Van ✸ @spellbbbound - Tumblr Blog

only thing that comes to mind today.

the fad of putting these little blurbs in TTRPGs was probably the most embarrassing bit of useless wanking the little industry scene has ever done, besides the time Warmahordes put a "this aint your daddys tabletop game!" in their rulebook.

does this serve any purpose other than to make the publisher feel like they're Doing Something, and to help consumers feel like their purchases are meaningful political engagement?

At the absolute minimum you could make a game which actually is a meaningful cultural expression of your ideals, or which is politically anti fascist in any way.

sunspotpony

So this is actually I can reassure you, the exact opposite of self indulgent wanking with no impact. It’s aggressively impactful in a very specific way—by making the nazis in the room very loud about the fact that they’re nazis.

I’m going to tell you about how a discord banner that was put up for pride month in the Lancer ttrpg official discord was so successful at getting bigots to out themselves, that it’s been the permanent official discord banner for 4 years now.

This is the updated version. It’s animated now.

But pride month 4 or 5 years ago, somebody made the server banner a Goblin mech dabbing in front of a trans flag.

And for your average person who joined the server, they just kinda went, lol cool.

For the trans people who joined the server, it made them feel extra safe.

And for the bigots who joined the server? They’d fucking bitch about it IMMEDIATELY. And promptly get banned.

And that month saw so many bannings of dipshits that they decided to keep that banner, because every single time a bigot joins the server, there is a high chance that they will out themselves IMMEDIATELY and be promptly banned.

While including text like this in a book is different than a community space, the reality is, fascists do not like being embarrassed or confronted about their beliefs; they have fragile egos.

So imagine you are going through the book with a group of friends, and you get to this block about “fascism bad,” and somebody is like, “I don’t know how I feel about this. It seems a bit stupid,” it immediately gets to raise a red flag for everybody that maybe this person isn’t, as cool to have at the table as they thought.

Similarly, you know how many bigots went and burned their beers/hats/shoes because some corporation supported trans people/gay people/Collin Kapernick?

This is performative, yes. But it’s not performative to puff up themselves as heroes. It’s performative, aimed right at the fragile skinned assholes who will boycott Oreos and Budweiser for “supporting the gays.”

It’s one of the FASTEST ways to reduce the number of virulent bigots in a community for ZERO COST.

Like, maybe the experience of the lancer discord is atypical, and fascists are learning to have thicker skins and lie about their beliefs better.

It’s still PROFOUNDLY CHEAP AND EASY to include this blurb.

So, it’s free, zero effort nazi repellent.

Frankly with that in mind, I’d regard anybody who ISNT doing this, as maybe a tiny bit cowardly.

It doesn’t fix the world— anyone who thinks the table top scene will magically save the day is a fool—but it does increase the odds that the hobby will be a safer place for more reasonable people, and not become a bastion of fascism like the wh40k fandom has.

noctumsolis

Like, maybe the experience of the lancer discord is atypical, and fascists are learning to have thicker skins and lie about their beliefs better.

It may be atypical but it's certainly not unique. Another example is the Heraldry discord I'm on, with an icon that is animated to switch its original colours and two other versions, displaying gay pride and transgender pride colours.

Bigots join, bigots mouth off, bigots get banned.

Sometimes we get a different flavour of bigot, ones who tolerate us queers but are racist as hell. They tend to out themselves, too, because it's a heraldry server. That fact alone makes them assume that we're all "European culture is best" and other racist bullshit. They get banned.

See also the Godot discord, with an icon that scrolls through pride colours in a beautiful way.

trismeowgistus

It even works for games famously infested with fascists like 40k. Games Workshop coming out with a (really rather tepid) statement of support of BLM had Nazis losing their minds in the comments fucking immediately

walking-fandom

I remember the meltdowns when the new Worls of Darkness books came out that this blurb is in. It's pretty easy to piss fascists off by just saying you don't want them there.

crazy-pages

The Pathfinder Facebook group did something like this on purpose as a honeypot and immediately banned all the bigots coming out of the woodwork, and immediately eliminated more than HALF of all incidents requiring moderators. Not just about bigotry, everything.

And that is TACTICALLY USEFUL.

Because game companies spend so much money moderating chat spaces (both forums and in-game chats) and they lose so much business when dominant third party online spaces associated with their game turn toxic. Hell moderation is the big money sink for social media. Managing that cost is one of the most difficult aspects of the business.

