"Pure" historical roleplaying?

[darksaba]

Pure Historical settings can easily include magic. You can buy a health potion in ancient Rome, ask a Medieval cleric to intercede with the gods on your behalf or ask an African witch doctor to place a curse on someone, heck you can do most of that stuff today with pretty much the same effect. Just because magic doesn't work doesn't mean it isn't there.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by darksaba

Pure Historical settings can easily include magic. You can buy a health potion in ancient Rome, ask a Medieval cleric to intercede with the gods on your behalf or ask an African witch doctor to place a curse on someone, heck you can do most of that stuff today with pretty much the same effect. Just because magic doesn't work doesn't mean it isn't there.

Most people would call that superstition rather than magic.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by darksaba

Pure Historical settings can easily include magic. You can buy a health potion in ancient Rome, ask a Medieval cleric to intercede with the gods on your behalf or ask an African witch doctor to place a curse on someone, heck you can do most of that stuff today with pretty much the same effect. Just because magic doesn't work doesn't mean it isn't there.

I think the point of the thing is that in a fantasized game it DOES work. At least sometimes.

[ak_aramis]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

I think the point of the thing is that in a fantasized game it DOES work. At least sometimes.

Only because well meaning but ill-educated quacks sometimes make the default untrained rolls in Medicine (Herbalism)...

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Most people would call that superstition rather than magic.

That's a metagame persepctive, though. The PCs don't know about GURPS rules, die rolls, the GM, etc. So, roleplaying them as believing in the efficacy of magic may make perfect sense in the context of the game-setting.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

That's a metagame persepctive, though. The PCs don't know about GURPS rules, die rolls, the GM, etc. So, roleplaying them as believing in the efficacy of magic may make perfect sense in the context of the game-setting.

Half-right, half-wrong. The _players_ very much exist outside the game world. It's the _characters_ who are trapped within it and it's theoretical assumptions.

If the GM insists on telling the players that their characters believe in superstitions he may get argued with extensively or he may get ignored. Some very immersive roleplayers may, perhaps for a limited period of time, go along with this.

However, they aren't going to invest a lot of game time in it, except perhaps for comic purposes. From where the _players_ sit it will be obvious that the herbal medicine isn't working and they will generally act accordingly.

Incidentally, I am not at all sure that historically earlier humans were truly different from modern ones in the normal spread of their personality types. Skeptics and "go to church and doze off" types might have been entriely as common then as now. When told "but _everybody_ believed ferventaly in this!" I tend to doubt it.

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

If the GM insists on telling the players that their characters believe in superstitions he may get argued with extensively or he may get ignored.

That would be a sign to me that I need to get new players, quite frankly speaking.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

That would be a sign to me that I need to get new players, quite frankly speaking.

<shrug> It's entirely likely that they'll be happier without you too.

[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.

Even in real life, you have a lot of people who believe in "superstitions" and the main reason such beliefs exist, is because every now and then things happen that validade those beliefs.

Miraculous healings, prophetic dreams, individuals who can say things about you that you never told anyone, etc.

In more than one ocasion I have lived things that could only serve to validade superstitions, and so do billions of others.


Even nowday, how many truly educated people, even atheists, believe your thoughts have power, that you can get in tune with the universe and attract wealth, yadda yadda.

Thats why I put psi, with the variation that humans have their anti psi as the most developed for evolutionary reasons, and theres slight static whenever a bunch of humans gathers up (making the huge majority of people who would turn out to have 1 ESP never really develop it, and etc.)

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

<shrug> It's entirely likely that they'll be happier without you too.

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