Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on May 08, 2025, 10:13:41 PM

Quote from: faelord on May 08, 2025, 10:01:37 PMRly you need stuff like Berserk tyoe thing of ""magic/normal fantasy stuff is obscure and dangerous.""

Which is another thing making "historical accuracy" hard to maintain, if you're trying to go the World of Darkness / Sorcerers Crusade route by hiding all the magical/fantastical stuff in the unobserved, unrecorded wainscots of history.

Yeah, a real implication of ""and then the normies were useless pawns, while the wizards were the masterminds""

Quote from: Ratman_tf on May 09, 2025, 07:40:59 PM

Quote from: D-ko on May 09, 2025, 03:36:53 PMI'm really pushing my luck on this site as of late,

We've had posters that make you look pretty tame and inoffensive. (That's not a challenge)

The only real rule is keep it relevant to gaming.  There have been outrageous things posted here both by lefties and righties related to gaming and it's fine.  Drift off into real world politics unrelated to gaming and you're risking a ban.

Quote from: D-ko on May 09, 2025, 03:36:53 PMI think somebody mentioned here that slavery parallels with with being indebted to someone and lots of white immigrants to America in its early days basically lived as somewhere between a slave and a citizen as well.

Yep, they were called the Irish.

Quote from: Spooky on May 10, 2025, 05:19:34 AM

Quote from: D-ko on May 09, 2025, 03:36:53 PMI think somebody mentioned here that slavery parallels with with being indebted to someone and lots of white immigrants to America in its early days basically lived as somewhere between a slave and a citizen as well.

Yep, they were called the Irish.

Some of my relatives from around the late 1800s or early 1900s had this happen in one of those mining camp traps.

Quote from: D-ko on May 09, 2025, 03:36:53 PMPeasants and slaves were freely allowed to sing and socially bond during the workday, but most American workers at minimum wage would be fired for singing, listening to music, or socializing while they work. Sure, there's no corporal punishment in the modern-day workplace but there are freedoms most working Americans will never get to experience that literal peasants had back in the day. They had families. It was affordable to have children. It was okay to be poor and hard-working.

The comment on singing makes me think of Blazing Saddles,


But seriously, America's chattel slavery was awful if one reads most of the first-hand slave narrative accounts. Being allowed to sing means little given the other conditions.

Likewise, being a galley slave in the Roman Empire was vile, but Roman slavery had more of a wide range - with some slaves having not just better conditions, but more freedom of movement.

I'm not here to demean or reduce the impact of anything, I suppose I'm trying to say that slavery is a spectrum and it exists in various degrees even to this day, so to ban it from roleplaying makes little sense-- ignoring a real-world problem because it might be too heavy of a subject or whatever. I don't understand why people use X-cards and such... if you know your group you can choose or make a campaign that fits. All I've ever seen the X-card do is allow perverted men to prey on women who are afraid to tap the card-- ironically the opposite of its supposedly intended purpose. It's not like you can just fix a whole campaign based around things that people keep X-carding, too. The whole thing makes little sense to me. This is what a zero planning session is literally for. You get to know everyone and plan for the sessions to come. For any kind of grimdark or historical setting, there SHOULD be slavery of some kind or you're losing a large part of what makes those themes what they are. We fight for progress, we show compassion and unity with our party members (even when they piss us off) and that's what tabletop roleplaying has pretty much always been about...

I don't negotiate with players.

I'll also attack them if they play out of character and ask them if they're retarded.

I had this one guy, he played a Nam vet, one disadvantage he had he has was extreme loyalty (Duty disad in GURPS) to his buddies from Nam. Well, 15 years after Nam he sees his old Platoon Sergeant in binds being paraded through a square in Benghazi by the Libyan Army with crowds throwing garbage and shoes at him. He gets put in the back of a truck with a bunch of other Westerners and driven away.

I've prepped the Libyan prison, statted out guards, drawn up guard change schedules, made stats for the main gate etc etc etc

He has an anti-tank mine that could blow through the wall or gate.

I ask what he does. He's like I continue to the safe house.

Me: to make a plan to rescue the Sarge right?

Him: No, fuck that guy, he got himself in that mess.

Me: Read your character sheet.

Him: I don't see the character that way anymore.

Then I started throwing pencils at his face.

I wouldn't call my games fun, but they are satisfying experiences. I'm definitely an adversarial GM, I consider the players and the player characters my enemy. If they leave because they're too weak I consider that I've just won the RPG against them.

That guy above, left a few weeks later because he was a fucking sook.

Quote from: jhkim on May 10, 2025, 10:59:56 AMLikewise, being a galley slave in the Roman Empire was vile, but Roman slavery had more of a wide range - with some slaves having not just better conditions, but more freedom of movement.

The Romans very rarely used galley slaves. Rowers were overwhelmingly freemen. They were trained professionals and also fought if the ship was boarded. The idea that Roman ships were rowed by chained galley slaves is a misconception created by the movie Ben Hur.

Quote from: jhkim on May 10, 2025, 10:59:56 AMLikewise, being a galley slave in the Roman Empire was vile, but Roman slavery had more of a wide range - with some slaves having not just better conditions, but more freedom of movement.

Greek and Roman slavery covered alot of things indeed. Everything from just being a live-in servant, to being a POW put to some form of work, to straight up slaves. The degree of freedom vs restriction was broad as well and if I recall right some had the option of buying off their servitude and others were in servitude only for a few years.

Quote from: Rhymer88 on May 11, 2025, 03:53:50 AMThe Romans very rarely used galley slaves. Rowers were overwhelmingly freemen. They were trained professionals and also fought if the ship was boarded. The idea that Roman ships were rowed by chained galley slaves is a misconception created by the movie Ben Hur.

What about the Muslims? I've read far more stories with Muslims having galley slaves even in later eras (Hornblower and Sea Hawk for example).

Quote from: faelord on May 07, 2025, 01:13:39 PM

Quote from: FishMeisterSupreme on May 07, 2025, 12:31:36 PMFun.

ig wantonly beheading eta as samurai or enacting ""prima nocta"" rights before dying of syphilis or infection would be appealing to certain groups, yeah

The first is mostly post-medieval. The second is mostly a myth.

Honestly everyone should read about samurai in the Middle Ages proper. They're much different from their Renaissance and early modern descendants for both better and worse.

Quote from: yosemitemike on May 10, 2025, 10:45:11 PM

You're just jealous because your games are gay.