Quote from: pawsplay on February 16, 2024, 02:12:46 AM

Quote from: RPGPundit on February 15, 2024, 02:50:26 PM...for 45 years, thousands and thousands of people read Tekumel and NOT ONE PERSON thought {that Tekumel was advocating for racist worldviews} until the secret life of Barker was revealed.

That's just not true. I was pretty new to the original source material before all that stuff came out, but I did read it, and I definitely found the notion of the "inimicals" troubling. I just chalked it up to unconscious aping of colonist tropes, or maybe a somewhat deliberate invocation.

Historically, almost every civilization and nation-group has conflicted with others, and demonized and exploited the losers of such conflicts. Are you saying there is no way to depict this phenomenon in a fictional setting, among fictional cultures and species, without it serving as an effective endorsement of racial/bio-supremacism in real life? Or that because the intended primary home culture for PCs, the Tsolyani Empire, is depicted as the winner (or at least a surviving descendant of the winner) of such conflicts, the players are intended to pick up the supremacist attitudes of the Tsolyani?

I think it is within the bounds of reason to acknowledge that Barker held racist beliefs and to assert that Tekumel in particular was neither meant to teach those beliefs nor in fact ever actually taught them, even accidentally. If that message is being read into Tekumel simply because the work doesn't explicitly state to the reader racial-supremacy beliefs are objectively false and/or morally wrong... well, there is no way to falsify that argument, but an unfalsifiable argument is too easily applied to too many things to be convincing.

Quote from: S'mon on February 16, 2024, 02:49:19 PM

Quote from: jhkim on February 16, 2024, 01:48:10 PM
I'm reading Serpent's Walk now, though.

Nazis walk among us!! 

Seriously, why give them what they want? Some things are better ignored. I feel like reading Far Left or Far Right stuff, a little piece of my soul dies.

Eh. It's a good idea to judge something on it's real aspects and not what others report. If one is going to comment on the book, they really should read it first.
One of jhkim's redeeming qualities is that he does do some of the grunt work in that respect.

Quote from: tenbones on February 16, 2024, 04:38:48 PM
Should Raymond E. Feist and all of his millions of fans now be castigated as Neo-Nazi sympathizers since Feist clearly wholesale ripped off Tekumel for his Riftwar books? I mean... those brown-skinned Aztec/Japanese samurai were clearly influenced by Nazi ideology as they broke through interdimensional barriers to exterminate a world full of natives for their resources.

... of course maybe Ray Feist was showing forethought in that those natives were European analogs and he was trying to wipe out Whitey... I mean it's possible right? /sarcasm off.

So 40-years and nearly 30-novels later, and no one claimed Ray Feist's clear interpretation of Tekumel is Nazi propaganda for obvious reasons. pawsplay, you're an idiot.


Edit: and for all the "Bury My Heart and Wounded Knee" fans, I highly recommend "Empire of the Summer Moon" as a counterpoint. I can't stand the noble savage myth that everyone pretends all Native Americans are the same and as if "they" didn't commit atrocities as a matter of course... yes horrible shit was done on both sides, and pretending the conflict was solely to blame on the more organized and powerful Europeans is *stupid* argument, when in reality it was two cultures colliding inevitably towards one another with obvious detrimental results.

As an actual "Native American" (everyone I know still says American Indian...) I can safely say the tribes ranged from savages to erudite sophisticates. But not one of them ever thought they weren't the center of the universe, nor the only race of people who should be on top and in charge. And what's wrong with that? Just like the Japanese got buttfucked in WWII and found out who the real masters were, so did the Indians. And the ones who embraced the superior culture thrived, others wallowed in misery and did jack shit. Smart people do what works to advance, dumbasses cling to failed ideologies. The Cherokees developed a written language and became an exalted group, the Comanche were crushed and eradicated. So basically, life is nasty, brutish, and short. Adapt and overcome.

Quote from: Angry Goblin on February 14, 2024, 11:16:08 PM
This conversation is droning on and on with the same arguments
from all sides of the spectrum. I would assume by now that we
can safely say that Tekumel as a setting would be in Yellow category
but what about the current license holder (UNIgames who sends their
proceeds to ethnic/religious advocacy group) and IP holder (The Tekumel
Foundation) there ain't a clear answer for this other than that they ain't Green,
so it is either Yellow or Red, which one is it?

Tekumel the setting and RPG is not even remotely in the yellow. Try again please.

Quote from: jhkim on February 16, 2024, 01:48:10 PM
Has anyone read Barker's Tekumel novels, like Man of Gold? I think that might signal a little more clearly his views on Tekumel colonization, and it would be interesting to compare to Serpent's Walk.

I read Man of Gold. Nothing in it just like theres nothing in the RPG. My only quibble is that it is a bit disjointed in the flow of action. I have the other book but have not yet gotten around to reading it.

