Cross posted from my blog-
Metal Earth contains several elements that might be considered anachronistic.
Rock Bands: Several 20th- 21st century style rock bands continuously tour Satan's Spine. Often they engage in blood feud with one another.
Cigarettes: Mass market pre-rolled cigarettes are commonly available throughout Satan's spine. Tobacco is produced primarily at S'zan, although a small amount is exported from Rax-Ur as well.
Movies: Accompanying caravans or moving about on their own, independent projectionists travel from settlement to settlement with old style movie projectors and their precious collections of films, mostly westerns, mostly sub-titled in half a dozen forgotten languages, which they display for the edification and entertainment of the latter day masses. Usually projectionists, or their assistants, will stand beside the screen and recite a narrative poem which explains the events in the film. Most of these poems are thousands of years old and passed down through time by the Projectionists Guild.
I'll add to this list as time goes on.
What kind of anachronisms do you have in your game?
I have plenty of seeming anachronisms, mostly monsters and spells that are based on, or refer to, 20th/21st century stuff.
I say 'seeming' because my players aren't quite sure whether the game is actually some sort of post-apocalyptic deal in some way.
A lot of my games feature pipes and tobacco as backdrops of the culture; including Dark Albion even though tobacco shouldn't exist in the "old world" yet (what with it still being a few years before the "new world" is even discovered).
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Quote from: RPGPundit;589957A lot of my games feature pipes and tobacco as backdrops of the culture; including Dark Albion even though tobacco shouldn't exist in the "old world" yet (what with it still being a few years before the "new world" is even discovered).
There must have been some habits people had at the time that were the result of some form of addiction or craving - other than alcohol - just can't think of any. I guess nobody went out of their way to get ergot poisoning.
Some of the architecture and social structures in High Valor are intentionally anachronistic (thanks to Dwarves and Elves.)
I try very hard to avoid anachronisms as much as possible in most games.
My anachronisms are relatively tame, e.g. plate armor and greatswords in an Arthurian fantasy game, or flintlock guns in a 1500s game.
Quote from: Lynn;590143There must have been some habits people had at the time that were the result of some form of addiction or craving - other than alcohol - just can't think of any. I guess nobody went out of their way to get ergot poisoning.
There's actually quite a bit of evidence that europeans were using pipes to smoke things since WAY before the discovery of Tobacco.
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Quote from: RPGPundit;590624There's actually quite a bit of evidence that europeans were using pipes to smoke things since WAY before the discovery of Tobacco.
Smoking in the Old World definitely predates tobacco - any idea what was commonly smoked in Europe before it?
Quote from: Lynn;590740Smoking in the Old World definitely predates tobacco - any idea what was commonly smoked in Europe before it?
Herodotus had the Scythians using cannabis. I don't believe they used pipes though.
Also, according to the South African Journal of Science (by way of Wikipedia) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_(drug)) "pipes dug up from the garden of Shakespeare's home in Stratford-upon-Avon contain traces up cannabis." I am shocked to hear Shakespeare smoked that stuff.
I'm not sure when people started smoking opium, but that might be another one to look into.
Quote from: gib;589828movies: Accompanying caravans or moving about on their own, independent projectionists travel from settlement to settlement with old style movie projectors and their precious collections of films, mostly westerns, mostly sub-titled in half a dozen forgotten languages, which they display for the edification and entertainment of the latter day masses. Usually projectionists, or their assistants, will stand beside the screen and recite a narrative poem which explains the events in the film. Most of these poems are thousands of years old and passed down through time by the projectionists guild.
Awesome!
As for tobacco, I would be disapointed if the people in a place called "Satan's Spine" didn't smoke.
In my Birthright campaign my governor PC is an accounting genius with eidetic memory -- and I rolled insanely high on a % chance of him to invent a new accounting tool. He's introducing double-entry bookkeeping to a "pre-Italian Renaissance" Brecht realm.
With my AD&D 2e Dessert Wars game (time: early Middle Ages, just after Battle of Hastings or so) I'm inventing mimes and a few desserts far before their actual invention date. Considering crème anglaise is the base for most puddings, custards, and dessert sauces, and I'm relabeling the Norman Conquest of England into "The Pudding Wars," the evolutionary development of desserts is extremely compressed.
(Basically the English invent the dessert mother sauce as we know it today and give the honor to France naming it Crème Français. As news traveled back to France, the French loved the sauce -- but in attempts to recreate the recipe altered it by miscommunication. The French said that this "lost in translation" version was the definitive form of the recipe and gave the honor back to the English calling it Crème Anglaise.
The English insisted the recipe was wrong and that, no, the French really deserve the honor for improving upon its production, therefore they should keep the name. This was an insult to the French honor bestowed upon the English and thus war was inevitable. Basically each feels slighted by their rejected gift and carnage must ensue to settle it. The meringue flambée catapults are truly a marvel of war in these Pudding Wars.)
Quote from: Dan Vincze;590741Herodotus had the Scythians using cannabis. I don't believe they used pipes though.
Also, according to the South African Journal of Science (by way of Wikipedia) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_(drug)) "pipes dug up from the garden of Shakespeare's home in Stratford-upon-Avon contain traces up cannabis." I am shocked to hear Shakespeare smoked that stuff.
I'm not sure when people started smoking opium, but that might be another one to look into.
According to wikipedia, opium didnt travel very far west until the 16th century.
That was probably Christopher Marlowe's stash ;)
The romans were known to smoke pipes, with a variety of herbal recipes of everything from apple leaves to oregano, if I recall correctly.
