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Author Topic: Is #DnD Twitter Worse Than Coronavirus?  (Read 21155 times)

nDervish

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Is #DnD Twitter Worse Than Coronavirus?
« Reply #195 on: April 13, 2020, 08:37:22 AM »
Quote from: Luca;1126672

The "dystopian nightmare" is what they're using in South Korea. There's an app there which will track if your position is coming close (within 100 meters) to the path of someone else who became a confirmed COVID case and warn you if this is the case.


Not just that, but it appears that carrying your phone at all times for tracking purposes is effectively (and perhaps literally) mandatory for anyone under specific quarantine rules, as they're also making use of bluetooth-enabled bracelets which will cause your phone to send an alert to the police if you go out without it:

Quote
"After deep consideration, the government has decided to put electronic wristbands on people who violate self-isolation rules, such as going outside without notice and not answering phone calls," Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said on Saturday, according to Yonhap.
- https://www.businessinsider.com/south-korea-wristbands-coronavirus-catch-people-dodging-tracking-app-2020-4?r=US&IR=T


I'd call that a dystopian nightmare of at least 0.75 Orwell in magnitude in and of itself, even without taking any other South Korean measures into account.

Quote from: Luca;1126673
Italy's travel ban was put in place for people with direct flights from China, but guess what: you can start from China, travel to one or more intermediate destinations, then go to Italy!


While that's true, I don't think it completely negates jhkim's point.  Even though Italy's travel ban from China isn't entirely watertight, it's tighter than those in the rest of Europe, and yet Italy is still being hit harder than other European nations.  On the surface, at least, this seems to imply that a stricter travel ban does not improve outcomes.  (If you dig deeper, there may be explanations other than travel which prove to be more significant, but I haven't done that digging myself, so I can't say how accurate the surface interpretation actually is.)

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Is #DnD Twitter Worse Than Coronavirus?
« Reply #196 on: April 13, 2020, 12:44:28 PM »
Quote from: nDervish;1126698
While that's true, I don't think it completely negates jhkim's point.  Even though Italy's travel ban from China isn't entirely watertight, it's tighter than those in the rest of Europe, and yet Italy is still being hit harder than other European nations.  On the surface, at least, this seems to imply that a stricter travel ban does not improve outcomes.  (If you dig deeper, there may be explanations other than travel which prove to be more significant, but I haven't done that digging myself, so I can't say how accurate the surface interpretation actually is.)

That could simply be bad luck. Disease spreads at an exponential rate, which means the final result is highly sensitive to the initial conditions. If the number of cases doubles every 5 days, then a country where the first cases appear 20 days earlier than in other countries will always have 16 times as many cases, at least until the number of cases peak due to slowing, herd immunity, or a vaccine. And if one of those early cases is a super-spreader (as happened in the US), and ends up tripling the number of early cases, that x3 multiplier will also persist until the peak.

Gagarth

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Is #DnD Twitter Worse Than Coronavirus?
« Reply #197 on: April 14, 2020, 06:07:37 AM »
Quote from: Nerag;1126690
American companies sold more than $17.5 million worth of face masks, more than $13.6 million in surgical garments and more than $27.2 million in ventilators to China during the first two months of the year, far exceeding that of any other similar period in the past decade, according to the most recent foreign trade data available from the U.S. Census Bureau.
.

If Trump had invoked the Defence Production Action at that time to prevent these sales he would have been condemned and labelled a racist. Or maybe you missed the whole "Modern Piracy" screeching recently.
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RPGPundit

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Is #DnD Twitter Worse Than Coronavirus?
« Reply #198 on: April 16, 2020, 11:00:33 PM »
Guys, please stick closer to the actual topic, which is really D&D Twitter.
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Nerag

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Is #DnD Twitter Worse Than Coronavirus?
« Reply #199 on: April 17, 2020, 03:06:58 AM »
Quote from: Gagarth;1126787
If Trump had invoked the Defence Production Action at that time to prevent these sales he would have been condemned and labelled a racist. Or maybe you missed the whole "Modern Piracy" screeching recently.

