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I think Spirit Island is a good example of how you could do an anti-colonialist game. Take narratively winning off the table, and if you must include a competitive aspect make it about surviving as long as possible against an interminable enemy. You can see hints of it in the design; I wonder if the nature spirits theme was because power fantasy sells and Xand_Man fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Aug 6, 2021 |
# ? Aug 6, 2021 16:24 |
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# ? May 25, 2024 14:45 |
Reveilled posted:To maybe put this more succinctly, I don't think you can make a game that adequately critiques colonialism while simultaneously having the player be the colonialist. It may fail the definition of “Adequate” but John Company and An Infamous Traffic (by the designer of Root) make their satire/critique a little more obvious by talking a step backwards into colonialist societies. You’re not the invisible hand of Capital trying to do A Colonialism the best to get the most points: you’re a family patriarch trying to use the revenue from the colonies to throw opulent weddings & own the fanciest hats. E: John Company in particular argues that the East India Trading Company becoming a military operation lead to a death spiral for the Company, but people vigorously kept it going because looting the princes of India made for colossal individual profit. Triskelli fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Aug 6, 2021 |
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# ? Aug 6, 2021 16:36 |
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Triskelli posted:It may fail the definition of “Adequate” but John Company and An Infamous Traffic (by the designer of Root) make their satire/critique a little more obvious by talking a step backwards into colonialist societies. You’re not the invisible hand of Capital trying to do A Colonialism the best to get the most points: you’re a family patriarch trying to use the revenue from the colonies to throw opulent weddings & own the fanciest hats. Yeah, plenty of games adequately critique things from the perspective of the person doing harm. I mean, Monopoly was originally invented as a critique of unrestrained capitalism. Which is why it's so infuriating to play for everyone but the one person that gets lucky and gets the most spaces first. It's just that people are dumb, companies want money, and between those two groups the actual message can be subverted along the way. And that's if the message was clear in the first place. Edit: A good example of this is actually Monopoly in another way, actually. When the game was stolen for mass production from it's original creator for the purposes of profiting off of it, part of the rules were left out. Specifically, that if one player pulls ahead (At this point in a likely unfair way, since barring cheating it's all luck of the dice whether you passively get rich off of everyone else by getting lucky enough to claim enough spaces early on or are constantly sucked dry of your money under the unrestrained capitalist system of rules.) of the rest the other three can by majority vote switch from capitalism to what by modern standards would probably be a form of Georgist socialism. Which (to quote another website) switches from the capitalist rules to a more socialist game and rule set where public services are nationalized, the only tax levied is on the unimproved value of land, and everyone is rewarded when wealth is created. Curiously, the thieves that stole the property originally left that part of the rules out of the game. And then Parker Bros basically screwed the original creator over with a pittance of money and no royalties on a massively popular game, violated their deal to get access to the license by altering it immediately to keep those rules removed, did everything to cover up the story of what they had done for like 50-70 years, and generally just proved themselves to be horrible people who should have never been permitted a position of any great power. All of which ironically lends an entirely different subtext to their version that speaks more to corruption and greed than anything else. Archonex fucked around with this message at 19:35 on Aug 6, 2021 |
# ? Aug 6, 2021 18:32 |
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Triskelli posted:It may fail the definition of “Adequate” but John Company and An Infamous Traffic (by the designer of Root) make their satire/critique a little more obvious by talking a step backwards into colonialist societies. You’re not the invisible hand of Capital trying to do A Colonialism the best to get the most points: you’re a family patriarch trying to use the revenue from the colonies to throw opulent weddings & own the fanciest hats. I'll give both of them a look, I haven't played either, thanks! Archonex posted:Yeah, plenty of games adequately critique things from the perspective of the person doing harm. I'd argue that's a perfect example of what I'm talking about, actually--the original game's option to socialise the economy means that, in the end, you're not playing (or at least, not only playing) as the people doing harm. Because if the conceit of the Landlord's Game is that you're all playing as Landlords, on what planet do Landlords vote to implement Georgist Socialism? As soon as the players do that, they're effectively taking the role of the common worker, the victims of the oppression you played in the game's first phase. The critique here works because the players are put in the shoes of the oppressed, and act to change the status quo. And when you strip that out...you have Parker Bros' ripoff Monopoly, where everyone is now explicitly playing only as the landlords. And nobody plays Monopoly and comes out the other end with a hatred of landlords or a newfound respect for socialism, the only critique Monopoly offers is a critique of the bastard who suggested you play it in the first place.
