PDA

View Full Version : RENAISSANCE! Moving on from the D&D middle ages



Altair_the_Vexed
2010-08-13, 09:30 AM
It is a trope in many fantasy fictions and games that civilisation is fixed in one era's style forever. In D&D, this tends to be a pseudo middle ages era.
(There are other settings, sure.)

Me, I like to see progress in a setting. I like to see that new inventions and cultural movements change the way the world works.
If new lands are discovered, people emmigrate. If new spells are invented, wizards use them. If a new battle tactic is winning, survivors emulate it.

How long should it take, in game, to move a D&D middle ages Europe setting to the early renaissance, and from the renaissance to the Eberon / Iron Kingdoms magic-punk settings?
Would you expect to see new inventions cropping up in game? Newly discovered islands being exploited?
What would be disruptive and annoying about a progressive setting?

In short: discuss!

Oslecamo
2010-08-13, 09:41 AM
Progress exists on the D&D world, but there's several nitpicks.

-MAGIC! That's where most of the research effort goes. Magic allows you to tell the laws of physics to shut up and do as you want.

However, advanced magic is normally on the hands of a few greedy people.

In the real world a scholar needs people to help him and eventually dies leaving his works behind for others to work.

In D&D a scholar creates his own servants(familiars, golems, undeads, ect) to help him and then either becomes immortal or hides his research in some trap-filled dungeon so it can't be turned against him. Either way, knowledge is hardly passed from one person to another.

In the Underdark splatbook it's explained that in Drow society research is highly encouraged, and new discoveries are always being made, but then each Drow House tries to hoard it's own secrets in fear the other houses will backstab them.


And then we have Eberron, wich indeed is very close to D&D renaissance with steampunk, but more on the magic side. Magic is just that good in D&D that there's little use for non-magic technology.

-DEITIES like their status quo. There's indeed voices from the sky and from the earth telling you what to do and most don't like change that much. Lighting WILL strike you if you don't do as you're told, either from the god himself or one of his clerics. In Eberron deities are a lot more weaker and passive so there's a lot more progress.

-MONSTERS-all D&D setings are filled with ruins of super-ancient-civilizations filled with secrets. And each of those civilizations was destroyed by some massive catastrophe or monster rampage. So there is "renaissance", several of them actually, but each one of them ends up being destroyed by some calamity like a Far Realms invasion.

Crasical
2010-08-13, 09:47 AM
It is a trope in many fantasy fictions and games that civilisation is fixed in one era's style forever. In D&D, this tends to be a pseudo middle ages era. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MedievalStasis)

Trope'd.



Me, I like to see progress in a setting. I like to see that new inventions and cultural movements change the way the world works.
If new lands are discovered, people emmigrate. If new spells are invented, wizards use them. If a new battle tactic is winning, survivors emulate it.


Theoretically, within the confines of the game, this could already be happening. A DM could say that explorers have colonized a new land and the players should head there to fight the weird new monsters.

A game where dungeon-diving(as a profession) has died out with the extinction of many races of monster and all the temples and ruins having been cleared of their treasure, only to be revived with the discovery of a new continent full of riches and creatures, could be an interesting campaign.

New tactics or spells being propogated throughout the world probably does happen on some small level for most DMs.


How long should it take, in game, to move a D&D middle ages Europe setting to the early renaissance, and from the renaissance to the Eberon / Iron Kingdoms magic-punk settings?
Would you expect to see new inventions cropping up in game? Newly discovered islands being exploited?
What would be disruptive and annoying about a progressive setting?


I think it'd be a pain in the rump for long-lived races unless there are rules for retraining in effect. "Hahaha, you dumped feats into swordplay? That's so dumb, muskets are where it's at now!" For the more ephemeral races, PROGRESS! should be less dramatic, as they'll be dead by the time their training is fully obsolete, and their rage against the dying of the light as their tradition is subsumed by new ways makes an interesting motivation.

rojomoke
2010-08-13, 10:48 AM
Ever since 3.0e introduced sorcerers, I've been working on an idea. Up to now, magic has been the preserve of the wizards and their hide-bound guilds. This has led to an ultra-conservative society, with power concentrated in the hands of the nobility and the magiocracy (who are often the same people). After a recent cataclysm (the exact nature of which my players will have to discover for themselves), certain people are able to cast spells intuitively, without having to spend years studying first. This puts more power into the hands of ordinary people. Cue massive social upheaval, and the flowering of new ways of doing things, both through magic and this new-fangled science thingy. The Powers That Be, of course, are desperately trying to stuff the djinn back into the bottle.

Spiryt
2010-08-13, 10:54 AM
How long should it take, in game, to move a D&D middle ages Europe setting to the early renaissance, and from the renaissance to the Eberon / Iron Kingdoms magic-punk settings?

It's assumption that whatever happened in "Real world" in Europe recently, is something typical, rather than one of a kind thing.


Tribes, even whole organized realms, civilizationals in Africa of South America, existed trough the millenniums without any sign of "progress" similar to European.

Europe gave birth to certain systems, ideas, that caused what we see today. It's one of a kind thing, in just tiny little period in whole humankind history.

So there's no reason for fantasy world to change in the same way at all, even if many elements are obviously similar.

Aroka
2010-08-13, 11:38 AM
I love Artesia: Adventures in the Known world history: it's already gone through the Bronze Age (and, indeed, Smylie's art for certain ages reflects this, with bronze equipment), the Dark and Middle Ages (again, art of older events depicts 14th century "transitional" armor and pigface bascinets, contrasted to "modern" sallets and full plate armor), and the default age is more or less early Renaissance (pikemen dominate the battlefield, full plate is common for knights and elite troops, and Imperial alchemists have developed bombards). Obviously, development does not parallel the real world on all counts (what are the odds anyway?), and even gunpowder is a result of magic - alchemy.

Meanwhile, the grand campaign of Pendragon goes through sped-up development (caused by the Enchantment) from the 5th/6th century Dark Ages technology all the way to Renaissance - armor goes from maille to gothic plate in about 50 years, and wooden hill-forts turn into massive stone citadels.

It's just that most campaigns don't work on timescales big enough for such advancements to be more than MacGuffins and other plot items.

Psyx
2010-08-13, 11:53 AM
How long should it take, in game, to move a D&D middle ages Europe setting to the early renaissance

Surely D&D is early renaissance already?

I'm seeing rapiers, full plate harnesses, steel hand crossbows, spyglasses...
All of these are tools of the renaissance.

Plus the mentality is already there. As the 'leading' people in the game-world are played or created by people from our own age, they think on a level far in advance of middle-age logic. The concepts of scientific method, logic, fair trial and a lot of the morals in game-worlds are taken from our own time: most certainly not the middle ages.

Aroka
2010-08-13, 12:47 PM
The concepts of scientific method, logic, fair trial and a lot of the morals in game-worlds are taken from our own time

I avoid those things like the plague. Then again, one of my main games is RuneQuest, which is 90% Dark Ages or earlier culture.

Some basic tenets include that only your own culture is really human and has rights (even outlaws are better than outsiders, though both can be killed out of hand), that everyone else's ideas are filthy and poisonous, and that new things are usually dangerous (unless it's been proven to work well, or shown to just be an extension of an old thing). I think RPGs are much more fun when you really get in a different mindset and explore unfamiliar societies.

It's one of the reasons I like ASOIAF, actually - the cultures in the world have their own medieval values, and actually believe in things like trial by combat and the inherent superiority of the nobility.

Ormur
2010-08-13, 01:31 PM
Unless we're talking about post-industrial-revolution rates of progress things don't necessarily happen so fast that you'd see new inventions and social currents suddenly appear in the span of the few months your campaign lasts.

I think it's more appropriate to hint at an undercurrent of subtle change. People representing older ideas and interests complaining about new ideas, nobles complaining about uppity merchants and royal bureaucracy or warriors or armies fighting in the traditional way being defeated by new tactics and weapons. Well informed NPCs might mention some spells being new or know about some new discoveries. Common people might only know rumours of great men that found new continents (although "here be dragons" is quite likely to be perfectly accurate in D&D)
However even ongoing revolutionary change might not be recognized by the short lived and often ignorant people living through it. People might still think everything was better in some mythological past and either interpret new things as evidence that everything is getting worse or that they're rediscovering something from back then.

