Quote from: S'mon;1104518@Chris - well, conveniently, in a typical D&D world the G-aligned deities (and most of the N ones) do adhere to Christian morality, and keep their followers on the straight & narrow.

But a big and notable difference is that they are just a few gods out of many. No unified set of belief for everyone.

The Greco/Roman pantheon had what could be termed G-aligned deities.

Yet Still:

Quote from: Chris24601;1104507Frankly, a far better portrait of what your standard D&D polytheistic society should look like is either Rome (if civilization is flourishing in your setting) or the post-Bronze Age collapse period (if its the Dark Ages in your world). Chattel slavery, women and children as property of the male head of household, gladiatorial games and human sacrifice, honor killings, state and religion as one and the same with rulers often worshiped as living gods. ....

But in all honesty, D&D doesn't even do pantheons right.

What it really boils down to is that some people seem to want Christian morality without the whole "Christian" part.

Very much like the SCA who like to pretend to live in "The Middle Ages as they ought to have been".

Quote from: Jaeger;1104523But in all honesty, D&D doesn't even do pantheons right.

  There are reasons I refer to D&D's religious structure as "Symbiotic Neutralist Monolatry/Henotheism."

If you do not agree with "Consent in Gaming", what are YOU gonna do?

Silent Dissent = Silent Agreement. Don't pretend otherwise.

With every purchase, we vote with our wallets. Each of our dollars is a vote.

If you give Monte Cook or WotC your money, you are voting FOR more bullshit like "Consent in Gaming".

Quote from: Koltar;1103736This is shit we don't need in RPGs.....

100% agree, but welcome to 2019 where our hobby is neck deep in this shit.

Quote from: Mor'du;1103794I guess the best way to deal with it is laugh 'em off and then ignore the flaming rage that will soon follow. It's like a toddler who wants something at the market and throws tantrums.

Sorry Mor'du, but "joke'm if they can't take a fuck" is pre-2016. Back then, I'd agree with you 100%. It's exactly what I used to say, but back then I never imagined Monte Cook would bow to psycho fringe assholes who represent 90% of online screeching and 1% of actual players.

Today, anyone who doesn't want to be ruled by raging toddlers needs to step up with more than a shrug and a chuckle.

Quote from: S'mon;1103802This seems likely to encourage Snowflake Escalation - in the Country of the Woke,  the Most Easily Triggered Is King.

Its high time for citizens of that country to learn how unwelcome they are in our hobby.

Time for EXCLUSION, not inclusion.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;1103837Nearly all of the vast social media posts make it clear that no dissent will be brooked on this topic

Which makes LOUD DISSENT even more important.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1103919Fuck, if WOTC has gone woke, the hobby is fucked.

The hobby as business? Yes. "Go woke, go broke" is coming for the hobby.

The hobby itself? No.

Conventions who impose restrictions on GMs will lose GM volunteers and then lose players who show up and can't play because there aren't enough GMs to accommodate the number of players. So "go woke, go broke" will hit them.

Cons which trust their GMs to deliver the fun will become known destinations for GMs and the players will follow.

But more importantly, the core of the hobby is friends around a table. As long as you can gather a handful of people who can leave their politics at the door, you can have a gaming group focused entirely on gaming.

Quote from: VincentTakeda;1103987My Cook of choice is Zeb.

Hell yeah!

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1104120Gonna call it: some troll GM is going to use the list to find out just where to strike.

Guilty as charged!!!

Quote from: Omega;1104197Except normal people wont oppose them because everyone treats these nutcases as if they were sane and their insane demands are reasonable and should be followed.

Most people are sheep. "If I stay quiet, the wolves won't eat me!"

Quote from: Omega;1104197Letting this stuff stand and fester is worse than stupid.

Everybody read that? Let's read that again. Omega nailed it.

"Letting this stuff stand and fester is worse than stupid."

Let's not become worse than stupid.

Our wallet is our weapon.

Quote from: Haffrung;1103818It's not politics, it's religion. Some people just need a place in their mind for piety, orthodoxy, and moral certitude. It's surely no coincidence that this credo has taken deepest root in the demographics that have turned away from traditional religion.

