Remove ads

The Politics of Tabletop RPGs

Potato Anarchy said:
The NWO as an organization of mages always tapped into the aesthetics of the most right wing fever swamp version of the NWO myth far, far more than they tapped into anything else from the history of the phrase. So did a lot of other Technocracy trappings, for that matter. The difference wasn't that it was less associated with fash then, it's that people were less worried about fascists then, plus prevailing left of center attitudes about the ethics of media portrayal were different.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This assumes that people are automatically opposed to it in the modern day. I for one am not, I don't think there's anything inherently unethical with borrowing common conspiracy tropes when designing a faction. Even if those tropes are associated with reactionaries (and they usually will be- most conspiracy theories are right-wing and bigoted).

Execution can of course be problematic but it's still necessary to actually argue that a particularly execution was bad, just establishing a thematic connection isn't sufficient to invalidate its existence.
 
Last edited:
It's been a very long time since I played Vampire, but in whatever edition it was at the time I remember being underwhelmed with how the "struggle with your own monstrosity" thing was handled.

Even without the copout easy answer of animal blood, it didn't seem like there was anything forcing a vampire to meaningfully hurt people. They can feed by taking a little bit of blood from a larger number of people, to the point where it doesn't cause major health problems. Obviously it's still bad to take people's blood without their consent (and probably even moreso to do whatever mindfuckery you need to do in order to get it from them), but weighed against the harm of your own death? Considering that many vampires didn't become Kindred by choice, or at least didn't know what they were really getting into? The moral calculus seems pretty easy to me. And that's even before getting in to how easy it is for a vampire to give back to the community they feed off of, given the sort of powers they have.

Obviously, most vampires don't do this. It's a lot more effort to feed carefully from multiple victims each time you're low on vitae then it is feed callously. It's a chore to do superheroics for a community you can never really be part of. My point is that you *can* do this, and the fact that that's even an option undermines the alleged premise and themes.

Maybe subsequent editions avoided this issue, idk.
 
Leila Hann said:
Even without the copout easy answer of animal blood, it didn't seem like there was anything forcing a vampire to meaningfully hurt people. They can feed by taking a little bit of blood from a larger number of people, to the point where it doesn't cause major health problems. Obviously it's still bad to take people's blood without their consent (and probably even moreso to do whatever mindfuckery you need to do in order to get it from them), but weighed against the harm of your own death? Considering that many vampires didn't become Kindred by choice, or at least didn't know what they were really getting into? The moral calculus seems pretty easy to me. And that's even before getting in to how easy it is for a vampire to give back to the community they feed off of, given the sort of powers they have.

Obviously, most vampires don't do this. It's a lot more effort to feed carefully from multiple victims each time you're low on vitae then it is feed callously. It's a chore to do superheroics for a community you can never really be part of. My point is that you *can* do this, and the fact that that's even an option undermines the alleged premise and themes.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I can't speak on the mechanical side but I think the lore justification is pretty strong.

Animal blood exists but it's worth keeping in mind that it's both significantly less tasty then Human blood (to point where it's actively disgusting) and even more critically it gives less fuel to the vampire. Which is massive, blood doesn't just power their biology it enables their powers. Thus vampires will always have a strong incentive to drink from humans, not just does it keep them alive but it also makes them powerful which is both psychologically enjoyable but also a critical matter of surviving their cut-throat society.

You're right that they could drink in a non-harmful manner but they'll always have the urge to drink more, to get more power for themselves. Just look at how easily normal humans can Otherize people, and that's without it giving you literal superpowers! It's not that vampires have to be a monster- it's that they have to struggle against becoming one and constantly do so for their theoretically infinite existence. Which means in practice they'll probably slip, and once that happens the normal human urge to rationalize kicks in and the rest is history.
 
Fourthspartan56 said:
I can't speak on the mechanical side but I think the lore justification is pretty strong.

Animal blood exists but it's worth keeping in mind that it's both significantly less tasty then Human blood (to point where it's actively disgusting) and even more critically it gives less fuel to the vampire. Which is massive, blood doesn't just power their biology it enables their powers. Thus vampires will always have a strong incentive to drink from humans, not just does it keep them alive but it also makes them powerful which is both psychologically enjoyable but also a critical matter of surviving their cut-throat society.

