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Prodigal
 
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Marios (1/22/2010)
Matt Pennington (1/22/2010)
It does have a setting, a "period" and what makes it unusual as a game is that that period is not "stock medieval Europe" but is empires of the Mediterranean some time between -250 BC and +250 AD give or take a century.
Not to be pedantic, but I thought (wrongly?) it was the equally blurry nebulous period just before that - 700BC - 300BC? I.e. before the period of massive cross-culture empires and Christianity (not that it would be a bad idea to rip imagery off from after that period - just so long as there's no reference to Rome's/Alexander's empire or Christianity).
So what you're saying is you've been ignoring the prevalance of Lorica Segmentata in everything Roman?
-- -- --
Eos: Manius Shard. Green and gold shiny healy thing.
Shadow Wars: Johnny Hyper, Hack the Planet!
Odyssey: Was Prince Ramekhet IV, of the line of Nectanebo etc etc; now Quintus Antoninus, sentimental fool err... philosopher of Rome.
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Prodigal
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Ian A (1/22/2010)
Marios (1/22/2010)
Not to be pedantic, but I thought (wrongly?) it was the equally blurry nebulous period just before that - 700BC - 300BC? I.e. before the period of massive cross-culture empires and Christianity (not that it would be a bad idea to rip imagery off from after that period - just so long as there's no reference to Rome's/Alexander's empire or Christianity).
Marios
Insofar as we have a period focus, it's both. Our Roman "look and feel" is Imperial, so c. the BC/AD handover. Our Persians and Carthaginians owe more to Biblical periods (700-500bc) than to the Alexandrine period. Our Egyptians could have come from anywhere from 1150bc through to 30AD and our Greeks are Alexandrine and the century before.
The message here is period doesn't matter, as long as it's in keeping with the game ethos.
I've been choosing to parse it as:
"assume that the coolest period of each culture had existed at the same time as the others."
Fair?
-- -- --
Eos: Manius Shard. Green and gold shiny healy thing.
Shadow Wars: Johnny Hyper, Hack the Planet!
Odyssey: Was Prince Ramekhet IV, of the line of Nectanebo etc etc; now Quintus Antoninus, sentimental fool err... philosopher of Rome.
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Wag
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Sarah (1/22/2010)
Dude, its not a historical game. Its fantasy. The period isnt that important, and the different empires might be inspired by different periods anyway. And 'inspired by' is the important bit.
700BC-300BC is hardly period-anal, but I clarified what I thought was relevant in the examples - i.e. are we in a period of massive cross-cultural empires (i.e. Roman Empire) and cross-cultural religions (Christianity), if so, that's a very different game and a lot of the printed setting/system design would make no sense.
Marios
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Wag
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Ian A (1/22/2010)
The message here is period doesn't matter, as long as it's in keeping with the game ethos.
My grasp of the game ethos was that it's basically set in the "the period before cross-cultural empires/cross-cultural religions" so more or less anything from those cultures is open so long as you don't design a character predicated on the assumption that there are commonly accepted higher loyalties/shared beliefs within the game (you may be a Greek and I a Persian and my good friend here an Egyptian, but that's basically trivial compared to the fact that we're united in the Roman Empire/Christ).
I could well be horribly wrong (?), but I'm basing this on my reading of the briefs which emphasise xenophobia and the fact that the setting goes to great pains to avoid situations where two Cultures mixed together (Alexander empire has been squished in such a way that it seems like you don't have a Greek ruling caste in charge of Persians and Egyptians and Greece is specifically stated to be at a cross-roads).
Marios
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Wag
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theshoveller (1/22/2010)
I.e. before the period of massive cross-culture empires and Christianity (not that it would be a bad idea to rip imagery off from after that period - just so long as there's no reference to Rome's/Alexander's empire or Christianity).So what you're saying is you've been ignoring the prevalance of Lorica Segmentata in everything Roman?[/quote]
I certainly have if it's Lorica Segmentata with a big chi-rho on the front.
Marios
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Wag
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theshoveller (1/22/2010)
"assume that the coolest period of each culture had existed at the same time as the others."
Fair?
