payn
I don't believe in the no-win scenario
Sophia Coppola did her own version of the Beguiled and it’s pretty good.
Is there any genre or theme that the TTRPG medium does not work for?
- Thread starter Reynard
- Start date
aramis erak
Legend
My degree is in history. I hold that genre in particular narrowness, and note that it's one of the very few that can't be played - because the academic definition is the only proper history. If you can't document it, it's not history.
Anything else is a different genre; history is, by nature, definitionally required to be non-fiction. Add any fiction, and you're no longer in the genre of history.
"historical gaming" is inherently NOT HISTORY... it's gaming informed by history, but it's a different genre from history.
Historical fiction is also a different genre than history.
Tonguez
A suffusion of yellow
I've played a game based on Bernard Cornwells Sharpes series, going on missions during the Peninsula War. Sure the pcs aren't ever going to get to kill Napolean or change the historic outcomes, but the PCs are still playing through history
MGibster
Legend
My degree is also in history. When it comes to defining literary genres, you are not using history/historical as it is typically used. You are using your own personal definition which actually makes conversation difficult. By your definition, no, I guess you can have a historical role playing game. By the definition used by people discussing literary genre, you most definitely can.
Bedrockgames
Legend
Mine is too, and not trying to be disagreeable at all as I often share your views on history, but I tend not to think of history as a genre but as an academic subject. This seems a little pedantic to me. I think when people talk about historical fiction as a genre, they understand it is going to be impossible to get everything right, but that is a distinct genre from something like alt history. And there is space in between too (i.e. movies that try to get things right but will choose good drama over reality, or restructure events for the sake of story). I think the issue is most mediums don't do history, as in the field of history, well. I you make a movie about someone's life, that only allows you to tell the narrative (narrative in the sense historians use it, not journalists, pundits or novelists), but it leaves out both the analysis and the ability to compare conflicting primary sources (i.e. X may have happened but there are others who think Y happened, and BFG argues it was actually Z). But if a GM says they want to run a historical campaign, I take that to mean they want to run a campaign that is based as much as possible on real history and their research into the time period.
Bedrockgames
Legend
I don't think my opinion of a person has ever changed so much after seeing one movie they directed. Up until 2003, the only thing I knew about her was her role in Godfather III. Then I saw Lost in Translation in the theater and was totally captivated by it.
Professor Murder
Hero
No more than is there any genre or theme that we cannot discuss. There is only degrees of difficulty in doing so.
Professor Murder
Hero
I think a more useful answer is this: As a GM, there are themes I would not try to explore through an RPG.
Bedrockgames
Legend
There is also the issue that people have wildly different assumptions about what it means to emulate a genre in an RPG (my idea of what a Noir campaign may be different from what another person's idea of a Noir campaign would be)
Professor Murder
Hero
This is an assumption that rules emulation is the primary goal for an rpg, which is a very contentious issue. For me, based on the initial posting, my concern is just thematic exploration, and how well the medium of interplay that rpgs are allows for such explorations.
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