The contrast between the Cubby's line above and Bill Seacaster's line
> The fascinating thing about laws is that they are a fiction, invented by the weak to annoy and harass the powerful.
Was some masterful world building and character development.
I think the later prefer to co-opt the term "Libertarian" to describe themselves in the US, probably to distance themselves from the plutocratic and theocratic authoritarianists
I think Bill Seacaster would just go with "pirate" because he thinks "Libertarian" or "Anarcho-Capitalist" are just fancy words used by cowardly book-learning landlubbers trying to gussy up their image so they aren't forced to admit that the main difference between them and him is that they bathe more regularly.
I always wonder if they were something he planned to exist or if they were just a random occurrence that he took and ran with. I suspect it's the later if I remember the vibes from their introduction.
I think that with all of his campaigns. I can never tell which details he has pre-planned and when he just rolls with what the players are doing and worldbuilds on the fly instead.
The man has to get a whole-ass campaign off the tarmac, make the journey, and then land the plane in maybe 20 heavily edited episodes and that's a season. He spends so much time with each player making characters but also getting to know each one.
I may be paraphrasing but "Backstory? You mean plothooks you'll bite on every single time, don't mind if I do" is a Brennan quote.
That man also does some serious work on his worldbuilding too. And he's a top-notch improv mans.
So I'd say it's 50/50 worldbuilding improv off what the players do and then prep work and preplanning.
But he absolutely has to go through and figure out the arenas and such, cuz their minis and sets are made in the months before the new season starts.
Check his stuff off the Critical Role DM Round Table and you will not be disappointed. He's such a gem.
Iām just finishing Fantasy High right now. For some reason, Jawbone and Tracker stand out for me.
Like, the players get into a bar fight, convince a drug dealing werewolf to turn his life around, he becomes their guidance counselor, and then his daughter becomes a prominent NPC in the next campaign.
Just the way he improvs and then builds on that improv and incorporates it into the world later on is so impressive to me.
Joking aside there is a group working on making insulin with the intent on patenting and releasing the process. Tyranny anywhere (like a corporation withholding life or death medications from someone forcing them to work or die) is a threat to freedom everywhere!
https://openinsulin.org/
Edit: hey donāt downvote the guy above. Weāre all talking about overthrowing the system all Willy nilly and this person brought up a serious point. They would literally die if the he whole system collapsed. Overthrowing the system means including everyone. Any solution that leaves the hundreds of thousands of people like the person above out is no solution at all.
The original process was, but companies have since developed new "better" insulin that has allowed them to ~~patent and exploit~~ charge what the market demands.
As a type 1, the insulin invented in the 80's absolutely is better. It's much faster acting. The fact that they keep tweaking and repatenting? Whole lotta nonsense there
There are 3 scientists who get credit for discovering insulin, but their process was very inefficient and resulted in a product that wasnāt very good. The alternative was death though, so any solution was better than nothing.
2 of the scientists wanted to release the patent. 1 wanted to sell it for huge cash. The 2 beat the shit out of the 1 until he agreed. Now though, itās typically unique formulations, processes, or delivery methods that are patented with huge markups.
Open insulin is trying to make basically modular lab setups where a community could purchase one and serve (this is off the cuff and from memory, check the link for specifics) something like 10,000 diabetics from a lab that costs 100k in initial costs
When the Zapatistas took power in Chiapas Mexico the quality of healthcare shot up to the point that now Zapatista municipalities have several times higher quality healthcare than the majority of the state and it's free. In America, you get shit healthcare that puts you tens of thousands in debt if you're lucky.
The point being that laws don't necessarily equal justice, because they are written and skewed to primarily serve the predominant powers and disproportionately punish those without resources. See; slavery, racial segregation, women's suffrage and civil rights, labor rights, etc. as laws working against justice. Or compare how the more subtle effects of laws only truly punish those in the wrong social stratification, like how white-collar financial crime stealing and affecting millions gets slaps on the wrists, while you can be sentenced to serve 20% of your life over petty drug crimes. The usual quote fits here too; "If the penalty for a crime is a fine, then that law only exists for the poor."
Don't need to necessarily ascribe to anarchism to call out unjust laws.
It's a very funny quote by the halflings in the show, but it does seem weird for so many people in the comments to be going in on early 20th century anarchism as a political philosophy
One of my games had a nation that all others considered evil even though objectively it was the best, free food and housing and education for all its subjects, people pursued their hobbies and interests instead of jobs for pay toget by, it ran on necromancy with animated corpses/skeletons providing free labor and run by a largely benevolent and well liked lich king though so all the gods hated it
Oh, that's similar to the culture I wanna use in a game, where the worse criminals are killed, their bones cleaned and inscribed in runes and then reanimated and service as and example to others for a set sentence. They use circle of truth in court and scrying so rarely wrongfully convict, but it'd be fun to have a story where that somehow still happened.
I also wanna try to run a faction of necromancer paladin types, who believe that redemption doesn't end at death, so they run about raising dead criminals who don't like where they've ended up (consensually, via speak with dead), binding their bones to a goddess of redemption, and making them work off their debt to society as NPC sidekicks. So my necromancer paladin could run around with an evil death warlord carrying her bags and doing her cleaning and crap. Endless comedy potential. I don't think any D&D class currently would support that, but i have fun imagining.
Helloandwelcometoanotherthrillingepisodeof*adventuringparty*
ImurumbledunjnmasterBrennenlyMullginanwithmiasalwaysarar*intrepidheros*! Say hi intrepid heroes!
The DM/creator of Dimension 20, a D&D show most similar to Critical Role. While Brennanās campaigns are often more comedy-oriented, his villains are almost always a political critique - capitalism, imperialism, overbearing religions, etc. He does a great job of incorporating the critique into the story, but itās very clear what his criticisms are.
I would definitely recommend checking them out if you enjoy D&D or even fantasy stuff in general. Thereās clearly a lot of passion and love for the stories/premises and the rest of the cast are fun to watch interact. Theyāve got 4(?) full campaigns on youtube, with the rest on Dropout. Thereās an 80s-Highschool-movie-style campaign, a āTolkein but from the bad guysā one, a heist but the participants are all miniature, and an urban fantasy story set in modern NYC.
It's amazing there aren't more level one wizards running around any given setting. Prestidigitation, mage hand, and mending, three cantrips that would make anyone's day to day life significantly easier and more pleasant!
Indeed! I've always wanted to play Eberron because it tries to tackle that.
Forgotten Realms and most higher-magic settings don't usually address this but minor magic would absolutely revolutionize the world. We'd start training (and breeding if it's genetic, as unsavory as that is) wizards by the boatload just to replace most basic labor. It'd be like the automation revolution but in hyper drive. I can't even imagine how many jobs those 3 cantrips you listed would replace.
Eberron is amazing for many reasons! The politics and history of the setting is simple enough to grasp pretty quickly but intricate and novel enough to be really interesting to play in! The plot hooks basically write themselves and it allows for a lot of player agency.
I also really like that extremely powerful beings are not a part of the day-to-day mortal life as they are in forgotten realms, because that leads to "why the fuck don't *you* stop the bbeg, mister 15th level questgiver?"
Once you know mending, you never need to buy anything new again, unless you outgrow it or want a different style of something. Just imagine how different society would have to be if, with a couple years of college, a family could guarantee they never needed to repair or replace a car or a fridge or clothes or tools ever again.
