Quote from: CRKrueger;1020024I think it's even more fundamental than that.  When you're playing 100% historical, you're faced with the fact that in real life, you're probably not a hero and probably not doing awesomely interesting things.  If you were, you'd be out doing them and too busy to roleplay.  You don't have the wealth to follow your interests 24/7 or the freedom or courage to just set off and walk around the world with a backpack.  

Every cool thing your character does reminds you that you could do similar things...you're just not.

Add magic in, even minor, and BAM, fantasy.  Now nothing that happens in that game says anything about you, your situation, your limitations, your decisions in life, whatever.

Even a game without magic can have genre rules that turn it into "fantasy", because you're a cinematic/pulp/literary protagonist, and again, you get that distance.

In addition, Magic, as well as High Tech, acts as a force multiplier.  It allows players to reinforce that "difference" between themselves and their character, even in a very mundane, 99% historical/real life setting.

I once had to transcribe the personal journal of a woman who lived in Lynn during the late 1800s. It was very interesting to read what she did on a daily basis, I learned a lot about how she got around, the spiritualist movement and the significance of public lectures. But it would have made a terrible RPG if I didn't throw in some drama or make her more important. But I don't think anyone believes doing authentic historical gaming means you have to enforce the drudgery of daily life. Heck most history books tend to focus on things that are exciting, interesting or exceptional in some way.

There are plenty of gamers, including me, with an interest in historical subjects, but little inclination to explore that interest via roleplaying.  Attributing that taste to lack of imagination is the biggest demonstration of a lack of imagination in this topic, as it is a very simple, easily observable part of human nature in all kinds of situations.  

It would be much more accurate to say that many gamers find that their tastes in roleplaying lean more to myth than reality.  It's not that reality isn't interesting.  It often is, even often more so than myth.  It's not necessarily the kind of interesting that someone wants in their entertainment, though.  There's a reason why those supplements are titled "Mythic" X, even if their basis is rooted strongly in history.

My experience is also that gamers require at least a token amount of fantasy, even though pure historical would be only mildly different.

Still, there are times when the mix of fantasy and historical can be multiplying instead of just throwing in a requisite. Apropos of Roman gaming, one of my favorite characters was from a GURPS Fantasy game set in a fantasy reincarnation of the Roman empire. He was a Romanized elf, who enthusiastically embraced Roman culture as 1000% superior to the tree-hugging nonsense of his elvish brethren. He worked as a merchant and was trying to accumulate enough wealth to buy some land and become a true Roman citizen. He had taken the name of Antonius Publius Eldarus.

I think it counts as Roman era fantasy, though it wasn't very historical.

Quote from: CRKrueger;1020024I think it's even more fundamental than that.  When you're playing 100% historical, you're faced with the fact that in real life, you're probably not a hero and probably not doing awesomely interesting things.

In my experience it's more that all the cool stuff cannot be done by the PC's, because anything really noteworthy would be in the history books. It's a millstone around the players neck because they'll never be as cool in or out of their imaginations.  It's like it's the worst case of GMPC taking over the campaign!  Except that these were real people!

Also, it's a bit of a burden on the GM because they have to limit the campaign in a way that doesn't overly affect the world around them too much, or it becomes fantasy with or without magic.  Now, there's nothing wrong with that sort of campaign but a lot of people would rather go somewhere that they don't have to worry about 'stepping' on any toes.  And fantasy is often simplest for that.

As always, Your Mileage WILL Vary.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1020260In my experience it's more that all the cool stuff cannot be done by the PC's, because anything really noteworthy would be in the history books. It's a millstone around the players neck because they'll never be as cool in or out of their imaginations.  It's like it's the worst case of GMPC taking over the campaign!  Except that these were real people!

Also, it's a bit of a burden on the GM because they have to limit the campaign in a way that doesn't overly affect the world around them too much, or it becomes fantasy with or without magic.  Now, there's nothing wrong with that sort of campaign but a lot of people would rather go somewhere that they don't have to worry about 'stepping' on any toes.  And fantasy is often simplest for that.

As always, Your Mileage WILL Vary.

It doesn't become fantasy, it becomes alt-history if you make a big enough change.  Still, I wouldn't want to play in any form of game in which you couldn't make that type of change.

