So in an effort to diversify my feed and possibly not make this ENTIRE twitter account just angry politics, here's why I talked about that medieval bullshit earlier: because high fantasy is boring, and literal real life medieval bullshit is more interesting.
High fantasy is often endless reiterations of the same "save the world from an ancient encrouching evil" storyline. And like, I get why. It's not always for GOOD reasons, but I get why.
At the end of the day, we're talking about D&D. There's fantasy games that aren't D&D, but D&D is the big (coughBADcough) one. And these are typically written in a few specific ways, often because of how the game itself is mechanically set up.
Storylines somewhat broadly have to take into account that D&D never *truly* stopped being a life-is-cheap roguelike dungeon crawler, which means plotlines have to take into account that characters are ultimately replaceable.
On top of that, there's NO mechanics that actually connect characters together, so you have to take into account that these are probably the stereotypical "group of strangers banded together." Compare this with, say, Powered by the Apocalypse games with it's Bonds.
Next, the big inspiration for most of these games are computer RPGs, which in turn have to account for the fact that they overwhelmingly push for "free character creation," aka "your main character does not exist until you make them."
Lastly, there's a strong tendency for D&D GMs to create their big sprawling universe and world and storyline *before the players make their character*. D&D culturally has never been good about pushing a Zero Session, much to it's ENORMOUS detriment.
The end result of all of this, is that "main plot lines" are all stunningly impersonal. They have to exist outside the bounds of the characters, and so they have no actual connection TO the characters.
And yo, this fucking sucks! There's a reason why Plaenscape Torment is lauded so much, and one of the big reasons is that it's one of the very few cRPGs with an *intensely* personal storyline!
So, you're making a storyline, and you don't know who the main characters will even BE, or if you'll even have the same main characters at the end as you had at the beginning, AND you need a reason for all these strangers to work together, so what's the easiest thing to do?
"Uh, there's...a big threat, and you all have to get together to stop it."
So, part of the problem here is mechanical. D&D is terrible for expressing any sort of storytelling or story creation. I think there's a big stereotype of "DMs who just worldbuild for fun" because that's ALL you can do. The game itself is not built around much else.
So I post dumb facts about medieval history because those can still be put into these mostly impersonal storylines to make them more interesting. If all you can make is stew, you can at least apply SOME seasoning to it.
Ok, you have a save the world plot and the players go into a city, but you can at least make the city an imperial free city run by the richest burgher families with a peasant's revolt fermenting rather then yet another vague king in a nearby castle.
Instead of drawing up yet another ye auld thieves guild, which never existed, you can make it an economic clash between two guilds who's crafts are close ENOUGH to each other that they're trying to find ways to take each other down, but don't want to be seen doing it themselves.
Add that seasoning, add that spice. If you're stuck with a generic conflict, you can add stuff to that conflict and the world around it to make it more interesting.
Oh, and REMEMBER MY MAIN RULE. Rule 1) All of this revolves around the PCs, it's their game. Facts should be interesting, but also *relevant.* Assume players don't give a shit, and then make them give a shit by making it matter to them.