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# ? Aug 6, 2021 20:06 |
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Reveilled posted:I'll give both of them a look, I haven't played either, thanks! I mean, originally you are the ones doing harm according to the first ruleset you have to play with. That's literally why monopoly is such a tedious ragefest for many people, since the unrestrained capitalist ruleset is designed to be extremely unfair and biased to the point of frustration and tediousness and the second half of the game was never included in the rules. I'm arguing that the original rules are accurately trying to show why unrestrained capitalism doesn't work by showing you what happens to people that would support the system under initial circumstances. No one starts out as a landlord. They get the opportunity to become one through luck and move up in the world for a period of time before the nature of the system starts depriving them of more and more opportunities (and eventually even stealing the achievements you've made away as things get more unbalanced depending on the edition) as power gets consolidated into the hands of one player. It's just that in the original rules the game goes from that situation to highlighting a failing of this fundamentally biased system to show how consolidating power under a system of unrestrained capitalism can potentially lead to it's own downfall into something else. Since if all the people (Who it should be noted are usually rapidly not becoming landlords at all, and later on are potentially more in line with being tenants as the advantages of the lead player exponentially increase over time.) actually find the courage to stand up and say "gently caress this. We're not playing by these hosed up rules any more." then the unrestrained capitalist's/lead players massive and unfair lead due to an inherent bias in the rules ends up demolished by throwing out those rules in favor of rules that gives benefits to everyone regardless of their position in the hierarchy of winners and losers. If you don't do this you are repeatedly taxed by the landlord controlling most of the board, start losing properties as they essentially become a monolithic giant (Or as some might say, a monopoly.), and eventually lose the game. Contrast this with the georgist/socialist ruleset that gives benefits to everyone by taking away the unfair advantages of the guy that ruthlessly exploited (or more likely lucked into) the advantages of unrestrained capitalism. Or to put it in a more TL;DR way: First time players are going to start up the original monopoly, get part way through, and have an "Am I the baddies?" moment when they realize the rules are fundamentally rigged to ensure that no matter how successful they originally were they can never truly succeed under this system and ultimately can only exploited into bankruptcy. They've essentially walked into the tabletop game equivalent of a trap that has wasted their time by promising something it has no intention of really giving once you've invested a minimum of effort into it. It's a meta-narrative in action through having you occupy the role of the bad guys without realizing it until you hit a certain point in the game. This is when the game posits a choice that determines how the rest of the game will go. At this point everyone not winning will either vote to dump the unrestrained capitalist system in favor of the Georgist one or lose horribly as they are ruthlessly* exploited into bankruptcy as tenants. Which is absolutely a political underpinning to the game given the economic context behind it, even if some won't agree with it. Seeing as how the company and the person who stole it basically exploited a number of loopholes to gain wealth and even straight up stole the game in the first place it also acts as a wonderful commentary in relation to the themes of the game itself on the people that publish and originally stole Monopoly as well. That's part of why it's such a neat little topic that was visited heavily in the news and media for a bit. Along with the shift towards what it's modern incarnation is all about when it comes to Monopoly. Which as I recall involved releasing downright contemptuous and very right wing/corporatist editions like the Millennial Edition and that "for Women" edition or whatever it was called. *And indeed, in a way passively, as the rules mean that no matter how nice the winning player is they ultimately can't even stop themselves from draining the other players money without the greater population forcibly taking action to stop them. This biased advantage is so extreme that if you are working with property trading rules the winning player may not even be able to stop themselves from outright stealing the rightfully earned property of other players under the dictates of the unrestrained capitalism system of rules. Meaning their inherent advantage due to the biases of the system is so great that even if the the lead player realizes that being the first to get a solid lead meant they were actively loving over the other player's fun they literally cannot stop hurting the other players under their own power. The only thing they can do is to join with the other players in voting to abandon this system if they care about their enjoyment or the idea of a fair competition. Failing that act of empathy, they will most likely have their unfair advantage forcibly taken from them by ensuring that their properties benefit all, themselves included. Which is actually pretty loving brilliant as a a narrative for wealth inequality, greed, unrestrained monopolies, and the harm those things bring. Archonex fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Aug 6, 2021 |
# ? Aug 6, 2021 20:51 |
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I've been using Kids on Brooms which is an offshoot of Kids on Bikes. It's a very collaborative and rules light Harry Potter simulator basically. One thing I really appreciate about it is that you design the world collaboratively and part of the creation system is considering the systems of Oppression that exist in your world.
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# ? Aug 6, 2021 21:28 |
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Archonex posted:I mean, originally you are the ones doing harm according to the first ruleset you have to play with. That's literally why monopoly is such a tedious ragefest for many people, since the unrestrained capitalist ruleset is designed to be extremely unfair and biased to the point of frustration and tediousness. But again, that supports the point I'm making. There's two games here, The Landlord's Game, which was the original, and Monopoly, which was the Parker Bros ripoff. In Monopoly, you play only as the unrestrained capitalists until one person wins. In The Landlord's Game, you may start out playing as the capitalists, but there are specific mechanics which allow and indeed encourage you as players to transition instead to playing as the working class. And of these two, only the one where you play as the working class is an adequate critique of landlordism, because it's the only one which supports play as the oppressed. The other one is just a poo poo game. I dunno, I guess my argument wasn't as clear as I thought it was because it's being taken as technically wrong because you do actually play as the landlords at the start of The Landlord's Game. But I thought my overarching point was fairly clear, that a better approach to critiquing these systems probably comes from playing as the oppressed group in these systems, and in that sense The Landlord's Game and Monopoly basically form a minimal pair exactly illustrating that: take a game which is a critique of landlordism and remove the very the thing I'm saying we need more of (games which have you play as the victims of the system being critiqued), and it stops being perceivable as a critique of the system and instead becomes the game everyone has in their house and devotes exactly zero critical thought to. Reveilled fucked around with this message at 21:43 on Aug 6, 2021 |
