I would like to know if Mike Shea agrees with Trump, that all the people trying to colonize the USA should be expelled.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on January 08, 2025, 01:22:12 PMThe combat wheelchair and the "safety tools" all originated in third party products, both are now on the new official D&D totally not 6e book.

Ignoring those products doesn't help.

Except those were popularized by Woke gamers who got excited about those ideas. This anti-colonialist screed was from a book published a YEAR ago, and that no one paid any attention to until a few anti-woke commentators decided to give it attention.

Quote from: Socratic-DM on January 08, 2025, 02:27:24 PMI simply threw pearls, whether you be swine or man is a choice unto you.

Wow, you actually portrayed yourself as the wise man throwing pearls before swine.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on January 08, 2025, 02:02:28 PMBecause ignoring them has worked so well the past 30 years...

I warned of this back when this new wave of "Social Justice" was just gaining momentum and people right here kept saying to ignore them.

And here we are with them entrenched in practically everything and we are a mere 5 fucking years off from the next wave and this wave has barely abated any.

Modern colonialism was fundamentally about exploiting the wealth of subjugated nations. It's a late chapter in a very old story - with a prototype in tribes seizing resources from weaker tribes in order to survive and flourish. But I think we can acknowledge colonialism is part of the bloody side of human existence whilst also recognising Old School RPG's are fine - they are something quite different and entirely benign.

Quote from: Socratic-DM on January 08, 2025, 02:27:24 PMYou argue with people on twitter and change no minds, don't flatter yourself.

You don't know that. Certainly you won't change the mind of the other person in the debate but on the internet the debate is public and you should always be aware of that.

Monsters have fascinated me all my life. Do I think monsters stand-ins for vanquished and marginalised people? No. I really don't. Quite the opposite. I think they represent the human experience of being prey to beasts of prey 

The Wild: I think monsters represent our fear of predation. The idea of being helpless in a spider's web.  Our ancestors had to steel themselves to hunt and forage in environments they shared with animals which were faster, stronger, and very wily (supersenstive). I think monsters are the trauma memories of our ancestors, which fermented in their imaginations during dark nights and in lonely places.

And I think the tale of the hero, shared around the fire, was probably a response these experiences of existential vulnerability:  comfort and catharsis and a way of boosting the social status of the group's hunters and protectors.

Dark Humanity:* I think intelligent, evil monsters (from orcs through to devils and demons) represent the cruel, vile, sadistic, parts of human nature. We've all read sickening stories of people behaving "like devils" or "like they're possessed", as "worse than beasts". I won't give real examples because they are sickening. But I'm talking of people who have been 'trapped in the cave of the cyclops'. And of people eviscerated by invaders/occupiers and prey to rapacious gangs. I think this is the human origin stories of orcs. I'm thinking this may be what Pundit was referring to when he offered the example of monsters embodying the archetype of chaos in the video? Law and order breaks down and beasts of prey run amok. An old horror story.

* Dark here is associated with 'night' - which is scary for the same reason 'the deep' is scary. Not skin colour.

Quote from: Green Demon on January 09, 2025, 07:05:55 AMModern colonialism was fundamentally about exploiting the wealth of subjugated nations.

Not quite. There are many cases where people fled their homeland to colonize another region to escape religious or political persecution. The Puritans who colonized Massachusetts and Roman Catholics in Maryland are two prime examples of this. The Dutch South African colonies were a mixed bag of Dutch Reformed Church, Huguenots, and Protestants fleeing religious persecution in France. To say colonizing is "fundamentally about exploiting the wealth of subjugated nations" isn't quite true. It's much more nuanced than that. The driving force behind colonization does vary.

Green Demon,

I've read you comments and for the most part agree with them. Basically you're saying monsters are archetypical representations of various parts of the human psyche. That's a concept I can get behind.

But...

Quote from: Green Demon on January 09, 2025, 08:24:01 AM* Dark here is associated with 'night' - which is scary for the same reason 'the deep' is scary. Not skin colour.

It's sad we live in world where such clarifications are thought to be needed, and yet with anyone with common sense knows this as a given.

Quote from: blackstone on January 09, 2025, 08:33:10 AM

Quote from: Green Demon on January 09, 2025, 07:05:55 AMModern colonialism was fundamentally about exploiting the wealth of subjugated nations.

Not quite. There are many cases where people fled their homeland to colonize another region to escape religious or political persecution. The Puritans who colonized Massachusetts and Roman Catholics in Maryland are two prime examples of this. The Dutch South African colonies were a mixed bag of Dutch Reformed Church, Huguenots, and Protestants fleeing religious persecution in France. To say colonizing is "fundamentally about exploiting the wealth of subjugated nations" isn't quite true. It's much more nuanced than that. The driving force behind colonization does vary.

I read your longer post on colonialism, up thread, and i do agree with a lot of what you wrote there. I think to some degree it's a matter of definitions. i'm not an academic on this subject - as you could tell from my loose definition 'modern colonisation'. i was thinking of the British Empire, the partitioning of Africa, and other examples of where military might has been used to subjugate another nation, administer it's government and extract it's wealth for the home nation (sometimes done under the banner of civilisation and mission).

I accept it's more nuanced. I cut the paragraph because it overshadowed the main point i wanted to make -  that this alleged controversy doesn't really have anything to do with RPG's, whatever our politics - because D&D monsters have never represented ethnic groups.

Quote from: blackstone on January 09, 2025, 08:43:57 AMGreen Demon,

I've read you comments and for the most part agree with them. Basically you're saying monsters are archetypical representations of various parts of the human psyche. That's a concept I can get behind.

But...

Quote from: Green Demon on January 09, 2025, 08:24:01 AM* Dark here is associated with 'night' - which is scary for the same reason 'the deep' is scary. Not skin colour.

It's sad we live in world where such clarifications are thought to be needed, and yet with anyone with common sense knows this as a given.

Yes. I think i am. I've never felt i had a clear grasp of what an archetype is, being totally honest.

Quote from: Ruprecht on January 09, 2025, 07:31:15 AM

Quote from: Socratic-DM on January 08, 2025, 02:27:24 PMYou argue with people on twitter and change no minds, don't flatter yourself.

You don't know that. Certainly you won't change the mind of the other person in the debate but on the internet the debate is public and you should always be aware of that.

You can link a great deal of radicalization, division, shrinking attention span, addiction, and overall time wasting to social media, I'm sure whatever amount of people convinced one way or the other by twitter arguments are hardly worth the time.

If you want to make real differences and change real opinions, you start with the people nearest you in relation or location.

Quote from: Green Demon on January 09, 2025, 07:05:55 AMModern colonialism was fundamentally about exploiting the wealth of subjugated nations. It's a late chapter in a very old story - with a prototype in tribes seizing resources from weaker tribes in order to survive and flourish. But I think we can acknowledge colonialism is part of the bloody side of human existence whilst also recognising Old School RPG's are fine - they are something quite different and entirely benign.

But without colonialism, I'd have a bone in my nose, wearing a grass skirt, and be an igorot axe-wielding, heart-eating, head-hunting cannibal.

Now? I'm siting here with a Coach beanie on, pondering buying some Margiela tabi boots on my other screen, while drinking Ethiopean Yirgacheffe espresso made from my Lelit Bianca espresso machine while my greyhounds snuggle around my feet as the snow drifts down and blankets my big yard in the middle of the Lone Star Republic - surrounded by gun-owning, freedom loving fellow benefactors of colonialism.

I probably wouldn't be playing, running, designing and working on publishing my own RPG's right now either.

Thanks Colonialism!