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Monte Cook would like to force YOU to ban tracking Food Rations in your game because they're privileged. And, Police Harassment in Waterdeep.
Also, to ban any player who doesn't think exactly like he does.

When I first saw his "consent checklist" I thought it was parody. It's not: it's Maoism.



[video=youtube_share;BAJooKNQgks]https://youtu.be/BAJooKNQgks [/youtube]

Wait...that checklist is for real?

Quote from: Doom;1103732Wait...that checklist is for real?

Yup. Monte Cook wrote it.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1103734Yup. Monte Cook wrote it.

Oy Vey!

This is shit we don't need in RPGs.....

- Ed C.

Can we all agree to not drag in real life politics into gaming at all?  Can't we just do that?  I guess not thanks to the SJWs.

.....Listening to the YouTube video.....

Wait a sec....

Voted differently than me?
People in an RPG group?
Holy Freaking Kahless - that is every game group I have been in for 30 years plus,

- Ed C.

I think this is the checklist from a free booklet called "Consent in Gaming" from Monte Cook games. The booklet lists the designers as Sean K. Reynolds and Shanna Germain. Monte Cook is listed as Creative Director. There's already a thread on the booklet started by Gagarth:

A new exciting product has been-release for the Cypher system (https://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?41121-A-new-exciting-product-has-been-release-for-the-Cypher-system)

All this Woke thinking keeps springing forth from members of the old D & D design teams.  There must have been something in the water at WOTC?

Say what you will about Mao but I don't think worrying about consent and other peoples feelings were really part of his governing philosophy.

Quote from: Razor 007;1103744All this Woke thinking keeps springing forth from members of the old D & D design teams.  There must have been something in the water at WOTC?

No just pretending to suddenly be woke to pander to a certain demographic in the gaming industry. While thinking no one will notice that they suddenly became woke. Really for nothing more than profit. Or fear of being ostracized as not being woke enough.

Quote from: ligedog;1103750Say what you will about Mao but I don't think worrying about consent and other peoples feelings were really part of his governing philosophy.

That's a really good point.

Quote from: ligedog;1103750Say what you will about Mao but I don't think worrying about consent and other peoples feelings were really part of his governing philosophy.

True, but having the public struggle sessions were a part of his regime, and that seems to be a large part of current Awokening going on.

I don't think Monte Cook or Shanna Germain are Maoists. I read the book this morning and I don't really agree with the books premise or content very much. I would even say I find it a bit silly personally. But my sense is they are part of a gaming culture in the north west where this is just the norm. Where I game, I don't think a checklist like the book has would go over well at all. But i do think the book is well intentioned. If they want to write a book like this, I am fine with it. What bothers me is the pushback I see online when people disagree with the book. That is where the real problem. Presenting an idea or a concept is fine by me. Not allowing people to discuss its merit openly, or to just simply have honest disagreements over it, is where I start to lose people.

There is a lot wrong with the book in my my opinion. One issue with the book is by framing it as a consent issue, it is using language more associated with sexual abuse and assault than with a GM presenting content in a game that upsets people. So I think making this about consent isn't the right way to even frame the discussion. It kind of takes the topic to a whole other level than what it really is. I mean we'd never talk about movies in that way (for example if a director surprises you with an avalanche of spiders, you would never say you didn't consent to a spider care).

Also the checklist itself is very unusual. There are things on there that most people have to address someway in an RPG. But it is filled with so many items ranging from cancer, to thirst, to terrorism and eyeball horror, that it doesn't even really seem like it would be manageable to juggle that with 4-6 players. And I don't think objecting to thirst or even terrorism (which are both pretty standard tropes in RPGs) is a reasonable thing. If someone has a specific issue with terrorism because something horrible happened to them, then sure I think a GM can easily handle that. But to go in assuming it needs to be on a checklist of concerns strikes me as very odd.

Quote from: sureshot;1103777No just pretending to suddenly be woke to pander to a certain demographic in the gaming industry. While thinking no one will notice that they suddenly became woke. Really for nothing more than profit. Or fear of being ostracized as not being woke enough.

