>DM begins to describe a sumptuous feast prepared by the villagers
I had to stop him midway through his description, because if there's one thing I can't stand, it's rampant anachronisms.
I had to explain to him that medieval villagers wouldn't have access to salt, pepper, tomatoes, potatoes, leeks, apples, pears, pork, pineapples, salmon, scorpions, artichokes, turnips, chicken, carrots, or just about everything else that he described.
At best, a medieval peasant ate a porridge made of boiled and mashed tree bark in the morning, a flagon of bathing water for lunch, and they would cry themselves to sleep for dinner.
>>43764215
Was it actually a medieval setting, or was it a medieval fantasy setting, where you'd be wrong and anachronistic NOT to have magic influence how the world works, down to what peasants could and couldn't have access to?
>>43764215
I've always been curious, OP, what's it like to not know what fun is? Additionally, what's it like being an enormous sperg?
>>43764215
Was it a historical/realism game?
>>43764235
>>43764286
>falling for such obvious bait
8/10 OP, you kinda give it away with how tongue in cheek the last sentence is though
>>43764331
Whether it's bait or not, this is my massive fucking pet peeve so by god I'll bite.
I loathe when a fantasy setting visibly and painfully switches gears between mindlessly recreating the medieval period and mindlessly slathering fantastical elements into the designated Magic Zones, without ever thinking about how the two would affect one another.
It's especially irritating because all it ever seems to actually become is a cudgel to wield against any character deemed ~too weird~ by the DM or putting the wizard on easy mode because the rest of the world reacts to magic like it's literally never seen a fucking spell before, despite the dragon that was forcefucking the kingdom last week.
Which is the other side of it; these comically-dangerous monsters that civilization just... doesn't seem to adapt to or care about, at all, until or unless it's actually going after them?
tl;dr anything the wizard can pull off in the first session should be a well-known trick in the world. Even if only 1% of 1% of people were capable of magic whatsoever, it'd still be well-known.
Friendly reminder, there's a level of trolling where the troll knows that you know he is trolling and isn't trying to trick you and just wants to make you laugh. You probably know it as the benevolent un-trolls, but they used to call them jokes.
Posting two threads, then calling people out for your memes is bad form you little shit.
Go eat your fucking potatoes in your gazebo.
>>43764215
>>43764453
This
>Start describing the party's well earned celebration after killing the Sorcerer who was devouring their children
>That Guy stops me in the middle of my two short sentence description of the feast in order to correct me on my gratuitous inaccuracies of properly representing a fictional village.
>Everyone goes okay and we continue on with the game
>>43764453
>>43764502
Thing about a joke is someone besides the schmuck telling it has to find it funny.
>>43764215
>and they would cry themselves to sleep for dinner.
I was getting ready to let my inner co/ck/ start sperging, then this last part actually made me laugh. Pretty good, OP.
>>43764453
I'm imagining you come from a future wasteland where all hope is lost, and there is no joy in people's lives. The closest thing to laughter they have is slightly less stoic silence. A wizened old man explains to younglings the difference between trolling others for your own amusement, and trolling them for their own.
>>43764215
>sumptuous feast
>scorpions
>>43764331
I had fun once, and it was awful.
>>43764661
Don't knock 'til try.
>>43764661
>>43764785
The venom gives it a nice tang.
>>43764410
Build a setting around that idea, anon.
I was mucking around with some worldbuidling ideas years ago about how magic being a thing people could practice would affect a world, but I never finished it.
>>43764410
>It's especially irritating because all it ever seems to actually become is a cudgel to wield against any character deemed ~too weird~ by the DM or putting the wizard on easy mode because the rest of the world reacts to magic like it's literally never seen a fucking spell before, despite the dragon that was forcefucking the kingdom last week.
It's also used to keep martials down. But I guess you're the kind of guy who's okay with that.
>>43765152
It's one and the same; if the setting reacted to magic/monsters intelligently and with the hundreds/thousands of years of experience that it's supposed to, the wizard would be dramatically less effective (because he'd run into more counter-strategies and generally be less imposing) and the martials would be dramatically more effective (since they'd HAVE those counter-strategies, and probably be the best at them--assuming the system had any counter-strategies to give; if the system is written that magic Just Wins, then there's not a whole lot the setting can do to help).
