What Is 'Medieval' Fantasy?
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- Опубликовано: 28 дек 2024
- Can we reasonably assume Fantasy is Medieval? Is any Fantasy world based fully in Medieval concepts? Should we even be trying to use the medieval period for our fantasy inspiration? I'm not certain the answer to any of these is a resounding 'yes.'
#dnd #dnd5e #fantasy #history #medieval #worldbuilding
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I always assumed that the medieval period was popular to set fantasy because it's developed enough to have for thriving cities and developed technologies but not so developed that you lose a lot part of the mystery of the land that they live. Or in other words at at a point history where civilizations are caught between knowing too much and too little about the world that they inhabit.
Grug get +1 club, beat mammoth. Bring back to cave. Spend rest of day making cave drawing. Sky God angry at night, make grass fire. Grug jump in river, end up in sand place. Grug stung by long-tail spider-crab. Grug stomp spider-crab and eat it. It yummy.
Roman period would be better for such, as Roman cities were overshadowed only in industrial era
@@somebodyanonymousx idk Renaissance and early modern (age of star forts and gunpowder, Columbus and Cotez) were before the industrial revolution and they were more developed than the romans.
Also would like to see more ancient greek fantasy.
@@somebodyanonymousxI think what is better is subjective, Roman period could be excellent, or the Bronze Age when the world was shrouded in even deeper mysteriousness, but I like the late medieval aesthetics more, and while the Roman empire was certainly more powerful than late medieval states due to its immense vastness, the late medieval world definitely surpassed it in technology.
@@asahearts1 Most of "Medieval" Fantasy settings are actually Renaissance without guns. Something closer to King Arthur is actually closer to actual Medieval Fantasy, what fit more Low Fantasy setting approach.
People seams to not understand really what Medieval times actually were. Starting from fact that guns actually start showing up in Late Medieval period and Rome didn't actually fall.
For settings, monster hunter often gets overlooked in these sorts of discussions. In a world with monsters, they're the ones that managed to make most of their industeries around them. Monster hide clothes, scale armour, claws for weapons. People call it cave punk, and it makes sense that technology revolving around hunting and protection from monstets wete prioritized so other industries are lagging behind.
Even then, they've managed to advance other fields and industries are quite well developed as long as it preominatedly uses monster related parts, their world's most abundant and valuable resource.
Even then it is also post apocalyptic an ancient civilization with all that's left is ruins like the great tower and stories. The gunlance, the switch axe, the charge blade and both types of bowgun are reverse engineered from archaeological finds in those ruins.
@@luketferWell, just because a setting is post apocalyptic with anachronistic objects abound, doesn't mean that a fiction's primary setting isn't medieval or whatever. Something like post-apocalyptic thousand year later things are mainly to explain strange things that normally wouldn't be possible in that particular genre. Like how lots of medieval fantasy has weird steampunk/magitech elements, explained by some ancient super advanced civilization making it possible.
I agree that too many stories completely miss the potential impact of magic on the society, as well as how weird it always seemed to have worlds with very little recent technological advancements. I would love that more authors understand that it is more exciting to have conflicts in the world that don't revolve around the protagonists, even if they might be drawn into it in the next story arc.
People often underlay magic's effect because in fiction you need the new with the familiar in order to connect to an audience. Ie, can have cowboys riding dinosaurs if you use Western fiction tropes for the cowboys. Realistically the presence of dinosaurs would change a lot of things about society, architecture, and technology (ie, no one uses guns because no town can survive a brontosaurus stampede), but then it becomes unrecognizable to the audience so they do not know what the heck they are looking at. It feels, "fake" and does not connect. This is a problem with a lot of failed fantasy books.
I actually handle this in my own setting. The basic gist of it is that the world hasn't industrialized because feudalism doesn't give rise to the prerequisite economic conditions for industrialization. The reason that feudalism has remained for so long is because castles are still extremely effective. The fall of feudalism in our real world happened largely because of the invention of the cannon which changed the way that war had to be conducted since you could no longer just wait in a castle until winter. You had to have a standing army which was significantly more expensive and led to alliances between lords and general weakening of the feudal structure. However in my setting, The cannon wasn't invented for a long time because firearms weren't invented due to magic being more effective. Meanwhile, Magic cannot fulfill the role of the cannon because A: People don't have the tools required to make spells which would work that way as a result of how the magic system works. And B: Magic can be blocked around a castle. Either by a field which dampens complex spells, Or by putting aluminum into the whitewash of the castle to block spells.
In the future, After a deadly plague, Magic actually gets completely banned across a large portion of the world since people blamed it for the plague. As a result, A focus is placed directly on more "natural" technology. And that technology (particularly the invention of the microscope) combined with a fall of feudalism allows people to actually truly understand how magic works when the restrictions get loosened. This then leads to the fastest technological revolution ever where we go from roughly 1600-1700 level preindustrial tech to interstellar FTL travel in a couple centuries.
I would argue that magic is not the source of stagnation, but the progress. Contrary to popular believes full plate armour was developed as answer to the firearms! Which become massive focus of the development from late medieval period (jest guns date as far). But in world where sizable portion of population can use magic, even on the low level. Development of guns could not be nesesery, especially with development of enchanted armour designed to resist some effects of magic and possibly also non-enchanted weapons. This actually can make development of guns unnecessary (though we need still address issue of arrows).
@@rynowatcher not really the stampede yes, but what ofthen people forget is that Dinos are animals not a fantasy animal, in the sense that if you shoot one with a gun if the dino in question survives it they will learn and the next time the animal wil not charge at you its more likely that its not gonna do that a turn the other way becpuse the dino (I am asuming carnivore) will not consider you worth it, in fact you will be by his perpective? A pest that barelly has any meath in the bones that doesnt even taste good.
Now the brontos are herbibores....you are fucked.
Herbibores are extremelly dangerous contrary to popukar belive.
@@galer15dx my point was more focused on the dinos as a consideration for how it would change social, technological, and architectural developments more so than the nuts and bolts of interacting with a Dino. Ie, if large herd animals were routinely stomping through an area where humans lived, it would affect how we build structures and things like cassles might never have arisen as it might not be practical to spend that many resources if a Dino stampede is going to level it a quarter of the way through construction. My point is most people stop with slapping a saddle on a t-Rex and call it a day if they want to use fantastical elements into a known social archetype despite it not making sense that you built a house smaller than everyone's mount.
Sure donosaurs are real, but they never had first hand human experiance with them, so it is as much of a fantastic element as a fire breathing dragon within the context of this conversation as a game or story is going to opt for the dramatically interesting thing for the creature to do, not the scientifically accurate thing. Die Hard would be boring if he passed out from shock of traumatic injury in the second action scene and the movie ended there. This is a discussion of fiction, not paleontology.
My opinion is that as it currently stands, most fantasy games ignore the medieval trappings anyway. Renaissance Faire aesthetic was the starting point, Classical Greek and pre-Medieval Scandinavian and all manner of Eastern things were thrown together. Robots and spaceships and rayguns had already been common staples _before_ Tolkien focused on a pre-gunpowder and even pre-crossbow technological era. Nowadays cowboy and pirate guns are commonplace.
A fantasy world that really commits to medieval Europe aesthetically would have a very strong flavor and identity if someone did it with no irony, and an actual functional understanding of medieval society, culture, commerce, history, technology, etc.
A big part of where we got this "Renaissance era Europe is fantasy" idea is from Victorian and early 20th century fairy-tales, using vaguely recalled "medieval times" as set dressing when doing new interpretations of folk tales that pre-existed not just the Renaissance, but often the medieval period as well. I think it was C. S. Lewis pointed out, modern fairy stories should start from the modern era as the basepoint, a lot of people think of beautiful kidnapped princesses and cruel, arbitrary kings as just as fantastical as fairy circles and mighty dragons. Almost all fantastical tales were, for their time, closer to what we'd call Urban Fantasy.
Actual medieval fantasy should be something closer to King Arthur. While D&D is pure high fantasy.
The modern romance (or fantasy story) based, approximately, on the Middle Ages goes beyond Tolkien. Sir Walter Scott and William Morris are two important authors. Our current idea of Robin Hood was heavily influenced by 'Ivanhoe', for example. And the medieval-Europe setting is an important part of our legendary culture because of romances like The Faerie Queene or Orlando Furioso, and back further to the Chanson de Roland.
The post-Tolkien fantasy worlds are what some call "consensus medieval" and not historical. One of the earliest books in the Ballantine paperback line of new fantasy ca. 1970 was Katherine Kurtz's "Deryni Rising" (et seq.)-significantly, Katherine Kurtz was an active member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, which is an almost-historical-recreation group that combines real research with The Middle Ages The Way We Want It, and the Deryni books were set solidly in the Consensus Middle Ages.
