Quote from: Will;796433Giving your love a life-changing gift because you sold a family heirloom is great story that is likely to have 0 impact on your actual adventuring power.

I have the feeling that StupidQuestion wouldn't have blinked an eye if the paladin sold her sword for any other purpose, or if the lover was acceptably, traditionally gendered.

Beyond which, I rather doubt StupidQuestion would demand that the paladin perform no action that didn't maximize her adventuring power in other ways.  Is he against paladins having personal relationships at all?  Those could distract you from Fighting Evil.  Does he require that paladins train every available hour of every day?  If you're not in top condition, after all, your ability to Fight Evil is impaired.  Does that paladin avoid charity of all kinds?  After all, giving your gold to the poor means you're not buying the best Evil Fighting gear you possibly can.

No?  Somehow I didn't think so.

Quote from: Will;796576Look, ambiguity creates interesting conflicts. Conflict makes for fun games.

Yep.  My retort to your rebutters comes in several flavors:

1) For starters, not everyone plays D&D, startling though this concept may be to some of you;

2) Beyond that, "D&D" is a damn broad church stretching over forty years of massive rules and setting changes, and declaring ANY paradigm to be universal is silly;

3) Given that in the great majority of D&D settings, the information given about the doctrine, dogma and practices of the various faiths tops out on a paragraph or three, I'm not nearly so sanguine that every clerical type has comprehensive, definitive information;

4) I don't necessarily believe that the objective reality of the gods presumes that they are disseminating such information to their worshipers; and

5)  Excuse me?  Gods are real in D&D but NOT in the Real World?  Sorry, but there are billions of people completely convinced that God (Allah, Jehovah, Krishna, whomever) is real, completely convinced in the accuracy of divine revelation, and completely convinced that they know the Truth.  No doubt there are a number of ISIS fanatics mowing down "apostates" even as I type who would agree that they are "paladins," even if they'd jeer at the nomenclature: they are relentlessly fighting the apostates and unbelievers, in a holy war, to the death, for the glory of Allah.  You might think they're full of shit ... but then again I could be an agnostic in your game world who thinks that "divine" manifestations are simply cleverly-disguised wizardry.

Quote from: stupidquestion;796458Still a problem, cause pals are supposed to think futher than people personally dear to her, but less, because it would not indicate anything about today politics and would not indirectly call 20-50% of population of western countries evil (exact numbers i would have to look up in polls).

Well we do love our obvioustrolls being obvious here don't we? (no offense whatsoever meant to our former forum member here of that moniker. HE will always be missed) Your name is well chosen. I'm mildly curious as to who you'll turn out to be? Guessing either that Rooster fellow or someone from SA, but maybe you're a completely new creep.

Hi, welcome (or welcome back?) to the RPGSite. One of the last bastions of free speech dedicated to the RPG hobby online these days. Whatever disagreements I may have with Pundit or any of his theories about life, the universe and everything, I 100% respect him for standing behind his convictions on this, and salute him as a worthwhile human being for that. Its a conviction I share: that free speech is import. Important to society, important to freedom, important morally and ethically. The price of free speech means that I have to put up with people saying things I don't like. That recently happened on another thread on this site and I'm sad to say it actually upset me. If you knew me as a person that might shock you a little. Why am I telling you this? Because I'm about to take some of that out on you. Fair warning.

Anyways, as I was saying, standing behind my conviction for free speech means that I honestly believe you have the right to say whatever you like. Just like I have the right to respond to what you say. So, all that foreplay out of the way...

You are a massive fucking bigot. Go to hell. If you are actually worried there might be a trend in D&D that they might allow gay or any other sexual minorities to be mentioned in a positive light? Dont play D&D. Go thump your Bible and pat yourself on the back  for thinking you're a good person for being so concerned with the completely harmless things that other free people chose to do to pursue their own personal brand of happiness. Feel free to condemn D&D 5th's writers (or me) as some "liberal crazies" and fret to yourself how the "sanctity of marriage" is being ruined by people you dont know and you'll never meet, and wrap yourself in that self-absorbed cocoon so that you never have to actuually face whatever problems abouut yourself you're obviously trying to avoid thinking about by concentrating on the percieved "sins" of others. You complete and utter twat.

