Quote from: jibbajibba;481832

• The game world becomes populated with irredeemibly evil creatures who are only there so the players can kill them and take their stuff. This may create the misunderstanding in some suggestible players that the real World may follow a similar rules.

Wow, Patricia fucking Pulling back from the dead and here to save impressionable youth from the occult evils of Heavy Metal and The Smurfs.

Quote from: jibbajibba;481832

• The game world becomes populated with irredeemibly evil creatures who are only there so the players can kill them and take their stuff. This may create the misunderstanding in some suggestible players that the real World may follow a similar rules.
• Within the game world the 'murderous hobo' play style where PCs move from place to place killing things and taking their stuff is often deemed to be Good or righeous behaviour, this is usually justified by the inclusion of 'bad guys' to kill (see above) and one presumes that when you kill 'bad guys' it's fine to root through their pockets and take anything you find. In fact often its okay to chop off their body parties to use as trophies or in magic spells. This might well lead to behaviours seen in various warzones where enemy soldiers are treated as inferior denied basic rights under the geneva convention and have their ears used to make necklaces, in some suggestible players (who go on to become combatants in war zones).
• As a result of these standard and accepted tropes the game attracts a fringe of radicals of various stripes that manipulate the games constructs and rules to put across a range of racist, sexist or bigoted views.

How does this differ from the typical complaints of concerned parent groups about role-playing games, heavy metal music, rap music, video games, comic books, pulp fiction, and so on?  Do you have any evidence that role-playing games are driving players to racism or to commit war crimes who would not otherwise be inclined to think or behave that way?  Don't you think this sounds at least a little like a Jack Chick tract?

It's the "irredeemably" part that I most object to, among both the antis and the pros. Not because I'm a pacifist, far from it, but it seems to go way too far--in the name of making violence 100% "justified", it creates an even more offensive (sorry John, that's how I see it) and set of premises.

EDIT: offensive because I'm not convinced that they can really hold without undermining the verisimilitude of the setting, so trying harder and harder to keep them puts their implications into more and more stark relief.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;481853It's the "irredeemably" part that I most object to, among both the antis and the pros. Not because I'm a pacifist, far from it, but it seems to go way too far--in the name of making violence 100% "justified", it creates an even more offensive (sorry John, that's how I see it) and set of premises.

EDIT: offensive because I'm not convinced that they can really hold without undermining the verisimilitude of the setting, so trying harder and harder to keep them puts their implications into more and more stark relief.

Elliot is restating what I said but more nicely.

Quote from: jibbajibba;481832Since Stormy seems to be tongue tied i will help him out.

Not really tongue tied, just tired of answering the same question fifteen or twenty fucking times.

QuoteThere is indeed a darker side to the hobby. We are basically playing a range of games in which the most common answer to any sort of question or threat is physical violence.

If you are meaning to say that a certain percentage of players go to the extreme of using violence for any situation, I would agree that is a less than savoury aspect.  I hadn't been thinking specifically along those lines, but it does fit in.

QuoteThe vast majority of RPGs take this stance. One of the affects of this preponderance of violence is that the following things become default settings in order to make the violence more fun

• There are seldom consequences to violent acts. Murders go unpunished or punishement is to go a touring holiday of the montainous region to the NE and bring back a trinket
• The game world becomes populated with irredeemibly evil creatures who are only there so the players can kill them and take their stuff. This may create the misunderstanding in some suggestible players that the real World may follow a similar rules.
• Social solutions in which people talk through their issues to come to a means of compromise are usually deemed so pathetic that there are seldom rules to cover them in most game books.
• Within the game world the 'murderous hobo' play style where PCs move from place to place killing things and taking their stuff is often deemed to be Good or righeous behaviour, this is usually justified by the inclusion of 'bad guys' to kill (see above) and one presumes that when you kill 'bad guys' it's fine to root through their pockets and take anything you find. In fact often its okay to chop off their body parties to use as trophies or in magic spells. This might well lead to behaviours seen in various warzones where enemy soldiers are treated as inferior denied basic rights under the geneva convention and have their ears used to make necklaces, in some suggestible players (who go on to become combatants in war zones).
• As a result of these standard and accepted tropes the game attracts a fringe of radicals of various stripes that manipulate the games constructs and rules to put across a range of racist, sexist or bigoted views.
• Because the game is absorbing and sedentary it can become obsessive to some people who then don't get enough exercise, or obey an acceptable personal hygine regime. Instead they stay up late at night posting bollocks on web message forums which can have negative social effects.

How's that for a starting list?
I can add more if you like?

