The Campaign Builder's Guild

I'm sure we're all familiar with many settings with premises along the lines of "it's basically a fantasy version of ancient Egypt" or "a fantasy world inspired by Europe during the 30 Years War" or what have you. Many of us have made and/or run games in such settings.

There's a relevant passage in the Referee's Book from the Lamentations of the Flame Princess RPG:

Quote from: LotFPInventing all of these things from scratch for a game campaign is a very intense and time-consuming job – at least it is if the final result is to feel like a living, breathing culture – and so this is why many campaign worlds work from a historical base. "It's like 16th Century England," for example, says a great deal, even if it winds up being a series of popular misconceptions about what that exactly means. Everyone at the table will get the general idea and that's enough to get the world out of the way and get directly to the adventure.

I like these sorts of settings, not just for the convenience posited in that quote, but because I have always loved both history and fantasy. Seriously, why not combine the two? :D

But my question is, where does the line fall between historical fantasy and fantasy inspired by history? I don't think anyone would call the Hyborian Age historical fantasy, even though most of its peoples and cultures have real-world historical inspirations and parallels - Howard even intended it as a distant age of our world, so those peoples are actually the ancestors or prototypical forms of the real-world cultures they have similarities to.

How far can one take a real-world historical setting into the fantastic? I'm reminded of many discussions about the inclusion of vanilla fantasy races in campaign settings, and the two questions that cropped up again and again of "if it's an orc in all but name, why not call it an orc?" and "why still call it an orc, when you've changed it so that it only resembles an orc in passing?"
Let's now apply those same questions to historical fantasy settings rather than individual fantasy races. If it's medieval Europe in all but name, why not call it medieval Europe? Alternatively, why still call it medieval Europe, when you've changed it so that it only resembles medieval Europe in passing?

Where are people comfortable with the line falling? If I were to write a setting about the Crusades where the Holy Land was to be reclaimed from the Drow rather than Islam, should I create a "new" setting for this to happen in, or still have knights from France, the Holy Roman Empire and the rest of Christendom laying siege to Antioch and Jerusalem - albeit a very different Antioch and Jerusalem than those that existed in the real world? If I wanted to create a fantasy setting where one culture was essentially Alexandrian Macedon, should I rename them, or could we allow that the Macedonians, or at least a version of the Macedonians, could exist in a fantasy world alongside the Dark Empire of Malath Rakeen and the Kingdom of the Crystal Forests?

EDIT: How valid is caricature of a historical people or culture? If the ancient Greek view of Illyrians was that they were all violent savages, would it be acceptable for my fantasy Illyrians to be essentially Always Chaotic Evil Humanoids? If the ancient Greek view of Illyrians wasn't that they were all violent savages, would it still be acceptable?

EDIT2: What if I were to create a vanilla DnD-style fantasy setting but call my dwarves Saxons, my halflings Britons, my elves the Irish and my orcs Danes?

EDIT3: People have told me that Dark Silver feels like a "historical" setting in some ways. I sort of more-or-less know myself what was inspired by history and what was inspired by more fantastic things, but I'd be interested to hear what if anything makes it seem historical to an outside observer.

This depends a lot on current sentiment and what is considered to be politically correct at the time of writing. Also, the age of the culture portrayed.

Now, I am a Dane, and I can't see me or any of my countrymen objecting to being portrayed as ferocious seafaring orc raiders. While we acknowledge our Viking ancestry, we don't directly identify ourselves with that culture anymore.
Portraying the crusade era muslims as drow on the other hand would probably offend some people. The crusades are still part of "living history" and muslims are often the subjects of racism and counter-reactions; any negative portrayal will be assumed to carry more intentional symbolism than is the case with the Vikings.
Now, this is the pseudo-political side of things.

More pragmatically (or stylistically), I think it's important to consider what story you want to tell. Is it alternative reality? Then keeping it close to the real world is probably the right way to do it. Are you merely interested in the underlying elements of religious war, desert warfare, etc. then it probably makes more sense to do an entirely new fantasy world involving the same elements. This gives you more freedom to explore the subject while drawing freely from your source of inspiration.

There has to be one or more fixed points of similarity before it makes sense to name your fictional continent Europe. At the very least, I'd probably require the geography to be vaguely similar. I'd also require that the majority of either the nation states or major cultures still exist. Otherwise the label confuses more than it aids.

