Historical Games Round 75

[Faraday]

@KarmaBum said in New Concept:

We do this all the time in modern settings. I believe Keys and Network both have a “no COVID” take on things, no? So is it harder to put out of mind because it’s historical?

No, if your game is set in 2023, I would have the same same uncanny valley problem. What exactly does a 2020 without covid look like? What happened instead? What didn’t happen?

@Testament said in New Concept:

“I’m never going to make a character or a player feel like that.”

I respect that compassion immensely. I too want people to feel safe, and do worry about toxic people inflicting distress under the banner of “but history!” I’m not sure I would ever run another open historical game for that reason. I think about doing a sci fi western sometimes to have a similar “lawless frontier” feel without the baggage, but it’s a lot of work to define something original.

[Pavel]

@Faraday said in New Concept:

I think about doing a sci fi western sometimes to have a similar “lawless frontier” feel without the baggage, but it’s a lot of work to define something original.

Firefly could work as a setting, if you were of a mind.

[Gashlycrumb]

Huh.

I don’t see why anything should stop you from removing the bigotry, with no explanation and no lampshade. As ‘Bridgerton’ has done. It is a historical fantasy and we don’t really have to worry about, or even ask, why some English aristocrats are Black in 1813. We can enjoy a show about romance and social manipulations and pretend the period had no racism and that the classism wasn’t really relevant. We can even watch ‘Harlots’ the next night and enjoy characters battling very highly relevant racism, classism and sexism without it ruining ‘Bridgerton’ or getting confused and thinking it’s the same fictional reality.

Nobody wants really accurate historicals, it’s too much reading and you get somebody like me saying, “No, you don’t have a Golden Retriever, they didn’t exist until 1908, no, there is no chocolate in medieval Italy and you don’t have an oven either, no, your pirate ship is not called ‘Aces Wild’ because we predate poker by over 200 years,” and so on.

Speaking of ships: CoC on an ocean-liner, with nods to shit like those Bermuda Triangle X-Files episodes and such.

Edited to Add: Not that I lack sympathy for those who do hate these inaccuracies and find they interfere with suspension of disbelief. I had to put (Sexy) Rome on pause to swear for several minutes about how there are so many parrots in that show and every single one of them is S. American or Australian, when the Old World has plenty of parrots that Romans really would have.

[Third Eye]

@Gashlycrumb said in New Concept:

Nobody wants really accurate historicals,

Eh. Back in the day I played straight-up historical MUs with no supernatural or alt-history adaptation, and I did enjoy them (I do not think I RP’d anything particularly horrific, either). I think the audience for them is niche and small, and there’s a large swathe of players who need to self-select out of them for various reasons, but folks who want to play Band of Brothers or Downton Abbey do exist. Whether those games could exist now in the same way they did 15 years ago, IDK, and that makes me a bit bummed. Still something I could see playing in a closed group and enjoying, though.

[Gashlycrumb]

@Third-Eye I love them, but they were very niche even when the hobby was larger. And I actually did tell people stuff like “Golden Retrievers don’t exist yet”, and had to learn to STFU about these details, or at least make it abundantly clear that I was saying it because it’s interesting, not 'cause I think it’s bad to ‘cast’ a Golden in an 1865 setting.

[Roz]

@Gashlycrumb said in New Concept:

Huh.

I don’t see why anything should stop you from removing the bigotry, with no explanation and no lampshade. As ‘Bridgerton’ has done. It is a historical fantasy and we don’t really have to worry about, or even ask, why some English aristocrats are Black in 1813.

I wish that was what Bridgerton had done – just made it entirely a historical fantasy, a more or less colorblind setting, where these things didn’t matter at all. Except they didn’t, really, because they suddenly inserted a very flimsy in-universe reason for it, and it seemed to come down “racism has been deleted from society over the past couple decades because the King married a black woman,” which was such a weird call for them to make. It removed it from the world of historical fantasy and gave it an explanation and lampshade.

[Tez]

@Gashlycrumb said in New Concept:

Huh.

I don’t see why anything should stop you from removing the bigotry, with no explanation and no lampshade. As ‘Bridgerton’ has done.

