"Pure" historical roleplaying?

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by D10

I would be very bothered if I played in a historically acurate campaign, and 0% of the mystical activities engaged by the group turn out to work.

Yes, even if it's only coincidence, this stuff should be seen to 'work' part of the time. Truth be told, the dice will tend to yields such results.
A medieval crusader who prays before battle may attribute a victory to the intercession of the saints. He may believe that defeats are chastisements from God for the sin of pride. Characters who fast and pray intensely may have visions. If events seem to bear out the vision, that would only strengthen their faith.

[Irish Wolf]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

Characters who fast and pray intensely may have visions. If events seem to bear out the vision, that would only strengthen their faith.

Especially since such "visions" tend to have a, well, rather dream-like perspective, and are thus easily subject to interpretation... :)

[ULFGARD]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

It's a good thing that I don't game with these hypothetical players.

I game with my friends. We are all into roleplaying. We discuss what sort of game we want to play before a campaign starts. The problem of a whole table of players going consistently out of character and rejecting all reasonable and fair GM advice about the culture of the setting...that would never happen for us. It sounds pretty much not fun to me, but to each his own.

YMMV

The same can happen in fantasy games... I used to play with someone who was so (stupidly) militantly atheist in RL that he would object to the gods existence in a world where I, the GM who created said world, has explicitly told him they DO EXIST. He claimed that this was "rational" behavior. I, the other players, and the game world, disagreed. It's not quite the same, but quite similar -- the GM tells you what the typical person's assumptions about the world are. In science fiction where various superscience items exist, neither I nor other physicists and former physicists I've played with objected that an item "isn't physically possible" because it would be out of character, setting, etc.

That's why historical roleplaying can be great so long as everyone can accept the genre conventions. Part of that is that their characters grew up in that culture. Even if the character doesn't outright believe in the supernatural, they'll know everyone else does, and will understand the social consequences of not playing along -- but this character will not be the norm.

Originally Posted by combatmedic

Yes, even if it's only coincidence, this stuff should be seen to 'work' part of the time. Truth be told, the dice will tend to yields such results.
A medieval crusader who prays before battle may attribute a victory to the intercession of the saints. He may believe that defeats are chastisements from God for the sin of pride. Characters who fast and pray intensely may have visions. If events seem to bear out the vision, that would only strengthen their faith.

I've had the same experience -- no in game fiat could have been as dramatic as my paladin type character rolling 3 critical successes in the course of a combat to utterly resist the BIG BAD's attempts to cast spells on him (granted, those were contests, but they were pretty much guaranteed to succeed). Dumb luck. But other characters (NPCs & PCs) afterwards believed that my paladin was somehow "blessed" -- as did he. (He spent the day after victory in prayer and fasting for thanksgiving.) The same sort of thing DOES happen in real life -- random chance dictates that it will.

Ironically both of these examples are from fantasy games...

[Crakkerjakk]

I have a very hard time running anything straight. I have a very strong tendency to add horror elements and often weird/fortean/etc elements, if not outright supernatural stuff, to pretty much every genre I run. I think the closest I come to pure historical games is pulp/cliffhangers, and there the PCs are still larger than life even though they're not dealing with vampires or sorcerors.

I have been wanting to run a Bourne/Sneakers inspired Action game, and that would be played straight Technothriller, which might count I suppose.

[ULFGARD]

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

I have a very hard time running anything straight. I have a very strong tendency to add horror elements and often weird/fortean/etc elements, if not outright supernatural stuff, to pretty much every genre I run. I think the closest I come to pure historical games is pulp/cliffhangers, and there the PCs are still larger than life even though they're not dealing with vampires or sorcerors.

I have been wanting to run a Bourne/Sneakers inspired Action game, and that would be played straight Technothriller, which might count I suppose.

I'm certainly not knocking those games. I'm just wondering who is doing it, how, and how much success they're having. And of course, that's led us to wonder what "pure historical roleplaying" really is...

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

I have a very hard time running anything straight. I have a very strong tendency to add horror elements and often weird/fortean/etc elements, if not outright supernatural stuff, to pretty much every genre I run. I think the closest I come to pure historical games is pulp/cliffhangers, and there the PCs are still larger than life even though they're not dealing with vampires or sorcerors.

I have been wanting to run a Bourne/Sneakers inspired Action game, and that would be played straight Technothriller, which might count I suppose.

If you set it in the Cold War, I'd call it 'historical.'

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by ULFGARD

I'm certainly not knocking those games. I'm just wondering who is doing it, how, and how much success they're having. And of course, that's led us to wonder what "pure historical roleplaying" really is...

I've run Boot Hill in the past. We played it as is, a Western without any overt supernatural elements, monsters of the nonhuman sort, 'kewl powerz', etc. My players really had a good time.

[ULFGARD]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

I've run Boot Hill in the past. We played it as is, a Western without any overt supernatural elements, monsters of the nonhuman sort, 'kewl powerz', etc. My players really had a good time.

Probably my all time favorite mini-campaigns that I ran was Old West (in GURPS 3e). It was amazing, culminating in a shootout that "resolved" much of the tension that had been building for 4 or 5 sessions (3 adventures -- this was the 4th).

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by ULFGARD

Probably my all time favorite mini-campaigns that I ran was Old West (in GURPS 3e). It was amazing, culminating in a shootout that "resolved" much of the tension that had been building for 4 or 5 sessions (3 adventures -- this was the 4th).

Sounds good to me!

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by ULFGARD

I'm certainly not knocking those games. I'm just wondering who is doing it, how, and how much success they're having. And of course, that's led us to wonder what "pure historical roleplaying" really is...

No, I'd probably have fun in pure games. I just have a VERY hard time stopping myself from adding weird or spooky stuff to my games, even if they're otherwise "pure." And my players seem to enjoy it, so it all works out. But yeah. I have a problem. I've been infected by Hite-worms.