Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on January 10, 2023, 08:41:38 AM
To pick a given theme for robot PCs at all, in other words, and to structure robot PC design around manifesting and dramatizing that theme, is to take agency away from the characters and players to begin with. The objection of essentialism in PCs is not what lessons or themes a character background is intended to convey, but that a background is built to work towards conveying any themes at all other than what the player himself wants to do, and I think it likely that somebody bothered by this will find it just as bothersome for robot PCs as they would for half-orc or dwarven PCs. (After all, paradoxically, a world in which every droid resents its service and wants its freedom could be argued to present just as "essentialist" a reading of what "droidness" is as a world in which none of them do.)

I think any Star Wars game with droid PCs is going to run up against droid slavery being a theme. And in any game, the GM inherently has a ton of control over a game's themes, by who the antagonists are, as well as sympathetic PCs and other context of the adventure. Even in a Star Wars RPG campaign where players make their PCs and no one makes a droid, if a GM includes a sympathetic droid NPC who wants freedom, that will color the game's themes. Equally, if the GM makes a NPC droid villain who wants to subjugate all biological life, that also will color the themes.

In a one-shot with pregenerated PCs and a prepared adventure, the GM inherently has even more control over theme. So that game format does reduce agency - but the players still can have choices, and can influence the theme strongly over the details of that theme and how it is expressed. In one of my other Star Wars games with pregenerated PCs, I did have a PC droid whose background was being a strong loyalist to the Old Republic. Even with pregenerated PCs and scenario, I've seen players take these Star Wars games in quite different directions.

Quote from: Banjo Destructo on January 10, 2023, 09:37:30 AM
I would like to see people who think "Biological Essentialism" is a bad/evil thing explain how a Giraffe and an Orca should be able to swim the same speed,   or explain how a field mouse and a rhino have no significant biological differences between the two.

An Elf becomes an ADULT around the age of 100 years old (in D&D), THAT IS NOT HUMAN.  How could you understand the mental/psychological aspects of an Elf character when they are a child for longer than a normal human even lives? What ethnic group of humans is this supposed to represent in their racist worldview where these optional player races are "different flavors" of human?

By this logic, anything that is clearly NOT HUMAN in a story doesn't represent humans thematically.

But I think that doesn't work in the face of concrete examples of stories in static media. In stories where animals are characters, then animals like giraffes and rhinos generally do represent humans. Take, for example, the crows in the film Dumbo. They are birds, not humans, and have clear biological differences like wings. Still, I think it's pretty damn clear that Jim and the other crows do stand in for humans with a specific ethnicity. The same is true for lots of other classic stories with animal protagonists.

I disagree with a lot of claims regarding biological essentialism, but I don't think that this argument against them holds water.

To dismiss them, one needs to acknowledge that non-humans in stories can and often do represent humans. However, they don't have to do so in a way that reinforces real-world stereotypes - like ones that East Asians are inherently good at math and martial arts - or that African-Americans are inherently good at dancing and sports.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on January 09, 2023, 11:38:07 PM

Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on January 09, 2023, 03:26:05 PM
If not, why couldn't nature, or the gods, "program" a biological race to be evil?

Same logic. Evil is by definition a moral choice. A race whose members were universally incapable of making moral choices wouldn't be much better than biological machines.

In other words they would be animals.

I'm thinking chiefly of orcs. Tolkien's orcs appear to be both willfully evil and universally unwilling to change. We could say that they are embodied souls who chose to be evil prior to their embodiment and, so, were confirmed in such, such that they could no longer choose otherwise, and this would make them evil, rather than animals.

Quote from: Horace on January 10, 2023, 11:53:50 AM

Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on January 09, 2023, 03:26:05 PM
why couldn't nature, or the gods, "program" a biological race to be evil?

They never claimed it wasn't possible. They claimed it was badwrongfun.

To them, the only correct way to play an RPG is by upholding leftwing precepts. And "live and let live" is not an option. You must submit.

This is why I think stories where space orcs and humans team up against demons then sing kumbaya is such a stupid premise for stories ostensibly about warfare (especially in RTS where this same plot outline took over most campaigns after the release of Warcraft 3 popularized it). Right now in real life you have these unreasonable expansionist imperialist cultures that don't respond to diplomacy despite ostensibly having the exact same bio-psychology you do. Why would fiction be any different? Why would aliens be any different?

I think using black and white morality pointlessly confuses the issue (every real culture thinks they're the good guys regardless of whatever atrocities they commit and that any atrocity is justified in the pursuit of advancing their tribe), but my point is that two tribes can have such different ethics that war is inevitable because both see the other as evil and deserving of extermination.

