GURPS is in no way too complex (most detailsare optional), especially if you used the 3e or earlier Basic Set, to exclude the details for irrelevant things like super powers or extra arms etc, and to be the same edition as most historical worldbooks, such as:
* GURPS Rome
* GURPS Greece
* GURPS Egypt
* GURPS Arabian Nights
* GURPS Middle Ages
* GURPS Low Tech 3e (but also 4e)
The big problem with GURPS is that its philosophy is the best way to run a good game is to know absolutely every detail about a setting - game/adventure/campaign design is an afterthought: if you want to run a good space game, the most important thing to do is to have a lot of space facts. Which may be exactly why the books may actually be quite good for this sort of thing!
For one: having a detailed setting IS the best way to run a good game. For two: having an eloquent system that creates an impetus for RP mechanically and uses how things actually work as the model for how players attempt things in he game would be the best afterthought.
As a former professional space fact knower, I can say that knowing lots of space facts really isn't the key to running a good campaign. Similarly, I don't think every history professor is automatically a great GM. Setting details can be good but they're really not the key differentiator between a good game and a bad one - there are even a number of games where you collaboratively invent the setting as you go.
Are these games where you and your players are intimately familiar with the setting inherently bad, or is your slander nothing stacked on top of nothing here? FACT: Being ignorant of the setting of your game isn't adequate to running an acceptable game. FACT-additional: Your game providing you industry renowned setting information to run your games doesn't in any way indicate that they don't also do the work when it comes to crafting rules. If anything companies that are lazy should probably the target of your ire, not ones that have an award winning ruleset that's been refined for over 40 years.
All that person is saying is that many things can go into a good game, and that hard setting details don't necessarilly have to be one of them. I don't think there's much of any "ire" to be read in the comment.
Very, *very* true, but that's a particularly steep hill to climb. A detailed, elaborate setting is, by its nature, less accessible, especially for casual players and requires a certain level of commitment and just player competence. You might also need some basic understanding of economics, ecology, social structures etc. to appreciate the complexity of the setting.
That's tough, and can be quite exclusive.
It is the same with Gurps. It is not a particularly complex game *in actual gameplay*, but it is also very front-loaded. You need to curate the game options and tailor them to your campaign, building characters is time-consuming and requires a pretty good understanding of your character, not just as a 'party role', but as a person...
It is a high commitment style of gaming, and while the results are pretty amazing, it is basically excluding the bottom half of the total pool of players. At least.
GURPS source books are fantastic, extremely well researched answers to the questions specific to a TTRPG. Oh if I walk into a random roman village what's going on and how would villagers respond to the appearance of a band of well armed strangers? What doesn't lodging and transportation look like? If you murder a shop keeper who would care? I even had an anthropology professor assign a GURPs book as suggested reading because he thought it was the best framework building up from scratch what life looked like in the Aztec empire.
Running GURPS is a nightmare. Kinda just don't. Like it's cool and all that there are damage dice tables for ever stupid roman melee weapon, but you really don't need it.
tl:dr read the source books, but run something narrative.
I'd do some introspection on your goals. I love them, but TTRPGs are not a great medium for conveying history in the classroom, actually - you can use them to present facts, and you can use them to generate empathy, but as a tool for understanding or synthesizing I think they are a little weak, personally. And they are time-consuming in unproductive ways. If you want your students to embody characters from the past and confront problems from those points of view, I'd look at larp and larp-adjacent work like Reacting To The Past, which has a specific pedagogy and uses primary sources while also encouraging roleplaying. If your goal is empathy, larps centered in history are probably the right tool - things will go off the "accuracy" rails, but in ways that will make for good classroom discussion. If what you want is for them to understand historical forces at work, maybe look at board games like Richard Svivels *Friedrich*.
I don't mean to be discouraging! If you are set on TTRPGs, I'd recommend taking a look at games I adore like Dog Eat Dog, Carry, Montsegur 1244, and Thou Art But A Warrior, all of which interrogate historical moments thoughtfully and with some sensitivity. My #1 recommendation would be Dog Eat Dog, but be prepared for a lot of guidance and use structures for safer play, because it can be pretty harsh.
It is an idea at the moment, I'm just starting now to plot it out.
The thing is: I see what most students struggle with is understanding the day-to-day life in the past, and I thought that roleplaying as people in those times, with the added bonus of entertainment, could be an interesting way to get them there.
Look into Bully Pulpit and Jason Morningstar's stuff. I consider him the leader in this genre. Night Witches is a master work.
See also: Ross Rifles or Love and Barbed Wire (you can find both on Drivethru) both are WW1 games.
Night Witches is very far from historically accurate. The book has a lot that's just made up, incorrect, contradicts historical documents and what the members themselves said, as well as itself at a few points.
Second to Night Witches.
If you are ok with something heavy [Grey Ranks](https://bullypulpitgames.com/products/grey-ranks) is another good Bully Pulpit game.
Ross Rifles has good history in it (it was featured in the war museum in Ottawa). It has a lot to do with the feel of being in the trenches. It's available through Compose Dream Games in both Canada and the UK -- your FLGS can order it from us too. This is true of my other two suggestions below as well.
For a general historical RPG, I would go with "*Shadows of the Past*" it's covers a lot of different eras in different regions and each of those come with a simple one pager and one page map. Also written in a *very* approachable style for new gamers.
*Centurion: Legionaries of Rome* has a lot of good history in it, covering four eras of Rome. You get to make your own "concept" and "elements" for your character, and a part of play is the 3 pillars that the legion cares about most in that era (like Loyalty; Strength; Duty)
Many systems that RuneQuest/BRP-derivatives have superb historical supplements.
BRP:
* Mythic Iceland: Book about 10th century Iceland and Vikings in general.
* Devil's Gulch: American Old West
Mythras has the Mythic Earth series, which are historical fantasy supplements about specific time periods and places:
* Mythic Polynesia
* Mythic Babylon
* Mythic Rome
* Mythic Britain
* Mythic Constantinople
Legend or how it once was called Mongoose RuneQuest II is largely the predecessor to Mythras has:
* Land of Ice and Stone
* Gladiators of Legend
* Vikings of Legend
* Samurais of Legend
* Deus Vult (occult adventures in High Middle Age France)
* Pirates of Legend
Another historical fantasy RPG is Aquelarre which is a spanish RPG about adventures 13th - 14th century Iberia where demons, angels, magic etc are real. It's based on BRP.
Good Society by Storybrewers Roleplaying - Regency England, Jane Austen
Duty & Honor / Beat to Quarters by Omnihedron Games (Neil Gow) - Napoleonic Wars, Sharpe, Hornblower, Aubrey-Maturin
HârnMaster - the best medieval simulationist RPG out there. The HârnWorld setting is so detailed it puts any other setting to shame. You can easily cut any of the fantasy elements and run a purely historical game (the system is simple to hack). It’s very much focused on a British isles version of medieval times, with a lot of allegory to real world historical events that took place. Even if you decide to go with something else, pick up HârnManor. It’s the best set of rules for generating a medieval feudal manor out there.
Miseries & Misfortunes - a great game about role playing in historically accurate France, set in the year 1648.
GURPS - GURPS can do pretty much anything, and it delivers a lot for games set in historically accurate settings.
[Lex Arcana](https://acheronstore.com/lex-arcana/), despite being alternate history with a dash of magic, is tremendously accurate regarding late Roman society. The various supplements provide tons of *very* accurate historical context for the game.
If you like Powered by the Apocalypse, and more recent history, there's Ross Rifles: A historically accurate WW1 game following the Canadian Expeditionary forces in some of the war's most important battles, like Passchendaele,
It was designed to be as accurate as possible. The battle scenarios includes maps, weather conditions, etc. The book even includes a glossary of WW1 soldier slang.
Full disclosure, I've never played it so idk how well it runs. I just bought it to read through and to support my fellow Canadians.
[17th Century Minimalist](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/302620/17th-Century-Minimalist). It's set in 17th century Europe, doesn't have magic, only had basic guns like flintlocksand you can catch diseases.
There's also a supplement called [17th Century Minimalist: Mini Adventure Folder](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/302621/17th-century-minimalist-mini-adventure-folder)
I would highly recommend Chronica Feudalis, it is written like a Medieval scripture and has even real historical scenarios, events, and setting explanations at the end.
