Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?

[Doctor Xero]

The view you present is a very, very Eurocentric one.  That being said, how does Beowulf fit in?  What is Grendel, really?  For that matter, what about so many of the Brother's Grimm fairy stories?  Where are the non-human races in, say, the Swan Princess?  Or the Frog Prince?  Or Sleeping Beauty? Or Tom Thumb?

But, how does that fit with, say, Asian mythology and fantastic literature?  I don't think it does.  Unless, of course, you count demons and other divine or semi-divine spirits as "other races".

I think characters like Monkey, which are arguably divine, and the sundry glopblins and fairies that inhabit mythology, are not the same as FRPG races at all.  This is because those creatures usually inhabit a speciif, and often metaphoric, morally meaningful, place in the worldview of the culture in question.

In the actual text, Grendel is definitely depicted as a creature of a nonhuman species (to use modern wording).  The various faerie stories of The Brothers Grimm, Perault, Lang,  d'Aulnoy, Anderson, et al. are filled with otherworldly creatures and anthropomorphic animals which would all function well as FRPG races.  To state that they do not count as fantastical races merely because of singularity or obvious thematic niche is to ignore how much The Professor's hobbits, elves, and dwarves function in precisely the same fashion!

As for Asian mythology, a simple Google search will reveal that Japanese and Chinese mythology/folklore is filled with fantastical races which would function quite well as FRPG races, including dragon kings and noblefolk, fish people, the kappa, and the over-used kitsune.  Similar fantastical races can be found in the non-Eurocentric mythology/folklore of the various Native American and African tribes.  The Middle East is not Eurocentric, either, and fantastical races can be found in the mythology/folklore surrounding the three Abrahamic faith traditions (such as the race of giants of which Goliath was a member).

Doctor Xero

[Doctor Xero]

I disagree that they allow RW racial issues to be dodges, rather IMO they allow such stereotypes to be projected under the guise of 'fantasy'.

I agree.  The racism in the second STAR WARS trilogy was not mitigated by the use of fictional alien races.  (Nor was it entirely unintentional according to an interview with the actor who played JarJar Binks and who claimed he had done a Jamaican caricature as a joke without considering how it might come across as racist.)

On a purely personal level, I'm not comfortable with using my campaigns as real world dodges of serious racial issues (or other serious issues) which threaten our current real life.  YMMV

Doctor Xero

[RyuMaou]

In the actual text, Grendel is definitely depicted as a creature of a nonhuman species (to use modern wording).  

Okay, I'll buy that.  But, is Grendel unique or an entire sub-species?  I was always under the impression that Grendel was unique, at least after its mother was killed.

The various faerie stories of The Brothers Grimm, Perault, Lang,  d'Aulnoy, Anderson, et al. are filled with otherworldly creatures and anthropomorphic animals which would all function well as FRPG races.  To state that they do not count as fantastical races merely because of singularity or obvious thematic niche is to ignore how much The Professor's hobbits, elves, and dwarves function in precisely the same fashion!

Yes, they would function well in that regard, but do they in the literature?  I don't think so.  Perhaps we see the "singularity" issue as different.  Elves are certainly a race of people, as are hobbits and dwarves.  But, the Swan Princess is a human, under a curse.  Tom Thumb is unique and, therefore, not a race.  As is the Frog Prince.  They might make quite nice fantasy races, but that's not how they are presented.  Ergo, fantastical races are not neccessary to fantasy literature.  Fantastical beings, which, of course, those all are, might be a requirement.  But, you're talking apples and oranges to the original question.

As for Asian mythology, a simple Google search will reveal that Japanese and Chinese mythology/folklore is filled with fantastical races which would function quite well as FRPG races, including dragon kings and noblefolk, fish people, the kappa, and the over-used kitsune.

Okay, you're right about the kappa and the kitsune, but I wasn't counting divine beings.  In my mind, they fall under the category of "gods", which are a whole different kettle of fish.  Dragon kings are, in one sense, a "race", but only in the sense that angels are a "race".  Similar, but different.  Which I think is fairly obvious when you follow those links from Google.

Similar fantastical races can be found in the non-Eurocentric mythology/folklore of the various Native American and African tribes.  The Middle East is not Eurocentric, either, and fantastical races can be found in the mythology/folklore surrounding the three Abrahamic faith traditions (such as the race of giants of which Goliath was a member).

