Quote from: TristramEvans;874377No, we have tons of evidence to this effect. The Inquisition was incredibly well documented, and the motivations of a lot of the witch trials in Europe were very clearly political.

I am no expert on the European Witch Craze, but that doesn't match what I was taught in my Medieval European Witch Craze and Salem Witch Trial courses. I am not saying politics were never a motive. And I am not saying it is so simple that it was always a matter of the individual involved being a devout believer. It is entirely possible I am wrong here because I haven't read up on the subject in a long time, and am going mostly by memory. But my recollection was reading a lot of documents that suggested the people behind the trials largely believed in what they were doing, and that the broader public certainly believed these things were real. I also remember seeing evidence that people were happy to use that to their own advantage at times, or that personal grudges would sometimes spill over into accusations of witchcraft, but that doesn't mean they were using religious believe toward political ends (if you believe witches are real, and the woman down the road is evil in your mind, it isn't that far a step to consider the possibility that she is a witch).

Most analysis I remember reading from historians, pretty much accepted these were real beliefs. They would also look at other factors and forces, but they wouldn't assume people were secretly modern secularists exploiting the primitive beliefs of peasants to put people on trial for witchcraft just to cease property. There have been all kinds of explanations put forward for why. But I don't think it being primarily about politics and property has gained a lot of traction. For the Witch Trials in Salem we just read endless analysis after analysis trying to explain it, and it never felt like a consensus was ever reached (everything form mass hallucination to the girls responsible were on a power trip). I think it is really difficult to psychoanalyze the dead.

Again I acknowledge I could be incorrect. At the very least though, I think we can agree that belief in these things was widespread enough for the witch craze to spread through much of Europe.

QuoteNo, but it takes on an incredibly different character. If witches and the magical abilities attributed to them were real, that would have drastically altered the course of human history. Curses, hexes, divinations, the ability to summon forth demons. Regardless of what folk people may have believed or wanted to believe, if any one of these things were possible, then people would have used and exploited them. Wealth would change hands, authority figures would be assassinated, famines and plagues would be spread. People who in our world were involved in the Inquisition for political reasons either wouldn't be involved or would have made completely different choices. People who weren't involved or objected to the Inquisition would have been, and vice versa. Witches would have fought back. People seeing the potential for power would have taken up witchcraft. And this is assuming just this one change, without looking back trough history in a world where witchcraft and witches were real, from the time of caveman shamans onward.

Sure, and you can take that that as far as you want to create an alternate history. But I still don't find it particularly implausible to say the things people believed in the past were real and the world largely panned out the same for the purposes of a roleplaying game or story. The people living there are still functioning as if those beliefs reflect reality so a lot their behavior is still going to be in accord with it being real. I do agree, if we were to dissect the history, the presence of real magic would change the past. I just don't think it is particularly implausible to say magic was real in fantasy europe and not change it much (because it isn't like all he historical deviations that stem from that would immediately jump out at me and mess with my suspension of disbelief).

QuoteBelief is not the same as reality. The more you think about it, it becomes impossible not to see the echo effect.

I agree belief and reality are not the same. I think the echo effect isn't immediately obvious though, so it doesn't really produce a big issue for believability (and how the echo effect pans out precisely is largely a matter of creative speculation anyways).

QuoteJust like the witch craze, like the McCarthy witch hunts, like anything of that nature, you will have the gullible people, you will have the people involved because finding a scapegoat is easier than taking personal responsibility, and you will find the people inciting it for personal gain. This is true of everything from the Satanic Panic (there were MANY people profiteering off of it) backwards.

Again, even during McCarthyism, the people behind it believed that they were rooting our communism. It isn't always just cynical exploitation. Yes there are people willing to find advantages for themselves when these sorts of things break out, but I think a lot of it has to do with sincere belief (even when people are profiting from it). Again, I remember calling into the 700 Club during the Satanic Panic and having a long debate with the guy on the other end (I wasn't on the air or anything but I was on the phone with one of their people). They were certainly benefiting from it because it gave them fuel for their broadcast, but it was also clear this person fully believed every word he said and that was his chief motivation. I am not discounting that politicians in a modern democracy will sometimes ride popular sentiment and cynically exploit it for their own gain. But I do think it is rare for people to act so egregiously and not have an accompanying belief that can justify the behavior to themselves. I was also in the middle of a really religious area of the country during the Satanic Panic and those people genuinely believed. I am sure it didn't hurt that these kinds of scares got more seats into the megachurches, but if you spoke with the pastors about it, it was pretty clear they were believers. I'm sure there were plenty of pastors, as there always are, who didn't. But the majority I met believed what they were preaching. Certainly the people in the churches did.

QuoteAgain, you're not actually accounting for the cause and effect of something actually happening. The Xfiles is not realistic, it just takes itself seriously. There is a huge difference. Yeah you can have a fantasy version of our reality where "urban legends are true", but its not our reality, it doesn't account for the manner in which our reality would be altered.

