Biff and I started joking around about capitalism during a game of Settlers tonight, and after the game we hashed out some ideas about how to play as the humble peasants of Catan instead of their lords and masters.
- Each player keeps track of two hands of cards: their own and their king's hand. A player can only use resources from their own hand, not from their king's hand. The game itself plays the role of the kings.
- Each turn, each city OR settlement in your color produces one resource-unit from each adjacent hex.
- Next, roll the dice, as usual. Whatever number is rolled, hexes that would normally produce will instead "eat" one resource of the appropriate type from your hand - this resource goes into your king's hand. Call this "tithing". Cities, though, eat two resources of each type from your hand.
- If you roll a 7, you can place the Robber on any hex you like; any player with a city or settlement bordering that hex takes one random resource from their king's hand and puts it in your hand.
- Each turn, check your king's hand to see if it can afford to buy any development cards. Buy all the development cards you can afford (using the king's hand only!) and play them as soon as possible (your next turn, I think). Lumber and bricks just sit in the king's hand (you must trade them with the bank or any available harbors, in order to collect as much wool, ore, and grain as possible - for development cards!)
- Development cards that award resources are instead tithed by that player to his or her king's hand. Those that award victory points work normally.
- When Knight cards are played, they are placed under the Robber's new location; this hex now produces nothing, but demands tithes when its number is rolled, and upon Robber-placement, a random resource is taken from an adjacent player's own hand and put into your king's hand. When the Robber changes locations again, such Knight cards return to the corresponding King's hand.
Not sure how victory points factor in or how I'd want them to be different. What I'm going for is some kind of end-goal of turning a city into a "free republic" a la the Italian Renaissance.
Help me develop this :)
Showing posts with label socialism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label socialism. Show all posts
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Friday, November 4, 2011
tales of Apocalypse World: Red Front
I used to think that a couple of my AW players were being really passive in our game, but I was reading this thread about passive players, and it occurred to me:
- my players seek to avoid conflict, yeah, but they're doing it because it's true to their characters. It's kind of impressive: the tunnel-rat Gunlugger only leaves his hidey-hole if anyone bothers him, and if they do, he shoots them dead with his 4-harm high-powered rifle. The Angel, who wears a scramble suit and does hir doctor's rounds for the town every single morning, wants absolutely no trouble or discord with anyone, ever. Zhe makes no enemies, holds no grudges...
In short, they're both a real test of my ability to tease out scarcities that matter (so there's conflict), but it could be a lot worse: they could decide that I'm trying to give them "cues", and then they would try to follow them.
It actually came up kind of directly, the other night: Rue the Gunlugger's player, John, joked that obviously Boo the Angel should follow the biker gang to the local warlord's citadel, because, "It's the RPG thing to do, right? Go check out the big city, you know, explore a little?" Still, he did mean it in jest, and when Boo's player, Valery, just laughed and carried on trying to avoid any conflict with the townspeople, it was clear that she felt no such pressure, or at least was resolute enough to ignore it.
I love playing with people who don't have mainstream-RPG baggage ^___^
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Marxism and RPG Design
So - most of us have read The Jungle. We know it contributed to the creation of the FDA and some major regulation of the meat industry.
But Sinclair didn't write it for that explicit purpose. He considered that a victory, I'm sure, but when he wrote it, he was trying to convert people to socialism.
Now, I'm a Marxist-Leninist (and we can talk about that, if you want). I have a particular outlook on how societies function, how groups and individuals do act, and are capable of acting, etc. In that vein, I'm intrigued by the prospect of writing books and RPGs that make use of Marxist ideas, but I don't want to be an Upton Sinclair - I don't want to try that hard to "convert" anybody.
One might then ask why I'd be doing it at all, if I didn't want that; the point is, I guess, I don't want to get emotionally fixated on that as a goal, and I don't want to write a screed that fails to be enjoyable/entertaining on its own merits.
That being said, I came across Spectre of the Beast - a game of civilizations undergoing sweeping changes. It seems pretty interesting - you use innovation, community, and idealism as cultural forces at your command, while you try to keep Hope high and avoid succumbing to the Beast (violence, really).
This isn't a complaint, per se, but it's a game that follows the perspective of Great Men and Women, and it's those folks who have the power to shape their cultures. Again, not a huge emotional investment in rebuking that analysis, but as a Marxist, it got me thinking about that Giants idea I had - one in which a whole community has to settle its differences and band together to defeat a common threat.
I see Giants in the Thicket as a potential, friendly response to Spectre - "like, man, those Great Men in History just push the last stone that starts the avalanche. It's not all about them, maaaan!" Something like that.
