Tuesday 24 July 2012

The Historical Context of D&D

I sometimes wonder whether or not Gygax, Arneson and the like had the right idea in setting D&D in a resolutely pseudo-medieval era. It's because that's the kind of era in which fantasy stories take place, of course. But if we view D&D's default mode of play as being about parties of adventurers venturing into the unknown to seek their fame and fortune, we would be much better off imagining it as taking place in a pseudo-renaissance, pseudo-Victorian, or perhaps pseudo-late-antiquity, era.

What are some examples of real world adventurers? The ones which spring to my mind are:
  • The vikings, who spread throughout Europe in late antiquity as, essentially, adventurers, mercenaries and pillagers, and who ended up founding kingdoms in Normandy, Sicily, the Middle East, and Russia
  • The conquistadors who sailed across the Atlantic in search of gold, slaves and glory
  • The explorers of Africa and Asia in the era of European empire building
  • The forerunners of the settlers of the great North and South American interiors - prospectors, slavers, explorers, scientists

High medieval societies were rather hidebound by feudalism and religion. They were not the kind of societies which bred adventurers. Historically, adventurers have mostly been fostered by a mix of variables - relatively high poverty (the motivation to escape), relative lack of opportunity for advancement (another motivation to escape), relatively high change of glory (discoveries of new areas of the globe to explore), breakthroughs in travel technology (e.g. ocean going vessels that could make it all the way to China from Portugal) and relatively large numbers of young men with nothing to do (big pool to draw from). This was true, for instance, in post-reconquista Spain, when there were thousands of men who had successfully fought the Moors sitting around with nothing much to do except set sail for the New World. It was true in late 18th to late 19th Century Britain, when the population was booming and the interior of Africa was opening up, and there was a sudden opportunity to escape a life of misery working in some godforsaken shit hole factory. It was true in the mid-18th Century USA, when opportunity called thanks to the opening up of the West and, likewise, the population was booming and life in cities in the East was pretty crappy. I think it was also probably true in the Scandinavia of late antiquity - the Roman Empire had fallen and, hey presto, Europe was laying wide open for impoverished young men with nothing to lose to go and raid.

It makes more sense to me, then, to imagine D&D campaigns taking place in a context of societal change, when there are new areas of the map to explore thanks to discoveries or advances in travel technology (or perhaps due to catastrophe), and where people are seeing an opportunity to improve their lives and with relatively little to lose. It seems more realistic to set it in an era of technological or cultural revolution like the renaissance or the imperial age, then, rather than the Tolkien-esque quasi-medieval settings it has traditionally been found in. Out with long swords and chain mail, in other words, and in with sabres and muskets.

44 comments:

  1. > new areas of the map to explore [A] thanks to discoveries or advances in travel technology [B]

    Where A is the deep underworld and B is ... light spell technology. (My players currently have the chance to explore a huge underground tunnel complex but are finding lantern oil availability a problem.)

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  2. My D&D world has, for many years been more Dark Ages than High Mediaeval. Anywhere in the second half of the first millennium. There's a lot to be said for a Europe that, east of the Rhine is mile upon mile of thick forest in which anything could live (and west of the Rhine, fallen cities full of lost treasure, whilst the formerly civilised population cower at the distant thunder of hooves.)

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    1. Yeah, people say that the Dark Ages is a misnomer and the popular conception is a myth, but it's a good myth to use nonetheless.

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  3. I have been on a 2E kick of late and reading through some of the many supplements that were produced during that era.

    HR1 Viking Campaign
    HR4 A Mighty Fortress

    These touch upon a few of the ideas you mention.

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    1. As I remember, the HR series was pretty cool.

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    2. Agreed, best late era TSR stuff apart from the Gaz series.

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  4. Well, the viking era took place between the VIIIth an Xth century, so technically, it was the Middle Ages.

    Also,
    "relatively high poverty (the motivation to escape), relative lack of opportunity for advancement (another motivation to escape), relatively high change of glory (discoveries of new areas of the globe to explore)"
    Those were also part of the motivations (apart from religios agendas) that fueled the Crusades in the XIIth and XIIIth centuries.

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    1. I dunno, I think "Middle Ages" encompasses everything from 500-1500 AD. The Viking era certainly wasn't the high middle ages.