You're right that they could drink in a non-harmful manner but they'll always have the urge to drink more, to get more power for themselves. Just look at how easily normal humans can Otherize people, and that's without it giving you literal superpowers! It's not that vampires have to be a monster- it's that they have to struggle against becoming one and constantly do so for their theoretically infinite existence. Which means in practice they'll probably slip, and once that happens the normal human urge to rationalize kicks in and the rest is history.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Sure. But that's still a far cry from "the fact that you aren't going sunbathing means that you're a bad person," which is a sentiment that I hear bandied around a lot in discussions of Vampire (and I think is paraphrased from one of the actual books?).
 
Leila Hann said:
Sure. But that's still a far cry from "the fact that you aren't going sunbathing means that you're a bad person," which is a sentiment that I hear bandied around a lot in discussions of Vampire (and I think is paraphrased from one of the actual books?).
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Well it depends, the neonate who still has their Humanity is far more of a victim then a monster but the point is that they'll either die or eventually shift. Neonates don't tend to have high life expectations after all.

In the long run any vampire who doesn't die immediately should kill themselves if they want to minimize harm. It's understandable that they don't but that too is part of the lore, VTM has always emphasized the tragic part of tragic monster.
 
Last edited:
Fourthspartan56 said:
This assumes that people are automatically opposed to it in the modern day. I for one am not, I don't think there's anything inherently unethical with borrowing common conspiracy tropes when designing a faction. Even if those tropes are associated with reactionaries (and they usually will be- most conspiracy theories are right-wing and bigoted).

Execution can of course be problematic but it's still necessary to actually argue that a particularly execution was bad, just establishing a thematic connection isn't sufficient to invalidate its existence.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Absolutely agree! I was mostly trying to push back on the idea that the connection was minimal or that there is some sanitized corner of the mythos being evoked which isn't like all the other parts, and talking about the modern reaction to the content descriptively.

I think Ascension's use of the government conspiracy mythos is like...fine? It does some interesting things with it, but mostly it is a colorful skin for the underlying themes of the game which are going in their own direction which I find (debatably!) to be mostly disconnected from a more deconstructive look at the tropes involved.

In the giant robot of offense framework it has basically formed the body, but didn't make much progress on forming the head. The writing handled it responsibly - god knows better than 90s White Wolf handled some other sensitive topics. Just also didn't dig in deep, and it demonstrated less on-page awareness of the real life seaminess involved then is now common practice.
 
Last edited:
In theory, a vampire could live a perfectly moral existence.
Except for bestial failures and successes (or whatever they were called), that seem to exist largely for you to really fuck up in ways that will turn you into a monster, sooner or later.
 
Leila Hann said:
It's been a very long time since I played Vampire, but in whatever edition it was at the time I remember being underwhelmed with how the "struggle with your own monstrosity" thing was handled.

Even without the copout easy answer of animal blood, it didn't seem like there was anything forcing a vampire to meaningfully hurt people. They can feed by taking a little bit of blood from a larger number of people, to the point where it doesn't cause major health problems. Obviously it's still bad to take people's blood without their consent (and probably even moreso to do whatever mindfuckery you need to do in order to get it from them), but weighed against the harm of your own death? Considering that many vampires didn't become Kindred by choice, or at least didn't know what they were really getting into? The moral calculus seems pretty easy to me. And that's even before getting in to how easy it is for a vampire to give back to the community they feed off of, given the sort of powers they have.

Obviously, most vampires don't do this. It's a lot more effort to feed carefully from multiple victims each time you're low on vitae then it is feed callously. It's a chore to do superheroics for a community you can never really be part of. My point is that you *can* do this, and the fact that that's even an option undermines the alleged premise and themes.

Maybe subsequent editions avoided this issue, idk.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Sorry, but I don't see how "there is a potential to choose to try to avoid being a monster" undermines the themes? It's like saying that if people just had some conversations in Romeo and Juliet, the tragedy wouldn't have happened. That's like, the point.

The PCs (and all vampires) have choices. They just live in a society (heh) that pressures them into making choices that are, well, bad. Or they have circumstances (frenzy, the Beast, sheer hunger) that drive them to do monstrous things even if they start out with good intent.
 
World of Darkness (Old, New, Chronicle, whatever) all are about the spiral around the drain, because Vampire showed that was a compelling framework to build a campaign around. Your baby vampire/werewolf/mage/hunter/etc starts with clear lines of ethics and then things get complicated and before you know it you're paying for your own life using the lives of others. Someone saw you feed, or the receptionist at the local branch of the Worm's megacorp was in late, or any other little thing can happen which gives you a choice between maintaining your life and not becoming a murderer.