That's the goal I'm setting out for myself, but first I'm going to play Spectre with some friends and see what we think. It looks neat! ^_^ That'll be my first RPing in forever, too, although I'm playing Best Friends next Saturday at a local con (Ice Station Nerdly), and apparently it's "Gay Hairdressers Edition". How exciting!
But Sinclair didn't write it for that explicit purpose. He considered that a victory, I'm sure, but when he wrote it, he was trying to convert people to socialism.
Now, I'm a Marxist-Leninist (and we can talk about that, if you want). I have a particular outlook on how societies function, how groups and individuals do act, and are capable of acting, etc. In that vein, I'm intrigued by the prospect of writing books and RPGs that make use of Marxist ideas, but I don't want to be an Upton Sinclair - I don't want to try that hard to "convert" anybody.
One might then ask why I'd be doing it at all, if I didn't want that; the point is, I guess, I don't want to get emotionally fixated on that as a goal, and I don't want to write a screed that fails to be enjoyable/entertaining on its own merits.
That being said, I came across Spectre of the Beast - a game of civilizations undergoing sweeping changes. It seems pretty interesting - you use innovation, community, and idealism as cultural forces at your command, while you try to keep Hope high and avoid succumbing to the Beast (violence, really).
This isn't a complaint, per se, but it's a game that follows the perspective of Great Men and Women, and it's those folks who have the power to shape their cultures. Again, not a huge emotional investment in rebuking that analysis, but as a Marxist, it got me thinking about that Giants idea I had - one in which a whole community has to settle its differences and band together to defeat a common threat.
I see Giants in the Thicket as a potential, friendly response to Spectre - "like, man, those Great Men in History just push the last stone that starts the avalanche. It's not all about them, maaaan!" Something like that.
That's the goal I'm setting out for myself, but first I'm going to play Spectre with some friends and see what we think. It looks neat! ^_^ That'll be my first RPing in forever, too, although I'm playing Best Friends next Saturday at a local con (Ice Station Nerdly), and apparently it's "Gay Hairdressers Edition". How exciting!
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Job rant[insert Marx-related pun here]
[cross-posted at http://totallypinkrock.livejournal.com/199431.html]
My friend Geoffrey and I are going to start reading (in his case, re-reading) Marx's Capital together. I feel like there's a whole layer of theory and analysis that he's privy to that is beyond me, thus far, and it's beyond me because of a lack of reading.
I know I can grok this stuff, no problem; I just gotta educate meself!
It's going to be interesting going, to be sure; in terms of what their end-goals would actually look like, I'm firmly convinced that left-anarchists and anti-Stalinist socialists have far too much in common to be alienated on the "practical" level - i.e. both groups are probably going to be interested in workers' and residential cooperatives, in localized economies, rejection of the corporate/hierarchical business model, etc.
I don't want to be "counter-productive", but I get the feeling that it could be tricky to really incorporate right-anarchists/anarcho-capitalists into this model.Mainly, it reminds me of the character Mollie from Animal Farm - someone who is so keen on her current lifestyle and the particular comforts that go with it that she would abandon the cause altogether for the sake of them. I think it's the Mollies of the world that put a certain burden on the cooperative/local-economy movement to demonstrate that one can be reasonably just as comfortable in this kind of system as one can be under the national system, if not more so.
For an example of this, consider the extreme value placed on anything hand-made, made with traditonal methods, etc., in the market economy, especially in the United States. Since mechanization has taken over so much of production (nearly all of it, in the commerical sphere), the chance to buy an item that was hand-made or traditionally made is fairly rare, unless you dedicate yourself to finding it; the price for these items tends to be somewhat higher than their mass-produced equivalent.
In a cooperative/local economy, there can be an emphasis on, and certainly there is much more room for, the development of personal craft skills, trade skills, and survival skills; this means that you can make your own hand-made down-stuffed cotton pillow for quite cheap, rather than paying hand over fist to get one commercially. That, of course, is a big element (for me) of the cooperative/local movement - if you do things yourself and/or pool your efforts with a few friends, your buying power out among the capitalists increases dramatically! Division of labor is a very basic ingredient of a market economy; without it, the marketplace is winnowed down to divisions based on geographic availability of certain resources, and perhaps historical access to the skills needed to harvest them.
