Why is D&D still Medieval?

[NigelWalmsley]

Also, I am really interested by this concept. Could you elaborate?

As a disclaimer, most of this is specific to 3e (as that's the edition I'm most familiar with). Much of it is applicable to one degree or another in other editions, but there's no guarantee it translates directly. Also, I'm ignoring Artificers, because all they really do is let you do stuff at lower levels, which I regard as optimization more than interesting worldbuilding. I'm also trying to avoid any kind of rules abuse, because that's not really interesting world-building.

Anyway, let's start with necromancy. Specifically the classic "raise undead minions" necromancy, not the various curses and debuffs available to aspiring necromancers. There are, broadly, three tools available for low-level necromancers to control undead minions: rebuking, Command Undead, and Animate Dead. Rebuking is mostly interesting in that it's the first to come online, but the numbers are pretty unimpressive. Command Undead is interesting, because unlike other methods of control, it doesn't check hit dice at all. You just hit a mindless undead with it, and the undead does what you say. The limit is how many castings you can keep up at once, meaning that if you have some way of producing individual undead that are very hard core it lets you field them in very large numbers. That said, Animate Dead is going to be the staple of any necromantic civilization, because it lets you make undead. There are, of course, higher level undead-creation spells, but for the most part they're not as useful because A) they don't offer any particular control over the undead they make and B) most of the undead you'd want to use those spells to make can make more of themselves anyway.

So, you've got some undead minions (skeletons, in most cases). What do you do with them? The most obvious use is that you can replace draft animals. Instead of horses or oxen that need to be fed, and to sleep, and might die if you work them too much, you can have skeletal versions that are tireless and require no sustenance. A 5th level Cleric can control 20 HD worth of undead. If you make Skeleton Heavy Horses, that's a half-dozen working animals, before you consider figuring out some exotic critter that has better stats, or try to expand your control pool. Those undead horses let you move goods farther (because they don't need food, meaning you don't need to carry as much food in your caravan), move goods faster (because they don't need to sleep, meaning you don't need to stop to let them rest), and give you better agricultural yields (because they can plow a larger area -- note that in this context undead aren't quite pure upside as the manure produced by living animals was important for crops). There's a lot of value to be gained there, but there are limits. Mindless undead are, well, mindless. Even if you're animating Human (or Elven or Goblin) corpses, the labor you get out of Skeletons is pretty primitive.

Before we go further, a brief discussion of the relationship between undead and the living. Fiction often depicts necromancers as running around killing people to turn them into zombies, or vampires draining people dry of blood, or ghouls devouring humans alive. That's certainly scary, and if your goal is to establish the undead as bad guys, it's pretty effective. But it's not particularly smart or necessary (unless the mechanics of magic are such that it explicitly is, but in D&D they aren't). Necromancers, even flesh eating undead, have no rational incentive to kill people. Vampires actually have an incentive to keep people alive, because living people produce blood and dead ones don't (incidentally: the fact that D&D Vampires do Constitution Drain instead of Damage makes some of the world-building you'd like to do with them difficult). The number of corpses per person is one, and it's one whether you kill people in their prime or let them die of old age (necromancers do benefit from population turnover, so you'd expect shorter-lived races like Goblins to be the most interested). As such, if they're not trapped in short-term thinking, necromancers can be perfectly functional members of society, with undead doing difficult, unpleasant, or dangerous manual labor, resulting in a higher overall standard of living for society.

Back to the main topic: Skeletons may be good for extremely low skill manual labor, but they falter at any task that you can't accurately describe in a couple of sentences. There are a lot of tasks like that which you might want your undead doing, so what do you do? There are three basic approaches. Most obviously, you could simply make intelligent undead. Then they can do anything normal people can do, with most of the benefits of undeath. Alternatively, Awaken Undead will turn mindless undead into intelligent ones. Finally, Haunt Shift will turn your undead into "haunting presences". The rules for that are complicated, but basically it allows you to make undead-powered assembly lines.

That covers your basic economic applications of necromancy. But where necromancy really shines is warfare. Undead soldiers don't need food or rest, won't disobey orders, won't break in the face of overwhelming enemy firepower, don't suffer from disease or poison, and are immune to some seriously nasty battle magic (some of it even heals them). An army of undead has no logistics train, can march through the night, and can fight under spells like Cloudkill, Fear, and Stinking Cloud without concern. If, as they should be, your line troops are Skeletons, you can even rain down whatever cold-based blasting you want, including Uttercold spells that heal your troops. Also, you can stick Permanency'd Symbols of Fear or Death on your standards, which does a really good job of breaking enemy troops. Oh, and Skeletons have Darkvision, meaning they can operate freely at night.

The logistics aspect is worth exploring some more, because undead armies behave very differently from medieval ones. Since your troops don't need food, you don't need the baggage train that most armies do. However, food wasn't the only thing it transported. It also moved ammunition (e.g. arrows) and backup weapons of various sorts. Those things are useful, but total strategic mobility is better, so undead armies probably have a lot less archery than traditional ones (though use of spells like Fabricate can mitigate this). Conversely, they probably have a lot more cavalry, because the primary constraints on those are things that undead can ignore (food, tiredness). The fact that undead don't need food also allows them a much finer control over their interactions with the local population. While many armies needed forage to support themselves (which could drive tension with locals), undead can leave the local population entirely alone. Alternatively, because they don't need food or drink, they can burn the fields, salt the earth, and poison the water supply, crippling the operations of more traditional armies.

Necromancers also have access to spawn-creating undead, which are basically the magical equivalent of nukes. A peasant can't do anything to a shadow, and a shadow kills a peasant in something less than 30 seconds, at which point the peasant becomes a new shadow. Unless stopped immediately, this process spirals out of control and can depopulate entire regions. And undead themselves are immune to shadows, allowing them to operate unimpeded.

Of course, you can also employ auxiliaries who have a somewhat less... absolute effect on the conflict. Undead have a wide swath of immunities that, beyond protecting them from your own magic artillery, protect them from the dangerous auras of various monsters. Most notably, dragons' Frightful Presence is a no-action AoE save-or-lose to which undead are completely immune. If your dragon allies are White, Silver, or some other Cold-breathing type, and your undead footsoldiers are Skeletons (which, again, they should be), the dragons can even let loose with their breath weapons with impunity. You can even take a page out of the Scourge's playbook and use dragons that are themselves undead. Note that this is a rare case where you actually want to make Zombies, because Zombie Dragons keep their breath weapons (and flight).

Then you've got your military leadership, which can be various forms of undead themselves. Turning (or more often, having them turn themselves) your senior officers into Ghosts, Liches, or Vampires modestly increases their combat capabilities, but more importantly makes them immortal and very, very difficult to kill in the field. Undead armies can field generals or even captains with hundreds or thousands of years of experience. That means that even if you can deal with all the horrors described above, you have to deal with the fact that the enemy's leadership is probably both smarter and better-trained than yours.

