Quote from: Spinachcat;1105659The setting "fix" in Savage Rifts is laughably weak. What made Rifts badass was there were no "good nations".

Well, there was Lazlo, which I tend to remember because it was set on the ruins of Toronto (a place of personal interest, see at left). But I never followed the setting's metaplot so I have no idea if the place survived.

QuoteBut none of that matters to the REEEEE clowns because like most Americans, they don't know jack shit about history and assume "German = Nazi".

That, or they automatically dismiss any attempt to distinguish them as a "#NotAllGermans" backlash.

Quote from: tenbones;1105755That is the *best* way to run it.

That's why Palladium agreed to it. So people would buy their books for the setting.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1105758Well, there was Lazlo, which I tend to remember because it was set on the ruins of Toronto (a place of personal interest, see at left). But I never followed the setting's metaplot so I have no idea if the place survived.

I don't think we ever got a whole Worldbook on Lazlo. I imagine Siembieda would grey they place up with some dissident factions. And there's the fact that Lazlo has been very non-interventionalist in it's policies. (Exceping the Xiticics wars) That can be viewed at least as selfish, since they let other nations take the hits while they cluck their tongues from a safe distance.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1105659Kevin Siembieda's system may be messy, but his settings kick ass with hard questions which make for excellent roleplaying.

The setting may be sophomoric in tone, but it's never boring.

Slight digression, but...

Quote from: deadDMwalking;1105573Not necessarily.  The Nazis were never elected to power

That's blatantly untrue.  They won the 1933 election to become the largest parliamentary party in Germany, with approximately 45% of the vote and Reichstag, allowing Hitler to be appointed Chancellor.  Official party membership may have been 10% of the population, but they were elected by a sizable lead.  The next largest party, Social Democrats, got less than 20% of the vote.  

 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1933_German_federal_election

Official party membership and support are not the same thing.

Disclaimer:  Factual correction does not mean support.

Quote from: Dan Davenport;1105569I wonder how long before the SJWs target Dust Adventures, which features (among other things) playable Germans in an extended WW2. Apparently the Germans gave the Nazis the boot at some point, but isn't that akin to the Confederacy giving slavery the boot of its own accord?

I don't have the game - but from brief reading on the game, yes, it seems like there are similarities. It's an alternate history where the Axis are made more palatable by having them reject Nazism. As this review puts it,

https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/16/16626.phtml

QuoteBrutal as the world of Dust might be, it no longer contains Nazis, the driving force behind other RPGs like Achtung Cthulhu (also from Modiphius) or Weird Wars (once for d20 and now mostly for Savage Worlds). Jews are not persecuted, the occupation of France and even the UK is substantially milder than the one under the Nazi regime and even the Germans try to clean up their former Nazi mess within their Axis superstructure. Only the SSU is ideologically dedicated to a cause (communism, for those that missed the memo). The Axis is a war alliance of convenience between more or less noble nations not unlike those seen in the European continent in centuries past, while the Allies are steadily becoming a crumbling affair and appear to be losing. War atrocities are still committed from all sides (and their mercenaries), idem for the weirdness that all sides bring to the theatres of operations, which however are not ideologically charged.

Note how it describes this alternate Axis as an alliance between "more or less noble nations", and how there are war atrocities from "all sides". Again, I don't have the actual game, so I don't have an opinion about it myself yet. But it does seem like there are similarities to Deadlands original handling of the CSA.

Quote from: deadDMwalkingNot necessarily. The Nazis were never elected to power

Quote from: Brendan;1105935That's blatantly untrue.  They won the 1933 election to become the largest parliamentary party in Germany, with approximately 45% of the vote and Reichstag, allowing Hitler to be appointed Chancellor.  Official party membership may have been 10% of the population, but they were elected by a sizable lead.  The next largest party, Social Democrats, got less than 20% of the vote.  

 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1933_German_federal_election

Official party membership and support are not the same thing.

When I read the Wikipedia article you link to, it's clear that the 1933 election was after the Nazis had already seized power, in the Machtergreifung on Jan 30. There was an enormous amount of violent political suppression by the SA and SS before and during the election. The Reichstag fire was 6 days earlier, and the Reichstag Fire Decree allowed the government to arrest thousands of communists. There is every reason to think that the elections were not free or fair, and thus the percentages in that election don't accurately represent the views of the civilian population.

That said, in the larger point, I think there are similarities. I can see parallels between non-Jew-hating, non-Nazi German PCs in Dust versus non-racist, non-slavery-supporting CSA PCs in Deadlands.

Quote from: jhkim;1105943I don't have the game - but from brief reading on the game, yes, it seems like there are similarities. It's an alternate history where the Axis are made more palatable by having them reject Nazism. As this review puts it,

https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/16/16626.phtml



Note how it describes this alternate Axis as an alliance between "more or less noble nations", and how there are war atrocities from "all sides". Again, I don't have the actual game, so I don't have an opinion about it myself yet. But it does seem like there are similarities to Deadlands original handling of the CSA.




When I read the Wikipedia article you link to, it's clear that the 1933 election was after the Nazis had already seized power, in the Machtergreifung on Jan 30. There was an enormous amount of violent political suppression by the SA and SS before and during the election. The Reichstag fire was 6 days earlier, and the Reichstag Fire Decree allowed the government to arrest thousands of communists. There is every reason to think that the elections were not free or fair, and thus the percentages in that election don't accurately represent the views of the civilian population.

