Anachronistic Inventions in a Medieval Fantasy Setting

[Mr. Mask]

:vaarsuvius: No, I understand, I'm simply saying that the architectural motifs found here in the city of Cliffport are inconsistent with the presumed medieval time period.
:durkon: It be magic.
:vaarsuvius: Yes, fine, I grasp the premise that any sufficiently advanced—and in particular, reliable—magic would be indistinguishable from technology, I merely find the implementation here haphazard at best.
:durkon: Meh. It could be worse, ye know.
:vaarsuvius: Oh?
:durkon: They could have magic trains.
:vaarsuvius: Point taken.


It's popular to involve some anachronistic technologies in a setting. Sometimes it's extreme (magic trains in a medieval setting), and sometimes it's subtle (certain technologies appearing a few years early). Often, the anachronistic technology is made rare to not disrupt the setting (other times that anachronism is integral to the setting). You also get cases of dated technologies receiving lengthened relevance, particularly swords and bows.


How do you like to handle this with your settings?

[Kiero]

What about forgotten technologies making a re-appearance earlier than was historical? For example there's a range of things which appeared in antiquity for which the expertise and necessary economic development was lost, and wasn't recovered until the 18th or 19th century. Like concrete, plumbing, steam power and logistics.

[SimonMoon6]

Don't forget the Apparatus of Kwalish.

Basically, a giant robot you get to ride around inside. Too bad it looks like a lobster.

[Zombimode]

How do you like to handle this with your settings?

What does "anachronism" mean in the context of a fantasy setting?

[Jay R]

I try to avoid anachronisms as much as possible. In my worlds, physical laws don't work the way you would think, and higher level machines cannot be made.

“It was all very well going on about pure logic and how the universe was ruled by logic and the harmony of numbers, but the plain fact of the matter was that the Disc was manifestly traversing space on the back of a giant turtle and the gods had a habit of going round to atheists' houses and smashing their windows.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic

---------

I was in a game recently in which the DM had no problem with anachronisms, and my character had successfully refined petroleum and developed gun powder, and had just built a steamship.

[draken50]

For me, it really depends on the feel for the setting.

I'm not a big fan of games where swords and guns are of equal power. I'm more okay with it when there's some kind of technomancy being designed which repels smaller objects, or faster objects better than slower. It would need to be the norm though for me to expect to see swords and bows around.

That being said, anachronistic elements I think can really add to a game. Alleviating hassle in some cases, or just allowing different sorts of flavor. Often my main rule is that the changes should be universal. I don't like settings where the Magicland, city of wonders and magic borne technology, is next door to Feudal Mclordy's Dysentery Dynasty. I've always felt the knowledge/technology tends to spread. There are obvious exceptions one can create, but I've felt it should be contrasted with the higher technological level of your "normal" societies.

I try to explain that things may have developed differently and possibly come up with histories for those kinds of things. For me the danger is when someone wants to use their own knowledge of technology to re-purpose that which is already present. Then as the GM it can be harder to maintain a good balance while also not removing player agency.

[Knaight]

It depends on the setting. I've made settings where I get very nitpicky about things like which plow designs have been invented yet, and I've made settings where the technological basis is heavily anachronistic in some way, often because of magic or geographic details (e.g. a setting that was 19th century in a lot of ways, almost modern in materials science, but where the pinnacle of nautical development was the trimaran). Heck I've made a setting where the technology was generally pretty 9th century, other than the crashed spaceship that was fairly central to the campaign, the satellites that said ship put in orbit, and the various other ships associated with it, such as the ones that shot it down and made it crash on the planet in the first place.

[Spiryt]

What does "anachronism" mean in the context of a fantasy setting?

Pretty much my thought.

It can get very tricky.

Obviously huge amount of technologies and ideas are obviously connected and cannot exist without another things.

But plenty of things can easily occur 'technically' and yet they are not there, or looks completely different than in some 'similar' culture.


Like concrete, plumbing, steam power and logistics.

Plumbing, or pipes, water supply etc. in general was heavily used in medieval and renaissance towns.

Sometimes using remaining Roman systems, sometimes not.

[Frozen_Feet]

What does "anachronism" mean in the context of a fantasy setting?

This was my first question as well.

Technological development is never purely progressive and there are multiple different orders in which things can be invented. It's the same principle as divergent and convergent evolution in biology. When you are making up a world you can decide the lineages and justifications of invidual technologies to have just the things you want, without limiting you to any one real world historical period. I mean, you're probably not limiting yourself to just real world animals either.

Me, I've given up on trying to use words like "medieval" to describe my settings. These days, I try to detail the technologies themselves and let my players decide which period it feels like. The game system I use is strangely fond of placing adventures in the early modern period, but there it makes sense because they take place on Earth, during the actual early modern period.

I also mix sci-fi concepts heavily with my fantasy. And by this, I don't mean (just) aliens from outer space. It means things like actual scientific explanations for why a sword is that durable, or why that potion heals wounds or that herb causes infertility. Because "it's magic" is just uninformative and lazy compared to "it's made of an alloy of steel, vanadium and chromium" or "the plantago extract serves as antibiote and antitoxin" or "that yams contains high levels of progestrone, causing a female's body to think it's pregnant".

My attitude also means I'm fairly allowing of my players trying to change the technology level of my settings... provided they can come up with a practical and scientifically plausible way for their characters to achieve that. I do know how to build a cannon out of bamboo, sinew, water and plant oil, but I won't fill in the details for them, and Knowledge checks and similar die-rolls only apply to things that already exist in the setting. If they want their characters to be a Renessaince Men, they better prepare for acting it out. Some of them have actually surprised me by doing the research between sessions.

[(Un)Inspired]

I need at least semi-modern sewage systems and lax social roles in games I play in. I want to play Dungeons and Dragons not Poop and Poverty.

When I play table top games I to indulge in a beautiful fantasy. The middle ages were pretty disgusting and I don't want to imagine my heroic characters trudging to the local tavern through a storm of human and animal fecal matter.

Likewise adventurers can't really exist in a world were everyone is barely able to survive through subsistence farming. I need to play in a world with economies that can accommodate adventuring as an occupation.

[nedz]

I find the term Professional Adventurer to be anachronistic in most of my settings — I prefer characters to have some background and if they are travelling it's usually for a reason.

I'm also aware of Arther C Clarkes line about High Tech and Magic — you just need a different method for your objective. I did once create wheeled Golems to make a train system — Iron Golem Locomotives — it was a Dwarf thing.

[Frozen_Feet]

"Professional Adventurer" only really means a person moves from place to place as a living. Usually a way to obfuscate the fact that a person is:

If serving the law: a detective, an inquisitor, a travelling merchant, a professional soldier, a privateer, an explorer etc.

If not serving the law: a fugitive, a stalker, a smuggler, a mercenary, a pirate, an invader etc.

The way some settings go to lenghts to define "adventuring" into anything specific is both silly and pointless. No world has ever had a shortage of loons who go from place to place and cause trouble. If you can't think of a single reason why your character is running loose save for "genre convention", you're not really trying.

[nedz]

Yes exactly, I just find the term Adventurer a bit of a cliché — as well as genre savvy, which is Anachronistic of itself.

[Coidzor]

It's popular to involve some anachronistic technologies in a setting. Sometimes it's extreme (magic trains in a medieval setting), and sometimes it's subtle (certain technologies appearing a few years early). Often, the anachronistic technology is made rare to not disrupt the setting (other times that anachronism is integral to the setting). You also get cases of dated technologies receiving lengthened relevance, particularly swords and bows.

How do you like to handle this with your settings?

Evidence that the world isn't quite in Medeival Stasis so much as it has at least reached its the Early Modern period-equivalent and then collapsed into another set of Dark Ages? And with Fantasy worlds there's all kinds of ways of collapsing that are more interesting and varied than the black death.

Full Plate is from after the Medieval period, IIRC, so even in the armor it's this hodgepodge of Viking Age and Early Modern and several places inbetween.

I think Splint mail may be something from the Persia/Iran of Antiquity, actually. :smallconfused: Those... Clibanarii, or whatever they were called.

[Jay R]

I find the term Professional Adventurer to be anachronistic in most of my settings — I prefer characters to have some background and if they are travelling it's usually for a reason.

That's the problem with almost any serial - from comic books to movie franchises to TV shows to D&D campaigns. The stories are events that would only happen to a few people, and only once in their lives. Frodo goes to Valinor after the war. Jack stops killing giants and marries the princess. Belle breaks the curse and marries the prince. Sky Masterson settles down with Miss Sarah Brown. All the reindeer now love Rudolph. Jim is free, so he and Huck can return to St. Petersburg, Missouri.

But if there is enough money to be made, the musketeers will gather back together, or the Enterprise will seek out still more new life and new civilizations, or James Bond will stop another attempt to take over the world, or the Spencers will keep fighting the Cassadines, or more people will commit crimes in Gotham City and Metropolis.

[Seriously - would you try to rob a bank in Metropolis? Why are people that stupid?]

Similarly, if there is enough fun to be had, then the D&D party will keep adventuring.

[This is without a doubt the first thing I've ever written that refers to Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, The Three Musketeers, Superman, Batman, Huckleberry Finn, James Bond, Jack the Giant Killer, Beauty and the Beast, Guys and Dolls, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Dungeons and Dragons, and General Hospital.]

[Leviting]

Don't forget the Apparatus of Kwalish.

Basically, a giant robot you get to ride around inside. Too bad it looks like a lobster.

Too bad? Why wouldn't you want to ride around in a giant lobster? (aside from the whole "no labels" thing)

[russdm]

Too bad? Why wouldn't you want to ride around in a giant lobster? (aside from the whole "no labels" thing)

Or just make it a screen that lights up black on a black background to show you that it has done it. And then also make every single button and everything else in the interior black...

Cookie if you get the reference.

On Topic: I see issues only with have high magic and all of its uses next to standard dark ages land of As someone earlier put it, "McLordy Land". If you are using high magic, then don't put it next to Mclordy land with its Dysentry and poor health. It makes no sense, especially with all of that clerical power to employ healing and purifying food what have you.

I can see Mclordy land working by a low magic area.

[Oneris]

For my rune-based system of magic, I implemented the phenomena of Rune Density Warping and Rune Degradation to combat people who think they can make a single rune that triggers thousands of sub-runes that trigger millions of sub-sub runes to create a magical computer.

Too many runes placed in a single array will start to behave erratically as they start to interfere with each other, but mana channeled between runes placed too far apart will never make it in time before the pathway erodes.

