Just a quick discussion thread about how much you prefer your saga to conform to history and what you do if you introduce something ahistoric but important to the saga.
In my (albeit limited number of) games I have been the primary storyguide and researched to my hearts content about the immediate area of the covenant and several dozen kilometers in each direction. With the detail slowly dropping off to effectively just international affairs of kings if there is more than a couple modern countries in the way.
Since my players tend to never follow a straight line, even one they drew themselves, there were several characters and events made up on the spot which on further reading turn out to be fully inaccurate. My approach then is to essentially say that nothing is guaranteed to happen that has not already happened in-game, and anything that happened after the start of the saga is probably only going to follow the general path of history. as written and interpreted by a busy student tying to get a passing grade.
But seeing as my approximately 1 year of storyguide is certainly a pittance compared to some and barely a drop in the ocean of the entire community I am interested to see your approaches.
Considering how many historical details are unknown, it is impossible to get 100% historical accuracy no matter how hard one tries.
Player characters interfering in events can easily cause a saga to diverge from recorded history, and that is perfectly fine. There is nothing which says history has to play out just the same in your saga as it did in reality.
As to how much historical research is the right amount, that is very much a matter of taste.
Getting the names of kings and popes right, as well as the years they ruled, that is doable.
Finding even the names of every little minor noble is generally not doable with reasonable amount of effort, so making up some of those from thin air is just fine.
A couple of the published source books, Hermetic Projects and Transforming Mystic Europe, are actually focused on things that can cause a break from history. TME especially can completely change things. The you have Dies Irae in which all of its adventures would cause a major change to history. Several of the other books have adventures, stories, and hooks that would cause local changes to history.
ME also differs in that things like "Magic is real", "Laws of physics are different", "Supernatural beings exist", and "lesser 'gods' exist". Paganism had almost completely died off IRL by 1220 for example. In ME it would still be a minor player but most likely in the single digits % of the population, since there are actual (Magic Realm) and fake (Faerie) gods which actually do provide effects. Hellenism had been dead for a long time IRL, but in ME there is a group of Faerie 'Gods' in published material and it still exist as a (very minor) faith.
History should give you the basis of your world before play begins. Names, places, cultures, languages, etc. However after the start of play things do not have to follow history. If they do or do not depends both on the actions of your players and the desired direction of the Saga.
Use published history for settings and ideas, but do not be afraid to completely break from it for your story.
History gives me plot hooks, and the starting state, but the story emerges from that and wrecks history immediately on the local level, and increasingly on the regional and national level as the characters age, sometimes reaching world-level changes.
My 1st Crusade campaign is highly researched and initially "historical" but due to the PC's actions became Alternate history very quickly. And not realistic due to constant magical shenanigans.
I like historical accuracy just to make a common backstory. In other words, there is no need to make the saga historically more accurate than the players' knowledge of history. OK, a little research is useful, to cover what the players' are likely to look up when they get the idea, but all the research I do not have time to do, would not add that much more value anyway.
OTOH. I do like the authentic mood, which makes inns with private rooms and artificial lighting very sparse.
I like very high historical accuracy, it is a big draw for me. I use historic events both as a lively tapestry in the background but also as hooks. I have a big file with plenty of events that happened year bybyear in the region and i drop them as rumours. Real life events such as the dwath of Engelbert of Cologne are the opportunity to have stories and similarly, knowing what events have happened (and when) lets the PC's (magical) actions be the catalyst for these events, for example: why did a massive crop failure led to famine in 1225? Because the PCs let out a famine demon while investigating a location connected to a 10th century famine.
How do you go about this? What if, for example, they had re-captured the demon, would the famine still happen.
I feel that this approach would (at least in my hands) never go well enough according to history that it would practically never work. In this case do you just have the event happen normally as it would in real history?
That is a simple case of misdirecting the players: If they don't destroy the demon, the famine is a result, & they are at fault; if they do destroy the demon, the famine happens, but would have been much worse, & they are heroes.
