I Found The Most 'Realistic' D&D Setting

[@rasmuseide5543]

Mostly I've found that when I look for "realistic" world-building or are, what I'm actually looking for is "clever" and "impressive", as well as some minimal standard of self-consistency needed for stakes to feel meaningful and trustworthy.

[@pandereodium]

I couldn't agree more

[@DStrormer]

I saw the blurred cover in the thumbnail and literally shouted Kalamar in excitement. For all its faults, I love the KoK books and not enough people know about it. Of it were more popular, perhaps it could see a revival and a bit of a modern revision. In any case, glad to see someone else at least knows about it. 😃

[@ColonelEviscerator]

I would hate to see a modern revision of Kalamar. Given the direction WotC has taken D&D lately, I think they'd take out a lot of what makes Kalamar so internally consistent and realistic.

[@nvfury13]

Got it sitting on my shelf right now, and also recognized it instantly. However, it is far from the most “realistic” setting, those would be the many real-world historical settings they released for 2nd Edition.

[@jefferywienhoff7678]

Seen the blur and went that looks familiar. Oh, that is Kalamar. Good news, it is not owned by WOTC, it is owned by Kenser and Company

[@hawkticus_history_corner]

@@ColonelEviscerator Don't gotta worry about that, Kenzer and Co are making it themselves. They even have their own 2e clone called Hackmaster.

[@ZamboniZone]

Kalamar, I remember that. I think I have it.

[@jaxkommish]

I co-wrote Divine Masters book for KoK and the review is pretty spot on. By the time I stumbled across the setting, it was already well established. It's a great setting if you buy into any one of the regional areas to focus on. Treat it like you would any other setting - and grab what you like

[@RyuuKageDesu]

This is why I prefer creating my own worlds, with their own pantheons.

[@gabehurd7569]

Hell, I've moved past that, and have started making my own game system for my own world with its own pantheons.

[@RyuuKageDesu]

@@gabehurd7569 Funny. That's my next step.

[@corsaircaruso471]

Same

[@gabehurd7569]

@@RyuuKageDesu it's both harder and easier than you'd think

[@RyuuKageDesu]

@@gabehurd7569 Part of my degree is game design, so I completely understand that.

[@vadaritis]

Fantastic vid! Here are my thoughts on the subject of realism. When running a game of dnd, its more important to have a compelling setting than a 'realistic' one. If you find a way to make the difference between an African and European Swallow's migratory patterns relavent to your game. Then awesome, you got a cool plot hook from some of your world building. Otherwise its completely worthless to both you and the players, and thus you wasted your prep time. For example, i will make a map with relatively good geography, dot some towns around in areas that make sense for the most part such as having access to water, and just decide. "This town is a mining town. Main export is steel." Then that gives me the ability to take that idea later, and go "if the forest elves disrupt all trade to that town it will mean no more tools can be made for the rest of the area to expand into the forest. This gives me the ability to turn the game into colonialism vs defending ones-home, and get some compelling plothooks from that. Now that isnt to say i dont then go down strange rabbit holes about weather patterns and dual moon lunar cycles... In my setting, all the celestial bodies are just spherical super-portals to alternate planes of existence. The shadowfell and the feywild are both moons. The sun is the plane of fire, and the other four planets in the 'solar system' are the prime material, the planes of air, earth (underdark), and water respectively. I didnt do this for my game as much as i made those changes cause 'I' thought it was cool. Other than the phases of the moons, it really hasn't mattered about the rest. But so long as you have fun, and realise that you are world building for fun more than to share. Then you should be a lot happier with both your world building, and your games.

[@JukeBoxHead]

Ive never taken your videos to be about realism, maybe a little authoritative, but not nitpicking realism. Ive always taken it as "if this thing is in your setting you need to deal with the implications of this existing"

[@TheRezro]

Good story should be coherent, not realistic. Real life is boring and nasty.

[@thamiordragonheart8682]

verisimilitude is great and can help make the world feel really cool and engaging, but there's no good reason to have that much detail. All you need is enough of a sketch to fill in the local details as you need them in a way that's consistent with the world and maybe get some awesome throwaway lines for NPCs. There's a good rule of thumb for writing where verisimilitude depends on how many levels of explanation you have with diminishing returns. having one level of explanation between the state of the world and "just because" is important for verisimilitude, and having two layers is great, but more than that really doesn't make any difference to the world or the story. People generally don't even go deeper than that in real life outside specialized academic research. One of the most important things to keep in mind is that so much of what drives verisimilitude is not explaining in detail why something exists in the world or how it got to be the way it is, so much as accepting that it does and thinking through the consequences of dealing with it. explaining exactly how the world got to be the way it is is the entire conceit of hard Sci-Fi, which most people aren't interested in. Especially with various gods, I feel like however well-considered they are, modern fantasy often gets stuck looking at "pagan" religions through a very Christian lens instead of through the lens of real ancient folklore and religion, which is part of how you get things like the D&D 9 square alignment system, gods who represent exclusively vices, and the odd focus on henothism. If you want cool religion, have things like minor patron gods and local fae (the capricious and mercurial kind), and have major gods that roughly line up with the extremes on each of the big 5 personality scales. it's not perfect, but it's close enough to what polytheistic religions really looked like, gives you your one level of explanation, and it's easy to make things up as you go along in a way that's coherent. I'm an aerospace engineer, so I know all about how planes work, and I don't actually care or cringe over dragons showing up on screen as long as they look awesome enough. Just make sure you thought through the first-order consequences of having them and you have that one level of explanation between how the dragons work and "just because" and it's easy enough to suspend disbelief. One of my favorite series with dragons is Anne McCaffrey's Dragon Riders of Pern. The dragons have 6 limbs, so a lot of the native life on Pern also has 6 limbs, and the story and cultural consequences of having the dragons are well thought out, and that places them in the world really well, without needing all the detail of exactly how everything works and how it got that way.