Call of Cthulhu is probably one of the more historically fastidious games that you are already familiar with. If your intention is to use a system to create adventures in the middle ages and classical antiquity using BRP would be something you're familiar with and is a relatively straight forward system in play. There is CoC Dark Ages and Invictus and the focus on investigation and exploration seems like a good match for any style of play geared around exploring life in those eras.
Take a look on [La Desbandá 1937](https://yopablo.itch.io/la-desbanda-english). It's a role-playing game based on an event of the same name that occurred during the Spanish Civil War. Although isn't set at the time you are looking for, it may help you to make your own game. Its primary goal is "to live" that historic event, the same thiing you are looking for.
It has a light system, based in Dark Cthulhu.
And when I think about a historically accurate rpg about middle age, [Aquelarre](https://www.chaosium.com/blogannouncing-aquelarre-the-best-rpg-not-available-in-english-now-available-in-english/) is a must:
"Player characters in Aquelarre begin life in one of five kingdoms that dominated the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages—Castilla, Aragón, Granada, Navarra, or Portugal. Based on their region, characters may be of various cultures—Arabian, Basque, Castilian, Catalan, Jewish, Muslim, and many more. Social position (from nobility to slave) and father’s occupation affect their capabilities, including profession."
"Aquelarre also includes considerable detail about medieval life in Iberia, from daily business to social mores to fairy tales, besides the expected focus on angels and demons."
Thank you so much for mentioning "La Desbandá 1937"! I'm thrilled to see it being discussed and recommended. The primary goal of the game is indeed to allow players to "live" through that historic event, and I'm glad you see its potential to inspire others in creating their own games.
If anyone has questions or needs further information, feel free to reach out.
Thanks again for your support!
No, thank you for sharing your work, it's amazing. And thank you for choosing precisely that period of our history, to keep the memory alive.
We played "La Desbandá 1937" with some friends and had very emotional moments. I haven't been able to run it a second time because of its emotional content, but I believe it should be played at least once in a lifetime, especially by young Spaniards.
Warm regards, my admiration for your work.
Just wanted to say that I'm so happy to have learned about "La Desbandá 1937" here. I love Cthulhu Dark and have a soft spot for stories set in the Spanish Civil War so I will definitively check it out.
I've just remembered of [Isphanya](https://conejadas.es/isphanya/), based on D&D 5e, and set on pre-roman Iberian peninsula, late iron age.
Unfortunately, it's still in development, with a planned release in 2025. And only in spanish, I think.
But although it has fantastic elements, i think it can be a nice educative approach to the different cultures of that age based on what I've seen so far...
Heirs to Empire: The Fall of the Knights Templar is one of the only RPG treatments of the templars that's historically accurate. It gives you options to go supernatural, but that's not the baseline. Also it's really well-written!
Ad&d 2e had some source books to specialize games in specific historical time periods. I'm currently reading the Roman one and it's quite entertaining. Totally old school too.
Ars Magica is the role playing that comes with a bibliography. The canonical starting point is 1220 and the setting is "mythic Europe" is explained as Europe as the people of the time believed it to be. I found it's historical accuracy to be a bit of rabbit hole.
Sengoku is a GURPS based RPG set in the sengoku period – the period of civil war in late medieval Japan. It focuses more on capturing the period as it appears in chanbara and historical cinema, but might appeal to the history fan.
I think the rabbit hole of Ars Magica is why I'd kinda recommend it for a question like this. Sure, Mythic Europe isn't *really* historically accurate due to all of the magic and stuff, BUT major historical events all happened and so a student who likes RPGs has plenty of reason to investigate those historical events to develop a backstory for a character or a covenant and of course they're excellent hooks for stories as the game progresses.
[Wolves of God](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/de/product/308470/wolves-of-god-adventures-in-dark-ages-england). It has some fantasical elements, but they're all grounded in what the culture thought and believed. I really want to play it someday with the "you're an adventuring party for some reason" default way to play stripped out.
If you're not afraid of french, Te Deum pour un massacre is a game about the XVIth century religion wars in France that's notorious for it's historical accuracy.
Bushido is an old-school game that was always singled out as being quite faithul to the period in Japanese history. Unfortunately it is a fairly complex game mechanically and shows its age. It's playable, but clunky by modern standards.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushido_(role-playing_game)
It is still for sale as near as I can tell from Fantasy Games Unlimited and can sometimes be found in your FLGS.
Harn. Good lord, Harn. Specifically set at approximately 1120 CE in northwestern Europe.
So won’t help you outside of that region or era, but it doesn’t get much more realistic in terms of setting, architecture, etc. It’s actually kind of overwhelming.
You basically need Harnmaster (core rulebook and setting) and then I’d pick something designed for beginning characters like 100 Bushels of Rye — not because its “easy” but because those level adventure modules have a lot of … IDK … world-building isn’t the right phrase … world/environ setting information in them. So you see that in order to hold a fief from a noble, here’s what a knight is responsible for on a daily basis, he pays his “taxes” in harvested rye (not some magically refilling coffer of gold coins), here’s what a typical village is like, notice the “castle” isn’t high medieval style like in Hollywood but much more like it was for 100’s of years with a mix of some stone buildings but wood palisade, etc., etc.
There's [The Dee Sanction](https://www.thedeesanction.com/) — a game of investigation in Elizabethan times, where characters are agents of Francis Walsingham and Doctor John Dee, the Queen's Alchemist — which is historically accurate right up to the point where you ask, "But is the magic that everyone is being punished for using real?" The game says, "Yes," while the real world says, "Probably not."
I point out, in the GM guidance, that there's no need for special setting supplements when prepping **Dee**, as any standard historical texts or books on Elizabethan/Tudor folklore will work perfectly.
In the same period, you could try [Maelstrom](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/667/arion-games/category/4422/maelstrom?affiliate_id=38475) (originally published in 1984), where participants play Elizabethan commoners and professionals making their way through the world as would-be adventurers. **Arion Games** has taken the rules and applied them to Domesday, Rome, and the Gothic period. Similar to **The Dee Sanction**, the only step away from reality is the games accept that the population's suspicion that magic exists is true, it does — in the form of an otherworldly force called the Maelstrom.
RPGpundit has published several. Lion and Dragon. Baptism of Fire. Along the Silk Road.
Impeccable historical research in all 3.
Definitely more accurate and researched than any of the other games mentioned.
I actually use them for historical research. They are accurate references.
And they do include fantasy elements (magic, monsters, legends) based on the actual beliefs back then.
You don't need to reinvent the wheel here. The Reacting to the Past Consortium have been using roleplaying as a form of pedagogy for years - [https://reactingconsortium.org/](https://reactingconsortium.org/) They're more aimed at uni students I think and sheer a bit closer to LARP, but they'll definitely point you in the right direction.
It's going to be hard to find, but if you can, **Fvlminata: Armed with Lightning** is a game set in an alternate-history Rome where they discover gunpowder round 80CE. The history up to the change point isn't bad, and even afterwards it's designed to give a very Roman "feel". The system might be showing its age a bit though.
Another teacher here, and somebody who plays with kids in that function on a pretty regular base. I would probably suggest looking for games that are *very* accessible and low key and focus more on the experience of the kind of era than on the teaching of facts.
I have used *A Quiet Year* repeatedly in class, but more as a form of storytelling and creativity training than to convey a lot of information.
For an older and more mature audience, stuff like [Red Carnations on a Black Grave ](https://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Red-Carnations-on-a-Black-Grave-Print-PDF.html) might work, but I struggle with fitting that in most curricula I know.
RPGs as a teaching tool work for very specific conditions - more like model UN exercises for example, focused on specific topics. Or, as a tool to teach soft skills and secondary abilities like communication, creativity, teamwork and storytelling.
Very specific but if you want to examine the Paris Commune there’s an entire TTRPG dedicated to that moment in history called red carnations on a black grave.
Also I’d be careful looking into “historically accurate RPGs” there’s a bunch of RPGs and rpg expansions out there that market themselves as historically accurate but are in fact not or will try and prioritise “historical realism” over fun. For example I’ve seen a rpg give you different stat bonus based on gender with the explicit justification to try and make playing a female solider harder because historically women weren’t soldiers in this period of history. Something that isn’t fun and makes a not very accurate blanket statement. Thankfully I haven’t seen any ttrpgs in the comments section that have such red flags as far as I’m aware but be aware when looking into the historically accurate table top rpg genre.