>>43764549
Why does that snake have Kevin's face?
>>43764410
In a weird way, that reminds me of Kingdom Death, or at least the general idea of it - human society is forced to deal with magic and monsters and is forced to contract inwards, our old lifestyle impossible in a world of magical beasts.
I mean, I've never gotten deeper into the lore or setting because tittymodels, but the general idea stands. A world of magic and monsters would be a far, far harsher world for humans to survive in.
>>43764661
I've eaten worse.
Not on purpose though.
>>43764410
Eberron, man. That's why I love Eberron. Villages have eternal lantern lightposts, there's newspapers, and magic puts you somewhere between the Renaissance and 1920's levels, depending on the tech. Great shit.
>>43765325
You mean "why does Kevin have that snake's face?".
>>43764410
The setting that most DMs run, without realizing it, is the world as medieval people THOUGHT it was.
"Nope, I never seen a sphinx, but one lives up past 'yonder hill, sure as I was born!
... Why hasn't it conquered our kingdom with its vast magical power and superior intellect, you ask? Uh, don't rightly know. That's why I keep me distance."
>>43764624
This is why I love /tg/.
>>43765056
Personally this discussion makes me want to do the opposite. Make a setting to EMPHASIZE the fact that adventurers move in a different world from commoners. For commoners it's like wonder and adventure are always around the corner, but wonder and adventure get you butchered, so you don't go around those particular corners. You just dream about them.
>>43764215
I just... Don't like people describing food.
It does NOTHING for me, nothing at all.
It just feels like they're wasting words.
I don't know why.
It feels weird.
>>43767689
I'm guessing you had a gm who way overdid it because he/she loved redwall.
>>43764215
>salt
There's a salt mine in the next kingdom over. Granted it's expensive, but the village does have a good stock they've bought over time.
>pepper
Those wild berries that border the forest? They're all Pepperberries. Turns out they're quite common around here.
>tomatoes
The tomato vines are just over there, down by the stream.
>potatoes
They're still rare, but the plant that Mary stole from the King's personal garden is growing extremely well. We still can't believe that all she had to do to get past the guards was to buy them an ale each. Certainly hope this isn't indicative of the rest of the army.
>leeks
You're kidding right, why do you think we told you to stay out of the grass?
>apples, pears
There's an exotic fruit trader who comes through once a month. We have about a quarter of what we buy fresh and then we make Jam from the rest.
>pork
It's Pig. What are you? Some kind of Lilly Valley Fop?
>Pineapples
Again, same guy we got the Apples and Pears off of.
>Salmon
The navy brought them in just last week. Normally it's Sardines this time of year, but dried Salmon is much nicer.
>Scorpions
It was that or Rust Monster, and those always taste a bit tinny.
>artichokes
Apples, Pears, Pineapples...
>turnips
We started growing them last year, some adventurer traded a few plants for a weeks rent.
Thought he was having us on at first but they cook up nicely.
>chicken
Shh! It's actually just dove cooked differently them normal.
We didn't have the money to spare for a whole chicken but the youngins have been looking forward to trying it for so long we couldn't bare to disappoint them
>carrots,
Really? Carrots are our prime vegetable produce.
>>43764215
>At best, a medieval peasant ate a porridge made of boiled and mashed tree bark in the morning, a flagon of bathing water for lunch, and they would cry themselves to sleep for dinner
Made me kek.
>>43767537
I had a good laugh on
>"That's why I keep me distance."
>>43764661
I'd hate to come off as sounding autistic on 4chan, but I dislike this image, on the same grounds that I hate a lot of poorly defined puzzles.
There's A LOT of things not like the others in that image.
There's only one dude with glasses.
There's only one child not looking toward Clinton.
There's only a few people who don't look happy.
There's only one guy with a cellphone out.
There's only one white guy. (Fully visible)
Sure, I assume the point of the joke is the second to last one, but, other than the mildly racist assumption that Africans don't own cell phones, there's not a ton funny about that. (Yes, that particular crowd seems fairly poor, and therefore is likely low in cell phones, but still. There are cities just as developed as American ones in Africa.)
