Regardless of genre and system - how much does history impact your gaming preferences? Or do you just emulate media you enjoy?

Give us some examples of things you're into, based on history, that you introduce into your games? I *expect* SHARK to load us up on this... who else has some?

If you're more into media emulation - what are some of those sacred cows you keep in your gaming pastures? e.g. Katana really are the greatest weapons ever devised by humans and could split a black-hole.

My last campaign was loosely based on a lot of Andean history - though it also had elves, dwarves, dragons, and so forth. One of the key dungeons used the actual site and maps of the archeological site Chavín de Huántar.

In the past, I've used a parallel 1860s Korea as a setting, and an alternate history of vikings in 1300s around what would be New York.

For the future, I've also been thinking about a slightly more historical game set around Cahokia in its heyday around 1150 A.D. or so, with a swashbuckling vibe. I'd also been looking at Pundit's Arrows of Indra.

The only historical setting I play in is 1920s-1940s in CoC, and that's not as influenced by real history as it ought to be, since I'm woefully under informed about the subject. My games there tend to play like modern period pieces that backfil a lot of modern attitudes, as much as I dislike the idea. When I'm done with the current module I'm running future CoC games will take place in modern times, just because it's easier to get into that headspace for my players.

As for my fantasy settings, I mostly take set dressing from history, some things about attitudes and customs, but I don't sweat being super accurate. I play in a fantasy setting with no relation to the real world, so that any differences can be chalked up as "that's just hte way it is here" rather than inaccuracies, while still taking cues from the real world. That way I can use whatever I want without having to be to precious about getting things right. That's one of the things I like about Howard's works. There's definetly inspiration taken from real world history, but the worlds are divergent enough that deviations go from being inaccuracies to just differences.

One place I do try to be fairly historically accurate though, at least in application, is weapons. The variety of types of weapons available, especially to travelers, is important to me, as well as is the fact that in many cases, weapons are basically interchangeable with only minor differences. A lot of the different varieties of sword we think of todays are all just called "sword" in regional dialect, and the difference between a kriegsmesser and a claymore is likely not wider than that between any two particular kriegsmesser in quality of construction. The game I play most in fantasy these days, Knave2e, simply doesn't have granular enough simulationist rules to model the differences between weapons, freeing up the weapons to have any description I or the players like. Someday I do want to build a full weapon tag system, similar to that in Neoclassical Geek Revival 2e, to model those kinds of weapon differences in an OSR game, but today is not that day, and my current players are not those that would enjoy them.

I would say that real history informs and inspires my games but it doesn't frame it.

A lot of my favorite stories are history stories and it very much informs my gaming.  Frequently, NPCs are my interpretation of historical personalities.  I also use historical events as inspiration for adventures as well as fictional history for my settings.

That being said, I'm not trying to be full on academic and I like the idea of the katana with the perfect cutting edge.  When I'm running a fantasy game, it's a blend of real history, folklore, and cool stuff I like.  Even the history I use is blended as I love mixing up Greek and Germanic mythology.

In one episode of TMNT (the original one that had nothing to do with the comics for the most part), Leonardo cut a door through 2' of solid steel with his katana in a single motion. As far as I'm concerned, that's how katanas operate because historically they're brittle as hell and would suck against any sort of metal armor, regardless of how sharp they could be.

Even when I ran C&S it was almost purely Charlemagne crossed with Merlin; history as seen through the lens of myth, fiction, and movie tropes.

Quote from: Zenoguy3 on February 07, 2025, 01:07:24 PMThe only historical setting I play in is 1920s-1940s in CoC, and that's not as influenced by real history as it ought to be, since I'm woefully under informed about the subject. My games there tend to play like modern period pieces that backfil a lot of modern attitudes, as much as I dislike the idea. When I'm done with the current module I'm running future CoC games will take place in modern times, just because it's easier to get into that headspace for my players.

Pre-CoC 7th ed, the game was well-written in regards to Jazz Era information.

Then they went woke and changed the tone of the game. Specifically, they've expunged what they perceived as racist and sexist.

Which is ironic because it was called the Jazz Age, which came out of a major flourish of African-American culture in that time. Plus women were more liberated than ever, with the passing of the 19th Amendment in 1920 and women's fashions threw away the petticoat and bloomers for slim dresses (i.e. Flapper culture) just to name a few.

Yes, we had the birth of the KKK as a reaction to African-American culture being more accepted. It's unfortunate, but it's a part of our history, regardless if they like it or not.

You have to take the bad with the good.

The latest version of CoC is soo watered-down it's pathetic. It's more of a Hollywood view of the Jazz Age than anything else. It bears no resemblance to the world, historically speaking.

It's ironic if you think about it: the same group of rainbow haired snowflakes that want real world politics and DEI crap in D&D, want to eliminate said real-world stuff from CoC. A game that at it's base historically in the Jazz Age.

When I run CoC, it's about as immersive as you can get. Speakeasies, gangsters, moonshiners, rum-runners, flappers, the Klan, Al Jolsen, Duke Ellington, Golden Age of Hollywood, the birth of radio as a medium for the masses, 23 Skidoo! It's the bee's knees!

FYI: if you need some info on Jazz Age culture, I kinda consider myself an expert. Basically the time post-WWI up to WWII. Wrote a few papers in college when earning my history degree on it.

History is a source of inspiration for my games. There is just so much cool stuff to mine!

Here's one that I've only partially used. During the Cold War, the US wanted the USSR to overextend itself economically in order to help hurry on its collapse. One of these was a uranium refinement program that used very reactive and toxic chemicals to function, except it didn't. They knew that it wouldn't work and would cause a lot of damage to people and cost a lot of money trying to get it to work.

