This came up in a game I played in last weekend, but kinda in reverse. The GM is running a very low-magic setting that, so far, seems to have no fantastical elements at all except for our one magic using PC. Everything else is Celts and Picts and dangerous wildlife. IMO the GM erred on the side of realism by pretty much expunging all mystery out of the setting... no suggestion of the magical worldview of those people, no colorful/odd NPCs, no strange occurences that MIGHT be supernatural to a superstitious person.
Like, you can have a setting that 'feels' fantasy without any real fantasy elements... but if everybody is a stolid rationalist, if there are no freaks and weirdos...

I guess I'm just saying that 'historical' doesn't rule out 'weird and strange', but that seems to be how this GM is taking it (and yes, we talked about this after the game session).
I LIKE that the game is low-magic and devoid of overt fantasy tropes... but I'd like there to be a LOT more color. Playing it straight doesn't mean there wouldn't be rumors of monsters and witches, fey being blamed for odd mishaps, creepy old guys selling 'magic' charms.
As it is I expect that when something truly supernatural does show up in the game (besides the one PC's occasional spell) it's going to feel forced... like a laser blaster in a Western.

What the OP is asking about is what I essentially did in Dark Albion.  My key guideline was this: I started from the point of view that (before the war, at least) the typical peasant or townsman living in Albion could easily go his entire life without personally seeing any kind of inhuman or unnatural monster.

Then I worked my way from there. So what this means is that you define areas as the "settled" and areas as the "wilderlands". This isn't necessarily strictly about borders; because there can be areas well within the center of a kingdom, but that for one reason or another qualify as "wilderland": places with difficult terrain, where there's no permanent human presence, ruined or damned or abandoned places. And of course the savage unsettled areas in the limits of the kingdom as well.


And yes, at the same time, the typical peasant or townsman would be absolutely certain that chaos and the inhuman was everywhere. They would know all the stories, they would fear the influence of evil/chaos in their own community, they would know that those kingdoms next door are just full of supernatural stuff you don't get here, thank the gods. They'd take great care to bury the dead properly so they don't rise up again, and be on the lookout for witches.

I ran a Savage Worlds campaign a while back that was set in the 1600s.  The characters were called in to deal with a set of deaths (unknown cause) in a very early New World settlement.  

I wanted to keep things as historically accurate as I could while also including supernatural elements.  I spent months reading books on the early settlements, politics of Europe, realities of ocean passage, Native American cultures from the region in question (including politics between the various native groups), regional Native American folklore and mythology, and sailor's folklore from the period.  All of the non-real critters they encountered were things people believed in at the time, but the players themselves weren't familiar with them.  The few NPCs who had magical abilities were drawn from real-life magical traditions (theological and otherwise), so the things they could do were limited.  One player wanted to make a character that was part of a monster-hunting secret society, so I helped him come up materials for that, including a bestiary compiled from reports that other people in his group had put together on their travels.  Another player wanted to play a magic using character associated with John Dee, so we worked out how Enochian magic would work and I gave him copies of notes he would have taken as an apprentice (including an Enochian translation table that he ended up having to use in the campaign).

The game went over fairly well.  I ran it in a sandboxy way.  All the players knew was that their characters were being paid to go to the colony in question and fix any problems they found, particularly any related to the mysterious deaths.  How they did that, what hooks they followed, etc. was all up to them.  They accomplished their goal, as far as they and the NPCs knew, but they did miss a number of things.  I always put a lot more into my campaigns than I expect the characters to discover.

Quote from: Simlasa;910683I guess I'm just saying that 'historical' doesn't rule out 'weird and strange'

Exactly. I try to run historical campaigns that would fit into the worldview of the people of the time period, whether certain beliefs would stand up to scientific scrutiny or not.

Quote from: carpocratian;911754Exactly. I try to run historical campaigns that would fit into the worldview of the people of the time period, whether certain beliefs would stand up to scientific scrutiny or not.

That's what Dark Albion tries to do.