Possibly? It's difficult to say. I think in some cases games where their politics on their sleeves and more or less make it known, if you play this then you support our politics.

Evil Hat is the one that most comes to mind. I could never really get into FATE in the first place, but the more and more they took on the ultra political progressive bent, the more and more they turned me off.

I grew up on World of Darkness games which were 90s Liberal and still are for the most part. With some exceptions where it got more progressive in more recent stuff.

I'm a Libertarian by nature. My favorite game system is "Savage Worlds", but my favorite settings are "World of Darkness". Deadlands is probably my 2nd favorite setting...

Looking at my two favorite game systems and settings....I can see why I'm a Libertarian.

I got into Pathfinder 2e recently, and I just roll my eyes when it specifies an npc in an adventure is Nonbinary, but most of their stuff is just "Here's a mathmatically sound D&D style game with lots of cool options."

Quote from: Scooter on July 19, 2023, 04:33:15 PM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on July 19, 2023, 04:13:15 PM

Quote from: Anon Adderlan on July 19, 2023, 02:33:21 PM
There was a time not too long ago where I would have dismissed such a notion as patently ridiculous. Now I'm not so sure, as it really seems RPGs arbitrated by a single individual attract more conservatives while RPGs where results are determined through group discussion attract more liberals. Then there's the RPGs which are specifically political to begin with, and the players concerned about their game choices endorsing or reflecting their values in some way. And while I appreciate how this forum is one of the few places such a discussion can even take place, it's still one where politics and playstyle are all but synonymous.

So am I seeing things here? Does anyone have any evidence for/against? What are the positives/negatives if true?

All of us (right or left) gamed in pretty much the same way. 

This. When I started out in the 70's it was a mix.  We had a leftwing professor running our game with right wing guys from a nearby military base and a female (OMG!) flower child type.  There was ZERO friction because all were playing the game in front of us.  Not "playing" at outside politics.  I too didn't see this happen until about 2011 when screechy libtards started pontificating at games.  I truly thought they were just a few borderline insane people unique to our little scene.  Online info told me it was getting widespread.

As a minor note: 2011 was about the time when I first noticed too. It was as if something snapped among a significant portion of the left leaning gamers.

Remember when we were ahead of the curve in calling out the 'degeneracy' in Vincent Baker's games long before The Woke agreed with us? Now they even find Apocalypse World too yikes for their tastes. Oh the irony.

Quote from: Thorn Drumheller on July 19, 2023, 02:56:43 PM
I will say, for myself, like I'd never play Thirsty Sword Lesbians,

I actually #Kickstarted this, and I literally can't play it because of the ideological agenda surrounding it. There's just no way to engage with it without implying political affiliation of some kind. Which is the point. And the fact the promo sessions consisted of nothing but transwomen, including one notorious for linking their vibrating butt plug to a game of Fall Guys, only enforced the notion that this was all rooted in Autogynephilia.

Quote from: Reckall on July 19, 2023, 05:49:50 PM
...A little speech that reminded me of "Watchmen", a comic book whose characters reflect a wide spectrum of political thought - including some that for sure go against anything that Alan Moore holds holy. And yet every position can be defended (my favorite is Adrian Veidt - go figure).

He did vaporize the character whose ideology he disagreed with in the end though.

Quote from: Reckall on July 19, 2023, 05:49:50 PM
Even funnier than "The Innsmoutians are pacifists" is that "Lovecraft Country" was attacked by the Israeli Times as antisemite. Full Total Karma.

One trait about Woke media I'm never not amused by is how it goes full circle into advocating the things is ostensibly seeks to condemn.

Quote from: jhkim on July 19, 2023, 06:23:36 PM
Regarding change in forums and social media -- I'd been on rec.games.frp.advocacy in the 1990s and The Forge in the early 2000s. Those were controversial at times, but they weren't political at all. In 2006, I joined theRPGsite, and at that time, there was controversy over the Blue Rose RPG which was political, but politics hadn't taken over most of gaming discussion. Since then the politics has steadily ramped up here, especially in 2016, and the same happened in RPG discussions in my other social media (mostly Facebook).

It's one of those issues which will take over discussions unless specific measures are taken to prevent it.

