Do your Political Views shape how your villains and heroes act?

Random thought that came through is that do the political views of the DM shape how the stories npc heroes and villains act? My villains tend to be not necessarily super evil, but more on the corrupt official lets get rich people to give me money and i'm decidedly liberal on a lot of my views.

Its just a bunch of already rich people trying to vie for more money and power while using fear and hatred as the main motivator to affect those around them. People aren't decidedly evil unless they worship an evil as all hell god, no matter the race and i try to play against the lets murder it simply because its there because murder hobos are kinda boring to play with.

So how do other people shape their heroes and what sort of campaigns do you play because of it?

No, my RL political views do not enter into my DMing.

I run black & white, high adventure, action movie type stuff. So that's how my heroes/villains/NPCs act.

Well, in a sense. As I lean libertarian, I am perfectly okay with groups of armed people killing others in self defense and not calling them "murder hobos", because I believe there is a difference between murder and justified homicide.

And most my villains tend to be lawful types.

No. I'm playing RPGs to play characters that are different from myself.

Not so much political views as cultural influences.
- There are NPCs who turn to Pure Evil, and it is morally OK to slay them.
- "Shades of Grey" do exist but I don't use them all the time, nor to GOTCHA paladins (especially if the player is sincere in his characterization).
- If the Pope calls a Crusade, Good people can disagree on best strategy / mission objectives / tactics without detecting each other as Evil.
- Lawful Evil uses Nazi symbolism, and Soviet Union references too.
- One way to be seen as Evil is to ignore or flout the Laws of Civilization, even if you think you are Chaotic and bound by nobody else's rules.

BRKNdevil said:

Random thought that came through is that do the political views of the DM shape how the stories npc heroes and villains act? My villains tend to be not necessarily super evil, but more on the corrupt official lets get rich people to give me money and i'm decidedly liberal on a lot of my views.

Its just a bunch of already rich people trying to vie for more money and power while using fear and hatred as the main motivator to affect those around them. People aren't decidedly evil unless they worship an evil as all hell god, no matter the race and i try to play against the lets murder it simply because its there because murder hobos are kinda boring to play with.

So how do other people shape their heroes and what sort of campaigns do you play because of it?

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I tend to be conservative in my view point, and my villains tend to care more about power than about money. Money is only one form of power, and liberals tend to think that money is the only form of power out there, their villains tend to be rich people that want to get richer, or evil faceless corporations.

A conservative villain might be a terrorist, or a revolutionary, from this viewpoint, evil comes out of a barrel of a gun rather than from someone's wallet or bank account. Villains don't have to be rich people trying to get richer through legitimate but immoral means.

One type of villain could be a crime boss that makes a living through extortion, theft, or through the sale of illicit substances. Liberals tend to like the legitimate but immoral businessman in a suit working for and sometimes directing an evil faceless corporation.

I'll give you a comic book example, take Lex Luthor for example:



This Lex Luthor is a crime boss, there is nothing legitimate about his operation, his lair is underground adjacent to a subway tunnel.



This is that same Lex Luthor portrayed by a different actor in Superman Returns.



Here is Lex Luthor from Smallville, he runs a corporation called Luthorcorp when he takes over the family business from his father.
Seems like the old Mafia crime boss went out of fashion, and more popular, at least as a Hollywood trope, is the evil CEO in a business suit.




And of course don't forget Nolan Sorrento from Ready Player One.

No one seems to like the crime bosses anymore, I wonder why?

ccs said:

No, my RL political views do not enter into my DMing.

I run black & white, high adventure, action movie type stuff. So that's how my heroes/villains/NPCs act.

Click to expand...

I'm not going to say my political views don't enter into my DMing, I know better than that. It is my belief that everyone is influenced by their political opinions whether they choose to admit it or not. I've read lots of books, and usually I can tell the political slant of the author by the kinds of villains he chooses to use. If his villain is a man in a business suit running an evil faceless corporation, I know what the author's political viewpoint is.

If the villain is a revolutionary trying to overthrow the capitalist system and install himself as dictator, I know what the author's political viewpoint is there too.

My antagonists are drawn with a wide variety of backgrounds, attitudes, and outlooks. All of them are in some way at odds with the group's motivations and goals -- otherwise they end up not being antagonists -- so it is more a case the PC's beliefs drive the potential shapes of the antagonists.

No and honestly I'd quit a game where the politics of the DM were shining though. It would be cheap and a disservice to the game if I made all my bad guys based on real world politics. I had a player always talking about running a cyberpunk game that was pretty much a Marxist rant against "the system", wasn't interested and sounded like a dreadful bore.

All fiction is, in part, a product of the culture in which it was created. Our villains and heroes are influenced by what we think is heroic or villainous, which is a cultural meme. You'd have along row to hoe to demonstrate that this is not at least correlated to politics, as our politics is part of our culture.