Quote from: RPGPundit;428111Consider that Aces & Eights ALSO did an alternate history (one that was much much better conceived, mind you), where the CSA still exists.  

Aces and Eights also has a zombie sourcebook for those who want to go that route, so it's one step closer to doing Deadlands better than Deadlands. Best of all, the sourcebook is FREE. And it's freakin' sweet.

-=Grim=-

Quote from: Spike;428672I do remember vague pictures of black characters, for what that's worth, just like they had women sheriffs, and the default, generally unspoken, assumption of all RPGs that racism and sexism may have existed in real life but it only exists in the game universe if you want it to.

Yes its silly, it may even be facile and mildly insulting in it dimunitization of real horrors, but that is/was Gaming... and I think its more fun that way.

Normally, I might agree that RPGs should gloss over the racial and gender issues of the past.  I don't in this case, however, because it was a core part of the CSA and their beliefs.

It's the same way I'd be offended by a WWII "reimagining" that featured a kinder, gentler Hitler who runs the German army with his best pal, Field Marshall Bernie Goldstein.

Quote from: jgants;428845It's the same way I'd be offended by a WWII "reimagining" that featured a kinder, gentler Hitler who runs the German army with his best pal, Field Marshall Bernie Goldstein.

Its a godwin, but basically yes.  And let's face it, certain military-geeks love the confederacy and the nazis alike, because they're obsessed with either their generals, or their strategy, or their cool uniforms, or their tech (not so much the latter in the case of the CSA), or their general "attitude", and at the same time they're too autistic to understand the monstrousness of the racism inherent in both cultures.  Its not that the geeks in question are racists themselves, they're just too retarded at the basic social-emotional level to understand that you can't just say "ok yeah, they had some slaves/killed some jews but that's not what i care about, what i care about was their awesome uniforms and accents!",  that this is not in fact an acceptable excuse for hailing them.

At least the Nazis are so utterly atrocious that only the most utterly worthless of lawncrappers will actually try to present them positively; no game designer has done so to my knowledge (and no, the nazi tards who wrote that one racial-war game don't count), and instead have to be satisfied with creating nazi-like clones (like RIFTS' Coalition, which even then get MOSTLY presented as seriously villainous by the authors, and only some of the most social-retard fans want to think of as the great heroes).

But because we're far enough away in time, and because it was slavery and not genocide  (and note, I'm certainly not trying to put both groups at the same spot on the scale of evil, as it were), it seems that the geeks have no such qualms about the CSA.  They can feel free to create a  world where Robert E. Lee shares command of the valiant Confederate armies with some black guy (who's also probably totally kickass in a mary-sue way) fighting against the evil and oppressive forces of the north and protecting the happy negroes of virginia from the evil general sherman, and think that this somehow is "ok" and is like, totally the "opposite" of racism.

Honestly, some days I feel like this hobby is just drowning in the social retardation.

RPGPundit

Maybe I should repeat my question:

Is this directed solely at the new edition of the game or at the old edition of the game, or both editions of the game?


Just to check myself I checked the old book on my shelf and, after about ten minutes of searching found a single solitary line regarding the CSA's position on slavery.

Relevant to the discussion: The slaves were freed in 1864, a year after Gettysburg.  That's it.  While the experts and professional confederate states historians among us can point out that they wrote their very government to prevent that, at the time I was playing the game my room mate, a non-gaming southern black (so you don't think he was racist about it...) was telling me that the south would have freed the slaves eventually, civil war or not, because they were increasing their industrialization and the slavery model of economics was simply not viable in an increasingly mechanized system.  

Thus, to me and to a lot of people who just want to play cowboys and zombies (circa 1997 or so...), a toss off line like the one I mentioned, buried in a bunch of other stuff about deals with the British going bad and annexing california, is plausible enough.

Though I take it that it is actually MORE offensive since they don't even get a sidebar.  The sidebar is reserved for the women.

Arguments like this is why I refuse to game with historians in historical settings, physicists in sci-fi, and people who read Drizz't novels in Forgotten Realms.  

Great forum fodder, though.

(I got into an "Alternate WWII" game once where the Germans weren't Nazis and were the aggrieved party trying to stave off the godless commies and money hungry imperial brits and Americans and oh god it was so transparent what the GM was trying to do/say I quit posthaste...  He fit into Pundit's thesis about certain military/history geeks.)

Quote from: RPGPundit;428874Honestly, some days I feel like this hobby is just drowning in the social retardation.

RPGPundit

Indeed; see the Shadowrun book "WAR!" wherein you can kill Jew ghosts at Auschwitz to get magic items.

No, I'm not kidding.  Yes, that's really what you can do.

Quote from: Spike;428897Arguments like this is why I refuse to game with historians in historical settings, physicists in sci-fi, and people who read Drizz't novels in Forgotten Realms.

In the defense of historians, one of our best players is a historian, but he's usually kind enough to leave his degree at the door and buy in whatever wacky alt-hist we're rocking this week (and even concoct a few of his own). And his critical insights do make for a decent discussion over a beer, away from the gaming table.