[Incanur]

I've no inherent opposition to mixing elements from different historical human cultures. In fantasy, there's no particular reason for technological and social developments to match our world. However, throwing together elements haphazardly can result in societies that make little sense and/or don't mesh aesthetically. If you want magic trains, fine, but think about what that would mean in an otherwise stereotypical medieval fantasy.

[JusticeZero]

People drastically underestimate the difficulty of the inventions they want to import. They want to build awesome inventions that wouldn't work, and in my case get shot down because the physics are different and I put a Tippy spin on E6 anyways.

[Lord Raziere]

On Topic: I see issues only with have high magic and all of its uses next to standard dark ages land of As someone earlier put it, "McLordy Land". If you are using high magic, then don't put it next to Mclordy land with its Dysentry and poor health. It makes no sense, especially with all of that clerical power to employ healing and purifying food what have you.

I can see Mclordy land working by a low magic area.

Unless your going for magic-punk, in which case demonstrating how the higher social classes use magic to oppress rather than help the lower ones is the entire point.

[Incanur]

Personally I'm fond of including elements from the 18th and 19th centuries like pianos, repeating airguns, an hot air balloons. Many D&D setting do this sort of thing. Even J. R. R. Tolkien did it (http://mathom.hubpages.com/hub/Anachronisms-in-The-Hobbit-and-Lord-of-the-Rings)!

[VoxRationis]

While "anachronism" means nothing in a fictional setting (fantasy or not), I find that the fantasy stories, myths, and legends that the genre attempts to emulate stem from particular historical eras in an integral and inextricable way, and that maintaining the tone of the setting therefore requires at least a basic level of historical fidelity. To have, say, plate mail in a setting intended to mimic the Dark Ages ruins immersion. This is particularly true in that D&D, unlike many media, lacks a convenient way to visually immerse the party (I could make drawings, but I'm not a very evocative artist, being more capable of schematics than anything else).

[Coidzor]

It depends on the setting. I've made settings where I get very nitpicky about things like which plow designs have been invented yet, and I've made settings where the technological basis is heavily anachronistic in some way, often because of magic or geographic details (e.g. a setting that was 19th century in a lot of ways, almost modern in materials science, but where the pinnacle of nautical development was the trimaran). Heck I've made a setting where the technology was generally pretty 9th century, other than the crashed spaceship that was fairly central to the campaign, the satellites that said ship put in orbit, and the various other ships associated with it, such as the ones that shot it down and made it crash on the planet in the first place.

Ahh, but could you buy a space ship from the local blacksmith and go fight TIE Fighters? :smallamused:


Yes exactly, I just find the term Adventurer a bit of a cliché — as well as genre savvy, which is Anachronistic of itself.

Can something at the genre convention level actually be anachronistic in the systems and settings where it is used? :smallconfused:

Shadowrunners aren't exactly anachronistic in Shadowrun, after all, and they're professional adventurers intrinsic to the setting.

[Knaight]

I need at least semi-modern sewage systems and lax social roles in games I play in. I want to play Dungeons and Dragons not Poop and Poverty.

When I play table top games I to indulge in a beautiful fantasy. The middle ages were pretty disgusting and I don't want to imagine my heroic characters trudging to the local tavern through a storm of human and animal fecal matter
The middle ages get exaggerated here, in how bad they are. There were some pretty sophisticated sewage systems in a lot of cities, but medieval London (which was about the worst big city sanitation-wise) gets remembered. There was a decent merchant class, commoners could rise high, etc. in lots of places, but the serfs get played up. So on and so forth.

[(Un)Inspired]

The middle ages get exaggerated here, in how bad they are. There were some pretty sophisticated sewage systems in a lot of cities, but medieval London (which was about the worst big city sanitation-wise) gets remembered. There was a decent merchant class, commoners could rise high, etc. in lots of places, but the serfs get played up. So on and so forth.

I am aware that much of the unhygienic horror of the Middle Ages was exaggerated by later writers.

That being said, any amount of raw sewage on the streets in more raw sewage than I want to deal with. I guess I have a zero tolerance policy for free range excrement. So while Europe might not have been a constant liquid vortex of human and animal waste, it was still far from the world I want to have my fantasies in.

Also we may have different definitions of high when you say "commoners could rise high".

Insofar as my fantasy games go, I like the extremely modern idea of an American dream style society were even a pauper can become a successful.

[Coidzor]

That being said, any amount of raw sewage on the streets in more raw sewage than I want to deal with. I guess I have a zero tolerance policy for free range excrement. So while Europe might not have been a constant liquid vortex of human and animal waste, it was still far from the world I want to have my fantasies in.

I must admit I'd look askance at any GM who was obsessed with telling us how much feces was in the general vicinity. :smallconfused: A rather... curious priority, that.

[(Un)Inspired]

I must admit I'd look askance at any GM who was obsessed with telling us how much feces was in the general vicinity. :smallconfused: A rather... curious priority, that.

Yes I concur. I guess I'm saying that most games are set in world of anachronistic cleanliness and that's the way I like it.

Most DMs I've had describe what a village looks like as the noble adventurers ride through it. I'm thankful that they don't include the less savory details of Middle Ages life.

[Ravens_cry]

Honestly, if you had exactly the same technology as the real world at a particular point it would, if anything, be downright weirder than a few 'anachronisms'. Technology builds on technology, but what gets adopted an when can depend on strange factors. China had movable type centuries before Europe, but the languages made it unwieldy compared to the much more limited symbol set of European languages. Even though it was 'better', it still wasn't good enough of an improvement to make its widespread adoption worthwhile. What I am saying is, a little 'anachronism' can add some colour and flavour if the implications are explored.

[nedz]

That's the problem with almost any serial - from comic books to movie franchises to TV shows to D&D campaigns. The stories are events that would only happen to a few people, and only once in their lives. Frodo goes to Valinor after the war. Jack stops killing giants and marries the princess. Belle breaks the curse and marries the prince. Sky Masterson settles down with Miss Sarah Brown. All the reindeer now love Rudolph. Jim is free, so he and Huck can return to St. Petersburg, Missouri.

But if there is enough money to be made, the musketeers will gather back together, or the Enterprise will seek out still more new life and new civilizations, or James Bond will stop another attempt to take over the world, or the Spencers will keep fighting the Cassadines, or more people will commit crimes in Gotham City and Metropolis.

[Seriously - would you try to rob a bank in Metropolis? Why are people that stupid?]

Similarly, if there is enough fun to be had, then the D&D party will keep adventuring.

Players do get attached to their characters and hopefully the setting. Really though — you should just start a new game.


Can something at the genre convention level actually be anachronistic in the systems and settings where it is used? :smallconfused:

Shadowrunners aren't exactly anachronistic in Shadowrun, after all, and they're professional adventurers intrinsic to the setting.

It depends whether it breaks the fourth wall or not. OK, we expect this in Paranoia, but we expect that for a reason.

[Frozen_Feet]

Honestly, if you had exactly the same technology as the real world at a particular point it would, if anything, be downright weirder than a few 'anachronisms'. Technology builds on technology, but what gets adopted an when can depend on strange factors. China had movable type centuries before Europe, but the languages made it unwieldy compared to the much more limited symbol set of European languages. Even though it was 'better', it still wasn't good enough of an improvement to make its widespread adoption worthwhile. What I am saying is, a little 'anachronism' can add some colour and flavour if the implications are explored.

Similarly, China had assembly-line crossbows and standardized arrowheads around 0 bc. I don't remember when paper and blackpoweder were invented there, but in the time when Europe was going through "middle-ages", China was basically this super-advanced sci-fi-culture from their point-of-view.

[Ravens_cry]

Similarly, China had assembly-line crossbows and standardized arrowheads around 0 bc. I don't remember when paper and blackpoweder were invented there, but in the time when Europe was going through "middle-ages", China was basically this super-advanced sci-fi-culture from their point-of-view.
And porcelain, don't forget porcelain.
It's also worth noting how said countries used said technology once they had them, particularly gunpowder. Since human nature is the same the world over, that's more a question of local resources and cultural quirks, which, again, shows how different conditions can foster differences in cultural development.

[Jay R]

Yes I concur. I guess I'm saying that most games are set in world of anachronistic cleanliness and that's the way I like it.

I think it would be more accurate to say that in most games, what's in the streets is never defined.

The forest is neither oaks nor firs unless the DM chooses to define it. And for the same reason, the contents of the streets remain undefined unless the DM chooses to define it.

We are strolling through Schrödinger's waste.

[Slipperychicken]

We are strolling through Schrödinger's waste.

Now I really want to make a post-apocalyptic, radioactive, randomly-generated, randomly-populated desert somehow caused by the uncertainty principle and called Schrodinger's Wastes.

[Knaight]

Also we may have different definitions of high when you say "commoners could rise high".

Even in agriculture, there were plenty of reasonably successful peasants with sizable houses, multiple people working under them, and money for luxuries. In the trades there were well paid experts, working in masonry or armoring or engineering or architecture, with apprentices under them, with influence on city politics, so on and so forth. Then there was the merchant class and the banking class, in which commoners obtained obscene amounts of wealth that rivaled royalty, paid for private armies (or bankrolled someone else's army and had the power that implies), and were generally movers and shakers in society. That's without even looking into religious orders or military matters.

[Slipperychicken]

Players I've known have been fond of having their PCs use waterboarding: A practice which seems anachronistic at first glance, but which actually has roots much deeper in history, when it was known by names like "water cure".

Trials will often have trappings of modern criminal proceedings (with formal courts, extensive and consistent legal code, legal rights and representation, presumption of innocence) rather than simply being some local lord or official with his literal court arbitrarily meting out justice on a whim.

Assuming the universal recognition of civil rights which have been in widespread use for a few hundred years or less IRL. Things like restrictions on child labor, equality under the law, 8-hour workdays (especially in D&D rules), abolition of forced labor, recognition and tolerance of interracial and same-sex couples (as opposed to labeling their love as a mental illness, betrayal, or heresy), equality between sexes (i.e. women are treated like full-fledged people rather than property or minors), tolerance of many religions, universal citizenship, and so on.

Use of precise and standardized measurements (of time, weight, height, distance, volume, etc) when almost none are feasible (i.e. "I'm going to wait here for precisely 7 minutes for my spell to recharge!").

If I had a quarter for every time someone tried to have his character invent gunpowder in-game..

[(Un)Inspired]

Even in agriculture, there were plenty of reasonably successful peasants with sizable houses, multiple people working under them, and money for luxuries. In the trades there were well paid experts, working in masonry or armoring or engineering or architecture, with apprentices under them, with influence on city politics, so on and so forth. Then there was the merchant class and the banking class, in which commoners obtained obscene amounts of wealth that rivaled royalty, paid for private armies (or bankrolled someone else's army and had the power that implies), and were generally movers and shakers in society. That's without even looking into religious orders or military matters.

