Quote from: Thor's Nads on August 26, 2023, 03:48:37 PM

Unfortunately that is not what it means to a majority of people. And the commies use language as a weapon by redefining terms.

Of course the majority of people, as proven by testing, have a vocabulary no greater than a 4th grader and even lower general education level.  Courtesy of the libtards run the public EDU system.  Easier to control idiots that educated people.

Quote from: Nameless Mist on August 26, 2023, 03:55:30 PM

While I agree with you on the political stuff, I think there's been a lot of good music from the 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s, but it's just rarely played on the radio.

Of course there is.  The problem is that unlike the 60's, 70's & early 80's 99% of it is total crap and you have to mine the cesspool for days to find anything good.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 26, 2023, 11:55:14 AM
The book is infinitely better, Verhoeven didn't even read it IIRC. Or if he did he understood jack shit, and it shows since his movie fails to present the Bugs as anything but genocidal communist monsters, the humans as justified and the Federation as a fair government.

I highly recomend you to read it.

That's the hilarious thing about the film. It makes Fascism look justified and correct. As a satire, it's garbage.
It is a good satire of people who misunderstand satire, but I doubt Verhoeven went that meta intentionally.

As a mindless action flick, I put in on par with flicks like Transformers (live action) or Battleship. And I think that's where it's popularity mostly resides.

Quote from: Nameless Mist on August 26, 2023, 03:55:30 PM

As for gaming, 3.0 and 3.5 D&D were pretty good IMHO.  So is Pathfinder 1E.  All of those were in the 2000s.  WOTC surely has a lot of problems as a company, but their initial run with D&D was good.  And 5E serves its purpose as a simplified version of D&D for newer players.  Granted, I'm not optimistic about the upcoming 5.5.

3.0/3.5 hasn't aged well, but it did make some important improvements like ascending AC.
I was surprised at how good 5e was, after 4 I was so jaded I wouldn't have anything to do with WotC D&D so I came to 5e kicking and screaming.

6.0 or whatever they call it is a train wreck. It's painfully obviously going to be terrible.

Quote from: Thor's Nads on August 26, 2023, 06:44:01 PM

Quote from: Nameless Mist on August 26, 2023, 03:55:30 PM

As for gaming, 3.0 and 3.5 D&D were pretty good IMHO.  So is Pathfinder 1E.  All of those were in the 2000s.  WOTC surely has a lot of problems as a company, but their initial run with D&D was good.  And 5E serves its purpose as a simplified version of D&D for newer players.  Granted, I'm not optimistic about the upcoming 5.5.

3.0/3.5 hasn't aged well, but it did make some important improvements like ascending AC.
I was surprised at how good 5e was, after 4 I was so jaded I wouldn't have anything to do with WotC D&D so I came to 5e kicking and screaming.

6.0 or whatever they call it is a train wreck. It's painfully obviously going to be terrible.

For me, Pathfinder 1E was the best system because of its expansion from D&D 3.5E mechanics.

I can see the appeal of D&D 2E, but I only played it when I was very young.  I remember enjoying it, but 3E just has so much more customization.

For systems that have less number crunching, I actually prefer the old World of Darkness games.  They even have several medieval modules if you dislike modern settings.

Criticizing the original points from a perspective these calls never consider -- that of what makes a working game and business product.

1. Don't link ability modifiers to species.

The reason preset ability modifiers, or ability sets, are listed for species backgrounds isn't because of a biased belief in essentialism, or to deny players or GMs the capacity to create variants that go outside the standard parameters (which they can do at any time).  It's purely and simply to save time.

Character templates of any kind are shortcuts that let players select prepackaged sets of design decisions rather than having to review and choose every single option themselves every time. If someone honestly thinks taking that kind of shortcut is going to promote racism among gamers in real life, I'd suggest his or her opinion of humanity is already so low that wanting to voluntarily associate with them for leisure and entertainment makes no sense.

2. Don't present species as monolithic.

The average bestiary entry in a classic-sized hardback core rulebook takes up a third to a half of a page. If every even semi-intelligent species with something resembling a culture has to be given at least three different subcultures to not appear monolithic, this is going to increase the page count of the volume by at least 25%, probably more.

