Just Tabletop Things

When I create a Sig character, the book tells me to create a list of three “subjective and philosophical” beliefs that she holds to. (59) This is immediately a problem because there are no subjective philosophical beliefs in Sig. The setting predetermines which of your character’s beliefs are true.

Sig’s setting is the now-standard Great Wheel planescape cosmology. Each plane is “composed of some pure substance, and it’s why those substances can exist elsewhere in the ‘verse”. (6) Not only are there planes composed of physical substances like water, but also of “ideological” and “conceptual” substances like freedom and death. (7) This means that freedom, etc. are not just ideas. They are real objects that can be visited, studied, and understood.

So, once I’ve made my character’s list of starting beliefs, anyone at the table can look at it, cross-reference it with setting information in the book, and immediately know which beliefs will hold true and which will prove false. Let’s see what that would look like, using the example beliefs from the book:

1. Family is a chain to be broken - This is not true. In Sig, family and heredity are fluid. Your body and mind are formed by social ties rather than biological ones. Family is not a chain to be broken because it is not a chain at all. Family is exactly those people with whom you have the closest social connections, and that can change at any time. Not only is this belief untrue; it’s meaningless. 2. Violence is the best teacher - This is not true. The Teachers Guild in Sig is run by the Plane of Justice, which is more like the plane of Mercy or Charity (I’ll drill into that later). Needless to say the guild is thoroughly nonviolent. So not only is Mercy the best teacher, it actually employs all teachers. I’m not twisting words here. Remember that ideas objectively exist in this setting. The plane of Justice defines the concept of teaching, so mercy will always be a more effective teaching technique here than violence. 3. Only sinners need masks - This is not true. We can look to the plane of Shadow for this answer, because it governs illusions and the like. The nice gnomes who live on the plane of Shadow use the shadowsubstance to make beautiful jewelry. This means that illusions or “masking” are not just for deceivers, but for anyone who wants to present themselves well.

Now, a character could argue that she doesn’t care about the damn gnomes or what they think. The plane of shadow represents falsehood. That jewelry is literally made from lies, which are evil.

The plane of Shadow might cement the properties falsehood, but it doesn’t actually tell us if lying is wrong. As long as the setting doesn’t enforce a moral compass, our characters can still make subjective value judgements. So, what does Sig say about morality? Well, hold on to your political alignment charts, because things are about to get authoritarian.

The multiverse of Sig contains a ring of five “Ideological” planes, each of which represents a different interpretation of the concept of law. The opposed planes of Order and Freedom roughly represent the principles of organization and disorganization. They are exactly the planes of Law and Chaos from D&D.

The remaining three ideological planes concern moral law, and are all opposed to one another. These are the planes of Justice, Tyranny, and Destruction. In describing these planes, the author tips his ideological hand so severely that it makes me cackle with rage.

Let’s start with the plane of Justice. “In this place, law shields the weak from the abuse of the strong. In this place, reconciliation is stronger than retribution.” The race native to Justice is diverse, “vary[ing] in appearance from midnight-hued... to russet”. The god venerated on this plane is Myn, a little girl who travels the multiverse persuading the “complacent or comfortable” to repent of their acts of injustice. She accomplishes this by asking “a single query” that cuts her quarry to the heart and exposes their hypocrisy. (82-85)

The plane of Justice is a utopian world of progressive ideals. I’m about to tear into this thing, so don’t get the wrong idea that I’m bashing social justice. I think it’s a great idea to include a plane that represents the progressive moral compass. I think it’s a terrible idea to make that plane the exclusive source of moral goodness in the entire setting, which is what Sig does.

"Justice” means a lot of things to a lot of people. In Sig, it can only mean one thing: exactly what the author wants it to mean. This is a problem for any player (including a liberal one) who wants to explore a character with a conservative perspective: their beliefs are canonically unjust; and not just unjust: tyrannical.

Consider the plane of Tyranny. This plane seeks to “bring order and harmony to the universe through force of arms and strength of will”, “chain the forces of chaos”, and “offer redemption to those who wish it”. (87) Sounds interesting! I’m imagining Inglorious Basterds: planeswalker edition; I’m imagining Chris Hansen with shape-shifting powers. I’m ready.

With dark certitude, the author dismisses all this as “lies and propaganda”. Those who accept the offer of redemption “would only be trading one set of shackles for another,” as they join a race of demons responsible for the “eternal torture” of “writhing, screaming masses chained for crimes real and imagined”. The pages of this section are splattered with words like “dominance”, “brutal”, and “hatred”. (86-89)

This is the only treatment of anything resembling a conservative sense of justice in the entire game. So, what if my character believes bad guys belong behind bars? What should she do when she discovers these demons punishing people without cause? She can’t throw them in prison, because they run the prison. She couldn’t even get them a fair trial, because they run the lawyers’ guild too. She also couldn’t even reliably get them arrested because, I kid you not, all cops come from the plane of Destruction and all they care about is power. She can’t even argue that it’s unjust for the demons to avoid punishment, because the plane of Justice doesn’t want bad guys to be punished at all. The game is rigged to ensure that conservative-leaning beliefs are impossible to defend.

I’m not saying Sig should be rewritten from a conservative perspective. It shouldn’t be. If your goal is to tell good stories about changing beliefs, your world must be inviting to people of diverse ideologies, including ones you hate. You have to present a world that, like ours, invites itself to be plausibly interpreted within many different worldviews. This grants the ability to understand another’s perspective, which is what makes stories about disagreement compelling.

Sig never encourages the reader to consider its multiverse from different angles, or to question the reliability of the one describing it. Characters’ beliefs are constantly challenged, but they can only change to agree more with those of the game designer. Despite its denunciation of domination in the Tyranny section, Sig creates its own relationship of domination between the author and the players.

It’s that hypocrisy that makes Sig unbearable to me. Consider the god of Tyranny, Kalzak the Absolute. In his description, the hypocrisy of this game is on shocking display:

“Kalzak earned his infernal title, Demon-god of Moral Absolutes [except for the moral absolute of justice presented in this game?], through toil and bloodshed in the infernal bureaucracy. He rules from a tower of skulls where his scribes engrave new laws on the bones of living victims. He infects the slumbering primes [earth-like worlds] with a single toxic idea, that anyone different [like people who have different worldviews than you] is dangerous. His servants fan the flames of racism [never mind the objectively evil race of demons on Tyranny], of prejudice [like the ruthlessly grotesque portrait of conservatism presented here], and of bigotry [such as the complete unwillingness to lend even a scrap of dignity to people who disagree with you] in the hope of triggering bloody wars [like the arguments and fights that a rigid ideology inevitably produces]. Once the smoke settles, Kalzak invites the most hateful and harmful souls to join his retinue.” (89)

Sig claims that Justice is a place where reconciliation is stronger than retribution. How can there be reconciliation if you demonize all perspectives but your own? Isn’t it basically the definition of retribution to portray your enemies as demons who engrave unjust laws on the bones of living victims?

Is it justice to dehumanize your ideological opposites instead of working to understand them?

If I’ve misunderstood something about the ideology behind this book, I want to understand. From my perspective this game just looks hateful, hypocritical, and domineering. From my perspective, this does not look like justice.

I think the central problem of our culture right now is not one ideology or another but that people hold to their ideologies without listening to others. I think instead of demonizing each other we need to humbly work together to better understand ourselves, each other, and our world. That doesn’t mean we have to give up our convictions. It means we have to learn to have productive conversations. This whole demon thing does not strike me as a productive conversation.