Is it wrong for a game to have an agenda?

[Crothian]

d02 has an agenda i don't particularly care about.

but the rest of the group likes it.

says the one guy who posts here with no agenda

 

[Henry]

Let's try to ease back on the inflammatory statements, ladies and gentlemen.

For that matter, let's steer away from the RL religious examples and back toward the oozes, ok?

 

[diaglo]

says the one guy who posts here with no agenda

who me?

i'm all about an agendum. just 1 line item on the whole agenda.

 

[diaglo]

Let's try to ease back on the inflammatory statements, ladies and gentlemen.

sorry Henry,

just letting my hat of d02 knows no limits show again.

 

[Belen]

Oh, holy crap.

If you can't see the blatant Protestant Reformation staring you in the face in what you just quoted, you're intellectually blind.

In the Valdemar series, the lady who overthrew the Church hierarchy became the Son of the Sun and High Priestess of the God Kernos, thus the church was transformed and led back to the original teachings. So it was more an internal reformation.

 

[Crothian]

Okay, let's swtich it around some.

I have my Ooze centric World that assumes Oozes are equal to everyone else*. However, there is no foreward saying I have an agenda and after its release when I'm accussed of having one I say no. It is just a world that treats oozes differently and you are reading way too much into my setting.

Do you take the word of the author or insist there is some devious ploy at work here?

*And it doesn't have to be equal rights for oozes, any agneda can be used.

 

[JoeGKushner]

I don't have to take the word of an author for anything. Certain things will be apparent. 2+2 will always equal 4, regardless of what the author stats. "No man, you missed it, see there is this little paragaraph here that expalins that it's not really that way and..."

For example, in the Iron Kingdoms, if the Menoite religion isn't heavily influenced by the Old Testament, someone, and it could be me, isn't familiar with his Old Testament.

 

[Crothian]

But does that always have to indicate an agenda? Can't you have a RPG based off something just for the fun of it and not have the intention to be to reform people? Just because my book is based off of the ancient writing of on the True Ooze, does it mean that I automatically have an agenda to bring peeople to the ancient slimey words?

 

[nothing to see here]

Okay, let's swtich it around some.

I have my Ooze centric World that assumes Oozes are equal to everyone else*. However, there is no foreward saying I have an agenda and after its release when I'm accussed of having one I say no. It is just a world that treats oozes differently and you are reading way too much into my setting.

Do you take the word of the author or insist there is some devious ploy at work here?

*And it doesn't have to be equal rights for oozes, any agneda can be used.

Well, there's wisdom in cliche's. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

In one of the cities whose media I monitor there is a columnist...who swears to be apolitical...he's a journalism prof who claims to be bringing his experience to encourage an aware public. The fact that EASILY 19 out of every 20 columns take a very strong and consistent political slant, he dismisses as irelevant.

Not acknowledging bias does not make it less so. Denying the presence of bias adds insult to injury as your in effect insulting the intelligence of the reader.

In a newspaper where the cost of purchase is low and you can skip disagreeable content, this is not a big deal. In an RPG book where, chances are, you purchased it because of some cool rules material or setting...and got a heaping pile of ideology instead...that's far more problematic.

The Book of Erotic Fantasy was deliberately designed to provoke...even more so than it was deisigned to titilate. It was an obivous and deliberate "agenda piece" speaking against the what the designers perceived as creeping cultural conservatism of the industry leader. It billed itself, however, as a book that opened up new options around romance and sex in RPG's...one of the biggest loads of hooey in the history of add copy. There was tremendous blow-back from a number of quarters...and my reckoning is, despite the free publicity...the agenda pushing ended up hurting sales.

Of course, I stand to be corrected.

 

[Belen]

But does that always have to indicate an agenda? Can't you have a RPG based off something just for the fun of it and not have the intention to be to reform people? Just because my book is based off of the ancient writing of on the True Ooze, does it mean that I automatically have an agenda to bring peeople to the ancient slimey words?

No. There is a difference between using historic tropes or stereotypes and actually enforcing an Agenda.