Historical settings

[bored]

I think hard boundaries are definitely a good idea. We say no to evil characters in tabletop when it's not appropriate, and we set other boundaries to enforce the general RP themes we want (ie, its not uncommon for medieval games to nonetheless keep people from playing actual dirt farmer serfs because those characters would have few opportunities). So I don't see why there's any problem of 'Grimdark fantasy' plus 'but srsly no raping.'

There will still be gray areas if you want some historical verisimilitude, but setting the red lines helps. After that, it's probably easier to address the players who is nonetheless continuing to press things too far (IE: excluding the female doctor above from plots vs. 'A lady physician? My word!') as individual problem cases. There are always going to be people who want to press that RP whether or not its supported in your theme (I think I recall mention of hostile sexist players on, say, a BSG game, where the setting is totally fantastic AND does nothing to support it).

This turns back to the old adage that you can't design around bad players.

[faraday]

@bored said in Historical settings:

After that, it's probably easier to address the players who is nonetheless continuing to press things too far (IE: excluding the female doctor above from plots vs. 'A lady physician? My word!') as individual problem cases. There are always going to be people who want to press that RP whether or not its supported in your theme (I think I recall mention of hostile sexist players on, say, a BSG game, where the setting is totally fantastic AND does nothing to support it).
This turns back to the old adage that you can't design around bad players.

Definitely. But without those red lines being clearly drawn, then the guy who's all "We don't need any help from a lady with delusions of being a physician, thank-you-very-much" doesn't know they're being a problem player. As far as they're concerned, they're just playing appropriate to the actual historical setting. (As opposed to on a BSG game, where RL -isms are established as not existing in canon, and anybody trying to push them is firmly beyond the bounds of the setting.)

[Botulism]

Our current story on Horror MU is set in 1902, and is a late-era Western. That said, we're mostly using it for flavor and only pushing the accuracy as far as players want to take it. We have a woman US Marshal, for example, and an all-women outlaw gang. We have gay cowboys. We have mixed-race couples.

It works for us because our game is a horror game first and each season setting is just flavor, really. There's also some metaplot behind everything where these people (PCs) are being made to live out these stories, so they aren't real and historical accuracy isn't key.

[peasoupling]

Generic City, 2018, is a racist, sexist, etc, setting too.

Even when the assumption is that RL events are happening in game, people tend to focus on pop culture, what movies are playing and what songs are hits and whether the kids are dabbing their memes, rather than politics and world news. There are local politics, but they tend to be incredibly generic. So while it's harder to ignore that sort of thing in a historical setting, it's really a matter of degree.

But even though the setting is all those things, it's not ahistorical for people to exist who rise above the prejudices of their time to some extent, and you could limit what sort of raging bigoted jerks PCs are, at least. But I do think you'd need to draw hard lines on what's allowable and what isn't, and do the same for NPCs and plots in general. Some people will think you've gone too far, some people will think you haven't gone far enough, but you're never going to be able to please everyone.

[surreality]

@peasoupling said in Historical settings:

Generic City, 2018, is a racist, sexist, etc, setting too.

This. This right here. I wish people would not lose sight of this.

It's not because I think modern settings need to emphasize or focus on these things.

It does, however, help create the desire for settings without it, because we do deal with these issues in daily life. We're not magically enlightened or perfect, no matter what part of the world we're in (so this is not a US-centric issue alone).

Personally, I'm more comfortable dealing with it in a historical context than in a modern setting, even if the level of it is dramatically more extreme in the historical one -- and, yes, I'm talking about it from the perspective of 'discrinated against' and not 'want to discriminate against for whatever reason'. The additional level of separation (era) lessens the immediacy of it for me; it may or may not be the same for others.

In a modern setting, it's also present. It's also much closer to home for me.

Tackling this from the perspective of 'want to play a character that overcomes the even more dramatic odds of an earlier era as a part of their story' definitely has some elements of wish-fulfillment (not intended in a negative context) and can be empowering. I think the same is possible in the realm of confronting these issues in a modern day game, but the 'hits along the way' are going to hit harder because it's impossible to not know they're just as likely to happen in our current society rather that being something that is only likely to occur within the framework of the story in that way; it's much easier to get discouraged and find more discomfort than empowerment there.

[Tinuviel]

@surreality said in Historical settings:

In a modern setting, it's also present.

