In classic tabletop roleplaying games, the default setting is something Tolkein-ish: a ‘medieval’ setting but without the ongoing tension between Christianity and Islam. Tolkein set the template, creating a shockingly deep lore and vivid setting. Dozens of fine authors have built out a very comprehensive and slightly diverse ‘palette’ in which we assume chivalric ethics, swords as the dominant weapon, with kings, castles, and plate-mail. For roleplaying, the great advantage of having this shared palette is that players imagine this world, and therefore imagine what they can do in that setting. Game-masters can emphasize the differences of their particular setting and campaign-arc, but use that assumed palette as a short-hand to help them imagine the setting.
I have always been uncomfortable with this implied setting. That discomfort has increased as I have come to regard Tolkein as an apologist for aristocratic privilege (why should Aragorn become the King of Gondor? Had he established his credibility with the people? No: his sole qualification was his ancestry. He was ‘superior’ to other men; an ubermensch).
The Eberron and Dark Sun campaign settings from Wizards of the Coast depart the most from this array of tropes. The Dark Sun setting is a little too dark for me; the powerful agents of Athas are actively evil. But the Eberron setting is fascinating, because it draws on the steampunk asethetic and because Keith Baker asked a great question: if a society were able to harness reliable spellcasting, wouldn’t that lead to a type of industrial revolution? What would an arcano-tech society look like? Furthermore, rather than a setting where technology and politics remain unchanged for thousands of years, wouldn’t it be more appropriate to start campaigns in one specific year? Wouldn’t there be many recent innovations and advancements that were still in the process of transforming society? More recent fiction is beginning to lean in this direction, such as the Dishonored video-game and Arcane: League of Legends–and so a new palette is being built.
John Harper focused very specifically on late-Victorian London for his game, Blades in the Dark. I admire his work, but like Dark Sun, I find it too grim to imagine as a Game Host. Dead Lands also focuses on the late 19th century, with an extremely amusing satirical take on the Wild West. I will draw on both. But rather than vague referencing of ‘the late 1800s,’ I want to focus on a very specific year:
1892
Why this year? Because it has a very specific relationship to our present. For several years we have all been wondering about the specific moment in time that right-wing cultists have been referring to when they say we should ‘make America great again.’ It seemed like it was 1978, when boomers where young, and sexism and racism were acceptable public behavior. But increasingly, it appears to be an aspiration for a time when there were no income taxes (pre-1913), no public schools (pre-1900), no regulatory agencies (pre-1903), when oligarchs (robber-barons) ruled the land and union-agitation was attacked by private militias (1880s &1890s). It is a dystopian setting, in which the elites (then as now) can be understood as actively harmful and so privileged that they cannot even imagine the cruelty that they inflict upon the poor. A protracted financial crisis began in 1893 that was so severe it provoked the Progressive-Era reforms for clean government, universal education, taxing the rich, and anti-Trust regulation; these reforms ended that ‘gilded’ age. Starting with Nixon, increasingly with Reagan, and most explicitly under Trump, right-wing American cultists seek to repeal all the reforms of the past 130 years. Replace public schools with home-schooling; repeal income-tax and rely again on tariffs; reject scientific research and impose occult healthcare; reject equal treatment under the law and embrace a cult of celebrities and elite corruption. We are heading back to the dystopia of the ‘gilded age’ with the enthusiastic support of MAGA cultists. So let us get familiar with that era in detail, to remind our fellow Americans what a lovely time that was. Fortunately, it is an era with many vivid cultural elements which we can use as our palette for tabletop roleplay:
Top-hats, bowlers, bonnets, and flat-caps; vests, long-coats, capes, and shawls; pocket-watches, tower-clocks, and grandfather clocks; carriages, railroads, and dirigibles; parliamentary republics, constitutional monarchies, and militarist despotates; tenements, apartments, and mansions; scientific experimentation and mysticism; newspapers, books, and telegraphs; clipper-ships, packet steamers, and steam-boats; factories, poor-houses, soup-kitchens, and gala balls. Villains might speak of the ‘civilizing mission’ of colonial conquest and other appalling bigotries.
Roleplaying games can go in many different directions, drawing from this Gilded Age palette. One option would be for a ‘third industrial revolution’ in which occultists discover (or unleash) arcane magic upon the world, leading to a setting like Eberron or Runeterra (League of Legends), or Miyazaki’s setting for Howl’s Moving Castle. Steampunk settings also draw upon this palette. The Gilded Age has an uncanny resemblance to the 2020s, which can be a boundless source of dramatic tension. It was an era of competing newspapers; and people all read ‘hardcopy.’ Locating individuals was difficult because all records were kept on paper, and most citizens had very little formal documentation. No comprehensive school system, so no records of children. No comprehensive public health system, so no vaccination records. No national healthcare…oh, yeah, we still haven’t implemented that. We are not literally repeating that past, but the parallels are so strong that we can use them for pointed satire as we game.