One thing that has always bothered me about the "politics was always in games" excuse you hear, is they use it to state you just don't like the politics they are shoveling.  In reality, they are not shoveling politic.  Politics is economic policy, should we subsidize the price of grain, should be increase military spending to discourage a war etc.  No, these little fuckers are pushing propaganda.  Pro-fragility (safety tools), racial identity politics (drow and orcs are black people, can't have races with different stats everyone is identical don't you know) and gender identity (can't use he or she, must use neutral pronouns).  Those concepts aren't politics they are fucking propaganda for a degenerate faith.  Leftarology moved past an ideology when they started pushing the miracle of transforming a male child into a girl with the power of a dress, make up and belief.

Well, that's all true, but besides that, the vast majority of games which may have had politics were not shoveling it as propaganda.

The only politics in my games are in-game politics (Kingdoms, laws, etc.).  External political discussion is not allowed at my tables, and I will kick someone from my group for talking about politics.

I hate politics and prefer to talk about anything else.  If a gamer wants to talk politics on his own time, that's fine.  But around me when I am running a game it is not allowed.

Luckily, I don't have any problems.

A game's lore can be political, have in-game politics that no-so-subtly reference real world politics, without insulting their audience.

This is something I'm doing in my own writing. I have a space western setting where there are various colonized planets inhabited by pastiches of the southern United States, and they really like jockeying with one another for power. Officially they're all members of the "Confederacy of Independent Systems" or whatever, but they're prone to infighting. Colonies wage occasional skirmishes with one another (think Dune's "war of assassins", or the various ethnic conflicts that have occurred in less fortunate countries over the last centuries, or the tensions between the Twelve Colonies of Kobol in the centuries prior to the Cylon wars), political parties sling mud at each other... and they pretty much have no regulation on environmental exploitation. It's gotten to the point where the various mining guilds have developed mobile refineries and infrastructure so they can rapidly move to new quarries without needing to prepare new infrastructure. Sometimes they outright crack whole planetoids apart to better access the interior, Dead Space-style.

Then some stuffy aliens show up and say "stop that, you're ruining the environment. The galaxy is a beautiful garden and you're wrecking it." Naturally, war erupts.

I would actually argue there is a limit to how good any given content can be when it doesn't have any philosophical or political content. Humanity strives for truth, so works which do not seek to satisfy that striving simply do not satisfy.

The problem is not games having political content, but that the political content we usually get is offensive levels of thoughtless and tasteless. Political content must be thought provoking and that means being controversial, even on your own side of the aisle.

This is mostly because modern liberalism does not teach people logical fallacies and is very susceptible to peer pressure. (Conservatism also has these faults, but there are more educated conservatives who know logical fallacies and who are less affected by peer pressure. That, and liberals have control of the culture war at the moment.) The end result is that most people can innately sense that liberal propaganda has a very low truth content.

My game actually has rules for politics and political campaigns.

As far as propaganda goes it's time to paint "THE KING IS A FINK!" on the old castle walls again.

Fantasy politics are not propaganda.  And that is where people have to call out people in the space putting propaganda into games.

Having people doing a revolt against an evil king isn't propaganda, it can be the basis for a campaign.

Having druids coming into towns and giving sex change to children in a village that looks like a Target commercial (black halfling dad, white half orc mom, asian dwarf son and hispanic lizadman daughter) with no explanation how all these disparate species are living together let alone how a halfling could mate to an orc and give a lizardman, but something like this if I told you twitter was pushing, could you say definitively that never happened, you can't.  That's propaganda.

Its why I think we should move away from politics and call it propaganda when that type of real world leftoigology is put into gaming.

I don't mind a little political chit chat and small talk while we are waiting for everyone to show up, get settled, get a drink, etc. Once the game starts I like to keep the chatter and attention focused on the game. The only propaganda I will put up with is any that relate to the campaign in the game world.

'Politics' is such an equivocal and slippery term that I try to avoid complaining about it and instead complain about propaganda, overt and distracting messaging, heavy-handedness, wickedness, and blasphemy.

I'll agree that the correct term is propaganda and not politics. However I think that a larger problem is the narrative woven by those who want us to believe that games have a political slant to begin with.

I'm most familiar with Traveller and will use it as an example. Since the default campaign is Free Traders, progressives tend to claim that the game is innately capitalist and therefore conservative. This is regardless of the campaign being run or what that campaign's base assumptions are. This is not done by progressives to promote playing the game, but to promote an agenda of what to fight against socially.

We may fight the propaganda in the game, but we have a greater conflict with the people trying to declare the game badwrongthink if it doesn't match their personal outlook. It isn't the propaganda that is the worst, it is the propagandists.

Quote from: jeff37923 on June 17, 2024, 03:11:54 PMSince the default campaign is Free Traders, progressives tend to claim that the game is innately capitalist and therefore conservative.