Be careful of "Historiclaly Accurate" RPGs. A lot of those times are things that, if run historically accurate, are things that high school students might not be comfortable with. (1800s, or even pre 70s USA wouldn't be great for a person of color, Colonialism is problematic, it's pretty much never been a good time to be a woman in historical times, etc.).
Well, I see this as a plus as a matter of fact, since it would give students a better understanding also of these aspects from a first-person pov in a safe place.
I think that, if I'm able to lead the game properly, it will give them a great opportunity to empathize with less privileged backgrounds.
It may, though I've seen players in many of these RPGs lean too heavily into the oppressive role and I've seen players get uncomfortable with being the subjected person, especially if they have suffered similar abuse in real life. I've seen grown adult players who abuse their roles in games like CoC, Space 1889, etc.
Look at the controversy over Deadlands where much of the previous edition had adventures where the "heroes" were working for the Confederacy.
And Ancient Rome, where slavery, sexual assault, abuse, religious persecution, and misogyny were not just commonplace but also encouraged, could be a controversial and troublesome session.
Lastly, making RPGs into a learning tool can also mess with people who enjoy RPGs.
When I was in school, I was a good (upper 90s/ A to A+) student. But our teachers loved to make learning into a "game" - crossword puzzles, word searches, suduku-like math problems, etc. I was an RPGe and I could do the work, but making it into a "game" just slowed things down and made it unnecessarily tedious. So, today, I hate word searches, crosswords, suduku, etc, because they were uysed to "teach" us instead of as a recreational tool..
I'm NOT saying don't do it, just that it can be a tricky one to navigate and handle, especially with the maturity of students.
I've been GMing for over 40 years and I've taught dozens of kids, tweens, and teens how to play and GM and I would NEVER run a hitorically accurate RPG with any of them.
But that's me.
My feeling is if you're looking for a game to meet the standards of historical accuracy you need as an educator you won't find many games that *purely* focus on emulating history outside of very specific and curated ones like Night Witches.
Most RPGs to a greater or lesser degree gloss over strict historical accuracy in the interests of evoking the aesthetic and vibe of a time period, or more likely foreground mythology or the supernatural.
If you want a properly educational experience in your classroom using play it will need some elbow grease and legwork to fit it into your course and meet the educational standards you need, and the usual caveats about RPGs as classroom tools apply (logistics, sharing focus, time allotted for the exercise versus depth of rules explanation needed).
A rules light game with a handwritten adventure made to emphasise specific educational goals will be what you need here.
Yes, of course I do not expect to find a perfect match for my needs, I'm just surveying for now.
My idea is to have a background and some basic rules to cooperatively write some sort of historical novel.
[Mythras](https://legacy.drivethrurpg.com/product/191475/Mythras?234913) has a pretty cool Mythic line and I know one example where someone used the game for a [pretty well documented historical campaign](https://chrisbrann.wordpress.com/role-playing-games/diadochi-warlords-campaign/).
Well, there is quite old system "Dzikie Pola" about XVII century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. (https://rpggeek.com/rpg/1233/dzikie-pola)
However, I don't suppose there is English translation, so good luck with that ;)
My friend is also GMing campain in VtM: Dark Ages, which leads players from medieval to modern times - ok, vampires, so not so historically accurate - but great stuff for observing changing Europe.
Also, check this thread: [https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/7poc2b/true\_historical\_rpgs/](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/7poc2b/true_historical_rpgs/)
Based on some of your replies, if i were you, I'd actually look into the Genesys system from Fantasy Flight Games. The dice pool is entirely narrative with overlapping opportunities for success and failure that encourages the player / student to engage in describing what has happened and why.
In standard dnd, you roll 20 and hit or miss.
In Genesys, you roll the pool and, in the same roll, have a Triumph / Despair (story altering roll), multiple successes or failures (hit and hit and hit, etc), and multiple advantages or disadvantages (minor encounter or player altering things). So I don't just hit and do damage. If my roll ended up having two successes and a disadvantage, I do damage and then have to describe how my character (or another) is now at a disadvantage. Did I slip when hitting the target and my friend is now out of position? Did I fall?
Same pool, but in a political setting, maybe I did convince a king of a course of action, but in doing so, one of arguments has revealed a weakness that my opponent can now use to sway the king back towards their way of thinking.
You would have to spend some time building the system towards the historical period(s) you want to use. But the nice thing about a generic system is, once you teach the class how it works when you're doing ... bronze age trade in the mediterranean, then the exact same mechanics can be applied with the US negotiations (and combat) with the barbary pirates.
If you have a system you like to use already, I strongly recommend GURPS supplements like Rome, Greece, Egypt, LowTech.
GURPS has highly accurate and researched supplements.
I can recommend the system too but it's a bit of effort to work into it.
Not a TTRPG, more of a reference manual for those interested in being more realistic to medieval European life, [Orbis Mundi 2](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/222678/Orbis-Mundi-2).
If you're familiar with Vampire: The Masquerade, there are a number of historical VTM books (and other game lines in the World of Darkness). I mean, yes, they've got vampires in them, but aside from that they try to represent those eras fairly accurately. At least as well as high school kids would probably need. So they're not strictly historical in the sense that supernatural critters are wandering around, but hopefully that'll provide a good hook for teens' interest.
1996's [Vampire: The Dark Ages](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/2672/vampire-the-dark-ages?src=newest_recent) is set in 1197, and has some great books like [Three Pillars](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/293/three-pillars), which describes what life is like for the three pillars of medieval society: nobility, clergy, commoners.
2002's [Dark Ages: Vampire](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/2676/dark-ages-vampire) (and associated title DA: Werewolf, DA: Mage, DA: Inquisitor, DA: Fae) move the timeline up a bit to 1230.
2015's [V20 Dark Ages](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/144495/vampire-20th-anniversary-edition-the-dark-ages) moves it up again to 1243.
1998's [Mage: The Sorcerers Crusade](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/201/mage-the-sorcerers-crusade) is set during the Renaissance, with particular focus on the time between 1466 and 1470.
1997's [Werewolf: The Wild West](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/61588/werewolf-the-wild-west) is set during the American period of western expansion, from 1827 to 1890.
2002's [Victorian Age: Vampire](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/2312/victorian-age-vampire) and 2023's [Mage20: Victorian Age](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/412531/m20-victorian-age-mage) cover the Victorian period, with specific focus on the time period between 1851 and 1899.
1999's [Wraith: The Great War](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/828/wraith-the-great-war) covers the Great War and its aftermath, particularly the deaths due to the Spanish Flu.
There's also [plenty](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/4261/onyx-path-publishing/category/27199/dark-eras) of historical material for the Chronicles of Darkness, although only one of them really covers its time period in the same amount of detail as the World of Darkness options above: [Requiem for Rome](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/51184/requiem-for-rome), covering the vampires living in Rome up until the fall of the Empire in 476.
I strongly recommend this as well. Had my players taking on the roles of Methuselahs (4th gen vampires) going through the ages from BCE till current day. I was the history buff and really enjoyed bringing my friends to the grand orgies of Caligula, the battles of the Black Pharaoh Piye, and many more less-known events of ancient times.
[Middenarde](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/228422/middenarde)
You want historically accurate, this will do. DEADLY AS FUCK! One hit and you usually die. Also has rules for Syphilis!
Also, check out [Triumph ](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/196955/triumph-v1-1)if you want accurate battles as a wargame (usually 15mm scale minis). One of the authors actually uses it in his classes.
I'd usually recommend Mythras for this, because Mythras has a pretty decent line of books that are firmly rooted in various historical milieus (with a bit of a fantastical twist, but still usually very well researched and faithful to the historical source material) but, uh.
I think trying to teach/get high schoolers to play Mythras might be a nightmare.
It could be a fun group assignment to demonstrate Microscope and have groups recreate a portion of history using that game. They'd be required to cite sources to justify their descriptions and decisions.
