Historical Accuracy of MotRD Adventures

[Kel-nage]

I was wondering, if we were thinking to letting more people know about Masque of the Red Death by making more adventures, how historically accurate do you think they should be? Should Masque be "balls-on-accurate", where barely anything that didn't happen in real life in 1890's should happen in your adventures? Or should an adventure creator have as much freedom as they would in say Ravenloft or other settings, where they are free to make up their own historical characters etc.

Oh, I haven't included anything about novels in the poll, for the reason that MotRD is full of literary characters and therefore it is almost automatic that they are part of the setting.

Anyway, I was just wondering as I was planning on contributing some adventures but I found that this point made me consider some of my ideas. Feel free to vote, but posted contributions are also very welcome (especially if you feel that I've left out an option from the poll).

[Jasper]

I still say this is one of MOTRDs biggest drawbacks. When your playing on set timeline changing anything big messes up the entire setting. The PC can have all the adventure they want on the Titanic but if they try to save it from sinking the DM either has to Nix the idea (and be acussed of hampering the PCs) or rewrite nearly 100 years of history.

While there is alot the PCs can do small scale it all needs to be stuff that woun't get into the history books. Adding recognisable historical moments to adventures (The assassination that started WW1 for example) in form the PCs can interact with just brings on more trouble then its worth.

[ScS of the Fraternity]

I'd say let the chips fall where they may.
If you want to have Samule Clemmens as a vampire hunter, do it.
Or, maybe Custer is still alive and active in politics - despite having been slain at Little Big Horn and resurected as a fiendish undead.

History is plastic, so I'd say conformity to historical timelines is not required.

[Blake_Alexander]

I still say this is one of MOTRDs biggest drawbacks. When your playing on set timeline changing anything big messes up the entire setting. The PC can have all the adventure they want on the Titanic but if they try to save it from sinking the DM either has to Nix the idea (and be acussed of hampering the PCs) or rewrite nearly 100 years of history.

I operate my campaigns under the premise that certain things are destined to happen, and if these significant events do not take place, due to player character actions history works to correct itself (i.e. the Titanic hit an ice berg and sink later in the trip, on the return trip to England, or later in the year. Although it's a minor change to history, the general continuity of history is maintained)

I also encourage my player not to use out of character historical knowledge as character knowledge in my games. After all, if the players were average characters on board the Titanic they would not be aware of the danger that the ship is in, and even if the character is in a postition to know that something is wrong, they still have to deal with all of the elements that actual historical figures had to deal with in these situations. If anyone tried to stop the Titanic from taking it's ill fated voyage due to ice berg dangers, they would have been laughted off the ship, after all, it was thought of as unsinkable.

[Jennifer]

Hi all,
I am currently running my second MotRD campaign. I enjoy the fact that you can play in a setting that is as 'real' as possible. The wikipedia is definitely a blessing for this sort of campaign.

In my campaigns I try to follow history as much as possible, although I add a generous dollop of forbidden lore and creatures of the night. My first campaign took place in South Africa, between the two Boer Wars. The party had an adventure there, which did not go well, as a result the South African Republic under Paul Kruger was seriously weakened by a part of their army being infected werelions and wreaking some serious havoc. So, after the close of the adventure it easily fell to the approaching armies of the British.

The second campaign takes place in Nijmegen, where I currently live. A bastard son of King Willem III is making a bid for the throne as his father lies dying. This is relatively accurate, as Willem III had bastard sons all over the place. What is new however, is that this is the son of a Succubus and that she is pushing him, so that the Netherlands will end up in chaos in a politically unstable time in Europe.

So I manage to make interesting adventures in the margins of history. If things don't go as intended, the momentum of history will probably balance out into the outcome we know.

And if not, well history is written by the winners. You don't really believe your historybooks, do you?

Jennifer

[Reginald de Curry]

My stance: MotRD is "alternate history", which means it can be as close or as far from reality as your group wishes. Trying to stay close to real-world history is risky, because it can stifle creativity ("I can't change this, it'll prevent this from happening, and then what'll I do?") and potentially cause somewhat absurd arguments down the line ("Frankenstein's monster can't kill Mark Twain, he dies of old age!"). However, moving too far from established history can threaten the setting's flavor ("Hurry! Dracula's velociraptors are attacking the White House, and the Rose Garden needs pruning before the cyborg general marries the cook!").

The best bet is to take an established fact of the real world and turn it around right at the start, even if you otherwise plan to stay historically accurate. It can be something relatively minor (during the Civil War, West Virginia never broke away from Virginia), it can be major (an earthquake caused the Potomic River to permanently change course, turning Washington D.C. into swampland), or extreme (the entire state of Florida sinks into the ocean, its highest elevation now 50 fathoms underwater). This underscores that the campaign is not bound by real-life history, but leaves the players free to draw off as much or as little as they see fit for their campaign.

[Jonathan Winters]

I have to agree with Reginald.

Use it however you like / need it. If going through History books is preventing you from making it to the gaming table, than odds are you've got too much of a good thing going on there.

And remember that sooner or later your PCs will probably do something that makes no sense with History. They WILL most likely change history.

To me, this is similar to how canon you want your RL to be. My game started at the end of 739 BC. It is most unlikely it will stay true to canon 100%, but it will be somewhat close to it. That's what you should do with MotRD.

