A Bit of History
Thus, this month's column will be shorter than usual, and a bit of a downer. Next month we will get back to talking about the Early Republic and the heroes and villains thereof. This month we will look at death, and how it has changed in the last century and a half. The majority of people living in developed nations do not need to deal with death on a regular basis; it is something that comes after a long life, or after a rare and sudden accident. Aside from those in certain professions or in the most marginalized of socio-economic groups, years may pass without the death of a loved one. This is a recent phenomenon, and our ancestors had to contend with death on an annual basis.
Pre-industrial societies have annual seasons of death; in temperate lands this is the winter. Imagine if every winter you knew someone who died. Every single winter. Usually it was the very old or very young, but a bad winter can claim anybody. I am not talking about hunter-gatherer societies here, nor ones millennia ago, this was a real concern in the 19th Century. Disease, poor nutrition or even starvation, unsanitary conditions, and a general lack of safety precautions we today take for granted all took their tool. Add in the poor state of health care, and even a minor injury could quickly become a life threatening infection.
Wars were once common, at least wars that took place in the belligerent nations' homelands and not in countries far away. This is not the situation for Americans, and even Western Europe is beginning to lose the scars and living memories of two world wars. War of the past had no concept of collateral damage; civilians who got in the way were killed. Farms were burned and at times entire cities were destroyed. Armies lived off the land, which sounds a lot like chasing deer and gathering berries. What it actually meant was that soldiers came to your farm, took all your food, livestock, and maybe a few valuables while they were at it, and if you complained they killed you. Hey, they might just kill you anyway if you happen to be on the wrong side of the conflict. Even if theses are your nation's soldiers, you might get looted, but even if that doesn’t happen, there is still a good chance you will have to share your meager supply of foodstuffs with the army. Ever wonder why in the US Constitution there is an amendment barring the quartering of troops in private homes during times of peace, and under proscribed law during times of war (the Third Amendment for those keeping score at home)? This wasn't in response to something the British did to annoy or oppress the nasty Colonials; the quartering of troops in private homes was a regular thing in Europe and in the lands that European nations controlled. The rough part, you had to feed them. This means as winter comes around you have an extra mouth or two (sometimes more) to feed, and they have the authority of law and the weapons to back it up to make sure they are fed, even if you and yours don’t get to eat.
Then there were natural disasters, famines, plagues, wild fires, earthquakes, storms, volcanic eruptions, locusts, and so forth. These could lay entire regions flat, and destroy that thin margin that people needed to survive on. Mass death of this nature is rare in the modern world (though like starvation and war above, more common to humanity outside of modern developed nations). Remember the earthquake that hit Haiti a few years ago? That sort of terrible loss of life would be the norm following a major disaster anywhere in the world a century and a half ago. There simply was not the will and infrastructure to deal with it, and certainly no international relief agencies to come to the rescue. A region could be affected for generations, and during that time the death rates would soar.
The past sucked, but our games are not the past, they are meant to be entertaining stories set in the past. So how do we work in the constant specter of death without turning it into a downer? First of all, a good role-player jots down a few notes during character creation about his character's family, maybe a name or two and a bit about their socio-economic class. A more historically accurate approach would be to also include the names of lost loved ones and relatives. How many parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, or siblings did the character bury? How about close friends and their families? Another approach for players is to look at this litany of the dead and consider how their character views death. If their long time adventuring companion dies after a grand battle, is your character going to weep and wail, or accept it as part and parcel of life?
Let us look at an example; I am making a character for the Renaissance System, the game is set in the 1680's and my character is from Strasbourg. His family are shopkeepers, let us say butchers, and he managed through the right connections, a little luck, and hard work, to gain a place as a cadet in a regiment in Paris. Our young soldier has a father who is living, but his mother died when he was young, and his father remarried. Between the two marriages, eight children were produced, and my character is the second born. Of these eight siblings, the eldest is still alive, number three died in childbirth along with the mother, and only three of the remaining five survived to adulthood. Now, after all these funerals, how will the character react when his good friend, the Chevalier d'Aboen, takes a ball to the chest and dies after three days of pain racked fever? How does his grief manifest? Is it sorrow, rage, a mixture of these? Or is this just one more death in a lifetime of lost loved ones, prompting our young soldier to simply doff his hat, say a few words with the priest, mount up, and ride off to the next adventure?
Taking a look at other issues facing the common folk of the past, how about some quartering? Most PCs will not be farmers or average townsfolk; indeed they are more likely to be the soldiers. Thus, how would my character respond to being placed in the home of townsfolk, possibly in Belgium, and told to make sure he and his men are properly fed? This is the sort of situation that a GM can use to generate good, thoughtful role-playing. Imagine a party that has a mix of backgrounds, some wealthy some poor, some in-between, and how they will respond to the issue of quartering and the burden this places on the victims. Now, turn it up a notch and have them living of the land and having to look a farmer in the eyes while they take his accumulated stores of foodstuffs, as well as his livestock, and knowing full well that winter is coming, winter is always coming, and those children playing in the fields may very well die. For my money, more so than the grand fight scenes across the rooftops of Paris, this sort of thing is what great role-playing is made of.
Hopefully this month's column was not too depressing, gentle readers, and there is always hope for the next month when we (finally) look at the Early Republic. There have been a few questions with regards to sources for last month's musical number. I would recommend the New Christie Minstrels' Tall Tales, Legends and Lies/ Land of Giants double album, Hogeye Navvy's Based on a True Story album, and Johnny Cash's rendition of "John Henry" found on the Live at Folsom Prison album. Many others have made songs about these figures, but these are my favorites. For written versions, any decent book of American folklore will contain all three, and the best volumes have multiple versions of each story.
