Have you ever ran/played in a straight-up historical campaign, with no fantasy bullshit? How did it turn out?

Have you ever ran/played in a straight-up historical campaign, with no fantasy bullshit? How did it turn out?

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>bullshit

I ran a 3-part game that was a cross between The "Lion in Winter" and "Flesh and Blood", using the WFRP system, and set in 14th century France.

It went pretty well.

Alright, mate, "no fantasy elements" - that better?

No, but I have played through a normal d&d campaign as an evangelical, fanatic Catholic LG Knight Templar who was somehow transported into the Forgotten Realms. He spread Christianity and converted several human settlements and even a few intelligent orc/goblin tribes. In the far north and purged dozens of pagan clerics , heathen witches, and countless pagan Saracens with holy blade and fire throughout the course of his crusade. He was a straight Fighter, no Cleric or Magic Classes whatsoever, and everything he did was legitimate.

DEUS VULT!

Could a Christian cleric still use magic or would be considered witchcraft?

I thought I did once, but then we run into Magyar marauders and their potato goulash.

Did he view his christian god as a supreme god above all others? Surely he couldn't deny the existence of other gods.

Probably "miracles". And he'd be cannonized after his death.

>Calling those demons gods

Yeah, I ran Aces & Eights for a spell. It's a wonderful wild-west game, technically Alt-history but you can run it without even really noticing. We had a lot of fun with the trials and travails of a young gambler making his way to the West Coast with a rotating cast of side kicks who tended to die horribly. I ran a couple encounters with the Comanche, and my players were quite horrified to realize that a man with a lance on a fast horse could still be incredibly deadly in this time period.

Played a game as some Romans Legionaries in GURPs once. It was okay.

Apparently stabbing did less damage than slashing. Kinda lame.

>potato goulash
>fantasy

I'm that user, and I'm a Christian myself. Theologically, the main problem with magic is that it's power is drawn from the devil and his demons. In the Forgotten Realms setting, where magic is a largely neutral force of nature, I don't think it would be heretical to use, so long as it was for the glory of God.

My PC didn't abide by that notion, and believed that magic was a sign of faithlessness in God's ability to protect his faithful, and believed that mortals were not meant to wield such power. He didn't use magic of any kind, except when it was absolutely necessary, and he would fast and pray for atonement for a week after using magical items.

He would tolerate kindhearted, benevolent magic-users so long as they didn't worship pagan deities, though he disapproved of it immensely. He believed that magic-users who sought power , immortality, and the spread of paganism were blasphemers, and purged them whenever possible.

As long as the Christian's power was derived from God, it would be his duty to use them for the glory of God. (See: The life story of Elijah The Prophet)

He did, and went out of his way to blaspheme against them, destroy their temples, and slay their clerics, paladins, and priests whenever possible. He viewed other Gods as demons drawing power from the souls of the Lost, or as false, deluded Idols granted power by Satan to mislead the faithless and weak-minded.

He never did any outright Cleric magic, but he did do several extraordinary things in his career.

> (cont.)

He once strangled two enraged paladins of Tyr to death, slayed 3 Clerics of Tyr, singlehandedly routed a mob of peasant congregation, and burned the temple to the ground after they caught him defecating on an idol of Tyr. Once, he rolled a 20 to sever a mountain giant's head from its body for mocking Jesus, and converted an entire tribe of Ogres that had been following it on the spot. Once, he rolled two 19s in a row, and a 20 on a few Charisma checks to preach to an entire tribe of orc ice-dragon worshipers, convinced the entirety of them that they'd been deceived by an agent of Satan, converted them on the spot, and led the tribe to butcher and burn the very being they'd been worshiping just that morning.

By the end of the campaign, Catholic Christianity had spread to become a major religion in the far north, and the Knight Templar began to gain Demigod status as tens of thousands of Catholics revered him as a saint. Forget Obould's Orc hordes, in a few decades Drizzt Do'Urden and friends would be contending with a full-on Catholic crusade against the pagans and their Idols.

In 13th century Europe?

But that's not "fantasy," that's just your GM not knowing his history.

I want to say this is the weirdest shit I've ever heard in relation to Christianity, but then I remembered that one podcast about what theological consequences aliens landing on earth would have.

>Defecating on an idol of Tyr

I get that Crusaders are pretty wild dudes, but seriously? Why didn't he just, I dunno, knock it down? Or burn it? Or hack it up?
Shitting on it seems so base for a Holy Knight of the One True God (tm).

Alcohol does wired things to people, it would probably earn him a "what the fuck was that about" from his superiors, though.

How does the belief in Jesus and the Bible work when the Romans and Jews plus Jesus and the Apostles didn't exist in the Forgotten Realms?