I think the era you're picturing is nearer to the 14th century or beyond. I guess there's no reason fantasy can't be modeled on the early to mid Renaissance but I always though generic fantasy was supposed to be an anachroistic hodgepodge of like the 7th to the 12th centuries.

[Knaight]

...recognition and tolerance of interracial and same-sex couples (as opposed to labeling their love as a mental illness, betrayal, or heresy), equality between sexes (i.e. women are treated like full-fledged people rather than property or minors), tolerance of many religions, universal citizenship, and so on.

Again, the medieval period isn't as bad about these as it is often portrayed. There were a number of people of different races in medieval Europe, even if you exclude moorish Spain, largely because of movement along the Mediterranean sea. The modern conception of race didn't really exist, and a lot of the ideas behind racism developed after the medieval period, particularly during the colonial period. Same-sex couples generally weren't recognized, but there were prominent exceptions (there was a caliph in Spain that comes to mind). Much of the opposition there was more from the early modern period, particularly once inquisitions got well underway, and some of the bigger religious wars got started - in a lot of ways, the early modern period was far worse socially than the medieval period, and colonialism often made things yet worse. Tolerance of religions is another one - while there were various crusades in the medieval period, provisional beliefs in earlier religions were common, and there was often a more live-and-let-live attitude in areas that weren't church bastions, with the crusaders being imported from elsewhere. The conflicts there intensified big time in the early modern period, which were an absolute mess of religious wars, purges, etc.

Then there's sexism. While there was major sexism in medieval society, particularly as regards nobility, royalty, and the clergy, it was actually better than it would be later in many respects. There were women in the military (muslim accounts of the crusades routinely refer to "Frankish women" fighting), in trades, etc.

Now, that's not to say that fantasy settings aren't often brighter - they are, in a lot of respects. The removal of slavery as an institution (though the medieval period had nothing on antiquity, and absolutely nothing on slavery during the colonial era and the trans-Atlantic slave trade), much more open society, etc. was common. Still, the baseline isn't nearly as bad as it often seems - there's a habit to assume that things have consistently gotten better, then the colonial, or early modern period is looked at and social institutions are extrapolated backwards, which makes the medieval period look far uglier than it really was. It was ugly, but it wasn't that ugly.


I think the era you're picturing is nearer to the 14th century or beyond. I guess there's no reason fantasy can't be modeled on the early to mid Renaissance but I always though generic fantasy was supposed to be an anachroistic hodgepodge of like the 7th to the 12th centuries.
A lot of medieval fantasy is at least technologically modeled on the later period, such as with the present . Even if it isn't though, the 11th and 12th century had a lot of that, particularly past 1050 or so. The rise of the cities was well underway, guilds were being established as a major power, raiding cultures (Vikings, Magyar, pirates in the Mediterranean sea) were far less of a threat than they were in the 7th-10th (and particularly 7th through 9th) centuries, etc. Now, in the 7th century in particular? Upward mobility was very, very constrained. It's also probably what I see least of in medieval fantasy. The central medieval period was from roughly 1050-1300, and it was where a lot of the things associated with the medieval period were most prominent. Stone castles, guilds, knights in mail on horses with lances, the more developed feudal structures, all of these were central-Medieval.

[nedz]

Use of precise and standardized measurements (of time, weight, height, distance, volume, etc) when almost none are feasible (i.e. "I'm going to wait here for precisely 7 minutes for my spell to recharge!")

Historically this varied.

Britain had standard weights and measures quite early — though the quality control varied.

France didn't have standard weights and measures until after the revolution. Under the Ancient Regime weights and measures depended upon the local lord and since they were linked to taxation immediately prior to the revolution there were something like 400 systems in use.

Now these are the extremes; but, like currency, it's probably worth standardising in any game — life is too short for realistic weights and measures.

[Coidzor]

Now these are the extremes; but, like currency, it's probably worth standardising in any game — life is too short for realistic weights and measures.

Seconded. Oh how I am seconding this right now.

[VoxRationis]

I like non-standard currency systems...

[nedz]

I like non-standard currency systems...

So you're into L.S.D. :smallamused:

Seriously most European countries started of with the Roman system of Pounds, Shillings and Pence: Libra, Solidus, Denarius — though the precise words varied with the local language: Livre/Lira etc. It's just that currency systems are subject to politics (and debasement) and generally suffer from inflation which requires restructuring. In a fantasy worlds: who knows: whatever you want. I tend to go with whatever is easiest for the players, because: Life is short.

[Coidzor]

So you're into L.S.D. :smallamused:

Seriously most European countries started of with the Roman system of Pounds, Shillings and Pence: Libra, Solidus, Denarius — though the precise words varied with the local language: Livre/Lira etc. It's just that currency systems are subject to politics (and debasement) and generally suffer from inflation which requires restructuring. In a fantasy worlds: who knows: whatever you want. I tend to go with whatever is easiest for the players, because: Life is short.

Necessary anachronism to avoid having to have a spreadsheet up at all times during play.

[Slipperychicken]

Now these are the extremes; but, like currency, it's probably worth standardising in any game — life is too short for realistic weights and measures.

One of my GMs tried to make us convert currencies in-game. It was a nightmare, even with a simple 2-to-1 ratio. I vastly prefer to use standardization in-game, despite it being anachronistic.



Then there's sexism. While there was major sexism in medieval society, particularly as regards nobility, royalty, and the clergy, it was actually better than it would be later in many respects. There were women in the military (muslim accounts of the crusades routinely refer to "Frankish women" fighting), in trades, etc.


Here's some history (http://www.icadvinc.org/what-is-domestic-violence/history-of-battered-womens-movement/) about the legality of domestic violence. It seems that in the middle ages through until the 1800s, men in the western world were expressly permitted to beat and rape their wives at will (the theory was that wives had already granted their consent in marriage, and thus couldn't withdraw it), and this was at times written down as a right. People wrote manuals on wife-beating techniques. I think it's hardly a consolation that the occasional woman was permitted to help out at work or experience the horrors of war.

[JusticeZero]

Nonetheless, you can still legitimately compare multiple awful settings and compare their relative awfulness without negating that they were all awful to some extent.
I've seen multiple currency before. Pretty quickly, people just carried around a lockbox full of saffron anyways. Bullion usually works too. Narcotics if your party is more roguish. Convert to local currency as needed.

[Knaight]

Here's some history (http://www.icadvinc.org/what-is-domestic-violence/history-of-battered-womens-movement/) about the legality of domestic violence. It seems that in the middle ages through until the 1800s, men in the western world were expressly permitted to beat and rape their wives at will (the theory was that wives had already granted their consent in marriage, and thus couldn't withdraw it), and this was at times written down as a right. People wrote manuals on wife-beating techniques. I think it's hardly a consolation that the occasional woman was permitted to help out at work or experience the horrors of war.

It was hardly "helping out" at work - women were owning businesses. Moreover, the comparison is between the middle ages and the colonial and early modern periods, and the increased rigid gender roles exacerbated the physical violence. So did the attempts to push women out of work (with the notable exception of agriculture and a few other jobs that largely involved lots of tedious manual labor), which created situations where domestic violence was harder to leave.

Again, the medieval world sucked in a lot of ways socially. I'd just say it compared favorably to the early modern period, and the colonial period. Take witch burnings, which were comparatively rare in the medieval period and downright ubiquitous in the early modern, which would be another sort of socially sanctioned violence aimed disproportionately at women.

Are the social conditions of the medieval world better than the modern world in the same area? Heck no. Are they generally better than the 1700's? In a lot of ways, yes, as with the 1600's, and even the 1800's. Even if we look exclusively at the legality of domestic violence (which I'd consider deceptive, as it ignores variations in the practice of it, along with painting a better picture of modernity than it deserves), we see this. The core concept that marital rape was an oxymoron because marriage was consent traces largely to 1600's English law, and not before that. That would be the early modern period. It also took until 1993 to get completely illegalized in the U.S.*, and that's with it still being treated more lightly even by the law now. It also took until 1920 to illegalize beating in the U.S.*

Then there's the matter of how slavery interacted with this. Rape and beatings were extremely common parts of slavery as an institution, and the beatings were generally more vicious and brutal than the ones in a strictly domestic context. There were a huge number of women suffering battery and rape because of that institution, particularly once the trans-Atlantic slave trade was established. The medieval period was ugly in this regard, the colonial far, far worse.

Put really bluntly, a great deal of progress relative to the medieval era is extremely recent. I would go so far as to say that the general social fabric of medieval society, particularly central medieval society, was substantially better than through about 1550-1850, even looking at areas that were generally better. Looking at places it was worse, I'd bump that later date up to about 1920. Contemporary attitudes are an anachronism, and they're an anachronism I'm glad to have. Still, as recently as 150 years ago the contemporary attitudes would have also been an anachronism - they'd have been worse.

*Which I'm using because I strongly suspect it's behind the times overall.

[Frozen_Feet]

It should be also noted that while wife-beating was legal, in plenty of places unjustified beatings were legit grounds for the woman to divorce *even before* medieval period. It should be also noted that there were also similarly bizarre laws justifying the woman committing violence on her husband, but for some reason these rarely get brought up when historical domestic violence is discussed. :smalltongue: To give an example, in parts of Asia a woman was legally allowed to murder their husband if she caught him sleeping with another woman, and also murder the other woman. I do not know if the existence of the law actually lead to its widespread application at any point of time.

(Also, the saying "rule of the thumb" comes from crafting, *not* beating up women. It refers to using your thumb as a measurement tool, a practice that was widespread and predates any reference to beating wives with a stick in any known law.)

[LibraryOgre]

What does "anachronism" mean in the context of a fantasy setting?

An invention without antecedents... one where you go from crossbows to revolvers without anything in between, just because.

[Jeff the Green]

An invention without antecedents... one where you go from crossbows to revolvers without anything in between, just because.

I think this is the only sane way to think of it. Invention is rather like evolution in that it's both quite random and historically constrained. While an invention must have antecedents, merely having those is far from a guarantee that the 'obvious' next step would be achieved. There was steam power in classical Greece, but not until the Newcomen engine in the 1700s did it find practical use. Conversely, black powder is both quite easy to make (and invent, if you have plenty of alchemists) and hard to replace, so it found use alongside a dizzying array of military technology that was itself constrained by things such as the understanding of ballistics, metallurgical techniques, and even packaging. Most technology can be reasonably made to go alongside a vast number of other technologies, even if in earth history they didn't overlap.

