I’m still kind of disappointed and irritated about an old D&D group. The guy ran a game that was literally patriarchy.

There was a king who died. He had a daughter, who was ruling competently presently. But he also had an infant son. Now a civil war is brewing because some people want the son on the throne, because that’s the male heir.

And he just played it straight and seemed to expect us to be like “Oh, obviously the son has a legitimate claim to the throne. and also absolute monarchy is unremarkable”. To his credit he did let us decide which faction to support, but it was kind of exhausting getting a constant stream of “no, absolute male hereditary rule is good and normal”.

It was a pretty fleshed out setting in terms of details and subfactions, but the core of it was just so very basic and unexamined. No one else seemed to give a shit, though. I did not gel with that group.

Meanwhile, some time before that I’d had a blast running a game. The players came upon an anarchist collective that had overthrown the old despot, but now there are counter-revolutionaries lurking that want to return the now undead tyrant to the throne. Also the neighboring state is rattling their sabers because they ideologically do not approve of a state without a king.

So I guess the lesson is games are better when you vibe with the group?

i imagine in law enforcement hell they have to sit all day watching people jaywalk and don’t get to do anything about it.

I mean props to the DM for saying the current queen is ruling properly. They could’ve just been like “oh this queen just thinks she can rule as well as a man. she’s actually hot headed and you note that public executions rise during a certain time of the the month”

In law enforcement hell, they have to testify against someone they falsely arrested to a fair and reasonable judge, and every lie they try to tell manifests as physical black sludge that sears their throat as they speak.

…Fuck, I’m gonna have to come up with a new one shot now.

I ran an adventure that was basically “stop w bush and dick Cheney from invading Iraq by proving that their ‘proof’ of wmd is made up”. In Warhammer fantasy.

It took them a while to wise up to it. Watching their face light up as they figured what Georg Strauch translates to was just priceless.

I’m still kind of disappointed and irritated about an old D&D group. The guy ran a game that was literally patriarchy.

There was a king who died. He had a daughter, who was ruling competently presently. But he also had an infant son. Now a civil war is brewing because some people want the son on the throne, because that’s the male heir.

And he just played it straight and seemed to expect us to be like “Oh, obviously the son has a legitimate claim to the throne. and also absolute monarchy is unremarkable”. To his credit he did let us decide which faction to support, but it was kind of exhausting getting a constant stream of “no, absolute male hereditary rule is good and normal”.

It was a pretty fleshed out setting in terms of details and subfactions, but the core of it was just so very basic and unexamined. No one else seemed to give a shit, though. I did not gel with that group.

Meanwhile, some time before that I’d had a blast running a game. The players came upon an anarchist collective that had overthrown the old despot, but now there are counter-revolutionaries lurking that want to return the now undead tyrant to the throne. Also the neighboring state is rattling their sabers because they ideologically do not approve of a state without a king.

So I guess the lesson is games are better when you vibe with the group?

You can’t depict a civilization of sapient entities without some kind of political component coloring the interactions. A non political campaign would require no interaction of any kind with any other being capable of communicating. Unthinking creatures only.

“He’s a LICH, you can’t kill him, he’ll just keep coming back.”

“All part of the fun.”

To his credit he did let us decide which faction to support, but it was kind of exhausting getting a constant stream of “no, absolute male hereditary rule is good and normal”.

I think there’s a very traditionalist patriarchal angle you can play on a game like this that boils down to the consequences of a shifting social dynamic resulting in upheaval you don’t want/can’t afford. An Elizabethan/Victorian Era might result in other women thinking they also shouldn’t be second-class citizens relative to their husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons. Consequently, you get a First Wave Feminist movement, complete with street protests, labor strikes, vandalism, and the occasional act of violence aimed at a leading patriarchal figure. Alternatively, you end up with a reactionary fascist movement, as traditionalists launch capital strikes, threaten secession, or author fascist military coups. Maybe you get both.

Sometimes sticking with the old bad system is preferable (for your elite group of insiders) because you value social stability over progress. Especially true if the threat of a domestic insurgency is paired with some broader economic strife or external crisis.

I think its easy to believe “oh well, everyone is just awful and that’s why nothing changes”. But a cleverly written story can put you in the real position of making hard choices. You might find yourself playing the John Adams, explaining to your outspoken feminist wife Abigail why women aren’t being enfranchised in the new national constitution, because we’ve already had a Shays’ Rebellion, a Whiskey Rebellion, a Fries’s Rebellion, and a nascent State of Muskogee to deal with, and you can’t afford to splinter public opinion any more than the current compromise constitution already has.

Or you might find power in progress and decide normalizing political power between the genders yields an untapped surplus of loyalty and economic cohesion.

For years I’ve been running an Elder Scrolls campaign, so recurring villains include elf Nazis. It has been hitting way too close to home this year.

One of my favorite podcasts (Critshow) involves a group of humans who basically want to commit multi-planar ethnic cleansing against everything not human, the DM has commented that playing these NPCs feels like it’s tainting his soul just giving them a voice

I think that’s a lot of interesting stuff you could explore, but the odds of doing that when the GM is running on unexamined defaults are slim.