(+) Gaming in historical settings and dealing with values of the era

[overgeeked]

I run and play a lot of Call of Cthulhu. I stick the racism in the trash where it belongs. If players want to play racist characters they can find a new table. The worst they’ll deal with is side eye and a tsk-tsk now and then. Historical accuracy be damned. People that deal with this stuff in real life don’t want to RP that same crap “for fun”. It’s not fun. Just don’t. You don’t have to include racism and sexism and other phobias and hatreds in your games. It’s a choice to do so. And a really terrible choice at that.

 

[dragoner]

I run and play a lot of Call of Cthulhu. I stick the racism in the trash where it belongs. If players want to play racist characters they can find a new table. The worst they’ll deal with is side eye and a tsk-tsk now and then. Historical accuracy be damned. People that deal with this stuff in real life don’t want to RP that same crap “for fun”. It’s not fun. Just don’t. You don’t have to include racism and sexism and other phobias and hatreds in your games. It’s a choice to do so. And a really terrible choice at that.

Same here when I run CoC. As an Italian girl told me years ago: "If it can't be fun, then it can't be done." Racism, sexism, are big bring downs, and either they walk or I will. Life is too short.

 

[S'mon]

The values of the time is the sea in which the fish swim; it should seem natural to the PCs. Generally the best way to achieve this I think is just to keep them in the background, unless you are really trying to get into the mindset of eg medieval knights; not an easy prospect!

Generally most people including most GMs don't have a good grasp of the values of a particular historical era, certainly not one prior to living memory. They tend to default to either 'same as us' or some weird inversion of current values. I generally don't find gaming in a real historical setting to be fun/enjoyable, partly for this reason. I have the same problem with a lot of historical novels. Generally I'd rather establish up front that it is a fantasy setting, albeit with some tropes from a particular period.

 

[S'mon]

When I used to run Call of Cthulu back in the 1980s, I used the published adventures in the Games Workshop hardback (ie 2e CoC + Companion). There's no racism in those adventures, indeed there is no race in those adventures. I was a 13 year old in Belfast, Northern Ireland, at a boys boarding school (99% white, 1% east-Asian), and had absolutely no idea about race relations in the USA. To some extent ignorance is bliss, I'm not sure I'd want to GM CoC now.

 

[cowpie]

Same here when I run CoC. As an Italian girl told me years ago: "If it can't be fun, then it can't be done." Racism, sexism, are big bring downs, and either they walk or I will. Life is too short.

In my historical games (often CoC) we have a session zero and discuss what we want in the game. For my players, who are all into history, and who are older, very mature, and experienced in managing difficult emotions (and have a lot of mutual trust built up over the years), we can deal with the racism and sexism, and they are not big bring downs for us. Some of us are mental health professionals, or veterans, who have experienced difficult stuff IRL, so having it in a RPG, believe it or not, is old hat, and not that hard to deal with. The more times you climb a mountain, the less scary it becomes.

Life has taught me a few lessons. As a result, I feel it's important to face difficult things to overcome them, and we don't mind including them in games. Since RPGs are make believe, by having tough or dark material, especially in a horror game, it serves as a practice run for dealing with them in real life, so that when the chips are down, one is better prepared to handle them with grace and strength.

If I were playing with strangers, or much younger people (esp. teenagers or some 20-somethings), I'd be careful about including sensitive materials, because of the lack of built up trust, and past (negative) experiences I've had with some younger players projecting blame onto the rest of the group, without forgiveness, even if someone does something accidental to "trigger" the person.

 

[Haiku Elvis]

I didnt vote in the poll as I couldn't find an answer that would match my aporoach. I would expect the characters and game to follow the social standards of the time (and least on the surface) for a lot of the structural flavour. For example I've been idly thinking of having a capaign set in Edo era Japan and if the characters didn't defer to a samurai as being a higher social rank, there would be trouble. (whether the characters decide they want to stir up trouble or not would be up to them).
Where I wouldn't follow historic precedent would be anything relating to personal abuse, predudice or derogatory language or treatment.
Before we would start it would be made clear any real historical predudices from this time will be waived or reworked significantly and do not give any player including the GM the right to use derogatory terms or be abusive or indicate anyone is lesser or doesn't have equal rights.
Being a bully and a d*ck is being a bully and a d*ck. Playing "in character" is not an excuse.
If this creates unrealistic scenarios, well most of us play games where we fight dragons. Realistic is relative.

