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Most fantasy is basically our world in the past with the names changed and dragons tacked on. This is so pervasive that most Game of Thrones viewers believe that show to be an accurate depiction of our own past (it's not even remotely).

So why not cut out the middleman and play in literal fantasy Europe? There are already existing sourcebooks that make excellent setting resources: Kingdoms of Legend has geography and politics and integration with genre cliches, Dark Albion has an inoffensive substitute for Christianity, Blood & Treasure has a ptolemaic planar cosmology, Medieval Players Manual has nitty gritty socio-political details, etc.

Because 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.

And where on earth did you get the notion that most people who watch Game of Thrones think its an accurate retelling of history?

For the same reason Ellen Kushner sets her novels in someplace other than fantasy-Earth:

"So that if I get one detail wrong I don't get 10,000 letters telling me that the crossbow was banned in 1103 and not 1104, or whatever."

Same thing.  Sweet Crom's hairy nutsack look at the arguments people have over gun stats in games or calling a "magazine" a "clip."  Claim your game is in "fantasy Europe" and 90% of people won't give a fuck and the other 10% will argue about trivialities constantly.

I speak from experience.  Been there, done that, said fuck it.

"The crossbow was banned in FUCK YOU ASSHOLE, that's when it was banned!"

Because 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.

And Gronan?  Guns are what you have on ships.  What you're discussing is a pistol.  :D ;)

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.

And Gronan?  Guns are what you have on ships.  What you're discussing is a pistol.  :D ;)

Match lock or wheel lock - it makes a huge difference to the flow of the game. It takes for-bloody-ever to span the damn things, or the fun when a forgetful player sticks the wrong hand into the budge barrel... :)

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;873555For the same reason Ellen Kushner sets her novels in someplace other than fantasy-Earth:

"So that if I get one detail wrong I don't get 10,000 letters telling me that the crossbow was banned in 1103 and not 1104, or whatever."

Same thing.  Sweet Crom's hairy nutsack look at the arguments people have over gun stats in games or calling a "magazine" a "clip."  Claim your game is in "fantasy Europe" and 90% of people won't give a fuck and the other 10% will argue about trivialities constantly.

I speak from experience.  Been there, done that, said fuck it.

"The crossbow was banned in FUCK YOU ASSHOLE, that's when it was banned!"

But... But... My .380 has an internal magazine that one loads with a clip... And so does the Arisaka that my dad brought home from New Guinea in '44...

Oh, I'm just so confused...

"BAYONET! FIX!" There; solved. :)

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;873550Most fantasy is basically our world in the past with the names changed and dragons tacked on. This is so pervasive that most Game of Thrones viewers believe that show to be an accurate depiction of our own past (it's not even remotely).

So why not cut out the middleman and play in literal fantasy Europe? There are already existing sourcebooks that make excellent setting resources: Kingdoms of Legend has geography and politics and integration with genre cliches, Dark Albion has an inoffensive substitute for Christianity, Blood & Treasure has a ptolemaic planar cosmology, Medieval Players Manual has nitty gritty socio-political details, etc.

But, seriously...

I think that it may be a little too close to home for a lot of people, and that there's the perception that 'everybody knows that' to some degree. You do get a lot of 'trivia buffs', and these can kill a game session in no time flat by arguing over the most ineffectual details.

And 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... :)

Actually, it's one thing I reall wish we could see more of. I appreciate the Dark Albion attempt to do a (near) historical attempt at the War of the Roses, and I also like games like Ars Magica which do Mythic Earth settings.

Real history is more interesting than playing in other people's fantasy worlds.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;873581Real history is more interesting than playing in other people's fantasy worlds.

But neither is more interesting than playing in my own fantasy worlds.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;873581Real history is more interesting than playing in other people's fantasy worlds.

To read, not to play in, for a lot of gamers I know.

Well, you couldn't have a fantasy Europe, except maybe the general geography. Even a little magic would change things radically.

You wouldn't have England or France with magic, you wouldn't have an England or France.

Unless you picked a specific point in time where magic suddenly happened and extrapolated from there. Sort of like Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Darcy_%28character%29) series, which basically started at Richard the Lion Hearted (he didn't get killed).

Quote from: Christopher Brady;873583To read, not to play in, for a lot of gamers I know.

Well, it takes a certain degree of pressure off if you don't have to be historically accurate in the games you run, admittedly - and reading up on history can be interesting for general fantasy ideas.

However, sometimes I get frustrated by fantasy settings - and seek more authentic experiences, often in time travelling campaigns. Each to their own though, of course.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;873586Well, it takes a certain degree of pressure off if you don't have to be historically accurate in the games you run, admittedly - and reading up on history can be interesting for general fantasy ideas.

In my admittedly small circle, even if the GM is lenient with the historical accuracy, some players are not.

I'd say it's a genre thing. Horror benefits from Earth settings (historical or contemporary) because it thrives under a facade of normalcy. Post-apocalyptic scenarios set in Earth benefit from showcasing the ruins of the world we all know.

But once you've placed an elven kingdom in France and decided Martin Luther was a dwarf, you either embrace a D&D-infused alternate timeline that'll never, ever look like our own (and give up familiarity as you struggle do retain internal consistency) or you just handwave the mounting inconsistencies away, resulting in a fantasy caricature of history (a la WFRP's Old World).

The "avoidance of historical pixelbitching" line is valid (and motivated, among others, Howard's Hyborian Age) but quite a few published settings suffer from similar problems by way of canon cruft. In any case, informing players that you're playing an alternate timeline that does not necessarily follow established history, might save you some aggravation in the future.

We're doing fantasy Ancient Greece but with group consent that most geographical and historical accuracy will be warped in favor of fun. Basically Hollywood movie history.

I've run an Honor+Intrigue campaign set in 1620s France for over three and a half years (190 sessions) with zero complaints about historical accuracy.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;873586Well, it takes a certain degree of pressure off if you don't have to be historically accurate in the games you run, admittedly - and reading up on history can be interesting for general fantasy ideas.

However, sometimes I get frustrated by fantasy settings - and seek more authentic experiences, often in time travelling campaigns. Each to their own though, of course.

I did a "fantastic England 1360" campaign some years ago for three or four years.

Two or three people thought it was neat, two or three people hated all the "history junk", and thirty or forty people didn't give a fuck or really notice.

Let's face it, for 90% of the players they absolutely do not give the tiniest trace of a fuck about whether the NPC they're talking to is named Sir John Chandos or Sir Loin of Beef or Lord Dickshits of Fucktown.

There are tiny pockets of variation on this, but 42 years and thousands of games have taught me I'm way more right than wrong.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;873607Let's face it, for 90% of the players they absolutely do not give the tiniest trace of a fuck about whether the NPC they're talking to is named Sir John Chandos or Sir Loin of Beef or Lord Dickshits of Fucktown.

I care.

And since I'm the GM we have the 1620s equivalents of Chandos - real people appear a lot. And while a well chosen humorous name or two is fine for the fictional characters, what I won't have are characters who sound like they were named by a bunch of stoned and giggling 14-year olds. YMMV and all that shit.

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.

BINGO! Once you pass that threshold, it essentially becomes an alien fantasy world. The only similarity being the geographic features. Unless those have been altered by magic as well. Might as well just play in a truly unique setting from square one. Which is more exciting for your average American: Exploring your own backyard or Borneo? Most folks would take Borneo.

If 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. If you need a place that feels kind of like France and a place that feels kind of like China to be right next to each other,you can do that in a fantasy world. It is easier to introduce those sorts of things. You are not as bound to real history in a fantasy setting. You also don't have to worry about stuff like people bickering as much over the details. You might get some folks who insist your fantasy Europe resemble real Europe in excruciating detail, but most people will be more okay with anachronisms in a fantasy setting.

I will say though, just going ahead and using history as a canvass is totally fine and I think people sometimes don't do it merely out of habit (we just make fantasy settings and don't stop to think if setting it in history, even greatly tweaked and altered history might not work better). Also people forget you can crank the past up to 11 if you need. Nothing stopping you from making witches real in Medieval Europe, or giving the priesthood some awesome smiting powers.

I like hybrid options like Dark Albion, because they make some things easy.  I can immediately know what languages are likely to be known, for example.  

If magic is rare (see clerics in Dark Albion) and most fantasy elements are in the wilderness then the general notion of "wandering in the deep woods is dangerous" is simply given extra weight.  Small deviations from history are easily explained -- it's a near clone of our reality and it should be deadly dangerous to assume that history is a guide to fine details.  It's the broad strokes that are similar

Quote from: Bren;873610I care.

And since I'm the GM we have the 1620s equivalents of Chandos - real people appear a lot. And while a well chosen humorous name or two is fine for the fictional characters, what I won't have are characters who sound like they were named by a bunch of stoned and giggling 14-year olds. YMMV and all that shit.

You're one of the lucky ones.

I had the care beaten out of me.  It's discouraging as hell to put a couple years' effort into a historically based campaign like I described above and to be told point blank that most players are at best neutral on the subject versus just making shit up.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;873645You're one of the lucky ones.

Somewhat, yeah. I knew before running the setting that my wife loves 17th century French history and Dumas' The Three Musketeers. Absent that, I'd probably have pitched something else. In addition, I do the majority of my GM prep for me. So as long as what I do amuses me and doesn't annoy the players I'm good.

Well, the reason why not has been thoroughly covered.

But I enjoy doing so, as earth has plenty of detail from which to adopt and derive content. However there's two main caveats to retaining mood, which is ever important in any game:

1. It cannot attempt claim to 100% fidelity to history. Otherwise there is no agency. At that point it is mere re-enactment, theater -- not a game with choices.

It, like much historical romance, can claim a veneer of verisimilitude with overarching bands of fate to hold things together. The veneer is there to accomodate the impact of the fantastic -- this includes PCs' non-magical interruptions with trifling historic consequence -- while retaining familiarity. The fate bands are there to similarly retain familiarity, by necessitating extreme direct action to otherwise trigger an alt-history snowball.

(Basically the latter is to avoid "Butterfly in France inducing Typhoon in China" speculations. Your PCs are special and precious to me and our play, but they're not that special to the world... Up until the point of major consequence, and that's easily assessed in many games with their tier-of-play demarcator, such as titles, "named level," etc.)

2. You as a GM got to be able to retain the option of firing a player on the table. At the point they cannot suspend for point one, they need to take the initiative and approach the GM discussing where is their grief, and if they can continue amid it without table disruption. If they cannot handle their disbelief, reconcile such discrepency with you, nor stop disrupting the game, then they gotta go elsewhere.

This feels hard socially, but it's the healthiest part of any form of play. Being able to know what you like and where are your boundaries are critical parts of knowing yourself. Being able to recognize what others like and respecting the boundaries of another's fun are critical parts of knowing others.

Essentially self-awareness and empathy are the keys to not being an intolerable asshole.

Ars Magica springs to mind as one version of Fantasy Europe done quite well. There's also things like Cthulhu Dark Ages and Stupor Mundi for RuneQuest. Deus Vult is another attempt, that I actually find very cool. The RuneQuest Vikings supplements, and Mythic Britain from Design Mechanism also do a great job of setting fantasy campaigns in actual history. All of these use real European medieval history as a basis for a game that includes fantastic elements, usually fairly in line with legend and fairy tales. I don't think that you can plonk all of the run of the mill D&D elements in, like halflings, orcs, etc. You have to go back to the roots of things like the fantasy races for them to fit authentic medieval feel.

It might be a case of D&D-isms being somewhat incompatible with actual historical play, but it seems less of a problem with other systems.

That said, unless you've got a very well researched campaign guide and players willing to go along with the necessary approximations and simplifications, it can involve a hell of a lot of work. And as pointed out, it can tie your hands somewhat.

As an example, the fantasy novel (yes, I know that's not the same thing as a campaign, rest assured, I keep them separate), that I started a couple of years ago, and that you can read some of at the link in my sig, is set in 10th Century Europe. I found that inspiring, and it gave me some depth and a feeling of reality that I appreciated. But now that I'm finished my PhD and am going back to continue it, I've decided I'll rewrite the beginning setting it in a fantasy world that's a few steps to the left of the real world. For one thing, it just requires too much research, and I'm kind of sick of research at the moment! For another, there are some elements I want to include, such as Celtic religion, that even historians don't know enough about, so I'd have to make them up anyway. But keep them in line with the complicated and conflicting things we do know. Best to just make it up whole-cloth, while being influenced by the real thing. I guess it boils down to me coming up against the Robert E. Howard lesson!

Quote from: Christopher Brady;873587In my admittedly small circle, even if the GM is lenient with the historical accuracy, some players are not.

But how can anyone be so deluded to be "historically accurate" when you have elves and dragons in your one-hundred-and-one year's war?

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;873734But how can anyone be so deluded to be "historically accurate" when you have elves and dragons in your one-hundred-and-one year's war?

You're asking human beings to be RATIONAL?  Have you lived on this planet long?  Watched the news?  Interacted with the internet?

I still boggle at it, but I don't question it anymore.

Quote from: markfitz;873722It might be a case of D&D-isms being somewhat incompatible with actual historical play, but it seems less of a problem with other systems.

D&D is and always has been a bit of a kitchen sink fantasy setting. Kitchen sink and historical setting just don't fit together. I have dwarfs in my 1620 Honor+Intrigue game. But those are these dwarfs...

(http://www.shmadrid.com/blog/en/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Vel%C3%A1zquez_%E2%80%93_Buf%C3%B3n_don_Sebasti%C3%A1n_de_Morra_.jpg)

(http://www.shmadrid.com/blog/en/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/portrait-of-a-midget-Juan-van-der-Hamen-and-Leon.jpg)

not these dwarves...

(http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/lotr/images/f/f0/Gimli_With_Axe.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20060313132644)

(https://www.dandwiki.com/w/images/thumb/b/ba/Dwarven_Berserker_2.jpg/350px-Dwarven_Berserker_2.jpg)

Quote from: markfitz;873722It might be a case of D&D-isms being somewhat incompatible with actual historical play, but it seems less of a problem with other systems.

D&D is and always has been a bit of a kitchen sink fantasy setting. Kitchen sink and history don't fit together. Thus I have dwarfs in my 1620 Honor+Intrigue game. But those are these dwarfs...

(http://www.shmadrid.com/blog/en/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Vel%C3%A1zquez_%E2%80%93_Buf%C3%B3n_don_Sebasti%C3%A1n_de_Morra_.jpg)

(http://www.shmadrid.com/blog/en/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/portrait-of-a-midget-Juan-van-der-Hamen-and-Leon.jpg)

not these dwarves...

(http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/lotr/images/f/f0/Gimli_With_Axe.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20060313132644)

(https://www.dandwiki.com/w/images/thumb/b/ba/Dwarven_Berserker_2.jpg/350px-Dwarven_Berserker_2.jpg)

Quote from: Bren;873752D&D is and always has been a bit of a kitchen sink fantasy setting. Kitchen sink and history don't fit together. Thus I have dwarfs in my 1620 Honor+Intrigue game. But those are these dwarfs...

Word. I like each dwarf to be unique in his dwarf-ness.

Also, that first one is a ringer for Tyrion Lannister.

If people are looking to use history as a canvass for history, I think a lot of Chinese shows get the balance right of adding in new elements and drawing on real events. Some of the following shows might give you a new perspective on blending history with fantasy adventure:

Legend of Condor Heroes:https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_F5PO5xD3Ig

Return of condor heroes:https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=v9oDr1roxM0

Legend of Qin: https://www.viki.com/videos/1090593v-the-legend-of-qin-episode-1

Considering 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.

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 isn't but I think gamers sometimes overthink these kinds of things or just avoid real history out of habit. I also know plenty of players who've had negative experiences that color their impression of using real world history (I.E. If the campaign becomes a pissing contest on historical knowledge---though to be honest I've seen plenty of Forgotten Realms games turn into pissing contests over expertise on Faerun). I think if people just tried to have fun with it and relaxed a little, they'd find you can easily run a campaign set in earth's past.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;873734But how can anyone be so deluded to be "historically accurate" when you have elves and dragons in your one-hundred-and-one year's war?

You're new to this hobby, aren't you, lad.

Also, mes amis, never forget the "old and tired" aspect.  After the umpteenth time of hearing that Dragonlance is a cooler setting than the real Earth, or that Dribbles the Drow or whatever the hell his name is is a cooler character than Bertrand du Gescelin (Not more powerful, COOLER) a certain number of aged grognards will simply throw up on their hands in despair and say, in the words of Master Yoda, "It, fuck."

Quote from: markfitz;873755Word. I like each dwarf to be unique in his dwarf-ness.

Also, that first one is a ringer for Tyrion Lannister.

Kind of makes sense as Martin is known for making his fiction like history. The Hapsburg fascination with dwarfs was very notable in art from that period. I'm not aware of any examples from actual royal or grandee families (which would be the equivalent of Tyrion Lannister), but dwarfs were prominent at court as companions and curiosities. In my Honor+Intrigue campaign, L'Omino* the dwarf is an NPC and enemy of one of the PCs, the Jesuit Priest Father Signoret.


* L'Omino is depicted about a fourth of the way down in this adventure write up (http://honorandintrigue.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-duc-de-bellegardes-ball-chaper-ii.html).

:rant: Anyone who thinks Drizzle Dro'Up is cooler than the Eagle of Brittany can just make sure not let my game room door hit them in the ass on their way out.

They'll read every Dragonlance book out there and cream themselves over Dribble d'Urinal, but getting them to read even a single book by Joseph & Frances Gies is "too much work."

Never MIND A Distant Mirror.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;873769They'll read every Dragonlance book out there and cream themselves over Dribble d'Urinal, but getting them to read even a single book by Joseph & Frances Gies is "too much work."

Never MIND A Distant Mirror.

I guess not everyone likes reading. I think I've seen the Life in a... by Gies and Gies. IIR the books are mostly pictures - which are actually really helpful for gaming. A Distant Mirror is an easy read. I'm not sure I've ever read any of the Dragonlance books. I certainly never purchased any. Whereas A Distant Mirror is on a bookshelf downstairs next to a few history texts.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;873581Real history is more interesting than playing in other people's fantasy worlds.

Dear gods, I agree with TrippyHippy on something! :jaw-dropping:

Fantasy is vapid and shallow for the most part, I could pick a random year and create a game I find much more interesting than any made up setting. I don't need magic or monsters or people wearing funny masks to make a game I'd want to play.

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.

Like 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.

Sure, establishing the "alternate history" angle will alleviate much of the GM's (or writer's) workload, but as a GM who ran his fair bit of historical stuff, I was often concerned with the after-effects of equivocal histroical data and mounting inconsistencies. I find it much more difficult to manage an alternate timeline of our own history, than a fantasy world that's been built form the ground up. The "historical" label does generate certain expectation, and there's certainly a treshold of history deviation where one wonders why not just go with a fully fantastic world instead.

So it's not that historical fantasy is undoable. Shit, it's what my players say I do best (our Savage Worlds Solomon Kane game was pretty cool). It's just that it places a few additional burdens on an immersion-invested group that not everyone's willing to bear.

Yes, I think that to find the narrative sweet spot, like Howardian Hyborea and FASA's Barsaive/Earthdawn, you need to be able to mash up historical context - but be willing to toss out timelines other than as a general guide.

I think this is why FASA's new 1879 game line is going to hit that same sweet spot with a good alt-history flavor. A shadow-run style "the magic comes back" event happens in 1879 when a eccentric inventor in England punches a hole through the astral plane to another planet. Instead of taking years and having a few "goblinized" babies at first.... it all happens in a few weeks, and some people don't survive it. "Looking Glass Fever" has changed the face of geo-politics on Earth, with many families expressing ancient bloodlines. The time-line is completely disrupted, and I really look forward to the early pre-WWI stuff (especially as Tesla fled to the Ukraine instead of dying in the US and they're getting tesla-punk magi-mecha).

Some of the issue for me is that it has the same problem as a 'modern' setting.  You can't really change much without suddenly making the game into a full fantasy/science fiction setting.

And in Fantasy, a lot of games end up being Epic Fantasy, in which the heroes suddenly become the rulers or at least demigods, and when the players suddenly are in charge, it stops being 'alt-history' for a lot of people.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;873950Some of the issue for me is that it has the same problem as a 'modern' setting.  You can't really change much without suddenly making the game into a full fantasy/science fiction setting.

And in Fantasy, a lot of games end up being Epic Fantasy, in which the heroes suddenly become the rulers or at least demigods, and when the players suddenly are in charge, it stops being 'alt-history' for a lot of people.

I think the point people are making though is why set it in a fake world when nothing is stopping you from setting it in our own. It might become full fantasy but you would have more familiar elements that don't need to be created whole cloth. You can always take more of a Hercules and Xena approach though, where history is more like a suggestion. I actually think that can work really well for certain campaigns (it also means the players are surprised because history doesn't necessarily play out the way you expect).

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.

.

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 (http://therpgpundit.blogspot.com/2015/11/dark-albion-demon-haunted-world.html).


That's part of what informs Dark Albion (http://www.dcrouzet.net/heroes-witchery/?page_id=206).

Quote from: RPGPundit;874231This is not exactly right.  Medieval Europe was always a fantasy world full of magic and monsters (http://therpgpundit.blogspot.com/2015/11/dark-albion-demon-haunted-world.html).

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 (http://therpgpundit.blogspot.com/2015/11/dark-albion-demon-haunted-world.html).

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 (http://therpgpundit.blogspot.com/2015/11/dark-albion-demon-haunted-world.html).

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. :D

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

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

Quote from: Premier;874311There'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".

Superhero movies are pretty unrealistic on this front as well though. The authorities basically allow people dressed up in costumes to take the law into their own hands and commit rampant crime as they chase down one loan psycho. In the case of characters like superman, I could see there is a certain degree of being so powerful the authorities may be better off letting you do your thing, but plenty of super heroes have minor powers or just function with gadgets. Super heroes get ignore as many of our laws and social norms as D&D characters get to ignore of Medieval law and social norm. There are things they just won't get incorrect though, because the people writing them are a product of the period they are set in (so no one is going to mistake a common item like a DVD player for a computer or apply 17th century fashion to 20th century New York).

To me this is more about to what degree your campaign has historical realism in it. I think that is a spectrum that is going to vary wildly from group to group (even groups who think they are cleaving closely to the real history are often way off in many of their assumptions). I think historical realism can be really awesome, and I've certainly incorporated it into some of my own campaigns. But there is also room for using history more lightly with less fidelity to the facts and hefty anachronisms. Whether I buy into the campaign the GM presents, is going to hinge more on how it is initially sold to me. If the tone of the campaign feels like it is going for something genuinely historical, then I'll bite if the details back it up. If it is clear this is just hercules and xena in Medieval Europe, I can buy into that too. I find it is more an issue when the GM presents one visions but the campaign doesn't really match it.

Quote from: Premier;874311Putting 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".

"NEVER" is incorrect. Taxes, wealth, title, ownership, and so on WERE talked about in AD&D. In fact, you even have a discussion insofar to the ramifications of "hiring a peasant," let alone getting them killed, because you were taking the value of labor away from a noble. Refusal, extra payment, or punishment could occur. So everything you said here does not apply.

You may play like that, but please do be aware that this is a post-WotC development if anything. Do not extrapolate it elsewhere. There is an extremely large gulf between TSR and WotC community assumptions of "what is D&D?"

Quote from: TrippyHippy;873586However, sometimes I get frustrated by fantasy settings - and seek more authentic experiences, often in time travelling campaigns. Each to their own though, of course.

Authentic experience and Time travel do not quite mix if you know what I mean.

If I want to play in fantasy europe then I'll drag out my copy of Fantasy Wargaming (The RPG. Not the Wargame) which is exactly your premise. Sadly done in such a snide and condescending way its not pleasant to read really. Some great ideas lost in the writers attitude.

TSR had a series of these. One based in Rome, one based in I believe Europe. (Charlemagne?) And of course Oriental Adventures which is fantasy mish-mash Far East. and so on.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;873763Also, mes amis, never forget the "old and tired" aspect.  After the umpteenth time of hearing that Dragonlance is a cooler setting than the real Earth, or that Dribbles the Drow or whatever the hell his name is is a cooler character than Bertrand du Gescelin (Not more powerful, COOLER) a certain number of aged grognards will simply throw up on their hands in despair and say, in the words of Master Yoda, "It, fuck."

Who the hell thinks Dragonlance is cooler? While not as soul crushingly brutal as Forgotten Realms. It is still a pretty not fun place to live. Alot like sections of Europe if you werent a noble, merchant, or safely working for said. I mean really. How many freaking times have the gods cataclysmed the planet now? three? Four? And thats just the kick-off to the grunge.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;874334Superhero movies are pretty unrealistic on this front as well though. The authorities basically allow people dressed up in costumes to take the law into their own hands and commit rampant crime as they chase down one loan psycho. In the case of characters like superman, I could see there is a certain degree of being so powerful the authorities may be better off letting you do your thing, but plenty of super heroes have minor powers or just function with gadgets. Super heroes get ignore as many of our laws and social norms as D&D characters get to ignore of Medieval law and social norm. There are things they just won't get incorrect though, because the people writing them are a product of the period they are set in (so no one is going to mistake a common item like a DVD player for a computer or apply 17th century fashion to 20th century New York).

To me this is more about to what degree your campaign has historical realism in it. I think that is a spectrum that is going to vary wildly from group to group (even groups who think they are cleaving closely to the real history are often way off in many of their assumptions). I think historical realism can be really awesome, and I've certainly incorporated it into some of my own campaigns. But there is also room for using history more lightly with less fidelity to the facts and hefty anachronisms. Whether I buy into the campaign the GM presents, is going to hinge more on how it is initially sold to me. If the tone of the campaign feels like it is going for something genuinely historical, then I'll bite if the details back it up. If it is clear this is just hercules and xena in Medieval Europe, I can buy into that too. I find it is more an issue when the GM presents one visions but the campaign doesn't really match it.

The thing is with Superheroes, it's mainly twofold.  First, there may be actual laws that allow superheroes to act the way they do, especially if they been around for a while, and it's often invisible to people reading the comics or just generally accepted.

Secondly, nothing is effectively 'set in stone'.  The leeway in changing things socially and historically is much broader because of the fact that the present isn't history.  Yet.

Whereas a historical setting, especially one where there's a clear social caste system and rules enforce by death penalties for any infraction against these laws (something else a modern setting has an advantage on. We're awfully squeamish about killing each other now.  For better or worse) the odds of being able to do anything remotely like a Fantasy Game session as per D&D is incredibly remote and implausible.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;874354The thing is with Superheroes, it's mainly twofold.  First, there may be actual laws that allow superheroes to act the way they do, especially if they been around for a while, and it's often invisible to people reading the comics or just generally accepted.

Secondly, nothing is effectively 'set in stone'.  The leeway in changing things socially and historically is much broader because of the fact that the present isn't history.  Yet.

Whereas a historical setting, especially one where there's a clear social caste system and rules enforce by death penalties for any infraction against these laws (something else a modern setting has an advantage on. We're awfully squeamish about killing each other now.  For better or worse) the odds of being able to do anything remotely like a Fantasy Game session as per D&D is incredibly remote and implausible.

But that feels like we are holding present to lower standards of plausibility than the past. If special laws can exist to accommodate superheroes, and that doesn't bother you, then special laws can exist in medieval Europe to accommodate fighters, Wizards, clerics, etc.

To 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.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;873550So why not cut out the middleman and play in literal fantasy Europe?

I do. In Warhammer, 7th Sea and Rifts.

Quote from: TristramEvans;874237It'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.

Somewhere in Project Bluebook or some equivalent files should be my sketch some military investigators got after an incident way back. Pretty weird. Though I had totally no clue at the time.

Many many years later my dad recounts seeing something he, a former air combat mechanic, could not identify. From his description I'd guess it was an ARV.

Which follows through to my personal opinion that some legends are probably based on some real phenomena. Just not what might be assumed.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;874357But that feels like we are holding present to lower standards of plausibility than the past. If special laws can exist to accommodate superheroes, and that doesn't bother you, then special laws can exist in medieval Europe to accommodate fighters, Wizards, clerics, etc.

To 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.

The problem is that in the real world we have a communication network that's global, and enforceable in the same way.  There's also a disparity of power in a Super setting.  Whereas a medieval Europe, well, there's a lot more of the King's men and enforcers than there are of the PC's, and likely, or at least plausibly, better armed and armoured, it will not end well when the players run afoul a local lordling thinking that because the King's Law says so, he should get his way.

Now, if the campaign is mostly a sports themed one, where the players are say, Jousters running the local circuit, and deals with local intrigue and the like, then it's doable.

I also remember an idea on RPGnet where someone brought up the idea of a group of people (the PC's) being an outsider caste, and they're the ones being sent into dangerous places.  Like going into a goblin cave.  Yes, the local lord could send his army, but he has to worry about his neighbour taking advantage and having his lands invaded, so he needs to keep his army around so as to not seem weak.  Not to mention his men are soldiers, not trained monster killers.

Why not send an expendable group of mercenaries into said death trap?  I think the idea was that there were called 'Doomed Slayers' or some such.  There was even a code they followed, keeping them moving and on the road, which was based on being outsiders to the caste and wearing out their welcome sooner or later.  Was very clever, but requires some heavy bending of Medieval Europe history to make happen.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;874357But that feels like we are holding present to lower standards of plausibility than the past. If special laws can exist to accommodate superheroes, and that doesn't bother you, then special laws can exist in medieval Europe to accommodate fighters, Wizards, clerics, etc.

Yes, and that's what I already described as "bog standard D&D with a map of Europe". Which is NOT the same as "play in literal fantasy Europe" as the thread title says.

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.

Bemusingly in a few cities the cops do allow people in costumes to handle situations. The trick there is that the guy in the costume is not being a nuisance and not endangering lives. Other cities. No. Not going to happen.

As for comics. The usual premise is that there are also costumed villains that ordinary police may not be able to handle. Or mobs and gangs that the police will not go after for whatever reason.

Back on topic.

People have been playing D&D with no monsters at all even right out the gate. Or even with only Fighters and Thieves as the availible classes. Or rangers and bards minus the magic. The elements are there to make about anything really and people have.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;874365The problem is that in the real world we have a communication network that's global, and enforceable in the same way.  There's also a disparity of power in a Super setting.  Whereas a medieval Europe, well, there's a lot more of the King's men and enforcers than there are of the PC's, and likely, or at least plausibly, better armed and armoured, it will not end well when the players run afoul a local lordling thinking that because the King's Law says so, he should get his way.