[@MauroDraco]

Excellent points!

[@tuomasronnberg5244]

Agreed. I've noticed that the older I grow, the less patience for worldbuilding I have and the more I want just to get the damn game going already! I can always fill in the blanks afterwards once it becomes relevant to the player characters.

[@TheRezro]

D&D alignment is rather problem of interpretation then hard rules. At least in modern interpretations.

[@tuomasronnberg5244]

@@TheRezro Well yeah, alignment has never had any kind of hard rules attached to it. Even back in the OD&D days saying that your character was Lawful or Chaotic didn't mean anything, because it had no mechanical effect. Paladin and Cavalier classes were exceptional because they came with some kind of rules codified ethics with them. As much as people liked to talk about alignment, it never had any kind of real impact on the gameplay.

[@TheRezro]

@@tuomasronnberg5244 It did have importance on how higher dimension worked. With most notable example being Planescape. I also never understand why there can't be a Dark Paladin?

[@gregh5665]

6:58. I love the 9-square alignment system. Morality and motivation summed up in two letters. Does it capture the full, nuanced world of sentient behaviour? No. Will your professor appreciate you referencing it in your term paper on Dostoevsky? No. But it saves the average DM and gamer reams of explanatory text. And it fits neatly into a stat block next to AC, HP, etc.

[@TheRezro]

The problem of old D&D was that it fallow arbitrary interpretations too strict. Instead being guideline.

[@TheRezro]

Regard good and evil, it can be maintained rationally in D&D with more humane approach to morality. Good people show more community focus, no matter if they are noble patrons, just normal folks who try survive or idealistic rebels opposing what they see as bad in society. While evil people should be rather egoistic, but not evil on principle of evil. So mafia running shady bussines, common antisocial people or straight bandits, who still see themselves as just trying to survive or even the victims of society. There should be reasons who people would pick a specific god, like for example personal liberation. It is worth to check modern satanism, as analogy for this subject.

[@gonzoengineering4894]

It's great, if you have no intention of role-playing

[@guyman1570]

​@@gonzoengineering4894only if you use it wrongly

[@michaelmullenfiddler]

I wonder if the people of Kalamar are called Kalamari?...

[@danielwindler7404]

Brb, making my settings more realistic

[@greenguy369]

This is probably my favorite video on this channel as you actually directly address what has consistently been my biggest issue with the way information has been presented here historically. Great video. Very important messaging very well delivered.

[@MRDRK1]

I could have sworn I had the Kingdoms of Kalamar book. I spent hours looking for it, only to conclude I don't actually have it. What I thought was real, was in fact an error in memory and perception. Fitting, isn't it?

[@Dreamfox-df6bg]

One detail I liked about the Kingdoms of Kalamar was that in one book they had a short description what the various deities' holy books usually looked like and what was written in them. It was a nice touch as that is what most people will know about their deities.

[@Holycrapitschad]

Yeah its definitely important to include that because it gives you context for why there may actually be members of this faith despite the darker stuff that they may be known to do in secret. The way BG3 handles sharrans kind of illustrates how a cult or “evil religion” can continue to exist in an at least somewhat realistic capacity

[@keenirr5332]

A thought: perhaps what you said about the Goddess of Spite, is what the faith's enemies say about it & wrote about it...nobody in general society nowadays is a follower of that goddess, so if anyone wants to learn about and maybe revive the faith, they only have what the goddess' followers' enemies wrote about it.

