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.
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.
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.
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
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.
