Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1096843My practical experience with actual bigots in real life (as opposed to, say, reading bigotry into someone else because they disagree with you on some point), is that only the approach taken by Dr. King has any positive effect.  Of course that assumes that the goal is zero bigotry--i.e. actual conversion of bigots to non bigots.   I've seen it from inside a circle of people where the bigots were candid:  All the other arguments (and screaming and rioting and lying and so forth) get peoples' backs up, including bigots.  Whereas I've seen bigots confronted with King's arguments stop, reflect, and then say, "Yes, he is correct."  And then start to change.

For games, one would then assume if I am correct that Pundit's approach is the correct one for reducing bigotry in games (to the extent that there is any). Everyone gets a voice. Everyone gets credited as being a person.

Steven Mitchell - I think you're going to have to unpack more about what you see as Dr. King's approach and Pundit's approach. This implies a connection, but I don't see resemblance between them. Dr. King tended to preach socialism to packed crowds of black people, which is very different from what I see as Pundit's tone and message. I think Dr. King, Pundit, and myself are all very different in approach.

I agree with you in that my personal preference is that everyone gets a voice and everyone is credited as being a person. It seems to me the best shot at converting people to be less bigoted. But I'm wary of saying that it's the best or the only way -- because success seems really difficult to measure.


To tenbones --

Quote from: tenbonesYou're asking questions as if the demand for "diversity" by the marketing departments of WotC (and all the other indy-companies) right along with the rest of the various entertainment industries - forcing *their* views of "diverity" upon everyone because no one else's standard is enough.

Quote from: jhkimSo I approve of the goal of eliminating bigotry, but I understand that people can make impractical and/or unethical efforts to do so, like calling for quotas or doxxing suspected bigots. However, regarding WotC marketing departments - I don't see how they're immorally forcing views on anyone. They make products and advertisements with a given view. That's not mind control - that's capitalism.

Quote from: tenbones;1096853So are you making the claim that within the confines of social-media WotC and their employees only do "marketing" for the purposes of capitalism? They don't engage in bigotry, or political pandering? Or social-engineering against the very base of fandom that put them on the map? Are you fucking serious? THIS is that point where I make the claim you're being willfully ignorant and obtuse.

I don't think that any of bigotry, pandering, or social engineering are exclusive of marketing. A whole lot of marketing - including successful marketing - is pandering. And I already believe there is plenty of bigotry in marketing. I'm actually not sure what you consider "social engineering".

I don't actually follow WotC marketing, so I have no opinion about the content of what they say. But even if I disagree with what they say, I don't think that their social media posts are *forcing* their views on me. They're expressing their views, and I can disagree with them. Can you point to what this forcing looks like?

Quote from: tenbones;1096853But according to the SJW's, which this thread is *about*, their claim is that the RPG industry (and I extend this out based on the multitudes of "news" stories, social-media "movements", etc. to all of entertainment - arguably beyond) is racist, white-male dominated for the express purposes of oppression of minorities, under their code-terms of "patriarchy" and blanket racist/bigoted views of Caucasians that are heterosexual and in particular, male.

SJWs should be clubbed over the head repeatedly with the Rules Cyclopedia till they get a clue.
Page 3. African looking fellow in the lineup.
Page 6. Two guys sitting together looking way more happy than they should. You be the judge!
Page 15. ghasparoonies a girl!
Page 20. Another african looking person.
Page 21. Another girl! Might be a gypsy too.
Page 25. Another girl. What is the world coming to?
and so on.

Quote from: tenbones;1096853But according to the SJW's, which this thread is *about*, their claim is that the RPG industry (and I extend this out based on the multitudes of "news" stories, social-media "movements", etc. to all of entertainment - arguably beyond) is racist, white-male dominated for the express purposes of oppression of minorities, under their code-terms of "patriarchy" and blanket racist/bigoted views of Caucasians that are heterosexual and in particular, male.

You're choosing a very sweeping interpretation.  