[@Lusa_Iceheart]

Kalamar initially caught my attention for many of the same reasons (great geographical and cultural world building), but the heavy focus on humans made me less enthused. Like most other published settings, this is one I wouldn't use out of the box but rather I'd rip it apart and use what I like while discarding the rest. The pantheon is one of those things I'd toss completely. I'd add more dwarven and elven presence, plus other races like Dragonborn (since my players like them), some of the nomadic tribal groups in the plains regions would be centaurs rather than humans, ect. I'd add in aquatic nations, like of saughiun or merfolk, add an underdark. It's a great big setting with an impressive map, but its very empty. The big central, cosmopolitan empire of Kalamar itself would also need a lot more internal racial diversity. Sort of like in the Eberron setting how you'll have dwarves who'd think of themselves as citizens of the empire first, dwarves second; assimilated after millennia of being members of the cosmopolitan empire. Magic would also need to be more consistently applied, that's always something settings seem to get lazy with and never properly consider the implications of how impactful magic would be to an economy and warfare. Imagine your leading a Roman Legion sized force to secure a frontier border, you've got 5000 men. If you had just 100 spellcasters attached to your unit, you could easily have the resources to build a stone (rather than wooden) field fort and supply it with a fraction of the normal baggage train. A single 9th level wizard could erect stone walls in four days and then establish a teleportation circle allowing you to instantly ferry troops and supply from anywhere else you this border fort. Druids and clerics could supplement the food supply and even just low level (5th or less) would greatly mitigate the impact of injuries' and disease. Starvation and disease destroyed more armies than battles ever did and those would be rather inconsequential to a force with spellcasters. This all ignores the artillery support magic can readily provide. And 100 spellcasters is a rather meager number too, you probably brought more horses with you than that even assuming every solider (including officers) walked. Even in a LOW magic setting (something abysmal like 1 caster in 10,000 people), there should still be enough of the population capable of casting spells (even low level spells) that a large empire could supplement it's fighting forces with plenty of magic. Based on Kalamars population numbers, they could be fielding entire legions worth of spell casters while still having more on the home-front greatly boosting domestic productivity.

[@HelotOnWheels]

Having magic revolutionize military affairs in that way is a legitimate option, but I don’t think it’s mandatory. Wizards are traditionally depicted simply being more interested in abstract science and the study of other worlds than in war-fighting and farming, and perhaps past efforts to coerce them to use their powers for other goals Ended Badly. A future TTRPG player might dismiss our own world as “unrealistic” for similar reasons. “A real world civilization with nuclear power and steam engines could easily have eliminated poverty and disease and colonized space and other planets.” Yes, we could have done those things, but our leaders’ priorities were elsewhere.

[@Lusa_Iceheart]

@@HelotOnWheelsThat's a fair point comparing it to nuclear energy. Altho I was figuring spellcasters would typically be conscripts or required to serve a term in the military either by law or social convention (for access to training/schools) so recruiting sufficient numbers wouldn't be as much as a problem. Militant autocracies like Kalamar would ensure they got their quota of spellcasters in the military. The thing that would hold it back tho would be a stigma against magic (in the same way nuclear energy is stuck with the stigma of weapons and a few bad meltdowns), tho I don't think the Kalamar empire has such a stigma. And most any empire modeled off the Roman "conquer and assimilate" philosophy would be likewise open to adopting military tactics of their enemies that worked. The famous Gladius, the scutum shield, the phalanx formation, it was all borrowed from people the romans fought when they saw that it worked. Kalamar, I assume, would have very little issue with adopting magic traditions that proved effective, including necromancy.

[@IdiotinGlans]

Worth noting - Hackmaster and Kingdoms of Kalamar begun as a parody of D&D in a comic Knights of the Dinner Table, then growing into the real thing. I wouldn't be surprised if some of complaints about things like the Corruptor you voice were once jokes in that comic.

[@metakarukenshi]

settings for TTRPG always fascinate me and how people interact with them. I for one cannot really enjoy running a campaign anymore unless its in my own world, even though I regularly am changing my world as we play, it gives me a sense of closeness and genuine passion about the story.

[@jasonGamesMaster]

The only D&D setting that ever really clicked for me in a "realism" way was Warlords of the Accordlands. Its still got alignments, but they don't mean much. You can be a Chaotic Good follower of the Storm, for instance, which is a Lawful Evil deity. Yes, there is a preference there, as the Storm embodies "Might makes right" so the character will have some cognitive dissonance, but the Storm itself doesn't care. The Storm is also a great example of powerful people altering the way religion works through polemics and propaganda to suit their own ends. Its a shame it only got 4 books before disappearing.

[@Magic__7]

The kingdoms of kalamar is the setting my dad use there was a time we needed to cross a sea only problem the curents go the worng way so sailing the way we need to go was a no go Its a fun setting to play in there is always more to know but thats the problem there is always more to know

[@thekaxmax]

Is there want always more to know the setting is finished and done for.

[@kylemerryman2074]

It’s honestly a book I grabbed for worldbuilding inspo, paired with the Atlas. It covers not just geography but wind currents and different resource locations which both indicate trade flow. My personal setting is partly defined by its nautical trade and I hope to build my own atlas.

[@corsaircaruso471]

I’ve been designing my own setting for the past couple of years, and I think I need to get my hands on this!

[@Arcko9]

Yo this is probably the first time ive ever seen anyone else ever mention that setting book, i love it. Its not perfect of course as you explain, but I do use the setting quite frequently.

[@samuelhaldane4717]

The best fantasy world I've ever played in is Eberron. It takes the things that exist in D&D and asks how they would play out.