But again, dealing with a real police department, the feds or the army, shouldn't be the cake walk it often is in modern games. I get that there were institutions in the past that were important and difficult to manage, but we have institutions too. And our institutions are heavily regulated and centralized. Being a murder hobo in the present is probably even harder than being on in Medieval Europe. They had institutions, laws and classes, but there wasn't the all encompassing presence of video phones, satellites, the communications networks you mention, etc. All things being equal, a party in the present who run afoul of local law should end up in just as much, if not more, trouble if they try to pull it off in the modern day. Now you can explain getting away with it to a degree if the players have superpowers or something. But depending on what one means by fantasy Europe, that may be the case as well in the past (if magic is a viable option for example).

QuoteWhy not send an expendable group of mercenaries into said death trap?  I think the idea was that there were called 'Doomed Slayers' or some such.  There was even a code they followed, keeping them moving and on the road, which was based on being outsiders to the caste and wearing out their welcome sooner or later.  Was very clever, but requires some heavy bending of Medieval Europe history to make happen.

I think if the problem is working an adventuring party into the historical setting, you ether have to find the closest approximation the period offers, or take the supers route, where you create new space for them. To make it work you'll probably need to muster some flexibility on the issue of course. I mean there were people who travelled and explored in this period. It isn't so crazy to have a Marco Polo or Ibn Battuta type campaign. Granted you probably want to work within the scope of the society in question, but there are usually places you can fit things (even if it is something as artificial as the king putting together a motley crew to achieve some secret objective). When I did Servants of Gaius, we used a similar core conceit to make room for a party of adventurers. Even in most modern games, there are conceits made to make the typical adventuring party and standard adventures doable. Because even in our world, going around and stealing treasure from tombs is still frowned upon. I mean a lot of what players get away with in a modern campaign would land a normal person in jail.

When you do fantasy Europe, you can pretty much align it as much with real world history as you want. It is totally up to you and the players what assumptions you want to keep and which ones you want to ignore.

Quote from: Omega;874371Bemusingly in a few cities the cops do allow people in costumes to handle situations. The trick there is that the guy in the costume is not being a nuisance and not endangering lives. Other cities. No. Not going to happen.
.

Yeah, 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.

Quote from: Premier;874368Yes, and that's what I already described as "bog standard D&D with a map of Europe". Which is NOT the same as "play in literal fantasy Europe" as the thread title says.

I may have missed your post on this point, so it is possible I am not clear on what you mean here. I think there is some middle ground between them though. It doesn't have to be Fighter, Thief, etc. I  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. Whether you are doing bog standard D&D on a map of Europe, or doing literal fantasy Europe, I think the principle can still apply (depending on what the fantasy part entails).

If people want more restrictions in their campaigns that is fine. I've run pretty gritty Roman intrigue campaigns that cleaved as closely to the history as possible. And that can be great fun too. But the moment you make a player character in the setting you are likely going to start doing things that a typical person from the period wouldn't (simply because they're PCs and will likely encounter more excitement, just like a protagonist in a modern show or movie goes on an adventure every episode, whereas I've maybe had one or two quasi-adventures, that were actually pretty boring, my entire life).

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;874270Except 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).

No, 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.

QuoteBut 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.

No, 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.

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

QuoteEven 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.

Just 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.

QuoteBut 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.

Again, 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.

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.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;873734But how can anyone be so deluded to be "historically accurate" when you have elves and dragons in your one-hundred-and-one year's war?

If your elves and dragons play the same role as they did in the real middle ages, there's no trouble with historical accuracy.  Elves and dragons were real to medieval people. So was God, and demons, and the undead.  And conjurers and witches.

The historically IN-accurate thing would be to treat the 15th century as though everyone was 20th century rationalists or 21st century relativists.

Quote from: RPGPundit;874723On 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.

I can't argue with that. Having real world characters to draw on is definitely an advantage of using historical settings. For me neither approach is better or worse. I think both are viable (but they each have their challenges).

I disagree with the argument that a wholly fictitious world gives the GM more freedom. With few exceptions, fantasy settings are lazy pastiches of real world historical cultures and geographies. Even the lauded Game of Thrones franchise slavishly follows this convention and in a truly astounding display of laziness makes the continents perfect rectangles that neatly fit onto A4 paper.

So playing in actual Europe saves time by spotlighting the real cultures that the GM would otherwise photocopy ad nauseum anyway. Rather than visiting Wutai, characters could visit China, Japan, Korea or any of the many other diverse countries in southeast Asia.

Quote from: Premier;874368Yes, and that's what I already described as "bog standard D&D with a map of Europe".

Has anyone done this?

Just taken the map of Europe and run BOG standard D&D? AKA, you visit Paris and meet some elves, fight some orcs and eat croissants?

If so, how did it go?

Quote from: TristramEvans;874377Yeah 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.

What if you worked backwards?

AKA, take an event, keep the historical outcome and add fantasy elements.

We know the Normans invaded England in 1066. What if that invasion also involved Normandy dragons fighting vs. Saxon manticores?

Quote from: Arminius;874439Isn't Backswords & Bucklers indisputably OSR? It's not fantasy Europe, but it obviously shows that historical D&D is viable.

Has anyone played Backswords & Bucklers?

If so, please start a thread about it!

Quote from: Christopher Brady;874459The 'echo effect' changes everything the moment you introduce certain fantasy elements.

I agree for high fantasy D&D magic, but low fantasy games have small ripples. In our world, there was superstition, but no reality to their fears. In a low fantasy game, the peasant superstitions would sometimes be justified.
 
CHILL does this. Chill monsters don't eat cities. They eat a family here, a hobo there, and a troublemaker or two. The authorities can't fathom what is really happening and not much of an investigation happens unless the victim is important.  

In a medieval world, that would be even easier to conceal.

Quote from: Bren;874496Really 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.

Good point. It is subjective.

I often lose immersion with more "realistic" setting elements.  I am totally good with supers games, but a game that brought down real world physics and real world penalties would actually lose me.

Quote from: Spinachcat;874743Just taken the map of Europe and run BOG standard D&D? AKA, you visit Paris and meet some elves, fight some orcs and eat croissants?

Sounds like fantasy Shadowrun (reminds me of the backlash against the Earthdawn supplement which did pretty much that with fantasy not-Italy, fantasy not-Germany, etc.).

I don't know why but I would have no interest in playing in a historical setting. Of any period in history. Especially if it had famous people that I knew about. I'm not precisely sure why, but the idea just ticks my "not interested" box.

I'm the same with games directly based on films, TV series, books (even something like MERPS), video games, or whatever. Anything that is directly attempting to emulate or "channel the goodness" from a specific real or fictional source immediately turns me right off.

I wish I knew why!

Furry Outlaws and Pirates are both set in historical Europe with animal people instead of humans and a touch of magic in there. The trick is that magic is much more low key hedge wizards and druids style than flat out D&D. And in Furry Pirates its optional.

I believe aside from magic and maybe some elementals and possibly demons the supernatural was on the fringes rather than pervasive.

The novel Operation Chaos is still one of my favorite go-to examples of extrapolating how the modern world might look if the settings past had been fantasy Europe. WWII is being fought against the Arabian nations instead of Germany. Machinegun clips have every 10th round silver in case theres were-creatures in the enemy ranks, flying carpets as bombers and so on.

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 for them it was real, in a totally different way, a different paradigm, than how some religious person today might say that their beliefs are real (unless said religious person belongs to a truly nutso evangelical cult, or we're talking about some brands of African christianity or tribal leftovers or stuff like that).

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.

Leaving aside that by "inquisition" you actually mean the early-modern Witch Craze (the Inquisition was mainly concerned with heresy, and in Spain with hidden jewish/muslim backsliders, not with witchcraft), how would it change?
To the people involved the witches REALLY DID EXIST. They weren't all just going around being all tongue-in-cheek about it. They really thought that witches were cursing them, ruining their crops, plotting against the king, and what's more they had really seen animals talk or women having sex with the devil in the woods.

QuoteWhere 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.

This is ridiculously cynical. You are making assumptions based on a perspective that has no actual context to the time or place. Of course, there were some hucksters and opportunists, but even most of these were people who really did think they were taking advantage of real problem to benefit themselves.  There may have been time they knew the person they were accusing probably wasn't a witch, but that's different from not thinking witches existed at all.

And no, it's not like the modern UFO maniacs. It's like if EVERYONE was sure that UFOs were real and alien abductions were really a thing that happens.

The mistake you and others in this thread are making is in thinking like a 21st century person, and assuming that these guys didn't really think it or mean it (because how could a rational person possibly think these things?), but the fact is they did.


From a setting-building perspective, the problem is not about making the supernatural real or not, it's all about how you do it.  If you have a friendly kingdom of elves in the middle of the Holy Roman Empire, or magic shops selling wands of fireball, then obviously that's not going to work. But if your fantasy elements mirror the way people actually thought (which are the principles that inform Dark Albion), it works just great.

Quote from: Bren;874297What I was objecting to was Pundit's claim that magic is real because people believe in it.

Good thing that wasn't my claim. My claim was that medieval society was a society BASED on the belief that magic (and things like salvation and damnation) are literally real things, and that monsters and demons literally exist. And that people interacted with these things to some extent.
I'm not saying "it is real because people believed in it", I'm saying the belief was real and all kinds of things in the society was based on the assumption (the paradigm) of those realities.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;873555For the same reason Ellen Kushner sets her novels in someplace other than fantasy-Earth:

"So that if I get one detail wrong I don't get 10,000 letters telling me that the crossbow was banned in 1103 and not 1104, or whatever."

Same thing.  Sweet Crom's hairy nutsack look at the arguments people have over gun stats in games or calling a "magazine" a "clip."  Claim your game is in "fantasy Europe" and 90% of people won't give a fuck and the other 10% will argue about trivialities constantly.

I speak from experience.  Been there, done that, said fuck it.

"The crossbow was banned in FUCK YOU ASSHOLE, that's when it was banned!"

"Mead is for closers."

JG

Quote from: Premier;874311Putting 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.

Not if you do it RIGHT (like Dark Albion does).

QuoteIn D&D, the party NEVER has to pay toll at tollhouses along the road

In Dark Albion there's rules on tolls and gate taxes. And sumptuary laws. And which social classes are allowed to wear swords. And medieval-accurate rules on law and justice in general.

Quotethey 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?"

All of those things are in Dark Albion. Social class is an important statistic, maybe in some ways one of the most character-defining elements of character creation.  Petit Treason is a crime and there's punishments listed for it. There have been several times in the Dark Albion campaign where the PCs had to do exactly what you described (negotiate with a local lord, usually through the lord they had as a patron, as to just how much of the loot the lord would be willing to let them keep in exchange for them taking care of a problematic haunted barrow for him).

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.

That's not quite right either. Again, look at Dark Albion. There's lots you can do.

Of course, banditry is one of the things you can do!

Quote from: RPGPundit;874943Leaving aside that by "inquisition" you actually mean the early-modern Witch Craze (the Inquisition was mainly concerned with heresy, and in Spain with hidden jewish/muslim backsliders, not with witchcraft), how would it change?

That's easy.  First, instead of being a land grab under the guise of 'Heresy' (there's evidence that the Church picked targets entirely based on territory they wanted), the Inquisition would focus entirely suppressing magic.  Witches and other spellcasters, would be resisting heavily, some secret, others obvious.  You'd have visible battles in the streets, where Divine fire (cuz you know, Clerics in the service of God and other Church aligned casters would exist, otherwise, the witches won hands down if it's D&D style magic) vs. Arcane fire blowing buildings and people.  Subtlety wouldn't last, as one side would want to 'make an example' of the other.  Or to sow fear or whatnot.

It's historically, generally accepted that the Inquisition got it's way, it 'won'.  But in a world where magic is a quantifiable force there's no guarantees that the Inquisition wouldn't have been destroyed in a blaze of likely literal hellfire.

This is assuming of course, a D&D like Paradigm of casters.  If only one side got magic, like the aforementioned witches, then it all changes even more.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;874968That's easy.  First, instead of being a land grab under the guise of 'Heresy' (there's evidence that the Church picked targets entirely based on territory they wanted), the Inquisition would focus entirely suppressing magic.  Witches and other spellcasters, would be resisting heavily, some secret, others obvious.  You'd have visible battles in the streets, where Divine fire (cuz you know, Clerics in the service of God and other Church aligned casters would exist, otherwise, the witches won hands down if it's D&D style magic) vs. Arcane fire blowing buildings and people.  Subtlety wouldn't last, as one side would want to 'make an example' of the other.  Or to sow fear or whatnot.

It's historically, generally accepted that the Inquisition got it's way, it 'won'.  But in a world where magic is a quantifiable force there's no guarantees that the Inquisition wouldn't have been destroyed in a blaze of likely literal hellfire.

This is assuming of course, a D&D like Paradigm of casters.  If only one side got magic, like the aforementioned witches, then it all changes even more.

Keep in mind the witch craze in early modern Europe wasn't exclusively an activity of the Catholic Church, some of the most affected areas were Protestant. And it didn't reach its height until the reformation period. The trials themselves were usually conducted by secular authorities rather than religious ones in areas where central authority was weaker. If you did happen to be tried for witch craft, there is some evidence you stood a better chance of a fair trial and survival if you were tried by a Catholic court. Again not an expert, but in every single class I took on this subject, the standard text books spent considerable time explaining the intellectual and religious foundations of the witch craze. Basically what Pundit refers to as the paradigm. I found it incredibly difficult to come away from reading that, and all the primary source material we had to read where these beliefs were expressed, and not see this as being based in very real beliefs (like pundit says, there are always people exploiting developments for themselves, but we shouldn't't assume people at the time were thinking like modern secularists. I also found that thinking about the churches role has greatly changed as more evidence has come to light and as earlier long held assumptions have been put under scrutiny. They lived in a world where they thought God was real and magic was real. And not all magic was regarded as bad. It was when the idea of witchcraft and diabolical combined that people started going truly crazy about it (and the church didn't even take witchcraft that seriously until about the 15th century). There were probably a lot of external factors feeding those beliefs but the beliefs were still real.

It is true that is magic were real, things could have panned out differently. But they might not have because if their beliefs were reality, that also means the church had God on its side. For the purpose of a roleplaying game, I have no trouble accepting a Europe with real magic and basically the same history.

Quote from: Spinachcat;874743We know the Normans invaded England in 1066. What if that invasion also involved Normandy dragons fighting vs. Saxon manticores?
.

I like using Secret History in a lot of my historical campaigns. This is something the game Colonial Gothic is based on where you take real world events and don't change them at all, but just explain them through alternative motives, causes, etc. That opens up some interesting possibilities with the supernatural or with things like aliens.

Quote from: RPGPundit;874942But for them it was real, in a totally different way, a different paradigm, than how some religious person today might say that their beliefs are real (unless said religious person belongs to a truly nutso evangelical cult, or we're talking about some brands of African christianity or tribal leftovers or stuff like that).

It was real in the same way that other crackpot, harmful theories are real. "Different paradigm?" Sounds like you are treading perilously close to the sort of post modern relativism you claim to decry. The magic and monsters "paradigm" is wrong about how the world works. It is an ill-conceived doctrine, useless to predict or explain what happens, and it caused (and still causes) great harm. It is not real. People just wrongly thought (and some still think) it is and was real.

Quote from: RPGPundit;874943The mistake you and others in this thread are making is in thinking like a 21st century person, and assuming that these guys didn't really think it or mean it (because how could a rational person possibly think these things?), but the fact is they did.

I know (to some extent) what early modern people thought. I know (for the most part) why they thought it. I also know that they were wrong in their beliefs about how the world works. You seem a bit confused on the last point.

QuoteBut if your fantasy elements mirror the way people actually thought (which are the principles that inform Dark Albion), it works just great.

This, on the other hand, is correct.

Quote from: RPGPundit;874944Good thing that wasn't my claim. My claim was that medieval society was a society BASED on the belief that magic (and things like salvation and damnation) are literally real things, and that monsters and demons literally exist. And that people interacted with these things to some extent.
I'm not saying "it is real because people believed in it", I'm saying the belief was real and all kinds of things in the society was based on the assumption (the paradigm) of those realities.

If you aren't claiming that magic and monsters are real than your use of the phrase "really seen" appears chock full of post-modernist, absolute relativism world view.

Quote from: RPGPundit;874943They really thought that witches were cursing them, ruining their crops, plotting against the king, and what's more they had really seen animals talk or women having sex with the devil in the woods.

If you think medieval or early modern people really heard animals talk or saw women have sex with the devil then I suggest a little less wacky tobaccy in your pipe is in order.

Now you may have meant to say people back then thought they heard animals talk and they thought they saw women having sex with the devil, but that is not what you said. Feel free to clarify what you really meant.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;874983Keep in mind the witch craze in early modern Europe wasn't exclusively an activity of the Catholic Church, some of the most affected areas were Protestant. And it didn't reach its height until the reformation period.

Indeed.  But once you actually start introducing magic, things begin to change.  It starts being taken seriously much sooner.  Especially once the true power of it is discovered.  Instant reading of locations, the ability to destroy settlements (one Fireball, which is just level 5 would decimate a small village.)  And suddenly, the authorities are in serious trouble in keeping their personal powers.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;874983The trials themselves were usually conducted by secular authorities rather than religious ones in areas where central authority was weaker. If you did happen to be tried for witch craft, there is some evidence you stood a better chance of a fair trial and survival if you were tried by a Catholic court.

The odds of someone not being 'guilty' are suddenly lower when you have magicians who can charm, beguile or able to read the thoughts or spying at a distance.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;874983Again not an expert, but in every single class I took on this subject, the standard text books spent considerable time explaining the intellectual and religious foundations of the witch craze. Basically what Pundit refers to as the paradigm. I found it incredibly difficult to come away from reading that, and all the primary source material we had to read where these beliefs were expressed, and not see this as being based in very real beliefs (like pundit says, there are always people exploiting developments for themselves, but we shouldn't't assume people at the time were thinking like modern secularists.)

Here's the thing, there is evidence that this 'modern secularist' thought isn't all that modern.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;874983I also found that thinking about the churches role has greatly changed as more evidence has come to light and as earlier long held assumptions have been put under scrutiny. They lived in a world where they thought God was real and magic was real. And not all magic was regarded as bad. It was when the idea of witchcraft and diabolical combined that people started going truly crazy about it (and the church didn't even take witchcraft that seriously until about the 15th century). There were probably a lot of external factors feeding those beliefs but the beliefs were still real.

It sounds to me that you're missing that Pundit was talking about D&D style magic, the title claims that it's all D&D.  And that changes all the paradigms.  The reason Ars Magicka works is because it turns it into the power behind the scene.  D&D does not.

So now you see where things change.  The 'issues' that men in power (the Church) would have had with Magic and witchcraft start EARLIER and much more polarizing, especially if this power is not just in their hands.

And thus the Inquisition is suddenly more prevalent and might occur earlier.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;874983It is true that is magic were real, things could have panned out differently. But they might not have because if their beliefs were reality, that also means the church had God on its side. For the purpose of a roleplaying game, I have no trouble accepting a Europe with real magic and basically the same history.

Problem is, it does change because D&D magic is more blatant, it's no longer 'A friend of a friend that my cousin 4th removes once heard that...'  There would be CLEAR incidents that people could see.

Historical fantasy is perfectly viable. It doesn't have to be literal Europe; it can be spun into something wholly different, with a distinct fantasy take with echos of our own world. Dark Albion is a modern example, along with old AD&D favorites like A Mighty Fortress, Charlemagne's Paladins, The Crusades, Age of Heroes, Celts and the Glory of Rome.

For people who thrive on using their imagination to craft games, some of you don't seem very imaginative.

Quote from: ZWEIHÄNDER;875078Historical fantasy is perfectly viable. It doesn't have to be literal Europe.

That's not what the title says.  Please read it before you start making blanket derogatory accusations.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;875082That's not what the title says.  Please read it before you start making blanket derogatory accusations.

I made two very distinct opinions. Reread what I typed.

Are you familiar with the AD&D historical supplements? They are agnostic of fantasy D&Disms entirely, and address both the topic and the conversation as it has evolved.

Quote from: RPGPundit;874943Leaving aside that by "inquisition" you actually mean the early-modern Witch Craze (the Inquisition was mainly concerned with heresy, and in Spain with hidden jewish/muslim backsliders, not with witchcraft)

Maybe you should pick up a book or two on the history of Basque.

Quotehow would it change?
To the people involved the witches REALLY DID EXIST. They weren't all just going around being all tongue-in-cheek about it. They really thought that witches were cursing them, ruining their crops, plotting against the king, and what's more they had really seen animals talk or women having sex with the devil in the woods.

Their belief isn't the issue. It's the effect of people actually being able to learn magic from the devil, having the power to curse their enemies, talk to animals, fly about on ergot and bat-blood smeared sticks, etc. Its the capability of these people to actually change the course of history, easily, by actually doing these things instead of being blamed for natural occurances.

QuoteThis is ridiculously cynical. You are making assumptions based on a perspective that has no actual context to the time or place. Of course, there were some hucksters and opportunists, but even most of these were people who really did think they were taking advantage of real problem to benefit themselves.  There may have been time they knew the person they were accusing probably wasn't a witch, but that's different from not thinking witches existed at all.

No, I'm making assertions based on quite a bit of research spanning two decades. The fact that there were people that believed witches existed does not change the fact that an excessive amount of accusations of witchcraft and resulting trials can be traced back to political motivations and the acquisition of land. Hell, even the Salem Witch Trials have evidence of this; try reading up on Thomas Putnam some time.

QuoteAnd no, it's not like the modern UFO maniacs. It's like if EVERYONE was sure that UFOs were real and alien abductions were really a thing that happens.

No, that wasn't the analogy. What you're not understanding is that it's not the belief that matters, its the actual effects of these things actually existing. The ACTUAL effect of extraterrestrials interfering on earth. The ACTUAL effect of people using magic to curse their enemies, cause crops to wither and animals to sicken and die.  

QuoteThe mistake you and others in this thread are making is in thinking like a 21st century person, and assuming that these guys didn't really think it or mean it (because how could a rational person possibly think these things?), but the fact is they did.

Nope, not making that mistake at all. The mistake you're making is the same as the people who think that people pre-Columbus all thought the world was flat.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;874985I like using Secret History in a lot of my historical campaigns.

Absolutely!

Back in the 90s, I played in a short lived "Medieval Delta Green" where we were Vatican witch hunters whose job was to find and kill the enemy before their magical power got out of control and resulted in big disasters.

...and when big bad disasters happened, the monks would "record" a different set of facts to be taught in the future.  So, the modern world just thinks the Library of Alexandra was lost, but we know what really happened....and where it is.

Quote from: ZWEIHÄNDER;875088Are you familiar with the AD&D historical supplements? They are agnostic of fantasy D&Disms entirely, and address both the topic and the conversation as it has evolved.

I owned most of them, and the mental gymnastics required to make the not D&D with a thin veneer of 'faux history' was AMAZING.  And they form my stance on why you can't do it in D&D.

Other game systems can do it, simply because magic can be made to be, or are, subtle.  Not so in D&D.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;875169I owned most of them, and the mental gymnastics required to make the not D&D with a thin veneer of 'faux history' was AMAZING.  And they form my stance on why you can't do it in D&D.

Other game systems can do it, simply because magic can be made to be, or are, subtle.  Not so in D&D.

OSR doesn't necessarily apply to D&D. But we are in agreement on your last point; out of the box D&D is not very condusive to supporting historic Europe.

Quote from: ZWEIHÄNDER;875214OSR doesn't necessarily apply to D&D.

Yes it does.  In fact, the only things created with that label have been modified versions of older editions of D&D.  We've decided to open it up, but you look at the title, it's all D&D and assumed variations of.

So this entire discussion is about D&D style magic being shoved into a European context that somehow doesn't change the entire dynamic of how the world happened.  Which I say is impossible, without massive amounts of hand waving.

Quote from: ZWEIHÄNDER;875214OSR doesn't necessarily apply to D&D.

Unfortunately in common usage by default it does indeed. This is something I've objected to from the beginning, since the actual renaissance of interest in old school games and playstyles as a movement instead of simply a marketing brand didn't start with D&D, but I'm afraid its pretty well ingrained by this point. The only compromise I've seen put forward is that "OSR" is just D&D while "osr" includes everything, but this is practically useless as you still have to explain you're not talking about D&D in most cases.

I know, it's lame. But then, the OSR seems to have pretty much run its course anyways.

I just checked out the preview material for Dark Albion. I also read some reviews.

It looks fun.


I think it was good call on replacing the Catholic Church with the Unconquered Sun. Sol Invictus, FTW.
This is not because I dislike fantasy historical games that involve my religion, but because the change signals the reader/ player to expect other differences. It shows that, despite the many close parallels to our history, this is a " weird" alternate universe.

What hints I have read about Frogland make me think of the bells of Saint Toad, Clark Ashton Smith, and all that.
Creepy.

Quote from: Spinachcat;875091Absolutely!

Back in the 90s, I played in a short lived "Medieval Delta Green" where we were Vatican witch hunters whose job was to find and kill the enemy before their magical power got out of control and resulted in big disasters.

...and when big bad disasters happened, the monks would "record" a different set of facts to be taught in the future.  So, the modern world just thinks the Library of Alexandra was lost, but we know what really happened....and where it is.

I quite liked what they came up with in Deus Vult for RuneQuest. It could pretty much be described as "medieval Delta Green". There was some cool stuff in there about taking on witch cults and such, and great random adventure generators. They basically assumed that the witch cult craze was based on truth, and that there was a secret force funded by the Church, at odds with the Inquisition, that sent out adventuring parties of gifted warriors and Magic/Spirit sensitives to combat evil. If I remember correctly. I thought it was quite a well done Fantasy Europe campaign idea. That said, I think it works with there potentially low magic system that RuneQuest can be tweaked to, and might not with standard D&D magic. On the other hand, who's to say we can't tweak D&D magic to fit a low magic setting? Would it help to make all spellcasters Warlocks? Works nice for witches and their ilk. Maybe make Catholic Priests Warlocks with a pact with God ....

There is also the option for a Fantasy Europe setting that the fantasy elements are on the fringes. They dont impact the rest of the setting much. Which may be intentional or may be due to the low overall level of the magical threats.

Or like with Norse mythology. The fantasy elements are other worlds that overlap at the edges with the mundane but are not a part of. Or like some sylvan legends where the faerie realms are etherial and may evaporate if too long in the real without proper anchoring points. Or the fantasy elements are spectral in nature and restricted to certain places as these things are often prone to be.

Conan for example is set 10000 years in the past. With something sufficiently cataclysmic occurring to totally re-arrange the map and obliterate about all traces of the age that was. And the Conan books themselves mention ages before that even more fantastical that were brought down.

Borderlands of Faery

That would work.

Say the setting is a county in the Anglo-Scots Border country and it lies very close to the realms of Faery-Land.
Witchery, strange creatures that crawl out of Faery, buried treasure with curses laid on it, and all that kind of stuff is unusually common in the county.
Saints may be more likely to grant intercession to people living there, who need all the help they can get in dealing with magical powers and weird monsters.
And don't the elfin lords pay a tiend to Hell?
So the Evil One may also take an interest...

Quote from: Gormenghast;875573Borderlands of Faery

That would work.

Say the setting is a county in the Anglo-Scots Border country and it lies very close to the realms of Faery-Land.
Witchery, strange creatures that crawl out of Faery, buried treasure with curses laid on it, and all that kind of stuff is unusually common in the county.
Saints may be more likely to grant intercession to people living there, who need all the help they can get in dealing with magical powers and weird monsters.
And don't the elfin lords pay a tiend to Hell?
So the Evil One may also take an interest...

Sounds a bit like the very Fantasy Europe setting of the County, in the Spook's Apprentice novels ... Another example of how magic can be combined with near real world history to pretty good effect.

Quote from: markfitz;875582Sounds a bit like the very Fantasy Europe setting of the County, in the Spook's Apprentice novels ... Another example of how magic can be combined with near real world history to pretty good effect.

Oh?
Maybe I should check these novels out.

Thanks for letting me know of this series.

Quote from: Gormenghast;875632Oh?
Maybe I should check these novels out.

Thanks for letting me know of this series.

It's a Young Adult series, but still worth a look. Takes place in a fantasy version of Lancashire, I think it is, drawing on lots of Northern English folktales about boggarts and witches. The plot concerns a young boy who is apprenticed top the local "Spook", a hunter of witches and demons. It's quite well done, but I found myself wishing for a more adult treatment of similar material. Anyone know of any adult novels that deal with occult detectives or witch-hunters? (I don't mean a mash up of fantasy and noir, like those Jim Butcher novels, something more historical perhaps?).

Quote from: markfitz;875667It's a Young Adult series, but still worth a look. Takes place in a fantasy version of Lancashire, I think it is, drawing on lots of Northern English folktales about boggarts and witches. The plot concerns a young boy who is apprenticed top the local "Spook", a hunter of witches and demons. It's quite well done, but I found myself wishing for a more adult treatment of similar material. Anyone know of any adult novels that deal with occult detectives or witch-hunters? (I don't mean a mash up of fantasy and noir, like those Jim Butcher novels, something more historical perhaps?).

Is that the source for the movie Seventh Son?

Quote from: Bren;875686Is that the source for the movie Seventh Son?

Yeah that's the one. Apparently the film sucks balls.

Quote from: markfitz;875704Yeah that's the one. Apparently the film sucks balls.

The Spook's accent sure is weird. It didn't get good reviews, but I  haven't gotten all the way through the movie yet to judge for myself.

Quote from: Bren;875707The Spook's accent sure is weird. It didn't get good reviews, but I  haven't gotten all the way through the movie yet to judge for myself.

Yeah it's strange. Good cast, and pretty good source material. Hard to know why it seems to have gone so wrong. I'd be interested to hear what you think of it if you make it to the end.

The books are interesting. A little simplistic, but really quite dark and flavourful. Very D&D-able, or other RPG of your choice. The Spook's role as a monster hunter for hire, with his semi outcast status, are very appropriate for adventurers. I wonder what class would work for him though. You could certainly, based on the books, include a Witch (Warlock) who was conflicted about evil with the party though, as the apprentice is allied with a young trainee witch, Alice, throughout. What class would a witch hunter be though?

I'm tempted to say Arcane Trickster with access to mainly abjuration spells for dismissing spirits and such.