This was a hard lesson for me to learn, but its actually in the Bible. According to the tale, God rescues the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt and Moses settles them at the base of mountain while goes up for a chat with God. What do the Hebrews do the moment Moses is out of sight? They carve a golden calf and worship it with fuck dances. That's humanity. Our species needs "religion" and if we don't have a religion at the moment, we'll quickly make one...and quite often, a very fucked up "religion".

Quote from: Chris24601;1104424Except organized religion held societies together for millennia and look how well ours is holding together without it.

The track record of organized religion as a force force for good is mixed at best. The only groups that have killed more humans than organized religions are other groups who try to impose their irrational beliefs on other people while simultaneously making profoundly self-destructive life choices, .e.g. the various communist and fascist parties.

Quote from: Chris24601;1104424One of the biggest problems with a lot of fantasy RPGs is they rip one of the central elements that built the medieval world out of it, replace it with a hodgepodge of extraplanar psychic vampires with super powers who can be killed and replaced by mortals at random intervals and then expect it to look just like Medieval Europe.

I don't see it as a problem. A bit silly and kind of boring, but not a problem. It's not like creating a different setting that doesn't do that is all that difficult and there have long been other games that don't serve up warmed-over medieval European kitsch beneath a patchwork of disconnected deities.

That said, I don't see what this has to do with anything I've said in this thread or how it relates to the first half of your reply. :confused:

Quote from: jeff37923;1104494Because God forbid the person has enough common sense to only game with a malicious GM once (and leaves the table when shit gets obviously uncomfortable).

Of course not. It's not their personal responsibility to do so. It's everyone and anyone else fault that they remain seated.

Quote from: Jaeger;1104523What it really boils down to is that some people seem to want Christian morality without the whole "Christian" part.

At the very least, most people want a setting where their personal morality is viable. So for fantasy they want some Good aligned gods who agree with them. They typically want Christian/post-Christian morality to have a solid place in the setting, even if the Evil guys over there don't agree.

Even running Primeval Thule or Wilderlands, I frequently get players wanting to create Christianity-based moral norms within the setting, and looking around for any setting elements which support that.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1104541(snip) Time for EXCLUSION, not inclusion.

Agreed.

Tolerance is not a virtue.

Quote from: S'mon;1104565At the very least, most people want a setting where their personal morality is viable. So for fantasy they want some Good aligned gods who agree with them. They typically want Christian/post-Christian morality to have a solid place in the setting, even if the Evil guys over there don't agree.

Even running Primeval Thule or Wilderlands, I frequently get players wanting to create Christianity-based moral norms within the setting, and looking around for any setting elements which support that.

Oh, I do think upper class Romano-Greek moral norms in the 1st century BC were not THAT far from today's post-Christian moral norms in many respects; Rome 44 BC is a pretty playable/familiar setting in a way that say Athens 444 BC really is not - in some ways the 5th century BC Greeks are 'false friends' in that they often appear superficially familiar to us while really still being quite alien. But a few centuries of philosophical progress changed that, and laid the foundation for Hellenic Christianity.

Quote from: Chris24601;1104507Psychic vampires are always problematic (and are still theoretically killable if you eliminate everyone who believes in them; ex. Mab in the 1998 Merlin miniseries).

Agreed. It's why I took a playbook out of some classical drama instead - with the gods being ultimately incomprehensible in their transcendental nature, although they clearly enjoy toying with mortals. As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, and all that. It wouldn't work if even one actual dark god could be killed by the PCs or some non-divine NPCs - it would mean that there is reason for hope, when the point is in setting up a universe in which there is no hope, arguably even less than in Warhammer 40K. Same reason why mortals can't ascend to divine status.

Quote from: Chris24601;1104507A counter-question though is WHY would they want it to look like Medieval Europe?

Valid question. And one that ultimately won't be answered for the reasons alluded to above: it's not to be comprehended by anyone in that world nor any of us. I would add though as an author that from my point of view it's like that monkey that can type forever on a typewriter - sooner or later he will type in the Bible. And not just once but an infinite number of times. Maybe it's just now one of those medieval times before the mood of the gods changes for something else.

Quote from: Chris24601;1104507Why wouldn't the war god want gladiatorial games played in his honor? Why wouldn't the goddess of sexy times demand more public displays of sexiness and ritual prostitution? Why would the god of drunkenness and orgies not insist on drunkenness and orgies?

