So I backed them on kickstarter and was very excited for the new edition. Right up until yesterday when one of the designers on facebook when on a full SJW assault on the fans.
Anyone else have a game they were looking forward too and ruined by the devs stupidly opening their mouths and spewing hate?
I was backing Chivalry & Sorcery in hopes that it might be a good tool for the Romanticized Fairy-Tale Medieval Christendom games I want to run someday, but backed out due to financial concerns and the system feeling too crunchy for my current tastes. Now it sounds like I might have dodged a bullet, although you can't state things like that without giving us details. :D
I don't know that I've ever had a forthcoming game ruined by developers, although I've had publishers alienate me due to their agendas becoming too intrusive and annoying to me (Green Ronin, Pelgrane Press).
huh...well, I'm not sure what full sjw attack is. Are they attacking sjws or are they sjws attacking?
In any case I played third edition for quite a while but skipped fourth. Sometimes I think I shouldn't have but I was very into Rolemaster at the time.
I didn't back the kickstarter but would have if I had any money at the time.
It was in this thread: https://www.facebook.com/groups/121390094630920/permalink/1911780872258491/
Sadly I can't get the original comments (or most of the comments on that thread to load for some reason).
The issue was him coming out and effectively saying that you if you disagreed you were bottom level scum and that it was always white men that were the issue.
The comment in question is from Andy Staples and is more aggressive then this one: https://www.facebook.com/andy.staples.102/posts/10156888653837424 but should give you an idea of the direction it went if you can get the one I was referring to in the original post to load.
I got no problem with a medieval setting of this kind: by all means include female warriors, muslims, PoC, etc etc etc. Its all good.
But throwing in your virtue signalling polemic just insults and alienates. Staples is setting himself up as holier-than-thou with his 'And I researched history so I know shit and all you white male fuckers don't' attitude. What a tool.
Quote from: BrokenCounsel;1105446I got no problem with a medieval setting of this kind: by all means include female warriors, muslims, PoC, etc etc etc. Its all good.
But throwing in your virtue signalling polemic just insults and alienates. Staples is setting himself up as holier-than-thou with his 'And I researched history so I know shit and all you white male fuckers don't' attitude. What a tool.
Agreed on both points. Now, I just did a skim of the free 4th Edition PDF downloads I picked up four years ago, and the references to Christianity seem pretty generic, glancing and sometimes defensive about doing so. So if they're going to make a big deal about including Islam and Judaism as well, I'm going to be curious to see how they approach Christianity.
Quote from: BrokenCounsel;1105446I got no problem with a medieval setting of this kind: by all means include female warriors, muslims, PoC, etc etc etc. Its all good.
But throwing in your virtue signalling polemic just insults and alienates. Staples is setting himself up as holier-than-thou with his 'And I researched history so I know shit and all you white male fuckers don't' attitude. What a tool.
Exactly. I love the game, I love the sound of everything about the game. I just can't stand giving money to someone like him.
I know the name 'Andy Staples', but I'm not sure from where... like I've seen it a lot over the years but I've never played any of the games I can find him associated with. Was he a Games Workshop guy?
Maybe there is more going on behind the scenes that he's being defensive about, people throwing up dust about including those elements in the game?
Quote from: Simlasa;1105459I know the name 'Andy Staples', but I'm not sure from where... like I've seen it a lot over the years but I've never played any of the games I can find him associated with. Was he a Games Workshop guy?
Maybe there is more going on behind the scenes that he's being defensive about, people throwing up dust about including those elements in the game?
There have been people both pushing hard for 'inclusivity' in medieval fantasy (some to highlight that it was predominantly white Christian men but not uniformly so, some for an agenda) and people pushing back hard against it (both nasty alt-right sorts--who are often Northern Europagan sorts--and those who are just fed up with PC), so that the historical accuracy seems to get lost in the polarization. Since Staples seems to be treating the Christian elements with as much thoroughness as the Jewish and Islamic ones he calls out, I expect this is both historical accuracy and some of the "lets include the 'marginalized'" element, combined with distaste for the alt-right and a bit of the annoying tendency on either side to assume 'if you're not with us, you're with The Enemy.'
I cancelled my pledge due to not really feeling too good about this rewrite; now I'm glad I did.
Quote from: Brad;1105464I cancelled my pledge due to not really feeling too good about this rewrite; now I'm glad I did.
