I note you have failed to respond to any of my arguments. And seem to believe that if morality is subject to change (which you'd think would require its existence in some form) it must therefore not exist? Likewise, that establishing the existence of morality objectively... establishes nihilism, or the lack thereof? Abandoning your post ethically is seeking ethics in objective form, whether that be via divine command, external knowledge or magical indicators, grace or the like? Up is down, left is right? Don't believe in an objective way of finding morality, and this is the best way to move towards what is objectively good. Which is also discernable from evolution, somehow, despite that contradicting the former. The cognitive dissonance is real.


But  that said, this is getting a bit off track, and I do note that you don't seem to have taken issue with my post primarily pertaining to the actual topic of the thread. We can continue this morality topic if you want in the non-rpg section, I'm sure, which would be fun.

Quote from: MeganovaStella on November 30, 2023, 09:53:57 PM
so in other words, you agree with moral nihilism: good and evil don't exist out of the imaginations of a few naked apes.

...then why are you morally lecturing us?

How is that nihilistic? Are you saying the birth, life and deaths of a few apes isn't significant to you? Sad.

Sometimes I feel like a frog in boiling water with respect to all the censorship, active corporate stance-taking and overreach within the context of unrelated political issues, and changes within the cultural zeitgeist towards I guess what you could call a more illiberal society. I guess the question for me might be less the thread topic's stated question, and more at what point did all this cross a line in the proverbial sand? And at what point did it become an active and noticeable trait within the hobby at large?

Quote from: KindaMeh on November 30, 2023, 11:20:14 PM
Sometimes I feel like a frog in boiling water with respect to all the censorship, active corporate stance-taking and overreach within the context of unrelated political issues, and changes within the cultural zeitgeist towards I guess what you could call a more illiberal society. I guess the question for me might be less the thread topic's stated question, and more at what point did all this cross a line in the proverbial sand? And at what point did it become an active and noticeable trait within the hobby at large?

Compared to what? The 1980s? Companies actively censored all kinds of content they didn't like. Try to find a gay couple in any D&D product before 2000.

Quote from: pawsplay on November 30, 2023, 11:21:33 PM

Quote from: KindaMeh on November 30, 2023, 11:20:14 PM
Sometimes I feel like a frog in boiling water with respect to all the censorship, active corporate stance-taking and overreach within the context of unrelated political issues, and changes within the cultural zeitgeist towards I guess what you could call a more illiberal society. I guess the question for me might be less the thread topic's stated question, and more at what point did all this cross a line in the proverbial sand? And at what point did it become an active and noticeable trait within the hobby at large?

Compared to what? The 1980s? Companies actively censored all kinds of content they didn't like. Try to find a gay couple in any D&D product before 2000.

Yeah, the idea that corporations were all super-free-speech back in the 1980s is pretty ridiculous. What has changed is the sort of content that gets censored, not the censorship. TSR removed the terms demons and devils in 1989, for example.

As far as wokeness in the hobby, I'd draw a big line between online discussion of RPGs vs actual play and game material of RPGs. I think all discussion got very political some time in 2015 to 2016, including online discussion of RPGs. In terms of actual gaming material, I think the shift has been far less noticeable. If I look at recent WotC adventures like "Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk", I think most people wouldn't notice much in play. WotC is much bigger about proclaiming online in liberal forums about how woke they are, as opposed to actually writing woke content in published books.

Greetings!

I like apes. I also like elephants. Elephants should be able to say whatever they want, anywhere, to anyone.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Gonna drop a part of my earlier post here so that I can reference it more easily.

Quote from: KindaMeh on November 30, 2023, 07:06:59 PM

Likewise, explicit censorship rules on major forums such as Reddit and rpg.net, which get more than 70% of incoming traffic, seem to actively target conservative voices within the hobby. Like reddit's ban on even discussing Ascendant or ACKS and condemnation of various other games and creators from a position of site authority, enforced with active mod rulings. Corporate censorship sucks, and it's more widespread than you might immediately suspect. Personally, I think sites should either be effectively free in speech or be counted as publishers for the views they condone and weed out as the ONE TRUTH from general public opinion, but that's neither here nor there.

