Recently there was a popular thread about modern sensibilities in historically accurate games. I'm not here to steal the thunder away from that discussion but to address another aspect of historical gaming.

Most people will agree that metaplots add little to the gaming expirence. Those that like games that include metaplots often ignore or horribly mangle the existing metaplot. It may lead one to wonder why designers continue to use them...


I submit to you, dear readers, that HISTORY can be a bigger metaplotting bitch to a game than anything that the wonky game designers come up with. This was partly inspired by the previously mentioned thread, and partly by reading Qin: the Warring States, and even a touch of having watched ROME last night before going to sleep.

You see, in most historical settings there are those giants of history, the collossoi striding through over the worlds stage.  If you truly value historical accuracy, what do you do with such characters? Is your Roman game truly accurate if Ceasar is a minor detail?

I see this much as I see the Star Wars franchise, or for that matter any licenced game. The story is set and told. Do you change history? Do you change the story? If not, what do you do with the fact that anything the characters do is essentially a side show to the 'main event'.

Let us look at Rome, for the moment.  Pullus and Vorenus are limited characters in many ways. They can not plausibly be brought into Ceasar's council. If they meet Pompeii on the road they have no choice but to let him go, let him flee to Egypt where history records his death. They Have No Choice.

This is fine for a TV show. But what about RPG's? If Pullus was being played by a gamer, Pompeii would have been dragged before Ceasar in exchange for wealth, for rewards.  Perhaps the duo would murder Ceasar themselves in an attempt to seize power for themselves.  

In Qin there are suggestions that certain NPC's are untouchable by the players. Oops.


How then should we treat History in RPG's?

I suggest lightly and at some distance. Far better to play during some nebulous 'roman era' than attempt to run through Ceasars rise to power. Far better to play in a historically accurate Warring States period, one where the characters have a say in the fate of their world, than to actually PLAY the warring States as things 'went down'.


I don't suggest playing Ceasar's rise to power is wrong, or bad, or unfun. What you do at your table is your business. What I suggest is that the default assumption from a game design standpoint should NOT be Ceasar's rise to power, or Qin's conquest of China or...  Design to play in a setting, not a story. History provides both.


Discuss.
:pundit:

My approach to this is the same as my approach to Middle Earth.

I pick a quiet era or place, and let the players run free. Typically the problems I throw at them threaten to make a mess of history. The story of the PCs is how they prevented that.

For example, I ran an invasion of Arthedain that occured centuries before it's actual fall with the players in key roles opposing it. No matter the outcome, it would represent that which JRRT didn't cover in his books (those pages of history didn't make it to him to translate)- but it's part of our groups Middle Earth history.

Quote from: SpikeI suggest lightly and at some distance. Far better to play during some nebulous 'roman era' than attempt to run through Ceasars rise to power.

That's one way I'd do it. Pretty much like any number of stories (books, movies) which take place in a discernable time period but which have a character named "The President" who isn't at all the president who historically existed. Of course most of these stories were set in "the present day" or the near future of the time they were written, but they're still enjoyable even though they can't be fit into our knowledge of American history.

QuoteFar better to play in a historically accurate Warring States period, one where the characters have a say in the fate of their world, than to actually PLAY the warring States as things 'went down'.

This is another way--or I'm reading it as such. It requires a bit more of a wargamer/alt-history mindset, with a willingness to take only the initial conditions as given. One problem is that players may have too much insight into the motives and future plans of historical figures, even if they don't know exactly how they'll play out as a result of random events or the PCs' own meddling. So I don't particularly like this approach if that's a problem, although I suppose you could announce beforehand that you're going to freely change around any facts which wouldn't be known to the PCs

Finally, a third way: simply make the main course of history a backdrop which is relatively unlikely to be affected by the PCs, but which also doesn't dictate their actions or behavior. The PCs' personal stories are still the center of the campaign. E.g., a mission-based game based on something like The Guns of Navarone/Force 10 From Navarone doesn't have to worry about whether the course of the Second World War will be changed. Or a game based on the La Cosa Nostra may not be historically accurate in terms of the exact fortunes of famous Mafiosi, but it needn't be bothered with whether the PCs will be able to affect the 1948 election...and mature players wouldn't try to bring it into the game either (e.g. they wouldn't place bets on Truman to raise capital).

