Why isn't there more historical fantasy from the Napoleonic era?

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it would all be down to your DM user. being part of a horse artillery team, or a being cuirassier or dragoon during a large battle would be pretty damn exhilarating.

Horse artillery is great because its somewhat mobile, PCs could move around, set up the cannon in unexpected places, ambush enemies and relocate, defend the gun, fire with their muskets or attack with swords, fire different types of rounds from the gun. It would be fun, with plenty of options.

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Not to mention the bullshit you'd have to take.

Like being having to make do if you don't get resupplied or supplies being late.

Or having to fight off animals if it's the dead of winter or something.

>Hey, instead of playing a game where you're adventuerers off in the wide world
>Your sat in the army
>Being a bunch of artillery monkeys
>But isn't the boring mindless drudgery of work fun!?

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>Sharpe is one of my favorite TV shows but it would be a boring as fuck game to play.

Why? Sharpe filled books and a tv show with 'all we got is muskets' and it was really interesting.

You don't need a diverse party to have an interesting game. You don't need to have diverse equipment to have diverse characters, or put them in interesting situations.

Veeky Forums has been filled with stories from single-class campaigns. 'We were all vampires/men-at-arms/thieves/operators/engineers/rocketeers' etc.

Why can't you adventure in a Napoleonic setting?

This one is honestly closer to 1600s

Short answer, Yes you do, you are stupid.

Long Answer for both of you; When the entire game is solved by "I fire musket or hit with sabre" then every single encounter, without fail, will be the exact fucking same.

The Napoleonic era was the death of the traditional Warrior culture, and with the Warrior culture comes the adventurer.

Hell anything "Historical" will usually be more banal mundane shit than it is fantasy.

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That'd be pretty baller.
You also get to see the new empire crush the northern jew empire.

Now why are there so few french revolution fantasy?

Then what about Only War? You pretty much play as the Imperial Guard doing Guard things

Because Only War is fucking shit.

People only ever play Only War to be the A-Team, you know, the exact opposite of doing guard things.

>to be the A-Team
Then why not be the Napoleonic-style A-Team? Fantasy RPGs pretty much do the same thing to pseudo-medieval Europe anyway

I don't think it's what you're referring to, but every now and then I ponder about an 18th century setting with standard medieval fantasy races.

The only real conclusion I have is that I like the idea of Ogre Grenadiers in an Elven-Human dominated colonial empire.

Sabers are cool

>When the entire game is solved by "I fire musket or hit with sabre" then every single encounter, without fail, will be the exact fucking same.
You sound boring, like you have boring games too.

The 'game' should resolved by things like 'sabotaging the French armoury', 'safely escorting the ambassador across the partisan filled countryside' or 'assassinating the Italian general during a diplomatic parley'. That's the game, not how your character dishes at d6s and d10s.

Nigga just gibe me the sauce

Because it's at the time when guns are not in so many different flavours of fun And the different flavours of melee weapons were phased out.

Here is a fun idea, Play Shadowrun, but everyone can ONLY EVER use a Pistol and a baseball bat, that's it.

Imagine how fun that is.

>It should be fun to do these inane boring Military tasks

Yeah, it's not fun.

>>It should be fun to do these inane boring Military tasks
>Yeah, it's not fun.
Please tell me some fun then, cause I clearly need to be educated in some good fun.

> Short answer, Yes you do, you are stupid.

Yeah why treat this like an interesting discussion being two people with different viewpoints when we can just escalate it to assholery and name calling for literally no reason

> Long Answer for both of you; When the entire game is solved by "I fire musket or hit with sabre" then every single encounter, without fail, will be the exact fucking same.

Are the games you play that bereft? If the combat is sameish, you take the focus away from those mechanics.

Make it a game where you're trying to survive in hostile territory with an extremely limited supply of ammunition, with high-lethality in combat. Play deserters in Napoleon's Russian campaign just trying to get the fuck out of dodge without freezing to death.

