Quote from: jeff37923 on March 15, 2021, 04:30:41 PM
I'd like to know what Evil Hat produces that is worth spending money on.

I liked the Harry Dresden stuff, card game and RPG, but that was mostly because I like the Harry Dresden books.

As with many others, my "Session 0" is done via ongoing conversations among the group. I normally start pointing the players towards relevant rules, background and options 3 to 6 months before I'm expecting the campaign to start. People can look at their liesure, ask questions, provide feedback etc.

I have an ACKS game planned to start 18 - 24 months from now, which I'm doing a bit of work on every now and again. Prior to my last Traveller session, I asked the players for feedback on any elements they didn't like from my previous 1E AD&D game, so I can incorporate this into my campaign planning.

A literal session zero happens in games where we've decided to do character gen as a group (group Traveller character generation is great fun), but by the time we get to that point we've well and truly established the theme and style of the game.

Quote from: Lunamancer on March 15, 2021, 11:41:30 PM
The question is, were tabletop RPGs ever in the control of bigots and jerks?

It's the bigots and jerks now who are projecting their jerkery backwards in time.

Quote from: Brigman on March 15, 2021, 01:31:31 PM
Wait.  I thought 'Gatekeeping = Bad'? 

It's only bad when somebody else does it.

Session 0 for me is basically everyone making their PCs together and being present to answer questions about the setting that PCs would reasonably know so that they aren't making things that blatantly don't fit.

Example; I decided to run a Star Trek game. None of the players was familiar with the LUG system, so I needed to be on hand to helping with basic char gen questions. I also laid out the premise that they were all serving on the same ship which was tasked with going colony planet to colony planet after the Dominion War and rendering what aid they could with the problems that had arisen when all the resources got poured into the war effort.

Specifically, they would be this ship's "Away Team Alpha"; a team of specialists who would assess, provide initial aid and figure out what more would be needed (basically, captain was a Vulcan who logically believed you don't send your senior staff down into potentially hostile situations). This gave them specific direction as they established which of them would handle which specialties (i.e. medical, engineering, diplomacy, science, security), what they had all been doing during the just ended Dominion War and if any of them had served together previously.

I'd define that as a very successful session zero.

Another example of a solid session zero was when we decided our next game would be Rifts. The first thing we decided was to keep the game lower powered... no glitterboys or cosmoknights or dragons. So the guy who wanted to be a power armor pilot picked the comparatively fragile Flying Titan suit (about twice the MDC of body armor) and everyone picked an SDC mortal and a class from the core book instead of an overpowered CJ Carella splat.

This meant that the GM wouldn't have to stress about threats that would be trivial to one PC while lethal to another and travel was comparably restricted (the Flying Titan was fast, but everyone else traveled by truck and they were too fragile to fly around solo as even a two-man SAMAS patrol would overwhelm them).

In a third case, session zero was more a brief chat at the end of one campaign about what we wanted to do next and we quickly decided a street level game where everyone was playing the member of a gang in the main city of our fantasy city and everyone was a non-spellcasting human would be a great change of pace.

Everyone was already really familiar with the system so the following week everyone showed up with their PC and, after a brief introduction, off we went.

Quote from: mightybrain on March 19, 2021, 11:22:13 AM

Quote from: Brigman on March 15, 2021, 01:31:31 PM
Wait.  I thought 'Gatekeeping = Bad'? 

It's only bad when somebody else does it.

"Power is bad unless I am the one with power." - SJWs, in unison.

How about some Black Supremacist Space Opera gaming. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/350467/ORUN-PostApotheosis-Space-Opera-RPG

Quote from: Gagarth on March 19, 2021, 12:36:55 PM
How about some Black Supremacist Space Opera gaming. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/350467/ORUN-PostApotheosis-Space-Opera-RPG

Afrocentric is the term they use. It doesn't mean the same thing as Black Supremacist.

Quote from: HappyDaze on March 19, 2021, 12:50:16 PM

Quote from: Gagarth on March 19, 2021, 12:36:55 PM
How about some Black Supremacist Space Opera gaming. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/350467/ORUN-PostApotheosis-Space-Opera-RPG

Afrocentric is the term they use. It doesn't mean the same thing as Black Supremacist.

Identarian Marxists set the vocabulary when they said that a Eurocentric setting that didn't include African Americans was White Supremacy. Given that standard Orun is Black Supremacist.   But then again you Identarian Marxists love your double standards.

Quote from: Gagarth on March 19, 2021, 01:11:28 PM

Quote from: HappyDaze on March 19, 2021, 12:50:16 PM

Quote from: Gagarth on March 19, 2021, 12:36:55 PM
How about some Black Supremacist Space Opera gaming. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/350467/ORUN-PostApotheosis-Space-Opera-RPG

Afrocentric is the term they use. It doesn't mean the same thing as Black Supremacist.

