Possibly Controversial idea (The Youth of Andrew Jackson)

I’m not sure what the point of playing as Andrew Jackson is. Are you trying to introduce players to his life story? Why would I play this game instead of reading a biography?

When I play COGs (or any RPG) I like to create a character and kind of emotionally adopt them. I already have a hard time playing COGs where I am given someone else’s character, if that character was someone who is responsible for genocide I am not interested.

Sorry if my post sounds rude, I’m honestly puzzled.

I’m not against portraying the sins of American history as long as they are treated with appropriate gravity. But right now I’m getting the uncomfortable vibe of “hey, he wasn’t ALL bad!” like that excuses or explains anything. Difficult youth and complex personality or not, he still promoted genocide and race war.

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True, sometimes you just want to read a good non-interactive book or view an old fashioned tv-series.

However I think the choice format can help make the story more moving, poignant and shocking if it were to confront us with the choices such a man might have realistically had in his circumstances and if it also explores where some of those might lead and what (flavor)outcomes they might change. Will they lead to something even worse than what was there historically for example? So in other words doing this as a CoG, instead of yet another biography has the potential of being the literary equivalent of “show not tell” put into practice.
But then I both like some speculative/alternate history on occasion and can roleplay a monster on occasion.
Or at least someone in very real danger of having his hopes, ideall, dreams and good-intentions be warped by both his circumstances and flaws of his own character and personality into something potentially monstrous. As I’m sure @Havenstone can attest to.
Fundamental thing to note is that, if done well, this story isn’t going to be fluffy light escapism or a power fantasy.

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I not romanticize or trivializing his sins. But he still cultural hero. To Cherokee he monster and rightfully so. This man still being is immortalized and glorified as much as he is demonized. He still on my twenty, he one of founder of the Democratic Party and Memphis. I little scared to write this because I do not want fuck the dog here. I want to humanized this monster and legend of American Culture. I do not want to shy away from his sins or the horror he committed because it do the story injustices, as much as it would be pretending that he did not do some good. I want to player to have heart warming moment and having feeling of disgusted guilty later.

I may do that one one gamemaker :slight_smile: Don’t worry that one favorite little projects.

Not to just the Cherokee but Choctaw, Muscogee, Seminole, and Cherokee.

Here’s the thing though: with IF, you’re going to be playing as a racist who sets in motion the dehumanisation and, by extension death of thousands, where your players might find racism uncomfortable. Are you:

  • going to give the player options to not be racist as Jackson, but have circumstances conspire to have history correct itself anyway, and thus whitewash/romanticise him?
  • going to give the player no such option, with all choices being racist of different measures, which risks alienating your audience entirely?
  • going to portray all Natives as bad, inhuman or evil to make the player want to go down the racist path willingly, which makes your game, and you, racist?
  • gloss over the racism in quick exposition or dialogue/narrative, which glosses over a horrific part of history and a god awful monstrous succession of events to the point of wholly whitewashing?

Because they’re all shit options, and so the very idea that uses these is shit. You’re stuck in shit. There are very few options that can work well in IF for this kind of subject.

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He is racist but during this time period tell American that was not 18 century. He grew up on the Frontier so was he going to have strange relationship he may work with but hated. Hell if gone down another path in life, for example become Trapper he could have easily end up marrying Native American woman. Now if down his path to raise his station as the play may have to deal with very unsavory things. That is only one part of his life. Jackson did many many unsavory things.

It is not always necessary to portray all members of a group as bad or evil, just the ones the player has any contact at with during the formative years of their lives will do that job nicely.
That’s why I like what @Havenstone has done with the slave prologue of his game, most of the nobles there are petty, spiteful abusers and the mc’s “noble masters/owners” in particular are some of the worst, sadistic scum on that planet. Then of course the only one you can optionally meet who seems nice and decent, friendly even turns out to be just as bad as the rest of them in the end.
Now the “good” or at least nice and at worst morally neutral ones do show up, but they show up late and given how powerful and numerous the bad ones are compared to them they may have arrived to little, too few and far too late to make any real difference to someone stubborn and already set in his ways. And that is narrative conspiring with the characters own flaws to make things take a potentially nasty turn indeed.

