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[GoblinCookie]

That is what I was arguing for! If Toady decides that this would take too much work, he should cut this from L&C and move it to Post-1 (or around Economy). Not everything has to be implemented in one pass. Do you agree?

It seems we have actually reached consensus, well miracles happen sometimes.   

[KittyTac]

Well, that's good. Nobody gets banned, nothing gets locked. Thank you for not resorting to outright flaming.

[Rataldo]

Can you phrase it like "It would be bad to do X in Dwarf Fortress. This idea would force/allow X."?

The closest I can get with what you have here is:
It would be bad to violate modern moral standards in Dwarf Fortress. This idea may force someone to violate modern moral standards in order for them to achieve their goals.

Is this accurate?

Pretty much.  That is why we need the activist role to exist in the game if we want to have an oppressive society, without such a role there really is no choice but to violate moral standards since the player is forced to play by the rules of the system. 

Personally I think it's fine if the player violates modern moral standards because DF doesn't take place in modern times. I doubt we'll make any progress on that front so agree to disagree.

I'm just going to leave this at: I reject the premise. There are just way more options than you are presenting and not every story should have some kind of positive lesson or happy ending. Especially not in DF. Also, leaving the dragon to, presumably, continue on its rampage is not a morally good decision either.

Having all moral decisions be bad, does not weaken my argument but makes it even stronger. 

By my ethical system however, leaving the dragon alone to rampage is not wrong.  That is because you did not cause the dragon to exist, nor did you cause it to rampage, therefore if the dragon burns stuff down you are not implicated in it's crimes.  The dragon is responsible, not you for not stopping it; this is a very important principle in my opinion. 

Again I have a problem with this attitude and I doubt either of us will change the other's mind. Simply washing my hands and saying "not my fault, not my problem" is not acceptable for me.

Again I reject the premise. The best solution is not necessarily the most complicated. "Best" is left intentionally vague because it needs to encompass so many variables, one of them being development time.

The real danger is that this idea will be implemented simply.  I don't want a situation where a single individual can simply wish away all the world's fundamental social evils simply because he is a big enough winner. 

Something alone the lines of the "I must be the one to slay the dragon" is almost the secret weapon of oppressive systems in general.  The individual seeks to "make the world a better place" and the individual thinks he would be able to do this if only he had enough power.  Once he has that elusive thing, power then he will able to sit on his throne and decree the abolition of all the world's many evils. 

This does not work.  The reason it doesn't work is the society creates a set of rules by which the would-be ruler has to follow in order to get the power he needs.  In order to gain and hold power, he learns those rules and the moment he does not follow the rules he finds his power undermined.  In order to gain the power to change the society, the rules dictate that the society not be challenged and changing the society requires that the society be challenged. 

In the end what we have is a situation where "I could use my power to change society, but if I did so society would take away my power to change it,".  That is why all the societal evils prove so resilient despite the great preponderance of despotic rulers throughout history; they can't all of have been card-carrying villains can they?  The trick is that the oppression *is* part of the society itself and even if the society should give an individual absolute power in theory, in practice it always has the power because it is it that made the ruler's power absolute.

You are correct. Most of the roles you would play would force your adventurer to "play by the rules", and changing those rules would be very hard. I agree that doing it any other way would do a disservice to human history's long, hard-fought struggle for the civil rights people in most 1st-world nations enjoy today.

Also, the society doesn't think what it's doing is actually wrong. When a society thinks something it's doing is wrong, given enough time, it stops doing that thing. Societies are setup and maintained by benevolent people for the benefit of benevolent people. Malevolent people exist, but given enough time, they are always ousted or shunned from the society. A long time ago, executing prisoners was the norm. In that society, making prisoners slaves would be considered "benevolent". Today, thanks to liberal and enlightenment thinking, we view it as morally reprehensible.

Suppose by the time DF is made a complete game society decides raising and consuming animals for food is morally wrong? Should that still be included in the game? (and yes I acknowledge there's a difference in that one of these things is already in the game and the other is just a proposal; I think it's still worth exploring the question)

[KittyTac]

Re: Including the consumption of animals
As per your first point, it was the norm in medieval societies, so why not?

