Once a week my friends and I play dungeons and dragons, using DnD Beyond for our character sheets and dice, and Roll20 for our world (maps, player characters, NPCs, etc.). I’m playing a dog folk girl based heavily on the blonde dog in my profile pic with the same name, look, and sassy attitude too. She’s fourteen, and in our campaign dog folk and humans age at the same rate. She’s a full blown communist and I’m not shy about voicing her ideals, while I don’t say the word “communist” during role play, it is explicitly stated in her character sheet. Using the term “Marxist-Leninist” would be inaccurate considering Marx and Lenin don’t exist in the world of our campaign, unless my DM pulls something. Hell, my character’s last name is Luxemburg.
I’m writing this post because I’m looking for some advice on how to play a revolutionary leader? For context, my character is the daughter of two revolutionaries, Clara Luxemburg and Sacha (no last name). Both parents lived outside a dog folk town where they acted as Robin Hood-esque figures. At one point enough was enough and they began plans for an uprising against the nobles of their town. To make a long story short the revolution failed and Sacha and Clara were executed to send a message to the other revolutionaries. My character fled, to be on her own after witnessing their deaths, and ten years later she finds herself in a city building a revolution with the homeless population against the noble families, the church, and the royals. This plan was interrupted when our party was arrested and I broke an anarchist out of prison (yes, shame on me, but in my defence I didn’t know he was an anarchist). But after a bunch of shit and an Ace Attorney court scene, my girl is back on track to leading the revolution once more and going back to her dog town to prevent a genocide. The genocide is because I accidentally sparked a race war between the humans and the dog folk.
Now I’m nervous and unsure on how to go about this. While I am well aware that this is a fantasy game and I could just do whatever I wanted in terms of leading the revolution (the rest of my party weren’t involved in this part of the game, but now they might be) but I wanted to do it accurately to how our real world revolutionaries have done it. Is there any reading material on how Lenin, or Castro and Che Guevara, or Sankara (etc.) went about planning, building, and carrying out their revolutions? This sounds silly as hell but playing this character actually helps make concepts stick better in my head, it also feels nice to act out scenarios I know I never could in real life.
Anyway I know this was rambly, goofy if you will, but I hope you were at least somewhat entertained reading a little bit about my little commie dog. If you need more background information or are just curious about the campaign itself please don’t hesitate to ask. I truly love interacting with you all and look forward to seeing the numbers next to that bell in the corner.
Note: Sorry for any spelling and/or grammatical mistakes, the keyboard I’m using is very small and weird. It’s for an iPad.
I’d say the main quality of your character would have to be that they are stubborn. In jail, Lenin would write using milk or lemon written iirc in toilet paper, which would reveal only when the paper was heated
Also, no idea why you or your DM chose a fourteen year old girl to roleplay as. That’s an odd choice lol
Lol no I’m the fourteen year old. She’s based off my dog, I created her that way.
Also incredibly cool how he’d write like that. I’m definitely making a note of that.
Communists these days are younger and younger
It helps if their parents are also communists
It might be fun to dip a few levels in paladin and make your character mechanically gain powers from their devotion to the proletariat
Oof I’m too far into the campaign to change my class (gunslinger) but I have been looking into maybe multi-classing or something. I thought looking for the Tome of Leadership would help.
So setting is a big factor in these things. Assuming this is in a setting of medieval and magic with barrons, lords, kings, queens, etc there really would be no concept of communism. As in, you wouldn’t really call yourself a communist per se. Communism came about as a direct result of Capitalism. Specifically capitalism during/post industrial revolution which is kind of where the proletariat as a class came to be. Yes there were always peasants/workers but being peasants serving a lord is different being a worker trying to sell your labor to a capitalist. All the literature, all the theories and such that ML is based on kind of requires capitalism. Even accepting that capitalism is a somewhat necessary stepping stone from feudalism to communism.
You would have to go about things based on the fundamentals of what communism is. Not necessarily as a communism. More along the lines of a pseudo-communism or proto-communism. A communist before the concept of communism was. Fighting for the rights of the peasant class. Overthrowing lords and driving society to provide for all and sharing resources for the benefit of all. You’d have to form a new government that all agreed on the dissolution of any form of lordship. You would have to rethink how businesses and merchants worked.
One example I have was a friend that played a half ogre that was raised by a farmer. His whole trope was just around defending the working man. Supporting farmers and workers to join forced and defend themselves against tyranny. Teaching that only through mutual cooperation could their lives be improved and as long as power was concentrated in the hands of few then they rest would suffer. That land and resources should be used to make all lives better and that a person’s life and work are intertwined and that all lives and professions should be seen as important. More about the fundamentals that communism is built on rather than communism itself.
As far as how you would carry out a revolution I wouldn’t look just at the Bolshevik revolution. It’s a different kind of revolution in general and a different era. It would probably be better to look at various medieval revolutions such as when King Charles dissolved the English parliament which eventually led to a civil war/revolution. It’s not an easy thing to do. You will need to have people spreading the word and idealology. Teaching people and creating an underground of support all while in a setting of feudalism where some local lord can just call for your head on a pike and you have no recourse. The ideal character for this would have been a paladin, cleric, or bard. Someone with a good Charisma roll because that’s how you will carry this out. Charisma roll the villagers, the leaders, the soldiers. Gotta make those speeches and get ppl on your side. Ppl willing to die for you. To put their lives at risk to spread your idealology.
It would honestly be easiest to install yourself as the new king/queen and then slowly work the government into something more akin to what a communist country would have. Make you focus on improving the lives of peasants. Create a system of education and use that to teach your proto-communism idealology. Then have a plan in place to slowly dissolve the monarchy into a representative body elected and controlled by the workers unions/guilds etc. Think of how China is doing their transition from capitalism to socialism with the end goal of being a fully socialist state by what, 2050 I think? It’s easy to make yourself a king/queen in these kinds of games. It’s hard to create a whole new form of government while also having just dismantled the only one the people have ever known.
Also the Maoist revolution would be a good example to pull ideas from.
If it were me trying this I would probably go with a bard. Really can’t beat their charisma and their skills. I’m more versed in pathfinder so idk what skills are like in then newer DnD stuff, but I would go hard into diplomacy, bluff, perception, and sense motive, or whatever the DnD equivalent of those are. I would put a point into those every level. This will give the the best chances of getting people on your side, negotiating, and detecting spies, and assassins. Being a revolutionary leader these are a must. Reaming points can be spread out among other useful skills but these staples are necessary.
Now in Pathfinder there’s a feat called leadership that lets you slowly grow a small army. It gets bonuses from charisma as well. One thing it also does if give you a higher level companion character/NPC that’s like, one level below you at all times. I would definitely get this feat if it’s an option. And have the companion character be either a paladin or a cleric. Paladin is best if you need extra persuasion and general brute force. Cleric is gonna give you even more spell options and give you access to Miracles in late game (if all that exists in the new DnD). In addition both of these classes are also higher charisma classes and will generally allow you to spread the necessary skills out to a wider variety.
I’ve played a few comrades before in such games. A good one was a Tiefling Bard, who had the public narrative framed against her (so, demonized) for several things she didn’t do by the powers that opposed her. And so she was fighting against the narrative presented about her and her beliefs and goals. It was a nice touch for a bard to fight against a story. Additionally, she was a former slave trying to free others taken during a war. Naturally, her way of fighting the slavers was by organizing all workers in the city into helpful collectives to create a supportive mass line needed for her missions. I got to drop a great deal of theory about the nature of labor, exploitation, class, and propaganda in the course of the campaign.
