Quote from: Antiquation!;1120524Decolonization successful! "How Tabletop RPGs Are Being Reclaimed From Bigots And Jerks!"

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/y3mw5b/how-tabletop-rpgs-are-being-reclaimed-from-bigots-and-jerks?utm_source=reddit.com

I'm so grateful that Evil Hat is saving this hobby!

"Evil Hat Productions recently told me they felt it was important to create distance between themselves and Lovecraft!" By... publishing a new CoC game? Huh. Anyway, I certainly can't wait for all you evil fascists to be forcibly purged.

For those of you non-fascists, grab your BDSM checklists boys and girls!

Was just gonna post that.

"The negative reaction to content warnings always take the same shape. The aggrieved point a finger and claim the writers are having an emotional overreaction, then demand a return to an era where everyone stoically dealt with their trauma and ignored it when a piece of art evoked uncomfortable feelings. This contempt for the weak and machismo are both signs of fascism."

If you disagree you're a FACIST, REEEEEEEEEE!!!

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1120528If you disagree you're a FACIST, REEEEEEEEEE!!!

LMAO. I don't know whether it's more hilarious or pathetic that what you wrote here is, quite literally, what they are openly accusing at this point.

Quote from: Antiquation!;1120533LMAO. I don't know whether it's more hilarious or pathetic that what you wrote here is, quite literally, what they are openly accusing at this point.

Can't it be both?

As I keep saying, call me when WotC apologizes for twenty years of erasing Christians and appropriating our culture in D&D.

Quote from: jhkim;1120476In my experience of RPGs, it's rare for the heroes to be indigenous locals fighting off colonizers.

There's Torg (and the current Torg Eternity) that lets you fight all manner of colonizers from different realities.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1120538Can't it be both?

It wouldn't be the same brain-damaged cultists we've come to know so well if it weren't heaping mounds of both!

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1120541As I keep saying, call me when WotC apologizes for twenty years of erasing Christians and appropriating our culture in D&D.

You may find yourself waiting, erm, a while...

Quote from: Ayn Rand;1120513Like every form of determinism, racism invalidates the specific attribute which distinguishes man from all other living species: his rational faculty. Racism negates two aspects of man's life: reason and choice, or mind and morality, replacing them with chemical predestination.

When you get right down to it, chemical predestination does explain a lot.

Quote from: HaffrungMost woke activists are woefully ignorant of history. I mean, they know marginally more than know-nothing conservatives who have never read a book. But they only learn enough history, selectively parsed, to use as a cudgel against Western culture.

What might actually educate both the conservative know-nothings and the anti-colonial brigade is to delve into history that doesn't involve Europeans at all, either as heroes or oppressors. But of course that would require a genuine curiosity about the world, rather than a need for emotionally-satisfying narratives of good and evil.

Yes, most people in general aren't well-versed in history. I agree particularly about the latter. I feel that learning about the Japanese-Korean conflict -- especially first-hand from my relatives -- has been very informative to me. I've also read up on other non-European-involved conflicts.

Quote from: Altheus;1120517This always bugs me, what would they replace western culture with?

Every people on earth who ever had the ability to colonize and conquer places and people did so. Why are the more recent incidences considered worse? Somebody won, somebody lost, just like the rest of history.

Conquest, war, murder, and rape and other things have happened throughout history - perpetrated by many different peoples. However, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't condemn them and try to behave better. Should the Koreans have just said "Well, the Japanese conquered us - I guess we just give up our own language and identity and all become Japanese now, under Japanese rule?" I think it's natural and indeed morally right that they said that what the Japanese did was wrong, fought back, and tried to undo the effects of that conquest.

Morally, might does not make right. There are conquerors and bullies out there, and we should try to stand against them and their effects.

One of the main weapons used in political rhetoric is what I call "Motte and Bailey by Assumption".  In a traditional Motte and Bailey fallacy, the speaker puts forward a controversial position and, when challenged, retreats to a far milder similar position which he pretends is the same position.  Likely he will swap them back later in the discussion when it serves his purpose.  (This needs to be distinguished from just clarifying where the speaker may have stated things wrongly in the first place and is trying to offer a genuine clarification.)

In the more sophisticated form, the position holder is careful to not state their actual claim openly.  They will instead use commonly accepted terms in uncommon ways, relying on the fact that the listener not initiated into the particular usages of their ideology will assume a more charitable position than they really hold.  I believe that is what's happening here.   I don't think when today's terminally woke say "colonialism" or "decolonizing" they mean the same thing as the simple act of sending out colonies, or even something as blatant as conquest or occupation.  I think they mean something more than this - something like a "mental decolonization" which is to say, a rejection of Western civilization as such.

eg:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoloniality
http://projectechoes.eu/decolonizing/

"Decolonization" in today's parlance isn't about fighting for self-determination against outright aggression in game, it's about an out of game ideology seeking to co-opt gaming.  

