Why is D&D still Medieval?

[Anonymouswizard]

No its depressing, leave my visually appealing species alone, humans are boring. Don't make me have to play them, I already put up with it in my anime roleplaying, I want to play a species that I'm actually interested in elsewhere.

Visually appealing? 90% of the time we're talking about 'human, but' physically as well.


I am sick of all-elcen parties, dwarves don't interest me anymore, and I see no 'race' that couldn't be done better with humans. Because if you put the work in humans can also be visually appealing.

[LibraryOgre]

Visually appealing? 90% of the time we're talking about 'human, but' physically as well.


I am sick of all-elcen parties, dwarves don't interest me anymore, and I see no 'race' that couldn't be done better with humans. Because if you put the work in humans can also be visually appealing.

It is one thing I much prefer in modern games, compared to those from the 90s and earlier... concrete, mechanical, reasons to play humans, at all levels of play. Shadowrun is the earliest I can think of that had it (putting playing a metatype at a premium on character creation), but 3e really put humans as a great race to play, mechanically.

[kyoryu]

Specifically, I'm talking a wide variety of statistics and surveys, across multiple media, between RPGs, MMOs, etc.

I do believe it to be, effectively, true.

Keep in mind that people posting on message boards are not a representative sample, and that we're talking a plurality here, not a majority.

[Telok]

I'm not sure what you expected them to do with your posting. Just dropping the link in here without also including an explanation as to what parts of the survey in question you think are non-representative and why is vaguely like wandering into the middle of a discussion and shouting 'Fallacy!' as loud as you can instead of formulating a thought and explaining it to others. Sure, those of us with a data science background can impute* your point from missing data, but for anyone else, you've just dropped a link to a book slightly too expensive to buy just to figure out another poster's point for them (mind you, they could have asked 'and what conclusions did you draw from this book, that you consider pertinent to this discussion?')

Ah, I was unclear. My apologies, I made a mistake.

As to databases... I inherited one, a live business critical one, that the users were entering "test" data into in order to check different outcomes. There were other issues, but that alone was skewing official results. To this day all reports I produce using that data have a warning on them that the data from 1996 to 2017 is unreliable due to "garbage in, garbage out". I fully believe that the D&D Beyond db has characters in it that are "hey, a new thing got added, make a character to check it out" from the customers and that there may well not be any way to tell if it's actually a "real" data point. People, are a problem.

[P. G. Macer]

The most common fantasy protagonist is a human, by something like a 100 to 1 margin. Warrior is also the most common character concept for said protagonist. That human and fighter would be the most common combination is logical.

If anything the trend in modern fantasy is against offering non-human options at all.

Oh, I would be totally unsurprised if human fighter is the most popular combination after all; I’m just not convinced the evidence presented is conclusive enough to state it as absolute fact.

[dps]

Sci fi was huge long before D&D was born.

Lookup Dan Dare and Flash Gordon.

Yeah, the comment about SF getting it's first big boost in the late 1980s shows a remarkable lack of historical perspective.

[Lord Raziere]

Visually appealing? 90% of the time we're talking about 'human, but' physically as well.


I am sick of all-elfen parties, dwarves don't interest me anymore, and I see no 'race' that couldn't be done better with humans. Because if you put the work in humans can also be visually appealing.

I'm not talking about those races, screw them, I'm talking dragonborn, tieflings, tabaxi, warforged and so on. I don't wanna play human, I wanna play a dragon and I'm already have to make a compromise by playing dragonborn so that people don't their knickers in a twist over balance, and now your wanting to take even that bit away from me, I have no sympathy to you and your concerns and no interest in any idea for making humans visually appealing unless your talking about transforming them into the species I want at character creation.

[Max_Killjoy]

I don't think D&D was ever all that medieval.

[KillianHawkeye]

Just to add a little anecdote, I absolutely chose the human fighter pregen character for my first game of Pathfinder 2nd Edition, and it was 100% because of the simplicity factor. IMO, the best way to learn a new game system is to start with an easy character.

