Historical and real world settings in role playing games

Illustrated with dragons, dragons make everything better

I like historical settings for role playing games. I enjoy Cthulhu games, the campaign games I have played have been set in the 1920s and 1930s; I really enjoyed running a Mage Sorcerers Crusade game, set in Francis Drake's round the world voyage. I have an idea for a War of the Roses setting game. One of the reasons I like Ars Magica is the historical setting. There are, however, things that need to be thought about with using historical settings.

History breaks if player's characters can have an impact

In different games characters will have different levels of impact on the game world. In Cthulhu games characters begin as fairly ordinary people. In games like Call of Cthulhu and Trail of Cthulhu if the indescribable horrors fulfill their plan then the world will be destroyed, or all humans will become slaves. The players try to prevent this disaster, and their characters may become quite powerful during the campaign, but there focus is on stopping the horror. In the current Cthulu game my character is an advocate for civil rights, and has become a staunch opponent of colonial powers, but his focus is on stopping the monster induced apocolypse(s) not changing the human world.

In games where the characters have more power they can have more impact on the world, and while they will have other concerns, and most of the games include some mechanism for shielding every day folk from the power that they have, they should have the potential to change history. For me this is a feature not a bug.

Some players find history a barrier

I did not do 'O' level history at my comprehensive school because I did not like my history teacher. I did pick it up at sixth form college, and still remember details about Russia before world war one that I have yet to have a use for (although it might come in useful in a game at some point). Because of my interest in table top war gaming, and board gaming, I developed an interest in military history. Of course later in my academic career I co-wrote books on history of psychology. I like history. Some of the people I have played with do not, knowing little about recent history in modern setting games, and feeling uneasy about playing in an historical setting. There is an easy fix for this in Ars Magica, the person can play characters who before the campaign starts have had little to do with the world outside of the Mage's covenant. It might be worth making more of a fuss about this, in a AM game the players do not need to know history, they can play characters for whom the world of mortal society is a unknown.

Some players really get into the history

One possible source of tension around the table is when players know more than their characters. With fictional settings I find it relatively easy to distinguish between what I know and what the character should know. Until fairly recedntly I never owned any Cthulhu game books, and I have read one H.P Lovecraft short story. So most of the time my knowledge of the evil monsters characters were facing was the same as the character.

When I design a character for an historically set game I will do some reading up on the period, and the type of person the character is based on. One possible difficulty is managing the knowledge a player has; this can be modeled by making a player buy particular knowledge abilities, although the other side of that coin is trying to establish what any member of a particular communnity might know.


In general I prefer not being told what my character would think, so I try to ignore any anachronisms in how other's characters act and what they believe.

Real world attrocities

One of the Trail of Cthulhu games I ran (a series of scenarios rather than a campaign) had an adventure with a setting of 1937 China, with the characters USA citizens based in Shanghai for the adventure. The story had nothing to do with that, but the approaching Japanese army created an end point, by which time the player's characters needed to have left Shanghai.  I am very uneasy with  explicit links between real world attrocities and the fictional aspects of role playing games. Nazis should be horrific human beings, not the puppets of none human monsters. Provided it is done with care I am more laid back about the sweep of history affecting the characters.

Nonsense on stilts

 Most of the games I have played that use real world or historical settings use one of the histories of the world up until the point the game starts. This can be easily handwaved for Cthulhu games, there can be ineffective cultists keeping traditions alive, but it is only when the stars align that the great evil begins to affect the world. It makes less sense in other games, the games have mechanisms whereby the player characters (and others) should try not to have too much of an effect on mortal society. However they very often do have an impact. If mages existed the world would not be like the historical world. This is something that as long as I do not dwell on it does not break my suspension of disbelief,

Language use

One of the things that interested me when writing about the history of psychology is the way that words have been invented, or their meanings changed by psychologists. There are a bunch of Freudian terms, some terms and concepts from Humanistic psychology, as well as neologisms like motivation, that now appear to be just a natural part of our human world. We are current humans pretending to be characters in a different time. As long as no one's sense of their character is not being spoiled by our less than perfect knowledge of history that probably the best we can hope to achieve.

Imagine if Psychology was a Science

Katherine Johnson who led the female 'computers' for Nasa

One of the reasons, I think, that I'm finding it hard to write about this is that there is so much to say, so I am going to try doing this from a different starting point.

Imagine Psychology as Science

You are feeling a bit off, you cannot quite put your finger on why. You take a test, listing your feelings and behaviours and receive an accurate diagnosis. You take another test, about the type of person you are, and receive an accurate typology of you as a person with regard to therapeutic intervention. Knowing these two pieces of information you can find the correct interventions (which may be a mixture of psychological and medical) to get back to who you want to be.

