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this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2025
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Those are great replacement terms for whoever my Marx will be. I'll probably steal one or both of those directly, haha thanks for that. And I'm jealous you got to play your own version of this.
I do hope that the fantasy setting will help hide it, like the Star Wars setting in Andor. The idea is to have some fun while propagandizing, like the capitalists are so good at doing lol.
Of course I still have to poke the libs a bit, by having the evil empire pretend to be just and good, and have a slight element of truth because it's better than the older evil empire that used to rule the island. They will probably have some other element they pride themselves on, too. Maybe it will be their version of the magna carta that gives nobles more control over the king, or some version of a parliament or duma. Their version of the US's "democracy", something to use as a justification for all the evil they do lol. Or maybe there's an oppressive guild system where the masters force the apprentices to do all the work through privately controlled licenses or something, and then if players liberate them, the empire will claim they're destroying small businesses or property rights, idk.
And definitely will check out those books. Thanks for the recommendations! I've just started getting back into reading books more to avoid doom scrolling at night lol.
yeah books are great! and please use those terms i'm glad you liked them (i originally used them in a fantasy project that is permanently "under construction")
and guilds are a great place to start from because they are sort of proto-unions! i used guilds as the basis for a proletarian ideology in that same project (the magocracy became so detached from regular people that the guilds just started governing the cities)
the Malazan Book of the Fallen series is another good one but I haven't started reading it yet. it centers on a revolutionary empire that sounds similar to what you describe for your own. something that topples the old order and pretends to be the good guy interventionists, with plenty of well meaning subjects that truly believe.
It deals with class conflict, gender equality, and other lefty adjacent stuff. cool too that the series originated as a worldbuilding project for a fantasy GURPS game by the authors, so it's basically an RPG setting transformed into a fantasy series. it's probably more "the furthest left of revolutionary france" and proto-socialist in theme but has good reviews
and i'm noticing so many getting back into books. i just got a library card for the first time in a decade and i almost feel shocked to walk out of there with "free stuff".
fun fact: most libraries have conference rooms you can rent for free and play TTRPGs at. my best years were playing with people there. might be a good place to start getting a group together!