Quote from: Caesar SlaadI my movie viewing life, I tend to draw a line between movies that I view as having an "agenda" (Hero, Brokeback Mountain, Rambo) and those that don't (Oh, Pirates of the Carribean is the DVD I'm watching right now).

There's a difference between reflecting conventions of a genre, society, era, culture, or situation and willfully promoting agenda. So it is in games.

Pirates of the Caribbean totally has an agenda.  It's to promote a myth that Pirates are badasssupercool, and that the life of a pirate is thrills and adventure.  

Quote from: Pierce InverarityWell... middle-class is a broad category. What you are talking about is your average two-cars, two-kids suburbanite, right? But those people aren't gamers--I'm talking about their 18-year old son.

 But  "Those people" ARE gamers - at least in this town many times they are..

There plenty of two-car suburbanites that play RPGs in the area, went away from it for a few years  - and now that their kids are teenagrs they are getting back into it.

 As for the "workingclass" crap some people are bringing up :
 How the bloody hell do you define that ?

 Ive got many regulars at the store that snobbish scum might call "working class".

As for a "Dumb Ass White People" ? - We got at least TWO group[s that are all African-Americans playing D&D/D20 together . They're NOT teenagers.

 Hell I'm tempted to start a version of "Tales from a Game Store..." on this forum.  Getting pretty sick of assumptions and stereotypes about gamers.

- Ed C.

Quote from: KoltarAs for a "Dumb Ass White People" ? - We got at least TWO group[s that are all African-Americans playing D&D/D20 together . They're NOT teenagers.

 Hell I'm tempted to start a version of "Tales from a Game Store..." on this forum.  Getting pretty sick of assumptions and stereotypes about gamers.

- Ed C.

Do you actually read what you're replying to? I wasn't saying that all gamers are Dumb Ass White People. I'm saying that Dumb Ass White People are a special product of the American middle class.

Set has said in the past that everything is political, and honestly, I agree with him. Of course, I come from an assumption that everything 'says' something about us and the way we see the world. On some level, this amounts to Sett's 'politics'.

Not everyone agrees with me. I believe all products carry baggage, cultural and otherwise while others believe that some products are essentially 'meaningless' or at least should be viewed as such. Consider the '300' debacle on RPG.net - it primarily boiled down to the question of if a product has subtext or not.

Most games are not trying to convince you of anything in particular. They don't have an overt agenda. Dungeons and Dragons is not telling you that paganism is better then monotheism. Vampire the Masquerade is not telling you that ethics are for chumps. Exalted does not tell you that science is a lie. Think about my examples a second before you just write off that games don't have agendas - I have seen these issues brought up by meatheads (or people impersonating them) in the past.

On the other hand, some games do have an agenda. Unquestioningly. We've all seen them. So, there's that.

All games have a subtext. They tell us things about the culture they came out of, what their creators thought was worth playing, and other things. I would hesistate to say that all speculation about these things is meaningful, or that it's worthwhile to look for it. What does D&D say about ethics? Nothing particularly useful, except, perhaps, that a black-and-white morality may have been a part of the development team and that this might be a feature of our culture.

Is that an agenda? Not really, though I assume it colors the thoughts of some people, somewhat. (Mostly people without any previous stance on the matter.)

Quote from: Thanatos02Set has said in the past that everything is political, and honestly, I agree with him. Of course, I come from an assumption that everything 'says' something about us and the way we see the world. On some level, this amounts to Sett's 'politics'.

Yes, but Settembrini is German. His is a country which in the space of a century experienced disunity, unity, constitutional monarchy, absolute monarchy, total war, military dictatorship, civil war, parliamentary democracy, fascism, total war, foreign occupation and partition, then parliamentary democracy and communism,  and... He lives in a country with a history of political turbulence and change unmatched by any other in the 20th century. Of course he thinks everything is political.

And of course he's wrong.

Quote from: JimBobOzAnd of course he's wrong.

No, you're wrong!

See JimBob:

Not everything is party-political, Pirates of the Carribbean for example isn´t partaking a stance in any recent political debate AFAIK.

But the World shown in PotC has assumptions built into them. By presenting a product that people use, this political message is permeated. This doesn´t have to be on purpose. But it happens, and forms via the sum of all permeated messages and your reactions to it, the culture you, we, live in.