Might this not be problematic if your view of 'coolest period' of a culture is one which isn't aligned to xenophobic monoculturalism - early Christian multicultural ('') Rome is pretty damn cool. If you think Rome is a world-girdling empire which has defeated all the other cultures and everyone else thinks you're still in Italy, that doesn't seem like a 'historical detail'.
Marios
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Wag
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Marios (1/22/2010)
However, I would be quite put off a game if I thought the general level of interest in playing the cultural setting (playing *as if* there were one) was at the level of Xena.
I'm not honestly sure I know what that means.
Do you mean you wouldn't be interested in playing a game if it was as historically inaccurate as Xena? If so you may not like Odyssey since it isn't historically accurate. Not historically disinterested in the way that Xena is, but we hand picked the bits of history that we felt would add to the game and discarded the rest, in pretty much the same way that the makers of Xena did. We just used a much smaller palette of colours than they did.
Do you mean you wouldn't be interested in playing a game if it had a strong emphasis on characters instead of the setting? I've never seen the idea of a LRP game discussed in terms of the importance of the setting over the characters (or vice versa). There are games that don't bother with a setting, I suppose you could argue the open world approach of the LT used to be something like that. If that's what you don't like then we aren't doing that, Odyssey has a unambiguously defined setting which is laid out clearly in the accompanying material.
I think you mean you don't want to play the game if people only buy into the game world to the level that the Xena show buys into their own world. If so then I think that illustrates a fundamental flaw in your analysis of Xena (see later), but ultimately it's out of our control. Obviously if people turn up dressed like Darth Maul, we'll send them home, but short of sending out culture police I don't see how we can enforce a level of cultural obedience. All we can do is try and present a cool, exciting setting and hope people buy into that - which is what I think we're doing.
It does look like Xena: Warrior Princess wasn't terribly bothered with setting consistency (meets Homer and then at some later point meets Caesar) but
That's only true if you consider Xena to be a historical show. Given that she regularly battles gods, and without going all history geek on you I think it's fair to say that the historical evidence to support the actual existence of Greek gods is relatively slight. I'm no scholar, but still...
Xena is internally consistent with... Xena. Almost by definition. It's clearly not historically accurate but it doesn't claim to be. Since it's using it's own setting, I don't see how it can be inconsistent, I don't see how that is possible.
I think what you really mean is not inconsistent, but incoherent... My real complaint with Xena is that it cheerfully shoehorns any old shit in there. I seem to recall she poddles off to the orient a few times, travels in Britain a bit. It's understandable in a long running show that the writers get bored and fancy a change. And they're not running a LRP game so that's ok.
In LRP terms though the more you include in a setting, the less setting you end up with. I'm not talking about level of detail, but breadth. One of the things that scares the willies off me is that Odyssey has the tightest setting design of any game I've ever been involved with. You can play a Roman, a Persian, a Greek, a Carthaginian or an Egyptian and that's it. No celts, no vikings, no goblins, no drow, hobbits and dwarves not apply, no elves here move along please, no beastmen, no furries. Ok a list of things you didn't include is pretty meaningless, but the focus of Odyssey is incredibly tight. Empires of the Med from the classical era. There's plenty there to go at but there's no room for pirates who go "aaargh", vampires or frockcoats.
and I admit to only having seen a few episodes - the issue is more with the lack of interest in cultural setting:
In the show? I don't know what means. If you're talking about Xena, the only thing that makes sense is that the show clearly has no interest in the historical setting. In which case, you might not like Odyssey as we don't have much interest in the historical setting either. We don't make the same mistakes Xena does (IMO see earlier) but we don't feel constrained by history any more than Xena is.
While the show is typically set in ancient times, its themes are essentially modern and it investigates the ideas of taking responsibility for past misdeeds, the value of human life, personal liberty and sacrifice, and friendship.
It does? I love Xena. She'd had the sexiest figure on earth, she looks hot and she kicks ass. You and I must have been watching different shows. You need to get out more.
Xena is a modern show, it's on telly for a start, which would have precluded it from reaching a large audience during the classical era. Does it have modern themes? I'm not sure I believe in the notion of modern themes. I don't think people have changed significantly in the last two thousand years, not physically, and I think the same ideas of life and loss and triumph are as valid today as they ever were. I think some cultural products catch the zeitgeist of their age, but such things are just fads, mere whimsy that floats on the universal truth that human beings love that shit.
