Quote from: jhkim;564040Is the claim here that if a private citizen posts on a board claiming that some RPG product is racist, then that somehow is "political regulation on your imagination"?  

However wrong-headed or not the claims are about Golarion, a fucking internet thread isn't a political regulation.  It is, in fact, their free speech rights.  Free speech means that people - being stupid - will sometimes say stupid things.  They might trash the game you like, rave about the game you hate, say that a game is racist when it isn't, or say that a game is racist when it is.  None of that is political regulation on you.

It becomes a problem when groups of people start trying to create boycotts and/or petitions to shut down or change a company.  For the record, I'm not talking about any particular instance, but in general.

There is plenty of valid racism and sexism out there.  That stuff deserves the attention it gets.  But you have to admit that there is a percentage of people who will look to find offense in just about anything, and will do whatever they can (including lying and warping the truth) to convince other people it's bad and it needs to be shut down.  Hence the Tipper Gore reference.  In his speech Dee said that rock lyrics tend to be general and vague, and if someone listens to them expecting to find horrible violence, they'll find it, even though that's not what the song was about.

Quote from: danskmacabre;564166From my POV and experience I probably started frequenting RPG.net about a year or so ago.
But I increasingly note how such an unhealthy place it is to discuss things.
Not ALWAYS tho I have got useful info from there from time to time. But you have to do a LOT of filtering out the crappy comments.

Discussing online stuff with people I game with all of them really couldn't care less what conclusions are drawn there and generally snigger at the whole nerdrage thing there.

The various witchhunts that have taken place there have not negatively influenced my buying habits at all. Possibly the other way around, if a product is getting slated there, I'm more tempted to actually take a look at it to see what the fuss is all about and draw my OWN conclusions.

As a result of these negative experiences, I less frequently read the posts there or post fo that matter.

And hopefully the majority of gamers are reasonable to think for themselves like this. But what I would worry about if I were Paizo is the the conclusions from that thread spilling elsewhere to the point that many online just assume and repeat Golarion is racist based on it. I'd also worry about how it might impact my relationship with other companies. paizo may well be willing to take a hit on their reputation at rpgnet, but are their distributors and sellers? I don't know what other companies they work with but in my own case, while I can speak for Bedrock, we have other companies we partner with and stuff like this can impact those relationships.

Quote from: danskmacabre;564169Many of which will be bots.

Sure. i am not saying those are 42,000 unique views. But compared to other threads on that subforum it is an enormous number. No idea how many individual people it indicates. But probably a lot more than threads with 1,000 views or 6,000 views.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;564172And hopefully the majority of gamers are reasonable to think for themselves like this. But what I would worry about if I were Paizo is the the conclusions from that thread spilling elsewhere to the point that many online just assume and repeat Golarion is racist based on it. I'd also worry about how it might impact my relationship with other companies. paizo may well be willing to take a hit on their reputation at rpgnet, but are their distributors and sellers? I don't know what other companies they work with but in my own case, while I can speak for Bedrock, we have other companies we partner with and stuff like this can impact those relationships.

Seeing as it sounds like you actually work in the RPG industry as opposed to me not at all (It's just a hobby for me) I wonder if you have a point.
I only speak form my experience in my social circle and cannot (or can't be bothered) validate this view when considering the greater circle of the internet RPG community .

I suppose many of the smaller companies that make RPGs depend more on online opinions and could be affected more by petitions and witchhunts etc..

Still, rpg.net is a nightmare to navigate and threads drop off the dial really quickly, it has 100s of people viewing and posting at the same time.
That and it's not the most stable website in the world, it has frequent crashes and the mods there can have very strong extreme left wing views.
 
It doesn't take that much for a forum/website to drop on popularity if it just becomes unreliable or just not fun anymore as experience has shown with other social sites.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;564167I think they have become a smaller and more focused community for sure in recent years, but still important. The golarion thread has something like 42,000 views. I know there are all kinds of ways to calculate that but still compared with many of their other threads that is a lot.

More like rubberneckers on the highway, if you ask me.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;564170It becomes a problem when groups of people start trying to create boycotts and/or petitions to shut down or change a company.  For the record, I'm not talking about any particular instance, but in general.

There is plenty of valid racism and sexism out there.  That stuff deserves the attention it gets.  But you have to admit that there is a percentage of people who will look to find offense in just about anything, and will do whatever they can (including lying and warping the truth) to convince other people it's bad and it needs to be shut down.  Hence the Tipper Gore reference.  In his speech Dee said that rock lyrics tend to be general and vague, and if someone listens to them expecting to find horrible violence, they'll find it, even though that's not what the song was about.

Yep, Dee's song Under the Blade sounded like it was about SM, when it was really about his experience at a dentist.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;564173Sure. i am not saying those are 42,000 unique views. But compared to other threads on that subforum it is an enormous number. No idea how many individual people it indicates. But probably a lot more than threads with 1,000 views or 6,000 views.

yeah I expect so, but that probably counts every time someone pages to another page on a thread (some of which have 100+ pages)
People replying multiple times.  people just checking on the progress of a thread..
I think the bigger a thread gets, the more multiple hits it will get.