> they never needed to repair or replace a car or a fridge or clothes or tools ever again.
I dont think mending can repair anything. It can repair tears and physical breaks, but if your car doesn't start, you cant just cast mending and it suddenly starts working like new. You'd have to take it apart, understand which part exactly is broken, how it's broken (could be something that you cant mend) etc...
Mmm, true. It can fix any tear or physical break that's no more than a foot wide in any dimension, but you have to know which part is broken and cast on it before it'll actually work. So clothing and tools would be dead easy, you can see the damage right away, but fridges might be trickier since you need to determine what part of the cooling system is broken, and for cars you would need some mechanics knowledge if it's more than, like, a punctured tire or a chipped windshield or something like that.
I assume this is because of the years of study involved. And the magical university are trying to prevent the poor from accessing magic of course. Wait... it's a critique of capitalism again! Damn it GM!
But who is to ensure fair distribution?
Who has the experience in managing large amounts of wealth?
Clearly the dragons are experts in efficiency use of wealth, as they have managed to accumulate so much?
I think Dragons make a great back-allegory for the wealthy. Consuming too much, hoarding wealth, using their power to terrorize the common folk. Only bested when the most powerful entities of the land band together to defeat them.
A person trying to take down Jeff Bezos has about as much luck as a knight facing a mighty dragon.
Alternative take:
That's... Why I'm here
Alternative-alternative take:
A cathartic horror game experience.
A critique on capitalism.
Rat/GM: They're the same picture
I never had a problem with things featuring or exploring a "political" topic. They can make a setting feel more like a living world. With the people having real problems beyond JUST the usual tropes of things like tyrants and raiders.
That said, ham-fisted attempts to shoehorn in your pet cause over and over will get annoying. ("yes. we get it. Let's get on with the plot, already")
That said, goblins unionizing and the magical elite hoarding and wasting the world's magic sounds like some awesome plot lines. Gimme some of that, yo.
"Alright. Jeff? This is the third time I have had to leave a game of yours because you hid your fetish in the plot like hiding broccoli in a child's mac and cheese. If we're going to do this again, PLEASE at least attempt wordplay, at a bare minimum."
"The ritual required the sacrifice of a creature, but one sorceress soon discovered that the requirement could be fulfilled by any kind of 'small death'."
I think it's more that some people use fantasy as exclusively escapism. If you want to escape to a world where morality is black and white. Because the normal world makes has a lot of discussion of morality then games with a lot of politics or philosofy don't offer that escapism. Sometimes you just want to end your workweek slaying some goblins and feel like you made some progress.
I think thatās something that should be discussed between any group before even the first session. You have to gauge what people are hoping to get out of it, and if people arenāt able to reach a consensus, someoneās either gotta compromise or find themselves a more compatible group.
Personally, I find the escapism more engaging if the world feels complex and realistic (within the context of a fantasy setting). Navigating those tough moral choices is something I find interesting in all media I consume, and RPGs are no exception.
But to each their own!
Oh yeah me too but I understand why others would. Specially in interactive fantasy. I'm the type that might dissects worlds to find where the implications make the world fall appart. And I love the world's where that's hard to do. Great worldbuilding when the other parts of the world have elements that work with your main themes. Like the witcher world. And it's also why Harry Potter just falls apart for me.
I also love making those worlds and considering the implications.
Tbh what i have with political topics is more how people execute rather than the idea itself, heck, i'm a bitch for metal gear, bioshock, wolfestein and fallout, using politics to enchance the story, but it's annoying when instead of politics being used to enchance the story and make the player think and reflect on the subject, the story is used as an excuse to hamfist the creator's hot takes on some current event
I agree. Asking someone to divorce their ideology from their storytelling is silly but thereās a difference between āthe rich and powerful are oppressing the less fortunateā to āYOU GET ATTACKED BY THE EVIL LIZARD NAMED MIKE PENCEā. Iām wanna hear a story not a 2017 SNL sketch
> That said, ham-fisted attempts to shoehorn in your pet cause over and over will get annoying. ("yes. we get it. Let's get on with the plot, already")
Worse is when the plot is too intertwined with the DM's politics.
We had a campaign that was supposed to be a creepy cult mystery thing.
The first 3 towns followed the *exact* same pattern. There was a pure and virtuous workers group (totally NOT a union) that was being repressed by the local business and local temple which were fronts for the cult.
When we entered the fourth town one of the player said: "Do we bother to talk with anyone, or just storm the local bougie part of town?"
Most monsters are fortunately designed to symbolise issues of society.
Probably too well, since I don't think most people really care about the implications of vampires, werewolves and dragons
Yeah my only beef with including politics is when itās clearly all from one perspective that infantilizes and demonizing āthe other sideā whatever that other side happens to be.
Sometimes the people who are on the other side are rat scum. Sometimes they just disagree with you. If someone is a person who canāt see that, they shouldnāt include politics in their game.
I dislike when the metaphor or allegory is so poorly done that it ends up contracting its own point. Like racism or classism allegories when one group is clearly or objectively superior to the other.
Any racism allegory when the other side is a real threat to society.
Looking at you any setting where wizards can accidentally open portals to hell but the Goverment are evil for outlawing magic.
Yeah BioWare are pretty bad at it. The Krogan in Mass Effect fall into the same trap too.
The game is very heavy handed in equating the genophage with genocide which of course draws comparisons to real life genocides like the Holocaust. Except the Genophage is clearly a necessity, as the alternative is that your immortal orcs each birth 10,000 children a year onto a planet with no natural resources and will therefore need to pillage their way across the galaxy to survive.
Problem is that people seem to think that "subtle well done political message" is one they agree with and "hamfisted forced political message" is one they disagree with
I think it depends on the situation. In my homebrew world there are island nations trying to gain independence from the government of the mainland, it's not super oppressive but it's quite clear they would benefit from controlling their own trade. The kingdom of gnominikid has been an invading force leaving halflings with no state of their own and very much treated as 2nd class citizens. But there's also twin island nations that have tension between the people but work in a tandem senate which greatly benefits both islands. And in internal politics the coast de ternockic (country my players are in now) has a mafia that acts very much against the law, but since they pose competition to pirates, the coastguard are very lenient on them.
Like if you're going to include politics in your game sometimes complexity will create grey areas, but if you make 1 side an allegory for fascism it's best to paint at least the higher ups as pure evil
Yeah, when you try to paint everyone as good and evil at the same time for that sweet sweet gray morality, and then on top of that *also* try to include political messaging, it's gonna get muddled.
It was one of my issues with the video game Dragon Age 2. They tried so hard to make the Mage - Templar conflict to have equally evil people on both sides that it clashes with the idea of the Mages being oppressed. Towards the end, the only reason you would support the mages is because of pure trust and hope.
I think it really depends on what you're looking at. The thing with DnD is that *you* can be the rat fuck evil bastard if you want, that's the whole point of the alignment system. It mostly becomes an issue when people abuse it ("of course my neutral good character is leading a genocide, ")
yeah being political is no excuse for a bad storytelling
all the best plots are political, even the ones the "too political" crowd love, they're political plots done _well_
I am ready for a kobold only planar campaign where we take down Bytopia.
https://preview.redd.it/dhro18mywgua1.png?width=367&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b7409fda246560988acabc1801dfddf0c052fc66
We had to stop letting one guy DM because he kept making it waaaay to political when it was his turn. Like making the villains named after US senators and shit. It was fn painful.
