Has Anyone Else Had To Deal With The "Historical Accuracy" Fallacy?


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PIXIE DUST wrote:

Yes, but Tolkien is the one who really put all those things together into one world. He pretty much single handedly created Medieval Fantasy as we know it.

More than a few times I GMs going so far as to getting all hurt when players are not playing Dwarves and Elves as what Tolkien laid out.

Yeah, we should all be playing humans like Game of Thrones.

I find it particularly funny since Tolkien pretty much brought in the non-human protagonists. Most of the fantasy before that was even more human-centric. If you want to blame Tolkien for something, blame him for the idea of non-human PCs. It's at least as much his fault as the particular Dwarves and Elves thing. And we know the Halflings aren't from Tolkien, because Gary said so :)


thejeff wrote:
PIXIE DUST wrote:

Yes, but Tolkien is the one who really put all those things together into one world. He pretty much single handedly created Medieval Fantasy as we know it.

More than a few times I GMs going so far as to getting all hurt when players are not playing Dwarves and Elves as what Tolkien laid out.

Yeah, we should all be playing humans like Game of Thrones.

I find it particularly funny since Tolkien pretty much brought in the non-human protagonists. Most of the fantasy before that was even more human-centric. If you want to blame Tolkien for something, blame him for the idea of non-human PCs. It's at least as much his fault as the particular Dwarves and Elves thing. And we know the Halflings aren't from Tolkien, because Gary said so :)

Well the problem is when people starting getting stuck in "Tolkien world" and start saying things like "Ninjas have no place in fantasy" or "Gunslingers make no sense in fantasy at all" or the best one for me "Psionics feels all wrong in fantasy."


PIXIE DUST wrote:
thejeff wrote:
PIXIE DUST wrote:

Yes, but Tolkien is the one who really put all those things together into one world. He pretty much single handedly created Medieval Fantasy as we know it.

More than a few times I GMs going so far as to getting all hurt when players are not playing Dwarves and Elves as what Tolkien laid out.

Yeah, we should all be playing humans like Game of Thrones.

I find it particularly funny since Tolkien pretty much brought in the non-human protagonists. Most of the fantasy before that was even more human-centric. If you want to blame Tolkien for something, blame him for the idea of non-human PCs. It's at least as much his fault as the particular Dwarves and Elves thing. And we know the Halflings aren't from Tolkien, because Gary said so :)

Well the problem is when people starting getting stuck in "Tolkien world" and start saying things like "Ninjas have no place in fantasy" or "Gunslingers make no sense in fantasy at all" or the best one for me "Psionics feels all wrong in fantasy."

I read those all as "in the kind of fantasy I'm interested in playing", hopefully with a "this game" appended.

I actually prefer to keep the last two out of most of my D&D/PF fantasy, for various reasons. I do have a game/setting in the back of my head where guns are common and there are psionics instead of magic.


Arachnofiend wrote:
TriOmegaZero wrote:
The only time it should come into play is when you are trying to actually play in a historical setting.
And even then I'd be wary of making this argument, mainly because A) you're ruining another person's fun for no reason and B) you're probably wrong. One of the most common uses of this fallacy, for example, is to excuse the lack of black people in a Medieval European setting. What these people forget is that the Caliphate was the premier mercantile power of the era and there were Middle Eastern and North African Muslims traveling through Europe to sell their wares all the time. We have evidence of the Caliphate trading as far north as Sweden.

'nother historical fun fact: the dark ages weren't really all that horrible--well, for a chunk of europe it certainly was, but lots of other places in the world were having periods of advancement and prosperity 'round that time.


Buri Reborn wrote:

I think the whole topic of calling it a fallacy smells of trying to box in what can be and can't be an acceptable form of expression or what can be an acceptable story. No thank you.

Why do people use history-ish settings? It's known and relatable.

The OP isn't talking about using settings that are informed or colored by real-world history. Heck, half of my original settings started off as "Fantasy-Venice," "Fantasy Holy Roman Empire," or "Fantasy Hanseatic League."

Rather, the OP is discussing things like "No blacks or women in my fantasy, that's not historically accurate" and "No guns alongside my rapiers and nunchuks, that's not historically accurate."

Shadow Lodge

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TriOmegaZero wrote:
The only time it should come into play is when you are trying to actually play in a historical setting.

Even then it goes out the window unless you ban all classes other than commoner, expert, and warrior; and make it an E6 game.


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Chengar Qordath wrote:
Rather, the OP is discussing things like "No blacks or women in my fantasy, that's not historically accurate" and "No guns alongside my rapiers and nunchuks, that's not historically accurate."

