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D&D is as medieval as Hollywood movies set in the middle ages are "medieval": the environment vaguely resonates with a middle-ages setting, but then you have hi

D&D is as medieval as Hollywood movies set in the middle ages are "medieval": the environment vaguely resonates with a middle-ages setting, but then you have high fantasy, epic kind of stuff (like kings fighting each other directly or pep-talking their soldiers to victory, football-locker style) that wasn't really a thing in the middle ages. That you don't have vassals and king is an implementation detail: you can totally play a game of D&D with vassals and kings, if you want. The real difference is overall "epicness", which is obtained at the rules level: if you are level 10, there's no way one (or ten) level 1 opponents can even touch you. This allows a storyline in which a small party of heroes can overthrow tyrants and slay dragons; in real life (especially in the middle ages) no matter how trained you are, a makeshift mace made of wood and nails swung by angry peasants can still end you quickly, especially if you wander alone, which means you can't get away from needing an army, a society, strategy, politics, etc.

PaulHoule 2y ago
When nobles did go into combat they were better equipped and protected. In warring states Japan, common foot soldiers would be armed with pikes (wood shafts with a sharp metal point) but nobles might ride a horse wearing mail armor and armed with an huge and asymmetrical simple bow and be further protected by their position in the military structure. This is more like Monster Hunter as you do not scale your ‘hit points’ by an order of magnitude but you do get gear and actual skills.
- curtisblaine 2y ago
  Right, but D&D exaggerates this mechanism to unrealistic lengths, in order to maintain the epicness of high fantasy. If you accumulate enough levels in D&D, you can destroy entire armies and tackle literal gods. Most of all, there's a limit (based on your AC and the enemies modifiers) under which lower challenge-rate enemies can't literally touch you (save maybe for critical hits), which is obviously not how it works in real combat. I remember there were "realistic" alternatives to D&D in the 90s, with thousands of detailed tables and the concept of hit zones, where any enemy could potentially even kill you with enough luck (say lucky hit to the back of your armored head from peasant with a spiked club), and you could always get maimed or crippled in some ways (because you wouldn't only lose HP when you get hit, you can break your foot or arm etc). Clearly, you had to have a much more cautious style of playing and you didn't have as much fun as in D&D, where the master would tailor a series of increasingly challenging but killable encounters until you got to destroy an epic, ridiculously powered villain at the end of the campaign.
  - cthalupa 2y ago
    > If you accumulate enough levels in D&D, you can destroy entire armies and tackle literal gods. This is largely an invention of modern D&D, though. This was 100% not the case in OD&D, or stock AD&D 1E. Splatbooks in 1E added significant power level to characters, particularly after the success of the Dragonlance modules, including some truly ridiculous stuff like the power progression in the H1-H4 books. But before that point you were playing adventurers, not heroes. Even in 2E you could still play more like adventurers, though it was clear the preference for heroic gameplay was the new norm. It wasn't until 3E that the adventuring playstyle was really made impossible. > where the master would tailor a series of increasingly challenging but killable encounters until you got to destroy an epic, ridiculously powered villain at the end of the campaign. The original decade or so of D&D really didn't even have the idea of campaigns ending or building up to an epic showdown with the big bad evil guy. Gygax wrote extensively of campaigns as settings, and the sort of campaigns he (and Arneson) ran wouldn't even allow for this sort of showdown, because they were more like gaming clubs. They had dozens of people playing in the campaign regularly at any given time, often across multiple characters, split into multiple groups, etc. They were big persistent worlds. There would be no way to make a specific showdown or progression like this enjoyable for that sort of group - you could never get all 30-50 people together at once, and even if you could, there's no way to make that manageable for actual play, and you wouldn't want all of the players not involved in the final showdown to feel like their years of play had ultimately missed out on the climax.

PaulHoule 2y ago

When nobles did go into combat they were better equipped and protected. In warring states Japan, common foot soldiers would be armed with pikes (wood shafts with a sharp metal point) but nobles might ride a horse wearing mail armor and armed with an huge and asymmetrical simple bow and be further protected by their position in the military structure. This is more like Monster Hunter as you do not scale your ‘hit points’ by an order of magnitude but you do get gear and actual skills.

curtisblaine 2y ago
Right, but D&D exaggerates this mechanism to unrealistic lengths, in order to maintain the epicness of high fantasy. If you accumulate enough levels in D&D, you can destroy entire armies and tackle literal gods. Most of all, there's a limit (based on your AC and the enemies modifiers) under which lower challenge-rate enemies can't literally touch you (save maybe for critical hits), which is obviously not how it works in real combat. I remember there were "realistic" alternatives to D&D in the 90s, with thousands of detailed tables and the concept of hit zones, where any enemy could potentially even kill you with enough luck (say lucky hit to the back of your armored head from peasant with a spiked club), and you could always get maimed or crippled in some ways (because you wouldn't only lose HP when you get hit, you can break your foot or arm etc). Clearly, you had to have a much more cautious style of playing and you didn't have as much fun as in D&D, where the master would tailor a series of increasingly challenging but killable encounters until you got to destroy an epic, ridiculously powered villain at the end of the campaign.
- cthalupa 2y ago
  > If you accumulate enough levels in D&D, you can destroy entire armies and tackle literal gods. This is largely an invention of modern D&D, though. This was 100% not the case in OD&D, or stock AD&D 1E. Splatbooks in 1E added significant power level to characters, particularly after the success of the Dragonlance modules, including some truly ridiculous stuff like the power progression in the H1-H4 books. But before that point you were playing adventurers, not heroes. Even in 2E you could still play more like adventurers, though it was clear the preference for heroic gameplay was the new norm. It wasn't until 3E that the adventuring playstyle was really made impossible. > where the master would tailor a series of increasingly challenging but killable encounters until you got to destroy an epic, ridiculously powered villain at the end of the campaign. The original decade or so of D&D really didn't even have the idea of campaigns ending or building up to an epic showdown with the big bad evil guy. Gygax wrote extensively of campaigns as settings, and the sort of campaigns he (and Arneson) ran wouldn't even allow for this sort of showdown, because they were more like gaming clubs. They had dozens of people playing in the campaign regularly at any given time, often across multiple characters, split into multiple groups, etc. They were big persistent worlds. There would be no way to make a specific showdown or progression like this enjoyable for that sort of group - you could never get all 30-50 people together at once, and even if you could, there's no way to make that manageable for actual play, and you wouldn't want all of the players not involved in the final showdown to feel like their years of play had ultimately missed out on the climax.