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Alien Rope Burn posted:Yeah. Even so, I was recently working on a semi-historical pirate game and it's still so easy to get buried on the massive amount of information we have on the era. History is a rabbit hole and it's easy to get sucked down it, but much harder to make it presentable to all your friends. I think there's also the problem that comes up a lot in this thread and others when other designers put their feet in their mouth. If you go too little with your historical/technical background, why did you even bother in the first place? But if you go in too deep, at what point do you reach "now you're just being culturally appropriating and spectacularly insensitive"? And that goes super double for events that happened in recent memory. I mean, wargames and boardgames tend to get a pass because they often start with a big base of research, and go so far as to stick bibliographies and recommended reading lists in the back for further review by interested players. (See, e.g. Navajo Wars, which seems like the complete opposite of the recent Monte Cook debacle thing.) I don't know if RPGs do that often, outside of, say, GURPS sourcebooks. It's not fair. All of my game ideas happen in 20th and 21st century analogues, so I get a few paragraphs in to writing them before my brain goes "you idiot! How would someone from the DRC/Belgium/Algeria/France/Japan/Russia/the Philippines/Sweden/Finland/the UAE/Israel feel about you hijacking their history and cutting/pasting like you're making a grade school collage?!" and I end up putting the whole thing down for a month.
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Mar 31, 2015 05:40
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It doesn't seem like it's hard to borrow from real world history without being a Monte Cook level doofus. It just involves actual work instead of making up a bunch of Disneyland level woo-woo bullshit about evil Thunderbird and everyone wearing a feather headdress just because and SO IN TUNE WITH NATURE, also only 15% of your magical Native American analogues are real people, welp bye. Like, I imagine it goes something like: Step 1). Avoid dumb ethnic/cultural stereotypes, treat everyone involved as real people Step 2). Do some loving research. Step 3). Write it up It's possible I'm underthinking this but, y'know, that seems like a good way to go about it to me.
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Mar 31, 2015 05:49
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The main problem is Step 2 is really easy to get sucked deep into if you're trying to be authentic. Step 2 is a pretty demanding step.
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Mar 31, 2015 05:53
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Alien Rope Burn posted:The main issue with trying to do historical megagames is just getting a large number of people people who have a good historical understanding. It's why the war college doesn't do them, even though there's a lot of call for them - finding 30-40 people that genuinely know the facts necessary historical event is tough! It's gonna be a bit of a clusterfuck but I'm kind of okay with that. We aren't going to produce a historically accurate outcome. Honestly, I'm half expecting that they will completely gently caress up the treaty and begin an arms race in the 1920's. The upside is the briefing material isn't awful, and the players have a slightly above average knowledge of history in that they know the interwar period existed. Part of this is that I want to eventually do Watch The Skies as a forum game but I need a test run to see how a megagame works out in a forum before I do one with a lot more fiddly bits.
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Mar 31, 2015 05:53
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Night10194 posted:The main problem is Step 2 is really easy to get sucked deep into if you're trying to be authentic. Step 2 is a pretty demanding step. It turns out that not being a dumb lazy rear end in a top hat and making GBS threads out something ludicrously embarrassing does take effort, yes. This is why most RPG writers really should steer as far away from "like real world group X with the serial numbers filed off" as they possibly can, because it inevitably leads to poo poo like The Strange or Pathfinder's scheming magical Gypsies. Tolkienian elves and dwarves are about as much heavy lifting as the average RPG writer can handle, and if they aren't willing to do any more work than regurgitating a first-grader's view of history then, well, they probably shouldn't be trying to do it then. For the record, Shadowrun, a game which is rife with dumb stereotypes and stupid bullshit enough to fill an entire thread all unto its own, actually managed to remember that there were different Native American tribes and not just one monolithic "Indian culture" which means that Monte Cook couldn't even be bothered to rise to the level of a game published over 25 years ago by a bunch of dudes in Chicago who had probably only ever heard of Native Americans by rote description before.
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Mar 31, 2015 06:04
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I mostly meant it's a simple process, but a difficult one to pull off well. Especially if you want to go deep enough to make it worthwhile to be Like X But With The Serial Numbers Off without making it 'You might as well have just used X'. Writing half-way plausible alternate history is hard work, though I find it a lot of fun as a hobby. Basically, it's easy to see what should be done, and you're correct about the framework (especially step 1) but like most things with this hobby, it's the execution that's tough.