[Dozebôm Lolumzalěs]

I don't think it's relevant whether it's moral to hunt the slaves to obtain the amulet to kill the dragon to save the people the dragon would have killed. It's a lesser-evil scenario, and the player has to decide which evil is lesser. It's good gameplay - open-ended and a roleplaying opportunity. You can establish what your character is like through their actions. It's even better if their actions shape in-game reactions by and interactions with different characters.

(Personally, I'm a utilitarian, so I'd weigh the positive and negative effects of the slave-hunting-and-dragon-killing plan. Pros: people saved, safer world in general (safer to travel means more trade etc.). Cons: slaves are worse off, and I'm stabilizing the institution of slavery (making it more profitable). Then I'd come up with other plans (steal the amulet, come up with other ways to kill the dragon, storm wherever the amulet is held and free the slaves while acquiring the amulet) and compare the net expected utility of each plan. My character might do something different, however, based on my gamestyle or role I'm playing.)

It's okay if you are allowed to do immoral things in the game. It's okay if your character (directed by you) does something you'd disagree with. It's okay if your character does something I'd disagree with. The simulated people have no moral value. You're not harming anyone. You can pretend to have a different morality without breaking your real morality. That's a good thing. It lets you imagine being somebody else. It's enjoyable and can generate novel experiences that you can't safely get elsewhere. And novel experiences can be useful and help you understand others better. Most people you disagree with aren't intentionally evil, for instance. Some people don't understand that, or only understand that on a surface level. Pretending to be different could help with that.

It's okay - even good - if there's no clear right answer, and we're forced to confront the contradictions in our moral frameworks or choose one value over another. That's not just a good game, that's a *thought-provoking* game. And if you don't want to think about it - don't. You won't harm anyone if you take the immoral option, since it's not real.

In a nutshell: games aren't better when there's a single Right Thing To Do. It may *feel* better, but it's unrealistic and doesn't produce complex gameplay. It's like if you could kill all the goblins with a single button.

[GoblinCookie]

Personally I think it's fine if the player violates modern moral standards because DF doesn't take place in modern times. I doubt we'll make any progress on that front so agree to disagree.

The player is playing the game in modern times. 

Again I have a problem with this attitude and I doubt either of us will change the other's mind. Simply washing my hands and saying "not my fault, not my problem" is not acceptable for me.

The alternative is really not a functional system.  The reason is that there are a far greater number of things that we could all be doing with our time than we actually have time to do.  While you are killing the world's dragon, it's hydra is somewhere else also killing people and there is an injured person in the middle of the wilderness somewhere that needs rescuing and so on.  That cinches the whole moral dilemma thing, doing bad for good ends generally fails because there are other good things you could be doing. 

That is why I think that your societal responsibilities matter ethically.  If you were made the official dragon-hunter of some civilization, promoting slavery in some other civilization becomes a genuine moral dilemma as it were and I think the calculus is then actually on the side of you killing the dragon.  Your responsibility is to save people of your civilization from being killed by dragons, not to keep other societies from being slavers. 

Who you are, where you are and what you did in the past matter in my opinion. 

You are correct. Most of the roles you would play would force your adventurer to "play by the rules", and changing those rules would be very hard. I agree that doing it any other way would do a disservice to human history's long, hard-fought struggle for the civil rights people in most 1st-world nations enjoy today.

Also, the society doesn't think what it's doing is actually wrong. When a society thinks something it's doing is wrong, given enough time, it stops doing that thing. Societies are setup and maintained by benevolent people for the benefit of benevolent people. Malevolent people exist, but given enough time, they are always ousted or shunned from the society. A long time ago, executing prisoners was the norm. In that society, making prisoners slaves would be considered "benevolent". Today, thanks to liberal and enlightenment thinking, we view it as morally reprehensible.

