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”.
man I just wanna play my lyre and have an adventure and have fun. I don’t wanna argue over politics. I game to get away from all that.
I think it’s ok to want to have some space between stuff.
The point is that there are politics in your game, like it or not. Whether you make them a central focus is another story entirely.
yep they exist. but I don’t need to solely focus on them. and this entire thread seems to be people saying that fact over and over again. (as you just did as well)
is there some kind of meme I missed or something? I’m confused as to why there’s so much hostility in the comments.
This comment answers it better than I can - https://beehaw.org/post/24101893/5457340
The hostility comes from the fact that for many, their existence is “political”. When people say “I don’t want politics in my game” it often means that they don’t want to consider the existence of those people.
all art is inherently political but going on an adventure kind of necessarily includes some type of obstacle and/or strife and the second anybody chooses an obstacle it is hella political
calvin >>>>>>>> that conservative cunt
People do not all have the same working definition of “politics”. Many people seem to use it to mean “overt content about contemporary issues”, but that’s not really a good definition.
If your game has sentient creatures with agency and desires, it has politics.
For example, if your game has a king, there’s politics. Having the people accept monarchy is a political statement. It’s not as hot-button as, say, having slavery, but it’s still political.
You might not be surprised if your players react to a world with chattel slavery by trying to free the slaves and end that institution. The same mechanism may lead them to want to end absolute monarchy. They see something in the setting they perceive as unjust, and want to change it.
A lot of people are kind of… uncritical, about many things. They don’t see absolute monarchy as “political” because it’s a familiar story trope. They are happy to accept this uncritically so they can get to the fun part where you get a quest to slay the dragon. (Note that the target of killing the dragon rather than, say, negotiating or rehoming it is also political)
People then get frustrated because they feel stupid, and they’re being blocked from pursuing the content they want. They just want to, for example, do a tactical mini game about fighting a big monster that spits fire. They don’t want to talk about the merits of absolute monarchy or slaying sentient creatures.
It’s okay to not always want to engage in the political dimension. That doesn’t mean it’s not there. If someone responds to the king giving you a quest with “wait, this is an absolute monarchy where the first born son becomes king? That’s fucked up” they’re not “making it political”. It already was political.
If you present a man and a woman as monogamously married in your game, that’s political. That’s a statement. If you show a big queer polycule, that’s also a statement. The latter will ping the aforementioned uncritical players as “political”, because it’s more atypical, but both are “political”.
Some of this can be handled in session 0. But sometimes you learn that some people in the group have different tastes and probably shouldn’t play together.
“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.
Just MLK’s white moderate doing white moderate things. Funny how shit don’t change.
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)
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.
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?
Let me introduce you to Spec Ops the Line. A game where wanting to blow stuff up is the political statement.
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.
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.
So you don’t like narratives involving politics. That’s a very different statement to “I don’t want politics in my gaming.”
Feels kind of ironic using Chowder for this meme, but I agree with the message :P
Respectfully; if we aren’t close and it doesn’t come up organically in game, I’m super not interested in hearing political opinions in games. While they may have some degree of politics baked in, that doesn’t mean Im interested in hearing people interpretation of them beyond gameplay. I play games to relax and socialise in a friendly, respectful setting.
That includes if I agree. I see this “if they don’t, they agree with the status quo/don’t want to deal/etc” used frequently but people who borderline grandstand in front of people who they know likely share their view are insufferable. At least that been my experience the one time someone has brought up politics at a table. Then again I avoid public/rand tables for a reason these days. Not saying all political discussion goes thay way at a table but the image just paints it in a very binary manner.
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.
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”.
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.
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?
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!
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.
No. Their politics is being default to the point they can completely avoid self awareness.
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.
normal sized tits are such a rarity
I hate normal sized tits!
/s Just in case 😄
Do the world and yourself a favor, and use this template instead.
What template was he using before?
Steven Crowder
Done. Thanks for the suggestion!
RPGs, much like SF, have always been a mechanism to explore social issues in philosophy, governance, and thought. In Human society I don’t personally believe that “politics” can be avoided in any group anywhere. —of course that’s just one man’s opinion.
You can assign politics to anything, so it really up to you to bring that in.
If you are going to allow yourself to get testicular torsion over a gender swapped character or having to play a character that is not your gender, than enjoy yourself.