I think the sorts of people arguing this sort of stuff have lived their lives in padded bubbles where they never had to experience or learn about real hardship or humanity's inhumanity to their fellow man, much less about advanced subjects like meta-ethics.

Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on January 10, 2023, 12:15:40 PM

I'm thinking chiefly of orcs. Tolkien's orcs appear to be both willfully evil and universally unwilling to change. We could say that they are embodied souls who chose to be evil prior to their embodiment and, so, were confirmed in such, such that they could no longer choose otherwise, and this would make them evil, rather than animals.

It's a little more complicated.

"They would be Morgoth's greatest Sins, abuses of his highest privilege, and would be creatures begotten of Sin, and naturally bad (I nearly wrote "irredeemably bad"; but that would be going too far. Because by accepting or tolerating their making - necessary to their actual existence - even Orcs would become part of the World, which is God's and ultimately good.)''

-J.R.R.T

Basically, Orcs are evil by their very nature, but in theory they can find redemption... They just, well, don't. At least not that we ever see.

Quote from: Bruwulf on January 10, 2023, 12:22:25 PM

Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on January 10, 2023, 12:15:40 PM

I'm thinking chiefly of orcs. Tolkien's orcs appear to be both willfully evil and universally unwilling to change. We could say that they are embodied souls who chose to be evil prior to their embodiment and, so, were confirmed in such, such that they could no longer choose otherwise, and this would make them evil, rather than animals.

It's a little more complicated.

"They would be Morgoth's greatest Sins, abuses of his highest privilege, and would be creatures begotten of Sin, and naturally bad (I nearly wrote "irredeemably bad"; but that would be going too far. Because by accepting or tolerating their making - necessary to their actual existence - even Orcs would become part of the World, which is God's and ultimately good.)''

-J.R.R.T

Basically, Orcs are evil by their very nature, but in theory they can find redemption... They just, well, don't. At least not that we ever see.

Isn't that Tolkien trying to keep his cake and eat it, too? Ought good races to kill orcs on sight or not? Wasn't there a line from Tolkien about how certain areas of Middle Earth in the Fourth Age would be given to the orcs to live in unmolested?

Tolkien was never satisfied with orcs because they contradicted the underlying themes of his work, namely that no one is born evil and beyond redemption.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on January 10, 2023, 12:31:09 PM
Tolkien was never satisfied with orcs because they contradicted the underlying themes of his work, namely that no one is born evil and beyond redemption.

I don't know enough Tolkien to answer this question: Was he dissatisfied with elves as well, for the obverse reason, or were there evil elves at some point in Middle Earth?

Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on January 10, 2023, 03:08:28 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on January 10, 2023, 12:31:09 PM
Tolkien was never satisfied with orcs because they contradicted the underlying themes of his work, namely that no one is born evil and beyond redemption.

I don't know enough Tolkien to answer this question: Was he dissatisfied with elves as well, for the obverse reason, or were there evil elves at some point in Middle Earth?

Initially, that's what orcs were... corrupted elves. But he walked away from that later, and as a result orcs have a few different somewhat contradictory origins.

As for elves... Elves were just as capable of evil and selfishness as man, but it was... uncommon. Eol, Maeglin, Feanor and his sons... none of them were, like... the next Sauron, sure, but they did some bad stuff.

Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on January 10, 2023, 03:08:28 PM
I don't know enough Tolkien to answer this question: Was he dissatisfied with elves as well, for the obverse reason, or were there evil elves at some point in Middle Earth?

Very much so, but "evil" in the "tragically proud and misguided and thinks they're justified in doing what must be done" sense rather than the "maniacally wants to destroy and/or rule everything from sheer spite" sense. Feanor and his sons basically helped bring the entire First Age crashing down in blood and grief because they swore to let no one, not even Eru Himself, stand between them and getting the Silmarils back from Morgoth.

When the last two surviving sons of Feanor, Maedhros and Maglor, finally did steal the last two Silmarils back from the Valar after they cast down Morgoth, they had done such terrible things in the name of fulfilling their Oath that the gems' holy light burned their hands, and in agony Maedhros threw himself into a cavern in the Earth while Maglor cast his Silmaril into the sea.

Quote from: jhkim on January 10, 2023, 11:58:31 AMI think any Star Wars game with droid PCs is going to run up against droid slavery being a theme. And in any game, the GM inherently has a ton of control over a game's themes, by who the antagonists are, as well as sympathetic PCs and other context of the adventure.

