Quote from: Necrozius;829945Honest question: how is this at the expense of these cultures?

For the record, I do agree that some forms of cultural appropriation are at the the very least insensitive and insulting. Some perpetuate often harmful stereotypes. But I don't think that the lives of people on reservations are getting even worse because nerds are talking about games on an internet forum. None of us are going: "haha wow Tibet is a fucked up fantasy world of monsters: I'm gonna post memes and jokes about Tibetans on facebook and twitter now".

There are real-world issues affecting these people. I think that you should spend your anger-fuelled energy on some real-world cause, like a non-profit organization or make donations to some charity, or something. Not type out angry posts on the fucking internet on one of the least-known RPG forums.

Or you're just trolling. In which case, well done: you played me like a fiddle!

...You simply don't get do you? Maybe this is exactly what I'm talking about when privileged groups like yourself take everything as superficial and don't go pointing fingers and shifting attention away towards what you call "real issues" when you're actually part of the problem which is simply what I'm pointing out here (at least someone has to) but to be honest, I better things to do than arguing with a bunch of liberals who especially think "charities" will solve everything just to feel better about themselves while turning a blind eye to the actual causes in the first place.

The main question is whether or not "lives are getting worse because of bunch of nerds on a internet forum" but more to do that everyone's actions here is only part of a much larger problem that is persistent in this society that isn't only limited on the internet which is what I was only to trying to point out.

Quote from: yabaziou;829752Is GamerGate the new NSDAP or KKK ? What the eff it has to do with this discussion ?

By the way, whaterever Zoey Quinn had done, I am actually disgusted by the way she was treated and I am pretty sure this whole thing would have not happened if Zoey was instead Zachary ...

More close to this thread topic, I think it is kind of cool that new people with skills found a paid job. I hope we will read a lot more things from them !

Mentioning GamerGate in relationship to this thread is VERY on topic.

The people who are anti-gamergate are the same SJW's who bullied Monty Cook into re-writing the Native American inspired recursion.

GameGate really did start off being about Ethics in Gaming journalism, but then very quickly it became apparent that it was just another front on the Culture War the left has been waging for decades.

Since they've already won their battles in the Legal, Education, and Entertainment realms it has finally trickled down to low hanging fruit like Tabletop RPG's.

GamerGate is about the fight for creators and players to decide for themselves what they want out of their games. What they want to make and perhaps more importantly how they want to play.

GamerGate is pro freedom of speech.
AntiGamerGate is pro censorship.
Gamergate celebrates the rights of the individual
AntiGameGate seeks to use the power of the mob to force their views on others.

It's as simple as that.

EDIT: My apologies for contributing to the derail. I'll just ignore that guy.

For crying out loud, culture is not a finite resource. It's not like oil or uranium, that if you use someone's culture, they can't use it.

The only problem I have is when someone butchers a language in films. You want to talk poor cultural representation? Try watching people talk Polish in American films. The first time I saw Sopranos "Polish" people talking, I was literally baffled. They were talking absolute gibberish.

Keep it to the industry news side of the topic, or it will get moved out of RPGs then closed when people start bringing the stupid.

In light of the last couple of pages, I feel I need to revise my short-sighted and unfair review of Cryptofblood's performance. Here's the new, hopefully fairer version:

This shit is  brilliant. No genuine troll outside of YouTube comments is seriously this fucking retarded with a complete lack of proper punctuation, frequent lack of local text cohesion, brainless repetition of (in this particular case) SJW catchphrases without any relevance to the discussion, utter failure to engage in any sort of two-way exchange and, indeed, a complete failure of reading skills as evidenced by his response to Sine Nomine.