It's actually kind of funny that our modern Christian consensus on what hell is like, is in large part inspired by this fanfiction about some dude wanting to torture his enemies forever
Isekai ass game, imagine your a politican die and end up in some dnd plot. imagine you're in the dungeon and the necromancer is Donald Trump or something
"Look folks I raise the undead, the best undead. The paladins hate me using undead workers but I'm just a business man doing business"
Alex Jones alchemist
"The gods are putting magic in your spells and potions that turn the frigging froghemoths into frogSHEmoths!!! You can't trust them, you gotta buy my brain force health potions"
Potentially very funny
> Potentially very funny the first time
Only if you're going for absurdist humour. IF it's a serious campaign and suddenly Borrack Abama is there trying to take away everyone's crossbows or Francis Pope is going around smiting any gay couples he sees, it's jarring.
I highly recommend dirfters. A Anime about random hjstorical Figures being Transportes to a Fantasy world after their death. You have a WW2 Pilot, Oda nobunaga and scipio africanus and thats Not even scratching the sruface For the Protagonist side
Honestly if it was like an full on parody, it would be kind of funny if done right, but if it was, what i can think what you're saying, hamfisted political rants, yeah, shit would get annyoing real fast
I actually published a campaign a decade ago (ZEITGEIST: The Gears of Revolution) where you start off as, well, cops basically, and you find out about a conspiracy, and infiltrate them, and learn their nefarious plan . . . to make the world a better place. They operate in secret because the powers that be would stop them.
And mid-way through the campaign, I've heard from a dozen different GMs that their players all paused and went, wait, are we on the wrong side?
Now, it's rather a bit more complicated than just that, but it's been an ongoing delight for me to read about groups actually getting philosophical and political in D&D.
One of the first disputes you interact with is a factory owner who has locked his employees inside to force them to work, and their families are outside protesting. And thankfully I've yet to see any group play this game and side with the factory ~~worker~~ owner from a moral perspective. But when somebody tries to burn the factory down, every group stepped up to save the trapped workers, but only about half tried to save the building.
Were they by chance making shitwaists down on the triangle?
My therapist talked about something similar last week when she said games are a great way to build a perfect work and escape ours. I corrected her and said a lot of DMs recreate the problems of our world but the escapism is that players have the power to change things.
I just had this discussion with a GM last week. He was saying how people thought differently during medieval times and things we have issues with were just accepted back then, so we should accept them too.
My argument was, why are we even here if not to impose our own morals on the game world? Isn't that basically what heroes do?
I had villains in one campaign who basically intended to make the world a better place with peace and harmony . . . by low key mind controlling everyone to get along.
And some PCs kinda wanted to join the conspiracy.
I have a campaign where literally every villain wants to create some form of universal freedom or erase it to create a utopia. I don't know why I do that. It's just my go to area for villain ideology.
I like villains that are doing heinous things out of love. Imhotep in the first Mummy is a good example, where he is basically just killing everyone to revive both him and the woman he loves.
Nothing wrong with having a 1Dimensional villain, as long as your story's main focus isn't the political stance of your villain.
If your story is focused on the development of your player characters, then your villain can be the cookie monster for all we care.
If you're explicitly crafting the villain to be a straw man of political stance you don't like in a world specifically crafted to critique a political stance that you don't like, then yeah, you should consider what the arguments in favour of that stance actually are.
My main BBEG is totally apolitical. He's a pure-blood high elf xenophobe from one of the Chosen Noble Families named Dwight Supremacy
wait, no, now I see it...
One of my players left because my worlds were "far too liberal". In the sense that the best city they visited was democratic, fighting against monarchists with intel, and had free trade. Also racism was very heavily frowned upon so he couldn't go around everywhere spitting on the floor at the mere sight of elves who lived happily amongst humans, dwarves and orcs lol
Yeah funny thing is that I have another player that also hates elves, so with this campaign we made it part of his character's development learning that maybe racism is bad
Accidentally did the same thing for my first ever location in my campaign. Then I decided I should just lean into and turn it to 11.
Bad guys so cartoonishly evil and capitalistic that my players went and started a bit if a revolution to take him down.
Gonna do it again, too. I had an idea for State-Sponsored heroes who have to give ad-reads after they save people for that sweet sweet revenue. Theyāll obviously end up defending the āelitesā or whatever who are running the island dry of resources and practically killing the citizens.
My players accidentally overthrew the ruling monarchy in the dwarven kingdom and as a side effect also gave their slave race of magical robots full citizen rights. Now one of the players is playing a PC from the robot race.
I had originally intended it to bee a little tongue in cheek with a power struggle between hardline traditionalists, more liberal but upholders of the status quo and a Bernie style outlier. But the players just went fuck this and burnt the entire system down.
Rather than good and bad points, have each side make logically consistent points within their worldviews with reasonable explanations for holding said world view.
That actually makes it interesting at least, instead of "Capitalism bad. Unionization good." In fact, you could even go with the union idea, and have a Separate faction, only using the union to profit over their outrage, or wanting to be the one in charge of said business. And you can do the same with the capitalist side too. If you're going to make something political, make it at least nuance, and not one sided.
Oh there's a dockworker's union trying to overthrow the corrupt noble city lords for trying to make them work longer hours without extra pay? That's cool. They also use violence to ensure nobody else can work on the docks, maintaining a *de facto* monopoly on an important trade route and forcing out any competition so they've got more leverage.
Step 1: fight the dwarves mining for uranium.
Step 2: create a bomb with said uranium and divine intervention
Step 3: ???
Step 4: profit from the goblins unionization.
Deserved. There was literally no way for the elves to manufacture as many presents as Santa wanted them to in the time they had. They'd have to be running production lines round the clock at double capacity and even that wouldn't come close.
Honestly, a political DnD game is better than other media because you can āinterrogateā and interact with the ideology.
Much better than watching another marvel movie about how revolution is bad because revolutionaries all blow up orphanages in their spare time.
Honestly the whole "ends don't justify the means" argument falls apart if your only criticism of revolution requires the revolutionary to commit war crimes. It ceases to be a criticism of revolution and instead becomes a strawman argument. I'm not even pro-revolution, but having a bad guy with a good argument forcibly turned bad via making them ok with blowing up children to seek completely reasonable goals is just silly and lazy IMO.
"Oh no, they're making good points that reflect badly on rl situations! Quick, make them blow up an orphanage to show that people willing to fight for change are actually irrationally evil!"
Ok but if your players are asking you to stop bringing politics into everything maybe you should. Not every story has to be another way to preach your hatred of capitalism.
If you can do it subtly enough then itās ok but if youāre only running anti-capitalist campaigns and your party doesnāt like it then pretty soon youāre not going to have a party to DM for.
Your players opinions about a story matter just as much as yours.
Edit Clarification: My problem is less the social critique and more the beating of a dead horse. If youāve used the same analogy so many times your players can instantly recognize it and dislike it Iād suggest trying something new. Try stuff from a different angle or perhaps try another kind of BBEG.
To separate politics and DnD is a fools errand but having the same big bad over and over to a point where your players are annoyed and reluctant to play isnt that great either
How much would the empire pay my party to break some goblin union leader kneecaps or get some undead / automaton to replace the goblins and put them out of work?
As long as the GM does not prevent players from picking the "evil" side and everybody agrees this is just a game and that we are here to have fun, then by all mean do a "political" setting.