Reynolds was always that way.  Don't know if the others were too, or were just better at hiding it to not offend their customers for awhile.  By about 2007, I had stopped buying anything that Reynolds worked on.  He's one of those people that pissed me off so much that every time I used a book with his name on the credits, my enjoyment of the content suffered because of being reminded about him.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1103785Reynolds was always that way.  Don't know if the others were too, or were just better at hiding it to not offend their customers for awhile.  By about 2007, I had stopped buying anything that Reynolds worked on.  He's one of those people that pissed me off so much that every time I used a book with his name on the credits, my enjoyment of the content suffered because of being reminded about him.

SKR was also great at messing up Pathfinder rules, so much so that I made it a point to ignore his rulings.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1103786SKR was also great at messing up Pathfinder rules, so much so that I made it a point to ignore his rulings.

Kinda the Jeremy Crawford of Pathfinder? :)

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1103784There is a lot wrong with the book in my my opinion. One issue with the book is by framing it as a consent issue, it is using language more associated with sexual abuse and assault than with a GM presenting content in a game that upsets people.

Yeah I agree. It is definitely seeing consent through the lens of sexual activity. But I haven't played/GM'd a game like that since the days of Yahoo mailing lists in the mid '90s (and that stuff was mostly, um, 'freeform'), and for the vast majority of tabletop play it's highly inappropriate.

I also noticed that the quotes from another source ("Your Best Game Ever") seemed considerably more extreme than most of the regular content. In particular the first 4 pages have a much milder tone, then the content gets more and more extreme until by the time of the Final Horror of the Consent Form on page 13 I was crying "Noooo! I don't want this!!" :D

Quote from: S'mon;1103791I also noticed that the quotes from another source ("Your Best Game Ever") seemed considerably more extreme than most of the regular content. In particular the first 4 pages have a much milder tone, then the content gets more and more extreme until by the time of the Final Horror of the Consent Form on page 13 I was crying "Noooo! I don't want this!!" :D

    "Your Best Game Ever" was by Monte Cook, while as I understand it, the original material in this pamphlet is by Reynolds and Germain.

Once again - they are mixing their B.S. into fantasy. I guess the best way to deal with it is laugh 'em off and then ignore the flaming rage that will soon follow. It's like a toddler who wants something at the market and throws tantrums. I just wonder if these sJws (once they get into the company) railroad all of the old employees into submission.  Seems like Monty has to change his colours in order to keep his desk?.... I dunno, this stuff was never an issue before. I'm perplexed. it's fantasy an escape from the "real world" -they'd like to see us old timers out of their safe space methinks.

Am I correct that it actually states that you can't ask someone to leave the group whose sensibilities don't agree with you? If I want to run CoC Horror and player X doesn't like that I'm not allowed to ever run that because he/she is part of my group now?

Quote from: sureshot;1103777No just pretending to suddenly be woke to pander to a certain demographic in the gaming industry. While thinking no one will notice that they suddenly became woke. Really for nothing more than profit. Or fear of being ostracized as not being woke enough.

I don't even think anymore that it's pandering. I am convinced that this is who WOTC are. They infiltrated the hobby and the industry.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;1103798I don't even think anymore that it's pandering. I am convinced that this is who WOTC are. They infiltrated the hobby and the industry.

  Given the location, the demographics they hire from, the cultural trends, and the lack of any countervailing creed or loyalty to anchor them, why should we expect any differently?

Is Monte Cook really such a great designer? Famous, sure, but... is there anything original about D&D 3E? And regarding d20 Cthulhu - where is it now? Has it gone anywhere, really?
Numenera is successful, alright, Invisible Sun raised huge funds. I am just not entirely sure about their respective design merits. Do they have any impact on the design of other games?
I guess I rate people like Stafford/Peterson, Greg Costikyan, Charrette/Hume/Dowd, Rick Priestley and later Fred Hicks and Vincent Baker higher.

Not saying he's a bad designer, I just feel unimpressed - unless I have overlooked important games.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1103793"Your Best Game Ever" was by Monte Cook, while as I understand it, the original material in this pamphlet is by Reynolds and Germain.

So that supports Pundit's thesis that Monte is the Maoist!!

Quote from: PencilBoy99;1103797Am I correct that it actually states that you can't ask someone to leave the group whose sensibilities don't agree with you? If I want to run CoC Horror and player X doesn't like that I'm not allowed to ever run that because he/she is part of my group now?

