TheRPGSite

Evil Hat's creating this:

"In Development: Fate Decolonization Toolkit
Sometimes we like role-playing games to help us escape from real-world struggles. Other times, we need the catharsis of a fictionalized struggle against injustice to prepare us to return to the everyday struggle. For those times, there's the Fate Decolonization Toolkit.

Under the creative direction of James Mendez Hodes, this book will show players how to include colonial powers as antagonists in their games, as well as how to create characters who fight against them. It breaks colonial domination down into its component systems of oppression such as violent conquest, the prison-industrial complex, theocracy, and ecological exploitation. Real-world examples expressed with Fate mechanisms will illustrate each of these systems, mapping out how you can apply them to your own games. It also will include a complete campaign frame which calls on the players to decolonize a fantasy setting; and a discussion of how to use safety tools to keep the process empowering and educational, not exploitative.

Even if you don't play Fate, you may find it a useful reference point if you ever want to speak frankly about, or play safely near, systemic oppression in creative media."

I got it in an e-mail and even considering the unsurprising source, figured it would be entertaining to see the braniacs here rip it apart with logic.

This part in particular stuck out: "we need the catharsis of a fictionalized struggle against injustice to prepare us to return to the everyday struggle". This makes this product go from weird to creepy, as if it's some DIY manual for crushing the oppression to be outlined in the book. And I wonder who the Big Bads will be? 🤔

Also, RTG gave this sample of Cyberpunk Red art. Sexy.

https://i2.wp.com/rtalsoriangames.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/RTG-CPRed-Nails-SantiagoBetancur.jpg?resize=1207%2C1536&ssl=1

Does anyone else find it ironic that people making and playing games in rich, industrialized nations are complaining about "systemic oppression"? I wonder if Evil Hat will send all the kids starving in Africa a copy of this so they can play FATE instead of scrounging for food.

Quote from: Brad;1119826Does anyone else find it ironic that people making and playing games in rich, industrialized nations are complaining about "systemic oppression"? I wonder if Evil Hat will send all the kids starving in Africa a copy of this so they can play FATE instead of scrounging for food.

No, because that's work and hurts their already thin bottom line. Bitching on Twitter using an iPhone is much easier. Adam Jury of Eclipse Phase fame is another "Capitalisms and white, mean things are bad!" type while Kickstarting an RPG, so people of that ilk do absolutely nothing to convince me they're anything less than cowards.

Late edit but after some thought dragging Adam into it wasn’t right. I disagree with him on many things but my comment ended up being a cheap shot and shouldn’t have been taken. That makes me no better than the things I’m complaining about.

This makes me have a perverse wish to play as a colonial elf soldier oppressing dwarves somewhere.


Oh...wait, that was a lie. Nothing ever makes me want to play an elf.

Quote from: BronzeDragon;1119831This makes me have a perverse wish to play as a colonial elf soldier oppressing dwarves somewhere.


Oh...wait, that was a lie. Nothing ever makes me want to play an elf.

Colonial dwarf oppressing elves, then?

Lmao. Evil Hat does it again! :p I can't wait to watch the inevitable furious circle-jerking over at TBP, like the current sensitivity-bukkake over Fate of Cthulhu (and other various supplements before that). "Gosh oh Golly, Evil Hat is just such a stand-up company! Doubt I'll be able find time to play this, but it's worth having in print anyway just to support such important, outstanding work! You guys rock! Totally picking this up when my parents give me my allowance this week! Wish every game company were like this!" :rolleyes:

I fully expect Evil Hat's next """game""" supplement to be even more impressive. "Fate of the Patriarchy" perhaps? "Fate of the Gender Pay Gap?" "Fate of the Proletariat?" "Fate Manifesto Toolkit?" "Fate Elections Tweeting Toolkit?"

I already wasn't buying anything they had any hand in.  So nothing has changed.

Will there be any support for running a campaign where a traditional society with strict gender roles and traditional sexual ethics resists the colonialism of rich white liberals and NGOs overseas, who are pressuring it to change and conform to the very latest western ideas about equality and gender?

No?

How very odd.

I really believe we reached peak Social Justice back in 2019, and the tide turned against it. Just look at the success of the Dave Chappelle and Bill Burr Stand Up Specials, the complete bombing of Charlie's Angels and Terminator Dark Fate. Throw in Ricky Gervais's speech.. and Social Justice in mainstream media... is beginning to die. It's not dead yet, but you can see that it's on it's way out. The Normies have gotten sick of it, and the capitalist driven companies are finally taking notice.

...However... it'll still be a few more years before the TTRPG industry catches up. Monte Cook released his "Consent in gaming" supplement, and hey here comes Fate with it's Decolonization supplement. I figure we'll still get a few more hold outs for a bit, Monet Cook and Evil Hat are big names in RPG culture, and they'll always crusade with Social Justice First.... RPG game second.. they've already fully committed to it, they can't back out now...

But, I bet it'll be less brought up in other companies. I do believe we WILL have more diverse products, and that's a good thing. I really don't see a problem with say... Black people running around in Faerun or Ebberon.. it's a setting that's not normal Earth, there's no issue with different human ethnicities having propagated further in those settings... Hell, I don't have a problem with it in 7th Sea Second edition because it plainly says, "There's less historical Xenophobia in the world of Theah, so there's been more immigration between people in the world.." and a Black guy from Avalon (Basically England) still acts like a dude from Avalon, Avalon is his culture.. so I don't have a problem with him being Knighted by the Queen and being part of her Royal Guard. Let more people participate in fantasy together..

But we'll probably see companies less bending over backwards to show how woke they are, and pointing out how diverse they are for those brownie points... and hopefully get back to just trying to make good games again.

I dont know if Monte Cook has been completely taken by the SJW infection yet but certainly Shanna Germain has as per the "Consent in Gaming" supplement.

If you can't make something good, make something preachy.

Quote from: Shasarak;1119845I dont know if Monte Cook has been completely taken by the SJW infection yet but certainly Shanna Germain has as per the "Consent in Gaming" supplement.

MCG isn't anywhere near the level of fuckery EH is, even with their Cozy List of Making People Feel Gooder and I haven't seen them outright insult patrons.

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;1119822Evil Hat's creating this:

"In Development: Fate Decolonization Toolkit
Sometimes we like role-playing games to help us escape from real-world struggles. Other times, we need the catharsis of a fictionalized struggle against injustice to prepare us to return to the everyday struggle. For those times, there's the Fate Decolonization Toolkit.

Under the creative direction of James Mendez Hodes, this book will show players how to include colonial powers as antagonists in their games, as well as how to create characters who fight against them. It breaks colonial domination down into its component systems of oppression such as violent conquest, the prison-industrial complex, theocracy, and ecological exploitation. Real-world examples expressed with Fate mechanisms will illustrate each of these systems, mapping out how you can apply them to your own games. It also will include a complete campaign frame which calls on the players to decolonize a fantasy setting; and a discussion of how to use safety tools to keep the process empowering and educational, not exploitative.

Even if you don't play Fate, you may find it a useful reference point if you ever want to speak frankly about, or play safely near, systemic oppression in creative media."

You know, if you can strip the SJW wankery out of this then it may actually be a good product.  In a Fantasy game you can have literal Nazis in charge so being able to run the PCs against them could be an interesting change of pace similar to the old "What if Sauron won" type scenario

As I mentioned, their lack of self-awareness coupled with their self-loathing will likely ensure it'll be a quagmire of SJW shit to find a nugget of fun.

Quote from: Orphan81;1119842I really believe we reached peak Social Justice back in 2019, and the tide turned against it. Just look at the success of the Dave Chappelle and Bill Burr Stand Up Specials, the complete bombing of Charlie's Angels and Terminator Dark Fate. Throw in Ricky Gervais's speech.. and Social Justice in mainstream media... is beginning to die. It's not dead yet, but you can see that it's on it's way out. The Normies have gotten sick of it, and the capitalist driven companies are finally taking notice.

...However... it'll still be a few more years before the TTRPG industry catches up.

The tide of woke crusading could very well recede in mainstream pop culture. However, I expect it to persist - even intensify - in sub-cultures dominated by the demographic who embrace woke dogma as their core moral identity. That demographic includes many creative types in tabletop gaming.

Quote from: Haffrung;1119857The tide of woke crusading could very well recede in mainstream pop culture. However, I expect it to persist - even intensify - in sub-cultures dominated by the demographic who embrace woke dogma as their core moral identity. That demographic includes many creative types in tabletop gaming.

Yes, will take a decade for it to mostly run its course (assuming it has peaked), and a generation to become a footnote.

Quote from: Plotinus;1119841Will there be any support for running a campaign where a traditional society with strict gender roles and traditional sexual ethics resists the colonialism of rich white liberals and NGOs overseas, who are pressuring it to change and conform to the very latest western ideas about equality and gender?

No?

How very odd.

How dare you??? LOL. Welcome aboard Plotinus! You obviously belong in our venomous pit of scum and villainy! Looking forward to hearing about your favorite RPGs.

For everybody else, check out the namesake of our newest member!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plotinus

Quote from: Shasarak;1119851You know, if you can strip the SJW wankery out of this then it may actually be a good product.  In a Fantasy game you can have literal Nazis in charge so being able to run the PCs against them could be an interesting change of pace similar to the old "What if Sauron won" type scenario

Seriously, I love the idea of playing a game about fighting oppressive forces in society, where everyone has to keep their head down cuz the ruling powers are corrupt clergy or an invading force that's taken over the region and enslaved the population, and characters are trying to retake their land, etc. It's the SJW preaching that puts me off, and I seriously doubt propagandists would be able to make a decent product that would be genuinely useful in actual play.

Quote from: Shasarak;1119851You know, if you can strip the SJW wankery out of this then it may actually be a good product.  In a Fantasy game you can have literal Nazis in charge so being able to run the PCs against them could be an interesting change of pace similar to the old "What if Sauron won" type scenario

I wonder why they never ever make the oppressor commies. Also religious zealots have not a single creative bone in them, so good luck finding that nugget among their woke turds

Quote from: VisionStorm;1119866Seriously, I love the idea of playing a game about fighting oppressive forces in society, where everyone has to keep their head down cuz the ruling powers are corrupt clergy or an invading force that's taken over the region and enslaved the population, and characters are trying to retake their land, etc. It's the SJW preaching that puts me off, and I seriously doubt propagandists would be able to make a decent product that would be genuinely useful in actual play.

Exactly, as they themselves have shown in comics, movies, etc. They are propagandists (and bad ones at that) besides, even if they had something half decent buried below the propaganda I wouldn't even pirate it.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1119867I wonder why they never ever make the oppressor commies.

Real brain teaser, that one. :p

Quote from: Antiquation!;1119871Real brain teaser, that one. :p

I think they should try a year with the commies to see how they would like that.

I believe the James Mendez Hodes they mention was at WotC today to lead a cultural sensitivity seminar.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1119880I believe the James Mendez Hodes they mention was at WotC today to lead a cultural sensitivity seminar.

Greetings!

You know, the whole "cultural sensitivity seminar" got me thinking. Why are all of these other cultures so *special*? Why does the majority *need* to care about them, and cater to their every whim, desire, and preference? Why must white people be so caught up and admonished for not "offending" them?

Why aren't they confronted with their need to worry about what white people like? What white people are offended by? What white people prefer? What makes white people feel safe, respected, and honoured?

How about that?

Try going to India, China, or Mexico, and scream about how important YOU are, and how everyone else needs to gulp and duck their fucking heads and watch what they say, and worry about what offends you?

I don't think these "culturally sensitive" activists would enjoy the response they would get in those countries if they went there, and demanded everyone change their attitudes and how they do everything. I don't think they would like the response at all.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

It's basically a scam that creates demand for lectures and such.  Not much different than the groups that went around to police departments to sell the satanic panic back in the day.

Quote from: Shasarak;1119851You know, if you can strip the SJW wankery out of this then it may actually be a good product.  In a Fantasy game you can have literal Nazis in charge so being able to run the PCs against them could be an interesting change of pace similar to the old "What if Sauron won" type scenario

Thats pretty much the premise of Albedo. The ILR are effectively Nazi Germany and Red China combined, in space. And the EDF is practically everyone else as they pretty much have no choice. Yeah there are some neutral systems. But they exist only as long as the EDF keeps the ILR from expanding into them.

It's also the essence of Midnight, the 3E-period campaign setting that was a version of "Sauron got the Ring and Middle-Earth is fucked".

The world is almost entirely run by the bad guys, and the PCs are runaways/insurgents trying to mitigate the situation ("winning" is basically not possible).

Quote from: Haffrung;1119857The tide of woke crusading could very well recede in mainstream pop culture. However, I expect it to persist - even intensify - in sub-cultures dominated by the demographic who embrace woke dogma as their core moral identity. That demographic includes many creative types in tabletop gaming.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1119858Yes, will take a decade for it to mostly run its course (assuming it has peaked), and a generation to become a footnote.

As I've said many times before. This is cyclic. About every 20 years you see a surge, then it reaches a peak of moral guardian madness, then falls into the mockery stage and quiets down finally. Then some group of cultists starts it up all over again. This time though its going to take longer than 20 years probably as the internet allows this mind disease to spread and fester like never before. We will probably see 2-5 more years of this in media unless theres some major blowup the suits cant ignore. And even then some may. In which case you'll see companies and venues die.
The 50s, the 70s, the 90s, the 2010s. And sure enough round 2030 it will start all over again.

Evil Hat is still a thing?

Quote from: Shasarak;1119845I dont know if Monte Cook has been completely taken by the SJW infection yet but certainly Shanna Germain has as per the "Consent in Gaming" supplement.

The consent in gaming supplement is at least useful for tuning the content of your games to what your players are comfortable with.

Colionalism seems to be the pattern of history, any time one group gets a significant power advantage over another they try take over, sometimes they succeed. I too think we are seeing the tide turn on SJWness, there are important fights still to win for lots of people in the world, decolonising make believe isn't one of them.

In the worlds I create for games one group is either in the process of gaining power or has already done so creating a situation of either war or an established empire becoming decadent. The nastiest of these was a multi-species roman empire analogue that was very much on the rise due to taking full advantage of different races strengths and abilities. Goblin scouts, ork shock troops, dwarf shieldwalls, elven archers, human cavalry all working together to conquer the world.

I've scanned the web and their site. Post a link or otherwise this book is vaporware.

Quote from: TNMalt;1119908I've scanned the web and their site. Post a link or otherwise this book is vaporware.

Well, to be fair, the OP did specify that they got it in an email. There's no claim that it's public yet. On the other hand, that does mean there is no corroboration.

The subject seems pretty broad for a sourcebook - I don't see how it would be of practical use in a campaign, even if the antagonists are colonizers. How much in common would, say, 1900-era Japan be with, say, colonizing orcs in Middle Earth?

Quote from: TNMalt;1119908I've scanned the web and their site. Post a link or otherwise this book is vaporware.

  If it's a hoax, it's a plausible one--the director is doing these kinds of things in the industry, and Evil Hat has already done an 'Accessibility Toolkit.' On the other hand, you'd think it would be popping up to much acclaim on TBP. :)

  I wonder … will it contain the TBP Oath of Fealty?

"Death to light, to law, to love!
Cursed be moon and stars above!
May darkness everlasting old
that waits outside in surges cold
drown Manwë, Varda, and the sun!
May all in hatred be begun,
and all in evil ended be
in the moaning of the endless Sea!"

  (With apologies to J.R.R. Tolkien.) :D

Quote from: TNMalt;1119908I've scanned the web and their site. Post a link or otherwise this book is vaporware.

It's as real as the part of the e-mail they sent. I'm not one to lie. If it never gets created, blame them.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1119878I think they should try a year with the commies to see how they would like that.

LOL, indeed!

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;1119899Evil Hat is still a thing?

Apparently still white knuckling it financially speaking. A few of their most recent product releases they couldn't even afford to add art to until long past release.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1119910If it's a hoax, it's a plausible one--the director is doing these kinds of things in the industry, and Evil Hat has already done an 'Accessibility Toolkit.'

Yes, the Accessibility Toolkit is why I find this project's existence totally believable. In addition to a bunch of stuff in the Horror toolkit, things like the myriad dangers of "othering" and why making monsters bad is bad, how horror has traditionally been used to "explore and validate/endorse the consequences of systemic bigotry," how horror turns minorities and women into targets to exploit, how to properly game "safely" because "someone might use your horror game to legitimize or conceal deliberate abuse of another player," endless talk of 'player consent and safety' (in addition to usual suspects such as X-Cards, 'Veils' and 'Script Changes') etc.

Quote from: Orphan81;1119842I really believe we reached peak Social Justice back in 2019, and the tide turned against it. Just look at the success of the Dave Chappelle and Bill Burr Stand Up Specials, the complete bombing of Charlie's Angels and Terminator Dark Fate. Throw in Ricky Gervais's speech.. and Social Justice in mainstream media... is beginning to die. It's not dead yet, but you can see that it's on it's way out. The Normies have gotten sick of it, and the capitalist driven companies are finally taking notice.

Don't forget the whole Star Wars fiasco. "The Force is Female" and stuff. Hard result: a mess of a new trilogy, and toys sales and park visits collapsing. Right now they are wondering if they will be able to recover the brand at all.

Quote from: Antiquation!;1119914Yes, the Accessibility Toolkit is why I find this project's existence totally believable. In addition to a bunch of stuff in the Horror toolkit, things like the myriad dangers of "othering" and why making monsters bad is bad, how horror has traditionally been used to "explore and validate/endorse the consequences of systemic bigotry," how horror turns minorities and women into targets to exploit, how to properly game "safely" because "someone might use your horror game to legitimize or conceal deliberate abuse of another player," endless talk of 'player consent and safety' (in addition to usual suspects such as X-Cards, 'Veils' and 'Script Changes') etc.

The word "safety" is an immediate red flag. It has become weaponized as a "dog whistle" (another term that's been weaponized) that is used to signal the presence of unapproved language or ideas, and mark them as "dangerous" or heretical. "Safety" no longer means safe, it means compliance with the moral authority of our self-appointed censors.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1119878I think they should try a year with the commies to see how they would like that.

You mean they need a holiday in Cambodia?

QuoteNow you can go where the people are one
Now you can go where they get things done
What you need, my son...
What you need, my son...

Is a holiday in Cambodia

Quote from: VisionStorm;1119943The word "safety" is an immediate red flag. It has become weaponized as a "dog whistle" (another term that's been weaponized) that is used to signal the presence of unapproved language or ideas, and mark them as "dangerous" or heretical. "Safety" no longer means safe, it means compliance with the moral authority of our self-appointed censors.

Spot on. Abuse and manipulation of language is one vital and insidious mechanism in the larger tactic of de facto control through targeted exclusion and suppression of conflicting ideologies that's so popular among zealots lately.

Quote from: Weru;1119945You mean they need a holiday in Cambodia?

Mrrr? Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Moscow, St. Peterburg, Macao, Chad, Sudan, Italy, Turkey. Something like that. I would love to see them trying out their social justice in true socialist, or communist societies, where the free speech we have here in the West, is absolutely not tolerated. That would be entertaining to observe them in such a place for an extended amount of time.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1119951...for an extended amount of time.

Extended?

Not bloody likely... :D

Quote from: GameDaddy;1119951Mrrr? Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Moscow, St. Peterburg, Macao, Chad, Sudan, Italy, Turkey. Something like that. I would love to see them trying out their social justice in true socialist, or communist societies, where the free speech we have here in the West, is absolutely not tolerated. That would be entertaining to observe them in such a place for an extended amount of time.

Greetings!

Indeed. In places like Communist China, if you run your mouth there too much, in ways the government doesn't approve of--such "activists" simply disappear, often also with their entire families. Vans with men dressed in dark clothes and masks arrive, throw your ass in the van, and you just fucking disappear, and are never heard from or seen again.

There are no lawyers to help you. No "action groups" or "rights groups" that will say a fucking thing about you, or investigate a damned thing. You are fucked. You get tortured, and then chopped up and mixed in with the industrial pig feed.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Haffrung;1119857The tide of woke crusading could very well recede in mainstream pop culture. However, I expect it to persist - even intensify - in sub-cultures dominated by the demographic who embrace woke dogma as their core moral identity. That demographic includes many creative types in tabletop gaming.

While we may very well have seen peak tolerance for SJW wokeness, I don't believe for one millisecond that they will go quietly into the night.

The more "get woke - go broke" continues, the more ferocious they will get in advancing their agenda.

SJW's always double down.

Always.

Quote from: SHARK;1119953Greetings!

Indeed. In places like Communist China, if you run your mouth there too much, in ways the government doesn't approve of--such "activists" simply disappear, often also with their entire families. Vans with men dressed in dark clothes and masks arrive, throw your ass in the van, and you just fucking disappear, and are never heard from or seen again.

There are no lawyers to help you. No "action groups" or "rights groups" that will say a fucking thing about you, or investigate a damned thing. You are fucked. You get tortured, and then chopped up and mixed in with the industrial pig feed.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Greetnigs!

Unless of course you have healthy organs, in which case only a part of you is chopped up and fed to pigs.  Other parts of you get to live on...

Quote from: Jaeger;1119962While we may very well have seen peak tolerance for SJW wokeness, I don't believe for one millisecond that they will go quietly into the night.

The more "get woke - go broke" continues, the more ferocious they will get in advancing their agenda.

SJW's always double down.

Always.

They will also turn on eachother more and more as they run out of "acceptable targets" and those thos were trying to cultivate them as "allies" to weaponize against competition, find themselves on the recieving end of the very weapon they thought they could handle and not get stabbed.

And this is the horrific part.

Its not new. Its not new by at least two prior iterations of this mental disease. I was on the peripery of the artist and comics wars of the 90s and not enough of these scum had their little self made hate groups turn on them. Complete with their own version of Anita Sarkesian on a smaller scale, but with alot more skeletons in the closet.

My theory of the entirety of the "woke" movement(s) can be neatly summed up as:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4097[/ATTACH]

I... guess this can be useful? I don't see the clamoring for such tools (outside of the fictive universe known as Twitter). I mean, yeah, I could see the appeal if I wanted to explore alt histories (e.g. Wild West or French Algeria) or some fictional setting histories (e.g. Maztica or Blue Planet). But its biggest problem is it's attached to FATE which really limits its appeal. :o :p

1. FATE sucks

2. If that's what "decolonizing" the hobby looks like, then I say we should recolonize the RPG hobby instead. I'll take "colonized" RPG's that are actually fun instead of preachy, pretentious, and boring.

Manifest Destiny!

[video=youtube;Ne2tzfxQ6T4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne2tzfxQ6T4[/youtube]

For Glory, God, and Gold! And the hobby of RPG's!

Quote from: GameDaddy;1119951Mrrr? Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Moscow, St. Peterburg, Macao, Chad, Sudan, Italy, Turkey. Something like that. I would love to see them trying out their social justice in true socialist, or communist societies, where the free speech we have here in the West, is absolutely not tolerated. That would be entertaining to observe them in such a place for an extended amount of time.

If you seriously believe Italy is communist, you've no fucking clue what you're speaking about.

