When Fantasy meets Medieval Europe

[Thomas Bowman]

This is one of the issues that have kept me from publishing my work. Is it "accurate enough"? And would it offend some people - from the errors, but also from some of the game design choices - would people from culture X be offended that they are represented by hobgoblins?

The other two main issues were potential licensing (it uses the warhammer rules after all...) and well, the sheer amount of work involved

I do have orcs stand in for Mongols, would the Mongols that live today be offended? There ancestors did some terrible things under Genghis Khan after all. to give a more modern example, would Germans be offended today if I portrayed the Nazis as orcs?

 

[Lylandra]

To give a more modern example, would Germans be offended today if I portrayed the Nazis as orcs?

German here, and yes, I would deem that problematic under most circumstances (I'd find it okay in non-realistic, satire settings where you'd use "teh evöl Nazis" as caricatures).

Why? Mainly because it downplays the fact that Nazis were humans. And that we, humans, are capable of commiting such atrocities or looking away or knowingly profit from genocide. Making them orcs writes them off as non-human, evil "other" creatures, therefore sanctifying human nature.

The other aspect is because the descendants of these Nazis are living human beings, not orcs. They struggle with what their parents or grandparents might have done. They try to build a better, more resilient, more humane society. I wouldn't wish to be demonized, at least not in a "realistic" setting.

Now I wouldn't have the same problem if you just erased all human Germans in your setting and turned them into faeries. Because there is no equivalent, no trope, no stereotype connecting Germans and fey (and no, Grimm's stories don't count).

 

[Chad Hooper]

Hey, Thomas,

A couple of random thoughts for things that might be fun in your setting(s):

If you ever run a campaign in your Venus setting, I recommend you read David Drake's novel "The Jungle" or Henry Kuttner's works the Venus setting is drawn from. Some very interesting ideas for carnivorous and otherwise dangerous plants in there.

If you run a campaign in Elven North America, deciding what Sasquatch are and how they fit in could give you some fodder for stories. I had three of them appear at various points in a modern-setting Ars Magica story called "New World Grendel" that was inspired by and centered on the rune stone outside Heavener, Oklahoma. I made my Sasquatch a long-lived faerie race to contrast with the enormous hairy troll that the villain (same species as Grendel) of the story was.

 

[Ancalagon]

It is also the term used by secular Muslims and Jews as well as Aristotle. "God" is sufficiently generic to be used on our Dollar bill which says, "In God we trust" Anyway, I am not willing to go through "contortions" just to avoid offending people who may be too easily offended. "Deus" sounds more like a specific god's name to the uneducated. I think "God" is fine, and if Atheists are offended, then so be it, this is not an Atheist Europe I am depicting, but I'm not expecting much divine intervention either, so it doesn't matter. Clerics get their spells when they pray, that is all that matters.

You ... are aware that Christians, Jews and Muslims worship the same God ... they just disagree on some important details. Again, by using the term Satan, you make it clear that it's not just a reference to "some monotheistic deity", it's a reference to the one worshiped on Earth.

That may not be your intention, but that is how 90% of your readers will interpret it.

The center of Europe is more exacting than the periphery. Europe is above all a mostly human continent, most of the other races, except for dwarves and monsters living underground, come from some place else. The center of the campaign is in Europe, and Elves brought over renaissance technology, so that is where the full plate mail and other things that did not exist in historical 1100 AD Europe comes from. History is the outline, but the details are mine. I don't worry too much about historical accuracy, but when I am looking for ideas, I look to the history, and if it inspires me, I use it, otherwise I don't sweat it too much. If I want to put King Arthur in charge of Britain, and this contradicts history, I don't worry about it, if it makes a great story idea I could use it.

Ok, are you trying to be historically accurate, or not? If in your 1100 elves have brought in new technology, then the D&D technology is not medieval (it never has been). You protest that Pagan gods were not worshiped in 1100 Europe, therefore we can't have them, and then turn around and add plate mail and King Arthur...

 

[Thomas Bowman]

German here, and yes, I would deem that problematic under most circumstances (I'd find it okay in non-realistic, satire settings where you'd use "teh evöl Nazis" as caricatures).

Why? Mainly because it downplays the fact that Nazis were humans. And that we, humans, are capable of commiting such atrocities or looking away or knowingly profit from genocide. Making them orcs writes them off as non-human, evil "other" creatures, therefore sanctifying human nature.

The other aspect is because the descendants of these Nazis are living human beings, not orcs. They struggle with what their parents or grandparents might have done. They try to build a better, more resilient, more humane society. I wouldn't wish to be demonized, at least not in a "realistic" setting.

Now I wouldn't have the same problem if you just erased all human Germans in your setting and turned them into faeries. Because there is no equivalent, no trope, no stereotype connecting Germans and fey (and no, Grimm's stories don't count).

