OSSR: Deadlands Back East The South

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Whipstitch
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Post by Whipstitch »

I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of Deadlands' name recognition stems more from Doomtown just because being in the CCG space in the '90s meant you got to hobnob with MtG. In my nerd circles Deadlands and Legend of the 5 Rings were mostly those things that sounded really cool in InQuest write-ups. We'd talk about it and make noises about maybe getting a game or two going but at the end of the day it was still WotC we ended up throwing our money at.
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OgreBattle
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Post by OgreBattle »

Playing as heroic Britishers and other colonials in pip pip cheery ho whitewashed 1800's is still acceptable yeah? Like the tories in Britain made fun of President Obama for having a grandfather tortured under Churchill's reign, it does feel like only loser's atrocities get highlighted, winning lets you brag about your flag no matter how blood soaked it is.

This sort of thing has been bugging me as the People's Republic of China censors seemed to have cancelled the release of a WWII I was looking forward to because the Republic of China flag was shown too often.
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Libertad
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Post by Libertad »

OgreBattle wrote:Playing as heroic Britishers and other colonials in pip pip cheery ho whitewashed 1800's is still acceptable yeah? Like the tories in Britain made fun of President Obama for having a grandfather tortured under Churchill's reign, it does feel like only loser's atrocities get highlighted, winning lets you brag about your flag no matter how blood soaked it is.

This sort of thing has been bugging me as the People's Republic of China censors seemed to have cancelled the release of a WWII I was looking forward to because the Republic of China flag was shown too often.
I cannot speak to UK gamers, but in the USA there's a broader anti-colonialiast strain of thought among the left these days. And not just among communists and anarchists, but increased public coverage over the Dakota Pipeline, Black Lives Matter, and even in video games like Metal Gear Solid which has a Navajo NPC talking about how uranium mining on the Reservation wrecked his community due to the Cold War oneupmanship are now part of a greater public awareness.

Conservatives definitely have their heads in the sand, but the idea of playing a "Great White Hunter touring the savage jungles of South America and Africa" is the kind of thing which many American socialist and liberal gamers nowadays may look askance upon. Or one where you're fighting technologically primitive natives for their gold and loot would elicit a lot of hand-wringing in the tabletop and video games sphere.
Last edited by Libertad on Fri Sep 20, 2019 8:29 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Chamomile
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Post by Chamomile »

America is also getting super-polarized, so your game is probably going to have an audience of either lefties or righties, not a mixed audience of both, even if it doesn't have anything that would strongly turn one group or another off (unless you're big enough to become omnipresent, which in this industry means "unless you're D&D").
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Post by Libertad »

Chamomile wrote:America is also getting super-polarized, so your game is probably going to have an audience of either lefties or righties, not a mixed audience of both, even if it doesn't have anything that would strongly turn one group or another off (unless you're big enough to become omnipresent, which in this industry means "unless you're D&D").
With the exception of the Gaming Den, most liberal and leftist gaming spaces have overall received the news positively. As did the majority of members in the official Facebook group. The people who have been most opposed to this change on forums and social media have been right-wing gamers. Ranging from those who loudly announce how much they don't care for this change while making multiple posts about it, and the typical "SJWs are ruining everything!"
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Chamomile
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Post by Chamomile »

Naturally. This is basically Deadlands declaring "if we have to choose, we'd rather be lefty, actually."
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Post by Username17 »

I just think that it isn't difficult to simultaneously acknowledge that reducing your setting's Confederacy support from "The South Wins the War" to "The Southern uprising lasted for more than twice as long as it historically did, but still eventually lost" is objectively a move in the right direction and also that it's hilariously and obviously insufficient. Reducing your added Confederacy holdout from 20 years to 6 years is a reduction in support for White Supremacy of 70%, but the correct amount of support for White Supremacy is still zero percent. Anything less than a one hundred percent reduction in White Supremacy support is moral failure. It's really obvious moral failure that people have been telling them frankly about for twenty years.

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Having people say "What if we compromise and say less good things about people who routinely kidnapped, raped, and tortured innocent people for money?" is just a bizarre attempt at compromise. Really, sayinganything good about American history's greatest monsters is an indefensible life choice. Asking to find an in-between position on whether it is morally right to use kidnapping, torture, and rape to keep an unwilling workforce in line is an act of radical centrism that is beyond parody. There are no "in-between" positions on that, and asking to find one makes you the bad guy in any discussion.

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-Username17
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OgreBattle
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Post by OgreBattle »

I like how Captain Confederacy did it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Confederacy

The Confederacy is one of 8 north American countries, you've also got the Union, Texa$$, Free Louisiana, Commie California, Great Spirit Alliance, Mormons, Mexico, Canada.

Everyone else looks down on the CSA as morally inferior. That comics series is about a propaganda actor (Captain Confederacy) who's fed up with how his black friends are treated but is addicted to the super drug that makes him a super hero.

So in such a setting you could have plots about reforming the CSA, or just not be in the CSA.

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The movie I was looking forward to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41VkLPcB_Cg
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Post by LR »

FrankTrollman wrote:There are no "in-between" positions on that, and asking to find one makes you the bad guy in any discussion.

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Because there is no limit to ironic milkshake ducking, Robert Webb (who portrayed the Nazi trying to argue that they weren't the baddies) has double and triple-downed on supporting transphobia on Twitter. But if anything that just makes the image macro more apt.
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Orion
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Post by Orion »

If you're going to reply to a picture of David Mitchell by talking about things Robert Webb has done, you should probably explicitly point out who is who.
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