Lists are generally bad. I have always preferred a random table to a simple list. This makes grocery shopping very frustrating, but it also makes me skeptical of naughty and nice lists, especially when they are maintained not by a benevolent beastman residing in the North Pole but by fascists and their ilk. So, although I try not to respond to whatever latest discourse has taken Twitter by storm, I was already mighty frustrated by the list of RPG creators that were woke or unwoke, as determined by the most unsavory figures that feed on table scraps amidst the ruins of the OSR. However, this blog post is categorically not about that list—too much digital ink has been spilt on that subject already. Instead, I want to discuss an assumption made by the heinous list-makers. In an effort to categorize more RPG creators as being simpatico to their own views, they listed several RPGs and their creators as “apolitical” and equated such apoliticality as worthy of inclusion on their “good” list. But this (among other things that are beyond the scope of what I hope will be a mercifully short post) is wrongheaded in the extreme.

All games are political. If you aren’t already sitting behind me nodding your head and draped in choir robes, perhaps it would be helpful to define my terms. Politics is a broad category. Only an insular mind would think that the contestations between (or within) political parties in democracies is the outer limit of the political. Politics describes any set of activities of a group or groups to determine the distribution of power and resources within society. It is not simply the rules by which society operates but also the rules by which those rules are created and maintained. The shortest definition of politics is “who gets what, when and how.” But what is a game? A helpful illustration comes from a post by Marcia on her blog:

The game gives the player(s) a desire, the rules dictate how they can satisfy it. In Hungry Hungry Hippos, for instance, the Hippos desire the marbles (which are resources), the rules and mechanisms (physically built into the game board itself) and the distribution of resources affect power relations (one Hippo, and their player, is declared the winner). It doesn’t take too much navel-gazing to see the ideologies at work in even a simple game like Hungry Hungry Hippos: it is survival of the fittest, the fastest, the best as guzzling down those little, round things. Social Darwinism (or perhaps just Darwinism—they are Hippos after all). Any game can be examined through the same lens to see that politics are at play. Let’s look at a different children’s board game that enacts a very different ideology: Don’t Wake Daddy.

Don’t Wake Daddy is anti-authoritarian. The fictional premise of the Don’t Wake Daddy board game is that the players are children that desire a midnight snack, but must not wake their father who, for reasons unknown, sleeps in the middle of the house between the children’s bedroom and the refrigerator. The game centers around achieving the desired food without being caught by daddy (the daddy being a quintessential authority figure, though here playing more of the role of cop than aloof god). Again, rules (e.g., to determine whether stepping on roller skates or overturning a bowl of fruit is sufficient to wake the father) structure the division of resources between the players (who gets food first) and, unlike Hungry Hungry Hippos, we see a power dichotomy in the fiction. The daddy clearly controls the flow of food and enforces where the children must be and when (in bed, at night). But the game is about subverting this relationship of power. The players don’t respect the existing power structure and attempt to get the resources for themselves. While this isn’t an all out violent coup against the daddy (unlike Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss), the game at least has an important message for the legitimacy of existing power structures. And don’t make me remind you that this is Don’t Wake Daddy we are talking about. Surely the RPGs you play are more complicated than that.

Don’t Wake Daddy itself recreates a common fantasy trope: the adventures plundering treasure from a dragon’s hoard while trying not to wake the monster and incur its fiery wrath. But in TTRPGs, the situation is rarely so simple. The dragon has a type of power, a literal one, in relation to the player-characters. But there are likely other powers at play: factions in the dungeon that may be aligned with or against the dragon, a kingdom outside the dungeon that wields political power in the most literal sense. Players tend to start a campaign in a state of powerlessness but rarely end that way (unless they wake the dragon). I have had multiple campaigns where players have obtained political power by inspiring an uprising and installed their own government (one of which failed horrendously—revolution is tough). But even simpler, more classic styles of play reveal the indelible mark of the political. At certain levels, characters gain strongholds and followers. What is this if not the accumulation of power and resources and channeling that power into obtaining still more power. All of this is as typical in a game like Dungeons & Dragons as devouring marbles is in a game of Hungry Hungry Hippos.

So you still want to make an apolitical game, huh? Well, first you should ask yourself why. Who are you so afraid of offending by wearing your politics on your sleeve? Do you not want to turn-off fascists from buying your games? Well, then watch out because it sounds like you are designing a game for fascists. Or are you a fascist but want your games to fly under the radar and appeal to normies? If this describes you, stop reading my blog and never come back. But if your motives are truly pure, here is how to make an apolitical RPG:

Step One: you can’t.

Step Two:

Hope that helps!

“But if all games are inherently political, are games with problematic themes bad to play?” Not necessarily. D&D and its lineage is caked in racist and colonial tropes, but scrubbing it from the game is no great decolonial project. Frankly, there is nothing I could say on this subject that is not better said by Zedeck Siew, author of A Thousand Thousand Islands and so much more (if somehow you are reading this blog and aren’t already familiar with Zedeck’s work, I highly recommend this deep dive from Vi Huntsman). Zedeck spake forth (on Twitter, I am only reproducing a portion but the whole thread is worth a read and a reread):

For those who want to continue using the "language" of D&D-

Going forth into the "wild hinterland" (as if this weren't somebody's homeland) to "seek treasure" (as if this didn't belong to anybody) and "slay monsters" (monsters to whom?) ...

Yeah. Problematic stuff here.

And definitely these aspects should make more people uncomfortable.

But it's an error to "decolonise D&D" by scrubbing such content from the game.

That feels like erasure; like an unwillingness to face history / context; like a way to appease one's own settler guilt.

Remember: if you -white or PoC- live in the West, or in an Asian urban centre (say), you are already complicit in colonialist / capitalist (they are inextricably linked) behaviour.

Removing such stuff from RPGs might let you feel better. But won't change what you are.

I think it more truthful *and* more useful, to not avert one's eyes from D&D's colonialism.

The fact that going forth into the hinterland to seek treasure and slay monsters is a thing and fucking fun tells us valuable things about the shape and psychology of colonialism.

- Zedeck Siew

If there is a takeaway from this post, it is to recognize that your games are political. Even the most simple, childlike games you can imagine are political. But armed with that knowledge, you needn’t necessarily scrub your games from any content that is politically squicky. Instead, play games intentionally. Sit with your discomfort. I don’t have any easy answers for you.