D&D General Why Fantasy? Goin' Medieval in D&D

[Willie the Duck]

Relative lack? - are there any sports RPGs out there?

The only ones I can think of are Pro Wrestling RPGs - which really pushes the boundaries of what I'd call a "sport" but as a "soap opera stunt show" can make a pretty good environment for an RPG.

I'm really curious to go off to Drive Thru or itch and see if I can find a football RPG now...

I don't know. Does En Garde! count?

 

[Hussar]

Sure, pretty much addressed in my comment.

Edit: Though, yes I did think about the 5 year mission and you are totally right. Thats how you get away from Fleet command and allow the players to do as they like. Well, assuming they are following the prime directives...

I believe that’s how the recent Star Trek game is framed. It’s set in an area that isn’t detailed in the shows and it’s very much a 5 year mission set up.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I believe that’s how the recent Star Trek game is framed. It’s set in an area that isn’t detailed in the shows and it’s very much a 5 year mission set up.

The Living Campaign that they recently turned into a setting book is this, yes. The core books themselves are pretty open.

 

[Hussar]

The Living Campaign that they recently turned into a setting book is this, yes. The core books themselves are pretty open.

I’ll admit I only played and didn’t run. So my knowledge is very limited.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I’ll admit I only played and didn’t run. So my knowledge is very limited.

I haven't played (yet), but I've read a good deal.

 

[Random Task]

The point is this - yes, we use a Ren-Faire approach to a fantasy setting that is very loosely based on pre-industrial cultures, typically from Europe, although certainly not exclusively that. But, we then completely romanticize the whole thing. We have "good kings" that do good things and are "good kingdoms".

And because morality is often so starkly delineated in these games, there are truly bad/evil people for the good kingdoms to guard and fight against, there's hardly ever any morally gray cost of doing good.

 

[Gravenhurst48]

Any way I could get a non-Derrida summary of what is actually meant, here? Because I've tried to understand the man's work before, more than once, and found it either totally impenetrable, trivial to the point of hilarity, or the philosophical equivalent of vaporware.

"...reference to paradoxes found in...culture's persistent recycling of 'retro' aesthetics and incapacity to escape 'old' social forms...term to describe a musical aesthetic preoccupied with this temporal disjunction and the nostalgia for 'lost futures'...and the persistence of the past."

 

[Tonguez]

Relative lack? - are there any sports RPGs out there?

Full Court - a card drawing game where you play through a College Basketball game.

theres a couple of fantasy Fishing games too

and of course Blood Bowl

 

[Gravenhurst48]

Most superheroes don't get markedly more powerful over time, so IMO it's a bit different. Some superhero video games do

I think sort-of-medieval works because it doesn't hit the uncanny valley issue. Have you ever seen The Polar Express? It was a okay movie that would have been better with either better fidelity or worse. As it was it was just strange to watch this animated movie that kind of looked real but not really. Kind of like how some people are fascinated with the Kardashians*. We know they aren't real, but they're so close it's spooky.

In any case, fantasy is close enough to myth and legends that have been around for a long time that it works for people without getting too caught up in the whole "it doesn't work that way" trap. Set something in the modern era and you'd have to continuously update it to keep current along with our knowledge of how things really work. That, and if set in the modern day some guy with a software development background is going to start going on about how you can't hack into a computer system by randomly mashing on a keyboard.

D&D doesn't do a very good job at simulation. Then again, our ideas of what it's trying to simulate are so vague and mushy that it doesn't need to. If it were trying to simulate the real world we'd be hitting all sorts of "but it doesn't work that way". As it is? We can have longbows that use dex alone and survive being eaten by a purple worm and it's okay because it's just fantasy and nobody expects it to be too realistic.

*I'm not one of them, I only have a vague idea of who they are because it's impossible to not have a vague idea of who they are.

Most superheroes don't get markedly more powerful over time, so IMO it's a bit different. Some superhero video games do have PCs "level up".

Lego video games are the best RPG styled games with your PC, essentially, staying at level zero throughout the game, unless you unlock other NPC's to help achieve goals and secrets with an ability to unlock the barrier or object, needed to raise your health or unlock a new ability to progress further into the game.
I mention Lego video games because they are very similar as a PC party in D&D, where you need other team mates to help achieve the adventure goal.

 

[Gravenhurst48]

Nobody said you can't have both. As had been stated, you can always start the game at 3rd level.

Edit: my comment has already been posted by someone else.