Interactive History Rules

The Interactive History concept was introduced in the Aria gameline. Instead of persons (or in addition to persons) the players would play whole societies. The way this differs from, for example, playing Civilization (or any other game of strategy) is that the culture is given the highlight. The rules given by Aria for IH provide a rough way to resolve military but, more importantly, also social and political conflicts. The results are highly interpretative: to really work they need to be fleshed out by the players and the GM. This means some work, but when done, it gives a highly enjoyable gaming experience!

In short, the idea of interactive history is to let each player play the government, or the ruling agency, of the society of their choice. Besides nations, the players may choose to lead other kinds of societies: secret societies, or churches. Or they may play key persons in the game: master tradesmen, powerful barons, heroes or saints. The player has several options to do. They can:

• expand their country by war or diplomacy
• increase their own power in their country
• or, and this is the most fun, change the culture of their country: guide the path of a nation from barbaric kingdom to an advanced peace-loving democracy - or the other way around

The dice system provided by Aria is obscure, and for this and other reasons, I decided to try to convert the IH mechanics to FUDGE.