Are Tabletop RPGs becoming more liberal?

[Duke Flauros]

So RPGs shouldn't care about the african american demographic, either?

Ah tell you, cuzin Billy-Bob, no one cares about them there neegers, them there preeverted homy sexuals, or them there Jews!

Unless you are actually significantly more than one person, no amount of your belonging to a demographic will stop it from being pitifully small and thus not worth considering from any kind of business or marketing standpoint.

The whole idea of marketing is to sell your idea to as many people as possible, even if each individual demographic would be individually too small to milk.

EDIT: And incidentally, no one should ever care about the Wiccan demographic either. See again: Tiny, no money in it.

White Wolf went of business pandering to only a small Christian minority. Chick-Fil-A is suffering because they decided to attack homosexuals on a "Biblical Basis". Rick Santorum lost the presidential nomination to Mitt Romney because Santorum would only pander to his base. 4th ed. sucked because Mearls designed it for only people who play like him.

[Prak]

Cham, I'm a satanist, you fuck, and your statement is like saying "No one should ever care about the wiccan demographic."

Edit: really, a satanic Virtue/Vice set would look like this:

• Virtues
• Indulgence Satanism teaches that indulgence is a good thing, leading to gratification that releases tension and urges, thus clearing the mind.
• Action Satanism values "vital existence" over "spiritual pipe dreams," and believes action to be infinitely more worthwhile than prayer.
• Wisdom Satanism urges one to act with wisdom, and seeing through deception, whether from without or within.
• Gratitude Satanism instructs it's followers to repay kindness with kindness
• Vengeance A Satanist is taught to repay pain, harassment and torment with the same
• Responsibility Satanism teaches one to be accountable and to hold others accountable
  
  Vices (Ignoring the contrarian nature of Satanic word use)
• Stupidity The vice of falling to what you are told, and not looking for the truth
• Pretentiousness The vice of empty or undeserved pride and thanklessness.
• Solipsism The vice of believing yourself to be the only truth, projecting your nature and reaction on to others
• Slavishness The vice of letting another entity dictate your actions and attitudes without good reason.
• Lack of Perspective The vice of tunnel vision, whether forgetting who you or others are, or what has come before or is happening now.
• Lack of Aesthetics The vice of laziness. Everything a satanist does should be done with style, and appreciation for classic, timeless beauty is essential, as is gratitude for Lesser Magic (read, manipulation, in a way).

Now, yes, I engaged in a bit of PR here, as well as condensing things down, as I said the muslims dearly need to do with their virtues. And, yes a lot of satanists are full of fail in these respects... but that's hardly different from other religions.

The thing is, because of the way the mechanics are set up Vices have to be something that PCs can do at least once a session to get willpower back.

Gluttony, greed, wrath, lust are pretty easy to do in a game. Gluttony, you just eat whatever isn't nailed down. That's easy. Find a melted candy bar on the ground? Eat it. Meet a girl in a bar? Tear her leg off and eat it. Chicks dig that. Kill a werewolf? Eat it. It's easy to just eat things at inappropriate times.

Greed, of course, means stealing stuff. You can do that quite easily, too. If you see something you want, take it. Preferably you take it from an NPC, not a member of your party, because that's disruptive. But you could totally be the Carmen Sandiego of the World of Darkness. Rob a bank, knock over a jewrly store. Put the Eiffel tower in your secret underground vault.

Wrath, of course, can be accomplished just by killing things. That's 90% of the game right there, so you'll be regaining willpower pretty easily. You're at a resturant and your steak is medium well when you specifically ordered rare? Kill everyone there, patrons and chefs alike. You might also want to eat them, but that's the glutton's job.

Lust, of course, is easiest. There is no point in a game session when you can't have a character just drop their pants and masturbate. Meeting with the leader of the local vampire coterie? Just jerk off right there in front of him. Bam, you regained some willpower. It's also always an option to rape the corpses of your defeated enemies.

Envy is harder to do, but it's basically just a lust, greed, or gluttony directed at something another guy has.

Pride's the only one that required deep roleplaying. And even then you can just resort to childish contrarianism when dealing with 1000-year-old vampires.

On the other hand, Im not at all sure how to practically rollplay any of the Satanic Vices, except possibly Lack of Aesthetics. But intentionally looking like a dweeb all the time isn't exactly work a willpower point.