      I agree about the Crusades but you can't deny the religious element in them. There were adventuring knights who joined up, but they weren't quite the same as conquistadors or vikings and didn't have quite the same goals. They were more organised and purposeful.

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    2. I didn' deny the religious element (hence, the claric class ;-) ). But apart from it, some crusaders like Bohémond of Tarente or Reynald of Châtillon were nothing more than adventurers looking for loot and new domains. Besides, when you read the descriptions that Europeans made of the Eastern countries (like the mythical realm of priest John) you can have the impression that -in their minds- making the trip to Holy land was akin to sailing to some kind of fabulous land.

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    3. In what way were crusader knights more organized or purposeful than conquistadors or vikings?

      ...I have a more complete comment to make on historicity, but I'm chewing it over.

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    4. The crusaders were answering a call from the Pope, who in turn was answering a call from the Byzantine Emperor. While there were some pure adventurers among them who set up their own realms, the majority of crusaders went at considerable expense to the Middle East and returned home afterwards; they certainly didn't make a profit and we have to assume they obeyed the call to arms out of genuine religious feeling (and societal pressure).

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    5. OK, I guess I just don't like "organised and purposeful" as a synonym for "had religious motives."

      Interesting side-note: King Manuel of Portugal stated that he was reopening the Crusades when he sent Vasco Da Gama around the Cape of Good Hope into the Indian Ocean - his plan was to team up with Prester John and kick the Turk out of the Holy Land. I haven't made a study of Iberian conquests in the Americas, but I seem to recall those having a lot of religious rhetoric too... I don't know how we'd assess the relative authenticity of religious feeling between Crusaders and Conquistadors, allowing that the two groups might have had different ideas about loot.

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  5. It would be fairly trivial to introduce such elements into a high (or even low) medieval society. Europe was on the brink of that kind of population pressure in the 13th century, before the Black Death changed everything.

    The trick, though, is to deliberately build your campaign world as teetering on the edge of a change in eras. Playing in a 1000-year-old kingdom that is expected to last 1000 more years doesn't leave a lot of space for crazy adventures.

    If you want adventurers to be common, the best element to add is a recently concluded war. Thousands of young men, many suddenly stranded miles from home, find themselves with a certain set of skills. Skills that make them a nightmare to people like, um, you know the rest. The age of the gunfighter in the Wild West was largely fueled by displaced Civil War veterans.

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    1. Like the conquistadors. The startling coincidence between the end of the reconquista and the era of exploration and exploitation of the Americas is not a coincidence.

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  6. D&D settings definitely work best with two themes: society in upheaval/recovery and personal freedom. I've got a campaign I've run for ages now that focuses on cultures and kingdoms which are just now reaching a new era of rediscovery after a long period of recovery from a devastating apocalyptic war. It's served well for generating interesting stories and purposeful characters for twenty years now. I have another setting I recently started which focuses on a cultural/mercantile hub where three divergent lands all interconnect and engage in trade, commerce and conflict; the locals are the PCs, who profit from and exploit this cultural crossroads. Any setting for D&D which fosters a "do as you will" approach for players in a setting that encourages and exploits cultural and political shift is going to be ideal for RPGs, I think...

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    1. That's probably a nice way of putting it.

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  7. FWIW, Gygax himself later (post-D&D) noted that he preferred the early modern era (15th-17th centuries) as a model for fantasy gaming, seeing it as offering my opportunities for adventuring. I'm not sure it matters much, though, since D&D never really modeled any period of human history. It was always struck me more as the Wild West in medieval garb, which works just fine as far as I'm concerned.

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    1. I didn't know that - do you have a source for it? It doesn't "matter", no, but it's still interesting to think about.

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    2. I can't recall where I read it -- probably an ENWorld of Dragonsfoot Q&A with Gary. But it's evident if you look at his Castle Zagyg stuff, which was very much an early modern setting rather than a medieval setting; it even had wigs as high fashion among the nobility, for example.

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  8. While I don't think that a "resolutely pseudo-medieval era" need lack for any of the motivations you mention, I've never noticed much in any of the editions to do any more than lightly suggest such an era. Other than Cleric level titles, the label used for plate armour, and a pronoun here and there, it all seems wide open.