Perhaps...then again, ignoring the implications of introducing things like guns can be jarring, and history is pretty much the best guide we have when it comes to the effects of new technology.

Guns replaced bows. They're smaller, easier to use, more convenient, etc. You could have a setting with semi-automatic firearms existing alongside bows, but you'd really need to explain why bows are still in common use. It's OK for the hero to use a bow; he's special. But if half the armies of the world use bows, and half use guns, you'd better have a really good explanation as to why that is the case. "Because fantasy" is going to rub some people the wrong way.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that verisimilitude matters, irrespective of genre.


bugleyman wrote:
Chengar Qordath wrote:
Rather, the OP is discussing things like "No blacks or women in my fantasy, that's not historically accurate" and "No guns alongside my rapiers and nunchuks, that's not historically accurate."

Perhaps...then again, ignoring the implications of introducing things like guns can be jarring, and history is pretty much the best guide we have when it comes to the effects of new technology.

Guns replaced bows. They're smaller, easier to use, more convenient, etc. You could have a setting with semi-automatic firearms existing alongside bows, but you'd really need to explain why bows are still in common use. It's OK for the hero to use a bow; he's special. But if half the armies of the world use bows, and half use guns, you'd better have a really good explanation as to why that is the case. "Because fantasy" is going to rub some people the wrong way.

It's because guns in Pathfinder are really bizarre and somehow tremendously more complicated and expensive to use than a bow.


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Chengar Qordath wrote:

The OP isn't talking about using settings that are informed or colored by real-world history. Heck, half of my original settings started off as "Fantasy-Venice," "Fantasy Holy Roman Empire," or "Fantasy Hanseatic League."

Rather, the OP is discussing things like "No blacks or women in my fantasy, that's not historically accurate" and "No guns alongside my rapiers and nunchuks, that's not historically accurate."

It's still trying to delineate between stories that "should" be told and those that shouldn't. It's no different than people getting pissed at Game of Thrones use of rape and Martin's response basically being "history is ugly." There's no argument that it's a very interesting and well written piece of literature. There's no reason why that story can't be told exactly as it was printed. None. I don't want to be part of a society that decries such works to the point where it becomes vogue to shout them down to the point where they either won't be written or printed. That's not a free or civil society.


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Buri Reborn wrote:
Chengar Qordath wrote:

The OP isn't talking about using settings that are informed or colored by real-world history. Heck, half of my original settings started off as "Fantasy-Venice," "Fantasy Holy Roman Empire," or "Fantasy Hanseatic League."

Rather, the OP is discussing things like "No blacks or women in my fantasy, that's not historically accurate" and "No guns alongside my rapiers and nunchuks, that's not historically accurate."

It's still trying to delineate between stories that "should" be told and those that shouldn't. It's no different than people getting pissed at Game of Thrones use of rape and Martin's response basically being "history is ugly." There's no argument that it's a very interesting and well written piece of literature. There's no reason why that story can't be told exactly as it was printed. None. I don't want to be part of a society that decries such works to the point where it becomes vogue to shout them down to the point where they either won't be written or printed. That's not a free or civil society.

There's also no argument that if that's not the game you want to run or play, you don't and shouldn't have to.

Rape is common in history (and the modern world). It's not even uncommon in fantasy. That doesn't mean you have to have it in your game, even if it would be "realistic".


bugleyman wrote:
Chengar Qordath wrote:
Rather, the OP is discussing things like "No blacks or women in my fantasy, that's not historically accurate" and "No guns alongside my rapiers and nunchuks, that's not historically accurate."

Perhaps...then again, ignoring the implications of introducing things like guns can be jarring, and history is pretty much the best guide we have when it comes to the effects of new technology.

Guns replaced bows. They're smaller, easier to use, more convenient, etc. You could have a setting with semi-automatic firearms existing alongside bows, but you'd really need to explain why bows are still in common use. It's OK for the hero to use a bow; he's special. But if half the armies of the world use bows, and half use guns, you'd better have a really good explanation as to why that is the case. "Because fantasy" is going to rub some people the wrong way.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that verisimilitude matters, irrespective of genre.

Pretty much this. Along with big dose of "While guns, by a strict definition, came along early, guns that were effective in standard PF type situations came much later. Saying "Guns existed in the 1400s", doesn't mean AK-47s existed in the 1400s just because they're guns. Or "muzzle-loading flintlocks" that can be loaded and fired in a couple of seconds. PFs guns match 18th century at the earliest, though they're described as much earlier. By the time the tech gets that far, it's really stretching my suspension of disbelief not to have armies using the more primitive versions at least.

