>Most “medieval” fantasy is actually early modern
Okay, what would an actual medieval fantasy look like? Game of Thrones?
>Most medieval fantasy is actually early modern
Community-driven video game blog & discussion
Community-driven video game blog & discussion
>Most “medieval” fantasy is actually early modern
Okay, what would an actual medieval fantasy look like? Game of Thrones?
got has strong elements of early modern
GoT has the surface trappings of early modern, but the way most things play out it feels like borderline caveman fiction.
Baudolino. I guess Brancalonia?
GRRM took a lot of inspiration from the high middle ages for sure. The Henry II and Barbarossa period in particular stood out to me as inspo.
Oh and A House of Dragons is literally just the Anarchy.
Aquelarre
Harnmaster
Chivalry & Sorcery
Parts of Hyboria are medieval (Aquilonia and most of its neighbors)
They wrote Troyan wars fanfics and the Arthurian Romance scene was hot back then.
You can also refer to the Niebelungen and general roman late antique adventure novels that were preserved in the histories of saints.
I think the Fanes cycle, the Eddas and the Ulster cycle would belong to the general period as well and could serve as materials.
On the other end of Eurasia, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Outlaws of the Marsh would be the classics. Gods and Demons fiction also took off during this period, so it's probably the best place D&Ddrones who can't stop murderhobo'ing and need their martials and magicians.
Journey to the West was published during the Early Modern period though.
The problem with the idea of 'actual' medieval fantasy is that the actual middle ages were, somewhat ironically considering the romanticized portrayal of them in pop culture (even when it is a negative portrayal), kind of a boring-ass time to live. Culture was subsumed nearly entirely by the church, secular pursuits of the layfolk were nearly non-existent (unless you count fucking), secular pursuits of the upper classes mostly focused on making really baller places to feast, and maintaining the power to continue to have baller feasts. Cities shrank as populations both shrank and became ruralified, international trade stagnated, generally sort of a dull-ass time for all involved. No exciting explorations or continent-engulfing conflicts really happened, everything was local, unless you planned on going to the Holy Land and dying for some vague religious goal of 'retaking' it, which no one, not even the Pope, REALLY knew exactly what constituted "retaken".
So unless you're interested in modeling local-area political metaphorical fuckery and aristocratic cousin literal fuckery along with an overarching religious authority there's not a ton of fun to be had RPing in a medieval world, even one with fucking magic, and honestly the kind of enjoyment someone might get from that, they'd have more fun playing Crusader Kings.
>kind of a boring-ass time to live.
????
Have you ever read a history book in your life?
Did you read any of the fucking rest of the post
Well, Lord of the Rings is a pretty fucking notable one.
Also King Arthur was Medieval fantasy in the Medieval era.
You're conflating the early middle ages for the whole thing.
The high middle age is characterised by regrowth, relearning but also new growth and new learning.
Then the late middle ages are basically the Black Death sinking populations but all the technological and knowledge progress of the High Middle ages being retained.
The early middle ages could be construed as boring for a random person experiencing it, but for a rich person/adventurer (and reader/historian) it's very exciting because it's a period of constant breakdown and rebuilding of systems which leads to new opportunity.
>secular pursuits of the layfolk were nearly non-existent
Anon, the historic Middle Ages in Europe were an age of colonization and urbanization, marked by a constant struggle between church and Emperor, multiple crusades within and without Europe and an unleashing of technological progress, now that the yoke of ethnic Romans had been removed. Its only fault is that the political conflict between the latin and greek church stymied the transmission of greek scientific literature.
Not that it matters, because OP was asking about potential sources of medieval fantasy.
You're wrong.
t. Historian
>international trade stagnated
You have viking burials with silks with Persians designs, Charlemagne was sent a gift by an Islamic ruler after his coronation as Emperor, there's evidence of Dark Age Britain having trade roots that, if indirectly, stretched as far as the Mediterranean by sea. And that's all before the high or late middle ages. This wasn't some dumb muddy bumfuck time.
There's also the whole issue of eastern roman arts, fashion and court styles radiating out into all directions for a long time.
