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Magnetic North posted:Quoting myself from the Board Games thread, I wonder if this thread would be interested in this sort of topic. I don't think board games (or other games for that matter) that engage with a horrible topic need to be about misinformation, although they can be. But look at a game like Twilight Struggle. Some of the effects of the cards (in the game you play with cards that feature historical events and people) don't necessarily make historical sense, but in the grander scheme of the game itself, you as the player are constantly afraid of triggering a nuclear war, which seems like a good lesson to learn. On the whole, it falls on the shoulders of the game designer to be at least somewhat faithful to history and the events they are trying to portray. I'm vaguely aware that, for a counter-example of sorts, there's a contingent of Warhammer players who think the "Imperium of Man" is actually really super cool and wicked awesome, where it is obviously a fascist murder regime ruled by a dead? god-emperor. Warhammer is fiction, but I don't know if you can entirely avoid, say, wargamers who will think that the Wehrmacht was pretty awesome at making war and don't think too hard about the war crimes and crimes against humanity aspect. Of course it is easier in a sense to just make your wargame about furry forest creatures and avoid this whole debacle, but you as the game designer are still making an entertainment product about mass murder. Or mass death, if we don't consider killing owls and rabbits as murder in the technical sense.
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Jul 2, 2022 08:06
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Funny thing is that even during the bad times the Imperium of Man was never presented as anything but an utter clusterfuck at every single level. Waging war is basically the only thing it's semi good at mostly due to sheer enthusiasm, and even then it's an empire long past its prime that is decaying from the inside, its responses to the problems it does recognise are ham-fistedly counterproductive, and the few reasonable and competent people in any positions of authority have to work extremely carefully to not get shot by the fascist lunatics who consider any sign of actual humanity to be weakness. Like there's entire genres of jokes and memes about how disparate and schizophrenic every aspect of it is culturally, governmentally and technologically, with an overwhelmed and incomprehensible bureaucracy and entire planets get lost in rounding errors. Technology and science are controlled by a literally religious monopoly enforced militantly and who enforce stagnant doctrine that regards innovation as literal heresy. It's a libertarian's worst fever dreams of Big Government incompetence and tyranny. And probably most realistically fascist in that way. Like the whole joke with the Tau is that they are the faction who, mentally and socially, are most similar to 21st century humans, who have actual science, rational thinking and pragmatic doctrine of warfare and material conditions, and they see the Imperium as bizarre and frequently insane, even though individual humans can be quite pleasant and even reasonable. Of course, the short version is something that needs to be repeated a lot to online critics: there's absolutely no point in trying to make your work not appeal to an imagined fascist audience looking for validation, because fascists are dumb as poo poo and will find it anywhere they want to find it. Ghost Leviathan fucked around with this message at 08:52 on Jul 2, 2022 |
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Jul 2, 2022 08:43
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Fascism in tabletop games deserves WW2 wargames being mentioned. Even now they still really like having the RKKA being mindless zerg rush horde and the SS being ultra disciplined super soldiers. That's a talking point direct from nazis poached after surrender, and in the real war even the Wehrmacht viewed the Waffen-SS as suicidal and incompetent.
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Jul 2, 2022 08:59
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Rappaport posted:Richard Nixon did run for office, and he even won it, twice. Trying to engage with his mind-set might be interesting, but it doesn't look like that game tries to emulate it very hard, maybe I'm judging it too harshly though. Yeah, the one good example that commonly gets brought up at lot in this context is Freedom: The Underground Railroad, which I also haven't played. As you might imagine from the name, it is a game about the efforts of abolitionist to attempting fight the institution of slavery to get slaves from the pre-Civil War US to Canada, which is probably about as serious as most board games ever get. The primary difference here is it is full cooperative. All players are fighting against tyranny; no one has to be the tyrant. That has to be a big part about making this subject matter considerably more palatable. While thinking about ACW games, there is a game that serves as a counter example to my concern that playing a side is an endorsement. It's a less well known example by Amabel Holland called This Guilty Land, which I also haven't played. This game is also about the political struggle over slavery in the Unites States, but it is not a cooperative game against 'the system' like Freedom. However, there can be little mistaking the game's message: one player plays Justice, the other plays Oppression, while a third non-player force called Compromise attempts to maintain the status quo. The game is quite explicitly not endorsing slavery. Of course, having an anti-slavery message might be considered a safe and obvious opinion over a century after the war was won. However, the publisher has a deeper explicit message in this game. They are quoted describing it thusly: Hollandspiele posted:When the game ends, the American Civil War begins: the game's argument is that the Civil War was both inevitable and necessary, and through its mechanisms, the game seeks to illustrate why that is the case while still providing a deep and engaging play experience. This also makes sense considering the source of the title, taken from abolitionist John Brown's final speech before his execution. John Brown posted:I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land can never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed, it might be done. So, I would normally say that with adequate gravity and consideration given, it's unlikely one could accidentally construed to be endorsing something terrible, but then again: Ghost Leviathan posted:fascists are dumb as poo poo There is likely only so far we can go to prevent intentional willful misinterpretation.