When there is no market exchange whatsoever, at least within a certain community, there is no longer an incentive to "stick with" a particular task or trade, as one may freely change tasks or duties without threatening one's "livelihood" - all members of a cooperative are permitted to take part in all tasks without "losing out" in any way; contrast this with the outright necessity of maintaining one's specialization in the market work-force, which demands that one choose a specialty and perpetuate it, so that future employers have proof that one's abilities are sufficiently profitable to merit hiring.
I look at my own job history in this regard, and it's amusing that it's taken me this long to find my way into a leadership position, but even more amusing that the commensurate benefits associated with leadership are so small. Given that I earn less than a dollar an hour more than the people I "manage", the only real benefit of my position is that I am assigned to clean the concession area less frequently than entry-level workers. Depending on what I'm assigned to on a given day, I still have to help clean this area (not fun, but not hard either), and when I'm not, I perform fairly easy tasks of inventory control.
It's strange - given how little name-recognition our theatre enjoys in Davis, it would be feasible to drop the name altogether, sever our ties with Corporate, and remain more or less equally profitable. Given that a large proportion of our income derives from hosting advertisements, rather than the labor we perform, it would be quite possible to cut costs and continue to find sufficient maintenance and support for our property without our corporate masters. We aren't particularly reliant upon them, except, perhaps, for the specific contracts with specific service-providers that we currently employ; local businesses still have access to armored cars, and internet service, and the like, don't they?
It's arguable that the money saved thanks to the size and pull of our corporation is substantial; to that, I say, where is this extra money going? A hierarchy demands more and more wealth to propogate itself, as it grows; basically, I don't disagree that the greater one's responsibilities, the greater compensation one could reasonably enjoy, to a point. If we were a single theatre, the responsibility would, at no point, be greater than that afforded our general manager; as such, on the single-store level, wage disparity is not so terribly huge, and could be shrunk somewhat for the sake of guaranteeing consistency in the workforce.
As for the easily-replaceable nature of our entry-level workers, I say that it really does waste several hours of wages *per worker* per week to use inexperienced workers instead of seasoned ones, even at fairly simple tasks. If a single-store theatre were to focus on creating the most experienced staff possible, the loss in replaceability and management impunity (that of hiring and firing) would be offset by the increase in the level of service provided to customers, and the much greater efficiency of work. The jobs we have there are temporary because we cannot live on the wages we earn; if we earned better wages, had some access to healthcare, etc., it would be very possible that people would be more content there, and stay. There's "no future" at this job for me because it will never pay me a living wage; I'm endlessly looking for other jobsand currently working two at once, which means I waste a lot of my time and energy outside of this job because this job pays so little.
It would do us all a lot of good to to become independent. The problem of doing this lawfully and contractually rests on the very facts that drive me to seek independence - i.e. the puny wages we command mean that purchasing the property from REG would take bloody forever, and that's exactly how they would want to keep things. Damn you, private property!
One last thought - if we do a cost-benefit analysis of seasoned vs. inexperienced retail workers, then account for the commensurately higher wages the seasoned would command (both due to pitifully small Corporate "raises" and to a wage-increase from the cooperative reorganization of the business), it might seem that there is no greater profit to be made from holding onto experienced workers, as things "balance out". With that in mind, these workers are inarguably more efficient, which means that, given that entry-level workers are always supervised here, it would save everyone several hours of their time per week to use as they wish, if we put the kibbutz on keeping the experience level so low. Given that the more senior managers are salaried, not waged, it would do them no harm to spend fewer hours at work; if anything, this would probably draw down their time commitment to something more reasonable.
My friend Geoffrey and I are going to start reading (in his case, re-reading) Marx's Capital together. I feel like there's a whole layer of theory and analysis that he's privy to that is beyond me, thus far, and it's beyond me because of a lack of reading.
I know I can grok this stuff, no problem; I just gotta educate meself!
It's going to be interesting going, to be sure; in terms of what their end-goals would actually look like, I'm firmly convinced that left-anarchists and anti-Stalinist socialists have far too much in common to be alienated on the "practical" level - i.e. both groups are probably going to be interested in workers' and residential cooperatives, in localized economies, rejection of the corporate/hierarchical business model, etc.
I don't want to be "counter-productive", but I get the feeling that it could be tricky to really incorporate right-anarchists/anarcho-capitalists into this model.Mainly, it reminds me of the character Mollie from Animal Farm - someone who is so keen on her current lifestyle and the particular comforts that go with it that she would abandon the cause altogether for the sake of them. I think it's the Mollies of the world that put a certain burden on the cooperative/local-economy movement to demonstrate that one can be reasonably just as comfortable in this kind of system as one can be under the national system, if not more so.
