Where and when is the common medieval fantasy setting based on?

Define "common medieval fantasy setting".

Witcher? Germany, Poland, Baltic coast, but also France, all in the late middle ages.

Forgotten Realms? Literally tiny bits of everything from MENA despotic realms to South American polities to early modern Mediterranean republics or minor states of the HRE.

TES? Loads of rather obvious stuff from Roman antiquity to early medieval Scandinavia.

Unless you tell us what you meant by a "common medieval fantasy setting" there can be no answer. A common trope sees many aspects of late middle ages France/England/HRE/Italy, but that alone is an incredibly wide scope of possibilities ranging from a centralized royal authority to mercantile republican city states, and obviously the fantasy setting plays fast and loose with anything even remotely resembling social and political realities of those times and places.

One thing that rarely makes it into a RPG setting is the presence of the Church both as an inseparable part of a medieval society, and as a political power. Conversely, and strangely enough, what many games do seem to get right is the social mobility and power wielded by various people and the loose framework in which they live. The common but incredibly flawed, imprecise and really often flat out wrong top-down or pyramid view of medieval society (aka "feudalism") fails to explain the majority of land being held privately (as in not held by a neat hierarchy of nobles who in turn owe fealty to those above them) or the constant growth of commerce, lending, and power wielded by the non-nobility and so on and so forth, which like I said is funnily enough what games do manage to convey.

Although my bet is the game developers achieving this not due to some desired historical authenticity, but by arriving at a somewhat correct conclusion from flawed premises influenced by presentism.

I think the Dwemer were meant to be Sumerian or Babylonian.

Good post, thanks. I didn't have a particular setting in mind, so maybe I should've specified "common settings".

Or, imagine in your mind a fantasy medieval setting. Where does it take you?

It has changed over time, but if we take a little bit from what Gary Gygax and Ed greenwood have said on the matter it would be the 1370-1380s western Europe with northern Germany and northern Italy added in. The end result is that full plate is a thing but a bit crude and very costly thus uncommon in most of the world. Cannon and hand gun use is so rare that it can be wrote out and not change much. A mix of strong and weak monarchs. Guilds that are strong and only getting stronger to the point they have taken over some cities. Most importantly a high level of tension in between local land owners and peasants due to efforts to reinstate serfdom. IRL this was caused by a shortage of work post black death and thus workers renegotiating far better terms under threat of them just leaving for a lord who would give them what they wanted. Fast froward 30 years and there is not near the level of shortage of workers and the local land lords want to take back what was theirs.

Dwenmer are this vague mix of mesopotamic with phoenician and hellenic elements.

Dunmer/Chimer are halfway Hindi but also a tad Egyptian. Nords are actually closer to Germanics than any nordic culture, and Orcs in Skyrim are a Mongolian influence. Cyrodiil in Oblivion was a patchwork of French towns with an Italian capital, the empire was thoroughfully Roman in all other games. Khajiit are some kind of Aus Abbo/Gypsy mix, particularly their religious approach. Bosmer are Mesoamerican natives with Celt aesthetics including the wild hunt thing. Redguard are sarracen/moor with a sprinkle of Persian empires. Argonians are tribal sub sahara Africans or SEA peoples.

Akavir anything is Japanese and Chinese including the Samurais, Tiger-Dragon peoples, frozen horde of elementals in the north and mountain monkey monks.

Bretons and Altmer are too polluted with generic fantasy crap to see any strong elements.

>Shame Bethesda are a bunch of hacks now.
>now

Bethesda has always been shit. Morrowind may have some interesting stuff but it's also a terrible mess technicaly and has a lot of 2deep4u Kirkbride shit.

Bretons are Celts imo. With the garden variety normal Bretons being Frenchified Brythonic Celts and the Reachmen being Gaels/Picts

Dummer also have a good bit of jew to them aswell

Especially with their exodus

TES did come out of D&D. The designers literally based it off their campaign.

Breton's not Celts at all, they're basically high to late medieval with all the bells and whistles, knightly houses and courtly politics

>I never played daggerfall

Good catch

I honestly can't come up with anything for Argonians, they're the most "non-culture" of the bunch. TESO gave them Aztec looking gear but i don't know of any civilization that had such a connection to their religious life and rituals as they do with the Hist, the sap and their condition and children of the root.

It's usually 12th century~13th century with bits of 11th century and 14th century stuff mixed in.

>story and setting wise

Fuck off you cunt

Witcher 3 is basically medieval Poland and Germany, except for Skellige which is a Nordic-Celtic mix.

Morrowind is basically 1st century Judea.

Dunmer = Judeans / Jews
Empire = Roman empire
Tribunal = Sanhedrin
3 houses = Herodian Tetrarchy
Morag Tong = Sicarii
Nerevarine = Messiah
Ashlanders = Essenes

what about runescape

from the props usually used, it's 13 to 14th century
some are trope breakers like pointed out by "depends"guys, but yeah most influence comes from what victorians thought middle age was about