Identarian Marxists set the vocabulary when they said that a Eurocentric setting that didn't include African Americans was White Supremacy. Given that standard Orun is Black Supremacist.   But then again you Identarian Marxists love your double standards.

You presume the game doesn't include non-Aficans. Do we have that explicitly stated?

You also appear to assume that I am an "identarian Marxist" which is simply a load of horseshit.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on March 18, 2021, 01:46:57 PM
Like you, I find a lot of the effort to be hypocritical and shallow trend following. That said, I'm a lot more charitable towards "Litany" than you are.

The easiest answer would be "I have no respect for people who build their work on someone else's life work while not respecting him."

Giving a different take to a famous character/milieu/trope is nothing new. Sherlock Holmes has been rewritten from a clueless bumble (Watson was the real genius) to someone living in modern times. Parodies are countless. I have no problem with that. I still wouldn't accept something written by someone who starts by declaring "Sherlock Holmes was an agent of an Imperialistic and Colonialists Power! Let's take him back!"

I would then point out the dangers of taking a horror/sci-fi story (possibly the genre most prone to symbolism along with fantasy), give to it one possible interpretation among many, and then condemning both the story and the author on the basis of your interpretation alone.

"The Shadow over Innsmouth" is an anti-miscegenation metaphor written by an avowed racist? Fine. Then James Cameron's "Aliens" is a "Anti-American" parable written by a notorious anti-American (JC is Canadian and openly said more than once how he hates to be defined as "American").

Proof?

Weyland-Yutani goes around "terraforming" alien worlds - a clear metaphor for the desire of the Americans to "americanise" wherever they go (I once was able to visit their base at Aviano and I literally entered into an Americanised bubble inside Italy). They poke their noses everywhere and even in places where they don't belong (the Derelict) all in name of profits. They are ruled by a Council of privilegiate White males and females who, when things go south in a corner of their Empire, send in the grunts (it is among these grunts, BTW, that you find the only black and hispanic characters).

So the American Arm... Er... The Colonial Marines descend on a planet that was originally inhabited by placid creatures (I mean, they normally sleep in their eggs for centuries); creatures who were forced to turn into warriors when their turf was disturbed. Nothing wrong in this, right? We would do the same. That they do react in this way, however, is presented as a bad thing.

The cocky Ame... Colonial Marines, badly led and informed, use superior firepower without really understanding their enemy or even the effects of their technology on unfamiliar environments (and thus creating an environmental, nuclear catastrophe - shades of "Agent Orange" here, or of the "Gulf War Syndrome", no doubt). The result is that their "low-tech, not more evolved than animals" enemy hands their asses to them even if trained only in hand-to-hand combat, forcing the few survivors to accept nuclear genocide as the only solution (something clearly spelled by Ripley as early as half into the movie; and we know that when the Americans, and only the Americans, use nuclear weapons it is not genocide; according to the Americans, at least).

Proof that at the end the Ame... human survivors think that they did the right thing after all? Well, after everything they did they sleep peacefully, so... And they are the heroes of the story anyway.

Before someone calls Guantanamo, I would like to make a couple of points:

- I wrote the above as a parody. As a way to show how, if you are really obsessed by something, you will be able to find that "something" everywhere if you look hard - to the point of ridiculousness. However...

- I can picture some places on Earth were, right now, "Let's take back 'Aliens' from the Americans!" could be a thing. In the right climate, a movie or a book with an "alternative view" based on my outline could be considered both "progressive" and an acclaimed way to tackle the "problematic" contents of the original "Aliens".

Which leads to: Yes, I too could have written "Winter Tide" exactly as it was published - as a parody of something written by an obsessed SJW. Pity that, in the right climate... 

Quote from: Reckall on March 20, 2021, 11:21:41 AMWhich leads to: Yes, I too could have written "Winter Tide" exactly as it was published - as a parody of something written by an obsessed SJW. Pity that, in the right climate... 

I remember when I first read an excerpt from Winter's Tide in some Cthuloid anthology and being stuck by how bludgeon-you-over-the-head unsubtle and preachy it was.

And "a deep ones story from a deep one's point of view" can be done well. If you can find it, I recommend checking out All Our Salt Bottled Hearts by Sonya Taaffe. It's funny to see two writers start from the same premise and end up with such dramatically different results.

Quote from: Reckall on March 20, 2021, 11:21:41 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on March 18, 2021, 01:46:57 PM
Like you, I find a lot of the effort to be hypocritical and shallow trend following. That said, I'm a lot more charitable towards "Litany" than you are.

The easiest answer would be "I have no respect for people who build their work on someone else's life work while not respecting him."