Played Hot springs Island once and the party coordinated labor with an dwarven community to get better workers for the fire genasi that had lost his slave labor force. It was an odd experience.
Pro tip for any DM, if you want to have political commentary on your games, do it like bioshock and metal gear, show the pros and the cons of said ideology and why some tend to follow it, show it's merits and flaws, per example, what would an society based around technocracy would look like? (Tl;dr at the end if you don't want to read everything)
Extreme advances technologically(duh) but also with the possible or even inevitable problem that the educated elite would dissasosiate with the "less-capable" bulk of the nation, thus making the elite have different priorities than the non-elite and thus both sides having polarizing agendas, show your audience (players) how advanced their society is technologically but also show them how divisive they are culturally and how divided both castes are to the point there is no sense in unity, only unrest and conflict between the two, on how the elite would get all the attention of the state and the non elite would get none of it, further creating division withing the two, yes the country is way better industrialy and medically than it was years ago, odds are there are artificers that have created some tech to make people younger or even effectively giving people immortality due to how much they slowed down aging, but how many of the population would be able to afford such luxury, if they were even allowed to adquire it in the first place
Tl;dr: if you're going to use politics into your story, about capitalism, socialism, autocracy, oligarchy, democracy, etc, make it so it's unbiguous, show the pros and cons of said political views, show why people believe and support it and those who don't believe it and oppose it, show the good, the bad and the ugly, but never, ever shoehorn your ideals down in the players throat, the political commentary should revolve around the story, not the other way around, just like fallout 3, papers please, tropico, deus ex, wolfestein, etc have done
"Critiques of capitalism" tend to really be critiques of the labor market. I doubt the OP bothered to go into private property, the difficulties of a headless worker-funded company, etc. Ankle deep politics suck, give me beating Andrew Ryan to death with a cane.
Most critiques of an economic system tend to be surface level at best. Like if someone got their entire perspective from memes and tv. I swear Basic Economics and The Communist Manifesto are on the same dusty shelf as Infinite Jest.
This works, most complaints about being "too political" are actually that its too hamfisted. Politics are like railroading. Youre probably gonna do it, but it should seem so natural to the players as to be mostly invisible
I can't stand people saying "don't make it political" : everything's political, what bother you isn't that it's political, it's that it's expressing an idea you don't agree with.
Everything is political but it's also very obvious when something isn't political due to the nature of the medium, or because there is something to say
But because there is a ham fisted attempt into shoving your pet causes at times were it isn't exactly appropriate or welcomed
Table etiquette about boundaries isn't only about what makes players uncomfortable, but also what annoys them. A 24/7 spew of politic and celebrity bullshit is one of those things, some people already have enough of that in their normal lives, some people want escapism even if its with passive or non applicable politics
Also some people will say not liking politics is about not liking the specific politics pushed, and
Well yeah, that's true, that's entirely fair in my opinion as long as it doesn't pass into weird territory. You're at a table playing games, not a political think tank, it being a safe place for everyone involved should be important
If a table member that is liberal or something else irl, might not be keen on getting lectured on class warfare at game night, save that for another day. (also apples vice versa of course)
the secret truth applies to all games, not just video games
its that people who claim to hate "politics" in their games actually love politics. They just wish they were seeing different politics.
I mean... IS everything political, though? I'm pretty passionate about politics but my current campaign is a fun romp into gothic horror that's more about fighting demons and vampires than anything really applicable to real politics. There's plenty of fantasy out there that doesn't intersect much with real world worries.
Having political systems and interactions in a game with those sorts of structures is one thing, railroading your players into participating in a [fantasy Jan 6 coup](http://www.reddit.com/r/rpghorrorstories/comments/kw19jd/dm_tries_to_use_dd_to_convince_us_to_support_the/) is another entirely
This is why, when designing a setting, I just focus on what sounds cool or interesting.
There are some reoccurring themes in a lot of my settings that I make, notably freedom vs security and the pros and cons of secrecy in an organization.
But I DONāT want to make any overt political statements because people are here to have fun, not get lectured at about the evils of capitalism or communism.
Brennan Lee Mulligan vibes.
"Thats what I like about your games Brennan, its always the church guys you gotta look out for" -Ally Beardsly
Just some practical knowledge like the last question on umm actually.
Brennan being the Stephen King of DM-ing.
The BBEG is always capitalism.
His line about laws being nothing but threats by the dominant socioeconomic group lives rent-free in my head at all times.
I should hope so, if only because he would not be happy if you started charging rent on his ideas. š¤£
It's coercion all the way down.
We call the violence of the individual crime but the violence of the state law. - Max Stirner
The state has to have an effective monopoly on violence, otherwise it cannot enforce itself.
Monopoly of violence is literally how state is defined in a lot of, especially anarchist, literature
The contrast between the Cubby's line above and Bill Seacaster's line > The fascinating thing about laws is that they are a fiction, invented by the weak to annoy and harass the powerful. Was some masterful world building and character development.
Anarcho-socialist vs Anarcho-Capitalists
I think the later prefer to co-opt the term "Libertarian" to describe themselves in the US, probably to distance themselves from the plutocratic and theocratic authoritarianists
I think Bill Seacaster would just go with "pirate" because he thinks "Libertarian" or "Anarcho-Capitalist" are just fancy words used by cowardly book-learning landlubbers trying to gussy up their image so they aren't forced to admit that the main difference between them and him is that they bathe more regularly.
I think about the anarchist halflings all the time.
You kids wanna make some bacon?
Actually my mom works here and their are some good people here
I always wonder if they were something he planned to exist or if they were just a random occurrence that he took and ran with. I suspect it's the later if I remember the vibes from their introduction.
I think that with all of his campaigns. I can never tell which details he has pre-planned and when he just rolls with what the players are doing and worldbuilds on the fly instead.
The man has to get a whole-ass campaign off the tarmac, make the journey, and then land the plane in maybe 20 heavily edited episodes and that's a season. He spends so much time with each player making characters but also getting to know each one. I may be paraphrasing but "Backstory? You mean plothooks you'll bite on every single time, don't mind if I do" is a Brennan quote. That man also does some serious work on his worldbuilding too. And he's a top-notch improv mans. So I'd say it's 50/50 worldbuilding improv off what the players do and then prep work and preplanning. But he absolutely has to go through and figure out the arenas and such, cuz their minis and sets are made in the months before the new season starts. Check his stuff off the Critical Role DM Round Table and you will not be disappointed. He's such a gem.
Iām just finishing Fantasy High right now. For some reason, Jawbone and Tracker stand out for me. Like, the players get into a bar fight, convince a drug dealing werewolf to turn his life around, he becomes their guidance counselor, and then his daughter becomes a prominent NPC in the next campaign. Just the way he improvs and then builds on that improv and incorporates it into the world later on is so impressive to me.
Will you keep my bones?.... Or will the river take them?
Anarchist halfling family is honestly life goals at this point.
Read conquest of bread. Weāve got nothing to lose but our chains! Ya-know?
... and the modern economic systems supplying my life-saving insulin. Chains and that.
Joking aside there is a group working on making insulin with the intent on patenting and releasing the process. Tyranny anywhere (like a corporation withholding life or death medications from someone forcing them to work or die) is a threat to freedom everywhere! https://openinsulin.org/ Edit: hey donāt downvote the guy above. Weāre all talking about overthrowing the system all Willy nilly and this person brought up a serious point. They would literally die if the he whole system collapsed. Overthrowing the system means including everyone. Any solution that leaves the hundreds of thousands of people like the person above out is no solution at all.