[Incanur]

Similarly, China had assembly-line crossbows and standardized arrowheads around 0 bc.

You forgot the space-efficient triggers and grid sights on the crossbows. Han-era crossbow were quite impressive.

[veti]

People drastically underestimate the difficulty of the inventions they want to import. They want to build awesome inventions that wouldn't work, and in my case get shot down because the physics are different and I put a Tippy spin on E6 anyways.

This.

Anyone who tries to build a steam engine using medieval smithing techniques - if they're very, very good at it, like world-class smiths - might just possibly get as far as building a boiler that will explode, destroying the building and anyone fool enough to be inside it, the first time they stoke it up.

Medieval people weren't stupid, likely there were plenty of people smart enough to work out that steam could be used to power things. But without high-quality steel and manufacturing techniques, there was no practical way to do it. Look at Charles Babbage's attempts to build a 'calculating engine' in the 1800s - brilliant design, should have worked, but it turned out that even state-of-the-art metalworking techniques in early Victorian times weren't good enough to build it (and it cost, in today's money, several millions of pounds to discover that).

Technology has to be built up brick by brick - you can't go missing out layers, just because you know how to do something cool, because it turns out that "cool" thing only works after someone else has done about 3000 boring things first.

[Coidzor]

Anyone who tries to build a steam engine using medieval smithing techniques - if they're very, very good at it, like world-class smiths - might just possibly get as far as building a boiler that will explode, destroying the building and anyone fool enough to be inside it, the first time they stoke it up.

OTOH: Greek Steam Engines and, IIRC, our current understanding that, yes, they could, in fact, have started scaling up from there and making them useful if not for slavery and labor economics.

Plus, y'know, those smithing techniques are unlikely to actually be medieval unless it's actually set on Earth during that time.

[Jeff the Green]

OTOH: Greek Steam Engines and, IIRC, our current understanding that, yes, they could, in fact, have started scaling up from there and making them useful if not for slavery and labor economics.

Plus, y'know, those smithing techniques are unlikely to actually be medieval unless it's actually set on Earth during that time.

Heron of Alexandria apparently made some amazing things, allegedly including steam-powered temple doors. (Apparently a number of the Greeks' more amazing inventions served primarily to bilk the credulous.)

Also note that the need for good steel to build a boiler isn't necessarily fixed. In a world with adamantine, mithril, and the like, you may not need any ability to work iron.

[nedz]

I think this is the only sane way to think of it. Invention is rather like evolution in that it's both quite random and historically constrained. While an invention must have antecedents, merely having those is far from a guarantee that the 'obvious' next step would be achieved. There was steam power in classical Greece, but not until the Newcomen engine in the 1700s did it find practical use. Conversely, black powder is both quite easy to make (and invent, if you have plenty of alchemists) and hard to replace, so it found use alongside a dizzying array of military technology that was itself constrained by things such as the understanding of ballistics, metallurgical techniques, and even packaging. Most technology can be reasonably made to go alongside a vast number of other technologies, even if in earth history they didn't overlap.

Yes but there are also marketing considerations. Everyone lauds the Printing Press, but without Paper it wasn't worthwhile. Back in the day they tried a small run of a couple of hundred Gutenberg Bibles printed on Vellum — they didn't sell. If you could afford Vellum then you could afford to have some Monks hand write and illuminate the manuscript, otherwise you would want it printed on paper because of the cost.

[Jeff the Green]

Yes but there are also marketing considerations. Everyone lauds the Printing Press, but without Paper it wasn't worthwhile. Back in the day they tried a small run of a couple of hundred Gutenberg Bibles printed on Vellum — they didn't sell. If you could afford Vellum then you could afford to have some Monks hand write and illuminate the manuscript, otherwise you would want it printed on paper because of the cost.

That's more of a "prerequisite technology" thing. Paper isn't strictly needed for the printing press to work, but it does need it to be usable as a means of mass-production. Sort of like how you don't need the Bayer process to make aluminum foil, but you're sure not going to be using it to wrap up your leftovers unless you've got that means of cheap production. Or how, as mentioned above, the printing press with movable type needed an alphabetic script (I'd imagine a shortish syllabary would work too) to become practical.

[Mr. Mask]

I think that is the point they had just illustrated.

[Milodiah]

Personally, if there's a magical solution to the problem that can be thought of, I use the magical solution. Welcome to the corner of Dancing Lights semaphore and the Coat Rack of Greater Mending.

However, I have allowed some certain things into the world simply because I wanted to, and they worked in the setting. Gnomes in mine don't use magic nearly as much as they do in the standard ones, so they've developed Mysorean rockets (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysorean_rockets) and Greek flamethrowers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_fire#Projectors).

The key to advancing your setting is to ask the following:

Is there already a way of doing the thing I want this to do?

And if the answer is no,

Have I done enough lateral thinking to be certain of my answer?

Magic is incredibly versatile, after all. And if there's not a spell that does exactly what you want, you could probably tailor one or create one that does. Why make telegraphs when there's sending? Or steam engines when there's golem power?

[Jay R]

I had a player once who wanted to research gunpowder. I told him that it doesn't work here. He said, "Yes, but something must explode, so I want to find out what it is."

I finally told him, "If you spend the time and money on this, you will eventually wind up with a Fireball scroll. That's gunpowder in D&D."

[Milodiah]

Why wouldn't it work? Are we going with the whole "banning antimony and dolphins" approach?


Honestly, in that situation I'd point out they're hardly skilled alchemists. Unless they are, in which case I would let them try. And then be faced with the hundreds of years' worth of fine-tuning black powder needed before it went from fireworks to military marvel.

[Jay R]

Why wouldn't it work? Are we going with the whole "banning antimony and dolphins" approach?


Honestly, in that situation I'd point out they're hardly skilled alchemists. Unless they are, in which case I would let them try. And then be faced with the hundreds of years' worth of fine-tuning black powder needed before it went from fireworks to military marvel.

Because I'm running a world based on the medieval model, not one based on modern knowledge. Here's the reason, taken from my introduction to the game:


A warning about meta-knowledge. In a game in which stone gargoyles can fly and people can cast magic spells, modern rules of physics and chemistry simply don’t apply. There aren’t 92 natural elements, lightning is not caused by an imbalance of electrical potential, and stars are not gigantic gaseous bodies undergoing nuclear fusion. Cute stunts involving clever use of the laws of thermodynamics simply won’t work. Note that cute stunts involving the gross effects thereof very likely will work. Roll a stone down a mountain, and you could cause an avalanche. But in a world with teleportation, levitation, and fireball spells, Newton’s three laws of motion do not apply, and energy and momentum are not conserved. Accordingly, modern scientific meta-knowledge will do you more harm than good. On the other hand, knowledge of Aristotle, Ptolemy, medieval alchemy, or medieval and classical legends might be useful occasionally.

Hidden within this was the first clue about the scenario. They were traveling with seven artifacts called the Staves of the Wanderers. These were seven staves capped with the seven metals, all with specific powers. For instance, once was capped in copper, and had charm and love spells.

Eventually, they figured out that the Wanderers weren't the seven people carrying them. The staves had powers associated with the seven wandering stars - the planets (the moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn). The stars aren't gigantic bodies of fusion; they are as described in Ptolemy. (The clues got increasingly more obvious.)

[Storm_Of_Snow]

Depends on what you mean by anachronistic - glassware in a medieval-era Chinese/Japanese environment would be an anachronism, but perfectly ok in a European one of the exact same era.

Wrist watches are probably off the table, but there's clocks in existence dating from the 14th century, so presumably there were even older ones that no longer exist.

Steam power has it's origins in ancient Greece - the main issue then becomes materials that can hold the high pressures you need to do anything worthwhile with it, but you could potentially have primitive mine pumps.

But anyone playing with gunpowder should have to make a lot of checks to avoid blowing up themselves and anyone close by.



Magic is incredibly versatile, after all. And if there's not a spell that does exactly what you want, you could probably tailor one or create one that does. Why make telegraphs when there's sending? Or steam engines when there's golem power?
To misquote a warning: Do not pester powerful wizards with trivial requests, for they can get annoyed easily and have the ability to turn you into a toad. :smallwink:

One mage can Send 25 words to only one person in 10 minutes, and will charge whatever he thinks is worth his time. Depending on the system, a telegraph system could send a much longer message in less time and to multiple destinations, all for less money.

[LibraryOgre]

I think this is the only sane way to think of it. Invention is rather like evolution in that it's both quite random and historically constrained. While an invention must have antecedents, merely having those is far from a guarantee that the 'obvious' next step would be achieved. There was steam power in classical Greece, but not until the Newcomen engine in the 1700s did it find practical use. Conversely, black powder is both quite easy to make (and invent, if you have plenty of alchemists) and hard to replace, so it found use alongside a dizzying array of military technology that was itself constrained by things such as the understanding of ballistics, metallurgical techniques, and even packaging. Most technology can be reasonably made to go alongside a vast number of other technologies, even if in earth history they didn't overlap.

Understandable, but an example would be firearms in the Realms (if you completely ignore Spelljammer* and Gond).

Firearms in the Realms spring up from pretty much nowhere. They're not mentioned in the 1st edition sources, then they're fully formed with wheellocks and the like in Forgotten Realms Adventures. They seem to come from nowhere, and so seem really out of place. They completely throw the setting out of whack, because once you have decent rules for firearms, you lose out on a lot of the feel of the Realms as it is. Gond supports this, because people relying on technology is his bailiwick.

If you want an example of how disruptive firearms can be to a traditional medieval setting, read the first three books of Joel Rosenberg's "Guardians of the Flame" series (The Sleeping Dragon, The Sword and the Chain, and The Silver Crown). A group of college students are transported to their characters in an RPG, keeping their own minds and their character's abilities. After some adventures, they wind up deciding to fight the slavers guild... with firearms that one of them knew how to build. The results of this social and technological change are HUGE... including the Slavers' Guild working with the Wizards' Guild to develop an alternative to gunpowder, the use of proxy nations to fight the conflict, and the growth of independent resistance to the slave trade.

*Now, we know where they actually came from; they're an imported technology from other Crystal Sphere. They appear in the Realms without antecedents, but that doesn't mean they don't have antecedents.

[nedz]

That's a good point. In a World with Teleportation, Divinations, Planer travel and the like; apparently anachronistic technology could spring up anywhere; but it is likely to cause an Outside Context Problem.

[JusticeZero]

One mage can Send 25 words to only one person in 10 minutes, and will charge whatever he thinks is worth his time. Depending on the system, a telegraph system could send a much longer message in less time and to multiple destinations, all for less money.
But it's much more likely that they will develop an unlimited Sending throne of some kind and make a career out of building a network of them.