A fantasy pirate game with black powder cannons and flintlock pistols? Great! I'll carry a brace and once I've fired them into the first boarder, I'll draw my cutlass and cut down the next one over the rail.
A fantasy musketeer game with rapiers and muskets? Sure, but the Musketeers used the guns for battle and dueled with rapiers. That's what I'd want to emulate.


thejeff wrote:

There's also no argument that if that's not the game you want to run or play, you don't and shouldn't have to.

Rape is common in history (and the modern world). It's not even uncommon in fantasy. That doesn't mean you have to have it in your game, even if it would be "realistic".

No argument there. However, it's perfectly fine if it's in someone else's game.


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Buri Reborn wrote:
thejeff wrote:

There's also no argument that if that's not the game you want to run or play, you don't and shouldn't have to.

Rape is common in history (and the modern world). It's not even uncommon in fantasy. That doesn't mean you have to have it in your game, even if it would be "realistic".

No argument there. However, it's perfectly fine if it's in someone else's game.

In the sense that it's no skin off my back if some people like really horrible food or read Twilight sure, but it's still nonsense with no verisimilitude.

Gunpowder changes things. If gunpowder is not new it will have advanced to the point where all other weapons begin to go obsolete. If it's new it's nothing like what Paizo published rules for.

It's a lot easier to get someone to buy that a magic pattern welded spatha is comparable to a magic longsword than it is to get someone to buy that a magic arquebus is in any way comparable to even a mundane Ferguson rifle. And really, fantasy wants to operate in a world in decline. Ancient should be better than modern so that the best adventuring gear is found in crypts and ruins. But gunpowder means progress to most people. Progress is generally bad. Stasis is okay, but progress is bad and a long drawn out decline with lots and lots of liches hanging around from past golden and silver ages is best.

Mixing cultures is a different problem, but it's still a problem. To have eastern and western classes coexisting in a fantasy setting both have to be right. Ki has to exist, but no one in the west uses it. Western style magic has to exist, but the eastern classes don't use it. Two pantheons have to exist because if Zeus and Susanoo are the same deity and interacted with his followers as a D&D deity then the cultures would have the same religions and that would in turn tend to remove cultural differences. Humans are humans everywhere, but the supernatural is regional. Europe has fae. India has Deva. Japan has Oni. Fae and Deva and Oni aren't just the same thing by different names. Big tent commercial settings tend to handwave all of this away, but a homebrew setting should aspire to make sense and operate under one coherent mythology. Or at least as coherent as it can be subject to D&D's need to have both divinely and arcanely sourced magic.


A fantasy setting can be whatever mashup of themes you want. That's the awesome thing about fantasy.


bugleyman wrote:
Chengar Qordath wrote:
Rather, the OP is discussing things like "No blacks or women in my fantasy, that's not historically accurate" and "No guns alongside my rapiers and nunchuks, that's not historically accurate."

Perhaps...then again, ignoring the implications of introducing things like guns can be jarring, and history is pretty much the best guide we have when it comes to the effects of new technology.

Guns replaced bows. They're smaller, easier to use, more convenient, etc. You could have a setting with semi-automatic firearms existing alongside bows, but you'd really need to explain why bows are still in common use. It's OK for the hero to use a bow; he's special. But if half the armies of the world use bows, and half use guns, you'd better have a really good explanation as to why that is the case. "Because fantasy" is going to rub some people the wrong way.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that verisimilitude matters, irrespective of genre.

What I would say is if you are taking a fantasy game that does not have guns in it (say you're running Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, etc.), then yes, history is a good guide to look at how and why firearms were created and how they adapted. In the example you gave, it makes total sense for why you should have to explain this.

If you have a setting like Golarion where firearms already exist, and you have several classes geared toward using them, the work is done for you in the source material. You, as the DM, don't have to figure out or apply anything; firearms are already in the world, we know which regions they're more prevalent in, and we have all the mechanics for using them.

In these instances what I see more DMs doing is banning firearms in Varisia, because it would undercut the paladin (somehow), but allowing gunslingers to be everywhere in The Shackles, because pirates.

If someone wants to limit a mechanic, then that is their prerogative as the DM. But if you're going to limit it, say why. If guns already exist in the world setting, it's silly to make a case for the technology not migrating. Be up-front with your players and say, "I don't like guns in my fantasy" or "I don't agree with the rules for guns in this setting, so I'd rather not use them at all." Those are fine reasons to modify a setting, and there's no reason to over-complicate the issue.


