Quote from: Zirunel;1134975Trade diaspora communities existed historically and are therefore a plausible element in an rpg setting.

Regardless if trade diaspora communities existed or not, they are a perfectly good element in a RPG setting if the GM feels that would make sense in the setting and increase its interest for the players.

San Francisco has Chinatown. The Emerald City of Yubnari can have Dwarftown.

Quote from: Zirunel;1134975DITED TO ASK: btw what makes you say they "took land from the natives by force?" There is no evidence whatsoever for that. Rather, both East and West Greenland appear to have been uninhabited at the time the Norse arrived.

Then the Inuit arrived, killed them, and took their stuff (probably).

I love how the Inuit were busy slaughtering & pillaging across North America only a few centuries before the Europeans started further south. The Europeans made it to Greenland first, but the Inuit made it last. They even reached Europe, I think it was in the 18th century one paddled into Aberdeen harbour. I guess they thought Europe was a bit too big to kill it & take its stuff.

Quote from: S'mon;1134980Then the Inuit arrived, killed them, and took their stuff (probably).

I love how the Inuit were busy slaughtering & pillaging across North America only a few centuries before the Europeans started further south. The Europeans made it to Greenland first, but the Inuit made it last.

Well, the colonies were abandoned a century or so after the Inuit arrived, so maybe... Personally I doubt it, the Inuit have very real traditions of feuding among themselves, but slaughtering and pillaging not so much... Hard to say though, with any certainty.

Quote from: Zirunel;1134975Why Germany now? and why Africans instead of Chinese? You're picking names out of your hat again.

No, I'll agree medieval Germany was not particularly plugged into any North African or subsaharan African trade networks. Medieval Portugal was, though. Once again, you carefully select a hypothetical and once again it fails to disprove my assertion. Just because you can come up with some random trade diaspora that may not have existed, does not demonstrate that ethnic trade enclaves didn't exist anywhere. They did.

One early example is the Assyrian merchant enclave at Kultepe in Turkey ca. 2000 BC.

How about Constantinople AD 1060, which had funduq (segregated trading enclaves) from Babylon, Persia, Medea, Egypt, Russia, Hungary and Spain as well as a large Jewish enclave?

Or for real diversity, Malacca in Malaysia at the end of the middle ages, which had segregated enclaves of traders from Cairo, Mecca, Abyssinians, Kilwa and Malindi (East Africa), along with Turks, Christian Armenians, Goans, Siamese, Chinese, and many many more (including Portuguese).

...the vast Armenian, Jewish, Chinese, Hanseatic German trade diasporas, the list goes on.....

I'll say it again. Trade diaspora communities existed historically and are therefore a plausible element in an rpg setting.



Yes, as I said, the Norse colonized Greenland. They established two small colonies there. However, their activities in the new world to the west were much more limited.

EDITED TO ASK: btw what makes you say they "took land from the natives by force?" There is no evidence whatsoever for that. Rather, both East and West Greenland appear to have been uninhabited at the time the Norse arrived.

Medieval Portugal had African enclaves?

No, I'm using random names, not to fuck with you, you complained about the distance, so I took two closer places, you complain again...

But again, you say those "communities" existed, well how common were those diverse communities in Europe? Could you find an African everywhere? Or a Muslim? I know of Jews, expelled from their native land, and Muslims conquering, raping and pillaging Europe, so you could call those both diasporas, but you'd be wrong.

Once more, travel was dangerous in the real medieval times, and they didn't had to deal with Dragons, Krakens and other big monsters, or roving bands of smaller monsters. Which would make traveling orders of magnitude more dangerous.

Quote from: S'mon;1134921I think ethnic enclaves in trade cities would be very historical in a medieval-esque setting. How many fantasy cities do have ethnic enclaves though? Very few AFAICT. Normally everyone is mixed up together, much more than in most modern cities, never mind the middle ages!

Pretty common to see those in a lot of Swedish rpgs from at least the 90s. Often more fantasy ethnicities (this is dwarf town) but happens with various human ethnicities as well.

The city of Atil around 800 AD would make a great cosmopolitan setting.  (For a better game than D&D).

