If someone tells you their setting is based off of medieval Europe, it’s usually pretty clear what to expect. Nations are ruled by a feudalistic network of hereditary landowners who also serve as an elite military class. Knights or some other hereditary warrior elite are likely going to be present. The majority of the population are farmers who serve these landowners in exchange for security. Gunpowder is either non-existent or in its infancy.
That tells you a lot. Not everything but you’ll find that no well-crafted fantasy setting can be easily summarized in only a few words.
Yeah you could narrow the inspiration of your medieval setting down to a hyper-specific place and period of history, but you don’t need to. For one, the author might not actually be doing that. They could just be developing their own culture with roughly medieval level technology. And technology in a fictional setting does not necessarily need to progress at the same rate as our own world - they could be ahead of the curve in some areas but behind in others.
If someone tells me: “my setting is based off of 12th century Normandy”, my first concern is going to be: “how much of your setting is your own creation and how much did you just take from history?” I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect worldbuilders to narrow it down to that extent: their story could be spanning multiple countries and they could be drawing from multiple different points of the medieval period. I don’t think this has much to do with how grounded your setting is.
I wish all advice links weren’t videos these days, I’m not going to be able to gain anything from those. If they don’t have subtitles, I’m going to miss half of what they say; even if they do, I don’t have the brainpower to actually watch them.
Luckily I have a folklorist on call, at least.
Unless you’re writing a family saga where the location is the main character and the point is showing it through the eyes of the human characters… I know a few non-IF authors who do that kind of thing. (Not medieval though, more 19th-early 20th century. And this one who does guesswork on prehistoric.)
Speaking of which, it’s still wild to me how every peasant in medieval fantasy has a family name. Like, what? Was that a thing in medieval England?
I was writing a stressful scene (as in the characters are stressed and Going Through ThingsTM) and I noticed my anxiety and heartbeat jumping up because of it. Gave me a good laugh when I noticed why I was feeling iffy
I think, though I’m not 100% sure, that it’s because the youtube algorithm is so good at promoting this sort of thing even outside of the niche it’s meant for. Creators are just incentivized to make vids rather than written posts, though that doesn’t mean that posts don’t have their place.
I imagine there’s an untapped market in social media/yt when it comes to getting fresh readers, though places like tumblr are better for getting the readers that are already in the space and already interested in interactive stories. That said, I am VERY happy that I can just make my game without needing to market it on tiktok, it seems so stressful to be a book author on there
Be that as it may, the end result is that I don’t benefit of that vast pool of information any! It’s an annoying position to be in, especially since it seems to be all people are linking nowadays.
I don’t think this is quite true. “Medieval Europe” covers a lot of time and a lot of ground, and part of my issue with “medieval” fantasy tropes is how they’ve sort of homogenised the whole time period into a fictionalised and highly simplified version of the High Medieval which didn’t actually exist. 6th century Thrace and 14th century England and 13th century Staufer Sicily and 11th century Kyiv are all “medieval European”, but very different from each other.
I chose to base the Fledgling Realms specifically on the historical period that “high fantasy” is supposed to be based on (late-high medieval Western Europe, especially Northern France and England), and there are still some differences between that setting and “conventional” medieval fantasy, much as there is in something like Darklands or Kingdom Come: Deliverance.
I think this is the key, mostly because this is generally what I do. I use history as a starting point, and work from there. Part of the reason the Fledgling Realms’ Concordat isn’t just Normandy and Southern England in about 1275 is because it’s been altered to conform with both the fantasy setting, and with sharing land borders with 14th century Mali, the 16th century Ottoman Empire/Muscovy, and having a direct sea route to 14th century Northern Italy.
This is one of the reasons I reaaaaallly want to depict medieval/Viking Age Finland, and one of the reasons I’m not doing that is that I know I couldn’t make it justice.
I’m not sure I agree, partly because of what @Cataphrak says above but also because there’s such a breadth of perception and also understanding of where/when a fantasy setting is “based on”.
I was amused once to see my game Blood Money (set in a second-world, non-industrialised, non-gunpowdered, warm-tropical rainy canal city with strong magical elements) referred to by a player as a game literally set in Victorian London. Granted that wasn’t me describing it that way, but there’s a temptation to set second-world fantasy settings against real historical/geographical settings where it doesn’t match up so precisely (or at all).
So in short I’m always interested to drill down into whether someone means “medieval” when they’re talking about fantasy settings, or just “vaguely pre-industrial”.
So what I mean is: when someone says their setting is based on “Medieval Europe” what they usually mean is: “this is the vibe my setting is meant to give off.”
We are indeed talking about a period spanning roughly a thousand years. And indeed, it’s true that there were many advancements in which will vary depending on what specific time in the medieval period we’re talking about. Things like the quality and availability of armour, the weapons used, the power and influence of guilds, the advancement of bureaucracy, the rights and privileges of the nobility, and so on, are all going to vary heavily based on time and place.
But what I’m trying to get across, is that when someone says “my setting is based off of medieval europe”, that is not the end point of their worldbuilding; it is the beginning. They’re telling you that their story/setting is not ancient, classical, renaissance, modern, futuristic, etc. Detail like how the government functions or the exact tech level will follow. Because if the writer isn’t intentionally delving into any specific period of history to pull these things from, they’re inevitably going to wind up fleshing those details out anyway as they create and explore more and more of their setting.
