(+) Gaming in historical settings and dealing with values of the era

[pemerton]

And I think selling a fantasy version of a historical period that erases its context while also wanting to claim its more heroic values is dangerous.

Possibly. I think this is very contextual - in all sorts of ways (content, audience, place, etc).

I found Death of Stalin an amazing film, and also very funny. A Finnish friend who has spent a lot of time living in Britain and Australia could understand why it was funny, but also found it uncomfortable. I'm told by those who have Russian friends that it's a century or two too soon for them.

I have similar feelings about how they swapped out Nazis for Hydra ("They are so bad even Nazis hate them!")

My own issue with this is that Hydra and the Nazis living in completely different worlds.

Hyrda are like Dr Doom or (to a significant extent) Sauron - they stand for a completely "empty" evil that has no reason or logic behind it, other than to provide a legitimate focus of opposition for good protagonists. They are stipulated to be evil, and hence the appropriate antagonists, and then we impute various deeds or dispositions to them more-or-less arbitrarily as needed to support the stipulation and the plot.

Whereas National Socialism was a real social movement, a real government, a real phenomenon that we can talk about in meaningful ways, including why - of all human political ideals - it is probably, at present at least, the most discredited. There is nothing going on here that resembles stipulation.

A story about fighting Hydra might let us enjoy adventure and vicariously imagining ourselves to be good and heroic.

A story about encountering, and perhaps fighting, National Socialists is something completely different. That could be a story about me or you actually having to make a political decision. It might be very challenging.

 

[Haiku Elvis]

D&D has always struck me as having very modern liberal values including free speech, freedom of religion, and a high degree of individuality. i.e. The values many Americans say they have directly translates into playing good characters in most D&D settings.


The closest example I can think of is one scene where someone questions the Japanese-American's presence. I think they ask him where he's from (as if he didn't belong with them) and he answers that he's from somewhere in California. But, yeah, I was a bit disappointed that we didn't stick with the Nazis as the bad guys and it appeared as though the US Army was not segregated in this time line.


Oh, yeah. Even in the 19th century here in the United States, we had some "crazy" religious people who were not only against slavery but actually believed all men were equal before God. And in my experience, most players have no desire to actually play characters who are strongly bigoted. They're not going to play characters who complain about black children going to the same school as their children or moving into the neighborhood.


That's probably because none of us identify as Helots. Let's face it, there are some fairly monstrous groups/people who get off lightly because so much time has passed that a lot of us just don't care. Look at how much pirates are romanticized these days despite largely being made up of murderers, rapist, and thieves.

I think you may be onto something there.

Popular themes for children's parties/fancy dress:

Pirates - semi-licenced theives/murderers = killers
Ninjas - trained assasins =killers
Knights - trained fighters who traded military service for land = killers.
Cowboys - actually intinerant farm hands but popular as they are portrayed fictionally as deadly gunfighters = killers
Wizards - erm... um... just wizards really.

 

[S'mon]

My own issue with this is that Hydra and the Nazis living in completely different worlds.

Hyrda are like Dr Doom or (to a significant extent) Sauron - they stand for a completely "empty" evil that has no reason or logic behind it, other than to provide a legitimate focus of opposition for good protagonists. They are stipulated to be evil, and hence the appropriate antagonists, and then we impute various deeds or dispositions to them more-or-less arbitrarily as needed to support the stipulation and the plot.

Whereas National Socialism was a real social movement, a real government, a real phenomenon that we can talk about in meaningful ways, including why - of all human political ideals - it is probably, at present at least, the most discredited. There is nothing going on here that resembles stipulation.

I noticed this too. Hydra seem to have no motivation, other than whatever the viewer will hopefully regard as evil. You have the same reaction I did, and explain it very well. They're not even cartoon Nazis - they don't actually seem to be Nazis at all. There is no 'there' there at all.

Contrast the opposition in The Suicide Squad. OK it was a bit odd that a Latin non-Communist/right-wing junta would be anti-American (right wing clients can turn against the USA when there is some kind of serious split, like Saddam invading Kuwait, but it's unusual), but at least they had motivations capable of explanation.

 

[pemerton]

Contrast the opposition in The Suicide Squad. OK it was a bit odd that a Latin non-Communist/right-wing junta would be anti-American (right wing clients can turn against the USA when there is some kind of serious split, like Saddam invading Kuwait, but it's unusual), but at least they had motivations capable of explanation.

I've not seen that film. But your description is clear.

 

[the Jester]

Were I to run such a game, I would expect engagement and use social consequences, while offering the opportunity to be better than those around you and subvert the era's expectations.

I have played in such games- Deadlands, set in the Wild West (with differences!) shortly after the Civil War. Race was a major issue in the campaign, with our party including at various points a Black ex-slave, a Mexican immigrant, and a... Cheyenne? Some kind of Native American. We dealt with racism, we dealt with areas where one ethnic group had charge, etc.

And we were the exceptions to the rule- the people who tried to treat women, Blacks, Native Americans, etc all the same.

 

[MGibster]

A story about encountering, and perhaps fighting, National Socialists is something completely different. That could be a story about me or you actually having to make a political decision. It might be very challenging.

I kind of miss the old days when fighting Nazis wasn't seen as a challenging political position.

 

[Eltab]

I kind of miss the old days when fighting Nazis wasn't seen as a challenging political position.

Back when there was somebody in almost every family who was an eyewitness to what the Nazis caused and did?

 

[S'mon]

Back when there was somebody in almost every family who was an eyewitness to what the Nazis caused and did?

The kind of awareness/attitude we have now only really starts in the 1970s. Reading WW2 war memoirs, I'd say there was very little awareness in US/UK/CA/AUS of how awful the Nazis were. The Western Allied governments didn't promote stories of Nazi atrocities the way they had with WW1 Germany - ironically, they got it wrong both times. Imperial Germany mostly was not committing atrocities, while of course WW2 Germany certainly was.

Conversely, people in the olden days generally didn't have any problem with 'we fight them because they're the enemy'.

 

[pemerton]

I kind of miss the old days when fighting Nazis wasn't seen as a challenging political position.

I think you misunderstood me. What is challenging is fighting them.

I live in a country that had a policy of race-based "child removal" (ie kidnapping undertaken by the state), and that was one of the original case-studies in the work of the scholar who coined the notion of genocide. When some survivors of that policy commenced litigation against the national government in the 1990s, the government's defence was that it was acting in the best interests of the kidnapped children.

I would love to say that my country was full of righteous persons who opposed the original policy, and who opposed the government's defence. But neither is true. The government which defended the policy in the way I described went on to win two more elections, and when it eventually lost it had little or nothing to do with the policies I've just described.

 

[MGibster]

Back when there was somebody in almost every family who was an eyewitness to what the Nazis caused and did?

Hell. I was thinking 2008.

I would love to say that my country was full of righteous persons who opposed the original policy, and who opposed the government's defence. But neither is true. The government which defended the policy in the way I described went on to win two more elections, and when it eventually lost it had little or nothing to do with the policies I've just described.

I've come to the conclusion that a nation doesn't expel all the Jews from their country (Spain 1492), allow extra-judicial killings to enforce labor and social conditions (United States 1877-1939), or execute approximately 55,000 women for witchcraft (Europe from 1450-1750) without the tacit approval or at the very least the indifference of the population at large. So while there are always people who opposed such thing, you're right, we shouldn't pretend as though our country (whatever that might be) was full of righteous people who opposed such policies. Most often those people were in the minority.

And that can be uncomfortable and yet another reason people might want to avoid gaming in historical settings. And there's nothing wrong with them for electing another game that's more fun for them.