It was at the mouth of the Volga river on the edge of the Caspian sea, and ruled by a former steppe tribe of Turkish nomads (the Khazars), who settled down and started a state and converted to Judaism (possibly because they were stuck right between the Christians and the Muslims).  It was at the end of the silk road, at the height of the Tang Dynasty and China's most westward expansion - there are some suggestions they sent armies as far west as the Caspian.  It was also along the Viking trade routes through Russia to Baghdad.
It was a trade city that had judges that had specified mixes of Jews, Christians and Muslims to ensure that no one took religious exception to the law.  It's a city where you could quite plausibly have a Viking rubbing soliders with a Chinese Monk.

But as for fantasy settings needing to be plausible on historical grounds...

How many gamers these days know anything much at all about history?  Or care?  D&D settings are ahistorcial mush and have been for a long time.  When D&D was something that emerged out of wargaming that actually cared about history, it may have been different, but that's long gone.

Quote from: Zirunel;1134985Well, the colonies were abandoned a century or so after the Inuit arrived, so maybe... Personally I doubt it, the Inuit have very real traditions of feuding among themselves, but slaughtering and pillaging not so much...

I guess the Paleo-Eskimos all decided to commit collective suicide, then.

Quote from: TJS;1135019But as for fantasy settings needing to be plausible on historical grounds...

How many gamers these days know anything much at all about history?  Or care?  D&D settings are ahistorcial mush and have been for a long time.  When D&D was something that emerged out of wargaming that actually cared about history, it may have been different, but that's long gone.

The earliest incarnations of D&D resembled another time of history than medieval Europe far more anyway. The American Wild West. Vast tracts of empty land, settlers coming in, somewhat isolated towns, raiders preying on travelers etc. Probably helped by everyone involved in the creation being from the Midwest too.

I'm having a bit of trouble thinking of any iconic fantasy settings, and I'm not talking about rpg settings here, that are particularly medieval. Westeros was created based on medieval history (although parts of it like the giant wall, the eunuch administrator, the named throne and other countries being generally small and irrelevant remind me more of Imperial China). Middle Earth is not. The Shire is some kind of idealized 18th/19th century England while Gondor/Rohan more resemble the late Roman empire, complete with letting a barbarian people take over part of the land in return for reinforcing the army. Mordor doesn't really have a historical analogy of course, being governed by an ageless evil demigod. Much of the rest of the world is post-apocalyptic wasteland with pockets of habitation.

Okay, what about Conan's Hyborian age? Some parts are definitely more medieval, like Aquilonia and Nemedia, but Stygia for instance is very much not. In the end, the world was created by Howard so he could throw stuff from different eras of history together.

Lankhmar/Newhon? Somewhat, but not really. Narnia? Well, it gets the monotheism at least, but is also a land ruled by a literal Ice queen and kept forever in winter, with no human inhabitants. Later it is conquered by refugee pirates from our world who are then finally defeated by an army of talking animals and fantasy creatures. Still, may be the closest to genuinely medieval just because of how Christian the whole thing is. The Young Kingdoms? I'm not familiar enough with Elric to say (I've only read two of the stories, not a big fan of Moorcock's style), so maybe. Discworld? Definitely not.

Quote from: Blankman;1135024Middle Earth is not. The Shire is some kind of idealized 18th/19th century England while Gondor/Rohan more resemble the late Roman empire, complete with letting a barbarian people take over part of the land in return for reinforcing the army. Mordor doesn't really have a historical analogy of course, being governed by an ageless evil demigod. Much of the rest of the world is post-apocalyptic wasteland with pockets of habitation.

Well I think Tolkien was overall going for a Dark Ages vibe; with Gondor as Byzantium, Rohan as Anglo-Saxons on horses (his equivalent of dinosaurs with laser cannons) and vast stretches of waste land. AFAICT Roman Britain was never heavily populated, because the heavy British soil didn't support Roman-style agriculture and the mouldboard plough for deep soil churn had not been invented yet. But it did have urban centres, which vanished after the Roman withdrawal and Anglo-Saxon invasions. So post Roman Britain did have something of a post apocalypse feel - there used to be Civilisation here, and now it's gone.