It says that people are always free to leave, but should never be threatened with expulsion.

What it does NOT do is talk about a player's obligation to the other people in the group not to ruin their fun (by eg stepping back from the table). Instead all obligations flow from group to individual, the individual has no obligations to the group. This seems likely to encourage Snowflake Escalation - in the Country of the Woke,  the Most Easily Triggered Is King.

So, basically yes. The implication is that since the game table is a Safe Space for Snowflakes, you are stuck with them - Forever.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1103800Is Monte Cook really such a great designer? Famous, sure, but... is there anything original about D&D 3E? And regarding d20 Cthulhu - where is it now? Has it gone anywhere, really?
Numenera is successful, alright, Invisible Sun raised huge funds. I am just not entirely sure about their respective design merits. Do they have any impact on the design of other games?
I guess I rate people like Stafford/Peterson, Greg Costikyan, Charrette/Hume/Dowd, Rick Priestley and later Fred Hicks and Vincent Baker higher.

Not saying he's a bad designer, I just feel unimpressed - unless I have overlooked important games.

Monte Cook is the best in the hobby at fleshing out ideas.

I do not think Numenera (and by extension Cypher system, Invisible Sun, The Strange) are build off of good mechanical idea. In-fact I think the system for Numenera is built around a bad core mechanic. But the game itself is good and interesting, in-fact I do not see why Numenera wouldn't make for an excellent toolset for an OSR GM (aside from the lack of random table content generation).

These games are a little too fleshed out and a little too premium (heck even their carpet at Gencon was thicker than everyone else's), but that and their basic mechanical starting point being bad are the only real issues in an otherwise good system.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1103800Is Monte Cook really such a great designer? Famous, sure, but... is there anything original about D&D 3E? And regarding d20 Cthulhu - where is it now? Has it gone anywhere, really?
Numenera is successful, alright, Invisible Sun raised huge funds. I am just not entirely sure about their respective design merits. Do they have any impact on the design of other games?
I guess I rate people like Stafford/Peterson, Greg Costikyan, Charrette/Hume/Dowd, Rick Priestley and later Fred Hicks and Vincent Baker higher.

Not saying he's a bad designer, I just feel unimpressed - unless I have overlooked important games.

He is a better developer than designer.  For example, Arcana Unearthed/Arcana Evolved doesn't really fix much with the 3E/3.5 mechanics.  It tinkers around the edges, and many of those changes are slight improvements.  But the overall product (especially Arcana Evolved) is a better, more consistent expression of 3E/3.5 than many of the alternatives.

Plus, he does work at it.  That whole 99% perspiration, 1% talent thing isn't just a saying.  And he used to be married to a very good editor.

Quote from: S'mon;1103802It says that people are always free to leave, but should never be threatened with expulsion.

What it does NOT do is talk about a player's obligation to the other people in the group not to ruin their fun (by eg stepping back from the table). Instead all obligations flow from group to individual, the individual has no obligations to the group. This seems likely to encourage Snowflake Escalation - in the Country of the Woke,  the Most Easily Triggered Is King.

So, basically yes. The implication is that since the game table is a Safe Space for Snowflakes, you are stuck with them - Forever.

My own view is, I GM in a pub, so anything in game should be appropriate to a pub environment. My pub actually bans swearing!  But generally pubs have well established norms you are expected to abide by. They are only Safe Spaces in the sense that if you punch another punter you are likely to get Barred. If you punch a girl they'll call the police.

Quote from: Snowman0147;1103739Can we all agree to not drag in real life politics into gaming at all?  Can't we just do that?  I guess not thanks to the SJWs.

I have no problem with a group putting real-life politics into their game if their members like it. I have no problem with somebody writing enthusiastic encomia on how this improved their games, or on how it can improve other games if adopted.

I have every objection in the world to someone claiming that if such politics aren't introduced to a game, then the activity is shallow at best or immoral at worst. (Note that this remains true regardless of whether I agree with the particular type of politics being demanded or not.)

Quote from: S'mon;1103802It says that people are always free to leave, but should never be threatened with expulsion.

