The following thread is what I have noticed over the years in terms of a fantasy world. It is not looking at a party of adventurers going on a quest (Fellowship of the RIng) or the the hero with a special destiny (Belgarion/Luke Skywalker) type of fantasy.
Culture Shift
This is basically taking a real world culture and portng it to a fantasy world. Sometimes it is cleverly disguised other times it is fairly blatant. Most of the time it is very sterotypical. The D&D world most guilty of this is likely Mystara which had fantasy Arabs, Romans, Merchant Republics, Vikings and Teutonic Knights there and then some. Other examples would be fantsy Egypt which becomes Nitha on Mystara, Mulhorand on the Realms and Osirion on Paizo's Golarion. This also applies to non D&D worlds as well. Consider the Game of Thones books and TV show. This can also apply to history and myth in general.
War of the 5 Kings. War of the Roses, house Lannister/House Lancaster.
Braavos. Mixture of Venice and the Dutch Republic with the Collossus of Rhodes.
Dothraki. Based on the Turkish tribes prior to the Ottoman empire.
Westeros. Continent sized version of Britain.
Wild Fire. Greek Fire
The Wall. Based on Hadrians Wall.
Valyria. Atlantis
You can probably find more. Even the Darksun city states are based on real world cultures.
Timefreeze
Fantasy worlds have often been stuck in a frozen in time moment where they have had the same technology for thousands of years with minimal technological progression or they have even gone backwards with advanced empires existing in the past. Star Wars also has this as well to some extent. This seems to mostly based on the perception on earth due to things like swords being used for 2000 years or so other worlds also "stagnated" like Earth. This conveniently ignores innovation that did happen as a medieval longbowman or Knight based army would likley crush a Roman legion. Roman legions struggled with the Parthians who used heavy cavalry and the late imperial and Byzantine armies had heavy cavalry contingents due to infantry becoming obsolete compared to previous eras. Westeros in the Game of Thrones Universe has carried this to extremes with the Andals having iron sword and armor around 8000 years before the TV show. Middle Earth would be another one and a good chunk of the TSR worlds as well.
Gigantism
In fantasy worlds everything seems to be bigger over real world equivilents. Hadrians wall for example was perhaps 10 feet in height The Wall on Westeros is 700 feet high. The staue in the harbour at Braavos is massive compared to the Collossus of Rhodes. The Great Wall of CHina was long but it was more of a political statement than a serious effort to guard the frontier. On Darksun The Dragon's city of Ur Draxa has city walls hundreds of feet thick and on Joe Dever's Lone Wolf series of books the Darklords city of Kaag has walls 2 kilometres high. Perhaps the greatest city walls IRL were the Theodosian walls of Constantinople which were around 30-50 feet high. They held out for 1000 odd years, saw around 14 major sieges and were not breached until 1453 after cannons were invented.
European Cultures Are Inferior.
This one seems to originate from the 18th centure enlightenment where the Protestants liked to paint medieval (Catholic) Europeans as stupid and repressive. Medieval Europeans it seemed had nothing better to do than sit around drooling, being stupid and getting reamed by the Saracens/Mongols/Berbers etc. In fantasy this is often represented by things like katanas being uber or other cultures being more noble or in tune with nature (see Elves for example). Eastern Europeans cultures shifted to a fantasy world also tend to be a bit primitive (Traldarans in Karameikos on Mystara). In reality the Turks had to hire a Hungarian to build cannons to breach the walls of Constantinople, the Crusaders won numerous batles while heavily outnumbered, and once countries like France unified things tended to change very fast. The east more wealth and a larger states than Western Europe as England for example had a small population, France, Germany, Spain and Italy were not unified until the 15th-19th centuries.
Yeah, the culture shift happens because the creator wants something the consumer can quickly relate to so they can get on with the story. I certainly don't want to be bothered oearning about a completely foreign fantasy culture . . . most of the time anyway. The alien culture Isaac Asimov created in The Gods Themselves was interesting, although that was actually science fiction, so not the best example for this discussion.
That Gigantism thing bothers me at times. It stretches my belief, perhaps, or just seems lazy to me, like saying "this wall is awesome because . . . it's so tall!" Meh, I say.