    As a kid using B/X and then AD&D I created my own campaign worlds freely and without a thought to such an implied setting. I never rejected medievality and yet I never created a setting even tinted with it. It certainly seems that very little "bookstore fantasy section" fare is medieval. Based on my reading and viewing, my campaigns were much more Xth Voyage of Sinbad plus Sanctuary.

    I believe that on a practical level that even in the context of a childlike obedience to printed rules and respect for authorial authority, the pseudo-medieval character of D&D as presented was trivial.
    -Vincent

    (I will accept that those who purchased only one or two supplemental products may have patterned their campaign after something pretty medieval. The World of Greyhawk boxed set seemed to be full bore for medieval miniatures mass combat. Perhaps just as many chose Tale of the Comet, though. Or something from Rolemaster's Shadow World.)

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    1. Really? That seems like an odd take on the fantasy genre - the most popular exponents post D&D, from Eddings to Williams to Goodkind to Feist to Brooks, would all be quite accurately described as "resolutely pseudo-medieval", wouldn't you say? They aren't the best examples of fantasy by any means, but they've been the most popular, and certainly the most influential on the day-to-day playing of D&D, I would say.

      That's without mentioning D&D spin off novel series and supplements, which as you suggest are also pretty high medieval in tone (except a rather crude, bowdlerised version of it, obviously).

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    2. The Belgariad was clearly a mis-mash. The Sendaria grew up in was very much "generic rennfaire England" and the Tolendrian Empire was clearly late Roman or Byzantine. The Nyssia was classic jungle swords and sorcery. Drasnia was medieval Italian. Algaria was Plains Indians. Only Cherek and Arendia were truly medieval (Viking and High Middle Ages respectively) and as you point out, the Vikings were not the static High Middle Ages. Riva strikes me as "Tolkien British", that idealized and timeless England of the Shire and Lake Town (especially in The Hobbit).

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  9. I certainly might recommend an Italian mercenaries campaign during the height of the Borgias' power. The novel Prince of Foxes is an excellent example of swashbuckling heroics during that time period.

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  10. Goddamnit! This is such a great post my brain has just been kicked into over-drive! Thanks!!

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    1. You're welcome. Glad it had an effect.

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  11. OD&D has a kitchen-sink, vague approach to "medievality", but AD&D focused into Late Middle Ages, I think. You just have to look at the equipment tables: plate mail, arquebusses, all those polearms... It's implied the existence of great cities, comerce, far away travel and somewhat advanced navigation. If I remember right, the hirelings examples in the DMG had a strong 15 centuryl feel: Genoese crossbowmen, Venetian stratioti, compagnies d'ordonnance (plated cavalry), Swiss pikemen, etc.
    Maybe it's only me, but Late Middle-Age is my default conception of D&D, (indeed, my current campaign is located in a fantasy 1450´s Europe).

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    1. That's true actually, I'd forgotten about those hirelings.

      The thing about the 1450s is that it is very different depending which part of Europe you were in. In England the Wars of the Roses were just kicking off and it was still very 'medieval' in feel. As too was Eastern Europe - Lithuania and Prussia had only fairly recently been Christianized.

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    2. Yeah: in my game, Eastern Europe is Badass Pagan Barbarian Country, of course.

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  12. I think I'm coming round to the idea that, in my D&D-esque fantasy gaming, it is *always* the Black Death, or the arrival of Europeans in the New World, or whatever, and worse(!), thanks to the presence of the fantastical. The world is always in turmoil, and sustained civilization or coherent nation is the (temporary?) exception.

    I spent a long time thinking about trying to make things realistic, and every time I reflected on the worlds I/we were creating, I realised I'd pushed adventure ever more distant, as civilisations, well, civilise.

    And that's before we consider the effects on any historically realistic social structures etc. resulting from the implied source of human power (gold won in adventure), monster ecologies, etc. built into D&D mechanics.

