Quote from: jhkimHowever, as you can see from the graphic you posted - there are actually only a handful of alleles that distinguish these groups, compared to hundreds of allele differences between individuals. And most of those are going to be ones for skin color, hair, sickle-cell anemia, and so forth. There isn't a lot of room to picture that there are gene clusters for dancing, financial planning, or math that are distinct between these groups.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1064253You should read Robert Plomin's "Blueprint." Twin studies have revealed that everything from how much you like to read to your likelihood of divorce are strongly influenced by genetics. What is outdated is the "nature vs nurture" concept, and the concept of DNA as deterministic programming. It's not an either/or. The effort now is how to quantify the effect nurture has on the expression of nature.

OK, I'll check out Blueprint. Though nature vs nurture was never a binary either/or even prior to recent genetics. I agree that twin studies have shown the importance of genetics in general - and they also highlight the importance of individual variation - since they are generally about differences between identical twins and fraternal twins. However, twin studies don't address the importance of race. And many findings from twin studies are not obvious - like how genetics appears to affect your likelihood of divorce, but not your likelihood of marriage. In general, I think that modern medical studies often overturn traditional stereotypes. The main point I am disagreeing with is Shark's description of race studies -

Quote from: SHARKI'm always reminded of the acedmic, biological studies that have been done which prove several things; Europeans, Russians, Americans, etc. typically and consistently score higher than others in regards to engineering, and financial skills. Blacks generally are superior in athletics, over others. It's not a specifically scientific measurement, though certainly an irrefutable sociological analysis that blacks are fantastically skilled in creative performance and musical abilities; Asians, while multi-talented in a variety of areas, just like white and black people, still demonstrate a consistent superiority in mathematic skills, and similar in scientific scoring with whites. These findings are consistent with a variety of scientific studies encompassing a variety of disciplines which suggest such talents, while influenced by exteriors such as education and culture--fundamentally are rooted in a biological foundation.

I don't think a person needs to have a PHD in anything to come to the same reasonable conclusions.

fearsomepirate - Would you agree with Shark's overview?  Personally, I don't think this accurately reflects the status of modern genetic studies on race. There are population studies that Asians and Asian-Americans tend to be good in math, for example, but there is no good data to isolate that this is primarily genetic.

Quote from: jhkimThis is explained in more detail in the link I gave earlier.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1064253No, it really wasn't. That was a massive exercise in Lewontonin's fallacy.

To keep this vaguely RPG-relevant, consider a d20 and a d14. The average of a d20 roll is 10.5; the average of a d14 is 7.5. The average difference between two individual d20 rolls is 6.65, more than double the average difference between all d20 rolls and all d14 rolls. On top of that, the average difference between a d20 roll and a d14 roll is 6.25!

Lewontonin's fallacy says, "the average between two random, individual d20 rolls is almost the same as the average between an individual d14 roll and an individual d20 roll, therefore there is not a meaningful statistical difference between a d20 and a d14." If you believe that, then you'll be happy to let me switch your d20 for a d14 at the table.

I don't think that the analogy here applies much. In your example, if you're looking at only absolute value of difference, then by switching in a d14 (why d14 BTW???) means you're trading off lower variance for higher average difference.

Genetics are different, though. If one posits that there is a singular "math gene" that Asians uniquely have, then yes, it is possible for there to be lots of overlap between Asians and Europeans while Asians still retaining genetically superior math skill. So in that sense, the overall genetic variation doesn't rule out specific racial stereotypes. From the research, though, it seems unlikely that there is such an allele.

As far as scholastic apptitude being linked to race my own personal experience makes me incredibly skeptical about that, to the point of strongly suspecting prejudice or thick headed ignorance on the part of people who seem sure that race determines, say, how good people are at math.

