I might venture iron age/ early middle ages. Britain serves as an easy proxy for the anglosphere. Collapsing empire leaves the population decimated, invasions occur regularly, tales of beasts in the dark unknown from the forests of Caledonia or the tales of the Geats. Conflicting peoples of Roman, Brythonic, Picts, Welsh, Irish, Saxons, Angles, and Jutes. 3 major religions fighting for dominance. Tales of magical reindeer herders, the magnificence of Constantinople, or the fall of Rome. Martin and Tolkein took inspiration from this time. Gondor could EASILY be Constantinople.
Don't forget the "Wild West" occured smack in the middle of "Victorian England". So if you want to know what the center of your pockets of "civilization" looks like Victorian England is a good bet.
It also happened during the last few samurai periods of Japan so samurai are historicaly accurate in western settings. So are pirates, like the jack Sparrow ones, I think the French and the Spanish and the English were still doing the whole shoot each other over ship cargo thing...
A big reason for the overlap in themes is that many of the early Pulp Fantasy writers were also Western Writers. RE Howard is a great example of a writer of both who Gygax cited as an influence on D&D
Oh this is something I figured out a LONG time ago. It makes sense when you realize the writers are all American. We have no real cultural memory or understanding of the Middle Ages here. Our idea of "the old days" is the Western, so we kind of conflated the Middle Ages aesthetic with Western sensibilities, even to this day. So yes, you're SPOT on. And once I realized that, making DnD games work became so much easier.
How to add a frontier - Plane Shift: "if you know the sigil sequence of a teleportation circle on another plane of existence, this spell can take you to that circle." You can invade/terraform an alternate Prime Material Plane - once a scout has discovered it and built the beachhead.
That would be an amusing subversion story. Your party are the invading 'demonic' empire that is trying conquer the locals. For full tomato in mirror vibe have you play the invaders initial then switch over to the local?
Taking this opportunity to say that I appreciate the way you engage with dnd so so much. I don’t think anyone I know puts as much thought into this well loved system and I appreciate you so much!
One group I am running started with an empty map, on a newly (magically) born world. When they did find civilization, it was isolated villages. They only recently managed to get some villages to work together, and create commerce.
From an authorial context, it seems to make sense; most early D&D designers and writers probably grew up watching westerns much more than fantasy movies, just because that was the fashion in Hollywood in the mid-20th century. We know a fair bit about the fantasy novels they've told us inspired them, but that surely wasn't all they grew steeped in. There is possibly some interesting overlap here also with a lot of the post-apocalyptic genre, which has often got much more obvious western elements. But I believe it was an old Matt Colville video that points out that the typical D&D fantasy world is usually also a form of post-apocalypse, with long-lost civilizations' scattered ruins serving as an awfully large percent of dungeons for adventurers to explore. Those apocalypses are usually much further back in time (millenia, rather than decades), but that may also scale with the longer life expectancies of some fantasy species. I'm not absolutely sure right now how to tie this all together; I'm just noting this apparent overlap between fantasy, western and post-apoc genres. Finally, if fantasyland is analogous with the wild west, then the century that follows seems to bring some inevitabilities with it. Fantasy mismanagement can probably just as likely lead to extinctions (whether of bison or flumph), ghettoisations, maybe an equivalent of the Great Depression. And if the magical abuse of ecology goes completely out of hand and burns the world up, we're now arriving at the Dark Sun setting, and somehow yet again back at post-apocalypse.
You mistakenly think the middle ages had absolute monarchies with the king at the top. The age of Absolutism started around 1610, _after_ the middle ages. The division of power between the Church and the Crown significantly weakened in England with Henry VIII, but _that_ was 1534. 5e is generally pre-firearm, which puts it, depending on location, between about 1250 and 1350 _at the latest_ . When you add in mages, you end up with even _more_ sources of authority that hold each other in check. If anything, you would expect the middle ages to last _longer_ under that system. Even just because the churches wouldn't lose power as people lost faith in them; their power is demonstrable every time a cleric casts a spell.
@@KaiHung-wv3ul Not just gunpowder, but heavy artillery. The ability to breach fortifications without massive losses on the attackers significantly reduced the ability of a city or upstart noble to defy the king. If you are running a game with gunpowder, like some people do for age of sail games, then you have an opportunity for a power struggle. The monarchs, using their new found cannon, finally have the ability to bring the mage guild to heel, unless the mages decide to end the crown first. Add in the divine casters trying to keep the peace and you might have the scene for quite the pollitical campaign.
@@yellingintothewind Yeah, castles and heavy cavalry gave the nobility a massive advantage, both of which were negated(in various forms) by gunpowder. I do wonder how magic plays into this, and whether certain forms of magic could play a similar role potentially.
@@KaiHung-wv3ul Depends on how common it is and who can wield it. One other factor @Grungeon_Master did not consider is the likelyhood of ending up with a magocracy or theocracy in a world where you can reshape the very fabric of reality with your will. If the most common casters are wizards, they may be too busy studying new magic to want to rule. But a powerfull cleric could easily become a god-emperor. Or a charismatic sorcerer who rules through diplomacy backed up with his personal might. We have examples from history of kings who inspired great loyalty in part from their personal prowess in battle, give them access to fireball and that effect would be greatly magnified. In that case, the age of absolutism could easily arrive much _earlier_ than the invention of firearms, especially if the king can teach his personal soldiers to wield a fraction of his own power.
There's also the fun overlap between westerns and samurai movies... to the point that it wasn't uncommon for a western movie to straight up be a reskin of a samurai movie, and the reverse.
Thats partly becouse a lot of the tropes we asociate with westerns ( lone nameless hero, lawless towns in need of rescue, bloody violance and epic showdowns between master fighers) actually originated from or were heavely influanced by Yojimbo and other samurai movies. They entered popular culture through films like "The good, the bad and the ugly" and other spaggeti westerns, movies done by italians, who mashed the classic westerns with the tropes they loved from samurai movies
@@Marcel2278 Yes and no Yes they WERE called samurai, but by the 1800's most of them were not the same elite warriors we all know them from the movies. The Tokugawa Shogunate with its huge focuse on peace, harmony and stabiliry (no mater what) was not favourable place for creating resorcefull highly skilled warriors. The only ones that came close to what samurai were in the warring states period would more then likely end up as ronin
I think it could be fun to introduce a new aspect to teleportation/circles, where you enter them but have to travel through some other plane to reach the other side. The space in this inter-plane would mirror the material plane, but be shrunk in a sort of Minecraft Nether way (but far more exaggerated), and though time would seem to pass while on this interplane, the teleportation would seem instantaneous on the other side. This would allow you to have real train robberies from astral raiders like Githyanki in a teleportation circle-dominated world. It could also be that the chalk used in creating teleportation circles is rare or only found in trace amounts in certain minerals, and thus the need to go out and mine it in the wilderness leads to mining towns popping up and eventually to railroads connecting them.
@@pederw4900 I absolutely love this idea. The Dresden Files and Warhammer 40k have similar mechanisms for teleportation worth looking into. Maybe teleportation spells work the same, but there's an oil analogue resource that can open temporary gates to the transport realm, leading to some kind of fantasty oil land disputes and resource hoarding?? I'm absolutely putting together an interdimensional train heist adventure now. Incredible idea
You know, I read a book that had the villain’s armies getting an advantage for a while when he managed to invent a way to mass-produce what was essentially a wand of magic missiles to make one of those standard gear for his soldiers. Maybe something like that could serve as background to justify a D&D western giving having something gun-like.
D&D's rules are suffused with American ideals. Exceptionalism (PC vs. NPC) , Meritocracy (leveling), Entrepreneurship (The adventurer), Social mobility (rags to riches). Even its evolution mirrors American lore from an aristocratic strategy game to the rugged individualism of a RPG. All the settings are always a time of upheaval where the bones of the old world a picked clean and the future is undetermined by fate.
I feel like the loop you'd get is: Expedition (to find the way) Wagon train (to get supplies & mages there) Base defense (keeping the basecamp secure while Tele is set-up) BoomTown (when they start teleporting people in en masse)
Regarding firearms, the Eberron setting has a pretty neat concept, the wandslinger. Imagine wands in the vague shape os a gun, more variety besides magic missile, reduced prices due to mass production, humans picking magic initiate at first level to take other cantrips, and other things along those lines and you have a setting with wands in holsters and wand duels at noon.
I think D&D was always very western-influenced. The idea of small 4-8-person groups of armed adventurers in search of wealth always reflected the American heritage of fur trappers, gold prospectors, and even Jesse James-style banditry more than anything from the Crusades, the Viking era, or the joust. The AD&D Players' Handbook even explicitly compared D&D's gold-rich economy to the West: "Think of the situation as similar to Alaskan boom towns during the gold rush days, when eggs sold for one dollar each and mining tools sold for $20, $50 and $100 or more!" and the bar scene in the page on "The Adventure" is culled directly from the image of a western American saloon, not any medieval alehouse or tavern. The adventurers were always portrayed as faux Renaissance-faire types, but the backdrop and social dynamics were western.
I feel like the range of firearms is less important than relative range, accuracy and rate of fire. A Wand Of Magic Missile with the range jumped up to 300 feet is going to kill several low CR bowmen with perfect accuracy while they're still rolling with disadvantage at long range. For a showdown at high noon, it's all down to the Initiative roll.
bro, i love your videos concepts. ur basically building a very logic world here, if you want, u can build a setting and u already have like 50% of the conept ready hahaha
While D&D does fit the Western genre quite well, I think it's less the traditional 19th century American West and more... post-apocalyptic. The frontier settlements of Ten Towns in Icewind Dale are as Western-coded as you're likely to find in the Forgotten Realms, but there's the fallen ancient Netherese city of Ythryn hidden in a nearby glacier. There's a Tolkien-esque vibe to D&D worlds where you're less blazing a new trail then rediscovering the roads that were already there, and while Adventurers might be mercenary cowboys they're also expected to be Indiana Jones a lot of the time.
DND can start off in a western type era but after any amount of time it's pretty much impossible to end up in a fantasy cyberpunk type era with the amount of technologically advanced magic items like ersatz eyes and prosthetic limbs and spells like magic mouth and lesser restoration.
this is why I personally like to have 'magic' as being essentially a new thing, at least among humans, since it presupposes that there isn't any of the built up technological base that would enable a magitech based society. Specifically taking cues about how people like renaissance alchemists did what they did before modern chemistry, medicine, and metallurgy split off. Ditto with renaissance era occultists like Cornelius Agrippa, since occultism today was born at that time and the aesthetic of magic in DnD is largely indebted to that tradition.
I’ve always thought about D&D as a “Wild West” kind of analogy. What I have been interested in is how “magic” affects the development of “technology” and vice versa. Game systems like TORG sometimes implies that you either have one OR the other as if they compete for intellectual pursuance and only one can become dominant for lack of academic bandwidth.
