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Message: <blockquote data-quote="shannona" data-source="post: 8581473" data-attributes="member: 42455">It sounds like you have good faith in your ability to suss out whether there might be Nazi tropes in Tékumel. From your description of your resume, that sounds accurate. But most people don't have those advantages. I think I might feel confident in my own ability to run a Tékumel game and to have it (mostly) reflect the progressive tropes I was more interested in. But all people might not feel the same. And if I were a retailer, I'd be very reluctant to sell Tékumel at this time, not knowing it had the potential to do damage.If Tékumel isn't already dead, as I said, I think some experts on facism and Nazis and cults and indoctrination reading through it could set some minds at ease (or reveal uncomfortable messaging). But, I honestly think it's already dead because it just hasn't been well-treated at the level required for ongoing success since 1975. (Yeah, maybe it was dead whenever this neo-Nazi revelation came out, no matter how successful it was, but I feel like the Foundation's cover-up ensured that.)Yeah, you're certainly right that there are some types of arts that make it easier to detect the biases of the creator and some where it's less. But I still think every piece of art is the embodiment of its creator in some way. Your music may touch back on what you found nostalgic in your youth or rebellious in your young adulthood; your jewelry may touch upon what you find beautiful, what stones or metals or patterns delight you; your sketches may highlight what you think is important in a scene or portrait, even if what you find important is just straight realism.Similarly, Tékumel ultimately reflects what M.A.R. Barker found nostalgic, what he found rebellious, what he found beautiful, what delighted him, and what he found important. Those may or may not be Nazi ideals, depend on whether he was a different person when he designed Tékumel and when he wrote that book. They may or may not be meaningfully represented.--I should make it very clear that I feel like the decision to choose to enjoy an art even if the artist is repugnant is a personal one, particularly when the artist is dead, and so unable to profit.I guess one of the biggest issues for me here is the collective nature of roleplaying. If I choose to run a Tékumel game, I'm sharing that worldview that Barker created in Tékumel with others. I'm not just giving it my stamp of approval, but I'm ultimately transmitting Barker's ideas. That's very different from me listening to Thriller or reading a Harry Potter book that I already own.I'd similarly have issue with reading Ender's Game to young adults because I'd wonder about what messages it was sending, especially since I thought some scenes were a bit creepy, even before I knew about Card's homophobia. But still, it stayed in my collection along with Speaker for the Dead, even when I stopped buying new Card books and dumped another dozen or so.(And generally, thanks for the thoughtful responses. That article was my first stab at how to discuss this historically.)</blockquote>

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