Quote from: HappyDaze on August 30, 2021, 10:05:06 AM

Quote from: King Tyranno on August 30, 2021, 08:53:53 AM

Quote from: RPGPundit on August 29, 2021, 07:00:37 PM

Quote from: Theory of Games on August 29, 2021, 10:57:52 AM
Deconstructionism.

FKN Derrida. The grassroots of the SJW movement is the elimination of "the Old": if you can destroy the past, you can redefine the present and thus control the future. Thomas Jefferson said "The Earth belongs to the living, not the dead." The SJWs HATE the past. So they finger-point the sins of their elders in order to cancel them and gain the upper hand. Parents see this when their children challenge them.

Now imagine a nation, as parent, dealing with an entire generation of malcontents. To include the political RIGHT.

Stephen Bannon, Trump's advisor, believes in order to create a "more perfect society" the citizenry must destroy the existing system and recreate it in the "proper image". So , Trumpets rail against the current government hoping to overwhelm and replace it with something more "American".

That this leaked into TTRPGs is normal. We have to defeat the lich of Gygax and replace it with the Good King of Crawford. No alignment, no classes, and no unexpected PC deaths. STORY trumps GAME. I expect D&D 6E to be a dice-less storygame where a group determines outcomes based on what "best fits the story".

Maybe. Funny thing is I always saw the OSR as the most Liberal expression of TTRPGs: you make and play the game the way YOU and your group think best. There's no authoritarian body telling you to play D&D as "THEY" say you should. No "Rule of Law and Sanctity of Contracts".

You want to fight the madness? Call them out for being the bullies they are. On Twitter. Eventually, you will win.

I kind of doubt that the SJWs who create 6e will trust gaming groups with making their own stories. They will just get to act out some talking parts in the stories (or "narratives") that the SJWs think is best for them.

My biggest nightmare for DnD is what happened with Warhammer Age of Shitmar. The very first boxed release had a two page leaflet. That was the rule book. No rules on army composition, point values or anything like that. "just do whatever" The rules were essentially "roll dice, move wee men. Have fun. Buy more."

I can foresee a similar thing for DnD. I like the simplicity of b/x. But I can foresee WotC "simplifying" the rules so much that they forget to mention you roll dice. There are no stats because DnD is a party game now bigot! You use a Jenga Tower or tokens to resolve challenges but if you don't like it tell the Dungeon Friend (changed from Master you fucking fascist) what you'd like to do instead and the Frienderino has to do it. Because your consent is the most important part of DnD.  But you also have to buy the 200 page Player's Conduct Handbook. Which explains proper pronoun usage. Who is allowed to game and who is not and how to make your theater of the mind games wheelchair accessible. Along with some links to friendly anti fascist groups and Porn Stars you can donate to. The final page is an advert for the monster manual.

4e is a better comparison with Age of Sigmar as it was a radical redesign. Also, both continued to be refined over time, but it doesn't help them to be accepted by old players that liked what came before and refuse to take up something new.

I actually agree with you for the most part about 4E. But it's not that the games were new. It's that they were new and worse than what they were supposed to replace. I will never completely accept 4e but I can see the appeal as a weird video gamey war gamey sort of abomination. I can see why some people would like that. But it's not my cup of tea. It also didn't have wide reaching consequences for my hobby at the time. As most people I knew hated it too. So we all just stayed on 3.5 and Pathfinder.

Shitmar on the other hand is a bad He Man rip off. If they actually ran with that it'd have been cool but it either does things too different from WFB or does them too similar in a lesser fashion. If it were an alternative to WFB I wouldn't mind. But as a replacement that erased WFB to the point you can't even play WFB in a GW store that really annoyed me. As someone in the UK. If you can't play your Warhammer in a GW store you are fucked basically. As they have the monopoly on game stores and LGSs mostly ignore Warhammer due to GW getting weird with independent stores selling their shit.

