Your "social setting"

[Graybeard]

My setting is essentially Ancient Rome. I changed some things and tweaked others. I tried to envision what Rome would have been like if it had survived another several hundred years. In my world, slavery is common and legal. Certain tihings like forcing citizens into slavery is illegal however. As for letting the players know ahead of time, I merely told them the basics of society and reminded them that slavery was legal and if they ran around trying to free all the slaves, they would have to deal with the consequences.

I have other quasi historical societies as well that the players have yet to encounter. When they do, they will have to adjust accordingly. The PCs have heard of Dwarves and Elves but have never met any (neither has the majority of people). If/when they do meet, they will discover that their preconcieved notions of how those races should act will differ from reality.

 

[Guldensupp]

Depends

While all my games take place in a single world, I have several different cultures. Some are very modern, others are very non-modern. My players sometimes get the settings and cultures, sometimes they don't.

They often get the non-modern cultures better, than the modern cultures.

Gregory

 

[Patlin]

Personally, I really like the Eberron campaign setting. Seems to me that it's a combination of the present, the between-the-world-wars period, and vaguely medieval inspired "traditional fantasy." I took the "no mortal poll" option, as the others didn't fit well IMO.

I don't think D&D needs to impose any "default setting" but I think it's a good idea for any DM to give the players background into a campaign world if the plot stipulates that their characters grew up there. I've seen games done well where the characters were dropped into a totally unfamilliar world, but usually they are expected to be natives and ought to have at least some understanding of the culture they are in.

 

[WayneLigon]

I think some mention of social dynamics always needs to be mentioned in a campaing setting.

Normally, I use a mixture of 'here and now' (mainly because I can easily conceive of having our more 'modern' attitudes at some other point in history. Just because it didn't work like that on our world doesn't mean it wouldn't work differently on another.) levened with some social constraints (which may or may not have existed in our world) to create tension.

It also depends on the tone I want my campaign to have. A 'dark ages' tone will be very different from a 'chvalry in is flower' tone. My default tone is that many of our more liberal ideas (women are closer to equality, there is little human ethnic bias) are in force while some (kings are outdated) are not. Religion is a very strong component of most people's lives. There is usually a strong emerging middle class of merchants who usually are in conflict with the older aristocracy.

 

[Yair]

None of the above.

The society is a mix between mostly modern views and a medieval political structure (and theory). You've get people behaving in very modern ways, but in some ways being "backward" - believing in the feudal order over democracy, for example, but not limiting "special people" to a set nobility.

Most of all, though, the society is varied. Some people would be purely modern, others fairly medieval, still others similar to buddhist monks, and so on.

 

[Galethorn]

I voted 'Medieval Europe' but only because it's the closest approximation.

You see, in the 'normal' part of the setting, it's a fairly europe-like range of climate and geography, and it has a level of magic fairly similar to the real world, at least as far as 99.99% of the population are concerned. If you want to choose a particular part of the middle ages, I'd say...late 12th century; the rise of plate armor to fortify mail, hand-and-a-half swords, and crossbows.

In this region--Aaldor--there are a handful of kingdoms, each with its own specific flavor, but all sharing certain features. For example, all of the kingdoms have a feudal structure of some kind; a king at the top, ruling over barons, who in turn rule over dukes, who in turn rule over earls, who own most of the land, and have most of the knights. Peasents do all of the work, but most aren't in the state of near-starvation that some anachronistic sources would have you believe. Guilds control commerce, religion acts as the source of--and solution to--much strife, and the wilderness is still by and large unconquered.

Outside of Aaldor, things vary a bit. For example, to the south, the Jangovian 'empire' is in a constant state of flux, always seeming to be at war with itself. The people live by a strict caste system, where the slaves and craftsmen toil, the warriors fight, the priests gaze at stars, and the nobles scheme.

Even further south, the Chandakhi people live in a huge, warm river basin. The region is divided into city-states that have made a loose alliance against the Jangovians. Most of the city-states themselves are ruled by egalitarian theocracies that support themselves with trade; there are few Chandakhi farmers, and many merchants and craftsmen. Oh, and they're fairly accustomed to seeing simple magic on a regular basis, at least when coming from their priest-kings in the form of healing, smiting, and bringing the yearly rains.

