What do games like Cthulhu require of Campaign Research Questions?

Question

This one's for @Graham; I'd like to hear some explanations of what Cthulu and other games like it need of the fringe-off-topic/too-localized "trivia" questions we discussed in the question Why did the automobiles and telephones thread close?

I mean, if we're open to including LARP we should at least try and figure out if and how we're boxing out valid needs.

So @Graham and anyone else who feels that these questions are necessary (@Jmstar) I invite you to answer this question and explain what games need this kind of information and how, more intricately: please focus on your needs, not on insisting the questions are appropriate; focusing on the need opens up the possibility of alternative solutions.

Because the reality is, it's true, I'm a DnD gamer and don't understand. But I'd like to :) and we're still in Beta, so what the hell!

So I hope any and all of those users can step up and argue the needs they have which these questions reflect, so that we - as a community - can figure out how to accommodate those needs, or whether the whole thing's out of scope.

Answer 1

Consider what sort of questions a Stack Exchange would gather if it were the Cthulhu Mythos Roleplaying Games Stack Exchange. There would be mechanical questions about Call and Trail alongside historical questions about how long it takes to get from London's passenger docks to the British Museum by taxi and when the telephone became ubiquitous in America.

The point is that all of those would be on-topic for that SE. And if such historical questions would be on-topic for an SE about Cthulhu mythos–based games, it follows that such questions are on-topic for a SE that is about all roleplaying games, including those Cthulhu mythos–based games.

So here's the heuristic I'm proposing:

• If a question is on-topic for a specific roleplaying game, it's on-topic for the Roleplaying Game Stack Exchange.

---

I know you're probably worried about questions getting bad answers because you're worried we're not expert enough in those sorts of questions. I suggest this isn't worth worrying about. For example, few people are expert enough in how Reign's Company rules work to give good answers, too. That doesn't make it off-topic—it just makes it special-interest. Rest assured that the people who are interested in a game will be expert in the things that are relevant to playing that game, whether it's the nuances of social life in Vichy France or the names of obscure pole-arms.

If the question is too hard to answer because it requires expertise we don't have, the system will take care of that for us. We don't need to police such questions. What will happen is that it will be low-voted, and hang around for months (or years). Then someone who is exactly the expert the OP was looking for will discover it, answer it brilliantly, and then the question will have served its purpose.

Essentially, stop worrying and learn to love the voting system. Give the system a chance to do what it does best.

Answer 2

Historical information is useful, in Cthulhu scenarios, for two reasons:

1. There is an expectation that Cthulhu scenarios are historically accurate. One of the pleasure of playing Cthulhu is playing in a detailed historical world.

2. Cthulhu scenarios often weave monsters into real historical events.

What's needed, then, is the answer to specific historical questions. The question "At what point in the 20th Century did automobiles and telephones become ubiquitous?" is actually a good example. Imagine I'm running a chase scene, in 1920s New York, I need to know:

• Are the Investigators likely to have access to a vehicle?
• If so, is it a car or a horse-drawn carriage?
• Are the streets jammed with traffic?
• Are there traffic lights? Will the Investigators need to jump a red light?

Those details do two things: they add flavour and they make a mechanical difference to how the chase plays out.

(For comparison, imagine running a chase scene in 1890s London. There, the Investigators will be navigating horses through crowds of people and flocks of animals. The details matter, both for flavour and for mechanics.)

Note, too, that details like this are surprisingly hard to find. You can find, from Wikipedia, when the Model T was introduced, but not when cars became ubiquitous. So questions like this are immensely useful. As I've mentioned before, the structure of this site supports them extremely well, pushing informed answers to the top.

Answer 3

OK, I like both Graham and Jason's answers, but I'm going to have a go at my own.

• There is nothing remotely mysterious going on here. Games set in Greyhawk need Greyhawk setting information; games set in 15th century France need information on 15th century France.

• Cthulhu roleplayers want historically accurate information for their games, which they can then abuse as they see fit. As Jason says, it's about atmosphere and versimilitude

• I've recently finished a large-scale editorial overhaul of Cthulhu by Gaslight, 3rd edition, most of which consisted of checking on the historical accuracy/plausibility of the information. The biggest single complaint about the preceding editions was that there was too much about Holmes and other fictional settings, and not enough historical background. If gamers are willing to pay for such information and it forms a significant part of Chaosium's business, I don't see how it can possibly be out of the scope of RPG SE.