I would take this one step further. D&D isn't a standard western, but a western in a post-apocalyptic (or perhaps a post-post-apocalyptic) land. In a standard western you never encounter someone with superior technology, except possibly someone with some new fangled gadget developed in the big city. On the other hand, a party in D&D must travel through the wilderness to find an entrance to a vast lost labyrinth where they battle countless foes and eldritch horrors in order to claim an artifact that is beyond the capability of "civilized" wizards to create. In essence, the wild west rests atop the ruins of a lost civilization.
What you deacribed just now is litteraly Conan and the Hyperborian age😅. Like word for word (minas the western part) that coveres most of the defening tropes of "sward and sorcery" and other pulp era fantasy story's, as well as to a lesser dergee elements of the L.P Lovecrafts mythos. All of these had a massive influance on the development of DnD, and yet so meny people still insist on Tolkein and the historical late middle ages as the one true deffinetive esthetic for basing a fantasy world on😅
Dnd trains are pretty interesting 'cause making a steam engine would just be equivalent to making an uncommon item (e.g. create and destroy water + heat metal + some metal tubes and a turbine) with maybe a bit of the fabricate spell to help speed up the building process, but yeah with teleportation circles being easier to make and operate i can see why trains aren't very common in dnd. Though i can definitely see magical steam engines being widely used still.
to be fair, you'd also need massive quantities of good enough grade metal and the ability to not only produce that but get it where it needs going, and also the means of actually putting it together it'd be quite an impressive feat to be able to make a train, helped along by magic (which could potentially replace some of the industrial processes) or not. In general, you'd still need an industrialised society and there isn't the social or economic frame work in place in most fantasy settings for trains to ever be possible
I was having that same conversation with myself about how the typical fantasy and Western genres share a lot of similarities. It's really interesting. I also watched a UA-cam video from a writer who said why fantasy writers need to study Westerns. Kinda enriches the argument.
@@webuser-webloser the whole dissertation was essentially a post-colonial/orientalist reading of Fantasy, centred on Orcs. I started with TLOTR, then went on to D&D, then assorted modern fantasy films. This video more or less corroborates much of what I wrote. The thesis was that Orcs represent a level of abstraction of the process of otherisation, which differs from context to context. the US/D&D context being a mirroring of dehumanizing tropes of Natives found in Westerns.
I think some kind of frontier works for DnD, but might not want to go too deeply into the western genre. Dark ages is closer to the flavor of DnD, or early iron ages. Those were times after the fall of civilization when the nobility were still adventurers carving out their portion of the world. Magic would be in the hands of the few who had avoided the fall in their secure isolated city states. This is the time when the barbarians in the fringes would rise up. The orcs and goblinoids are better like vandals, or the sea people . I see the hobgoblins like the Huns a newer competing empire against the fading Rome
On the topic of trains, Tenser's Floating Disk has some serious potential. It is a first level ritual spell and the disk itself has a very precise and defined size (3ft diameter, 1 inch thick disk), floats 3 feet above the ground, and can handle a slope of just under 10ft per 5ft of distance (a ridiculous 200% grade), and lasts for 1 hour with no concentration needed. The disk also has no defined speed, instead it always follows the caster at a set distance of 20ft and is immobile while within 20ft. The spell only ends early if the caster is more than 100ft away or there is more than 500lbs of weight put on the disk. Now here's where things get strange. Because of the way this spell is worded, if the caster is at a fixed spot relative to the disk anywhere from 21ft to 99ft away, the disk will try to close that distance at a theoretically infinite speed (not actually infinite but I'll get to that). So assuming someone made a 25ft long board with a seat on one end and a 3ft diameter, 1 inch thick, semi enclosed space on the other end, and the caster casts the disk to fill that space while sitting in the seat at the other end, what would happen? (side note here, this method would technically allow you to create a hoverbike, provided you figure out a way to steer yourself) There are two possibilities I can think of. The first possibility is that the disk instantly accelerates and tries to close the gap, producing more than 500lbs of force on itself in an instant as it tries to push the contraption and dispelling itself immediately upon casting. I don't think this is how the spell would behave because if it was then the spell would break every time it ran into an obstacle. The second possibility is that the disk can accelerate the contraption up until the disk reaches it's 500lb force limit, at which point it would travel at steady acceleration until dispelled or the caster is within 20ft. This second option then begs the question, how do we increase the rate at which the disk can accelerate the contraption? Using the 5e rules for Mounts and Vehicles if you instead build a cart or other object around the disk you can increase the carrying capacity, and thusly the force limit of the disk, by 5x (minus the weight of the contraption). This means that the disk, so long as nothing is placed directly on it, could have a 2,500lbs force limit when pushing a cart or similar contraption. Now we finally get back to trains, as they are much more efficient at converting the force into motion. Additionally because this is a ritual spell, you are not limited by the caster's spell slots. It takes 10 minutes per casting of the spell meaning that a single caster can have up to 6 disks at once without expending a spell slot. Making a train engine that would be able to fit all of these disks would be relatively simple, each one adding a further 500lbs force limit, meaning that a single caster, over the course of an hour, and through continual work, can effectively create an engine capable of pushing with up to ~3,000lbs of force. For modern trains on level track it takes 2-5lbs of force per ton to move a train, but we are assuming a much lower level of development so to be on the safe side I'll say it takes 10-25lbs of force per ton to move this train on level ground due to friction and other stuff. This means that a single ritual caster could move anywhere from 20-50 tons to up to 120-300 tons on level ground. I do not know how you would calculate the force per ton needed as the grade changes as the disk itself can handle anything under a 200% grade with no impact to it's performance. Generally speaking for actual trains you'd expect to need ~20lbs of force per ton for every 1% of grade but the disk might not care about that? I am going to assume that you will still need to account for the grade. As a result the amount a single caster could move would be anywhere from 11-16 tons to up to 66-96 tons on most tracks as they rarely have more than a 1% grade. And the only limiting factor to the speed of this train would be friction and air resistance. All of this is ignoring other magical items like portable holes and the like which could vastly increase the efficiency of the trains.
It doesn't really make sense to me. The disk tries to close the gap with the caster only, like if there was a rubber band between the two. It wouldn't make the contraption move. I'd probably rule that if there is no path available to close the gap, the disk would just stop or maybe gently push against the obstacle, but nothing that would have a noticeable effect.
@@qhsfb for reference, while not explicitly stated in the spell, mechanically each disk is an animated object with a STR score of 33 (500lb carry weight divide by 15 equals 33 STR) and if you used the pushing rules for 5e then you would actually double the value of my calculations. I chose not to use the pushing rules as the spell specifically says that it ends if it holds more than 500lbs but mechanically it is technically more accurate to double the value of my calculations. It is often stated that the hovercraft version of this idea could move at the speed of light, which is just not accurate for a multitude of reasons, hence why it is common to use the carrying capacity as the limit of the disk's acceleration. I have no idea how fast the entire contraption would be able to go, as that would be determined by how much weight the disk needs to push, but the disk itself can in fact travel at an infinite speed in order to follow you just by how the spell is worded. I would agree with you if we were talking about a static object but so long as the object can move out of the disk's way then these calculations would be correct.
Also the disk would not be able to impart enough force to damage a creature or object, or that would have been stated in the spell's description, meaning that while it could certainly pin a creature to a wall, it wouldn't be able to crush them. But so long as the obstruction moves out of the disk's way, the disc will impart as much force as the obstruction can handle without damaging the obstruction. This is assuming the disk can't simply float over the obstruction, as simply holding out your hand underneath the disk would be enough for the disk to float over your hand, and the rest of you, if you are in it's way.
You can't use real world physics to extrapolate from spell descriptions, because otherwise the system breaks down and the game becomes imbalanced. Spells do exactly what the rules text says, and *nothing more.* In this case, the Floating Disk can *hold up* up to 500 lbs of weight. It DOES NOT *apply* up to 500 lbs of force, because nowhere in the description it states that the Disk can shove, push, or displace objects or creatures. I hope this clears up your confusion!
@@tuomasronnberg5244 firstly, magic is inherently imbalanced and claiming otherwise is ignoring the reality of the game and it's rules. Using your description of how the spell works and ignoring real world physics, like you say is needed for a "balanced" game, if you have a cart with a weighted arm which is balanced so as to never apply more than 500lbs of weight on the disk and you have the disk carry that arm, by the wording of the spell the disk would move the arm which would in turn move the cart. The cart could have infinite weight and so long as the arm that the disk is carrying never puts more than 500lbs of weight on the disk, the entire contraption would move with the disk. Now most people would agree that that wouldn't work, but why doesn't it work? Because you are extrapolating from real world physics to decide that the disk can't pull that cart. Nowhere in the spell does it state that it can't do that, as far as the spell is concerned the only thing the disk is doing is carrying a 500lb arm. This is why the game has a DM, it is up to the DM to decide what is and is not possible within the game. Many DMs, myself included, have decided that the only fair way to make these kinds of rulings is to use real world physics. Many other DMs take your approach, but neither approach is inherently more "balanced" because the system itself is fundamentally imbalanced.
To be fair, Devils wouldn't be just hanging out around most regions. Methinks a Bulette or Otyugh might've been a better creature to list given how deadly that would be to most civilians (granted the latter would rather live someplace with more trash but still). This bastions of civilization with a vast untamed wilderness is sounding more and more like the Tippyverse lol (not sure if you saw the other comment I made about that, it's a campaign setting imagined under 3.5 rules with a description on the GiantITP forum, the biggest thing it has you don't is an eternal cold war).
Matt mercer had some really good gun rules for 5e (rules 5e printed without the backfire mechanic unfortunately). The guns did about as much damage as bows but had more range and an interesting reload and backfire mechanics. Many people ignore reloading bows and crossbows in 5e but technically it's a bonus action to reload an arrow with any weapon that has the loading property (crossbows) so they can't be spam shot but the way mercer made guns is they had a reload property. The mechanic works like this, the weapon has reload(x), (x) is the number of times you can shoot the gun before you need to spend an action or bonus action to reload. There was also the misfire mechanic, similar to reload all the guns had the misfire(x) property. (x) was the number you needed to roll over otherwise your gun jams and needs to be repaired. It was often a low number like misfire 2 or misfire 5, if you rolled that number or below on your d20 roll to attack then the gun misfired and jammed. Perfect wild west mechanics and keeps bows and magic relevant, also adventures in dnd are stupid resilient so a single bullet won't drop them dead instantly, despite what people say about the gun instakill meme.
4:10-5:30 This just comferms what I mentioned in the teleportation video. Late Medievel style kingdoms with there level of settled territory and political structure simply make no sence in a fantasy setting where dragons, giants, demons, and monsters of all shapes and sizes are a regular part of the world. For a DnD style world it makes far more sence to have smaller kingdoms, city states or specialized settlements who can still prosper thanks to benefits aforded by at least low level magic (with large kingdoms and empires being more of a rearaty) while most of the world is uncivilized, unsettled wilderness or under the rule of dragons, giants and other such monsters.
