Thursday, October 28, 2010

Gamer ADD?

So I've been working on developing a historical town for the beginning of an Early Modern Campaign setting. I was creating a town in Bohemia where the first events of what would turn into the 30 Year's War first started to brew. After a significant amount of research, I realized that many of my assumptions I had made at the beginning were just wrong. Essentially, I had 'wasted' my time and the town I was creating never existed.

So it got me thinking, why am I holding myself to a rigorous historical standard? So what if the town I made was not even close to what it was in 1618? I can still use what I have created and just drop the pretentiousness of a rigorous historical representation.

So I followed this line of thought and have been considering dropping the whole "earth" geography. I still want to create a D&D campaign based on the actual time period. Yet, I am still ambivalent.

So on one hand, I can either use real world geography and just rework it to my needs (Oh, there's no major town here? There is now!) or grab a supplement like Greyhawk or HarnWorld and just similarly rework it to my needs. Does it make much of a difference? In the micro-sense, it doesn't really make a difference. Only in the big picture, if the PCs care, is there a difference, such as, would you rather crusade for Pelor or the Counter-Reformation?

So I'm torn if I just don't want to go back to a fantasy setting that is already "spec'ed" out for use in an RPG or adapt history/earth to a fantasy game...

Or is this just gamer ADD and I need to stick to one course of action until completion?

2 comments:

  1. Keep the Earth geography but enjoy skewing the hell out of it. The benefits of the geology, climatology and familiarity will remain, but you should not fail to adapt whatever part of the world you wish for your own needs. The world was made for the DM, not the DM made for the world.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I will stick it out. I was also reading through some prior posts and ran across this: "I'm also writing with the assumption that there is a certain level of general knowledge of our shared, actual history and geography."

    So the Earth setting actually creates its own back story and avoids the hackney fantasy cliches as well. Plus, the average person's misconceptions and ignorance of our own past and of other cultures is the perfect simulation of reality :D

    ReplyDelete