# ? Aug 6, 2021 21:40 |
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Reveilled posted:But again, that supports the point I'm making. There's two games here, The Landlord's Game, which was the original, and Monopoly, which was the Parker Bros ripoff. In Monopoly, you play only as the unrestrained capitalists until one person wins. In The Landlord's Game, you may start out playing as the capitalists, but there are specific mechanics which allow and indeed encourage you as players to transition instead to playing as the working class. And of these two, only the one where you play as the working class is an adequate critique of landlordism, because it's the only one which supports play as the oppressed. The other one is just a poo poo game. Monopoly is literally a bastardized version of the Landlord's game. We're on the same page with that. That's why I keep referring to the original ruleset. Monopoly is like half of the total original product. As part of the overall chat about Monopoly I was referring to the original Landlord's Game rules in my prior posts and why it has multiple intended and unintended politics, along with how Monopoly ended up being stolen goods to create an extra layer of (hosed up) implied politics behind it. I'm probably not being clear either. Since my opinion was that the Landlord's Game technically does show you as one of the oppressed. It just tricks the ever loving gently caress out of you by making you think early on you were going to be one of the wealthy and important people that end up loving you over later on. It does this by not telling you that you are not playing under a system of rules that is truly fair and balanced (IE: The Georgist/socialist rules.) but instead a set of rules that are predatory and demand exploitation. In a way, it's a critique of capitalism as a whole delivered in the form of you taking the role of anyone that ever wanted to make it big and get rich, be they working class or born to wealth. To try and sum my thoughts up: The Landlord's Game/original rules starts you out thinking you're going to be the oppressor, thinking that you're one of the ones that are going to hit it big (IE: The whole "embarrassed millionaire" thing.) and then part way through the game you realize that you were tricked into becoming the oppressed by trying to compete in this system instead of throwing it out from the start. Since under the initial system of unrestrained capitalism the only probable outcome is that you are bled dry by degrees into bankruptcy by the luckiest player of the bunch to get a sizable lead first. As it becomes apparent that what little you achieved before the initial stages of a formation of a monopoly is slowly but surely taken away from you, you are forcibly regressed more and more back into being a landless tenant (paying money with less and less money as income as time goes on) under this system than the landlord as you initially assumed you were going to be. At which point you can for whatever reason decide to meekly bow your head at this state of affairs alongside the other players and lose horribly or make a decision as a collective majority to throw these rules out for something that benefits everyone. To a certain extent, this is even true of the oppressor/winning player, since the initial player with a sizable lead over all the others cannot even stop ruining the fun of other players via this incredibly rage inducing system even if they wanted too. Which has a meta-narrative of it's own. It's a system that fucks over anyone remotely decent or empathic in multiple ways from multiple angles and tricks you into thinking you're going to be something it has no intention of letting you actually be. Or to put it in a more succinct way: The Landlord's Game had might as well be telling a story about upwards social mobility under rampant capitalism and the attendant impossibility of it. Edit: I should add that the pieces Monopoly had (No idea if they were in the Landlord's Game, sadly.) kind of add a certain bit to this as well. They're just as much working class symbols (A clothing iron, a boot, a dog, etc, etc.) as they are things that you would think are for the wealthy (A yacht, a fancy car, a top hat, etc, etc.). Assuming they were the same in the Landlord's Game it's not unfair to say that in the end the unrestrained capitalism ruleset fucks over everyone equally, to the unintentional and usually unwitting benefit of the winner. And it's more or less dumb luck in determining who wins/exploits the hell out of everyone else under the unrestrained capitalist ruleset on top of that. Now obviously I do agree it doesn't just go out and out and say that you're one of the oppressed from the word go. But that's because the nature of the point it makes wouldn't land quite as hard if it did. I'm not even sure you could make the point as effectively solely from a working class position where you're obviously going to get hosed over from the word go. Archonex fucked around with this message at 04:31 on Aug 9, 2021 |
# ? Aug 6, 2021 21:55 |
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Archonex posted:Monopoly is literally a bastardized version of the Landlord's game. That's why I keep referring to the original ruleset. Monopoly is like half of the total original product. As part of the overall chat about Monopoly I was referring to the original Landlord's Game rules in my prior posts and why it has multiple intended and unintended politics, along with how Monopoly ended up being stolen to create an extra layer of (hosed up) implied politics behind it. I think we're definitely communicating poorly. I promise I am fully familiar with Monopoly and the Landlord's Game and the history between the two, and Elizabeth Magie, and Parker Bros, and all that. I thought providing the name the game had under those original rules unprompted would have been sufficient to indicate that I knew what you were talking about when you referred to "the original rules". I am 100% in agreement that the Landlord's Game shows you as one of the oppressed. That is exactly the point I'm making. It is the single relevant difference between the two games. And one of these games (The Landlord's Game) is a good critique of Landlordism, and the other one (Monopoly) is pretty much not a critique at all. Both games have you play as the oppressor, but the only one that works as a critique is the one which also has you play as the oppressed. And what I'm saying we need more of is games where you play as the oppressed. Like, my original point here was that games like Puerto Rico and such where you play as the governor of a colony or a plantation, or a wealthy merchant or whatever are essentially the default mode for games which have history or economics as their set dressing. And I think it's very hard to give a cogent critique of these systems that will be perceived, understood, and hopefully accepted by the players when the only perspective players get on the mechanics puts them in the shoes of the oppressors. In this sense, modern Monopoly is a good example: you play as a landlord, you roll some dice, maybe you get lucky, maybe you don't, you snowball a bit and the game drags out to its inevitable conclusion with one player winning all the money. And despite the fact that you could construct a critique of landlordism from it, virtually no one who plays Monopoly actually perceives that critique through play or learns anything of value. Now the original rules, despite being older, are actually more innovative by having a mechanics change halfway through which basically flips the economic system and the notional "people" the players embody on their heads. That's pretty unique. You don't start a revolt halfway through Puerto Rico and try to do the Haitian revolution. You don't switch to playing the Utility Worker's Union halfway through Power Grid. In that sense, The Landlord's Game is not a traditional sort of board game, because the entire point is that halfway through, the system you spent the game constructing comes down. And it's that break from convention (or if you like, the virtue of having been designed before the convention was established) that makes it possible to give a good critique. Is the fact that you start out playing as the oppressor vital to the game's message? Absolutely! But it's also not special, because it's what almost every conventional boardgame about history or economics does. What makes the game special is the inclusion of the second phase, and it's more convention defying stuff like that we need.