Those are some interesting points in an of themselves.  I am really not particularly worried about people being 'corrupted' from playing, at least not in substantial enough numbers to consider it a problem.

Overall, there are specific instructions on how to adjudicate violence of the type you describe in an RPG that simply isn't present in poker or Monopoly.  Similarly, neither of those games have mechanics for determining which 'race' is better than another one.  These are the tools inherent to RPGs that make them much, much better tools for expressing real world prejudices than boardgames.  Which is why Stormfront has dozens of RPG posts and threads with rules for incorporating their racist views, and about two boardgame posts, neither of which describe how the black pawns in chess are inferior.

Much like the film making industry, in fact.  You can make films or enjoy watching them, but denying there is a seamier side (some of the more vile pornography, for example) just makes one look foolish.  Continually demanding someone point it out for the twentieth time even more so.  It doesn't mean cinematography should be banned, or that everyone who watches movies is also a paedophile.  That would be an equally stupid assumption, only surpassed by attempting to paint another as making that argument.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;481704But I also see the value in keeping your identity secret. I mean it is rare, but someone could take a flame war too far and show up at a person's house (if they had enough info on them---and a name+location is a good start).

The thing is that if you post regularly on one or more forums under the same pseudonym, go to chat rooms, and have facebook or the like, at some point you'll have mentioned your location, and/or your job (even if not actual place of employment), your family and so on. With all that it's only a matter of at most a few hours of effort for someone to track you down.

If you want to be anonymous online, you basically have to not post on forums at all. Or if you do it, have an email address to register with which you only use for registering on that forum, and have a different email and different pseudonym for each forum... and carefully avoid saying anything describing where you live or what you do. And certainly do NOT have facebook, or a blog, or google+ or anything like that.

A determined person could still track you down, but they'd have to be smart and determined, and the sorts of people who get angry at complete strangers online and want to drive off to meet them and punch them out tend not to be the sharpest tools in the shed.

And even if they did come for you, they probably wouldn't be much threat. You don't get super-strong and l33t martial arts skillzorz sitting at your keyboard arguing with strangers on the internet.

Quote from: John Morrow;481848How does this differ from the typical complaints of concerned parent groups about role-playing games, heavy metal music, rap music, video games, comic books, pulp fiction, and so on?  Do you have any evidence that role-playing games are driving players to racism or to commit war crimes who would not otherwise be inclined to think or behave that way?  Don't you think this sounds at least a little like a Jack Chick tract?

Allow me a moment to interject.  The critical part of what JibbaJabba said in that last bullet point was:

"As a result of these standard and accepted tropes the game attracts a  fringe of radicals of various stripes that manipulate the games  constructs and rules to put across a range of racist, sexist or bigoted  views."

The highlighted part is what I have never denied.  They are a very fringe element, but they exist.  The first part, about the "standard and accepted tropes" explains why they choose RPGs over boardgames.

In that regard, Jack Chick tried to portray every single gamer as a potential Satanist, while Jibba's point (that I agree with) is that there is only a smallish number of radicals that use RPGs as their means to spread the message.  I certainly don't think there is anything about RPGs that makes players in general more susceptible to influence from themes of racism, sexual violence, or genocide; I suspect JibbaJabba does not either.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;481853EDIT: offensive because I'm not convinced that they can really hold without undermining the verisimilitude of the setting, so trying harder and harder to keep them puts their implications into more and more stark relief.

And I think the verisimilitude problem reflects a problem you have with the idea rather than an objective problem with it.  People keep claiming that irredeemably evil creatures are unbelievable and and unrealistic despite the fact that there are real people who exhibit the characteristics in question without having the problems that people assume that they'd have.  You might want to consider why you are claiming to be offended by a verisimilitude problem.  Are you also offended by the verisimilitude issues created by flying dragons, giant insect, and time travel in games that have those features?  Since when is verisimilitude a moral issue?

1) A psychopath is very different from a species of psychopaths, as has been pointed out many times. Psychopaths are parasitic on ordinary morality, not a replacement for it.

2) Something can be offensive for aesthetic reasons - the term "offensive" is descriptive of the emotion(s) provoked, not a description of the process by which that emotion arises, and can therefore be equivocal. The smell of shit is offensive. The music of Britney Spears is offensive. Advocating the racial inferiority of non-whites is offensive.

Quote from: John Morrow;481860People keep claiming that irredeemably evil creatures are unbelievable and and unrealistic...

I just wanted to address this part really quickly; no one is saying an irredeemably evil creature is unbelievable.  Demons, unique creatures from mythology (I believe Medusa was mentioned), certain undead, etc aren't the problem.  What's wholly unrealistic is that there are entire species that are irredeemably evil.  No could ever possibly be so much as True Neutral, they are all EVIL.

