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Historical Games Round 75
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I feel like we’re overcomplicating things. “There’s less bigotry in this world because: bigotry isn’t fun OOC; it’s not required to be there like it’s some default state of humanity; and if you can’t suspend your disbelief for less prejudice but can for God being a space squid who hates you, then maybe sit with that and really think about it.”
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@GF I mean that’s not really what the discussion has been, at all. PS it is fun for some people to explore these things, and that is as valid as wanting to avoid any rl issues.
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@hellfrog I apologize.
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@GF said in New Concept:
if you can’t suspend your disbelief for less prejudice but can for God being a space squid who hates you, then maybe sit with that and really think about it.
If it’s a fictional setting? I absolutely can suspend my disbelief for that. But history is established. Someone (sorry can’t find the quote) mentioned “it’s just the 1920s but without discrimination.”
I don’t know what that means.
I’m not being snarky. I hate discrimination with a burning passion in RL, and I fully respect someone not wanting to deal with that in their pretendy funtimes.
The problem is that discrimination is so deeply baked into societal systems that it’s just not as simple to me as snapping your fingers and saying it doesn’t exist.
Everyone always points to Wild West settings and says: “If you can imagine a world where the PCs don’t die of dysentery, why can’t you imagine a world without discrimination?”
Easy. You’re not pretending dysentery doesn’t exist, you’re just saying the PCs are lucky enough to not contract it, or to contract it and survive – both of which actually happened.
“A world without discrimination” is just not the same thing. How did it get that way? Let’s start from that Wild West setting…if racism isn’t a thing, then logically slavery wouldn’t have been. There wouldn’t have been a Civil War (or it would have gone very differently). Heck, the entire economic basis of the south would probably be dramatically different. Oh and would America even exist at all if not for the genocide against the native peoples? How far back do we go with this?
If you want to do alt-history, that’s cool. That’s what Savage Skies did. They picked a divergence point (something about “when dragons appeared” IIRC) and then wrote the history from that point forward to explain why their imaginary world is different from our real world. It’s a bunch more work, but it addresses the issue cleanly.
Less clean is “racism exists but we don’t want stories about it here” because of systemic discrimination. What about the laws of the land? What about PCs who have discrimination in their backstories? It gets thorny.
I’m not telling people how they should RP. I just wish people would stop ascribing evil motivations to those of us who just have a hard time imagining a historical setting as an egalitarian utopia.
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@Faraday said in New Concept:
If it’s a fictional setting? I absolutely can suspend my disbelief for that. But history is established. Someone (sorry can’t find the quote) mentioned “it’s just the 1920s but without discrimination.”
I don’t know what that means.
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I’m not telling people how they should RP. I just wish people would stop ascribing evil motivations to those of us who just have a hard time imagining a historical setting as an egalitarian utopia.This was me and what I said was This is a different 1920s where bigotry has been solved. I used that phrasing because I was trying to touch on what you’ve gone into detail on here. Like you, fictional histories leave me struggling to reconcile an internally-consistent setting.
I have a lot to say on the topic but I am way of doing so for the same reason you cited in your closing statement.
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@Faraday said in New Concept:
I’m not telling people how they should RP. I just wish people would stop ascribing evil motivations to those of us who just have a hard time imagining a historical setting as an egalitarian utopia.
I had a bunch of answers for the questions you asked, and I can provide them if you’re interested in hearing them, but I feel like this is the really important part I need to address.
I apologize unreservedly for suggesting that your motivations must be evil. That was not at all my intent. My intent was to say that the selectiveness of the ability to suspend disbelief doesn’t make sense to me, because it’s so easy for me to imagine a world where slavery was a thing without racial animus* that it confuses me why other people can’t. That doesn’t necessarily imply evil to me, just a rigidity of thought that I can’t quite wrap my head around except by thinking of it as an intrusive thought. I should have been more careful to express that, and I was wrong not to take that care. I don’t think you’re an evil person or a cheerleader for racism or anything like that. As far as I can tell, you’ve always been a chill and decent person.
*There’s a lot of money to be made not paying your slaves, and Africans looking so different from Europeans makes it real easy to identify them as a slave class. No need to consider them racially inferior, just a willingness for slave owners to be shitty for money.