Neal Litherland wrote:
bugleyman wrote:
Chengar Qordath wrote:
Rather, the OP is discussing things like "No blacks or women in my fantasy, that's not historically accurate" and "No guns alongside my rapiers and nunchuks, that's not historically accurate."

Perhaps...then again, ignoring the implications of introducing things like guns can be jarring, and history is pretty much the best guide we have when it comes to the effects of new technology.

Guns replaced bows. They're smaller, easier to use, more convenient, etc. You could have a setting with semi-automatic firearms existing alongside bows, but you'd really need to explain why bows are still in common use. It's OK for the hero to use a bow; he's special. But if half the armies of the world use bows, and half use guns, you'd better have a really good explanation as to why that is the case. "Because fantasy" is going to rub some people the wrong way.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that verisimilitude matters, irrespective of genre.

What I would say is if you are taking a fantasy game that does not have guns in it (say you're running Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, etc.), then yes, history is a good guide to look at how and why firearms were created and how they adapted. In the example you gave, it makes total sense for why you should have to explain this.

If you have a setting like Golarion where firearms already exist, and you have several classes geared toward using them, the work is done for you in the source material. You, as the DM, don't have to figure out or apply anything; firearms are already in the world, we know which regions they're more prevalent in, and we have all the mechanics for using them.

In these instances what I see more DMs doing is banning firearms in Varisia, because it would undercut the paladin (somehow), but allowing gunslingers to be everywhere in The Shackles, because pirates.

If someone wants to limit a mechanic, then that is their prerogative as the DM. But if you're going to limit it, say why. If...

Unless of course you're not happy with the way they've added them to the setting.

And frankly, the "technology not migrating" is one of the big reasons I'm not happy with Golarion's treatment of guns. That's a big part of the way guns are in the setting. That doesn't mean a gunslinger might not wander to Varisia. It means soldiers in Varisia don't have guns. Bandits in Varisia don't have guns. Only a couple of wandering adventurers have guns anywhere in the world except Alkenstar.

I also have no problems with changing the setting assumptions between different games in the same world. If I want the pirates in S&S to be all about the guns (which the base AP isn't), I can do that. And still run SS without guns without worrying about the conflict. Maybe the two adventures are in the same world at the same time. Maybe not. Different assumptions to make different games work.


Buri Reborn wrote:
A fantasy setting can be whatever mashup of themes you want. That's the awesome thing about fantasy.

A good fantasy setting can be a mashup of any two themes and not be too much of a mess. Maybe. But the fewer moving parts your metaphysics has the more sensible your setting will be. For every pair of mythoses you're using you have a seem. For every unreal force you add to a setting you make your world less comprehensible to your players and the more you have to rethink society from first principles to have it make sense.


Pathfinder Lost Omens Subscriber

i'm going to say i haven't had to deal with this, because i'm the historian of all the players i know.

like during the early medieval periods berbers(i think) invaded all the way up to France, there were Muslims in Europe holding sizable domains for a long period. not many people know that.


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thejeff wrote:
PIXIE DUST wrote:

Yes, but Tolkien is the one who really put all those things together into one world. He pretty much single handedly created Medieval Fantasy as we know it.

More than a few times I GMs going so far as to getting all hurt when players are not playing Dwarves and Elves as what Tolkien laid out.

Yeah, we should all be playing humans like Game of Thrones.

I find it particularly funny since Tolkien pretty much brought in the non-human protagonists. Most of the fantasy before that was even more human-centric. If you want to blame Tolkien for something, blame him for the idea of non-human PCs. It's at least as much his fault as the particular Dwarves and Elves thing. And we know the Halflings aren't from Tolkien, because Gary said so :)

L Frank Baum says hi. A catfolk PC, along with construct PCs, were a part of western fantasy more than thirty years before The Hobbit. Heck, a couple of construct PCs got solo adventures in later books.

Also, Baum is obviously responsible for munchkin players:)

You're correct in that pre-20th century literature tended to place either humans or gods as the protagonists. In all the Greek myths I can think of off the top of my head, the protagonists are either humans, nymphs, or gods.

On the topic of guns in fantasy...I read Harry Potter before LotR (well, before I STARTED reading LotR--I didn't like it enough to get through the whole thing). Rowling put a gun in her first book.

I don't remember any guns in Baum's works, though there might have been and I just forgot. But it would certainly have been 'historically accurate' to have guns in early 20th century Kansas.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Kobold Cleaver wrote:
Charender wrote:
Because the player characters represent exceptional individuals. Seriously, you can have a wizard who can out think Einstein(20 int), a fighter who is almost as strong as Hercules(20 strength), or a cleric with wisdom greater than Solomon(20 wisdom).

