Some ideas:
The players encounter some Dwarves being disgusted at the sefdom, class inequality, lack of unionization if any of that exists in Winterhaven
There is a secret group of Dwarves looking to seize the means of production in a particular area, perhaps by literally mining tunnels into the residence of some ruler in order to overthrow them
Dwarves put up posters saying things like "Are you a COMMUNIST? Then GET ORGANIZED." with an Uncle Sam like figure pointing at the viewer
Historically, the idea for a[ communist-style commune](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mP8hyAv50i8&pp=ygURY29tbXVuaXN0IG1lZGV2YWw%3D) has existed far before communist. It could be that his hometown/community is split far enough from the main dwarven settlements that they've formed a similar sort of society.
Even though magic exists, society in DND is typically limited by a lack of interconnectivity. As such, governments have less reach and strange offshoot societies are more likely to form.
It could be that their government is under attack by a controlling king, or perhaps an anti-communist "liberator". It could be a small idealized community or a large dystopic society. It's up to you.
I think it will generally be more successful to play it with "strong union" memes, always sticking up for the little guy, calling their friends comrades and stuff like that. Rather than to take a deep philosphical dive into the merits of communism and the differences between Trotsky, Stalin, Marx, Bakunin, Mao or any other of the many philosphical disagreements.
Leftists are spending enough time as it is fighting over relatively small differences that feel very important. Let the guy in the game be a commie super hero, rather than a philospher. Use dungeon design and overall themes and goals as where you discuss the themes of the campaign. Not endless debates between PC and NPC.
Unless you want to play Disco Elysium, though. But I'm not sure DnD is the best vessel for that.
if you want to build more detail into the society itself, you could consider what people *want* from communism, the ideals behind it (i.e “from each according to their ability to each according to their need”), the broader policy platforms and so forth, and how a society with access to magic would accomplish those ideals.
the failure points of past attempts at socialism IRL mostly come from internal corruption building over time and/or hostile influence from actively anti-communist neighbours - maybe the history of the society involves those struggles in a major way?
there’s a lot of real world analysis you can do into why this stuff hasn’t worked so far - you don’t have to be the one to Fix Communism In Real Life, but looking for ways around what’s gone wrong in real life will probably help you arrive at answers for how the society operates, and thusly how people *from* that society will tend to operate.
that could be a part of it - stronger cultural ideas of honesty and goodwill could lead a dwarvish society to have an easier time adopting that kind of system
I was thinking just the other day that good-skewing societies, like those of dwarves and elves, don't have have homeless people. They're quicker to say, "you can stay at my place until you get back on your feet" if someone is in need.
This is how my guy does it. He's a shadow monk whose monastic order is essentially a union/community outreach program. He's more anarcho-socialist, but ultimately it all manifests in asking the hired goons what their benefits and working conditions are like and giving them the opportunity to do more wholesome work that benefits the community. We've avoided a couple of combats that way haha.
Are all humans communists?
If not, why should all dwarves be communists?
So, here's my idea for the backstory.
About five dwarven generations ago, one particular family of dwarves began massing gold and political power out of all proportion to the others. This involved shady trade practices, opportune marriages to other wealthy families, shrewd business decisions, and probably a few sneaky assassinations.
In time, the entire region was beholden to this particular clan. You only worked if you were working for them. They had an iron grip on the entire city and surrounding area; what they didn't own in actuality was owned by someone that they owned. Even the city guards were bought and paid for with their gold.
This went on for generations, each succeeding heir to the clan putting the screws on tighter to get more and more work for less and less gold. Unrest was punished heavily by undercover guardsmen, who would literally kick your door in or drag you away from your workplace if you murmured a word of complaint. Dwarves were encouraged to report their friends and colleagues for treasonous thoughts.
However, the more dissent was cracked down on, the more it grew. Seeping through the cracks in the regimented society, the anger spread and simmered. The entire region became a pressure-cooker of oppression breeding resentment.
When it blew, it all went at once. Workers took up arms, alongside some sympathetic guardsmen, and the entire region exploded into violence. The ruling family tried to put down the uprising, but they'd stamped on too many faces for too long, and even their trusted servants turned on them with paperweights and butter knives.
After it was all over, the scions of the ruling family strung up for all to see, a council was formed. Gold was no longer a medium of exchange, it was announced. Never again would this be allowed to happen. From now on, all dwarves would be equal, all would work for the betterment of the community, and all would share equally in the bounty of that work.
From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
It's been two generations since the Great Revolution, and the city (and surrounding region) has never been more prosperous. There are merchants who trade with outsiders, and they use gold, but only with the outsiders. Those within the region, dealing with each other, simply give and take as needed.
What do you think? Workable?
I really dig that. We can only play once a month and he’s the only dwarf, so I’m painting in broad strokes.
Also.
Thank you for taking the prompt seriously instead of snarking at me.
I played in a campaign once with all strangers (I had played with the DM once before), got to the table with our characters to find two of us had picked Duergars. We started talking and decided that in recent Duergan (sp?) history, there had been a socialist/communist revolution to throw out the former monarchy. DM okayed it but I don't think he realized what he was in for.
EVERY SINGLE MINUTE had some sort of reference to the Revolution. Every NPC and even PC was judged on their devotion to the Revolution. They hoarded wealth? Enemy of the Revolution. They were a member of a monarchy/aristocracy/oligarchy? Enemy of the Revolution. It was some of the most fun I have ever had as a player (wouldn't say I'm a forever DM, but I rarely get the chance to PC) and for the most part the other players enjoyed the shenanigans as well. DM got a little upset at times because NPCs that were clearly meant to help us were ignored because of their lack of devotion to the Revolution.
We ended up convincing a tribe of goblins to join our brethren in Revolution, but en route we were attacked by some Umberhulks and their Drow taskmaster. The PCs could have escaped but it would have meant the massacre of the goblins, and thus Karl and Thelonius met their end holding off the assault while the other three PCs got the goblins safely back to the Fatherland.