What it does NOT do is talk about a player's obligation to the other people in the group not to ruin their fun (by eg stepping back from the table). Instead all obligations flow from group to individual, the individual has no obligations to the group. This seems likely to encourage Snowflake Escalation - in the Country of the Woke,  the Most Easily Triggered Is King.

Yes, exactly.  All it takes is one narcissist player to completely derail the game and ruin it for everyone, and these mechanisms actually encourage and reward narcissistic behavior.

Quote from: S'mon;1103807My pub actually bans swearing!

Heh.  There's a place out here in Cali that does the same thing.  The wife and I used to go there with friends on the regular, before we had kids.  It sounds restrictive and weird, but it helps keep the riff-raff away.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1103800Is Monte Cook really such a great designer? .

Yes, for d20 Cthulhu alone, I'd say he is great. But 3E pretty much saved D&D. In hindsight, it had its issues, like any edition. But at the time most people I knew loved the system. And Numenera is quite an interesting game in its own right (much more of a boutique RPG than 3E, but the setting is very creative and the mechanics seem interesting---still haven't played enough to really judge it thoroughly though). Things don't need to be original to be good design (I will leave the originality if 3e debate for others).

It's not politics, it's religion. Some people just need a place in their mind for piety, orthodoxy, and moral certitude. It's surely no coincidence that this credo has taken deepest root in the demographics that have turned away from traditional religion.

Quote from: Brendan;1103812Heh.  There's a place out here in Cali that does the same thing.  The wife and I used to go there with friends on the regular, before we had kids.  It sounds restrictive and weird, but it helps keep the riff-raff away.

Yeah, we nearly got thrown out... :o

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1103813Yes, for d20 Cthulhu alone, I'd say he is great. But 3E pretty much saved D&D. In hindsight, it had its issues, like any edition. But at the time most people I knew loved the system. And Numenera is quite an interesting game in its own right (much more of a boutique RPG than 3E, but the setting is very creative and the mechanics seem interesting---still haven't played enough to really judge it thoroughly though). Things don't need to be original to be good design (I will leave the originality if 3e debate for others).

Seems like any edition that needs to save D&D ends up being well received.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1103813Yes, for d20 Cthulhu alone, I'd say he is great. But 3E pretty much saved D&D. In hindsight, it had its issues, like any edition. But at the time most people I knew loved the system. And Numenera is quite an interesting game in its own right (much more of a boutique RPG than 3E, but the setting is very creative and the mechanics seem interesting---still haven't played enough to really judge it thoroughly though). Things don't need to be original to be good design (I will leave the originality if 3e debate for others).

I won't speak for d20 Cthulhu (never played it).

But I'm going to say that I think, with zero proof, that D&D3e in any competent designer's hands would have been a huge seller because the time was simply perfect for it. New generation of players came of age at that time, older players had beaten 1e/2e into the ground and were hungry for it. I think 3e had conceptually a LOT of good ideas, but the execution of it was ultimately not good. How much was Tweet/Cook is irrelevant to me ultimately. As a design, I think 3e set the stage for a lot of bad things design-wise.

That said I do think Cook is *far* more imaginative in his settings than his mechanics. I think his mechanical design is middling at best. But his setting fluff and concepts are excellent.

Numenara in particular is pretty cool. I think it stumbles away from a lot of the darker and cooler potential it otherwise could have, and mires itself in D&D-fantasy tropes needlessly, but it's a very interesting setting. I'll never run it natively though because the Cypher-system is just bad.

Overall I do think Cook is over-rated as a Game Designer. Tweet on the other hand... that dude is next-level.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;1103797Am I correct that it actually states that you can't ask someone to leave the group whose sensibilities don't agree with you? If I want to run CoC Horror and player X doesn't like that I'm not allowed to ever run that because he/she is part of my group now?

Piss on that.  If they don't want to play the game you are running, then by default they aren't in your group.

Quote from: Haffrung;1103818It's not politics, it's religion. Some people just need a place in their mind for piety, orthodoxy, and moral certitude. It's surely no coincidence that this credo has taken deepest root in the demographics that have turned away from traditional religion.