Suppose by the time DF is made a complete game society decides raising and consuming animals for food is morally wrong? Should that still be included in the game? (and yes I acknowledge there's a difference in that one of these things is already in the game and the other is just a proposal; I think it's still worth exploring the question)

The game already has a society that has decided that raising and consuming animals for food is morally wrong; the Elves.  But they don't attempt to impose that on anyone else, generally, nor does the game currently give them the tools to do so. 

One issue is that what is wrong/right is not in most societies the same thing as what is legal/illegal.  A society can permit people to do things that it considers wrong.  That is what complicates the whole story of societal reform, you have to deal not only with those who think that the societal evil is not wrong but also those who agree with you that it is wrong but do not think it ought to be prohibited all the same.

I don't think it's relevant whether it's moral to hunt the slaves to obtain the amulet to kill the dragon to save the people the dragon would have killed. It's a lesser-evil scenario, and the player has to decide which evil is lesser. It's good gameplay - open-ended and a roleplaying opportunity. You can establish what your character is like through their actions. It's even better if their actions shape in-game reactions by and interactions with different characters.

The problem is not the moral dilemma, it is that if you kill the dragon you advance in the game, regardless of whether it is the right thing to do while if you refuse to kill the dragon you don't advance in the game.  Games are biased towards winning, that is advancing the character's story in the desired direction, that means when a moral dilemma occurs the game simply makes the decision as to what to is the correct thing for the player by virtue of how it is structured, semi-randomly in this case. 

The problem as already mentioned is that is exactly how real-life societies control their members dissenting tendencies; I call this the win-lose matrix.  Above right and wrong there is the imperative of win/lose.  The society gives rewards to those who behave the way it wants them to behave, in other words they win and hands out punishments to those who dissent, in other words they lose.  An evil society is challenged and forced to change when people refuse to value it's rewards and value it's punishments. 

In a computer game however, the entire thing is just a win-lose matrix.  In effect the gamer is the perfect subject for societal indoctrination, that means that fictional societies are indoctrinating the player to think as they think in the same fashion real societies do. 

(Personally, I'm a utilitarian, so I'd weigh the positive and negative effects of the slave-hunting-and-dragon-killing plan. Pros: people saved, safer world in general (safer to travel means more trade etc.). Cons: slaves are worse off, and I'm stabilizing the institution of slavery (making it more profitable). Then I'd come up with other plans (steal the amulet, come up with other ways to kill the dragon, storm wherever the amulet is held and free the slaves while acquiring the amulet) and compare the net expected utility of each plan. My character might do something different, however, based on my gamestyle or role I'm playing.)

The irony is that a computer game is probably the only environment where such ethical calculations can actually be made.  But the computer game makes all the calculations for the player, the right thing is always to win and the limitations of the game mechanics limit the ways you can win.  Your maths will never be allowed to produce an outcome that the right thing to do is to lose the game. 

It's okay if you are allowed to do immoral things in the game. It's okay if your character (directed by you) does something you'd disagree with. It's okay if your character does something I'd disagree with. The simulated people have no moral value. You're not harming anyone. You can pretend to have a different morality without breaking your real morality. That's a good thing. It lets you imagine being somebody else. It's enjoyable and can generate novel experiences that you can't safely get elsewhere. And novel experiences can be useful and help you understand others better. Most people you disagree with aren't intentionally evil, for instance. Some people don't understand that, or only understand that on a surface level. Pretending to be different could help with that.

It's okay - even good - if there's no clear right answer, and we're forced to confront the contradictions in our moral frameworks or choose one value over another. That's not just a good game, that's a *thought-provoking* game. And if you don't want to think about it - don't. You won't harm anyone if you take the immoral option, since it's not real.

In a nutshell: games aren't better when there's a single Right Thing To Do. It may *feel* better, but it's unrealistic and doesn't produce complex gameplay. It's like if you could kill all the goblins with a single button.

That would be all fine and good, *if* we lived in a perfect world in RL.  As I said before, societies (fictional or otherwise) primarily control their people through the win-lose matrix and a computer game *is* a win-lose matrix.  The most easily controlled people in any society are those who live their lives as though life were a computer game, their purpose is to get ahead in the game and if they fail it is their fault for not learning the rules properly. 