Er, I know this is a bit off-topic, but...according to whom? Who says Solomon only had a 19 Wisdom? Who says Hercules only had a 20ish Strength? Hell, who says Einstein only had a 19 Intelligence?

Keep in mind that true "genius" level is generally classified at 30 Intelligence.

Genius is not defined by a number. Actually if he was actually tested, Einstein probably would not score a stratospheric IQ store. He didn't have a brain that operated in hyperdrive motion. He probably couldn't stand up to a real chess master.

What he had... in spades. was a unique combination of imagination and insight. In game terms what he had was a genius that relied as much on Wisdom as it did on Intelligence.


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137ben wrote:
I don't remember any guns in Baum's works, though there might have been and I just forgot. But it would certainly have been 'historically accurate' to have guns in early 20th century Kansas.

Solomon Kane, a character written by Robert Howard (creator of Conan the Barbarian), used a gun, among other things.

bugleyman wrote:
Guns replaced bows. They're smaller, easier to use, more convenient, etc. You could have a setting with semi-automatic firearms existing alongside bows, but you'd really need to explain why bows are still in common use. It's OK for the hero to use a bow; he's special. But if half the armies of the world use bows, and half use guns, you'd better have a really good explanation as to why that is the case. "Because fantasy" is going to rub some people the wrong way.

Guns replaced bows after a few hundred years of existence in Europe.

Guns showed up in Europe as early as the 1210s.

They didn't completely supplant bows and crossbows until the late 1500s/early 1600s.

The English Longbow was still a dominant force well into the 1500s; the fact that Henry VII had over 3000 arrows and over 130 longbows in the Mary Rose, which sunk in 1545, kinda shows how much stock they put into the weapon.

Bows are/were cheaper and easier to make, especially en masse.

Firearms were expensive as s#!$. Gunpowder was hard as s$@+ to create. They had absolutely s$&% accuracy which by the time of the American Revolution had been worked out to only mostly-s$$~ accuracy (and weren't made highly-accurate until rifling was invented in the mid-1800s).

Firearms also had a really, REALLY bad habit of kinda-sorta-totally exploding literally in the faces of their users randomly for a few centuries before Europeans figured out how to make them more stable.

Also, a bowman could fire a freakish number of arrows compared to the number of bullets that could be fired by a gunman - a fast-loading musketeer could fire off 6-10 shots a minute if they were going god-mode on the enemy; an equally-proficient bowman could fire off that many in 15 SECONDS and would still be taking his time doing so.


LazarX wrote:

Genius is not defined by a number. Actually if he was actually tested, Einstein probably would not score a stratospheric IQ store. He didn't have a brain that operated in hyperdrive motion. He probably couldn't stand up to a real chess master.

What he had... in spades. was a unique combination of imagination and insight. In game terms what he had was a genius that relied as much on Wisdom as it did on Intelligence.

Einstein had an IQ of at least 160, which is equivalent to an Int score of 22.

I say "at least" because there's a chance that he had upwards of 190, though psychiatrists pretty universally admit that 160 is a conservative given.

Some very interested gamers/statisticians have looked at the comparison of the prototypical/traditional 3d6 method of ability scoring, and come to an interesting conclusion: the 3d6 model for Intelligence and the chances for each value coming up is very close to the rarities of IQs - so close, in fact, that they determined that every 1 ability point is roughly equivalent 5 IQ points in real life, and can be treated as such.

Assuming the baseline values are IQ 100 and Int 10, a person with an IQ of 105 is an 11; an IQ of 130 (what most doctorate-achievers have) is a 16; a 150 (MENSA members, i.e. certified geniuses) are 20; people with IQs of 160, like Einstein, Hawking, Bill Gates, etc., are 22.

160 is still amazingly high; high enough to be within the top .5% of all humans, though the difference between a 160 and a 200 are a matter of tenths- to hundredths-of-a-percent difference in where they rank.

The IQ curve stops at 300, or Int 50, and basically no-one has ever certifiably achieved that. There are a few candidates, but the chances are even the most ingenious minds in history cap out at probably 250 or so.

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16

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Eh, no, Human Int stops around the 24 area, and that's for maxed out geniuses with a Nat 20 who have reached level 4 with an age bonus of +3.

That's still ungodly smart compared to normal folks. Consider they can answer questions about any field of endeavor equal to a 3rd level expert with 12 Int and full ranks + class skill bonuses.

