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I love the fact that people are writing articles about whether armor in Baldur's and dnd5e gate[1] is historically accurate. I feel like you have to be really c

I love the fact that people are writing articles about whether armor in Baldur's and dnd5e gate[1] is historically accurate. I feel like you have to be really committed to miss the point so badly. It's a game. The point of the game systems is to be fun, not accurate. In fact dnd5e and Baldur's gate never makes any pretense of being historically accurate. Historically-accurate arms and armor might be fun in a simulation, but this isn't "Mount and Blade" we're talking about here. [1] a world in which you have half-demons, dragons, vampires, magic spells, mindflaying dimension-traversing humanoids with tentacle mouths, people with magic artifacts embedded in them and primed to explode etc

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
> A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry I'm pretty sure the author is aware of this perception.
aidenn0 3y ago
The author has written extensively about why he does things like this, and I'll sum up: He is a professor of pre-modern military history, and students come into his classes thinking that pre-modern European battles were at least a little bit like the things they see in 300, or LotR, or D&D games, when in fact they get more wrong than right. Also, the fact that a setting is fantasy is not carte-blanche for being unrealistic. We could e.g. critique characters as acting against their motivation if they do so, we don't just say "There are dragons so who cares if someone just randomly decides to hit themselves in the head with a hammer"
- ourmandave 3y ago
  Like the Physics 101 teacher that has to teach students that Wiley Coyote is not an accurate representation of falling objects.
  - aidenn0 3y ago
    I am not sure how to read your comment. Did you mean to imply that people coming into his history class are stupid for thinking that their only experiences with certain items (swords, armor, &c.) have some grounding in reality, or did you mean to imply that people actually go into physics 101 thinking that Wile E. Coyote physics are real?
    - ourmandave 3y ago
      The latter. Nobody believes you hover until you hold up a that says "Egads!" But a teacher complained he had to explain you keep moving laterally if you run off a cliff instead of falling straight down.
  - whartung 3y ago
    Maybe at the 101 level, but I think when we talk at the quantum level, the coyote may be on to something. The whole Schroedingers cat thing and about state collapsing to “reality” under observation as manifest when the coyote, suspended in mid air, looks down and THEN a suddenly falls. I bet there’s a lecture buried in that phenomenon somewhere. IANAQM.
    - Yoric 3y ago
      Funny, but as you probably suspect, it doesn't quite work like that :)
- marginalia_nu 3y ago
  Just as there is hard and soft sci-fi, fantasy makes different levels of committment to realism. D&D has always been a flippant pastiche with little grounding in history.
  - aidenn0 3y ago
    > D&D has always been a flippant pastiche with little grounding in history. But it has often represented itself as more than that.
    - marginalia_nu 3y ago
      By whom? I guess as a tabletop RPG you can run some sort of hyperrealistic variant of D&D, but at its core it's got a few to many talking swords for that sort of thing.
    - D13Fd 3y ago
      With dragons and magic, I don’t think it’s representing itself as historically accurate.
      - aidenn0 3y ago
        Okay, let's try a different analogy. Let's say there was an urban fantasy where dragons attack present-day New York. If a character's 1993 Chevy Corvette breaks down because an issue with the carburetor, we wouldn't just say "it's not supposed to be realistic; dragons!" It would rightly be seen as an oversight by the author. Arms and Armor are a technology and D&D at least pretends that the (non-magical) versions of them are based on said technology.
        marginalia_nu 3y ago
        This is how a lot of fiction operates though, it doesn't attempt to portray realism first. This is true in everything from western movies to rom coms. The story comes first, and the details have to be just believable enough to not stick out so much as to break immersion. Although what breaks immersion varies. Someone who's at most shot a few cans or a deer won't perhaps question a bad guy being sent flying backwards from a revolver shot, a war veteran might see this as jarring and unrealistic.
- cultofmetatron 3y ago
  yup, checkout the anime "goblin slayer" if you want an idea of realistic humans fighting as realistic humans in a fantasy setting. warning: shit gets dark
