Quote from: Bruwulf on December 09, 2022, 11:15:29 PM

Quote from: MeganovaStella on December 09, 2022, 09:20:42 PM

sorry, hold on, let me clarify, i was being imprecise

a world where there is only one ideology that is right and most people follow it. those who don't are shown to be idiots, or worse, villains, and are soon defeated.

No. I'm not woke, I don't need my RPGs to be hugbox affirmation sessions. I make it a point to *fix* settings that do that before I use them. I have no interest in playing Thirsty Sword Lesbians, even if it did agree with my politics.

good, you are one of us

Let's see. My world is a post-post-apocalyptic (so it's in the late rebuilding state) where the divide between the have and the have-nots are really on the nose. Not only does the rich live on elevations that literally makes them look down on the poor, but also blocks out the sun (so the poorest and most criminally infested areas are called "Shadowtowns", because they live in a literal shadow.)

The rich also are the only one who trades with gold coins (which are more technically bars than coins) while the ordinary people have to settle with trading in silver. Since some stuff (like artefacts from the old world, vehicles, housing on the elevated area) can only be bought with gold, this is another hurdle for poor and ordinary people to overcome. Luckily there is a black market where the regular people can buy gold for silver at a inflated price. As one gold is worth approximately 100 silver, the price on the black market is on average 150 silver, depending on supply and demand. (By rolling 1d100 and add 100. So the price that week can be anything from 101 silver to 200)

Yes, that means that PCs can (and probably will) be able to trade with currency like its a stock market.

Religions are these huge and mammoth organizations that control the rulers from behind the curtains.They are not good, but corrupt and self-serving.

In the chapter of Law and Justice, a PC that has a low social status (characters have a Influence stat) are more inclined to get in trouble with the law and get a harsher sentence for any crime they commit (or didn't commit) than a rich, influential PC that can be caught red-handed and still walk away. (and then they'll find some hobo or drifter and imprison them instead.

Speaking of imprisonment, there is also a slave trade going on. I don't think the SJWs will like that, but to my defense, the reason I've put prices on slaves is not so the players can make a living on slavery but rather to buy friends, compatriots free in case the are caught. Not to mention a mission they can get is from someone rich is: "here is 10 Gold, use that to buy my daughter free at whatever cost. Anything thats left over if you can haggle the price down is yours to keep," with the option of keeping the money and stage a rescue operation.
But there is nothing in the rules that forbid PCs to take up the trade themselves... Other than a GM who will likely send wave and wave of adventurers to disrupt their business. Not to mention other slavers might send mercs to get rid of the competition.

Any PC who goes to a brothel should be aware that the girl (or boy) they sleep with is in all likelyhood a slave. But a form of indentured slave. A common contract looks something like: the brothelkeeper takes 20%, 70% goes to pay of the slaves debt (the price they cost) and then they get to keep 10% for the day they are released. There is even lawyers who specialize in slave law to make sure former slaves get what they're owned. This doesnt make slavery right or ethical, but it does allow them (slaves) more rights in my world than what they had historically in the real world. And anyone, no matter what their gender or skin colour or religion can be taken slave.

So the world is right-wing, capitalist, religious. But it is also unfair, oppressive, dystopian, anti-progressive. It's not a world you would want to live in (well, maybe a few of you would). So the game itself would actually be more left-wing, maybe something like Cyberpunk.

But I wouldnt consider it woke. Players will be free to create characters who try to resist and change the world order or to play as characters who take advantage of it to improve their situations- just like in the real world. Ambigious and grey.

I normally use published settings, and tend to use some of the authorial intent where reasonable/practical. So my Grey Box Forgotten Realms is somewhat left-liberal to left-libertarian, where my Primeval Thule is more right-libertarian, both in line with the source material.  I'm not sure my Wilderlands could be said to have any political slant though, it seems too much of a chaotic soup. There were some anti-Nazi themes in the long running Black Sun/Neo-Nerath saga, but really it was more about the nature and evils of ethnic conflict per se, the main inspiration was the Balkan wars of the 1990s. If anything it's anti-ideological in that it tends to explore the dangers of ideology. I guess it's broadly Humanist. There are also some mild pro-Christian themes in how it presents the faith of Mycr.