Thankfully 3D printers go brrr so I was able to find a local group that plays WFB and doesn't mind 3D printed minis either. But Shitmar is still shit. And yes I know about Old World. But GW probably won't let me rock up with my 3D printed Bretonnians from Lost Kingdom Miniatures. (great company, great models btw.) and I'm just on the Dark Side now that I know I can print minis in resin to the same quality as GW for pennies. 20p per mini to be exact. Reminds me of when it was feasible to spend my pocket money on GW minis.

Quote from: King Tyranno on August 30, 2021, 10:25:49 AM

Quote from: HappyDaze on August 30, 2021, 10:05:06 AM

Quote from: King Tyranno on August 30, 2021, 08:53:53 AM

Quote from: RPGPundit on August 29, 2021, 07:00:37 PM

Quote from: Theory of Games on August 29, 2021, 10:57:52 AM
Deconstructionism.

FKN Derrida. The grassroots of the SJW movement is the elimination of "the Old": if you can destroy the past, you can redefine the present and thus control the future. Thomas Jefferson said "The Earth belongs to the living, not the dead." The SJWs HATE the past. So they finger-point the sins of their elders in order to cancel them and gain the upper hand. Parents see this when their children challenge them.

Now imagine a nation, as parent, dealing with an entire generation of malcontents. To include the political RIGHT.

Stephen Bannon, Trump's advisor, believes in order to create a "more perfect society" the citizenry must destroy the existing system and recreate it in the "proper image". So , Trumpets rail against the current government hoping to overwhelm and replace it with something more "American".

That this leaked into TTRPGs is normal. We have to defeat the lich of Gygax and replace it with the Good King of Crawford. No alignment, no classes, and no unexpected PC deaths. STORY trumps GAME. I expect D&D 6E to be a dice-less storygame where a group determines outcomes based on what "best fits the story".

Maybe. Funny thing is I always saw the OSR as the most Liberal expression of TTRPGs: you make and play the game the way YOU and your group think best. There's no authoritarian body telling you to play D&D as "THEY" say you should. No "Rule of Law and Sanctity of Contracts".

You want to fight the madness? Call them out for being the bullies they are. On Twitter. Eventually, you will win.

I kind of doubt that the SJWs who create 6e will trust gaming groups with making their own stories. They will just get to act out some talking parts in the stories (or "narratives") that the SJWs think is best for them.

My biggest nightmare for DnD is what happened with Warhammer Age of Shitmar. The very first boxed release had a two page leaflet. That was the rule book. No rules on army composition, point values or anything like that. "just do whatever" The rules were essentially "roll dice, move wee men. Have fun. Buy more."

I can foresee a similar thing for DnD. I like the simplicity of b/x. But I can foresee WotC "simplifying" the rules so much that they forget to mention you roll dice. There are no stats because DnD is a party game now bigot! You use a Jenga Tower or tokens to resolve challenges but if you don't like it tell the Dungeon Friend (changed from Master you fucking fascist) what you'd like to do instead and the Frienderino has to do it. Because your consent is the most important part of DnD.  But you also have to buy the 200 page Player's Conduct Handbook. Which explains proper pronoun usage. Who is allowed to game and who is not and how to make your theater of the mind games wheelchair accessible. Along with some links to friendly anti fascist groups and Porn Stars you can donate to. The final page is an advert for the monster manual.

4e is a better comparison with Age of Sigmar as it was a radical redesign. Also, both continued to be refined over time, but it doesn't help them to be accepted by old players that liked what came before and refuse to take up something new.

I actually agree with you for the most part about 4E. But it's not that the games were new. It's that they were new and worse than what they were supposed to replace. I will never completely accept 4e but I can see the appeal as a weird video gamey war gamey sort of abomination. I can see why some people would like that. But it's not my cup of tea. It also didn't have wide reaching consequences for my hobby at the time. As most people I knew hated it too. So we all just stayed on 3.5 and Pathfinder.

