The standard #ttrpg dungeon crawl is problematically colonial: "We want these treasures, and if the natives try to stop us, we'll just have to kill them in self defense."
How can the story be tweaked to avoid this, while maintaining the action/adventure idea of solving problems through personal violence?
I guess the obvious answer is to ally the player characters with the oppressed rather than with the empire. Perhaps more interesting would be to have them *start* allied with the empire, then slowly turn up the wrongness until they switch sides.
@peterdrake yes, I ran a very political long campaign using the Runequest system that was just like that. I was willing to let the original party go either way with it, but they picked the underdog. The setting was one where an empire had fragmented into feudal states which were just kicking into competitive expansion mode. They started off chasing bandits, who turned out to be sympathetic, and they eventually became essentially an antimonarchist revolutionary "re-expropriation" team
@peterdrake it also turned into a referendum on organized religion, which in the RQ system is quite consequential. Going against a powerful priesthood because they're allied with the state is no joke.
@mrcompletely ... or, y'know, when they have actual, functioning divine magic.
@peterdrake anyway if you really design a campaign around exposing and foregrounding some of the usually buried injustices, it can absolutely work. I'd just say lean all the way into it, take that idea seriously - where does the oppression come from? What is the class and economic system like? Is that really okay? It can lead to a pretty great Robin Hood dynamic a lot of players will really like
@peterdrake exactly - and religious cult avatars, warriors with powerful divine magic, are very much a thing, and getting a hit squad of those sent after you is a pretty big deal. Plus a lot of players rely on divine magic themselves, it's relatively powerful in the system (most RQ characters use at least basic combat magic, and there are a few flavors, divine being one of them). So if the deity you get your everyday utility spells from is part of the pantheon you're fighting, that's a problem