I suspect user/anon's GM retconned the setting a bit for the purposes of his game.

>No, but I have played through a normal d&d campaign as an evangelical, fanatic Catholic LG Knight Templar who was somehow transported into the Forgotten Realms.

sounds pretty based.

...

Cool.

youtu.be/GvrOlKUUSlI

youtube.com/watch?v=VhqeNUFCyI0&

I am in the process of planning an early iron age game with the players as employees of a phonecian trading company.
Need more books on Persia though.
Anyone have some good reccomendations?
Also have some ideas floating around for either a campaign or wargame during the thirty years war after reading Peter H Wilson's excellent books.

I'm that user. This was the attempt of an ordinary medieval Knights Templar Crusader to theologically rationalize being dropped into the Forgotten Realms, where magic and daily divine intervention is a fact of life. Of course his theology would be a little off-kilter!

The only reason this particular blasphemy against Tyr is noteworthy is that he was trashed drunk and possibly high from something the party's LN half-elf wizard slipped into his drink at the tavern when he did it. Normally, his routine was to slay any pagan clerics/cultists, smash the Idol of the pagan deity with his blessed,(a Catholic priest once prayed over it in Europe before he ended up in the Forgotten Realms) Warhammer and burn the temple to the ground, but this time he was feeling particularly spiteful, the temple was empty, and really had to take a shit. That, and that he largely fought off an entire town with no backup or magical equipment, if it wasn't for Divine Providence,(several really, really lucky rolls) he probably would've been torn apart.

He had no superiors, and effectively started Christianity in the Forgotten Realms, as he was the only Christian in the setting, at the start of the campaign. After the incident, he swore to never accept a drink from the half-elf Wizard again, and decided to stick to conventional arson to get hid point across.

This wasn't the Forgotten Realms with all of Christianity transplanted into the setting, this was the Forgotten Realms with one, individual, particularly open-minded, die-hard fanatic Catholic Knight Templar Crusader transplanted into the setting.

DEUS VULT!

>"Jerusalem"" not Hierosolyma or Jherusalem

Yes, all my players rolled percentiles at the start and started as poor serfs as their rolls weren't good enough. We got through about half an hour of character creation and an hour of farming and animal handling action before a bad roll resulted in vikings burning their village down and killing them all.
Everyone then proceeded to suck my cock because they were amazed at the gritty realistic nature of my campaign, because in this day and age people think realism somehow trumps fun.

>He did, and went out of his way to blaspheme against them, destroy their temples, and slay their clerics, paladins, and priests whenever possible.
So how many stray lightning bolts did he take?

Yes. Constantinople during the fourth crusade, players were various byzantine empire individuals, from an exiled norwegian berserker serving in the Varangian guard to an AMBITION nobleman gunning for the imperial throne. Shit was cash

I mean, SERFDOM SIMULATOR 2016 could actually be wacky fun. Something like Kingdom Death in terms of trying to keep a small community together while unspeakable random events keep ruining everything. Random tables could get you Viking Raids, Plague, Witch Hunts, or the local Lord feels the itch to go Crusading and decides to drum up half the village to go with him.

In seriousness though, a "realistic" commoners game would be more boring than anything else. Just a lot of farming, broken up with the occasional religious festival. Maybe a minor dispute about grazing rights that has to be taken to the lord, who's mostly disinterested rather than some George RR Martin maniac.

I dunno man, even in ancient times you get people like en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basil_I who go from peasant to emperor. Stupid shit that would only fly in some 80s fantasy novel right.

And ofcourse, you can always be a bunch of commoners conscripted in the early napoleonic era. Though I get that's not what you are going for with SERFDOM sim, especially in terms of era.

Play WHFRP.

Fuck that sounds like a shitload of fun.
>tfw I will never play out my fantasies of being a fanatical crusader for the One Holy True & Apostolic Church

>Christian cleric
>magic
No fantasy stuff.

Huh. Come to think of it, there are no downsides to another crusade. We have nothing to lose but a few mudslimes, and everything to gain.

>LN
>Spikes someone's drink

Our GM has a giant boner for Christian Cameron and Bernard Cornwell and as a result we've played landowners in greece during the time the persians started getting rowdy, English men at arms and archers during the 100 years war, spies/thugs for venetian merchants and all sorts of fear and loathing during the early crusades, vikings in england.

Some of the absolute best campaigns I've ever played in, but you need players who respect the source material and aren't expecting the D&D Disneyland version.

We mostly used modded Call of Cthulhu rules with the whole mythos/insanity parts replaced with stuff that fit thematically with what we were playing. It's amazing how much you can do with a simple rules-set and some swapped out words.

Yeah, a one-shot about romans during Veringetorix rebellion. Kinda cool, the DM knew even more than me about the period. I feel though that the gaming part itself was a bit boring, specially for those who were not as interested in history.