And on top of that to be a complete pussy in how you go about it? Grow some goddamn balls, you wanker. Man up and wear that KKK hoodie proudly as you peddle your shit.




And if you are just a troll here just saying this stuff to get a reaction? Well, you're just as responsible as the bigots who actually believe this crap.

Quote from: Haffrung;796536Some people don't seem to understand that someone can be fully supportive of gay marriage and real-world transgendered rights, and have no interest in seeing it in RPGs not because of politics, but because modern real-world social issues and politics are simply dumb and irksome in D&D adventures.

Bullshit.  Just bullshit.  No one is ever going to convince me he's "fully supportive" of such rights at the same time he's telling me that the mere existence of gays or transgendered characters in a RPG book puts him off.  Anyone who tries is either a liar or self-deluded.

We're not talking, after all, about Gay Cults who are seeking to turn all straights queer.  We're not talking, after all, of priests of the Transgendered God/dess, who wander around stealing the genitals off of men and grafting them onto women.  We're not talking about LBGT festivals or LBGT populations.  We're not even talking about a dozen LBGT characters in every product any one company puts out.

What we're talking about is the mere MENTION of a couple LBGT characters (always, so far, amidst a blizzard of hetero characters), and in a couple of products.  Why exactly do you find that irksome?  Do you complain when there are characters explicitly described as hetero?  With hetero spouses and children?  Do you?

No, I didn't think so.

And no, the presence of such characters don't "detract" from an adventure.  How, exactly?  Sexuality is a character trait, with no more or no less impact on an adventure than hair color, handedness, how much leather the character sports, whether the character smokes a pipe or not, or anything of the sort.

It is distracting only if the mere existence of that character trait creeps you out.  And, sir, if that's the case here, if nothing more than the identification of a fictional character as gay sets your teeth on edge, then spare us the malarkey about how open minded you are.  Because it's bullshit.

Quote from: Ravenswing;796656Bullshit.  Just bullshit.  No one is ever going to convince me he's "fully supportive" of such rights at the same time he's telling me that the mere existence of gays or transgendered characters in a RPG book puts him off.  Anyone who tries is either a liar or self-deluded.

We're not talking, after all, about Gay Cults who are seeking to turn all straights queer.  We're not talking, after all, of priests of the Transgendered God/dess, who wander around stealing the genitals off of men and grafting them onto women.  We're not talking about LBGT festivals or LBGT populations.  We're not even talking about a dozen LBGT characters in every product any one company puts out.

What we're talking about is the mere MENTION of a couple LBGT characters (always, so far, amidst a blizzard of hetero characters), and in a couple of products.  Why exactly do you find that irksome?  Do you complain when there are characters explicitly described as hetero?  With hetero spouses and children?  Do you?

No, I didn't think so.

And no, the presence of such characters don't "detract" from an adventure.  How, exactly?  Sexuality is a character trait, with no more or no less impact on an adventure than hair color, handedness, how much leather the character sports, whether the character smokes a pipe or not, or anything of the sort.

It is distracting only if the mere existence of that character trait creeps you out.  And, sir, if that's the case here, if nothing more than the identification of a fictional character as gay sets your teeth on edge, then spare us the malarkey about how open minded you are.  Because it's bullshit.

Yep.

I hate the pseudo-activist brigade as mucuh as anyone (well, maybe not as much as Zak S and Pundit and others, but a fair deal). I don't really care for gimmicky political correctness being inserted into RPGs or infesting the hobby at all. And these days I consider the term "inclusive" a dirty word.

But here? In this thread? Whats being discussed? You're calling it like it is.

Kudos.

Quote from: Will;796559Haffrung: I'm pretty sure there was mention of married couples and occasional romances in RPGs long before Paizo.

It's incredibly scarce, actually.
But your sureness about something - anything - seems to be a pretty strong indicator of it not being the case!

Quote from: Bren;796590It wouldn't be fair, perhaps, if it required substantion work.