Quote from: Ruprecht on July 19, 2023, 10:19:43 PM
I think age is a bigger factor, but age and political ideology may go hand in hand.

They do, but I'm noticing folks are not aging into their politics as much as before. It's like everybody's stuck in high school.

Quote from: LouProsperi on July 20, 2023, 11:00:47 AM
I'm fascinated by the "don't give money to people who hate you" stance, since it often feels more like an exaggerated and distorted form of virtue signaling (is "reverse virtue signaling" a thing?) than an honest protest.

Do you honestly think companies hate you, or have they just done or said things that you disagree with?

These days it's increasingly likely the folks who hate me will not take my money in the first place.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on July 21, 2023, 04:12:36 PM
For me a politically-partisan game would be one which refused to make the setting's expected antagonists at all rational or understandable from their own point of view.  Even Tolkien's orcs had reasons for their own worldview which made sense to those who'd lived their lives.

This is the foundation of empathy and literally how the real-world works, and why the folks who cannot engage in such thinking are so problematic.

Quote from: PulpHerb on July 21, 2023, 04:46:44 PM

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on July 21, 2023, 04:12:36 PM

Quote from: PulpHerb on July 21, 2023, 04:01:39 PM... the broader point: that having a character have a worldview isn't endorsing or pushing that worldview.

Agreed. But this is one of the points on which modern Wokism tends to disagree with most classical liberal philosophy: a fundamental principle of Woke criticism holds that presenting a character's worldview plausibly or realistically enough to make it understandable, even if not sympathetic, is endorsing it.

Some argue presenting it at all is endorsement.

Which is a big issue with modern comics. The villains have to be as woke as the protagonists so there is no real conflict and it's just about eating and hanging out or *Three's Company* level "I overheard something and misunderstood" plots.

The enemy is both weak and strong. #8 on Eco's Ur-Fascism list. To represent the villain as weak means their ideology isn't a threat worth opposing. Yet to represent the villain as strong means their ideology has at least some practical merit. So these are literally the only scenarios they have left.

Quote from: PulpHerb on July 21, 2023, 04:55:44 PM

Quote from: LouProsperi on July 20, 2023, 02:07:20 PM
For another example, as curious as I've been about the quality of Pundit's game products, I can't bring myself to pay for one because I don't want to support someone who goes out of their way to promote anger and division within the game community.

If this is true why are you using the site Pundit owns and moderates as your vehicle to discuss gaming? Why not discuss it in other forums not controlled by people whose games you avoid because you think they are trying to create division? By using his forums instead of MeWe or OD&D Forum or Knight&Knave aren't you helping amplify him by making his personal platform attractive?

At the very least they are supporting his work by using his forum in the first place. And while he's indeed a shit stirrer, he's also someone who doesn't silence dissent, which folks often see as promoting it.

Quote from: Grognard GM on July 26, 2023, 12:35:55 PM
I think the big problem is that a lot of Americans, even at the highest levels of power, think that American style liberty and political systems are some natural human state, only requiring the correct conditions (one of the few ways that American jingoism resembles Communism.) Post WW2, America has fucked up quite a few nations by trying to push square pegs through round holes.

China is the most dangerous and egregious example of this. "If we trade with them, they'll become Capitalists! Wait, China, why are you using your money that way? NNNOOOO!"

I think that this inability fo comprehending that other people can have other desires is something characteristic for both sides of American politics. Just look at American leftists (called in USA "liberals" which is ridiculous to me) and their relation to Muslims.

Quote from: Adeptus on July 28, 2023, 08:40:29 AM
I think that this inability fo comprehending that other people can have other desires is something characteristic for both sides of American politics. Just look at American leftists (called in USA "liberals" which is ridiculous to me) and their relation to Muslims.

True, and this is true of most countries - whatever the politics, people of that culture share common traits. US conservatives are more like US leftists than they are like Hungarians. US leftists are more like US conservatives than they are like Dutch.

OTOH while South Asian or Arab Muslims are not much like Westerners, they certainly have more in common with conservative and religious Westerners than they do with leftists. Likewise typical Israelis have more in common with conservative Poles & Hungarians than they do with George Soros's leftist activists.