Given all that, people often ask the not-unreasonable question "why haven't undead conquered the world?". A common response is to assert that the gods won't allow it, but that's not really compelling. It's true that there are gods of Light and Life that might take objection to the necromancer-priests of Ermor riding forth and founding an empire of darkness and despair that lasts for all time, but there are also gods of Darkness and Undeath that are 100% on board with that happening (and remember, while I'm using provocative language, such an empire is probably an improvement over faux-medieval D&Dland, so it's unclear that the Good gods should oppose it). It's also a bad answer from the perspective of running a campaign, because "the gods heavily intervene in the setting to solve problems before they arise" is just about the most disempowering piece of worldbulding you can have. The better answer is realpolitik. Once they get going, necromantic empires are nigh-unstoppable juggernauts. But before they can get their battle-caster artillery, legions of undead, and other tricks going, they're just a regular empire that has a few auxiliaries that are slightly tougher and better than normal troops. And everyone knows that their power is only going to go up from there, meaning that the best time to attack them is right now. Any power that starts dipping its toes into necromancy is going to get smacked down hard by every one of its neighbors, not out of any moral opprobrium, but because that's the only chance those neighbors are likely to get. The first international treaties in D&Dland probably amount to "no necromancy".

In terms of broader magical advancement, most of the big stuff is in the 3rd to 6th level spell range, with the big hump at 5th level spells. There are a few low level spells that are kind of interesting, but their impact is pretty limited. Silent Image is convenient but not world-changing, Whispering Wind is neat but doesn't travel fast enough or far enough to do too much, Goodberry is a nice tool for increasing food yields but doesn't do too much, and Divinations are potentially impactful but depend heavily on how your legal system is structured.

At 3rd level, you get Animate Dead (discussed in some detail above), Create Food and Water (which can't replace farming, but does a lot to help supplies last through lean times or on campaign), Stone Shape (the volume isn't huge, but you can make decent-sized structures with repeated castings), and Plant Growth (a 33% productivity bump isn't the Green Revolution, but it's no joke and means a big bump in available non-farm labor). Noe of those are paradigm shifts, but they're all enough to offer real improvements over medieval standards of living. Plant Growth in particular is big enough deal that I would expect most societies to dedicate significant resources to ensuring it's cast appropriately.

4th level doesn't offer anything with as dramatic an impact as Plant Growth, but it has Minor Creation (the stuff it makes is temporary, but it can still be useful), Scrying (the potential impact is huge, but spell slots are limited enough to constrain it somewhat), Sending (fixes the issues with Whispering Wind, but a 4th level slot is a steep rate), Lesser Planar Ally (this is the first thing that lets you go dumpster-diving for outsiders, which is potentially very strong), and Restoration (interestingly, one of the most impactful uses of this is allowing you to safely feed Vampires).

5th level has basically everything you could want. Plane Shift (outer planes have all kinds of useful stuff lying around), Wall of Stone (this is what Stone Shape wishes it was), Lesser Planar Binding (like Lesser Planar Ally but easier to use), Teleport (instantaneous travel is good, but it's not instantaneous shipping, so the impact isn't as big as some think), Fabricate (this allows industrial-scale production of most goods, though as I noted a while ago it's vulnerable to individuals quitting or dying), and Permanency (this takes a lot of other spells from "neat" to "game-changing").

6th level stuff is largely just improvements on stuff you already had. Wall of Iron is like Wall of Stone, but made of iron, in case that's more useful for some reason. Planar Binding lets you get more stuff than its Lesser variant (ditto Planar Ally). Move Earth better in some respects than earlier earth-manipulating spells, but not fundamentally different.

It would probably also be worth going into the ways in which magical creatures likely impact D&D society (basically: it takes training and work for a Human to cast 4th level spells, for a Couatl it takes "being born"), but this post is already super long.

[Destro2119]

As a disclaimer, most of this is specific to 3e (as that's the edition I'm most familiar with). Much of it is applicable to one degree or another in other editions, but there's no guarantee it translates directly. Also, I'm ignoring Artificers, because all they really do is let you do stuff at lower levels, which I regard as optimization more than interesting worldbuilding. I'm also trying to avoid any kind of rules abuse, because that's not really interesting world-building.

Anyway, let's start with necromancy. Specifically the classic "raise undead minions" necromancy, not the various curses and debuffs available to aspiring necromancers. There are, broadly, three tools available for low-level necromancers to control undead minions: rebuking, Command Undead, and Animate Dead. Rebuking is mostly interesting in that it's the first to come online, but the numbers are pretty unimpressive. Command Undead is interesting, because unlike other methods of control, it doesn't check hit dice at all. You just hit a mindless undead with it, and the undead does what you say. The limit is how many castings you can keep up at once, meaning that if you have some way of producing individual undead that are very hard core it lets you field them in very large numbers. That said, Animate Dead is going to be the staple of any necromantic civilization, because it lets you make undead. There are, of course, higher level undead-creation spells, but for the most part they're not as useful because A) they don't offer any particular control over the undead they make and B) most of the undead you'd want to use those spells to make can make more of themselves anyway.

So, you've got some undead minions (skeletons, in most cases). What do you do with them? The most obvious use is that you can replace draft animals. Instead of horses or oxen that need to be fed, and to sleep, and might die if you work them too much, you can have skeletal versions that are tireless and require no sustenance. A 5th level Cleric can control 20 HD worth of undead. If you make Skeleton Heavy Horses, that's a half-dozen working animals, before you consider figuring out some exotic critter that has better stats, or try to expand your control pool. Those undead horses let you move goods farther (because they don't need food, meaning you don't need to carry as much food in your caravan), move goods faster (because they don't need to sleep, meaning you don't need to stop to let them rest), and give you better agricultural yields (because they can plow a larger area -- note that in this context undead aren't quite pure upside as the manure produced by living animals was important for crops). There's a lot of value to be gained there, but there are limits. Mindless undead are, well, mindless. Even if you're animating Human (or Elven or Goblin) corpses, the labor you get out of Skeletons is pretty primitive.

Before we go further, a brief discussion of the relationship between undead and the living. Fiction often depicts necromancers as running around killing people to turn them into zombies, or vampires draining people dry of blood, or ghouls devouring humans alive. That's certainly scary, and if your goal is to establish the undead as bad guys, it's pretty effective. But it's not particularly smart or necessary (unless the mechanics of magic are such that it explicitly is, but in D&D they aren't). Necromancers, even flesh eating undead, have no rational incentive to kill people. Vampires actually have an incentive to keep people alive, because living people produce blood and dead ones don't (incidentally: the fact that D&D Vampires do Constitution Drain instead of Damage makes some of the world-building you'd like to do with them difficult). The number of corpses per person is one, and it's one whether you kill people in their prime or let them die of old age (necromancers do benefit from population turnover, so you'd expect shorter-lived races like Goblins to be the most interested). As such, if they're not trapped in short-term thinking, necromancers can be perfectly functional members of society, with undead doing difficult, unpleasant, or dangerous manual labor, resulting in a higher overall standard of living for society.

Back to the main topic: Skeletons may be good for extremely low skill manual labor, but they falter at any task that you can't accurately describe in a couple of sentences. There are a lot of tasks like that which you might want your undead doing, so what do you do? There are three basic approaches. Most obviously, you could simply make intelligent undead. Then they can do anything normal people can do, with most of the benefits of undeath. Alternatively, Awaken Undead will turn mindless undead into intelligent ones. Finally, Haunt Shift will turn your undead into "haunting presences". The rules for that are complicated, but basically it allows you to make undead-powered assembly lines.

