So my first DnD campaign is on hiatus so another player has started their own for us to play in the meantime. My DM for this new campaign is explaining the world and itās a bitā¦ hmmm. I guess you could say Iām uncomfortable with a setting based on the Soviet Union by someone who doesnāt know anything about the USSR. He explains it as small states forced to be in absorbed into the empire, thereās one rich area and as you get farther away the poorer it gets, the worst area is described as Ukraine. I guess in that area you can be working the land and then some guy forces you to give him money. Our Soviet Union is very repressive and weāre at war with a democratic nation. Every child is given a magical stamp, if you go against the empire or do āthought crimesā you get changed markings. You can get good markings back via āsocial credit.ā I feel so uneasy and I feel bad. I donāt want to be a Debby downer or an ass.
He mentioned Marxism but it seems to be evil in this universe (āwith regards to Marxism make sure you donāt get the worst mark on your headā). Also heās encouraging us to play evil/neutral. I donāt know what to do. I want to make the best of it but damn, I literally play as a Marxist dog in the hiatus playthrough (the current DM is a fellow player on that campaign) so Iām surprised this is happening. Do you have advice on how to make the best of this? Maybe combat misinformation subtly in character? Iām freaking out!
Edit: the currency in this āstateā is not gold or typical money, itās food rations. So when I said if you live in a poorer region and a guy comes demanding money I mean some state official haggles you for taxes which is paid in rations. This haggling seems to only take place in the poorest āUkraineā areasā¦
Damn, thatās cringyā¦ not that militaries have never ordered massacres against civilians before, but there was always some sort of logic to them, like discouraging people from harming colonizers, or simply making room for colonizers. Your DM sounds like me at age ten. I bet that your DM rewards people for lateāterm abortions, too. The later the abortion, the better!
Yeah if anything this is just childishā¦not to mention lazy, like, if I wanted to do Nazi Germany Iād probably research to pull some fun details from real life to inspire something allegorical. This is just a lazy heap of vague cultural osmosis anticommunist slop.
Fun fact: apparently this campaign has been in the works since COVID started and the Ukraine war just inspired him moreā¦ I donāt know what the hell kind of research heās been doing this whole time but itās clearly wrong. Like, at best his āSoviet Unionā resembles the Russian Empire or Nazi Germany. He also sent us the song āfeed the machineā by Poor Manās Poison, so I thought this would be a working class campaign but I guess not. I always thought that song was anti-capitalist (most of their songs are in my opinion). What an unfortunate series of events Iāve found myself inā¦
The reprise to feed the machine is āgive and takeā which is explicitally a revolution in response to the of the society in āfeed the machineā.
Exactly, both fantastic songs that I always associated with, at the very least, leftist politics. I find it funny (not funny haha, funny weird) that itās being used in this context. I love their music and have listened to their work to inspire my own story ideas and projects, so you can imagine that I was a bit shocked at which direction this campaign was taking. Had I known what the story was going to be about before hand I wouldnāt have agreed to itā¦