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2017-06-14, 09:50 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Apr 2016
Has anyone tried a D&D setting in the real world?
For example, did you have a setting that mixes the fantasy world of most D&D worlds with the real world and it's history? Like, were stuff like magic in actual medieval England existed, Orcs and Half-Orcs consisted of most of the Mongolians, or maybe even have most of Feudal Japan rules by warlords with a load of levels in Fighter or Paladin?
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2017-06-14, 10:00 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2006
- Location
- NYC
- Gender
Re: Has anyone tried a D&D setting in the real world?
Kinda.
I figured that the advances of magical technology would enable some really terribly brutal warfare techniques, and so the Axial Age basically rendered the lands of the most powerful expansionist empires -- Europe, India, and China -- uninhabitable magical wastelands.
The setting was based on those who escaped, and had eventually rebuilt a vaguely feudal civilization in North & South America ~1k years later.
So: real-world geography, but very much NOT real-world population distribution.I want you to PEACH me as hard as you can.
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2017-06-15, 01:18 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Apr 2009
- Location
- Germany
Re: Has anyone tried a D&D setting in the real world?
Many adventures for Lamentations of the Flame Princess take place in 16th century Europe.
We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.
Spriggan's Den Heroic Fantasy Roleplaying
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2017-06-15, 01:22 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2009
- Location
- Erutnevda
Re: Has anyone tried a D&D setting in the real world?
Peanut Half-Dragon Necromancer by Kurien.
Current Projects:
Group: The Harrowing Halloween Harvest of Horror Part 2
Personal Silliness: Vote what Soulknife "Fix"/Inspired Class Should I make??? Past Work Expansion Caricatures.
Old: My homebrew (updated 9/9)
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2017-06-15, 02:05 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Apr 2011
- Location
- 30.2672° N, 97.7431° W
- Gender
Re: Has anyone tried a D&D setting in the real world?
So...like Shadowrun? Only maybe a little earlier in the world time line?
"Sleeping late might not be a virtue, but it sure aint no vice. The old saw about the early bird and the worm just goes to show that the worm should have stayed in bed."
- L. Long
I think, therefore I get really, really annoyed at people who won't.
"A plucky band of renegade short-order cooks fighting the Empire with the power of cheap, delicious food and a side order of whup-ass."
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2017-06-15, 04:01 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2010
- Location
- Germany
- Gender
Re: Has anyone tried a D&D setting in the real world?
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2017-06-15, 07:21 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2013
Re: Has anyone tried a D&D setting in the real world?
Not D&D, but the Warhammer fantasy setting is based on a version of Renaissance Europe, and there's Middle Earth, of course. Then there are Arthurian and Robin Hood type settings, (again, mostly not D&D but including Doug Niles' Moonshae Islands, which was envisaged as a version of Arthurian Britain and later incorporated into the Forgotten Realms, and there was a FR trilogy based on Cormyr fighting off a 'Mongol' horde). The problem with this approach is that incorporating the more numerous humanoid races becomes tricky: it's fine having elves, dwarves, gnomes etc as secretive peoples who live in the deep forests or underground, but if you have hoards of Orcs invading from Mongolia/ North Africa, or tribes of Gnolls roaming the Serengeti/ American Mid-West, you can end up with some uncomfortable implications ("it's Earth in the 1400s, but people from X are Orcs not humans in my version of reality..."). That may or may not be an insurmountable obstacle for a homebrew campaign, but it's unlikely to be picked up to be published as a campaign setting commercially in the 21stC.
Last edited by Nightcanon; 2017-06-15 at 07:33 AM.
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2017-06-15, 05:06 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2015
Re: Has anyone tried a D&D setting in the real world?
Pax Britannica takes that idea on pretty well!
http://paxbritannicarpg.com
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2017-06-21, 02:09 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2015
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2017-06-21, 02:49 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2005
- Location
- Santa Barbara, CA
- Gender
Re: Has anyone tried a D&D setting in the real world?
I would say the whole point of D20Modern was this.
Most of the magic stuff was "hidden" to avoid consequences of having wizards and mind flayers et al.Last edited by sktarq; 2017-06-21 at 02:50 PM.
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2017-06-21, 03:26 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2017
Re: Has anyone tried a D&D setting in the real world?
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2017-06-21, 03:42 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2009
- Gender
Re: Has anyone tried a D&D setting in the real world?
I play Lamentations of the Flame Princess, so games set in random places on historical Earth have become a mainstay on my tables. I don't even try to explain where dwarves, elves and halflings come from; if someone asks, I make roundabout references to whatever folklore happens to exist in that part of the world. Such concerns are usually forgotten when faced with LotFP's signature weirdness.
London is my favorite place, because Death Love Doom takes place near it."It's the fate of all things under the sky,
to grow old and wither and die."
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2017-06-21, 03:56 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2013
Re: Has anyone tried a D&D setting in the real world?
Yeah, if you start categorizing actually pairing D&D races to human races, it's going to get really racist really fast. #1 no-no in appropriative worldbuilding.
However, if you make a cosmopolitan society where there are all D&D races everywhere, then you can use the keystones of certain locales, such as the Feudal Paladins of Japan, the Warriors of Gaul, the Nomadic raiders of the east, the Clerics of the Mediterranean, et cetera.
The Race doesn't matter, but certain societies either revolve around or discourage/encourage a certain class. Make the Druids in the Americas act differently than the Druids of Scandinavia, who act differently than the Islander druids, even though they may all be elves/orcs/gnomes/humans/et al. In one area they're leadership, in another they're a utility support class, in yet another they're outcasts.
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2017-06-21, 04:27 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2009
- Gender
Re: Has anyone tried a D&D setting in the real world?
You can't really dodge prejudices if you want to do historical Earth with any accuracy. However, historical prejudices by and large weren't the same as modern ones. For example, Somalis have a long-lasting feud with Amharat (Ethiopians), partly for religious reasons, and this has lead to wildly exaggerated stereotypes on both sides. When Somalis escaped to Ethiopia during their civil war, some honestly believed Amharat would eat their babies.
If you replaced Amharat with baby-eating gnolls, I'd wager most non-Somali players would be completely unobservant of any racism - because as outsiders, they would not associate baby-eating with Amharat and thus not get the gnolls could be stand-ins for any real people. They would just be fantasy monsters doing monster stuff."It's the fate of all things under the sky,
to grow old and wither and die."
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2017-06-22, 06:12 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2011
- Location
- Right behind you
- Gender
Re: Has anyone tried a D&D setting in the real world?
I'm doing it, a D&D world in the XIV-XV (1390) Gotholonia (Catalonia).
Races exist and are part of our world, for example, due to the help in the conquest of Mallorca island dwarfes have been awarded with several mountains where they live by their own, though technically their king is vassal of Martin the Humane.
Some things are changed because a demonic incursion in the 1200s, for example the Catholic Church has been broken, making protestantism much more early and widespread (And that has made the templar knights actually survive) and several churches has apeared (As the Church of Jerusalem, in the iberian peninsula).Last edited by Daedroth; 2017-06-22 at 07:12 AM.