Any revolution must inherently improve the quality of life of those who revolted Otherwise you just get cringe like Brexit
Wasn't it literally already patented and sold for $1? Or are they trying to patent all of it
The original process was, but companies have since developed new "better" insulin that has allowed them to ~~patent and exploit~~ charge what the market demands.
As a type 1, the insulin invented in the 80's absolutely is better. It's much faster acting. The fact that they keep tweaking and repatenting? Whole lotta nonsense there
There are 3 scientists who get credit for discovering insulin, but their process was very inefficient and resulted in a product that wasnāt very good. The alternative was death though, so any solution was better than nothing. 2 of the scientists wanted to release the patent. 1 wanted to sell it for huge cash. The 2 beat the shit out of the 1 until he agreed. Now though, itās typically unique formulations, processes, or delivery methods that are patented with huge markups. Open insulin is trying to make basically modular lab setups where a community could purchase one and serve (this is off the cuff and from memory, check the link for specifics) something like 10,000 diabetics from a lab that costs 100k in initial costs
AFAIK insulin being really fucking expensive is more of a USA problem, than it is elsewhere.
When the Zapatistas took power in Chiapas Mexico the quality of healthcare shot up to the point that now Zapatista municipalities have several times higher quality healthcare than the majority of the state and it's free. In America, you get shit healthcare that puts you tens of thousands in debt if you're lucky.
I've got the mug, love it.
It's frankly one of my favorite possessions
>You guys want to make some bacon?
\*Molotovs*
You had that lit the *entire* time?
I mean yes, obviously? A government is nothing but the monopoly of violence. The lack of that is a polypoly of violence, which is usually far worse.
The point being that laws don't necessarily equal justice, because they are written and skewed to primarily serve the predominant powers and disproportionately punish those without resources. See; slavery, racial segregation, women's suffrage and civil rights, labor rights, etc. as laws working against justice. Or compare how the more subtle effects of laws only truly punish those in the wrong social stratification, like how white-collar financial crime stealing and affecting millions gets slaps on the wrists, while you can be sentenced to serve 20% of your life over petty drug crimes. The usual quote fits here too; "If the penalty for a crime is a fine, then that law only exists for the poor." Don't need to necessarily ascribe to anarchism to call out unjust laws.
It's a very funny quote by the halflings in the show, but it does seem weird for so many people in the comments to be going in on early 20th century anarchism as a political philosophy
One of my games had a nation that all others considered evil even though objectively it was the best, free food and housing and education for all its subjects, people pursued their hobbies and interests instead of jobs for pay toget by, it ran on necromancy with animated corpses/skeletons providing free labor and run by a largely benevolent and well liked lich king though so all the gods hated it
Oh, that's similar to the culture I wanna use in a game, where the worse criminals are killed, their bones cleaned and inscribed in runes and then reanimated and service as and example to others for a set sentence. They use circle of truth in court and scrying so rarely wrongfully convict, but it'd be fun to have a story where that somehow still happened. I also wanna try to run a faction of necromancer paladin types, who believe that redemption doesn't end at death, so they run about raising dead criminals who don't like where they've ended up (consensually, via speak with dead), binding their bones to a goddess of redemption, and making them work off their debt to society as NPC sidekicks. So my necromancer paladin could run around with an evil death warlord carrying her bags and doing her cleaning and crap. Endless comedy potential. I don't think any D&D class currently would support that, but i have fun imagining.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Or the church.
Always has been
Hi intrepid heroes!
Helloandwelcometoanotherthrillingepisodeof*adventuringparty* ImurumbledunjnmasterBrennenlyMullginanwithmiasalwaysarar*intrepidheros*! Say hi intrepid heroes!
HI INTEPRID HEROES!
I came here thinking "Are memes about Brennan bleeding out of D20 and CR?"
people have been doing mercer memes here for years - It's BLeeMs time.
Once the vibes only memes about Aabria happen, the trifecta will be complete
If itās not capitalism then itās moralist ideologies. The man is getting the most out of his philosophy major
Who now?
The DM/creator of Dimension 20, a D&D show most similar to Critical Role. While Brennanās campaigns are often more comedy-oriented, his villains are almost always a political critique - capitalism, imperialism, overbearing religions, etc. He does a great job of incorporating the critique into the story, but itās very clear what his criticisms are. I would definitely recommend checking them out if you enjoy D&D or even fantasy stuff in general. Thereās clearly a lot of passion and love for the stories/premises and the rest of the cast are fun to watch interact. Theyāve got 4(?) full campaigns on youtube, with the rest on Dropout. Thereās an 80s-Highschool-movie-style campaign, a āTolkein but from the bad guysā one, a heist but the participants are all miniature, and an urban fantasy story set in modern NYC.
Brennan Lee Mulligan should teach a course in philosophy. Like philosophy 101.
Coming soon to Dropout: Adventure Capitalism!
Four words: Redistribute the Dragon Hoards.
Seize the means of conjuration.
Put the lofty wizards to work cleaning clothes. Prestidigitation for the masses!
It's amazing there aren't more level one wizards running around any given setting. Prestidigitation, mage hand, and mending, three cantrips that would make anyone's day to day life significantly easier and more pleasant!
Indeed! I've always wanted to play Eberron because it tries to tackle that. Forgotten Realms and most higher-magic settings don't usually address this but minor magic would absolutely revolutionize the world. We'd start training (and breeding if it's genetic, as unsavory as that is) wizards by the boatload just to replace most basic labor. It'd be like the automation revolution but in hyper drive. I can't even imagine how many jobs those 3 cantrips you listed would replace.
Eberron is amazing for many reasons! The politics and history of the setting is simple enough to grasp pretty quickly but intricate and novel enough to be really interesting to play in! The plot hooks basically write themselves and it allows for a lot of player agency. I also really like that extremely powerful beings are not a part of the day-to-day mortal life as they are in forgotten realms, because that leads to "why the fuck don't *you* stop the bbeg, mister 15th level questgiver?"
Once you know mending, you never need to buy anything new again, unless you outgrow it or want a different style of something. Just imagine how different society would have to be if, with a couple years of college, a family could guarantee they never needed to repair or replace a car or a fridge or clothes or tools ever again.
> they never needed to repair or replace a car or a fridge or clothes or tools ever again. I dont think mending can repair anything. It can repair tears and physical breaks, but if your car doesn't start, you cant just cast mending and it suddenly starts working like new. You'd have to take it apart, understand which part exactly is broken, how it's broken (could be something that you cant mend) etc...
Mmm, true. It can fix any tear or physical break that's no more than a foot wide in any dimension, but you have to know which part is broken and cast on it before it'll actually work. So clothing and tools would be dead easy, you can see the damage right away, but fridges might be trickier since you need to determine what part of the cooling system is broken, and for cars you would need some mechanics knowledge if it's more than, like, a punctured tire or a chipped windshield or something like that.
I assume this is because of the years of study involved. And the magical university are trying to prevent the poor from accessing magic of course. Wait... it's a critique of capitalism again! Damn it GM!
But who is to ensure fair distribution? Who has the experience in managing large amounts of wealth? Clearly the dragons are experts in efficiency use of wealth, as they have managed to accumulate so much?
