Liberal Crime Squad

Liberal Crime Squad is a strategy game utilizing roguelike ASCII graphics, created by Tarn Adams, the programmer behind Dwarf Fortress. Liberal Crime Squad is a political satire focused on a fictional extremist organization, Liberal Crime Squad, based on the historical Symbionese Liberation Army. It features the player as the leader of a 'liberal revolution', in which the player must infiltrate 'conservative society' in order to turn the country liberal. The game purposefully exaggerates its portrayals of liberals, who are heroes of the society or oppressed by the conservatives, and conservatives, who are portrayed as stupid and violent rednecks or cruel masterminds.
Gameplay
In LCS, the player manages their organization's activities through an ASCII-styled interface. Gameplay is turn-based, with each turn representing a whole day. When exploring certain places, such as factories, parks or Internet Cafés, or when a vile force of conservatism lays siege to the player's liberal outposts, the player controls whatever team of the squad was assigned to that place in a fashion similar to that of Roguelike games, with different keys making the squad undertake different actions, like talking to people in the area or try to kidnap or kill conservative enemies.
Juice
Members of the Liberal Crime Squad are ranked by their amount of juice, which replaces the experience concept of traditional role-playing games. Juice is Liberal Street Credibility and having higher juice influences the character's attributes, since that Liberal is inflamed by the powers of Liberal Justice. Most Liberals are unable to get anyone to follow them without gaining a significant amount of juice first. Juice can be made negative by performing non-liberal actions or just generally messing up.
Juice "can be gained by doing anything that would make a Conservative say, 'By jove, that man is insane!' Because obviously a Conservative would not be open-minded enough to say 'man, woman, hermaphrodite or transvestite.'"
Peace
Peaceful methods of converting society include writing, such as writing to newspapers and writing for the Liberal Guardian, causing public disturbances, harassing websites, and hacking. Peaceful methods of making money include legal things like soliciting donations, selling T-shirts, selling art, and selling music; and illegal things like selling drugs, prostitution, and credit card fraud. In order to increase membership in the LCS (Since, at the start of the game, only one person, the leader, is member of the organization), people must be met on the street and talked to, trying to convince them of the evils of conservatism so that they join the LCS as militant members. Squad members can also try to make sexual advances on these persons, and if they fall sufficiently in love with them, turn them into members of the organization through their relationship links.
Violence
Violent methods of converting society are very numerous. One can buy guns and make or steal armor, and raid buildings, steal items, or free 'oppressed' peoples (including animals, sweatshop workers, servants, prisoners, etc.) One can also kidnap and torture/brainwash conservatives to make them see the 'liberal light'. If done sufficiently well that their kidnappings are not publicly noticed, these people can return to their jobs as moles in the conservative lines ('sleepers') instead of being militant members of the LCS. They can then infiltrate society and promote liberalism, promote conservatism to gain trust, expand sleeper networks, uncover secrets, embezzle funds, steal equipment, and fabricate scandals (unavailable as of the current version). Following the violent path sets off a timer for the formation of the Conservative Crime Squad. The CCS is the conservative version of the LCS, but are much less effective than the LCS. They will try to track you down and kill you to the last man/woman/transvestite/hermaphrodite.
End of the game
There are a number of laws in LCS that the player must turn into "elite liberal" that are key to winning the game. These include: Abortion, Animal Rights, Law Enforcement Control, Death Penalty, Pollution, Worker Rights, Homosexual Rights, Corporation Regulation, Free Speech, Flag-Burning and Gun Control. To win the game, all these laws must be elite liberal (L+), the president must be elite liberal, and the house and senate must be elite liberal. The Supreme Court must also be five-ninths elite liberal. All of this is a slow process, but can be sped up if the "Elite Liberal Amendments" are passed. There are two Elite Liberal Amendments: One that eliminates political entrenchment, often forcing the Arch Conservatives out of the Senate, and another one which banishes all members of the Supreme Court who aren't Elite Liberal to foreign conservative countries, replacing them with Elite Liberals.
The game will end in defeat for the player if the organization's leader dies or is arrested and no member in it dares to succeed him/her/hir, or if the conservatives manage to pass their arch-conservative amendment, which allows them to control the parliament and crush liberalism completely, preserving their conservative power forever.

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See Also

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