Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1120895And then asked players to play Star Trek where everybody was religious and if you were not you were a bad person?

Issues like this were the basis of what I cited as an "offensive" element in RPGs, in another thread: Any game which requires your players to get into a specific philosophical headspace before it can be enjoyed or fully explored is, on a certain level, "offensive" if it doesn't make that philosophical perspective obvious right up front before you buy it. Proselytization has its place but having to listen to it shouldn't be a requirement for an entertainment activity.

Quote from: S'mon;1120835This is entirely correct.

At my work we've been told to "Decolonise the Curriculum", which means removing white/European authors and replace them with non-white/non-European authors. This is regardless of what we're teaching.

Re actual games about Decolonisation, the only one that comes to mind is The Price of Freedom. I do think there are remarkably few RPGs about playing the underdog, considering it is such a common fictional trope. The new Star Wars films have tried to push a Decolonisation type agenda in the SJW sense I guess; especially The Last Jedi.

Thanks S'mon.  In thinking about underdog stories, the old D20 game Midnight comes to mind - a Middle-Earth where Sauron won and the PCs are now underground resistance fighters.  I think Pundit once suggested playing Blue Rose as individualist rebels against the tyranny of the game setting's projected utopia.  Splicers maybe?  I never played it but it sounds like it might fit the bill.

Edit:  It just occurred to me that a Sartar vs the Lunar Empire Runequest game could fit very nicely as a version of the Celts / Germans vs the Romans historical struggle.

Quote from: Brendan;1121001Thanks S'mon.  In thinking about underdog stories, the old D20 game Midnight comes to mind - a Middle-Earth where Sauron won and the PCs are now underground resistance fighters.  I think Pundit once suggested playing Blue Rose as individualist rebels against the tyranny of the game setting's projected utopia.  Splicers maybe?  I never played it but it sounds like it might fit the bill.

Edit:  It just occurred to me that a Sartar vs the Lunar Empire Runequest game could fit very nicely as a version of the Celts / Germans vs the Romans historical struggle.

Midnight has the problem that it's set up as an unwinnable situation. Sartar vs Lunar Empire sounds good, and might even fit the Social Justice tropes pretty closely. Stafford claimed the rather Saxon-esque Heortlings were brown, which makes Decolonisation tropes even better. (BTW I'm sad I never got to play my copy of the Dragon Pass boardgame!)

Quote from: S'mon;1121003Midnight has the problem that it's set up as an unwinnable situation. Sartar vs Lunar Empire sounds good, and might even fit the Social Justice tropes pretty closely. Stafford claimed the rather Saxon-esque Heortlings were brown, which makes Decolonisation tropes even better. (BTW I'm sad I never got to play my copy of the Dragon Pass boardgame!)

Haha.  I started putting together a Midnight game years back and then gave up because it was just too depressing.   Judging by the artwork, current Runequest appears to be relocated to somewhere between India and Persia.  I've heard that this was "always the way it was", which may be true, but I don't remember that vibe from the earlier editions.  I always thought of them as Saxon-ish or Celt-ish too.

Quote from: Brendan;1121016this was "always the way it was"

I love Glorantha and Greg but he bullshitted a LOT.  ^QED, this was never the case in the older stuff, and if his vision changed over the years, that's fine and dandy, but don't piss on my head and tell me it's raining.

Midnight isn't an unwinnable setting, but it's grim as fuck. If you're playing Dark Heresy, you're not going to kill the Chaos Gods and cleanse the Imperium of all heresy in your campaign BUT you might slaughter armies of heretics and defeat a dozen plots of the unclean gods.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1121035Midnight isn't an unwinnable setting, but it's grim as fuck. If you're playing Dark Heresy, you're not going to kill the Chaos Gods and cleanse the Imperium of all heresy in your campaign BUT you might slaughter armies of heretics and defeat a dozen plots of the unclean gods.

In Dark Heresy you have the Emperor and the Imperium, the largest power in known space, on your side. In Midnight Izrador is the only God, his guys control nearly all the real estate, and are basically unbeatable. You're not going to persuade the Orcs to Decolonise and go home.

Yes, yes, Runequest has always been woke.

Spoiler

please don't ask about the broo please don't ask about the broo please don't ask about the broo please don't ask about the broo

Quote from: ThatChrisGuy;1121027I love Glorantha and Greg but he bullshitted a LOT.  ^QED, this was never the case in the older stuff, and if his vision changed over the years, that's fine and dandy, but don't piss on my head and tell me it's raining.

Yeah, my feelings as well.  It has an air of "We've always been at war with East-Asia" about it.

Quote from: Melan;1121044Yes, yes, Runequest has always been woke.

Spoiler

please don't ask about the broo please don't ask about the broo please don't ask about the broo please don't ask about the broo

Knock knock.
Who's there?
Broo.
Broo wh - (Horrible rape noises)

Shame the romance stuff is so off topic, as I think it's worth discussing further. Maybe later in a separate thread.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1120407Schizoaffective totaliphobia: A paranoid attribution of fascist philosophy to one's opposition which is so acute that it renders the sufferer incapable of perceiving his own use of fascistic tactics against those opponents.

That's my favorite, and by that I mean the one I hate seeing the most.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1120434Don't. Not even out of any principle or whatever. Them never having to be culpable to their own language use isn't a flaw on their own end but an intentional structure of their ideology. "Gotcha your a hypocrite" never works on them because that implies they ever cared about ideological consistency in the first place. If they were ideologically consistent they would not be SJWs.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1120439You're not wrong, but in certain contexts making sure this hypocrisy is demonstrated in public can go a long way towards mitigating the effect.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1120440I think at this point the people who noticed have already decided one way or the other. At this point, the battle isn't of awareness but fighting cognitive dissonance.