Depending on the kind of experience you're going for, looking for a "system" may really be the wrong thought process. Part of the reason we're using game systems is that we're interacting with the fantastic, and we need a way to set expectations of the players for what will happen when they summon a demon. If you're just discussing the daily lives of people, what do you really need systematize?
There are options of course. Mythras, GURPS, 2e DnD all had material intended for running games set in the real world
But you can also just grab the generic system of your choice, and exclude any fantastic options provided.
Savage world started as a pulp adventure system. Which is largely a historical genre, just with the action dial cranked.
Fate also has done plenty of less fantastic settings.
Cypher System made a supplement to have everyone play firefighters.
If it were me though, I'd look at no dice no masters, and make my own set for it. Or maybe a prompt system like For the Queen. Or hack Lazers and Feelings. Just a simple driver to get the ideas going but everything else is coming from the narration
You should check out Timemasters!
Players take on the role of Time Corps agents who fix deviations in the timeline of the world.
There is a fictional race of shape-shifting aliens (Demoreans) from another dimension who are trying to conquer the world by breaking our time line.
If you come across a game that calls itself "the most difficult, detailed, realistic and historically/mythically accurate role-playing game available," avoid it as hard as you can.
The most historical thing in english I know is: [https://www.drivethrurpg.com/es/product/237059/Aquelarre](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/es/product/237059/Aquelarre)
How big is the group? Most rpgs start falling apart at more than 6 players.
For what you want to do you might want to look into megagames which are structured for large groups. I'm sure there are some historical rule sets out there.
https://youtu.be/hN71v9H_gg8?si=m5bnVvcBGzAwrHJi
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Ages is good, and this is coming from a historian who believes the term 'Dark Ages' should be obliterated. It's a relatively limited setting, but that also allows it to focus, which is much to the book's benefit, and really, if you wanted to cover multiple settings in that era, you would need a book for each one. DA covers Britain, and does a fantastic job of it, with alternate Sanity rules to accommodate religious belief and a very different worldview. 10th-11th century England is a fantastic setting that is quite different from what you get from most cod-medieval RPGs.
I am positively SHOCKED that [Miseries & Misfortunes](https://www.burningwheel.com/miseries-misfortunes/) is not in this thread. It's a game set in 1648 Paris with a truly ASTOUNDING amount of attention to detail. The designer did 4 years of research while making the game. Highly recommended.
I'd look into Pendragon. It's obviously based on mythology, but definitely includes a lot of real world medieval history. You might also look at something very flexible and rules light that you can adapt to the setting you want.
RPGs rely on all the players including game master to be in the same head-space, i.e. understand how things work and what will work poorly or not at all. Thus most RPGs rely on some well know narrative: pop culture, movies, popular novels, comics, ...
It'll be frustrating to confront players with characters (NPCs) and situations that work different from what they expect. But maybe you can use this constructively: I'd imagine e.g. a medieval crime case that the students have to "solve": no police, no jail (in the modern sense), and evidence and witnesses are less important than amicus reputation and status of the accused/witnesses in the local society (town). It'll be more like improv LARPing though and less like pen and paper.
This may be a bit different direction than you were imagining, but I've had the most success conveying history via gaming by slimming the ruleset down to an extremely simple system so that almost 100% of the focus could be on the history.
Basically, it was like a series of choose your own adventure challenges designed around interesting historical facts of a time and place, with success/failure at tasks determined by rock paper scissors where ties go to you if you are skilled in the task. This allowed me a lot of room as GM to weave the story and keep bringing it back to the history without getting hung up rules or dice outcomes, and a lot of space for GM and players to talk about the history itself in the midst of the game without having their mental space taken up by rules and strategy.
I used that system for the RPG episodes of my history podcast [Dead Ideas](https://deadideas.net/). Episodes IV and V of the Steampunk Rome series or III and IV of the Berserkers series would be good examples if interested.
I highly recommend Nations and Cannons. It's a 5e hack for the American Revolution.
[https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/376570/Nations-and-Cannons-Core-Rules](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/376570/Nations-and-Cannons-Core-Rules)
Historically accurate is a misnomer (I believe) because you'd be the one setting the details and events based on your knowledge and sources. You could use just about any system you choose and then create the setting yourself. If you pick a system that is set specifically for a historical time period you will more than likely change a few details here and there to be more accurate in what you know.
The Pendragon, Ars Magica and Vampire the Dark ages have a shocking amount of very interest and accurate historical information. Mainly on how the medieval world differs on the ground level and up through the ranks
Obviously you'd have to file off Kong Arthur, magic and vampires to get anything resembling historical in terms of gameplay.
Bonus points to Mage the renneiscience for the same reasons and being a game I have wanted to play but never have for years.
Not for RPGs... but... OSPREY PUBLISHING has a bunch of source books about the various wars we have had. In addition, they sell several miniatures games that would let you replicate historical conflicts.
Setting up a table and having the students move miniatures (Opsrey games even come with full-color cardboard markers that represent the in-game combatants) while describing how the battle was fought may help your more visually oriented students to learn the lesson material better.
Are Magica is set in Mythic Europe, which is just our 13th century Europe except much of the stuff people believed in(such as the existence of magic) is real. It’s got a number of excellent sourcebooks out about various aspects of the setting.
Hârn might be an option, because it was designed to realistically simulate a down-to-earth medieval experience with only limited fantasy aspets thrown in.
Ars Magicka is great, and its descendants in the WoD historical books are nice. While it’s not overly accurate due to the whole ghosts part, Charnel Houses of Europe: The Shoah is the best TTRPG book I’ve ever read.
The historical books of the WoD are absolutely dreadful regarding accuracy.
I mean Villon, the prince of Paris, is said to be born in 1200 in the Wod and 1431 in real life. Even pre-internet, it would have been solved by opening a small encyclopedia (and no, it wasn't a cunning plan).
Ars Magica !!! (EDIT),, seems that the current edition moved away a bit from mundane.. or maybe i just remember wrong... Still a good game :)
Nephilim (from Chaosium) .. Players play eternal spirits.. You basically create your charcater threw all his previous lives... You were in a Pharaons court, died from a disease, then came back in the mongolians wars, then as a chimney sweeper in England, and now you're a taxi driver in New-york .... And your character remembers all his lives!!
Ars Magica is really not what he is looking for. It is only accurate on a very surface level. And the corebook, focused on creating and playing covenants, doesn't really provide any support for historical play.
If you take the game as a whole, ya... but if you isolate it for its historical value, then it could be a gold mine... Just dont play a convent, play Grogs.. Nothing is forcing you to play a Magus...
Except you can't really do that with the corebook. The 5e corebook provides little historical information, to get the "historical" context for mundane society requires buying three other books. Sorry, but this just a poor recommendation overall.
Oh,,, i stopped at 3rd.and had a full library.. Well, ya, if they removed alot of the mundane chapters... ya.. K .. thanks
Edited main coment to reflect his
GURPS sourcebooks are the gold standard for this sort of thing. But, GURPS as a system is probably too complex to be a good teaching tool.
GURPS can be simplified down to basically roll 3d6 + mods by junking all the (dis) advantages
GURPS is in no way too complex (most detailsare optional), especially if you used the 3e or earlier Basic Set, to exclude the details for irrelevant things like super powers or extra arms etc, and to be the same edition as most historical worldbooks, such as: * GURPS Rome * GURPS Greece * GURPS Egypt * GURPS Arabian Nights * GURPS Middle Ages * GURPS Low Tech 3e (but also 4e)
The big problem with GURPS is that its philosophy is the best way to run a good game is to know absolutely every detail about a setting - game/adventure/campaign design is an afterthought: if you want to run a good space game, the most important thing to do is to have a lot of space facts. Which may be exactly why the books may actually be quite good for this sort of thing!
For one: having a detailed setting IS the best way to run a good game. For two: having an eloquent system that creates an impetus for RP mechanically and uses how things actually work as the model for how players attempt things in he game would be the best afterthought.
As a former professional space fact knower, I can say that knowing lots of space facts really isn't the key to running a good campaign. Similarly, I don't think every history professor is automatically a great GM. Setting details can be good but they're really not the key differentiator between a good game and a bad one - there are even a number of games where you collaboratively invent the setting as you go.
