Quote from: The Butcher;873925Like I said upthread, it's a genre thing. LotFP works great because it's a horror RPG as much as a fantasy RPG, and horror benefits from juxtaposition with the familiar and mundane. Besides, the typically smaller scale of horror scenarios tends to generate less attrition with historical fact.

"Straight" fantasy gaming can be done in a historical setting (which can easily provide the same "not in Kansas anymore" so many of us expect from a good fantasy setting) but some GMs (and writers!) believe ahistorical fantasy settings to provide them with more creative freedom before immersion is shattered.

Howard famously created the Hyborian Age, a patchwork of cultures cribbed from history to Lovecraft's chagrin, so he could have Conan adventure in Medieval Europe-like Aquilonia this week and Ancient Egypt-ish Stygia the next.

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I always liked Howard's approach because it allowed for bending different times and cultures so they could be in close proximity. But one thing that I've noticed over the last few years online is, even if you are using a fake world for that express purpose, you still get people calling for extreme historical realism (I know we've had countless threads here on subjects like that). So it seems almost like no matter how much effort you make to say "this isn't the real world" that advantage that fantasy settings are supposed to provide, is kind of diminishing in some sections. If there is going to be a call for historical realism either way, it almost doesn't make a difference whether you are meddling with real world history or creating a new pastiche.

I don't think setting it in fantasy Europe means you have to take history as it is.  I have a deep, unexplainable love for the Epic of Aerth setting, which is a fantasy version of the real world.

The benefits are simple.  You have recognizable cultures, scenery and geography.  A player with a character from Francia knows immediately what that means, as opposed to, say, Furyondy.  History and current events can be as similar or as different as you'd like.  I can even play with details of the culture around the edges and get away with it.  It just makes for a more recognizable setting thats more accessible to players.  That was the aim of the setting and something I agree with.

I'm currently setting my library b/x d&d game in the Kingdom of Roumania, right next door to Transylvania.  With that one sentence, all the players know they can expect vampires, gypsies, werewolves, and other madness.  I don't have to go into any long descriptions of Barovia or some elaborate pastiche.

I personally would love to see more of these types of settings.

Tom

Quote from: TristramEvans;873553Because it only lasts as long as you don't stop for one second and consider that if even one fantasy element was true in our world, there's no possible way that history from that point on would actually resemble anything close to what happened in our reality.

This is not exactly right.  Medieval Europe was always a fantasy world full of magic and monsters.


That's part of what informs Dark Albion.

Quote from: RPGPundit;874231This is not exactly right.  Medieval Europe was always a fantasy world full of magic and monsters.

Except people believing magic, demons, and monsters are real isn't the same thing as magic, demons, and monsters actually being real. People do believe and always have believed in lots of things that are utter bullshit. Medieval people were no different in that respect.

Quote from: RPGPundit;874231This is not exactly right.  Medieval Europe was always a fantasy world full of magic and monsters.

Belief in something and that thing actually existing and interacting with people is a bit different of a thing, I'd say. It's one thing to take the stance that all those stories and legends told by the people of an age actually happened, but say, for example, witches actually existed: that single fact drastically alters the Inquisition and its role in history. Where in our world people were making grabs for property and wealth, or political coups, or providing scapegoats to superstitious yokels, instead we have an actual holy war against Satan's minions.

It's the same difference between our world with its myriads of tonnes of eyewitness encounters with aliens/UFOS, and if alien being id in fact visit Earth.

Quote from: Bren;874235Except people believing magic, demons, and monsters are real isn't the same thing as magic, demons, and monsters actually being real. People do believe and always have believed in lots of things that are utter bullshit. Medieval people were no different in that respect.

But I think it is a fair point to raise that it does shape their world view and their society when they believe these things are genuinely real. Sometimes our secularism colors our ability to understand behavior in the past because we project it onto people who took these beliefs literally. They may not have burned or hanged any who made actual functioning made with the devil, but that wouldn't have happened had they not thought that magic and the Devil were real. We don't believe in magic, but they did and that shaped their culture.  

So I think it is reasonable to say for example, that a setting that takes place in Early Modern Europe where witches are real, and where the devil appears before people and makes pacts with them, is pretty believable and you don't really need to make historical changes for players to buy into it (though I would certainly add some twists because you could milk that reality for all kinds of campaign goodness). It isn't that much further of a step to include other types of magic (which the people in the setting would accept and acknowledge as real).

