Plotting Historical Games

This classic post first ran on August 19, 2009.

Here’s how I plot campaigns set within real-world history.

First, decide who the villain is going to be. If it’s a fictional character, look for real-world organizations or people to connect him with, to give him verisimilitude. If it’s an actual historical figure, do research and find unanswered questions and story hooks. Reality is often stranger than fiction.

Next, look up a certain year in Wikipedia and find historical events that would make good adventures. Pick one event from the beginning of the year, and one from the end of the year. Then, figure out those two events are connected, how the villain is secretly behind those events, and make every other event somehow tie in.

As an example, let’s look at 1953.  On January 7th, Truman announces that the United States has developed a hydrogen bomb. That’s going to kick off the events of the plot, the villain’s going to react to that. Skip ahead to December, and there’s lots of good stuff. The first issue of Playboy comes out, the first color television goes on sale, Albert Schweitzer wins the Nobel Prize. While I could draw lines from the H-bomb to any of those, none of them have the punch of a campaign ender. The Tangiwei Disaster, where a railway bridge collapses and kills 153 people, is certainly dramatic and good for a superhero game or a Cthulhu conspiracy, but I want American heroes involved and getting them to New Zealand doesn’t seem to fit with a Golden Age comic book. I’m going to go with the Amami Islands being returned to Japan after 8 years of occupation by the U.S. Military. What’s the real reason for giving those islands back?

In between, we have Eisenhower being sworn in as President (regime changes always yield plot hooks), The CIA-sponsored Robertson Panel first meets to discuss the UFO phenomenon, the Soviet Union breaks diplomatic relations with Israel, Georgia approves the first literature censorship board in the United States (what don’t THEY want you to know?), Joseph Stalin has a mysterious stroke and dies, nuclean tests are conducted in Nevada, Jonas Salk announces a polio vaccine (alien technology? comic book super-science?), the first James Bond novel is published (I’m thinking, steal the plot and work in a cameo by Ian Fleming), Queen Elizabeth II is crowned, the CIA uses LSD in MKULTRA… I’m only up to June! There’s so much to work with, to create a through-line. Will I use all of these events? No, but I’d mention them in the background. It’s starting to get a sort of Watchmen flavor to it in my mind, and I’m thinking I can dig up the Delta Green timeline for ideas as well and maybe have them in the background.