Ah, sorry, I know next to nothing about NWoD so I kind of assumed that acting to one's virtues was supposed to be beneficial and acting against them was supposed to be detrimental. But yes, it is much easier to figure out ways to roleplay indulging in the 7 deadlies, possibly because they're proscriptions against such natural things...

[hyzmarca]

Ah, sorry, I know next to nothing about NWoD so I kind of assumed that acting to one's virtues was supposed to be beneficial and acting against them was supposed to be detrimental. But yes, it is much easier to figure out ways to roleplay indulging in the 7 deadlies, possibly because they're proscriptions against such natural things...

When you indulge a Virtue, you get a full Willpower refresh. When you indulge a Vice you get a single Willpower point back.

Indulging both are beneficial. Indulging the Virtue is most beneficial but is supposed to be difficult and limited to once a session max. Indulging a Vice has a lesser benefit, but is easier to spam, though it is limited to once per scene.

Mechanically, you're best off indulging your Vice once every scene and your Virtue near the end of the session after spamming your Willpower (or at the beginning of one if you start out WP drained).

[OgreBattle]

So RPGs shouldn't care about the african american demographic, either?

No they should, because there is a large demographic of white people who will be offended if they perceive the game as being racist. http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?637 ... nda-racist

[RadiantPhoenix]

In answer to the original question:
No; "liberal" is becoming more "conservative"

[Whipstitch]

I can't believe people are still trying to sell this herp a derp "ONLY THE MAJORITY MATTERS!1!" approach to marketing every time we talk about White Wolf games and morality systems. Every god damn thing about your marketing strategy will come to naught if you're unable to make your product relevant to your audience and what they are doing. And with White Wolf games, you're selling books to people that want to go to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, except when they get there they want to find debonair but debauched monsters who lived through the French Revolution and stuff rather than hang out with Mr. Rogers and some hand puppets. And that scenario really doesn't benefit from taking the panoply of of ethics and philosophy that exists in the world and boiling it down to the one shopworn system any dumbass who went to sunday school probably already knows anyway. I mean, fuck guys, I was raised Roman Catholic, okay? My grandma's got a Virgin Mary shrine in her house. When I crack open a book and find a lack of support for characters drawn from the "Not Christian" pile I don't think "Wow, like, you guys really get me man, I'm touched". No, I think "These chuckle fucks are wasting my time," and I think that because they are actually wasting my fucking time.

[Prak]

Yeah. If you're making a specifically christian RPG, like Holy Lands (terrible, by the way), then you're at least justified, but your audience is going to be vanishingly small. When you're writing a game about animistic man eating monsters and blood sucking fiends who thought Caligula was a pretty cool guy that historically appeals to such marginalized demographics as goths, wiccans, satanists, etc, you really need to play up those minority drawing things.

[Whipstitch]

I honestly think the demographics of the player base borders upon being irrelevant. The group I pulled from was pretty much all Catholics or Lutherans and most of them still are today. But the character sheets and NPCs still ended up more diverse than that because pretending you're something else is very nearly the entire point.

[Chamomile]

Africans make up 12.6% of the American population. That is actually a fairly large number, despite not being the majority. The number of Wiccans and especially Satanists in America are both dwarfed by the number of Mormons, and somehow I seriously doubt anyone cares if this or that RPG didn't support Mormon values.

The fact is, if you somehow get every Wiccan in America to play your game, you are still doing worse than 4e. There comes a point when a demographic becomes too small to care about at all. When you sit down and decide which value systems you want to support in your RPGs, picking just one is always going to be stupid barring some mitigating circumstances like if you're making "Catholic: The Repenting" or whatever, but that doesn't mean nWoD would've done better if your pet philosophy had been better represented. There's not even any strong reason to believe the moral system was a significant factor in the failure of nWoD at all. There are plenty of other potential failure points in that game.

[Prak]

2008 religious census data shows that, yes, there are only 342,000 wiccans, but then include more than just Wiccans by reaching into other faiths that could marketed to as a group. There are 1,189,000 Buddhists, 582,000 Hindus, 186,000 "Native Americans," 340,000 un-specified pagans, 426,000 spiritualists, 1,985,000 Agnostics, and before even adding the number of Satanists, that gets you to 4,098,000.

12.6% would mean there are roughly 39,260,582 african americans. So, sure, African Americans out number Wiccans, Buddhists, Hindus, Native Americans, Spiritualists, Pagans, and Agnostics about 10:1.