I have to draw the conclusion that what we're seeing here is, in fact, a sort of absolutely brilliant metatrolling, where this person - clearly a sockpuppet for some highly accomplished regular poster - is trolling the trolls themselves by presenting a hilarious parody of them. Excellent, he even had me there for a minute. The only real criticism I can offer is that he's aiming too low by mimicking - and thereby mocking - the lowest, most primitive and retarded of trolls. With a bit more effort, he could just as well spoof the more intelligent, more erudite ones, which would turn his performance into a true classic. I'm proud to award him a revised

Trollscore: 8/10

PS: Just to point out one of his finest touches: "Cryptofblood" strongly rhymes with "Christ's blood", a phrase which, when used frivolously, can be construed to be highly social insensitive and offensive towards Christians. How sublime that our performer pretends to be a socially sensitive, progressive person while having a highly social offensive username!


On a serious and somewhat relevant note:

I love the Straits blog. I'm curious, does anyone know any similar ones that are about Pacific Islander cultures and their use in RPGs?

Quote from: Gwarh;829966Mentioning GamerGate in relationship to this thread is VERY on topic.

The people who are anti-gamergate are the same SJW's who bullied Monty Cook into re-writing the Native American inspired recursion.

GameGate really did start off being about Ethics in Gaming journalism, but then very quickly it became apparent that it was just another front on the Culture War the left has been waging for decades.

Since they've already won their battles in the Legal, Education, and Entertainment realms it has finally trickled down to low hanging fruit like Tabletop RPG's.

GamerGate is about the fight for creators and players to decide for themselves what they want out of their games. What they want to make and perhaps more importantly how they want to play.

GamerGate is pro freedom of speech.
AntiGamerGate is pro censorship.
Gamergate celebrates the rights of the individual
AntiGameGate seeks to use the power of the mob to force their views on others.

It's as simple as that.

This is pure bullshit and everything you said conflicts with reality. GamerGate has nothing to do with "Ethics" but it actually started out as a stalking campaign by a abuser to destroy his girlfriend's reputation and it launched into a full scale witch hunt aim to harass and silence women, PoC, and their supporters in the industry to "restore order" in the white male hegemony.

Also "Anti-GamerGate" only exists in your head, it's simply you vs the world.

It's fascinating to see the psychological effects of blind Religious Fundamentalism applied to secular issues.

Well, combined with the sad and ironic part.

Quote from: Cryptofblood;829981This is pure bullshit and everything you said conflicts with reality. GamerGate has nothing to do with "Ethics" but it actually started out as a stalking campaign by a abuser to destroy his girlfriend's reputation and it launched into a full scale witch hunt aim to harass and silence women, PoC, and their supporters in the industry to "restore order" in the white male hegemony.

Also "Anti-GamerGate" only exists in your head, it's simply you vs the world.

Or maybe you're an idiot blinded by ideology.

Now fuck off back to your hugbox, the adults are talking.

Quote from: Cryptofblood;829981This is pure bullshit and everything you said conflicts with reality. GamerGate has nothing to do with "Ethics" but it actually started out as a stalking campaign by a abuser to destroy his girlfriend's reputation and it launched into a full scale witch hunt aim to harass and silence women, PoC, and their supporters in the industry to "restore order" in the white male hegemony.

Also "Anti-GamerGate" only exists in your head, it's simply you vs the world.

You're my favorite poster. Easily.

Quote from: Gwarh;829966Mentioning GamerGate in relationship to this thread is VERY on topic.

The people who are anti-gamergate are the same SJW's who bullied Monty Cook into re-writing the Native American inspired recursion.

GameGate really did start off being about Ethics in Gaming journalism, but then very quickly it became apparent that it was just another front on the Culture War the left has been waging for decades.

Since they've already won their battles in the Legal, Education, and Entertainment realms it has finally trickled down to low hanging fruit like Tabletop RPG's.

GamerGate is about the fight for creators and players to decide for themselves what they want out of their games. What they want to make and perhaps more importantly how they want to play.

GamerGate is pro freedom of speech.
AntiGamerGate is pro censorship.
Gamergate celebrates the rights of the individual
AntiGameGate seeks to use the power of the mob to force their views on others.

It's as simple as that.

Still very unconvinced of the relevance of GamerGate is this topic.

I also agree with Rincewind on this : "For crying out loud, culture is not a finite resource. It's not like oil or uranium, that if you use someone's culture, they can't use it."

