Quote from: David R;482325Not really. I don't see that. Like I said, there are some inbuilt moral assumptions in the game (D&D), although I don't think Dray has any real understanding of them. Like I said the conversation has moved on. The question here has become ,I think, which was no doubt sparked off by Dray's post are gamers attitudes towards evil races in their games.

Regards,
David R

I don't see that at all. I see people trying to say that some ways of viewing evil and evil races is inferior to others. They are using real world morality to try to make this case. It's wrong. My fantasy world is whatever I make it, and judging me and my world-building skills only on the criteria of whether I include irredeemably evil monsters in my pretend world is an unsupportable position. Now if you and John are enjoying talking about morality in a more general or opinion-based way, then have at it. That's not what Pseudo is saying, however. Pseudo is trying to hammer his moral rules into everyone else's games, condemning anyone who doesn't agree with him as "lazy worldbuilders" or "pretentious twits". Hell, he can't even use the word "pretentious" correctly, and I thought I was the one without a formal education. I might be obnoxious at times, but I'm certainly not pretentious.

Quote from: Sigmund;482327We all get it. You would not enjoy a game that includes irredeemable evil or orc babies. Peregrin wouldn't either, but at least he admitted it's his and his group's own preferences, and not some moral rule. He remained open to being convinced, and agreed to think about it. That kind of dissenting opinion is the perfect one, IMO. he didn't belittle anyone else's PoV or opinions, he simply presented his own and then agreed to think about it. I think we're at the point where we all would be best served by doing the same.

Sigmund, it's irrelevent that I don't use evil races in my games or that John does in his games. What I was objecting to was your comment to psuedoephedrine along the lines of who cares about moral philosophy (reasoning) and that it's just a fantasy game. Obviously our moral reasoning informs our games or part of it. I get that you don't like what psuedoephedrine has been saying but let's keep a bit of perspective here.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;482328I don't think it is lazy worldbuilding. Personally it isn't my cup of tea because I want races and cultures in my setting to be more historically rooted. Different kinds of settings call for different levels of texture. But I don't think my real world knowledge of history, religion or philsophy always has to factor into a game setting. I don't expect the GM to be a renaissance man who brings thousands of years of accumulated knowledge to the setting design table. I just want a fun and enjoyable setting. If the economic system wouldn't work in real life, that isn't going to interfere with my enjoyment (in fact it a much more interesting game world than one produced by an economist like Ben Stein---though I suspect he is secretly one of the world's greatest GMs). By the same token if the world's cosmology and morality have a few holes that  philosopher could find, it isn't going to ruin the game for me.

I know ya don't brother, and I agree with ya. I don't even have orcs in my own world. I just find the idea that if I were to include irredeemably evil orcs in my game world, despite the years of geographic and historical study, map-making, note-taking, and system adaption, I'd somehow suddenly be a lazy world-builder, or worse a racist, to be elitism of the worst kind and completely unsupportable.

Quote from: David R;482331Sigmund, it's irrelevent that I don't use evil races in my games or that John does in his games. What I was objecting to was your comment to psuedoephedrine along the lines of who cares about moral philosophy (reasoning) and that it's just a fantasy game. Obviously our moral reasoning informs our games or part of it. I get that you don't like what psuedoephedrine has been saying but let's keep a bit of perspective here.

Regards,
David R

Fair enough. I should have said to Pseudo, "Who cares about your moral philosophy". I stand corrected.

Edit: In my (admittedly weak) defense, I allowed him to piss me off. I'd be better served by not doing that.

Quote from: John Morrow;482232I would actually argue that the Greeks could actually be quite evil.  I'm still surprised that anyone considers the Spartans admirable.  You want to see a real human example of a violent psychopathic parasite culture in action (*cough* Helots *cough*), take a close look at the Spartans.

I guess I could have phrased that better. My point was that the myths weren't about a conflict between good and evil (certainly not as we'd define those things today... sometimes not even as they'd define those things back then).

The Greeks themselves? The characters in their myths? The things they did? Yeah, that stuff might be good or evil but it was sort of incidental. Had little to do with the premise of the story a lot of the time.

Quote from: Sigmund;482329I don't see that at all. I see people trying to say that some ways of viewing evil and evil races is inferior to others. They are using real world morality to try to make this case. It's wrong. My fantasy world is whatever I make it, and judging me and my world-building skills only on the criteria of whether I include irredeemably evil monsters in my pretend world is an unsupportable position. Now if you and John are enjoying talking about morality in a more general or opinion-based way, then have at it. That's not what Pseudo is saying, however. Pseudo is trying to hammer his moral rules into everyone else's games, condemning anyone who doesn't agree with him as "lazy worldbuilders" or "pretentious twits". Hell, he can't even use the word "pretentious" correctly, and I thought I was the one without a formal education. I might be obnoxious at times, but I'm certainly not pretentious.