  - aidenn0 3y ago
    FWIW, I read the first LN and couldn't really get into it.
- seanhunter 3y ago
  I get that. I feel for arms and armor specifically, in a world where you have magical methods of production, magical materials and non-human races needing to utilize these, you're so far removed from pre-modern European tech as to make the comparison a bit redundant. I mean the main trailer artwork has Laezel bearing a greatsword with a kind of semicircular notch in the blade with a hook on it like you could use it as a giant tin opener. Hopefully noone needs to be told that's unrealistic when she herself looks like some sort of psychopathic grinch knight.
readthenotes1 3y ago
His points aren't just about historical accuracy, they are also on value and language (being an unmitigated pedant, he would for example also probably object to something being called a "hot water heater"). I believe his points on historical accuracy are actually more about physics consistency although he does explain some of the confusion away with the mistaken Victorian historical assumptions.
bestekov 3y ago
ACOUP is very aware of the pedantry part. He is also an avid gamer himself (see his extensive articles about what the Paradox grand strategy games get right and wrong).
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
dmonitor 3y ago
Wavering between "history" and "fantasy" is still 5e's biggest problem imo, especially at later levels of gameplay. Wizards/magic classes can basically just do whatever because "it's magic", but martial classes are still confined by mortal limitations because D&D grognards hated anything that reminded them of anime, such as guys with swords being cool.
jcranmer 3y ago
There's different kinds of ahistoricity that you can complain about. I'm far less bothered than the author about the way AC works (although the end result that everyone ends up around the same AC does raise an eyebrow to me), for example. But the opposite spectrum is introducing something like studded leather armor which is... why? It's an armor type that doesn't exist and that makes no sense [1], so it's not even a "well, in a fantastical setting, it might make sense" sort of scenario. The other issue is that this kind of fantasy is often the way by which people learn about history. This means that when fantasy engages in very ahistorical treatments of things with potential historical analogues, people will assume that the fantasy treatment is realistic. This definitely applies to armor--people will look at the armor types in a fantasy game and assume they're at least broadly reflective of how armor in Medieval Europe worked, since it's not overtly coded in fantasy unless it's explicitly dragonskin or something like that. So when DnD is treating leather in a completely different way from how it normally works... that's a constant canard that historians are continuously having to try to rebut (much like myths about full plate meaningfully restricting movement). [1] Just to remind you, studded leather is a misinterpretation of images depicting something like brigandine armor. In brigandine, the apparent studs have value--they're the attachment points for metal plates. But the entire point of studded leather as an in-universe armor type is that it doesn't contain these metal plates, so the studs serve no purpose.
jamesgreenleaf 3y ago
The D&D cosmology is bonkers too. Every solar system exists inside its own separate "crystal sphere" which floats in the chaotic fiery substance called phlogiston that fills the universe. There's a hundred different dimensions and planes of existence. Gods exist in some crystal spheres, but not in others. There's an "astral plane" where time doesn't exist, but somehow creatures there can still move around, but they don't age. It makes no sense, and it doesn't have to. It's all just for fun. D&D is a huge mishmash of all the ancient mythologies and folk tales, plus a bunch of modern ones invented just for the game.
yurodivuie 3y ago
Part of the fun is immersion. A player can easily suspend disbelief if it's important for the game's conceit (it's like our world, but with dragons and magic). But if it's based on a misunderstanding of the base nature of the world, it's just a distraction with no value. Sometimes it can be fun to get into the medieval mindset and have the rules reinforce their erroneous beliefs (maybe bloodletting is treated as a useful treatment for diseases, for example). But in this case, if the armor types are based on a misunderstanding in the Victorian era, I don't really see the fun in pretending that these other types of armor both exist and would be useful.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago

> A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry I'm pretty sure the author is aware of this perception.

aidenn0 3y ago

The author has written extensively about why he does things like this, and I'll sum up: He is a professor of pre-modern military history, and students come into his classes thinking that pre-modern European battles were at least a little bit like the things they see in 300, or LotR, or D&D games, when in fact they get more wrong than right. Also, the fact that a setting is fantasy is not carte-blanche for being unrealistic. We could e.g. critique characters as acting against their motivation if they do so, we don't just say "There are dragons so who cares if someone just randomly decides to hit themselves in the head with a hammer"

ourmandave 3y ago
Like the Physics 101 teacher that has to teach students that Wiley Coyote is not an accurate representation of falling objects.
- aidenn0 3y ago
  I am not sure how to read your comment. Did you mean to imply that people coming into his history class are stupid for thinking that their only experiences with certain items (swords, armor, &c.) have some grounding in reality, or did you mean to imply that people actually go into physics 101 thinking that Wile E. Coyote physics are real?
  - ourmandave 3y ago
    The latter. Nobody believes you hover until you hold up a that says "Egads!" But a teacher complained he had to explain you keep moving laterally if you run off a cliff instead of falling straight down.
- whartung 3y ago
  Maybe at the 101 level, but I think when we talk at the quantum level, the coyote may be on to something. The whole Schroedingers cat thing and about state collapsing to “reality” under observation as manifest when the coyote, suspended in mid air, looks down and THEN a suddenly falls. I bet there’s a lecture buried in that phenomenon somewhere. IANAQM.
  - Yoric 3y ago
    Funny, but as you probably suspect, it doesn't quite work like that :)
marginalia_nu 3y ago
Just as there is hard and soft sci-fi, fantasy makes different levels of committment to realism. D&D has always been a flippant pastiche with little grounding in history.
- aidenn0 3y ago
  > D&D has always been a flippant pastiche with little grounding in history. But it has often represented itself as more than that.
  - marginalia_nu 3y ago
    By whom? I guess as a tabletop RPG you can run some sort of hyperrealistic variant of D&D, but at its core it's got a few to many talking swords for that sort of thing.
  - D13Fd 3y ago
    With dragons and magic, I don’t think it’s representing itself as historically accurate.
    - aidenn0 3y ago
      Okay, let's try a different analogy. Let's say there was an urban fantasy where dragons attack present-day New York. If a character's 1993 Chevy Corvette breaks down because an issue with the carburetor, we wouldn't just say "it's not supposed to be realistic; dragons!" It would rightly be seen as an oversight by the author. Arms and Armor are a technology and D&D at least pretends that the (non-magical) versions of them are based on said technology.
      - marginalia_nu 3y ago
        This is how a lot of fiction operates though, it doesn't attempt to portray realism first. This is true in everything from western movies to rom coms. The story comes first, and the details have to be just believable enough to not stick out so much as to break immersion. Although what breaks immersion varies. Someone who's at most shot a few cans or a deer won't perhaps question a bad guy being sent flying backwards from a revolver shot, a war veteran might see this as jarring and unrealistic.
cultofmetatron 3y ago
yup, checkout the anime "goblin slayer" if you want an idea of realistic humans fighting as realistic humans in a fantasy setting. warning: shit gets dark
- aidenn0 3y ago
  FWIW, I read the first LN and couldn't really get into it.
seanhunter 3y ago
I get that. I feel for arms and armor specifically, in a world where you have magical methods of production, magical materials and non-human races needing to utilize these, you're so far removed from pre-modern European tech as to make the comparison a bit redundant. I mean the main trailer artwork has Laezel bearing a greatsword with a kind of semicircular notch in the blade with a hook on it like you could use it as a giant tin opener. Hopefully noone needs to be told that's unrealistic when she herself looks like some sort of psychopathic grinch knight.

readthenotes1 3y ago

His points aren't just about historical accuracy, they are also on value and language (being an unmitigated pedant, he would for example also probably object to something being called a "hot water heater"). I believe his points on historical accuracy are actually more about physics consistency although he does explain some of the confusion away with the mistaken Victorian historical assumptions.

bestekov 3y ago

ACOUP is very aware of the pedantry part. He is also an avid gamer himself (see his extensive articles about what the Paradox grand strategy games get right and wrong).

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

dmonitor 3y ago

Wavering between "history" and "fantasy" is still 5e's biggest problem imo, especially at later levels of gameplay. Wizards/magic classes can basically just do whatever because "it's magic", but martial classes are still confined by mortal limitations because D&D grognards hated anything that reminded them of anime, such as guys with swords being cool.

jcranmer 3y ago

There's different kinds of ahistoricity that you can complain about. I'm far less bothered than the author about the way AC works (although the end result that everyone ends up around the same AC does raise an eyebrow to me), for example. But the opposite spectrum is introducing something like studded leather armor which is... why? It's an armor type that doesn't exist and that makes no sense [1], so it's not even a "well, in a fantastical setting, it might make sense" sort of scenario. The other issue is that this kind of fantasy is often the way by which people learn about history. This means that when fantasy engages in very ahistorical treatments of things with potential historical analogues, people will assume that the fantasy treatment is realistic. This definitely applies to armor--people will look at the armor types in a fantasy game and assume they're at least broadly reflective of how armor in Medieval Europe worked, since it's not overtly coded in fantasy unless it's explicitly dragonskin or something like that. So when DnD is treating leather in a completely different way from how it normally works... that's a constant canard that historians are continuously having to try to rebut (much like myths about full plate meaningfully restricting movement). [1] Just to remind you, studded leather is a misinterpretation of images depicting something like brigandine armor. In brigandine, the apparent studs have value--they're the attachment points for metal plates. But the entire point of studded leather as an in-universe armor type is that it doesn't contain these metal plates, so the studs serve no purpose.

jamesgreenleaf 3y ago

The D&D cosmology is bonkers too. Every solar system exists inside its own separate "crystal sphere" which floats in the chaotic fiery substance called phlogiston that fills the universe. There's a hundred different dimensions and planes of existence. Gods exist in some crystal spheres, but not in others. There's an "astral plane" where time doesn't exist, but somehow creatures there can still move around, but they don't age. It makes no sense, and it doesn't have to. It's all just for fun. D&D is a huge mishmash of all the ancient mythologies and folk tales, plus a bunch of modern ones invented just for the game.

yurodivuie 3y ago

Part of the fun is immersion. A player can easily suspend disbelief if it's important for the game's conceit (it's like our world, but with dragons and magic). But if it's based on a misunderstanding of the base nature of the world, it's just a distraction with no value. Sometimes it can be fun to get into the medieval mindset and have the rules reinforce their erroneous beliefs (maybe bloodletting is treated as a useful treatment for diseases, for example). But in this case, if the armor types are based on a misunderstanding in the Victorian era, I don't really see the fun in pretending that these other types of armor both exist and would be useful.