In a one-shot with pregenerated PCs and a prepared adventure, the GM inherently has even more control over theme. So that game format does reduce agency - but the players still can have choices, and can influence the theme strongly over the details of that theme and how it is expressed.

You're right, of course, and I agree. The thing with thematic control exercised through the GM's choices is that there, players who object to how they feel this "forces" their characters down particular paths have the ultimate recourse: They can directly complain to the responsible party who has the power to change it, and vote with their feet to replace him if he doesn't.

If they feel such essentialist "forcing" is baked into the structure of certain PC templates from first design, and their moral objection is to it being present at all, their only option in that context is to either not play the game at all, or to demand radical overhaul of the game itself from the designers, and the latter involves at the very least browbeating the rest of the market into not objecting to this.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on January 10, 2023, 03:23:13 PM

Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on January 10, 2023, 03:08:28 PM
I don't know enough Tolkien to answer this question: Was he dissatisfied with elves as well, for the obverse reason, or were there evil elves at some point in Middle Earth?

Very much so, but "evil" in the "tragically proud and misguided and thinks they're justified in doing what must be done" sense rather than the "maniacally wants to destroy and/or rule everything from sheer spite" sense. Feanor and his sons basically helped bring the entire First Age crashing down in blood and grief because they swore to let no one, not even Eru Himself, stand between them and getting the Silmarils back from Morgoth.

When the last two surviving sons of Feanor, Maedhros and Maglor, finally did steal the last two Silmarils back from the Valar after they cast down Morgoth, they had done such terrible things in the name of fulfilling their Oath that the gems' holy light burned their hands, and in agony Maedhros threw himself into a cavern in the Earth while Maglor cast his Silmaril into the sea.

Eol kidnapped and (effectively, as close as Tolkien could bring himself to write such a situation) raped Aredhel, kept her from her family for countless years, then when his son she bore wanted to see his mother's family, he forbade him from doing so as well, keeping them trapped in his woods until they finally escaped, at which point he hunted them down, demanded they return with him, and tried to kill his son for defying him - and did kill his wife, who took the spear meant for his son.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on January 10, 2023, 10:47:01 AMThis is an interesting point. I feel an actually good example of biological essentialism is this novella Three Worlds Collide.

The story is a commentary on metaethics.

It's an interesting work, although I personally think it's something of a cheat, as noted by one of the key characters:

Quote"They made me study metaethics when I was a little kid, sixteen years old and still in the children's world. Just so that I would never be tempted to think that God or ontologically basic moral facts or whatever had the right to override my own scruples."

In other words, Yudkowsky fundamentally skews his scenario by sneaking in an a priori disqualification of the founding assumption of ethics and morality to begin with: that there are objective universal moral principles detectible by reason by any sapient species, regardless of biology. The entire force of his story rests on the assertion that none of the species' incompatible moralities could, in any universal objective sense the others could grasp, actually be objectively determined to be "wrong" or "right", or "true" or "false"; if you reject this premise, the story's whole thematic point collapses, and it simply becomes an epic-scale version of the Trolley Problem.

QuoteThat ethical relativism/repulsiveness is the point of my superorganism: their ethics make perfect sense to them and anything else is seen as evil/insane, while humans simply cannot comprehend why they would act this way and likewise see them as evil/insane.

The "problem" there -- at least for any scenario where the superorganism is supposed to be involved in the drama -- is that this basically (or so it seems to me) reduces the interaction calculus of any other species encountering them to two options: ignore/evade if possible, exterminate if not. This seems like it would significantly reduce their dramatic potential as characters. If they aren't meant to be used as anything other than an antagonist force -- on the same level as a volcanic eruption or forest fire -- that's no problem, but a species you can talk to without making any difference to them by talking isn't really a species you can talk to.

(In Peter Watts' novel BLINDSIGHT, First Contact reveals that in fact the vast majority of alien life in the universe is not self-aware or sentient, and that this actually makes alien life a lot more evolutionarily successful than conscious reason does; the problem is that once this truth hits the characters, it's basically the end of the story. Which is fine for a novel, but distinctly limiting in the context of a theoretically indefinitely ongoing RPG campaign.)

Drama lies in choice. The trick is to use the things the characters can't control to make their choices about what they can control more difficult and interesting, not to make them impossible.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on January 10, 2023, 05:05:07 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on January 10, 2023, 10:47:01 AMThis is an interesting point. I feel an actually good example of biological essentialism is this novella Three Worlds Collide.

The story is a commentary on metaethics.