Or take it the other way and add *more* mechanics. We've got magic ammo now and choice in the battlefield. The enemy is sometimes werewolves. Maybe the brits did a deal with Satan and are now running around with Skaven-level tech

There's probably heaps of other ways to play with it. Why dig your heels in and give up immediately?

>You will never see Elven Winged Hussars charge on their pegasi

could easily be reflavored

Not true at all.

>historical FANTASY

I've thought of the same general idea, but the problem IMO is that you end up with too much of the same thing - "Oh, the french are Elves, the Brits are humans+dwarves, the Russians are Orcs"

Because every scenario you just shat out is "What if you were in X boring military scenario"

See the conclusion here All you end up getting is a boring historical campaign doing boring semi-historical things in an era that was boring as fuck.

>guns are not in so many different flavours
Musketoons. Carbines. Blunderbusses. Pistols. Rifles. Muskets. Air rifles.

And it wouldn't take much to make situations where grabbing the nearest weapon available would allow players a wider variety of melee weapons. Axes, cutlasses, sabers, clubs, bats, spears, bayonets.

And if you make it PSEUDO-Napoleonic instead, you can justify a wider variety

I feel like I've argued with you before, from another thread where an user kept going on and on why some historical setting would be boring

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is pretty gud. There's also a pretty good TV adaptation

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Strange_&_Mr_Norrell

Your GM must be shit if he can't figure out how to make military campaigns fun.

Nah, we just avoid boring settings.

See

Just got back from watching episode 3, and I agree that it is indeed pretty gud.

Hey, I'm only critiquing the idea of one-race nations. I'm totally down for fantasy/napoleonic mergers.

Problem is that, imo, it's more of a Regency tale that happens to feature a Napoleonic cameo.

Because in an era with real nationstates and gunpowder the hero legend gets way harder to pull off.

sound like you lack a bit of imagination, and probably a lot of knowledge on the period. There's a LOT of interesting things you can do, even within the army in the napoleonic times. Usually adventurers like a bit of structure like an overall mission, but then like to approach it their own way. Being a dragoon or horse artillery crew would be awesome during a large battle, even just on a foraging mission or something. Plenty of intrigue - violent peasants, highwaymen, guy you thought were looters but turned out to just be from some other part of le grande armee (which in 1812 was made up of many different ethnicities and languages)

Napoleonic era would make a great setting, easily rival any standard fantasy setting. Or would you prefer to use fighter, cleric, rogue and wizard forever in a generic fantasy world with goblins and orcs?

At present in our D&D campaign we're playing in a renaissance era setting, with early muskets, and with goblins fighting as if a thirty-years-war army, with mass musket fire and cannons. makes goblins a real threat instead of just some random savages in the mountains. Taking ideas from history can really help add flavor to your settings.

If you dont like a purely historical napoleonic setting, why not add in fantasy? be a battlemage of the grande armee, casting to keep your men's morale up at they hold off wave after wave of half Russian-hald orc troops rushing the redoubt at Borodeeno.

Read 1812, great book and full of interesting and brutal information and details of the Napoleonic period.

Of course, there's the problem of whether we are focusing on the Napoleonic aesthetic, or on the actual time period. if it's the former, you can do it like medieval fantasy - draw inspiration from it without being completely bogged down in the actual era, drawing more on themes and imagery - while following the latter causes the 'one race, one nation' problem you mentioned

not at all user. Duelists and generals were the heroes of the day. PCs play as minor generals, mounted and going around doing diplomatic shit and leading their units in battle. There's heroes in any period or setting, just need to read up a bit about it. You almost always come across stand-out figures and characters when reading about a period.

>There is plenty of imagination!
>You can play as either peasents with guns
>Or highwaymen with guns
>Or the Military
>All doing Mundane boring shit! How Fun!

Are you American? I'll assume you are, you sound naive and stupid.

The Napoleonic era is the death of the Wilderness and the death of the local adventure.

It's the time when globalism rose it's young head and the Knight and the hero was dead and buried.

Look at all your fantastic examples, where you say the player must play a rat in a crowd at every turn.

It's a time where national armies were determined 100% by their colours and sepiatone makes everyone look the fucking same.

It's the time of factory, not the handcrafted.