Again, based on what I know of Native American myhology, those are arguably divine beings.  I'm not sure about the African reference, but then, this is the first time it's been mentioned.  And, as for Goliath being a member of a "race" of Giants, I seem to recall he was a Philistine, who happened to be a giant.  Not the same thing as being a member of a self-perpetuating race.

The rest of the examples that have been mentioned, however, were Eurocentric.  I'll admit that I forgot about the two Japanese examples that you used, but I've been reading Chinese mythology lately, so that was where I was focused.  
And, of course, the question of whether or not fantasy races are required for a game is still up in the air, as far as I'm concerned.  All other arguments aside, I'm not sure that enough people would buy it to make it a viable game.  I'm talking break-even business models here, BTW.  And, I'm just not sure there's enough of a market for a game with out the "standard" fantasy races.

Thanks,
Jim

[Shreyas Sampat]

I don't think you're going to get anywhere by positing an arbitrary distinction between "divine" beings and others, particularly since the conception of divinity varies so widely between cultures.

The distinction between races and unique beings looks much more interesting to me, and I'd like to know what you make of that in the context of RPGs.

[RyuMaou]

I don't think you're going to get anywhere by positing an arbitrary distinction between "divine" beings and others, particularly since the conception of divinity varies so widely between cultures.

Perhaps not, but I feel that it's an important difference.  How about this, if the race is effectively immortal and has power far beyond anything the players would have, it's not the same thing as, say, a community of beings that might generate "heros" who adventure in the world.    A different order of magnatude, if you will, that remove such beings from being considered for players or NPCs.

The distinction between races and unique beings looks much more interesting to me, and I'd like to know what you make of that in the context of RPGs.

Well, unique beings are just, heros with power.  They may, or may not, be supernatural.  But, they are fundamentally different than a community of beings that have similar characteristics.  A group of players that are uniquely "gifted"  are different than a group of similar people with different specialties.

OTH, my wife had an idea about a game based on specifically that.  A group of people who all start out more or less "normal" but develop mutations or supernatural "oddities" as the game goes on.  The goal is to accomplish a task or tasks while learning to live with these sudden changes, some of which are good and some of which are not so good.  I might have to develop that, actually.  It seemed like an interesting idea.

Thanks,
Jim

[Bill Cook]

There was a hard-bound, one volume game that I used to have.  And I just loved it!  Can't remember the name.  On the cover, it had a devil rising out of a pentagram behind an alchemist at his desk.  Anyway, it was ingenious.  Every line.

And I seem to remember it making the point that the first generation of fantastic beasts were mix-a-matches of existing creatures.  An unconvincing example would be . . . a jackelope.

[OT] This book also made the point that traditionally, magic occured for its own sake.  Certainly not in any functional way.  And that any fantasy game that ignored the struggle for Christianity to subplant Paganism was missing the boat. [/OT]

To me, what's most ugly about non-humans is using them as templates for character advantage.  Particularly when they trump class functions.  (Urge to burn Player's Handbook rising! . . .  Rising!! . . .  Fading . . .)

BTW, hitsumei, Mr. Sluagh, welcome to the Forge!

[AnyaTheBlue]

I think that there is a general consensus on the main point of the thread.

Are intelligent non-humans AS PCs necessary for a game to be a Fantasy RPG?

o No.  It is possible to make all of the PCs restricted to 'normal' humans.

Are intelligent non-humans as NPCs necessary for a game to be a Fantasy RPG?

o Yes.  With a caveat.

Why?

There's not just one reason.  First, Fantasy RPGS are, to a degree, attempting to Simulate-with-a-capital-S Myths and Fairy-tales.  Myths and Fairy-tales contained supernatural creatures with human-like intelligence and motivations.  Puss-in-boots and all the other talking animals.  Fairies, sprites, goblins, kobolds, and so forth.  At one time, real people believed most of these things to be real.  Modern Fantasty Fiction and the games that it inspired have attempted to embelish, simulate, or simply be inspired by these myths and legends

Most of the Fantasy Races descend, yes, from Tolkien's examples.  But that's not required.  They provide a shorthand that is commonly used in the grammar of FRPs, but Talislanta, if nothing else, shows us it's not necessary to use the stock set.

