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Do your Political Views shape how your villains and heroes act?
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<blockquote data-quote="maruahm" data-source="post: 7511871" data-attributes="member: 6974151"><p>To try to answer OP's question: my politics heavily impacts the lens through which my games play, but my personal beliefs do not impact the good-evil demarcation I use in my games. As an example of the latter, in a system with mechanical morality like D&D, I understand alignment to follow the natural law tradition in ethics, which is not a view or mode of analysis I am sympathetic to IRL.</p><p></p><p>In terms of how my political views infect my games, here are some examples: 1) my views on how power is structured, which heavily borrows from de Mesquita, Smith, et al. in <em>Logic of Political Survival</em>, shape how empires and kingdoms function in my fantasy; 2) my views on grand history, which are heavily influenced by Braudel's historiography in <em>The Mediterranean</em> and <em>Civilization and Capitalism</em>; 3) my family's background in a communist country and what it was like to live in one, which impacts my understanding of authority and social capital.</p><p></p><p>More controversial subjects like immigration in my fantasy games are things which are not impacted by my (generally pro-) views. I have run games depicting immigration as bad, as good, or as something complex and nuanced, often in the same game. I expect my players to understand that my fantasy games do not represent my views, and though I try to have some verisimilitude in my fantasy politics, there are many things that are <em>very</em> different in fantastical situations, such as morality when gods of good and evil exist. And power structures. And so on.</p><p></p><p><strong>tl;dr</strong> Yeah, my politics impact my games, but I try to make sure they're still fun for everyone involved as long as they can understand that the games do not represent even my views. Make-believe is a special place to explore possibilities, not the real world. I have run conservatives and liberals in the same group IRL and never had any problems, but I concede that none of them were particularly radical.</p><p></p><p>Good question by the way, OP. Just a shame some of the posts are getting heated.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="maruahm, post: 7511871, member: 6974151"] To try to answer OP's question: my politics heavily impacts the lens through which my games play, but my personal beliefs do not impact the good-evil demarcation I use in my games. As an example of the latter, in a system with mechanical morality like D&D, I understand alignment to follow the natural law tradition in ethics, which is not a view or mode of analysis I am sympathetic to IRL. In terms of how my political views infect my games, here are some examples: 1) my views on how power is structured, which heavily borrows from de Mesquita, Smith, et al. in [I]Logic of Political Survival[/I], shape how empires and kingdoms function in my fantasy; 2) my views on grand history, which are heavily influenced by Braudel's historiography in [I]The Mediterranean[/I] and [I]Civilization and Capitalism[/I]; 3) my family's background in a communist country and what it was like to live in one, which impacts my understanding of authority and social capital. More controversial subjects like immigration in my fantasy games are things which are not impacted by my (generally pro-) views. I have run games depicting immigration as bad, as good, or as something complex and nuanced, often in the same game. I expect my players to understand that my fantasy games do not represent my views, and though I try to have some verisimilitude in my fantasy politics, there are many things that are [I]very[/I] different in fantastical situations, such as morality when gods of good and evil exist. And power structures. And so on. [B]tl;dr[/B] Yeah, my politics impact my games, but I try to make sure they're still fun for everyone involved as long as they can understand that the games do not represent even my views. Make-believe is a special place to explore possibilities, not the real world. I have run conservatives and liberals in the same group IRL and never had any problems, but I concede that none of them were particularly radical. Good question by the way, OP. Just a shame some of the posts are getting heated. [/QUOTE]
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