Saturday 16 May 2015

Sweeping historical epics

BBC Four has started screening Danish sweeping historical epic 1864, set around the war between Denmark and Prussia which I must admit I had never heard of. It centres around a small group of ordinary people about to be swept up in events and an archetypal romantic triangle at its heart, with cutaways to movers and shakers to provide context (as well as a modern frame story and a narrator from the time looking back on it, which seems a bit much) so it could be a useful example of making people care about history they don’t know well.

Have you ever taken part in a historical game with no outside genre elements? I think I’ve only done a few one shots here and there myself. Historical genre games, and historical campaigns for regular genre games, are often heavily informed by the period, but there are always cool powers handy. As a genre geek this is kind of inevitable for me, but historical epics appeal to me as well...

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