A lot of people at least claim to play during the medieval
time period; I’m not sure if that is either just a word that they use which has
lost all meaning, or if they really do go all history with it. Me, personally,
when I do play fantasy, I don’t play it during a medieval setting; instead, I
typically shoot for the Renaissance. The reason is simple, even from the
Renaissance, our minds and philosophies are very far removed from these ancestors
or ours, and this only gets worse the more ages we go back. In all actuality,
we have little in common with these people which we claim to be role-playing.
The Renaissance is the time period where our modern
philosophies began to take form; it wasn’t anything like us yet, but the seeds of decency
were planted. It was
during this time period that the West was ready to emulate the Roman culture; they had their basic needs met, and they were ready to begin work on a very
hard to grasp concept for them, Civilization. Improving life, not just your
life, but the life of others as well; and when one spends generations living
fist to mouth, and spending all of their energies gathering resources for
themselves, it is very difficult to shed what we modern westerners would call:
Selfishness or Self Serving behavior.
Perhaps, in game terms, what this means to us is that, during the
Renaissance, the Lawful Good alignment returned to humanity after an absence
that had lasted since the fall of Rome. Up until the mid-Renaissance, in order
to survive you had to be self-serving.
Let’s go back in time to France, besides Italy, the greatest
achievements of the Renaissance age were found in this country, and they kept
really good records. In order to understand our differences, we just have to
look at how we treated children. In the Renaissance, life was hard. Society
dictated that a man should have at least 10 children to survive him, but they
had many many more, and most of these youngsters died very early in their
lives. Today, the death of a child is impossible to get over, but back then, in
farm journals of the period, it was just another notation in the books, and not
a very important one either. More children died than lived, and even those that
did survive didn’t live well.
If a woman died, her husband, though a devoted man to her,
quickly got married again. Things got even worse if the husband died. When a
woman was widowed, she too was expected to get remarried as soon as possible,
but her children were not a part of the deal. If an infant was lucky, perhaps a
widow’s sister would be kind enough to keep the child, but older children were
completely abandoned and left to fend for themselves. They never saw their
families again. This was behavior
dictated by society that only recently became unacceptable, so chances are, all
of the players who refuse to write up a family background are actually playing
closer to period than those who fuss over such things. As far as what else we can take away from
this, if people can do this kind of thing to their own blood, how do you think
that they treat each other?
To be fair, a man of his time treated himself no better. It
wasn’t uncommon to take a long journey on a drunken whim which serves no real
point, and drag whoever happened to be there along with you. If you didn’t die on the
road, you typically came back ruined and without friends, and for what? Well, a
man of his time wouldn’t ask that question. Thinking of the consequences of his
actions was not yet even a thing. Again, you live a fist to mouth existence,
and you are genetically designed to fulfill immediate needs first, but now you
have a little bit of free time to think. The Romans knew that free time was not
productive, so they eliminated it, which wasn’t the case in France. People got
bizarre ideas and they acted on them, and why not? The highwaymen who robbed
and killed travelers stupid enough to follow the roads on their own typically
made more money than any body else. Sure, if you got caught you were killed, but
so what. The future was unthinkable to most men, thus it was ignored.
Lets get away from men, and let's look at other things in his
world that are more real to us than how he saw the world around him. Cities! I’m
sure that we all know what Waterdeep is! A bustling city full of people,
adventure, and violence! Well, that is not what happened. There were no cities
like that during the Renaissance, and they hadn't existed since
the fall of Rome. Paris, the capital of France, what was it like? We have a
much larger population today than back then. Most people chose to live in the
country, and when they couldn’t, and they were forced to live in the city, they
always brought the country with them.
There were no bustling crowds of people, though it was a
place to gather to buy and sell at the market, but most of those people didn’t
live in the city itself. Streets weren’t cobbled, they were muddy trenches that
froze in the winter, and caused horrible clouds of dust in the summers. The few
homes within the city all had gardens, and buildings, just like in the country,
but on a smaller scale. I suppose that one could compare them to very small
villages today. If one is going to live in the city, one needs to have a trade,
and make a tidy living. Nothing extravagant; Instead of gold, or money, it was
chickens, eggs, or dried whatever that you preferred to work for. As nice as
gold is, one has never been able to eat it.
If we go look at a Lord’s chateau, one would think that this
is where the good living is taking place, and it was! But, it wasn’t what you’d
think. In fact, the nobles were forbidden to earn currency, they were expected
to live off of that which was provided by the king, and this was not easy.
Their homes were grand, and if you go to one today you will be impressed, but
at the time things were very different. Today we live better than kings! In our
homes we have cold and hot water on tap, we have a refrigerator to help us keep
what we eat fresher longer. We can cook things on demand, but of all of these
modern conveniences which we ignore every day, the men of the Renaissance had
no central heating and cooling, specifically no heating. One can go see their
massive fireplaces and marvel at their grander, but one is still standing in a
modern temperature controlled environment. These places were cold! In the
summer, they brought greenery inside to keep the stench down, but the hardest
time was in the winter. Straw was brought in to cover the floors, imagine that
for a moment. These lavish and beautiful chateau floors covered in straw. This
helped keep the heat in. And one would assume that the lords and the servants
avoided each other, but this is a Victorian idea, and one that never entered
into the minds of our Renaissance ancestors. People didn’t have personal space
back then. There were no comfort bubbles. People lived right on top of each
other, and it wasn’t just people. The warmest room in any house has always been
the kitchen, and that is where you found everybody. From the lady of the home,
dressed in the most modern finery to the men who worked out in the fields all
day covered in filth, they all crammed into the kitchen every chance they got.