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# ? Aug 6, 2021 22:43 |
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Oh are we talking board games now? Because let me tell you about the COIN series by GMT games. The first COIN game, Andean Abyss covers the conflict between the state government, drug lords, and guerilla groups in Colombia. COIN, short for counter-insurgency, refers to the efforts of governments to repress insurgent uprisings, either at home or abroad. Since then, there have been games about modern afghanistan, the Cuban revolution, the revolutionary war, the Algerian uprising, Roman suppression of the barbarians, the Uprising in India, and more. The core mechanics of COIN games involve asymmetric gameplay. Most games involve 4 sides, with each side having actions with different powers. In addition, there is a deck of historical events and counterfactuals that are used. The fun of the gameplay comes from the negotiations between each player who shift between sharing goals and trying to stop others from gaining too much power. The COIN series was largely created by Volko Ruhnke, a security analyst for the CIA. For some folks, this may seem like a “well, he would know,” bit of information, and for others, this would be a big glaring siren to watch out for ideology. So, which is it? Are COIN games an accurate abstraction of counter insurgency? Well, yes and no. You will find a lot of information on the efficacy of counter insurgency. If we look at the historical outcomes for games in the COIN series, the insurgency almost always wins: the American revolution, the Cuban revolution, Indian independence, the fight for Algeria, the war in Afghanistan all being examples. The COIN games, in order to be competitive, try to balance for any side to win. Games are meant to be contests of skill, after all. Look at games about World War II or the US civil war and how they create arbitrary rules for the axis or confederacy to win, or just make them ahistorically powerful. This gets into a whole other idea about historical war games. Did one side win because they played the “game” better, in reality? Or was it because of historical forces? War games kind of assume a “great man” view of history, with that man being the player themselves. There is a bit of luck involved, but these games play either on the desire for the historical underdog to win, or perhaps the more ideological desire for your comrades to win. The COIN series of games has run out of popular historical insurgencies to model, and has fallen, like many war games, to having an upcoming WWII game. These are not games about tanks rolling out into open combat. The rules are not meant for that’s so the rules get stretched and sometimes broken to model these things. The American revolution game forces 4 players by including native Americans and the French, even though they are forced by historical modeling to have little to do within the confines of the game. The COIN series models the chaos and luck of insurgencies. The event card model can lead to huge swings based purely on luck and timing. In this sense, the game feels historical, because each player feels that sense of helplessness to their own luck. Historical forces are modeled through luck of the draw, and the composition of events. Wars are not balanced things, and neither are insurgencies. Many historians would attribute historical changes moreso to an overwhelming force built up over decades or centuries rather than simple luck of the draw or single decisions. It is simple to point to single mistakes made for handling an insurgency, while dismissing the decades of mistakes that lead to that insurgency existing. Something that is so often missed in historical war games is the context of history. You are placed in a single moment and asked to make decisions within it. The past does not matter, only the battlefield before you. You lack the historical context of decision making to both provide information and push for certain decisions. You are free in a way that historical figures never are. This is why the board game Oath is secretly the best historical war game.
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# ? Aug 7, 2021 00:55 |
fr0id posted:This is why the board game Oath is secretly the best historical war game. The State is overthrown, long live the State
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# ? Aug 7, 2021 01:37 |
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Reveilled posted:But again, that supports the point I'm making. There's two games here, The Landlord's Game, which was the original, and Monopoly, which was the Parker Bros ripoff. In Monopoly, you play only as the unrestrained capitalists until one person wins. In The Landlord's Game, you may start out playing as the capitalists, but there are specific mechanics which allow and indeed encourage you as players to transition instead to playing as the working class. And of these two, only the one where you play as the working class is an adequate critique of landlordism, because it's the only one which supports play as the oppressed. The other one is just a poo poo game. One of the weird things about Monopoly being a "poo poo game" is that 90% of the reason is how common house rules modify it. House rules that get baked in so much that like you're playing it how your grandparents did and no one in the family ever really read the rules. Money on Free Parking and eliminating auctions are the most pervasive examples, but there are a bunch of common ones, all of which feel desirable and forgiving but make the game take forever. By the rules, Monopoly is a cutthroat game and tends to make early leads snowball by design, but making it much easier to build property sets when you're competitive or driving losing players out of a (much shorter) game makes it much less stressful for all participants. Even when you lose you feel less invested since you're not being slowly crushed in marathon play. It's a pretty good example of how rule tweaks that sound fun and friendly can spoil a game. You could probably also read some political statements in about how it reflects on capitalism too, I suppose.
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# ? Aug 7, 2021 02:04 |
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Triskelli posted:The State is overthrown, long live the State Yes, but everyone playing REMEMBERS the loving state. That is key. There is a history to Oath that is lacking in other games. For folks who don’t know. Oath is a board game of conquest and empire. Importantly, the person who wins a game gets to dictate the beginning state of the next game. So the echoes of their victory and any resentments build over it. THIS is actual history. People get to remember betrayals and victories and humiliations. These things stick in a way that they don’t with other games. The victors decisions of the last game are always there to remind you.
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# ? Aug 7, 2021 03:31 |
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fr0id posted:Yes, but everyone playing REMEMBERS the loving state. That is key. There is a history to Oath that is lacking in other games. This sounds incredibly entertaining in a "This game is liable to create a tabletop gaming blood feud amongst my friends." sort of way and it makes me wish interesting board games were more of a thing amongst my social circle.
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# ? Aug 7, 2021 05:13 |
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Let's talk about when WW decided to write about the Gothic-Punk streets you were going to encounter in their games. Let's talk about Destiny's Price: The year is 1995 and WW has released their first (and only shockingly enough) Black Dog game factory book for their Mage line. As you can guess from "Ripple and cum" up there, this is a journey.