Altair_the_Vexed
2010-08-15, 12:59 PM
Good points about the speed of progress - gunpowder was used in the military for a long time before pistols and muskets were available.
I guess if I introduced gunpowder into the game (for example), then it'd take a good long time to turn from rockets and cannon into personal firearms.

Yes - a wizard did it.
Just because I mentioned real-world technological eras, doesn't mean that magical advancement is out. Indeed, many advancements that would have taken mundane society generations to do might be accomplished in a couple of year or even months.

We have to be careful not to go down the Tippyverse route here though.

Lord Raziere
2010-08-15, 03:27 PM
It's assumption that whatever happened in "Real world" in Europe recently, is something typical, rather than one of a kind thing.


Tribes, even whole organized realms, civilizationals in Africa of South America, existed trough the millenniums without any sign of "progress" similar to European.

Europe gave birth to certain systems, ideas, that caused what we see today. It's one of a kind thing, in just tiny little period in whole humankind history.

So there's no reason for fantasy world to change in the same way at all, even if many elements are obviously similar.

Jared Diamond would like to have a word with you.

0Megabyte
2010-08-15, 05:00 PM
Yeah, that was what I was about to say.

To give more detail, I'd like to point out that the Spanish conquistadors were amazed when they visited Aztec cities. Why? Because they were so much more sophisticated and well-made than their own.

Though technology WAS different, in many ways the Aztecs were a match or even more advanced than the Spanish. For example, IIRC, they ditched their armor for Aztec armor and clothes pretty much straight away, for they worked much better in that environment than what they had.

What things they lacked, they were only a few centuries behind. If they'd met the Spain of 1000 A.D., for example, there would be no contest.

Well, yes there would. The Spanish diseases would still kill them by the millions... but that's not technology. That's just unlucky since they had no experience with the current Eurasian diseases.

Shademan
2010-08-15, 05:25 PM
I DM'ed a D&D reneisance game fer a short while once.
now, sleep.

Yora
2010-08-15, 05:27 PM
Yeah, that was what I was about to say.

To give more detail, I'd like to point out that the Spanish conquistadors were amazed when they visited Aztec cities. Why? Because they were so much more sophisticated and well-made than their own.
"It hasn't got **** all over it"? :smallbiggrin:

Oslecamo
2010-08-15, 05:36 PM
Well, yes there would. The Spanish diseases would still kill them by the millions... but that's not technology. That's just unlucky since they had no experience with the current Eurasian diseases.

They had no experience with diseases, point. The records show the Aztec population didn't have to bother with any serious bacteria or virus before. The europeans on the other hand came from a continent where mortal plagues were almost common. It was War of the Worlds reversed (in War of the Worlds the space invaders end up being defeated by earth diseases, in this case the defenders were slaughtered by the invader's diseases).

Boci
2010-08-15, 05:38 PM
Jared Diamond would like to have a word with you.

I think he would agree that the numberous magical disasters and powerful feral monsters, combined with multiple intelligent and malicious races from other planes mean that most D&D setting do not have the stable enviroment that allowed Europe to advance as it did.
That could be mitigated by magic, but that is arguable.

Knaight
2010-08-15, 06:09 PM
What things they lacked, they were only a few centuries behind. If they'd met the Spain of 1000 A.D., for example, there would be no contest.

This is extremely debatable. While the typical academic account is Cortez and a few hundred men toppling an empire with the aid of disease, there is a lot more to it than that. The Aztec had the effective armor and weapons they had because they were constantly at war with somebody, when the Spanish came the Aztec empire included a lot of recently conquered territory, and many of the people in that recently conquered territory tossed in their lots with the Spanish. The Aztec would have had a far better chance without the disease factor even against the Spain they were dealing with, and certainly against the Spain of 1000 A.D., but the uprisings that came with would still have presented the same huge issue.

Volos
2010-08-15, 06:25 PM
I have a campaign setting in which I am doing this very thing, advancing the technology slowly to show the advancement of eras though time. Each time a campaign ends, (which happens fairly often when you start at lvl 10) I advance the timeline, redraw borders, and invent new tech. My players love it because all of their hard work in game and in roleplay pays off with new nations rising up from uncharted lands and strong royal family lines that move with the times. So far we've made it to a renaissance tech and next advancement would be Eberron or as close as I'd like to get. The world would progress fairly quickly, concidering the actions of the Player Characters, but continual world destruction threats and the loss of millions of lives tends to slow science/magic/scimagic down a little bit.

Lycan 01
2010-08-15, 08:56 PM
Hm. Renaissance. Y'know, why haven't I thought of that already? Its not that big a difference, but its still noticeable and fun. Like Assassins Creed to Assassins Creed 2. You're not jumping forward very far into the future, and you've still got all the same basic concepts. The culture and tech has just slightly progressed further.

Y'know, I need to discuss this with my players. Jumping our DnD setting's timeline into the Renaissance would be pretty interesting, IMO. It would add gunpowder and other inventions, and bring art, science, religeon, and politics further into focus. And all those castles and cities they used to frequent in "old" DnD will now be ruins and relics, ready to be explored and ripe for the picking. Yeaaaah... I really like this idea! :smallbiggrin:

Lord Raziere
2010-08-15, 10:08 PM
I think he would agree that the numberous magical disasters and powerful feral monsters, combined with multiple intelligent and malicious races from other planes mean that most D&D setting do not have the stable enviroment that allowed Europe to advance as it did.
That could be mitigated by magic, but that is arguable.

Stable? Europe was violent as hell, the middle ages were the most turbulent in history of Europe, if barbarians weren't invading you had them fighting decades long wars against each other, there were plagues ravaging Europe since Rome, its only recently that Europe has ever been stable, from the Middle Ages to WWII, they have basically been fighting each other over whether this guy or that guy succeeded the throne, in fact in the Middle ages the place that was stable and nice? the Islamic Caliphate, which was experiencing a golden age in comparison to Europe's constant warfare.

in fact? The Renaissance happened because of the Crusades combined with the Black Plague; as in Europe gone out and took everything in the Islamic Empire by force where all the old works and such were preserved, THEN a friggin plague that chopped Europe's population in half provided everyone opportunity to start fresh. Probably didn't occur in THAT order but they were both contributing factors, the Renaissance was born of blood, theft, violence and lots of death.

and the Colonial Age afterwards only succeeded because Europe had so many plagues and wars, the Europeans had become immune to such diseases by then and their culture had turned competitive, conquer and power hungry which led to them to seek out new riches and places to get them from while at the same time hating their neighboring countries.

Middle Ages Europe. Stable. Funniest thing I ever heard.

0Megabyte
2010-08-15, 11:33 PM
Osle: To be clear, it isn't that they had no experience with diseases. They had plenty.

But they had no resistance to the diseases that Europeans had been dealing with for the previous 10,000 years or so. As Jared Diamond would point out, the lack of large farm animals and the lessened breeding grounds for bacterial diseases left them vulnerable to the sorts that the Europeans carried with them.

Ormur
2010-08-16, 12:08 AM
I've stumbled upon many theories for the industrialization and modernization of Europe and its offshoots in my studies. Some of them are:

-The right blend of centralization and fragmentation. Europe had many centralized states that had to compete for economic and military domination. China most often only had one centralized bureaucracy without competition whereas India didn't have strong or stable enough states.

-European states from their early formation in the middle ages had weak despotic powers but strong infrastructural power. The King usually couldn't do whatever he wanted since he was constrained by nobles, parliaments, customs and business interests but when he got his way he had a bureaucracy capable of enacting his will comparatively effectively throughout the state. In China the powerful bureaucracy was just too small to effect much change in local governance. European priests and sheriffs however routinely meddled in local minutiae according to royal policy.

-Related to the above is the role of the medieval church which provided a cosmopolitan, literate and efficient bureaucracy through it's universities (not just the clergy but scribes and lawyers too).

-Cities and towns which drove much change were pretty autonomous and mostly came into being spontaneously or organically. Merchants often ruled the towns and they could protect themselves and nobles and later governments saw the benefit in that for their tax and customs income. Cities in China were under more state control but Middle Eastern and Indian ones were vulnerable to raiding armies (some of them European) that looted their wealth for short term benefit.

-In the vein of Jared Diamond there is the geographical advantage of having a jagged coastline that promoted maritime trade and fragmentation.

