I admit, I am an asshole... but I'm not THAT asshole. Not all that long ago, I talked about games that I owned and would never play, and part of that was a rant on the expanding "wokeness" of games that are being put out. Obviously, because I'm offended by the overt wokeness, I'm a horrible transphobic (I'm not) or misogynistic (again, no) or just a raging asshole. I may be that last one, I was a non-commissioned officer of the United States Army for 12 of the 15 years I served in the Army, and that is not a job that usually attracts the nicest of folks, we tend to be a bunch of hard asses. However, asshole I may be, but it's not because of any personally held phobias. So what am I complaining about, exactly, if I'm not THAT asshole? It's games and their creators rubbing their politics in our faces, the constant virtue signaling of "look at me, look how righteous and pure I am!" that is completely unnecessary.
What brought this all about is the recent Bundle of Holding for the Powered by the Apocalypse rules, Fellowship (still on BoH for the next 20 days as I type this). Normally, I'm not really interested in PbtA rule games because too many of them are just trying to remake other RPGs that are perfectly fine the way they are, thank you very much, but Fellowship is different. Here, this is what the creators say about their game:
Fellowship is a game for 3-6 players about going on an adventure, in the same vein as Lord of the Rings or Wakfu or Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders. The system is loosely based on the Apocalypse Engine. In Fellowship, one player is the Overlord, a maniacal being who has become a Threat to the World, and everyone else forms a fellowship of heroes to stop them. The focus of Fellowship is on the journey you take and the communities you meet, and saving the day is what you're here to do.
Now that sounded interesting to me, as PbtA is not a strong combat rules system but is a great RP rules system, and this sounds like a game with tons of RP and not a lot of combat, perfect for the rules. Still I was leery of picking it up outright - many of the PbtA games are pushing their politics on folks in 60 foot blazing letters, was this going to be more of the same? I managed to sneak a peek in a certain underground RP collection, and to my surprise, they're not overtly throwing their politics around. Now, the art is of a diverse cast of folks of various body types, genders, skin tones, and even show what used to be called "alternative lifestyles" as there is one obvious cross dressing or trans person in the art. Which doesn't bother me, because they didn't waste any of their word count or page space with preaching about their inclusivity - if you want to be inclusive, be inclusive in your art like Fellowship is, but don't preach to us about how inclusive everyone playing the game should be. So, if this is the right way, what is the wrong way? Well, let me give you some examples.
The oldest example I have is from a wargame, discussing how if you want to publish anything in their world, you have to behave yourself.
Design your setting in such a way that the signature elements of feudal, authoritarian, totalitarian, communist, corporate/anarcho-capitalist, or democidal political structures that are not true, workable, or morally acceptable in the real world are equally untrue, unworkable, and unacceptable in your setting.
Because if you just believe hard enough, the bad people will just go away in a shower of pixie dust (end sarcasm). Look, this is fiction we are playing and if your fiction is too perfect, your characters are without flaw, then where is the struggle, the conflict, the personal growth to explore? I'm not saying we need to venerate or praise these government types, but to not allow them to exist at all is the height of burying your head in the sand. This is nothing more than childish demands from immature people who are no better than the religious nutbags trying to "pray away the gay". Silliness. And this was part of the Creative Commons license for doing any paid work based on their product... but let's be honest here, you're already giving away your game, do you really think anyone who is offering any kind of addition or expansion of your free game is going to get any buyers? No, again, this is just virtue signaling for the sake of feeding the egregore.
Next up is something a little more recent, an RPG that in its playtest wanted to shove their politics down your throat with both feet. I've talked about it before (and again... and again), but this is the passage they published in the final game.
Gaming Is for AllWhether you are the GM or a player, participating in a tabletop roleplaying game includes a social contract: everyone has gathered together to have fun telling a story. For many, roleplaying is a way to escape the troubles of everyday life. Be mindful of everyone at the table and what they want out of the game, so that everyone can have fun. When a group gathers for the first time, they should talk about what they hope to experience at the table, as well as any topics they want to avoid. Everyone should understand that elements might come up that make some players feel uncomfortable or even unwelcome, and everyone should agree to respect those boundaries during play. That way, everyone can enjoy the game together. {PRODUCT} is a game for everyone, regardless of their age, gender, race or ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or any other identities and life experiences. It is the responsibility of all of the players, not just the GM, to make sure the table is fun and welcoming to all.
