In d&d and a lot of role playing.  Things don't change.  You go on an adventure and come back to the same stable kingdom you left.
I've been reading a bit of history lately.  In history the default state is War, Coup, Counter Coup, Roits, Revolution & Reprisals.

Pundit mentioned this is because d&d is an American game.  (If I remember correctly.)

Obviously its easier to run a game with a base assumption of political stablity.  You don't have to keep stating up new Dukes for one thing.  The rules don't deal with large battles, or riots well.  The focus is on individual heroics and small groups.  PCs come to play, not watch you talk to yourself.

Anyone have much success running a game in the washing machine of history?

Quote from: Headless;961612In d&d and a lot of role playing.  Things don't change.  You go on an adventure and come back to the same stable kingdom you left.
I've been reading a bit of history lately.  In history the default state is War, Coup, Counter Coup, Roits, Revolution & Reprisals.

Pundit mentioned this is because d&d is an American game.  (If I remember correctly.)

Obviously its easier to run a game with a base assumption of political stablity.  You don't have to keep stating up new Dukes for one thing.  The rules don't deal with large battles, or riots well.  The focus is on individual heroics and small groups.  PCs come to play, not watch you talk to yourself.

Anyone have much success running a game in the washing machine of history?

In my current Lamentations of the Flame Princess campaign the PCs have been caught up, since the first adventure, in a secret inter-dimensional and interplanetary war taking place during the 17th century. In the last session the King in Yellow created a bridge through space from Carcosa that ended in Europe. There have been factions at war with each other, and with the PCs as they found out more and more about what is going on. There has been nothing about static about the setting since we began.

I just posted my first notes about the Classic Traveller setting I want to run.

The notes begin:

QuoteThe subsector I'm working up is part of an empire in decay. The empire's power is slipping away, both politically and economically, as civil wars across different sections of the empire have drained its focus. The influence of the empire on the subsector as a political or social entity is non-existent.

Instead, three noble families which have rules potions of the subsector are now scrambling to exert influence and exploit resources of worlds not yet explored. The families see themselves as both standard-bearers for the rich tradition of the imperial past, but also cut off from its support and making their own way forward as best they can.

On a G+ thread talking about it I wrote:

QuoteWhat I am invested in is setting that are not stable. Unstable environments are rich soil for RPG adventures.

So I'm all for unstable settings -- politically, economically, socially. I want things to not be settled -- because that provides more opportunity for situations and environments that offer adventure.

I really would't want a stable setting if anyone handed it to me. (Which is why GDW's Third Imperium for Traveller never did much for me.)

Half the fun is returning home to find out out things are not as they were, as at the end of Return of the King when we see the Shire again.

I forgot to add about the "episodic" part:

In my LotFP game we have been playing through LotaFP modules and modules of my own design. There is no plot or plan however. The Players follow up on any rumors or breadcrumbs they wish to pursue. They choose when to bug out of a dungeon or go back to some god-forsaken village they had explored weeks earlier. I am not leading them to any climax of my own design. But the adventures are episodic. But there is a "background static" of Bigger Things Going On that the Players have chosen to pursue. This provides a sense of "purpose" the campaign perhaps... but it is all based on Player choices and nothing to do with me leading them anywhere or forcing their hand in any kind of agenda.

Uuhhh.... in both Blackmoor and Greyhawk, the PCs BECAME part of the "movers and shakers," so the background situation was anything but stable.

And, of course, there is the lost "end game" of D&D, where you take a bunch of wargamers, give each one of them a castle, an army, and a treasury and stand back.

So the short answer is this is less an artifact of "D&D" than it is an artifact of TSR shifting their marketing to 14 year old kids who had fuckall notion of history.

I need glasses...I read the title as "Erotic adventures in an immutable status quo"...nevermind.

I tend to set my D&D campaigns at a time in the setting where things are relatively static at the moment, but people are waiting for the other shoe to fall.  Small events are happening that foreshadow larger events to come.  The players can do what they want in that environment.  They may decide not to deal with the larger events, but they can't entirely ignore them, as they provide the backdrop around which they act.

But then I think the tensions of waiting on the coup is more interesting than the coup, and likewise for other big events.

