Wisdom in the Dungeon

One major, but often-forgotten part of medieval history is the monastery; religious complexes inhabited by monks, who dedicated their lives to the worship of god, and the preservation and recording of spiritual knowledge. Monasteries served several important roles in medieval Europe, roles which could be adapted to serve the needs of a D&D game. Firstly, monasteries were incredibly wealthy. At their height, the greatest of monasteries owned more land, and had more income than, the strongest of secular lords; in no small part the result of centuries of religiously-motivated donations. More wealth was held in the form of holy relics - including the likes of thorns from the Crown of Thorns, fragments of the True Cross, vials of the blood of Christ, the bones of saints, and so on. The potential for D&D is clear to see. Monasteries could recruit player characters to track down religious relics for them, which would, of course, found in dungeons and wild places. Less scrupulous playe...

There's a strong association in the public consciousness between Dungeons & Dragons, and the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. Indeed, Tolkien's Middle Earth has come to be seen as the 'template' for a fantasy setting; the starting point from which other fantasy settings are birthed, the black hole at the centre of a galaxy of medieval fanatasy. The late Sir Terry Pratchett sums this up far better than I could hope to: "J.R.R. Tolkien has become a sort of mountain, appearing in all subsequent fantasy in the way that Mt. Fuji appears so often in Japanese prints. Sometimes it’s big and up close. Sometimes it’s a shape on the horizon. Sometimes it’s not there at all, which means that the artist either has made a deliberate decision against the mountain, which is interesting in itself, or is in fact standing on Mt. Fuji." In some aspects, Tolkien's influence cannot be denied. Take elves, for example. While elves have a long history in Germanic folklore, stretching ...