Anon everything of what you said is wrong.
Christ have you ever actually read a history book?
>No exciting explorations or continent-engulfing conflicts really happened
You act like small scale adventures aren't fun. I'm sick of JRPG cliches about stopping the big villain destroying the world or becoming god
Amerimutt education.
Historically illiterate underage redditer.
Massively retarded post.
>Culture was subsumed nearly entirely by the church
Wrong
>secular pursuits of the layfolk were nearly non-existent
Wrong
>secular pursuits of the upper classes mostly focused on making feasts
Wrong
>international trade stagnated
Wrong
>No exciting explorations or continent-engulfing conflicts really happened
Wrong
>everything was local, unless you planned on going to the Holy Land
Wrong
It takes a genuine effort to make that many braindead sweeping statements about a continent over hundreds of years.
>falling for John William Draper's lies
Fuck off you flat earther fuck.
Imagine not reading Gold and Hispanice.
>scroll_of_reveal_historian.txt
otoh, bakker
I'm no historian, but isn't the early middle-ages the time of Arab conquests, viking invasions, famines, the fall of the Lombard and Byzantine empires, etc.? There seem to have been quite a few things going on.
It was more interesting than it is now.
Excellent work, you've really gotten everyone going.
What I find most amusing is how hordes of single-syllable posters immediately came down on you for being “wrong” with nary a hint of rebuttal. My favorites are the replies which frame themselves as authority by virtue of public consensus. It’s a very redditesque form of argument which centers on the false equivalence of social authority in form of institutional approval (I’m totally a historian, doctor, physicist, lawyer, learned figure) being immune to criticism or lapses in knowledge.
Regardless of the validity of your statements they are backed up with an explanation, one that attempts to be approachable rather than expository of beliefs implied to be unchallengeable.
As such, generic replies to the tune of “you’re wrong” only serve to reinforce your position. The “historian” is unwilling to “correct” you and others double down on eye-rolling attempts like “the muslims” or “the kings had fancy stuff”.
It's okay, you don't have to samefag just cause you got rekt
Lion and Dragon exists. I would recommend non-Pundit products but other anons already did.
Not touching P*ndit shit with a 10ft pole
You hate the rules or does out of game political gayry scandalize you that much?
P*ndit is just an out and out moron
gay really started his own website because he hated having to suck off rpg.net mods only to make a site where you have to suck him off or get banned
The High Middle Ages offer plenty of opportunities for adventure, especially if you're ok with fantasy elements:
1. Engage in the intrigue & politics of the day
2. Go on Crusade
3. Crawl Dungeons be they Roman, Egyptian, or ancient Semitic to pay for said Crusade (or other objective).
4. Hunt exotic beasts from Ye Olde Bestiary
5. Travel east down the Silk Road to spread the Gospels, acquire wealth, or find the Lands of Prester John
6. Go to Tournaments for fun and profit.
7. Hunt Heretics, Demons and their cults in the name of the Church
8. And much, much more
>6. Go to Tournaments for fun and profit.
I've been thinking of doing something like this over the past few days. What are some other good events or games to be held at a Tourney and Faire?
Joust is pretty much the main event, a big Grand Melee as well. What's some other stuff you'd do for a medieval olympiad?
Earlier than jousts, tournaments were mock battles waged between knights. Basically a mounted melee/last team standing.
You can have a fair being held at the same time, with more classes of people competing. That would be stuff like archery competitions and games of strength
I would like to run a fairly in depth 'feudal' game but I always feel I have to know more before I subject others to my interpretation and watch it all unravel.
I would always suggest people learn more because no amount of pop history / existing fantasy even tries to come close (probably for good reasons) but you have to first understand something before you can intelligently alter it.
I'v enjoyed the (earlier) History of England podcast, they are free online and good background listening.
Tournaments even into 1200 were centered around a mock battle, formalised jousts are not wide spread and sometimes even banned till later.