I mean, hell, I am sure there were Nazis that signed up in a fervour of patriotism who later changed their minds and went AWOL because of the whole genocide thing.  Saying every last one of them was pure evil to the core is misguided, to say the least.

Quote from: StormBringer;481859The highlighted part is what I have never denied.  They are a very fringe element, but they exist.  The first part, about the "standard and accepted tropes" explains why they choose RPGs over boardgames.

Yes, and there is a fringe element of dark heavy metal fans who have burned down churches in Norway.  And there is a fringe element of rap music fans who are really gang bangers.  Anders Behring Breivik claims he trained for his attack using the video game Modern Warfare 2.  And so on.  There are fringe elements in every hobby and crazy people can turn anything into an unhealthy obsession.  

Quote from: StormBringer;481859In that regard, Jack Chick tried to portray every single gamer as a potential Satanist, while Jibba's point (that I agree with) is that there is only a smallish number of radicals that use RPGs as their means to spread the message.  I certainly don't think there is anything about RPGs that makes players in general more susceptible to influence from themes of racism, sexual violence, or genocide; I suspect JibbaJabba does not either.

That's not all he was saying.  He was saying that role-playing games could drive "susceptible" people to believe it's OK to kill people and take their stuff or commit actual war crimes if they later join the military.  Do you believe that?

The same argument has been used for decades to justify banning pulps, comic books, role-playing games, video games, heavy metal music, rap music, and so on.  While Jack Chick is an extreme example, the argument is always that the thing in question can turn good people bad.  The reality is that normal people can tell the difference between fantasy and reality and the people who can't can turn anything they feel intensely about into a hobby or cause, including things like environmentalism.

Quote from: John Morrow;481844Good can come from an evil environment so long as the individual has the capacity to be good.  And the flip side of that is that evil can come from a good environment if the individual does not have the capacity to be good.

As for redemption, I have repeatedly said that my D&D game included both redeemable and irredeemable evil.  I understand the theme of redemption and certainly believe that there are bad people in the world who can be redeemed.  But there are also bad people who are not going to be redeemed short of a miracle because they lack empathy for their victims, lack a conscience that might make them feel bad about doing bad things, and because they like being the way they are.

Agreed and this is exactly what the Criminal Minds bit I quoted implies, the whole quote mind you. But what you did was slash the quote and use it as a springboard to launch into your preoccupations with psychopaths.

QuoteI'm not sure how you can draw that conclusion given that I've repeatedly said that my D&D game included a variety of types of evil, both redeemable and irredeemable, and the quote claiming that 50% of violent criminals in prison are psychopaths also means that 50% arent.  And the article about the Columbine killers that I linked to basically says that one was a psychopath and the other wasn't.  My focus on psychopaths is to explain how a species of creatures might be sentiend and rational yet also be be inherently and irredeemably evil, not to explain the only way a person can be evil.  It's to explain how a remorseless yet rational mindset actually works.

I draw that conclusion because even though I said that your games include a variety of types of evil – see my respone to CK – you continue cherry picking qotes of mine (like you did with my Crimnial Minds quote) and holding forth on psychopaths without providing examples as to the other types of evil in your games.

You seem more interested in reinforcing the fact that they can be a logical reason for the kind of irredeambale evil in your games even though I have not disputed this. In fact, on this very thread I posted that my Hunter game was similar to your Goblin example. Either you are not reading what I wrote or prefer to build strawmen hoping to catch me in some sort of rhetorical trap.  

QuoteIs he redeemable?  I would think so. That means he's not the type of evil I'm talking about when I talk about violent psychopaths.  I'm specifically addressing the plausiblity and reasoning being inherently and irredeemably evil creatures for those who believe such a thing is impossible ot imagine or would only be included in a game for morally or creatively contempable reasons.

This is what I mean. My example of the torturer was in response to your “advice” about doing research about “bad people” and "evil” with regards to psychopathy. The torturer example was about how bad or evil people were not always psychopaths but the only reason I brought it up was because you had started on abut psychopaths….again.

QuoteI'm not asking you to limit your perception of evil only to psychopaths.  I'm suggesting you to consider not basing your perception of evil primarily on folklore and fiction and to consider not limiting your perception of evil to exclude something that not only actually exists but plays a disproportionately large role in the evil that's actually committed in the real world.

First off, my references for real life evil is not based primarily on fiction or folklore. It’s based on histories, testimonies (both victim and perpetrator), archival material, articles, research papers etc. I assume this is just a cheap shot because I make references to a TV show. Fair enough. Here's another one from Criminal Minds.

