Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="nedjer" data-source="post: 5560683" data-attributes="member: 83796">Many of the behaviours reported seem mediated by fears, which are our most easily pushed buttons. However, religion doesn't have a monopoly here, as our fears are continually manipulated, e.g. it's currently quite the thing for millions to consume pro-biotic sludge for breakfast.For most people the gut populates itself with bacteria, so there's no obvious medical benefit and the ads carefully avoid making medical claims. However, the fear of not being one of the smiley, wholesome family, sunny breakfast team on the ad has people pouring this deliberately unappealing looking gunk down their throats.Where this becomes all the more relevant to us is that these same politics of fear, linked to status, control and a sense of control, are built into every game session. The rules lawyer as prophet, the TPK as 'take your medicine', the misogynistic 'girls can't have the same strength', the newbie v's the grognard, and the 'my Edition genitals are bigger than the your Edition genitals'.This traps many games in the meta-game and meta-world, as exemplified by new Monopoly, where it's 'fun' and 'win' to lower the value of your kid's property by dumping a sewage farm next to the kid's hotel.Which in turn, perhaps, explains a lot of the fear of RPGs, as they are much, much more open to player choice, mediation, compromise and collaboration than regulation or rule-bound games. That doesn't mean we play to all those values all the time, (who could), but the potential to re-formulate, shape your own imaginative experience and 'cut lose' by making your own decisions is anathema to those seeking to control and confine.</blockquote>

Verification