Historical Games

[Clonus]

There are three standard categories of historical game. There's the kind where the players will be dealing with matters to trivial to be remembered, the kind where they run a red queen's race and history only changes if they fail, and the kind where they are involved in a major historical event but because it's a major historical event, nothing they do actually matters. In theory there could be a game where the goal is to actually, say, prevent the death of the Archduke Ferdinand, or cause the death of Hitler or expose Queen Victoria's son as the true identity of Jack the Ripper and thereby topple the monarchy...but I've never actually seen it. The problem with such games is "What do you do for an encore?"

[tkdguy]

Re: Historical Games

 

You'd have to extrapolate the consequences. Would saving Archduke Ferdinand prevent World War I, or would someone find another reason for it to happen? If the Great War never takes place, several nations could still be empires today, and others would never have achieved independence. This assumes a long-running campaign. It would be an interesting game, but it sounds like a lot of work for the GM.

[lemming]

Re: Historical Games

 

You'd have to extrapolate the consequences. Would saving Archduke Ferdinand prevent World War I' date=' or would someone find another reason for it to happen? If the Great War never takes place, several nations could still be empires today, and others would never have achieved independence. This assumes a long-running campaign. It would be an interesting game, but it sounds like a lot of work for the GM.[/quote']

 

There are several resources to see what other people have come up with, though in some ways it really depends on how fast time passes in a game.

[steriaca]

Re: Historical Games

 

There are three standard categories of historical game.

 

I think you left out a fourth categorie: setting only game. Most Western RPG games are not the 'change history' game, but the 'your a cowboy/outlaw/lawman' game, where the heros have no position to change history, no chance to change history, and acualy don't want to change history.

 

(That is, unless you set such a game during the Civil War, and your players want to play Rebs...you have to then give the South a chance to win, or say that your players are not important.)

 

Another example of a setting only game is the Movie World game, where life in the game is exactly like a period movie/melodrama/period setting TV show. Action is cinimatic, good guys don't die (unless it is nessasary to the story), and the hero gets the girl (after saveing her from being kidnaped for the umpthinth time).

[Lucius]

Re: Historical Games

 

I think you left out a fourth categorie: setting only game. Most Western RPG games are not the 'change history' game, but the 'your a cowboy/outlaw/lawman' game, where the heros have no position to change history, no chance to change history, and acualy don't want to change history.

 

I don't think he did.

 

There are three standard categories of historical game. There's the kind where the players will be dealing with matters to trivial to be remembered

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Set the Wayback Machine for - 1991, Year of the Palindromedary!

[Midas]

Re: Historical Games

 

Or the option of Free Will. For reasons too long to go into here, I detest perdetermination in either the religious or the temporal form. For example, in the "genres I hate" thread, someone mentioned a player who wouldn't play in a Star Wars campaign, because "We already know how it comes out."

 

Uh uh. First rule of every game I've ever mastered: "You (the PCs) have an open future. Only the NPC's have pre-ordained roles, and only as long as nothing has changed. Rick will always have Paris, and the girl will always get on the plane - unless you change her mind." (No, I wouldn't change the ending, myself but the players would have that option in a spy vs Nazi campaign). After the PCs change history, everything is open.

 

"For ex, If you kidnap Bilbo before Gandalf and his dwarven press gang show up, then thngs will get *very* interesting over the next couple of centuries, but there is no Angel of Predestination keeping the plot on course: I'm as curious as you are to see how that comes out."

[Clonus]

Re: Historical Games

 

Or the option of Free Will. "

 

Free will is rather beside the point when the events you are involved with are too trivial to matter or too major for you to affect. For example, if you are playing a small military unit in World War II starting with D-Day... you can do anything. Absolutely anything. And it will have no effect on the outcome of the war. Yeah, there are points where PCs really could make a radical difference to history, like killing Lenin before he leaves for Russia...but those sort of opportunities have to be handed to the PCs if they are being played in character. If you never meet Lenin, you never get a chance or reason to kill him. As for Star Wars, the problem with "exercising free will to change the ending" is that I wouldn't want to change the ending just to exercise "free will". The Empire isn't the side I want to win.

[Midas]

Re: Historical Games

 

Free will is rather beside the point when the events you are involved with are too trivial to matter or too major for you to affect. For example' date=' if you are playing a small military unit in World War II starting with D-Day... you can do anything. Absolutely anything. And it will have no effect on the outcome of the war. Yeah, there are points where PCs really could make a radical difference to history, like killing Lenin before he leaves for Russia...but those sort of opportunities have to be handed to the PCs if they are being played in character. If you never meet Lenin, you never get a chance or reason to kill him. As for Star Wars, the problem with "exercising free will to change the ending" is that I wouldn't want to change the ending just to exercise "free will". The Empire isn't the side I want to win.[/quote']

 

Well sure, if you are playing a "low" game. Let's use Star Wars for our example. If the PCs are a band of smugglers trying to get that One Big Score, on the far side of the galaxy from Tatooine, Bespin and wherever, then of course nobody knows or cares about the Skywalker family quarrel.

 

OTOH, in an epic game, I didn't say the Empire would win, I implied that the chance is open - that the future is unwritten. Let us say that one or more of the PCs are Force Sensitives: They could say "The Force tells me that Anakin is supposed to knock up Amadala, and through their children bring balance to The Force." However, it is in no way written in stone that either the Empire will last a thousand years without action by the Skywalker twins, nor will the empire be overthrown only through the efforts of Luke and Liea.

[Clonus]

Re: Historical Games

 

Well sure, if you are playing a "low" game. Let's use Star Wars for our example. If the PCs are a band of smugglers trying to get that One Big Score, on the far side of the galaxy from Tatooine, Bespin and wherever, then of course nobody knows or cares about the Skywalker family quarrel.

 

OTOH, in an epic game, I didn't say the Empire would win, I implied that the chance is open - that the future is unwritten. Let us say that one or more of the PCs are Force Sensitives: They could say "The Force tells me that Anakin is supposed to knock up Amadala, and through their children bring balance to The Force." However, it is in no way written in stone that either the Empire will last a thousand years without action by the Skywalker twins, nor will the empire be overthrown only through the efforts of Luke and Liea.

 

Well first of all, I was in fact talking about historical games. Historical games are low end almost by definition because they are set in nonfantastic history. No superpowers, no magic, no anachronistic technology. Just a certain degree of dramatic license. The only high end historical game is a game of political intrigue at the highest levels of society.

 

But as far as that goes, have you ever in fact seen a Star Wars campaign in which PCs significantly changed the outcome of recorded events? (Ignoring the routine Star Wars AUs where Luke is now Emperor and rules beside his wife and sister Leia at the start of the campaign). Just saying that the future is unwritten doesn't make it so.