Quote from: Luca;1120036If you seriously believe Italy is communist, you've no fucking clue what you're speaking about.

Oh forgive me. I meant the "Democratic" Party or whatever the fuck they are calling themselves these days... Centre Left Coalition.. Five Star Movement, ...whatever.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1120042Oh forgive me. I meant the "Democratic" Party or whatever the fuck they are calling themselves these days... Centre Left Coalition.. Five Star Movement, ...whatever.

Yep, you know nothing about Italy's politics.
If there's even a single communist in either of those two parties, I'm an alien from the Magellanic Cloud.

Quote from: luca;1120046i'm an alien from the magellanic cloud.

i knew it!

Quote from: SHARK;1119881Try going to India, China, or Mexico, and scream about how important YOU are, and how everyone else needs to gulp and duck their fucking heads and watch what they say, and worry about what offends you?

I don't think these "culturally sensitive" activists would enjoy the response they would get in those countries if they went there, and demanded everyone change their attitudes and how they do everything. I don't think they would like the response at all.

That literally happened already. A bunch of white people showed up and demanded that the locals cater to their whims. That's the reason India and Hong Kong speak English and Mexico speaks Spanish.

Quote from: Xuc Xac;1120060That literally happened already. A bunch of white people showed up and demanded that the locals cater to their whims. That's the reason India and Hong Kong speak English and Mexico speaks Spanish.

SJW-ism does indeed have MUCH more in common with colonialism then they wish to admit.

I knew a guy that decried colonialism on one hand (for enforcing viewpoints on others) but made an instant pivot about the current (SJW) culture is the best because it promotes the best values and how its good to always push it onto others.

I am of the opinion that SJW-ism is gonna get much hotter then what people think. The stakes are too large and the plans too far reaching to just die off. SJW brainwashing is some of the most advanced I have ever seen or heard about. Thats not gonna wash off with some flopped films and low sales.

Quote from: Brad;1119826Does anyone else find it ironic that people making and playing games in rich, industrialized nations are complaining about "systemic oppression"? I wonder if Evil Hat will send all the kids starving in Africa a copy of this so they can play FATE instead of scrounging for food.

The irony is not lost on gamers from countries the average USian would consider underdeveloped. Those I know (gamers from Russia and a few from less developed post-communist countries) tend to find these attitudes the fantasies of hypocritical, pampered tossers. Proverbial "first world problems", either laughable (compared to real social issues) or contemptible (privileged whining).

But there is really nothing unique about these views. Most people in the West have fairly similar opinions about moralist busybodies. Most people don't like being policed and being judged for trivial shit. They are just concealing their views better because there are real social costs to being mobbed, or attacked by the corporate structures which have been successfully infiltrated (typically HR departments) or entirely taken over (most universities, the press, big tech) by SJWs. Find a working-class community where these rules don't apply, and you will suddenly get something a lot less filtered.

The only sad thing about gaming is, this hobby collectively used to know better due to the 1980s moral panic, and then drank the Kool Aid without a peep just because it was a flavour they liked better. Those who don't learn from history...

Quote from: GameDaddy;1120042Oh forgive me. I meant the "Democratic" Party or whatever the fuck they are calling themselves these days... Centre Left Coalition.. Five Star Movement, ...whatever.

Shut up about Italy, you ignorant doofus. Or, for that matter, Russia.

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;1119822Also, RTG gave this sample of Cyberpunk Red art. Sexy.

https://i2.wp.com/rtalsoriangames.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/RTG-CPRed-Nails-SantiagoBetancur.jpg?resize=1207%2C1536&ssl=1

hummm
http://i.4cdn.org/tg/1580121392565.jpg

Quote from: Melan;1120082Shut up about Italy, you ignorant doofus. Or, for that matter, Russia.

Heh, yeah. Exactly what criminals and communists want from the masses. Shadup, or we'll make you shut-up.

Fuck You.

So, i got the Fate of Cthulhu's pdfs. and i cringed so hard reading it.

H.P. Lovecraft was a racist and anti-Semite!

But, married a Russian Jew, and had friends who are Jew. And if i remember right, he was basically a Proto-weeboo. Btw, anyone have read any one the stories suggested, who "fixed" Lovecraft racism? I'm just curious if they're any good or one got an "Golden Star" for "Diversity Points".

So, i got the Fate of Cthulhu's pdfs. and i cringed so hard reading it.

H.P. Lovecraft was a racist and anti-Semite!

But, married a Russian Jew, and had friends who are Jew. And if i remember right, he was basically a Proto-weeboo. Btw, anyone have read any one the stories suggested, who "fixed" Lovecraft racism? I'm just curious if they're any good or one got an "Golden Star" for "Diversity Points".

Ah, decolonization. One of those idealistic fantasies that turns into banal revenge porn in practice.

You want to know what decolonization looks like? Read about the Haitian Revolution. It's colonialism in reverse, with all the slaughter and rape that entails.

Quote from: DarcyDettmann;1120115So, i got the Fate of Cthulhu's pdfs. and i cringed so hard reading it.

H.P. Lovecraft was a racist and anti-Semite!

But, married a Russian Jew, and had friends who are Jew. And if i remember right, he was basically a Proto-weeboo. Btw, anyone have read any one the stories suggested, who "fixed" Lovecraft racism? I'm just curious if they're any good or one got an "Golden Star" for "Diversity Points".

People can change. If they really want to change and stay that way, then they deserve forgiveness.

Also, would Lovecraft's stories have been remembered if they weren't horribly prejudiced? Some of the best neo-Lovecraftian fiction is that which rebuts Lovecraft and humanizes the monsters. The Black Brat of Dunwich, The Litany of Earth, The Song of Saya... This is great stuff!

Threads like this really, really make me hope that the Goblin Slayer rpg gets translated to English soon.  The sjw's will have a complete fit over the goblin genocide simulator this must be.  

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4101[/ATTACH]

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1120141Also, would Lovecraft's stories have been remembered if they weren't horribly prejudiced? Some of the best neo-Lovecraftian fiction is that which rebuts Lovecraft and humanizes the monsters. The Black Brat of Dunwich, The Litany of Earth, The Song of Saya... This is great stuff!

While I haven't read those, the premise sounds moronic. The shape of the water is a classic example of such a thing that made me wretch.

Quote from: DarcyDettmann;1120115H.P. Lovecraft was a racist and anti-Semite!

But, married a Russian Jew, and had friends who are Jew.

One of the reasons they got divorced was that he wouldn't shut up about how horrible Jews were and gave his wife the "you're one of the good ones" treatment.

She quotes him as saying  "You no longer belong to those mongrels."

As a jew, I don't give a shit what he thought. He was a paranoid man who was racist based on the evidence he assumed at the time. Its easy to judge the past from 2020 with our vision.

His paranoia informed his writing and its mostly enjoyable regardless of race or creed. Even as a racist his works are more subtle then SJW anti-racist propaganda of our time.

Quote from: Manic Modron;1120149One of the reasons they got divorced was that he wouldn't shut up about how horrible Jews were and gave his wife the "you're one of the good ones" treatment.

She quotes him as saying  "You no longer belong to those mongrels."

On the flip side, he blamed (lack of) money for the reason for the divorce and never actually finalized it...

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1120147While I haven't read those, the premise sounds moronic. The shape of the water is a classic example of such a thing that made me wretch.

Well i know song of saya is a porn game where a guy rapes a cthulloid monster cause he sees her as a little girl due to a head injury for what thats worth.

Quote from: Slambo;1120153Well i know song of saya is a porn game where a guy rapes a cthulloid monster cause he sees her as a little girl due to a head injury for what thats worth.

Oh is it the one where he sees everything else as bloody viscera?

The funny thing is that Neo-Lovecraft kinda proves Lovecraft right. I guess without fearmongering people really would fuck fish-people.

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;1119822"....It also will include a complete campaign frame which calls on the players to decolonize a fantasy setting; and a discussion of how to use safety tools to keep the process empowering and educational, not exploitative. ....."  

That is one of the most annoying and obnoxious sentences about a game product that I have ever read...

-Ed C.

Yes its the one where he sees everything as bloddy viscera and its pretty much a big pile of shock value.

Quote from: Slambo;1120168Yes its the one where he sees everything as bloddy viscera and its pretty much a big pile of shock value.

Obfuscating the embarassment and shame of the porn game with bullshit shock value, or somekind of overtly complex magic system (*Cough*Fate*Cough) seems to be a recurring trend of the anime porn game.

So I don't really think that shitty porn games do Lovecraft Justice and im not even his biggest fan or the like.

Quote from: goblinslayer;1120143Threads like this really, really make me hope that the Goblin Slayer rpg gets translated to English soon.  The sjw's will have a complete fit over the goblin genocide simulator this must be.  

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4101[/ATTACH]

I didn't find Goblin Slayer to be interesting. It's plot is extremely shallow and the world building is contradictory. The pointless shock value is another sign of poor writing.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1120147While I haven't read those, the premise sounds moronic. The shape of the water is a classic example of such a thing that made me wretch.

Oh please. Monstergirl/monsterboy porn has been a staple of hentai for decades now. A monster/human coupling has been a staple of myth and fairytale since forever.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1120169Obfuscating the embarassment and shame of the porn game with bullshit shock value, or somekind of overtly complex magic system (*Cough*Fate*Cough) seems to be a recurring trend of the anime porn game.

So I don't really think that shitty porn games do Lovecraft Justice and im not even his biggest fan or the like.

The Song of Saya is widely regarded with praise by horror aficionados. Also, the "shock value" critique is ironic since anti-SJW darlings like Goblin Slayer only receives praise because of its shock value.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1120175The Song of Saya is widely regarded with praise by horror aficionados. Also, the "shock value" critique is ironic since anti-SJW darlings like Goblin Slayer only receives praise because of its shock value.

I know the kinds of people that "Praise" hentai games. And yup, thats all Goblin slayer has got. Shock value to belay a shit plot and characters. Unlike SJWs Im not a intersectionalist moron. Just because they dislike something doesn't mean I love it and just because they love it doesn't mean I hate it. I don't base my taste on how to piss others off.

But the Anime/Light Novel fanbase is one of the worst and densest. So discussing their taste is a moot point. Pearls before swine.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1120175The Song of Saya is widely regarded with praise by horror aficionados. Also, the "shock value" critique is ironic since anti-SJW darlings like Goblin Slayer only receives praise because of its shock value.

Em i dont see wide acclaim for song of saya, i more so see "Wow this game is fucked up". Id even say Kishi Hono Demonbane is more widely praised when were talking lovecraft games by nitro+. Its popularity basically comes from people saying "you thought madoka was fucked up look at Gen Urobuchi's earlier work"

Yes Lovecraft was rAcist and his writing prefects that imo. Yet so were many other white people of the time as well. One tries to bring that up or (gasp!) some kind of context and SJWs refuse to listen. As one can't go against the carefully constructed personal narratives. Whites were racist against each other. When the Irish and Italians moved to North america and simply glad to work so that they could keep their families feed and pay the bills. They were accused of stealing jobs from honest "white" folk.

In any case HPL is an author that will remain on my shelf in print or PDf for as long as I am alive and no one especially an sJW will make me do otherwise.

Quote from: Slambo;1120178Its popularity basically comes from people saying "you thought madoka was fucked up look at Gen Urobuchi's earlier work"

Wait did Urobutcher work on Hentai games before his other crap? Makes sense. The guys a hack. So much of his stuff is skin deep. Put a bit of thought into it and it falls apart. But it apeals to edgelords that don't like to think to deeply about anything.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1120181Wait did Urobutcher work on Hentai games before his other crap? Makes sense. The guys a hack. So much of his stuff is skin deep. Put a bit of thought into it and it falls apart. But it apeals to edgelords that don't like to think to deeply about anything.

Yes, and these are my exacr thoughts on Gen Urobuchi.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1120181Wait did Urobutcher work on Hentai games before his other crap? Makes sense. The guys a hack. So much of his stuff is skin deep. Put a bit of thought into it and it falls apart. But it apeals to edgelords that don't like to think to deeply about anything.

Greetings!

What is an "Edgelord" my friend?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1120175A monster/human coupling has been a staple of myth and fairytale since forever.

Yes, but in myth and fairytale when this happens, almost always either the monster is ultimately redeemed from its monsterdom (Beauty and the Beast), or the human who couples willingly with it meets a terrible fate (selkie or swanmay legends) or is transformed into a being like the monster (vampire or faerie bride legends). The idea that both human and monster can stay as they are and nonetheless still be happy and contented together -- and not just happy and contented, but more happy and contented than either could be with their own kind -- is a uniquely modern twist, and one that (I think) comes not from SF&F literature but, as pointed out by L. Jagi Lamplighter, modern romance literature.

The key to a successful romance is that there have to be profound obstacles preventing the lovers from being together, or there's no struggle in their union and no drama to their story.  In the past you could set up all kinds of barriers -- class, religion, race, nationality, etc. -- which simply don't apply today, not without going to a great deal of work to establish a fairly specific and unusual context. Thus, one reason the paranormal romance has become so popular is that it replaces these outdated barriers with the existential barrier of one's very species: vampire/werewolf, vampire/human, half-angel/half-devil, whatever. But because the notion of changing's one's essential nature for the sake of a relationship is considered a politically problematic message today, these romances almost always find some way to imply a permanent happy ending without having to make such a change. The Shape of Water is a direct descendant of those narrative tropes.

Personally I think of The Shape of Water as an unofficial prequel to Pacific Rim; I think the River-Man comes from the same dimension as the Kaiju-builders, and it was from Elena or her descendants that the Builders learned of the existence of our dimension. So I look at it as a tragedy that nobody involved (except, ironically, Strickland himself) realized was a tragedy until far, far too late. :)

Quote from: SHARK;1120194Greetings!

What is an "Edgelord" my friend?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

According to Dictionary.com
An  edgelord is someone on an internet forum who deliberately talks about controversial, offensive, taboo, or nihilistic subjects in order to shock other users in an effort to appear cool, or edgy.

This is also worth a look:
https://youtu.be/XaZem6lMEqw

Quote from: Anselyn;1120199According to Dictionary.com
An  edgelord is someone on an internet forum who deliberately talks about controversial, offensive, taboo, or nihilistic subjects in order to shock other users in an effort to appear cool, or edgy.

This is also worth a look:
https://youtu.be/XaZem6lMEqw

I thought they were just trying to appear more pathetic than the allready normal trolls are pathetic?

What's funny is how neither of the broadly-defined "sides" in this conversation (I mean this generally, not just here at this forum) are comfortable mentioning the most salient and relevant example of colonialism, so salient and relevant that it's still going on today: Palestine and Israel. I seriously doubt (sight unseen, I admit) that the product under discussion is any exception. Funny how SJWs shut their fat yaps on this specific subset of a topic they ostensibly loooooove to talk about...

P.S., I have managed to glean that "TBP" refers to rpg.net, but what exactly does it abbreviate?

When I picture an "edgelord," I imagine an overweight high school student dressed in a black trenchcoat and fedora adorned with "PROUD ATHEIST" and "FUCK GOD" pins, brandishing a katana in one hand and an anime body pillow in the other.

Quote from: Morlock;1120203P.S., I have managed to glean that "TBP" refers to rpg.net, but what exactly does it abbreviate?

"The Big Purple."

Quote from: Antiquation!;1120206When I picture an "edgelord," I imagine an overweight high school student dressed in a black trenchcoat and fedora adorned with "PROUD ATHEIST" and "FUCK GOD" pins, brandishing a katana in one hand and an anime body pillow in the other.

"The Big Purple."

You ninja-ed me. Saw a blog post talking about The Big Purple and Pungency and it clicked. Thanks though. :)

Quote from: Antiquation!;1120206When I picture an "edgelord," I imagine an overweight high school student dressed in a black trenchcoat and fedora adorned with "PROUD ATHEIST" and "FUCK GOD" pins, brandishing a katana in one hand and an anime body pillow in the other.

This sounds like a scream of a Halloween costume! :D

Quote from: SHARK;1120194Greetings!

What is an "Edgelord" my friend?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

1990s and 2000s Street Magicians? :confused: Humorless goths? :confused: Weaboos who bought the otaku hype?

Quote from: Morlock;1120209You ninja-ed me. Saw a blog post talking about The Big Purple and Pungency and it clicked. Thanks though. :)

No problem! Took me a hot minute to figure it out when I first got here as well. :cool:

Quote from: Opaopajr;1120210This sounds like a scream of a Halloween costume! :D

Your comment had me briefly consider dressing up like that for the upcoming Emerald City Comic Con, but then I realized that, given the crowd, people would probably not assume I were in costume... :p

Quote from: Reckall;1119922Don't forget the whole Star Wars fiasco. "The Force is Female" and stuff.

No wonder it so readily obeys my commands.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1120141You want to know what decolonization looks like?

My favorite image is a brace of natives taking down power and phone lines so they can sell the copper as scrap. Second place is dismantling power transformers to use the (toxic) oil for frying food at roadside stands. Actually, that might be first place.

Seriously, though: decolonization is usually synonymous with words like decay, entropy, etc.

Quote from: goblinslayer;1120143the Goblin Slayer rpg

Please, do go on.

Quote from: JeremyR;1120152On the flip side, he blamed (lack of) money for the reason for the divorce and never actually finalized it...

He never signed the paperwork, but he told her that it was done and she went to California and got remarried.

The man was a xenophobic bigot by the standards of his day, not merely ours, and his contemporaries often tried to call him out on it.

I will always enjoy much of his work and the work that was inspired by it, but the way he was a product of his time was the sorry state of psychology and psychiatry.  He was the racist uncle of his literary family.

I am an unapologetic Lovecraft fan. Zero apologies. Go tentacle fuck yourself to death if you need an apology.

That said, it's a free country. If you draw the line at reading the work of racist authors, that's your right. Nobody needs to be a Lovecraft fan, especially if you're one of the dirty mongrel people like ME that HPL despised.

BUT...here's the corollary. If you're waving the "HPL = bad" flag, you don't get to profit from his work. There are plenty of horror authors in the past 100 years who were either not racist or whose racism was never public. If "fighting racism" is your daily wank, go find another author's work to plunder...or better yet, go lease their IP.  

Fuck Evil Hat. Hypocritical garbage.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1120061I am of the opinion that SJW-ism is gonna get much hotter then what people think. The stakes are too large and the plans too far reaching to just die off. SJW brainwashing is some of the most advanced I have ever seen or heard about. Thats not gonna wash off with some flopped films and low sales.

Unfortunately, I agree with you.

Quote from: SHARK;1120194What is an "Edgelord" my friend?

The best prestige class from 3e.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1120176I know the kinds of people that "Praise" hentai games. And yup, thats all Goblin slayer has got. Shock value to belay a shit plot and characters. Unlike SJWs Im not a intersectionalist moron. Just because they dislike something doesn't mean I love it and just because they love it doesn't mean I hate it. I don't base my taste on how to piss others off.

But the Anime/Light Novel fanbase is one of the worst and densest. So discussing their taste is a moot point. Pearls before swine.

Goblin Slayer wasn't that great, but the anime fanbase is far from the worst out there.

At least we're not Marvel fans. Seriously, the only thing worse than capeshit these days are the fans of capeshit.

Quote from: Antiquation!;1120206When I picture an "edgelord," I imagine an overweight high school student dressed in a black trenchcoat and fedora adorned with "PROUD ATHEIST" and "FUCK GOD" pins, brandishing a katana in one hand and an anime body pillow in the other.

I usually picture a Goth or a Punk, and most fedora-wearing atheists I've met tend to not go for the katanas or anime these days. That was more of a late 90's/early 2000's sort of thing, and now it's used as a strawman smear by capeshit-loving SJW's to attack anyone who likes anime and manga.

Quote from: Morlock;1120203What's funny is how neither of the broadly-defined "sides" in this conversation (I mean this generally, not just here at this forum) are comfortable mentioning the most salient and relevant example of colonialism, so salient and relevant that it's still going on today: Palestine and Israel. I seriously doubt (sight unseen, I admit) that the product under discussion is any exception. Funny how SJWs shut their fat yaps on this specific subset of a topic they ostensibly loooooove to talk about...

Personally, I am very pro-Israel. Despite some of their more questionable policies, they are far better than the opposition and are the closest thing that the Middle East has to a functional Western democracy. Most SJW's hate Israel with a burning passion, which is something they share in common with most white supremacists.

Israel is based as fuck. Let's be honest, any nation that can get both Antifa and Neo-Nazis to utterly seethe is kind of awesome when you think about it.

If the Israel-Palestine debate is an issue of colonialism, then I am a proud colonialist!

Quote from: Slambo;1120153Well i know song of saya is a porn game where a guy rapes a cthulloid monster cause he sees her as a little girl due to a head injury for what thats worth.

1.) Saya is not "raped" by the main character, nor does she appear as a "Little Girl" she appears as a beautiful young woman, and the main character and her fall in love with one another. That's the horror of the setting, when Fuminori realizes that Saya is a monster and that he's been having sex with something that actually looks like a Sea aneomnie crossed with a flower and tentacles... Also that it's been feeding him human flesh. Choices made by the player will result in either Saya being killed, or Saya allowing horrible lovecraftian entities to destroy the world, with her basically giving birth to a mutating plague.

2.) Song of Saya is wildly acclaimed and praised by Horror manga fans, and has even been adopted into an IDW comic and is being made into a feature film.

Quote from: Orphan81;11202411.) Saya is not "raped" by the main character, nor does she appear as a "Little Girl" she appears as a beautiful young woman,

With a wonderfully questionable anime style age range, which can be as young or as old as you like ;). And if somebody questions you about it just say "Well she's actualy 700 years old".
Like at one point in time anime excuses where funny but now their just boring.

Read your filthy, shlocky, perverse and degenerate smutt if you want. I mean many people do. But don't wrap it in layers of delusion and underseved pretension.
Its widely praised by people with bad taste, IDW doesn't dismiss this fact, and getting a feature film in japan speaks to the utter lows their film industry had reached. Sword art online "recieved wide praise"

This shit ain't no Uzamaki. Get over yourself.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1120235Goblin Slayer wasn't that great, but the anime fanbase is far from the worst out there.

At least we're not Marvel fans. Seriously, the only thing worse than capeshit these days are the fans of capeshit.

Well unironically liking modern marvel (And even a majority of modern DC) would require you to be retarded.

And lets get this out of the way: #notallanimefans.

The thing is I used to be such a fan of anime. 10 years ago if you asked me about anime Id say it was this awesome artform and defend it against accusations that its just a massive smut factory. Now I call it a massive smut factory and argue against most of the things that are touted as its artistic merits.

There is always more garbage then good, but the ratio of garbage to good has increased exponentially and the level of good has downright decreased.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1120246With a wonderfully questionable anime style age range, which can be as young or as old as you like ;). And if somebody questions you about it just say "Well she's actualy 700 years old".
Like at one point in time anime excuses where funny but now their just boring.