Guns in the wild west is obviously a requirement, but this is fantasy, and roughly around the industrial revolution in terms of technology, so the obvious fix I have in mind is to take the RWBY design philosophy of "It's also a gun!" There are bound to be people with impressive physical strength, poor aim, or some other reason to get up close in combat for an advantage in the fight. Maybe the reliance of ranged gun reliant combat has the consequence of many people not training for close quarters fighting, so when someone Misty Steps within 5 ft of you, too close to use a bayonet, axes, daggers, and rapiers are prime. Plus all the situations where stealth is your best approach
First of all - Hex Blades as HexSlingers. Ya get a Crooked Wand and a Shiny Badge (Pentagram) from a descended Law Elemental and a Bounty List. If you’re good at your job you get a shadow hound for tracking your targets and preventing them from getting away.
Was looking for support in a world I’ve already created. Thank you so much. I needed some ideas to help justify my world. It’s pretty spread and mirrors most of your sentiments. I love my old North America universe I’ve made
When it comes to guns, i think people would likely just use wands rods and staffs with a at-will spell of 1st level or lower. Hell, melle weapons with firebolt or eldritch blast enchanted on it would be great. Or of course, you could just use the futuristic firearms in the dmg and reflavor them to being magical instead of technological and that they require attunement or something.
I've always felt more at home in 'Kingmaker' campaigns for these reasons. Going out into some wild, untamed, unexplored terrain... not many campaigns grasp that well.
I've always loved the idea of magical tech duplicating some of our own, like the trains. Not steampunk, exactly, tho it might have some of that aesthetic anyway. There was a series of portal fantasy books I read long ago, where an engineer from our world made gunpowder and guns there, and kept the tech top secret, so the local mages had to come up with a magical version, which ran on water. (Guardians of the Flame, Joel Rosenberg) And the heroes also started revolutions, freed slaves, had a loyal dragon companion, all sorts of fun stuff, as you do.
Fantastic video here, I couldn't agree more! I have really embraced the western style in my current campaign by actually instigating a chaos curse in the area which has disrupted all long distance communication and travel (spells like sending and teleport etc. A company known as the couriers union Has set up a massive wagon train guarded by talented Warriors and majors and they are the only people tough enough to travel the roads. We started out needing to travel with them but as we leveled up and became stronger we were able to brave the wilds Between each city ourselves. That became a source of Significant Income for us once people learned that we Could Transport people, messages and commodities from point to point safely.
Honestly because of how I developed my setting the frontiers are genuinely unsettled by any sapient people, not to erase the people's that existed in real life, but because my frontier is held by extremely dangerous monsters. It wasn't until this current age that anyone had the power to fight for these far flung frontiers. It was just a couple hundred years ago that an adventuring party dealt with the biggest threat to their already existing homes. People who share traits with indigenous peoples from our world have already been interacting with other civilizations. The frontier is genuinely a land beyond where people could survive.
I live in the western united states. I have used an "alternate universe earth" as my campign setting dor my sons. Names are already there, maps are pre made, history can be stolen directly. And on the plus side, my kids have learned aome local history and geography by playing dnd. "Dad is this the waterfall that we caught that bandit smuggler at in the game?"
Two days ago I was just about positing with a friend of mine that the Curse of Stradh would be far more intriguing if played in a Far West setting rather than the snotty Gothic setting it's always been portrayed as, with wonders such as "Stradh's moving train castle" (running on a looping branched set of tracks spanning around the realm), or characters such as "the good, the bad, and the gunslinger gargoyle". This video comes at the PERFECT moment to reinforce my statement!
Great arguments as always, Tom! I agree a bunch with them I guess there is a lot of very interesting discussion to be had regarding magical vs industrial implementation of either some kind of mass producing world and how does that relate to guns as useful and common or not...
Personally, I'm a big fan of combining fantasy tropes with Western tropes, including the technology of the time, like guns and trains. My homebrew setting does this.
You might enjoy recent Keith Baker discussions on his new Eberron book which is explicitly Western-themed frontier style adventure. The Frontiers of Eberron.
Cossacs settelment of Sibiria seems to me much more fitting. It took something like 250 years. Was gradual and with medieval levels of technology. You just swap hot wasteland for cold tundras. And whenever they find a place somewhat more habitable and important a city sprung out around it. Divided by hundreds of miles of wildlands. Picture perfect.
Think of it more like a sci-fantasy space opera. There are things like warp/teleportation. Secure travel lanes that are heavily patrolled by the military for pilgrams and commerce. But there are also the fringes, remote communities, and less safe routes. You could even set it up where most of the well established communities or even kingdoms exist in pocet dimensions. But those plebians not well connected or trusted enough to use magic to securely jump from one pocket dimension to the other must enter the hyper leathal overworld searching for some way to access their desired pocket dimension.
Edit: You have covered the following before, but that honestly only makes it stranger not to mention the fact and point to that video. Lots of great arguments how D&D-style magic is naturally suited for a western-style world of wild frontiers. What's honestly missing, though, is how standard D&D-style fantasy worlds are indeed a lot more like that in feel than any other period of wild frontiers, let alone the mostly frontier-less high middle ages that people mistakenly think they're playing, namely a whole bunch of societal structures, and most centrally to the average D&D adventure, taverns which resemble their historical namesakes only in the loosest sense, yet only lack a piano to fully match the archetypal saloon.
I'm GM a game of Pathinder. While the Standard Pathinder Setting has a relatively densely inhabited world, I've set my game in its past, in a period when there a lot of lands where the human civilization hasn't yet reached. And I've also noticed that I can use westerns as an inspiration for this setting, with another inspiration being the spread of the Roman Empire. Neither USA or Roman Empire expanded into vacuum, there were people living on the lands, and I've included that into my setting, with the presence of native peoples (not all of which are human), and fallen civilizations in the lands that the colonists consider 'barbaric'.
I’ve long argued that the tropes and assumptions of D&D are essentially “Western with a Medieval Aesthetic” - good to find someone else who has come to a similar conclusion!
I have been doing this for YEARS. The prime example of this is the Ranger. There are two main situations where you see rangers. High fantasy and the wild west. If you want to still have older styles then go to Eastern Europe and you have another plains biome where people are more closely tied to those old european traditions. The era of pike and shot is right there!
I was in a campaign of Savage Worlds set in Deadlands. It's an alternative mid-19th c. I really liked how much range mattered, even tho i am not a gun enthusiast. There was some stat about being afraid which was interesting. It was very creepy.
The creator of the Eberron campaign setting, Keith Baker, had a long-running Q'barra campaign he ran that was explicitly designed as a Western. He'd probably enjoy discussing it with you if you approached him about it. :)
Personally, I feel the Italian wars period to be quite analogous to D&D. Each city is basically another country. Mercenary groups (adventurers) travel between the cities seeking the best patrons and renown. Shifting factions offer allegiance and enmity including religions, which are very important in this time, and wealthy merchant guilds and bankers in addition to city leaders. People idolise and learn from the ancient past. New inventions shape combat and exploration, such as huge ships that are similar in use to the teleportation circles and airships of D&D used with permission of those with the wealth or position to own them. And expeditions are sent out into mythologised but unexplored (by them) continents. Though the wilds aren't directly on the doorstep they are closer than ever as the whole world is beginning to open up. And at home stories of the dead, including skeletal figures stalking amongst us, fester everywhere with the black death in such recent memory.
weve basically been playing fantasy weird west in space with a homebrewed spelljammer campaign for the better part of a year now. ive let them progress in tech level from flintlocks and crossbows to full on revolvers, i make em reload but for ease of keeping track ammo is unlimited other than whats in the gun
I got one for you... There's a genre that D&D is accidentally almost perfect for in a way that actually causes mechanics like levels to actually make sense rather than need to be handwaved constantly... Xianxia. Sometimes called "cultivator fantasy" in english, is a chinese fantasy genre grounded heavily in chinese folklore, legends and their own literary tradition of things like Journey to the West. It's the mid to high fantasy branch off of Wuxia. These stories feature a lot of similar elements - exploration, fighting monsters, opposing evil-doers, delving into ruins to find ancient artifacts, taking a side in a political/military struggles. Very action-adventure, with (though there are exceptions) a general sense that combat is going to be a major element of the story, but basically every sort of activity you'd expect to see in standard D&D type adventures makes perfect sense in Xianxia. Including a lot of things that don't really make a lot of sense in the actual D&D settings because of the huge disconnect between the game mechanics and the fiction... One of the central conceits is that individuals who practice cultivation steadily improve in martial/spirtual/etc capabilities on a path that begins as a normal person and ends, in theory at least, as a godlike immortal. And potentially an actual god. There's ranked stages of development, and folks farther along can - barring surprises or misfortune - can be assumed to be stronger than those who're less developed.... In other words it maps fairly well to a game system that features a level system where a handfull of moderately experienced adventurers can have a reasonable chance of winning a fight against as mall town in a pinch, and the most experienced ones could throw down with an army of normal people. In some stories cultivators have normal needs for food, drink or sleep, others have much lower needs. This works pretty well for explaining both "we're tracking meals/etc" and "we're ignoring them" styles. There's variants that develop themselves in almost purely mystical ways, almost purely martial ways, and mixed, with most folks devoting themselves to a very specific path of development that has everyone on that path develop similarly, so classes make a bit more sense as mechanic. It's not a perfect fit of course, but a /lot/ of D&D stuff that's kind of weird in most of its own settings actually work great in a xianxia story. And xianxia fiction makes for some great inspiration for D&D even if you're not basing your setting on it, simply because the fiction actually assumes a lot of things that line up with D&D expectations.
I prefer to think of it as a magical post apocalyptic world. That is why ruins exist with ancient magic (technology,) that is why there are vast areas with unexplainable climates (weather control magic) and so on.
I thought the Wand of Magic Missile would make for a good revolver substitute. It gives you up to 7 shots per day (with a chance of the wand disintegrating after the last use) and doesn't require attunement. Also, there's the brooch of shielding, which nullifies MM damage; a must-have for every noble/merchant/high value target out on the town.
I've looked through Dragon of Icespire Peak and Phandelver feels very "western frontier mining town" And the way my DM has been running Icewind Dale gives it similar vibes I've been a fan of D&D as a western for a while
On the topic of dnd Economy and magic taking Gold and Gems as a form of exchange. I had the thought that Dragons used to have to kill things and literally bathe in the blood and gore to accumulate the “Experience” to grow and progress. They are too magic for eating to really work on any useful timescale. So the Dragons got together and made a ritual that the “experience” they needed would manifest as something cleaner, more hygienic, more comfortable, less likely to stain their other possessions, and pretty - gold and gems. This caused massive problems as soon as everyone else realized that killing something produced money and others realized that killing something like a cow only produced money. Basically the Gods all had to get involved and patch things back together. So no the dead turning into money only happens when Dragons kill stuff. And the Screw with the Dragons, the Gods set it so that magic burns gold and gemstones at fixed economic prices. Meaning eventually, every society is going to start looking for the Dragon Hoard as it is the easiest and most accessible fuel source
Could you discuss how and why you think various forgotten realms countries should in theory evolve technologically and culturally? You could make a fantastic (and likely to go mega viral) videos on various countries. A separate note: how long do you think this frontier period would last? Indefinitely due to the likely endless process of fighting monsters?