These mock battles can be very loose indeed with lots of foul play. You have a line of infantry to hide behind that 'nobles' ride out from to try and capture the opponents (for the full ransom of all equipment/mount), you can even have a foot man run along beside you and help subdue fallen combatants/ pick shit up. The Count of Flanders ~1160 would decline to fight till late in the day, when the combatants were exhausted he would take the retinue on a sweep and mop up easy captures.
I just did a dissertation on this and I am going to make that your problem.
Early tournaments are the fun ones imo. Those are the tournaments which prove once and for all that Normans were the closest humanity has come to being real life orks. What you have to understand is that jousts are NOT the main event. Not at all. The melee is the main event.
What's a melee? It's very simple. It's a fucking battle. That's it. It's a battle. The ONLY difference is that you use a blunt lance, you've agreed the battlefield ahead of time, and you never aim to kill your opponent. There are basically no further rules.
>but what about honour?
Yes, of course, every knight must strive to behave with honour.
Honour does not mean what you think it means.
Honour means beating the ever loving shit out of your enemies. Honour means defending your comrades, obeying your liege, and being generous to your subordinates. Honour means winning by any fucking means necessary. Honour does NOT mean fighting on an even playing field or even doing anything to earn your victories. That is called stupidity, or maybe hubris, not honour.
The most famous tournament hero of all time, William Marshal, was eating mackerel in an inn. The tournament had already started, but he'd only just arrived, so he was tucking into a nice meal before he (and his king) actually joined the tournament. A fight broke out outside his inn and one of the enemy knights happened to fall from his horse and break his leg before the other knights all moved on. Thinking quickly, William Marshal leapt out of his seat and dragged the knight into the inn so he could capture him and take his horse and armour. This was an honourable victory.
You have to understand that knights saw the entire purpose of their social class as being "beat the fucking shit out of your enemies". That was their reason for living. If you were beating the shit out of your enemies you were cool. If you weren't? You better be a monk or a woman.
>what other stuff is there to do?
Okay. Imagine you have six hundred knights all cooped up in one small town. They are desperate to show off. Their leaders are obsessed with showing how rich they are and how generously they lavish their wealth on loyal followers. They are either preparing to beat the fuck out of each other or they have just beaten the fuck out of each other. If the latter, then one side has effectively taken a massive amount of money from the other side. Imagine the atmosphere before and after the final of a football league, except there's six hundred fucking footballers.
What else is there to do? Well, what do you fucking want to do? You better believe there are SO MANY beautiful low born women who want to fuck you RIGHT NOW (you are a knight, right?). The magnates are constantly throwing the wildest parties since the Romans to show off to their rivals and keep their gaggle of friends happy. You can buy anything you damn well please in the weird ramshackle market town that's spontaneously built itself around you, because holy shit, every commoner wants to take advantage of six hundred twenty-something year old multi-millionaires when they're drunk on victory and alcohol.
And there's women. Highborn women. They're looking at you, boy. They're judging who the best knights of the whole tournament are. They're going to dance over to the best knight of all and give him a special prize in front of everybody. Don't you want to impress them?
Before the tournament begins, in this atmosphere of revelry and rivalry, there will be 'hastiludes'. Those are shorter, more focused games which are easier to spectate than a melee (which, again, is a LITERAL BATTLE fought across forty square miles), for example...jousts. That makes them the IDEAL place to show off. All those women will be watching. So will the magnates. If you do well, they'll give you much better gifts. And everyone will admire and love you.
>William Marshal
It's weird that this guy does not appear at all in Tales of Ivanhoe or Robin Hood as one of the chivalrous knights. He lived at the same time as Richard the Lionhearted and Prince John.
Well, Robin Hood wasn't really about the time period, in fairness. I found it weird that Henry II and William Marshal didn't show up at all in Baudolino though. That almost felt like a purposeful omission for such a history autist as Eco.
First king mentioned in Robin Hood tales is Edward, who died 108 years after Richard, where Robbin takes the king's pardon but reverts to being a outlaw.
Unsurprisingly people have the exact same problem with "samurai honor" forgetting that the purpose of a warrior caste is primarily to beat other people. Strength and the ability to win was the primary virtue behind any sort of "honor".
