You can assign politics to anything, so it really up to you to bring that in.

If you are going to allow yourself to get testicular torsion over a gender swapped character or having to play a character that is not your gender, than enjoy yourself.

Over all I do agree with you. When I play it is to unwind and not think about anything other than the electronic challenges in front of me or the mindless grind, whatever I am in the mood for.

Incidently that is one of the many things I loved about GOW 2018. You could go do the puzzles and combat or you could just go grind to your hearts content.

So, you want less bureaucracy and more warfare? That’s a pretty bold political statement right there. I’m sure there’s nothing political about war.

Do the world and yourself a favor, and use this template instead.

This comment is really funny now that OP is using the new format, please leave it up.

Agreed. And there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s a big difference between playing a gay character and derailing the entire campaign because you choose to lead a gay rights movement while the world is being overrun by the demon king’s hordes.

I don’t care about the former and have done so myself, but I’ll boot you from my table for the later. Not because I’m against gay rights, but because that’s not the kind of story I’m interested in DMing and you’re free to find a DM who’s interested in this storyline, but you won’t take my campaign and players hostage for your narcissistic urge for self-promotion!

Imagine if you had to file paperwork for every demon killed in Doom. You’d practically never be killing demons after the first level because of all fhe paperwork from all the demons you killed in the first level!

I came here after the edit and got scared that Watterson did something.

That may be the case for some people, but a lot of people just want some good lighthearted fun without any of the real world implications attached to it. This obviously doesn’t excuse bigoted mindsets. I’m talking about campaigns where me and my players just want to do some good old goblin slaying without the need for anyone to chime in with a “UM actshually those goblins have families too”.

He changed it to Calvin, but this comment is hilarious now.

“I don’t want politics in my gaming” = “I stopped growing, emotionally, the first time I saw Jugga in Conker’s Bad Fur Day”

What template was he using before?

Steven Crowder

Nah, you’d just write up the first level in an Incident Report covering multiple dead demons. And more to the point, both bureaucracy and warfare are forms of politics, so killing demons is still a form of politics, with or without paperwork.

I think there’s a middle ground where the game ‘world’ can acknowledge there are political maneuverings happening, while not forcing you to track the shipments of food and goods so you can squeeze nobles who depend on certain economic routes into complying with the king’s orders to rally troops for a cause.

Bounty orders style campaigns are fun for a short while, but there’s only so many ‘go here, kill x, biggest change is the layout of the dungeon and enemy vulnerabilities’ before the game sessions all bleed into one long blurry dice roll. That’s close to warhammer/battletech/etc territory. I want a real story to go with the campaign, and that necessitates a ‘politics’ somewhere unless you’re playing one of the barbarian/end-of-the-world games where there is no civilization or npcs at all aside from enemies.

But I think we can all agree that the “politics” of motions and passing votes is not what was being addressed by OP.

Now it’s like…

If it has a story it’s political

I don’t care about politics in my games (and shows/movies) as long as it fits into the world and into the story. A TV show examples for that is Torchwood. It has to be the most gay scify show (at least it is the most gay I know) but all of it fits together and I love the show, even as a totaly hetero/cis guy. It doesn’t feel forced but is just how everything just it. Not sure if I can explain it good, hope it is somewhat to understand.

Easy moral patch: These specific goblins have all made unambiguously evil choices that warrant a good slaying. Like kicking dogs. You’re not slaying goblins because they’re goblins, you’re slaying dog-kickers that happen to be goblins. There are plenty of goblins who do not kick dogs, but they’re not a part of this fight.

This is still a political statement that dog kickers are evil. I doubt anyone would mind that, and those that do are better off leaving my table anyway.

Or, you know. We could just ignore those pseudo-moral excuses and do some good old goblin slaying because they’re in the dungeon, laying traps and we want the loot. Not everything needs 12 layers of logical depth. Sure, it’s fun to explore moral implications from time to time, but more often than not, no one cares.