The rewrite doesn't bother me. The virtue signalling does. Nothing more than trolling for no reason other than to provoke a reaction from the 'white male bottom feeders' and demonstrate how worthily fucking Woke he is. Guy's a Completely Unworthy Nuisance Troll.
Yes there certainly is a lot of virtue signalling online. It seems like hardly anyone goes to any RPG forum to post about gaming. It's almost all politics and political/cultural signalling.
Just double checked the kickstarter page (because they usually have a little info about each person involved) and here's what it says about Andy.
"Andy Staples
is a communications consultant and former journalist based in the Middle East. He's a founder member of the Gulf Role-Playing Community, and has been a fan of Chivalry & Sorcery since discovering the 2nd edition around 1984. Ed Simbalist's article on manorial economics led him to run research projects on medieval villages, agriculture and landscapes. He has previously done design work for Columbia Games Inc and Brittannia Game Designs."
Communications Consultant? Real nice job communicating with the fans.
Though as an ex-journalist I guess we really should expect anything else from him.
Ehh? I have a dead tree copy of the first edition Redbook of C&S. So they are doing a new edition, huh? And it's being written by a virtue-signaling sjw you say? This should be interesting. Let's see how true they remain to the original C&S, which included much better stats adjustments, skills bundles, and backstories for Women, and Moors than any other RPG of that time period. The new writer for the Kickstarter edition, Andy Staples, acts like this is all brand new to C&S, but in fact, it was already included in the game, right from the very beginning.
This was one of the reasons I really liked the original Chivalry & Sorcery, it had more traditional Knights & Chivalry, from the Middle Ages. It included Moors, Saracens, & The Mongolians Horse Lords with the Orange Book. C&S featured more realistic weapons combat than D&D, and of course, the really great jousting tables. It was published in 1977, and I began playing it from 1978 on btw, and had a good gaming going that I was running, as well as another campaign I was playing in, that was being run by my friend Rodney.
Quote from: GameDaddy;1105536Let's see how true they remain to the original C&S, which included much better stats adjustments, skills bundles, and backstories for Women, and Moors than any other RPG of that time period.
Reading through the (horribly written) Wikipedia entry on C&S suggests that later editions of the game moved away from its original adherence to presenting a realistic medieval european setting, which bothered many of its fans. It sounds like Britannia, with 4th edition, started trying to head back toward that original focus... so maybe that is why these matters are getting attention?
I don't know the game in detail in any of its versions, but I did gloss through the original back during my 'realism' craze and was impressed with its detail and seeming authenticity (based on my historical knowledge at the time).
Having female warriors, including PoC, a sympathetic view of Muslims and so on isn't new in medieval games. Pendragon did it and still does for example. What's more, its not new in popular media either. So Staples isn't banging some radical new drum. This latest version of C&S isn't riding in to massacre all the horribly racist and misogynistic alt-right views of the medieval period that are holding the hobby and popular culture back. No. All he's doing is waving his Virtue Signalling dick around and posturing as some fucking enlightened saviour when, in fact, he's just a troll.
Christ. Makes me want to play 'New Horizons: Ludens 2.0'.
Second edition was mainly a cleaned up first edition that moved the mass combat rules to a supplement.
Third edition introduced an integrated skill system and a more detailed combat system, the magic system was interesting but a bit generic when it came to the spells.
Fourth edition put a lot of new material out but came too soon after the third edition, necessary due to copyrights and licensing I suspect but even so.
The new edition sounds like it brings a lot of material back into the core.
LOL. What a fucking tool.
While I'm never buying their C&S Woke Bullshit Edition, I'll be waiting over here for the next Asian Fantasy RPG where white men are forced into the game as playable characters "for historical accuracy".
Medieval Europe was multi-cultural. There were no "white people", that's modern American political correct nonsense. It had Italians and French and Germans and Spanish and dozens of other ethnic groups with their own distinct languages and complex cultures. Were there visitors, explorers and merchants from the lands of Arabia, Africa and Asia? Sure, but I've never met anyone who wanted to play the Portuguese in a samurai game.
Fortunately, the imbecilic virtue signalling by woke assholes makes it easier to identify the human garbage to keep off the game table.
Sadly the devs are from England which has fallen to that line of thinking long ago.
As for the next Asian Fantasy RPG - I'm waiting to see how the Zwiehander guy explains the lack of "diversity" in the one he's working on when it comes out.
Quote from: Spinachcat;1105663LOL. What a fucking tool.
While I'm never buying their C&S Woke Bullshit Edition, I'll be waiting over here for the next Asian Fantasy RPG where white men are forced into the game as playable characters "for historical accuracy".