Shitmar on the other hand is a bad He Man rip off. If they actually ran with that it'd have been cool but it either does things too different from WFB or does them too similar in a lesser fashion. If it were an alternative to WFB I wouldn't mind. But as a replacement that erased WFB to the point you can't even play WFB in a GW store that really annoyed me. As someone in the UK. If you can't play your Warhammer in a GW store you are fucked basically. As they have the monopoly on game stores and LGSs mostly ignore Warhammer due to GW getting weird with independent stores selling their shit.

Thankfully 3D printers go brrr so I was able to find a local group that plays WFB and doesn't mind 3D printed minis either. But Shitmar is still shit. And yes I know about Old World. But GW probably won't let me rock up with my 3D printed Bretonnians from Lost Kingdom Miniatures. (great company, great models btw.) and I'm just on the Dark Side now that I know I can print minis in resin to the same quality as GW for pennies. 20p per mini to be exact. Reminds me of when it was feasible to spend my pocket money on GW minis.

I don't play in official gw stores because of how anal they are about official minis only. Here we are lucky that we have LGSs that sell and host warhammer and mostly ignore what gw puts out. I've seen some creative interpretation on gw pricing rules, like apparently they are not allowed to give discounts on gw products. But a store wide discount is fine, even if they sell mostly warhammer. Also as far as rules age of sigmar isn't bad, I just really wish they didnt destroy the old world to do it. The tone and design is way too different, and their units are designed to be hard to find 3rd party models without infringing on copyrights. Like the total lack of horses for example, the bonereapers or whatever the fuck the steampunk dwarves are doing.

Quote from: HappyDaze on August 30, 2021, 10:05:06 AM
4e is a better comparison with Age of Sigmar as it was a radical redesign. Also, both continued to be refined over time, but it doesn't help them to be accepted by old players that liked what came before and refuse to take up something new.

I'll give you that the trade dress was very different for 4E compared to 3e, but mechanically it was a pretty small hop from the late 3.5e releases and early 4E and from 4E Essentials to 5e.

It was only a huge jump if you hadn't moved past the 3.5e core rules and had ignored the 5+ years of monthly hardcovers released after that; most notably the Complete X series class books (key features are the Warlock class, Reserve Spell feats and Skill Tricks which presaged the warlock class, at-will spells and martial utility powers) and Tome of Battle (presaging the Warlord and complex martial classes).

3e was a far bigger departure from 2e in terms of mechanics and character building even if you do count 2.5e (i.e. Skills & Powers) than 4E was from its immediate 3.5e predecessor products.

Quote from: King Tyranno on August 28, 2021, 08:43:46 AM

Quote from: Omega on August 28, 2021, 07:16:35 AM

Quote from: Shasarak on August 26, 2021, 07:18:56 PM

Quote from: Omega on August 26, 2021, 05:42:59 PM
Whats Role Playing? To a storygamer - Everything on Earth.

Everything except those powergaming min/maxing bigots.

And yet invariably the worst powergaming and abuse of being "in character" I have seen or gotten complain reports on... is from storygamers.

"Okay so I'm a tiefling and my father is Asmodeus and I'm like super oppresed by the bigoted humans.  Actually me and Dad get on really well but I'm super rebellious because I have this lesbian relationship with an Elf from Africa. And Dad gave me awesome powers to crush mortals with."

"That's.. a bit to overpowered for my tastes could you change that up a bit. I'm not giving you awesome powers just because your backstory says you have them. Also we don't have Africa in this setting."

"OMG you are so restrictive an railroading. Y'know, Matt Mercer said we can play DnD in our own way. This game is shit!"

"Okay, I'll ignore that. I told you before you joined that we're going for a low fantasy low power vibe. There are plenty of other groups for you if you don't like that.

"Stop excluding me!"

You left out the inevitable...

"You cant play that! It offends me! Hey dont RP that way you have to RP the ONE TRUE WAY!" and so on ad nausium because exclusion is a one way road to these sociopaths.