I don't know. I honestly don't know what it means to have modern themes. What might the non modern themes be? How do you even have themes in a LRP game? Themes seem to make a lot of sense to a narrative, where the author has a theme they want to explore or present. It seems pretty irrelevant to a LRP game, in which you have hundreds of people trying to beat the shit out of each with rubber swords. How you going to present a theme in all that? Does Maelstrom have themes? I don't think so, I'm not conscious of any.
I think there are things that are important to players and to characters. These things are pretty timeless in LRP; conflict, mystery, intrigue, battle. Those are the "themes" of Odyssey. Are they modern? Are they ancient? It seems a specious analysis to me.
The show often addresses ethical dilemmas, such as the morality of pacifism; however, the storylines rarely seek to provide unequivocal solutions.
All doable in a narrative based story medium. Kind of irrelevant in a LRP game with a thousand authors surely?
I want to play in a game whose themes are essentially *not* modern.
Are you honestly thinking there is any chance that we might serve up a LRP game that is based on themes such as the morality of pacifism?
I have a basic principle for LRP games, I call it the Henson principle. If the idea you are thinking of would be something that Jim Henson would consider suitable and appropriate for the Muppets or Sesame Street then you should keep it the hell away from your LRP game. I love Henson's stuff, and if someone ran a game inspired by the crazy world of Labyrinth, I'd seriously consider playing. But I wouldn't expect to turn up and find out that the game was about the importance of family values and looking after small children. I'd expect goblins with exploding heads and David Bowie in Escher mazes. It would be cool if it had puppets but I'm ambivalent about the singing.
My point is that when creating a LRP, unless you are explicitly trying to precisely create a game from one book or film then you are inevitably going to be mixing themes, drawing on ideas and concepts and imagery from different sources. So you take the stuff that looks cool and you think will make a good game and you leave out the rest of the stuff.
I'm not saying Xena: The LRP is invalid (it's because it's valid that I think the distinction is important!), I'm just saying I wouldn't want enjoy playing it and I wouldn't enjoy the OOC conflict of attending a game where some people wanted to play that and some didn't (what I might enjoy on a forum is not what I'd enjoy at an event!).
Simon already said we weren't running Xena: the LRP. It's cultural trash and we're highbrow art dontcha know. I suspect I'm one of few people involved in the game who doesn't hate the show. I quoted it because this is a thread about how historically accurate Odyssey is going to be and "slightly more accurate than Xena" is probably a fair response.
I certainly don't have a problem with the setting presented (more please?), The more time spent posting here, the later the setting material will arrive.... 
but one of the major tensions throughout the Maelstrom campaign was negotiation over the setting. A lot of people - people who can't be just waved away not really knowing what they liked - liked everything about Maelstrom except the setting and did view it as negotiable.
I think that's inevitable in any game. Sadly with Odyssey I think a lot of that tension will be wrapped up in faux historical arguments of "you're not doing it right, real Roman sandals had three buckles, not four".
Odyssey is an even mix of PvP and dramatic plot set in a world inspired by the classical era and populated by five great empires. I don't know what else you can say. That's the game in a nutshell. Of course you can give more detail, but you can't dictate how people respond to the pitch, not without a lot more secret police than we have access to.
I think it's a mistake to view that as automatically unreasonable (where do the Maelstrom rules say that the setting is not negotiable?)
Four years ago I was contacted by a couple of players who wanted to come to Maelstrom as comedy kobolds and wanted to know how that fitted best into the world. I suggested they try the LT. To me the world setting is always non-negotiable. As a player you don't get to say "well I don't want that bit to be true", that's not an option in a LRP game IMO.
I think you're confusing your desire to have everybody perfectly embody the setting - "the snowflake free world" with others acceptance that some non-conformity is allowed. Why wouldn't some Freibodeners not care about the revolution. If you like the idea of muskets but aren't interested in revolutionary marxism, why not play someone on the fringes who wasn't much affected. I don't think that's as unreasonable as you seem to think it is.
