Something a little different today. I spend more gaming time playing RPGs (and board games) in my little gaming group than anything on the table top, and for obvious reasons I follow a number of RPG-themed blogs. I thought I'd give a shout out today for Monsters and Manuals, which is very well deserved on a normal day, but especially so today as there is a great example of the posts that make it such a worthwhile follow/regular read. Even if you don't play RPGs, Noisms discussion of the historical context of D&D is well worth a few moments of your attention.
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| In my experience, all these adventurers will die |
Anything close to a 'realistic' historical setting leaves little space for the kind of dungeoneering, monster ecologies, and distribution of high-level NPCs implied by D&D. Ideas such as nations, realistic social and economic structures, etc. all need to be mutated or abandoned in the face of the fantastic.
ReplyDeleteI think that's why I use a D&D-derived system that doesn't buy into those implications, to be honest. I like something that has the shapes and textures of real history; I'd like to mutate and create social structures but I know there's something I wouldn't think of that's ego-punchingly obvious.
DeleteIt's very tempting to get carried away world building, but of course that's not going to lead to a good gaming experience for all involved and is probably best left to novelists.
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