this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2026
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I feel like a lot of people, who complain about politics in gaming are not choosing to examine/not examine the political assumptions, they are simply not realising that they’re there. Often these themes reside deeper in the storytelling so you have to actually engage with it to be aware of them. People who complain about it only choose a handful of topics to be mad about, because they are against it.
No. Their politics is being default to the point they can completely avoid self awareness.
Exactly. What they're really mad about is the fact that there's a black person, a gay person, or woman with normal sized tits in the game.
I hate normal sized tits!
/s Just in case 😄
normal sized tits are such a rarity
That may be the case for some people, but a lot of people just want some good lighthearted fun without any of the real world implications attached to it. This obviously doesn't excuse bigoted mindsets. I'm talking about campaigns where me and my players just want to do some good old goblin slaying without the need for anyone to chime in with a "UM actshually those goblins have families too".
Aren't goblins ontologically evil in most DND settings? That should take care of that specific issue anyway.
Nah, they've long fallen to the usual cycle of "here is a species of interesting antagonistic creatures" -> "Oh wow, that sounds interesting. I want to play them" -> "Yeah sure, here's a playbale variant of that species. We've removed all traces of evilness and uniqueness because god forbid players playing evil characters". Same as Drow, Orcs, Fairies and Goliath.
It's not just their inherent evil nature BTW. It's also stuff like daylight sensitivity.
I mean I can understand having occasional exceptions to the rule so the players can get an interesting non standard experience, but straight evil aligned critters should always be present in fantasy settings especially ttrpg and DND specifically.
I'm not sure about always. That's just lazy world building to have orcs naturally evil instead of predominantly mind controlled or ruled by evil leaders or some sort of blood fued. It's the same with good aligned races. Unless you want to focus on the definition of good and evil.
Easy moral patch: These specific goblins have all made unambiguously evil choices that warrant a good slaying. Like kicking dogs. You're not slaying goblins because they're goblins, you're slaying dog-kickers that happen to be goblins. There are plenty of goblins who do not kick dogs, but they're not a part of this fight.
This is still a political statement that dog kickers are evil. I doubt anyone would mind that, and those that do are better off leaving my table anyway.
Or, you know. We could just ignore those pseudo-moral excuses and do some good old goblin slaying because they're in the dungeon, laying traps and we want the loot. Not everything needs 12 layers of logical depth. Sure, it's fun to explore moral implications from time to time, but more often than not, no one cares.
But you're making the statement that it's okay to kill people if you want their stuff. The politics are there even if you don't choose to examine them.
No, I'm not. Because my mental development moved past three years old and I'm able to differentiate reality from fiction. Do you also believe that Super Mario players advocate for animal cruelty towards turtles?
Have you taken any literature or maybe other media classes at the 200 level?
Sometimes people say really weird things and I wonder if they just don't know any better. Maybe they're a teenager.
But like "fact from fiction" is irrelevant here. No one's saying Dracula is non-fiction, but you can still read it and take meaning from the text. Furthermore, it's not just a story about a guy who bites people. The read on how women are expected to behave is pretty obvious, for example.
You don't have to care about the subtext of "kill all the goblins and take their stuff", but saying there is no subtext or "no one cares" is absurd and self-centered.
That's an interesting point you make and I partly agree. There are certain undertones and sometimes you can create a better story by engaging these undertones and creating a monster in noble clothing and a metaphor for the societal corset women are forced ro wear.
But other times I just want to enjoy a trash movie or 15$ airport library book. And the undertones there are purely accidental and shouldn't be taken too seriously.
Both forms of entertainment serve their purpose and you can insist on pointing out the political statements and societal undertones in a cheap slasher movie. but that doesn't make you smart or enlightened. It just makes you an ass who enjoys shitting on other people's lighthearted entertainment.
And one last note: "'fact from fiction' is irrelevant here". No, it's not. If someone accuses me of encouraging mindless slaughter of people based on some mindless dungeon crawling, then it does matter. Because that's exactly the idiotic killer games argument of the early 2000s that has been disproved 100s of times! Killing goblins in a ttrpg has absolutely nothing to do with any moral standpoints I hold outside of the game and only an idiot would believe otherwise!
Well, I'm glad we're approaching some common ground.
No one here is making the argument that you're seriously "encouraging mindless slaughter of people based on some regular dungeon crawling". No one's saying you're, like, recommending people go out and do that in real life. The argument is there is a message, even if it's unintentional.
There's little wrong with enjoying a trash movie, but
Why? What authority says subtext shouldn't be taken seriously?
There's a lot of rich material for analysis, for talking about what our society values among other things, by looking at the messages in pop culture. Imagine two societies. In one, all their pop culture and trashy airport novels are about murder and plunder. In the other, they're about cooperation and building a better world together. Do you think that would mean anything? Do you think you could infer anything at all from that? It says something that we're cool with "then I killed him and took his stuff! Rock on!". We've all played that kind of game, but if you think about it that's a horrible story.
Surely there are stories that would be on the far side of the line for you. "I killed the men and enslaved the women! Look at all these points the game gave me!" would probably make most people uncomfortable. Why is the line there, but murder is fine? Does the placement of that line mean anything?
And again, this doesn't mean you can't play a beer-and-pretzels half-brained game about tactics, strategy, and extermination. But to wave your hands in the air and say it doesn't mean anything is absurd.
jjjalljs@ttrpg.network Yeah, the ideas that "I'm not interested in receiving a message, therefore the things I consume have no message" or "this product was inexpensive, therefore the creator has no message" are pretty wild.
Sometimes the politics being presented are invisible to the author, and sometimes they're not. In either case, they're communicating real messages about the world, what the creator believes is acceptable, and what they believe is not. Not seeing those messages really just means that you thoughtlessly agree with them.
Which says more about the consumer than it does the producer.
I mean the statement is being made within the universe. Super Mario does advocate for violence against koopas. You don't have to examine it, but that doesn't make it apolitical.