 

[Ixal]

I didnt vote in the poll as I couldn't find an answer that would match my aporoach. I would expect the characters and game to follow the social standards of the time (and least on the surface) for a lot of the structural flavour. For example I've been idly thinking of having a capaign set in Edo era Japan and if the characters didn't defer to a samurai as being a higher social rank, there would be trouble. (whether the characters decide they want to stir up trouble or not would be up to them).
Where I wouldn't follow historic precedent would be anything relating to personal abuse, predudice or derogatory language or treatment.
Before we would start it would be made clear any real historical predudices from this time will be waived or reworked significantly and do not give any player including the GM the right to use derogatory terms or be abusive or indicate anyone is lesser or doesn't have equal rights.
Being a bully and a d*ck is being a bully and a d*ck. Playing "in character" is not an excuse.
If this creates unrealistic scenarios, well most of us play games where we fight dragons. Realistic is relative.

Isn't defering to samurai not exactly that?

 

[Haiku Elvis]

Isn't defering to samurai not exactly that?

I know what you mean technically yes, but its not going to be really personal to a player in the same way that race, sexuality, gender etc is.
I was going to say I doubt anyone would be triggered by a samurai walking into a tavern and saying "Peasant! Look after my horse" but I was forgetting some players may work in the service industry.

 

[TheSword]

Players are all equal but why on earth do player characters have to be equal? I’ve played landed nobles, I’ve played itinerant rogues. The fun is playing up your choices and creating a believable character

WFRP delves deep into the idea that not everyone is equal, and they do a very good job of it too. Status is a real thing in our world and has been throughout history. I don’t see why it’s wrong to have it in our RPGs.

Incidentally we see prejudice and animosity from all peoples to all peoples. It isn’t restricted to racism. Prejudices and then confounding and turning prejudices on there heads makes for very interesting roleplaying.

Gimli and Legolas’s friendship was all the more powerful because it overcome the prejudices of their respective people.

The same can apply to a noble and a farmer; a bounty hunter and a thief; a wizard and a witch hunter; a laborer and a scholar.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

Couldn't find one that was what I do. The whole "expect players to..." is the problem. I don't "expect" them to...I don't care what their PC's do...because I'm the "world"; the world doesn't conform to a PC's particular picadillo's just because it would "hurt or be detrimental to their feelings/sense of morality/sense of right-wrong/sense of justice/etc".

The world is the world. If, as someone mentioned above, it was an Edo era Japanese campaign, then there is a very strict expectation for members in the society. That won't change. People defer to Samurai, period. They do nothing against them without knowing the consequences (often, death).

HOWEVER... the Players are free to play their PC's however they want. If they want to play a group of "treasonous barbarians", intent on dismantling the status-quo... go for it! But I'm not going to just have people "accept it" and not immediately inform the Daimyo's men.

The base ground expectations are in the title: "Historical Settings". If I was to join a "Historical Edo Japan Campaign" using the HERO/GURPS/Masterbook/whatever 'generic' system, I'd expect there wouldn't be any female samurai, male Gisha, or noble persons 'helping the farmers in the fields'. Because that goes against the 'historical' aspect of it all. Ergo, if a Player got "upset/offended" by their PC being treated as they should (based on religion, house, caste, sex, profession, etc), I'd ask why the heck they wanted to play in a historical based game in the first place.

But, as I said, if the Players want to roleplay a PC that goes distinctly "against the grain" for the challenge of it all... heck yes! I'm just not going to "change things" so it's easy for them.

^_^

Paul L. Ming