What happens if our computer game ends up replicating some oppressive societal system that actually exists?  Now our win-lose matrix mirrors that of the society we are part of.  Since it is now in effect functioning as propaganda for the societal system that is it's mirror in RL, real people are actually getting hurt. 

[KittyTac]

Your last argument makes little sense. People who are mentally sane and fully matured can discern the difference between fiction and reality and don't just swallow all ideologically-charged elements in a game/book/movie as part of their worldview. Especially if it's an ASCII game.

[VislarRn]

I was just wondering, if things go that far that DF actually tries to implement some more complex political systems in it and ideas about this topic start to be more relevant, should the rules of this subforum be made more strict?

Maybe the standard posting protocol could be something like: Someone posts an idea that could be implemented in DF. All further responses keep their orientation towards to improving this idea and/or pointing out technical aspects about possibilities in implementing it.

If user doesn't post its response according to this protocol, they receive a ban.

This way only relevant posts remain and people can't have their morally sanctimonious navel-gazing and devs can actually read information that matters to them. Right-now we don't have filters and useful information gets piled under useless derailed non-technical debates about different moral-philosophies. It ruins the process of brainstorming and might actually hurt the development of the game because topics are hopelessly derailed in first ten posts.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalěs]

GoblinCookie:
1. You're imposing something onto the game. There is no defined win condition. We decide what we want out of the game. If you play in a way that ignores the societal effects of your actions, then in a sufficiently detailed game, you will probably cause in-game detrimental societal effects. Toady shouldn't limit the detail just so people who ignore the detail can keep their consciences clean.

2. The in-game oppressive structures might randomly resemble real-life oppressive structures, yes. (Although Toady has expressed a desire to avoid putting things like rape and sexism in the game, so this is less likely than you might think.) That doesn't show that it will significantly reinforce those real oppressive structures. Association doesn't imply causation.

[GoblinCookie]

Your last argument makes little sense. People who are mentally sane and fully matured can discern the difference between fiction and reality and don't just swallow all ideologically-charged elements in a game/book/movie as part of their worldview. Especially if it's an ASCII game.

Everything you said is pretty much wrong.  Fiction only works because people cannot truly distinguish between it and reality, they can tell in the more shallow sense of knowing; but not in the deeper sense of feeling.  Otherwise you wouldn't care that some data in a database somewhere was altered because you know that it was just data in a database. 

If nobody feels anything about a fictional depiction, then what is it's value?  Why do you think people in regular games (not DF) spend millions on having the best graphics?  Because the game has to fight against the ability of the player's knowledge that it is not real to undermine their emotional connection to it's depiction and one way to do this is to have very good graphics.  Alternatively you can go down the route of engaging mechanics and stories, which is what DF does. 

And yes, people very much swallow the ideology of a book/game/movie as part of their worldview.  That is partly where those things come from, one means by which they are acquired by an individual from the society.  I would guess that depictions purporting to be of reality have a great impact, but I don't know that. 

Maybe the standard posting protocol could be something like: Someone posts an idea that could be implemented in DF. All further responses keep their orientation towards to improving this idea and/or pointing out technical aspects about possibilities in implementing it.

That does rather miss the bigger question about whether it should be implemented in the first place and when.  In any case, the rest of your post was basically just a call for draconian censorship of the forums in the name of keeping the forum audience's general ignorance of the wider connections between things from being challenged.  The devs on the other hand seem very aware of the general connections between the various elements of the game, so to implement your idea would be the height of hypocrisy. 

GoblinCookie:
1. You're imposing something onto the game. There is no defined win condition. We decide what we want out of the game. If you play in a way that ignores the societal effects of your actions, then in a sufficiently detailed game, you will probably cause in-game detrimental societal effects. Toady shouldn't limit the detail just so people who ignore the detail can keep their consciences clean.

2. The in-game oppressive structures might randomly resemble real-life oppressive structures, yes. (Although Toady has expressed a desire to avoid putting things like rape and sexism in the game, so this is less likely than you might think.) That doesn't show that it will significantly reinforce those real oppressive structures. Association doesn't imply causation.

