Quote from: KindaMeh on December 12, 2023, 08:11:44 PM
I think my thread is up in the political subforum if folks would be interested in posting on that kind of thing or any counterarguments  there. 

I guess to try to drag things back on track locally, do we think the marketing and sales data is being actively distorted in potentially unethical ways that are aligned with woke values? I feel like if so, that might be proof that the companies are both woke and acting in negative/bad faith fashion.

I think it's more likely that the same old biases suppress participation of women and minorities in marketing research.

Quote from: GnomeWorks on December 12, 2023, 07:37:36 PM
I'm (among other things) a statistician. Fight me.

Like, baseball, or what?

I could have sworn that like 2/3rds of marketing and professional advertising is done by females. Though I do think I recall minorities being below their national population proportions, I also know they are rising proportionally at a rate that is notably faster than their population or socioeconomic improvement trends would predict. Not an issue as opposed to a positive in-and-of itself, I will note. Though there could admittedly be some overlap there with hiring practices that emphasize race as a credential in minority marketing and/or multicultural marketing. Which is essentially stereotyping. And a sketch practice WoTC openly admitted to using in who it hired for certain books as a required authorship credential, to bring things back around.

I think at bare minimum, companies that support more woke values would want to claim that's a winning move. Because then shareholders and the like will be jazzed as opposed to wanting to bail on them. So I don't think it's all that weird to think that they might want to massage or distort statistics, or trumpet woke strategies if they execute them, in principle, to seem like that's the case.

Quote from: pawsplay on December 12, 2023, 08:25:10 PM

I think it's more likely that the same old biases suppress participation of women and minorities in marketing research.

Nope.  Women outnumber men in marketing and advertising by over 2 to 1.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1179002/gender-distribution-advertising-agencies-type-united-states/

Quote from: Grognard GM on December 12, 2023, 08:24:30 PM

Creating variant covers, and making retailors take several (unsellable) regular covers for every variant they're 'allowed' (again up to a 10-1 ratio)

It has gotten worse.  1:25 and 1:50 variant covers are common now.  1:100 variants are not all that rare.  Back when Diamond was essentially the sole comics distributor, you could get reliable numbers for the number of issues ordered by stores.  Now, it's all hidden.  There are no reliable numbers for anything.  It's like the supposedly great digital sales that you didn't get to see except that's the entire market now.  We just have to take their word for it and they have been trying to shit us for years.

Quote from: yosemitemike on December 12, 2023, 10:13:24 PM

Quote from: pawsplay on December 12, 2023, 08:25:10 PM

I think it's more likely that the same old biases suppress participation of women and minorities in marketing research.

Nope.  Women outnumber men in marketing and advertising by over 2 to 1.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1179002/gender-distribution-advertising-agencies-type-united-states/

What causal relationship are you trying to establish?

First, that's about the category of the marketing professionals, not respondents to market research in general.
Second, that's a self-selecting sample. Anyone who's had a little statistics knows to take that with a little pink organic salt.
Third, what industries does that cover?
Fourth, why do we think RPG surveyors and RPG respondents, either one, are representative of the general public?
Fifth, self-selection, again. The surveys put out by WotC, for instance, are hardly scientific, and I think there's a strong reason to believe that women and minorities are under-represented in who would choose to respond. People respond when they expect their voices to be heard, and it's clear, that in many circles, it's an article of faith women and minorities don't belong to the community.

Quote from: pawsplay on December 12, 2023, 10:18:58 PM

What causal relationship are you trying to establish?

It's pretty obvious.  The fact that women outnumber men in marketing and advertising disproves the idea that bias is suppressing the participation of women in marketing and advertising.  It obviously isn't.  The idea that women are somehow being suppressed or kept out is a popular, knee-jerk assumption on the left but a simple Google search showed that it just isn't true.  You are still clinging to that assumption though and tying yourself in knots trying to justify it.

I'm pretty sure marketing divisions aren't idiots, by and large, when it comes to trying to get a representative sample of the population or their targeted portion of the population. Which, WoTC has been quite clear is not so much white males. So yeah...

Likewise, are you seriously going to argue that current WotC, of all companies, is not firmly left leaning? And that their marketing is not similarly oriented towards the company's apparent values there?

I could understand arguing that it's a good thing, from your perspective. Or that they haven't overstepped moral lines or boundaries, though I might not personally agree on that part. But it seems we are disagreeing here on a basic characterization of what the company values and how it operates.