The plain truth is that what most GMs need and want out of a potential antagonist are their combat stats and an excuse or two for them to fight the PCs, nothing more. Overloading a book with unneeded fluff is a good way to create a product that loses money, and a product that loses money is a good way to discourage further such products.

3. Don't list intelligent species as foes to fight in your bestiary.

This is like saying that you have to create a separate list of statted entities which cannot be used as foes, which is not only inefficient (this now either takes up space in other corebooks or requires a separate new book of its own) but pointless (wherever a statted entity is listed, if the GM wants to use it as a player opponent, he will).

All game-tailored simulations of any element of reality are going to simplify that element to an implausible degree once sufficiently analyzed. You want to eliminate racism from a secondary world? Set it in Eden before the Fall, and see how long it takes your players to get bored.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on August 26, 2023, 07:56:56 PM

3. Don't list intelligent species as foes to fight in your bestiary.

What complete moron came up with this idea?  Just fight that which has animal or lower int?

Quote from: Ratman_tf on August 26, 2023, 06:37:27 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 26, 2023, 11:55:14 AM
The book is infinitely better, Verhoeven didn't even read it IIRC. Or if he did he understood jack shit, and it shows since his movie fails to present the Bugs as anything but genocidal communist monsters, the humans as justified and the Federation as a fair government.

I highly recomend you to read it.

That's the hilarious thing about the film. It makes Fascism look justified and correct. As a satire, it's garbage.
It is a good satire of people who misunderstand satire, but I doubt Verhoeven went that meta intentionally.

As a mindless action flick, I put in on par with flicks like Transformers (live action) or Battleship. And I think that's where it's popularity mostly resides.

If the Federation were black communists exterminating white capitalists, he'd probably consider them heroes.

Also, there's no evidence given in the movie that they're fascist. They're never depicted heroically executing people for wrong think, when it's easy to find wokebros being celebrated for abusing women for wrongthink. I cannot take Verhoven seriously when the global left are the fascists now. Or "communists" as they call themselves. As if that makes a difference.

In the original book, Johny was actually named Juan and Filipino. The movie adaptation is lambasted by Filipino scifi fans as racist whitewashing. So Verhoven is literally guilty of multiple counts of whitewashing. I don't think many of the characters actually have their precise appearances or races stated. You could make a multiracial cast and be perfectly in line with the novel.

It's not even fascist. The text is too vague to make a statement either way. The Federation even takes prisoners of war to negotiate with the bugs, so they're not actually a faceless genocidal horde. For all we know, the war is eventually resolved with a treaty and less genocide than Ender's Game. Heinlein should've focused more on the politics and war itself to actually explain the culture.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on August 26, 2023, 07:56:56 PM
Criticizing the original points from a perspective these calls never consider -- that of what makes a working game and business product.

1. Don't link ability modifiers to species.

The reason preset ability modifiers, or ability sets, are listed for species backgrounds isn't because of a biased belief in essentialism, or to deny players or GMs the capacity to create variants that go outside the standard parameters (which they can do at any time).  It's purely and simply to save time.

Character templates of any kind are shortcuts that let players select prepackaged sets of design decisions rather than having to review and choose every single option themselves every time. If someone honestly thinks taking that kind of shortcut is going to promote racism among gamers in real life, I'd suggest his or her opinion of humanity is already so low that wanting to voluntarily associate with them for leisure and entertainment makes no sense.

2. Don't present species as monolithic.

The average bestiary entry in a classic-sized hardback core rulebook takes up a third to a half of a page. If every even semi-intelligent species with something resembling a culture has to be given at least three different subcultures to not appear monolithic, this is going to increase the page count of the volume by at least 25%, probably more.

The plain truth is that what most GMs need and want out of a potential antagonist are their combat stats and an excuse or two for them to fight the PCs, nothing more. Overloading a book with unneeded fluff is a good way to create a product that loses money, and a product that loses money is a good way to discourage further such products.

3. Don't list intelligent species as foes to fight in your bestiary.

This is like saying that you have to create a separate list of statted entities which cannot be used as foes, which is not only inefficient (this now either takes up space in other corebooks or requires a separate new book of its own) but pointless (wherever a statted entity is listed, if the GM wants to use it as a player opponent, he will).

All game-tailored simulations of any element of reality are going to simplify that element to an implausible degree once sufficiently analyzed. You want to eliminate racism from a secondary world? Set it in Eden before the Fall, and see how long it takes your players to get bored.