I don’t think that’s a perfect example, as Bridgerton actually did try to explain it – largely by gesturing to the Queen. Historians, don’t come after me, but I understand that she historically may have been biracial, and they used that to say that she helped break down social barriers. It’s even briefly referenced here and there: Lady Dansbury comments on it. A quick google of ‘Bridgerton’ and ‘race’ will show that there are people even on the liberal side who weren’t happy with that, for many of the reasons that we’ve actually touched on in this thread.

That said, we also get Kate and Edwina, so Bridgerton is basically perfect and haters can go watch something else.

Nobody wants really accurate historicals, it’s too much reading and you get somebody like me saying, “No, you don’t have a Golden Retriever, they didn’t exist until 1908, no, there is no chocolate in medieval Italy and you don’t have an oven either, no, your pirate ship is not called ‘Aces Wild’ because we predate poker by over 200 years,” and so on.

Speaking as someone who spent a whole lot of time googling what kind of racing horses there were in the American colonies and what kind of dogs were common on ranches on the frontier, RESPECTFULLY DISAGREE. There is a lot of room for lovely texture in these small details, and I think that on the whole people are more likely to engage in it when it is put before them.

Sorry about the chocolate, though. Bummer.

[Tez]

@Roz WHY ARE YOU FASTER

Mine had a gif tho.

[shit-piss-love]

Just weird to me people coming in here still like “I can’t imagine why anyone would want to play a historically accurate setting” when there’s been multiple people in this thread explaining why in detail. Not a single one of us has said anything remotely like we think playing sanitized settings is dumb or wrongfun. Would be hella cool if we could get the same respect back.

[KarmaBum]

@shit-piss-love said in New Concept:

Not a single one of us has said anything remotely like we think playing sanitized settings is dumb or wrongfun.

…did someone say that historically accurate is dumb/wrong and I missed it?? Been refreshing like a boss today and even did a ctrl+f for “dumb” and “wrong” and admittedly the way this software paginates shit sucks but didn’t find any except your post…

[hellfrog]

@KarmaBum ok but for real there have been a couple posts being real dismissive of any desire to play Historical Accuracy, come on now

[Roz]

@KarmaBum said in New Concept:

@shit-piss-love said in New Concept:

Not a single one of us has said anything remotely like we think playing sanitized settings is dumb or wrongfun.

…did someone say that historically accurate is dumb/wrong and I missed it?? Been refreshing like a boss today and even did a ctrl+f for “dumb” and “wrong” and admittedly the way this software paginates shit sucks but didn’t find any except your post…

I think probably this:

@Gashlycrumb said in New Concept:

I don’t see why anything should stop you from removing the bigotry, with no explanation and no lampshade.

And this:

Nobody wants really accurate historicals

[Third Eye]

@hellfrog said in New Concept:

@KarmaBum ok but for real there have been a couple posts being real dismissive of any desire to play Historical Accuracy, come on now

And the thing is THAT’S FINE. Historical MUs were never super-popular. They are not and were not for everyone. But they did exist. They were not hot-beds of racism or sexism or homophobia from my experience. Some of my most interesting RP experiences were finding roles to RP a female character in WW2 or a POC character in WW1 (these people absolutely did exist and you can find plenty of RL figures to base them on!). With the understanding that these people faced societal prejudices that weren’t reflected in RP, in part just because it’s not fun to be the bad guy, but also because in a foxhole different kinds of relationships and viewpoints develop between individuals that can be genuinely interesting to explore.

TBH my Sikh sergeant on WW1 The Greatest Generation (still one of my favorite characters even tho he died violently due to code) probably encountered the same amount of IC prejudice my prodigal knight did on Arx, and I had to back-feed a similar amount of ‘I guess NPCs are mean to me in XYZ’ ways into my head-canon.

[Gashlycrumb]

@Roz I guess I missed that. Damn.

I took it as a rather lovely theatre-major’s joke: This is a dumb modernized regency romance and we’re gonna cast like we’re doin’ Shakespeare.

@Tez said in New Concept:

Speaking as someone who spent a whole lot of time googling what kind of racing horses there were in the American colonies and what kind of dogs were common on ranches on the frontier, RESPECTFULLY DISAGREE. There is a lot of room for lovely texture in these small details, and I think that on the whole people are more likely to engage in it when it is put before them.