>Rich inbreds and fat people are interesting characters.

You want to know why it's so shit? It's simple.

Because you can't stop using real-world "Oh it's X histroical but with Y fantasy trope" because it's so fucking dull.

>era with real nationstates and gunpowder
This didn't stop Western films. Or James Bond. Or WW2 action films like Guns of Navarone.

>in an era with real nationstates and gunpowder the hero legend gets way harder to pull off
Not really, no. There's plenty of political intrigue to go around for diplomatic heroism, and combat in the Napoleonic era still had room for heroic cavalry and bayonet charges, melee combat, and wooden ships and iron men on the high seas.

Even going past the Napoleonic era, there are countless examples in Hollywood, television, vidya, literature, and national medal recipient archives that disprove that claim.

>At present in our D&D campaign we're playing in a renaissance era setting, with early muskets, and with goblins fighting as if a thirty-years-war army, with mass musket fire and cannons. makes goblins a real threat instead of just some random savages in the mountains. Taking ideas from history can really help add flavor to your settings.

So they fight like every army in your setting? How fun and unique and interesting.

The general idea is intriguing, but it needs to be very carefully handled. For example, if you've got some sort of protection spell, is Ney still the Bravest of the Brave if he benefits from it?

Basically, magic (for historical fantasy in general and Napoleonic in particular, imo) needs to be powerful enough to alter things - no point in doing Waterloo with fire mages instead of cannons - while not removing the human elements.

In other words, the exemplary courage of the Poles means nothing if they are protected from enemy fire by magic, or conversely, if they get instantly cut down by magic. Is Napoleon still a genius if he has a scryer who can help him?

One way you can get around this, potentially, is having the sense of honour that pervaded the period sometimes cause issues; wearing your charm into battle is fair play, but you'd better take it off to fight a duel.

Can we just elect to ignore that asshole?

I love the idea of 19th century Europe dealing with an alieum invasion

And don't give me the original War of the Worlds shit.

Yes of course I agree with you. And I'd have a blast with that. But my point is that you can't really do "One person or group of people travels the world and fights evil" as easily.

>themes

What ARE the themes of the Napoleonic era?

Might I suggest this. It's got Napoleonic naval fights, poulticing, explorations, Dragons, aerial combat.

Why? Because I make posts like this The stupid shit they are?

Look at all the famous figures from the era.

Fat balding men who ran away when anyone over 5 foot 2 came near them.

Industrialization and the crushing of the individual in the name of the collective. Fantastic things to base an adventure on.

>One person or group of people travels the world and fights evil
How about a raiding ship travelling the world hunting down enemy ships? Also gives the opportunity to do some land missions on the coast

>casting to keep your men's morale up at they hold off wave after wave of half Russian-hald orc troops rushing the redoubt at Borodeeno.

See which I really agree with - if the heroes have magic that makes them braver, etc. it diminishes their heroism. And the Napoleonic Wars to me are sort of the last gasp of chivalry and "casual" bravery. To us risking death for honor is dumb, for them it was every day. Not denigrating the bravery of guys going over the top in WWi or doing OIBUA in Iraq, but it's also not quite the same thing.

Visual Themes: Awesome uniforms. Massive armies, gunpowder and canons,lace lace and more lace,

General themes: Fighting against tyrants, grand political alliances with infighting, class struggle, Exploration of Africa and the Far East, the infancy of colonialism, Pirates and Privateers.

So we come to the terminus of how far we can reach.

The only way to do Napoleonic era shit in an interesting manner is being Pirates.

It's possible to do, just harder than in a medieval era. That's why Napoleonic era fantasy isn't that popular.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love doing Napoleonic fantasy.

It was called Flintloque and nobody but me played it.

So literally the antithesis of Heroism.

You're that user from way back in a thread about WW1 right? The one who kept saying it'd be nothing but the Western Front?

>traveling the world
Travel is as easy as the GM wants it to be. If it's high fantasy, then magic makes travel easy no matter what the tech level. If it's low fantasy, then Napoleonic-era international travel is more accessible than that of earlier tech levels and harder than that of later tech levels.

