Historical Games Round 75
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Yeah.
What interests me about historical settings is the same thing that interests me about fantasy or sci-fi settings - inhabiting a world that has interesting conflicts and tensions and feels notably different from the ‘real’ world. With historical games, I’m interested in the tensions that already exist - if I want to play in that time, it doesn’t mean I just want to have a character who tosses on a flapper dress and dances the Charleston to some jazz. I want a character who is a flapper because of the changing mores around women’s presence in society and the wider acceptance of birth control, who dances the Charleston because newspaper and radios are spreading ideas and ‘pop culture’ faster than ever before and urban spaces are simultaneously being glamourized and demonized, and listens to jazz without necessarily being fully aware of the ways oppression has shaped the development of Black music (and its appropriation and acceptance by White culture) but who may end up realizing that she might dance with people of color at the speakeasy she goes to, but when she goes to the ‘respectable’ dance hall, all those people - including the musicians who wrote and play the music - don’t get to walk in the front door.
I think the greater societal pressures are meaningful for historical play. Your character and your game don’t have to be FOCUSED on it, but for myself, I absolutely do want to have a character who engages with those societal forces in some way, even if it’s just as things that led up to THIS moment, or this part of the time.
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Just re: feeling dismissed in this thread, I do feel like it’s important to point out that any time you have several people who feel deeply passionate about a topic but are diametrically opposed in their opinion, you’re going to feel a little dismissed regardless of intent of the other party.
IMO, you’ve got several elaborate, well-reasoned, and very personal justifications for either opinion in this thread that are just inherently dismissive of the opposite view in the way they are written because that’s the internal logic of the conclusion the author came to, otherwise they would feel differently about the topic.
It doesn’t mean anybody here is dismissive about the people who hold the opposite view, it’s just a topic that is going to singe some fingers because it’s something we all obviously care about a lot and, as always, it’s devastatingly hard not to take it personally when someone disagrees with you about something very personal you feel very passionate about, whether you want to admit that or not, lol.
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@Pyrephox said in Historical Games Round 75:
I think the greater societal pressures are meaningful for historical play. Your character and your game don’t have to be FOCUSED on it, but for myself, I absolutely do want to have a character who engages with those societal forces in some way, even if it’s just as things that led up to THIS moment, or this part of the time.
The engagement is a big thing for me and I’ve come to realize a major thread in why I lose interest in most MU*s these days. If it’s a L&L game for instance I have a very short list of characters I’m willing to play:
- Anti-establishment commoner fighting against class oppression
- Noble who sees no problem with the system who I make sure constantly demonstrates the problem indirectly through open cluelessness (“isn’t this opulent dress so cool, it cost more money than it would take to feed this whole city!”)
- Noble who has class consciousness and actively works to maintain the status quo (in which case I consider myself to be a villain and what I want is for people to see it that way and try to stop me)
My experience however is that each of these are essentially non-starters without significant GM investment in support. The anti-establishment commoner’s goals are essentially PvP in a L&L game. The clueless noble’s RP tends to look so very similar to the norm that the parody is lost. The noble villain probably should be a NPC but also their actions in-game are probably very similar to others who actively represent their characters as heroes. There’s actually some potential fun RP to be explored in that dichotomy but my experience is that trying to engage in it gets little IC traction and provokes an OOC response like “yo I’m just trying to play medieval dress up and tell fun stories about knights fighting brigands over here”.
It’s that last bit that keeps me from even trying these games at this point because it is totally valid that people may want to just be a knight fighting brigands and not engage in deep philosophical evaluation of the darkness of the age and how it mirrors contemporary issues. That’s not Wrongfun, do you. I wish there were an option for a game where this sort of RP were part of the main theme. I started designing one but I have a kid now instead of time.
tldr; I want a game that’s not a Power Fantasy, but an Empowered Fantasy.
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@Wizz said in Historical Games Round 75:
IMO, you’ve got several elaborate, well-reasoned, and very personal justifications for either opinion in this thread that are just inherently dismissive of the opposite view in the way they are written because that’s the internal logic of the conclusion the author came to, otherwise they would feel differently about the topic.
I think those of us who were stumping for our preference of historical verisimilitude have been super careful to make sure we’re talking about these things as our personal preferences and to explicitly call out that we think not wanting to be subject to the darker side of the human condition is totally valid. Conversely, I had someone suggest my thinking was rigid because I lack the imagination to conceive a world without bigotry. Most specifically, it’s frustrating to have someone say “I can’t imagine why someone would think this way” in a thread where people took time to write out why they think that way. You can’t imagine it? You don’t have to we wrote it down.