1. I know there is no defined win condition in the game.  The win-lose condition here is not being imposed by the game onto the player, it is being imposed by the game's generated society onto the player.  If the game imposed a win condition onto the player then the situation would actually be solvable by giving the player a metagame penalty score to counter the in-game rewards they got from the in-game society. 

That not being the case we are leaving the player to decide their own win-lose condition.  The goods that the player initially defines as winning and the evils the player defines as losing would be controlled by society in any game with a developed economy.  Since games, like stories cannot stand still, the imperative to win (however this is defined by the player) overrides any moral principles the player might have because that is what moves the story forward. 

Unlike in RL, in a game I can't just accept to forever be an irrelevant nobody sitting in the naughty-corner because my progressive views have offended the mainstream of society; because that is a game-over state. 

2.  Logically it follows that *if* real-life societies indocrtinate/control people through a win-lose matrix that replicating the same thing in media would also have the same effect and said society would actively demand that replication in it's media.  Also, why does it matter about relative significance, death by a thousand cuts is as much death as death by a single blow, Dwarf Fortress could be simply adding it's own small contribution to the total sum of computer games negative effect on the society.

The main element here is the ethical calculus; the gamer does what he has to in order to win because that is the only way to move his story forward.  That means there are not inherently viable options by which embracing insignificance for the sake of the ideal is going to be the ethical choice because the game continuing is not compatible with that option.  The players ethics are 'required' to be modified by the game should they get in the way of winning. 

One thing here is this actually works cross-oppression.  Any oppressive system is best served by ambitious people who treat life like it were a computer game where what matters is that *they* move forward and *they* are the one's who make the world a better place.  By teaching people the overall ethics of such people in the context of one oppressive system a completely different oppressive system could make use of this mentality. 

[KittyTac]

Your last argument makes little sense. People who are mentally sane and fully matured can discern the difference between fiction and reality and don't just swallow all ideologically-charged elements in a game/book/movie as part of their worldview. Especially if it's an ASCII game.

Everything you said is pretty much wrong.  Fiction only works because people cannot truly distinguish between it and reality, they can tell in the more shallow sense of knowing; but not in the deeper sense of feeling.  Otherwise you wouldn't care that some data in a database somewhere was altered because you know that it was just data in a database. 

If nobody feels anything about a fictional depiction, then what is it's value?  Why do you think people in regular games (not DF) spend millions on having the best graphics?  Because the game has to fight against the ability of the player's knowledge that it is not real to undermine their emotional connection to it's depiction and one way to do this is to have very good graphics.  Alternatively you can go down the route of engaging mechanics and stories, which is what DF does. 

And yes, people very much swallow the ideology of a book/game/movie as part of their worldview.  That is partly where those things come from, one means by which they are acquired by an individual from the society.  I would guess that depictions purporting to be of reality have a great impact, but I don't know that. 

Willing suspension of disbelief is different from actual belief in that you KNOW that whatever you're watching/playing is fake, but you still feel something for the characters. Yet you do not take it as fully real. You seem to be confusing the two.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalěs]

GoblinCookie:

1. You’re getting it backwards. I’m saying that you, GC, are projecting your goals onto the game. The game can be played with any goal in mind. And if you’re worried that your goals will be put at cross purposes with your ethics, just put “be ethical” into your goals! Yes, if you ignore ethics, you will probably do unethical things. That’s your fault for playing the game in a way you didn’t want to. Nobody forces you play unethically. It does mean you’ll have to be less effective at achieving other things like “be famous and awesome,” but if those aren’t your goals, then why do you care?

TL;DR: Any confusion and frustration you feel when playing an open-ended game is probably the result of contradictions inside your own ethical system, and not anyone else’s problem.

If you don’t want to sit in a corner, don’t. If the game forces you to choose between being ethical and having fun, then choose. (Although there’s often a third option: a way to have fun without being a murderhobo.) Whatever you choose, that’s your own choice. If there’s no choice you feel good making, then don’t play the game. (A game that you can’t enjoy is no worse than a game that doesn’t exist.)

