03-04-2013, 10:25 AM
As for religion, short of outright killing people, one generally cannot defeat their most entrenched beliefs (Mesalian religion was never very systematized anyway). Religion provides a way from people to understand the world that surrounds them, and really especially in a fantasy world, where science (i.e., physics) has a hard time explaining things, I think religion will always be a prominent option.
Also, I've personally never known any homosexual individual (or homosexual character for that matter) who has essentially disregarded the fact that others have their own sexuality in such a manner referred to above... I could personally even see the fact that this would even be brought up (as if it might be anything more than an isolated issue) as potentially somewhat offensive to the wider cause. Please remember that this can be a sensitive topic.
But for me the real issue here is what can be referred to as "internal consistency". We want a world that forms a coherent and convincing setting, which may contain medieval elements and may contain fantasy elements (I'm not interested in prioritizing either of those over the other). So yes, we can state that just because something happened IRL historically, doesn't mean it must in our setting, but it is slightly more complicated than that. This is because the "real world" is our only available model for an internally consistent world, and ultimately from a psychological standpoint it would probably be impossible to divorce our minds from "reality" entirely. After all, we learn what is believable and what isn't from our experience in the "real world".
I would have liked to save this discussion for a blog post, but oh well, here goes: In Mesalia we have recently been moving increasingly towards what may be called a "simulationist" form of RP (we simulate our characters' actions with some concern for "realism", in so much as it applies to our setting). This has been contrasted with the more "narrativist" (which in my understanding is primarily concerned with forming an interesting story) or "gamist" (wanting characters to be successful) forms of RP. Now, of course, all three factors play a role, but I say that we emphasize "simulationist" RP since we tend to value convincing characters who have believable motives for their actions, more than we value characters who are good for simply creating drama or characters who always achieve their goals. I'm paraphrasing the model slightly, and I apologize for the tangent, but I do think this is relevant to the discussion. While we are not a hardcore realism RP, we do tend to stress psychological realism because we believe that this makes better characters. Again, this is a case where it's difficult to come up with anything else that could model internal consistency in this regard other than the "real world" and our own minds (whereas a "narrativist" strategy might have us playing one-dimensional, pointlessly evil characters in accordance with much of the rest of fantasy).
My overall point is simply that even though we certainly need not imitate real history for the sake of it, in many regards the "real world" is the only model of an internally consistently world available to us.
Also, I've personally never known any homosexual individual (or homosexual character for that matter) who has essentially disregarded the fact that others have their own sexuality in such a manner referred to above... I could personally even see the fact that this would even be brought up (as if it might be anything more than an isolated issue) as potentially somewhat offensive to the wider cause. Please remember that this can be a sensitive topic.
But for me the real issue here is what can be referred to as "internal consistency". We want a world that forms a coherent and convincing setting, which may contain medieval elements and may contain fantasy elements (I'm not interested in prioritizing either of those over the other). So yes, we can state that just because something happened IRL historically, doesn't mean it must in our setting, but it is slightly more complicated than that. This is because the "real world" is our only available model for an internally consistent world, and ultimately from a psychological standpoint it would probably be impossible to divorce our minds from "reality" entirely. After all, we learn what is believable and what isn't from our experience in the "real world".
I would have liked to save this discussion for a blog post, but oh well, here goes: In Mesalia we have recently been moving increasingly towards what may be called a "simulationist" form of RP (we simulate our characters' actions with some concern for "realism", in so much as it applies to our setting). This has been contrasted with the more "narrativist" (which in my understanding is primarily concerned with forming an interesting story) or "gamist" (wanting characters to be successful) forms of RP. Now, of course, all three factors play a role, but I say that we emphasize "simulationist" RP since we tend to value convincing characters who have believable motives for their actions, more than we value characters who are good for simply creating drama or characters who always achieve their goals. I'm paraphrasing the model slightly, and I apologize for the tangent, but I do think this is relevant to the discussion. While we are not a hardcore realism RP, we do tend to stress psychological realism because we believe that this makes better characters. Again, this is a case where it's difficult to come up with anything else that could model internal consistency in this regard other than the "real world" and our own minds (whereas a "narrativist" strategy might have us playing one-dimensional, pointlessly evil characters in accordance with much of the rest of fantasy).
My overall point is simply that even though we certainly need not imitate real history for the sake of it, in many regards the "real world" is the only model of an internally consistently world available to us.