Proposed modern fantasy campaign setting: Gaia Crusaders

[hyzmarca]

Just make it "the evil primitive barbarians made up from various races and driven by evil ideologies and religions are threatening our way of life".

"Diverse Evil Primitive Barbarians" still has the mighty whitey problem. It's just the British Empire vs Africa, Asia, and the Middle East all at once instead of one at a time.

The only way to avoid it is to avoid portraying your antagonists as savage devil-children and treat them as actual people with a perfectly valid culture.

[fectin]

Alternately, embrace the problem. Some cultures are really unpleasant and could use some expedited cultural renormalizing.

Be civilized about presenting only some barbarians as evil and you're fine.

[Fuchs]

Just make it "the evil primitive barbarians made up from various races and driven by evil ideologies and religions are threatening our way of life".

"Diverse Evil Primitive Barbarians" still has the mighty whitey problem. It's just the British Empire vs Africa, Asia, and the Middle East all at once instead of one at a time.

The only way to avoid it is to avoid portraying your antagonists as savage devil-children and treat them as actual people with a perfectly valid culture.

Some cultures are not perfectly valid. Fighting fantasy nazi barbarians who want more Lebensraum is not "the british empire vs. all the colored folk", it's "all the good people vs. the evil ones".

When you have a modern culture on one side, with gender equality, human rights and democracy, and a feudal system based on oppressing anyone not in the noble caste/race on the other side, then it's good vs. evil, not some stugle between two perfectly valid cultures.

[hyzmarca]

When you have a modern culture on one side, with gender equality, human rights and democracy, and a feudal system based on oppressing anyone not in the noble caste/race on the other side, then it's good vs. evil, not some struggle between two perfectly valid cultures.

The problem is that feudal cultures were never actually like that. If that's what you're fighting then you're fighting a caricature, a cartoon. There is nothing wrong with fighting a cartoon if you're playing a game, but you can't honestly say that it is at all realistic.


Hollywood Feudalism is simple, real feudalism is complex. And it's about a hell of a lot more than just keeping the nobles in power. It's also about protecting the rights of the commoners. It also doesn't help that there are umpteen-hundred different varieties of it. If you go into something like this from a point of view that feudalism = Hollywood Feudalism = Bad then you've already given up on serious deconstructionism and descended into parody. You can't have a world that's populated by cartoon characters with cartoon politics and actually be serious at the same time.

A serious game designer really has to crack a few history books to get a good feel of it.



About the other thing, National Socialism was a political movement, not a culture. It was a minority political movement, at that, and was only propelled into power due to reasonable public resentment over the Treaty of Versailles. Moreover, such caricaturization of Germany led to such interesting conclusions as the idea that random 10-year-old German girls deserve to be raped and the idea that it would be awesome to let millions of German civilians starve to death.


The problem is that once you label your enemy as Evil then you're justified in doing practically anything to them. That's why the Evil Alignment exists in D&D, so that Joe Paladin can feel good about raping and killing Sally the Orc Farmer certain in his knowledge that it was absolutely the right thing to do according to objective cosmic morality.

And this is exactly what you don't want in a deconstruction.


So yeah, your Nazi barbarians who want some living space actually have a perfectly legitimate grievance and would be the good guys if not for the fact that they went absurdly overboard and misdirected the worst of their revenge by several miles. That doesn't mean that they're not people.

[Fuchs]

The problem is that once you label your enemy as Evil then you're justified in doing practically anything to them. .

That's utterly wrong. Evil people have rights too. The laws of war are in effect even when fighting evil. That doesn't make them less evil.

It also doesn't matter if it's hollywood feudalism or real feudalism - compared to a democracy in our modern sense, with our values and rights, feudalism is wrong.

I hate it when people try to tell me that all cultures, even primitive, sexist and racist ones, are equal to a modern, enlightened democratic culture.

[hyzmarca]

In the conditions that gave rise to feudalism, modern democracy wold fail miserably and everyone would starve to death.

You can't isolate a society from the pressures around it or its technological limitations.

Without modern agrotech farming is extremely expensive and extremely risky. It requires a lot of land, a lot of labor, and is an absolute crapshoot depending on the weather. Independent farmers have no safety net. One long winter, one bout of crop disease, and their entire family starves to death. You can certainly understand why farmers do not like that solution. So instead they rent land from the rich guy who is legally obligated to provide them with a safety net. They can be sure that they won't starve to death unless everyone is starving to death.

It makes sense. It makes good sense. The land owner provides provides for your basic necessities as part of the rental agreement, and the agreement remains valid no matter who owns the land. And with your basic needed guaranteed to be taken care of (baring country-wide famine, which unfortunately does happen), you're better off than you could be an an independent farmer.

And then there are trade issues, defense, water rights, roads, and all sorts of other things that make pure anarco-syndicalist communes less feasible. All of that is usually taken care of by the guy you pay rent to.

