Seriously. Every form of entertainment has baked-in political assumptions, and that definitely includes #ttrpg . You might choose not to examine them, but this is an active choice on your part, and you don’t get to pretend that your entertainment is “free of politics”.
EVERYTHING is politics and the shitheads who complain are the ones who made it that way.
Do the world and yourself a favor, and use this template instead.
Done. Thanks for the suggestion!
What template was he using before?
Steven Crowder
This douchebag isn’t exactly the most appropriate for this meme.
This template really needs to die.
Your comment now serms hilariously hostile after the edit.
He changed it to Calvin, but this comment is hilarious now.
Now it’s like…
This comment is really funny now that OP is using the new format, please leave it up.
Hah, gotta edit it at least a bit. I’ll leave the original viewable.
I came here after the edit and got scared that Watterson did something.
When I say “I don’t want politics in my gaming,” I mean it literally.
Like, I don’t care for the Star Wars prequels because they spend a lotta time just doing politics instead of space battles.
I don’t wanna sit through boring ass senate sessions listening to motions and passing votes. I wanna blow shit up!
Prequels? You don’t think the original Star Wars had tons of politics in it?
So, you want less bureaucracy and more warfare? That’s a pretty bold political statement right there. I’m sure there’s nothing political about war.
Imagine if you had to file paperwork for every demon killed in Doom. You’d practically never be killing demons after the first level because of all fhe paperwork from all the demons you killed in the first level!
Nah, you’d just write up the first level in an Incident Report covering multiple dead demons. And more to the point, both bureaucracy and warfare are forms of politics, so killing demons is still a form of politics, with or without paperwork.
Let me introduce you to Spec Ops the Line. A game where wanting to blow stuff up is the political statement.
So you don’t like narratives involving politics. That’s a very different statement to “I don’t want politics in my gaming.”
I think there’s a middle ground where the game ‘world’ can acknowledge there are political maneuverings happening, while not forcing you to track the shipments of food and goods so you can squeeze nobles who depend on certain economic routes into complying with the king’s orders to rally troops for a cause.
Bounty orders style campaigns are fun for a short while, but there’s only so many ‘go here, kill x, biggest change is the layout of the dungeon and enemy vulnerabilities’ before the game sessions all bleed into one long blurry dice roll. That’s close to warhammer/battletech/etc territory. I want a real story to go with the campaign, and that necessitates a ‘politics’ somewhere unless you’re playing one of the barbarian/end-of-the-world games where there is no civilization or npcs at all aside from enemies.
But I think we can all agree that the “politics” of motions and passing votes is not what was being addressed by OP.
I feel like a lot of people, who complain about politics in gaming are not choosing to examine/not examine the political assumptions, they are simply not realising that they’re there. Often these themes reside deeper in the storytelling so you have to actually engage with it to be aware of them. People who complain about it only choose a handful of topics to be mad about, because they are against it.
Exactly. What they’re really mad about is the fact that there’s a black person, a gay person, or woman with normal sized tits in the game.
I hate normal sized tits!
/s Just in case 😄
normal sized tits are such a rarity
No. Their politics is being default to the point they can completely avoid self awareness.
That may be the case for some people, but a lot of people just want some good lighthearted fun without any of the real world implications attached to it. This obviously doesn’t excuse bigoted mindsets. I’m talking about campaigns where me and my players just want to do some good old goblin slaying without the need for anyone to chime in with a “UM actshually those goblins have families too”.
Easy moral patch: These specific goblins have all made unambiguously evil choices that warrant a good slaying. Like kicking dogs. You’re not slaying goblins because they’re goblins, you’re slaying dog-kickers that happen to be goblins. There are plenty of goblins who do not kick dogs, but they’re not a part of this fight.
This is still a political statement that dog kickers are evil. I doubt anyone would mind that, and those that do are better off leaving my table anyway.
Or, you know. We could just ignore those pseudo-moral excuses and do some good old goblin slaying because they’re in the dungeon, laying traps and we want the loot. Not everything needs 12 layers of logical depth. Sure, it’s fun to explore moral implications from time to time, but more often than not, no one cares.
But you’re making the statement that it’s okay to kill people if you want their stuff. The politics are there even if you don’t choose to examine them.
No, I’m not. Because my mental development moved past three years old and I’m able to differentiate reality from fiction. Do you also believe that Super Mario players advocate for animal cruelty towards turtles?
I mean the statement is being made within the universe. Super Mario does advocate for violence against koopas. You don’t have to examine it, but that doesn’t make it apolitical.
Have you taken any literature or maybe other media classes at the 200 level?
Sometimes people say really weird things and I wonder if they just don’t know any better. Maybe they’re a teenager.
But like “fact from fiction” is irrelevant here. No one’s saying Dracula is non-fiction, but you can still read it and take meaning from the text. Furthermore, it’s not just a story about a guy who bites people. The read on how women are expected to behave is pretty obvious, for example.
You don’t have to care about the subtext of “kill all the goblins and take their stuff”, but saying there is no subtext or “no one cares” is absurd and self-centered.
That’s an interesting point you make and I partly agree. There are certain undertones and sometimes you can create a better story by engaging these undertones and creating a monster in noble clothing and a metaphor for the societal corset women are forced ro wear.
But other times I just want to enjoy a trash movie or 15$ airport library book. And the undertones there are purely accidental and shouldn’t be taken too seriously.
