User:Matt

Revision as of 21:11, 1 April 2022

Prejudice

Every year we use the winter break to look at aspects of the Empire game, with a view to trying to update things. We understand that changing things comes with a cost - people have to learn new rules or game elements and it can affect what people have roleplayed - but we want to ensure that we can continue to enjoy running Empire and people continue to enjoy playing it for years to come. Because we've all had such a long break from Empire, we've tried to use that time as an opportunity to change some really important parts of the game that either required major work or involved changes to the core setting. Hence major updates to things like the conduct process, costume and the armour rules.

The final major change that we are making is to revamp some key elements of prejudice in the setting. Altough Empire is a fantasy setting it is deliberately intended to have a more realistic feel to it, it's a game of politics and messy compromises more like Game of Thrones than the heroic ideals of Lord of the Rings. As a consequence many of the kind of conflicts that happen frequently in the real world crop up periodically in Empire, and players have noted times in the past like when we have plots that involved refugees or similar. We've tried to be open about the fact that a setting that aims to play with ideas that drive realistic conflicts in the real world will produce things that can make people uncomfortable.

However, we've also deliberately shied away from some forms of conflict that we are not interested in including in our game, no matter how unrealistic that makes the setting. Our setting explicitly tries to exclude misogyny, homophobia and similar kinds of prejudice because those are not themes we think are worth exploring in a game like Empire. For a host of reasons we don't think explicit references to them or including them as themes in plot would add anything to the game. Conflict is an inevitable part of Empire, the game simply would not work without it, but we wanted to exclude ideas like misogyny that were felt were inseperable from their real world analogues.

One of the elements we did include in the original setting was widespread prejudice against briars. This was an explicit design choice, we wanted to create a character choice that people could take that would allow them to encounter discrimination and prejudice in the game. It's clear that some people have leaned into that element of the setting and enjoyed the roleplaying that comes from it. However after several years of running the game, it's increasingly clear that the inclusion of this prejudice makes the game less enjoyable for a significant number of players.

As designers we thought the distinctions between race in the real world and lineage in our fantasy setting were distinct enough that the comparisons (and there are clear comparisons) didn't matter. That was a mistake on our part. There are elements of lineage that are fundamentally different to racism in the real world, but the similiarities are still too close. That leads to situations where people sometimes adopt the language that accompany real world racism and transplant them into the setting which only heightens those similarities. Given our design decisions to exclude elements like misogyny or homophobia it makes no sense to include a theme that is acting as a translation of real world racism. It's not a defence to say "that wasn't what we intended" when it is increasingly clear that it is what we ended up with.

So we've taken the decision to change the Empire setting and retire all overt prejudice against lineage and the Imperial Orcs. For a number of reasons, including continuity with recorded player actions, we've chosen to imeplement this change as a development that has occurred on the run up to the Winter Solstice. We are asking people to update their characterisation to reflect the changes in the setting, and we've changed the emphasis on some elements in the setting, but everything that characters did at recent events still happened. Current plots, like the one involving flowers growing from briar bark will continue, but we'll try to be clearer on the themes of those plots to reduce parallels with real world racism.

Obviously it is patently ridiculous that a society of millions of people could stop being prejudiced over night - no change like that has ever occurred on such time-scales in the real world. But we are doing this because we want to focus the game on politics, economics, war, intrigue and similar themes - the only way to change the setting is to update the wiki and ask people to change the way they play their characters going forwards. It's not practical or even desirable to play that out over a series of events, so we've taken advantage of this long period when everyone has not been playing Empire to change how they play their characters when the game resumes. Between the fact that this is an in-character evolution - and the strange mists that have taken people's memories - we hope that that will be sufficient explanation for most people to justify any changes to the way they play their characters.

Although we've removed the explicit prejudice we have deliberately not made lineage irrelevant in the setting. It is still meant to be very important to your characterisation - and we've maintained some positive distinctions towards the lineaged - and we've also remodelled the Highborn view of lineage in a way that is meant to remove the overt prejudice but replace it with a different approach that keeps lineage unique in that nation. It is important to stress that we know we haven't removed all prejudice or discrimination from the setting. Empire is a game of conflict between individuals, groups and societies - and there will always be parallels with real world prejudices and conflicts in that. Our goal here is to remove the explicit exhortation towards overt prejudice towards briars and Imperial Orcs that produces language and interactions on the field that are too close to real world racism for us and some of our players.

