Historical accuracy and Fantasy gaming

[Collective_Restraint]

Hi everyone,

is it me or the majority of GURPS fantasy gamers seem more preoccupied with historical accuracy in their fantasy games compared to say, D&D (or Runequest, etc.) gamers ? Is historical accuracy that important ? I for one, don't really care about historical realism in my fantasy games for 2 prime reasons :

1. I am not very good at history, I want to play games, not start studying how feudal system fully works, etc. I have always been very interested into history but simply was never good at it.

2. How can you really evaluate historical realism when we are talking about realism where dragons roam, magic exists, etc. ? Sure, I don't put television sets in my fantasy games (still, I know I could with magic existing an all) but since I am not very good in history, I'm sure if I had historians in my games they would start pointing me that this event doesn't make sense and etc, etc. How can you realistically evaluate how a realm would function with magic being present and all ?

My point is, is historical accuracy very important in your fantasy-themed games ? Is a good story more important than historical realism ? This is probably what turned me down into using Banestorm as my game campaign setting: too historical for my taste. I feel that if I don't understand fully how the medieval ages were, crusades, etc, I wouldn't run a "good" Banestorm game. One other thing that I don't like is that it is too close to what Earth is. I play fantasy games to escape to other worlds. I'm already tired of hearing about religious wars of catholics against muslims in newspapers that it's something I don't even want to start gaming. So I'm asking you, do you prefer games where everything is historically accurate or games where evil mages build lairs and fills them with traps and monsters and laughs maniacally about taking over the world ;) ?

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by Collective_Restraint

is it me or the majority of GURPS fantasy gamers seem more preoccupied with historical accuracy in their fantasy games compared to say, D&D (or Runequest, etc.) gamers ? Is historical accuracy that important ?

There is certainly a vocal minority which wants, if not accuracy, then at least historical versimilitude. Some are, unlike you, very good indeed at history, so seeing historical trappings, they'll tend to fill in historical justifications and implications as well. For such people, seeing, for example, full plate armor in a setting which otherwise resembles Europe's Dark Ages is as jarring as your seeing a TV set in that same setting. Others are simply simulationists by disposition. They need a high degree of internal consistency. If they don't get it, they'll find all the cracks where inconsistencies have been papered over, and it'll really bug the hell out of them. I don't think it's a feature of the majority of GURPS players, but since GURPS tends to draw in a lot of people who are into realism of some flavor or another, I wouldn't be surprised if proportionately more GURPS players were into it than other games.

Originally Posted by Collective_Restraint

2. How can you really evaluate historical realism when we are talking about realism where dragons roam, magic exists, etc. ?

Sure, there are all of those, but there are also peasants who look a lot like our peasants, villages that are a lot like our villages, knights that are a lot like our knights, and so on. Such things migh reasonably seen to imply underlying conditions which look a lot like ours.

[zorg]

Originally Posted by Collective_Restraint

My point is, is historical accuracy very important in your fantasy-themed games ?

I don't care much about historical accuracy myself, but I try to go for plausibility. I'm not too interested in the historical details of, say, plate armour or lance combat - but if I do integrate fireball-slinging mages into my setting, I want to think about how that would change warfare.

That said, I'm perfectly OK with assuming both inaccurate and non-plausible things, if those help the setting as I'm imagining it. For instance, mecha are implausible without several technological handwaves, but if I want to have mecha in my game, I'm willing to overlook that piece of inconsistency. But I want that ignorance to be intentional - so I can tell the players in advance "I know that these mecha are, strictly speaking, nonsense, but let's ignore that piece of nonsense for the sake of he game."
I'm OK with healing potions, and I'm OK with peasants being in bad health. But I'll be curious why these peasants can't get healing potions.

Whether I GM or play, I also want to know in what way a setting is, frex, medieval, and in what way there will be modifications. I'm fine with a quasi-medieval setting in which women are equal under the law, but I want such an assumption to be explicit.

[Irish Wolf]

Originally Posted by zorg

I'm OK with healing potions, and I'm OK with peasants being in bad health. But I'll be curious why these peasants can't get healing potions.

That's why in my medievaloid-fantasy games, there aren't many plagues, and the ones that do exist aren't easily cured with standard potions or spells.

I don't insist on "historical accuracy" in any of my games - but I do like to think through the implications of various assumptions. For instance, the medievaloid-fantasy genre requires lots of old ruins full of stuff to loot. Where did it all come from? In superhero games, you might be running a character with more power than most armies. How have governments come to deal with such individuals?