That's unreal.
==========
Rifling was invented in the 1600's. It was outlawed by the Church. There was a famous competition where lead bullets were used by the rifle, and compared to sacred, blessed, cross-carved bullets from the same weapon. Naturally, the ungouged, heavier bullets were more accurate, and on that basis, rifles were declared a weapon of the devil and were suppressed for over 100 years. Same thing as xbows...a common weapon with great power and aim couldn't be trusted in the hands of a common man.

Of course, a large number of Americans didn't give crap about the Catholic Church's rulings, and rifles proliferated here. They were immensely useful against the British during the Rebellion, as they outranged the British and Hessian muskets and were far more accurate.

==Aelryinth


You all can credit this massive threadjack to... KC with a headcold!

You're welcome.

*Blows nose*


No, seriously, I read the "30 Int = genius" thing somewhere. Maybe it was a 3.5 splatbook? The DMG? It could have also been "30 Int = superhuman".

Shadow Lodge

I feel like I saw those rankings in 2E.


Not so much lately, but it used to be a big bugaboo, particularly because one player always liked to mention 'The Church' doing things (obviously referring to the RCC).

So, I'm like "Which church? (God 1)? (God 2)? Or that religion you're think of that doesn't exist in this setting?"


Kobold Cleaver wrote:
No, seriously, I read the "30 Int = genius" thing somewhere. Maybe it was a 3.5 splatbook? The DMG? It could have also been "30 Int = superhuman".

Mayhaps it was from D&D (Deities and Demigods) where they discuss the stats with 30 being more in the line of deific stats?

Interestingly enough, I believe old time AD&D had IQ with each point = 10 pts.

So a 3 INT = 30 IQ and a 16 INT would = 160 IQ.

ON a similar note I think they had it where your STR stat was related to how much you could military press above your head..where a 10 STR = 100 lbs military press and 15 STR would = 150 lbs military press. This of course went out of wack onto a different scale once you hit percentile STR...but unique idea.


Orfamay Quest wrote:

And, of course, 7th Sea tries to do the same thing for the Thirty Musketeers and the Three-Year's War (or maybe the other way around). If there's a specific world-type that most of the group wants to be playing in, then it's rather poor form for that "special snowflake" to insist on breaking everyone else's immersion.

For example, an elf PC or a ninja would be inappropriate in all three games.

I would say that a ninja could fit into 7th seas just fine. Either having somehow ended up on a trading vessel passing from the far east to Europa, or as a thematically similar local assassin. [bear in mind the black pajama thing isn't in the class description.]


'Historical Accuracy' Hmm.. As a GM I think history can provide a number of plots and settings for my games which require minimal investment of my own time to set up. As to accuracy; well I like Kobolds and Dragons, and I favor sprawling dungeon complexes buried into random hills as opposed to random forts built on top of said hills (which are sooooo much better tactically).

As a player? I like it when games (Settings/rules) make sense, so 'historical accuracy' is nice, but then I expect magic too and if Merlin were a real person I think Britain would have been a world power much earlier than the age of exploration and that wands would have evolved over guns to dominate the battlefield.

As a person? I really f+#*ing hate the way Paizo implemented guns. I can't look at them without grinding my teeth. I have no issue with guns in games, fantasy settings or no. I just wish that in Pathfinder they were called "re-flavored bows," or "the reason you don't get crossbows," or the "steam powered magic missile projection system mark III" which while longer to say are a more setting accurate description (historical or not). Oh wait, that's a bit off topic.... More to the point I like history, if you're trying to teach someone it's full of lessons to give them. That said it doesn't need to be a driving factor in day to day life, or gaming.


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Well, I've got no input on this from the "guns and ninjas" perspective, but I do have some experience with nonsense "historical accuracy".

"Well, you can't play black people/women/insert not white person here because this is Europe."

There is, first of all, the argument that adventurers are not normal and don't need to follow societal norms. Second, it's just plain wrong. A lot of people throw around "historical accuracy" for the sake of exclusion and isn't even accurate with it. So, I've developed a rather visceral reaction to the term "historical accuracy".


chbgraphicarts wrote:
Assuming the baseline values are IQ 100 and Int 10, a person with an IQ of 105 is an 11; an IQ of 130 (what most doctorate-achievers have) is a 16; a 150 (MENSA members, i.e. certified geniuses) are 20; people with IQs of 160, like Einstein, Hawking, Bill Gates, etc., are 22.

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Wait... you're serious? Really?

Sure Gates is a shrewd businessman and intelligent, but he's no certified Genius, let alone 'beyond certified genius.'


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Some day I want to see a historically accurate rome, where the gladiators are shilling sandles and the food stands outside are all a franchise.


Only thing one of my GMs ever really got butt-blasted about historically was leather and "studded leather" armor, one of which was basically just leather padding and the other is a misnomer for brigandine.


