A common trope in both fantasy and science fiction is the autocrat with unlimited power. It should be obvious that in real life, no one wields that kind of authority. One source of inspiration for these despots is the legacy of European monarchs. The proper term for the philosophy that kings and queens should have... Continue Reading →
For Your Enlightenment: Pre-industrial gunpowder warfare for compelling militaries
Many people argue that due to magic, fantasy combat should have more in common with early modern warfare than premodern war. To be honest, I haven't fully considered this idea. To get started, let's look at what war looked like in the gunpowder era before the Industrial Revolution. This will focus on European warfare at... Continue Reading →
For Your Enlightenment: Early modern colonialism for fictional empires
Now that the first article discussing the basics of the early modern era, is out of the way, we can get started dissecting the elements that can be used by worldbuilders. One of the features that defined the early modern period was globalization. The world went from being a collection of regional powers that only... Continue Reading →
For Your Enlightenment, Prologue: Intro to the Early Modern Era
Merry Christmas, worldbuilders! A few people have asked for info on the early modern period. While the premodern era has many lessons worldbuilders can draw from, the rest of history definitely has its share of inspiration. This is the introduction to a series collecting what I consider to be some of the more interesting features.... Continue Reading →
For Your Enjoyment, Part 9: Premodern medicine for lifelike well-being
Well, here we are. As far as I can tell, this is the last topic I can helpfully cover about premodern life. Everything else is too varied or too complex to discuss in an article of reasonable length. But, that leads into two new upcoming series! For Your Enchantment will revisit the topics covered in... Continue Reading →
For Your Enjoyment, Part 8: Premodern travel for realistic journeys
Assuming your world will feature a variety of fascinating places, your characters will probably spend a lot of time travelling between them. Today we'll look at all the factors affecting transportation in the premodern world. The usual conditions apply. Magic changes a lot, so we'll address that in a different article. You could argue that... Continue Reading →
For Your Enjoyment, Part 7: Premodern nobility for interesting aristocracy
Another week, another ramble about the intersection between history and worldbuilding! This week, it's the commonalities between the upper classes of premodern cultures. I should note that while I use the word "nobility," I just mean an upper class that is given special rights and/or responsibilities by the government. In general, the concepts used in... Continue Reading →
For Your Enjoyment, Part 6: Law and order for justice systems
I'm running low on topics that can effectively be addressed in these "focus on cross-cultural trends" articles. I've got this one, then nobility, then travel, then I'm out. I'm open to moving on to For Your Enchantment, which will revisit these topics with magic and monsters added in, but I'd be fine with returning to... Continue Reading →
For Your Enjoyment, Part 4: Facts about premodern polytheism for more engaging religions
After general society, warfare, and economy, people have been asking for religion. So here we go! Right at the start, I'd like to recommend Bret Devereaux's "Practical Polytheism" series on his blog, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry. That series inspired a lot of this, though I've added some insights and resources as well. Alrighty, the... Continue Reading →
For Your Enjoyment, Part 3: Trade and commerce for deeper economies
I had a great time writing about premodern society and warfare, and people had some great suggestions on what to do next. One good one I saw was economics, so I'll try to tackle that here. For those who might be nervous: I'm not going to be getting into stuff like interest rates and fiscal... Continue Reading →
For Your Enjoyment, Part 2: Facts about premodern warfare to make deeper armies and battles
I made a post the other day about using premodern society to inspire worldbuilding, and it got way more popular than I expected. I decided to make a sequel on warfare. Let me know if there's anything else you'd like me to write on! Like the last one, I'm going to try to focus on... Continue Reading →
For Your Enjoyment: Facts about premodern life to make livelier settlements and NPCs
It can be hard to make interesting people and places. Things kind of blur together, forming a mush of fantasy tropes. One source of inspiration is actual history: so many of our fantasy settings are based on misconceptions that a world closer to reality can be novel and fascinating. (And if you're like me, realism... Continue Reading →
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