Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on December 25, 2022, 01:19:06 PM
Id say while not woke, they are the kinda 'pre-woke' that absolutely led to this point.
Almost all edgy 90s rebels have been the ones to most utterly embrace modern wokeness. Some get cancelled for being too 'edgy' for our time, but even then none of them ended up recanting or becoming introspective.

So have they always been woke? No, but thats because the term didn't exist back then. But wher ethey setting the stage for woke? Absolutely.

This is the point I make to old school Liberals that are living on Copium, about society going back to how it was in the 90's. Everything pushed in the 90's directly led to where we are now. The slippery slopes we laughed at were actually slippery.

It turns out the people writing WoD weren't actually fighting the system, they were just fighting a system that wasn't theirs. Once the system aligned with them, they embraced it like a lover.

Paradox's decisions in 5e have alienated a lot of fans and, what with the video game and VTT focus, they show no signs of stopping. Has anyone taken the opportunity to make competing games for the urban fantasy market? They don't need to have succeeded, I'm just curious. It would be nice to play and discuss urban fantasy that isn't fun-hating liberal goth bullshit.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on December 26, 2022, 09:39:49 AM
Paradox's decisions in 5e have alienated a lot of fans and, what with the video game and VTT focus, they show no signs of stopping. Has anyone taken the opportunity to make competing games for the urban fantasy market? They don't need to have succeeded, I'm just curious. It would be nice to play and discuss urban fantasy that isn't fun-hating liberal goth bullshit.

The most popular literary Urban Fantasy seems to be woman plus sexy Vampires/Werewolves/Dragons/Elves/Ghosts, so maybe it's a blessing.

Quote from: Grognard GM on December 25, 2022, 02:03:56 AM
Werewolf the Apocalypse was the first RPG I ever GM'ed, and I did so at least once or twice a week, every week for years. It started as Werewolf, but branched it to a World Of Darkness game, but still very changers-based game. My friend ended up getting Vampire and Changeling.

We played it as a bunch of young teens, as male and working class, and it was mostly about cool monster fights. The programming slid off of us like water off a duck's back. In fact, if anything we had a good time poking fun at the proto-SJW parts.

I think RPGs are extremely poor vehicles for propaganda, because the GM and players control everything that happens. You're using your own imagination, which isn't constrained by what is written.

I played a Werewolf the Apocalypse campaign and a brief Mage the Ascension campaign. I hate the background of M:tA for having scientists as the evil oppressors keeping down free-thinking magicians, since I'm very pro-science in real life. But I could easily ignore those parts to play and poke fun at it, as you say.

Yeah, I didn't like the propaganda. The consensus reality premise has tons of ramifications that never occurred to the authors. Among other things, it means that homeopathy, antivaxxer, and flat-earther beliefs would become true if they murdered all the non-believers. The current crop of books walk back on that by making the technocrats parrot American left-wing talking points, even though this makes no sense with a consensus reality premise.

I like the idea of players flavoring their magic after different magical styles like Hermeticism, Wicca, Taoism, mad science, reality hackers, or whatever. I would give that to all splats, not just mortal magicians. However, I would avoid explaining it in terms of consensus reality to avoid inadvertently promoting beliefs that are dangerous in real life.

Getting upset at fantasy implications is a long and dumb history.

Its the stupid orcs stuff all over again. If you want your fantasy world to perfectly mirror the vision for modern morality throw out all your books and get newspapers and TV.

Edit: I personally really like some themes of mage, but I can't detail them now.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on December 26, 2022, 02:53:31 PM
Getting upset at fantasy implications is a long and dumb history.

Its the stupid orcs stuff all over again. If you want your fantasy world to perfectly mirror the vision for modern morality throw out all your books and get newspapers and TV.

Edit: I personally really like some themes of mage, but I can't detail them now.

Fair enough. I remember that the game cultivated a notoriously toxic argumentative community who were attracted by those beliefs. Upon the release of 3e, they sent Jess Henig so many death threats that he was afraid to open his inbox for years. I don't want to foster that sort of thing.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on December 26, 2022, 03:03:10 PM
Fair enough. I remember that the game cultivated a notoriously toxic argumentative community who were attracted by those beliefs.

My personal rule is that all fanbases are toxic, some are more toxic then others. And yes WW is pretty toxic and awful as a general rule.

That never justifies demanding all fantasy conform to reality lest *gasp* someone think wrong thoughts! Because people can't be trusted with opinions!

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on December 26, 2022, 03:09:06 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on December 26, 2022, 03:03:10 PM
Fair enough. I remember that the game cultivated a notoriously toxic argumentative community who were attracted by those beliefs.

My personal rule is that all fanbases are toxic, some are more toxic then others. And yes WW is pretty toxic and awful as a general rule.

That never justifies demanding all fantasy conform to reality lest *gasp* someone think wrong thoughts! Because people can't be trusted with opinions!

I'm not arguing that fantasy should conform to reality. I apologize for giving that impression. I'm just not interested in writing a setting that promotes science denial in its premise, to say nothing of the many other logical problems inherent to consensus reality.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on December 26, 2022, 03:19:14 PM
I'm not arguing that fantasy should conform to reality. I apologize for giving that impression. I'm just not interested in writing a setting that promotes science denial in its premise, to say nothing of the many other logical problems inherent to consensus reality.

All urban fantasy is science denial unless its a "all magic is advanced tech" setting.

Not saying you have to be interested, but mulling about what fantasy implications mean will deny you any ability to have any sort of fantasy fun.

No, white wolf used to be progressive, but not every form of progressivism is woke. Woke progressivism only became popular in the later half of the 2000s. Initially it equated itself with old school progressivism, but in many ways it is counter to it.

It is a shame how many progressives were all to happy to betray their old beliefs or otherwise unable to recognize the sham of woke progressivism.

Quote from: jhkim on December 26, 2022, 12:34:45 PM

Quote from: Grognard GM on December 25, 2022, 02:03:56 AM
Werewolf the Apocalypse was the first RPG I ever GM'ed, and I did so at least once or twice a week, every week for years. It started as Werewolf, but branched it to a World Of Darkness game, but still very changers-based game. My friend ended up getting Vampire and Changeling.

We played it as a bunch of young teens, as male and working class, and it was mostly about cool monster fights. The programming slid off of us like water off a duck's back. In fact, if anything we had a good time poking fun at the proto-SJW parts.

I think RPGs are extremely poor vehicles for propaganda, because the GM and players control everything that happens. You're using your own imagination, which isn't constrained by what is written.

I played a Werewolf the Apocalypse campaign and a brief Mage the Ascension campaign. I hate the background of M:tA for having scientists as the evil oppressors keeping down free-thinking magicians, since I'm very pro-science in real life. But I could easily ignore those parts to play and poke fun at it, as you say.

The Technocratic Unions are not fighting for scientific progress.

If a scientist conducts research that the Union does not approve of they will shoot him in the head, destroy his corpse, and replace him with a clone. That clone will then sabotage his life's work.

Their standard approach to scientific research is suppression and control. Fighting for scientific progress is in-universe propaganda.

The Union are totalitarian technomages.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on December 26, 2022, 01:42:48 PM
Yeah, I didn't like the propaganda. The consensus reality premise has tons of ramifications that never occurred to the authors. Among other things, it means that homeopathy, antivaxxer, and flat-earther beliefs would become true if they murdered all the non-believers. The current crop of books walk back on that by making the technocrats parrot American left-wing talking points, even though this makes no sense with a consensus reality premise.

I like the idea of players flavoring their magic after different magical styles like Hermeticism, Wicca, Taoism, mad science, reality hackers, or whatever. I would give that to all splats, not just mortal magicians. However, I would avoid explaining it in terms of consensus reality to avoid inadvertently promoting beliefs that are dangerous in real life.

The traditions aren't luddites either.

The common theme among them is self actualization. Heavy focus on learning, understanding, improving oneself. A large part of that is their need to understand their paradigm to a high degree. Don't throw away interesting stuff in favor of shallow aesthetics.

The second common theme among them is recognition and acceptance of different worldviews being able to interact and cooperate. That also requires a focus on how they believe the world functions. Throwing that away as well because you don't want to accidentally convince a player random shit (you won't, their mind will be made up about all of that way before they hit your table) is also sad.

Also your plan to murder people is a poor one. You wouldn't really be strengthening your paradigm, you'd just make reality more brittle until it kinda sorta might function, assuming you have enough of it left. Also it's impractical and the actual belief you'd convince people of is that you are pretty evil which - behold - would end up becoming the new actual reality.

-

Don't listen to the internet takes on the Traditions or the Union. Don't run them as 1-dimensional stereotypes. It's not fun. Science and technology can be used for both good and evil. The technocrats is an evil organisation with a few good people in it, the traditions is an good organization with a few evil people in it. Consensus reality has more depth to it than just 'belief defines reality'. It's what makes all of it fun. Without it you're just chucking boring sphere effects at random assortments of mooks. The setting having more depth than a simplistic 'science good, not science bad' is what has made the setting last for decades.

Quote from: Grognard GM on December 26, 2022, 09:22:29 AM

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on December 25, 2022, 01:19:06 PM
Id say while not woke, they are the kinda 'pre-woke' that absolutely led to this point.
Almost all edgy 90s rebels have been the ones to most utterly embrace modern wokeness. Some get cancelled for being too 'edgy' for our time, but even then none of them ended up recanting or becoming introspective.

So have they always been woke? No, but thats because the term didn't exist back then. But wher ethey setting the stage for woke? Absolutely.

This is the point I make to old school Liberals that are living on Copium, about society going back to how it was in the 90's. Everything pushed in the 90's directly led to where we are now. The slippery slopes we laughed at were actually slippery.

It turns out the people writing WoD weren't actually fighting the system, they were just fighting a system that wasn't theirs. Once the system aligned with them, they embraced it like a lover.

Nah, I used to be involved in leftist social media and the 90s culture did not directly led to our current circumstances. This was a recent development that happened with the rise of social media and got pushed by the algorithm and the realities of online advisement and making money online. I saw it change during the time of my own involvement in the late 2000s to early/mid 2010s. And there used to be healthier debate in leftist social media, where people could disagree with each other and not get immediately hounded off the internet and persecuted IRL.

I used to argue with people all the time and got zero flack for. The wokeness was there (before it was called that), but it was mostly at the margins of Tumblr, and you could point out that the "pay gap" wasn't what people thought it was without immediately being branded a sexist who wanted to keep women chained to the kitchen sink. It wasn't till the early 2010s when the woke mindset started to become more prevalent and criticism of it started to get strong pushback, which coincided with the use of algorithms to create curated feeds and push certain stories to the forefront, as well as the rise of Clickbait media to drive traffic to "news" sites and opinion blogs masquerading as such.

It wasn't till around that time when Intersectionality or "Intersectional Feminism" became prevalent in leftist cycles, and people started to become pressured into specifically identifying as a Feminist, with the implication that if you weren't a Feminist you were necessarily a sexist, that if you were a sexist you were necessarily bigoted and in favor of certain forms of oppression, and that if you were in favor of ANY kind of oppression you were not a "Leftist". Ergo, you're either a Feminist or you're not a Leftist, and by the way, by "Feminism", we mean "Intersectional Feminism", so that ALL identity-based activism necessarily came under the banner of Feminism.

NONE of this stuff used to be the case before, and Intersectionality was an obscure ideology before that. And it wasn't till Intersectionality became prevalent and started to get pushed by social media algorithms and the mainstream media that we got the culture that we had today. The slippery slope truly was a slippery slope. People who supported gay marriage then weren't all secretly hoping to groom kids and using gay marriage as a proxy for that. They just didn't give a shit about what other people did in their bedroom and their lack of concern for other people's sex life was not a direct line to woke taking over the world. This was pushed by big tech and the media that has been lying to us and serving as a propaganda wing for the establishment since before the internet.