He did throw a hissy fit when we contradicted canon in a Dragonlance game, though. Go figure.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;428901Indeed; see the Shadowrun book "WAR!" wherein you can kill Jew ghosts at Auschwitz to get magic items.

No, I'm not kidding.  Yes, that's really what you can do.

*cringe*

Quote from: thedungeondelver;428901Indeed; see the Shadowrun book "WAR!" wherein you can kill Jew ghosts at Auschwitz to get magic items.

No, I'm not kidding.  Yes, that's really what you can do.

Jesus fucking Moroni.

RPGpundit

Quote from: thedungeondelver;428898(I got into an "Alternate WWII" game once where the Germans weren't Nazis and were the aggrieved party trying to stave off the godless commies and money hungry imperial brits and Americans and oh god it was so transparent what the GM was trying to do/say I quit posthaste...  He fit into Pundit's thesis about certain military/history geeks.)

Let me correct you in one thing, its not "miltary/history geeks", its "military-history geeks".  That is to say, there are a very very tiny group of "history geeks", people like me, who care about details aside from the size of german howitzers or whatever, and who do not cream over nazis because being a real historian gives you a very good innoculation to that particularly disgusting type of romanticism.  Then there's the "Military history geeks", most of which are not in any way shape or form actual historians, who are just obsessed with macho militarism and seem drawn to idealize and revise the most disgusting examples of the same.

RPGPundit

Quote from: The Butcher;428905In the defense of historians, one of our best players is a historian, but he's usually kind enough to leave his degree at the door and buy in whatever wacky alt-hist we're rocking this week (and even concoct a few of his own). And his critical insights do make for a decent discussion over a beer, away from the gaming table.

He did throw a hissy fit when we contradicted canon in a Dragonlance game, though. Go figure.

I don't have any problem at all with "wacky alt-history" that makes no effort to try to pretend its a credible perspective on how things might go.  My issue is when certain writers of certain games (or theoretically, the GMs of certain homebrew campaigns) try to make claims that their alt-history is somehow credible when it so clearly is not.  
Aces & Eights is an example of an alt-history game that is fairly credible.
Castle falkenstein is a wacky historical game that isn't credible but doesn't seem to make any serious claims to be credible about its alt-history, so I don't have any real problem with it.
Games like Deadlands and Roma Imperious, on the other hand, have utterly absurd and impossible alt-histories but try to make a big deal out of the veneer of credibility (Roma Imperious much moreso than Deadlands, mind you), and thus piss me of immensely.

If you want to be a stupid fun gonzo game that makes no sense historically speaking, that's awesome, just make sure you stick to that and don't try to start pretending that "it could have really happened this way".

RPGpundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;428917If you want to be a stupid fun gonzo game that makes no sense historically speaking, that's awesome, just make sure you stick to that and don't try to start pretending that "it could have really happened this way".

I understand the distinction, but where is it exacly that Deadlands makes a claim to verisimilitude?

Just curious. For what it's worth, I found their handwaving away of the racist issue... ill-advised, to put it mildly, and well worth the panning it's getting in this thread, with or without claims to consistency.

And speaking of Castle Falkenstein (one of the best games ever, BTW) and alt-hist Western games, has anyone here ever read a copy of the CF American sourcebook, Sixguns & Sorcery? What's it like?

Quote from: RPGPundit;428917Games like Deadlands and Roma Imperious, on the other hand, have utterly absurd and impossible alt-histories but try to make a big deal out of the veneer of credibility (Roma Imperious much moreso than Deadlands, mind you), and thus piss me of immensely.

If you want to be a stupid fun gonzo game that makes no sense historically speaking, that's awesome, just make sure you stick to that and don't try to start pretending that "it could have really happened this way".

RPGpundit

Seriously?

Deadlands???

Again: Are we even looking at the same setting?  You know: The one with kung fu pirates navigating the canyons of california and undead cowboys working for the four horsemen of the apocalypse freed by a pissed of Indian (er... native american...) shaman and Doyle's book of games being a major fucking grimoire of spells for literally no reason at all?!

This isn't a 'wacky alt-history' but a misguided attempt to solve the question: What would have happened in the US Civil War if there was coal made of the compressed souls of the damned you could burn for magic juice?

Spike - I submit that the question is even less serious, something like "What excuse would allow seven totally different sci-fi/fantasy/pulp/horror genres to coexist with cowboys?"

See also: Brisco County, Jr.

Quote from: RPGPundit;428913Let me correct you in one thing, its not "miltary/history geeks", its "military-history geeks".  That is to say, there are a very very tiny group of "history geeks", people like me, who care about details aside from the size of german howitzers or whatever, and who do not cream over nazis because being a real historian gives you a very good innoculation to that particularly disgusting type of romanticism.  Then there's the "Military history geeks", most of which are not in any way shape or form actual historians, who are just obsessed with macho militarism and seem drawn to idealize and revise the most disgusting examples of the same.

RPGPundit

Yes, that's what I was going for; I chose the wrong punctuation there is all.