  I would say the politics are extremely local.  One area can run very differently from another.  I think a medieval tech world with some magic and confirmation of gods and demons existing is going to be MUCH MUCH different than our perception of Right and Left.

My game is in 1984, so kind of conservative? Our characters aren't too politically active, and politics isn't really part of the adventures we play, but I'm guessing this is about where they stand politically on the Nolan Chart.

In real life,we're both somewhere on the right side of the green.

One game I plan to run is a Star Wars-ish knock-off.  A new universe with its own story.  One major change will be the number of major factions.  It can have a rebellion vs an evil emperor, but that is just happening inside one nation among many others.

In any game there should be more than good guys and bad guys.  Tolkien was guilty of this.  You can say the Shire, Mirkwood Elves, dwarves, Gondor, and Rohan are each a nation, but the end result were just two sides.  Stereotype good vs stereotype bad. 

Typically I go with four factions at least.  Pick a Mcguffin that everyone is fixated on, then have one faction that loves it, one faction that uses it begrudgingly, one faction that is almost gotten rid of it, and another faction that has never and will never use it.  Each faction is actively trying to make the other three be more like themselves, as anyone knows the root of conflict is unwanted change. 

My world is a fantasy setting that was once a high-magic setting but turned into a low-magic setting and is currently a mid-magic setting

Politics will vary from kingdom to kingdom; you have liches, god-kings, wizards, the council of lords, dragons, ruined dwarven kingdoms, devastated elven lands that the elves are trying to restore, and a small island nation further along in technology that uses a combination of steam and arcane power.

With the gods having a real presence in the world, mortal politics don't matter nearly as much as what the gods are doing.  The last time the gods' will was ignored, the world was plunged into darkness and almost destroyed.  Most kingdoms have aligned themselves with a god faction, and their politics align with its god's vision.

Now that's not to say others disagree with those gods and their vision.   Many do, but the gods and their followers have the upper hand for now

Quote from: Krugus on December 11, 2022, 05:08:39 PM
My world is a fantasy setting that was once a high-magic setting but turned into a low-magic setting and is currently a mid-magic setting

Politics will vary from kingdom to kingdom; you have liches, god-kings, wizards, the council of lords, dragons, ruined dwarven kingdoms, devastated elven lands that the elves are trying to restore, and a small island nation further along in technology that uses a combination of steam and arcane power.

With the gods having a real presence in the world, mortal politics don't matter nearly as much as what the gods are doing.  The last time the gods' will was ignored, the world was plunged into darkness and almost destroyed.  Most kingdoms have aligned themselves with a god faction, and their politics align with its god's vision.

Now that's not to say others disagree with those gods and their vision.   Many do, but the gods and their followers have the upper hand for now

I find your ideas fascinating and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Quote from: MeganovaStella on December 09, 2022, 02:53:45 PM
where does your world that you made for rpgs (or something else, like a novel series like i'm planning to do, the rpg is just for my friends) fit on the political compass? authright? libright? libleft? authright? center? this is a question of 'what ideology does your world support and how'.

So, the world I'm working on is set in the period from Genesis 4:16 to 6:4. I guess, given it is premised on the first part of the Book of Genesis being true, it would be in the hard conservative part of the compass.

Similarly, its predecessor from a decade ago, The World After, was built on something akin to the events in the James Blish novels Black Easter and The Day After Judgement and thus is built on all of the Bible being true (although liberties are taken with Book of Revelation), and thus is arguably conservative as well.

Both worlds share similar ideas, especially the place of Lilith as the mother of elves (who disappear after The Flood only to reappear after the premature Apocalypse). I think of them as the same world, bookends of our own present existence.

So, they are conservative on the political compass, but that entirely misses the point of both worlds and the games I run. If you want to put a grand philosophy on them, I guess The World After is about the real consequences of the free will and the meek inheriting the Earth. This would be in line with a minor inspiration, the RPG, The End: Lost Souls Edition, which I have read in part but never owned. The newer one even lacks that much of a theme that coherent.

