The Pundit weighed in on this, it's not going to happen.

https://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?41051-GENERAL-WARNING-OFF-TOPIC-Political-Posts-on-this-Subforum

Quote from: Brad;1101049And yet you felt the need to reply to this thread with an oblique snipe at people complaining the forum is being invaded by retards. Doesn't that undermine your entire remark?

I'm not the one asking for a new forum for on-topic discussions I don't happen to like.

This is a Silly idea

Just stop contaminating Gaming with politics.

See?
Simply solved.

Ed C.

Koltar, we're not the ones poisoning gaming with politics. That's not the issue.

The issue is "personalities" in the RPG "community" OR game companies themselves are shoehorning politics into our hobby.

I don't see how RPGPundit's solution is going to work. As entities are shoving politics into gaming, any prolonged discussion of what's being shoved into the game is going to divert from just its presence in that game to the wider issue in society.

As tensions rise in the next 2 years (both pre and post election), I expect more politically motivated stupidity in the hobby.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1101544Koltar, ......

As tensions rise in the next 2 years (both pre and post election), I expect more politically motivated stupidity in the hobby.

Why? How?
How in any way does the upcoming American Presidential election impact any Dungeons & Dragons campaign or game session? (Or Pathfinder)
The current PTUS - Donald Trump is not 'in' any D&D or Pathfinder setting. I normally run Sci Fi games, so I'm a bit odd. In the Star Trek gaming universe there is no 'Trump' running for Federation President...or Bernie Sanders, or Elizabeth Warren. That would be just be silly and weird. If I run something in the TRAVELLER universe of the 57th century - there is no reason any of the current presidential candidates would show up ...or their policies and politics.

If some people are that obsessed with politics then I feel sad for them and maybe a bit of pity.

Gaming should be an escape from all the silly and stupid stuff in regular life - not an excuse to rehash arguments you might not be winning away from the game table.

- Ed C.

Quote from: Koltar;1101575Why? How?
How in any way does the upcoming American Presidential election impact any Dungeons & Dragons campaign or game session? (Or Pathfinder)
The current PTUS - Donald Trump is not 'in' any D&D or Pathfinder setting. I normally run Sci Fi games, so I'm a bit odd. In the Star Trek gaming universe there is no 'Trump' running for Federation President...or Bernie Sanders, or Elizabeth Warren. That would be just be silly and weird. If I run something in the TRAVELLER universe of the 57th century - there is no reason any of the current presidential candidates would show up ...or their policies and politics.

If some people are that obsessed with politics then I feel sad for them and maybe a bit of pity.

Gaming should be an escape from all the silly and stupid stuff in regular life - not an excuse to rehash arguments you might not be winning away from the game table.

- Ed C.

You need to tell that to other people.

Like the Con Committee at GenCon.

Quote from: Koltar;1101575Why? How?

Because there is a culture war raging in the Western World and its soaked deep into the online hobby community, and somewhat into the offline hobby experience. As the MSM, academia and most prominent gaming forums have taken the so-called "progressive" or "SJW" side of the culture war, free speech sites like ours are the few places left to discuss these issues. Depending on where one stands in the culture war, these issues are a good or bad thing.

And these discussions have grown increasingly heated in the past few years and there's every social indicator these discussions will grow even further heated in the next two years.

Quote from: Koltar;1101575How in any way does the upcoming American Presidential election impact any Dungeons & Dragons campaign or game session?

The culture war is everywhere unfortunately, and there is no common ground between the two sides. The election is just the latest focal point of the culture war and 2020's final result is seen by both sides as incredibly important for the fate of the future culture.

Quote from: Koltar;1101575If some people are that obsessed with politics then I feel sad for them and maybe a bit of pity.

Politics is downstream of culture.

Politics have become a key aspect of personal identity and how people judge others. Allegiance to a certain political side is an affirmation of where you stand in the culture war, thus defining your vision of the future. As both sides are competing to achieve vastly different futures, the "obsession" is less about "politics" as defined in prior decades.

Quote from: Koltar;1101575Gaming should be an escape from all the silly and stupid stuff in regular life - not an excuse to rehash arguments you might not be winning away from the game table.

You are entirely correct.

That's why I quash political/culture talk at my game table, and exactly why I started this thread.