Of course in my example the divide is class and slavery based, but that need not be the case, race, religion or even plain politics will work just as well.
Just front-load the player and their character with many reasons to hate and despise and few reasons to love or sympathise early on and then it quite easily becomes a case where it gets very hard indeed to let go of hate and prejudice, particularly if many of the individuals of said group remain (seemingly) deserving of it, no matter what you do.

The main character of Breaking Bad, is also deconstructed to go from kind of sympathetic, underpaid teacher and family man with cancer who has been dealt a generally rotten hand by life (and the flaws of his own character) to become an absolute monster by the end of it. Yet he was quite human, if very flawed indeed, at the start of it all.

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If nothing else, this thread is the first time I’ve actually considered the words “Andrew,” “Jackson,” and “fanfic” all together and in that order. :sweat_smile:

Again, OP, I think you mean well, but I’m not sure that Jackson is revered as an American hero anymore as much as you think. He’s gone much the way of people like Thomas Edison, in that their own propaganda machines and seemingly “era-appropriate” attitudes have eroded in the harsh light of the information age, when people have better access to the records of their crappy deeds. I will refer you back to my Hitler analogy, in that if you are legitimately asking if there is a broad enough interest in this proposal to not only warrant writing it, but formatting and submitting it as a CoG, the responses on this forum thread seem to suggest it’s a bad fit.

^^^ Then make that story. I still haven’t heard a good reason why this game HAS to actually BE Jackson and not some other frontiersperson that you have made up in your head that doesn’t carry the baggage of Native American mass genocide with it.

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This is the crux of my posts above. not only frontiersman but frontier-woman. And in my humble opinion make the story 30 years earlier in setting to coincide with Jackson’s mother - a more interesting and explorable historical person for the readership of CoG stories.

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My live would easier if I did focus on Jackson, he took much controversial and interesting historical persona and villain not try make game out of him. Honestly this idea first came to mind when want satire about Jackson early legal career and make it similar to PR games, slowly doping hints you are playing as Jackson. Then I did reach on the guy and he just flawed and damaged person. I cannot tell how where is Honor being and his just naked ambitions and social climbing ends. How does one get to that point where they even sleep at night.

I could make like easier base game around somebody like this

Or even more wild American persona that no one really know about.

Jackson symbolic of duality of American during the early republic. He uplift and destroyed. In way view political figure have in this nation. He was one of the first successful people that fulfilled the American dream, on the corpse of many. He could and died with brother in prison when he thirteen year old.

I agree with what you’re saying - ‘writing what you know’ does bring greater authenticity to the story. I know that people can’t help writing about places they’ve lived or experienced which is why I acknowledged that it’s a little unfair to complain about.

Having said this, it doesn’t change the fact that I would like to see a greater diversity in the setting of places. For people who don’t live in America (I should probably only speak for myself, really) it can sometimes start to feel like a trope/cliche.

I read because I love being challenged and I want to learn more about other people’s perspectives and sometimes it’s because I want to escape. So when the market is saturated with one perspective it gets a little tiring (white cis males, America, an excess of unrealistic orphans…). Ultimately though, it comes down to good writing.

Honestly, I may be the only one who feels this way. I’m not saying setting a story in America is a bad thing and I’m not at all outraged or upset by it. People are entitled to set their story wherever they like.

Sure. Me too. In this case though I’m personally not so interested. It’s yet again a controversial white male figure who goes on to wield great power — the kind of narrative/life-story you can find in a great deal of ‘conflicted/flawed protagonist’ media and there’s rarely any consequence to their actions. I also find that striking a balance with these kinds of people is very hard to pull off. All to often they become ‘justified’ or romanticised.