Since I have been branded an SJW, let me clarify.  

Essentially, jhkim's contention is correct.  There are 300 Million + people in the United States and some of them are extremely bigoted - whether against a sect or religion (Jews, Muslims, Atheists, Satanists, etc), a race (blacks, Africans, Asians, Italians, Roma, etc), a gender (women, trans-) a sexual preference (homosexual, bi-sexual, pansexual, etc) or something else.  It's normal enough that you don't have to look very hard to find these people.  Often they're very eager to express their opinions about why one group or another doesn't deserve to be treated as people.  Because some significant number of people are bigoted, and there's no reason to think that players or RPGs are any less bigoted than the general population (or other groups where bias and bigotry has been a problem like the military, the police, and many other individual businesses), there's no reason to think that bias and bigotry CAN'T exist among people who play RPGs.  It doesn't have to be among all groups for it to be seen as a problem...  Many groups are very stable, they don't typically recruit new players for years at a time and no matter how open-minded they might be, they may not be the first group that people encounter.  If people who play RPGs have the same distribution of prejudice as the general population, some new players will encounter it and may find that it turns them off the hobby completely.  

Some people are very welcoming in this hobby.  That's a good thing.

Some people are very UNwelcoming in this hobby.  That's a bad thing.  

Since there isn't a system set up to ensure that people first interact with welcoming people, it becomes a crap-shoot.  Saying 'I was once new to this hobby and nobody made me feel unwelcome' doesn't invalidate the experience of someone else who's experience wasn't as positive.  Understanding that some groups experience more bias than others, it's even less convincing when a straight white male playing in a group entirely composed of other straight white males helpfully explains how they never experienced discrimination as if that proves that historically discriminated against groups couldn't have had the experience of being discriminated against.

Let me sum this thread up after 35 pages. The future of RPGing is thus:

1) The only players "welcome" in the hobby will be SJWs and those nodding in obedience to their dogma.

2) All the "unwelcome" deplorables will gather on forums such as these and build their own RPG community with like minded evil scum. Surely there are enough of us to host a kickass convention.

I say bring it on. Do you really want to game with SJW assholes who demand obedience to their dogma, rewrite our hobby's history and try to force you to parrot their bullshit out of fear of being ostracized?  

Fuck that shit.

All of us can rally a half dozen unrepentant enemies of humanity to roll dice and eat cheetos.

Quote from: jhkim;1096876Steven Mitchell - I think you're going to have to unpack more about what you see as Dr. King's approach and Pundit's approach. This implies a connection, but I don't see resemblance between them. Dr. King tended to preach socialism to packed crowds of black people, which is very different from what I see as Pundit's tone and message. I think Dr. King, Pundit, and myself are all very different in approach.

I agree with you in that my personal preference is that everyone gets a voice and everyone is credited as being a person. It seems to me the best shot at converting people to be less bigoted. But I'm wary of saying that it's the best or the only way -- because success seems really difficult to measure.

Success is extremely easy to measure as long as reality is faced.  Do you know someone who is a bigot?  What works to get them to stop being a bigot?  That's it.  All other measurements are pipe dreams.  Now, if you want something that you can quantify at some national level report, then no, that cannot be measured--by anyone.  Heck, that couldn't even be measure back when "social scientists" thought all this stuff could be quantified, and before the populace got so sick of them and polls that they started lying to surveys on a routine basis just to screw with the numbers.

Any with Dr. King, I'm not talking about his economic or political messages--which were rather unclear and sometimes contradictory to each other and his stated purpose, but rather his cultural and religious ones--which were very clear.  To be entirely clear, also, I'm also not concerned with or addressing in this topic whether any of those message are necessarily correct, merely their effectiveness.  Stated plainly, when he appeals to people with a point something like--treat me the same as everyone else, because I'm a human being with hopes and dreams, who works the same as you, lives like you, and is blessed by God the same as you--that message resonates--even with many bigots.  Now, my opinion on why it resonates is that there is no weasel answer that can finesse a response, and it is too direct to avoid it.  Only a highly educated person can finesse it, and those types are typically too arrogant to avoid it.  While there are highly educated bigots, they aren't consequential enough to worry about for speech purposes.  

