Quote from: Kage2020 on October 23, 2023, 10:33:11 PM

Quote from: rytrasmi on October 23, 2023, 09:30:05 PM
Your choice, your opinion. But you won't be banned for expressing it here.

I never said my definition was definitive. I said the opposite. That's only one article among many.

Nobody has prepackaged answers for you.

And that's fair enough, and apologies. There was just so much packed into that in terms of anti-education, blue collar vs. white collar shenanigans, etc. that it was harder to separate what was "woke" other than a scare word.

My understanding of the term "woke" was that it was created pre-Civil Rights era to address those that understood the specific plights of the disenfranchised/minorities. That it might be applied to groups that might consider themselves to be disenfranchised would make sense.

I'm not quite sure how that gels with the definitions being offered herein, nor with why pronouns have come such a prominent feature of the game industry. (I'm remembering Unisystems's habit of switching from "he" to "she" every other chapter..)

Maybe it all comes down to being a European-born individual educated in Europe, now an American working in American higher education on programs related to Homeland Security. Suffice to say, confusion abounds. And I live in Virginia, which means that it gets even more confusing. O.o

Quote from: rytrasmi on October 23, 2023, 09:30:05 PM
PS: You can swear here. "Fuck." See? Welcome to our little slice of paradise!

If I say it here I'm sure that I'm going to drop it in front of my <10 year-old son.

Not that he hasn't heard it. The ribald humour on the school bus is ever writ large.

Woke is a term that came about almost 20 years ago now.  The idea was that most people are "asleep" when it can to how the world works and you're "woke" if you're in tune with all the social and political ideologies that shape modern life.  "He's woke to white privileged and understands how it harms POC."  This was from a leftist perspective and it's a term they came up with.  It's become a pejorative term now being used by people of a more right leaning position when they discovered it and used it in a mocking tone. 

Quote from: BadApple on October 23, 2023, 11:48:28 PMWoke is a term that came about almost 20 years ago now.  The idea was that most people are "asleep" when it can to how the world works and you're "woke" if you're in tune with all the social and political ideologies that shape modern life.  "He's woke to white privileged and understands how it harms POC."  This was from a leftist perspective and it's a term they came up with.  It's become a pejorative term now being used by people of a more right leaning position when they discovered it and used it in a mocking tone.

Again, the origins go back to the 40s where it was used by African Americans in the US. It's in the pre-Civil Rights US that it became politically charged.

I'm less convinced that the adoption by the political right has anything to do with "mocking", but hey-ho.

What are the issues that are supposedly "woke" in RPGs?

(And I'm definitely interested in issues as they contrast from the US to Europe or elsewhere. The US's seems to be particularly caught up in culture war hijinks?)

Quote from: Kage2020 on October 24, 2023, 12:00:58 AM

Quote from: BadApple on October 23, 2023, 11:48:28 PMWoke is a term that came about almost 20 years ago now.  The idea was that most people are "asleep" when it can to how the world works and you're "woke" if you're in tune with all the social and political ideologies that shape modern life.  "He's woke to white privileged and understands how it harms POC."  This was from a leftist perspective and it's a term they came up with.  It's become a pejorative term now being used by people of a more right leaning position when they discovered it and used it in a mocking tone.

Again, the origins go back to the 40s where it was used by African Americans in the US. It's in the pre-Civil Rights US that it became politically charged.

I'm less convinced that the adoption by the political right has anything to do with "mocking", but hey-ho.

What are the issues that are supposedly "woke" in RPGs?

(And I'm definitely interested in issues as they contrast from the US to Europe or elsewhere. The US's seems to be particularly caught up in culture war hijinks?)

Let me give you an example, albeit from ComicCon rather than gaming:
My wife and I found that BLM had a strong presence at San Diego ComicCon, I believe this was in 2017 or 18. They were milling around in the hallways, asking people to look out for "microaggressions". This is typical woke behavior today. It made the whole arrangement noticeably uncomfortable for many, and when we got home we realized they had pounced on someone, screaming and shouting about racism. This was posted on YouTube. Turns out that this someone was a Whoopi Goldberg fan who didn't get the memo that blackface is a no-no in America these days. Who did all this hoopla help? Absolutely nobody.

Do you have the YouTube link?

