Communism (& Socialism) in RPGs

[Umbran]

In the middle of some preliminary work on the subject, I was struck with a thought, "There's not a lot of communism in RPGs!"

Most of the games out there are pseudo-medieval fantasies. Communism calls for an industrial base that the games don't have.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

KK,

One thing you may want to consider is instead of looking for overt Marxism/socialism in game settings, you may want to use Marxist criticism as a lens to look at the games/structures themselves. For example, how are labor and its fruits distributed at the game table? What about the dichotomy in authority between the DM and players? How do experience point systems demonstrate an epistemology that might privelege capitalist values?

Does this help?

I should have been clearer. The question I was asking was only for communism (or something similar) in settings. This is (mostly) separate from a Marxist analysis of RPGs. The commodification of elements within the game and of rule sets gives more than enough for this analysis. (The wealth rules in d20 Modern are fantastic!)

Really, I'm simply curious about the presence of communism in settings.

The replies above are great! Thanks, folks!

 

[the Jester]

I seem to recall that the dwarves of the Chainmail! game that WotC released were communists. I never actually had the game, so I'm not certain how accurate this is, however.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

I think most of the known examples were covered above.

I used communism as a device once, in a homebrewed setting. As Edemaitre suggested was possible I created a dwarven race embroiled in a long Cold War between an original highly capitalistic civilization modeled on the U.S. during the Gilded Age and its hostile Marxist offshoot (it did not suffer many of the excesses of that particular form as seen in real history). I won't further derail this thread. If you're a community supporter you can find it by searching for Dwarven Cold War, but the short thread is more than a year old and may have been lost in the Great Crash.

 

[pawsplay]

Have you ever seen a real, diehard gamer drink a glass of water?

 

[coyote6]

Hmm, well, Twilight: 2000 was set in the aftermath of a classic NATO/West vs. Warsaw Pact WWIII, so there were lots of Communists, though not necessarily a lot of Communism per se.

Several near-future RPGs at least mentioned Communist nations, but real world history overran 'em, and it kind of got scarce.

 

[RFisher]

Well, PCs tend to be some sort of adventurers--people on the fringe of society. From their point of view, all societies tend to look very similar: There a few people who are in charge, regardless of any underlying economic model or the justification (explicit or implicit) for their positions of power. Any of that is just window dressing in an RPG, which has little direct impact on the game.

Or maybe it's just that when you look at RPGs in English you don't find a lot of communism because there haven't been a lot of English-speaking communist states. (Assuming you haven't looked at a lot of Russian & Mandarin RPGs.)

...but--truth be told--I don't know what I'm talking about. Just throwing out the thoughts I have because it's too late & I've been working too much today, so my judgement's impaired. (^_^)

Edit: "their" to "there", although the typo is already immortalized in KK's quoting of me. (u_u)

 

[Kwalish Kid]

Have you ever seen a real, diehard gamer drink a glass of water?

It took me a bit to get it, but that's funny.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

Or maybe it's just that when you look at RPGs in English you don't find a lot of communism because their haven't been a lot of English-speaking communist states. (Assuming you haven't looked at a lot of Russian & Mandarin RPGs.)

I haven't, but I did find an article on RPG groups near the end of the Soviet Union in a Siberian studies journal.

 

[AnonymousOne]

Most of the games out there are pseudo-medieval fantasies. Communism calls for an industrial base that the games don't have.

You win this thread.