I didn't quite understand where the BDSM angle was coming from, but after looking up Shanna Germain's home page - hoo boy, now those are some red flags, and you don't even need to open the 'Erotica' section to find a bunch of them.

Explains a few things.

Quote from: Melan;1104386I didn't quite understand where the BDSM angle was coming from, but after looking up Shanna Germain's home page - hoo boy, now those are some red flags, and you don't even need to open the 'Erotica' section to find a bunch of them.

Explains a few things.

Yes, and Jezebel has found her Ahab.

The succubus has, so far, been declared the winner of that relationship.

Harlot, succubus, Jezebel? Did she harshly turn you down for a date or something?

Quote from: Bren;1104412Harlot, succubus, Jezebel? Did she harshly turn you down for a date or something?

Hehe... it might seem that way but, no.

I just find it interesting that the people lecturing others on how to live their lives are the same people who are making profoundly self-destructive life choices. And that, of course, is why going woke simply doesn't work.

Quote from: Scrivener of Doom;1104413I just find it interesting that the people lecturing others on how to live their lives are the same people who are making profoundly self-destructive life choices.

Yeah I've noticed that too, but lot's of people still buy into organized religions.

Quote from: Bren;1104415Yeah I've noticed that too, but lot's of people still buy into organized religions.

This guy gets it.

Fundamentalism is always bad, whether it be in the form of woke SJW's, Evangelical Neo-Puritans, or Islamist jihadists.

Fundamentalism and zealotry take many forms, and every one of these forms is extremely self-destructive and leads people down the path of misery and self-destruction.

Quote from: Bren;1104415Yeah I've noticed that too, but lot's of people still buy into organized religions.

Except organized religion held societies together for millennia and look how well ours is holding together without it.

One of the biggest problems with a lot of fantasy RPGs is they rip one of the central elements that built the medieval world out of it, replace it with a hodgepodge of extraplanar psychic vampires with super powers who can be killed and replaced by mortals at random intervals and then expect it to look just like Medieval Europe.

Quote from: Chris24601;1104424Except organized religion held societies together for millennia and look how well ours is holding together without it.

One of the biggest problems with a lot of fantasy RPGs is they rip one of the central elements that built the medieval world out of it, replace it with a hodgepodge of extraplanar psychic vampires with super powers who can be killed and replaced by mortals at random intervals and then expect it to look just like Medieval Europe.

Damn. There is NO fat in that post. Well done.

Quote from: Chris24601;1104424Except organized religion held societies together for millennia and look how well ours is holding together without it.

One of the biggest problems with a lot of fantasy RPGs is they rip one of the central elements that built the medieval world out of it, replace it with a hodgepodge of extraplanar psychic vampires with super powers who can be killed and replaced by mortals at random intervals and then expect it to look just like Medieval Europe.

   +1. And the crowning irony is that many of the folks who profit from this will turn around and complain about misrepresentation and cultural appropriation.

(There are numerous reasons why I look at Dragonlance through my Anti-Canon lenses nowadays, but this is among them.)

Quote from: GIMME SOME SUGAR;1104102Oh, my goodness! I got banned when trying to make my second post on this topic at rpg.net. I asked alittle about what romance, explicit was. I feel violated now. I was just about to add to my post with this when I got a message that I was banned:

I also thought of another thing. The list is kind of filled with potential spoilers. How do you work around that? Lie? "No, Billy, listen to me. Calm down. It's not that kind of horror game. I promise on my mother's grave that there will be no eyeballs in this scenario. Zero, zip, zilch, nada."

Spoiler

GOTCHA, BILLY!!! WHAT'S THE MATTER? SCARED?

To their credit, some of the posters over there seem to have taken this criticism seriously. Handing a malicious GM a list of your personal issues, is probably not a great idea.

Quote from: Chris24601;1104424Except organized religion held societies together for millennia and look how well ours is holding together without it.

One of the biggest problems with a lot of fantasy RPGs is they rip one of the central elements that built the medieval world out of it, replace it with a hodgepodge of extraplanar psychic vampires with super powers who can be killed and replaced by mortals at random intervals and then expect it to look just like Medieval Europe.

What if they can't be replaced by mortals and they WANT it to look just like medieval europe? Problematic?

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1104446To their credit, some of the posters over there seem to have taken this criticism seriously. Handing a malicious GM a list of your personal issues, is probably not a great idea.

Because God forbid the person has enough common sense to only game with a malicious GM once (and leaves the table when shit gets obviously uncomfortable).

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1104492What if they can't be replaced by mortals and they WANT it to look just like medieval europe? Problematic?

Psychic vampires are always problematic (and are still theoretically killable if you eliminate everyone who believes in them; ex. Mab in the 1998 Merlin miniseries).

A counter-question though is WHY would they want it to look like Medieval Europe? Why wouldn't the war god want gladiatorial games played in his honor? Why wouldn't the goddess of sexy times demand more public displays of sexiness and ritual prostitution? Why would the god of drunkenness and orgies not insist on drunkenness and orgies?

And why would creatures that feed off belief want ANY type of advancement that puts the focus of humanity on anything other than worship of them as the end all and be all of Creation? Only an utterly self-sufficient God would allow focus on anything else.

I think a lot of the post-Christian completely underestimates the degree to which the teachings of Jesus Christ (whether you believe he was the Son of God or not) has influenced what we even think of AS morality. Whose followers started the concept of hospitals? universities? the scientific method (no point in even bothering if you don't believe in a God that created a rational universe)? who copied and transcribed a lot of the ancient texts which are the only reason we even remember the likes of Greek, Roman, Celtic or Norse mythology or the works of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle?

The Post-Christian world is living on the inheritance of Christian civilization without really comprehending what the world looks like once it is forgotten as a common point of reference. Where you can't use intrinsic worth of a human life as justification for why the strong shouldn't just enslave the weak and why you aren't ground down into paste to feed all the other slaves the moment you cease to be productive for whomever holds the reigns of the power at the time.

Frankly, a far better portrait of what your standard D&D polytheistic society should look like is either Rome (if civilization is flourishing in your setting) or the post-Bronze Age collapse period (if its the Dark Ages in your world). Chattel slavery, women and children as property of the male head of household, gladiatorial games and human sacrifice, honor killings, state and religion as one and the same with rulers often worshiped as living gods. Christianity is almost entirely responsible for wiping those things out of what we consider a civilized society and a lot of people in the West don't even comprehend how unique those things are to Christianity and how little there is to support not going back to them without it.

@Chris - well, conveniently, in a typical D&D world the G-aligned deities (and most of the N ones) do adhere to Christian morality, and keep their followers on the straight & narrow.

Quote from: S'mon;1104518@Chris - well, conveniently, in a typical D&D world the G-aligned deities (and most of the N ones) do adhere to Christian morality, and keep their followers on the straight & narrow.

   That is a good point, but it can run into conflict with the 'gods depend on worship' and 'Balance is all-important' tropes that have been woven into most of the D&D cosmologies since late 1st Edition or so.