Read your filthy, shlocky, perverse and degenerate smutt if you want. I mean many people do. But don't wrap it in layers of delusion and underseved pretension.
Its widely praised by people with bad taste, IDW doesn't dismiss this fact, and getting a feature film in japan speaks to the utter lows their film industry had reached. Sword art online "recieved wide praise"

This shit ain't no Uzamaki. Get over yourself.

Well unironically liking modern marvel (And even a majority of modern DC) would require you to be retarded.

And lets get this out of the way: #notallanimefans.

First, I've never even played Song of Saya myself. I've considered doing so, because I've heard it's one of the best horror Visual Novels out there. Name dropping Junji Ito's most famous work doesn't make you seem cool Bro. So do me a favor, and go fuck yourself.

Edit: And let me add, the whole "I'm so enlightened because I don't like Anime like I did 10 years ago" schlock doesn't make you seem cool or wise either. Every Anime fan does that when they get older.

But JoJo's Bizarre Adventure transcends all other anime and superhero based entertainment for me, and is a work of art. Literally the only Manga shown in the Louvre.

Quote from: Orphan81;1120247First, I've never even played Song of Saya myself. I've considered doing so, because I've heard it's one of the best horror Visual Novels out there. Name dropping Junji Ito's most famous work doesn't make you seem cool Bro. So do me a favor, and go fuck yourself.

Edit: And let me add, the whole "I'm so enlightened because I don't like Anime like I did 10 years ago" schlock doesn't make you seem cool or wise either. Every Anime fan does that when they get older.

I don't call the stuff you like shit because it makes me cool. I call it shit because I call it like I see it. THATS what makes me wise.
And not giving a fuck about what other people say about my preferences is what makes me cool. :cool:

Anyway again: Anime fans are notoriously dense, its not worth my time arguing about it.

Back to decolonization. Its bitter and moronic.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1120246With a wonderfully questionable anime style age range, which can be as young or as old as you like ;). And if somebody questions you about it just say "Well she's actualy 700 years old".
Like at one point in time anime excuses where funny but now their just boring.

Read your filthy, shlocky, perverse and degenerate smutt if you want. I mean many people do. But don't wrap it in layers of delusion and underseved pretension.
Its widely praised by people with bad taste, IDW doesn't dismiss this fact, and getting a feature film in japan speaks to the utter lows their film industry had reached. Sword art online "recieved wide praise"

This shit ain't no Uzamaki. Get over yourself.

Well unironically liking modern marvel (And even a majority of modern DC) would require you to be retarded.

And lets get this out of the way: #notallanimefans.

The thing is I used to be such a fan of anime. 10 years ago if you asked me about anime Id say it was this awesome artform and defend it against accusations that its just a massive smut factory. Now I call it a massive smut factory and argue against most of the things that are touted as its artistic merits.

There is always more garbage then good, but the ratio of garbage to good has increased exponentially and the level of good has downright decreased.

I'd rather have "filthy, schlocky, perverse degenerate smut" than pretentious capeshit of any kind (be it Marvel or DC), to be honest.

At least with anime, there are still some good to go with the garbage

With Marvel and DC, it's all garbage and no good.

Of course, I am someone who likes what they like and doesn't care about "artistic merit" or any of that pretentious snobbery, so I honestly do not care for the bitching and moaning of moralizers on either end, be they left-wing Marxists or right-wing Protestants. At the end of the day, it's fiction and it ultimately doesn't matter.

Back to topic: I personally like colonialism in my RPG's. It's leagues better than the proposed alternative.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1120252I'd rather have "filthy, schlocky, perverse degenerate smut" than pretentious capeshit of any kind (be it Marvel or DC), to be honest.

Alright. Id rather have neither, or not so much have neither (since Im always for choice), but to not have them as cultural phenomenons. This puts me in the precarious position of pissing SJWs and hedonists off. Both of which are expressions of a cultural nihilism in my opinion. I don't want Morlocks or Eloi. Some escapism is good, and sex apeal is innate to humanity and adds spice to work. But I find modern anime lays on the spice as the substitute for any substance. And the escapism is bitter, angry and misanthropic. An expression of Japans collapsing social culture. Toxic work environments, cold interpersonal relationships, awful eduction system and a society without a cultural center.

Capitalism can only support hedonism while the goings good and that paradoxically requires people who can delay gratification and generally strive for longterm stability over short term self-fullfillment. A generation of hedonism won't have a generation of hedonists following it because there will be no shit left to be hedonistic over.

Colonialism also feels like such  buzzword. What civilization doesn't have some level of colonial influence over others outside of the ones that where only ever conquered and never conquerers?
Dominance, struggle and conflict are base parts of life.

Its just an excuse to be destructive and feel morally righteous.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1120253Alright. Id rather have neither, or not so much have neither (since Im always for choice), but to not have them as cultural phenomenons. This puts me in the precarious position of pissing SJWs and hedonists off. Both of which are expressions of a cultural nihilism in my opinion. I don't want Morlocks or Eloi. Some escapism is good, and sex apeal is innate to humanity and adds spice to work. But I find modern anime lays on the spice as the substitute for any substance. And the escapism is bitter, angry and misanthropic. An expression of Japans collapsing social culture. Toxic work environments, cold interpersonal relationships, awful eduction system and a society without a cultural center.

Capitalism can only support hedonism while the goings good and that paradoxically requires people who can delay gratification and generally strive for longterm stability over short term self-fullfillment. A generation of hedonism won't have a generation of hedonists following it because there will be no shit left to be hedonistic over.

Colonialism also feels like such  buzzword. What civilization doesn't have some level of colonial influence over others outside of the ones that where only ever conquered and never conquerers?
Dominance, struggle and conflict are base parts of life.

Its just an excuse to be destructive and feel morally righteous.

I honestly do not care about morality nor do I care about feeling morally righteous, but that's just me.

Remember that time Visigoths colonized Rome? Or was that decolonization? Did king Arthur of legend decolonize himself some Saxons? Colonize, decolonize, good, bad...I'm the guy with paved roads and written language. I wonder how many extinct-before-we-got-here peoples were "colonized" by native american tribes whilst greeks were mastering pottery?

Buzzword is correct, and the term is loaded as it implies a colonization is inherently bad even if it overall longterm improves the quality of life of those involved, and seems to ignore that colonization can occur just as easily with peaceful migration and integration as it can with war. To claim to worship at the alter of diversity but then oppose colonization...in favor of what, then,  segregation, some sort of prime directive ala star trek "no contact with non-aeroploane building ethnic groups"? Absurd is the word.

Quote from: Orphan81;11202411.) Saya is not "raped" by the main character, nor does she appear as a "Little Girl" she appears as a beautiful young woman, and the main character and her fall in love with one another. That's the horror of the setting, when Fuminori realizes that Saya is a monster and that he's been having sex with something that actually looks like a Sea aneomnie crossed with a flower and tentacles... Also that it's been feeding him human flesh. Choices made by the player will result in either Saya being killed, or Saya allowing horrible lovecraftian entities to destroy the world, with her basically giving birth to a mutating plague.

2.) Song of Saya is wildly acclaimed and praised by Horror manga fans, and has even been adopted into an IDW comic and is being made into a feature film.

Maybe you played an all ages version, but no thats not quite what happens for 1 the 3 endings are saya being killed, saya fixing the main characters eyes and  then never seeing him again, or saya turning everyone into creatures like herself. I was wrong about it being the main character, its  suzumori, but saya later violates and transforms the main characters childhood friend as well. Also saya is a bit less round in the face, but shes the same size and proportions as Al Azif from Demonbane.




Saya with Al https://s2.dmcdn.net/v/D4BHP1Mc7DSB1xg7W/x1080
Saya from her own game.
https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/apps/702050/extras/saya-no-uta-characters-2.png?t=1569287748

Edit: i see now you say you never played it. You are correct jojo is amazing though, but yeah Song of Saya is imo not very good. It flew under the radar until Mafoka came out and people started suggesting it as something even more fucked up. I can't find the interview but Urobuchi said its sales grew in response to Madoka (which is also a terrible anime imo)

Quote from: Manic Modron;1120216He never signed the paperwork, but he told her that it was done and she went to California and got remarried.

The man was a xenophobic bigot by the standards of his day, not merely ours, and his contemporaries often tried to call him out on it.

I will always enjoy much of his work and the work that was inspired by it, but the way he was a product of his time was the sorry state of psychology and psychiatry.  He was the racist uncle of his literary family.

Like, who cares? Seriously, EVERY SINGLE TIME someone starts talking about Cthulhu mythos, the inevitable, "HPL was a racist/bigot/homophone/xenophobe," nonsense gets brought up. Might as well just throw in gun control and Hitler to hit the hat trick for shit no one wants to discuss anymore.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1120235Goblin Slayer wasn't that great, but the anime fanbase is far from the worst out there.

At least we're not Marvel fans. Seriously, the only thing worse than capeshit these days are the fans of capeshit.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1120252I'd rather have "filthy, schlocky, perverse degenerate smut" than pretentious capeshit of any kind (be it Marvel or DC), to be honest.

Rapeime.
Now go back to your troll cave like the edgelord bitch you are.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1120235I usually picture a Goth or a Punk, and most fedora-wearing atheists I've met tend to not go for the katanas or anime these days. That was more of a late 90's/early 2000's sort of thing, and now it's used as a strawman smear by capeshit-loving SJW's to attack anyone who likes anime and manga.

Huh. It shouldn't surprise me that I'm out of touch with modern edgelords I suppose. I'm a product of my times, in that way Lovecraft and I are much alike! :p I do sympathize with you about 'capeshit'.

Quote from: Omega;1120279Rapeime.
Now go back to your troll cave like the edgelord bitch you are.

Methinks the hipster doth protest too much.

I will go back to my non-existent troll cave when you crawl in the grave with your heroes GG Allin, Vladimir Lenin, and Stan Lee, you pretentious smug bitch.

I'd rather be an "edgelord bitch" than a pretentious pseudo-intellectual capeshit-loving snob.

Even Stan Lee himself eventually admitted that capeshit was a mistake in his final years when he was being subject to horrific elder abuse at the hands of his Disney-backed caretakers, all because the dangerhair sows and bearded hipster bugmen at Marvel wanted to keep his close loved ones and family away from all the money they were making off his works.

As much as i love anime, i dont think you can call "capeshit" pseudo-intellectual in a way anime is not. There are good examples of that in all mediums.

Quote from: Slambo;1120294As much as i love anime, i dont think you can call "capeshit" pseudo-intellectual in a way anime is not. There are good examples of that in all mediums.

True, but the issue of pseudo-intellectualism and smug unwarranted self-importance seems to be a much bigger problem in the Marvel and DC fandoms in the past several years overall.

Plus, thanks to the popularity of the MCU, the capeshit fans are often far more insufferable and pretentious in my book.

Wow, i just realize how off topic we got.

On the subject of decolonization in RPGs i actually have no idea what people mean by decolonization besides maybe return to pre-industrial times.

Quote from: Slambo;1120301I actually have no idea what people mean by decolonization besides maybe return to pre-industrial times.

"Colonization" is the term used in SJ advocacy for the act of one culture dominating another by force, so "decolonization" is any social movement aimed at undoing the effects of such domination. Restoration of fading languages, preference for original cultural names over those assigned by others (e.g. "Inuit" or "Innu" vs. "Eskimo/Esquimaux"), study of the works of art and history of the dominated people over the dominators', all the way up to outright violent overthrow of a regime, reclamation of dispossessed geographical territory and expulsion of "non-native" inhabitants -- all fall under the rubric of "decolonization".

In itself this certainly has no shortage of dramatic conflict potential, so it's as fit a topic for RPGs as any other. In practice, most "decolonization" movements are undermined by the tendency to be extremely selective about which examples of intercultural domination are "wrong" and which not, and by the fatal desire to "eat one's cake and have it too" when it comes to keeping the benefits of "colonization" while rejecting the undesired elements. ("All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?")

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1120306"Colonization" is the term used in SJ advocacy for the act of one culture dominating another by force, so "decolonization" is any social movement aimed at undoing the effects of such domination. Restoration of fading languages, preference for original cultural names over those assigned by others (e.g. "Inuit" or "Innu" vs. "Eskimo/Esquimaux"), study of the works of art and history of the dominated people over the dominators', all the way up to outright violent overthrow of a regime, reclamation of dispossessed geographical territory and expulsion of "non-native" inhabitants -- all fall under the rubric of "decolonization".

In itself this certainly has no shortage of dramatic conflict potential, so it's as fit a topic for RPGs as any other. In practice, most "decolonization" movements are undermined by the tendency to be extremely selective about which examples of intercultural domination are "wrong" and which not, and by the fatal desire to "eat one's cake and have it too" when it comes to keeping the benefits of "colonization" while rejecting the undesired elements. ("All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?")

Yep. It's just more attempts by the SJW left to divide and conquer. This one's a bit more esoteric and tends to fly under the radar.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1120306("All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?")

Isn't this what makes the whole thing utterly retarded? Western "colonization" has produced the most technologically advanced society to ever exist, but SURELY all those tribes in Africa were on the verge of an industrial revolution right before they got sold into slavery! The whole thing is a joke.

Reminds me of this scene from CB4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5Ng0LyWUjY

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1120306In itself this certainly has no shortage of dramatic conflict potential, so it's as fit a topic for RPGs as any other. In practice, most "decolonization" movements are undermined by the tendency to be extremely selective about which examples of intercultural domination are "wrong" and which not, and by the fatal desire to "eat one's cake and have it too" when it comes to keeping the benefits of "colonization" while rejecting the undesired elements. ("All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?")

Yup, and with it comes a truckload of cognitive dissonance. "They would have totally adapted all the values we like anyway if the Romans didn't get involved".

The whole philosophy is a farce. It's just an organized excuse to be hateful pricks and smash stuff.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1120254I honestly do not care about morality

Unless you have complete bodily detachment and don't care what happens to you I don't think that's accurate. Even a sociopath would care about what happens to them, and for that, it requires a set of structured moral laws for at least the society around them even if they don't value any of the moral underpinnings.
I guess a more accurate statement would be "I don't care about following any sort of morality".

I mean you can't be a capitalist without valuing independence and personal responsibility. Unless you mean you're a consumerist which doesn't require the preceding two values, nor free-market capitalism really. Consumerism works fine under (theoretical) luxury socialism.

Okay, it doesnt sound so bad wheb you put it that way. So it must be something in the way its practiced. From what i saw looking at examples, it seems like theres often an effort to go for flipping the opressed to the oppressor. That imo could make a good campain if you dont mind becoming evil

Quote from: SlamboI actually have no idea what people mean by decolonization besides maybe return to pre-industrial times.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1120306"Colonization" is the term used in SJ advocacy for the act of one culture dominating another by force, so "decolonization" is any social movement aimed at undoing the effects of such domination. Restoration of fading languages, preference for original cultural names over those assigned by others (e.g. "Inuit" or "Innu" vs. "Eskimo/Esquimaux"), study of the works of art and history of the dominated people over the dominators', all the way up to outright violent overthrow of a regime, reclamation of dispossessed geographical territory and expulsion of "non-native" inhabitants -- all fall under the rubric of "decolonization".

So, I just got back from a three-week work trip to South Korea, and there de-colonization is generally part of a conservative, nationalist agenda. For those who don't know, Korea was taken over by Japan in 1910 and officially made a Japanese colony. My father was a child during Japanese rule, and he had to speak and read Japanese in school, according to their curriculum. So post-WWII, the conservative nationalist agenda has often been about eliminating Japanese influence -- including yes, restoration of Korean (Hangul) as the official language, restoration of Korean names, and similar. So it isn't just a modern SJW thing.

I think it tends to be a matter of perspective. Of course, with successive waves of invasions, there is plenty of grey area in who is the colonizer -- but I think any social definition always has grey areas.

In RPGs, I think colonizers can be excellent villains. In many fantasy games, the monsters are on the fringes. i.e. The PCs go out into the wilds to find and fight evil monsters, and then go back to civilization to recover and re-equip and such. That pattern means that the monsters aren't all that threatening. Whereas if the monsters are actually in the process of taking over civilization, and control large territory, then they are a more serious threat that has to be countered.

Actually, a couple of my recent campaigns have featured more monster-dominant settings. I ran a D&D campaign where dragons were conquering the surface world - that was my post-apocalyptic "Dawn of Fire" game where surviving humans were heading into dungeons to find a safe place to live. I also ran a Call of Cthulhu campaign which was set in an alternate 1940s after a world-spanning war with the Deep Ones, and there was still overt Deep-One-controlled territory.

Another one bites the dust over Lovecraft. Lol. "STOP TALKING ABOUT HISTORY AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!" :p

https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/ruemere-receives-a-%F0%9F%92%80-permanent-ban.858314/

Quote from: jhkim;1120313So, I just got back from a three-week work trip to South Korea, and there de-colonization is generally part of a conservative, nationalist agenda.

A good example of the complexities of such issues.

The reason I attribute it to SJ advocacy in particular is because SJ advocates tend to use the term as the explanation for any kind of perceived power disparity between cultures, whereas traditionalists or conservatives tend to limit its use solely to cases of actual military or political hegemony rather than cultural popularity or comparative economic value.  Hollywood's influence over worldwide pop culture, for example, is considered "colonization" in SJ advocacy, despite the fact that there isn't a country in the world whose people are required by law to go see those movies.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1120309Unless you have complete bodily detachment and don't care what happens to you I don't think that's accurate. Even a sociopath would care about what happens to them, and for that, it requires a set of structured moral laws for at least the society around them even if they don't value any of the moral underpinnings.
I guess a more accurate statement would be "I don't care about following any sort of morality".

I mean you can't be a capitalist without valuing independence and personal responsibility. Unless you mean you're a consumerist which doesn't require the preceding two values, nor free-market capitalism really. Consumerism works fine under (theoretical) luxury socialism.

I suppose I should clarify...

I do not believe in dogmatic morality, the kind of morals that are espoused by both the Marxists and SJW's on the Left and the Abrahamic fundamentalists on the Right.

I have my own personal morals, but they are largely antithetical to both Marxist intersectional morality and traditionalist Judeo-Christian morality as well.

I am a capitalist, a centrist, a hedonist, a Greco-Roman polytheist, and a sadist. I support the ideology of capitalism because it is the only modern ideology that is somewhat compatible with my personal beliefs and views.

As for the uproar over colonialism, I think it's mostly overblown nonsense, no different than the uproar over "D&D promoting Satanism" that was en vogue during the 80's.

Personally, I had an idea for a game that turns the anti-colonialist narrative on its head. A scenario where the colonizers are the good guys and the indigenous tribals are the villains.

I'm imagining either a horror scenario in the vein of "The Hills Have Eyes" or an adventure campaign that is a fantasy parallel of the Aztec Empire's downfall.

The latter scenario would be really good, because you could have a different group of indigenous people as allies of the heroes, much like how the Tlaxcala helped the Spaniards fight the Aztecs.

Quote from: Slambo;1120310From what i saw looking at examples, it seems like there's often an effort to go for flipping the oppressed to the oppressor.

That is, indeed, one of the pitfalls. Human nature unfortunately tends to the vindictive, and everyone has an interest in representing themselves as the target of aggression rather than its practitioner, thereby representing their opponents as "deserving" of complete erasure and disenfranchisement. (I have no objection, for example, to adding courses to an education curriculum which study the art and literature of various indigenous peoples worldwide. I just object to the idea that the study of Shakespeare should be retired in their favour.)

In an RPG, such conflicts are most likely to be physical and martial, both in what sets up the original domination (cf. Alexander the Great or the Romans) and in what's done to push back against it (guerrilla rebellion campaigns). One possible way to examine a more even-handed version of such conflicts is to make them geopolitical and economic, like the struggle over the anti-agathic/space-navigation spice melange in Dune (or its real world inspiration, the oil-rich nations of the Middle East): possessing an absolutely vital resource for the rest of the known world makes you either the king of the world or its slave, depending on what's done about it.

Quote from: Antiquation!;1120316Another one bites the dust over Lovecraft. Lol. "STOP TALKING ABOUT HISTORY AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!" :p

https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/ruemere-receives-a-%F0%9F%92%80-permanent-ban.858314/

Thanks for posting this.

Every so often  wonder whether things has calmed down over there, and wonder if I should have asked for my account to be Permabanned.

Nope, say anything rational but outside of party lines and you're out of there.

Quote from: ponta1010;1120324Thanks for posting this.

Every so often  wonder whether things has calmed down over there, and wonder if I should have asked for my account to be Permabanned.

Nope, say anything rational but outside of party lines and you're out of there.

Indeed. I thought for sure I was going to get perma'd for complaining openly about the moderation, but as it so happened the thread just got closed (after they banned several others for complaining and hurting their fee-fees, of course). I figure they let me skate due to already having gotten their taste of blood for the day. I'm still waiting for the perfect opportunity to burn that account... :D

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1120235Personally, I am very pro-Israel. Despite some of their more questionable policies, they are far better than the opposition and are the closest thing that the Middle East has to a functional Western democracy. Most SJW's hate Israel with a burning passion, which is something they share in common with most white supremacists.

Israel is based as fuck. Let's be honest, any nation that can get both Antifa and Neo-Nazis to utterly seethe is kind of awesome when you think about it.

If the Israel-Palestine debate is an issue of colonialism, then I am a proud colonialist!

I got no problem at all with pro-Israel folks, as long as they aren't hypocrites or Jewish particularists who only allow room for Jewish ethnostates. As long as they don't get up to that kind of slimy shit, they're fine by me.

I couldn't give less of a fuck about democracies in west Asia, though. ZFG.

I disagree that SJWs hate Israel. IME, this is mostly a GOPer fantasy.

Quote from: Antiquation!;1120316Another one bites the dust over Lovecraft. Lol. "STOP TALKING ABOUT HISTORY AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!" :p

https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/ruemere-receives-a-%F0%9F%92%80-permanent-ban.858314/

Bites the dust or earns a badge of honor?

Quote from: Morlock;1120346I got no problem at all with pro-Israel folks, as long as they aren't hypocrites or Jewish particularists who only allow room for Jewish ethnostates. As long as they don't get up to that kind of slimy shit, they're fine by me.

I couldn't give less of a fuck about democracies in west Asia, though. ZFG.

I disagree that SJWs hate Israel. IME, this is mostly a GOPer fantasy.

Tell you what, you keep your dumb-fuck opinions about "da joos" to yourself and I'll keep my "slimy shit" opinions about ethnostates to myself and we'll all get along juuust fiiine.

Quote from: Morlock;1120346I got no problem at all with pro-Israel folks, as long as they aren't hypocrites or Jewish particularists who only allow room for Jewish ethnostates. As long as they don't get up to that kind of slimy shit, they're fine by me.

No one seems to have a problem with the idea of Ethnostates in general.  Well maybe the Leftists but can we even count them?

Quote from: Slipshot762;1120261Remember that time Visigoths colonized Rome?

Of course! That's when Al Bundy scored four touchdowns for Polk High. Who doesn't remember that glorious moment?

Welcome aboard Slipshot!!

Quote from: Slipshot762;1120261I wonder how many extinct-before-we-got-here peoples were "colonized" by native american tribes whilst greeks were mastering pottery?