Speaking of fantasy elements in a real world, or close enough, setting. There is also the Borribles series of novels. Weird ageless kids with pointy ears battling in the fringes of London with eachother and a race of rat people. Theres allmost no magic in it. But its a nice example of fantasy elements hidden away in the corners and co-existing.

Quote from: markfitz;875712Yeah it's strange. Good cast, and pretty good source material. Hard to know why it seems to have gone so wrong. I'd be interested to hear what you think of it if you make it to the end.

Not that bad. Having low expectations for the film certainly helped. I'm sure I'd have liked the newest Mad Max film better if it hadn't been touted as the greatest action film evaaah!

Although I found Jeff Bridges' rocks in the mouth speech affectation annoying, his character was OK as the cantankerous old master. I particularly liked the way he struck his swords on metal so he could listen to the vibration the steel made when choosing which blade to use.

Seventh Son's plot is a bit of a muddle with things like the boggart just sort of showing up solely to serve as a step on the hero's journey, but the magic effects were interesting. I liked the league of evil witches AKA Mother Malkin's gang. A bit of a shame that the movie wasn't longer or a couple of films so the various villains could have had some expanded screen time. The 102 minute running time was too short for what they tried to pack in. Overall I'd say the pacing was a bit off. At times the movie seemed slow but at other times it raced along hardly giving us enough time to dislike a villain before they ended up as toast.

QuoteThe Spook's role as a monster hunter for hire, with his semi outcast status, are very appropriate for adventurers.

I definitely got that vibe.

Not being a fan of level and class I can't say what would make sense. In the film, the Spook seems to have a magic staff but almost exclusively confront's foes with normal combat plus a few tricks (the silver powder stuff, silver net, and iron chains) that might be the D&D equivalent of 1-use items like potions or scrolls or the equivalent of silver for killing werewolves, and wolvesbane and garlic for repelling werewolves and vampires. So possibly some sort of Lore skill rather than magic.

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.

People did. Queen Elizabeth had John Dee determine astrologically the best moment for her coronation.

QuoteWealth would change hands

It did. Kings paid fortunes and competed with each other to have the best alchemists and diviners (including the aforementioned John Dee).  Peasants paid money for curses, blessings, cures, and talisman, and the ongoing state of this market demonstrated that they really kept right on believing in it.

And of course, the selling of relics, and indulgences, were HUGE business for both the catholic church and clandestine opportunists within the church. These were not being bought for 'political' reason. They were being bought because people believed them to have real power, including the power to save them from eternal damnation.

Quote, authority figures would be assassinated,

They were. Several powerful figures died because of or in relation to curses or dark auguries placed on them.  The Roman general Germanicus may have literally died from witchcraft, or a combination of that and poison.

Quotefamines and plagues would be spread

They were, or in other cases were avoided. There are tons of medieval accounts of both.

Quote. 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.

WHY?
What logic do you have for this argument?

Let me put it this way: do you believe climate change is real?
Do you think there are people involved in the climate change debate that think it's real? Do you think there are people involved in the climate change debate who are in it for political reasons?
Do you think these are exclusive?  Do you not think there are people involved in the debate who think climate change is a real problem but also want to gain political power, influence, and profit off the 'crisis'? Do you not think there are people who think climate change is real but will publicly claim otherwise for political reasons?

If you can accept that people can have those kinds of ulterior motives and double-discourses around something today, like climate change, what on earth makes you think that it wasn't that way back then, around witchcraft?

You still seem to think that most people involved at high levels were hard atheists and had no belief that witchcraft existed at all. Which makes you a fucking moron.  I spent YEARS studying the sources, trust me: these people almost ALL believed absolutely in witchcraft just as much as we believe in magnetism. Magic was a force of nature to them, as utterly assumed to be true as atoms or molecules or black holes are to us. People might fake being magicians like people today fake being scientists sometimes, but no one would have ever taken that to mean that there was no such thing.

QuotePeople who weren't involved or objected to the Inquisition would have been, and vice versa.

No, it would have been EXACTLY THE SAME DEBATE because and get this through your thick fucking head: ALMOST EVERYONE INVOLVED IN THE DEBATE BELIEVED IN MAGIC.

The people objecting about false accusations or the violations of rule of law would still be objecting on that basis because THEY BELIEVED IN MAGIC ALREADY.
The people calling for more ardent persecution of witches and who believed in plots against Christian kings etc would have still called for more ardent pursuit on that basis because THEY BELIEVED IN MAGIC ALREADY.
The Church figures (Catholic or Protestants) who warned against excesses and wanted to stay in control of the process of trial cases, expropriation of funds, and all that this would bring to them in terms of power and money, would still be doing things that way because THEY BELIEVED IN MAGIC ALREADY.
The insane mobs that would sometimes burn entire villages to the ground for witchcraft because they believed the entire village were in league with the devil and cursing their neighbors crops, would still do this because THEY BELIEVED IN MAGIC ALREADY.
The unauthorized "Witch Finders" who opportunistically took advantage of the chaos to sell themselves off as 'experts' and bilk people for fame and fortune, and didn't really give a fuck if they burned people who clearly were not guilty of witchcraft so long as they kept in business would have continued to do exactly that same thing because THEY BELIEVED IN MAGIC ALREADY.

The victims who ardently insisted that they were good Christians and had not been in league with the devil, or the ones who confessed and admitted that they were guilty (like the young English girl who had wished her grumpy old neighbour dead and that same moment he keeled over and died, and therefore the girl knew she had been touched with the power of the devil) would have continued to insist on their innocence or admit to their guilt just like they did in history because THEY BELIEVED IN MAGIC ALREADY.

There is NO ONE, as a group at least, who would change at all.

 

QuoteWitches would have fought back.

Most of those persecuted weren't witches. They were magicians at all.
Those who were witches (in the sense of practicing magic) were mostly old village wise women or wise men, who knew how to make some curses and trinkets. A few might call on the devil, and of course some of those who were witnesses to witchcraft had fits and seizures because the accused witch was apparently cursing them. But there's only so much that the devil can do against the power of God.
Most of the really capable magicians, the high level magic users, were dudes that would never get swept up in the witch craze at all. They were respectable people, university graduates and Natural Philosophers.  Why should they give a fuck what happened to charlatans and pagan remnants?

 

QuotePeople seeing the potential for power would have taken up witchcraft.

They did. ALL THE FUCKING TIME.

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

No, the more I think about it the more I see how utterly and totally your head is up your ass, and as far deep in there as it can get to avoid having to connect to the medieval paradigm.

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.

This isn't quite like any of that. The Witch Craze can't really be compared to the satanic panic except maybe in the very narrow context. But let's talk about the bigger question: the paradigm assumption that magic, non-human intelligences, god, the devil, angels and other spirits are all absolutely real.

To understand how fundamental that is, you would need to compare it to this statement of the 21st century paradigm: "If you eat right and exercise regularly you'll live longer".

Now, there's a lot of people who don't eat right and don't exercise, but who still take the above paradigm-assumption to be absolutely true. They make up excuses for why they can't do it, or they lament their personal moral failing at not restricting themselves, or whatever. And of course there are people who are absolute devotees at fitness and diet, and there are special magic diets that SCIENCE has proven will help you to be healthier and therefore not die. And there are so many stories of people who lived healthy and ate right and are now energetic 90 year olds who still play basketball every weekend; and of slobs who ate nothing but big macs and had heart failure at 35 years. Any inconsistencies are excused; if George Burns and Gerald Ford lived into their 90s and smoked heavily every single day then it was just a strange bout of luck or because of something else they did. If the "joy of running" guy died of a heart attack or the Atkins Diet guy dropped dead, then maybe running isn't as good an exercise as yoga, and maybe the atkins diet is not as 'balanced' and healthy as other low-carb diets.

But if someone were to point out that by far the greatest indicator of health is predetermined genetic conditions, well, that would be crazy talk! Only insane people would believe such a thing.  And if someone were to say that desiring longevity at the cost of deep personal sacrifices is stupid, that person would have something deeply wrong with them and would need therapy at the very least.

This is how fundamental the medieval relationship to magic was.  That magic really exists was as firm and sure to them as that diet and exercise make you live longer is to us.

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.

If it turned out that tomorrow absolute, incontrovertible, total and definite proof appeared that aliens existed and were visiting our planet, what would happen? I would agree, it would certainly and massively change everything. The world would never be the same.
But why is that? Because most people in our society do not really believe this. Probably even most people who 'want to believe' don't actually believe in it. It would change because this is not the paradigm of our culture.

If our entire culture was already ABSOLUTELY CONVINCED that aliens were around and visiting us, it wouldn't really be any fucking deal if they were because we'd already have an alien-oriented culture. It already wouldn't look like ours currently does.

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.

The Inquisition didn't run most of the witch trials. In fact, it ran a tiny minority, and witch-trials were a tiny tiny minority of what the Inquisition did. It wasn't their job. Their job was heretics and hidden jews.

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.

The Church (as in the Catholic church) was actually not particularly scared of witches. Because it had much greater magical power in the form of Christ and the Saints.

Incidentally, saying 'magic is real' does not just mean 'witches are real'.  The most impressive medieval and renaissance magicians were not witches. They were highly-educated Natural Philosophers.  A great many of them were monks; monasteries, being where all the books are, and where people had time to study, were the best place to develop magicians for a long time.  Like Roger Bacon, for example.  The church in general was a great source for magicians. One of them even became pope.

Later, as the University system developed, most magicians moved from the monasteries to the colleges. People like Agrippa, Paracelsus, Regiomontanus, John Dee, Flamel, and others.

 

QuoteSimply 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.

Not if magic is largely impractical to use without a lot of training, and for most cases requires the use of implements. And if the people being persecuted are mostly not actual magic-users, and none of the really powerful magic-users are being persecuted, and the power of God is greater than the power of Satan and most really powerful magic-users are devout Christians who would absolutely hate witches anyways.

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 don't think so. Create a setting (oh, say, like DARK ALBION (http://www.dcrouzet.net/heroes-witchery/?page_id=206)), where you get rid of the truly major damage spells (like fireball), where the vast majority of wizards are level 1, and where magic items are extremely rare, AND create social conditions that also mirror the medieval viewpoints on magic (including social status stuff about who should be and who shouldn't be allowed to study it, just like they had in medieval europe), and you'll end up with a world where magic will pretty much do exactly as much as it did in terms of its influence in our medieval world.

Quote from: Bren;874496And 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.

Both Queen Margaret and Queen Elizabeth Woodville were thought to be witches (by their political opponents, mainly). Woodville's family (on their mother's side) claimed descent from a water-spirit. The Tudors claimed descent from King Arthur.  The Pope you're thinking about was probably Sylverster II.  Countless medieval kings employed respectable magicians for a variety of services.
John Dee was a noted mathematician, an astrologer who determined the date of the Queen's coronation, was the "Queen's Conjurer" to Elizabeth I but was later also employed by rulers in various countries throughout Europe, cartographer, invented the term "British Empire", had the largest library in Britain (maybe the largest private library in all of Europe), was one of the first agents Her Majesty's Secret Service (with his code designation being "007"), was a practiced alchemist, and routinely had conversations with and received guidance from angels he summoned using a complex system of magic.

Quote from: RPGPundit;875810PThe Roman general Germanicus may have literally died from witchcraft, or a combination of that and poison.

Not to mention the Archduke Franz Ferdinand literally died from black magic or a combination of that and a bullet.

Quote from: RPGPundit;875810THEY BELIEVED IN MAGIC ALREADY.

so the fuck what? Magic wasn't real, isnt real, and their belief didnt change that. People werent assassinated by magic, crops werent ruined by magic, there were no actual effects from magic curses, plagues werent started by magic. Thats the point you don't seem to be able to grasp.

Oh...oh right, I just realized I'm debating with someone who does believe in magic. Fucking pointless.

Quote from: TristramEvans;875845so the fuck what? Magic wasn't real, isnt real, and their belief didnt change that. People werent assassinated by magic, crops werent ruined by magic, there were no actual effects from magic curses, plagues werent started by magic. Thats the point you don't seem to be able to grasp.

Oh...oh right, I just realized I'm debating with someone who does believe in magic. Fucking pointless.

I don't think Punidt's belief (or lack of belief) in magic is really the point here.  Nor is the fact that magic doesn't exist.

People were assassinated, crops failed, random bad shit happened to people, and plagues ravaged the populace.  At the time, people believed that these things were caused by magic, therefore they behaved in the same way that they would have if magic had been the actual cause.

People have always behaved in accordance with what their beliefs about the world, even when those beliefs are contrary to the reality of the situation.  This is as true today as it was in the Middle Ages.

Now, would the Middle Ages have looked radically different if every decent-sized city had a few guys living there who could toss fireballs and lightning bolts around?  Absolutely!  But that's because D&D magic doesn't work like medieval beliefs about magic.  If you had a magic system where magic worked the same way it was believed at the time to work, however, then people would have had the same beliefs and behaved the same way.  The only difference would be that their beliefs would have been correct instead of incorrect.

So maybe Pundit's belief in magic is the point after all.  He believes in it, therefore he behaves as though it's real.  Whether it actually is objectively real or not doesn't enter into the equation.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;874968That's easy.  First, instead of being a land grab under the guise of 'Heresy' (there's evidence that the Church picked targets entirely based on territory they wanted),

That's not mostly what the Witch Craze was. Some of that happened, yes, just like there were some cases that appeared to be about settling old feuds or local authorities making scapegoats for social problems, but the vast majority of cases had little to do with that.

And again "the Church" was not in fact the main instigator of the Witch Craze, though they were one player that was involved. When they were, it wasn't usually "the Inquisition" that was doing it. I don't know why you insist on using that as your term if it's historically inaccurate. Are you ill-informed? Or have you got an agenda that might be clouding your judgment?

Because trust me, I have (famously) no love lost for the Catholic Church (much less the Inquisition) and yet because I'm an historian, I have no problem with recognizing what the actual facts say. You should try that sometime.

 

Quotethe Inquisition would focus entirely suppressing magic.  

The Inquisition's main job was to root out heresy. In Spain, its second job was to root out secret Jews (people who had claimed to convert to Christianity to stay in Spain but were secretly still practicing Judaism).  Witchcraft was not one of their active objectives and something they only pursued incidentally if it came up.

As for whether anyone else would be 'suppressing magic', since they ALL BELIEVED IN MAGIC, I would say that this is pretty well exactly what they were doing. Or rather, the WRONG KIND of magic. Because the 'magic' of religion was fine (unless it was heretical) as was the magic of educated gentlemen Natural Philosophers (again, unless they were heretics). Giordano Bruno was not executed for magic, he was executed for heresy.

QuoteWitches and other spellcasters, would be resisting heavily, some secret, others obvious.  You'd have visible battles in the streets, where Divine fire (cuz you know, Clerics in the service of God and other Church aligned casters would exist, otherwise, the witches won hands down if it's D&D style magic) vs. Arcane fire blowing buildings and people.

You are supposing a power-level and commonality of magic that does not match it's actual levels in the medieval paradigm.

Quote from: Bren;875001It was real in the same way that other crackpot, harmful theories are real. "Different paradigm?" Sounds like you are treading perilously close to the sort of post modern relativism you claim to decry. The magic and monsters "paradigm" is wrong about how the world works. It is an ill-conceived doctrine, useless to predict or explain what happens, and it caused (and still causes) great harm. It is not real. People just wrongly thought (and some still think) it is and was real.

Paradigms are real things. It explains, for example, the rift between Islam and the West. Or for that matter, the rift between African Christianity (where they still actually really believe in things like salvation, miracles, demons, witchcraft, etc) and the rest of Christianity (which mostly doesn't).
Paradigm doesn't actually change reality. Reality is reality. But it changes cultural assumptions ABOUT reality.

And it takes a lot of practice to be able to actually slip into the mindset of a paradigm that is not your own, rather than consciously or subconsciously think that 'those people couldn't possibly seriously believe this'.

QuoteIf you aren't claiming that magic and monsters are real than your use of the phrase "really seen" appears chock full of post-modernist, absolute relativism world view.
If you think medieval or early modern people really heard animals talk or saw women have sex with the devil then I suggest a little less wacky tobaccy in your pipe is in order.

That was what they really SAW.  That doesn't mean that this is what it really was.  But that makes little difference. If everyone sees a miraculous healing, and is absolutely certain that this healing was miraculous and obvious, then they will base their cultural standards on that.  And the person who doesn't believe what is obvious to everyone else will be seen as the dangerous madman.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;875003Indeed.  But once you actually start introducing magic, things begin to change.  It starts being taken seriously much sooner.  Especially once the true power of it is discovered.  Instant reading of locations, the ability to destroy settlements (one Fireball, which is just level 5 would decimate a small village.)  

Fireball is level 3. But if you're trying to make a literal fantasy Europe, you don't want to include it in your spell list, because it didn't happen in medieval Europe.

QuoteThe odds of someone not being 'guilty' are suddenly lower when you have magicians who can charm, beguile or able to read the thoughts or spying at a distance.

Medieval witches and magicians were known to be able to do all of those things. People knew for certain that this was so, and when pursuing witches took precautions about this.



Here's the thing, there is evidence that this 'modern secularist' thought isn't all that modern.

QuoteIt sounds to me that you're missing that Pundit was talking about D&D style magic, the title claims that it's all D&D.  

I was talking about modifying D&D to make it fit medieval Europe. Like I did with Dark Albion, where you have my word (and experience from two different lengthy campaigns and various one-shots) that it works just fine.

Couple of reasons

1) Too much work in order to maintain an acceptable level of historical verisimilitude.
2) Playing any setting where Christianity is important does not appeal to me. Too much baggage. Sure I could substitute the faith with some made up form of monotheism, but then it wouldn't be fantasy Europe.

Quote from: TristramEvans;875090Maybe you should pick up a book or two on the history of Basque.

Basques were disproportionately suspected of witchcraft (not unsurprising, given their differentness and their considerably higher level of cultural pagan survivalisms). And so they were disproportionately targeted as witches, and many of those cases fell to the Inquisition. It doesn't change the fact that the vast majority of the witch trials in Europe were NOT conducted by the Inquisition and that the vast majority of the Inquisition's cases were NOT about witchcraft.

QuoteTheir belief isn't the issue. It's the effect of people actually being able to learn magic from the devil, having the power to curse their enemies, talk to animals, fly about on ergot and bat-blood smeared sticks, etc. Its the capability of these people to actually change the course of history, easily, by actually doing these things instead of being blamed for natural occurances.

The people doing these things for the most part were absolutely sure they could do them. The people who saw them doing it or saw the effects of it were absolutely sure the former people could do it. Nothing would actually change.

QuoteNo, I'm making assertions based on quite a bit of research spanning two decades. The fact that there were people that believed witches existed does not change the fact that an excessive amount of accusations of witchcraft and resulting trials can be traced back to political motivations and the acquisition of land. Hell, even the Salem Witch Trials have evidence of this; try reading up on Thomas Putnam some time.

I've studied this subject for 20 years too. I'll admit my focus was Europe and not America, where there were hardly any witch trials (but of course the Salem trials were a very famous exception, and very late in the era of witch trials). But the Salem Witch Trials from all I have read about it began with utterly sincere accusations of witchcraft (inasmuch as any of these accusations are sincere, by which I mean people actually believed it).  The opportunism came in after.

QuoteNo, that wasn't the analogy. What you're not understanding is that it's not the belief that matters, its the actual effects of these things actually existing. The ACTUAL effect of extraterrestrials interfering on earth. The ACTUAL effect of people using magic to curse their enemies, cause crops to wither and animals to sicken and die.  

If an entire society is already modeled around a certain belief that these things really do happen all the fucking time, then having them actually happen would  change extremely little, so long as the things that can happen are mostly similar to the things the society already believes happens.

QuoteNope, not making that mistake at all. The mistake you're making is the same as the people who think that people pre-Columbus all thought the world was flat.

No, because that is largely a misconception that arose in people long after the fact (which is to say, that almost no one in medieval europe believed the world was flat, that idea came up because of a book written hundreds of years later that basically pulled that claim out of its ass).  Whereas the Wars of Religion pretty well prove that medieval/early-renaissance people almost all took the works of god and demons damn seriously.

Have to agree with Pundit and nDervish here. It seems to me that if you put the work in to make D&D magic look more like what people believed at the time was possible for magicians, then you get a medieval world that looks much like the one that actually existed. Magic happened all the time, as did demonic possession, hauntings, and sightings or experiences of the weird, the occult, and the miraculous. Just because we know that a lot of this evidence for magic was due to mass hysteria, mistaken chains of cause and effect, trickery, or plain wrongness, doesn't mean that we can't just accept the occult explanations for these phenomena in our games, in line with what people believed at the time. The Secret History version can be assumed to be true, for the purposes of gaming, and damn if it isn't fun!

By the way, it's not like the Enlightenment put paid to all of this stuff either. There were renegade priests and sorcerers putting spells on each other and attacking each other at a distance or invoking the protection of divine and diabolical forces in late nineteenth century France. The shenanigans described in JK Huysmans's Là bas were based on the author's own real experiences, to cite just one modern example. Were he and all the people involved deluded and neurotic? Yes indeed, but it doesn't change the fact that they not only believed in magic but were fully convinced they had seen it in operation.

Tristam is right. Believing in magic doesnt make it real. And all that ancient belief didnt do anything other than get people killed by the believers. Which isnt magic either.

BUT.

Alchemy on the other hand is real and THAT has had an impact on the whole world over time since it is based on real world chemistry when not side tracked by beliefs in magic.

Which brings up the following back on topic.

A relatively real world setting where the only "magic" existing is in the form of potions and some specially treated items.

Not-Quite-Example: One of my AD&D 1st level magic users tricked orcs into believing he was a much higher level mage via use of flasks of oil and some flash-bang powder and a whole lot of crazy charisma checks.

Quote from: Omega;875882Tristam is right. Believing in magic doesnt make it real. And all that ancient belief didnt do anything other than get people killed by the believers. Which isnt magic either.
.

But no one is making that argument. I think Pundit does believe in magic, but he isn't saying that a belief like that shapes reality. He is saying it shapes the culture and the perceptions of the people in it. It isn't a commentary on whether religion is good, whether the witch craze was good or bad, it is just trying to understand what people were thinking during it. In terms of gaming, I think it is pretty good argument for keeping things largely the same if the magic you are introducing largely aligns with what people believed at the time. Obviously, it being real could have created completely different historical outcomes because belief and reality are not the same. I mean if someone summoned a demon and killed Elizabeth in 1558 that would most certainly have changed history. But all the GM has to do to avoid that kind of issue is say: no one ever summoned a Demon to kill Elizabeth the first, the only magical events that occurred up to this point, were those that people living in the time thought were a result of magic. As a player I find this perfectly plausible for the purpose of game (and same with movies or books).  That said, if the GM wants to create an alternate history around the presence of magic, I would totally be behind that. That can be a lot of fun and interesting as well. But it also creates its own plausibility concerns because a lot of GMs are going to come up with historical timelines that fail under scrutiny. To me both the alternate history and the secret history path are perfectly viable here.

For a game, I have no problem if someone takes all the religious and supernatural assumptions from a given era, says they are true, and keeps the history largely the same. Now, once the rubber hits the road, once the players are actually involved in historical events then I might expect to see some changes in the course of history, because at that point it gets a lot harder to hand wave. To me that is the much bigger issue in any historical game. Not what came before the players started (I can always come up with an explanation for why a magic missile spell was used at the Battle of Hastings and why this didn't change history as we know it). But when the players are involved and it is happening at the table, things may actually deviate in a way from history that gets much harder to explain.

Right Brendan, no one is arguing that believing in magic makes it true. I think the waters are muddied somewhat by the fact that Pundit isn't shy about the fact that he's a practising magician and does believe that magic exists! I for one think that this adds a certain je ne sais quoi to the fact that he's our host here .... But he's not arguing that point in this thread. He's also a historian and that seems to be the hat he has on here. I can't get away from the fact that some people seem just offended by the idea that a guy who believes in magic should have anything coherent and non hippy dippy to say about the place of magical belief in real world history. But I find his arguments here about paradigm and belief to be pretty convincing.

Also, who's to say that someone didn't summon a demon to kill Queen Elizabeth? Just turns out she had some serious magical protection going on. But it all occurs behind the scenes - in our Secret History version of history - and none the wiser. Except those Initiates who are In the Know. I can't get over how antagonistic people seem to be to something that is just such plain fun ...

Quote from: RPGPundit;875811The Inquisition didn't run most of the witch trials. In fact, it ran a tiny minority, and witch-trials were a tiny tiny minority of what the Inquisition did. It wasn't their job. Their job was heretics and hidden jews.

That was the job of the Spanish Inquisition along with ferreting out false converts among the Moriscos. Spain had a huge fetish about false converts and about whose ancestry was pure enough and/or could be traced back to the Visigoths. Inquisitions outside of Spain had other jobs. IIR, the Roman Inquisition was heavily involved in book approvals and bannings, but not too concerned with ferreting out lapsed converts.

Quote from: RPGPundit;875869The Inquisition's main job was to root out heresy. In Spain, its second job was to root out secret Jews (people who had claimed to convert to Christianity to stay in Spain but were secretly still practicing Judaism).

And Moors. The Reconquista was only completed in the late 15th century. Moors raided the coasts of Spain (and England and Ireland) through at least the 17the century. It would be difficult to overemphasize how much their war with Islam was a key concern for the Spanish.

Quote from: RPGPundit;875872Paradigm doesn't actually change reality. Reality is reality. But it changes cultural assumptions ABOUT reality.

Yes. This is exactly what I was saying. And that is why it is ontologically incorrect to say that people saw witches fornicating with the devil. Because that is not, in fact, what they saw. It is what they thought they saw.

QuoteAnd it takes a lot of practice to be able to actually slip into the mindset of a paradigm that is not your own, rather than consciously or subconsciously think that 'those people couldn't possibly seriously believe this'.

Lots of people believe lots of stupid shit. That's not news. Astrology and magic are two of the stupid things people have believed in the past. Sadly, they are also two of the stupid things some people believe in the present.

QuoteThat was what they really SAW.  That doesn't mean that this is what it really was.

Then they didn't actually SEE the devil. They thought they saw the devil. Just like the time I THOUGHT I saw a strange old woman sitting in a rocking chair at night in my bedroom. But what I really SAW was a jumble of clothes on a chair that, in the dark, looked like the silhouette of an old woman.

QuoteBut that makes little difference.

It makes all the difference as far as reality goes. In one case a ghostly apparition exists. In the other case it doesn't exist and in the light of day (and one's reason) one can clearly see the clothes piled on the chair.

Quote from: RPGPundit;875819John Dee was a noted mathematician, an astrologer ... ... a practiced alchemist, and routinely had conversations with and believed he received guidance from angels he summoned using a complex system of so-called magic.

Fixed that for the rest of us.

Quote from: RPGPundit;875875Here's the thing, there is evidence that this 'modern secularist' thought isn't all that modern.

Yes it goes back at least as far as some of the pre-Socratic philosophers in Greece.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;875892But no one is making that argument.

Quote from: markfitz;875896Right Brendan, no one is arguing that believing in magic makes it true.

It is not clear that no one is making that argument. Pundit is ambiguous in his use of language. That ambiguity may be intentional and caused by his personal paradigm including some kind of magic. Or he may just be sloppy in his language either due to laziness or for polemical effect. In any case, his beliefs and his imprecise use of language does muddy the water about what, precisely, he means when he repeatedly says people back then saw the devil, talked to angels, received practical advice from angels, killed people via curses, and practiced magic that had an affect on the world.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;875892For a game, I have no problem if someone takes all the religious and supernatural assumptions from a given era, says they are true, and keeps the history largely the same.

Neither do I. That is more or less what I do in my Honor+Intrigue campaign.

RE: Witch trials

While the focus in the Trier witch trials was initially aimed at Protestants and Jews, it later turned toward those accused of using witchcraft (which the two aforementioned groups had roundly been accused by the Jesuits of practicing). In fact, it is suggested that this is one of the first documented cases of genocide in Europe.

The Bamburg and Würzburg persecutions took place during the Thirty Year War. Unlike the Trier witch trials, both were well-documented. Modern scholars likened it to an epidemic, where it became fashionable to blame the supernatural for the spread of pestilence and famine. Scholars strongly suggest that the Catholic church conspired to spread propaganda of the supernatural among the poor to take their attentions away from what was really happening.

The Inquisition, on the other hand, was a very different beast. I don't know enough about it to speak on the subject.

Quote from: Bren;875906It is not clear that no one is making that argument. Pundit is ambiguous in his use of language. That ambiguity may be intentional and caused by his personal paradigm including some kind of magic. Or he may just be sloppy in his language either due to laziness or for polemical effect. In any case, his beliefs and his imprecise use of language does muddy the water about what, precisely, he means when he repeatedly says people back then saw the devil, talked to angels, received practical advice from angels, killed people via curses, and practiced magic that had an affect on the world.

Neither do I. That is more or less what I do in my Honor+Intrigue campaign.

My reading is he is saying this what people thought. He may be leaving himself room for his own perspective. But I don't believe in magic, I don't believe that belief in magic makes it real, but I do think he has a point about how real those experiences feel to the people experiencing them. Obviously I don't think anyone was actually effectively using magic, but I do believe when I read the primary source material and I go back and look at my standard secondary source books from my coursework on this, that most of the expressed belief in magic was genuine. Just to take a line from my Brian Levack book on the Witch Hunt in Early Modern Europe, there is a whole chapter devoted to understanding the intellectual foundation of the craze where he says "By the end of the Sixteenth Century most educated Europeans believed that witches, in addition to practicing harmful magic, engaged in a variety of diabolical activities....". The rest of the chapter painstakingly goes over the development of this belief. Looking at my primary source book (which is filled with documents from the era) I find document after document that supports the notion that these were real beliefs.

That doesn't mean there were not people being cynical or folks on the fringe who were skeptical perhaps. And there are always folks willing to exploit disasters and crazes to their advantage (even if they believe they are genuine). But if you spend much time reading material from this period you do see plenty of evidence that there was a worldview which assumed God was real and magic was real. Once you accept that this was how a significant portion of the population understood the world, you really can't analyze their behavior with the same assumptions you might about a person in the modern world doing something similar (if I don't believe in god or believe that magic is real, yet you see me participating in or spearheading a witch craze, you know something is up).

