Agemegos
Over-educated dilettante
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- May 15, 2021
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A recent thread about RPG campaigns and adventures set during WWII got me thinking about the difference between stories and novels that were written in past eras with then-contemporary settings (on one hand) and historical fictions set in the same periods, but from a point of view in time that makes them seem strange and romantic (on the other hand). There are a lot of them (differences, that is) that have to do with presenting period features as quotidian or romantic (which might go one way with sword-fights and the other way with train travel), and with treating social and political issues as controversial (which they were at the time) or as universally agreed upon (which they might seem to be now). In the Sherlock Holmes story His Last Bow motor-cars and naval guns are technothriller exotica; now they are humdrum or even quaint. A work written in the actual Thirties that depicted fascism as vile, and shooting German state officials as heroic, would have been taking an extreme view in a global controversy; one written in 1980 but set in 1936 that does the same is expressing a consensus that enjoys unanimous lip service. Jane Austen's depiction of the lot of women in the upper class of late Georgian England is edgier than Georgette Heyer's.
I think in the case of those differences RPGs with period settings tend strongly to resemble the historical novels rather than the old novels, and that that is perfectly fine and as it ought to be.
Another difference that I notice is that historical fiction tends to deal with larger stakes than old fiction. For example, Sherlock Homes stories written in the late Victorian period deal with such issues as finding out who actually stole a sapphire out of an hotel-room, covering up the sexual past of a snobbish king, murders incidental to the nobbling of a race-horse or the kidnap of a schoolboy, or somebody being framed for a murder. The stakes are generally the reputation and fortune of an unimportant family, sometimes a bit of espionage, and at most a murder or a few murders. But when new Sherlock Holmes stories were written in the early 21st century the stakes were at least the massacre of the House of Lords by a technothriller terrorist, or a nefarious plan by the German Empire to cheat in WWI by starting it a year early, before everyone was ready.
It will come as no surprise to fellow habitués of this Pub that I think that grandiose stakes are best for special occasions and career climaxes, that for a steady diet in role-playing adventure it is preferable to deal with stakes that may be vitally important to the PCs and their clients or patrons, but that most NPCs can reasonably treat as secondary, or not their business at all. Besides, many players are not terribly keen to deal with issues that would be in the history books if real.
Perhaps that means that historical RPG has a natural or ideal or perhaps expected place that is uncomfortably in between examples from historical fiction and examples from old adventure fiction.
I think in the case of those differences RPGs with period settings tend strongly to resemble the historical novels rather than the old novels, and that that is perfectly fine and as it ought to be.
Another difference that I notice is that historical fiction tends to deal with larger stakes than old fiction. For example, Sherlock Homes stories written in the late Victorian period deal with such issues as finding out who actually stole a sapphire out of an hotel-room, covering up the sexual past of a snobbish king, murders incidental to the nobbling of a race-horse or the kidnap of a schoolboy, or somebody being framed for a murder. The stakes are generally the reputation and fortune of an unimportant family, sometimes a bit of espionage, and at most a murder or a few murders. But when new Sherlock Holmes stories were written in the early 21st century the stakes were at least the massacre of the House of Lords by a technothriller terrorist, or a nefarious plan by the German Empire to cheat in WWI by starting it a year early, before everyone was ready.
It will come as no surprise to fellow habitués of this Pub that I think that grandiose stakes are best for special occasions and career climaxes, that for a steady diet in role-playing adventure it is preferable to deal with stakes that may be vitally important to the PCs and their clients or patrons, but that most NPCs can reasonably treat as secondary, or not their business at all. Besides, many players are not terribly keen to deal with issues that would be in the history books if real.
Perhaps that means that historical RPG has a natural or ideal or perhaps expected place that is uncomfortably in between examples from historical fiction and examples from old adventure fiction.
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