The biggest thing that irritates me from this is the implication that anybody is arguing for “historical accuracy” to medieval Europe in a setting that has dragons and goblins that shoot lightning from their fingertips. If, for whatever weird reason, the DM doesn’t want potatoes to exist that’s okay, but you’re not waiting for the Columbian exchange to bring them over from the Americas because the Americas don’t exist here. If you have a player character that’s a shape shifting sentient blob who casts illusions and is on a quest to seduce every milliner they can find then a plain tasting sausage made from fine ground questionable cuts of meat shouldn’t be seen as a stretch.
Additionally, as someone who majored in History in college, I can assure you that most people insisting on “historical accuracy” on any one or two things they learned from a tweet or a tiktok about are almost definitely getting fifteen other things wrong in any given session.
I think one could argue that fantasy isn’t based on the reality of the medieval ages, but on the collective beliefs and myths of that era.
As a side effect, though, the countryside would probably be filled with giant snails that you’d have to fight.
I’m putting giant snails into my homebrew world now. It’s a skypunk setting so I just have to decide if the snails are native to a specific cloud enshrouded plateau, a flying nuisance species of blimp-mollusks, or an invasive species that shows up everywhere. Maybe all of the above.
People want to feel like they’re in a historic setting, but they also want dragons and potatoes. 🤷♂️
My take:
It’s not even set on Earth in the first place, so “historical accuracy” is a non-starter. This world can be whatever you want it to be.
In my world, running was recently invented by Thomas Running in 748 when he tried to walk twice at the same time.
I believe it was Running who stated “If I have seen further, it is only because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.” Referring, of course, to the works of noted giant Thrynn Walk.
One time another player and who both speak spanish were playing tieflings and decided that tieflings are native to mexico so we’d make jokes about our native foods that no one knows about bc they are “from mexico”. Anytime we spoke infernal in game we’d just speak spanish irl bc the other players couldn’t understand it. Super silly
Why wouldn’t your setting have potatoes? Does your setting have Peru in it? No, no Peru? Gee, then it sure sounds to me like you get to decide where potatoes come from in your setting; they don’t have to be a “new world” food if you world doesn’t have or has a different “new world.”
Potatoes come from the Elemental Plane of Earth.
The mighty DM has spoken!
Potatoes? What are potatoes?