This isn't the first time we've made changes like this - we rewrote the Brass Coast background in 2019 to remove the matrilineal elements because of the clear problems they had. To their credit, the Freeborn players responded overwhelmingly positively to that and took the significant changes to their backstory and roleplaying in their stride because they understood why it would make a better game. The changes we are making here affect every nation in the game, and we know they won't suit everyone, some people will have chosen to play a briar or Imperial Orc character because they wanted to play with those themes of prejudice and discrimination, so this is a loss to them. But we are confident that these changes will produce a better game, there is still a vast range of themes that Empire can explore but with a setting that is accessible to more people than previously.

IC Justification

We've chosen a handful of characterful Synod statements of principle as the in-character justification for this change. Normally we would respond to a statement in the general assembly that achieved a greater majority with a wind of fortune, some plot and some possible mandates. On this occasion we've skipped those steps and gone straight to the in-character consequences. We hope the players-characters who put those judgements forward are happy for their characters to take credit for this change in the Empire, but obviously this is an out-of-character decision that Profound Decisions have taken, it's not appropriate to criticise them for these changes in anyway. Nor is this something that could be reversed by in-character action.

Key Changes

We've removed every single nation page discussing lineage and orcs. We've made a handful of changes to appropriate nation pages to reference the old prejudices that existed previously. We've also updated some pages to contain details of the positive ways in which people view the lineaged that were on the removed pages previously. Finally we've updated the religious beliefs page for Highguard to make clear the unique challenges that Highborn lineaged face that flows from their commitment to the Way. It's useful to read the parts of the linked pages for your nation that have been changed and the update to the language section of the conduct rules if at all possible.

User:Matt

Revision as of 21:11, 1 April 2022

Prejudice

IC Justification

Key Changes

Conduct

The Brass Coast

Dawn

Highguard

Imperial Orcs

The League

The Marches

Navarr

Urizen

Varushka

Wintermark

More About Empire[edit | | ]

Profound Decisions[edit | | ]

Social[edit | | ]

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 Obviously it is patently ridiculous that a society of millions of people could stop being prejudiced over night - no change like that has ever occurred on such time-scales in the real world. But we are doing this because we want to focus the game on politics, economics, war, intrigue and similar themes - the only way to change the setting is to update the wiki and ask people to change the way they play their characters going forwards. It's not practical or even desirable to play that out over a series of events, so we've taken advantage of this long period when everyone has not been playing Empire to change how they play their characters when the game resumes. Between the fact that this is an in-character evolution - and the strange mists that have taken people's memories - we hope that that will be sufficient explanation for most people to justify any changes to the way they play their characters.
-Although we've removed the explicit prejudice we have deliberately not made lineage irrelevant in the setting. It is still meant to be very important to your characterisation - and we've maintained some positive distinctions towards the lineaged - and we've also remodelled the Highborn view of lineage in a way that is meant to remove the overt prejudice but replace it with a different approach that keeps lineage unique in that nation. It is important to stress that we can't remove all prejudice or discrimination from the setting - and we're not trying to do that. Empire is a game of conflict between individuals, groups and societies - and there will always be parallels with real world prejudices and conflicts in that. Our goal here is to remove the explicit exhortation towards overt prejudice towards briars (and to a lesser extent Imperial Orcs) that produces a game that feels too close to real world racism for us and some of our players.
+Although we've removed the explicit prejudice we have deliberately not made lineage irrelevant in the setting. It is still meant to be very important to your characterisation - and we've maintained some positive distinctions towards the lineaged - and we've also remodelled the Highborn view of lineage in a way that is meant to remove the overt prejudice but replace it with a different approach that keeps lineage unique in that nation. It is important to stress that we know we haven't removed all prejudice or discrimination from the setting. Empire is a game of conflict between individuals, groups and societies - and there will always be parallels with real world prejudices and conflicts in that. Our goal here is to remove the explicit exhortation towards overt prejudice towards briars and Imperial Orcs that produces language and interactions on the field that are too close to real world racism for us and some of our players.
 This isn't the first time we've made changes like this - we rewrote the Brass Coast background in 2019 to remove the matrilineal elements because of the clear problems they had. To their credit, the Freeborn players responded overwhelmingly positively to that and took the significant changes to their backstory and roleplaying in their stride because they understood why it would make a better game. The changes we are making here affect every nation in the game, and we know they won't suit everyone, some people will have chosen to play a briar or Imperial Orc character because they wanted to play with those themes of prejudice and discrimination, so this is a loss to them. But we are confident that these changes will produce a better game, there is still a vast range of themes that Empire can explore but with a setting that is accessible to more people than previously.