Some thoughts on medievalism in fantasy world building / play. Focuses on the trope of medieval feudalism and how to use the historical reality to make your fantasy royalty and little more interesting.
I’m with you! I certainly don’t want my fantasy games burdened by unwanted realism and I don’t begrudge people using the catch all “olden times” as a kind of buffer to provide enough distance from the current day to stage adventures that otherwise feel quite modern.
But I also think its fun to selectively incorporate aspects of medieval history. I’d recommend The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England by Ian Mortimer. It helped me hone in on why my adventures never really had the right “feudal” feeling. I bring it up because I feel like the book touches on most of points listed in this blog! Highlights I took away were young aggressive kings who had to stay on top of their game lest they lose their country, a juxtaposition between the beauty and filth of society, the church as an ever present symbol of power.
I feel like many common D&Dism such as the implementation of watered down polytheism, weak nobility in preference of a strong merchant class, and magic as a substitute for technology accessible by the common man make achieving a certain type of medieval vibe quite difficult with the default set of assumptions at play in classic D&D settings.