Kind of sounds like what we were talking about over in the AiME thread about there being plenty to do even if you're not the Fellowship.  Which is interesting, because maybe Middle-Earth is SO detailed and omnipresent that it actually crosses a line somewhere causing the same reaction people have when faced with real history.  I think Tolkien would have liked that.

You see, from the GM's standpoint, the PCs are always stepping on toes, they just don't know it until they start seeing the pushback.   Stepping on toes is practically a job requirement.  The only difference in a highly detailed environment like Middle-Earth or real history, is that the players know the toes are there.

You've highlighted one of the major stumbling blocks people seem to have with history, which is based on a misapprehension. Firstly, that we have a comprehensive record of everything that took place, leaving no room for license. Secondly, that what is recorded is the unvarnished truth, which leaves no room for interpretation or variation. Neither of those is true, and the historical record becomes less authoritative the further back we go.

To the first, the further back in time you go, the more fragmented the literary and other non-archaeological sources become. It becomes a question of the best educated guesses to fill the ever-expanding blanks between what has survived and trying to build a coherent picture from it. As someone interested in antiquity, this is particularly acute, where the fire at the Great Library of Alexandreia destroyed a great wealth of information, but also that many cultures simply didn't record anything that's useful to us beyond an understanding of government administration.

To the second, the notion that a historian's job is to provide an objective and truthful record of what has gone before is an incredibly modern conceit. In the past, at best a historian's only bias might be to tell a good story. More often, it was to hammer home a political point (like "look how bad democracy and demagogues are!") or to fawn over the ancestors of the patron who was paying them. So a lot of reading historical antiquity is as much about knowing when particular sources are reliable, and how to judge who is better on a particular topic.

So in summary, I reject this notion that doing a historical game means being constrained by the "historical record". Even the most cursory reading of any history would demonstrate how fallacious this idea is.

Quote from: CRKrueger;1020293It doesn't become fantasy, it becomes alt-history if you make a big enough change.  Still, I wouldn't want to play in any form of game in which you couldn't make that type of change.

Kind of sounds like what we were talking about over in the AiME thread about there being plenty to do even if you're not the Fellowship.  Which is interesting, because maybe Middle-Earth is SO detailed and omnipresent that it actually crosses a line somewhere causing the same reaction people have when faced with real history.  I think Tolkien would have liked that.

You see, from the GM's standpoint, the PCs are always stepping on toes, they just don't know it until they start seeing the pushback.   Stepping on toes is practically a job requirement.  The only difference in a highly detailed environment like Middle-Earth or real history, is that the players know the toes are there.

I think this is probably correct for most of the players I have had.  They tend to be a "polite bunch" about things like that.  Even though I wouldn't mind if they trashed the setting, they would mind.  They'd feel the same way about a world that I made, if I overtly showed the toes for them to step on.  I'll take the good with the bad on something like this.  It's also a player trait that causes them to get attached to certain setting elements, and then want to protect them.  In a setting I make, they pick those elements because they care about them.  In a preset setting, in their minds, the elements to care about are already picked.  Plus, sometimes I'm surprised by what they pick.  In a preset setting, I am very rarely so surprised.

Edit:  Along those same lines, I guess I should say that if I were so inclined, I could get away with a historical setting if it is sufficiently removed from the interests and knowledge of the players at the table.  Thus my early statement about playing in a period immediately after the fall of the Roman empire.  I'd make it fantasy because that's what I enjoy.  But were I so inclined, I could probably pull of that game as an alt-history one, too.  When everything is crumbled, and the goals are immediate survival, history-altering goals tend to go on the backburner naturally.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1019990Because it allows people to 'change' history, rather than re-enact it.  It's a silly hang up but that's how a lot of players think in my experience (anecdotal.)

Yeah, I think that it's maybe more fundamental than that, it's just that the touch of fantasy somehow feels like it's 'liberating' somehow, that they have permission to have weird things happen or something.

Which is just nonsense, because of course you could run a historical game with some fantasy where PCs were still highly restrained in terms of what they themselves could accomplish, or a purely historical game where the PCs had enormous freedom to alter events.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1020708Yeah, I think that it's maybe more fundamental than that, it's just that the touch of fantasy somehow feels like it's 'liberating' somehow, that they have permission to have weird things happen or something.

I think you've hit on something there.

QuoteSo in summary, I reject this notion that doing a historical game means being constrained by the "historical record". Even the most cursory reading of any history would demonstrate how fallacious this idea is.

