"Modern" things in your game?

[jester47]

I would like to cast "Dispell Misconception" on this. Here's a nice little quote written by James F Dunnigan and Albert A Nofi on the subject of hygeine in the medieval era. You can find all sorts of information on this in your average college history text or with a quick Google search. In a nutshell, the above quote statement is highly inaccurate.



Popular myth, including television, movies, and fiction, all tend to view the medieval period through the lens of the Renaissance authors who wrote about it. If, however, you look at contemporary source material, you will find that the average medieval was at least moderately clean. Now, they were not as clean as modern standards would like, but they were not generally covered in lice, dirt, and open sores either.

The reason the renaisannce writers wrote about a middle ages where the peasants and pretty much everyone else stank was because the previous century was dominated by the results of the Black Death. The plague raged for 25 years. Huge numbers of people died. 1350 - 1450 was the middle ages everyones grandparents in 1492 talked about. And that was a very different time than the 1000-1350 middle ages. Essentially Europe after 1375 was a post apocalyptic society that thought bathing had caused the problem. After 1375 the population stopped bathing. This can be seen by the change in fasion.

Aaron.

 

[s/LaSH]

In D&D, I've thrown in relatively few anachronisms; mostly things like pants and the ability for females to go adventuring without comment.

In my homebrew, the best term is panchronism. There's a region that's supposed to be fairly medieval in flavour, with swords, dragon riders, and the occasional witchunt for demon-touched people who aren't really all that bad - but several border fortresses have electric power (run from portable generators), you might see wristwatches and ionised swords, and tiny cyborg vagrants raid the mage foundries in the cities. Most of this is overflow from other, more advanced/strange regions, but I think it says something about the tone...

 

[Wraith Form]

• Carriages carried stickers on their rears, reading, for example 'My other carriage is a royal coach.'

Hey! Stop all that comedy! Starbuck's is too expensive to be spewing it onto my monitor screen! (chuckle)

 

[Gez]

Gender equality is a common one, as is near-universal literacy. Clean cities and a high availability of good steel also seem to crop up a lot.

Clean cities is an anachronism in all eras.

I don't find modern cities very clean, with cars that leak oil on the pavement; grey/black sootlike thing from said cars all over the buildings' walls; plastic bags, dog droppings, old newspapers, leaflets, and other various trash in the streets; and graffitis/tags everywhere. Of course, not all parts of a modern city are that punkish, but overall, if modern cities are maybe a bit cleaner than medieval ones, they are are not clean.

 

[Ziggy]

Why have you ignored the material component of THOUSANDS OF GOLD PIECES OF DIAMONDS for the resurrection spells?

WHY IS IT SO HARD TO NOTICE THAT ONE LINE OF TEXT?!?!??!?

Lots of people do it and it's getting REALLY ANNOYING hearing people maon about how resurrections are so "easy" in D&D.

And what are you smoking ? Try reading my post one more time, and use your brain this time.

.Ziggy

 

[jester47]

And what are you smoking ? Try reading my post one more time, and use your brain this time.

.Ziggy

Yeah, you said it was really expensive in your game. I wonder if thats because of the material components.

Aaron.

 

[kirinke]

huh. i guess even gods need pretty sparkly things. (reference to the ressurection components)

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Only a few of these are actually problems in my games - and that to a very small degree.

1. Military strategy & organization

Um, many, if not most, ancient militaries were quite organized and used strategy reasonably effectively. At least, the militaries of organized nation-states did.

Brad

 

[kirinke]

Um, many, if not most, ancient militaries were quite organized and used strategy reasonably effectively. At least, the militaries of organized nation-states did.

Brad

Normal military tactics work very well in a low-magic campaign or if you're dealing with two relatively equal nation states. But in a typical campaign you also have to deal with those durn blasted, unreasonably insane clerics of (Insert evil god bent on genocide here) and their equally insane wizard/sorcerer buddies.

 

[Ziggy]

Yeah, you said it was really expensive in your game. I wonder if thats because of the material components.

Aaron.

There are two different types of contracts. One where you will have to pay the material cost on ressurection (depending on type of ressurection needed). This contract is only available for people in good standing, where the insurer can be reasonably sure that the client have the means to pay the bill. The other contract includes a raise dead without extra payment, but cost quite a bite more in annual premium.

Note that there are no fixed rates, risk and thus annual premium is judged based on the risk of the client dying, and the amount you have to pay varies a lot. This is especially true for the version with raise dead included. In general you'll have to pay between 10% and 75% of the raise dead cost every year, but in some cases the premium can be close to 100% or even above that in special cases.

.Ziggy