Well, politics as religion--which is two-thirds of the reason why it shouldn't be in gaming.  The only thing that would be worse would be sex and politics as religion in gaming.  Oh, wait ... :)

Nearly all of the vast social media posts make it clear that no dissent will be brooked on this topic

Quote from: Haffrung;1103818It's not politics, it's religion. Some people just need a place in their mind for piety, orthodoxy, and moral certitude. It's surely no coincidence that this credo has taken deepest root in the demographics that have turned away from traditional religion.

Yes, it goes much deeper than politics.  It has become a religion of sorts for the special snowflakes.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1103823Seems like any edition that needs to save D&D ends up being well received.

Well said.  3E succeeded, and 5E is a raging success.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;1103798I don't even think anymore that it's pandering. I am convinced that this is who WOTC are. They infiltrated the hobby and the industry.

Fuck, if WOTC has gone woke, the hobby is fucked.

Either Hasbro will bail them out or throw them to the wolves if the wokeness starts causing brokeness.

We've already seen what SJW Leftism did to White Wolf (and by extension Onyx Path) and what it's doing to Paizo, and those were two of their more prolific competitors at different points in time.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1103919Fuck, if WOTC has gone woke, the hobby is fucked.

Either Hasbro will bail them out or throw them to the wolves if the wokeness starts causing brokeness.

We've already seen what SJW Leftism did to White Wolf (and by extension Onyx Path) and what it's doing to Paizo, and those were two of their more prolific competitors at different points in time.

Thank God for individuals who want to make their own forks to counter this insanity.

So, is the problem that Monte Cook is forcing anyone to play his game? Or is this another, "Grrr, those people exist!" thing?...let me guess...

Quote from: cranebump;1103923So, is the problem that Monte Cook is forcing anyone to play his game? Or is this another, "Grrr, those people exist!" thing?...let me guess...

I bet Shanna and Sean's Consent book makes perfect sense in the Seattle gaming scene (and a good reason that as much as I loved Seattle back in the day I guess I'm never going back).

Quote from: Mor'du;1103794Seems like Monty has to change his colours in order to keep his desk?.... I dunno, this stuff was never an issue before. I'm perplexed. it's fantasy an escape from the "real world" -they'd like to see us old timers out of their safe space methinks.

More likely, it's that he's banging Shanna Germain and wishes to continue doing so.

After checking out the checklist in the back, it doesnt seem so bad.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1103800Is Monte Cook really such a great designer? Famous, sure, but... is there anything original about D&D 3E? And regarding d20 Cthulhu - where is it now? Has it gone anywhere, really?
Numenera is successful, alright, Invisible Sun raised huge funds. I am just not entirely sure about their respective design merits. Do they have any impact on the design of other games?
I guess I rate people like Stafford/Peterson, Greg Costikyan, Charrette/Hume/Dowd, Rick Priestley and later Fred Hicks and Vincent Baker higher.

Not saying he's a bad designer, I just feel unimpressed - unless I have overlooked important games.

Couldn't tell you who half those people are, but I know Cook.

Good enough for me.

Quote from: Tait Ransom;1103939More likely, it's that he's banging Shanna Germain and wishes to continue doing so.

Heh that's actually what I was surmising.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1103919Fuck, if WOTC has gone woke, the hobby is fucked.

Hardly. WotC could go down in flames - and it wouldn't impact my gaming at all. I don't think it would adversely impact anyone currently playing D&D either. The games are out there in the wild. Someone would pick up the IP and it would continue anew.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1103919Either Hasbro will bail them out or throw them to the wolves if the wokeness starts causing brokeness.

We've already seen what SJW Leftism did to White Wolf (and by extension Onyx Path) and what it's doing to Paizo, and those were two of their more prolific competitors at different points in time.

Well that's why you should get your bags of marshmallows and skewers, pull up a chair, and enjoy the fire. It'll burn itself out on its own.

There are enough D & D resources on the market right now, to stretch coast to coast across America.  If they stopped publishing content right now, D & D would keep on rocking for decades to come.

Quote from: Tait Ransom;1103939More likely, it's that he's banging Shanna Germain and wishes to continue doing so.

She's not bad looking - when I googled the name I was expecting more of a purple-haired walrus. I do think it's likely she's pushing BDSM values into TTRPGs where they don't belong. But it sounds as if the men may be the greater sinners here. Unlike my initial assumption that the names I recognised (Cook & Reynolds) were being influenced by the wicked female. :D

Quote from: Rhedyn;1103805Monte Cook is the best in the hobby at fleshing out ideas. (snip)

Ptolus was a superb piece of design, publishing, and marketing. He was the best marketer in the hobby for many years.