I only recently learned of 'bardcore', which is to medieval music as modern fantasy is to the historical Middle Ages.
Trust me- if we had any spells like mage hand in the real world, we'd be living in a technological utopia. The ability to manipulate an object without direct contact would allow for previously impossible contraptions. Want to work metal while it'd a liquid? Mage hand. Want to write your name on a grain of rice (or inscribed a circuit on a microchip)? Mage hand. Want to make deice that can be remotely operated without the need for a battery? Why- MAGE HAND.
That spell, as low tier as it is, would revolutionize the world of tech and manufacturing on it's own. Now imagine what heat metal, shape earth, create water or portals to the elemental planes could do- Yeah. There'd be no *energy crisis* when you could just open a portal to the plane of fire for free and infinite heat to power turbines nor shortages of rare minerals when the plane of earth is so readily available to an aspiring mage.
I’ve thought of similar things prestidigitation could do for cooking, especially if the effects can be replicated by a rune or something. The chill effect would remove the need for ice, the warm effect means you don’t have to recook and potentially dry out leftovers, and the ability to flavor means you don’t have to transport seasonings. Depending on how far you could stretch those effects, you could potentially have a modern kitchen without the need for electricity.
Yeah, no energy crysis, aham, just open a portal to a new dimension.
*tries to shuffle away from the obvious demon*
@@kovi567in all fairness, any stove can potentially cause a house fire. No solution is perfect. This one just happens to have a stabbier solution than your usual mundane stove 🤷🏽♂️
We really would not. Population levels rise in accordance with economic activity, broadly speaking, and we have plenty of seemingly miraculous gadgets that have not made life a technological utopia. Large swathes of problems are fundamentally social in nature, not technological.
This is probably why so many magical settings have a history of global catastrophes and wars, the most recent of which they are still recovering from, something to keep hitting the reset button to stop the inevitable progress.
What happens after a genre is established is that people tend to just start copying what came before. Audiences start expecting it because that's what they've grown accustomed to and creators do it because that's what audiences expect. Regardless of the original reasoning, it becomes a heuristic, a mental shortcut to make communicating the concepts and elements of the setting easier. In film and television space opera, the energy shield was originally a way to have space battles without damaging the filming models and thus became the default. Not having energy shields was and to a degree still is something that sci-fi settings actively choose not to have. Why is most fantasy medieval? These days, because most fantasy is medieval. Deviating from expectations risks drawing the ire of the audience for not delivering what they expect.
I believe there are a lot of 18th and even 19th century elements in fantasy because a lot of the elements in the stories that would become fantasy were established during the Victorian era. Quite a lot of "traditional" things were created during that time period, including the the modern perception of Chivalry and Bushido. The image of Vikings as savage warriors with horned helmets was very much a Victorian creation. My guess is that what evolved into what we now know as fantasy was a product of Romanticism, a rejection of Enlightenment values in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars and the revolutions that followed. A rejection of modernity means going to a pre-Renaissance setting meaning medieval (but not classical because that's almost sacred territory). And it's late medieval because depictions of the medieval era during that period were mostly late medieval. Arthur and his Knights of the Round, Charlemagne and his Paladins were often depicted anachronistically because authors and painters back then were less interested in historical accuracy than screenwriters and costume designers today. Victorian audiences would more easily recognize a rapier than a sword from the period that the Battle of Camlann allegedly took place in.
If this is the case, then fantasy was originally set in a static era because it was in part a rejection of modernity, and nowadays to create a fantasy setting that's in the midst of the magical equivalent of the Industrial Revolution is to step outside the box that has been drawn around the fantasy genre. When it is done, it often starts to look a lot like steampunk and retrofuturism. With enough progress and it pretty much becomes sci-fi because a fair amount of pop sci-fi doesn't actually use science and technology, but magic pretending to be science and technology.
This is an excellent comment. I think you're right, for the most part. Interesting to look at this development from a genre history perspective, whereas I came from the other direction.
Deadly loop
"Tolkein... refuses to describe in any great detail the Technology of the world"
He describes the heaviest armours as chainmail, seige towers and catapults.
Also quick to point out that the highest technology is accessible to the Sauron aligned forces, it being this Fallen spirit of construction and craftmanship who invented it for his purposes. Isengard being essentially a mini-isengard.
But there is a consensus among tolkien scholars that he was drawing on Anglo-Saxon/Viking materials when writing the lord of the Rings. With Gonder being a Byzantine empire expy.
Which makes the lord of the rings definitely early middle ages, with a few exceptions that are used to show how different they are to the world.
In modern standard Lord of the Rings would be considered as Low Fantasy. Or at least division line.
Somewhere in the first few pages of LOTR, there is are references to an express train and the postman, which suggests 19th century IMO. As the story moves away from the Shire the language and storytelling become more elevated in style perhaps towards medieval but there being several lands in close proximity with different cultures and different kings, would suggest dark age to me. The movies muddied the waters with costume choices from 18th and 19th centuries. But these are only my thoughts.
Agreed! As the video says, Tolkien VERY craftily avoids to give a definite description of the technology; which gives him leeway to mix and match anachronistically, but the focus is decidedly Viking/Saxon era as you said.
I recently re-read The Fellowship and TT and (from memory) most combat is shield + spear and bows. Then, swords, axes, daggers and scimitars. The armors mentioned are mail hauberks and skull caps (super viking- esque!) and lamellar, but not much. Mostly is tunics the charcters wear. The every day habits and culinary aspect seems to be the most “modern” he gets, but military wise is all very 9th century.
@susanscott8653 ah but you must remember that the "red book" is a "translation" so is the express train real or an idiom in that language that has been translated into something modern languages can understand?
I can’t see late Middle Ages at all and I’m starting to think there’s too many of these RUclipsrs who don’t know what they’re talking about when they say late Middle Ages, the closest to reasoning I got for why “so much fantasy appears to be inspired most by this period” (mid to early actually, not late) is that clocks exist in the shire, but again it’s fantasy and not unthinkable that a clock could be invented given the fact that some races can have more refined skills in certain areas compared to humans
People forget that nothing prevents magic from being used in mundane research.
The medieval focus of "medieval fantasy" is, I think, due to D&D. D&D drew from Tolkien, certainly, but it also drew from Chainmail, which was Gygax's adaptation of wargame minis rules to specifically medieval battles.
As to "medieval stasis" in fantasy settings, it comes from a few factors of human psychology. It is, I think, probable that people who lived in the 1400s had a vague sense of history. Yes, they knew OF it, but if you look at various contemporary works of a given period, even when they purport to depict ancient things, they depict them in styles that are recognizably contemporary to the work. Kings are depicted in then-typical attire and with then-typical tools and weapons, for example. So there's a sense in-period of history looking a lot like the present, except where explicitly called out. Similarly, the notion of "fallen Rome" being an empire of marvels beyond anything contemporary medieval tech or culture could produce (however unfair that is to 15th century tech and culture) informs that "medieval fantasy" trope of ancient artifacts being much more powerful than anything "new."
But the other factor is that writers are human, and have a tendency to inflate time to ever-larger numbers to make things seem impressive. In reality, a 200-year-old nation is pretty impressive, in terms of how much history it has. But saying a fantasy whatever is merely a couple centuries old only sounds impressive in a "one upsmanship" thing with mortals, not in a sense of being ancient and knowledgeable of long-changed trends. But a 120-year-old elf - a fresh-faced young man out on his first adventure, by D&D standards - would, if alive _today_ IRL, have been around before WWI, and have had cowboys and samurai be potentially-distant, but not entirely "lost to history" things. The "Old West" would be still going on when he's beginning to toddle, and he'd be a child through the roaring twenties and the great depression. Having a smartphone as he is heading into business or adventure or a career of his own would be normal to him by now, but he'd easily remember growing up with tech changing rapidly and culture shifting a great deal.
Consider that in "medieval fantasy," he might remember three or four generations of his human friends and friends-of-the-family, but he'd also have known those friends as "the blacksmiths of this town" that has remained the same size all those decades. Because the "sense" is that it's not an "ancient empire" until it's been around for a thousand years.
The contemporary depictions of ancient times in medieval art come down to two things: ease of understanding and access to information. Everyone had a good idea how a king dressed and how a knight looked during their lifetime, but art, and especially books, from Ancient Rome and Greece were in very short supply. So when you have no idea how ancient Greeks dressed, but know Achilles was sort of an equivalent of a legendary knight today, you draw him how you know high-ranking nobles dress for war. This has the advantage of being easy shorthand for the viewer to understand as well.
D&D was not medieval fantasy. People use term incorrectly.
@@TheRezro And yet, the entire video topic is about the kind of fantasy that D&D is. So, if "people use term incorrectly," The Grungeon Master is "people" who is using it incorrectly, as well. As the term is good enough to convey meaning, I see no reason to be pedantic over whether it is "correct" to use it to describe the kinds of game settings The Grungeon Master is describing or not. And when _I_ think something is too pedantic, it has gotten very, VERY pedantic.