In my own life, my wife believes in spirits and I don't. She'll tell me some mornings that she saw a ghost, or she was visited by a dead relative. When she and I talk about these experiences, it turns out we both have the same or similar sensory experiences, but what she calls a ghost, I call seeing something out of the corner of my eye. What she calls being visited by a dead relative, I call sleep apnea. Now I believe I'm correct but I don't think she is lying about what she saw. I think she believes she saw a ghost just as strongly as I believe I stopped breathing in the middle of the night and woke up gasping for breath. That is the sort of paradigm difference Pundit is pointing to. Heck I've even hallucinated little green men dancing on my stomach after a surgery once. When I looked it up, it turns out that is a common hallucination when people are sleep deprived (so it made sense to me that it was a product of the anesthesia and the lack of good sleep). But that does point to something important. The brain can play really powerful tricks on you. Sometimes it isn't just that you are projecting explanations onto vague sensory experiences. You can also hallucinate things, even if you are otherwise not prone and totally sane. I mean, if I,as someone who doesn't believe any of this stuff can see little green men dancing on my belly in the middle of the night, then imagine what a person in the medieval world, similarly sleep deprived or under the influence might have seen.

Uruguay is unusually secular for South America, isn't it?


I have not read any pertinent research on the matter, but my impression is that belief in the reality of miracles is fairly common in most of South America. It certainly seems to be among the immigrant population here.  
Again, I have no research before me on this count. I could be much mistaken.

I think the impact of magic may be reduced by altering how present/controllable it is (and thus how easily the scientific method applies). By making magic fairly uncommon/rare and inaccurate/imprecise (particularly for the purposes of experiments) you may prevent it from dominating the same way our rigorously defined technology does while remaining largely practical for practitioners to utilize.

Quote from: RPGPundit;875869You are supposing a power-level and commonality of magic that does not match it's actual levels in the medieval paradigm.

No.  I'm supposing how D&D magic actually WORKS, which doesn't match any levels in the medieval paradigm, which if it did, would NOT be D&D magic.  D&D magic destroys any historical credibility in how history would have worked out.

If you want a game system that supports the medieval paradigm as you call it, go look at Ars Magicka, or Runequest.  Or any other system in which magic CAN fail or can actually be subtle.

D&D does NOT work in a historical context, simple because of how reliable and effective it is.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;875932No.  I'm supposing how D&D magic actually WORKS, which doesn't match any levels in the medieval paradigm, which if it did, would NOT be D&D magic.  D&D magic destroys any historical credibility in how history would have worked out.

If you want a game system that supports the medieval paradigm as you call it, go look at Ars Magicka, or Runequest.  Or any other system in which magic CAN fail or can actually be subtle.

D&D does NOT work in a historical context, simple because of how reliable and effective it is.

Well, Vancian casting certainly didn't appear to be an assumption behind things like Maleficia. But there is also a lot of vagueness around magic is described in medieval sources, and it is pretty broad in variety. D&D wouldn't be my first choice but I think if the GM sufficiently paired down the spell selection, you could do a D&D game in Medieval Europe and it would be believable enough that it wouldn't bother me (even some of the stuff in the old Green Book for Rome was kind of okay in that respect). Obviously the best way to do it is to make a completely new system based on the source material. My assumption if people are using D&D is it is because that is the more familiar system that is going to attract the most players. But you can still make it work well enough provided your flexible about it.

One thing I will say, is history sometimes surprises you. I was doing a ton of research into magic during the Song Dynasty for my campaign (not using D&D). And I used only primary sources and reputable secondary sources. I was surprised to see a few instances of spells that were basically right out of D&D (one was quite close to fireball for example, except I believe it only worked on spirits not regular people). I didn't use D&D but it would be pretty easy to adjust a spell like Fireball enough so that it matched the ritual in question.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;875935Well, Vancian casting certainly didn't appear to be an assumption behind things like Maleficia. But there is also a lot of vagueness around magic is described in medieval sources, and it is pretty broad in variety. D&D wouldn't be my first choice but I think if the GM sufficiently paired down the spell selection, you could do a D&D game in Medieval Europe and it would be believable enough that it wouldn't bother me (even some of the stuff in the old Green Book for Rome was kind of okay in that respect). Obviously the best way to do it is to make a completely new system based on the source material.

I don't have it, but I've been curious for a while: I wonder how well Aquelarre does medieval magic? It looks to be just what you say, a system based on the source material ....

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;875919My reading is he is saying this what people thought. He may be leaving himself room for his own perspective.

I think he is leaving a lot of room. Which is unnecessary in analyzing what we think that people believed at the time. And I use the phrase "what we think that people believed" intentionally because we don't really know what most people believed. All we have is what a small minority of the literate population (which was already a minority of the entire population) wrote about what they thought or what they thought other people thought. All of which makes me a bit skeptical when someone claims to know (a) what people saw and (b) what they all believed about those reported sightings.

QuoteBut if you spend much time reading material from this period you do see plenty of evidence that there was a worldview which assumed God was real and magic was real.

One should also keep in mind that publishing views contrary to what the Church or State mandated could, at the very least, get your books burned and your press destroyed. So it is not surprising that the preponderance of the available writings support the official views on magic.

QuoteOnce you accept that this was how a significant portion of the population understood the world, you really can't analyze their behavior with the same assumptions you might about a person in the modern world doing something similar...

I'm not arguing that people 500 years ago thought about the world in the same way that you or I might. One can't even assume that everyone in the modern world has the same world view. So there is certainly no reason to think that people 500 years ago had the same view as that held by a minority of the people who are alive today.

QuoteWhat she calls being visited by a dead relative, I call sleep apnea.

Sleep apnea is measurable. The number and duration of sleep interruptions and blood oxygen levels are all real, measurable things, that can be replicated by multiple observers on multiple occasions. Ghosts don't appear to be reliably measurable nor consistent in their so-called appearances.

Quote from: Bren;875952I think he is leaving a lot of room. Which is unnecessary in analyzing what we think that people believed at the time. And I use the phrase "what we think that people believed" intentionally because we don't really know what most people believed. All we have is what a small minority of the literate population (which was already a minority of the entire population) wrote about what they thought or what they thought other people thought. All of which makes me a bit skeptical when someone claims to know (a) what people saw and (b) what they all believed about those reported sightings.

One should also keep in mind that publishing views contrary to what the Church or State mandated could, at the very least, get your books burned and your press destroyed. So it is not surprising that the preponderance of the available writings support the official views on magic.

Sure, but we are talking pretty casually here.

In terms of taking what people said with a grain of salt, absolutely. One of things they teach you to look out for when your reading primary documents is exactly that sort of thing. But the general consensus among historians now is these were widely held beliefs. It isn't controversial to start with that assumption. But we do know more than people might think about other views. A lot of micro histories have taken a closer look at individual cases of heresy (where again you have to consider where the documents come from) and you get some really unusual world views (like in the Cheese and the Worms for example).

QuoteSleep apnea is measurable. The number and duration of sleep interruptions and blood oxygen levels are all real, measurable things, that can be replicated by multiple observers on multiple occasions. Ghosts don't appear to be reliably measurable nor consistent in their so-called appearances.

Again, i am not saying belief=reality at all (I stated pretty clearly I think my view is the correct one). I'm not saying ghosts are real because people believe them. What i am saying is her experience that this was a ghost is the experience she believes she is having and to her it is very real. We are operating under two very different world-views and those shape how we interpret what we see and feel. This is purely about being able to see something from the point of view of a person who doesn't share your world view.

I think when you look at historical people, you really need to take their beliefs seriously if you want to understand where they are coming from. Skepticism is healthy too, but if you take it too far and assume they have the same materialist assumptions that we do, that they must be lying or cynical, then I think you can easily miss their real motives.

Quote from: Bren;875952I'm not arguing that people 500 years ago thought about the world in the same way that you or I might. One can't even assume that everyone in the modern world has the same world view. So there is certainly no reason to think that people 500 years ago had the same view as that held by a minority of the people who are alive today.
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Part of the problem is we are on an internet forum and people are debating really big historical issues to make smaller points about elf games. So a lot of the discussion is getting glossed over. I mean there are different arguments and points of views even among mainstream historians on this subject and one could easily tilt the discussion one way or another by leaning on the right group of them.

So the well is probably already poisoned from the start because really people just want to play an RPG a particular way, or not play it a particular way, and the debate hinges entirely (for some reason) on whether people really believed witches existed and could perform magic.

Typically these things are not quite settled because like you point out, we can't know for sure what people were thinking. We just have some conclusions that seem more plausible than others based on the available evidence.  But that doesn't mean that any and all speculation on motives is valid. It is about what views have grounding in the available evidence.

If we really wanted to have an involved and fruitful discussion about what people believed during the Early Modern Witch craze, it would probably need to be divorced from a discussion where people feel like they are scoring points and where everyone lays out some sources on the table (which could be interesting because people might encounter sources they were not aware of).

I think I made a similar point a few months ago on a similar thread. When people invoke scholars or mention their own research but don't actually list off any books or articles to give us some insight into where their information is coming from, that's really hard to judge. They may be the world's biggest expert and have  a direct line to the truth, but I would have no real way of discerning whether that is the case or not. It just becomes people asserting that this or that was so. This is why I keep emphasizing most of my information comes from coursework I did ages ago. I'm totally open to being wrong if there has been a shift or if new evidence has come to light.

As for the D&D magic not working in a pseudo-historical game, there is always the option of changing the spell lists and limiting mages to X level.

There is no reason the D&D magic list can't be subtler spells.

Considering the whole HP thing, you'd probably want to limit levels anyway. I easily could see a historical game being a L6 limit game.

Quote from: Spinachcat;875964As for the D&D magic not working in a pseudo-historical game, there is always the option of changing the spell lists and limiting mages to X level.

There is no reason the D&D magic list can't be subtler spells.

Considering the whole HP thing, you'd probably want to limit levels anyway. I easily could see a historical game being a L6 limit game.

That is my thought as well. Cap levels alone and things change dramatically.

Playing early on with alot of BX D&D, pareticularly B and the level cap of 3 you get that general feel. Expecially when all you can attain there as a mage or elf is 2nd level spells, and cleric limited to 1st. And you've only got 2/1 for the MU or elf.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;875958Part of the problem is we are on an internet forum and people are debating really big historical issues to make smaller points about elf games.

Undoubtedly that makes the issue more fraught.

Interestingly, I agree with the conclusion that one can include magic and monsters in an historical setting provided the magic and monsters are rare and seldom witnessed by the masses and almost never seen in public, i.e. pretty much what we have from the historical record.

But in regards to the discussion about paradigms in general and the language used in discussing paradigms in this particular instance, I've seen discussions of paradigms shift from historical analysis to reification of the paradigm. It's not uncommon direction for extreme relativist to assert that all world views or paradigms are equally valid. A point with which I take strong exception. Pundit in this thread seems to be treading right up to that line (or over that line) in regards to magic, which I find ironic given his disdain for the same practice of reification when it is applied to social and economic paradigms with which he disagrees.

QuoteWhen people invoke scholars or mention their own research but don't actually list off any books or articles to give us some insight into where their information is coming from, that's really hard to judge.

Agreed.

Quote from: Bren;876003But in regards to the discussion about paradigms in general and the language used in discussing paradigms in this particular instance, I've seen discussions of paradigms shift from historical analysis to reification of the paradigm. It's not uncommon direction for extreme relativist to assert that all world views or paradigms are equally valid. A point with which I take strong exception. Pundit in this thread seems to be treading right up to that line (or over that line) in regards to magic, which I find ironic given his disdain for the same practice of reification when it is applied to social and economic paradigms with which he disagrees.
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I don't know. I think people are reading more into what he is saying, based on what they know about his beliefs in magic. The first time I read his article, O interpreted the way you do now. But I read it a few times and my interpretation changed.

I am not a relativist. And I don't believe in magic. But what Pundit is suggesting about paradigms isn't a threat to that in my view. He is just encouraging good practice when you want to understand people. Now it can be taken too far and get into relativist grounds (you can go from trying to see things through someone's eyes to believing their view is just as valid as any other). But until one reaches that point, I am not worried. It isn't a challenge to our modern, rational world view to understand historical people by taking their beliefs seriously. If I want to understand Romans I need to understand as best I can, what they believed (not what I think they ought to have believed). If I want to understand the spread of Islam, I need to understand as best I can what early Muslims believed. If I don't I risk projecting assumptions baked into my world view onto them, and my conclusions could be flawed. If Pundit goes on to argue that this therefore means all paradigms construct reality, by all means, Take exception. But right now I think he is just saying, from their point of view, this is how the world worked.

Quote from: Bren;875906That was the job of the Spanish Inquisition

I wasn't expecting that!

Quote from: Spinachcat;875964As for the D&D magic not working in a pseudo-historical game, there is always the option of changing the spell lists and limiting mages to X level.

There is no reason the D&D magic list can't be subtler spells.

Considering the whole HP thing, you'd probably want to limit levels anyway. I easily could see a historical game being a L6 limit game.

And again, if you're playing OD&D with the "monster level divided by PC level times gold = XP" paradigm, leveling flattens out fairly quickly at about level 8 or 9.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;876016I wasn't expecting that!

No one ever expects the Spanish Inquisition.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;876015But what Pundit is suggesting about paradigms isn't a threat to that in my view. He is just encouraging good practice when you want to understand people. Now it can be taken too far and get into relativist grounds (you can go from trying to see things through someone's eyes to believing their view is just as valid as any other). But until one reaches that point, I am not worried.

No, clearly Pundit does not believe every view is equally valid. That's not at all what I was trying to suggest. His many rants about gaming swine and leftists demonstrate that he doesn't consider all paradigms to be equally valid.

Quote from: Gormenghast;875396I just checked out the preview material for Dark Albion. I also read some reviews.

It looks fun.


I think it was good call on replacing the Catholic Church with the Unconquered Sun. Sol Invictus, FTW.
This is not because I dislike fantasy historical games that involve my religion, but because the change signals the reader/ player to expect other differences. It shows that, despite the many close parallels to our history, this is a " weird" alternate universe.

What hints I have read about Frogland make me think of the bells of Saint Toad, Clark Ashton Smith, and all that.
Creepy.

Thanks!  Hope you consider picking up the book.

Quote from: Arminius;875833Not to mention the Archduke Franz Ferdinand literally died from black magic or a combination of that and a bullet.

If Ferdinand had willed himself to take massive ballistic-impact damage because he was convinced he'd been cursed, that would be about equivalent.

Quote from: TristramEvans;875845so the fuck what? Magic wasn't real, isnt real, and their belief didnt change that. People werent assassinated by magic, crops werent ruined by magic, there were no actual effects from magic curses, plagues werent started by magic. Thats the point you don't seem to be able to grasp.

Oh...oh right, I just realized I'm debating with someone who does believe in magic. Fucking pointless.

The type of magic I practice has about as little to do with the typical medieval european's idea of magic as the typical modern physician's has to do with a medieval bleeder's.

You are so fucking blinded by your pig-ignorance of your own utterly robotic conditioning to the 21st century secular paradigm that you can't even begin to comprehend the concept that the entire culture was framed on assuming magic to be true, and that they MEANT it. You're convinced they were just trolling us all.

At least half of the Republican Party is willing to base public policy on a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible, and the other half pays lip service to get their votes.  So you guys are telling me that people WITHOUT knowledge of science didn't believe the supernatural was real?

JG

Quote from: RPGPundit;876099You are so fucking blinded by your pig-ignorance of your own utterly robotic conditioning to the 21st century secular paradigm that you can't even begin to comprehend the concept that the entire culture was framed on assuming magic to be true, and that they MEANT it. You're convinced they were just trolling us all.

No, you're just so willfuly ignorant to the point I made that you're galloping around on some ridiculous mountebank high horse off on some ridiculous tangent that has nothing whatsoever to do with anything I said. It has nothing to do with a point of view, or a paradigm, or any other projectionyou're putting on me because you're trying to make an argument that is so far beyond beside the point that you're tilting at some massive strawman windmills with your panties in a bunch.

Let me try one last futile attempt to explain this in as simple as terms possible:

1. No one in history died because of a magical curse. People may have believed that certain people died because of curses, certain deaths may have been attributed to magical curses. But the cause of death of no historical figure in our reality was "magical curse".
2. If people had died from magical curses this would have altered the course of history as we know it substantially. This is the echo effect. The "butterfly beats its wings" on a colossally grander scale. Not because of anything to do with belief, nothing to do with a medieval mindset vs a modern mindset, but because a person who would have, in our reality, continued to live, have children, affect others people's lives, die a natural death under different circumstances instead would be dead because of a magickal curse, at the whim of the person who could cast this curse. Not just one person, but anyone who any person wanted dead that was willing to put the effort in to learning a manner in which how to curse them. Fuck, if I could go out and learn a rite that would put a death curse on someone, just the political landscape of our world in the last 20 years would have been insanely different.
3. This is just one example of a commonly believed form of magick, granted one with a precedence stretching back to the Kollossoi of Classical cultures and probably well before that. That's several centuries of people with the ability to kill off people that in our reality were not killed by magick. Add in every other commonly believed folklore about witchcraft, and you have a vast alteration of the landscape of history. Because those people would not be replicating the natural events that took place that people may have blamed on witchcraft, those events would still happen in addition to the innumerable effects of actual witchcraft. If you actually consider the implications of that starting from prehistoric cultures onwards, it is so bloody obvious that history would be in every way completely altered from our reality that its absolutely flabberghasting to me that I even need to point this out, let alone argue it.

And all that is ONLY taking into account beliefs of witchcraft extant of those time periods. Add in D&D style magic and you're talking about a world completely alien to anything we could conceive of. Wars would be massacres between wizards. In fact simulations of this were actually run by Gygax and his wargaming buddies, who took the basic concepts of D&D and applied them to a massive army scale conflict. What they found was ancient wargaming was essentially turned into World War 2.

Quote from: TristramEvans;8761462. If people had died from magical curses this would have altered the course of history as we know it substantially. This is the echo effect. The "butterfly beats its wings" on a colossally grander scale. Not because of anything to do with belief, nothing to do with a medieval mindset vs a modern mindset, but because a person who would have, in our reality, continued to live, have children, affect others people's lives, die a natural death under different circumstances instead would be dead because of a magickal curse, at the whim of the person who could cast this curse. Not just one person, but anyone who any person wanted dead that was willing to put the effort in to learning a manner in which how to curse them. Fuck, if I could go out and learn a rite that would put a death curse on someone, just the political landscape of our world in the last 20 years would have been insanely different.
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Except if you take the secret history approach, which is what most people are arguing for here, the only people who die that way prior to the start of the campaign are people who would have died anyways and whose deaths were attributed to witchcraft. No historical events are being changed at all. The only thing that is being changed is the explanation for those events.

I do agree the echo effect is an issue. But that is an issue in any game where history is changed in any way for any reason. As far as plausibility goes, this is a pretty tight solution to that issue. I think it isn't asking readers, players or viewers a lot to accept that one conceit in a historical setting (especially if the events leading up to the moment everything starts were not changed in their outcomes, but simply had a magical explanation behind them).

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;876157Except if you take the secret history approach, which is what most people are arguing for here, the only people who die that way prior to the start of the campaign are people who would have died anyways and whose deaths were attributed to witchcraft.

Also in this fictional world that happens to look a lot like our real world, some of the historical deaths that were not attributed to witchcraft were undoubtedly, but very secretly, actually due to witchcraft.

Quote from: TristramEvans;876146Let me try one last futile attempt to explain this in as simple as terms possible:

1. No one in history died because of a magical curse. People may have believed that certain people died because of curses, certain deaths may have been attributed to magical curses. But the cause of death of no historical figure in our reality was "magical curse".

Mmm... Wrong. Here's how this actually works scientifically speaking.

If you believe you are cursed, you are cursed. Anything that you believe will make you I'll, will make you ill (Nocebos). Some Placebos which actually have no healing properties at all, will heal you, simply because you believe the Placebo has healing powers. There are plenty of medical studies which have proved this. So Disbelieve in magic to your peril, because magic can affect other people, and those other people can harm you. Just becuase you don't beleieve it can affect you doesn't mean that it won't.

Now here are a few actual cases, you can review for yourself. Feel free to get back to me with questions.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150210-can-you-think-yourself-to-death

Despite its continued use in clinical trials, the so-called placebo response is not universally accepted. In fact, in 2001 a systematic review (http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM200105243442106) of clinical trials concluded that there was no evidence of clinically important effects, except perhaps in the treatment of pain and continuous subjective outcomes. A Cochrane review with similar conclusions (updated as of 2010) has also been published by the same authors.

One conclusion that can be drawn is that the nocebo response may be of similarly dubious scientific merit despite the belief in its existence.

Quote from: Bren;876197Despite its continued use in clinical trials, the so-called placebo response is not universally accepted. In fact, in 2001 a systematic review (http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM200105243442106) of clinical trials concluded that there was no evidence of clinically important effects, except perhaps in the treatment of pain and continuous subjective outcomes. A Cochrane review with similar conclusions (updated as of 2010) has also been published by the same authors.

One conclusion that can be drawn is that the nocebo response may be of similarly dubious scientific merit despite the belief in its existence.

What?!!! Your claim is simply not true!  From your study from the New England Journal of Medicine;

"As compared with no treatment, placebo had no significant effect on binary outcomes, regardless of whether these outcomes were subjective or objective."

"For the trials with continuous outcomes, placebo had a beneficial effect, but the effect decreased with increasing sample size..."


We need to conduct more studies, because your own study says that with continuous treatments placebos indeed have a beneficial effect...

What that means in plain English is if the people believe it is good for them, they are getting healthier.

So instead of dissing the study on Nocebo's you should be calling for more in-depth studies.

What you'll learn from that though is what I'm already telling you.

If the people believe the curse works, the curse really works, and they can die, or die sooner, as a result of said curse...

i.e. Magic... works.

Quote from: GameDaddy;876207What?!!! Your claim is simply not true!  From your study from the New England Journal of Medicine;

First, it is not my study. It's the study I cited. You, on the other hand cited no studies just a media piece.

Quote"As compared with no treatment, placebo had no significant effect on binary outcomes, regardless of whether these outcomes were subjective or objective."

And second, no significant effect for binary outcomes. That means there was no placebo effect for any binary outcomes. Like I said and unlike your claim that placebo/nocebo has a powerful effect. Guess what one example of a binary outcome would be: Is the subject alive or dead? Guess what the studies show for placebo in those cases? No effect.

Quote"For the trials with continuous outcomes, placebo had a beneficial effect, but the effect decreased with increasing sample size..."

You left out "The pooled standardized mean difference was significant for the trials with subjective outcomes but not for those with objective outcomes." So when they pooled the results (which was done in an attempt to discount the effects of small sample sizes), they found that only in the case of subjective outcomes was there any significant evidence of a placebo effect. Which is why the authors suggest the effect may be an artifact of small sampling size rather than of any significant beneficial effect for placebo.

So what does all this continuous, subjective outcome stuff mean in English?

What it means is if you give people a pill and then ask them later "does it hurt less now?" there is a statistically significant increase in the number of people who say, "Yes it hurts less now" when compared to the group where you do absolutely nothing for them and then ask them later "does it hurt less now?" Is this really very surprising? What might be surprising would be if they improved on some nonsubjective criteria or on a binary outcome. But the studies showed that doesn't happen with any binary outcomes nor does it happen with any objective outcomes. Which calls into question the long held belief in the power of the placebo effect.

QuoteWe need to conduct more studies, because your own study says that with continuous treatments placebos indeed have a beneficial effect...

No that is not what the study said. What it said was people said they felt better. Whether they actually felt better than they would have felt without placebo is impossible to determine because you can't separate their subjective feeling from any objective actuality. But when the measure is objective, then in large studies, small studies, or pooled studies, there is no placebo effect.

QuoteWhat that means in plain English is if the people believe it is good for them, they are getting healthier.

No what it means is some people will tell you they feel better if you tell them you did something that will help them to feel better. When the measure is of something objective, placebo does nothing. When the measure is binary, placebo does nothing. The only time any placebo effect is seen is when the measure is both nonbinary and subjective. And we can't separate improvement from perception of improvement.

QuoteSo instead of dissing the study on Nocebo's you should be calling for more in-depth studies.

What you'll learn from that though is what I'm already telling you.

If the people believe the curse works, the curse really works, and they can die, or die sooner, as a result of said curse...

i.e. Magic... works.

No what the study review shows is that death (a binary, objective result) is exactly the sort of thing that placebo does not effect. There is no reason to think that nocebo will be more effective than placebo for causing changes that are objectively measured. Like, for example, death.

Now ere's what the media source you provided says about the death curse. "We can never know whether the nocebo effect would have actually killed Mr A, though Fabrizio Benedetti at the University of Turin Medical School thinks it is certainly possible."

So we can never know if there was a nocebo effect for the objective measure of Is he alive or is he dead? But despite the lack of evidence Fabrizio Benedetti still believes enough in his unprovable claim that he spent time out of his day to talk about it with a reporter. Lots of things are possible. Responsible scientists obtain proof before making claims. Sadly, the media is always happy to report unproven claims if they think it will sell papers, get clicks, or boost ratings.

I laughed out loud when I read this in your media source: "It is notoriously difficult to neutralise long-held beliefs, but responsible media reporting would at least stem the spread of poisonous rumours." I laughed out loud because the placebo response is a long-held belief that is only now being called into question by actual academic research. But apparently you and Signore Benedetti know the truth without the need for troublesome studies and data and stuff.

Quote from: Bren;876223No what it means is some people will tell you they feel better if you tell them you did something that will help them to feel better. When the measure is of something objective, placebo does nothing. When the measure is binary, placebo does nothing. The only time any placebo effect is seen is when the measure is both nonbinary and subjective. And we can't separate improvement from perception of improvement.

GE did a study back in the 50s.

They went through corporate offices and increased the lighting, telling people they were installing "better lighting."  Productivity increased measurably.

Then they went through and decreased the lighting, telling people they were installing "better lighting," and productivity increased measurably again.

Then they set the lighting to its original level, telling people they were installing better lighting, and productivity increased again, and stayed up.

It's in the Harvard Business School Case Study Library someplace, it was 30 years ago I read it.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;876227GE did a study back in the 50s.

Interesting. I'd be curious to know more about the study. Sustained productivity improvement is surprising. Successive increasing improvements in productivity is surprising. Successive, increasing, sustained improvements is very surprising. At some point there would have to be diminishing returns in productivity or lack of sustainability otherwise GE could have continued to play that game forever, with ever increasing productivity, which (since GE does not own the world) obviously did not happen.

That said, an awful lot of "productivity" in corporations is and always has been subjectively, not objectively, measured so without knowing more about what GE measured in 1950 that they called productivity we might not want to accept the case study results at face value. But even if the productivity in the GE studies was objective in measure, there are lots of subjective things that will make people either more or less productive.

EDIT: Not sure about the GE Case Study, but the earlier Western Electric studies associated with the Hawthorne Effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect) seem to indicate that improvements were temporary.

QuoteThe term was coined in 1958 by Henry A. Landsberger[3] when analyzing earlier experiments from 1924–32 at the Hawthorne Works (a Western Electric factory outside Chicago). The Hawthorne Works had commissioned a study to see if their workers would become more productive in higher or lower levels of light. The workers' productivity seemed to improve when changes were made, and slumped when the study ended. It was suggested that the productivity gain occurred as a result of the motivational effect on the workers of the interest being shown in them.

This effect was observed for minute increases in illumination. In these lighting studies, light intensity was altered to examine its effect on worker productivity. Most industrial/occupational psychology and organizational behavior textbooks refer to the illumination studies.[4] Only occasionally are the rest of the studies mentioned.[5]

Although illumination research of workplace lighting formed the basis of the Hawthorne effect, other changes such as maintaining clean work stations, clearing floors of obstacles, and even relocating workstations resulted in increased productivity for short periods. Thus the term is used to identify any type of short-lived increase in productivity.[3][6][7]

Isn't the placebo effect something very specific though? I'm not sure it would apply to being cursed (since it is generally about whether your condition improves after taking a pill).

I would think though that a person who believes they are cursed and works themselves into an intense emotional state over it, might raise their risk of a heart attack or something. I believe people who are newly diagnosed with highly fatal cancers have an increased risk of suicide, stroke and heart attack (and some of this risk is believed to stem from mental health affecting the body). I'm no doctor, and I am open to whatever the medical consensus is on this,but I've long been under the impression that it is pretty accepted that mental health can impact physical health.

Quote from: Bren;876231Interesting. I'd be curious to know more about the study. Sustained productivity improvement is surprising. Successive increasing improvements in productivity is surprising. Successive, increasing, sustained improvements is very surprising. At some point there would have to be diminishing returns in productivity or lack of sustainability otherwise GE could have continued to play that game forever, with ever increasing productivity, which (since GE does not own the world) obviously did not happen.

That said, an awful lot of "productivity" in corporations is and always has been subjectively, not objectively, measured so without knowing more about what GE measured in 1950 that they called productivity we might not want to accept the case study results at face value. But even if the productivity in the GE studies was objective in measure, there are lots of subjective things that will make people either more or less productive.

EDIT: Not sure about the GE Case Study, but the earlier Western Electric studies associated with the Hawthorne Effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect) seem to indicate that improvements were temporary.

I may indeed have been thinking of the WE study, and the results were indeed short term as cited.  As I said, thirty years ago.

Re the Seventh Son movie and Last Apprentice books by Joseph Delaney:

Quote from: markfitz;875712Yeah it's strange. Good cast, and pretty good source material. Hard to know why it seems to have gone so wrong. I'd be interested to hear what you think of it if you make it to the end.

The books are interesting. A little simplistic, but really quite dark and flavourful. Very D&D-able, or other RPG of your choice. The Spook's role as a monster hunter for hire, with his semi outcast status, are very appropriate for adventurers. I wonder what class would work for him though. You could certainly, based on the books, include a Witch (Warlock) who was conflicted about evil with the party though, as the apprentice is allied with a young trainee witch, Alice, throughout. What class would a witch hunter be though?

The movie seems a counterexample to the discussion here; it could have been set in any D&D-ish world ever.

The Spook in the books is different (and a lot more interesting) than the movie character. The Spook has a substantial library about various supernatural beings, and he and his apprentice use materials like salt, iron, silver, running water and so on rather than actually casting spells of their own, but clearly they know a lot about magic. Alice comes with a lot more use of magic than the Spook is comfortable with. Among other things, they practice entangling witches in a silver chain, so perhaps they were some form of Monk as a character class. Alchemist? Spell-less Cleric?