The secondary school I went to, it was Thorns Comprehensive then

 

 

 

 

Throughout your education accurate diagnostic tools are able to identify any difficulties you may have, and depending on what type of person you are, tested ways to ameliorate the difficulties can be used so that you are not disadvantaged. There are no longer fads in how to teach people, because there is instead a body of psychological knowledge about how to teach people, depending on the type of person they are, to maximise their potential.

It would be possible, at an early age, to predict the sorts of careers you would be best suited for, with an acknowledgement that this can change as you get older. Once at work the work can be designed so that it is not overly stressful, that it is rewarding, so that it allows you, if you wish, to change as a person.

Leg spin bowlers would never get the 'yips'; in fact no athelete would ever have a bad day because of their psychological state because they would always be in the perfect state to do their best.

Slot machines, and other forms of gambling would be utterly enthralling. The major gambling companies already employ psychologists, and give research grants to psychologists, to improve how 'entertaining' people find the experience of gambling.

People could be taught to fight in wars in such a way that they never have psychological distress, no matter what horrors they witness or that they inflict upon the enemy.

Advertisers could craft perfect adverts to make particular products amazingly attractive to specific groups of people.



I would not want to live in a world if psychology was a science. Of course if I was living in such a world I would think it was the best of all possible worlds.

Pet Dragons Part Two

Nostalgia for Infinity, my PD 2 Dragon

Just over 3760 days ago I started playing Pet Dragons 2. This was late in the day, there were so many people attempting to play the new game that I had to wait until after work to do so (or maybe I did at lunch time), and after choosing a place to live on the world map, the dragon egg hatched and there was Nostalgia for Infinity.

Pet Dragons 2 had the same basic game play, players trained their dragons, they attacked other dragons but could only do so in a certain size range, and friendly dragons could try and assist someone being attacked. It was, however, a much more complicated game.

Screen shot of Nosti after the game stopped.

While some clan mates from the Order had done playtesting, along with other experienced trainers from across PD1, I had not and it took some time to orientate myself to the new game. Amongst the changes were; there were many more statistics, from replacing the old fighting strength, speed and vision affected the agility of the dragon, which determined hitting and missing, strength affected the amount of damage done, health the number of hit points, there were elements that the dragon could learn, a world map for dragons to choose their cave location, a stealth statistic, and a multiple opponent statistic, that affected how well a dragon fought when there three in a fight, not two.

Trinity, who never collected gold, and focussed on a high multiple opponent score

 The terrain that a dragon's cave was located, and the element of the dragon affected the benefits gained from training.

Table showing adjustment for Ice dragons by terrain type.

There were some features that added to the game, but were not about game play as such, the ability to make friends within the game, not affecting facebook friend status, and the message facility that allowed dragons to communicate with each other in game, but also allowed for multiple player threads, creating a social aspect to the game.

BRT the founder of the Order of the Rose

There was meant to be an in game clan function, that included clan versus clan combat, with the aim of raiding the clan's treasury. Unfortunately late in play testing that feature proved to be broken and it was never implemented. So the organisation of clans remained outside of the game.

Kali, an admin for the Order

There are no statistics for the clans, and without the official clan versus clan mini game there can be no reliable statistics. However, the Order rarely missed an assist, and many of the assistants for the clan had an overall winning record when assisting.

LJ an admin for the Order

There are multiple reasons why the Order had such a good record when assisting. We were ultra organised. I have never been that good at keeping chaos at bay, luckily several of the admins for the order were very good at it. When the game was in full swing we had a database of every dragon that had ever attacked an order member. We had an ingame intelligence thread, where people reported the element of any dragon they had seen, and then several of the admins would  transfer this information to the data base. This was important because having the right assistant element for any given attack was very useful. We also had members around the globe, so while trainers might sleep the Order never slept.

After some years the game play element of Pet Dragons diminished, but by then I had made a number of friends through the game. I have met several of the dragon trainers in real life. We have shared joy for each other, and shared grief as people playing the game died.

Finally the reason I kept playing the game was The Tavern. Char the Sky Pirate and Scales were the other ever present members of the Tavern, Nosti would often eat breakfast there, and spend long evenings eating wonderful food and drinking merlot. So a final toast from Nosti to Pet Dragons and the Tavern.

Pet Dragons; an appreciation, part one.

A picture for Wisdom Like Silence, my Pet Dragon for PD1

More than twelve years ago I joined an application called Pet Dragons on facebook. Not sure exactly when, but the earliest picture of my Pet Dragon has a date of 22 November 2008. By then the dragon was called Wisdom Like Silence, and the reason I know that is the watermark on the picture, proclaiming that I was a member of the Order of the Rose.

