Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 02, 2024, 03:22:48 PM
Is any of that in Tekumel? or any of his other gaming materials?

Immaterial in the first place, and it's not by any reasonable metric, anyway. That's not the point of what's going on here, though. "This COULD be a problem" will soon be "this IS a problem" very shortly, so unless you start bending the knee immediately they're going to dredge up any good thing you said about Tekumel as being proof positive you're a literal Nazi. Might take a couple years, but it's going to happen.

Oh and if you bend the knee, they're just gonna chop your fucking head off first.

Quote from: Quasquetonian on February 02, 2024, 03:08:55 PM

Quote from: BadApple on February 02, 2024, 01:11:07 PM
I have seen accusations of racism and fascism leveled at all kinds of people that just don't bear tight scrutiny.  Here's a couple:

1.  Henry Ford - Supposedly, he was a big supporter of Hitler so he's a racist and a fascist.  Here's the problem, Hitler was Time Magazine's Man of the Year because he pulled Germany out of an economic death spiral.  His early efforts considerably raised the quality of life for the German people that were truly suffering.  This was during the Great Depression that was seeing Americans starving to death and America was doing better than Germany in 1935.  The horrors of WW!! like the holocaust weren't well known until the concentration camp liberation in 1945; there had been some rumors but many of them had been "debunked."  Once Henry Ford saw what was going on as it really was, he backed the US and the allies 100%.  Many, many prominent figures in the US and in the broader world were pro-fascist up until the late 30s.

People don't say that Henry Ford was an antisemite because he admired Hitler's economic miracle.  People say that Henry Ford was an antisemite because it's a well-documented fact that he hated the Jews and promoted Jew hatred.  After he took over his hometown newspaper, he published antisemitic articles under his byline for many years, collecting them into a series of booklets he called The International Jew.

You also have it exactly the wrong way around.  It was actually Hitler who admired Ford.  Hitler was known to keep a prominent photograph of Ford in his office, and he even said this in 1923:

Quote"I wish that I could send some of my shock troops to Chicago and other big American cities to help in the elections," the young leader of the Bavarian Fascisti party said grimly. "We look on Heinrich Ford as the leader of the growing Fascisti movement in America. We admire particularly his anti-Jewish policy which is the Bavarian Fascisti platform. We have just had his anti-Jewish articles translated and published. The book is being circulated to millions throughout Germany."

Ford ended up with several libel suits being brought against him by Jews he had named as part of the conspiracy and lied about.  Although the first was declared a mistrial, it was utterly embarrassing for Ford, and he quickly settled out of court.  He negotiated an agreement with the American Jewish Committee, promising to stop publishing antisemitic materials.

I'm going to stop there, because this is obviously getting way beyond roleplaying games.

Most of the world was anti-semitic in the early 1900s. That's why in the wake of World War 2, it was determined that the Jewish people needed a country of their own.

For that matter, we westerners think that racism is a great moral sin today, but the unfortunate reality is that the overwhelming majority of humanity is still intensely racist. It's only a rather small, predominantly white percentage of humanity that actually thinks racism is bad.

Quote from: Corolinth on February 02, 2024, 05:04:11 PM
Most of the world was anti-semitic in the early 1900s. That's why in the wake of World War 2, it was determined that the Jewish people needed a country of their own.

Talking about the overall degree of antisemitism in the early 20th century is complicated, and I am not interested in taking this conversation in that direction.  I'll just say that if you do any reading on Ford, you'll find that even a lot of his contemporaries thought his hatred of the Jews was over the top at the time.  That should be obvious, as you'd be hard pressed to find another figure of his stature who bought a newspaper to air his antisemitic conspiracy theories, repackaged those theories as a series of booklets that he sold through his automobile dealerships, and was sued for libel by several specific Jews that he outright lied about.  On top of that, the most infamous Jew hater of all time cited him as an inspiration.  "Most of the world" may have been antisemitic, but Hitler didn't cite most of the world as an inspiration or recommend most of the world's books exposing the international Jewish conspiracy.

But this has nothing to do with roleplaying or any figures involved in roleplaying, so I'm going to leave it at that.

So many RPG content creators are accused and accosted, because they didn't live perfect lives from birth to death.  The loud screeching about nearly everyone and everything, makes it difficult to narrow down your focus; and decide what is good content creation, and what isn't.

I am not a Nazi.  I am not anti-semitic.  I am not an expert on the lives of the creators of every book I own.  I do like D&D / Sword & Sorcery type fantasy RPG content.  I also like coffee.

Quote from: Brad on February 02, 2024, 04:36:18 PM
Immaterial in the first place, and it's not by any reasonable metric, anyway. That's not the point of what's going on here, though. "This COULD be a problem" will soon be "this IS a problem" very shortly, so unless you start bending the knee immediately they're going to dredge up any good thing you said about Tekumel as being proof positive you're a literal Nazi. Might take a couple years, but it's going to happen.

Oh and if you bend the knee, they're just gonna chop your fucking head off first.

As I've already said, I'm not one to tell anyone how they should spend their time.  I do not care in the slightest if you enjoy Tekumel and, whether you believe it or not, I'm not interested in going after people who do.  I can promise you that I am never going to call anyone a Nazi for enjoying Tekumel.

However, if someone claims that Barker probably wasn't a Nazi and suggests that the whole thing might be an overreaction to his interest in Hinduism?  I'm going to point out that Barker wrote a neo-Nazi novel that was published by a neo-Nazi organization and that he sat on the advisory committee of a publication that was designed to give cover to Nazis and others engaged in holocaust denialism.

Quote from: Jam The MF on February 02, 2024, 09:11:54 PM
So many RPG content creators are accused and accosted, because they didn't live perfect lives from birth to death.  The loud screeching about nearly everyone and everything, makes it difficult to narrow down your focus; and decide what is good content creation, and what isn't.

My issue with Barker isn't that he didn't lead a perfect life.  It's that he wrote a neo-Nazi novel that was published by a neo-Nazi organization and sat on the advisory committee of a publication devoted to holocaust denialism for more than a decade.  If you enjoy Tekumel, then enjoy Tekumel.

Quote from: Jam The MF on February 02, 2024, 09:11:54 PM
So many RPG content creators are accused and accosted, because they didn't live perfect lives from birth to death.  The loud screeching about nearly everyone and everything, makes it difficult to narrow down your focus; and decide what is good content creation, and what isn't.

I am not a Nazi.  I am not anti-semitic.  I am not an expert on the lives of the creators of every book I own.  I do like D&D / Sword & Sorcery type fantasy RPG content.  I also like coffee.

Them: He's a Nazi.
You: Well, nobody's perfect.

Get out of town! LOL.

Quote from: Quasquetonian on February 02, 2024, 09:41:10 PM

Quote from: Brad on February 02, 2024, 04:36:18 PM
Immaterial in the first place, and it's not by any reasonable metric, anyway. That's not the point of what's going on here, though. "This COULD be a problem" will soon be "this IS a problem" very shortly, so unless you start bending the knee immediately they're going to dredge up any good thing you said about Tekumel as being proof positive you're a literal Nazi. Might take a couple years, but it's going to happen.

Oh and if you bend the knee, they're just gonna chop your fucking head off first.

As I've already said, I'm not one to tell anyone how they should spend their time.  I do not care in the slightest if you enjoy Tekumel and, whether you believe it or not, I'm not interested in going after people who do.  I can promise you that I am never going to call anyone a Nazi for enjoying Tekumel.

However, if someone claims that Barker probably wasn't a Nazi and suggests that the whole thing might be an overreaction to his interest in Hinduism?  I'm going to point out that Barker wrote a neo-Nazi novel that was published by a neo-Nazi organization and that he sat on the advisory committee of a publication that was designed to give cover to Nazis and others engaged in holocaust denialism.

Quote from: Jam The MF on February 02, 2024, 09:11:54 PM
So many RPG content creators are accused and accosted, because they didn't live perfect lives from birth to death.  The loud screeching about nearly everyone and everything, makes it difficult to narrow down your focus; and decide what is good content creation, and what isn't.

My issue with Barker isn't that he didn't lead a perfect life.  It's that he wrote a neo-Nazi novel that was published by a neo-Nazi organization and sat on the advisory committee of a publication devoted to holocaust denialism for more than a decade.  If you enjoy Tekumel, then enjoy Tekumel.

How is the novel, it's publisher or the organization in any way relevant to the question of if Tekumel is any good?

Like I said before, this is yet ANOTHER thread pawsplay has managed to derail with political bullshit, can we please just ignore that fucking Troll?

Quote from: Brad on February 02, 2024, 07:04:22 AM
I have the original Tekumel, the GOO one, Gardasiyal, Tirikelu (which is free and probably the best actual game), and Swords and Glory. Two of these had no direct involvement from MAR Barker that I can find, and you would be hard pressed to tell the difference. They're dense as fuck and have a very consistent theme of a pseudo-ancient society that relies on near-magic technology (and some actual magic) given in the context of an Indian (dot, not feather) caste-based society if it was like 20 thousands years in the future. To me it's basically Dune but some backwater world that got sucked into a pocket universe and developed independently of anything else.

It's been said Barker was the only one who could run a Tekumel game, and I believe it. There are just too many moving pieces to give the setting justice. You CAN just run adventures in the underworld and do tech raids or whatever, typical D&D fare, but that's almost like playing Forgotten Realms and totally ignoring the gods, the time of troubles, the harpers, etc. Kind of defeats the entire purpose of using the game world.

RE: Nazi crap, I saw that mentioned on this messageboard a while back and literally DGAF. Barker was so involved and invested in Hindu culture I wouldn't doubt he had a couple old school swastikas and some retard took it the wrong way. Dredging up this sort of garbage is a waste of everyone's time.

So it's a dense setting to master and run a campaign in, which features a caste-based society; and if you're just running one shots etc., the uniqueness of the setting is not being realized.  That doesn't sound like a good fit for me.  I heard the name mentioned amongst the early settings for OD&D, and was a bit curious.  OD&D has wonderful nostalgia.  The birthing of the genre, etc.

Tekumel is super cool, and obviously he did what he could to keep his politics out of the game.  One way you know this is true is that, until an old book was found after his death, no one ever once put up any complaint against his stuff.  So everything you see people saying now, they just made all that up to try to cancel something that will never be woke.

I guess the glory of theRPGSite is that here you get to see equally silly aguments made from both the Progressive Left and the Libertarian Right.  Most RPG places are orthodox hard Progessive Left, those that aren't are usually strict no-politics. This place reminds me that while I sympathise more with the Libertarians, anyone can make a silly argument. 

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 02, 2024, 09:51:06 PM

Quote from: Quasquetonian on February 02, 2024, 09:41:10 PM

Quote from: Jam The MF on February 02, 2024, 09:11:54 PM
So many RPG content creators are accused and accosted, because they didn't live perfect lives from birth to death.  The loud screeching about nearly everyone and everything, makes it difficult to narrow down your focus; and decide what is good content creation, and what isn't.

My issue with Barker isn't that he didn't lead a perfect life.  It's that he wrote a neo-Nazi novel that was published by a neo-Nazi organization and sat on the advisory committee of a publication devoted to holocaust denialism for more than a decade.  If you enjoy Tekumel, then enjoy Tekumel.

How is the novel, it's publisher or the organization in any way relevant to the question of if Tekumel is any good?

For some people, it's important that creators be decent people, and they see Ocule's list as helping mark that. For example, in the "Worst People You Have Never Met" thread, Thorn Drumheller expressed it as:

Quote from: Thorn Drumheller on January 31, 2024, 05:51:08 PM
if anything, this whole twatgate rpgdrama had reminded me of Ocule's list. I really will only support creators who I know are decent.

Personally, I don't see much relevance, but then, I also don't see relevance between Steve Jackson supporting abortion rights and the quality of GURPS as a system.

Quote from: jhkim on February 03, 2024, 11:54:43 AM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 02, 2024, 09:51:06 PM

Quote from: Quasquetonian on February 02, 2024, 09:41:10 PM

Quote from: Jam The MF on February 02, 2024, 09:11:54 PM
So many RPG content creators are accused and accosted, because they didn't live perfect lives from birth to death.  The loud screeching about nearly everyone and everything, makes it difficult to narrow down your focus; and decide what is good content creation, and what isn't.

My issue with Barker isn't that he didn't lead a perfect life.  It's that he wrote a neo-Nazi novel that was published by a neo-Nazi organization and sat on the advisory committee of a publication devoted to holocaust denialism for more than a decade.  If you enjoy Tekumel, then enjoy Tekumel.

How is the novel, it's publisher or the organization in any way relevant to the question of if Tekumel is any good?

For some people, it's important that creators be decent people, and they see Ocule's list as helping mark that. For example, in the "Worst People You Have Never Met" thread, Thorn Drumheller expressed it as:

Quote from: Thorn Drumheller on January 31, 2024, 05:51:08 PM
if anything, this whole twatgate rpgdrama had reminded me of Ocule's list. I really will only support creators who I know are decent.

Personally, I don't see much relevance, but then, I also don't see relevance between Steve Jackson supporting abortion rights and the quality of GURPS as a system.

Why do you ALWAYS have to equivocate and make false equivalences?

If you buy Tekumel, does any of that money go to support neo-nazis? Answer: NO.

If you buy anything from SJG, does any of that money go to support murdering babies? Answer: YES.

So, to anyone not trying to make a "who cares, muh both sides" false equivalence there's an obvious difference here.

Do you seriously think if buying Tekumel funded neo-nazis I would be arguing for it?

Regardless of M.A.R.Bs personal political beliefs, so little of it was reflected in Tekumel that many in the LGBT community actively claimed it as their own, and the current guiding voices of the foundation are as left leaning as you can get. The numerous posts on Tekumel and its foundation on this forum are perhaps the most authentic historical record on the matter if you're into that.

Quote from: Quasquetonian on February 02, 2024, 03:08:55 PM
I'm going to stop there, because this is obviously getting way beyond roleplaying games.

Nevertheless I appreciate the history lesson.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 02, 2024, 03:22:48 PM
Yet another thread pawsplay has managed to derail onto politics...

Yes, Barker WAS an anti-semite and probably a neo-nazi...

So. Fucking. What!?

Is any of that in Tekumel? or any of his other gaming materials?

NO! Ergo, since the POS is dead and won't benefit from people playing his shit, who fucking cares what kind of lunatic the guy was?

I don't feel his intervention up to this point is a derailment. Some posters were claiming that it was probably a lie that Barker was a neo-nazi, others were saying he might have been racist but was not a full on nazi-supporter; and pawsplay provided the truth, which is that Barker was a member of a  neo-nazi organization for decades and wrote a novel about heroic SS resistance fighters. It was made relevant by other posters trying to claim Barker was not actually what he has been proven to be.