I've written a few essays considering when I'd guess D&D's adventures would take place. Sure the Forgotten Realms isn't Earth. Sure Magic throws a monkey wrench into how technology works... but what time period would you put it in?

Personally, I imagine it mostly as Europe's 1400's... but it can be widened to 1100 to 1600. How about you?

I’d agree, Late Middle Ages is definitely the basis.

There's no way to place D&D historically because it's a thoroughly ahistorical game, especially once you start looking across various settings

Fantasy worlds, like D&D, are often treated as existing in something equivalent to "Cyclical Deep History", which means that civilization is built up on the ruins of countless eons of other ancient civilizations. Ruins on top of ruins on top of ruins.

Medieval Europe is a popular backdrop, but that can change dramatically from region to region, country to country, continent to continent, world to world, and plane to plane.

And, as they say, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", so while we usually treat a "magic sword" as being a slab of steel with glowing runes, it could very easily be reimagined as a complicated piece of technology filled with microchips and circuitry. It's all the same to the layman.

However, one thing is likely to remain true, regardless of the time period: Any world that is regularly threatened by perpetual violence and global cataclysm is going to struggle to develop and maintain advanced technology. Old world technology is reliable and easy for individuals to rebuild whereas modern power/communication systems are remarkably fragile and require increasingly complicated manufacturing processes. Factories are expensive and very easy targets.

D&D isn't remotely close to any period of human history. It is a hodge-podge of references to various different periods combined with a bunch of made-up stuff, and seasoned with a variety of elements people mistakenly *think* were historical but are absolutely not. The total package of D&D is that it is no more like medieval times than Star Trek Adventures is.

Technologically speaking, D&D spans almost 2,000 of history starting in the BC era and going to the mid-late Renaissance period. If you include Artifficers then you’re into science-fantasy Victorian era.

IRL, lots of D&D takes place on Wednesday evenings.

It's ahistorical.  It's medieval in the way Lord of the Rings or Willow or Ladyhawk or Princess Bride are medieval (which aren't really medieval at all).  Sure there's a popular conception of "medieval" involving swords and armor, but governance institutions, politics and the place of the common human individual don't really resememble any published D&D world, though there are many gamers who do strive for something more authentic.  The recent film The Green Knight is set in a medieval _fantasy_ world with origins in the actual medieval imagination, but I wouldn't call that any more medieval than I would Excalibur.  

So year 2525 or 42, or somewhere around each other. 

It’s worth pointing out, while we’re at it, that even D&D’s martial combat draws from Hollywood, not history. For example, leather armor was rarely used, crossbows (except for Chinese repeating crossbows) took a minute to reload, and dual welding just doesn’t work. The only historical instance of *that* is in armorless street duels with rapiers, and even then the second weapon was a dagger.

D&D (and most high fantasy in general) is really based more on folklore of a medieval origin than the real historical period known as the Middle Ages (which would be nearly unrecognizable to those of us only familiar with it through fantasy gaming), and even its connection to that folklore is usually tenuous at best. In general, D&D resembles the Middle Ages to about the same extent that Star Wars resembles the 20th-century space race.

The rapier seems to be the most modern weapon or armor in the standard D&D equipment. It dates to the 16th century. And not long after firearms became prevalent and made plate armor obsolete. So I would say that's the best approximation.

There is a whole OSR niche about "Medieval authentic" role-playing (games like Lion and Dragon, sourcebooks like Dark Albion). I'm not suggesting that "you should play those instead," but rather, they are instructive when comparing to D&D. Huge swathes of D&D are just out, if you want to do authentic middle-ages RP.

Quote from pavilionaire >>

The rapier seems to be the most modern weapon or armor in the standard D&D equipment. It dates to the 16th century. And not long after firearms became prevalent and made plate armor obsolete. So I would say that's the best approximation.

Spyglasses are very early 17th century, and traditional clockwork /wind-up toys are 19th century, so depending on the setting, there are some fairly modern innovations present.

