Quote from: jeff37923;1105442I'm sorry that you are feeling butthurt for getting called on your bullshit there, cupcake.

You are the one that made the butthurt outburst.

Quote from: sureshot;1105445I'm not fond of JHkim debating tactics either. While I disagree with BRB about him being an SJW, what the fuck does his religion have to do with the discussion at hand. I could care less and that just smacks of desperation of not being able to find the right thing to say.
Seconded.

When his religion is a leftist cult a hell of a lot.

Quote from: Gagarth;1105565When his religion is a leftist cult a hell of a lot.

I am not unitarian, but I've been to a few unitarian services and have known unitarians. For the most part they just seem like liberal Christians who are actually pretty mild as people go. But they also seem to vary a lot from church to church. I wouldn't describe them as cult-like. Being more accustomed to Catholic and High Episcopal services, they seemed a lot less invested in ritual and not particularly dogmatic. If peoples' religion is causing them to go out in the world and do good works (which seems to be the case with Jkhm) I'd say it is more of a positive force than a negative one.

Quote from: sureshot;1105445I'm not fond of JHkim debating tactics either. While I disagree with BRB about him being an SJW

Seconded.

I think if you think he is an SJW, you need to visit other communities more. Liberal and/or progressive does not equal SJW.

Now I'm left wanting an answer to Gagarth's question. Do those progressive unitarian protestants show porn as part of sex ed?

Quote from: Gagarth;1105565When his religion is a leftist cult a hell of a lot.

Besides you no one really gives a huge flying fuck.

I don't like his some of his opinions and he and I will not agree on many subjects. I'm not going to go to trash the guy because of his religion. When it comes to most religions I let bygones be bygones.

Quote from: Chris24601;1104507Psychic 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 don't much care for the idea that RPG gods depend on belief to power themselves; as you note, they would then be primarily motivated to get more followers, so more likely to grant you that miracle if there's a big audience of potential converts, and I don't know of any game with a mechanic like that. (Maybe conversely mages would get better results in secret.) It is sufficient that gods are constrained from direct action and act through mortals while encouraging whatever agenda they have (or they'd sort things out themselves rather than depending on adventurers).

A game world could have 0, 1, 2 or many gods (once you're above two, there's not much difference in exactly how many).

The one god could be completely uninvolved (and therefore hard to distinguish from having no gods), very benevolent or very malevolent - these correspond to the Impartial GM, the Monty Haul GM and the Killer GM, with the latter two being games to avoid, although they could be toned down as a god who plays according to some rules or self-imposed limits (the more active the god(s), the more limited they have to be, however you justify it, for the RPG to be playable).

The two gods would be good guys vs bad guys or Law vs Chaos or, without judging, our side vs their side.

But in either case there isn't much for the player characters to do by way of appealing to the one or two gods; the pantheon of more than two opens up a wealth of factions and intrigues, where player characters could potentially seek different patrons among the gods, and it can justify rules for game balance (e.g., the other gods mandated that mages can't wear armor or use swords because the followers of the god of magic would have too great an advantage).

Lawrence Watt-Evans' Denner's Wreck has a pantheon of [STRIKE]gods[/STRIKE]humans with advanced technology living on a planet of primitive humans who view them as gods. Long time since I read it, but the "gods" dealt with the colony in a variety of ways.

QuoteI 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?

Pre-Christian hospitals in ancient Greece, India, Sri Lanka and Rome, according to Wikipedia. The Academia from ancient Greece. Pew Research Center says less than half of scientists believe in God; while many scientists have been motivated by their religious faith, religion has often been at odds with science. Preserving Greek works seems based in the idea that the Greeks perfected non-religious knowledge while the Bible answered all religious questions, and woe to those who questioned either (we have three discoverers of non-Euclidean geometry because even in the 19th century Gauss didn't want to risk controversy by questioning Euclid).

QuoteChattel 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.

Lots of Christians were or are fine with most of those things.

Quote from: rawma;1105869Lots of Christians were or are fine with most of those things.

None of the once Christian states practices any of these things now unlike a number of Islamic states (and a large number of those who have migrated from those states) but we are not supposed to talk about that.

Get back on topic, or suffer my wrath.

Quote from: Gagarth;1105912None of the once Christian states practices any of these things now unlike a number of Islamic states (and a large number of those who have migrated from those states) but we are not supposed to talk about that.

Fallacy of relative privation (and some cherry picking or false equivalence or no true Scotsman).