[@llamatronian101]

Sometimes realistic rain shadows are fine. Other times I want a desert because a young prince was accidentally gifted a wish, and said one wet day "I wish it would never rain again!"

[@laurencefraser]

For most people, 'realism' means that the thing in front of them should have the expected effects unless a specific reason is given for why it does not. And maybe if something seems really out of place and they ask 'why?' there should be a reason for it that isn't complete nonsense in light of the rest of the setting. Now, what the Expected Effects are will, of course, vary with their knowledge of the thing in question, both IRL and in setting. Which can make things a bit awkward.

[@Heselbine]

Great to see Kalamar discussed. One of my all time favourite settings.

[@kovi567]

Logical is when something can be traced back to something ESTABLISHED, at least in fictional literature, where the thruth is managed by the author. HEMA plebs get pissy about fantasy fight scenes because they employ the weapons they trained with, and thus know how they work (and because big money filmmakers can't bother to ask for professional opinions when making fight coerographies, which is quite stupid tbh). For the record, if one gets the basics right they are mostly placated. Avionics engineers(dafuque?) and biologists cringe when seeing dragons fly is because most depictions don't even try to have a reasonable mass-to-wingspan ratio, or because their body plan fails to follow basic aerodynamics. Historians will bitch about basically anything that is within their field of knowledge and the get accosted by other historians who point out that this and that part is actually connected and dependenton their field of knowledge, and was actually done this and that way instead. Basically, nowadays you will always find someone who knows better, so the best you can do is build a logical string that traces itself back to something that was established early on. If gandalf has a spell that can do X, don't just use it in situation X where it conviniences the plot, but also at Y and Z where it would also make sense. That gets most critics off one's shoulder. The problem begins when something is marketed as realistic, historical, or all the other terms that knowitalls have taken dibs on.

[@kovi567]

TL;DR: Make your setting internally consistent and most people will find little to gripe about.

[@TheRezro]

The problem is rather that people don't even bother to check basics, rather then being realistic.

[@lukkaredwolf3534]

Have you just checked out the Campaign setting book, or have you also seen the Player's Guide as well? I know that there is an awful lot of Gazetters from them as well that worked to pad some of the information that you found lacking.

[@sequoyahwright]

Outstanding shout out to an oft-overlooked, excellent product from the 3rd Edition days.

[@kelpiekit4002]

I think it can be a matter of tone. Tone can be horror, high fantasy, folkloric, etc. But scientific is also a tone. Ethnographic, geopolitical, technologically progressive, bureaucratic, and so on are not just setting. They all shape tone. As such they can also be the wrong tone. And if you shove them all in to be realistic they can conflict and damage tone. Because realism is not about being realistic. If someone wants wounds to be realistic then it's not about realism, it's about danger and the experience of harsher survival. An importance of migration may be a focus around politics, cultural issues, or the relationship with the natural world. In real life things happened because things happened. In fantasy worlds things happened because of meaning and feeling now.

[@connors7078]

I guessed the Kalamar books from the opening too. I have this Campaign Guide AND the Player's Handbook.

[@Liethen]

Soon as I read the title I knew exactly which setting you were talking about. No matter it's flaws it's still one of my favorites to this day.

[@neuromantic4313]

hackmaster is so named because it began as a fictional rpg in a comic strip

[@Dreamfox-df6bg]

And then the questions for a rule book came in as well as questions for a license. They originally had the ok from WotC to use the old AD&D 2nd Edition rules for Hackmaster. This has changed since then, Also the fictional creator of Hackmaster was Gary Jackson. A combination of Gary Gygax (D&D) and Steve Jackson (GURPS) for those not in on the joke.

[@neuromantic4313]

@@Dreamfox-df6bgwhat causes your comment to be highlighted?

[@Dreamfox-df6bg]

@@neuromantic4313 I have no idea. For me it was your reply that was highlighted.

[@SymbioteMullet]

Today i discovered that Hackmaster has an official setting. How I'd missed that for so long is a mystery. Well, time to grab my +12 and find a swack-iron again.

[@samuelteare8160]

very reasonable video! Thanks, Grungeon Master!

[@darkqueenfenrisulfr]

I also been making the mistake of falling in the trap of realism .(i have a degree on medieval history) Last year i been trying to focus on Authenticity over Realism. Ive found that my focus on realism bogs down the game on things the players dont have the same interest as me. I want to focus on giving an authetic feeling of my world with out , to feel real with out falling on the trap of realism Tldr Authenticity > Realism

[@hawkticus_history_corner]

I recognized the cover even blurred. I love that setting, even with all its weird quirks.

[@laurencefraser]

For most people, 'realism' means that the thing in front of them should have the expected effects on the rest of the world unless a specific reason is given for why it does not. And maybe if something seems really out of place and they ask 'why?' there should be a reason for it that isn't complete nonsense in light of the rest of the setting. Now, what the Expected Effects are will, of course, vary with their knowledge of the thing in question, both IRL and in setting. Which can make things a bit awkward.

