Quote from: CRKrueger;904237I missed this shitshow thankfully, but looking back Dragoner was correct on something:

Yosemite Mike did once link directly to Rense with an article on how Rosa Parks was an employee of the NAACP and trained in tools of political activism by the Communist Party.  He did so here.

I really don't think that sort of guilt-by-third-degree-association is enough to be calling Yosemite Mike a racist. He's never said anything to indicate hostility to blacks or non-whites. You can acknowledge that Parks was a political activist, while still being in favour of her activism against Segregation. The black girls who originally came to the NAACP after being kicked off a segregated bus, and who gave them the idea for the campaign with Parks as the lead, were not activists. I don't think saying that makes me racist, either.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;904248Whereas my argument, to reiterate on it, is that the issue with 'Realistic Aristocrats' being disrespected was a rather common thing in the various fiction used for a lot of RPGs based in a vaguely European setting.

Fiction is interesting. I think villainous aristocrats are common in fiction set 'somewhere else' - eg 20th century American writers setting stuff in Europe or fantasy-Europe (Conan), or English writers setting stuff in France or Spain - but much less common to represent 'home team' aristocrats as bad, and being disrespected with impunity by the plucky heroes. I think it's much more common in older stories to see the hero rise from humble origins, prove his worth, and be rewarded with joining the aristocracy (Dick Whittington), or be an aristocrat himself who struggles against external threats (Beowulf).

Quote from: RPGPundit;902929I might have used that term, I don't recall. I usually say something like "medieval American"; that is, fantasy worlds whose social conventions are all either contemporary American or the fantastic notions that Americans imagine from really inaccurate movies or the like.

This isn't unique to fantasy, nor is it a recent trend. Gore Vidal wrote two famous -or infamous- essays ("The Ashes of Hollywood") about this habit among writers in 1973:

Part 1

Part 2

Money quote:

QuoteThe bad movies we made twenty years ago are now regarded in altogether too many circles as important aspects of what the new illiterates want to believe is the only significant art form of the twentieth century. An entire generation has been brought up to admire the product of that era. Like so many dinosaur droppings, the old Hollywood films have petrified into something rich, strange, numinous-golden. For any survivor of the Writers' Table (alien or indigenous integer), it is astonishing to find young directors like Bertolucci, Bogdanovich, Truffaut reverently repeating or echoing or paying homage to the sort of kitsch we created first time around with a good deal of "help" from our producers and practically none at all from the directors—if one may quickly set aside the myth of the director as auteur. Golden age movies were the work of producer(s) and writer(s). The director was given a finished shooting script with each shot clearly marked, and woe to him if he changed MED CLOSE SHOT to MED SHOT without permission from the front office, which each evening, in serried ranks, watched the day's rushes with script in hand ("We've got some good pages today," they would say; never good film). The director, as the Wise Hack liked to observe, is the brother-in-law.

I think it is necessary to make these remarks about the movies of the Thirties, Forties, and Fifties as a preface to the ten bestselling novels under review since most of these books reflect to some degree the films each author saw in his formative years, while at least seven of the novels appear to me to be deliberate attempts not so much to re-create new film product as to suggest old movies that will make the reader (and publisher and reprinter and, to come full circle, film maker) recall past success and respond accordingly. Certainly none of the ten writers (save the noble engineer Solzhenitsyn and the classicist Mary Renault) is in any way rooted in literature. For the eight, storytelling began with The Birth of a Nation. Came to high noon with, well, High Noon and Mrs. Miniver and Rebecca and A Farewell to Arms. Except for the influence of the dead Ian Fleming (whose own work was a curious amalgam of old movies in the Eric Ambler-Hitchcock style with some sadomasochist games added), these books connect not at all with other books. But with the movies...ah, the movies!

The rest is pretty funny, especially when he asserts that Dan "Semi-Tough" Jenkins would have done a much better job with August 1914 than Alexander Solzhenitsyn. It seems absurd at first, but Jenkins really is a better writer.

QuoteAnyways, when I have a player that has this attitude of "I'm going to speak my mind to the Duke" or whatever (or for that matter, open your fucking mouth unbidden at all, if you're any rank below Knight), I try to take a gentle path first, because I realize that the player is probably spoiled by having played Forgotten Realms campaigns where that sort of thing is totally normal and expected, maybe even rewarded.  But in a setting like Albion, you just can't do that! Thing is, his character, being from that world, would KNOW you just can't do that, so I usually try to deal with this by reminding the player of what his character would know.