Quote from: TristramEvans;874237Belief in something and that thing actually existing and interacting with people is a bit different of a thing, I'd say. It's one thing to take the stance that all those stories and legends told by the people of an age actually happened, but say, for example, witches actually existed: that single fact drastically alters the Inquisition and its role in history. Where in our world people were making grabs for property and wealth, or political coups, or providing scapegoats to superstitious yokels, instead we have an actual holy war against Satan's minions.

Except I think we project an awful lot of our own beliefs on people here. I'm sure there were cynics who exploited things like the witch craze for personal gain (and living in the Salem area, there is plenty of evidence here that people were happy to use it for things like property grabs). But for that to work, the population still has to believe this stuff is real. And I would guess that the majority of people involved thought they were waging a war against Satan's minions. So if if you make the change that witches were actually real, that doesn't stop the witch craze from happening. If anything it would probably heighten it, because now you have a situation where the people being put on trial have real powers they can use and there is the possibility of them getting the upper hand in the conflict.

I agree it changes the role of the witch craze, because it puts the inquisitors in the right. But form their point of view at the time, if you read the material written from that period, these were real beliefs people held. Even in our own time, if you look at the whole Satanic Panic in the 80s, the people who spearheaded that were not being cynical and making power grabs, they really believed that teenagers were opening up dangerous connections with demonic forces through things like the new age movement, heavy metal and D&D. I can confirm that, because I knew people who believed it.

QuoteIt's the same difference between our world with its myriads of tonnes of eyewitness encounters with aliens/UFOS, and if alien being id in fact visit Earth.

But the point is, you wouldn't really have to make any changes to such a setting. A show like the X Files can present our world pretty much as it is, with the added twist that alien abductions and monsters are real, because they all occur exactly as our modern myths about these phenomena say they do. People get abducted and no one believes them, but the government knows and keeps a lid on it. We don't watch a show like that and expect them to make drastic cultural changes to account for the fact that aliens are real.

Well said Brendan. I agree that making the foundation of their world view real doesn't have to change history. Just because these things are real doesn't mean that magic users, say, have to be as common as they are in kitchen-sink D&D. History is full of "real" encounters with magic and the supernatural, and its believed effects were very similar to what would have been if those things were real.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;874268But I think it is a fair point to raise that it does shape their world view and their society when they believe these things are genuinely real. Sometimes our secularism colors our ability to understand behavior in the past because we project it onto people who took these beliefs literally. They may not have burned or hanged any who made actual functioning made with the devil, but that wouldn't have happened had they not thought that magic and the Devil were real. We don't believe in magic, but they did and that shaped their culture.

I completely agree with you Brendan that the secularism that is part of our culture today makes it difficult to fully understand or empathize with the world views of people who thought magic, witches, and werewolves were real. If one's fantasy world has magic and monsters that exist almost entirely in the shadows and thus are seldom seen and never displayed to most people in the broad light of day or replicated in public then the world might be similar to what we know of history (or in the case of the X-files the modern world). That's the central conceit of Call of Cthulhu - horrible things are real, but most people don't and shouldn't know the truth. But for such a setting to be consistent and make sense it requires that magic and monsters are mostly hidden. And that is very different than the typical D&D style RPG setting where a dwarf, a priest, a barbarian, a lizard man, and a half-elf mage walk into a bar.

What I was objecting to was Pundit's claim that magic is real because people believe in it. Belief in the existence of magic and monsters does not prove that magic or monsters are real. Secularism did not become the dominate belief in science because it told a better story or had better PR. Secularism became dominant because a secular model of the world has greater predictive and explanatory power than models of the world dependent on magic, monsters, and mumbo jumbo.

Quote from: Bren;874297What I was objecting to was Pundit's claim that magic is real because people believe in it. Belief in the existence of magic and monsters does not prove that magic or monsters are real. Secularism did not become the dominate belief in science because it told a better story or had better PR. Secularism became dominant because a secular model of the world has greater predictive and explanatory power than models of the world dependent on magic, monsters, and mumbo jumbo.

I am on record here saying I don't believe in magic and that I accept the secular world view as true. So I agree, that just because people in the past believed a certain thing, that doesn't make it true. But it does give us insight into their motives and it creates some interesting gaming possibilities in a historical setting where you can justify inclusion of real supernatural elements because people already assumed them to be real.

I read his article about three times because I thought he was saying this literally at first. But after the second or third read, I felt he was just saying that paradigms matter when you are taking about campaigns settings and about history. I didn't think he was weighing in on which paradigm was true, just pointing out, we have a completely different paradigm than people did during the middle ages or early modern period (that said, I am sure he has a strong opinion on what paradigm is closest to the reality). That doesn't mean you accept everything people living under that paradigm say at face value, but it does mean you approach the history with an understanding that people believed these things to be true, and may even have believed themselves to have witnessed such things (much in the same way you can find people today who claim to have had experiences with UFOs or Bigfoot). It means it isn't that implausible to have a historical setting that is pretty close to the real past with supernatural elements that align with their paradigm.

That said you can take the butterfly effect as far as you want in that sort of scenario. I could certainly see a GM saying "well if fireballs were real, that is going to have a huge impact on these battles here" for example. I just don't think one has to do that. Because the beliefs are there, I can accept as a player that magic is real and medieval Europe is largely unchanged (same with Rome, Greece or India).

Quote from: chirine ba kal;873576And yes, I've had people tell me about how "historically accurate" GoT is. "Yep," I say, "it's Scotland. Same feuds, same nasty people, same eternal internal warfare." They are a little shocked by this, as most folks know very little about Scots history...

Why qualify it?  The vast majority of gamers/SF&F types just plain suck at history.  At least the general public, if they stop to think about it, will usually admit they don't know much about history.  Gamers generally think they're just a cut below Braudel or Pirenne.

Quote from: RPGPundit;874231This is not exactly right.  Medieval Europe was always a fantasy world full of magic and monsters.

Another enduring shibboleth beloved of gamers is a surprising intolerance for myth and fantasy within the context of game settings.  The example that sticks out in my mind was a forum discussion for a large MMORPG where the OP wanted to get a merchant to make him "dragon"-themed clothing, and a couple posters rather viciously responded that dragons, per se, didn't exist in that setting.

"They don't on Earth either, fuckwit," was the gist of my response.

Quote from: JimLotFP;873758Considering the great amount of supernatural-style fiction taking place in the real world, I don't know why people consider this a problem. Even many stories set in fictional places (examples: Arkham, Sunnydale) are understood to exist in the real world. Hell, superhero settings invent multiple large cities and nations and civilizations and alien invasions, complete with their own custom histories, and even with all that history as we understand it is still completely recognizable in the setting.

I don't see why using a real-world setting in a game would be any more difficult or disruptive.

There's an important difference between your examples and "Ye Standarde D&D in Reale Medievale Worlde".

Superhero stories set in "the present day" have elements that we understand to be fictional - Superman, Batman, the cities of Metropolis and Gotham, etc. -, but the wider world still looks, sounds and feels like modern day America. It's a modern day American society inhabited by modern day American people holding modern day American culture and social mores. Yes, they meet Superman, but they's modern day Americans meeting Superman. Lovecraft's stories also involve fictuitious protagonists and the whole Mythos stuff bubbling beneath, but if the story is set in, say, early 20th century New England, the place, the people and the society feels like 20th century New England.

Putting your D&D game, impregnated as it is with its numerous social and cultural assumptions, into Medieval Europe will thoroughly fail to feel medieval or European. You might have a map of Medieval Europe on the table, and the characters might interact with historical figures, but the "world at large" will be nothing like Medieval Europe. What it will feel like is D&D Disneyland where the social structure and culture of Feudal Europe has been utterly ripped out and replaced by a 20th century libertarian fantasy through the goggles of Western stories and a fucked-up California gold rush economy turned up to 11.
In D&D, the party NEVER has to pay toll at tollhouses along the road, they NEVER have to turn in all of the loot because the dungeon was located on the King's land and therefore all its contents are the King's property, they NEVER have to face the propect that they will die in the same social class and most likely the same village they were born in, or that if a 0 level local nobleman says "jump", the only socially acceptable thing they can do is ask "how high?" There's no such thing as "D&D in the real medieval world"; there's only "bog standard D&D on a medieval map".

Quote from: Premier;874311In D&D, the party NEVER has to pay toll at tollhouses along the road, they NEVER have to turn in all of the loot because the dungeon was located on the King's land and therefore all its contents are the King's property, they NEVER have to face the propect that they will die in the same social class and most likely the same village they were born in, or that if a 0 level local nobleman says "jump", the only socially acceptable thing they can do is ask "how high?" There's no such thing as "D&D in the real medieval world"; there's only "bog standard D&D on a medieval map".

This, so much this.  You have no wiggle room in a pseudo-historical campaign, if you want it to feel like a historical setting.

D&D style adventuring just doesn't happen.  It's called banditry.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;874316This, so much this.  You have no wiggle room in a pseudo-historical campaign, if you want it to feel like a historical setting.

D&D style adventuring just doesn't happen.  It's called banditry.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Quote from: Michael Gray;874326You say that like it's a bad thing.

Well, it's usually bad for one side.  Depending on who is better armed at the time...