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The reason we don't see more historical RPGs is because they all suck

Burning Bridges

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I thought about it the last few days and certain historical periods can only be molded very badly into an rpg.

E.g. historical thirty years war or napoleonic wars without any magic or monsters.
Stuff like that would work much better as HoMM like game but even then the fantasy setting has too much advantages.

Even with lots of combat tricks musket-, pike- and cavallery combat would be extremely boring.
Also the implementation of artillery is hard even when your party is as big as 16 chars.
Mages are a much more balanced falconet.

You basically would have to ignore a lot of history to make combat fun and if it's like that why not invent your own fantasy setting already?

There were enough things that can replace magic: alchemy, mysticism, old books in unknown languages, magician tricks, ancient medicine, basic cryptography and much more.

If you mention thirty years war, having someone like Descartes in a game who could calculate artillery trajectories while developing treatises in mathematics, physics and pondering on the cosmos would be a sufficient replacement for a magician.
 

overly excitable young man

Guest
The question is about combat magic and not about the lore aspect of it.

Sure you can force the lame stun grenades, liquid fire and salves that work like health potions in but imo if you take those cheap tricks you might as well give the setting magic. At least you get haste and fireball and cool stuff like that then.

But realistic thirty years war combat would be pretty boring and would only make sense on a grand scale like total war but not for the size of an rpg.
 

Lyric Suite

Converting to Islam
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I find it hilarious how "historical" means no magic.

Except magic existed in the middle ages, so by "historical" what people means is our modern understanding of history, rather than a portrayal of the past as people who existed back then actually lived their own age.
 
Unwanted

Sweeper

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Except magic existed in the middle ages,
Absolutely based and redpilled.
51LjkquG6IL.jpg

And it still exists, unfortunately
267a86a4217d3dddb4414da41ce4556e--john-podesta-clinton-campaign.jpg
 
Unwanted

Sweeper

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So why didnt the Anglo-Saxons just cast harm at the battle of hastings? Total noobs.
That's not how it works. Satanists perform ritual sacrifices in order to be rewarded by Satan in the after life, where they will join the ranks of demons in the eternal battle between good and evil.
 

overly excitable young man

Guest
Also theres a forest with the last living unicorn somewhere.
I saw a documentary about it.
 

Tigranes

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Much of the CRPG combat systems we know of today came out of, one way or another, D&D. If you just keep all the systems and then get rid of magic, of course it's going to be impoverished. To then conclude that historical settings will suck ass doesn't really square up, though.

Legends of Eisenwald was a good example of how a tight combat system could be built in such a way that you have fun without needing spectacular deus ex machina magical effects. You could do it in a number of other ways - e.g. a turn based system that derives a whole system around stances and movements for sword duels. Or you are a leader of a group of brigands and combat doesn't revolve around walking in and killing everything that moves, but a mix of scoping out the forest, laying traps, getting to know your men and assigning them based on their skills & temperament (e.g. as lookout man), making decisions about how to disable key targets and get away with the loot.

Or medieval sieges - take the KCD ending scene and bring it up notches. Plenty of things that can be done, as long as you step outside the narrow box of "five people walk into a long cavern populated with orcs in 3x3 rooms and murderhobo".
 

Risewild

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Much of the CRPG combat systems we know of today came out of, one way or another, D&D.
Which came out of Chainmail. A system based on tabletop historical miniature wargames. Wargames that didn't use magic.

I guess if some people can have fun playing historical miniature wargames that don't have magic rules, there could be a turn based tactical RPG using a variant of those rules and still be fun for some people too.
 

AArmanFV

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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire
Much of the CRPG combat systems we know of today came out of, one way or another, D&D.
Which came out of Chainmail. A system based on tabletop historical miniature wargames. Wargames that didn't use magic.

To make a clarification, the fantasy supplement of Chainmail had magic "rules" at some degree.

(Chainmail originated D&D (the fantasy supplement specially), but the two games have very little in common actually).
 

Tigranes

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Yes, certainly - I didn't go there because we know many of the very earliest computer RPG experiments in 70s/80s was already about transposing fantasy adventures and orcs-in-a-room, but overall the point is that "get rid of magic what's left only boring stuff" is only true if we work with a very particular, magic/fantasy-oriented sense of how an RPG works in the first place.
 

JarlFrank

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People who think historical RPGs are boring by default lack imagination and are mentally stuck in the currently existing frameworks of RPG design. Think outside the box instead of assuming "historical RPG = D&D without wizards". There are plenty of pen and paper systems set in historical periods btw and they're all fun both mechanically and in the sorts of scenarios they offer. Japanese samurai RPG during the Sengoku Jidai period? Yep. Exploration-focused RPG where you play a conquistador in America? Sure. Combat-focused RPG with rules inspired by medieval fencing manuals? Those exist too. We even have plenty of WW2 RPGs with a focus on tactical squad combat.

Depending on the era and location, adding some lowkey magic wouldn't be jarring either since people of the time genuinely believed in it. Bronze age people had plenty of magic rituals, Greeks and Romans used "curse tablets" to curse people they didn't like, etc. Just make the stuff people believed in actually real and you'll have a more authentic game than if you excluded the supernatural.
 

Rafidur

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Sure you can force the lame stun grenades, liquid fire and salves that work like health potions

Let's brainstorm. How do you make grenades for crap like Flight, Summon Monster II, Invisibility, Create Food And Water, or Raise Dead?
 

Saduj

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Let's brainstorm. How do you make grenades for crap like Flight, Summon Monster II, Invisibility, Create Food And Water, or Raise Dead?

If you're talking about a modern setting involving characters who have access to military grade hardware like grenades, then it isn't much of a stretch to think the characters might also have access to helicopter transport and a radio. And those two things together can approximate everything you just mentioned.
 

Ghulgothas

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The inability to view the past in any other lens that that of the modern era continues to vex aspiring creators. Even if you're not willing to commit to hard historic emulationism, the prevailing religions and aggregate mythology of your chosen period/locale should be all you need to inform your new setting's fantastical elements.
 

Morpheus Kitami

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Let's brainstorm. How do you make grenades for crap like Flight, Summon Monster II, Invisibility, Create Food And Water, or Raise Dead?

If you're talking about a modern setting involving characters who have access to military grade hardware like grenades, then it isn't much of a stretch to think the characters might also have access to helicopter transport and a radio. And those two things together can approximate everything you just mentioned.
So the modern cleric is the radio operator. Who's the modern wizard then?
 
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Let's brainstorm. How do you make grenades for crap like Flight, Summon Monster II, Invisibility, Create Food And Water, or Raise Dead?

If you're talking about a modern setting involving characters who have access to military grade hardware like grenades, then it isn't much of a stretch to think the characters might also have access to helicopter transport and a radio. And those two things together can approximate everything you just mentioned.
So the modern cleric is the radio operator. Who's the modern wizard then?
Demolitions expert, tankhunter, or grenadier.
 
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The middle ages pretty much sucked.
The ever more prominent digital hellholes we inhabit are far worse psychologically and spiritually, and if you decide to IRL, you'll get trannies reading books to children and faggots running around in the streets or perhaps the kindly military age muslim refugee who's just looking for a better life. If that's not enough, you'll encounter a complete breakdown of social fabric via apathy and absence of any kind of moral or traditional values. It's all relativism this and hedonism that.

It must be so boring, being a conservative...

To be bored you need to be intelligent.
 

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