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But Why
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@De-Villefort said in But Why:
What is the appeal of playing humans in a world without magic, technology, or even indoor plumbing?
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That’s not a fantasy, it’s a nightmare.I’m going to assume this is in good faith despite some of the other replies, because I think it’s an interesting question.
What defines “fantasy”? For some, it has to involve some kind of fantastical element, be it magic or tech or aliens or whatever.
But for others, it’s simply “what if”. The world could be a nightmare. Post-apoc / dystopian / cyberpunk / war settings certainly fit that bill. That’s what makes the stories interesting.
Even if the world at large is a nightmare for most, the game/story might focus on the exceptional ones. You see that a lot in Wild West settings, for instance. Your protagonists are the gamblers or the idle wealthy or the roguish outlaws and gunslingers. They’re not the farmers toiling in the fields all day or the pioneers dying of dysentery.
At least not usually. But even then, sometimes people DO like the “slice of life” RP. To each their own.
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@mietze said in But Why:
True, even noble women were treated as second class nobles but they still had better standing than your average peasant man in society. That was my point, to show how horribly stratified and stagnant society was back then.I guess I’ve just read too much history to think going back to anything even remotely related to those times would be appealing. It was all so barbaric. Even in Lord of the Rings things were really messed up if you stop and think about it even for a moment.
To me, maybe because I was raised on sci-fi rather than fantasy, making a fantasy version of the dark ages is like making a fantasy version of the American south during slavery. You could do it, it is possible, you could ignore all the bad stuff and make a game out of the high society aspects of it, but… why?!
To each there own, I guess.
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i totally don’t think it’s wrong to think about this kind of stuff, i do all the time in the sense of “wouldn’t it be funny if…” just to liven things up a little. but i dunno, maybe i just have a great imagination because i can also think of why maybe other people wouldn’t especially enjoy it. which is why i try to control myself.
i would never advocate for a mandatory +shart check at the beginning of every ambush. everyone’s got their own things that they feel are demeaning and i don’t see the benefit in subjecting anyone to that sort of thing, especially when it’s hard to know who can read the room or not. i’d much rather just keep my juvenile thoughts to myself than make someone uncomfortable in the middle of a scene.
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We are used to viewing history through a singular lens, as though everything was always worse all the time forever about everything in the past, but that isn’t at all true. ( @Aria I think this is your cue.)
There are places and times where women enjoyed more rights than they do now in many cultures, including our own. With many original themes, they make changes to remove many of the abrasions and inequities of history around race, gender and sexuality because so many players deal with that enough in their day to day. There are still plenty of things to play about, plenty of reasons for characters to engage in conflict, without those pieces. It would be a mistake to assume that all historical settings engage in those aspects, just as it is a mistake to assume that all of history if a monolith of ‘bad’ and ‘worse’.
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@De-Villefort sci-fi also was dominated for a long while (and some would argue that it still is) by people who have pretty horrific biases as well. it’s not free of stratification or suggestions that some of that is good, especially when it comes to controlling people who are less than. The community also (like fantasy tbh) has some deep problems with white supremacist ideology, even today. In addition much of “history” is written through problematic lenses and interpretations as well, some of which is being looked at again, but not without a lot of hue and cry from people whose interests it serves. Not going to go too much into that because it’s politics as well and unpleasant ones.
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also sometimes people like RPing about bad things. that’s a thing that people do.
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I am a glutton for RPing about bad things. It’s weirdly empowering? Dunno.
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Is this the point where I get to whip out my notes on historical hygiene practices, from the time that abbots were complaining of Norse invaders seducing local women what with their heathen “baths” and “combing their beards” to the importance of frequent undergarment changes for proper Tudor lords and ladies?
Because I can and I will, and that is not an offer, that is a threat.
I double dog dare you (because it would be interesting to read).
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Yep. I think it’s for every game runner to decide what balance they want to strike with players. I know i’ve been disappointed to have storylines disappear because they were not comfortable to other people (and didn’t appreciate those folks shitting all over people on channel and the like for enjoying those storylines, as if their viewpoint was the only one that was valid) but you know, that’s how it goes. if there are certain boundaries or decisions made, you get to decide if it’s worth it to keep playing. most of the time, at least for me, it has been. everyone’s got a line where the rp of uncomfortable things won’t be enjoyable. those of us with higher tolerance, imo, really should be careful with those who don’t, because while you can certainly add stuff when you’re with people who you know are not going to be oocly disturbed by it, you can’t take back what people who WILL be experience if you do let it fly.
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@STD
In those dark dystopias you fight the corporations to make the world a better place for everyone. In the dark ages, it was a struggle to survive just being a human.Think about the fantasy genre and the themes it has.
Lord of the Rings - Take the ring of power, resist it’s call to make you all powerful and destroy it.
Game of Thrones - Kill everyone and take power for yourself.