Quote from BioWizard >>

There is a whole OSR niche about "Medieval authentic" role-playing (games like Lion and Dragon, sourcebooks like Dark Albion). I'm not suggesting that "you should play those instead," but rather, they are instructive when comparing to D&D. Huge swathes of D&D are just out, if you want to do authentic middle-ages RP.

 I think that you may have misunderstood my meaning.  Part of what I've been writing about is how far firearm technology has advanced by the time Henry VIII is born... and to that, just how short lived most of the mainstays of D&D like Plate Armour really were.  I'm not so much looking for accurate as I am differences in perspective.  The first several responses were all really funny and I had a good time.  Your quote, "The total package of D&D is that it is no more like medieval times than Star Trek Adventures is." was great!

IamSposta's "IRL, lots of D&D takes place on Wednesday evenings." resulted in a shirt change.

It was around NaivaraArnuanna's post that my inner nerd started to say, "Well actually, rawhide blah blah blah," but that rant gets off topic.

I was more wondering if anybody else aims for something older, or newer even if it's more Hollywood than Hollyfact?  Dark age, or Victorian in general... or does everybody else aim for the high middle ages/late Renaissance?

My campaign setting, and BioWizard's is based on a fantasy version of the Ancient Roman Empire.  For my own, I got tired of Ye Olde Generic Medieval as a setting and went off to try and make a setting that would be different.  Just like everyone else. 

A lot of D&D (and other fantasy) is pretty much inspired by the Victorian idea of what the "medieval times" were like. Evil dragons, virtous knights, damsels in distress and so on and so on. This too is of course quite ahistorical and there are many things that are, compared to actual history, often overlooked, missed or just plain wrong. Houses, even peasants' hovels, often have different rooms for different purposes, streets are covered in stones instead of shit and people tend to wear trousers with pockets instead of hose and braies.

Personally I tend to not worry about the time period as much as the internal constiency. Developments in society tend to follow each other and so there are a lot of things that doesn't make sense in a setting if you have certain things but not other things. Of course, often you can just use "magic!" as an explanation but I prefer to make my worlds work even without "magic!" having to fill all the gaps.

Quote from IamSposta >>

Technologically speaking, D&D spans almost 2,000 of history starting in the BC era and going to the mid-late Renaissance period. If you include Artifficers then you’re into science-fantasy Victorian era.

D&D's span of history goes back even further if you really want to stretch it. What do we make of the fact that the Monster Manual has dinosaurs in it?

For me, D&D will always be the middle ages, so between 1000 and 1200AD.

With the Artificer and guns, D&D is being pushed into the renaissance era, but that feels "wrong" to mix technology and magic. (IMO)

I remember a 1E/2E module were players discover a crashed spaceship. In order to properly operate any gun they find, required an intelligence check (which I recall being set at a very high bar)

I have a setting with a bronze age Mesopotamian theme. I don’t pretend to be accurate but I did limit armour options. Different system though and in some ways easier to adapt.

Quote from Geann >>

My campaign setting, and BioWizard's is based on a fantasy version of the Ancient Roman Empire.  For my own, I got tired of Ye Olde Generic Medieval as a setting and went off to try and make a setting that would be different.  Just like everyone else. 

Yup, mine's based on Rome. A Rome with magic, and elvish members of the Empire, obviously, but Rome, rather than the "faux middle ages" you usually have in D&D.

I don't think I'll ever do it again. Much as I love the period and doing something different, there are hardly any resources for Roman themes, and so I have to homebrew literally everything, right down to temple maps (Roman temples were NOTHING like middle ages ones) and so on. It's been a lot of work, and I'm in it now, so I won't change. But I won't do it again.

Quote from Grunk999 >>

With the Artificer and guns, D&D is being pushed into the renaissance era, but that feels "wrong" to mix technology and magic. (IMO) 

The Artificer barely mixes technology and magic, in truth. It's really pretty much all magic, just made to look like technology. It takes next to no effort to reskin an Alchemist as a witch or a Battle Smith as a spirit shaman.