Played in one. One of the characters recreated the Not-Mongol empire and we kind of just followed along with her.

It was pretty cool in that, since subsequent campaigns revisisted the world at different times, we got to see the historical effects of past character actions.

There's a reason it took until WW1 for lancers to be phased out of service.

>mfw I am a medievalist and none of my friends like medieval history enough to run something like that for me.

That sounds glorious.

If there is anyone who plans to run a game based entirely on historical example.

>Roman Genus
>Anglo-Saxon tribe and family
>Viking Jarl and court

Any, base it has in history and I'm in, specifically Western history. What system would you recommend for realistic historic fantasy?

Party kept on wiping to CON checks against disease.

We get it, you are insecure about the fact that you prefer morning cartoon superheroes with swords disneyland fantasy. Don't worry about it, lots of people do.

Some of us just feel that history is full of amazing adventures and events that are plenty exciting without adding 50% world of warcraft.

If you're not looking for too much crunch, then I'd do BRP/Call of Cthulhu. It's simple, easy to grasp and easy to mod. There's options for things like special maneuvers, but generally you don't need much beyond Sword, Parry, Ride Horse, etc. It tends towards the gritty, high lethality end of things, but there's options for more heroic stuff too. You can cut the infamous sanity system out completely, or keep it for representing fear and ptsd.

We did an American Revolutionary War game using BTRC's old Warpworld game system that was pretty cool.

We also did a more historical take on King Arthur (though I suppose there was a small amount of "fantasy elements" as there were some fae and magic nvolved...but it was mostly historical.)

You can slash with the gladius hispaniensis just fine.

I keep thinking it would be fun to GM a campaign based around the Byzantine agents sent to China to steal and safely return silk worms.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smuggling_of_silkworm_eggs_into_the_Byzantine_Empire

I could have a rotating cast of Chinese, Indian, Mongolian, European, or Middle Eastern hirelings and mercenaries join the monks on their journey.

Dunno what system would work best, maybe just use 5e.

At one point, the PCs meet up with a shady rhubarb smuggler, who runs the medieval equivalent of a grow-op in the hills.

>join game that was advertised as a Roman empire style thing
>some historical inaccuracies, especially with player selection (characters from countries the Roman Empire has no part in) but was still cool
>everyone having fun
>during climax of second session of raiding a germanic barbarian settlement, all of a sudden we are fighting some sort of magic user?
>wtf
>we're suddenly transported
>wake up in generic fantasy land
>0 indication that the game was heading in that direction

And that's when I quit.

>"I'm a Roman Centurion but was transported to an alternate world with weird technology I don't understand also my emperor is now an elf?!"
>The new, bestselling Light Novel from Japan

I've always wanted to run a Roman history campaign set right after the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, but styled after Apocalypse Now.

vmashup.com/HWMPb6Ym

>Every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker, and every minute Marsi stays in the forest, he gets stronger.

>It ain't me! It aint' me! I ain't no Senator's son!

Holy shit user.

We tried it once, but the DM kind of turned out to be super shit at it. He was fine with high fantasy, fine with dark fantasy, fine with sci-fi, but put him in charge of a historical setting and suddenly it's the classic shitshow

>You try to do something interesting? The world shits on you!
>Sorry user, this dice says you caught dysentery. The local doctor rubs lavender into your eyes to cure you, but you die anyway
>Your expert swordsman in full plate is killed by two bandits with sharpened sticks, shouldn't have tried to be a hero in this REALISTIC setting!

It was pretty terrible, but he acknowledged that he fucked up and we went back to playing things he was good at.

I would totally play a Drifters style game.

Played in a game where we were mongols and needed to run around in the front trying to take over China. Was pretty hype. Had some "fantasy elements" lifted from folklores, though we never found out if they were actually magic or what. Like healers claiming to be magic and stuff. As in "This guy claims he's magic, and your characters have no idea what he's doing, and it seems to be working."

It was fun-ish. A bit of snorefest at times, and our characters ended up being rather similar. Some lulz were had, but players not being nearly as familiar as the DM with the historical time limited the enjoyment a bit.

I was planning on running a Castlevania inspired game set in the crusades. Not quite 'no fantasy bullshit' but it's heavily set in history.

>Church's crusaders are out fighting the Barbarous hordes
>At home it leaves too many vampires, demons and undead unchecked
>PCs have to take on the Church's workload

If I went for a straight on Castlevania game I would have had a plot with a Belmont of choosing a successor among the PCs but that would limit their backstories to being Belmonts.

kickstarter.com/projects/1861515217/aquelarre-the-dark-and-mature-medieval-rpg-now-in

Is the best historical rpg i know.
It also comes with mitology and magic but the setting is basically Spain in the XIII-XIV century. So you can put those away and play a normal historical campaign.

