Tweaking FATE Red Planet for a conservative player
The game supplement 'Red Planet' by Jess Nevins provides a pulp science fiction setting with a utopian socialist twist for the FATE Core table top role playing game. Both the base rules and the supplement are available for .pdf download at Drive Thru RPG on a 'Pay what what you want' basis. Go download them, play within them and tell me what you think.
I ran a session of Red Planet as my first taste of the FATE role playing system and as a return to Games Mastering after a very a long break. It was buckets of fun. I spent far too long writing background material. Players being players went in different directions to the ones I prepared for. This blog shares some of that material with you in the hope that you are inspired to run your own game, use my ideas and tell me how it went.
The source material is sensitive to this criticism, saying "Red Planet is a roleplaying game. It is a fantasy based on the idea that an idealized fictional philosophy similar to communism ... could appeal enough to people’s better natures to make them willingly and joyfully belong to a communist civilization... But let no one reading Red Planet be under the slightest illusion: communism, in the real world, killed millions of people."
I wasn't satisfied simply acknowledging that the fantasy communism is different to the reality of communism before diving into the fantasy. Idealised visions of the future can inform our actions in the present. I needed an in-game mechanism to draw attention to the fact we playing in a propaganda fantasy. I did this by including the aspect:
"This show is educational"
In my game, our story is being broadcast by a 1960s era state run broadcasting commission in an educational TV programming time slot.
Mechanically players invoke this aspect to 'declare story detail' based on a scientific principle or Marxist social theory. This aspect could also be compelled a 'Galaxy Quest' style meta-commentary of the show and the setting.
I'd grant a free invoke if players acknowledged the fourth wall by explaining the principle in character, but as if they were explaining it to a child.
It worked better than expected. In addition to providing a way to play with utopian themes without the story becoming uncomfortably tankie, it provided a way to manage the amount of science we included in our science fantasy. In the source material the native Venusians are described as 'frog-like'. The players took that idea and ran with it, invoking the "This show is educational" aspect to turn elements of real life frog reproductive biology into a major plot point of the story.
The rest of this post is a 'after the-game reflection'. If you end up using this story framing device into your game please let me know how well it worked.
Layer 1: Tune in next week tovarishch for the next thrilling chapter of Red Planet
This is the propaganda story of progressive materialism where the people of Mars are inspired to work together, be the best they can be, help people with the aid of zap guns, dirigibles, space ships. Bountiful fields of wheat fill the plains of Mars, and Venus is a steaming jungle, with dinosaurs and frog peasants toiling under feudal overlords.
The communism in this layer is idealistic, with story played for high camp silliness moving into satire of the excesses of propaganda.
Layer 2: The show must go on.
This is the story of the making of the TV show 'Red Planet'.
Here the lead actor is a washed out no-hoper, the supporting actor is a tortured artiste, looking for a serious acting job, and the female lead is fending off the unwanted attentions of the producer. In this layer actors actors deal with embarrassingly low production values and a the writing team fighting among themselves to resulting in scripts that are one week parroting the party line, next week full of subversive 'under the radar' criticism. The production must deal with threats of cancellation and an over zealous censor to keep the show on the air.
Example of linking layer 1 and 2:
When the main story reaches a point where several Venusians have been converted, the revolution is at hand and the narrative is heading toward a towards mass combat, cut to the production story.
A new director has joined the show with a new vision he calls 'historical materialist' film making. His vision rejects traditional story telling as 'counter-revolutionary individualism'. Instead he attempts to represent social forces and trends in history representing small groups of actors as a single character.
Mechanically get the players to create several 'squads as characters' using the large scale combat rules in the FATE System Toolkit (p159). Play this scene as dig at film auteurs such as Sergei Eisenstein.
The communism of this layer is 'well meaning, underfunded and a little incompetent', Play this layer both as a tribute to cheesy BCC TV scifi of the 1970-80s and to community theatre productions. Play as an office comedy.
Layer 3: The lives of others
This is the story of the Stasi detail tasked with monitoring the actors and crew of the television show 'Red Planet'. In this layer we find the grim realities that the propaganda is attempting to cover up. Who's informing on who, Why have the writers introduced a new villain to story that resembles the trade minister?
If a player can't make a session incorporate this into the narrative. His actor has been 'Taken in for questioning' by the Stassi. The Red Planet' story goes on with another actor. This can be played for laughs in the 'show must go on layer' because they need to find a short notice and the only available actors look nothing like the continuing actor.
When our players returns to the next session, the atmosphere on the production is tense. Why was he taken away.... Did he crack under interrogation? ... Did he inform on his colleagues?
I ran a session of Red Planet as my first taste of the FATE role playing system and as a return to Games Mastering after a very a long break. It was buckets of fun. I spent far too long writing background material. Players being players went in different directions to the ones I prepared for. This blog shares some of that material with you in the hope that you are inspired to run your own game, use my ideas and tell me how it went.