I personally think it's a bizarre misconception given the glut of Japanese media banging on and on about how dishonourable samurai 'honour' really was. Like all those famous samurai films are also the films which clobber you around the head with the idea that samurai were scumbags.
Regarding knightly honour: in fairness, the later development of chivalry did mean that knights went through life with a more honourable ideology than before, even if they often didn't match up to that ideology. Still, even then chivalry included things like "don't engage in business, don't live in a town, and don't you fucking dare marry a commoner out of love", which...I don't think we'd consider the hallmarks of honour nowadays.
Still, the real point is that in the 1170s (and even into the early 1200s) being honourable meant doing things which we now consider dishonourable.
People also idealize Corleone in the Godfather even though... "Cool warriors/people" tend to erase many otherwise not-so subtle messages. And then it depends what media you're looking.
>Still, the real point is that in the 1170s (and even into the early 1200s) being honourable meant doing things which we now consider dishonourable.
Mostly I think, people tend to forget that knights and their likes were primarily warriors (just like the 12th c. samurai in that regards). Their social role revolved around beating people up, not just like sitting around in castles doing entertaining the damsels and banqueting. Their ethos and socialization were turned towards the realization of violent deeds so... yeah, it made them opportunistic violent people. The samurai started out as basically a colonization force that were left free reign in the northern parts of Japan. Those guys were spending their days among themselves, patrolling on horses and shooting at people, not much time for meditation and cool poetry (yet). We imagine that violence was just like a side thing where it was the core of their thought and process.
There's a great scene in Hogen Monogatari where Minamoto no Tametomo who is basically the Hercules of his time has three very telling moments back to back: he refuses to properly aim at his father even though he is fighting against him (he still frightens him with a whistling arrow), he then proceed to kill about fifty other people in battle ("how many did you kill my lord? - how many arrows did you gave me?"), then he refuses to shoot an enemy who just killed two of his guys because it would make him look bad and a valiant person can always be recruited after their inevitable victory. This really tells us much of what a strong warrior is supposed to do.
>Game of Thrones
Game of Thrones is grimderp trash with little to no relation to the actual period. GRRM doesn't like to read actual historical sources and it shows.
Actual medieval fantasy rpgs...The only one is probably Pendragon, which is very appropiate because Pendragon is also the absolute best one out there. To be a game about romantic chivalry it has an impressive and quite autistic level of research and soul behind.
Line is kinda thin and blurry
Like it blew my mind when I realized Saint Thomas More was a little boy durring the War of the Roses
War of the Roses is kind of a liminal space between Medieval and Early Modern English history.
I always pictured Richard III as "late middle ages" and Tom's run in with "fatty-fatty-2x4-can't-get-through-the-kitchen-door-betrayed-his-faith-to-wed-a-whore" to be early modern but I never realized they were literally one king apart.
Anybody got any strong opinions on Lord of the Rings?
They have some instances of the heavier plate typical of the 1400s, but for the most part people are running about in chain more typical of the 1100s.
I think they were just trying to visually demonstrate the difference between Gondor and Rohan. Gondor has shiny plate armor because it's a big, well-established kingdom with a long history, while the Rohirrim are rougher men and thus have less fancy armor.
That said, I don't really recall Tolkien discussing it in the books, but my memory might just be failing me. I could believe that he waxes on about it at some point, but I could just as well see it as a complete contrivance of the film makers to make a strong visual distinction between the two nations.
The movies kinda miss a point with the Gondorian armor. From how Tolkien described it, it's supposed to be a kingdom in terminal decline, akin to the last pockets of Roman civilization before the Dark Ages fully began. Yeah, they would have many artifacts of the former Numenorean glory, but not for normal foot soldiers. And even worse, for some reason the movies seem to imply that they were mass-produced as they're extremely uniform, which is just plain fucking weird.
All the races of middle earth are supposed to be early medieval anglo-saxon inspired
Techwise LoTR is pretty medieval. In the books, plate doesn't exist. It's all mail.
LotR is not a great example of consistent time periods.
