How much is enough?

[Thor]

First post.

I thought I would start with a question befor hammering you with my wondeful game designs.

I have been reading a number of posts lately that got me thinking about setting. I have started two campaigns: one in Sub-Roman Britain about 480 a.d. and the other during the English Civil war. I like both settings for the same reason. They are both periods where the social foundations have come completely apart and nobody knows what is going on or who to trust. They should be eras that are packed with conflict and emotion (as well as juicy fighting and lost treasures and all that stuff) but every time I get one up and running it falls apart for the same reason. Nobody knows crap about either of those time periods and it starts to feel more like the Legend of Hercules rather than something historical.

My question would be what sorts of information do y'all think players need to get into a setting? I realize that some of it would be improved if I were a better color commentator.
I have also had some success running a Neverwhere campaign based on the book by Neil Gaiman. All of the players had seen or read the story and so we were on the same page. I don't think they all want to read up on the ECW just to get the gist of what we are playing. I have pointed them to novels for both periods but it seems unfair to people who would buy these campaign settings to have to look elsewhere for the info. I was thinking about converting the Sub-Roman campaign to Heroquest which seems like it would work well for the various ethnic groups. But I'm not sure that the tribal settings are enough to make the groups real enough for players who don't already know what they are supposed to be like.

Does anyone have good ideas for making a foreign land or time more accessible?

[quozl]

Good question.  I've been thinking about this a lot lately.  

If you want to boil it down, what makes the setting matter?
For example, if you want the game to focus on courtly romance in the renaissance, all the players need to know the societal restrictions of that era.  Also, they'll need to know how things are done in that era.  

The problem I see with many settings is that the author wants to cover everything and that's usually because the game isn't about anything in particular.  So game masters have to figure out what they want the game to be about and then distill the setting into a handout for everyone which gives the setting as it relates to the game.  They shouldn't have to.  The game should know what it's about and give only the setting that is needed.  

Of course, that's just one person's opinion.  I hope it helps.

And welcome to the Forge!

[Storn]

I play with two historians and used to play with another... the one that I used to play with  also did roman campaigns.  It didn't hurt that I had read Cesaer's Gaul Campaign diary or that I've played the battle of Alesia from Avalon Hill back in the day...

But all three of them take this tact and tell their players;  "you dont have to know anything about the time period, I take it upon myself to teach you."  One is running L5R and funny enough, I'm more steeped in that culture (having taken a class in japanese history at NYU, watched more chambara and anime, read more manga than is healthy).  But the other players are not.  I've seen him be very patient and use this as an opportunity to really delve into a new culture, an alien culture.  (now don't hit me over the head, L5R is NOT Japanese, it is influenced and derived from Japanese with a smattering of chinese).

It is an opportunity to teach... and that is kinda cool.  But you have to have players who are up for it.  One thing I suggest is to give each player a little 2 paragraph or chart showing who is  loyal to whom as far as THAT PC knows.  The English Civil War especially... if Capt. George is loyal to Cromwell, but his sister is at court and he is torn... write that down for them.  Who is catholic, who is protestant and why does it matter?  Impress on them the firestorm that is Europe after Martin Luther.  Explain how pissed Rome is at the English Monarchy.

I just watched a bit on the discovery channel talking about how EVERYONE wanted to be a citizen of Rome... what benefits there where in being a citizen.  Impress that on your players.  Tape 10 mins of the history or discovery channel, show them at the beginning of the game.  Take books out of the library and show them Hadrian's Wall (for either game, I guess) and say "your PCs are RIGHT there! "  

If you make the learning aspect of it fun... they'll stick around.  I learned a tremendous amount from the Roman campaign I was in and I was already pretty well read on the subject.

And allow your players full access to Google.  Let them do some research, tell them if they bring up something cool, it will get incorporated into the campaign when and where it makes sense.

The other historian is running a modern day horror/magic game using witchcraft, but it is steeped in Templars, Order of the Rose Cross, Woolworth, Tesla, Free Masons, Long Island mansions, and mysterious happenings in the Balklans around 1913.  Even though it is a modern campaign, Tesla as an element to the story was introduced by a player (as in his PC is a follower of Tesla).  I discovered that the Woolworth bldg is near Wall Street and has all kinds of gothic architecture and brought this up (this was after fighting the ghost of Woolworth in his Long Island Mansion... Woolworth was not a nice guy... and that is real history).  The fun of the modern game is deciphering what is the "shadow" history and what gibes with both "shadow" war and history as the players know it.

[John Kim]

Does anyone have good ideas for making a foreign land or time more accessible?  

Well, this is personal opinion, but I think that having a familiar genre to relate to is vital.  Where here by "genre" I mean a set of works of popular fiction of some sort.  Now, it doesn't have to be in the same setting.  For example, you could run a far-future game which is based on the genre of period martial arts or samurai movies.  You can stray pretty far from that genre in many respects.  But having a genre as a starting point is important for getting everyone's expectations on the same page.  You can stray and change from that a lot, but it forms a starting point.  

For the English Civil War, there are many possibilities.  You could either start with swashbuckling (a la Three Musketeers) as a genre and modify it to more grittiness and ambiguity.  Or you could start with war movies (which generally means WWII) as a genre.  

If I were doing it, in my mind the hardest thing for a modern person to wrap their head around is what the catholic/protestant split was really about.  My take would probably to go with swashbuckling as a genre, and to have the PCs be themselves mostly clueless about many of the issues.  i.e. They are soldiers who see the world in black and white, but the course of the campaign may show them what is going on outside of their circles.

