Quote from: Haffrung;1104762Heck, 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.

World of Warcraft has a good bit of steampunk in it... as did the later wargame versions of Warhammer... lots of steampunk in Harry Potter as well.

Steampunk is something that mostly works in visual media.

Rpgs are not a visual media.

But rpg books are.

Quote from: Chris24601;1104661Basically, 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.

This is all good and fine but I fail to see the difference between this and Knights of the Black Lily. Particularly since I mentioned before that one pathway for the players is to try to be noble and valiant in the face of hopelessness. You can try to overthrow a local tyrant (although they kinda all are). You can try to save the peasant's daughter. There's no difference in that regard.

But, by canon, you're not going to lead the continent to democracy nor will you overturn the dark gods or some such. No more than you're going to save the Imperium of Man in Dark Heresy from the Chaos Gods. No more than you're going to end the reign of megacorps in Shadowrun. (I mean even if you could, you would end the setting as-is, so it would be self-defeating.)

Quote from: Chris24601;1104661There'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.

I am adapting Mike Pondsmith here for Knights of the Black Lily; this quote encapsulates it just perfect.
https://imgur.com/gallery/VJ0RpHr

As for your winning strategy: if only it was that easy. It's the strategy that fearful peasants pursue - and it works for them, to differing degrees. The eyes of the gods, our players, however, don't enjoy that (dubious) luxury.

Quote from: Scrivener of Doom;1104573Agreed.

Tolerance is not a virtue.

Tolerance is a virtue. I don't think the right reaction to this is to embrace intolerance. Any virtue can be taken to an extreme. I think the PDF is advancing ideas that are not very workable for most people, and counter productive for many, in the name of laudable ideals. But don't trip yourself and attack good ideals just because they are being mishandled by people.

Exactly. The whole point of eudaimonia is the competition of virtues to achieve excellence in the individual. You don't hang everything on a single virtue alone - you have to use them with reason to prioritize them for your life circumstances to become better as a person. Spread that out across your community as individuals and your civilization flourishes... with Most Excellent People /guitar riff.

When you focus on one virtue pathologically - you inherently create imbalance because circumstances of reality are not monolithic.

It probably doesn't help that being a collectivist inherently dehumanizes people.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1104839Tolerance is a virtue. I don't think the right reaction to this is to embrace intolerance. Any virtue can be taken to an extreme. I think the PDF is advancing ideas that are not very workable for most people, and counter productive for many, in the name of laudable ideals. But don't trip yourself and attack good ideals just because they are being mishandled by people.

The problem is intolerance works. If you're intolerant, and your opposition is tolerant, they will tolerate your ideas, and you will not tolerate theirs. It's the prisoner's dilemma on crack.

Quote from: tenbones;1104844Exactly. The whole point of eudaimonia is the competition of virtues to achieve excellence in the individual. You don't hang everything on a single virtue alone - you have to use them with reason to prioritize them for your life circumstances to become better as a person. Spread that out across your community as individuals and your civilization flourishes... with Most Excellent People /guitar riff.

When you focus on one virtue pathologically - you inherently create imbalance because circumstances of reality are not monolithic.

It probably doesn't help that being a collectivist inherently dehumanizes people.

It's almost like no one has ever read Aristotle...

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1104855The problem is intolerance works. If you're intolerant, and your opposition is tolerant, they will tolerate your ideas, and you will not tolerate theirs. It's the prisoner's dilemma on crack.

LOL. This reminds me of that terrible bit (one of many) in the Last Jedi:

Spoiler

Rose: "That's how we're gonna win. Not fighting what we hate, saving what we love."

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1104855The problem is intolerance works. If you're intolerant, and your opposition is tolerant, they will tolerate your ideas, and you will not tolerate theirs. It's the prisoner's dilemma on crack.

