[IW] Anarcho Communist Worlds

[Minuteman37]

So long story short, I currently living with one of my players (my only player after the recent conclusion of my last campaign) and ergo have a lot of time to prep and play one on one games. One thing in particular though is that he's an adamant anarcho communist (seriously it's the only thing he can talk about), though I'm a social democrat myself we manage to get along quite well and I was wanting to introduce him to the infinite worlds setting and a world that personifies his political philosophy would be pretty neat to come across.


Any idea how we'd do that?

[Erling]

Check Ursula LeGuin's novel Dispossessed. It features both anarcho-communism and intrigue, so there will be something to play with.

[pieclone]

Historically you're looking at relatively small and/or close-knit communities - there have been successful and long-lived Anarcho-Communist towns and villages throughout European history. Outside of the historical context you're looking at things like space colonies/habitats where cooperation and finite resources are at a premium. You can always go post-scarcity for that Iain M Banks Culture style as well in which instance the world/orbital/GSV is your oyster.

[Minuteman37]

Well I'd like to keep things at the very least near future if not a more primitive society, but at the same time give this particular world something valuable that outside forces like the Infinity and Centram would like to take and by extension ruin the peaceful society these anarchists have developed.

Basically I want a game world were my player can be the jake sully to these anarcho communist's Na'vi, if we're to use an Avatar comparison.

[whswhs]

How to approach this depends on what your roommate is looking for. Most basically, does he want an idealized anarchocommunist world where everything works as his beliefs say it should, or does he want a critical exploration of the conflicts and failure modes of such a world?

In the first case, you might want to do utopian gaming, portraying a society based on an ethical idea in which everyone is committed to that idea. This isn't much used in gaming, because it limits your choice of possible conflicts: You don't have Man vs. Society, you probably don't have Man vs. Man (particularly if you assume that the society can avoid conflicts based on economic scarcity), and you may not even have Man vs. Self, if you assume that enhanced ethical and psychological insight make people mentally healthier. You might have Man vs. God/Fate, if you assume there is some sort of supernatural aspect, but your main focus is likely to be Man vs. Nature, with explorers, scientists, doctors, and the like as heroes.

One common strategy for increased drama is a utopia under external threat, as in Aldous Huxley's Island. Here your protagonists might be soldiers, administrators, or diplomats. As a variant, they might be missionaries carrying the anarchocommunist message to less enlightened societies, sort of analogously to the classic origin story for Wonder Woman.

You can also put the social organization into the background, in the style of Wonder Woman or Asimov's Lucky Starr novels, with the advanced society providing an explanation for the superior gifts of the protagonists but without exploring its mechanics in detail.

As a step to realistic/critical storytelling, imagine an explorer who wants to undertake some great venture, but whose society doesn't routinely provide the necessary resources for such undertakings. So they have to find a way to gain support for the venture. In a communist society they can't expend their personal fortune, or find a wealthy "angel," or start a corporation and issue stock. But there are ways to gain voluntary cooperation, by recruiting other people to share the vision and put their free time into it, in the style of the Verein für Raumschiffart or the British Interplanetary Society. E.E. Smith's First Lensman shows such a venture on one of the planets of Rigel, which has a highly ethical and somewhat communalist culture. This would call for rolls vs. Diplomacy (to make a rational case to individuals) and/or Propaganda (to get the word out to large numbers of people and inspire them to join it)—most of the other persuasive skills wouldn't apply in a truly communist society.

You can also have a communist society where not everyone is all that ethical or committed. Maybe there are people who hoard and divert resources, or who put other people under duress, or start cults, or even work to build some voluntary association into the nucleus of a state. If the society is anarchistic, you won't have police or spies investigating such things; you'll have to have some sort of voluntary action. So the protagonists are going to be in an ideal position for having adventures, having nearly unlimited freedom of action, no official competition, and only their own personal resources.