Sorry about the chocolate, though. Bummer.

I love you for that. And love to do that, too.

And do want to play accurate historicals myself.

So, guys, sheesh, yeah, the nobody was hyperbole. On historical games, it’s often hard to keep accurate in the strictest or even the Patrick O’Brian level without policing people for it more than I feel is comfortable.

[KarmaBum]

@Gashlycrumb said in New Concept:

Not that I lack sympathy

@farfalla said in New Concept:

I definitely didn’t take it personally, don’t worry!

@KarmaBum said in New Concept:

You’re a good RPer who just has a totally different set of preferences from mine.

@bear_necessities said in New Concept:

no need to apologize! I am just not great with words anymore these days so I wanted to make my point a little clearer lol

@L-B-Heuschkel said in New Concept:

Either take’s valid, I figure.

…

Tired of scrolling. I guess I thought we were all engaging on the same terms. (“You don’t like this? Weird, tell me more.” “You DO like this? Weird, tell ME more!”)

Anyway, I am sorry if the tone is reading as dismissive. It’s not my intention.

I probably made my point like 15 posts ago anyway.

[Faraday]

@KarmaBum said in New Concept:

Tired of scrolling. I guess I thought we were all engaging on the same terms. (“You don’t like this? Weird, tell me more.” “You DO like this? Weird, tell ME more!”)

You quoted a number of the folks engaging in constructive discussion, which is great. I appreciate them, and this isn’t directed at them (or you).

But there have also been a number of comments like (paraphrased): “No one wants accuracy…” or “I can’t fathom why anyone would want accuracy…” or “If you can suspend your disbelief for this but not that maybe you should think about that…” or “I don’t see what the big deal is…”

These come across as kind of dismissive when several of us have tried–patiently and repeatedly–to explain why handwaving away discrimination is problematic for us.

In contrast, no one (that I recall) is saying “Wow, I can’t fathom why anyone would want to nope out of RPing in a bigoted world…”

@Third-Eye said in New Concept:

[Historical MUs with some measure of historical accuracy] did exist. They were not hot-beds of racism or sexism or homophobia from my experience. Some of my most interesting RP experiences were…

Heh, I actually thought of your Sikh guy before you even mentioned him. That was a cool character.

But you summed it up well. I played on a lot of historical games, and almost everyone I know had to head-canon far more discrimination (from NPCs) against our characters than ever came up on-camera.

That said, I can understand how even imagining your character inhabiting a world where NPCs wouldn’t accept them can be triggering or unpleasant or exhausting. I think that’s part of the rub that no amount of “you can nope out of that RP” can overcome.

And to be fair, there are always people who take things too far. Even if you deal with them perfectly, that doesn’t take away the unpleasantness they leave in their wake. Much as I love historical fiction, for open games I’ll probably stick to sci-fi.

[Tez]

@Faraday lol I thought about it but I don’t like to interfere unless requested. Will do!

[Polk]

@Faraday Good points. Some people WANT there to be stuffy old racists around that can be shown up.

Some people want terrible adversity for their PCs to overcome.

I deal with this every day in WoD. Some people want gritty harsh defeat and misery. Some people want shiny spaceships and rayguns.

[Tez]

@Polk said in Historical Games Round 75:

I deal with this every day in WoD. Some people want gritty harsh defeat and misery. Some people want shiny spaceships and rayguns.

I’m sorry, WoD has spaceships?!

[shit-piss-love]

I just don’t take seriously any of the trappings of a setting that is fantastic. All the dragons, unicorns, magic, strange races etc does not interest me in the slightest unless the depiction of those things in some way relates back to the political and socioeconomic state of the setting.

Dragons? Meh. Dragons secretly manipulating the political fabric of the peninsula to keep the city-states from organizing a larger state that could actually pose a meaningful threat to their existence? Better.

Cast Fireball? Yawn. Cast Lead to Gold to trick the burgher buying the shipment of grain so that once the spell ends they are left in such significant debt that the Shadow Cartels can capitalize on the ensuing series of economic power shifts and insinuate their front operation into the legitimate structure? Dope.

If it doesn’t groove in some way on the human condition I’m not interested.