Well, that and "tolerance" is merely a secondary virtue.  It's valuable because the primary virtues of justice and mercy are often in conflict where ideals hit reality, and tolerance lets people acknowledge that while not going ballistic.  As soon as you make tolerance more important than the other two, you start coining ideas like "social justice" to explain the inversion, and pretty soon you are doing stupid stuff like being complete unjust and unmerciful to people that play games differently than you do.

Quote from: Antiquation!;1104860LOL. This reminds me of that terrible bit (one of many) in the Last Jedi:

Spoiler

Rose: "That's how we're gonna win. Not fighting what we hate, saving what we love."

  The confusion of this bit is compounded by the fact that we'd just seen a similar attempt work in the last act. Apparently it was meant to be more clearly futile or pointless than it came across on screen ...

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1104867The confusion of this bit is compounded by the fact that we'd just seen a similar attempt work in the last act. Apparently it was meant to be more clearly futile or pointless than it came across on screen ...

Yeah, it was a bit of a mess. It makes slightly more sense if you look at it with the perspective that Finn is a PC and Rose is the GM's deus ex machina to keep him alive, already knowing the outcome of the battle. Ridiculous rationalization, but there you have it... I digress.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1104855The problem is intolerance works. If you're intolerant, and your opposition is tolerant, they will tolerate your ideas, and you will not tolerate theirs. It's the prisoner's dilemma on crack.

Tolerance can still have limits though. I mean, a person can be tolerant of a person who disagrees with them about politics living next store, but draw the line at the person knocking on their door at night shouting political slogans. Tolerance doesn't mean you have to meekly allow people to walk over you. Nor does it mean you don't get to debate other people ideas. It just means you tolerate people being different from you. Again, any virtue taken to an extreme, isn't a good thing. Doesn't make intolerance a good thing.

Quote from: Brad;1104859It's almost like no one has ever read Aristotle...

In their defense, the Nichomachaen Ethics isn't exactly a scintillating read. I had to read that thing like three times just to understand it. And even then, I am sure I've forgotten most of it.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1104855The problem is intolerance works. If you're intolerant, and your opposition is tolerant, they will tolerate your ideas, and you will not tolerate theirs. It's the prisoner's dilemma on crack.

Depending on one's definition of "tolerance", I don't think this is true. If "tolerance" means letting someone physically beat you up and take your stuff, then obviously that's unworkable. But if "tolerance" means allowing someone else to preach intolerance, then this isn't necessarily true. If they preach intolerance, it can still be workable to ignore them and instead just preach your own message -- rather than preaching intolerance of them.

So, for example, I go to a Unitarian Universalist church. We're very big on tolerance. Suppose a new fundamentalist church opens in town and they start preaching that UU are evil and shouldn't be tolerated. It's still possible for us to tolerate them - in the sense that we don't say anything bad about them, and just continue to exist and keep doing our community and outreach work. We don't have to preach that fundamentalism should be banned. We would be countering their message not by being intolerant of them, but by showing who we are, and how our approach of tolerance is better.

Is this the best approach? I can't prove it, but it's not impossible.

Quote from: jhkim;1104907Depending on one's definition of "tolerance", I don't think this is true. If "tolerance" means letting someone physically beat you up and take your stuff, then obviously that's unworkable. But if "tolerance" means allowing someone else to preach intolerance, then this isn't necessarily true. If they preach intolerance, it can still be workable to ignore them and instead just preach your own message -- rather than preaching intolerance of them.

So, for example, I go to a Unitarian Universalist church. We're very big on tolerance. Suppose a new fundamentalist church opens in town and they start preaching that UU are evil and shouldn't be tolerated. It's still possible for us to tolerate them - in the sense that we don't say anything bad about them, and just continue to exist and keep doing our community and outreach work. We don't have to preach that fundamentalism should be banned. We would be countering their message not by being intolerant of them, but by showing who we are, and how our approach of tolerance is better.

Is this the best approach? I can't prove it, but it's not impossible.

Do you actually do that? or do you just talk about it?