Tabletop Games Have Weird Politics: If the players bring about Jesus' death, great!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Tabletop Games Have Weird Politics: If the players bring about Jesus' death, great!

CommieGIR: Aug 22, 2006; The blue glow is a feature, not a bug; Pillbug

Doctor Jeep posted:

or maybe the simplest explanation is that in VtM the bible is generally but not literally correct - so yes, god exists, cain and abel existed, but that doesn't mean the earth is 6000 years old

Does VtM accept the Evangelical method of dating the earth via the Bible? That was basically made up on the fly by adding all the begats in the book of Genesis.

# ¿ Jul 28, 2021 16:02

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 03:59

CommieGIR: Aug 22, 2006; The blue glow is a feature, not a bug; Pillbug

eviltastic posted:

I think at least some of the third generation of vampires (antediluvians, because they predate the biblical flood), and thus Cain himself are canonically older than six thousand years, which would rule that out.

That's what I figured, from my vague recollection of VtM, mostly through my spouse.

# ¿ Jul 28, 2021 17:15

CommieGIR: Aug 22, 2006; The blue glow is a feature, not a bug; Pillbug

Seems like VtM suffers from the same sort of racial issues that a lot of late 80s early 90s role play games did.

# ¿ Jul 28, 2021 18:23

CommieGIR: Aug 22, 2006; The blue glow is a feature, not a bug; Pillbug

moths posted:

In Warhammer, the Warp interacts with the subconscious in such a way that, at least with orks, belief influences reality. The Chaos deities are manifestations of the universe's collected pathos and desperation - it's internally consistent that another approach might produce smaller, individual results.

Or maybe orks just paint their fastest vehicles red.

It's a good setting when you can still have a fun mystery after 30+ years of world building.

Isn't it basically implied that the Chaos factions are directly fueled by the very actions the Imperium and others take, directly fueling the Chaos factions through the mind-numbingly insane dystopian world they want to achieve?

# ¿ Mar 31, 2022 16:06

CommieGIR: Aug 22, 2006; The blue glow is a feature, not a bug; Pillbug

Absurd Alhazred posted:

And yet endless war is the premise of the game about endless battles for which you should buy and paint miniatures/run various RPG campaigns.

Endless War is now Endless Infrastructure Week.

Like Sim City 2000 but with crazy space Catholics.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2022 16:16

CommieGIR: Aug 22, 2006; The blue glow is a feature, not a bug; Pillbug

90s Cringe Rock posted:

Slaanesh is probably into the endless poetry.

Slanesh is Vogon?

# ¿ Mar 31, 2022 17:49

CommieGIR: Aug 22, 2006; The blue glow is a feature, not a bug; Pillbug

SirPhoebos posted:

On the topic of 40K (but also sci-fi/fantasy in general) I've always found the the conceit of "these space racist humans aren't prejudice against ethnicities because they're too busy being space racist towards aliens" to be rather dubious (even if totally understandable from a marketing perspective).

It's not like 19th century U.S. was too tuckered out from genociding Native Americans and enslaving Africans to not also be hella racist towards Irish, Germans, Italians, Chinese, Jews, Hispanics, etc.

To be fair, I suspect racism in the 40k universe no doubt influences who gets genocided or sacrificed.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2022 00:48

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 03:59

CommieGIR: Aug 22, 2006; The blue glow is a feature, not a bug; Pillbug

Archonex posted:

Which is funny, since as time has gone on it's become apparent that Halo's Earth based government is running down a checklist of evil overlord/evil fascist government tropes by the standards of other scifi settings.

What's more, the fascists in control straight up have some evil ideals that take some digging to suss out. Like killing yourself before you present a threat to the government's ruling power (One of the academies mentioned indoctrinates applicants via idolizing a general from the Rome that was told to commit suicide by the Emperor after he feared he was growing too powerful) in one of the most obvious hypocritical actions out there.

Then there's the fact that the "hero" of the game is straight up a kidnapped child by the government that was raised to be a super soldier. How did they kidnap him? By replacing him with a flash clone that would die horrifically in front of his parents after enough time had passed that they'd cover their tracks. The parents of these victims only found out later on and it got handwaved away because *plot reasons that say that Master Chief is never gonna unload a magnum into the head of a murderous fascist that isn't an alien*.

Then there's the civil war. Master Chief would straight up be the villain protag or an end game boss if the covenant hadn't showed up. The whole "the rebels are the eeeevvviil ones!" rings pretty hollow if you realize that the rebels were doing unethical poo poo to stay ahead of the even more wildly absurdly evil (Example Stealing children from the rebelling outer colonies for a literal super soldier project named after a genocidal slave state that regularly murdered their slaves. Or having their CIA equivalent engineer horrifying flesh liquefying viruses.) fascist inner colonies. Which is not inaccurate given the things that many real world rebellions had to do to stay ahead of the ones they're rebelling against. And that includes the US's rebellion against Britain. Go look up how we handled trading with pirates and smugglers for example.

Of course, the whole conflict looks even more shady from a narrative intent bent when you count the issue that the Spartans (Another fashie trope) weren't created to fight dogmatic space aliens. They were straight up created to crush rebellions like the Empire does with super soldier projects in Star Wars. The poo poo with the aliens comes afterwards, and was a complete surprise to the UNSC.

Honestly, in an alternate universe set of games where it's just the rebels versus the earth government it'd probably end up being a plot point that Reach fell when the rebels overtook it due to the UNSC MAC stations being ordered to turn 60-90 degrees towards the planet and glass it, Death Star style.

Yeah this bugged me to no end: Halo wasn't exactly an uplifting story because it was incredibly hosed up.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2022 19:28

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Tabletop Games Have Weird Politics: If the players bring about Jesus' death, great!