This is far more restrained than what they proposed in the playtest, but let's be honest, none of this is necessary. They were doing just fine in the 1st version of their game, they alternated between male and female iconic characters, they gave people different skin tones, even made a couple of said iconic characters gay when they portrayed them in the comics. But that wasn't far enough for woke left, oh no, not these days. As an internet commenter on the liberal egregore recently typed, "Your “37 Genders” protest sign got you in the front of the line in 2016, but got you cast out in 2018 and cancelled outright in 2020. Don’t you know trans women are women now?" So you get the above, as the game makers virtue signal their asses off. It's unnecessary folks - be inclusive in your art, but don't go shoving your politics down everyone's throat.
Last example I have is from a recent RPG. It looked like it had an interesting setting and they offered a free downloadable core rulebook, and since I was curious about it, I downloaded it. But then I find the below in the intro.
In this book there are some fraught, difficult, or otherwise uncomfortable themes and content discussed. {PRODUCT} takes place in a setting recovering from millennia of cruel anthrochauvinist rule – a fascist, imperial, Earth-first ideology that had little time, space, or care to acknowledge beings or perspectives that ran counter to their didactic tyranny. We want to acknowledge that many phenomena and acts touched on in {PRODUCT} – slavery, exploitation, racism, directed hate, genocide, the stealing of indigenous land – are real phenomena, are ongoing acts of injustice and cruelty, and are not simply “fantasy" or “interesting devices” to use in a roleplaying game. Their inclusion in {PRODUCT} is by no means a flippant choice, intended to be read as endorsement, or idle thought. We think it important also to acknowledge that both {SOMEONE} and I are writing from the perspective of straight, cis, able-bodied men. When writing {PRODUCT}, we wanted to create a setting where humanity is – in the narrative present – at once in a state of utopia and working to affect it. We imagine that Union isn’t burdened by the same cultural definitions of gender that oppress and malign so many people who live under the umbrella of capitalism and empire and, as such, there is a wide spectrum of expression and identity in Union and among its constituent worlds. At the risk of enacting further violence by depicting worlds and cultures where there are regressive or discriminatory stances on gender baked-in, we have decided not to codify in the rules how players may express themselves – please do note that this absence of canonical definition is absolutely not meant to be read as exclusion, but is meant instead to avoid flattening all possible stories into one “canon” definition of what it means to be gendered, transgender, nonbinary – to have a body in {PRODUCT}. We encourage you to play your characters how you see them, and consider them to be in-canon. We hope that you create narratives and characters that stand against terrible abuses and prejudices. {PRODUCT} features no easy aliens to pass these transgressions upon, only other human beings; humanity alone are the architects of terrible cruelties, but we can also be the architects of better, more just futures – and presents. {PRODUCT} is a game that involves war, combat, and facing the terrors of the galaxy – human-made or otherwise – but this does not mean a GM should force their players to encounter scenarios or content that could be triggering or harmful. If there is any canon assumption that would cause you or your players to feel unsafe or distressed, then it does not need to be included. We recommend utilizing the X Card as a tool to establish boundaries if necessary (by {SOMEONE}, found at {WEBSITE}). We believe that ideas of liberation, of radical antifascism and anti-hate, can begin around the table with friends and end in the streets, at the ballot box, and in all of our hearts. Sometimes around the table with friends is the only place where liberation – where fighting back – can happen. This does not diminish the impact that it can have. That’s why we made {PRODUCT}: to help people fight back, if nowhere else then around the table with friends. In solidarity, {SOMEONE} and {SOMEONE}.