As to why I see a connection with Pundit, I'll point out just one:  We are having this discussion on a free speech site where the object of the free speech is the more people who get to talk, the more likely we are to find a correct/useful/whatever answer.  A SJW says, "Shut up, and let the [insert minority flavor of the week] talk.  If the rest of you behave, we'll let you listen to them."  Whereas at the heart of King's approach is, "I get to talk, the same as you.  If you find my words convincing, you are welcome to listen."  A sincere, reality-based SJW--as unlikely as that idea sounds--would never try to get anyone banned for anything from any game.  They certainly wouldn't be screaming about representation problems or otherwise interfering with products or organizing boycotts.  Instead, they'd be working on product that had the ideas, characters, etc. that they wanted out there.  Instead, what we have is this group that wants other people more talented than them to do their creative heavy lifting for them.

That's more or less how I run my games.  Anyone that is willing to let other people be themselves (as games, appropriate to the venue) gets to participate.  People that want to shut other people down--or dominate the game with stuff that isn't about the game--those I exclude, because they've violated the social contract of the thing.

Quote from: GIMME SOME SUGAR;1096850I might be an actual bigot but in no way do I represent other people on this forum. I am not against gay marriage. I'm against marriage. Period. I am against same sex parents having children though (for instance via adoption). I think that every child deserves a father and a mother. I'm also against abortions used as birth control. Use contraceptives or fist-fucking, I don't care what. Just don't be a lazy bitch like above. I'm also against quotas in any line of work. Well, more transpeople and bluehaired lesbians would be fun to watch slave in African diamond mines, I might be persuaded out of that bigotry. Oh, and I'm also atheist in the proper sense (without a god, I have no need for gods) and I have a most rational fear of islam and great white sharks.

All I got from this was "fist-fucking great white sharks", which is bold, sir.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;1096884You're choosing a very sweeping interpretation.  

Since I have been branded an SJW, let me clarify.  

Essentially, jhkim's contention is correct.  There are 300 Million + people in the United States and some of them are extremely bigoted - whether against a sect or religion (Jews, Muslims, Atheists, Satanists, etc), a race (blacks, Africans, Asians, Italians, Roma, etc), a gender (women, trans-) a sexual preference (homosexual, bi-sexual, pansexual, etc) or something else.

What these lists are missing shows exactly why you fucking leftist SJWs are all brain damaged assholes.  It is another example of leftist SJW blindness which has been all over this thread.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;1096884Since there isn't a system set up to ensure that people first interact with welcoming people, it becomes a crap-shoot.  Saying 'I was once new to this hobby and nobody made me feel unwelcome' doesn't invalidate the experience of someone else who's experience wasn't as positive.  

Nor does it validate the idea that the vast majority of non-white males who approached a rpg group were told to fuck off.  This is the idea that is being used to fuel the SJW jihad.

Quote from: Gagarth;1096937What these lists are missing shows exactly why you fucking leftist SJWs are all brain damaged assholes.

I noticed the same thing. Interesting how only straight, white men are bigots, huh? How stupid is it that saying everyone should try to ignore sex and skin color and just be good to each other is in itself, considered bigoted? It's not, obviously, but without ists and isms, SJWs don't have anything to beat others into submission with.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1096893Success is extremely easy to measure as long as reality is faced.  Do you know someone who is a bigot?  What works to get them to stop being a bigot?  That's it.  All other measurements are pipe dreams.  Now, if you want something that you can quantify at some national level report, then no, that cannot be measured--by anyone.  Heck, that couldn't even be measure back when "social scientists" thought all this stuff could be quantified, and before the populace got so sick of them and polls that they started lying to surveys on a routine basis just to screw with the numbers.

