I'm not a member of the Knights & Knaves Alehouse, so when I make my infrequent visits I must put up with the egotistic cock-shining of user sigs.

I did spot an interesting one, though...

QuoteD&D is the ultimate right wing wet dream. A bunch of guys who are better than your average joe set out into the middle of nowhere where they murder and kill everything they come across in order to stockpile gold and elaborate magical bling. There are no taxes, no state and any poor people that get in your way get their village burned to the ground. It's like Ayn Rand on PCP
 - Mr Analytical

...which offers an interesting take on games, settings and political views.

So, which games and worlds do you think represent a political view or ideology?  We should be able to get some funnies out before the thread devolves into a shitfight.

For my money, the most stridently Right-wing game setting is Warhammer 40K: the United States of Humanity is a beacon of light in a universe full of beings who are Not Like Us.  The orcs have different-coloured skin – obviously evil - while the awful, intellectual Eldar act as though an ancient history of learning and culture give them some sort of authority and the right to criticise the actions of a race that popped into existence five minutes ago.  Worst of all, the Tyranids have mastered the dark arts of biological science, which they use to threaten the magical primacy of Jesu...the Emperor, probably by  performing abortions and teaching the warp-spawned lie of evolution, backed only by logic and massive amounts of evidence.

As for Left-wing settings, I think anything Star Trek-related counts: an intergalactic federation of united planets in an environment of limitless resources without conservative Klingons, conservative Humans and conservative Romulans all wanting to make war on each other and denouncing their peaceful brethren as appeasers.

Bring it on, commies.

That's my sig. It is both utterly ridiculous and a completely accurate description of what D&D is.

WH40k is satire, although it seems to have developed an unhealthy fascism fetish along the way. The Morrow Project is a better example of what I'd call right-wing, while Vampire is very leftist (and Werewolf even more so).

Ehm, except 40k is massively satirical, and the Empire of Humanity is seen as utterly utterly sucking ass and being a horrific place to live in.

RPGPundit

And yes, all of WW's games have certain basic political assumptions, which can be summed up as "everything from western civilization is EVIL, vague new-age religion and stereotyped non-western cultural representations are good and noble". Or "science sucks because its too hard, I want to be a wiccan Art-student poet!!"

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;318269Ehm, except 40k is massively satirical, and the Empire of Humanity is seen as utterly utterly sucking ass and being a horrific place to live in.

But humans are grateful for their awful conditions because it's better than the  alternatives they're told exist.  Authority figures protect humans from a broad, ill-defined threat, therefore uncritical submission seems sensible and rational.  How much more Right-wing can it get?
Posted in Mobile Mode

Quote from: Hairfoot;318265As for Left-wing settings, I think anything Star Trek-related counts: an intergalactic federation of united planets in an environment of limitless resources without conservative Klingons, conservative Humans and conservative Romulans all wanting to make war on each other and denouncing their peaceful brethren as appeasers.

Bring it on, commies.

Um,..NO...just no.

Current political terminology just doesn't apply. You've fallen into a trap that happens quite often. People bring their own political baggage and agenda into Science Fiction /STAR TREK stories where it doesn't really apply.

Klingon and Romulans aren't 'conservative' or 'liberal' - the modern-day terminology doesn't really apply to them.  Theiur culture /history evolved differently than Earth's did - hence different ways of looking at things. Also Klingons NEVER had bias/prejudice based on skin color - just look at the episodes. He or she might know that your family or house fought theirs.

Also, it was implied in the episode "Dayt of the Dove" that Klingons had reads Terran history and found the atrocities and Death casmps of World War II and other wars quite strange. Kang's wife Mara specifically refers to this.

As to the STAR TREK universe in general - WHICH version?