[Frozen_Feet]

I finally told him, "If you spend the time and money on this, you will eventually wind up with a Fireball scroll. That's gunpowder in D&D."

The funny thing is that it's true. XD

[Milodiah]

Honestly, the thing about guns is that the guns are the hard part of the equation. It seems laughably simple to us now, but it took centuries for someone to perfect the idea of "put a ball in a tube and explode a tiny bomb behind it so it flies out of the tube". In fact, that kind of sounds stupid when put like that. And once you have the idea, it's a lot of work to accomplish. Make a tube strong enough to not be a pipe bomb, make a projectile just the right size so it fits but doesn't come out too easily, figure out how to ignite the charge, etc. etc.
There's no reason to say "there's no gunpowder here", but you can certainly say "the technological requirements behind guns are a bit beyond you guys at the moment."

And besides, their OOC knowledge is kind of making them into Connecticut Yankees in King Arthur's court. If the player is expecting to invent the .45 revolver when he sits down and says he wants to make the gun, you can just grin and say "You manage to make a tube that holds gunpowder in it, and a ball you put in the tube. You figured out you can use a burning piece of rope to light the gunpowder most of the time, but usually the projectile just flies off randomly in the general direction you're holding it. Also be sure not to point it down at any point, because then everything falls out and you have to start over in your full round reload."

"But that's just a hand cannon!"

"Precisely."

[Knaight]

Because I'm running a world based on the medieval model, not one based on modern knowledge.

Gunpowder was around in China even in the early medieval period, as was the silk road. It was known about - it wasn't easy to produce, it wasn't weaponized particularly well, and it was deep within alchemy and the sort of thing that you probably weren't getting any information on without pretty good access to a number of texts that were mostly in Arabic, but it was there.

[Milodiah]

To understand properly, in your world heavy objects fall much faster than light objects because...Aristotle said they did? As opposed to Galileo proving by experiment that Aristotle was full of rubbish on this particular point?

[Jay R]

To understand properly, in your world heavy objects fall much faster than light objects because...Aristotle said they did?

A. No. That would be silly. Aristotle can't command the universe. Things are the way they are because I say they are. For instance, the planets (including the moon and the sun, but not Earth) circle the Earth as described in Ptolemy because I designed a scenario around that fact.
B. I don't know if heavier objects fall faster than light objects, or even if the answer is always the same, because there is no scientific method, and no guarantee of consistent results.


As opposed to Galileo proving by experiment that Aristotle was full of rubbish on this particular point?

Galileo could not prove that in my world, because it is not true that natural laws are always consistent. In a world with teleportation, levitation, and fireball spells, Newton’s three laws of motion do not apply, and energy and momentum are not consistently conserved.

If a Galileo did his experiments, he would discover, not a universal gravitational force causing acceleration of 32 feet/second/second, but that an object with Feather Fall falls slowly, and a person with levitation rises. I do not guarantee a consistent gravitational acceleration of 32 ft/sec/sec, in the absence of magic, for several reasons.
1. I'm not convinced that there is ever an absence of magic, just an absence of a magical caster in sight, and
2. To prevent meta-gaming based on scientific principles that the characters wouldn't know. (I started gaming at an engineering school. Those guys would try anything.)
3. The planets are not in elliptical orbits; they are in orbits that are circles, with a complicated system of epicycles. Consistent universal gravity won't produce that.
4. The goal is to produce as close as possible to the medieval image of the universe. Modern scientific principles are part of what I'm escaping from when I game. (I have seven telecommunications patents, and a few published papers.)
5. To produce something fun and unusual.

[Storm_Of_Snow]

But it's much more likely that they will develop an unlimited Sending throne of some kind and make a career out of building a network of them.
And how long's that going to take them, even assuming that they can be persuaded to do so? Compared with giving a few thousand gold as a venture capital investment to some ex-seaman who's got an idea for combining naval semaphore with a windmill and sending messages for a few silver pieces a time, and expecting a 5% per annum return - or even better, having some trusted person in the nearest city handling their investments for them so that they're not bothered by people knocking on their door every five minutes expecting them to do something?

Basically, if you had some maths homework, would you ask Professor Steven Hawking to help you with it?

That's not to say that kind of communications network couldn't exist, but if it does, it would be instigated by the ruler of the country, and it's use limited to them and their closest ministers in order for them to run the country properly, especially if the regions between settlements are basically lawless and there's a risk that any couriers would be intercepted.

It could even be the equivalent of the hotline between various nations.

As for mage-artificers, I'm not so sure. I can easily see apprentices learning how to make various items as a part of their training, an adventuring mage breaking out the alchemical supplies to brew various potions for his teammates between one mission and the next, or the leader asking them to make a certain magical item so they can defeat their latest big bad, the mage going off and doing research, then telling the rest of the party what components are needed and where they need to go to find them, but I can't see production lines of mages churning out healing potions, rings of protection, +1 swords and so on just for profit.

It could also start getting political - for instance, if there's large numbers of healing potions around, who'd ever go to a temple and pray so that the cleric will heal them? And if their followers start to dwindle, the gods will tell their priests to take action.

So, the population can do the mundane stuff, the mage can sit in their tower and probe the infinite mysteries of reality, or, as one of our heroes said:

:vaarsuvius: I am somewhat preoccupied with telling the laws of physics to shut up and sit down.

[Mr. Mask]

I don't know if heavier objects fall faster than light objects, or even if the answer is always the same, because there is no scientific method, and no guarantee of consistent results. I had wondered about this question, a while back. I managed to find a test for just that. It's pretty cool: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C5_dOEyAfk

[VoxRationis]

Galileo could not prove that in my world, because it is not true that natural laws are always consistent. In a world with teleportation, levitation, and fireball spells, Newton’s three laws of motion do not apply, and energy and momentum are not consistently conserved.

If a Galileo did his experiments, he would discover, not a universal gravitational force causing acceleration of 32 feet/second/second, but that an object with Feather Fall falls slowly, and a person with levitation rises.

Feather Fall and Levitation spells count as an "outside force."

[JusticeZero]

Hawking doesn't do the math, he comes up with the process to do the problem. Then he tasks his students to crank them out in return for instruction, and trades the product for wyvern tongue, angel wing feathers, and so on. As the students grow in skill, they replicate the system elsewhere.

[Jay R]

Feather Fall and Levitation spells count as an "outside force."

Which does not change the fact that in my world, Newton's three laws of motion don't apply, and energy is not conserved. Gravitation is not universal. The atmosphere reaches up to the perfect sphere defined by the moon's orbit. All seven planets (including the sun and the moon, but not the earth) rotate around the motionless Earth, using epicycles of perfect circles. The stars are on a fixed celestial sphere. If you fly a full earth-radius above the earth, you weigh exactly what you did before, not 1/4 as much. None of this is possible with universal gravitation.

Plants grow from seeds, not because of DNA, but because the Dying Corn God (or Demeter, Ashanti, Brigid, Freyr, etc.) make it so.

Lightning is not a discharge of electrons attracted to a positive charge (or wizards wouldn't be able to aim it). It's variously caused by Jupiter, Thor, Haikili, Shango, random magic in the atmosphere, or force of will in the form of a spell.

My world is not set in a scientific modern universe with the occasional magic-based exception. It's a mystical medieval world. That's why modern anachronisms wouldn't work.

[VoxRationis]

And that's perfectly fine for your world. I just was reacting to the sentence that began "In a world with teleportation, levitation, and fireball spells..." The idea that such things automatically throw out every aspect of the real world is distressingly common, which leads me to propose...
The Axiom Vocis, or the Floodgate Axiom

The presence of one or more fantastic elements in a setting does not imply the presence of other fantastic elements or prevent the elements and laws of reality from functioning in that setting.
Example: A fireball spell is often said to disobey the laws of thermodynamics. That is not inherently true. The specific means by which this fire springs about are not stated, and could well increase entropy and diminish free energy, either in the caster's vicinity or elsewhere. When you only know the practical end result of the effect (the d6/level fire damage), but not the specific mechanics, it is easy to imagine a violation of thermodynamics; this is true of actual machines and effects in real life as well.
Example: In A Song of Ice and Fire, magic exists, to some limited extent, as well as dragons and fey. However, teleportation has never been observed to exist.

Edit: How does one edit one's signature?

[JusticeZero]

I disagree with your axiom because a fireball, feather fall, or teleportation spell are inherently a part of the laws of reality. Indeed, the reason people throw out arcane terrestrial physics is because the magic system here is incompatible with the magic system there.
It is annoying to have our local wizards trying to metagame their spells to work there in addition to and synergistic with the spells available to their characters. The rules describe a setting which only superficially approximates a correspondence of physics, but which decidedly omits terrestrial magic effects as a thematic point. Characters shouldn't get shadow levels in terrestrial magic using classes just because their players understand the principles, just as people with terrestrial levels in combat classes don't get to carry over shadow levels by explaining how to do terrestrial combat maneuvers.

[Milodiah]

I disagree with your axiom because a fireball, feather fall, or teleportation spell are inherently a part of the laws of reality. Indeed, the reason people throw out arcane terrestrial physics is because the magic system here is incompatible with the magic system there.
It is annoying to have our local wizards trying to metagame their spells to work there in addition to and synergistic with the spells available to their characters. The rules describe a setting which only superficially approximates a correspondence of physics, but which decidedly omits terrestrial magic effects as a thematic point. Characters shouldn't get shadow levels in terrestrial magic using classes just because their players understand the principles, just as people with terrestrial levels in combat classes don't get to carry over shadow levels by explaining how to do terrestrial combat maneuvers.

I absolutely let my players do that. If they want to describe in detail what they're doing and how, then by all means the outcome of that (successfully rolled) attack will occur.

[JusticeZero]

If I know how to do a blood choke, does that mean my Cleric can do what amounts to a Death Attack from a flank? I mean, there has to be some limits. The tactics carry over, but once I start getting into some of the exploits possible from knowing terrestrial biology, you start coming up with things that abuse the heck out of the rules as d20 applies them - those techniques are standard for a terrestrial melee type, but go above and beyond what even an initiator class can do, in ways.

[VoxRationis]

I disagree with your axiom because a fireball, feather fall, or teleportation spell are inherently a part of the laws of reality. Indeed, the reason people throw out arcane terrestrial physics is because the magic system here is incompatible with the magic system there.
It is annoying to have our local wizards trying to metagame their spells to work there in addition to and synergistic with the spells available to their characters. The rules describe a setting which only superficially approximates a correspondence of physics, but which decidedly omits terrestrial magic effects as a thematic point. Characters shouldn't get shadow levels in terrestrial magic using classes just because their players understand the principles, just as people with terrestrial levels in combat classes don't get to carry over shadow levels by explaining how to do terrestrial combat maneuvers.