But I'll go out on a limb here and say that it seems highly unlikely that substantial work is required. How essential are the exact details of the paladin's transgendered relationship really?

As far as I can tell from only having Book 1 of Wrath of the Righteous, it's presented as very important and the PCs deal with it as they interact with the male-to-female character and subsequently her half-orc Paladin wife (the cover character of the AP issue), who seems to be a major plot element. It does not seem to be easily discardable fluff as far as I can tell. I tried running it for my son (7) who loves the WoTR demon minis and was keen to play the WoTR AP, but I remember it giving me a headache when I tried to modify it to something more comprehensible for a 7 year old who is still grappling with "two mummies can't make a baby together, even when they're married".

Quote from: Haffrung;796605My experience with Paizo adventure paths is that I have to excise so much anachronistic soap-opera bullshit that all the NPC background and motivations and plots - about 30 per cent of material - is unusable. So these days I stick to setting-based adventure material, where I can create my own NPCs and plots that aren't parables about the cultural hang-ups of left-leaning hipster geeks from Seattle.

Hmm, yes. I'm running an AP currently, but I'm starting to think that the best way to use Paizo material is just to sandbox with their setting material while avoiding their Adventure Paths, or just use bits and pieces of the APs (dungeons, encounter tables & suchlike). It seems to be the APs where the 'bad fanfic' feel is by far the strongest, especially the more recent ones. Unlike old White Wolf stuff it does not seem to be a problem with their setting material, which avoids 'metaplot' & such, and is generally more play-oriented, whereas the APs seem more oriented for reading - something I have no interest in doing outside of game-prep.

AC4, 6+2 HD, rubbery green skin, regenerates 3 HP per round, 3 attacks, 2 claws 1-4 each, 1 bite 1-8.

@all
What did you have to argue about to fill 7 pages?

Quote from: RPGPundit;796466Your answer makes it pretty clear that this whole "we must preserve the role of the paladin" thing is just an irrelevant side-tracking of your main issue: you think transgender people are icky.

You probably will not believe me, but what makes me icky here, is paying for products painting people with different opinion than publisher about the political-legal framework in respect to LGBT as evil, as i am one of them.
But i would generalize that to other opinions, since there should not be something special about mine, hence i asked with this threads for "political commentary" in general.

See it this way, i am sure you agree that some of the words in your post are not utmost polite in respect to the quality of my character (which is ok, nobody forced me to read it). Consider that if i bought a product and then to my suprise would not only find what i wanted to pay for, but rather a condemnation of my character and political views written in the style you wrote?
Why shouldn't i try to avoid paying for products containing such friendly statements in the future?

Because while its ok for you to say what you say, i am unwilling to pay for it.

And except for the wording and language style, paizos message is identical to yours, that i'm a bigot or something like that.

Quote from: RPGPundit;796466where you're trying to argue that a Paladin not immediately losing her powers for loving a transgender person is not just a statement that having a transgender love is 'not bad enough to lose abilities' but is rather stating that LGBT relationships are an absolute moral good making those who dislike them a an absolute moral evil, all just because a paladin sold her sword to help her lover.

I did not claim, the pal should lose powers for loving a transgender. I claimed placing such personal feelings above her duties should make her lose the powers. And that would be the same with paladin selling her sword for the other scenarios you suggested, pals do not neglect their duties just because her lover is unhappy about something.

Quote from: RPGPundit;796466So let's extrapolate this in another direction: Let's say the paladin's lover was fat, instead of transgender.  And the paladin was selling the sword to pay for liposuction.   IF paizo had done this instead, would they be:
a) putting in a ridiculous anachronism while thinking they're clever, because they're shitty writers and even shittier adventure-designers?
b) stating that its ok for a paladin to give up a treasured magic item in order to help someone she loves?
or
c) claiming that ANYONE WHO DOESN'T LIKE FATTIES IS HITLER?

If there would be differing opinions in politics regarding the legal framework in respect to liposuction and paizo publisher would name the including of such scenarios as mandatory for paizo material and other paizo material would back up the general direction, then yes, it could be c).

