Mining particulars from a game to use elsewhere is a tradition that pre-dates D&D itself, so there’s no argument there. Likewise, the use of fantasy tropes as allegory does allow for the underlying politics to be mostly overlooked/ignored (or so I presume, based on what I know about the game) if the players are so inclined.

That said, the admission (on one of the co-author’s blogs) that the allegory between the fantasy aspects and a real-life political issue is purposeful is a difference worth being cognizant of. Most such interpretations are just that, interpretations by individual players/readers, and can be argued either way. In this case, we’re told directly (as per the co-author’s blog) that the allegory is intentional and deliberate; that the “bad guys” in this scenario are meant to be a stand-in for a very large segment of the population in real life.

Personally, that’s not something I can countenance. I find any real-world philosophy that starts from a presumption that people are inherently bad – be it original sin or an accusation of inherent bias and complicity in oppression due to their being normalized via socialization – and that only a radical change of lifestyle (under a more-enlightened leader’s guidance) can allow them to remove that evil from their lives, to be a cure that is worse than the proverbial disease it seeks to expunge. Yes, contemporary society has problems, but the underlying philosophy in The Watch seems to not so much make the perfect the enemy of the good, but rather denies that there’s any good to begin with, or at least very much of it, and places the blame for this squarely at the feet of certain people and not others.

I personally prefer that the games I play concern themselves only with being fun (which can be difficult enough) without trying to be didactic, let alone propagate a political view…much less one I disagree with.

That’s a fair statement, yes. I consider myself only indifferently well-read on the details of the political issues at stake, and I think one of the game’s strong suits is that you don’t need a working knowledge of the current conversations around gender, and especially toxic masculinity, to get a satisfying experience out of the game.

I am generally in line with the game’s politics, though, and I especially like using a veil of fantasy/sf allegory to paint real issues in larger-than-life format.

This article quotes the line about the game having an overt political mission, but does so after saying that this isn’t a hack & slash type game, which is rather misleading. In fact, the game’s overt political statement is that the reason men are vulnerable to “The Shadow” is that The Shadow represents “The Patriarchy” (or “toxic masculinity”). As I understand it, what this means is that negative attitudes and behavioral traits are defined as being masculine in nature via socialization – that’s why most of the men have already been corrupted by The Shadow: because they were already engaged in toxic attitudes and practices due to them being normalized as “what men do.”

This article says that the point of this game is specifically about playing women, but that’s only half the story: it’s about playing heroic women who have to resist the forces of evil men, because it defines evil as part of what it means to be a man in the first place. The ultimate lesson that’s baked into the premise is that contemporary masculinity has become inextricably linked with toxicity, and needs to be radically redefined in order to create a better society.

That’s what The Watch is about.