Long thread about my TTRPG campaign and it's unintended intersection with current politics:
I'm currently running a game set in a homebrew world where what we consider the material plane has been split - each classical element has a floating island in the void where it (and a humanoid that embodies it) holds sway. Where those elements meet, paraelements carry the day: Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Ash, Jungle, Swamp, Ice.
1/
In the center of these Wards and Crossings lies an larger isle covered in a steampunk-esque city, ruled over by a vaguely evil administrative body called the Consulate.
They oversee trade between Wards, they run the city, and most importantly to the current campaign, they are the only people currently capable of creating Clockwork - mechanical humanoids that develop personalities and consciousness.
2/
The Consulate creates Clockwork as laborers, primarily - customizing them for jobs as needed. It is not uncommon for a Clockwork to try to escape from the Consulate, and for the Consulate's part, they've mostly decided that any Clockwork that does so is not worth trying to recover because they'll be so ineffective and unhappy as to be useless for the job they're intended for.
3/
But recently, something's changed - the Consulate has started using a street gang as muscle to round up the poor, destitute, lost, abandoned, you-name-it from the slums of the city and make the disappear. My players found out why a few sessions ago: the Consulate has discovered how to force the souls of existing people into the empty shells of waiting Clockwork. This process results in a "broken in" Clockwork.
4/
As it happens, these "broken in" Clockworks have had their will to fight, to struggle against the Consulate stripped away. They are useless for anything *but* being Clockwork.
Obviously, my players see this for the evil it is. They're fighting against it. The technology involved has as much to do with the reason why their shattered world is the way it is as it does with the oppression they're fighting against, which they will learn about coming up.
5/
But what's interesting, at least to me, is that I've written an ICE storyline without ever intending to. My players had picked up on it, and when I prefaced our last session with what was effectively a CW for the game, they were all like, "Yeah, we made that connection already," but the thing is, I hadn't until I sat down to do some game prep last week. Looking back, I don't think I started this game with the parallel in mind, but I do think I subconsciously guided it there.
6/6
@stumblewyk I'm currently prepping to run a (heavily modified) old adventure. I realized one of the GB groups is basically MAGA and has to ask my group if they thought it was too "on the nose" for our current environment. Everyone was OK with it, so long as they were allowed to kill the BGs in question. Catharsis is a real thing!
Josh
DThoris