As someone said upthread, a Fantasy RPG has to have fantastic things in it.  If a place is fantastic, but entirely occupied by the mundane and ordinary, well, where's the Fantastic?  Fantasy entails the Fantastic, be those Fantastic People (mages, heroes, etc.), Fantastic Beings (dragons, unicorns, griffons), Fantastic Races (elves, dwarves, trolls, ad nauseum), Fantastic Things (the holy grail, Mjolnir), Fantastic Cultures, and Fantastic Places (Jotunheim, Olympus, Atlantis, Avalon).

The Fantastic source material is full of Fantastic places, and also Fantastic people, places, and things.  It's common to have Fantastic Things in Fantastic Places (elves, goblins, magic cauldrons, and so forth all in the Mystical (and hence Fantastic) Otherworld, or the Spear of Longinus in the Kingdom of the Fisher King), and it's common to have Fantastic Things and People in mundane places (Merlin and Excalibur).

There is a caveat.  You can have the fantastic without fantastic races, but only if you really constrain yourself.  It could be done.  I'm not sure if it would completely qualify as a standard FRP.

One option would be to have only the place, creatures, things and perhaps some of the people be Fantastic.

But what would that look like?  Surrounded by all this fantastic stuff, why would the people be 'normal'?  Why wouldn't they become fantastic themselves?

A good option here is to make everybody human, but then make the cultures they belong to Fantastic in some way.  If you took the Ducks, Trolls, Elves, Trolls, and so forth out of Glorantha, but left the magic and gods in, well, I think it'd still be Fantasy.  Of course, it wouldn't really be Glorantha, but that's another issue entirely.

But here's the thing.  In the end, you kind of end up recreating yourself.  No, you may have excluded Fantastic Races, but those races are a 'shorthand, archtypical stereotype set'.  Without them to fill those roles in the game and the setting, you make other things which end up looking an awful lot like them -- humans who belong to a culture with an elf-like role in the setting, or humans with certain 'special traits' or 'taint' or a club/guild/caste/whatever that, again, make them elf-like (Jorune had some of this going on, actually, with the elf-like Muadra (I think I spelled that right) and their (massive and giant) dwarf-like bretheren).

Heck, look at Star Wars.  Jedi are Elves (Yoda is ancient and has pointy ears -- you do the math).  The Sith are Drow.  Stormtroopers are Orcs.  Robots are kinda Dwarves, but so is Chewbacca.  Everybody else is surreal color of one sort or another.

I guess my conclusion is yes, you can make an FRP without any fantasy races.  But the trade-off is that you'll replace them with humans (or whatever) that fill the same evolutionary niche in the Fantastical story-scape.

Which is a roundabout way of saying they have to be there in some form or another.  But you don't have to call them elves, dwarves, or even fantasy races.  You can disguise them as castes or cultures or guilds of humans.

Well, in my opinion, anyway.

[Zak Arntson]

There was a hard-bound, one volume game that I used to have.  And I just loved it!  Can't remember the name.  

That would be Fantasy Wargaming by Bruce Galloway. And, interestingly, it is an attempt to provide rules and background to play a believable game based on a fantasy medieval period. Complete with Christianity, Satanism and Nordic religions. Also, it is an example of fantasy game which does not allow for PC fantasy races.

[contracycle]

I may have a slightly clearer expression of my approach after thinking about it overnight.

I have come to think that OD&D hit the nail on the head when it distinguished all the non-player creatures as Monsters.  That is what they are, monsters, NOT people or any kind of self-sustaining race or gene line.  The purpose of Monsters, much like ninja's, is to flip out and bite peoples heads off.  Yes, they can have other thematic roles, but I think the primary function is probably to be eaters of people.

Now it seems to me that this was implicit in early D&D; theres no real attempt to make a coherent mythological or realistic 'ecology' or anything; just a compendium-like list of things that might conceivably encountered.  And in my opinion many of these were mistakenly generalised, like Medusa going from individual to species.

Now orcs and goblins et al fit in an interesting place here.  I think it is essentially only the Tolkienesque convention that introduces multiple 'races' as vehicles for the readers identification.  I don't think the kappa or the svartalfar are really races or species at all in the sense that RPG uses the term; they are still Monsters as OD&D uses the term.  They are completely inhuman, and presented in contrast to the humans.  They are not the Enemy because they are different or strange; they are the Enemy because they are our predators.