And to be honest, I don't care what Bugbear says, there's just something I find satisfying about hitting monsters with sticks. The sticks don't need even need to be fancy! Give me a hammer, and the orcs and goblins all start to look like nails.

But in all seriousness, simplicity as an aesthetic is something that I feel people sometimes overlook, and it has a real value in art and media.

[Anonymouswizard]

I'm not talking about those races, screw them, I'm talking dragonborn, tieflings, tabaxi, warforged and so on. I don't wanna play human, I wanna play a dragon and I'm already have to make a compromise by playing dragonborn so that people don't their knickers in a twist over balance, and now your wanting to take even that bit away from me, I have no sympathy to you and your concerns and no interest in any idea for making humans visually appealing unless your talking about transforming them into the species I want at character creation.

So basically, you want a human in an incredibly silly hat?

[Lord Raziere]

So basically, you want a human in an incredibly silly hat?

Let answer your question with another question:
DnD is known to make shortcuts, biologically with its races, morally and philosophically with alignment, with classes it makes the shortcut of portraying the most archetypical and generic versions of each, making shortcuts historically by not actually portraying a medieval world. Everyone knows and accepts this. These elements are defended and seen as taken "apart of DnD".

So why in the name of the Seven Heavens is the races psychology suddenly being held to this academic standard of mental difference that we all know can't be achieved in any realistic capacity, that DnD never will reach for and why are you bent out of shape about ruining other peoples fun just because that standard can never be achieved?

Its none of your business what I want to play. Nor is it your right to deny me it just because you don't like it. If your term for it is supposed to shame me, it doesn't. Its another shortcut. My advice is that you accept that Dnd races will always be this way, and move on. Myself, I always find more depth in portraying the individual as themselves rather than as a member of something else. Besides I don't do silliness much. I do conflict and suffering. You want something to be anything more than a comedic joke you put real pain and tragedy into it. They can still happy even humorous yes. But your "silly hats" only exist because the effort was never made to make them properly into cool helms, scratched, dented by time and suffering.

The lack of such suffering is why so many imitators of an original thing fail after all. They imitate the looks and what they as good about something without bothering to study the pain that is the heart, the core of it. Of course I'm not saying the races will can or should be changed to experience more suffering- I'd be hypocritical and foolish to think I have any hope of changing how they are made in the books any more than you- but at least I can extrapolate what pain could logically be caused from their current depictions and develop individual PCs who portray that pain well and thus move beyond being a "silly hat" played for pure comedy. As for other people, they are free to play their hats as silly as possible. Their style of roleplaying is just different from mine, not worse or better. However I will say that if you want them to not be silly hats....you got to stop being silly and start portraying some actual suffering maybe even horror. And if they don't want to do that? Oh well. Can't be helped.

[Pex]

No problem with non-humans having all kinds of buttons to push to do something cool and/or passive nice things and/or interesting roleplaying hooks. That doesn't mean humans should be denied their own.

[Anonymouswizard]

Let answer your question with another question:
DnD is known to make shortcuts, biologically with its races, morally and philosophically with alignment, with classes it makes the shortcut of portraying the most archetypical and generic versions of each, making shortcuts historically by not actually portraying a medieval world. Everyone knows and accepts this. These elements are defended and seen as taken "apart of DnD".

Wow, it's like you're listing all the reasons I'm not interested in playing D&D. Can you edit that to fit 'the class system is needlessly restrictive' in there somewhere?

Like seriously, I'm not saying that any of that is something I'm happy with either.

So why in the name of the Seven Heavens is the races psychology suddenly being held to this academic standard of mental difference that we all know can't be achieved in any realistic capacity, that DnD never will reach for and why are you bent out of shape about ruining other peoples fun just because that standard can never be achieved?

Because it's my opinion, and it makes worldbuilding easier for me if I don't have to make each culture have a silly physical trait, or try to do mental lairs to work out how fish people would love when I'm not a fish person. There ain't no troglodytes here because they're ain't no troglodytes here.

