Quote from: Scrivener of Doom;1104078Rich Baker is a great designer.

Even Chris Perkins said that Rich was the best adventure designer at WotC. (And, yes, adventure design is only a subset of RPG design but it's the one where everything else comes together.) It's hard to believe Rich got booted but the spammiest of OGL spambots was retained. Maybe Rich wasn't interested in going woke?

And then he co-designed the disaster of 4e D&D Gamma World. Id like to hope that he was not involved in the stupider segments.

Quote from: Haffrung;1104118Yep. It's not clear to me if the people pushing the stuff really believe most gamers are so deeply fucked up that this sort of hyper-anxious policing of behaviour is necessary, or they're just so in love with the idea of being saviours that they'll pretend the world is far more dangerous than it really is on order to burnish their reputation.

Both.

The problems started when people began to believe insane sociopaths and grifters. This on top of listening to the paranoid nuts out there who see OFFENSE!!! and DANGER!!!! in everything.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1104120Gonna call it: some troll GM is going to use the list to find out just where to strike. I mean just using this list is kinda exposing your own weaknesses to someone else. Some people you're concerned enough about to require an explicit no-no list at that. Which actually vulnerable person is going to consent to any of this?

Sadly this is not exactly new. I'd talked to a fellow DM several years ago who recounted having a new player who on arrival handed him a list of things that could not be in the campaign or any session.

What is going to be the end result of this?

Lets assume they manage to make it mandatory on all cons.
Then what? You think the crowd will be the same, smaller or larger?

Lets assume also they manage to make all the big publishers to include it in their products. Then what? How are they gonna make anybody use it at home?

I might be alone in thinking that this is good news for the hobby in general, the more the zealots expose themselves as the crazy idiots they are the sooner the less vocal among us will start opposing them, the more people will speak against them, the more the general public will notice just how totalitarian and intolerant they are.

I think they believe that managing to make this mandatory in all cons is a victory for them. And it is, but a Pyrrhic victory, maybe the beginning of the end for their control on our corner of the culture.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1104144What is going to be the end result of this?

Lets assume they manage to make it mandatory on all cons.
Then what? You think the crowd will be the same, smaller or larger?

Lets assume also they manage to make all the big publishers to include it in their products. Then what? How are they gonna make anybody use it at home?

I might be alone in thinking that this is good news for the hobby in general, the more the zealots expose themselves as the crazy idiots they are the sooner the less vocal among us will start opposing them, the more people will speak against them, the more the general public will notice just how totalitarian and intolerant they are.

I think they believe that managing to make this mandatory in all cons is a victory for them. And it is, but a Pyrrhic victory, maybe the beginning of the end for their control on our corner of the culture.

I think the end is to make this normative everywhere that isn't literally dudes around a table chucking dice all by themselves. So it's going to be mandatory at the Cons, at the Game Store, online in any form (either technically implemented or via TOS clauses), etc. so that most users in most public-facing outlets are subject to this regime and thus give the appearance of normalcy while accounts gainsaying this narrative are snuffed out with extreme prejudice.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;1104156I think the end is to make this normative everywhere that isn't literally dudes around a table chucking dice all by themselves. So it's going to be mandatory at the Cons, at the Game Store, online in any form (either technically implemented or via TOS clauses), etc. so that most users in most public-facing outlets are subject to this regime and thus give the appearance of normalcy while accounts gainsaying this narrative are snuffed out with extreme prejudice.

Well they can try to make it mandatory online

https://www.rptools.net/

http://rolisteam.org/

Something tells me they won't succeed.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;1104156I think the end is to make this normative everywhere that isn't literally dudes around a table chucking dice all by themselves. So it's going to be mandatory at the Cons, at the Game Store, online in any form (either technically implemented or via TOS clauses), etc. so that most users in most public-facing outlets are subject to this regime and thus give the appearance of normalcy while accounts gainsaying this narrative are snuffed out with extreme prejudice.