I get what you are saying although I think psuedoephedrine's argument is more nuanced than that. I hope you understand where I'm coming from.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;482303I don't see why a fantasy setting has to align with our own personal assessments of evil and good, or why it has to be subject to a thorough philosophical analysis. I mean I have my own ideas about what good means, how that relates to the existence/non-existence of god, etc, but I can imagine a setting where all of my assumptions and knowledge aren't meaningful. That is half the fun.

It doesn't have to align with your own beliefs. It simply has to be consistent and well-thought through. I don't believe human sacrifice is a good thing, but I include cultures with it in almost every game I run.

Quote from: Sigmund;482329I don't see that at all. I see people trying to say that some ways of viewing evil and evil races is inferior to others. They are using real world morality to try to make this case. It's wrong. My fantasy world is whatever I make it, and judging me and my world-building skills only on the criteria of whether I include irredeemably evil monsters in my pretend world is an unsupportable position. Now if you and John are enjoying talking about morality in a more general or opinion-based way, then have at it. That's not what Pseudo is saying, however. Pseudo is trying to hammer his moral rules into everyone else's games, condemning anyone who doesn't agree with him as "lazy worldbuilders" or "pretentious twits". Hell, he can't even use the word "pretentious" correctly, and I thought I was the one without a formal education. I might be obnoxious at times, but I'm certainly not pretentious.

I called you "pretentious" because you are. You're certainly happy to claim special knowledge of matters when you feel you can get away with it (your whining post about how hard your own life has been and how other gamers don't know anything about darkness), and you jump back and forth from trying to assert your opinions (badly) and claiming that thinking too much about these things is irrelevant whenever someone punches a hole in your nonsense.

I challenged you to summarise my viewpoint, and you still haven't. You are pretending to understand the views of others on this thread despite consistently getting them wrong. David R has had to spend a half-dozen posts that I've seen just pointing out to you that all the shit you've been arguing against has nothing to do with anything, and that you don't actually understand his point of view or anyone else's.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;482339It doesn't have to align with your own beliefs. It simply has to be consistent and well-thought through. I don't believe human sacrifice is a good thing, but I include cultures with it in almost every game I run.

I didn't think you were coming from a position of it needs to align with your beliefs. But I think your standard for believability is much higher than most peoples when it comes to cosmology (it is a perfectly fine standard though). But I think Sigmund is just saying your standard isn't one he feels needs to be used across the board in all campaigns.

For what it is worth I think a thorughly vetted and scrutinized cosmology like the one you seem to use in your game would be great fun. But I can also enjoy a much simpler, "there are good gods and evil gods, morality flows from the cosmology itself", kind of world (without fretting over the philosophical implications of it).

For me it largely depends on what the world builder is trying to achieve. I wouldn't hold every kind of game setting to the same standards of consinstency and logic.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;482342You're certainly happy to claim special knowledge of matters when you feel you can get away with it (your whining post about how hard your own life has been and how other gamers don't know anything about darkness), and you jump back and forth from trying to assert your opinions (badly) and claiming that thinking too much about these things is irrelevant whenever someone punches a hole in your nonsense.

I claim knowledge I have, what I don't do is pretend I'm somehow better than everyone else because of that knowledge like you do. I shared my personal experience to put things in perspective, quit whining that it shows how you're taking this shit too seriously. It's odd how many other folks get what I'm saying just fine, but you seem to have difficulty with it, if you can be believed (which I doubt, another opinion of mine is that you'll say anything to "win"). Perhaps the difficulty isn't mine after all. However, by all means, keep talking out your ass. We need some comedic relief in this thread.

I'd like to respond to you, Pseudo, but at this point I honestly have no idea how.  All you're demonstrating, in paragraph after paragraph is your inability to conceive of a cosmology beyond our own or a refusal to accept that it may change how humans view things like good, evil, or morality.  

There is a difference between a false belief in a god who supposedly reveals himself through natural events that cannot be proven, only believed in and a real god who actually reveals himself through supernatural events that prove the existence of the god and leave no doubt as to his wishes or will.

You can state "I'm wrong" all day long, however, it doesn't make it so.

The entire body of religious, historical, philosophical and moral thought of Earth was created in a context of the former, ie. false belief.

You can create a cosmology in which a fantasy deity has to follow the metaphysical rules of a world with no real deities or you could create a cosmology where the actual existence of gods has shaped man's response to them somewhat differently.

