Games That Sanitize the Past: A Cautionary Tale

I've been playing Call of Cthulhu for many years, but it's been quite a while since I sat down and actually read the rulebook more or less straight through. Like most reference manuals, I tend to use a few sections of the book very heavily and skip over most of the rest. Recently I've been reading the CoC rulebook (5.6 edition) straight through for the first time since I bought it a decade ago. Turns out there's some interesting bits I'd forgotten about.

One of these bits comes very early in the book on page 24. In discussion of time periods in which to set your game we find:

"Historical settings are as real as possible. The world and the United States were very different in the 1890s and 1920s from now, and behaviors most find repugnant today then were ordinary and acceptable. Racism, xenophobia, religious bias, and sexual discrimination as we now perceive them were normal parts of life, and often loudly espoused. Local, state, and federal laws systematically supported segregation and discrimination of every sort, and social forces of great power underwrote that legislation.
Scenario authors can choose to ignore social history as not germane, or decide to incorporate specific elements into their plots. Both sorts of approaches have been published. To preclude information about earlier eras (or about this one) dishonors the memory of those who prized freedom, fairness, and opportunity, perhaps long before we were born."

This attitude to historical gaming is, in my opinion, very healthy. It is also very unfashionable. Whenever I see online discussions about including sexism, racism, and discrimination of any sort in a game setting, there tends to be a very decisive chorus of cries to leave this stuff out of what is, in the end, a form of entertainment. There are always several strident voices that loudly proclaim that inclusion of any such subject matter is an absolute deal breaker for them, that they could never enjoy such a game. This viewpoint has been heard loud and clear by games writers, and publishers, and most historical or pseudo-historical games published nowadays go out of their way to point out that such matters of unpleasant social history are best left out of one's games.

Consider this bit from the newest edition of the Deadlands weird wild west game. It follows four paragraphs explaining how in this alternate time line, the Confederacy abolished slavery to gain the support of the British:

"By 1879, racism is becoming a thing of the past in the Weird West. Progress has been made, and more will come as peace returns and folks resume their normal lives. The prospect of further integration of Confederate society is aided by a greater sense of community and shared values than in actual history. Circumstances are similar in the North. Just as in the real West, folks are willing to overlook the color of a person's skin in favor of the content of his character."

I feel the need to point out that the Real West absolutely did not overlook the color of a person's skin, but I don't want to get hung up on that point. I am not suggesting that Deadlands has a nefarious political agenda. I'm sure Deadlands is just trying to find a quick way to get troubling social history out of the picture so we can get on with the good stuff as most gamers would prefer they do. Deadlands includes an even shorter section explaining that sexism too is all but forgotten in their alternate vision of 1879.

Consider, also, an example from the excellent small-press game Colonial Gothic. CG is set in a Revolutionary America beset by secret conspiracies and occult powers. The game spends a lot of time trying to get the details of their setting right. They delve deeply into social customs, clothing, transportation, religion, and the political structures of the day. It's a wonderful game set in a criminally underused period of history for adventure gaming. But on page 45 we find this:

"Your hero's gender matters less than his name or even age, but it is still important. Colonial Gothic assumes that there is little to no discrimination based on gender. For example, it is just as likely that the head of a family is a woman as a man. That said, human beings being what they are, men and women relate to one another differently and there is little reason to assume a lack of discrimination will totally eliminate the recognition of gender differences. If you choose to make your hero a man or woman, you may encounter certain benefits or hindrances that you would not have if you were the opposite gender."

With a stroke, they turn an otherwise robust and accurate historical setting into an extreme vision of alternate history, and a very sexist vision at that.

'Sexist' may sound like a strong word, but I think it accurately describes such a setting. Please note that I am most certainly *not* implying any kind of bigotry on the part of the authors. I'm certain they were actually trying to create just the opposite in their setting. But when you create a historical setting that adheres to the history of our world in all ways except the inclusion of gender discrimination, you have made a world in which men hold all the positions of political, social, and religious power for some reason other than discrimination. This is now a world in which women have simply abdicated willingly from playing an equal role in society. One in which women can objectively be said to be men's inferiors because of such a willing abdication of power. By way of example: if discrimination doesn't exist is the world of CG, why don't the patriots have any Founding Mothers in their Continental Congress?

This is the sort of pitfall that awaits historical gaming which tries to do away with the uncomfortable elements of social history. We end up saying things through our games that we really didn't intend. Deadlands tries to sidestep this sort of problem by employing alternate history but this still doesn't get them completely off the hook of this dilemma. We must be aware that such alternate time lines do make certain passive suggestions about how history could have played out and that such thinking tends to massively underplay just how important the ugly parts of history were in shaping the culture of their times. When we can easily picture the past without its ugly side, we tend to forget about those who struggled so hard to give us the changed world we live in now.

Or as the Call of Cthulhu rulebook says: "To preclude information about earlier eras (or about this one) dishonors the memory of those who prized freedom, fairness, and opportunity, perhaps long before we were born." Certainly the CoC quote at the start of this post mentions that some games may not find such elements germane to a given scenario. There's no need to cram such material down player's throats in every game. But CoC insists that we are not free to simply edit the history as we like. We owe the past (and those who live there) a bit more recognition than that.


I'll save discussion of how to work with troubling social realities in classroom gaming for a future post. This one seems to have gotten a bit longer than I intended.