I do think this would make a difference. I sometimes pop in and check the main forum, and move on when I see three or more threads on political stuff.

Quote from: CRKrueger;1100498100% agreed.
RPG Forum - Gaming Only
Politics in Gaming - The latest assaults from the Usual Suspects.  The local front of the RPG Culture War.
Pundit's Forum - Non-gaming politics or anything else as long as Pundit keeps it open.

Yeah, I'd approve of having RPG gaming threads separate from RPG politics threads. They scratch different itches and the politics tends to crowd out the gaming here, mostly because it's one of very few places where the political/cultural issues can be discussed freely. So eg I might end up posting a gaming thread on a different forum and politics here. If there were a gaming-only forum I think there'd be more gaming discussion. Or if not the politics forum would explode.

Looking at the first page of the general forum, ignoring the stickied threads, only 3/10 are related to the culture-war side of the hobby. The rest are straightforward threads on gaming.

I resigned as moderator over this issue as it was getting bad and I haven't seen it get better. So yes I concur there should be a politics in gaming sub forum.

A politics and religion in gaming sub forum.

So, there's absolutely no way I'll allow for the marginalization of the very real problem our hobby faces into some lateral subforum, just because some people are uncomfortable with the fact that our entire civilization is in the middle of a massive Culture War. I didn't start it, our side aren't the ones who infiltrated EVERY AREA of our culture and DEMAND that it be politicized, but I will damn well end be the one who helps to end them.


So if your goal is that we shouldn't get to talk about the SJW attacks on every fucking thing we hold dear, in threads where those subjects would be relevant, in the main forum, you aren't going to get what you want.


HOWEVER: for those of you who are moral cowards, or burnt out and needing a safe space, or are the lukewarm mushy middle moderates who "don't want to take a side" and want to be spit out by anyone with convictions, then fine. I could be willing to start a subforum that was inferior to the Main Forum, a ghetto forum, which would be "RPG Discussion NO Politics Allowed".  It would be moderated EXTREMELY strictly to insure the protection of special snowflakes from anything resembling politics.


So in the main forum people could continue to post about ANYTHING that was about the hobby, including non-political threads like the vast majority of the main forums threads currently are, but there would be a separate forum for people so goddamn sensitive that their eyes can't even bear to see the topic thread of a subject that could be controversial to them.

What do you think?

I think you're posting angry, and that's rarely a good idea.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1108142What do you think?

I think you're in Uruguay and I'm in Los Angeles so the Culture War for you is Twitter pissing matches and for me it's my fucking city, state, nation and culture being torn apart at the seams. My hometown of New York City just made saying "illegal alien" or "illegal immigrant" a punishable offense. And I'm just grateful I'm not in London or Sweden.

The ONLY reason I suggested the idea of a subforum was because I felt it was for the benefit of our forum members. The US, UK and EU members of this forum are often neck deep in Culture War bullshit at work or with friends and families and RPGing was supposed to be a fun escape from all real life bullshit.  Let's not forget we have forum members who put food on the table for their family at jobs where they keep their heads down to stay employed.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1108142So, there's absolutely no way I'll allow for the marginalization of the very real problem our hobby faces into some lateral subforum, just because some people are uncomfortable with the fact that our entire civilization is in the middle of a massive Culture War. I didn't start it, our side aren't the ones who infiltrated EVERY AREA of our culture and DEMAND that it be politicized, but I will damn well end be the one who helps to end them.

As I've said before, I understand why you're choosing this option and in many ways, I agree with your choice. "Our side" is everyone to the right of Mao and we didn't start this spiral down into insanity either in the culture or the hobby.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1108142I could be willing to start a subforum that was inferior to the Main Forum, a ghetto forum, which would be "RPG Discussion NO Politics Allowed".  It would be moderated EXTREMELY strictly to insure the protection of special snowflakes from anything resembling politics.

Fuck that noise for so many reasons.

But keep this in mind. If you want to stomp this SJW bullshit, you will need a big tent full of imperfect allies to win. AKA, the same coalition Trump needs to get re-elected. I know you hate the Mushy Middle and I understand why, but if the Anti-SJW brigade goes down our own purity test route, we're fucked. Utterly fucked.

We need to be the side with diverse opinions, but committed to the common goal.