Quote from: RPGPundit on January 03, 2023, 11:27:31 AM

Quote from: Validin on December 28, 2022, 05:57:54 PM
I might not know the full story, but from what I know surface-level shouldn't Pinnacle be set to Yellow? They've not insulted their fans, but rewriting their entire setting's history to appease politically correct wokesters as well as supposedly trying to not have "too many" white characters in their book should be, I think, enough to say they've been questionable at best.

For those who may not know, brief rundown is that Deadlands originally did some mundane alt-history with its setting unrelated to the supernatural or horror themes. The biggest change was that Britain intervened on behalf of the Confederacy in the American Civil War under the condition they'd begin working to abolish slavery and this brought the war to a stalemate. Washington D.C. was blockaded and then occupied by British troops, which led the Union and the Confederacy to negotiate a truce. This is based on the popular real-world alt-history question of how the war would've gone had Britain and/or France joined the war, and ongoing tensions between North and South formed a major part of the setting's drama, as well as having the chance for mixed parties of Northern or Southern-supporting characters, but with the overall plot putting an emphasis on uniting to combat the supernatural threats in the West.

This was of course way too offensive for some people, for some reason, and the entire plot was scrapped and anyone holding pro-Confederacy views made into evil villains. A big change to the setting and tone got removed exclusively for woke political reasons.

For Schwalb Entertainment, I think Green is alright, but Schwalb did donate to a BLM-associated group and did the usual "#BLM" spiel on Twitter about it. He also renamed Shadow of the Mad Wizard to Weird Wizard after someone told him it was "ableist" otherwise. These seem to be the only two times he's blended politics with his game, but I think they're worth a mention.

I'd also suggest adding Eden Studios (All Flesh Must Be Eaten, Conspiracy X, Buffy RPG, Unisystem) to the Green section. They're not active anymore, but the owner still runs a game shop in NYC and seems like a cool dude. The games are products of the early 2000s and predate any woke nonsense, but they also keep largely apolitical to early 2000s issues too, as in no tirades about elections, Bush, Gore, Iraq, and so on. Eden's games are still on sale and I think they're worth supporting.

Games Workshop should be listed under Yellow or even Red, as my last opinion in the post. They've taken a strong "anti-fascist" in the modern sense stance in the past few years, supported BLM, and so on. Warhammer itself was always an actively left-leaning game that incorporated real-world politics in its content to varying degrees, though it's gotten more aggressive in the last decade. Lots of pronouns in bios, xy/xyr pronouns in some of the books, and so on.

The Confederates WERE villains. Also, their original setting was idiotic whitewashing of historical facts, to the point that the Civil War didn't end, but you could be a black Confederate Army OFFICER, because in their alternate history the Confederacy just decided to not be racist anymore.

The Confederate Army had black commissioned officers IRL.  There were only a handful, but they did exist.  Why would they exclude them in the RPG?

Note for the curious:  Google suppresses the results using the General Search, you must use Advanced Search and use the specific phrase "black confederate officer", and you'll find plenty of links and sources for men such as Tobias Spurlock and others.

It also worth noting there are historians in the past few years (i.e. the woke-period) that now claim no black soldiers willingly fought on behalf of the South.  Blatant revisionism on par with The 1619 Project.

Quote from: Two Crows on January 03, 2023, 01:35:02 PM

Quote from: RPGPundit on January 03, 2023, 11:27:31 AM

Quote from: Validin on December 28, 2022, 05:57:54 PM
I might not know the full story, but from what I know surface-level shouldn't Pinnacle be set to Yellow? They've not insulted their fans, but rewriting their entire setting's history to appease politically correct wokesters as well as supposedly trying to not have "too many" white characters in their book should be, I think, enough to say they've been questionable at best.

For those who may not know, brief rundown is that Deadlands originally did some mundane alt-history with its setting unrelated to the supernatural or horror themes. The biggest change was that Britain intervened on behalf of the Confederacy in the American Civil War under the condition they'd begin working to abolish slavery and this brought the war to a stalemate. Washington D.C. was blockaded and then occupied by British troops, which led the Union and the Confederacy to negotiate a truce. This is based on the popular real-world alt-history question of how the war would've gone had Britain and/or France joined the war, and ongoing tensions between North and South formed a major part of the setting's drama, as well as having the chance for mixed parties of Northern or Southern-supporting characters, but with the overall plot putting an emphasis on uniting to combat the supernatural threats in the West.