Based on the scant records, the answer is MANY. And we know the Mongols wiped out whole civilizations and we have near nothing to figure out who they were or how long their nations existed. Brutal destruction of the conquered is the nature of man.

As jhkim pointed out, Korea is recent case study. If the USA had not crushed Japan in 1945, its quite possible Korea would just be an extension of Japan today instead of its own sovereign nation. We will never know what Mexico would have become if the Aztecs had been immune to Spanish germs, or China if they explored the entire Pacific before the Mongol invasion, or if they had fought off the British.

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;1119822Evil Hat's creating this:

"In Development: Fate Decolonization Toolkit
Sometimes we like role-playing games to help us escape from real-world struggles. Other times, we need the catharsis of a fictionalized struggle against injustice to prepare us to return to the everyday struggle. For those times, there's the Fate Decolonization Toolkit.

Under the creative direction of James Mendez Hodes, this book will show players how to include colonial powers as antagonists in their games, as well as how to create characters who fight against them. It breaks colonial domination down into its component systems of oppression such as violent conquest, the prison-industrial complex, theocracy, and ecological exploitation. Real-world examples expressed with Fate mechanisms will illustrate each of these systems, mapping out how you can apply them to your own games. It also will include a complete campaign frame which calls on the players to decolonize a fantasy setting; and a discussion of how to use safety tools to keep the process empowering and educational, not exploitative.

Even if you don't play Fate, you may find it a useful reference point if you ever want to speak frankly about, or play safely near, systemic oppression in creative media."

So essentially an #SJW playbook.

I wonder how they'll avoid endorsing violent solutions.

Quote from: Plotinus;1119841Will there be any support for running a campaign where a traditional society with strict gender roles and traditional sexual ethics resists the colonialism of rich white liberals and NGOs overseas, who are pressuring it to change and conform to the very latest western ideas about equality and gender?

No?

How very odd.

I wonder how they'll make sure it can't be about that.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1119866Seriously, I love the idea of playing a game about fighting oppressive forces in society, where everyone has to keep their head down cuz the ruling powers are corrupt clergy or an invading force that's taken over the region and enslaved the population, and characters are trying to retake their land, etc.

I mean it's not like this theme is uncommon or anything.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1119866It's the SJW preaching that puts me off, and I seriously doubt propagandists would be able to make a decent product that would be genuinely useful in actual play.

They might, though creating effective propaganda will certainly take priority over creating a playable game regardless.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1120061SJW-ism does indeed have MUCH more in common with colonialism then they wish to admit.

I knew a guy that decried colonialism on one hand (for enforcing viewpoints on others) but made an instant pivot about the current (SJW) culture is the best because it promotes the best values and how its good to always push it onto others.

#SelfAwareWolves

Quote from: Manic Modron;1120149One of the reasons they got divorced was that he wouldn't shut up about how horrible Jews were and gave his wife the "you're one of the good ones" treatment.

She quotes him as saying  "You no longer belong to those mongrels."

It's the 'one black friend' effect.

Funny how having an actual relationship with someone can short circut bigotry and lead to all kinds of justifications to overcome the cognitive dissonance. I guess that's why totalitarians discourage them.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1120196Yes, but in myth and fairytale when this happens, almost always either the monster is ultimately redeemed from its monsterdom (Beauty and the Beast), or the human who couples willingly with it meets a terrible fate (selkie or swanmay legends) or is transformed into a being like the monster (vampire or faerie bride legends). The idea that both human and monster can stay as they are and nonetheless still be happy and contented together -- and not just happy and contented, but more happy and contented than either could be with their own kind -- is a uniquely modern twist, and one that (I think) comes not from SF&F literature but, as pointed out by L. Jagi Lamplighter, modern romance literature.

The key to a successful romance is that there have to be profound obstacles preventing the lovers from being together, or there's no struggle in their union and no drama to their story.  In the past you could set up all kinds of barriers -- class, religion, race, nationality, etc. -- which simply don't apply today, not without going to a great deal of work to establish a fairly specific and unusual context. Thus, one reason the paranormal romance has become so popular is that it replaces these outdated barriers with the existential barrier of one's very species: vampire/werewolf, vampire/human, half-angel/half-devil, whatever. But because the notion of changing's one's essential nature for the sake of a relationship is considered a politically problematic message today, these romances almost always find some way to imply a permanent happy ending without having to make such a change. The Shape of Water is a direct descendant of those narrative tropes.

I think the transformation aspect is still very much a thing though, given the success of #Twilight and #50ShadesOfGrey, and how often the theme of getting a 'bad boy' to change his ways pops up.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1120306"Colonization" is the term used in SJ advocacy for the act of one culture dominating another by force, so "decolonization" is any social movement aimed at undoing the effects of such domination. Restoration of fading languages, preference for original cultural names over those assigned by others (e.g. "Inuit" or "Innu" vs. "Eskimo/Esquimaux"), study of the works of art and history of the dominated people over the dominators', all the way up to outright violent overthrow of a regime, reclamation of dispossessed geographical territory and expulsion of "non-native" inhabitants -- all fall under the rubric of "decolonization".

Shit that's point #2 on Umberto Eco's essay on Ur-Fascism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism#Umberto_Eco).

Quote from: Antiquation!;1120316Another one bites the dust over Lovecraft. Lol. "STOP TALKING ABOUT HISTORY AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!" :p

https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/ruemere-receives-a-%F0%9F%92%80-permanent-ban.858314/

So they were banned for pointing out that this statement (https://www.reddit.com/r/Lovecraft/comments/4wmk6k/lovecraft_on_hitler_1933/), which begins thusly...

Quote from: Lovecraft on Hitler (1933)The details of Nazism are deplorable, but they do not even begin to compare in harmfulness with the extravagances of communism. You seem to forget that most of the German people are quietly going about their business as usual, with a much better morale than they had last year. If the Nazi destruction of certain books is silly--& there is no reason to deny that it is--then there is no word to express the abysmal idiocy & turpitude of the bolshevik war on normal culture & expression. Germany has not even begun to parallel Russia in the destruction of those basic values which Western Europeans live by. When I say I like Hitler I do not imply that his is a & blindly against the disintegrative forces which more educated & sophisticated people accept without adequate evidence as inevitable. His neurotic fanaticism, scientific addle-patedness, & crude gaucheries & extravagances are admitted & deplored--& of course it is quite possible that he actually may do more harm than good.

...does not make Lovecraft a Nazi follower. Because it's not enough he was a raging xenophobe, he has to be a Nazi as well, regardless of the facts.

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;1120350Bites the dust or earns a badge of honor?

Fair point! ;)

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1120377...does not make Lovecraft a Nazi follower. Because it's not enough he was a raging xenophobe, he has to be a Nazi as well, regardless of the facts.

He obviously WAS definitely a Nazi, proper deplorable. Plus that poster that got permabanned, they're definitely a Nazi as well. I mean, just look! They said Hitler's name! :rolleyes:

With regards to decolonization... I would very much like these psychotic cultists to decolonize their asses from my fucking hobby. At the very least my personal table remains unconquered, shame so many conventions and games publishers haven't been as lucky. Nice to see a some companies still willing to stand up to the screeching mental patients though, such as SJG with their Frog God Games partnership. Or Kevin Crawford calmly shutting down people insinuating his upcoming Wolves of God game is racist and colonialist.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1120377I think the transformation aspect is still very much a thing though, given the success of #Twilight and #50ShadesOfGrey, and how often the theme of getting a 'bad boy' to change his ways pops up.

Agreed, although I think one of the ways that process has been thematically defanged in modern romance (vs. the myths and fairytales) is that modern romance tends to depict such processes not as a true transformation, per se -- i.e. as a process in which neither the end state nor its consequences are under the subject's control or match the subject's expectations -- but as a restoration; the implication is that whichever party changes more to make the relationship work isn't really "changing", but finding or releasing their "true self" or "another part of their nature" or "who they really were all along", etc.  It's always depicted as the psychological equivalent of the frog turning back into the prince, never vice versa. The philosophical overlap with certain recent political advocacy movements is not, I think, coincidental.

Consider, for example, that the first edit made to any werewolf or therianthrope/shapeshifter mythology, when redesigning it for non-horror protagonist characters, is to put the process of changing at least partially under the shifter's control and to let the shifter keep his memories, reason and most of his free will while changed. The reasoning behind this is obvious for urban fantasy RPGs or stories (you can't have a protagonist who loses all agency at critical points unless that loss of agency is itself his biggest antagonist, i.e. it's a horror story), but the effects on the myth's meaning are profound and unavoidable.

Emotional imperialism: The strange belief that your feelings should dictate someone else's behavior.

Identity colonialism: The assumption that you have a better grasp of what's harmful to a marginalized group than members of that group.


Fight the SJWs with their own stupid language.


Edit: The Lovecraft thing is CLEARLY a case of Nazinoia

Nazinoia: A delusional tendency to see Nazis as hiding behind ideas or practices one opposes, and by accusing anyone to the right of Bernie Sanders of being Nazis, fascists, white supremacists, or alt-right.

Quote from: tenbones;1120404Nazinoia: A delusional tendency to see Nazis as hiding behind ideas or practices one opposes, and by accusing anyone to the right of Bernie Sanders of being Nazis, fascists, white supremacists, or alt-right.

Or alternately:

Schizoaffective totaliphobia: A paranoid attribution of fascist philosophy to one's opposition which is so acute that it renders the sufferer incapable of perceiving his own use of fascistic tactics against those opponents.

Let's be honest - it both.

In fact that's not true either. It's WAY more than just those, haha. But they're great starting points to show the magnitude of the mental issues we're dealing with.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1120403Agreed, although I think one of the ways that process has been thematically defanged in modern romance (vs. the myths and fairytales) is that modern romance tends to depict such processes not as a true transformation, per se -- i.e. as a process in which neither the end state nor its consequences are under the subject's control or match the subject's expectations -- but as a restoration; the implication is that whichever party changes more to make the relationship work isn't really "changing", but finding or releasing their "true self" or "another part of their nature" or "who they really were all along", etc.  It's always depicted as the psychological equivalent of the frog turning back into the prince, never vice versa. The philosophical overlap with certain recent political advocacy movements is not, I think, coincidental.

Consider, for example, that the first edit made to any werewolf or therianthrope/shapeshifter mythology, when redesigning it for non-horror protagonist characters, is to put the process of changing at least partially under the shifter's control and to let the shifter keep his memories, reason and most of his free will while changed. The reasoning behind this is obvious for urban fantasy RPGs or stories (you can't have a protagonist who loses all agency at critical points unless that loss of agency is itself his biggest antagonist, i.e. it's a horror story), but the effects on the myth's meaning are profound and unavoidable.

And it is inevitably the masculine partner who adapts, because all the other partner needs is for someone to confirm to them.

Quote from: RandyB;1120413And it is inevitably the masculine partner who adapts, because all the other partner needs is for someone to confirm to them.

Not always; in Twilight the woman became a vampire to live forever with her love, rather than the story turning on finding a way for the male vampire to become human again.  And while it's certainly true that Twilight is not very well written and has its own share of flaws, the sheer scale of its success means that on some fundamental level it's appealing to some fantasy of most of its readers.

Then, too, the masculine partner adapting to the feminine is often presented as one half of a "saving each other" dynamic, where the man saves the woman from external, physical threats like the story's nominal villains, while the woman saves the man from internal, emotional threats, i.e. his own flaws and issues.  One reason this no longer rings as "balanced" to most readers is the feminism-cultivated dislike of women having to be saved by men, which inevitably spills over into dislike of plots turning on the woman doing more work in the relationship by "fixing" the man.

(I strongly suspect that this is part of why male-male "slash"/"yaoi" romances are so popular in fandom, because by their very nature they skip past most of these dynamics or mix them up chaotically across both participants.)

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1120417Not always; in Twilight the woman became a vampire to live forever with her love, rather than the story turning on finding a way for the male vampire to become human again.  And while it's certainly true that Twilight is not very well written and has its own share of flaws, the sheer scale of its success means that on some fundamental level it's appealing to some fantasy of most of its readers.

Then, too, the masculine partner adapting to the feminine is often presented as one half of a "saving each other" dynamic, where the man saves the woman from external, physical threats like the story's nominal villains, while the woman saves the man from internal, emotional threats, i.e. his own flaws and issues.  One reason this no longer rings as "balanced" to most readers is the feminism-cultivated dislike of women having to be saved by men, which inevitably spills over into dislike of plots turning on the woman doing more work in the relationship by "fixing" the man.

(I strongly suspect that this is part of why male-male "slash"/"yaoi" romances are so popular in fandom, because by their very nature they skip past most of these dynamics or mix them up chaotically across both participants.)

Eh, I didn't know that about Twilight. One example reduces the rule from universal to general.

OTOH, as Twilight illustrates, "I'll change for the 'right' partner" has a strong resonance with feminine audiences.

Quote from: RandyB;1120424Eh, I didn't know that about Twilight. One example reduces the rule from universal to general.

OTOH, as Twilight illustrates, "I'll change for the 'right' partner" has a strong resonance with feminine audiences.

It's also worth noting that even if both partners change significantly for the other in order to make the relationship work, it's far more common in fiction for the man's changes to involve sacrificing something, giving something up, or taking on a duty, limit, obligation or responsibility he didn't have or mostly disregarded before. The female partner's changes almost always involve having to grow in confidence and authority to a wholly positive degree, even if she has to get there faster than she's comfortable with; if she has to give something up to enter or uphold the relationship, it's usually depicted as something that really wasn't worth keeping anyway. In other words, in fiction, a man's changes are most commonly depicted as costs that must be paid for the relationship, while a woman's are most commonly depicted as benefits that accrue from the relationship.

(Example: Jake Peralta and Amy Santiago from Brooklyn 9-9: they've both changed visibly over the course of their relationship and eventual marriage, but all Jake's changes have involved him calming down and taking responsibility, while Amy's changes have involved her loosening up and earning authority.)

Quote from: tenbones;1120404Fight the SJWs with their own stupid language.

Don't. Not even out of any principle or whatever. Them never having to be culpable to their own language use isn't a flaw on their own end but an intentional structure of their ideology. "Gotcha your a hypocrite" never works on them because that implies they ever cared about ideological consistency in the first place. If they were ideologically consistent they would not be SJWs.

SJW-ism is anti-rules and laws but pro emotions and gut feelings. If you wanna beat SJWs at their own game you have to make them feel bad and not fall to emotional manipulation.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1120434"Gotcha your a hypocrite" never works on them because that implies they ever cared about ideological consistency in the first place. If they were ideologically consistent they would not be SJWs.

You're not wrong, but in certain contexts making sure this hypocrisy is demonstrated in public can go a long way towards mitigating the effect.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1120439You're not wrong, but in certain contexts making sure this hypocrisy is demonstrated in public can go a long way towards mitigating the effect.

I think at this point the people who noticed have already decided one way or the other. At this point, the battle isn't of awareness but fighting cognitive dissonance.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1120434Don't. Not even out of any principle or whatever. Them never having to be culpable to their own language use isn't a flaw on their own end but an intentional structure of their ideology. "Gotcha your a hypocrite" never works on them because that implies they ever cared about ideological consistency in the first place. If they were ideologically consistent they would not be SJWs.

SJW-ism is anti-rules and laws but pro emotions and gut feelings. If you wanna beat SJWs at their own game you have to make them feel bad and not fall to emotional manipulation.

Leftism isn't anti-rule or anti-law. It has no actual articulable principles (what with its actual principles being evil and all), but it isn't anti-rule or anti-law. On the contrary, leftism is a morass of rules and laws. The trouble is, there's no consistency. It's a lot like an ancient religion in that sense; all revealed truth, little or nothing in the way of logical underpinning.

Leftists are quite conformist. Leftism may provide some veneer of being driven by emotion and gut feeling but that's just marketing - like the laughable leftist pretension of being "for the little guy," "the plucky rebel fighting the establishment," "pro-underdog," "non-conformist," "speaking truth to power," etc.

Leftism is far too consistent* to be emotion- or feeling-driven. No, it's just a big mass of shitty, often-contradictory rules that leftists have to learn, usually by osmosis.

Edit:

*: it's tempting to say that leftism is a constantly-moving set of goalposts, but that only proves my point; it changes radically over time, but leftists still all manage to keep their firmware updated and mouth the correct platitudes for [current year]. I suppose I should have written, "leftists are far too consistently in lockstep," or similar.

Quote from: Brendan;1120357Tell you what, you keep your dumb-fuck opinions about "da joos" to yourself and I'll keep my "slimy shit" opinions about ethnostates to myself and we'll all get along juuust fiiine.

To reciprocate; you can keep your dumb-fuck opinions about anything and everything to yourself.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1120439You're not wrong, but in certain contexts making sure this hypocrisy is demonstrated in public can go a long way towards mitigating the effect.

Yeah the key to the hypocrisy accusation is to make it for the audience's benefit, not the transgressor's. Fuck the transgressor, for whom learning something is the exception, not the rule.

This is true of arguments/debates in general. Don't work your opponent, work the room.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1120427It's also worth noting that even if both partners change significantly for the other in order to make the relationship work, it's far more common in fiction for the man's changes to involve sacrificing something, giving something up, or taking on a duty, limit, obligation or responsibility he didn't have or mostly disregarded before. The female partner's changes almost always involve having to grow in confidence and authority to a wholly positive degree, even if she has to get there faster than she's comfortable with; if she has to give something up to enter or uphold the relationship, it's usually depicted as something that really wasn't worth keeping anyway. In other words, in fiction, a man's changes are most commonly depicted as costs that must be paid for the relationship, while a woman's are most commonly depicted as benefits that accrue from the relationship.

(Example: Jake Peralta and Amy Santiago from Brooklyn 9-9: they've both changed visibly over the course of their relationship and eventual marriage, but all Jake's changes have involved him calming down and taking responsibility, while Amy's changes have involved her loosening up and earning authority.)

Yep. that's what I was getting after. Well said.

To keep this on topic for RPGs,

Quote from: jhkimIn RPGs, I think colonizers can be excellent villains. In many fantasy games, the monsters are on the fringes. i.e. The PCs go out into the wilds to find and fight evil monsters, and then go back to civilization to recover and re-equip and such. That pattern means that the monsters aren't all that threatening. Whereas if the monsters are actually in the process of taking over civilization, and control large territory, then they are a more serious threat that has to be countered.

Actually, a couple of my recent campaigns have featured more monster-dominant settings. I ran a D&D campaign where dragons were conquering the surface world - that was my post-apocalyptic "Dawn of Fire" game where surviving humans were heading into dungeons to find a safe place to live. I also ran a Call of Cthulhu campaign which was set in an alternate 1940s after a world-spanning war with the Deep Ones, and there was still overt Deep-One-controlled territory.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1120320Personally, I had an idea for a game that turns the anti-colonialist narrative on its head. A scenario where the colonizers are the good guys and the indigenous tribals are the villains.

I'm imagining either a horror scenario in the vein of "The Hills Have Eyes" or an adventure campaign that is a fantasy parallel of the Aztec Empire's downfall.

The latter scenario would be really good, because you could have a different group of indigenous people as allies of the heroes, much like how the Tlaxcala helped the Spaniards fight the Aztecs.

In my experience of RPGs, it's rare for the heroes to be indigenous locals fighting off colonizers. But that said, I'd be interested in a setting of Tlaxcala and Spaniards versus the Aztecs. There's a recent RPG that sounds similar to your idea, called Dragons Conquer America.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/270512/Dragons-Conquer-America-Core-Book

I ran an alternate history campaign for a while about vikings in the New World -- where the PCs were mostly Icelanders allied with local Algonquian tribes against the invading Haudenosaunee (Iroquois).

Quote from: jhkim;1120476In my experience of RPGs, it's rare for the heroes to be indigenous locals fighting off colonizers.

Palladium's a big fan of this theme. In Nightbane, the Nightlords are trying to transform Earth. Same with the Bugs in Systems Failure. In Rifts, we see the Southwest trying to hold off the Vampires which rule Mexico and numerous communities trying to withstand the crushing colonization of the Coalition States.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1120478Palladium's a big fan of this theme. In Nightbane, the Nightlords are trying to transform Earth. Same with the Bugs in Systems Failure. In Rifts, we see the Southwest trying to hold off the Vampires which rule Mexico and numerous communities trying to withstand the crushing colonization of the Coalition States.

Except in most of those cases its not colonialism as the aliens want to wipe out the indigent species rather than enslave, displace or absorb them into the colony. Nearly all the Palladium settings boil down to an all-or-nothing situation.

In Albedo the ILR straddles the problem as they are absorbing any lapines and enslaving or displacing any non-lapine. But their end goal is to exterminate everyone else once they have completely taken over.

As the SJW's use the term, decolonization is squarely anti-Western Civilization. To them, colonization, like slavery, is a sin that is unique and egregious to Western Civilization, and especially to the predominant ethnic group of Western Civilization.

To express that in gaming requires a proxy for Western Civilization, whether cultural or racial, as the evil colonizer. The "good guys" are then a diverse group opposing the evil colonizers.

Quote from: RandyB;1120494As the SJW's use the term, decolonization is squarely anti-Western Civilization. To them, colonization, like slavery, is a sin that is unique and egregious to Western Civilization, and especially to the predominant ethnic group of Western Civilization.

To express that in gaming requires a proxy for Western Civilization, whether cultural or racial, as the evil colonizer. The "good guys" are then a diverse group opposing the evil colonizers.

Seconded as apparently no one else but Western civilization aka "white" people are the only ones who engaged in colonization. As no other races beyond that one ever did engage in colonization. To say otherwise is to be told only non-whites can be the victim of colonization. At least that is the narrative that way too many SJWs try to push. Speak against said narrative and one is ignored or called evil and an colonization apologist.

Quote from: sureshot;1120495Seconded as apparently no one else but Western civilization aka "white" people are the only ones who engaged in colonization. As no other races beyond that one ever did engage in colonization. To say otherwise is to be told only non-whites can be the victim of colonization. At least that is the narrative that way too many SJWs try to push. Speak against said narrative and one is ignored or called evil and an colonization apologist.

Because, to the SJW, non-whites can only be victims, or collaborators.

There is a small amount of gaming fodder there - a dwarf who collaborates with elves against his own people. Or is he an agent for his people? Or a double agent, only out for his own gain? Spy novel stuff, maybe hard to pull off in a game.

Most woke activists are woefully ignorant of history. I mean, they know marginally more than know-nothing conservatives who have never read a book. But they only learn enough history, selectively parsed, to use as a cudgel against Western culture.

What might actually educate both the conservative know-nothings and the anti-colonial brigade is to delve into history that doesn't involve Europeans at all, either as heroes or oppressors. But of course that would require a genuine curiosity about the world, rather than a need for emotionally-satisfying narratives of good and evil.

Quote from: Morlock;1120453To reciprocate; you can keep your dumb-fuck opinions about anything and everything to yourself.

Wow clever.  As an aside, I wonder how long it will be before the mask slips and you treat us to your inevitable alt-right sperg out?  Anyway, enjoy your day.

