How further away from the stereotypical medieval fantasy setting are you willing to stray in order to keep internal consistence/logic and verisimilitude ?
How does things like the existence of monsters/magical creatures, many gods and other extra-planar being like fey being objectively real, the existence of magic how prevalent and understood it is changes the expected pseudo-medieval status quo ?
 Shopping Cart Returner Shirt $21.68 |
 UFOs Are A Psyop Shirt $21.68 |
Shopping Cart Returner Shirt $21.68 |
I feel like both of these questions are way too personal to really answer in a broad sense. So, in my personal opinion, I'll say that more important than verisimilitude, you need to focus on internal consistency within your world. Things can unfold in whatever way you want them to, as long as it makes sense within the world's rules.
I think that medieval fantasy is trash, so I'm willing to go pretty far from it. The existence of the standard fantasy trappings would make things turn out differently from your standard medieval fantasy schlock, the extent of which changes would occur are up to you to determine.
This is the fundamental problem with medieval fantasy. Any bit of magic has the potential to completely warp any medieval society into unrecognizable forms, if not handled with care. If magic is that powerful why don't wizards rule? Why aren't magic teleporters everywhere? It is not an accident that half of fantasy medieval settings are post-apocalyptic with most knowledge of how magic actually works being a lost science when you read the lore behind them.
Depends how wide spread and prevelant the magic and weird stuff is? If most of the world is like medieval europe, with only small pockets of fey in the woods, occasional dwarven stronghold in only a few mountain peaks, only a few dragons, undead and monsters here and there lurking in ruins or abandoned dungeons, only a few 'miracles' being witnessed, etc, then it is quite easy to have a consistant setting (for most people) much like our own. It's only when the weird spreads everywhere and everyone can do magic or otherworldly creatures become common place that the consistency of a standard medieval setting starts to break down and you have to invent a completely new one.
This.
This is actually comes pretty close to modern fantasy, or even real-life interpretation of magic.
Magic IRL is often assumed to be subtle.
Horoscopes, fortune telling and minor prophesies that work ones in fool's moon are the local staple, which is why gypsies and other charlatans remain popular.
Or the other example is luck magic, four-list clovers, animal paws, prayers and OCD rituals. Even local meme magic and dubs catching. Schisoterics even claim you influence reality directly by adjusting yourself so it basically works like probability manipulation.
Minor health charms like red threads, customary sayings and prayers.
Abjuration and protection from curses like crosses, amulets, holy water and salt circles.
Pretending it actually works and gives you absolutely tiny, but stacking bonuses, is fun with the percentile systems.
But it's basically "le mudcore! reeee!" situation because it's all realism and basically no fantasy.
Ouch, missed my mark again. Guess my luck amulet broke again.
People are bad at magic power levels. Everyone hears magic and immediately assume god-wizards that can level mountains if they’re feeling like it. But nobody thinks about a world where magic is much more subtle and less “i cast apocalypse firestorm and delete half of an entire Roman legion in half a second”. Make a world where the best magic is very limited shape-shifting, or maybe the ability to turn your finger into a Bic lighter rather than an M2 Flamethrower. Maybe have a single person at that level, who being at generic fantasy mage level left him vulnerable to his own hubris and ego.
>stereotypical medieval fantasy
These settings often have dogshit for internal consistency in the first place.
>How does things like the existence of [D&D shit] changes the expected pseudo-medieval status quo?
D&D is not a medieval history simulator and it's barely a setting to begin with. Nothing about the sort of cultures you can glean from official D&D campaign settings implies that its meant to be a historically accurate world, but merely a fantasy setting.
>How further away from the stereotypical medieval fantasy setting are you willing to stray in order to keep internal consistence/logic and verisimilitude ?
I am willing to drop-kick the "medieval" part past the stratosphere. I'd rather just make the setting exactly like right now, only with monsters and magic and shit.
D&D is not “fantastic-medieval.” It’s not even “fantastic renaissance” or “fantastic-post-apocalyptic.” It’s “fantastic American history.” It's a game that exalts the American values of self-reliance, ability, and the ruthless accumulation of money.
It is not only non-medieval, it is anti-feudalistic and anti-aristocratic. Creatures with more XP and hit dice rule lower-level ones, from settled barons and goblin kings to wandering bandits and nomads. Level requirements for baronies are at odds with the hereditary gloss added to D&D in nearly every subsequent setting.
Obsession with money-gathering for its own sake that is suggestive of mercantilism or capitalism.
Gygax original pre-publication Greyhawk campaign drew heavily from his own American experience. It took place on a United States map, with Greyhawk at Chicago, and Dyvers at Milwaukee. His buddy Don Kaye’s Greyhawk character, Murlynd, was a gunslinger from Boot Hill.