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  13. Most of the fantasy novels and short stories of Appendix N take place in a setting that is pseudo-medieval or quasi-Renaissance, on the brink of most if not all the things you mention... whether through nature or through proximity between Law and Chaos. The pseudo-Europe of Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions, the era of the High Crusade, the Broken Sword era of vikings; Burrough's Pellucidar, Mars, and Venus settings; Lin Carter's World's End series; de Camp's Lest Darkness Fall was early Dark Ages; Farmer's "World of Tiers" featured conflicting cultures from various eras of Earth's history coming into conflict; Howard's "Conan" stories were set in a mix-mash of eras, though the tech and general politics and economy were really Renaissance/early Modern. Leiber's Nehwon, Moorcock's Young Kingdoms, Tolkien's Middle-earth, all these worlds were at points in their development where these kinds of things were happening... and yet, all were ostensibly "medieval" and "feudal" by nature.

    One of the problems is this common mis-perception that the "Middle Ages" were ruled by this ossified hierarchical society and culture where "adventurers" couldn't get by. This is hardly the truth, whether from "Dark Ages" of the collapse of the Empire and the Migration era, the Merovingian era through the Carolingian era, to Norman era (ye gods, what adventures those Normans had) and the Crusades and the Reconquista (which as mentioned above, ended only shortly before the Age of Discovery). Anywhere you went, there was always opportunity for adventurers... Sure, you weren't likely to truly conquer France and hold the throne yourself if you were born a peasant, but you could certainly rise to be the power behind the throne. Always in the study of the history of the "Middle Ages," you find the great (and not-so-great) exceptions to the general rules...

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    1. It's not that there was no potential for adventure, just that the particular type of adventure assumed in D&D was probably not a great fit for medieval societies. Most of them actually saw profit and trade as sinful, for example.

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  14. Cossacks. It's all about the cossacks. Like Vikings but with sabres and muskets :)

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Repin_Cossacks.jpg

    "for their part Cossacks were mostly happy to rob everybody more or less equally"

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    1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_conquest_of_Siberia

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    2. Nice! You could even go later: the early 1800's in the Caucasus as per Tolstoy's "The Cossacs" and "Hadji Murat".

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  15. The Roman Empire would make a great setting for RPG adventure.
    It has upward (and downward) social mobility, warfare, intrigue, social unrest, technological innovation, expanding borders and a wide array of cultures.

    TSR did make a try of the Wild West with 'Boot Hill'. When I was a kid my gaming group gave it a try, having our D&D characters wind up in the American West from the effects of a big miscast spell or something to that effect. With magic greatly reduced and chucking armor away as nearly useless against guns, it was an interesting campaign. We didn't have enough interest to try it pure, but for those with more interest in the period it'd be a good setting.

    Guns do present a problem for an RPG setting though. Without magic and with guns the settings becomes far more lethal than a typical D&D setting. Maybe with magic armor and potions you can explain-away how a major hero can take 50 orc-arrows and keep swinging, but no one's taking bullets in a mundane world even close to that and walking away from it. But if adding fantasy to it, then sure, any time-setting could work.

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    1. Yes, I think once you get into the age of guns, you need a different system than D&D. I actually think Cyberpunk 2020 is a good fit for that, if you could incorporate a system for it whereby you get money for XP - to keep the quintessence of D&D.

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  16. Although I find this article well-inspired, I'm not sure I understood your point, Noisms.

    You see, from a non-D&D player point of view, your idea looks strange. In fact there is many RPGs based on historical accuracy or a specific background. If I had to be a GM for a group, I would ask them what kind of caracter they want to play before choosing the game. As D&D is for me in the "medieval fantasy" category, I would not recommend it to people who want to roleplay a viking, a conquistador or a colon.

    And here is a point I think you will agree to : "fantasy" universes can be distinguished from the others, accordingly to the level of supernatural mecanisms they allow. Consequently, nature of D&D impacts the type of adventure it is associated with (encountering a medievalesque bestiary, explore dungeons, fight with and against "tolkien-esque" caracters...).

    That's why I think you're asking yourself the wrong goal. If your motive is to play a "real adventurer" in a non-fantasy story, you should look for the RPG that best suits you instead of keeping it.

    That been said, I think you're right about the definition of adventure and to conclude rather for its compatibility with Midle Ages in Europe (a time of slowdown from the end of the Roman Empire until Renaissance, as far as I now). Some people will like to play medieval heroes, I don't.