Quote from: Shasarak;1120358No one seems to have a problem with the idea of Ethnostates in general.  Well maybe the Leftists but can we even count them?

Quote from: Ayn RandRacism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage—the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.

Racism claims that the content of a man’s mind (not his cognitive apparatus, but its content) is inherited; that a man’s convictions, values and character are determined before he is born, by physical factors beyond his control. This is the caveman’s version of the doctrine of innate ideas—or of inherited knowledge—which has been thoroughly refuted by philosophy and science. Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes. It is a barnyard or stock-farm version of collectivism, appropriate to a mentality that differentiates between various breeds of animals, but not between animals and men.

Like every form of determinism, racism invalidates the specific attribute which distinguishes man from all other living species: his rational faculty. Racism negates two aspects of man’s life: reason and choice, or mind and morality, replacing them with chemical predestination.

What she said.

Quote from: Haffrung;1120506Most woke activists are woefully ignorant of history. I mean, they know marginally more than know-nothing conservatives who have never read a book. But they only learn enough history, selectively parsed, to use as a cudgel against Western culture.

What might actually educate both the conservative know-nothings and the anti-colonial brigade is to delve into history that doesn't involve Europeans at all, either as heroes or oppressors. But of course that would require a genuine curiosity about the world, rather than a need for emotionally-satisfying narratives of good and evil.

This always bugs me, what would they replace western culture with?

Every people on earth who ever had the ability to colonize and conquer places and people did so. Why are the more recent incidences considered worse? Somebody won, somebody lost, just like the rest of history.

Quote from: Altheus;1120517This always bugs me, what would they replace western culture with?

Every people on earth who ever had the ability to colonize and conquer places and people did so. Why are the more recent incidences considered worse? Somebody won, somebody lost, just like the rest of history.

They have a Rousseauian view of human nature, which means they don't think that they need to replace it with anything.  

https://theconversation.com/explainer-the-myth-of-the-noble-savage-55316

They think that if they just remove the entirely negative social conditioning that has produced modern man then we'll return to an organic Eden-like state.  The Right-Left divide is more significant than just an awareness of history vs an ignorance of it.  It goes to a fundamental understanding of the human condition.

Quote from: Brendan;1120518They have a Rousseauian view of human nature, which means they don't think that they need to replace it with anything.  

https://theconversation.com/explainer-the-myth-of-the-noble-savage-55316

They think that if they just remove the entirely negative social conditioning that has produced modern man then we'll return to an organic Eden-like state.  The Right-Left divide is more significant than just an awareness of history vs an ignorance of it.  It goes to a fundamental understanding of the human condition.

Ah, rankest folly. They do not realise that any other set of values would not give them space to say what they want and would instead reassign them to a new role as reactor shielding.

Quote from: Omega;1120485Except in most of those cases its not colonialism as the aliens want to wipe out the indigent species rather than enslave, displace or absorb them into the colony. Nearly all the Palladium settings boil down to an all-or-nothing situation.

Well, the Vampires in Rifts want to enslave the human population as a food source. Some would even track to the modern conception of "colonization". The names escape me, but one Kingdom treats humans as second-class citizens, but does give them a certain amount of freedom and responsiblity. Others just flat out treat humans as cattle.

The goals of the Nightlords are less clear. (AFAIK, I've only read the first 3 books)

Decolonization successful! "How Tabletop RPGs Are Being Reclaimed From Bigots And Jerks!"

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/y3mw5b/how-tabletop-rpgs-are-being-reclaimed-from-bigots-and-jerks?utm_source=reddit.com

I'm so grateful that Evil Hat is saving this hobby!

"Evil Hat Productions recently told me they felt it was important to create distance between themselves and Lovecraft!" By... publishing a new CoC game? Huh. Anyway, I certainly can't wait for all you evil fascists to be forcibly purged.

For those of you non-fascists, grab your BDSM checklists boys and girls!

Quote from: Antiquation!;1120524Decolonization successful! "How Tabletop RPGs Are Being Reclaimed From Bigots And Jerks!"

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/y3mw5b/how-tabletop-rpgs-are-being-reclaimed-from-bigots-and-jerks?utm_source=reddit.com

I'm so grateful that Evil Hat is saving this hobby!

"Evil Hat Productions recently told me they felt it was important to create distance between themselves and Lovecraft!" By... publishing a new CoC game? Huh. Anyway, I certainly can't wait for all you evil fascists to be forcibly purged.

For those of you non-fascists, grab your BDSM checklists boys and girls!

Was just gonna post that.

"The negative reaction to content warnings always take the same shape. The aggrieved point a finger and claim the writers are having an emotional overreaction, then demand a return to an era where everyone stoically dealt with their trauma and ignored it when a piece of art evoked uncomfortable feelings. This contempt for the weak and machismo are both signs of fascism."

If you disagree you're a FACIST, REEEEEEEEEE!!!

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1120528If you disagree you're a FACIST, REEEEEEEEEE!!!

LMAO. I don't know whether it's more hilarious or pathetic that what you wrote here is, quite literally, what they are openly accusing at this point.

Quote from: Antiquation!;1120533LMAO. I don't know whether it's more hilarious or pathetic that what you wrote here is, quite literally, what they are openly accusing at this point.

Can't it be both? :)

As I keep saying, call me when WotC apologizes for twenty years of erasing Christians and appropriating our culture in D&D. ;)

Quote from: jhkim;1120476In my experience of RPGs, it's rare for the heroes to be indigenous locals fighting off colonizers.

There's Torg (and the current Torg Eternity) that lets you fight all manner of colonizers from different realities.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1120538Can't it be both? :)

It wouldn't be the same brain-damaged cultists we've come to know so well if it weren't heaping mounds of both!

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1120541As I keep saying, call me when WotC apologizes for twenty years of erasing Christians and appropriating our culture in D&D. ;)

You may find yourself waiting, erm, a while... :o

Quote from: Ayn Rand;1120513Like every form of determinism, racism invalidates the specific attribute which distinguishes man from all other living species: his rational faculty. Racism negates two aspects of man's life: reason and choice, or mind and morality, replacing them with chemical predestination.

When you get right down to it, chemical predestination does explain a lot.

Quote from: HaffrungMost woke activists are woefully ignorant of history. I mean, they know marginally more than know-nothing conservatives who have never read a book. But they only learn enough history, selectively parsed, to use as a cudgel against Western culture.

What might actually educate both the conservative know-nothings and the anti-colonial brigade is to delve into history that doesn't involve Europeans at all, either as heroes or oppressors. But of course that would require a genuine curiosity about the world, rather than a need for emotionally-satisfying narratives of good and evil.

Yes, most people in general aren't well-versed in history. I agree particularly about the latter. I feel that learning about the Japanese-Korean conflict -- especially first-hand from my relatives -- has been very informative to me. I've also read up on other non-European-involved conflicts.

Quote from: Altheus;1120517This always bugs me, what would they replace western culture with?

Every people on earth who ever had the ability to colonize and conquer places and people did so. Why are the more recent incidences considered worse? Somebody won, somebody lost, just like the rest of history.

Conquest, war, murder, and rape and other things have happened throughout history - perpetrated by many different peoples. However, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't condemn them and try to behave better. Should the Koreans have just said "Well, the Japanese conquered us - I guess we just give up our own language and identity and all become Japanese now, under Japanese rule?" I think it's natural and indeed morally right that they said that what the Japanese did was wrong, fought back, and tried to undo the effects of that conquest.

Morally, might does not make right. There are conquerors and bullies out there, and we should try to stand against them and their effects.

One of the main weapons used in political rhetoric is what I call "Motte and Bailey by Assumption".  In a traditional Motte and Bailey fallacy, the speaker puts forward a controversial position and, when challenged, retreats to a far milder similar position which he pretends is the same position.  Likely he will swap them back later in the discussion when it serves his purpose.  (This needs to be distinguished from just clarifying where the speaker may have stated things wrongly in the first place and is trying to offer a genuine clarification.)

In the more sophisticated form, the position holder is careful to not state their actual claim openly.  They will instead use commonly accepted terms in uncommon ways, relying on the fact that the listener not initiated into the particular usages of their ideology will assume a more charitable position than they really hold.  I believe that is what's happening here.   I don't think when today's terminally woke say "colonialism" or "decolonizing" they mean the same thing as the simple act of sending out colonies, or even something as blatant as conquest or occupation.  I think they mean something more than this - something like a "mental decolonization" which is to say, a rejection of Western civilization as such.

eg:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoloniality
http://projectechoes.eu/decolonizing/

"Decolonization" in today's parlance isn't about fighting for self-determination against outright aggression in game, it's about an out of game ideology seeking to co-opt gaming.  

Take the situation of a small human polis threatened by an aggressive horde of savage monsters (orcs, trolls, cannibal barbarians, whatever). If my understanding is correct this would NOT count as an example of "decolonization" or "anti-colonization".  Rather the advocates for decolonization would lament that the very structure of this scenario is ITSELF an example of colonization and "white-supremacy".

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1120541As I keep saying, call me when WotC apologizes for twenty years of erasing Christians and appropriating our culture in D&D. ;)

Nah, they also need to apologize on behalf of TSR, whom they purchased in toto, for the previous 26 years of the same.

Quote from: jhkim;1120546There are conquerors and bullies out there, and we should try to stand against them and their effects.

Agreed. What I suspect most object to in the SJ advocates' version of this plank are the contentions that "standing against conquerors" requires cultural protectionism stronger than the inhabitants of the interacting cultures themselves may want (imagine if the speaking or teaching of Japanese, the reading or publication of novels translated from Japanese, or the selling or eating of Japanese food was outlawed in Korea), or that allowing a previously dominated culture to regain some of its freedom and self-development requires the previously dominating culture to disavow all belief in or defense of its own good qualities and content, or to pay for that restoration without having any input into how the restoration funds are actually used.

Might does not make right, but just because one is naturally sympathetic to the underdog does not mean the underdog is always the moral superior in any conflict either, or is guaranteed to stay the moral superior if they actually gain victory in that conflict -- q.v. the French Revolution collapsing into the Reign of Terror.

For a good RPG setting on this theme, imagine a tribute province of a declining Empire finally being released to its own rule as the legionnaires pull out (cf. the Romans leaving proto-Arthurian Britain). On the one hand, freedom, yay! On the other hand, however hard the Imperials try to organize their departure, there's going to be a power vacuum: the internal politics of exactly who gets to take over (why not your PCs?), the external threats of outlanders and monsters seeing the removal of the previous protective force (time to teach those orcs to fear our banners, not the Empire's!), the personal drama of families and friends being separated by the politics of both issues (no, your tribune won't let you resign to marry your local sweetheart, you've still got two years on your term of service, bucko!), and the profit opportunities for the unscrupulous trying to commandeer whatever the Imperials leave behind (do you know how much gold they're paying for leftover alchemical supplies?!), all would make for a great campaign.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1120568For a good RPG setting on this theme, imagine a tribute province of a declining Empire finally being released to its own rule as the legionnaires pull out (cf. the Romans leaving proto-Arthurian Britain). On the one hand, freedom, yay! On the other hand, however hard the Imperials try to organize their departure, there's going to be a power vacuum: the internal politics of exactly who gets to take over (why not your PCs?), the external threats of outlanders and monsters seeing the removal of the previous protective force (time to teach those orcs to fear our banners, not the Empire's!), the personal drama of families and friends being separated by the politics of both issues (no, your tribune won't let you resign to marry your local sweetheart, you've still got two years on your term of service, bucko!), and the profit opportunities for the unscrupulous trying to commandeer whatever the Imperials leave behind (do you know how much gold they're paying for leftover alchemical supplies?!), all would make for a great campaign.

You just described and expanded on one of my campaign ideas: a very early start Pendragon campaign.

Quote from: RandyB;1120571You just described and expanded on one of my campaign ideas: a very early start Pendragon campaign.

Barbara Hambly's novel Dragonsbane also depicts a very atmospheric setting in which the primary civilizational state power is retreating from its subject lands, and which demonstrates the many ways in which this process quite often sucks greatly, however glad one might be of the regained freedom.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1120528Was just gonna post that.

"The negative reaction to content warnings always take the same shape. The aggrieved point a finger and claim the writers are having an emotional overreaction, then demand a return to an era where everyone stoically dealt with their trauma and ignored it when a piece of art evoked uncomfortable feelings. This contempt for the weak and machismo are both signs of fascism."

If you disagree you're a FACIST, REEEEEEEEEE!!!

Greetings!

FASCIST REEEEEEEEE!!! Geesus, that is so hilarious! The sounds they make, crying and sobbing! Their lips quivering, whining as they fall helplessly to their knees, begging for a "safe space" and a stuffed animal to hold.

Yeah, I have seen videos of these SJW's acting just like that, and worse. Hysterics, oh my god! The tears! Blubbering and sobbing women.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: HappyDaze;1120542There's Torg (and the current Torg Eternity) that lets you fight all manner of colonizers from different realities.

See?! Decolonizing adventures can be fun! And you don't have to use FATE. And it all happened before our precious snowflakes were born or out of diapers, let alone had their first class-walkout protest. :p

Quote from: Antiquation!;1120524Decolonization successful! "How Tabletop RPGs Are Being Reclaimed From Bigots And Jerks!"

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/y3mw5b/how-tabletop-rpgs-are-being-reclaimed-from-bigots-and-jerks?utm_source=reddit.com

I'm so grateful that Evil Hat is saving this hobby!

"Evil Hat Productions recently told me they felt it was important to create distance between themselves and Lovecraft!" By... publishing a new CoC game? Huh. Anyway, I certainly can't wait for all you evil fascists to be forcibly purged.

For those of you non-fascists, grab your BDSM checklists boys and girls!

I followed a link on that article to what I guess is Evil Hat's twitter account, and found this lovely post by Fred Hicks:

QuoteSince the predictable edgelords and apologists have now shown up, a quick reminder:
If you don't like the politics included in our games, don't buy them.
We literally do not want your money.
We are committed to diverse and inclusive gaming.
We're not perfect, but we're trying.

Anybody else unsurprised, then, that Evil Hat recently very nearly went out of business? That it now only survives because Mr. Hicks had to fire all his woke buddies to pay the bills? He'd rather sit on his high fucking horse and reject your money than take a hard look at the fact that his own bullshit and politics have chased his customers away.

So fucking sad.

Quote from: RandyB;1120564Nah, they also need to apologize on behalf of TSR, whom they purchased in toto, for the previous 26 years of the same.

No, TSR was actually willing to include Christian characters in things like the Historical Reference series. WotC, though? Not a peep.

Quote from: SavageSchemer;1120606Anybody else unsurprised, then, that Evil Hat recently very nearly went out of business? That it now only survives because Mr. Hicks had to fire all his woke buddies to pay the bills? He'd rather sit on his high fucking horse and reject your money than take a hard look at the fact that his own bullshit and politics have chased his customers away.

So fucking sad.

FATE wen't out of Buisness? Huh. Can't say I will shed any tears with that kind of douchebaggery. And I didn't like FATE anyway.

Quote from: jhkim;1120476To keep this on topic for RPGs,





In my experience of RPGs, it's rare for the heroes to be indigenous locals fighting off colonizers. But that said, I'd be interested in a setting of Tlaxcala and Spaniards versus the Aztecs. There's a recent RPG that sounds similar to your idea, called Dragons Conquer America.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/270512/Dragons-Conquer-America-Core-Book

I ran an alternate history campaign for a while about vikings in the New World -- where the PCs were mostly Icelanders allied with local Algonquian tribes against the invading Haudenosaunee (Iroquois).

You both fall short, very short on the number of kingdoms that joined the Spaniards to fight the Aztecs (who were at this point one of the more genocidal regimes known to man), it began with the first kingdoms they encountered in what it's now Veracruz all the way to Tenochtitlan. Doña Malinche was a princess among her people and was given as a slave to Cortez, she helped him beat the Spaniards in many ways, and he built her a mansion in Cuernavaca.

From the text there that game has shit to do with what you want.

But there's a Mexican RPG in development that I guess will be something better for that. Unless it's a woke shit.

Quote from: SavageSchemer;1120606I followed a link on that article to what I guess is Evil Hat's twitter account, and found this lovely post by Fred Hicks:



Anybody else unsurprised, then, that Evil Hat recently very nearly went out of business? That it now only survives because Mr. Hicks had to fire all his woke buddies to pay the bills? He'd rather sit on his high fucking horse and reject your money than take a hard look at the fact that his own bullshit and politics have chased his customers away.

So fucking sad.

Fred Hicks is a fucking cunt. I will be making myself a drink to celebrate the day his company finally croaks for good.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1120608FATE wen't out of Buisness? Huh. Can't say I will shed any tears with that kind of douchebaggery. And I didn't like FATE anyway.

Didn't go out of business; narrowly avoided doing so (https://www.evilhat.com/home/refocused-resized-hat-mode-activated/). He got through it via a combination of canceling a bunch in-flight projects, firing (ahem! layed off) his woke friends, and then had something of a fire sale to move old and now discontinued product.

I very much doubt the company will survive the next iteration of that. I have zero doubt it will come again. And while I for one have enjoyed my share of Fate games over the years, I feel obligated to honor the man's wishes and not give him a single red cent of my money. Ever. There are plenty of other game companies out there that will value me as a paying customer even if / when I do disagree with their politics.

Quote from: Antiquation!;1120611Fred Hicks is a fucking cunt. I will be making myself a drink to celebrate the day his company finally croaks for good.

There was a time when he was a relatively level-headed, reasonable guy. He's become increasingly more insufferable as the years have worn on in his pursuit of all things woke.

Quote from: jhkim;1120476In my experience of RPGs, it's rare for the heroes to be indigenous locals fighting off colonizers.

Forgotten Realms. Orcs periodically sweep into the region and lay waste to swaths of civilization untill pushed back again.

Eberron is a series of this with demons or humans displacing goblins, other races displacing demons, goblins displaces someone else, and so on.

Known World has various kingdoms occasionally trying to move into other folks lands. At one point apparently gnomes were making a bid to push halflings out of their lands. And so on. Gnomes are not a PC race in BX. (That changed later with BECMI D&D. But overall it and Greyhawk for example and even Eberron at the time the PCs come on the scene, are all mostly in a state of stability either after a migration, or after the last in a series of migrations.

FR is the closest with its orc kingdom problem.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1120542There's Torg (and the current Torg Eternity) that lets you fight all manner of colonizers from different realities.

Including literally Victorian Era Colonial British.

Let's add this shit to the pile of stupid.

https://evilhat.itch.io/fate-accessibility-toolkit-prototype-edition

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1120607No, TSR was actually willing to include Christian characters in things like the Historical Reference series. WotC, though? Not a peep.

Damn. I love the Historical Reference series, and I completely overlooked them with my comment. Good catch!

Nutter? Figured I'd warrant a commie pinko. But seriously, it's not WOTC that is publishing this, it's a smaller company that got lucky with some publicity. And it's a niche product. And honestly, it'll never show up on drivethrurpg's best seller list. And why get bent out of shape over this in the first place,
 TBP doesn't even have a thread on this book anywhere.

Quote from: SavageSchemer;1120615There was a time when he was a relatively level-headed, reasonable guy. He's become increasingly more insufferable as the years have worn on in his pursuit of all things woke.

Indeed. I am not going to name more names, as I don't need a bigger target on my back via being personally identified and harassed en masse by the loony crew, but many in the Fate publishing community are real dickwads. Both personally and professionally. There are plenty of reasons to despise them beyond their political and moral stances, as despicable as many of those are in and of themselves.

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;1120639Let's add this shit to the pile of stupid.

https://evilhat.itch.io/fate-accessibility-toolkit-prototype-edition

What's funny/tragic about this one is the majority of complaints about it I've personally read have come from disabled people. Not terribly surprising but there you go.

Quote from: TNMalt;1120670Nutter? Figured I'd warrant a commie pinko. But seriously, it's not WOTC that is publishing this, it's a smaller company that got lucky with some publicity. And it's a niche product. And honestly, it'll never show up on drivethrurpg's best seller list. And why get bent out of shape over this in the first place,
 TBP doesn't even have a thread on this book anywhere.

  Evil Hat's fairly well established, the TBP thread was long but has fallen on to the third page, and as of right now, Fate of Cthulhu's #23 on the DTRPG bestseller list. It's not going to be the equal of, say, CoC 7E or even Sandy Petersen's guides to Cthulhu for Pathfinder or 5E, but it has a presence.

  Personally, I don't much care for Lovecraft as a person or a writer any more, but part of that's because I think the TTRPG field has hit the point of saturation and then some when it comes to Cthulhu and ilk. But an analogy:

  Gene Roddenberry was an inveterate philanderer and adulterer, at times a shady businessman, and thoroughly anti-religious--and those elements of his character arguably show up in his work about as much as Lovecraft's racism. Despite that, I can still enjoy Star Trek. Yet if I were to write a Star Trek work, calling those parts of Roddenberry's character out front and center in the introduction would probably seem tacky, ungrateful and hypocritical.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1120675Evil Hat's fairly well established, the TBP thread was long but has fallen on to the third page, and as of right now, Fate of Cthulhu's #23 on the DTRPG bestseller list. It's not going to be the equal of, say, CoC 7E or even Sandy Petersen's guides to Cthulhu for Pathfinder or 5E, but it has a presence.

  Personally, I don't much care for Lovecraft as a person or a writer any more, but part of that's because I think the TTRPG field has hit the point of saturation and then some when it comes to Cthulhu and ilk. But an analogy:

  Gene Roddenberry was an inveterate philanderer and adulterer, at times a shady businessman, and thoroughly anti-religious--and those elements of his character arguably show up in his work about as much as Lovecraft's racism. Despite that, I can still enjoy Star Trek. Yet if I were to write a Star Trek work, calling those parts of Roddenberry's character out front and center in the introduction would probably seem tacky, ungrateful and hypocritical.

This. To pile on, there's also something exhausting, depressing, and fundamentally destructive about this constant dredging up people's flaws and disavowing of them as a result. Especially when they are long gone and there is nothing they can do about it anymore -- which makes it even more likely that whatever the flaw was a product of their time and not an egregious error on their part.

It reduces everyone to the worst aspects of their character, always. So why try? Judgment will always be based on the worst thing about you, rather than anything you ever accomplished, even as people examine and try to be inspired by the best of your work.

It strips context and intentions and judges people by an unknowable standard. What hope does anyone have to ever accomplish anything in a society that attacks people this way, if doing one's best in spite of incomplete information and the inevitable flaws of humanity isn't enough to earn any credit at all?

I'll give a hypothetical example, so that we can consider the time period starting now and going forward, with apologies to Futurama: let's say in 10 years we discover that ocean shrimp are actually hyperintelligent aliens with a well-organized society and we've been murdering them en masse for culinary entertainment for hundreds of years. A protracted human-on-shrimp holocaust, where humanity has committed unspeakable atrocity, due to unspeakable, unforgivable ignorance. We were big, dumb, brutish, hungry, and they were delicious but unable to fight back. Is every historical shrimp-eater ever now worse than Hitler? Does that mean every work by every shrimp eater must be discarded due to guilt by association?

