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

[DalekFlay]

Even on the Codex I see a ton of people with the "Tolkien fantasy or GTFO" attitude. Drives me nuts.

Because RPGs needs to sell.
Creating African RPG for couple milions is like burning that in fire.
And then there are cultural differences.

That is why we have tolkien lorefication and white people medieval period.

Imo if anything i would love to see original ideas instead of historical RPG set in Africa with quest to became full owner of 5 cows.

Not sure why you think Africa is the big example. Roman or Greek Empire would probably be the obvious go-to ones, and last I checked that was European (or close enough). There are literally hundreds of great choices. How about a Deus Ex spy style action RPG set in the cold war or WW2? How about a base building tactical RPG like Dead State set in the wild west? I could go on for paragraphs here on this shit.

Also I'm not just talking historical when I bitch about the Tolkien fetish. How about more sci-fi or alternate realities? More Fallout, less Baldur's Gate.

 

[DragoFireheart]

I want a cRPG with Dinosaurs god fucking damnit. No humans, you choose a race and eat other dinosaurs. Make it work Chris you wolf-dying pussy.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

How about more sci-fi or alternate realities? More Fallout, less Baldur's Gate.

Fuck you. You have the entire FPS genre in reserve.

 

[DalekFlay]

How about more sci-fi or alternate realities? More Fallout, less Baldur's Gate.

Fuck you. You have the entire FPS genre in reserve.

What do FPS games have to do with fuck-all?

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Because they're the same shit as sci-fi, space marines with weapon upgrades. Dur.

 

[DalekFlay]

Because they're the same shit as sci-fi, space marines with weapon upgrades. Dur.

You might not have noticed but we are talking about RPG settings.

 

[Grinolf]

I am not sure that avoiding unpleasant subjects is a big factor there, as low fantasy games, like Gothic or Witcher, are/were pretty popular and they and they don't portray a good picture of their worlds. And having real history setting wouldn't guarantee that it would be that different from a standard high fantasy in that regard. As these Ubisoft game clearly show, where they choose Renaissance Italy as a setting and turned it into some derpy battle between good assassins and bad templars. Not sure why they even decided to use Renaissance Italy for these kind of shit. That wasn't an RPG, gratefully.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Because they're the same shit as sci-fi, space marines with weapon upgrades. Dur.

You might not have noticed but we are talking about RPG settings.

Which is why I used the term "in reserve". And most FPS's are action games with RPG elements, as you well know.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Because they're the same shit as sci-fi, space marines with weapon upgrades. Dur.

You might not have noticed but we are talking about RPG settings.

Yeah. CoD is a great RPG setting, what with all the ways to can blow stuff up.

 

[dryan]

Meh.

Why aren't present day large urban centres used more as settings within RPGs?

 

[Johannes]

You're all kinda beside the point.


There's no need for a game in a historic setting to be realistic at all. The socioeconomical setting doesn't have to be accurate at all. It's not like games taking place in modern day are that way either.

What RPGs taking place in a (pseudo)historical setting do we have? Darklands, Lionheart, Nethergate, off the top of my head. All of these include magic of some sort, and all offer a heavily romanticized/extreme version of the period.

A developer can very easily take a historical year and place and mangle as much to his liking as he wants. Yet people are not doing this.

Very interesting to compare to movies though - there's a lot more historical films than straight up fantasy ones. But let's not kid ourselves that Braveheart, Gladiator or Good, Bad & the Ugly are, or have to be, any more realistic than Conan the Barbarian, either.

 

[Ebonsword]

You're all kinda beside the point.


There's no need for a game in a historic setting to be realistic at all. The socioeconomical setting doesn't have to be accurate at all. It's not like games taking place in modern day are that way either.

I agree. I mean, look at The Three Musketeers. It's not exactly realistic, but it sure would make a cool RPG setting.

 

[Abelian]

Use ancient, medieval or very early history as setting, add in mythological elements, and you got lots of subtle magic and god/gods helping out devout adventurers, so lack of magic is not necessary.

Spoken like a true medieval barbarian

 

[Ludo Lense]

When you introduce elements that are of the supernatural kind you also shape the player's expectations and make him/her more willing to accept absurd things (like a direct sword hit not lobbing off your arm, only taking hp). The closer you get to reality the bigger the player dissonance for elements that are "gamey". This is combined with the fact that RPGs are very central character focused (if there is any event that threatens to destroy the world you are involved 99% of the time, the opposite of this type of character focus is a game like Papers, Please where you are just some guy).

Thus if you want a medieval rpg (presumably with combat) you need to make engaging systems to reflect:
-Brutality of combat (Death in very few hits and also lasting damage)
-Disease (the main killer in medieval times, most warriors died from infected wounds btw)
-Something related to dialog/diplomacy to reflect an era of heavy social stratification (You can just use writing skills and encounter design to make the world seem like that but it's a heavy burden just for the "pen" to hold)

Honestly, it's why strategy games (especially the grand variety) are much more comfortable here. Because in those types of games one life really doesn't matter.

One of the ways I could see it being done okay is by putting you in charge of mercenary armies (Jomsvikings) or Holy Orders (Teutonics Knights). You could do it with systems similar to x-com (Base building, hiring out your services, going on raids and earning the ire of kingdoms etc.)

TL DR : RPGs are usually about some guy or a party of people against the world and that would be silly in medieval times.

 

[Abelian]

You're all kinda beside the point.

There's no need for a game in a historic setting to be realistic at all. The socioeconomical setting doesn't have to be accurate at all. It's not like games taking place in modern day are that way either.