Its also come with a lot of historical background and fluff to know how the society worked.

>the-dark-and-mature-medieval-rpg

It was a Viking game, I was 15 and no one took it seriously at all. It only lasted one session.

>with no fantasy bullshit?

user, that's impossible, simply because people believed that fantasy bullshit was real and actively tried using it to attain their ends.

You can't run a historic game without people using magic and shit.

>Almost 2017
>Deus Vult joke
user, those were stale 3 years ago

It's called Wild Fields and it's fun.

Also, no deus vult bullshit ivolved

But the magic will only work if it is grounded in science / through the placebo effect.

This.

Wild Fields is technically historical game. But since it's set in 17th century, you CAN'T have less than 10% of Superstition.
Average character has 30%, representing devout, well-educated Catholic.

The newfags attracted by /pol/ have latched onto them and spamming them more and more.

>"I need only draw that sword to become king!"
>''...On second thought maybe I'll go conquer the desert."

>Second edition
First or GTFO.

>17th century
>average character
>Well-educated
user...

>"I'm a Roman Centurion lost in a strange part of the Barbaricum where people don't even properly rever their ancestors

>I've always wanted to run a Roman history campaign set right after the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, but styled after Apocalypse Now.

That'd be the long war in Spain.

You play as Polish nobleman in this game. Which means finishing at least two stages of education. Or as a foreign merc/visitor, which means a highly-qualified craftsmen/other noble.

Welcome to the Commonwealth. The real deal, not some Anglo bullshit.

This is only a problem if you're autistic and shriek a lot.

The Crusades is an interesting subject, though.

It is, but a lot of recent usage of the meme stems from LE KEKUS VULT nonsense or photoshopping pictures of Trump's face onto Templars.

I blame ISIS for stirring up shit.

Most recent western supporter of the HOLY WAR OF CHRISTIANITY maymay was Bush 2.

Sure, but you have also a generation that grew up with 9/11 and Bush as a part of their childhood. They carried with them the Dingus Vult meme.

>I blame effect for being the cause
Nice logical lapses

The king of what? Strange swords lying in stones is no basis for a system of government.

>surely that crusading zealot couldn't percieve reality differently because of his faith.

How the fuck is that image eight megabytes?

Neither is conquering piece of a desert

Did a couple vanilla Crusades games before we moved onto weirder fantasy variants (which unfortunately died), and they were fun, mostly trying my hardest to be the knight and shining armor while my compatriots were either well-intentioned but zealous, or plain old rape pillage and burn, more so than the actual viking in the party, with the former okay so long as they weren't doing it to Christians, which is a major if as we thankfully never ran into any Eastern Orthodox, or campaign being largely confined to Spain and Africa.

Played a 1800-century Austen-style game once. Shit was pretty fucking rad. Acquire wealth, entertain ladies.

>conquering a land is not a basis for system of government for people living on that land
????

In the first case, you draw a sword from the stone and that's literally it. You now have a rusty sword.
In the second case, you conquer Jherusalem, and rule the people living in it. It's not fucking rocket surgery.

It should be noted that not every deity that fell under the Lord's gaze was purged violently. Several of them, including many of the old Slavic pagan gods, actually forfeit their abilities to become saints under the God. A cheeky crusader would seek out the physical avatar of a god that doesn't conflict with the Lord's teachings and teach them of the potential of sainthood.

I think they did that with Buddah as well.

>He thinks all it takes is to conquer
You also need to keep it.

Have you seen any of the crusader kingdoms around? Meanwhile, getting a LEGIT claim on the throne, because it's based on pulling a sword from a stone allows you to keep the land, rather than conquering it and then regularly routing a rebellion or counter-attacks.

But sure, go with removing kebab, you fucking sperg. Especially since kebab wasn't even around for next century or so and only succeeded, because everyone bleed out on crusades.

So kind of like Thermae Romae?

appropriate

Fair enough, except the forest is a little less dense, and the wars there have less pop culture traction so it's harder for non-historian players to get into it.

>sword
>legit claim on the throne
Let's not kid ourselves here.

user, there were worse legit claims over history than just legend about pulling a sword from a stone. And nobody fuss about them.
Unlike invading army trying to subdue you.

Yeah, me and some friends played a game about playing mercenaries around the year 1100.

Since it was GURPS, one of the sessions was able to end with a single man in plate mail being a goddamn boss fight, which we beat by knocking his ass on the ground and stabbing his eyes through his visor.

There was a pretty good, constant tension through every session since a single stray hit could cripple or take your character out of the fight.

>1100
>Mercs
Words cannot describe the disgust