-Related to that is the benefit of finding a whole new continent, essentially there for the taking, America. Exporting people was demographically advantageous, new crops increased food yields, gold and other resources mitigated the European trade imbalance with Asia and the subsequent emphasis on maritime trade and innovation allowed European powers to dominate world trade and later allowed them to enforce their will on the advanced civilization of Asia in the 18th and 19th century.

-Then there's of course the protestant work ethic explanation from Weber (which I personally don't subscribe to).

I'm not saying those theories are correct and they don't say anything about inherent European superiority or some such nonsense. There were certainly eras in which those conditions might have been present in other civilizations and spurred innovation but they might not have lasted long enough.
They might however provide ideas for the conditions necessary in a campaign that focuses on progress. If your world is frequently laid waste by monsters and cosmic events (on the scale of the Mongol invasions or black death) long-term progress might not happen.

Aroka
2010-08-16, 12:22 AM
in fact? The Renaissance happened because of the Crusades combined with the Black Plague; as in Europe gone out and took everything in the Islamic Empire by force where all the old works and such were preserved, THEN a friggin plague that chopped Europe's population in half provided everyone opportunity to start fresh. Probably didn't occur in THAT order but they were both contributing factors, the Renaissance was born of blood, theft, violence and lots of death.

and the Colonial Age afterwards only succeeded because Europe had so many plagues and wars, the Europeans had become immune to such diseases by then and their culture had turned competitive, conquer and power hungry which led to them to seek out new riches and places to get them from while at the same time hating their neighboring countries.

The inaccurate oversimplifications, they burn.

Europeans were immune to diseases? what

And yes, the Middle-Eastern Crusades did occur first (11C-13C), the Black Death later (mid-14C). But there's a gap of some 200 years from Crusades to Renaissance, and 100 years from Black Death to Renaissance. All those wonderful books by Islamic scholars (which were indeed pretty impressive, including advanced lens optics, etc.) just sat around for 100 years waiting for a plague to kill off a third of the population, then sat around another 200 years before they were picked up again?

Lycan 01
2010-08-16, 12:30 AM
Sorry to divert attention from historic debate, but I have a few questions.

If I were to run a Renaissance game, what sort of firearms, armor, and tech would be available? Flintlock weapons would be too advanced. I'm thinking Wheel-lock and clockwork firing mechanisms. Armor wise, I think metal cuirasses and breastplates would be available and countable for Plate armor. And as for tech, the printing press and such would be available, correct? I suppose airships would be a must, since it IS DnD after all. :smalltongue:

I'm thinking clockwork stuff would be prevailent. Not steampunk, that's more Victorian. But gears, springs, and tension-driven machines might make for good enemies. C'mon, a clockwork Warforged would be so cool. :smallbiggrin:

HamHam
2010-08-16, 12:43 AM
In an adventuring context, early firearms are going to be almost completely useless. While they work fine in formation, one guy who can only shoot every couple of rounds is just not up to snuff.

Lycan 01
2010-08-16, 12:58 AM
But a brace of pistols in melee combat would surely put a damper on anyone's day. While I don't expect a player to actually stop and spent 10 rounds reloading a pistol mid-battle, I think they'd be able to find uses for it, especially if they had several of them. Plenty of roleplaying opportunities, close range attacks before moving into melee range, intimidation and style factos, et cetera.

Aroka
2010-08-16, 01:06 AM
But a brace of pistols in melee combat would surely put a damper on anyone's day. While I don't expect a player to actually stop and spent 10 rounds reloading a pistol mid-battle, I think they'd be able to find uses for it, especially if they had several of them. Plenty of roleplaying opportunities, close range attacks before moving into melee range, intimidation and style factos, et cetera.

You'll deal more damage if you keep PAing your greatsword than if you start TWFing pistols (and you have to waste a feat on Quick Draw), though. If you're inside a pistol's range increment, you can just charge. Making firearms competitive in regular D&D is pretty much undoable.

Lycan 01
2010-08-16, 01:17 AM
Yes, I know its statistically not the best option. There's no way around that... :smallsigh:

But bear with me, please. :smallannoyed: For the sake of roleplaying purposes, not combat awesomeness, what sort of firearms would be available in a generic Renaissance Era game? From what I've gathered, Matchlock and Wheel-lock seem to have been the type available near the end of the Renaissance, with Flintlock not coming out til shortly later. I'm not sure about muskets, but I did read something about Arabeques or some other funky name for "pre-musket rifle" around during the Renaissance.

Aroka
2010-08-16, 01:37 AM
Matchlocks and wheellocks are muskets. D&D probably can't usefully model the differences between handgonnes, arquebuses, muskets, and other early firearms, so it doesn't matter - just use the musket and pistol from the DMG. Plenty of detail of the firearms on Wikipedia.

Other weaponry and armor would just be all the PHB stuff; full plate, breastplates, greatswords, rapiers, and possibly halberds are all Renaissance stuff. (Obviously breastplates are earlier armor, but as sole armor they're later period stuff; you'd usually wear one over full mail, since if you could afford a breastplate you'd be a fool not to also cover the entire rest of your body.)

Altair_the_Vexed
2010-08-16, 03:21 AM
While it's certainly easy to convert the medievalism of D&D into a renaissance setting - we've got plenty of worked examples ready made for us to do that -what I'm asking in the OP is over what kind of timeline that should be happening.

In my mind, adoption of military of technology ought to be fairly rapid in a setting where aggressor non-human species exist in the badlands. Muskets are scary to face, and easy to use (compared with a longbow) - and in the real world they quickly replaced crossbows as the ranged weapon of choice. With mass adoption of new weapons, we get mass production (or rather, non-artisan production). With mass production comes increased innovation as producers try to get their firearms to beat their competitors, and so win lucrative contracts... Roll on the flint lock, the revolving cylinder, the turret rifle, the gattling gun...

Now - on to other, more fantastic technology: warforged and war jacks (Eberon and Iron Kingdoms). Golems are already a staple part of D&D settings, so there's little to change there - except to say that the route to warforged and war jacks is simple enough: cheaper, less magic intensive golems might be made to attack opposition that use undead or poison gases and the like. These magical mechanical soldiers need not be as tough and expensive as golems - they only need to be as tough (or a little tougher) than the human soldiers they replace.

Social reforms are another thing. D&D already tends to assume equality of the sexes to some extent, and intraspecies racism isn't often portrayed (when you've got goblins over the river, who cares if your fellow human is paler or darker than you?) - so what is there to reform and modernise..?
Democracy, and the rise of middle classes starts to be discussed about the renaissance and early modern era. Isn't it a great trope of fantasy adventures to throw off oppressive rulers and free the peasants? Imagine that a wave of revolution is sweeping through your setting - look at the reactions of the historical real world rulers to this tide of democracy. Awesome campaign material...

But does any of this happen in the course of an adventurer's career?
I'd like to think that, like the first motor cars, it would take a couple of decades for any new technology to be adopted, but then a shorter time to be almost universal.
So if I want to see wizards with flintlock pistols by the end of my game, I need to start with a new regiment of musketeers being formed in the King's Guard - and wait a few game years.

Lord Raziere
2010-08-16, 04:25 AM
The inaccurate oversimplifications, they burn.

Europeans were immune to diseases? what

And yes, the Middle-Eastern Crusades did occur first (11C-13C), the Black Death later (mid-14C). But there's a gap of some 200 years from Crusades to Renaissance, and 100 years from Black Death to Renaissance. All those wonderful books by Islamic scholars (which were indeed pretty impressive, including advanced lens optics, etc.) just sat around for 100 years waiting for a plague to kill off a third of the population, then sat around another 200 years before they were picked up again?

:smallannoyed: yes immune to their own diseases, after a few centuries of dying from them repeatedly, obviously. I felt that such overspecific clarification was not needed in this discussion to satisfy pedantry, was I wrong?

as for the gap, yes it occurred but I am talking in the wider context of history, what matters is that they lead to the Renaissance, not the various minute details of it.

I am speaking in the general sense that Europes history has violent and turbulent for a long time and between the fall of Rome and the end of WWII, it has never been truly stable and that factor contributed to their colonial/imperial power to correct the other posters notion that Europe was ever stable.

Lord Raziere
2010-08-16, 04:51 AM
I've stumbled upon many theories for the industrialization and modernization of Europe and its offshoots in my studies. Some of them are:

-The right blend of centralization and fragmentation. Europe had many centralized states that had to compete for economic and military domination. China most often only had one centralized bureaucracy without competition whereas India didn't have strong or stable enough states.