Any with Dr. King, I'm not talking about his economic or political messages--which were rather unclear and sometimes contradictory to each other and his stated purpose, but rather his cultural and religious ones--which were very clear.  To be entirely clear, also, I'm also not concerned with or addressing in this topic whether any of those message are necessarily correct, merely their effectiveness.  Stated plainly, when he appeals to people with a point something like--treat me the same as everyone else, because I'm a human being with hopes and dreams, who works the same as you, lives like you, and is blessed by God the same as you--that message resonates--even with many bigots.  Now, my opinion on why it resonates is that there is no weasel answer that can finesse a response, and it is too direct to avoid it.  Only a highly educated person can finesse it, and those types are typically too arrogant to avoid it.  While there are highly educated bigots, they aren't consequential enough to worry about for speech purposes.  

As to why I see a connection with Pundit, I'll point out just one:  We are having this discussion on a free speech site where the object of the free speech is the more people who get to talk, the more likely we are to find a correct/useful/whatever answer.  A SJW says, "Shut up, and let the [insert minority flavor of the week] talk.  If the rest of you behave, we'll let you listen to them."  Whereas at the heart of King's approach is, "I get to talk, the same as you.  If you find my words convincing, you are welcome to listen."  A sincere, reality-based SJW--as unlikely as that idea sounds--would never try to get anyone banned for anything from any game.  They certainly wouldn't be screaming about representation problems or otherwise interfering with products or organizing boycotts.  Instead, they'd be working on product that had the ideas, characters, etc. that they wanted out there.  Instead, what we have is this group that wants other people more talented than them to do their creative heavy lifting for them.

That's more or less how I run my games.  Anyone that is willing to let other people be themselves (as games, appropriate to the venue) gets to participate.  People that want to shut other people down--or dominate the game with stuff that isn't about the game--those I exclude, because they've violated the social contract of the thing.

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Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;1096897All I got from this was "fist-fucking great white sharks", which is bold, sir.

Bold indeed, lol. In fact too bold for me. I save that moment for Ocean "marine biologist but dumb as a rock" Ramsey who likes to swim and pester great whites. She reminds me of Timothy Treadwell.

Jeff, don't know why you would roll your eyes at that.  I'm well aware of that dynamic and have commented on it before, in this forum, multiple times.  That's why the type of people that use that tactic are excluded from my games.  The only way to win that game is not to play.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;1096884You're choosing a very sweeping interpretation.  

Since I have been branded an SJW, let me clarify.  

Essentially, jhkim's contention is correct.  There are 300 Million + people in the United States and some of them are extremely bigoted - whether against a sect or religion (Jews, Muslims, Atheists, Satanists, etc), a race (blacks, Africans, Asians, Italians, Roma, etc), a gender (women, trans-) a sexual preference (homosexual, bi-sexual, pansexual, etc) or something else.  It's normal enough that you don't have to look very hard to find these people.  Often they're very eager to express their opinions about why one group or another doesn't deserve to be treated as people.  Because some significant number of people are bigoted, and there's no reason to think that players or RPGs are any less bigoted than the general population (or other groups where bias and bigotry has been a problem like the military, the police, and many other individual businesses), there's no reason to think that bias and bigotry CAN'T exist among people who play RPGs.  It doesn't have to be among all groups for it to be seen as a problem...  Many groups are very stable, they don't typically recruit new players for years at a time and no matter how open-minded they might be, they may not be the first group that people encounter.  If people who play RPGs have the same distribution of prejudice as the general population, some new players will encounter it and may find that it turns them off the hobby completely.  

Some people are very welcoming in this hobby.  That's a good thing.

Some people are very UNwelcoming in this hobby.  That's a bad thing.  

Since there isn't a system set up to ensure that people first interact with welcoming people, it becomes a crap-shoot.  Saying 'I was once new to this hobby and nobody made me feel unwelcome' doesn't invalidate the experience of someone else who's experience wasn't as positive.  Understanding that some groups experience more bias than others, it's even less convincing when a straight white male playing in a group entirely composed of other straight white males helpfully explains how they never experienced discrimination as if that proves that historically discriminated against groups couldn't have had the experience of being discriminated against.