I cannot find demographics for RPGs based on anything other than income, money spent age, gender and marital status, but come now, I think we can look around the local gaming store and realize that wiccans and pagans, at least, are much more highly represented amongst gamers than african americans.


EDIT: You know what, that's really not even the fucking point.

The point is that, philosophically, NWoD is highly based in christian theology, when the player base they target is, by in large, not. I can count on one hand the number of christian gamers I know. The majority of gamers I know are atheist, agnostic, pagan, or some other philosophy.

More over, an african american has no inherent reason to find the Virtue/Vice system of NWoD offensive. People asked for cultures which do not uphold various cardinal virtues as praise worthy, I happen to be of an underrepresented and maligned culture which refutes two of them. But really, Wiccans would refute quite a few as well, and Atheists refute most of them. At the same time, the christians who could be attracted by the Virtue/Vice concept being only christian virtues tend to abhor RPGs anyway, so it's not like anything is gained. It was a dumb move by WW, and it alienated a lot of their player base, while bringing in no one.

[Chamomile]

The fact that you have to reach for such a tiny group to find anyone who doesn't believe in the virtues only serves to prove that they are, in fact, very nearly universal virtues. The fact that you, personally, happen to belong to the group does nothing to change the fact that only a vanishingly small percentage of people are not represented by the system.

To say nothing of the fact that most criminals do, in fact, believe in justice (many of them strongly believe, with varying degrees of correctness, that they are oppressed and their criminal acts are justified as balancing out injustices done to them), atheists do in fact believe in the definition of faith given by White Wolf (which includes "it might involve belief in a Grand Unified Theory whereby the seeming randomness of the universe is ultimately an expression of mathematical precision"), and even if that definition is weird and bizarre and not what people think of when they hear the word "faith," fact remains that plenty of atheists do in fact believe in it.

White Wolf used the seven deadly sins/virtues for the same reason that Overlord did, not because they were trying to make some point about Christianity being "correct," because otherwise they would not have changed the definition of practically every single virtue. It was a motif. It was clumsy and poorly executed and not entirely appropriate (just like everything else in that game), but it's nothing to start a moral crusade over.

[Prak]

I didn't reach. Nor was my belonging to such a group in anyway giving it preference. I happened to know of a group off the top of my head, and thus used it.

If that is not sufficient, then I would contend that anyone who acts even when the outcome of their actions is assured to end in negative consequences to a statistical certainty is not one who cherishes hope, but action.

Or, to get pedantic:

Hope being a combination of the desire for something and expectation of receiving it, the virtue is hoping for Divine union and so eternal happiness.

So, Atheists, Agnostics, Hindus, Buddhists, and pretty much anyone who doesn't believe in an after life would not exalt Hope. This would include, by the way, Vampires, who would prefer their eternal existence and endless human blood cattle to Divine Union.

Temperance, as a virtue, is not moderation of deed and action as the word actually means, but an eschewing of certain things, like sex or alcohol. Therefore I would contend that the percentage of Americans who uphold temperance is actually smaller in number than, oh, say, the number of Satanists.

Believing a scientific theory is not faith. It is knowledge, which is diametrically opposed to faith, as knowledge requires evidence, and faith eschews evidence. So, sure, under WW's definition, Atheists have "faith," but at that point you might as well say you have faith in gravity and get a willpower refresh anytime you fail to fly off into space.

Justice, as defined by Augustine, the person christians actually look to for this shit, is "love serving only the loved object, and therefore ruling rightly." I have no clue what the fuck that means, but I'm pretty sure that it is not upheld by the majority of criminals.

There was no reason to cram seven christian vices and virtues into the game and tell everyone they had to be defined by them. As was pointed out earlier, the Nature/Demeanor system worked perfectly fine, and if they really wanted to switch from "piss poor one line description of your character's personality and mindset" to "terrible failings and saving graces of your character" then they could have just taken a couple pages and catalogued a smattering of virtues and vices from various cultures/philosophies.

But, honestly, I'm just going to quote Frank here, because it says all that needs to be said:

Telling people that everyone has to and does fit into the virtues and vices schema of the Catholic Church is offensive in a way that merely having Jesus be the literal son of god who is also god made flesh who died to convince himself to forgive you for a crime you didn't commit which he would otherwise feel compelled to punish you for eternally in his literally limitless mercy and justice would not be.

[Koumei]

Wait, pretentiousness is a vice in Satanism? Wow, that'd never work with White Wolf: it's all about pretentiousness.