I am not saying the X Files is realistic. I am saying most viewers accept it because they play off existing beliefs in our society. We don't expect things to be different. If you reject Early Modern Fantasy Europe because it treats their beliefs as real, then you have to reject all media with fantasy elements that don't make all the appropriate cultural changes, because none of them, including the X Files or any other modern supernatural show, are going to satisfy peoples need for a plausible setting. If any supernatural elements being introduced demand that we comb through and change the setting accordingly,I don't know what movie, show, book or game could meet that standard. I just feel we are setting the bar awfully high here. I mean, I am not saying there wouldn't be a difference. But I can certainly accept a show, RPG or book that introduces these elements and doesn't create hugely different societies around them (especially when they are things that people from that period already believe).

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;874357To me i feel it is just implausible for me to put on a cape and wreck Downtown Boston without facing jail time, as it is for adventurers to break local laws in the past.

Me too.

And since I prefer settings where the implausibility dial is turned down to the low single digits, I use neither city wrecking supers settings nor Medieval Land with dragons and mega-magic settings.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;874376I  am just saying, if the modern era can make room for supers and still be plausibly modern, I see no reason why the Medieval Period and Early Modern Period can't be made to accommodate adventurers and still be plausible.

I don't find supers settings remotely plausible.

Similarly, I didn't find "Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame" plausible. But it was an entertaining movie.

Quote from: TristramEvans;874377No, but it takes on an incredibly different character. If witches and the magical abilities attributed to them were real, that would have drastically altered the course of human history. Curses, hexes, divinations, the ability to summon forth demons. Regardless of what folk people may have believed or wanted to believe, if any one of these things were possible, then people would have used and exploited them. Wealth would change hands, authority figures would be assassinated, famines and plagues would be spread.

Those things all happened. They did not happen for magical reasons. But they did happen. Now in an alt-history setting where the supernatural of some sort is real, the reasons would be different for the events, but we aren't talking about a different kind of event occurring.

Actual gaming case in point. Last Saturday the PCs in my H+I campaign figured out that the reason that an evil witch was ritually sacrificing people to create a giant pentagram was so that she could blight the crops of all the farms inside the pentagram which is one of the most fertile areas of farmland near Paris. If unchecked this blight would cause some level of famine. Is that plausible?

Well crops failures and famine were endemic in the early modern period in France. So such things happening is completely plausible.

Witches as a cause for crop failure was something (some/many) people in that time believed, so people believing that a witch caused the blight is very plausible.

Now in the real world crop failures due to witches tossing curses is bullshit. That's beyond implausible.

But in my alt-historical campaign setting where the supernatural is rare but does exist, it could be true. So it is a plausible cause in the game world.

Now D&D wizards with wands of fireballs and shit showing up at the Battle of White Mountain to shatter the Spanish Tercios and save the day for the Winter King. No that won't fit in my setting and still be plausible.

Quote from: Bren;874427Me too.

And since I prefer settings where the implausibility dial is turned down to the low single digits, I use neither city wrecking supers settings nor Medieval Land with dragons and mega-magic settings.

I never run supers (though I am happy to play in a supers campaign). I will occasionally run Medieval Fun Land though. It depends on what I am shooting for. Sometimes I just want a bunch of over the top stuff from different genres and times thrown in a blender. Sometimes I want something that feels more rooted in reality.

QuoteI don't find supers settings remotely plausible.

Similarly, I didn't find "Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame" plausible. But it was an entertaining movie.

I love Detective Dee. I would agree it isn't terribly plausible, though that isn't the point of that genre. But it is an example of how one can apply history lightly and still have a blast. Detective Dee works in part because they have fun with the the period and with Wu Zetian and Di Renjie as a characters. They also inject some crazy elements into it. A lot of Chinese movies are like that. They have fun with their history, occasionally include fantasy and myth. Some of the movies take the history more seriously. The prequel to Detective Dee has even more genuine fantasy elements in it if I recall (whereas Detective Dee I think gave vaguely real world explanations for the presence of strange events). But there are many possible tones and approaches with different degrees of anachronism. The Detective Dee approach is definitely one way to run a historical campaign that can be a lot of fun. It just seems strange to me that people are so insistent things be 100% realistic all the time in a game of imagination. I am fond of those types of campaigns myself. I just don't see them as inherently superior, better or preferred when dealing with history.

Supers I don't find particularly plausible either. Somehow they came up though in an example and I was just saying if a person can accept supers in a modern setting I don't see why they can't accept Fighters and Wizards in historical Europe.