    *** This has not been written by a native English speaker.

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    1. I think perhaps you're misunderstanding - it's not that I want to play a "real adventurer" in a non-fantasy story, it's that I want to have a fantasy game which incorporates some of what we know from the real world.

      If I was running a renaissance-era D&D it would still have dragons and orcs in!

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  17. Intresting (or not-so-intresting, but somewhat related to the post) fact: in french, "heroic fantasy" is usually translated as "Médieval fantastique" (med-fan).

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  18. For some reason adventuring in Greyhawk has always felt more pseudo-classical than pseudo-medieval. I don't know why I imagine it that way, or where I got the notion. There are plenty of medieval trappings, but for me it always feels like a fabled Ancient world.

    Funny what the brain does.

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  19. OK, James Mishler said much of what I was thinking. LoTR is explicitly set in the war that stands at the cusp between worlds - I find it weird that Tolkien has come to be seen as the epitome of the "unchanging medieval" viewpoint, when he's all about (elegiac) response to change. A lot's already been written about the Shire as a stand-in for Hardyesque 18th century England while the rest of ME seems more 14th century - again, it's historically inspired, not history. The accusation of eternal merrie Englandism is generally poorly founded - as I know you know, those bucolic English yeomen always inhabited a little envelope that knew all about its exterior, the threats from Napoleon and the Navy and enclosure and middle class debt creation and so on. And anyway there's plenty of room in ME for DnD type tomb/cave robbers - like the dwarves that drag Bilbo out of his cozy house.

    OTOH the "medievalism" of ADnD seems pretty clear to me - it was at least clear enough to my 13 year old self that I disliked it, and went and played C&S for my "authentically" medieval jones and other games for my other yearnings. And (I now see) ADnD was trying to establish a kind of stasis and stability as a product line, so the idea of a dynamic world in transition was probably deliberately suppressed around the time it came out.

    Now I just find it weird, and weirdly predicated on military technologies, without reference to a lot of what comes along for the ride when you say "medieval" - stuff that has no place in a great deal of the Appendix N material. Sure, lots of authors seem to have liked worlds without guns, but The Dying Earth for instance is always too impatient and time-trotting to bother with solid, cohesive setting detail, Conan is an explicit mashup with deliberately rough joins, and secret master type stories like Battle Circle or Riverworld are defined technologically by what can be found/has been left lying around/wasn't adequately swept under the carpet.

    A couple of extra ages to add to your list (there are many more, of course):
    1. 500-1500 outside Europe, particularly in Central Asia and Asia Minor. Eg. 620-750 - rise of the Arab Empire; the Abbasid revolution, rises of the Seljuks, Mongols and Timurids, Mamluks, and (the most DnD setting I know) that curious power vacuum described in the Baburnama where, according to the Conanesque conquering prince author, the plains and mountains of Tartary were awash with adventuring horsemen who held a tenuous claim to nobility and dreams of world conquest.
    2. The conquistadors are nice, but if anything I prefer the age when it was all privatised - ca 1600-1780. Apart from a few white Rajahs and English Samurai, we tend to think of these conquistadors as middle class Company men, but I call teleological shenanigans: J P Coen or Clive of India are closer, I reckon, to Kipling's Man Who Would Be King than corporate functionaries (and modern corporations are more piratical than legal-democratic too, for that matter).
    3. Rome (which always had uppity border provinces) and even more, the Med before Rome, whether that's Hellenistic opportunists or Homeric heroes or Atlantean Minoans or Phoenician Travellers.

    As for guns and deadliness, I guess when I play DnD I yearn to spring those fighters out of their lobster shells, and I get frustrated by the high-level pincushion effect and prefer a deadlier, first level game. I probably like everything about musketing up the old formula.

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    1. Hmmmm, actually I guess JRRT contained multitudes... it's quite possible that line about "change comes slowly, if at all" in Jackson's film is a direct quote - I'm so used to dealing with contradictions in this stuff, I should just give up on trying to divine anyone's supposed actual intention.

      This has been brought to you by a tired Derridean ;9

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  20. Your post is really good providing good information.. I liked it and enjoyed reading it. Keep sharing such important posts.

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