Historical Accuracy in Grimmsdorf

Mike Caputo, July 19th 2017

Grimmsdorf is set in a world that straddles the borders between fantasy and reality. In a world of magicks and taking animals, what place could there be for historical accuracy?

To answer this, we need to step back in time to the original tales recorded by the Grimm Brothers. Before they were put down into paper, they were oral stories. And most oral stories have some roots in reality.

The tales were recorded in a pre-industrial age, when people lived more closely with nature and the rhythms of the seasons — a relationship that was not always in harmony. The hardships presented in the stories — hunger, poverty, orphaned children — were often a chronicle of real events. A harsh winter, a year of bad harvest, an inattentive local ruler, or even a parent suffering an illness or an injury — for a people living on the edge, sometimes it wouldn’t take much to push a family or a whole region into crisis.

We wanted to have these aspects represented in the game; to remind the players that the tales were not pure fantasy, but a product of a time and place that was very familiar with real hardship. Goldilocks chopping wood for winter’s warmth? Cinderella braving the unknown wilds, looking for food? Yes — because these were the real worlds that inspired the stories to begin with. The fantasies of royalty, castles, and magick were just that: escapist fantasies for a people who sometimes lived in misery and abject poverty.

Aside from the generalities, there is specific historic evidence that reënforce these notions of a world in hardship. Historians have identified a period called the Great Famine of 1315–1317, wherein excessive summer rains — for several years in a row — resulted in widespread crop failures and persistent food scarcity source. With less sophisticated food storage techniques, and no access to birth control, populations could spike in a few decades and then the agricultural output would not keep pace. In these situations, is it too much to imagine some of the scenarios presented in the stories: hungry families, abandoned children wandering the wilds, even fears of cannibalism?

These are ghastly notions, but we wanted to be sure they were present in the game. We think that maintaining harsh but realistic elements in the game adds to the believable atmosphere, without detracting from the fantastical aspects of the world. We hope players will come away from Grimmsdorf with a more nuanced understanding of the real-world hardships underpinning many fairy tales.

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Grimmsdorf is a fully coöperative, storytelling/ exploration/ town-building game set in an isolated fairytale forest. Visit us at grimmsdorf.com

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