All of this and then some:

So there's NO intelligent species as enemies... What happens when we reach third level? how many of the beasts of the world present a threat anymore? You would need to make say Dragons beasts to have them be dangerous and suitable enemies, part of what makes D&D Dragons dangerous is precisely their intelligence.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on August 26, 2023, 07:56:56 PM
Criticizing the original points from a perspective these calls never consider -- that of what makes a working game and business product.

All game-tailored simulations of any element of reality are going to simplify that element to an implausible degree once sufficiently analyzed. You want to eliminate racism from a secondary world? Set it in Eden before the Fall, and see how long it takes your players to get bored.

Not going to quote your entire post, but there was much to disagree with and a few things to agree with. You are right about the problems with making intelligent cultures non-monolithic in the space of an entry. You'd have to write an entire book to even do a single intelligent culture, say elves or kangaroo men, justice. A monster entry is short hand.

Monsters, and character races are more than a bag of hit points. Monsters are best thought of as puzzles for the player's to solve how to defeat. Shear combat stats are not the sum of the problem. Likewise character races are chosen more for flavor, of course some player's are min-maxers, but they tend to disrupt the fun for everyone.

But ability bonus/penalties are every bit a part of flavor as anything else. I'd expect a rhino-man race to have a higher strength than a mouse-man race. To make them the same is to ruin what makes them interesting, the distinction, and the fun.

Quote from: Thor's Nads on August 27, 2023, 12:26:52 PMMonsters, and character races are more than a bag of hit points. Monsters are best thought of as puzzles for the players to solve how to defeat. Sheer combat stats are not the sum of the problem.

That's a very good point, and you're right. But while the numbers aren't the be-all and end-all they are an indispensable component, at least of anything that's resolved through the mechanical systems of the game.

The point I was criticizing was the original argument's claim that it's "racist" to quantify a standard baseline for an entity type, by pointing out that you can't have an actual viable game product if you refuse to do this. (This is also one of the reasons that I never considered FUDGE to be a finished complete roleplaying game; it gave you all the tools you need to build such a game, but it didn't actually make enough of the decisions to give you a ready-to-play out-of-the-box product.)

QuoteBut ability bonus/penalties are every bit a part of flavor as anything else. I'd expect a rhino-man race to have a higher strength than a mouse-man race. To make them the same is to ruin what makes them interesting, the distinction, and the fun.

This also is true -- the division between "fluff" and "crunch" is not as absolute as it seems, and the simple product of choices in crunch will imply a lot of fluff all by itself.

What the original argument seems to think is that the fluff is the only place where you can allow creature types to be differentiated, or to have comparative advantages or disadvantages over each other -- that the moment you make this something numerical that affects dice outcomes, it's "racist".

Five pages of this shit.

Want to know how to make your TTRPG is not racist? Simply remember that you can't be racist against an imaginary being. Orcs don't exist except in your imagination, so therefore it is easy to not be racist against them in the Real World.

It's called keeping reality and fantasy separate, people.

Quote from: jeff37923 on August 27, 2023, 09:20:43 PM
Five pages of this shit.

Want to know how to make your TTRPG is not racist? Simply remember that you can't be racist against an imaginary being. Orcs don't exist except in your imagination, so therefore it is easy to not be racist against them in the Real World.

It's called keeping reality and fantasy separate, people.

racism isn't necessarily a bad thing.  Saying that Japanese average higher IQ than a Europeans is both racist AND true.  So, not bad.

"In My Game" if you're not an Orc, you're not a person. You're sport, then you're food. If you're an Orc, or an especially entertaining beast, You get a chance to die in combat. Then you're food. If you're especially annoying, you'll get treated extra special.

This is why we do not treat with Orcs. They are savage beasts that happen to walk on two legs and look vaguely humanoid. That is just further mockery. Put them down, and harvest the bacon. Lastly, never listen to the lies that Half-Orcs are a thing. They are not a thing, and if ever one existed, surely it was a damned thing deserving only of cleansing fire (heh).

Quote from: Scooter on August 27, 2023, 09:49:01 PM
Saying that Japanese average higher IQ than a Europeans is both racist AND true.

How is that racist? Have the Left changed the definition again this week?