The more that this goes on, the more I'm convinced this is simply a way a certain group of 4e fans are trying to do anything to hurt Paizo and Pathfinder.

This has been out since 2007?  And we know we have a group of people (you know who) who make it their life's work to pick a certain product or company, and then post in several big forums trying to make a big deal about how that product is -ist.  After a month or so, when it starts to die down, they pick another product.  Rinse and repeat.

And those products almost always are competitors to 4e.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;564172And hopefully the majority of gamers are reasonable to think for themselves like this. But what I would worry about if I were Paizo is the the conclusions from that thread spilling elsewhere to the point that many online just assume and repeat Golarion is racist based on it. I'd also worry about how it might impact my relationship with other companies. paizo may well be willing to take a hit on their reputation at rpgnet, but are their distributors and sellers? I don't know what other companies they work with but in my own case, while I can speak for Bedrock, we have other companies we partner with and stuff like this can impact those relationships.

Since the accusation of racism can be brought against just about any RPG out there, the folks with the pitchforks should be careful what they wish for.

Quote from: Benoist;564047It is, however, an attempt to gather support towards the idea of creating such political standards in the design and publication of role playing games, if not whatever ideas are deemed "okay" or "not okay" to play at your game table.

Note that I haven't read the RPGnet thread, and I'm not endorsing anything said there.  I do hate moderation there.  

Still, I'm not sure about the point.  Are you claiming that some RPGnetters really are actually gathering support for political action regarding RPGs?  Or are you saying that if anyone says that an RPG product is racist then they are "creating political standards"?  

I would disagree with the latter.  They might be wrong about Golarion, but some RPG products are racist, and people should say so rather than just letting it pass.  If they're wrong, I'd say argue that they're wrong rather than arguing that it's invalid to call anything racist.  

Quote from: Marleycat;564046Please, take your personal "white man guilt" somewhere else . The guy is Korean and knows racism deeper than you'll ever meet in your lifetime if you're lucky. I'm not even going to go into my personal experience.

Point is I can flat list pure racism against me but who cares? I rise above it and get the last laugh EVERY FUCKING DAY that passes.

@Jkim, you gotta stop using that awesome avatar because you're heavily tempting me to go back to Olivia.

Thanks.  (The avatar is from Kim Ji-woon's Leone-inspired film The Good, The Bad, and the Weird.)  I have no idea what other racism posters have encountered, but I think we all agree it's bad.  BTW, I definitely agree with the previous poster that Koreans can be racist.  The anti-Japanese is often political rather than racial - but there anti-black bias is common as well as anti-Semitism.

Quote from: S'mon;564163I'm not sure politics of RPG products affects sales much; I did avoid Deadlands as I didn't like the setting's political set up, esp the removal of slavery from the Confederacy side of the Civil War to make them more 'nice', and the general absence of sexism & racism in the pseudo-historical setting. But that's probably fairly unusual I think.

(Don't forget evil Lincoln in Deadlands!)  I don't think it's the norm, but I can think of other cases.  For example, there was Pundit's (and others') crusade against Blue Rose, which I think had a definite effect on sales.

Quote from: flyerfan1991;564180Since the accusation of racism can be brought against just about any RPG out there, the folks with the pitchforks should be careful what they wish for.

Why should they be careful? A thorough examination of racism in RPGs is something to be welcomed, not something to fear and if it leads to less unimaginative racist drek in the marketplace then all the better. The only mistake Ettin made was on focusing the thread on Golarion specifically, it seems unfair to single out the Varisians as being a negative Roma stereotype when WotC's Vistani are just the same in using the same old racist gypsy tropes.

Quote from: jhkim;564187(Don't forget evil Lincoln in Deadlands!)  I don't think it's the norm, but I can think of other cases.  For example, there was Pundit's (and others') crusade against Blue Rose, which I think had a definite effect on sales.

Blue Rose had a definite effect on sales of Blue Rose.

Quote from: danskmacabre;564175Seeing as it sounds like you actually work in the RPG industry as opposed to me not at all (It's just a hobby for me) I wonder if you have a point.
I only speak form my experience in my social circle and cannot (or can't be bothered) validate this view when considering the greater circle of the internet RPG community .
.

We are a very small game company and I can only speak from my own point of view here. So take what I say with a grain of salt. I have no idea what things are like at a place like Paizo and I am sure that many other small companies have different experiences and perspectives. I do know that for us, forums are an important driver of our web traffic and they seem to infuence our sales.

Quote from: Coblynau;564194Why should they be careful? A thorough examination of racism in RPGs is something to be welcomed, not something to fear and if it leads to less unimaginative racist drek in the marketplace then all the better. The only mistake Ettin made was on focusing the thread on Golarion specifically, it seems unfair to single out the Varisians as being a negative Roma stereotype when WotC's Vistani are just the same in using the same old racist gypsy tropes.

Oh?

How about Tieflings.  Perceived as evil, commonly associated with trade and banking, shunned by all 'right thinking folk'.  

If you want me to Godwin this thread, that'll do quite nicely, because there's a certain group right out of the Middle Ages that fits that sort of stereotype.