To make this a little less "Autism Triggered", that's one of the reasons it's so tricky to DM puzzles: unless you spend a fair bit of time, it's hard to find puzzles with ONLY one answer. You have to either be ready to accept answers that you didn't intend, thus making the puzzle easier, or you have to be a dick, thus burning party time.
>>43764215
>porridge made of boiled and mashed tree bark
That's nor how you make porridge.
>>43768058
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_World_crops
He's just pointing out how much shit should not exist in most medieval fantasy lands given that they're all supposedly set in the equivalent of 14th century Europe.
>>43768224
>fantasy-land must be an exact copy of whatever it's based on
14C Europe didn't have wizards and dragons either.
>>43768224
I know. I was giving a retort.
The comments about being a lilly valley fop, stealing potatoes and rust monsters, especially the rust monster, was a hint I was playing along.
>>43764785
we all know scorpions are insects
>>43768280
You're kidding right?
Count the number of legs.
Insects only have six legs.It's a squid
>>43768242
Bollocks didn't it, were you there? There's plenty sources saying about people doing magic. Up ur ackeracy m8.
>genuinely thinking people starved all the time
sure, famines, plauge and war had a large negative inpact on the lives of the peasantry, but as long as things just kept running smoothly peasants didn't starve had while surley they didn't have a luxurious diet so would they have what was locally produced at hand.
if you add in the fact that this is fantasy so is "the local peasant village prepares a feast for the people who saved their fucking shit" not really a big step from reality.
>>43768316
>were you there?
Yes. I am a skeleton, and there's no such thing as magic.
>>43768326
As a skeleton, I can confirm there was some serious magic getting tossed around in 14th century Europe.
>>43768360
I am also a skeleton, and this skeleton is a liar.
>>43768224
Clearly the Esteemed Order of Culinary Sorcerers have made a breakthrough in teleportation magic and are mostly squandering it by just getting neat new ingredients from distant lands.
>>43768448
>Squandering
New World Crops basically revolutionized life in Europe and lead to a huge population boom, especially once we figured out how to into Corn and Potatoes. The Kingdom to master these first would have a huge advantage
I spent an entire campaign pulling this on players once.
They were literally gods descended to Earth and most people knew it, yet the best feast anyone could put on usually consisted of a jelly-like dish made from berries and tree sap, usually served up with some rabbit meat and porridge for mains. There were occasional village specialties in particularly well off places, such as actual motherfucking BREAD, or fish.
There is one law of humanity, and that is, if you give people shit, they will figure out how to make good food out of it. ESPECIALLY if their lives are miserable. Suffering = Cuisine
>>43768174
>There are cities just as developed as American ones in Africa.
Detroit doesn't count.
>>43764410
>tl;dr anything the wizard can pull off in the first session should be a well-known trick in the world
Why? What possible reason do you have to assume that the average villager has ever even seen a wizard?
>>43765232
What 'counter strategies' are you even talking about that are not in fantasy games already?
>>43764551
False.
>>43767689
Well, if my extremely infrequent visits to /fit/ are any indication, they've got the same problem. Tell me, do you see the necessity of consuming foodstuffs as a nuisance?
>>43764215
They wouldn't have access to potatoes, pineapples or scorpions at least, all of the rest of the shit they had. And DMs really should learn about the history of the potato already, that shit wasn't medieval.
>>43768314
AZfriend here, it is just before 6am and I know where to catch scorpions. After a few minutes study I can verify that this is NOT an insect. Still trying to see how it navigates water though. A lot of flailing and sinking so far. Now it's staying still. Maybe waiting for prey to swim by? Results for squidiness behaviors will have to wait for now.
>>43764215
I bet you have a stick in your ass over cultural appropriation too, right?
Just because Fantasy/Medieval timelines don't coincide agriculturally does not mean certain crops did not exist. Besides what are you bitching about anyways? I'm sure someone in your party can summon lightning or fire from their nipples and piss acid or shit out magic missiles. Yet you take exception to crops and NOT the mage? How about the monk, do you have one of those around? Do you harp on them for using Lai Tung Pai instead of Ditangquan? Maybe give your bard a bunch of shit for referencing musical hits from the 19th century in their songs?