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That was one person who apologized right away when someone else went “hey not cool,” for what it’s worth, and it seemed to me like a sort of snappy generalization rather than directed at anybody here. There certainly are people in the hobby who don’t take nearly the same level of care as you and others here have to make it clear their views are personal and make them more of a demand for accuracy, and it’s easy to me to see why they’d have formed that response as their go-to.
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@Wizz said in Historical Games Round 75:
That was one person who apologized right away when someone else went “hey not cool,” for what it’s worth, and it seemed to me like a sort of snappy generalization rather than directed at anybody here. There certainly are people in the hobby who don’t take nearly the same level of care as you and others here have to make it clear their views are personal and make them more of a demand for accuracy, and it’s easy to me to see why they’d have formed that response as their go-to.
I’m not trying you clash with you here but I need to be clear that it wasn’t just one person. I know this because it happened a few times over the course of a couple days of discussion and I kept letting it roll off until I got fed up and said something.
Very specifically, what made me feel dismissed is that there were continued statements like “I don’t understand how someone could prefer this”. We wrote words to try to be understood. If others still don’t understand, we’ve signaled our desire to engage in the discourse and provided material they can question. To not engage with that is explicitly dismissive. “How about those people that think this. IDGI, right?” when those people are standing right there is rough.
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I’m actually trying really hard here to find where the post is where someone was totally dismissive of another person’s opinion on this matter, but I honestly can’t see what the problem is?
That being said, I often say “I can’t understand why anybody <XYZ thing>” not because I mean I literally cannot understand even if you explain. Like I don’t think anyone is actively trying to be insulting here but anyway if I was the one who said “I don’t understand how someone could prefer this” I didn’t mean it literally just meant that it doesn’t match what I feel and I can’t imagine myself feeling that way I guess?
I don’t think this is constructive to the conversation though and I think this is probably the most polite conversation a forum’s had on this topic so carry on. I want a Western cowboys game so please somebody make it but add evil werewolves
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@bear_necessities said in Historical Games Round 75:
I’m actually trying really hard here to find where the post is where someone was totally dismissive of another person’s opinion on this matter, but I honestly can’t see what the problem is?
I definitely don’t want to go scour a thread so I can post direct confrontations about shit that bothered me in aggregate so I will just drop it.
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@Wizz said in Historical Games Round 75:
Just re: feeling dismissed in this thread, I do feel like it’s important to point out that any time you have several people who feel deeply passionate about a topic but are diametrically opposed in their opinion, you’re going to feel a little dismissed regardless of intent of the other party.
To be clear, I am not feeling this way because someone disagrees. There have been a number of people (among them the ones KarmaBum quoted) who have argued the opposing position quite kindly. Other comments, especially taken together, have made at least two of us feel dismissed. But as @shit-piss-love says, I’m not interested in scouring the thread and pointing fingers at specific comments. The point has been made, and folks can either keep it in mind when posting disagreements or not.
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@Aria said in Missed Settings:
The thing is, the first person that I brought the idea to was like, “But what about the racism, Aria?!”
This comment made me go and read through this thread about MU* historical accuracy again. I guess some players find it disruptive to delete The -Isms from a historical setting, some find it disruptive not to delete that, and (like your friend and yourself) these types don’t easily mesh together.
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A Ashkuri referenced this topic
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@Aria said in Missed Settings:
And then I decided that if I couldn’t persuade one single person that we could probably just, y’know, not include 1920s style racism and generally be fine, with less people being offended by the erasure of it than the allowance of it, this was actually a terrible idea and promptly gave up.
You should do it, exclude the racism altogether and all the other historically accurate shitty behavior, and anytime someone approaches you about “WHY NO RACISM?” show them the door.
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@Aria I think it’s entirely fair to set those expectations for your game. You don’t need to be slaves to historical accuracy in a fantasy game; that’s not what it’s about. It’s about eldritch horror. I don’t see any problem telling people who can’t wrap their heads around that concept that this game isn’t for them.
I’d like to think most people would be totally fine ignoring the shittier aspects of history to allow for a broader, more diverse cast of characters. Not to mention making players more comfortable by not forcing them to deal with those concepts and actions, even in a fictional context.
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@Ashkuri said in Missed Settings:
@Aria said in Missed Settings:
The thing is, the first person that I brought the idea to was like, “But what about the racism, Aria?!”
This comment made me go and read through this thread about MU* historical accuracy again. I guess some players find it disruptive to delete The -Isms from a historical setting, some find it disruptive not to delete that, and (like your friend and yourself) these types don’t easily mesh together.