That sounds more like a case of player knowledge vs. character knowledge, not a matter of setting building.

[JusticeZero]

It is that too. The issue is that there are a lot of Tippy-esque things we do on Earth that are absolutely ridiculous that are completely common knowledge for OUR spellcasters, melees, et cetera that rely on physics quirks on Earth that don't necessarily apply on another setting. People want to bypass the normal power gain in the game setting by using player knowledge and ASSUMING that all of the RAW quirks on Earth that their techniques rely on will automatically and uncritically apply in a setting where the physics are already portrayed as radically different in every other way.

[Jay R]

And that's perfectly fine for your world. I just was reacting to the sentence that began "In a world with teleportation, levitation, and fireball spells..." The idea that such things automatically throw out every aspect of the real world is distressingly common, which leads me to propose...
The Axiom Vocis, or the Floodgate Axiom

The presence of one or more fantastic elements in a setting does not imply the presence of other fantastic elements or prevent the elements and laws of reality from functioning in that setting.
Example: A fireball spell is often said to disobey the laws of thermodynamics. That is not inherently true. The specific means by which this fire springs about are not stated, and could well increase entropy and diminish free energy, either in the caster's vicinity or elsewhere. When you only know the practical end result of the effect (the d6/level fire damage), but not the specific mechanics, it is easy to imagine a violation of thermodynamics; this is true of actual machines and effects in real life as well.
Example: In A Song of Ice and Fire, magic exists, to some limited extent, as well as dragons and fey. However, teleportation has never been observed to exist.

Edit: How does one edit one's signature?

So we should refuse to acknowledge the actual effects we see and guess at some other unobserved effect elsewhere that never affects the world to balance it, rather than admit that magic is not consistent with real-world physics.

Leaving aside the fact that your explanation doesn't explain (moving the energy from one place to another is now the non-physical action that violates real-world laws), what's the point? Why is it important to preserve real-world physics in a game we play to avoid the strictures of our world?

[Storm_Of_Snow]

Why is it important to preserve real-world physics in a game we play to avoid the strictures of our world?
I guess it depends on whether you want your players to be comfortable in the universe you're creating, whether any changes are a part of the campaign world and something the players are supposed to investigate and fix, you're just trying to mess around with their minds, or you're actively trying to shutdown any game-breaking schemes you imagine they're going to come up with.

In the latter case, you've got bigger problems than trying to rationalise why light objects fall slower than heavy ones, and exactly what happens if you follow Galileo's thought experiment of attaching a heavy object to a light object and trying to work out how the universe will deal with it.

Frankly, your world sounds like a place for a single adventure, or a short number of sessions, but I don't think I'd like to permenantly commit a party to it. At best, I'd use it for a party that's been given the job of going to alternate realities and doing something - say retrieving artefacts, or trying to reunite the realities in a Shards of Alara-style convergence.

[Jay R]

I guess it depends on whether you want your players to be comfortable in the universe you're creating, ...

Insult received. Yes, I want them to be comfortable in the game world, and no player has ever told me that it made them uncomfortable. I started the game for six players and very quickly had twelve.


...whether any changes are a part of the campaign world and something the players are supposed to investigate and fix, ...

There were no changes to fix. Again, you are assuming that modern physics is the basis for D&D, and that any world that doesn't work that way has "changes" that " the players are supposed to investigate and fix." The only way that it affected them at all was that the seven Staves of the Wanderers had powers based on the seven Wandering Stars - the planets.


...you're just trying to mess around with their minds, ...

Insult received. No, I'm not trying to mess around with their minds, and I didn't. In what way do you think that it would mess with their minds?


...or you're actively trying to shutdown any game-breaking schemes you imagine they're going to come up with....

Insult received. No, these players wanted to play the game, not break it. All but one of the players were at least 40 years old; that level of immature thinking just didn't exist here.


...In the latter case, you've got bigger problems than trying to rationalise why light objects fall slower than heavy ones, and exactly what happens if you follow Galileo's thought experiment of attaching a heavy object to a light object and trying to work out how the universe will deal with it....

First of all, I haven't decided whether light objects fall more slowly than heavy objects. I haven't even decided if the same object always falls at exactly the same speed. Such a decision was never needed in play.

And until some PC stops being a Fighter, Paladin, Thief, Wizard, Cleric, etc., and starts trying to become a full-time scientist, I'll never have to deal with that question. I suspect that if one tried it, then after several months of experiments, he would discover that falling speed is not always exactly the same. Unless the same object falls at the same speed every time, there's no reason to ask why it And it's much easier than trying to figure out why most high-level characters can survive a fall from any height in the rules.


...Frankly, your world sounds like a place for a single adventure, or a short number of sessions, but I don't think I'd like to permenantly commit a party to it. At best, I'd use it for a party that's been given the job of going to alternate realities and doing something - say retrieving artefacts, or trying to reunite the realities in a Shards of Alara-style convergence.

There was universal regret when we stopped playing. You seem to be making the assumption that PCs would spend all their time exploring scientific phenomena. In fact, they were far busier with orcs, dragons, pirates, etc.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Don't forget the Apparatus of Kwalish.

Basically, a giant robot you get to ride around inside. Too bad it looks like a lobster.
This is a BAD thing?! :smalleek:

[Coidzor]

This is a BAD thing?! :smalleek:

Looking like a lobster? No.

Being the Apparatus of Kwalashia? Yes. :smallfrown:

[Knaight]

Looking like a lobster? No.

Being the Apparatus of Kwalashia? Yes. :smallfrown:

It really isn't that good in the games it's in, and it is way overpriced. Which is a shame, as the Apparatus of Kwalash is a seriously cool artifact.

[Storm_Of_Snow]

Insult received. Yes, I want them to be comfortable in the game world, and no player has ever told me that it made them uncomfortable. I started the game for six players and very quickly had twelve.

There were no changes to fix. Again, you are assuming that modern physics is the basis for D&D, and that any world that doesn't work that way has "changes" that " the players are supposed to investigate and fix." The only way that it affected them at all was that the seven Staves of the Wanderers had powers based on the seven Wandering Stars - the planets.

Insult received. No, I'm not trying to mess around with their minds, and I didn't. In what way do you think that it would mess with their minds?

Insult received. No, these players wanted to play the game, not break it. All but one of the players were at least 40 years old; that level of immature thinking just didn't exist here.

No insults were ever intended, and I apologise if they were received. My post was intended more as general answers to the specific question that you asked.



First of all, I haven't decided whether light objects fall more slowly than heavy objects. I haven't even decided if the same object always falls at exactly the same speed. Such a decision was never needed in play.

And until some PC stops being a Fighter, Paladin, Thief, Wizard, Cleric, etc., and starts trying to become a full-time scientist, I'll never have to deal with that question. I suspect that if one tried it, then after several months of experiments, he would discover that falling speed is not always exactly the same. Unless the same object falls at the same speed every time, there's no reason to ask why it And it's much easier than trying to figure out why most high-level characters can survive a fall from any height in the rules.

There was universal regret when we stopped playing. You seem to be making the assumption that PCs would spend all their time exploring scientific phenomena. In fact, they were far busier with orcs, dragons, pirates, etc.
Sounds like your group were well immersed into the universe you'd created - I think a lot of us would do well to achieve similar levels of immersion.

[dilepoutee]

What does "anachronism" mean in the context of a fantasy setting? Is this true??

[Jay R]

No insults were ever intended, and I apologise if they were received. My post was intended more as general answers to the specific question that you asked.

Thank you very much. I apologize for misunderstanding your intent, and I'm glad we cleared it up. This is how the internet works at its best.


Sounds like your group were well immersed into the universe you'd created - I think a lot of us would do well to achieve similar levels of immersion.

Again, thank you. I suspect that you still don't realize how little this affected anything in-game, except the fact of the seven planets.


What does "anachronism" mean in the context of a fantasy setting? Is this true??

Temporal inconsistency of elements. In a battlefield primarily of sword and shield, spears, and longbows, a rifle unit is an anachronism. In a feudal society defined by noble families, a large group of people who gain power and influence within their lifetime is an anachronism.

And, of course, mixing the classical Greek minotaurs and cyclopes with the ancient Mesopotamian Tiamat, medieval Norse frost giants, and the very modern approach to vampires is certainly anachronistic, as well as showing a great deal of culture clash.

[Frozen_Feet]

I guess it depends on whether you want your players to be comfortable in the universe you're creating.

This is a very important thing. If a fantasy world has no relation to reality, it will hurt immersion and make it hard for players to make informed decisions. The closer a fantasy world is to the expectations players have of reality, the easier they will find it to play.

Of course, the joke is that the expectations people have of reality might have exactly zilch to do with actual reality, nevermind contemporary physics. I still run to people who can't grasp the idea of smaller and bigger objects falling at the same speed, or how human reproduction works, or Earth orbiting the Sun. To such people, a world based around the four classical elements and a Ptolemaic cosmology might actually be more intuitive than a more accurate representation of how things actually work.

[Garimeth]

Just want to say, I get where Jay R is coming from.

In my current campaign setting there are two moons, each with dierent cycles, and one of them is only visible 66% of the time. A week is 8 days long, and there are 4 weeks in a month, and 11 months in the year. There is a spirit realm, and the "Abyss" is subterranean. Additionally there is an Overworld high above the surface in the clouds, that functions very similar to the percieved ideas of several ancient myths, and Jack and the beanstalk. The "gods" live here, as well as any number of sufficently powerful beings capable of surviving here. There is no outer space, stars are not stars, lightning is the discharge of excess ambient MAGIC, and the setting is bordered by an uncrossable sea whose storms and monsters are so violent that nobody can cross. Half elves can be born to two humans or two elves, and in the northern portions sometimes half orcs as well. Why? Because I said so.

All this is explained to the players when they make their characters, its not brought up mid game. If they want to do something their character would know better then I tell them. This serves the purpose as making my setting different. You are NOT playing in a Earth of a past time period. You should not even come in expecting it to be similar to Earth, but that's ok because I gave you a well developed setting document that explains all this. Not to mention, in general, none of this stuff is going to come up in any meaningful fashion. The players tend to be far more busy adventuring, politicking, or rebelling.

[LibraryOgre]

What does "anachronism" mean in the context of a fantasy setting? Is this true??

An anachronism is a technology without antecedents and (to expand on my own definition), frequently one without realistic impact on the world.