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Jul 2, 2022 09:44
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It's like that old chestnut about how satire needs clarity of message and purpose, otherwise it's going to be mistaken for what it's satirizing, plus as a game, it also has to be an engaging, otherwise nobody's going to play it. Not necessarily fun, I'd never describe This War of Mine as fun, but it sure as hell is engaging.
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Jul 2, 2022 09:55
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:Fascism in tabletop games deserves WW2 wargames being mentioned. Even now they still really like having the RKKA being mindless zerg rush horde and the SS being ultra disciplined super soldiers. That's a talking point direct from nazis poached after surrender, and in the real war even the Wehrmacht viewed the Waffen-SS as suicidal and incompetent. WW2 also seems to cultivate the most "what ifs" games that revolve around the Time Life Books commercial mythologies of what if the Nazis had super weapons that worked, or the rumors of Werewolf supersoldiers were real or if magick was real. I always felt the pitch meetings went, "Haha guys, that certainly would be terrible if they did that... unless?"
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Jul 2, 2022 14:59
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NC Wyeth Death Cult posted:WW2 also seems to cultivate the most "what ifs" games that revolve around the Time Life Books commercial mythologies of what if the Nazis had super weapons that worked, or the rumors of Werewolf supersoldiers were real or if magick was real. I always felt the pitch meetings went, "Haha guys, that certainly would be terrible if they did that... unless?" The Nazis were also famously into weird science bullshit and occultism, but really not like the rest weren't? Look up Operation Fairy Flag, and then of course it's the US who invented a brand new superweapon that changed the entire idea of war.
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Jul 2, 2022 16:02
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Ghost Leviathan posted:The Nazis were also famously into weird science bullshit and occultism, but really not like the rest weren't? Look up Operation Fairy Flag, and then of course it's the US who invented a brand new superweapon that changed the entire idea of war. Yeah. We can laugh at the crazy poo poo people were coming up with to try to win a war that was at a global scale, but the US had bombs small enough to be carried by a B-52 bomber that was strong enough to devistate entire cities, and even after Hiroshima, Japan's command were basically saying "Okay, sure, they had a super weapon, but it's not like they have more, right?" Weird science bullshit is only weird science bullshit until it works, is what I'm saying.
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Jul 2, 2022 16:17
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And yet in wargaming models, the Ratte (nazi land battleship of which 0 were built, would have demolished every bridge and field in Europe, piece of poo poo idea, they never even managed to get Panthers or Tigers working properly) exists in larger numbers than any allied dumbshit weapon. Where's my soviet flying tanks or my british iceberg carriers? It all feeds the idea of fascism producing hardened elites when our best two examples of fascism, Germany and Italy, produced backstabbing clownshows while the likes of USSR, USA, and UK utterly defeated them in the real world. The T-34 didn't ever even get a turret basket. The loader had to scooby doo around the tank's floor grabbing shells as the turret rotated around him. It still killed vastly more nazi tanks than killed it. Turns out your cool tank with a broke rear end final drive and turret that direct enemy shells into the heads of the unfortunate driver and bow gunner (with their own ammo stored between their loving seats) is not that cool. Edgar Allen Ho fucked around with this message at 16:55 on Jul 2, 2022 |
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Jul 2, 2022 16:36
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Nazi "esoteric science" seems like an area where it's really easy for the Wehraboos to just slap a swastika on Germany, give them a +5 modifier in science and a research tree that is mechanically easier to deal with than, say, the Soviets. It's video games, not table top, sorry, but the Wolfenstein games at least tried to show off "weird Nazi science and occultism poo poo" and make the player think this was all really bad and evil. Say what you will about the game-play of Half-Life one 2 decades after its launch, but that feels like a good example of a game showing, not telling, through the game-play that the US military-industrial complex is really, really messed up and horrible.
