22: It's Medievalism Jim, but not as we know it: Super-Tropes and Bastard-Tropes in Medievalist Games

22: It's Medievalism Jim, but not as we know it: Super-Tropes and Bastard-Tropes in Medievalist Games

Robert Houghton, @RobEHoughton, University of Winchester Representations of the Middle Ages and pseudo-medieval worlds in games are driven by popular medievalisms in combination with game design traditions and restrictions. This can result in the exaggeration of stereotypes (super-tropes) or the emergence of entirely new visions (bastard tropes), the combination of which presents a unique and original form of medievalism within games. Super-tropes are mostly straightforward. Games have a strong tendency towards violence. The Middle Ages are seen as endemically violent. So medievalist games are more likely to be violent. They tend to focus on conflict and conquest. Visceral and casual violence abound. Likewise, games in general are heavily Eurocentric (if not Anglocentric) and medievalism tends strongly towards Northern European settings. Games set in this period are mostly positioned in Europe (and almost inevitably in British Isles/Scandinavia) with homogenous white casts. The medievalist notion of Chivalry also finds reinforcement in games: this vision of a rules heavy and black and white morality ties in neatly with the rules and mechanics required by games to function. It also fits with the need for balance and ‘fair play’ in games. Bastard tropes are consequences of competing gaming and medievalist tropes. Medievalist games are amongst the most violent, but this violence can be innovative. For example, Permadeath (you die, you lose) and Iron Man (only one save, updated automatically) are common in medievalist games – Dark Souls is a prominent example – and emerge to a large extent from a drive to match mechanics to medievalism. Religion in medievalist games is a melange of rival tropes. Medievalism dictates a prominent Church. But games are reluctant to do anything deep with religion. So medievalist games have ubiquitous but trivial religion: symbols, architecture and material culture are everywhere, but there is little of substance in terms of mechanics or even story. Science and ‘progress’ is another area with notable bastard tropes. Strategy games demand ‘progress’ as a core mechanic, usually represented through a ‘tech tree’. But medievalism dictates a Dark Age giving a narrative of stagnation alongside progress mechanics. Although super-tropes are important, bastard tropes can be just as influential. Games doing something differently doesn’t lessen their impact. There are growing signs that games are seen as more authoritative sources than other fiction media by a large part of their audience and that games may have a substantially deeper impact on their audience’s understanding of the Middle Ages than any other media format. Hence it is vitally important to consider not only where games exaggerate existing medievalist tropes, but where they subvert or bastardise them.

Obviously these super-tropes and bastard tropes aren’t present in every medievalist game. There are plenty of nuances, subversions and deconstructions. Counterplay and modding allow players to mess with dev expectations. Devs often look to history beyond medievalism. But we can see examples of bastard tropes all over medievalist games. Game tendencies and requirements (such as balance, progress, victory conditions etc.) clash with medievalist visions. Often this leads to exaggerations, but frequently we see new accounts emerging. Hence we can see a new variety of medievalism emerging within games. One which draws on literary and audio-visual medievalisms, but which is fundamentally different in diverse (and unexpected) ways – as a consequence of the expectations and limitations of the medium. The idea that games set in the Middle Ages are influenced by both gaming and medievalist tropes isn’t earth-shattering. But we need

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to think more about how these two sets of tendencies interact and how these interactions create a new and distinct branch of medievalism.

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23: Vikings and Tudors and Knights, Oh My!: Pick-and-mix-medievalism in Old School Runescape

Megan Bunce, @MeganBunce12, University of Oxford Fantasy settings inspired by medieval history have always been the most popular for Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs). Of around 200 MMORPGs released since the term was coined in 1997 by Ultima Online creator Richard Garriott, at least 120 have medieval settings with varying degrees of fantasy. Eight of the ten most played MMORPGs in 2020 have medieval fantasy settings. Among them is Old School RuneScape (OSRS). RuneScape was first released in 2001 and Old School RuneScape is a 2007 version of RuneScape which was re-released in 2013 to meet popular demand. Old School RuneScape now has a larger player base than RuneScape 3. Old School RuneScape has fewer high fantasy elements than many other MMORPGS: players can only play as humans and navigate a world in which human society is central and fictional creatures occupy a peripheral space in storylines. Yet the setting conflates several centuries of medieval history. The castles and settlements of Lumbridge, Varrock and Falador are based on architectural forms from the twelfth to fifteenth centuries but many of the interiors, notably the churches, have a later, almost modern, feel.

The early medieval is represented by the presence of ‘barbarians’ whose settlement and character design evokes post-Roman Germanic-speaking peoples. The inhabitants of Fremennik are specified to be ‘Norsemen’ with Old Norse names and Scandinavian material culture. However, in general the social structures of Old School RuneScape are high-medieval and express chivalric values. A lot of the early content develops high medieval themes, with quests about Arthurian legend, orders of knights, priests, monks, and missions to the Arabic-inspired land of Al Kharid. This is unsurprising given that the high-medieval period is the second most popular historical setting for films. For Old School RuneScape’s early twenty-first century audience though, the medieval world with which they are familiar is a fantasy world. In the game you find the same playful, eclectic medievalism as in The Princess Bride (1987), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), A Knight’s Tale (2001) and Shrek (2001).

Figure 23.1: Old School Runescape

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However, it is not just wider pop-culture trends that caused MMORPGs, like Old School RuneScape, to create such anachronistic, mix-and-match, medieval worlds. It is a legacy of their development from tabletop RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons and a result of their unique gameplay and persistent worlds. Instead of moving through the story with one character, as in Action-Adventure games, or viewing history from outside, as in strategy games, players of Old School RuneScape must all access the same world, with the same content, in real time. This means the world must be static. The setting, society and politics of the game world must be unchanging, but the world need to provide a large amount of varied content to hold players’ interest. A way to achieve this is to create a world in which all medieval history is happening simultaneously.

Figure 23.2: Old School Runescape

The in-game history of Old School RuneScape, marked by 5 ‘ages’, is referenced in quests, but from the players’ perspective it has been year 169 of the Fifth Age for the last 20 years. The society of the game is never disrupted, it never develops, it is a dream of medieval life. When players travel around the game map they also travel through time. This collapsing of chronology allows developers to create a palimpsest of popular medievalism, featuring the perennially popular chivalric heroes and crusading knights as well as barbarians and Vikings.

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