Quote from: Brad on January 27, 2021, 04:21:34 PMSo now killing evil people is political in nature?

In that the definition of who counts as "evil people" and thus merits killing is almost always heavily politicized, yes.  Even the notion that people can be "evil" in some objective innate sense, as opposed to simply "wants goals or accepts means intolerable and incompatible with ours", usually becomes a political plank once people start arguing about it.

Quote from: Brad on January 27, 2021, 04:21:34 PM
So now killing evil people is political in nature?

Yes, because evil people dont think that they are evil.

Quote from: Brad on January 27, 2021, 04:21:34 PM

Quote from: Rhedyn on January 27, 2021, 03:40:05 PM
All the Rambo movies are deeply political calls to action. Granted, some of those overt political statements come from conservative politics, but that does not mean they aren't political.

If you are getting amped up at the idea of killing evil drug cartel members invading your rural ranch, then you have accepted multiple political messages.

If you are rooting for Rambo in the first movie, you have been convinced of the political message that he didn't do anything wrong. That being an American Veteran is not reason persecute someone. (This previous political message has since been accepted as fact, but it started as a political idea that various woke people had to push)

So now killing evil people is political in nature? I guess that means killing orcs in a game is political as well, hence the thread comes full circle and now we're all pushing identity politics and racism if we want to destroy tribes of orcs.

It's not subtle. You have to suspend your disbelief to believe that situation is plausible enough to enjoy watching. You have to accept that the cartel would/can cross the border to kill one guy. You are accepting that it is OK to know these people are coming and taking care of them yourself with "home defense" as a justification. And overall there is a pro-gun message.

Why does our hero have illegal traps all over his yard? Why didn't he attempt to receive help from local law enforcement? Why didn't he rig the yard to explode and just leave instead of personally gutting a dude? Why didn't he just leave? Those are all political and ethical decisions that movies political messaging gets you to look over or you went in with political beliefs firmly in place.

Just because something agrees with your politics does not mean it is not political.

I wanted to comment a lot about travesties about Tolkien lore spoken in this thread, but alas I lack time to write it all down.

Quote"Hmmm...Chris, I must respectfully disagree with your assessment regarding the ancient use of the term "Race". Or medieval, as well. The usage of the term "Race" is commonly found throughout medieval and ancient writers and commentators, even from otherwise diverse and "barbarian" sources, such as Norse Vikings, Celtic Pagan barbarians, Native American tribes. Evidently most people in the Asian East, such as the Chinese and the Mongols, also used the term "Race". "

SHARK, dude, Chinese and Mongols could not use term race - as it's English term derived from Italian. Some word could be translated as "race" - but this is well translation with all it's interpretation problems. Word "race" was first noted in English in 1580 and is derived from Frenche rasse (noted first in 1512). Of course word race existed as a you know horse race before, but not as human diversity one.

Quote from: Wicked Woodpecker of West on January 27, 2021, 07:24:36 PM
I wanted to comment a lot about travesties about Tolkien lore spoken in this thread, but alas I lack time to write it all down.

Quote"Hmmm...Chris, I must respectfully disagree with your assessment regarding the ancient use of the term "Race". Or medieval, as well. The usage of the term "Race" is commonly found throughout medieval and ancient writers and commentators, even from otherwise diverse and "barbarian" sources, such as Norse Vikings, Celtic Pagan barbarians, Native American tribes. Evidently most people in the Asian East, such as the Chinese and the Mongols, also used the term "Race". "

SHARK, dude, Chinese and Mongols could not use term race - as it's English term derived from Italian. Some word could be translated as "race" - but this is well translation with all it's interpretation problems. Word "race" was first noted in English in 1580 and is derived from Frenche rasse (noted first in 1512). Of course word race existed as a you know horse race before, but not as human diversity one.

Greetings!

Indeed, as you mentioned though, similar terms are found in translation.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on January 27, 2021, 04:24:08 PMIn that the definition of who counts as "evil people" and thus merits killing is almost always heavily politicized, yes.  Even the notion that people can be "evil" in some objective innate sense, as opposed to simply "wants goals or accepts means intolerable and incompatible with ours", usually becomes a political plank once people start arguing about it.

I'm talking specifically about RPGs that have a race of creatures whose alignment is Evil, e.g., they are born such a way that they are incapable of doing anything but bad stuff. And you have paladins and clerics who can tell you with 100% accuracy that those creatures will in fact do nothing but bad stuff and are irredeemable. So that's not political unless we define politics as being the umbrella under which objective morality sits.

RE: other stuff like Rambo, eh...

Quote from: Shasarak on January 27, 2021, 04:50:31 PMYes, because evil people dont think that they are evil.

Talking about ORCS here! They know they're evil.

Quote from: Rhedyn on January 27, 2021, 05:24:53 PMIt's not subtle. You have to suspend your disbelief to believe that situation is plausible enough to enjoy watching. You have to accept that the cartel would/can cross the border to kill one guy. You are accepting that it is OK to know these people are coming and taking care of them yourself with "home defense" as a justification. And overall there is a pro-gun message.

Why does our hero have illegal traps all over his yard? Why didn't he attempt to receive help from local law enforcement? Why didn't he rig the yard to explode and just leave instead of personally gutting a dude? Why didn't he just leave? Those are all political and ethical decisions that movies political messaging gets you to look over or you went in with political beliefs firmly in place.

Just because something agrees with your politics does not mean it is not political.

70 year old Rambo and 30 year old Rambo have little in common and the younger one was killing the bad guys because they were bad.