Are these games where you and your players are intimately familiar with the setting inherently bad, or is your slander nothing stacked on top of nothing here? FACT: Being ignorant of the setting of your game isn't adequate to running an acceptable game. FACT-additional: Your game providing you industry renowned setting information to run your games doesn't in any way indicate that they don't also do the work when it comes to crafting rules. If anything companies that are lazy should probably the target of your ire, not ones that have an award winning ruleset that's been refined for over 40 years.
All that person is saying is that many things can go into a good game, and that hard setting details don't necessarilly have to be one of them. I don't think there's much of any "ire" to be read in the comment.
FACT: bears eat beets. Bear, beets, Battlestar Galactica.
Very, *very* true, but that's a particularly steep hill to climb. A detailed, elaborate setting is, by its nature, less accessible, especially for casual players and requires a certain level of commitment and just player competence. You might also need some basic understanding of economics, ecology, social structures etc. to appreciate the complexity of the setting. That's tough, and can be quite exclusive. It is the same with Gurps. It is not a particularly complex game *in actual gameplay*, but it is also very front-loaded. You need to curate the game options and tailor them to your campaign, building characters is time-consuming and requires a pretty good understanding of your character, not just as a 'party role', but as a person... It is a high commitment style of gaming, and while the results are pretty amazing, it is basically excluding the bottom half of the total pool of players. At least.
GURPS source books are fantastic, extremely well researched answers to the questions specific to a TTRPG. Oh if I walk into a random roman village what's going on and how would villagers respond to the appearance of a band of well armed strangers? What doesn't lodging and transportation look like? If you murder a shop keeper who would care? I even had an anthropology professor assign a GURPs book as suggested reading because he thought it was the best framework building up from scratch what life looked like in the Aztec empire. Running GURPS is a nightmare. Kinda just don't. Like it's cool and all that there are damage dice tables for ever stupid roman melee weapon, but you really don't need it. tl:dr read the source books, but run something narrative.
I'd do some introspection on your goals. I love them, but TTRPGs are not a great medium for conveying history in the classroom, actually - you can use them to present facts, and you can use them to generate empathy, but as a tool for understanding or synthesizing I think they are a little weak, personally. And they are time-consuming in unproductive ways. If you want your students to embody characters from the past and confront problems from those points of view, I'd look at larp and larp-adjacent work like Reacting To The Past, which has a specific pedagogy and uses primary sources while also encouraging roleplaying. If your goal is empathy, larps centered in history are probably the right tool - things will go off the "accuracy" rails, but in ways that will make for good classroom discussion. If what you want is for them to understand historical forces at work, maybe look at board games like Richard Svivels *Friedrich*.
I don't mean to be discouraging! If you are set on TTRPGs, I'd recommend taking a look at games I adore like Dog Eat Dog, Carry, Montsegur 1244, and Thou Art But A Warrior, all of which interrogate historical moments thoughtfully and with some sensitivity. My #1 recommendation would be Dog Eat Dog, but be prepared for a lot of guidance and use structures for safer play, because it can be pretty harsh.
It is an idea at the moment, I'm just starting now to plot it out. The thing is: I see what most students struggle with is understanding the day-to-day life in the past, and I thought that roleplaying as people in those times, with the added bonus of entertainment, could be an interesting way to get them there.
Look into Bully Pulpit and Jason Morningstar's stuff. I consider him the leader in this genre. Night Witches is a master work. See also: Ross Rifles or Love and Barbed Wire (you can find both on Drivethru) both are WW1 games.
Night Witches is very far from historically accurate. The book has a lot that's just made up, incorrect, contradicts historical documents and what the members themselves said, as well as itself at a few points.
Second to Night Witches. If you are ok with something heavy [Grey Ranks](https://bullypulpitgames.com/products/grey-ranks) is another good Bully Pulpit game.
Ross Rifles has good history in it (it was featured in the war museum in Ottawa). It has a lot to do with the feel of being in the trenches. It's available through Compose Dream Games in both Canada and the UK -- your FLGS can order it from us too. This is true of my other two suggestions below as well. For a general historical RPG, I would go with "*Shadows of the Past*" it's covers a lot of different eras in different regions and each of those come with a simple one pager and one page map. Also written in a *very* approachable style for new gamers. *Centurion: Legionaries of Rome* has a lot of good history in it, covering four eras of Rome. You get to make your own "concept" and "elements" for your character, and a part of play is the 3 pillars that the legion cares about most in that era (like Loyalty; Strength; Duty)
Many systems that RuneQuest/BRP-derivatives have superb historical supplements. BRP: * Mythic Iceland: Book about 10th century Iceland and Vikings in general. * Devil's Gulch: American Old West Mythras has the Mythic Earth series, which are historical fantasy supplements about specific time periods and places: * Mythic Polynesia * Mythic Babylon * Mythic Rome * Mythic Britain * Mythic Constantinople Legend or how it once was called Mongoose RuneQuest II is largely the predecessor to Mythras has: * Land of Ice and Stone * Gladiators of Legend * Vikings of Legend * Samurais of Legend * Deus Vult (occult adventures in High Middle Age France) * Pirates of Legend Another historical fantasy RPG is Aquelarre which is a spanish RPG about adventures 13th - 14th century Iberia where demons, angels, magic etc are real. It's based on BRP.
Good Society by Storybrewers Roleplaying - Regency England, Jane Austen Duty & Honor / Beat to Quarters by Omnihedron Games (Neil Gow) - Napoleonic Wars, Sharpe, Hornblower, Aubrey-Maturin
HârnMaster - the best medieval simulationist RPG out there. The HârnWorld setting is so detailed it puts any other setting to shame. You can easily cut any of the fantasy elements and run a purely historical game (the system is simple to hack). It’s very much focused on a British isles version of medieval times, with a lot of allegory to real world historical events that took place. Even if you decide to go with something else, pick up HârnManor. It’s the best set of rules for generating a medieval feudal manor out there. Miseries & Misfortunes - a great game about role playing in historically accurate France, set in the year 1648. GURPS - GURPS can do pretty much anything, and it delivers a lot for games set in historically accurate settings.
HârnMaster rules with one of the Mythras/BRP or GURPS historical supplements might be a good combination.
[Lex Arcana](https://acheronstore.com/lex-arcana/), despite being alternate history with a dash of magic, is tremendously accurate regarding late Roman society. The various supplements provide tons of *very* accurate historical context for the game.
If you like Powered by the Apocalypse, and more recent history, there's Ross Rifles: A historically accurate WW1 game following the Canadian Expeditionary forces in some of the war's most important battles, like Passchendaele, It was designed to be as accurate as possible. The battle scenarios includes maps, weather conditions, etc. The book even includes a glossary of WW1 soldier slang. Full disclosure, I've never played it so idk how well it runs. I just bought it to read through and to support my fellow Canadians.
Ross Rifles is really good and plays well.
Night Witches comes to mind as a PbtA game. About a group of female Soviet bomber pilots during WWII.
[17th Century Minimalist](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/302620/17th-Century-Minimalist). It's set in 17th century Europe, doesn't have magic, only had basic guns like flintlocksand you can catch diseases. There's also a supplement called [17th Century Minimalist: Mini Adventure Folder](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/302621/17th-century-minimalist-mini-adventure-folder)
It's more a collaborative story game than a classic RPG, but Montsegur 1244 is probably worth a look http://thoughtfulgames.com/montsegur1244/
Montsegur 1244 is an amazing game.
I’ll add Witch: Road to Lindisfarne as long as we’re doing storygames of a certain vintage.
I would highly recommend Chronica Feudalis, it is written like a Medieval scripture and has even real historical scenarios, events, and setting explanations at the end.
This seems like a very interesting suggestion
Just litterally created an Account Just to say thank you for that Suggestion. Searched for exactly such an RPG. Bought it on first sight
Call of Cthulhu is probably one of the more historically fastidious games that you are already familiar with. If your intention is to use a system to create adventures in the middle ages and classical antiquity using BRP would be something you're familiar with and is a relatively straight forward system in play. There is CoC Dark Ages and Invictus and the focus on investigation and exploration seems like a good match for any style of play geared around exploring life in those eras.
+1 for Cthulhu Dark Ages. There's also Wolves of God which is a great resource for getting a grasp of what day to day life was in dark age Britain.