-European states from their early formation in the middle ages had weak despotic powers but strong infrastructural power. The King usually couldn't do whatever he wanted since he was constrained by nobles, parliaments, customs and business interests but when he got his way he had a bureaucracy capable of enacting his will comparatively effectively throughout the state. In China the powerful bureaucracy was just too small to effect much change in local governance. European priests and sheriffs however routinely meddled in local minutiae according to royal policy.

-Related to the above is the role of the medieval church which provided a cosmopolitan, literate and efficient bureaucracy through it's universities (not just the clergy but scribes and lawyers too).

-Cities and towns which drove much change were pretty autonomous and mostly came into being spontaneously or organically. Merchants often ruled the towns and they could protect themselves and nobles and later governments saw the benefit in that for their tax and customs income. Cities in China were under more state control but Middle Eastern and Indian ones were vulnerable to raiding armies (some of them European) that looted their wealth for short term benefit.

-In the vein of Jared Diamond there is the geographical advantage of having a jagged coastline that promoted maritime trade and fragmentation.

-Related to that is the benefit of finding a whole new continent, essentially there for the taking, America. Exporting people was demographically advantageous, new crops increased food yields, gold and other resources mitigated the European trade imbalance with Asia and the subsequent emphasis on maritime trade and innovation allowed European powers to dominate world trade and later allowed them to enforce their will on the advanced civilization of Asia in the 18th and 19th century.

-Then there's of course the protestant work ethic explanation from Weber (which I personally don't subscribe to).

I'm not saying those theories are correct and they don't say anything about inherent European superiority or some such nonsense. There were certainly eras in which those conditions might have been present in other civilizations and spurred innovation but they might not have lasted long enough.
They might however provide ideas for the conditions necessary in a campaign that focuses on progress. If your world is frequently laid waste by monsters and cosmic events (on the scale of the Mongol invasions or black death) long-term progress might not happen.


for various reasons of Europe: why not all of them? History is rarely clean and simple and does not occur in a vacuum, the course things take often have dozens of reasons and factors narrowing the down the possibilities of which direction it goes.

as for DnD worlds, I think all the cataclysms and such actually occur less often than we think; despite the fact that they happen, society almost always has the same knowledge, tools, skills, magic and general level of civilization coming out of it, the only world you could really argue that too much cataclysms has destroyed all progress is Dark Sun or any campaign I don't know of, so I'm guessing that DnD isn't that bogged down in stasis- DnD is pretty close to Renaissance times anyways, it has plate armor ,rapiers and all that which didn't appear until later in the Middle Ages and seems to me in fact to be right at gap between the crusades and the plague mentioned earlier, cause that gap is the most widely idealized and romanticized part of the middle ages before black plague hit, half the people died then the late middle ages came in and caused even more wars.

so yeah I'mma guessing that DnD is one disaster away from going late middle ages- heck Spellplague might just be that, fits the period and everything. :smallbiggrin:

Caewil
2010-08-16, 06:57 AM
Man, it would be awesome to play in a late-renaissance setting.

Imagine having the players set up a revolution against an oppressive nobility, only to have it go horribly, horribly wrong and have to run for their lives from the guillotine of revolutionary radicals. Or return and take it over as conquering heroes, a la Napoleon.

MickJay
2010-08-16, 07:05 AM
That's more of a late Enlightenment, rather than late Renaissance (and there was Baroque in between too) :smallwink: but there's really not much reason why one of the countries couldn't be more socially "advanced", or simply have problems similar to those that pre-revolutionary France had.

Psyx
2010-08-16, 07:31 AM
I avoid those things like the plague. Then again, one of my main games is RuneQuest, which is 90% Dark Ages or earlier culture.


I also don't like the 'even kobalds are accepted in society, fair trials all round, modern morals' fluffyness that has crept into D&D. But by canon it seems to be present because it's 'more fun' than 'kobolds kill people so we lynch any we see, bandits get summarily executed, want to buy a slave?' reality of middle age morals.


If I were to run a Renaissance game, what sort of firearms, armor, and tech would be available? Flintlock weapons would be too advanced. I'm thinking Wheel-lock and clockwork firing mechanisms. Armor wise, I think metal cuirasses and breastplates would be available and countable for Plate armor. And as for tech, the printing press and such would be available, correct? I suppose airships would be a must, since it IS DnD after all.

No: The metal cuirass and breastplates would be 'breastplate' in 3.5 terms. If you read the description, you'll see that a 'breastplate' isn't just a breastplate at all.
The armour commonly used at the time wasn't better or equal to D&D full plate: It was lighter and faster to move in.

Matchlock would be more common. Wheel locks were very expensive and essentially clock-work; being spring driven.

Why have a printing press when you could just have an item that casts amuantis an unlimited number of times per day? Magic is sometimes more effective than technology.

dsmiles
2010-08-16, 07:46 AM
Hmm. Renaissance? I much prefer steampunk. I play a mix of 4e Iron Kingdoms and 4e Cthulhu, where progress is the rule, not the exception.

Caustic Soda
2010-08-16, 07:48 AM
In D&D, the earlier use of catapults and mangonels can be replaced by magic. Teleport could be used to stage assassinations and things like Disintegrate could destroy walls. Heck, the nature of the D&D system means that a few high-level characters could outfight an army of low-level soldiers any day of the week. The very first thing you'll need to puzzle out is how present magic si in the world. As you yourself have noted, magic as written in the 3.5 rules can recreate a modern society or create a post-scarcity society with relative ease.

As I see it there are three ways to avoid Tippyverse, one of which you will need to decide upon.

1) Figure out how limited magic (or the availability of magic) must be for society to resemble renaissance society at all.
2) Come up with some reason(s) why magic doesn't change society even though it could
3)Ignore the possiblities of magic, like most official settings seem to.

Whichever method(s) you choose, the emergence of cannons would make it easier to reduce fortifications. If magic such as Disintegrate or Earthquake was used to destroy walls in the past, cannons could open spellcasters to other roles in war, or reduce the use of casters in wartime.

In the real world, the larger Europeans states in the time period began to centralize, armies grew larger, and it became harder for nobles or free cities to match the armies of the King/Doge/Staatholder. If this process can take place in the face of possibly-magical opposition, it might make sense for the ruler(s) to restrict the availability of magic, since it can be so potentially destabilizing.

By extension, the emergence of cannons and muskets might make it easier for humanoid states to drive back non-human monsters, especially those who cannot use magic and/or are to disorganized to have armies of their own.

If you consider having something to represent the Reformation, you will probably need a new upstart God or a less polytheistic/animistic system than the standard setting. Something relatively widespread like the Church of the Silver Flame from Eberron might do the trick.

hamishspence
2010-08-16, 07:55 AM
I also don't like the 'even kobalds are accepted in society, fair trials all round, modern morals' fluffyness that has crept into D&D. But by canon it seems to be present because it's 'more fun' than 'kobolds kill people so we lynch any we see, bandits get summarily executed, want to buy a slave?' reality of middle age morals.

It makes life easier for people who want to play kobolds, or goblins, or orcs.

Cityscape in particular mentions "goblinoid districts" where those kobolds,goblins, orcs, ogres, etc who are willing to get along with the rest of society, tend to congregate, within cities.

Even in medieval times, defeated bandits weren't summarily executed by whoever defeated them, unless the people that defeated them were "the law"- they were generally taken to the nearest town for execution.

D&D has always portrayed "hurting", "oppressing", killing" when done without very good reasons, as evil- so it's not a new thing.

Slavery may qualify as "oppressing" under most circumstances.

A "realistic" medieval society, taken to D&D, would qualify as Evil, and I see no problem with that. FC2 describes typical LE societies- and they are very like medieval ones.

And it's not like its a new thing- as far back as one of the first Forgotten Realms novels, Black Wizards, ogre mercenaries were being used in cities.

Altair_the_Vexed
2010-08-16, 08:00 AM
I also don't like the 'even kobalds are accepted in society, fair trials all round, modern morals' fluffyness that has crept into D&D. But by canon it seems to be present because it's 'more fun' than 'kobolds kill people so we lynch any we see, bandits get summarily executed, want to buy a slave?' reality of middle age morals.
Personally, I like the idea of a clash between both these ideologies - "enlightened" do-gooders (trying their best to be accepting of savage goblin tribes) on one side of the continent, and grim "barbaric" clans who are chasing the evil green scum out of their farmlands on the other side.

