Quote from: RPGPundit;580070Yes, and for the record now, they want to ban not only the bikini chainmail but the Drow, too.

RPGPundit

Personally, I don't care for Drow very much because I think they've been done to death thanks to Salvatore.

But good luck with that.  I hope they let us know how that turns out.

If WOTC artists put tattoos all over their D&D characters (and monsters) in their books, more tattooed-covered people would play the game.  Fill the book with metrosexual looking characters, and the game halls will fill up with them also.  Fill the books with big fat greasy balding dudes with hardly any females in the book, and you end up with a game room filled with Warhammer players.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;580092If WOTC artists put tattoos all over their D&D characters (and monsters) in their books, more tattooed-covered people would play the game.  Fill the book with metrosexual looking characters, and the game halls will fill up with them also.  Fill the books with big fat greasy balding dudes with hardly any females in the book, and you end up with a game room filled with Warhammer players.

So what you're saying is that we need fat, greasy, tatooed metrosexuals on all the pages and the game is instant success?

You need to take that to ENWorld quick!  They might even cut you a profit sharing deal

Quote from: Killfuck Soulshitter;580020Couple of serious questions regarding the RPG.net feminist/queer/PC culture (however you want to characterize or name it, you know what I mean):

Is it just me, or has it absolutely exploded and taken over the boards during the last 6-12 months?

And if so, is this a reflection of movement in the wider culture?

I've spotted a couple of manufactured hysterias along the same lines in other geeky segments of society recently, most recently at Defcon, the paticipants of which unlike most others have absolutely no difficulty digging up names and backgrounds on the participants and publishing them. It seems to be liberal arts types who are responsible for the most part, activists without a cause.

Near as I can tell they are targeting certain predominantly male occupied pastimes and occupations under the delusion that it's PATRIARCHY at work rather than chronically shy socially backwards nerds who would be only delighted to have more women involved.

So in they storm, love handles aflap in a traditional dominance display, while the retiring types still haven't figured out that not all women are nice people, and mostly fall in behind the buffoons in the hopes of maybe a conversation or something with a female not on IRC.

Its a whirlwind of confusion and unrivalled stupidity, but erring on the side of caution, the liberal arts people started condemning random individuals and setting up camp. They don't know why it was so easy to overthrow this bastion of male power, but they aren't ones to look a gift horse in the mouth.

That, in short, is rpgnet.

When the penny dropped on this crap I felt like a CoC investigator that had discovered the secret of Cthulhu, except instead of horror it was a struggle not to slip into the loving arms of insanity due to the volume of concentrated stupid involved.

No, its not a reflection of wider society.

Quote from: Panzerkraken;580108So what you're saying is that we need fat, greasy, tatooed metrosexuals on all the pages and the game is instant success?

The trick is to find the right combination that will cyphon from the largest income pool, while taking care not to over-spend research funds on focus groups, control groups, and recovering RPGer groups.

But it would not kill WOTC to put booth babes at their vendor tables.

Quote from: RPGPundit;579945It also may end up being the first RPG I know of to feature a transgender person on the cover.

RPGPundit

In a situation where everyone is allowed to chose their own gender , isn't transgenderism made redundant?

I will only sign the petition if it means hot dark elven women will show up at my house. Preferably not to torture or kill me.

Man, people here really care a lot about what is said over at RPGnet.  I haven't been there in ages, but it seems like I would have to read there to get what's going on here.  

Quote from: SineNomine;579795It's the associated threads that make mention of Africa, and it's the associated petitioners that are making my teeth hurt. The petition itself is harmlessly useless, but the Righteousness Rays emitting from many supporters in the relevant threads are enough to make a hardshell Baptist tent preacher look like Voltaire.

OK.  I've read here, the petition, and a thread at Story Games.  (I've just browsed a thread at the WotC community thread now, too.)  I had some quibbles with the petition, but it's basically fine and after some thought I've now signed it.  

Another two cents:

1) It's not necessarily racism to have a product aimed at a particular demographic, including race.  A show might target older white women as its target audience, or Asian teens, or young black men.  However, D&D isn't like a show and there's no reason for it to be narrowly targeted like this.  

2) It's not racism to request particular races in illustrations.  Like with the above - if my product is aimed at black men, I might tell my hired illustrator to put a black man on the cover.  That isn't necessarily racism.  Likewise, customer feedback of "we want more minorities" or even "we want at least 20% people of color" isn't racism.  