Quote from: Brad on January 27, 2021, 08:28:22 PM70 year old Rambo and 30 year old Rambo have little in common and the younger one was killing the bad guys because they were bad.

Lol

1. Don't treat nam vets bad.

2. Care about Nam MIAs and POWs

3. Support our brave allies the TALIBAN in Afghanistan.

4. You see all the genocide in Asia? We should do something about that

5. Drug cartels are bad, really close, and we should stop them.

Seriously, it's overt political calls to action every movie.

Quote from: Brad on January 27, 2021, 08:28:22 PM
I'm talking specifically about RPGs that have a race of creatures whose alignment is Evil, e.g., they are born such a way that they are incapable of doing anything but bad stuff. And you have paladins and clerics who can tell you with 100% accuracy that those creatures will in fact do nothing but bad stuff and are irredeemable. So that's not political unless we define politics as being the umbrella under which objective morality sits.

Yahbut. Is a Paladin or Cleric "justified" in killing an Orc that hasn't done anything bad? Even if it's rotten to the core, let's say Bob the Orc, alone in the woods, just eats turnips and never goes out to bother anyone.
And I hate the Detect Alignment ability in general. Like, ding, my spell says you're irredeemably bad, therefore, *Whack!*

I'm no into a dreary exploration of ethics in my Dungeons and Dragons games, but I do like a little more thought put into it than just chasing Orcs around because they're Orcs.

Usually the bad guys are doing something bad, or have done something bad, and not simply sitting there "being" evil.

Quote from: Brad on January 27, 2021, 08:28:22 PMI'm talking specifically about RPGs that have a race of creatures whose alignment is Evil, e.g., they are born such a way that they are incapable of doing anything but bad stuff. And you have paladins and clerics who can tell you with 100% accuracy that those creatures will in fact do nothing but bad stuff and are irredeemable. So that's not political unless we define politics as being the umbrella under which objective morality sits.

Fair enough, and for my own part I grant the distinction. The essayist Tom Simon wrote a piece I quite like called "The Terminal Orc" where he talks about Tolkien's own difficulties as a Catholic in imagining and portraying a race of thinking beings who were nonetheless wholly irredeemable; you can find the essay at www.bondwine.com.

That said, there are quite a lot of people who do define politics as precisely the business of deciding what will effectively sit under the umbrella of common social morality, because they no longer believe in an objective received morality. That is precisely why SJ advocacy is so fervent among so many of its practitioners: it has assumed the place of traditional religion as a source of spiritual and moral purpose.

Quote from: sureshot on January 26, 2021, 08:25:06 AM
Another hit piece from Wired magazine appraently RACISTS ARE EVERYWHERE in the hobby.

https://www.wired.com/story/dandd-must-grapple-with-the-racism-in-fantasy/

'
I tried to read that screed all the way through and just couldn't. I got dizzy from shaking my head at utter bullshit navel gazing.

I can tell by the responses to my posts that you guys just need to have a couple of drinks and enjoy meaningless murder and mayhem a la 80s style. The only time a killing is unjustified is when the hero doesn't say something clever.

Quote from: Brad on January 28, 2021, 12:08:59 AM
I can tell by the responses to my posts that you guys just need to have a couple of drinks and enjoy meaningless murder and mayhem a la 80s style. The only time a killing is unjustified is when the hero doesn't say something clever.

I tell you what. You play your pretend elf games how you want, and I'll play my pretend elf games how I want.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on January 27, 2021, 11:08:27 PM

Quote from: Brad on January 27, 2021, 08:28:22 PMI'm talking specifically about RPGs that have a race of creatures whose alignment is Evil, e.g., they are born such a way that they are incapable of doing anything but bad stuff. And you have paladins and clerics who can tell you with 100% accuracy that those creatures will in fact do nothing but bad stuff and are irredeemable. So that's not political unless we define politics as being the umbrella under which objective morality sits.

Fair enough, and for my own part I grant the distinction. The essayist Tom Simon wrote a piece I quite like called "The Terminal Orc" where he talks about Tolkien's own difficulties as a Catholic in imagining and portraying a race of thinking beings who were nonetheless wholly irredeemable; you can find the essay at www.bondwine.com.

Long winded, but good esasy.

I  pretty much agree with him. I somtimes think of Tolkien grappling with the idea of Orc morality. I'm pretty satisfied with the idea that they're corrupted elves, and the effort it would take to "redeem" an orc would be as much effort as Morgoth put into corrupting them. Not a very practical endeavor while a band of them are trying to burn down your house.
But, but... the few times we hear orcs in the rings trilogy, they do seem to have some ideas of morality and ethics. Just corrupted and sociopathic views. So it's there, buried deep and twisted.

Quote from: sureshot on January 27, 2021, 08:41:25 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbyDnjISpHM

I think he used to post here before he acquired TDS and drank the SJW Kool-Aid completely.

If hes the same on as on a list I used to moderate, and his postings here suggest yes, then theres been something off kilter for about 2 decades now.

Quote from: Kael on January 27, 2021, 11:13:55 AM
FWIW, in OD&D, the term "race" never appears (it was written in the early '70s, after all.) The original equivalence was "character-types."

Pretty much the term I use too. Mainly because all the IP settings I did writing for had no actual races and instead were either a sort of ambiguous "anything" or were divided by species sub-types within a single large undefined group. And in one I just tossed out the everything and you just create a character. No race/species selection because race/species/assembly/etc was meaningless in the setting and had zero impact on chargen.