Quote from: pawsplay on February 09, 2024, 06:09:18 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 09, 2024, 06:01:12 PM
Ah yes, the famous Nazi tolerance for gays and other cultures...

Ernst Rohm

Nazis tolerated absolutely anything and everything that was useful to them. Hitler made several of his Jewish-descended acquaintances from the old days, such as his chauffeur and some Wermacht officers, into Honorary Aryans so he could continue to enjoy their friendship and services instead of deporting them. The Japanese were "honorary Aryans." Every last one of them.

So I get you're going for hyperbole, but the Nazis weren't known for their integrity. First and foremost, Nazism is about power, and the first rule of power is that it's greatest if you're allowed to do something, and someone else isn't.

Nazis had no problem with sex tourism in Asia and Africa, I don't know why you think Barker would be any different.

Why Nazis don't sound homophobic, antisemitic, or racist, at all.

Quote from: Omega on February 10, 2024, 06:30:49 PM
Except the book is not as pro-Nazi. In fact the characters are weirdly accepting. By the end of the book its more socialist or neo-communist than straight up Nazi spiel.

[butterfly meme] is this a Nazi?

Quote from: Venka on February 15, 2024, 11:26:33 AM
The only thing that's really the non-lefty intolerant version of what WotC and friends openly engage in is something like Myfarog by Vikernes,

Ironically the game is quite anti-capitalist though.

Gosh, but ideologies sure are inconsistent.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan on February 17, 2024, 01:23:49 AM
Ironically the game is quite anti-capitalist though.
Gosh, but ideologies sure are inconsistent.

That National Socialists are anti-Capitalist isn't inconsistent at all. Clue is in the name. Nazis think Capitalists and Communists are two sides of the same (Jewish) coin. Same as Communists think Nazis and Capitalists are two side of the same coin.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 16, 2024, 07:33:19 PM
Eh. It's a good idea to judge something on it's real aspects and not what others report. If one is going to comment on the book, they really should read it first.
One of jhkim's redeeming qualities is that he does do some of the grunt work in that respect.

In this case I don't think there's any serious dispute about its "Nazis are cool" contents.
I don't think there's any serious dispute about Tekumel not having any Real Nazi (TM) content, either. Obviously blowhards will bloviate and cranks will crank.
But yes in the case of a serious & specific allegation, like the ones made against Zak and Pundit and Mearls etc etc, reading the evidence rather than taking people's word for it is definitely a good idea. Or if I really cared about exactly how Nazi the Nazi book published by the Nazi publisher is, I'd want to read it. But I'm aware that comes with a cost in 'emotional labour' as the SJWs put it. Another example - Natural Born Killers is a disgusting film, if I really had to watch it again for research on exactly what Stone was going for then I'd do so. But I'd much rather not.

Quote from: Omega on February 16, 2024, 11:41:40 PM

Quote from: Angry Goblin on February 14, 2024, 11:16:08 PM
This conversation is droning on and on with the same arguments
from all sides of the spectrum. I would assume by now that we
can safely say that Tekumel as a setting would be in Yellow category
but what about the current license holder (UNIgames who sends their
proceeds to ethnic/religious advocacy group) and IP holder (The Tekumel
Foundation) there ain't a clear answer for this other than that they ain't Green,
so it is either Yellow or Red, which one is it?

Tekumel the setting and RPG is not even remotely in the yellow. Try again please.

I've never read any Tekumel.

If I take this thread at face value, the author was indisputably some kind of Islamist and/or neo-nazi, and nobody knew about this for some indeterminate length of time because it never showed up in his work.

That sounds like the very definition of green.

Quote from: Corolinth on February 17, 2024, 08:29:18 AM

Quote from: Omega on February 16, 2024, 11:41:40 PM

Quote from: Angry Goblin on February 14, 2024, 11:16:08 PM
This conversation is droning on and on with the same arguments
from all sides of the spectrum. I would assume by now that we
can safely say that Tekumel as a setting would be in Yellow category
but what about the current license holder (UNIgames who sends their
proceeds to ethnic/religious advocacy group) and IP holder (The Tekumel
Foundation) there ain't a clear answer for this other than that they ain't Green,
so it is either Yellow or Red, which one is it?

Tekumel the setting and RPG is not even remotely in the yellow. Try again please.

I've never read any Tekumel.

If I take this thread at face value, the author was indisputably some kind of Islamist and/or neo-nazi, and nobody knew about this for some indeterminate length of time because it never showed up in his work.

That sounds like the very definition of green.

Sure, if you don´t count the advocacy group part as being political, the "apolitical" is part of the Green rating. Resisting one type of politics is politics imo. though personally I don´t care either way, I´m more interested about the results on the concensus of this than anything else.

The author is dead and does not profit from his book. If he were alive, and would stand to profit from his book, he should be right besides Olivia Hill and Varg. But as he's not, his game world can be judged on its own merit, and that of whoever is the current publisher.