Quote from: SineNomine;579795WotC is not necessary. There is no more intermediary gatekeeper between the game creator and the gaming public. Every ounce of effort spent coaxing WotC to add a third pigment to their fleshtone palette is an ounce of effort spent in a fundamentally useless pursuit. Anyone and everyone can create exactly the game content they want to see and can share it with the entire planet. They can even get paid for it sometimes.

So it isn't necessary, but that doesn't mean it's a bad idea.  WotC customers still can and should expect that the company will at least listen to what they want - especially so if WotC asked for feedback.  

Yes, you can put your own game out there - and I approve of that.  However, it's easy to put a game out there, but it's hard to put one out that anyone gives a damn about.  There are thousands of RPGs out there - I have over 850 on my free RPG list and over 1500 in my encyclopedia.  Making a tiny difference in what WotC produces is likely to affect the gaming community a lot more than yet another hastily-produced indie RPG.

I'm much more interested in if a person can make the time to come to an RPG game than what their skin color, sex, hair style, clothing brand, CMOS battery type, atmospheric sensitivity, food intake is.

Quote from: jhkim;580135Man, people here really care a lot about what is said over at RPGnet.  I haven't been there in ages, but it seems like I would have to read there to get what's going on here.

The problem with rpgnet is that its likely the first place people who search for rpg forums are likely to stumble across on google, little knowing what a vastly retarded hazard they are stepping into. I'd say you could put a percentage whole-number on the amount of damage the place has done to the hobby in terms of people who have left as a result.

Quote from: jhkim;580135However, D&D isn't like a show and there's no reason for it to be narrowly targeted like this.

What? D&D has a pretty well defined demographic.

Quote from: jhkim;5801352) It's not racism to request particular races in illustrations.  Like with the above - if my product is aimed at black men, I might tell my hired illustrator to put a black man on the cover.  That isn't necessarily racism.  Likewise, customer feedback of "we want more minorities" or even "we want at least 20% people of color" isn't racism.

I agree, and I guess the publisher of Ebony magazine would agree as well.

But then, many people go on to explain why they want what they want, and that's usually when racism of some kind can creep in.

Quote from: jhkim;580135So it isn't necessary, but that doesn't mean it's a bad idea.  WotC customers still can and should expect that the company will at least listen to what they want - especially so if WotC asked for feedback.  

Yes, you can put your own game out there - and I approve of that.  However, it's easy to put a game out there, but it's hard to put one out that anyone gives a damn about.  There are thousands of RPGs out there - I have over 850 on my free RPG list and over 1500 in my encyclopedia.  Making a tiny difference in what WotC produces is likely to affect the gaming community a lot more than yet another hastily-produced indie RPG.

And I think the fundamental assumptions attached to the petition are actively counterproductive to bringing about the gaming ethos that its supporters purport to desire. I also think that a great many of its supporters are using it as a cheap prop to excuse themselves from actually taking more productive steps, and to feel good about their highly public uselessness.

The petition has been up for a little under two weeks. On RPGnet alone, the thread on it has earned 35,000 views at present, and there are still less than 500 signatures on the petition. The chances that this spectacle is going to be received by WotC with anything more than a brow-furrowed nod of deep respect for the passionate feeling expressed by the members of their valued gaming community is like unto that of a snowball in Hell.

Now suppose that each one of those 496 petitioners sat down within the past two weeks and wrote a single Joesky-tax blog post about an NPC, location, organization, culture, or art piece that really suited what they wanted to see in gaming. The sidebars would be wall-to-wall with it. There'd be most of a campaign setting just sitting there for anyone who wanted to pick and choose parts to assemble. And it would take them, oh, maybe half an hour apiece if they typed slowly.

WotC is a company, and petitions are nothing more than signals to the PR center of its brain to emit the correct noises. To make it act, you need to make it afraid or you need to make it greedy. Either show it a desolate future in which it's a latter-day Palladium limping behind after Paizo's Pathfinder or show it a vast pool of people buying stuff that it could produce too. It wasn't coincidence that a public playtest for 5e kicked off with the Ur-Module of the OSR as its setpiece. That's what influence looks like. It is earned one step at a time- one blogpost, one homebrew module, one almost-ignored indie game stacked on top of another. Even if it fails in the end, you're guaranteed to get a Hell of a lot more productive fun out of it than a half-empty petition can give you.

Quote from: SineNomine;580169Now suppose that each one of those 496 petitioners sat down within the past two weeks and wrote a single Joesky-tax blog post about an NPC, location, organization, culture, or art piece that really suited what they wanted to see in gaming. The sidebars would be wall-to-wall with it. There'd be most of a campaign setting just sitting there for anyone who wanted to pick and choose parts to assemble. And it would take them, oh, maybe half an hour apiece if they typed slowly.

