Quote from: olepederI read a commentary article in Newsweek or thereabouts, maybe it was The Economist, on how anger has become a fashionable form of rhetoric in the US. Everyone should be very upset all the time whilst communicating, because it signals some form of gravitas. I think this discussion has suffered due to this phenomenon.

I know the most common response it to say that not everyone here is American. While others here may be (unintentionally) willing to throw the American posters under the bus by not addressing the root of your argument, I'm not one to let that stand - mostly because I am American.

You're mistaking disgust for anger.

I'm not angry you want to make this game, or have this game made, or help it by playtesting - I'm disgusted.

To be disgusted requires judging.  I know it's not common in Europe where everything is supposed to be a big multicultural melting pot where everyone's point of view is valid, but there are a few of us left here in the US that think it's OK to judge - even condemn.

See how I did that?  See how I generalized a bunch of biases to dismiss the criticisms?  It's a bogus argument.  It's not bogus because people other than Americans post here, its' simply a bogus argument on it's face.

Now you've apologized (kind of) for making generalizations - I just want to know if those generalizations for which you were apologizing were simply that people not of America also responded, or just that you recognized that your general bias against Americans had reared its ugly head before you could leash it?

Quote from: James J SkachI know the most common response it to say that not everyone here is American. While others here may be (unintentionally) willing to throw the American posters under the bus by not addressing the root of your argument, I'm not one to let that stand - mostly because I am American.

You're mistaking disgust for anger.

I'm not angry you want to make this game, or have this game made, or help it by playtesting - I'm disgusted.

To be disgusted requires judging.  I know it's not common in Europe where everything is supposed to be a big multicultural melting pot where everyone's point of view is valid, but there are a few of us left here in the US that think it's OK to judge - even condemn.

See how I did that?  See how I generalized a bunch of biases to dismiss the criticisms?  It's a bogus argument.  It's not bogus because people other than Americans post here, its' simply a bogus argument on it's face.

Now you've apologized (kind of) for making generalizations - I just want to know if those generalizations for which you were apologizing were simply that people not of America also responded, or just that you recognized that your general bias against Americans had reared its ugly head before you could leash it?

I'm angry that I'm being dismissed so readily. Perhaps it's my "tribalist mindset". But disgust is what I'm really kinda feeling.

But yeah, I think you nailed it, James.

Also, did anyone else notice how my direct query got deflected so quickly?

Quote from: Anders NygaardWhy on earth would I do that? It's not my game. I didn't write it. It's in playtest. I've tried to give an idea of the shape of it, and how one playtest of one part of it worked for me. I don't see the point of second-guessing the author and then cutting that up small to feed it to you piece by piece.

I'm not even sure you can pack much of a message in an RPG. Players will always screw with it to the point where your "message" wouldn't be recognized by its own mother. Matthijs is welcome to try to preach, but I predict that if nazis play it, they won't get the same message as if, say, communists play it.

Or did you see some particular message here which you wanted to point out to me?

I bolded the money quote.

And no, I wanted you to tell me what the message was in your terms.

Quote from: Anders Nygaard.......

..........
Science has been working on explaining the facts for sixty years, since the documentation of the holocaust sank in. History, psychology, philosophy, medicine, anthropology, everyone has grappled with it, or aspects of it. The consensus reached fits fairly well with what I went trough while testing this game. It happens in little baby steps. You swallow one lie, and then another one, and then another one, and in the end you find yourself agreeing on the absolute and obvious necessity of doing something so terrible, it defies the understanding of those who have not been pushed trough the same sick line of reasoning.

................

...... "race traitors". I'm pretty sure I'd qualify as a norwegian "race traitor". Does that give me some special authority in this matter? I don't think so.

 First off WTF???   No I'll write it out WHAT THE Fuck!!???

 Science has been working on explaining the facts for sixty years??

 I'll help you with that one : Some people chose to do evil things in the early 1930s. Nobody stopped them. People who chose to do GOOD things weren't able to get organized and have their act  tgether till the early 1940s.

 Its just that simple.

 Its all about humans choosing to do inhumane things...and no one stopping them in time.  Then honorable humans discover the true scope of things...are a bit shocked and the phrase "Never again" gets a whole new meaning.