Quote from: KindaMeh on December 12, 2023, 10:26:51 PM
Likewise, are you seriously going to argue that current WotC, of all companies, is not firmly left leaning? And that their marketing is not similarly oriented towards the company's apparent values there?

I could understand arguing that it's a good thing, from your perspective. Or that they haven't overstepped moral lines or boundaries, though I might not personally agree on that part. But it seems we are disagreeing here on a basic characterization of what the company values and how it operates.

I'd agree that WotC is left-leaning, but mostly they seem to be generically corporate (i.e. soulless money-grubbing) - and I don't find their actual published products particularly woke. There are a few nods like a gay side character on page 87 of an adventure, but that's pretty minor. These days, even some conservatives are allowing gay characters to appear in their stories. I recently got a free copy of one of "Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk", and despite online furor over a two-sentence sidebar on page 12, it reads like a standard D&D adventure.

There is a common point of view that if only WotC would publish more conservative material, they'd be making tons more money, but that seems like a stretch to me. Yes, the D&D movie flopped -- but the top box office movie of 2022 was Avatar: The Way of Water, and the top box office movie of 2023 was Barbie. Those were unquestionably woke. Many of the top RPG Kickstarters have woke themes, and few of them come from Ocule's Green list.

Quote from: jhkim on December 13, 2023, 12:56:08 AM

Quote from: KindaMeh on December 12, 2023, 10:26:51 PM
Likewise, are you seriously going to argue that current WotC, of all companies, is not firmly left leaning? And that their marketing is not similarly oriented towards the company's apparent values there?

I could understand arguing that it's a good thing, from your perspective. Or that they haven't overstepped moral lines or boundaries, though I might not personally agree on that part. But it seems we are disagreeing here on a basic characterization of what the company values and how it operates.

I'd agree that WotC is left-leaning, but mostly they seem to be generically corporate (i.e. soulless money-grubbing) - and I don't find their actual published products particularly woke. There are a few nods like a gay side character on page 87 of an adventure, but that's pretty minor. These days, even some conservatives are allowing gay characters to appear in their stories. I recently got a free copy of one of "Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk", and despite online furor over a two-sentence sidebar on page 12, it reads like a standard D&D adventure.

There is a common point of view that if only WotC would publish more conservative material, they'd be making tons more money, but that seems like a stretch to me. Yes, the D&D movie flopped -- but the top box office movie of 2022 was Avatar: The Way of Water, and the top box office movie of 2023 was Barbie. Those were unquestionably woke. Many of the top RPG Kickstarters have woke themes, and few of them come from Ocule's Green list.

Who has asked for "conservative material" from ANY RPG publisher? Do you even know what that would look like?

People are asking for less Current Year Seattle, which doesn't even mean zero gays.

But you're either too deep into your progressive bubble to understand or you're honestly conflating things.

We mean less prom, baristas, everybody is "diverse", OMG  so random!, everybody sings kumbaya.

But I guess when you're so far left anything to the right of Mao looks like conservativism.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on December 13, 2023, 01:30:32 AM
But you're either too deep into your progressive bubble to understand or you're honestly conflating things.

We mean less prom, baristas, everybody is "diverse", OMG  so random!, everybody sings kumbaya.

My issue is that you haven't read any of the published material that you're talking about.

I have only a handful of WotC books from the last few years, but in my sampling, there is almost nothing woke by your definition - beyond a handful of blink-and-you'll-miss it bits - say, less than 1% of content. For reference, the books I have are Candlekeep Mysteries, Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, Van Richten's Guide, Monsters of the Multiverse, Journeys Through The Radiant Citadel, The Shattered Obelisk.

For example, there was a thread here about the page 12 sidebar about player consent in The Shattered Obelisk. It was pitched as "now everyone sings kumbaya and nothing bad can happen to any PCs". But when I read it, it was a GM option to add to the atmosphere over the course of the plot by having random mutations from a table inflicted on the PCs. These had no saving throw and no way for the PCs to avoid them by tactics or action. So yeah, it's adding a consent, but it's not softening any part of the adventure. The adventure is killing goblins and mind flayers and other monsters, and possibly being killed.

(Edited to fix a miswritten sentence.)

EDITED TO ADD: There is various woke RPG material, like the Thirsty Sword Lesbians RPG. But the published WotC material I've read is overwhelmingly about the typical sort of D&D stuff of killing monsters, getting treasure, and leveling up.