>>43769674
OP was a joke, anon. You could tell by subtle clues like "scorpion" in the list of ingredients, or the entire last paragraph.
>>43769674
>>43767680
>For commoners it's like wonder and adventure are always around the corner, but wonder and adventure get you butchered, so you don't go around those particular corners.
Very Terry Pratchett/Douglass Adams, I like it.
>>43764215
>if there's one thing I can't stand, it's rampant anachronisms
>medieval peasants
>bathing water
try harder anon
>>43765232
Frankly, it's arbitrary as hell to limit magic to medieval nerds anyway. Mythological warriors can do ridiculous things like shooting down the sun with a bow and arrow or shoving mountains out of the way, but for some reason Wizards get to become Elminster at higher levels while Fighters develop into "normal guy who is better at hitting stuff".
If Clerics get to become Moses, Fighters ought to become Herakles.
>>43764624
The future 4chan chose.
>>43768325
This.
And villagers actually had feasts as well. It was common practice during winter to search the forest for nuts to feed the pigs with, and then slaughter the pigs for their meat for great occasions.
Of course not all villagers had pigs, and that's another thing people tend to forget : All farmers and villagers didn't have the same living conditions
Some were so wealthy that they could build castles, but the law forced them to tone them down and call them "Mansion" instead since they weren't nobles. They would exploit other villagers working on their land, and those guys would live in bad conditions.
English longbowmen had to provide their own equipement, wich meant buying a sword, a jack, a helmet, a longbow and a horse. That's definitely not something someone who is constantly starving can afford.
>>43764215
>Medieval Settings
>Not Bronze Age
>Not Neolithic Magical Realms
how drool...
>>43769522
If I could get big without eating big, that'd be lovely
>>43769927
> Mythological warriors can do ridiculous things like shooting down the sun with a bow and arrow or shoving mountains out of the way,
Mythological warriors with divine magical powers. It's quite hard to find an example of a warrior performing some amazing feat that isn't being blessed by a god or descended from one.
>Fighters develop into "normal guy who is better at hitting stuff".
The "warrior bound by peak human limits" is a better description, and it's quite useful in a wide variety of campaign styles, including no-magic campaigns, and some people enjoy the challenge of achieving goals while remaining within defined boundaries. But, if you do want something a little more magical, there are other more "magical" warriors, such as the paladin, eldritch knight/other magic fighter variants, barbarian, ranger, cleric, ninja, samurai, and so on and so forth.
>>43770058
>Mythological warriors with divine magical powers. It's quite hard to find an example of a warrior performing some amazing feat that isn't being blessed by a god or descended from one.
It's hard to find /anyone/ doing /anything/ amazing that isn't put down to the blessing, assistance, or descent from a god - whether they're wizards, priests, hunters, lovers or warriors. That's how description works in ancient epics - when Athene gives Odysseus a great plan, it's Wisdom/Inspiration telling him what to do, not a sign that he literally needs a magic skyperson to hold his hand.
More to the point, if we're talking about mythological precedent, wizards basically shouldn't exist except as alchemists and diviners. Characters like Circe, Merlin, Zhuge Liang and the Witch Of Endor didn't throw around fireballs, they just had secret knowledge that let them make or work out things.
The absolute closest you get to actual D&D Wizard magic (Solomon, Moses, Abe no Seimei) is found in the equivalent of Clerics, who call on their divine or infernal patron/slave for power.
Even in popular pre-D&D fiction, Gandalf is a Paladin.
>>43770058
>The "warrior bound by peak human limits" is a better description, and it's quite useful in a wide variety of campaign styles, including no-magic campaigns
Yeah, exactly. The only way for a mundane character to keep up with a magical one is to kick out the magical one. Which is dumb, and not in line with any kind of fiction or myth that inspired D&D is based off.
>>43769707
But if I don't point out that its bait with my epic bait memes fresh from /v/, people will think I didn't get the joke.
I gotta safe face on this anonymous image board and prove I'm intellectually superior.
>>43770058
>Mythological warriors with divine magical powers. It's quite hard to find an example of a warrior performing some amazing feat that isn't being blessed by a god or descended from one.
Which is also true of wizards.
