Quote from: Koltar;470049An out-of-date example from a now out-of-print RPG book doesn't exactly bolster your point. (12 YEARS out of date)

CURRENT players in a Star Trek role playing game KNOW that women have led fighter jet squadrons launched off of aircraft carriers - in real life.

Quote from: Koltar;470049They also have seen examples of women commanders in the STAR TREK shows made since that book was published.

I'm not really sure of your point.  Are you really saying that back in the dark ages of 1999, sexism was understandable and expected - whereas today it would be unthinkable?!?  Star Trek Voyager (with Commander Kathryn Janeway) had already been on the air for four seasons at the time that book was written - and there had already been plenty of examples of women in combat.  I was not trying to characterize all Star Trek players of sexism.  I was just giving that I happened to remember of clear sexism in a particular RPG product.  

While things may have gotten somewhat better in the last 12 years, I don't think that we have totally eliminated all sexism from RPG products in that time.  I don't know offhand of such a clear example in a current RPG product, but I haven't looked in a while either.  Do you really think that it has become impossible in the past 12 years?

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;470082In the case of the individual poster who was banned hete, i think its fair to say he would have been banned long ago on pretty much any other forum.

No shit.  It's like people somehow forgot the guy did pretty much nothing but troll threads and make pointless arguments for the sake of being a contrarian for the last several years.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;470055I don't think it's "thought control", but yes, it does stifle certain kinds of obnoxious speech that should be dealt with by individuals confronting the dipshits in question, rather than hammering them with the easily abused authority of the mods.

Now, are you going to admit that you lied when you said that you don't temp-ban people, and man up more generally to unban Seanchai (and walkerp, for that matter)?

We don't temp-ban people. We permaban them, and when we do its a permanent deal.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;470084Welcome to theRPGsite, bro. You must be new if you are confusing talking with Pundit for rational debate in any way, shape or form. Pundit is a persona, not a person, and is no more susceptible to rational argumentation about what he should do than Hamlet is mid-performance.

The hive-mid that is Pundit seems pretty rational to me, but like you mentioned, I'm new. It's still got that new site smell.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;470082Have to say the mod policies and enforcement here I've found very refreshing. In the case of the individual poster who was banned hete, i think its fair to say he would have been banned long ago on pretty much any other forum.

So? Pundit would also have been banned long ago on pretty much any other forum. Actually, he has been banned on RPGNet, ENWorld, and probably elsewhere. So have a lot of other active posters on this site. One of the original objectives of this forum was to create an environment where this does not happen (the other one was the appreciation of traditional games, which, especially at that time, were attacked with a lot of disingenuous deconstructionist bullshit elsewhere). Therefore, while I find the place generally fair and refreshing, it is also more galling when bans are handed out on the basis of "I don't like this guy". Nobody is exactly crying over Jackalope or Cylonophile. Well, nobody is crying much over Seanchai either, but I will maintain his ban was a miscarriage of justice.

The RPGNet threads have taught me a very valuable thing.  They taught me how to tailor my work to best exclude the choads that make what I love suck.

Also, I'm quite okay with Seanchai's ban.

Quote from: Melan;470132Therefore, while I find the place generally fair and refreshing, it is also more galling when bans are handed out on the basis of "I don't like this guy".

It sounds like some people didn't know the difference between license and freedom to be honest, and there is an important difference. The kind of freedom I see on the RPGsite isn't particularly a plus or minus to me, I don't personally need it to do what I do, but I can definetely see the wider need for it.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;470154The RPGNet threads have taught me a very valuable thing.  They taught me how to tailor my work to best exclude the choads that make what I love suck.

There's a lot of truth in this. It's one thing to make a game that you feel good about sharing with your friends and family and that a wide range of people would enjoy playing... it's another thing try and bend over backwards to make a game that hardcore complainers online will find acceptable.

I regret Seanchai was banned. If he was "tolerated" for many years I don't see why he couldn't stay some more. I don't think he's such a disturbance and I can't see what horrible thing he did this time. I have ignored many of his posts, especially when he answered sentences after sentences of his target of the day. I'm not saying he's a model member. But he also makes smart observations and has a talent to reveal elephants in the room. I know Pundit won't come back on his decision. It was a lame decision though.

The fact that we can recall pretty much everyone who has been banned here since it became theRPGSite many years ago pretty much proves that the moderation is pretty light.