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I for one, am a history buff, and I love this idea!!
You at least have one fan!

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Go with what your heart desires, you can’t please everyone. Besides, there is a market for everything. (Trying to be informative? Don’t smite me please.) I just think The Jackson Era was an intresting but vague as we don’t get much into it minus the Bank War and Indian Removal Act. (That’s most of what I retained from a few months back, gotta love US History taught with opposing views.)

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I…don’t think I would play this game. I don’t particularly admire Andrew Jackson, but even if I did I don’t think a biographical story game works.

I’d read a book about him, or watch a documentary, maybe even play a more traditional linear video game, but in a choicecript the choices are the gameplay. Playing as an historical figure seems like not only would it limit your ability to customize your character (physically, emotionally, spiritually etc…) but it seems like it would also limit your choices about the character’s actions.

Maybe a game about a fictional character in Andrew Jackson’s life would be more appealing for a choicertain game.

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The only thing I want from Jackson is his mug off the 20 dollar bill!

I think a better historical figure might be Harriette Tubman!

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My preferences would veer more to Norman Thomas, Eugen V. Debs or even Franklin D. Roosevelt, but if it really must be a woman, why not take the woman behind Roosevelt?

Given the total Republican dominance in the incoming administration this may be more likely though:

Of course if it were totally up to me our own Euro’s would feature my favourite male models/actors/singers :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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(Before I say anything I’d like to clarify that I am not Native American and if I cause any offense to anyone who is, I sincerely apologize in advance)
I’ve been eyeballing this thread for a while now trying to figure out whether or not I should really say anything. First of all, my initial thought when I first found this thread was honestly “YIKES”. You’re treading on some very very thin ice with this idea and saying that it’s controversial is only the very tip of the iceberg. I’ll be putting my thoughts under a cut because this ended up a lot longer than I intended it to be

[details=Summary]There are the points that Laguz brought up. How would his racism and the genocide that he created be framed? The majority of Western history is written from a very white lens. A lot gets brushed off as “a big deal but not THAT big a deal” or erased or the facts are just plain wrong because the writer is biased, whether its because they just are blatantly racist or it’s because they personally don’t want to feel as guilty

And if, for example, you end up deciding to write the genocide from the side of a Native American character? That in itself would be very difficult unless you’re Native American yourself simply because you don’t have the perspective that someone who is Native American would and you could easily fall into the internalized biases I explained earlier or otherwise get the facts wrong

I decided to speak up about this because when I was in high school my english class had a unit based around the book The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. I never talked about this back then but doing that unit made me extremely uncomfortable. I’m Vietnamese American and, while I don’t know any family members that directly took part in the war, the majority of my family emigrated from Vietnam as a direct result of it. The book and the related readings and documentaries my English teacher showed during the unit were nearly all from a white perspective, like what I said earlier about the majority of history being written from a white perspective. The country and the people were treated as abstract or as a backdrop. The few Vietnamese people that were in the book weren’t named (probably because the book was an autobiography and the writer just didn’t know the names, but the people were written felt more like they were props than they were people). The horrors of the war were shown on mostly on the American side while the effects on Vietnam was limited to only the death count. This was at a poorly funded high school so the focus would obviously on the American side of the war but it would only be respectful to at least summarize the affects that the war had on Vietnam itself. Of the few writings or other pieces of American media that have Vietnamese characters affected by the war, most of them treat them as sad monoliths or, again, backdrops to white characters

Obviously the Vietnam War was much more recent at 40 years compared to Andrew Jackson’s 200 or so, but it’s piece of history and its effects can still be felt today no matter how subtly. There could be a respectful way to approach it but I don’t think a fictional account in the form of an interactive game would be one[/details]

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I’m not quite sure you or @Havenstone are entirely understanding here.