[Prak]

I don't know... a good case could be made for a vampire with max dots in Mindraping not actually being pretentious at all, since he really can make you his bitch...

[K]

White Wolf used the seven deadly sins/virtues for the same reason that Overlord did, not because they were trying to make some point about Christianity being "correct," because otherwise they would not have changed the definition of practically every single virtue. It was a motif. It was clumsy and poorly executed and not entirely appropriate (just like everything else in that game), but it's nothing to start a moral crusade over.

The problem is that The Seven Deadly Sins and Seven Virtues are specifically and historically Catholic ideas with a very narrow focus on morality.

WW could have had a number of "virtues" and "sins" that would have fit any number of philosophies and had that work and let players use ones that fit their character. I mean, "Cruelty" is not a sin under their metric unless you do a wildly tortured and disingenuous reading of Wrath or Lust, and yet many religions would frown on Cruelty for their own variety of reasons which may not be explicit in their doctrine.

Hell, most of the Seven Deadly Sins don't even make sense. I mean, no one other than Protestants and Catholics even care about Sloth and I'm not even going to go into the number of religions that embrace Lust that range from Taoism and Tantric Bhuddists and Hindus to ancient Dionysists to modern Wiccans.

Basically, if you think that WoD Virtue and Sins are universal to most religions, you don't know anything about modern or ancient world religions AND your understanding of modern ethics is woefully underdeveloped.

[Winnah]

I don't think lust is a sin. It has a biological function. It is only when people have seriously fucked up abberrant sexual impulses and act on them that lust even becomes an issue; serial killers, pedos, chicken fuckers and rapists.

I think Envy has some merit, in that it motivates people to succeed. Pointless bitching, tall poppy syndrome and shadenfreude make you a dick, but motivating yourself to get something you want, that someone else already has is OK.

Wrath has a use if you go with the "I'm angry and I want justice" interpretation. Meekly depending on a sky-fairy to administer justice for wrongdoings is incredibly stupid and disempowering.

I don't know, my opinion on this shit is incredibly ill informed.

[Prak]

Not really, seems you have a pretty good grip on it, Winnah.

[tussock]

The fact that you have to reach for such a tiny group to find anyone who doesn't believe in the virtues only serves to prove that they are, in fact, very nearly universal virtues.

How did you miss that bit about the enlightenment? You know, science? I know the US is pretty backwards about some things that were controversial at the time its political parties formed (like evolution and the age of the earth, how cool is it that the former predicted the latter) but for the rest of it science is really big and well understood there, and in most rich countries.

Excepting climate change in recent years, where you bump up against corporate propaganda. But whatever.

Anyhoo, the virtues of the enlightenment are scepticism, testing your ideas, peer review, proof. Hell: equality before the law and freedom of movement, speech, and association are huge in the US. Not perfectly effective, but totally virtuous.

Faith is a sin. Believing things without testing them, like, say, about food safety. Hope is a sin, like in finance and food safety you don't get to assume everything will work out.

For capitalism, profit and competition is virtue. Cooperation is a criminalised sin. Giving is tax evasion. Sharing is for children.


Universal virtues? What in the buggery fuck, dude? This isn't pre-plague Europe.

[Voss]

I once read a brief statement in a blog post by Robert Kuntz that modern-day RPGs are more "politically correct" than their older counterparts.

Various RPGs (Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Blue Rose) have been described as carrying a liberal message. Some recent examples, such as Eclipse Phase, appear to have a more prominent message or political tilt in their works.

I personally think that RPG games have been mostly liberal for their time. Shadowrun has always had an anti-corporate message warning against the power of big business run amok. Many White Wolf RPGs have taken liberal stances on various issues in their RPGs (Werewolf has environmentalist overtones, most of their RPGs are progressive in their views of homosexuality, the "revolutionary anti-establishment" Carthians in the new Vampire appear a lesser evil than the Lancea Sanctum and the "old money" Invictus).

The societies of several games (Eclipse Phase, Shadowrun, Blue Rose) are more socially accepting of sexual alternatives to heterosexual monogamy, the developers of Pathfinder have described that diversity (in regards to real-world races and sexual orientations) are a positive step for RPGs, and this is deliberate in their Pathfinder books.

