Rein Hagen a Georgian covert agent?

[Username17]

OK, weird conspiracy theory time.

After Rein ☻ Hagen got pushed out of White Wolf he did something much stranger than what Gary Gygax did after getting pushed out of TSR: he went to the post-Soviet kleptocracy of Georgia and started working as a paid propagandist for the government. I mean, a writing gig is a writing gig, right? Lots of science fiction and fantasy hacks have tried their hand at writing government copy. At first he was writing English language pap extolling the strong European roots of Georgia to try to encourage Westerners to come to Georgia as tourists and investors. But when the South Osetia War happened (which you may recall happened because Georgia attacked Russia having been apparently promised by John McCain that Bush's America would back them despite that being completely insane), the dotmeister turned to writing anti-Russian propaganda about how bad the Russians were and how important it was for NATO to start World War 3 to protect Georgian territorial claims on South Osetia and Abkhaz.

Anyway, supposedly after the war he went back to game design. But a funny thing about that... He's still writing it as Georgian propaganda. What? He's putting out "games" where the upshot is that the nation of Georgia has an ancient and important claim to South Osetia and the Russian invaders are literally monsters.

Doesn't that sound like he's still putting out government=approved anti-Russian propaganda for the nation of Georgia?

Now the fact that the game itself is a WoD title with the serials rubbed off that is about Zombies is an actual joke that people were making ten years ago. Like, my friend Matthew literally put together a nWoD "Zombie: the Brain Eating" in 2005, as a joke. But it's apparently serious. Or at least taken seriously enough by the Georgian government to use as a propaganda vehicle against Russians.

-Username17

[Ghremdal]

Since I see he actually lives in Georgia it may be possible he truly believes in his own propaganda. Weird shit happens during a war, and this is pretty tame by comparison.

[sandmann]

There is an interesting study about the perception of women in the Media that Concludes that not only do negative pictures of women turn people more hostile towards women, but that the people most influenced are the People that think they are influenced the least, or that they cannot be influenced at all.

So I'm with Ghremdal on this one. The beauty of propaganda is that even the Guys writing the "Stürmer" for the Nazis at one point looked around and said:" C'mon guys, all that shit about the jews can't possibly be all fake."

[darkmaster]

I would be very interested to see that study.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I respectfully request that the political stuff be taken to the political thread, please. At least the part where people start arguing about whether Georgia or Russia owns places that I've never heard of and don't care to go to.

[OgreBattle]

I've heard of Tetris being accused of being soviet propaganda... somehow.

Russia is such a common villain in hollywood and FPS's though that I wouldn't think much of them being villains in some tRPG I had only heard of today.

[GreatGreyShrike]

I've heard of Tetris being accused of being soviet propaganda... somehow.

Oh come on, it's really obvious

[fbmf]

I respectfully request that the political stuff be taken to the political thread, please. At least the part where people start arguing about whether Georgia or Russia owns places that I've never heard of and don't care to go to.

Discussion of Georgian independence moved to MPSIMS.

[/The Great Fence Builder Speaks]

[talozin]

At last. I've been waiting a long time for the RPG industry to have its own Ezra Pound.