Restating what I think are the main points:
A) Adding the fantasy elements makes a departure already to another world.
B) You avoid pedantic quibbles.

So, Katherine Kurtz in her Deryni series could have a medieval dynastic saga (plus psionics) without being tied to known historical dynasties, Church politics, etc.

Robert E. Howard's "Hyborian Age" could eclectically mix whatever bits he liked regardless of anachronism (or even actual history, if popular fiction versions were more fun) -- along with sorcerers and giant slugs.

In actual medieval times, the Arthur and Charlemagne cycles took real-world referents as just a jumping off point into their own fantastic worlds.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;875892I think Pundit does believe in magic,

I don't need to 'believe' in it, I've done it. But again, the sort of magick I do is very different from the assumptions involved in the medieval paradigm about magic.

QuoteI mean if someone summoned a demon and killed Elizabeth in 1558 that would most certainly have changed history.

To put it in context, for example, during the attempted "Spanish Armada" invasion, both sides were convinced they had divine providence guiding them, and not in the way some republican politicians today might think that sort of thing about some modern military action. They also understood their respective victories or defeats in that context, in a way that dramatically affected the English and Spanish psyche.

It was in fact claimed that John Dee raised the storm that sank the Armada; this is almost certainly not historically true (even in the sense of Dee attempting to do it), as Dee was not in the country at the time.  But what is true is that he had received a prediction about the Armada five years before the invasion, from one of his frequent invocations of angels (the angel Uriel, in this case). He almost certainly alerted Walsingham about this (the latter being the director of the secret service, in which Dee was agent 007), which may have contributed to the English discovering the Spanish plans before the invasion occurred. The important point is no one questioned the possibility of magic being involved; and indeed the character of Prospero in Shakespeare's The Tempest was inspired by John Dee.

Quote from: Bren;875906That was the job of the Spanish Inquisition along with ferreting out false converts among the Moriscos. Spain had a huge fetish about false converts and about whose ancestry was pure enough and/or could be traced back to the Visigoths. Inquisitions outside of Spain had other jobs. IIR, the Roman Inquisition was heavily involved in book approvals and bannings, but not too concerned with ferreting out lapsed converts.

That was still for the purpose of uncovering Heresy, which was the Inquisition's main job, wherever it was.

QuoteYes. This is exactly what I was saying. And that is why it is ontologically incorrect to say that people saw witches fornicating with the devil. Because that is not, in fact, what they saw. It is what they thought they saw.

And people in the United States today are convinced that daily use of shampoo is essential for hair cleanliness. It doesn't necessarily make it true, but the belief is so strong that people who don't use shampoo (at all, or even 'enough') are considered weirdos and looked on as 'dirty'.

What is or is not objectively true doesn't have very much to do with what defines culture.

QuoteIt makes all the difference as far as reality goes. In one case a ghostly apparition exists. In the other case it doesn't exist and in the light of day (and one's reason) one can clearly see the clothes piled on the chair.

Your individual anecdote involving a misperception means nothing in terms of what we're talking about here.  If you were to be capable of realizing there's something you AND EVERYONE IN YOUR CULTURE are absolutely sure is true but is in fact not objectively true, then you'd maybe have a better grasp on this, but then it would only prove my point about how little the lack of objective truth would matter in terms of the effect this paradigm has on the culture.

QuoteFixed that for the rest of us.

You can phrase it how you like, but the point is he was having conversations with something (be it angels, aliens, his own mind, a gestalt he and edward kelly formed out of their joint subconscious, extradimensional entities or whatever else you want to think it was), and we know from his meticulous surviving diaries that he was TOTALLY FUCKING SERIOUS about it, that he had not the slightest doubt that it was really happening, that a significant number of events occurred that confirmed it to be happening for him, and (and this is the really fucking important part) that it informed not only his life-decisions but also the affairs of state of a half-dozen kingdoms of Europe and changed the course of history.
Whether you want to think it was real or not in your own little atheist paradigm, the EFFECT it had was very real. And he and everyone involved were quite certain of its reality.

QuoteIt is not clear that no one is making that argument. Pundit is ambiguous in his use of language. That ambiguity may be intentional and caused by his personal paradigm including some kind of magic. Or he may just be sloppy in his language either due to laziness or for polemical effect. In any case, his beliefs and his imprecise use of language does muddy the water about what, precisely, he means when he repeatedly says people back then saw the devil, talked to angels, received practical advice from angels, killed people via curses, and practiced magic that had an affect on the world

I think you're seeing an ambiguity that isn't there, because the language I'm using doesn't fit your own personal dogmas, and the whole thing is an inconvenient reality for you.
You still desperately want to pretend that the entire medieval world were just trolling us down through the ages and couldn't possibly have been serious about this. Which, frankly, is something only a moron could allow himself to be led by his inept personal dogmas to believe.

You are, in other words, making a faith-based argument here.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;875919In my own life, my wife believes in spirits and I don't. She'll tell me some mornings that she saw a ghost, or she was visited by a dead relative. When she and I talk about these experiences, it turns out we both have the same or similar sensory experiences, but what she calls a ghost, I call seeing something out of the corner of my eye. What she calls being visited by a dead relative, I call sleep apnea. Now I believe I'm correct but I don't think she is lying about what she saw. I think she believes she saw a ghost just as strongly as I believe I stopped breathing in the middle of the night and woke up gasping for breath. That is the sort of paradigm difference Pundit is pointing to.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but your wife is Asian, right (specifically Thai, if I'm not remembering wrong)? And not born in the U.S.?

Because that would be a very important point here: she is operating from a different paradigm.

Now, modern Asian cultures (and of course, it's a very broad brush to use that term at all, because modern Thai culture is radically different from modern Japanese culture; or for that matter modern urban Chinese culture is radically different from modern rural Chinese culture) are ALL far, far less bound to the 'magical paradigm' than medieval Europe was. What they have is at best a kind of remnant; outside of some remote hill tribes and stuff like that, they're half-way out of actually really truly BELIEVING this stuff, but it's still powerful enough for people raised in those cultures to appear very "superstitious" to us.

You'd have to magnify this at least tenfold to approach just how binding the paradigm was to medieval Europe.

Quote from: Gormenghast;875921Uruguay is unusually secular for South America, isn't it?

Incredibly so. It's one of the only latin-american countries to have full separation of church and state, and it has the lowest rate of religious attendance or active religious affiliation of any latin country.  If you break it down not just by country but by states and provinces for the U.S. and Canada, only Quebec has as comparatively high a rate of secularism as Uruguay does in all the Americas.

QuoteI have not read any pertinent research on the matter, but my impression is that belief in the reality of miracles is fairly common in most of South America. It certainly seems to be among the immigrant population here.  
Again, I have no research before me on this count. I could be much mistaken.

This is true in many latin countries, but absolutely not the case in Uruguay. Though of course, like all countries, you see a higher rate of religiosity and superstition among the lower classes (where not only is Catholic devotion still a little higher, but there's also a growing demographic adherence to both Evangelical Christianity and Umbanda, which is an afro-descendent religion). But even in the lower classes the rate of religious affiliation is much much lower in Uruguay than anywhere else in Latin America.

Quote from: RPGPundit;876327Incredibly so. It's one of the only latin-american countries to have full separation of church and state, and it has the lowest rate of religious attendance or active religious affiliation of any latin country.  If you break it down not just by country but by states and provinces for the U.S. and Canada, only Quebec has as comparatively high a rate of secularism as Uruguay does in all the Americas.



This is true in many latin countries, but absolutely not the case in Uruguay. Though of course, like all countries, you see a higher rate of religiosity and superstition among the lower classes (where not only is Catholic devotion still a little higher, but there's also a growing demographic adherence to both Evangelical Christianity and Umbanda, which is an afro-descendent religion). But even in the lower classes the rate of religious affiliation is much much lower in Uruguay than anywhere else in Latin America.

Indeed.

I blame the Freemasons. And the Jesuits.
;)

As for the stuff about paradigm, I think this is essentially what I was taught to call " worldview." Or at least it is closely related.
I would agree that it is vitally important in the study of history. And in anthropology, comparative religion, politics in multiethnic or multi-religious states, international affairs, etc.

Quote from: Bren;875952I think he is leaving a lot of room. Which is unnecessary in analyzing what we think that people believed at the time. And I use the phrase "what we think that people believed" intentionally because we don't really know what most people believed. All we have is what a small minority of the literate population (which was already a minority of the entire population) wrote about what they thought or what they thought other people thought. All of which makes me a bit skeptical when someone claims to know (a) what people saw and (b) what they all believed about those reported sightings.

Right... because obviously the highly-educated elite were far more superstitious than the notoriously hard-atheist dawkins-reading peasantry. That happens in all societies. :rolleyes:

QuoteOne should also keep in mind that publishing views contrary to what the Church or State mandated could, at the very least, get your books burned and your press destroyed. So it is not surprising that the preponderance of the available writings support the official views on magic.

There's lots of stuff that survived from the medieval and renaissance period that surely would not have met with Church approval, and yet that stuff generally also doesn't point to people having been voracious fans of "The God Delusion".

And ironically to your point, the Church was frequently one of the most carefully skeptical examiners of supernatural claims and phenomena, both in order to discriminate true miracles from fraud, and to hold onto their control over the monopoly on spiritual power.  They were just as often telling people not to assume that some event was witchraft or a miracle when everyone else was eager to assume it was. None of which is to say that the Church didn't believe in magic or miracles, they just recognized (being educated men within the paradigm) that there was also fraud and false reports, and that it was important to discriminate between real magic/miracle and false reports of the same.

Quote from: Bren;876003It's not uncommon direction for extreme relativist to assert that all world views or paradigms are equally valid. A point with which I take strong exception. Pundit in this thread seems to be treading right up to that line (or over that line) in regards to magic,

No, I'm not. If anything, I'm saying that ALL paradigms (including our own culture's) are equally INVALID. They are all socially/collectively-constructed projections of artificial reality that distorts reality as it actually is.

Which, by the way, is very much in line with true occult teaching (as opposed to the medieval paradigm of belief about magic).

Quote from: TristramEvans;876146No, you're just so willfuly ignorant to the point I made that you're galloping around on some ridiculous mountebank high horse off on some ridiculous tangent that has nothing whatsoever to do with anything I said. It has nothing to do with a point of view, or a paradigm, or any other projectionyou're putting on me because you're trying to make an argument that is so far beyond beside the point that you're tilting at some massive strawman windmills with your panties in a bunch.

Let me try one last futile attempt to explain this in as simple as terms possible:

1. No one in history died because of a magical curse. People may have believed that certain people died because of curses, certain deaths may have been attributed to magical curses. But the cause of death of no historical figure in our reality was "magical curse".

This changes NOTHING. If you are sure your Uncle Louis has cancer, the doctors are sure, everyone else in your family is sure, it looks and acts like cancer as far as everyone expects cancer to act, the eventual autopsy concurs that it was probably cancer that killed him, etc.; the fact that it wasn't actually cancer even though no one knew or would ever come to know for the next 1000 years that it wasn't means that it changes NOTHING.

What you're doing here is a Flying Spaghetti Monster argument. It's like saying "maybe Martin Luther King was actually killed by a tiny alien spaceship that just looked and acted in every respect like an ordinary bullet and could never ever be proven to be anything but a bullet! That fact changes everything!!"
No, it fucking doesn't. As far as everyone involved is concerned, it was just a bullet.

Maybe gravity works in a TOTALLY different way than we today assume it works. Maybe in 1000 years people will laugh and chuckle at just how stupidly naive we all were for everything we assumed about gravity and how nonsensical it all was.
What exactly would that change in our culture today, dumbass?

Quote2. If people had died from magical curses this would have altered the course of history as we know it substantially. This is the echo effect. The "butterfly beats its wings" on a colossally grander scale. Not because of anything to do with belief, nothing to do with a medieval mindset vs a modern mindset, but because a person who would have, in our reality, continued to live, have children, affect others people's lives, die a natural death under different circumstances instead would be dead because of a magickal curse, at the whim of the person who could cast this curse. Not just one person, but anyone who any person wanted dead that was willing to put the effort in to learning a manner in which how to curse them. Fuck, if I could go out and learn a rite that would put a death curse on someone, just the political landscape of our world in the last 20 years would have been insanely different.

Not if magic worked the way it was assumed to by the medieval paradigm. You are assuming that magic would be something easy, commonplace, safe, at little to no cost, essentially unstoppable, learnable by anyone, and that wouldn't get you in trouble with the authorities.

NONE of those things fit the medieval paradigm with regards to magic.

So all you're saying here is "If magic really worked AND if magic was totally different from how people understood it in the middle ages that would change the medieval setting radically"; but you don't actually need anything in that sentence before the "AND". The question of whether or not magic actually works is irrelevant in terms of how it affects the culture, if magic works exactly the way the medieval mind thought it did.

QuoteAnd all that is ONLY taking into account beliefs of witchcraft extant of those time periods. Add in D&D style magic and you're talking about a world completely alien to anything we could conceive of. Wars would be massacres between wizards. In fact simulations of this were actually run by Gygax and his wargaming buddies, who took the basic concepts of D&D and applied them to a massive army scale conflict. What they found was ancient wargaming was essentially turned into World War 2.

Let's remove the historical analysis from this and look at what you're claiming about D&D.

No one here, I think, is claiming that you can use the AD&D 1e or BECMI rules exactly "as is" and end up with a credible magic system for an authentic medieval setting.

But you are claiming that there's no way that you can modify the D&D magic system in a way that would still be D&D and make it credible for an authentic medieval saying.

But THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT I DID IN DARK ALBION.

And it certainly works. And I've run a nearly six-year long campaign of it (and a second shorter campaign, and various one-shots) and it worked JUST FUCKING FINE.

Wars were not 'massacres between wizards', because with the Dark Albion mods in place wizards are mostly useless in battles.  Almost all wizards are level 1 magic users, and there is no fireball spell even if you do have some maniac who gets to level 5. Having a typical Anglish Wizard in any battle in the Rose War was practically insignificant having a bombard, or flemish crossbowmen, or squadron of Scots Men mercenaries.  It was usually even less useful than having a decent knight of the same level in full plate and warhorse.

I can think of only one or two incidents in a campaign that saw the PCs involved in every major battle of the war where magic-use was of any kind of significance (in the sense that something a magister did was of decidedly more significance than the impact of a typical knight). And even in those, in no case was it of sufficient significance to be the deciding factor in the battle.

So either way you look at it (historically or in terms of D&D), you're full of shit.

Quote from: Gormenghast;876345As for the stuff about paradigm, I think this is essentially what I was taught to call " worldview." Or at least it is closely related.
I would agree that it is vitally important in the study of history. And in anthropology, comparative religion, politics in multiethnic or multi-religious states, international affairs, etc.

The main difference between a 'paradigm' and a 'world-view' as I'm using it is that people within a given paradigm assume it to be absolute natural reality. You might recognize that a world-view is a social construct, and allow room for other people to hold other views, but a paradigm is something so firmly-held that you would think anyone who thought otherwise was either dangerously insane, lying about actually believing differently (as some people's comments here seem to suggest) or unbelievably ignorant in a harmful way.

Quote from: RPGPundit;876326Correct me if I'm wrong, but your wife is Asian, right (specifically Thai, if I'm not remembering wrong)? And not born in the U.S.?

.

Yes, she was born in Bangkok (or rather a suburb of Bangkok). How much of this is cultural or individual, I really can't say. I've met plenty of people in the US who believe in spirits, magic and are religious. So it isn't stuff I've never encountered before. Some of what she believes is comparable to things my religious aunts believe for example, but maybe a little more intensely. And there is more of a folk magic aspect to some of her beliefs (which usually come to her by way of her mother).

It really hasn't been much of a source of debate or disagreement for either of us. But then, I did grow up in a very religious household.

Quote from: RPGPundit;876356This changes NOTHING. If you are sure your Uncle Louis has cancer, the doctors are sure, everyone else in your family is sure, it looks and acts like cancer as far as everyone expects cancer to act, the eventual autopsy concurs that it was probably cancer that killed him, etc.; the fact that it wasn't actually cancer even though no one knew or would ever come to know for the next 1000 years that it wasn't means that it changes NOTHING. [snip]

So at this point either 1) you still have no idea what I'm talking about and are still pursuing a strawman argument that has nothing to do with what I'd said or 2) you are putting forth the theory that if magick and witches as historical cultures believed in them were real that history would have played out exactly the same as in our history because every single piece of magick done would simply recreate everything that happened in our history through natural circumstances but got blamed on magick. Which has to be the most retarded idea I've ever heard.

Either way, I don't have even the slightest motivation to continue debating this.

Quote from: RPGPundit;876323I think you're seeing an ambiguity that isn't there, because the language I'm using doesn't fit your own personal dogmas, and the whole thing is an inconvenient reality for you.
You still desperately want to pretend that the entire medieval world were just trolling us down through the ages and couldn't possibly have been serious about this. Which, frankly, is something only a moron could allow himself to be led by his inept personal dogmas to believe.

You are, in other words, making a faith-based argument here.

It would help in having an intelligent conversation and an actual dialog, Pundit if you addressed what I actually said instead of making up things I did not say and do not believe for you to argue against. I have said absolutely nothing that would support the claim you made in bold. If I had said anything that supported that you could (and likely would) have quoted it here. But you didn't quote anything that supports what you claimed. The reason you didn't quote me is because you can't. The reason you can't find an appropriate quote is because I didn't say any such thing. Nor is it that what I believe. So then we are left with a bit of a puzzle. Why did you make this false claim?

Now maybe you honestly confused what some other poster said with what I said. It's a long thread and that happens. Certainly that's the most charitable interpretation of what you've said and done here. And I always like to start by assuming honest mistakes from others rather than malice or stupidity. And if this was just an honest mistake, you can just clarify and apologize for your mistake.

Or maybe you know I didn't say that but it is easier create a caricature of my position and use rhetorical tricks to disguise instead of creating a reasoned argument of your own. That certainly fits the persona of a pundit and a polemicist which you often adopt on line. In that case, no clarification or apology will be forthcoming because it doesn't fit your adopted persona.

Or maybe this is just a story you made up and told yourself to feel better about how smart, unique, and generally misunderstood you are. In that case you may, despite all evidence to the contrary, actually believe it to be true. Because you need it to be true. People often delude themselves with beliefs that support their world view. Most especially when their world view is unpopular or just flat out irrational.

EDIT: Or maybe you think your lies will somehow help you to sell more games.

Quote from: RPGPundit;876356But THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT I DID IN DARK ALBION.

It seems unlikely, but you do keep mentioning your game. A lot.

Or maybe Dee's angels whispered this false truth in your ear during Tantric meditation and you believed them because the world, in your view, is filled with magic and the supernatural. But that's one of the problems with belief in supernatural spirits that whisper in one's ear. Typically the recipient cannot distinguish true whispers from false.

In any case, what you said above is false. It is not what I said. It is not what I believe. It is a lie.

I'm not talking about real life magic, in historical gaming, and all it entails.  I'm talking D&D style magic in historical gaming, which simply has never worked in my experience.

Quote from: RPGPundit;876350Right... because obviously the highly-educated elite were far more superstitious than the notoriously hard-atheist dawkins-reading peasantry. That happens in all societies. :rolleyes:

That's not what I said or implied. But you'd know that already if you stopped rolling your eyes long enough to read what I actually wrote.

QuoteAnd ironically to your point, the Church was frequently one of the most carefully skeptical examiners of supernatural claims and phenomena...

I am already well aware of that.

Quote from: RPGPundit;876352No, I'm not. If anything, I'm saying that ALL paradigms (including our own culture's) are equally INVALID. They are all socially/collectively-constructed projections of artificial reality that distorts reality as it actually is.

Your language does the opposite. Well we've had that discussion and you made it clear you seem unwilling to use precise language that would actually support this point instead of treating paradigms as reality.

QuoteWhich, by the way, is very much in line with true occult teaching (as opposed to the medieval paradigm of belief about magic).

No doubt. True occult teaching is undoubtedly remarkably similar to true Scotsmen.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;876448I'm not talking about real life magic, in historical gaming, and all it entails.  I'm talking D&D style magic in historical gaming, which simply has never worked in my experience.

If by magic you mean wizards tossing fireballs in public to obliterate entire companies of pikemen, I don't think anyone is arguing that would integrate well with our history.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;876448I'm not talking about real life magic, in historical gaming, and all it entails.  I'm talking D&D style magic in historical gaming, which simply has never worked in my experience.

Everyone here though seems to mean highly customized D&D magic or a system tailored to fit the assumptions of the period.

Quote from: Phillip;876310Restating what I think are the main points:
A) Adding the fantasy elements makes a departure already to another world.
B) You avoid pedantic quibbles.

But for the downside of invented fantasy worlds, you give up familiarity (assuming the players actually are familiar with history; those who aren't and don't really care could be added as point C to your list), you forego a large supply of source material, and you lose the potential of "truth is stranger than (plausible) fiction": knowing that something actually happened in history might forestall losing suspension of disbelief.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;876450Everyone here though seems to mean highly customized D&D magic or a system tailored to fit the assumptions of the period.

Yeah, but that doesn't seem much like D&D to me, and apparently not to other people in this thread. What OSR/OGL means is a lot less certain, but I expect a lot of it still includes stuff being common like fireballs and raise dead and teleport and commune and dragons and undead and so forth, if not actual wishes being granted, even if Dark Albion and other games don't.

The weird thing about this thread is that Bren hasn't been jumping up and down shrieking "argumentum ad fireballum!" all the times someone suggested that powerful magic would change history. :idunno:

Quote from: rawma;876543Yeah, but that doesn't seem much like D&D to me, and apparently not to other people in this thread. What OSR/OGL means is a lot less certain, but I expect a lot of it still includes stuff being common like fireballs and raise dead and teleport and commune and dragons and undead and so forth, if not actual wishes being granted, even if Dark Albion and other games don't.

:

I think OSR/OGL is flexible enough that you can really tweak the magic system to fit the setting if you want. But even if one doesn't I am not particularly troubled by straight D&D transported into history. Yes it requires some imaginative suspension of disbelief, but I think there is a lot of fun to be had with history as a campaign setting even if you don't worry about the changes something like Fireball or Raise Dead might introduce. It is a game of imagination and fantasy. I'm fine with the GM cranking up the fantasy elements as much as he or she wants in a historical or vaguely historical setting. If I weren't I probably wouldn't enjoy games like Call of Cthulu or movies like Excalibur and Dragonlslayer (the latter of which invents a kingdom whole cloth as I recall). And pretty much all I read is history books. It just doesn't bother me.

I do think using historical Europe does introduce challenges that fantasy analogy europe won't (because it is easier take and remove aspects you like or don't without explanation). And also if your players are sticklers for real world history, fantasy analogs can avoid those issues. For me as a GM,the main reason I would opt for an analog is so I don't end up bogging myself down in research for every inch of adventure. But I think part of that is because I am overly pedantic when I run that sort of setting, and my players really could care less (something I observed when I've run Doctor Who and, because of its very open nature, had to run a lot of times and places on the fly----so end up using a lot of my assumptions and hollywood stuff as crutches....players really didn't seem to mind or enjoy the game less than when I put in hours of researching key details). Granted it is Doctor Who, so it has a lighter tone than some other campaigns might. But it did show me you can free yourself up a bit.

You can do stuff to graft D&D as is onto a historical setting: all the dungeon crawls take place deep beneath ordinary cities (like urban fantasy) or all the magical wars are fought out of sight of most people (like supernatural horror) or whatever, but then you're not really playing IN that history, you're playing next to it -- the important stuff is all in the secret world where the adventuring happens.

Or you can change the magic to fit; all I'm saying on that is that it doesn't feel like D&D to me, and not OSR/OGL to the extent that those should also feel like D&D to me, and apparently I'm not completely alone in that opinion.

Doctor Who brings up another potential problem with a historical setting; players who want to engage in some sort of tourism or pranks that are meaningless within the historical setting, like Rose trying to get Queen Victoria to say "We are not amused". It might be fun to hide in a tree and drop every kind of fruit except an apple on Isaac Newton's head, but only because of the perspective of our time.

Quote from: rawma;876543But for the downside of invented fantasy worlds, you give up familiarity (assuming the players actually are familiar with history; those who aren't and don't really care could be added as point C to your list)...

Familiarity with what? Even a game of Waterloo is interesting as a game precisely because of what we don't know about the history we shall make through our actions, as opposed to following a script from books.

We cannot be familiar with a historical world in which a charmed dragon turtle helps win the battle of Lepanto for the Ottomans, because there is no such.

The "what if" contrast can indeed be fun, as can a game in which Frodo kept the Ring and Middle-Earth is over the thumbs of heinous Hobbits. To me, though, the conceit wears thin pretty quickly.

Quote... you forego a large supply of source material, and you lose the potential of "truth is stranger than (plausible) fiction": knowing that something actually happened in history might forestall losing suspension of disbelief.

I can use all the source material, only it is just the start rather than the end! Knowing that something actually happened in history, and regarding it as plausible also in a world in which giant killer frogs stalk owlbears in Hyde Park, how is it suddenly implausible just because this is another park in another kingdom?

Quote from: rawma;876711Doctor Who brings up another potential problem with a historical setting; players who want to engage in some sort of tourism or pranks that are meaningless within the historical setting, like Rose trying to get Queen Victoria to say "We are not amused". It might be fun to hide in a tree and drop every kind of fruit except an apple on Isaac Newton's head, but only because of the perspective of our time.

That is only as much of an issue as the players make it, or make out of it.If that bugs people, the GM can have NPCs react appropriately or have consequences for that sort of behavior. But if it is a light enough game and people aren't bothered by it, it isn't an issue. This isn't a problem I've ever encountered as most groups I've been in have been on the same page with the campaign's tone.

Quote from: rawma;876711You can do stuff to graft D&D as is onto a historical setting: all the dungeon crawls take place deep beneath ordinary cities (like urban fantasy) or all the magical wars are fought out of sight of most people (like supernatural horror) or whatever, but then you're not really playing IN that history, you're playing next to it -- the important stuff is all in the secret world where the adventuring happens.

This would really depend on the campaign. But both are still using the history. You are still operating in a historical setting (even if you doing things like adding a bunch of monsters and dungeons). You've just greatly expanded it, that is all. But the historical stuff is still there for you to chew on and you might have a campaign that focuses entirely on the historical aspects, despite bringing the D&D system largely unchanged. I'd agree it isn't historical realism, it is more like using history as a canvas. If you want a realistic, historical campaign, then you can do the things people have been suggesting (tweaking the system, particularly magic and monsters, to reflect the real world beliefs of people at the time).

QuoteOr you can change the magic to fit; all I'm saying on that is that it doesn't feel like D&D to me, and not OSR/OGL to the extent that those should also feel like D&D to me, and apparently I'm not completely alone in that opinion.

.

I guess I don't really understand what people want when they say on the one hand, too much D&D makes it not history anymore, so there is no point in setting it in real world Europe, but if you change it to fit real world Europe, it isn't D&D enough. If it is that much of an issue, you can use another system to do it (though I really don't see anything out of the ordinary using d20 if one likes that system, since it has been used for just about every genre at this point). Or if the issue is the person just doesn't want to play in a historical setting, then they can forgo doing a historical one for that reason and just play in a fantasy setting. But then if that's the case, the person never really had any interest in a historical setting anyways and the whole OGL/OSR/D&D argument is besides the point.

Keep in mind, early in this discussion I was pointing out some of the advantages of using a fantasy analog. I don't think it is a bad choice. I do it myself most of the time. I understand there are reasons why a GM would go that direction. But I also think using history is perfectly workable and has its own advantages.  

I get that some people might consider those changes not D&D anymore. That is fine if you feel that way, but the OGL (which is part of the title) is pretty broad and encompasses things like D20 Cthulu and d20 Modern (which is pretty far from standard D&D). And even OSR stuff has games that make plenty of changes to the spell system (how far you can go is up for debate but I don't think everyone agrees it has to be a copy of D&D in order to be OSR). Some people might take that to mean something that is basically D&D with few changes. Others might be more open to customization. I think one of the strengths (not the only strength but one of them) of the OSR its being able to take that familiar and workable D&D structure and build it into whatever kind of campaign you want to run. Part of the point OSR people are making is the system is flexible enough if you want to be, to accommodate lots of different options.

That said, I've said already, the more ideal approach is probably to build a system from the ground up around the concept because then you don't have to make any compromises. But that has down sides too (like you actually have to build the system, and it may be harder to recruit players). You could use another system that feels more built for medieval supernatural, and I think there are a lot of good options there, but again you may run into the issue of recruitment (which isn't a small problem for a lot of people). Plus you may have to teach players a new system (which for some is no big deal, but it is a sticking point for others). So the big advantage of going with an OGL/OSR/D&D version is the familiarity the players will have with it, and the ease of recruitment.

Quote from: Bren;876449Your language does the opposite. Well we've had that discussion and you made it clear you seem unwilling to use precise language that would actually support this point instead of treating paradigms as reality.

Paradigms are a reality, inasmuch as they're a way of expressing the set of cultural beliefs that define how an entire society understands reality.   If you think that idea is invalid, then you're operating completely contrary to historical sense.

Quote from: RPGPundit;877143Paradigms are a reality, inasmuch as they're a way of expressing the set of cultural beliefs that define how an entire society understands reality.   If you think that idea is invalid, then you're operating completely contrary to historical sense.

I misspoke.

The problem isn't that you use language that treats the idea of a paradigm as real - a paradigm is an intellectual construct. It is no more nor less real than any other intellectual construct e.g. Plato's forms or his "Allegory of the Cave". The problem is that your language treats the belief that is part of the paradigm as real. In direct contrast to your claim that you are saying is that all paradigms (presumably including your own paradigm) are equally invalid your language supports those beliefs by leaving the reports of them unquestioned and unqualified.

Elsewhere you said:

QuoteBut in 15th century Europe, people mostly didn't pay lip-service or pretend or struggle to be convinced of these things, they were assumptions as entirely and definitely real to them as the laws of gravity are to us.

But 15th century assumptions about witchcraft, magic, astrology, and magic, are different than Newton's law of universal gravitation. Gravity affects all of us (scientists and Luddites alike) regardless of what paradigm we hold or what we believe about how the world actually works. If you disagree that is the case, by all means stand on the nearest chair and jump off. If you are anywhere on earth when you perform this little experiment your resulting motion will demonstrate the utility of Newton's Law.

