Historical adventures -- a little market research

[cjbowser]

Oooh - very cryptic

Is your period revealed by reading through some of the excellent material in the BRP Adventures books? IIR one of those babies was yours and was historically inspired...

No. This is something I've always wanted to put together, but never have.

[Trifletraxor]

I'm a big sucker for campaign books, filled with interlinked scenarios. Don't really need more source info than what's needed to to run the campaign. I prefer the more generic ones, as they're easier to use with existing PC groups. Only the more irrelevant info should be placed in the appendix. Beasts and magic should be baked into text or in sidebars or boxes in the page they appear.

SGL.

[Guest Vile Traveller]

Um, yeah, what the trollkin said. Although a separate stat sheet is nice if you want to make your NPCs (monsters are people, too!) reusable, when it comes to scenarios I likes me critters in the text where they're encountered.

[Atgxtg]

It's not historical, but IMO the old RQ2 Borderlands boxed set had one of the best formats for a campaign. a book on the setting and people, another with stats, a player's handout, and then a bunch of adventures. One of the things that made it so cool was that if gave enough info on the setting that a Gm could easily get more adventures out of it than the 7 that came in the box.

It wouldn't be a bad way to handle a historical scenario book.

[Guest Vile Traveller]

The RQ3 Vikings set also had the same format, and that was a (pseudo)historical setting. Probably the best RQ3 supplement there was, in my opinion.

[HierophantX]

The RQ3 Vikings set also had the same format, and that was a (pseudo)historical setting. Probably the best RQ3 supplement there was, in my opinion.

I'll second that. Also, say what you want about GURPS, I was rather fond of their Greece and Vikings supplements myself. Though I would rather there were more maps (pretty much in all cases I would rather there were more maps ).

Nothing helps get the players invested in a setting like giving them some details to hang on to. One could always go to far (like some parts of Harn are "known" down to the manor), but the having enough detail so the players know where they are from and how that impacts their worldview and where it sits on the map I find is really helpful all around (I'm thinking some of the Pendragon supplements here). RQ Vikings had this cool table where you could roll where your character came from but aside from whether that was a trading port, seat of a King or out in the forest, there was no other detail about what or where those communities were and how they related to one-another. I mean, one could nowadays cobble together a decent map of medieaval Scandinavia and greater Vikingdom thanks to Google and Wikipedia, but when RQ Vikings was au current, that level of detail was really hard to get. Unless, of course, you lived near a major university or in a Nordic country (or Minnesota, North Dakota, Northern Wisconsin or up in dah U.P. der, aka Finnmark.. ok I digress, but those places really ought to be in some sort of enosis with Scandinavia).

[GianniVacca]

one could nowadays cobble together a decent map of medieaval Scandinavia and greater Vikingdom thanks to Google and Wikipedia.

That's an issue I have with Tiān Xià... I am wondering if I should really add those Chinese surname tables, maps of East Asia, etc. as anybody can find that stuff on the internet today!

[RosenMcStern]

Yes, you should. Not all have Google maps available when they play, and some sort of filtering is needed on the information that come from Wikipedia and the Internet in general. Some stuff is just plain wrong, and other is not so easy to find with google.

[rust]

I am wondering if I should really add those Chinese surname tables, maps of East Asia, etc. as anybody can find that stuff on the internet today!

Yes, please. One problem with Chinese material are the many different and therefore confu-

sing transcriptions, and it would be nice to have the surnames in a uniform transcription and

the place names on the map in the same transcription as their names in the text. With Wiki-

pedia and many other internet sources one gets rather mixed results in this regard.

[cjbowser]

That's an issue I have with Tiān Xià... I am wondering if I should really add those Chinese surname tables, maps of East Asia, etc. as anybody can find that stuff on the internet today!

Maps, with period appropriate details are always useful. I was lucky enough to stumble upon three period correct maps for the setting I'm working. Importantly, none of them are on the internet. I plan on adding translations and either using them as-is or redoing them.

[Thalaba]

Maps, with period appropriate details are always useful. I was lucky enough to stumble upon three period correct maps for the setting I'm working. Importantly, none of them are on the internet. I plan on adding translations and either using them as-is or redoing them.