Over all I do agree with you. When I play it is to unwind and not think about anything other than the electronic challenges in front of me or the mindless grind, whatever I am in the mood for.
Incidently that is one of the many things I loved about GOW 2018. You could go do the puzzles and combat or you could just go grind to your hearts content.
I mean sometimes I just want to take a break from thinking about it and larp as “The good guys” for a while
Agreed. And there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s a big difference between playing a gay character and derailing the entire campaign because you choose to lead a gay rights movement while the world is being overrun by the demon king’s hordes.
I don’t care about the former and have done so myself, but I boot you from my table for the later. Not because I’m against gay rights, but because that’s not the kind of story I’m interested in DMing and you’re free to find a DM who’s interested in this storyline, but you won’t take my campaign and players hostage for your Selbstdarstellungsdrang.
How come gay people don’t already have rights in your setting?
They do. Doesn’t stop dipshits from arguing though. Case in point.
That doesn’t make any sense. If they already have rights then what are they arguing for?
As I wrote in my original post, some people just have a narcissistic need for self-promotion. They will preach to the choir and bring irrelevant political topics into the game because they feel like the real world doesn’t appreciate their valiant efforts towards weaponized inclusivity enough.
Your language choices give a phobic vibe, just FYI. “[…] they feel like the real world doesn’t appreciate their valiant efforts towards weaponized inclusivity enough.” Like you know they’re suffering actual IRL oppression, right? Stuff like that could be giving LGBT players the impression that you’re hostile towards them.
My language choice is not phobic, it’s aggressive, because I’m once again realizing, why half of this sub is permanently looking for groups.
I can assure you, that there is no inclusivity issue in any of my worlds. But it’s also not anything I pay any mind to at all unless my players are looking for connections or love interests. Other than that I try to avoid heteronormativity for the very few occasions NPCs are actually in a relationship that matters to the game and that’s it.
And as I commented before, if you want a world and story FOCUSED on inclusivity and LQBTQ issues, then I’m sure there are countless DMs who will be happy to provide that. Because I am not. My games focus on adventuring, nature and mystic, long forgotten places and that’s exactly how I and my players like it!
Sounds like you’re either not picking up on the fact that your world isn’t actually supportive of gay rights (because of subconscious prejudice or something) or you’re bad at communicating that it is, or both.
“Weaponized inclusivity” jesus christ so its clearly the former
“Narcissistic urge for self-promotion” insane statement. Check your prejudice.
When everyone around you seems like a dipshit, you’re probably the dipshit.
Oh, quite the opposite. Most people around me are awesome. And I’ve gotten pretty good at sorting out the few who are. Actually, after deleting Reddit, pretty much my entire dipshit intake stems from Lemmy. I sometimes really do wonder what I’m still doing here. Because clearly, this entire community has some serious issues to work through.
Just a massive red flag of a comment right there i tell ya.
you choose to lead a gay rights movement while the world is being overrun by the demon king’s hordes.
This maps kind of easily onto “We can’t fight for gay rights right now. They just blew up the twin towers!” or similar “wait your turn for justice” arguments.
I get the impression that you don’t see that kind of thing, and furthermore don’t care. You run whatever kind of game you want, but I would be surprised if your settings weren’t full of unexamined biases and defaults.
Lol, nice strawman you built there. There’s no need to “wait your turn for justice”. Just get yourself a group who enjoys that kind of campaign and you’re good to go! This isn’t a “We can’t fight for gay rights right now. They just blew up the twin towers” scenario.
In fact, you’re arguing exactly like the people on the opposite side: “How dare you care about gay rights. We need thoughts and prayers for the 9/11 victims right now and everyone who doesn’t focus entirely on thoughts and prayers is a terrorist supporter!” That’s your argument right there!
I dunno man, you’re the one that said the players can’t talk focus on gay rights now. there’s a demon invasion. Which, again, maps pretty cleanly to that kind of attitude. But I think you might be the kind of person who doesn’t understand subtext, or maybe text.
I disagree, because typically it means someone is racist or sexist and just doesn’t want to see people of color or queer characters. Such people may still be willing to engage with the political aspects of their gaming insofar as they may join initiatives like Stop Killing Games or argue that game devs should be treated better, but they’re just bigoted assholes who can’t handle people of color or queer characters.
Also don’t mistake this as a defense of them. They’re deplorable. I’m just saying I don’t agree with the statement as written.