And thats before even getting into actual play. Thats when the real hell begins for anyone who doesnt grovvel at the feet of these creeps.

Back on topic, such as it is.
The OSR was a sham from the get-go so is it any wonder it fell apart ASAP? We have one faction trying to claim their horrifically narrow little window is THE ONE TRUE WAY!!!!!!! And another faction trying to steal everything that isnt nailed down AND everything that is. We have a faction that isnt even OSR just likes to claim it is. We have a faction that, of course, defines OSR as Everything on Earth. A faction thats really just storygamers and/or SJWs looking to infiltrate and co-op so they can use it as another attack platform for their hatemongering.

And so on ad nausium infinitum.

Part of it is the mindset in fantasy and science fiction today.

For example, compare Luke Skywalker to Rey from those crummy Disney "Star Wars" movies. Luke had to endure pain, train hard, sometimes losing- in fact in that bar fight scene in the first movie he would have died if his old mentor Obi-Wan had not been there, not to mention coming in a distant second in his first fight with Vader- in short, it was the classic "Hero's Journey."

But today it's all expected to be there from the start for everyone. Rey could do almost anything right from the get-go. In the old D&D games I played you had to actually get good at the game, discovering which kind of character you were best at playing, learning how to do things right, and of course playing as a unit with each character using his character properly- magic user, thief, cleric, fighter, etc. Each could do things others couldn't do as well.

But look at it now. Stats mean nothing, males and females are essentially the same, the races (gasp!) are the same, you now have EVIL DRUIDS when the original idea of druids was that they were purely neutral nature priests, "Tasha's Cauldron of Everything" really = nothing.

Don't get me wrong- there was nothing wrong with someone playing a good drow as long as it was clear HE WAS A RENEGADE AND RARE INDEED.* I played a pseudo-dragon with limited (very) clerical abilities once, but my main job was scouting ahead for the others and using my limited healing abilities. But again, even if the rules were bent a little here and there, the basic "good vs. evil" theme remained.

Those things are to SJWs what holy water is to a Hammer vampire. What's more, anything "old school" is seen as dangerous to the "woke" since history must be erased, and that even includes something like AD&D.


* But since the drow were an evil race that rare good drow had to deal with the perfectly expected and justifiable suspicion he would encounter. That came with the territory. Just as I had to accept certain obvious limitations my pseudo-dragon had.

This...

Quote from: GriswaldTerrastone on August 30, 2021, 06:19:46 PM
Part of it is the mindset in fantasy and science fiction today.

For example, compare Luke Skywalker to Rey from those crummy Disney "Star Wars" movies. Luke had to endure pain, train hard, sometimes losing- in fact in that bar fight scene in the first movie he would have died if his old mentor Obi-Wan had not been there, not to mention coming in a distant second in his first fight with Vader- in short, it was the classic "Hero's Journey."

But today it's all expected to be there from the start for everyone. Rey could do almost anything right from the get-go. In the old D&D games I played you had to actually get good at the game, discovering which kind of character you were best at playing, learning how to do things right, and of course playing as a unit with each character using his character properly- magic user, thief, cleric, fighter, etc. Each could do things others couldn't do as well.

Isn't really connected to this...

Quote from: GriswaldTerrastone on August 30, 2021, 06:19:46 PM
But look at it now. Stats mean nothing, males and females are essentially the same, the races (gasp!) are the same, you now have EVIL DRUIDS when the original idea of druids was that they were purely neutral nature priests, "Tasha's Cauldron of Everything" really = nothing.

Cinematic characters with no flaws and hence no development suck, but it's unrelated to a panoply of options.

I think what you're going for is a different concept: The idea of limits. One of the most important concepts in developing a coherent world is saying no. Yes, you can have every possible race and monster in your world, but all those cosmopolitan kitchen-sink worlds start to feel very samey after a while. Since they have all the same races and monsters, they often have to extraordinary measures to make them feel different. In contrast, the simplest and most straightforward way to make your world unique is to just have a short list of races and common monsters. If your world is all human, or only gnomes and halflings, it will inherently feel very different from yet another world where all possible races bump shoulders with each other. The same is true for all other elements of the world; saying "no" is more important than saying "yes".

