I've talked a lot about RPGs having political agendas; it struck me that obviously you have your "hard" political agendas in certain games, like Blue Rose; but there are also games that have soft political agendas, at least this is my perception.

It struck me that Traveller tends to be a "conservative" game, and I'd be willing to bet that among Traveller fans there are more conservatives and libertarians than in other RPG fandoms.
I'd guess you might get the same from Palladium's games, and GURPS tends to have some positively insanse-right wingers fanaticizing about it.

Likewise, I have no doubt that most Forge games will tend to have a higher percentage of mush-brained politically-correct Liberals; ditto with most of White Wolf's.

I'm trying to think of an RPG that would be likely to have the more intelligent kind of classical liberal, the type of guy who might tend to vote Democrat more often than Republican (or Labour more often than Tory) but isn't a college-sophomore self-styled-know-it-all pretentious politically correct feminist marxist wanker.
But my inability to come up with one might just be because this is actually the default majority of gamers, and most games that don't cater toward any other group in fact cater to this group (ie. D&D, D20, WFRP, etc).

RPGPundit

Wow, we must be reading the same threads!

I don't know what my problem is, but for the most part, when reading books or RPGs or whatnot, unless it is a political non-fiction book, I almost NEVER pick up on political undercurrents. I read fiction and play games to have fun, not to disect them and find the "hidden meaning" behind the story - what did the author REALLY mean?

Seriously. I read a book or a game and enjoy it or I don't, then I see people posting thousand-word screeds attacking some point or other of the book, the author, his ancestry, and what he eats for lunch. And I don't get it! Really - I used to think I was pretty intelligent, then I started hanging out on t3h Intarweb. Now I think I'm an oblivious moron - and I have plenty of folks willing to back me up on that!

So, in conclusion: stop worrying about it and enjoy the god-damn books/games/whatever. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, eh? Moreso with RPGs than books - because after all, YOU decide what the game is about. The author just provides you with the tools to do so.

I've only made the observation that games with military background (MechWarrior, Milleniums End etc.) tend to draw in more "militarists" of the kind that runs around in woodland camo trousers and debates about assault rifles, as well as actual soldiers. They definitively have some more conservative and/or right-wing undertones than other games among their players, but I'd guess it's more the effect of the kinds of people who get attracted to setting and core story, not that they attract a more rad fringe among them.

Apart from that, gamers seem to be generally what I call "fashionable greenies" - those who are absolutely against the war on terror, bash America "'cause they're dumb 'cause they've voted for Bush 'cause they're dumb" and look down on conservative parties (Reps, Tories, [the right-leaning major party of the country]) out of principle rather than out of case-by-case decision, but with a healthy skepticism towards fringe lefties as radical feminists or eco-vegans.

Sometimes, killing and orc and taking its stuff is just killing an orc and taking it stuff.


Er, I mean, WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE!  OVERTHROW CAPITAL!  POWER TO THE PROLETARIAT!  ONE BIG UNION!

Or, you know, not.

Is a fondness for chess an indicator of monarchical tendencies?

Quote from: jrientsIs a fondness for chess an indicator of monarchical tendencies?

not sure, but having a fondness for checkers is an indicator. Heck, you can be "kinged"

Quote from: Mcrownot sure, but having a fondness for checkers is an indicator. Heck, you can be "kinged"

So essentially, checkers is a prototypically Capitalist game, because you can, though hard work and a bit of luck, advance to become one of the upper class.

Quote from: WerekoalaSo essentially, checkers is a prototypically Capitalist game, because you can, though hard work and a bit of luck, advance to become one of the upper class.

Not just upper class, but the King.

Re: Traveller I´d like to point out that the Imperium can also be played just as an evil thing.
"The cruelty of the watchmen-state" is not such an uncommon thing to be a theme for a Traveller campaign.

I dunno, I think Pundit might be reading too much into this "soft" political thing.

Basically, books about guns and weapons get right-wing nutters who have big bellies and/or a drug habit, but reckon they could be awesome special forces guys. That applies whether the book is "Tanks of the Waffen SS" or "the back third of gamebook X".

Aside from that, I've never seen preferences for rpgs based on political viewpoints. Do all GURPS players vote for the Shooter's Party? Do all FATE players vote Greens? I don't think so.

There probably is an interpersonal explanation for at least some small part of it. RPGs are usually run with people from your local area, and we know that people with similar political viewpoints do tend to cluster around one another. It makes sense that GURPS or whatever would have more conservative players if the seed group for it was conservative, and they played it with their friends, and so on. Because most people don't hang around only with people of their own political leanings, you do get extensions beyond "just" libertarians or fascists or Wobblies or whatever playing the game, but those initial conditions do tip things one way or another.

Anything beyond that is probably specious, and just a misperception based on inadequate data.

@Data: In Germany, someone did an online survey, and did so scientifically correct. There was no indication of any strong correlation between the clusters of people he made and political leanings.

Quote from: SkyrockApart from that, gamers seem to be generally what I call "fashionable greenies" - those who are absolutely against the war on terror, bash America "'cause they're dumb 'cause they've voted for Bush 'cause they're dumb" and look down on conservative parties (Reps, Tories, [the right-leaning major party of the country]) out of principle rather than out of case-by-case decision, but with a healthy skepticism towards fringe lefties as radical feminists or eco-vegans.

Well, in Hungary, most gamers I have met and whose leanings I got to know tended to be some flavour of conservative (usually a fairly liberal one); but then that's a question of demographics, not games, and Hungarian political affiliations don't work the way you would think they should work.

I think 2nd edition AD&D was a kinda-liberal game that tried to reject its kinda-libertarian roots, and didn't do it convincingly enough. But then a lot of people would argue that both are reactionary and right-wing to the extreme (Elminster the paternalist dictator, etc.). Violence is the pretentious college student kind of leftist. Older post-apocalyptic games are 2nd amendment right wing (hell, John Morrow got his user name from one of them), and Vampire as originally envisioned was kinda liberal. OTOH the politics of games are usually not that blatant; it is the gaming group whose values may have more influence on the style of play.

Sub-cultures also have their weird unthought of political connections.

Example:
There´s quite some emo-romantic-viking-pagan-crypto-nazi-goths out there.

Politics should be separetes from gaming.

Games don't have viewpoints , they're just games.


 For that matter, everyone seems to assume I'm a right-wing nutjub.....one of my players (the oldest one, in her 60s) used to think I voted democrat...or as she put it "IF you're a republican, you're one of the most felexible thinking ones I've ever met. "

Of the other 3 players, 1 votes democrat most likely (I think/didn't ask), another doesn't vote because he thinks its all a conspiracy , and the other votes  - but I have no idea what her politics are.


I don't care what the politics of my players are - just want to know that they're fun to game with.


- Ed C.