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

[Calithorne]

I strive to inspire real hatred towards my villains, but no, I do not try to promote a particular political agenda.

 

[fjw70]

No, no real world politics influence my game. My orange skinned demon that wants to Make The Realms Great Again has nothing to do with real world politics.

 

[Morrus]

I guess they must be unconsciously, but my characters and settings are so divorced from reality that it's certainly not blatant.

 

[billd91]

Almost certainly. Our core political and moral beliefs inevitably shape our perspectives and thoughts and those affect pretty much everything we perceive, say, and do - some a lot more strongly than others.

 

[Gradine]

I'd also make the argument that purposefully avoiding real-world politics when collaboratively storytelling is also a political choice, but I know that's not necessarily a popular theory.

 

[dragoner]

I do near future sci-fi, so there some overlap, I'm a Democrat, though I do have Republican friends and players. However, I try to make things more than two dimensional; both heroes and villains can do good and bad. This is life, the way things happen, so it doesn't take a huge amount of explaining.

 

[Umbran]

That's not quite true. I actually consider villains that are simply 'Evil' (with a capital 'E', no less) considerably less interesting than villains that are just misguided.

Well, there's a question as to what types of villains are interesting to experience in a story (say, a novel), and what kinds of villains are interesting for the player to deal with an in RPG.

There's also another question based on what counts as "misguided". There is one form of misguided, where the culprit isn't aware of the repercussions of their actions - and the only "evil" you may put on these is that maybe they should have done more work to alleviate their ignorance of consequences before starting. There's another thing I have heard of as described as "misguided" in which the culprit is fully aware of the consequences of their actions, but they don't feel they are significant. As in, "I am causing pain to 100,000 people, and I don't care - the ends justify the means."

The former is merely ignorance. It is uninteresting.

The latter is entirely human, based in interesting human psychology, visible in many places in human history, and also textbook capital-E Evil.

 

[Umbran]

I'd also make the argument that purposefully avoiding real-world politics when collaboratively storytelling is also a political choice, but I know that's not necessarily a popular theory.

Popular or not, I think it is simply incorrect. Politics are those things concerned with governance of large bodies of people. The content of a game in your home, that is only seen by a half-dozen people, is not political. It has no impact or bearing on the governance of a nation, state, or even a town. When the impact of the choice is negligible on the scale of governance of our groupings, then the choice is aesthetic or personal, rather than political.

 

[Gradine]

Popular or not, I think it is simply incorrect. Politics are those things concerned with governance of large bodies of people.

That's a rather narrow framing of what "politics" are and what they could possibly represent, and as a limit I could not disagree more with that statement. In fact, the "governance of large bodies of people" is to me the least interesting and least impactful aspect of "politics" as a whole.

The content of a game in your home, that is only seen by a half-dozen people, is not political. It has no impact or bearing on the governance of a nation, state, or even a town. When the impact of the choice is negligible on the scale of governance of our groupings, then the choice is aesthetic or personal, rather than political.

The Personal is Political

 

[Umbran]

That's a rather narrow framing of what "politics" are and what they could possibly represent

Yep. And with good reason. I cannot go into that reason in this venue, as my reason *is* political. So, we will have to just note we disagree with each other, and let it drop.