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cbh graphic chart wrote:
Bows are/were cheaper and easier to make, especially en masse.

A good war bow was most commonly made out of yew though, which effectively comes out of the tree as a composite material because of the differences between the heartwood and sapwood. Making a lot of them depleted a limited resource.

Makes me wonder if a good sustainable forestry program could have kept them around longer...


More to the general point, the "Fallacy" has some weight at least. While no one.. well, not a LOT of people, are going to complain about pockets you really don't want someone driving a formula 1 racecar into the goblins unless you'd planned for that sort of thing from the getgo. There's a balance to maintain in a fantasy campaign and some things heavily change it.


BigNorseWolf wrote:

Some day I want to see a historically accurate rome, where the gladiators are shilling sandles and the food stands outside are all a franchise.

GURPS Imperial Rome?

Personally, I would go for a historically inaccurate Rome game, taking place during last days of the Republic but with many early Imperial anachronisms, though...

Sovereign Court

BigNorseWolf wrote:

More to the general point, the "Fallacy" has some weight at least. While no one.. well, not a LOT of people, are going to complain about pockets you really don't want someone driving a formula 1 racecar into the goblins unless you'd planned for that sort of thing from the getgo. There's a balance to maintain in a fantasy campaign and some things heavily change it.

I guess the "fallacy" is more GMs abusing their role of arbitrating that balance by banning things irrationally and using historical accuracy as a (flawed, as shown by this thread and the related article) shield.

What particularly annoys me about this fallacy is that it stifles debate and discussion on the *actual* reasons the GM wants to ban something like firearms in a setting.

It usually, in my experience, indicates a fundamental disconnect between the players and a GM on what type of game they actually want to play.


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Leandro 'Verbal' Garvel wrote:
BigNorseWolf wrote:
More to the general point, the "Fallacy" has some weight at least. While no one.. well, not a LOT of people, are going to complain about pockets you really don't want someone driving a formula 1 racecar into the goblins unless you'd planned for that sort of thing from the getgo. There's a balance to maintain in a fantasy campaign and some things heavily change it.

I guess the "fallacy" is more GMs abusing their role of arbitrating that balance by banning things irrationally and using historical accuracy as a (flawed, as shown by this thread and the related article) shield.

What particularly annoys me about this fallacy is that it stifles debate and discussion on the *actual* reasons the GM wants to ban something like firearms in a setting.

It usually, in my experience, indicates a fundamental disconnect between the players and a GM on what type of game they actually want to play.

That last is probably true. Which means rather than fight about historical accuracy and whether or not it's important or even historically accurate, it's better to figure out what kind of game the various players want to play and clearly communicate that. Then compromise, if possible.

Though I'll add a note that a lot of the same things bother me just as much as a player. I just don't have the ability to ban them.


Of course then there is the reverse, where players invoke 'historical accuracy' to try to force inclusion of an element. Such as "well, there was gunpowder in ancient China so you have to let me have my guns"


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When someone tires to argue historical accuracy with my fantasy game, I turn to all the caster players and say "You heard her/him guys, hand over your character sheets."

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Aelryinth wrote:

Eh, no, Human Int stops around the 24 area, and that's for maxed out geniuses with a Nat 20 who have reached level 4 with an age bonus of +3.

That's still ungodly smart compared to normal folks. Consider they can answer questions about any field of endeavor equal to a 3rd level expert with 12 Int and full ranks + class skill bonuses.

That's unreal.
==========
Rifling was invented in the 1600's. It was outlawed by the Church. There was a famous competition where lead bullets were used by the rifle, and compared to sacred, blessed, cross-carved bullets from the same weapon. Naturally, the ungouged, heavier bullets were more accurate, and on that basis, rifles were declared a weapon of the devil and were suppressed for over 100 years. Same thing as xbows...a common weapon with great power and aim couldn't be trusted in the hands of a common man.

Of course, a large number of Americans didn't give crap about the Catholic Church's rulings, and rifles proliferated here. They were immensely useful against the British during the Rebellion, as they outranged the British and Hessian muskets and were far more accurate.

==Aelryinth

I'm pretty sure the Brits used them as well. After all, like most Americans, they had rejected the Catholic Church centuries before when King Henry VIII had made his famous act of separation... so he could put aside his first wife in his search for an heir. So I really doubt the Pope's edict had any effect. (Trivia fact: the reigning British monarch is also the Head of the Church of England, or the Anglican Church as it's known now.)


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I deliberately remove historical accuracy: I want my games to be about modern things with an obviously peeling Past Times paint job.