Its none of your business what I want to play. Nor is it your right to deny me it just because you don't like it. If your term for it is supposed to shame me, it doesn't. Its another shortcut. My advice is that you accept that Dnd races will always be this way, and move on. Myself, I always find more depth in portraying the individual as themselves rather than as a member of something else. Besides I don't do silliness much. I do conflict and suffering. You want something to be anything more than a comedic joke you put real pain and tragedy into it. They can still happy even humorous yes. But your "silly hats" only exist because the effort was never made to make them properly into cool helms, scratched, dented by time and suffering.

Because you're the one who carried my view depressing? I didn't originally reply to you, I replied to a different postet, and you found my view so offensive you had to tell me I was having badwrongfun by not including intelligent nonhumans.

The lack of such suffering is why so many imitators of an original thing fail after all. They imitate the looks and what they as good about something without bothering to study the pain that is the heart, the core of it. Of course I'm not saying the races will can or should be changed to experience more suffering- I'd be hypocritical and foolish to think I have any hope of changing how they are made in the books any more than you- but at least I can extrapolate what pain could logically be caused from their current depictions and develop individual PCs who portray that pain well and thus move beyond being a "silly hat" played for pure comedy. As for other people, they are free to play their hats as silly as possible. Their style of roleplaying is just different from mine, not worse or better. However I will say that if you want them to not be silly hats....you got to stop being silly and start portraying some actual suffering maybe even horror. And if they don't want to do that? Oh well. Can't be helped.

Which has nothing to do with my actual point, but sure, putt words in my mouth. For clarity here's my original post, where I'm talking about hats and how to use them, and mainly saying 'let's Amit were playing humans in hats, because then we can more easily discuss and play with the hats' (or at least, that was the intent).

Which isn't a bad thing in my opinion. Playing a human in a silly hat is much more fun when we all acknowledge the existence of the dragon-feather hat.

You also get the middle ground of providing different cultures of humans instead of different races which can be... problematic. To use D&D terms it's gone when they're getting free skills or Cantrips, dodgy when they're getting stat boosts or unique powers. Not that there's anything inherently wrong about giving Rohirrim +2 Dexterity, just that you have to be very careful with how you frame it (and for the love of Pelor don't give them minuses).

[AdAstra]

Wow, it's like you're listing all the reasons I'm not interested in playing D&D. Can you edit that to fit 'the class system is needlessly restrictive' in there somewhere?

Like seriously, I'm not saying that any of that is something I'm happy with either.



Because it's my opinion, and it makes worldbuilding easier for me if I don't have to make each culture have a silly physical trait, or try to do mental lairs to work out how fish people would love when I'm not a fish person. There ain't no troglodytes here because they're ain't no troglodytes here.



Because you're the one who carried my view depressing? I didn't originally reply to you, I replied to a different postet, and you found my view so offensive you had to tell me I was having badwrongfun by not including intelligent nonhumans.



Which has nothing to do with my actual point, but sure, putt words in my mouth. For clarity here's my original post, where I'm talking about hats and how to use them, and mainly saying 'let's Amit were playing humans in hats, because then we can more easily discuss and play with the hats' (or at least, that was the intent).

Wait, what's your definition of hats in this case? Because it seems like sometimes you talk about it like playing a dragon is just being a human in a funny hat, sometimes not. Normally a Hat is basically a stereotype, mostly cultural, but the way you're using it doesn't always seem to hew to that?

People do have a right to have opinions on your opinions.It's an opinion after all, which is an unassailable right. This whole thread's all about someone's opinion and most of it has consisted of people poking holes in it.

Plus in many cases the appeal of playing things that aren't humans (or even just playing humans who aren't you) is specifically the appeal of that alternative psychology and experience. You can't actually understand it fully, what with being a human, but it can be interesting to explore and think through what it might be like. Or just being able to look cool. I think games probably would be lesser if they didn't allow that.