It should also be considered that every change ripples back through history. If the invaders of Jerusalem are drow, then where did they come from? Who did they fight? What is their background? Instantaneous change should be avoided and everything should be tied back into the overall history of the world. This is probably the biggest hurdle in modifying a historical version of our own world. Unless the changes are isolated, virtually meaningless (e.g. the Vikings are orcs, but act exactly like the historical Vikings did, in all matters) or somehow run parallel to normal history (e.g. Harry Potter where magic exists but doesn't affect the normal world) they will probably quickly spin out of control, interacting and compounding until there is little left of "our" Europe.

QuoteLet's now apply those same questions to historical fantasy settings rather than individual fantasy races.

I don't find these issues to be at all comparable.  "An orc" is merely a fantasy convention, a sum of various descriptors and tropes that make up orc-dom.  An orc is a thing devoid of context; as orcs do not naturally exist, you can place them in any time period, in any nation, on any world, and in any form (as long as it's recognizably "orcish") and it would be acceptable.  In contrast, history is bound to context by its very nature.  If my setting is merely "like" medieval Europe, I am free to borrow what I wish from history and create the rest as I see fit, but if it is medieval Europe, I have suddenly bound myself to thousands of years of context which I may not want to use or simply not know.  Replacing "Saracens" with "Drow" in the Crusades creates a whole host of conundrums that have to be answered and resolved.  For instance, the Islamic civilization grew from converts across the old world; presumably you can't convert to drow-dom, so how did they grow so powerful?  In this analogy, are the drow the Turks, the ones who swept into Asia Minor and caused the Emperor Alexius to call for western help in the first place, or are they the pre-existing inhabitants of the previously-Muslim world - in which case, why wasn't there some "crusade" to destroy them sooner, since they're not even human?  What does the Bible say about Drow - are they descended from Adam and Eve?  Do they have souls?  Are they heretics, or pagans, or schismatics?  What role did they play in world history up to this point, or did they suddenly appear, ex nihilo, in the Holy Land in 1095 and just decided that Jerusalem was going to be their new home?

I love history, and I love fantasy, but there is a difference between borrowing history for your fantasy and trying to graft the latter onto the former.  Much of the history and culture of settings I make is in some way inspired by real history, but in the same way that it is inspired by fantasy novels or movies or artwork.  Inspiration gives you a starting point from which you are free to travel in whatever direction you want.  It lets you keep what you want and discard what you don't, and is not constrained by the context and implications of real history.

For a while, I was trying to make the races of my setting wholly unique. But eventually I grew to subscribe to the "if it walks like a duck" philosophy. What I took away from it is that words carry powerful connotative properties. If you call your continent "Europe", or even something with "Euro" in it, it's going to imply things; different things to different people too. Only do it if you want to draw those implications.

Historic Fantasy is great for "what if" situations, but if it's going to be something long term you will need to consider many implications. It seems drawing inspiration from history is safer for when you want to create a living and breathing world.

I know I've been M.IA. all summer, but as of late I have been pondering my fledgling Grindelrath (http://www.thecbg.org/index.php/topic,209524.0.html) setting that eventually evolved into a world that was human only, extremely low-magic, the heroes were elite warrior-monk-mercenary-pariahs who killed monsters in the shadows of civilized society, which I likened to 17th-18th century Europe, with a bent towards the dark and violent world of the Grimm Brothers.

Anyhow, long story short, I've been thinking of making (when I have time, which is hopefully soon) Grindelrath a country in Europe at a specified date - some small, backwater kingdom in the Carpathians or somewhere along the Baltic. Being able to tell the players about shadowy Venetian merchants, deadly Spanish inquisitors hunting any spell-casting players, Sephardic Jewish travellers well versed in strange lore, an exiled Turkish janisarry who could teach the players things about guns, a pragmatic and jovial Irishman, etc, etc is alot easy, and in a way even better, than making up my own Venice, my own religions, my own cultures.

I think as long as you don't try to hide a historical influence and pretend like it's an original idea (because most people, especially roleplayers, can see through it, and thence becomes insulting to an extent) it's fine. The old adage that nothing's stranger than history is very true, and I see nothing wrong with borrowing from it. There are, however, events that are much more well known and almost cliched - the Crusades as mentioned, or the Roman Empire - that are tough to duplicate because they are so ingrained in the zeitgeist. But for every Roman Empire and Crusade, there are a thousand lesser well-known, but nonetheless interesting, events that could be used with a bit of digging on the worldbuilders side.