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Mar 31, 2015 06:16
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I mean, I'm willing to accept that there's a point where, unless you're making a historical supplement all about X, you want to cut things off because most RPGs don't have the pagespace to give Bob Nerd a complete rundown on the intricacies of Native American tribal history and culture. Okay, fine. That said, if you don't really want to do any actual research the question you should be asking yourself is "then why do I feel the need to base this fictional elfgame group off of real, actual people I know nothing about?" Like, you don't even have to be a world history supergenius to avoid the obvious pitfalls, it's like a day or two of talking to people, reading books, and avoiding the basest and most obvious cliches. Not going straight to "thieving magical gypsies that love to dance and steal from people with their wily gypsy magic" isn't rocket science. I mean, I've seen people in defense of Pathfinder's dumb not!Gypsies straight up go "well what if I WANT to use these stereotypes in my game?" at which point you have to accept that a lot of RPG writers and no small amount of RPG fans are lazy schmucks who don't give the slightest, marginal-effort poo poo, which means that even if all you do is slightly more than marginal-effort research that already puts you several steps above most people in the hobby who aren't, like, Ken Hite.
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Mar 31, 2015 06:23
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The saddest part of that is that RPGs have tremendous potential as an instructional tool. People remember poo poo they see and experience in games fantastically well, because they're engaged while they're playing. There's so much space to use RPGs to actually teach about history, cultures, religions, and philosophies and it's generally all wasted.
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Mar 31, 2015 06:28
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I could be pulling this out of my rear end but I think part of the problem is that elfgames that concern themselves with historical accuracy have traditionally also been groggy as gently caress, in the "impenetrable, dense cluster of bullshit rules and dry, unengaging writing" sense. I'm probably overlooking all sorts of examples, but it seems like every time someone tries to make a game that actually strives for some sort of accuracy in some regard, whether it's history or medieval swordfighting or economics or whatever, it always winds up more boring than reading an actual textbook on the subject would be.
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Mar 31, 2015 06:33
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I blame Gygax and his legacy. Not only was he crazy about that stuff, he was wrong about pretty much all of it. I was reading my old D&D Arms and Equipment guide from my 2e days in high school and holy poo poo, just about every bit of historical info in it is wrong. 'Historical RPG' has become shorthand for 'Actually wrong about everything, what the author imagines history to have been'.
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Mar 31, 2015 06:39
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To bring up an old topic. Cards Against Humanity is doing a science expansion pack that's set to give scholarships to women. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...-women-in-stem/
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Mar 31, 2015 12:28
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Night10194 posted:I blame Gygax and his legacy. Not only was he crazy about that stuff, he was wrong about pretty much all of it. I was reading my old D&D Arms and Equipment guide from my 2e days in high school and holy poo poo, just about every bit of historical info in it is wrong. 'Historical RPG' has become shorthand for 'Actually wrong about everything, what the author imagines history to have been'. One of the problems of being "right" about a historical RPG is also that history isn't really a static field, new things are discovered and occasionally there are competing theories on things, once you go back far enough to not have super-accurate records from multiple perspectives. It's entirely possible TSR did their research on historical weapons and armor, but got bad sources or later research simply proved them to be wrong. There's also some challenge in making a historical RPG, because if you try to play it 100% straight, you tend to, as said, end up with something very groggy and realism-focused, where there's... relatively little for PC's to do, because most of human history doesn't really lend itself to brave packs of adventurers doing cool things. And if you break realism, you kind of lose the instructional/educational element.
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Mar 31, 2015 14:20
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I wish this was better because I played through the whole thing and I still have only the most tenuous understanding of what the gently caress is going on with Exalted rules, doubly so for combat. Then again, I wish Exalted rules were better as a whole.
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Mar 31, 2015 14:29
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Exalted is good as it is.
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Mar 31, 2015 14:32
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Len posted:To bring up an old topic. Cards Against Humanity is doing a science expansion pack that's set to give scholarships to women. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...-women-in-stem/ Please no. The five hundred posts raging last time the game was mentioned was terrible.