Quote from: jhkim on December 13, 2023, 01:52:35 AM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on December 13, 2023, 01:30:32 AM
But you're either too deep into your progressive bubble to understand or you're honestly conflating things.

We mean less prom, baristas, everybody is "diverse", OMG  so random!, everybody sings kumbaya.

My issue is that you haven't read any of the published material that you're talking about.

I have only a handful of WotC books from the last few years, but in my sampling, there is almost nothing woke by your definition - beyond a handful of blink-and-you'll-miss it bits - say, less than 1% of content. For reference, the books I have are Candlekeep Mysteries, Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, Van Richten's Guide, Monsters of the Multiverse, Journeys Through The Radiant Citadel, The Shattered Obelisk.

For example, there was a thread here about the page 12 sidebar about player consent in The Shattered Obelisk. It was pitched as "now everyone sings kumbaya and nothing bad can happen to any PCs". But when I read it, it was a GM option to add to the atmosphere over the course of the plot by having random mutations from a table inflicted on the PCs. These had no saving throw and no way for the PCs to avoid them by tactics or action. So yeah, it's adding a consent, but it's not softening any part of the adventure. The adventure is killing goblins and mind flayers and other monsters, and possibly being killed.

(Edited to fix a miswritten sentence.)

EDITED TO ADD: There is various woke RPG material, like the Thirsty Sword Lesbians RPG. But the published WotC material I've read is overwhelmingly about the typical sort of D&D stuff of killing monsters, getting treasure, and leveling up.

EVEN if you were right and it was ONLY 1% woke it's too much.

But since you're a progressive I don't think you're the best judge of what's woke or isn't, BECAUSE of your pro woke bias.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on December 13, 2023, 03:10:33 AM

Quote from: jhkim on December 13, 2023, 01:52:35 AM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on December 13, 2023, 01:30:32 AM
But you're either too deep into your progressive bubble to understand or you're honestly conflating things.

We mean less prom, baristas, everybody is "diverse", OMG  so random!, everybody sings kumbaya.

My issue is that you haven't read any of the published material that you're talking about.

I have only a handful of WotC books from the last few years, but in my sampling, there is almost nothing woke by your definition - beyond a handful of blink-and-you'll-miss it bits - say, less than 1% of content. For reference, the books I have are Candlekeep Mysteries, Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, Van Richten's Guide, Monsters of the Multiverse, Journeys Through The Radiant Citadel, The Shattered Obelisk.

For example, there was a thread here about the page 12 sidebar about player consent in The Shattered Obelisk. It was pitched as "now everyone sings kumbaya and nothing bad can happen to any PCs". But when I read it, it was a GM option to add to the atmosphere over the course of the plot by having random mutations from a table inflicted on the PCs. These had no saving throw and no way for the PCs to avoid them by tactics or action. So yeah, it's adding a consent, but it's not softening any part of the adventure. The adventure is killing goblins and mind flayers and other monsters, and possibly being killed.

(Edited to fix a miswritten sentence.)

EDITED TO ADD: There is various woke RPG material, like the Thirsty Sword Lesbians RPG. But the published WotC material I've read is overwhelmingly about the typical sort of D&D stuff of killing monsters, getting treasure, and leveling up.

EVEN if you were right and it was ONLY 1% woke it's too much.

But since you're a progressive I don't think you're the best judge of what's woke or isn't, BECAUSE of your pro woke bias.

Every time jhkim discusses his friends, family and social groups, it sounds like a Disney+ show. Actually, Disney would tell the writers to tone it down.

If jhkim casually mentioned that his kid's little league coaches were Trans Eskimo conjoined twins, that wouldn't even surprise me. The view out of his window must resemble a page from 'And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.'

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on December 11, 2023, 10:23:02 AM
The absolute worst people I've chatted with are those who refuse to give up on compromised companies/IPs and insist that I'm defeatist and stupid (because of course they can't support their argument and must resort to ad hominem) for suggesting that they patronize different companies or try their hand at game design. They're so loyal to a particular brand that they stubbornly insist that everything would be perfect if we just followed the plans in their imagination that never disappoint them.

This is why nothing gets done anymore. People are being brainwashed to forget how capitalism works and treat brands like religions that they must adhere to forever or their souls are damned. Inventing your own thing? Witchcraft! Burn the heretic!

Not even a religion of the corps get their way. Step into the abattoir and by the next edition treadmill product! Customers will be reduced to mindless cattle. I used to see it alot on BGG before quitting the place.