I don't think that goes counter to medieval europe. Remember that in the context of fantasy we're not talking medieval europe but mythical medieval europe (and even that just in broad strokes); and the myths of europe were in my estimation still influenced by the classical era.

Quote from: Chris24601;1104507And why would creatures that feed off belief want ANY type of advancement that puts the focus of humanity on anything other than worship of them as the end all and be all of Creation? Only an utterly self-sufficient God would allow focus on anything else.

Yeah, I think it does undermine the sense of divinity when they need to be worshipped for subsistence. Which is why I shifted from a need of worship to a need of entertainment for staving off ennui.

Quote from: Chris24601;1104507I think a lot of the post-Christian completely underestimates the degree to which the teachings of Jesus Christ (whether you believe he was the Son of God or not) has influenced what we even think of AS morality.

Yeah but then again you need to consider how alien you want to make your setting from what your players/readers are used to? (Very insightful quotation by M. A.-R. Barker in that blogpost... and good reading anyway.)

Quote from: Chris24601;1104507who copied and transcribed a lot of the ancient texts

Only the ones deemed useful in spreading the faith. Still way better than nothing though. But, yeah, you're preaching to the converted here. Let's not forget either that, starting during the high middle ages, the pope in Rome was the highest court of appeal - and good thing too, since Rome usually was not politically involved in local affairs and could function as an impartial arbiter. That's how the pope meant actual, tangible hope to a lot of people. A notion completely buried today.

Quote from: Chris24601;1104507Where you can't use intrinsic worth of a human life as justification for why the strong shouldn't just enslave the weak and why you aren't ground down into paste to feed all the other slaves the moment you cease to be productive for whomever holds the reigns of the power at the time.

I'd like to see what people gonna play like in a setting where there is no incentive to being good and there is no hope for being ultimately rewarded for being good. Will they try to be noble in a world of darkness? Will they go all-out depraved? Or will they just look out for their own? In a way an interesting social experiment to me. Pretty sure there will be a mix but will one approach be more common than the others?

Quote from: Chris24601;1104507Chattel slavery, women and children as property of the male head of household, gladiatorial games and human sacrifice, honor killings, state and religion as one and the same with rulers often worshiped as living gods.

Check on all of it and more, depending on locale.

It sounds like your system is your standard nihilistic fantasy dystopia, not something actually unique at all. In fact, quite depressingly common in the fantasy market at the moment because, while it generally sells like crap, it appeals to the elites who hand out literature awards.

In answer to your question...

"I'd like to see what people gonna play like in a setting where there is no incentive to being good and there is no hope for being ultimately rewarded for being good."

... the answer is most likely, "stop playing entirely after a few sessions because that style of play literally only appeals to about 5% of the general public."

In fact, I think if you were plain with your players that this is the concept you wanted to explore, most would ask to play something else instead. If I wanted to be depressed about the state of the world... how the powerful prey upon the weak and justice largely goes un-served and there's nothing I can really do about it... I could just turn on the evening news.

Its like the rank hideousness of Forgotten Realms' cosmology makes me only interested in it to the degree I can create a plane-travelling Lich to help ferry the hapless mortals in that Hell dimension out of the grips of the powers in charge of it because that is literally the only moral approach to its cosmology (along with recruiting whoever you can find from beyond that universe to come in to curb stomp and replace Ao... because some even Lovecraftian Old One as Supreme God couldn't devise a system any worse... even better if you can abuse the Epic Level rules to Pun Pun yourself into the thing that does it).

Good luck with your game and all, but realize going in that the audience for Nihilism is VERY VERY tiny and your sales will match the potential market size for the product.

Quote from: Chris24601;1104603In fact, quite depressingly common in the fantasy market at the moment because, while it generally sells like crap, it appeals to the elites who hand out literature awards.

The genre is called dark fantasy and Shadow of the Demon Lord, Shadows of Esteren and Symbaroum seem to be selling just fine. You can add WFRP to the mix. Another world that has been doomed from the outset and in fact we know that it gets leveled at some point in time, "thanks" to Age of Sigmar.

Quote from: Chris24601;1104603... the answer is most likely, "stop playing entirely after a few sessions because that style of play literally only appeals to about 5% of the general public."

I hope you won't mind if I don't take too much stock in your opinion here, especially in the light of our recent discussions in this forum about design vs development and idea vs implementation. So, in short: only one way to find out for sure.