Now imagine telling a game or social media executive that you can eliminate half of their harassment in a single honeypot operation. Imagine telling them that you have a technique which surgically targets a majority of their most toxic members and immediately gets rid of them. Because that's what this is.

You slap up a big pride or power banner and an announcement that this company stands with [insert group here], or stands against fascism, and you take names on everybody who has angry or quibbling shit to say about that. And then you ban them all. And just like that the moderation load you're dealing with gets so much lighter. Keep it up with a similar announcement whenever a topical opportunity presents itself and you clean out any new trash which walks in too.

And it just so happens that the way to do this is to clear out the bigots and make a safe space for oppressed groups.

There are so many of these companies which are worried that by taking a stand like this they will hurt their user base. There are so many forums online with volunteer moderators who reflexively don't want to wait into politics because they think that will increase their workload. Give them good solid practical examples of this reducing their workload instead, and you will get some of them onboard.

Because this has a real measurable impact with the right follow through, and the impact is a general reduction in all harassment of everyone. And that is worth capital M Money and capital T Time to some people.

prismatic-bell

There's another effect, too, and I'm going to explain it by going back to when I was thirteen years old.

I had to write a paper for school about the KKK. The internet was a new and powerful tool in a way I don't think I can explain to a modern audience--suffice to say that the fact I was looking to include an internet source at all was unusual.

I decided to write to a KKK chapter and ask to interview someone.

Now keep in mind, I'm thirteen. My writing style marks me out as being weird as hell. I'm used to being talked down to and dismissed, considered a troublemaker.

This chapter got a fucking Grand Dragon to email me back. If you're not familiar with KKK terminology (I got to be so because of this paper, actually), this is somewhat like writing to someone at city hall to ask if maybe you can interview a local politician and then you get a letter from the Vice President.

This leader among Klansmen was polite. He called me Miss. I told him straight-up that I didn't agree with him, and he was very cordial about it and said he was glad that whether I agreed or not, I was willing to share an underrepresented side of the Klan's story. He was respectful and his answers were well thought-out. At the end of our discussions, he told me I could reach out any time, and that he'd be happy to find a local chapter I could talk to if I wanted.

WAIT--

You see what happened there, right? That was grooming. That was him seeing an opportunity--nice young white Christian girl, contacting him--and running with it.

So now let's get back to the TTRPG.

Your local shop runs a game night and a thirteen-year-old comes in. You can tell just looking at him that he's used to being dismissed, bullied, unseen.

And a guy at your table is like "dude! Glad you're here! Come play with us! You know how to fill out a character sheet or is this your first time? Nah, it's cool, we were all beginners at one point. Here, you can borrow my dice."

The thirteen-year-old starts to look up to this guy. They become friends.

There are two ways this story can end.

One involves the guy being a genuinely good guy. He introduces the kid to a wider group of gamers, helps him set up a gaming group at his school, tells the kid's parents about an upcoming convention their son might like. It's a genuinely good friendship, one that provides a loving and affirming mentor and a safe space for a young person desperate to find his own people.

But then there's the other ending.

The other ending is one where, once he has the kid good and invested in the game, our older gamer guy decides to introduce him to some older versions of M:TG or D&D, saying the games were better before they got so woke.

You know how this version of the story goes. We hear it every time there's a mass shooting. It surrounds every incidence of the word "redpilled." It might be TTRPG, MMPORG, YouTube, or a friendly email, but at its core it's always the same. It's grooming, it's radicalization, and it's dangerous.

But let's rewind. Let's go back to that first night, the one in the game shop where we don't know yet if this is Good Guy Gamer or a fascist asshole.

We're about to find out.

The DM reads out the V:TM antifascism statement.

Our guy says "hell yeah" and no more discussion is had on the subject. But our thirteen-year-old now knows the guy who was kind to him supports kindness to others in general.

But what if his response is to throw a tantrum? He says it's stupid, leans hard on the existence of wargaming, and eventually storms off in a huff.

A different player, who has no problem with the anti-fascism statement, looks at the thirteen-year-old and says "wow. I'm sorry, kid. I didn't realize he was such an asshole. You need some dice? I've got plenty. Here, let me see your character sheet. We can finish it together."

What lesson did the kid at this table learn? Did he see that the people who find fascism uncool are those who decided to stay and play with him? That they're more fun than Nazi McGee? That the loud, angry, pushy bully so much like the jerks at school is the one who wanted to add fascism to the game?

Don't let a Grand Dragon roll the dice. Announce your table opposes bigotry. You never know who's sitting there and needs to hear it.

#slay