Or you can have a society where these tendencies have gone so far as to endanger its ideals; or where there are ongoing conflicts over different visions of communism that arise from it; or even where the communist ideal is revealed to have hidden contradictions that make conflict inevitable. That requires your roommate to be receptive to a very nonutopian, realistic portrayal of a society based on his premises, of course.

I myself am not a communist, but an individualist; for much of my life I was an individualist anarchist in the style of Benjamin Tucker or Lysander Spooner, or an anarchocapitalist in the style of David Friedman, and later I became a constitutional republican in the style of James Madison. But the questions that arise about that particular vision of a better world are in many ways parallel to the questions about communism that I've been discussing. I've thought, for example, about how to write a book about the Duncanites of Ceres in Transhuman Space, very much in the "anarchist society on the edge of decay into statism) mode. So I've transferred over some of my thoughts, and I hope they're of some use to you.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Minuteman37

So long story short, I currently living with one of my players (my only player after the recent conclusion of my last campaign) and ergo have a lot of time to prep and play one on one games. One thing in particular though is that he's an adamant anarcho communist (seriously it's the only thing he can talk about), though I'm a social democrat myself we manage to get along quite well and I was wanting to introduce him to the infinite worlds setting and a world that personifies his political philosophy would be pretty neat to come across.


Any idea how we'd do that?

Honestly, I'd suggest you don't do that. If the guy is that committed to that idea, and you aren't, then whatever you come up with is almost certain to be wrong from his standpoint, which will probably ruin the experience for the both of you. About the only option you really have that would make things fun, but that probably isn't really an option, would be to have him design the timeline, then you can come up with an Infinite Worlds-style monkey wrench to throw in to make the adventure.

[SteamBub]

One setting could that could work would be the Makhnovia, The Free Territory, during the Ukrainian Revolution. It could be alternate history where they were not wipeout by the Bolshevik government. Intrigue styled campaign could work where Makhnovia is trying to expand the territory through diplomacy. Or maybe fight off Russian spies both from the communist or the Imperial side. A war campaign could also work fighting the nonanarchists.

If you want to go bit crazy with the setting The Steel Tsar by Michael Moorcock puts the setting into a steampunk alternate history.

And for your friend, suggest a hobby or two. I don't think just talking about anarchism all the time is that healthy, but if he's getting into RPGs maybe he's already on track for recovery, lol.

[Fred Brackin]

The first thing I would do is give your friend's character a Secret Disadvantage. something like "Delusion:Everything can be understood as part of the struggle between Anarch-commumism and its' opposing forces." (-15). Keep this secret and never explain toy our friend that all of character's Reaction Rolls are failing because of the -3 from the Delusion.

You say "But Fred-sensei! How does this help me work anarcho-communism into the Infinite Worlds setting?".

The first answer is that it wouldn't. I would only be doing it for my own amusement.

The second answer is that _you_ don't need to be the one doing the working-in. I predict that your friend will do that for you. All you need to do is be moderately aware of when he and his belief structure has.

But you ask "But Fred-sensei! How does that help?" and the third answer is that you balance the Secret Disad with a Secret Advantage. something like as Aspected Serendipity (at least 2 levels because it will produce major results) with a limit such as "Only for solving problems that the possessor believes to be related to Anarcho-communism".

So when your friend has analyzed the problem world in question and come up with an Anarcho-comunism based theory and plan of how to fix things the Serendipity causes that plan to work is some way that they will attribute to the inherent rightness of Anarcho-communism.

You and the higher-ups back at IW will attribute this to "Probability Manipulation" rather than "acute socio-economic analysis" but your friend will never know that.

[lvalero]

You might as well go to the opposite direction. Face him against a world dominated by mega corporations that rule over the goverments and your PC belongs to a resistance group / terrorist cell that opposes them.

Make him feel comfortable inside this group only to discover that the "resistance" is, in fact , a tool in the hands of one of these evil megacorporations.

[lachimba]

Read China Mieville, steal everything that you can.

Or steal from THS specifically Duncanites and info socialism, and adapt to be closer to that you want.