The mechanics of combat were descended from Chainmail, but D&D was rather more generalized. The earliest D&D campaigns-Gygax's Greyhawk and Arneson's Blackmoor-were quite different. As Gygax wrote of gunpowder, "Blackmoor has some gunpowder usage but the filthy stuff won't work in Greyhawk's world." It doesn't work in Zelazny's "Amber" either, come to think of it, which is the basis of "The Guns of Avalon". D&D's idea was emphatically not to stick to a single historical (or even possible) setting, which was one reason that Simbalist and Backhaus created 'Chivalry and Sorcery' in 1977, an attempt to set a fantasy RPG in a world closely resembling medieval France. In the second edition, as Wikipedia reports, "The medieval setting was clearly divided into three distinct periods: Early Feudal, High Chivalric Feudal, and Late Chivalric Feudal, each period having a distinct technology. For example: Heavy plate armor and two-handed swords only become available in Late Feudal (14th - 15th centuries)."
1400s?? I’m so tired of this, middle earth is not Rennaissance era, it’s closer to 900s
10:30 Conan the Barbarian is LITERALLY the setting you are describing.
I can't stress enough how good that setting is and how flexible it feels.
While D&D seems pretty medieval in nature (and isn’t the easiest to tinker with to either roll back, or even harder, advance forward), there are games that have either a more archaic or more modern feel. Dark Suns (which has been mentioned on previous videos on this channel, and unfortunately seems to have been disowned by WotC), had a definite stone to Bronze Age flavor, while a game called Adventurer, Conqueror, King is set in a setting much like the late Roman Imperial period. On the other hand, just looking at games I have, there are fantasy games set in the Victorian Era (Steam Craft - with air ships and steam ships), the old west (Owl Hoot Trail - where paladins have become sheriffs and other classes have been likewise altered and changed to fit into the time period), the modern era (Witch Girl Adventures - a sort of Harry Potter-ish setting at a magical school [Cell phones and Sorceresses?] or the future (Shadow Punk - Cyberpunk with magic). It’s too bad D&D is centered so much around medieval equipment, especially the armor (which makes implementing guns [they do have rules for guns, but guns, specifically the older muzzle loaders, seem underwhelming] or eliminating armor for a later time period awkward, especially for fighter types). Not that it’s impossible, but it’s difficult to pull off in a satisfying, balanced way.
Disowned by WoW?
@@____________838 Oops! Brain fart - I meant WotC.
@@EyeOfMagnus4E201 gotcha, I was a little confused, but I figured that was what you meant.
@@____________838 It’s fine. I obviously was a bit confused myself getting my World of Warcraft mixed up with Wizards of the Coast. 😅
I would point out that Athas's history contains a world more like traditional D&D landscapes, and the present state of the world was due to an apocalyptic event.
Which brings me to an important point. Apocalypses can happen in D&D, and cause civilization to regress, which is a perfect explanation for the world being an anachronistic mess. As people use knowledge and artifacts from previous eras to complement their own different path of advancement.
Technological development in fantasy settings generally stops at around the Renaissance because at that point your into clockwork-punk or steam-punk more than fantasy.
Admittedly, creating X-Punk classes (Artificers) to be in direct competition with magical classes could be interesting, if pretty hard to more or less balance between the classes.
If that sort of conflict interests you, I’d highly recommend looking at an old isometric TTRPG by the Anne of Arcanum: of Steamwork and Magicka Obscura. The premises is essentially what happens when a heavily Tolkien-esque (and yes I do mean Tolkien-esque, not just vaguely generic high fantasy) world rapidly undergoes an Industrial Revolution wr too early in its history. Magic and technology are constantly at odds because magic mucks up the laws of physics and causes technology to stop working and vice versa for technology’s effect on magic. Noble kingdoms of ancient knights are being torn apart by the new economic industrial powerhouse with its access to advanced firearms. At the same time, as the magic of the world weakens on account of the heavier reliance on technology, races that require magic to survive because of their fantastical anatomy, like giants or elves, are becoming weaker and weaker. The game allowed you to specialise for either a tech-based character or a magic-based character and as you came to rely more on one or the other, it actually influenced the world around you physically. Incredibly powerful wizards have guns basically just break in their hands and half to sit in the furthest back coach on trains or else their magic might muck up the engines. It really is a beautifully crafted fantasy world.
High presence of magic is actually good explanation why firearms could not be a thing, with mages taking they palce in otherwise Renaissance period. Even if guns were a thing during late medieval times. When Battle of Agincourt take place, where French allowed themselves to be surprised with outdated and overrated Longbows. Only few decades later Czechs were using Warhammer style battle-wagons.
As a Medieval historian, I would like to see some fantasy in a setting that's closer to the reality of the Middle Ages. There's a lot of ignored potential there.
There's also a lot of weird stuff in the Middle Ages that would make for a very fantastic setting. Likewise, there are many things that are considered "standard" that would never work in a real pre-industrial world, and whose absence would make the setting more interesting.
I'm kinda tired of the shallow pastiche worlds we keep getting.
As someone that's writing their first medieval fantasy story, and a fan of medieval history myself (though by no means extensively knowledgeable on the topic), I'd love to hear a more detailed explanation.
What story potentials are you referring to? Which medieval fantasy tropes make the least sense to you? What story aspects would you say are the biggest offenders/ most commonly overlooked?
I'd love to hear more; it's not often you get access to professionals.
@@manuelfriend4060 Thank you for the interest and kind words! Technically, I'm not a professional, as I don't get paid. However, I find "amateur" unfitting, as it implies a lack of quality. Basically, I've been studying the subject for 15+ years, reading as many period sources and academic papers as I can get my hands on.
So, one thing that is often overlooked is how trade worked. You have trade caravans crossing over all kinds of dangerous and hard to traverse lands to bring rare and expensive commodities to a wider market, à la the Silk Road. Now, there was much competition for control of the various trade hubs, and you have places like Constantinople, that became incredibly rich and powerful by essentially being the one place that all East-West trade had to pass through. Aside from land trade, there were also a lot of ships that would sail from Europe, through the Mediterranean, to reach Constantinople. Groups like the Hanseatic League became incredibly powerful by controlling the majority of the trade ships.
So, there's two interesting plot ideas, involving arduous travel through dangerous environments. Having characters be engaged in trade is also a great way to showcase multiple parts of your fantasy world, since both ships and caravans need to stop for supplies and engage with the locals.
Now, up there I mentioned the Hanseatic League, which was a group of cities and towns in Europe that banded together for mutual defense, and eventually became so powerful that they were essentially a political entity in their own right. Which brings me to things like corporations and confederations. So, Medieval governance was pretty messy; you'd often have multiple layers of government in the same area, that did different things, all with varying levels of independence from each other. If you look at Medieval London, the city itself was run by the Corporation of London, which was empowered by Royal Charter to run the city and collect taxes to fund itself, but there were also several areas inside the city that didn't strictly come under the Corporation's authority. For instance, the various churches and monasteries inside the city were under religious authority, London Bridge had it's own Corporation, and The Tower of London belonged to the King. I feel like one could get multiple novels out of the political infighting between competing entities in a fictional city, but it would certainly make for an interesting background detail, in any case.
But the same kind of "messiness" also plays out on an international stage. In the Middle Ages, nations were not the same thing as Kingdoms; nationality was merely where you were from, it had very little to do with who ruled you. To clarify, at one point, England controlled more of France than France did, and the people in those areas largely considered themselves subjects of the English Crown. So "England" was just one of the places controlled by the "King of England," who was also Count of Anjou, Duke of Normandy, etc, and the people in Normandy were loyal to him because he was their Duke. Essentially, local people owed allegiance to a Lord who had the Title to rule that area, but who may also hold Titles elsewhere, and rule other people.
In addition to this, you also had groups like the Hanseatic League, that were not ruled by a Lord. Often, cities in places where local rule was weak or unsure would band together for mutual protection.
If all of that is of use/interest to you, I have more. Some of it just makes settings more complex and interesting, and...well, _different,_ but other stuff can be used as a springboard for creating conflict and tension.
I would be really interested in an early 16th century European setting with a tinge of gothic horror elements like Nosferatu in a deserted castle and a werewolf or two howling about in a forest.
@@manuelfriend4060 Okay, so if you read this, as a medieval history student in my 2nd year of Master's, I'll try to tackle some of them (it's impossible to be exhaustive).
-Some story potentials can be axed around medieval merchant republics like Italian city-states (Venice, Florence) but also lesser-known examples like the Republic of Novgorod in Russia. Lots of political intrigue to analyze, discuss how trade affects geopolitics and plain old politics, talk about commerce with other lands (though be careful to for instance *not* have non human peoples as stand-in for the Islamic world, for obvious racism-related reasons).