• As noted, there are plenty of other games that share this need. I know it's early days for the site, but making people who play such games effectively second-class citizens strikes me as a serious mistake. Shouldn't all games be considered equal in the eyes of SE?

• There's arguably a stronger need for such background questions for historical gamers than for fantasy gamers. Worlds such as Middle Earth, Greyhawk, Jorune, Tekumel are all highly detailed settings, but at least there is a known limit to canon: certain questions just don't have answers, or at least you have to make your own. In historical gaming, this is very difficult to ascertain. Asking such questions of a large and knowledgeable group is often the only way to discover that your question in fact does not have a known answer. Maybe this is what worries people? I don't think anything will ever match the deluge of D&D-related questions, however.

• The "trivia" problem should not arise. Examples given earlier such as "what's the 100th digit of pi" hardly seem likely to come up as essential to someone's campaign prep. And if they do, they will be voted down as ridiculous. And there are equally silly questions to be asked in fantasy settings, as should be obvious.

• However, if a question is so narrow that no-one is ever likely to ask it again, the asker should be requested to broaden it into a question about resources for answering questions of this type, while retaining the specific issue in the wording below for clarity. If they are unwilling to do this, then I would vote to close the question. From what I've seen so far, specific questions often attract answers in terms of resources anyway, which is a Good Thing IMO

• The questioner should not identify the game they are playing in the question, only in the tags applied (site style). But they should make it crystal clear in the wording that follows what game they are playing, what the actual problem is that they are trying to solve, and what sort of answers would be helpful.

• A "history" or "historical" tag might well be useful. I don't know enough about tagging on this site yet, however. Or Jeremiah's suggestion of "verisimilitude" would also do nicely.

• If you don't run games that require historical input, please do not vote to close a question simply because you don't understand it. Leave a comment asking the questioner to clarify why they want to know this.

Answer 4

Really? OK. If you want an exhaustive list of roleplaying games that would benefit from real-world history I would say all of them. History is an endless pageant of what we as a species tend to get up to and it is always fascinating.

Verisimilitude is fun and cool and a big part of many games that take place within a historical milieu. It's cool to be able to say:

"So we're at the foot of the Pioniatowski bridge, up to our ankles in late summer Vistula mud, and we can see the shabby pavilion of the Warsaw zoo just across the river..."

Or:

"There are three telephones in this town - one in the Mayor's office, one in the hotel, and one in Old Man Potter's mansion. He's the guy with the Ford Model T, the only car in the county, and he wheels around the dirt roads scaring the horses..."

Details like this make the game. Fixing your players in the time and place isn't just fun, it's sort of your job as Keeper in Call of Cthulhu, which is all about atmosphere.

To say these sort of questions are randomly off topic is very disheartening. The notion that "what is the western-most point in Faerun?" is appropriate here but "What is the western-most point in Alaska?" isn't makes no sense.

Answer 5

These questions are as valuable as those about Faerun or the Yuan-ti. The key is in asking the question in a way that gives an answer (and it needs to be definitive) that can be used at the gaming table. We are, after all, a site dedicated to giving answers that can be used. This is not a discussion forum, it is a Q&A site.

A bad question: "When did automobiles become prevalent?"

The good version: "How would my 1920s call of Cthulu investigators react to distances and what is the best way to ensure that distance is a limiting factor."

The answers are tellingly different here. For the first I get some dates, maybe some social history. Ideally for the second I'll get some meaty gaming bit. Or at least thats how I would hope to answer it.

A bad question: "When do cell phones become prevalent?"

The good version: "For a 1980s conspiracy game what sort of cell phones are available and how should we handle their presence?"

What the other answers are missing, and why I chose to give another rather than commenting is that need to write questions in ways that are game specific and give usable answers. I would be as quick to downvote a question asking about the western-most point of Faerun. We had one early on about the stars and I thought that one was borderline as well. Because it didn't ask for, or receive, answers that could then be turned into good gaming.