For me Anomandaris and MigRib have hit the nail on the head.
Books and TV series all have their versions of politics and an RPG based on one should have the politics of the original material.
But absolutely should never ever ever be “adjusted” or “adapted” for whatever passes for current politics or agendas. We see time after time that when they try to take a property and “make it relevant to today” it fails miserably. If a property is popular, it is popular because of what it is. Not as an alternate re-write dreamed up by a late comer.
Dune the novel (and the follow on books for those that like them) has just the exact amount of politics needed for Dune. It doesn’t need any extra stupidity from 2020.
At least it doesn’t in my opinion.
Again, I think people are just laboring under the concept that any work of fiction cannot have a layer of political metaphor or commentary, that can be related to any era of politics, including the one the audience comes from. ‘Politics’ merely refers to people and how they exercise power. The story of Dune is a case study of politics. Part of any fidelity in adapting Dune to new mediums needs to acknowledge this. How you interpret the politics of the book is really down to you.
No, the people here are not laboring under the concept that any work of fiction cannot have a layer of political metaphor or commentary. Of any era. What they are truly against is the very justified understanding that there are people that simply cannot refrain from trying shove their personal opinions of those politics down everyone’s throat. You personally may not do that, but there are many that cannot help themselves.
Many of us believe that an RPG game should stay closely with whatever the actual source material is and let everyone that buys it make their own choices. But give some people a hair and the entire thing will be poisoned.
Moving vaguely back on track I wonder what other tie-ins there are for Dune?
So far we have:
- Dune 2020 movie (possibly 2, not clear)
- Dune: The Sisterhood miniseries
- Dune RPG by Modiphius
- Up to 3 Dune computer games by Funcom, main one being a MMO game in the vein of Conan (not sure about MMOs personally)
- Board game (Remake already out more to come?)
- Miniatures game, I assume that this isn’t going to be a Modiphius one.
- Comic book series
Anyone know of anything I have missed? Regardless there is a storm of Dune coming.
We have Dunesign the likes of which even God has never seen!
His/her opinion is not changing five novels of lore written by the original creator. Maybe? There’s a world of difference between a forum post and mutating an RPG world to match with current political standards. Possibly?
Well, the only Dune movie we’ve seen to date had large parts of the book changed. Is this what we mean? Or are we just speculating, with a fairly unabashed agenda, about a set of movies that have yet be released here? Or maybe just a RPG that hasn’t been released here? Or what else?
The Polygon article which started this thread doesn’t reveal much about the new Dune RPG, but reveals just enough to congratulate Modiphius on their diverse and inclusive team (the same about the future movie cast). This does seem to indicate the possibility of present day sensibilities being a top priority. Also, there have been many recent examples of works of fiction being adapted to current trends and authors being criticized for their dated personal opinions. Let’s not forget what happened with the RPG Fate of Cthulhu and the way it badly handled the critique of Lovecraft and Lovecrafts work. It can happen, it has already happened.
It’s not bad, it’s good (at least for the people they chose, more work for them, that’s good, of course). But when someone writes an article about a game as yet unreleased and congratulates the company behind it for being diverse and inclusive (and puts that in the title) it makes me wonder (and it appears that’s not just me, others too) if the game itself will also be diverse and inclusive just for the sake of diversity and inclusivity rather than quality.
That’s not what I said. At a certain point a couple of people commented about being affraid that the original work might be adapted to conform to identity politics, which is a very modern day thing. Inclusivity and diversity are some of those very modern concerns. There’s nothing wrong about them, quite the contrary, specially when it concerns to the chosen team. But it does lend some credibility to the worries that the fiction might also be adapted to modern sensibilities when the title of the article gives such importance to “diverse list of authors”.
The only people obsessing about ‘identity politics’ here are the people who have come on to this site to have a rant about it. Nobody was discussing this, whatsoever, before the duly titled “No I.D. Politics” turned up.
As pointed out before, the original Star Trek went out of its way to be diverse and inclusive in its casting way back in the 1960s. There is nothing new to it, and it has absolutely no compromising aspects towards quality at all. I’m sorry but there is no credibility to all this - it’s just a load of hand wringing about nothing.
Well, I’m not claiming the people who addressed identity politics are right. I have no inside information about this or any other 2d20 product. But I do disagree that they are the only ones obsessed about it. The Polygon journalist who wrote the article that started the topic seems to be concerned mostly about identity politics. At least the text shows more concern about the inclusivity and diversity shown by Modiphius than about the game itself.
So, they may be wrong (I hope they are), but if they want to complain about the possibility of identity politics intruding into the game, I think this is the right thread to address those concerns.
So, again, I ask you what is wrong with a RPG design crew and film cast being diverse and inclusive? Why is this a cause for concern? Why would there be an inverse relationship between celebrating diversity and inclusiveness and the quality of the game? The person writing the article wasn’t even in a position to pass comment on the quality of the game, considering it hasn’t been released yet. He was in a position to comment on the diversity and inclusiveness of the crew writing it though - and it is worth celebrating, isn’t it?
On that point I couldn’t agree more. Though I’m not a Star Trek fan, in the reimagining of Battlestar Galactica their take on diverse characters gave chance to much more interesting ones that in the original BSG. The male Starbuck was a boring cliché and the female one was an interesting and refreshing character. So, there’s no need to compromise.
I’m not concerned about it. I just mentioned it because it’s the scope of the Polygon article. In this particular case I think having someone with a lot of knowledge about Middle East, for example, is a very wise choice. I just pointed that out because the news article is so much about inclusivity that it sounds a bit strange. Maybe there wasn’t enough info in the game itself and the author chose to lean on that…