2. Logically it follows that if shooting someone might kill them, being shot in a video game is dangerous for the player’s health. (I know this is an invalid argument. How is it different from yours? This is known as reductio ad absurdum, or Proving Too Much.)

There is no single forward direction. There are many ways to play. If you don’t like any of the ways, then don’t play. You are at no point forced to betray your ethics. If the lure of a good story is too tempting for you to give up a game, then that is an internal contradiction, and you should solve your personal problem. Nobody else has to solve it for you by creating a game without any complex moral decisions.

The “teaching people to achieve your goals by any means necessary” thing is only a problem if people already have selfish goals. In this way, it is no more harmful than a generic inspiration to Achieve Your Dreams.

[GoblinCookie]

Willing suspension of disbelief is different from actual belief in that you KNOW that whatever you're watching/playing is fake, but you still feel something for the characters. Yet you do not take it as fully real. You seem to be confusing the two.

I made a clear distinction between the two.  At the intellectual level we know it is fake, but we do not feel it as fake partly because the game is set up to confuse us as to this and partly because we engage in willing suspension of disbelief.

Thing is though, people's emotions do effect their thoughts don't they?  If you are busy suppressing your empathy for others in order to oppress imaginary people better, even though you know that they don't actually exist, you will be better able to suppress your empathy for real people won't you? 

GoblinCookie:

1. You’re getting it backwards. I’m saying that you, GC, are projecting your goals onto the game. The game can be played with any goal in mind. And if you’re worried that your goals will be put at cross purposes with your ethics, just put “be ethical” into your goals! Yes, if you ignore ethics, you will probably do unethical things. That’s your fault for playing the game in a way you didn’t want to. Nobody forces you play unethically. It does mean you’ll have to be less effective at achieving other things like “be famous and awesome,” but if those aren’t your goals, then why do you care?

TL;DR: Any confusion and frustration you feel when playing an open-ended game is probably the result of contradictions inside your own ethical system, and not anyone else’s problem.

If you don’t want to sit in a corner, don’t. If the game forces you to choose between being ethical and having fun, then choose. (Although there’s often a third option: a way to have fun without being a murderhobo.) Whatever you choose, that’s your own choice. If there’s no choice you feel good making, then don’t play the game. (A game that you can’t enjoy is no worse than a game that doesn’t exist.)

I'm not projecting my goals onto the game, nor is the devs directly projecting their goals onto the game.  The in-game society is projecting their goals onto the player because whatever standard goals the player seeks to accomplish over the course of the game the in-game society has the means to further or frustrate. 

This is why I said that oppressive societies require an activist role in order to be justifiable.  Only if the player is able to make undermining the society's oppressive systems their primary plot goal do we end up with something that the society cannot really use to influence them into serving it's own end. 

2. Logically it follows that if shooting someone might kill them, being shot in a video game is dangerous for the player’s health. (I know this is an invalid argument. How is it different from yours? This is known as reductio ad absurdum, or Proving Too Much.)

There is no single forward direction. There are many ways to play. If you don’t like any of the ways, then don’t play. You are at no point forced to betray your ethics. If the lure of a good story is too tempting for you to give up a game, then that is an internal contradiction, and you should solve your personal problem. Nobody else has to solve it for you by creating a game without any complex moral decisions.

The “teaching people to achieve your goals by any means necessary” thing is only a problem if people already have selfish goals. In this way, it is no more harmful than a generic inspiration to Achieve Your Dreams.

  It does not logically follow in this instance because the player is not actually being shot.  It is not a question of taking logic too far, it just does not follow logically at all. 

You did not get the point.  The problem with moral dilemmas is that a computer-game by virtue of it's nature cannot stand-still.  Whatever moral dilemmas you throw into the game are ultimately all subject to the fundamental imperative of the computer game to keep itself moving along.  It simply cannot support a situation where the correct moral decision is to do nothing and bring the plot to a stand-still; think about all those quests in RPGs.

