Tell me about Blue Rose

[takyris]

The initiation of force or fraud against other individuals is wrong.

That is as close as you will get to the official bottom line statement of values of the libertarian party. Which far and away wipes out any contortion into "killing things and taking their stuff".
It'd be closer to the truth to say all democrats are stalinists.

Right. Until you start talking about what initiation actually means, and whether, when someone fails to pay their taxes and gets arrested, the initiation was on the part of the government for coming to arrest them or on the person for fraudulently using government resources but failing to pay the taxes that, by living in the country, he had implicitly agreed to pay. But that's a conversation for a different messageboard, I believe.

I apologize for putting my two points together. "Killing things and taking their stuff", when I wrote, was a simplistic statement meant to reference D&D and most other roleplaying games currently out there, which most people here seem to agree are based on the works of writers that include Howard. That was me linking D&D to Howard while linking Howard to the political ideas in his work, and it was sloppy writing on my part to put it in there.

The fact that MMadsen seems to have deliberately ignored the rest of my sentence, in which I brought up the whole "Conan the strong idealized man defying pointless laws and proving that individual willpower will overcome the weakening notions of civilization that common men must use as a crutch" shtick, which actually does relate to libertarian ideals, and indeed the rest of my posts, which clarified this position, says that he might possibly have been picking on the one thing he could find to argue with instead of acknowledging that D&D is based on writing that does, in fact, have a political message, even if most gamers either don't find it objectionable or don't notice it at all, either in the writing or in the gaming inspired by that writing, and that it is therefore not the end of the world for another roleplaying game to espouse a political position fairly overtly in its setting and rule system.

 

[BryonD]

Right. Until you start talking about what initiation actually means, and whether, when someone fails to pay their taxes and gets arrested, the initiation was on the part of the government for coming to arrest them or on the person for fraudulently using government resources but failing to pay the taxes that, by living in the country, he had implicitly agreed to pay. But that's a conversation for a different messageboard, I believe.

Yep, there are certainly very solid responses to that challenge. But I'll agree this isn't the place.


(Though I'd hint that it has to do with the LP not being against "taxes" axiomatically and that a real discussion would need to consider the objective nature of various taxation and spending programs on a case by case basis. Such analysis makes the determination of initiation far easier to determine. )

I apologize for putting my two points together.
<snip>

No problem.

Obviously I've been pointedly not posting in this thread.

Clearly the fiction that RPGs emulate quite often contain pointed political statements.
And that can make for a tricky balancing act.

I'd suggest that if an RPG was released which had a built in assumption of libertarian ideals as de facto "goodness" and characters in favor of big government were protrayed as simple minded dupes at best and corrupt and evil at worst, that a discussion of such system would be shut down long before it went this far.

The mods controls the boards and it is completely their right and privledge to hold a double standard. No crime there, but a little dissappointing.

 

[Crothian]

ACtually threads that discuss game politics have happened on the board. They only get closed down when people bring in real world politics into them.

 

[takyris]

Yep, there are certainly very solid responses to that challenge. But I'll agree this isn't the place.

And I'm glad it's not, since really, I know very little about libertarianism aside from "Big government bad." I'm not attempting to come at this from a "libertarian evil" angle, and again, I apologize for the sloppy sentence that lumped libertarians in with killing things and taking their stuff.

Clearly the fiction that RPGs emulate quite often contain pointed political statements.
And that can make for a tricky balancing act.

I have no problem agreeing with that.

I'd suggest that if an RPG was released which had a built in assumption of libertarian ideals as de facto "goodness" and characters in favor of big government were protrayed as simple minded dupes at best and corrupt and evil at worst, that a discussion of such system would be shut down long before it went this far.

See, the interesting thing is that I see the average D&D campaign as having many libertarian qualities. Maybe this is just my group, but my players always end up thinking of the kingdom/empire/meeting-of-chiefs as being effectively paralyzed with infighting and unable to break away from rules -- and unable to mount a solid defense when necessary, to the point that the PCs end up having to step in and save the day. Power to the individual and government as a necessary and often-corrupt or at least compromised-by-unknown-forces evil.

Again, this could just be me not knowing enough about libertarian politics, but I'd suspect that the average D&D campaign is a pretty good representation of such -- kingdoms that get all up in the players' faces about taxes and laws are almost always the Lawful Evil ones, the ones that the heroes have to outwit to get their work done.

The mods controls the boards and it is completely their right and privledge to hold a double standard. No crime there, but a little dissappointing.

Can't honestly say if they are or not. Possibly they've held off because Blue Rose is so very inherently political (or at least seen that way), or possibly because, in most cases, most people have been able to say "Political Element XX is a part of Blue Rose, and I don't like it, and I think it's stupid, and I won't play Blue Rose because of that," rather than, "Political Element XX is a part of Blue Rose, and here's why that political element is wrong, and any roleplaying game that does that is stupid." Subtle distinction, but I think that if, for example, State of Nature d20 came out and forced players to either choose the path of Freedom, which gave bonuses to ability scores and skill points, or the Path of Order, which gave you mind-control abilities and the power to make zombies by sucking the souls out of sacrificial victims provided that you'd beaten enough toil-slaves into submission to create the Organizational Power Level necessary to cast the spell... I suspect that the mods would keep it open at least until people started throwing labels on it.

 

[Arrgh! Mark!]

Double post.