What you might call, simplistic, uneducated, or uninformed, I would call having imagination.

Quote from: Sigmund;482346I claim knowledge I have, what I don't do is pretend I'm somehow better than everyone else because of that knowledge like you do. I shared my personal experience to put things in perspective, quite whining that it shows how you're taking this shit too seriously. It's odd how many other folks get what I'm saying just fine, but you seem to have difficulty with it, if you can be believed (which I doubt, another opinion of mine is that you'll say anything to "win"). Perhaps the difficulty isn't mine after all. However, by all means, keep talking out your ass. We need some comedic relief in this thread.

I don't have any trouble understanding what you're saying. Your position is merely of psychological value for its insight into you, rather than deserving to be taken as any sort of rational consideration or empirical observation.

My position has remained exactly the same throughout this thread. Since you seem unable to summarise it (you still have not, despite boasting that you could), I would suggest you go back and read my posts more carefully than you obviously did the first time.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;482344I didn't think you were coming from a position of it needs to align with your beliefs. But I think your standard for believability is much higher than most peoples when it comes to cosmology (it is a perfectly fine standard though). But I think Sigmund is just saying your standard isn't one he feels needs to be used across the board in all campaigns.

For what it is worth I think a thorughly vetted and scrutinized cosmology like the one you seem to use in your game would be great fun. But I can also enjoy a much simpler, "there are good gods and evil gods, morality flows from the cosmology itself", kind of world (without fretting over the philosophical implications of it).

For me it largely depends on what the world builder is trying to achieve. I wouldn't hold every kind of game setting to the same standards of consinstency and logic.

I specifically held out genre games as following different standards. I also specifically said that some games were fine with lazy world-building due to other factors.

I don't know what "hold[ing]" games to standards means here, since I have no power over other people except to mock their idiocy and punch holes in their arguments. I evaluate all settings that are not genre settings with a consistent set of standards, and some are better designed and some worse. I can't make people change their settings, so I can't "hold" them to anything. But evaluating them using a relatively consistent set of standards is only fair.

Quote from: CRKrueger;482348I'd like to respond to you, Pseudo, but at this point I honestly have no idea how.  All you're demonstrating, in paragraph after paragraph is your inability to conceive of a cosmology beyond our own or a refusal to accept that it may change how humans view things like good, evil, or morality.  

There is a difference between a false belief in a god who supposedly reveals himself through natural events that cannot be proven, only believed in and a real god who actually reveals himself through supernatural events that prove the existence of the god and leave no doubt as to his wishes or will.

You can state "I'm wrong" all day long, however, it doesn't make it so.

The entire body of religious, historical, philosophical and moral thought of Earth was created in a context of the former, ie. false belief.

You can create a cosmology in which a fantasy deity has to follow the metaphysical rules of a world with no real deities or you could create a cosmology where the actual existence of gods has shaped man's response to them somewhat differently.

What you might call, simplistic, uneducated, or uninformed, I would call having imagination.

If you cannot imagine the worldview of people in the past, I would not call it "having an imagination". You seem unable to understand that they believed in exactly the kind of magical, holy world you have displaced strictly into fantasy, and that the intellectual heritage they left us adequately describes both kinds of worlds (ours and theirs).

This is why your repeated complaints that I am somehow hampered by my atheism are bizarre. I am, if anything, the only person taking the world view of the genuinely religious Christian seriously in this entire thread.

All you're doing at this point is trying to snake out of the examples (the ancient Jews), and the reasoning (Might does not make right) of how a powerful god does not change what is good or bad.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;482352I specifically held out genre games as following different standards. I also specifically said that some games were fine with lazy world-building due to other factors.

I still wouldn't call it lazy world building. You are going to focus on different things for different genres and different styles of play. Just because someone can imagine a setting where morality doesn't adhere neatly to real-world moral philosophy, that doesn't mean there isn't lots of elbow grease involved.

QuoteI don't know what "hold[ing]" games to standards means here, since I have no power over other people except to mock their idiocy and punch holes in their arguments. I evaluate all settings that are not genre settings with a consistent set of standards, and some are better designed and some worse. I can't make people change their settings, so I can't "hold" them to anything. But evaluating them using a relatively consistent set of standards is only fair.

Well, if you  mock people, you are going to get consistently negative reactions. And they aren't going to listen to your criticisms. You seem like a very intelligent guy, with some creative ideas. I am sure in person you are perfeclty friendly. But when you make posts like this, attacking something as innocuous as my use of the word "holding" you come off as a bit pedandic. It just feels like you are belittling others to make yourself feel smart.