We have a whole stack of quests for the player to do.  There is considerable pressure on the player from the nature of the RPGs advancement system to do all the quests that there are without questioning the ethics of doing them because while there are rewards for doing them, there are no rewards for *not* doing them and in certain cases the plot of the story will completely come to a halt if you refuse to do certain quests.  That is ironically rather realistic and an antidote to moralism, societies do in fact control their members by exactly that kind of methodology; you do what they want you get promoted, you fail to do what they want and you languish at the bottom; thus bad societies are not primarily served by people because of their badness but because the individuals unthinkingly further their own advancement without being allowed any moral consideration.

It is not about the player having selfish goals.  It does not matter whether the player is pursuing their advancement for their own sake or for other people; the game must go on.  Realistically however, the trade-off between advancement and morality exists, but the computer game ultimately allows no such decisions.  Ambition trumps everything else because a computer game is ultimately all about ambition, this is imposed on the game by the need to keep moving along.

[KittyTac]

Willing suspension of disbelief is different from actual belief in that you KNOW that whatever you're watching/playing is fake, but you still feel something for the characters. Yet you do not take it as fully real. You seem to be confusing the two.

I made a clear distinction between the two.  At the intellectual level we know it is fake, but we do not feel it as fake partly because the game is set up to confuse us as to this and partly because we engage in willing suspension of disbelief.

Thing is though, people's emotions do effect their thoughts don't they?  If you are busy suppressing your empathy for others in order to oppress imaginary people better, even though you know that they don't actually exist, you will be better able to suppress your empathy for real people won't you?

Unless you are able to control yourself and not just give in to your subconscious (like most people, as far as I'm aware). If you are able to tell the difference between simulated and real people (even on a shallow conscious level), you probably won't enjoy oppressing real people if you enjoy oppressing simulated people, simply because your emotions are much stronger for real people. The effect is negligible, even if it is theoretically there.

[Putnam]

dwarf fortress characters don't have a face, which matters waaaaaaaaay more than you'd think

also, since i forgot to reply earlier:

And that's completely ignoring that this is a fantasy game, which makes fantasy worlds, where individuals make massive sweeping changes all the damn time and such heroes are something that they have openly and repeatedly said they want.

Maybe if the individuals are wizards, but that arguably simply replaces oppression-by-muggles with oppression-by-wizards.  Is it accomplishing anything to magically enslave everyone in order to abolish slavery?

There is a lot of ignorance about the place as to how things change, a lot of people think (see scourge above) that societal change did in fact happen simply by decree from powerful rulers.  I am not sure that the authors were knowingly being fantastical when they imagined individuals radically changing a unified society by decree and not ending up simply being deposed effortlessly; they possibly thought that is how things work. 

As I said before, this false conviction that progressive official leadership initiates change rather than it's rise to power being the conclusion of it.  It allows such leadership to be manipulated since *they* have to win because once they have won they can change stuff for the better.  But as described, the society decides who wins and loses, as well as what that means. 

That is why the activist role is different from just any random individual aspiring to public office.  The activist divides society and society punishes the activist by depriving him *of* various rewards, including public office; society's aim is to get him to accept it's win-lose complex.  That means that any regular player in adventure mode that just sets out to take over sites is actually the very opposite of an activist. 

The end here is to get people to reject the win-lose complex of the society and break away to form a new society.  Then the new society 'feeds' on the old society, gradually drawing more and more people and resources into itself.  The pinnacle of this process is when the public offices belonging to the old society are stolen from it and it is at this point that the roles switch, the supporters of the old society are now forced to become activists and the supporters of the new society now determine the win-lose complex. 

This missed my point so utterly that I have no idea what you're actually replying to. First of all, no, they don't have to be wizards. There are many examples of otherwise quite normal people making large, sweeping changes in fantasy, since this is a fantasy world simulator, which purports to create fantasy stories. Yes, I agree the "great man hypothesis" or whatever it's called is a highly inaccurate description of reality, but it is an extremely common trope in fantasy, which this game attempts to emulate by including fantasy tropes. Your argument works just as well not to include wizards at all, since wizards aren't real.