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Why aren't historical time periods used more as settings within RPGs

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thebeardofandronicus asked: Why aren't historical time periods used more as settings within RPGs? There appears to be potentially interesting, "well known" periods (Fall of the Western Roman Empire in 5th century, Crusading period, Early Middle Ages, Renaissance Italy, etc etc.) that would make for an interesting backdrop for an RPG, but developers seem content on relying on standard fantasy fare, judging from the last few popular releases. Is it a lack of interest on the part of the public, developers, or something else?

 

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Josh is really great when talking about stuff he's passionate about. I hope the day will come when he convinces Feargus a historical RPG might be worth a try after all.
 

Abelian

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I would personally enjoy playing a historical RPG, but I think there's good reason why developers stay away from them (these are just personal thoughts).

Political correctness is one such reason, be it in terms of depicting gender, racial, religious or other customs that would exhibit strong values dissonance to a modern audience. Escapism is another reason, where the creators don't want to be restricted by historical constraints in their narrative.

The presence of magic or advanced technology can be another factor, where many players would prefer to role-play as a character who wins battles through intellectual prowess rather than physical ability (let's face it: RPGs have been long considered a geeky pursuit). This is not a factor for strategy games (Age of Empires or Paradox's titles as Josh mentioned) since the player can role-play as the cunning commander.

Personally, I think there exists a large enough niche to support historical RPGs and would welcome more of them. Hopefully, Josh will get a chance to create one himself, since it's obvious history is a subject he loves.
 

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Josh may look "passionate" about it, but he sure as fuck isn't making PoE world's history any degree of remotely interesting. I've read all poe's books I could find and, I hate to be so blunt, but it's just primitive, naive and dull shite. And apparently it's all been written by Josh himself.

I think there's a big misunderstanding going on here. You assume that he's interested in really cool historical stuff, while his interests lie in what nation had the biggest thumbs.
 

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Josh may look "passionate" about it, but he sure as fuck isn't making PoE world's history any degree of remotely interesting. I've read all poe's books I could find and, I hate to be so blunt, but it's just primitive, naive and dull shite. And apparently it's all been written by Josh himself.

Not one word here is correct

:smug:

Smugness aside, at least the last part isn't. IIRC, I'm pretty sure at least George Ziets contributed to the initial lore.
 

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Oh god. Go and look what videos Josh "liked". This man reeks of utter boredom, just watching a few of those vids gave me suicidal thoughts. No wonder his books are exactly like that.
 

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He likes a bunch of videos about guns. Not very SJW, that.

Josh's Midwestern German-American white dude-ism overrides his SJWism. It's an adorable trait.
 

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What's cute is that you guys can't tell that I'm making fun of him

I'm a notorious reactionary. I find Sawyer's politics fairly absurd.
 
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Josh may look "passionate" about it, but he sure as fuck isn't making PoE world's history any degree of remotely interesting. I've read all poe's books I could find and, I hate to be so blunt, but it's just primitive, naive and dull shite. And apparently it's all been written by Josh himself.

I think there's a big misunderstanding going on here. You assume that he's interested in really cool historical stuff, while his interests lie in what nation had the biggest thumbs.

What specifically do you find objectionable in PoE's lore/books? I'd say they're a damn sight more interesting and original than any of the FR IE games.
 
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What's cute is that you guys can't tell that I'm making fun of him

I'm a notorious reactionary. I find Sawyer's politics fairly absurd.


> Viciously Defend Sawyer Whenever Critique is Given For the Past 3 months
> Call him sexy and adorable
> Clearly you were joking and we didn't pick up on your implicit sarcasm.

:notsureifserious:
 

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Kingdom cum dev reacted to Sawyer's video:

kingdom-cum-dev.jpg
 

Abelian

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Those were very good points. I'll add another one: the difficulty in writing about history without pronouncing judgement, which is in turn shaped by the author's upbringing, values and cultural milieu.

A game designer would need to choose a protagonist, whose faction would become the de facto good guys and whose opponents would simply become "the side that deserves to lose". For a movie that handled this poorly, see Mel Gibson's The Patriot (TV Tropes' Historical Hero Upgrade and Historical Villain Upgrade are also relevant).

Age of Emipres III dealt with this by conjuring up the imaginary Circle of Ossus conspiracy, while its predecessor had an interesting mix of traditional European heroes, such as William Wallace and Joan of Arc, and villains, such as Genghis Khan and Saladin (whose chivalry was admired by his foes), for the player to support.

This idea ties in with what I mentioned about political correctness, but goes somewhat deeper since one group's reviled enemy may very well be another group's glorious historical figure.

I recently re-played the 1996 turn-based strategy video game Conquest of the New World and found this amusing disclaimer in the manual (and this is a video game that allowed the player to choose any of the six available nations to play as):

Designers' Note: Conquest of the New World is not a game that depicts what occurred in the 16th century in historically accurate detail. Instead, it provides an opportunity to participate in the spirit of the 16th century's drive for exploration and world conquest. In some sense, it offers multiple alternate "realities" to explore rather than a way to play what actually occurred.

Ya think that a game with a random map generator would not accurately depict history? :roll:
 

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Kingdom cum dev reacted to Sawyer's video:

Most of this just requires more effort and creativity, which is of course an issue for artists working for their livelihood. I really think Tolkien fantasy is just the path of least resistance, which is very tempting for anyone.
 

pippin

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When people talk about historical setting for RPGs they say things like "this would be too incorrect for modern audiences". Truth is, today's world is very similar to that of XIII-XIV-XV century (that is, late middle ages). That goes from Jews being Jews to kids playing ball on the streets. If anything, the problem (as usual) is the sjw-oriented pseudo scientific revisionism. Don't you guys forget that thinking about the MIddle Ages as an age of ignorance and darkness was something brought by XIX century libruls.

That said, the Reconquista could be easily re-interpreted as something "friendly" to the SJW ideology. Since the main conflict was muslims vs christians, and since muslims were known as educated, clean (to the point of wearing perfume) people, it became very common for spanish christians to embrace the opposite: ignorant, dirty and unaccepting assholes . Sounds familiar? Then, there's the thing about how jews were persecuted soon after the Reconquista was successful for the christian spanish kingdom.
 

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