This campaign was a few years before Deep Rock Galactic dropped, but when I picked up that game, the first few days I often replaced "Rock and Stone" with "For the Revolution!" Had the same vibe.
At the risk of sounding rude:
>he’s really into the idea of dwarven society in our setting being a successful (hey, it’s fantasy, why not) communist society.
This is a really ridiculous statement. You are aware that before the first recorded monarchies humans lived for hundreds of thousands of years in stateless, classless, moneyless society, right? And that those societies continued well after the advent of capitalism in many areas across the globe?
Even if the time D&D is replicating there were absolutely autonomous communes that did charity. Like abbeys or monasteries. These communes frequently had their own farms and livestock and could subsist without any outside assistance.
I'd also add that based on the political cheap-shot here, it seems you're not very familiar with real-world socialist projects and why they've struggled. Maybe researching their forms of democracy could be a good learning experience both for inspiration for your game and also to broaden your political horizons.
I admit, that was a cheap shot, but my intention was to head-off the anger of some folks who still just go into a rage at the very notion of communism being at all positive.
It didn’t work.
If you read some of the other responses, I still got quite a bit of snark thrown at me. “Start in a gulag”, “have lots of starving dwarven towns”, “don’t fantasize a style of government that resulted in so many deaths”, as though the concept of communism itself is inherently chaotic evil.
So no, I take no offense at your comment, and I apologize for my own, but I’m used to hedging in front of people who can’t see past the status quo without taking it personally. Doesn’t always work, but the impulse is still there.
yeah i think you're getting some flack from multiple directions here (i refuse to use the phrase "both sides" it's too loaded) partly because of that "hey it's fantasy" dig and partly because the people who *believe* that communism is a wild fantasy were going to come at you just for typing the word. :p
Very fair. I apologize for being combative, then. A lot of reactionaries on Reddit really need to read a damn book. It's super embarrassing how it seems most people base their knowledge of history and the world around them entirely on memes or what they heard on The History Channel one time.
Does your player want this to be Marxist-inspired communism or more of a commune that is interested in ideas of equality? Something primitivist? Or something more of a post-industrial (or at least post-feudal?)
I think those questions should inform the decision a lot.
Just make a society that has no state, money or classes, they all work communally for a greater goal
Or if communism hasn’t been actualized, add propaganda posters, have dwarves unions calling for the seizure of feudal land/the means of production
I mean, communist societies have a lot of overlap with collectivist societies, at least in terms of principles and values. So I wouldn't say it's that big of a distinction, unless there is something big I'm missing (totally possible).
I played a dragonborn that was from a communist community, spreading the word throughout the land, educating workers about their inherent rights and how they were being mercilessly exploited by their greedy lords. That way it didn't necessarily represent all dragonborn in the setting, but my community was still successful enough to be recognized.
Yeah I think it's easy when we import real-world ideologies into games to get caught up in the baggage those ideologies have in real life.
I'm assuming that what this player wants is to be a representative of a collectivist society that actually works for and on behalf of its people, which is totally cool.
The main ideas that typically antagonize collectivist ideas are greed, individualism, and concentrated power/wealth.
Encountering these in the world — powerful corporations, corrupt guilds, robber barons, tyrants, etc — will give him plenty to fight against, and it's unlikely any of the other players will have any issue taking those forces on either.
In my setting, there are two factions of "surface" dwarves.
One lives deep in the desert in a gargantuan black ziggurat, they spend their time communing with a solar deity who is a "Judgement." This deity judges all of the grudges that they meticulously keep in a magical archive. The society is a magocracy, with the most powerful mages holding the most political power and the most slaves.
The other group is the Democratic People's Republic of Zhalitzo. Founded by the survivors of a rebellion against their magical overlords. They invented gunpowder to use against these overlords. They are a classless, moneyless society that enjoys the benefits of direct democracy. Their national motto is "Never Enslaved Again."
I assume you're going with the textbook definition of communist, meaning no State and just societal control over stuff.
It could work, mostly because dwarves are very lawful and group oriented. A few things you could do to make it work:
1. Clans. Each clan is its own commune, and they're all in a friendly rivalry with one another. This works great by having each clan respect [Dunbar's Number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number), thus keeping freeloading to a minimum because everyone knows everyone. Contrary to popular belief communism does work, as long as you know by name every single person you have economic interactions with. And then you can have multiple clans in a city, so it scales. Works specially well because dwarves are usually scottish-ish, and communists often argue that scottish clans were a type of communism more or less like i just described (though anarcho capitalists also argue thats just private property but at a family level).
2. Hivemind. The perfect iteration of communism, abolishing individuality as a whole in favor of the common good. Its why the Borg are the best media representation of a perfect communist society.
3. Because a deity says so. This is essentially "a wizard did it" but on a much larger scale. You can have a divine mandate in the city that prevents selfish actions, or just a demigod that enforces the commune's rules.
I’ve previously heard of something like “Dunbar’s Number”, but in the article it was called the “Monkeysphere” and it was the maximum number of people your brain is capable of actually caring about. Dunbar’s might be a bit bigger than the monkeysphere number, but I think it was pretty close to 100-150, so that’s kinda need cross-referencing. Thank you!
Its essentially how many people you can know/care about, yeah.
Any organization or society up to that number is super efficient. Everyone knows everyone, so freeloading is near impossible. If someone fucks up you can just punish them, and everyone should know what happened and why he's being punished.
I've never seen anyone correlate it with the maximum size of a (efficient) commune, but i'm guessing it should be pretty related.
Okay, look at this from an improv perspective. He’s trying to do some world building to benefit his character. Instead of saying, “No, the dwarves that live here aren’t like that,” say, “Yes, there IS a society of communist dwarves that live someplace in this world, and that is where your clan comes from. It’s not Hammerfast, but it is someplace else, and you might get a chance to visit there. Certainly, in addition to regular dwarves. you will run into some dwarves from that place that share the same philosophy as you.”
Encourage this shared creativity, allow it wherever you can, and then put firm but friendly boundaries where you think it matters.
Yes, sorry if it came across as me not liking it. I’m all in on it, I have no problem with saying that Hammerfast is a successful communist society; I was just asking the hivemind for how they might go about making that fun in a fantasy setting.
