Historical MUSHes

[paperbrilliant]

Are there any around? It seems like whenever I look I find ones that have died a slow death.

[tek]

@paperbrilliant I would be interested in one of these!

[yyrqun]

I'd love to join a game like this! Good old slice of life drama in anything from Rome to the medieval period, to Regency England, to the Wild West would be an awesome setting.

[Seraphim73]

Depending on the era, I would totally be down for this. The problems that I've seen with them in the past tends to be "depending on the era," and also "how historical do you want it." Because if it's too historical, than the average player can't play it, and if it's too Hollywood, then the people who really like the era will get frustrated by everyone else. There has to be happy medium, I'm sure someone will find it, I just don't know that I've seen it yet.

[tek]

@Seraphim73 said in Historical MUSHes:

Depending on the era, I would totally be down for this. The problems that I've seen with them in the past tends to be "depending on the era," and also "how historical do you want it." Because if it's too historical, than the average player can't play it, and if it's too Hollywood, then the people who really like the era will get frustrated by everyone else. There has to be happy medium, I'm sure someone will find it, I just don't know that I've seen it yet.

You ran a great game with The 8th Sea. I'd love to see something like that again.

[RnMissionRun]

If historical accuracy doesn't matter too much, there's at least one and possibly two 7th Sea games in the works. The one I know of for certain is being made by a friend I used to play with on Holotrek and WNO. I've been helping her with the code and it's really starting to shape up (it's Evennia, btw). The other one could be just a rumor. One of the people that logs on to my friend's game has occasionally remarked that she's working on her own game. No one has seen any proof of this yet, so far as I know.

[Saulot]

@Seraphim73 I know I sound like a pessimist, but I don't think there is a happy medium. You gotta accept that you can't please both audiences, and will have to cater to one. I may be wrong since I haven't been mushing for long, and there may have been games that have accomplished it.

[Goldfish]

Horror MUX has had one present day story. The first. Then it was 2149 on a space station. Then 1902 in the dying Old West. Then 1989 through the 80s horror film lens. Soon: 1934, Dust Bowl.

I think the cyclical nature of the game lends itself well to period settings, I feel. We aren't there long enough to fret too much about accuracy or long term issues. I love, love, love historical settings so I'm terribly happy.

[Pandora]

Historical accuracy isn't going to happen in the current era of gaming, where certain themes aren't allowed due to being A) unpleasant and B) a pain in the ass to moderate.

There's also the fact that most people are not experts in one bygone era, let alone enough of them that they'd be able to just jump in and immerse themselves.

There's also the fact that the average game-runner would run themselves ragged trying to correct unthematic behaviors, and likely wind up being accused of 'wrongfunning' their players. Alternatively, they can let things slide if they aren't 'too problematic' and that's how theme-slip begins and you wake up one day and your Period Drama has turned into a modern-day cosplay tea party.

Also for most of history, people were really dirty, didn't wear particularly nice clothes unless they were rich or a whore, lice were more common than having all your teeth, and women were treated kind of like shit. So have fun making that game.

[faraday]

@Saulot said in Historical MUSHes:

@Seraphim73 I know I sound like a pessimist, but I don't think there is a happy medium. You gotta accept that you can't please both audiences, and will have to cater to one. I may be wrong since I haven't been mushing for long, and there may have been games that have accomplished it.

I think it depends on what you mean by "happy medium". There have been numerous historical games that have done "Hollywood History". Like @Pandora says, this means that the historical setting is much cleaner, fancier, healthier, more progressive and more adventurous than its historical counterpart. Sure, there are people who grit their teeth at the historical inaccuracies, but I don't think it's any worse than Deadwood or Pick-a-Crown-Drama on TV.

[Tinuviel]

@faraday said in Historical MUSHes:

Sure, there are people who grit their teeth at the historical inaccuracies

Most of us folks that have more than a passing interest in history mostly grit our teeth when people insist on being "historically accurate" but aren't. Fictional takes on history are fine and are done often enough. We just get people trying time and again to be "historically accurate" rather than just using history as a story tool.

[faraday]

@Tinuviel said in Historical MUSHes:

Most of us folks that have more than a passing interest in history mostly grit our teeth when people insist on being "historically accurate" but aren't. Fictional takes on history are fine and are done often enough. We just get people trying time and again to be "historically accurate" rather than just using history as a story tool.