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# ? Aug 8, 2021 19:15 |
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Relevant Tangent posted:Let's talk about when WW decided to write about the Gothic-Punk streets you were going to encounter in their games. Let's talk about Destiny's Price: Let me guess, this book isn't about how your vampire can get involved in the crack epidemic.
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# ? Aug 8, 2021 19:23 |
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Sodomy Hussein posted:Let me guess, this book isn't about how your vampire can get involved in the crack epidemic. Ironically enough, there's rules for that. Certainly isn't about how you can get involved in a positive way though. No "super heroes with fangs" here, no no this book is dark and gritty TM.
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# ? Aug 8, 2021 20:41 |
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# ? Aug 8, 2021 21:46 |
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fr0id posted:Yes, but everyone playing REMEMBERS the loving state. That is key. There is a history to Oath that is lacking in other games. To clarify, the board is split between the Cradle (of the current state), the Provinces, and the Hinterlands. The locations owned by the winning player at the end of the game always make up the Cradle for the next game, and they start as the next game's chancellor. Also, the advisor deck is stacked to have more of what ever the last winning player's most common suit was. Finally, winning players can add monument cards in, or repair ruined monument cards for the next game.
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# ? Aug 9, 2021 01:40 |
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Archonex posted:This sounds incredibly entertaining in a "This game is liable to create a tabletop gaming blood feud amongst my friends." sort of way and it makes me wish interesting board games were more of a thing amongst my social circle. Go play Diplomacy. Hide the kitchen knives first.
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# ? Aug 9, 2021 15:59 |
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This is the crack ping that creates a CSPAM poster.
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# ? Aug 9, 2021 16:02 |
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MonsieurChoc posted:One of the designers is a "Nixon was right to bomb Cambodgia" Republican. Kenneth Hite. Right wingers who are clear eyed about what their ideology entails are arguably more horrific than the ones that lie to themselves/are ignorant of it. 'Realpolitik' is shorthand for "Hi, I'm a monster" From what I recall, in DG you can also play professional criminals, but are narcs on a fed leash. TheCenturion posted:Go play Diplomacy. Hide the kitchen knives first. The last time I played a boardgame it was Diplomacy. Everyone else was drunk and there were multiple weapons lying around. Ronwayne fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Aug 9, 2021 |
# ? Aug 9, 2021 16:28 |
Oath is kinda hard to discuss in this thread since it’s such a sandbox it manages to avoid any overt political statements (except maybe that history is necessarily focused on state-building & destruction, and that individuals can only be defined as being in-state or outside the state) I did want to continue the Root Chat though, by going over the politics of the Woodland Alliance. Oath is kinda hard to discuss in this thread since it’s such a sandbox it manages to avoid any overt political statements (except maybe that history is necessarily focused on state-building & destruction, and that individuals can only be defined as being in-state or outside the state) I did want to continue the Root Chat though, by going over the politics of the Woodland Alliance. The Woodland Alliance represents a popular revolution in the forest, a revolution against all the warmongers that seek to do violence against the rabbits, mice, and foxes. It executes this revolution with extreme violence. Mostly though, the WA gains “legitimacy” (victory points) through the spreading of sympathy tokens by spending a secondary hand of cards called “supporters”. Sympathetic clearings grab cards from your opponent’s hands and turn them into Supporters when they move troops into a clearing or attacking the sympathy token itself. Sympathy is important, since those are the only places you can have Revolts; where you put up the tiny guillotines and burn all enemy infrastructure to the ground and place an alliance base on the ashes. It’s only after you have a base out that you gain access to the WA’s military actions, and the more explicit assumptions about how popular revolts work are laid out. The WA has 10 warriors, compared to the 20-25 of the militant factions. A good portion of THOSE get recruited as Officers, so you often only get 7-4 on the board to protect your bases. Your sympathy tokens get very difficult to place, so you quickly have to send out warriors to Organize the uneducated. And like all revolutionaries you participate in Guerilla warfare, where you deal the bigger number rolled on defense AND attack. So ultimately Root argues that revolutions require violence to be done to people in order to start up, and require violence to maintain themselves. They fail when their army becomes top-heavy with aspiring leaders, and when their bases of support are attacked directly.
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# ? Aug 9, 2021 16:52 |
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There was an attempt made to "re-balance" the game of Monopoly: Anti-Monopoly. A friend of mine bought the game, and we played for an afternoon. The concept is interesting; players split between Monopolists and Competitors, drawing different cards, using different rules, charging different rents. But in practice, the "mathematically balanced" rule set just left us locked in equilibrium; neither of us could get enough of an advantage to knock the other out. Eventually, we got bored.