To be fair, if they’d been pointing out the need to develop a divergent history or something, I think that would’ve been entirely reasonable. If they’d been pointing out that intersection of early labor movements with fights against racial injustice, this also would’ve been an excellent point! Wanting to see those things included in games instead of lifted out as if that solves everything, I totally get. But this was like…
“It’s Appalachia. Of course all the characters are going to be horrifically racist. Because it’s Appalachia!”, effectively painting all of the people of an entire region as a monolith of unvaried views or possibility for nuance without exception. And, like, that’s just not true of any single point group of people literally ever or history wouldn’t have gone the way that it has. Hence the examples I was providing. For every predominant view and systemic issue that’s historically accurate, there’s also counterpoints to it that are historically accurate without having to engage in presentism.
But! I digress, and if I digress anymore, this should probably be Historical Accuracy Argument #385 or something.
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I always find it disappointing when people can’t live without the historical -isms, even though I also don’t terribly mind if they’re in there to an extent and people who are clearly really leaning into getting their ooc freak on in regards to that are culled.
With most any game setting on a mush, you always have to narrow down the scope for the sanity of the staff and the health of the game as a whole. This is just part of that! Of course you will get the screamers of OMG I can’t be whatever splat/association I want putting pressure on game runners to do all nobility plus all guild availability on a fading suns game with 2 staff, or screaming for 15 splats on a WoD place when staff only have availability or interest for 1-3!
I’ve always told people I understand how exploring certain themes from the relative safety of RP is very appealing but that’s probably something better done in a private game or one that the playerbase is heavily vetted because on a public one, one with randos, or one with many “friends” of friends, you are increasing the likelihood of someone who has no business exploring those themes with others being able to come in. Maybe sometimes there’s staff willing to police it, and if there is and you like that avenue of play rather than whining you better treat them well, because most people don’t have time or patience for that.
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@mietze said in Missed Settings:
I always find it disappointing when people can’t live without the historical -isms, even though I also don’t terribly mind if they’re in there to an extent and people who are clearly really leaning into getting their ooc freak on in regards to that are culled.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the next time I try and run a game, I’m going to include the themes and topics I want, and exclude offensive isms and stuff and if people don’t play because I removed racism or sexism from their favorite setting, I’m totally okay with that.
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I’m gonna say something wild:
I think maybe more isms should be included again and we’ve gone too far to remove them. It is possible to tell stories – good stories, fun stories – inside of that structure as long as people have full awareness of what they are engaging it and the chance to opt in or out. Let players play bad guys if they want, so that other players have something to play against.
But.
The list of people I trust with this is pretty small, and staff would have to VIGOROUSLY ENFORCE THIS. I’ve talked about this with @Trashcan a bit lately. I can’t blame people for choosing to eliminate the isms rather than police them. It’s staff time that could go elsewhere, and by including them, staff have a responsibility to make sure that they are used well and players are behaving.
But!!!
I don’t think including isms is necessarily bad.
she/they
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Moved here from https://brandmu.day/topic/606/missed-settings/41
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@Tez I don’t think that’s a wild take at all. You absolutely could run a game with “isms,” but as you said, it’s not necessary. Either way a game runner goes, the key is setting clear expectations upfront—and having a zero-tolerance policy for abuse.
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@Tez said in Historical Games Round 75:
I think maybe more isms should be included again and we’ve gone too far to remove them. It is possible to tell stories – good stories, fun stories – inside of that structure as long as people have full awareness of what they are engaging it and the chance to opt in or out. Let players play bad guys if they want, so that other players have something to play against.
It’s partially the cultural moment we’re in, for better or worse, but I think part of it is just the audience for historical games is small in the first place, and within that small audience the population of gamerunners is even smaller. I enjoyed straight historical games back in the day but they had like 10ish players. So, yeah, there’s an element of people not doing it that is people not wanting to deal with it, but it’s also just…a very small number of people who may or may not want to support a MUSH at any given time.
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@mietze said in Historical Games Round 75:
I’ve always told people I understand how exploring certain themes from the relative safety of RP is very appealing but that’s probably something better done in a private game or one that the playerbase is heavily vetted because on a public one, one with randos, or one with many “friends” of friends, you are increasing the likelihood of someone who has no business exploring those themes with others being able to come in. Maybe sometimes there’s staff willing to police it, and if there is and you like that avenue of play rather than whining you better treat them well, because most people don’t have time or patience for that.
I think this is a great take, but I also think that some of this can be covered with the use of a Social Contract as described by James Mendez Hodes in one of his several very good blog posts on historical (tabletop) roleplaying:
https://jamesmendezhodes.com/blog/2018/11/10/best-practices-for-historical-gaming
If Staff lays out from the start what is acceptable to see on-screen and what is not, what will be argued about on-screen and what will be accepted, then anyone who violates that Social Contract can pre-emptively be shown the door, allowing those who remain to explore the setting to the extent that they feel comfortable within the protections of that Contract.
Formerly known as Seraphim73 (he/him)
