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<blockquote data-quote="Misanthrope Prime" data-source="post: 9391304" data-attributes="member: 6776166">In the middle ages governments were, on average, weak enough that a small group of armed heroes could conceivably change the political landscape. Once you start getting into modernity you have states consolidating power with things like absolutism, westphalianism and colonialism, which makes it hard to imagine a group of five armed people changing the world unless they were otherwise government stooges, and that removes player agency.A D&amp;D style adventure requires lawlessness and the easiest ways to do that are a psuedomedieval setting, a postapocalyptic setting (which, to western Europeans, was basically what the middle ages were) or a colonial frontier like the Wild West, the latter of which is very untenable these days.That being said, my own personal RPG setting is explicitly modern rather than medieval, the closest analogue I could compare it to is probably Disco Elysium; it features single-shot firearms coexisting with an internet made out of cloned psionic brain tissue and battery farming for unicorns because the pharmaceutical industry demands their horns to make analgesics.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Misanthrope Prime, post: 9391304, member: 6776166"] In the middle ages governments were, on average, weak enough that a small group of armed heroes could conceivably change the political landscape. Once you start getting into modernity you have states consolidating power with things like absolutism, westphalianism and colonialism, which makes it hard to imagine a group of five armed people changing the world unless they were otherwise government stooges, and that removes player agency. A D&D style adventure requires lawlessness and the easiest ways to do that are a psuedomedieval setting, a postapocalyptic setting (which, to western Europeans, was basically what the middle ages were) or a colonial frontier like the Wild West, the latter of which is very untenable these days. That being said, my own personal RPG setting is explicitly modern rather than medieval, the closest analogue I could compare it to is probably Disco Elysium; it features single-shot firearms coexisting with an internet made out of cloned psionic brain tissue and battery farming for unicorns because the pharmaceutical industry demands their horns to make analgesics. [/QUOTE]

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