This dinosaur cannot be silenced!
This will be longer than usual today. This is something I posted to RPG Pub because I wanted to have a frank discussion of how past prejudices can seep into things like gaming and be perpetuated. The Pubâs answer was to delete because it was âpolitical.â
You tell me if this is political, folks.
Confession of a Dinosaur
In Goldeneye, a movie I consider the Platonic ideal of a James Bond film, M famously accuses Bond of being âa sexist, misogynist dinosaur,â and we all laughed because, of course, heâs not! Or was he?
More recently, Wizards of the Coast placed disclaimers on all its old TSR library material, apologizing for the content within. And most gamers I know, and I scoffed at this because it seemed so silly! Or was it?
For a couple of years, Iâve kicked around an idea for a mercenaries game in the vein of The Wild Geese or The Dogs of War. I even put together a vague campaign structure and hammered out the first iteration of a campaign document. When asked what system Iâd use, I vacillated between Fantasy Games Unlimitedâs MERC and the under-appreciated Flying Buffalo classic Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes, along with more contemporary options. These were my go-to systems for games set in Africa, Central and South America, or even Southeast Asia back in the â80s. And believe you me, I ran a whole bunch of stuff that, quite frankly, wouldnât pass muster with todayâs gamers.
I donât apologize for that, and I donât expect anyone with a similar past to apologize, either. But I was getting ready to repurpose that mercenaries campaign for Modern War when I reached an epiphany of sorts. I thought, âYou spent so many years telling these stories from one side, and there are so many pitfalls in doing so again today. Maybe you ought to think about why youâd do it.â
So I didnât do it. Instead, I looked at the story I was trying to tell, recognized it as a product of its time and place, and set it aside. If there were a game about warfare in Africa in me, it would be something else.
And it was! I flipped the script by discarding an â80s setting suffused with â80s ideas and updating not only the milieu but the realities of modern Africa. In todayâs Africa, the heroes of all those old MERC and MSPE games are the villains, and the people we mowed down without a second thought back in the day arenât necessarily who we thought they were.
I guess this is where I acknowledge Iâm the dinosaur, and maybe itâs given you cause to, as well. Itâs not like weâre being cast out of the club, but a lot of us are getting on in years, and maybe we might want to think about what weâre doing with our favorite hobby. Are we adding to the creative atmosphere, or are we subtracting from it?
If we continue to think we can move forward somehow while moving backward, we add nothing.
As you see, thereâs nothing political here at all unless you say, âdonât be an assholeâ is political. We should consider our old attitudes toward everything all the time, as thereâs always the possibility that we have a blind spot that needs examination. This is true of life, and it is true of gaming.
Iâm not talking about the (offensive) school of thought that equates Orcs with Black people, or anything like that. Thatâs nonsense and deserves to be quashed. No, Iâm talking about being a responsible adult who doesnât take things at face value, and that includes our personal history.
Deciding that shooting up a bunch of Africans might be a bad thing shouldnât be controversial. Thatâs a sign of our evolving understanding of the world. In the â80s, with communism on the rise in Africa, it was easy to vilify various rebels. But rather than paint all insurgents with the same anti-communist brush, we ought to examine who they are and why theyâre fighting. Some have good reasons. Many donât. Take some time to figure that out. Alternatively, consider my approach and fictionalize your African country, drawing inspiration from various countries and their issues. One might call that the Far Cry 2 method. It worked there, and it can work for you.
There was a time when I viewed gaming as pure escapism, using it as an excuse to include all manner of objectionable material. In time, I learned how to make judicious use of these things, mostly in parallel with my writing, which also required a modicum of restraint. You can have things like murder, torture, and even sexual violence in your games, but you had better make damned sure your players are on board, and youâre handling them with sensitivity.
How can you be sensitive about something like sexual assault? Well, donât use it gratuitously, for one. Before you put it in there, ask yourself if thereâs anything else you can substitute instead. And even if you decide on that sort of thing, I have one piece of additional advice youâd do well to follow:
DONâT RAPE YOUR PLAYERSâ CHARACTERS!
I canât believe I have to say that, but as with the discussion of racism and other prejudices above, it seems common sense does not prevail in these circumstances. Some folks are downright convinced that a game where a player character can get assaulted is the only kind of game worth playing. Itâs all about ârealism.â Well, Iâm here to tell you that realism isnât all itâs cracked up to be.
Address reality in your games, but remember that ultimately, youâre in charge of what happens in the world youâve created. And including that kind of violence in your games says a lot more about you than it does about the world at large. The same goes for old prejudices.
So, if youâre in the mood to take advice from a dinosaur, today is your lucky day. And RPG Pub? See ya!
Good gaming, everyone.