I read that, and I deleted the pdf, because if that is the first thing I run into in your product, I'm no longer interested in said product. Whatever interest there was in your game before reading your diatribe, your virtue signaling screed, I have lost that interest. I couldn't tell you how the rules look or even if the setting is interesting for this game, because I literally read the above, said "NOPE!" and deleted the free pdf, that's how uninterested I became with it. I don't... wait, let me fix that. NO ONE needs to know about your politics, your sexuality, gender, disabilities (or lack thereof), or listen to you apologize for the same. The only things that matter - IS YOUR GAME FUN TO PLAY? HOW DO WE PLAY IT? That's it, that is all that anyone not you, the authors of this game, this work of fiction, give a shit about when it comes to your game. You have wasted our time including it in your product instead of focusing on the important parts, which are the rules and the setting, and it's not winning you any admirers. Yes, there are uncomfortable things in EVERY RPG out there going back to D&D, if you can't handle that, then maybe you should stick to reading books. And I'm not saying that I, as a DM/GM/whatever, need to go into graphic detail about every upsetting thing that occurs in my games. Why not? Because I'm an adult and don't have to shock my players just to be cool. However, disturbing things do happen in my games - death, murder, starvation, rape, theft, kidnapping, slavery, prostitution, drug abuse, fear (which leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering and the Dark Side, or something like that) - yet I still find that I get better results if I let the players imagine the nastier details themselves. Please note that I am also not here to feed anyone's secret fetishes.
Oh, another bit of outrage porn I have run into recently - did you know the recent Super Mario Brothers movie was pushing the woke agenda? Or maybe it's secretly anti-woke? I didn't know any of that when I took the family to see the movie, because I don't pay attention to the news (yes, this is not some rando on the internet, like yours truly, this showed up in the professional news media) but caught someone ranting about it in what I thought was a movie review. When the ads for the movie came out, all I could think was that I wasn't too sure if Chris Pratt was a good choice as Mario, but didn't think too much of Princess Peach being portrayed as a badass. She's shown up as a playable character in enough of the games that her being a "strong female" is within character for her. But that upset folks on the right, and still other pundits out there are calling SMB anti-woke. Having seen the movie, all I could think about it afterwards was that Chris Pratt was fine as Mario, Seth Rogen was distracting as Donkey Kong (he only has one voice/character in his repertoire, the stoner slacker, which is just him playing himself), and if Peach was such a badass in this fantastical world before the titular Brothers showed up, why did she even bother training Mario, much less bring him along? Oh, the child-voiced blue star in the dungeon pining for the sweet release of death was the funniest part of that movie. But woke or anti-woke? I don't think it was either and everyone should STFU about the movie. Did you like it, yes or no? Good, go with that.
Anyway, I did purchase the Fellowship bundle, and no, I doubt I will ever get any play out of it, but it was too interesting to pass up. And it was less than $20, which was nice on the budget. It's an interesting concept, as you don't have a game master, instead another player who is playing the bad guy, and everyone works to play out their part of the story. Okay, admittedly, whoever is playing the Overlod is the game master analogue to the game, except you don't feel so bad when you TPK the rest of the players because you are actually trying to win as the Overlord, not just keep it tense but still fun like you have to as a GM. It does remind me a bit of Kingdom, another RPG-adjacent storytelling game, except in that one there is no set antagonist/BBEG that someone is playing from the beginning. I really doubt I'll ever get a group to play Fellowship, but hope springs eternal, may have to print out the pertinent pieces and keep it in my gaming bag in case a session doesn't happen at the last minute and we need something to pass the time.
Thinking on it some more, Fellowship may be a good intro game for my wife and daughter. My wife doesn't think she is creative enough to play an RPG correctly, which is wrong as anyone can play an RPG and have fun with it, and the kiddo has shown interest (we did have to take her to see the D&D movie, which she liked), but she is intimidated by the much older crowd of players I have in my other games. This may be the game I get a group of my daughter's friends together, possibly with their parents, and introduce them to the concept of RPGs. Yes, reading through the rules, Fellowship does appear to be more of a traditional board game or party activity, but there are some light roleplay elements in there.
There you go. I hope I don't appear to be that huge of a raging asshole, but I get so tired and frustrated when folks have to make everything they do political. I didn't try to out any of the games and their authors directly, but if you are really curious, a little investigation will reveal all of my secrets. Hopefully everyone reading this will go out and play some games with your friends in the very near future. Enjoy!