When political views at the table are a required part of the game and your qualifications to DM or play it, that's political in nature. Guess who puts that into writing? There are many left-wing examples I could name, many quite popular, that have recently begun trying to dictate table political leanings from the corporate office. And I mean literally, in the rules of the game.

Now, are there games which explore left and/or right leaning, or even orthogonal, political and social themes to a heavy degree within their settings or content without doing that? Sure. Moreso on the left than on the right, probably, but I'd actually be broadly fine with that. The problem is that all the issues above are not only political, but actively encourage the overextension of corporate power over everyday life. They have ties also to rising plans of government censorship, which you should be concerned about regardless of political affiliation. They also have ties to ESG being the only metric legally endorsed as usable in investment that isn't profit when investing somebody's money. (Regardless of what they may value or want you to do, that's your only legal option, which is very much government-backed economic and societal distortion.) These complex issues all interconnect and come into play together.

Gay couples in stories and supplements would fall under the first sentence of that last paragraph. Exploring themes without the aforementioned practices and the same degree of subsequent ties to the issues listed in that final paragraph's conclusion is of course fine, but not mandatory. If you lack publishing presence that's one thing, and on the flipside I don't have a problem with gay or left wing supplements being made available by corporations en masse to the public. (Though actively censoring creators and their content would certainly count for me as a problem in the same sense that hiring on the basis of race+politics counts to my mind these days in places like WOTC, sure. And I do think that some of that took place, and that the corporations have long had too much say in what hits the public debating square.)

So essentially, I'm talking more about literal censorship than "under-representation" (whoever the hell decides quotas for that) in market share.

On forums, for sure. I guess also maybe Youtube and other similar platforms, so the internet definitely comes into play a fair bit. Control that and you can control the conversation. Also at conventions with respect to who is allowed to speak, or even just attend within the hobby.

Also restrictions on politics of players at tables and who is and is not allowed to play. As enforced quite literally in many rulebooks these days. Censoring and rewriting past modules to erase past creative content and thereby control thoughts with respect to the game's history.

Also let's not pretend that ESG being the only alternative to profit under law has had no impact. That was a blatant distortion of the market and corporate values, and it's still ongoing.

All this and more points to the active repression of certain points of view within the hobby.




Outside the hobby, from a political standpoint, speech is getting banned more broadly. Sometimes it's hate speech that gets curtailed, sometimes it's criticism of religious identity as in DeSantis' Florida. Or, as a leftist, consider when Trump recently called for something to be done about MSNBC and mainstream media from a political perspective. Or all the calls to take down Fox News for misinformation or whatever on the other side. Or college campus agreements that stipulate you can be expelled or lose scholarships and whatnot for certain kinds of speech. Think about how workers are losing their right to bring cases to fair trial, because they can sign away their right to speak in court or just in general through arbitration agreements and NDAs. And again, corporate censorship is still censorship. A bit too much for me to go into there properly, but it's very much a thing. Consider also how ChatGPT answers certain search queries, for instance. Or I guess maybe think about school and library book bannings on both sides of the political aisle. The marketplace of ideas is dying out, because folks don't want to share the airwaves anymore. And they will soon possess the means to no longer have to. It's an issue for anyone and everyone, I feel.

Quote from: KindaMeh on November 30, 2023, 09:57:55 PM
I note you have failed to respond to any of my arguments. And seem to believe that if morality is subject to change

The thing to remember about woke morality is that there really isn't any such thing.  There are no underlying moral principles.  For the wokeists, morality is entirely instrumental.  It's just whatever suits them right now.  Bullying behavior is wrong and unacceptable unless they want to engage in or excuse bullying behavior.  Then it's not just acceptable but laudable.  Free speech is an important right unless people are saying things that they don't like.  The rest is just ad hoc justifications.  Their bullying behavior is acceptable because they are "punching down".  Speech they don't like is placed in a nebulous hate speech category with them defining what is hate speech ad hoc as it suits them.  There is no morality there.  There are just rationalizations couched in moral terms.