First of all, I'm a fantasy cartographer - I prefer to build the geology and geography to my imagination, then make a map, not be bound by the confines of a real location. I too design worlds that are 'like historical places'. Hence Kaidan which is closely based on Japan, but is not Japan.

I am heavily borrowing on Japanese culture, history, religion, legends and folklore. I'm digging deep and adding lots of detail, not usually included in a published 'oriental setting'. However, I want the freedom to not be restricted by history, modern conceptions by modern Japanese (I don't want to insult any people or historic faction), and I want to be able to deviate from true Japanese concepts (not all of which I know) to fit a given concept to the setting and/or to the D&D/Pathfinder mindset.

By folklore tradition, yokai (supernatural beings) and oni (demon-like) are basically neutral beings with agendas, with very few as truly evil beings. That doesn't fit in the D&D world. There has to be large numbers of evil mixed with other aligned beings for some resemblence to a D&D game. Researching various monsters capabilities according to folklore if it looks like an evil act, I categorize them as oni - which are evil beings of Kaidan. There's also a category of cursed beings called Noroi that are basically human and through some act, event or heritage as acquired a supernatural affliction - extendable neck, extra mouth, split mouth, shape change ability, cause recent dead to animate, etc. Most neutral and good supernatural beings, especially animal based shape-changers are categorized 'yokai'. There's another category for legendary beings (Densetsu) - dragons, kirin, etc. Everybody else is human or undead (yurei).

While I am borrowing historically, I am really keeping closer integration with Japanese folklore accuracy, as much as possible.

I don't want to be restricted to real Japan, actual temples/shrines - I don't want to have to research that much, nor step on any toes with what I do to change it to fit my setting. With Kaidan I can be close as hell to Japan, and can easily plea, this is not Japan, so I cannot slight anyone's considerations or beliefs. I'm creating a fictional place.

I'm not a fan of alternate Earth settings - it's not my thing.

Great replies everyone, thanks.

It seems a few of you are generally against the idea of directly messing with historical stuff without at least reskinning it as something fantastic. I totally get your points, but don't you think it could equally be argued that, as Leetz says, sometimes stuff from the real world is just incredibly efficient at conjuring a certain image? Maybe even just using the same name for something as it has in the real world could work...

And Polycarp, I obviously wasn't suggesting it was the same issue, I was just reminded of the other debate and decided to apply the same questions to this one - not because I expected the debate to be a parallel, just because I thought it would be interesting :)

EDIT: I'm also still interested in what people think sets something apart as historical fantasy. If so many of us draw on history as an inspiration for our settings, at what point does that inspiration become the overriding theme? Is it to do with the obviousness or unadulterated nature of the inspiration? The similarity in terms of naming conventions and visual aesthetics? The level of verisimilitude? The lack of "high" fantasy elements?

I'd argue that using history as a heavy influence works much better when it it just that, and influence, and not a plug-in meant to fill in a campaign world. Having something like the Mongols, but they're elves, or the Holy Roman Empire, but they're dwarves and live underground, usually leaves me desiring something a little more in-depth and appropriate for the setting.

I would also say that we - with myself being guilty as well - tend to organize the cultures of our settings like they are in real life. Lots of settings have a big desert kingdom to the south, where there are probably pyramids and obelisks. The east usually represents a mystic land full of wealth and martial arts. The north is usually full of burly, fur-wearing axemen.

I suppose what I'm getting at is that there is a fine line between using history as an influence and as inspiration, and using it as a substitute for world-building by merely adding a fantastic element to something - Rome with wizards, for instance.

Quote from: Señor Leetz
The north is usually full of burly, fur-wearing axemen.

Why yes, yes it is.

Seriously though, I take your point, but I think what you're talking about may sadly have more to do with the quality of the author than their subject matter. I mean "the Holy Roman Empire, but they're dwarves and live underground" does have the potential to be kind of awesome, it just depends how it's executed. You're right though that it equally has the potential to be bland and cardboard-cutout-y, and it's pretty tricky to make it awesome.