Now, if the player is dumb enough not to believe me, he gets what's coming to him, which is, if he's extremely lucky, AT MINIMUM a really vicious tongue-lashing.

This really is dependent on the campaign though. In a world of courtly customs and etiquette, obviously it should be a major blunder to talk out of turn at all, let alone be rude or impudent. However, in a world where nobles are brigands who only recently made good, being tactless isn't a faux pas, it's an invitation to being physically attacked on the spot. Twilight:2000 presents a similar scenario: If the PCs are still organized into an actual military unit, then an enlisted man telling a major to piss off is going to be in hot water for insubordination. If the PCs are deserters, stragglers and bandits then being a major means less than Jack Shit unless the major has something other than rank insignia to justify a place of authority.

It's important for the GM to lay out the dos and don'ts clearly, as well as repercussions, rather than expecting PLAYERS to know how to do courtly interaction, then busting their balls when they botch it.

I'm so glad we agreed on more lace being necessary.

Though I will miss dragoner as he cannot now rejoin my PbP campaign in this forum. It's been on hiatus because it sputtered out for a bit and then shit's been real on my end*. He didn't particularly seem enthused for my addition of culture clash enduced racism, sexist, homophobia, and other Wild West bigotry, however. I thought they were good character hook seeds for challenging his cleric character in non-combat ways and was hoping he would explore those themes more, but I am afraid I overwhelmed him and he started to shut down.

Off to the brave unknowns of Traveller, my dragoner! It was fun while we lasted!

*(deer totalled my car on the freeway in an attempt to wish me a belated happy birthday the day after. and then simultaneously the tv & internet has been down for over a fortnight now. as a result i've been a bit subdued and busy lately.)

Well Gore Vidal is a thread high-water mark for me, so thanks Elfdart! With the wisdom that it's all about more lace, and Hollywood is a self-referential shitshow, I think we all learned something valuable this thread.

Looking at the original OP, I'm reminded of that quote "The past is a foreign country.  They do things differently there."  There's been quite a bit of railing on the board of late about fantasy settings that embody 21st century middle class values, but anyone involved in making historical fiction will tell you that you cannot make accurate historical fiction, even if you know what accurate is.  The mores, thought processes and unconscious assumptions change so much just from, say, the early 20th century to now that it would be impossible to make a bit of fiction that didn't embody the zeitgeist of the era it was written, rather than when it was set.

So I don't think that making aristocrats more "realistic" or "historically accurate" is terribly useful, because the players aren't going to be either of those things in their reactions to the game world around them.  I think a more useful approach is to take a more metaphorical approach to things.  If the players are interacting with an aristoi, what is it that you want that aristoi to say about aristocracy in general?  About the relationships between the classes?  The morality (good or bad) of that power structure?

Just for an obvious example, compare the way King Richard and Prince John are depicted in The Adventures of Robin Hood and The Lion in Winter.  Same people, but very different views of kingship and aristocracy.

Quote from: daniel_ream;904454There's been quite a bit of railing on the board of late about fantasy settings that embody 21st century middle class values, but anyone involved in making historical fiction will tell you that you cannot make accurate historical fiction, even if you know what accurate is.

I'm reminded of a quote

QuoteThe perfect is the enemy of the good enough.

This still has the same meaning to us as it did to 16th and 17th century Italians and to Frenchmen, like Voltaire, in the 18th century.

Quote from: daniel_ream;904454So I don't think that making aristocrats more "realistic" or "historically accurate" is terribly useful, because the players aren't going to be either of those things in their reactions to the game world around them.

Well, there are degrees of accuracy. And for my part anyway, what I expect to see is a society that at least reflects the material conditions of its world and our understanding of cause and effect. I would expect modern notions of teenagers to exist only in worlds where the labour of children was unnecessary. I would not expect literacy to be common in an isolated locale in the wilds. I would not expect modern notions about authority and conformity to exist in a martial society facing serious external threats.

Quote from: Bren;904464I'm reminded of a quote.

Much of the idiocy of ideologues, especially those of the modern left, can be laid at the feet of the kinds of people who insist on making the perfect the enemy of the good. It is not enough to identify and bring about progress. There is no degree of wrong or badness. No, all wrong thought or action must be eradicated else we live with a shaming taint. And if we fail to achieve this idea, we fail.