This was of course way too offensive for some people, for some reason, and the entire plot was scrapped and anyone holding pro-Confederacy views made into evil villains. A big change to the setting and tone got removed exclusively for woke political reasons.

For Schwalb Entertainment, I think Green is alright, but Schwalb did donate to a BLM-associated group and did the usual "#BLM" spiel on Twitter about it. He also renamed Shadow of the Mad Wizard to Weird Wizard after someone told him it was "ableist" otherwise. These seem to be the only two times he's blended politics with his game, but I think they're worth a mention.

I'd also suggest adding Eden Studios (All Flesh Must Be Eaten, Conspiracy X, Buffy RPG, Unisystem) to the Green section. They're not active anymore, but the owner still runs a game shop in NYC and seems like a cool dude. The games are products of the early 2000s and predate any woke nonsense, but they also keep largely apolitical to early 2000s issues too, as in no tirades about elections, Bush, Gore, Iraq, and so on. Eden's games are still on sale and I think they're worth supporting.

Games Workshop should be listed under Yellow or even Red, as my last opinion in the post. They've taken a strong "anti-fascist" in the modern sense stance in the past few years, supported BLM, and so on. Warhammer itself was always an actively left-leaning game that incorporated real-world politics in its content to varying degrees, though it's gotten more aggressive in the last decade. Lots of pronouns in bios, xy/xyr pronouns in some of the books, and so on.

The Confederates WERE villains. Also, their original setting was idiotic whitewashing of historical facts, to the point that the Civil War didn't end, but you could be a black Confederate Army OFFICER, because in their alternate history the Confederacy just decided to not be racist anymore.

The Confederate Army had black commissioned officers IRL.  There were only a handful, but they did exist.  Why would they exclude them in the RPG?

Note for the curious:  Google suppresses the results using the General Search, you must use Advanced Search and use the specific phrase "black confederate officer", and you'll find plenty of links and sources for men such as Tobias Spurlock and others.

It also worth noting there are historians in the past few years (i.e. the woke-period) that now claim no black soldiers willingly fought on behalf of the South.  Blatant revisionism on par with The 1619 Project.

Didn't New Orleans provide quite a lot of black/mixed soldiers to the South, despite being Union occupied? A reasonable background for a Deadlands Black Confederate.

Personally I disliked the old whitewashed non-racist Deadlands Confederacy nearly as much as I dislike the modern "Confederates were Nazis" trope.

Quote from: Grognard GM on January 03, 2023, 01:04:34 PM
I really like this site, and I don't want to be banned by the person that is, essentially, god here, but your post is a strawman, utterly unworthy of you. It strips my post down to a very basic (and biased) stance, then ridicules me as a person.

The old game had Black officers, and female law enforcement but they were still a minority and at least semi-unusual. Yes women and racial minorities had been accepted in to society at a very unrealistically fast pace in the original game, but that was a conceit necessary to allow those kinds of players to feel included in the setting while making them rare-enough that it didn't make the game seem like D&D 5E.

I also strongly disagree with your last post, and, respectfully, it seems emotionally charged and ignorant of the very real setting benefits of a never ending Cold War (which leads to the events in Wasted West.)

Hopefully I don't disappear in a puff of smoke.

You can call Pundit a dick (I'm sure I have) and he'll not ban you. He basically only bans for (a) posting off topic after warning, (b) being a Nazi, or (c) Antifa when they threaten violence against him and other Board members.

Quote from: Two Crows on January 03, 2023, 01:35:02 PM
Note for the curious:  Google suppresses the results using the General Search, you must use Advanced Search and use the specific phrase "black confederate officer", and you'll find plenty of links and sources for men such as Tobias Spurlock and others.

It also worth noting there are historians in the past few years (i.e. the woke-period) that now claim no black soldiers willingly fought on behalf of the South.  Blatant revisionism on par with The 1619 Project.