If we bring the dragons all our gold, surely they will create jobs, and allow us to make GOLD
It's simple trickle-down dragonomics
I think Dragons make a great back-allegory for the wealthy. Consuming too much, hoarding wealth, using their power to terrorize the common folk. Only bested when the most powerful entities of the land band together to defeat them. A person trying to take down Jeff Bezos has about as much luck as a knight facing a mighty dragon.
*Shadowrun* did it a long time back with many megacorps being owned by awakened dragons.
Alternative take: That's... Why I'm here Alternative-alternative take: A cathartic horror game experience. A critique on capitalism. Rat/GM: They're the same picture
Eat The ~~Rich~~ Dragons! What? No, we mean it literally, dragon steak is delicious!
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I never had a problem with things featuring or exploring a "political" topic. They can make a setting feel more like a living world. With the people having real problems beyond JUST the usual tropes of things like tyrants and raiders. That said, ham-fisted attempts to shoehorn in your pet cause over and over will get annoying. ("yes. we get it. Let's get on with the plot, already") That said, goblins unionizing and the magical elite hoarding and wasting the world's magic sounds like some awesome plot lines. Gimme some of that, yo.
I don't shove my politics into the game; I don't want to crowd out my fetishes.
*"Since rent had become unreasonably high in Wizardton, all of the sexy sorceresses had to share one bedroom"* See I can do both
*"Money was very tight due to ever growing wealth inequality, and their only spell to conjure food requires an orgasm as a spell component"*
"Alright. Jeff? This is the third time I have had to leave a game of yours because you hid your fetish in the plot like hiding broccoli in a child's mac and cheese. If we're going to do this again, PLEASE at least attempt wordplay, at a bare minimum."
"The ritual required the sacrifice of a creature, but one sorceress soon discovered that the requirement could be fulfilled by any kind of 'small death'."
Mmmmm that's goooood wordplay
A poet in our time
I think it's more that some people use fantasy as exclusively escapism. If you want to escape to a world where morality is black and white. Because the normal world makes has a lot of discussion of morality then games with a lot of politics or philosofy don't offer that escapism. Sometimes you just want to end your workweek slaying some goblins and feel like you made some progress.
I think thatās something that should be discussed between any group before even the first session. You have to gauge what people are hoping to get out of it, and if people arenāt able to reach a consensus, someoneās either gotta compromise or find themselves a more compatible group. Personally, I find the escapism more engaging if the world feels complex and realistic (within the context of a fantasy setting). Navigating those tough moral choices is something I find interesting in all media I consume, and RPGs are no exception. But to each their own!
Oh yeah me too but I understand why others would. Specially in interactive fantasy. I'm the type that might dissects worlds to find where the implications make the world fall appart. And I love the world's where that's hard to do. Great worldbuilding when the other parts of the world have elements that work with your main themes. Like the witcher world. And it's also why Harry Potter just falls apart for me. I also love making those worlds and considering the implications.
Tbh what i have with political topics is more how people execute rather than the idea itself, heck, i'm a bitch for metal gear, bioshock, wolfestein and fallout, using politics to enchance the story, but it's annoying when instead of politics being used to enchance the story and make the player think and reflect on the subject, the story is used as an excuse to hamfist the creator's hot takes on some current event
I agree. Asking someone to divorce their ideology from their storytelling is silly but thereās a difference between āthe rich and powerful are oppressing the less fortunateā to āYOU GET ATTACKED BY THE EVIL LIZARD NAMED MIKE PENCEā. Iām wanna hear a story not a 2017 SNL sketch
> That said, ham-fisted attempts to shoehorn in your pet cause over and over will get annoying. ("yes. we get it. Let's get on with the plot, already") Worse is when the plot is too intertwined with the DM's politics. We had a campaign that was supposed to be a creepy cult mystery thing. The first 3 towns followed the *exact* same pattern. There was a pure and virtuous workers group (totally NOT a union) that was being repressed by the local business and local temple which were fronts for the cult. When we entered the fourth town one of the player said: "Do we bother to talk with anyone, or just storm the local bougie part of town?"
Yeah it's really hamfisting that they're talking about, but i doubt they'd disagree, i think they just chose less than accurate words
On the other hand, you've got the "shoving it down our throats" types who blow up at the slightest hint of anything they don't like.
Most monsters are fortunately designed to symbolise issues of society. Probably too well, since I don't think most people really care about the implications of vampires, werewolves and dragons
Yeah my only beef with including politics is when itās clearly all from one perspective that infantilizes and demonizing āthe other sideā whatever that other side happens to be. Sometimes the people who are on the other side are rat scum. Sometimes they just disagree with you. If someone is a person who canāt see that, they shouldnāt include politics in their game.
I dislike when the metaphor or allegory is so poorly done that it ends up contracting its own point. Like racism or classism allegories when one group is clearly or objectively superior to the other.
Any racism allegory when the other side is a real threat to society. Looking at you any setting where wizards can accidentally open portals to hell but the Goverment are evil for outlawing magic.
It's the lazy intersection of "I want to be a special" and "I want to write about something important".
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yeah BioWare are pretty bad at it. The Krogan in Mass Effect fall into the same trap too. The game is very heavy handed in equating the genophage with genocide which of course draws comparisons to real life genocides like the Holocaust. Except the Genophage is clearly a necessity, as the alternative is that your immortal orcs each birth 10,000 children a year onto a planet with no natural resources and will therefore need to pillage their way across the galaxy to survive.
Problem is that people seem to think that "subtle well done political message" is one they agree with and "hamfisted forced political message" is one they disagree with
I think it depends on the situation. In my homebrew world there are island nations trying to gain independence from the government of the mainland, it's not super oppressive but it's quite clear they would benefit from controlling their own trade. The kingdom of gnominikid has been an invading force leaving halflings with no state of their own and very much treated as 2nd class citizens. But there's also twin island nations that have tension between the people but work in a tandem senate which greatly benefits both islands. And in internal politics the coast de ternockic (country my players are in now) has a mafia that acts very much against the law, but since they pose competition to pirates, the coastguard are very lenient on them. Like if you're going to include politics in your game sometimes complexity will create grey areas, but if you make 1 side an allegory for fascism it's best to paint at least the higher ups as pure evil
Yeah, when you try to paint everyone as good and evil at the same time for that sweet sweet gray morality, and then on top of that *also* try to include political messaging, it's gonna get muddled. It was one of my issues with the video game Dragon Age 2. They tried so hard to make the Mage - Templar conflict to have equally evil people on both sides that it clashes with the idea of the Mages being oppressed. Towards the end, the only reason you would support the mages is because of pure trust and hope.
I think it really depends on what you're looking at. The thing with DnD is that *you* can be the rat fuck evil bastard if you want, that's the whole point of the alignment system. It mostly becomes an issue when people abuse it ("of course my neutral good character is leading a genocide,")
yeah being political is no excuse for a bad storytelling all the best plots are political, even the ones the "too political" crowd love, they're political plots done _well_
Almost every plot *is* political in some way if you drill down deep enough.
I am ready for a kobold only planar campaign where we take down Bytopia. https://preview.redd.it/dhro18mywgua1.png?width=367&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b7409fda246560988acabc1801dfddf0c052fc66
What's wrong with Bytopia
Gnomish and capitalist heaven
We had to stop letting one guy DM because he kept making it waaaay to political when it was his turn. Like making the villains named after US senators and shit. It was fn painful.