[@HelotOnWheels]

Hobgoblins are a favorite race/species for me, too. One of my better homebrew cultures was the Maklons, a tribe of bison-herding hobgoblin worg-riders. I and my son did a very successful short campaign centered around trying to recruit the Maklons as allies to save their hometown from another barbarian tribe.

[@Holycrapitschad]

I have recently been working on a setting where goblinoids as a whole are pretty much a steppe herder culture outside of a select few urbanizing trade cities along a major trade route so the cities are administrated by goblinoids and are very nice and generally safe but the areas surrounding are basically a no mans land due to the more isolated populations having to raid trade caravans and settlements to supplement their lifestyle

[@onetruetroy]

Terrific video. I hope the ewe toob owl gore rhythm treats you well. The first time I was introduced to the nine square alignment arrangement, I blurted out “oh, like the Hollywood Squares.” We couldn’t not think about that and filled each box with a celebrity. Paul Lynde was always in the center square. Strangely enough, it was a great way to get the gist of the alignments from the notable personality traits. Fun times.

[@nobody342]

THe problem with other peoples worlds is its not your world. You have to know everything about someone else world to run it, but your own world, you only have to know what you plan to tell the players, and then remember what you told them. You can have it predefined, partly defined or almost non-defined, as long as your consistant with what you have told them in the past. Premade worlds are great for ideas, but if you players have access to the worlds info, they may know more about it then you do, then when you contridict it, well its just trouble!.

[@marks7037]

Yeah all of it is interwoven with magic, of course its not realistic 😂 That being said, whenever someone tries to tell me drow are evil because an evil goddess took control, or that humans are the only race that mixed with other races, I cringe like crazy - not because it is objectively wrong, but because it feels subjectively wrong and seems like poor taste.

[@kylienielsen6975]

And it's also really boring

[@Zerker102]

So funny thing, race mixing isn't limited to human, at least in the major D&D setting of Faerun. Most of the humanoid races that are playable are able to have children with one another. It's just that offspring end up being one of the races of the parents, with maybe some minor feature from the other race. The hybridization of half elfs and half orcs is entirely unique to them and is why they get a special mention as a playable race. If you want an example, dwarves can have offspring with humans, halflings, and gnomes(too my knowledge). The offspring from these unions will almost always be a dwarf. Sure they might be a little taller(humam) or shorter(halfling/gnome), or have more hair on their feet/hands(halfling), or have weird hair colors(gnome), to anyone who was not aware of their heritage, they would be no different from any other dwarf they've seen.

[@marks7037]

@@Zerker102 so what you are saying is that they in fact do not exist. Dwarves and elves can have offspring but they are either elves or dwarves. Which is imho just stoopid. In fact, I would dare to say that even if such half-bloods "exist" in a game world sense, they are not real as long as there are no mechanical differences.

[@albertcapley6894]

There were books giving more detail to the other species, including one for the hobgoblins I'm still trying to track down for my collection. Some of the gods do seem like their portfolios were made by rolling on a d% chart out of Warhammer fantasy or something, which was odd, I kinda lifted a lot of things from this setting for my own homebrew which (for now) is largely focused on one very large city and surrounding region, so the wider world is less directly important anyhow. I really liked the spell singer and basirian dancer as base class concepts, as they presented a lot of flavor and felt like real professions rather than like archetype heroes from literature, which is a trope I like to play around with, some characters blue the line between these distinctions like how the fighter is both highly trope and completely realistic as well, but others sometimes are almost pure trope, like the barbarian, or, mechanically at least, the bard (from a 3/3.5 perspective). You could ofc tailor yr bard to feel less like a trope, but out of the box it's just a literature exposition character lol. The basirian dancer, which shares many traits with bards, feels like a real cultural role straight out of the box, and I really like that. Spell singing is just straight up cool turned up to eleven, like it might even be underpowered (unless DM let's you use the silent augmentation dear) but the idea of mages who sing recalls what I love about magic in Middle Earth where songs (sometimes) really carry magic of their own, and it feels very satisfying. Ofc I modify all these classes to essentially PF1e scale, but I try to play them as much like they are in the main book as possible with concessions made for the power level difference.

[@albertcapley6894]

* silent augmentation feat*

[@mikesstuff5307]

Ooooo, I adored playing in Kalamar back in the day. Kenzerco puts out some good content.

[@PjotrFrank]

Love the new frog (Grungeon?) on the shelf.

[@wokste]

Great video. For me, verisimilitude is the absence of the need for suspense of disbelief. This greatly depends on the audience. If nobody at the table blinks an eye when you describe an evil religion and nobody finds it jarring is succeeds on the verisimilitude. If that also happens to be an easy plot hook, it can really help move the plot forward. On the other hand, if people find it strange, then you should not put these "unrealistic" elements into the game. Realism is a really hard goal to reach, especially when also keeping abstractions, gameplay, sensitive topics and limited mindspace in mind.