Quote from: RPGPundit;796466I mean, I could get it, if paizo had some scene in one of their shitfest adventures where you had, say, an evil order of knights that persecute transgender people and they were the bad guys.  Let me be clear: in the real world, people who persecute transgender people ARE bad guys, but that would probably just be done in the book as heavy-handed and over the top writing that would engage in stupid moralizing masquerading as adventure.
But paizo didn't even fucking do that!

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2q9qi?Is-the-dwarven-goddess-of-marriage-homophobic
"Paizo Employee Jessica Price Project Manager    Oct 19, 2013, 04:57 AM | Flag |
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Jessica Price
Nicos wrote:

    Jessica Price wrote:

        Given that Bolka is neutral good, her being homophobic seems incongruous.

    You that work with paizo surely know more about the gods of golarion than me, but I want to mention that people (in this case gods) can be incongruous. Bolka being NG can still have her blak spots.

Yes, but generally the flaws in good deities are fairly minor, comparatively speaking -- none of them are in favor of torturing the innocent, for example. Given that Paizo has a large number of LGBT employees, I think that as a company we tend to take the idea of forbidding people loving relationships and marriage based on genders of the partners to be a pretty significant flaw. I could see us maybe having it be a flaw in a neutral deity, but it's hard to imagine we'd publish it for a good deity. It'd be like having a good deity that objected to people of Garundi descent being allowed to marry -- too evil for a good deity."

Being against gay marriage is not only a flaw, but a flaw that gets one booted from the "good" camp. So while they had so far no such plots, in case they have such plots, one can bet upon the "against gay marriage"-fraction be placed in the evil camp.

Quote from: RPGPundit;796466So yeah, all of this, all of this concern about how the paladin theoretically won't be able to kill theoretical demons now because of the Transgender Agenda, and how her god not immediately smiting her for selling a weapon to help someone she loves, is all because you think transgender people are icky.

Just say it.
Admit it.
You'll feel better if you stop trying to hide your true feelings, won't you?

Admitting something that is not true, is lying.

And it is not true, because if someone told me now "do not worry, paizo stopped including political commentary regarding LGBT, they now only paint people in favor of high taxes as evil and they certainly deserve it, those commies." it wouldn't matter much, because using RPG to paint someone else merely for a differing political opinion as evil is as bad as painting me as evil and i would not like to pay for such material.

Besides, i am trying to estimate what i am to expect from some product. My feelings about anything are irrelevant for that question, because whatever i feel the product would not change.

Quote from: RPGPundit;796466Come out and say it, and stop pussyfooting around if its what you actually believe and you don't think it's wrong.  If you're worried about being banned, take note that I'm the OWNER of this forum (and also the first guy to ever put a transgender character on the cover an RPG rulebook, so there's also that!), and I'm promising you that you won't be banned for sharing what you really think about transgender people.
You might be banned if you turn out to be a sockpuppet, or if you turn every other thread you post in into an soapbox for a totally off-topic personal issue, or if you post porn, or if you stalk someone else. But I absolutely PROMISE that you don't have to hide behind arguments about fictional paladins serving fictional gods and not getting fictionally punished here, you won't be banned for just saying that you don't want any of those icky transgender people in your RPGs, and showing us all just what a stupid fucking bigot you really are.

But since you are the owner here and ask so nicely and politely, people being straight is preferable to being LGBT, but the question whether anything can actually influence whether someone is straight or LGBT is unanswered as far as i know; hence, saying aloud that its preferable might be impolite, cause maybe they cannot do anything about it.

And watching porn including anal sex etc. makes me feel what you maybe mean with "icky"; but that is not dependent upon the gender of the participants (but unavoidable has the consequence, that i prefer not to watch gay porn; though i tried to reduce my porn consumption even regarding straight porn).

And i do not see any reason to think of a male with something chirurgically removed as "she" or a female with something chirurgically added as "he", though talking about, i usually try to avoid this due to politeness issues. If i change the color pigmentation of my skin, i am still member of a white ethinic and not member of a black ethnic, whatever i or other people choose to call me.

Enough soul stripping? In what way does this help with the thread topic?

