[IW] Anarcho Communist Worlds

[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.

[Anthony]

I don't have any particular experience with anarcho-communists, but my experience with other utopian world-views is that they can only be safely incorporated in a game where either no-one believes in them, or everyone believes in them. Otherwise, you get the GM saying things happen, and the players objecting that things just wouldn't actually happen that way (this can be true whether it's the GM or the players who holds the utopian worldview). I remember doing some shared worldbuilding which was supposed to include a world of libertarians, and it rapidly turned into a fiasco because most of the people involved were not libertarians and imposed their concept of how people behave on that world, resulting in it being a deeply dysfunctional society which the actual libertarians involved took offense at.

You can get similar things with non-utopian government types, but in those cases you can usually get around the problem by saying the government is modeled on (real world society X) rather than some theoretical government type, and while people can still object that society X fails to live up to the standards of government type Y, you can't plausibly argue that society X is impossible.

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by 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.

This suggestion, along with Bill's, provide the most help. I don't have anything better to offer, because a functional anarcho-communist society so violates my perception of how humans think and act that I can't achieve willing suspension of disbelief.

However, criticism of the idea is not what the OP asked for, people! He asked for ideas to help him create a one-on-one campaign that could work, and not a bunch of snarky comments about why it wouldn't.

China Mieville's settings include capitalistic societies, theocratic organizations or autocratic hierarchies in which endemic corruption and abuse are endemic and inherent. His heroes are outcasts or working-class underdogs who struggle to overcome or fight against the abusive status quo, in an effort to achieve better lives for themselves and their compatriots.

That's a solid, workable campaign premise, applicable to steampunk (for which it's perfect), cyberpunk (which incorporates the ideas, already) and even mythical fantasy.

Of the three examples, the last requires the most effort, but Mieville already has some workable ideas. In the story, Un Lun Dun, a hapless, rather plain school girl discovers a wainscot-magic London, threatened by an evil spirit of waste and abuse. She's sent to regular London to find the prophesied savior, a beautiful blonde girl from a privileged background -- essentially, the wainscot fantasy version of the fairy tale princess.

Of course, it turns out that the prophesied savior is a shallow, useless, terrified ditz who has nothing to offer. The sidekick girl turns out to be the real heroine, able to save the day by working collectively with the outcasts of Un Lun Dun.

Alternatively, in Kraken, Mieville introduces the spirit of a shabti -- a little ceramic doll buried in the tomb of a pharaoh, and enchanted to work as an obedient servant in that pharaoh's idyllic afterlife. However, sometime during the passage of the centuries, the runes that enslaved the shabti got damaged, and it was able to free itself from magical bondage. It promptly went around to all the other shabtis and scrubbed their ceramic images free of the enslavement runes, as well.

That allowed the shabtis to successfully revolt against the souls of the pharaohs, and create an egalitarian society. Thereafter, every time a new pharaoh arrived in paradise, his or her shabtis were promptly freed, his goods seized and distributed, and he received a hoe and a plot of land and was told to put his lazy, privileged, dead ass to work and make a real contribution to the larger society.

You could almost swipe that last plot, whole-cloth, for your campaign. Create a magical version of Sparta, which only survives because of the ceaseless labor of a magically-enslaved helot class. The character manages to throw off the enchantment that keeps him obedient, and must then figure out how to free his fellows. Then, he must train them to fight successfully against the military might of their overlords, while maintaining the illusion they remained servile.

Once the revolution successfully concludes, the real problems begin. The other people in the region, although not as militant as the pseudo-Spartans, also depend on slave labor, and the successful pseudo-helot revolt threatens them all. So, those reactionary forces send troops to quash the revolution, lest it spread.

In desperation, the freed helots band with orcs and goblins to collectively resist. For their part, the orcs and goblins willingly join up, because they're tired of getting robbed and slaughtered by racist, human murder-hoboes.

Hrm. Maybe I do have an idea or two. I don't know that I'd want to play in such a campaign, but I'd sure like to read the session notes. :)

[lachimba]

The Iron Council has the perpetual train. Which could be turned into a lot of different things for the setting.


Plus Perdido Street Station has the garuda.

Make the PC someone who commited a serious crime against them. That will give them some drama of being judged by anarcho communists!

plus Armada isn't anarcho communist, but could be if you wanted it to be.