Isn't Backswords & Bucklers indisputably OSR? It's not fantasy Europe, but it obviously shows that historical D&D is viable. So if other games can do "low profile fantasy" of the sort that merges history and fantasy--like Pendragon, or Crusaders of the Amber Coast for BRP--then I'm sure it could be done in a manner that's recognizably D&D/OSR.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;874433It just seems strange to me that people are so insistent things be 100% realistic all the time in a game of imagination.

I've never met anyone who wants a setting to be 100% realistic. What I have seen are a lot of people who don't agree on which specific aspects of the setting must be realistic for their enjoyment and which don't have to be.

Quote from: Bren;874430Those things all happened. They did not happen for magical reasons. But they did happen. Now in an alt-history setting where the supernatural of some sort is real, the reasons would be different for the events, but we aren't talking about a different kind of event occurring.

OF COURSE they did.  He's not denying that.  What you're obviously missing is that if 'magic' had been real, and had been as powerfully insidious as the Church was trying to pawn off as, there would have been witches in power, in fact, there's a good chance that the Inquisition would not have worked as well.  Simply because the other side would have had the means to stop them from going as far as it did.  The 'Witches' of history had no ability to defend themselves from the inevitable outcome of their accusations.  If you failed the 'test', they killed you.  You passed the test, you often died as a 'reward' for not being a witch.

Add Magic to the equation, and now you have something likely akin to an all out war.

The 'echo effect' changes everything the moment you introduce certain fantasy elements.  And do you have any idea how much work that is to keep it plausible?  You can't have 'Medieval Europe with Magic and Dragons' without having one small incident actually changing the entire world paradigm, because in D&D magic is that powerful a force.

D&D doesn't work in anything than a pure Fantasy setting because there's no way to make it seem even remotely ineffective or corrupting, without changing the base game.  Other systems is easier, often because they're set up that way.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;874433It just seems strange to me that people are so insistent things be 100% realistic all the time in a game of imagination.

I'm not insisting that at all. What I'm saying is the minute any of these elements are introduced, it stops being "Historical gaming". The suspension of disbelief that our history would somehow work out the same way despite radical alterations to our reality is harder to maintain, than with a gaming premise that doesn't require ignoring the echo effect. It's not that it can't, or certainly shouldn't be done. I've enjoyed many games with such premises, from Ars Magica to Pendragon to Call of Cthulhu. But the verisimilitude of the game falls apart the moment you stop and think about any of these fantasy elements logically as applied to real history.

That's not going to matter to everyone. But from the perspective of a game master or game writer thats one reason why a fantasy world is easier as the premise for a game than "history but with magic added" (the second being that its largely unlikely one will find a group of players for your campaign who actually give a shit about historical accuracy).

Quote from: Christopher Brady;874459OF COURSE they did.  He's not denying that.  What you're obviously missing is that if 'magic' had been real, and had been as powerfully insidious as the Church was trying to pawn off as, there would have been witches in power, in fact, there's a good chance that the Inquisition would not have worked as well.

I'm not missing anything. I am reaching a different conclusion. In part, I think, because I am using different premises. I am not assuming the only type of magic and monsters that can exist are D&D magic and monsters.

And in actual history there were actual people who were accused of being witches or using witchcraft who were not prosecuted, who had positions of great wealth and power, and who maintained those positions for years, even decades despite rumors that they were witches or consorted with the devil. Examples include Queen Catherine de Medici of France, at least one of Louis XIV's mistresses and a number of his courtiers, numbers of Catholic Church officials including, I think, at least one Pope, and many or most heretics including Luther and Calvin. So there were people, thought by many to be witches and consorters with the devil who actually were powerful. Some were even insidious. Which is exactly what you are suggesting would happen if magic were real.

QuoteThe 'echo effect' changes everything the moment you introduce certain fantasy elements.  And do you have any idea how much work that is to keep it plausible?  You can't have 'Medieval Europe with Magic and Dragons' without having one small incident actually changing the entire world paradigm, because in D&D magic is that powerful a force.

D&D doesn't work in anything than a pure Fantasy setting because there's no way to make it seem even remotely ineffective or corrupting, without changing the base game.  Other systems is easier, often because they're set up that way.

I've already said I am running an historical setting (1620s France) where the supernatural is real, though rare. So yes I do have some idea of how to keep things plausible. As I said, magic and monsters need to be rare, lurk in the shadows, and not be too powerful in fact. Which is exactly what many people at the time thought was happening in our history.

And I already said, you can't have D&D type magic with wizards publicly casting fireballs to obliterate blocks of pike or lines of musketeers and still have our history. But since I'm not allowing D&D type wizards, that's not really a problem for me, is it?
 

Quote from: TristramEvans;874463I'm not insisting that at all. What I'm saying is the minute any of these elements are introduced, it stops being "Historical gaming".

That is also true after the first play session of any "historical setting" where the PCs are allowed free will and the ability to change historical outcomes. The degree to which magic and monsters would make our history look different really will depend on what kind of magic and monsters are introduced and how they manifest in the setting.

