Dystopias are a popular setting for videogames and tabletop RPGs alike, but they can be hard to build and manage. It’s easy to go from “dystopia” to “hopeless nightmare” on the design and planning scale, and it’s also easy to give tools to regressive elements to perpetuate their beliefs and inflict them on others. So, let’s take a hard dive into dystopian world design.
Background
Shortly after releasing my recent article on the layered oppression in Shadowrun and noting how it detracts unnecessarily from the setting, I got a comment along the lines of “You know it’s supposed to be dystopian, right?” The implication I took from that being that the racism was fine because the setting was supposed to be awful. But here’s the thing, dystopias are essentially dystopian, not essentially racist. However, racism is an unfortunately popular aspect of dystopian world building. But it doesn’t have to be. Because like 97.8% of the time, it’s a choice the designer is making, not something inherent to the broader conceptualization.
What Make a Dystopia
On paper, a dystopia is the opposite of a utopia, typically a society in fear, with scarcity, and living with injustice as the norm. And honestly, that alone is enough to kickstart a world build. “Fear, Scarcity, and Injustice”. But people add more to it. There’s usually some kind of oppressive, tyrannical government, socioeconomic disparities that make the peasants of France in the last years before the French Revolution look like the post-war middle class, and usually a sprinkle of environmental collapse to match the late stage capitalism woes. Popular additions for genre flavour include Rome like gladiatorial games with a “bread and circuses” approach to population control; and punitive religion makes a lot of appearances too (particularly Roman Catholics or extreme Protestants, or carbon copies/palette swaps of them). There’s often a global aspect to it all, with travel restrictions and the like. And honestly, at this point, you’ve got enough happening to have the players going for years.
However, all that isn’t enough for some. So they add in racism too. And past the usual problems with adding baked in racism to a setting, dystopian worlds tend to actively support and justify racism (and sexism, homophobia, or transphobia too) when it’s added because of their nature. In essence, dystopia builds like this almost always internally justify this addition with in-world reasoning, and ignore the problematic real world origins of that reasoning and its influence.
Racism in Dystopias
There are two great and well-known examples of this in fiction. The Sixth World of Shadowrun, and the nightmare future of Warhammer 40000. And they both share the same problem: they justify, support, and encourage racism in setting. Now, this might seem like a “but it’s fiction, not reality, people can tell” thing, but it really isn’t. Fiction influences real world behaviours and attitudes. It can create whole movements and even cults (The Vril Society is a good example). So when you normalize racism in a game setting, people can (and some will definitely) subconsciously internalize it as being okay. And if you add recognizable cultural or physical aspects to a discriminated against group in a setting, peoples minds will connect those dots because pattern recognition is a big part of how our brains work.
Warhammer 40000 is a troubled setting; it started out as a parody and satire of extreme right-wing politics, but around 3rd Edition, it lost the satire. Not completely, but if you didn’t read the right novels and other fluff content, you’d miss it easily. Things got so bad in the fandom with right wing extremists that in 2020, Games Workshop released a statement that was pro diversity and inclusion and had pushback for it. And they did it again in 2021 with a more direct message. How did this happen? Simple. Within their fiction, right wing xenophobia and hate of anything different or outside limited and enforced parameters is not only justified, but also celebrated as “good” and the people perpetuating it are lionized as heroes. People online have even argued that Warhammer 40000 shows that “racism works”. And this all contributes to the setting continuing to attract and support the ideology of real-world racists.
Shadowrun just leans into all the racism it can, at every level, but then adds a very specific “All Lives Matter” vibe to the operation, taking the POV that “hate flows both ways” and therefore is equal in being awful. Then it proceeds to layout how human supremacy is pretty much the norm, how ethnostates are clearly the answer to all social issues, and that regular real-world racism is still alive and well too. So, you know, when there’re no orcs or trolls about, you can go back to hating on Blacks/Asians etc.… Shadowrun is built to look like a game that’s about fighting the power, but the reality is that it’s a game whose setting is expressly there to facilitate supporting the status quo. And like Warhammer 40000, Shadowrun has attracted an ugly component to its fandom because they feel their personal ideologies are being supported by the fiction; and that ranges from the relatively mild “All Lives Matter, Hate is Hate” groups to the right-wing regressive side of the conservative spectrum.
Do Dystopias Have to be Racist?
No, absolutely not. Racism is a huge and horrible form of injustice, but it’s not required for a dystopia to run. For example, in my last article on Shadowrun, I laid out that the socioeconomic pressures and the SIN system alone were sufficient forms of oppression for the game. They fit the situation with the governments and corporations, provide story and plot motivations, and all without giving that weird player or GM who seem to be too into dropping in game or real-world slurs during gameplay “because it’s how the world is” an opportunity to do so.
So why add it? Honestly, there’s no real reason to. If racism is a primary motivator in your game’s setting, it’s going to inevitably cause problems unless it’s called out for the problem it is, and not the problem people want it to be. Namely, it can’t be “All Lives Matter”. It can’t position the oppressed as being actually more powerful in a literal sense than their oppressors. It can’t take the POV that racism has a positive outcome. Why? Aside from being awful, it encourages and conditions the worst parts of a fandom to be the worst. And then they transfer that to other games, and into real life. Also, many people simply don’t have the vocabulary or nuanced understanding of the topic of racism to actually explore it in a meaningful way at the table.
Are Dystopias Worth Making?
Yes, yes they are. Dystopias are amazing settings that offer a variety of challenges from multiple angles and they can facilitate all kinds of stories and narratives. Many of the “-punk” genres thrive on dystopias. Steampunk, dieselpunk, cyberpunk, dungeonpunk, noir… All of these THRIVE with a dystopian setting in the background. Dystopias are also fun to write. They let you push limits creatively as a world builder and then again as a GM as your players work to get around in your creation.
Final Thoughts
Racism is not an essential, or often even a desirable part of a dystopia. The setting’s baselines of oppression, scarcity, and injustice are already doing the heavy lifting. And even if you choose something where real-world influences are at work and racism could be a component (like steampunk or dieselpunk), you can still choose to either not include it, limit it to villains, or to place the story in active opposition to it. The point here is that it’s always a choice, and it’s seldom, if ever, a good one to include in your world build. Handled carelessly, it contributes to racism in the real world, can stoke conflict at the table, and has a very real chance of pushing away or discouraging people who experience it in their day to day from trying your game. So yes, make dystopias. Make them awful. Make them so that the characters want to take up arms against their oppressors. Just, you know, leave the racism on the cutting room floor.
Read Part Two Here!