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# ? Aug 12, 2021 04:44 |
Didn’t mean to so thoroughly kill this thread. Did want to share Space Biff’s latest article about “Greenwashing”, his term for replacing real historical agents with Lovecraft aliens. https://spacebiff.com/2021/08/12/greenwashing-history/#more-20510
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# ? Aug 16, 2021 15:21 |
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To get back to the original thread topic, and VtM specifically, something i've noticed in VtM is an odd habit of lionizing the gerontocracy in direct contradiction to what is described as them being a total negative to the well being of the world or the people they want to force into becoming their subordinates. To give one particular example of this, despite being presented as bad and self destructive (to the point where the elders are spiritually rotting inside) the big bad's representative of the corrupt system just as often seem to be taken down in a grand and glorious conflict where they get an epic last stand that wouldn't be out of place in a game with a less introspective take on the characters. You would assume they'd go down just as much from their own corruption, mistakes, and refusal to change given the overarching themes the writers say that VtM is about. But this is not as common as you'd think. This is especially true of V5. For every Inner Council getting air striked to oblivion in a hilariously abrupt way (thereby signaling it's ultimate insignificance despite the fascist leanings and all the atrocities it committed to get ahead) there is a Mithras. Who is depicted as going down with soldiers and I think even APC's swarming him like ants if he gets his original power back in V5. That post talking about how the devs are seemingly enamored with their own self declared elites within the setting seems strangely spot on, the more I think of this. Edit: VtMB, interestingly enough, kind of zig zagged on this. Sure, you have to take down Ming Xiao when she goes full tentacle monster. And sure, you basically Matrix your way through the final building. But the actual punchline to this seems very apt to how you would assume a corrupt prince would get taken down just from reading the surface level claims of the text. Which is probably part of why the ending is so memorable to people that played it. Also, I suspect this thread probably shouldn't have had it's title switched over to being about tabletop games quite as early as it did. As having it be about a specific game or game line was liable to attract people curious about it in particular and encourage more engagement. Archonex fucked around with this message at 16:49 on Aug 16, 2021 |
# ? Aug 16, 2021 16:03 |
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Triskelli posted:Didn’t mean to so thoroughly kill this thread. Did want to share Space Biff’s latest article about “Greenwashing”, his term for replacing real historical agents with Lovecraft aliens. Man, that "AuZtralia" game just sounds repulsive. I don't know if it's worse if I take it as endorsing 'terra nullus' doctrine and directly erasing indigenous peoples from Australian history, or if I take it as using hideous Lovecraftian monsters as a stand-in for them. EDIT: Ooh, just did some googling, looks like Old One settlements are illustrated as Mesoamerican style temples. So just straight up "All indigenous peoples are monsters and also interchangeable". Nice. Angry Salami fucked around with this message at 10:23 on Aug 17, 2021 |
# ? Aug 17, 2021 10:17 |
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I'd just assumed it was a generic zombie game. Wow.
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# ? Aug 17, 2021 10:22 |
90s Cringe Rock posted:I'd just assumed it was a generic zombie game. Wow. “Well you see the zombie is wearing a top hat, so obviously they’re not indigenous people”
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# ? Aug 17, 2021 12:24 |
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Archonex posted:
Mithras is a bit of a mixed bag all around, what with him originally taking over Monty Coven after the latter ate him and wearing the Assamite like a meat suit. Trying to balance some of the more gonzo 90s stuff with the modern day is just weird at times and why some of the Dark Ages stuff can be more fun. Constantinople being run by an undead polycule whose relationship issues are the indirect cause of so much of the modern issues is one of those things that's *interesting* but hard to use outside the box since mechanically loving no PC would know that. As for the love of the elites/gerontocracy that seems pretty baked in, yeah. Most of my experience with the games are from various Digichats and the like, basically online LARPs which might color my views a bit but there is always a conservative slant to the games where folks want things to stay as they are. The biggest offender, to me, is WtA. One of the things that makes the setting "gothic punk" is that *everything* is corrupt and you should rebel against the systems in place. Werewolf society can't survive as is because all of these age-old conflicts and rivalries keep everyone divided and it's up to the PCs to change things... but the only way to advance and level up is to act like what the powers that be deem appropriate. Get too out of line and Totems start showing up to smack you around Rather than see that as a struggle to overcome most folks skip over the subtext and just go with how things are written. So you end up with players reinforcing the oppressive system both ICly ("it's what the book says that people should do!") and OOCly ("i had to put up with poo poo and now you do too!"). Another pretty good example of this sort of romanticizing of lovely power structures is Unhallowed Metropolis which goes all in on Victorian stuff but with zombies. Anarchists and socialists attempting to reform a clearly unjust system are villains because without the elites in place then the Compare that to Deadlands, which has a whole host of problems of its own but at least there direct action and helping a community has a legit benefit to the world as a whole.
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# ? Aug 17, 2021 14:04 |
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Angry Salami posted:Man, that "AuZtralia" game just sounds repulsive. I don't know if it's worse if I take it as endorsing 'terra nullus' doctrine and directly erasing indigenous peoples from Australian history, or if I take it as using hideous Lovecraftian monsters as a stand-in for them. As a side note to all this, I also thought of something kind of fucky with VtM. But I have to go into the lore to explain it. So in the backstory Tremere was originally a group from Mage the Awakening (and Ars Nouveau). As they got older, their leaders and membership at one point began to fear death so much that they turned themselves into vampires. Coincidentally, Tremere were a house in the Order of Hermes back in the old days before they became vampires. The Order of Hermes is obviously the same one we discussed a few pages back that the early form of the Technocracy formed to depose since they were mostly all colossal assholes that deserved it. So it should come as no surprise that how they betrayed the Order of Hermes and became vampires is kind of hosed up. Y'see, mages aren't vampires. So the only way these mages could turn into vampires was by what was essentially magical mass diablerie. They did this in part by eating pretty much the entirety of Clan Salubri, including Saulot, token good guy antediluvian (dubiously) of the VtM line. They also ate a gently caress ton of Tzimisce and other vampires.