These liberal alternative fantasy scenarios are tiresome. If Trump were any good he would have made the tough decisions. But he can't because he's weak and can't lead because you say he scared of being called a racist. So according to you he is a coward.

In related news Mexico is calling for Americans to be barred from the US by Trump's wall.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52053656

Hilarious. I have sen adventures in Ravenloft go better.

Gagarth

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Is #DnD Twitter Worse Than Coronavirus?
« Reply #200 on: April 18, 2020, 03:41:10 AM »
Quote from: Nerag;1127119
These liberal alternative fantasy scenarios are tiresome. If Trump were any good he would have made the tough decisions. But he can't because he's weak and can't lead because you say he scared of being called a racist. So according to you he is a coward.

No what I am saying is that no matter what decisions he made the leftest including  the biased media would have screeched he should have done the opposite.  Since the start of this they have been saying that Trump should have lockdown the whole country from...  well who  knows from when was supposed tohave done this  probably January. Hindsight is wonderful .

But being the true hypocrites they are they now saying he has no control over lockdowns . https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-reopen-explain/explainer-trump-has-little-power-to-restart-u-s-economy-idUSKBN21B3F5
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BoxCrayonTales

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Is #DnD Twitter Worse Than Coronavirus?
« Reply #201 on: April 26, 2020, 08:02:34 PM »
#orcs blew up today.

I'll summarize:

Person 1: "hey guys! the description of orcs in the monster manual bears eerie similarity to generic racist propaganda."

Person 2: "so you're saying orcs are black people?"

Person 1: "no, I'm just saying that--"

Person 3: "yeah, so what? That description is painfully outdated. In modern fantasy, orcs are whatever we want them to be. Very few writers actually depict them as generic evil mooks anymore, for obvious reasons. Have you ever heard of Warcraft, Warhammer, or--"

Person 2: "you're the real racists! Reeeee!"

Person 1: "Reeeee!"

Person 3: "Reeeee!"

Edit: relevant video:
https://youtu.be/0F1NL4vRCpw
« Last Edit: April 26, 2020, 08:11:20 PM by BoxCrayonTales »

ajevans

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Is #DnD Twitter Worse Than Coronavirus?
« Reply #202 on: April 27, 2020, 07:09:49 AM »
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1127962
#orcs blew up today.
Person 1: "hey guys! the description of orcs in the monster manual bears eerie similarity to generic racist propaganda."

Any idea where the description in the tweet that flared this up actually came from as I can't find it in the core books?

rgalex

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« Reply #203 on: April 27, 2020, 07:24:01 AM »
I believe (but could be wrong) it was in Volo's Guide to Monsters, not any of the core books.

Also, more accurately, the "Person 1" who started the whole thing said:

Quote
CW Blatant Racism
I'm in genuine awe that this shit came out for THIS edition of D&D holy shit.
[pic of the text of Roleplaying an Orc section]


So not quite as benign as BoxCrayonTales put it.

BoxCrayonTales

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« Reply #204 on: April 27, 2020, 10:19:07 AM »
Quote from: rgalex;1128014

So not quite as benign as BoxCrayonTales put it.


Volo literally describes orcs, sapient beings, as being "domesticated." I shouldn't have to explain why that sounds disturbing.

Yes, orcs, gnolls, trolls, blah blah don't exist and don't represent any particular real group of people. The whole concept of evil races of sapient beings with cultures and families and blah blah blah inherently displays parallels with the racist propaganda used by all human groups throughout history. You dehumanize your targets so that you don't feel guilty for killing them and their families. The same rhetoric was used to justify genocide by colonizers.

The game world is contrived so that humanoids really are subhuman scum you can mass murder and "domesticate" with impunity, rather than people being brutally exterminated by sociopathic "adventurers."

There's nothing wrong with playing violent genocide fantasies. Cowboys & Indians is a children's game about genocide and nobody denies that it's fun as heck. We shouldn't pretend that they're not violent genocide fantasies, though.