I'm beginning to think you may be right.

Quote from: insubordinate polyhedral;1120682there's also something exhausting, depressing, and fundamentally destructive about this constant dredging up people's flaws and disavowing of them as a result. Especially when they are long gone and there is nothing they can do about it anymore -- which makes it even more likely that whatever the flaw was a product of their time and not an egregious error on their part.

It reduces everyone to the worst aspects of their character, always. So why try? Judgment will always be based on the worst thing about you, rather than anything you ever accomplished, even as people examine and try to be inspired by the best of your work.

It strips context and intentions and judges people by an unknowable standard. What hope does anyone have to ever accomplish anything in a society that attacks people this way, if doing one's best in spite of incomplete information and the inevitable flaws of humanity isn't enough to earn any credit at all?

This would explain why self reflection is so rare among SJWs, as it would utterly destroy them. And tragically I think most adopted this philosophy with the best of intentions.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1120843Previously I mentioned that "The Litany of Earth" is a landmark for depicting deep ones as a persecuted minority a la The Shape of Water. The irony is that the RPG leftists have utterly failed to recognize that message. They still treat deep ones as evil savages who must be killed, while demonizing Lovecraft for being racist and writing the deep ones as a miscegenation metaphor.

This is hypocrisy.

Indeed it is.

Speaking of which,you can read Litany of Earth over on Tor.com.

Quote from: S'mon;1120926One funny thing is that my students are mostly south-Asian, the majority being Muslim female, and their views on most things are much closer to mine than to the views of the far-left extremist academics who dominate culturally.

They're not the only ones, and the irony of #CtrlLeft culture is that most of the groups they advocate for are either apathetic or antithetical to theirs.

Quote from: Brendan;1121057Knock knock.
Who's there?
Broo.
Broo wh - (Horrible rape noises)

Which reminds me...

Quote from: S'mon;1121041In Dark Heresy you have the Emperor and the Imperium, the largest power in known space, on your side. In Midnight Izrador is the only God, his guys control nearly all the real estate, and are basically unbeatable. You're not going to persuade the Orcs to Decolonise and go home.

I disagree.

In Dark Heresy, you aren't even an Inquisitor. You're an expendable killer working for an Inquisitor who is many light years away. You may have the Emperor in your heart, but the Imperium on your side is at best, a bolter. Instead, its your talented crew stuck on planet with 99 problems and Chaos might not even be number one, and its on your shoulders to root it out.

Midnight is a rough setting, no question about that. You're insurgents against Sauron, but his minions are still orcs, goblins and mostly moron monsters. And orcs are most certainly beatable, especially if the PCs run disruptive operations. Does Izrador have some heavy hitters under him? Sure, but again, you're insurgents so your job is hit (hard) and run (fast).

But a DM can certainly decide Midnight is an unbeatable scenario. Maybe it's the fantasy Kobayashi Maru, but that's a DM choice. I've played plenty of insurgency games and a huge part of the fun is the hit and run for small gains.

For example, I run Palladium's Mechanoid Invasion. There is ZERO chance to beat the Mechanoids...BUT you can buy time for the rescue fleet to arrive (in theory), organize a counter-invasion of their Mothership, and you can certainly cause the Mechanoids hell on your way out.

BTW, the smartest move my players ever did was capture a defective Overlord and uploaded him into the clone vat facility, but hacked the system to make the defective genes most dominant and not trigger the auto-abort. They didn't "win", but now the Mothership was dealing with loads of extremely defective leaders and literally millions of lower caste Mechanoids doing whatever these defectives now demanded. It was unholy chaos and the highest order Mechanoids were forced turn on each other to "cleanse" the Overlords...and the PCs took further advantage of the chaos.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1121170Midnight is a rough setting, no question about that. You're insurgents against Sauron, but his minions are still orcs, goblins and mostly moron monsters. And orcs are most certainly beatable, especially if the PCs run disruptive operations. Does Izrador have some heavy hitters under him? Sure, but again, you're insurgents so your job is hit (hard) and run (fast).

But a DM can certainly decide Midnight is an unbeatable scenario. Maybe it's the fantasy Kobayashi Maru, but that's a DM choice. I've played plenty of insurgency games and a huge part of the fun is the hit and run for small gains.

I don't think my GM was trying to make it unwinnable, but we still all died eventually. It was a bit like playing Fantasy Blake's 7 with Evil Space God backing the Terran Federation. I feel the whole Gnostic thing with the world being a prison for Izrador and no good gods accessible makes it feel very hopeless, like committing suicide is the best way out.

I'm unsure where the line is drawn that makes a setting hopeless. I've had players who felt Mechanoids was hopeless because the Mothership couldn't be beaten. I've also heard that about Ravenloft even though domain lords can be destroyed and you can find ways to escape Ravenloft entirely.  

I wouldn't want to play in an utterly hopeless setting and if the players don't feel their actions have value, it wouldn't be fun to run such a setting. My take on Midnight was Izrador was imprisoned and neither omnipresent or omnipotent, and thus he and his ilk could be defeated eventually. Maybe not in your lifetime, but every generation of fighters could claw more and more of his domain apart.

It's the "Capitalism is Evil" sht.

"You work to make your wealth? You're evil!!! You should give your money to the poor - like me!!!"

Fk them. Full stop.

Their problem is they don't want to work and they don't want to listen to reason.

I don't wish harm to them but damn, they like walking into volcanoes.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1121161Which reminds me...

Oh yeeaaahh.  I remember reading that a while back.

Quote from: S'mon;1121191I feel the whole Gnostic thing with the world being a prison for Izrador and no good gods accessible makes it feel very hopeless, like committing suicide is the best way out.

That's an interesting angle actually.  Midnight really needed a Valis / Gnostic Christ figure or force.