Quote from: pawsplay on December 12, 2023, 12:51:10 AM

Many early IQ proponents were racists, and set out to prove racial disparities in intelligence. Over time, they have repeatedly, abjectly failed to produce results supporting such theories. That view is in the history museum of science.

Many modern IQ researchers are racist, and set out to prove that all races are exactly the same on an intellectual level by jiggering the tests to prove their preconceived narrative.  As you just admitted.  Let me tell you something:  facts are not racist.  Racism comes in in how people apply the results of the tests.  Like the Nazis of the past or Western liberals of the present, they see Jews achieving more than them and so they assume there's some conspiracy afoot to deliberately keep them down, so they take steps to rectify the situation.  Nazis were just more violent about it, killing people rather than "fixing"IQ tests or promoting unqualified diversity hires like modern Leftists do.

Like most liberals, you are obsessed with "any criticism of blacks = racism."  So let's flip this around:  if I tell you that if 10,00 WASPs like me are given an IQ test that's the same as 10,000 Ashkenazi Jews and 10,000 Japanese, that the folks like me are going to average lower scores than those two groups -- what's your response then?  Am I a racist for saying that my people are dumber than theirs?  And if you try to convince me that no, they only appear dumber because the IQ tests are inherently biased against WASPs and need to be "fixed" (by liberal "experts" like you, of course) so as to make sure the tests all come out the same -- then are you the racist for discriminating against Jews and Asians?  Why are Jews so over-represented among famous physicists?  Is it because of a big Jewish conspiracy against us?  I mean, they achieved something I didn't, so they must be oppressing me, right?  It's not possible that maybe they're just plain smarter than most people.

But let's not limit the discussion to brainpower.  If there's no difference between races (and even between different ethnicities in those races), then why are the Olympic contest results so skewed?  Why do East Africans excel at running?  Why do Turks and Bulgarians excel at power lifting?  You might expect that an Austrian is going to be better at skiing than an Arab, but do they run around a lot more in East Africa than other places, or pick heavy shit up more in Bulgaria than other places?  And why are there practically no black Olympic swimmers?  Why does 7% of the U.S. population (black males) dominate professional sports?  Is that because pro sports are inherently biased against whites and Asians and we need to lower the standards so that the athletes "look more like America" as your ilk is so fond of saying?

People like you are hesitant to admit differences between races/ethnicities/haplogroups/whatever because if ever admit that there are physical differences between them -- like the aforementioned ability of pale skin to absorb Vitamin D better than dark skin, or dark skin to withstand longer exposure to sunlight -- then you might start to consider that mental differences also exist, and your liberal religion forbids you from even going down that road, like a medieval Catholic cleric couldn't even consider that the Earth might revolve around the Sun, because it shatters your whole view of the world.  These differences exist because of evolution, which is part of that science you claim to value so highly yet abuse by ignoring every facet of it that doesn't align with your pseudoreligious view of reality.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on December 13, 2023, 03:10:33 AM

Quote from: jhkim on December 13, 2023, 01:52:35 AM
I have only a handful of WotC books from the last few years, but in my sampling, there is almost nothing woke by your definition - beyond a handful of blink-and-you'll-miss it bits - say, less than 1% of content. For reference, the books I have are Candlekeep Mysteries, Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, Van Richten's Guide, Monsters of the Multiverse, Journeys Through The Radiant Citadel, The Shattered Obelisk.

For example, there was a thread here about the page 12 sidebar about player consent in The Shattered Obelisk. It was pitched as "now everyone sings kumbaya and nothing bad can happen to any PCs". But when I read it, it was a GM option to add to the atmosphere over the course of the plot by having random mutations from a table inflicted on the PCs. These had no saving throw and no way for the PCs to avoid them by tactics or action. So yeah, it's adding a consent, but it's not softening any part of the adventure. The adventure is killing goblins and mind flayers and other monsters, and possibly being killed.

EVEN if you were right and it was ONLY 1% woke it's too much.

But since you're a progressive I don't think you're the best judge of what's woke or isn't, BECAUSE of your pro woke bias.

Even if we have different political views, there exists an objective reality that we should be able to agree on.

My problem is blatantly misrepresenting what is actually in the books. If you want to complain about a disabled NPC on page 146 of one book, fine, but it's objectively false to say something like "WotC adventures are now all about making friends and going to prom and singing kumbaya" or to say that all dungeons are now wheelchair accessible.