And finally, if human accomplishment stands on the shoulders of giants, who is ever going to try to learn from the past and use that to build something better if they are instantly shot down because the shoulders they chose are problematic? And because of our attempts to always do better, there will always be valid criticism of anyone we choose. The question is fundamentally whether we try to pick the best things and do better, or constantly attack each other, ourselves, and our past for every mistake flawed humanity ever committed.

It seems like this culture  is pushing towards the latter, but I have no idea how anyone achieves anything under that scheme. It looks like a fast track to paralysis and misery.

And no, I don't like Lovecraft or his writing myself, either.

Quote from: insubordinate polyhedral;1120682Does that mean every work by every shrimp eater must be discarded due to guilt by association?

No, it means we write an RPG about eating steak in direct homage to a shrimp-eater's steak-eating book, but tell everyone that while we enjoy their steak recipes, we don't like shrimp eaters and shrimp-eaters are bad even though we're monitizing ourselves using the work of a shrimp-eater. Enjoy our steak!

In any case, good post.

Quote from: insubordinate polyhedral;1120682This. To pile on, there's also something exhausting, depressing, and fundamentally destructive about this constant dredging up people's flaws and disavowing of them as a result. Especially when they are long gone and there is nothing they can do about it anymore -- which makes it even more likely that whatever the flaw was a product of their time and not an egregious error on their part.

It reduces everyone to the worst aspects of their character, always. So why try? Judgment will always be based on the worst thing about you, rather than anything you ever accomplished, even as people examine and try to be inspired by the best of your work...

These are the habits of people that know that their own character is a piece of shit.  They'll do almost anything to keep from facing up to that.  Yelling about someone else doing something different is how they handle avoiding their own problems.  It's also why they are so sure that everyone else should be full of guilt for everything that bothers them.  The particularly cowardly ones pick on dead people, because they can't fight back.

Quote from: Antiquation!;1120611Fred Hicks is a fucking cunt. I will be making myself a drink to celebrate the day his company finally croaks for good.

You know I never realised just how problematic Evil Hat's webpages are. Let's unpack this.

Nevermind a grinning hat resembling a fedora (a common symbol in relation to alt-right neo-nazi ['incels'). Two white dudes (ugh), one white woman a strong and beautiful troll... woman... thing and- wow, just wow, a somewhat intelligent gorilla in a fighting stance? I was literally crying when I realised the extremely offensive implications of that image in relation to a lack of other visible Persons of Colour. That's not even getting into the colour palette. Black, red and white? What other symbol of a fascist state used that combination?

If this is what companies like Evil Hat and Fred Hicks think they can get away with in Drumpf's America I've never been more scared in my life.

Quote from: Snark Knight;1120753You know I never realised just how problematic Evil Hat's webpages are. Let's unpack this.

Nevermind a grinning hat resembling a fedora (a common symbol in relation to alt-right neo-nazi ['incels'). Two white dudes (ugh), one white woman a strong and beautiful troll... woman... thing and- wow, just wow, a somewhat intelligent gorilla in a fighting stance? I was literally crying when I realised the extremely offensive implications of that image in relation to a lack of other visible Persons of Colour. That's not even getting into the colour palette. Black, red and white? What other symbol of a fascist state used that combination?

If this is what companies like Evil Hat and Fred Hicks think they can get away with in Drumpf's America I've never been more scared in my life.

LMAO! Good eye! :p This would have been a great response to their "don't buy our products" tweet.

Quote from: Brendan;1120563One of the main weapons used in political rhetoric is what I call "Motte and Bailey by Assumption".  In a traditional Motte and Bailey fallacy, the speaker puts forward a controversial position and, when challenged, retreats to a far milder similar position which he pretends is the same position.  Likely he will swap them back later in the discussion when it serves his purpose.  (This needs to be distinguished from just clarifying where the speaker may have stated things wrongly in the first place and is trying to offer a genuine clarification.)

In the more sophisticated form, the position holder is careful to not state their actual claim openly.  They will instead use commonly accepted terms in uncommon ways, relying on the fact that the listener not initiated into the particular usages of their ideology will assume a more charitable position than they really hold.  I believe that is what's happening here.   I don't think when today's terminally woke say "colonialism" or "decolonizing" they mean the same thing as the simple act of sending out colonies, or even something as blatant as conquest or occupation.  I think they mean something more than this - something like a "mental decolonization" which is to say, a rejection of Western civilization as such.

eg:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoloniality
http://projectechoes.eu/decolonizing/

"Decolonization" in today's parlance isn't about fighting for self-determination against outright aggression in game, it's about an out of game ideology seeking to co-opt gaming.  

Take the situation of a small human polis threatened by an aggressive horde of savage monsters (orcs, trolls, cannibal barbarians, whatever). If my understanding is correct this would NOT count as an example of "decolonization" or "anti-colonization".  Rather the advocates for decolonization would lament that the very structure of this scenario is ITSELF an example of colonization and "white-supremacy".

This is entirely correct.

At my work we've been told to "Decolonise the Curriculum", which means removing white/European authors and replace them with non-white/non-European authors. This is regardless of what we're teaching.

Re actual games about Decolonisation, the only one that comes to mind is The Price of Freedom. I do think there are remarkably few RPGs about playing the underdog, considering it is such a common fictional trope. The new Star Wars films have tried to push a Decolonisation type agenda in the SJW sense I guess; especially The Last Jedi.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1120568For a good RPG setting on this theme, imagine a tribute province of a declining Empire finally being released to its own rule as the legionnaires pull out (cf. the Romans leaving proto-Arthurian Britain). On the one hand, freedom, yay! On the other hand, however hard the Imperials try to organize their departure, there's going to be a power vacuum: the internal politics of exactly who gets to take over (why not your PCs?), the external threats of outlanders and monsters seeing the removal of the previous protective force (time to teach those orcs to fear our banners, not the Empire's!), the personal drama of families and friends being separated by the politics of both issues (no, your tribune won't let you resign to marry your local sweetheart, you've still got two years on your term of service, bucko!), and the profit opportunities for the unscrupulous trying to commandeer whatever the Imperials leave behind (do you know how much gold they're paying for leftover alchemical supplies?!), all would make for a great campaign.

A Decolonisation campaign set in 5th century Britannia does sound a lot of fun. I'm guessing from a SJW perspective it's White Supremacy All the Way Down since Romans, Britons and Saxons can all be baddies if you squint hard enough, due to being 'white'. Or go the BBC route and make the Britons look as Diverse as modern London.

Quote from: Antiquation!;1120524Decolonization successful! "How Tabletop RPGs Are Being Reclaimed From Bigots And Jerks!"

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/y3mw5b/how-tabletop-rpgs-are-being-reclaimed-from-bigots-and-jerks?utm_source=reddit.com

I'm so grateful that Evil Hat is saving this hobby!

"Evil Hat Productions recently told me they felt it was important to create distance between themselves and Lovecraft!" By... publishing a new CoC game? Huh. Anyway, I certainly can't wait for all you evil fascists to be forcibly purged.

For those of you non-fascists, grab your BDSM checklists boys and girls!

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1120675Evil Hat's fairly well established, the TBP thread was long but has fallen on to the third page, and as of right now, Fate of Cthulhu's #23 on the DTRPG bestseller list. It's not going to be the equal of, say, CoC 7E or even Sandy Petersen's guides to Cthulhu for Pathfinder or 5E, but it has a presence.

  Personally, I don't much care for Lovecraft as a person or a writer any more, but part of that's because I think the TTRPG field has hit the point of saturation and then some when it comes to Cthulhu and ilk. But an analogy:

  Gene Roddenberry was an inveterate philanderer and adulterer, at times a shady businessman, and thoroughly anti-religious--and those elements of his character arguably show up in his work about as much as Lovecraft's racism. Despite that, I can still enjoy Star Trek. Yet if I were to write a Star Trek work, calling those parts of Roddenberry's character out front and center in the introduction would probably seem tacky, ungrateful and hypocritical.

Quote from: insubordinate polyhedral;1120682This. To pile on, there's also something exhausting, depressing, and fundamentally destructive about this constant dredging up people's flaws and disavowing of them as a result. Especially when they are long gone and there is nothing they can do about it anymore -- which makes it even more likely that whatever the flaw was a product of their time and not an egregious error on their part.

It reduces everyone to the worst aspects of their character, always. So why try? Judgment will always be based on the worst thing about you, rather than anything you ever accomplished, even as people examine and try to be inspired by the best of your work.

It strips context and intentions and judges people by an unknowable standard. What hope does anyone have to ever accomplish anything in a society that attacks people this way, if doing one's best in spite of incomplete information and the inevitable flaws of humanity isn't enough to earn any credit at all?

I'll give a hypothetical example, so that we can consider the time period starting now and going forward, with apologies to Futurama: let's say in 10 years we discover that ocean shrimp are actually hyperintelligent aliens with a well-organized society and we've been murdering them en masse for culinary entertainment for hundreds of years. A protracted human-on-shrimp holocaust, where humanity has committed unspeakable atrocity, due to unspeakable, unforgivable ignorance. We were big, dumb, brutish, hungry, and they were delicious but unable to fight back. Is every historical shrimp-eater ever now worse than Hitler? Does that mean every work by every shrimp eater must be discarded due to guilt by association?

And finally, if human accomplishment stands on the shoulders of giants, who is ever going to try to learn from the past and use that to build something better if they are instantly shot down because the shoulders they chose are problematic? And because of our attempts to always do better, there will always be valid criticism of anyone we choose. The question is fundamentally whether we try to pick the best things and do better, or constantly attack each other, ourselves, and our past for every mistake flawed humanity ever committed.

It seems like this culture  is pushing towards the latter, but I have no idea how anyone achieves anything under that scheme. It looks like a fast track to paralysis and misery.

And no, I don't like Lovecraft or his writing myself, either.

Quote from: Antiquation!;1120685No, it means we write an RPG about eating steak in direct homage to a shrimp-eater's steak-eating book, but tell everyone that while we enjoy their steak recipes, we don't like shrimp eaters and shrimp-eaters are bad even though we're monitizing ourselves using the work of a shrimp-eater. Enjoy our steak!

In any case, good post.

There is a blatant irony in continuing to publish CoC games while disavowing Lovecraft. What do they hope to accomplish by doing this? The CoC games are still promoting Lovecraft's racist views by regurgitating the same stereotypes of degenerate cults, savage non-white peoples, white trash (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_the_Wall_of_Sleep_(short_story)), etc.

Previously I mentioned that "The Litany of Earth" is a landmark for depicting deep ones as a persecuted minority a la The Shape of Water. The irony is that the RPG leftists have utterly failed to recognize that message. They still treat deep ones as evil savages who must be killed, while demonizing Lovecraft for being racist and writing the deep ones as a miscegenation metaphor.

This is hypocrisy.

Quote from: S'mon;1120836A Decolonisation campaign set in 5th century Britannia does sound a lot of fun. I'm guessing from a SJW perspective it's White Supremacy All the Way Down since Romans, Britons and Saxons can all be baddies if you squint hard enough, due to being 'white'. Or go the BBC route and make the Britons look as Diverse as modern London.

Alternately, if you're lucky enough to have the material, an Empire of the Petal Throne game about the Tsolyani Empire having to cut a border province loose would let you hit all the same themes while dodging the anti-Western issues entirely.

Quote from: Stephen TannhauserFor a good RPG setting on this theme, imagine a tribute province of a declining Empire finally being released to its own rule as the legionnaires pull out (cf. the Romans leaving proto-Arthurian Britain). On the one hand, freedom, yay! On the other hand, however hard the Imperials try to organize their departure, there's going to be a power vacuum: the internal politics of exactly who gets to take over (why not your PCs?), the external threats of outlanders and monsters seeing the removal of the previous protective force (time to teach those orcs to fear our banners, not the Empire's!), the personal drama of families and friends being separated by the politics of both issues (no, your tribune won't let you resign to marry your local sweetheart, you've still got two years on your term of service, bucko!), and the profit opportunities for the unscrupulous trying to commandeer whatever the Imperials leave behind (do you know how much gold they're paying for leftover alchemical supplies?!), all would make for a great campaign.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1120847Alternately, if you're lucky enough to have the material, an Empire of the Petal Throne game about the Tsolyani Empire having to cut a border province loose would let you hit all the same themes while dodging the anti-Western issues entirely.

Both of those sound cool - though I think the 5th century Britannia is more appealing to me. For me, the resonance of real-world cultures is a positive point. A long time ago in grad school, I played in a fantasy game where we fought against a version of the Roman empire, but my first character was strongly pro-Roman. (He was a elf who aspired to be a Roman citizen and had taken a Roman name.) I like the theme of it not just being about kicking out the empire, but how to run things once the empire is gone.

Quote from: Armchair GamerEvil Hat's fairly well established, the TBP thread was long but has fallen on to the third page, and as of right now, Fate of Cthulhu's #23 on the DTRPG bestseller list. It's not going to be the equal of, say, CoC 7E or even Sandy Petersen's guides to Cthulhu for Pathfinder or 5E, but it has a presence.

Personally, I don't much care for Lovecraft as a person or a writer any more, but part of that's because I think the TTRPG field has hit the point of saturation and then some when it comes to Cthulhu and ilk. But an analogy:

Gene Roddenberry was an inveterate philanderer and adulterer, at times a shady businessman, and thoroughly anti-religious--and those elements of his character arguably show up in his work about as much as Lovecraft's racism. Despite that, I can still enjoy Star Trek. Yet if I were to write a Star Trek work, calling those parts of Roddenberry's character out front and center in the introduction would probably seem tacky, ungrateful and hypocritical.

I don't generally give a damn about outrage over some RPG product because it's introduction fails to show proper respect or express the right politics. There are a handful of RPGs that actually represent extremist points of view (like an RPG by a convicted murderer), but for the most part, I can't see getting worked up over things like this. If a religious author wrote a Star Trek game that called out Roddenberry's anti-religion stance, I similarly wouldn't particularly care.

Quote from: insubordinate polyhedral;1120682To pile on, there's also something exhausting, depressing, and fundamentally destructive about this constant dredging up people's flaws and disavowing of them as a result. Especially when they are long gone and there is nothing they can do about it anymore -- which makes it even more likely that whatever the flaw was a product of their time and not an egregious error on their part.

It reduces everyone to the worst aspects of their character, always. So why try?

To burnish your own moral reputation with your peers. Some people are so insecure and so desperate for status that the only way they know to gain it is to morally denounce others - ideally, people who can't fight back.

Quote from: jhkim;1120857If a religious author wrote a Star Trek game that called out Roddenberry's anti-religion stance, I similarly wouldn't particularly care.

That Magna Roma Star Trek episode was pretty clearly pro-Christianity. It also implied Uhura was Christian - "It's not the Sun in the sky - it's the Son of God!" :D

Obviously by the 1980s that sort of thing was not allowed any more; only a hippy New Age Spiritualism version of 'Native American belief system' got any respect, in Voyager. Plus I guess the DS9 Prophets stayed nicely ambiguous.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1120675Evil Hat's fairly well established, the TBP thread was long but has fallen on to the third page, and as of right now, Fate of Cthulhu's #23 on the DTRPG bestseller list. It's not going to be the equal of, say, CoC 7E or even Sandy Petersen's guides to Cthulhu for Pathfinder or 5E, but it has a presence.

We'll see if it has any actual staying power.  "Bought it" doesn't mean "going to play it"  or even "going to read it."

Quote from: jhkim;1120857If a religious author wrote a Star Trek game that called out Roddenberry's anti-religion stance, I similarly wouldn't particularly care.

And then asked players to play star trek where everybody was religous and if you where not you where a bad person? Would you not care then?
Remember the endgoal is to get rid of invisible nazis. If those invisible nazis don't disapear after 1 effort that means the message wasn't strong enough, and so more must be changed to get at them.

Quote from: S'mon;1120835At my work we've been told to "Decolonise the Curriculum", which means removing white/European authors and replace them with non-white/non-European authors. This is regardless of what we're teaching.

Your teaching skills can be monetized in the corporate world. Mine certainly have been. I'm still surprised how much my special education teaching skills still come into play in my current far-from-education career.

It can't be fun being a teacher at an communism indoctrination day care center, especially as the school management becomes increasingly retarded. It'll become especially un-fun when you can't dance fast enough to hide how you really feel about their bullshit.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1120904It'll become especially un-fun when you can't dance fast enough to hide how you really feel about their bullshit.

I'm polite, but I'm pretty sure they know how I feel!

I guess at some point I may get the midnight knock on the door as things get crazier and crazier, but we're a ways behind the top UK Unis, who in turn lag the big US ones, who lag the US private colleges.

One funny thing is that my students are mostly south-Asian, the majority being Muslim female, and their views on most things are much closer to mine than to the views of the far-left extremist academics who dominate culturally. They're ok with the idea that white males in positions of power should be replaced with Muslim females, but for them it's just simple self-interest - more opportunities for them - no Marxist dialectical framework explaining how whites are the Most Evil Ever. And of course they're socially/culturally conservative and tend to sympathise with Christians being persecuted by the cultural-Marxist authorities.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1120895And then asked players to play Star Trek where everybody was religious and if you were not you were a bad person?

Issues like this were the basis of what I cited as an "offensive" element in RPGs, in another thread: Any game which requires your players to get into a specific philosophical headspace before it can be enjoyed or fully explored is, on a certain level, "offensive" if it doesn't make that philosophical perspective obvious right up front before you buy it. Proselytization has its place but having to listen to it shouldn't be a requirement for an entertainment activity.

Quote from: S'mon;1120835This is entirely correct.

At my work we've been told to "Decolonise the Curriculum", which means removing white/European authors and replace them with non-white/non-European authors. This is regardless of what we're teaching.

Re actual games about Decolonisation, the only one that comes to mind is The Price of Freedom. I do think there are remarkably few RPGs about playing the underdog, considering it is such a common fictional trope. The new Star Wars films have tried to push a Decolonisation type agenda in the SJW sense I guess; especially The Last Jedi.

Thanks S'mon.  In thinking about underdog stories, the old D20 game Midnight comes to mind - a Middle-Earth where Sauron won and the PCs are now underground resistance fighters.  I think Pundit once suggested playing Blue Rose as individualist rebels against the tyranny of the game setting's projected utopia.  Splicers maybe?  I never played it but it sounds like it might fit the bill.

Edit:  It just occurred to me that a Sartar vs the Lunar Empire Runequest game could fit very nicely as a version of the Celts / Germans vs the Romans historical struggle.

Quote from: Brendan;1121001Thanks S'mon.  In thinking about underdog stories, the old D20 game Midnight comes to mind - a Middle-Earth where Sauron won and the PCs are now underground resistance fighters.  I think Pundit once suggested playing Blue Rose as individualist rebels against the tyranny of the game setting's projected utopia.  Splicers maybe?  I never played it but it sounds like it might fit the bill.

Edit:  It just occurred to me that a Sartar vs the Lunar Empire Runequest game could fit very nicely as a version of the Celts / Germans vs the Romans historical struggle.

Midnight has the problem that it's set up as an unwinnable situation. Sartar vs Lunar Empire sounds good, and might even fit the Social Justice tropes pretty closely. Stafford claimed the rather Saxon-esque Heortlings were brown, which makes Decolonisation tropes even better. (BTW I'm sad I never got to play my copy of the Dragon Pass boardgame!)

Quote from: S'mon;1121003Midnight has the problem that it's set up as an unwinnable situation. Sartar vs Lunar Empire sounds good, and might even fit the Social Justice tropes pretty closely. Stafford claimed the rather Saxon-esque Heortlings were brown, which makes Decolonisation tropes even better. (BTW I'm sad I never got to play my copy of the Dragon Pass boardgame!)

Haha.  I started putting together a Midnight game years back and then gave up because it was just too depressing.   Judging by the artwork, current Runequest appears to be relocated to somewhere between India and Persia.  I've heard that this was "always the way it was", which may be true, but I don't remember that vibe from the earlier editions.  I always thought of them as Saxon-ish or Celt-ish too.

Quote from: Brendan;1121016this was "always the way it was"

I love Glorantha and Greg but he bullshitted a LOT.  ^QED, this was never the case in the older stuff, and if his vision changed over the years, that's fine and dandy, but don't piss on my head and tell me it's raining.

Midnight isn't an unwinnable setting, but it's grim as fuck. If you're playing Dark Heresy, you're not going to kill the Chaos Gods and cleanse the Imperium of all heresy in your campaign BUT you might slaughter armies of heretics and defeat a dozen plots of the unclean gods.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1121035Midnight isn't an unwinnable setting, but it's grim as fuck. If you're playing Dark Heresy, you're not going to kill the Chaos Gods and cleanse the Imperium of all heresy in your campaign BUT you might slaughter armies of heretics and defeat a dozen plots of the unclean gods.

In Dark Heresy you have the Emperor and the Imperium, the largest power in known space, on your side. In Midnight Izrador is the only God, his guys control nearly all the real estate, and are basically unbeatable. You're not going to persuade the Orcs to Decolonise and go home.

Yes, yes, Runequest has always been woke.

Spoiler

please don't ask about the broo please don't ask about the broo please don't ask about the broo please don't ask about the broo

;)

Quote from: ThatChrisGuy;1121027I love Glorantha and Greg but he bullshitted a LOT.  ^QED, this was never the case in the older stuff, and if his vision changed over the years, that's fine and dandy, but don't piss on my head and tell me it's raining.

Yeah, my feelings as well.  It has an air of "We've always been at war with East-Asia" about it.

Quote from: Melan;1121044Yes, yes, Runequest has always been woke.

Spoiler

please don't ask about the broo please don't ask about the broo please don't ask about the broo please don't ask about the broo

;)

Knock knock.
Who's there?
Broo.
Broo wh - (Horrible rape noises)

Shame the romance stuff is so off topic, as I think it's worth discussing further. Maybe later in a separate thread.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1120407Schizoaffective totaliphobia: A paranoid attribution of fascist philosophy to one's opposition which is so acute that it renders the sufferer incapable of perceiving his own use of fascistic tactics against those opponents.

That's my favorite, and by that I mean the one I hate seeing the most.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1120434Don't. Not even out of any principle or whatever. Them never having to be culpable to their own language use isn't a flaw on their own end but an intentional structure of their ideology. "Gotcha your a hypocrite" never works on them because that implies they ever cared about ideological consistency in the first place. If they were ideologically consistent they would not be SJWs.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1120439You're not wrong, but in certain contexts making sure this hypocrisy is demonstrated in public can go a long way towards mitigating the effect.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1120440I think at this point the people who noticed have already decided one way or the other. At this point, the battle isn't of awareness but fighting cognitive dissonance.

I'm beginning to think you may be right.

Quote from: insubordinate polyhedral;1120682there's also something exhausting, depressing, and fundamentally destructive about this constant dredging up people's flaws and disavowing of them as a result. Especially when they are long gone and there is nothing they can do about it anymore -- which makes it even more likely that whatever the flaw was a product of their time and not an egregious error on their part.