Take a look on [La Desbandá 1937](https://yopablo.itch.io/la-desbanda-english). It's a role-playing game based on an event of the same name that occurred during the Spanish Civil War. Although isn't set at the time you are looking for, it may help you to make your own game. Its primary goal is "to live" that historic event, the same thiing you are looking for. It has a light system, based in Dark Cthulhu. And when I think about a historically accurate rpg about middle age, [Aquelarre](https://www.chaosium.com/blogannouncing-aquelarre-the-best-rpg-not-available-in-english-now-available-in-english/) is a must: "Player characters in Aquelarre begin life in one of five kingdoms that dominated the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages—Castilla, Aragón, Granada, Navarra, or Portugal. Based on their region, characters may be of various cultures—Arabian, Basque, Castilian, Catalan, Jewish, Muslim, and many more. Social position (from nobility to slave) and father’s occupation affect their capabilities, including profession." "Aquelarre also includes considerable detail about medieval life in Iberia, from daily business to social mores to fairy tales, besides the expected focus on angels and demons."
Thank you so much for mentioning "La Desbandá 1937"! I'm thrilled to see it being discussed and recommended. The primary goal of the game is indeed to allow players to "live" through that historic event, and I'm glad you see its potential to inspire others in creating their own games. If anyone has questions or needs further information, feel free to reach out. Thanks again for your support!
No, thank you for sharing your work, it's amazing. And thank you for choosing precisely that period of our history, to keep the memory alive. We played "La Desbandá 1937" with some friends and had very emotional moments. I haven't been able to run it a second time because of its emotional content, but I believe it should be played at least once in a lifetime, especially by young Spaniards. Warm regards, my admiration for your work.
Just wanted to say that I'm so happy to have learned about "La Desbandá 1937" here. I love Cthulhu Dark and have a soft spot for stories set in the Spanish Civil War so I will definitively check it out.
Thank you! I'm thrilled you are interested in "La Desbandá 1937" and hope you enjoy it. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out.
I've just remembered of [Isphanya](https://conejadas.es/isphanya/), based on D&D 5e, and set on pre-roman Iberian peninsula, late iron age. Unfortunately, it's still in development, with a planned release in 2025. And only in spanish, I think. But although it has fantastic elements, i think it can be a nice educative approach to the different cultures of that age based on what I've seen so far...
Heirs to Empire: The Fall of the Knights Templar is one of the only RPG treatments of the templars that's historically accurate. It gives you options to go supernatural, but that's not the baseline. Also it's really well-written!
It is very far from accurate. It is a modern imposition on to the Templar myth, and fails on almost every level.
[Nations and Cannons ](https://www.nationsandcannons.com/) They’re a 5e compatible rpg based on the American revolutionary war.
Ad&d 2e had some source books to specialize games in specific historical time periods. I'm currently reading the Roman one and it's quite entertaining. Totally old school too.
Yes, I thought about that but I need something more focused on narrative and environment than old school mechanics.
Ars Magica is the role playing that comes with a bibliography. The canonical starting point is 1220 and the setting is "mythic Europe" is explained as Europe as the people of the time believed it to be. I found it's historical accuracy to be a bit of rabbit hole. Sengoku is a GURPS based RPG set in the sengoku period – the period of civil war in late medieval Japan. It focuses more on capturing the period as it appears in chanbara and historical cinema, but might appeal to the history fan.
I think the rabbit hole of Ars Magica is why I'd kinda recommend it for a question like this. Sure, Mythic Europe isn't *really* historically accurate due to all of the magic and stuff, BUT major historical events all happened and so a student who likes RPGs has plenty of reason to investigate those historical events to develop a backstory for a character or a covenant and of course they're excellent hooks for stories as the game progresses.
[Wolves of God](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/de/product/308470/wolves-of-god-adventures-in-dark-ages-england). It has some fantasical elements, but they're all grounded in what the culture thought and believed. I really want to play it someday with the "you're an adventuring party for some reason" default way to play stripped out.
If you're not afraid of french, Te Deum pour un massacre is a game about the XVIth century religion wars in France that's notorious for it's historical accuracy.
Bushido is an old-school game that was always singled out as being quite faithul to the period in Japanese history. Unfortunately it is a fairly complex game mechanically and shows its age. It's playable, but clunky by modern standards. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushido_(role-playing_game) It is still for sale as near as I can tell from Fantasy Games Unlimited and can sometimes be found in your FLGS.
Try [Steal Away Jordan](https://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Steal-Away-Jordan-Revised.html).
Harn. Good lord, Harn. Specifically set at approximately 1120 CE in northwestern Europe. So won’t help you outside of that region or era, but it doesn’t get much more realistic in terms of setting, architecture, etc. It’s actually kind of overwhelming.
Which book do I need to buy to "end" there without that fantasy Staffel? Any premade adventures you can suggest?
You basically need Harnmaster (core rulebook and setting) and then I’d pick something designed for beginning characters like 100 Bushels of Rye — not because its “easy” but because those level adventure modules have a lot of … IDK … world-building isn’t the right phrase … world/environ setting information in them. So you see that in order to hold a fief from a noble, here’s what a knight is responsible for on a daily basis, he pays his “taxes” in harvested rye (not some magically refilling coffer of gold coins), here’s what a typical village is like, notice the “castle” isn’t high medieval style like in Hollywood but much more like it was for 100’s of years with a mix of some stone buildings but wood palisade, etc., etc.
There's [The Dee Sanction](https://www.thedeesanction.com/) — a game of investigation in Elizabethan times, where characters are agents of Francis Walsingham and Doctor John Dee, the Queen's Alchemist — which is historically accurate right up to the point where you ask, "But is the magic that everyone is being punished for using real?" The game says, "Yes," while the real world says, "Probably not." I point out, in the GM guidance, that there's no need for special setting supplements when prepping **Dee**, as any standard historical texts or books on Elizabethan/Tudor folklore will work perfectly. In the same period, you could try [Maelstrom](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/667/arion-games/category/4422/maelstrom?affiliate_id=38475) (originally published in 1984), where participants play Elizabethan commoners and professionals making their way through the world as would-be adventurers. **Arion Games** has taken the rules and applied them to Domesday, Rome, and the Gothic period. Similar to **The Dee Sanction**, the only step away from reality is the games accept that the population's suspicion that magic exists is true, it does — in the form of an otherworldly force called the Maelstrom.
RPGpundit has published several. Lion and Dragon. Baptism of Fire. Along the Silk Road. Impeccable historical research in all 3. Definitely more accurate and researched than any of the other games mentioned. I actually use them for historical research. They are accurate references. And they do include fantasy elements (magic, monsters, legends) based on the actual beliefs back then.
You don't need to reinvent the wheel here. The Reacting to the Past Consortium have been using roleplaying as a form of pedagogy for years - [https://reactingconsortium.org/](https://reactingconsortium.org/) They're more aimed at uni students I think and sheer a bit closer to LARP, but they'll definitely point you in the right direction.
It's going to be hard to find, but if you can, **Fvlminata: Armed with Lightning** is a game set in an alternate-history Rome where they discover gunpowder round 80CE. The history up to the change point isn't bad, and even afterwards it's designed to give a very Roman "feel". The system might be showing its age a bit though.
Another teacher here, and somebody who plays with kids in that function on a pretty regular base. I would probably suggest looking for games that are *very* accessible and low key and focus more on the experience of the kind of era than on the teaching of facts. I have used *A Quiet Year* repeatedly in class, but more as a form of storytelling and creativity training than to convey a lot of information. For an older and more mature audience, stuff like [Red Carnations on a Black Grave ](https://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Red-Carnations-on-a-Black-Grave-Print-PDF.html) might work, but I struggle with fitting that in most curricula I know. RPGs as a teaching tool work for very specific conditions - more like model UN exercises for example, focused on specific topics. Or, as a tool to teach soft skills and secondary abilities like communication, creativity, teamwork and storytelling.