[@Xaphedo]

My goal as a DM is to immerse my players. My specific players. Verisimilitude is a good basis and it can't hurt to try to stick to it, but it's not even close to the most important factor that will keep most players engaged. What is that factor, then? Only your players can tell you.

[@crimfan]

Verisimilitude is good but too much work to attain it can end up being a block from fun, which is the point of gaming.

[@sameraiza5767]

Having a plot that doesn't make sense can be very fun. Just read the plot of the Gen 3 Pokemon games

[@SpiritWolf1966]

I enjoy all of the Grungeon Master videos

[@TheRezro]

There is famous quote that most important thing about Dark Ages is that it did not exist. In reality it was actually rather boring period, what do not fallow many misconceptions people has about it. Most of knight stories are either fantastical retelling from later periods, or literal fantasy like King Arthur. Overly focusing on realism is detrimental. The core to success is balance between convincing coherent world and simple fun and wounder.

[@beardyben7848]

I really appreciated this video, but dude, "I hope you'll agree with me, that at least...we should try to be a bit more reasonable," is probably the most English expression I've ever heard you say. That's up there with great English phrases such as "God save the King/Queen" and "Izzit?" 😂. Thanks for your thoughtful videos, from an easily entertained "Yank". Proud subscriber.

[@weylins]

I was excited when I first bought Kingdoms of Kalamar... but for me, it didn't really have a spark that makes a great or even good setting and is overall kind of bland honestly... especially the deities. Coolest thing to me was they actually looked at what was written about Hobgoblins and then made a militaristic and militocratic nation for them that really should have been in other settings.

[@SerafineSilverstream]

I honestly don't really care if the setting is realistic (especially if magic is involved) as long as it is internally consistent. Settings that permanently contradict themselves are the worst.

[@prosamis]

I'm hlad to see more people witnessing the weaknesses of logic. I very much share your sentiment here and it's a topic I wrestled with for a while Great topic

[@thekaxmax]

The only real weakness of logic is in the interactions with human emotions.

[@prosamis]

@@thekaxmax the weakness of logic is how limited and short sighted it is.

[@MrBigCookieCrumble]

Lovely video. I havnt played any kind of tabletop rpg in a decade but i still tune in every video of yours, world building is a great passion of mine, a continuous process going on in my head, basically every day. Is that weird? xD Still, love your videos, they have this philosophical flare to them and your presentation is very engaging, always fun to watch and gets the imagination going. That being said, unlike what you stipulated in your dwarf video four weeks ago Dwarves and bats should never be friends. Gimli does not dig for guano!! I will die on this hill. :'D

[@Grungeon_Master]

Ahaha, well they can't all be winners. A very *reasonable* take. Thanks :)

[@verityverri6506]

The Matt Easton of the RPG community.

[@AdamK1095]

I don't think most rpg players are looking for realism, they are looking for relatability. Long ago, nearly a decade before the great catastrophe of Y2K that never came, it was harder to have new rpg players relate to things like greyhawk or forgotten realms since fantasy was still a very niche thing (especially the rpg hobby as a whole). But KoK (and Mystara to an extent) where easier because if I said Rome like or viking like newbies could more easily understand. So yes, I think realism is not a good tag line for the setting but approachable is. As for religion; if the gods of that setting interact w/mortals on a more normal basis then it will be very different than the history we Personally, I think the setting is not that great for D&D. Systems like Low-Fantasy Gaming or OpenQuest (RuneQuest variant) that tend to feel human centric have worked better w/the setting. It was much easier to do away with alignment based situations & magic that would show up in D&D. I regulated the elves, dwarves, & other demis to more alien/fairy type creatures while hobgoblins became the Lemurians (a human offshoot like neanderthals) who fought to regain their empires. These changes really worked out for the group.

[@Nanitefox]

I feel like this would be good in pf2e remastered

[@Edhelistar]

Speaking of reasonable and realistic... I have an idea for a video subject: What would be your take on the most popular D&D race: Half-Elves. How would that even work, biologicaly speaking? What would be their impact in culture and society? Can they even exist?

[@williamstokes4282]

Ah yes fantasy genetics, where the rules of genetics do not apply.

[@003mohamud]

Ive always wondered why would someone want to subject a short lifespan upon their kids. It would be like humans making a kid with somone who would live for a few months. Imo half elves would mostly be products of either flings or love between young elves(before their mindset becomes too alien) and humans.

[@kyhumphrey5247]

I presume it would be something like mules/hinnies or ligers/tiglons (lions & tigers), where parents of different though related species can procreate, but the resulting offspring will be less likely to reproduce themselves

[@jessewallace3647]

Humility? Have you ever been on the internet? Fantastic video. Keep it up!

[@jamaisj]

If you don't think having an evil society is realistic, then you have a very rosy opinion of society. We've always had those groups that want to see the downfall of society, whose beliefs run counter to a well-performing society, or were formed by narcissistic individuals for their own ends. Currying the favor of a deity just gives those individuals a special incentive to be evil. I'm also not sure how you can be an atheist when there's actual evidence of the existence of gods.