What was the last Tekumel product Barker put out?

Last thing I saw at cons was the Growing up/Adventures in series of solos?

Quote from: Brad on February 16, 2024, 08:20:19 PM

Quote from: tenbones on February 16, 2024, 04:38:48 PM
Should Raymond E. Feist and all of his millions of fans now be castigated as Neo-Nazi sympathizers since Feist clearly wholesale ripped off Tekumel for his Riftwar books? I mean... those brown-skinned Aztec/Japanese samurai were clearly influenced by Nazi ideology as they broke through interdimensional barriers to exterminate a world full of natives for their resources.

... of course maybe Ray Feist was showing forethought in that those natives were European analogs and he was trying to wipe out Whitey... I mean it's possible right? /sarcasm off.

So 40-years and nearly 30-novels later, and no one claimed Ray Feist's clear interpretation of Tekumel is Nazi propaganda for obvious reasons. pawsplay, you're an idiot.


Edit: and for all the "Bury My Heart and Wounded Knee" fans, I highly recommend "Empire of the Summer Moon" as a counterpoint. I can't stand the noble savage myth that everyone pretends all Native Americans are the same and as if "they" didn't commit atrocities as a matter of course... yes horrible shit was done on both sides, and pretending the conflict was solely to blame on the more organized and powerful Europeans is *stupid* argument, when in reality it was two cultures colliding inevitably towards one another with obvious detrimental results.

As an actual "Native American" (everyone I know still says American Indian...) I can safely say the tribes ranged from savages to erudite sophisticates. But not one of them ever thought they weren't the center of the universe, nor the only race of people who should be on top and in charge. And what's wrong with that? Just like the Japanese got buttfucked in WWII and found out who the real masters were, so did the Indians. And the ones who embraced the superior culture thrived, others wallowed in misery and did jack shit. Smart people do what works to advance, dumbasses cling to failed ideologies. The Cherokees developed a written language and became an exalted group, the Comanche were crushed and eradicated. So basically, life is nasty, brutish, and short. Adapt and overcome.

Yep. I'm filipino - tons of different tribes. All of them enslaved for 350+years. No one gripes about it because its history. Life happens. And yes, we're former cannibals, and we eat dogs (some still do), and other horrible things people in the west would freak out over. But there are many Filipinos that likewise freak out over those things, and not all tribes did those things. Ultimately, though, it's the monolith grouping of everyone together for the purposes of making some stupid point *outside* of the complexities of reality that Shit does, in fact, Happen(tm) and carrying a chip on ones shoulder for stuff you didn't live through, nor *have* to live through now, isn't necessarily beneficial for the purposes of moving forward.

Unless you have an agenda (not you Brad). Which is why pawsplay is an idiot.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on February 16, 2024, 05:33:38 PM

Quote from: pawsplay on February 16, 2024, 02:12:46 AM

Quote from: RPGPundit on February 15, 2024, 02:50:26 PM...for 45 years, thousands and thousands of people read Tekumel and NOT ONE PERSON thought {that Tekumel was advocating for racist worldviews} until the secret life of Barker was revealed.

That's just not true. I was pretty new to the original source material before all that stuff came out, but I did read it, and I definitely found the notion of the "inimicals" troubling. I just chalked it up to unconscious aping of colonist tropes, or maybe a somewhat deliberate invocation.

Historically, almost every civilization and nation-group has conflicted with others, and demonized and exploited the losers of such conflicts. Are you saying there is no way to depict this phenomenon in a fictional setting, among fictional cultures and species, without it serving as an effective endorsement of racial/bio-supremacism in real life? Or that because the intended primary home culture for PCs, the Tsolyani Empire, is depicted as the winner (or at least a surviving descendant of the winner) of such conflicts, the players are intended to pick up the supremacist attitudes of the Tsolyani?

I think it is within the bounds of reason to acknowledge that Barker held racist beliefs and to assert that Tekumel in particular was neither meant to teach those beliefs nor in fact ever actually taught them, even accidentally. If that message is being read into Tekumel simply because the work doesn't explicitly state to the reader racial-supremacy beliefs are objectively false and/or morally wrong... well, there is no way to falsify that argument, but an unfalsifiable argument is too easily applied to too many things to be convincing.

If only there were some way to tell what Barker's actual attitudes toward supremacy and colonization were. I guess we'll never know.

Quote from: pawsplay on February 19, 2024, 03:03:25 AM
If only there were some way to tell what Barker's actual attitudes toward supremacy and colonization were. I guess we'll never know.

That the man had vile beliefs does not necessarily mean every bit of his work is reprehensible. I'd not read Flamesong and Man of Gold for twenty years, so pulled them off the wall over the weekend and started on a reread. That a thing is depicted in a book does not mean the  author is promoting it, even if we have external evidence that the author might favour something similar.