Quote from: RPGPundit;796466You'll just be ruthlessly mocked, and have your arguments torn to shreds by people smarter than you.

I always enjoy this whenever it happens. But it happens seldom.

Quote from: RPGPundit;796466Because I strongly believe no one should ever be banned or censored for saying stupid fucking bigoted things.  It causes us all to lose learning opportunities that way.

That is to be respected, which - in case you wondered - is the reason why i asked in this forum. With other forums i suspected the chance of banning with such questions is a lot higher. And here i get at least some answers (@S'mon: Thanks)

Besides, if you want me to be as politely to you as you are towards me, you need to say so. I am not used to that level of politeness.

Old Geezer has the right of it.

Alternatively, this....

Quote from: rawma;796570I am curious; stupidquestion, how many Paizo adventures have you bought?  From what others say, this seems to be the most extreme example; were you unlucky enough that this was the first, or were you happy with all of the previous ones, and if so, how many?

Several beforehand and they were mostly ok, though getting neutral chars raiding innocent coastal villages in Shackles and having a perfectly flexible but ready to be monogamous heir to a thorne with magically enforced sucession of a kingdom at threat of demon invasion in case of interregnum, while no author ever seemed to connect the dots, that if the heir shacks up with a female ragtag from the other side of the world in a monogamous relationship, then the subjects would feel insecure, seemed to be small lapses from the authors side.

But with wrath of the rightous i noticed that some of the things irritating me, where actually part of a specific political message, paizo deliberately inserted. So i stopped, especially as i deceiphered the message to be:

Quote from: Emperor Norton;796570I'll be completely honest. If you don't think that transgender and non-hetero adult sexual relationships are morally equivalent to cis and hetero adult sexual relationships, I don't give a shit if you are offended or not. Actually, no, wait, I hope that anyone who doesn't believe that is offended, and leaves the hobby forever.

If they ask me to not buy their products because i am a bigot about whom they give a damn and with whom they want to have nothing to with, i felt additionally encouraged to avoid their products. (Yes, emporer norton posted this, but it nicely sums up what i think is behind paizos position.)

Quote from: Bren;796586People who find it intrusive should do what I do when I find some bit of RPG material doesn't suit me. Don't buy it. Or buy it and revise it.

And what is then exactly wrong about my thread? I want to avoid buying certain stuff. Just need to know whether D & D is likely to be among the "stuff" or not.

Quote from: stupidquestion;796699And what is then exactly wrong about my thread? I want to avoid buying certain stuff. Just need to know whether D & D is likely to be among the "stuff" or not.

   Basically, stuff coming out of White Wolf or the companies headquartered in the People's Republic of Greater Seattle (Paizo, WotC, Green Ronin, etc.) seems likely to take a more overt stand in favor of the Spirit of the Age. WotC has been less bold, but based on Mearls' comments in interviews, that seems likely to change, especially now that the Paragraph has been so well received. Outside that, it seems to be largely hit or miss. I'm not aware of any companies that have said 'we don't want to address these high-tension, divisive issues', largely because any such statements are likely to be met with shouts of "BIGOTRY! Doubleplusungoodthink! To the guillotine!"

Quote from: Ravenswing;796656We're not talking, after all, of priests of the Transgendered God/dess, who wander around stealing the genitals off of men and grafting them onto women.

A deity of chaos that inspires a cult whose goal is to switch genders around magically sounds kind of interesting.

If the switch is magical and temporary it could be a prankster deity. Maybe sometimes, very rarely if the person affected really wants and likes the change the change is permanent. So a prankster deity who is occassionally benevolent.

On the other hand if the switch is painful and permanent it could be a terrible, horrible deity.

Quote from: stupidquestion;796699And what is then exactly wrong about my thread? I want to avoid buying certain stuff. Just need to know whether D & D is likely to be among the "stuff" or not.

This has been covered at length by me, by Pundit, by others. If you've been reading the thread you couldn't possibly have missed the explanations. People whose world views are so precious and fragile that they require all material they consume to avoid any challenging viewpoints don't get a lot of sympathy from me.