Possible pipeline idea: Explicitly leftist tabletop club the links up the terminally online with labor organizers and uses one-off games as a method of teaching people how to organize. It’s basically corporate retreat roleplay exercises but actually fun and voluntary.
:amogus: is kinda the template for something like this
just gotta tweak some stuff to make the imposter swapped out for a class traitor
maybe a card game that can be played for fun and for more practical uses
I’m surprised how many people here have mentioned developing a whole new card game. Is that something that could be prototyped quickly?
Stressing the importance of a trust model is good, but it could also be used for more generic roleplaying too. Everything from agitating to canvassing to writing PR statements could be covered.
I like this as well, when canvassing we would often roleplay with other canvassers to help get comfortable with the "stock" answers we would get. Also could be helpful if trying to do community organization (food drive, rent strike, anti-imperialism campaigns)
we have a big dnd server with 100+ members (more like 25 active ones) that started from hexbear here more than a year ago, if you didnt know. if anyone wants a link, ask me (or go look in my post history)
cos i dont want people to invade the server!!! anyway here it is: https://discord.gg/R5dPsZU
This is actually something that I wanted to capture in the game I developed, granted it is based in a sci-fi/fantasy setting and what you are describing sounds more like a way of gamifying the inoculation process that is an important part of union organization. essentially roleplaying scenarios that would come up during union organization especially the phase before you send off a card-check or have a vote.
Honestly I think the best way to go about this is a pvp card game, maybe similar to netrunner where you have one player as the "worker" and the other as the "boss"
Each player has a hand of cards that may be a setting like "the factory floor", or "working class pub" or "c-suite meeting", some cards are actions like "wildcat strike" "pandemic" "minimum wage hike" "at-will employment" or cards that are people like "scab" "new employee" "union member" "shift lead".
The win-con could be a reduction of a numberical amount similar to magic's life but renamed into "Workplace Influence" or something like that, other win-cons could be reaching a threshold for people cards to simulate the organization, while the action and setting cards would be closer to the sorcery/instant side of MTG.
idk just kinda spitballing here but love this!
Another approach is to use d20 modern, or if enough people are wanting I could adapt the d6 system I developed away from being setting specific to a generalized modern setting so that you could run scenarios like "The four PCs are all employess at the amazon processing facility, and run encounters of the job itself but also having social encounters with NPC workers, or a boss who is going thru the guilt trip shit when they find out about your union drive."
Prettty good thread that captures what I mean by inoculation: https://labornotes.org/2016/10/inoculate-your-co-workers-against-bosss-tactics
Only issue with making a socialist netrunner is that someone’s gotta play the capitalist :bern-disgust:
True, in union organization roleplay someone has to play the boss. It is a good way of donning the perspective of the ruling class not only as it can help the other person be prepared but also you may get insight for a power analysis.
A year old post with some more info on power analysis: https://hexbear.net/post/87343
Actually, there are games out there where the "opponent" is basically just the rules, so they can be played solo or cooperatively. Imagine a "capitalist" deck with specific cards, each turn you flip over the next card on the deck which describes what the "capitalists" do that turn, which the players must then react to appropriately in order to win.
Another approach is to use d20 modern, or if enough people are wanting I could adapt the d6 system I developed away from being setting specific to a generalized modern setting so that you could run scenarios like “The four PCs are all employess at the amazon processing facility, and run encounters of the job itself but also having social encounters with NPC workers, or a boss who is going thru the guilt trip shit when they find out about your union drive.”
This is more what I had imagined but developing a card game would be neat. Probably more long term than what I was hoping
I wonder what the premise of the scenarios would be? I'm sure there's plenty of good stories to rip off already of out there.
I think some of it would just regular games. Have an actual TTRPG community that happens to be leftists. Then there would community events where players or DMs would be labor organizers. Instead of an AMA where you ask questions, here they can show you what it actually looks like. We had that one AMA with Abby from the IWW and I saw her talking about salting an Amazing warehouse at one point. That would make an awesome short campaign
You would realistically wanna write a pro-leftist, labor organizing module that people can run.
Yeah the system also needs to support the fact that majority of the encounters will be social-based. While being able to roleplay shooting cops may be cathartic in regards to any practical application you would need to have something that allows people to roleplay a conversation that would happen.
@quartz242 just proposed:
The four PCs are all employess at the amazon processing facility, and run encounters of the job itself but also having social encounters with NPC workers, or a boss who is going thru the guilt trip shit when they find out about your union drive.
Sounds pretty fun to me
Also I wanted to put this out there if anyone is interested developing a tabletop game I would love to talk more about this, pros & cons of going with a dice & character sheet based system versus a pvp card game
Hell yeah I’m not super well versed and would love to learn more
I’d never thought about it before but the need for a dungeon master who’s something of an expert at the system has an interesting social difference from a card game people can pick up and play just by reading the directions for a few minutes
