Using the real world as a fantasy setting

[Tonguez]

Another example, there are probably billions of people in the world who believe that devils exist. So why isn't our society built around protecting ourselves from devils? Well, someone is actually doing something with prayers or hanging religious symbols on their doors. The other billions who don't believe are doing nothing, for them there is no proof devils exist hence they don't. But the believers would swear upon their lives that they do exist, and that it is because of their rituals if nothing bad happens, except that sometimes it does... even if the unbelievers would swear too that it is only imagination. And so on...

Are you sure our real world societies aren't built around protecting us all from devils? Have a look, virtually every town in western nations has a church and a lot of older towns have the Church as the central building. And those chickens on weather vanes and spikes on tall buildings? - all used to scare off devils.

Plus modern buildings use lots of steel, which keeps the supernatural suppressed

 

[Doug McCrae]

Americans should know very well what happens when you disturb an "Indian" burial mound.

 

[Li Shenron]

Are you sure our real world societies aren't built around protecting us all from devils? Have a look virtually every town in western nations has a church and a lot of older towns have the Church as the central building. And those chickens on weather veins and spikes on tall buildings? - all used to scare off devils.

Plus modern buildings use lots of steel, which keeps the supernatural suppressed

Them's the point! In this idea, you just use real-world folklore and beliefs, and make PCs actually meet ghosts, vampires, devils or deities.

It shouldn't even matter on what side of beliefs the players are in their real lives.

 

[GMMichael]

Are you sure our real world societies aren't built around protecting us all from devils? Have a look, virtually every town in western nations has a church and a lot of older towns have the Church as the central building.

So, a world in which the priests haven't been lying to us all this time? Scary!

 

[Eyes of Nine]

I kind of like the idea where today it's the "real" world, but we all wake up tomorrow, and fantasy has returned. Sort of like Shadowrun; but in our world. Not sure if I'd use D&D 5e rules for that though... Definitely wouldn't use Shadowrun rules, any incarnation.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I don't advice to use real world but pre-Christian age. As DM I can allowing myself things like the destruction of the great sept of Baelor, but some players could feel unconfortable if a Christian temple is destroyed. Other DM could take revenge against other players, former DM, with event ending with a unbelieble deus ex-machina, for example a zombie apocalypse ends when a innocent little girl prays and then the undeads ruled by the lord vampires are terminated by the summoned saint Maurice and the Theban Legion. Maybe in your tabletop you allow as antagonists the cardinal Richelieu, Claude Frollo, Cardinal Franklin (2018 Robin Hood movie) or the bishop of Aquila (ladyhawke movie) but others wouldn't tolerate it. It may be better a fictional counterpart world nobody will complain if the alien skrulls are infiltrated among the calipha's harem.

Other thread is in games set in the real life the History is frozen and it shouldn't be altered by the PCs. For example a group of superheroes PCs help to win the Vietnam War, but then they face the dilema to start a new war against Cambodia to stop Khem rouges and Pol Pot's genocide, and after to face Chinese rage. Or the PCs could help Republicans for the Spanish Civil War against Franco's troops, but the consequences would be the worst anti-Catholic genocide from the XX century by the Red Terror.

 

[Li Shenron]

There should be no need to say that the players should be onboard with the idea. But that's the same as with fantasy settings. I will complain if you introduce aliens in a D&D game without informing me beforehand, because I consider it one of the lamest idea.

Creating an alternate course of history with the actions of the PCs can be one of the attractive features of the game. However, I would rather warn the players not to overestimate how much they can change, and how easily. Sure, if you kill an important NPC before doing a key historical deed, this should have consequences. But you can't just decide "we're going to make this side win the war", because that depends on a lot of factors, and largely not on a PC's capability in combat. D&D is about small-scale battles, so tipping the odds of an entire war is beyond the scope of the game. Sure you can do it sometimes, but it's not what I had in mind. I would rather have the PCs embark in quests that are either local (at low levels) or otherwordly but far from the public eye (at high levels), and then connect the consequences to subtle changes on a wider scale.

 

[Hoffmand]

I’ve kind of taken my own twist to Dresden and cthulhu settings and so rural arcana in a county of wear Virginia where the largest city of 5600 with a small College that trains young pastors, a type of miskatonic university, but i don’t draw much from lovecraft. I focus more on irish and Native American folklore. The mothman is pretty important. But I use a modified runequest and Cthulhu rules for it.

 

[Fenris-77]

@LuisCarlos17f - So you advise avoiding any RPG content that might offend a Christian at the table, but you're fine offending any Jews, Pagans, or Muslims at the table? I don't mean for that to sound adversarial, but this is essentially what you're suggesting. Obviously, the game needs to be a safe space, and no one wants to offend anyone else or make them uncomfortable, but I vehemently disagree that the result of that is that you should never roleplay certain historical periods. Of course you should, just like you should be up front about what a campaign entails at the start, and a player who is uncomfortable should be able to opt out. I don't think it's appropriate to give Christianity a special pass though.

I would never force a player to participate in in-game actions that violate their personal precepts of course, and each player gets to make a character that stands for whatever they want. So if they're playing a character that, for whatever reason, would not stand for the destruction of a Christian temple, then they wouldn't participate or would actively work against it. The history of a period isn't a straight jacket and individual characters aren't, or shouldn't be, forced to align themselves with groups or actions that make them uncomfortable. That does not, in any way, make whole swathes of history unplayable as RPG settings though.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

We can agree we need a safe space, but with real History it has to be a really great space. It's too risky. For example when different countries have got different points of view about a past conflict. Do you remember the movie "300" about the battle of the Thermopylae? It may be enough politicall correct for us, but then Erdogan, the Turkysh president, was really angry with this movie. A story about the Spanish Reconquest could show the Muslim like the civilitation with a higher culture, but others could tell a story about the fitna of al-Andalus, a civil war among Muslims what caused the end of the Omeya dinasty and the kindgom broken into taifas. Or the Napoleonic Wars. If the storyteller is French then Napoleon is a hero, but if he isn't then Frenchs are the evil empire.