[@ninjabreadman22]

As you were initially describing it I could tell which book you were taking about and I couldn't hold back a yawn. The point of fantasy role playing has never been exploration into anthropology. The whimsy, thrills, and wonder if exploring a world that often decides explanation is what sets the best settings apart.

[@kaseyboles30]

Logic doesn't prove anything per-se. It can however show an argument to be false.

[@JERKIMBALL1]

Probably least worst of the forgotten realms attempt to make other areas of Faerun flushed out - better than the Asianesque and middle-east-esque ones they made, Kara-tur and Calimshan, they were just straight up western viewpoints of Japan and Egypt and were chalk full of stereotyping that hasn’t aged well- never saw this one before will have to dig it up lol

[@MauroDraco]

A guess Kingdoms of Kalamar is somewhat at fault on the front of confusing realism for real. Realism is more of a direction, within a context, and purposefully limited by factors, such as the content being part of a game. It is great to have sound geography and culture and politics tied to those. But is it interesting? Is it evocative as a fantasy place to immerse oneself in? Why would it focus mostly on humans or solely on them, if there are others? These and many other questions may be worth exploring or could hold some answers about what went wrong or how to improve upon it

[@lyudmilapavlichenko7551]

If I wanted realism I'd do my taxes. I want fantasy.

[@MauroDraco]

They do not oppose one another. On the contrary...

[@peachibread1983]

You will do your fantasy taxes and you will like it

[@Gmorktron]

300 level philosophy for a game of pretend. I'm all for it.

[@SuperUnnamedplayer]

I think trying to create anything truly "realistic" would require a Matrix level computation. To simulate millions of years of progress is already impossible with our current world and we have to rely on estimates, trying to make a planet with all aspects of reality being the way they "would realistically be", isn't possible for humans. Best we can hope for is to create worlds that are believable and make sure our players buy into it. Suspension of disbelief is a thing for a reason.

[@critzibletherainbowknight322]

Its better to Use Kalamar as a setting for Hackmaster 4e

[@HxTrEmEcHaOs]

Fantastic video. Cheers 🎉

[@xSkyWeix]

Everybody advocating for "realistic" depiction in fantasy just yearns for consistency. Worlds need to be coherent and believable. Not necessarily realistic. We don't want to experience ludo-narrative dissonance. And the more you know the easier it is. That's why it is a good practice to skimp on details as much as possible to not leave room for paradoxes.

[@tomkerruish2982]

Not everyone agrees on the rules of logic. Intuitionistic logic lacks both the law of the excluded middle and double negation elimination.

[@pound9981]

Over-written realism turns off my sense of wonder, its as if logic hurts creativity and explorationism. I mean that's why we roll dice because logic is only a strong as your modifier is.

[@cobinizer]

I remember Kalamar. I prefer Eberron. The way Eberron handles religion is extremely "reasonable".

[@HelotOnWheels]

Tom, your main objections to Kalamar seem to be its religions, particularly that the gods are boxed into D&D’s nine-alignment system and that the Mistress of Spite’s religious organization is unsustainable. This makes sense. This deficiency particularly ruins the appeal of what could have been your favorite TTRPG fantasy world because you’ve devoted a lot of time to studying religions; OK again. Then you conclude that realism is a trap, essentially because everybody has different ideas of what is reasonable and thus realistic. This is a bridge too far. Individual experience varies, yes, but the variance is starkly limited. Our birthplace, economic background and life experience may be different, and within a limited range affects our ideas of what is realistic. But none of us were raised by intelligent mile-wide starfish, born in the Kuiper Belt without artificial heat, or grew up on a diet of pure uranium, and all of us can see the unrealism of these backgrounds no matter how diverse our experiences otherwise are. Whatever its other flaws, Kingdoms of Kalamar is better for having rain shadows and migratory peoples who eat crops and animals instead of yellowcake uranium. I, too, dislike settings with good and evil gods with worshipers exclusively of their own alignment, mainly because I find our own world’s religions so much more exciting, with good and evil people often sharing the same religion and gods, and struggling with each other to turn their faith community in the direction they want. Nonetheless, there could be a universe with good and evil gods; the Manichaeans posited that our own universe had such opposing gods, and it’s an obvious explanation for why our world has both much joy and much suffering. I think you explain very well why the Mistress of Spite’s business model is unsustainable, but there’s nothing inherently unrealistic about people doing unsustainable things. We do them in the real world all the time, from the Easter Islanders cutting down all their trees to our modern civilization’s dependence on a shrinking supply of nonrenewable hydrocarbons for practically everything. So I wonder if Kalamar’s lack of appeal to you goes deeper than this.

[@revshad4226]

i dont think that fantasy is directly opposed to realism, if we correctly use the various religions, myths, legends and folklore that have been created by society and present a world in which those are true, we end up with a realistic world that is also fantastic. lets look a the silk road era, there are conflicting religions (each with there own deity/deities), there are various monsters, demons, and other creatures from various cultures.