For example I've taught Korean kids for years now (own an English cram school in Korea) and for a long time I taught kids who'd spent years in American boarding schools but who had returned to Korea alongside Korean kids who'd only studied in Korea and the differences were night and day. They also lined up perfectly with what people say are the genetic differences between Asians and white people (the kids who never left Korea were better at math etc. etc. etc.). So is it just a coincidence that the cultural differences between less and more Americanized Koreans align perfectly with the supposed genetic differences between Asians and white people? Also I taught those kids how to do better on the SATs and a lot of the test taking skills I taught would carry over just fine to things like an IQ test. Would be pretty simple to teach someone to score 10 points higher on an IQ test.

Similarly while African-Americans tend get worse grades etc. than other Americans there's a huge amount of diversity within subsets of African-American demographics. For example the children of recent immigrants (depending a bit on country of origin) tend to do VASTLY better than among people whose ancestors have been in America for a long time. If genetics made a difference here you'd expect it to be the other way around since recent African immigrants have a loooooooot less white ancestry than other African-Americans.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1063675Great scott! That sounds nothing at all like something I would expect a neo-Nazi to like! Truly we are in a time of crisis and panic!

Pretty much my reaction too. A great big "So fucking what?"

Not at the racist stuff. But that people act all surprised that it may have attracted the sorts of people it was written for. And personally I am dubious that it actually did in any significant numbers.

Quote from: Bob Something;1064002Can I just say: "Whatever happened to dealing with drama at the game table only if/when it shows up on a case by case basis?"

I think we are reaching the point where the drama is creeping into the RPGs themselves or where its becoming a good idea to be forewarned and prepared in case one of these lunatics comes your way.

It stopped being about bad players, rules lawyers, min maxers, or even storygamers. Its now about twisting anything and everything into a political agenda.

Like I said. At some point one of these maniacs will declare the color red an appropriation of native american culture. I mean a few have allready in the last year declared the rainbow racist. Soooooo...

Quote from: jhkim;1064274fearsomepirate - Would you agree with Shark's overview?  Personally, I don't think this accurately reflects the status of modern genetic studies on race. There are population studies that Asians and Asian-Americans tend to be good in math, for example, but there is no good data to isolate that this is primarily genetic.

There's a general rule of thumb that being good at something takes a lot of genes (usually, a lot of alleles) working together, whereas being bad at something only takes one defect. So you're not likely to see an 'Asian maths gene'.

I somewhat agree with you insasmuch as there is plenty of evidence that culture is very important and HBD types often ascribe much too much to genes. OTOH when the culture is similar and you still see big differences then genes  likely play a larger role. Again there is a useful rule of thumb, the 50-50 rule - that culture & genes, nurture & nature, both have an impact on variation, of similar magnitude. There are outliers - it's not culture that makes east Africans great distance runners and west Africans great sprinters - but those are exceptions. Furthermore genes can express differently in different environments - genes definitely affect height, but so does diet. People who thought the Japanese were naturally much shorter than Europeans were wrong; it turned out to be largely diet.

The way you determine something is heritable isn't by finding the genes; the way you find the genes is by determining something is heritable. The way you find something is heritable is by analyzing populations and controlling for variation.

Pretty much every single heritable trait varies by ethnic cohort. Lung capacity. Bone density. Lever Tendon length. Estrogen levels. First age of puberty. Color-sensitivity. And yes, problem-solving ability. Empathy. Compliance. You can do your own reading to find how much.

As S'mon pointed out, environment can profoundly affect gene expression (diet affects height, IQ, and a whole bunch of things...eye color not so much). But it can't overcome or neutralize genes.

That's all I've got to say about that.

Quote from: jhkim;1063765Sorry. My apologies for the mistake, and I'll keep it in mind for future postings.

I'm glad you agree with me about the racist nature of the game.

I certainly do. It's a shit game by a piece of shit human being. Fortunately, it's also entirely peripheral.

Also, everyone please get off the tangent of Race and genetics, except as related to RPGs.