It doesn't take a damn consensus to match up with you play-acted iun a game !!! There are still Holocaust survivors around. Many also were videotaped or recorded sharing their eyewitness testimony before they died in recent years.  Oh....another thing - a friend of mine never got to meet a chunk of her family because they were killed by the Nazis.  I don't need scientific paper or studies - I'm less than three steps from people who died in that ...that..years-long atrocity.

 Oh and Norwegian is NOT a "race" its just a nationality. Ony race on this planet is called human, which sometimes does some pretty SHITTY things to itself.  Now I'm really pissed ..cuz this whole game crap is making me feel ashamed that I'm supposedly 50% Norwegian.

- Ed C.

 (Don't even get me started on the crap GURPS reference . Jerk should look over on those forums and see the arguments against playing Nazis....)

I want to thank everyone again for their comments.

Here's what's currently happening.

- I'm rethinking the concept. Labeling it a "game", with the connotations people have to that word, is misleading. I believe the focus must be on education, and that it's probably best suited for use in a classroom situation. I realize that such a concept isn't what this forum is about, and I will take the debate elsewhere, as has been strongly suggested by others on this thread.

- I'm getting in touch with various Jewish groups and institutions focusing on Holocaust education - in Norway, the U. S. and the U. K., for starters. I will be asking for their opinions and guidance on the project, and will attempt to meet and speak to survivors or their relatives.

- I'm thinking long and hard about my personal motivations for the project, and will be prepared to discuss those with the groups, institutions and individuals mentioned.

I applaud your decisions and you ability to really listen to the crticisms presented here.

You've changed my opinion of you with this post. Not that my opinion matters to you.

Good luck finding a respectful way to teach future generations about the horrors of our past.

Quote from: Matthijs Holter- I'm getting in touch with various Jewish groups and institutions focusing on Holocaust education - in Norway, the U. S. and the U. K., for starters. I will be asking for their opinions and guidance on the project, and will attempt to meet and speak to survivors or their relatives.

- I'm thinking long and hard about my personal motivations for the project, and will be prepared to discuss those with the groups, institutions and individuals mentioned.

I want to suggest you talking to Yad Vashem and the Wiesenthal Center again. Those are the only two that matter. If theyre ok with whatever you are doing, I don't think anyone in the world (certainly not me) would complain. If they are specifically not included (perhaps because of the pervasive anti-Israel bias that seems to be popular with Norwegian leftists), then we'll all know whats up with this.

Yad Vashem: http://www.yadvashem.org/
Wiesenthal Center: http://www.wiesenthal.com/

Quote from: James J SkachLet's assume that you can learn something about yourself through an RPG.
I've said it in previous posts; it's not a prevalent way to play, particulalry in the US, but I'll grant that some people feel they can use RPG's successfully in this way. OK? Clear?

Fair enough. "Learning about myself" is not exactly my concern either. I try to understand the subjects I explore for that understanding's own sake. I guess, in the widest possible sense, this might lead to some sort of self-insight, but that's incidental.

QuoteTo use this episode of history is not the proper tool for that exploration.  The fact that you can't understand why it's not is actually the exact reason for the dismay. You simply cannot, in any way, understand the way in which these people were treated.  That's what people mean when they say it's almost unimaginable.  It's because you simply can't understand it.  Surely not by trying to imagine yourself in that role - it's just not possible.

We're not in disagreement here, I think. Of course you can't relive this terrible suffering, or understand what that's like. I think I said as much. But my business is not some sort of learning by immersion. I try to understand *why* things happened. To do that, you have to try to follow the reasoning which enabled them to happen. For me personally, I hope to avoid falling into the same trap. Human beings did these things; I'm a human being. How do I avoid becoming part of something like it? How can I stop it happening again?

QuoteSo get off the argument that this criticism is only about people who dont' think you can get any emotional reflection from an RPG; or that they can't be used to learn something about the player.  I'll grant that some people do and try.

I'm saying that even if you can do this, the Holocaust is beyond this capabililty.  That to do so will result, not matter how good the rules or system or how constricted the script, in a maudlin masturbatory pseduo intellectual wankery - it's inevitable; the moment you make this attempt to vicariously understand the victims of the Holocaust in a personal way, you've lost.

Yeah. If you try to do this with evoking emotion as the main goal. Like you, I don't think that's a good idea at all.

QuoteOh, BTW.  Congratulations.  You've successfully compared yourself to Nazi twats having fun playing SS troops in GURPS WWII. If that's your standard/defense, good luck with that.

No, I most definitely have not. I am not a nazi. Quite the opposite.