Another reason to use Duck Duck Go.

Quote from: S'mon on January 03, 2023, 03:12:56 PM

Quote from: Two Crows on January 03, 2023, 01:35:02 PM

Quote from: RPGPundit on January 03, 2023, 11:27:31 AM

Quote from: Validin on December 28, 2022, 05:57:54 PM
I might not know the full story, but from what I know surface-level shouldn't Pinnacle be set to Yellow? They've not insulted their fans, but rewriting their entire setting's history to appease politically correct wokesters as well as supposedly trying to not have "too many" white characters in their book should be, I think, enough to say they've been questionable at best.

For those who may not know, brief rundown is that Deadlands originally did some mundane alt-history with its setting unrelated to the supernatural or horror themes. The biggest change was that Britain intervened on behalf of the Confederacy in the American Civil War under the condition they'd begin working to abolish slavery and this brought the war to a stalemate. Washington D.C. was blockaded and then occupied by British troops, which led the Union and the Confederacy to negotiate a truce. This is based on the popular real-world alt-history question of how the war would've gone had Britain and/or France joined the war, and ongoing tensions between North and South formed a major part of the setting's drama, as well as having the chance for mixed parties of Northern or Southern-supporting characters, but with the overall plot putting an emphasis on uniting to combat the supernatural threats in the West.

This was of course way too offensive for some people, for some reason, and the entire plot was scrapped and anyone holding pro-Confederacy views made into evil villains. A big change to the setting and tone got removed exclusively for woke political reasons.

For Schwalb Entertainment, I think Green is alright, but Schwalb did donate to a BLM-associated group and did the usual "#BLM" spiel on Twitter about it. He also renamed Shadow of the Mad Wizard to Weird Wizard after someone told him it was "ableist" otherwise. These seem to be the only two times he's blended politics with his game, but I think they're worth a mention.

I'd also suggest adding Eden Studios (All Flesh Must Be Eaten, Conspiracy X, Buffy RPG, Unisystem) to the Green section. They're not active anymore, but the owner still runs a game shop in NYC and seems like a cool dude. The games are products of the early 2000s and predate any woke nonsense, but they also keep largely apolitical to early 2000s issues too, as in no tirades about elections, Bush, Gore, Iraq, and so on. Eden's games are still on sale and I think they're worth supporting.

Games Workshop should be listed under Yellow or even Red, as my last opinion in the post. They've taken a strong "anti-fascist" in the modern sense stance in the past few years, supported BLM, and so on. Warhammer itself was always an actively left-leaning game that incorporated real-world politics in its content to varying degrees, though it's gotten more aggressive in the last decade. Lots of pronouns in bios, xy/xyr pronouns in some of the books, and so on.

The Confederates WERE villains. Also, their original setting was idiotic whitewashing of historical facts, to the point that the Civil War didn't end, but you could be a black Confederate Army OFFICER, because in their alternate history the Confederacy just decided to not be racist anymore.

The Confederate Army had black commissioned officers IRL.  There were only a handful, but they did exist.  Why would they exclude them in the RPG?

Note for the curious:  Google suppresses the results using the General Search, you must use Advanced Search and use the specific phrase "black confederate officer", and you'll find plenty of links and sources for men such as Tobias Spurlock and others.

It also worth noting there are historians in the past few years (i.e. the woke-period) that now claim no black soldiers willingly fought on behalf of the South.  Blatant revisionism on par with The 1619 Project.

Didn't New Orleans provide quite a lot of black/mixed soldiers to the South, despite being Union occupied? A reasonable background for a Deadlands Black Confederate.

Personally I disliked the old whitewashed non-racist Deadlands Confederacy nearly as much as I dislike the modern "Confederates were Nazis" trope.

Another inconvenient historical detail is that there were black plantation owners in the Antebellum South.

Regarding Deadlands and black Confederate soldiers...

Quote from: S'mon on January 03, 2023, 03:12:56 PM

Quote from: Two Crows on January 03, 2023, 01:35:02 PM
The Confederate Army had black commissioned officers IRL.  There were only a handful, but they did exist.  Why would they exclude them in the RPG?