Just because I advocate a progressive setting with changing levels of technology and social norms, doesn't mean there aren't different socio-cultural groups in that setting.
In fact, I think it's more fun with all the societies you can think of existing somewhere in your setting.


Why have a printing press when you could just have an item that casts amuantis an unlimited number of times per day? Magic is sometimes more effective than technology.
Well, the way I see it is that you have to get a wizard to make your magic item, and pay her a load of gold to do so - but you could for the same price make the tools to make a bunch of mundane mechanical items to do the same job, and not have to rely on the wizard and her elitist cronies.

Yes, magic will do the job of some industries. Many mechanised industries however were the result of simple steps of innovation.
The printing press you mentioned starts out as a woodcut press. It's not a big idea to think that you could cut a picture / text onto a piece of wood in reverse, then ink it onto lots of sheets of paper. Kids make potato prints all the time. From that stage, having individual letters that you can arrange into text isn't too big a leap. Why get a wizard involved? People are always trying to fix things for themselves.

hamishspence
2010-08-16, 08:04 AM
Personally, I like the idea of a clash between both these ideologies - "enlightened" do-gooders (trying their best to be accepting of savage goblin tribes) on one side of the continent, and grim "barbaric" clans who are chasing the evil green scum out of their farmlands on the other side.

Savage Species does mention this sort of thing- clashes between "chaotic-accepting" and "lawful-rejecting" or "chaotic-rejecting" societies.

Sigil in Planescape is probably the ultimate "accepting" society- devils and angels alike can get along with the minimum of friction there.

WarKitty
2010-08-16, 09:14 AM
You could actually have a lot of fun with something similar to the european conquest of the islamic states. The adventurers go to drive out what the presume is a "barbarian" tribe and find the records of an ancient civilization that describes various technologies. They take them back to a scholar and are maybe rewarded with a prototype to test out.

You wouldn't necesarily need a musket type gun either. There should be a high demand in the D&D world for magic items that work without requiring a wizard or a UMD check. Maybe they discover a new variant on a wand that lets anyone use a wand of fireball.

HamHam
2010-08-16, 09:35 AM
Social reforms are another thing. D&D already tends to assume equality of the sexes to some extent, and intraspecies racism isn't often portrayed (when you've got goblins over the river, who cares if your fellow human is paler or darker than you?) - so what is there to reform and modernise..?
Democracy, and the rise of middle classes starts to be discussed about the renaissance and early modern era. Isn't it a great trope of fantasy adventures to throw off oppressive rulers and free the peasants? Imagine that a wave of revolution is sweeping through your setting - look at the reactions of the historical real world rulers to this tide of democracy. Awesome campaign material...

The middle class and the peasants are two completely different things, and AFAIK there wasn't any real change in the status of serfs during the Renaissance. The people who gained power during this time were the artisans, the merchants, and the nobility. So in a DnD renaissance, what I would expect to see is a shift in power from the King to the local wizarding guilds, adventuring organisations, those sorts of things.

Psyx
2010-08-16, 10:16 AM
Well, the way I see it is that you have to get a wizard to make your magic item, and pay her a load of gold to do so - but you could for the same price make the tools to make a bunch of mundane mechanical items to do the same job, and not have to rely on the wizard and her elitist cronies.


But to make a machine you have to have several qualified metallurgists make -relatively- fine-tolerance machines. D&D campaign worlds feature magic shops where the PCs can buy pretty much anything. Magic is generally more accessible than trained 'leading edge' mechanical engineers.
For clockwork and machines to dominate, there has to be a good reason why magic doesn't.


In 'typical' D&D campaigns, any decent wizard has an INT of over 20 and a university education; yet in most game worlds, nobody ever thinks of inventing 'new' stuff like printing presses; apart from gnomes. It doesn't require simply a brain, but a different way of looking at the world.




Many mechanised industries however were the result of simple steps of innovation.
The printing press you mentioned starts out as a woodcut press. It's not a big idea to think that you could cut a picture / text onto a piece of wood in reverse, then ink it onto lots of sheets of paper. Kids make potato prints all the time. From that stage, having individual letters that you can arrange into text isn't too big a leap.


Err...yeah it is. That's why it didn't happen until the Renaissance. You are using modern thinking and over-simplifying a little. 90% of stuff that surrounds us is 'obvious' to anyone with a mandatory 12 years of scientific-method based learning under their belts and the ability to read and write - like 99% of the population of the West. But that 90% of 'stuff' is utterly inconceivable to people of 400 years ago. The people who built the pyramids were the same as us, yet never invented the printing press. Many ancient civilisations loved their paperwork, but never did, either, despite the press being 'obvious'.People used pre-cut blocks for areas of writing for a hundred and hundred of years before that turned into a printing press.

Altair_the_Vexed
2010-08-16, 10:22 AM
But to make a machine you have to have several qualified metallurgists make -relatively- fine-tolerance machines. D&D campaign worlds feature magic shops where the PCs can buy pretty much anything. Magic is generally more accessible than trained 'leading edge' mechanical engineers.
Citation needed. :smallbiggrin:

Who is qualifying these metalurgists? Why are blacksmiths and clock makers not adequate?

The Magic Item Compendium specifically rules against the existance of magic items shops. I'll dig the quote out and edit in a page ref here, later.

The demographics in the DMG put the number of Experts in a given population way higher than the number of casters.

dsmiles
2010-08-16, 10:23 AM
@Psyx: You're generalizing with that "magic shop" thing. Some DMs don't have magic shops, thereby forcing alchemists, metallurgists and engineers to progress society. Just sayin'.

EDIT: Darn ninjas.

Aroka
2010-08-16, 10:41 AM
I also don't like the 'even kobalds are accepted in society, fair trials all round, modern morals' fluffyness that has crept into D&D. But by canon it seems to be present because it's 'more fun' than 'kobolds kill people so we lynch any we see, bandits get summarily executed, want to buy a slave?' reality of middle age morals.

Ha! That's part of why I love Glorantha. The heortlings keep slaves (thralls) taken from among their own people, have no concept of "rights" for anyone from outside of their culture (they can only be protected by the hospitality/guestright of a chief or king), outlaws are really outside the law (more accurately, outside kinship; kinstrife is the worst sin, so outlaws have to be severed from kin before they can be killed), and anything that's not human is a monster that's to be avoided, placated, or gloriously murdered.

And they're usually presented as the good guys.

(Actually, the Lunars aren't necessarily objectively worse, even though they make military use of gruesome monsters; they're overall more enlightened, more accepting, more egilitarian, etc., it's just that they're expansionist imperialists who will force you to join if you don't do it freely.)


You could actually have a lot of fun with something similar to the european conquest of the islamic states. The adventurers go to drive out what the presume is a "barbarian" tribe and find the records of an ancient civilization that describes various technologies. They take them back to a scholar and are maybe rewarded with a prototype to test out.

Or they could actually switch sides and champion the unjustly maligned culture. (Black swords made entirely out of poison optional. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erekose))

Psyx
2010-08-16, 11:11 AM
Who is qualifying these metalurgists? Why are blacksmiths and clock makers not adequate?

Nice try; thinking that the lack of an obvious formal exam system removes the concept of being qualified.

The people who they were apprenticed to under a city-based guild system, maybe? You don't get to be a blacksmith inside of five years hard work.

As for clock-makers: well that's the pinnacle of technology there. How much does it cost to hire nano-technologists or SAP consultants per day in our era?

So there are a lot of experts. How many are clock-makers. Not a lot of call for that in agrarian-based cultures, really. Seeing as only one in a few hundred people could ever dream of affording a clock, and all.




The Magic Item Compendium specifically rules against the existance of magic items shops. I'll dig the quote out and edit in a page ref here, later.

So in most high fantasy D&D campaigns you've ever seen, the party struggle to find places to sell or buy magic items? They most certainly don't seem to to me. And the published Greyhawk adventure book seems to have a flat percentage chance of any magic item the PCs want to be for sale in the mage's guild. That seems like a magic shop to me in real terms, if not literal ones. High fantasy means prevalent magic. It's cheaper and easier than technology until the GM comes up with a reason why it isn't in their game world.



but you could for the same price make the tools to make a bunch of mundane mechanical items to do the same job, and not have to rely on the wizard and her elitist cronies.

Why is the time of a highly trained professional working as part of a guild cartel somehow much cheaper than another's? If renaissance metropolises did anything well; it was collaborate to gouge customers in interesting ways to maintain profits for members.

