United We Stand - Political WIP

It doesn’t have to be grand history, it could just be a bit of playable background for our characters and their personal story and origins that simultaneously allows us to get a feel of this fictional country.
Show us a bit of who our characters were and what they did before circumstances no doubt drove them to become a part of either the radical right or left wings in the politics of this country.

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I personally enjoy the feeling around in the beginning. I think if we wait for more story to come out we will get our background soon enough.

I really enjoyed the demo and definitely think you should include the facist playthrough, seems more interesting than serving the communist agenda. I will admit though, it really does feel like the game is post WW1 Germany alittle too much.

I’ve added the promised section in the opening chapter where you can choose your social background, and fleshed out the character’s backstory somewhat. Does that satisfy those looking for more background? I’m not really sure about a playable backstory because it would inevitably involve simply asking the reader straight which background they want to be from and which party they join. And as you may have noticed with my style i try and always avoid just asking the player “you are: male, female etc, what is your name etc etc etc”. I really strive to have those sort of establishing questions weaved in for the sake of the narrative.

I also had a think about the whole historical intro vs feel your way into world and I must say I really like the idea of you slowly learning and understanding more about the world you are in. Perhaps my favourite game of all time is dishonored, which is set in a steampunk world. Only the very basics of the universe are laid out at the start but over the course of the game there is so much detail that it honestly is one of the most rich game worlds i’ve ever come across. That’s the gold standard i strive for.

edit: I’ve also planned out the next chapter. The open world system will work like this: the city has 5 districts and in each chapter you will have the choice to go to each one to carry out tasks for the party. In each chapter, there will be one main or “story” task, which you have to do to porgress. Before you tackle it you can can go to other districts and complete any number (or none) of the smaller side tasks. As an example, as solidarity in the next chapter the main task is moving in to new order’s district with paramilitaries and taking them on in the streets. Side tasks include union agitation in industry and meeting a prominent member of the social democrats to discuss an aliiance. What do you guys think of this systrm?

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Yes; the newspaper story still hits like a tonne of bricks out of nowhere but I like the background snippets.

Fine; it reminds me of @Vendetta’s Mobster story structure which is a good thing. If you have not looked at his structure, you should.

I still think the “Social Democrats” are Leninists - October revolution variation, not Stalin’s ursurption of the party. Just like the right party had too many shades of Hitler, the left has too many shades of Lenin - for a fictional world.

I played through the demo on the Fascist side of things. I’ll never be accused of being left wing in any context other than a hockey line up. It’s a well written demo so I look forward to seeing how it develops.

With respect to those suggesting fascism is necessarily Nazism, that’s not really true. There were the regimes of Mussolini and Franco which evolved separately and lacked the racism of their German counterpart. Which is not to say that there were not aspects of either of those regimes that were deplorable. Those noting that the history of extreme Communist regime is rather grim are quite right. The death count of Stalinism and Maoism actually dwarfs the body count of fascism and Stalin engaged in his own genocide in the Ukraine. So arguably there are no good guys in this game just various flavours of misguided radicals in a difficult time in world history.

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I haven’t played the demo but I do enough about history to tell you that communist regimes have a much bloodier track record then fascist regimes and that the whole idea that ether idea could be rejected while the other stays is arbitrary. Although I understand if your just want to keep the work load down, these things must be very time consuming.

As Spanish I could tell you Franco was racist as hell. He treated gypsys as shit, forcing them to move from certain zones to new accommodations . He was against Jews and did eternal discourses about The JEWISH masonry alliance trying to stealing our county and tainted our catholicism

And new backgrounds are cool.

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I haven’t been posting here much, but I enjoy being able to play as the Fascists and would prefer if you kept them in the final game.

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If I can direct you backwards in the thread, a lot of of these points have already been discussed. As I’ve mentioned before and as Mara has pointed out, Franco’s regime was definitely racial. Franco’s enemies were portrayed as “anti-spaniards” which is a phrase, the meaning of which, that doesn’t translate well into english but essentially denied liberals, trade unionists, left-wingers spanishness, treated them as a different race and the many of the policies towards them were essentially racial. There was also a strange internal racism against the landless peasant workers of the southern countryside, not that dissimilar to the american south where the landowners treated these people as subhuman. Then again, as I’ve said before I don’t want this to become a thread about the respective crimes of communism and fascism.

Can I just ask you to clarify that, what do you mean by that?

I must say I this a bit confusing, for two reasons. The Social Democrats refers to social democracy, i.e. moderate centre-left politics, and is based on the Social Democratic parties you see (and saw at that time) across europe, such as SPD in germany, SPO in austria, Labour in britain, and many others. Nothing to do with Lenin or revolution.

The other is about the whole “too similar to real thing for a fictional world” that a few people have mentioned. In a way, the setting is not a fictional world. It’s set in actual 1930s europe. Ok, its a fictional country but its very much based on the real politics of that time. So I don’t really get “too similar to”, it’s supposed to be drawing off the real events of that time. It’s hardly surprising that a fascist party in Moravia is similar to the Nazis or italian fascists, for example, when all fascist parties at that time tended to follow closely the examples set by hitler and mussolini (often even funded by them, e.g. Mosley’s British Union of Fascists)

And he wasn’t friendly to gay guys either right, Mara?

