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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DammitVictor" data-source="post: 9391088" data-attributes="member: 6750908">Couple of big caveats before I dig into this:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">"Medieval" isn't actually my preferred flavor of D&D.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Thread is on page 8 as of the time I'm writing this and I've only read the OP.</li> </ol>So. Classic pseudo-medieval D&D isn't actually my preferred flavor. I do like firearms and printing presses, I prefer social structures and institutions that are either less medieval or more medieval than D&D assumptions, I'm not all that into the Tolkien Trio, et cetera and et cetera and et cetera.But why is it so popular?<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">It's traditional and familiar. Which, unlike certain wagging tongues would have it, is not a criticism of people who prefer it. Any speculative setting is going to be chock full of things that don't exist in real life, but in Tolkienesque pseudo-medieval fantasy D&D, even a rookie player is going to know what most of those things are without a glossary and visual dictionary. If you know what a tzimisce, a wraeththu, and a midnight sunstone bazooka are, and why those streams should never be crossed, you should be helping me design my next convention one-shot.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">D&D's assumptions about how society works create an atmosphere of freedom and agency that more realistic or more utopian settings wouldn't. Player characters are (obscenely) independently wealthy, heavily armed, and free to go wherever and do whatever they damned well please-- see what happens when they try that in a small town.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The... anachronistically medieval-ish tech level of D&D-- which sometimes does include printing presses-- is easy to design adventures around. No smartphones, no 911, no jetpacks, no sniper rifles, no spaceships. Forum's full of people struggling with flying PC races, teleportation magic, and all that-- well, at least in classical medieval D&D, those things aren't available to every PC, at will, with convenient financing plans.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Kind of a followup on that, but the world being so much bigger than the PCs means that... hiding in any given corner of the world, or emerging from any given corner of the world, could be something the players and the PCs have never heard of, and it wouldn't break the immersive feeling they should have heard of it. If I told you there was an army of grimlocks amassing in the sewers of Amsterdam, you'd feel pretty confident in telling me that there isn't. (I'm not lying; look it up.) If I told you that a guild of svirfneblin artisans were trying to slowly assume control over Waterdeep's economy... even if you grew up in Waterdeep, you'd have to wonder.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The iconography of traditional D&D settings is diverse and compelling. Your player characters are Arthur Pendragon, Gandalf, Conan the Cimmerian, Bilbo Baggins, and Joan D'Arc. There's just a much deeper-- and self-reinforcing-- reference pool with D&D, and there are legitimate reasons why one of the most common complaints about modern D&D is that they keep broadening that pool with unfamiliar concepts.</li> </ol>Basically... even aside from the troubling, irrational unwilingness of some D&D fans to venture beyond the most vanilla generic D&D... it's easier to build your own campaign setting and premise using D&D assumptions, and it's easier to onboard even the most eager players if you start from those assumptions. Some people might read an implied criticism in that, but... when you're dealing with a lot of people, and you don't know all of those people intimately well, then the easiest way to have a good time is going to be the most reliable way of making sure everyone has a good time.</blockquote>

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