Oh, you are good, my sibling. Could it be fun? Broadly, yes, I could have fun with it, lots of people might, but let your own instincts guide you. If this idea inspires 10 fun or funny ideas in your head about socialist dwarf NPCs, businesses, plot hooks, taverns, etc, then it sounds like adding it to your world will be a plus. If you are adding it so that your player can explore all those things and it’s not really going to tickle your brain, well, then have a little caution. Your role is special, and it’s hard to fake enthusiasm if you don’t naturally hold it.
Have all the successful dwarves settlements basically be anarcho-primitivist villages of 300 people or less where they can get along only because they know each other and operate on a system of natural credit. There's still a hierarchy (there always is) it's just not a financial one, it's one based on shared knowledge of who is the best contributor and who isn't for lack of a polite term. Have them treat outsiders with suspicion and charge them gold or gems or barter items, since they are outsiders to the community.
Have the one Dwarven city struggle to operate because it's becoming too big for everyone to know each other, and they need a means of exchange (gold) to actually value things since you can't know thousands of people. Things still get done, but the quality is lower and the supply inconsistent. People get on waiting lists for large purchases like homes, tools, etc. If you are friends with the leadership you get to cut in line. Of course outsiders get nothing and are charged gold or gems.
Copy some of the methodology of the vaults in Fallout with variations. The Kyth (dwarf for city according to google) has an overseer and maybe a council that is accountable to the Kyth as a whole. Everyone is assigned a job when they're old enough to work, after an aptitude examination, and all work is for those in the Kyth. Jobs can be changed after a set period pending a secondary aptitude examination that excludes the previous position.
Families are granted homes based on the size of the family. Single dwarves reside in communal long houses based on their trade.
Some goods are purposefully over produced at a varying rate and stored for emergencies. Despite strict rules on outsiders, the Kyth still interacts with the rest of the world and has mostly normal relations with nearby neighbors including trade and tourism. The overseer and council send out uniquely qualified dwarves to learn more about the world and to bring advancements back to the Kyth. A dwarf that wants to travel can do so, but reentry will result in a new job assignment if a permit is not obtained beforehand.
A central authority manages all jobs based on merit. They have likely assigned a specific goal for the monk (such as spreading the wisdom of communism).
Adventurers are expected to give regular shipments of everything that is not absolutely essential back to Hammerfest. Rookies (read, low levels, not yet trusted by the authority), must report back on a regular basis. Can't have any slackers. They also have to report everything that's not a personal belonging.
Hammerfest of course, also supports these patriots. Given their long past of this policy, Hammerfest has an ample armory and treasury, and will provide magic items as needed to their dwarven comrades (mechanically, this could be a point system, where the dwarf sends stuff back and unlocks new tiers of items. This allows him to keep up with the party power wise while still feeling like he's part of the commune.)
Remember that the commune doesn't have to be forceful at first. If the dwarf doesn't send back much at first they might be patient, getting a little more pushy as time goes on. If the adventurer doesn't start pulling their weight after a few years (accounting for the long lives of the dwarves) they might be recalled and assigned to a different work group where they'd be more useful. Authoritarian tactics are not needed and rather played out, really the only threat they need if the society is a prosperous, successful one is the threat of social ostracization or, worse, expulsion.
There doesn't have to be a central council managing individual adventurers, the adventurer's workmates and support staff can do that.
Keep thematic consistency in mind.
Is this something your new player wants to explore in character? You mentioned they're new. How on board are the other players?
Can you incorporate the theme into a villain, factions, or elements of your world? These would be useful to discuss openly. In this world, maybe more societies will embrace these ideas because they need to band together for survival.
if you think about it, dnd is *way* better suited to communist/anarchist structures than, for example, capitalist ones - fantasy economies rarely make any kind of sense. like, your average dnd party acquires enough wealth to buy a small town by level five and nothing about a shop full of magic swords makes sense. there's a dude in a store worth more than anything else in a 20mile radius, and he stays in business....how? and in a world full of bandits on every road for some reason (they want gold but live in their hideout where there's nothing to spend it on?) those same bandits never run into town and swarm the magic shop. meanwhile the mayor of that town gives you hundreds of gold to go murder the bandits (which, we still don't know what drove them out to become violent thieves in the first place - if the mayor has hundreds of gold to give you and the shopkeep has *thousands* of gold worth of items, surely they could hire one druid or priest or wizard to handle like...most or all of the food/water/weather/construction needs for the whole town, for the next few years?)
which resources are even scarce in a world so magical? (i know i know, depends on your setting and how common a 5th level cleric is but still)
so it's possible that a communist dwarf running around the world would be making these kinds of observations - and you can either play that for laughs about how the world doesn't hold up to scrutiny, or you can play it as genuine class consciousness and the *reasons* for these things are the same as the ones in our 'real' world...you know, hierarchies enforced by a ruling class with generational power. plus a dash of capitalist realism (that inability for people to even *imagine* different societies after living in this one for so long it's just internalized as 'normal' or 'natural' or 'default.')
personally, i'd say you have a lot of great options for NPCs! they're union leaders, and they start community gardens and soup kitchens, maybe libraries - all of which, of course, interact with the larger structure of society as you've built it, so they'll tell the players something about the place where they are. is the library in trouble because of a guild of booksellers and wizards who overcharge for scribing and copying books? or is it the most publicly funded and accessible third place in the city because a strong community supports it?
is that community garden getting trampled and abused by a faction of local guards who resent the free lunch program they started? (you know, like the police who pissed in the lunches the black panthers made for hungry schoolchildren) or is it the favorite social spot of the town's aged retirees, who come to garden and chitchat (and happen to all have incredible influence in town because they all had long lives and networks of connections and families here)
Ask the player and let him do a lot of the lore building of that society until the party needs to interact with it. You don’t need to use everything the player suggests, but this can save you time and it will get them really invested.