There is a clash between players who want to be able to play anything they can imagine, and a DM who wants to run a standard B/X-style world where you can play four classes of humans, or a single type of elf, dwarf, or halfling. But it's a different problem than a world full of invulnerable, flawless Reys.

It is related- the entire issue here is interconnected. Just look at "modern" AD&D as opposed to old-style AD&D, and there it is. Remember I've seen all of this happening since the mid-1970's, when I could understand it.

Quote from: RPGPundit on August 29, 2021, 07:00:37 PM

Quote from: Theory of Games on August 29, 2021, 10:57:52 AM
Deconstructionism.

FKN Derrida. The grassroots of the SJW movement is the elimination of "the Old": if you can destroy the past, you can redefine the present and thus control the future. Thomas Jefferson said "The Earth belongs to the living, not the dead." The SJWs HATE the past. So they finger-point the sins of their elders in order to cancel them and gain the upper hand. Parents see this when their children challenge them.

Now imagine a nation, as parent, dealing with an entire generation of malcontents. To include the political RIGHT.

Stephen Bannon, Trump's advisor, believes in order to create a "more perfect society" the citizenry must destroy the existing system and recreate it in the "proper image". So , Trumpets rail against the current government hoping to overwhelm and replace it with something more "American".

That this leaked into TTRPGs is normal. We have to defeat the lich of Gygax and replace it with the Good King of Crawford. No alignment, no classes, and no unexpected PC deaths. STORY trumps GAME. I expect D&D 6E to be a dice-less storygame where a group determines outcomes based on what "best fits the story".

Maybe. Funny thing is I always saw the OSR as the most Liberal expression of TTRPGs: you make and play the game the way YOU and your group think best. There's no authoritarian body telling you to play D&D as "THEY" say you should. No "Rule of Law and Sanctity of Contracts".

You want to fight the madness? Call them out for being the bullies they are. On Twitter. Eventually, you will win.

I kind of doubt that the SJWs who create 6e will trust gaming groups with making their own stories. They will just get to act out some talking parts in the stories (or "narratives") that the SJWs think is best for them.

Actually, I agree. As long as the SJWs can control the narrative from their Control Towers, yes, real individual roleplay will become something akin to mind control. "Play as I say, not as I do."

I'm waiting for the "What is a Roleplaying Game?" screed to read like conditional rites of passage.

Edit: Crazy Uncle Gary wrote in the AD&D preface that what you do at your table is WHAT YOU DO. The textbook only applied to tournament play. SJWs wants EVERYTHING to be controlled.

Quote from: GriswaldTerrastone on August 30, 2021, 06:45:02 PM
It is related- the entire issue here is interconnected. Just look at "modern" AD&D as opposed to old-style AD&D, and there it is. Remember I've seen all of this happening since the mid-1970's, when I could understand it.

Correlation is not causation. There is correlation, but they're independent variables.

YEAH!

AD&D and BECMI was a game. WoTC created a STORYGAME without the limits. The beginnings of Storygame.  FK Alignment. FK Class. FK Race. Those stupid limits prevented the White Wolf-style gaming the SJWs wanted. "Your PC can be whatever they want to be. This is NEW! FK the past!"

How did that work with dozens of GMs asking for D&D advice to handle it. WoTC broke the rules of what D&D is, then abandoned the GMs. "Figure it out."

Good luck with 5e.

Quote from: Pat on August 30, 2021, 07:28:17 PM

Quote from: GriswaldTerrastone on August 30, 2021, 06:45:02 PM
It is related- the entire issue here is interconnected. Just look at "modern" AD&D as opposed to old-style AD&D, and there it is. Remember I've seen all of this happening since the mid-1970's, when I could understand it.