OK, getting back to my current campaign - with good-aligned orcs, kobolds, and goblinoids as the PCs.

Quote from:  jhkimI sometimes like shades of grey - but equally, sometimes I just want to kill the bad guys rather than discussing the morality and ethics of what proper social treatment of the bad guys is. The real world might be shades of grey, but in a fantasy game, we can be righteous paladins who really are actual good slaying truly evil monsters.

Quote from: S'mon;1061638There's plenty of slaying evil monsters IMCs. But there's also the non-aggressive Stonehell Kobolds who the PCs got in a feud with after ambushing one of their work teams, and the non-evil goblins who were converted away from evilness by one of my son's old PCs in a previous campaign. All the local orcs hobgoblins and gnolls have been pretty evil, but I do like to roll those 2d6 Reaction checks and see where it goes. The Stonehell megadungeon default for most of the organised factions is that they are pretty nasty but can often be negotiated with - IMC the PCs are at war with the Mountain Trolls and have established relations with the Vrilya, but it could have gone the other way. OTOH there are completely hostile groups like the Depraved Cannibal Berserkers and most of the Undead - though not the Gentleman Ghouls. For me one of the most interesting bits is the Ogre tribes who demand small tolls to pass through their territory, and have so far been tolerated by the PCs because they have trade relations with the kobolds.

I don't think I would like your Kill all Humans game, and I might not be too keen on Kill all Orcs/Goblins either, if they're presented as actual cultures the way you do with your humans/elves/dwarves. I prefer to restrict Kill Them All to demons, undead, and stuff which acts like demons, even if it's called an Orc. 'Genocide Bad, M'Kay?' has tended to be a theme IMCs.

The campaign just started and is a work-in-progress. My intent is for humans to be over-the-top evil with no more actual culture than orcs or drow in standard D&D. They're just evil, and will do things just to be evil. The PCs for the most part are not intent on genocide per se - but the evil races are a constant threat and in general the response to that threat is to fight them.

I do have a planned situation where there is an ostensibly good human, Lareth the Beautiful, who convinces some good people that there can be peace with the humans - but it is a trap. Lareth is a unethical dupe used by other humans to find where potential victims are living so they can loot and kill them.

I have run plenty of campaigns similar to yours where the PCs make uneasy alliances with various factions. In my last campaign, the PCs had a number of goblin henchmen in their group, say. But this campaign is more black-and-white, what I would consider old school - along the lines of Tolkien, say.

With the race reversal it feels more like a deconstruction of Tolkien. And Tolkien had humans on both sides.

Quote from: S'mon;1064915With the race reversal it feels more like a deconstruction of Tolkien. And Tolkien had humans on both sides.

I guess that's a question. Is the race-reversal itself enough to make this a deconstruction in itself? I'm trying to have it be more-or-less straight D&D with the modified background. The adventure content is pretty normal - a bit of talking, exploration, random encounters, and fighting monsters.

I can see it being called a deconstruction just by the nature of the background. Personally, I'm not fond of the works typically called deconstruction because they're typically self-involved and overly analytical. I do like alternate takes on a genre, like Astro City on superheroes - or the Imaro stories compared to Conan and Tarzan.

In my setting, I think there's room for there to be traitorous orcs or others who work with the evil races like Wormtongue in Tolkien. I haven't introduced that so far, but it's a possibility. This isn't a setting that I worked out in detail in advance - I just had the concept and a rough adaptation of the first big adventure - the Temple of the Elements.

Quote from: sureshot;1063656Fatal is not hilarious in anyway shape or form imo.

Made worse by the devs trying to defend their game. It's such a disturbing thing to read. Even more than the rpg itself. It's how they go out of their way not to understand or even remotely accept that their rpg is so terrible and flawed.

I disagree. FATAL is unintentionally hilarious. The dev (term used loosely) defense just makes it better.

FATAL completely stops being hilarious when they get to the blatant and disgusting racism.