That covers your basic economic applications of necromancy. But where necromancy really shines is warfare. Undead soldiers don't need food or rest, won't disobey orders, won't break in the face of overwhelming enemy firepower, don't suffer from disease or poison, and are immune to some seriously nasty battle magic (some of it even heals them). An army of undead has no logistics train, can march through the night, and can fight under spells like Cloudkill, Fear, and Stinking Cloud without concern. If, as they should be, your line troops are Skeletons, you can even rain down whatever cold-based blasting you want, including Uttercold spells that heal your troops. Also, you can stick Permanency'd Symbols of Fear or Death on your standards, which does a really good job of breaking enemy troops. Oh, and Skeletons have Darkvision, meaning they can operate freely at night.

The logistics aspect is worth exploring some more, because undead armies behave very differently from medieval ones. Since your troops don't need food, you don't need the baggage train that most armies do. However, food wasn't the only thing it transported. It also moved ammunition (e.g. arrows) and backup weapons of various sorts. Those things are useful, but total strategic mobility is better, so undead armies probably have a lot less archery than traditional ones (though use of spells like Fabricate can mitigate this). Conversely, they probably have a lot more cavalry, because the primary constraints on those are things that undead can ignore (food, tiredness). The fact that undead don't need food also allows them a much finer control over their interactions with the local population. While many armies needed forage to support themselves (which could drive tension with locals), undead can leave the local population entirely alone. Alternatively, because they don't need food or drink, they can burn the fields, salt the earth, and poison the water supply, crippling the operations of more traditional armies.

Necromancers also have access to spawn-creating undead, which are basically the magical equivalent of nukes. A peasant can't do anything to a shadow, and a shadow kills a peasant in something less than 30 seconds, at which point the peasant becomes a new shadow. Unless stopped immediately, this process spirals out of control and can depopulate entire regions. And undead themselves are immune to shadows, allowing them to operate unimpeded.

Of course, you can also employ auxiliaries who have a somewhat less... absolute effect on the conflict. Undead have a wide swath of immunities that, beyond protecting them from your own magic artillery, protect them from the dangerous auras of various monsters. Most notably, dragons' Frightful Presence is a no-action AoE save-or-lose to which undead are completely immune. If your dragon allies are White, Silver, or some other Cold-breathing type, and your undead footsoldiers are Skeletons (which, again, they should be), the dragons can even let loose with their breath weapons with impunity. You can even take a page out of the Scourge's playbook and use dragons that are themselves undead. Note that this is a rare case where you actually want to make Zombies, because Zombie Dragons keep their breath weapons (and flight).

Then you've got your military leadership, which can be various forms of undead themselves. Turning (or more often, having them turn themselves) your senior officers into Ghosts, Liches, or Vampires modestly increases their combat capabilities, but more importantly makes them immortal and very, very difficult to kill in the field. Undead armies can field generals or even captains with hundreds or thousands of years of experience. That means that even if you can deal with all the horrors described above, you have to deal with the fact that the enemy's leadership is probably both smarter and better-trained than yours.

Given all that, people often ask the not-unreasonable question "why haven't undead conquered the world?". A common response is to assert that the gods won't allow it, but that's not really compelling. It's true that there are gods of Light and Life that might take objection to the necromancer-priests of Ermor riding forth and founding an empire of darkness and despair that lasts for all time, but there are also gods of Darkness and Undeath that are 100% on board with that happening (and remember, while I'm using provocative language, such an empire is probably an improvement over faux-medieval D&Dland, so it's unclear that the Good gods should oppose it). It's also a bad answer from the perspective of running a campaign, because "the gods heavily intervene in the setting to solve problems before they arise" is just about the most disempowering piece of worldbulding you can have. The better answer is realpolitik. Once they get going, necromantic empires are nigh-unstoppable juggernauts. But before they can get their battle-caster artillery, legions of undead, and other tricks going, they're just a regular empire that has a few auxiliaries that are slightly tougher and better than normal troops. And everyone knows that their power is only going to go up from there, meaning that the best time to attack them is right now. Any power that starts dipping its toes into necromancy is going to get smacked down hard by every one of its neighbors, not out of any moral opprobrium, but because that's the only chance those neighbors are likely to get. The first international treaties in D&Dland probably amount to "no necromancy".

In terms of broader magical advancement, most of the big stuff is in the 3rd to 6th level spell range, with the big hump at 5th level spells. There are a few low level spells that are kind of interesting, but their impact is pretty limited. Silent Image is convenient but not world-changing, Whispering Wind is neat but doesn't travel fast enough or far enough to do too much, Goodberry is a nice tool for increasing food yields but doesn't do too much, and Divinations are potentially impactful but depend heavily on how your legal system is structured.

At 3rd level, you get Animate Dead (discussed in some detail above), Create Food and Water (which can't replace farming, but does a lot to help supplies last through lean times or on campaign), Stone Shape (the volume isn't huge, but you can make decent-sized structures with repeated castings), and Plant Growth (a 33% productivity bump isn't the Green Revolution, but it's no joke and means a big bump in available non-farm labor). Noe of those are paradigm shifts, but they're all enough to offer real improvements over medieval standards of living. Plant Growth in particular is big enough deal that I would expect most societies to dedicate significant resources to ensuring it's cast appropriately.

4th level doesn't offer anything with as dramatic an impact as Plant Growth, but it has Minor Creation (the stuff it makes is temporary, but it can still be useful), Scrying (the potential impact is huge, but spell slots are limited enough to constrain it somewhat), Sending (fixes the issues with Whispering Wind, but a 4th level slot is a steep rate), Lesser Planar Ally (this is the first thing that lets you go dumpster-diving for outsiders, which is potentially very strong), and Restoration (interestingly, one of the most impactful uses of this is allowing you to safely feed Vampires).

5th level has basically everything you could want. Plane Shift (outer planes have all kinds of useful stuff lying around), Wall of Stone (this is what Stone Shape wishes it was), Lesser Planar Binding (like Lesser Planar Ally but easier to use), Teleport (instantaneous travel is good, but it's not instantaneous shipping, so the impact isn't as big as some think), Fabricate (this allows industrial-scale production of most goods, though as I noted a while ago it's vulnerable to individuals quitting or dying), and Permanency (this takes a lot of other spells from "neat" to "game-changing").

6th level stuff is largely just improvements on stuff you already had. Wall of Iron is like Wall of Stone, but made of iron, in case that's more useful for some reason. Planar Binding lets you get more stuff than its Lesser variant (ditto Planar Ally). Move Earth better in some respects than earlier earth-manipulating spells, but not fundamentally different.

It would probably also be worth going into the ways in which magical creatures likely impact D&D society (basically: it takes training and work for a Human to cast 4th level spells, for a Couatl it takes "being born"), but this post is already super long.

Plane Shift is not a 5th level spell. It is a seventh level spell.

My personal take on this whole thing is that while these are great suggestions that you can do from only core, it isn't looking at logical extrapolations and not-RAW things. Things like developing Starfinder UPBs or magical industrial devices or using magic to research and mass produce a fertilizer that replicates plant growth or other useful things, or in Pathfinder, casting ceremony buffed by like 20 level 1 clerics to cover huge areas with plant growth a la this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_..._agricultural/

Frankly, the thing we need to look at is how the initial society is even formed. I mean, if your populations are so small that you are counting 25000 people as a metropolis (and the largest city in your 1000s of miles wide nation state is 160000 people), then you do not have a nation state. There is simply not enough people to govern it effectively like nation state. I mean, Paris in medieval times had a pop of 200000+. Also, the whole universal literacy thing ALREADY requires a huge surplus of food/time to even teach anyone to be literate, to the point where many medieval lords were not literate. This is something that is never addressed in any setting I have read.