So let us say, that yes I agree that in order to be Fantatstic, some sort of Monster must probably be introduced, some sort of threat that could potentially drag your dearly beloved off into the bushes and eat them, complete with all the wet noises (but that said, this works perfectly well in SF without much of this confusion).  But in addition to the role that Monsters play, we have a whole body of work going in the opposite direction, the Orcs Are People Too movement.

I think that a lot of early RPG texts gave a sort of National Geographic-style description of these 'races', sometimes even including unkowns in the ' it is believed that...' form.  Their living arrangements and technology are described, sometimes even their ritual and mating and honour codes, that sort of thing.  The conclusion that Orcs Are People Too is quite strong, and this I believe is derived from the Tolkienesque precedent of realised, speaking enemy races.  But it seems to me that exactly there lies the problem: whether orcs are People or Predators.  Locked into the overarching mythic structure of LOTR, Tolkien can probably get away with orcs as rather people-like predators, but denied this specifically meaningful identity in most FRPG, and instead presented as just something that happens in the game world, the orcs-as-people concept has no counter-argument to overcome.

I think that this has resulted in a confused mess.  I disagree with the claim that there are a wide variety of existing (in the literary sense) mythical beings that are analogous to FRPG races... the kappa and kitsune to my mind having both a metaphysical function and a predatory relationship with humans.  They are not People Too, they are Monsters - even if some RPG has already senselessly made them into character races (no more than Medusa or the Minotaur become races).

Now, reverting to my otiginal point: if I wanted to do something that specifically addressed cultural relatavism, or cultural exploration, then I would strictly limit this to human cultures.  If I wanted to do something atavistic and directly threatening, I would employ Monsters.  But I think that the current crop of RPG races are caught in the divide between Monsters and People and I find them unsatisfying and/or counterproductive for this reason.

[Doctor Xero]

But, the Swan Princess is a human, under a curse.  Tom Thumb is unique and, therefore, not a race.  As is the Frog Prince.  They might make quite nice fantasy races, but that's not how they are presented.

I was referring to the races of enchantresses/fairies/et al. who cursed such individuals as the Frog Prince or the Beast -- don't forget that in much European folklore and some Native American and African folklore, witches and other enchanters/enchantresses are depicted as members of a race not as as individuals with magical skills.  (You'll find the same is true of Gandalf of the Istari.)  In some versions of the tiny child folktale (Tom Thumb, Thumbelina, et al.), the heroine or hero ends up married to a tiny fairy after ending up in intrigues involving anthropomorphic animals.  And then there're the innumerable ogres/trolls/giants faced by various and sundry heroines and heroes.  In some versions of The Sleeping Beauty, Briar Rose ends up with a mother-in-law who is half-ogre.  Folktales abound with "monster races" and such.

In my mind, they fall under the category of "gods", which are a whole different kettle of fish.  Dragon kings are, in one sense, a "race", but only in the sense that angels are a "race".  Similar, but different.

The reason that, as a folklorist, I am being so stubborn about this is that the division between fantastical race and magical/divine entity is a fairly modern conceit.  Elves/dwarves were originally viewed as no less divine than angels and gods, and I think it is a tad ethnocentric for us to dismiss their divine heritage.  One of the many sources for our image of the fairies is the Tuatha de Danann, the pre-Christian gods of what is now known as the United Kingdom.  Our modern division between the shadow fantastical race and the shadow magical/divine entity, between the monster and the demon, is similarly a modern conceit, born in part from early SF/horror tales.

One of the causes of our current confusion comes from European Medieval syncretism, as explicated by C. S. Lewis in his writings on the longevai (what we would now call the fantastical races).  Put simply, the European Medieval mindset wished to have an overtly Christian cosmology and metaphysics while still incorporating pagan imagery and figures -- so the gods-turned-fairies of previous religions became magical races halfway between divine angel and mortal human.  This is the primary origin of modern conceptions of the fair folk, strengthened and shaped particularly (though not exclusively!) by William Shakespeare's *A Midsummer's Night Dream* as well as The Professor's magnum opus.

Doctor Xero

[Doctor Xero]

The conclusion that Orcs Are People Too is quite strong, and this I believe is derived from the Tolkienesque precedent of realised, speaking enemy races.  But it seems to me that exactly there lies the problem: whether orcs are People or Predators.

Your division has helped me to recognize a key dividing point in the discussion in this thread, contracycle.

I think we need to recognize that we're talking about two very different visions of (for example) elves without differentiating these two visions.