It always amuses me when you do these videos because like, you’re describing Eberron. The logical conclusion of DnD worlds is literally Eberron or Dark Sun.
I've actually found that a lot of the old Deadlands: The Weird West TTRPG adventures work exceptionally well for D&D with a few tweaks to make it not America. I do use firearms in my campaigns but again I tweak them so they have magical effects instead of bullets for the most part (like a warlock requires a firearm as a focus to use eldritch blast, etc.)
I believe it's either Gary Gygax or Dave Arneson that said that early on their gametesting of D&D and Blackmoor, they realized they were basically playing spaghetti western. It's a very relevant parallel to draw, and I found myself playing the greatest campaigns when stealing from the western genre for my games
Most fantasy worlds are a grab bag of cultural touchstones and time periods, informed by books, TV and films. You have ostensibly an early medieval culture with late medieval /early reneissance technology. You have medieval cities with what seem like victorian shops and policemen (most city watches seem to be more modelled on them than actual medieval bailiffs, sheriffs or reeves) . A fallen empire leaving balkanised successor states and large areas of wilderness. The wilderness areas being treated like the wild West, with hostile tribes, expansionism and colonisation. It's similar to how the era when a film is made informs it no matter what time period it's presenting. Western movies - Unforgiven is far different to Red River.
Why is it every time a certain group people approach take inspiration from this period in US history that the native/original populations are always swapped out for "not humans" who are in the way of the very human settlers?
That is a very fair criticism, to be honest. I should have mentioned other ways to do this with humans on both sides, or flipping the script entirely. However I would suggest that elves (who are my first example) are often presented as 'humans but better', and that most of our non-human humanoids are just different facets of the human experience made living metaphor. But still, very fair point.
i think specifically in DND settings, humans are oftentimes stand in for "western europeans" in the same way dwarves are often scottish or norse, fox people as eastern asian(mostly japanese, korean or chinese tbf), lizardfolk as mesoamericans, etc this isn't a good thing, mind, and i think it's great to ask ourselves why we take this for granted, but i think it comes from the most popular of these fantasy stories being written by western white people and the humans being projections of what they saw as "default" it's gotten so ingrained into our culture that if we don't actively try to fight it, we end up with very similar settings everytime
@ferrisffalcis I am so with you on this. Some things are problematic with this setting, but I like Hyperborea for that very thing. Player characters are humans and it comes w all of the baggage.
Because re-enacting our generational trauma (and/or inherited sin) allows us a safe space to explore those emotions, and potentially change the situation, in the fiction, overcoming perceived difference that feel very real but are meaningless compared to peace? Because revisting such unpleasantness in fiction allows us to form moral opinions we might not have thought out, and develope radical empathy for beings that are imaginary and vastly more different from us than anyone we might meet in the real world, potentially making us better people? Because some of us are racist, or some other kind of violent absolutist ideology, and having a fiction with an absolute evil in flesh to harm with impunity gives them permission to be that person in a place where they can't hurt anyone- SHOWING US what they are, in the real world, and affording us the opportunity to leave them behind? Probably a little of all that. We do it the other way, too. "Alien invaders." Maybe we need more of that, so it doesn't seem so egregious when pale western game designers recreate the racism of colonial America for their artistic purposes. Maybe we need to change our society in some way, to actually resolve that generational trauma and/or inherited sin.
I fixed the gun issue! Kind of. There is a reason guns don’t exist. They are magically enhanced railguns. They use a complex mix of magical alchemy and runes to propel projectiles. And because of the value of materials and the complex enchantments they break super easily. So guns are being developed in pockets. Though they are quite suppressed
Good ideas, I'm with you...I'm currently working on a campaign that is going to be a bit turn of the 20th century robber barons sort of thing set in a world that 2000 years ago was home to two giant empires(a world where my players are currently playing in and basically have become gods), but now society is rebuilt and just getting back to the magitek that they had lost so long ago, cities are now city-states, empires no longer exist, some city states lean heavily into the magic and techo, others a more natural approach, starting my players in a no-mans land sort of like the history of the Oklahoma panhandle, so a town with no baron or lord, lots of crime. Going for a steampunk meets western, meets fantasy, meets cyberpunk, depending on where the party is.
Absolute Monarchy didnt make any sense in the real world, where a king was never the best strategist, economist, or warrior in a civilization- The position being hereditary kinda kills that possiblity, due to the Law of Averages in genetics. (Plus, the inbreeding didnt help) Sentient creatures sometimes structure their society in ways that aren't at all efficent. We invented the steam engine before the fall of rome, but didnt bother to put it to use until the victorian era and western colonization of America. Why? We were busy doing other stuff. We believed in things and pursued things, that in hindsight we can say weren't rational. We were in medeival stasis, with all the tools to escape it, for 1000 years. A dungeons and dragons, or other fantasy world, could totally do the same. That said, victorian era, western colonization era, age of piracy, end of the age of the samurai- these are all the same general time, and they're some of my favourite fantasy settings. Its possible that we find those times more relatable than we do Feudal Europe. Its easier to immerse ourselves in, so it feels "better."
I mean to be fair, and you're likely to mention this is just a moment in the video, but the industrial revolution and the 'wild west' aren't opposed, and in fact go hand in hand. Western colonisation in the US wouldn't have happened, or at least not nearly as quickly, without trains for example The other thing about medieval fantasy, is that I think a lot of people's definition of "medieval" can also be expanded to fit the renaissance and it's there that I see the more traditional fantasy DnD as fitting in quite well, bonus points because the discovery of the Americas was happening around that time, so you can have your cake and eat it too. Don't necessarily need the Wild West, when you can scootch back a century or two and stick that frontier on the east coast instead In particular I think the history of the occult can be quite interesting to take inspiration from for the developments in magical technology in a DnD setting. This is the time when modern occultism as we know it today was being born. The aesthetic of magic in DnD ultimately stems from people of this time like Cornelius Agrippa, so why not use material from that and learn how magic actually worked in real life to apply it to our fantasy worlds?
IMO the concept of the West started well before you think. It extends back into the 1700s at least. Earliest cowboys were in the western parts of the Early States of the Americas & the conflict involving Native Americans was continuous almost from early on, along with the idea of a foreboding wilderness.
Absolutely. I do state the terms of the specific period I'm interested in here; it's largely because of the available technology that I limit myself to the late 19th century, as telegraphs and trains have such easy analogues in D&D, and the development of late-industrial urban centres is also critical to the argument.
Dnd is way more advanced than 19th century with technology like ersatz eyes, prosthetic limbs, perfectly functional android/cyborg type beings like war forged/golems, spells like magic mouth that can recreate modern telecommunications, spells like lesser restoration that cure ALL disease which is far superior to even modern medicine, etc etc. If most or all those things exist in any dnd setting i cant see how it wouldn't end even more futuristic than even the modern day almost like a fantasy cyberpunk. And not only that but if people are smart enough to figure out all of that there's not really much reason why they couldn't also learn modern science at the same time when society is already far more advanced and stable than it ever was in real life. Which would make it even more likely any dnd world quickly cyberpunk type world except with magic explaining the cyberpunk type elements except for futuristic advanced science.
Have you considered using arcane pollution in your game In the capital of a city state is a spell tower The air is cleaner, the water purer and illness is unknown Common spells like light and good berry can be cast at low spell slot ranks Sometimes by people with no spell casting ability Some spell towers favor civilizations others favors wilds The further you travel from the spell towers the weaker the blessings become Till is no longer possible to cast good berry But with every blessing there is a price Miasma Miasma manifests as magical monsters, self creating dungeons and contagious madness Its strongest at the edge of a city state and grows even stronger in the buffer zone between two states Two spell towers cannot exist in the same territory Political parties attempt to destroy neighboring spell towers so the can expand the influence of their own spell tower and their own wealth So the factions are pro-civilization vs pro-wild Benevolence versus corruption As the moral faction lines
That’s exactly what I did with the elves and the native population it’s they’ve got their own cities our own culture they even hold half of Congress at least in the united nations of America is what I change the USA to
D&D is the inevitable outcome of kitchen sink fantasy: you get inspirations from across thousands of years of history. And honestly, that's fine. There is space travel in D&D, why not cowboys?
18:20 couldn't you just develop the bows and other range items to compete with guns, since it most range weapons could work off your superhuman abilities and enchanting them would be easier to and the upkeep of them as well and also the AMMO as well., and also magical items as well.
If thats the case then the natives must be kicking everyone's ass cuz druids are stupid op. Literally no class could even remotely stand up to them except maybe wizards and even then druids are arguably which more world defining and consequential with spells like plant growth, goodberry, and awaken (especially awaken).
It's either Western or in the Bronze Age, with its pockets of culture linked to one another by trade routes, beyond which is the untamed wild.
Cyberpunk-esque dystopia works pretty well too.
I might venture iron age/ early middle ages. Britain serves as an easy proxy for the anglosphere.
Collapsing empire leaves the population decimated, invasions occur regularly, tales of beasts in the dark unknown from the forests of Caledonia or the tales of the Geats.
Conflicting peoples of Roman, Brythonic, Picts, Welsh, Irish, Saxons, Angles, and Jutes. 3 major religions fighting for dominance. Tales of magical reindeer herders, the magnificence of Constantinople, or the fall of Rome.
Martin and Tolkein took inspiration from this time. Gondor could EASILY be Constantinople.
Or some wierd postapocalypse
Counterpoint: It's both at once, dependent on the specific location of the world. Which makes for fun culture clashes.
@@occupationallystrong1606 It's essentially an early medieval setting with late medieval technology.
Strangers roll into town, hang out at the bar, and then solve the towns problems before moving on to the next, yep checks out
Don't forget the "Wild West" occured smack in the middle of "Victorian England". So if you want to know what the center of your pockets of "civilization" looks like Victorian England is a good bet.
It also happened during the last few samurai periods of Japan so samurai are historicaly accurate in western settings.
So are pirates, like the jack Sparrow ones, I think the French and the Spanish and the English were still doing the whole shoot each other over ship cargo thing...
@@Marcel2278the “golden age of piracy” was about a century earlier
The Eberron setting sets up an alarming amount of this as the baseline of the world. Even trains! (of a sort)
I was going to say exactly this.