Giving a different take to a famous character/milieu/trope is nothing new. Sherlock Holmes has been rewritten from a clueless bumble (Watson was the real genius) to someone living in modern times. Parodies are countless. I have no problem with that. I still wouldn't accept something written by someone who starts by declaring "Sherlock Holmes was an agent of an Imperialistic and Colonialists Power! Let's take him back!"

I would then point out the dangers of taking a horror/sci-fi story (possibly the genre most prone to symbolism along with fantasy), give to it one possible interpretation among many, and then condemning both the story and the author on the basis of your interpretation alone.

"The Shadow over Innsmouth" is an anti-miscegenation metaphor written by an avowed racist? Fine. Then James Cameron's "Aliens" is a "Anti-American" parable written by a notorious anti-American (JC is Canadian and openly said more than once how he hates to be defined as "American").

Proof?

Weyland-Yutani goes around "terraforming" alien worlds - a clear metaphor for the desire of the Americans to "americanise" wherever they go (I once was able to visit their base at Aviano and I literally entered into an Americanised bubble inside Italy). They poke their noses everywhere and even in places where they don't belong (the Derelict) all in name of profits. They are ruled by a Council of privilegiate White males and females who, when things go south in a corner of their Empire, send in the grunts (it is among these grunts, BTW, that you find the only black and hispanic characters).

So the American Arm... Er... The Colonial Marines descend on a planet that was originally inhabited by placid creatures (I mean, they normally sleep in their eggs for centuries); creatures who were forced to turn into warriors when their turf was disturbed. Nothing wrong in this, right? We would do the same. That they do react in this way, however, is presented as a bad thing.

The cocky Ame... Colonial Marines, badly led and informed, use superior firepower without really understanding their enemy or even the effects of their technology on unfamiliar environments (and thus creating an environmental, nuclear catastrophe - shades of "Agent Orange" here, or of the "Gulf War Syndrome", no doubt). The result is that their "low-tech, not more evolved than animals" enemy hands their asses to them even if trained only in hand-to-hand combat, forcing the few survivors to accept nuclear genocide as the only solution (something clearly spelled by Ripley as early as half into the movie; and we know that when the Americans, and only the Americans, use nuclear weapons it is not genocide; according to the Americans, at least).

Proof that at the end the Ame... human survivors think that they did the right thing after all? Well, after everything they did they sleep peacefully, so... And they are the heroes of the story anyway.

Before someone calls Guantanamo, I would like to make a couple of points:

- I wrote the above as a parody. As a way to show how, if you are really obsessed by something, you will be able to find that "something" everywhere if you look hard - to the point of ridiculousness. However...

- I can picture some places on Earth were, right now, "Let's take back 'Aliens' from the Americans!" could be a thing. In the right climate, a movie or a book with an "alternative view" based on my outline could be considered both "progressive" and an acclaimed way to tackle the "problematic" contents of the original "Aliens".

Which leads to: Yes, I too could have written "Winter Tide" exactly as it was published - as a parody of something written by an obsessed SJW. Pity that, in the right climate... 

The filmmaker himself went on to make the hugely sucessful Avatar, which I'd argue is very similar to your "progressive critique" version of Aliens.

Quote from: HappyDaze on March 19, 2021, 12:50:16 PM

Quote from: Gagarth on March 19, 2021, 12:36:55 PM
How about some Black Supremacist Space Opera gaming. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/350467/ORUN-PostApotheosis-Space-Opera-RPG

Afrocentric is the term they use. It doesn't mean the same thing as Black Supremacist.

So you'd be happy to see an Eurocentric ideology and games/movies/books/etc?

I mean if Afrocentrism isn't black supremacist then Eurocentrism isn't white supremacist either.

It's the equivalent of saying that Wakanda isn't an ethnostate, one that discriminates even against other african people.

In game terms, you're claiming that Varg Vikernes' MyFarog isn't a white supremacist fantasy.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on March 20, 2021, 02:53:48 PM

Quote from: HappyDaze on March 19, 2021, 12:50:16 PM

Quote from: Gagarth on March 19, 2021, 12:36:55 PM
How about some Black Supremacist Space Opera gaming. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/350467/ORUN-PostApotheosis-Space-Opera-RPG

Afrocentric is the term they use. It doesn't mean the same thing as Black Supremacist.

So you'd be happy to see an Eurocentric ideology and games/movies/books/etc?

I mean if Afrocentrism isn't black supremacist then Eurocentrism isn't white supremacist either.

It's the equivalent of saying that Wakanda isn't an ethnostate, one that discriminates even against other african people.

In game terms, you're claiming that Varg Vikernes' MyFarog isn't a white supremacist fantasy.

I haven't read MyFarog, but I know a bit about Pendragon and I'm OK with it's European focus.