Very few other games put such focus on the spiral, and make said spiral so player driven. Cthulhu player spirals are based around encountering the great ones' weird dogs, not hiding the body of the guy you murdered because you botched a hunger roll. Warhammer's doom spiral is did you touch something magical, y/n?
 
MooGoesCow21 said:
Though The NWO in OWOD and the Technocracy, in general, are very much inspired by anti-Semitic conspiracies another good example is The Syndicate who are the rich Jewish bankers controlling the world conspiracy.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The $yndicate is actually old-school Marxists. No, seriously. Where do they believe power comes from in society? Not divine right, not holy bloodlines, nothing like that. What gives power is control of resources. The owner class is the owner class not because of any divine right, but because they control the only thing that matters. Money. Of course like everything in Mage, they twisted it around so THEY can be the owner class. And yes, they are capitalists too, libertarians, financiers, traders...but it all rests on the assumption that money is power.

Also, a fan-made $yndicate page did THE BEST example of how magic works in mage, in one paragraph. Seriously. I go back to it for reference it for other reality warping games.

As for NWO, they are old school KGB and the like. With a very 1960s cynicism added. Go watch The Prisoner, that's NWO all over.

And anyway, if you want a really accidental racism oops, look to Mage the Awakening. Hint: if your game depends on Atlantis and an Ur-race out of Blavatsky, and says that those ruins native peoples claim are actually Atlantean so you have a right to loot them...you MIGHT have a problem.
 
Potato Anarchy said:
In the giant robot of offense framework it has basically formed the body, but didn't make much progress on forming the head. The writing handled it responsibly - god knows better than 90s White Wolf handled some other sensitive topics. Just also didn't dig in deep, and it demonstrated less on-page awareness of the real life seaminess involved then is now common practice.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Semi-related potentially unpopular opinion, one not specifically meant as a commentary on the White Wolf games because I'm almost entirely ignorant of their entire product line:

I like how the article you reference says "oh yeah, actually 'forming the head' and making it impossible for others to use my artistic creation hurtfully is impossible, so I'll just do my best and hope for the best."

The flip side of this is "at some point, you may have worked so hard to make your artwork impossible to use as a weapon against others that you're starting to carve pieces out of its value as art." At some point you are pursuing diminishing returns, and your only hope of making the artwork more harmless to minorities is to either "win the lottery" and have a story that is virtually impossible to misuse while still being very good... Or to sacrifice some of your energy and ability to tell a compelling story in an attempt to make the story itself totally unabusable.
 
Simon_Jester said:
The flip side of this is "at some point, you may have worked so hard to make your artwork impossible to use as a weapon against others that you're starting to carve pieces out of its value as art."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I'd expect that to happen immediately. As framed by the author of that post, even depicting something evil as "cool" is bad, putting their tolerance for separation of aesthetics and morality in fiction at about the level of a chad/soyjak meme.
 
AssaultRaven said:
I'd expect that to happen immediately. As framed by the author of that post, even depicting something evil as "cool" is bad, putting their tolerance for separation of aesthetics and morality in fiction at about the level of a chad/soyjak meme.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Well, no.

There are things you genuinely can do to make it harder for vicious jackasses to wield your work as a bludgeon, make it less likely and attractive a target for them, without detracting from the quality of the work itself.

As an amusing example, one wonders just how much less foolishness we'd have had to put up with over the years involving 40k if all the Horus Heresy era art of the God-Emperor of Mankind back when he still had a living body and a recognizable face showed that the God-Emperor was unmistakably of sub-Saharan African ancestry, even with no change in the character whatsoever.
 
maskedanddanger said:
World of Darkness (Old, New, Chronicle, whatever) all are about the spiral around the drain, because Vampire showed that was a compelling framework to build a campaign around. Your baby vampire/werewolf/mage/hunter/etc starts with clear lines of ethics and then things get complicated and before you know it you're paying for your own life using the lives of others. Someone saw you feed, or the receptionist at the local branch of the Worm's megacorp was in late, or any other little thing can happen which gives you a choice between maintaining your life and not becoming a murderer.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
oWoD? I'll give you that.

nWoD? Not really.