 

[Arrgh! Mark!]

Croathian:

That's a nasty tongue you have there, accusing me of being a terrible GM when you've never met me.

There are three situations in which adventuring in the country of Aldis is exciting. When something goes wrong (Which, mind you, could happen all the time and make an interesting game. However, according to the book, it does not. Overall there is more good and bad people are rare and misguided), when other people invade, and when you are a bit pissed off that some magical animal picks the king.

There are situations other than that that can occur, but tend to involve a lot of heavy-on-the-soap drama from what I can tell. While all well and good for some players, the chances of having people that want to re-enact Passions in a medieval aspect are lower than higher.

When I say that it's hard to write adventures in Aldis, I say so because I'm talking about the Average Gamer and the Average GM.

If you wish to know, I've actually run a game in Aldis and it wasn't too bad. It was rather heavy on the soap, though. While people had fun, they didn't seem particularly interested in a long-term game, preferring Conan-style swords and sorcery style games.

 

[Crothian]

Croathian:

That's a nasty tongue you have there, accusing me of being a terrible GM when you've never met me.

Never called you specifically a bad DM. I said if the statement is true, which I don't believe it is. I don't think anyone can make claims about what most DMs can or cannot do. You are jumping at the wrong part of my statement and wrongfully assuming I'm attacking you.

There are three situations in which adventuring in the country of Aldis is exciting.

If you feel there are only three spcific circumstances that makes adventureing in the country exciting, then I'd have to say that either you are limiting yourself or that running this game is not for you. The "you" applies really to anyone with this problem. Not all setting are for everyone. I myself know I would have trouble running many ctberpunk settings. It is not a bad thing to know and admit ones limits. All games/setting/etc are not for everybody.

There are situations other than that that can occur, but tend to involve a lot of heavy-on-the-soap drama from what I can tell. While all well and good for some players, the chances of having people that want to re-enact Passions in a medieval aspect are lower than higher.

Again, your take on the gaming community as a whole and what they like to role play is probably not great statements to make. I don;t think any one person can really speak for the millions of gamers worls wide. But you are right, this is a role playing setting that deals more with emotions. It does not have to heavy on the soap drama but from this and other threads it does seem like that is a common interpreation of what the setting needs.

When I say that it's hard to write adventures in Aldis, I say so because I'm talking about the Average Gamer and the Average GM.

I'm not sure even the people at wizards can define what is average for a player or a DM these days. There are so many different styles of gaming that d20 can be used for these days.

If you wish to know, I've actually run a game in Aldis and it wasn't too bad. It was rather heavy on the soap, though. While people had fun, they didn't seem particularly interested in a long-term game, preferring Conan-style swords and sorcery style games.

Then play Conan or another game like that problem solved. I also ran a game in the setting and the players really enjoyed it and wish to have a true campaign on it. But I know they would not be happy with a Conan style game, so I plan on running a gme that I know they will enjoy.

 

[Gentlegamer]

Re: Conan and politics

Conan is apolitical. If anything, he is an anarchist for most of his life. This softens a bit once he usurps the throne of Aquilonia.

 

[mmadsen]

Adding egalitarianism, positive potrayal of homosexuality, and pointed villainization of "organized religeon" to a genre of quasi-medieval inspiration blows its cover, in respect to the source material.

For you.

So you'd be lumping in Conan, the Iliad, and the Three Musketeers as lousy because Conan has people being born in servitude and becoming powerful through their own work and strength instead of noble heritage, the Iliad portrays gay relationships in a non-negative way, and the Three Musketeers has an evil cardinal being devious and evil and trying to gain political power for the church?

None of those elements are the least bit anachronistic. When he speaks of "blowing its cover," it's pretty clear he's talking about a thinly veiled political agenda -- a collection of ideas that obviously belong to a particular (recognizable) modern ideology.

I think what it all eventually comes down to is the fact that the mythical and often misinterpreted Average Reader does not want historically accurate fantasy.

I suspect that's true -- particular since the average reader hasn't read much history and doesn't recognize his own highly modern point of view.

It still comes down to "the politics that I don't like bother me when they appear in a story."

I don't like feudalism at all, but I recognize its role in history, and I certainly recognize its place in fantasy, which derives from medieval romance. I'm not the average reader, but I think I can say that the issue is not simply the presence of politics that I do or do not like, but the presence of discernably modern ideology in a fantasy setting.

 

[mmadsen]

And I'm glad it's not, since really, I know very little about libertarianism aside from "Big government bad."

I think you've misinterpreted what you've heard. Modern libertarianism derives from the classical liberalism of the Enlightenment. It believes that big government is bad, but that rule of law is paramount; it's the philosophy of the "night watchman" state.

See, the interesting thing is that I see the average D&D campaign as having many libertarian qualities. Maybe this is just my group, but my players always end up thinking of the kingdom/empire/meeting-of-chiefs as being effectively paralyzed with infighting and unable to break away from rules -- and unable to mount a solid defense when necessary, to the point that the PCs end up having to step in and save the day.

That sounds more fascist than anything.

Edit: As does this:

Conan the strong idealized man defying pointless laws and proving that individual willpower will overcome the weakening notions of civilization that common men must use as a crutch.

You're describing the Neitzchean "Will to Power" as misrepresented by his sister (who edited his works and who did support the rise of [those guys who end all civil political discussion when mentioned]).