Is it wrong for a game to have an agenda?

[Desdichado]

Not sure where you're getting anti-Christian from. The material the game is based upon is certainly not in that vein.

Really? You didn't think that "oppressive, evil, patriarchal and fundamental" religious kindgom next door wasn't an obvious parallel to (some varieties of) Christianity?

Not trying to spark any religious or political discussion really about the merits of anything, but I think that parallel from the game was pretty obvious.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Hard to say.

Take Iron Kingdoms for example, There is some meta-plot going on there but how it impacts the game directly will be the telling factor.

Forgotten Realms takes one direction, lots of space for the players to do things but influenced heavily by fiction.

Scarred Lands may have went that way, but the fiction was so mediocore, that it didn't matter and no more books were made.

 

[Rel]

This thread has been really good for me because I often misspell agenda as "adgenda" for some reason. I doubt I'll ever do that again.

As others have pointed out, it depends on what you mean by "wrong". I certainly don't think there's anything morally wrong about publishing a game system that promotes a certain agenda. But it might be crap and it might be offensive or simply unusuable for the majority of gamers out there and it would therefore largely be a waste of time and effort.

Kind of like the "All Gnomes" game concept I once came up with.

 

[Mallus]

I find social engineering, subtle or blatant, to be repugnant in all forms, even when pushing an agenda I otherwise agree with.

So you find everything from The Time Machine to The Chronicles of Narnia to Star Trek: TOS repugnant?

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

Take Iron Kingdoms for example, There is some meta-plot going on there but how it impacts the game directly will be the telling factor.

One of the nice things that I noticed about IK is that it doesn't have any one particular agenda it's pushing. Sure, it has the peace-love-and-all-that-jazz "nice" Dhunians, but it also has the other Dhunians and the Devourer Wurm. Yes, it has a mean and nasty patriarchal church-dominated nation (Menoth), but it also has the Old Menite faith and Morrow, who reminds me of the NT. It's got things that individually could be construed as pushing any of a number of agendas, but it's not particularly pushing any of them. I don't know if it was intentional or not.

IK's cosmology and theology rocks the casbah.

 

[pdkoning]

Hard to say.

Take Iron Kingdoms for example, There is some meta-plot going on there but how it impacts the game directly will be the telling factor.

Forgotten Realms takes one direction, lots of space for the players to do things but influenced heavily by fiction.

Scarred Lands may have went that way, but the fiction was so mediocore, that it didn't matter and no more books were made.

Not played Iron Kingdoms yet, but interested, I wonder -> what kind of meta-plot is going on in IK?

 

[Mallus]

You didn't think that "oppressive, evil, patriarchal and fundamental" religious kindgom next door wasn't an obvious parallel to (some varieties of) Christianity?

On thin ice here, but the coffee and better judgment hasn't kicked in yet...

The question is: at what point does demonizing certain varieties of Christian though become equivalent to demonizjng the whole?

 

[Belen]

Really? You didn't think that "oppressive, evil, patriarchal and fundamental" religious kindgom next door wasn't an obvious parallel to (some varieties of) Christianity?

Nope. If you read the source material, Lackey's Valdemar series, then the Church in question was headed by corrupt men who no longer received their power from god, instead they received their divine power from demons and corrupted their own church from within. Eventually, the corrupt hierarchy was overthrown by a true follower of the faith.

There is and should be a distinct difference between anti-chuch/ religion and anti-Christian. IMO, the source material makes the distinction that the faith/belief is ultimately good, yet was corrupted by a few flawed people who wanted power.

In fact, several alternate versions of that organization existed because there were good people who could not condone the corruption of their faith.

Thus, the source material was in no way anti-Christian. In fact, it was far more anti-corruption, and anti-evil.

There are plenty of oppressive, patriarchal religions in the world and throughout history, so I do not see any reason to identify oppressive and patriarchal with Christianity when we have so many of the sources to choose from.

In any event, I see a difference between Agenda (which I take to mean shove it in your face dislike and you better learn to agree with me) and commenting/ critiquing human flaws and fallacies.

A friend of mine has a favorite expression "You create your own reality."

 

[Rel]

On thin ice here, but the coffee and better judgment hasn't kicked in yet...

The question is: at what point does demonizing certain varieties of Christian though become equivalent to demonizjng the whole?

This is not the place for a thorough discussion of your question.

My short answer would be "It varies by consumer."

 

[Desdichado]

This is not the place for a thorough discussion of your question.

My short answer would be "It varies by consumer."

As Rel says. Also, I wasn't tyring to say that Blue Rose demonizes Christianity as a whole. That's why I included the parenthetical statement.