So my point is there are ALREADY a ton of "modern" things these so called "medieval" kingdoms must be doing in order to have such developments be present.

[NigelWalmsley]

Plane Shift is not a 5th level spell. It is a seventh level spell.

Plane Shift is a 7th level Wizard spell. It's a 5th level Cleric spell.

it isn't looking at logical extrapolations and not-RAW things.

Why would you need to? As demonstrated, you can get pretty far with "basically RAW". If you want to go further the thing you want isn't so much new effects as better rules for managing the existing ones. D&D doesn't have a good framework for modeling any of the tools discussed, which is a far bigger issue than what specific tools you have.

I mean, if your populations are so small that you are counting 25000 people as a metropolis (and the largest city in your 1000s of miles wide nation state is 160000 people), then you do not have a nation state.

Why would you expect people to have nation-states? That's a relatively recent political development, and certainly far beyond medieval society (let alone the Iron Age civilizations that are a better match for D&D in many ways).

Also, the whole universal literacy thing ALREADY requires a huge surplus of food/time to even teach anyone to be literate, to the point where many medieval lords were not literate.

That seems like a really minor detail to get hung up on. Also one that's not at all essential. If you just give the NPC classes (except maybe Adept and Aristocrat) the Barbarian's Illiteracy class feature, that fixes the problem. Hell, if you use Unearthed Arcana's Traits, you don't even have to homebrew.

[snowblizz]

Also, the whole universal literacy thing ALREADY requires a huge surplus of food/time to even teach anyone to be literate, to the point where many medieval lords were not literate. This is something that is never addressed in any setting I have read.

It really doesn't. The last great famine occurred in Sweden in the late 1860s, 1867-69 IIRC. That is at least a hundred years after effectively basic universal literacy existed in the country (about 200 years earlier a basic system for teaching basic literacy and religion existed all over the nation) and 20 years after compulsory public schools were introduced for children. Teaching the public to read and providing adequate sustenance oddly enough are two different skill sets.

The illiteracy of medieval and earlier ages is vastly overblown. There is an argument made by historians and scholars about rune inscribed stones that they are rather pointless without a significant portion of the populace being able to read them. Since they convey rather mundane glorification of the subjects and erectors.

Public schools existed in many cities in the early to middle Middleages, open to boys and girls alike.

I don't remember exactly but I think historians were suggesting that a significant portion of the public were able to do some basic reading, with difficulty of course. The truth is probably that the Victorians who thought themselves above the so called Dark Ages, Middle ages and the Renaissance were probably as literate on average as the earlier periods. Remember the Dark Ages were never as dark as the Victorians would have us believe, the Middle Ages were not a vast nothing in between and the Renaissance didn't exactly reborn culture as they supposed. Nor were the Victorians the crowning achievement of all civilization before them.

[Max_Killjoy]

It really doesn't. The last great famine occurred in Sweden in the late 1860s, 1867-69 IIRC. That is at least a hundred years after effectively basic universal literacy existed in the country (about 200 years earlier a basic system for teaching basic literacy and religion existed all over the nation) and 20 years after compulsory public schools were introduced for children. Teaching the public to read and providing adequate sustenance oddly enough are two different skill sets.

The illiteracy of medieval and earlier ages is vastly overblown. There is an argument made by historians and scholars about rune inscribed stones that they are rather pointless without a significant portion of the populace being able to read them. Since they convey rather mundane glorification of the subjects and erectors.

Public schools existed in many cities in the early to middle Middleages, open to boys and girls alike.

I don't remember exactly but I think historians were suggesting that a significant portion of the public were able to do some basic reading, with difficulty of course. The truth is probably that the Victorians who thought themselves above the so called Dark Ages, Middle ages and the Renaissance were probably as literate on average as the earlier periods. Remember the Dark Ages were never as dark as the Victorians would have us believe, the Middle Ages were not a vast nothing in between and the Renaissance didn't exactly reborn culture as they supposed. Nor were the Victorians the crowning achievement of all civilization before them.

There's also perhaps a little quirk in what was meant by "literacy" -- in certain times and regions, it specifically referred to literacy in Latin or some other elite and/or scholarly language.

So when some sniffy philosopher in 1000 CE describes the masses as "illiterate", maybe they didn't care that the people in question were quite capable of writing and reading everyday notes in their "vulgar" language.

[Tanarii]

Frankly, the thing we need to look at is how the initial society is even formed. I mean, if your populations are so small that you are counting 25000 people as a metropolis (and the largest city in your 1000s of miles wide nation state is 160000 people), then you do not have a nation state. There is simply not enough people to govern it effectively like nation state. I mean, Paris in medieval times had a pop of 200000+. Also, the whole universal literacy thing ALREADY requires a huge surplus of food/time to even teach anyone to be literate, to the point where many medieval lords were not literate. This is something that is never addressed in any setting I have read.

The Carolingian empire had a pop of about 15 million and area the size of France (equivalent to about 1000x500 miles) and was one of the more powerful nations of the time. According to Wikipedia it's cities were around 20-25k.

"Medieval" was a wide time period, and conjures up pop-culture ideas based on a wide variety of IRL times, from Carolingians and Viking raiders, to The Flower of French Chivalry dying to artillery in the form of English Longbows.

[snowblizz]

There's also perhaps a little quirk in what was meant by "literacy" -- in certain times and regions, it specifically referred to literacy in Latin or some other elite and/or scholarly language.

So when some sniffy philosopher in 1000 CE describes the masses as "illiterate", maybe they didn't care that the people in question were quite capable of writing and reading everyday notes in their "vulgar" language.

I was very much think about that also. And it's true, for a long period educated and literate tended to be assumed to mean reading and writing Latin.

Also the ability write was much less widespread, which also tend to colour our view of earlier literacy. But it also means that just because kings and nobles had scribes doesn't mean they were themselves unable.

If I can spend my time hunting boar and fair maidens you can be sure some commoner scribe who can't form his own power-base is doing my correspondence.

That said am sure in 200 years people will look back at the illiterate and barbaric 2000s where most people could not program in a language not yet invented for a device we can't even imagine.

[Tanarii]

That said am sure in 200 years people will look back at the illiterate and barbaric 2000s where most people could not program in a language not yet invented for a device we can't even imagine.

Heck, programmers already do that.

[Nifft]

That said am sure in 200 years people will look back at the illiterate and barbaric 2000s where most people could not program in a language not yet invented for a device we can't even imagine.

Heck, programmers already do that.

Yeah this is unironically Scala, where I can write code for the JVM (an emulator for a device not invented yet) in a dialect which is created as I write it.

And two weeks later, I will indeed feel illiterate as I gaze over what my hands have wrought.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Yeah this is unironically Scala, where I can write code for the JVM (an emulator for a device not invented yet) in a dialect which is created as I write it.

And two weeks later, I will indeed feel illiterate as I gaze over what my hands have wrought.

