Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1059009There is still another problem though. Varg isn't the only kind of bad racism that still exist. Maybe some people have broadened the spectrum too much, or place too much weigh on the lighter side of the spectrum. But there are still bad racist ideas people can embrace before they get to the level of Varg, and some people use Varg as cover for that.

Even if that is true - I think it has some truth - treating it as a continuum or slippery slope is very much to the benefit of actual Nazis. It makes it easy for them to say "You see; I'm just like you. They hate us both and call us the same names."

Quote from: Rhedyn;1059012Are you trolling? The chain shows him asking if boys were being excluded not that he was attacking him for being gay.

All FeloniousMonk does is troll here.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1059009There is still another problem though. Varg isn't the only kind of bad racism that still exist. Maybe some people have broadened the spectrum too much, or place too much weigh on the lighter side of the spectrum. But there are still bad racist ideas people can embrace before they get to the level of Varg, and some people use Varg as cover for that.

Well, that is what happens when a term used to describe a vile set of behaviors gets overused, it loses its impact and meaning. Rapist, racist, homophobe,Nazi, all of those words have gotten overused by leftists trying to smear people when they are losing an argument. So now, they have been rendered ineffectual thanks to those same leftists who have overused them.

Varg Vikernes is an asshole and as both a Pagan and a Gamer, he really pisses me off.

He recently made a video about D&D and the Satanic Panic, and it contains his usual racist lunacy.

So I just now posted a video in response to his bullshit, arguing for reconciliation between Christians and Pagans, and that we should put ideologies and extremism aside and just play the damn game!

Extremism has no place at the gaming table, and the RPG community should be about games and not political ideologies or extremism.

[video=youtube;hdoW-G4XDg0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdoW-G4XDg0[/youtube]

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1059025Extremism has no place

FTFY

Quote from: Warboss Squee;1058971I could deal with the embezzlement cause we have laws to deal with that stuff. I could even deal with Critias and the rest of the writers saying I'm a monster cause I supported Trump over Clinton.

But SR5 is a bad game. Combat is a mess, gear is a mess, and there's a massive amount of "3rd Edition was my fav, so let's regress".

Factor in that every supplement had less content than the previous edition's just so they could sell you a $20 pdf?

Fuck 'em. Not one DIME more.

Yeah they sure made it easy didn't they?

Quote from: S'mon;1059008Yes - eg if you look at Brendan's post above about Vikernes #115, it is entirely reasonable when applied to someone like Vikernes. But very similar language gets used all the time about people who are nothing like Vikernes. This makes it easy for the wolves to hide among the sheep, when the hunters can't distinguish the two.

In my opinion, any hunter who thinks that Vikernes is difficult to distinguish from an innocent sheep is either (1) utterly mentally defective, (2) a fucking racist shithead, or more likely, both. He is a convicted murderer who openly espouses neo-nazism.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1059025Varg Vikernes is an asshole and as both a Pagan and a Gamer, he really pisses me off.

He recently made a video about D&D and the Satanic Panic, and it contains his usual racist lunacy.

So I just now posted a video in response to his bullshit, arguing for reconciliation between Christians and Pagans, and that we should put ideologies and extremism aside and just play the damn game!

Extremism has no place at the gaming table, and the RPG community should be about games and not political ideologies or extremism.

I agree that Vikernes is an asshole, and I also don't want him in the gaming community. But the key line for me is that he is a frickin violent murderer. (Not that murder is the only line to cross - but it is certainly is way past the line.)

If people want to peacefully run games with political ideologies in them - of whatever stripe - then I think that's fine. There should be room for non-political games, moderate political games, and extreme political games.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1059031FTFY

Extremism is the way to shift the Overton Window. Having a few screaming maniacs on your side makes your more moderate members seem comparatively reasonable, and because the rest of the world would rather deal with the relatively normal folks than the freaks, when used adroitly that can lead to incremental political and policy gains. The left has used this very successfully in their push for gay rights, for instance. In fact, the general leftward tendency over the last 60 years on social issues has been led by extremists, whose ideas have been progressively normalized, and replaced with new views even further to the left.

The problem now is both sides have picked up on the tactic, both are pushing toward undesirable extremes, and both mainstreams are adopting the tactics of extremists, so there's little distinction between the norms and the freaks. The left traditionally has the edge, which is why they've been dominating the culture wars despite losing nearly all the political wars, but with the loss of the middle and the extremists tugging from both sides, it seems like the Overton Window isn't moving so much as fracturing into a zillion little pieces that are being scattered around the fringe.

That's why politics should be kept from non-niche games, now more than ever. Because there's no relatively safe, generic middle any more. Everyone sees everyone else as screaming freaks.

Quote from: jhkim;1059044In my opinion, any hunter who thinks that Vikernes is difficult to distinguish from an innocent sheep is either (1) utterly mentally defective, (2) a fucking racist shithead, or more likely, both. He is a convicted murderer who openly espouses neo-nazism.

They don't see the sheep as innocent. Some of those sheep voted for Trump!

I guess some of the hunters are fucking racist shitheads - the sheep are white, the wolves have white fur, they're all white so they all need shooting... but I kinda think you missed the point of my analogy.

Quote from: S'mon;1059054They don't see the sheep as innocent. Some of those sheep voted for Trump!

I guess some of the hunters are fucking racist shitheads - the sheep are white, the wolves have white fur, they're all white so they all need shooting... but I kinda think you missed the point of my analogy.

