You’re running a historical or alt-historical game. What
place and time in history do you choose? Are you including fantastical elements
of any sort, and if so, what?
Well, as it happens, I'm currently planning to run a supers one-shot set in the so-called Golden Age of comics. Supers + WWII = Alt-History. That said, it's just a one-shot, not a lengthy campaign, so there's not a lot of decision-making for this one: take some superheroes and give them Nazis to punch. Easy. And honestly, if I'm going to run a Golden Age campaign, my primary concern is making sure the tone and genre tropes I invoke reflect the source material. There's a significant difference between Golden Age Supers and World War II With Superhumans. The former is a very four-color supers game with Nazi-punching, the latter is GODLIKE, and far more of an alt-history setting than Golden Age goofiness. And while I admire GODLIKE, it's not really my idea of fun these days. So, let's talk about something with more history and less supers.
I'd dearly love to run a game someday set in the first half of the 17th century, in western Europe. The age of pike and shot and the Thirty Years War and the English Civil War and all that. It's a wonderful setting for RPGs because it was such an awful time to be alive. :) Whether or not I use fantastical elements would probably be down to the players' wishes. I'd rather not go the 7TH SEA route, but I could certainly make a go of something less blatantly magical like ALL FOR ONE: REGIME DIABOLIQUE, but I'd be just as happy playing a game of gritty soldiering in the world of Captain Alatriste (I pray for an English translation of the Spanish RPG some day), or the intrigues and dueling of FLASHING BLADES. A few years ago, I ran a one-shot of HONOR & INTRIGUE with no magic at all and it was a blast. So magic is hardly necessary for my enjoyment.
I'd dearly love to run a game someday set in the first half of the 17th century, in western Europe. The age of pike and shot and the Thirty Years War and the English Civil War and all that. It's a wonderful setting for RPGs because it was such an awful time to be alive. :) Whether or not I use fantastical elements would probably be down to the players' wishes. I'd rather not go the 7TH SEA route, but I could certainly make a go of something less blatantly magical like ALL FOR ONE: REGIME DIABOLIQUE, but I'd be just as happy playing a game of gritty soldiering in the world of Captain Alatriste (I pray for an English translation of the Spanish RPG some day), or the intrigues and dueling of FLASHING BLADES. A few years ago, I ran a one-shot of HONOR & INTRIGUE with no magic at all and it was a blast. So magic is hardly necessary for my enjoyment.
There's a LotFP supplement/adventure for the English Civil War that you might enjoy as a reference...as an OSR thing, it'd be easy to adapt to whatever system entertained you. ENGLAND UPTURN'D.
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