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@GF said in New Concept:
My intent was to say that the selectiveness of the ability to suspend disbelief doesn’t make sense to me, because it’s so easy for me to imagine a world where slavery was a thing without racial animus* that it confuses me why other people can’t.
*There’s a lot of money to be made not paying your slaves, and Africans looking so different from Europeans makes it real easy to identify them as a slave class. No need to consider them racially inferior, just a willingness for slave owners to be shitty for money.
You’re right, that alternate explanation makes no sense to me in regards to the historical culture or just, like, human beings.
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@Roz I see. I apologize for bringing it up, and won’t do so again.
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@Faraday said in New Concept:
The problem is that discrimination is so deeply baked into societal systems that it’s just not as simple to me as snapping your fingers and saying it doesn’t exist.
I guess I disagree insofar as it is that simple for me.
The same as it’s that simple for me to snap my fingers and pretend I’m a dragonrider on a world that doesn’t exist, I can pretend to live in a modern earth where I have psychic powers and not once am confronted with bigotry in a meaningful way and could very easily pretend that there’s a version of the 1920s where society is just better.
How did a world with vampires get that way? How did we actually invent space travel? Howcome all the aliens speak English? handwave, handwave
I don’t think (and I hope no one has implied) that there are evil intentions. It’s just different philosophies.
edit lol I think @GF just said basically the same thing, read her post ^
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@KarmaBum I’m the asshole that asks all those kind of questions, because I love asking:
“BUT WHY.”
I’m also the same asshole that will write a dissertation on how these things happened thematically. Not that anyone has to go read it, but I wholly admit that sometimes I will get completely lost in the minutiae.
something something mammoth herd conservation regulations something something
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@GF said in New Concept:
My intent was to say that the selectiveness of the ability to suspend disbelief doesn’t make sense to me, because it’s so easy for me to imagine a world where slavery was a thing without racial animus* that it confuses me why other people can’t. That doesn’t necessarily imply evil to me, just a rigidity of thought that I can’t quite wrap my head around except by thinking of it as an intrusive thought.
NB, Warning, Disclaimer and Plea: I am not saying that games where people are safe from being victimized or re-traumatized or otherwise subject to things they don’t want to be are dumb, bad, or wrong. I am glad there are games that function this way, think they are necessary, and celebrate their existence regardless of my enthusiasm about playing there. My opinions should not be construed as an attack on the existence of such games.
Everything is intersectional. People who are collectively oppressed but in different ways make for the liberal alliances that have improved society over the ages. To take just the 1920s in question as an example the labor advancements of the early 20th century would have got nowhere without the significant involvement of black labor organization finding common cause with Socialists and driving things like the split from the AFL to form the CIO, which had significant effects of pushing those movements away from traditional conservative power structures. Erasing racism undoes such historical reference points. Sure, it could just have happened without the contribution of those black Americans who were motivated by fighting the personal oppression. But it happened the way it did and it’s the kind of story that, to me, makes human existence beautiful despite the darkness.
Our fights for liberation are, to me, the most personally inspiring aspects of our collective history. To snap the fingers and say those struggles didn’t need to happen, or that they happened in the past and it was all wrapped up nice and neat, just takes the arc of society’s development so far from where we are even today that it feels false (to me). There is also something personally troubling to me in the act of defining which forms of oppression have been eradicated and which ones are not. This is why I do not play on Arx, a game where the premise includes eliminating forms of racial and gendered oppression, leaving the caste system and economic horror of the feudal world intact.
These are all just the opinions of someone who defines their life in very political terms. Activism and the study of the philosophy of resistance and has been a big part of my life and the lens I look at the world through is one of critical political and social analysis. I can’t see a world where we’ve “won” because I don’t think such a state is possible. I think the human condition is primarily defined by struggles for agency and liberty and the fight is never-ending. I think those fights are the most important work humanity can engage in and that colors my recreational preferences as well. If I were on a game and met a Dragon-Riding Elf Knight I think the most interesting thing I could do with that has nothing to do with their ear shape or mode of transport. Let me get them in a deep conversation about the morality of the knights serving the feudal class that holds the monopoly on violence in exchange for the privilege of rent farming.