Machinery isn't always cheaper than magic. Look at the price of a spyglass in the PH by way of comparison. 1000gp for two chunks of glass and a bronze tube.

dsmiles
2010-08-16, 11:32 AM
@Psyx: Again, you're assuming that most DMs use "high magic" in addition to high fantasy. This is not necessarily true. Admittedly, some do, but I wouldn't say that prevalent magic is necessarily a component of high fantasy.

As long as your stating things from actual DnD game worlds: Dragonlance is high fantasy, and look how rare wizards were. Look how rare clerical magic was. No magic shops.

Forgotten Realms is high fantasy, there is prevalent magic, but no magic shops.

Newhon is high fantasy, but extremely low magic. No magic shops.

Doug Lampert
2010-08-16, 11:33 AM
This is extremely debatable. While the typical academic account is Cortez and a few hundred men toppling an empire with the aid of disease, there is a lot more to it than that. The Aztec had the effective armor and weapons they had because they were constantly at war with somebody, when the Spanish came the Aztec empire included a lot of recently conquered territory, and many of the people in that recently conquered territory tossed in their lots with the Spanish. The Aztec would have had a far better chance without the disease factor even against the Spain they were dealing with, and certainly against the Spain of 1000 A.D., but the uprisings that came with would still have presented the same huge issue.

As has been mentioned, their Aztec weapons and armor weren't much worse than the Spanish weapons and armor, and the same would have been a legitimate thing to say if they'd met Europeans with the tech of 1,000 AD, or 500 AD, or 0 AD, or 500 BC, or 1000 BC, or 1500 BC. In all cases metal gear and horses would give the Europeans a marginal superiority, and it would be marginal. Loss of canons would hurt the Europeans some, but it wasn't canons that defeated the Aztecs.

Both the Inca's and the Aztecs got conquered by GROSSLY inferior Spanish forces because their political organizations would have been considered silly and vulnerable in 1000 BC in Europe.

If a plague wiping out half your population left an empire of many millions ripe for the plucking of any group of 300 or so adventurers with maybe modestly superior gear to come in and conquer then why didn't this happen to EVERYONE IN EUROPE during the black plague?

During their own plagues European contries continued to fight wars with thousands of troops on both sides, and relatively few large and powerful governments were overthrown by the first decent sized company to show up and attack them in that time.

For that matter, both the Incas and Aztecs had a plethora of locals willing to throw 300 men at them to get them overthrown if all it took was 300 armed thugs.

But most European nations kept functioning fine with their leader dead or in enemy hands and would keep fighting under those circumstances. Azteks and Incas had real problems with this, and combined this single point failure in their entire military structure with a willingness to expose the emperor to a risk of capture!

European monarchs often took the field, but capturing or killing one rarely had any really significant long term military effect. The next guy in line took over and continued the fight.

Everyone of any importance in a European nation would simply ASSUME that the strangers who showed up offering to off the local ruler and then leave with the loot were lying scum who'd backstab them in the blink of an eye if it was convienent. They're a self-admitted looting expedition planning to use treachery on the local ruler, why would anyone trust them? But to the potential rebels agains the Aztecs trusting exactly this sort of group seemed like a good idea.

And the rebels against the Aztecs weren't nobodies. They were tribal leaders nearly as powerful as Montezuma. They managed to put not one but two different armies of 20,000 men into the field to help the Spanish, and yet with the fights involving 40,000 of their guys and a few hundred Spaniards the Spanish ended up in charge. This didn't happen because the Spaniards were so powerful personally or were all level 20 fighter or because everyone was so awed by the canons the Spaniards had already lost almost all of.


It happened because the locals had no clue about the type of national organization they were dealing with and the fact that once Cortez won he'd be getting backing and reinforcement to make sure it stayed won.

When Europeans showed up all it took was a few hundred armed thugs to conquer and hold millions. The Europeans were just plain better at keeping their groups coherent (they weren't at all good at it by modern standards, just better than the Incas and Aztecs), just plain better at playing one local group off against another, just plain better at finding local allies, just plain better at recognizing the weak spots in local systems and exploiting them.

And they were better because their own political systems had largely outgrown God-Kings hundreds of years earlier (even the Diefied Roman emperors were using it as a deliberate tool of state, not as something anyone took all that seriously), and the system they had was one that could and did beat the crap out of God-Kings.

HamHam
2010-08-16, 12:03 PM
@Psyx: Again, you're assuming that most DMs use "high magic" in addition to high fantasy. This is not necessarily true. Admittedly, some do, but I wouldn't say that prevalent magic is necessarily a component of high fantasy.

As long as your stating things from actual DnD game worlds: Dragonlance is high fantasy, and look how rare wizards were. Look how rare clerical magic was. No magic shops.

Forgotten Realms is high fantasy, there is prevalent magic, but no magic shops.

Newhon is high fantasy, but extremely low magic. No magic shops.

Forgotten Realms still operates under the "if it's under the community gp limit, you can find it" rule that is standard practice according to the DMG. So even if there is no actual magic shop, there is enough stuff spread out amongst individual sellers to make it effectively the same thing. So there might be more of a magical ebay, where someone just acts as a middle man between buyer and seller, rather than a shop that keeps it's own inventory.

dsmiles
2010-08-16, 12:14 PM
I'm just sayin'. You never see Drizzt or Cadderly walk into a magic shop.

EDIT: Of course, I never saw Gord the Rogue (Greyhawk, written by Gygax himself) walk into a magic shop, either.

Thane of Fife
2010-08-16, 12:35 PM
Even in medieval times, defeated bandits weren't summarily executed by whoever defeated them, unless the people that defeated them were "the law"- they were generally taken to the nearest town for execution.

Actually, the terms "bandit" and "outlaw" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlaw) come from the fact that such men weren't protected by the law. I.e. Anyone could do anything to them and it was perfectly legal. So there was no need to bring them back to town, because they could just be killed wherever.

hamishspence
2010-08-16, 01:06 PM
Might depend on the period- sometimes, punishing bandits without the sanction of the law, was considered vigilantism:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigilante

Arbane
2010-08-16, 01:18 PM
Actually, the terms "bandit" and "outlaw" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlaw) come from the fact that such men weren't protected by the law. I.e. Anyone could do anything to them and it was perfectly legal. So there was no need to bring them back to town, because they could just be killed wherever.

Well, sure, but why not bring 'em back to town? Nothin' like a good public execution to bring people together, and the kiddies love 'em!



Newhon is high fantasy, but extremely low magic. No magic shops.

Well, there was _one_, but it was presented as being a Very Bad Thing. (The Bazaar of the Bizarre.)

hamishspence
2010-08-16, 01:26 PM
Well, sure, but why not bring 'em back to town? Nothin' like a good public execution to bring people together, and the kiddies love 'em!

I remember in one of the Robin Hood tales, Will Stutely was brought out for execution before the crowd, by the Sheriff, but Robin rescued him in the nick of time.

dsmiles
2010-08-16, 01:53 PM
Well, there was _one_, but it was presented as being a Very Bad Thing. (The Bazaar of the Bizarre.)

I wouldn't exactly call it a "magic shop." I mean, sure the "items" were enchanted, or more specifically the "junk" was enchanted to look like items, but it was all a trap to lure unsuspecting people into abject poverty.

Knaight
2010-08-16, 01:55 PM
Everyone of any importance in a European nation would simply ASSUME that the strangers who showed up offering to off the local ruler and then leave with the loot were lying scum who'd backstab them in the blink of an eye if it was convienent. They're a self-admitted looting expedition planning to use treachery on the local ruler, why would anyone trust them? But to the potential rebels agains the Aztecs trusting exactly this sort of group seemed like a good idea.

And the rebels against the Aztecs weren't nobodies. They were tribal leaders nearly as powerful as Montezuma. They managed to put not one but two different armies of 20,000 men into the field to help the Spanish, and yet with the fights involving 40,000 of their guys and a few hundred Spaniards the Spanish ended up in charge. This didn't happen because the Spaniards were so powerful personally or were all level 20 fighter or because everyone was so awed by the canons the Spaniards had already lost almost all of.

And they were better because their own political systems had largely outgrown God-Kings hundreds of years earlier (even the Diefied Roman emperors were using it as a deliberate tool of state, not as something anyone took all that seriously), and the system they had was one that could and did beat the crap out of God-Kings.