It's an interesting work, although I personally think it's something of a cheat, as noted by one of the key characters:

Quote"They made me study metaethics when I was a little kid, sixteen years old and still in the children's world. Just so that I would never be tempted to think that God or ontologically basic moral facts or whatever had the right to override my own scruples."

In other words, Yudkowsky fundamentally skews his scenario by sneaking in an a priori disqualification of the founding assumption of ethics and morality to begin with: that there are objective universal moral principles detectible by reason by any sapient species, regardless of biology. The entire force of his story rests on the assertion that none of the species' incompatible moralities could, in any universal objective sense the others could grasp, actually be objectively determined to be "wrong" or "right", or "true" or "false"; if you reject this premise, the story's whole thematic point collapses, and it simply becomes an epic-scale version of the Trolley Problem.

QuoteThat ethical relativism/repulsiveness is the point of my superorganism: their ethics make perfect sense to them and anything else is seen as evil/insane, while humans simply cannot comprehend why they would act this way and likewise see them as evil/insane.

The "problem" there -- at least for any scenario where the superorganism is supposed to be involved in the drama -- is that this basically (or so it seems to me) reduces the interaction calculus of any other species encountering them to two options: ignore/evade if possible, exterminate if not. This seems like it would significantly reduce their dramatic potential as characters. If they aren't meant to be used as anything other than an antagonist force -- on the same level as a volcanic eruption or forest fire -- that's no problem, but a species you can talk to without making any difference to them by talking isn't really a species you can talk to.

(In Peter Watts' novel BLINDSIGHT, First Contact reveals that in fact the vast majority of alien life in the universe is not self-aware or sentient, and that this actually makes alien life a lot more evolutionarily successful than conscious reason does; the problem is that once this truth hits the characters, it's basically the end of the story. Which is fine for a novel, but distinctly limiting in the context of a theoretically indefinitely ongoing RPG campaign.)

Drama lies in choice. The trick is to use the things the characters can't control to make their choices about what they can control more difficult and interesting, not to make them impossible.

Well, yes. Blindsight and The Dark Forest are key inspirations too. Also, and this may sound like a non-sequitur, the Puella Magi Madoka Magica franchise. You'd understand what I mean if you watched/read it, because to say anything else would be huge spoilers.

I'm just really annoyed by how hack writers turned the Borg and the Zerg into good guys, nevermind that everything about them is just fundamentally horrifying. The Borg saw off limbs and cut out eyeballs to replace with machine tools. The Zerg use ammunition that eats people alive in a painfully torturous manner and uses their consumed meat to make more monsters that go on to attack others. Only a complete fucking idiot would think it's a good idea to turn those monsters into good guys.

This is my middle finger aimed at said idiot writers who seem irrationally compelled to turn literal hideous people-mutilating monsters into good guys. They're still fully intended to be an antagonistic force, I just find it an interesting novelty to depict their perspective. They're not evil, their value system is just so alien that humans cannot understand why anyone would follow it because it just seems insane to humans... just like the value systems of the aliens in Three Worlds Collide.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on January 10, 2023, 05:28:49 PM
This is my middle finger aimed at said idiot writers who seem irrationally compelled to turn literal hideous people-mutilating monsters into good guys. They're still fully intended to be an antagonistic force, I just find it an interesting novelty to depict their perspective. They're not evil, their value system is just so alien that humans cannot understand why anyone would follow it because it just seems insane to humans... just like the value systems of the aliens in Three Worlds Collide.

Well, the Hugh storyline was good. Even Seven, to some extent, as much as I hate how she turned the show into "The Seven of Nine's Boobs Show". But there the idea works because your contrasting the individual with the... "species", for lack of a better term. Hugh and Seven were *victims* of the Borg.

Quote from: Bruwulf on January 10, 2023, 05:43:28 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on January 10, 2023, 05:28:49 PM
This is my middle finger aimed at said idiot writers who seem irrationally compelled to turn literal hideous people-mutilating monsters into good guys. They're still fully intended to be an antagonistic force, I just find it an interesting novelty to depict their perspective. They're not evil, their value system is just so alien that humans cannot understand why anyone would follow it because it just seems insane to humans... just like the value systems of the aliens in Three Worlds Collide.

Well, the Hugh storyline was good. Even Seven, to some extent, as much as I hate how she turned the show into "The Seven of Nine's Boobs Show". But there the idea works because your contrasting the individual with the... "species", for lack of a better term. Hugh and Seven were *victims* of the Borg.

Exactly. They only prove my point.