-Also show more popular movements and "commoners" (including burgesses/merchants) self-organizing as autonomous polities: the commune and free town was a widespread phenomenon in the High to Late Middle Ages (1100-1500).
-The weirdness around religion: you can't really talk about the Western medieval period (which is what most modern fantasy is based on) without talking about the importance of religion (also applies to the Islamic world) and specifically the Roman Catholic Church in everyday life. But since most fantasy religions are polytheistic or are at least meant not to be a stand-in for Christianity, you get a weird mash of pop-culture understanding of paganism/polytheism (magic, terrifying gods, etc..) and modern Abrahamic religions (the insistence on personal faith, a very coded representation of fanaticism, a priest class).
-The unfortunate effects of the "planet of hats" trope, i.e. having elves, orcs, dwarves, humans etc... be stand-ins (intentionally or not) for real historical or present human groups. Especially with how orcs are associated with "barbarian" peoples like steppe nomads or late-Roman-era Germanic peoples (Warcraft), or even how elves are presented as a sort of "superior" race in a lot of fantasy media.
-The lack of inspiration from other aesthetics than medieval France or England: we should see more people, clothes, architecture, legends and folklore from the Middle East, North and Subsaharan Africa, Central and East Asia, India etc... There were connections throughout Eurasiafrica in the medieval period (see the legend of Prestor John inspired by the Ethiopian kingdom or potentially the Kereits of Mongolia or the Kara Khitai of Central Asia).
@@samrevlej9331 Wow this is great, tysm. Lots of new points of research of me.
And ya, I definitely won't be making the mistake of race essentialism/ substitution. It seems that started with Tolkien's LOTR. While I love LOTR, Tolkien was apparently a bit of a racist, so it has its flaws. Mono-culture races are also ridiculously unrealistic.
Are there any sources you'd recommend for learning about the Catholic religion's close ties to the period? I think that's currently my weakest point from this list.
I've always wondered why there isn't more wild west-era fantasy settings as that's the last time period where if you told just anyone that you met a wizard and fought a ogre they'd probably believe you universally. Of course, in some areas this lasted longer than other, most Germans still believed in unseen spirits into the first world war and iceland rather famously believe in elves to this day.
In the US you prolly would’ve been laughed at, Americans tried distancing themselves from European monsters and myths and what not, in the process making their own in a way
One overlooked aspect of Medieval history is the medieval republic. Not every medieval nation was a Kingdom. Venice comes to mind. How would a republic work in a fantastical setting?
"The Lies of Locke Lamora" takes place in a Fantasy "Venice", also some regions of Abercrombie's "First Law" are quite close to Italian city states/republics (mostly in "Best served cold")
@@bartolo498 Thanks.
Gondor was a republic before aragorn restored the monarchy. So was esgaroth
As a medieval history student in my 2nd year of Master's, here are a few ideas and tropes that might need adjustment (this isn't meant to be a complete list but a starting ground, and if you know pieces of media that have already done these, great):
-Some story potentials can be axed around medieval merchant republics like Italian city-states (Venice, Florence) but also lesser-known examples like the Republic of Novgorod in Russia. Lots of political intrigue to analyze, discuss how trade affects geopolitics and plain old politics, talk about commerce with other lands (though be careful to for instance not have non human peoples as stand-in for the Islamic world, for obvious racism-related reasons).
-Also show more popular movements and "commoners" (including burgesses/merchants) self-organizing as autonomous polities: the commune and free town was a widespread phenomenon in the High to Late Middle Ages (1100-1500).
-The weirdness around religion: you can't really talk about the Western medieval period (which is what most modern fantasy is based on) without talking about the importance of religion (also applies to the Islamic world) and specifically the Roman Catholic Church in everyday life. But since most fantasy religions are polytheistic or are at least meant not to be a stand-in for Christianity, you get a weird mash of pop-culture understanding of paganism/polytheism (magic, terrifying gods, etc..) and modern Abrahamic religions (the insistence on personal faith, a very coded representation of fanaticism, a priest class).
-The unfortunate effects of the "planet of hats" trope, i.e. having elves, orcs, dwarves, humans etc... be stand-ins (intentionally or not) for real historical or present human groups. Especially with how orcs are associated with "barbarian" peoples like steppe nomads or late-Roman-era Germanic peoples (Warcraft), or even how elves are presented as a sort of "superior" race in a lot of fantasy media.
-The lack of inspiration from other aesthetics than medieval France or England: we should see more people, clothes, architecture, legends and folklore from the Middle East, North and Subsaharan Africa, Central and East Asia, India etc... There were connections throughout Eurasiafrica in the medieval period (see the legend of Prestor John inspired by the Ethiopian kingdom or potentially the Kereits of Mongolia or the Kara Khitai of Central Asia).
14:46 Precisely. Thank you for putting the words on how free-ranging some of these characters seem to be.
I highly suggest reading the manga, "The Dragon, the Hero and the Courier", which focuses on a courier and a fantasy world that takes a lot from actual history (from what I know)
Am going to check that out right now.
Searched for that comment, lol.
It's also quite appropriate, since the main conflict is about the socio-economic changes that are going on (Among with mages being made obsolete, because of technological advancement)
I just want some medieval guns. It's always either "No guns allowed" or Renaissance flintlock muskets. There's a whole history of firearm development. Give me a breech-fired handgonne! Give me a matchlock or wheellock arquebus!
a rolling block gun
A big argument I've seen in the technological limits of fantasy is the "well we don't really have viable melee options for modern characters". Not even touching how this isn't necessarily accurate in skirmish level fights or ones that don't involve specifically modern militaries though, honestly it's easier to justify why a magitek-infused setting has armor that stops tiny bullets better than massive chunks of metal or why charging in with a hammer might be more effective in fantasy than in reality, and more people are willing to accept "melee weapons do big damage so melee is still viable" if you don't want to deal with explanations but keep melee more present in combat.
There are plemty of explicitly futuristic settings where melee is viable. That argument holds no water.
I always felt that magic would progress technology further. Avatar while i do know is not the typical fantasy example, they have shown throughout the series where bending is used in technology. In fact, i think magic should give a more interesting take on technology. I even read about how magic was used in space travel.
My favorite use of this before pointed out not just how the magic advanced but also where it dragged behind. I don't remember the name anymore sadly but the idea was this:
Humans have magic strong enough to tame large aquatic beasts.
Humans have large aquatic beasts so they developed large ships with no motor to be pulled by them.
Humans have no need for motors so they haven't explored the technologies that come right before them.
Humans have magic strong enough to kill the aquatic beasts of other ships OR wipe out the crew.
Humans have no need for cannons and the like because it was quicker and more efficient to use magic than basic weapons.
Humans have no need for basic weapons so weapon technology didn't advance.
Magic would cause technology to not be needed in many cases. Got magic portals? That reduces transportation between long distances, etc. Less reason to spread out into the countryside because less need for the space, etc Would guns happen, probably not. Enhancments in bows perhaps, if these were developed at all, or perhaps there was something else. I suppose it depends on where you start having magic influence society, and not in just the hands of a chosen few.
On the reasons to make plate mail, greatswords, and other heavy arms. In alot of fantasy, the process of "enchanting" requires physical space to write the "runes" of which enact the enchantment, as well as strong enough material to withstand the intensity of the enchantment itself. I think that is reason enough to use larger weaponry. If the size of the weapon directly correlates to the potential complexity of the enchantments applied, bigger weapon would literally mean more power. It would also explain why there is a minimum start size for "dragon slaying" weapons, there might me a set of enchantments that would require a specific size of material.
It would also display plenty reason for specific advancements to stagnate, in the context of warfare. If metals are needed in order to enchant, and enchantments can increase defenses so far as to ensure a certain degree of protection from even dragons? The scientific advances from warfare that bred our modern innovations wouldn't have the same opportunities. Those worlds would probably develop trains, but it is unlikely that it would be through steam power. Steam power, electricity, magnets, and many other technologies would be massively delayed because other technologies would be developed to fill those roles well enough that only the absurdly wealthy and eccentric would be able to explore them, more so than our own world had been.
Much of what you said is dependent on how your magic works. You can come up with any reasons for this or that to come about. Perhaps a basic enchantment to reinforce clothing from damage turns into a ramping up of armored cloth, negating the need for 'assumed' armor types. There are so many options. I think a study, a train of thought, examine the different paths of society, and insert how magic would influence or change things, and try and steer away from 'expected' things.
You know, I do agree that bronze age tech plays very well if not arguably better than medival does with fantasy tropes. Either way, being willing to look to different eras for our settings is valuable
I love Bronze age. The armors and weapons. The whole aesthetic and spirituality works well for fantasy.