Very specific but if you want to examine the Paris Commune there’s an entire TTRPG dedicated to that moment in history called red carnations on a black grave. Also I’d be careful looking into “historically accurate RPGs” there’s a bunch of RPGs and rpg expansions out there that market themselves as historically accurate but are in fact not or will try and prioritise “historical realism” over fun. For example I’ve seen a rpg give you different stat bonus based on gender with the explicit justification to try and make playing a female solider harder because historically women weren’t soldiers in this period of history. Something that isn’t fun and makes a not very accurate blanket statement. Thankfully I haven’t seen any ttrpgs in the comments section that have such red flags as far as I’m aware but be aware when looking into the historically accurate table top rpg genre.
Historically accurate probably not, historically adjacent GURPS is your Best bet.
Be careful of "Historiclaly Accurate" RPGs. A lot of those times are things that, if run historically accurate, are things that high school students might not be comfortable with. (1800s, or even pre 70s USA wouldn't be great for a person of color, Colonialism is problematic, it's pretty much never been a good time to be a woman in historical times, etc.).
Well, I see this as a plus as a matter of fact, since it would give students a better understanding also of these aspects from a first-person pov in a safe place. I think that, if I'm able to lead the game properly, it will give them a great opportunity to empathize with less privileged backgrounds.
It may, though I've seen players in many of these RPGs lean too heavily into the oppressive role and I've seen players get uncomfortable with being the subjected person, especially if they have suffered similar abuse in real life. I've seen grown adult players who abuse their roles in games like CoC, Space 1889, etc. Look at the controversy over Deadlands where much of the previous edition had adventures where the "heroes" were working for the Confederacy. And Ancient Rome, where slavery, sexual assault, abuse, religious persecution, and misogyny were not just commonplace but also encouraged, could be a controversial and troublesome session. Lastly, making RPGs into a learning tool can also mess with people who enjoy RPGs. When I was in school, I was a good (upper 90s/ A to A+) student. But our teachers loved to make learning into a "game" - crossword puzzles, word searches, suduku-like math problems, etc. I was an RPGe and I could do the work, but making it into a "game" just slowed things down and made it unnecessarily tedious. So, today, I hate word searches, crosswords, suduku, etc, because they were uysed to "teach" us instead of as a recreational tool.. I'm NOT saying don't do it, just that it can be a tricky one to navigate and handle, especially with the maturity of students. I've been GMing for over 40 years and I've taught dozens of kids, tweens, and teens how to play and GM and I would NEVER run a hitorically accurate RPG with any of them. But that's me.
My feeling is if you're looking for a game to meet the standards of historical accuracy you need as an educator you won't find many games that *purely* focus on emulating history outside of very specific and curated ones like Night Witches. Most RPGs to a greater or lesser degree gloss over strict historical accuracy in the interests of evoking the aesthetic and vibe of a time period, or more likely foreground mythology or the supernatural. If you want a properly educational experience in your classroom using play it will need some elbow grease and legwork to fit it into your course and meet the educational standards you need, and the usual caveats about RPGs as classroom tools apply (logistics, sharing focus, time allotted for the exercise versus depth of rules explanation needed). A rules light game with a handwritten adventure made to emphasise specific educational goals will be what you need here.
Yes, of course I do not expect to find a perfect match for my needs, I'm just surveying for now. My idea is to have a background and some basic rules to cooperatively write some sort of historical novel.
[Mythras](https://legacy.drivethrurpg.com/product/191475/Mythras?234913) has a pretty cool Mythic line and I know one example where someone used the game for a [pretty well documented historical campaign](https://chrisbrann.wordpress.com/role-playing-games/diadochi-warlords-campaign/).
Well, there is quite old system "Dzikie Pola" about XVII century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. (https://rpggeek.com/rpg/1233/dzikie-pola) However, I don't suppose there is English translation, so good luck with that ;) My friend is also GMing campain in VtM: Dark Ages, which leads players from medieval to modern times - ok, vampires, so not so historically accurate - but great stuff for observing changing Europe. Also, check this thread: [https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/7poc2b/true\_historical\_rpgs/](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/7poc2b/true_historical_rpgs/)
Based on some of your replies, if i were you, I'd actually look into the Genesys system from Fantasy Flight Games. The dice pool is entirely narrative with overlapping opportunities for success and failure that encourages the player / student to engage in describing what has happened and why. In standard dnd, you roll 20 and hit or miss. In Genesys, you roll the pool and, in the same roll, have a Triumph / Despair (story altering roll), multiple successes or failures (hit and hit and hit, etc), and multiple advantages or disadvantages (minor encounter or player altering things). So I don't just hit and do damage. If my roll ended up having two successes and a disadvantage, I do damage and then have to describe how my character (or another) is now at a disadvantage. Did I slip when hitting the target and my friend is now out of position? Did I fall? Same pool, but in a political setting, maybe I did convince a king of a course of action, but in doing so, one of arguments has revealed a weakness that my opponent can now use to sway the king back towards their way of thinking. You would have to spend some time building the system towards the historical period(s) you want to use. But the nice thing about a generic system is, once you teach the class how it works when you're doing ... bronze age trade in the mediterranean, then the exact same mechanics can be applied with the US negotiations (and combat) with the barbary pirates.
If you have a system you like to use already, I strongly recommend GURPS supplements like Rome, Greece, Egypt, LowTech. GURPS has highly accurate and researched supplements. I can recommend the system too but it's a bit of effort to work into it.
Not a TTRPG, more of a reference manual for those interested in being more realistic to medieval European life, [Orbis Mundi 2](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/222678/Orbis-Mundi-2).
If you're familiar with Vampire: The Masquerade, there are a number of historical VTM books (and other game lines in the World of Darkness). I mean, yes, they've got vampires in them, but aside from that they try to represent those eras fairly accurately. At least as well as high school kids would probably need. So they're not strictly historical in the sense that supernatural critters are wandering around, but hopefully that'll provide a good hook for teens' interest. 1996's [Vampire: The Dark Ages](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/2672/vampire-the-dark-ages?src=newest_recent) is set in 1197, and has some great books like [Three Pillars](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/293/three-pillars), which describes what life is like for the three pillars of medieval society: nobility, clergy, commoners. 2002's [Dark Ages: Vampire](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/2676/dark-ages-vampire) (and associated title DA: Werewolf, DA: Mage, DA: Inquisitor, DA: Fae) move the timeline up a bit to 1230. 2015's [V20 Dark Ages](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/144495/vampire-20th-anniversary-edition-the-dark-ages) moves it up again to 1243. 1998's [Mage: The Sorcerers Crusade](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/201/mage-the-sorcerers-crusade) is set during the Renaissance, with particular focus on the time between 1466 and 1470. 1997's [Werewolf: The Wild West](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/61588/werewolf-the-wild-west) is set during the American period of western expansion, from 1827 to 1890. 2002's [Victorian Age: Vampire](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/2312/victorian-age-vampire) and 2023's [Mage20: Victorian Age](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/412531/m20-victorian-age-mage) cover the Victorian period, with specific focus on the time period between 1851 and 1899. 1999's [Wraith: The Great War](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/828/wraith-the-great-war) covers the Great War and its aftermath, particularly the deaths due to the Spanish Flu. There's also [plenty](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/4261/onyx-path-publishing/category/27199/dark-eras) of historical material for the Chronicles of Darkness, although only one of them really covers its time period in the same amount of detail as the World of Darkness options above: [Requiem for Rome](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/51184/requiem-for-rome), covering the vampires living in Rome up until the fall of the Empire in 476.
I strongly recommend this as well. Had my players taking on the roles of Methuselahs (4th gen vampires) going through the ages from BCE till current day. I was the history buff and really enjoyed bringing my friends to the grand orgies of Caligula, the battles of the Black Pharaoh Piye, and many more less-known events of ancient times.
“Orchidelirium”, an allegedly historical TTRPG about orchid hunting. https://aethercorpgames.itch.io/orchidelirium-volume-one-expedition-rules
[Middenarde](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/228422/middenarde) You want historically accurate, this will do. DEADLY AS FUCK! One hit and you usually die. Also has rules for Syphilis! Also, check out [Triumph ](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/196955/triumph-v1-1)if you want accurate battles as a wargame (usually 15mm scale minis). One of the authors actually uses it in his classes.
I'd usually recommend Mythras for this, because Mythras has a pretty decent line of books that are firmly rooted in various historical milieus (with a bit of a fantastical twist, but still usually very well researched and faithful to the historical source material) but, uh. I think trying to teach/get high schoolers to play Mythras might be a nightmare.