Not even mentioning that in many cases, the psychology isn't all that different. A fish is usually not as smart as a person, but it's not like the things that drive it are completely incomprehensible to us. It wants to eat, avoid getting eaten, and ideally live at least long enough to secure some kind of legacy (in this case in the form of more fish). Dragons are pretty different from humans in many ways, but they really don't have drives that are that alien to us. If anything, the fiction of dragons is highly relatable to a person. Lazy, wealth-craving, substantially longer-lived and more intelligent than most of the life they share this world with, sounds pretty familiar. If anything a lot of popular culture overstates how alien even other humans are (seeing all the articles about how totally alien my culture supposedly is is both fascinating and also rather annoying).

[Max_Killjoy]

So basically, you want a human in an incredibly silly hat?

You're coming across as very reductionist and belittling, you know.

[Max_Killjoy]

Not even mentioning that in many cases, the psychology isn't all that different. A fish is usually not as smart as a person, but it's not like the things that drive it are completely incomprehensible to us. It wants to eat, avoid getting eaten, and ideally live at least long enough to secure some kind of legacy (in this case in the form of more fish). Dragons are pretty different from humans in many ways, but they really don't have drives that are that alien to us. If anything, the fiction of dragons is highly relatable to a person. Lazy, wealth-craving, substantially longer-lived and more intelligent than most of the life they share this world with, sounds pretty familiar. If anything a lot of popular culture overstates how alien even other humans are (seeing all the articles about how totally alien my culture supposedly is is both fascinating and also rather annoying).

Sadly, we've seen a resurgence of the idea that the minute details that make us different supposedly overwhelm all the things we have in common, and make it impossible for us to understand or empathize.

[Tanarii]

Wait, what's your definition of hats in this case? Because it seems like sometimes you talk about it like playing a dragon is just being a human in a funny hat, sometimes not. Normally a Hat is basically a stereotype, mostly cultural, but the way you're using it doesn't always seem to hew to that?

"A human in a silly hat" is kinda the exact opposite of "a race of hats". They both speak to race Psychology / personality. Or rather the first to physical only difference lacking psychological, and the second to one identical psychological difference only.

A "race of hats" are ones with one very strong psychological difference from humans, one so strong it's the only thing that defines them and it becomes a caricature for the personality of every member of the race, allowing no or only very difficult variation between members of the race.

A "human in a silly hat" are races that are psychologically identical to humans, merely looking physically different, often wildly so.

Possibly we need something like "you in a silly hat" to describe an avatar character, where it's just the player's personality, but playing a PC. (Note, I find avatars fine, especially among new to roleplaying players.)

[DwarfFighter]

I'm told the DA1-5 modules (Temple of the Frog, The City of the God's) introduced a lot of sci-fi elements. There is also Expedition to Barrier Peaks.

D&D is what you put into it. The default level of classes and equipment sets this to a medieval level, true. This appears to be sufficiently popular to get people interested. I see no problem here.

[Leon]

The High the Tech level is the less important "magic" is and magic is what lets most people get their power trip on.

[TridentOfMirth]

Why have we never seen a more updated setting? I mean really updated closer to modern day. How many games even use the Medieval setting? Or do most use a much more modern one anyway?

So, why don't the makes of D&D update?

They DID update. In the early 2000s, WotC was producing "medieval" D&D as well as Star Wars and d20 Modern/Future games. Star Wars proved to be very popular while d20 Modern/Future really languished. It languished, not due to lack of support (it had loads of books and dragon/dungeon articles) but because it was simply less popular than "medieval" D&D.

Look at the RPG industry in general - outside of Star Wars (and 40k for a bit), there are not really any sci-fi games that dominate the sales charts or grab zeitgeist and become wildly popular.

[Satinavian]

Look at the RPG industry in general - outside of Star Wars (and 40k for a bit), there are not really any sci-fi games that dominate the sales charts or grab zeitgeist and become wildly popular.

There have been a couple more over the years. Traveller and SR for example were at least at times quite big. For modern but not SF there was always the whole WoD line and also CoC. And then don't forget all those Superhero RPGs.

D20 modern had a hard time not because no one is playing modern games but because everything it did, other, well established system could already do. And those had often properly flashed out settings. Or rules that were tailor-made for the setting at hand.

I mean, when i want to do a Star Trek campaign, would i try to do it it with D20 modern, one of half the dozen official Star Trek TPGs or use another generic without the D20 baggage like GURPS ?