[@sizanogreen9900]

I think realism purely exists within the contxt of the individual setting;)

[@twelfthknight]

Adding layers of realism and nuanced complexity to your world doesn't necessarily make that interesting from a dramatic perspective, is the issue. From a TTRPG perspective, just as I'm not interested in roleplaying through a GM's novel, I'm not going to invest myself in being a cog in a GM's fantasy world simulation. Reality is an invaluable source of inspiration, but it shouldn't be an end in and of itself.

[@nightwind67]

I have no idea what your point is on this.

[@Dingoman013]

I'm pretty sure you got realistic and believable mixed up

[@jamestitus472]

Really good video

[@kylelind6239]

"We should be able to hold differing opinions in almost every feild, unless we are specifcally engaging in logic" This statement implies that people who are speciffically engaged in logic will necessarily come to the same conclusions as one another, which is *demonstrably false*. Why is this false? Because of differing starting assumptions. Two people who both use perfectly sound logic will necessarily reach different conclusions, if their starting assumptions (often called, and sometimes actually, "evidence") are different.

[@thekaxmax]

It's d&d, because of the system it can't be realistic. Unless you have the cultures all use magic everywhere in normal life.

[@michaelmullenfiddler]

Try Harn

[@CitanulsPumpkin]

There's a reason this is the first time I've heard anyone mention Kingdoms of Kalamar in a 5e era video. Eberron gets brought up all the time, but I've even heard Ghostwalk mentioned several times. Going for "realism" seems great, but after a while, it stops being a functional campaign setting for use in games and starts being an exercise in medieval fan fiction. One of my favorite games is the original Final Fantasy Tactics. It's probably the most realistic FF game in the franchise, but once you strip away the moogles, chocobos, monsters, airships, and the 12 zodiac stones that imprison 12 elder gods, Ivalice is literally just War of the Roses fan fic. Realism isn't actually fun. If you want real dungeon crawling you can book a spelunking tour or maybe a catacombs tour if you live in parts of Europe. If you want fun start the campaign on the deck of the luxury space cruise ship from the fifth element an hour before the opera starts, run the characters through the opening scenes of Final Fantasy IX, and then as soon as the opera is over and the theater troupe fails their hiest crash the cruise ship in the jungles of Ixalan and make the rest of the campaign dealing with Aztec Dino Riders and vampire conquistadors.

[@Marcus-ki1en]

I though you were going to roll out a "Complete History of the Medieval and Dark ages of Western Europe" ; ) Welcome back from the dark side my friend. Most of us play to escape, not to emulate. Verisimilitude only requires that it seems believable, not that it must be.

[@the_epipan]

My dear pal... that you have found a setting that is well made, well crafted, with a good level of detail and a strong sense of realism or mundane... but that still does not attract you as much as you would expect it should, does not have to make you go through an existential crisis or identity crisis. It's possible that you simply don't find "Norse mythology in D&D" that appealing to you, which I think is the inspiration for that setting, right? I didn't know about that book, I'll keep an eye on it since according to you it seems to be so well done, although I'm not too attracted to Nordic mythology and it seems that there are no kobolds there... and precisely the version, appearance and culture-mythology that kobolds had in D&D 3e and 3.5e is one of the things that makes it my favorite edition of D&D.

[@spudbuckets]

I see you finally get it. In the last 80s we fell into a trap of RPG realism/simulation. I really think you need to look at HARN.

[@williamstokes4282]

This feels a lot like the realism in video games pitfall. It sounds cool for the game to be more realistic but the reality is that most people aren't as interested in a "truly realistic" game as say they are and what they mean when they say they want a more realistic game mean slightly to vastly different things from person to person.

[@lloydgush]

Ethnic stereotypes and evil gods just work. D&D is about story telling, after all. Just realism doesn't make a good story. Resonating matters more.

[@patrickwest5516]

After watching this video, I think that realism is undoable simply because we don't know everything about everything, let alone a full understanding of reality itself. Only God (if you believe in Him) who created all things and knows all things can fully grasp what would be considered "realism"; for us, to create something "realistic", we would need understanding as deep as His. So what we should be striving for in creating fictional worlds, instead of realism, is believability, or verisimilitude, where we can explain how or why something works or exists within the framework of the various "sciences" inherent in the world's creation.

[@TheGateShallStand]

I feel like almost all of your criticisms are good... Until you look at history, and realize that, in fact, people have fallen for all of those "unrealistic" ideas. Evil church trying to usurp the good people with false anger? Has happened multiple times in various eras. Evil people wprshipping an evil god? Well, im not gonna say the Aztecs, but child sacrifice was very prominent. The philosophy of belief when it comes to deviation within personal thought? Yeah, even just pinpointing a single historical country might be enough, the "brother of Jesus Christ" just so happened to be that chinese emperor after all. Theres a lot to grasp between logic and reason, as gray as the line happens to be, and all i have to say is that - its all technically realistic as long as you look within the past 4000 years. Yet, everything can be absolutely *reasonable* if you want to take ot that way.