As you say, most “medieval fantasy” is based specifically on the late medieval period, and this is common across the genre. Writers who are actively trying to do something different are usually pretty quick to say or otherwise establish that they are, because they want to stand out. So it’s pretty easy to infer what is meant. I do feel like going: “I have no idea if you’re referring to the 6th century or the 14th century” is getting a bit lost in the reeds.
I was mainly objecting to the notion that saying “I based my setting off of medieval europe” tells people nothing. It’s also worth considering that someone who doesn’t know the difference between 6th century Thrace and 14th Century England isn’t actually going to get anything out of specifying. And someone who does know about those topics may potentially see any creative liberties you take as inaccuracies. That doesn’t make the setting inherently more “grounded”, which the person I first replied to claimed it did.
Plus: as you go on to say, even if you’re trying to be as accurate as possible, if you want your setting to be believable you are still going to have to make changes from what you originally wrote because you have to consider the geographical and political factors which actually cause culture to develop.
To be clear, I’m not saying there isn’t value in exploring this at all.
I took issue with the notion that telling someone your setting is based on “medieval europe” isn’t saying anything. Though I didn’t explicitly say so in my post, I also don’t believe that narrowing your focus to an even more specific period is somehow “more grounded.”
I have seen many writers with hyperfixations on very specific regions during specific periods of history and choose to copy/paste those things into fantasy settings, and the result was not a grounded fantasy setting because it just resulted in a bunch of unrelated cultures vomited onto a map. They gave hyper-detailed descriptions of how their society functioned and the people in it (who were literally named after and acted exactly like real world historical figures) but there was no soul or creativity there because it was just copied from historical articles they read. And it also didn’t feel grounded because the geopolitical factors which led to the development of those real world cultures were simply not present in the world we were trying to create together.
On the opposite end of the spectrum? Privately I’ve also personally had to deal with other people assuming I was doing the exact same thing because I gave them a brief summary of a concept that I was intended to serve as a hook before I elaborated in more detail. In a private personal nation-building roleplay: “Yeah this kingdom draws elements from both the Scottish and the Norse” received the feedback of: “oh so you’re just slapping the Norse and the Scottish together with no regard for how they are different or how the mingling of those two cultures would affect each other?” Because they took my vague concept and assumed that was the end of my worldbuilding rather than the beginning.
Worldbuilding can be tough. Communicating your worldbuilding to others in a way that doesn’t lead to them misunderstanding or making assumptions is even harder. That said, certain things can be inferred and just because something isn’t as detailed as you would like it to be doesn’t mean it should be dismissed.
All that to say: if someone tells me their setting is based on medieval europe my reaction isn’t: “which kingdom during which century?”, my reaction is to instead ask them about the geography, politics, cultures, and technology of their setting. That is what actually makes a setting grounded. And if the answers are things that I recognize, I can go: “oh cool, that sounds like…”
Meanwhile if I do ask: “which kingdom during which century?” there’s a chance that I might be putting them on the spot or that they might name something I myself do not know about. Because I’m not a historian and chances are, neither are they.
The individual in question was from Norway and very protective of their culture.
Though I had made it clear from the beginning that my goal was to take elements from both cultures I found interesting and also introduce my own stuff. It was pretty difficult to do this though because the GM couldn’t produce a map he was satisfied with and I didn’t want to get into the nitty gritty of designing a culture without a good sense of geography.
Edit: I should clarify this was for a private roleplay so neither of us were exactly up to professional standards. I mainly brought this up to demonstrate how difficult worldbuilding discussions can be.
Happy pride everyone, and thank you for all those who said it before me.
I have a question, I am thinking of writing two concept/test demos for some future IFs that I want to create. What would be a good word count goal to hit for the concept demo?
For a concept demo? Well, this might not be exactly what you want to hear but, I wouldn’t care about word count for a concept demo. Short, long, wide, thin, it doesn’t matter. I’d say the point of a concept demo is to, well, get the concept across.
Give it as much as you feel it needs. If you write 10k and still feel like you haven’t got the idea across, write more. Or, write less, but make it more clear. Hell, I’d say you might not even need a demo if you just want to get the concept across. Just do a really quick and persuasive pitch.
Though, it is your idea, and if you feel you need a demo? Go ahead make one. Just go ahead and start, you know your story better than we could, so I’d bet you’ll also know when your demo is good enough, regardless of word count.
I wrote a short concept demo for A Kiss from Death where it went through the life of just one ordinary farmer in the world and tried to express the feeling of your life moving by so quickly that you can’t catch up. I put it in the interest check thread. People liked it, so that sequence ended up in the final game. It was about 7000 words.
Hmm, quick q: in an Among Us inspired game, would it be more interesting to play a crewmate or an imposter?
Just wanna get some two cents here lol sorry if wrong channel
Of course, ultimately the writer is the one who brings life to the concept. A good write could probably even make a game about being bread seem fun lol /hj
But in all seriousness, I’m just curious on the main premise/ concept itsekf—would you prefer to play a crewmate or an imposter?
If they don’t have subtitles, I’m going to miss half of what they say; even if they do, I don’t have the brainpower to actually watch them.