I also think a late Bronze Age setting, i.e. circa 1200 B.C. is a great setting for fantasy, after all it’s the era when Greek, Ancient Egyptian and Ancient Mesopotamian mythology was created and set. I think the reason it isn’t popular is it doesn’t conform to many fantasy tropes; no knights, no mail, AKA “chainmail” armour, no Western European setting, full plate armour limited to Mycenaean Dendra style armours, Radically different (and to a modern mind alien) cultures, the Mycenaean kingdoms, Ancient Egypt and Ancient Mesopotamia are very different to Medieval Western Europe.
The earlier ancient period was the OG period for fantasy telling
Discovered you yesterday and binging your videos, they're so thought-provoking! I for one would love to hear your take on a magical industrial revolution
The notion that "if 20% of people do magic, the rest of the people aren't just sitting on their hands" presupposes that the people who would be doing the inventing aren't the magicians already. In a world where magic exists, if it is a learnable skill, it is the smart people that would otherwise be discovering non magical technologies that are going to be pursuing magical discoveries, so magic becomes the mode of technology. The level of "industrialization" then depends on how easy or difficult magic is to learn and use, and what its inherent limits are. Like, Vancian magical limitations would definitely prevent a magical industrial revolution. Even more skill based magical systems tend to have limitations on how much magic can be used. And even if a magic system allows for teleportation, usually you have to have been there before, so it isn't really a method of exploration. There's also the fact that, in most depictions, magicians tend to both have an idiosyncratic set of abilities, and also not be particularly trusting of their knowledge with others. Then there is the whole range of cultural limitations.
If magic use is bound to some other arbitrary characteristic not related to raw learning ability, you get get Star Wars, eventually, but you probably start with Ars Magica.
The Grungeon Master,
I know it wasn’t anywhere near as common in medieval period as it was during the age sail, but weren’t there still technically pirates in medieval times as well? There were pirates in the ancient world and as long as any valuables were transported via ship, thieves had a motive to rob those ships if they thought they could get away with it
Yes. Quite a lot of them. Vikings were closely related to pirates (technically not as they targeted targets on land) and there were lots of pirates in the Mediterranean. Corsairs were a major part of Spanish and Portugese armament.
Piracy probably came around few days after someone discovered that hey we can transport cargo by water... Idea of stealing stuff predates humanity.
The Victual brothers were a guild of pirates in the Baltic sea.
After finishing this it looks like the main issue is that 'medieval fantasy' seems to be just renfaires due to that being most americans closest connection to the period.
A second issue seems to be tied to everyone playing DnD which meanes people are playing on a system best known for renfaire style fantasy. This then means that other periods like the bronze age are then neglected.
In fact a commenter below made the observation that the whole frontier with few sparks of civilization and hostile wilderness all about is more reminiscent of the wild west. With parties of adventurers being posse's of cowboys except with swords instead of guns.
Since D&D has merged with MTG, they brought in the world of Theros which is based around the Greco/Roman mythology. Spelljammer brings in space travel, though the ship weaponry is primarily ballistas and mangonels, but the technology is all over the place and very open.
I've always liked to set my homebrew games in a Renaissance era setting. Usually because I like to think of how magic effects the world but also because I like adding guns to my games :P
But would guns have existed at all? With magic, there is less need for this to even happen.
@@CaptnJack depends on the system and whatever excuse the author can make. guns exist in full metal alchemist despite magic because alchemy requires deep understanding of natural science. having the magic system require a phd-level understanding of physics makes it fairly inaccessible.
12:49 Spain getting to Americas ... England getting to Americas ... Tolkien kind of _did_ deal with that as Numenoreans getting to Middle Earth. The explanation why Eriador speaks Westron is like the explanation why English is spoken from Alaska to Florida and from Newfoundland to California la Alta.
Speaking of Westron, basically _all_ of the languages in Eriador, human or elven, are meant to evoke pre-Indo-european languages of Europe, and it is arguable Gondor is actually facing an onslaught of people from the Kurgans (wainriders). Linguistically, any Middle Earth material and especially Third Age is very firmly set millennia before Christ.
A bit like how Esgaroth evokes .... looking up my 2019 essay "Laketown, but not Esgaroth" ... I linked to Lac de Chalain ...
7:25 I have sometimes used this excuse as well but it really doesn't make all that much sense when you start thinking about it. Most likely the people with no magical talent would start an arms race in order to compete with magic. Not just in combat, but technological advancement overall. Unless, of course, the ones with magic fight against this change which could very well happen (looking at certain parts of our real world history).
Or technology would become an outgrowth of magic to produce more and more potent spells.
Something that doesn't get talked about enough is that when places other than medieval Europe are included, they tend to get exotizied. They are deemed "exotic" with their strange wonders and exotic people with their strange, exotic customs.
One of my d&d buds has a habit of referring to all of the d&d games we play as medieval. I've had to tell him more than once that some of these settings have early modern, or non European influences.
So I've been world-building a fantasy setting based on the early middle ages, the migration period and the chaos after the Fall of Rome, the Carolingian cycle and Arthurian myth, Norse mythology and Germanic legend, and the rise of Christianity (although my version of it is more like Gnosticism with a Lovecraftian touch). But then out of a spontaneous impulse, I also placed an island based on Japan far to the west. They're now competing with my version of the Norse about who gets to colonize an icy continent far in the north (based on Greenland, northern Canada and Alaska) that harbors dark secrets and eldritch horrors.
I also have a far higher percentage of magic users than other settings. Like, it's effectively 100%, but it doesn't _feel_ like that, because your magical abilities shape with the demands of your profession, culture and lifestyle, so a peasant is going to use different magic than a warrior, who is going to use different magic than a wizard or scholar of the arcane, or a seidkona or priest, or a martial artist, etc.- and then there's also huge cultural differences. So I have lots and lots of different forms of magic in my setting, and some are really subtle and barely distinguishable from the mundane techniques they're interwoven with. As I see it, magic would change and develop alongside technology in such a setup.
Expanding on my previous comment here, it doesn't necessarily need to be some specific entity, there are other potential explanations for the Fermi Paradox that with some softening could apply to a more terrestrial setting; like for example self-destructive destabilizing tendencies when magic becomes accessible enough some bored kid might accidentally retcon the whole history of the town, or someone in a fit of rage produces an infectious curse that increases the flammability of water, or someone sneezes at the wrong time and nukes the whole place etc.
While those examples are just that, in most settings anyone who is capable of those feats of magic are typically divine or very very very powerful mages whether by studying hard ( where in they would not do these things accidentally) or they just have an absurd amount of magic power but unless they are divine or studied they should be dead with that level of power ( ie their power would kill them when it's expressed probably as collateral damage so most people would just not have that level of power without studying/training and those that do would be incredibly rare to the point of nonexistence )
@@rrose9161 Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic; people nowadays carry in their pockets more processing power than used to fit in whole building floors, hell, even the wall-wart that charges it has more processing power than what was used to take Man to the Moon; and in just few decades we're in the process of developing genies and we have yet to figure out how to avoid accidentally creating evil genies. Now, in a world where reality itself is programmable, consider the trajectory a culture with similar levels of scientific prowess and tendencies of democratization of knowledge might take.
@@tiagotiagot I was not disagreeing in my first comment but merely pointing out how rare people who would be able to perform the examples you used would be and thus should not be used as examples of what the typical person would be capable of ( specialists vs average) not to say that such feats of magic are impossible for a species to perform just rare to occur
@@rrose9161 When was the last time you saw an electronics specialist using a cellphone?
@@tiagotiagot well that is the difference between technology and magic right there for you ( technology is external and collective in relation to a person but magic is more innate in the sense of a mix of external/internal and personal ) where the spells and techniques are collective and will persist beyond a person's life time their level of magic power will fade and disappear when a person dies
D&D focuses on medieval fantasy because it started out as a mod for Chainmail. I think the world would need to be more hostile for the whole stagnant technology idea to make sense. By designing a hostile world where humans live in caves could solve the technology problem. Add cataclysmic events, such as a swarms of different colored dragons that appear every certain number of prime numbered years, like cicadas.
Woah, didn't expect to go in this direction. My current setting is sci-fi, and I've been thinking a lot about how being in the bronze age would constrain magical Innovation before 'Science' has been invented.
On the topic of choosing an earlier setting for that "frontier conflict" aspect; another option is to have a later developed "medieval" society where you're setting takes place immediately after a cultural regression or great war. Your nation might be hundreds of years old with technology like spring steel and plate armour, but still have a frontier like feel because a once great empire has just fallen.
With the collapse of a widespread empire, cities and villages in many areas would return to ruins as lack of trade or military pressure causes them to fall prey to bandits and famine, leading to the inhabitants coalwscing in fewer settlements (possibly even inciting a fuedal period between warlords or barons, that could further explain a temporary stagnation of advancement). And things like monsters and nature could take over and make the wilds dangerous again, necessitating popular tropes like adventurers guilds.