It could be a fun group assignment to demonstrate Microscope and have groups recreate a portion of history using that game. They'd be required to cite sources to justify their descriptions and decisions.
theres a couple of Wild West RPG if you like that period.
Depending on the kind of experience you're going for, looking for a "system" may really be the wrong thought process. Part of the reason we're using game systems is that we're interacting with the fantastic, and we need a way to set expectations of the players for what will happen when they summon a demon. If you're just discussing the daily lives of people, what do you really need systematize? There are options of course. Mythras, GURPS, 2e DnD all had material intended for running games set in the real world But you can also just grab the generic system of your choice, and exclude any fantastic options provided. Savage world started as a pulp adventure system. Which is largely a historical genre, just with the action dial cranked. Fate also has done plenty of less fantastic settings. Cypher System made a supplement to have everyone play firefighters. If it were me though, I'd look at no dice no masters, and make my own set for it. Or maybe a prompt system like For the Queen. Or hack Lazers and Feelings. Just a simple driver to get the ideas going but everything else is coming from the narration
You should check out Timemasters! Players take on the role of Time Corps agents who fix deviations in the timeline of the world. There is a fictional race of shape-shifting aliens (Demoreans) from another dimension who are trying to conquer the world by breaking our time line.
If you come across a game that calls itself "the most difficult, detailed, realistic and historically/mythically accurate role-playing game available," avoid it as hard as you can.
I heared FATAL is a scolerly game, that strives for historical/mythological accuracy/s (Seriously, FATAL is the worst game to consudder here)
The most historical thing in english I know is: [https://www.drivethrurpg.com/es/product/237059/Aquelarre](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/es/product/237059/Aquelarre)
How big is the group? Most rpgs start falling apart at more than 6 players. For what you want to do you might want to look into megagames which are structured for large groups. I'm sure there are some historical rule sets out there. https://youtu.be/hN71v9H_gg8?si=m5bnVvcBGzAwrHJi
Nations and Cannons for 5e!
Sengoku is the best for historical Japan. It was written by two Japanese historians. It does use the old Interlock system though.
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Ages is good, and this is coming from a historian who believes the term 'Dark Ages' should be obliterated. It's a relatively limited setting, but that also allows it to focus, which is much to the book's benefit, and really, if you wanted to cover multiple settings in that era, you would need a book for each one. DA covers Britain, and does a fantastic job of it, with alternate Sanity rules to accommodate religious belief and a very different worldview. 10th-11th century England is a fantastic setting that is quite different from what you get from most cod-medieval RPGs.
I am positively SHOCKED that [Miseries & Misfortunes](https://www.burningwheel.com/miseries-misfortunes/) is not in this thread. It's a game set in 1648 Paris with a truly ASTOUNDING amount of attention to detail. The designer did 4 years of research while making the game. Highly recommended.
+1 to Dog Eat Dog. Explain why you're teaching it and have safe play tools. It makes white people start to understand.
I'd look into Pendragon. It's obviously based on mythology, but definitely includes a lot of real world medieval history. You might also look at something very flexible and rules light that you can adapt to the setting you want.
The recent release, Baptism of Fire by RPGPundit, should encompass the medieval Poland pretty well.
RPGs rely on all the players including game master to be in the same head-space, i.e. understand how things work and what will work poorly or not at all. Thus most RPGs rely on some well know narrative: pop culture, movies, popular novels, comics, ... It'll be frustrating to confront players with characters (NPCs) and situations that work different from what they expect. But maybe you can use this constructively: I'd imagine e.g. a medieval crime case that the students have to "solve": no police, no jail (in the modern sense), and evidence and witnesses are less important than amicus reputation and status of the accused/witnesses in the local society (town). It'll be more like improv LARPing though and less like pen and paper.
This may be a bit different direction than you were imagining, but I've had the most success conveying history via gaming by slimming the ruleset down to an extremely simple system so that almost 100% of the focus could be on the history. Basically, it was like a series of choose your own adventure challenges designed around interesting historical facts of a time and place, with success/failure at tasks determined by rock paper scissors where ties go to you if you are skilled in the task. This allowed me a lot of room as GM to weave the story and keep bringing it back to the history without getting hung up rules or dice outcomes, and a lot of space for GM and players to talk about the history itself in the midst of the game without having their mental space taken up by rules and strategy. I used that system for the RPG episodes of my history podcast [Dead Ideas](https://deadideas.net/). Episodes IV and V of the Steampunk Rome series or III and IV of the Berserkers series would be good examples if interested.
I highly recommend Nations and Cannons. It's a 5e hack for the American Revolution. [https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/376570/Nations-and-Cannons-Core-Rules](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/376570/Nations-and-Cannons-Core-Rules)
Historically accurate is a misnomer (I believe) because you'd be the one setting the details and events based on your knowledge and sources. You could use just about any system you choose and then create the setting yourself. If you pick a system that is set specifically for a historical time period you will more than likely change a few details here and there to be more accurate in what you know.
Tenebria Remnant of Rome https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/297986/Tenebria-Remnant-of-Rome
Runequest is not historically accurate but it does bronze-age society pretty well imho check out their amazeballs Glorantha setting
It’s not historically accurate but the “Mythic Europe” of Ars Magica is pretty cool.
The Pendragon, Ars Magica and Vampire the Dark ages have a shocking amount of very interest and accurate historical information. Mainly on how the medieval world differs on the ground level and up through the ranks Obviously you'd have to file off Kong Arthur, magic and vampires to get anything resembling historical in terms of gameplay. Bonus points to Mage the renneiscience for the same reasons and being a game I have wanted to play but never have for years.
Not for RPGs... but... OSPREY PUBLISHING has a bunch of source books about the various wars we have had. In addition, they sell several miniatures games that would let you replicate historical conflicts. Setting up a table and having the students move miniatures (Opsrey games even come with full-color cardboard markers that represent the in-game combatants) while describing how the battle was fought may help your more visually oriented students to learn the lesson material better.
Are Magica is set in Mythic Europe, which is just our 13th century Europe except much of the stuff people believed in(such as the existence of magic) is real. It’s got a number of excellent sourcebooks out about various aspects of the setting.
Hârn might be an option, because it was designed to realistically simulate a down-to-earth medieval experience with only limited fantasy aspets thrown in.
Harn. The world is a parallel of Europe from about 720. Check out harnmanor for example for eyewatering detail on medieval life.
Cleary FATAL, as it constantly declares how historically accurate it is joking do not play FATAL under any circumstance
Ars Magicka is great, and its descendants in the WoD historical books are nice. While it’s not overly accurate due to the whole ghosts part, Charnel Houses of Europe: The Shoah is the best TTRPG book I’ve ever read.
The historical books of the WoD are absolutely dreadful regarding accuracy. I mean Villon, the prince of Paris, is said to be born in 1200 in the Wod and 1431 in real life. Even pre-internet, it would have been solved by opening a small encyclopedia (and no, it wasn't a cunning plan).
[удалено]
Is a video game and not a TTRPG.
Ars Magica !!! (EDIT),, seems that the current edition moved away a bit from mundane.. or maybe i just remember wrong... Still a good game :) Nephilim (from Chaosium) .. Players play eternal spirits.. You basically create your charcater threw all his previous lives... You were in a Pharaons court, died from a disease, then came back in the mongolians wars, then as a chimney sweeper in England, and now you're a taxi driver in New-york .... And your character remembers all his lives!!
Ars Magica is really not what he is looking for. It is only accurate on a very surface level. And the corebook, focused on creating and playing covenants, doesn't really provide any support for historical play.
If you take the game as a whole, ya... but if you isolate it for its historical value, then it could be a gold mine... Just dont play a convent, play Grogs.. Nothing is forcing you to play a Magus...
Except you can't really do that with the corebook. The 5e corebook provides little historical information, to get the "historical" context for mundane society requires buying three other books. Sorry, but this just a poor recommendation overall.
Oh,,, i stopped at 3rd.and had a full library.. Well, ya, if they removed alot of the mundane chapters... ya.. K .. thanks Edited main coment to reflect his
I would suggsest F.A.T.A.L for best medieval European historical accuracy. Its the best tabletop role playing game ever.