The classic shows or NEXT GEN era ? - because there was uite a shift in how things were presented. Original seroes was quite a bit "Libertarian" about many things when compared to nEXT GEN. Also the opposite assumption to yours has been tossed at the STAR TREK universe from time to time - that the Federation is actually Imperialistic and "conquers" planets via trade , negotiation and peer pressure into joinig the Federation.

The line of dialogue that David Marcus had in THE WRATH OF KHAN was an acknowledgement of that sometimes wrongheaded view.


- Ed C.

Quote from: RPGPundit;318270And yes, all of WW's games have certain basic political assumptions, which can be summed up as "everything from western civilization is EVIL, vague new-age religion and stereotyped non-western cultural representations are good and noble".

"Multiculturalism

One of the core assumptions of Changeling: The Lost is that fae things work in much the same way around the world. The Others are the Others, even if one resembles an American urban legend when haunting the streets of Miami and another is reminiscent of a Tibetan demon when it goes hunting for prey at the roof of the world."

--from Winter Masques, a "player's guide" supplement for Changeling.

Quote from: Hairfoot;318286But humans are grateful for their awful conditions because it's better than the  alternatives they're told exist.  Authority figures protect humans from a broad, ill-defined threat, therefore uncritical submission seems sensible and rational.  

How much more Right-wing can it get?
Posted in Mobile Mode

Thats not "right wing" thats totalitarian - there is a difference between the two.

Pundit is probably right that the WH40K universe was probably meant as satire....however it has quite drifted into something else. The Warhammer players get a shocked look on their faces when I say I'm not interested in playing it because there are no "Good Guy" faction in that universe. They say : "WHat about the humans?"
ME: "No they are blatantly and obviously oppressive by killing a thousand people a day to keep that human carcas they call an emperor supposedly alive."


- Ed C.

Hairfoot's right, Koltar. Roddenberry's Federation in Star Trek is a socialist wet dream, particularly The Next Generation (where you even had a mind-reading ship's counselor to ensure that the crew thought appropriately, the Bad Guys were often either militaristic Klingons/Cardassians or capitalistic Ferengi or perfidious Romulans, and Q was around to demonstrate that a God was nothing more than very powerful spoiled brat).

Thankfully, JJ Abrams came along and drove a wooden stake into the vampiric undead heart of Roddenberry's Ghost to ensure that Star Trek didn't suck anymore as a franchise.

Mr Analytical used to post here.  

The thing about that sig is: If I really had a mind I could easily post a similar statement stating that D&D was the ultimate Left wingers Wet Dream... I'd probably start with the alignment assumptions, move on to how the characters are never part of the ruling elite, and are thus exemplars of the common man or some such, then point out the egalitarian nature of parties, where the race and gender of a character are meaningless, or if i was being really snarky, how the various minority races are better than humans...

That being, of course, merely a rough framework.

In order to really do it justice, I'd have to jump up and grab every over the top stereotypical propaganda used against 'left wingers', much as the OP did.

Harfoot,

 Was this whole thread a backdoor sneaky way to discuss politiucs in the guise of it being an RPG thread ??

 Just wondering.

Jeff - you're both wrong and right.

 I was referring to STAR TREK the whole she'bang over the past three decades or so. (And your ongoing Roddenberry slams are getting pretty old)

In the 80s I ran a FASA adventure for a small group.  ("A Doomsday Like Any Other") One player had the knee-jerk commentary that the Federation and Starfleet were just spacegoing Imperialists - so he felt 'forced' to play it that way. Meanwhile, the player that grew up in Europe didn't feel that way at all about Starfleet.


If it can be viewed as "Right-wing" wet dream by one bunch of misguided people and also be called a "Left wing wet dream" by yet another group of people - it just means that TREK fell somewhere in the middle and had more than 17 different wraiters over the years and at least 47 different ones that were on staff at one time or freelancers for the shows.


- Ed C.

Oh and Jeff -  the next time you knee-jerk slam Roddenberry ? Which version of Roddenberry?  - the 1960s version of him? Or the late 1980s version of him that started Next Gen?  The man changed his mind on some things.
Nobody is perfect or stays static over the course of his or her life.