In some literary and folkloric tales, fantastical beings are members of another (often envied or feared) race : Tolkien's elves, Anderson's mermaids, MacDonald's goblins, Lewis' giants, Gaiman's angels, the elves and dwarves and fairies in many high fantasy stories, etc.  Monsters which are nothing more than dangerous beasts or dangerous people fall into this category.

In some literary and folkloric tales, fantastical beings are preternatural entities (sometimes like carrier particles of the metaphysical, to use a physics analogy) whether divine or demonic or embodiments of mystical awe : Grimm's fairies, Anderson's Snow Queen, Beagle's Last Unicorn, Shakespeare's Three Witches, the elves and dwarves and fairies in Norse and Celtic mythology, etc.  Monsters which are embodiments of nature's terrors or of human nightmares fall into this category.

And in some literary and folkloric tales, it's not quite clear.  (Or there is a mix, as in Arthurian lore.)

In general, in FRPGs there may be no difficulty with allowing a player to play an elf who is a fantastical being who is part of a magical race but most FRPGs do not allow players to play elves who are fantastical beings which are divine or are embodiments of mystical awe.

In its earlier days, AD&D outraged a number of devotees of folklore and mythology when they "mortalized" into entire races various folkloric and mythic entities.  This was seen as a disrespectful diminishing of the awe and power of these entities.  The World of Darkness with its races had a similar but far less intense reaction.  There are still those who argue about whether faeries or kappa or dragons or Judaeo-Christian angels should be allowed as player-character races.

Or, to reword this in part in your words, contracycle, not people or predator
but
people or predator or thematic(metaphysic) personification.

I think the discussion here involves several different now-intertwined thoughts:

*) whether one needs in an FRPG fantastical beings who are part of a magical race

*) whether one needs in an FRPG fantastical beings who are embodiments of the divine or the demonic or mystical awe

*) whether one needs in an FRPG to allow players to play characters who are members of a magical race

*) whether one needs in an FPRG to allow players to play characters who are embodiments

Doctor Xero

[RyuMaou]

I was referring to the races of enchantresses/fairies/et al. who cursed such individuals as the Frog Prince or the Beast -- don't forget that in much European folklore and some Native American and African folklore, witches and other enchanters/enchantresses are depicted as members of a race not as as individuals with magical skills.  

Really?  Which ones?  I remember the enchantresses as people with supernatural skills.

And then there're the innumerable ogres/trolls/giants faced by various and sundry heroines and heroes.  In some versions of The Sleeping Beauty, Briar Rose ends up with a mother-in-law who is half-ogre.  Folktales abound with "monster races" and such.

I mostly read those ogres and such as individual beings, not at all like a community.  At best, an extended family.  Like, for instance, Grendel.

The reason that, as a folklorist, I am being so stubborn about this is that the division between fantastical race and magical/divine entity is a fairly modern conceit.  Elves/dwarves were originally viewed as no less divine than angels and gods, and I think it is a tad ethnocentric for us to dismiss their divine heritage.  One of the many sources for our image of the fairies is the Tuatha de Danann, the pre-Christian gods of what is now known as the United Kingdom.  Our modern division between the shadow fantastical race and the shadow magical/divine entity, between the monster and the demon, is similarly a modern conceit, born in part from early SF/horror tales.

Oh, that's nice.  You know what they say about opinions, right?

I, obviously, disagree.  But, then, I was also the kid who argued for thirty minutes with his Junior English teacher about just what Shakespeare meant when Hamlet was talking to Yorick.  
The division, for instance, between the divine and the "less-than-divine" in American Indian culture was non-existant because everything was divine, including lunch.  Was the same true of other cultures?  Maybe.  But, where do you draw the line?  It must be drawn somewhere or else there's no point in the discussion.  Or, perhaps that's your point...

One of the causes of our current confusion comes from European Medieval syncretism, as explicated by C. S. Lewis in his writings on the longevai (what we would now call the fantastical races).  Put simply, the European Medieval mindset wished to have an overtly Christian cosmology and metaphysics while still incorporating pagan imagery and figures -- so the gods-turned-fairies of previous religions became magical races halfway between divine angel and mortal human.  This is the primary origin of modern conceptions of the fair folk, strengthened and shaped particularly (though not exclusively!) by William Shakespeare's *A Midsummer's Night Dream* as well as The Professor's magnum opus.