If I ever had the chance to run a straight historical game...I'd do one of two things:

1.  Do as gleichman, and hide the PCs somewhere they know nothing about.

2.  Be up front in saying nthat the PCs are starting in a historical game, but will end up in an Alternate History game and let them run wild.

It's never really concerned me. Whether it's historical or a well-established licenced setting, it's just that, a setting. I'm willing to let the players mess around with it as much as they want and if for some reason, the 'truth' of the books or the movies falls to the wayside, then more's the better. They're creating their own legends without feeling restrained by the old ones. Emulation can be well and good, but for me, what is history but a series of decisions that could branch in any one of a million ways, and why can't the players be one of those branches?

A GM running an historical game has to keep two things in mind if he wants to be successful:

1. History doesn't just happen. It happens for a reason.  This isn't "metaplot"; its taking all factors into account.  In most cases, when something occurs historically its because of a whole series of events that lead up to it. So if players try to act against those events, there's a good chance that they will fail.  If they plot to try to put someone else on the throne than X, then they'd better be sure that they nip some trends in the bud; usually by the time X is a significant figure, though, there's already all kinds of historical momentum behind why they couldn't easily stop him from getting to the throne.

2. However, sudden random spontaneous chance is a huge bitch in all of history, and your players can do something utterly unexpected that changes everything. Therefore, any good GM of a historical campaign has to ready himself for the possibility of ending up playing an "alternate history" campaign at any time.

What I mean is: if you try to arrange so that Vespasian doesn't become emperor (assuming you the player aren't commiting "meta-role", doing stuff that your character couldn't know IC), he'll probably try to lead an army against Vespasian. But Vespasian has massive support, and is a military genius, and the product of years of circumstances have led him to the place he is now, so odds are you'll fail and he'll crush you.
However, if you're in a reunion with Vespasian and he has no reason not to trust you, and you suddenly thrust a dagger into his heart, you've just spontaneously changed everything. A good GM had better be ready and willing to allow that to happen.

There's also the fact that usually, you can have a shitload of fun stuff to do without having to actually change any history. For sure, getting to "change history" shouldn't be the actual GOAL of an historical campaign; neither should it be an impossibility. But the players and the GM both need to be working in good faith.

RPGPundit

I have never run an historical game, but I have often run games with an historical flavour to them. So for example if I were to run something like a time of Caesar game, I wouldn't put Caesar and Marius and Pompey in it. I'd put people like them. I mean, people like them were bound to arise at some point. There was always going to be an argument between the Senate and the armies over division of loot. Once the Roman armies left the Italian peninsula, the Senate was always going to have to extend commands to beyond a year. So we have a commander who's been with his troops for some years, and either he's their genuine advocate for their getting more of the loot, or he uses this advocacy to advance himself. So, even supposing Marius, Sulla, Caesar etc get strangled at birth, the situations will come up again.

So instead we have (say) Gaius, Antonius and Lucius, and the same issues. This then gives the players' characters the freedom to do as they wish. Not an historical world, but a world with an historical flavour to it. If I want to write history, I'll do that; this is a game, and games are most fun when the outcome is uncertain.

Trust me, my historical games are a shitload of fun. For starters, its not just about the events but about HOW the events come to pass. None of my players know as much about Roman history as I do, and many of them don't know anything beyond a few very big names and events.  Thus, what's history to me is novelty to them, and the outcome of events is uncertain as far as they're concerned.

Second, its not all written.  There's a whole lot of blanks in history; and in those areas there's room to fill in with PC actions.

RPGPundit

Well I certainly hope I didn't come off a suggesting that Historical Gaming is Bad

I was thinking about it first when I read Qin: the warring States, The game is set as Qin is in the 'about to conquer all' position, the adventure in teh back sets the Players in Zhou, which is about to be eaten for lunch, then introduces a shit load of possibly historically accurate NPC's who are, for all intents and purposes Immune to PC plot hijinks. Oops.

