Reply To: D&D officially turning Forgotten Realms sights away from Euro inspired campaigns

[horati0nosebl0wer 19649xp 2]

Thinking about the branding of the ‘culture war’ as only an American thing is not quite right to pigeonhole it. As @onlyonepinman points out there are other factors at work at various levels that may not be directly aimed at the gaming hobby.

With regard to gaming, I’d argue that we as gamers are, generally, a sub-culture with a history of play. There is the simple goal of “Play” (kinda like the re-introduction of Peter Pan to the Lost Boys in the film ‘Hook’). The camps of competitive or cooperative exist within gaming but they don’t exclude anyone from the aim of having ‘Fun’. There really isn’t anything further than that with anything we do in this hobby. All our activities tend to be in the pursuit of making it Fun for everyone Playing. As a company flexes its influence on the subculture it relies on for existence, ‘bending the knee’ to the people who don’t Play and aren’t acting in the interest of Fun it does tend to put some sand in the shorts and chafe some tenders.

With regard to the world of Anglophone and gaming, look at the history of the fluff for Warhammer 40k back in the 80s and how it developed. From there peek at comics with 3000AD that led to the Dredd IP in its various manifestations today. Consider the reason Paranoia was ever created as a game to mock the banality of the world around its creators. Gaming was meme culture before the Internet. Trump shopped as The God Emperor was genius in fusing the ideas to troll vocal authoritarian culture but it doesn’t shield the games we play.

WoTC already has the rights to MtG and there is plenty to read/watch over what kind of shitstorm is going on there. The world of the tabletop RPG isn’t exclusive or immune from the people who run the company. Honestly it feels like the premonition of this situation was in the storyline of the comic Fables in the history of how the characters came to the point where the story begins. Slowly one by one the realms of make-believe in stories were overtaken by the authoritarian forces of The Adversary that led to the characters of the comic taking residence as exiles in a NYC neighborhood.

I don’t want to be a mental refugee,  a self cognizant minority.

Just play my games with my friends all fine, no bother to the world on/offline

The push against powers that be is here and the strange angles with which pressures are manifested makes the mind spin. Call of Cthulhu makes a little bit more sense in the meta-analysis.