The only ones I recall are:
* The guy who wouldn't stop stalking Koltar
* The guy who wouldn't stop talking about his issues with age of consent / attraction to minors
* The guy who wouldn't stop talking about his extreme views on politics (you know, the whole "humanity just needs to die" thing)
* The few guys who solely came here to disrupt the site and talk smack about Pundit, usually an invasion from some other site
* The guy who did absolutely nothing but troll threads and make circular, contrarian arguments.

Did I miss anybody?

Personally, I miss being able to use the bat slap image a lot more than I'll miss those guys.  

Quote from: jhkim;470042It seems like this is making sexism into an exaggerated binary - i.e. either there is no sexism anywhere in the hobby, or the hobby is so sexist that an all-women campaign would be totally impossible because virtually all women would be driven out.  I see lots of women players as well, but that doesn't mean that the hobby is completely free of any sexism.  

Well, it really depends if one is defining "The Hobby" as the games themselves, the game designers, or everything including the players. I'm sure there are plenty of sexist people who are also roleplayers, but just as there are probably tons of football fans who are racist, that doesn't make football racist.

QuoteI don't think the RPG hobby is outrageously sexist, but sexism exists within general society and it exists in our hobby as well.

I think the biggest difference is that sexism/gender discrimination IRL is a big problem of society that I think requires an ongoing struggle for equality. Sexism in gaming is, well, inconsequential to the world in the same way sexism in porn is. RPGs are entertainment, and entertainment is, by it's nature , a solipsistic pursuit.  

QuoteAs for what in the books can be sexist:
1) People have already mentioned illustrations.  Illustrations can follow a trend of sexist stereotypes, even if such isn't intended.  If women are almost never powerful and almost always sexy, that conveys a negative impression.

This one is the biggest disconnect for me over sexist issues. Over on RPGnet we have people claiming that Frazetta is evil, that chainmail bikini cheesecake makes men beat their wives, and that pictures of unattractive women are somehow ethically and artistically superior to pictures of attractive women, regardless of their submissiveness.

The fact is that no one has ever (and I'm not talking about online RPG-based forums, I mean IRL, in history, ever) produced any proof that cheesecake art causes any harm nor increases sexism. And, speaking as someone who made a nice living selling cheesecake art just after getting out of art school in the late 90s, I also know that the overwhelming majority of customers for cheesecake art are women (in NY anyways).

On top of all of that, every example (that's actually from a published RPG and not a random Google search that posts DeviantArt or stills from video games as if they have some relevance to a discussion of the RPG industry) given of "evil cheesecake art" I've seen online either comes from 2 or 3 specific game-lines, or a book that has been out of print for years. There is demonstratively NOT a preponderance of cheesecake art in the hobby, unless one's definition of the hobby doesn't go any further than D&D.

Despite that, whenever this issue is brought up, you have a clown-car-load of people who simply assume and accept that cheesecake art is everywhere and that it's rotting the brains of the poor, weak-willed males who can't distinguish from fantasy and reality. It's BS along the very same lines as claims that violence (or worse (gasp) sex!*) in comic books and video games corrupt our children. Going by those standards the main causes of serial killers in society is McDonalds cheeseburgers and Monopoly.

(* may not apply outside of the United States of Conservative nutbags)

Quote2) The same can be said of examples.  i.e. If the characters in rules examples or the NPCs in adventures follow patterns, that can have the same effect.  For example, the Star Trek RPG (1999) has a bunch of fiction snippets, and there are two places where women appear.  These two are as follows:

Yep those are kinda bad. And yep, they're from a game from over a decade ago that's no longer in print.

QuoteOthers have suggested that this is correctly representing the sexism of original series Star Trek - i.e. there are female officers, but they're only good for opening hailing frequencies, and they tremble at even doing that.  However, I think that's a thin excuse.  We manage to do pulps without having the incredibly racist stereotypes of the pulps from the 1930s, and we manage to make Lovecraftian adventures without including his outrageous racist caricatures.

Well, there are plenty of Call of Cthulhu adventures that incorporate racist characters, but I agree with this point at least. I said something very similar in response to Frank Miller's Sin City, a disgusting little orgy of adolescent macho fantasy from the man who spearheaded the ninja lesbian stripper meme, that people tried to defend because it was supposed to be "pulp noir". *


* - I don't personally recall any lesbian ninja prostitutes in The Third Man or The 39 Steps.