Doesn't even take doing things like that. I frequently have the "what idiot wrote that? And what the heck is that doing? And why?" feeling. 99% of the time, the answers were "Me, a week ago. No clue. And because that worked." And my work isn't all that complex. Knowledge is fragile, and complex knowledge is even more fragile. Even a good interruption when I'm in the flow will leave me struggling to pick back up the pieces when I come back. Context switches are awful.

[Destro2119]

Plane Shift is a 7th level Wizard spell. It's a 5th level Cleric spell.



Why would you need to? As demonstrated, you can get pretty far with "basically RAW". If you want to go further the thing you want isn't so much new effects as better rules for managing the existing ones. D&D doesn't have a good framework for modeling any of the tools discussed, which is a far bigger issue than what specific tools you have.



Why would you expect people to have nation-states? That's a relatively recent political development, and certainly far beyond medieval society (let alone the Iron Age civilizations that are a better match for D&D in many ways).



That seems like a really minor detail to get hung up on. Also one that's not at all essential. If you just give the NPC classes (except maybe Adept and Aristocrat) the Barbarian's Illiteracy class feature, that fixes the problem. Hell, if you use Unearthed Arcana's Traits, you don't even have to homebrew.

"Why would you expect people to have nation-states? That's a relatively recent political development, and certainly far beyond medieval society (let alone the Iron Age civilizations that are a better match for D&D in many ways)."

Uh, because it is the assumption of the "average fantasy setting?" Like Greyhawk or Golarion. Because in a medieval setting you just have people living on some lord's vaguely defined land holdings, not in the nation of "whatever."

Also, I think you all are drastically overrating the literacy quality of the medieval times, especially compared to the modeen assumptions of the normal DnD worlds. Even in Renaissance times the literacy rate was only 60% for oys and men. And that is only if you count being able to sign your own name as being literate. Medieval people had nowhere near the literacy/vocab knowledge of even a blue collar worker from the 1940s.

[Democratus]

Are Greyhawk and Waterdeep nation states?

I had always thought of them like the city-states of ancient Greece. Athens ruled Attica. Sparta rules Laconia.

[LibraryOgre]

Are Greyhawk and Waterdeep nation states?

I had always thought of them like the city-states of ancient Greece. Athens ruled Attica. Sparta rules Laconia.

They are city-states; obviously, they control some area around themselves, but it's within a day or two's journey (i.e. patrol range), and influence a larger area, but they're not nation-states with significant holdings.

[InvisibleBison]

Are Greyhawk and Waterdeep nation states?

I had always thought of them like the city-states of ancient Greece. Athens ruled Attica. Sparta rules Laconia.

Being a city-state and a nation state are not inherently contradictory, though I can't think of any actual examples of anywhere that is both of the top of my head.

[Tanarii]

Being a city-state and a nation state are not inherently contradictory, though I can't think of any actual examples of anywhere that is both of the top of my head.

They're inherently contradictory, even allowing for being poorly defined things. But they're generally separate "size" categories within the concept of "nation", with a nation being larger than a city-state. Ie a city-state is just a small one city nation.

[Beleriphon]

They're inherently contradictory, even allowing for being poorly defined things. But they're generally separate "size" categories within the concept of "nation", with a nation being larger than a city-state. Ie a city-state is just a small one city nation.

I have an answer for you here, and its pretty straightforward. A nation state is simply put a group of people that are consciously members of the same ethnic group. That usually lines up by political boundaries, although doesn't always, but to be a sovereign nation is really should. There plenty of real world example where the nation of whatever group lives within the borders of a sovereign that they don't feel any attachment to. The HRE for example was composed of several nationalities that didn't exactly match up political boundaries where each group actually lived.

A city-state is typically just a city that operates separately from other neighboring cities. They usually have pretty soft borders compared to large sovereign states. Athens for example in Classical Greece was a city state, it didn't have any particular ability to tell other cities what to do directly, although has the largest city in Attika the Athenian rulers certainly had plenty of sway. And its direct influence pretty much extended as far as it could march soldiers effectively.

The only modern examples I can think of are Monaco, Singapore, and Vactican City. Of those three the closest to a classic city state is Singapore.

[Nifft]

I have an answer for you here, and its pretty straightforward. A nation state is simply put a group of people that are consciously members of the same ethnic group. That usually lines up by political boundaries, although doesn't always, but to be a sovereign nation is really should. There plenty of real world example where the nation of whatever group lives within the borders of a sovereign that they don't feel any attachment to. The HRE for example was composed of several nationalities that didn't exactly match up political boundaries where each group actually lived.

A city-state is typically just a city that operates separately from other neighboring cities. They usually have pretty soft borders compared to large sovereign states. Athens for example in Classical Greece was a city state, it didn't have any particular ability to tell other cities what to do directly, although has the largest city in Attika the Athenian rulers certainly had plenty of sway. And its direct influence pretty much extended as far as it could march soldiers effectively.

The only modern examples I can think of are Monaco, Singapore, and Vactican City. Of those three the closest to a classic city state is Singapore.

I remember reading somewhere that Classical Greek city-states sometimes had different dialects to the point that communication with non-neighbors was sometimes difficult.

Some Classical Greek city-states also had specific traditions which bound its citizens into a cohesive community identity.


It seems like someone who knew more specifics might be able to argue that those city-states were also nation-states.

[Beleriphon]

I remember reading somewhere that Classical Greek city-states sometimes had different dialects to the point that communication with non-neighbors was sometimes difficult.

Some Classical Greek city-states also had specific traditions which bound its citizens into a cohesive community identity.


It seems like someone who knew more specifics might be able to argue that those city-states were also nation-states.

In theory Athenains were a nation state, but the nebulous political boundaries mean they weren't sovereign states the way we'd define France from Germany, or Sweden from Norway (to use two sovereign states that are more similar in terms of language and culture). So Athens and Sparta are definitely separate national identities to the people who lived there, but it gets weirder when looking at things from the perspective of other states like the Persian Empire. The Persians knew that Athens and Sparta didn't get along, but at the same time also recognized that the Greek were more homogeneous than their own empire.

[HouseRules]

In theory Athenains were a nation state, but the nebulous political boundaries mean they weren't sovereign states the way we'd define France from Germany, or Sweden from Norway (to use two sovereign states that are more similar in terms of language and culture). So Athens and Sparta are definitely separate national identities to the people who lived there, but it gets weirder when looking at things from the perspective of other states like the Persian Empire. The Persians knew that Athens and Sparta didn't get along, but at the same time also recognized that the Greek were more homogeneous than their own empire.

There are three Leagues, four if you count the Hellenized Slavs lead by Macedonia. The three Leagues are the Thebes leading the Boeotian League, Athens leading the Delian League, and Sparta who overtook Corinth in the League of Corinth and renamed to Achaean League. You should think of the three Leagues as three Vassal Dukes whom have more power than their "King", the King of Corinth is the King of Greece.

• Sovereign Princes, Upper Nobles = Leader of Major Leagues.
  
  • Archduke
  • Grand Duke
  • Grand Prince
  • Duke
  • Prince
• Vassal Princes, Middle Nobles = Leader of Minor Leagues.
  
  • Palace Count, Count Palatinate
  • Mark/March Count, Marquess
  • Land Count
  • Princely Count, Noble Prince
• Lower Nobles
  
  • Count = King of Major City-States.
  • Viscount = King of Minor City-States.
  • Baron = King of Major Town-States.
  • Baronet = King of Minor Town-States.