Surley a socialist Utopia is the idealised end state for any culture. If you accept that folks will have motivation enough to act even when their every whim is catered to by a benign and limitless central authority.
I mean no one actively wants the starving millions and unfair distribution of resources we just accept it as a result of the result of the fact that resource pool is limited and the more sucessful nations/indivdiuals will therefore grab more of the stuff.
And Koltar, socialist states can be Imperialistic and domineering especially when its for the good of the many to impinge on the freedoms of the few (or is that getting more like the 'Verse). I mean they had to invent a type of money when they invented the Ferengi becuase prior to that they hadn't even needed it.

Quote from: Hairfoot;318286But humans are grateful for their awful conditions because it's better than the  alternatives they're told exist.  Authority figures protect humans from a broad, ill-defined threat, therefore uncritical submission seems sensible and rational.  How much more Right-wing can it get?
Posted in Mobile Mode

You need to broaden your political base quite a bit. A lot, in fact.

You just described Stalin's USSR, and also the PRC for the first 50+ years. Both decidedly left-wing.

Uber right-wing, such as Germany under the National Socialists, told the people to bear heavy burdens for future rewards from dealing with a broad, extremely well-defined threat.

So did the Kymer Rouge, who were decidedly left wing.

As Koltar accurately pointed out, you're confusing political doctrine with political system. Centralized control, demonization of interior and exterior threats, and restriction of information are apolitical tools used for the purpose of control, regardless of whether the governing body claims the left, right, or royal basis for its rulership.

40k is Orwellian in nature, with a strong cyber-uniform fetish. The government would be  best described as a paternalistic bureaucratic dictatorship with religious support (the Imperial cult). It is very strongly modeled after Imperial Russia.

And your quote about D&D could go either way. D&D's concept that small groups of Right-Thinking Folk must save the masses (who are too inept to protect themselves) from poorly-explained EVIL, wherein EVIL is always wealthy, frequently organized, warlike, and harmful to the environment. Its the ultimate tree-hugging leftist dream.

Politics is about power. Left, right, etc., are just the labels used to rally people to their side. As Lenin said, the masses need only slogans which can be shouted, and phrases which can be used to open a speech. The rest is the business of the Party.

A leftist, you will recall, who told the peasants that they should be grateful for their awful conditions because it's better than the  alternatives they're told exist.  Authority figures protect them from a broad, ill-defined threat*, therefore uncritical submission seems sensible and rational. A concept which ran largely unchanged for 82 years.


* = The US, French, British, and Japanese intervention in the Russian Civil War, and the dire Poles and Finns, for Lenin. The threats were updated with time.

Quote from: jibbajibba;318341....................... I mean they had to invent a type of money when they invented the Ferengi becuase prior to that they hadn't even needed it.

NOT really true - "Classic" or Original TREK had money.

Lots of dialogue like "Scotty, you've earned your pay for the week"

Or the whole business of Starfleet having to pauy the miners in "Mudd's Women" to get the dilithium crystals.

The planet in "Devil in the Dark" bering a mining concern that was worried about making a profit - and an important enough business that Starfleet and Kirk had to help them out.

Its NEXT GEN -era ...24th Century STAR TREK where they went too far into saying there was no money.

So yeah, there was a background premise shift.

- Ed C.

Quote from: Koltar;318340(And your ongoing Roddenberry slams are getting pretty old)

Oh and Jeff -  the next time you knee-jerk slam Roddenberry ? Which version of Roddenberry?  - the 1960s version of him? Or the late 1980s version of him that started Next Gen?  The man changed his mind on some things.

Nobody is perfect or stays static over the course of his or her life.

You are just pissed off that JJ Abrams came along and does Star Trek better than the original creator.

Roddenberry is dead, Ed. You can stop sucking his cock any time now.