The *contention* from SJW's *IN* the RPG space - i.e. the loudest, most obnoxious, people what either are part of the publishing/design teams, or indy-scene, and/or their fandom, is that until their arrival the RPG "community" is largely unwelcoming to their ilk, including neutral people they've co-opted that aren't white, or are LGBT that don't really agree.

The counter claim - by Pundit, and many of us here - including "POC" like myself is this is, and I'll use a technical term "HORSESHIT" (no offense meant if you identity as an Equus or are a general animal lover, or a "Scat enthusiast"... okay maybe if the latter).

Your response is to flood the zone with what is actually nonsensical and non-contextual facts. Nonsensical because 300-million people in the US *do not* play RPGs. Non-contextual because of those that DO play - a paltry number by DIRECT comparison - when in fact there is *nothing* preventing anyone of any stripe from participating/organizing/creating/playing table-top RPG's any way they want. Your very statement is the inverse of what these people are claiming (not sure if you realize that) - you're claiming that LGBT/POC, because they may have feelings that they are "non-normative" or whatever - they are *walking* into the sphere assuming things about those not like them. They're bringing their own biases, justified or not, into the setting.

Further - rather than engaging on their own to make the game their own thing, which is what I advocate for. They engage in activism to change the state of the medium to suit their ends at the expense of everyone else that *are not like them*. And here's the thing - this is not about representation. But no one should be under any obligation to partake in *anything* they don't want to be invested in. So while one can say "Well WotC is now full of ideologues and this is how they want to portray their content. You can do what you advocate and go play your games your way." - which I do. Likewise I create my own games to play the way I want. You know... which anyone can do.

But you don't get to pretend that the RPG fanbase has not been inclusive from the start. The same is true of comics, movies, etc. You want representation to be sufficient to your own standards? Go create it. You are owned nothing for your own needs by others. Nothing is stopping you except the illusion that those that aren't invested in your pet-identity label of choice *should* be by some corporate fiat or social-mob mandate. That's not "representation". That's co-option and coercion.

Quote from: tenbones;1096952Further - rather than engaging on their own to make the game their own thing, which is what I advocate for. They engage in activism to change the state of the medium to suit their ends at the expense of everyone else that *are not like them*. And here's the thing - this is not about representation. But no one should be under any obligation to partake in *anything* they don't want to be invested in. So while one can say "Well WotC is now full of ideologues and this is how they want to portray their content. You can do what you advocate and go play your games your way." - which I do. Likewise I create my own games to play the way I want. You know... which anyone can do.

But you don't get to pretend that the RPG fanbase has not been inclusive from the start. The same is true of comics, movies, etc. You want representation to be sufficient to your own standards? Go create it. You are owned nothing for your own needs by others. Nothing is stopping you except the illusion that those that aren't invested in your pet-identity label of choice *should* be by some corporate fiat or social-mob mandate. That's not "representation". That's co-option and coercion.

A glaring example of this cognitive dissonance is the Batwoman show. They applaud her strength and how she's so brave and forging her own path...after she stole the identity and equipment of a man. They can and will not see their insanity.

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;1096954A glaring example of this cognitive dissonance is the Batwoman show. They applaud her strength and how she's so brave and forging her own path...after she stole the identity and equipment of a man. They can and will not see their insanity.

The examples stretch to nearly *every* thing this ideology has touched.

A better challenge is to show me where it has succeeded *without* co-opting something already established? Then let's talk about that "success"...

Quote from: tenbones;1096962The examples stretch to nearly *every* thing this ideology has touched.

A better challenge is to show me where it has succeeded *without* co-opting something already established? Then let's talk about that "success"...

I doubt it's possible. My example was just one of many examples that've been hopping around Nerd Land lately.