[Clistenes]

On the subject of Greek city-states:

Many Greek polis weren't proper city-states, but a group of villages bound together by blood ties, history and culture, with a sanctuary acting as the core; these were pretty autonomous most of the time, but they shared the same laws and gathered to make decisions as a group. They were sorta mini-countries, and they could be monarchies, democracies, oligarchies... etc.

All polis, as soon as they got enough power, tried to create hegemonies: Sparta, an extreme case, enslaved (helots) or reduced to serfdom (periekoi) all settlements in Laconia and Messenia. Others just asked for troops and ships...

So polis were in a way mini-countries rather than mere self-governed settlements...

[Talakeal]

snip

Nice post.

I think you are understating a few of the drawbacks to undead though.

Obviously some of it varies on edition, but most undead require a 50gp onyx to create; 50gold is the better part of a lifetime’s wages for an unskilled laborer, and I would imagine you are going to get some serious scarcity issues if you create indead on a mass scale.

While I agree gods getting involved is lame, there are a lot more anti undead gods than there are pro death gods, as most gods with the death portfolio believe undead to be desecrations and prefer to let the dead rest in peace.

Also, undeath is “evil”. Good people cannot be necromancers. Good clerics cant animate dead. So yeah, there is a reason why you see necromancers as bad guys. Likewise, becoming a lich or vampire literally changes your alignment to evil. Most of the lesser undead, particularly the self replicating kind, also go on evil rampages if there is a break in the chain of command, and such breaks are inevitable in a large scale undead operation.

Also, you have books like heroes or horror and libris mortis claiming the mere presence of the undead makes the world worse by corrupting it with evil or negative energy.

[KorvinStarmast]

@Mark Hall: Conan wasn't a Cowboy.

The social mobility, where a simple warrior could become king (or a poor cowpoke could become a rich landowner).

I've got about 13 paperbacks full of Conan stories that were re issued as a series in the 70's. Conan is a fundamental icon of the kind of pulp stories that shaped D&D.
He started as a captive, chained, and ended up as the King of Aquilonia.

Your "it's a Western" take that you excerpted is quite reductionist. With that said, Gygax did mention in the AD&D 1e DMG how the 'economy' of an adventuring area would resemble a boom town in the American frontier. Boom towns are not unique to the American West. As a classic example, the rise and fall of Bordeaux, France, from about 1650 through 1800, boom to bust.

But to get at what D&D was built upon, go back to the history of the Feudal and Frankish Europe** - not medieval Europe - if you want to see the chaotic and battle strewn landscape with small pockets of civilization and order (Late Dark Ages, around the time of Charlemagne, plus or minus a century) and lots of lawless ness (Chaos!) with some locales being run by warriors/horsemen, and some areas by bishops, and then which D&D adds wizards to that mix to make it more like a story with Magic. (Something similar was going on in the old Eastern Roman Empire, but since they had an Emperor and a Patriarch, there was a bit more order ... and intrigue)

Magic is a critical added element to all of this, in D&D, and Magic is noticeably Lacking in Westerns)

That's the progression, which Conan took beyond Name Level: a man on a horse (probably with some social connections) makes a name for himself and holds an area in fief to a higher noble.

That's your 9th level Fighting Man of the Original D&D. He looked at the "Outdoor Survival" map that was a recommended supplement to the original game and tried to find a spot to build his stronghold. The Cleric did likewise, and the Wizard .,..
If They Survived.

Nothing to do with a Western, and that's due to the pretty decent connection to the Late Dark Ages to Crusading to Early Rennaisance time period covered in Chainmail. The gamers who brought us that game were historical war gamers also. (And they played Diplomacy, and Avalon Hill games, and so on)

Granted, once you hit Basic D&D (B/X) and you begin to get away from the campaign aspect of D&D the "where does this fit" in a genre certainly shows a lot of crossover with "well, what are these knights errant (or even outlaw knights) doing on the edges of civilization, and what's there to make their reputations?"

Old ruins (someone mentioned archaeology and grave robbing being close cousins) in dangerous locations guarded by
Monsters and Magic.

Monsters and Magic: that's not from Westerns. But the chests full of treasure? In Westerns, we now and again get 'treasure from the old Spanish era' which is a few hundred years before Westerns take place, and in Pirate stories there are buried treasures looted along the Spanish Main, so in D&D you get treasures 'of this older fallen civilization' (OK, what fell before Feudal Europe? Yeah, Roman Empire ... or if you go ancient, Egyptian empire ...) So there's your treasure.

As to we meet in a tavern: Right out of Fellowship of the Ring.
Or a variation on Lieber's "Ill met in Lankhmar"
Or variations on a hundred detective novels/pulps of the first half of the 1900's.
Or variations on who someone meets in a book by Luke Short or Louis L'Amour

Above considered, I do see the trope overlap with the archetype from the Standard Western Oater (1940's to 1970's) with the saloon as a center piece of a story.
Yeah, there are bound to be some Western / Oater story elements in there, since D&D was a synthesis of a lot of different kinds of stories and movies and maybe a few TV shows written by Americans immersed in radio, movie, book, comic book, pulp, and TV stories and all of Bullfinch's Mythology and King Arthur and so on.

It should come as no surprise that shortly after they (TSR) made D&D they produced an actual Western Game called Boot Hill. In that game there were, as the movie with Sharon Stone and Gene Hackman alluded to a decade or so ago, The Quick and the Dead. It didn't have legs.

To answer the OP: Feudal/Medieval/Renaissance Magic stories, with Monsters did have legs thanks to the 'level progression' mechanic. I think Arneson gets credit for that, when he had to answer the question: how do we get to be a Hero or Superhero (Chainmail leader and Name Level in Original D&D) and he arrived at a point system that we eventually see become XP.

-------------

** Oman's book on the Dark Ages is quite good at bringing that chaotic situation to life.

[LibraryOgre]

@Mark Hall: Conan wasn't a Cowboy.
I've got about 13 paperbacks full of Conan stories that were re issued as a series in the 70's. Conan is a fundamental icon of the kind of pulp stories that shaped D&D.
He started as a captive, chained, and ended up as the King of Aquilonia.

Conan is something of a special case, partially because he shaped the genre that became D&D. Conan isn't a cowboy, but Driz'zt has some of the same elements of a cowboy... more of Bronson's Chato than John Wayne, to be sure, but well in the mold of the Western. And, while Conan may not be a Cowboy, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser aren't too far from Butch and Sundance.

It's important to note that while D&D grew out of pulp, it's not pulp. It's become its own subset of the fantasy genre... and the fantasy genre is heavily influenced by the Western genre.

Magic is a critical element to all of this, and Magic is noticeably Lacking in Westerns)

Socrates Poole, representing Mr. Brisco County, Jr.,, Deadlands, and Werewolf: The Wild West would beg to differ. It might even become a class action lawsuit, given the Ghost Rider and Jonah Hex are both westerns with heavy magic. Weird West stories, mixing magic with Westerns, go back to the 30s. Even Robert E. Howard, author of Conan, wrote a Western involving magic. John Carter's Barsoom used an explicitly Western frame story for a world of monsters, telepathy, and ray guns, and that started in the 1910s. There's no reason Westerns can't have magic, just that it's not a feature of all Westerns.

