Historical Games Round 75
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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)
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@Roadspike said in Historical Games Round 75:
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.
Literally right this second in another chat talking about social contracts as a good tool for this. 1000% agree.
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I admit, I am a person who wants historically accurate -isms and resistances in historical games. Does that mean I want to see a bunch of racist, sexist, bigoted PCs? No, of course not.
But these societal forces shaped the era and had a lot of impact on the culture, the structure of society, and the pressures that drove people to accomplish amazing and heartbreaking things. When you remove, for example, the fact that suffragettes could be and were tortured and murdered by law enforcement for campaigning for women’s rights, then the courage it took to be a suffragette is diminished. If you’re talking about union-building, I think you have to include the fact that union-busters used racism to try and drive working class groups apart, even if that effort fails in the context of your game. If you’re talking 1920s-30s, it’s a bit repugnant to me to not make it clear that it’s an era when the people who made some of the defining music of the era couldn’t have a drink in the “respectable” clubs they played in. It also helps contrast some of the speakeasys which were integrated and even havens for LGBT folk of the era, etc. The fact that people had to find refuge in criminality because the laws were bigoted and unjust is a huge part of the story of the era.
I just finished reading Last Night at the Telegraph Club (excellent book), and it’s a lesbian coming of age story that could not exist if you took out not just the anti-LGBTQ prejudice of the 40s, but also the harassment and abuse of Chinese immigrants by immigration officials on anti-Communist witchhunts.
Does every game have to include this stuff? No, of course not. It’s your game, make what you have fun with. But there are valid reasons for including major societal pressures that have nothing to do with wanting to abuse other players or PCs by playing a bigoted character.
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@Tez I dont think it is either, I enjoy those tensions, but personally I’d only want to give it a shot with gamerunners I trusted, both in how that would be managed and their quickness in excluding people with problematic behavior that crop up. (You are on the list of trusted gamerunners BTW but I think you already know that! <3)
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@Roadspike that is largely what I mean. If I dont think staff is able and willing to spot and remove people that don’t get it, that is where I dont bother investing/playing on that place because I know its going to go off the rails, no matter what language is used in policies/what the genuine intent is. I know many nice/creative folks who are great storytellers but suck at boundaries.
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@Pyrephox said in Historical Games Round 75:
But these societal forces shaped the era and had a lot of impact on the culture, the structure of society, and the pressures that drove people to accomplish amazing and heartbreaking things. When you remove, for example, the fact that suffragettes could be and were tortured and murdered by law enforcement for campaigning for women’s rights, then the courage it took to be a suffragette is diminished. If you’re talking about union-building, I think you have to include the fact that union-busters used racism to try and drive working class groups apart, even if that effort fails in the context of your game. If you’re talking 1920s-30s, it’s a bit repugnant to me to not make it clear that it’s an era when the people who made some of the defining music of the era couldn’t have a drink in the “respectable” clubs they played in. It also helps contrast some of the speakeasys which were integrated and even havens for LGBT folk of the era, etc. The fact that people had to find refuge in criminality because the laws were bigoted and unjust is a huge part of the story of the era.
This whole passage is generally why I’m against the removal of -ist/-ism speech in art. If we don’t see how ubiquitous it is that characters are frequently denigrated or have slurs thrown at them, it’s hard to appreciate the movements that worked so hard towards changing that perspective. There are also thematic constraints that come with including bigoted characters that are often subtextually difficult to explore without them. I could point at media that explicitly looks at the semiotics of racism or sexism like Get Out or more recently Silent Hill f, but also at things where the racism is front and center and its endemic nature shows us how a myopic worldview can lead to the development of a specific genre: Lovecraft and the other pulp-era writers on racism and sexism, Robert Heinlein on sexism, etc. Edit: I forgot to finish this point out. We can see that there are many other elements in these genres now that have moved away entirely from these perspectives, and have played with the old school -isms in different ways to elevate the genre. Lovecraft Country is the obvious example, but also modern sword and sorcery revival literature tends to turn sexism on its head.
On a personal level, I will rarely play characters that are front and foremost with my RL identities. I’ve only played one Muslim character and I rarely have my characters engage with their sexuality, so there have only been a handful of times when someone used the f-slur towards a character of mine and one particularly memorable time when someone used some (admittedly mild) Islamophobia against my character which was very much rooted in the cultural perspectives of the United States. It does get my hackles raised a bit if I don’t know the person, though, and I can imagine that if I were Black I would probably get deeply emotionally exhausted attempting to play through a perfect recreation of 1920s Appalachia, warts and all.
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I would agree that wholesale removal of hate speech is bad because it removes the ability to recognize it, understand it, and safely deal with it when it does arise.
That said, individual games choosing to eliminate that from the scope of RP is totally cool with me, and will probably be the route I take for my games in the future. I’m trying to have pretendy fun times and tell neat fantasy / sci-fi / horror stories. I’m not trying to give minority players the potential to flashback to the small-minded nonsense they deal with in their RL on the regular.
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I’m largely in agreement with Pyrephox, surprising nobody, but I also have to acknowledge that I just don’t have the time nor the capacity for the level of moderation a historically authentic game would probably require. And if I don’t have the time, I can hardly make demands of others to have such time or spend such effort.
So I’ll most likely content myself with playing pseudo-historical dress-up on a MU instead of anything even remotely verisimilitudinous.