A big reason for the overlap in themes is that many of the early Pulp Fantasy writers were also Western Writers. RE Howard is a great example of a writer of both who Gygax cited as an influence on D&D
Oh this is something I figured out a LONG time ago.
It makes sense when you realize the writers are all American. We have no real cultural memory or understanding of the Middle Ages here. Our idea of "the old days" is the Western, so we kind of conflated the Middle Ages aesthetic with Western sensibilities, even to this day.
So yes, you're SPOT on. And once I realized that, making DnD games work became so much easier.
I’ve always liked the idea of a dimensional rift effecting a world and creating a massive new continent
How to add a frontier - Plane Shift: "if you know the sigil sequence of a teleportation circle on another plane of existence, this spell can take you to that circle." You can invade/terraform an alternate Prime Material Plane - once a scout has discovered it and built the beachhead.
That's an awesome addition to the video. Thanks!
That would be an amusing subversion story. Your party are the invading 'demonic' empire that is trying conquer the locals. For full tomato in mirror vibe have you play the invaders initial then switch over to the local?
Taking this opportunity to say that I appreciate the way you engage with dnd so so much. I don’t think anyone I know puts as much thought into this well loved system and I appreciate you so much!
One group I am running started with an empty map, on a newly (magically) born world. When they did find civilization, it was isolated villages. They only recently managed to get some villages to work together, and create commerce.
From an authorial context, it seems to make sense; most early D&D designers and writers probably grew up watching westerns much more than fantasy movies, just because that was the fashion in Hollywood in the mid-20th century. We know a fair bit about the fantasy novels they've told us inspired them, but that surely wasn't all they grew steeped in.
There is possibly some interesting overlap here also with a lot of the post-apocalyptic genre, which has often got much more obvious western elements. But I believe it was an old Matt Colville video that points out that the typical D&D fantasy world is usually also a form of post-apocalypse, with long-lost civilizations' scattered ruins serving as an awfully large percent of dungeons for adventurers to explore. Those apocalypses are usually much further back in time (millenia, rather than decades), but that may also scale with the longer life expectancies of some fantasy species. I'm not absolutely sure right now how to tie this all together; I'm just noting this apparent overlap between fantasy, western and post-apoc genres.
Finally, if fantasyland is analogous with the wild west, then the century that follows seems to bring some inevitabilities with it. Fantasy mismanagement can probably just as likely lead to extinctions (whether of bison or flumph), ghettoisations, maybe an equivalent of the Great Depression. And if the magical abuse of ecology goes completely out of hand and burns the world up, we're now arriving at the Dark Sun setting, and somehow yet again back at post-apocalypse.
Á Western D&D would be funny AF as long not written by WotC.
Hyper specialized settlements with farmland surrounding it and wilderness beyond that, perfect setting for a wuxia
You mistakenly think the middle ages had absolute monarchies with the king at the top. The age of Absolutism started around 1610, _after_ the middle ages. The division of power between the Church and the Crown significantly weakened in England with Henry VIII, but _that_ was 1534.
5e is generally pre-firearm, which puts it, depending on location, between about 1250 and 1350 _at the latest_ . When you add in mages, you end up with even _more_ sources of authority that hold each other in check. If anything, you would expect the middle ages to last _longer_ under that system. Even just because the churches wouldn't lose power as people lost faith in them; their power is demonstrable every time a cleric casts a spell.
Makes sense, the invention of gunpower was a major cause of the Age of Absolutism, which often isnt present in many fantasy settings.
@@KaiHung-wv3ul Not just gunpowder, but heavy artillery. The ability to breach fortifications without massive losses on the attackers significantly reduced the ability of a city or upstart noble to defy the king.
If you are running a game with gunpowder, like some people do for age of sail games, then you have an opportunity for a power struggle. The monarchs, using their new found cannon, finally have the ability to bring the mage guild to heel, unless the mages decide to end the crown first. Add in the divine casters trying to keep the peace and you might have the scene for quite the pollitical campaign.
@@yellingintothewind Yeah, castles and heavy cavalry gave the nobility a massive advantage, both of which were negated(in various forms) by gunpowder. I do wonder how magic plays into this, and whether certain forms of magic could play a similar role potentially.
@@KaiHung-wv3ul Depends on how common it is and who can wield it. One other factor @Grungeon_Master did not consider is the likelyhood of ending up with a magocracy or theocracy in a world where you can reshape the very fabric of reality with your will. If the most common casters are wizards, they may be too busy studying new magic to want to rule. But a powerfull cleric could easily become a god-emperor. Or a charismatic sorcerer who rules through diplomacy backed up with his personal might. We have examples from history of kings who inspired great loyalty in part from their personal prowess in battle, give them access to fireball and that effect would be greatly magnified.
In that case, the age of absolutism could easily arrive much _earlier_ than the invention of firearms, especially if the king can teach his personal soldiers to wield a fraction of his own power.
There's also the fun overlap between westerns and samurai movies... to the point that it wasn't uncommon for a western movie to straight up be a reskin of a samurai movie, and the reverse.
And there's also star wars which is heavily influenced by both
Thats partly becouse a lot of the tropes we asociate with westerns ( lone nameless hero, lawless towns in need of rescue, bloody violance and epic showdowns between master fighers) actually originated from or were heavely influanced by Yojimbo and other samurai movies.
They entered popular culture through films like "The good, the bad and the ugly" and other spaggeti westerns, movies done by italians, who mashed the classic westerns with the tropes they loved from samurai movies
What's even funnier is that samurai existed in the time periods of the cowboys, you can 100% have a samurai in your cowboy campaign (and vise versa)
@@Marcel2278 Yes and no
Yes they WERE called samurai, but by the 1800's most of them were not the same elite warriors we all know them from the movies.
The Tokugawa Shogunate with its huge focuse on peace, harmony and stabiliry (no mater what) was not favourable place for creating resorcefull highly skilled warriors.
The only ones that came close to what samurai were in the warring states period would more then likely end up as ronin
I think it could be fun to introduce a new aspect to teleportation/circles, where you enter them but have to travel through some other plane to reach the other side. The space in this inter-plane would mirror the material plane, but be shrunk in a sort of Minecraft Nether way (but far more exaggerated), and though time would seem to pass while on this interplane, the teleportation would seem instantaneous on the other side. This would allow you to have real train robberies from astral raiders like Githyanki in a teleportation circle-dominated world.
It could also be that the chalk used in creating teleportation circles is rare or only found in trace amounts in certain minerals, and thus the need to go out and mine it in the wilderness leads to mining towns popping up and eventually to railroads connecting them.
@@pederw4900 I absolutely love this idea. The Dresden Files and Warhammer 40k have similar mechanisms for teleportation worth looking into.
Maybe teleportation spells work the same, but there's an oil analogue resource that can open temporary gates to the transport realm, leading to some kind of fantasty oil land disputes and resource hoarding??
I'm absolutely putting together an interdimensional train heist adventure now. Incredible idea
You know, I read a book that had the villain’s armies getting an advantage for a while when he managed to invent a way to mass-produce what was essentially a wand of magic missiles to make one of those standard gear for his soldiers. Maybe something like that could serve as background to justify a D&D western giving having something gun-like.
Wand slingers is a great idea actually
D&D's rules are suffused with American ideals. Exceptionalism (PC vs. NPC) , Meritocracy (leveling), Entrepreneurship (The adventurer), Social mobility (rags to riches). Even its evolution mirrors American lore from an aristocratic strategy game to the rugged individualism of a RPG. All the settings are always a time of upheaval where the bones of the old world a picked clean and the future is undetermined by fate.
I feel like the loop you'd get is:
Expedition (to find the way)
Wagon train (to get supplies & mages there)
Base defense (keeping the basecamp secure while Tele is set-up)
BoomTown (when they start teleporting people in en masse)
Regarding firearms, the Eberron setting has a pretty neat concept, the wandslinger. Imagine wands in the vague shape os a gun, more variety besides magic missile, reduced prices due to mass production, humans picking magic initiate at first level to take other cantrips, and other things along those lines and you have a setting with wands in holsters and wand duels at noon.
I think D&D was always very western-influenced. The idea of small 4-8-person groups of armed adventurers in search of wealth always reflected the American heritage of fur trappers, gold prospectors, and even Jesse James-style banditry more than anything from the Crusades, the Viking era, or the joust. The AD&D Players' Handbook even explicitly compared D&D's gold-rich economy to the West: "Think of the situation as similar to Alaskan boom towns during the gold rush days, when eggs sold for one dollar each and mining tools sold for $20, $50 and $100 or more!" and the bar scene in the page on "The Adventure" is culled directly from the image of a western American saloon, not any medieval alehouse or tavern. The adventurers were always portrayed as faux Renaissance-faire types, but the backdrop and social dynamics were western.
I feel like the range of firearms is less important than relative range, accuracy and rate of fire. A Wand Of Magic Missile with the range jumped up to 300 feet is going to kill several low CR bowmen with perfect accuracy while they're still rolling with disadvantage at long range. For a showdown at high noon, it's all down to the Initiative roll.
Dnd to me is closer to Renaissance era especially technology wise
This works great as a concept for Pathfinder. That system has a variety of guns and a whole Gunslinger class.
Its called Eberron
That "Mexican Orcs" image caused SO MUCH crwtive stor in my D&D friends we were all really excited about it
bro, i love your videos concepts. ur basically building a very logic world here, if you want, u can build a setting and u already have like 50% of the conept ready hahaha
Sounds nice! 😉
Yes please.
While D&D does fit the Western genre quite well, I think it's less the traditional 19th century American West and more... post-apocalyptic. The frontier settlements of Ten Towns in Icewind Dale are as Western-coded as you're likely to find in the Forgotten Realms, but there's the fallen ancient Netherese city of Ythryn hidden in a nearby glacier. There's a Tolkien-esque vibe to D&D worlds where you're less blazing a new trail then rediscovering the roads that were already there, and while Adventurers might be mercenary cowboys they're also expected to be Indiana Jones a lot of the time.
DND can start off in a western type era but after any amount of time it's pretty much impossible to end up in a fantasy cyberpunk type era with the amount of technologically advanced magic items like ersatz eyes and prosthetic limbs and spells like magic mouth and lesser restoration.
this is why I personally like to have 'magic' as being essentially a new thing, at least among humans, since it presupposes that there isn't any of the built up technological base that would enable a magitech based society. Specifically taking cues about how people like renaissance alchemists did what they did before modern chemistry, medicine, and metallurgy split off. Ditto with renaissance era occultists like Cornelius Agrippa, since occultism today was born at that time and the aesthetic of magic in DnD is largely indebted to that tradition.
I’ve always thought about D&D as a “Wild West” kind of analogy. What I have been interested in is how “magic” affects the development of “technology” and vice versa. Game systems like TORG sometimes implies that you either have one OR the other as if they compete for intellectual pursuance and only one can become dominant for lack of academic bandwidth.
Man, you are so good at this!