The elephant in the room - the Red Planet setting is fantasy communism.
Red Planet provides utopian science fiction roleplay in a 'retro-futurist' setting. It's a refreshing alternative all the dystopian storytelling out there, but it draws heavily on 1950s era communist propaganda tropes. The fantasy of a society based on collective action can be a fun place to explore, but doing it uncritically can easily cross the line into 'tankie', becoming an apologist for Stalin, Mao and the rest.The source material is sensitive to this criticism, saying "Red Planet is a roleplaying game. It is a fantasy based on the idea that an idealized fictional philosophy similar to communism ... could appeal enough to people’s better natures to make them willingly and joyfully belong to a communist civilization... But let no one reading Red Planet be under the slightest illusion: communism, in the real world, killed millions of people."
I wasn't satisfied simply acknowledging that the fantasy communism is different to the reality of communism before diving into the fantasy. Idealised visions of the future can inform our actions in the present. I needed an in-game mechanism to draw attention to the fact we playing in a propaganda fantasy. I did this by including the aspect:
"This show is educational"
In my game, our story is being broadcast by a 1960s era state run broadcasting commission in an educational TV programming time slot.
Mechanically players invoke this aspect to 'declare story detail' based on a scientific principle or Marxist social theory. This aspect could also be compelled a 'Galaxy Quest' style meta-commentary of the show and the setting.
I'd grant a free invoke if players acknowledged the fourth wall by explaining the principle in character, but as if they were explaining it to a child.
It worked better than expected. In addition to providing a way to play with utopian themes without the story becoming uncomfortably tankie, it provided a way to manage the amount of science we included in our science fantasy. In the source material the native Venusians are described as 'frog-like'. The players took that idea and ran with it, invoking the "This show is educational" aspect to turn elements of real life frog reproductive biology into a major plot point of the story.
Responding to a problematic setting with creative story telling
Another response to the propaganda aspects of Red Planet would be to create a Matryoshka doll (or FATE fractal) of related stories focused around "Red Planet: the TV show" with each layer reflecting a different view of socialism.The rest of this post is a 'after the-game reflection'. If you end up using this story framing device into your game please let me know how well it worked.
Layer 1: Tune in next week tovarishch for the next thrilling chapter of Red Planet
This is the propaganda story of progressive materialism where the people of Mars are inspired to work together, be the best they can be, help people with the aid of zap guns, dirigibles, space ships. Bountiful fields of wheat fill the plains of Mars, and Venus is a steaming jungle, with dinosaurs and frog peasants toiling under feudal overlords.
The communism in this layer is idealistic, with story played for high camp silliness moving into satire of the excesses of propaganda.
Layer 2: The show must go on.
This is the story of the making of the TV show 'Red Planet'.
Here the lead actor is a washed out no-hoper, the supporting actor is a tortured artiste, looking for a serious acting job, and the female lead is fending off the unwanted attentions of the producer. In this layer actors actors deal with embarrassingly low production values and a the writing team fighting among themselves to resulting in scripts that are one week parroting the party line, next week full of subversive 'under the radar' criticism. The production must deal with threats of cancellation and an over zealous censor to keep the show on the air.
Example of linking layer 1 and 2:
When the main story reaches a point where several Venusians have been converted, the revolution is at hand and the narrative is heading toward a towards mass combat, cut to the production story.
A new director has joined the show with a new vision he calls 'historical materialist' film making. His vision rejects traditional story telling as 'counter-revolutionary individualism'. Instead he attempts to represent social forces and trends in history representing small groups of actors as a single character.
Mechanically get the players to create several 'squads as characters' using the large scale combat rules in the FATE System Toolkit (p159). Play this scene as dig at film auteurs such as Sergei Eisenstein.
Layer 3: The lives of others
This is the story of the Stasi detail tasked with monitoring the actors and crew of the television show 'Red Planet'. In this layer we find the grim realities that the propaganda is attempting to cover up. Who's informing on who, Why have the writers introduced a new villain to story that resembles the trade minister?
If a player can't make a session incorporate this into the narrative. His actor has been 'Taken in for questioning' by the Stassi. The Red Planet' story goes on with another actor. This can be played for laughs in the 'show must go on layer' because they need to find a short notice and the only available actors look nothing like the continuing actor.
When our players returns to the next session, the atmosphere on the production is tense. Why was he taken away.... Did he crack under interrogation? ... Did he inform on his colleagues?
The communism in this layer is 'grim, oppressively bureaucratic and totalitarian'. Play this layer for a cynical 'Statler and Waldorf' style meta-commentary, as an espionage thriller and to acknowledge the grey reality of living under a 1950s era socialist state.
Post updated Mon 19 Feb 2018 in response to feedback. The original post implied that the Red Planet setting was propaganda, and was 'tankie' (i.e. an apologist for real world communism atrocities). I agree with the posters who say that these criticisms are unjustified.
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