There's always a way to get the best of both worlds if you put enough effort into your world building.
A plausible explanation for the persistent primitivism could be something similar to that trope in sci-fi where whenever a civilization gets advanced enough they attract the attention of dangerous powerful entities, and advanced civilizations either get eliminated, or decimated back into a more primitive state; so you likely only encounter cultures that advanced very slowly, or that have suffered major setbacks and are still recovering.
a world with magic that is seeing a simultaneous industrial revolution, "gold craze", "new world" colonizarion (with extended war and revolution cause the power scaling isnt so inbalanced thanks to magic; and there are also countries that are firmly against it cause they can afford the moral high ground or are investing in other ventures and such), the existence of adventurer's guilds due to monsters and whatnot, pirates, having readily access to explosives, guns being on the cusp of being invented, and more; would be amazing
10:21 Esgaroth. Have you taken a look at the real life inspirations for it?
Some are dated to 5000 or 3000 BC ...
My main fantasy setting is in the Hellenistic Age, which is Iron Age before the rise of Rome. It doesn't directly involve Hellenic mythology because a) Hellenic mythology is incredibly complex, hard to fully comprehend, and riddled with contradictions and b) I'm not all that interested in the mythology to begin with. What I'm interested in are the historical figures and cultures rubbing up against each other and the conflict and cooperation that leads to. My world includes real-world cultures and historical figures to provide me with a framework on which to build, but everything has been tweaked to fit with the fantasy things I've added. I like to call it fantasy with elements of alternate history.
7:25 - Oddly enough firearms were present in the Late Medieval period. There was a large overlap time where guns existed, but weren't the de facto choice for warfare.
It would be awesome to see a fictional world set in Copper Age & Bronze Age Prehistoric* Ireland tbh 🇮🇪.
I agree with a lot of what you are saying here. Though I would point out most innovation is caused by a need a problem that has to be solved. If there are few problems that can't be solved by magic then progress is going to be slow, and or might never happen at all. Most problems first and foremost would be solved through application of spells first rather then tech. It's really important to remember that fir most of our history progress has been extremely slow going,
0:52 As a Tolkien fan and a Medievalist, I actually tend to agree a bit.
I occasionally get to wondering about some of the things that setting books never cover. Like fantasy plumbing. Especially drow plumbing. You have these large, chaotic, fully three-dimensional cities, full of factions and families that all hate each other. But how do the air and water get in, and the waste out? How do they avoid monsters and assassins using the pipes as well? Sewer systems were some of humanity's first megastructures and in D&D they seem to be just a slightly worse flavour of dungeon.
This brings me to the idea of the drow plumbers guild. Their works are some of the most advanced, most beautiful, most complex, things you will never see. They bring order to chaos, keeping the water, air, waste, and magic flowing in one of the harshest environments imaginable, and in a society that actively rejects order.
They're the only group to wield power over drow society to rival the church of Lolth. A few high priestesses have tried to humble them. Fewer still survived the attempt.
I think the biggest overlooked method for limiting magic's influence on technofical advancement is its cost. If anyone can toss around magic willy nilly and it's a common tool, then you would see it everywhere and it would replace traditional weapons much like firearms did. But if you build a magic system where magic is either hard to access or is costly to perform, then people aren't going to use it very often, and that can be a valid explanation for why it hasn't transformed your world as much as it otherwise logically should. Having RPG like magic systems based on internal mana reservoirs that refill on over time and increase with experience works great in games, but it doesn't really translate well to physical world settings in stories.
E.g a difficult magic system might be based around using an extremely rare material as fuel instead of "internal mana."
Or a costly system might have magic draw directly from the casters life force, except it DOESNT regenerate. Casting powerful spells might shave 10 years off the mage's lifespan.
Poorly implemented magic systems in medieval settings is one of my biggest peeves.
Perhaps we should start saying Pre-Modern Fantasy or Pre-Late Modern Fantasy, if you want to get "precise". And whenever someone wants to ask how much before the Modern Era is this fantasy World, our answer is always "yes".
The Grungeon Master,
You should indeed do an episode on way you don’t like the trope that magic stifles innovation. That could be interesting. Another interesting idea for you is what you think modern fantasy authors can learn from writers in the genre that came before Tolkien, as there actually were arguably a significant number of them
This is why I love Warhammer Fantasy so much. It uses real world region analogs to give you a vast range of possible micro-settings to play in. The Empire is a Renaissance-era country that's financing expeditions into the new world. Bretonnia is high medieval France, mixed with King Arthur. Border princes are Italy at the height of the regional wars, with mercenary companies ruling warfare. Khemri is (undead) bronze age Egypt, and Kislev is Eastern Europe, with vast steppes that are constantly under thread of invasion, and another great area for frontier adventures.
Considering magic, you could have a more frontier setting with your cult of personality leaders and fairly lacking organization, and still have wicked cool castles and weapons, since magic drastically cuts down on the time and effort needed for large scale projects.
Not sure I quite agree with you on the individualism bit, as while its not individualism in the modern sense the concept of a job/daily life was quite different. Let alone most fantasy settings tend to err towards where some sort of professional adventuring would be a thing.
Hard agree. I will die on the hill that industrialisation has such an important place in fantasy.
You raise many valid point, but miss one big one. It is not the magic in the world that inhibits innovation, it is the disasters. On Faerun alone we have the Sunderings, the Spellplague, the Dracorage, the Dark Disaster, the Time of Troubles, the Tearfall, and Karsus's Folly. That is just off the top of my head. I am sure there is more.
I don't limit my multiverse to any adversarial DM or medieval restrictions? Who does?
I think a good addition to this discussion would be anime. A lot of anime series just get rid of the idea of trying to be historically accurate at all. In a lot of animes, and jrpgs you can find anything from medieval samurai to robots using machine guns, and it will all exist in the same world. For example, you could just look at old school dragon ball.
Medevil fantasy and Urban fantasy are both interesting in there own way, and the stories told in each tend to have their own focuses.
I think Medevil fantasy draws from the mystical, a time of when epic adventures and unknown lands. There's a sense of history in it as well, as though your looking into not only another world, but also at a seperate time. Also swords & bows are way more awesome looking than modern weaponry.
Meanwhile, to me, Urban fantasy is more about how fantastic elements might have shaped, changed, and/or meshed with modern society, is it hidden, or visable, has it existed since ancient times, or has something happened with the past x amount of years (usually within or just over about century), what's formed the same as our world vs what's different
Brandon Sanderson's cosmere is a perfect example of how to fix these problems. Almost every planet is at a different level of technological development and progress, with societal, economic, and political upheaval. You have first encounters with foreign civilizations, the advent of space travel, firearms, and industrialization, all in the same series. It's pretty spectacular.
Laziness isn't the only reason that magic might lead to technological stagnation. There's also the idea that a reality-bending, often unpredictable force at work in the world will dissuade people from following the scientific method. How can you make a science of weather or climate when all weather may be tangentially affected by weather-mages and rainmakers? And there's a hard-science version of this: in the _Three-Body Problem_ trilogy, the sophons making the output of particle accelerators pure noise, blocking technological progress.
I've been homebrewing in my world technology advances faster depending on how much innovations are made to give non-magically inclined people the ability to use magic via this innovations.
However, it has made it interesting that because of these innovations, they've become extremely reliant on the resources to make it, and the most valuable resource just became harder to acquire because my players opened a portal to hell in the region this resource is located.
Makes it interesting because now the technological advances that once gave the constant edge, is now slowly shifting to a point in which they risk becoming the least technological and powerful nation.
The stagnation of technological development problem was addressed in a setting by a friend of mine as being a deliberate action of the main villain, who is basically a god, and works in the shadows. It is from the shadows that he rules, and he does not wish for his subjects to reach their ultimate potential because he has already reached that potential and he does not wish to share the power with anyone. The best part is he hasn't even been introduced in the main campaign yet.
I have a few ideas for a setting were magical causes technology to accelerate. For example it makes it possible to make new materials for advanced machinery.
I do plan to start my main setting in an amalgamation of a medieval world, and through the use of magic, making it into something hopefully unique.
Most people don't want bronze age fantasy because the swords and armor aren't as cool. They didn't have proper fire places so the buildings were filled with smoke which is too primitive for most people to fantasize about. The copper age just isn't as easy to glamorize.
The reason we stop at the age of knights, is because going further brings in the possibility of advanced guns existing. That renders magic and swords nearly obsolete which is the main traits of fantasy stories.
Popular Fantasy definitely needs to explore other time periods. But, I'd say even more pressing, popular fantasy needs to explore other parts of the world outside of Europe or the "highly original" deviations from the Europeanesque cliche Egypt, China/Japan (they're pretty commonly conflated into a hodgepodge vague "Asianess".