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0e/NewtonsLawOfUniversalGravitation.svg/200px-NewtonsLawOfUniversalGravitation.svg.png)

The problem is that you use language that treats the beliefs that are part of and shaped by the paradigm as real in contrast to language that does not make that assumption.

Compare the following:

• "Martin Luther fought with demons sent to assail him" vs. Martin Luther reported that he fought with demons sent to assail him.
  
• "John Dee spoke with angels" vs. John Dee said that he spoke with angels.
  
• People saw witches fornicating with the devil vs. People sometimes reported seeing witches fornicating with the devil.
  
• "magic was already absolutely real" vs. People believed in magic and that it was absolutely real.
  

Quote from: Bren;877150I misspoke.

The problem isn't that you use language that treats the idea of a paradigm as real - a paradigm is an intellectual construct. It is no more nor less real than any other intellectual construct e.g. Plato's forms or his "Allegory of the Cave". The problem is that your language treats the belief that is part of the paradigm as real. In direct contrast to your claim that you are saying is that all paradigms (presumably including your own paradigm) are equally invalid your language supports those beliefs by leaving the reports of them unquestioned and unqualified.

Elsewhere you said:

But 15th century assumptions about witchcraft, magic, astrology, and magic, are different than Newton's law of universal gravitation. Gravity affects all of us (scientists and Luddites alike) regardless of what paradigm we hold or what we believe about how the world actually works. If you disagree that is the case, by all means stand on the nearest chair and jump off. If you are anywhere on earth when you perform this little experiment your resulting motion will demonstrate the utility of Newton's Law.

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0e/NewtonsLawOfUniversalGravitation.svg/200px-NewtonsLawOfUniversalGravitation.svg.png)

The problem is that you use language that treats the beliefs that are part of and shaped by the paradigm as real in contrast to language that does not make that assumption.

Compare the following:

• "Martin Luther fought with demons sent to assail him" vs. Martin Luther reported that he fought with demons sent to assail him.
  
• "John Dee spoke with angels" vs. John Dee said that he spoke with angels.
  
• People saw witches fornicating with the devil vs. People sometimes reported seeing witches fornicating with the devil.
  
• "magic was already absolutely real" vs. People believed in magic and that it was absolutely real.
  

We've understood gravity in a number of different ways over the centuries. For a long time, it was just "stuff falls down".  Newton did a lot to explain more of that; but Quantum Physics changed that understanding (added to, you could say, since it didn't exactly over-rule Newtonian Physics, only revealed that the rules as we understood it breaks down at a certain point).

When I said that the belief of medieval people in magic was like our belief in gravity, that's just what I meant.  I wasn't really commenting on gravity itself, but on just how much of a certainty it is in our understanding of the world today.  In the medieval period, magic and monsters were just as much of a certainty.

I'm not saying 'everything we know about gravity is wrong'; but if as an intellectual exercise we imagined it was. Conceive of a theoretical scenario where in fact because of some kind of fundamentally wrong assumption, we've created a set of mechanics that explain gravity that appear to be correct but are in fact fundamentally wrong in some sense.
IF that was true, it wouldn't actually change anything about our culture or how we live or what we do, until such time as someone both found out that this was the case and managed to conclusively convince enough important people that this was in fact the case. Until then, NOTHING would change.

As to your final examples; I was using that language very intentionally. Because as soon as we say "John Dee SAID that he spoke with angels" we're approaching history from our own paradigm, and that affects the entire way we examine it.  It alters our perspective and acts as a barrier to our ability to get into the heads of the people and events.

Quote from: RPGPundit;877780I'm not saying 'everything we know about gravity is wrong'; but if as an intellectual exercise we imagined it was. Conceive of a theoretical scenario where in fact because of some kind of fundamentally wrong assumption, we've created a set of mechanics that explain gravity that appear to be correct but are in fact fundamentally wrong in some sense.
IF that was true, it wouldn't actually change anything about our culture or how we live or what we do, until such time as someone both found out that this was the case and managed to conclusively convince enough important people that this was in fact the case. Until then, NOTHING would change.

Gravity is part of the structure of scientific theory that is used to effectively explain and predict. If our theory of gravity was significantly incorrect in a way that would effect our lives our predictions based on it would be wrong. And we wouldn't be able to send men to the moon, among other things. Magic, on the other hand, has demonstrated no effective ability to predict and explain. Witness the ineffectiveness in killing witches or using magic to end plagues.

QuoteAs to your final examples; I was using that language very intentionally. Because as soon as we say "John Dee SAID that he spoke with angels" we're approaching history from our own paradigm, and that affects the entire way we examine it.  It alters our perspective and acts as a barrier to our ability to get into the heads of the people and events.

Surely you aren't claiming that "John Dee said that he spoke with angels" is not a true statement?

Dee did say that, did he not? (Or if he didn't say it he wrote it.) So what is the problem with language that describes what is (to the best of our knowledge) actually known?

It doesn't presume one way or another what it was that John Dee saw. Which to me is reasonable since we don't know what John Dee saw. We only know what he said he saw...or wrote about what he saw...or what someone else wrote about what they said, John Dee said, about what John Dee saw.

It's true that historians often are imprecise in their language and draw conclusions about the likelihood of what someone said they witnessed and allow that to influence their grammar. If those reports accord with what else is known from other, independent sources, historians will often use the simpler grammar of saying "Sir Francis Drake saw the Queen of England" rather than saying that Sir so-and-so wrote in his journal on page 12 "that Sir Francis Drake saw the Queen of England." In part they do this because using more precise grammar is cumbersome. And in part, perhaps because they are lazy.

Your insistence on using less precise language when more precise language is available because "paradigm" is like the insistence of social justice warriors that we must accept without question reports of discrimination, misogyny, racism, etc. at face value and as facts. That we may not question the accuser because that somehow invalidates their truth, their being, or, yes, their paradigm. Which is exactly where we end up when beliefs based solely on paradigms are treated, without question, as the truth.

And of course...
What if John Dee did actually communicate with angels, or some nonhuman intelligence he described and interpreted as angels?

Why is it that you (seem to) think he even could not have communicated with angels?


The sources in this particular case seem unreliable to you? Dee seems not to be credible?

Quote from: Gormenghast;877815And of course...
What if John Dee did actually communicate with angels, or some nonhuman intelligence he described and interpreted as angels?

What if he did? It would still be correct to say "John Dee said he communicated with angels." Because he did say (or write) exactly that.

QuoteWhy is it that you (seem to) think he even could not have communicated with angels?

What I am saying is that reporting he communicated with angels presumes angels exist. Just like reporting that someone is a murderer instead of a suspect in a murder presumes they are guilty.

QuoteThe sources in this particular case seem unreliable to you? Dee seems not to be credible?

See previous answer.

Quote from: Bren;877820What if he did? It would still be correct to say "John Dee said he communicated with angels." Because he did say (or write) exactly that.

What I am saying is that reporting he communicated with angels presumes angels exist. Just like reporting that someone is a murderer instead of a suspect in a murder presumes they are guilty.


See previous answer.

Do you apply this to all historical sources?
All sources beyond your personal experience?

I mean, do you actually write " reading or listening to the source offers this information" or something like that every single time you refer to anything whatever you did not personally witness?
I confess I had not noticed that you habitually write in that style. As you note, it would be very cumbersome, if technically correct.



And if you single out angelic visitations for a qualifier like this, does that not suggest that you are assuming angels do not exist?

Quote from: Gormenghast;877825Do you apply this to all historical sources?

Yeah. Pretty much. I wouldn't have any problem at all with saying "Sir so-and-so in his diary said, "I saw Sir Francis Drake visiting with the Queen." Instead of saying "Francis Drake visited the Queen." If that's what Sir so-and-so said in his diary, why not say what he said instead of drawing a conclusion about what occurred based solely on what he said?

QuoteAll sources beyond your personal experience?

Personal experience isn't sacrosanct either.

QuoteI confess I had not noticed that you habitually write in that style. As you note, it would be very cumbersome, if technically correct.

I don't always write in that style. But I have no problem with using a more precise grammatical form. Nor would I have a problem with correcting language to be more precise.

Why do you have a concern with precise language?

QuoteAnd if you single out angelic visitations for a qualifier like this, does that not suggest that you are assuming angels do not exist?

But I don't single out angels. For example, I already noted the difference between saying someone is a murder suspect and saying they are a murderer as well as Sir so-and-so and his hypothetical diary entry about Sir Francis Drake's visit with the Queen.

You ask a lot of questions. But you don't provide any answers. Why is that?

Answers?

Did I miss questions?

I will scroll back.

I think maybe what you are asking is how I would write about historical events.

That would depend on the event in question, the sources, other evidence, the whole context.

It is not a simple question.

It would also depend on what sort of writing I was doing.

As for John Dee, I would probably write " Dee claimed he spoke with angels" rather than "Dee spoke with angels."

But there are other instances of an angel communicating with a person that I would simply describe as " the angel said...".

Sources matter, as you note.

So does our worldview, especially at the level Pundit calls paradigm.

My position seems to lie in the middle. I think Oundit is making a good point about avoiding presentism and cultural bias. Judge the past, and other cultures, by the internal standard as best we can puzzle these out. Recognize that other people who may share much of our cultural background may still be operating under different sets of beliefs about what is real and what is possible or probable (as this tangent seems to show)

But I think you are making a good point about the importance of avoiding an extreme relativism. I agree with you that all human ways of understanding reality cannot be equally invalid. Pundit lost me on that point. I may have misunderstood him.


What I am not sure about is what this tangent (to which I have contributed) really has to do with the main topic. It seems like drift. But, hey, I have helped things drift with all those questions you remarked on.

Quote from: Gormenghast;877835Answers?

Did I miss questions?

Not really. My mistake.

Quote from: Gormenghast;877837I think maybe what you are asking is how I would write about historical events.

Your position sounds closer to my view than to what Pundit seems to be saying.

QuoteBut there are other instances of an angel communicating with a person that I would simply describe as " the angel said...".

What would such an instance look like and why would you describe it that way?

QuoteMy position seems to lie in the middle. I think Oundit is making a good point about avoiding presentism and cultural bias.

As I said originally, Pundit took a good point too far.

QuoteWhat I am not sure about is what this tangent (to which I have contributed) really has to do with the main topic.

Maybe not drift so much as drilling down to the level of pedantic minutia.

Quote from: Bren;878023Not really. My mistake.

Your position sounds closer to my view than to what Pundit seems to be saying.

What would such an instance look like and why would you describe it that way?

As I said originally, Pundit took a good point too far.

Maybe not drift so much as drilling down to the level of pedantic minutia.

If the source were Holy Scripture, then naturally enough I credit it.
But the books of the Bible are not all the same genre. Literalism across the board is, I believe, a bad idea. Some books are  history, mythology, poetry, law, some allegorical visions, etc.
A couple of thousand years of scholarship have provided not only the tools but also given satisfying answers to many, many questions.

The Annunciation is a historical event, the objective reality of which I. Do not doubt.

It gets a bit murkier with some areas of Tradition, but signs and miracles may confirm or make credible other stories about a saint.

We are talking about areas of overlap in inquiry and study. Historians' tool are definitely part and parcel of this (indeed, this is the origin for some of those tools) but it isn't possible to seal history off in its own little bubble.

A historian working in other areas may need help from social or natural scientists. Archaeology can help inform the context of sources.
Etc, etc. The other humanities figure in, obviously so.
A historian working with religious matters should know some theology.

Now, you may have a different worldview that gives less (or no) credit to certain beliefs. This would be just as true in many other areas, though. A Marxian historian may see things radically different than you or I. His understanding of the world is very different.

-------

Short answer: In informal discourse, as on this gaming forum, I would definitely add ''reported'' if I thought the whole thing looked foggy or I just didn't buy it.

I think maybe all three of us (Pundit, you, and I) have been doing some sliding back and forth between a very precise and formal approach, and a looser and more personal style.
That seems quite normal for online discussion, IME.

I'm open to any questions or comments.
But let me just say I have enjoyed the tangent, I thought you both made some sound points about how to imagine the past.

Rock on.

Quote from: Bren;877809[quote[As to your final examples; I was using that language very intentionally. Because as soon as we say "John Dee SAID that he spoke with angels" we're approaching history from our own paradigm, and that affects the entire way we examine it.  It alters our perspective and acts as a barrier to our ability to get into the heads of the people and events.Surely you aren't claiming that "John Dee said that he spoke with angels" is not a true statement?

Dee did say that, did he not? (Or if he didn't say it he wrote it.) So what is the problem with language that describes what is (to the best of our knowledge) actually known?

It doesn't presume one way or another what it was that John Dee saw. Which to me is reasonable since we don't know what John Dee saw. We only know what he said he saw...or wrote about what he saw...or what someone else wrote about what they said, John Dee said, about what John Dee saw.

Your insistence on using less precise language when more precise language is available because "paradigm" is like the insistence of social justice warriors that we must accept without question reports of discrimination, misogyny, racism, etc. at face value and as facts. That we may not question the accuser because that somehow invalidates their truth, their being, or, yes, their paradigm. Which is exactly where we end up when beliefs based solely on paradigms are treated, without question, as the truth.

The thing that makes John Dee fairly unique in Renaissance history is that we don't have secondhand accounts, or even published first-hand accounts that were made for an audience. We have YEARS AND YEARS of his actual diaries, written only for his own record-keeping purposes and not meant to ever see the light of day. These record literally years of sessions that he and Edward Kelley had where they conjured up and had very lengthy conversations with a variety of angels, received all kinds of prophecies and magical instructions, including an entire system of magical operation and an entire magical language.  These are mostly written in script format, and were written while the operations were taking place.

So we don't just have heresay that John Dee talked with angels, or a book where he claimed to talk to angels for the sake of some audience, we have huge transcripts of his conversations precisely as they took place.

Quote from: RPGPundit;879013Surely you aren't claiming that "John Dee said that he spoke with angels" is not a true statement?

You are actually quoting me here at some length.

I noticed there was a typo in my quote that made it unclear where I quoted you. I've since edited my original quote to more clearly identify where I quoted you. You might want to edit what you wrote here to make clear which words are yours and which are mine.

QuoteSo we don't just have heresay that John Dee talked with angels, or a book where he claimed to talk to angels for the sake of some audience, we have huge transcripts of his conversations precisely as they took place.

I never said Dee's half of the conversation was hearsay. Though the angel half of the conversation obviously is hearsay. And for either half of the conversation we do not have independent corroboration. I discount his partner Kelly as truly independent corroboration since the two were working together.

A diary entry is still the words of the author. And the words of the author are accurately represented by saying "Dee said he spoke with angels" or by saying something like on page 497 of the seventh diary book John Dee wrote, "The angel Nalvage spoke to me and said, 'I am therefore to instruct and inform you, according to your Doctrine delivered, which is contained in 49 Tables.' "

Quote from: Gormenghast;877837But I think you are making a good point about the importance of avoiding an extreme relativism. I agree with you that all human ways of understanding reality cannot be equally invalid. Pundit lost me on that point. I may have misunderstood him.

I didn't say that. I said that all Paradigms are equally invalid.  Certainly, some paradigms allow closer ideas about certain subjects than the paradigms of other cultures or times do.  For example, our current paradigm, I'm fairly sure, allows for closer approaches to scientific truth about physical reality than the paradigms of other cultures. Not perfect, mind you, because there are of course certain 'paradigm truths' that touch on some sciences that we are all not supposed to question. And quite a lot more where there is a paradigm shift going on and thus conflict around just what is truth.

Other cultures and times' paradigms are probably a lot better than us at approaching other parts of reality: philosophical reality, for example, or moral reality, or esoteric reality. But of course, to someone who is completely brainwashed into the material-positivist meme their idea is that none of those things exist at all.  Which to me sounds as completely moronic as if someone were to say 'there's no such thing as cats'.

The point is there is NO paradigm which is an accurate presentation of Reality, unfiltered, as it actually is. Any paradigm that did that would just not be; because all a pardigm is are the cultural rules we heap onto reality that distort it in a culture-specific way.   Like pretending there is something called heterosexuality, or imagining that 'all lives matter', or 'all religions are the same', or "Romantic love is not just real it should be the only good reason for anyone to ever get married", or 'there isn't really any god, though some of us will still pretend to be religious' or 'dying is something weird and unnatural that we should all try our best to avoid for as long as possible'.

Quote from: Gormenghast;878150The Annunciation is a historical event, the objective reality of which I. Do not doubt.

You almost certainly do. You can't help it, it's not your fault, but unless you were raised in the countryside of the Philipines, the most rustic parts of Latin America, or any of a half-dozen backward African shitholes, you were brought up in a paradigm that doesn't allow you to "not doubt" an angel appearing to a girl to tell her that she's going to have a virgin birth of a half-man half-god.

And this goes to my point: the medieval person? Be it the lowliest peasant to the highest monarch?  THEY actually really truly DID NOT DOUBT it. It was as real to them as the idea of stars being other suns and having their own planets is to us.  There was no doubt because there would be no question whatsoever of doubting. It was a known default assumption of their entire culture.

THAT is the difference of paradigm between them and us. An event that to us would come out of mythology or D&D magic was absolutely real to them, and the foundation-stone of their whole culture.

Which is why only a COMPLETE MOTHERFUCKING MORON would say 'adding magic or miracles to the middle-ages would have changed their entire culture'.  Their society was ALREADY a magic & miracle based culture.


RPGPundit

Quote from: Bren;879068You are actually quoting me here at some length.

I noticed there was a typo in my quote that made it unclear where I quoted you. I've since edited my original quote to more clearly identify where I quoted you. You might want to edit what you wrote here to make clear which words are yours and which are mine.

Done.

QuoteI never said Dee's half of the conversation was hearsay. Though the angel half of the conversation obviously is hearsay. And for either half of the conversation we do not have independent corroboration. I discount his partner Kelly as truly independent corroboration since the two were working together.

A diary entry is still the words of the author. And the words of the author are accurately represented by saying "Dee said he spoke with angels" or by saying something like on page 497 of the seventh diary book John Dee wrote, "The angel Nalvage spoke to me and said, 'I am therefore to instruct and inform you, according to your Doctrine delivered, which is contained in 49 Tables.' "

Well, if nothing else I've got you actually learning about John Dee, at least.

In any case, since Dee's diaries were not for anyone else, we can scratch out Fraud. That leaves two possibilities: looking at Dee's diaries, you can only conclude that the man was just making up all those records (with Kelly assisting him in that lie), which would be a bit like if you were to write personal diaries of having had a huge argument with me online when it never actually happened, or this was an event that ACTUALLY FUCKING HAPPENED.

So if it did, that means Dee had a conversation (a bunch of conversations, for years and years, actually). His conversation was with something self-identifying as an angel (a bunch of angels, each with different appearance and personalities). This is only in question if you think that Dee was insane to the point of trying to defraud himself, writing in his diary about things that never took place.

So we have to otherwise accept that Dee DID in fact have the angelic conversations, and that who communicated to him were identified to him as angels. The only question left is what these angels might actually have been, not whether the event took place.

Dee did magick, and SHIT HAPPENED AS A RESULT.  

I know it doesn't fit your paradigm and that's really hard for you, but that pretty well proves my point. You're a walking talking example of how paradigms trap people who lack the personal consciousness to transcend them.

Regarding Dee and Kelley (scroll down):

http://www.academia.edu/441236/A_Problem_of_Authorship_John_Dee_Edward_Kelley_and_the_Angelic_Conversations_

Quote from: RPGPundit;879129Well, if nothing else I've got you actually learning about John Dee, at least.

This conversation resembles conversing with a Christian evangelist. Or Mormon.

QuoteIn any case, since Dee's diaries were not for anyone else, we can scratch out Fraud. That leaves two possibilities: looking at Dee's diaries, you can only conclude that the man was just making up all those records (with Kelly assisting him in that lie), which would be a bit like if you were to write personal diaries of having had a huge argument with me online when it never actually happened, or this was an event that ACTUALLY FUCKING HAPPENED.

And now it resembles a conversation with a Biblical literalist, Christian, evangelist. Or Mormon.

   What else could it be?

The perennial question of the true believer who can't or won't consider other explanations.Well as is always the case with these sorts of things, fraud and self-deception is one explanation that should always be considered.

QuoteThis is only in question if you think that Dee was insane to the point of trying to defraud himself, writing in his diary about things that never took place.

Self-deceit combined with fraud is common in the annals of the spiritualists. Doyle and the fairy photos being just one example.

QuoteSo we have to otherwise accept that Dee DID in fact have the angelic conversations, and that who communicated to him were identified to him as angels. The only question left is what these angels might actually have been, not whether the event took place.

We only have to accept it if we are unwilling to consider explanations or if, for other reasons, we are already predisposed, like Dee, to believe in angels and such.

QuoteDee did magick, and SHIT HAPPENED AS A RESULT.  

Because Dee said so. We must obviously believe him. Joseph Smith too, I guess.

QuoteI know it doesn't fit your paradigm and that's really hard for you, but that pretty well proves my point. You're a walking talking example of how paradigms trap people who lack the personal consciousness to transcend them.

At best, this is the self-deluded pot calling the kettle black.

Obviously a magical genius like Dee being defrauded and deluding himself doesn't fit your paradigm of how you fit into the world. Which is the reason why, according to you, you must believe it to be true. Which is why you say "Dee talked with angels." Rather than "Dee said he talked with angels" or "Dee claimed to have talked with angels." Which is what I said in the first place.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;879143Regarding Dee and Kelley (scroll down):

http://www.academia.edu/441236/A_Problem_of_Authorship_John_Dee_Edward_Kelley_and_the_Angelic_Conversations_

Oh look, somebody else has considered fraud mixed with self-deception as a possible cause that fits the available facts, quelle surprise.

Quote from: RPGPundit;879013The thing that makes John Dee fairly unique in Renaissance history is that we don't have secondhand accounts, or even published first-hand accounts that were made for an audience. We have YEARS AND YEARS of his actual diaries, written only for his own record-keeping purposes and not meant to ever see the light of day. These record literally years of sessions that he and Edward Kelley had where they conjured up and had very lengthy conversations with a variety of angels, received all kinds of prophecies and magical instructions, including an entire system of magical operation and an entire magical language.  These are mostly written in script format, and were written while the operations were taking place.

So we don't just have heresay that John Dee talked with angels, or a book where he claimed to talk to angels for the sake of some audience, we have huge transcripts of his conversations precisely as they took place.

Are you really this credulous or is it just another part of your wannabe-Hunter Thompson of the  RPG world act?

Gotta love the Pundit. He scrolls through a few Wiki articles and deems himself an authority not to be questioned.

Quote from: Matt;879155Are you really this credulous or is it just another part of your wannabe-Hunter Thompson of the  RPG world act?

Shouldn't this be in Tangency? :rolleyes:

Quote from: Matt;879156Gotta love the Pundit. He scrolls through a few Wiki articles and deems himself an authority not to be questioned.

I think this is unjust. He sounds well-read and I'm reasonably certain he's read more than just Wiki articles about Dee.

But the deep-thinking, genius who understands the world in a way that the we poor mundane masses, trapped in our mundane reality, and brainwashed and blinded by our materialist view to the true nature of reality do not and probably cannot understand fits Pundits self-image and shtick to a T.

Skeptical inquiry tip: Whenever anyone, but most especially a self-described RPG designing genius claims that other people disagree with him because they are brainwashed, watch out.

Quote from: Omega;879158Shouldn't this be in Tangency? :rolleyes:

I knew I took a wrong turn somewhere.

Quote from: Omega;879158Shouldn't this be in Tangency? :rolleyes:

In fairness, I'm pretty sure I now know one reason why playing OSR/OGL/D&D in literal fantasy Europe would be a bad idea, and especially if RPGPundit and Bren were both at the table. :p

Quote from: RPGPundit;879129So if it did, that means Dee had a conversation (a bunch of conversations, for years and years, actually). His conversation was with something self-identifying as an angel (a bunch of angels, each with different appearance and personalities).

Hrrrm? I had a conversation with an Angel once. It was at an interesting point in my life where I had two very divergent paths to follow, and I was in the process of making a choice as to which path to take.

The angel had stopped right in front of me on the street, right at a busy intersection and abruptly started a conversation with me, even though I had never met her before. She was remarkably beautiful, slim with fair skin, and long platinum blonde hair. No visible feathered wings. Just sayin'

This choice was not a clear-cut case of a path of good versus evil, more like two paths that would take me in two radically different directions, one towards more familiar people and places. With the other choice, I would remain in place, and get to meet a host of new people. In the long run, I couldn't even guess which choice would be the beneficial choice for me, and so asked the Angel to choose for me. This was of course after the angel had identified herself as an Angel, and let me know she was there to help me at that moment in time, but before I had informed her I was in the process of making a decision right there and then.

This had the added benefit of removing any self-doubt or regret regarding the choice, and I moved confidently to meet my future after that, the future of more familiar people and places. Later, I moved on from that of course, and went off to meet a whole new group of people, however it was a very good choice at the time, and allowed me to learn much more about the people whom I was already familiar with.

In return for choosing, I asked the Angel if she wanted anything in return. She wanted to be taken to her next meeting, so I arranged that without delay, escorted her to her next meeting, and that was the end of it.

No high magic was involved, nor were any miracles displayed, for none were needed, just a bit of wisdom, and some good counsel.

If John Dee says he met an Angel, and had many conversations with it, and wrote that all down in a book, who am I to doubt that, since I actually met an Angel myself, and held an extended conversation with one. I could have written a book about it. Didn't seem like a big deal though.

Also, we are kind of getting off subject here, though aren't we? We should be talking about RPG gaming in Fantasy Europe, which would be like Historical Europe but with D&D magic instead of real magic, right?

Quote from: Matt;879155Are you really this credulous or is it just another part of your wannabe-Hunter Thompson of the  RPG world act?

"We were riding on the banks of the Thames, somewhere near the City, when the powders began to take hold."

All this talk about paradigms and belief and mystical stuff that's simply over my head still doesn't refute my belief that D&D magic, as presented and expected to be used would utterly destroy everything that a pseudo-historical game would want to achieve simply because D&D magic works in a certain manner that simply changes everything.

0eD&D, AD&D, 3e and it's wannabe fantasy heartbreakers (like OSRIC, Labyrinth Lords, Swords and Wizardry, Castles and Crusades and all the rest) have some basic gameplay assumptions that simply won't work with anything resembling the real world.

Quote from: RPGPundit;879013So we don't just have heresay that John Dee talked with angels, or a book where he claimed to talk to angels for the sake of some audience, we have huge transcripts of his conversations precisely as they took place.

of his conversations with Edward Kelley who was a con man.

I see Pundit is now actively overlooking this thread. I don't blame him, the multi-front scrutiny was getting a little intense. I was curious to see what his response would have been.

Quote from: rawma;879208In fairness, I'm pretty sure I now know one reason why playing OSR/OGL/D&D in literal fantasy Europe would be a bad idea, and especially if RPGPundit and Bren were both at the table. :p

Actually Pundit and I agree that it is possible to include magic in a literal fantasy Europe. It's the real world that we disagree about.

Quote from: Bren;879580Actually Pundit and I agree that it is possible to include magic in a literal fantasy Europe.

I don't disagree there either actually, I disagree that D&D magic as written in the various D&D editions and their various heartbreakers would work.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;879281All this talk about paradigms and belief and mystical stuff that's simply over my head still doesn't refute my belief that D&D magic, as presented and expected to be used would utterly destroy everything that a pseudo-historical game would want to achieve simply because D&D magic works in a certain manner that simply changes everything.

0eD&D, AD&D, 3e and it's wannabe fantasy heartbreakers (like OSRIC, Labyrinth Lords, Swords and Wizardry, Castles and Crusades and all the rest) have some basic gameplay assumptions that simply won't work with anything resembling the real world.

Wouldn't this depend on the frequency of magic? For example, if only Merlin and a handful of others could use magic in all of Britain, and "clerics" wasn't all clergymen - but instead only potential saints.

This does have the potential problem that cleric and wizard PCs are potentially of enormous power and interest within the social world - but situations can be set up to counter that, like other powerful people opposed to them.

Quote from: jhkim;879625Wouldn't this depend on the frequency of magic? For example, if only Merlin and a handful of others could use magic in all of Britain, and "clerics" wasn't all clergymen - but instead only potential saints.

And that ends the moment you give Magic to PC's.  Cuz you'll need villains and other foes to counter them, and that requires MORE magic.

Quote from: jhkim;879625This does have the potential problem that cleric and wizard PCs are potentially of enormous power and interest within the social world - but situations can be set up to counter that, like other powerful people opposed to them.

Do you know how many magical spells makes temporal power meaningless?  All of them.  D&D breaks any analog to the 'real' world.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;879634Do you know how many magical spells makes temporal power meaningless?  All of them.  D&D breaks any analog to the 'real' world.

All of them? That's just crazy talk.

Sure one might want to reskin something like magic missile to make it look and act more of a curse or require an actual bow or something, but even left as is, it hardly makes temporal power meaningless. One guy in robes with a magic missile or two or even a dozen is hardly a replacement for a company of longbowmen or even half a dozen archers. Similarly Hold Portal doesn't make mundane locks meaningless. The number of doors that can be held or even Wizard Locked is, after all, finite. Continual Light widely used would make the world a different looking place so you couldn't have that. A temporary Light spell could be worked in though.

I think that everyone here has agreed that if you have widely available, commonly used, visually observable magic that doesn't accord with Medieval myth and legend e.g. Fireballs being cast in public at a moment's notice, Lightning Bolts used on a clear day in full view of the army like Napoleonic artillery, Magic Shops in every town and village, and Continual Light streetlights glowing on every corner those sorts of spells used in those sorts of ways wouldn't fit a fantasy Europe.

And by the way, if you make fantasy Europe's population look like some fantasy D&D towns where every block has at least a handful of Elf gardeners, dwarf smiths, hobbit inn keepers, ogre bouncers, and the occasional Dark Elf fantasy Nirvana musicians touring band that won't look like fantasy Europe even without over the top magic everywhere.

But neither of those things is what we are talking about doing. Yet you keep coming back to the idea of exactly like everything in vanilla D&D. I agree with you that uncontrolled access to all the spells in D&D won't work. So either don't do that. Or don't do a literal fantasy Europe with a kitchen sink of magic and monsters.

Personally I wouldn't allow Magic Shops in every town and village, Continual Light streetlights glowing on every corner, mixed population towns and villages everywhere, or a lot of the other tropes of an Order of the Stick style fantasy world. Not because it doesn't fit literal fantasy Europe, but just because it doesn't appeal to me. It seems like a parody of a fantasy world and I just don't find parody an entertaining setting for gaming. YMMV and all that shit.