You are not them! Dungeons & Dragons makes things a little simpler by letting the bad guys be monsters. The way I look at it is that we have monsters in our world, but those monsters look like human beings. It is hard to tell if a person is evil just by looking at them. Where I live, there was an evil person named Adam Lanza who murdered a bunch of Elementary School Children at Sandy Hook, in Newtown, Connecticut, it was just the next town over from where I live in Danbury.

This was the evil person who murdered those children, he first killed his mother, took her gun and shot his way into an elementary school and murdered a bunch of school children.

On December 14, 2012, 20-year-old Adam Lanza fatally shot twenty children and six adult staff members in a mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School in the village of Sandy Hook in Newtown, Connecticut. Before driving to the school, Lanza shot and killed his mother Nancy at their Newtown home. As first responders arrived, he committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.

What​

do you think? Is he a monster? I can't think of any circumstances that would make me act like him. He does have a weird expression in his face though. I don't think he could hold a candle to what Hitler had done, but nevertheless, he was the local evil person in my community. I don't really know why we get evil people like him. The main difference between him and Hitler I think is that Adam Lanza did all his evil by himself, he didn't have help. World War II and the Holocaust were communal acts of evil rather than the act of a lone individual such as Adam Lanza, and as such, it is harder to understand. How do you deal with it? I never had to grow up in a country like yours, what is it like?

As for Dungeons & Dragons, I guess we need villains to make the game interesting to play, orcs and other creatures like that usually fit the bill.

[Completely inappropriate content for this site. Please review the rules on real world politics and religion. - Morrus]

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[Ancalagon]

This thread is rather frustrating because part of me really wants to cheer for what you are doing yet... I find it difficult.

So... you say "would Germans be offended today if I portrayed the Nazis as orcs?".

A German says that yes, it would be. And then you go into a spiel about Adam Lanza... That is a very particular response.

As for Dungeons & Dragons, I guess we need villains to make the game interesting to play, orcs and other creatures like that usually fit the bill.

And you are making the mongols into orcs, or, as you say, villains. How would that not be offensive?

When I made some of my cultures as D&D races (example: hobgoblins) I was quite concerned about being offensive, so I made sure that those cultures would not be depicted as *villains*. Hobgoblins were sometimes foes yes, but no more than that - heck a party member was a hobgoblin! The other thing I did is that well, I never published.

 

[Hussar]

Yeah, really, at the end of the day, if you're going to pick a culture, and then bowdlerize that culture into a specific race, then, yeah, you're probably going to offend someone. There's no real way to avoid it. So, either don't do it, or do it and accept that people are going to react negatively to it.

 

[CapnZapp]

Yeah, really, at the end of the day, if you're going to pick a culture, and then bowdlerize that culture into a specific race, then, yeah, you're probably going to offend someone. There's no real way to avoid it. So, either don't do it, or do it and accept that people are going to react negatively to it.

And if you plant to publish, that advice can be shortened to just "don't do it".

 

[Morrus]

You are not them! Dungeons & Dragons makes things a little simpler by letting the bad guys be monsters. The way I look at it is that we have monsters in our world, but those monsters look like human beings. It is hard to tell if a person is evil just by looking at them. Where I live, there was an evil person named Adam Lanza who murdered a bunch of Elementary School Children at Sandy Hook, in Newtown, Connecticut, it was just the next town over from where I live in Danbury.

This was the evil person who murdered those children, he first killed his mother, took her gun and shot his way into an elementary school and murdered a bunch of school children.

On December 14, 2012, 20-year-old Adam Lanza fatally shot twenty children and six adult staff members in a mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School in the village of Sandy Hook in Newtown, Connecticut. Before driving to the school, Lanza shot and killed his mother Nancy at their Newtown home. As first responders arrived, he committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.

What​

do you think? Is he a monster? I can't think of any circumstances that would make me act like him. He does have a weird expression in his face though. I don't think he could hold a candle to what Hitler had done, but nevertheless, he was the local evil person in my community. I don't really know why we get evil people like him. The main difference between him and Hitler I think is that Adam Lanza did all his evil by himself, he didn't have help. World War II and the Holocaust were communal acts of evil rather than the act of a lone individual such as Adam Lanza, and as such, it is harder to understand. How do you deal with it? I never had to grow up in a country like yours, what is it like?

As for Dungeons & Dragons, I guess we need villains to make the game interesting to play, orcs and other creatures like that usually fit the bill.

What on earth do you think you're doing? Keep the real world politics off this forum, please. And don't post again in this thread.

 

[Morrus]

Since this appears to now be a thread about modern day politics, mass shooting, and the Holocaust, I'm closing it down. These are not suitable subjects for this forum.