Quote from: RandyB;1060031David 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.

The only reason to ever read Eddings was the characters and the dialog (or rather, a good subset of the characters and the dialog).  There were some cringe-worthy bits in the Diamond Throne series, too, but high points from Belgariad to the end of the latter.

In the Elder Gods, Eddings deliberately threw away every reason anyone had to read him, phoned in the characters and the dialog when it wasn't actively messing it up (AKA, worse than phoned in), and all that was left was the tedious repetition.  

BTW, it's a prime example of what happens when a writer is more interested in their idea and their cause, than their craft.

Quote from: Motorskills;1060027Despite 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.

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.

SHARK is complaining because those people ARE hell-bent on destroying part of the hobby.  The part that a number of US belong to.
We don't care what they do with THEIR elf games as long as they let US play OUR elf games.
It is all part of the SAME hobby but apparently a certain group of people

A)Don't want US to be part of the hobby (You are fired from D&D)
B)Are only interested in telling us HOW we have to play. (Long diatribes for inclusiveness)
C)Are obviously not interested in "debate" about something even if their narratives had merit.  (Check out the Ban stuff for TBP for examples of debate)

I would be interested in seeing how many of us that have been gaming since the 70s/80s were considered somewhat of a social "outcast" when we started playing.  I know how many people "I" refused to play RPGs with back then...That was exactly 0 (We didn't even turn away assholes)...because almost NO ONE wanted to be part of our nerdy D&D group so we included EVERYONE that wanted to play.  And now people are telling us that we are problematic because NOW the hobby has some sort of cred and "I" am gate-keeping.  I see enough self-righteous moral posturing in Real Life that I don't need it from some pathetic fucks at WOTC, Green Ronin or TBP just because they believe they can finally lord it over some one. They are like the hall monitor in school who becomes a cop..."Respect my Authoritay!!"

...and it just gets tiring for people to listen to diatribes about how "bad" they are, when there are actual problems in the real world the morality police could be out solving.  But that would involve them actually doing something or maybe getting dirty and they won't do that.  Its much easier to preen about how 'just and good' they are on the internet and pretend that they are actually someone important.

Yeah it's always rather moronic to hear that RPGs haven't been "inclusive".

Say what? Just because you thought the people who played RPGs were gross doesn't mean we were excluding you.

And the recent narrative that there were plenty of females in the early days of D&D who wanted to play but the male gamers wouldn't allow them to join is absolutely ridiculous.  I know that my gaming group back in the 1980's would have happily allowed girls to join. They didn't want to play with us.  And not because gamers were mean and exclusionary.  We just weren't seen as being part of the cool crowd.  I don't necessarily blame the girls - peer pressure is a tough thing.  But the reality is, girls were "gatekeeping" much more than guys were.

And I'm sure I would get banned at TBP for saying this.  :rolleyes:

While I sympathise to some extent, I think some of that is backwards. The general public did indeed sneer at games and gamers back in the day, no doubt about that. But those of us that were in the hobby supported each other and had great times. Eventually that battle was won, in 2018, our hobby is popular, accepted, and yet remains hugely dynamic.

There have been certain changes in gaming, not least more female players, more LGBT players, etc, and as a natural extension games that reflect their interests.

And those changes have been made possible in part by those of us who can constructively look at the past and saying "that was bad, let's not do that going forward". And those projects been hugely successful. And fantastic for the hobby - new blood, new ideas, new games, new money, all of it.

While I won't seek to defend the more extreme actions that I am prepared to believe have occurred, I'm far more cognisant of the basically abhorrent pushback at the general changes in our hobby. The very suggestion that the historical depiction of Drow could be problematic is casus belli for some members of this hobby.
And I have far more issue with those folks.

Quote from: Chris24601;1060015So 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.

No, I'm saying that it's absurd to examine the socio-political implications of the two-dimensional characters in a trash-tier novel by a hack author, who cranked them out like clockwork in order to harvest burger-flipping income from the pockets of teen boys. You shouldn't pretend this crap matters for any longer than it takes the self-important, Marxist dork in charge of your college lit class to give you an 'A'.

Quote from: Crusader X;1060043And the recent narrative that there were plenty of females in the early days of D&D who wanted to play but the male gamers wouldn't allow them to join is absolutely ridiculous.  I know that my gaming group back in the 1980's would have happily allowed girls to join. They didn't want to play with us.  And not because gamers were mean and exclusionary.  We just weren't seen as being part of the cool crowd.  I don't necessarily blame the girls - peer pressure is a tough thing.  But the reality is, girls were "gatekeeping" much more than guys were.