Most of D&D’s thousands of imitators, in game and fiction, preserve the game’s democratic bones (cash economy, guns for hire, rags to riches stories) while overlaying a medieval-European skin.
Gygaxian levelocracy, where a villager can rise to become a baron or a “Conan type”, is fundamentally incompatible with the European fantasy typified by Lord of the Rings, in which no fellowship can alter the fact that Sam is by birth a servant, Frodo a gentleman, Strider a king, and Gandalf a wizard.
damn i never realized how based dnd was
OK, but what it has do do with the thread ?
So, this mean that D&D orcs are actually native-Americans, and the PC are brave cowboys ready to claim the land from the savages.
>Writing a mini thesis about made up fairy worlds for games
>Making use of a host of political jargon which ranges in accuracy from dubious to absolutely incorrect
Why is everyone such a pretentious moron nowadays? At least when "professors" pull this stunt they get paid.
Where are the knights? Where are the feudal overlords? Where are the serfs? Where is the Catholic church? What's up with all polytheism? Who are the player characters vassals to whom? Who is the king?
That don't matter moron
Medieval fantasy doesn't mean IRL middle ages with some magic and mythical creatures being real
stop being a pedantic pseudo or go back to Ganker
Then why use medieval aesthetics? You morons are simply insufferable with your inability to accept L and admit mistakes.
because its cool!
get lost, you fricking nerd
fricking first response
good on you, anon
I have long been contemplating a setting that doesn't have gods in it, with the possibility of gods having existed in the past, having since been wiped out in a cataclysmic event.
That was one of the original concepts I wanted for my setting. I've never liked the D&D approach to gods, and I decided to just axe them entirely. There's some leftover elements of their influence in the setting, but overall the whole setting is post-deity.
nature abhors a vacuum. there's a new god "in training" that's gathering followers and power; potentially a church leader. guaranteed.
Close, but not quite the same conclusion I wound up coming to. All my work to write deities out of the setting wound up making them still have a notable influence on the world even though they're now long dead and gone.
The gods are dead, slain by the setting's precursors, but their servants are still around and kicking. The angels/celestials have been working behind the scenes to try and revive their masters to no success. They came to the setting a bit under 2000 years ago to bring the word of the gods to the world in an attempt to revive them via faith, but that didn't work either. It did give them a foothold in the world for a while, as well as introducing one of the setting's main systems of magic and gave rise to a select few mortals tapping into the dead gods' domains by matching the personalities of the dead gods. Maybe those demigods will rise up to become gods of their own right, or maybe they'll be pulled down by their peers or assassinated by others who aspire to their power.
games?
>in order to keep internal consistence/logic and verisimilitude ?
Lol, lmao.
Just because you are an unimaginative autismo throwing a tantrum whenever something is "wrong" and "not how it should be" doesn't mean the game is going to bend over to your brain-damage. And if you can't adjust, you can leave at any moment, given we are apparently discussing random table here.
You don’t need to go full Forgotten Realms to have a fantasy setting. You can technically get whatever part of the world you like during the medieval times and have all the fantastical ideas people had back then be real.
For example there are fairies in the woods of Britain that abduct children. The graveyards of your typical middle eastern city has flesh eating monsters called Ghouls roaming it. There are bloodsucking monsters called Dhampyrs that attack people in the night etc.
It’s outside the medieval period but I read an account from the 16th century Ottoman Empire where a bunch of villagers in the balkans called the local islamic judge to take care of what they believed to be a vampire terrorizing their village. The judge appearantly hired some christian to help with this vampire. In your game the judge could hire the player characters for example.
>You don’t need to go full Forgotten Realms to have a fantasy setting
>You can technically get whatever part of the world you like during the medieval times and have all the fantastical ideas people had back then be real.
I know, that's was not what i was asking
"I was asking how far from any form of medievalism you are willing to go to keep internal consistency of the setting given all the magical stuff being real" ?
please, learn to read
Just do it in reverse. Start with the outcome you want, and engineer a cosmology and history around that. If adding something to a setting would change it away from what I want it to be, then I don't add it in.
Simple as.
Not much. They have the same weapons and armor as real-life. Mostly the same castles (there is some adaption to giant/flying monsters and casters). Technology doesn't advance past medieval because all the smartest people are wizards who spend their time on magic, not mundane shit. Society is the biggest difference, at the macro level; instead of people cramming into every available space, populations are limited and population centers are more isolated from each other, and the average person is higher quality. Civilization just can't spread and dominate due to magic, monsters, and non-(your race) humanoids. People don't spend too much time or energy on the big questions when they're busy surviving and trying to find some joy and relief in life.
Not that far. I tend to prefer iron age or bronze age post apocalypse; but keep it in the European milieu.