Quote from: jhkim;470087I don't know offhand of such a clear example in a current RPG product, but I haven't looked in a while either.  Do you really think that it has become impossible in the past 12 years?

Impossible? No.

Unproven until someone actually provides it? Of course. Especially if one example is being posted as an example of a supposedly hobby-wide problem.

Quote from: TristramEvans;470187This one is the biggest disconnect for me over sexist issues. Over on RPGnet we have people claiming that Frazetta is evil, that chainmail bikini cheesecake makes men beat their wives, and that pictures of unattractive women are somehow ethically and artistically superior to pictures of attractive women, regardless of their submissiveness.

The fact is that no one has ever (and I'm not talking about online RPG-based forums, I mean IRL, in history, ever) produced any proof that cheesecake art causes any harm nor increases sexism. And, speaking as someone who made a nice living selling cheesecake art just after getting out of art school in the late 90s, I also know that the overwhelming majority of customers for cheesecake art are women (in NY anyways).

On top of all of that, every example (that's actually from a published RPG and not a random Google search that posts DeviantArt or stills from video games as if they have some relevance to a discussion of the RPG industry) given of "evil cheesecake art" I've seen online either comes from 2 or 3 specific game-lines, or a book that has been out of print for years. There is demonstratively NOT a preponderance of cheesecake art in the hobby, unless one's definition of the hobby doesn't go any further than D&D.

Despite that, whenever this issue is brought up, you have a clown-car-load of people who simply assume and accept that cheesecake art is everywhere and that it's rotting the brains of the poor, weak-willed males who can't distinguish from fantasy and reality. It's BS along the very same lines as claims that violence (or worse (gasp) sex!*) in comic books and video games corrupt our children. Going by those standards the main causes of serial killers in society is McDonalds cheeseburgers and Monopoly.

I completely agree, its rather ludicrous.  It's even more ludicrious when you consider how many short and fat guys with glasses feature on the cover of the thousands of romance novels women love (hint: none).

How many football teams have fat, ugly or old cheerleaders?  How many beer commercials have unattractive women?  How many sitcoms?  How many studio movies?

Christ, Mike and Molley is seen as semi-revoluationary just for having two overweight leads (instead of the fat guy with hot wife meme of the 2000s).  And both stars of it may be large but are still attractive.

Let's face it, people like to see attractive people.

Quote from: TristramEvans;470187Yep those are kinda bad. And yep, they're from a game from over a decade ago that's no longer in print.

And that's just one game.  Out of an industry of hundreds.  Let's take a look at D&D again.  Check out the Moldvay books.  You'll see several examples showing females, some as magic-users, some as warriors.  You'll see the "his or her" nonsense in the writing.  And that was clear back in 1980.

Quote from: TristramEvans;470187* - I don't personally recall any lesbian ninja prostitutes in The Third Man or The 39 Steps.

True.  In pulp noir, women were usually scheming backstabbers instead.

Whether or not lesbian stripper ninjas is a step up or down is debatable.

My biggest problem with the "sexism in RPGs" issue on RPGnet is tis attitude posters have that they are "Striking a blow for feminism or justice!" by posting their opinions online. Bullshit. RPGnet is a niche forum of a niche hobby. It has no political presence or impact whatsoever. Posting one's opinions on an online MB is essentially masturbation, at best.

These threads started on TT Open always draw in a bunch of posters who otherwise never set foot in TT Open and I've never seen once discussing RPgs otherwise; in other words, strays from Tangency dropping by the RPGnet forums to provide the roleplayers with their "superior" Tangency hivemind opinions. And, of course,  now they want to extend their Tangency circlejerks to TT Open. That all such threads aren't immediately booted to Tangency is a mistake on the mod's part IMO.

These posters are claiming that they aren't able to talk about their problems without a bunch of male naysayers threadcrapping, but that's also a bullshit excuse. It's entirely possible to start private groups on the RPGnet forums; heck, I belong to a few myself. If these people genuinely wanted a private thread to themselves to discuss issues of sexism without men offering their opinions, they could easily do that. So why post in TT Open and then complain that they don't get to censor half the posters? It's blatantly a plea for attention, nothing more.

And then there's the claim that women posting about sexism are immediately "shouted down" by male posters. How the fuck does that compute?