And I'm sure I would get banned at TBP for saying this.  :rolleyes:

I don't buy that there was gatekeeping in the early days either.

I remember when D&D first came out in the 70s, the target market was mostly wargamers of course, and one of the spins put on it was "look! Wargaming that girls like!"

 And sure enough, girls did play. A small minority, but huge compared to the historical wargaming we did before. Some historical grognards complained about this new thing, but it was because FANTASY. Stupid elves. Friggin magic. But nobody, nobody complained about women joining the table. On the contrary gamers were super pumped about that. I remember well.

Quote from: moonsweeper;1060033SHARK is complaining because those people ARE hell-bent on destroying part of the hobby.  The part that a number of US belong to.
We don't care what they do with THEIR elf games as long as they let US play OUR elf games.
It is all part of the SAME hobby but apparently a certain group of people

A)Don't want US to be part of the hobby (You are fired from D&D)
B)Are only interested in telling us HOW we have to play. (Long diatribes for inclusiveness)
C)Are obviously not interested in "debate" about something even if their narratives had merit.  (Check out the Ban stuff for TBP for examples of debate)

I would be interested in seeing how many of us that have been gaming since the 70s/80s were considered somewhat of a social "outcast" when we started playing.  I know how many people "I" refused to play RPGs with back then...That was exactly 0 (We didn't even turn away assholes)...because almost NO ONE wanted to be part of our nerdy D&D group so we included EVERYONE that wanted to play.  And now people are telling us that we are problematic because NOW the hobby has some sort of cred and "I" am gate-keeping.  I see enough self-righteous moral posturing in Real Life that I don't need it from some pathetic fucks at WOTC, Green Ronin or TBP just because they believe they can finally lord it over some one. They are like the hall monitor in school who becomes a cop..."Respect my Authoritay!!"

...and it just gets tiring for people to listen to diatribes about how "bad" they are, when there are actual problems in the real world the morality police could be out solving.  But that would involve them actually doing something or maybe getting dirty and they won't do that.  Its much easier to preen about how 'just and good' they are on the internet and pretend that they are actually someone important.

So much agreed and seconded. It's easy to say were not interested in listening to the other side. Except the other side in the argument has made it clear they don't want to listen to us at all. Many in the hobby were diverse, mostly accepting of gays ( i had to toss a homophobe or two out of my games) and we sure as hell at least my group would never turn a female gamer away if they wanted to join. Sorry but their was no one remotely transgendered back then. If they were they kept it hidden because sadly they would lose their jobs and/or become social pariahs.

I could understand if only a few things both the regressive leftist in Rpgs. Yet they see evil everywhere and with anything. While making it very clear all they want is kumba-yah echo style chamber. If one does not agree with them 10000% your the enemy. I tried to work with them yet after being banned from rpg.net and seeing how I'm such a evil person according to the Paizo devs. Well collectively as a whole the Rpg regressive can go fuck themselves.

Quote from: Crusader X;1060043And the recent narrative that there were plenty of females in the early days of D&D who wanted to play but the male gamers wouldn't allow them to join is absolutely ridiculous.  I know that my gaming group back in the 1980's would have happily allowed girls to join. They didn't want to play with us.  And not because gamers were mean and exclusionary.  We just weren't seen as being part of the cool crowd.  I don't necessarily blame the girls - peer pressure is a tough thing.  But the reality is, girls were "gatekeeping" much more than guys were.

I can kind of understand the younger generation because they were not born then and were not there to experience the lack of women in the hobby. It's the 35-45 year olds like myself. When I began and maybe it was just my area women would not be caught dead playing rpgs, reading comics, or playing computer games. That was a hobby for losers and nerds and if they wanted to do date the popular guys they would pretty much ignore it. Even then I began to see more female gamers in the 90s once I went to college. Even then they were a definite minority compared to men and pretty much most of the time the sterotype of the awkward male gamer with no social skills and not very attractive except for being female. Sorry but I'm not going to sugarcoat my experiences. We had some attractive female gamers yet they were as rare as a blue moon. We asked women to join our groups if they say no we cannot force them too. In any case let the Regressive rpers try and rewrite history because they don't like what actually happened. We know the truth.