Imagine that you are a child, doing your studies, you’ve got everyone pressed
together in the kitchen; dogs are running around fighting over scraps and
looking for attention, not to mention the goats and the chickens which are kept
indoors so nothing can take them. Your smaller siblings are running around,
your infant sister is squalling for attention which she will not get. Your
mother is dutifully and critically watching the maids who are trying to set the
table, your father is there too yelling to be heard over all of the noise as a
cook kicks a dog to get it to go back. How in the world did anybody get
culture? This scene played itself out, not just in chateaus, but in homes all
over Europe. The quest to stay warm was
one of necessity, and when it comes to this, the more the merrier!
Travel was dangerous, thieves killed and robbed everybody
who they judged game. One wanted to travel with armed men, and lots of
them. Everybody knew that they were out there. That was a given. If you did
survive traveling the roads by day, one found themselves at a dark inn full of
homeless, fellow travelers, and the undesirable all gathered around to repeat
this ritual of finding warmth in company. These places were not nice, the
highwaymen could be found here as well, in droves. If one was lucky enough to
get a room, we again run into the common theme, beds were huge, but most inn
beds fit four men, and they slept together without a second thought, this too
kept you warm. Being alone in the Renaissance never happened, and the men and
women who lived here didn’t want it to happen! One didn’t find much rest here
either, once a room was full, a dresser was pushed in front of the door, one
drew their sword and rested as best as they could until the sun came up and
travel was once again possible.
Actually, speaking of the sun, man had not yet tamed the
darkness, and darkness was a very terrifying thing. Darkness dictated our
lives. We were slaves to it. People didn’t sleep all night, to sleep for 6-8
hours was unheard of! One had to get up periodically and check on their loved
ones, look in on horses and other animals too large or too dirty to be kept indoors. They
would venture out into the night to check on their neighbors. Many of these
jaunts were fatal, it is easy to get lost in the pitch blackness. If something
happens to your light source, you were typically doomed. People fell into
rivers, twisted ankles and froze to death. Superstition dictated much of what
was known, and when the body of your neighbor is found floating in the river,
people had only their fear and superstition to explain this.
Now, what about the King? When one thinks about a king, one
imagines a powerful man sitting on a throne and making decisions for people,
but this wasn’t all that accurate. A king who stays in one place will soon be a
king of nothing. In France, from the time of his coronation, to the time of his
death the king is on the move. What about his court? Well, the court traveled
with him. Visions of beautiful princesses and ladies of the court are fantasies,
these women were just as hard as the men, they had to be. Even the Queen was on
the road with her husband. In the morning, the servants would rush ahead to
where the King would be spending the night, typically a Lord’s Chateau. The
royal huntsmen would attempt to find red meat or fish, which were rare. The
royal cook would take over the lords kitchen and begin preparing supper while
the lords servants rushed around to make the house look presentable and make room
for all of the king's horses and all of the king's men. This was the life of a
noble! God forbid that a holiday was coming up, typically the King wanted to be
in a specific place for religious observances, some were long enough to give
himself and his men a break from the road so that he could actually spend a month
in one place.
The King would look over the lords records, which had to be
kept in order. He himself was forbidden to earn currency as well, with the
exception of leveling taxes upon the people. Nobles and the King were expected
to live on a budget, if one went over their budget, then tough! The only class
which could earn currency was the middle class, namely merchants, soldiers, and
tradesmen. This formed the basis of European economy for centuries. A knight
who went looking for wealth was unable to keep it, as the wealth that he found
belonged to the people. That is something to think about.
Not that we want to be trapped in history while playing our
games, but it is something to consider. If well used, history can provide many
fun ideas for us to try. It is a lot of fun researching this kind of stuff too.
2 comments:
Hey, Ripper, I was off line for a bit, my PC crashed. Got your points about life during Renaissance versus Dark Ages and that most peoples' conception of Renaissance is based on the splendor of the Louis the Fourteenth's Court.
However, we run fantasy games, and everything is possible in our imagination and in the multiverse. So, yes, we can create a historically accurate medieval or renaissance setting, or create out own, or even leave it alone and let the players think, that they are living in the same world as ours, except for the swords and armor. It's all good. Now, it would be interesting, how you implement the alien-ness of the different era in the regular running of your game.
I think that many players of the game are also into history. While we don't want to be enslaved by it, we can use it to add color. It is a tool that is available to help the DM decide what NPCs are doing on a massive scale, which is hard. Do I suggest that you empty out the City of Greyhawk in some pompous attempt to add authenticity? Absolutely not! But it can be an interesting tool that guides our writing.
Continuing our education is something that we do, and we do apply what we have learned to our settings, it is fun! Many of the decisions that we make at the table deal with cause and effect, any tool to make this unique and believable is a good tool.
As far as my game, we are back to Gothic Earth, a game that takes place in the world of Victorian Gothic Horror stories. By no means are we capable of creating an authentic experience, we don't want to, but we are all very literate in regards to the era, I know that it is probably my favorite genre. At the end of the day, we are still playing AD&D; my writing and the decisions of the players always comes first, but the back drop, the feel, the influence, that we can apply to the game makes it a very unique and very fun experience. The players are a part of the writing process, and we all know different things about our world which does come up in the game, and changes the story in an organic way that is very pleasing to everyone. In a traditional game of Fantasy, the only person who really knows the world is the DM, but when one plays a more historical game, this playing field is leveled. Everyone knows the world, or at least the rough geography, things may be slightly different, but everybody is somewhat familiar and knows what to expect. Not to dismiss true fantasy, exploration is a fun aspect of the game, but the less that I as the DM have to tell them, the easier I can control the pace of the game, which is something that is very important to me.
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