What do you look for in RPG books describing or detailing historical periods of play?
Graham Walmsley asks over at the Story Games forums, and I thought I’d echo the question here, to get some more takes on the subject. What do you like to see? What do you need to see? What justifies the purchase or the time spent reading an RPG book when you could be reading a straight-up history book?
Turn it around, too: What irks you? What diminishes your enthusiasm for an historical setting for play? Has a book ever convinced you that a particular setting was a terrible time or place to play in? How did that happen?
I’ve long thought that part of any historical setting book’s job was to grant license to play amid the history. Not to observe or recite or recreate, but to play. That means giving out toys (in the form of people, places, customs, trivia) and permission and authority to experiment.
I’m tempted to say, here, that historical-setting books should actually be story guides. They should concern themselves with the stories to be found at the intersection of time and place—focus on the conflicts and the characters. Don’t just show us the proper way to address a Spanish duke (or whatever), but show me why I’d want to or what the consequences are for not doing it right. That’s conflict. Don’t just tell me who people were, tell me what they want and why they don’t have it yet. That makes them characters.
Fill the book with potential energy. Things should be on the verge of happening, whenever the book is set.
The truth, though, is that I’ve enjoyed plenty of game books that employ other approaches. So I don’t think it’s my way or the highway. Just thinking about this has me that much more excited to hear what you like in historical-setting books.
Flavor and story hooks.
As opposed bland details.
For example, I’m not interested in the specific methods of crop rotation in medieval Turkey, regardless of how important they might have been historically. However, if you tell me that court acrobats were called “pehlivan” and that tradition held that the only good ones trained in Constantinople, now we’re talking. That’s a neat descriptive detail, a character, and an entire plot in and of itself.
I think the key is telling history with a focus on feeling and uniqueness, rather than pure importance.
I’m currently re-reading Sartar, Kingdom of Heroes, for HeroQuest, and this is what I’d like historical books to be – focused on how people live. What do we here believe in? What are our highest ambitions? What do we do in a typical day, and how often do untypical days come along? What challenges and crises do we face, and how do we deal with them? When we want to earn some glory, what do we try to do? Who are our neighbors, and what do we think about them? Who are our enemies, why are we their enemies, and what do we do with it? How do we look, how do we distinguish ourselves from each other, and how do we show distinctions?
One way of putting it is that I want less history and more anthropology and acting advice.
Well, what I like is the things done the other way round, that is I am not interested in historical settings per se, but interested in how history is used. Therefore my favorite settings are fictious ones that employ history:
Fading Suns: Space Opera in year 5000, but the whole setting is compilation of historical elements transposed from Medieval Europe, so I got the Plague, marauding Vikings, crusades, superstition, heresies etc. etc.
The Mystara setting for D&D: Same deal as Fading Suns. They pick historical elements and reorganize them into a new world, so I can again play out the Roman Empire encountering the Celts, or as it is in this setting: The Byzantine Empire encountering jungle Celts, almost the same, I can use all kinds of historical facts about the Celts, and yet change a few details to suit my tastes, but still there are historical elements.
Rewriting history: Conspiracy settings (like Nephilim), that rewrites history through the lens of conspiracies. Allows me to reinterpret history and see it anew.
I like to explore history, but I find, that I have more freedom, when it is reorganized, since you are always playing up against “how it really was”. Also using history in the above manner, allows me to put an emphasis on specific themes, for instance the horrors of living in a medieval village in Southern France during the Black Death, or in a village on the planet of Pentateuch during the Green Plague? Same thing, but once removed from the historical setting, I can emphasise elements, that strengthens the theme without caring the least about staying within a historical frame.
I like to see things that can give me ideas. I need to see a blend of the factual information alongside the game’s underpinnings of those events–for all the historic information there, some of it should be linked to the game’s version of how those things happened, or what those events cover up.
What kills my enthusiasm for a historical settings are two things: a setting so tightly written that it leaves no room for players to change the world or play within it, forcing them instead to be witness to canon or history without being able to play a role in either. I don’t *need* the ability to rewrite history, but I’m irked by games where the canon of the game robs players of any feeling of agency.
and
Settings where the explanations for historic events or the game’s secret history of that time period rob history of its impact. Declaring all the evils in history were caused 100% by the Monster of the Week is bad writing, among other things.
These are great perspectives, everybody. Thanks for sharing them.
Do you suppose there’s a difference in approach when presenting an historical setting from a fantastical one? Should there be?
So in a historical game I want history.
Which makes me odd, I suppose, both in this crowd and in my own gaming self. I’m all about the interesting story stuff, right?
Well, as it turns out in historical games that isn’t true. The reason I’m going to play in a historical period has to do with a desire to simulate that historical period, to have something that feels like a legitimate interaction with events that actually transpired.
Now, how that is conveyed and how it will be played still has a lot of variation. As Bruce pointed out I like games that convey a “this is how you live” in terms of what you care about, where it makes you stand, and how it brings about self and society. And I don’t necessarily want a treatise about crop rotation in medieval Angora (great example!) — but I do want historical details that were generative to the way that society worked and was formed at an anthropological level. (Which crop rotation may, so please, keep it brief….)
Every time I’ve lost interest in an historical game (as opposed to an historical fantasy, which is different) its been because the game had neither respect or understanding for the history involved. Crappy game systems I can take, a fundamental misunderstanding of the structure of the Guptan empire, however, is unforgivable.
It sounds like freedom and inspiration are two recurring themes here. (Though you’re quite right, Brand, that historical settings should deliver distinctly historical elements, too, to earn themselves the title.) And Lillian, you nailed two of my concerns when I was outlining Requiem for Rome andFall of the Camarilla: too much rigid adherence to lore over play and too much influence of the fictional (especially the supernatural) over every aspect of history. Part of the fun is seeing how the supernatural and the historical intertwine in fiction, and that doesn’t happen when every facet of history has been absolutely drenched in vampirism (or whatever).
In practice, though, I also tend to prefer fantastical settings with strong historical connections or ingredients, like you’re talking about, Morten. I enjoy reading historical settings, but they’re not typically where I play.
None of this really considers the role of high-concept alternate-history settings like Ken Hite’s Day After Ragnarok, though, which is a pretty wonderful blend of fiction and history into something altogether else. No shortage of things to play with in there and yet no shortage of history, either. The question is, it is so far removed from history that it no longer counts as a historical setting?
I leave that question open.
…I looked through this thread and the one you reference and I’m floored that no one has considered Ars Magica (Jeff Tidball, where for art thou?) for this topic.
Helllloooo. The whole line has been looking at the historical aspect for 20ish years? They’ve written fantastically-focused setting books on France, Germany, Greece (just for ArM5), the Levant, UK, Iceland, Switzerland, Near Russia, Italy, Provence (Previous editions) and they cover those story inducing places and moments for an SG to consider.
The books come with bibliographies most times, fer crying out loud.
You want historical RPG books? Ars Magica, baby. Ars F-ing Magica.
-Ben.
@Ben: Hi! Wherefore art I’m around here somewhere.
Ars Magica’s a great game, and yes, its 20 years of supplements are chock full of great detail, both drawn from history and imaginatively fabricated. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again now: David Chart is the one person best suited in all the world to be the line developer on that line, and ArM 5 is the best edition of the game to date.
My silence in the comments here is mostly due to crushing workload, but also due to the fact that my thoughts about historically-set RPGs are long, complicated, and (I’d like to think nuanced). Sitting down to write about it at length seems daunting, while sitting down to write briefly seems pointlessly glib. Damned if you do…