Quote from: rawma;879208In fairness, I'm pretty sure I now know one reason why playing OSR/OGL/D&D in literal fantasy Europe would be a bad idea, and especially if RPGPundit and Bren were both at the table. :p

Quote from: Bren;879580Actually Pundit and I agree that it is possible to include magic in a literal fantasy Europe. It's the real world that we disagree about.

Oh, sure, the game starts out alright with everyone promising it'll be OK, and not like last time! and so on. But then somebody says "paradigm" or "reality" or "I wonder if this ring of many wishes would actually have far-reaching socio-economic ramifications" or uses a crossbow from the wrong century, and the whole thing falls apart. Better just to start off in the Forgotten Realms in the first place, I tell you. :)

Quote from: rawma;879743Oh, sure, the game starts out alright with everyone promising it'll be OK, and not like last time! and so on. But then somebody says "paradigm" or "reality" or "I wonder if this ring of many wishes would actually have far-reaching socio-economic ramifications" or uses a crossbow from the wrong century, and the whole thing falls apart. Better just to start off in the Forgotten Realms in the first place, I tell you. :)

That would never work. Forgotten Realms came out in 1987. That was years after any edition of D&D I've enjoyed playing. So we'd just end up arguing about whether or not hit points in the Forgotten Realms are sufficiently associative. Then Justin Alexander would pop in to direct us to his blog posts that explain what associative means and why hit points really and truly are associative. Then the thread would explode into cluster bomb and napalm posts. Better not to risk it.

Besides Uruguay is pretty low on my vacation destination list and unlikely to be a work stop. And Pundit has a waiting list. With auditions. I'd probably end up walking out of that audition too.

Put some limiters in and even 5e could work.

Personally I think B with a little of X D&D would work best as you dont have quite the power access you do in AD&D or OD&D.

Either limit it to just B and accept that level 3 for PCs is the max. Or allow X and cut off at level 4 or 5 depending on how much eventual oomph you want PCs to have. Or even regular  BX with a serious curb on access to spells and items and things level out nicely for a fantasy Europe setting.

Quote from: Bren;879745That would never work. Forgotten Realms came out in 1987. That was years after any edition of D&D I've enjoyed playing. So we'd just end up arguing about whether or not hit points in the Forgotten Realms are sufficiently associative. Then Justin Alexander would pop in to direct us to his blog posts that explain what associative means and why hit points really and truly are associative. Then the thread would explode into cluster bomb and napalm posts. Better not to risk it.

Besides Uruguay is pretty low on my vacation destination list and unlikely to be a work stop. And Pundit has a waiting list. With auditions. I'd probably end up walking out of that audition too.

Well, I won't claim there aren't reasons not to play in the Forgotten Realms. I do think the actual arguments over it (and not over hit points) are not nearly as extreme as the arguments we've seen in this thread, and are generally more interesting.

Quote from: Omega;879749Put some limiters in and even 5e could work.

Personally I think B with a little of X D&D would work best as you dont have quite the power access you do in AD&D or OD&D.

Either limit it to just B and accept that level 3 for PCs is the max. Or allow X and cut off at level 4 or 5 depending on how much eventual oomph you want PCs to have. Or even regular  BX with a serious curb on access to spells and items and things level out nicely for a fantasy Europe setting.

Agreed - and I note that it depends a lot on the level of grittiness and realism desired. Setting a game in medieval Europe doesn't mean that a game is focused on gritty realism. For example, a game set in the modern world can vary from CSI to Sherlock to James Bond to superheroes.

For example, I've played a fair bit of Ars Magica - which is set in Europe, and magi there can easily be as powerful as a 10th level spellcaster or higher. The main thing that keeps them under control is the rules to not interfere with mundane politics.

So there's room for more powerful characters. It just means that the historical world is likely to become more of a backdrop for the actual conflicts.

Quote from: Bren;879154Self-deceit combined with fraud is common in the annals of the spiritualists. Doyle and the fairy photos being just one example.

Only if you were claiming the photographs themselves never existed, because that's what you're claiming with Dee.

QuoteWe only have to accept it if we are unwilling to consider explanations or if, for other reasons, we are already predisposed, like Dee, to believe in angels and such.

Because Dee said so. We must obviously believe him. Joseph Smith too, I guess.

Again, what you're doing here is disputing the existence of Mormonism itself.   Joseph Smith may well have been a fraud (there's certainly far more evidence he was than that John Dee was) but mormonism was still a thing that actually happened.

QuoteObviously a magical genius like Dee being defrauded and deluding himself doesn't fit your paradigm of how you fit into the world. Which is the reason why, according to you, you must believe it to be true. Which is why you say "Dee talked with angels." Rather than "Dee said he talked with angels" or "Dee claimed to have talked with angels." Which is what I said in the first place.

No, what I'm saying is that Dee had a real experience, that actually really happened, which he described as a conversation with angels.  You are trying to suggest that Dee never had such a thing happen at all.  
If you aren't doing that, then what are we arguing here except that you are hell-bent on demanding that any conversation about the event be predicated on everyone loudly proclaiming "there's no such thing as angels" which is COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT TO THE SUBJECT AT HAND.

QuoteOh look, somebody else has considered fraud mixed with self-deception as a possible cause that fits the available facts, quelle surprise.

People have considered that for ages now. This paper is nothing new.  You'll note that the author isn't doubting that the people involved actually went through the rituals in question and that the accounts in Dee's diaries are real and not just invented.

As to the actual thing the paper is addressing: this overview really doesn't add much to the academic debate. Everyone agrees Kelly was scoundrel, both his known history before Dee and his ignominious fate after parting ways with Dee makes that abundantly clear..  But there's no way to conclusively be certain that Kelly was engaging in a fraud on Dee.

He might have been; I think it's a lot more improbable, when you pore over the entirety of the diaries (like I have).  It would require Dee to be much more naive than everything about him indicates.  It would also require Kelly to be an not just an astoundingly skilled and manipulative con-man on a level that should put him down as one of the top ten greatest performances of all time, but also to have a level of mental acuity and intelligence that nothing else before or after his time with Dee seems to back up.

If I were to look at this from the view of an academic, I would say by far the more likely theory is that while we can infer from the text that (especially in their early interactions) Kelly was somewhat trying to impress Dee in order to win his favor (not to a level of fraud though), the two of them were shared and convinced participants in the angelic conversations and both engaged in them, neither actually believing them to be false as an event (though, as the paper itself notes, of the two Kelly was the one far more skeptical of the claims these Angels were making, not in the sense of disbelieving what was going on, but in the sense of thinking they might be evil or deceitful spirits rather than the angels they claimed to be).

You know what no academic thinks? That either of them didn't actually believe magic was real. Even the people who think Kelly was engaging in an act of fraudulent magic.

The only person who wants to assume the entire medieval/renaissance world was just fucking with us for posterity is you.

Quote from: Matt;879156Gotta love the Pundit. He scrolls through a few Wiki articles and deems himself an authority not to be questioned.

I've studied this subject academically and personally for about 20 years now. Ironically, I've never been that much into Enochian magick in practice, myself.  It's both too complex and too unpredictable, or predictable, depending on how you're looking at it (it's predictable in terms of something pretty well always happening when you do it, but unpredictable in terms of just what that 'something' will actually turn out to be).

I'm more of an Abra-melin guy myself.

Quote from: yosemitemike;879284of his conversations with Edward Kelley who was a con man.

Kelly was a con man, as his later alchemy scam on the continent proves. But the really interesting question academics have is just how much he was also a sincere occultist. Some people think a great deal, some think very little, I think it was somewhere in between.

The main thing is, for the entire seven year period of work he did with Dee to have been one long totally intentional enormous con, he'd have to have been both simultaneously the most talented and the dumbest con man in history.  The most talented because the enormity of the work put into this con and the level of intellectual acumen it would have required is (to anyone who's actually looked at the enochian material and the details of the process of how it was received) absolutely mindboggling. And the dumbest because for any conman that clever and talented to have wasted his time scamming someone at Dee's level, not just for long enough to make a few quick bucks or get some prestige and then move on but for seven fucking years at a totally meager payoff, it's just a ludicrous waste of time and effort.

And again, if we look at Kelly's 'criminal record' both before and after his time with Dee, we do not see that Genius-level conman.  Instead, we see a guy who was pretty damned incompetent and got caught out very fast.

The more credible theory to me is that Kelly hung around with Dee all that time because, even though he may have initially joined up with him with a plan to get some quick cash or a letter of recommendation or maybe just steal some (very valuable) books from what was then one of the biggest libraries in Europe, he found to his surprise that when the two of them were working together something genuine was happening.  Something that partly seemed to scare the shit out of him too (if you don't assume that was again that super-genius level of con-man mad bluffing skillz that he very suddenly got and very suddenly lost later in life), but that he had probably been looking for and wanted to see through, because, again, he believed like almost everyone else did that magic was real.  And after all, if he could become a REAL magician and not just a fraud, the power and money and prestige that would grant him would be all the more, so that was worth hanging out with Dee for the better part of a decade, in spite of all the insane shit that was going down.

Quote from: rawma;879743Oh, sure, the game starts out alright with everyone promising it'll be OK, and not like last time! and so on. But then somebody says "paradigm" or "reality" or "I wonder if this ring of many wishes would actually have far-reaching socio-economic ramifications" or uses a crossbow from the wrong century, and the whole thing falls apart. Better just to start off in the Forgotten Realms in the first place, I tell you. :)

Bren would just require everyone at the table to publicly declare that there's no such thing as spells before playing. Maybe for Wizard PCs, every time they cast.  Because apparently that's really really important to him, even if it's totally irrelevant to the actual game experience.

Quote from: RPGPundit;880156Only if you were claiming the photographs themselves never existed, because that's what you're claiming with Dee.

No. You are being obtuse. I'm saying that the photographs were fake, and fake photographs are not proof that fairies exist.

QuoteAgain, what you're doing here is disputing the existence of Mormonism itself.   Joseph Smith may well have been a fraud (there's certainly far more evidence he was than that John Dee was) but mormonism was still a thing that actually happened.

You are being willfully obtuse. I am suggesting that the claims that Joseph Smith made about the source and content of the tablets may be false.

QuoteNo, what I'm saying is that Dee had a real experience, that actually really happened, which he described as a conversation with angels.  You are trying to suggest that Dee never had such a thing happen at all.

You are either incredibly stupid or you are intentionally reading what I wrote in bad faith. I am not suggesting that Dee didn't write a diary. I am suggesting that there are other explanations for his claim that he spoke with angels besides the actual existence of supernatural entities of any sort. I'm suggesting that Dee's diary may have no more to do with angels than Doyle's photos have to do with fairies.

QuoteIf you aren't doing that, then what are we arguing here

I can't tell what you think you are arguing for. You ignore what I do write and make up your own strawmen to argue with. Try reading my posts very slowly and carefully. Maybe diagram the sentences or something. Then maybe you will finally understand what I wrote and you can actually craft a reply to the words I wrote instead of the words you pulled out of your ass.

QuoteBut there's no way to conclusively be certain that Kelly was engaging in a fraud on Dee.

Which is why I have not said, "Dee's claim that he spoke to angels was really a fraud."

There is also no way to be certain that it wasn't a fraud perpetrated by one or both men. Or that it wasn't self delusion on the part of one or both men. And yet, you keep insisting that we should take Dee's claim that he spoke to angels at face value by saying, "Dee spoke to angels."

Dee said he spoke to angels. Doyle said the fairy photos were proof of the existence of fairies. Joseph Smith said all sorts of things. The fact that those three men said something does not prove that they were right about what they said they saw or that what they said they saw has any existence outside of their imagination.

QuoteIt would require Dee to be much more naive than everything about him indicates.

Many smart people are incredibly naïve about certain things while being very skeptical of other things. Stage magicians aren't smarter than scientists, but are a lot better at uncovering fake spiritualists than are physicians or scientists.

But Dee being wrong about what he said he saw doesn't require that Dee had to be naïve. He may have really wanted to believe that he was talking to angels. Because he already believed in angels and magic and shit before he talked to the angels. Just like Doyle really wanted to believe in spiritualism and fairies.

QuoteIf I were to look at this from the view of an academic, I would say by far the more likely theory is that while we can infer from the text that (especially in their early interactions) Kelly was somewhat trying to impress Dee in order to win his favor (not to a level of fraud though), the two of them were shared and convinced participants in the angelic conversations and both engaged in them, neither actually believing them to be false as an event (though, as the paper itself notes, of the two Kelly was the one far more skeptical of the claims these Angels were making, not in the sense of disbelieving what was going on, but in the sense of thinking they might be evil or deceitful spirits rather than the angels they claimed to be).

You know what your academic theory does not address? Whether the angels that Dee said he spoke with have any independent existence.

QuoteThe only person who wants to assume the entire medieval/renaissance world was just fucking with us for posterity is you.

Maybe if you repeat this lie often enough you can get someone to believe it.

Please point to even one statement where I have said that no one in the medieval or renaissance world believed in magic. Just one statement. If you can't do that, then please stop lying about what I have said.

"I'm sorry, but when you say I'm being obtuse, exactly what does that mean?"

As long as they admit that UFO abductions and Bigfoot are real Im ok with that. :cool:

Quote from: Bren;877829I don't always write in that style. But I have no problem with using a more precise grammatical form. Nor would I have a problem with correcting language to be more precise.

But it (usually) should be readable.  I'd probably just refer to "Drake's visit to the Queen" and give the details in a footnote.  Unless there were some serious reason to doubt Drake visited the queen.

Now, Schmolo the Peasant Boy's visit to the Queen for tiffin and a game of Hide the Winkle, I'd be more skeptical about.

Quote from: James Gillen;879265"We were riding on the banks of the Thames, somewhere near the City, when the powders began to take hold."

Okay, totally disregarding anything about the conversation itself, this is beautiful.

Quote from: Omega;879749Put some limiters in and even 5e could work.

Personally I think B with a little of X D&D would work best as you dont have quite the power access you do in AD&D or OD&D.

Either limit it to just B and accept that level 3 for PCs is the max. Or allow X and cut off at level 4 or 5 depending on how much eventual oomph you want PCs to have. Or even regular  BX with a serious curb on access to spells and items and things level out nicely for a fantasy Europe setting.

The easy way to limit power in OD&D is limit gold.  Gold = XP, and monster XP is chump change.

I ran OD&D in medieval England for about three years, and used historical prices and currency.  I boosted XP considerably, but if I'd set the rate differently the PCs would have leveled up about every 15 sessions or so.

An unexpected aftereffect was that money was SO scarce that the PCs took to looting dead kobolds and goblins for their crappy knives and spears and occasional scrap of mail to sell to the local smith.  Getting three or four pence for a goblin's knife was a big deal; it meant they could eat that day.

Nowadays I'd make them travel to a big city, York or London or Greenwich, to sell the mail.  Because I'm a bastard.

Also, I don't play in literal fantasy Europe because I use Howard's Hyborian age so that I can have Ancient Egyptians, Minoans, Babylonians, di Medicis, Plantagenets, Capets, plate armor, chariots, Sphinxes, cathedrals, Spanish Main pirates, Moors, Heorot...

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;880485Also, I don't play in literal fantasy Europe because I use Howard's Hyborian age so that I can have Ancient Egyptians, Minoans, Babylonians, di Medicis, Plantagenets, Capets, plate armor, chariots, Sphinxes, cathedrals, Spanish Main pirates, Moors, Heorot...

And Tsathoggua. Cant be Hyborian without those space gods.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;880485Also, I don't play in literal fantasy Europe because I use Howard's Hyborian age so that I can have Ancient Egyptians, Minoans, Babylonians, di Medicis, Plantagenets, Capets, plate armor, chariots, Sphinxes, cathedrals, Spanish Main pirates, Moors, Heorot...

Unfortunately that didn't work so well for Gary Gygax.

JG

Quote from: James Gillen;880707Unfortunately that didn't work so well for Gary Gygax.

JG

I have absolutely no idea what point you're trying to make.  It worked great; we had lots of fun.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;880708I have absolutely no idea what point you're trying to make.  It worked great; we had lots of fun.

Totally agree. Worked perfectly fine for us too.

Quote from: Omega;880432As long as they admit that UFO abductions and Bigfoot are real Im ok with that. :cool:

Sometime in the future, someone will be arguing that our generation lives in a Cryptozoological world because we all believed in bigfoot.

For me it's simple - people like me. History nerds who can't let go. I'd be eaten alive if I tried to run a historical campaign (maybe Napoleonic period, but even that I am unsure of), and that'd be a karmic death.

Also, holy shit, someone was taken for a ride because they didn't know Pundit believes in magic(k).

Quote from: Rincewind1;880803Also, holy shit, someone was taken for a ride because they didn't know Pundit believes in magic(k).

A magic(k) ride. :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4WiyxXpyZc

Quote from: Rincewind1;880803For me it's simple - people like me. History nerds who can't let go. I'd be eaten alive if I tried to run a historical campaign (maybe Napoleonic period, but even that I am unsure of), and that'd be a karmic death.

.

I used to be that guy. It is a choice though. If everyone in the group is like that, then its fine, but if you are ruining the game for four others or ruining a movie fro four others because you can't let go just because you are a history nerd, it starts to annoy people. I learned the hard way that people do not appreciate the unsolicited history lessons or the constant critiques. Not only did my own enjoyment of games, books and media improve when I started to let go, but my understanding of history also improved (because my ego would get in the way any time I encountered things I didn't know fully before....I became more willing to see where I needed to learn more or where I was carrying around outdated/incorrect facts).

One conversation years ago with some designers came down to this conundrum.

You do a historical game. Ok. So now what?

If you allow the PCs to interact with historical figures then very likely something is going to get altered. At which point what was the point of all that historical accuracy you demanded? Just so you can cockwave killing Sun Tsu or banging Joan of Arc? Cherish the players who are totally ok with just meeting in passing or working for such figures in some reasonable manner.

If you dont allow the PCs to interact with historical figures then you have to keep them out in the boonies or otherwise not interacting with history. At which point also what was the point in all that historical accuracy?

One trick suggested was to pick an area where alot was happening. But the details of which are nebulous at best. Drop the PCs onto the coast during the height of Viking raids or somewhere in Russia during the great bogatyr conflicts. Alexander Nevsky was just one of a number of leaders rising and falling.

Or base things in the realm of legend like Ilya Muromets where magical events still occur.

Quote from: Omega;880843If you allow the PCs to interact with historical figures then very likely something is going to get altered. At which point what was the point of all that historical accuracy you demanded?

(1) The point might be to create a detailed starting point and then see where things go from there. Basically similar to the point of all the many alternate history novels ever published.

(2) Changes made by PCs don't necessarily mean changes to known history. Predominantly this is an issue of scale of the campaign and the power level of the PCs. If you don't assume the butterfly theory of events, then unless your PCs start out the game with the resources to make major changes in the setting or the players are the sort of assholes who have their PCs assassinate the President or kill the infant king just to fuck with history because they can, the changes the PCs make aren't necessarily going to cause huge changes in history that will invalidate everything. So many, if not most historical people and events are still usable even after a series of PC driven changes. Or at least they will be usable until well into the campaign when the PCs have gained the power, wealth, and influence to become movers and shakers, kings and kingmakers.

Scale is critical. Are the PCs kings and kingmakers? Is the story of the world and the story of the PCs more or less the same thing? Or is the world a much, much bigger place than the PCs who, like the vast majority of all of us, don't do anything all on our own that significantly changes the entire city, country, continent, or world we live in. Consider any number of fictional movies or TV shows set in historical time periods.* The actions of the protagonists, though presumably exciting and meaningful on the scale of operations of the show are not sufficient to change the entire world as we know it, no matter what the protagonists do or don't do. A historical campaign may be like that.

For that matter, a fictional setting may be like that. Even a character like Conan does not, until he becomes King of Aqualonia, change the entire shape of the Hyborian world with every adventure. Unless we assume a butterfly effect, saving or not saving the scantily clad girl from the sacrificial alter and succeeding or failing at looting the Elephant's Tower is unlikely to have enormous consequences of the sort that would change the fictional recorded history of the Hyborian age. When I run fantasy/fiction, the PCs are just a handful of characters and by no means the most powerful or important characters in the setting. Growth in power is something I like to see occur over time in most campaigns.

Also, when I run an historical campaign, PC success sometimes reinforces the history as we know it, e.g. the PCs were materially responsible for the defeat of the Spanish at the Siege of Bergen op Zoom in my H+I campaign. In a campaign set in the American Revolution, the PCs may ensure that Paul Revere (or other similar folks) made their midnight ride. Maybe the PCs are the other folks making midnight rides. In a WWII espionage setting, the PCs may be the ones who see that the Polish device and information is delivered to the British. So PC actions may reinforce rather than subvert known history.


* Examples off the top of my head include:

• The fairly gritty, squad level five season, 152-episode  TV show COMBAT! and the silly squad level TV show The Rat Patrol
  
• Nearly all episodes of the old TV show the Untouchables, which is set during Prohibition and just after
• The first TV version of La Femme Nikita. (Haven't watched the newer version yet.) and newer series like the British TV shows Ultimate Force and (most of) Spooks/MI-5.
• Any detective show, police procedural, murder mystery, or Western
• Most actions movies, e.g. The Dirty Dozen, The Guns of Navarone, Die Hard, Rocky and its sequels, and the Transporter films
• Some James Bond movies (though it is arguable whether they take place in the real world).

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;880708I have absolutely no idea what point you're trying to make.  It worked great; we had lots of fun.

Wasn't Gary pestered until he allowed Elves and Dwarves and Hobbits into the game, because the crew loved Lord of The Rings and he did not?  I remember you mentioning this back on TBP...

That MAY be what Mr. Gillen is saying?  That his idea got co-opted because he got pushed in a direction he didn't want.

Quote from: Bren;880875(1) The point might be to create a detailed starting point and then see where things go from there. Basically similar to the point of all the many alternate history novels ever published.

(2) Changes made by PCs don't necessarily mean changes to known history.

1: This was my thought too. But I do agree that it seems a little odd to have demanded the history just to throw a wrench into it. Then again some really dig that aspect.

2: This was my argument too. Have the PCs in positions to do big things but not to de-rail history. Rather to support it. Like my Alexander Nevsky example.

Furry Pirates took the middle ground. They laid out the history and personalities of the era and then left the players and DM to sort out which direction to go. The high seas was vast and you could adventure all your life and never meet a personality or impact history. Or you could hob-nob with, or oppose, kings, queens and Blackbeard if you wanted.

Quote from: Omega;8808851: This was my thought too. But I do agree that it seems a little odd to have demanded the history just to throw a wrench into it. Then again some really dig that aspect.

One might argue that the BBC TV show Musketeers does this. They started out with a fairly loose interpretation of history (as do many cape & sword fictions). And they have clearly made a significant change from the historical timeline by

Spoiler

having Richelieu die early and allowing the fictional Rochefort to take the Cardinal's place.

But I don't expect too much historical accuracy in a what is, more or less, a historical romance. History is frequently just the backdrop in that genre.

Why do it in an RPG?

I'd only expect to see it if it interests the GM and one or more of the players. It's way too much work if the GM isn't interested. And if none of the players care, there is probably insufficient payoff or audience to keep the GM motivated.

Quote from: Omega;8808852: This was my argument too. Have the PCs in positions to do big things but not to de-rail history. Rather to support it. Like my Alexander Nevsky example.

Yes. Or just don't play PCs who are movers, shakers, kings, and kingmakers. D'Artagnan in the Three Musketeers doesn't do anything history changing or history making. The same is true of much, if not most, swashbuckling and cape & sword fiction. It's only when you get into world saving fiction like the Lord of the Rings and Star Wars where the action is centered on whether or not the ordinary and not so ordinary folks can save the world, defeat the dark emperor, etc.

This is a thing I find applies not just to historical settings. Some players have a strong expectations that the PCs in any RPG are extremely important and hypercompetent. You see elements of that in the frequent arguments about whether or not any sort of restraint on "adventurers" makes sense in a setting or is even feasible. People who argue no, usually do so with an assumption that there is a status like "adventurer" and that those in that class are much more powerful than ordinary mortals. Others arguing for restraint often assume that PCs are no more powerful than NPCs in the setting - and often less powerful than powerful NPCs. The PCs are special/powerful/savers of worlds expectation isn't accurate for all settings nor all RPGs.

Part of the original appeal of Runequest and Glorantha was that PCs started out as ordinary folks. It was called Runequest because play was, in part, a long term quest to master several runes and become rune-level. But even rune-level characters were small potatoes compared to the movers and shakers of Glorantha - which we had a glimpse of in the board games White Bear/Red Moon (aka Dragonpass) and Nomad Gods as well as in the cult histories. Some people liked that aspect of the setting. It bugged other people.

I find that there is often an unstated assumption or desire by those that find historical settings impossibly implausible. This assumption or desire is that their PCs should be a really big noise in the setting. So an historical setting where the characters are squad level soldiers in WWII is unsatisfying, not so much because there is some problem with contradicting history, but it is a problem because the expectation in a squad level soldiers campaign is that YOUR guy will never end WWII by punching Hitler in the face. Some people want campaigns where the stakes are enormous. Winning WWII. Saving the world. Saving the universe. If those are the stakes then any historical setting is quickly going to end up as a railroad or as significantly altered history.

Quote2: This was my argument too. Have the PCs in positions to do big things but not to de-rail history. Rather to support it. Like my Alexander Nevsky example.

Kudos. You cleverly combined both uncertainty about the details of how history came about (so it is difficult to contradict) with setting the power level and scale where it affects the local area not an entire country or region.

Simmilar to IP RPGs. If you stat out the main characters. Someones going to try and off them. As a designer/writer you just have to accept that this may happen. And it may not.

As a DM. Know your audience. Are they the types to play Time Meddler? Or are they going to set out and make a name for themselves? Or are they out to assist history? Or are they trying to stay out of history? and so on.

Lot s of ways to approach it.

Quote from: Omega;880935Simmilar to IP RPGs. If you stat out the main characters. Someones going to try and off them. As a designer/writer you just have to accept that this may happen. And it may not.

Yes, but IP settings are somewhat easier, because you can have the PCs after the prime of said characters.  Some settings are admittedly easier than others.  Conan for example, a lot easier, because he never defeated the world's greatest 'evil', he was just a dood who was looking to become King by his own hand.  He succeeded, but he didn't seal off any chance of other characters having adventures in Hyboria.

Unlike say, Lord of The Rings, because once Samwise saves his Frodo and let's Gollum fall into the lava, that's the end of the greatest evil.  And once that happens, anything that the players want to do kinda pales in comparison.  Some players are totally OK.  Some are not.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;880819https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4WiyxXpyZc

I usually think of this version, or Aladdin's "A Whole New World," when it comes to magic carpet rides.

Pizzicato Five — Magic Carpet Ride (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MHJ0X3BgGl4)

But that's because I'm not old enough to remember the 60s. :p

Quote from: Christopher Brady;880879Wasn't Gary pestered until he allowed Elves and Dwarves and Hobbits into the game, because the crew loved Lord of The Rings and he did not?  I remember you mentioning this back on TBP...

That MAY be what Mr. Gillen is saying?  That his idea got co-opted because he got pushed in a direction he didn't want.

No, I just thought Dangerous Journeys was a bit too "kitchen sink."

JG

Quote from: Omega;880843One conversation years ago with some designers came down to this conundrum.

You do a historical game. Ok. So now what?

If you allow the PCs to interact with historical figures then very likely something is going to get altered. At which point what was the point of all that historical accuracy you demanded? Just so you can cockwave killing Sun Tsu or banging Joan of Arc? Cherish the players who are totally ok with just meeting in passing or working for such figures in some reasonable manner.

If you dont allow the PCs to interact with historical figures then you have to keep them out in the boonies or otherwise not interacting with history. At which point also what was the point in all that historical accuracy?

One trick suggested was to pick an area where alot was happening. But the details of which are nebulous at best. Drop the PCs onto the coast during the height of Viking raids or somewhere in Russia during the great bogatyr conflicts. Alexander Nevsky was just one of a number of leaders rising and falling.

Or base things in the realm of legend like Ilya Muromets where magical events still occur.

History deviating after the campaign starts is a lot easier to manage than devising an alternate timeline due to changes well before the campaign starts in my view. If the PCs do something that would change history, they might not even notice since to them it is the present (they won't necessarily see the butterfly effect that creates, to them maybe one battle goes differently or someone else ends up in power). That isn't much different from a typical campaign where a major NPC is killed or disaster is averted.

If the players go ahead and kill Sun Tsu, that is a ripple that is going to take time to play out. And in a case like that it is really easy to work around if you don't want history to change to much (it is not certain exactly when the Art of War was written for example, so he might already have penned it, or it might have been written by someone else). With a figure like him, you could easily dismiss his death by revealing he just wasn't as important to history as once believed. Joan of Arc might be harder because her life is more well documented. But even then, your just dealing with the history as the present, so any changes that do arise, are pretty easy to handle as they come.

Also I think a lot of how these things shake out will depend on what approach to history the GM takes. How important is one person to the GM? If you kill Caesar but the GM takes more of a "its about historical forces in play that allow a Caesar to emerge" approach, then he can just replace Caesar with someone else and have events leading to the Great Roman Civil War continue largely as they did. There are ways to minimize historical changes if they present too much of a problem for the GM (I personally would have Caesar's death produce changes, but I can certainly see a GM choosing to go another way there).

One of the things I really like to do, is to start a new historical based game just right after a major historical event. Some of my favorite starts for both Runequest and D&D go something like this.

It's a fine sunny morning in 117 a.d. The Picts have just completed annihilated the 9th Roman Legion. Your Legion. You and your comrades are survivors of this great debacle, and have been disgraced in Briton. The Eagle is lost. The Celts, Picts, and Britons are hunting you. There's a price on your head. You are in the highlands at least fifty leagues from your nearest base at Eboracvm (York). What do you do?

It's 70 a.d. The last stronghold of your kinfolk, Masada, has fallen after an extended siege. Titus and his army will be parading captured prisoners through the streets of Jerusalem next week, and are making ready to depart for Rome as part of his wedding Triumph. These prisoners are his wedding gift to Berenice, daughter of Herod.  Your people (Judeans) are no longer allowed to publicly carry any weapons in this city or any other Judean city or town, except for a small hunting dagger. What do you do?