I find it hard to assess this otherwise, perhaps due to where I live (VA) and how facts have been, ah, manipulated to misrepresent how things actually are.

Don't get me wrong. I can totally see how political agendas and activists could be agents of discomfort.

Quote from: Dracones on October 23, 2023, 01:54:01 PM
Games Workshop is also huge and doesn't feel woke. Neither does Fantasy Flight Games. So maybe it depends a lot on where you're located.

GW treats everyone like dirt. They dont have time to be woke when they are tossing more of the cattle, into the grinder.

FFG is very woke. They have done diversity hires, have woke content in their board games, and thats just the little I know of after quitting doing business with them. Their new Arkham Horror game had ample examples. One of the new investigators is a lesbian with "a taste for girls" who is married to another woman, an have an adopted girl because of course. In the 1920s. Another investigator left their parents and joined a cult because and I quote. "Their parents misgendered them". In the 1920s.

Quote from: Coffeecup on October 23, 2023, 05:28:36 PM
First of all it is so unbelievable refreshing to read the posts here.
I posted the same topic in a German forum and there the usual wokies try to tiptoe around the topic.
One was the exception. His explanation boils down to "roleplaying gamers are better educated and more intelligent".

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on October 23, 2023, 04:26:09 PM
They did what ? There's absolutely nothing in the original Italian edition that would require something like that. Even the (obviously abundant) Latin terms are correctly gendered according to Latin grammar, there's absolutely no reason to butcher the text like that.

I know. I know.
Here is one excerpt from the German quickstart:

QuoteIn der Cohors Arcana gibt es fünf sogenannte Officia (deutsch: Ämter, Singular: Officium), die davon abhängen, welchem Ausbildungspfad der*die jeweilige Custos gefolgt ist: Diplomat*in, Gelehrte*r, Krieger*in, Kundschafter*in oder Seher*in.

And the English quickstart:

QuoteThere are five offices in the Cohors Arcana, based on the training course the Custos was selected for upon recruitment: augur, diplomat, fighter, scholar, and explorer.

"Tradurre è un po' tradire" (translate is a bit like betrayal, more or less) is an Italian expression that applies in this case, the general idea being that the original language of a text conveys not only literal meaning but also other, less literal messages that can be hard (if not impossible) to properly render in another language through translation.
In this case, the original Italian Lex Arcana rulebook is written in an impersonal, neutral style very much similar to that used in school textbooks and divulgative history books.... and that's not by accident, since actual archeologists and Roman history experts collaborated with the authors so that the feeling of an "authentic" late Roman world could be communicated effectively and impartially (because yes, old Romans were, by modern standards, pretty much imperialistic assholes and not very nice people, but the role of historic research is to communicate, not judge).
So, literally translating the text to German but adding the gender indeterminate/neutral/total/whatever version of words that were not present in the original betrays the intention of the authors of having a corebook sounding like an history textbook.

TL;DR: it's a shit translation job, more on the "betray" side than the "translate" side.

Just to be clear what I understand a woke company does:
In the external communication it emphasizes (important word. I don't mind queer people and am also opposed to discrimination due to sex, race, etc.. But I don't feel the need to voice that opinion over and over again and also point out when attempts to fight discrimination go too far).
-diversity
-queer topics
-anticapitalistic

Part of the external communication is the product design but of course advertisements, newsletters, etc. as well.

Quote from: Kage2020 on October 24, 2023, 12:00:58 AM

What are the issues that are supposedly "woke" in RPGs?

There are basically three issues of "woke" in gaming.  The first is that some of the gaming material itself has become propaganda for far left ideology.  The second is that companies are financing organization that are openly hostile to large portions of the gaming community or push far left agenda in politics and RL communities at large.  The third is that gaming companies and third party organizations are trying to force gamers to submit or pay tribute to far left causes.

Propaganda as games: 

For games like Thirsty Sword Lesbians, Shield Maidens, or Gaming with Pride, you can see what it is and decide for yourself if you are interested.  I, and many other can simply say "no thank you" and move on. No harm no foul.  However, there are games being marketed as mainstream but hide the ideology in it.  I recently did a counter-review of the game Dark Stars that was touted a Cyberpunk in space.  Nope, it was actually Antifa propaganda.  Through the Radiant Citadel by WOTC for D&D 5e was like this.  They actively hid from consumers that it was both highly feminist, communist, and leftist "multicultural."  (I've been around the world and what leftist call "multicultural" isn't actually embracing different cultures.) 

