How would you run a game with nationalist bad guys and imperialist good guys?

read a couple books on vietnam and do that

Create a setting where imperialism is objectively right.

Off the top of my head, the easiest way to do this is establish "good" and "evil" as measurable forces in your setting, then have your imperialist characters worship good gods and your nationalist characters worship evil gods. As long as you don't lean too heavy on metaphor, conquering savages in this world is inarguably righteous.

witcher setting with players on the side of Nilfgaard

Imperialism implies subsuming other cultures under an 'imperial' one, that's hard to make acceptable unless those other cultures were being brutalised before the empire shows up.
You could try looking for inspiration with propaganda for both the British and French empires (mission to civilise), just this time avoid free market liberalism. The invisible hand fucked over everyone, imperial and subjugated alike.

By not bringing politics to game

... where is the nationalist part of the equation?

>nationalist bad guys
The Khmer Rouge
>imperialist good guys
Literally anyone else.

The Temerians and Redanians are nationalistic as fuck, and are absolute shitters with retarded leaders.

The Northern Realms? Eg.: using WWI style propaganda posters or the Kaedweni landgrab claiming they are liberating their brothers etc

Another possible situation: an imperialist overlord that keeps nationalistic subjects from jumping at each other's throats.

America vs North Korea

>Hated by everyone for interfering.
>Constantly on the defensive, everyone trying to chip away at imperial control.
>Charging from one end of the empire to the other, stamping out rebellions.
>Still finding time to dispense emergency aid to combat floods/famine.
>Only reason trade still exists is the thin veneer of control from the capital.
>Neighboring realms constantly funding espionage.
>Maybe even a hidden evil that threatens to destroy everything the empire built, but hidden to stop widespread panic.

So... basically Karl-Franz.

What anime is that image from? Anything with Admiral Perry is bound to be a hoot.

I want to protect his smile.

Seconded

>Papers in the Thalmor embassy show that they engineered Ulfric's rebellion.
One report shows that both fighting each other is good for the Thalmor. So they need to stop fighting and just let Skyrim go, and provide aid a la Hammerfell.

Sekko-Boys I think.

>A dying prideful, ignorant man says mean things.
>This must be true

Those same bullshit letters later say they don't want him to win and I swear to god if you cite that Propaganda Piece the Bear of Markarth I'll kick your cow

>implying

Roam vs the Germanic people

Google says "Dagashi Kashi".

World War 1

this

Goodness, I didn't know that candy anime with the fat-chested businesswoman had a historical skit.

It's all over the place with skits

Empire conquering tribal savages.

Do you think it's worth watching?

If you like Japanese humor and you haven't already read the manga, yeah.

You are both aware this only applies to games... right?

subtly

What do you mean? Both examples from are from the books.

>all these evidence point towards the same thing but it means nothing
You are an idiot

>a divine empire of warrior-kings who dedicate their lives to eradicating the various demon lords who have been plaguing the world for millennia , saving various nations from their reach and assimilating them to build a mightier force

>the other side are unwilling kingdoms who would rather maintain their national identity and resists annexation, even in the face of highly manipulative demonic forces who actively prey on the weak and isolated

I wouldn't run it, at least, not with the good/bad dichotomy layered over it.
I would try to play out a colonial/post colonial scenario as realistically as I could and allow my players to decide who's right, or even choose an alternative to the imperial and nationalist forces.

Isn't that just WWII?
Yes, I know the Americans, Soviets and Chinese were officially "anti-imperialist", but that just meant every empire except their own.

That doesn't sound fun.

they weren't good guys tho, especially not the soviets

What about good guys Monarchists and bad guys Democrats?

And then Iron was anti-magic?

I'd start by banning airguns

Michael cylonfrakking Hogan.

There's some sort of massive imminent calamity coming and the only feasible way to prepare for it is with the speed that a quality monarch could rather than waiting to bumble through democratic process

people will almost certainly get oppressed, but they won't all die while waiting for inter-party gridlock to resolve

tell that to Prince George, 2nd Duke of Cambridge

he'll love it, but he'll still be a fatheaded idiot with no idea what he's fucking doing, who won't accept that a committee might have more good ideas than an individual

The imperials allow thalmor death squads to murder with impunity

Roman Empire vs Jewish Zealots

Hammerfell singlehandedly pushed back the elves.

Desert insurgencies are historically the easiest to pull off

>WW1 allies
>good

War doesn't have good guys. There were no "good guys" in ww2.

I didn't know Germany assigned so much clout to Japan in WW1

Maybe no good guys, but there were objective bad guys.

The germans, who, well, you know.
And the Japanese, who killed and raped millions of Mainland Asian and Oceanian.

>savages
>NATIONalistic

No shit. That's why I'm saying that ww2 doesn't fit the thread.

Except there were no good guys in WW1. They were all assholes. And imperialists (except maybe Serbia).

