Historical RPG's have been around since the 1980's -- I remember seeing advertisements for them, in Dragon Magazine. However, I never really gave them much thought before.
I have a historical gaming group who has many members who call themsleves, "Rivet Counters," because they know so many details of the history of WW II, Napoleon, etc. It never occurred to me that a historical RPG might appeal to them, until now.
They have run black powder imagi-nation games with fictitious European kingdoms, in the past. They are all RPG'ers playing D&D, but they've never played a historical RPG. I don't think they ever made a connection that they could make such a jump…
I shared your article with them. I think it would be a blast to be a player in one of their games. They have sooo much knowledge of the history of so many battles. I am not a Rivet Counter, but I think it would be fun to see them roll out their story lines, to discuss where we, the players, had deviated from history. I think they would have a blast with it.
On top of that, I believe they would come up with cross-over games: big battle miniatures games on tabletop, with our RPG characters in play on the table (I do this with my fantasy RPG characters getting tabletop time in fantasy mass battles).
I think the idea of historical RPG's has more potential than I ever realized before. This could really become a bridge between historical gamers, and fantasy gamers, creating some common ground between them. Cheers!