[Anonymouswizard]

They DID update. In the early 2000s, WotC was producing "medieval" D&D as well as Star Wars and d20 Modern/Future games. Star Wars proved to be very popular while d20 Modern/Future really languished. It languished, not due to lack of support (it had loads of books and dragon/dungeon articles) but because it was simply less popular than "medieval" D&D.

Look at the RPG industry in general - outside of Star Wars (and 40k for a bit), there are not really any sci-fi games that dominate the sales charts or grab zeitgeist and become wildly popular.

To be fair to d20 Modern it failed due to a mix of two things: the d20 system not being that great outside of D&D, and other games already being in the space it to move into. I'm actually sightly more interested in it now than I was at the time (when I had never even heard of it), but as I already own Modern AGE it would be somewhat redundant.

D20 Modern tried to do modern day roleplaying when World of Darkness was at it's height, it tried to do space opera when both Traveller and Star Wars games were available. It tried to do historical fantasy when Ars Magica existed. It tried to do low magic fantasy, but Runequest already existed. It tried to be a universal system, but didn't have simplicity in the way the soon to be released Savage World's did, or the sheer in depth research that goes into GURPS books.

d20 Modern might have been saved by better compatibility with D&D, but that's pure conjecture. I know I might have loved to have futuristic weapons in my teenage D&D games, and the DMG entries were never that detailed.

The OGL might have also caused WotC some problems here, because there was d20 everything. Although the same thing has happened with 5e WotC also isn't releasing anything outside D&D roleplaying-wise, which means that but even Adventures in Middle-earth (which I'm somewhat annoyed has stopped) is in the same exact niche as what they're selling.

As a side note, my go-to generic right now is Modern AGE using GURPS books for additional support, mainly because many people don't have the patience for GURPS character creation (it's easy, but it's also relatively long even for a 100CP character). Although I've grown to prefer more specialised systems, I wouldn't use it for a dark urban fantasy game when Chronicles of Darkness exists.


Also, 5e has been another attempt at updating D&D, but instead of chasing trends in media it tried to chase trends in indie RPGs. To me it also failed because of it, if I want narrative than I own Fate or a couple of Forged in the Dark games (as well as a couple other games with nareativist elements), and if I want rules light fantasy I own Advanced Fighting Fantasy*, where character creation is quick, painless, and the rules are significantly lighter.

* And soon Stellar Adventures, or AFF IN SPACE!!!!

[Willie the Duck]

There have been a couple more over the years. Traveller and SR for example were at least at times quite big. For modern but not SF there was always the whole WoD line and also CoC. And then don't forget all those Superhero RPGs.

I was going to drop in to say similar (regarding the sci fi ones). Ming you, up until WoD, no line (including WEG Star Wars) ever really got enough traction to get a lot of notice outside of gaming circles, but within the circles at at specific times WEG SW, Traveller, and Shadowrun were all successful game systems with significant followings.

[Yanagi]

As far as I can tell, D&D settings stay the same because when the company wants to try out something different they create a separate product line. That way they retain the successful product while gambling on the new product. Over the years many product lines didn't stick as effectively, so D&D has become synonymous with that particular fantasy no-time that's present in Greyhawk and FR.

(With 5e we're actually watching an attempt to re-introduce IP that was set to the way side, so we're in another round of experimenting with what will sell how well.)

The other thing that has happened is that like Star Wars, D&D has become its own context. Where once is was one paradigm of fantasy among others, it reached a point of both market dominance and cultural ubiquity that it's the standard against which other fantasy materials are compared. This isn't bad...it's just an inevitability. People expect a certain backdrop, a feel of how to be in a D&D world...which makes it valuable intellectual property.

But I also think it's worth noting that D&D has always been a kitchen sink--overlapping multiple genres *and* deliberately modular with materials aping tropes from prominent writers with dissimilar worlds--in an attempt to draw in players that want different things but all want to be at the same tabletop. It has always been incoherent because the point is to create a product that captures as much market share as possible for the least amount of work...so the setting remaining relatively static, but the ruleset expands to allow more and different play styles rooted in disparate genre tropes, and the aesthetics transform to meet the expectations of younger audiences with a different expectations.

