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I'm quite far on the left if many regards and so are my players. Maybe Zimmy means "actual communists" or something like that? Though I don't get why they wouldn't play the game.
Finding a live gaming group generally is hard enough. Finding a group of leftists (which yes, does mean "communists," or near enough, in most parlances) able and willing to associate with one another for any purpose is harder, and not just because we're a fractious bunch. We're also terribly thin on the ground. Assembling a group of leftists to play a TTRPG, therefore, ought to be a one-in-a-million chance. And all that's without getting into the game's politics itself, which ought to put off the politically correct, fixating as it does on the standard fantasy trope of restoring the good king whenever it tries to do something overtly political. As roguerouge has pointed out, doing anything else means fighting the game and the writing rather than working with it, and that's not necessarily the best experience. Preexisting friend group explains it nicely, though.
Oh, and for your question of "Where did you find workers?" you're aware that this is a game and that people can do whatever they want and use whatever NPCs they want to make up, right?
Yes. You can tell because I tossed out a few guesses about how that might have worked.
Ordinarily I wouldn't have cared, but Ian G specified that his Ravounel would be a "worker-run. . . representative democracy" by the time he was through with it, which implies not only that workers exist, but that they are far more numerous than the setting implies (parts of Golarion have industrialized - Ravounel, with its minuscule urban population and primarily handicraft production, is not one of them, or if it is, it is only incipiently so) and far more active in events than the writing (which centers nobles, petit-bourgeois, and above all intellectuals) gives them credit for. I'd like to do something similar, and was curious. As it turns out, however, what Ian G actually did was turn up the radicalism of existing NPCs rather than change their demographics or invent other NPCs. I'd speculate about why, but I suspect it wouldn't be taken in good humor. Oh well, c'est la vie.
I also greatly expanded the role of a minor NPC from book one because the players loved her but that's mostly just "this gay dork high on THE REVOLUTION!!! gets involved with the resistance and sometimes gets into sticky spots".
I love this because Zea was a main NPC in my game too... but I used her as a reflection as to what one of the PCs could've become if he went down a different path so she ended up being a loner ninja hellbent on revenge for being doghoused. (My other favourite was Blosodriette as the group couldn't decide what to do with her and two of them, one which was the Sarini player, eventually went behind the others' backs and released her from her contract and had her scout out the main temple for them before they attacked it in book 4.
Finding a group of leftists (which yes, does mean "communists," or near enough, in most parlances)
[and a bunch of other stuff]
Not so much in North America. Here it tends to mean "Liberal" or "Democrat."
As for everything else, from all of your posts that I've seen over the past few years on the Hell's Rebels board, I get the impression that you and roguerouge have the game be a lot more of a reality simulator than most other GMs and players.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
(Also, how did you find a bunch of leftists willing to play Pathfinder, of all things?)What?
Why wouldn't people with left-leaning (or very far over to the furthest left possible) not want to play Pathfinder?
I think answering that in the way I would prefer as a former academic would require pointing to articles that might run afoul of the board rules on politics. And even if my post wouldn't, I would end up derailing a productive thread. I'm glad you spoke up with this question, because it did lead to an educational google search for me to look into the matter.
All my players are leftists and I'm an anarcho-socialist, this is going to be a worker-run form of representative democracy by the time they're done.
Let me just say this now--I will read the HELL out of game updates from this table.
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And I'm not really all that simulationist with my gaming--I'm not using the Kingdom building rules now in Book 5, for example. You're probably right that I'm a bit unusual in my interest levels in that stuff, however.
I tend to look at the politics and economics as more about background world-building, helping me to understand the NPCs better, setting up skill challenges, and helping create challenges for my table's noble scion PC that's trying to create a better world. What better way to challenge a high-level Face PC than ideological and economic structures that are immune to the diplomacy skill?
I think of ideology and economics as one genre among many at my table--it suits one player (narrative obstacles to the noble scion trying to build a better world), but it shouldn't drown out the genres that interest my other players--tactics, religion, heists, martial arts movies, even romance. I do think the social sciences are a useful tool for all DMs to have in their belt. Threads like these really help me, because there's a lot more effort and expertise that goes into this genre than in learning the basic tropes of martial arts movies.
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I started writing them up in another thread on this subforum!All my players are leftists and I'm an anarcho-socialist, this is going to be a worker-run form of representative democracy by the time they're done.Let me just say this now--I will read the HELL out of game updates from this table.
Just is case anyone is still looking, this is that thread.
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Brief thought - Ravounel's provisional government (still? it's been three years now. . . ) would be rather more democratic if rather than an upper house, the Council of Peers was construed as an executive council, with the Silver Council being the unicameral legislature (assuming there are ever elections to it). The Peers are responsible to the cantons rather than the Silver Council, but at least some of them (principally the Lord-Mayor of Kintargo and thus the Domina of Ravounel) are elected by the people, which the Silver Council isn't (yet).