There are games where they are changing the material to be more "socially acceptable," usually by removing large parts of a setting because it offended someone that saw parallels between the fictional setting and some IRL thing that offend them.  Chaosium has been doing this a lot lately but other games have been doing this.  Companies that do this usually start with the pronoun thing and the devolve into digital book burning.  All this while lying to us and gaslighting us.

Financing leftist causes

Several companies have been donating to organizations that are either revolutionary in nature or directly supporting political candidates that push far left policies.  BLM has openly stated that they are a revolutionary Marxist organization with the stated goal of ending the nuclear family, ending "capitalism" in America, and taking all white people out of positions of power and yet has received money from several gaming companies.  Recently, SJG has been the topic for this but several companies have statement sthe show support for them.

One of the biggest issues in the USA right now is the queer sex education in schools today.  There are several elements to it but the two biggest that those that are not leftist have an issue with is the exposure of children to explicit sexual content and the "transitioning" of children without the knowledge or consent of the parents.  It doesn't help at all that gay pride marches have been featuring the chant "we're here, we're queer, and we're coming for your children."  With this in mind, it's easy to see how gaming companies making rainbow versions of their corporate logos in the middle of this might be a problem for many consumers. 

The demand for gaming communities to submit

If anyone needs me to spell this one out then they just haven't been paying attention.  WOTC, Paizo, and GW, who have the biggest influence on gaming physical spaces, have been pushing policies that align with leftist activist groups.  The most egregious was when WOTC prevented background checks being done on judges and moderators for MTG organized play.  (Much of MTG is underage people.)  Parents want to know that their kids are safe from known predators at events but WOTC said that it needed to preserve the dignity of it's volunteers by not violating their privacy.  This was after two different people that had previous convictions associated with pedophilia were identified running events.

Kyle Brink said live on a podcast that white males can't get out of the hobby fast enough.  Coyote and Crow has a section in the book specifically telling white people that they can only use the game within specific guidelines they spell out.  Many articles have been published by gaming journalist and gaming companies calling average gamers racist and sexist and then telling us how we are supposed to behave.   The X card and the consent in gaming contract were being pushed a couple of years ago and we were told we were sexist NAZIs if we didn't want to use them.  (If any reader disagrees with my interpretation that they were being pushed like this, keep it to yourself.   They damn well were but I'm not going to bother dredging up the mountain of articles written about it.)  Both the X card and the consent in gaming were explicitly to allow "marginalized people" to take control of a game if they felt it was headed in a direction that would trigger past trauma.

For me the part that really gets under my skin is that when there was a little push back gamers would be gaslit and demonized. 

I hope this clarifies for you what's been going.  Also, there's no "supposedly" about it, it really is an issue.

Quote from: Kage2020 on October 24, 2023, 01:51:57 AM
Do you have the YouTube link?

I find it hard to assess this otherwise, perhaps due to where I live (VA) and how facts have been, ah, manipulated to misrepresent how things actually are.

Don't get me wrong. I can totally see how political agendas and activists could be agents of discomfort.

Sadly I haven't been able to find that video for years. Maybe whoever posted it took it down. It was just a lot of screaming and shouting though.

EDIT: here's at least one video from that whole situation
https://m.twitch.tv/clip/HelpfulGlamorousWebDerp

Quote from: Kage2020 on October 23, 2023, 10:33:11 PM

And that's fair enough, and apologies. There was just so much packed into that in terms of anti-education, blue collar vs. white collar shenanigans, etc. that it was harder to separate what was "woke" other than a scare word.

My understanding of the term "woke" was that it was created pre-Civil Rights era to address those that understood the specific plights of the disenfranchised/minorities. That it might be applied to groups that might consider themselves to be disenfranchised would make sense.

I'm not quite sure how that gels with the definitions being offered herein, nor with why pronouns have come such a prominent feature of the game industry. (I'm remembering Unisystems's habit of switching from "he" to "she" every other chapter..)