Derek Morgan: Rossi, don't tell me you believe in evil.
David Rossi: Don't tell me you do this job and you don't.
Derek Morgan: I believe there are evil acts, but those are choices - brain chemistry. What do you think, Hotch?
Aaron 'Hotch' Hotchner: I think, deep down, we're all capable of unspeakable things. Where it starts or what you call it, I don't know.

Second, I do not exclude psychopaths from my games. I exclude races based on the concept of psychopaths because they do not jibe with my concept of heroic fantasy and because I model evil on real life and I have yet to encounter a race of psychopaths. However my imagination is quite capable of accpeting a race of pyschopaths but I don't think I could pull it off.

There may be no irredeambley evil races in my games but there are irredeamably evil individuals. As I said I base the evil in my games based on real world acts (psychopaths included) personified in individuals or groups in the game. Please respond to what I write and and not to what others write.

QuoteI'm not saying that you should only have psychopathic evil in your game.  I'm saying that maybe your game shouldn't be sanitized of it if your goal is to reflect the full range of real human behavior.  If you want to sanitize psychopaths out of your games because of personal preference or taste, that's no different than sanitizing a game of rape, slavery, or other horrible things because of personal preference or taste, and I'm fine with that.  But thenplease don't claim that doing so adds more depth to a game because I don't think less is more.

I never said I want to sanitize my games. I did say my conception of heroism is limited and that I would reject certain acts that I don’t consider heroic. The question of depth was not a response to sanitization but rather the question of why I don’t use irredeemable evil races in MY games.

The answer was because I think it brings more depth to MY games when the players see that their social workers motivations have as much influence as their butt kicking heroics.  I never meant to imply (and I don't think I did) it adds more depth to A game,( your game, CK games whoevers) . Depth here had nothing to with personal preference or taste but rather how I (and my players) view the setting and their role in it.

Again you seem to be implying that if a game does not have psychopaths it’s sanitized. Nonsense. In fact I would argue that evil committed by people who are not psychopaths is more horrific because they are not fucked in the head. As I said in my first post in, some people use evil races without the horrible implications of having evil races and that’s ok.  

QuoteWhat I'm looking for is your "all things considered" final assessment at the end of the movie.  Overall, at the end of the movie, is Ripley a hero or not?  Is she a good person or not?  Can a hero or good person commit genocide and still be a hero or good person?  Ripley tried to kill all of the Aliens, including Alien children

I believe I answered that but in case you missed it, here it is again:

I don’t see how I can be any clearer. Ripley’s act of going back for Newt was heroic. Her act of (not spiteful but rather rage filled – understandable since the people who had worked with her and in Aliens fought with her and given up their lives in some instances, were killed by them ) genocide was pragmatic.

I don’t think a person who commits genocide against a species which is not evil but which is a threat to her kind is a hero. I fully concede that my conception of “hero” is limited in scope.

QuoteWhat I'm talking about is when the protagonist, portrayed as the good guy, does something that makes you feel that maybe they aren't the good guy.  I doubt very much the writers and makers of Goldeneye decided to show James Bond mowing down Russian police officers to make the audience think he was the bad guy

Well in the James Bond example it's the casual demonizing of the other, in this case evil Russians. The Good guy is allowed to get away with such actions well, because the "others" are the 'bad guys'. But I get what you’re saying. Read my response above for what I think of Ripley.

QuoteSpecifically, with respect to role-playing, this is about the claim that the players shouldn't feel like they are playing good heroes if their characters engage in certain behavior.  I'm trying to figure out when people think role-playing characters lose their status as good heroes.

The criteria varies between groups I suppose. I think I have given you examples of what I think is unheroic. Genocide for one, regardless of whether a race is evil or not.

QuoteAnd if the corporation didn't send people to them and nobody ever landed on that planet again, they'd still be eggs locked in statis for eternity, which is preferable to or morally different from genocide how, exactly?

Um, we would not be the ones doing the genociding ? What’s your point ?

QuoteOn the one hand, early in this thread, people were claiming that it was lazy worldbuilding to not think these issues through and now I'm being told that it's not my job as a worldbuilder to think these things through.  So which is right?

You know something Morrow, this is getting tedious. I never once said it was lazy world building to not think these issue through. My response was to your question of how I define evil. Don’t use me as a stand in for arguments or discussion that you had or are having with other posters.

QuoteAnd accepting that assessment for the sake of argument, I think that a setting can have room for both Burkes and Aliens and including the Aliens does not make the setting inferior to or more shallow than a setting that includes only Burkes.