I would take this one step further. D&D isn't a standard western, but a western in a post-apocalyptic (or perhaps a post-post-apocalyptic) land. In a standard western you never encounter someone with superior technology, except possibly someone with some new fangled gadget developed in the big city. On the other hand, a party in D&D must travel through the wilderness to find an entrance to a vast lost labyrinth where they battle countless foes and eldritch horrors in order to claim an artifact that is beyond the capability of "civilized" wizards to create. In essence, the wild west rests atop the ruins of a lost civilization.
What you deacribed just now is litteraly Conan and the Hyperborian age😅. Like word for word (minas the western part) that coveres most of the defening tropes of "sward and sorcery" and other pulp era fantasy story's, as well as to a lesser dergee elements of the L.P Lovecrafts mythos.
All of these had a massive influance on the development of DnD, and yet so meny people still insist on Tolkein and the historical late middle ages as the one true deffinetive esthetic for basing a fantasy world on😅
Dnd trains are pretty interesting 'cause making a steam engine would just be equivalent to making an uncommon item (e.g. create and destroy water + heat metal + some metal tubes and a turbine) with maybe a bit of the fabricate spell to help speed up the building process, but yeah with teleportation circles being easier to make and operate i can see why trains aren't very common in dnd.
Though i can definitely see magical steam engines being widely used still.
With some creative tinkering, trains do have enormous potential in fantasy worlds! Indeed
to be fair, you'd also need massive quantities of good enough grade metal and the ability to not only produce that but get it where it needs going, and also the means of actually putting it together
it'd be quite an impressive feat to be able to make a train, helped along by magic (which could potentially replace some of the industrial processes) or not.
In general, you'd still need an industrialised society and there isn't the social or economic frame work in place in most fantasy settings for trains to ever be possible
@@wilhelmseleorningcniht9410 agreed
I was having that same conversation with myself about how the typical fantasy and Western genres share a lot of similarities. It's really interesting.
I also watched a UA-cam video from a writer who said why fantasy writers need to study Westerns. Kinda enriches the argument.
This was the argument of the middle chapter of my Bachelors Dissertation lol
Interesting! Could you tell more?
@@webuser-webloser the whole dissertation was essentially a post-colonial/orientalist reading of Fantasy, centred on Orcs. I started with TLOTR, then went on to D&D, then assorted modern fantasy films. This video more or less corroborates much of what I wrote. The thesis was that Orcs represent a level of abstraction of the process of otherisation, which differs from context to context. the US/D&D context being a mirroring of dehumanizing tropes of Natives found in Westerns.
I think some kind of frontier works for DnD, but might not want to go too deeply into the western genre. Dark ages is closer to the flavor of DnD, or early iron ages. Those were times after the fall of civilization when the nobility were still adventurers carving out their portion of the world. Magic would be in the hands of the few who had avoided the fall in their secure isolated city states. This is the time when the barbarians in the fringes would rise up. The orcs and goblinoids are better like vandals, or the sea people . I see the hobgoblins like the Huns a newer competing empire against the fading Rome
On the topic of trains, Tenser's Floating Disk has some serious potential. It is a first level ritual spell and the disk itself has a very precise and defined size (3ft diameter, 1 inch thick disk), floats 3 feet above the ground, and can handle a slope of just under 10ft per 5ft of distance (a ridiculous 200% grade), and lasts for 1 hour with no concentration needed. The disk also has no defined speed, instead it always follows the caster at a set distance of 20ft and is immobile while within 20ft. The spell only ends early if the caster is more than 100ft away or there is more than 500lbs of weight put on the disk.
Now here's where things get strange. Because of the way this spell is worded, if the caster is at a fixed spot relative to the disk anywhere from 21ft to 99ft away, the disk will try to close that distance at a theoretically infinite speed (not actually infinite but I'll get to that). So assuming someone made a 25ft long board with a seat on one end and a 3ft diameter, 1 inch thick, semi enclosed space on the other end, and the caster casts the disk to fill that space while sitting in the seat at the other end, what would happen? (side note here, this method would technically allow you to create a hoverbike, provided you figure out a way to steer yourself)
There are two possibilities I can think of. The first possibility is that the disk instantly accelerates and tries to close the gap, producing more than 500lbs of force on itself in an instant as it tries to push the contraption and dispelling itself immediately upon casting. I don't think this is how the spell would behave because if it was then the spell would break every time it ran into an obstacle.
The second possibility is that the disk can accelerate the contraption up until the disk reaches it's 500lb force limit, at which point it would travel at steady acceleration until dispelled or the caster is within 20ft.
This second option then begs the question, how do we increase the rate at which the disk can accelerate the contraption? Using the 5e rules for Mounts and Vehicles if you instead build a cart or other object around the disk you can increase the carrying capacity, and thusly the force limit of the disk, by 5x (minus the weight of the contraption). This means that the disk, so long as nothing is placed directly on it, could have a 2,500lbs force limit when pushing a cart or similar contraption.
Now we finally get back to trains, as they are much more efficient at converting the force into motion. Additionally because this is a ritual spell, you are not limited by the caster's spell slots. It takes 10 minutes per casting of the spell meaning that a single caster can have up to 6 disks at once without expending a spell slot. Making a train engine that would be able to fit all of these disks would be relatively simple, each one adding a further 500lbs force limit, meaning that a single caster, over the course of an hour, and through continual work, can effectively create an engine capable of pushing with up to ~3,000lbs of force.
For modern trains on level track it takes 2-5lbs of force per ton to move a train, but we are assuming a much lower level of development so to be on the safe side I'll say it takes 10-25lbs of force per ton to move this train on level ground due to friction and other stuff. This means that a single ritual caster could move anywhere from 20-50 tons to up to 120-300 tons on level ground.
I do not know how you would calculate the force per ton needed as the grade changes as the disk itself can handle anything under a 200% grade with no impact to it's performance. Generally speaking for actual trains you'd expect to need ~20lbs of force per ton for every 1% of grade but the disk might not care about that? I am going to assume that you will still need to account for the grade. As a result the amount a single caster could move would be anywhere from 11-16 tons to up to 66-96 tons on most tracks as they rarely have more than a 1% grade. And the only limiting factor to the speed of this train would be friction and air resistance.
All of this is ignoring other magical items like portable holes and the like which could vastly increase the efficiency of the trains.
It doesn't really make sense to me. The disk tries to close the gap with the caster only, like if there was a rubber band between the two. It wouldn't make the contraption move.
I'd probably rule that if there is no path available to close the gap, the disk would just stop or maybe gently push against the obstacle, but nothing that would have a noticeable effect.
@@qhsfb for reference, while not explicitly stated in the spell, mechanically each disk is an animated object with a STR score of 33 (500lb carry weight divide by 15 equals 33 STR) and if you used the pushing rules for 5e then you would actually double the value of my calculations. I chose not to use the pushing rules as the spell specifically says that it ends if it holds more than 500lbs but mechanically it is technically more accurate to double the value of my calculations.
It is often stated that the hovercraft version of this idea could move at the speed of light, which is just not accurate for a multitude of reasons, hence why it is common to use the carrying capacity as the limit of the disk's acceleration. I have no idea how fast the entire contraption would be able to go, as that would be determined by how much weight the disk needs to push, but the disk itself can in fact travel at an infinite speed in order to follow you just by how the spell is worded.
I would agree with you if we were talking about a static object but so long as the object can move out of the disk's way then these calculations would be correct.
Also the disk would not be able to impart enough force to damage a creature or object, or that would have been stated in the spell's description, meaning that while it could certainly pin a creature to a wall, it wouldn't be able to crush them. But so long as the obstruction moves out of the disk's way, the disc will impart as much force as the obstruction can handle without damaging the obstruction. This is assuming the disk can't simply float over the obstruction, as simply holding out your hand underneath the disk would be enough for the disk to float over your hand, and the rest of you, if you are in it's way.
You can't use real world physics to extrapolate from spell descriptions, because otherwise the system breaks down and the game becomes imbalanced.
Spells do exactly what the rules text says, and *nothing more.* In this case, the Floating Disk can *hold up* up to 500 lbs of weight. It DOES NOT *apply* up to 500 lbs of force, because nowhere in the description it states that the Disk can shove, push, or displace objects or creatures.
I hope this clears up your confusion!
@@tuomasronnberg5244 firstly, magic is inherently imbalanced and claiming otherwise is ignoring the reality of the game and it's rules.
Using your description of how the spell works and ignoring real world physics, like you say is needed for a "balanced" game, if you have a cart with a weighted arm which is balanced so as to never apply more than 500lbs of weight on the disk and you have the disk carry that arm, by the wording of the spell the disk would move the arm which would in turn move the cart. The cart could have infinite weight and so long as the arm that the disk is carrying never puts more than 500lbs of weight on the disk, the entire contraption would move with the disk.
Now most people would agree that that wouldn't work, but why doesn't it work? Because you are extrapolating from real world physics to decide that the disk can't pull that cart. Nowhere in the spell does it state that it can't do that, as far as the spell is concerned the only thing the disk is doing is carrying a 500lb arm. This is why the game has a DM, it is up to the DM to decide what is and is not possible within the game. Many DMs, myself included, have decided that the only fair way to make these kinds of rulings is to use real world physics. Many other DMs take your approach, but neither approach is inherently more "balanced" because the system itself is fundamentally imbalanced.
Fallout: New Vegas, only the Courier is a Warlock
Ain't that a crit in the head
@@cyberbrunk Well said!!
To be fair, Devils wouldn't be just hanging out around most regions. Methinks a Bulette or Otyugh might've been a better creature to list given how deadly that would be to most civilians (granted the latter would rather live someplace with more trash but still).
This bastions of civilization with a vast untamed wilderness is sounding more and more like the Tippyverse lol (not sure if you saw the other comment I made about that, it's a campaign setting imagined under 3.5 rules with a description on the GiantITP forum, the biggest thing it has you don't is an eternal cold war).
Thanks for the tippyverse i had never heard of it before. Cheers
Westerns have Firearms,
so you can have Tucker Kobolds with Artillery Pieces.
Matt mercer had some really good gun rules for 5e (rules 5e printed without the backfire mechanic unfortunately).
The guns did about as much damage as bows but had more range and an interesting reload and backfire mechanics.
Many people ignore reloading bows and crossbows in 5e but technically it's a bonus action to reload an arrow with any weapon that has the loading property (crossbows) so they can't be spam shot but the way mercer made guns is they had a reload property.
The mechanic works like this, the weapon has reload(x), (x) is the number of times you can shoot the gun before you need to spend an action or bonus action to reload.
There was also the misfire mechanic, similar to reload all the guns had the misfire(x) property. (x) was the number you needed to roll over otherwise your gun jams and needs to be repaired. It was often a low number like misfire 2 or misfire 5, if you rolled that number or below on your d20 roll to attack then the gun misfired and jammed.
