condoms existed, and were RE-USED! In fact, most of the increase in modern life expectancy in not due to our advanced medicine, but just basic sanitation.

I once made a point of the fact that when the PCs were walking along the street in the morning, they had to dodge the contents of chamber pots being dumped out the windows above.

Also, the maps of fantasy cities are completely out of whack with the reality of medieval settlement. The streets and building density on WOTC maps look like modern American suburbs, not the overcrowded warrens of historical Europe. True, a city might only have 20,000 people in it, but they were ususally packed into a very tiny area. In addition, the area around a medieval city, for a distance of 5-10 miles, would be thickly planted with crops, since at a medieval level of agriculture it takes 8-9 farmers to feed a single urban dweller, and those farmers have to live within a single-day's journey of their market. For a city of 20,000, that means about 150,000 farmers must live in villages close to town.

 

[Dragonbait]

Filth.

The real-world Middle Ages were filthy on levels unimaginable to modern Americans. People stank, the streets stank like garbage and horse dung, and the division between barn and home was pretty fuzzy. Condoms existed, and were RE-USED! In fact, most of the increase in modern life expectancy in not due to our advanced medicine, but just basic sanitation.

Warhammer Fantasy settings usually handle this, but for D&D, you are correct sir. Just think about how filthy and disgusting we will look to humanity 1,000 years from now.

As for city layout, don't forget that many city planners would probably have access to non-human engineering knowledge (read: dwarven) and city planning and setups would probably be different than real world medieval cities. Of course YMMV from setting to setting.

 

[Prince of Happiness]

As for city layout, don't forget that many city planners would probably have access to non-human engineering knowledge (read: dwarven) and city planning and setups would probably be different than real world medieval cities. Of course YMMV from setting to setting.

That's the way I roll. Not as interesting to run or play a game and "OH NOES! U GOTZ DYSENTERY!!!11"

Hell, who's to say that the game anyone runs is necessarily run off a medieval European model (when it's clearly not...a 100%). Roman, Etruscan, and Cretan civilizations give some insight into how things could be different, hygenically, and not be anachronistic.