Plot

How does Veeky Forums feel about politics and racism in a campaign when not done to a /pol/ish level?

pic very unrelated

In a campaign, politics and racism should do two things. The first is to divorce them from current real world politics and racism. The players and the GM are there to have fun, not a political debate. Don't make people thinly veiled expy's of existing political figures, don't make a minority a 1:1 copy of an existing one, and if you are going to use real figures (like in a historical game) use them fucking carefully. It's really easy to go from "tasteful and dramatically appropriate" to "complete shithouse" when it comes to things like that.

The second is to then only have them if they're going to be something important to the plot/tone/setting. Having racism or political clusterfuckery for the sake of having it is just a drag on the campaign. The racism and political shit have to serve a purpose within the game, otherwise they're just there to cause argument. If you have elves be discriminated against by humans or whatever, make that an important factor in the actual plot that's developing, instead of just an extraneous detail that people might bitch over.

taking it to /pol/ish extremes is half the fun.

We're probably safe with a /thread right here

But since fags are gonna shitpost, let's turn this thread into an art dump of pretty girls with big cats.

Same as anything else done right. I suppose the only things you'd have to worry about is if it fits the tone (which doing it right would imply) or if your players are mature enough to handle it.

I think this is more true in some genres than others. Like, a lot of cyberpunk games, I don't think you can easily make that apolitical without it losing a lot of its thematic essence. The genre's full of musings on how we structure our societies and economies, pic below being a related example

Should read
>pic above
>recent example

Funny thing, is /pol/ levels is mild. All bark, no bite.

That fact that people on average find the children in /pol/ as abhorrent or extreme is a testament to how far we've bettered ourselves.

Fantasy racism is a thing. And there's nothing wrong with that thing. Having people have orcs (or whatever) at an instinctual level is only reasonable when the average orc is a ravening monster out to kill you, take your stuff and enslave any survivors. It makes for an interesting twist when the party runs into a non-evil or or an orc tribe that's attacking settlements because they've been boxed in by human expansion with nowhere else to go.

Oh definitely. I think the key with something like cyberpunk, where politics is almost required, is to make sure to try and separate them from immediately existing political groups the players know about. Have the GM design varying parties with different outlooks and different goals, mix and match ideologies and ethics to create something new and unknown, and make it that much more interesting when the players interact with them, because they can't just say, "oh, so he's just a ____" when they meet this npc.

That said, I wrote primarily assuming a fantasy game. Different types of game call for different levels of political and ethical interaction.

I guess in the end it really depends on what the game is going for, and what the GM is planning. A full pink mohawk game is going to be vastly different than a morally grey cyber-noir thriller.

Literally depends on the setting (and the genre, as says, but perhpas less. Amusingly enough a hyper-fantasy game like Exalted IS supposed to be "political", you'd better reform the shit that is on creation)

Fuck. Kender.

Don't let that fool you, they're only so mild because they're so few, the split second fascists are the majority humanity is fucked, and that's why we can't let that happen.

Conflict makes a story.

>Funny thing, is /pol/ levels is mild. All bark, no bite.


They drove a car through a crowd, you know.

>they

every single person who has ever posted on /pol/ drove a car through a crowd, that had no business being in the middle of the street and were attacking the car before anything had happened. yeah, sure whatever.

fuck off scum.

>implying /pol/ doesn't deserve to play D&D.
/pol/ is a board of peace.
Not all posters.

>>every single person who has ever posted on /pol/

Oh fuck off, they all support it

>>that had no business being in the middle of the street

They had a permit and the street was closed to traffic

>>and were attacking the car before anything had happened

The car wasn't in the crowd until after it drove into the crowd, as can be seen in any of the billion videos of it.

Person you're responding to here; I agree. If your scenario maps one to one with your own country's politics, that's not exactly a creative flourish.

Yeah, but it's Romance of the Three Kingdoms political, not Enlightenment philosopher political

All of this, but I would also add that the players and DM should have an established understanding OOC about how politics and racism are going to play a part in the game. If a PC is going to be racist then that player should explain in general terms what their intentions with the character are. Likewise, if the DM is going to make politics a focus point then they should explain (in general terms with minimal spoilers) why or how it is in the game. Dropping shit like that suddenly on the group with no warning can lead to a lot of infighting. In my experience, once all that shit is cleared up OOC then the game runs pretty damn smooth since everyone's reasoning for playing they way they are is clear to everyone else.

>just an extraneous detail that people might bitch over.
I disagree, even in a fantasy setting it can serve as a way to make the world more detailed and immersive. Unfortunately people are always going to have biases against other groups and the fantasy world would too. It can be incorporated in small ways Dwarf Merchant gives shitty prices to elf or later be used for a campaign hook One group is attacking another group simply because they don't like them, what will the party choose to do? Does the party have Biases?

I remember a book called something like "Gender *something* worldbuilding in the 21st century"
basically it gave hints and ideas of rules to help simulate difference and such.

DIVERSITY DUNGEONS! That was it.

every muslim ever was responsible for 9/11 because they all supported it. See how retarded that sounds,

If the roads were closed to traffic what were those other two cars being blocked by a crowd doing there?

>>every muslim ever was responsible for 9/11 because they all supported it. See how retarded that sounds,

I think it's fair to say that all Muslims who are regular posters on /AlQaeda/ are probably assholes.

>>If the roads were closed to traffic what were those other two cars being blocked by a crowd doing there?

Parking. That's why there was no one in them.

>/pol/

Oh boy here we go

Amusingly enough in 2ed (I think) the give the Founding Fathers reborn in our days as examples for solars.

No, really.

>ywn see george washington return and spend 3 years being briefed on what a smartphone is

To me it's a plot element, and little more.

If i feel the DM is going to far / inserting his own retarded opinions in the story, i will leave without a word, simply.

The blacks killed police officers, you know. All of them, in the shooting attack.

Meanwhile, every Democrat supporter tried to kill Republican congressmen at a baseball game.

>Parking. That's why there was no one in them.

people were in those cars. you don't know what you're talking about. you are fake news.

Boy. You'll know when there's a /pol/ caliphate when there's freedom of speech, net neutrality and strong privacy protections.

Make an informed decision for each campaign based on the players & the desired tone for the campaign.

In general: for serious campaigns with some pretensions of "realism," yes (politics & racism both exist in the real world so why wouldn't they exist in the game), for either silly campaigns or heroic fantasy/mythological games, no (it breaks the atmosphere for both imo, though in different ways)

Hey, Ben Franklin would have loved the Information Age.

They are all over the place. People don't like other people. People don't like people with different views. People want things always. This leads to conflict. You draw this out as a DM because it makes the world richer.
Fuck go /pol/ levels, if it's warranted. The elves can be haughty bastards who believe they are superior in every way to humans... And they can be right. The elder scrolls world is a great example of these kinds of conflicts in action.

What comes to racism, I doube I'll ever bother going deeper than "Elves are uppity bastards" or "The dark-skinned, bald people of Fus-run Rha are odd; they don't even drink ale!"

My players don't give a fuck about such depth. I also don't trust to do in-depth politics properly, interestingly

This user speaks truth. The webcomic Unsounded does racism in a fantasy setting correctly.

You know what the part has? Dance. Dance party