Pet Dragons One was a fairly simple fighting game. People 'adopted' a pet dragon, as far as I can remember each day the dragon's trainer received points to spend on their pet. They could grow the dragon, train it for fighting, or collect gold. The fighting statistic was limited by how big the dragon was, and dragons would also gain fighting strength by losing in fights. The fighting mechanism involved someone raiding another dragon, if they won the raid they would gain treasure, and the defender would lose treasure. There was also a mechanism  so that only dragons in a certain weight range could be attacked. Finally there was a mechanism whereby a dragon under attack could be aided by a facebook friend who also played the game. Attacks took a certain amount of time before they landed, and friends could help if they sent their dragon before the attack 'landed'. The amount of help that could be given was 'capped' and once a capped assistant was in place they could not be bumped, before then stronger dragons could replace weaker dragons.

Dark Lord was one of the strongest t assistants in PD1

The assistance mechanism led to the setting up of a number of unofficial clans, groups of people who would help each others dragons when they were attacked, and who also swapped hints and tips. Because they had to be facebook friends it also led to people connecting via the game. I have a lot of 'Dragon Friends' on my facebook list because of that mechanism. When one was a friend of a dragon under attack you could see the fact that they were being attacked, but not when the attack would land.

I know I had been playing PD1 for some time when I joined the Order of the Rose (hereafter the Order). The game had a lively forum attached to it. In the forum I was recruited to a small group of dragon trainers who would help each other out and try to spread fun and chaos across the game. They had no indication on their dragon pictures that they were a group, had set up their own forum, and knew a trick whereby a dragon could assist another dragon without being facebook friends. So the group were not necessarily all facebook friends. This group wanted me to join the Order and so I did. Nothing nefarious ever came out of that, and I quickly went native as an Order member. One of the main things was to fill in a database of which dragons were being attacked, and try to find out when the attacks would land. The Order had members from around the globe and it was very rare for an Order dragon to be unassisted.

Once Pet Dragons 2 was launched I  became less interested in PD1.

In part two I will do a brief personal history of Pet Dragons Two.

Virtues and Flaws in roleplaying games

Inspired by the discussions that the Grand Tribunal bunch were having  about the future of the game here are some thoughts about merits and flaws. Of course Ars Magica is not the only game that uses them, and amongst the games I have played are the World of Darkness and Exalted games that were published by White Wolf. My thoughts are probably more influenced by WoD than AM. As far as I can remember in WoD games the term merits was used rather than flaws.

Why use Virtues and Flaws?

Plenty of games do not have a virtues and flaws system, and of course the system adds to the complexity of character design for players. More narrative systems tend not to have this mechanism, although there might be an instruction to take some negative character trait this is not explicitly 'balanced' by a merit (I'm thinking of Heroquest and Over the Edge for examples). Other game systems do not have anything equivalent.

One argument for using them is to personalise the character. This seems more important in a game that means the characters will meet others that are similar to them. If there is a community of x type of vampire, mage, wizard or whatever a player might want to make their wizard of type x stand out.

Another argument for using them is that they can act as a signal to the person running the game that a player wants to explore a particular part of the game world. Of course this could also be achieved by just talking beforehand about what people want to get out of the game.

Arguments against using them include the increase in complexity during character design, and they encourage a more min-maxing approach to character development.

Beware the economy of trading flaws for build points

In WoD games flaws could be balanced by merits, or could be balanced by gaining bonus points to spend during character creation. In part because the whole bonus point for character creation and experience point for character development was so badly out of alignment this could lead to some very out of kilter beginning characters. That by itself would only be a problem if the player then used that to hog more screen time than other players.

In AM flaws have to be balanced by virtues. However, there are virtues which give the equivalent of build points, for example Skilled Parens. The shorter the chronicle the more benefit a player's character gains from this trade off. Although if you are like me that just adds to the general feeling of being overwhelmed by all the choices available.

Flaws that affect the whole group should be balanced by virtues that aid the whole group

 In white wolf games the 'Enemy' type flaws might affect the whole group, expecially in those games like Werewolf, Mage and Changeling that encouraged the group to play together; the whole pack would have to deal with the enemy. In games like Vampire, and some Exalted games characters would have personal goals that the enemy could try to thwart that would not negatively affect the whole group. This could lead to all sort of issues, a pack could easily deal with a single enemy; and I have seen some people that run games make the enemy powerful enough to be a credible threat to the group, at that point other characters should also get virtues to make up for the flaw.

In AM these types of flaws would probably be better as Covenant flaws, balanced by a Covenant vritue. This might also apply to some of the other Story flaws.