Also...I feel like a high powered telepath/astral projector or long range flier would be far more effective for mapping the world than a teleporter.
11:33 Walter Leaf made a point of Mycenaean Greece being ruled by Achaean warlords that had come into the country (and actually centralised it - if you think of it, only a well centralised Achaea could have matched Hercules' prowess in stopping him from being king some other place than Tiryns) just a few generations earlier, like Pelops was not too many generations before Agamemnon, Perseus before Hercules and so on .... many of the earlier warlords are called "sons of Zeus" according to his conjecture in the sense of "self made man" ...
B u t ... while this was going on, a generation or two before the Trojan war and up to that war itself, the Hittite Empire was older than the Achaean family lines, and Egypt was older than the Hittites, so was Crete.
When it comes to family lines, if you consider it from a Christian perspective, Achaean Greece is partly overlapping in time with the long family line that CMI loves to depict, from Luke 3, in the crucial time period between Obed and King David. And King David has a few Aragorn vibes.
So, those aspects of "Medieval" in Tolkien are not necessarily Medieval. For Snorre, the Yngling family starts a bit before Christ is born, for Saxo, those people lived a bit closer to perhaps Alexander or Cyrus. It was a _long_ family line. Obviously, the most Medieval counterpart to Tolkien is like Poles and Hungarians facing the Mongols.
The non-Greek style may have something to do with the climate not being Mediterranean (apart from Ithilien) and peplos and himation being less adviceable ...
OMG! You did it! Thanks a lot! Wonderful Review!! Intriguing data to consider!!!. I really agree with everything you said!! Great definition of Medieval Fantasy as a link between the Ancient and Contemporary Ages! (Funny to think that this Past became its Future and the Present in a Future Past) Shocking the Cultural interpretation of Fantasy in each era and Above all I adore the satires Reinterpretations of this Genre!! XD!! Like Shrek, Nimoa, Fabule and Discworld!!
Indeed it is not Medieval it is Between, between Dream and Reality...
I would love to see a fantasy Prehistoric Ireland and Prehistoric Bronze Age Iberia too.*
I mostly just like the classic tunic, robes and hose look. Is it weird if my setting has advanced magical technology but the fashion is mostly inspired by Late Medieval/Early Renaissance garb. Maybe magic makes it easier to make red or purple dye so more lower-class people dress in those colors, but the nobles wear stuff like floating anti-gravity capes and gowns made of liquid gold.
For fantasy in a generic 'medieval' setting, I like a more renaissance era feel. As mentioned in the video, some of the 'medieval' stuff people are going for, work better in a later period. Also narrowing the scope down into that later period helps you focus concepts a bit more than the huge time period of the entire medieval period. Not to mention the Renaissance is a period with a lot of built in change going on. Though I do also enjoy dialing it back further instead and going for a more late Roman period as well, which also has natural change and conflict as you transition into the medieval period.
So, there's two things that come to mind from this.
The first is a recent Tumblr post of mine about "alternate world with the same tech level, they just used magic instead of science to get there."
The second is a Tumblr chain about how unrealistic Westeros really is, scientifically and historically.
So my current setting I've been building and playing in comes up with some pretty solid(imo anyway) explanations for the most common problems of a stagnant medieval fantasy world. Firstly, the gods of fate were directly to blame for the stagnation, in their view mortals would simply become too dangerous to the gods if allowed to continue developing technologically. This backfired and the mortals rebelled, and succeeded thanks to having a few divine backers. However, the tens of thousands of years in a prolonged early-middle iron age simply resulted in a resource shortage once the gods of fate stopped arranging for more iron to be found, and caused the collapse of mortal civilization and a re-emergence of the bronze age which is where we're actually playing. Nations are few and far between, the vast majority of 'civil' societies are Greek-style city-states, some of which being entirely tyrannical, others almost modeling Athenian democracy.
The time period that a Fantasy setting is based on/ set in can greatly affect the sort of stories that could (or should) be told.
If you want a typical "Adventurer goes out slaying monsters and dueling other heroes" story, you could go with the Bronze age, as Grungeon Master suggested, since the Bronze Age was when most of the world's Homeric epics were set. You could also set it in Late Antiquity or the Early Middle Ages, which was the other time of Homeric epics, and was the time period that Tolkien based most of Middle-Earth on.
If you want a story where the Adventurer goes on a Quest, and must either defeat a shadow archetype or pass a test of character in order to achieve his goal, set your story in the High Middle Ages. The Chivalric Romances made during this time are mainly about Knights going on Quests, and overcoming enemies that represent various sins and temptations.
If you want a story where great nation-states are clashing with each other for the right to exert hegemony, feuding Aristocratic families plot against each other in backrooms, and Philosophers and Prophets challenge the established mentalities of 'Might Makes Right' and 'we must worship the gods just because they are mightier than us', you could set your story in either Classical Antiquity or the Late Middle Ages (or a pastiche of both, as George R.R. Martin did).
If you want a story where the Adventurer goes out into an unsettled (or undersettled area) with the express purpose of settling it, or a story where the protagonist is involved in a clash between the 'Enlightened' (eg. secularism, rationalism, technological progress, social progress, and secret societies) and the 'Spiritual' (eg. religion, tradition, and the welfare of indigenous peoples), you can set your story in the Early Modern Age (1492-1900).
I think there are two particular things that can lead to long-term medievalism making sense. If you consider, industrialization and technological development will often take a couple hundred years, a generation or two, where magic can be developed by a handful of savants. Savants within one lifetime, you can have situations where individuals have immense amounts of power instigating various calamitous events. You also have to consider things like monsters, spell blights, and extra-planer entity.
I think it's believable that you could have a setting where there is a cyclical apocalypse, wherein technology tends to develop to bronze age fairly quickly , as there are the remnants of the destroyed civilizations all over the place, and then technology goes through the iron edge and by the time we get to the end of feudalism, some wizard destroys civilization as we know it, and the cycle begins again where people relearn everything they lost, and there's a few ancient into mortal beings that look at all of this like it was really dumb and stick to the good old times, like the elves that dipped out into the Faye wild before humanity broke the world... Again
THANK YOU. YES, THIS, THANK YOU.
As a nerd of both history and genre literature (and yes, TTRPG too), it has always (for decades) caused me real pain to hear the expression “medieval fantasy” thrown around as a synonym for fantasy. Sure, Tolkien is at the heart of a lot of our modern understanding of the genre, but most settings rather mix some Tolkien imagery (especially elves and dwarves) with a social and political world more based on Howard and Lewis, which in turn are not so much medieval, but explicitly inspired in antiquity and early modernity respectively.
Howard, in particular, is a personal sore point. People focus so much on the Tolkien influence on D&D (and through D&D, more modern fantastical imagery) that they ignore how much of D&D is pulled directly out of Conan books and comics. Marvel Conan comics were *huge* in the days D&D was developed, and the influence is very clear.
On the topic of stagnation, a lot of fantasy worldbuilding plays with the concept of cycles of civilization and collapse: “something keeps knocking technological development back down to a medieval-ish state once it develops past a point.”
Beyond being a great pretence to scatter interesting items around in your ttrpg campaign, I think there are some very interesting opportunities for theming.
Tales of Symphonia is an old jrpg with a very interesting take on this, where the something that keeps resetting civilization is a far more technologically advanced faction that wants to keep its opponents in an exploitable state. The game manages some very punchy philosophical themes around how state power can be manufactured through systemic violence against the innocent.
The power relations in the game’s setting are incredibly well developed and IMO relevant to a 19th, 20th or even 21st century social paradigm, but the game’s world is full of swords, magic, elemental spirits, and totally-not-catholicism.
I always worked under the assumption that if magic exists and it is decently widespread... it will accelerate the scientific progress compared to a magicless world (unless there is some specific pressure from explicit group to prevent it). Because a lot of stuff you can relly only on nature to discover is far more common to happen... How easy is to discover the nature of electricity when many spell are able to produce lightning ? For most of human history mankind had no way to refrigerate something, but in a magic setting there are tons of those ways and so tons of experiment (allowed by magic but not magical themselves) became suddenly avaliable ?
There's no way to watch your video and not remember The Legend of Korra. It portrays the exact thing you mentioned. They used earth and fire bending to develop a deeply modern and industrialized society. And it kinda makes a lot of sense
I see magic, if prevalent and powerful enough, as driving technological advancement based around it, like Avatar/Korra did.
Great video as usual. I'll just point out that firearms are medieval too. Siege canons appear in the 14th century. Small handheld canons not long after, and by the time of the War of the roses we have surprisingly riffle-looking arquebuses
I think in a world with magic, it would definitely change the sort of technological changes you would see. That could be an interesting video in its own right
Why medieval? Because swords, castles, and armor, that's why.