For my purposes, in the D&D-style setting, my gameworld is just emerging from millennia of Dark Ages, following the collapse of the fabled First Aathean Empire. Technologies have been lost (and in certain regimes, are actively suppressed, as the work of the evil god Technos the Uncaring), spells are still being rediscovered and reinvented, and the lands are only just starting to come under some form of government. The lands beyond the Worldsedge Mountains, being beyond the grasp of either the Elven Republic or the resurgent Second Empire, are still largely "unexplored" since the Fall, with any rule being on the tribal or village level at most. (At least as far as the characters know; one day, they may run across the other resurgent Second Empire...)

Thus, if anyone wants to complain that this or that isn't compatible with Dark-Ages-Europe-style history, I can simply say that a) this ain't Europe, and b) some of the stuff is left over from the First Empire (or back-engineered from items found by adventurers - primitive doesn't necessarily mean stupid).

[Collective_Restraint]

Originally Posted by Irish Wolf

Thus, if anyone wants to complain that this or that isn't compatible with Dark-Ages-Europe-style history, I can simply say that a) this ain't Europe, and b) some of the stuff is left over from the First Empire (or back-engineered from items found by adventurers - primitive doesn't necessarily mean stupid).

My thoughts exactly! When you're on Krynn, Toril, Middle Earth, you're somewhere else! Women can have the exact same rights as men (even if it's historically inaccurate), etc.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Collective_Restraint

My thoughts exactly! When you're on Krynn, Toril, Middle Earth, you're somewhere else! Women can have the exact same rights as men (even if it's historically inaccurate), etc.

Well, my current Gurps Fantasy game is set in The World of D'y'r't so you can guess that I don't care much about historical accuracy. :)

However, I am very good with history and that's why I don't try and insist on "authetic" medeivalisms in my fantasy games. Change one thing and you could change a lot of things. The historically authentic Middle Ages weren't a particularly good time for Fantasy adventures anyway.

I know this because I started out in Chivalry & Sorcery a long time ago. The authetic medievalism was constantly getting in the way of our adventures.

This si going to be true of any system that allows for a wide range of "normal" abilities (much less magic). All other things being equal, in the High Middle Ages the side with the msot knights won. That's why soceity was designed to support knights maiximize their numbers

Give the non-knights 20 experience levels or 400 CP or whatever and this just isn't so and everything changes because of that.

"Historical autheticity" tends to parallel "hard science" in gamer snob appeal, mostly in the way that they tend to make adventures in their respective genres impossible.. Both are to be used as a thin layer of camouflage paint if at all.

[DanHoward]

I don't particlarly care about historical accuracy unless the characters are in an actual historical setting. I'm much more interested in internal consistency and a "simulationist" mindset seems to be the best way to achieve this. Studying historical parallels can help create a plausible and internally consistent world.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

I don't particlarly care about historical accuracy unless the characters are in an actual historical setting. I'm much more interested in internal consistency and a "simulationist" mindset seems to be the best way to achieve this. Studying historical parallels can help create a plausible and internally consistent world.

I agree with this. I don't want history getting into my fantasy game . . . I want games where I can file the serial numbers off Aztecs, Guptas, Mongols, Norsemen, Romans, etc.; advance the low-tech ones and retard the high-tech ones to get everyone on a technological par; and slam them down on a single continent where magic works and gods intervene. However, I do draw on real, historical cultures, and try to stick to a recognizable technological par. I just don't care much about sociological reasons why these cultures couldn't coexist or operate on an equal footing. "The gods made it that way and magic keeps it that way" works well enough for me. But bows still shoot like bows and iron is still harder than bronze.

[Gavynn]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

I don't particlarly care about historical accuracy unless the characters are in an actual historical setting. I'm much more interested in internal consistency and a "simulationist" mindset seems to be the best way to achieve this. Studying historical parallels can help create a plausible and internally consistent world.

I have not read all of this thread, but my opinion is similar to Dan's. I fill in the holes in a fantasy game with historic analogs, but am mainly concerned with logical consistency in the game.

[David Johnston]

Originally Posted by Collective_Restraint

Hi everyone,

is it me or the majority of GURPS fantasy gamers seem more preoccupied with historical accuracy in their fantasy games compared to say, D&D (or Runequest, etc.) gamers ? Is historical accuracy that important ?

It is you. Well technically there are more GURPS fantasy gamers who actually play in some historical time period + magic so in that sense...