Culture is dress, language, food, customs, history, politics, religion, laws and morals, art and literature. It's all these things and more. Which is more "correct" for Maelstrom - a player who plays a firebrand revolutionary Freiboden student dressed in a suit of chainmail and carrying an axe or someone who plays a Freiboden cook who dresses in lederhausen, makes and sells brattwurst and tells you that they prefer not to discuss the revolution because they came to the New World to get away from all that conflict so they could concentrate on making sausages.
I don't see that the first is any more valid than the second.
Saying "I don't want to play that stuff so I'm just going to ignore it when I make my character" is in my opinion deeply rude to your fellow players. Saying "I don't want to play that stuff so I'm going to make a character who ignores it" is to me perfectly fine.
I realize there are playings in the first category at Maelstrom. There are also players who don't take their hits at Maelstrom as well as players who steal lammies after time-out, players who are rude to other players or abusive when you mess up their downtime plans. There are players whose kit isn't very good and players who use gazebos and don't bother to dress them. There are players who get drunk and make a fool of themselves and players who don't engage with the game and make a fool of themselves. There are players who just come to see their mates and players who just come to see the traders. There are players who don't flush the toilet after they've been and there are even some players who don't put the toilet seat down after they've used it. I know, it's shocking, but it's true and it needs to be said.
In short Maelstrom is a game entirely populated from top to bottom by human beings. I've never met the perfect player and I've never met the perfect human being. LRPers are a pretty cool bunch on the whole, but we're still just human beings.
Maelstrom's setting is really novel for a game of that size - I think there's a general pre-existing expectation that settings will be *very* negotiable.
I guess that's where you and I differ then! I think there is a radical difference between how much you expect people to create characters that embody the setting vs creating characters that are exceptions to the setting and how much you expect people to make characters that follow the rules of the setting.
Making a Maelstrom character that is Kamakuran but thinks humans and mokosh are equals is fine. It's unorthodox and subject to social disdain from upstanding Kamakurans but it's fine.
Making a Maelstrom character that is Kamakuran and claims to be half mokosh/half human is not fine. The setting explicitly forbids it. You're breaking the rules unless you acknowledge OOC that your character is wrong and is supposed to be mad. (mad characters is a pretty dull characterisation unless it's part of a wider engagement with the setting).
But the upshot is that you end up with two groups of people playing different games finding themselves OOC irked at being stuck in a game with contradictory OOC expectations.
Put a thousand people in a field and you'll have groups that are trying to play different games.
Put two people in a field and you'll have groups that are trying to play different games. Only the differences will be significantly smaller and less noticeable.
Conclusion - human beings are different. LRP is a social game, we do our best to synthesize something from common aspirations as best we can, otherwise we can't play.
History is an important source for LRP. Along with other works of fiction.
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Wag
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Marios (1/22/2010)
Not to be pedantic, but I thought (wrongly?) it was the equally blurry nebulous period just before that - 700BC - 300BC? I.e. before the period of massive cross-culture empires and Christianity (not that it would be a bad idea to rip imagery off from after that period - just so long as there's no reference to Rome's/Alexander's empire or Christianity).
I haven't a fricken clue. Now Ian - he knows about this history thing. See his post for more accurate information about precise periods that have inspired the writers.
Me? I'd describe the period game is *inspired* by is "even oldier than Olden Times". I honestly don't know any history and nor do I want to. I chose to study physics, partly because I find history really really boring.
History is an important source for LRP. Along with other works of fiction.
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Wag
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theshoveller (1/22/2010)
"assume that the coolest period of each culture had existed at the same time as the others."
Fair?
Bang on!
History is an important source for LRP. Along with other works of fiction.
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Wag
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Marios (1/22/2010)
Might this not be problematic if your view of 'coolest period' of a culture is one which isn't aligned to xenophobic monoculturalism - early Christian multicultural ('') Rome is pretty damn cool. If you think Rome is a world-girdling empire which has defeated all the other cultures and everyone else thinks you're still in Italy, that doesn't seem like a 'historical detail'.
Not really. Because when the game is released, there will be a load of information telling you what we have actually done, so you can check your assumptions against that.
History is an important source for LRP. Along with other works of fiction.
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