For that reason, I advocate playing Violence: The Role-Playing Game of Egregious and Repulsive Bloodshed. http://www.costik.com/Violence%20RPG1.pdf

rgalex

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« Reply #205 on: April 27, 2020, 10:43:59 AM »
I wasn't making a single comment on the whole orcs=racist discussion.  I was saying that your "summary" of the original tweet as:

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1127962

Person 1: "hey guys! the description of orcs in the monster manual bears eerie similarity to generic racist propaganda."

Person 2: "so you're saying orcs are black people?"

Person 1: "no, I'm just saying that--"


isn't nearly how the original tweet was phrased.  With a content warning and Current Yearism it was a much more in your face "Reeeeeee!" right from the start.

VisionStorm

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« Reply #206 on: April 27, 2020, 11:36:39 AM »
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1128029
Volo literally describes orcs, sapient beings, as being "domesticated." I shouldn't have to explain why that sounds disturbing.

Yes, orcs, gnolls, trolls, blah blah don't exist and don't represent any particular real group of people. The whole concept of evil races of sapient beings with cultures and families and blah blah blah inherently displays parallels with the racist propaganda used by all human groups throughout history. You dehumanize your targets so that you don't feel guilty for killing them and their families. The same rhetoric was used to justify genocide by colonizers.

The game world is contrived so that humanoids really are subhuman scum you can mass murder and "domesticate" with impunity, rather than people being brutally exterminated by sociopathic "adventurers."

There's nothing wrong with playing violent genocide fantasies. Cowboys & Indians is a children's game about genocide and nobody denies that it's fun as heck. We shouldn't pretend that they're not violent genocide fantasies, though.

For that reason, I advocate playing Violence: The Role-Playing Game of Egregious and Repulsive Bloodshed. http://www.costik.com/Violence%20RPG1.pdf


You're willfully trying to find "racist propaganda" where there is none. Describing a race that in the context of the game world happens to literally be vile and destructive subhuman scum (often as a result of not even being natural creatures, but creations of magic that are made vile destructive and "domesticated" subhumans by some outside force) does not reveal some need to dehumanize your enemies to justify slaughtering them. That is simply a description of reality. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes a race of evil subhumans bent on destruction about to kill you is really a race of evil subhumans bent on destruction about to kill you.

The fact that people in real life may have used racist propaganda to dehumanize other ethnic groups to justify trying to kill them does not mean that actual vile evil subhumans cannot exist in some hypothetical reality. It's not like we don't have animals in real life that can sometimes become a destructive invasive species and have to be exterminated or hunted to manageable levels so they don't fuck up the entire ecosystem for everyone else. Or is trying to reduce deer overpopulation racist propaganda as well?

And stop lying to us and to yourself every time this subject comes up by constantly bringing up how it's totally 100% OK to play racist murder simulators after going on a histrionic rant about how portraying orcs as the vile destructive monsters that they actually are is somehow "disturbing" racist propaganda that apparently needs to be examined. If it's real so OK then WTF is there to examine or be distributed about? Contradicting yourself to try to "soften" the blow from essentially calling people unconscious racists that need to get their murder grove on does not make your argument easier to swallow. It just makes you sound passive aggressive, delusional and dishonest about what you're actually trying to say.

mightybrain

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« Reply #207 on: April 27, 2020, 01:41:53 PM »
Dress your orcs up in Nazi iconography. That will blow their tiny minds. They won't know whether to punch them or have a parade.

BoxCrayonTales

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Is #DnD Twitter Worse Than Coronavirus?
« Reply #208 on: April 27, 2020, 02:49:57 PM »
Quote from: VisionStorm;1128036
You're willfully trying to find "racist propaganda" where there is none. Describing a race that in the context of the game world happens to literally be vile and destructive subhuman scum (often as a result of not even being natural creatures, but creations of magic that are made vile destructive and "domesticated" subhumans by some outside force) does not reveal some need to dehumanize your enemies to justify slaughtering them. That is simply a description of reality. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes a race of evil subhumans bent on destruction about to kill you is really a race of evil subhumans bent on destruction about to kill you.

The fact that people in real life may have used racist propaganda to dehumanize other ethnic groups to justify trying to kill them does not mean that actual vile evil subhumans cannot exist in some hypothetical reality. It's not like we don't have animals in real life that can sometimes become a destructive invasive species and have to be exterminated or hunted to manageable levels so they don't fuck up the entire ecosystem for everyone else. Or is trying to reduce deer overpopulation racist propaganda as well?

And stop lying to us and to yourself every time this subject comes up by constantly bringing up how it's totally 100% OK to play racist murder simulators after going on a histrionic rant about how portraying orcs as the vile destructive monsters that they actually are is somehow "disturbing" racist propaganda that apparently needs to be examined. If it's real so OK then WTF is there to examine or be distributed about? Contradicting yourself to try to "soften" the blow from essentially calling people unconscious racists that need to get their murder grove on does not make your argument easier to swallow. It just makes you sound passive aggressive, delusional and dishonest about what you're actually trying to say.


To quote someone else who put it sagely:

Quote
According to what I have seen, the entire thing *started* because someone said it *had* something in common with racist propaganda

Quote
There are *at least* three separate issues here:
1 - If the depiction of "Always Chaotic Evil" races is morally repugnant, and that discussion is as old as Tolkenian Orcs themselves, given that the Professor himself was troubled over the issue of how to present them, given that the idea of an inherently evil race is unacceptable for him.
2 - If Orcs (And other Always Chaotic Evil races) in general standard medieval fantasy settings (as well as in other settigns) are supposed to be stand-ins for non-European cultures and/or vehicles for subtle and/or subconscious racism against "non-white" people, and *this* debate is way mroe complex and intrincate that number 1, and anyone pretending it's clear cut has an angle, IMO.
3 - If this kind of deep analysis is warrated because, really, some people just want to dungeon delve and get shiny loot. To some people, the entire thing is about debating if the minions in League of Legends, whose entire point is be killed for the advancement of player characters, are helpless victims; or if Battleship players are guilty of multiple homicides because of the poor crews they so thoughtlessly blow out of the water.


Number 3 itself could be folded out into yet another debate - is a roleplaying game more morally demanding of its player than *Battleship*? Does the fact that you are playing a character, isntead of an abstract fleet admiral, grant more weight to how you have your character behave? Are some games immoral by their very natures? Does playing *Monopoly* stain your soul with disgusting greed? And the thing is - this is Twitter. There is no space (and no time!) to *think* and write about it. There are only so many characters and so long an attention span, so all you can get in is a couple of soundbites designed for maximum outrage or applause, IMO. The entire thing is a sham. Outrage/drama porn, basically.


Quote
Alright, I'm gonna bite: *in this particular case we are talking about*, the accusation is that the depiction of orcs is racist. Thus, indirectly, the claim is that these popular games and authors are racist. Thus, again indirectly, the claim is that people who enjoy these games and authors are racist.
In fact, sometimes it is insinuated, or even stated outright, that people like these games and authors *because* they are racist.
Which is to say, the entire thing is an attack on the character/morals of a very broad set of people, and the most natural thing to do when your character/reputation/morality is attack is to react.


Quote
Quote
I think some of these fears rest on an assumption that we're all completely passive consumers of media

So do I, to a point. But if I may, I think what drives some of these concerns is not so much the idea that people could be *influenced* to think in this way (some races/people are inherently evil/inferior) but that people *already think like that* and these media could be indicators that they do and something must be done about it.
Not a causal relation, but a... I don't know, expression relation.

HappyDaze

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« Reply #209 on: April 27, 2020, 02:53:06 PM »
Quote from: mightybrain;1128047
Dress your orcs up in Nazi iconography. That will blow their tiny minds. They won't know whether to punch them or have a parade.

Stormboyz?