Quote from: fearsomepirate;1059894It's super evil wicked and bad to mash a bunch of cultures on a single continent into a cartoonish, historically meaningless trope, which a lone warrior wearing "studded leather", fighting with a halberd, and carrying a longbow on his back totally isn't at all.

   I keep on saying, if we were to hold those complaining about appropriation and erasure to a consistent standard, I could have so much fun with them given my standing as a practicing Catholic who specializes in medieval theology ...

I for one think it's pretty cool that we have achieved such incredible heights of material comfort and safety that there are people who can expend serious emotional energy being upset about the gully dwarves in trash novels from the 1980s.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1059930I for one think it's pretty cool that we have achieved such incredible heights of material comfort and safety that there are people who can expend serious emotional energy being upset about the gully dwarves in trash novels from the 1980s.

Greetings!

Hello Fearsomepirate! Yeah, really. I don't remember Gully Dwarves ever being very popular. In fact, in my experience, Gully Dwarves were rather obscure, to be honest. Most players I knew tended to like sticking with a standard Hill or Mountain Dwarf.

It's so strange reading threads like that. These SJW people see "offense" in everything. The most innocuous creation or presentation is somehow twisted and interpreted into being "Deeply problematic." The whole whining about being "offended" because particular, historical stereotypes are used...in a game...for fun. And no, these morons are too stupid to ever comprehend stereotypes being partially true, and funny. The Roma get stereotyped. Big deal. Romans, Greeks, Persians, Germans, Spaniards...Mongols, Vikings, French, English, Scots and Celts get stereotyped as well. Everyone, everywhere has stereotypes, which are often embraced by everyone around them as well. Are lots of individual people different, and break stereotypes? Certainly. But stereotypes are in large part accurate--that is why they have developed and endured for centuries in many cases, because the stereotypes reflect people's experience on a consistent basis with people from that particular culture or ethnic group.

It is what it is. It's so frustrating dealing with these kinds of morons that seem hell-bent on corrupting and destroying our hobby.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: sureshot;1059889To be fair Gully Dwarves deserve to be called out imo. Such a strange and god awful thing to put in any campaign world followed by Kender. I don't think they realize it or even care how insulting it is to compare Gully Dwarves to those who are intellectually handicapped. While I have not met many individuals who are I have seen a few and none of them at least the ones I associated with act in any way shape or form as a Gully Dwarf. Shocking they assume those who are intellectually handicapped to be like the stereotype that they are unfortunately too often portrayed.

I wonder how those in that D&D thread function in normal society without the safe space, echo chamber of the the Rpg.net forums.

I have worked as a nurse and seen those homeless patients that are both mentally and physically afflicted (though none I have worked with have had dwarfism), and Gully Dwarves do remind me of a funhouse mirror version of such unfortunate individuals, but that's because of firsthand exposure to such folks.

I have visited service homes for the severely mentally and physically challenged (I traveled interesting circles throughout life) and they do not seem like Gully Dwarves. First major difference is Gully Dwarves are written with a consistently craven nature and passive aggressive bullying culture (particularly among themselves). They're a caricature of that whipped villain sidekick to an extreme -- dumb, craven, servile, petty cruelty when they can get away with it -- and then made into an entire race.

Real challenged people have a wide variety of personalities, and they vary from day to day as much as anyone else (good days and bad days,). I don't see much similarity, but that might be proximity allowed me to see individuals over stereotypes. :confused:

Quote from: Opaopajr;1059963I have visited service homes for the severely mentally and physically challenged (I traveled interesting circles throughout life) and they do not seem like Gully Dwarves. First major difference is Gully Dwarves are written with a consistently craven nature and passive aggressive bullying culture (particularly among themselves). They're a caricature of that whipped villain sidekick to an extreme -- dumb, craven, servile, petty cruelty when they can get away with it -- and then made into an entire race.

Real challenged people have a wide variety of personalities, and they vary from day to day as much as anyone else (good days and bad days,). I don't see much similarity, but that might be proximity allowed me to see individuals over stereotypes. :confused:

They're a race of Renfields.

Don't hear the Brits crying.

Leaving aside the political element as something which isn't really able to be discussed here in any worthwhile way.

It would be a shame if all this SJW/Anti-SJW bullshit ended up with people fighting to retain all these hackneyed and boring elements of D&D out of sheer stubbornness.

One of the most refreshing elements of the OSR has been the willingness to throw out all these done to death stuff and create new stuff free of the all the old cruft (political or not).

The main reason I'll probably never used Orcs again is that they bore the fuck out of me.

And I don't need any political interpretations to see that Gully Dwarves were a stupid idea and the only humour in them was both cruel and unfunny.  (Ha ha these people are so stupid - they can't count to three).

Quote from: Opaopajr;1059963I have visited service homes for the severely mentally and physically challenged (I traveled interesting circles throughout life) and they do not seem like Gully Dwarves. First major difference is Gully Dwarves are written with a consistently craven nature and passive aggressive bullying culture (particularly among themselves). They're a caricature of that whipped villain sidekick to an extreme -- dumb, craven, servile, petty cruelty when they can get away with it -- and then made into an entire race.

