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Pope Francis (R) meets Robert Matthew
Festing,
Prince and Grand Master of the Sovereign Order of Malta
during a
private audience at the Vatican June 23, 2016.
REUTERS/Gabriel Bouys/Pool/Files
|
This Reuters Article
grabbed my attention. In part that was because we don't hear much about
the Knights of Malta (or the Hospitallers) as a religious order with
power, wealth, and status. For the average American their only
connection with the Knights is likely to be some vague recollection of
them being the source for the McGuffin in the movie version of the
Maltese Falcon. In part it struck me as a reminder that the Catholic
Church is not now (and never was) a uniform, homogeneous, monolithic
organization with one goal and one aim.
The more I read of history, the
more I find easy simplification misleading if not flat out impossible.
Understanding and then accurately representing historical factions are
two things I find challenging in gaming. Many of the issues that were
important to people back in the day are have become passe or even
incomprehensible to us today. And factions are frequently linked to the
politics of the great houses and royalty or used by those houses in ways
that make easy analysis and representation impossible. The factions of
days gone and their concerns are likely to strike us far more like the
silliness of the Big and Little Ender factions in Gulliver's Travels.
The factions of his day that Swift was satirizing are long gone from our
popular consciousness rendering his satire opaque and silly to us
rather than bitingly sarcastic and topical as he intended.
In my Honor+Intrigue campaign I've used lists, handouts, and diagrams to convey and display information to my players.
GMs what have you used to convey to the players what their characters would know of the issues and factions in your campaign setting?
Players what have you found helpful or unhelpful to your understanding of issues and factions in the campaigns you've played in?
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