So during the Reagan Administration, the US built the damn thing in Oak Ridge, TN with the express purpose of leaking the plans and specs for the machine to Russian spies so that the USSR would blow billions of rubles, time, engineers, and resources on building something that we knew wouldn't work. It was a long con worthy of masters. And the con worked.

Now, take that bit of Real World espionage and apply it to a game setting. You've got a winner.

I've been recently mining the War of the Roses for ideas to use in a Nobles centric Traveller campaign. It's been a blast!

Now all this history is easy to find. Just look at YouTube. The channels of Scott Manley (mostly rocketry history), The Fat Electrician (mostly military history and popular businesses), and Extra History (uses cartoons to explore in depth historical events). As an example below is the Liberty Doll talking about The Battle of Athens (a significant event in post-WW2 USA that sounds like some GMs game session).

How much I employ history depends a lot on setting and genre.

By default, I'm more into historical flourishes, particularly as relates to technology, than say, having a fictional empire run along the exact same course as a genuine history one.

So, I'll care enough to present pre-gunpowder naval combat accurately (at least before magic drops into the scenario), but not really in having a similar string of emperors, advances and setbacks as the real thing in my pseudo-Roman Empire.

Similarly, I enjoy figuring out an alt-history point of divergence when I am creating my own superhero setting... but that's more in a "anything after this COULD be different" and not that it automatically is (so far the earliest point of divergence I've done involved the Titanic as an inciting incident, but it didn't truly start to diverge until the children aboard the ship and exposed to alien radiation from a ship trapped in the iceberg, came of age in the lead up to WW2).

You wanna talk alt-history:

In a CoC game at Origins a few years ago, we played Horror on the Orient Express with historical figures. I played Nikola Tesla, my best friend played T.E. Lawrence (aka Lawrence of Arabia), and one of the other players was playing Leon Trotsky (how we got together? Don't ask. I don't remember). There were other historical figures played by others, but I don't remember who. They're not important to the story.

Well, we altered history. One of the stops for the Orient Express is Venice, Italy.

Mussolini's Italy.

We were out in Venice and we wanted to get rid of Trotsky. The guy playing him was being a complete jackass. Everywhere he went he was all "workers of the world unite!" and all that crap. Sure, he was playing to type (it was Trotsky), but it got to the point where Trotsky convinced the hotel staff to unionize and go on strike. Which mean the bar was closed in the hotel! Lawrence of Arabia would have none of that shit! You take away his gin and tonic or scotch, you're in for trouble (by this time Lawrence was a notorious alcoholic) .

So we found ourselves a couple of Black Shirts, pointed to Trotsky, and yelled "Communista agitatore!" (which means Communist agitator).

Trotsky ran. They caught up with him. He resisted. They promptly beat the shit outta him until dead and threw his body in the canal.

That was one of the most fun and funniest times I've ever played a game.

So, yeah, instead of Trotsky getting a ice pick shoved in his head in Mexico in 1940, we had Mussolini's goons club him to death in 1927 in Venice.

Ahhh...Venice...

I rarely base things on history or go the media emulation route.  More often, it would be better described as I throw some different bits of history and media emulation in a blender, then extrapolate from that.  It's what some people would describe as a mashup, though that is not entirely accurate, either.

The closet I come to basing on history is that I'll use a region and time as a kind of analog for general tech level and tone.  My current campaign used Western and Central Europe, before Charlemagne, as an idea for the starting point.  Then I slathered a lot of myth, fairy tale, vastly alternate history, and the like on top of it. About all that remains of that starting point is some of the base tech, look of the usual weapons and armor, clothes, etc. It would be misleading to describe this campaign as in any way, shape, or form as historical.

I'm always trying to make something imaginary that manages to somehow feel a little real through selective realistic or even historical elements.  Most media properties as is don't scratch that itch for me, and even when they do, I find them harder to change.  If you tell most players you are doing, for example, Dumas with magic, then what you'll get if you are lucky is the Three Musketeers, 1970's version, with almost no fantasy at all.  If not lucky, you'll get the Disney cartoon version.

To date, nothing I have done needs any historical accuracy. I do hope to get into some more real world-ish games, like Delta Green, and I will try to not completely break immersion by introducing laser guns in 1985. But since there's already a suspension of disbelief, I'll do what me and my players will enjoy. I know some folks on this forum are into historical accurate sims (and, hey, I admit to being an SCA member in the past), but that's not what I'm looking for when I play.

Generally speaking, if it's for anything remotely fantasy related, even something like Lamentations of the Flame Princess which often uses real history as its backing, I'll generally ignore it, unless it's something in more modern times, like Call of Cthulhu or anything that's potentially still in living memory. Usually then I'll at least try to make sure I'm not outright contradicting any commonly known history, and will often look for opportunities to add interesting pieces that the players might not be familiar with.

Well, part of the problem is who wrote the history book you're using...

While there are times for taking history seriously, generally I follow actual history with about as much sincerity as I do any RPG's canon setting; I mine it for parts. Generally, I start with a critical mass of actual history which serves as canon, but I will abruptly stop looking things up in the book if I get inspiration to do otherwise, and I reserve the right to go back to looking at a history book if I run out of inspiration.

Quite often, seeing the real history is good at prompting me to do something else. Real events have a tendency to result in boring conclusions, at least by RPG standards.

The game I'm almost done writing is fantasy 1600s pirates and treasure hunting in the Caribbean.  I've done a lot of research into the history of the locale and it's as close as I can make it, except where I made intentional changes for the fantasy and different map.

If I am running a game like CoC, accurate and immersive history is very important --and I don't try to "update" things for modern audiences, or create alternate narratives