Something near in dear to my hearts is politics in TTRPGs, the way that playing games recreates political thoughts and the ways we can educate about politics through roleplay. TTRPGs are able to communicate politics intended or not.
Masks: The New Generation makes a ton of political inspiration while it might seem politically neutral due to matching media tropes it actually has a lot in here to have the player engage in actively supporting the police state. It brings the politics of super hero comics with it from it's Solider Playbook and Secrets of AEGIS in general clearly place the military origination in the morally good side. The game also takes a political assumption about teenagers, that teens are always influenced by what Adults say to them. This simply isn't true but it is an assumption based in a particular experience with adults that teens with difference experiences clearly would not relate to. In recreating the white middle class lens of the world that Super Hero comics operate under we see that Masks despite seeming like a more scrappy story of teens fighting the powerful secretly enforces that status quo.
Politics can be spoken through what seem like fairly normal mechanics too. The fight move in Thirsty Sword Lesbians is very intentionally a move that always has a negative effect for the player using it. The game wants you to fight but it wants that to not be the first reaction to every single problem. Where in a game like D&D the game wants you to turn to violence whenever possible giving you a ton of options to do violence with the intention of killing or knocking out or whatever else. TSL has a ton of great mechanics that reflect politics but since I worked on it I don't want to gush about it too much.
Another great example of a game reflecting it's politics is The Watch, that game takes a harsher and much more dark approach then a lot of games I've played but it's all in service of making a game that is in every way, every mechanics, every narrative aspect, about dismantling the patriarch. It does a great job using everything to give you a vision of fighting back against this force and struggles and sacrifice and pitfalls one might fall into. I don't totally agree with it on every political point but I can appreciate that there is no wasted mechanic, it has just enough mechanics to do what it wants to do and it uses all of them to their full potential. I saw on twitter there was a potential new version and I am excited to see how the game will evolve with more time, z
With these examples discussed I think for me what I want to take away is that we are always communicating politics in our games intentional or not, so we should strive to take a reading of the games we create or love. By understanding the politics, intended or not we can subvert or embrace the political ends of games to say something with the stories we tell, not just simply tell stories but tell stories at our tables with intent. I think it makes games more fun and more engaging. TTRPGs can teach us new perspectives, give us new empathy and give us so much more then silly jokes with friends [but also that]. So think about the politics of your games sometime.
