# The Presence of the Political, A Brief Discourse on Political Realities in Games tags: #thoughts/youtube I really appreciate the guy who does *[The Joy of Wargaming](https://www.youtube.com/@TheJoyofWargaming)* because his gameplay is intermingled with soliloquies about things unseen in our hobby; for instance, in this case, political situations.  No, I'm not talking about the eternal quest to insert *Present-Day*™© wherever and whenever someone can find a crevice to slam it into, like a horny teenager with a watermelon. That's an unhealthy compulsion. I'm talking about fictive positioning. Particularly in wargames, but much the case in RPGs, there is a political environment within which you are operating. Usually, it's dictated to you; that is an aspect of the setting. In your average World War II wargame, World War II has broken out, and the war is as history sets forth; you're just part of it. In your average sci-fi RPG, you have a relationship to the wider world, probably within the owned space of some pseudo-empire, and your fictive positioning is either in support of or contravention of that established political entity. (Unfortunately, for the last decade, at every single point, that decision has been to be against the established political entity because of a critical lack of imagination and the emotional projection of immature authors. But I digress.) But that needn't and probably shouldn't always be the case. I personally appreciate games which have as part of their setup the implicit session zero in which we generate the world. Part of generating the world is generating the factions within it. Why is that important, you might ask? Because it's the dynamic between groups of people with divergent interests that really drives interesting conflict. Even when you are manifesting control over the military forces of some faction, there are influences that have nothing to do with the boots on the ground that should be making a difference to your experience. Yes, even if you are notionally role-playing the king. Having to deal with consequence is part of the point of playing games altogether. The next time you're sitting down at the table to throw down some minis or start putting together that next campaign, seriously think about injecting political realities for the characters on the ground. Give them conflicting intents. Give them a stake in multiple groups who they would like to satisfy or at least keep on the hook. Give them awkward rules of engagement. Make things about more than just what you see strictly in front of you, and make the things that they can't see have more nuance than *"these are my friends and these are my enemies."* Just to keep the urge to inject your own personal political ideation off the table, one of the factions you introduce should hold at least one of your own personal political positions in absolute derision, and they should be right. Extra points for every faction involved in the setting holding at least one of your own personal political positions in derision and all of them being right.