Good beats Evil, is a basic message in PotC. Being smart is good, is another. I don´t remember that movie all too well, but you get the idea.

The same with games. Moreso, in games, there are group set-ups regarding expected behaviour.

solve the riddle - get XP -> achievement principle

keep in character - immerse deeply - respect other´s immersion - get XP -> romanticist pitted esoterics


etc.

Quote from: SettembriniBut the World shown in PotC has assumptions built into them. By presenting a product that people use, this political message is permeated. This doesn´t have to be on purpose.

If it's not on purpose, it's not a plan or program, and ergo not an "agenda".

But everything remains political, still.

Is Pirates of the Caribbean an rpg now?

No?

Then let's talk about roleplaying games with agendas. Promoting an agenda in a film is easy, because you control every last detail of it; promoting an agenda in an rpg is hard, because you have to choose its elements very carefully to make sure they'll show up in play. It's no use writing Racial Holy War and then giving it to members of the UNHCR to play.

Racial Holy War is actually an example of an rpg with an agenda - others are Fatal, and the Shoah supplement for Wraith. Games with an obvious agenda are pretty universally considered not worth playing. Games with more subtle agendas, well that's an open question.

So, let's ask the actual question RPGPundit was asking: do all rpgs have socio-political agendas? From context it's obvious he meant "socio-political", since obviously all rpgs have at least one agenda, "people should have fun." My answer would be: "No."

I am unable to discern any socio-political agenda in even one of the 576 pages of GURPS, for example. My copy of d6 Adventure also seems similarly apolitical. I suppose that you might say that my AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide promotes a communitarian society since it emphasises working in parties, but you might also say it emphasises a capitalistic way of thought since it talks about NPC wizards being stingy when trading with PC wizards for spells, and gives you XP for GP won and stored. So D&D is...  communist-capitalist! Hmm, maybe not.

Please give me examples of roleplaying games with socio-political agendas. That some rpgs have them I don't doubt - I even gave examples above. But that even a significant minority, let alone a majority, and forget "all", have them - no way. John Kim lists over 1,600 roleplaying games; I don't think even one-tenth of them have a socio-political agenda. The ratio might be higher for Forger games, but I don't like to think about them too much, someone else can.

Quote from: SettembriniBut everything remains political, still.

Only necessarily inasmuch as they are an outgrowth of the culture and society of the authors.

Which is a trivial observation.

Quote from: KoltarOh C'mon!!

 You knew it was a loaded question when you started the thread.
 You might be full of shit this time ...or just bored as someone else suggested.

- Ed C.

The question was only "Loaded" in the sense that some people are apparently trying to ignore an obvious reality. If it wasn't for that, there'd be no controversy here at all.

RPGPundit

Assumptions are agendas.

Given that RPGs are all emulations, the assumptions writers put into those emulations, either assumptions of how the genre works, or how the world works, reveals their (conscious and heavy or unconscious and soft) agendas.

RPGPundit

Exactly.

Take Traveller.

In T4 it´s even spelled out:
Economy, economy, economy + personal freedom vs collectivism & the value of moral codices for the operation of large political bodies.

EDIT: Whereas Traveller gameplay has a heavy:"Deal with the randomness of the situation you are born into!" message.

I'm still having trouble making the connection between in-setting assumptions that are presented for entertainment value and authorial agenda. If I write a campaign that portrays slavery as an ethically acceptable, economically viable condition that props up various nation states it doesn't mean that I as a person am taking a pro-slavery stance in any way. Rpg worlds are largely fueled by characterisation and conflict, so I'm at liberty to include all sorts of nasty shit that I may find personally reprehensible in order to advance that goal.

The act of creation in and of itself may expose assumptions and bias, but unless I take an active stance in delineating the horrors or the benefits of something like slavery-- including specific rewards and consequences for characters interactions with it --then I really can't see how it's advancing any "hard" agenda. If my only active goal is to provide a fertile ground for adventure, intrigue and the like then I think it's more a case of people projecting their own assumptions onto my work.  

That said, my own personal projection is that this thread is now more about semantics than anything else. Go figure.