Just from the outset, any pitch that amounts to "this game is about everything getting worse until either you become an irredeemable scumbag or get killed" is a complete non-starter for me, and trying to bend nWoD into that shape would involve actively poisoning several of the things I like about nWoD.

Like, your proposal would be especially egregious for Changeling and Promethean, since those gamelines are about recovering from past trauma and ontological self-actualization, respectively. Are you arguing for the idea that Changeling should be about how actually, there isn't any way to escape past trauma? That Promethean should be about an inevitable spiral into misanthropic nihilism, because the world is a fuck and you are trash man?
 
Geist 2e, too, is all about making big positive changes (or trying to, at least). Direct from the book: 'There's a term for Bound who don't want to get out there and change things (even if not on a global/cosmic scale): That term is "Storyteller character".'
 
Leila Hann said:
It's been a very long time since I played Vampire, but in whatever edition it was at the time I remember being underwhelmed with how the "struggle with your own monstrosity" thing was handled.

Even without the copout easy answer of animal blood, it didn't seem like there was anything forcing a vampire to meaningfully hurt people. They can feed by taking a little bit of blood from a larger number of people, to the point where it doesn't cause major health problems. Obviously it's still bad to take people's blood without their consent (and probably even moreso to do whatever mindfuckery you need to do in order to get it from them), but weighed against the harm of your own death? Considering that many vampires didn't become Kindred by choice, or at least didn't know what they were really getting into? The moral calculus seems pretty easy to me. And that's even before getting in to how easy it is for a vampire to give back to the community they feed off of, given the sort of powers they have.

Obviously, most vampires don't do this. It's a lot more effort to feed carefully from multiple victims each time you're low on vitae then it is feed callously. It's a chore to do superheroics for a community you can never really be part of. My point is that you *can* do this, and the fact that that's even an option undermines the alleged premise and themes.

Maybe subsequent editions avoided this issue, idk.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
What's missing is the rules for _Humanity loss._

So, Vampires start out at Humanity 7. Basically a normal person (I think, maybe this wasn't in oWoD, I mostly played nWoD, I'm pretty sure it was in 5e Masquerade though).

Humanity can drop because you fed on someone forcefully, or got into lethal combat, or had a bad emotional shock.

If you drop to 5, you functionally have ASPD, an enforced jaded callousness as your Inherent Vampireness overwhelms your connection to humanity. Dropping to 5 is meant to happen within a couple of stories unless you're REALLY clinging to your humanity, and using it to maintain your Humanity. It's just too easy for any bad event to knock you into being unable to relate to people as people anymore.

Humanity 4 is harder to fall to, most vampires stabilize at 5, where, by nature of their biology, they're selfish predators who can't see you as a human being. 4 is an actual monster who _likes it,_ and I can't remember how it falls from there, though in nWoD if you drop below 2 IIRC you become a superpowered animal and cease being a player character.

And that's the core of why suicide, while you're still moral enough to make that call, is the good decision. Because vampires don't start out totally heartless, but it's essentially inevitable that they will become that, maybe soon, maybe in 10 years or 20, but certainly within a human lifetime. You will be a serial killer in the end. All vampires end up that way, as they age, unless they die first.

Relatedly, I tend to relax the fuck out of the humanity rules when running Vampire, because of all those things I just said.
 
stratigo said:
Not all vampires. Some achieve nirvana instead
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
That one removes you from the game though.

Even trying to maintain Humanity 10 effectivly means you have to remove yourself from any normal campaign.
You don't have to kill yourself, but to become a hermit that causes no harm in word, thought or deed, which is effectivly the same for the sake of playing a game.
 
Less than no experience with WoD, Old or New, but I am a fan of the idea that there are methods for transcending that which is innately immoral in yourself as a personal appeal thing.
 
Arawn_Emrys said:
Definitely got some issues there, especially as it almost directly implies that wartime soldiers are literally less human than other people.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
no, but vampiric horrors that routinely engage in violence are less human than vampires who don't, because vampires are monsters who become more monstrous when exposed to violence. Any emotional shock can send you spiraling into horror, including aging. Violence is just the worst one, because you're literally a violent demon who goes crazy for spilled blood. Human characters can kill all they want and not have the issue of humanity loss, you can literally play a human soldier in a vampire game, working with the vampires, and only have negative mental effects from violence if you choose to play it that way, while the vampires are visibly losing their minds and you can go home to your family after or talk to a therapist or however you choose to cope and be totally okay.
 
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top