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CommieGIR posted: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. Demon the Fallen (which is the same world) is pretty explicitly young-earth creationist, but I don't think it lands on the 6kish year number, since it makes references to neolithic humans, which only barely fall into that.
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Jul 28, 2021 16:44
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 05:49 |
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Hey shrecknet, if you're cool with it we can open this up to talking about politics in tabletop stuff in general. A recent Atlantic article talked about the pro-colonialist subtext in quite a few board games, for instance.
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Jul 29, 2021 15:51
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Yeah I'd prefer we keep the conversation focused on the media itself, rather than the creators.
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Jul 29, 2021 16:06
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Honestly I find that old mage better reflects the tendency for real world occult and pagan revivalists to imagine themselves as ideologically superior to existing systems of power when there isn't actually any reason to believe that they're not just a different flavor of the same basic thing
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Jul 30, 2021 15:49
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Yeah shadowrun too spends a lot of time confusing its own message by making the evils of capitalism a product of, at best, megalomaniacal schemes gone wrong or outright illuminati groups, or at worst completely alien forces of spiritual evil. It focuses a lot on the people who have fallen into the cracks of capitalism; the destitute, gangs, and organized crime, as the victims of capitalism, while regarding workers with contempt for upholding the status quo, rather than victims in their own right. They call them wageslaves but don't examine what that means; it means that cybernetics and downloadable educations makes workers entirely interchangeable, they don't even have their own skills to market, they're just fleshy platforms for hardware and software with no hope for anything better.
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Jul 30, 2021 20:46
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This is kinda getting away from discussing the politics of the game lines
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Jul 31, 2021 18:32
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Oh yeah, see also "the practice of the Aztec folk religion is literally hastening the apocalypse and a dragon left a substantial bounty for the capture of their priests" in Shadowrun. The animal-sacrifice-as-demon-worship Christian attitude is depressingly common in fantasy writing, despite most world religions practicing it to a greater or lesser extent.
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Aug 1, 2021 16:31
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Yeah the marquis is explicitly a colonial power focused on industrializion and resource extraction. Because she starts with control of the board, and because she has poor action economy, she effectively wants to have an intentional controlled collapse and consolidate her industrial power until she's unassailable. There's another imperialist faction in the moles, more interested in making the woodlands a tributary than on raw materials. They're focused on building military outposts and friendly markets rather than the cats' sawmills and workshops; old world imperialism rather than colonialism.
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Aug 2, 2021 18:53
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Triskelli posted:Huh, I had always read the Underground Duchy of the moles as a more explicit parody of American intervionism, with tunnels=airports and an allergy to responsibility when things went bad with the “Price of Failure” rule. That's also a valid reading I hadn't really thought about. I can definitely see it: their homeland is unassailable, they're hesitant to invest heavily in the conflict at first until they get public opinion on their side through some early victories, and they're quick to cut and run in the face of setbacks, but if they get momentum behind them they can bring a level of force and logistics to bear that few other factions can match.
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Aug 2, 2021 20:28
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Yeah the solution to the vagabond is for all other players to violently oppress them because they are an ubermensch who will conquer the forest by sheer force of bootstraps otherwise. That's not the INTENTED message; vagabond is supposed to be an opportunist who wins by becoming a folk hero while all the other factions ruin the forest duking it out for too long, but they got the balance wrong.
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Aug 2, 2021 22:55
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Reveilled posted:A game I'd really like to get a chance to play some time is Spirit Island, where the players are trying to expel a colonial power from their island. You draw an adversary Arkham Horror style that determines the monstrous entity you'll be battling against this game, with such foul names as "England" and "Spain". I'm not sure myself how well it handles the stuff I've mentioned, but heck, at least it's worth something to actually see a video game where colonialism is the explicit enemy for a change. Spirit island focuses more on the environmental message than the anti-colonialist one. Invaders, who are various European colonial powers as you said, are on the Island to extract resources and build industry, which causes environmental damage and thus kill the nature spirits that the players control. They also do attack natives who share space with them, but don't otherwise deliberately hunt them down or exploit them. Similarly, the natives don't actively resist the Invaders unless attacked first or a spirit urges them to do so. There are some effects that convert natives to invaders and vice-versa, but the native-colonizer relationship isn't really deeply examined.
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Aug 6, 2021 15:51
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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
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The lizard cult are specifically religious extremists who recruit from whichever ethnic group is 'outcast' at the time (most cards of their suit in the discard pile).
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Aug 18, 2021 14:22
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Battletech writing is all kinds of fraught, but especially the clans. They've gone from vague space Mongols, to utopian Ubermenschen, to deconstruction of the same, to reformed 'reasonable' fascists. There's a reason why a lot of fan hate the clans in particular.
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Oct 4, 2021 05:07
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Paranoia is like mad magazine level silly. It was like, you get an “assault rife” and it’s a salt shaker that shoots salt at things. Paranoia specifically has different tones with different rules and player expectations, ranging for W A C K Y to Brazil to the aforementioned Hunger adventure.
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Oct 22, 2021 04:13
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Ragnar34 posted:I kind of wish, instead of making casters weaker, they'd given the nonmagic classes a team/holy see/guild/platoon to lead. Maybe wizards could have a tower to make it feel fair while explaining where this extra power is coming from. Just last night I was reading a book with that solution, I think it was Low Fantasy Gaming. This was a mechanic in earlier editions of D&D. All classes got followers of various types at a certain point, with wizards getting a few apprentices and fighters getting a platoon of men-at-arms, ect.
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Nov 8, 2021 04:17
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Guys this thread is about the politics and commentary in tabletop games, not which versions of D&D are a better play experience.
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Nov 9, 2021 18:30
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 05:49 |
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The authorities also deny the existance of the skaven despite their ubiquitous nature and constantly exposed attempts to undermine society. Orcs are Americans actually.
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Nov 12, 2021 03:19
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