That said, in the larger point, I think there are similarities. I can see parallels between non-Jew-hating, non-Nazi German PCs in Dust versus non-racist, non-slavery-supporting CSA PCs in Deadlands.

The Nazis were the largest party in the Reichstag as early as 1932.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_1932_German_federal_election

My point is that one can't claim that they didn't have popular German support, or were "never elected".  Just like Communism, Nazi-ism took power largely through democratic means.  Only once they had a very clear hold on state power did they do away with the competition.  

But we're going further off the rails of the conversation.

Quote from: Brendan;1105949Just like Communism, Nazi-ism took power largely through democratic means.  

Communism in Venezuela? Not in USSR, anyway! According to my GCSE history class the Bolsheviks had a violent revolution to overthrow the Kerensky government.

Quote from: S'mon;1105961Communism in Venezuela? Not in USSR, anyway! According to my GCSE history class the Bolsheviks had a violent revolution to overthrow the Kerensky government.

Well if you want to use either of those in a game you must remember that they all are socialists at the end of the day. Which means you need to find their similarities and differences to better represent them ingame.

Quote from: Brendan;1105949The Nazis were the largest party in the Reichstag as early as 1932.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_1932_German_federal_election

My point is that one can't claim that they didn't have popular German support, or were "never elected".  Just like Communism, Nazi-ism took power largely through democratic means.  Only once they had a very clear hold on state power did they do away with the competition.

So, do you accept my point that the 1933 elections were full of violence, corruption, and intimidation? As far as I can see, there is overwhelming evidence that the Nazis were using a massive campaign of force to influence that election.

And now are you arguing that while the Nazis might have been violent in 1933, but in 1932 they were lawful and democratic?

The Nazis were always violent - since before the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. At best, they put on a show of following the rule of law. But they would turn to violence, lies, and threats whenever it suited them. They had broad support from a significant fraction of the country - maybe 25-30%. But they didn't come into power by peaceful democracy. The same is true of communist rise to power in the USSR and China. In all these cases, the country was full of unrest, making it easy to subvert the democratic process.

Quote from: jhkim;1105972So, do you accept my point that the 1933 elections were full of violence, corruption, and intimidation? As far as I can see, there is overwhelming evidence that the Nazis were using a massive campaign of force to influence that election.

And now are you arguing that while the Nazis might have been violent in 1933, but in 1932 they were lawful and democratic?

The Nazis were always violent - since before the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. At best, they put on a show of following the rule of law. But they would turn to violence, lies, and threats whenever it suited them. They had broad support from a significant fraction of the country - maybe 25-30%. But they didn't come into power by peaceful democracy. The same is true of communist rise to power in the USSR and China. In all these cases, the country was full of unrest, making it easy to subvert the democratic process.

This is drifting further and further off topic, so I'm not going to continue going into it here.  If you want to start a separate thread in Pundit's private forum, I'll do my best to elaborate on my position there.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1105404What percentage, in your estimation, of the populace of the 3rd Reich were more than mere tag-alongs?

This is off topic, but 99.9%.  Anyone who didn't directly oppose Hitler during his regime was guilty of all the crimes against humanities of the German people.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1105406Also, lets not forget that the CSA isn't vanishing from Deadlands.

The South losing the Civil War doesn't mean you can't have Southern PCs and NPCs.  It doesn't mean there isn't a whole load of Southerners looking for ghost rock with the firm intention of restarting the war so the South rises again.

Exactly. One reason why the historical wild west is WAY more interesting than the "alt history where the non-racist wonderful CSA survives and keeps doing good things for black people" nonsense is that you can have former Confederates doing all the sorts of things they actually did in the Wild West, plus magic.

Quote from: tenbones;1105462Well that's not the Deadlands *I* have been reading. I don't agree with the assumptions either. But I shrug and treat it like 19th Century Rifts. Magic happens. CSA becomes like the Coalition and says "humans" are more important than the monsters.

Again - that's the basic angle they took it for ulterior reasons. I'm like "whatever" and I play my NPC's as individuals with their motivations informed by whatever I feel is necessary. I don't (and I assume you don't either) look at everyone and everything as a monolith. Not all Nazis were Jew-hating monsters. Not all Confederates were slave-owning black-owners. Sure a lot were... but the game is the interaction between PC's and NPC's. That is where the GM's job is to make interesting despite the collective assumptions.

The larger point is pretending ANY of this content has some impact on real life is where the insanity begins.

No, I look at these things as an historian. There is NO WAY that the CSA would have abolished slavery while still at war or any time soon after the war. For starters, this would have immediately caused the CSA to crumble as many (most? All?) of its own states would secede from the Confederacy. The idea that the CSA would suddenly not only make black people free but also completely legally equal and even be able to serve as CSA Army OFFICERS (or, say, representatives in government) is absurd whitewashing.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1106016No, I look at these things as an historian. There is NO WAY that the CSA would have abolished slavery while still at war or any time soon after the war. For starters, this would have immediately caused the CSA to crumble as many (most? All?) of its own states would secede from the Confederacy. The idea that the CSA would suddenly not only make black people free but also completely legally equal and even be able to serve as CSA Army OFFICERS (or, say, representatives in government) is absurd whitewashing.

That's why I say *I don't agree with its assumptions either*. I was just offering up a way to make the shit-pill taste better. Whitewashing aside - I'm not going to sweat Shane for making the decision he made, at least until he tells us we're assholes (or worse) simply not for agreeing with him, when I don't even think *he* disagrees it's a-historical.

SJW's want it both ways for outrage purposes.