Translations, ah-ha! Hmmm (makes note).

Yes, you should. Not all have Google maps available when they play, and some sort of filtering is needed on the information that come from Wikipedia and the Internet in general. Some stuff is just plain wrong, and other is not so easy to find with google.

Bingo!

[cjbowser]

Translations, ah-ha! Hmmm (makes note).

There might even be transliterations... The maps were all created contemporary with the period, so they should be really useful.

[cjbowser]

I've outlined the book as I currently imagine it. It's sitting at 9 scenarios covering 20 years of history.

[Thalaba]

Ok - what are we talking here? Russia, 1904-1924?

[cjbowser]

Just thought I'd give a little update. Things have changed a little bit since the original plan.

Instead of focusing on twenty years of history, I'm opening it up to the last fifty years of the century in question. I think that'll open up utility quite a bit. The period was a huge time of change, so to go any wider would make the book even larger.

Right now, I'm only at 18519 words. However, I console myself that I took the time off to buy a house, move, go on vacation, help a friend move, and produce some other material for pay.

Here's a list of the chapters:

1 - Introduction.doc

2 - Being of the culture in question.doc

3 - Family.doc

4 - The Gentry.doc

5 - table of ranks exampe.doc

6 - The Cities.docx

7 - The Villages.docx

8 - The Military.docx

9 - The Great Something or Other.docx

10 - Organizations.doc

11 - The Church.docx

12 - Folk Belief.docx

13 - Animals.doc

14 - Creatures.doc

15 - Character Creation.doc

16- Money.doc

17- Adventuring.doc

18- Tables.doc

None of the chapters are 100% complete yet. Some are very, very close. Well, I guess chapters 5 and 18 are complete, but they just consist of tables so there's not much going on there.

[Agentorange]

I'm a big fan of historical stuff ( after all I set up the poll mentioned in this thread ) personally I like the whole sourcebook approach. As for magic in historical settings I think you have to give people the option. That said I think certain settings lend themselves to the notion of magic use much more easily than others. For example an ancient Greek, homeric style campaign is likely to be chock full of feuding deities, strange beasties, mysterious heroes etc etc. Within that context it'd be perfectly reasonable to include magic as part of the fabric of the setting. You could allow priests to use the Divine Magic system in Basic Magic, possibly in the case of Pan and such like deities Spirit Magic, the magicians of the far east and Egypt might have sorcery ( either kind ) so on and so forth. By it's very nature the setting partakes of the supernatural and the fantastical so magic would fit in nicely

On the other hand a game based around WW2 special forces wouldn't have any need for such like shenanigans ( I can see it now: BRP goes commando )

Basically the further back in history you go the easier it is justify magic. Rationality and science start to bleed away and myth becomes steadily more influential. Of course you can take the whole secret history approach where magic lurks in the background.

[GianniVacca]

Basically the further back in history you go the easier it is justify magic.

Well... The Boxers who were trying to drive out the Europeans from Beijing between 1898 and 1901 believed that they could magically stop the Europeans' bullets from harming them -- hence their demise. And voodoo-like practices are still pretty much prevalent in much of Western Africa and the Congo.

[Agentorange]

Well... The Boxers who were trying to drive out the Europeans from Beijing between 1898 and 1901 believed that they could magically stop the Europeans' bullets from harming them -- hence their demise. And voodoo-like practices are still pretty much prevalent in much of Western Africa and the Congo.

Voodoo would be what I would call hidden history. On the surface it's a rational 21st century world, but behind the scenes.....

In ancient Greece with it's gods, Minotaurs, Stymphalian birds etc you can get away with having magic as part of the everyday fabric of the game.

[Guest Vile Traveller]

You don't even have to go back in time to find "magical" practices alive and well. You can't move a pot plant in the HSBC headquarters building in Hong Kong without the say-so of a feng shui master.

[Agentorange]

I guess it's about willing suspension of disbelief. It's easier to believe in overt use of magic in an ancients setting than in a modern one. I personally believe that Feng Shui is Chinese for: " move that pot plant one inch, now give me all your money gullible foreign devil "