That is how they have operated in other fields.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1104144I might be alone in thinking that this is good news for the hobby in general, the more the zealots expose themselves as the crazy idiots they are the sooner the less vocal among us will start opposing them, the more people will speak against them, the more the general public will notice just how totalitarian and intolerant they are.

Except normal people wont oppose them because everyone treats these nutcases as if they were sane and their insane demands are reasonable and should be followed.

Moreso because these cultists can, have, and will paint anyone speaking out against them as racist, sexist ist-ist, everything-ist and of course "allways believe the victem." So who are they going to believe? You? Or the person cryinging crocodile tears of victimhood? We see this more and more in gaming and other venues.

Letting this stuff stand and fester is worse than stupid.

It didnt work the time before this, or the time before that, or probably the time before even that. These movements continue to gain momentum the longer you let them run rampant and lose steam far slower even as they eventually turn on eachother and someone gets a personal wake-up call. Possibly with false charges jail time.

And this is what tends to be the more telling brake on the PC wagon. Supporters or bystanders get attacked and sooner or later start opposing them. This is why the art circuit is so over the top now for example. And we are gradually seeing this creep into RPGs.

Quote from: Omega;1104197Except normal people wont oppose them because everyone treats these nutcases as if they were sane and their insane demands are reasonable and should be followed.

Sounds more like 2009 than 2019. The Great Awokening post-2012 has been accompanied by much greater understanding and resistance. If people don't oppose them these days it is much more likely from fear and from desire for a quiet life, than from ascription of moral virtue to the Woke. I do see some 'nice Liberals' who still think like that - "They're wrong/taking it too far, but they're coming from a Good Place" - but those guys are a dying breed.

I think the situation today resembles that behind the Iron Curtain when Communism still ruled, but had lost all moral authority among the general population.

Quote from: jeff37923;1104067The thing that sticks in my craw is that the act of creating a guidebook on consent in an RPG is declaring that your average gamer is an incompetant at socialization and needs this. Same with the X-card. If the person you are gaming with is that pathetic at human interaction, then they probably shouldn't be involved in the hobby.

This is the kind of crap that sucks the fun right out of a RPG.

Browbeating, shaming and guilt-tripping people is a tried-and-true method of exercising control. Making them stay in line through the implied threat of social ostracism and mob violence - losing their support network in one swoop - is "outsourcing" the same control mechanism to a faceless, hysterical and ultimately unaccountable crowd. It results in a stifling environment that feels suffocating. And it does suffocate people, spiritually and eventually physically. People who believe they are guilty, or would be found guilty if they were singled out don't speak up and don't stick their necks out for other people. They obey and stay silent. They don't fight. When someone is targeted, they stay quiet like a mouse, secretly glad it is not them. When they get targeted, they are easily broken.

Obviously, nobody actively pushing for these guidelines here and now believes him- or herself to promote totalitarian thought control.* Nevertheless, totalitarian methods and worldviews produce totalitarian results.

__________
* Some do revel in destroying "bad people" - there are your future Nazis and Bolsheviks.

Quote from: S'mon;1104084Another edit: Looking at Wikipedia, frankly it's clear his design talents go far beyond RPGs. He seems to have produced most of the best D&D stuff over the past 30 years!

Whichever bozo wrote that wikipedia entry left out Baker's most important contribution, creating and then writing the best D&D world ever, Birthright.

As for the whole business of the OP, I am fairly pessimistic about the current state of affairs.

Things have been deteriorating, not getting better. I was a teacher in a big ESL school from 2007 to 2014. In my time there, me and 3 other guys were the only straight men out of a group of about 30. Several of the women were lesbian as well. Prime human material for SJWdom, right? But in all that time, only one of the women was an in-your-face feminazi, and only two of the gay guys were sorta into the SJW stuff.

Since I left, a friend of mine that continued working there tells me the situation has radically changed. He can't even talk to people anymore, since they have essentially all turned into mega-SJWs that don't tolerate even a whisper of a different opinion. He has decided to ignore everyone, since they all either ignore him or decry him as the worst of the worst. This doesn't look like improvement to me.