LOOK I'M TYPING IN ALL CAPS! I'M "SHOUTING"! DOES THIS IN ANY WAY EFFECT ANY POST THAT'S COME BEFORE OR AFTER THIS ONE? DOES IT IN ANYWAY PREVENT SOMEONE FROM WRITING WHATEVER THE HELL THEY WANT IN RESPONSE?

Jesus fucking Christ on a dildo pogo-stick.

This is simply Tangencite feelings of entitlement. They want their circlejerks where no one is ever allowed to post an opposing PoV that might in anyway challenge their preconceptions and glorified prejudices, because they simply can't handle anyone not "towing the line" of their left-wing extremist college-hipster-dueschbag excuse for politics. They don't want to make any effort to educate or deal with the problem, they certainly aren't interested in solutions, they simply want to vent and pat themselves on the back for winning rounds of misery poker.

Of course, if any male dares offer his opinion, then they play the "white male privilege" card, essentially telling posters they don't get to have an opinion because their magical schlong grants them wonderful lives and they couldn't possibly understand or have anything intelligent to say about social injustice.

The irony of going on a MB composed of the geekiest of geeks and telling them they know nothing about what it means to be socially ostracized would be laughable if it wasn't so pathetically arrogant. Then, of course, a few posts later it's revealed the poster claiming you have no idea what it's like to be a woman is a transexual. I have no problem with someone identifying as/with whatever gender they want, but the fact is , if you were born with a dick, the fact you got it nipped or tucked doesn't mean you have any more insight into being a woman than a white man who goes to a tanning salon has regarding being black.

This latest decision is, mark my words, the beginning of the end of RPGnet even having a pretense of being a site devoted to RPG discussions. Pretty soon it will all be Tangency dipshits beating themselves and each other off as they compete for martyr complexes.

Quote from: TristramEvans;470187This one is the biggest disconnect for me over sexist issues. Over on RPGnet we have people claiming that Frazetta is evil, that chainmail bikini cheesecake makes men beat their wives, and that pictures of unattractive women are somehow ethically and artistically superior to pictures of attractive women, regardless of their submissiveness.

The fact is that no one has ever (and I'm not talking about online RPG-based forums, I mean IRL, in history, ever) produced any proof that cheesecake art causes any harm nor increases sexism.

I am enthusiastically in favor of free speech, including cheesecake art.  However, it is incredibly difficult to produce any proof of behavioral influence in anything.  I doubt that I could produce proof that political speeches that speak out in favor of blatant discrimination cause harm.  Thus, I am going to disapprove of things that seem clearly bad to me, even if I don't have scientific proof of harm.  

My issue with cheesecake isn't that pictures of attractive women are inherently bad.  What is bad is the occasional pattern of having pictures of women be almost exclusively cheesecake.  It's like the casting in old Hollywood movies.  I'm not in principal opposed to any white person being cast as an Asian, but the pattern that almost all Asian parts were played by white actors was troubling and wrong.  Likewise, having a dumb but sexy woman character isn't inherently wrong - but if women characters are almost all like that, then it's a problem.  

Quote from: TristramEvans;470187On top of all of that, every example (that's actually from a published RPG and not a random Google search that posts DeviantArt or stills from video games as if they have some relevance to a discussion of the RPG industry) given of "evil cheesecake art" I've seen online either comes from 2 or 3 specific game-lines, or a book that has been out of print for years. There is demonstratively NOT a preponderance of cheesecake art in the hobby, unless one's definition of the hobby doesn't go any further than D&D.

Well, I don't claim that all art or a preponderance of art is all specifically evil cheesecake.  However, I do think that sexism exists, and that it should be opposed.  What I'd like is agreement that sexism exists and that it should be opposed - and then possibly disagreement over whether particular examples are sexist.  Instead, it seems like people are arguing that sexism in RPGs just doesn't exist and it is wrong to oppose sexism in RPGs at all.  

Quote from: TristramEvans;470187Well, there are plenty of Call of Cthulhu adventures that incorporate racist characters, but I agree with this point at least. I said something very similar in response to Frank Miller's Sin City, a disgusting little orgy of adolescent macho fantasy from the man who spearheaded the ninja lesbian stripper meme, that people tried to defend because it was supposed to be "pulp noir". *

* - I don't personally recall any lesbian ninja prostitutes in The Third Man or The 39 Steps.

Exactly.  Thanks for the example.