D&D, as I said, is a Western; it draws from a lot of the same tropes and styles as Westerns, and the themes of Westerns were heavy in popular culture at the time of the writing of D&D, to the point where a major inspiration of one of the classes in AD&D was the Western, Kung Fu. While there are certainly periods of history where you had a similar level of chaos, they did not have the cultural impact in the 40s-late 70s that Westerns did. They did not have, in the popular imagination, the same level of race-as-personality that I cited. Being a Western does not prevent it from being other things... but being other things does not prevent it from being a Western.

[Lord Raziere]

well its too bad that DnD lacks the one thing that truly makes a western worth coming to the genre for: the gunslinging.

now I realize you may go "but Raziere, the genre is wider than just gunslinging and here are examples" and so on.

But: the reason I bring it up, is because gunslinging is whats so iconic to the genre. without it, a lot of what DnD does can be argued to just be normal action-adventure tropes. western is something very specific for a reason.

[Mechalich]

The Western is a tradition that descends, in the English-speaking tradition, from the Knights-Errant tradition, including Arthurian romances and similar sources. Fantasy, in the English-speaking tradition, also descends from the Knights-Errant tradition. Tolkien, whose influence on modern fantasy and certainly on D&D is immense, was a professor of British Literature and drew inspiration directly from the works with which he was familiar (read his translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight sometime, it's excellent). Westerns and Modern Fantasy share a common literary ancestor and are closely related, but that does not make one a subset of the other.

[Willie the Duck]

Your "it's a Western" take that you excerpted is quite reductionist.

Honestly I don't know which stance I feel is being more reductionist -- it's a western because it contains elements common to westerns or it can't be a western because it contains things one finds in other genres. I feel like I'm back in '93 and having a Usenet debate over whether Shadowrun is Cyberpunk, with magic; Cyberpunk, full stop (the magic being orthogonal to the question of Cyberpunkedness); or not-Cyberpunk, because of the magic.

I think this gets into one of those set theory questions of style. Is such and such music rock-influenced jazz, jazz, jazz fusion, etc.

[Lord Raziere]

Honestly I don't know which stance I feel is being more reductionist -- it's a western because it contains elements common to westerns or it can't be a western because it contains things one finds in other genres. I feel like I'm back in '93 and having a Usenet debate over whether Shadowrun is Cyberpunk, with magic; Cyberpunk, full stop (the magic being orthogonal to the question of Cyberpunkedness); or not-Cyberpunk, because of the magic.

I think this gets into one of those set theory questions of style. Is such and such music rock-influenced jazz, jazz, jazz fusion, etc.

Well here is my take:

is it recognizably this genre at a glance?

with Shadowrun? yeah its cyberpunk. I know when I see it: cyborgs, big cities full of megacorps, little hope, and so on.

is DnD a western? uuuuuuuuuuuuuh......well lets look at the tropes of a western:
-gunslinging (doesn't have this)
-cowboy attire (doesn't have this)
-generally set in the wild WEST, or places much similar to it, with deserts and other terrain similar to that (maybe?)
-features small villages in need of help? (I mean probably yes, but....this isn't a trope exclusive to westerns)
-wandering heroes (yes, but again, this isn't a western exclusive trope)

like the problem with labeling it as a western is that there is absolutely nothing obviously telling you that this should be the case in the art. even if you say that DnD doesn't use guns and they use wants or hand crossbows instead, we don't see any rogues looking like a cowboy but with a hand-crossbow or any warlocks who are like a cowboy but with a wand shaped like a pistol.

while basing an assertion that DnD is a Western because of the less aesthetic reasons is iffy, because many of the tropes there are universal action-adventure tropes that were around long before the western even existed; the western just provides a more modern take on the trope by changing the weapons and thus the style of combat. that and if it was intended that way, surely the designers would say so in their inspirational reading section of the Dnd 5e book? keep in mind in contains both things new and old, with some of this stuff from Gygax's original list:

Spoiler: Warning: Long

Show

Ahmed, Saladin. Throne of the Crescent Moon.
Alexander, Lloyd.The Book of Three and the rest of the
Chronicles of Prydain series.
Anderson, Paul. The Broken Sword, The High Crusade, and
Three Hearts and Three Lions.
Anthony, Piers. Split Infinity and the rest of the Apprentice
Adept series.
Augusta, Lady Gregory. Gods and Fighting Men.
Bear, Elizabeth. Range of Ghosts and the rest of the
Eternal Sky trilogy.
Bellairs,john. The Face in the Frost.
Brackett, Leigh. The Best of Leigh Brackett, The Long
Tomorrow, and The Sword of Rhiannon.
Brooks, Terry. The Sword of Shannara and the rest of the
Shannara noveis.
Brown, Fredric. Hall of Mirrors and What Mad Universe.
Bulfinch, Thomas. Bulfinch's Mythology.
Burroughs, Edgar Rice. At the Earth's Core and the rest
of the Pellucidar series, Pirates ofV enus and the rest of
the Venus series, and A Princess of Mars and the rest of
the Mars series.
Carter, Lin. Warrior of Worlds End and the rest of the
World's End series.
Cook, Glen. The Black Company and the rest of the Black
Company series.
de Camp, L. Sprague. The Fallible Fiend and Lest
Darkness Fall.
de Camp, L. Sprague & Fletcher Pratt. The Complete
Enchanter and the rest of the Harold Shea series, and
Carnelian Cube.
Derleth, August and H.P. Lovecraft. Watchers out of Time.
Dunsany, Lord. The Book of Wonder, The Essential Lord
Dunsany CoJlection, The Gods of Pegana, The King of
Elfland's Daughter, Lord Dunsany Compendium, and The
Sword of Welleran and Other Tales.
Farmer, Philipjose. Maker of Universes and the rest of the
World of Tiers series.
Fax, Gardner. Kothar and the Conjurer's Curse and the rest of
the Kolhar series, and Kyrik and the Lost Queen and the rest
of the Kyrik series.
Froud, Brian & Alan Lee. Faeries.
Hickman, Tracy & Margaret Weis. Dragons of Autumn Twilight
and the rest of the Chronicles Trilogy.
Hodgson, William Hope. The Night Land.
Howard, Robert E. The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian and
the rest of the Conan series.
jemisin, N.K. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and the
rest of the lnheritance series, The Killing Moon, and The
Shadowed Sun.
Jordan, Robert. The Eye of the World and the rest of the Wheel
of Time series.
Kay, Guy Gavriel. Tigana.
King, Stephen. The Eyes of the Dragon.
Lanier, Sterling. Hiero's journey and The Unforsaken Hiero.
LeGuin, Ursula. A Wizard of Earthsea and the rest of the
Earthsea series.
Leiber, Fritz. Swords and Deviltry and the rest of the Fafhrd &
Gray Mouser series.
Lovecraft, H.P. The Complete Works.
Lynch, Scott. The Lies of Locke Lamora and the rest of the
Gentlemen Bastard series.
Martin, George RR. A Game of Thrones and the res! of the
Song of Ice and Fire series.
McKillip. Patricia. The Forgotten Beasts of Eld.
Merritt, A. Creep, Shadow, Creep; Dwellers in the Mirage; and
The Moon Pool.
Miéville, China. Perdido Street Station and the other
Bas-Lag novels.
Moorcock, Michael. Elric of Melniboné and the rest of the
Elric series, and Thejewel in the Skull and the rest of the
Hawkmoon series.
Norton, Andre. Quag Keep and Witch World.
Offutt, Andrew J., ed. Swords against Darkness lll.
Peake, Mervyn. Titos Groan and the rest of the
Gormenghast series.
Pratchelt, Terry. The Colour of Magic and the rest of the
Discworld series.
Pratt, Fletcher. Blue Star.
Rothfuss, Patrick. The Name of the Wind and the rest of the
Kingkiller series.
Saberhagen, Fred. The Broken Lands and Changeling Earth.
Salvatore, RA. The Crystal Shard and the rest of The
Legend of Drizzt.
Sanderson, Brandon. Mistborn and the rest of the
Mistborn trilogy.
Smith, Clark Ashlon. The Return of the Sorcerer.
SI. Clair, Margaret. Change the Sky and Other Stories, The
Shadow People, and Sign of the Labrys.
Tolkien,j.R.R The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings. and The
Silmarillion.
Tolstoy, Nikolai. The Coming of the King.
Vance,jack. The Dying Earth and The Eyes of the Overworld.
Weinbaum, Stanley. Valley of Dreams and The Worlds of Ir.
Wellman, Manly Wade. The Golgotha Dancers.
Williamson,jack. The Cosmic Express and The Pygmy Planet.
Wolfe, Gene. The Shadow of the Torturer and the rest of The
Book of the New Sun.
Zelazny, Roger.jack of Shadows and Nine Princes in Amber
and the rest of the Amber series.