This is completely nonsensical. Firstly, capitalism is a spectrum of regulations and not a coherent ideology. There are many people who love capitalism but hate corporations and call modern capitalism "crony capitalism." Secondly, conservatism (and for that matter progressivism) isn't a fixed ideology but arbitrarily defined based on time and space. An American conservative and a Japanese conservative aren't gonna share the same values when it comes to social safety nets and abortion, for example.

I have a simple rule of thumb:  If the player can't tell the difference between politics of the real world and politics of the game, then they aren't ready to play.  Usually, such a player is absolutely convinced (despite never having thought much about it) that "the personal is political". 

Of course, it doesn't show up that clear cut to them.  Instead, it's a "no politics" game where they can't understand why their comments are political.

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on June 17, 2024, 11:05:30 AMHaving druids coming into towns and giving sex change to children in a village that looks like a Target commercial (black halfling dad, white half orc mom, asian dwarf son and hispanic lizadman daughter) with no explanation how all these disparate species are living together let alone how a halfling could mate to an orc and give a lizardman, but something like this if I told you twitter was pushing, could you say definitively that never happened, you can't.  That's propaganda.

Its why I think we should move away from politics and call it propaganda when that type of real world leftoigology is put into gaming.

That sounds like a hypothetical example. I feel like it helps to talk about real cases.

I'm not sure what I'd call propaganda in RPGs, but I can think of politics.

What springs to mind for me is, say, _Paranoia_ (1984). It's explicitly a humorous satire of Cold-War-era U.S. nationalism. The Computer purports to hunt down "commie mutant traitors" who are the enemy but in reality, it is the insane totalitarian ruler. Along similar lines, _Macho Women With Guns_ (1988) is a humorous satire of male chauvinism, with post-apocalyptic monsters like "Drunken frat boys" and "Chauvinist swine" along with "Lawyers" and "TV Evangelists".

I think they're explicitly real-world political satire, but I wouldn't call them propaganda.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on June 17, 2024, 04:44:15 PMI have a simple rule of thumb:  If the player can't tell the difference between politics of the real world and politics of the game, then they aren't ready to play.  Usually, such a player is absolutely convinced (despite never having thought much about it) that "the personal is political". 

Of course, it doesn't show up that clear cut to them.  Instead, it's a "no politics" game where they can't understand why their comments are political.

Greetings!

Yeah, Steven, I'm with you. However, the idea of "The Personal is Political" didn't just pop out of nowhere. I recall hearing this mantra taught over and over and over again in a mandatory Women's Studies Class that I was forced to endure at my university over 20 years ago. Yes, unfortunately, it was a state-mandated graduation requirement that all university students were required to attend a minimum of two university courses that covered women or minorities. Thus, here I was, a History major, Senior, and getting ready to graduate, and I suddenly had to shoehorn in attending two of these stupid classes. The PH.D. woman professor was *very insistent* on her views being taught, and fully embraced by everyone in the class. She taught the usual Feminist and Communist ideology and propaganda from start to finish. I resisted her in every class, and always had loud, dramatic debates with her, surrounded as I was by maybe 4 other guys, and 45 women in the class. Despite her loathing towards me, and despite my superior work, I was stuck with getting a "B" grade in the class. Yes, her down marking me was inevitable, and entirely intentional. I had a mentor friend of mine--a professor of Philosophy, explain that was the feminist professor's way of sticking me with her disdain, with a lower grade than I deserved--while being sufficient that any complaint I might seek would go nowhere.

Yes, it is my understanding that the Communist and Feminist propaganda and brainwashing are even more entrenched and crazy now. Thus, these students and young people are being piped down full blast with this evil ideology non-stop, from most of their professors and faculty at the university and the Community College. NON-STOP, my friend!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: jhkim on June 17, 2024, 07:13:00 PM

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on June 17, 2024, 11:05:30 AMHaving druids coming into towns and giving sex change to children in a village that looks like a Target commercial (black halfling dad, white half orc mom, asian dwarf son and hispanic lizadman daughter) with no explanation how all these disparate species are living together let alone how a halfling could mate to an orc and give a lizardman, but something like this if I told you twitter was pushing, could you say definitively that never happened, you can't.  That's propaganda.

Its why I think we should move away from politics and call it propaganda when that type of real world leftoigology is put into gaming.

That sounds like a hypothetical example. I feel like it helps to talk about real cases.

I'm not sure what I'd call propaganda in RPGs, but I can think of politics.

What springs to mind for me is, say, _Paranoia_ (1984). It's explicitly a humorous satire of Cold-War-era U.S. nationalism. The Computer purports to hunt down "commie mutant traitors" who are the enemy but in reality, it is the insane totalitarian ruler. Along similar lines, _Macho Women With Guns_ (1988) is a humorous satire of male chauvinism, with post-apocalyptic monsters like "Drunken frat boys" and "Chauvinist swine" along with "Lawyers" and "TV Evangelists".

I think they're explicitly real-world political satire, but I wouldn't call them propaganda.

Then why bring them up? We know they're satire. You know they're satire. That's not the topic being discussed.

Why not address Black Aragorn in MTG, or the "Diversity Initative" in D&D?