What happens here ? Bruce Cordell wrote a book featuring 3 pages (out of 400+) with a fictional/totally not real setting inspored by his visions of Native American people. MCG (owned by Monte Cook and Shanna Germain) released it.

People were upset by the white male vision of Native american culture (which is their right) and asked it to be removed (also a fair call). MCG asked to meet them, things get ugly, social media were blocked, an online petition was started calling Cook, Cordell and Germain genocide profiteers (which is deeply uncool and false). MCG asked people's advice, made some posts on social media, and decided that Cordell's vision had to go and hired two talented people who happens to be native americans to do the job.

That is a story with a rather nice ending. Nothing to do with gamergate. Mentionning it is just a derailing attempt. And wild claims about people participing in doxx and others terrible behaviors associated with gamergate kinda suck.

I'm starting to realize that this forum is a waste of time and also ironically only proving me right in the end.

Quote from: Premier;829979I love the Straits blog. I'm curious, does anyone know any similar ones that are about Pacific Islander cultures and their use in RPGs?

I've been looking, because I've been working on a campaign setting that includes peoples inspired by Pacific Islander cultures (but in a fantasy archipelago world). It's been difficult because a lot of the "real" language, myths and even names have been lost thanks to aggressive colonialism.

It's been awhile since I last checked, but the number of people who still fluently speak actual Haida is pretty small. (source: http://www.haidalanguage.org/).

Anyhow, if anyone has found anything good for Polynesia, Papua New Guinea, Maori or any others, lemme know!

Looks like i'm going to have to step in.

No talk about gamergate please.

As the guy referenced in the OP has actually posted to the thread, can we do him the honour of not shitting the fucking thread up with any old crap you think sounds cools, either for or against social justice issues?

Quote from: Premier;829979In light of the last couple of pages, I feel I need to revise my short-sighted and unfair review of Cryptofblood's performance. Here's the new, hopefully fairer version:

While I agree your first guess is wrong, so is this guess. What we have in Cryptofblood is a chatterbot designed as a senior class project by a group of avowedly Christian undergraduates at Cornell to pass a Turing test.

• Crypto as in cryptology is a clue that Cryptofbloods' name and words are not to be taken at their plain text meaning. The real meaning or nature of Cryptofblood have been concealed.

• Since cryptography is all done with computers now this is a clue to Cryptofbloods' true nature -- a machine -- not a man.

• If we assign numbers to the letters in the name, "Crypt of blood" using the usual simple encryption of A=1, B=2, etc. we get the following.

c-r-y-p-t-o-f-b-l-o-o-d
3-18-25-16-20-15-6-2-12-15-15-4

• If we, as in typical numerology, sum those numbers we get 151, which when again summed is 7 the mystical number associated with man, e.g. the seven chakras, the seven openings in a human head, etc.

• If we then decrypt 151 back to letters we get AEA, the name of the city in Colchis that was the home of Golden Fleece. Clearly cryptofblood is a clue that hides the object of a great quest, i.e. a program that can pass the Turing Test.

• If instead we look at the numerology of each word in crypt of blood we get 82-21-48 which when again summed gives us 10-3-12. This corresponds to JCL, clearly an acronym for Jesus Christ Lives. Which, like the Christ's Blood vernacular reference that Premier mentioned, clearly shows us that the Turing Test Program Cryptofblood was created by a group of Christian students.

• Also if we take the numbers by word 10-3-12 and resum them we get 25 which corresponds to the letter Y. Which is the first letter in Yahweh and in Yesus, both alternate words for god the father or god the son. Further evidence for the encryption of Christian symbology in this program.

• If instead we resum 25 that gives us lucky number 7. Undoubtably their were 7 undergraduates in the team that built Cryptofblood.

By now all the rational members on this forum have been convinced by the overwhelming weight of evidence and you crazy people can never be convinced by the facts so l don't think I need to provide additional proof - although let me assure you there is much more evidence present, we haven't even looked at a textual analysis nor a comparison to Biblical verses, still even without all that I think we can all see where this is leading....