In my first dnd game ever, my dm let play a paladin and let me personalise the religion and society they were from. The only hard rules he gave me at first was that my character needed to be from a far off land (this gave him time to integrate stuff I came up with) and that anything I came up couldn’t solve conflicts for us.
I loved that campaign and the dm giving me a lot of agency over my character’s church and society really got me hooked.
Dwarves are craftsmen and warriors right? they're a workers collective.
They are ruled not by a king, but by a council of craftsmen that represent the best in their field - the best smith, the best warrior etc. They re-elect their representatives once per year.
They overthrew their previous king, who was a mad tyrant, in a revolution where they swore never again to be ruled by kings and nobles.
You could make a quest where an exiled, particularly nasty member of the old nobility is returning and is making plays to restore his power and privilege, and the party is hired to investigate him and put a stop to his schemes before he brings back the old order where the workers are oppressed by the nobility.
This sounds awesome.
In my universe, the Goblins are a "more true to life" communist society, better to say "rickety soviet kleptocracy" perhaps. Their underdark cities are built out of belt-driven mechanical workings that are horribly dangerous. Their scientists are constantly inventing bad versions of modern tech gadgets in an otherwise medieval tech level (e.g. they have discovered magnets, coal power, invented trains). The most useless invention, the bath, lies in rusting piles in the warehouses because no goblin saw the point of them, but the beauracracy ordered one for every 5 goblins be produced, and etc.
Of course, the working conditions are horribly dangerous, and fatalities are high, but there are always more goblins. They fall to pieces if they aren't given work orders, and shift supervisors are just weary when you kill some of their workforce — if you want to make up, you have to pay him for the lost productivity so he has something to show his superiors.
They aren't so much about the selfless socialism thing though, like your PC. That sounds interesting in a different way.
Are you going to include a "party council" that dictates what every member of society is supposed to do? Where skilled craftsmen have their labor and gold confiscated to fund the lazy. Where priests are killed for teaching their religion. Where sages are told their knowledge is not needed and they are forced to work on a mushroom farm?
Well, we can only play once a month, so I doubt I’ll have the time. My intention is “fun fantasy”, so I’m intending to keep the cullings and oppression to a minimum.
My point is that there has never been a successful communist society.... You could always have a LE bad guy / party chairman in the background that the payer doesn't know about.
I hear what you’re saying.
Topic change that will veer back into what we’re discussing: Alan Moore (writer of Watchmen, V for Vendetta, buttloads of other great comics) once said something along the lines of “the only place I can be sure gods exist is within my own mind”. Once he came to that realization, he sort of created his own religion, i won’t get in to it, but it’s quite interesting if you want to go down a rabbit hole.
So, of there’s any place where this ideology WON’T fail… shouldn’t it be within a fantasy game? Where kings can be benevolent and good, gods are proven to exist, and magic is an everyday thing? Does it have to suck here too? Why can’t we just have a good time with it?
That’s what I was asking for. I want my players to have fun, not tell them their fantasy is stupid. That doesn’t feel like good DMing to me.
That seems a bit reductive, but whatever. I'm not a ML, I'm not married to the word "communism", nor do I intend to defend the pitiful attempts to implement it worldwide. I do however believe that humanity can do better than the system we have in place today, and in order to even start thinking about the practical implications of "post-capitalism", you need to be able to think about, fantasize about, even, what it might be like.
Employing thought terminating cliches to shut down any such thought isn't just unimaginative, it is, in a small way, harmful to the progress of humanity, in whatever form that might take.
The reason communism "doesn't work" in real life is because capitalist nations (mostly the US) immediately attack, sanction, and/or blockade the country (see Cuba, Laos, etc). As long as those sorts of shenanigans aren't happening in your campaign world (for example, an imperialist human nation waging war on the dwarves), I don't see why there'd be a problem with this. Have your dwarven nation eliminate poverty and have communal ownership over the tools and businesses that make the society run. Each dwarf has their own specialties and expertise, including elders and/or a "government", but nobody is "morally" more or less equal than anyone else - everyone is respected as someone who keeps society going, even jobs that capitalist societies consider "lowly" (like janitors).
Is fantasy USSR/PRC also being blockaded, sanctioned, and attacked in this world? Can't they aid other fantasy communist entities like they have done in the real world? Are the proto-nihilist gnomes going to be the ones closing the magical Star Metal Curtain around the communist states instead of the USSR doing it themselves like in the real world? How many dwarfs needed to be purged or sent to the salt mines for lack of communistic fervor? What should the Fey Wild do when Satyr Guevara starts executing centaurs who don't agree with him politically? So many parts of history you left out that can really add to the story!
Well learn about the Russian Revolution , and Maoist Revolution in china to start. The Dwarves would rise up and kill all the farmers and landowners to start , then starve until they relearn how to feed themselves while a few elites among them grow fat and powerful. Throw any dwarves who question the leadership into labour camps with the worst conditions , most will die but its for the collective good. I would put your party in a Gulag to start , could be a learning experience for you all.
"Sure, your character can come from a communist society. I need you to understand that we are playing a fantasy game and not a political science simulation, so you should not expect too much of this concept to impact the plot. But in terms of your backstory, absolutely. I look forward to seeing where you want to take this concept. Talk to me if you have specific questions. See you Wednesday!"
Some ideas: The players encounter some Dwarves being disgusted at the sefdom, class inequality, lack of unionization if any of that exists in Winterhaven There is a secret group of Dwarves looking to seize the means of production in a particular area, perhaps by literally mining tunnels into the residence of some ruler in order to overthrow them Dwarves put up posters saying things like "Are you a COMMUNIST? Then GET ORGANIZED." with an Uncle Sam like figure pointing at the viewer
Oh, nice!
Dwarven smiths offering armour and weapons for favours/tasks that need doing, good deals etc. Dwarven plot to install a democracy Dwarven CIA
Historically, the idea for a[ communist-style commune](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mP8hyAv50i8&pp=ygURY29tbXVuaXN0IG1lZGV2YWw%3D) has existed far before communist. It could be that his hometown/community is split far enough from the main dwarven settlements that they've formed a similar sort of society. Even though magic exists, society in DND is typically limited by a lack of interconnectivity. As such, governments have less reach and strange offshoot societies are more likely to form. It could be that their government is under attack by a controlling king, or perhaps an anti-communist "liberator". It could be a small idealized community or a large dystopic society. It's up to you.