It looks like they are going to redo Land of the Rising Sun. We'll soon learn how crazy that will be.
I don't know anything about the game itself, and this is the first I've heard of Icky Andy Staples. But Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder ruined the title of this game for me, years ago.
Quote from: Spinachcat;1105663Medieval Europe was multi-cultural. There were no "white people", that's modern American political correct nonsense. It had Italians and French and Germans and Spanish and dozens of other ethnic groups with their own distinct languages and complex cultures. Were there visitors, explorers and merchants from the lands of Arabia, Africa and Asia? Sure, but I've never met anyone who wanted to play the Portuguese in a samurai game.
Playing someone from halfway across the world is very different from playing someone from the country right next to yours. Sure, I wouldn't expect Chivalry and Sorcery to cover having a Malaysian character; or a Sengoku Japan game won't cover a Portuguese character. Those are all a long way off.
But if you're going to cover multiple countries across different medieval periods of Europe, then I think it makes sense to include Jewish characters, Moorish characters, Avar characters, and Saracen characters. These are peoples who lived in Europe, not visitors from distant lands.
Quote from: jhkim;1106110Playing someone from halfway across the world is very different from playing someone from the country right next to yours. Sure, I wouldn't expect Chivalry and Sorcery to cover having a Malaysian character; or a Sengoku Japan game won't cover a Portuguese character. Those are all a long way off.
But if you're going to cover multiple countries across different medieval periods of Europe, then I think it makes sense to include Jewish characters, Moorish characters, Avar characters, and Saracen characters. These are peoples who lived in Europe, not visitors from distant lands.
I think there might be some apprehension that the setting might start to look similar to the politically correct Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman show of the 1990s. "Most everyone in this small English hamlet is very cosmopolitan, and very welcoming of the new Saracen family that has decided to take up farming in the midst of the community."
I think it would make sense to have Moors, Saracens, etc. as character options, but I think they'd very much be outsiders looking in on the society. There will be some who want to take the "exotic" option, but will not want to have their characters treated as such, so you get a kind of whitewashing of the setting. It could be a design choice, and I can see why some game designers would take that approach. It seems similar to the approach that Shane Hensley takes with Deadlands, for example. That doesn't prevent me from "dirtying" up the setting for a home game and have ugly issues such as Jim Crow being put back into my Deadlands games. Same could be done for C&S.
As to the virtue-signaling by a creator, it can be annoying, but in any team effort you're likely to find someone you don't like.
(I looked at this KS, but didn't back. Didn't look like something I needed when I already have a ton of Harn material at home.)
Quote from: jhkim;1106110Playing someone from halfway across the world is very different from playing someone from the country right next to yours.
Europe had plenty of trade happening with all of Asia during the "Age of the Samurai", but as merchants and rare visitors, they were not part of the society of feudal Japan which would be the focus of a Samurai Fantasy RPG. At best, they are NPCs "strange foreigners" who are alien to the setting focus.
At my table, NO! is the correct answer to players asking to play Tom Cruise in our next L5R game. And when they pull out Wikipedia and whine about "famous" English, French or German people who lived in Japan in the 16th century, the correct answer still remains NO!
In movies like 13th Warrior, Last Samurai and Costner's Robin Hood, Hollywood feels the audience needs a movie star playing an outsider character as the audience stand in to experience the exotic and strange elements of the culture at the center of the movie. However, in RPGs, its just special snowflake nonsense.
Yes, I know some players like to "play against type" and play "outsiders", but my experience with these players is they shit themselves the moment their Special Snowflake gets pushed back for being an outsider.
Hell, in my L5R game, you can play Minor Clans, but you always gotta remember the MINOR part when dealing with the MAJOR clans. That's the nature of regimented societies. They ain't Seattle 2019. I once had a player crap out like a loon because the Lion samurai in the group (major clan) would not talk to their Wasp samurai (minor clan) and demanded the Unicorn samurai translate anything the Wasp said (as Unicorns are major, but with a tarnished reputation). The Lion player was not being an ass, he playing his PC's social status. He would even compliment or thank the Wasp...but only through the Unicorn.
Somehow I don't see the new C&S promoting such "mistreatment" of "marginalized" groups in their fantasy Europe. Those 14 warrior women that Captain Super Cuck put into his book are surely to be treated just like any other fighter character.
And that's perfectly fine for D&D, but don't say "let's play a historically accurate RPG" and then focus on the most extreme outliers.
