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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tonguez" data-source="post: 8125488" data-attributes="member: 1125">I beleive that one of the major influences which is often overlooked is Fairytales and in particular the common set up of ”a kingdom far away” with castles, heroic knights and magical enchantments and antagonist in the form of witches, giants, dwarfs, fairies and dragons. Its notable too that the best known fairytales to modern players have their origins in England, France and Germany and thus most fantasy worlds look like those countries (temperate, western Europe).You can add to that Le Morte d’Arthur and also Tolkien and similar ’modern’ authors. Both of these center English/French landscapes and culture and largely helped to codify many elements of fantasy - magic swords, a band of adventurers, and mundane elves. Le Morte d’Arthur is also notable for being chock full of ahistoric anachronism - which is a trait modern fantasy RPGs have heartily embraced to the point they really look nothing like the real middle ages.Those anachronism and the ubiquity of magic (particularly in D&D) goes a long way to explain why travel, communications and demography in fantasy worlds is very different to real world Medieval. The Galleon for instance is a post-1600s ship but often included in fantasy naval campaigns and fantasy populations seem to be much healthier and educated than Medieval peasants were- which must be due to helpful clerics and druids<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I want to comment too on then State of Religion as it is area of gaming which is rarely mined for adventure material. So while the Medieval Church had established its monopoly over Europe in the Early Middle Ages it would be incorrect to say it was truely universal. Besides the existence of Jewish, Muslim and other populations in Europe, some Pagan beleifs remained and there were also a huge number of anti-clerical movements which questioned and challenged the Church’s teachings and which the Church then condemed as heresy.  Manichaeism was popular, as was Greek Gnosticism and both were synchretised with Christian teachings to create new alternate systems. Its also not entirely accurate to say DnD is polytheistic, it tends to be Monolatrist - the consistent worship of one god despite recognising that others exist, which could be compared to the veneration of Saints.</blockquote>

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