It kinda sucks seeing more and more fascism but not being able to do anything about it. I hate being on the losing side constantly.
Sometimes I wish I could be fascist so I could cheer for all the horrors but unfortunately not only do I have empathy, but I'm not exactly the kind of person they let on their team.
my cope is writing a detailed timeline for an alternate history where FDR died early, Wallace gets 4 terms as a radical democratic socialist, the cold war is between a U.S.-Soviet alliance and the decaying remnants of colonial Europe, and the world is like 20 years ahead of us in technological and social development.
I love it lol. My cope is I've been working on a D&D campaign setting where the players would play the rulers of a sort of fantasy Cuba (an island off the coast of a giant evil empire that just went through a revolution) where the players and any fellow NPC leaders just basically instituted communism. I wouldn't say it is to my lib players, but the premise would be that you are taking back old property that empire nobles had owned on the island, arming their slaves, ending fantasy racism, and starting mass organizations of the formerly most oppressed groups, etc.
Combat gameplay would come from traveling around and fending off saboteurs and assassin guilds paid by the evil empire, and of course a Bay-of-Pigs-type situation where they attempt a full on counter revolution. Social gameplay would come from the need to balance the needs of the different factions, keeping your coalition together despite the reactionary thoughts of some of the common populace or the bourgeois mindset of any nobles or guildmasters that stayed. And exploration would come from exploring different parts of the island to talk to people or find old weapon or magic item caches that can be used to defend the island, or at at higher levels traveling around to help other fantasy lands with their own revolutions and struggles against the big, evil empire. And they'd have to do this while the press of the empire, owned by one or two of their noble houses of course, constantly print distortions of everything the players do to make it sound horrible and like they are the tyrants.
Now if only I could find players around me who could all meet on the same schedule and be happy playing socialists ...
(although honestly I feel like I could put enough fantasy veneer on it I could probably make libs not tell, like the sci-fi on Andor)
i ran a similiar campaign long ago but it was steampunk. well "ran" as in played DMed with my partner. it is hard to find people to play (and find time/work schedules/ugggghhh i want socialism just to have community gaming groups again)
but sounds lit you should just fantasy it up, change the ideology to "radical egalitarianism" or "liberation democracy" or something lib friendly. whatever your version of Marx is just came up with a different name because different material conditions/magic/etc.
since it's straight forward peasant/commoner revolt vs nobles libs should have no trouble thinking it's cool and good. you're not hurting their precious capitalists after all.
also check out fantasy books by China Mieville for inspiration! great writer and a marxist
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!
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