Indeed, but almost nobody is saying "So we're setting the game in 2018... but we're not including anything that actually happened that year in the background." Which is unlike what some people always say the minute a 'historical' setting is described.

[Wizz]

@faraday said in Historical settings:

What I ended up with was what somebody not-so-affectionately dubbed "Twin Peaks 1866"

I mean...The Owls Are Not What They Seem, Man From Another Place, Fire Walk With Me Twin Peaks in 1866?

Or Jarringly-paced, awkward Andy physical comedy Twin Peaks in 1866?

................because both of those sound amazing

[faraday]

@wizz said in Historical settings:

................because both of those sound amazing

LOL. I've never actually seen Twin Peaks, so forgive me if this is a gross mis-characterization, but I think it was more of: "Oh goodness, how did all of these incredibly unusual people end up in this one small town what is going on here?!?!" Twin Peaks 1866

[Seraphim73]

@mietze said in Historical settings:

So that's one thing that you'd need to take a hard look at. What DO you want in the scope of your game? Then be honest about it.

I really wish that every game started out with a Mission Statement:

We're making this game to do this. Characters will generally be doing this. This is what we want from the game.

Then every decision made in creating the game and staffing the game should flow back to the mission statement and support it. If you find yourself chafing under the "restrictions" of the mission statement, change the mission statement. I think it's a good way to get everyone--Staff and players alike--on the same page from the start. This also helps with the theme-flouting assholes you mention, you can always refer them back to the mission statement and say, "Here's where it says the type of game this is, your choice goes completely against that, that's why we're retconning it."

As you might imagine, I think that directly confronting theme-drift-players immediately is the way to go. Let them know where they're going wrong, why you're concerned, and ask them to stop. If they don't, they clearly don't want to play the game you're running, so remove them. Losing a player or even a few players will be better for your game in the end compared to allowing theme to drift into something you don't want it to be.

I completely agree with you on making sure you've thought of what you want the players to do. I believe that should be the first question every game-runner asks themselves: What will my players -do- with their characters day-to-day.

[Wizz]

@faraday
"Incredibly Unusual People" basically describes the show XD

[faraday]

@wizz Heh, that's kinda what I've heard, and I presumed why someone used that moniker for the game.

And it's like @bored said -- sometimes you can just say "heck with history" and it works because the history is secondary.

But when it's supposed to be "Hollywood history in a small town Wyoming in 1866" yet you've got the livery being run by an gunslinging female rancher, the hotel run by a white widow having an affair with an ex-slave, one of the town's three doctors being an educated free African American, the seamstress being a transgender woman married on the d/l, a couple of Chinese immigrants running an apothecary down the road....man, I love each and every one of those characters individually, but you put them all together in a population of a few hundred, and, like, how much resemblance does it actually bear to real history any more?

I'm not saying I'd change anything if I had it to do over again, because the only alternatives to "everyone is special" is to either make nobody special, or ration "special-ness". I wasn't prepared to do either one. But there were consequences to that, and a lot of flak from those folks who wanted their historical games a bit more... historical.

[surreality]

@tinuviel I have actually seen this come up -- not in the thread, but absolutely on games, and not infrequently.

It is somewhat camouflaged by the fact that it gets classified as 'avoiding hot-button political issues' rather than 'avoiding unpleasant historical realities', but it is ultimately the very same animal in practice, and the same arguments regarding engagement with these themes apply in a modern setting:

• "It exists in the world, so it should be fair game for RP."

• "I have to deal with this issue on the daily RL, and I don't feel like dealing with it in my RP all the time."

• "Removing these things from the world today would make the world today a very different place due to the impact these conditions have on daily life." (Domino effect.)

..and so on.

[faraday]

@surreality said in Historical settings:

It is somewhat camouflaged by the fact that it gets classified as 'avoiding hot-button political issues' rather than 'avoiding unpleasant historical realities', but it is ultimately the very same animal in practice

It's definitely similar, for sure. But I do think there's a pretty big difference between, for example, "Women in the military are sometimes mistreated" and "Women can't serve in the military, period." The differences are even starker for the treatment of minorities. The underlying theme, of course, is the same, but skirting around it is far less problematic IMHO on a modern game than a historical one.