Trumps a cunt?

Quote from: HorusArisen;1059056Trumps a cunt?

I love both cunts and my President! Win-win!

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;1059068I love both cunts and my President! Win-win!

Just make sure you grab him.

Giving credit where credit is due, at least WotC is supporting a good cause here:

https://www.customink.com/fundraising/wotcdndoperationgratitude2018

Anyone else find Varg Vikernes strangely soothing to listen to? He's like some white supremacist Bob Ross.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1058898Explain.

Everything is moving to digital, and the Ministry of Right Think have demonstrated they're fully capable of deplatforming anyone they don't like. They can ban you from #Twitter, suspend your #Patreon, prevent you from using #Kickstarter, disable your #MasterCard, take your videos down on #YouTube, deindex you on #Google, and even take the domain name you paid for away. And when they can't do this through legal means they resort to #Doxxing, #DDOS, and extortion. Their ultimate aim is to prevent anyone they don't like from accessing financial services or using the internet entirely.

Increasingly games (like #Overwatch) depend on having an account to play, so being suspended means you cannot play the game you paid for! Companies (like #Blizzard) are increasingly banning users based on off-site behavior and political opinions, so you have to watch what you say even in private. Corporations are pushing to stream games rather than sell them, so this is only going to get worse. And even if I only wanted to play tabletop RPGs in meatspace, I still have to buy them online, so if my #DriveThruRPG account were suspended I'd be screwed.

Meanwhile in the real world they're taking positions of authority and instituting vaguely worded codes of conduct which allow them to prevent anyone they don't like from participating in conventions, LARPs, and other events. They can declare guilt when it suits them and then find reasons for it afterwards. And the architects of these policies rarely follow them themselves! It's purely authoritarian.

The situation with #Roll20 was the final nail for me. Nolan T Jones banned someone for having a similar name to someone already banned, just because that user had the audacity to criticize his product. And then when the mistake was realized, he kept that user banned because of how they reacted to being falsely accused. And when this shitstorm finally made it to r/all, Nolan's response became the second most downvoted comment in #Reddit history (not counting the Thanos one which asked to be downvoted), which led to all the #Roll20 employees abandoning ship and handing the mess off to the folks at r/lfg to mod, and their first action was to declared a 48 hour meme war.

But that's not the worst of it, because is was later revealed (and corroborated by at least four people involved) that Nolan decided who to sponsor based not on reach or passion, but on race and gender, and how diverse they'd make the platform seem, which is completely counter to the ethos presented in #Roll20's own Code of Conduct. And I'd love to link you to the #Reddit threads where that's discussed, but I can't because the new mods removed them all.

So as a #Roll20 user, how confident would you be in using their service after all this? How much money would you actually invest in it when you might be suspended on a false accusation and lose it all?

Quote from: RandyB;1058950There are three general cases regarding creator/publisher behavior:

1. creator or publisher publicly "takes a side" in general political matters.
2. creator or publisher publicly "takes no side" in general political matters. (ex. "a pox on both their houses")
3. creator or publisher publicly says nothing about general political matters.

you forgot #4: Actively gatekeeps people they consider bad or don't share their ideology.

This includes people like Zak S and Whitney Strix Beltrán who have both taken action against specific people in an effort to prevent them from participating. And yet their work is still some of the best in the industry.

Quote from: Warboss Squee;1058974I really should follow Pundit and Sammy and do a video on it for my channel. Because I coukd rant at length.

Please don't, because then they'll make reaction videos to your rant until the whole thing becomes inception.

Quote from: FeloniousMonk;1058969Like when Pundit is so desperately flailing for attention that he attacks a gay DM who teaches at an all girls school who runs an all girls (8-11) game at said school... and the gay DM teacher has had zero communication with Pundit: https://twitter.com/kasimirurbanski/status/1047988621859536897?s=21

Does that qualify?

Quote from: Rhedyn;1059012Are you trolling? The chain shows him asking if boys were being excluded not that he was attacking him for being gay.

Gotta agree with Rhedyn.

FeloniousMonk raised a valid point regarding the all girls thing, as the school is listed in the teacher's bio, so that's absolutely an example of the RPGPundit being lazy and unnecessarily provocative. But then they go on to overstate their case by bringing up the gay thing. Because that was never a point of contention, and the teacher didn't even list that in their bio, so it might not be something they consider important enough to draw attention to.

What both of these folks have in common though is that they're far more concerned with making someone else look bad than pursuing actual social justice. In the meantime I hope Ethan Schoonover's game went well.

Quote from: JeremyR;1058983It really shows the danger of calling everyone a racist, Nazi, etc, because when someone comes along who actually is one, the words have lost all power.

Quote from: S'mon;1059018treating it as a continuum or slippery slope is very much to the benefit of actual Nazis. It makes it easy for them to say "You see; I'm just like you. They hate us both and call us the same names."

This is so obviously the case that I sometimes wonder if this hasn't been the goal all along.

Quote from: jhkim;1059044In my opinion, any hunter who thinks that Vikernes is difficult to distinguish from an innocent sheep is either (1) utterly mentally defective, (2) a fucking racist shithead, or more likely, both.

I don't think you're far off, considering how many of the #CtrlLeft can't.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1059083Anyone else find Varg Vikernes strangely soothing to listen to? He's like some white supremacist Bob Ross.

I am content to leave that an unknown.