QuoteThe suspension of disbelief that our history would somehow work out the same way despite radical alterations to our reality is harder to maintain, than with a gaming premise that doesn't require ignoring the echo effect.

It may be nit picking, but the point is not for history to work out the same way. The point is that for an observer who is not aware of the secret, underlying reality of the game setting (i.e. magic is real and monsters exist) our history would be written the same and the public view of events would be the same. The villainous NPCs* and the Investigators, Witch Hunters, Cardinal's Blades, or whatever one calls the PCs who try to foil the villains and are in the know would grasp the truth behind the fiction the public calls history, but the ordinary man on the street or woman in the market would not.

QuoteBut the verisimilitude of the game falls apart the moment you stop and think about any of these fantasy elements logically as applied to real history.

That's not going to matter to everyone. But from the perspective of a game master or game writer that's one reason why a fantasy world is easier as the premise for a game than "history but with magic added" (the second being that its largely unlikely one will find a group of players for your campaign who actually give a shit about historical accuracy).

Really I think what matters is a subjective thing. Some people will find the historical setting makes it really hard, even impossible for them to suspend disbelief. (I have that feeling about supers games , it's one reason I don't play or run them.) But some people have the same problem with the inconsistencies of the average fantasy setting. Most fantasy settings are seldom well thought out and frequently require some serious suspension of disbelief or even outright blindness or ignorance regarding physics, economics, politics, military tactics, psychology, and any number of other things. The plethora of inconsistencies imbedded in level based systems like D&D is one reason I haven't run D&D in decades.


* Here I am assuming villains and heroes, but the same is true if the PCs are in the know and are the villains.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;874374Yeah, but my point was just that. They are not going to let me do random property damage, endanger the public, and commit violence against people I deem villainous.

Most superheroes do not do that either. (usually) In the comics at least they tend to get into the big public battles after some investigation and the villain does something out in the open. Namor attacks the city. Doomsday rampages through the city, etc. And in non-pulps at least the scale of the villainy tends to pretty much requires heroes to beat the current threat. And Spider Man and a few other vigilantes at least for a long time faced arrest if ever caught.

WW's Aberrant RPG sets up a metas in the real world setting and at least in that you could and would be arrested if you got out of hand. Lawsuits and all the other hassles.

As for fantasy settings. Seen quite a few where the PCs have to pay tolls or have to bow to nobles and all the other hassles of being a commoner as it were. AD&D at least covers some of these potential situations as do a few other RPGs. And there was the city guard and more to deal with as well in AD&D if someone acted up.

In our current 5e campaign we know that there are tolls for crossing specific locales. It helps pay for the upkeep and patrol of major roads. We also know not to confront the local nobles without a-lot of backup and prep if it came to that. Whereas in other kingdoms things work differently. We havent traveled outside our own yet so who knows how things differ.

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.

It worked just fine for Indiana Jones, James Bond and countless others. Besides, most myths and fairy tales take place in "literal fantasy Europe".

Quote from: Elfdart;874618It worked just fine for Indiana Jones,

Of course it did.  It worked because the Magic was not in the Player's hands as a resource, it was a macguffin or plot device.  You're conflating two completely separate situations.

As for the 'Urban Fantasy' of course it works, because it hand waves all the messy details and leaves it in the player's imagination as to how things 'got here'.  There's a reason very few Zombie shows are during the supposed apocalypse, simply because a lot of the assumptions simply fall apart.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;873561Because it's 'all been done'.  No amount of fantastical addition will open up places to 'explore', no real ruins to delve in, because we 'know' that the world has been explored by other people.

In Dark Albion, the whole point is that you get to be the ones who 'do it'.

One big draw of a non-real-world based fantasy setting is the sense of exploration and discovery some can bring fourth. That is harder to get in a real-world setting. But certainly not impossible.

The level or type of fantasy used for a real-world setting can be a factor too in how well it comes across. If it is just D&D on the real world map then what was the point in touting it as fantasy Europe? Mystara for example is set on a skewed version of the real world. But does not tout that as a feature. Greyhawk has a little more overt hints of it too. Though the map does not.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;873643If you are basically playing in a fantasy version of the real world, maybe setting it in the real world is the way to go. But I think using fantasy settings have several advantages that make running and prepping a lot easier. The biggest is you have a lot more freedom to do whatever you want in a world that never existed.

On the other hand, the real world and real history affords you a ready-made set of NPCs and events you could most likely never come up with in total on your own.

I think, for example, that the War of the Roses makes for a more interesting setting than the War of the Five Kings in Westeros. There's a lot of interesting characters in Game of Thrones but there's an order of magnitude more characters in the real War of the Roses.  There's a lot of setting lore about Westeros, but not nearly as much as the setting lore of 15th Century England.