Correlation is not causation. There is correlation, but they're independent variables.

Not really, they come from the same mentality.  "There is more in heaven and earth, Horatio, than is dreamt of in your philosophy."

Quote from: Eirikrautha on August 30, 2021, 10:45:54 PM

Quote from: Pat on August 30, 2021, 07:28:17 PM

Quote from: GriswaldTerrastone on August 30, 2021, 06:45:02 PM
It is related- the entire issue here is interconnected. Just look at "modern" AD&D as opposed to old-style AD&D, and there it is. Remember I've seen all of this happening since the mid-1970's, when I could understand it.

Correlation is not causation. There is correlation, but they're independent variables.

Not really, they come from the same mentality.  "There is more in heaven and earth, Horatio, than is dreamt of in your philosophy."

They're two traits shared by a certain group of people you and Griswald seem to dislike. That doesn't mean there's any real commonality. Just because you meet two people who are tall and have red hair doesn't mean they're siblings. The reason I'm distinguishing them is because the tendency to make characters who have no negative qualities and no place to grow or develop is pretty much a universal negative, but evil druids? You can like it or dislike it, but that's just a slight stylistic change to the game.

Quote from: King Tyranno on August 28, 2021, 10:06:03 AM
I didn't come here to "be a dick to my peers". IRL I am too quiet and I never voice my opinion for fear of causing a confrontation

I'm really not comfortable with the way this thread is going. I just wanted to see what people's opinions of the OSR are and how to combat people being aggressively offended that I have a philosophical disagreement with the way they play the game.

This is becoming more about me and how I run my games than I would like. I can't defend against personal attacks from strangers on the internet because none of you know me. But what really grinds me gears is when I give an opinion and you start assigning negative traits to me to justify your own arguments. That makes me defensive when what I should've done is not respond. For 6 months I've been in a game as a GM where I've had to be a "storygamer" because that group was very new and that was what they expected of DnD. I knew that if I voiced my opinion to them or tried to enforce my way of doing things they would leave. So I played the long game. Didn't say a word about how I liked my games. Never voiced my opinion or tried to be obnoxious. Did the best I could as a GM to make them feel comfortable and welcome. Gave them as fun a game as I could manage under the restrictions. Then they got bored. I got the opportunity to do things my way and they liked it. I don't run the games I like as if they are hardcore tactical simulations or "try hard edgelord" stuff. Again, that's an assumption certain members here made about me and my style of GMing. I've said my style of GMing several times to justify myself to people who are probably still going to take offense and project negative traits onto me. I do not want to be a hostile or confrontational GM. I do not intentionally provoke or railroad my group. But when I've designed a dungeon full of traps and monsters and one player decides to run through the whole thing by themselves they will inevitably bump into the monsters I had already placed there or a trap. And they will have to figure out a way out of that situation. I find just telling the players what they want to hear to be condescending. I find that 5E and 5E culture encourages that playstyle. Feel free to disagree. But it's why I don't like 5E or the expectations of playing 5E I get from other players. And the whole point of my original topic was to discuss what to do when people get offended that I even mention that I like OSR and the Old school mentality.

I like OSR style play. Old school mentality where foolish actions are punished by the consequences of your actions. I don't see that as try hard or edgy. It's not, actually. I refuse to justify that. I just had a game with a group who enjoyed it. They didn't see it as particularly "hardcore". They just liked having choices and consequences both mechanically and in the story that mattered. 

I feel like I'm waffling on trying to justify myself to complete strangers. I'm just going to stop doing that.

Are you running 5E?  I do tend to agree.  I played in a 5E and a Pathfinder group.  Never again.  I'll play in a 1st or 2nd ed group... but even then if the GM has a bunch of precious house rules (most do) I get irked.  So I always wind up GMing.  Running Ars Magica now.