Maybe it all comes down to being a European-born individual educated in Europe, now an American working in American higher education on programs related to Homeland Security. Suffice to say, confusion abounds. And I live in Virginia, which means that it gets even more confusing. O.o

No worries.

The pronoun issue is freedom of conscience/speech vs freedom to not be offended. The issue is pushed by activists for their own power and gratification. There is a large segment of alphabet people who are against it because a) its importance is exaggerated and b) it alienates regular people who don't like being told how to think and what to do.

Quote from: BadApplePropaganda as games

Life imitates art, or vice versa depending on how much you may or may not be influenced by Oscar Wilde, surely?

That is, as a form of art, authors are allowed to express their opinions in a medium that is meaningful to them, right? This seems to be a core sentiment here--at least from what I see. A "say what you want but I don't have to listen" vibe, which is entirely reasonable though not without limit (at least in America according to the Supreme Court).

I mean, look at the amount of propaganda and indoctrination that abounds with respect to Christian Mythology (etc.), which includes TTRPGs, films (Left Behind, anyone), books etc. Heck, even daycare in the US can indoctrinate pre-K children, forcing upon them a theist education and making them bow before the cross. Admittedly, in my experience, not surprising when you select a daycare in a church. (Heck, even the Taekwondo was Christian. Wonderful people, though.)

Going back further, you've got other examples of propaganda being disseminated without being called out. Textbooks in the American "South," for example, were rife with it (and are arguably going to become more so). Ovid's Metamorphoses etc.

I guess what I'm seeing is a sea change that is being reflected in "art" and it's totally fine that not everyone is going to be onboard with those changes. I know that there are things that I'm uncomfortable with in modern America--something that is exacerbated that I was originally European (UK).

Anecdotally, I just had to remind myself of the origins and meaning of "gaslighting". For some reason that darn word won't stick in my mind.

Quote from: BadAppleFinancing leftist causes

To be fair, you're going to be able to find examples of companies--counted as individuals for some reason--financing right wing (and even so-called "alt" right wing) organisations. Whether that's Hobby Lobby, Chick-fil-A, the Church, or the average American citizen that is forced to support them through state taxes.

Quote from: BadAppleBLM has openly stated that they are a revolutionary Marxist organization with the stated goal of ending the nuclear family, ending "capitalism" in America, and taking all white people out of positions of power and yet has received money from several gaming companies.

FWIW, one of them expressed this publicly as part of their background, another had it as part of their publishing profile, and the third? Nothing about them and Marxism.

With that said, I admit that I had to Google this because I was given to understand that it's really hard to pin down a specific ideology for BLM given its fragmentary practices (which do, indeed, sometimes involve violence).

Your final point I didn't do any research on, though I can imagine it to be true insofar as they might demand some form of equitable outcome such as was seen, for example, in the Civil Rights Movement. (I might be totally wrong.)

The "nuclear family" thing is definitely a thing, which sucks of you're a family person and doesn't if you had a sh*t family. (I'm fall into the latter category until I came over to the States.) With that said, they back it up with the notion of "It Takes a Village to Raise a Child" which, while it was coined by Hillary Clinton, it doesn't take too much Googling to find that Christianity has tried to adopt it as it represents a strength of the Church, i.e. community.

Quote from: BadAppleOne of the biggest issues in the USA right now is the queer sex education in schools today.  There are several elements to it but the two biggest that those that are not leftist have an issue with is the exposure of children to explicit sexual content and the "transitioning" of children without the knowledge or consent of the parents.

I'm... having trouble with what amounts to the second and third of the three points in these two sentences. I just don't believe them.

As to the first point? I imagine that you're speaking to education that deals with same sex acts?

Quote from: BadAppleIt doesn't help at all that gay pride marches have been featuring the chant "we're here, we're queer, and we're coming for your children." 

So much euwww with this. While it's easy to massage this into a more positive message vis-a-vis educating children against installed prejudices, this is not the way that you do it. So, so much euwwww.

Whomever thought that slogan up needs to take some classes in messaging and crisis communications.

Quote from: BadApplePropaganda as games

The demand for gaming communities to submit[/quote]
This I have more problem with, especially the bit about not requiring background checks to work with children. That's a big no for me and it's not rocket science.

With the rest of this section, I guess I'm circling around to the first section and response, above.