This isn’t about a feeling of disgust, and by describing it like that, although I know it is likely not either of your intentions, I feel like my concerns as well as the concerns of others in this thread are being diminished. This is about making a fictionalized game starring a real person that supported genocide, during a horrific event that, despite being 2 centuries ago, is still being repeated not just worldwide, but in this very country through the colonization of the Americas’ indigenous peoples. As Havenstone said, the intentions may be pure but I can guarantee that they will not end up becoming pure actions. Even Lolita was grossly misinterpreted, and there are many people to this day that believe the narrator was entirely in the right.

What Jackson did is immediately trivialized when it’s turned into a video game choice. The 2,000-6,000 people that died during the Trail of Tears become justified because in the game some mean Native hurt the protagonist’s feelings. It turns them into a joke in the same way that playing an evil character in a video game is considered a joke.

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What you describe is very much possible. That doesn’t mean it is a good idea to do with a historical person.

The problem is that such a narrative is seducing. Breaking bad is good, yes. (And ultimately I have a weak spot for villain protagonist, só how could I not like it), and I am all for anything which can make people aware of their own moral compass, but the thing is. Stories are seductive. Our brain loves narratives, so if a story just made the first first natives bad, so we sympathise with the controversial man. Then it doesn’t matter if the natives are universially bad. They can be 100 procent in the right even those bad formitative years experiences, and readers will still read the Natives as evil because the Native came off as unlikeable to the MC who the reader is likely to identify with, espically when the player can control him.

What I say is that this story is going be very difficult to write without accidentily seducing the player into justifying this person atrocities.

Narratives are seducing. If a story like this need to be told, I do think it needs to (learn from history and all that, beaware that humans can very much be monsterous to each other) I am not sure letting us control the controversial person is the best option to go. It is much better be the people affected on by this man. In this I would suggest different mcs on the same playthrough.

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And honestly I don’t know necessarily how to go about an attack on them we can play as Jackson’s family being his parents. I gotta see if his cousins survived he grew up with them. I could do something really crazy and you can have a rotating in a different perspective of different people let’s see him at different moments of his life. Who plays Jackson as you get older and you get in the different positions of life you can see the repercussions of your actions are different people’s perspectives as a player. So if you did something good or unsavory it’s never trivialize. And as monstrous as a person he is he has many moments in this life that makes him sympathetic and tragic least on the personal level.

We recently learned about him in APUSH, and I actually really liked him and most of what he did. The only thing he did that I didn’t like or agree with was getting rid of the National Bank and covering up abolitionist propaganda at one point. But that was after his youth, and I find the first part of his life very interesting. We all know what he did after that time, but not much about before, so I think a guide so to speak would be interesting and educational. But then again, I’m also the person who watches the documentaries on the History Channel for fun, soooo xD

As for his evolution, later on in life after his wife died, he was a very angry bitter man for most of his presidency effectively convincing himself Henry Clay indirectly killed his wife with the spread of the rumor about her marrying Jackson before she divorced her husband(it was certainly more colorful than this but the details escape me), even if she did’t mean to as the post was super slow. So I feel it is plausible that his early life could have effectively changed him for worse later on in his life

His treatment of others definitely was terrible, there is no doubt, but for the times he was exactly what Rogar describes him to be. A hero to the people. He was a hero for demonizing Indians, he was a hero for killing them. The people loved him for his humble roots, for his violent climb to the top after fighting in wars. It’s all history, awful history, but history nonetheless. And I’m not advocating his violence in anyway, but he wouldn’t be who is remembered as if he didn’t do those things, so how could it be cut out or forgotten because it offends the ancestors of those he wronged? That’s like an extremely religious person constantly telling the astronomy teacher they are wrong about the cosmos. It is your belief, but it is culturally shaping and we can’t just ignore it’s significance, even if we wanted to. It’s like trying to act like slavery never happened. The abolition of slaves crippled the deep south to the point where they had to make Black Codes. As awful as it is the history of most great civilizations were built on the backs of others. The outing of different people. Jackson is the same. His legacy was built on the mistreatment of others, and we need to appreciate the horridness of it all, and remember it.

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