starts running a game where the first page of the core book is about colonialism

Okay, this campaign is gonna be a dark and sinister urban adventure, so law enforcement is corrupt and doing evil things.

Okay, this is a swashbuckling tale, a la Robin Hood against the Sheriff of Nottingham, so law enforcement is corrupt and doing evil things.

Okay, this is basically a noir detective style adventure, so law enforcement is corrupt and doing evil things.

Okay, I noticed I keep making law enforcement evil, so I’m gonna do a one shot set in hell. There’s no civilisation or human NPCs, so law enforcement isn’t even here. The year is 1312…

I was trying to run a beam saber campaign, trying to make a really terrible and corrupt techno imperialistic faction, and got to the point where a few weeks in a row, my plot was too close to current affairs, so I had to stop.

About to do session 0 for monster of the week, hoping I can keep politics out of it.

I just realized in our pirate campaign, we became the corrupt rich law enforcement over time.

Honestly, that’s on theme for pirates

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.

That sounds like a Lego comercial.

Yeah, politics is literally at a basic level just the description of group decision making and distribution of power and resources. Good luck avoiding that in any system/story that is based around groups of players or has more than one NPC.

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.

As someone that plays a lot of Crusader Kings I’d do this plotline specifically to give players the choice

Yeah, obviously the laws of the kingdom say the male child is the legitimate ruler, but if the nobles have a problem with it they can raise their little rebellion…

It’s a free justification for taking their lands after we win the civil war.

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.

Nobody who doesn’t think ”Lich McConnell" is funny would be at my table, so it’s fine.

Not necessarily anything personal, but if you don’t hate Mitch McConnell, we’re not going to get along.

There’s a really funny youtube series my son made we watch where a guy is running one campaign that is some PCs hack and slashing their way through a goblin kingdom, trying to get to the goblin king, then another campaign where the PCs are playing in a modern urban city as cops and paramedics on the trail of some psycho serial killer arsonist looter murder hobos.

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.

In Warhammer fantasy.

Know-know where man-things hide the warpstone, yes-yes! Near Tikrit, Baghdad… east-east, west-west, south-south, north-north also! See-find, we will see-find them!

It took them a while to wise up to it.

Yes-yes, old words from Tennessee-thing, maybe Texas-thing too! Say-speak, trick fool-thing once, make you, yes-yes, you feel the shame! But trick-fool poor rat-thing twice? No-no! Can’t trick-fool, no trick-fool again, no!

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.

I think it is referring to keeping real-world politics out of campaigns. Like for instance, one time during a campaign, we blamed a museum heist on Islamic terrorits. It made the rest of the game real weird.