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Wednesday 25 January 2017

When They Think You Aren't Watching, Storygamers Declare: "D&D is Fascist"/"Gygax was Fascist"

Storygamers have, for as long as they've existed, maintained a careful double-discourse on D&D and regular RPGs.  Whenever it's convenient for them, they'll pretend they have no problem with D&D, pretend they're fans, etc.

But whenever it's convenient for them, they have been all too happy to claim that D&D is incoherent, that regular RPGs cause brain damage, that the masses of the 'great unwashed' who like normal RPGs are morons.

And of course, as the discourse of identity-politics began to try to worm its way into the RPG hobby, the Storygamers (being predisposed to all elitist bullshit) adopted it wholeheartedly.  This is how we get something like this:



This is from a thread in the Storygames forum called "How Does Your Game Fight Fascism"? It begins with the presumption that RPGs are 'fascist' in nature, and that it is therefore a duty of 'woke' gamers to actively run and presumably write games that work to oppose that 'fascism'.

Naturally, by the 3rd post in the thread D&D is explicitly named as a "pro-fascist RPG". And that killing orcs is an example of "cruel, discriminatory thinking" (pity the poor orc!).  And then the statement that "My sense of Gygax is that he probably was a little bit fascist", because he "yearned for heroic adventuring".


So there you have it. Do you like killing orcs? Do you yearn for something heroic? YOU'RE A FASCIST, according the Storygames crowd. Because they define anything heroic as inherently at least "a little bit fascist", just like Gary "Adolph" Gygax. 


There's a lot that could be said about all this, and we're chatting about it on theRPGsite, but fundamentally, there's three things I want to point out here:

a) it shows the two-tongued nature of the Storygaming crowd.  Anytime they pretend that they have 'no problem with D&D', remember how they said D&D and Gygax/Arneson was 'fascist'.

b) It shows their own moral bankruptcy that they equate the ideas of heroism and the struggle against evil with 'fascism'.  

c) And here's the most important point: they're just WRONG.

I explained exactly how this argument is wrong in an earlier post. But for the sake of 'tl;dr', here's the summary of it.  The narrative the storygamers want to push is basically this: "D&D players are crypto-fascists that make orcs a substitute for dark-skinned people and the D&D game is a fascist exercise in the extermination of 'lesser races', imperialism, colonialism, misogyny and everything we don't like. Heroism is wrong, and fighting evil is not virtuous. Civilization and rule of law are horrible and oppressive, and D&D promotes those things so it is evil too."

But that's not how almost anyone who plays D&D views it.

Here's the REAL 'narrative' of the typical D&D experience:
"a multiracial group of courageous individuals from different backgrounds, genders, social classes, and levels of education putting aside all their differences, religious and non-religious, lily-white defenders of the law and those with a somewhat shady criminal past, country-folk and city-folk, all coming together in unity and collaborating in an autonomous (and usually non-hierarchical) collective, a fraternity with a common cause, often run by consensus, to save helpless innocents from the orcs. And it is the orcs, not the PCs or their players, who are greedy vicious racists that hate everything that isn't them and would destroy any chance for peaceful co-existence and the rule of law (that can only be brought about by civilization)."

Yet somehow, that's never how the Storygamer-Swine want to see it. Because they don't just fail to understand D&D, they want to despise it, and anyone who likes it. 


RPGPundit


Currently Smoking: Lorenzetti Oversize + H&H's Chestnut 



16 comments:

  1. This is really strange to me. I never have drawn a line in the sand between "story gaming" and whatever else. I can easily change my tone of role playing and have no problem with it just like wargames or board games all rpgs are different but really just the same in my eye. When did this schism come about?

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    1. I would say, from the very beginning of the Forge.

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  2. The content in question: http://story-games.com/forums/discussion/20941/how-does-your-game-fight-fascism

    I don't know what that particular community is all about but when you look at the post and some of the comments, overall I don't see a lot of shade being thrown on D&D. A lot of people made the same type of points you made at the end about the positive aspects of D&D.

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    1. Some of those people, like Bedrock Brendan, were actually RPGsite regulars who'd gone there in reaction to what the actual Storygamers were saying.

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    2. JHKim is also an rpgsite regular, though he has sympathies for storygames while trying to present himself as a 'moderate'. It's his (self-appointed) job to show up and pretend to be the 'voice of reason' (which really means just warning the Storygamers that the Jig Is Up and the Pundit has exposed what they're up to).

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    3. AnonAdderlan too.

      The 'dissenting voices' you're seeing in that thread are all people who have come there to denounce it AFTER it was exposed by theRPGsite. They're not the core storygamers.

      By far the most well-known Storygame-Swine on that thread was Eero Tuovingen, and he was all "D&D is ur-Fascism!"

      So yeah, your point is invalid.

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    4. Aaactually, my initial exposure _was_ on story-games.com. You make it sound like your site is some kind of base of operations for #TheRevolution, and once again the discussion there is all about how much certain people/groups suck rather than _why using RPGs to fight #Fascism (or any other #Ideology) is a bad idea_.

      On the other hand it's a perfect example of what I was warning people about, so thanks?

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    5. Fair enough, though in any case my point still stands that the actual full-blown storygamers who primarily identify as Forge/Storygames types are all for this type of analysis. Not one of them has said this might be fucking retarded.

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  3. Now, if they labeled all that stuff Nietzschean, rather than fascist, I think the point is worth arguing. But fascist? Those assholes can fuck off.

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  4. ive heard stock standard abuse script of friends telling me my gaming is less evolved than theirs, 4 years of being friends and they say this shit not knowing how shit they sound and they have never played a game with me.

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  5. (1) these folks don't even know the definition of fascism and just throw the word at anyone they don't like
    (2) seriously doubt they actually play any games and likely they merely go on message boards to shore up their leftist bonafides and pat themselves and each other on the back--can you imagine this conversation taking place orally between two people not hiding behind screens? And who would they play with after the first game where everyone else concludes "what an a-hole" and resolves not to play with that type again?

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  6. maybe the "story gamers" are the ones living in a fantasy world.

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  7. Hey Pundit, I think you're coming at this from the wrong angle. Leadership and authority is a good thing. Our defense against their claims should not be "there's no fascism here!" But rather, "a certain amount of fascism (or authority or leadership) is a good thing."

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    1. Fascism is NOT the same thing as "authority" or "leadership", however.

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  8. Why does it matter what anyone says. I have played since the start. will play until I leave this existence. Why? Because I enjoy it! I have weathered criticism of my hobby for over 4 decades. This voices of opposition only matter if you let them matter. I don't and won't. I am a military veteran, and served as a Police Officer, and for some that means that I am automatically a Fascist. I can't help these people that would throw a label on me even though I dedicated a large part of my life to serving as their protector. They won't thank me for my service, but would instead revile me for it. And to me their opinion of me is irrelevant. It has as much relevance as celebrities preaching politics. In other words none whatsoever.

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  9. Fascist is a word leftists tend to use without knowing its meaning, much like their confusion of republic vs democracy and feelings vs facts.

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