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Historical accuracy is just a cover-up word for really saying "That idea breaks the tone I planned for this session".

It can be hard to set up a period piece if players are hellbent on breaking it.


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Of course everyone realizes that using the PF game construct for intelligence in an attempt to gauge the psychological construct of intelligence for real life people is not going to really get you anywhere.....right?

Seriously?


SilvercatMoonpaw wrote:
I deliberately remove historical accuracy: I want my games to be about modern things with an obviously peeling Past Times paint job.

*fist bump*

RPG Superstar 2008 Top 16

I think that I'll enter this fray on every side...

1.) An interesting essay on characters' power level compared to "real life": Calibrating Your Expectations

2.) I once ran a Norse-themed one-shot game. One player wanted to run a "Native American warrior named Richard Nixon". Sometimes arbitrary restrictions about characters are needed to keep the game from devolving into chaos.

3.) Many of the "that's not period arguments I've seen are not based on facts, but on the GM's or players' opinions.

People need to keep and open mind and seek consensus when such disagreements arise.


Sir_Wulf wrote:

I think that I'll enter this fray on every side...

1.) An interesting essay on characters' power level compared to "real life": Calibrating Your Expectations

2.) I once ran a Norse-themed one-shot game. One player wanted to run a "Native American warrior named Richard Nixon". Sometimes arbitrary restrictions about characters are needed to keep the game from devolving into chaos.

3.) Many of the "that's not period arguments I've seen are not based on facts, but on the GM's or players' opinions.

People need to keep and open mind and seek consensus when such disagreements arise.

I think "Richard Nixon" can be nixed on the basis of "This is a goofy character whose goofyness appears to be both central to the character and fundamentally incompatible with the campaign". No need to resort to "Historical" anything. After all, you probably wouldn't allow a norse bard whose schtick was to spam shout and do called shots on his enemy's knees. Even if it doesn't clash with the historical basis for the campaign, it's just silly and doesn't work well in a serious campaign that is supposed to stay serious.


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thejeff wrote:
I find it particularly funny since Tolkien pretty much brought in the non-human protagonists.

Even if we gloss over Ben's example of Oz as "children's stories," there's still a large pre-Tolkien swath of nonhuman or half-demihuman protagonists in more "serious" literature.

  • Orion, in Dunsany's The King of Elfland's Daughter (1926), was a half-elf.
  • The Irish hero Cuchulainn was likewise half-fey, and now we're going back to ca. 11th century AD.
  • The stories of Reynard the Fox (an anthropomorphic fox -- i.e., a Pathfinder kitsune) were very popular starting ca. 1170 AD.
  • John Carter of Mars (starting 1912), although human himself, adventures with a 4-armed green Martian and is married to a red-skinned egg-laying mammal. Later protagonists, in addition to humans and red Martians, include human brains in the bodies of a 4-armed ape and a hormad (construct).
  • Etc.

    It's also useful to note that contemporaneous with Tolkien was E.E. "Doc" Smith, whose Lensman series (starting 1937) features a human, a dragon (Worsel), a Rigellian (Tregonsee), and an N-dimensional alien (Nadreck) as what amounts to an adventuring party.

    In comics, the original "Human Torch" (1939) was an android created in a lab; other explicitly nonhuman protagonists followed.


  • Kirth Gersen wrote:
    thejeff wrote:
    I find it particularly funny since Tolkien pretty much brought in the non-human protagonists.

    Even if we gloss over Ben's example of Oz as "children's stories," there's still a large pre-Tolkien swath of nonhuman or half-demihuman protagonists in more "serious" literature.

  • Orion, in Dunsany's The King of Elfland's Daughter (1926), was a half-elf.
  • The Irish hero Cuchulainn was likewise half-fey, and now we're going back to ca. 11th century AD.
  • The stories of Reynard the Fox (an anthropomorphic fox -- i.e., a Pathfinder kitsune) were very popular starting ca. 1170 AD.
  • Etc.

    It's also useful to note that contemporaneous with Tolkien was E.E. "Doc" Smith, whose Lensman series (starting 1937) features a human, a dragon (Worsel), a Rigellian (Tregonsee), and an N-dimensional alien (Nadreck) as what amounts to an adventuring party.

  • By the same argument Tolkein didn't bring in the Elves and Dwarves either, so he didn't introduce any of the stuff people complain about when they complain about "Tolkien purists".

    Yes, there were examples before, just like there were examples of Elves and Dwarves before, but he made both much more the focus of the fantasy genre than they had been. I don't think you can point at one as a bad thing without accepting the other.

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