Note for the curious:  Google suppresses the results using the General Search, you must use Advanced Search and use the specific phrase "black confederate officer", and you'll find plenty of links and sources for men such as Tobias Spurlock and others.

It also worth noting there are historians in the past few years (i.e. the woke-period) that now claim no black soldiers willingly fought on behalf of the South.  Blatant revisionism on par with The 1619 Project.

Didn't New Orleans provide quite a lot of black/mixed soldiers to the South, despite being Union occupied? A reasonable background for a Deadlands Black Confederate.

From my reading, while there were small numbers of black people in the Confederacy who took up arms as irregulars, there is no documentation of any black officers or masses of black troops in the Confederate army. It seems to have been much less common than, for example, Jews who fought for the Nazis. The American Battlefield Trust covers the topic:

QuoteThis is not to say that no black man ever fired a gun for the Confederacy.  To be specific, in the "Official Records of the War of the Rebellion," a collection of military records from both sides which spans more than 50 volumes and more than 50,000 pages, there are a total of seven Union eyewitness reports of black Confederates.  Three of these reports mention black men shooting at Union soldiers, one report mentions capturing a handful of armed black men along with some soldiers, and the other three reports mention seeing unarmed black laborers.  There is no record of Union soldiers encountering an all-black line of battle or anything close to it.

In those same Official Records, no Confederate ever references having black soldiers under his command or in his unit, although references to black laborers are common.  The non-existence of black combat units is further indicated by the records of debates in the Confederate Congress over the issue of black enlistment.  The idea was repeatedly rejected until, on March 13, 1865, the Confederate Congress passed a law to allow black men to serve in combat roles, although with the provision "that nothing in this act shall be construed to authorize a change in the relation which the said slaves shall bear toward their owners," i.e. that black soldiers would still be slaves.

Source: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/black-confederates-truth-and-legend

Note that March 13 is less than a month before the end of the war. There is no sign that anyone acted on this law. There is a non-military report of the Confederates using black soldiers by a Dr. Steiner of the Sanitary Commission, but this has the character of anti-Confederate propaganda and is contradicted by other sources.

https://deadconfederates.com/2010/10/26/real-confederates-didnt-know-about-black-confederates/

I searched as Two Crows suggested, but I didn't find any verifiable information about Tobias Spurlock or any other black Confederate officers. This page, for example, claims that Tobias Spurlock was the name of a black Confederate officer, but gives no references or details.

https://cwmemory.com/2010/07/09/a-few-more-black-confederate-references/

On the other hand, it is true that there were blacks (usually mixed-race) and American Indians who owned slaves.

Quote from: Cathode Ray on January 03, 2023, 07:34:22 PM

Quote from: Two Crows on January 03, 2023, 01:35:02 PM
Note for the curious:  Google suppresses the results using the General Search, you must use Advanced Search and use the specific phrase "black confederate officer", and you'll find plenty of links and sources for men such as Tobias Spurlock and others.

It also worth noting there are historians in the past few years (i.e. the woke-period) that now claim no black soldiers willingly fought on behalf of the South.  Blatant revisionism on par with The 1619 Project.

Another reason to use Duck Duck Go.

Duck Duck Go actively censors information.  Duck Duck Go actively hires on race and genital hole preference.  Duck Duck go is Googles retarded step child with worse search results and same censorship as Google.

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on January 04, 2023, 02:15:32 PM

Quote from: Cathode Ray on January 03, 2023, 07:34:22 PM

Quote from: Two Crows on January 03, 2023, 01:35:02 PM
Note for the curious:  Google suppresses the results using the General Search, you must use Advanced Search and use the specific phrase "black confederate officer", and you'll find plenty of links and sources for men such as Tobias Spurlock and others.

It also worth noting there are historians in the past few years (i.e. the woke-period) that now claim no black soldiers willingly fought on behalf of the South.  Blatant revisionism on par with The 1619 Project.

Another reason to use Duck Duck Go.

Duck Duck Go actively censors information.  Duck Duck Go actively hires on race and genital hole preference.  Duck Duck go is Googles retarded step child with worse search results and same censorship as Google.