Out of all the things mentioned, the time freeze has bothered me the most. Chafing against the timefreeze was probably partly responsible for why I was so impressed by Eberron, and why I so enjoyed the D20 Modern Urban Arcana supplement.
Zardnaar wrote:
Medieval (particularly before around the 1200's or so) Western Europeans were, by and large, vastly less advanced than the Middle East/North Africa. Most of that difference in advancement was in areas other than basic war technology, however. Instead, they had much better medicine, maths, cultural and political institutions, etc.
MechaPilot wrote:
DoctorBadWolf wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
dave2008 wrote:
Shasarak wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
Shasarak wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
Tony_Vargas wrote:
MechaPilot wrote:
OGRE1984 wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
The static society trope has always bothered me. A single line of succession/power structure lasting for several thousand years in a human society? Not likely. The roman empire for example changed dramatically over the centuries and had the same governing body in name only.
When it comes to technology advances however, I've rationalized a lack of gunpowder and steam power as extensions of a world where magic works. The more magic infuses your world, the less likely you are to have technological advances.
You can go two ways. One is that it simply doesn't work, something about the physics is just different enough that you need an enchantment to make it work. At that point the utility compared to other magic (especially for early uses) is dramatically reduced.
Another option for gunpowder is that whenever someone starts to use it effectively, someone creates a cantrip that sends out small sparks that seeks out gunpowder. Using gunpowder becomes counterproductive.
For steam power, there are a couple of obstacles. The initial versions of steam engines were little more than toys and are not taken seriously. Few people would have made the investment of energy and time and invest in magic instead.
A more interesting option is that in a world where magic exists is that things that seem to be alive can actually come to life. It would only take a few steam powered threshing machines coming to life and "harvesting" people instead of crops for them to be banned.
Or the concentrated steam and moving parts attracts creatures like steam mephits that take control of the machinery or destroy it.
A few gnomes now and then may develop a steam punk type of machinery but most (sane) people run whenever a gnome comes up with a new invention.. 
OoftaMeg wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
MechaPilot wrote:
Shasarak wrote:
Shasarak wrote:
Azzy1974 wrote:
Azzy1974 wrote:
Zardnaar wrote:
OoftaMeg wrote:
MechaPilot wrote:
OoftaMeg wrote:
stuff. In general I can see why OP believes what they do. I disagree with most of their conclusions. i'm guessing like me, the OP spent too many years in college studying history. I remember spending endless hours in a dusty corner of the half-step floors of Butler library in Uptown, reading letters from courtiers to queens and other correspondences, in particular poets with a flourish for language. like me, I'm sure the OP actually went to China and ran along the great wall and concluded what they did. OP is probably aware of the land of Wa and it's Empress, and the step pyramids near what is now Turkey, and probably laughed that off too.
Then again, maybe people aren't familiar with the ancient civilizations as much as their history professors would like? Maybe ancient mythology is actually far more fantastical, and things like Ancient Sky scrapers... in Asia...are discussed from the mouths of philosophers who have had followers since before the first crusades? We like to claim "no civilization has ever ____", and that "no such thing as___" existed, but history is full of accounts of incredibly massive creatures, giants, and buildings... long before anything like Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones.
If a civilization long ago built a city fortress along the grand canyon, and some foreign civilization were to write about it, would they be exagerrating or prone to Gigantism by claiming the 'moat' of this fortress were over a mile deep? The stories I read of the time of ancient emperors fit quite nicely with the stories of giant towers and walls. The stories of the Mahabharata and old testament blend easily with the accounts of Greek Titans and giants of Norse mythology.
We fantasize things all the time, but fantasy is typically rooted in mythology and magic. When it isn't, it tends to resemble science fiction or pataphysics.
Zardnaar wrote:
DoctorBadWolf wrote:
Shasarak wrote:
OoftaMeg wrote:
It can be interesting to speculate on how a Dnd fantasy world would be diferent from from the world we live in.
For example how would architecture be efected if you had to build cities and castles taking in account that giants might be a actual treat in the area ?
With the chance of a enemy army having wizards that might be able to fly and cast fireball, might lead to it being forbidden to build booden buildings inside the citie walls in case of war.
historical siege warfare might be a lot less efective when magic that can create recources like food and water gets involved.
edwin_su wrote:
edwin_su wrote: