Quote from: The Evil DMIt's almost condescending in the way Black history month is.

Ah.  I take it you're black then.  Can you tell me precisely what it is about Black History Month that you find condescending to you other blacks?

!i!

Quote from: Ian AbsentiaAh.  I take it you're black then.  Can you tell me precisely what it is about Black History Month that you find condescending to you other blacks?

!i!

sure thing. PM me if you wish. no need to derail this thread.

What's Black history month?

Does that mean you ignore Black history the other 11 months?

Quote from: BalbinusWhat's Black history month?

Does that mean you ignore Black history the other 11 months?

It is like a Gay Pride Parade. Only without the 'gay' or the 'parade'. Apparently stripped of some of the pride too?

I think it is one of those PR things you do when you don't have enough cash or enough things to talk about to maintain an advertising and public awareness campaign for the entire year. So you concentrate it and build an event out of it. In that context having a whole month makes it pretty big. Usually it'll only be a single week or even single day. Maybe it comes off as condesending sometimes but the motives are usually real. From my experience on the outside looking in for symbolic things like this the results can be real too if over time if it gets established.

Quote from: BalbinusWhat's Black history month?

Does that mean you ignore Black history the other 11 months?

Apparently. Actually I lump Black History in with History and pay attention to it 12 months a year. I don't believe in Separate but Equal treatment, but then that's just me personally. The Government in its infinite wisdom hath decreed that Black History is indeed Separate, but only 1/12 as important as other history. Some History is thus more Equal than others.



-clash

Quote from: BalbinusWhat's Black history month?

Does that mean you ignore Black history the other 11 months?

In America, February has been designated as Black History Month.  Its meant to set aside time to draw attention to all of the accomplishments and struggles the Black community has done and endured.  Like all things of this nature, there is a positive way to look at it and a cynical way to view it.

Aw, crap.  And here I was PM-ing Evil DM to avoid just this.

But, yes, Moriarty has it right.  No one is being absurd enough to pretend that black history doesn't exist outside of the month of February (or, as I discovered, October in the UK), or that black history is any more important than any other brand of history during that period.

!i!

Quote from: Hastur T. FannonMy point is, if Bruce did his research properly and got appropriate feedback, the fact he's a honky shouldn't make a difference

'Cept that being a "honky" makes him less likely to do the research. I mean, just look here at therpgsite when it's suggested that the place is a bit blokey and not exactly welcoming to women. "What? Are you crazy?! How is this place unfriendly to women?" Part of being at the top of the social heap is that you think the heap's not very high - it's even level, you think. There's a whole lot of assumptions and ideas we have it just never occurs to us to question.

As to his doing his research properly, even if it were purely book research into cultures other than his own, well if you look at his rather extensive list of credits, we see only one book which focused on a real-world culture or group foreign to him - and that's about Tokyo. I happen to have read this book, and while it's not as bad as, for example, Sheppard's Akashic Brotherhood (real "Orientalist" stuff), it's still not terribly awesome. All the rest is based on made-up cultures and races and groups. So if he were writing a book about entirely fictional groups, I'd say he'd do quite a good job. Real groups? Not so much.

Like you say, Hastur T. Fannon, if a writer researches well, keeps an open mind and is constantly questioning themselves and others, they can write about just about anything. But most people, being human, don't keep open minds, don't constantly question themselves and others. Why not? Well, because we think we know already. I don't see that kind of open-mindedness in the guy.

We've got a whole swag of people here on therpgsite who are open-minded and questioning enough to do this kind of project well - Hastur T. Fannon, Balbinus, David R, are those who come to mind at the moment. And we've got a shitload who are more closed-minded and/or prejudiced, and would bollocks it up completely - me, RPGPundit, James McMurray, etc.

That I myself couldn't do a good job doesn't mean I can't recognise when someone's going to do a bad job of it. If I have a car accident and my right leg is horribly crushed and needs to be amputated to save my life, and then when I go to the hospital the doctor whips out an axe and goes for my left leg - I don't need to be an orthopaedic surgeon to figure out he's going to do it wrong.  

Characters of diverse backgrounds should be part of the corebook. They should not be an afterthought. They're not elves or orcs, they're human beings. They belong in the corebook.

Quote from: blakkieIt is like a Gay Pride Parade. Only without the 'gay' or the 'parade'. Apparently stripped of some of the pride too?