For an example of this, consider the extreme value placed on anything hand-made, made with traditonal methods, etc., in the market economy, especially in the United States. Since mechanization has taken over so much of production (nearly all of it, in the commerical sphere), the chance to buy an item that was hand-made or traditionally made is fairly rare, unless you dedicate yourself to finding it; the price for these items tends to be somewhat higher than their mass-produced equivalent.
In a cooperative/local economy, there can be an emphasis on, and certainly there is much more room for, the development of personal craft skills, trade skills, and survival skills; this means that you can make your own hand-made down-stuffed cotton pillow for quite cheap, rather than paying hand over fist to get one commercially. That, of course, is a big element (for me) of the cooperative/local movement - if you do things yourself and/or pool your efforts with a few friends, your buying power out among the capitalists increases dramatically! Division of labor is a very basic ingredient of a market economy; without it, the marketplace is winnowed down to divisions based on geographic availability of certain resources, and perhaps historical access to the skills needed to harvest them.
When there is no market exchange whatsoever, at least within a certain community, there is no longer an incentive to "stick with" a particular task or trade, as one may freely change tasks or duties without threatening one's "livelihood" - all members of a cooperative are permitted to take part in all tasks without "losing out" in any way; contrast this with the outright necessity of maintaining one's specialization in the market work-force, which demands that one choose a specialty and perpetuate it, so that future employers have proof that one's abilities are sufficiently profitable to merit hiring.
I look at my own job history in this regard, and it's amusing that it's taken me this long to find my way into a leadership position, but even more amusing that the commensurate benefits associated with leadership are so small. Given that I earn less than a dollar an hour more than the people I "manage", the only real benefit of my position is that I am assigned to clean the concession area less frequently than entry-level workers. Depending on what I'm assigned to on a given day, I still have to help clean this area (not fun, but not hard either), and when I'm not, I perform fairly easy tasks of inventory control.
It's strange - given how little name-recognition our theatre enjoys in Davis, it would be feasible to drop the name altogether, sever our ties with Corporate, and remain more or less equally profitable. Given that a large proportion of our income derives from hosting advertisements, rather than the labor we perform, it would be quite possible to cut costs and continue to find sufficient maintenance and support for our property without our corporate masters. We aren't particularly reliant upon them, except, perhaps, for the specific contracts with specific service-providers that we currently employ; local businesses still have access to armored cars, and internet service, and the like, don't they?
It's arguable that the money saved thanks to the size and pull of our corporation is substantial; to that, I say, where is this extra money going? A hierarchy demands more and more wealth to propogate itself, as it grows; basically, I don't disagree that the greater one's responsibilities, the greater compensation one could reasonably enjoy, to a point. If we were a single theatre, the responsibility would, at no point, be greater than that afforded our general manager; as such, on the single-store level, wage disparity is not so terribly huge, and could be shrunk somewhat for the sake of guaranteeing consistency in the workforce.
As for the easily-replaceable nature of our entry-level workers, I say that it really does waste several hours of wages *per worker* per week to use inexperienced workers instead of seasoned ones, even at fairly simple tasks. If a single-store theatre were to focus on creating the most experienced staff possible, the loss in replaceability and management impunity (that of hiring and firing) would be offset by the increase in the level of service provided to customers, and the much greater efficiency of work. The jobs we have there are temporary because we cannot live on the wages we earn; if we earned better wages, had some access to healthcare, etc., it would be very possible that people would be more content there, and stay. There's "no future" at this job for me because it will never pay me a living wage; I'm endlessly looking for other jobsand currently working two at once, which means I waste a lot of my time and energy outside of this job because this job pays so little.
It would do us all a lot of good to to become independent. The problem of doing this lawfully and contractually rests on the very facts that drive me to seek independence - i.e. the puny wages we command mean that purchasing the property from REG would take bloody forever, and that's exactly how they would want to keep things. Damn you, private property!
One last thought - if we do a cost-benefit analysis of seasoned vs. inexperienced retail workers, then account for the commensurately higher wages the seasoned would command (both due to pitifully small Corporate "raises" and to a wage-increase from the cooperative reorganization of the business), it might seem that there is no greater profit to be made from holding onto experienced workers, as things "balance out". With that in mind, these workers are inarguably more efficient, which means that, given that entry-level workers are always supervised here, it would save everyone several hours of their time per week to use as they wish, if we put the kibbutz on keeping the experience level so low. Given that the more senior managers are salaried, not waged, it would do them no harm to spend fewer hours at work; if anything, this would probably draw down their time commitment to something more reasonable.
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