There is nothing noble about attempting to tear down a system that works so that you can replace it with an unwanted and unpopular system that will most likely cause mass destitution and starvation. That doesn't make you a hero. At best it makes you a well-meaning moron.

Of course, with magitech that exists in D&D feudalism makes jack all sense. But most D&D societies aren't really feudalistic.

That's utterly wrong. Evil people have rights too. The laws of war are in effect even when fighting evil. That doesn't make them less evil.

That's extremely naive. It's a great principle, sure, but there will always be an urge to do evil unto evil, and the more your propaganda caricaturizes the opposition the easier it will be for your soldiers to slip up and do something silly. That's just human nature. In this case your soldiers would be the players. There is nothing wrong with the players having some guilt free orc genocide, it's good clean fun. But it might undermine the point that the game is trying to make.

Of course, the idea of an evil society also implies collective guilt with is pretty much anathema to any modern sense of justice.

[Fuchs]

In the conditions that gave rise to feudalism, modern democracy wold fail miserably and everyone would starve to death.

You can't isolate a society from the pressures around it or its technological limitations.

In this case we talk about we do have a working, modern society (an utopia even according to the OP), so it's possible. So, tearing down feudalism in favor of democracy is possible, and therefore the right thing to do.

That's extremely naive. It's a great principle, sure, but there will always be an urge to do evil unto evil, and the more your propaganda caricaturizes the opposition the easier it will be for your soldiers to slip up and do something silly. That's just human nature. In this case your soldiers would be the players. There is nothing wrong with the players having some guilt free orc genocide, it's good clean fun. But it might undermine the point that the game is trying to make.

It's reality. Not just a great pricniple, but the law. It's what we in law enforcement adhere to. It's what I practise at work. Even the worst cases of murderes are humans, with rights. We do not torture them, we do not abuse them.

Of course, the idea of an evil society also implies collective guilt with is pretty much anathema to any modern sense of justice.

No. There is no collective guilt even in an evil society. And an evil society is not an idea, it's a fact, just check our world and history.

[hyzmarca]

In this case we talk about we do have a working, modern society (an utopia even according to the OP), so it's possible. So, tearing down feudalism in favor of democracy is possible, and therefore the right thing to do.

Maybe, maybe not. It is a post-apocalyptic setting.

And anyway, you'll fail miserably unless you actually understand the underlying culture and social system. You can't just dismiss the whole thing as ebil and expect any successful reforms.

It's reality. Not just a great pricniple, but the law. It's what we in law enforcement adhere to. It's what I practise at work. Even the worst cases of murderes are humans, with rights. We do not torture them, we do not abuse them.

We're not talking about cops here. We're talking about gamers. And, we'll, I was talking about the Red Army. And America's early food policy in occupied Germany.

Of course, you should know that anyone, given the proper circumstances, will make atrocious mistakes. Dehumanizing an entire group only makes such errors in judgment far more likely.

No. There is no collective guilt even in an evil society. And an evil society is not an idea, it's a fact, just check our world and history.

I think we're debating at cross purposes here. You're subtly separating the social structures from the people. I can get down with that. The problem is that most people aren't so nuanced. They'll look at the phrase "evil society" and see it as an excuse to kill all the Jews and steal their stuff. That's what happens when you throw around blanket labels.

Instead of throwing blankets over entire groups and systems, it is better to point out specific practices. It's also better to use less charged terms, like "maladaptive" instead of "evil".

[Fuchs]

I think we're debating at cross purposes here. You're subtly separating the social structures from the people. I can get down with that. The problem is that most people aren't so nuanced. They'll look at the phrase "evil society" and see it as an excuse to kill all the Jews and steal their stuff. That's what happens when you throw around blanket labels.

Instead of throwing blankets over entire groups and systems, it is better to point out specific practices. It's also better to use less charged terms, like "maladaptive" instead of "evil".

No. Systems can and should be judged, as should individual humans. Calling an evil system evil is not dehumanizing the people trapped in it. But those who support the system should be judged for that.

[hyzmarca]

No. Systems can and should be judged, as should individual humans. Calling an evil system evil is not dehumanizing the people trapped in it. But those who support the system should be judged for that.

When Reagan was visiting Gorbachev in Moscow a reporter asked him if he still believed that the Soviet Union was an Evil Empire. He responded "No." And he went on to say that it was time they stopped talking about each other and started talking to each other.

Judgment gets in the way of progress.

Calling an evil system evil is not dehumanizing the people trapped in it.

Many people will perceive it that way, especially those who agree.

[Fuchs]

Many people will perceive it that way, especially those who agree.

They are as wrong as those who make up excuses for inhuman systems.

[Fuchs]

Many people will perceive it that way, especially those who agree.

They are as wrong as those who make up excuses for inhuman systems.