Of course I know Stalin’s order 131 against homosexuality was disgraceful as well, but on the extreme left gay people, like me, at least have a theoretical place (that isn’t an early grave or a concentration camp) and I’ve already said I want my character to be closer to the German Communists then the Russian ones when it comes to sexual liberation and gender (expression), under all forms of Fascism we’re simply anti-social elements to be disposed of.
But even Stalin’s envisioned punishment for homosexuality, five years in jail or hard labour pales in comparison to what most Fascists did.

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What I mean by that is this: a political savvy person elected to be a member of parliament knows the beat journalists and you give us a sense that the MC knows the reporter but not what the MC knows of her reporting. The MC should have an idea of how she writes and how her stories are seen as… the reporter seems like an allied journalist when we meet her but when the story is published we are made out poorly.

The leftist party seems (to me an American) to be farther radicalized than those seen in Britain or Germany. They have paramilitary organizations, which the democratic western parties such as Labour never had and which they use to gain control of the districts they move into. This is exactly how the Octoberists gained control in Moscow and St. Petersberg. I can not speak to the Nordic realms of the 1930’s nor the Low Countries because I have not the knowledge; England, Scotland, Wales, France, Germany and the Bohemian countries the democratic parties non-aligned with Moscow did not have paramilitary organizations taking local district power.

So far, the story is attempting to have it both ways (in my opinion) as both a historical narrative and as a morality play type of story set in a fictional world with historical lessons.

My story draws heavily from history as well but the details involved with each particular thing, place or person I draw upon is changed from the historical just enough to make the thing, place or person unique in my world.

In your fictional world, it is more of a this is historical parties and events and people with nothing but the name changed.

If I am not explaining this clearly, I’ll try to clarify later.

Yes but each had differences that made them unique. Here in America, Charles Lindbergh was an admirer of Hitler and Mussolini but he did not serve in the trenches in WW1 nor did he adapt the two headed roman eagle … the leader of Morovia’s party lived Hitler’s life up to the point where we met him to the point where he had the same mustache…

Our most radical left-wing parties did have informal “fighting squads”, mostly non uniformed, except for perhaps a band around the upper arm, or a red scarf, mostly in order to fight the police and private strike-breakers during labour disputes.
But you’re quite right that unlike Mussert’s “Brownshirts” of the NSB they never did amount to any sort of formal paramilitary force, nor did they really control territory like a gang. Though there were working class gangs who did do so back in the darkest of our 30’s, but they weren’t (formally) affiliated with any of the (radical) left-wing parties.
Besides our left, unlike our right wing, lost some of their best potential “commanders” to the Spanish Civil war, unlike our own gloating fascists, back then.

Of course, even our Fascist “Brownshirts” were pretty pathetic compared to some of our neighbour’s organisations and even the Nazi’s during the occupation didn’t really take them seriously. I guess as a country we were just pretty bad at radicalising back then. Which obviously isn’t true for the fictional country, which appears to be both worse hit be the economic crash and possess a less resilient political system, ours did require toppling by an outright Nazi invasion after all to drive liberals and Christian Democrats out of power even then.

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I ask because I don’t know… are you talking about those aligned with Moscow or non-aligned?

Both, but obviously those who were Moscow aligned did receive some informal support that helped them train and equip theirs to a somewhat higher standard, still again, nothing like that seen in some of our neighbouring countries though.

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Thanks for the detail of your feedback, i’ll try and address each point in turn.

  1. What I’m trying to do with the interview is get across the naivety and inexperience of the MC, it is after-all their first day as an MP in a party which is quite new and not so well established. So unlike politicians of today they haven’t been media trained etc. They know the journalist because they are a famous political reporter but Stark is not aligned to the far left or right and so will try and trip you up. That said, it is possible to come out with a not overly-negative story.

  2. We’ve simply got mixed up here. The social democrats are not the party the left wing MC is a part of, but another party that exists in moravia which fits the description i’ve set out. Solidarity (which you play as) definitely is further left than that! In terms of moving into districts, paramilitaries etc, I’m really basing it on the street war that took place between the Nazis and communists in weimar germany. Even actually the social democrats in germany had a paramilitary force (although it, unlike that of the nazis or communists, was defensive rather than offensive) but the street battles were in part about defending or disrupting political meetings and attacking/defending the opposition’s pubs and clubs.

  3. I get your point here, I’ll try and explain myself. This is not about morality lessons but telling a story. The setting is inspired by real events for sure. Is it just these events and parties with their names changed? I would argue no. I’m drawing on all sorts of elements. Many of the events to come in the story actually bear far more resemblance to the spanish second republic than weimar germany. But all sorts of events from the 20s and 30s have inspired what is to come, from the “clearing out of red vienna” in 1934, to the popular front in france, to the abdication crisis in britain, to the spanish civil war, to the july plot against hitler in 1944. What i suppose i’m trying to do is a flavour of the times that wouldn’t be possible with a historical setting. For instance a game set in weimar germany couldn’t feature the interplay between a radical government and the monarchy. I suppose because there is so little in the game so far, it is difficult to see this and the germanic setting makes it look like this is just weimar germany with different names. For example, there was never really a party quite like Solidarity at that time in europe, perhaps (very loosely) it is similar to the spanish POUM or british ILP but neither of those had anywhere near the success of the fictional solidarity party. I’m not trying to have any sort of morality lessons, just tell a good story in a particular setting and to do that i chose a fictional country so that i’d have more creative license to shape the world how i want.