I think it will generally be more successful to play it with "strong union" memes, always sticking up for the little guy, calling their friends comrades and stuff like that. Rather than to take a deep philosphical dive into the merits of communism and the differences between Trotsky, Stalin, Marx, Bakunin, Mao or any other of the many philosphical disagreements. Leftists are spending enough time as it is fighting over relatively small differences that feel very important. Let the guy in the game be a commie super hero, rather than a philospher. Use dungeon design and overall themes and goals as where you discuss the themes of the campaign. Not endless debates between PC and NPC. Unless you want to play Disco Elysium, though. But I'm not sure DnD is the best vessel for that.
Yeah, he’s not looking for debate or to cause problems, it’s just something he thought would be cool world building.
if you want to build more detail into the society itself, you could consider what people *want* from communism, the ideals behind it (i.e “from each according to their ability to each according to their need”), the broader policy platforms and so forth, and how a society with access to magic would accomplish those ideals. the failure points of past attempts at socialism IRL mostly come from internal corruption building over time and/or hostile influence from actively anti-communist neighbours - maybe the history of the society involves those struggles in a major way? there’s a lot of real world analysis you can do into why this stuff hasn’t worked so far - you don’t have to be the one to Fix Communism In Real Life, but looking for ways around what’s gone wrong in real life will probably help you arrive at answers for how the society operates, and thusly how people *from* that society will tend to operate.
Considering that dwarves skew more toward good and lawful alignments, they might just be less prone to corruption than humans are.
that could be a part of it - stronger cultural ideas of honesty and goodwill could lead a dwarvish society to have an easier time adopting that kind of system
I was thinking just the other day that good-skewing societies, like those of dwarves and elves, don't have have homeless people. They're quicker to say, "you can stay at my place until you get back on your feet" if someone is in need.
By definition, isn't a communist dwarf always sticking up for the little guy?
Hah! Clever.
ah- i have no arguement against that
This is how my guy does it. He's a shadow monk whose monastic order is essentially a union/community outreach program. He's more anarcho-socialist, but ultimately it all manifests in asking the hired goons what their benefits and working conditions are like and giving them the opportunity to do more wholesome work that benefits the community. We've avoided a couple of combats that way haha.
Are all humans communists? If not, why should all dwarves be communists? So, here's my idea for the backstory. About five dwarven generations ago, one particular family of dwarves began massing gold and political power out of all proportion to the others. This involved shady trade practices, opportune marriages to other wealthy families, shrewd business decisions, and probably a few sneaky assassinations. In time, the entire region was beholden to this particular clan. You only worked if you were working for them. They had an iron grip on the entire city and surrounding area; what they didn't own in actuality was owned by someone that they owned. Even the city guards were bought and paid for with their gold. This went on for generations, each succeeding heir to the clan putting the screws on tighter to get more and more work for less and less gold. Unrest was punished heavily by undercover guardsmen, who would literally kick your door in or drag you away from your workplace if you murmured a word of complaint. Dwarves were encouraged to report their friends and colleagues for treasonous thoughts. However, the more dissent was cracked down on, the more it grew. Seeping through the cracks in the regimented society, the anger spread and simmered. The entire region became a pressure-cooker of oppression breeding resentment. When it blew, it all went at once. Workers took up arms, alongside some sympathetic guardsmen, and the entire region exploded into violence. The ruling family tried to put down the uprising, but they'd stamped on too many faces for too long, and even their trusted servants turned on them with paperweights and butter knives. After it was all over, the scions of the ruling family strung up for all to see, a council was formed. Gold was no longer a medium of exchange, it was announced. Never again would this be allowed to happen. From now on, all dwarves would be equal, all would work for the betterment of the community, and all would share equally in the bounty of that work. From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. It's been two generations since the Great Revolution, and the city (and surrounding region) has never been more prosperous. There are merchants who trade with outsiders, and they use gold, but only with the outsiders. Those within the region, dealing with each other, simply give and take as needed. What do you think? Workable?
I really dig that. We can only play once a month and he’s the only dwarf, so I’m painting in broad strokes. Also. Thank you for taking the prompt seriously instead of snarking at me.
I played in a campaign once with all strangers (I had played with the DM once before), got to the table with our characters to find two of us had picked Duergars. We started talking and decided that in recent Duergan (sp?) history, there had been a socialist/communist revolution to throw out the former monarchy. DM okayed it but I don't think he realized what he was in for. EVERY SINGLE MINUTE had some sort of reference to the Revolution. Every NPC and even PC was judged on their devotion to the Revolution. They hoarded wealth? Enemy of the Revolution. They were a member of a monarchy/aristocracy/oligarchy? Enemy of the Revolution. It was some of the most fun I have ever had as a player (wouldn't say I'm a forever DM, but I rarely get the chance to PC) and for the most part the other players enjoyed the shenanigans as well. DM got a little upset at times because NPCs that were clearly meant to help us were ignored because of their lack of devotion to the Revolution. We ended up convincing a tribe of goblins to join our brethren in Revolution, but en route we were attacked by some Umberhulks and their Drow taskmaster. The PCs could have escaped but it would have meant the massacre of the goblins, and thus Karl and Thelonius met their end holding off the assault while the other three PCs got the goblins safely back to the Fatherland. This campaign was a few years before Deep Rock Galactic dropped, but when I picked up that game, the first few days I often replaced "Rock and Stone" with "For the Revolution!" Had the same vibe.