Again, I have no contempt for folks who do just want to enjoy the fantasy of a world without some of humanity’s darkest sides. That organizing a game like that and providing a safe space is a popular enough idea to make for a tenable game is a wonderful thing and a sign that previous struggles have made forward motion. I just want to tell stories of struggle, and I want to explore the human condition, and I want to be able to do so with all I know about what good and evil humans have done.
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@Snackness yes ty sums it up perfectly
The joke/idea being: The young vampire learning to transform into a bat is worried about where her clothes go, and Laszlo replies that she’s focused on the wrong thing, “When I want to transform into a bat, I simply shout BAT!”
Is how I feel about theme questions.
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@KarmaBum said in New Concept:
The joke/idea being: The young vampire learning to transform into a bat is worried about where her clothes go, and Laszlo replies that she’s focused on the wrong thing, “When I want to transform into a bat, I simply shout BAT!”
I feel like this scene accurately describes two different types of players.
I’m the one who wants to know where the clothes go. Once I realized this both about myself and and people who simply shout BAT, a lot of things made more sense to me.
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@KarmaBum Don’t thank me, you came up with it!
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@shit-piss-love said in New Concept:
Everything is intersectional… Erasing racism undoes such historical reference points.
This is what I was trying clumsily to say with my Wild West analogy. Your examples are better.
@KarmaBum said in New Concept:
How did a world with vampires get that way? How did we actually invent space travel? How come all the aliens speak English? handwave, handwave
You handwave better than me, apparently. (nothing wrong with that) If you tell me “it’s WW2 but vampires exist” them I’m gonna have all kinds of questions about how that impacted society, how that altered the course of WW2, etc. I don’t need every single detail, mind you, but I at least need the broad sketches of what happened so that we can all operate from a common frame of reference.
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@Faraday Isn’t the default answer almost always ‘vampires try to do human factory farming (again)’?
Mummy Pun? MUMMY PUN!
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@Jennkryst OK vampires maybe not the best example since they tend to stay hidden in most settings. Aliens, monsters, zombies, whatever.
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This thread right here is why I go “I want to make a cowboy game!” and then @KarmaBum and I start talking about it and we realize we can’t ever make a historical cowboy game because of all this and because we both like to BAT!
Anyway I don’t really understand why it’s become the norm that we can’t have a historical setting without historical struggles. I do understand not wanting to actively play scenes involving extreme -isms and absolutely not suggesting that happen here, but I would happily play in a 1920s game where the sticker on the front says “this shit is happening but we’re here to fight nightmares not be racists”.
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@bear_necessities I think that is the norm for every historical themed game I’ve played in the last 10 years. (this is era-inspired but no you can’t be racist/sexist/homophobic and that will not be tolerated, so deal with it or don’t play.) I can’t think of a historical game now that advertises itself or even wants to be “we are totally accurate and you MUST reflect the attitude of the times according to white male academic assumptions” (because let’s face it, a lot of the things the undesirable folks that aren’t necessarily nazi or custer reenactor wannabes are frankly not the most historically accurate anyway. they’re based with some truth and a lot of wanting to justify the historian’s contemporary views). But maybe it’s just because I didn’t hear of those games.
I think it’s more likely than ever before that a great deal of respect will be given to consent and not forcing players to deal with content they don’t wish to partake in. Even in a historical game.
But I’m not saying that they’re not out there? I’m glad I’ve not come across them.
Editing to add: what makes me somewhat uncomfortable sometimes is the value judgement against people who even want to reference inquality or struggles of the time period, either in their backgrounds or otherwise. I don’t think it’s very common, but like everything when people speak passionately either way they’re going to be a bit more absolutist. But I don’t think this is limited to historical games. I know part of the appeal of certain genres for me is exploring certain themes of oppression and trauma and horror where honestly I get to exert far more control over what my character chooses to do/in the story. Not because I don’t understand the impacts real life, or have not lived them. Because of that I would /never/ want to force anyone to engage in that without full consent. I don’t understand why to some people just even the thought of that would seemingly make me a bad or unsafe person, but by the same token I soft-assume it’s just part of the argument, and that’s not actually what they mean.
