Yanping Fulsome died a martyr. I met him within the park, simply after I might completed beating an beginner magician to loss of life for his place on electoral reform, and our comradeship was fast and agency. His skills as a locksmith had been invaluable, and collectively we had been the voice and palms of the liberal revolution: One silver tongue and ten deft fingers, able to profitable virtually anybody to our facet and robbing the remaining within the night time.
However we bought sloppy. Yanping took one to the left arm whereas robbing an condominium block downtown (liberally). An arch-conservative development employee had stayed house that day, and took situation when he observed Yanping filling his pockets with jewelry and iPads. It was a matter of minutes earlier than DethSquad officers confirmed up.
Neither Yanping’s 9mm pistol nor his bodyguard Rane (a black belt martial artist I might flirted with so exhausting he dedicated to a lifetime of terrorism) may stand as much as them. Rane went down first, and Yanping—comfortable, sentimental Yanping—wasted time dragging his physique to the elevator earlier than he succumbed to his wounds, one button-push away from escape. I changed him with a 46-year-old soccer coach named Donovan. Donovan sells pot brownies to additional the trigger somewhat than dying in an elevator shaft. We’re truly making more cash now.
We want a slogan!
That is Liberal Crime Squad (LCS), the under-discussed predecessor sport from the devs behind Dwarf Fortress. A revolutionary cadre simulator that duties you with implementing The Liberal Agenda via homicide, sabotage, kidnapping and theft, LCS differs from Dwarf Fortress in that it truly has a objective in thoughts. Your process is, basically, to make all of Glenn Beck’s nightmares come true directly.
By any means needed, you must assemble an enormous liberal conspiracy, constructing a nation-spanning spider net of activists who will cease at nothing to ensure homosexual individuals can marry and flags might be burnt, undermining custom via means each delicate and overt. Generally, which means kidnapping a decide and breaking them to your will. At different instances, it means, uh, making and promoting tie-dye t-shirts. Hey, the Bolsheviks bought postcards (opens in new tab). Generally the revolution is about arts and crafts.
You will not do it alone, after all. You are aided on this by your recruits, acquired by seduction and persuasion, who’re divided into “energetic” liberals and sleeper brokers embedded on the essential interstices of conservative society, able to wreak havoc everytime you ship phrase.
You are opposed by, effectively, just about your entire remainder of the world. The police, the state, even public radio are all standing athwart historical past and yelling “Cease,” which implies you must be intelligent. By putting your sleepers inside these establishments (and others), you may obtain advance warning of police raids, get bailed out of a jam within the courts, even start subtly spreading liberal ideology on the airwaves, in case you dare.
You may find yourself in a scenario the place John Q. Public is prepared to burn down an animal testing facility however thinks executing human beings for minor infractions is A-okay.
It is satire, after all, heralding from a political period—the early 2000s—when probably the most radical left-of-centre voice within the American public eye was Jon Stewart. The thought of individuals as milquetoast because the mainstream liberals of 2004 forming some sort of New York Instances Baader-Meinhof Group was patently absurd again within the day, even when the thought of radical and rude political motion from the left is less complicated to think about in 2023.
It is a complicated simulation, and it fashions numerous layers of public opinion and political energy. You are not simply pushing a ‘liberal reputation’ meter by hook or by crook, you are impacting what individuals take into consideration a spread of points individually. There’s the presidential approval ranking, naturally, which you may need to both maintain buoyed up or ship crashing to Earth relying on the ideology of the particular person in energy, however individuals have their stances on the problems, too.
Focus strictly on acts of sabotage and activism round animal rights, as an illustration, and you’ll find yourself in a scenario the place John Q. Public is prepared to burn down an animal testing facility however thinks executing human beings for minor infractions is A-okay. So it is fairly lifelike, is what I am saying.
Wither liberalism?
LCS is a rough and finite factor compared to the wild sprawl of Dwarf Fortress, however that is not essentially dangerous. As soon as upon a time, LCS was the go-to advice for newcomers trying to get into Tarn and Zach Adams’ beloved dwarf-management sport: A means of dipping your toe into the unusual waters of a systems-heavy, barely-navigable ASCII sport with out having to observe programs of a ‘my hen’s left knee is moist’ stage of granularity.
However Dwarf Fortress has a graphical Steam model with (one thing resembling a) tutorial now, which implies studying that sport might be greatest achieved by enjoying it. However does that imply The Liberal Agenda will probably be left to languish?
Bay 12 stopped engaged on LCS virtually instantly after its first public launch in 2004, so that you may say it is already been languishing for some time, however the trigger has been taken up by a devoted corps of followers. The model I have been enjoying is King Drake’s Liberal Crime Squad (opens in new tab) (which provides an opposing Conservative Crime Squad that makes use of your individual ways in opposition to you), however there are others you will discover over on the LCS wiki (opens in new tab), together with a fan-made graphical remake (opens in new tab) in case you simply cannot stand the allure of the ASCII model.
I believe the sport nonetheless has some life left in it but, and may even see a surge of curiosity after the unimaginable success of Dwarf Fortress’ Steam model, however I might hate to see it wither now that it now not capabilities as a set of coaching wheels for its successor sport. I suppose what I am saying is, Kitfox, you’ve got performed it as soon as and you are able to do it once more. Let’s get a prettied-up model of LCS on Steam, ideally with enter from the open-source devs who’ve been preserving it going all this time. Do it for the revolution, comrades.