Especially, as the poster points out, that large parts of the historical record are poorly recorded, or not at all.  In finding a point in which to set a Call of Cthulhu campaign set in ancient Rome, I hit upon the end of the reign of Antoninus Pius partly because of constraints imposed by the Lovecraftian and other fictional stories I was looking at, and partly because it seemed not so well documented historically as what came before and what came after.  The player characters thus had greater scope to operate, as did I as the keeper in writing scenarios.

And it may or may not be liberating to have weird things happening in such a story, as another poster suggests--there is also the observation in Lovecraft's essay "Notes on Writing Weird Fiction," which suggests the author (or game master) has the problem of maintaining believability for a weird tale:  "Inconceivable events and conditions have a special handicap to overcome, and this can be accomplished only through the maintenance of a careful realism in every phase of the story except that touching on the one given marvel."

This leads me to try to demand more historicity from the historically centered CoC game, rather than less.

Quote from: wombat1;1018889But then there is this in Suetonius:



I recall seeing a passage in Pliny which suggests that the Emperor Claudius had to have another dragon put down by the Praetorians when it got a bit uppity, but I cannot now find it.  Still, you too can have a dragon in your Roman-era fantasy if you wish, though, as one of my players suggested:

"It can't be much of a dragon if it was eaten by ants."

And another replied, "well, we haven't seen the ants yet, either."

The word dragon was used for any number of large reptiles from snakes to iguanas to monitors to crocodiles, so I'd assume he was referring to one of those. As for the ants, maybe druids had Creeping Doom spells in real life. :eek:

Quote from: Elfdart;1021201The word dragon was used for any number of large reptiles from snakes to iguanas to monitors to crocodiles, so I'd assume he was referring to one of those.

People can interpret this in different ways. Fans of purely historical/no fantasy settings use the above approach, saying that dragon must refer to large reptiles. Fans of fantasy settings can say that dragon refers to, well, dragons.

Personally, I go Mythic. Roman mythology is full of monsters, gods and goddesses, magic and so on, so why not have dragons, centaurs, a hydra and so on?

Quote from: wombat1;1020954Especially, as the poster points out, that large parts of the historical record are poorly recorded, or not at all.  In finding a point in which to set a Call of Cthulhu campaign set in ancient Rome, I hit upon the end of the reign of Antoninus Pius partly because of constraints imposed by the Lovecraftian and other fictional stories I was looking at, and partly because it seemed not so well documented historically as what came before and what came after.  The player characters thus had greater scope to operate, as did I as the keeper in writing scenarios.

That is actually fairly well documented period. It is, however, a period that is less well-known by the general public, and by the average gamer, than the Julio-Claudian or Flavians emperors, or the time of Commodus (though that one is mainly thanks to Gladiator).

Anyways, it's a good period to do a CoC campaign because the empire is very stable, but is under the risk of decadence, and it was also when the Roman Secret Service (the Frumentarii) started to operate. It would be pretty easy, I think, to reinvent the Frumentarii (or some special division of them, a kind of Bureau XIII or whatever) as an organization dedicated to investigating mythos dangers to the Empire.

Quote from: Elfdart;1021201The word dragon was used for any number of large reptiles from snakes to iguanas to monitors to crocodiles, so I'd assume he was referring to one of those. As for the ants, maybe druids had Creeping Doom spells in real life. :eek:

True enough and fair enough--so one could easily include in that category of critters an overgrown Komodo Dragon, which would be more than enough to have long day written all over it for our heroes such as they are, and since we are dealing with Call of Cthulhu and have access to serpent people which I admit aren't straight up history but a species of fantasy it can be a bit enhanced to make it even bigger.  Though of course, we still haven't seen the ants.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1021685That is actually fairly well documented period. It is, however, a period that is less well-known by the general public, and by the average gamer, than the Julio-Claudian or Flavians emperors, or the time of Commodus (though that one is mainly thanks to Gladiator).

Anyways, it's a good period to do a CoC campaign because the empire is very stable, but is under the risk of decadence, and it was also when the Roman Secret Service (the Frumentarii) started to operate. It would be pretty easy, I think, to reinvent the Frumentarii (or some special division of them, a kind of Bureau XIII or whatever) as an organization dedicated to investigating mythos dangers to the Empire.

Exactly so, though the thought running through my mind when I wrote it was that the key bit of Cassius Dio is missing, so all manner of possibilities open up.