Quote from: Haffrung;904470Much of the idiocy of ideologues, especially those of the modern left, can be laid at the feet of the kinds of people who insist on making the perfect the enemy of the good. It is not enough to identify and bring about progress. There is no degree of wrong or badness. No, all wrong thought or action must be eradicated else we live with a shaming taint. And if we fail to achieve this idea, we fail.

I'm commenting on RPGs, not ideologues nor demagogues. The accuracy of my depiction of aristocrats in a historical fictional setting (like say 1620s France) only needs to be good enough. It does not need to be better or perfect. As does my players' understandings of what is accurate. Which is basically the same point you were making.

Quote from: daniel_ream;904454Just for an obvious example, compare the way King Richard and Prince John are depicted in The Adventures of Robin Hood and The Lion in Winter.  Same people, but very different views of kingship and aristocracy.

Ah yes, The Lion in Winter.  Sort of like Game of Thrones, but more cynical.

JG

Quote from: CRKrueger;904237Yosemite Mike did once link directly to Rense with an article on how Rosa Parks was an employee of the NAACP and trained in tools of political activism by the Communist Party.  He did so here.

I was simply disputing the narrative that Rosa Parks was a normal housewife who spontaneously decided not to move one day.  That narrative just isn't true.  She wasn't a normal housewife.  She was a dedicated activist.  It wasn't spontaneous.  It was planned and set up.  Fighting segregation was a noble effort but the narrative around Parks just isn't true.  I just grabbed the first source without paying much attention to it.  I have never actually looked at that site before.  

Quote from: Christopher Brady;904248Whereas my argument, to reiterate on it, is that the issue with 'Realistic Aristocrats' being disrespected was a rather common thing in the various fiction used for a lot of RPGs based in a vaguely European setting.  Where as one hyper-specific to Japan, it was often seen as a bad thing and promoted as a sentence that often times was literally worse than death.

Historically, life was pretty constrained for the great majority of people.  They couldn't just take off for adventure.  They had a proscribed role in society.  People had fields to tend, flock (both literal and figurative) to tend to, lands to administer and military service obligations to uphold.  Being a foot loose and fancy free adventurer requires being outside of the normal social structure.  Ars Magica, which is about the most historical RPG I have played set in a version of Medieval Europe, sets the PCs apart from the structure of feudal society.  As for Japan, the only historical game I know of is set during the Sengoku period when the country was in turmoil and people had more social and physical mobility than they did before or after to facilitate adventuring in what was normally a very rigid society.  The rest all introduce some element of fantasy to allow for it whether it's L5R or one of the Japanese themed D&D regions.  A stratified feudal society where everyone has their place and their role is just not that conducive to heroic fantasy adventuring.

Quote from: yosemitemike;904680I was simply disputing the narrative that Rosa Parks was a normal housewife who spontaneously decided not to move one day.  That narrative just isn't true.  She wasn't a normal housewife.  She was a dedicated activist.  It wasn't spontaneous.  It was planned and set up.  Fighting segregation was a noble effort but the narrative around Parks just isn't true.  I just grabbed the first source without paying much attention to it.  I have never actually looked at that site before.  

Except Kyle Aaron wasn't arguing that she was just a "normal housewife", nor has anyone else with half a brain because she was arrested while returning home from her job outside the home. In other words, you erected a straw man with a foundation of horseshit that came from neo-Nazi stables. Nice going, Numbnuts.

Quote from: James Gillen;904559Ah yes, The Lion in Winter.  Sort of like Game of Thrones, but more cynical.

JG

If you get a chance to see it on TCM or in some other Hi-Def format, do so. The late Douglas Slocombe's cinematography is brilliant:

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Quote from: Elfdart;904696Except Kyle Aaron wasn't arguing that she was just a "normal housewife", nor has anyone else with half a brain because she was arrested while returning home from her job outside the home. In other words, you erected a straw man with a foundation of horseshit that came from neo-Nazi stables. Nice going, Numbnuts.

I just can't be bothered.

Good lord.  How long has it been since the last time we interacted?  i can't believe you are still so butthurt you are jumping on the thinnest excuse to take a cheap potshot at me in an unrelated topic.