Ballistae and trebuchets are in abundance and gunpowder is used (if only once)
Dwarves and elves have architectural feats that smack of gothic or Byzantine quality and to the north the hobbits and men of Bree seem to live in what is at the very least a 1600’s mid modern world: smoking tobacco and living in agrarian communes with tweed waistcoats and pubs.
What do you think of Aquelarre as a medieval game?
Pretty much how people already do fantasy but the clothes would be different and their would be more church power.
The fact that the scientist has succeeded where the magician failed has put such a wide contrast between them in popular thought that the real story of the birth of Science is misunderstood. You will even find people who write about the sixteenth century as if Magic were a medieval survival and Science the new thing that came in to sweep it away. Those who have studied the period know better. There was very little magic in the Middle Ages: the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are the high noon of magic. The serious magical endeavour and the serious scientific endeavour are twins: one was sickly and died, the other strong and throve. But they were twins. They were born of the same impulse.
good point
humanism and modern historians blamed the dark ages and high middle age for the evils of the early modern age. be it opressive feudal lords or occultism/witchcraft and its brutal persecution
No, you need to go even further than that. Science IS medieval magic. And I don't mean that fucking stupid concept people throw about online that magic was an early attempt at science or something (you know, the patronising "oh those silly alchemists, well, it's not like they knew better, they were simply inventing the precursor for real chemistry"). No. I want to be clear: medieval scholars practiced a very rudimentary form of science, and they considered this to be a form of magic. Do you get me? They considered all of creation to be God's will and God's power, so if you used the fundamental laws of creation to your own advantage...you were practicing a kind of magic. Wearing glasses made you a fucking magician. If you brought Roger Bacon into the present and sat him through a university course on physics, he would come out three years later and say "it's amazing how much magic I've learned".
I think this fundamental misunderstanding of how medieval people understood magic is partially to blame for how people see medieval people. Magic didn't just mean mumbo jumbo woo woo to them (although...they did that too. Then again, so do we).
For most medieval scholars, who believed that God created the universe according to geometric and harmonic principles, science – particularly geometry and astronomy – was linked directly to the divine. To seek these principles, therefore, would be to seek God.
To mark the start of the new millennium, the New York Times ran a leader that stated: 'A thousand years ago, when the earth was reassuringly flat and the universe revolved around it, the ordinary person had no last name, let alone any claim to individualism... Then came the Renaissance explosion of scientific discovery and humanist insight and, as both cause and effect, the rise of individual self-consciousness... the beginning of our modern era.'
Is that really what they believe in New York? Do they really think that having a surname gives a person more identity than a Christian name? Isn't it rather the reverse?
And do New Yorkers really, truly believe that before the wonderful Renaissance nobody had any sense of being an individual? Have they read the General Prologue to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales? Have they read any of Boccaccio or Dante? And I name these three as specifically medieval not Renaissance.
The Renaissance was a backward-looking movement that hailed the distant past - ancient Greece and ancient Rome - as the only source of enlightenment. Petrarch, a Renaissance writer, wanted to put the clock back and to return to writing in Latin. And not just the Latin that was then current. He wanted to return to classical Latin. The Latin that was then current and still being spoken in the churches and monasteries was condemned as deficient. Rather than reviving Latin, the Renaissance killed it stone dead as a spoken language.
Chaucer, Boccaccio and Dante (although writing at the same time as Petrarch) wrote in the vernacular. They also celebrated the vitality, exuberance and individuality of ordinary men and women. They were the modernists and in that way they were truly medieval. Petrarch was the backwards-looking conservative. The proud despiser of the common people. The willing servant of a tyrant such as Bernabo Visconti. Petrarch provides a prototype for the Renaissance and for much of what follows.
In order to sell their package of conservative intellectual authoritarianism, the writers of the Renaissance had to make out that the intervening centuries were a time of darkness and ignorance into which they would now shine the light of ancient knowledge.