[Nifft]

As far as I can tell, D&D settings stay the same because when the company wants to try out something different they create a separate product line. That way they retain the successful product while gambling on the new product. Over the years many product lines didn't stick as effectively, so D&D has become synonymous with that particular fantasy no-time that's present in Greyhawk and FR.

This is wrong.

FR does "advance" in time into every new edition, making changes in landscape if not society or technology.

Greyhawk did advance in both time and technology -- there's recently a fun order of Paladins who use revolvers, for example -- but it's been unsupported long enough that it might look static, even though it wasn't.

[Alteiner]

No D&D setting that I've run has been medieval for over a decade. I run D&D in one of two broad paradigms. Either technology and magic are at least at the level of Eberron, or it's a "Points of Light" style setting where individual walled city-states with wildly-different technologies and magics are separated by vast gulfs of hostile terrain. Even the ruins of the lost ancient empire which I typically use as the basis for a setting like that was well beyond Europe's medieval period in its heyday.

[Clistenes]

I don't see D&D as medieval, but just as pre-industrial...

Technology, culture, economy, politics, religion...etc., are made up of bits taken from the Bronze Age all the way to the XVIII century.

As for why it remains pre-industrial and most often lacking gunpowder... D&D is a fantasy based on a combination of tales and fantasies from all mythical pasts... anything after the Industrial Revolution is just too close to us...

[Scots Dragon]

I don't see D&D as medieval, but just as pre-industrial...

Technology, culture, economy, politics, religion...etc., are made up of bits taken from the Bronze Age all the way to the XVIII century.

As for why it remains pre-industrial and most often lacking gunpowder... D&D is a fantasy based on a combination of tales and fantasies from all mythical pasts... anything after the Industrial Revolution is just too close to us...

Also all of these settings are set during a specific time in their history, with the one that's had the most timeline evolution covering at most a hundred and thirty-five years.

And that was purely due to an ill-conceived timeskip.

[quinron]

This is wrong.

FR does "advance" in time into every new edition, making changes in landscape if not society or technology.

Greyhawk did advance in both time and technology -- there's recently a fun order of Paladins who use revolvers, for example -- but it's been unsupported long enough that it might look static, even though it wasn't.

I don't know enough about Greyhawk, but I know that the technological changes in the Forgotten Realms, at least since 3.5, have been almost entirely to accommodate the rules changes. The only "technology" that significantly changes is magic, which to be fair has changed as drastically in universe as mechanically.

Which provides one possible answer to OP's question: the technology in the game hasn't progressed because they haven't made rules for it, and they haven't made rules for it because most things that can be accomplished with advanced technology either a) are already accomplished more easily with magic, or b) would invalidate now-classic magical elements to a degree that you'd be fundamentally re-evaluating the whole system.

[Clistenes]

Also all of these settings are set during a specific time in their history, with the one that's had the most timeline evolution covering at most a hundred and thirty-five years.

And that was purely due to an ill-conceived timeskip.

But even when there isn't an advance in time and all the adventures happen in a few consecutive years and in the same country, D&D settings tend to be a mishmash of traits from many pre-industrial societies, and even some from industrial societies.

Like, you have a walled village that is an independent city-state, similar to Iron Age oppida settlements, only the village head is voted by all adult citizens and has a position similar to the mayor of a Far West settlement, but the main religion has an authority close to the medieval Catholic Church, there are Druids living in the nearby forest (save these "druids" are more like Native American Medicine Men combined with Central Asian Shamans), Bards have a privileged status similar to Celtic Ovates, there are banking companies similar to Renaissance Italian ones, the architecture is inspired in the Tudor style save the temple, which is of Greco-Roman style, they have XVIII level clocks, their clothes are similar to XVII century Slavic ones, their weapons and armor are of Renaissance level, they grow potatoes, tomatoes, maize, rice, tobacco and cotton, and glass is common and cheap...