Unless you go into eastern mythologies... but then they also have totally non-divine mythic badass warriors, so it's a wash.
>>43769936
>The future 4chan chose.
>>43765332
I think the operative difference is that in KD:M, everything is a gribbly man-eating horror and in, say, most D&D settings, many things aren't.
As long as were having happyspergytimes, this is one of the things that really got to me about Pokemon after a while, too. I feel like a world whose entire biosphere includes 6" creatures with the natural ability to cause tectonic upheaval would somehow involve a bit more struggle.
>>43768326
>>43768360
>>43768413
Lich reporting in, magic is a lie they told the peasantry
>>43770666
I would put it down to power creep, but even the first game had Onyx. Yeah, human society looking nearly identical to our own with small villages and such don't really make sense unless Pokemon are an incredibly new thing, like introduced in the last ten years and mankind just hasn't grasped the horror of a potential PokeWar.
>>43770666
>>43770848
The pokemon games actually start after a recent PokeWar, one that Lt. Surge took active duty in.
The ultimate plot of the first game is trying to locate and subdue a rogue military weapon that was financed by a terrorist organization with aims of world domination.
The later game likewise include hints of past struggle alongside present threats to world peace, and while it looks like a happy world on the outside, it's always just that you start in a fragile period of tranquility that quickly deteriorates.
>>43769950
Its ''droll'' fuckwit
>>43764215
Actually, many historians have found that the medieval diet was much richer than many believed. In addition to having access to a largervariety of nutritious crops, they have also found that outside of times of war and drought the idea of total subsistence farming was a myth.
>>43764661
According to my friend, scorpion is actually delicious especially fried.
>>43771001
Damn you, anon. Now my lust for PokéGear Solid can't be quenched.
>>43764215
>I had to explain to him that medieval villagers wouldn't have access to salt
Stopped reading there.
>>43764410
>>43764410
You gotta go with a low magic and low power world if you want anything resembling historical accuracy.
Though I go with 1500's level tech and explicitly post-atlantic trade type settings so I avoid setting off player autism because I described a pumpkin pie.
![img000035[1].png](https://i.imgur.com/O7lj5E6.jpg "img000035[1].png")
>>43764661
Plebeian.
>>43771903
>Solid Snake will never evade roaming Hitmonlees
>you will never see him and Liquid fistfight on top of an enormous Blastoise
>>43771428
On the table was placed a centre-piece, which represented a green lawn, surrounded with large peacocks' feathers and green branches, to which were tied violets and other sweet-smelling flowers
In the middle of this lawn a fortress was placed, covered with silver
The fortress was hollow, and formed a sort of cage, in which several live birds were shut up, their tufts and feet being gilt
On its tower, which was gilt, three banners were placed
The first course consisted of a civet of hare, a quarter of stag which had been a night in salt, a stuffed chicken, and a loin of veal
The two last dishes were covered with a German sauce, with gilt sugar-plums, and pomegranate seeds
At each end, outside the green lawn, was an enormous pie, surmounted with smaller pies, which formed a crown. The crust of the large pies were silvered all round and gilt at the top. Each pie contained a whole roe-deer, a gosling, three capons, six chickens, ten pigeons, one young rabbit, and, no doubt to serve as seasoning or stuffing, a minced loin of veal, two pounds of fat, and twenty-six hard-boiled eggs, covered with saffron and flavoured with cloves
For the three following courses of the feast there was a roe-deer, a pig, a sturgeon cooked in parsley and vinegar, and covered with powdered ginger
A kid goat, two goslings, twelve chickens, as many pigeons, six young rabbits, two herons, a leveret, a fat capon stuffed, four chickens covered with yolks of eggs and sprinkled with spice, a wild boar, some wafers and stars
A jelly, part white and part red, representing the crests of the honored guests
Cream covered with fennel seeds and preserved in sugar
A white cream, cheese in slices, and strawberries
And, lastly, plums stewed in rose-water
Besides these four courses, there was a fifth, entirely composed of the prepared wines then in vogue, and of preserves. These consisted of fruits and various sweet pastries
>>43768801
The Appalachians are basically a procession of villages that could have come straight out of Africa
>>43771981
>A weapon to surpass Hyper Beam!