Eclipse Phase takes its message even further, making it possibly the most liberal RPG of all. Traditional 21st century capitalism is referred to as an historical failure, organized religion in general (especially the Abrahamic ones) has fallen by the wayside, the Jovian Republic faction is nominally fascist, yet it seems more akin to a mash-up of American right-wing ideologies than an accurate reinvention of Mussolini and Hitler's doctrines. The Hypercapitalist Planetary Consortium is a sham democracy, while the Autonomist habitats are the most ideal and happy societies (as happy as can be in a dystopia).

What do you folks think? Have Tabletop RPGs traditionally been liberal for their time in regards to societal messages? Is the industry eagerly adopting left-wing messages? Or is this all natter and people reading too much into things?

Complete and utter garbage, more than natter. If this were early 90s and Shadowrun (of the time) and White Wolf were still going concerns, you might have a point. But that was 20 years ago now, and most products are devoid of any message at all. Well, beyond the idea of violence as entertainment, which is very old and conservative indeed.

You're also conflating 'politically correct,' 'liberal' and 'left-wing' as if they are exact synonyms, and that is frankly making my brain hurt. And if you don't believe American right wing ideology has facist roots [particularly the emphasis on nationalism and the whole 'anything foreign is evil' thing], I am a bit disturbed for the future.

But anyway... TTRPGs have very rarely been liberal in any sense of the word. Even WW, which people try to tout on this subject, didn't do it 'for the cause,' or anything like that. It was mostly to shock and titilate the middle class white kids that made up their target market. Edgy sells, particularly to angsty teenagers.

[Zaranthan]

On the other hand, Im not at all sure how to practically rollplay any of the Satanic Vices, except possibly Lack of Aesthetics. But intentionally looking like a dweeb all the time isn't exactly work a willpower point.

It's not that bad.

Stupidity The vice of falling to what you are told, and not looking for the truth

Take what someone tells you at face value, not because you have good reason to believe them, but because you can't be arsed to fact-check them.

Pretentiousness The vice of empty or undeserved pride and thanklessness.

This is just classic Pride. There's a kicker in those "empty" and "undeserved" qualifiers, but that just means you need to kick it up to 11.

Solipsism The vice of believing yourself to be the only truth, projecting your nature and reaction on to others

"Projecting" is the keyword here. This isn't just acting like you're right, it's acting like everybody else on earth thinks the same way you do.

Slavishness The vice of letting another entity dictate your actions and attitudes without good reason.

Like Stupidity, this is doing what someone says, not because they have some authority over you or a good plan, but because you can't be arsed making a decision yourself.

Lack of Perspective The vice of tunnel vision, whether forgetting who you or others are, or what has come before or is happening now.

You can probably spin any sort of rash decision into this.

Lack of Aesthetics The vice of laziness. Everything a satanist does should be done with style, and appreciation for classic, timeless beauty is essential, as is gratitude for Lesser Magic (read, manipulation, in a way).

Solving every problem with a hammer comes naturally to most RPG players.


Given my understanding of how WoD Vices are supposed to work, this is a pretty good set.

[Libertad]

Complete and utter garbage, more than natter. If this were early 90s and Shadowrun (of the time) and White Wolf were still going concerns, you might have a point. But that was 20 years ago now, and most products are devoid of any message at all. Well, beyond the idea of violence as entertainment, which is very old and conservative indeed.

1. You're also conflating 'politically correct,' 'liberal' and 'left-wing' as if they are exact synonyms, and that is frankly making my brain hurt.

2. And if you don't believe American right wing ideology has facist roots [particularly the emphasis on nationalism and the whole 'anything foreign is evil' thing], I am a bit disturbed for the future.

But anyway... TTRPGs have very rarely been liberal in any sense of the word. Even WW, which people try to tout on this subject, didn't do it 'for the cause,' or anything like that. It was mostly to shock and titilate the middle class white kids that made up their target market. Edgy sells, particularly to angsty teenagers.

I mostly made this thread due to various factors: every so often, I see a message on grognards.txt or somewhere else complaining about White Wolf having an agenda or that the inclusion of homosexual characters in RPGs is immmoral and a sign of societal decline (I recall something like this happening with Blue Rose in 2005), or something else along those lines. Of course, almost everything seems liberal to an ultraconservative, and society is more liberal than it was on many issues decades ago. I'm probably only focusing on a very small pool of samples for games instead of looking at all the Indie Games and retroclones. But I still want to get a conversation started on things I find interesting.