I put that as about the worst way to handle things.  

I was further inspired when I was watching Rome and realized that if Vorenus and Pullus were PC's, then there was every chance that Vorenus could have done any number of things which would have seriously altered history. Bringing in Pompeii alive, for example might have completely nixed the whole 'go to egypt' part of Ceasar's agenda, thus eliminating cleopatra from teh picture, possible circumventing or seriously delaying the plot to murder him, as the Senate wouldn't have a year to stew about it while he was gone, and so forth.

I'm in line with most every comment I've heard here about historical games. Random corners of nebulous history, potential alternative histories and more.

Quote from: SpikeYou see, in most historical settings there are those giants of history, the collossoi striding through over the worlds stage.  If you truly value historical accuracy, what do you do with such characters? Is your Roman game truly accurate if Ceasar is a minor detail?

Yes.

My life is an accurate early 21st Century life as best I can tell, I enjoy it.  And yet, I have never even met Tony Blair or George W Bush.

If my game is about Roman spies on the frontier, then it's about that.  The fact other people are doing other stuff elsewhere is neither here nor there.

If it's about social climbers in 1770s Naples it's about that, the fact the American Revolution is happening elsewhere doesn't matter.

The game is about the characters, in any setting there may be other people elsewhere doing cool stuff, however this game is about these people doing their cool stuff.

As for metaplot, I am happy to let history change if the players do stuff that changes it.  In my crusades game, half of Toulouse fell and many people there died.  That didn't happen in history, the whole city stood.  But the players made a difference and I'm fine with that.  Simon de Montfort still died on schedule though as they weren't involved with that.  I use history as a support for the game, not as a limit.

Quote from: SpikeWell I certainly hope I didn't come off a suggesting that Historical Gaming is Bad

I was thinking about it first when I read Qin: the warring States, The game is set as Qin is in the 'about to conquer all' position, the adventure in teh back sets the Players in Zhou, which is about to be eaten for lunch, then introduces a shit load of possibly historically accurate NPC's who are, for all intents and purposes Immune to PC plot hijinks. Oops.

I put that as about the worst way to handle things.

I agree.

I mean, if the party came up against Caesar they would probably get their asses handed to them, as lots of folk did try to take him out and he outlasted most of them.  But I would try to avoid that being necessary and if it came up would allow him to be taken out if that's the way it went.

Untouchable NPCs is just bad GMing, whether historical, fantasy or whatever.

Let's put this way: in the setting of my game, Napoleon originally won the battle of Waterloo through his sophisticated energy weapons and eventually crowned himself the Emperor of the Earth, which in turn led to the Bonaparte Dynasty ruling over the Far Colonies of the solar system near the end of the nineteenth century. However, in 1892 the entire history of the world from 1342 onwards was rewritten, and the technological renaissance five hundred years ago never happened (although memories of it still turn up in the strangest places). So everything now is much as it would be in our world.

You cannot really count on historical verisimilitude when the past is that malleable...

But that's not really historical though is it?  That's more a blending of the sci-fi and napoleonic genres.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalBut that's not really historical though is it?

It is now. If a PC lived in that era or somehow travelled back in time to Waterloo, she wouldn't find anything not in keeping with our textbooks. But nevertheless, all that could still change: history isn't set in stone, even without some enterprising soul attempting to, say, smuggle firearms to the Greeks in the battle of Marathon.

Quote from: GrimGentIt is now. If a PC lived in that era or somehow travelled back in time to Waterloo, she wouldn't find anything not in keeping with our textbooks. But nevertheless, all that could still change: history isn't set in stone, even without some enterprising soul attempting to, say, smuggle firearms to the Greeks in the battle of Marathon.

But why bother? I mean, didn't the Greeks WIN Marathon?  What would be the point of going back in time to give the winner of a famous battle even MORE of an advantage?