This wasn't a natural or direct outgrowth of leftism or 90s liberalism. It was a PSYOP.

Quote from: rpgSeeker on December 26, 2022, 04:59:25 PM
No, white wolf used to be progressive, but not every form of progressivism is woke. Woke progressivism only became popular in the later half of the 2000s. Initially it equated itself with old school progressivism, but in many ways it is counter to it.

It is a shame how many progressives were all to happy to betray their old beliefs or otherwise unable to recognize the sham of woke progressivism.

Quote from: jhkim on December 26, 2022, 12:34:45 PM

Quote from: Grognard GM on December 25, 2022, 02:03:56 AM
Werewolf the Apocalypse was the first RPG I ever GM'ed, and I did so at least once or twice a week, every week for years. It started as Werewolf, but branched it to a World Of Darkness game, but still very changers-based game. My friend ended up getting Vampire and Changeling.

We played it as a bunch of young teens, as male and working class, and it was mostly about cool monster fights. The programming slid off of us like water off a duck's back. In fact, if anything we had a good time poking fun at the proto-SJW parts.

I think RPGs are extremely poor vehicles for propaganda, because the GM and players control everything that happens. You're using your own imagination, which isn't constrained by what is written.

I played a Werewolf the Apocalypse campaign and a brief Mage the Ascension campaign. I hate the background of M:tA for having scientists as the evil oppressors keeping down free-thinking magicians, since I'm very pro-science in real life. But I could easily ignore those parts to play and poke fun at it, as you say.

The Technocratic Unions are not fighting for scientific progress.

If a scientist conducts research that the Union does not approve of they will shoot him in the head, destroy his corpse, and replace him with a clone. That clone will then sabotage his life's work.

Their standard approach to scientific research is suppression and control. Fighting for scientific progress is in-universe propaganda.

The Union are totalitarian technomages.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on December 26, 2022, 01:42:48 PM
Yeah, I didn't like the propaganda. The consensus reality premise has tons of ramifications that never occurred to the authors. Among other things, it means that homeopathy, antivaxxer, and flat-earther beliefs would become true if they murdered all the non-believers. The current crop of books walk back on that by making the technocrats parrot American left-wing talking points, even though this makes no sense with a consensus reality premise.

I like the idea of players flavoring their magic after different magical styles like Hermeticism, Wicca, Taoism, mad science, reality hackers, or whatever. I would give that to all splats, not just mortal magicians. However, I would avoid explaining it in terms of consensus reality to avoid inadvertently promoting beliefs that are dangerous in real life.

The traditions aren't luddites either.

The common theme among them is self actualization. Heavy focus on learning, understanding, improving oneself. A large part of that is their need to understand their paradigm to a high degree. Don't throw away interesting stuff in favor of shallow aesthetics.

The second common theme among them is recognition and acceptance of different worldviews being able to interact and cooperate. That also requires a focus on how they believe the world functions. Throwing that away as well because you don't want to accidentally convince a player random shit (you won't, their mind will be made up about all of that way before they hit your table) is also sad.

Also your plan to murder people is a poor one. You wouldn't really be strengthening your paradigm, you'd just make reality more brittle until it kinda sorta might function, assuming you have enough of it left. Also it's impractical and the actual belief you'd convince people of is that you are pretty evil which - behold - would end up becoming the new actual reality.

-

Don't listen to the internet takes on the Traditions or the Union. Don't run them as 1-dimensional stereotypes. It's not fun. Science and technology can be used for both good and evil. The technocrats is an evil organisation with a few good people in it, the traditions is an good organization with a few evil people in it. Consensus reality has more depth to it than just 'belief defines reality'. It's what makes all of it fun. Without it you're just chucking boring sphere effects at random assortments of mooks. The setting having more depth than a simplistic 'science good, not science bad' is what has made the setting last for decades.

I don't give a fuck.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on December 26, 2022, 06:15:59 PM

Quote from: rpgSeeker on December 26, 2022, 04:59:25 PM
No, white wolf used to be progressive, but not every form of progressivism is woke. Woke progressivism only became popular in the later half of the 2000s. Initially it equated itself with old school progressivism, but in many ways it is counter to it.

It is a shame how many progressives were all to happy to betray their old beliefs or otherwise unable to recognize the sham of woke progressivism.

Quote from: jhkim on December 26, 2022, 12:34:45 PM

Quote from: Grognard GM on December 25, 2022, 02:03:56 AM
Werewolf the Apocalypse was the first RPG I ever GM'ed, and I did so at least once or twice a week, every week for years. It started as Werewolf, but branched it to a World Of Darkness game, but still very changers-based game. My friend ended up getting Vampire and Changeling.

We played it as a bunch of young teens, as male and working class, and it was mostly about cool monster fights. The programming slid off of us like water off a duck's back. In fact, if anything we had a good time poking fun at the proto-SJW parts.

I think RPGs are extremely poor vehicles for propaganda, because the GM and players control everything that happens. You're using your own imagination, which isn't constrained by what is written.

I played a Werewolf the Apocalypse campaign and a brief Mage the Ascension campaign. I hate the background of M:tA for having scientists as the evil oppressors keeping down free-thinking magicians, since I'm very pro-science in real life. But I could easily ignore those parts to play and poke fun at it, as you say.

The Technocratic Unions are not fighting for scientific progress.

If a scientist conducts research that the Union does not approve of they will shoot him in the head, destroy his corpse, and replace him with a clone. That clone will then sabotage his life's work.

Their standard approach to scientific research is suppression and control. Fighting for scientific progress is in-universe propaganda.

The Union are totalitarian technomages.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on December 26, 2022, 01:42:48 PM
Yeah, I didn't like the propaganda. The consensus reality premise has tons of ramifications that never occurred to the authors. Among other things, it means that homeopathy, antivaxxer, and flat-earther beliefs would become true if they murdered all the non-believers. The current crop of books walk back on that by making the technocrats parrot American left-wing talking points, even though this makes no sense with a consensus reality premise.

I like the idea of players flavoring their magic after different magical styles like Hermeticism, Wicca, Taoism, mad science, reality hackers, or whatever. I would give that to all splats, not just mortal magicians. However, I would avoid explaining it in terms of consensus reality to avoid inadvertently promoting beliefs that are dangerous in real life.

The traditions aren't luddites either.

The common theme among them is self actualization. Heavy focus on learning, understanding, improving oneself. A large part of that is their need to understand their paradigm to a high degree. Don't throw away interesting stuff in favor of shallow aesthetics.

The second common theme among them is recognition and acceptance of different worldviews being able to interact and cooperate. That also requires a focus on how they believe the world functions. Throwing that away as well because you don't want to accidentally convince a player random shit (you won't, their mind will be made up about all of that way before they hit your table) is also sad.

Also your plan to murder people is a poor one. You wouldn't really be strengthening your paradigm, you'd just make reality more brittle until it kinda sorta might function, assuming you have enough of it left. Also it's impractical and the actual belief you'd convince people of is that you are pretty evil which - behold - would end up becoming the new actual reality.

-

Don't listen to the internet takes on the Traditions or the Union. Don't run them as 1-dimensional stereotypes. It's not fun. Science and technology can be used for both good and evil. The technocrats is an evil organisation with a few good people in it, the traditions is an good organization with a few evil people in it. Consensus reality has more depth to it than just 'belief defines reality'. It's what makes all of it fun. Without it you're just chucking boring sphere effects at random assortments of mooks. The setting having more depth than a simplistic 'science good, not science bad' is what has made the setting last for decades.

I don't give a fuck.

Then you're retarded. Do us a favor and eat some lead.

Quote from: MeganovaStella on December 26, 2022, 07:38:18 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on December 26, 2022, 06:15:59 PM

Quote from: rpgSeeker on December 26, 2022, 04:59:25 PM
No, white wolf used to be progressive, but not every form of progressivism is woke. Woke progressivism only became popular in the later half of the 2000s. Initially it equated itself with old school progressivism, but in many ways it is counter to it.

It is a shame how many progressives were all to happy to betray their old beliefs or otherwise unable to recognize the sham of woke progressivism.

Quote from: jhkim on December 26, 2022, 12:34:45 PM

Quote from: Grognard GM on December 25, 2022, 02:03:56 AM
Werewolf the Apocalypse was the first RPG I ever GM'ed, and I did so at least once or twice a week, every week for years. It started as Werewolf, but branched it to a World Of Darkness game, but still very changers-based game. My friend ended up getting Vampire and Changeling.

We played it as a bunch of young teens, as male and working class, and it was mostly about cool monster fights. The programming slid off of us like water off a duck's back. In fact, if anything we had a good time poking fun at the proto-SJW parts.

I think RPGs are extremely poor vehicles for propaganda, because the GM and players control everything that happens. You're using your own imagination, which isn't constrained by what is written.

I played a Werewolf the Apocalypse campaign and a brief Mage the Ascension campaign. I hate the background of M:tA for having scientists as the evil oppressors keeping down free-thinking magicians, since I'm very pro-science in real life. But I could easily ignore those parts to play and poke fun at it, as you say.

The Technocratic Unions are not fighting for scientific progress.

If a scientist conducts research that the Union does not approve of they will shoot him in the head, destroy his corpse, and replace him with a clone. That clone will then sabotage his life's work.

Their standard approach to scientific research is suppression and control. Fighting for scientific progress is in-universe propaganda.

The Union are totalitarian technomages.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on December 26, 2022, 01:42:48 PM
Yeah, I didn't like the propaganda. The consensus reality premise has tons of ramifications that never occurred to the authors. Among other things, it means that homeopathy, antivaxxer, and flat-earther beliefs would become true if they murdered all the non-believers. The current crop of books walk back on that by making the technocrats parrot American left-wing talking points, even though this makes no sense with a consensus reality premise.

I like the idea of players flavoring their magic after different magical styles like Hermeticism, Wicca, Taoism, mad science, reality hackers, or whatever. I would give that to all splats, not just mortal magicians. However, I would avoid explaining it in terms of consensus reality to avoid inadvertently promoting beliefs that are dangerous in real life.

The traditions aren't luddites either.

The common theme among them is self actualization. Heavy focus on learning, understanding, improving oneself. A large part of that is their need to understand their paradigm to a high degree. Don't throw away interesting stuff in favor of shallow aesthetics.

The second common theme among them is recognition and acceptance of different worldviews being able to interact and cooperate. That also requires a focus on how they believe the world functions. Throwing that away as well because you don't want to accidentally convince a player random shit (you won't, their mind will be made up about all of that way before they hit your table) is also sad.

Also your plan to murder people is a poor one. You wouldn't really be strengthening your paradigm, you'd just make reality more brittle until it kinda sorta might function, assuming you have enough of it left. Also it's impractical and the actual belief you'd convince people of is that you are pretty evil which - behold - would end up becoming the new actual reality.

-

Don't listen to the internet takes on the Traditions or the Union. Don't run them as 1-dimensional stereotypes. It's not fun. Science and technology can be used for both good and evil. The technocrats is an evil organisation with a few good people in it, the traditions is an good organization with a few evil people in it. Consensus reality has more depth to it than just 'belief defines reality'. It's what makes all of it fun. Without it you're just chucking boring sphere effects at random assortments of mooks. The setting having more depth than a simplistic 'science good, not science bad' is what has made the setting last for decades.

I don't give a fuck.

Then you're retarded. Do us a favor and eat some lead.

I was deep in the toxic WW fandom for years before I developed the antipathy I have now. I don't think highly of these games anymore, I'm not impressed with attempts at proselytizing, and I don't see any point in pretending otherwise to spare your feelings.