Then there are flaws like Blatent gift that mean that the rest of the group have to make up for the deficency in some way. It is those flaws that I think should be balanced by virtues  to the other characters and not just the character with the flaw.

Flaws that are not flaws
 
Various of the personality flaws just seem like character description rather than flaws. Across systems I have a particular dislike of over confident.

Final thoughts

Flaws for personalisation seem more important for grogs, and some companions (i.e. companions that don't have a supernatural aspect). Magi have a lot of personalisation options through the choice of Techniques and Forms. 

Writer’s Block notes towards an autoethnography

OK an odd blog post, mostly for me. First a listing of the writing projects that have gone nowhere this year. As I was writing this, if for no other reason than trying to write something, I tried to capture my stream of consciousness about the my process of writing. This, isn’t a real autoethnography.



Description

Writing projects that I done very little work on.

Witch Marks

A Call (or trail) of Cthulhu adventure based on this news story . The idea involved having players playing two characters, one above ground character and one below ground character. The above ground characters would be loosely based on Time Team, and the below ground characters on Most Haunted.

A Mage the Ascension game. Set current day. While the Technocracy ‘won’ the ascension war about 20 years ago since then the Technocracy has been in decline. They no longer get any support from government (some parallels with end of the Cold War), and former embedded agents have been or are being pension off). Meanwhile the forces of anti rationalism are on the rise, the growing conspiracy theories, the rise of popularism, the pressure on the EU, the anti vaccination movement, the wellness movement and so on. The characters will be young, idealist, technocratic mages trying to hold back the forces of anti rationalism. Plenty of newspaper stories have referred to the EU as a technocratic exercise. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/nov/16/europe-technocrats-politics



An idea for a novel, it would involve  some elements of transhumanism (which I think is a silly idea) because I want the central character to live through  a long stretch of the climate crisis. It would also explore this idea https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/13/climate-crisis-mental-health-environmental-anguish, which coincidentally appeared in the Guardian today, although I have been thinking about it for six months or so.

Finally an idea for a set of blog posts, ‘what I learnt from psychology’ I have half written one of those.

 Interpretation

So as I think about writing something I start thinking about how to write it, and that gets more and more complicated. So for this piece I am imagining writing a series of explainers for the various terms I am using, so a post on what autoethography means, on the RPGs on Cthuhlu and Mage, Transhumanism and so on. Of course that make the thing far too difficult to write. Instead I can use links to wiki.

I have written stuff before, how did that work, not going back to the beginning with this, just after I was working. The book chapters were based on lecture slides. I never wrote lectures, I did write lecture slides, originally directly written on to OHP acetates, then printed on printable slides (lots of printers with melted plastic inside from colleagues who did not check carefully if they were loading the right type) and then finally powerpoint and keynote slides projected on screen. I wrote the slides by imagining what I wanted to say, then writing headlines for that. Occasionally with what I felt were important quotes from research papers, later some links to things like you tube videos in place of quotes. Then I used those slides to guide the subsections of chapters I was writing. A two hour lecture would turn into a book chapter. So my writing process was about turning an ad libbed performance that I had read up on and thought about into a written record. Personally once I wrote those chapters I rewrote the lectures so that the lectures had fresh material compared to the books.

As I was thinking about the above paragraph I began to feel anxious or stressed. My writing process has become enmeshed with the situation at former work. There is a myth that teachers and educators are told; once you have developed your materials the job will get easier. Now I know some people for whom that might be true. A senior colleague when I first joined had files of yellowing paper that they carried into lectures. I have heard other colleagues, when negotiating lecture slots in a series of lectures say things like ‘I have written a lecture on x so I could do that’

In my final term I had a brand new set of (6, 3 hour) lectures to give on Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis. For my third year and MSc lectures I would try to do some updating of every session every year and did extensive rewriting of the 12 (3 hour) sessions on social psychology I delivered for the MSc. In my gender and sexuality lecture series (12, 2hour sessionsI used up to date figures on things like sex crime statistics, mental health statistics, also trying to incorporate literature from the prior year. I did no more than try to put right some things that didn’t work for the 6 or so 2 hour lectures I did for the first year lectures (that isn’t all my teaching in the final term). In the balance of duties allocation we had approximately 1 hour preparation time for each 1 hour of lecture. That is impossible unless all that is being done is no change at all. So writing lectures was, in the last decade or so of my job time pressured and stressy. That I still have those feelings now could be explained in terms of Classical Conditioning.

Tentative conclusion

Well I started writing this about 23 hours ago, but I seem to have finished writing it, and it is not as if I have deadlines any more. When I was working I was more productive early mornings, by lunch time my head was just so full of daily stuff I found it hard to be productive. These days I find it hard to start doing any writing until around noon.