  4. I’ve changed the background of Riga to a resistance leader, and he has a pencil moustache, not a toothbrush one like hitler had. He’s actually based on oswald mosely rather than hitler, at least in appearance. However, i would point out that in 1930s europe, almost all men of a certain age had served in the war in some capacity and all fascist parties in europe had common traits that New Order reflects in the game. All over europe you had fascist parties that were very similar in appearance and beliefs, just like you had social democratic parties in every country that were basically the same. Again, i’d go back to the “fictional country, real setting” that moravia is an imagined country in 30s europe that reflects the trends and politics of that time.

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I didn’t know that you could have a bad story from the reporter. I always choose the logical positive for each party choices. I mean there is easy knowwhat a politicians should say I find new order more funny so Mara will be from a noble origin in new order

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I think this is just a difference between American and European politics. In America, up until 1960’s every facet of politics was dominated by a local political machine - to get elected to the Congress or the Senate, you had to be plugged into that machine. Even a novice had to understand who was who and what they did. Reporters, fixers, street gangs, the police, the judges… everyone was a part of that machinery. Tammany Hall in New York City is most famous but it was similar everywhere. It was part of why gangsters literally got away with murder and the federal government had to persecute under tax law!

I think this is very appealing - I’d argue that to do this your going to need better developed the fictional country in the mind of your reader. Part of it is because there is so little, you are correct. This is exactly why I am spending so much time developing my introduction, the fictional world is one we have to build up. Which leads directly to 4…

Yes, you tweaked Riga for the better … I’m going to provide a compare and contrast here with two of your characters you’ve introduced so far: the Queen and Riga…

Morovia as a fictional realm has a monarchy - and you’ve succeeded in separating it from that of any historical monarchy of the interwar years. It is not Bohemian, nor is it Bismarkian Junker, nor is it English… just by making the monarch a Queen. I actually pictured her as the modern Dutch Monarch for some reason :wink:

Your Riga leader when we first met him (not the newer better version) when combined with the overall German-feeling setting allowed my mind no other conclusion than he was this story’s Hitler. Now, he does not feel that way as much and as he is now, he survives as an independently developed character - I still believe having a beer garden as the meeting place will give the non-history nerds the Hitlerite vibe too much but for me personally I am o.k. with it.

One last thing : [quote=“AlexClifford1994, post:97, topic:19177”]
Even actually the social democrats in germany had a paramilitary force (although it, unlike that of the nazis or communists, was defensive rather than offensive) but the street battles were in part about defending or disrupting political meetings and attacking/defending the opposition’s pubs and clubs.
[/quote]

The defensive vs offensive characteristics is exactly which drew the left as being communist or at least Moscow supported - You can ignore my critique here and I’d still enjoy the story. The “spittle scene” with the youngsters felt spot-on to me because it seemed that they were more [quote=“idonotlikeusernames, post:94, topic:19177”]
informal “fighting squads”, mostly non uniformed, except for perhaps a band around the upper arm, or a red scarf, mostly in order to fight the police and private strike-breakers during labour disputes.
[/quote]

The way you laid out your future invasion plans felt to me exactly like the communist vs fascist offensive paramilitary wars - which means the “best” the left party then could be in your fictional world would be Leninist.

So I’ve just bought Divided We Fall but I hate to admit that I’m feeling quite lost here. It’s no fault of yours @AlexClifford1994 but more of mine since the nuances between the political parties and organizations just go over my head.

The education system in my country does not delve into the differences between each political view much, so aside from Communists and Capitalists I have no idea what drives people who believe in other views. And even with communism and capitalism, I only know the surface. So the nuances are quite lost on me.

That aside, would it be possible to explain what makes people from each political view think the way they do or believe what they do? Not through the forums but in the actual game? (Perhaps not Divided We Fall, but here in United We Stand) I understand that such things could be found out via Master Google but an explanation might make it more accessible to more people. :slight_smile:

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Except we have a King now, of course if you believe the rumours his wife really pulls what strings the monarchy can still pull these days. :wink: They also know to stay mostly out of politics while this Queen seems be not only quite heavily involved in the day to day politics (although ti’s rumoured our previous one was too, at times), but more importantly she does so openly, which our monarchs had more sense than to try. In the game-world all of this really makes my character want to abolish that monarchy completely, but then again that was likely the authors intention that might not have been achieved with a more circumspect monarch.

Did you mean in XoR, cause then, yeah, my character there has shades of various left-wing, revolutionary leaders including Lenin, but philosophically he draws closer to Maoism, I’d say.

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