Take the situation of a small human polis threatened by an aggressive horde of savage monsters (orcs, trolls, cannibal barbarians, whatever). If my understanding is correct this would NOT count as an example of "decolonization" or "anti-colonization".  Rather the advocates for decolonization would lament that the very structure of this scenario is ITSELF an example of colonization and "white-supremacy".

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1120541As I keep saying, call me when WotC apologizes for twenty years of erasing Christians and appropriating our culture in D&D.

Nah, they also need to apologize on behalf of TSR, whom they purchased in toto, for the previous 26 years of the same.

Quote from: jhkim;1120546There are conquerors and bullies out there, and we should try to stand against them and their effects.

Agreed. What I suspect most object to in the SJ advocates' version of this plank are the contentions that "standing against conquerors" requires cultural protectionism stronger than the inhabitants of the interacting cultures themselves may want (imagine if the speaking or teaching of Japanese, the reading or publication of novels translated from Japanese, or the selling or eating of Japanese food was outlawed in Korea), or that allowing a previously dominated culture to regain some of its freedom and self-development requires the previously dominating culture to disavow all belief in or defense of its own good qualities and content, or to pay for that restoration without having any input into how the restoration funds are actually used.

Might does not make right, but just because one is naturally sympathetic to the underdog does not mean the underdog is always the moral superior in any conflict either, or is guaranteed to stay the moral superior if they actually gain victory in that conflict -- q.v. the French Revolution collapsing into the Reign of Terror.

For a good RPG setting on this theme, imagine a tribute province of a declining Empire finally being released to its own rule as the legionnaires pull out (cf. the Romans leaving proto-Arthurian Britain). On the one hand, freedom, yay! On the other hand, however hard the Imperials try to organize their departure, there's going to be a power vacuum: the internal politics of exactly who gets to take over (why not your PCs?), the external threats of outlanders and monsters seeing the removal of the previous protective force (time to teach those orcs to fear our banners, not the Empire's!), the personal drama of families and friends being separated by the politics of both issues (no, your tribune won't let you resign to marry your local sweetheart, you've still got two years on your term of service, bucko!), and the profit opportunities for the unscrupulous trying to commandeer whatever the Imperials leave behind (do you know how much gold they're paying for leftover alchemical supplies?!), all would make for a great campaign.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1120568For a good RPG setting on this theme, imagine a tribute province of a declining Empire finally being released to its own rule as the legionnaires pull out (cf. the Romans leaving proto-Arthurian Britain). On the one hand, freedom, yay! On the other hand, however hard the Imperials try to organize their departure, there's going to be a power vacuum: the internal politics of exactly who gets to take over (why not your PCs?), the external threats of outlanders and monsters seeing the removal of the previous protective force (time to teach those orcs to fear our banners, not the Empire's!), the personal drama of families and friends being separated by the politics of both issues (no, your tribune won't let you resign to marry your local sweetheart, you've still got two years on your term of service, bucko!), and the profit opportunities for the unscrupulous trying to commandeer whatever the Imperials leave behind (do you know how much gold they're paying for leftover alchemical supplies?!), all would make for a great campaign.

You just described and expanded on one of my campaign ideas: a very early start Pendragon campaign.

Quote from: RandyB;1120571You just described and expanded on one of my campaign ideas: a very early start Pendragon campaign.

Barbara Hambly's novel Dragonsbane also depicts a very atmospheric setting in which the primary civilizational state power is retreating from its subject lands, and which demonstrates the many ways in which this process quite often sucks greatly, however glad one might be of the regained freedom.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1120528Was just gonna post that.

"The negative reaction to content warnings always take the same shape. The aggrieved point a finger and claim the writers are having an emotional overreaction, then demand a return to an era where everyone stoically dealt with their trauma and ignored it when a piece of art evoked uncomfortable feelings. This contempt for the weak and machismo are both signs of fascism."

If you disagree you're a FACIST, REEEEEEEEEE!!!

Greetings!

FASCIST REEEEEEEEE!!! Geesus, that is so hilarious! The sounds they make, crying and sobbing! Their lips quivering, whining as they fall helplessly to their knees, begging for a "safe space" and a stuffed animal to hold.

Yeah, I have seen videos of these SJW's acting just like that, and worse. Hysterics, oh my god! The tears! Blubbering and sobbing women.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: HappyDaze;1120542There's Torg (and the current Torg Eternity) that lets you fight all manner of colonizers from different realities.

See?! Decolonizing adventures can be fun! And you don't have to use FATE. And it all happened before our precious snowflakes were born or out of diapers, let alone had their first class-walkout protest.