Nazi twats would play as nazis no matter what game you fed them. Emo jerks who wanted to pretend to be suffering would try to do that with any damn game you could come up with.

QuoteCan you read your own statement here?  RPG's can't recreate reality.  In this case, the gap is so large as to result in pseudo-intellectual wankery/emotional masturbation. Are you saying that this applies to any other Non-RPG material about the holocaust, or just RPG material? The former is a joke of an argument, that latter is most likely true, if there's any other material out there that attempts to teach the pariticipant something about themselves by prostituting the deaths of 6 million people.

Why is the gap larger than in a hollywood movie? If you seriously believe that any medium is capable of accurately capturing what it was like to be present at and a part of the holocaust, we've got a whole different discussion going. All ways of representing are inaccurate in some way, leaves things out, and carries the fingerprints of the authors. What fills the gap is the people using the representation. The representation - a movie, a book, a game - doesn't become wankery until you fill the gap with wankers. (If the author is also a wanker, I assume like will attract like. But for the purposes of discussion and common civility, let's assume we're dealing with an author who can be trusted with the material).

I may have misunderstood the accusation; I thought we were discussing reproductions - material which we can use as tools for understanding, transform our perspective on the actual event. We pretend that representations are "real" and accurate to be able to interpret them. But an author who honestly thinks he can recreate an event so well that his readers understand it as if they were really there is clearly not to be trusted. If a movie patron can't understand the distinction between what's on the cinema screen and what he himself experiences on his own body, things are probably not well with his mind.

I think prostitution of the holocaust is a legitimate and extremly important concern with any treatment of the matter. A legitimate treatment of the holocaust must hold the potential to deepen our understanding of what took place. You don't stir this stuff just for shits and giggles. Just "learning about yourself" is definitely not good enough. Studying atrocities leaves you with a a dose of cynisism about "human nature" and similar fine and noble sentiments. You might call that cynisism "learning about ourselves" - I certainly think that knowing what perfectly ordinary people are capable of coming up with, and how we do it, counts as an important self-insight. Playtesting this game reminded me of it and got me with my guard down. I'm pretty sure that effect is not predictable or completely reproducible.

Quote from: KoltarIts all about humans choosing to do inhumane things...and no one stopping them in time.  Then honorable humans discover the true scope of things...are a bit shocked and the phrase "Never again" gets a whole new meaning.

I really don't think it's that simple. Nor did all the people who have been researching and studying the evidence over the years. You're leaving a lot of questions unanswered here. Where did they come up with the idea in the first place? How did they convince themselves that these horrific acts were right, just and good? You've got two sides fighting for what they believe is the ultimate good - and one side is fucked up beyond belief, apparently beyond comprehension. In the end, they had a choice, and made the wrong ones. But how did they create their options?

QuoteIt doesn't take a damn consensus to match up with you play-acted iun a game !!! There are still Holocaust survivors around. Many also were videotaped or recorded sharing their eyewitness testimony before they died in recent years.  Oh....another thing - a friend of mine never got to meet a chunk of her family because they were killed by the Nazis.  I don't need scientific paper or studies - I'm less than three steps from people who died in that ...that..years-long atrocity.

It takes lots of people remembering, seeing all that evidence, and thinking about it. Let's not play the "less steps removed from the holocaust than you"-game. It's frankly disgusting, and no one wins.

QuoteOh and Norwegian is NOT a "race" its just a nationality. Ony race on this planet is called human, which sometimes does some pretty SHITTY things to itself. Now I'm really pissed ..cuz this whole game crap is making me feel ashamed that I'm supposedly 50% Norwegian.

Exactly. "Jewish" is not a race either. Humans died in the camps. So humans have a right to understand what the hell happened. It was a rhetorical question, intended to point out that there's no one "race" or other imaginary category which gets to veto what is said about this subject. Sorry for the confusion.

Quote(Don't even get me started on the crap GURPS reference . Jerk should look over on those forums and see the arguments against playing Nazis....)

You and others seem to have gotten that one backwards. These hypothetical players are not nazis for playing that excellent line of sourcebooks. I meant to convey the idea that nazis who chose to play GURPS:WWII would probably play a pretty sick game, regardless of what the authors' intentions were.)
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Quote from: Matthijs HolterI want to thank everyone again for their comments.

Here's what's currently happening.