* This had the side affect of descending their soul and forcing them to use This is why in some versions of VtM it's extremely easy to pass as a Tremere without advanced blood sorcery being used on you to detect your bloodline. Since the blood of the Tremere is literally a hodge podge of other lines they hijacked to serve their own generally hosed up and evil purposes. So basically one could say as far as the clans go their blood purity stat would be a flat 0 if a certain book's mechanics were adapted to them. Coincidentally, this does not make them very popular with vampires old enough to remember how they became vampires. Since a fair number of them lost friends and allies to these bastards, who are sometimes even referred to as usurpers. Like, that's actually one of their nicknames! Though not a publically spoken one obviously. They murder people for that to...Uh, keep up their good PR. Which just shows how loving evil the Camarilla is, I guess. Though this is somewhat off topic and off thread, obviously. Though I guess you could get into a realpolitik allusion/discussion about that habit of theirs if you wanted to stretch it a bit. So what does this have to do with politics in the sense of the thread topic? Well, look back on the first few pages for that in-game screenshot from the super racist "Gypsies" book and find the bit about blood purity and given the contents of both the most gonzo and second most gonzo Gehenna scenario you might see where i'm going with this. So it comes to light in the Gehenna book that anyone bearing the blood of Tzimisce can be possessed by Tzimisce since Tzimisce is more a cancerous biome and virus than a vampire nowadays. This is actually relevant to the plot! Since the only reason the Mormon proxy-baptism-cronenbergering thing occurs is because Tremere (IE: The guy who orchestrated the mass diablerie in the first place.) gets possessed by Tzimisce at the last second upon Tremere mind controlling the planet via the ridiculous Mormon Genealogical Proxy Baptism spell. So in a very real way a lack of maintaining the purity of their blood basically got the world Cronenberg'd. Of course the implications of this get a bit more disturbing. All this means that the only reliable way to kill Tzimisce is to: A. Genocide his entire bloodline out of existence. B. Genocide anyone that has ever taken drank or come into contact with the blood of Tzismice out of existence. This includes large parts of the civilian populace and probably everyone that lives in or has traveled to/or has drank the water in New York City. This is due to one Gehenna scenario saying he can ghoul and flesh meld any humans or animals that drank the blood of a Tzimisce or knew flesh crafting. Since Tzimisce was lairing there in the sewers cooking up all sorts of horrible concoctions for quite awhile it's safe to say the entire city, any past residents, and associated infectees would have to be massacred to actually stop him once and for all. C. Never compromise the purity of your blood.** Now, granted, I will give this one kind of a pass since this reads less like "Lovecraft thought that interracial marriage is bad so this is a proxy for that in the form of eldritch horrors and the Innsmouth taint." and more "These evil, hosed up, and monstrous people that thought they were beyond consequences did something evil, hosed up, and monstrous only to promptly realize that consequences do in fact happen to them.". Basically, that "Well, well, well, if it isn't the consequences of my own actions." meme in gothic horror form with a bunch of innocent people caught in the crossfire. But holy poo poo does that come close to being a hard yikes. *As a side note: They would then take their rampant dickery even further by abducting random vampires and essentially magically molding them into Also, remember that whole "sexualization of violence" thing that Vampire has that was mentioned on the first page? Well, you had might as well add "rape as the only viable means of procreation" in with that in multiple ways. Since Gargoyles can't themselves reproduce through a normal embrace, meaning they have to basically drag someone down and just utterly destroy who they were right down to their memories and personality to make a new Gargoyle. The alternative to this for free Gargoyles is to go extinct due to persecution. So yeah. I really wasn't kidding when I said that the Order of Hermes was full of evil little shitlers back in the day. Voormas (Literally the mage version of a Gehenna scenario all by himself) originated from it as well, I think. Though i'd have to check that last bit. **This was also alluded to in earlier books. Since it was heavily suggested in one myth that the sacred fire flower that let the Sabbat break the blood bonds might have come from Tzimisce's body itself. Meaning the Sabbat were all infecting themselves with Tzimisce. Which could potentially imply that one small part of why the Sabbat going straight to monster town and becoming rapacious supremacists and all around cackling douchebag monsters might have also been due to it's influence due to them...guess what? Compromising the purity of their blood. The other cause is outright stated to be (to the point where the Beckett's Jyhad book points out that the Salubri weren't around to counter the Tzimisce clan's influence. In fact, it mentions that if they had survived and joined the Sabbat in rebellion against the elders the Sabbat would not only be more peaceful and philosophical, but basically be the dominant force with the Camarilla mostly restricted to Europe. Basically Tzimisce is a poison in multiple ways.) because the vampires of Clan Tzimisce hosed everything for them. Edit: And to expand on that Shitlers remark: Until V5, the Tremere still were evil little genocidal authoritarians, to the point where they enslaved all lower members to the leadership. Now after verbally excoriating them I will say that at least there's a breakoff faction in V5 that wasn't genocided by dint of their blood and lack of loyalty. And yes, they did that. The allusions to the Tremere being magical little fascists demanding everyone serve their authoritarian pyramid scheme has been made by other posters years back in other threads. Of course, the group they did this left to join the Sabbat. And during the genocide Goratrix and the few survivors got possessed by Saulot or something like that. So one might expect them to give a hearty mea culpa for their errors if it was freedom from some of the most evil vampires in the Camarilla they were seeking, instead of just wanting to evil even harder. The V5 breakoff is in the Anarchs, who took the opportunity to break with the Pyramid after humanity gave the Tremere higher ups (Who might have just been Saulot or Tzimisce throwing a tantrum at the time.) a healthy dose of karma by way of air striking them out of existence. These vampires are edgy wicca lovers and Lilith worshippers that have mixed in with what earlier books would say are basically libertarian techno mages. Because of course we gotta have some cyberpunk technocracy-esque blood magic in the comparatively modern faction. Stereotypes in fiction gotta stereotype I guess. Contrast this to the actual feminist group that wanted freedom from the Pyramid and...rejoined the Camarilla? I don't even know how that works. Is it even political in this context? Like, a commentary on how sometimes accepted in groups that were previously persecuted sometimes end up supporting established power structures or something? Or did that entire plot point about Carna going on a rampage due to centuries of misogyny and bullshit from the Tremere get retconned? Maybe someone can explain why Carna went from "freedom or death!" to "Actually I think formal serfdom is great.". Though I suppose from certain books they dropped a few leads that she might not be in control of herself any more in one way or another. Also, holy poo poo was that way more than I intended when I started this. Apologies to folks that don't enjoy megaposts. Archonex fucked around with this message at 06:08 on Oct 4, 2021 |
# ? Aug 17, 2021 15:24 |
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Voormas was a Euthanatos, a hodge podge of Hellenistic death cults and "what if Temple of Doom, but the Thuggees have actual powers". But you are spot on with both the Tremere being huge flaming assholes and the Tzimisce being a cancerous poison. Their original clanbook went way too all in on "yeah no these guys totally chummied up to the Nazis" plus whatever weird poo poo they had with Myca/Sascha Vykos. Sexual violence, whether implied or otherwise, was always turned up to 11 when they were involved. Plus the various ethnic genocides. But at least pre-V5 they weren't orchestrated by vampires but rather taken advantage of.
