So, I was contemplating the various arenas of possible adventure, intrigue, and skullduggery created by the many colourful eras in history, when my attention turned to the modern day. Specifically Mexico. I don't know if anyone is keeping track of what's going on down there, but it's pretty wild. Basically most of the South American drug cartels finally got a monopoly on production in their home countries and exported their collective violence to the nearest state to the target market, pax narcotica.

So we get the Mexican drug wars. I'm not going to paste over any of the text there, it's a lot, but have a quick read, or maybe look at this for a more concise view.












The question is really, how sensitive would people be to a game set in modern day Mexico? What's happening there is really nasty, and really real, people are dying in their thousands. And yet we have no difficulty setting campaigns in far worse periods of history.

Mexico is an incredible place, with a tremendous history stretching back millenia. You have the potential for pirate treasure hunts, tomb raiding, mystical quests, modern wild west scenarios, vampires (dusk till dawn?), mummies, incredible scenery, the ability to blast away with automatic weapons in public, investigative games, noir games, just about any good-vs-evil trope that can be imagined.

Is it bad taste or taking advantage of misery to use the terrible situation in Mexico in gaming?

No fair: that submarine is South American, not Mexican.

But I honestly think that modern day Mexico is a pretty cool place to set action movies and RPGs. We don't flip out when someone makes Once Upon a Time in Mexico, why should we get upset when people play RPGs set there?

Stay away from Speedy Gonzalez imitations and similar offensive crap and you're gold.

-Frank

Steve Sailer teaches me that no one cares about Mexico.

I can't see any problem with it.

With these kinds of things it is all in how you run it and how you handle player sensitivities. Modern day headlines are a great source of adventure. Nothing wrong with using something going on in the news as a backdrop. I've run tons of counter terrorism games and the one thing to be aware of when dealing with these kinds of subjects is: you could have players who have been personally impacted by the setting material in their real life. So you may want to check with those players before hand (as well as those who may just have strong political views or sensititivites) about the content of the game.

So far I've never really run into an issue and my games have covered a lot of ground (never done mexico but I've done everything under the terrorism heading and plenty of real-life crime stuff). At one point I had two players get into an argument about Iraq but just asked them to resume the debate when the game ends (if people want to argue politics at the game I don't care, I just ask that they do so before and after, rather than during, play).

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;477951you could have players who have been personally impacted by the setting material in their real life. So you may want to check with those players before hand (as well as those who may just have strong political views or sensititivites) about the content of the game.

Yes, this is where I get a bit wary. I'm considering doing a setting based in part in Mexico; headlines from that part of the world are replete with tales of beheadings and mutilations. So if as part of this setting some of these murders were part of a spiritual war, ritual sacrifice, or vampire hunt, is that beyond the pale when real people are being beheaded for very non fantastical reasons?

Quote from: The Traveller;477955Yes, this is where I get a bit wary. I'm considering doing a setting based in part in Mexico; headlines from that part of the world are replete with tales of beheadings and mutilations. So if as part of this setting some of these murders were part of a spiritual war, ritual sacrifice, or vampire hunt, is that beyond the pale when real people are being beheaded for very non fantastical reasons?

I don't think it is beyond the pale. You just need to read your group to see what level of detail they want. I think as long as you aren't dwelling on the graphic imagery of it you'll be fine with most players. Most of my campaigns are pretty mundane so the villains do evil things for non fantastical reasons.

Mexico 1970 was a small FUDGE game available on the internet that I ran as a goof back in 2001 -- it ended up one of the most fun games I ever ran.  But I'm a big fan of Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, so there it is.

A year ago I popped down to see an ex-girlfriend in Monterry whilst I was on a trip to Houston.
The night I arrived we headed out to a Karaoke bar for her friend's birthday party. As we arrived and were heading up the steps I got pushed in the back, so I turned round to give the bloke some verbal and there he was in a balaclava, kevlar vest with an HK54. The Narco Police were raiding the place. About 80 of them in a couple of vans and a dozen black SUVs. I didn't continue my complaint:)

The odd thing was mixed in with the uniformed police were guys in civies in face masks but also guys in civies with no face masks and female officers in civies and no masks or vests who were videoing it all on handy cams.

Mexico great place

Huh.  I'm fine with role-playing in Mexico, but I'm curious how people were OK with it.  

I've been thinking about running a d20 Afghanistan game, and it seemed like a lot of people felt that it would be in bad taste.  Is the same thing that makes the Mexican cartel wars non-news also make them more acceptable as RPG material than Afghanistan?  Or are people here also good with Afghanistan as a setting?

Quote from: jhkim;478007Huh.  I'm fine with role-playing in Mexico, but I'm curious how people were OK with it.  

I've been thinking about running a d20 Afghanistan game, and it seemed like a lot of people felt that it would be in bad taste.  Is the same thing that makes the Mexican cartel wars non-news also make them more acceptable as RPG material than Afghanistan?  Or are people here also good with Afghanistan as a setting?

I am fine with the Afghanistan setting. But I would be mindful of player's personal experiences and any strong political viewpoints at the table. I've run games set in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and games that deal with terrorism on US soil. If people are okay watching 24 or Syriana, I don't think they'll have a huge issue with these kinds of settings----unless you are using it as a platform to vent your politics.

