@theresattrpgforthat my wife and I are going to be presenting at a conference this month about the intersection of roleplaying games and social/political imagination - do you have any recs for games we should look into that we may have missed?
Hello. This might be a bit of a bigger ask than you might have originally realized; social and political imagination could connect to such a broad span of topics. I’m going to try and contain my recommendations inside broader topics, in the hopes that you find this easier to navigate.
Revolution.
If you want to talk about revolution, there’s a number of ways to go about planning one. W.M. Akers explores an underground revolution in Comrades, a PbtA game made out of anger that both empowers players and also shows them the limitations of violence. Brinkwood: The Blood of Tyrants looks at the politics that exist within a revolution by slowly expanding the factions your brigands have to play nice with in order to overthrow vampires. Spire: The City Must Fall, by Rowan Rook and Decard, looks at the darkness that can exist in the desire to fight back: the journey from revolution, to zealotry, to the players’ place inside a death cult. Violence is such an easy route to take in tabletop games; it exists within the bones of our wargaming predecessors, and so using it as a tool in games feels like such an easy shift.
Community
Community in the face of resistance is a very big theme in a lot of solar punk games - too many for me to really count, but if you want a list of examples, you might want to check out the Applied Hope Jam of 2021. I’ve been looking at After the World Drowned and Waxworm for a long time, and I think The Transition Year might also bear a number of similar signs of community building.
On the other end of the scale, Neon Black looks at community in a dystopian cyberpunk future as both a grounding tool for the players (you have loved ones you need to protect) as well as a resource (your community has your back). Neon Black considers community in the context of marginalization and poverty - you need each-other to face those who have replaced their sense of community with wealth and power.
Colonialism.
Imagining a future without colonialism might feel too fantastical, because it’s such a pervasive force. But Coyote & Crow manages to do just that, and the result is rich and beautiful. While Coyote & Crow imagines a world untouched by colonialism, Orichalcum approaches a world after the colonial powers have faded: you are an indigenous community rising from the ashes, building something new, deciding what you will keep and what you will throw away.
Meanwhile, Jiangshi: Blood in the Banquet Hall examines the immigrant experience and what racialized communities experience in worlds where they are considered the “other”, while Dialect observes the death of a language and how that impacts people groups. I’m really loving the numbers of ways we can have conversations about indigeneity and colonialism, from examining what is happening in the here and now using a slightly fantastical lens, to approaching the what-if scenarios, of a future that is either parallel or speculative.
Capitalism.
The engine of Blades in the Dark is an excellent representation of how poverty is so difficult to climb out of. It puts your characters in a crab bucket and asks them to start climbing over each-other, and your constant battling of stress is so so so good at replicating that. Red Markets pushes capitalism to an apocalyptic level, placing your characters into what should be a world-ending crisis, and then asking them to just continue living, if they can. The games ihuntand Subway Runnersexplore the gig economy but put a fantastical twist on them by placing characters against magic, monsters, and immortal bourgeoise. Lesbians Built This Farm is an intersectional approach to queer identities and the gruelling societal expectation that your body is only worth the labour that it provides.
Justice / Governance.
I think Exceptionals is the first game I came across that showed me a way to have a conversation about how to solve community problems without relying on the police. As stand-ins for the mutant characters in the X-Men series, the PCs are challenged to live in a world where they are targeted and feared: where the police are much more likely to hurt you than help you. I think looking at theoretical situations that require you to think about how to protect or help members of your community knowing that you have no other resources is a great way to start the conversation of community crisis management. In Dream Askew, the play group has to answer questions about the kinds of politics that plague their queer little enclave. Since the world has fallen apart, they have to figure out how to navigate those politics on their own.
I’ve only played the first version of Urban Shadows, but I’m curious as to whether the 2nd edition will continue to carry forward the valuable currency of debts and favours owed. PbtA games have a habit of pushing characters up against each-other before pulling them in different directions, and players find themselves entering conflict very easily. Examining that conflict might be the other side of the coin when it comes to talking about governance and justice.
Gender Realities.
I’ve really loved the talk I’ve heard so far about Bluebeard’s Bride and the way it examines feminine horror. All of the pieces of play that I’ve heard are genuinely bone-chilling, and I’d be curious about the kinds of reactions that conversations following a campaign. In a similar way, I’m looking forward to listening to more play of The Watch, which makes the patriarchy an overt, martial threat that has corrupted the setting’s men and turned them against the non-men of the setting. Talking about gender and the violence it inflicts on everyone means that we also have to consider Blood Feud, an examination of how social expectations may push men to violence, even when it is the last thing they want.
These are all really just the beginnings of multiple conversations: I think each of these games is worth a conversation in it’s own right. I’d love to hear other folks’ experiences or thoughts concerning any of these games above - or additions of other games that people found provoking!
I don’t want to exaggerate, but I don’t think this list would be complete without Wanderhome. It was an intensely educational read for me when I first read it. I’d compare it to the work of Ursula le Guin in terms of art which stretches the political imagination. The world Wanderhome presupposes is one of a post-capital restructuring, where the soul of a people - its cultures, its senses of community and tradition - are regrowing from the earth like plants in volcanic ash. If you’re looking for a game to exemplify a revolutionary imagination, Wanderhome is it, hands down.
I’m gonna suggest a couple games that I had the honor of editing.
Doikayt is an anthology of short ttrpgs through a Jewish lens. My partner contributed אמת (pronounced eh-MET), a game about golems, community, and otherness.
Little Katy’s Tea Party is about navigating anxiety, fear, and social or political change through the eyes of a child. You play Katy’s imaginary friends, working to piece together where she is now. The pre-gen scenes cover a pretty wide variety of challenges that a child might face
people cosplaying on public transit are the backbone of our society and i am SO serious. there is no greater omen of good fortune than seeing hatsune miku on the bus.
USPS was completely self-sustaining until 2006, when Congress inexplicably began requiring it to pre-fund retirement health benefits for all of its eligible employees and retirees, 75 years in advance. This unprecedented requirement cost USPS more than $5 billion per year for 16 years … which is almost exactly the amount they were in debt.
And still, USPS maintains First Class mail delivery to every household in the country within 5 days for less than a dollar. No private carrier comes close to their price point (which USPS actually doesn’t control), and many of them actually use USPS as their “last mile” carrier in rural areas where it’s too costly for them to operate.
babe wake up new dr who theme tune just dropped. and it fucking slaps
Ho-ly mo-ly, is that a welcome return to form! It gives me flashbacks to the first Russell T. Davies era, 2005 to 2010, which in turn gives me hope that we really will see the Doctor Who we know and love restored to its former glory and moving into a brighter future.
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