If you want to say that WotC is a soulless corporation churning out generic content where every third book has a token progressive inclusion hidden somewhere in it, then fine. If you want to say that WotC is represents progressive values, then I'm going to disagree.

Quote from: Grognard GM on December 13, 2023, 03:27:47 AM
Every time jhkim discusses his friends, family and social groups, it sounds like a Disney+ show. Actually, Disney would tell the writers to tone it down.

If jhkim casually mentioned that his kid's little league coaches were Trans Eskimo conjoined twins, that wouldn't even surprise me. The view out of his window must resemble a page from 'And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.'

Objectively, I don't think my circles are odd given real-life U.S. demographics. Like, I mentioned one member of my church being transgender, but that's out of 150 or so members - when LGBT are 7% of the U.S. population. I mean, I'm public about my identity, and I've been so since going online in the 1990s. You're free to check up on what I say, and I can give more details if you message me.

Quote from: jhkim on December 13, 2023, 12:35:22 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on December 13, 2023, 03:10:33 AM

Quote from: jhkim on December 13, 2023, 01:52:35 AM
I have only a handful of WotC books from the last few years, but in my sampling, there is almost nothing woke by your definition - beyond a handful of blink-and-you'll-miss it bits - say, less than 1% of content. For reference, the books I have are Candlekeep Mysteries, Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, Van Richten's Guide, Monsters of the Multiverse, Journeys Through The Radiant Citadel, The Shattered Obelisk.

For example, there was a thread here about the page 12 sidebar about player consent in The Shattered Obelisk. It was pitched as "now everyone sings kumbaya and nothing bad can happen to any PCs". But when I read it, it was a GM option to add to the atmosphere over the course of the plot by having random mutations from a table inflicted on the PCs. These had no saving throw and no way for the PCs to avoid them by tactics or action. So yeah, it's adding a consent, but it's not softening any part of the adventure. The adventure is killing goblins and mind flayers and other monsters, and possibly being killed.

EVEN if you were right and it was ONLY 1% woke it's too much.

But since you're a progressive I don't think you're the best judge of what's woke or isn't, BECAUSE of your pro woke bias.

Even if we have different political views, there exists an objective reality that we should be able to agree on.

My problem is blatantly misrepresenting what is actually in the books. If you want to complain about a disabled NPC on page 146 of one book, fine, but it's objectively false to say something like "WotC adventures are now all about making friends and going to prom and singing kumbaya" or to say that all dungeons are now wheelchair accessible.

If you want to say that WotC is a soulless corporation churning out generic content where every third book has a token progressive inclusion hidden somewhere in it, then fine. If you want to say that WotC is represents progressive values, then I'm going to disagree.

Quote from: Grognard GM on December 13, 2023, 03:27:47 AM
Every time jhkim discusses his friends, family and social groups, it sounds like a Disney+ show. Actually, Disney would tell the writers to tone it down.

If jhkim casually mentioned that his kid's little league coaches were Trans Eskimo conjoined twins, that wouldn't even surprise me. The view out of his window must resemble a page from 'And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.'

Objectively, I don't think my circles are odd given real-life U.S. demographics. Like, I mentioned one member of my church being transgender, but that's out of 150 or so members - when LGBT are 7% of the U.S. population. I mean, I'm public about my identity, and I've been so since going online in the 1990s. You're free to check up on what I say, and I can give more details if you message me.

Let's start by defining our terms so we can have a meaningful discussion without anyone equivocating between two different positions shall we?

Woke == Progressive == Being worried about appearing as a god person while doing evil: Equity > Equality, "Inclusion" by excluding, Oppresor-Oppressed narrative, ANY difference in outcomes is due to some ism/phobia, casting ANY criticism of your methods and goals as comming from istophobic straight white men, anti-Science (men can get pregnant, etc).

Now, let's discuss Radiant Citadel:

How was it advertised? It's Huwhite free, and it was. So, it is a woke product, you might like what's inside the book, it doesn't mean it isn't woke.

The one about going to higschool (can't remember the name right now): How was it advertised? What's the focus of it?

The rulebooks: Removing race because raicismism, removing races because some asshole said it was a minstrel (meaning black people), subreptitiosly changing the text in the PDFs, hiring politikal komissars (sensitivity readers AKA censors)... Woke

Including combat wheelchairs... Woke

I'm sure you'd love to focus in just the one thing, but we're not talking about just the one book here, we're talking about WotC being woke, I think I've made my case, you're free to disagree but you can't deny the evidence.