It was like the time I went on a comic forum and one of the members tried to do the same thing insisting that his family who lived in the South accepted his uncle coming out gay in the 1970s in the South of the USA. They were all of course completely endorsing and accepting of his choice. When in reality maybe one or two if them many would accept his coming out and he would be a social pariah.

Quote from: Motorskills;1060044There have been certain changes in gaming, not least more female players, more LGBT players, etc, and as a natural extension games that reflect their interests.

And those changes have been made possible in part by those of us who can constructively look at the past and saying "that was bad, let's not do that going forward".

You're making an assumption that the popularity of gaming is partly due the removal of certain content we see today as "problematic". I haven't particularly seen that, and I'm not really sure how that would even be measured. The one large event where I did personally see a massive influx of women into the hobby was Vampire the Masquerade. I don't recall the material for that game being any more inclusive than D&D 2e. If anything it touched on darker subjects. IMO, the reason why Vampire worked was it tapped into interests of women at the time(gothic punk was big, Anne Rice was cool and there was an explosion of authors like Poppy Z Brite writing that genre of material).

I have seen people become interested in RPGs because of a game system being easier to play or dealing with a genre they're interested in(Star Wars, Twilight 2000, Call of Cthulhu). I haven't seen people being turned off of RPGs because of drow, sand orcs, sea elves, character cover art being a white person, or whatever. The only people I see being upset over that are SJWs who to me seem like they're not happy unless they're being upset over something.

I'm personally not against RPGs tossing out bad ideas like gully dwarves, chainmail bikinis, and having settings and main NPCs that aren't all white people. The problem is when that becomes a witch hunt. That will drive off new players as no normal person wants to spend their hobby time dealing with college level political drama.

Quote from: Motorskills;1060044W
And those changes have been made possible in part by those of us who can constructively look at the past and saying "that was bad, let's not do that going forward".

I think the idea that the current popularity of D&D was due to SJWs doing socjus, is silly. Normal people of all sexes and races rarely find anything 'problematic', and certainly not stuff like drow. The same player who posted a punch-a-D&D-Nazi meme to my Meetup Facebook group, plays a female Drow PC - she obviously sees no contradiction.

Quote from: Dracones;1060054I'm personally not against RPGs tossing out bad ideas like gully dwarves, chainmail bikinis...

Yeah, topless amazons are much better.

Quote from: Dracones;1060054The one large event where I did personally see a massive influx of women into the hobby was Vampire the Masquerade. I don't recall the material for that game being any more inclusive than D&D 2e. If anything it touched on darker subjects. IMO, the reason why Vampire worked was it tapped into interests of women at the time...

Yes, this is how things actually work. Something catches the current zeitgeist, and people go for it. It has nothing to do with removing Politically Incorrect elements; vampires for instance are not particularly PC.

I do notice that the more liberal my friends, the more they do not value anything old or historical.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1060048No, I'm saying that it's absurd to examine the socio-political implications of the two-dimensional characters in a trash-tier novel by a hack author, who cranked them out like clockwork in order to harvest burger-flipping income from the pockets of teen boys. You shouldn't pretend this crap matters for any longer than it takes the self-important, Marxist dork in charge of your college lit class to give you an 'A'.

Unfortunately, it is still relevant and matters to me because there are three gamers in my area, one or more of whom always end up in games I play in, who consider Dragonlance to be awesome and who regularly want to play Kender and Tinker Gnomes (and play halflings and regular gnomes as them when they can't).

Anything I can provide that makes them feel ashamed of wanting to play such dumbass things (or make the GM come down hard on allowing them into his game out of a desire to give the players something they want) is a win in my book.

Quote from: S'mon;1060058Yeah, topless amazons are much better.

I agree 10 000%:p!

Quote from: Chris24601;1060064Unfortunately, it is still relevant and matters to me because there are three gamers in my area, one or more of whom always end up in games I play in, who consider Dragonlance to be awesome and who regularly want to play Kender and Tinker Gnomes (and play halflings and regular gnomes as them when they can't).

Anything I can provide that makes them feel ashamed of wanting to play such dumbass things (or make the GM come down hard on allowing them into his game out of a desire to give the players something they want) is a win in my book.

Just make a literary analysis, followed by a world building analysis, why those racesare stupid. Then stop playing with griefers, because that's like the ultimate griefer's races.
No politics required where common sense should suffice;).