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Printing presses
Pinhole cameras
Passports
Functioning spaceport
Newspapers
Following Ray Winninger's Rules of Dungeoncraft, I have a secret for every major feature of my campaign setting. For the presence of firearms and cannon, which exist on the level of smoothbore muskets and the cannon one expects of immediately after the 30 Years War.
The secret is this: the figure responsible for their existence--"The Artificer"--already has knowledge of how firearms and ordinance of the 21st Century work, but lacks the means to make them in the numbers that would-be users would want- he has his own, which he not only can keep working, but already enhanced with magic. (i.e. dude knows how to make contemporary guns, ammo and bombs; dude has better guns than PCs can get, and his guns are enchanted)
As the campaign progresses, the guns and ordinance available would improve as the Artificer's faction developed and improved. (i.e. make him and his better, and PCs get access to better guns)
In my D&D campaign: Printing presses and "Copperflaps", cheap dime novels (1 CP) that detail the "Real" (often exagerated and sexed up) tales of famous dungeon-crawlers.
Does taking your dirty clothes to your local "dwarven dry cleaners" count as an anachronism?
Quote from: Soylent Green;591273Does taking your dirty clothes to your local "dwarven dry cleaners" count as an anachronism?
Depends: do they use some kind of machine-like contraption?
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If I ever get around to starting a new campaign of something in a medieval fantasy vein, I'm planning to include Restoration-era hand-presses and an exhaustive analysis of how the hand-press book trade interacts with the need for spellbooks. I had to learn all of this crap, I'm going to use it somehow.
Quote from: Soylent Green;591273Does taking your dirty clothes to your local "dwarven dry cleaners" count as an anachronism?
Do they use anything resembling modern dry cleaning processes?
There's nothing particularly modern about "Pay me two sestertii/folles/pennies and I'll wash your toga/tunic/doublet and hose."
More social anachronisms than anything...I tend to whitewash over gender rights issues and racial/tribal/jingoism for the most part in my historical games.
Well, except Call of Cthulhu, where random bizarre racism is part of the fun.
Quote from: TristramEvans;591672More social anachronisms than anything...I tend to whitewash over gender rights issues and racial/tribal/jingoism for the most part in my historical games.
Well, except Call of Cthulhu, where random bizarre racism is part of the fun.
Ah yes, "She was a negress!"
Seriously though, in historical games I generally prefer to acknowledge issues of gender/religion/race. However, the player characters get to deviate from the norms of the day quite a bit, as adventurers are (at least in my games) a bunch of anomic weirdoes anyway.
Quote from: TristramEvans;591672More social anachronisms than anything...I tend to whitewash over gender rights issues and racial/tribal/jingoism for the most part in my historical games. Well, except Call of Cthulhu, where random bizarre racism is part of the fun.
Didn't even think about that one, but its a huge one!
The happy cosmopolitan urban middle ages fantasy trope always got on my nerves. When people would rarely be allowed to travel to the net county without leave from the manse house, and look at strangers in askance, why would all the good humanoid D&D races mingle without incident. Culture and taboos is a very real thing and the glossing within games as time went by started to get under my skin.
And don't get me started on the stupidity of Common as a language across the planar multiverse. Yes, the whole universe speaks Esperanto, the language has been frozen for millennia, and yet new thoughts and ideas burgeon organically with negligible difference throughout. Outside of grunts of pain and other simple gestures denoting hunger, thirst, etc. "common" is not a true language.
Banking
Unions
Quote from: Opaopajr;591757The happy cosmopolitan urban middle ages fantasy trope always got on my nerves. When people would rarely be allowed to travel to the net county without leave from the manse house, and look at strangers in askance, why would all the good humanoid D&D races mingle without incident. Culture and taboos is a very real thing and the glossing within games as time went by started to get under my skin.
And don't get me started on the stupidity of Common as a language across the planar multiverse. Yes, the whole universe speaks Esperanto, the language has been frozen for millennia, and yet new thoughts and ideas burgeon organically with negligible difference throughout. Outside of grunts of pain and other simple gestures denoting hunger, thirst, etc. "common" is not a true language.
Hmmm...but what does any of that have to do with anachronisms in your games?
I already mentioned anachronisms in my games up-thread. I'm commenting on a tangential point upon more egalitarian cosmopolitan life (what our modern life would be comfortable with) being generally anachronistic and extending that to language. Globalized, let alone universal, language is also rather anachronistic for fantasy medieval and is a pet peeve of mine.
Quote from: Opaopajr;592098Globalized, let alone universal, language is also rather anachronistic for fantasy medieval and is a pet peeve of mine.
I understand, its a pet peeve of mine as well, though not as much as the "universal communicators" of SciFi shows. Of the ones I've seen, only Farscape proposed anything even remotely believable besides, weirdly enough, Hitchhiker's Guide.
I will give mad props to Douglas Adams and the babelfish.
Ooh, another fantasy trope anachronism I don't like, but don't put in my games, is the evenly distributed supplies of the supply shops. In the plains or sandy desert and want pitons and crampons? Why of course the local supply shop has everything in the PHB equipment list. It's just like Wal*Mart or Big 5 Sporting Goods. Supply chain and necessity? Bah, only special armors and weapons are at a premium or localized, everything else is evenly distributed throughout the world for your convenience...
Banking, to a certain extent, is an anachronism I use fairly frequently. Unions, not so much.
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