[surreality]

@faraday Yep, that was the crux of the previous post. It's much more extreme in the historical period, but the combination of the 'distance' provided by the time difference removes some of the immediacy, and the more intense version of most issues in a historical setting also increases the empowerment factor for folks looking for that kind of 'overcome it' story.

Some folks won't be interested and may be completely averse to the themes on the whole either way, but I can absolutely understand why some players may be open to exploring these these themes in a historical setting and opposed to dealing with them in a modern one for those reasons.

[Kanye Qwest]

The biggest difference being, imo, playing the 'sometimes' discrimination inherent in a more real world modern theme will very clearly single out a character (and maybe a player) as a giant target because of crappy behavior

In a historical setting, you'll see pushback on that because 'bu bu it's the norm'. It's just sticky. Best avoided.

[surreality]

@kanye-qwest said in Historical settings:

The biggest difference being, imo, playing the 'sometimes' discrimination inherent in a more real world modern theme will very clearly single out a character (and maybe a player) as a giant target because of crappy behavior

Crappy behavior on the part of the one doing the discrimination, or the target? (It could be either in some cases, see the horrible stereotype characters as an example for a target where this may be the case.)

In a historical setting, you'll see pushback on that because 'bu bu it's the norm'. It's just sticky. Best avoided.

I think the hard line 'no' described by others can handle this; it just requires enforcement. As people see the behavior is not acceptable on a game, you will see it diminish save for the problem children that are not a good fit for that game anyway, and should be shown the door.

[Kanye Qwest]

@surreality I'm referring to the one doing the discrimination. It doesn't necessarily translate character to player, but objectively, 100% - discrimination is bad. If you are taking part in it, you are doing a bad thing and deserve the corrective heat that comes your way for it. I think in a modern game, a character exhibiting that behavior is likely to have a very bad time.

in a 'historical' setting, a character exhibiting that behavior might also have a bad time because people are generally decent and generally know better, but that player is more likely to complain about the bad time being unthematic. Imagine being a staffer having to tell people "now now, don't be mad at this character who says black people are mentally inferior by nature. That's the game!"

like. yikes.

[faraday]

@kanye-qwest said in Historical settings:

objectively, 100% - discrimination is bad. If you are taking part in it, you are doing a bad thing and deserve the corrective heat that comes your way for it.

Yes, 100%, no question whatsoever, discrimination in real life is bad.

But this is fiction we're talking about. Do you really think that whoever wrote Schindler's List is a terrible human being because they had some historically-appropriate bad guys in it doing bad things?

I 100% support anyone who doesn't want to engage in these themes because it makes them uncomfortable. But I'm not going to judge someone poorly because they react to my 1866 female doctor with historically-appropriate skepticism or disdain. It would actually be a little jarring to me if I were playing on a modestly-thematic historical game and they didn't.

[Kanye Qwest]

@faraday said in Historical settings:

@kanye-qwest said in Historical settings:

objectively, 100% - discrimination is bad. If you are taking part in it, you are doing a bad thing and deserve the corrective heat that comes your way for it.

But this is fiction we're talking about. Do you really think that whoever wrote Schindler's List is a terrible human being because they had some historically-appropriate bad guys in it doing bad things?

Not even remotely. But I think straight up comparing a work of fiction to interactive fiction where there are multiple people taking part and playing single characters and investing emotion into those singular arcs is a false equivalence.

It is absolutely not the same thing.

[faraday]

@kanye-qwest said in Historical settings:

Not even remotely. But I think straight up comparing a work of fiction to interactive fiction where there are multiple people taking part and playing single characters and investing emotion into those singular arcs is a false equivalence. It is absolutely not the same thing.

I respectfully disagree. To use another example - actors engaging in interactive fiction in improv troupes has a lot in common with MUSHing. A given group may create boundaries of what stories they're going to tell for the comfort of the group, and that's totally fine. They may avoid historical settings with particular hot-button types of characters for that very reason. But I think any acting troupe worth its salt who decided to take on a historical setting would acknowledge that they're each playing characters and that their characters' views do not equate to the views of the actors.

ETA: The tone of the story is important too in this discussion. Dr. Quinn, for example, was a very family-friendly show that probably wouldn't have offended a lot of people. But even there they addressed bigotry and the treatment of Native Americans inherent in that historical setting as important parts of the story. It was done with a light touch befitting the audience, but it was still there. Reflecting the historical time period doesn't have to mean people running around yelling slurs left and right.