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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7023583" data-attributes="member: 4937">Also, the Chinese developed complex mechanical time keeping devices around the third century AD, and then at some point lost both the knowledge and memory of them, so that when European traders arrived with complex mechanical time keeping devices in the 16th century, the courts of China marveled... at something that they had invented a 1000 years before.  Perhaps they did, but if they did, they probably would have asked what such an engine could do that could not be done better by slaves.  And, if we started making machines that did the labor of slaves, what would the slaves do?   We can't no for certain that this was said regarding the steam engine, but we do know this was said regarding the windmill and the watermill by the Romans.  The Romans knew how to build them, but they only used them as a temporary devices.  It would appear that before an industrial revolution in wind power or water power could take place, some revolution in how you thought about individual rights and about the structure of society had to take place as well.   It wasn't until the 13th century that such a revolution in individual rights and dignity met up with both economic need and engineering knowledge, leading the industrial revolution of the High Middle ages. In a sense, I've written this into my homebrew world's backstory.  There is an era of the distant pass where magic looked a lot like technology, and so now when people create sufficiently advanced technology it is associated with that condemned time and treated as a sort of 'witchcraft'.  I don't either.  And in particular, the problem with assuming a hard correspondence between real world history and your fantasy game is that your fantasy game has many features the real world does not.  You should expect the fantasy world to not perfectly correspond to real world historical periods.  What I think history is useful for though is adding depth of detail you might not otherwise be inspired to create.  It's quite fine to be 'anachronistic' because there is no real historical period to measure the anachronism by, but you should I think be conscious regarding your 'anachronism'.  The only thing I object to is making assumptions without due consideration.  By all means, if you think it fits, have schooners instead of cogs in your quasi-medieval world, just understand what you are doing and why.  As you say, the false realism is worse than anachronism.</blockquote>

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