Quote from: Chris24601;1104603In fact, I think if you were plain with your players that this is the concept you wanted to explore, most would ask to play something else instead. If I wanted to be depressed about the state of the world... how the powerful prey upon the weak and justice largely goes un-served and there's nothing I can really do about it... I could just turn on the evening news.

I take it that you don't like the cyberpunk genre either but cyberpunk RPGs have been sufficiently successful nonetheless. So, again, you may turn out to be correct here but I intend to put those predictions to the test.

Quote from: Chris24601;1104603Good luck with your game and all, but realize going in that the audience for Nihilism is VERY VERY tiny and your sales will match the potential market size for the product.

Okey-doke.

Depends on the flavor of Cyberpunk. There's a difference between dark and nihilistic and while much of cyberpunk is dark, nihilism (a story where the message is that life is pointless and without meaning) is a far rarer beast.

More commonly in Cyberpunk the setting is dark, but the protagonist manages to accomplish something for their struggles and have some in their lives. The bleakness of the setting serves either to make the victory sharper (victory is achieved despite all the setbacks) or temper it with the knowledge that this was a battle not the war.

Blade Runner isn't nihilistic, nor Robocop (though it borders on black satire), nor Altered Carbon, nor Alita... the list goes on. The system is often messed up but, no matter how remote the possibility, the idea that the protagonist can at least bring about some small change to it (if not bring it down entirely) is what keeps it from turning into nihilistic garbage.

I think a lot of Cyberpunk RPGs sometimes get lost in the notion of "status quo is God" in presenting a setting the PCs can't hope to change which is often counter to what the actual fiction it is derived from portrays, but ekes by on the personal survival and advancement of wealth and ability for the PCs.

Basically, Cyberpunk mostly exists as an oppressive system for protagonists to rail against, and in actual fiction, eventually overcome whatever obstacle is the real opponent of the particular story.

The same applies to dark fantasy. I think you're confusing dark for hopeless. Take the setting for New Adventures of Monkey (basically a variation on Journey to the West). It's a very dark setting. It opens with thd supposed last hope being murdered. The gods are either dead or in hiding, the demons rule over mankind and the only hope is a selfish jackass whom the gods locked away because he was potentially worse than the demons and after a 500 year timeout his powers are on the fritz. But it's not hopeless. The earnest protagonist is already starting to win Monkey over by the second episode.

The problem with the setting you describe is that the gods dick you with you for shits and giggles and there's nothing you can do about it. You're a pawn in a game played by others and can't even attempt to break free of it (vs. the extremely common trope of playing along until the opportunity to break free occurs and then the protagonist is able to take the fight to their tormentors). It's not a dark situation... it's a hopeless one. It's the difference between playing Russian Roulette with a revolver (dark) and an automatic (hopeless).

There's very little incentive to DO anything in such a setting. Don't stand out so the gods don't notice you and make your life even worse is the winning strategy in such a world. If the gods are gonna make your life miserable until you die, deprive them of their fun by making your death as boring and anticlimactic as possible.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1104624The genre is called dark fantasy and Shadow of the Demon Lord, Shadows of Esteren and Symbaroum seem to be selling just fine. You can add WFRP to the mix. Another world that has been doomed from the outset and in fact we know that it gets leveled at some point in time, "thanks" to Age of Sigmar.



I hope you won't mind if I don't take too much stock in your opinion here, especially in the light of our recent discussions in this forum about design vs development and idea vs implementation. So, in short: only one way to find out for sure.
.

Grimdark fantasy is an underserved genre in the rpg market, considering it's popularity as a literary genre.

And most of that which does exists eg Shadow of a Demon Lord, Symbaroum, hews a lot closer to D&D tropes then the current trends in fantasy literature.

Quote from: TJS;1104749Grimdark fantasy is an underserved genre in the rpg market, considering it's popularity as a literary genre.

And most of that which does exists eg Shadow of a Demon Lord, Symbaroum, hews a lot closer to D&D tropes then the current trends in fantasy literature.

Agreed. The works of hugely popular authors like Joe Abercrombie, Steven Erikson, and Mark Lawrence don't seem to have had any sort of impact on tabletop RPGs. Heck, I'd suggest steampunk has a bigger influence on fantasy RPGs today than grimdark. Not sure why that's the case, but it's odd.