Perfect wild west mechanics and keeps bows and magic relevant, also adventures in dnd are stupid resilient so a single bullet won't drop them dead instantly, despite what people say about the gun instakill meme.
As a novelist converting my world into D&D, I love your insights. Thumbs up from America!
4:10-5:30 This just comferms what I mentioned in the teleportation video. Late Medievel style kingdoms with there level of settled territory and political structure simply make no sence in a fantasy setting where dragons, giants, demons, and monsters of all shapes and sizes are a regular part of the world.
For a DnD style world it makes far more sence to have smaller kingdoms, city states or specialized settlements who can still prosper thanks to benefits aforded by at least low level magic (with large kingdoms and empires being more of a rearaty) while most of the world is uncivilized, unsettled wilderness or under the rule of dragons, giants and other such monsters.
Guns in the wild west is obviously a requirement, but this is fantasy, and roughly around the industrial revolution in terms of technology, so the obvious fix I have in mind is to take the RWBY design philosophy of "It's also a gun!" There are bound to be people with impressive physical strength, poor aim, or some other reason to get up close in combat for an advantage in the fight. Maybe the reliance of ranged gun reliant combat has the consequence of many people not training for close quarters fighting, so when someone Misty Steps within 5 ft of you, too close to use a bayonet, axes, daggers, and rapiers are prime. Plus all the situations where stealth is your best approach
First of all - Hex Blades as HexSlingers. Ya get a Crooked Wand and a Shiny Badge (Pentagram) from a descended Law Elemental and a Bounty List. If you’re good at your job you get a shadow hound for tracking your targets and preventing them from getting away.
Was looking for support in a world I’ve already created. Thank you so much. I needed some ideas to help justify my world. It’s pretty spread and mirrors most of your sentiments. I love my old North America universe I’ve made
When it comes to guns, i think people would likely just use wands rods and staffs with a at-will spell of 1st level or lower. Hell, melle weapons with firebolt or eldritch blast enchanted on it would be great.
Or of course, you could just use the futuristic firearms in the dmg and reflavor them to being magical instead of technological and that they require attunement or something.
I've always felt more at home in 'Kingmaker' campaigns for these reasons.
Going out into some wild, untamed, unexplored terrain... not many campaigns grasp that well.
I've always loved the idea of magical tech duplicating some of our own, like the trains. Not steampunk, exactly, tho it might have some of that aesthetic anyway. There was a series of portal fantasy books I read long ago, where an engineer from our world made gunpowder and guns there, and kept the tech top secret, so the local mages had to come up with a magical version, which ran on water. (Guardians of the Flame, Joel Rosenberg) And the heroes also started revolutions, freed slaves, had a loyal dragon companion, all sorts of fun stuff, as you do.
Fantastic video here, I couldn't agree more! I have really embraced the western style in my current campaign by actually instigating a chaos curse in the area which has disrupted all long distance communication and travel (spells like sending and teleport etc. A company known as the couriers union Has set up a massive wagon train guarded by talented Warriors and majors and they are the only people tough enough to travel the roads. We started out needing to travel with them but as we leveled up and became stronger we were able to brave the wilds Between each city ourselves. That became a source of Significant Income for us once people learned that we Could Transport people, messages and commodities from point to point safely.
Honestly because of how I developed my setting the frontiers are genuinely unsettled by any sapient people, not to erase the people's that existed in real life, but because my frontier is held by extremely dangerous monsters. It wasn't until this current age that anyone had the power to fight for these far flung frontiers. It was just a couple hundred years ago that an adventuring party dealt with the biggest threat to their already existing homes. People who share traits with indigenous peoples from our world have already been interacting with other civilizations. The frontier is genuinely a land beyond where people could survive.
You're talking about Eberron, yes?
I live in the western united states. I have used an "alternate universe earth" as my campign setting dor my sons. Names are already there, maps are pre made, history can be stolen directly. And on the plus side, my kids have learned aome local history and geography by playing dnd.
"Dad is this the waterfall that we caught that bandit smuggler at in the game?"
Two days ago I was just about positing with a friend of mine that the Curse of Stradh would be far more intriguing if played in a Far West setting rather than the snotty Gothic setting it's always been portrayed as, with wonders such as "Stradh's moving train castle" (running on a looping branched set of tracks spanning around the realm), or characters such as "the good, the bad, and the gunslinger gargoyle".
This video comes at the PERFECT moment to reinforce my statement!
DnD can also be a post-apocalyptic world, an ancient disaster has left behind ruins with treasures, magical items and secrets and monsters
Great arguments as always, Tom! I agree a bunch with them
I guess there is a lot of very interesting discussion to be had regarding magical vs industrial implementation of either some kind of mass producing world and how does that relate to guns as useful and common or not...
Personally, I'm a big fan of combining fantasy tropes with Western tropes, including the technology of the time, like guns and trains. My homebrew setting does this.
You might enjoy recent Keith Baker discussions on his new Eberron book which is explicitly Western-themed frontier style adventure. The Frontiers of Eberron.
Cossacs settelment of Sibiria seems to me much more fitting. It took something like 250 years. Was gradual and with medieval levels of technology. You just swap hot wasteland for cold tundras. And whenever they find a place somewhat more habitable and important a city sprung out around it. Divided by hundreds of miles of wildlands. Picture perfect.
Think of it more like a sci-fantasy space opera. There are things like warp/teleportation. Secure travel lanes that are heavily patrolled by the military for pilgrams and commerce. But there are also the fringes, remote communities, and less safe routes.
You could even set it up where most of the well established communities or even kingdoms exist in pocet dimensions. But those plebians not well connected or trusted enough to use magic to securely jump from one pocket dimension to the other must enter the hyper leathal overworld searching for some way to access their desired pocket dimension.
Edit: You have covered the following before, but that honestly only makes it stranger not to mention the fact and point to that video.
Lots of great arguments how D&D-style magic is naturally suited for a western-style world of wild frontiers. What's honestly missing, though, is how standard D&D-style fantasy worlds are indeed a lot more like that in feel than any other period of wild frontiers, let alone the mostly frontier-less high middle ages that people mistakenly think they're playing, namely a whole bunch of societal structures, and most centrally to the average D&D adventure, taverns which resemble their historical namesakes only in the loosest sense, yet only lack a piano to fully match the archetypal saloon.
You're just kinda describing the Eberron setting in how you are describing your setting.
I'm GM a game of Pathinder. While the Standard Pathinder Setting has a relatively densely inhabited world, I've set my game in its past, in a period when there a lot of lands where the human civilization hasn't yet reached. And I've also noticed that I can use westerns as an inspiration for this setting, with another inspiration being the spread of the Roman Empire. Neither USA or Roman Empire expanded into vacuum, there were people living on the lands, and I've included that into my setting, with the presence of native peoples (not all of which are human), and fallen civilizations in the lands that the colonists consider 'barbaric'.
I’ve long argued that the tropes and assumptions of D&D are essentially “Western with a Medieval Aesthetic” - good to find someone else who has come to a similar conclusion!
I have been doing this for YEARS. The prime example of this is the Ranger. There are two main situations where you see rangers. High fantasy and the wild west.
If you want to still have older styles then go to Eastern Europe and you have another plains biome where people are more closely tied to those old european traditions. The era of pike and shot is right there!
I was in a campaign of Savage Worlds set in Deadlands. It's an alternative mid-19th c. I really liked how much range mattered, even tho i am not a gun enthusiast. There was some stat about being afraid which was interesting. It was very creepy.
The creator of the Eberron campaign setting, Keith Baker, had a long-running Q'barra campaign he ran that was explicitly designed as a Western. He'd probably enjoy discussing it with you if you approached him about it. :)
Personally, I feel the Italian wars period to be quite analogous to D&D. Each city is basically another country. Mercenary groups (adventurers) travel between the cities seeking the best patrons and renown. Shifting factions offer allegiance and enmity including religions, which are very important in this time, and wealthy merchant guilds and bankers in addition to city leaders. People idolise and learn from the ancient past. New inventions shape combat and exploration, such as huge ships that are similar in use to the teleportation circles and airships of D&D used with permission of those with the wealth or position to own them. And expeditions are sent out into mythologised but unexplored (by them) continents. Though the wilds aren't directly on the doorstep they are closer than ever as the whole world is beginning to open up. And at home stories of the dead, including skeletal figures stalking amongst us, fester everywhere with the black death in such recent memory.
weve basically been playing fantasy weird west in space with a homebrewed spelljammer campaign for the better part of a year now. ive let them progress in tech level from flintlocks and crossbows to full on revolvers, i make em reload but for ease of keeping track ammo is unlimited other than whats in the gun
I got one for you...
There's a genre that D&D is accidentally almost perfect for in a way that actually causes mechanics like levels to actually make sense rather than need to be handwaved constantly... Xianxia. Sometimes called "cultivator fantasy" in english, is a chinese fantasy genre grounded heavily in chinese folklore, legends and their own literary tradition of things like Journey to the West. It's the mid to high fantasy branch off of Wuxia.
These stories feature a lot of similar elements - exploration, fighting monsters, opposing evil-doers, delving into ruins to find ancient artifacts, taking a side in a political/military struggles. Very action-adventure, with (though there are exceptions) a general sense that combat is going to be a major element of the story, but basically every sort of activity you'd expect to see in standard D&D type adventures makes perfect sense in Xianxia. Including a lot of things that don't really make a lot of sense in the actual D&D settings because of the huge disconnect between the game mechanics and the fiction...
One of the central conceits is that individuals who practice cultivation steadily improve in martial/spirtual/etc capabilities on a path that begins as a normal person and ends, in theory at least, as a godlike immortal. And potentially an actual god. There's ranked stages of development, and folks farther along can - barring surprises or misfortune - can be assumed to be stronger than those who're less developed.... In other words it maps fairly well to a game system that features a level system where a handfull of moderately experienced adventurers can have a reasonable chance of winning a fight against as mall town in a pinch, and the most experienced ones could throw down with an army of normal people.
In some stories cultivators have normal needs for food, drink or sleep, others have much lower needs. This works pretty well for explaining both "we're tracking meals/etc" and "we're ignoring them" styles. There's variants that develop themselves in almost purely mystical ways, almost purely martial ways, and mixed, with most folks devoting themselves to a very specific path of development that has everyone on that path develop similarly, so classes make a bit more sense as mechanic.
It's not a perfect fit of course, but a /lot/ of D&D stuff that's kind of weird in most of its own settings actually work great in a xianxia story. And xianxia fiction makes for some great inspiration for D&D even if you're not basing your setting on it, simply because the fiction actually assumes a lot of things that line up with D&D expectations.
I prefer to think of it as a magical post apocalyptic world. That is why ruins exist with ancient magic (technology,) that is why there are vast areas with unexplainable climates (weather control magic) and so on.