See, I never claimed otherwise. Y’know I can keep saying this but you are going to carry on making these ridiculous strawmen instead of addressing what I actually wrote.

QuoteI don't think any of the humans in Aliens really changed their core nature.  Burke certainly didn't get a chance for redemption.  Gorman wasn't a coward so much as he was green and in over his head.  Hudson's backstory was that he was a few weeks away from retirement, not that he was chicken.  There were no Darth Vader picking up the Emperor and throwing him into a chasm or Jules deciding he was done being a hit man that I can see.

Fair enough. My view is that it’s not neccesarry for every character to have a shot of redemption. As for Gorman it was just another example of the difference between the “warrior structures” of the humans and aliens. The former plagued by politics or whatever. The fact is that his greenness got people killed something he realized and he took steps to correct it even if it meant his own death.

I think there a little bit of chicken in Hudson - "game over, man”, “let Bishop, go” - and the knife scene between him, Bishop and Drake. Anyway, for me it showed change, not the big kind like you mentioned but in the context of the film, enough to highlight difference between the aliens and them.

QuoteWhen you talk about certain choices adding depth or being more interesting, the implication is that other choices lack depth or are less interesting.  The more explicit comments about lazy worldbuilding and so on came from others earlier in the thread.

Not at all. Maybe the online discourse has got so bad that whenever we talk about the choices we make in our games it automatically means that the other choices are less interesting or inferior. What works for me may not work for you. I have treid to answer your question honestly and not disparage any other preferences.

I think I have been pretty clear of what I find interesting and what I don’t, without disparaging your preference and if I thought I did I was quick to make it clear when I was wrong or behaving like a dick.

QuoteIf you don't think the choice to have inherently and irredeemably monsters in a game is a bad or inferior choice, then are we disagreeing about anything here other than play preference?

I think part of this discussion is you building strawmen and wondering why I'm burning them down. Another part of this discussion is about my definition of heroism and how it differs from yours.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;4818611) A psychopath is very different from a species of psychopaths, as has been pointed out many times. Psychopaths are parasitic on ordinary morality, not a replacement for it.

It has been claimed but not supported.  An assertion is not a proof.

Yes, you can argue that psychopaths are parasitic on ordinary people but what makes you think an entire species of monsters cannot be parasitic on ordinary humans?  I'm not suggesting creating a world inhabited only by monsters, am I?  This objection is like claiming that you can't have a society of vampires because they are parasitic and need the blood of others to live on.  That's only a problem if you imagine a world with insufficient humans for them to feed on (see Daybreakers).

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;4818612) Something can be offensive for aesthetic reasons - the term "offensive" is descriptive of the emotion(s) provoked, not a description of the process by which that emotion arises, and can therefore be equivocal. The smell of shit is offensive. The music of Britney Spears is offensive. Advocating the racial inferiority of non-whites is offensive.

The emotion provoked is disgust and once an aesthetic choice produces that emotional response, it carries the weight of a moral decision such that the person feeling the emotion often not only believes that the aesthetic in question disgusts them personally but should disgust every other decent person or else there is something wrong with them.

ADDED:  And, I'm sorry if it offends you, but I actually like Toxic.

Quote from: John Morrow;481845For the most part, I agree with that. The things people seem to be questioning are (1) whether the Paladin can ever be 100% sure and (2) whether an a Paladin could be certain about an entire type of monster because of their nature. I am not saying that either of these is required. What I am saying is that the answer to both, in a fantasy setting with magic and monsters, can (not "must" or "should" but "can") be "yes" and that there are reasons other than crypto-racism or laziness why a person might want to do that in their game.

Edit: Yes, that seems right to me although my personal preference is trending toward simplicity. So there's less sword fights with Satan and more knife fights with a dog.
 

QuoteAbsolutely. And if an entire species of creature is incapable of feeling remorse because their brains lack the capacity to?

Then they'd keep on doing what they do, unless theres some sort of non-remorse reason for them to change their behavior. (Such as when the Tarrarasque goes back to sleep. Or when a demilich makes his final voyage beyond prime material plane to places unknown.)
 

QuoteAnd if you knew for certain that they were guilty of past crimes, knew for certain that they enjoyed committing those crimes, and knew for certain that they were incapable of feeling remorse for what they did or really caring about their victims, where would your views of them be on that spectrum?

I'd be at 100% terror and 0% outrage. I don't see how I could be outraged at something that has no choice in the matter. It's like being angry at a 'naughty' toaster or a 'mischievious' cliff. I don't anthropomorphise inanimate objects -- they hate it!

137 pages about whether or not Orcs are evil based on a so-so article?

Holy crap.


- Ed C.