Actually, I think it comes from your lack of understanding of the question.  Or, your need to hijack the thread to prove some kind of point.  
The question related to fantasy role-playing games, not literature.  You keep bringing that up, though.  Working on an English paper?  Or, thesis?  I'm fascinated to know why you insist on encourageing topic drift.

Cheers,
Jim

[Itse]

Contracycle:

Hmm, I still disagree, I ave felt for many years now that fantasy races are at best supurfluous and at worst pernicious. I disagree that they make tyhe handling of cultural differences easier and more explicit, because they obviate the issue precisely becuase its a race property, not a culture property. I disagree that they allow RW racial issues to be dodges, rather IMO they allow such stereotypes to be projected under the guise of 'fantasy'.

That's also true. "Easy solution" doesn't mean "good results" if your not ready to put some effort into the game in general. I just wanted to point out that I don't think that the current "standard" presentation of fantastic races is just a result of tradition. Most fantasy fiction is crap. 95% of everything is garbage.

[neelk]

I think that there is a general consensus on the main point of the thread.

Are intelligent non-humans AS PCs necessary for a game to be a Fantasy RPG?

o No.  It is possible to make all of the PCs restricted to 'normal' humans.

Are intelligent non-humans as NPCs necessary for a game to be a Fantasy RPG?

o Yes.  With a caveat.

Thanks for summarizing the consensus, because it provides a really strong hook for me to explain just why I disagree. :)

First, I know the answer to the second question is "no", because, well, I've run fantasy games like that, and read fantasy novels like that.  For example, I ran a game in college which in a pretty standard late-Renaissance setting which didn't have any non-humans. There were swords, castles, magic spells, sorcerers, and all the usual trappings of genre fantasy, except that there weren't any gods (though there were religions), demons, elves, orcs, ghosts, or whatever. It was all just people.

I've been meaning to run a fantasy game without any magic in it, either. It wouldn't be very hard to do, either, for reasons I will elaborate below:

There's not just one reason.  First, Fantasy RPGS are, to a degree, attempting to Simulate-with-a-capital-S Myths and Fairy-tales.  Myths and Fairy-tales contained supernatural creatures with human-like intelligence and motivations.  Puss-in-boots and all the other talking animals.  Fairies, sprites, goblins, kobolds, and so forth.  At one time, real people believed most of these things to be real.  Modern Fantasty Fiction and the games that it inspired have attempted to embelish, simulate, or simply be inspired by these myths and legends.

This account overlooks an entire brach of the fantasy genre's evolutionary tree. An important ancestor of fantasy genre are historical romances. Think  of The Three Musketeers, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Ivanhoe, and later novels like The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, Scaramouche, and The Scarlet Pimpernel. Historical adventure fiction was wildly popular in the nineteenth century, and especially in the latter half it occupied a position of literary (dis)respect roughly comparable to the way that fantasy and science fiction hold today. However, what's important to us is that writers often wanted to write historical adventures that were not overly constrained by actual history or legend, and from this impulse we got the subgenre of Ruritanian fantasy, which had "ordinary" adventure stories set in fictional (and sometimes fictionalized) countries. (And of course nowadays that technique is not just used for adventure stories -- cf LeGuin's Orsinian Tales.)

So, one game I want to run is adventure in the mode of Dumas, but I don't want to use a historical setting because I can't expect the players to know everything relevant. So, I can use an invented fantasy setting for this purpose. In it swashbuckling heroics would be appropriate, and I'd leave out magic and nonhumans because they'd just be a distraction.

[RyuMaou]

So, one game I want to run is adventure in the mode of Dumas, but I don't want to use a historical setting because I can't expect the players to know everything relevant. So, I can use an invented fantasy setting for this purpose. In it swashbuckling heroics would be appropriate, and I'd leave out magic and nonhumans because they'd just be a distraction.

Too bad that Fantasy Games Unlimited is kaput.  They made a game called "Flashing Blades" that was perfect for what you describe there.  Of course, they used the fictionalized France that Dumas wrote, but the rest of the game system would be just what you would want.  I'm at work now, but I think I actually have a copy of the game at home.  The box has been destroyed, but the game itself should be around.  If you're interested, we might be able to work out a "loan" of somekind so you could see the rules...

You know, I don't think I ever actually played that game.  I bought it just because I liked the Idea of it.  Well, the First Step is admitting there's a problem...

Cheers,
Jim