I have something like this in the Thundering Plains. I even got the book, Wretched Country, to help me run said western style
I thought the Wand of Magic Missile would make for a good revolver substitute. It gives you up to 7 shots per day (with a chance of the wand disintegrating after the last use) and doesn't require attunement. Also, there's the brooch of shielding, which nullifies MM damage; a must-have for every noble/merchant/high value target out on the town.
I've looked through Dragon of Icespire Peak and Phandelver feels very "western frontier mining town"
And the way my DM has been running Icewind Dale gives it similar vibes
I've been a fan of D&D as a western for a while
On the topic of dnd Economy and magic taking Gold and Gems as a form of exchange. I had the thought that Dragons used to have to kill things and literally bathe in the blood and gore to accumulate the “Experience” to grow and progress. They are too magic for eating to really work on any useful timescale.
So the Dragons got together and made a ritual that the “experience” they needed would manifest as something cleaner, more hygienic, more comfortable, less likely to stain their other possessions, and pretty - gold and gems.
This caused massive problems as soon as everyone else realized that killing something produced money and others realized that killing something like a cow only produced money.
Basically the Gods all had to get involved and patch things back together.
So no the dead turning into money only happens when Dragons kill stuff. And the Screw with the Dragons, the Gods set it so that magic burns gold and gemstones at fixed economic prices. Meaning eventually, every society is going to start looking for the Dragon Hoard as it is the easiest and most accessible fuel source
Could you discuss how and why you think various forgotten realms countries should in theory evolve technologically and culturally? You could make a fantastic (and likely to go mega viral) videos on various countries.
A separate note: how long do you think this frontier period would last? Indefinitely due to the likely endless process of fighting monsters?
Eberron. You should talk about Eberron.
We making it into Alkenstar with this one
It always amuses me when you do these videos because like, you’re describing Eberron. The logical conclusion of DnD worlds is literally Eberron or Dark Sun.
I've actually found that a lot of the old Deadlands: The Weird West TTRPG adventures work exceptionally well for D&D with a few tweaks to make it not America. I do use firearms in my campaigns but again I tweak them so they have magical effects instead of bullets for the most part (like a warlock requires a firearm as a focus to use eldritch blast, etc.)
I believe it's either Gary Gygax or Dave Arneson that said that early on their gametesting of D&D and Blackmoor, they realized they were basically playing spaghetti western. It's a very relevant parallel to draw, and I found myself playing the greatest campaigns when stealing from the western genre for my games
Most fantasy worlds are a grab bag of cultural touchstones and time periods, informed by books, TV and films. You have ostensibly an early medieval culture with late medieval /early reneissance technology. You have medieval cities with what seem like victorian shops and policemen (most city watches seem to be more modelled on them than actual medieval bailiffs, sheriffs or reeves) . A fallen empire leaving balkanised successor states and large areas of wilderness. The wilderness areas being treated like the wild West, with hostile tribes, expansionism and colonisation. It's similar to how the era when a film is made informs it no matter what time period it's presenting. Western movies - Unforgiven is far different to Red River.
I'm just reminded of Anbennar.
Why is it every time a certain group people approach take inspiration from this period in US history that the native/original populations are always swapped out for "not humans" who are in the way of the very human settlers?
That is a very fair criticism, to be honest.
I should have mentioned other ways to do this with humans on both sides, or flipping the script entirely. However I would suggest that elves (who are my first example) are often presented as 'humans but better',
and that most of our non-human humanoids are just different facets of the human experience made living metaphor.
But still, very fair point.
i think specifically in DND settings, humans are oftentimes stand in for "western europeans" in the same way dwarves are often scottish or norse, fox people as eastern asian(mostly japanese, korean or chinese tbf), lizardfolk as mesoamericans, etc
this isn't a good thing, mind, and i think it's great to ask ourselves why we take this for granted, but i think it comes from the most popular of these fantasy stories being written by western white people and the humans being projections of what they saw as "default"
it's gotten so ingrained into our culture that if we don't actively try to fight it, we end up with very similar settings everytime
@ferrisffalcis I am so with you on this. Some things are problematic with this setting, but I like Hyperborea for that very thing. Player characters are humans and it comes w all of the baggage.
ELVES ARE THE BEST PLAYABLE CHARACTER RACE!!!
Because re-enacting our generational trauma (and/or inherited sin) allows us a safe space to explore those emotions, and potentially change the situation, in the fiction, overcoming perceived difference that feel very real but are meaningless compared to peace?
Because revisting such unpleasantness in fiction allows us to form moral opinions we might not have thought out, and develope radical empathy for beings that are imaginary and vastly more different from us than anyone we might meet in the real world, potentially making us better people?
Because some of us are racist, or some other kind of violent absolutist ideology, and having a fiction with an absolute evil in flesh to harm with impunity gives them permission to be that person in a place where they can't hurt anyone- SHOWING US what they are, in the real world, and affording us the opportunity to leave them behind?
Probably a little of all that.
We do it the other way, too. "Alien invaders." Maybe we need more of that, so it doesn't seem so egregious when pale western game designers recreate the racism of colonial America for their artistic purposes.
Maybe we need to change our society in some way, to actually resolve that generational trauma and/or inherited sin.
I fixed the gun issue! Kind of. There is a reason guns don’t exist. They are magically enhanced railguns. They use a complex mix of magical alchemy and runes to propel projectiles. And because of the value of materials and the complex enchantments they break super easily. So guns are being developed in pockets. Though they are quite suppressed
Do you chrochet? That amigurumi is awesome
Good ideas, I'm with you...I'm currently working on a campaign that is going to be a bit turn of the 20th century robber barons sort of thing set in a world that 2000 years ago was home to two giant empires(a world where my players are currently playing in and basically have become gods), but now society is rebuilt and just getting back to the magitek that they had lost so long ago, cities are now city-states, empires no longer exist, some city states lean heavily into the magic and techo, others a more natural approach, starting my players in a no-mans land sort of like the history of the Oklahoma panhandle, so a town with no baron or lord, lots of crime. Going for a steampunk meets western, meets fantasy, meets cyberpunk, depending on where the party is.
Check out the D&D 5e Essentials Kit.😉
Absolute Monarchy didnt make any sense in the real world, where a king was never the best strategist, economist, or warrior in a civilization-
The position being hereditary kinda kills that possiblity, due to the Law of Averages in genetics. (Plus, the inbreeding didnt help)
Sentient creatures sometimes structure their society in ways that aren't at all efficent. We invented the steam engine before the fall of rome, but didnt bother to put it to use until the victorian era and western colonization of America.
Why? We were busy doing other stuff. We believed in things and pursued things, that in hindsight we can say weren't rational.
We were in medeival stasis, with all the tools to escape it, for 1000 years. A dungeons and dragons, or other fantasy world, could totally do the same.
That said, victorian era, western colonization era, age of piracy, end of the age of the samurai- these are all the same general time, and they're some of my favourite fantasy settings.
Its possible that we find those times more relatable than we do Feudal Europe. Its easier to immerse ourselves in, so it feels "better."
I mean to be fair, and you're likely to mention this is just a moment in the video, but the industrial revolution and the 'wild west' aren't opposed, and in fact go hand in hand.
Western colonisation in the US wouldn't have happened, or at least not nearly as quickly, without trains for example
The other thing about medieval fantasy, is that I think a lot of people's definition of "medieval" can also be expanded to fit the renaissance and it's there that I see the more traditional fantasy DnD as fitting in quite well, bonus points because the discovery of the Americas was happening around that time, so you can have your cake and eat it too.
Don't necessarily need the Wild West, when you can scootch back a century or two and stick that frontier on the east coast instead
In particular I think the history of the occult can be quite interesting to take inspiration from for the developments in magical technology in a DnD setting. This is the time when modern occultism as we know it today was being born. The aesthetic of magic in DnD ultimately stems from people of this time like Cornelius Agrippa, so why not use material from that and learn how magic actually worked in real life to apply it to our fantasy worlds?
IMO the concept of the West started well before you think. It extends back into the 1700s at least. Earliest cowboys were in the western parts of the Early States of the Americas & the conflict involving Native Americans was continuous almost from early on, along with the idea of a foreboding wilderness.
Absolutely. I do state the terms of the specific period I'm interested in here; it's largely because of the available technology that I limit myself to the late 19th century, as telegraphs and trains have such easy analogues in D&D, and the development of late-industrial urban centres is also critical to the argument.
Dnd is way more advanced than 19th century with technology like ersatz eyes, prosthetic limbs, perfectly functional android/cyborg type beings like war forged/golems, spells like magic mouth that can recreate modern telecommunications, spells like lesser restoration that cure ALL disease which is far superior to even modern medicine, etc etc. If most or all those things exist in any dnd setting i cant see how it wouldn't end even more futuristic than even the modern day almost like a fantasy cyberpunk. And not only that but if people are smart enough to figure out all of that there's not really much reason why they couldn't also learn modern science at the same time when society is already far more advanced and stable than it ever was in real life. Which would make it even more likely any dnd world quickly cyberpunk type world except with magic explaining the cyberpunk type elements except for futuristic advanced science.
Stop giving away my campaign setting XD
Have you considered using arcane pollution in your game
In the capital of a city state is a spell tower
The air is cleaner, the water purer and illness is unknown
Common spells like light and good berry can be cast at low spell slot ranks
Sometimes by people with no spell casting ability
Some spell towers favor civilizations others favors wilds
The further you travel from the spell towers the weaker the blessings become
Till is no longer possible to cast good berry
But with every blessing there is a price
Miasma
Miasma manifests as magical monsters, self creating dungeons and contagious madness
Its strongest at the edge of a city state and grows even stronger in the buffer zone between two states
Two spell towers cannot exist in the same territory
Political parties attempt to destroy neighboring spell towers so the can expand the influence of their own spell tower and their own wealth
So the factions are pro-civilization vs pro-wild
Benevolence versus corruption
As the moral faction lines
That’s exactly what I did with the elves and the native population it’s they’ve got their own cities our own culture they even hold half of Congress at least in the united nations of America is what I change the USA to
What if you added a cantrip spell that turns all gunpowder in a area to ash without a saving throw or exploding
D&D is the inevitable outcome of kitchen sink fantasy: you get inspirations from across thousands of years of history. And honestly, that's fine. There is space travel in D&D, why not cowboys?
Westmarch baby
18:20
couldn't you just develop the bows and other range items to compete with guns, since it most range weapons could work off your superhuman abilities and enchanting them would be easier to and the upkeep of them as well and also the AMMO as well., and also magical items as well.
You forgot Water wars
Truly the natives really ought to be druids. That really fits best with the concept.
If thats the case then the natives must be kicking everyone's ass cuz druids are stupid op. Literally no class could even remotely stand up to them except maybe wizards and even then druids are arguably which more world defining and consequential with spells like plant growth, goodberry, and awaken (especially awaken).
@@Tupadre97 Undying Warlocks can compete with Druids even better than Wizards.