It's a fine spring morning as a rider on Horseback flies through your Caravan encampment without slowing down shouting "Paris has Fallen, Paris has Fallen!".  By mid-morning, you know it's true, and the merchants in the caravan have called for a halt and a council meeting. You are about a weeks ride out from Paris in the countryside of Aquilonia, and were on your way to Paris with supplies and trade goods, intent on entering the city before the Vikings arrived to sell your goods to a local population who were busy preparing for a siege. It's the ninth of April, 845 a.d. word has just reached your trade caravan that a Viking army has just captured and sacked Paris. What do you do?

260 a.d. The Alemanni Army (your Army) is moving out. Heading South. Word has it, the Roman Legio XXI Rapax, has withdrawn from the frontier. Tomorrow morning, the plan is to attack and take Aventicum the Roman Capitol in this region. Any loot you can carry, ...you get to keep! Good Luck! What does your warband do now?

I'm ok, if the story deviates from history because of the players actions. Much of the fun is in exploring the consequences of "What if". Also, If the Players add a few wrinkles, so will I. This usually makes for a pretty good game, and I don't remember any quasi-historical game that really went off on a major tangent.

Quote from: Bren;880175No. You are being obtuse. I'm saying that the photographs were fake, and fake photographs are not proof that fairies exist.

I'm not saying the Enochian workings are proof that Angels exist. But Conan Doyle really saw the faerie pictures and a bunch of things really happened as a result.  Likewise, John Dee really had the experience of the Enochian workings and a bunch of stuff really happened as a result.

In Doyle's case we know that what he believed was not what was actually going on.
We can surmise the same in Dee's.

In Doyle's case we can say what exactly was going on.
In Dee's we can't, because of a lack of information.

The big diff between the two? Most people in 1900s modern Europe didn't believe in faeries.  Most people in 1500s Europe did believe in magic, and it was something that informed the culture.

QuoteYou are being willfully obtuse. I am suggesting that the claims that Joseph Smith made about the source and content of the tablets may be false.

You're the definition of "willfully obtuse" in this thread. You are insisting that we must make declarations of faith that we all acknowledge that the medieval mindset was full of shit in order to even talk about this.
Also, a lot of historians think Smith was intentionally lying and engaging in Fraud.  No legitimate historian I know of thinks Dee's diaries were an act of fraud. You are just engaging in trying to damn Dee by really piss-poor association here.

QuoteYou are either incredibly stupid or you are intentionally reading what I wrote in bad faith.

I'm reading what you're saying here in EXACTLY the same level of faith that you're reading what I'm saying.

QuoteI am suggesting that there are other explanations for his claim that he spoke with angels besides the actual existence of supernatural entities of any sort. I'm suggesting that Dee's diary may have no more to do with angels than Doyle's photos have to do with fairies.

And NOTHING in what I'm saying demands the existence of supernatural entities. But you've been so determined in your Atheist Jihad that you can't fucking understand that.

QuoteAnd yet, you keep insisting that we should take Dee's claim that he spoke to angels at face value by saying, "Dee spoke to angels."

I insist that we should assume that Dee had a real experience, and that he and others understood it to be magic based on the paradigm they operated on. Today we might define it as 'insanity', 'psychology', 'trance', 'creative visualization' or 'unknown event', based on the paradigm we operate on. Our paradigm is better at getting reality in some respects, and far, far worse in other respects.

QuoteDee said he spoke to angels. Doyle said the fairy photos were proof of the existence of fairies. Joseph Smith said all sorts of things. The fact that those three men said something does not prove that they were right about what they said they saw or that what they said they saw has any existence outside of their imagination.

Blah blah blah Richard Dawkins blah blah blah Flying Spaghetti monster blah blah blah there is no god blah blah blah blah WHO GIVES A FUCK? No one is arguing this except you, no one is demanding that you say "angels are real" except your own inner fears.  And I don't give a twopenny fuck about how your mom forced you to read bible stories or Father Joseph touched you in the Rectory, and now you can't see how much of your material positivism is a self-restricting delusion just as entrapping to you as a 14th century peasant believing in leprechauns. It's not my problem.

QuoteMany smart people are incredibly naïve about certain things while being very skeptical of other things.

You don't say...?

QuoteStage magicians aren't smarter than scientists, but are a lot better at uncovering fake spiritualists than are physicians or scientists.

And actual magicians can almost immediately spot if someone has had a genuine esoteric experience, is posing, or is an intentional fraud.  Yet I suspect your strongly held articles of faith will make that difficult for you to get.

QuoteBut Dee being wrong about what he said he saw doesn't require that Dee had to be naïve. He may have really wanted to believe that he was talking to angels. Because he already believed in angels and magic and shit before he talked to the angels. Just like Doyle really wanted to believe in spiritualism and fairies.

Dee had spent years studying magick before running into Kelly. He had done work before that. You are conflating two different things here: the idea that Dee 'didn't actually talk to angels' and the idea that Dee was just completely hoodwinked by Kelly.  The latter is so beyond credibility because of the various details involved in both Dee and Kelly's history and in what it means Kelly would have to have been capable of, that it may as well be discarded.
The former is not really the point of the argument I was making in this thread. It doesn't matter that you don't believe in Angels, you get that right? No one cares, it's not relevant to what we're talking about. I don't believe in Angels, but I've had plenty of magical experiences that involve conversations with what medieval lingo termed 'Angels'. What you're talking to doesn't actually have to be an Angel, much less the 16th century conception of one, for the mystical experience itself to be real.

You seem so hell-bent on needing us all to strongly recite your testament of faith that the only possible answer is that nothing at all happened to Dee in the 7 fucking years of Angelic conversations, and then somehow want to tie that in as 'proof' of... what? That the medieval paradigm wasn't a real thing? That they didn't believe in it? That they did believe in it but that it is somehow not an accurate perception of reality (as if anyone here is arguing that)?
What? What's your fucking point other than "I don't like jeebus", you ass?!

QuoteYou know what your academic theory does not address? Whether the angels that Dee said he spoke with have any independent existence.

BECAUSE IT DOESN'T NEED TO BE ADDRESSED.
If you talk about the history of Mormon Migration, you don't need to say "obviously Joseph Smith made it all up". If you're talking about the physics of the Big Bang you don't need to say "clearly, we must now state that there is no sign of the dead giant Ymir involved in the creation of the universe".  If you're talking about 18th century Chinese martial arts schools you don't need to say "by the way Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon was totally fake".

Maybe if you have a huge personal chip on your shoulder, you might think such things are necessary. But in fact to say "Medieval and renaissance people believed that magic, angels and salvation was real and this had a profound effect on their culture", you do not need to add "BUT THERE ARE NO SUCH THINGS AS FAERIES!!"

QuotePlease point to even one statement where I have said that no one in the medieval or renaissance world believed in magic. Just one statement. If you can't do that, then please stop lying about what I have said.

If you don't, then what the fuck is your argument? If you accept that John Dee believed magic was a real force, Edward Kellly believed magic was a real force, the Angelic Conversations were an event that really happened, and had a profound effect on both men's lives, then what is your fucking point (again, other than thinking we all need to collectively say "there ain't no such thing as sasquatch!" as a magic chant to avoid the evils of pre-modern religiousity or something)?

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;880476The easy way to limit power in OD&D is limit gold.  Gold = XP, and monster XP is chump change.

I ran OD&D in medieval England for about three years, and used historical prices and currency.  I boosted XP considerably, but if I'd set the rate differently the PCs would have leveled up about every 15 sessions or so.

An unexpected aftereffect was that money was SO scarce that the PCs took to looting dead kobolds and goblins for their crappy knives and spears and occasional scrap of mail to sell to the local smith.  Getting three or four pence for a goblin's knife was a big deal; it meant they could eat that day.

Nowadays I'd make them travel to a big city, York or London or Greenwich, to sell the mail.  Because I'm a bastard.

To take a break from the Dawkins Mujahaddeen for a moment, in the original Dark Albion campaign I started out with XP rules establishing that 1 shilling = 1xp for advancement purposes.

This quickly turned out to be a big problem, because you had a real medieval environment, but where you found the sons of Knights or Lords looting the bodies of peasants for a couple of pennies just to gain XP. People who were not supposed to hold filthy lucre in very high regard were socially humiliating themselves to get it.

This is why, in the Appendix P rules, I changed the XP system entirely, to one that simply works on the basis of 'adventures completed' (plus 'best roleplayer' awards). I think it makes things way more authentic, because players don't have to think of what they need to do to level up, they just need to roleplay their character the way the character should be in the setting.

So to sum up: magic in a medieval culture that already believed in magic? Not a huge problem.

Using the 1gp=1xp system? Seriously harms the setting.

Quote from: Rincewind1;880803Also, holy shit, someone was taken for a ride because they didn't know Pundit believes in magic(k).

More like because they can't reconcile that with me being an historian. As though they were sure my talking about magic in history was a secret plot to trick them into saying that angels are real.

Also, Magick isn't a religion. There are of course people who 'believe' in magick, those people are useless. Real magick has nothing to do with believing in it, much less trying to get other people to 'believe' in it. It is something you do.  I gain precisely nothing from getting anyone to 'believe' in magick, on the contrary people who say they 'believe' in magick are a huge part of the problem. For that matter, it doesn't get me nothing if you actually start doing magick, either. I couldn't give a fuck.   I do this for me.

Quote from: Opaopajr;880985I usually think of this version, or Aladdin's "A Whole New World," when it comes to magic carpet rides.

Pizzicato Five — Magic Carpet Ride (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MHJ0X3BgGl4)

But that's because I'm not old enough to remember the 60s. :p

You fucking heretic.

Hilariously, I also used 1 shilling =1 xp.  Deranged minds think alike.

Quote from: RPGPundit;881144You fucking heretic.

Do I get burned at the stake? I like BBQ! :cheerleader:

Quote from: RPGPundit;881137If you don't, then what the fuck is your argument?

You might know if you got off your magical soap box long enough to read what I wrote. I will try to keep this really simple so you might finally stop tilting at Richard Dawkins or whatever other windmills you have created in your own mind and read and respond to what I wrote.

Here are four sentences.

• John Dee spoke with angels.
• John Dee wrote that he spoke with angels.
• John Dee claimed that he spoke with angels.
• John Dee fraudulently claimed that he spoke with angels.

You used the first sentence to describe 500 year old events. I said, that the second sentence was preferable since it (a) accords with all the facts that are known and accepted and (b) does not require a conclusion about the reality of Dee's experience, i.e. about the existence of angels.

For some reason, you continue to insist that I said the fourth sentence and that I am claiming nobody in the Medieval or Early Modern Period believed in magic. I haven't said either. I don't know why you keep insisting that I have. I could speculate, but at this point I can't come up with any charitable explanation, so rather than list a series of uncharitable hypotheses, I'll leave that as an open question and allow you to explain why you continue to insist that I said and believe things that I did not say and do not believe.

QuoteIf you accept that...the Angelic Conversations were an event that really happened

What really happened is exactly the point at issue.

Which is why I suggested it was preferable to use a sentence that did not draw a conclusion about what really happened. We don't know what really happened. We know what Dee wrote at length about what he said he believed had happened. He attributed his experience to a series of chats with something he called Angels.

Quote from: Bren;881187You might know if you got off your magical soap box long enough to read what I wrote. I will try to keep this really simple so you might finally stop tilting at Richard Dawkins or whatever other windmills you have created in your own mind and read and respond to what I wrote.

Here are four sentences.

• John Dee spoke with angels.
• John Dee wrote that he spoke with angels.
• John Dee claimed that he spoke with angels.
• John Dee fraudulently claimed that he spoke with angels.

You used the first sentence to describe 500 year old events. I said, that the second sentence was preferable since it (a) accords with all the facts that are known and accepted and (b) does not require a conclusion about the reality of Dee's experience, i.e. about the existence of angels.

Except I've repeatedly stated that I am not commenting on the 'reality' of Dee's experience, but on the reality of his understanding of his experience.   John Dee did not just WRITE that he spoke with angels, he had an experience that he was certain was him speaking with angels, and wrote about it (as it was happening, for the most part).

Thus, MY statement is far more accurate than yours.

QuoteWhat really happened is exactly the point at issue.

Which is why I suggested it was preferable to use a sentence that did not draw a conclusion about what really happened. We don't know what really happened. We know what Dee wrote at length about what he said he believed had happened. He attributed his experience to a series of chats with something he called Angels.

We know what happened, we do not need to make any conclusions about its physical veracity.  He had an actual experience, which he attributed to speaking with angels; that much is not in question by anyone serious. The part you're obsessing over would be relevant to a meeting of the Skeptics' Society, but not to an historical analysis of renaissance-era beliefs.

Quote from: RPGPundit;881439Except I've repeatedly stated that I am not commenting on the 'reality' of Dee's experience, but on the reality of his understanding of his experience.

If you had confined yourself to commenting on Dee's understanding of angels or on Medieval beliefs in general there would be little for us to disagree about. But instead you have repeatedly mischaracterized what I said. And  you have done so at length. When challenged on this you to failed to provide any evidence whatsoever to support the statements and beliefs that you have falsely attributed to me. You are arguing in bad faith. If this is an example of your ability as an historian, you really shouldn't give up your job as a game designer.

Quote from: RPGPundit;881139To take a break from the Dawkins Mujahaddeen for a moment, in the original Dark Albion campaign I started out with XP rules establishing that 1 shilling = 1xp for advancement purposes.

This quickly turned out to be a big problem, because you had a real medieval environment, but where you found the sons of Knights or Lords looting the bodies of peasants for a couple of pennies just to gain XP. People who were not supposed to hold filthy lucre in very high regard were socially humiliating themselves to get it.

*SNIP*

Using the 1gp=1xp system? Seriously harms the setting.

Well, yes. I think lots of people fail to realise that at its core, in terms of its basic worldbuilding and gameplay assumptions, Gygaxian D&D is not in any way a "medieval" (or renaissance) game. Not even an ahistorical medieval one.

What it really is is a 19th century Wild West game as interpreted through the lens of a sort of idealised 20th century libertarianism. It's a game of 9th level Randian superheroes rising above the masses of 0 level social leeches by virtue of their superior abilities and ruthlessness and piss on established social structures from high on (because honestly, when was the last time a bunch of PCs paid a toll to the King's toll collector for using the King's road? - THAT would be a medieval game); where having the strength and cunning to lay your hands on a chest of gold means that from that point onwards, everybody acknowledges you as the gold's owner in every possible legal and extralegal sense of the word. Equating the PCs ability to acquire riches with their objective advancement is very much this, and very much NOT anything medieval.

Of course, the Pundit will now correct me because it's supposed to be Objectivism and not libertarianism, or somesuch. :)

Quote from: Premier;881513because honestly, when was the last time a bunch of PCs paid a toll to the King's toll collector for using the King's road? - THAT would be a medieval game

Ummm... in every one of my D&D games... here is an example from the toll bridge in BlackHolm, a hamlet that can be found many of my 0D&D games.

3-Quaystone Bridge 160' long, 32' wide, Stone Archway Bridge. Between Sunset and Sunrise the Quaystone bridge is closed, gated and barred at both the east and west ends. West Enders may elect to stay at the Ice Hammer Inn. Eastenders should be staying in the village as a guest, because night time patrols from Blackcrave Castle may arrest and jail any loiterers...

In the daytime, The feeb, Alain Quarterstar stands at the east end of the bridge collecting a bridge toll of 5 silver pieces for each person crossing, and 1 silver coin for each mount or pack animal that wants to cross the bridge. Alain will never fight or challenge any who cross the bridge without paying, instead reporting to His Lordship, Baron Blackcrave after sunset paying the baron directly the daily proceeds from the toll bridge while at the same time enjoying the barons' wine. Alain and the Baron are fast friends, and the Baron protects Alain, and those Alains requests protection for. The Baron keeps his Knights and Sorcerers trained by having them go after the toll scofflaws, and other outlaws in the region, as well using the garrison to kill or capture monsters, and wild animals in the region that are loose killing and maiming his taxable population.


5- Bridge Wardens Home - Alain Quarterstar Lvl-1 AC-3 Htk-10 Dmge/Attk- Staff (1d6)  Str-14 Int-7 Wis-9 Con-12 Dex-14 Chr-8 ALN: Righteous and Innocent LG. Dark Hair, Blue Eyes, Large Man - 6' 6" Alain is a simple-minded fighter who serves as the toll collector and guard in the daytime on the Quaystone Bridge. He reveres Baron Blackcrave, believing the Baron to be fair and just man. (becuase the Baron is fair and just with him!) Alain is paid 20% of whatever he takes in tolls every day on the bridge, and is often a guest for dinner with the Baron and his knights at the castle. All who know the baron really well, know that this man was the best friend of the Barons'  dead son (who was killed hunting other outlaws a few years back.). The last thing the Baron did with his son, was to promise to look after the simple-minded fighter before his son rode off and managed to die. So far, the Baron has kept that promise to his long lost son.

Alain is disfigured. He was kicked in the face by a Minotaur  when he was young, and never quite looks right anymore with a vicious scar across his face and one eye a bit lower than the other. The townsfolk treat Alain well as they know he is a favorite of the Baron. Alain wears platemail, with a tan cloak and black boots. He carries a purse with 5 gold, 42 silver, and 27 copper coins to make change for the Quaystone Bridge toll.

Soooooo... piss on the lowly bridge feeb, and don't pay the toll, and incur the wrath of a 14th level Lord with a Wizards Court, Clerics, and a large contingent of Knights...


There's plenty of lovely encounters like this in my old school games, Muuuuuhahahaha...

I agree with the broad point that D&D was not made up as some sort of feudalism simulation. The medieval-mind approach would be more tenable with Arneson's earlier method of promoting figures based on his assessments of their accomplishments.

It's first and last a game, and scoring points for treasure dovetails very well with the then-innovative dungeon expedition concept that has been so successful.

Chivalry & Sorcery and other efforts have put more emphasis on a medieval social milieu, which taken seriously tends to shift the main field of play to that and push the more typical D&D concerns out of the center.

If your aristocrats are all high-level figures, then the recommended pro-rating in OD&D/AD&D 1st should make penny-grubbing not very worthwhile. I would reckon many undertakings worth no points at all at 'name' level.

If you make largess the key, awarding points only for treasures given away, then you get a situation more like the ancient and Dark Age heroic traditions. Adding the appropriate senses of honor and glory of course goes even further.

Quote from: Premier;881513(because honestly, when was the last time a bunch of PCs paid a toll to the King's toll collector for using the King's road? - THAT would be a medieval game);

where having the strength and cunning to lay your hands on a chest of gold means that from that point onwards, everybody acknowledges you as the gold's owner in every possible legal and extralegal sense of the word.

1: been there, payed that.

2: Hate to burst your bubble. But there are times when someone can and will contest your hanging onto treasure that was theirs. Such as the PCs taking out the local thieves guild and collecting all the stolen loot. Even Hoard of the Dragon Queen has this to a small extent.

Quote from: Bren;881500If you had confined yourself to commenting on Dee's understanding of angels or on Medieval beliefs in general there would be little for us to disagree about. But instead you have repeatedly mischaracterized what I said. And  you have done so at length. When challenged on this you to failed to provide any evidence whatsoever to support the statements and beliefs that you have falsely attributed to me. You are arguing in bad faith. If this is an example of your ability as an historian, you really shouldn't give up your job as a game designer.

You've consistently misrepresented what I say,  you mean. You've kept trying to paint this as me trying to claim medieval magic is objectively real, when what I was saying has nothing to do with that.

Quote from: Premier;881513Well, yes. I think lots of people fail to realise that at its core, in terms of its basic worldbuilding and gameplay assumptions, Gygaxian D&D is not in any way a "medieval" (or renaissance) game. Not even an ahistorical medieval one.

What it really is is a 19th century Wild West game as interpreted through the lens of a sort of idealised 20th century libertarianism. It's a game of 9th level Randian superheroes rising above the masses of 0 level social leeches by virtue of their superior abilities and ruthlessness and piss on established social structures from high on (because honestly, when was the last time a bunch of PCs paid a toll to the King's toll collector for using the King's road? - THAT would be a medieval game); where having the strength and cunning to lay your hands on a chest of gold means that from that point onwards, everybody acknowledges you as the gold's owner in every possible legal and extralegal sense of the word. Equating the PCs ability to acquire riches with their objective advancement is very much this, and very much NOT anything medieval.

Of course, the Pundit will now correct me because it's supposed to be Objectivism and not libertarianism, or somesuch. :)

Well no, I'll correct you by saying that's an overly simplistic analysis of D&D.  D&D is based on a LOT of influences. Of course the real middle ages was one influence; as was medieval wargaming, and sci-fi/fantasy. But movies/books/comics from the '30s to the '60s about knights and robin hood and king arthur and even Sinbad and such were also an influence. And obviously American culture and history. And the heroic journey, though I doubt Gygax was consciously informed by Joseph Campbell or anything like that.

D&D is really a big old mishmash.  I think you are reading far too much into the simple formula of 1gp=1xp. I'm pretty sure that was just because of a gamifying quality: you need to go up in level, how do we judge it? By the win  conditions of the game: kill monsters, get treasure.

Also, Dark Albion has tolls and historically-accurate taxation. So if that's what you want, you should check it out!

Quote from: RPGPundit;881636Well no, I'll correct you by saying that's an overly simplistic analysis of D&D.  D&D is based on a LOT of influences. Of course the real middle ages was one influence; as was medieval wargaming, and sci-fi/fantasy. But movies/books/comics from the '30s to the '60s about knights and robin hood and king arthur and even Sinbad and such were also an influence. And obviously American culture and history. And the heroic journey, though I doubt Gygax was consciously informed by Joseph Campbell or anything like that.

D&D is really a big old mishmash.  I think you are reading far too much into the simple formula of 1gp=1xp. I'm pretty sure that was just because of a gamifying quality: you need to go up in level, how do we judge it? By the win  conditions of the game: kill monsters, get treasure.

* applause *
* applause hell, standing ovation! *

The other reason to give PCs an incentive to gather gold is so they can build their castle and armies.  Written by wargamers for wargamers; once everybody hits name level and has their stronghold and their army and their lands, now the wargame campaign starts.  Give a bunch of wargamers armies and castles and fiefs and wars WILL happen.

Quote from: RPGPundit;881633You've consistently misrepresented what I say,  you mean. You've kept trying to paint this as me trying to claim medieval magic is objectively real, when what I was saying has nothing to do with that.

It's not misrepresentation to point out what you have said and to quote what you actually said. You said Medieval Europe was full of magic and monsters, that people really saw animals talk and women have sex with the devil, and that John Dee talked to angels that he summoned using a complex system of magic.

Quote from: RPGPundit;874231This is not exactly right.  Medieval Europe was always a fantasy world full of magic and monsters (http://therpgpundit.blogspot.com/2015/11/dark-albion-demon-haunted-world.html).

Quote from: RPGPundit;874943To the people involved the witches REALLY DID EXIST. They weren't all just going around being all tongue-in-cheek about it. They really thought that witches were cursing them, ruining their crops, plotting against the king, and what's more they had really seen animals talk or women having sex with the devil in the woods.

You used the words "really saw." You could have said, "claimed they saw" or more neutrally "reported they saw" but you chose to say "really saw" which seems to be making a claim about reality.

How would your wording differ if you were really claiming that the things they "really saw" were really real?

You also said and continue to echo this bit of bullshit.

Quote from: RPGPundit;876323I think you're seeing an ambiguity that isn't there, because the language I'm using doesn't fit your own personal dogmas, and the whole thing is an inconvenient reality for you.
You still desperately want to pretend that the entire medieval world were just trolling us down through the ages and couldn't possibly have been serious about this. Which, frankly, is something only a moron could allow himself to be led by his inept personal dogmas to believe.

You are, in other words, making a faith-based argument here.

Except that I have not said nor have I implied that the entire medieval world were lying about their beliefs. Nor have I said that most of them were lying about their beliefs. Nor do I believe that most or all of the medieval world lied about their beliefs.

Despite this, you continue to misrepresent my statements and mischaracterize my beliefs. Why is that?

Quote from: Bren;881745It's not misrepresentation to point out what you have said and to quote what you actually said. You said Medieval Europe was full of magic and monsters, that people really saw animals talk and women have sex with the devil, and that John Dee talked to angels that he summoned using a complex system of magic.

No, I didn't. I said that to the people in it, medieval europe was already full of magic and monsters, talking animals, devil-sex and angelic conversations.

QuoteYou used the words "really saw."

You conveniently ignore the part that says "to the people involved".

QuoteYou could have said, "claimed they saw" or more neutrally "reported they saw" but you chose to say "really saw" which seems to be making a claim about reality.

No, because to them it wasn't a 'claim'. It was something self-evident.
If one of us today saw a devil coming through a window, we would immediately doubt the experience. Even if you were nominally Christian, you would doubt it. Even if you were strongly Christian, today in the 21st century, you would have a hint of doubt. That's because the 21st century paradigm puts a strong emphasis on saying "there is absolutely no such thing as devils", and this is so powerful it subconsciously superimposes itself even on the most religious people in the west (you'd have to go somewhere operating on a totally different paradigm, like Africa, to get someone who really wouldn't experience that hint of doubt).   Even if you're an evangelical pastor, some part of you would be thinking you're drugged, or insane, or having a stroke, or any number of other possible things before the presence of an actual devil coming through your window.
Someone in the medieval paradigm would have no doubt at all, because it was an accepted part of reality.

QuoteHow would your wording differ if you were really claiming that the things they "really saw" were really real?

I would have said: "that's because these things really DO exist! There really are demons and magic and angels and talking animals just like the medieval people thought"!

QuoteExcept that I have not said nor have I implied that the entire medieval world were lying about their beliefs. Nor have I said that most of them were lying about their beliefs. Nor do I believe that most or all of the medieval world lied about their beliefs.

Despite this, you continue to misrepresent my statements and mischaracterize my beliefs. Why is that?

Maybe because you seem to also believe that I keep trolling this thread.  Maybe because you are VERY CLEARLY allowing your personal prejudices to warp your most basic capacity to understand what we're talking about.  Pretty much exactly the way fanatical religious believers do. No real surprise there.

So when you say, someone "really saw" something, you don't mean they really saw that thing they said they saw and you don't mean the thing they said they saw really existed. What you mean is that they really thought they saw the thing they said they saw? Well you certainly have an odd and roundabout way of speaking and I'm glad you cleared that up.

We can agree that many medieval people who said they saw things, really thought they saw the things they said they saw. I never said or thought otherwise and that was not a point I ever contested.

Quote from: RPGPundit;882145Maybe because you seem to also believe that I keep trolling this thread.

Well you have continued to misattribute statements and beliefs to me that I haven't said and don't believe. You've yet to retract or support those claims. If you want to call that trolling, I won't disagree.

Quote from: Bren;881745It's not misrepresentation to point out what you have said and to quote what you actually said. You said Medieval Europe was full of magic and monsters, that people really saw animals talk and women have sex with the devil, and that John Dee talked to angels that he summoned using a complex system of magic.

 
You used the words "really saw." You could have said, "claimed they saw" or more neutrally "reported they saw" but you chose to say "really saw" which seems to be making a claim about reality.

How would your wording differ if you were really claiming that the things they "really saw" were really real?

Bren, I'm curious on your stance on this metaphysical position: Do Words/Symbols have eternal abstract meanings, or does meaning depend entirely on the totality of context?

I'm seeing two paradigms completely talk past each other, and it had me curious. Thank you for any response.

Your arguing has drawn a wandering monster.

Roll reaction time.

Quote from: Telarus;882159Bren, I'm curious on your stance on this metaphysical position: Do Words/Symbols have eternal abstract meanings, or does meaning depend entirely on the totality of context?

Protagoras said, "Man is the measure of all things." In general, I agree with Protagoras.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;882161Your arguing has drawn a wandering monster.

Damn it!

QuoteRoll reaction time.

You can't fool me. There is no such thing as reaction time in OD&D. But I rolled for surprise and I wasn't surprised.

Quote from: Bren;882166Protagoras said, "Man is the measure of all things." In general, I agree with Protagoras.

Damn it!

You can't fool me. There is no such thing as reaction time in OD&D. But I rolled for surprise and I wasn't surprised.

Reaction time is my house rule.  :D

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;882171Reaction time is my house rule.  :D

:hmm: Well then, I rolled a great reaction time. Obviously since I'm posting, a much better reaction time than Pundit, who is monster chow by now.

Correct; you're attacked by a monster Chow, a little poofy dog enlarged to be six feet tall at the shoulder.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;882176Correct; you're attacked by a monster Chow, a little poofy dog enlarged to be six feet tall at the shoulder.

A six foot tall Chow with a pipe. Yes I can see that. I retreat down the passage as I toss oil on the Chow dousing his poofy fur. Then I chuckle to myself as his lit pipe ignites the oil.

I toss caltrops behind me as I run away faster than the dwarf in my party.

Quote from: Bren;882178A six foot tall Chow with a pipe. Yes I can see that. I retreat down the passage as I toss oil on the Chow dousing his poofy fur. Then I chuckle to myself as his lit pipe ignites the oil.

I toss caltrops behind me as I run away faster than the dwarf in my party.

As the party Dwarf, I say this:  "CHOKE ON MY HAIRY ASS, YOU FLEA INFESTED BEASTIE!"  And promptly get eaten.

Quote from: Bren;882178A six foot tall Chow with a pipe. Yes I can see that. I retreat down the passage as I toss oil on the Chow dousing his poofy fur. Then I chuckle to myself as his lit pipe ignites the oil.

I toss caltrops behind me as I run away faster than the dwarf in my party.

A big table half blocks the passage ahead. On the table is a basket of dinner rolls.

Quote from: Phillip;882286A big table half blocks the passage ahead. On the table is a basket of dinner rolls.

I tip over the basket as I leap over the table. If the burning giant Chow isn't dead yet, it may stop to eat a few dinner rolls to go with the dwarf main course.

Quote from: Bren;882350I tip over the basket as I leap over the table. If the burning giant Chow isn't dead yet, it may stop to eat a few dinner rolls to go with the dwarf main course.

You take a few rolls off the Wandering Monster Table.

Quote from: Phillip;882791You take a few rolls off the Wandering Monster Table.

:duh: Ouch.

Quote from: Phillip;882791You take a few rolls off the Wandering Monster Table.

Well played, sir, well played.

Please make sure that these are proper fantasy European dinner rolls!

Alright, that's enough thread derailment. I get that some people are feeling bad about being wrong, but this is not the way to respond.