Very much like Medusa, my troupe and I are big fans of historical accuracy too.
Part of our play contract is that history will appear to unfold as in history books. This is not an "explicit" rule. It's just that the Storyguide will nudge things so that big stuff will go in a certain way (and delicate but consistent nudging can exert a powerful push), and players tend to have their characters opt for choices that maintain historical accuracy.
Of course, characters can alter historical facts that are "small enough" that we no longer know about them. They can make facts adhere to "mythic", rather than real, history (including legends of supernatural feats etc.). They can also change history, even in major ways, while leaving appearances unchanged - for example, replacing a king with an impostor.
We've found this to be a lot of Tim-Poweresque fun. It also saves a lot of effort on long sagas, as we can keep using Mythic Europe not just as a starting point, but as a constant consistent backdrop for our stories. Finally, it makes adjudicating large-scale prophecies very easy
In my opinion, history provides an extremely rich and detailed background that no single author could come up with. Lord of the Rings or A Song of Ice and Fire is nothing compared to what history can give us. Lots of minor nobles with changing alliances, rivalries, family ties and ambitions - it can be overwhelming. In addition, there are so many glaring holes in what we know, due to lack of documents, that you can easily adapt the setting to your needs by substituting your imagination for what we don't know. I like to delve deep into local history, even if it's a lot harder to research.
The repercussion of player's actions depend heavily on the saga. If they try to keep out of mundane affairs and are mostly involved with faeries and other magi, researching forgotten cults to extend hermetic limits etc., then history will not be influenced. If players are bent on saving Philip of Swabia or influence papal elections, you're into alternate history territory. It's not my cup of tea but I know that some people really enjoy that. You should probably discuss beforehand whether players want to change the course of history.
That raises another interesting question. Suppose the troupe agrees on not playing a predestined game, and the saga lasts until 1349. How do you deal with it?
The black death is a big enough deal that it would be worth discussing OOC with the party: must it happen? Can it be cured with magic? Do you just follow the dies irae senario?
Or maybe you don't discuss it and let events in tge Tribunal of Novgorod along with the Order's response to the increased rate of famines in the early 14th century dictate where the Black Plague strikes and how severely.
So maybe the seige if Kaffa is not the first strike but something in the Levant Tribunal instead and it gets litterally telegraphed by red caps...
I have never considered running a game that reaches the Black Death, but I can certainly see how the Order being able to spam +9 to recovery rolls really would mess with the plague...
I have about as much experience as you, by the sound of it. For the first half of your question, it varies. I like the book's point that taking positive features of history and making them central is better than stressing over errors, and I have less knowledge of history than many fans on here. I generally do a decent amount of research before starting a saga, once I know where we want to set it. I've also run a lot of one-shots, and I do a lot less work for those, generally just using some authentic medieval stuff as background to a more mythic-centered story.
As for what happens if they introduce something ahistorical, I roll with it unless it's easy to nudge things back on course. Often it is easy - my view of Mythic Europe's history is that things pan out as they do because supernatural beings cancel each other out a lot of the time. If magi push on one end of the lever, there may well be something else pushing on the other
These two fit nicely together. If I ever ran a saga that reached the Black Death I'd almost certainly make it more deadly than it really was so that when magic (including divine magic answering people's prayers for relief as well as the magic of the Order and various non-Hermetic traditions) it roughly balances out to the historical state of affairs.
It may just be all the discworld I have read, but I don't think that the order would have a concentrated movement to stop the plague.
At least in my games, maybe the immediate surrounding of a covenant would get some help but the magi would probably just heal their own, most likely with enchanted items so they wouldn't need to interact with the sick masses.
A 99% survival rate is still 1% death and if you could avoid that with a couple months of lab work I know what option I would take.
So I don't think that the Black Death would need to be much more deadly than it was to have a similar impact, unless the PCs start rolling out massive aid packages that is.