I can say nothing about Leftists, Woke, Alt-Right, Ctrl-Left, or any of that is at all relevant except perhaps Eastern Europe in The World After being under a weird communist dictatorship in theory.  I think trying to apply modern politics in any definable way to either world is as misguided and as likely to produce just as poor a game, as the continual need to apply Ctrl-Left Woke ideology.

Wokeness is evil, but the application of politics to most fantasy games in direct or strongly allegorical ways is always going to create problems regardless of the ideology. This is one place where I'm much more in alignment with Professor Tolkien than C. S. Lewis.

My current campaign is in a largely medieval-authentic published setting, so I try to keep the moral assumptions true to that milieu.

A campaign I would very much like to do (largely contingent on me finding the right game system for it) would be a swingin' 60s "imperial" science fiction setting, modeled after cold- war era sci-fi like Poul Anderson's Flandry of Terra series, very similar to the feel being gone for in the Thousand Suns RPG. So, a universe in which Humanity is in the late stages of a galactic civilization, perpetually in peril of collapse back into an interstellar dark age.

I find that kind of science fiction is often defined by the tension between the post-enlightenment liberal belief in the value of reason and progress, and a more conservative skepticism about the long-term survivability of such things in the face of corruption, decadence and human nature (think Dune or Warhammer 40K). I like the idea of my PCs being like Dominic Flandry or James Bond: the hard men (or women) necessary to preserve a soft civilization from the barbarians knocking at the gates.

Quote from: ForgottenF on December 11, 2022, 08:04:15 PM
My current campaign is in a largely medieval-authentic published setting, so I try to keep the moral assumptions true to that milieu.

A campaign I would very much like to do (largely contingent on me finding the right game system for it) would be a swingin' 60s "imperial" science fiction setting, modeled after cold- war era sci-fi like Poul Anderson's Flandry of Terra series, very similar to the feel being gone for in the Thousand Suns RPG. So, a universe in which Humanity is in the late stages of a galactic civilization, perpetually in peril of collapse back into an interstellar dark age.

I find that kind of science fiction is often defined by the tension between the post-enlightenment liberal belief in the value of reason and progress, and a more conservative skepticism about the long-term survivability of such things in the face of corruption, decadence and human nature (think Dune or Warhammer 40K). I like the idea of my PCs being like Dominic Flandry or James Bond: the hard men (or women) necessary to preserve a soft civilization from the barbarians knocking at the gates.

That sound like a blast.  Right up my alley.  I'll just throw out the Poleseotechnic League and Falkenberg's Legion as similar source material.  I've always thought LBB traveller is just the thing for such a game.

Too many areas in my campaigns are in contrast to each other and/or are in flux themselves to give a singular answer in the aggregate. It's like imagining a slice of the world where everything was the same except for the terrain. I guess maybe an overarching atmosphere? But that'd be more literary convention than political compass. I love alignment and moral encounters, so having friction is part of that fun for me.

Quote from: Mishihari on December 12, 2022, 01:39:01 AM

Quote from: ForgottenF on December 11, 2022, 08:04:15 PM
My current campaign is in a largely medieval-authentic published setting, so I try to keep the moral assumptions true to that milieu.

A campaign I would very much like to do (largely contingent on me finding the right game system for it) would be a swingin' 60s "imperial" science fiction setting, modeled after cold- war era sci-fi like Poul Anderson's Flandry of Terra series, very similar to the feel being gone for in the Thousand Suns RPG. So, a universe in which Humanity is in the late stages of a galactic civilization, perpetually in peril of collapse back into an interstellar dark age.

I find that kind of science fiction is often defined by the tension between the post-enlightenment liberal belief in the value of reason and progress, and a more conservative skepticism about the long-term survivability of such things in the face of corruption, decadence and human nature (think Dune or Warhammer 40K). I like the idea of my PCs being like Dominic Flandry or James Bond: the hard men (or women) necessary to preserve a soft civilization from the barbarians knocking at the gates.

That sound like a blast.  Right up my alley.  I'll just throw out the Poleseotechnic League and Falkenberg's Legion as similar source material.  I've always thought LBB traveller is just the thing for such a game.

