RPGing via Billy Bragg?

[pemerton]

@Campbell That sounds like it might be a different sort of social realism from Billy Bragg's or Battleship Potemkin's!

(I don't want this thread to veer to the wrong side of the board rules line. Hence I leave it at that.)

EDIT: Or not quite.

I guess there are some RPGers who see Conan, or Lotr, as social realism, or at least wish that it were so. Whereas I see them as fantasy stories expressing certain political/social ideas/convictions.

As you describe BitD, to me maybe it seems like it's in that category too? Though the social elements of its imagined world are less obviously fantastic.

A further thought: Classic Traveller could do a different sort of social realism: less Marx, more Weber!

 

[hawkeyefan]

So would this be social realism by way of fantasy metaphor?

Animal Farm the RPG?

Yeah, the setting is designed with that element because the game wants to push players to see how far they will go for a cause.

 

[chaochou]

I'd say the themes of HeroWars can be social realism, since one of the core conflicts is the struggle of an indiginous people against an oppressive, culturally overbearing, outsider.

Strangely, I think Paranoia draws a lot of its potency by beaing a recognisable parody on the absurdity and powerlessness of citizens in the modern world. It's playable because it's recognisable - even if the play itself often descends into slapstick rather than deliberate social commentary.

 

[pemerton]

I think Paranoia draws a lot of its potency by beaing a recognisable parody on the absurdity and powerlessness of citizens in the modern world. It's playable because it's recognisable - even if the play itself often descends into slapstick rather than deliberate social commentary.

Another win for Weber vs Marx!

 

[payn]

Cyberpunk games sound like they are a good fit. I dont have one in particular.

 

[Blue Orange]

It probably says something not-good about me that when reading about Glorantha (the setting of Hero Wars), I only wanted to play a Lunar. (City boy. Really.)

There were real lower-class uprisings in history, even in medieval times--peasant revolts were pretty common, even though they always got put down. But...maybe not with your party in the way. What if the Diggers had had fireballs? (What if the king had?)

Overthrowing an oppressive regime is a pretty good arc for a campaign. You've even got mooks (the soldiers of the regime) and a climactic boss fight with either the monarch or the monster they summoned (or that's manipulating them) built in. Of course, for real socialist cred, you should have a chance to sway the mooks to your side rather than killing them, and maybe get double XP since it's more appropriate. (Advance further if you are using milestones.) If your players are into that, you can even roleplay trying to manage the revolution after they've won. (Lots of French revolutionaries wound up getting guillotined by their former comrades.)

You want mechanical consequences, though--the success of your rabble-rousing (from the 5e point of view, lots of Persuasion rolls and Charisma saves) could affect the number of allies you have in key set-piece battles, or the strength of your enemies. (There's going to be a lot of fighting going on, sooner or later.) You could easily expand the Inspiration mechanic to be given more frequently for inspiring speeches delivered in character, with plenty of opportunity for the frustrated actors in your group to ham it up. ("Comrades! Your enemy is not us, but the baron who pays you a few measly silvers out of his treasury!" [roll Persuasion with advantage]) I'm just thinking D&D here because that's what most people here play, of course...

Older game--Ray Winninger's Underground had you spending points to improve education levels and health, decrease crime rates, and other social determinants. If you tried to improve one thing, something else got worse unless you spent more XP (or whatever the equivalent was, it's been a while and I can't find the book now). First RPG I ever saw with rules for social change.

(Themes for conservative games could include suppressing dangerous radicals or any police procedural-themed game, really.)

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Interesting to read about some systems that have some mechanisms for social realism built in. Before reading the thread I would have said "it's all campaign dependent."

I mean, it's still possible to inject socially weighty themes into any campaign. But it's cool that there's games with mechanics that encourage it.

In a western game I play using Hero System our group of drifters have wandered into a mining town that's got the full panoply of "tyrannical boss runs the company town like his personal fief." Everyone is (poorly) paid in company scrip to buy goods form the company store, a nascent union movement, threats and violence were used to buy out all the other local miners, etc. Even the ladies of negotiable affection have to accept company scrip. Our bunch are working on ways to screw with the boss; like stealing all the silver dollars we know he has squirreled away and giving them to the folks so they a way of getting out.

In a Star Wars game I'm playing with the same group we're "mercs and bounty hunters" yet somehow we always wind up helping the downtrodden.

The games I run usually have a certain amount of social weight going on, maybe just in the background. My current urban fantasy is centred on some very working class heroes in 1986 London. They're about to come against the (fictional) Bermondsey Embankment Renewal Authority who are attempting to do some hard core urban renewal on our heroes' neighbourhood. BERA is run by a pack of sloane rangers who are also vampires in the most unsubtle metaphor I could think of. Coincidentally, in the opening session of the game, set on NYE 1985, I actually named checked Billy Bragg.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

@Haiku Elvis, hey thanks! You gave me my 1000th like. I got a (virtual) trophy and everything.

 

[Bagpuss]

I remember the "Underground RPG" which was about playing unwanted super-soldiers trying to reintegrate into a collapsed society that didn't want them had a great supplement called "The Streets Tell Stories" had a system for tracking the influence the characters actions had on the neighbourhood. Often if they improved one aspect of the community it would leads to problems in other areas. Go hard on crime could lead to authoritarian policing, etc.

It's worth looking at for inspiration if you can find a copy (and no you can't have the one off my shelf).

 

[Grendel_Khan]

Red Markets doesn't have mechanics for societal change, but it's the most directly anti-capitalist game I've read. Zombies are a threat, but it's the human system that incentivizes (forces?) you to leave protective enclaves and scavenge for goods, getting paid paltry amounts by the powers-that-be, that's the real horror. That horror is reflected in game mechanics that, imo, reflect or enforce social realism—you often have to decide whether it's worth taking an action, given that it will burn rations (calories, essentially). In that sense it's game-ifying some of the worst elements of poverty and being exploited by captains of industry, who'll survive and monetize anything, including the apocalypse. Needless to say it's a dark, dark game.

A|state might also be pretty relevant, particularly its newest, FitD-based edition. It's a surrealist SF dystopia where corps dominate and life is hard, and instead of a Blades in the Dark-style criminal enterprise, you have a Corner of the city your PCs have decided to protect. That doesn't mean you're superheroes, but rather something like community activists and advocates, doing dirty deeds to keep gangs, corps, and worse from making the neighborhood even more unlivable. There are mechanics for improving conditions and "Hope" on the Corner, and for generating attacks on it. The designers are open about wanting to make a game that's about social and economic oppression, but rather than playing characters who are just more tools or victims of that, you're working to improve things. Related to that, one of the actions (skills in FitD) is Care, which is meant to be much broader than just medical assistance. I'm still not sure if A|state is all that playable, but it has a lot of great ideas, and its approach to FitD is really thoughtful.