D&D General Why Do You Prefer a Medieval Milieu For D&D? +

[aco175]

Lord of the Rings, King Arthur, Conan, Tarzan, 3 Musketeers.

All these stories have the hero and the villain with most having knights with magic swords doing brave deeds fighting evil.

 

[Gorck]

My response is very short and sweet: I'm familiar with it because it was in the books I grew up reading.

 

[cbwjm]

I'm actually fine with firearms, printing presses, trains, and airships, as part of a medieval set up, sort of a medieval+, though I won't necessarily have them all in there (especially trains, but airships I'm more okay with for some reason).

I use a basic medieval set up because I like having questing knights, and wizards, and rogues, there's just something I like about having these sorts of heroes in a backdrop of, somewhat feudal, castles and domains. My settings aren't exactly like it, I've introduced basic firearms before and like to include additional things like broadsheets,which could be magically created but throw in a printing press and that's also good for me, and coffee houses.

 

[Desdichado]

Because that's what fantasy--as a genre--is defined by. If it doesn't have those tropes, it's atypical and doesn't feel like fantasy. I guess the deeper question then is why do I want fantasy at all. I think the romanticism of medievalism is something that's been part of Western Civilization since the dawn of the Industrial Age and the Romantic Period in art, literature and music back in the earlier 1800s. It's not about historical accuracy, it's about projecting our own society back into a period where problems were simpler, life was more idyllic, and people were more heroic and all that. You could probably do something similar by having fantasy based on the Old West or the Golden Age of Piracy or the Bronze Age or Warring States China or something rather than medieval Europe... but it always feels very niche because the tradition of fantasy being medievalist is now itself really old and well established.

The evolution of grimdark out of that is interesting maybe, but it feels more like a kind of simplistic inversion for purposes of some deconstruction or just because we've become more cynical as an audience rather than a completely different frame of reference. It's looking at the same frame from another point of view.

UPDATE: Curiously, of course, as space opera was being established, they also went with a kind of feudal capes & rayguns in space that was surprisingly medievalist, albeit again romanticized, at least in a social and political sense if not technological. I think there's something about the Anglophone psyche that yearns for the pageantry and heroic ideals of romanticized medievalism so that all of the escapist genres we've created default to it.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Cause it's the milieu of Dungeons & Dragons and everything is written for that milieu. So if I'm choosing to play D&D, I'm choosing to play the milieu.

If I want firearms in an RPG I'm playing, I'll play an RPG that has firearms. Or if I want to play an RPG that has a cyberpunk aesthetic, I'll play a cyberpunk RPG.

It's why I've never actually played any of the 3E-era d20 System RPGs that were not medieval fantasy, nor any of the 5E games that are not the same. d20 and 5E were and are games for playing Dungeons & Dragons. So why play them a different way when I can just play a different RPG altogether-- especially one specifically written for the milieu it was designed for?

 

[pawsplay]

I like swords.

 

[cranberry]

I like many different settings, but I prefer them to be separate.

I want my fantasy in a fantasy setting, my science fiction in a sci-fi settings, super heroes in a super hero setting.

I'm not a fan of mixing laser guns with fire balls.

It's a personal preference, but I see guns as going outside the boundaries of fantasy. Your mileage may vary.

To answer the OP directly, it was the first RPG setting I was introduced to, so for me it's the default.

 

[Pedantic]

Honestly, I think the biggest factor is that melee combat is cool, but it takes a ton of contrivance to make it aesthetically reasonable to do. A faux medieval setting is one of the easiest ways to make sure swords are relevant.

 

[Stormonu]

Mostly it was the D&D presented to us, and the movie and book genre of the time. It was either the fighter in plate or a fur loincloth; the bowman or the wizard's magic bolt (if even the latter). Guns were the weapons of cowards and criminals that even the party rogue was too noble to touch (seriously, anyone in media at that time that tried to pull a gun in the scene wouldn't make it out of the scene, getting knocked off by some secondary character without the hero even having to sully their hands with taking down the slime), you beat your enemy down with a sword or your bare knuckles and the (cowardly) wizard went down with one solid punch (if you could get past their minions or spells).

 

[GetInTheHole]

Because that’s where the dungeons and the dragons are.