Worldviews and campaigns coming together

[Scruffy nerf herder]

Foreword: this is not intended to start any extended discussion about comparing and debating beliefs. The focus is more narrow than that and if things get heated, or the premise isn't appropriate for this forum, please feel free to remove the thread, mods.

How much have your games resembled the way you think about the world? Do your NPCs at times represent how you think the world often works, and/or express themes that spring from your perspective or culture?

 

[Hex08]

I think that is unavoidable not matter how much you try to minimize it. I think it's even more true in games with alignment systems, my personal belief in good/evil certainly informs the way I think about the world for the games I run in. However, I am able to put my beliefs aside if the setting or game calls for it though. For example, If I am running in a game setting where it is considered good and right to kick puppies that's how I would run the game even though I have strong feelings regarding animals being abused.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Do your NPCs at times represent how you think the world often works, and/or express themes that spring from your perspective or culture?

Short answer: Yep.

 

[Guest 7034872]

How much have your games resembled the way you think about the world? Do your NPCs at times represent how you think the world often works, and/or express themes that spring from your perspective or culture?

It's my first serious time as DM, but I am consciously trying hard to forbid myself doing this. The way I figure it, if the NPCs turn into springboards for my own beliefs, they're not characters: they're 2D sock puppets. To fight the tendency, two things I did when first writing the campaign was (1) consciously take all my favorite NPCs at the time and turn them into lesser underlings, and (2) make the world a place in which many things I hate are common and taken as given. In the early writing phase, anyway, this helped me a lot.

 

[Teo Twawki]

Do your NPCs at times represent how you think the world often works, and/or express themes that spring from your perspective or culture?

Nope. They represent their own perspectives and cultures.
A great aspect of role-playing is that it allows me step beyond my own dissonant perspectives and mestiza of cultural narratives.

 

[Scruffy nerf herder]

I think that is unavoidable not matter how much you try to minimize it. I think it's even more true in games with alignment systems, my personal belief in good/evil certainly informs the way I think about the world for the games I run in. However, I am able to put my beliefs aside if the setting or game calls for it though. For example, If I am running in a game setting where it is considered good and right to kick puppies that's how I would run the game even though I have strong feelings regarding animal animals being abused.

Can you think of any good examples of this happening? Evil settings aren't exactly common I would presume.

It's my first serious time as DM, but I am consciously trying hard to forbid myself doing this. The way I figure it, if the NPCs turn into springboards for my own beliefs, they're not characters: they're 2D sock puppets. To fight the tendency, two things I did when first writing the campaign was (1) consciously take all my favorite NPCs at the time and turn them into lesser underlings, and (2) make the world a place in which many things I hate are common and taken as given. In the early writing phase, anyway, this helped me a lot.

This is interesting to me because I've never been overly worried about my ideas bleeding a little into the campaign. It's merely part of the flavor, and I figure it helps make it my own.

But that's partly because I always create settings, and never use established ones.

Nope. They represent their own perspectives and cultures.
A great aspect of role-playing is that it allows me step beyond my own dissonant perspectives and mestiza of cultural narratives.

It's refreshing interacting with people who sometimes downplay their own perspective in order to enjoy something different.

 

[Hex08]

Can you think of any good examples of this happening? Evil settings aren't exactly common I would presume.

You're right evil settings aren't common, I was thinking hypothetically but I have a homebrew setting where the overall atmosphere is defiantly morally gray. The players aren't heroes, it's more about day-to-day survival in a very corrupt city which sometimes leads to actions that are decidedly not heroic. The PCs aren't evil, but they sometimes don't have any good choices. In some systems/setting things like slavery are not uncommon and that's certainly not compatible with most modern ethical views. Savage Worlds has an older setting, Evernight, that I understand to be pretty dark but I haven't read it myself. In games like Vampire: The Masquerade players will frequently engage in some morally reprehensible behavior.

 

[Umbran]

Nope. They represent their own perspectives and cultures.

Yeah, but they don't have a culture like a living person does - they have one you assign. You're choosing (even designing) those cultures and perspectives, and thus the personalities and belief systems of the NPCs. These things are not independent of the GM.

Authors cannot, in a practical sense, avoid having their own ideas impact their work. That doesn't mean that every NPC is a direct and obvious sock puppet in an active agenda to push a belief system on players, but influences will be present.

 

[Catolias]

Yeah, but they don't have a culture like a living person does - they have one you assign. You're choosing (even designing) those cultures and perspectives, and thus the personalities and belief systems of the NPCs. These things are not independent of the GM.

Authors cannot, in a practical sense, avoid having their own ideas impact their work. That doesn't mean that every NPC is a direct and obvious sock puppet in an active agenda to push a belief system on players, but influences will be present.

Absolutely agree. You are enmeshed and influenced by your local culture - there is no way you can stand outside it to create an rpg setting. That all goes to how you create your settings - even when you try to create a deliberate alternatice

If you don’t agree, just think about culture’s influence when you travel to another country and experience how the Other culture lives their daily lives. Some of that difference is obvious (eg, which side of the road do they drive) but some are less so. These less recognised impacts of culture are the way people communicate with each other - the euphemisms, the metaphors, the norms of socially acceptable behaviour. (My favourite from years ago were Indian taxi drivers referring to the rear of the building as “backside” - which made you think carefully about asking for an entry at the rear of the building!)

This all feels like a university discussion on post-structuralism and post-modernism. Ahh, those were the days…

 

[Teo Twawki]

Yeah, but they don't have a culture like a living person does - they have one you assign.

They have the one needed for the story being collectively told. Few of the NPCs I run in my game hold my cultural beliefs.
Fictional characters very much do have their own cultural perspectives, regardless of critics who insist they are all the foils or variations of their author. Ideas impacting a work is vastly different from an author assigning perspectives to their characters, especially in a collectively-authored story.

At least, the better authors don't.