19:35 One of the basic ideas about "Medieval stasis" is the Industrial Revolution didn't happen (or didn't happen with good and successful guys).
Now, for me, the Industrial Revolution is not so much about producing better as about producing more, and _also_ not so much about producing more per unit of area, per acre, as about producing more per person employed in production.
In France, some have spoken about a "first industrial revolution" which involved producing salpeter or sulphuric acid for purposes like gunpowder or etching.
In fact, I know a fantasy that basically takes place in such a setting resembling 18th C - Lloyd Alexander _Misadventures of Sebastian_ (I think Westmarch is also set in a similar setting).
I have always said that firearms are the natural progression for anyone who doesn't have magic. Or even for mages who find using guns as less costly to using certain spells
Well, maybe some of us just don't like what gunpowder does to the world from a fantasy perspective. I feel like it makes killing and even mass killing too easy and too accessible. With magic, you can put a cap on things. You can say that the spell was only possible because of some conjunction or rare artifacts, but with gunpowder, all the modern problems with explosives and firearms rear their ugly head.
That aside, a lot of people engage in fantasy specifically because they want to immerse themselves in a fairytale world. First of all, the medieval times in Europe were not a monolith. There were non-Christian areas where the hierarchy wasn't as you mentioned. And it's often from these non-Christian roots that we get the fairytale parts of fantasy. We also love in a world that is in such great change and upheaval that it's possible humans might not even exist in 40 years; taking a break from that might entail journeying to somewhere more stable.
IMO People should combine what they like about various real-world and imagined settings. I am a big fan of the Bronze Age, but I also want to have plate armor for mechanical and flavorful reasons. Maybe some towns have traditions that allow the construction of things like plate, but it doesn't necessarily mean there is a strict hierarchy to the Pope.
Recommending a few fantasy book series:
The Temeraire se😅by Naomi Novik -Napoleonuc Wars with dragons bred by humans for various tasks
Shadow of the Fox trilogy by Julie Kagawa - Japanese inspired fantasy set in “Samurai times”. I’m sorry, I don’t know what to call the period.
The Lady Trent series by Marie Brennan -set on an alternate earth like world in a Victorian/Edwardian esque era, it follows a female naturalist studying dragons
"Samurai period" could be Edo period in Japan (1600-1868) or even go back to the 1100s.
I've had debates about this with a friend, an old-school GM. He prefers traditional D&D settings because it's familiar. Not a lot of work involved in setting it up. No explanation needed - it's just goofy dice rolling with friends. No geopolitics, logistics, in-depth factional warfare. "Magic is everywhere yet seems to have no bearing on the world around it unless it relates to a bad guy somewhere."
I don't have much knowledge of systems and settings outside of 5e so maybe this is discussed in-depth elsewhere, but we've had some interesting discussions on why being able to cast literally any spell would drastically change how the world works - especially if it's introduced suddenly. The world would go from 1400 to 1900 overnight. Everything would reform around the application of this apex power. Armies would ditch metal weaponry, training users of this spell instead. Kings would be overthrown and new hierarchies would be implemented to accommodate this.
Our world for reference: Incredible leap in travel, production, science (forging many new sciences) all improve quality of life for many, but it caused massive social upheaval, and wars became far larger and deadlier than anything prior. This fantasy world, if it survives this period of war and chaos, would exist either in some kind of "World of the Future"-level of sci-fi technological utopia, or it would look like Warhammer 40k. The world would be ruled by magic - or live in constant fear of it. Would wars be fought over trying to wipe out or subjugate the "lesser" or magic-incapable civilizations? Perhaps the Gods would live in fear of what they've created - would they intervene? Could they? Would they be killed in the process? So many directions this could go, I fear I'm not creative enough to do such a concept justice.
Also known as epic pooh. The heroes are wholesome and live in an idyllic rural setting close to nature. I enjoyed narnia and lord of the rings when i was 11 but then i discovered howard, moorcock and love craft with their morallly grey protagonists, horror influences and unexpected plot twists
Yes! A Magical Industrial Revolution is great!
To start, I completely agree that magic would not cause stagnation but a spike in innovation and technological advancement. Similarly, many staple concepts and tropes are more akin to the 18th century or are 20th/21st century anachronisms.
The framing of the Middle Ages is only really characteristic of the Early Middle Ages, and the presentation of the Bronze Age is way off. Large wilderness frontiers, other than the Eurasian steppe, have largely not existed in Eurasia since the Neolithic; places have otherwise been relatively consistently occupied-and as densely occupied as logistically possible-since. The Bronze Age had _more_ extensive beurocracy than most of the Middle Ages did, and massive wars of increasing scope were increasingly common in the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period; Hundred-Years War, War of the Roses, Fall of Constantinople, the Crusades, Reconquista, Protestant Reformation, Catholic-Protestant 30 Years War, later the Hapsburg-Ottoman wars.
The frontier that was the Americas was only so due to the massive depopulation events resulting from plague wiping out large swathes of indigenous peoples; it was not a wilderness frontier in less affected areas. That is not a one-to-one translation to a fantasy world but quite context-specific.
As for _why,_ our current age has its mythological roots in the Middle Ages and our present times are looking increasingly akin to the cusp of the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period in terms of institutions, socioeconomics, aesthetics, and values.
All this talk of frontiers and exploration and monsters outside of civilization just gets me thinking like, my dude you’ve heard of the sword coast right?
Medieval people went on adventures all the time though. Pilgramages were HUGE back then as were wandering travelers or even crusader peasants. Plus the medieval world also included societies with less strict hierarchies like the Vikings-who's whole MO was grabbing a boat and a group of bros and setting sail to go steal land, slaves, and loot. Even women could become Shieldmaidens.
I've been saying this! That's why I'm creating a world based on the new world between 1600-1900. Way more interesting time for adventure.
Guns appearing in late middle ages fantasy makes sense cause that's when guns were invented. But they weren't muskets (which is all anyone is seemingly familiar with) but a tube on a stick that you lit with some burning rope.
I agree with your points, however in my fantasy setting I have a solution of some sort to this question: religion oscurantism
in a society that with magic made lots of progress, reaching a level of pre-industialization a catastrohic event envolving dragons, (specifically, a comeback from extintion, trough magic) the religious autorithy in the main empire put a strict ban n the use of magic and deemed every "tecnological" advance an heresy, leaving room just to church approved magicians to operate.
So, my justification to be stucked in a semimedieval setting is religious oppression, wich is not the most original idea (thank you frank herbert), but I like it for the message I want to deliver
It’s my understanding that “the frontier” / “dark forest” concept itself comes from “The New World” (aka “The Americas”) which was not discovered until well after the “medieval era”). And “Ranging” is a mix of medieval game warden and Robert Rogers Rangers of the 7 Years War (better known to Americans as “The French and Indian War”). Am I wrong?
i'm not personally convinced that magic would lead to scientific stagnation, but if that's the conceit the setting is putting forward to get the story along, i'll accept it. the problem for me is, gunpowder > armor. it's a simple fact. if i want my knights in shining armor, then i have to leave my guns at home--unless i want to focus on those things, and sometimes i just don't.
I've been finding using ___anything___ Fantasy is way too vague as it is. It really doesn't help that Fantasy is a synonym for Imagination/Creativity, & that could be used to describe all of fiction.
A descriptive term should tell you what you can expect before jumping in, but Medieval Fantasy could range anywhere from, historically accurate setting with one dragon to JRPG where it cherry picks some elements of the era while the protagonist ends up kills multiple gods in space.
Talking about fantasy design is one of the most frustrating things, everyone has a completely different mindset. You can create so many work around just to explain why the world is staying Medieval, one of my stores is the Immortals that case stagnation who are actively hostile to change. Also change doesn't have to be on a world level, many fantasies active fail on character design, just becoming a parent can be a big enough change, or in another story of mine becoming a fully conscious undead forces the protagonist to drastically changes his existence.
I've been running some ideas for Fantasy settings, I already threw away the whole "We wouldn't develop guns or advanced technology" as that makes no sense, how hard would it be to modify an animation spell to be a ritual that animates a carriage, thus we no longer need beasts of burden for regular use, or maybe we use spells to manifest specific animals to move the carts instead.
Why do we not build guns, could you not have an artificer make a catapult spell built into a handheld crossbow-esque item. Why use those expensive chemical compounds when anyone with the blueprint for the Magi-launchers can make you something easier to use.
Heck, why would kingdoms who are allied not have the Communication spells on hand, sure you can't send a lot, but there are ways to communicate more information with careful planning. Why would priests not also be Clerics in many cases, or why would an Empire looking to expand not have a special program to collect those skilled into the army. There are so many things that you can consider for your setting.
GRRM does fantasy the best in my opinion. He uses magic in the world in a very unique and understated mysterious way