>fighting evil
But the French are right fucking there.

>But the French are right fucking there.

But it's really badly written.

You didn't even offer a rebuttal to >Fat balding men who ran away when anyone over 5 foot 2 came near them.
Ney, Murat, Picton, Inglis, I could list hundreds.

Now run along, you silly troll.

>Look at all the famous figures from the era.
>Fat balding men who ran away when anyone over 5 foot 2 came near them.

'When a friend expressed envy of his estate, Lefebvre said "Come down in the courtyard, and I'll have ten shots at you with a musket at 30 paces. If I miss, the whole estate is yours." The friend naturally declined this offer, and Lefebvre then added, "I had a thousand bullets shot at me from much closer range before I got all this."'

>ywn rescue a sexy Irish adventuress from an evil cult of Aztec blood god worshipers during the Peninsula War

Actually, no.

On the inverse WW1 has an amazing scope for Fantasy because of the emergence of new technologies.

WW1 can be far more personal than Napoleonic era can be, and that's the entire point of it.

>A fat ugly general shoots a pistol in a duel
>WOW SO GREAT

Thank you for just making my point for me.

>French Officer
>Her uniform has the symbol for Avacyn's religion

but then they have tricorn hats so whateves.

Just ignore him, everyone.

>I've thought of the same general idea, but the problem IMO is that you end up with too much of the same thing - "Oh, the french are Elves, the Brits are humans+dwarves, the Russians are Orcs"
I'm not sure if that is a problem unique to fantasy in this time period though.

Why? Because I hurt your feelings?

The fact is I am right. How exactly do you form a party in the Napoleonic era without ever using the Military as an excuse?

Go ahead. Indulge me, Write me up a party of heroes in Napoleonic DnD.

That was easily the worst Sharpe movie.

>without ever using the Military as an excuse?
A private gemtleman has a treasure map leading to hidden gold stashed by pirates during the great Age of Exploration. He has hired unique individuals with specific skills to help him retrieve this gold. Problem: other private gentlemen also know the location of this treasure, including ones from enemy nations who may or may not have military backing.

The players are then given the task of finding this treasure. What they do with it in the end is up to them. They can keep it for themselves, or give it to one of the factions.

No need for them to be members of any military.

Your imagination is stunted. I bet you'd struggle to think of a WW2-era adventure without involving the conflict, while there's a whole body of pulp literature right there for you to study.

Oh, by far. The problem was they had used up the plot from the book in the movie version of Rifles, so they had to do something original. The original-plot movies, mainly this, Justice and Mission, are lousy compared to the ones adapted from the books.

Still, it has a great villain, and is an interesting example of how you could do a horror/fantasy-themed Napoleonic game.

So then tell me at what point does fantasy need to come into this then?

All of that is done infinitely better with WW1/WW2 era shit though.

>Write me up a party of heroes in Napoleonic DnD.
The rogue was a cutpurse from the roughest neighbourhood in the nation-capital, called Ogre Street. He escaped from the ship-based prison of Bilge-Mark to get his revenge on the corrupt copper that set him up. In the mean time however he needs money, and luckily there's no shortage of employers for a skilled thief.

The fighter -was- a soldier, but deserted after watching half his regiment get fed to wild-fire in the mage-wars. He's taken his skills into 'private enterprise' after changing his name, working as a mercenary in colonial adventures.

The wizard is a graduate from the mage academy of the nation's capital. A son of the nobility, he scoffed at a career in politics or the military and instead dedicated himself to unlocking the arcane arts through the prestigious Waterhull Academy. Disgraced after fighting a magical duel, and disinherited from his family, he is forced to take on work far beneath his station.

And so on and so on and so on

Use your imagination.

Maybe the gold is cursed or connected to some legendary city. Maybe the pirates are spooky scary skeletons. Maybe one of the PCs is a wizard. Maybe their chief rivals are a sober Russian, a lactose-intolerant Frenchman, a Prussian pacifist, and a British dentist. Figure it out for yourself.