I agree. I mean, look at The Three Musketeers. It's not exactly realistic, but it sure would make a cool RPG setting.

I'd love an AoD-style RPG inspired by the historical fiction of Alexandre Dumas (The Three Musketeers and its sequels, or the Valois romances) or Michel Zevaco's Les Pardaillan novels. Plenty of opportunities for intrigue, swordplay, stealth.

 

[Eirikur]

The Holy Roman Empire. The Kingdom of Prussia. The German Empire. Any German setting, really. I'm starving for it. The only non-strategy game I've ever played that takes place in a somewhat authentic German setting is Gabriel Knight 2, and that was nearly 20 years ago.

 

[buzz]

I dunno why people think this has to do with historical settings in particular.
At the end of the day, we still have 1 or 2 steampunk RPG, two or three post-apocalyptic ones and one or two space age/space opera ones. Then a bajillion of Tolkien fantasy ones.


Like, you'd imagine people milking the shit out of mythology-based settings for their RPGs by now. Yet, we barely have one or two games doing that in a sketchy way.

Or why we don't have much in terms of superhero RPGs even though, why the fuck not? It's the perfect setting for an RPG.

 

[Luzur]

30 year war RPG

DO IT NOW

 

[Ninjerk]

The Holy Roman Empire. The Kingdom of Prussia. The German Empire. Any German setting, really. I'm starving for it. The only non-strategy game I've ever played that takes place in a somewhat authentic German setting is Gabriel Knight 2, and that was nearly 20 years ago.

play darklands you piece of shit newfag

 

[Grim Monk]

Imo if anything i would love to see original ideas instead of historical RPG set in Africa with quest to became full owner of 5 cows.

Not sure why you think Africa is the big example.

There is quite a lot of "built up" civilization in the south, even though its not common knowledge...

Africa has a lot of potential:

The eastern Islamic Coastal trading cities versus the tribal cultures of the jungle interior.

The large empires built on the wealth of the Trans-Saharan salt and gold caravan trade.

The orthodox christian "Nubian" Kingdoms and their long doomed struggle to stop the advance of Islam from Egypt.

Christian Ethiopia, in conflict with both the above mentioned Nubian Kingdoms, coastal sultanates of Somalia/Eritrea, pagan tribes of the south, and even "Beta Israel" (Ethiopian Jews)!

The nomadic confederacies/kingdoms of northern grasslands and Sahara, raiding all directions against more settled peoples.
The braying of camels in the night as their masked riders sit around campfires sharpening their swords.
The thunder of horses hooves of on Sahel (grasslands)...

Even playing as a tribal warrior/hunter in the rainforest could be very interest if well done.

Wistful sigh...

 

[Kem0sabe]

You're all kinda beside the point.


There's no need for a game in a historic setting to be realistic at all. The socioeconomical setting doesn't have to be accurate at all. It's not like games taking place in modern day are that way either.

What RPGs taking place in a (pseudo)historical setting do we have? Darklands, Lionheart, Nethergate, off the top of my head. All of these include magic of some sort, and all offer a heavily romanticized/extreme version of the period.

A developer can very easily take a historical year and place and mangle as much to his liking as he wants. Yet people are not doing this.

Very interesting to compare to movies though - there's a lot more historical films than straight up fantasy ones. But let's not kid ourselves that Braveheart, Gladiator or Good, Bad & the Ugly are, or have to be, any more realistic than Conan the Barbarian, either.

Historical crpg's have a pretty big market considering, look at how successful CK2 has been.

 

[Jick Magger]

I can understand cheesing the history books to a certain extent for the sake of storytelling/gaming conventions, like with works such as I, Claudius. History, after all, doesn't conform to storytelling conventions and often takes turns which might be considered mundane or nonsensical. That said, I prefer it when writers at least try to stay as accurate to the period as possible. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I can put up with something with I, Claudius because despite its main story having various fictitious elements to it, it's still grounded in the period it's set and tries to conform to actual historical events to an extent, while I had a fucking aneurysm when someone described the plot of Ryse to me because it veered so utterly from actual history that it may as well of just been a pure fantasy world instead.

 

[Smejki]

That's Smejki.

yup

 

[CaptainCoxwaggle]

The chief problem with a historical setting is that player interactivity intrudes on historic outcomes. And disallowing the player from affecting major events is a major turnoff.

Most Fantasy and Sci-fi settings on the otherhand already have a strong basis in human history, being that history is ingrained in culture itself and very few games truly have surreal worlds that are completely detached from reality. The problem is Fantasy settings are made up near exclusively of Tolkien clones and Sci-Fi is made up of American futurism or Star Wars.

 

[Lyric Suite]

When you introduce elements that are of the supernatural kind you also shape the player's expectations and make him/her more willing to accept absurd things (like a direct sword hit not lobbing off your arm, only taking hp).

I disagree with this argument completely. People have no trouble separating things that pertain to the purely mechanical aspect of the game with things that pertain to its narrative. Those are completely separate issues. When more realism is introduced in the game at a mechanical level, more realism is also required in the representation of whatever supernatural element was implemented in the game's narrative. If a sword hit is programmed to lob off limbs from enemies, nobody would take issue with the presence of magical fireballs in and of themselves, but they might ask why casting a fireball against a tree does not set the tree on fire, even though "realistically" speaking, it should.

The things a player is willing to accept from a narrative stand point are completely different from the things he has learned to accept due to the obvious limits of computer technology.