Across the moutains cutting the continent in half is a wide, grassy steppe-land, populated by hundreds of nomad tribes known collectively as the Rhúrs. Some of these Rhúrish tribes are peaceful horse-farmers, and others live only on plunder, but all Rhúrs worship a single god; a god of life and death.

North of the Rhurlands is a rough, forested land ruled by the Dalsk, a people who long ago fled a particularly warlike Rhúrish conqueror, and went on to model themselves on the Aaldoric monarchies. However, the Dalsk are new arrivals in their land, so they haven't built up the same level of wealth as the Aaldorans, meaning a somewhat lower level of technology and civilization; their knights wear mail hauberks, and carry short cutting swords and broad axes, and they ride the shaggy descendants of the steppe horses their ancestors brought north.

So, there's a certain amount of variability. Overall, though, most of the cultures are chauvanistic monarchies of one kind or another, where the common man has to work a lord's land for his entire life, and then pass on the same way of life to his children. Theft is punished by branding, cutting off hands, and so forth. Woman-warriors are unheard of (except for among the Chandakhi), and seldom given much respect. Nobles are considered 'better' than the rest of the population, except perhaps for a few, but they're usually smart enough to keep quiet.

My players enjoy playing in the setting, and I enjoy GMing in the setting, so I figure I did something right.

 

[mythusmage]

Medieval Europe with modifications.

Europe is well on its way to recovering from the chaos of the barbarian invasions and the Vking irruption. England is stable, France faces numerous enemies foreign and domestic, while Iberia remains a collection of squabbling statelets.

Meanwhile Italy remains under Roman rules, Helvetica is tribal land, and the Germans are slowly working towards unification. Further east it is a mixture of tribal land, city states, trade alliances, and savages.

Slavery is accepted, but the infrastructure does not lend itself to plantation slavery. In addition, old technologies, such as magic, and new technologies mean it's becoming less and less profitable to keep slaves. In France proper people expect slavery to disappear by the start of the 15th century, baring any mishap or misfortune. Normandy (more a tribal land than an organized state) is noted for its slave holding, and for its technological, sociological, and political backwardness.

Thanks to better health care than historically (including magical means) European population is actually lower at present. In some areas as low as 1/4 historical numbers. People simply don't see the need to have lots of kids. That will change when the plagues hit later on (foreshadowing ).

There's more to be said, but that can wait for another time.

 

[fusangite]

I chose option #3. I have run games in many game worlds but, with the exception of one campaign, all have been in what I would class as "pre-modern worlds." So, as diverse as my worlds' cultures, histories and physics have been, essentially none have had concepts and structures that, based on our best history and anthropology, are unique to the post-Enlightenment period.

Some of my campaigns have been in highly primitive, socially egalitarian societies; some have been in quasi-ancien or quasi-medieval hierarchical societies. Some have been in societies where there is no such thing as theology, philosophy or science; others have been in societies where that's what it's all about. However, there have been some pretty consistent attributes in that the following things are highly unlikely to appear in the game:
- modern fundamentalist thought that is sensitive and hostile to paradox and hypocrisy
- highly modern identity categories like race (as in black/white) and sexual orientation (as in homo/hetero-sexual) or social age groups like teenagers
- capitalism/supply and demand economic theory
- universal literacy
- uniquely modern political systems like representative democracy (as distinct from Athenian democracy and other republican systems) or totalitarianism

Basically, take everything that is unique, interesting and exciting about Eberron and assume I'm doing the opposite.

As to the second question, I think D&D gives contradictory messages about setting. At one moment, it seems to indicate a medieval-style setting is in order and the next, that modernity in fantasy costumes is in order. I think playing it either way results in contradictions and fudging; I choose to go the route I go because it works for me. But I don't assume that's how others will interpret the game -- so I'm very clear to my players as to which way I read sections to the books that could be read either way so that nobody is in for too big a surprise.

I recall quite specifically having a very enthusiastic potential player completely reverse his idea about whether he wanted to game with me after I laid out my views of how D&D economics works, an area of the rules that, in my opinion, is most strongly biased to the medieval style of play.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

My campaign setting is set in a world of fantasy where magic (Arcane and divine) is advanced to the point to mimic a world almost like ours, had magic existed and it was used for the evolution of technology and sociology. A feat makes it possible for commoners to use cantrips and/or orisons.

 

[ThirdWizard]

It's Planescape, so it depends on where you want to go. One campaign can have very diverse social structures throughout because the PCs tend to planehop between a fair amount of different places regularly.