Quote from: BadApplePropaganda as games

For me the part that really gets under my skin is that when there was a little push back gamers would be gaslit and demonized.
[/quote]
On my own behalf, I like to see both sides of the debate. At least the US would be a weaker place without the conversation between progressives and conservatives. Preferably without the Religious Right, but that's just me.

Quote from: rytrasmi...it alienates regular people who don't like being told how to think and what to do.

It's not what you meant, but this is very much the reason that I did not join the military despite a family history of service.

If, as quoted, this is the only problem "In der Cohors Arcana gibt es fünf sogenannte Officia (deutsch: Ämter, Singular: Officium), die davon abhängen, welchem Ausbildungspfad der*die jeweilige Custos gefolgt ist: Diplomat*in, Gelehrte*r, Krieger*in, Kundschafter*in oder Seher*in." I think it's much ado about nothing and not actually all that leftist or woke.

My native language is Dutch, which one can see as the discount language of German (but the most beautiful language in the world after West-Flemish) and I kind of *get* why they do that. In Dutch as well as German, you have separate nouns for the two genders, which in English you don't have (of course if you replace -man with -woman, then you do).

In my view, I think it is much more to do with the readability of the text rather than anything else. To be entirely clear, allow me to demonstrate:

A seer in English can be both male or female (yes, you can "add" -ess to words but it is much more common to use male as the standard).

In Dutch (and German), however, you need to use the right word: Seher for male, Seherin for female. Ziener (in Dutch) and zieneres.

If, for the sake of inclusivity, you want to emphasise both genders are to be represented in the text, you should therefore, say this:

"In der Cohors Arcana gibt es fünf sogenannte Officia (deutsch: Ämter, Singular: Officium), die davon abhängen, welchem Ausbildungspfad der oder die jeweilige Custos gefolgt ist: der Diplomat / die Diplomatin, der Gelehrte / die Gelehrter,  der Krieger / die Kriegerin, der Kundschafter / die Kundshafterin oder der Seher /die Seherin."

I think you see the problem with this. Much more (obsolete) words, including articles which can easily be substituted as they did on the beginning of the sentence. Keep in mind, German has four articles: Der for masculine, Die for feminine, Das for neuter, Die for plural. And that's only in nominative! Then, to make things interesting, you have accusative, dative and genitive, each with mostly their proper own articles.

I think that the choice here is made for readability of the text other than anything else, however, I may be wrong, so if so, I stand corrected.

So, there's no "generic" case/gender in German/Dutch ?
Because one thing that a lot of (italian speaking) people tend to forget nowadays is that in Italian, the masculine grammatical gender is also the "indeterminate" or "catch all" gender: if you're not sure about what grammatical gender to use or if you're talking about a group that contains elements of both genders, you use the masculine. If German has some grammatical feature that works like that, it's what should have been used in this case; if not, then the * or whatever symbol they used is the best possible approximation (rember, "to translate is a bit like betrayal").

Definitely. The hobby is overwhelmingly male social outcasts, who want nothing more than some female contact. Their only social contact is with other gamers, so they see the only way for them to get female social contact is for women to start playing the hobby. For years, before anything really happened to the hobby, they were constantly asking what they could do to get more women into the hobby.

When early SJWs and the type caught wind of this, they gave their answers, and these men starved of female attention bent over backwards to give the SJWs everything they wanted. After all, the gamers were literally asking for it.

It's absolutely no surprise that of all hobbies and subcultures, ttRPGs were among the first to get completely steamrolled and whipped by SJWs.

Quote from: migo on October 25, 2023, 08:39:26 AM
Definitely. The hobby is overwhelmingly male social outcasts, who want nothing more than some female contact. Their only social contact is with other gamers, so they see the only way for them to get female social contact is for women to start playing the hobby. For years, before anything really happened to the hobby, they were constantly asking what they could do to get more women into the hobby.

When early SJWs and the type caught wind of this, they gave their answers, and these men starved of female attention bent over backwards to give the SJWs everything they wanted. After all, the gamers were literally asking for it.

It's absolutely no surprise that of all hobbies and subcultures, ttRPGs were among the first to get completely steamrolled and whipped by SJWs.

In the USA, maybe. Friendly reminder that there's a whole world outside of your borders and (surprising, I know) it doesn't conform to american social standards and expectations.