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Fantasy in Renaissance Italy

Started by Aracaris, November 01, 2015, 04:24:29 PM

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Aracaris

A friend and I have been working on a Renaissance Italy setting for Fate, though we may eventually handle it using other systems (maybe OSR, maybe D20, not sure yet).

I'm releasing just the player section (which comprises about half of what we've done so far), in simple Google doc form.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kDcl2Ajtql7ImGwBn01t1QkoODb-25tIpW7qyFJ9Z7g/

I was going to handle this with my own homebrew system, but for a variety of reasons (and some constructive criticism from someone here and folks elsewhere as well in fact) led to me deciding to work with an existing one.  

I guess I'm kinda looking for general feedback and constructive criticism, as so far what I have received I think has helped shape the game in a better direction than it would other wise have ended up in.

I know Fate isn't super popular here so I'm suspecting feedback on mechanics will be limited, but we've just started testing out the improv. magic system, so, I'm trying to see what terrible traps might be lurking in it too.

Skarg

Looks like you're off to a good start. It's a bit much for my available time/energy to read and digest it all. Just running a historical Earth game in 16th Century Italy seems like it could be plenty interesting and challenging to develop and to play in, for my detailed play style. I'd suggest sticking to contemporary maps.

It's a little hard for me to imagine adding several non-human civilized races and religions, and women's rights, and reconciling or imagining how different it would be from historical Italy, since Christianity was so dominant and shaped what I think I understand about it.

Aracaris

#2
Thanks for checking it out as much as was reasonable for you to do so.
Dealing with fantasy elements (races, and maybe even worse when it's of the more overt sort, magic) in a pseudo-historical setting is always tricky (but tons of fun).
It's one reason I'm trying to play up it being a different world, even if it is an alternate version of ours (it gives some more license to pick and choose what bits of history I keep or get to have fun butchering). I could have gone as far as to rename things and have "fantasy Italy" not called such, but there's something about the contrast between weirdness and the familiar which is gained by not changing names that is appealing, even if it does make things more difficult to deal with in some ways.

Still though, it gets hard to justify having things like healing magic without disease being much less an issue, or teleportation, without trade looking completely different… most fantasy games seem to hand wave these things away, but I've (and the person I'm working on it with) really had to put some thought into why things wouldn't be more dramatically different than the are (and in some cases the world will just really be dramatically different). It's a fun challenging what if scenario, and I think as it's developed I'll run into more and more "how would this change things, or how can I justify it not changing things" situations.

Believe it or not the women's rights issue was actually a thing in Bologna at this time, even to the point where it was not entirely unheard of for them to organize for more rights with some success; this was rather unheard of in any other Italian city at the time.  I'm still looking into Rome's motives for later seizing the city (beyond obvious political ones), but I'm sure that issue didn't help Bologna any when it came to relations with Rome (while at the same time not being the most important factor I'm sure).  

Now, when I move on to deal with other parts of the world, I'll have to ponder how to handle societal issues more with those, both in terms of how I want the differences in this world from ours to have shaped things, and how much leeway I want to give players for playing different concepts.

Rome in particular I think I want to make pretty traditionalist, but it will have to be different in some ways due to other species and magic (I do know I want it to be pretty heavy handed and controlling when it comes to both, as that's more interesting than having it be just another place made more progressive because of the weirdness in the world.  It should if anything be the opposite).