The distortions, obfuscations and downright lies which they and admirers of the Renaissance ever since have fastened onto the Middle Ages still infect our historical vision. The very fact that we call that period (whatever it is) 'the Middle Ages' is but one example. The idea that it is a limbo between the bright lights of the classical World and the even brighter lights of the Renaissance is enshrined there in the very title.
But the medieval world wasn't a time of stagnation or ignorance. A lot of what we assume to be medieval ignorance is, in fact, our own ignorance about the medieval world.
Take for example the idea that the people of the Middle Ages thought the earth was flat. It simply isn't true. And yet the New York Times takes it as gospel and, indeed, some get quite cross when you try to tell them that people in the Middle Ages were quite aware that the world was round.
The idea that they thought it was flat was invented by an American journalist by the name of Washington Irving. In 1828, he wrote a biography of Columbus in which he described the great man confronting the Church leaders who accused him of heresy for claiming the earth was round when the Church taught that it was flat.
The meeting never happened and the Church never taught that the earth was flat. Irving simply made it all up. And yet it's stuck. It's just one of the many, many misconceptions about the medieval world that we don't seem able to shake off.
>when the earth was reassuringly flat
People started thinking this after the Renaissance and mostly in the 18th-18th century too.
Ptolemy was a major source of the medieval time and it posited the Earth has round.
Didn't he demonstrate it by looking at noon shadows at different latitudes? He got a pretty good estimate of the size as I recall.
Iirc (hs was a long time ago), he basically copied Eratosthenes and Posidonius method wich indeed involved moon shadows, different latitudes and camels.
>He got a pretty good estimate of the size as I recall.
No Bond, that's the whole thing, he messed up royally, giving something like 33000 instead of 40000 for the circumference, while Eratosthenes first calculus was very close, basically perfectly correct considering his methods. That's why Columbus, based on Ptolemy thought India closer to us and why people couldn't imagine the existence of America, there was just no room for it if earth is 33000km of circumference...
Ah, I was probably thinking of Erastosthenes.
Battle Brothers... just ignore the southern dlc
>Anything other than europe didn't exist in middle ages
What's the problem with DLC exactly? No, seriously, I haven't gotten it?
it has gunpowder. That's all bro calm down
Oh. Honestly, this being Ganker, I expected worse, my bad.
Battle Brothers is based on around 14th-15th century, right? Handgonnes were a thing back then, so i don't see the problem.
I got the sense that its supposed to be the 13th century judging by the armor, but yeah you are probably right. I just thought OP was asking for high middle age stuff.
Also the desert stuff is kino, the city states are such assholes I love them lol
It's interesting to note that cannons and gunpowder weapons began to appear around the the beginning of the Hundred Years' War. The first recorded use of gunpowder weapons in Europe was in 1331 when two mounted German knights attacked Cividale del Friuli with gunpowder weapons of some sort.
The Battle of Crecy which pitted the English against the French in 1346 featured the early use of cannon which helped the longbowmen repulse a large force of Genoese crossbowmen deployed by the French.
By the end of the Hundred Years' War, France was a cannon-making powerhouse.
Medieval period had guns
In fact, Europeans had guns before they had plate armor
Europe got both guns and plate around the 1300s
Having guns did not stop them from having knights or developing more plate
It 500 years for guns to become good enough for Europe to decide plate was useless
By the Napoleonic Wars we still have have accounts of cuirassiers having bullets hitting their armor and harmlessly ricocheting off while they barely felt the impact
Guns are by no means the fantasy killer
What kills fantasy is industry
High Medieval thread? High Medieval thread.
I am a Norman knights enjoyer myself
No plate armor, no major polearms besides spears, no two-handed swords, church plays a huge role in everything, the list goes on. What's really funny is that despite the fact the tech of most 'medieval' systems is around ~1500 they never use guns when they were quite common on the European battlefield. Guns came to Europe before the full plate armor we know and love was invented.
>no major polearms besides spears, no two-handed swords,
Wat.
They never stopped using Dane axes or putting them on longer hafts, Le Jeu de la Hache was published around 1400 too and most types of polearms in Europe emerged in their nascent form during the late middle ages at their latest.