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Jul 2, 2022 16:37
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The new Wolfenstein games at least made a point that the Nazis stole all their weird science poo poo. (which has its own issues mind) Though oddly enough, comic books are actually pretty good for 'everyone in WW2 had crazy superweapon poo poo going on', or at least the US and Nazi Germany anyway. Captain America vs the Red Skull and all. Now I'm picturing a story where a bunch of time travelling nazis are going back to WW2 to try to give the Third Reich superweapons to win the war, but because they're all Nazis they're still a clownshow of delusions and backstabbing sabotating themselves constantly.
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Jul 2, 2022 17:16
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I think it’s worth noting that Twilight Struggle is serious in tone but overtly satirical in design, which is a delicate balance but I think it pulls it off really well.
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Jul 2, 2022 19:04
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Bottom Liner posted:I think it’s worth noting that Twilight Struggle is serious in tone but overtly satirical in design, which is a delicate balance but I think it pulls it off really well. Labyrinth tried to do the same thing except using Thomas Friedman's NYT op-eds about bringing good governance to Islamic countries (at gunpoint, if necessary) as its base modeling assumption and that was much less successful. A Cold War game built around contemporary Soviet assumptions about what they were doing and why would be incredibly interesting. FMguru fucked around with this message at 19:17 on Jul 2, 2022 |
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Jul 2, 2022 19:14
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Schwarzwald posted:It's not that the political dimension is replaced by superhero fiat, but rather that superhero fiat is an analogy for the political dimension. From Miracleman # 16 
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Jul 2, 2022 19:16
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Toph Bei Fong posted:From Miracleman # 16 eat poo poo maggie
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Jul 2, 2022 19:23
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Ghost Leviathan posted:
Harry Turtledove did this but it's pro-apartheid safricans giving kalashnikovs to the CSA
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Jul 2, 2022 19:51
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Twilight Struggle literally makes the world a board with marker chits for you and the opponent, and as a Finn I must say we are woefully underrepresented!, but I'm not sure it's so much a political statement for mister Kissinger as it is trying to make the idea of global thermonuclear war a tangible, game-play reality. Which is what the thread has been discussing. Things like the Vietnam and Korean wars are, essentially, abstracted away into points one side or the other can gain as "gently caress you" moves. This does not represent the reality of these conflicts. That said, the way their abstraction is portrayed still makes it clear that these are Bad Things you, the player, are doing, but the game mechanics force you into. Which simulates the I suppose Randian view of the Cold War. It is a game of dealing with one crisis after another, and trying to make the best of it. It's easier to win it in the early war with the Soviets by taking over the world with wars of aggression. I don't mean it is a portrayal of world politics as they were, or how they "should have been", just that it makes it clear to the player that it is annihilation by a nuclear storm that is at stake, and the player as the agent should perform accordingly. And it encapsulates that sense of complete, absolute dread and how each turn ticking down makes the player more desperate. I suppose at its heart it is a game meant to make you hate your opponent, but the same could be said of chess.
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Jul 2, 2022 21:03
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One thing that I always thought was pretty hosed up was in HoI4 (don't know if this is true in the current version) if played the USSR and deliberately avoided doing the purges and curbed/replaced Stalin, then right when Germany was about to declare war on you, Trotskyist launch an armed coup. Giving the implication that Stalin was right to do the purges. Like imagine if they did the same thing with Germany? "Oh, you got rid of Hitler? Well, all your neighbors declare war on you at once while the Jews steal your treasury. I guess you should of done those genocides!"