BTW, its not about "no wahmen fighters!" I run Mazes & Minotaurs and Amazons and Nymphs are badass, fun, female only characters RAW. Guess what? Nobody at my table gets to play a male Amazon or a male Nymph. [That's what Barbarians and Satyrs are for].
Quote from: jhkim;1106110But if you're going to cover multiple countries across different medieval periods of Europe, then I think it makes sense to include Jewish characters, Moorish characters, Avar characters, and Saracen characters. These are peoples who lived in Europe, not visitors from distant lands.
Muslims invaded Europe and were taking slaves and territory. They're not gonna be traveling around getting greeted like tourists.
And Jews? They were being blamed for killing Jesus in a society hardcore about Christianity. Also, not gonna be getting happy greetings as they travel.
They're NPCs in a European focused setting. Or a short lived misery tourism PC.
The Franks not only traded with Muslims, they sold other Europeans into Muslim slavery, especially the Slaws. Depending on where you play and WHEN, a Muslim PC in medieval Europe is playable,
As for the Jews, they had communities within Europe throughout the Middle Ages, they should be playable as well. But, again, it depends on where and when.
This thread devolved quite a bit...no one who is a C&S fan (like me) cares if all these groups are included (as mentioned above, they had sourcebooks for Mongols and even fucking dinosaurs), it's the notion that somehow if you have a problem with the blatant virtue signaling you're an asshole. You want to include a bunch of profiles of female knights or whatever, IDGAF, but why do you have to make it such a huge deal? It's very off-putting and quite annoying.
My all-time favorite example is Aliens...no one gave one fuck that Ripley was a female because it made perfect sense within the context of the story; in fact, she almost had to be female to fully explore the whole mother-vs-mother confrontation with the queen. If Aliens were made today, the entire marketing campaign would be about how fantastic it was the main character in an action-horror film was a woman and how empowered young girls should feel, along with a lot of apologies about having so many toxic males in positions of power, blah blah blah. You totally destroy any sort of artistic credibility when you do this sort of shit.
1st/2nd edition C&S are better, anyway, I own all the books, and part of the charm of the game is how opaque the rules are. GLAD I rescinded my KS money.
Eh, one boob having a fit of pique spewing on social media is par for the course for our modern reality with a 'permanent record' now publically available. :) Overall I am not going to condemn everyone else's work for one of their own having an opinion-tantrum. That'd be sinking to Cancel-Culture's own level. :cool:
Back in the day people had dive bars, church potlucks, etc. to grouse amid company about others and the world. And mercifully all that venom evaporated into the ether after it was said. Nowadays we have trascripts to never forget & never forgive... :rolleyes: Yup, sometimes a technological "advancement" is a step backwards. :)
Should people be more guarded ("professional") with their unhappiness? ;) Yes, in part. But social media stumbled into many people's lives without them giving it due consideration of its ramifications. And I am forgiving in nature.
"Social Media is Stupid and You Are Stupid for Using It!" should become a well-understood truism in an ideal world. We'll get there eventually, as people detox from this heady rush of remote powertripping. :) Until then say your piece, ask for the professional courtesy of discretion, and then compartmentalize this poison as the uselessness it is and move on. :p
Andy Staples is an intolerant in your face SJW Labour Party type.
Quote from: Brad;1106215This thread devolved quite a bit...no one who is a C&S fan (like me) cares if all these groups are included (as mentioned above, they had sourcebooks for Mongols and even fucking dinosaurs), it's the notion that somehow if you have a problem with the blatant virtue signaling you're an asshole. You want to include a bunch of profiles of female knights or whatever, IDGAF, but why do you have to make it such a huge deal? It's very off-putting and quite annoying.
My all-time favorite example is Aliens...no one gave one fuck that Ripley was a female because it made perfect sense within the context of the story; in fact, she almost had to be female to fully explore the whole mother-vs-mother confrontation with the queen. If Aliens were made today, the entire marketing campaign would be about how fantastic it was the main character in an action-horror film was a woman and how empowered young girls should feel, along with a lot of apologies about having so many toxic males in positions of power, blah blah blah. You totally destroy any sort of artistic credibility when you do this sort of shit.
1st/2nd edition C&S are better, anyway, I own all the books, and part of the charm of the game is how opaque the rules are. GLAD I rescinded my KS money.
I agree with you 100%. The same thing happened to me. See my thread. They are very in your face aggressive and annoyingly repetitive with all their preaching and virtue signaling. Specifically Andy Staples.