FYI, the idea of Clerics who get their power from an abstract philosophy has been around since at least 2e. Don't recall if they mentioned it in the PHB, but at the very least they covered it in the Complete Priests Handbook. So this predates Woke D&D by decades.

Quote from: VisionStorm on October 11, 2023, 10:51:30 PM
FYI, the idea of Clerics who get their power from an abstract philosophy has been around since at least 2e. Don't recall if they mentioned it in the PHB, but at the very least they covered it in the Complete Priests Handbook. So this predates Woke D&D by decades.

Good to note, but I think there's more verbiage to that effect in mainline products now. Which again, I think is fine.

Quote from: VisionStorm on October 11, 2023, 10:51:30 PM
FYI, the idea of Clerics who get their power from an abstract philosophy has been around since at least 2e. Don't recall if they mentioned it in the PHB, but at the very least they covered it in the Complete Priests Handbook. So this predates Woke D&D by decades.

  This is true, although I think we can locate a dividing point in 3E, which moved it from a DM's world-building tool in the CPrH to a default player option in the PHB.

Quote from: Yitzhak Marxx on October 09, 2023, 11:53:40 AM

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on October 09, 2023, 11:40:15 AM
  According to Mark Rosewater's blog https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/, "witch" is not being removed, but they don't use it as a 'type' for "real-world religious considerations," and are considering the same for "druid" and "shaman."

Once again their "RPGs" get hollower and more generic, evermore incapable of birthing games with narratives where anything matters at all. These are the people that say/think orcs and drow are black because theyre barbarians or occultist thieves (projecting their implicit beliefs), so it's fitting.

This is what I mean by "vanilll".  D&D is so generic anymore.  And what's the harm in religious inspiration for anything in RPGs?  You know, secular humanism is a modern-day religion, just not an organized one.  remove all that, Wizards.  That includes all wokeness.

I'm guessing the writers just don't understand any religion period besides fundamentalist Christianity?

WotC should just slowly remove everything from DnD until eventually they just sell a Blank book, thus offending nobody.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on October 12, 2023, 07:46:43 AM
This is true, although I think we can locate a dividing point in 3E, which moved it from a DM's world-building tool in the CPrH to a default player option in the PHB.

It's never been a default player option (as in, an option a player can expect to choose if playing by core rules).  It's mentioned in the 3.X PHBs, certainly, but it's never assumed to be true.  There are settings that WotC themselves shipped that allow it, and others that ban it.  The same is true of any homebrew setting- the DM has to figure it out for themselves, to decide whether it's available to players or not.

Ahh, MTG.  We will cause Christians headaches, but as soon as Twitter Slactivism reared it's ugly head we gladly offered our company's testicles to be crushed on the altar of wokeness.

I have returned to Magic: The Gathering. This is totally for personal enjoyment and definitely not opposition research to make a competing product. Let me lay it thick with the stupidity I've seen since I returned.

• WotC has now made "Universes Beyond" cards which are for every TV show and movie they can get the rights to. This is grotesquely unpopular among the core fanbase, but apparently Magic is the only thing working for Hasbro, and  WotC has promised to roughly quadruple revenues over about a 10 year period, which has lead to aggressive marketing. My understanding is that almost none of the fans of other franchises who bought Universes Beyond sets for things like The Walking Dead and Jurrasic Park did not remain with the game long term.
• WotC has no clue what to make of their most popular format, Commander. Tolarian Community College's last video was a guide to Commander deck mana bases which was almost certainly assisted by someone at WotC, and he recommended a breathtaking 8 fetch lands for a dual color deck. This is probably so that they can make money selling lands; mana bases using fetch lands basically need to pair with shock lands. Coincidentally, the upcoming Ravnica Remastered set will feature shock lands. The problem with fetch lands is Commander is an infamously slow format and fetches will worsen the sensation of slow gameplay. It takes a lot of time to shuffle a 100 card deck, which you do every time you crack a Fetch land. Even as the metrics say that WotC is making Commander into a faster format by turn count, in terms of interactivity, this is going to make Commander feel even slower. The tables which feel the best to play at use dirt-cheap ETB tapped lands which get you into the heart of an EDH midrange game quickly and painlessly. Unfortunately, because this is one turn slower than the competitive decks and WotC has a massive hard on for their World Championships, they are going to push deck construction paradigms which are actively less pleasant to play.
• The finance people seem to think that Ravnica is going to be left abandoned on shelves because there isn't enough card value in the chase rares to give MTG nerds their gambling fix. Card prices are starting to fall, which means sales struggles for new sets.
• Apparently Elspeth is alive again. The story behind that is shockingly half-assed. It's hard to even call this a Christ parody because the execution is downright pitiable. I am 1000% hoping that WotC goes bankrupt from their stupid Universes Beyond nonsense and the finance trap they're in before they get back to Innistrad again and bring Avacyn back in an equally pathetically bland manner.

