BestialWarlust wrote: ↑Fri Jul 24, 2020 8:07 pm
Honestly it can die in hellfire. I want my RPG games to be free of real world politics do what you want at your table but for publishers that want my money keep it fictional. If you want your game product to be some passive aggressive messaging and preaching I'll just pass your product up. I play these games for fun and someone trying to preach and cram their person views down my throat are not what I want in a game. Too much of this non sense has leaked into hobbies over the years and its tiresome.
The fallacy that these games a were never "inclusive" is just non sense it's not the RPG systems it's the individual groups.
First I agree with the post; I use entertaiment and games as escapism, not to be reminded of the world's realities like the rest of the time I'm awake. If I put some social group or messge, it'll either becasue it is part of a scenario I'm running, to make fun of it (à la Judea's People Front/People's Front of Judea affair) or use as background colour in Altdorf when some agitator barks this or that nonesence, in the name of whatever cause that's currently buying his drinks, right before the rioting starts.
Second, the larger, bolder text. The police change done by me to add focus on the phrase. The RPG game itself is nothing, it is just a mindless, souless thing. Ink on paper. Example. If your group's idea of playing Warhammer is having the PCs getting drunk and being old women in dark alleys to steal thier money, raping and killing them becasue it's funny, only to go drink and repeat the process again and again until the Watch gets involved or they decide to leave town to ply their trade somewhere else....well you can talk it out with the GM, and if that doesn't do much, take your things, get up, and go find another group; better yet start your own group.
Yes the game allows you to do that, but it's not the game's fault, it's the others at the table who are being ridiculous and see the game as
carte blanche to do whatever (like the Murderhobo symdrome). Like saying on who's to blame during a car accident; the car or the driver?
And putting the blame on the easy access to cars is not the right answer as well, as the car by itself cannot do anything without direct human intervention.
Herr Arnulfe wrote: ↑Fri Jul 24, 2020 9:19 pm
I'm not aware of any RPG products pushing political agendas. Which ones do you have in mind? AFAIK it's about making games more inclusive and relevant which I think we can agree are worthwhile goals. I suppose most games (including WFRP) assume the players are fighting for the cause of good but that's not a political agenda just basic decency.
Vampires 5th is a good example. They went from having a pre-made neo-nazi character for people to use in previous editions and games (Hunter:The Reckoning) to banning fascists from even picking thier book, even urging them to call someone and tell them 'where you went so wrong in your life'.
Then they go on about how Vampires are evil, but they are not that evil, and that PCs ough to oppose fascism in Vampirie society or in normal society (if they even decide to *gasp* use such notions on thier game), and how the Storyteller can pretty much only introduce fascist character to have them be defeated/redeemed by the players at a later point.
Talk about grey morality...grey as long as it's their shade of white that prevails.
D&D is getting there too, changing Orcs and Drows's stats penalties and backgrounds to fit the more sensitive, modern era.
RPG to reach the widest autience, is and must be broad in subject and description, that is why stereotyping is common; it falls to the individual groups and GMs to take some and give some. To give the inexperienced GM some idea to RP some jungle tribal (for example) which will be different from a farming medieval serfs or a town patriarch back when there was no real RPG 'community'.
I blame World of Warcraft and MMOs to have changed the perception of what a P&P RPG is, which brought all the changes we see and saw since now.
It is no longer about becoming someone else in another world, thinking, acting, reacting, becomming the character, but being youself while controlling an avatar in some enclosed setting, seeing and acting as you would, just without the limitations of your own body and reality.