- I'm rethinking the concept. Labeling it a "game", with the connotations people have to that word, is misleading. I believe the focus must be on education, and that it's probably best suited for use in a classroom situation. I realize that such a concept isn't what this forum is about, and I will take the debate elsewhere, as has been strongly suggested by others on this thread.

- I'm getting in touch with various Jewish groups and institutions focusing on Holocaust education - in Norway, the U. S. and the U. K., for starters. I will be asking for their opinions and guidance on the project, and will attempt to meet and speak to survivors or their relatives.

- I'm thinking long and hard about my personal motivations for the project, and will be prepared to discuss those with the groups, institutions and individuals mentioned.

Hope this discussion has been of useful to you. I'd like a follow up to your "project" if you ever finish it and perhaps some examples of how it's used.

Regard,
David R

I would argue with some of the things that have been written since I posted but Matthijs's last post renders those issues somewhat moot.

IMO relabelling and (re)purposing the project as an educational tool, rather than a private activity of "playing Holocaust", goes a long way.

Matthijs, I want to commend you for seeking commentary here, especially because you probably knew this would be a highly critical, even hostile forum.

Of course I personally reserve final opinion on the project while it develops, but at this point I think additional criticism and counter-criticism (etc.) is likely to be redundant. So having said my piece I'm going to try to avoid posting further in this thread.

I do want to say, though, that while Jewishness isn't a prerequisite for having a legitimate opinion on this subject (or being Cambodian isn't a prereq for talking about the Khmer Rouge), hearing the voices of the victimized group is almost essential to forming a legitimate opinion. Otherwise it's far too easy to assume you "know it all", which is arrogance.

By "getting in touch" you're taking an important step in the right direction.

Quote from: The Good AssyrianI had intended to stay way the fuck out of this clusterfuck.  In fact, JB, I largely have agreed with your points, but you are *really* being an amazing asshole here.  How Jewish does Tony have to be to have an opinion?  

There are no degrees of Judaism. You either are or you aren't.

I was expressing surprise that he's Jewish, because I've heard nothing of this before. Certainly many people keep all sorts of aspects of their lives private online, and in even more cases, it just doesn't come up.

Nor did I say that anyone had to be Jewish to have an opinion of it. What I did say was that no Jew would write this thing.

His Jewishness or not came up when I said, "No Jew would write this thing." He took that to mean, "no Jew would like it", which is a different thing. He missed the point - Jewish or not, Tony hasn't written this thing. Nor has he expressed plans to play it. So my point stands. No Jew would write this thing, or play it. If Tony wants to prove me wrong by writing the Zyklon B supplement for it, or by toodling off to his group and playing it, and writing about the experience afterwards, I'll be interested to see that and publicly say, "I was wrong, yids will write and play this."  

Pseudoephedrine also claimed that he knew heaps of Jews who'd write it or play it. We haven't heard from them, either. Perhaps we will?

Until then, I can continue to say, "No Jew would write this thing, or want to play it. That tells you something."

Quote from: olepederI think a lot of the problem boils down to a very limited conception of what roleplaying games can/should be.

It's the Cheetoist philosophy. Roleplaying games are a social creative hobby. being miserable together I suppose could be said to be "social", but only by such a stretching of the word that it's in danger of tearing into little pieces to be consumed by Forger babies. Exploring the depths of human misery and suffering could also be said to be "creative", but again it's a fucking stretch.

This thing is a roleplaying game in the same sense that going on Dr Phil is psychotherapy. It kind of resembles it in some ways, but in the most important ways is different. And most importantly, it's profoundly superficial.

The PCs are powerless. The essence of an rpg session is that you get to do stuff. Here, you don't get to do anything - you're suffering passively. You're taking away the most important part of an rpg. To say that this indicates a narrow conception of what an rpg is, is like saying that if we take away the ball from football players and tell them to play football anyway, and they complain, they have a narrow conception of what football is. The essence of football is that there's a ball which is passed around; the essence of roleplaying is that there's the power to do stuff which is passed around. Take it away and it's not a game anymore.

Quote from: PseudoephedrineAs I said upthread, either the Holocaust is a public event, in which case, one's Judaism is immaterial to one's right to engage with it, or else it's just something that happened to a bunch of Jews, and as a non-Jew, there's no particular reason I should care that it happened.

I offered you a choice then, and you didn't pick one, but it really is that stark a dichotomy.

I didn't pick one because like most dichotomies, it's a false dichotomy. I recognise them pretty quickly now after some time of reading RPGPundit's posts, he's fond of them.