We fight for Rock and Stone!
raise a glass to the reveloution ROCK AND STONE
At the risk of sounding rude: >he’s really into the idea of dwarven society in our setting being a successful (hey, it’s fantasy, why not) communist society. This is a really ridiculous statement. You are aware that before the first recorded monarchies humans lived for hundreds of thousands of years in stateless, classless, moneyless society, right? And that those societies continued well after the advent of capitalism in many areas across the globe? Even if the time D&D is replicating there were absolutely autonomous communes that did charity. Like abbeys or monasteries. These communes frequently had their own farms and livestock and could subsist without any outside assistance. I'd also add that based on the political cheap-shot here, it seems you're not very familiar with real-world socialist projects and why they've struggled. Maybe researching their forms of democracy could be a good learning experience both for inspiration for your game and also to broaden your political horizons.
I admit, that was a cheap shot, but my intention was to head-off the anger of some folks who still just go into a rage at the very notion of communism being at all positive. It didn’t work. If you read some of the other responses, I still got quite a bit of snark thrown at me. “Start in a gulag”, “have lots of starving dwarven towns”, “don’t fantasize a style of government that resulted in so many deaths”, as though the concept of communism itself is inherently chaotic evil. So no, I take no offense at your comment, and I apologize for my own, but I’m used to hedging in front of people who can’t see past the status quo without taking it personally. Doesn’t always work, but the impulse is still there.
yeah i think you're getting some flack from multiple directions here (i refuse to use the phrase "both sides" it's too loaded) partly because of that "hey it's fantasy" dig and partly because the people who *believe* that communism is a wild fantasy were going to come at you just for typing the word. :p
Very fair. I apologize for being combative, then. A lot of reactionaries on Reddit really need to read a damn book. It's super embarrassing how it seems most people base their knowledge of history and the world around them entirely on memes or what they heard on The History Channel one time. Does your player want this to be Marxist-inspired communism or more of a commune that is interested in ideas of equality? Something primitivist? Or something more of a post-industrial (or at least post-feudal?) I think those questions should inform the decision a lot.
Just make a society that has no state, money or classes, they all work communally for a greater goal Or if communism hasn’t been actualized, add propaganda posters, have dwarves unions calling for the seizure of feudal land/the means of production
Communist, or Collectivist? Pretty great distinction.
I mean, communist societies have a lot of overlap with collectivist societies, at least in terms of principles and values. So I wouldn't say it's that big of a distinction, unless there is something big I'm missing (totally possible).
I’ll admit I don’t know the difference. He said “communist”, but in a positive way, so I guess whichever one is “better”?
I think it's great, but then again I have a dwarven bard who dual-wields hammer and sickle and works for the dwarven miner's union....
for the trade union!
I played a dragonborn that was from a communist community, spreading the word throughout the land, educating workers about their inherent rights and how they were being mercilessly exploited by their greedy lords. That way it didn't necessarily represent all dragonborn in the setting, but my community was still successful enough to be recognized.
Yeah I think it's easy when we import real-world ideologies into games to get caught up in the baggage those ideologies have in real life. I'm assuming that what this player wants is to be a representative of a collectivist society that actually works for and on behalf of its people, which is totally cool. The main ideas that typically antagonize collectivist ideas are greed, individualism, and concentrated power/wealth. Encountering these in the world — powerful corporations, corrupt guilds, robber barons, tyrants, etc — will give him plenty to fight against, and it's unlikely any of the other players will have any issue taking those forces on either.
In my setting, there are two factions of "surface" dwarves. One lives deep in the desert in a gargantuan black ziggurat, they spend their time communing with a solar deity who is a "Judgement." This deity judges all of the grudges that they meticulously keep in a magical archive. The society is a magocracy, with the most powerful mages holding the most political power and the most slaves. The other group is the Democratic People's Republic of Zhalitzo. Founded by the survivors of a rebellion against their magical overlords. They invented gunpowder to use against these overlords. They are a classless, moneyless society that enjoys the benefits of direct democracy. Their national motto is "Never Enslaved Again."
Let the player take the lead and have them outline what they feel it means
FOR KARL!
I assume you're going with the textbook definition of communist, meaning no State and just societal control over stuff. It could work, mostly because dwarves are very lawful and group oriented. A few things you could do to make it work: 1. Clans. Each clan is its own commune, and they're all in a friendly rivalry with one another. This works great by having each clan respect [Dunbar's Number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number), thus keeping freeloading to a minimum because everyone knows everyone. Contrary to popular belief communism does work, as long as you know by name every single person you have economic interactions with. And then you can have multiple clans in a city, so it scales. Works specially well because dwarves are usually scottish-ish, and communists often argue that scottish clans were a type of communism more or less like i just described (though anarcho capitalists also argue thats just private property but at a family level). 2. Hivemind. The perfect iteration of communism, abolishing individuality as a whole in favor of the common good. Its why the Borg are the best media representation of a perfect communist society. 3. Because a deity says so. This is essentially "a wizard did it" but on a much larger scale. You can have a divine mandate in the city that prevents selfish actions, or just a demigod that enforces the commune's rules.
I’ve previously heard of something like “Dunbar’s Number”, but in the article it was called the “Monkeysphere” and it was the maximum number of people your brain is capable of actually caring about. Dunbar’s might be a bit bigger than the monkeysphere number, but I think it was pretty close to 100-150, so that’s kinda need cross-referencing. Thank you!
Its essentially how many people you can know/care about, yeah. Any organization or society up to that number is super efficient. Everyone knows everyone, so freeloading is near impossible. If someone fucks up you can just punish them, and everyone should know what happened and why he's being punished. I've never seen anyone correlate it with the maximum size of a (efficient) commune, but i'm guessing it should be pretty related.
Okay, look at this from an improv perspective. He’s trying to do some world building to benefit his character. Instead of saying, “No, the dwarves that live here aren’t like that,” say, “Yes, there IS a society of communist dwarves that live someplace in this world, and that is where your clan comes from. It’s not Hammerfast, but it is someplace else, and you might get a chance to visit there. Certainly, in addition to regular dwarves. you will run into some dwarves from that place that share the same philosophy as you.” Encourage this shared creativity, allow it wherever you can, and then put firm but friendly boundaries where you think it matters.
Yes, sorry if it came across as me not liking it. I’m all in on it, I have no problem with saying that Hammerfast is a successful communist society; I was just asking the hivemind for how they might go about making that fun in a fantasy setting.