Or, have the adventures revolve around small stories that have no worldly consequences.

Just my two cents...

Patrick

[Jester of the FoS]

World's a big place. You can do alot and have some very fun stories without running across anyone of even remote historical significance.
Heroes might be able to "change history" but more often than not my players would never be in that big of a position.

History is the background of the stories, it happens around the adventures and seldom in the adventures.

[Charney]

I must admit that as an historian, I'm against changing important historical events like the assassination of Franz Ferdinand for instance. What I'd do to make these events unavoidable is to make them plans of the Red Death.

Like in one of the Book of S_ where they said that in the Titanic there was several ennemies of the Red Death and that it was it that sunk the ship.

[order99]

I like a certain amount of historical accuracy in my adventures....
and yet sometimes
just sometimes
You really need to let Dracula break out his Velociraptor army and go to town on DC!!!
After all, what would Blackstone's Freak Circus do without the appropriate foes-balloon animals and Bar Mitzvahs?

ROLL CALL!
The Necrobiotic Man-check!
The Accelerated Woman-check!
The Man Who Isn't There-check!
Spring-Heeled Ava-check!
The Human Ironclad-check!
The Hunstman-check!
The Amazing Wax Man-Check!

" Alright team, you know the drill...England's fastest steamship waits to take you to Washington, where Dracula plans to-"

Okay, i'll stop.
My point being-my players are a varied and twisted lot...most times they enjoy Gothic Horror dosed with Dark Fairytale. Once in a while though these same players will toss thier regular PC's in the "on hold" folder and demand to adventure beside Charles Darwin the Vampire Slayer...honestly, I don't see the harm as long as my players understand that if the two campaigns ever meet ALL LIFE ON GOTHIC EARTH SHALL END!

[Jack of Tears]

I look at it this way: Your players can only be in once place at a time - thus, while they might change events in one area, all those historical incodents they are not involved with will continue to unfold as they were intended.

As such, you can give them a fair ammount of lattitude while using those other events as background, adding to the sense that history is unfolding around them, despite what they might be doing to change one branch here or there.

My biggest complaint, when running a game set in our world, is that my knowledge of history is rather lacking and I'm affraid I'll do something outright inappropriate. (Player "The Winchester was a lever action rifle, not a barrel action - besides, it wasn't produced until 1866, where did this guy get one in 1840?")

It always seems like there is just TOO MUCH homework required to run a(n) historical game, even when you are willing to bend a little.

[Luke Fleeman]

Forego accurate history.

Do what you must within existing history as much as you can manage; but don't be afraid to shake it up. Alternate timelines spawned by what happens can be fun too; like WW1 20 years early or the victory of the Indian Ghost Dancers.

It's still a a game. Unless your PCs are hardcore historians, you should be free to fudge away.

[Georg Kristianokov]

I never really use typical Masque 1800's. I always use the more advanced times, never later than 1928, and never earlier than 1895. I also like to use science, alot. I do like to tie in actual events to my adventures. I heard there was a big flood in New York in the 1920's, so I had it caused by a tropical storm-controlling zombie lord, all of the way from Haiti. (how else could I get zombies in New York, beside Live and Let Die?) I also came up with the Great Depression being caused by Bealzelbub, the patron fiend of Sloth, but I never used it. I hate the Depression.

Speaking of demons, wasn't there mention on this board of the Eiffel tower being the Mystic Cage for a storm demon?

[Sylaire]

I'm going to go the opposite direction of most posters in this thread and say that I prefer my historical fiction--regardless of medium--to stick as close to history as possible. This is why I also prefer my historical fiction to be as "small-scale" as possible--that is, I don't want to see fires destroying cities, historical personages striding on stage at all times, major events playing out before my eyes, and so on. If I was staging a story on an ocean liner, it wouldn't be the Titanic. I would not have the players on hand to try to prevent the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

(Vampire stories, for some reason, seem to be particularly inclined to this. Sometimes I believe one of Nick Knights salient abilities in Forever Knight was to meet up with historically significant individuals during the time when no one knew they would be historically significant.)

This is by no means confined to game plots--when I read Sherlock Holmes pastiches, for example, the ones I enjoy the least are those which involve plots to assassinate the Queen, plunge England into war, or do something else that starts playing games with history. Ultimately, I find that once we start playing that game, my suspension of disbelief which allows me to mentally go back in time and savor the historical time period shatters, and I am suddenly painfully aware that I'm sitting in 2008 (or whenever) and looking back at that history involved in some story written by Fakey McMade-Up.

It's kind of like being in Scaena and realizing that I'm on-stage (actually, there's a plot there--start a historical-fiction type of story, have it get more and more implausible by the minute and have it end up in Scaena when the experimental nuclear weapons are detonated under Buckingham Palace by the ancient pseudo-Hindu cultists when they can't retrieve the Mystic Ruby of Osiris, which had been plucked from the eye of their god by General Huffenpuff when he wondered why pseudo-Hindu cultists had gotten their deity mixed up with one from ancient Egypt...).

Oddly enough, I don't have this problem with historical-setting material that was actually written in the time period in question; my hindbrain seems to be aware that this is no different than our modern-day, forward-looking spy thrillers and whatnot.