It also is irrelevant to my point. My point is not that "you non-Jews couldn't possibly understand!" I have many times spoken against the absurdity of personal experience being the only qualification for intelligent comment on things.

What I am saying is that no Jew would write this thing, or want to play it, and that tells you something. The reason is that roleplaying is a medium which is inherently trivialising of things, like comic books or cartoons are. I know a thousand anime geeks will now leap up to tell me I'm wrong, but I'm right. I'll give the same example again: on South Park, they kick a baby out the window, and it's funny. It would never be funny on film. The cartoon medium trivialises the scene, makes the abhorrent acceptable, even funny. Likewise, the roleplaying medium.

No Jew would want to trivialise the Holocaust. A Jew would understand that the roleplaying medium will in fact trivialise it. That is, a person with even a touch of real understanding and real experience will know that this is not a way to share it. If they didn't understand its trivialising nature, a quick chat with their old grandmother would help them. Now, these guys say it's some kind of art project to help them understand the Holocaust, and understand themselves. I say that trivialising things is not a way of understanding them or yourself. It's like saying that watching Grey's Anatomy will give me insights into my love life.

The Holocaust, as I said, was not a unique event. That's why I suggested the Quisling government and Nazi collaboration as a topic closer to home for them - it's also a horrific event involving human suffering and collaboration with evil, and one which they can write more intelligently about. Or they could write about Rwandan and Burundi genocides, or Kurds under the Ba'athists, or Manideans under Iran, or women in rural Pakistan, or Amerindians locked up in reservations dying of smallpox, or Easter Islanders deported from home for slavery in Peruvian mines, and so on and so forth.

Or they could even trouble themselves to remember that while 6 million Jews died, 6 million Romani, Soviets, homosexuals, Quakers and so on also perished.

Or they could remember the Germans in the Great War, that on the third day of their invasion of Belgium they massacred a village of hundreds of people. Or their deportations and massacres in the Ukraine. Or perhaps Stalin's deportations of millions of Chechens and Volga Germans, the collectivisation leading to the famine of tens of millions. Or maybe Mao's Great Leap Forward (into mass death and famine) Or how about Pol Pot's Year Zero, a quarter of the country's population dead in four years. Or...

Why choose the Jewish Holocaust, particularly? That's what makes me uneasy. It's like these guys are choosing to educate themselves - but the topic they choose for their education just shows how ignorant they are, how little they know of the world and its history.

It's so middle-class comfortable kids wanting strong emotions... It's just embarassing.

Quote from: AndersCommunists died, gays, travelling people of all kinds, resistance fighters, anarchists, terrorists - the list goes on. Should their modern successors get to veto when, how and why something is said about the complete failure of humanity which led to all this suffering and death?

No. But if you're trying to get an insight into the experiences of group X, it's wise to consult group X about it.

"What's suffering child abuse like? Let's explore it!"
"I dunno. We could ask a victim of it."
"Why would we ask them?"

No-one's said that Jews should get to veto your thing. We've said that if you want insight into the experience of group X, the best thing to do is to talk to group X. Not to sit around with people from group Y.

I'm not sure why that's considered a revolutionary thought.

If you want to understand an experience someone had, ask them about it. Ask a variety of those people, since everyone has their own experience. Don't sit around with a bunch of people who never had that experience, and try to imagine it.

Quote from: Elliot WilenBy "getting in touch" you're taking an important step in the right direction.

Hm. Some of these posts came in a hurry. Parts of what I said might have appeared as if I objected to the opinions Elliot is expressing here and elsewhere in this post. Just to make it clear that I'm not...

I'm surprised no one has referenced this somewhat famous "experiment":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Wave

The book based on it, that fictionalized it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wave_%28book%29

Or the TV movie made out of the book :
http://imdb.com/title/tt0083316/

http://imdb.com/title/tt0083316/trivia

 It basically describes a High School teacher that starts a "mind Game" with his students where they wind up emulating Hitler Youth.

 
- Ed C.

QuoteIMO relabelling and (re)purposing the project as an educational tool, rather than a private activity of "playing Holocaust", goes a long way.

Bollocks.  To borrow JimBob's phrase, this game is as much educational as Dr. Phil is legitimate therapy.  

If anything, casting it as some kind of "educational tool" is even more poisonous, for the very reasons I've already stated.  

It's a playacting game.  Not real life.  Period.