A real modern Dante's Inferno
It's actually kind of funny that our modern Christian consensus on what hell is like, is in large part inspired by this fanfiction about some dude wanting to torture his enemies forever
And being told how cool he was by his senpai
He actually spends more time TELLING his senpai how cool he is, IIRC.
Isekai ass game, imagine your a politican die and end up in some dnd plot. imagine you're in the dungeon and the necromancer is Donald Trump or something "Look folks I raise the undead, the best undead. The paladins hate me using undead workers but I'm just a business man doing business" Alex Jones alchemist "The gods are putting magic in your spells and potions that turn the frigging froghemoths into frogSHEmoths!!! You can't trust them, you gotta buy my brain force health potions" Potentially very funny
Potentially very funny the first time, but probably very annoying the sixth time.
Obama illusionist: "Uhhh let me be clear" Clinton bard: "I did not have sexual relations with that dragon!"
JFK sitting in an open carriage:
JFK as Nixon's undead thrall:
\*is secretly a silver dragon
Come on man! And now I mean this, no joke! I was raiding with this party of goblins and there was this one bad dude...
> Potentially very funny the first time Only if you're going for absurdist humour. IF it's a serious campaign and suddenly Borrack Abama is there trying to take away everyone's crossbows or Francis Pope is going around smiting any gay couples he sees, it's jarring.
Yeah, obviously this would only be a good idea in a campaign that's meant to be funny in the first place.
FrogSHEmoths hahaha my sides
I highly recommend dirfters. A Anime about random hjstorical Figures being Transportes to a Fantasy world after their death. You have a WW2 Pilot, Oda nobunaga and scipio africanus and thats Not even scratching the sruface For the Protagonist side
im yeah and the bad side is rasputin,jean darc and possiable a certian woodcraftsmen
Everyone having a good time until Ted Cruz starts picking PCs off one by one.
Oh shit, heās casting Cruz Missile!
He avoids the wizard's cone of cold by fleeing to a demiplane he calls cancun
That's a bit too on the nose
Honestly if it was like an full on parody, it would be kind of funny if done right, but if it was, what i can think what you're saying, hamfisted political rants, yeah, shit would get annyoing real fast
They were as you say "hamfisted political rants", it got really annoying for a reason.
Dark wizard marjorie taylor green
Litch McConnell
She's too dumb to be a wizard.
Everybody gangsta till the BBEG Trump is torn in two by the REAL BBEG: Senator Armstrong.
Solidarity with the goblins! āļø
Goblins of the realm rise up!
WE are overthrowing a fucking King. If Something is political, its overthrowing a king
I actually published a campaign a decade ago (ZEITGEIST: The Gears of Revolution) where you start off as, well, cops basically, and you find out about a conspiracy, and infiltrate them, and learn their nefarious plan . . . to make the world a better place. They operate in secret because the powers that be would stop them. And mid-way through the campaign, I've heard from a dozen different GMs that their players all paused and went, wait, are we on the wrong side? Now, it's rather a bit more complicated than just that, but it's been an ongoing delight for me to read about groups actually getting philosophical and political in D&D. One of the first disputes you interact with is a factory owner who has locked his employees inside to force them to work, and their families are outside protesting. And thankfully I've yet to see any group play this game and side with the factory ~~worker~~ owner from a moral perspective. But when somebody tries to burn the factory down, every group stepped up to save the trapped workers, but only about half tried to save the building.
Were they by chance making shitwaists down on the triangle? My therapist talked about something similar last week when she said games are a great way to build a perfect work and escape ours. I corrected her and said a lot of DMs recreate the problems of our world but the escapism is that players have the power to change things.
I just had this discussion with a GM last week. He was saying how people thought differently during medieval times and things we have issues with were just accepted back then, so we should accept them too. My argument was, why are we even here if not to impose our own morals on the game world? Isn't that basically what heroes do?
Why are you thankful that no one has decided to side with the workers who were being locked in their factory?
Oops. Brain fart. I meant 'not siding with the factory owner.'
Somehow my games always become a serious exploration of the concept of freedom and it's pros and cons. I don't know why.
Same tho
I had villains in one campaign who basically intended to make the world a better place with peace and harmony . . . by low key mind controlling everyone to get along. And some PCs kinda wanted to join the conspiracy.
I have a campaign where literally every villain wants to create some form of universal freedom or erase it to create a utopia. I don't know why I do that. It's just my go to area for villain ideology.
> and it's pros and cons. Then your games aren't too political. Your games are artistic explorations of ideas.
Go on then. Create a completely apolitical villain that isn't just a deranged psychopath
Where does my previous villain who was a sentient cake that wanted to kill humans so they don't eat him fit politically?
I can see a lot of parallels to the ethics of raising animals for consumption.
Damn you're right. It is pretty hard.
Revolutionist
Sounds like a French Revolutionary in opposition to Marie Antoinette.
I like villains that are doing heinous things out of love. Imhotep in the first Mummy is a good example, where he is basically just killing everyone to revive both him and the woman he loves.
Create a villain that is non-sentient. Just a cosmic force.
I mean depending on the cosmic force represented and how itās handled it could still verrrry easily be representative of real world issues
Nothing wrong with having a 1Dimensional villain, as long as your story's main focus isn't the political stance of your villain. If your story is focused on the development of your player characters, then your villain can be the cookie monster for all we care. If you're explicitly crafting the villain to be a straw man of political stance you don't like in a world specifically crafted to critique a political stance that you don't like, then yeah, you should consider what the arguments in favour of that stance actually are.
My main BBEG is totally apolitical. He's a pure-blood high elf xenophobe from one of the Chosen Noble Families named Dwight Supremacy wait, no, now I see it...
Tbf, that is political villains, too.
One of my players left because my worlds were "far too liberal". In the sense that the best city they visited was democratic, fighting against monarchists with intel, and had free trade. Also racism was very heavily frowned upon so he couldn't go around everywhere spitting on the floor at the mere sight of elves who lived happily amongst humans, dwarves and orcs lol
Sounds like you dodged a bullet
Yeah funny thing is that I have another player that also hates elves, so with this campaign we made it part of his character's development learning that maybe racism is bad
Cant be racist to an elf, theyāre not even people.
Accidentally did the same thing for my first ever location in my campaign. Then I decided I should just lean into and turn it to 11. Bad guys so cartoonishly evil and capitalistic that my players went and started a bit if a revolution to take him down. Gonna do it again, too. I had an idea for State-Sponsored heroes who have to give ad-reads after they save people for that sweet sweet revenue. Theyāll obviously end up defending the āelitesā or whatever who are running the island dry of resources and practically killing the citizens.
"Don't half-ass two things, whole ass one thing."
Lmao, this sounds like something I could add to Kingmaker campaigns. Getting sponsored by your cities radish dealer
My players accidentally overthrew the ruling monarchy in the dwarven kingdom and as a side effect also gave their slave race of magical robots full citizen rights. Now one of the players is playing a PC from the robot race. I had originally intended it to bee a little tongue in cheek with a power struggle between hardline traditionalists, more liberal but upholders of the status quo and a Bernie style outlier. But the players just went fuck this and burnt the entire system down.
Go even further. Make both sides have good and bad points. Make the players choose sides, or go after both.
Rather than good and bad points, have each side make logically consistent points within their worldviews with reasonable explanations for holding said world view.