Quote from: pawsplay on November 30, 2023, 11:21:33 PM
Compared to what? The 1980s? Companies actively censored all kinds of content they didn't like. Try to find a gay couple in any D&D product before 2000.

Try to find much of anything about sexuality in D&D products before 2000.  Sometimes there was a little mention of a relationship a marriage or when it was pertinent to a central conflict like the Ravenloft module but that was extremely rare.  TSR went out of their way not to include things of a romantic or sexual nature because it didn't add anything to game play and they understood that much of their audience were minors.

Before ESG was set as a corporate drive, the only censorship companies engaged in was that which they felt gave a negative light on their products.  Now the same organizations that poison ground water, engage multi level financial fraud, and exploit their employees are acting morality police.  Mark my words, power wielded against your enemies will be used against you one day.   

Also, NGL, I wasn't even alive back in the 80s. Nor do I have any real recollections of the 90s, for that matter. So that wasn't really what I was thinking of earlier. Still, even with a relatively small lifespan sample size, I have noticed changes in censorship and corporate overreach. And broadly not for the better.

Quote from: BadApple on December 01, 2023, 01:41:09 AM
Try to find much of anything about sexuality in D&D products before 2000. 

Random harlot table. Naked succubus. The Grand Duchy of Karameikos is ruled by Stefan Karameikos, and his wife, Olivia, with whom he has three children.

Quote from: pawsplay on December 01, 2023, 02:00:54 AM

Quote from: BadApple on December 01, 2023, 01:41:09 AM
Try to find much of anything about sexuality in D&D products before 2000. 

Random harlot table. Naked succubus. The Grand Duchy of Karameikos is ruled by Stefan Karameikos, and his wife, Olivia, with whom he has three children.

I'll admit, that first one surprises me.

Quote from: KindaMeh on December 01, 2023, 02:03:05 AM

Quote from: pawsplay on December 01, 2023, 02:00:54 AM

Quote from: BadApple on December 01, 2023, 01:41:09 AM
Try to find much of anything about sexuality in D&D products before 2000. 

Random harlot table. Naked succubus. The Grand Duchy of Karameikos is ruled by Stefan Karameikos, and his wife, Olivia, with whom he has three children.

I'll admit, that first one surprises me.

It was a thing, for a short time, then it wasn't because Puritans, not sure if MY side or the feminist side, demanded it.

Same for the succubus, but that one was Christian fundamentalists.

Quote from: pawsplay on December 01, 2023, 02:00:54 AM

Quote from: BadApple on December 01, 2023, 01:41:09 AM
Try to find much of anything about sexuality in D&D products before 2000. 

Random harlot table. Naked succubus. The Grand Duchy of Karameikos is ruled by Stefan Karameikos, and his wife, Olivia, with whom he has three children.

One table, a picture and a mention of a marriage.  That's not much of anything.

Quote from: jhkim on November 30, 2023, 11:43:26 PM
If I look at recent WotC adventures like "Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk", I think most people wouldn't notice much in play.

Try looking at some of the other ones like Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel.

Quote from: yosemitemike on December 01, 2023, 02:24:48 AM
One table, a picture and a mention of a marriage.  That's not much of anything.

It's an example each of sexual liberality, sexual manipulation, and sexual reproduction within a heterosexual marriage. That pretty much covers all bases. Having demonstrated how obvious and well-known these examples are, I'm not going to encyclopedically list every other example. If you need a bunch of other examples in a hurry, just read up on the Guide to Hell and virtually anything involving drow.