My point exactly. The european technology was largely irrelevant and the Aztec were essentially toppled by rebellion. All the europeans did was stir that up, which had very little to do with technology, while this leaves disease as a very large issue (due to a lack of redundancy in the Aztec command structure) it ultimately comes down to the Aztec having grown too quickly and not holding onto conquered territory very well.

hamishspence
2010-08-16, 01:56 PM
In the splatbook Silver Marches, there is a shop that sells scrolls, potions, and the like. It's run by an evil-aligned tomb raider.

The Red Wizards of Thay effectively have magic shops in cities across the continent, in their enclaves.

Lord Vampyre
2010-08-16, 02:25 PM
Most campaigns that I've played in we're closer to the european renaissance than to the middle ages. When magic is abundant, why would anyone want to do things the hard way (where obeying the laws of physics is doing it the hard way)? Sure not everyone can cast magic, but in most dnd games anyone smart enough to be a scientist would be able to cast magic. Unless they have some aversion to magic, this tends to dictate which direction they're research is going to take.


The Renaissance happened because of the Crusades combined with the Black Plague; as in Europe gone out and took everything in the Islamic Empire by force where all the old works and such were preserved, THEN a friggin plague that chopped Europe's population in half provided everyone opportunity to start fresh.

This is fairly true. It can be seen in human history that humans rarely make ground breaking advancements without some level of conflict or strife. Most of our technology is based on being able to kill one another more efficiently.

Machine guns were relatively new inventions during WWI, then you move into WWII and suddenly we're splitting the atom. Talk about a leap of faith or insanity.

Ormur
2010-08-16, 05:35 PM
for various reasons of Europe: why not all of them? History is rarely clean and simple and does not occur in a vacuum, the course things take often have dozens of reasons and factors narrowing the down the possibilities of which direction it goes.

I never said you had to pick one, most of the reasons I mentions can work with each other and are often complimentary. Some may be more accurate or more important than others and it doesn't mean that only this mix of causes triggers a take-of. History is much too complex to be reduced to a few simple explanations.


And they were better because their own political systems had largely outgrown God-Kings hundreds of years earlier (even the Diefied Roman emperors were using it as a deliberate tool of state, not as something anyone took all that seriously), and the system they had was one that could and did beat the crap out of God-Kings.

That may not be technology but advanced political systems are a part of the advantages theories like Jared Diamond's said Eurasian had over Americans because of geography. Greater population density and a longer history of civilization made advances like writing and a bureaucracy possible and the Conquistadores benefited from that. The Spanish empire was capable of sending expeditions to and exploiting a continent separated from it by thousands of kilometres of ocean.


This is fairly true. It can be seen in human history that humans rarely make ground breaking advancements without some level of conflict or strife. Most of our technology is based on being able to kill one another more efficiently.

Machine guns were relatively new inventions during WWI, then you move into WWII and suddenly we're splitting the atom. Talk about a leap of faith or insanity.

Of course the atom wasn't split for military purposes. Most of the advances in physic in the late 19th and early 20th century were made for civilian purposes, in universities and corporate laboratories. It was an incredibly fertile period for physics but Europe had one of it's longest period of peace until the First World War and I'm not sure that did so much to spur innovation in theoretical physics.

It's just that in the second world war the field had advanced enough that scientists, politicians and military men could see the military applications. World War II was such a total war that every possible advantage was exploited, including something so far fetched as nuclear fission. At least by the allies, the Germans authorities were actually much worse at recognizing such advantages.

If it hadn't been for the war theoretical physics might have progressed just fine but it might not have been applied to things like electronics, power generation and destruction as soon. It would also probably have been on a smaller scale than the post-war big science projects like CERN or NASA.

Lycan 01
2010-08-16, 05:57 PM
So, I'm tossing around a bunch of ideas, ranging from settings to missions...

The Spanish Inquisition took place during the Renaissance, which lasted until the 1600's unless I'm mistaken. In the early 1500's, my progenerator was a Count exiled from Spain by the Inquisition. I never found out the charges, but he fled to Germany and set up a new identity. So, I'm thinking that Witch Hunts and Inquisitions may prove an interesting backdrop for some Renaissance Era missions. Magic is already uncommon and sometimes feared in my settings, so fastforward a few hundred years and we may have a situation not unlike Dragon Age, where unlicensed magic users are feared and hunted. This opens up plenty of options and opportunities for the players, who may try to help people escape the Inquisitions clutches, or instead volunteer their services as Witch Hunters.

I want the search of knowledge and power to also play a role in the game. Perhaps scientists on the verge of a breakthrough need a special item, like a Druid researching botany and medicine needs a rare flower from a local mountain. Or perhaps an artist desires a model to study, such as the famous painter who needs a dragon's heart for his next project. And then of course there's exploration, privateering, and other swashbuckling adventures. Oh, and political intrigue. I'd say some aristocratic cloak-and-dagger stuff would fit in quite nicely...

Caewil
2010-08-17, 06:47 AM
I don't think the divide and conquer plus superior political organization explanation of why the Spanish were winning covers Pizzaro. The Europeans were better at warfare, had vastly superior weapons and armor (go hit a metal cuirass with a club, see what happens) and had horses. Being able to completely outmaneouver and completely overrun your enemy is a huge advantage when they don't have dense pike formations or good ranged capabilities.

Notably, the only natives to remain independent into the late 1800s were those who had embraced european weaponry and horses.

Furthermore, why wouldn't civilizations such as the Aztecs or Incas be trusting? All they ever met initially were small groups of Spainards, they couldn't read or write, and had no idea they these were merely the spearhead of a much nation. It wasn't simply a matter of superior political organization due to getting rid of god-kings. No written language means all authority is based on tradition, force or persuasion, restricting them to such primitive forms of political organization by necessity.

I will also point out that writing was only independently invented a few times. Most ancient scripts were inspired by the existence of others. It is difficult for someone brought up in a literate culture to understand how difficult an invention it was.

Psyx
2010-08-17, 08:28 AM
...So, I'm thinking that Witch Hunts and Inquisitions may prove an interesting backdrop for some Renaissance Era missions. Magic is already uncommon and sometimes feared in my settings, so fastforward a few hundred years and we may have a situation not unlike Dragon Age, where unlicensed magic users are feared and hunted. This opens up plenty of options and opportunities for the players, who may try to help people escape the Inquisitions clutches, or instead volunteer their services as Witch Hunters...


I'm thinking that this is much better suited to 2nd edition Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. An excellent system. Better than 3.5...




Forgotten Realms is high fantasy, there is prevalent magic, but no magic shops.

PCs never have much of an issue buying or selling most magic items. Perhaps 'magic items as part of the economy' would be a better phrase, because you can sure as heck buy pretty much anything that you need.

I've also lost count of the number of villages/towns mentioned in published adventures which states 'the village shop has any magic items worth under blah gp for sale. Items of blah value can be bought from a nearby town'. If that's not a shop that sells magic, I'm not sure what is.

Basically: You're being a little pedantic over the use of the word 'shop'. We all know that most generic D&D campaigns are pretty tooled to the hilt with magic items. It's even been stated in the rules that game balance somewhat relies on the fact.

Aroka
2010-08-17, 08:46 AM
Forgotten Realms is high fantasy, there is prevalent magic, but no magic shops.

Aurora's, plus the Red Wizard enclaves you find at almost any large city. Magic shops.

hamishspence
2010-08-17, 08:49 AM
Aurora's, plus the Red Wizard enclaves you find at almost any large city. Magic shops.

Yup- I mentioned that shortly afterward.


In the splatbook Silver Marches, there is a shop that sells scrolls, potions, and the like. It's run by an evil-aligned tomb raider.

The Red Wizards of Thay effectively have magic shops in cities across the continent, in their enclaves.

Aroka
2010-08-17, 08:57 AM
Suddenly I'm not that sure about Aurora's. It's a magical shop - you've got the catalogue at an outlet, and your order is teleported from a central location or somesuch - but what did they sell, exactly? My impression of their selling magic items might come from Gateway to the Savage Frontier and Treasures of the Savage Frontier. Did the AD&D 2nd ed. FR book mention Aurora's had some sort of "secret" catalogue for special clients that included rare and magical items? (And this was back in AD&D where magical items didn't have prices attached.)

dsmiles
2010-08-17, 09:01 AM
Suddenly I'm not that sure about Aurora's. It's a magical shop - you've got the catalogue at an outlet, and your order is teleported from a central location or somesuch - but what did they sell, exactly? My impression of their selling magic items might come from Gateway to the Savage Frontier and Treasures of the Savage Frontier. Did the AD&D 2nd ed. FR book mention Aurora's had some sort of "secret" catalogue for special clients that included rare and magical items? (And this was back in AD&D where magical items didn't have prices attached.)

