The Rest of All Possible Worlds: The Wrong End of the Staff

There are two things that prompted the writing of this. The first thing is a few recent posts by noisms on the problems of writing from the point of view of humans in a fantasy - or even pre-Englightenment - setting. Of course,  TRoAPW is specifically an Enlightenment or Enlightenment-equivalent setting. So, how does one avoid writing a setting in which everyone sounds.....suspiciously reasonable and modern?

First of all, of course, our own age is post-Englightenment. Quite when it became 'post' varies, I think, with how you judge such things. In literature, the ideas of Modernism post-Great War suggests a world where the settled march of scientific knowledge and Whig history is interrupted by the death and devastation of the Western Front. Of course, nobody told the architects: witness the square, 'rational' designs and 'machines for living' of Le Corbusier. This is to say nothing of the grand schemes of the post-war 1940s: social democracy, the centrally-planned welfare state and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - all of which must, I think, count the Enlightenment among their forebears. Still, there is a sense of distance between us and the Enlightenment that would make the magical Enlightenment of TRoAPW as if not more distant.

Secondly, change does not occur equally. TRoAPW positions its Enlightenment as taking place mainly on one continent: Calliste. Even there, it might be centred around a few states or a few cities or a few social groups. My mind goes to Manola's Own Private WFRP (see Points One and Two): 

'There's a Renaissance in progress! The cities are growing. The economy is booming. The tax receipts are up. .... The progress celebrated by the elites is real, but it has been purchased at a terrifying price in social dislocation and human suffering.' 

Even in the compact and politically active Datravia, not everyone is going to be up-to-date and alert and with it (whatever it may be). I've written enough about the Majestic Vision to suggest that it is still a meaningful force in Calliste. 

The second thing is that TRoAPW was in part suggested by the idea of being wrong about things - hence 'White-Hot Sparks from the Crucible of the Enlightenment'. Are you a brief speck of light and heat, or are you part of the final product? When we're talking about a process occurring across an entire continent, you might well be going down one of the dead ends of the maze. 

The suggestion of Voltaire's over-optimistic Pangloss in the title is no error! You might be going as far wrong as he is in Candide. Indeed, if Valentine Sims and Principia Arcana are the most influential and important product of Calliste's Enlightenment (they quite specifically are not!) it should be possible for Our Heroes to encounter 'That irritating little squirt Sims who's always barking up the wrong tree' and get written into the popular history books two centuries later as narrow-minded dunderheaded hidebound reactionaries! I've written it before: It's all the discarded ideas and first efforts and groundwork that contributed, bundled up and dressed in a periwig.

Indeed, when building up the ideas for TRoAPW and the magical debates ongoing in Calliste I did contemplate writing in a few Red Herrings. Eventually, I decided this wasn't necessary. Firstly, some schools of thought (e.g, Ante-Grimoireans) are wilder than others anyway and can act as potential implausible explanations. 

Secondly, a number of the debates I was writing up weren't about anything as solid as (say) the orbit of the planets or the circulatory system - how one divides up Spells for use by human wizards isn't something one can answer in a mathematically correct manner. This isn't to say that a GM can't say that in their Calliste (to take a side at random) the Polycameralists have it mostly right and their opponents are wrong, but I have no wish to put that rule in place.

Thirdly, in my experience RPG players are quite good at picking the wrong end of the stick all by themselves. When it's something as open as TRoAPW rather than a mystery solving game like Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, perhaps best not to through additional obstacles into their way. 

In addition to Pangloss, of course, there's meant to be a sense of possibility in TRoAPW. The Bastille has been stormed - now the future of France is wide open, and you are right there in the heart of Paris! You are a participant, not a tourist - Cf. Faufreluches - and unlike the rulers of Lakoto, you can make some bloody stupid decisions. 

Fine, some conclusions:

1. Even setting magic aside, the TRoAPW point of view should be in almost equal parts as like and as unlike to a modern PoV. There might even be an 'Uncanny Valley' effect - the reformers of Calliste trying so hard to be capital-M modern without succeeding that they end up becoming somehow repellant.
2. Players coming up with half-baked schemes is right in the spirit of TRoAPW. Players getting it utterly wrong is right in the spirit of TRoAPW.
3. You might be part of a movement with some overall positive effects - that doesn't mean you're a paragon of virtue.
     Likewise, that Calliste is presently free of Thirty Years War-style religious conflict does not mean it is free of strife.