In many ways, a lot of D&D is built around anarchronisms, especially in 3.x and later. Why have a conventional castle when you've got some of the combat magics available? Fireballs, flying cavalry, earth elementals which appear from the ground to **** your **** up... all of these are things that are unconsidered in the design of traditional castles, because they're things that the technology they faced didn't require them to.

[Durkoala]

Edit: How does one edit one's signature?

In the top right, near your username, click on Settings. In the third box on the left (My Settings), click Edit Signature. :smallsmile:

[Storm_Of_Snow]

An anachronism is a technology without antecedents and (to expand on my own definition), frequently one without realistic impact on the world.

In many ways, a lot of D&D is built around anarchronisms, especially in 3.x and later. Why have a conventional castle when you've got some of the combat magics available? Fireballs, flying cavalry, earth elementals which appear from the ground to **** your **** up... all of these are things that are unconsidered in the design of traditional castles, because they're things that the technology they faced didn't require them to.
It's not just 3.x on - I remember a White Dwarf article of at least 25 years ago talking about the exact same things, and why that made dungeons a good bet as defensive structures.

However, anything an attacking force has access to, chances are the defenders will have access to it as well - and there may be other things that are sitting behind the scenes, such as large scale defensive magics that a PC caster either won't have access to learn (maybe something which originated centuries ago and has handed down from court mage to court mage ever since, or is still in the memory of the court mage who originally cast it, if they're either of a long-lived enough species, have played around with some body hopping, hopefully via cloning themselves, but possibly through evil methods, or have otherwise been preserved), or wouldn't bother with in the first place.

[LibraryOgre]

It's not just 3.x on - I remember a White Dwarf article of at least 25 years ago talking about the exact same things, and why that made dungeons a good bet as defensive structures.

Oh, I know, and didn't mean to imply it was just a 3.x issue; rather, just that it got more pronounced with 3.x and the greater availability of magic.

[nedz]

It's not just 3.x on - I remember a White Dwarf article of at least 25 years ago talking about the exact same things, and why that made dungeons a good bet as defensive structures.

IIRC that article was trying to rationalise the existence of Dungeons, because I believe that they feature in some game or other.

Medieval Castles are much more anachronistic in many fantasy settings because RL Castles were designed to counter RL anti-castle weapons and so had to evolve to meet the arrival of new weapons — most famously Cannons. Medieval Castles, in most fantasy settings, haven't evolved to meet the 'new' threats present in those settings.

[Ettina]

For me, it really depends on the feel for the setting.

I'm not a big fan of games where swords and guns are of equal power. I'm more okay with it when there's some kind of technomancy being designed which repels smaller objects, or faster objects better than slower. It would need to be the norm though for me to expect to see swords and bows around.

In real life, a guy wielding an early gun could be beaten by a guy with a sword. The reason was that guns had very few bullets and were really slow to reload. So you'd shoot a bullet or maybe a few bullets, then spend 5-10 minutes trying to reload. If you missed your shot, the swordsman could easily run up and kill you.

How you'd do that mechanically is to have a low-accuracy instakill that requires a couple rounds' worth of recharging before it can be used again. (Recharging would be using up your standard action to reload.)

Ways around it would be to use both a sword and a gun, or (as many pirates did) to carry a whole bunch of guns and switch between them. Or else have a buddy who keeps them off of you so you can reload - for example armies had three rows of guys who took turns shooting, then kneeling and reloading while another row shot.

[Ettina]

As for mage-artificers, I'm not so sure. I can easily see apprentices learning how to make various items as a part of their training, an adventuring mage breaking out the alchemical supplies to brew various potions for his teammates between one mission and the next, or the leader asking them to make a certain magical item so they can defeat their latest big bad, the mage going off and doing research, then telling the rest of the party what components are needed and where they need to go to find them, but I can't see production lines of mages churning out healing potions, rings of protection, +1 swords and so on just for profit.

Why not? Something has to pay for all of those books. And those things are so plentiful, there has to be a ready supply of them coming from somewhere.

[Storm_Of_Snow]

IIRC that article was trying to rationalise the existence of Dungeons, because I believe that they feature in some game or other.

Really, do you happen to know which game? It sounds fun. :smallamused:


Medieval Castles are much more anachronistic in many fantasy settings because RL Castles were designed to counter RL anti-castle weapons and so had to evolve to meet the arrival of new weapons — most famously Cannons. Medieval Castles, in most fantasy settings, haven't evolved to meet the 'new' threats present in those settings.
Not completely - castles were designed for three purposes, firstly, to be the local lords home and impress his allies, secondly, to act as a visible sign of authority to the local populace and the lord's enemies, and thirdly, to hold off an attacking army long enough for them to either run out of troops from failed storm attempts, or their own food (especially if it's late in the campaigning season and you grabbed what food you could and destroyed the rest before retreating into your castle), or for relieving allied forces to drive them off.

A lot of the possible fantasy threats are limited - there's not many high level mages around (you need to be at least 9th level for medium elementals via Summoning V), you're not that likely to get a dragon on your side, it'll take years and a lot of money to build up squadrons of pegasus riders etc, and most of them are not something you'll be able to do without other people knowing about it.

Plus, as I said before, if you have access to something, it's likely that your enemies have access to the same thing, or at least something similar, and you should plan accordingly - some things may only be beatable by throwing your version of it at them and hoping, while others may be able to be dealt with easily with normal forces or even through non-military means.

We could probably spin off a thread - someone suggests something to either attack or defend a castle, other people suggest ways to counter it within certain ground rules, then we have countermeasures for those, and so on. :smallwink:


Why not? Something has to pay for all of those books. And those things are so plentiful, there has to be a ready supply of them coming from somewhere.
Guess it depends on the levels of magical treasure in your campaign world.

But even a cure serious wounds at 750gp for one days work will probably buy a lot of books, components and day to day supplies. And if the mage is making magic items day in, day out, they've probably not got a lot of use for such materials, because they'll never have the time to use them.

And how many of the potions out there were brewed years, maybe even centuries ago, and discovered on the corpse of their original purchaser, sold, then bought by the PCs? It's not like they've got a best before date, after all. :smallwink:

[Jay R]

And how many of the potions out there were brewed years, maybe even centuries ago, and discovered on the corpse of their original purchaser, sold, then bought by the PCs? It's not like they've got a best before date, after all. :smallwink:


You've just opened up a whole new vista of partially active or corrupted magic items. What does a spoiled Potion of Heroism do?

Hmmmm...

[Brother Oni]

In real life, a guy wielding an early gun could be beaten by a guy with a sword. The reason was that guns had very few bullets and were really slow to reload. So you'd shoot a bullet or maybe a few bullets, then spend 5-10 minutes trying to reload. If you missed your shot, the swordsman could easily run up and kill you.


Depends on what you mean by 'early gun'. As you've mentioned, many such early firearm users still carried sidearms, but I'm not sure whether you get this value of 5-10 minutes to reload from.

Fire lances were one shot weapons and hand cannons/culverins took a while to load (and were typically used as one shot weapons) but such early weapons weren't used until very close (a few feet in the case of a fire lance), so chance of dodging was slim.

I've seen a video of a Japanese re-enactor with a tanegashima (16th Century matchlock arquebus) managing one round in 46 seconds, although he skipped some steps (use of the ramrod and actually putting a ball in), which probably puts them at about one round a minute.

A 17th Century musketman was considered competent at two rounds a minute with the use of wooden pots containing pre-measured amounts of powder, but they still had sidearms or bayonets and in a pinch, could turn the musket around and use the stock like a club.

It's not until the Napoleonic era that sidearms for the common soldier were eliminated (they still had their bayonets), but the use of paper cartridges had made three rounds a minute the minimum standard rate of fire (four was more typical in good weather).



Ways around it would be to use both a sword and a gun, or (as many pirates did) to carry a whole bunch of guns and switch between them. Or else have a buddy who keeps them off of you so you can reload - for example armies had three rows of guys who took turns shooting, then kneeling and reloading while another row shot.

Reloading a muzzle-loader while kneeling is very difficult. From what I've read of volley fire drills, each rank fired in turn then the whole unit reloaded in one go.
A separate drill had the front rank retire to the back after firing, then they reloaded while stepping forward as each new front rank fired then retired, in a continuous cycle.

[Garimeth]

I don't even think you have to specify " early guns". Look up the the 21 Foot Rule, which even though doubt has been cast on it recently, nobody doubts it within 10 feet. "Melee" range in a game is 5 feet. Context is key and different situations call for different tools. This is why I've always liked the idea of the fighter as a weaponS specialist (plural), not a weapon specialist (singular).

Combat begins, ranged combat as the attacker closes (or use cover or w/e depening on the situation) Draw main melee weapon and begin fighting. During the fighting one of the combatants is disarmed, and charges the other - resulting in them both being on the ground, the disarmed combatant draws his dagger.

[Narren]

IIRC that article was trying to rationalise the existence of Dungeons, because I believe that they feature in some game or other.

Medieval Castles are much more anachronistic in many fantasy settings because RL Castles were designed to counter RL anti-castle weapons and so had to evolve to meet the arrival of new weapons — most famously Cannons. Medieval Castles, in most fantasy settings, haven't evolved to meet the 'new' threats present in those settings.

It depends on how common or easily obtained those threats are. The medieval castle design will keep out most mundane threats, and those may well be only threats that a ruler needs to worry about. Even settings that are saturated in high-level mages don't often have them risking their lives to blow apart castles. And if that is an active threat, you can have a mundane castle (to stop regualr armies) along with magical defenses (to stop magical threats).

I guess a good analogy would be a prison. They have thick walls and fences with razor wire. This won't stop a group with a helicopter and C-4, but that's normally not a realistic threat. These things exist exist, but they're rare for the average person.

[Brother Oni]

I don't even think you have to specify " early guns". Look up the the 21 Foot Rule, which even though doubt has been cast on it recently, nobody doubts it within 10 feet.

21 feet is the distance the average melee attacker can cover in the time it takes an average pistol user to assess a threat, draw a holstered pistol, aim and fire twice CoM (~1.5 seconds according to the Tueller Drill (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tueller_Drill) and additional testing disputes that value as you've said: link (http://www.policeone.com/edged-weapons/articles/102828-Edged-Weapon-Defense-Is-or-was-the-21-foot-rule-valid-Part-1/)).

Neither distance really applies when the gun is already out and either aimed or ready, or if the shooter knows close quarter/defensive shooting techniques (eg the Mozambique Drill (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDqLOJy0O_A&feature=player_detailpage#t=81)).