I would tone down the language a bit, but yes, Duck Duck Go does some Woke/censorious things. It isn't as bad as Google, but it is only by degree.

QuoteSo when I say trans men are men and trans women are women, or black lives matter, I'm not making a political statement. I'm acknowledging that every person should have the freedom to be who they feel they truly are. Or to not be systematically degraded so that society views some people as lesser or inferior.

I could agree that this isn't a "political" statement.

No controversy about black lives mattering, though the phrase itself is deeply associated with a particular movement that includes many who view my (non-black life) as not mattering, so I suspect those who use it.  Also those who leave out the inconvenient truth that while the dozens of unarmed black men killed each year by police is terrible and ought to be ended yesterday if not sooner, the tens of thousands of black young men killed by other black young men seems to be a bigger problem...one that has only been exacerbated by the "defund the police" movements.  In short, if black lives mattered to those who most often use the phrase, they have a funny way of showing it by following the exact opposite policies of those that would preserve them.

As to trans men being men and trans women being women--again, not necessarily political.  Rather, it's at best just affirming a religious-type conviction held contrary to all evidence, or at worst quite simply a lie.  In no case is it actually a "human rights issue".  People can "be who they feel they truly are" but that does not create an obligation on anyone else to accept that as reality.  As far as being "systematically degraded" as being viewed as "lesser or inferior"--sorry, people who deny reality are "inferior" to those who accept it.  The fact that you want to "help" mentally ill people live out their delusion is a lot more degrading than refusing to play with it.

Quote from: Osman Gazi on January 06, 2023, 12:39:21 PM

QuoteSo when I say trans men are men and trans women are women, or black lives matter, I'm not making a political statement. I'm acknowledging that every person should have the freedom to be who they feel they truly are. Or to not be systematically degraded so that society views some people as lesser or inferior.

I could agree that this isn't a "political" statement.

No controversy about black lives mattering, though the phrase itself is deeply associated with a particular movement that includes many who view my (non-black life) as not mattering, so I suspect those who use it.  Also those who leave out the inconvenient truth that while the dozens of unarmed black men killed each year by police is terrible and ought to be ended yesterday if not sooner, the tens of thousands of black young men killed by other black young men seems to be a bigger problem...one that has only been exacerbated by the "defund the police" movements.  In short, if black lives mattered to those who most often use the phrase, they have a funny way of showing it by following the exact opposite policies of those that would preserve them.

As to trans men being men and trans women being women--again, not necessarily political.  Rather, it's at best just affirming a religious-type conviction held contrary to all evidence, or at worst quite simply a lie.  In no case is it actually a "human rights issue".  People can "be who they feel they truly are" but that does not create an obligation on anyone else to accept that as reality.  As far as being "systematically degraded" as being viewed as "lesser or inferior"--sorry, people who deny reality are "inferior" to those who accept it.  The fact that you want to "help" mentally ill people live out their delusion is a lot more degrading than refusing to play with it.

Hello, are you me? This is how I think as well.

Back on topic: Have we decided where Goblinoid Games goes now?

Quote from: grimshwiz on January 06, 2023, 04:10:04 PM


Hello, are you me? This is how I think as well.

Back on topic: Have we decided where Goblinoid Games goes now?

yellow and not like it matters as he's closing up shop AFAIK

Quote from: THE_Leopold on January 06, 2023, 04:38:19 PM

Quote from: grimshwiz on January 06, 2023, 04:10:04 PM


Hello, are you me? This is how I think as well.

Back on topic: Have we decided where Goblinoid Games goes now?

yellow and not like it matters as he's closing up shop AFAIK

It's good to give the guy his scarlet letter, in case he slithers out of a hole in a few years with a new book.

Anyone know if the publisher The Arcane Library is Woke or Normie?

The entire conversation about confederate officers irl (and about what search engine to use) are totally off topic. People who keep posting about it will be sanctioned.

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on January 06, 2023, 07:49:24 PM
Anyone know if the publisher The Arcane Library is Woke or Normie?

Is that the same one as this youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@TheArcaneLibrary