I don't think it did, but they did sell Catoblepas Death Cheese. :smallbiggrin:

Bharg
2010-08-17, 11:11 AM
For making a fine Renaissance you need at first a fine ancient world to be reborn.
Then give people muskets. They always suggest some modernity and could pack a punch turning normal guards into more troublesome guards.

Other things that are Renaissance-ish:
-WITCH HUNTS, yay!
-Few SCIENTISTS while normal people are still dumb and stink!

Aroka
2010-08-17, 12:09 PM
-WITCH HUNTS, yay!

This (and the much more common burning of heretics) requires pretty specific mythology, though. Why would a D&D world's population suddenly start burning witches? Who are these witches specifically, anyway? If magic isn't believed to be a power granted by a malevolent enemy of the local religion (and it's a pretty rare setting where it is), or somehow inherently dangerous, there's no reason for this. Hunting heretics requires a religious power struggle where the dominant side, at least, is cruel and unscrupulous or fanatical.


-Few SCIENTISTS while normal people are still dumb and stink!

The scientific method came about in the late renaissance. Your basic renaissance medicine is pretty much non-empirical tonics or elixirs, little better than potions (that mostly don't work, or work mostly by chance). Chirurgery wasn't even a thing physicians (legitimate, educated healers) did - it was something barbers ("craftsmen" rather than "scholars") did.

hamishspence
2010-08-17, 12:18 PM
This (and the much more common burning of heretics) requires pretty specific mythology, though. Why would a D&D world's population suddenly start burning witches? Who are these witches specifically, anyway? If magic isn't believed to be a power granted by a malevolent enemy of the local religion (and it's a pretty rare setting where it is), or somehow inherently dangerous, there's no reason for this. Hunting heretics requires a religious power struggle where the dominant side, at least, is cruel and unscrupulous or fanatical.

In Faerun, House Karanok, founders of the cult of Entropy (actually Tiamat in disguise) persecute arcane casters in general, in the city of Luthcheq.

In Tome of Magic, it was Binders that the clergies in general, good and evil, considered too dangerous to be permitted.

The Tome of Magic Binders might make good "witches" for a general witch hunt.

Psyx
2010-08-17, 12:23 PM
"This (and the much more common burning of heretics) requires pretty specific mythology, though. Why would a D&D world's population suddenly start burning witches? "


You need a nice big empire-wide disaster or war of epic proportions and arcane magic squarely to blame for it. cf The Butlerian Jihad in the Dune universe doing away with computers.

Then everyone hates mages, burns them, and desperately turns to other solutions in order to do the things that magic used to.

hamishspence
2010-08-17, 12:25 PM
I wouldn't be surprised if mages were decidedly unpopular immediately after the death of Mystryl.

During the Time of Troubles, there was also something of an anti-mage sentiment.

Nothing approaching a world-wide witch hunt though.

Bharg
2010-08-17, 12:41 PM
The other Renaissance-ish things i mentioned are hard to integrate into normal D&D settings, yep, that's why I mentioned them seperately. I just forgot to point it out.

I meant a few SCIENTISTS over the whole continent. There methods don't have to be very scientific, though (like catapulting a chicken or trying to cross breed cows and cabbages).

The problem about Renaissance is probably that you can't really feel changes. Everything is still pretty medieval and there are a lot of movements that suggest things are actually gettting worse.

Aroka
2010-08-17, 12:42 PM
During the Time of Troubles, there was also something of an anti-mage sentiment.

Makes sense, with the wild magic areas. An anti-Helm sentiment would make more sense, though. Blaming the mages is kind of blaming the victim. (Anyway, don't wild magic areas affect clerics, too?)

dsmiles
2010-08-17, 12:42 PM
trying to cross breed cows and cabbages

What's wrong with breeding cowbbages? :smalltongue:

Bharg
2010-08-17, 01:25 PM
What's wrong with breeding cowbbages? :smalltongue:

The idea is great actually, but I don't think it would work.

Thing is there was and always will be an anti mage sentiment. They are gifted and powerful? They do stuff you can't? They lost their powers? KILL 'EM ALL!

Caustic Soda
2010-08-17, 01:51 PM
Let's have an Inqusition /paraphrase


If you include Inquisitors you should probably consider if you want it to be more like the Spanish or Roman Inquisition. Ie. is your inquisition loyal to a state or church which straddles multiple states?

As I understand it the Spanish Inquisition persecuted not just heretics and moriscos but also other 'enemies of the state'. A sort of renaissance secret police.

IRL a lot more people were condemned at secular witch hunts than at Inquisition trials. Partially because the (Roman) Inquisition demanded actual evidence and not just witness accounts, and partially because witch hunts were widespread in Protestant areas, which obviously didn't have the Inquisition.

If you have anything resembling the Catholic/Protestant split, you may want to factor that in.

edit: I was trying to make it clear that the Spanish Inquisition was loyal to the the King of Spain, who was the head of government. Apparentlytihs was pretty unclear. Apologies.

Bharg
2010-08-17, 02:02 PM
AFAIK the spanish inquisition sided with the king not the vatican.

Aroka
2010-08-17, 03:45 PM
AFAIK the spanish inquisition sided with the king not the vatican.

Indeed, wasn't the point of the Spanish Inquisition pretty much to take lands and property from wealthy enemies and give it to the Church and/or King?

That was done during the English Reformation too, naturally.

Xuc Xac
2010-08-18, 02:35 AM
I think it'd be a pain in the rump for long-lived races unless there are rules for retraining in effect. "Hahaha, you dumped feats into swordplay? That's so dumb, muskets are where it's at now!"

There are IT professionals working right now who got there first degrees in "punch-card computing". As long as you keep up with the latest developments in your field, you won't become obsolete. Maybe you learned "Rapid Reload" on a crossbow and everyone today is using muskets but if you've been paying attention then you also now have a musket (which you reload rather quickly). You may have learned "Quickdraw" back when people were dueling with blades but if you kept your edge then you can still "skin a smokewagon" with the youngsters.


However even ongoing revolutionary change might not be recognized by the short lived and often ignorant people living through it. People might still think everything was better in some mythological past and either interpret new things as evidence that everything is getting worse or that they're rediscovering something from back then.

In the real Renaissance, people often didn't realize that things were improving. Most people were illiterate and the literate people didn't really spend much time reading unbiased histories. They usually thought that things were getting worse, not more advanced. If you look at paintings that were made in the Renaissance but depict the distance past, you'll see that they thought the past looked like their present. This is why there are so many paintings of the Trojan war where people are wearing the latest Italian steel full plate armor instead of a bronze cuirass. This is also why we think of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table as being clad in full plate and wielding long swords, even though they lived in the 6th century when the state of the art in chivalry was a chain hauberk. Durendal, the sword of Roland, was made of unbreakable steel... even though it was supposedly forged and used by famous heroes way back in the bronze age.

If you want to show progress in a D&D game, just make sure that all of the antique magic items uncovered in dungeons and old tombs are older styles. You won't find magical two-handed swords and full plate in a tomb that's been sealed for 500 years, but that ancient champion may have been buried with a cool shortsword and shield. Try that and see how long it takes before your players ask why they can't find a suit of plate armor that's older than their grandfather or why they never find any ancient blades bigger than shortswords. You could even apply the same to magic. Maybe the current generation of wizards was the first to enchant weapons and armor with +5 enhancements. The famous legendary sword of the ancient emperor was actually just a +2 shortsword that got a big reputation because everything else at the time was a +1. Swords today are better but they don't have legends about their awesomeness and the air of mystery that comes with great age, so everyone assumes it must have been a +5 greatsword.

Bharg
2010-08-18, 06:39 AM
I also like the idea of forerunner technology or knowledge assuming that the stuff that existed in that ancient world was actually more advanced.
Some invasion of something terrible (like Huns) coul be the reason for the loss of all that stuff.


Talking about long lived races... I don't think there is a problem. As we all know they advance much more slowly than we reckless short lived humans and if there is some general revolution and development they will trade and adapt...