It reduces everyone to the worst aspects of their character, always. So why try? Judgment will always be based on the worst thing about you, rather than anything you ever accomplished, even as people examine and try to be inspired by the best of your work.

It strips context and intentions and judges people by an unknowable standard. What hope does anyone have to ever accomplish anything in a society that attacks people this way, if doing one's best in spite of incomplete information and the inevitable flaws of humanity isn't enough to earn any credit at all?

This would explain why self reflection is so rare among SJWs, as it would utterly destroy them. And tragically I think most adopted this philosophy with the best of intentions.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1120843Previously I mentioned that "The Litany of Earth" is a landmark for depicting deep ones as a persecuted minority a la The Shape of Water. The irony is that the RPG leftists have utterly failed to recognize that message. They still treat deep ones as evil savages who must be killed, while demonizing Lovecraft for being racist and writing the deep ones as a miscegenation metaphor.

This is hypocrisy.

Indeed it is.

Speaking of which,you can read Litany of Earth (https://www.tor.com/2014/05/14/the-litany-of-earth-ruthanna-emrys/) over on Tor.com.

Quote from: S'mon;1120926One funny thing is that my students are mostly south-Asian, the majority being Muslim female, and their views on most things are much closer to mine than to the views of the far-left extremist academics who dominate culturally.

They're not the only ones, and the irony of #CtrlLeft culture is that most of the groups they advocate for are either apathetic or antithetical to theirs.

Quote from: Brendan;1121057Knock knock.
Who's there?
Broo.
Broo wh - (Horrible rape noises)

Which reminds me (https://archive.is/UbIV6)...

Quote from: S'mon;1121041In Dark Heresy you have the Emperor and the Imperium, the largest power in known space, on your side. In Midnight Izrador is the only God, his guys control nearly all the real estate, and are basically unbeatable. You're not going to persuade the Orcs to Decolonise and go home.

I disagree.

In Dark Heresy, you aren't even an Inquisitor. You're an expendable killer working for an Inquisitor who is many light years away. You may have the Emperor in your heart, but the Imperium on your side is at best, a bolter. Instead, its your talented crew stuck on planet with 99 problems and Chaos might not even be number one, and its on your shoulders to root it out.

Midnight is a rough setting, no question about that. You're insurgents against Sauron, but his minions are still orcs, goblins and mostly moron monsters. And orcs are most certainly beatable, especially if the PCs run disruptive operations. Does Izrador have some heavy hitters under him? Sure, but again, you're insurgents so your job is hit (hard) and run (fast).

But a DM can certainly decide Midnight is an unbeatable scenario. Maybe it's the fantasy Kobayashi Maru, but that's a DM choice. I've played plenty of insurgency games and a huge part of the fun is the hit and run for small gains.

For example, I run Palladium's Mechanoid Invasion. There is ZERO chance to beat the Mechanoids...BUT you can buy time for the rescue fleet to arrive (in theory), organize a counter-invasion of their Mothership, and you can certainly cause the Mechanoids hell on your way out.

BTW, the smartest move my players ever did was capture a defective Overlord and uploaded him into the clone vat facility, but hacked the system to make the defective genes most dominant and not trigger the auto-abort. They didn't "win", but now the Mothership was dealing with loads of extremely defective leaders and literally millions of lower caste Mechanoids doing whatever these defectives now demanded. It was unholy chaos and the highest order Mechanoids were forced turn on each other to "cleanse" the Overlords...and the PCs took further advantage of the chaos.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1121170Midnight is a rough setting, no question about that. You're insurgents against Sauron, but his minions are still orcs, goblins and mostly moron monsters. And orcs are most certainly beatable, especially if the PCs run disruptive operations. Does Izrador have some heavy hitters under him? Sure, but again, you're insurgents so your job is hit (hard) and run (fast).

But a DM can certainly decide Midnight is an unbeatable scenario. Maybe it's the fantasy Kobayashi Maru, but that's a DM choice. I've played plenty of insurgency games and a huge part of the fun is the hit and run for small gains.

I don't think my GM was trying to make it unwinnable, but we still all died eventually. It was a bit like playing Fantasy Blake's 7 with Evil Space God backing the Terran Federation. I feel the whole Gnostic thing with the world being a prison for Izrador and no good gods accessible makes it feel very hopeless, like committing suicide is the best way out.

I'm unsure where the line is drawn that makes a setting hopeless. I've had players who felt Mechanoids was hopeless because the Mothership couldn't be beaten. I've also heard that about Ravenloft even though domain lords can be destroyed and you can find ways to escape Ravenloft entirely.  

I wouldn't want to play in an utterly hopeless setting and if the players don't feel their actions have value, it wouldn't be fun to run such a setting. My take on Midnight was Izrador was imprisoned and neither omnipresent or omnipotent, and thus he and his ilk could be defeated eventually. Maybe not in your lifetime, but every generation of fighters could claw more and more of his domain apart.

It's the "Capitalism is Evil" sht.

"You work to make your wealth? You're evil!!! You should give your money to the poor - like me!!!"

Fk them. Full stop.

Their problem is they don't want to work and they don't want to listen to reason.

I don't wish harm to them but damn, they like walking into volcanoes.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1121161Which reminds me (https://archive.is/UbIV6)...

Oh yeeaaahh.  I remember reading that a while back.

Quote from: S'mon;1121191I feel the whole Gnostic thing with the world being a prison for Izrador and no good gods accessible makes it feel very hopeless, like committing suicide is the best way out.

That's an interesting angle actually.  Midnight really needed a Valis / Gnostic Christ figure or force.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1121161Which reminds me (https://archive.is/UbIV6)...

I feel like I took sanity loss from reading that. You know, I've ran some pretty tasteless one shots for my crew way back in the day when we were young and dumb.. and it made us giggle inappropriately.... But, I have... no idea why that exists.

Quote from: Brendan;1121339Midnight really needed a Valis / Gnostic Christ figure or force.

A hidden good god would be easy to include. You could have a demigod of stealth, patron of night heroes, who might not be strong enough to grant spells to clerics, but certainly enough to give the humans and good demi-humans a spark of hope. The god would be dismissed as a myth, a rumor to be broken, but vandals will paint the god's symbol wherever they can. In fact, the demigod might only have one divine power: invisibility to Izrador.

I wonder if Midnight would be more fun played with Godbound.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1121364I wonder if Midnight would be more fun played with Godbound.

Or Exemplars & Eidolons?

It would work well with demigod PCs as a nascent pantheon battling to overthrow Izrador's Old Order. Very Nietzschean 'Also Sprach Zarathustra' - rather than have a good deity backing the PCs, the PCs become their own value creators and the hope of the world.

Quote from: Brendan;1120513Wow clever.  As an aside, I wonder how long it will be before the mask slips and you treat us to your inevitable alt-right sperg out?  Anyway, enjoy your day.





What she said.

Rand was a hack. And an ethnic particularist (which explains how she never turned her lens on herself or her own kind)...

Quote from: S'mon;1121424Or Exemplars & Eidolons?

E&E would work great too!

Translating the Midnight chargen powers would not be difficult. I agree on the PCs as nascent pantheon concept. LOTR Exalted might be really fun to play!

Quote from: Morlock;1121426ethnic particularist

an "alt-right" sperg out has got to be better than subversive hand wringing moralizing touchy feely emotional claptrap which dances around truths in an effort to preserve the delusions of popularity most have and i encourage such in the name of great justice.
"oh no people will think less of me if i don't bleat properly during the two minutes hate, better feign sympathy for the vile so i can still be invited to important gender reveals".
My advice is to give peoples feelings exactly the merit they deserve which is to say none. People only "care" what others think insomuch as they can attack them for deviation from herd thought in a vain and futile effort to elevate themselves as virtuous...given then that they don't thus really care what you think, why should you care what they think? i think most humans are a waste of meat, not worth the flesh they are printed on and i'll happily tell them as much the instant they want to try to paint me as evil for not sharing their delusions. speak of the devil and he shall appear.

Quote from: Morlock;1121426Rand was a hack. And an ethnic particularist (which explains how she never turned her lens on herself or her own kind)...

Yeah, they are gonna ban you pretty soon I reckon. :p

Edit: I'm guessing you are surely an ethnic particularist too, right? :D

Quote from: S'mon;1121442Yeah, they are gonna ban you pretty soon I reckon. :p

Edit: I'm guessing you are surely an ethnic particularist too, right? :D

Let's just say I don't let people who have exercised their right to a thing tell me I don't have the same right. I am of subhuman stock from no one's perspective.

Quote from: Morlock;1121426Rand was a hack. And an ethnic particularist (which explains how she never turned her lens on herself or her own kind)...

Define ethnic particularist, also kindly tell us who exactly is "her kind"

Quote from: Morlock;1121426Rand was a hack. And an ethnic particularist (which explains how she never turned her lens on herself or her own kind)...

OK, but was she wrong?

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1121448Define ethnic particularist, also kindly tell us who exactly is "her kind"

Yeah I haven't heard that particular #NewSpeak word before either.

And given this definition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_particularism) she strikes me as exactly the opposite.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1121450OK, but was she wrong?



Yeah I haven't heard that particular #NewSpeak word before either.

And given this definition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_particularism) she strikes me as exactly the opposite.

Not being a Rand fan I can happily agree that she might be wrong on some or all of her claims. But I need to see it proven not claimed.

By that definition ethnic particularism would be the same as ethno nationalist or almost. Which, by her own words she sounds as exactly the opposite, from what little I have read of her writings she strikes me as an individualist, which is antithetical to any kind of collectivism.

" It also will include a complete campaign frame which calls on the players to decolonize a fantasy setting." I could easily see this being useful for someone playing a Maztica game in which the Helmites of Faerûn have attempted to colonize the "new world" and they're fighting against the invading force. It ticks off quite a few boxes...

There is a recently released video game by an Eastern European developer in which a generic Native American vengefully kills invading white settlers.

You know what the irony is? Eastern Europe was not involved in the Columbian Exchange. They were victims of colonization themselves.

They are obviously not motivated by white guilt. I would hazard a guess that they were sublimating their own revenge fantasies.

Quote from: Slipshot762;1121439an "alt-right" sperg out has got to be better than subversive hand wringing moralizing touchy feely emotional claptrap which dances around truths in an effort to preserve the delusions of popularity most have and i encourage such in the name of great justice.

Problem is this. The moral guardians and SJWs will just abandon ship and re-infest whatever party they think is the most viable for infiltration and subversion. This is exactly what happened to the left as the prior iteration of this mental disease was attached to the right. And I'd lay good odds that prior to that it had its claws in the left. And so on back ad nausium.

Since the 70s RPGs have been a growing target both as the monster that needs to be stopped, and the poor helpless who need to be protected as it has an ever growing fanbase which is huge now.

Quote from: Morlock;1121443Let's just say I don't let people who have exercised their right to a thing tell me I don't have the same right. I am of subhuman stock from no one's perspective.

And what stock do you hail from?

Keep in mind that Ayn Rand was Russian, and the only people who would consider Russians to be sub-human would be the literal Nazis and also 19th-Century WASP's

Southern Europe invented Western Civilization and Eastern Europe did a lot to preserve Western Civilization.

Know your place, you uncouth profligate.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1121487And what stock do you hail from?

Keep in mind that Ayn Rand was Russian...

He's saying she was Jewish, and as she never criticised Jews-as-Jews, ergo she was an 'ethnic particularist'.
I don't recall her criticising *any* ethnicity as such (or ever praising Jews-as-Jews, for that matter), so this sounds to me like a weak argument grounded in anti-Semitism. She seems one of the least ethnocentric writers imaginable AFAICS, and I don't think this was just a cover for her sinister Jewish plotting.

My understanding of Rand's philosophy and the Jewish faith leads me to believe there wasn't much common ground there. When I've met Randians, none were Russian and only one was semi-Jewish. But I've heard that Rand's anti-communist stance was fueled from the popularity of communism in some Jewish circles in the early 20th century. I don't know enough about Rand's early life and whether she broke from the Jewish community and exactly why. Perhaps one of you know her history better?

Quote from: S'mon;1121499He's saying she was Jewish, and as she never criticised Jews-as-Jews, ergo she was an 'ethnic particularist'.
I don't recall her criticising *any* ethnicity as such (or ever praising Jews-as-Jews, for that matter), so this sounds to me like a weak argument grounded in anti-Semitism. She seems one of the least ethnocentric writers imaginable AFAICS, and I don't think this was just a cover for her sinister Jewish plotting.

I figured he was implying Rand was Jewish, which is why I corrected him and intended to goad him into saying it outright.

Ayn Rand was a cunt in her own right, but she was not part of some vast Jewish conspiracy.

The biggest issues at hand have a lot less to do with ethnicity and a lot more to do with things like culture and economics, and how the two often affect each other in tandem.

Both the Far Right and Far Left like to demonize the Jews because they make a convenient boogeyman.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1121502I figured he was implying Rand was Jewish, which is why I corrected him and intended to goad him into saying it outright.

Ayn Rand was a cunt in her own right, but she was not part of some vast Jewish conspiracy.

The biggest issues at hand have a lot less to do with ethnicity and a lot more to do with things like culture and economics, and how the two often affect each other in tandem.

Both the Far Right and Far Left like to demonize the Jews because they make a convenient boogeyman.

Well to be fair the first one to ask "The ***ish Question" Was Marx, so the lefties come to it honestly, might be also why they love the Islamists so much.

Back to the topic, you can't "decolonize" shit, maybe countries where the colonization was "recent" but other than that shit. And they don't want to, they want to demonize western culture (RPGs are a part of it) while taking advantage of all it's trappings and advancements.

Would love to see them go live in the bushes in some jungle.

The more they cry about it the more I want a colonization game where the Spaniards are the good guys and the Aztecs the bad guys.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1121502.....

Ayn Rand was a c*nt in her own right, but she......

NO, she wasn't - and it is NEVER 'okay' to use that word towards someone just because you disagree with their philosophy.

How the hell did Ayn Rand get into the conversation in the first place?? She never wrote a role playing game.
Talk about topic drift....

- Ed C.

Quote from: Koltar;1121506NO, she wasn't - and it is NEVER 'okay' to use that word towards someone just because you disagree with their philosophy.

How the hell did Ayn Rand get into the conversation in the first place?? She never wrote a role playing game.
Talk about topic drift....

- Ed C.

Well, Ayn Rand's philosophy is downright awful. Forgive me if I'm harsh in my language.

If Giovanni Gentile is to the Far Right what Karl Marx is to the Far Left, then Ayn Rand is to the Far Right what Kropotkin is to the Far Left.

The writings of Marx and Gentile laid the ideological bedrock of the Authoritarian wings of the Right and Left.

Rand and Kropotkin wrote the holy texts of the Anarchist wings of the Right and Left

Quote from: Morlock;1121426Rand was a hack. And an ethnic particularist (which explains how she never turned her lens on herself or her own kind)...

"Her own kind"??? - Do you mean Humans? People who live in New York?

WTF?
She never wrote a role playing game

- Ed C.

Quote from: Koltar;1121511"Her own kind"??? - Do you mean Humans? People who live in New York?

WTF?
She never wrote a role playing game

- Ed C.

This whole shit is crazy.

Quote from: Snowman0147;1121513This whole shit is crazy.

Agreed.

Quote from: Morlock;1121426Rand was a hack. And an ethnic particularist (which explains how she never turned her lens on herself or her own kind)...

Morlock, where the hell are you from?

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1121504The more they cry about it the more I want a colonization game where the Spaniards are the good guys and the Aztecs the bad guys.

That would be such an awesome game.

Greetings!

You know, it boggles me that these SJW's and liberal historical revisionists in academia never seem to come to grips with the fact that Cortez only had about 1,000 Spanish soldiers, ala Conquistadores, with him. A few horses, a few war dogs, and only a few small cannon.

Cortez had something far more powerful. A Native TRIBAL PRINCESS that became his LOVER, his TRANSLATOR, and CHIEF ADVISOR. She was at his side, at all times, and in every meeting. AND the loyalty and service of some 50,000 NATIVE WARRIORS that marched alongside Cortez, and helped bring the AZTECS to their knees, at every step of the campaign.

The Catholic priests complained that Cortez never went anywhere without the Native woman at his side. She slept in his tent every night, and everything went through HER, first. Cortez didn't know or do much of a fucking thing without her approval and encouragement.

Yeah. Think about that.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: SHARK;1121517Greetings!

You know, it boggles me that these SJW's and liberal historical revisionists in academia never seem to come to grips with the fact that Cortez only had about 1,000 Spanish soldiers, ala Conquistadores, with him. A few horses, a few war dogs, and only a few small cannon.

Cortez had something far more powerful. A Native TRIBAL PRINCESS that became his LOVER, his TRANSLATOR, and CHIEF ADVISOR. She was at his side, at all times, and in every meeting. AND the loyalty and service of some 50,000 NATIVE WARRIORS that marched alongside Cortez, and helped bring the AZTECS to their knees, at every step of the campaign.

The Catholic priests complained that Cortez never went anywhere without the Native woman at his side. She slept in his tent every night, and everything went through HER, first. Cortez didn't know or do much of a fucking thing without her approval and encouragement.

Yeah. Think about that.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

The Spanish didn't take over Mexico.  Mexico allowed Spain to take over cause it was a better fate than what the Aztecs where offering.  The real Mexican history should had been about how Mexico decided the Aztecs had to go and how they allied with Spain to make it happen.

Quote from: SHARK;1121517Greetings!

You know, it boggles me that these SJW's and liberal historical revisionists in academia never seem to come to grips with the fact that Cortez only had about 1,000 Spanish soldiers, ala Conquistadores, with him. A few horses, a few war dogs, and only a few small cannon.

Cortez had something far more powerful. A Native TRIBAL PRINCESS that became his LOVER, his TRANSLATOR, and CHIEF ADVISOR. She was at his side, at all times, and in every meeting. AND the loyalty and service of some 50,000 NATIVE WARRIORS that marched alongside Cortez, and helped bring the AZTECS to their knees, at every step of the campaign.

The Catholic priests complained that Cortez never went anywhere without the Native woman at his side. She slept in his tent every night, and everything went through HER, first. Cortez didn't know or do much of a fucking thing without her approval and encouragement.

Yeah. Think about that.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Fascinating I just returned from peru and not a single person there used that point.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1121520Fascinating I just returned from peru and not a single person there used that point.

Greetings!

Well, I wouldn't expect the people of Peru to have the same experience. The Inca Empire was very different from the Aztec Empire, and they had different relationships not only with their neighboring tribes and peoples, but also within Inca society itself, between the elite classes and the lower social echelons of their society.

It is interesting to learn how different groups of Spaniards interacted with native tribes and kingdoms, and those native tribes and kingdoms had different kinds of relationships with the Spaniards as well.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: S'mon;1121499He's saying she was Jewish, and as she never criticised Jews-as-Jews, ergo she was an 'ethnic particularist'.
I don't recall her criticising *any* ethnicity as such (or ever praising Jews-as-Jews, for that matter), so this sounds to me like a weak argument grounded in anti-Semitism. She seems one of the least ethnocentric writers imaginable AFAICS, and I don't think this was just a cover for her sinister Jewish plotting.

She's wasn't Jewish, She was an Atheist.

Her parents were Jewish though, her father a successful Pharmacist in St. Petersburg. The Red Commies and the Russian revolution wrecked everything for her family. His Pharmacy business was nationalized by the reds in 1920 like almost exactly one hundred years ago today, and her family was left to starve on the streets of St. Peterburg. However they left and moved to the Crimea, where many White Russians relocated who had supported the Tsar moved to after the revolution. She returned to St. Peterburg though to complete college.  Along with many other bourgeois students, she was purged from the university shortly before graduating. After complaints from a group of visiting foreign scientists, however, many of the purged students were allowed to complete their work and graduate, which she did in October 1924. She then studied for a year at the State Technicum for Screen Arts in Leningrad. For an assignment she wrote an essay about the Polish actress Pola Negri, which became her first published work.

In late 1925, Rand was granted a visa to visit relatives in Chicago. She departed on January 17, 1926. When she arrived in New York City on February 19, 1926, she was so impressed with the skyline ofManhattan that she cried what she later called "tears of splendor". Intent on staying in the United States to become a screenwriter, she lived for a few months with her relatives, one of whom owned a movie theater and allowed her to watch dozens of films free of charge. She then left for Hollywood, California.

In Hollywood, a chance meeting with famed director Cecil B. DeMille led to work as an extra in his film The King of Kings and a subsequent job as a junior screenwriter. While working on The King of Kings, she met an aspiring young actor, Frank O'Connor; the two were married on April 15, 1929. She became a permanent American resident in July 1929 and an American citizen on March 3, 1931. Taking various jobs during the 1930s to support her writing, she worked for a time as the head of the costume department at RKO Studios. She made several attempts to bring her parents and sisters to the United States, but they were unable to acquire permission to emigrate.

Rand's first literary success came with the sale of her screenplay Red Pawn to Universal Studios in 1932, although it was never produced. This was an anti-communist movie. She knew the red commies well, because of her families firsthand experience with them.

Rand's first major success as a writer came in 1943 with The Fountainhead, a romantic and philosophical novel that she wrote over a period of seven years.

In 1951, Rand moved from Los Angeles to New York City, where she gathered a group of these admirers around her. This group (jokingly designated "The Collective") included future Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, a young psychology student named Nathan Blumenthal (later Nathaniel Branden) and his wife Barbara and Barbara's cousin Leonard Peikoff. Initially the group was an informal gathering of friends who met with Rand on weekends at her apartment to discuss philosophy. She later began allowing them to read the drafts of her new novel, Atlas Shrugged, as the manuscript pages were written. In 1954 Rand's close relationship with the younger Nathaniel Branden turned into a romantic affair, with the consent of their spouses.

Atlas Shrugged, published in 1957, was considered Rand's magnum opus. Despite many negative reviews, Atlas Shrugged became an international bestseller.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Rand developed and promoted her Objectivist philosophy through her nonfiction works and by giving talks to students at institutions such as Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Harvard, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Lewis & Clark College on 2 October 1963. She also began delivering annual lectures at the Ford Hall Forum, responding afterward to questions from the audience (TED, you owe her big time!). During these speeches and Q&A sessions, she often took controversial stances on political and social issues of the day. These included supporting abortion rights, opposing the Vietnam War and the military draft (but condemning many draft dodgers as "bums"), supporting Israel in the Yom Kippur War of 1973  and calling homosexuality "immoral" and "disgusting", while also advocating the repeal of all laws about it. She also endorsed several Republican candidates for President of the United States, most strongly Barry Goldwater in 1964, whose candidacy she promoted in several articles for The Objectivist Newsletter.

In 1964, Nathaniel Branden began an affair with the young actress Patrecia Scott, whom he later married. Nathaniel and Barbara Branden kept the affair hidden from Rand. When she learned of it in 1968, though her romantic relationship with Branden had already ended, Rand terminated her relationship with both Brandens, which led to the closure of the NBI.