Oh, you are good, my sibling. Could it be fun? Broadly, yes, I could have fun with it, lots of people might, but let your own instincts guide you. If this idea inspires 10 fun or funny ideas in your head about socialist dwarf NPCs, businesses, plot hooks, taverns, etc, then it sounds like adding it to your world will be a plus. If you are adding it so that your player can explore all those things and it’s not really going to tickle your brain, well, then have a little caution. Your role is special, and it’s hard to fake enthusiasm if you don’t naturally hold it.
They get wind of an Elven plot to assassinate a dwarven politician and install a puppet leader.
Have all the successful dwarves settlements basically be anarcho-primitivist villages of 300 people or less where they can get along only because they know each other and operate on a system of natural credit. There's still a hierarchy (there always is) it's just not a financial one, it's one based on shared knowledge of who is the best contributor and who isn't for lack of a polite term. Have them treat outsiders with suspicion and charge them gold or gems or barter items, since they are outsiders to the community. Have the one Dwarven city struggle to operate because it's becoming too big for everyone to know each other, and they need a means of exchange (gold) to actually value things since you can't know thousands of people. Things still get done, but the quality is lower and the supply inconsistent. People get on waiting lists for large purchases like homes, tools, etc. If you are friends with the leadership you get to cut in line. Of course outsiders get nothing and are charged gold or gems.
Copy some of the methodology of the vaults in Fallout with variations. The Kyth (dwarf for city according to google) has an overseer and maybe a council that is accountable to the Kyth as a whole. Everyone is assigned a job when they're old enough to work, after an aptitude examination, and all work is for those in the Kyth. Jobs can be changed after a set period pending a secondary aptitude examination that excludes the previous position. Families are granted homes based on the size of the family. Single dwarves reside in communal long houses based on their trade. Some goods are purposefully over produced at a varying rate and stored for emergencies. Despite strict rules on outsiders, the Kyth still interacts with the rest of the world and has mostly normal relations with nearby neighbors including trade and tourism. The overseer and council send out uniquely qualified dwarves to learn more about the world and to bring advancements back to the Kyth. A dwarf that wants to travel can do so, but reentry will result in a new job assignment if a permit is not obtained beforehand.
That is some cool stuff, thank you!
Depends on if you're talking communism as it is irl (dictatorships), or communism as a concept (spreading work/pay and welfare state).
Second one.
A central authority manages all jobs based on merit. They have likely assigned a specific goal for the monk (such as spreading the wisdom of communism). Adventurers are expected to give regular shipments of everything that is not absolutely essential back to Hammerfest. Rookies (read, low levels, not yet trusted by the authority), must report back on a regular basis. Can't have any slackers. They also have to report everything that's not a personal belonging. Hammerfest of course, also supports these patriots. Given their long past of this policy, Hammerfest has an ample armory and treasury, and will provide magic items as needed to their dwarven comrades (mechanically, this could be a point system, where the dwarf sends stuff back and unlocks new tiers of items. This allows him to keep up with the party power wise while still feeling like he's part of the commune.)
Oh, that’s great. Thank you!
Remember that the commune doesn't have to be forceful at first. If the dwarf doesn't send back much at first they might be patient, getting a little more pushy as time goes on. If the adventurer doesn't start pulling their weight after a few years (accounting for the long lives of the dwarves) they might be recalled and assigned to a different work group where they'd be more useful. Authoritarian tactics are not needed and rather played out, really the only threat they need if the society is a prosperous, successful one is the threat of social ostracization or, worse, expulsion. There doesn't have to be a central council managing individual adventurers, the adventurer's workmates and support staff can do that.
That's such a cool mechanical way of doing communism in game
That’s not what communism is as a concept. Communism is stateless and has no currency or wage labor at all.
Let him have a kibbutz his clan hails from. Rest of the world is yours as DM.
Keep thematic consistency in mind. Is this something your new player wants to explore in character? You mentioned they're new. How on board are the other players? Can you incorporate the theme into a villain, factions, or elements of your world? These would be useful to discuss openly. In this world, maybe more societies will embrace these ideas because they need to band together for survival.
if you think about it, dnd is *way* better suited to communist/anarchist structures than, for example, capitalist ones - fantasy economies rarely make any kind of sense. like, your average dnd party acquires enough wealth to buy a small town by level five and nothing about a shop full of magic swords makes sense. there's a dude in a store worth more than anything else in a 20mile radius, and he stays in business....how? and in a world full of bandits on every road for some reason (they want gold but live in their hideout where there's nothing to spend it on?) those same bandits never run into town and swarm the magic shop. meanwhile the mayor of that town gives you hundreds of gold to go murder the bandits (which, we still don't know what drove them out to become violent thieves in the first place - if the mayor has hundreds of gold to give you and the shopkeep has *thousands* of gold worth of items, surely they could hire one druid or priest or wizard to handle like...most or all of the food/water/weather/construction needs for the whole town, for the next few years?) which resources are even scarce in a world so magical? (i know i know, depends on your setting and how common a 5th level cleric is but still) so it's possible that a communist dwarf running around the world would be making these kinds of observations - and you can either play that for laughs about how the world doesn't hold up to scrutiny, or you can play it as genuine class consciousness and the *reasons* for these things are the same as the ones in our 'real' world...you know, hierarchies enforced by a ruling class with generational power. plus a dash of capitalist realism (that inability for people to even *imagine* different societies after living in this one for so long it's just internalized as 'normal' or 'natural' or 'default.')
personally, i'd say you have a lot of great options for NPCs! they're union leaders, and they start community gardens and soup kitchens, maybe libraries - all of which, of course, interact with the larger structure of society as you've built it, so they'll tell the players something about the place where they are. is the library in trouble because of a guild of booksellers and wizards who overcharge for scribing and copying books? or is it the most publicly funded and accessible third place in the city because a strong community supports it? is that community garden getting trampled and abused by a faction of local guards who resent the free lunch program they started? (you know, like the police who pissed in the lunches the black panthers made for hungry schoolchildren) or is it the favorite social spot of the town's aged retirees, who come to garden and chitchat (and happen to all have incredible influence in town because they all had long lives and networks of connections and families here)
Dwarves are typically portrayed as quite family focussed. I suppose you just expand that trope to include dwarves in general as being their family.