The problem with that is that "Historically Accurate" is a scale, not a yes/no checkbox. I don't think anybody would want to play a western that was 100% historically accurate because it would be bleak and boring. Your PC would be be more likely to die of dysentery than to have an interesting adventure or drama.

Hollywood westerns, for example, range in accuracy from Tarantino westerns (crazily over-the-top but entertaining) to Into the West (reasonably realistic but still over-dramatized). Your MUSH can draw the line anywhere along that scale. Where we have difficulty is defining that scale so people can come into the game with a common set of expectations.

[Tinuviel]

@faraday said in Historical MUSHes:

The problem with that is that "Historically Accurate" is a scale, not a yes/no checkbox.

Well, one can have various levels of accuracy but if it's not accurate it's not accurate. So saying that something is "historically accurate" is the wrong term to use. "Inspired by a historical setting" or "set in the backdrop of the XYZ," would be better. Nobody gets to be the historical pendant, then.

[faraday]

@Tinuviel said in Historical MUSHes:

Well, one can have various levels of accuracy but if it's not accurate it's not accurate. So saying that something is "historically accurate" is the wrong term to use. "Inspired by a historical setting" or "set in the backdrop of the XYZ," would be better. Nobody gets to be the historical pendant, then.

I think that's being a little nitpicky about the terminology. Short of a documentary/non-fiction, nothing in fiction is 100% accurate, yet "accuracy" is the term people use in common parlance to describe Into the West as being "more accurate" than Hateful Eight.

That said, I've played on a number of historical games and I've never seen one say "We expect people to be historically accurate." Usually the gripes about accuracy come from individual players complaining that something is outside their personal bounds of what is "accurate enough" for their suspension of disbelief.

[surreality]

It would not surprise me to discover a few historically-themed games out there.

I kinda doubt they'll ever be actively advertised here, though, as a very vocal portion of the forum population is extra vocal when it comes to telling folks who want to run a historical game that unless they bring all of the social and cultural issues up to better than the actual modern day standard re: equality, they are only not choosing to do that due to RL sexism, racism, etc. on the creator's part, and the creators clearly just want to call women whores and spit on LGBTQ and PoC.

While this is complete nonsense on its face, this argument has come up often enough and played out the same way every damned time. It's not even a conversation worth having any more on account of this behavior. As a result, I would be sincerely stunned if anyone ever posted an ad for a historical game here. Hell, considering what's ascribed to people who want to create or run one, it's hard to imagine a creator not actively wincing if their game gets brought up on the forum, since they're going to get dragged through the mud on a very personal RL level in a spectacularly ugly way.

[peasoupling]

You could have a game entirely staffed and played by people who did their PhDs on that particular time and place and it still wouldn't be historically accurate to anyone's satisfaction. Especially their own. Which they'd let each other know, vigorously!

Beyond that, you do have people who go "well, this was pretty uncommon, so it's historically inaccurate" and people who go "well, this happened once, so it's historically accurate" and people who go "we have no evidence this was impossible, so it's historically accurate". And, of course, "well, this sticks it to the libs, so it's historically accurate".

But even if everything is historically inaccurate, some things are more historically inaccurate than others, and in different directions. So staff would still need to decide what exactly they're going with, what their specific vision for the setting is and how rigidly they want to enforce it, regardless of whether they call themselves historically accurate or a medieaeval fantasie.

[mietze]

@peasoupling I love historical setting games, but that is one of my least favorite parts about it, the competitive masturbation on channel about who is more educated about what esoteric historical accuracy that like hasn't even come up in the scope of the game, and how everyone else is an idiot for not knowing everything like the masturbator does.

[Ganymede]

@Tinuviel said in Historical MUSHes:

Most of us folks that have more than a passing interest in history mostly grit our teeth when people insist on being "historically accurate" but aren't. Fictional takes on history are fine and are done often enough. We just get people trying time and again to be "historically accurate" rather than just using history as a story tool.

I'd just like it if a period piece stuck somewhat near the technological level and actual world history. Like, please, no grenades at the Battle of Acre, I don't care what you think the History Channel said existed or aliens.

[Saulot]

@Ganymede the history channel said the Nazis were there, and that ancient aliens caused it.

[Ganymede]

@Saulot said in Historical MUSHes:

@Ganymede the history channel said the Nazis were there, and that ancient aliens caused it.