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Jul 3, 2022 00:22
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They've patched it sense, so Stalin's paranoia is portrayed more like, well, paranoia. You can get a coup and civil war by Trotsky or Bukharin but you have to actually choose that. You can, of course, also choose a resurgent White Russia because it's a HoI game, of course you can.
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Jul 3, 2022 00:50
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SirPhoebos posted:One thing that I always thought was pretty hosed up was in HoI4 (don't know if this is true in the current version) if played the USSR and deliberately avoided doing the purges and curbed/replaced Stalin, then right when Germany was about to declare war on you, Trotskyist launch an armed coup. Giving the implication that Stalin was right to do the purges. Its been patched, you can go multiple routes, including a bloodless coup of Stalin if you do the right things
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Jul 3, 2022 00:53
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SirPhoebos posted:One thing that I always thought was pretty hosed up was in HoI4 (don't know if this is true in the current version) if played the USSR and deliberately avoided doing the purges and curbed/replaced Stalin, then right when Germany was about to declare war on you, Trotskyist launch an armed coup. Giving the implication that Stalin was right to do the purges. "HoI4... let's see... Lead Designer, Jeff Stalin?!??!"
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Jul 3, 2022 00:53
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Now I'm picturing a story where a bunch of time travelling nazis are going back to WW2 to try to give the Third Reich superweapons to win the war, but because they're all Nazis they're still a clownshow of delusions and backstabbing sabotating themselves constantly. Slantedfloors fucked around with this message at 14:56 on Jul 3, 2022 |
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Jul 3, 2022 01:23
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Slantedfloors posted:There's a Czech film from the 70s called Tomorrow I'll Wake Up and Scaled Myself With Tea which is about a cabal of elderly Nazis using a time machine to go back and help Hitler, but they keep accidentally killing him or psychologically destroying him with knowledge from the future. It's pretty good. Man, I wish I watched that old foreign time travel movie in film class instead of La Jetée (which is good, but this sounds hilarious).
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Jul 3, 2022 09:20
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I don't know how it's been since the reboot, but Legends of the Five Rings has some really hosed up politics, not just from the narrative and mechanics but also (at least in early editions) how the writers wanted you to play it. "Feudalism and Xenophobia are metaphysically endorsed and trying to dismantle this faux fantasy Japan puts you on the side of actual Hell. But if you go along with it the GM is encouraged to emphasize what horrible people your characters are for being the tools of oppression." It's like a game that's meant to make you feel bad for playing it.
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Jul 3, 2022 19:51
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Debate and Discussion: John Wick Has Some Weird Politics.
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Jul 3, 2022 20:00
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while i'm not inclined to give John Wick in particular the benefit of the doubt, how would you best implement a game where the players are supposed to be people "of their era" in some genuinely uncomfortable context and discourage players from trying to pseudo-isekai their way to modernity, at least as a default state of play? like, we've obviously seen the bad way, what's the good one?
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Jul 3, 2022 20:20
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:while i'm not inclined to give John Wick in particular the benefit of the doubt, how would you best implement a game where the players are supposed to be people "of their era" in some genuinely uncomfortable context and discourage players from trying to pseudo-isekai their way to modernity, at least as a default state of play? like, we've obviously seen the bad way, what's the good one? Besides the Glorantha method of having the setting being self-reinforcing?
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Jul 3, 2022 20:45
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:while i'm not inclined to give John Wick in particular the benefit of the doubt, how would you best implement a game where the players are supposed to be people "of their era" in some genuinely uncomfortable context and discourage players from trying to pseudo-isekai their way to modernity, at least as a default state of play? like, we've obviously seen the bad way, what's the good one? I think it starts with a close examination of who the players are supposed to be playing, and what these characters are trying to achieve and what the central struggle is. Then make sure that the mechanics of the game are central to that struggle. And if you have the resources to create a published adventure, make sure that it aligns with the message you are trying to get across. All of this, of course, requires that you not be in love with the smell of your own farts. There probably is an RPG out there that would be good for playing minor nobility dealing with being complicit in the injustices of society, and then trying to correct them from a position of privilege, balancing doing what is right against jeopardizing all they've ever known. It could even be fun to play, but such a game probably would not have complicated combat systems with a dozen sword styles to pick from, and doesn't devote lots of text to explaining why one noble house hates the other.