>No Polearms
Other than the early halberd (more of a bardiche really), fauchard, spetum, old fashioned spear, lance, bill, etc.
>Chausses
>Gambeson
>Haubergeon
>Coat of Plate
>Arming Cap
>Mail Coif
>Heraldic Coat
>Enclosed Helmet
>Heraldic Cape
>Survival Kit
>Short Sword
>Long Sword
>Lance
>Battle Axe
>Mace
>Flat-topped Kite Shield
Yep, it's time for adventure in Holy Land
Read this and you’ll know
it covers life in 14th century England, the iconic medieval period
Rome is a pretty cool setting in the medieval era. Within the old city walls rural, urban, and ruined areas all intermingle. Some of the old buildings survive in whole or part, many renovated into churches. Others like the Colosseum were fortified into castles for the patrician houses.
Rome's population was lower than many of the other Italian cities; at some points areas became abandoned or bases for brigands.
>Medieval Rome
Lombards or Normans?
Meant Post-Norman it was similar to how I described into the Renaissance. It was especially depopulated during the Avignon Papacy.
Medieval Rome was literally "living in the ruins of the old civilization" sci-fi trope.
Parts of Croatia were like that too
Ironically, it was kind of scifi.
They either were really into ancient greek stuff or they thought about what kind of people lived on the moon and how the arabians were building mechanical monsters.
Just do Darklands but as a tabletop game.
I applaud your taste. I loved this game, and started playing again about a year ago.
I like how the low fantasy is incorporated in it, by putting in monsters and magic medieval Germans used to believe in and by making praying to saints the magic system for player characters.
There's one called HârnWorld that was specifically designed to model the middle ages of another planet with some light fantasy elements.
Game of Thrones is a mess, it isn't really anything. The aesthetics are taken from the medieval period but everything is too consolidated. There are too few languages and cultural groupings. The cities are too big. The armies are too big. The clothing is too fine. Westeros is a country the size of South America under the control of one government. Religion is barely present. Everyone believes in the idea of a unified Westeros/North like it's a nation state.
And that's before we get into the multi-year winters, which 21st century humanity would struggle to deal with, never mind those guys.
The amount of people hating on game of thrones will never not be hilarious, if only due to how petty and buttblasted it comes across as.
The Fat Man is their boogeyman.
cope, you're never getting that sixth book
I’m actually of the opinion that he should never finish the series due to the ungrateful masses. Terrible, terrible fan base.
I read the first four, tried picking up the fifth, but it came out so much later that I no longer cared who any of the characters were and I couldn't be bothered to reread. They were ok summer reads. At the time I'd just go into Barnes and Nobles and buy anything really long, because I was a poor college student and buying longer books meant not needing to buy as many. But it's not very good writing, and ever since he spent way too long dwelling on how Sansa felt about the growth of her breasts it was pretty clear dude's a pedo. I dunno, anon. Maybe you're projecting.
I think you’re just a rooder(reader).
Go choke on Sandersonor something I guess.
I don't understand whether that's even suppose to be an insult. Sanderson finished Wheel of Time, at least. That was ok.
It's a pretty big insult yeah. Sanderson is seen as a less than mediocre writer.
>It's a pretty big insult
It's not a very good one, from someone defending George RR Martin. Read books if you like reading. It's really not about winning internet cool points on a forum for cartoon porn.
Because they're mediocre. That's all there is to it. Anybody who's read actually good fantasy could easily tell how shit they are.
please recommend good fantasy according to your taste
Glen Cook
Roger Zelazny
Robin Hobb
Terry Pratchet
JK Rowling
But the bigger point is that George RR Martin isn't very good at writing. Fantasy novels are a nice, guilty pleasure. But aside from 2 of the 5 I mentioned, there aren't many good writers pandering to genre fiction.
There's nothing wrong with a guilty pleasure and reading George RR Martin is still doing more for your brain than watching the greatest film ever made. But try reading other things, too. Read literature. You won't be so defensive when someone makes fun of your favorite beach book. Fantasy novels are to adolescent boys what romance novels are to forty year old moms. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with with either one. But enjoy other books, too. And when someone points out that your guilty pleasure is one? You won't need to get your panties in such a twist, because you'll have pleasure you're proud of, too.