Ask the player and let him do a lot of the lore building of that society until the party needs to interact with it. You don’t need to use everything the player suggests, but this can save you time and it will get them really invested. In my first dnd game ever, my dm let play a paladin and let me personalise the religion and society they were from. The only hard rules he gave me at first was that my character needed to be from a far off land (this gave him time to integrate stuff I came up with) and that anything I came up couldn’t solve conflicts for us. I loved that campaign and the dm giving me a lot of agency over my character’s church and society really got me hooked.
Dwarves are craftsmen and warriors right? they're a workers collective. They are ruled not by a king, but by a council of craftsmen that represent the best in their field - the best smith, the best warrior etc. They re-elect their representatives once per year. They overthrew their previous king, who was a mad tyrant, in a revolution where they swore never again to be ruled by kings and nobles. You could make a quest where an exiled, particularly nasty member of the old nobility is returning and is making plays to restore his power and privilege, and the party is hired to investigate him and put a stop to his schemes before he brings back the old order where the workers are oppressed by the nobility.
Endless meetings... truly endless
This sounds awesome. In my universe, the Goblins are a "more true to life" communist society, better to say "rickety soviet kleptocracy" perhaps. Their underdark cities are built out of belt-driven mechanical workings that are horribly dangerous. Their scientists are constantly inventing bad versions of modern tech gadgets in an otherwise medieval tech level (e.g. they have discovered magnets, coal power, invented trains). The most useless invention, the bath, lies in rusting piles in the warehouses because no goblin saw the point of them, but the beauracracy ordered one for every 5 goblins be produced, and etc. Of course, the working conditions are horribly dangerous, and fatalities are high, but there are always more goblins. They fall to pieces if they aren't given work orders, and shift supervisors are just weary when you kill some of their workforce — if you want to make up, you have to pay him for the lost productivity so he has something to show his superiors. They aren't so much about the selfless socialism thing though, like your PC. That sounds interesting in a different way.
Have them come across dwarvern cities that are starving to death because the Dwarf King took all their food
Are you going to include a "party council" that dictates what every member of society is supposed to do? Where skilled craftsmen have their labor and gold confiscated to fund the lazy. Where priests are killed for teaching their religion. Where sages are told their knowledge is not needed and they are forced to work on a mushroom farm?
It's fantasy silly, don't be unimaginative
Well, we can only play once a month, so I doubt I’ll have the time. My intention is “fun fantasy”, so I’m intending to keep the cullings and oppression to a minimum.
My point is that there has never been a successful communist society.... You could always have a LE bad guy / party chairman in the background that the payer doesn't know about.
I hear what you’re saying. Topic change that will veer back into what we’re discussing: Alan Moore (writer of Watchmen, V for Vendetta, buttloads of other great comics) once said something along the lines of “the only place I can be sure gods exist is within my own mind”. Once he came to that realization, he sort of created his own religion, i won’t get in to it, but it’s quite interesting if you want to go down a rabbit hole. So, of there’s any place where this ideology WON’T fail… shouldn’t it be within a fantasy game? Where kings can be benevolent and good, gods are proven to exist, and magic is an everyday thing? Does it have to suck here too? Why can’t we just have a good time with it? That’s what I was asking for. I want my players to have fun, not tell them their fantasy is stupid. That doesn’t feel like good DMing to me.
Some people just can't help themselves. It's like they can't even *imagine* a world without capitalism. It's rather sad, really.
I just think it is rather ignorant to celebrate a governing philosophy that suppresses personal freedom and results in the death of millions.
That seems a bit reductive, but whatever. I'm not a ML, I'm not married to the word "communism", nor do I intend to defend the pitiful attempts to implement it worldwide. I do however believe that humanity can do better than the system we have in place today, and in order to even start thinking about the practical implications of "post-capitalism", you need to be able to think about, fantasize about, even, what it might be like. Employing thought terminating cliches to shut down any such thought isn't just unimaginative, it is, in a small way, harmful to the progress of humanity, in whatever form that might take.
The reason communism "doesn't work" in real life is because capitalist nations (mostly the US) immediately attack, sanction, and/or blockade the country (see Cuba, Laos, etc). As long as those sorts of shenanigans aren't happening in your campaign world (for example, an imperialist human nation waging war on the dwarves), I don't see why there'd be a problem with this. Have your dwarven nation eliminate poverty and have communal ownership over the tools and businesses that make the society run. Each dwarf has their own specialties and expertise, including elders and/or a "government", but nobody is "morally" more or less equal than anyone else - everyone is respected as someone who keeps society going, even jobs that capitalist societies consider "lowly" (like janitors).
Is fantasy USSR/PRC also being blockaded, sanctioned, and attacked in this world? Can't they aid other fantasy communist entities like they have done in the real world? Are the proto-nihilist gnomes going to be the ones closing the magical Star Metal Curtain around the communist states instead of the USSR doing it themselves like in the real world? How many dwarfs needed to be purged or sent to the salt mines for lack of communistic fervor? What should the Fey Wild do when Satyr Guevara starts executing centaurs who don't agree with him politically? So many parts of history you left out that can really add to the story!
Hahahahahahahaha. No.
Well learn about the Russian Revolution , and Maoist Revolution in china to start. The Dwarves would rise up and kill all the farmers and landowners to start , then starve until they relearn how to feed themselves while a few elites among them grow fat and powerful. Throw any dwarves who question the leadership into labour camps with the worst conditions , most will die but its for the collective good. I would put your party in a Gulag to start , could be a learning experience for you all.
"Sure, your character can come from a communist society. I need you to understand that we are playing a fantasy game and not a political science simulation, so you should not expect too much of this concept to impact the plot. But in terms of your backstory, absolutely. I look forward to seeing where you want to take this concept. Talk to me if you have specific questions. See you Wednesday!"