Not interested in defending Islam, but in the "Islamic Golden Age" a thousand years ago it was maybe better than both Christian Europe of the time (including on some measures listed by the previous poster) and present day Islam. But (back on topic for the forum, if not the original thread) as soon as you put into your RPG/module that kind of judgement on anything in the real world you risk somebody getting all worked up about it -- arguing you depicted it as worse or better than the critic would like. Unless your game is about that kind of controversy, I think it better to avoid hot-button things like real world religion or current politics. (I haven't waded into that thread on the Deadlands with nearly 300 replies but it'd be unsurprising if that's what's happening there.)

So, a monotheistic religion in a game world is going to be taken by some people as a thinly veiled analogue of one of the major real world monotheistic religions and get them irate, so I see it as another reason a pantheon is better. Again, unless your objective is to get people irate.

In one of my old Rolemaster campaigns a human empire had realized that the gods needed energy from worship so they started working on monotheism and weaponized gods.  One of the artifacts in the campaign is a goad that can be used to force gods to obey.  Anyhow, the Empire of the Divinity of Man died out when the fertility goddess fought back by going into hiding and no children were born for 20 years.  Well, there was one but that's another story.

No they're not.

Quote from: Razor 007;1103744All this Woke thinking keeps springing forth from members of the old D & D design teams.  There must have been something in the water at WOTC?

Wouldn't surprise me: Part 1 | Part 2

Quote from: S'mon;1103791I also noticed that the quotes from another source ("Your Best Game Ever") seemed considerably more extreme than most of the regular content.

Not sure about more extreme, but certainly more toxic as it suggests you shouldn't play with people whose beliefs you disagree with.

Quote from: cranebump;1103923So, is the problem that Monte Cook is forcing anyone to play his game? Or is this another, "Grrr, those people exist!" thing?...let me guess...

The problem are the people who will thoughtlessly demand these policies be adopted by everyone and declare others toxic for not doing so.

Also the opposite.

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

Well it's already being used as a tool to gatekeep rather than establish consent.

Quote from: Melan;1104217Browbeating, 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.

Accurate.

Quote from: BronzeDragon;1104219Things 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.

Imagine being a child forced to participate in such a system.

Quote from: Scrivener of Doom;1104383It'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.

Can you show us on this gender neutral doll where she touched you?

Quote from: S'mon;1104565At the very least, most people want a setting where their personal morality is viable.

Not necessarily, and there are plenty of RPGs such as #BurningWheel and #Paranoia where that's not the case.

#SJWs, like all radical authoritarians, want all art to validate their values and beliefs, which is why they consider comedy like South Park, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Seinfeld, Rick & Morty, or anything _featuring characters not designed to be role models_ to be an actual threat.

Quote from: S'mon;1105266So my African students tend to come in better educated than those from most other parts of the world - Germans are good too though, but for different reasons I think.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1105276This was my experience at UCLA. The African students (both male and female) were better prepared that most US natives, both for the university academics and being an independent adult in college. Equal to them were the students from Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Quote from: S'mon;1105295Yep. It's quite striking. I value a 2.1 (ie good quality) degree from eg Nigeria or Ghana above its equivalent from almost anywhere else in the world. African students from blue collar and lower middle class backgrounds seem to be better educated than the elites from most of the world. I think you're right they tend to have a more mature attitude too

At least nobody can accuse yous of being white supremacists.

Quote from: S'mon;1105295though I used to be surprised by the universal belief in witchcraft/magic - I'm used to that now.

Nobody's perfect

Quote from: tenbones;1105086AND/OR - more RPG's need the internal consistency of Lion & Dragon as a core design standard.

Alot do. The problem is when you get these group effort RPGs where apparently everyone is on a different page writing a different game. 4e D&D Gamma World is still the poster child for this sort of schizo game design.

Or if you absolutely must have a crowd designing a game. Then at least have everyone on the same damn page or have some sort of hard framework they have to work within.

Doubly so for setting material.

Quote from: Omega;1106738Alot do. The problem is when you get these group effort RPGs where apparently everyone is on a different page writing a different game. 4e D&D Gamma World is still the poster child for this sort of schizo game design.

Or if you absolutely must have a crowd designing a game. Then at least have everyone on the same damn page or have some sort of hard framework they have to work within.

Doubly so for setting material.

It's called an "editor". They are good for consistency of tone and content, too.