Quote from: S'mon;1135027Well I think Tolkien was overall going for a Dark Ages vibe; with Gondor as Byzantium, Rohan as Anglo-Saxons on horses (his equivalent of dinosaurs with laser cannons) and vast stretches of waste land. AFAICT Roman Britain was never heavily populated, because the heavy British soil didn't support Roman-style agriculture and the mouldboard plough for deep soil churn had not been invented yet. But it did have urban centres, which vanished after the Roman withdrawal and Anglo-Saxon invasions. So post Roman Britain did have something of a post apocalypse feel - there used to be Civilisation here, and now it's gone.

The Rohirrim/Eorlingas were granted a part of Gondor to rule as their own as reward for help in battle, and on a promise to help in future wars. That's textbook late Western Roman Empire (the Visigoths were granted Aquitaine in this way for instance) apart from how the alliance actually held. I think Tolkien had a lot of sources and ideas, but one thing is for sure, Middle Earth is not particularly high or late medieval. A bit early medieval/dark ages sure, but also some late antiquity and 19th century England thrown in there too (no tobacco pre-Columbian exchange after all). Basically, the big grab bag of influences that fantasy settings often are.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1134998Medieval Portugal had African enclaves?

No, I'm using random names, not to fuck with you, you complained about the distance, so I took two closer places, you complain again...

But again, you say those "communities" existed, well how common were those diverse communities in Europe? Could you find an African everywhere? Or a Muslim? I know of Jews, expelled from their native land, and Muslims conquering, raping and pillaging Europe, so you could call those both diasporas, but you'd be wrong.

Once more, travel was dangerous in the real medieval times, and they didn't had to deal with Dragons, Krakens and other big monsters, or roving bands of smaller monsters. Which would make traveling orders of magnitude more dangerous.

Travel may have been dangerous, and yet people were travelling all over the place. One of the reasons for the first crusade was Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem facing harder receptions than earlier, so we know many went on pilgrimage top Jerusalem. The Crusades themselves were of course travels. The Mongol conquests stretched from China to Poland, and during their rule Marco Polo and thousands of other Europeans traveled through their realms, including China. And in china Polo saw Christian churches. Maybe no Chinatown in Europe, but at least in the 1320s there was a Genoese colony in the Chinese trade city of Quanzhou (Zaiton to many foreigners), which also housed merchants from Arabia, Iran, India, Sumatra, Cambodia, Brunei, Japan, the Philippines etc. No, the average peasant in a village in medieval England may not have traveled far (although maybe he went on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, Rome or even Jersualem) but merchants, mercenaries and nobles often did. Especially merchants.

People who live in cities often project the urban setting they live in onto their fantasy setting. A lot of the RPG writers live in cities and what they experience in those cities go into their work. The result is something like the movie Ella Enchanted, the "Flintstones" for Dungeons & Dragons. I'll give you another example, the television shows Hercules and Xena.

Quote from: Tom Kalbfus;1134940Mostly my point was on the non-player characters, not on the player characters who can choose any or background they want, man or woman. The background will tend to be monocultures, monoethnic and monoracial for the most part, and if player stands out because she want to play a black female human fighter in a white male dominated pseudo-medeaval setting, you can role play this out and have the female black woman prove herself, there is nothing wrong with dealing with societal prejudice in a fantasy setting. The best settings are not perfectly progressive by 21st century standards, people need something to fight for after all, the players can improve upon the society they find themselves in. I remember a book called The Sleeping Dragon where players find themselves in their player character's bodies and in their fictional setting that they thought was just in a role playing game, a major campaign goal was the fight to abolish slavery in this world and they had many adventures leading to this goal. An imperfect world has lots of adventure possibilities.

By the late Joel Rosenberg. The series is Guardians of the Flame. He gamed with us a little and we talked about gaming a lot.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1134955So Africans in Germany? Nope it doesn't work and it's not a reductio ad absurdum, it's me pointing facts and using logic, sorry to rain on your parade.

Yes, the norse COLONIZED Greenland, they took land from the natives by force, you calling it visits is funny as all hell.

They reached a part of Greenland that was temporarily unoccupied and only met the Inuit later.