Beowulf - Kill monsters and take power for yourself.
Robinhood - Kill the nobles and take power for yourself because you think you can do a better job.It’s all about selfishness. It’s an entire genera based on the idea that getting what you want is the only important thing. You are just replacing one self-important jerk with a nicer self-important jerk and nothing ever gets better for anyone else in a dark ages fantasy. Look at Lord of the rings, all those books, all that adventure and the only thing that really changed was 1 ring got destroyed and one human village got roasted by a dragon. Then life pretty much went back to normal.
Sci-fi is for the most part a more collectivist endeavor. You don’t take down the mega-corp to replace them, you take them down to collapse a system of oppression. There is a reason to fight. A better future to aim for. I don’t see that happening in a lot of fantasy stories.
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@De-Villefort lmao at lord of the rings being distilled down to a narrative of selfishness. what in the world. you are just trolling now
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@De-Villefort maybe you need to branch out from largely white eurocentric authors/traditons. both in fantasy and the history you read.
Also: what’s the difference between ‘kill the nobles and take power for yourself because you can do a better job’ and ‘take down the mega-corps and their power brokers to put a new structure in place that benefits you more’
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I solely RP scenes in outhouses. You don’t know what you’re missing.
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@De-Villefort Depends on the cyberpunk fiction. I know tons about awful folks doing awful things to good folk. I mean it is based on the book itself, I’m a huge cyberpunk fan.
Also in most cyberpunk novels, the MegaCorps tend to win in the end.
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@DrQuinn outhouses, feh. you and your modern tech. i remember the good old days of chamberpots and hanging one’s ass up over the railing of the ship as we rped out the 2 months of travel to stay true to ‘rl’.
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@De-Villefort said in But Why:
In those dark dystopias you fight the corporations to make the world a better place for everyone.
You’ve certainly been reading and watching very different dark dystopian things than I have. It’s true that some have those themes, but a lot of them are just about survival too. Shadowrun is one of the biggest cyberpunk RPGs, and it’s mostly just about Ocean’s 11 style heists. There’s no moral high ground here.
Lord of the Rings - Take the ring of power, resist it’s call to make you all powerful and destroy it.
Robinhood - Kill the nobles and take power for yourself because you think you can do a better job.
It’s all about selfishness.These are very odd takes on the themes in these stories. LoTR is all about folks being selfless and saving the world. The whole mantra of Robin Hood is “rob from the rich and give to the poor”. Of course there are variants of Robin Hood where that’s not the case, but they’re the exception, not the rule.
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@Roz
Lord of the rings was a story about resisting selfishness but it was still a world built on selfishness. There was only the one guy who could be trusted to hold the ring because everyone else wanted it for their own power.Remember the The Council of Elrond scene where they argued about who would carry it because they all wanted it for themselves? None of them wanted anyone else to have it.
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@De-Villefort said in But Why:
@STD
In those dark dystopias you fight the corporations to make the world a better place for everyone. In the dark ages, it was a struggle to survive just being a human.Think about the fantasy genre and the themes it has.
Lord of the Rings - Take the ring of power, resist it’s call to make you all powerful and destroy it.
Game of Thrones - Kill everyone and take power for yourself.
Beowulf - Kill monsters and take power for yourself.
Robinhood - Kill the nobles and take power for yourself because you think you can do a better job.It’s all about selfishness. It’s an entire genera based on the idea that getting what you want is the only important thing. You are just replacing one self-important jerk with a nicer self-important jerk and nothing ever gets better for anyone else in a dark ages fantasy. Look at Lord of the rings, all those books, all that adventure and the only thing that really changed was 1 ring got destroyed and one human village got roasted by a dragon. Then life pretty much went back to normal.
Sci-fi is for the most part a more collectivist endeavor. You don’t take down the mega-corp to replace them, you take them down to collapse a system of oppression. There is a reason to fight. A better future to aim for. I don’t see that happening in a lot of fantasy stories.
It seems to me like you’re trying to apply some hierarchical moralistic value to playing one setting over another as if (and this part is key, so pay attention) these were mutually exclusive.
They aren’t. You can play an anti-corp revolutionary in a cyberpunk setting and a questing dragonhunting noble in a fantasy one. Debate over.
That said, the idea that in an era of neo-liberalism (and just plain liberalism) gone fucking batshit nuts you think roleplayers would limit themselves within the cyberpunk genres to solely playing the underdog and you’d have no one playing the amoral corporate mercenaries or CEOs (thus deflating the entire moralistic point of your argument), you have zero contextual awareness of this hobby, buddy.
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@De-Villefort said in But Why:
@Roz
Lord of the rings was a story about resisting selfishness but it was still a world built on selfishness.so is cyberpunk…?
she/her | playlist
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@De-Villefort Excuse me don’t you do Samwise wrong like that.