Rand called her philosophy "Objectivism", describing its essence as "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute"

In 1974 she gave the commencement speech for the graduates of the United States Military Academy at West Point, which I'm including a link for here, because I think it is one of her best speeches…

West Point Commencement Speech 1974 – Philosophy, Who Needs It?
https://courses.aynrand.org/campus-courses/philosophy-who-needs-it/philosophy-who-needs-it/

I never had the chance to speak with her, however would have very much liked to. She died in 1982, and the first time I picked up and read one of her books Anthem, was in early 1984. I did have the chance to talk with Nathaniel Branden though, and that was a very illuminating conversation which I'll share some details today.

He went on to become  the founder of the self-esteem movement in psychology, and ended up becoming an eminent psychologist with a very large practice in Los Angeles.

Branden argued that self-esteem is a human psychological need and that to the extent this need remains unmet, pathology (defensiveness, anxiety, depression, difficulty in relationships, etc.) tends to result. He defined self-esteem formally as "the disposition to experience oneself as competent to cope with the basic challenges of life and as worthy of happiness", and proposed that, while others (parents, teachers, friends) can nurture and support self-esteem in an individual, self-esteem also relies upon various internally generated practices. Branden distinguished his approach to self-esteem from that of many others by his inclusion of both confidence and worth in his definition of self-esteem, and by his emphasis on the importance of internally generated practices for the improvement and maintenance of self-esteem.

I looked him up, and just cold called him one day from my office here in Indiana back in late 2001, or early 2002, just to ask him about Ayn Rand and the Objectivist movement and why he withdrew from that movement. He responded affirmatively about his identity and previous affiliations when asked, because you know, cold-calling and all, wasn't 100% sure it was the correct Nathaniel Branden.

At the time, I was also quite unaware that he had been in a relationship with Ayn Rand, and that they had not amicably parted, so did not understand why he had abruptly left the Objectivist movement back in 1968, and that was literally my first question for him. "Why did you just quit when everything was going so well?"

Anyway. once we got through that emotional minefield, we were able to move on to some productive conversation.  He actually never left the Objectivist movement, rather, he was excluded by Ayn Rand after their breakup. He never spoke negatively about her, or Objectivism, and in my conversations with him, if he had the choice, I believe he would have continued with the Nathaniel Branden Institute and promoting Objectivism as his primary work.

As it was, he moved back to L.A. with his new wife in 1969, and started his Psychology practice also getting his Phd. there in 1973. After which he began a successful four decade career as an Internationally renowned psychologist. He had a tough spot of luck. His second wife accidentally drowned in their pool after falling in as a result of a seizure in 1978. So he literally had to completely rebuild his life a second time, ...less than a decade after having to completely rebuilding his life the first time.

During our conversation, and as a result of my questions about the long-term goals and results of Objectivism, it came out that he thought there should be more to Ayn Rand's school of philosophy than what she presented, and while he didn't say it in words,  his actions and subsequent choices of words and actions told me a lot more about what actually happened, and the rift that had developed between them, which was much less about their personal relationship, and much more about their professional one.

I can confirm that although he remained a supporter of Rand's philosophy, he did name to me problems of a tendency for Objectivists to encourage emotional repression, and in making moralizing permanent judgments about other people. Also that Objectivists routinely experienced a failure to appreciate adequately the importance of kindness in human relationships.  A lot of this had much less to to do with him personally and much more to do with the rough upbringing that Ayn Rand had to deal with as a target of the red commies, but I'm not sure he ever realized that directly, he just adjusted to it subconsciously, deciding how he was going to promote Objectivism.

He also apologized in another interview to "every student of Objectivism" for "perpetuating the Ayn Rand mystique" and for "contributing to that dreadful atmosphere of intellectual repressiveness that pervades the Objectivist movement." He was very uncomfortable with the "cult" like aspects of the Objectivist movement and much preferred a grander much understated gentler approach for everyone involved. He also thought that people could change, and become better, and worked ceaselessly to develop new tools mostly related to self-esteem or lack thereof, so that people could recognize when they were the problem, and could then self-correct their negative, or otherwise self-destructive and destructive behaviors.

He subscribed to the theory of Objectivism completely... "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute". He lived this way after Ayn Rand rejected him for loving another woman besides her, and his first wife also divorced him as well, although she remained lifelong friends with him? Anyway, when I spoke to him he was about as satisfied as anyone could be with all that he had to deal with in his own personal life, and had made his life after Objectivism about improving the awareness and quality of life of many thousands of other people. Personally, I rate that as excellent on the Ayn Rand scale of living well and as a true Objectivist.

A link to his website for you today, where his estate still sells his books. I'll confirm directly a bit later on this week that his wife Leigh Horton Branden, as heir, is receiving the proceeds from book and publication sales there, as I learned her email addy doing research for this report for you today, and will email her Monday.

http://www.nathanielbranden.com/

Maybe I should do an article on Leonard Peikoff as well, as the heir to Ayn Rand's estate (With the exception of Anthem, which is in the public domain now) he has carried on her legacy and still currently runs the Ayn Rand Institute which is currently located in Irvine, California. I'm not sure he's keeping up with her legacy so well though, his latest book is "The DIM Hypothesis: Why the Lights of the West Are Going Out"

So he's now busy finding all the cultural excuses for the West to fail, all the while failing to realize that it's literally the communists with their poisonous leftist ideals, and their long-term goals and actions that are deliberately destabilizing societies, in order take control of them strong-arm style, that remains the greatest threat to what remains of freedom here in the United States.

Anyway, Ayn Rand was Atheist, not Jewish, Don't let the Commutards tell you different, because they actually don't know her well enough to actually know.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1121504The more they cry about it the more I want a colonization game where the Spaniards are the good guys and the Aztecs the bad guys.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4127[/ATTACH]

Quoteand it is NEVER 'okay' to use that word towards someone just because you disagree with their philosophy.

aaand thats where you are wrong. I can and will use that and far worse just because its tuesday or for no reason at all and it IS "okay" because I say it is and I'm in charge of me. you can call it impolite or crass if you like, but that won't stop me. sanction won't stop me. really nothing short of killing me will...are you prepared to try to kill me to police my language? good luck hucklebuck.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1121524Anyway, Ayn Rand was Atheist, not Jewish

Jewish is an ethnicity as well as a religion.

Quote from: S'mon;1121535Jewish is an ethnicity as well as a religion.

\
Yeah. ...No. She wasn't at home serving the menfolk. She didn't do Bar Mitvah's. On Sabbat she worked. Remember she was the head of the costume department at RKO pictures in the 20's. She married an American, after she was on her own she didn't live in any Jewish communities. Superficially, because of her ancestry, she might be considered Jewish. Being an Atheist, I seriously doubt she considered herself Jewish.

Greetings!

I'm an American citizen, born and raised here, from many generations. I believe the United States of America is the greatest nation on earth. I also like American Exceptionalism, and all of our great heritage.

Does that mean I am an "Ethnic Particularist"?:D I'm not sure what the fuck an "Ethnic Particularist" even is.

I'm not sure why it is relevant what nationality or erm, "ethnicity" Ayn Rand was. She was a philosopher that wrote about Objectivism. Why would anyone care? Like many philosophers, she seems to have been intelligent, kinda cool and kinda nutty and weird, too. Seems pretty ordinary in that way for philosophers.:D

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Snowman0147;1121513This whole shit is crazy.

Kolts been off his meds for a few months now it seems. Or has some obsessive compulsive disorder to play commander contrarian.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1121529[ATTACH=CONFIG]4127[/ATTACH]

Thanks, I wasn't aware that existed, gonna go buy it asap!

Quote from: Snowman0147;1121519The Spanish didn't take over Mexico.  Mexico allowed Spain to take over cause it was a better fate than what the Aztecs where offering.  The real Mexican history should had been about how Mexico decided the Aztecs had to go and how they allied with Spain to make it happen.

México didn't decide shit, because México didn't exist. The other tribes that were under the Aztec rule allied with the Spaniards to overthrow the murderous and cannibalistic Aztecs, thus the New Spain was born, after that the Criollos (Spaniards born in the New Spain) revolted demanding equal treatment, which led to the independence and creation of the Country known as México.

Take this into consideration for any campaign set in that time.

Quote from: SHARK;1121517Greetings!

You know, it boggles me that these SJW's and liberal historical revisionists in academia never seem to come to grips with the fact that Cortez only had about 1,000 Spanish soldiers, ala Conquistadores, with him. A few horses, a few war dogs, and only a few small cannon.

Cortez had something far more powerful. A Native TRIBAL PRINCESS that became his LOVER, his TRANSLATOR, and CHIEF ADVISOR. She was at his side, at all times, and in every meeting. AND the loyalty and service of some 50,000 NATIVE WARRIORS that marched alongside Cortez, and helped bring the AZTECS to their knees, at every step of the campaign.

The Catholic priests complained that Cortez never went anywhere without the Native woman at his side. She slept in his tent every night, and everything went through HER, first. Cortez didn't know or do much of a fucking thing without her approval and encouragement.

Yeah. Think about that.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Exactly, which is how he was able to build Carabelas to sail the lake that surrounded Tenochtitlan and put it under siege. It was really a revolt of the opressed who saw in the Spaniards an ally and a lesser evil. If the second proved not to be true is up for discussion.

And this is why, most Aztec Empire settings bother me to hell and back, they always (almost) paint the Aztecs as the saint noble savages, the Spaniards as demons and the rest as tools or slaves to the Spaniards.

Funny how in this case the winner didn't wrote the history to paint himself as the good guy, but the losers did to paint the winner as a fucking demon.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1121567Exactly, which is how he was able to build Carabelas to sail the lake that surrounded Tenochtitlan and put it under siege. It was really a revolt of the opressed who saw in the Spaniards an ally and a lesser evil. If the second proved not to be true is up for discussion.

And this is why, most Aztec Empire settings bother me to hell and back, they always (almost) paint the Aztecs as the saint noble savages, the Spaniards as demons and the rest as tools or slaves to the Spaniards.

Funny how in this case the winner didn't wrote the history to paint himself as the good guy, but the losers did to paint the winner as a fucking demon.

Greetings!

Excellent, my friend! You know, it is sad that even in American universities, your basic History 101 class will present and ram this fucking narrative down the student's throats, until they believe it. THEN, you have all the special Latina Student Union groups--always eager to guest lecture at any university class--and then proceed to ram more bullshit into the students about how glorious the Aztecs were, how great the indigenous brown peoples are, and how fucked the white Spaniards are.

I actually got into it with a Mexican student, a girl. I told her,

"You know, I love brown people. Indians, Mexicans, whatever. However, in your rush to embrace La Raza, and your eagerness to hate white people, you should realize sweetheart that YOU are half white. You have Indian blood in you, as well as white European blood in you. SPANISH blood in you. Spaniards were not all terrible people, and have done many great things through the centuries to build and contribute to your societies and culture. You need to learn true history, and learn to love, and be gracious and proud of ALL of your beautiful heritage."

Her mouth went open at me, bewildered and in shock.

I hate historical revisionism. What is wrong with jumping into the whole truth? The good, the bad, the mixed. The confusing, the glorious, the righteous, the wicked, and the history of just accepting huge changes and making something new, and different?

I can imagine you shouting at revisionist history books, my friend!:D

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: SHARK;1121572Greetings!

Excellent, my friend! You know, it is sad that even in American universities, your basic History 101 class will present and ram this fucking narrative down the student's throats, until they believe it. THEN, you have all the special Latina Student Union groups--always eager to guest lecture at any university class--and then proceed to ram more bullshit into the students about how glorious the Aztecs were, how great the indigenous brown peoples are, and how fucked the white Spaniards are.

I actually got into it with a Mexican student, a girl. I told her,

"You know, I love brown people. Indians, Mexicans, whatever. However, in your rush to embrace La Raza, and your eagerness to hate white people, you should realize sweetheart that YOU are half white. You have Indian blood in you, as well as white European blood in you. SPANISH blood in you. Spaniards were not all terrible people, and have done many great things through the centuries to build and contribute to your societies and culture. You need to learn true history, and learn to love, and be gracious and proud of ALL of your beautiful heritage."

Her mouth went open at me, bewildered and in shock.

I hate historical revisionism. What is wrong with jumping into the whole truth? The good, the bad, the mixed. The confusing, the glorious, the righteous, the wicked, and the history of just accepting huge changes and making something new, and different?

I can imagine you shouting at revisionist history books, my friend!:D

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Precisely for my mixed blood this revisionism bothers me so much. I'm sure Cortez's men were not all of them good people, after all most were there to escape jail. And I'm also sure many a terrible thing was done by them, but the same holds true of the Aztecs and most any empire, and if it wasn't because of the evil of the Aztecs I doubt Cortez would have gotten much farther away from Veracruz.

The Aztecs weren't the only Mesoamerican people practicing human sacrifice and ritual cannibalism. There really are no good and evil parties in this story.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1121567And this is why, most Aztec Empire settings bother me to hell and back, they always (almost) paint the Aztecs as the saint noble savages, the Spaniards as demons and the rest as tools or slaves to the Spaniards.

Funny how in this case the winner didn't wrote the history to paint himself as the good guy, but the losers did to paint the winner as a fucking demon.

I'm curious what specific settings you're talking about here. It's pretty rare for me to see Aztecs vs Spaniards in a setting at all. From what I've seen, Aztecs are generally the bad guys when they appear (like in Witch Hunter). I'm familiar with GURPS Aztecs, which seems roughly historical to me, with no sign of noble savage. I've heard about Dragons Conquer America and Totems of the Dead -- but I don't own them or know them in detail.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1121564Thanks, I wasn't aware that existed, gonna go buy it asap!

The Aztecs in it are Pure Evil and are planning a counter-invasion of Europe! It's up to those meddling witch hunters (and their dog) to stop them. Yes, your Mystery Machine is a galleon.

Quote from: Morlock;1121426Rand was a hack. And an ethnic particularist (which explains how she never turned her lens on herself or her own kind)...

Ahem...

Quote from: Brendan;1120513As an aside, I wonder how long it will be before the mask slips and you treat us to your inevitable alt-right sperg out?

Called it.

Quote from: Koltar;1121506How the hell did Ayn Rand get into the conversation in the first place?? She never wrote a role playing game.
Talk about topic drift....

- Ed C.

Oh, I can clear that up.  Morlock decided he needed to drag Israel into the conversation about evil oppressor colonizing states even though it has nothing to do with RPGs because, in his mind, colonizing = evil = (((us))).  

Someone (Sammy, I think?) challenged him on this and he said he was fine with Jews provided they didn't try "that slimy shit" wherein they get to have their ethnostate [sic] while denying him his.  Rather than further degenerate the thread by refuting the various ways this is a dumb position (and his even more dumb claim that today's left is somehow pro-Israel), I settled for a simple response of "How about you shut up about Jews and I'll shut up about ethnostates and we'll all just get along."  With some minor grumbling things settled down.

Shaasrak said something like, "No one aside from leftists has a problem with ethnostates".  And I replied with one of my favorite Ayn Rand quotes about how racial collectivism is the dumbest form of collectivism.  I honestly give two shits if Morlock wants to move to an abandoned fishing village in upper Canada with Nick Fuentz and Richard Spencer.  Form whatever intentional communities you want, but I also think the idea of white-topia is stupid (also black-topia and brown-topia).

Anyway, you're welcome... I guess.

Quote from: Brendan;1121671Ahem...

 

Called it.



Oh, I can clear that up.  Morlock decided he needed to drag Israel into the conversation about evil oppressor colonizing states even though it has nothing to do with RPGs because, in his mind, colonizing = evil = (((us))).  

Someone (Sammy, I think?) challenged him on this and he said he was fine with Jews provided they didn't try "that slimy shit" wherein they get to have their ethnostate [sic] while denying him his.  Rather than further degenerate the thread by refuting the various ways this is a dumb position (and his even more dumb claim that today's left is somehow pro-Israel), I settled for a simple response of "How about you shut up about Jews and I'll shut up about ethnostates and we'll all just get along."  With some minor grumbling things settled down.

Shaasrak said something like, "No one aside from leftists has a problem with ethnostates".  And I replied with one of my favorite Ayn Rand quotes about how racial collectivism is the dumbest form of collectivism.  I honestly give two shits if Morlock wants to move to an abandoned fishing village in upper Canada with Nick Fuentz and Richard Spencer.  Form whatever intentional communities you want, but I also think the idea of white-topia is stupid (also black-topia and brown-topia).

Anyway, you're welcome... I guess.

Greetings!

Thank you, Brendan! There have been times here where I felt strangely like I had walked into some side room where a private party was going on, unrelated to the rest of the party going on beyond. It's like, what the fuck is being said here, and why? Arrrgghh.

Alt right sperg out? *laughs*:D Living in a isolated fishing village in northern Canada? *rolling*

Brendan, do you drink coffee? I'm pouring some fresh coffee, my friend. Fucking hilarious!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: SHARK;1121674Greetings!

Thank you, Brendan! There have been times here where I felt strangely like I had walked into some side room where a private party was going on, unrelated to the rest of the party going on beyond. It's like, what the fuck is being said here, and why? Arrrgghh.

Alt right sperg out? *laughs*:D Living in a isolated fishing village in northern Canada? *rolling*

Brendan, do you drink coffee? I'm pouring some fresh coffee, my friend. Fucking hilarious!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Thank you Shark.  Yes, I know the feeling.  Enjoy your cup. The wife brings me some every morning, just before my alarm goes off.

Guys, one and only warning, keep this on the subject of RPGs!

Quote from: 3rik;1121583The Aztecs weren't the only Mesoamerican people practicing human sacrifice and ritual cannibalism. There really are no good and evil parties in this story.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1121588The Aztecs in it are Pure Evil and are planning a counter-invasion of Europe! It's up to those meddling witch hunters (and their dog) to stop them. Yes, your Mystery Machine is a galleon.

Speaking of fighting Aztecs, I was planning on making the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs a past life era for a game of Nephilim. Options including being a Mesoamerican deity still holding a grudge against colonization, a conquistador who committed war crimes, a Catholic missionary ahead of his time who tried to stop the atrocities, etc.

The Spanish conquest was so horrific that it's very easy to depict everyone as equally villainous, or the Aztecs as (slightly) less monstrous than the conquistadors.

If you were a Mesoamerican deity, then why would you encourage your worshipers to perform human sacrifice? How would you spin doctor yourself as the good guy in this conflict?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1121820If you were a Mesoamerican deity, then why would you encourage your worshipers to perform human sacrifice?

To stop the Sun going out.

Quote from: S'mon;1121837To stop the Sun going out.

What if that wasn't actually the case?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1121853What if that wasn't actually the case?

It was obviously to keep Cthulhu asleep.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1121820Speaking of fighting Aztecs, I was planning on making the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs a past life era for a game of Nephilim. Options including being a Mesoamerican deity still holding a grudge against colonization, a conquistador who committed war crimes, a Catholic missionary ahead of his time who tried to stop the atrocities, etc.

The Spanish conquest was so horrific that it's very easy to depict everyone as equally villainous, or the Aztecs as (slightly) less monstrous than the conquistadors.

If you were a Mesoamerican deity, then why would you encourage your worshipers to perform human sacrifice? How would you spin doctor yourself as the good guy in this conflict?

For a good crop.

Also, for reals, when I was in Cozumel I toured San Gervasio which were Mayan ruins. The ruins were once a hub of worship of the goddess Ix Chel, a feminine deity of childbirth, fertility, medicine, and weaving. Pre-Columbian Maya women would try to travel to San Gervasio and make offerings at least once in their lives. In 1560, the Spanish historian, Diego Lopez de Cogolludo, wrote: "The pilgrims arrive at Cozumel for the fulfillment of their vows to offer their sacrifices, to ask help for their needs, and for the mistaken adoration of their false gods." The bishop of Yucatán, Diego de Landa, wrote in 1549 that the Maya "held Cozumel in the same veneration as we have for pilgrimages to Jerusalem and Rome, and so they used to go to visit and offer presents there, as we do to holy places; and if they did not go themselves, they always sent their offerings."

IxChel was the Goddess of the Dawn, of the New Life. Women went there to pray for children, and to see the if the oracles there, Priestesses of IxChel, would be able to divine if a particular marriage or wedding match would be favorable. It was a sacred Island that men, except for priests of Ixchel or other Mayan Deities, were generally not allowed to visit, and women who did not like their marriage match would flee to the island seeking sanctuary.

I asked my very Mayan Guide about their propensity to conduct human sacrifice, and about why they picked their very best leaders to be sacrificed. He told me that there were several different ways these sacrifices occurred. The most common ways were decapitation and heart removal where the victims blood was offered as nourishment for the Gods. Dedication to a new building, or new ruler required a human sacrifice. If the sacrifice happened it usually took place in the courtyard of the temple or the summit of their pyramid-temples which had a triple purpose being as astronomical observatory, as well as an accurate map of the heavens. They totally sacrificed their best sports heroes, and the winner of the handball game tournaments that they liked playing, was usually first pick as a major sacrifice. Once picked, the winner received the gift of an entire year as a leader, and could pick whatever mates they wanted, and pretty much do anything they wanted, and were waited on hand and foot by the rest of the Mayans, right up until the day of their sacrifice. I'll post a few pics later...

So that's what they really did.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;1121854It was obviously to keep Cthulhu asleep.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1121858For a good crop.

I'll skip ahead and provide some much needed context from the Nephilim supplements.

The Mesoamerican "Xibalbans" were psychic vampires that lived wretched existences. They had to eat the substance of souls to survive (in the form of emotion or blood, either was fine), or consign themselves to living within elaborate sarcophagi that protected them from dissolving alive. They started the "Blood Dynasties" with the intent of harvesting human life force in massive quantities, which they would use to construct a second Moon. This "Black Moon" would provide then with vitality converted directly from the Sun's ethers (the ultimate source of the human soul/vitality), removing their dependence on humans forever.

Their magical assistance was invaluable to the development of the Mesoamerican civilizations. They didn't prey upon their worshipers like predators, but convinced them to make sacrifices in exchange for magic. It might seem cruel to outsiders, but the dynasties didn't see it that way.

The Xibalbans were the lords of the underworld and masters of necromancy, among other things. They shared human feelings: love, revenge, regret, etc. They could feasibly provide an eternal afterlife paradise for those who were sacrificed to them, and have the desire to share eternity with their subjects.

So when the conquistadors arrive and start conquering, butchering, raping, pillaging, etc... the Spanish don't necessarily have the moral high ground.

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;1119822Evil Hat's creating this:

"In Development: Fate Decolonization Toolkit
Sometimes we like role-playing games to help us escape from real-world struggles. ....

Where is this quote taken from?

Quote from: Trond;1121956Where is this quote taken from?

 
  Alderaan Crumbs apparently received a mailing of some sort. I just checked Evil Hat's Project Status page, and the project is on there, so that much is confirmed: https://www.evilhat.com/home/project-status/

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1121958Alderaan Crumbs apparently received a mailing of some sort. I just checked Evil Hat's Project Status page, and the project is on there, so that much is confirmed: https://www.evilhat.com/home/project-status/

Ah, right he says as much.