So yeah...Magic's a mess. The least of their problems is whether or not they use Shaman as a card type.

I'm considering making a collectible card game for this generation. Anything and everything that might be offensive will be removed.



And also a companion roleplaying game.



Here is a sneak preview:



(edit: made the post more relevant to this thread)

Quote from: Cathode Ray on October 12, 2023, 08:07:59 AM

Quote from: Yitzhak Marxx on October 09, 2023, 11:53:40 AM

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on October 09, 2023, 11:40:15 AM
  According to Mark Rosewater's blog https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/, "witch" is not being removed, but they don't use it as a 'type' for "real-world religious considerations," and are considering the same for "druid" and "shaman."

Once again their "RPGs" get hollower and more generic, evermore incapable of birthing games with narratives where anything matters at all. These are the people that say/think orcs and drow are black because theyre barbarians or occultist thieves (projecting their implicit beliefs), so it's fitting.

This is what I mean by "vanilll".  D&D is so generic anymore.  And what's the harm in religious inspiration for anything in RPGs?  You know, secular humanism is a modern-day religion, just not an organized one.  remove all that, Wizards.  That includes all wokeness.

All of this is about Magic: The Gathering. Not D&D. D&D confirmed to not be ditching any of these words. They're all in the current playtest even. This is purely a MTG thing.

Quote from: Mistwell on October 12, 2023, 11:11:20 PM

All of this is about Magic: The Gathering. Not D&D. D&D confirmed to not be ditching any of these words.

Yet.  They will do so when they feel they can.  How dense do you have to be to not see the patterns?

You know, this is about as ignorant a take as being someone who has downplayed media distortion and censorship, and then being upset when the media bias is turned against you.  It's always no big deal... then suddenly it's a crisis when it's done to you...

Quote from: Venka on October 12, 2023, 07:05:31 PM

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on October 12, 2023, 07:46:43 AM
This is true, although I think we can locate a dividing point in 3E, which moved it from a DM's world-building tool in the CPrH to a default player option in the PHB.

It's never been a default player option (as in, an option a player can expect to choose if playing by core rules).  It's mentioned in the 3.X PHBs, certainly, but it's never assumed to be true.  There are settings that WotC themselves shipped that allow it, and others that ban it.  The same is true of any homebrew setting- the DM has to figure it out for themselves, to decide whether it's available to players or not.

If they wanted to, either the GM or the worldbuilder (who may or may not be the same person) could decide that martial schools are a thing, and that fighters only get to pick their bonus feats from combat feats associated with their school. That doesn't suddenly make all combat feats stop being a default player option. Likewise, atheist clerics are right there in the book as a thing the player can do.

But this conversational thread isn't about what is or isn't a default player option, it's about when the separation started to occur. It has been confirmed in this thread that clerics and deities were separated at least as far as the Complete Handbooks from 2nd edition, and it appears to have been introduced as a world-building tool. This decision appears to have been made to facilitate modeling something like animism using the cleric class, rather than having to create a new "kind of like a cleric, but without a god" class.

The irony of WotC potentially removing these elements from the game is that the stories that inspired D&D and continue to emanate from it in good company, are inspired by the hero cycles and mythology of human societies and civilizations, which themselves echo primordial mystical elements present in our cosmology and psyches.
Continuing to sanitize and secularize the game by removing these mystical components which resonate with our mythological instincts just destroys most of the fun. Imagine getting stuck with some sort of deracinated fantasy world whose inspirations stem from a modern day Californian interpretation of medieval society, Afrocentrism forefronted.

And yeah, as a neopagan LARPer, I would prefer these titles stay in-tact, even if they really don't accurately represent the historical realities of something like Druidism, which is completely fine.