Quote from: Headless;961612In d&d and a lot of role playing.  Things don't change.  You go on an adventure and come back to the same stable kingdom you left.

Um... since when?

That is definitely not the norm for D&D. Things change. Kingdoms rise and fall.

From my Pov, a backdrop of political instability is the ideal context in which to run an adventure game. It feeds character ambition and allows for rapid, dramatic escalation of the stakes. My games have involved such things as coups, rebellions, counter coups, feuds, small battles and border wars.

Yeah, you will need a system or two for resolving large fights and running military campaigns. I think having a background in wargaming helps.

One thing that I have learned is that while most good roleplayers take to political intrique very well, not everyone adapts well to the army game. So you have to keep close tabs on players'interests and this may mean that war and battles stay in the background/off screen and don't become the main event. Whatver happens, keep the focus on the PCs.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;961625Uuhhh.... in both Blackmoor and Greyhawk, the PCs BECAME part of the "movers and shakers," so the background situation was anything but stable.

And, of course, there is the lost "end game" of D&D, where you take a bunch of wargamers, give each one of them a castle, an army, and a treasury and stand back.

So the short answer is this is less an artifact of "D&D" than it is an artifact of TSR shifting their marketing to 14 year old kids who had fuckall notion of history.

This. Prof. Barker's Tekumel campaign, and mine, for that matter, also had a constant background of wars, intrigues, and disputes, and we managed to get something like thirty-five years of games out of it.

My guess is that one reason for stability in settings may be the use of pre packaged adventures and settings, and people using them in what amounts to very short (almost one-off) games. Just a thought, I don't have a lot of game-play time in that kind of campaign setting...

Our last campaign was set in the middle of Game of Thronesian maneuvering between ambitious nobles. The players took sides, but got waylayed by a big macguffin thing that basically remade the campaign world. Since it was Dungeon World, I didn't have to worry about statting everything. I just made notes on the behind the scenes activities of the various players, and worked using a tentative timelines of what was likely to occur if the PCs did nothing related to it. My NPCs played all sorts of dirty pool with them, to include lying, bribery, backstabbing and extortion. They downright hated the local lord, even though all the huge screwovers done to them by "him" where actually the schemes and advice of said Lord's advisor (who played good cop with the PCs, by painting the Lord as the elephant in the room).

Quote from: Headless;961612In d&d and a lot of role playing.  Things don't change.  You go on an adventure and come back to the same stable kingdom you left.
I've been reading a bit of history lately.  In history the default state is War, Coup, Counter Coup, Roits, Revolution & Reprisals.

Pundit mentioned this is because d&d is an American game.  (If I remember correctly.)

Obviously its easier to run a game with a base assumption of political stablity.  You don't have to keep stating up new Dukes for one thing.  The rules don't deal with large battles, or riots well.  The focus is on individual heroics and small groups.  PCs come to play, not watch you talk to yourself.

Anyone have much success running a game in the washing machine of history?

My sandbox Wilderlands game is a constant roiling turmoil of political shenanigans. Dozens of petty lords (NPC & PC) constantly allying, fighting, betraying, getting overthrown, creating petty kingdoms and failed alliances, etc. Some PCs dream of empire and a new golden age, others just want to be king of the village with an endless supply of lemonade...

Some realms are on their third or fourth ruler in 2 years.

Quote from: Headless;961612In d&d and a lot of role playing.  Things don't change.  You go on an adventure and come back to the same stable kingdom you left.

Sure, if you play with fucking asshats.

As for why PUBLISHED settings are usually stable and without the levers and gears that might shake a setting into chaos I have always assumed it is because the publisher needs a setting that will discourage changing the setting on the part of any Referee or Players. A puvlisher putting out four or eight or twelve products in a setting a year wants to know that the setting is the same setting that the Referee is runnning. You want a setting that is so stable the PCs clearly cannot change it. You don't want any levers lying around the Referee could pull on his own that might change it.... because the next module or setting splatbook might not work anymore if those levers get pulled.

Quote from: Headless;961612In history the default state is War, Coup, Counter Coup, Roits, Revolution & Reprisals.

I think that's because you're looking at the really long view.  In any given 10 year historical time period in a specific geographical area, chances are that things will probably be pretty stable.