Yeah, I'm not seeing any westerns on here. DnD isn't exactly subtle when its trying to emulate something. I mean you can argue EBERRON has western elements with its wandslingers, but thats not DnD as a whole. Just because DnD has similarities to a western doesn't mean it is one, or that it was designed with westerns in mind. it is far more plausible to say that is emulating the Knight-Errant tradition, and that people are just imposing the thing they know better onto it because they're used to westerns while conflating this with "well it can be medieval it doesn't match what medieval is REALLY like" when DnD was never meant to emulate real medieval society, and action-adventure worlds often don't resemble ours in terms of societal structure anyways.

like "going around being wandering heroes/adventurers/knight-errant/ronin/cowboy/wuxia encountering random village with troubles" with no real structure to society that allows for better protection than those adventurers isn't new, nor is it unique to westerns, and really its a romantic notion no matter what time period you place it in. The Wild Wild West is just as mythical and fanciful as King Arthur's Knights of the round Table. plausibility has no sway here. mostly because many romantic action-adventure narrative structures assume the same thing: that some badass good-hearted person has nothing better to do with their life than go around randomly traveling across the land to maybe fight some threats they encounter along the way without resorting to begging or stealing at some point. everything else is just set up to make sure that fantasy works regardless of when or where you put it.

[Man_Over_Game]

Unfortunately, the real answer doesn't have to do with technicalities.

DnD is medieval because the theme has always been medieval. It was a universe that was designed around whatever the original makers fantasized, and most of what they made it from were toys (owlbears were literally these weird toys that a dying manufacturer made with spare parts) and books (LOTR) from their childhood.

And it hasn't really ever grown past that. It probably will never grow past that, because even the mechanics aren't really all that thematic (4e) or cohesive (all spell slots in 5e are treated the same and even sum together). Even the skills have changed dramatically over time. The most consistent thing that's stayed the same is the use of a d20 to determine randomized effects, which mostly just means that adventuring is chaotic without lots of hedged bets. Even the unique feature of the original Fighter (being able to rule entire armies and people) was smoothened out to make him a generic man-at-arms.

So the only thing about DnD that defines "DnD" is the theme and the d20.

And if 4e is any example, any change big enough to the existing formula will be decidedly "Not DnD". More 5e copies were sold for the single Xanathar's Guide to Everything expansion book for the existing characters (of which there were already several books doing something similar) than there were for the modernized Artificer (which is the first and only new class over the last 7 years, putting us at now 13 classes).

So the world is medieval because it has to be.

[Duiker]

is it recognizably this genre at a glance?

like the problem with labeling it as a western is that there is absolutely nothing obviously telling you that this should be the case in the art.

Yeah, I'm not seeing any westerns on here. DnD isn't exactly subtle when its trying to emulate something.

This is the same question as, "Is it marketed as a western?" and the answer is obviously no. All this is actually arguing is that the designers don't think it's a western. No one disputes that, though.

while basing an assertion that DnD is a Western because of the less aesthetic reasons is iffy, because many of the tropes there are universal action-adventure tropes that were around long before the western even existed; the western just provides a more modern take on the trope by changing the weapons and thus the style of combat.

like "going around being wandering heroes/adventurers/knight-errant/ronin/cowboy/wuxia encountering random village with troubles" with no real structure to society that allows for better protection than those adventurers isn't new, nor is it unique to westerns, and really its a romantic notion no matter what time period you place it in. The Wild Wild West is just as mythical and fanciful as King Arthur's Knights of the round Table. plausibility has no sway here. mostly because many romantic action-adventure narrative structures assume the same thing: that some badass good-hearted person has nothing better to do with their life than go around randomly traveling across the land to maybe fight some threats they encounter along the way without resorting to begging or stealing at some point. everything else is just set up to make sure that fantasy works regardless of when or where you put it.

This argument is "I concede that it's a western in all but name". Like, if you want to argue that D&D is palette-swapping goblins for Indians the way westerns palette-swapped Moors for Indians, then by all means. That was the entire original argument for "It's a western," anyways.

The issue isn't that you disagree. The issue is that you're offended by the analogy because aesthetics are the most important component of a genre to you.

...

Personally, I'm not sure, but I don't think that genre classification is a terribly useful thing to do as an end-goal. It's useful insofar as it highlights other aspects as interesting or useful. Mechalich and Xuc Xac discussing homesteading as a point of concern, for instance. Or Mark Hall discussing the Othering of non-player races and the historical trend of how their handling changed as time went on.

The former interests me, because I like looking at how RPGs handle the "downtime" period that isn't all fighty-shooty. The latter situates the hobby in an interesting context historically, though considering westerns-as-Westerns have died out and been replaced by stuff like Logan and Firefly, that context is interesting academically more than practically. But this is an academic thread, so it's not like it's out-of-place, either; and it's not as if "what if D&D... but with superheroes" or "what if D&D... but in space" hasn't been done.

If you're trying to use genre as a way to determine weapon choices for your character, then obviously "D&D is a western" is an unhelpful statement. Entertainment media has and always will be a poor place to get realism advice, because it's not real. But if you're designing a campaign around society's varied negative opinions of the morally upstanding PCs, then watching a western-genre movie that explores that would be more helpful than watching a fantasy-genre movie that's busier exploring the call of destiny via magic sword.

[Lord Raziere]

This argument is "I concede that it's a western in all but name". Like, if you want to argue that D&D is palette-swapping goblins for Indians the way westerns palette-swapped Moors for Indians, then by all means. That was the entire original argument for "It's a western," anyways.

The issue isn't that you disagree. The issue is that you're offended by the analogy because aesthetics are the most important component of a genre to you.

No.....I don't concede that. its not a western. You don't get to say that I concede, westerns aren't universal action-adventure. there is a difference, and your acting as if time and place are somehow irrelevant. don't put me in boxes I don't agree with.