Most "medieval" settings are actually just the wild west with a coat of medieval paint.
So far, LoTR and ASOIAF are the only settings that actually feel medieval to me. What are some other "true" medieval settings that you'd actually run a game in?
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>wild west with a coat of medieval paint
would probably have firearms
Can you explain more? What makes something wild west or medieval? Tax policies?
>what makes wild west
Star Trek is wild west in theme. Not western like guns and cowboys, but western like frontier living away from civilization, encounters with peaceful and hostile natives, guns even if they're lazer guns or magic zappy wands and crossbows both do the same thing in stories.
I kinda like how Firefly did it's western, six shooters went zap.
>lotr fan didn't read all the books
Numenor was the classic period of Middle Earth for men. The first and second ages have long histories of kingdoms rising and falling. The third age is dark with it's important civilizations waning, the Elves and Dwarves, but it promises new hope after victory against the Enemy in the War of the Ring.
There's not much magic in LotR, it's not mythic like when the world is sung into existence in the Silmarillion. Galadriel knows there's no magic in her reflecting pool when Frodo asks to see magic, but that is what the Hobbits would call it. It's a tool, like the Platinir, or your cell phone, only magic to a cave man or a stoner who doesn't know how magnets work.
Numenor is very unambiguously supposed to be Atlantis, direct predecessor of the fallen realms that would in Earth history become the archaic-period civilizations of the Mediterranean. Gondor is Greece, as envisioned by the Aryan supremacist Tolkien, partly riding its sacred Herculean blood but mostly just a mundane realm of men.
I don't actually think Tolkien subscribed to Aryanism.
He even went as far as to say only Iranians could be accurately called Aryan.
The medieval world also had unexplored frontiers.
This problem is more your conception of what medieval is than the settings themselves.
>as envisioned by the Aryan supremacist Tolkien
Are you moronic?
>Star Trek is wild west in theme
Star Trek is about exploration. If you're going to insist on pinning it to a historical period, go with the fricking age of exploration.
You're just very vaguely describing colonialism, which isn't at all specific to the wild west.
Bro TOS was literally pitched as Wagon Train in space
I'm not pinning it on a historic age. Western isn't a time period. Cowboy Bebop and Firefly are both 'Westerns' but there's no exploration. They come from that lineage of Star Trek that combined sci-fi with Westerns in the 60s, a genre of tv shows and books inspired more by Buffalo Bill shows and Annie Oakley than historic accounts which can be too dull to be a story. Going to a planet where a farmer, or a scientist living alone growing plants, essentially a space farmer having trouble with locals was a recurring show plot in Trek.
Other Western genre things from these shows:
Native Americans being pushed off their land in the Cardassian DMZ.
Settling longtime family fueds.
That Next Gen episode where they pick up the Irish settlers. (Were they aliens, what was up with them, i don't remember)
Dealing with various isolationist religious communities.
Playing poker.
A spaceship with a saloon in it where fights happen.
Talks breaking down into gunfights.
It's not all Western inspired, things like the space zombies, the Puckish trickster god, the ghost stories, spy thriller episodes, but you can see where the DNA of this thing is Western show stuff that could happen on Bonanza if there weren't aliens, but wouldn't happen on a non-Western genre inspired sci-fi like an Outer Limits or Black Mirror.
>lotr
>medieval
What the frick are you talking about, LotR is mythic history much like Conan, there hasn't even been a classic period in Middle Earth, let alone a middle ages. Rohirrim are the most civilized men not descended from Gondor and they're, at best, dark ages Anglo Saxons (and really they are meant to be the Royal Scythians of Middle Earth).
Medieval historicals would seem to be what the doctor ordered. Though I don't think you really want medieval considering both of those settings have massed armies including cavalry charges, large empires, seafaring societies, not to mention fricking dragons and shit.
>Medieval historical
>pooping in pots
Gross
Cool twitter post, shame everything about it is fricking stupid and wrong.
I'm surprised at some of the pushback this is receiving. At least as an European this couldn't be more obvious.
You could check out the setting of "The Dark Eye" rpg. The book "Aventuria Almanac" is a good starting point.
I've also heard good things about the "Harn" setting, if you want a medieval island a la britain, but I haven't looked into it myself.
The Wild West wasn't even particularly wild in reality, so your metaphor is DoA.
Fantasy is its own genre you overly analytical twit.
Also Pendragon.
True, it was much tamer than the Wild West myth sells. Still, there is no doubt that D&D is very much and American fantasy of upward mobility, self-reliance, and money-gathering. If it was truly medieval, player characters would be mostly knights or wanting to be knights. Chivalry would be exalted even while knights being a hypocrite about it half the time. A lot of D&D values have more in common with Conan than true medieval fantasy.
Harnworld for an original setting. 99% of the written stuff for it is about the island Harn (basically britain but with more kingdoms), the main Eurasian continent has sparse info.
Aquelarre is the next best step. It's just medieval Europe, in this case focused on Spain in the 13th/14th century. But it has lots of fantasy elements including a unique view on magic vs faith.
So your choices are either Harn, or literally Europe but fantasy (Ars Magica, Pendragon, Aquelarre)
> You wake up in your leaky thatched hut with 25 members of your inbred family all sleeping on the floor around you (not allowed to leave the estate to look for mates that are not your cousins)
> Go outside for a nice relaxing shit in the field while crunching unprocessed barley kernels with your one functioning tooth
> Your liege-lord drives up in his carriage and has his way with your sister-aunt while the whole family watches
> Commence 16 hours of backbreaking work in the barley field, can't afford draft animals because muh realistic medieval economy of your setting doesn't allow it
> Low-fantasy wizard comes and burns down your field with mirrors
> Go back to hut to eat unprocessed grains with family
> All dead of tuberculosis
> Mfw
Gee wizz I wonder why no-one wants to play that
what are you fricking talking about m8
that straight up made that into a movie
twas called le monty python and the holy grail
Actually most people didn't work backbreaking works before capitalism became a thing. People in the middle ages worked less hours than today.
That's also because there were a lot more chores at home, there were no clocks, most workers came for the free meal, and the church was a powerful influence.
Imagine responding like this to an exaggerated post making fun of realism gays. This level of autism should be bannable.
True medieval settings have never been tried.
>Historical novels? What's that?
To say nothing about historical fantasy, because those are a dime a dozen.
I think what OP means is the level of lawlessness, in Tolkien there's towns and cities, and a whole lot of badlands inbetween, where Dark Riders seem to be able to operate freely, and only the Rangers stop the orcs from wandering in in raiding parties in between major pushes that would requite raising an army to stop.
I don't think most D&D players could function in a setting that had actual laws, a state religion, assigned roles for genders and races, and law enforcement beyond town guards and bounties.
Most Conan stories were set on a frontier with settlers and Pict raids and bandits.