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Jul 3, 2022 21:59
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SirPhoebos posted:I don't know how it's been since the reboot, but Legends of the Five Rings has some really hosed up politics, not just from the narrative and mechanics but also (at least in early editions) how the writers wanted you to play it. L5R in general makes much more sense when you think of the Kami as a deliberately Regressive force. [Edit: The Ivory Kingdoms box was among my favorite of all things put out in the setting, including the in-character diary of a noble sent there and quickly realizing her old way of life sucks rear end and slowly warming to the freedoms and customs of this new land.] AmiYumi fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Jul 3, 2022 |
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Jul 3, 2022 22:07
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Oh is it time to talk about how religion in the FR makes sense and is perfectly fine but people don’t like it for nonsense reasons in this thread
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Jul 3, 2022 22:44
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Arivia posted:Oh is it time to talk about how religion in the FR makes sense and is perfectly fine but people don’t like it for nonsense reasons in this thread AmiYumi fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Jul 3, 2022 |
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Jul 3, 2022 22:47
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Look, Helm can take a steaming dump into the nearest heap and watch (get it) me not giving a poo poo (get it?). The deities in FR don't make any sense at all.
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Jul 3, 2022 22:48
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AmiYumi posted:The setting where deities themselves intervene and murder anyone who disturbs their Funko pop case by inventing or changing things is not, in fact, “fine” I genuinely have no idea what you’re complaining about. It’s obvious it’s not about the Wall of the Faithless but beyond that you’ve lost me.
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Jul 3, 2022 23:00
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The gods of the forgotten realms drat well know my demands for supporting them. Just pop on over when Elminster next raids Ed's beer fridge and do me a polymorph, and I'll devote my life to realmslore, simple as.
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Jul 3, 2022 23:13
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Arivia posted:I genuinely have no idea what you’re complaining about. It’s obvious it’s not about the Wall of the Faithless but beyond that you’ve lost me. If only you would open your mind and read the Cyrinishad, you would understand. Bony-Eared Assfish fucked around with this message at 16:01 on Jul 4, 2022 |
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Jul 3, 2022 23:29
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Xiahou Dun posted:Besides the Glorantha method of having the setting being self-reinforcing? Having a world where the laws of physics just don't work is a pretty good way to prevent modernization, yeah. I've seen one thing where a trash plane of existence made out of a bunch of shards of other planes of existence normally has people just powering through with magic, but one scientist had to figure out how to deal with the shifting laws of physics in order to compete.
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Jul 4, 2022 05:36
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Discworld at least has the gods be recognised as petty, childish assholes who literally treat the Disc as a game board.
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Jul 4, 2022 06:16
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Discworld at least has the gods be recognised as petty, childish assholes who literally treat the Disc as a game board. And get regularly semi dunked on. I also liked Offler, who had been around so long that he'd changed the rules of his faith to be more human friendly.
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Jul 4, 2022 07:07
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Rappaport posted:Twilight Struggle literally makes the world a board with marker chits for you and the opponent, and as a Finn I must say we are woefully underrepresented!, but I'm not sure it's so much a political statement for mister Kissinger as it is trying to make the idea of global thermonuclear war a tangible, game-play reality. Which is what the thread has been discussing. Things like the Vietnam and Korean wars are, essentially, abstracted away into points one side or the other can gain as "gently caress you" moves. This does not represent the reality of these conflicts. The Designer's Notes for Twilight Struggle are worth a read. quote:Twilight Struggle does not reach beyond its means. Wherever there were compromises to make between realism and playability, we sided with playability. We want to evoke the feel of the Cold War, we hope people get a few insights they didn’t possess, but we have no pretensions that a game of this scope or length could pretend to be a simulation. There's more in there but that's probably the most relevant part for this.
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Jul 4, 2022 10:56
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AmiYumi posted:L5R in general makes much more sense when you think of the Kami as a deliberately Regressive force. Mantis clan is about respectability politics, and Yoritomo did nothing wrong. I stopped playing at scorpion clan coup and will assume the storyline continued with no wild swerves.
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