There's this... is it a #trope? I'm not sure if tvtropes has an article for it, but I call it Second World Aversion. And I might have heard that somewhere before.
It's when a piece of media clearly is a high #fantasy story, but doesn't dare go all the way and establish itself as taking place on a different world. So you have a story with elves and orcs and magic and shit, and then it drops a connection to the real world.
There's Spain. Or England.
Now there are a lot of ways this can work. Not every fantasy story has to take place on another world.
But then there are those where it's clear from the outset that it's jut because the author didn't believe the audience would accept it.
Which brings me to Evil Ruins, a 1984 3rd party #ttrpg scenario that does it as well, in one of the worst ways.
The Evil Ruin of the title is Castle Tintagle, an actual castle in Cornwall.
Meaning, this place exists. You can find it on Google maps.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/EvZ6nus5CRWwQpx47
There's legends that it was the Camelot of the Arthurian myth.
Which is mentioned in the scenario as well. It's just that the scenario doesn't do anything with it. It gives a 2 page backstory about the family drama of some Saxon royalty instead. Which is also... okay. No King Arthur in his Camelot.
But it doesn't do anything with that either. The scenario is a very generic Tolkien fantasy dungeon crawl.
And I actually like it. It's so very generic dungeon fantasy it hurts, but it's done in a naïve mode. It's so generic it feels fresh and new.
But I really can't stand the lackluster background. Clearly this is supposed to be a real place. This is supposed to be medieval England. The background section feels like a history text. But then we learn about a warrior priest of Zeus, a forest full of orcs, and intelligent giant spiders (I genuinely like that part)
Oh, and the maps manage to not fit the real place at all (they put the castle on the east coast)
So I'm not sure what this whole thing is about. The scenario was intended for beginner players, so maybe the intention was that absolute ttrpg noobs wouldn't have to do the mental gymnastics of having to imagine a different world.
️ 
@kyonshi Gygax did that kind of a lot, his Greyhawk locations are basically specific Earth European history with light relocation to post-apocalypse Great Lakes US, including a lot of flora & fauna. Dangerous Journeys even more so, Ærth is just alt-history with elves.
I kinda like it, it's easier to talk about Parisian Elves than Elves of High Flauridiel. Why not have King Arthur?
But yeah, Role-Aids didn't go all in, they just wrapped some rando setting on whatever they'd already written.