Is it possible to have an exciting and long-lasting campaign in a historical setting?

[Thanee]

From what I have read here and there, a majority of gamers think that playing in a historical setting is boring, or at least much less exciting than a true fantasy world.

I sometimes wonder where you get your ideas from...

Playing 'real life' is boring, i.e. doing what you do every day, anyways.

But historical settings can be about as fun and interesting as true fantasy, especially if you add some supernatural bits and pieces. There are a few very successful roleplaying games, which work that way, i.e. Vampire or Cthulhu.

Bye
Thanee

 

[TerraDave]

As often, my choice of words wasn't careful. In fact I don't want to play a truly historical setting. My idea was of taking some period of history and build a campaign upon it. Lets see this one as an example:

-- Dark Ages 500: Roman empire is crumbling as west is swept by barbarian hordes that destroy civilization. Roman empire being decadent cannot stop the barbarians.

-- Larger than Life: Have seen movies such as Gladiator or 13th Warrior? Obviously equipment and building are better than what they truly were during these periods. I would do the same, and maybe even more exaggerated.

-- Adding the Supernatural: Not only magic and monsters are real, I want more. I would pretend this: in fact Roman were not only decadent, they were becoming more and more chaotic, dabbling in sorcery, summoning of demons, etc. Their doings brought chaos in itself, and as a result the forces of nature (represented by barbarian hordes) retaliated with savagery. What I mean is, that under the rationale course of history were occult and supernatural forces at work.

-- Maybe add a really weird D&D staple in it. For something more Cthulhu like, it appears that antediluvian abominations were brought back to the world by the careless doings of Roman necromancers. These would be the Mind Flayers, whose agents are dopplegangers; and adding some deep-ones wouldn't hurt either.

Of course, all of this is off the top of my head as I am writing, and would need more thinking. But the idea would be to use historical Earth for doing something fantasy, but with more subtlety to not break the suspension of disbelief. At least making something similar to Cthulhu Dark Ages, but in heroic d20.

This does not sound boring! (and you should be able to find a lot of resources, including the new Green Ronin Mythic Vista, which I think is called "Eternal Rome")

 

[MaxKaladin]

I've never run a full historical campaign. However, at this point in my life, I'm not sure I could run a game that wasn't influenced by history. Most of my settings generally start with some sort of historical premise which I then twist and turn into a fantasy setting of some sort.

 

[sword-dancer]

From what I have read here and there, a majority of gamers think that playing in a historical setting is boring, or at least much less exciting than a true fantasy world.?

Migard - check
Harnmaster check
Gurps Middle Ages, Celtic Myth, China, Arabia check

In fact, this was great, but low magic and we hardly got past 9th level. But today, if I were to do it again, I fear that realism would really restrict myself and induce a boring campaign. However, I guess that cleverly done it could be cool nonetheless.

You couldn`t do anything realistic with D&D

-- What supernatural stuff could be added that wouldn't break the suspension of disbelief for play in a pseudo-mythical Europe of the Dark Ages

Look at Midgard

 

[Ambrus]

I ran a historical fantasy Dark-Ages campaign set in the West Saxon kingdom in England in the year 511 AD. I picked this time period because it was, among a few other candidates, the period in which King Arthur is reputed to have lived. I based my ideas on two articles published in Dragon magazine #257. I even corresponded with the author by email for a bit. The twist was that the party was made up of first generation native Saxons, i.e. the bad guys. The weren't really bad though, they were just young Saxons intent on surviving and thriving in their native home. The Romans were long since gone from the island but their roads and ruins were still around, though the Saxons assumed they'd been built by giants. The campaign lasted for several years but the game had a lot of turn-around as several early players dropped out not quite realising what the campaign would be like I guess. Those who stayed however got into it and seemed to enjoy it quite a bit.

As it turned out, the heroes never met King Arthur but only heard rumours about him. In the time frame of the campaign, he just didn't figure prominently. The PCs did encounter a few Arthurian characters, though they didn't necessarily realise it since I used their welsh names; Merlin, Taliesin and Sir Percival. The campaign started with a quest to escort a christian priest who was seeking an old Greek draft of the gospel of Saint Mark in the roman ruins that lay in Saxon territory. Later the story centered around a group of classic mythology dream spirits called the Oneiroi lead by their master and brother Morpheus. They'd been slumbering since the Romans abandoned the island but had been accidentally roused and were angry at having been forgotten.

All in all, we had fun. The problem with a historical fantasy game is the work involved. Essentially, the difference between this kind of a setting and that of a published game world is that of reading versus research. A published game world requires you only to buy the book(s) and read them while a historical fantasy setting requires you to find the right history books, read them and then convert the material into notes, stats and a decent player handout so the players are on the same page. It was a lot of work for me. I read so many history books that I could have written a thesis on the subject of Saxon life. I drew my own maps of the islands with old city names and geographical features that have long since changed on the island. The player handout was about 15 pages IIRC. Another big hassle was the lack of published adventures for the setting, I had to create everything from scratch. Many of the classes also had to be shoe-horned to fit the setting (this was 2ed). If I were to try running the same thing now, I'd use 3ed, I'd consider using Monte Cook's new Iron heroes setting to better reflect the lower-magic setting and flip through Unearthed Arcana to consider some of the possible alternate rules provided.

 

[Spell]

-- Larger than Life: Have seen movies such as Gladiator or 13th Warrior? Obviously equipment and building are better than what they truly were during these periods. I would do the same, and maybe even more exaggerated.

you know, the trick is making it logical.
if you have, say, flying machines in your late ancient world setting, so be it. but then:
1. are they available to some people, most people, everyone? and why?
2. given the availability of such equipment, how would the world change? even something so mundane as an improved way to farm crops could have a significant impact on your campaign and your adventures!

if everything is logical (not realistic, just logical), then i think you will have a very successful campaign

 

[Spell]

A lot of the terms and lingo we use today for past events and locations were not in place at the time they existed at. The presence of differences in language between cultures and eras present a barrier as well (how many phrases and lingo do we have that are shaped by relatively "modern" events), especially considering how much language affects how people think. And cultural assumptions of historical settings that are different from modern day Western culture presents an obstacle also.

that's very true, but a good history/ sociology/ philosophy book could solve the problem and make you a better person, too (if you understand history better, you understand the world around you better, too.)
i think anybody has something to learn in this respect, so don't take my comment as coming from a patronising man...

 

[Renton]

Really, a lot of the problems people see with historical campaigns (historical knowledge of the players, playing out cultural differences, etc) are an illusion. I may only have a cursory knowledge of say dark ages Britain, but really, how much more knowledge am I going to have of DM joe bloggs homebrew, even after he gives me a page or so of background info? The only thing DM Bloggs has is absolute authority on knowing his world.

And surely, any homebrew worth it's salt should have some different cultural assumptions, or you might as well be playing a modern game.

And unless you're running a game for a thesis, then noones going to complain if you chop up history a bit. If the pcs are interacting with historical big events, you have to assume and expect history to change a bit. And "real" history changes all the time. New narratives are constantly being constructed to explain this or that.

One of the best pieces of advice regarding history came from a prof in school. He said that all history texts are fiction, they just differ in degree. It's up to you to figure out which is which.