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# ? Aug 17, 2021 18:45 |
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citybeatnik posted:Voormas was a Euthanatos, a hodge podge of Hellenistic death cults and "what if Temple of Doom, but the Thuggees have actual powers". Yeah, I remember the Tzimisce book straight up having fiction about a nazi obsessed with blood purity (Why does this keep coming up?) and his "race" getting embraced in a tank that some Tzimisce used the crew to make insulative lining out of. Said Tzimisce was just gaga over this guy's massive amount of genocidal bigotry.
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# ? Aug 17, 2021 18:55 |
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citybeatnik posted:
This was a bit of a trend in the 90s, when RPGs were more focused on simulation. Underground had the community defined by the parameters of wealth, safety, government purity, quality of life, education, necessities, and take home pay. They were all interconnected; increase the local education level, and you also increase wealth but lower take home pay (better jobs, but higher taxes.) It's up to the GM to reflect the changes in the story; safety going down? More random encounters with gang members and criminals. Wealth going up? Homeless people start getting rousted out. A campaign was described in terms of target levels to hit, and you were working towards a goal.
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# ? Aug 17, 2021 19:58 |
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On Root-chat, Root is fascinating because it has an explicit political take about how different people come together within a state, as well as how different ideologies compete for the loyalty of people. One of Wehre's developer diaries is worth reposting in full.Cole Wehre posted:As both a designer and a player, I dislike cards. Perhaps that’s too strongly put. Really, I don’t mind them, but when I sit down to play a game that makes an extensive use of cards—especially multiple decks—I begin with more suspicion than faith in the design. I think this tendency came from the role that chess and classic war games played in molding me as a gamer and a designer. Card decks were something I toyed with during my brief stint into Ameritrash games in high school and college. As soon as I found Martin Wallace (especially Age of Steam and Struggle of Empires), I thought I was done. This core idea, that cards represent the loyalty of specific peoples, and that different factions with different ideologies play them in various ways makes Root sing. When the Woodland Alliance converts a Mouse supporter card into a Sympathy token, that's a very different arc than the Marquis de Cat using Overwork to take an extra action in a Mouse clearing. In some ways, it's not the most sophisticated model, since there's no real difference between the suites, except that they constrain actions to matching locations on the board. They're "peoples" without culture, history, or character. But as a framework for creating a story a cute woodland creatures engaged in brutal political war that is also a medium weight boardgame, it's a hell of lot more interesting and coherent than the COIN series.
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# ? Aug 17, 2021 23:05 |
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Biffmotron posted:On Root-chat, Root is fascinating because it has an explicit political take about how different people come together within a state, as well as how different ideologies compete for the loyalty of people. One of Wehre's developer diaries is worth reposting in full. This is a really good post and the kind of thing this thread should strive for. Would you care to talk more about your critiques of the COIN series?
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# ? Aug 18, 2021 05:58 |
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The different suits in Root do give the various ethnic groups a bit of culture. Birds, the ruling ethnic group, are wild cards. The various suits produce nominally different trade goods and mechanically different craftable upgrades.
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# ? Aug 18, 2021 06:06 |
And initially, the intent was to have a tilted balance of cards, with mouse>rabbit>fox>bird, but it was changed to a nearly even split through testing.
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# ? Aug 18, 2021 12:16 |
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What do the various sides/creatures in Root represent? I know the Cats are the new authoritarian regime(?), the Birds are the old royal regime(?), the alliance are the rebels/terrorists(?), someone is playing a one man Skyrim game and wins if they finish the main quest line (?). Please also include the expansions. Are all the various sides balanced in that can all win, or are some easier to win than others?
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# ? Aug 18, 2021 13:07 |
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# ? May 25, 2024 14:45 |
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Comstar posted:What do the various sides/creatures in Root represent? I know the Cats are the new authoritarian regime(?), the Birds are the old royal regime(?), the alliance are the rebels/terrorists(?), someone is playing a one man Skyrim game and wins if they finish the main quest line (?). Please also include the expansions. Riverfolk are the PMCs and arms dealers, the Lizard cult is the "SECRET UNDERGROUND RACE OF LIZARD PEOPLE THAT CONTROL OUR EVERY ASPECT OF LIFE! WAKE UP PEOPLE, FIGHT THE OPPRESSIVE LIZARD OVERLORDS!"? But seriously, I thought the Riverfolk were the "Sell weapons and supplies to every side of the conflict" businesspeople, and the Lizard cult was either the religious groups that swell during times of unrest, or the scam artists that make "religious sects" to prey on people who look for hope in religion/belief in a higher power during times of need (depending on how charitable you want to be to religious groups).
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# ? Aug 18, 2021 13:29 |