Not him:

>It also can include an alternative history where the past or present has been significantly changed when an actual historical event turned out differently.[4]

>The story takes place in a secondary world with specific and recognizable parallels to a known place (or places) and a definite historical period, rather than taking the geographic and historical "mix and match" favoured by other works of secondary world fantasy.

>Historical Fantasy may also be set in a fictional world which resembles a period from history but is not that actual history.

Or it could just be a story set in Napoleonic era France minus any fantasy elements.

Take your stunted, fucking imagination; your negativity and your overall bad faith and leave the thread. You have contributed nothing of value to the conversation and have no intention of doing so.

See

Rather than continuing to feed the troll, how about we try to think up a system of magic that fits into a "historical" Napoleonic context?

For example, referencing a couple of comments above, improved wound care or magic that can reduce the incidence of disease could have a huge impact and it still lets everyone be big damn heroes

Make your fucking WW2 and leave this one. Some of us enjoy this theme and would like to discuss it in peace, among people that actually want to contribute meaningfully to the conversation.

>So then tell me at what point does fantasy need to come into this then?
Because its fun. Fantasy is not necessary for any kind of adventure, but we use it because its enjoyable.

The treasure could as easily be some kind of magic trinket as much as gold. The bad guys could be dabbling in black magic like necromancy or magical plagues in an effort for their leader to win. The nobility could be vampiric, the Napoleon stand-in could be half-demon and planning to end the world, there's a lot of ways to add fantasy tropes and make them work.

I don't think y'all realize how insignificant the individual was to the style of warfare fought in WW1/2 compared to the 1800s. Y'all are arguing from a point of bias rather than historical reality.

Also, the entrenched caste system common in Europe in the 1800s makes for better fantasy fodder than the modern age.

Colonialism is literally the most heroic endeavour.

The Entire standing point of the Napoleonic wars was that the individual was worthless and the regiment was more important.

I mean fuck me, you people missed the entire idea of Georgian era mercantilism.

maybe you American fucks should learn what the fuck era of history you're talking about before you try and lambast people for seeing it as a dullard era ever.

I mean fuck, it's right next to the Victorian era for fuck sake.

If you want Redcoats and Bluecoats firing at shit, just use the Victorian era.

>how insignificant the individual was to the style of warfare fought in WW1/2 compared to the 1800s
Archive pages for the Victoria Cross and US Medal of Honor provide plenty of fodder for individual heroism. And that's before we get into all the World War vidya, literature, TV, and movies. And it's fantasy, so you have extra wiggle room for PCs to be extraordinary.

Any era can be suitable for heroism and RPG campaigns if the GM is even halfway competent.

>Are you American?
not even close user

You have a very close-minded view of the napoleonic period, I would suggest reading more books on the period.

>So they fight like every army in your setting?
Partially, they also make use extensively of boar riders, ogres, and werid half-breen orge monstrosities so quite different to most regular armies. Also they're goblins so their pretty chaotic and unpredictable.

There's bravery in all periods user. American civil war saw huge bravery, Russo-Japanese wars, WW1 (especially in places that weren't the western front and actually had maneuver warfare and lots going on), WW2, even modern times.

Any period is going to have interesting flavor, characters, bravery, equipment. You just need to learn a bit about the period and have a good DM who knows his shit.

Really need to work on the subtlety, man. You could have kept this going for three threads but you went way overboard.

jesus christ

You seem pretty angry user. Not everyone you disagree with is american. Might want to have a bit of a reality check there.

individuals can be as important as your DM makes them. Any setting, any period.

>The Entire standing point of the Napoleonic wars was that the individual was worthless and the regiment was more important.
This is the age of the glorious hero figure i.e. Napoleon standing above all
You literally know nothing of what you're talking about, that garbage assembly of buzzwords is truly impressive

Right but my point is that these were men who would volunteer to lead a charge into almost certain death, or fight a duel, or any number of things, for the sake of honor, plus letting a defeated opponent go if he was brave, etc. - not things that were such a factor in wars after the ACW, which was basically the American-market remake in terms of attitude.

Correction, I thought you were being too obvious but then we have these guys