Consider in the 1980's when Warsaw pact countries officially had communist governments and heavy censorship (Look into the film productions of Henryk Sienkiewicz novels as examples, because the Eastern Block film companies needed to work around censorship in translating the novels to film.), how well did those citizens agree with that censorship? Did the general populations of Poland, Hungry, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, etc. struggle against the imposed censorship to produce what they could? Did they look at the freedom to create allowed to their Western counterparts?
Those creators maybe had heroic attitudes to create, but their efforts were throttled by oppressive regulations. Censorship is bad for creativity and other reasons. The censors are bad, not the creators being suppressed.
Considering state of art in post-communist Poland, compared to communist Poland I honestly think sometimes that throttling culture with some limitations is not a bad thing, sir.
Even with Sienkiewicz novels - truly the first one "By Fire and Sword" was not filmed in those years due to its description of Cossacks (ergo ethnic Rusyn) people in Ukraine conflict vs. Nobility (mostly also Rusyn but subject to Polish Crown). (Ironically enough novels written during partition period suffered probably more from censorship - as all mentions about Russia and Moscow has to be very very limited, despite important Moscow influence), but both "Deluge" and "Colonel Wołodyjowski" are considered classic movies. When Hoffman finally did first part, without censorship, well results were far from excellent. Many Polish satirical groups, cabarets just lost their mojo without their constant play with censorship - now they can write whatever they wanted, and that took need to be smart.
Communists were bad, but it took Polish culture like 25 years to recover from fall of communism, and lack of censorship. History can be really ironic. (Now of course it depends of severity of censorship - as usual, balance between limitations and desires - it's really kinda like RPG
)
But in terms of RPG it was not really a thing. The RPGs that wandered to Poland were first xerocopies of various systems, it started to be promoted in 80s when Polish fandom grow from you know just people reading sci-fi to more united front, and then fluorished in 90s weird wacky capitalism. As all new things you need time for things to grow in new place. Now definitely anti-American stance of goverment was certain hindrace, but overall we lost just few years compared to many western countries. Have no idea what would happen without fall of communism - probably there would be much worse quality of paper books, but ultimately Dungeons and Dragons wasn't really political.
The solution to this is small independent authors and platforms maintaining the freedom to publish what they want, because hypothetically a large publisher that started in the Western Hemisphere where censorship is fundamentally illegal could be forced to rewrite its intellectual properties (IP) to sell product in Eastern Hemisphere where censorship is strong.
Dude, I'm in Eastern Hemisphere, that's bit of overexaggeration, especially since most of landmass is here
I mean I guess there is no playing D&D in North Korea, but other than that, unless country is not totally poor I guess you can play it. I mean Chinese definitely are playing RPG's, India is not much for censorship that's 2/7 of mankind over there. I wanted to check Iran - unfortunately all Middle Eastern countries parried with RPG - are googled in military context
As a hypothetical example, a publisher could have an IP about a band of freedom fighters rebelling against some oppressive overlord. That IP could could be popular for maybe 40 years. Now that publisher maybe wants to sell in the East, but a story about heroic freedom fighters could not sit well with censors. The publisher tries to develop a revised IP where the updated version discredits the freedom fighters as sellouts to power and money. The publisher maybe even fires certain creators, because they are too strongly to connected to the original IP disapproved by the new sensors. By doing that the publisher's poor attempt to appease new sensors could completely backfire, damage the product, and drive away the original fans.
That's a lot of job that can be make much more easily, sir. I mean unless your game is very very very over-the-top-Ayn-Rand libertarian, then it's quite quite easy to give certain flavour to rebellion - that would suit your evil Eastern overlords, because like 99% of them also came from revolutionary governments and even if like Chinese they came back to more traditional governing they still present themselves as faithful children of Mao. It's quite easy to sell rebels vs opressive overlord to authoritarian governments - because modern ones are born from it.
I mean maybe King of Thailand would be offended.
Modern anti-censorship regulations are based on the guidance of Ben Franklin (the small publisher) and the philosophical vision of Voltaire. We need to keep their spirit for free speech before the cancel culture erases them.
I really must say only think I want to with spirit of Voltaire is some really good exorcisms
Hmmm... a long long time ago Ben Franklin provided guidance to a freedom fighting farmer turned soldier named Tadeusz Kościuszko from a land far away. Kościuszko became the hero of the turning point Battle of Saratoga. Maybe I could develop a story about an old guru named Ben that guides a poor dirt farmer into an intergalactic revolution and that dirt farmer becomes the hero of a turning point battle? Nah, that could never get passed censors.
Dear Lord, what have they taught you in those American schools.
I must say I'm not big fan of Kościuszko (being Catholic monarchist and all, and him being freemason nationalist democrate partially responsible for creation of USA) nevertheless - Kościuszko when joining American fight was 30 years old nobleman, with many years of military training and formal education in Polish Corpse of Cadets, and later 5 years in Military Academy of France at Versaille (that's where he become interested in revolutionist deal, so basically just after his arrival he become officer - engineer in your Army.
Luke Skyewalker you say... bollocks. Kościuszko was your Rogal Dorn, dammit.