I feel like you're implying a much higher value to such a collection than I would.  From what you say, it's a bunch of half-hour snippets from different people with no quality control and varying setting assumptions and aesthetics.  They could, say, expand the D20NPCs wiki to 700 entries instead of only 200.  

I haven't found such collections useful, personally, and I don't feel like they have any influence amidst the hundreds of other free games and resources. It's more work for me to sift through all the posts to find something to use than it is for me to just create the NPC/location/whatever for myself.  

Quote from: SineNomine;580169WotC is a company, and petitions are nothing more than signals to the PR center of its brain to emit the correct noises. To make it act, you need to make it afraid or you need to make it greedy. Either show it a desolate future in which it's a latter-day Palladium limping behind after Paizo's Pathfinder or show it a vast pool of people buying stuff that it could produce too. It wasn't coincidence that a public playtest for 5e kicked off with the Ur-Module of the OSR as its setpiece. That's what influence looks like. It is earned one step at a time- one blogpost, one homebrew module, one almost-ignored indie game stacked on top of another. Even if it fails in the end, you're guaranteed to get a Hell of a lot more productive fun out of it than a half-empty petition can give you.

It sounds like you're implying an either/or.  Maybe that the petition shouldn't exist or people shouldn't sign it, because the 30 seconds it takes for them to sign the petition prevents them from expressing themselves in other ways?  I don't get it.  

I signed the petition, and I have tons of other material game material, game discussion, and so forth.  It sounds to me like lots of the people who signed the petition also went on to make blog or forum posts on the topic.

Quote from: SineNomine;580169Now suppose that each one of those 496 petitioners sat down within the past two weeks and wrote a single Joesky-tax blog post about an NPC, location, organization, culture, or art piece that really suited what they wanted to see in gaming.

No, no, not again...
http://shii.org/knows/Zybourne_Clock

Quote from: jhkim;580178I feel like you're implying a much higher value to such a collection than I would.  From what you say, it's a bunch of half-hour snippets from different people with no quality control and varying setting assumptions and aesthetics.  They could, say, expand the D20NPCs wiki to 700 entries instead of only 200.

The absence of filters is the entire point. Of course the great majority of it will be garbage- Sturgeon's Law will not be mocked. But some of it won't be trash for certain readers and some of it won't be trash by any reasonable measure, and either way it produces more good stuff for our hobby. More significantly, this stuff would exist, which is not a state of being apt to be induced by a half-empty petition.

QuoteI haven't found such collections useful, personally, and I don't feel like they have any influence amidst the hundreds of other free games and resources. It's more work for me to sift through all the posts to find something to use than it is for me to just create the NPC/location/whatever for myself.

That's presumably because you've already cultivated an attitude of self-provision for your fun. You are not frightened of creating your own context and building the kind of gaming you want to have. This is not the modern mindset in our hobby, and it is certainly not the mindset of people who think that humble appeals to WotC is a productive way to get a deep-seated revision of their flagship IP's aesthetic. Those people who sincerely want to broaden the gaming zeitgeist need to quit petitioning the emperor and start hammering their own plowshares into glaive-guisarmes. Enough of them do that, the emperor will do his own listening.

QuoteIt sounds like you're implying an either/or.  Maybe that the petition shouldn't exist or people shouldn't sign it, because the 30 seconds it takes for them to sign the petition prevents them from expressing themselves in other ways?  I don't get it.

Petty acts of virtue tend to make people give themselves permission to be bastards thereafter. This is visible in the rpg.net thread, where support of the petition is taken by several participants as license to be thermonuclear assholes to anyone failing to show similar enthusiasm for the idea. Hell, they're even tearing strips off fellow signatories for not supporting it with the right mindset. It's a sight that's equal parts hilarious and contemptible, and doubtless responsible for the thunderous support the petitioner's goal has received.

It's a given that a lot of the people who signed don't give a tinker's damn for the actual goal, and just want a cheap excuse to feel better about themselves. You'll identify them as the ones with The East Is Red for a social interaction soundtrack. They were always going to be worthless to their cause. But there are real talents and people with genuine potential in that list, and they should be encouraged to actually deploy their abilities in a way that makes the kind of gaming they want to see. The petition doesn't do it. It only depletes focus, distracts with the gleichaltung trolls, and lets people offload their responsibility to the hobby onto the shoulders of an indifferent third party.