Quote from: jhkim;478007Huh.  I'm fine with role-playing in Mexico, but I'm curious how people were OK with it.  

I've been thinking about running a d20 Afghanistan game, and it seemed like a lot of people felt that it would be in bad taste.  Is the same thing that makes the Mexican cartel wars non-news also make them more acceptable as RPG material than Afghanistan?  Or are people here also good with Afghanistan as a setting?

I have the following thoughts, which I'll tie together at the end here that cover both Mexico and Afghanistan.

0. Most people play RPGs with their friends, and so concerns about bad taste are probably minor. I mean, you know your friends, their preferences, and so-on. Bad taste only becomes an issue if you're going to game in public or talk about your games on the Internet. I'd aim the following discussion at the second scenario address a concern about bad-taste gaming from an Internet discussion.


I believe that:

1. RPGs, as a medium, tend to trivialize their subject matter. This should be taken into account by anyone worried about the "taste" of their game. If you're worried that others might judge you, bear it in mind

2. Lots and lots of other mediums tend to trivialize their material to one degree or another

3. The trivialization is less a matter of medium (I don't think comic books are /inherently/ more trivializing than novels or movies), and more a matter of the degree to which quality can be controlled for and to which quality is present. RPGs have virtually no in-play quality controls that would help ensure a respectful treatment of the material.

So: Extremely high-quality game play could handle a touchy subject in good taste (When I talk about high-quality game *play* I'm talking about scenario design and execution -- NOT game mechanics, so much... although mechanics could degrade the quality of a game)

Quality in rpg-play is hard to judge and people are likely to over-value the quality of their own play -- possibly vastly over value it.

So even if I think my treatment was measured and respectful, I should be aware that to many people may not be impressed by how well I roleplayed the Zeta Commander or the Mujahadeen, or whatever.

Now, here's the key:

4. Our culture is pretty okay with trivializing war and cops-and-robbers. We're less okay with trivializing racism, the Holocaust, etc.

Taking all this into account, I'd say an action-adventure game set in Mexico falls squarely into the Cops / Robbers / Soliders spectrum, and is less risky from a Bad-Taste standpoint, than other focuses.

If someone told me they were building a game that would encourage players to role-play the experience of an illegal immigrant struggling through progressive victimization to make it to the US, where they could suffer in migrant-worker farm until they died in an emergency room, I'd say the risks of Bad Taste were through the roof.

This might not be fair, but given that we're culturally okay with gun battles and far, far less so with racism, I think it's the case.

I'd also note that an Afghanistan game that focused on warfare aspects would be relatively safe (c.f. Iron Man), but if the game focused on rendering Afghan culture, it would be much harder for most groups to pull off and more risky. Games with any overt political content are likely to be extremely risky from a bad-taste perspective (just like any political art).

I'll note that I ran a game which involved gun-play in Mexico a couple of years ago (the narco-civil-war was really just taking off). I did my best to do a respectful job, but the game had a science-fiction and supernatural elements was very much an action-movie style piece of fiction. By staying away from an attempt at a realistic portrayal, I kept things within norms for popular fiction in our society.

If I were going to do an Afghanistan game, I'd take the same approach.

If I were going to run a game at a convention or in another public space, I'd stay away from either setting.

Cheers,
-E.

I think the general idea that a setting in and of itself can be "offensive" is overblown.  Now some places in history have been indelibly marked by the horrors that occurred there, and some topics are way to easy to descend into perversion, or misery tourism if not handled correctly.  But nothing suggested in this thread is even remotely in the same area.

Modern Mexico?  It's a Cyberpunk world without the Cyber.  There are a thousand stories that you can tell in such a warzone without being involved in the violence.

Afghanistan?  It's an incredible place to have a setting.  Thousands of years of history, strong cultural elements, harsh and forbidding environment.  The Graveyard of Empires is one of the greatest places to run a modern campaign there is, whether it's military, investigative, supernatural, what have you.

If people can't handle the realities of what is happening there, play Mouseguard.  Not that I'm dissing Mouseguard, I love the comic and the system is pretty cool too if a little storygamey for my tastes, I'm just saying in Mouseguard you don't have to worry about a PC getting captured and getting their head cut off, or having a tire around their neck set fire with gasoline.

I think a Mexico Drug War campaign is fair game; we do have modern spy/police/military games after all.  Its a real thing that's really happening, and I think its fine to make use of it in a campaign as long as its presented in good taste.  That is to say, avoiding racist stereotypes on the one hand, or glorifying the criminals on the other.

RPGPundit

Sounds good to me. I'd love to play Shadowrun in Mexico. Drug lord dragons!

I have run Counterstrike-style events at conventions post-9/11 and I start my games with a warning to keep your politics off the table, even if I fully agree with them. I had one dickless bitch walk out once because I was "denying his freedom of expression", but every other player saw my event blurb and knew what to expect from my game.

"Misery tourism" is one of the cornerstones of great fiction. It's why Contagion made so much money this weekend.