Do you prefer to apply present-day moralities and sensibilities to your campaigns and adventures...

Do you prefer to apply present-day moralities and sensibilities to your campaigns and adventures, or would you try to keep the characters thinking as they would at the given time and era? If you do the latter, how will you keep the characters sympathetic even at the times their actions and behavior come across as decidedly not so to our modern eyes?

Fantasy game, fantasy setting. No reason why you can't have fantasy morality.

My groups tend to enjoy fantastical, cinematic stuff over anything aiming for realism or authenticity. Then again, we don't go whole hog- A few key elements here and there can enhance a setting, and you're just an asshole if you contradict the premise as set by the GM. If the GM talks about a setting where slavery is commonly accepted, your entire party shouldn't be angry abolitionists, but some more moderate flavour in keeping with the themes of the world.

We play in a mud-faminepunk setting, so it's basically the worst misconceptions of medieval Europe that guides the characters moral compasses.

Modern day morals, and if you don't you're not living your life correctly.

>mud-faminepunk setting
What do you mean by this?

I and my group already have antique sensibilities compared to most modern fashions, and we prefer diverse ethics rooted in the local environment anyway.

"Upper-middle-class white westerner academic urbanite" is a boring and homogenous niche. If I wanted to hear SJWs whining about muh pseudo-utilitarian redistributionism, I'd visit a Starbucks.

How does it feel knowing people in 2100 will despise your primitive morals?

Don't care? People in 1900 don't care about your 2000 era morals either.

I feel there's a certain middleground to it and tend to apply things from both sides depending on what makes for the best story.

Slavery is a thing and few folks are likely to think much of it, because it'll be more interesting and makes for some cool dynamics between the freemen and (ex-)slaves. On the other hand, nobody at the table likes to just chop up the baby orcs, not just because it's gruesome and a bit too hard to swallow by modern times, but also because it's the single least interesting solution to the problem imaginable.

Just because you're correct doesn't mean that you're right.

If I'm creating a fantasy setting I don't see any reason why its cultures and social norms need to correlate with real world ones given the power structures, religious schisms and ruling dynasties would not be the same as ours

Thus I don't pursue exclusively "modern" sensibilities (although there may be liberally-governed nations and undiscriminatory religions) nor justify misanthropy or prejudice as "historically accurate" (although there may be prejudiced and intolerant cultures and religions).

"Realism" rarely has much place in a fantastical world. By all means create worlds populated by paranoid, intolerant peoples, but do not hide behind perceived historical precedent to justify it unless you are playing in the real world.

History's taboos and values are shaped by centuries of cultural development. There is no reason why a world with entirely different cultures would follow the same path thus it is not inherently "realistic" for it to share real historical attitudes.