Polesotechnic League was on my radar, but Falkenberg's Legion wasn't, so thanks for the recommend. Ironically, I saw several books from that series at a thrift store just yesterday, but passed them up because I didn't know what they were. Might have to go back.

Of the big, famous games, Traveler is probably the one I know the least about. Honestly, every time I look at the book, I see cat and dog people, and I bounce right off of it. I'd kind of written the game off as being one that is too married to its default setting to be easily homebrewed. Is that not the case?

Quote from: ForgottenF on December 12, 2022, 09:02:34 AM

Quote from: Mishihari on December 12, 2022, 01:39:01 AM

Quote from: ForgottenF on December 11, 2022, 08:04:15 PM
My current campaign is in a largely medieval-authentic published setting, so I try to keep the moral assumptions true to that milieu.

A campaign I would very much like to do (largely contingent on me finding the right game system for it) would be a swingin' 60s "imperial" science fiction setting, modeled after cold- war era sci-fi like Poul Anderson's Flandry of Terra series, very similar to the feel being gone for in the Thousand Suns RPG. So, a universe in which Humanity is in the late stages of a galactic civilization, perpetually in peril of collapse back into an interstellar dark age.

I find that kind of science fiction is often defined by the tension between the post-enlightenment liberal belief in the value of reason and progress, and a more conservative skepticism about the long-term survivability of such things in the face of corruption, decadence and human nature (think Dune or Warhammer 40K). I like the idea of my PCs being like Dominic Flandry or James Bond: the hard men (or women) necessary to preserve a soft civilization from the barbarians knocking at the gates.

That sound like a blast.  Right up my alley.  I'll just throw out the Poleseotechnic League and Falkenberg's Legion as similar source material.  I've always thought LBB traveller is just the thing for such a game.

Polesotechnic League was on my radar, but Falkenberg's Legion wasn't, so thanks for the recommend. Ironically, I saw several books from that series at a thrift store just yesterday, but passed them up because I didn't know what they were. Might have to go back.

Of the big, famous games, Traveler is probably the one I know the least about. Honestly, every time I look at the book, I see cat and dog people, and I bounce right off of it. I'd kind of written the game off as being one that is too married to its default setting to be easily homebrewed. Is that not the case?

Bolding mine.

The cat people are called Aslan and the dog people are called Vargr, there has been over 600 pages of official game material written about the former and over 500 pages of official game material written about the later across eight editions. As alien races that Players can role-play, they are definitely not "humans in funny rubber head make up" like on Star Trek or Star Wars. To get the gist of each race, all you have to do is read about a page of description if you aren't ready to deep dive into them.

Unfortunately, because of their resemblance to cat people and dog people, the fandom has to fight off the occasional insurgence of furry fetishists.

I'm saying this because it is one the things that attracts me to the game Traveller, the aliens are what Larry Niven wanted out of his aliens. Beings that do not look like us or think like us, but think as well as we do. I find that much more appealing than playing Dwarves who all talk with Scottish accents and drink a lot or Elves who talk in sneering upper class English accents and love their self-importance.

Traveller was originally designed as a generic science fiction system, but since its inception back in 1977 an Official Traveller Universe has organically grown from the rules. The OTU is both good and bad, depending on what kind of campaign you want to run, but I've found it is best at running games of literary science fiction - like the Dominic Flandry or Falkenberg's Legion series of books. Now,if you want to use a system that is close to Traveller, the OGL version is known as Cepheus Engine and has several campaign settings for it.

Quote from: ForgottenF on December 12, 2022, 09:02:34 AM
Of the big, famous games, Traveler is probably the one I know the least about. Honestly, every time I look at the book, I see cat and dog people, and I bounce right off of it. I'd kind of written the game off as being one that is too married to its default setting to be easily homebrewed. Is that not the case?

I can't speak to the later editions of traveller, as I'm mainly familiar with the original, little black book edition, but for the most part the setting information is so scanty as to be almost non existent.  The map is mainly a random generation system for a region of space,.  The vargr, aslan, etc are in supplementary books and are easily ignored if you want them.   The government is mostly just implied th the chargen and world gen system.  I find it very wide open.