In RPGs, I haven't been to a convention in many, many summers, and the International RPG Meeting in São Paulo (which, for a while, was second only to GenCon in terms of visitors) has been gone since 2015, so I don't have a way to gauge the overall situation here in Brasil. My friends don't really do the SJW thing, even though one is an actual communist and most are lefties. However, I can imagine how bad things are among the younger crowd, who has grown up during the upswing of the SJW movement.

To sum it up, I think things will get worse before they get better....if they get better.

Quote from: BronzeDragon;1104219Whichever bozo wrote that wikipedia entry left out Baker's most important contribution, creating and then writing the best D&D world ever, Birthright.

No, it's missing from the Bibliography but the career section says

Baker and Colin McComb co-designed the Birthright campaign setting.[3]:29 The Birthright Campaign Setting boxed set won the 1995 Origins Award for Best New Role-Playing Supplement: "I'm very proud of it. It represents an entirely new approach to the traditional fantasy roleplaying campaign, and the world itself is filled with a strong sense of history."[1] Baker also oversaw the development of the Player's Option series of second edition AD&D manuals, stating "I greatly enjoyed the work I did on the World Builder's Guidebook".[1]

Monte Cook is the most overrated game designer in the history of the hobby.  He is also a leftist SJW loon and so is Shanna Germain.  I generally ignore the garbage that spews forth from them.

Quote from: Melan;1104217Obviously, nobody actively pushing for these guidelines here and now believes him- or herself to promote totalitarian thought control.* Nevertheless, totalitarian methods and worldviews produce totalitarian results.

Most, even the vast majority of them, fit that profile.  That's where the phrase "useful idiots" applies.  There are exceptions, though.   Most of the people in any cultural revolution think that it won't be their proverbial necks on the line.  There is nothing special about RPGs that will play out any different in that respect.  If anything, the lower stakes (compared to everything else in life) makes the outcomes more predictable.

It's no coincidence that a BDSM-loving succubus wrote the consent guide for MCG. An adult life filled with weird, unnatural, deviant behaviour probably bit her on the ass (in a figurative and unwelcome sense) so she suddenly discovered that rules were required to deal with the creeps her perverse lifestyle attracted.

Quote from: S'mon;1104084(snip) Another edit: Looking at Wikipedia, frankly it's clear his design talents go far beyond RPGs. He seems to have produced most of the best D&D stuff over the past 30 years!

Agreed.

My last campaign was basically an expanded version of Reavers of Harkenwold and Search for the Diamond Staff so it's fair to say it owed a lot to Rich's work.

Note that he was arguably the only WotC designer who wrote decent 4E adventures from the get-go. Everyone else there failed - including Bruce Cordell who once had a reputation as an excellent adventure writer.

Quote from: Omega;1104139And then he co-designed the disaster of 4e D&D Gamma World. Id like to hope that he was not involved in the stupider segments.

I rather like GW7E/GWD&D4E - other than the collectible cards that were Slavicseked on to the design team.

Quote from: BronzeDragon;1104219Whichever bozo wrote that wikipedia entry left out Baker's most important contribution, creating and then writing the best D&D world ever, Birthright. (snip)

Birthright was genuinely innovative and interesting.

Quote from: S'mon;1104220No, it's missing from the Bibliography but the career section says

Baker and Colin McComb co-designed the Birthright campaign setting.[3]:29 The Birthright Campaign Setting boxed set won the 1995 Origins Award for Best New Role-Playing Supplement: "I'm very proud of it. It represents an entirely new approach to the traditional fantasy roleplaying campaign, and the world itself is filled with a strong sense of history."[1] Baker also oversaw the development of the Player's Option series of second edition AD&D manuals, stating "I greatly enjoyed the work I did on the World Builder's Guidebook".[1]

He was also the only WotC designer who could write decent fiction. His Forgotten Realms novels, especially the Last Mythal trilogy, were surprisingly good both as novels and as lore dumps for FR fans.