[Thor]

The ECW campaign started befor Neil Stephensons Quicksilver came out, which is as good a view of what the late 17C was like, as any i've seen.  I still don't think I could talk everyone into reading a 2000 page monster  trilogy just to play in my campaign. More importantly if I publish (a naging desire) how do I capture the essence of the time in less than 2000 pages. The ECW setting was set up to be like Paranoia without the comedy, bunches of factions all of whom are equally entrenched and powerful. every character would be members of two or three factions by default and possibly several more if they were betraying what the believed to get ahead. I deliberately tried to make the campaign about nothing so that we wouldn't focus on the factions till the needs of the players started conflicting.

The scenario wound up feeling very victorian which was a dissapointment and I think led to the devaluing of the factions. I feel that if they were on board with the setting the nature of the time period would take hold better.

I also get completely geeked reading about a time period but I get the feeling that lots of people don't. Hence the popularity of a nonsetting specific historical mishmash RPG like that which shall remain nameless.

[Garbanzo]

Thor,

What folks are saying, in different ways, that setting doesn't matter per se.  That the important thing is what you want to get out of the setting.


You seem commited to real setting-heavy simulation.  This is a fairly specialized play-preference, one that requires a lot of investment.  As you've found, you're more into this than your players.  You're talking about "capturing the essence of the time in less than 2000 pages."  Yow.  Sure, publishing is a little different (only a little, though!), but what you want is to get your players on board and interested.  Doesn't much matter what the setting's like if you're not getting the kind of play you like.

I say give a few pages of basic state-of-technology, attitudes-and-beliefs.  And, as John said, include some clear references to common movies or tv shows or books so that people know what the tone of the campaign is.


Really, though, I'm just reiterating what other folks have said.  I get the sense from your reply that this isn't what you're looking for, though.  Is that right?  What about this advice doesn't work for you?

-Matt

[M. J. Young]

From the perspective of what the players should know, it will help a great deal to consider what kinds of characters they're going to play, and what those characters know. Obviously, someone who is a member of court is going to know a lot more than someone who is merely a soldier in the army, who in turn will probably know more than a peasant; a priest will know quite a bit as well, but will know different things from the nobleman.

I don't have a lot of trouble running historical and pseudo-historical worlds in Multiverser because I can readily begin with the concept that the player character knows exactly as much about this world as the player knows, and has the same attitudes the player would have. If you're trying to get players to roleplay indigs--characters indigenous to the world--you have to attempt to communicate to them an understanding not merely of what their characters know, but what their characters think and believe. In the English Civil War, the Divine Right of Kings was still an issue for many people, if I recall correctly; it's not an issue for many modern role players, and if they're going to play characters from that period, that has to be presented as a factor in that mindset.

The question then becomes whether any of your players particularly want to play people from another time and place, as opposed to merely projecting their own beliefs and values into characters constructed for a setting.

When you speak of publishing, you compound the problem, because somehow you must structure it so that the referee has the ability to lead the players into the necessary character mindset, while at the same time the referee receives enough information to adequately grasp how the characters fit within the world.

For all that, I agree that time periods of great change and social upheaval create wonderful settings for play, particularly as they leave so much uncertain. That in itself can work in your favor, as some of the things the players would naturally want to know are not known and completely unknowable at the time and place of the characters.

Have you thought of attempting a sort of 7th Sea model, in which the major players and factions are all somewhat simplified and given new identities, so that you can get the flavor of the situation but not be locked into the history? This way players can't guess whether Cromwell gets the throne or the axe based on their own knowledge of history, and although they're not getting as much of the real history they are getting quite a bit more of the uncertainty.

I may have rambled a bit here; I hope this helps.

--M. J. Young

[Thor]

I was discussing the above question with one of the players this weekend. He is of the opinion (as it seems many of you are) that the setting is just a costume and set of tools for the character. That of itself may be part of the problem.

I had designed the ECW setting to have lots of motivation from the factions and if those factions turn into so much window dressing there isn't a lot of motivation. I suppose that I could just get overly strict and when they think anachronistically treat them as heretics but that doesn't seem like it would be fun either.

I understand that part of the problem was that the first adventure wasn't particularly faction centered. It was a murder for hire and double cross. I had wanted to keep things somewhat neutral in the beginning so that they could get a feel for the system I was using. A somewhat crunchy version of Rissus . Perhaps if I had made the scenario more centered on the differences between the characters I might have gotten more flavor.

My question still stands as what other methods are there for introducing players to an unfamiliar setting?

[Michael S. Miller]

Hi, Thor.

First, check out the thread Bringing History into Play. It's partially about fictitious history of made-up game worlds, but plenty of the ideas would work fine for real world history.

When we were writing FVLMINATA, we tried to boil down the essentials of the mindset to as clear and strong a form as possible. To this end, the first chapter contains a quiz on how to think like an ancient Roman. The quiz presents situations genericized from myth and history and then poses "What would you do?" giving 4 options. It then gives the "proper" Roman answer and the specific historical info backing it up.

In your case, you could link something like a quiz to character creation. Have the players answer questions designed to probe their own beliefs and preferences. From those beliefs and preferences, assign them to an appropriate faction. Remember that gaming, as an ephemeral hobby (i.e., the gameplay itself generally doesn't get recorded or revised), is best when painted with broad strokes, so boil down the agenda and beliefs of the factions as clearly as you can, so the players know what to do.

[Thor]

FVLMINATA was one of the games that got me thinking about this question.

The option of bringing the color of the setting into the chargen is one of the best I have come up with. Making the characters part of the setting should be job 1.