>reading George RR Martin is still doing more for your brain than watching the greatest film ever made
nta, Watched Kurosawa's "High and Low" recently and yeah no.
I only disagree with this because I can't disagree with the rest.
Baudolino
Pantagruel
Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio
Beowulf
Gilgamesh
Earthsea
FUCK modern fantasy and fuck you too for even asking. How dare you.
Traitor son cycle
Masters and mages
Game of gays is not medieval. Its modern. The people act like modern humans, they have no sense of morals or religion, they're extremely hedonistic and place zero value on loyalty/honor/oaths etc. A society like that full of non religious backstabbers never would have existed at the technology level being displayed
>morals are a matter of technology level
Yeah no, also contemporary =/= modern. Just look at the crusades anyway, non-stop backstabbing opportunistic people.
Technology facilitates the kind of society we see today. Without it, certain types of people just aren't going to be viable and thats a fact. Our individualistic, non religious society wouldn't work in a time where survival is only guaranteed by working together and sharing a moral compass.
Dude, the rich and people in power in general don't live in the same society as the rest of the vast majority. If you don't think that you can't see hedonistic, immoral and individualistic attitudes in the ancient and medieval nobility, you really haven't paid attention. Doesn't mean that they also didn't felt religious and what not, just like Cosa Nostra mobsters are persuaded that they are good catholics.
You could say it's a matter of numbers and that would feel a bit more adequate.
> non religious society wouldn't work in a time where survival is only guaranteed by working together and sharing a moral compass.
The fuck? You realize that when it comes to concepts of morals and ethics, the further back in time you go, the worse it gets. Seriously take off the fucking rose colored glasses. Past sucked, harder than the present does.
You are nitpicking grains of sand and assuming humans aren’t a horrible dumb shit species
You are arguing with a dolt criticizing the fat man purely because he dislikes the fat man. Of all the complaints to give, he goes for the shallowest ones
You're not as smart as you think you are.
What? Are you assuming I’m samefagging? Hey idiot, it doesn’t take mild intellect to tell when someone is complaining for asinine reasons.
Those reasons aren't asinine. That Song of Fire and Ice pretended to be gritty-realism, then put modern people in a fantasy setting, is a pretty fucking spot-on criticism. His closest headfake to actual pre-modern beliefs was "everyone wants to fuck children" which, by the way, has nothing to do with medieval beliefs but at least it's a pre-20th century mindset (the age of marriage during the medieval period was around 26 and only started going down in the 18th century, hitting its lowest in the 19th century). So even his "typical medieval behavior" cliches were modern misunderstandings of medieval behavior. Yeah: it's pretty solid criticism.
Age of marriage? Around 26? bro, what? The legal age for marriage set by canon law was twelve for girls and fourteen for boys. Though, usually, girls married in their teens and boys in their early 20s. For a period during the 12th century girls married somewhat later in average, but then the average marriage age sank again.
>the age of marriage during the medieval period was around 26
Only after the great plague and mostly during the modern period.
>You are arguing with a dolt criticizing the fat man purely because he dislikes the fat man
Fat Man is a good kid though, he's done... things, for sure, just like any Little Boy his age would, he's got an explosive temper is all, nah gonna sack him!
I am once again shilling for Harnworld
>Most “medieval” fantasy is actually early modern
Anon. LotR is pretty Firmly Medieval.
Only people who say its not are concerned with irrelevant minutia like hobbits having potatos. Which can be pallet swapped to carrots and have no meaningful effect on the story or setting.
>Most “medieval” fantasy is actually early modern
Is there a strong difference between the two?
Not if you're living in Great Britain. The continent started slowly abolishing feudal and medieval law between the French Revolution and 1850 or so, and even that process was constantly undermined by neofeudal and paternalistic arrangements at the social and economic level.
That's the thesis of the book pic of course. Le Goff's "Long MA" goes from the fall of western rome to 1789.