Just run the game you want!  You'll find players.  I advertised a "Lamentations of the Flame Princess" game- a few years back, created a Meetup.com group to attract new players- I had a few but not enough for a whole group.  A couple of the gamers, clearly expecting a "5E" or "Pathfinder" type experience (although not at all what I was advertising) kept asking to make various skill checks. 

Player "I want to Sense Motive". 

Me "You don't have that skill.  That's not a skill in this game."

Player "How do I know if this guy is lying to me or not?"

Me "Well, you have to figure it out.  I can't tell you."

They didn't like that.  I lost two players, both young ones in their 20's.   

Another example: 

Player  "I make a search roll." 

Me  "No, tell me what you're doing." 

Player "I search the room." 

Me "No, there's a lot of stuff in here (I describe the stuff), what do you do?"

When you use a simpler system, the players have to think and interact MORE with each other and the GM.  The more bells and whistles on a players sheet, they are sitting looking at their sheet, and trying to figure out what doodad on their sheet they can use to solve a problem instead of using their brain.  I lost some lame players, eventually found good ones.

Quote from: Pat on August 30, 2021, 11:03:58 PM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on August 30, 2021, 10:45:54 PM

Quote from: Pat on August 30, 2021, 07:28:17 PM

Quote from: GriswaldTerrastone on August 30, 2021, 06:45:02 PM
It is related- the entire issue here is interconnected. Just look at "modern" AD&D as opposed to old-style AD&D, and there it is. Remember I've seen all of this happening since the mid-1970's, when I could understand it.

Correlation is not causation. There is correlation, but they're independent variables.

Not really, they come from the same mentality.  "There is more in heaven and earth, Horatio, than is dreamt of in your philosophy."

They're two traits shared by a certain group of people you and Griswald seem to dislike. That doesn't mean there's any real commonality. Just because you meet two people who are tall and have red hair doesn't mean they're siblings. The reason I'm distinguishing them is because the tendency to make characters who have no negative qualities and no place to grow or develop is pretty much a universal negative, but evil druids? You can like it or dislike it, but that's just a slight stylistic change to the game.

Not allowing evil druids also buys into D&D's official cosmologies as the ONLY valid cosmologies for play. In the real world there is evidence of human sacrifice performed by the druids (the victims may have been condemned criminals, but condemned for what?)

I'm picturing an adventure now where the PCs have been hired to rescue someone from a circle of druids before they sacrifice them at the next full moon... their crime to warrent the hideous death? The individual got lost in the forest and stumbled into a sacred grove during one of the druid's secret rites.

That druid behavior would make them villains and anyone who'd sacrifice someone for the "crime" of getting lost is evil in my book.

But that's not allowed because "evil druids" is supposedly Woke wankery. I bet an evil priest with all sort of pseudo-Christian trappings would be a perfectly acceptable villain to them though. Boy, the people behind the Woke would laugh their asses off about that irony.

Quote from: Chris24601 on August 31, 2021, 07:19:48 AM
Not allowing evil druids also buys into D&D's official cosmologies as the ONLY valid cosmologies for play. In the real world there is evidence of human sacrifice performed by the druids (the victims may have been condemned criminals, but condemned for what?)

I'm picturing an adventure now where the PCs have been hired to rescue someone from a circle of druids before they sacrifice them at the next full moon... their crime to warrent the hideous death? The individual got lost in the forest and stumbled into a sacred grove during one of the druid's secret rites.

That druid behavior would make them villains and anyone who'd sacrifice someone for the "crime" of getting lost is evil in my book.

But that's not allowed because "evil druids" is supposedly Woke wankery. I bet an evil priest with all sort of pseudo-Christian trappings would be a perfectly acceptable villain to them though. Boy, the people behind the Woke would laugh their asses off about that irony.

     Gygax admitted druidic human sacrifice and that it pushed them towards the evil edge of neutral when first working out the expanded alignment system. I believe it's in The Strategic Review #6; I'll check it when I have access to my DRAGON Archive.