Why Fantasy Earth instead of Historical Earth?

[Thomas Shey]

I've heard it argued Barney Miller is one of the most realistic programs about police officers in the United States. If anyone here rememers the show, they spent most of their time at the station completing paper work.

If I recall, that's because it wasn't a drama; it was a workplace comedy that happened to be about a police station.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The show only rarely showed anything outside the standing sets of the station. It was the ultimate bottle show. It was not a police procedural, it was a workplace comedy set in a police station.

And I'm beaten to the punch.

 

[MGibster]

If I recall, that's because it wasn't a drama; it was a workplace comedy that happened to be about a police station.

It wasn't a drama but neither was it a straight up comedy either. They often dealt with serious issues unique to law enforcement you typically wouldn't see in other settings. Like the episode where Wojo fills out a report when a battered wife came in to make a complaint about her husband but leaves at the end of the episode having refused to sign it. I've heard Barney Miller referred to as realistic simply because it dealt with common aspects of being a cop most other shows at the time didn't.

 

[MNblockhead]

Even though D&D's first official setting book didn't arrive until 1980 with the Greyhawk Folio, so much was already inherited from fantastic lands. One wonders what the game might have been like had Gygax's Greyhawk and Arneson's Blackmoor been replaced by, I don't know, Britain and the Holy Roman Empire.

Or, as was popular among the war gaming community at the time, the Napoleonic era wars.

Grenadiers & Glory (G&G)
Adventure in a world of marching armies, secret societies, daring cavalry charges, and political conspiracies!

I still like to think that in this alternative history David Arneson would have located a castle in a swamp with ten levels of dungeon beneath it. La Noire Tourbière.

 

[MNblockhead]

Considering the amount of debate about historical accuracy in our fantasy settings, I'd hate to think about actual historical settings

PC: "Hey, you short-changed me! I paid a livre!"
Merchant: "Yes, but that's a Tournois livre, not a Parisis livre."

 

[MNblockhead]

Pretty much every show that isn't primarily a soap opera turns up the dial on the interesting parts of whatever they're about: hospital dramas, legal dramas, cop shows, shows about firefighters--even though all these can have interesting and exciting events, they don't come up nearly as often in reality as in those shows. Heck, you can even argue that about military dramas.

What you don't think people would be interested in watching a junior associate sitting at a computer Shepardizing legal citations in Lexis Nexis?

"Sorry honey, I can't miss tonight's episode of Ailey McPhail, its the season finale about a 50-attorney document review!"

 

[Tonguez]

I think someone else has already mentioned fictional stories are all set in a fantasy world. But that's not a particularly useful truth when we're trying to categorize Frodo's Middle Earth and Harry Callahan's San Francisco.

yes absolutely - I was being specific to the cited examples of CoC and Pendragon both of which are set in historic eras but with creatures that never existed on 'our' Earth. In contrast Harry Callahan's stories don't tend to feature those fantastic elements

 

[Maxperson]

I don't think so really. Playing WW2 based D&D just doesn't feel that exciting honestly.

I don't, either. I get enough of the real world here in the real world. When I sit down to play an RPG, I want to run across the deserts of Athas and plumb the depths of Undermountain.

 

[Autumnal]

I would watch Dirty Harry XIII: The Mole Men.

 

[Committed Hero]

I don't like overly well defined settings, and historical settings would certainly qualify.
The problem isn't neccessarily nerds arguing - it can be simply that players might make assumptions based on their real historical knowledge that aren't true in my campaign because I lacked that real world knowledge. That might not even lead to a real conflict - but it can still lead to confusion and frustration.

Similarly, you have to balance playing in a historical era with giving players the ability to forge history.

I prefer historical gaming, but can understand someone else not liking it.