There's also the fact that "liberal" factions in products like Vampre or Eclipse Phase tend to be the lesser evils in comparison to more authoritarian or "conservative" factions, and that many historical RPGs include things like relative gender equality for PCs in order to be accommodating to many different character concepts. The last example may not be liberal so much as common sense, because otherwise it wouldn't be any fun to face constant discrimination. But it may be seen as liberal to some.

As for your points:

1. I don't mean to; in the Kuntz example, "politically correct" is US conservative code-word for "liberal," which is what I thought that he meant. Maybe not the best example. As for liberalism and the left-wing, I realize that there are many different kinds of liberalism (like classical liberalism), but I focused on the US version for this thread.

2. Many American Right-wing ideologies are older than fascism. Also, fascism is totalitarian, but it's a specific kind of totalitarianism with things that set it apart. from other forms of nationalism. It views the Nation-State as the end-all be-all of national unity, that only a select few should lead society instead of letting the majority have a say in national policy. It believes that universal, worldwide peace (or any kind of utopia) is impossible, and that conflict is inherent to human nature. It is highly collectivist, emphasizing that individualism is a negative. The US GOP, despite its nationalist and militaristic leanings, is too free-market friendly and too individualistic in economic affairs to actually be fascist.

I realize that many American Neo-Nazis align against the Democrats and champion things like States' Rights, but they mostly took Hitler's policies of white supremacy and ditched the other aspects of fascism. Actual fascists would find the concept of States' Rights absurd and view Ron Paul's policies of deregulation and government dismantling as insane (Ron has a following in white supremacist circles due to his racist newsletters).

TL;DR Just because an ideology or party shares something in common with fascists doesn't make them fascists, nor does it mean that they're taking direct inspiration from them.

[Josh_Kablack]

Just because an ideology or party shares something in common with fascists doesn't make them fascists, nor does it mean that they're taking direct inspiration from them.

I am totally in favor of having trains that run on time.

[Voss]

1. I don't mean to; in the Kuntz example, "politically correct" is US conservative code-word for "liberal," which is what I thought that he meant. Maybe not the best example. As for liberalism and the left-wing, I realize that there are many different kinds of liberalism (like classical liberalism), but I focused on the US version for this thread.

Ah. What to anywhere but here would be Centrist. Or for the modern Obama Democrat, right of center.

2. Many American Right-wing ideologies are older than fascism. Also, fascism is totalitarian, but it's a specific kind of totalitarianism with things that set it apart. from other forms of nationalism. It views the Nation-State as the end-all be-all of national unity, that only a select few should lead society instead of letting the majority have a say in national policy. It believes that universal, worldwide peace (or any kind of utopia) is impossible, and that conflict is inherent to human nature. It is highly collectivist, emphasizing that individualism is a negative.

Eh. With the sole exception of the collectivist angle, this is exactly what a lot of American Right really believes, and will happily tell you so. What they won't explicitly tell you is the individualism only applies to them (as the select few leaders), but they would rather herd the sheep in a group than not. Their followers, by the way, are the good sheep, who they will happily feed off, but give no real power, while they will be perfectly happily grinding down everyone who disagrees or is different in some fashion. And you can pick whatever meaning of 'ground down' you like, whether it is a servile class, expulsion, or death.

The rhetorical talking points about freedom and liberty are clearly bullshit to anyone that can grasp the consequences of the shit they endorse, and differ very little from the stump speeches of Facist leaders of the early to mid 20th century. I'm about a month shy of escaping the American Southwest, and I'm honestly surprised I haven't heard political speeches about securing water, other natural resources and 'Living Space' for the True American Culture, even if it means taking them away from the reservations (again), or the 'obviously' illegal immigrants. Or 'securing the border' by moving it a couple hundred miles south.

Ron Paul is a weird guy to bring up. Most Republicans treat him as a crazy guy or a bad joke at best. He is hardly an example of the typical far Right.

[Whipstitch]

I suspect that things are stacked a bit against stereotypical hawkish conservative factions simply by virtue that it's easier for a lazy writer to set up the the guys who are more willing to resort to violence as outright villains than it is the liberal hippie dippie types. Well, unless you're Terry Goodkind and don't see anything weird about having your protagonist hack his way through a crowd of pacifists for great justice.

[Voss]

Well, yeah. You are measured by the quality of your enemies and all that. Enemies that don't do shit are boring compared to people with seemingly endless personal machinations, shadowy organizations and conspiracies of power.