Years ago a friend ran an extremely well-regarded Al-Qadim campaign, in which, sadly, I was only participated as a player ofr a short time. One of the memories that stick out is that he dissed the Zakhara setting and ran his games on actual Near Eastern locations, and used actual Islam instead of the "Loregiver" religion. He was no stickler to historical or geographical detail (in fact the campaign felt fairly gonzo), but he felt this made easier for the PCs to engage the exotic setting by having real world material to look at and try and grok certain elements. Clash between "civilized", sophisticated Islam and "savage", primal pre-Islamic myth was a big theme throughout the campaign, as Islamic paladins and clerics teamed up with infidel wizards and shamans to find common cause against power-hungry villains seeking to twist ancient pre-Islamic magic and mythic beings to their benefit (kind of like an Arabic/Islamic version of Three Hearts and Three Lions, though neither the DM nor any of the players had read this little gem of a book).

Recently, Pundit's Dark Albion struck another blow in favor of using historical settings with the minimum necessary alterations for a fantasy game.

The point here being, why bother with the Old World? Why not just set the game in 16th or 17th Century Germany and call it quits? I mean, I can see how certain elements would have to go, such as the extensive "monster nations" (e.g. Chaos Wastes, Vampire Counts), humanoid races (dwarves, elves, halflings, orcs), and you'd have to trade in GW's over-the-top aesthetics to something more toned down. But you could still use the system, and quite a few adventures, and Daemons, and Undead, and lycanthropes, and fey folk, and most everything else.

Don't get me wrong, the Old World is a great caricature of Medieval Europe that revels in its historical accuracy. I love playing with all sorts of post-Enlightenment Medieval stereotypes like jus primae noctis and turning them up to 11 a la Terry Gilliam (and would probably do it regardless of whether I was using the Old World or just The Butcher's alt-16th Century Germany). But maybe I can't help wonder whether, e.g. having the actual Thirty Years Wars raging around would make for a more interesting game than Storm of Chaos this and Valten that... I don't know, maybe Aquelarre would be a better game for what I'm going for here. (If only I could get my grubby mitts on a copy of this snazzy new edition, or any edition really...)

But what do you all think? Would this sort of change affect your enjoyment of the game in any way?

Have a History major in your gaming group. You'll very soon come to hate all historical gaming (at least me and my friends do).

I think it's because people have certain historical expectations; here stateside there isn't much interest in 1500-1700's (or even 1800s) Central Europe per se but I do think when you get into the cloistered ranks of RPGers, there probably is some.  So I, myself, would want to avoid any "Aha!  I'll go see if Duke so-and-so of the Hozenhollerns is home" etc.

Quote from: The Butcher;549216The point here being, why bother with the Old World? Why not just set the game in 16th or 17th Century Germany and call it quits? I mean, I can see how certain elements would have to go, such as the extensive "monster nations" (e.g. Chaos Wastes, Vampire Counts), humanoid races (dwarves, elves, halflings, orcs), and you'd have to trade in GW's over-the-top aesthetics to something more toned down. But you could still use the system, and quite a few adventures, and Daemons, and Undead, and lycanthropes, and fey folk, and most everything else.

I actually think WFRP would work well in that situation, because the core mechanics seem designed around playing average men who happen to go on adventures rather than superheroic adventurers who happen to be human (Or not).

Change-wise, you'd need to ditch the non-humans and magic (You could maybe keep the magic-user classes, but theme them more as "scholar"... also, you'd need a non-casting priest-y career path), but beyond that... honestly, I think you'd be good to go, mechanics wise. I'd also suggest that WFRP1 would be a better starting point because it's the oldest version of the Warhammer world, before it got shiny / spiky.

I'd certainly be happy to play it, and Ars Magica and Pendragon show that there's a market for almost-historical fantasy games.

Quote from: Ladybird;549252Change-wise, you'd need to ditch the non-humans

Yup, beastmen would be right out, you could keep Chaos as satanism though. Not unlike The Warhound and the World's Pain.

Quote from: The Traveller;549254Yup, beastmen would be right out, you could keep Chaos as satanism though. Not unlike The Warhound and the World's Pain.

One of Moorcock's better stand-alones.

Thanks for the acknowledgement for Dark Albion.

This is increasingly becoming my preference for play.

With Arrows of Indra, I've made a technical point of saying "the World of Jagat" is not necessarily our actual historical earth. But all of its countries, kingdoms and geography are straight out of the mythological India of the Mahabharata. I didn't bother changing them at all, because I doubt that any variation I could come up with myself would be quite as interesting as the setting that has stood the test of history over thousands of years.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;549396Thanks for the acknowledgement for Dark Albion.

This is increasingly becoming my preference for play.

With Arrows of Indra, I've made a technical point of saying "the World of Jagat" is not necessarily our actual historical earth. But all of its countries, kingdoms and geography are straight out of the mythological India of the Mahabharata. I didn't bother changing them at all, because I doubt that any variation I could come up with myself would be quite as interesting as the setting that has stood the test of history over thousands of years.

One of the big draws of Dark Albion for me was that you managed to map every interesting NPC or plot hook to a historical counterpart. At least to me, this lends resonance and depth to a scenario that you don't always get with fictional stuff; this has little to do with adherence to historical detail, though, I'm just as happy to play with caricatures or later-day accretions like the afore mentioned jus primae noctis. Don't ask me to explain why; I know it makes no sense... I've always been a big fan of alternate histories, though, so there you go.

We do have one history major in the group, BTW, but he's not an asshole (at least not WRT historical accuracy ). The way we see it, the mere existence of the PCs, as fictional constructs in an open-ended world, already pushes any purported "historical" scenario into alternate history; and any perceived benefit of restraining the game to "historically possible" events would pale in the face of the convoluted railroading required to keep PCs from assassinating Hitler (or Richard II or Martin Luther or whoever).

Most of the fantasy games I run, I just set it in Earth+Fantasy. Yeah, the fact that there are Elves and shit means that history and culture and such will necessarily be different - but there's still about infinity more source material for our world than there is for any other. Besides, the players respond much much more to "The Elbe River" than they do to some fantasy river you made up.

-Frank

Quote from: The Traveller;549254Yup, beastmen would be right out, you could keep Chaos as satanism though. Not unlike The Warhound and the World's Pain.

I haven't read that, but Chaos = satanism would work great.

Regarding removing non-human races, I was thinking Dwarves and Elves more than the NPC races. If the characters at the time would think there were monsters living in the woods... there probably should be. Not many, and probably not organised empires of them, but certainly some.

Conceptually, as a barbaric Other, the Beastmen are pretty neat. They're quite easy to re-theme as grown-up feral children, forest-dwelling wild men, local nobility being jerks and dressing as beastmen to go out and terrify the country bumpkins, or simple rural satanic cults. And after the characters defeat the fake-Beastmen, dropping some evidence that Beastmen are very real indeed would have a lot more impact; as a sample situation, I'd get the characters into a forest investigating a coven of fake-Beastmen, and then have a pack of actual, real Beastmen get to them a minute or two before the characters do.

I think the key would be not overdoing it; monsters in that type of setting would be best used very, very sparingly, and the decision to directly take one on shouldn't be an easy one.

It's a pity that GW are content to use their Orcs as comic relief, because they'd make pretty grim antagonists; oppressors who simply don't understand that the people of the Empire just aren't as robust as them, but could (In theory) still be reasoned with. I don't know quite enough about the 30 years war and military organisation of the period, but roaming armies in the Empire operating on a the war feeds itself concept could maybe fill that role. I certainly wouldn't include Orcs as a non-human species, though.