Real challenged people have a wide variety of personalities, and they vary from day to day as much as anyone else (good days and bad days,). I don't see much similarity, but that might be proximity allowed me to see individuals over stereotypes. :confused:

Greetings!

Hey Opaopajr! Interesting! You know, I'll admit that a portion of the mentally ill and those with a variety of mental disabilities--their antics and expressions can be very humorous. Sometimes, of course, some individuals are also quite dangerous. In general though, many of them can be frustrating to deal with, for a wide variety of reasons. I think some aspects of the streotypes, like with many such, can be humorous and in good fun.

The Gully Dwarves were just fucking stupid as all hell though.

Having said that, I have also done some work tutoring both adolescents and adults with mental and learning disabilities. Down's Syndrome, and so on. I have to say some of them are indeed a great blessing to us. Many are without guile, at all. They don't lie or deceive, and they truly accept YOU for being YOU. They could care less about your age, your race, what you look like, what you do, or how much you make. What is deeply meaningful to them, is that YOU are their friend. I think that kind of love and acceptance is a gift to us, the rest of humanity, and I think that capacity for love and friendship often demonstrated by mentally disabled/challenged people makes them very special. Joking aside, we should remember to respect them, cherish them, and value them as members of our community.

Your post reminded me of some of those good relationships I had, Opaopajr. Thank you, my friend.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: TJS;1059973And I don't need any political interpretations to see that Gully Dwarves were a stupid idea and the only humour in them was both cruel and unfunny.  (Ha ha these people are so stupid - they can't count to three).

Gully Dwarves aren't real and the Dragonlance novels are trash.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1059995Gully Dwarves aren't real and the Dragonlance novels are trash.

And the sky is blue and water is wet.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1059995Gully Dwarves aren't real and the Dragonlance novels are trash.

Quite.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1059995Gully Dwarves aren't real and the Dragonlance novels are trash.

So what you're saying is there's every reason to find it shameful that has nothing to do with politics, but rather embarrassment that Gully Dwarves, Kender and Tinker Gnomes ever saw publication in an official product.

That was the poster's point. Not everything on that list is something worth defending and upholding just because someone with opposing political views hates it. Some things are just objectively bad ideas (Star Trek V for example) and worthy of scorn because they are bad ideas.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1059995Gully Dwarves aren't real and the Dragonlance novels are trash.

I have to disagree they were okay. After all they were not written to win any awards just to push the setting on readers to buy more. Try reading Karen Miller who is very misandristic towards men. Whose female characters are better, stronger faster than male characters. Whose majority of make characters are the exact opposite. Whose main female character in the Godspeaker trilogy infects another male character with magical STD to make him sterile because "reasons and feels" essentially. Whenever either a male or female writer needs to put down another character because of their gender in their writings is trash to me at least.

Look at David Eddings Elder God series. He tried to pull a fast one over his fanbase by taking characters from the Belgariand and Malleron. Changing their names and appearance yet they acted the exact same way and hoped no would notice. Except we did and he was ripped a new one by the fanbase.

Quote from: SHARK;1059935It's so frustrating dealing with these kinds of morons that seem hell-bent on corrupting and destroying our hobby.

Despite the hobby being more popular, design-diverse, and  embedded in everyday culture than ever before?

This whining is at odds with basic reality.

I'm not especially sold on the elements called out in those RPGnet screenshots, but it's absurd to suggest that we can't or shouldn't look back at our hobby's history and debate the merits (or not) of particular publications, with a view to applying lessons to today.

The Mickey Rooney example I quoted is particularly egregious of course, but it's taken 50 more years for Hollywood to really start debating representation in movies.

The RPG hobby can do better than that, we don't have the embedded business and cultural obstacles, and the designers are not removed from their audience.

As a hobby we are extremely forward-looking, people are trying out new stuff all the time. For that matter, I don't consider the OSR to be a retrograde step by any means, (e.g. Stars Without Number is brilliantly inventive).

For the record I'm a card-carrying ACKS fan, own most everything via a previous Kickstarter. I was involved in an extensive PBP on TBP until the paperwork(!) finally broke me.

So while this "destroying the hobby" bullshit doesn't wash  it doesn't mean we can't debate the merits and flaws of earlier publications and the (cultural) considerations of future output.

Will the hobby come to an end when C7 publishes splatbooks for the 13th Doctor? I don't think so.

Quote from: sureshot;1060025I have to disagree they were okay. After all they were not written to win any awards just to push the setting on readers to buy more. Try reading Karen Miller who is very misandristic towards men. Whose female characters are better, stronger faster than male characters. Whose majority of make characters are the exact opposite. Whose main female character in the Godspeaker trilogy infects another male character with magical STD to make him sterile because "reasons and feels" essentially. Whenever either a male or female writer needs to put down another character because of their gender in their writings is trash to me at least.

Look at David Eddings Elder God series. He tried to pull a fast one over his fanbase by taking characters from the Belgariand and Malleron. Changing their names and appearance yet they acted the exact same way and hoped no would notice. Except we did and he was ripped a new one by the fanbase.

David Eddings rewrote the same story multiple times, until people finally caught on and gave him well-deserved grief over it. Even the Malloreon was a redo of the Belgariad.