I think it is one of those PR things you do when you don't have enough cash or enough things to talk about to maintain an advertising and public awareness campaign for the entire year. So you concentrate it and build an event out of it. In that context having a whole month makes it pretty big. Usually it'll only be a single week or even single day. Maybe it comes off as condesending sometimes but the motives are usually real. From my experience on the outside looking in for symbolic things like this the results can be real too if over time if it gets established.

Man, lose the parade and really, what's the point?

Anyway, I read the other replies too, my views are deeply off topic, but coincide remarkably with Clash's.

By the way, it's nice of JB to name me as someone who could do this well, but I'm not persuaded that's necessarily true.  It's a tricky thing, even if you are from a minority that doesn't give you much insight into other minorities necessarily, we are all little bubbles of our own experience at the end of the day.

I still welcome the whole project, at worst I won't buy it if I don't think I'll use it in actual play.

Quote from: StuartShe is eager to be offended.  She wants to read RPGs and be pissed. Like Karen.

DING-DING-DING!

we have a winner...here's a hula-girl lamp!

Quote from: BalbinusBy the way, it's nice of JB to name me as someone who could do this well, but I'm not persuaded that's necessarily true.  It's a tricky thing -

And that's why you're suited for it. You recognise it's a "tricky thing". You have self-doubt. Self-doubt leads to self-questioning, self-questioning leads to questioning others with an open mind, and questioning others with an open mind leads to understanding.

It's the person who says they already know all they need to know who's truly ignorant.

The point isn't who could or couldn't do a good job at such a project, its whether or not such a project should even exist in the first place, and even you recognize it shouldn't.

You want to include minorities in protagonist roles in the main book? Go nuts! Hell, I did read SoTC and I seem to recall that they'd done precisely that.  You want to talk about some of the difficulties they might have faced, as an option for more historical-realist campaigns? Sure, that's a clever and useful thing to have as an option within the main book. Its something that would add to the overall usefulness of the book.

But you want to write a 200-page book telling gamers about how Pulp is awful and racist/sexist/homophobic and how you shouldn't be allowed to play it like that anymore, while chirping out pathetic shallow sound-bites about inclusiveness and sensitivity learned in a 1st year marxist political science course at community college? Yeah, that's useless.
Especially if the guy writing is Bruce Baugh, who already has a track record of intentionally trying to radically alter genres he despises out of hatred for its fans, when he thinks they don't do RPGs "seriously" enough.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPunditThe point isn't who could or couldn't do a good job at such a project, its whether or not such a project should even exist in the first place, and even you recognize it shouldn't.

Shouldn't?

I may be a godless commie pinko liberal, but I'm a free market godless commie pinko liberal.

If someone is interested in writing it, and others are interested in buying it, then that is enough justification.

Personally I think it could be cool, but that's irrelevant, the free market already justifies it.

Freedom of speech is also relevant here as it happens.

But sure, fuck it, the very writing of a book about minority characters is in and of itself offensive even if one has no intention of buying or using it.  Naturally.

Quote from: RPGPunditThe point isn't who could or couldn't do a good job at such a project, its whether or not such a project should even exist in the first place, and even you recognize it shouldn't.

I assume "you" means "JimBobOz".

To clarify: ideally, all options should be well illustrated in the corebook if you want to be "inclusive." If you want a sort of literary segregation, then put those strange "others" in a splatbook.  Obviously I'd prefer the inclusion.

Splatbooks can then go on to flesh out this or that country in detail - I don't think it's productive to look at individual cultures and religions in any game book based on the modern real world, or some slight variation of it.  

I don't think it's productive to create some sort of book talking about various groups fighting for their human rights. Suffragettes, Marxists, US civil rights activists - putting them all together is just trying too hard. You're going to end up with a real mess if you do that, and a mess that looks uncomfortably like a 2nd year accountancy uni student trying to fit in with the other WASP kids at the weekly Socialist Alliance meetings.

Which of course doesn't mean it won't sell. :deflated:

Basically, I reckon that if the damn thing is going to be written, I'd hope for it to be written as well as possible. Which is why Balbinus and David R. should go to Baugh's house, and pelt him with d20s and stale cheetos until he gives in and lets them write it instead.

Quote from: JimBobOzAnd that's why you're suited for it. You recognise it's a "tricky thing". You have self-doubt. Self-doubt leads to self-questioning, self-questioning leads to questioning others with an open mind, and questioning others with an open mind leads to understanding.

It's the person who says they already know all they need to know who's truly ignorant.

The importance of doubt is perhaps ironically my key belief.  As long as we doubt, we tend not to kill each other.

The moment we're sure of anything somebody tends to get hurt.