Both forms of entertainment serve their purpose and you can insist on pointing out the political statements and societal undertones in a cheap slasher movie. but that doesn’t make you smart or enlightened. It just makes you an ass who enjoys shitting on other people’s lighthearted entertainment.
And one last note: “‘fact from fiction’ is irrelevant here”. No, it’s not. If someone accuses me of encouraging mindless slaughter of people based on some regular dungeon crawling, then it does matter. Because that’s exactly the idiotic killer games argument of the early 2000s that has been disproved 100s of times! Killing goblins in a ttrpg has absolutely nothing to do with any moral standpoints I hold outside of the game and only an idiot would believe otherwise!
Aren’t goblins ontologically evil in most DND settings? That should take care of that specific issue anyway.
Nah, they’ve long fallen to the usual cycle of “here is a species of interesting antagonistic creatures” -> “Oh wow, that sounds interesting. I want to play them” -> “Yeah sure, here’s a playbale variant of that species. We’ve removed all traces of evilness and uniqueness because god forbid players playing evil characters”. Same as Drow, Orcs, Fairies and Goliath.
It’s not just their inherent evil nature BTW. It’s also stuff like daylight sensitivity.
I mean I can understand having occasional exceptions to the rule so the players can get an interesting non standard experience, but straight evil aligned critters should always be present in fantasy settings especially ttrpg and DND specifically.
I’m not sure about always. That’s just lazy world building to have orcs naturally evil instead of predominantly mind controlled or ruled by evil leaders or some sort of blood fued. It’s the same with good aligned races. Unless you want to focus on the definition of good and evil.
“I don’t want to talk about/see politics” is always synonym to “I support the status quo, and I will aggressively reject anything that goes against it”.
Nothing that happens on a public space is free of politics, even when it’s not controversial.
I don’t like politics in ttrpgs because that means less time SMITING and more time with boring words. Unless the politicians are secretly vampires, then I can keep SMITING.
NO TALK ONLY SMITE.
This post has been brought to you by the palabian gang.
Anything they see in there that goes against their DESIRED status quo they don’t like cause it reminds them all how their shit stinks and they aren’t really all that smart or morally sound. Cause if they were, they wouldn’t have identified with any that stuff to begin with.
And it makes them know the cringe at how they’re viewed (but they say its just how they’re PORTRAYED to pass the buck on being that way being their own fault and indicative of their lack of talent and lack of any real character)
Just MLK’s white moderate doing white moderate things. Funny how shit don’t change.
It usually means they don’t want anything but the status quo.
I don’t care about politics in my games (and shows/movies) as long as it fits into the world and into the story. A TV show examples for that is Torchwood. It has to be the most gay scify show (at least it is the most gay I know) but all of it fits together and I love the show, even as a totaly hetero/cis guy. It doesn’t feel forced but is just how everything just it. Not sure if I can explain it good, hope it is somewhat to understand.
I learned after the fact, that most of Torchwood is just how John Barrowman is. He insisted on having a scene with a shirtless Stephen Amell in Arrow as well.
Maybe that why it feels so “real” and “authentic” and not just forced onto the story.
I haven’t actually seen Torchwood, but I am skeptical that it could possibly be gayer than my beloved Sense8.
I do like that era of Doctor Who though, so maybe I should check this out for myself…
If it has a story it’s political
If it involves people it’s political.
I’m very curious what political message shapez is sending. It’s a factory building game that takes place in a seeming void where magical shapes appear out of nowhere and then simply get thrown into what appears to be a black hole there’s no particular discernible story or message just a fun puzzle
Ghost of Tsushima:
A Samurai and several of his battle-ready female companions try to reclaim their island after Mongol invasion.
I remember thinking “did they really have female warriors and lords back then who called the shots and fought alongside the men? I like the message, but a bit of realism would be nice…”
And then our brave stoic rugged Samurai literally prostrates himself in front of his lord/uncle at every opportunity constantly grovelling and professing how unworthy he is and how he seeks only to serve, and then I’m thinking “oh yeah… the stoic Samurai is a trope, they were either small militias or snivelling arms of the state.”
So I’m okay with realism being bent if it means I’m not constantly questioning the values of my main character.
I’m not super familiar with either the game or Japanese history, but I found this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onna-musha
It seems that women were regarded more equally prior to confucianism.
The page for the game says:
Jin’s samurai armor and katana are not historically accurate, with his armor based on that of the Sengoku period during the 16th and 17th centuries. According to Chris Zimmerman, one of Sucker Punch’s cofounders, samurai armor from the 13th century was “jarring looking” and did not align with players’ expectations of what samurai armor would look like.
Totally-not-samurai-looking armor:
It means “I don’t believe in anything and my media must reflect the status quo of (my) politics or I will throw a little baby tantrum because you dared to make me think about the cost of the comfort I enjoy”
“Politics” or “the way one sees the world”?
Because I’m pretty sure there’s a language disconnect regarding worldview.
A dev has their game reflect their worldview, and a social curmudgeon experiences political rhetoric cognitive dissonance, illustrating the incongruency and the fact that they are, indeed, a tool. ARRGHHH MUH FREEDOMS
It’s a classic case is “What I do is my world view, what you do is politics.” Maybe sometimes the more radical variant “What I do is reality, what you do is politics.”
You know, like the older version of that, “What I do is religion, what you do is superstition.”
When talking to people, especially on the right side of the political spectrum, it’s sadly quite common that people cannot separate their opinion from reality.
“faith based”
It means “I don’t want politics that I don’t agree with in the game”
calvin >>>>>>>> that conservative cunt