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Mar 31, 2015 14:54
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:Exalted is good as it is. please do not troll the chat thread
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Mar 31, 2015 15:11
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Len posted:To bring up an old topic. Cards Against Humanity is doing a science expansion pack that's set to give scholarships to women. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...-women-in-stem/ Let's give Caesar what is Caesar's: this is a good thing they have done. The game is juvenile at best and horribly insensitive at worst, but this its creators are doing some good.
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Mar 31, 2015 15:11
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i usually have fun when I play CAH.
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Mar 31, 2015 15:18
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Oh no that means you're on the list of people someone doesn't want to game with. Whatever will you do?
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Mar 31, 2015 15:34
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Please buy our misogyny engine now with criticism deflecting scholarships.
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Mar 31, 2015 15:44
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Fun things are fun.
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Mar 31, 2015 15:44
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PresidentBeard posted:Oh no that means you're on the list of people someone doesn't want to game with. Whatever will you do? panic and tweet about it i guess???
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Mar 31, 2015 15:50
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Mr. Maltose posted:misogyny engine you should get this namechange, I think
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Mar 31, 2015 15:51
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Captain Foo posted:you should get this namechange, I think It's a good one.
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Mar 31, 2015 15:54
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sorry for making a joke, I just want to be like you cool guys who give no fucks...
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Mar 31, 2015 15:56
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Mr. Maltose posted:sorry for making a joke, I just want to be like you cool guys who give no fucks... You seem upset. You should take a cold shower and drink some milk and maybe eat a sandwich.
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Mar 31, 2015 15:59
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Mr. Maltose posted:sorry for making a joke, I just want to be like you cool guys who give no fucks... please don't group me with Plutonis
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Mar 31, 2015 16:01
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Captain Foo posted:please don't group me with Plutonis Yeah, that was definitely beyond the pale. My apologies.
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Mar 31, 2015 16:02
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Mr. Maltose posted:Yeah, that was definitely beyond the pale. My apologies. Apology accepted, friend 
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Mar 31, 2015 16:03
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Beyond the pale? Wow, you must be as white as all the CAH writers.
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Mar 31, 2015 16:08
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Great to see the anti-latino racism they display against me.
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Mar 31, 2015 16:11
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The only thing I really know about CAH is that its creator was accused of rape by an acquaintance of his. Did anything happen with that? Yawgmoth posted:I wish this was better because I played through the whole thing and I still have only the most tenuous understanding of what the gently caress is going on with Exalted rules, doubly so for combat. Then again, I wish Exalted rules were better as a whole. You should really just check out the 3E leak for yourself, IMO. The base system is much more intuitive now.
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Mar 31, 2015 16:20
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:Great to see the anti-latino racism they display against me. I'll have you know I'm prejudiced against bad posters regardless of race or creed.
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Mar 31, 2015 16:23
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...I keep reading CAH as "Cartoon Action Hour" which makes the last several posts really confusing.
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Mar 31, 2015 16:44
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Mr. Maltose posted:I'll have you know I'm prejudiced against bad posters regardless of race or creed. Aaaand the anti-TG sentiment rears its ugly head.  Literally shaking here. But CAH does suck really bad.
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Mar 31, 2015 17:09
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Bedlamdan posted:The only thing I really know about CAH is that its creator was accused of rape by an acquaintance of his. I didn't know this
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Mar 31, 2015 17:57
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Captain Foo posted:I didn't know this It was a thing that happened last summer: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/29/the-case-against-cards-against-humanity-is-max-temkin-a-horrible-person.html
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Mar 31, 2015 18:01
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Bedlamdan posted:It was a thing that happened last summer: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/29/the-case-against-cards-against-humanity-is-max-temkin-a-horrible-person.html Well that's unfortunate but CAH is still fun.
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Mar 31, 2015 18:06
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quote:It doesn’t help that Temkin had positioned himself as an ally of progressive, feminist gamers, to the point of openly taking a stance against gamer icons Tycho and Gabe of Penny Arcade for making rape jokes while he had a booth at the Penny Arcade Expo. Um...I think his game has the card "date rape" in it... Also making jokes about genocide and the holocause is pretty drat bad too. Dude is about PA levels of progressive.
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Mar 31, 2015 18:10
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CAH cards never work grammatically and that annoys me. Also while some cards are hilarious like "the mere concept of applebees" good like getting the subject card that it works with
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Mar 31, 2015 18:13
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