He means the Cental Powers are the good guys

And the brits who firebombed civilians and the americans who incinerated thousands of innocents with nukes the soviets who raped and enslaved millions and forced several countries to become their puppets and become shitholes with terrible living conditions for 40 years.

But then it's the opposite of the thread. The imperialist British and French and Belgians oppressed millions.

This goes against everything I believe in. Go be rotten teeth thin haired bulging eyed drunk somewhere else, Nigel.

Going a Roman or Bronze Age route I think is the best bet.

Becoming a part of the Roman Empire was almost all pluses.

Except they were also assholes. The Germans, Austrian-Hungarians, and Ottomans were just as imperialistic as the French, British, or Russians, and the Bulgarians were asshats as shown by the Balkan Wars.

I'm not denying that those events happened, but most of them were done to enemy countries who were still actively fighting them. Not their own populations or those of already-subdued enemies.

Is that supposed to be a Klingon? Why the fuck does it look so different? This looks more like a different species then Klingon.

How is STD, I haven't seen it yet? If this is the only thing different it's jarring, but something I could look over.

Apparently it's decent now with some kind of mirror universe shenanigans going on, but I can't be arsed to pay for cbs special snowflake streaming to find out

So Apartheid South Africa?

>war crimes are okay if they are done to the enemy
Okay then.

Also in the case of the soviets they both committed crimes against their own population (e.g.:gulags) and to already subdued enemies (e.g.:mass rapes).

The fact is, in WW2 both sides were bad. You could argue about which was worse than the other, but saying that one side was evil and the other was not just isn't true.

Anyone else feel bad for Pontius Pilate? The guy was there trying to hold the colony together, and he kept getting dragged (reluctantly it seems from the Bible) into desert cult shenanigans. He didn't even want to seem to execute Jesus, but the pissed off Jewish zealots forced his hand.

>ave, my Semitic friends, do you want aqueducts and roads?
>nah, we'd just rather kill each other and you guys because our nameless god told us to

If you've ever watched LotGH then you know that's addressed, heavily

His name is Yahweh (יַהְוֶה).

That's a stoning

>anything from that IP being subtle

YHWH. Sacrilege is not okay goy.

>muh moral equivilence

My favorite interpretation is Jesus was a spy for the Persians. The Persians had wanted access to the Mediterranean for a while, so they could sail directly to Rome. Judea was a thin strip of land that bordered Persia and the Mediterranean. The Jews revolted very-very often, punching above their weight limit, and we’re historically very friendly with the Persians.

You should read "The Master and Margarita" if you haven't already.

How does that make Jesus a spy for the Persians?

It doesn’t necessarilly, I just think it’s a great concept for a movie.

Just looked it up, that seems like a really interesting plot. I will put it on my list.

Yeah but the Romans were slaveholding misogynists just like the Gauls, only the Gauls had liberty while Rome had taxes and centralized government.

I say have the empire be well-intentioned, incompetent, and largely concerned with small comforts while the nationalists are grandiosely idealistic, sexy, and ultra-competent. The players will want to support the status quo who are somehow also underdogs. Plus comfy bureaucracy is a better employer for exciting people than equally exciting people who will get moody at them are.

Also you can just make the antagonists the fantasy or scifi IRA. Just extend the timeframe for how unlikeable you want them to be, from the plucky but misguided anti-Treaty IRA all the way to the dirtbag IRA drugdealers who still exist, with the Provos inbetween.

What? That's equally applied to the books.

Pretty much the Russian Civil War.

The Bad guys are the Soviets
The Good Guys are the Whites and the Allied interventionists.

Snow Insurgencies are good too

Careful, you'll trigger all the internet commie LARPers

That's funny, considering eye witnesses and private journals all say Ulfric didn't execute anyone.

Put in a third party, maybe a conquered territory that the nationalists are Nankining to shit because it's "traditionally ours". The wonderful Empire has to save peaceful and prosperous Tinytopia!

>Hammerfell singlehandedly pushed back the elves.
Well them plus the legionaries sent home "on leave" that've been ripping the elves a new one.

Is that you Orson Scott Card?

Y'know, except that eight year old girl in Markarth. The one who's own father witnessed her head rolling off the block because Ulfric thought it'd be funny to sentence him to life and sentence his daughter to death?

The Serbs were nationalists while the Russians were Pan-Slavic nationalists. Everyone else were imperialists or got dragged into the war.

The Russians were also imperialists (poles, Kazakhs, etc.) and the Serbs were declared upon after a domestic Serb terrorist cell miraculously assassinated the archduke, and agreed to most of the Austrian-Hungarian demands outside of the ones that would have made them a puppet state.

To expand on this, Nationalist separatists engaging in an insurgency and terror campaign during a war against the Great Enemy pretty much makes them pawns of the BBEG, whether they know it or not, and even whether he had any part in instigating their uprising (though any BBEG worth his salt would, of course, try to aid this thorn in the side of his enemies, if possible). Kind of like the Wild Men of Dunland, for example.