[Garimeth]

21 feet is the distance the average melee attacker can cover in the time it takes an average pistol user to assess a threat, draw a holstered pistol, aim and fire twice CoM (~1.5 seconds according to the Tueller Drill (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tueller_Drill) and additional testing disputes that value as you've said: link (http://www.policeone.com/edged-weapons/articles/102828-Edged-Weapon-Defense-Is-or-was-the-21-foot-rule-valid-Part-1/)).

Neither distance really applies when the gun is already out and either aimed or ready, or if the shooter knows close quarter/defensive shooting techniques (eg the Mozambique Drill (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDqLOJy0O_A&feature=player_detailpage#t=81)).

Feah for sure. I was just pointing out for the other poster that whether its a sword or knife, or a musket or an M9 - it essentially comes down to the training level of the operator and wether the situation play to thier advantage or not. An earlier poster had mentioned:

"In real life, a guy wielding an early gun could be beaten by a guy with a sword. The reason was that guns had very few bullets and were really slow to reload. So you'd shoot a bullet or maybe a few bullets, then spend 5-10 minutes trying to reload. If you missed your shot, the swordsman could easily run up and kill you"

I was more pointing out that a modern combatant with poor fire discipline could be incapacitated by a knife just as easily as a musket using rifleman by a swordsman.

EDIT: I was unaware of that last one you linked though, I'll have to check it out!

[Incanur]

I've seen a video of a Japanese re-enactor with a tanegashima (16th Century matchlock arquebus) managing one round in 46 seconds, although he skipped some steps (use of the ramrod and actually putting a ball in), which probably puts them at about one round a minute.

In this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-lGCtbg580) video, the gunner reloads twice in about 32 seconds. That'd be almost 4 shot per minute, though it's only for show and thus takes shortcuts. Based on the 16th-century European military manuals I've read, I suspect historical matchlock arquebusiers shot 2-3 rounds per minute when pressed, for the first minute or two. For example, Humphrey Barwick claimed you could shoot an arquebus 40 times in a hour. Because of how heat and barrel fouling slow down the process, the rate of fire for the first few minutes must have been significantly higher. Barwick also provides numbers for using the heavy musket against advancing infantry at various distances that suggest it took no more than a minute to reload and fire even such a large piece.

[nedz]

It depends on how common or easily obtained those threats are. The medieval castle design will keep out most mundane threats, and those may well be only threats that a ruler needs to worry about. Even settings that are saturated in high-level mages don't often have them risking their lives to blow apart castles. And if that is an active threat, you can have a mundane castle (to stop regualr armies) along with magical defenses (to stop magical threats).

Medieval Castles were designed to force a siege, and then to resist that siege. They became obsolete with the invention of Cannon and so Bastion walls were developed leading to Star forts etc. Regular armies in fantasy settings will have casters for siege raising and so different defences are required — hence the anachronism.

[Daishain]

I don't mind minor anachronisms at all. We're talking about a world which has a radically different mode of existence and history by comparison to ours. Frankly, it being exactly like medieval age Europe would be unrealistic in and of itself.

Those poor bloody peasants have been locked in a pseudo medieval era for millenia. This, presumably, is due to the presence of magic, which would stifle innovation beyond a certain point.

What you are likely to end up with as time marches on is an odd mixture of inventions that would be ahead of their time in our own past, but are actually FAR behind schedule for theirs. Many of said inventions would have to compete with the magic users, and may end up being abandoned and/or forgotten if it doesn't prove viable.

Take a steam locomotive for instance. Early attempts would be slow, unreliable, and stupidly expensive, with magical equivalents being quite cheap and easy by comparison. The idea fails to live long enough for its later upgrades to make their advantages known.

Something similar would be true of firearms. The first crude matchlocks wouldn't be remotely impressive to any inventor's patron, who could probably get a half dozen magical crossbows made that were more accurate and caused more damage for the same price (and they wouldn't be likely to blow up in the user's face).

An upgrade to armor design on the other hand, like the full plate that was mentioned before, is likely to survive, since its benefit is obvious, and much cheaper to equip soldiers with than the magical alternative

[Storm_Of_Snow]

Medieval Castles were designed to force a siege, and then to resist that siege. They became obsolete with the invention of Cannon and so Bastion walls were developed leading to Star forts etc. Regular armies in fantasy settings will have casters for siege raising and so different defences are required — hence the anachronism.
If the guy attacking the castle's got a mage on his side, the guy in the castle's almost certainly got one on his side too.

And, for D&D at least, unless the mage has a level somewhere up in the teens, regular siege engines are doing a lot more damage than he ever could with his daily allowance of spells.

[LibraryOgre]

If the guy attacking the castle's got a mage on his side, the guy in the castle's almost certainly got one on his side too.

And, for D&D at least, unless the mage has a level somewhere up in the teens, regular siege engines are doing a lot more damage than he ever could with his daily allowance of spells.

Unless his daily allowance of spells is Invisibility and Spider Climb. A 3/4 Mage/thief (a mere 10,000 total XP) can turn invisible for 24 hours, spider-climb over the wall, walk wherever he needs, and extensively poison supplies or simply kill important individuals. Make him an illusionist and he can walk out invisibly after killing someone; make him a 4/5 and he can also do that, AND gets the advantage of a triple-strength backstab.

It's not just the siege weapons you have to resist; it's all the ways your opponent can mess with you. When you're limited to land-based, visible people, then a big curtain wall and a couple doors is what you need.

[Spiryt]

Unless his daily allowance of spells is Invisibility and Spider Climb. A 3/4 Mage/thief (a mere 10,000 total XP) can turn invisible for 24 hours, spider-climb over the wall, walk wherever he needs, and extensively poison supplies or simply kill important individuals. Make him an illusionist and he can walk out invisibly after killing someone; make him a 4/5 and he can also do that, AND gets the advantage of a triple-strength backstab.

It's not just the siege weapons you have to resist; it's all the ways your opponent can mess with you. When you're limited to land-based, visible people, then a big curtain wall and a couple doors is what you need.

Well, on the other hand, one needs just bunch of Alarm spells in critical places to render that impossible 'just like that' - without solid espionage job all around.

Sand all over the walls and watching guards would help too.

[Daishain]

Unless his daily allowance of spells is Invisibility and Spider Climb. A 3/4 Mage/thief (a mere 10,000 total XP) can turn invisible for 24 hours, spider-climb over the wall, walk wherever he needs, and extensively poison supplies or simply kill important individuals. Make him an illusionist and he can walk out invisibly after killing someone; make him a 4/5 and he can also do that, AND gets the advantage of a triple-strength backstab.

It's not just the siege weapons you have to resist; it's all the ways your opponent can mess with you. When you're limited to land-based, visible people, then a big curtain wall and a couple doors is what you need.

There are plenty of means for the commander of a fortress to defend against magical shenanigans, even if they don't have access to their own spellcaster (although such access certainly helps a great deal). Try leafing through the stronghold builder's guide for 3.5e D&D for a small selection of ideas, much of which fail to touch on the really creative defenses.

Regardless, you still need the big curtain wall and the doors. Just because 0.1% of the enemies you face have a means to bypass the walls doesn't mean the other 99.9% aren't worth trying to keep out. What the hell are you going to tell people if you set up the perfect defense against arcane users, only for your keep to be overrun by a small pack of goblins?

[nedz]

Field armies intent on conquest will always have more resources available than are sensible to allocate to any fixed position. IRL Castles were often held with remarkably small permanent garrisons, the defences were a major force multiplier. In a fantasy setting you need magical defences which will keep out both your mundane opponents and the less mundane ones — curtain walls are an anachronism.

[Daishain]

curtain walls are an anachronism.
No, they still represent a force multiplier, and a damn good one.

Yes, magical defenses are needed to shore things up, yes some enemies can just waltz straight past a standard wall. But the simple fact of the matter is that a simple, straight up physical barrier is the easiest and likely the most effective single defensive measure you can set up, and will be effective against nearly any foes you are likely to face.

The only possible exception to this is if you can replace the physical barrier with magical ones that aren't easily neutralized by the first random Adept with a scroll of dispel magic. But even then, the physical barrier still represents an extra layer that can support the rest of it.

[nedz]

Dispel Magic is a third level spell, Spider Climb and Invisibility are level 2 spells.

The best magical defences are those you don't even know are there, Illusions are good for this.

[Daishain]

Dispel Magic is a third level spell, Spider Climb and Invisibility are level 2 spells.

The best magical defences are those you don't even know are there, Illusions are good for this.

Alarm, see invisibility, and Glitterdust are also level two spells. A canny defender using any two of those will leave the poor bastard trying to sneak in exposed behind the walls, cut off from the rest. Items that will let sentries see invisibility, among other things, are also cheap enough that a stronghold owner should be able to spring for several.

If they've got a bit more resources than that, just slap down a few chambers of seeing in strategic locations. Invisibility is automatically purged upon entering the area.

Sigils of suppression are more expensive, but prevent 4th level and lower spells from functioning. Set it so that our invisible spider almost gets to the top of the wall before his ability to climb is compromised for extra hilarity.

If that still won't cut it, a bloody rich owner could spring for sigils of antimagic, which do exactly as suggested.

And then there are walls that autograpple things that come near, are covered in webs, have magical blade traps, nooks from which constructs like the Iron Cobra can lie in wait, can emit energy much like a wall of fire/lightning/whatever does, the list goes on.

And this doesn't even cover summoning/creating/hiring creatures with unusual senses to augment your standard.

Regardless, even if the walls can be bypassed, their presence means that they must. The enemy must spend additional time and resources doing so, which gives the defenders more options. Which alone is worth the time and money to slap down a little mundane stone. And again, the vast majority of enemies you will be concerned with will not have the ability to simply bypass a simple stone wall.

Now, what I would consider an anachronism would be strongholds designed just like the ones we have/had on earth. These would have some similar features, but other unusual threats exist, and the design must be adjusted to accomodate them.

[Killer Angel]

With magic, the advantage given by mundane defences is minor, but it's still there. Plus, in a D&D fantasy world, you can have curtain walls and moats for free, so, why not have them?

[Narren]

Medieval Castles were designed to force a siege, and then to resist that siege. They became obsolete with the invention of Cannon and so Bastion walls were developed leading to Star forts etc. Regular armies in fantasy settings will have casters for siege raising and so different defences are required — hence the anachronism.

My point was that regular armies in fantasy settings may or may not have casters for siege raising. Spellcasters are rare, and spellcasters that are interesting in risking their life on a battlefield probably more so. Or not....it just depends on the setting. Castles don't HAVE to be anachronistic. It depends on what the realistic or common threat is.

I keep my front door locked so intruders don't come in. If I lived in a bad neighborhood, I may have a security door that can't be kicked in. That won't stop a rocket, but that's not really something I worry about.