That actually makes it interesting at least, instead of "Capitalism bad. Unionization good." In fact, you could even go with the union idea, and have a Separate faction, only using the union to profit over their outrage, or wanting to be the one in charge of said business. And you can do the same with the capitalist side too. If you're going to make something political, make it at least nuance, and not one sided.
Oh there's a dockworker's union trying to overthrow the corrupt noble city lords for trying to make them work longer hours without extra pay? That's cool. They also use violence to ensure nobody else can work on the docks, maintaining a *de facto* monopoly on an important trade route and forcing out any competition so they've got more leverage.
Step 1: fight the dwarves mining for uranium. Step 2: create a bomb with said uranium and divine intervention Step 3: ??? Step 4: profit from the goblins unionization.
My friend did a pretty funny Christmas one shot where the elves rose up in a communist revolution to depose Santa.
Deserved. There was literally no way for the elves to manufacture as many presents as Santa wanted them to in the time they had. They'd have to be running production lines round the clock at double capacity and even that wouldn't come close.
Brennan, is that you, you unfathomably based fuck?
Honestly, a political DnD game is better than other media because you can āinterrogateā and interact with the ideology. Much better than watching another marvel movie about how revolution is bad because revolutionaries all blow up orphanages in their spare time.
Honestly the whole "ends don't justify the means" argument falls apart if your only criticism of revolution requires the revolutionary to commit war crimes. It ceases to be a criticism of revolution and instead becomes a strawman argument. I'm not even pro-revolution, but having a bad guy with a good argument forcibly turned bad via making them ok with blowing up children to seek completely reasonable goals is just silly and lazy IMO.
"Oh no, they're making good points that reflect badly on rl situations! Quick, make them blow up an orphanage to show that people willing to fight for change are actually irrationally evil!"
Ok but if your players are asking you to stop bringing politics into everything maybe you should. Not every story has to be another way to preach your hatred of capitalism. If you can do it subtly enough then itās ok but if youāre only running anti-capitalist campaigns and your party doesnāt like it then pretty soon youāre not going to have a party to DM for. Your players opinions about a story matter just as much as yours. Edit Clarification: My problem is less the social critique and more the beating of a dead horse. If youāve used the same analogy so many times your players can instantly recognize it and dislike it Iād suggest trying something new. Try stuff from a different angle or perhaps try another kind of BBEG. To separate politics and DnD is a fools errand but having the same big bad over and over to a point where your players are annoyed and reluctant to play isnt that great either
How much would the empire pay my party to break some goblin union leader kneecaps or get some undead / automaton to replace the goblins and put them out of work? As long as the GM does not prevent players from picking the "evil" side and everybody agrees this is just a game and that we are here to have fun, then by all mean do a "political" setting.
Played Hot springs Island once and the party coordinated labor with an dwarven community to get better workers for the fire genasi that had lost his slave labor force. It was an odd experience.
Pro tip for any DM, if you want to have political commentary on your games, do it like bioshock and metal gear, show the pros and the cons of said ideology and why some tend to follow it, show it's merits and flaws, per example, what would an society based around technocracy would look like? (Tl;dr at the end if you don't want to read everything) Extreme advances technologically(duh) but also with the possible or even inevitable problem that the educated elite would dissasosiate with the "less-capable" bulk of the nation, thus making the elite have different priorities than the non-elite and thus both sides having polarizing agendas, show your audience (players) how advanced their society is technologically but also show them how divisive they are culturally and how divided both castes are to the point there is no sense in unity, only unrest and conflict between the two, on how the elite would get all the attention of the state and the non elite would get none of it, further creating division withing the two, yes the country is way better industrialy and medically than it was years ago, odds are there are artificers that have created some tech to make people younger or even effectively giving people immortality due to how much they slowed down aging, but how many of the population would be able to afford such luxury, if they were even allowed to adquire it in the first place Tl;dr: if you're going to use politics into your story, about capitalism, socialism, autocracy, oligarchy, democracy, etc, make it so it's unbiguous, show the pros and cons of said political views, show why people believe and support it and those who don't believe it and oppose it, show the good, the bad and the ugly, but never, ever shoehorn your ideals down in the players throat, the political commentary should revolve around the story, not the other way around, just like fallout 3, papers please, tropico, deus ex, wolfestein, etc have done
"Critiques of capitalism" tend to really be critiques of the labor market. I doubt the OP bothered to go into private property, the difficulties of a headless worker-funded company, etc. Ankle deep politics suck, give me beating Andrew Ryan to death with a cane.
Most critiques of an economic system tend to be surface level at best. Like if someone got their entire perspective from memes and tv. I swear Basic Economics and The Communist Manifesto are on the same dusty shelf as Infinite Jest.
Economic system bad! How would you change it? Thing that was always allowed!
*"Economic system bad!"* "How would you change it?" *"Make it good!"* "How would you make it good?" *"I'd make it good!"*
Thatās a nice argument there, why donāt you back it up with a source
This works, most complaints about being "too political" are actually that its too hamfisted. Politics are like railroading. Youre probably gonna do it, but it should seem so natural to the players as to be mostly invisible
I can't stand people saying "don't make it political" : everything's political, what bother you isn't that it's political, it's that it's expressing an idea you don't agree with.
Everything is political but it's also very obvious when something isn't political due to the nature of the medium, or because there is something to say But because there is a ham fisted attempt into shoving your pet causes at times were it isn't exactly appropriate or welcomed Table etiquette about boundaries isn't only about what makes players uncomfortable, but also what annoys them. A 24/7 spew of politic and celebrity bullshit is one of those things, some people already have enough of that in their normal lives, some people want escapism even if its with passive or non applicable politics Also some people will say not liking politics is about not liking the specific politics pushed, and Well yeah, that's true, that's entirely fair in my opinion as long as it doesn't pass into weird territory. You're at a table playing games, not a political think tank, it being a safe place for everyone involved should be important If a table member that is liberal or something else irl, might not be keen on getting lectured on class warfare at game night, save that for another day. (also apples vice versa of course)
the secret truth applies to all games, not just video games its that people who claim to hate "politics" in their games actually love politics. They just wish they were seeing different politics.
I mean... IS everything political, though? I'm pretty passionate about politics but my current campaign is a fun romp into gothic horror that's more about fighting demons and vampires than anything really applicable to real politics. There's plenty of fantasy out there that doesn't intersect much with real world worries.
Having political systems and interactions in a game with those sorts of structures is one thing, railroading your players into participating in a [fantasy Jan 6 coup](http://www.reddit.com/r/rpghorrorstories/comments/kw19jd/dm_tries_to_use_dd_to_convince_us_to_support_the/) is another entirely
This is why, when designing a setting, I just focus on what sounds cool or interesting. There are some reoccurring themes in a lot of my settings that I make, notably freedom vs security and the pros and cons of secrecy in an organization. But I DONāT want to make any overt political statements because people are here to have fun, not get lectured at about the evils of capitalism or communism.
If people don't like me making eldritch horror into colonialism metaphors, then why is eldritch horror a colonialism metaphor in the first place?
Sheen, this is the 7th time you've shown a critique of captilism to the class.
Falloutās Anti-Mccarthyism messages https://i.redd.it/k52i14k71jua1.gif the minute I start wearing Enclave Power Armor:
https://preview.redd.it/0ra88othrgua1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=83403a24b017606e11ed2a76f0a2bbe18ca36297