I also remain enamoured with the Complete Book of Eldritch Might or its three constituent books. Sure, some of the ideas are imbalanced but it's refreshingly creative. I've stolen a lot of the ideas for my 4E games.

Numenera, however, left me a bit cold. I don't blame Monte for that; it just wasn't what I was looking for. I did love the art and visual sensibilities, however.

Cook is a Maoist? Sound the alarm! Activate the National Guard! Put on your gas masks! Iceberg! Iceberg! WE'RE ALL DOOOOOOMED!

(And i should give a shit because WHY...?)

My Cook of choice is Zeb.

Quote from: S'mon;1103958I do think it's likely she's pushing BDSM values into TTRPGs where they don't belong.

I'd have to say that is exactly what is going on.

Quote from: Snowman0147;1103920Thank God for individuals who want to make their own forks to counter this insanity.

Amen to that!

Quote from: Warboss Squee;1103951Couldn't tell you who half those people are, but I know Cook.

Good enough for me.

There's plenty of famous singers and there's actual pioneers.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1104015There's plenty of famous singers and there's actual pioneers.

But who gets to decide what is great? There are lots of musicians and singers who appeal to a narrow selection of critics, or who appeal to other musicians, because they seem to be carving new ground, or because they are doing things that musicians find interesting. And there is definitely a place for that. But there is also something to be said for people who can appeal to a much broader audience. I think greatness operates on multiple levels here: technical skill, audience appeal, how inspired the person is, how innovative. I don't think you can just pick 'innovation' as the thing to measure. It is one thing, and it is often important, but innovation for its own sake, without thinking of the other categories, points you in the direction of something with very narrow appeal.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1104027But who gets to decide what is great?

Well, as a general rule, if they need AutoTune to actually sell their product... they're definitely not great.

It's a product to coddle weak people.
Meh. As long as it stays away from my table.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1103800Is Monte Cook really such a great designer? Famous, sure, but... is there anything original about D&D 3E? And regarding d20 Cthulhu - where is it now? Has it gone anywhere, really?

If I recall right did he not do some stuff for Iron Crown way back? Rolemaster or Champions? And Dark Space? And he is credited as the designer for the Dark*Matter setting for Alternity and d20m. Though I believe Rich Baker was the main designer for that. Not positive. Been a few decades and the books are in storage. He is also the designer for Dead Gods which alot of people rave about as a great D&D/Planescape module.

You can see all the stuff hes done big and small over on BGG.
https://rpggeek.com/rpgdesigner/12569/monte-cook (https://rpggeek.com/rpgdesigner/12569/monte-cook)

Quote from: VincentTakeda;1103940After checking out the checklist in the back, it doesnt seem so bad.

And then everyone realizes that the book doesn't mean TTRPGs... :eek:

Quote from: jeff37923;1103988I'd have to say that is exactly what is going on.

Ive noted this in past threads here and there.

What we are seeing are factions treating RPGs and other media as a fetish and setting out to infiltraite, co-opt and then supplant that thing with their own fetish. Storygamers in particular use the Exact Same Tactics.

Then you get the splinter factions that inevitably want to "clean up the media" by getting rid of or killing off anything they disapprove of. (or in a crack headed bit to get rid of competition) In an ever escalating spiral of ever more stringent criteria.

The thing that sticks in my craw is that the act of creating a guidebook on consent in an RPG is declaring that your average gamer is an incompetant at socialization and needs this. Same with the X-card. If the person you are gaming with is that pathetic at human interaction, then they probably shouldn't be involved in the hobby.

This is the kind of crap that sucks the fun right out of a RPG.

Quote from: Omega;1104045(snip) Though I believe Rich Baker was the main designer for that. (snip)

Rich Baker is a great designer.

Even Chris Perkins said that Rich was the best adventure designer at WotC. (And, yes, adventure design is only a subset of RPG design but it's the one where everything else comes together.) It's hard to believe Rich got booted but the spammiest of OGL spambots was retained. Maybe Rich wasn't interested in going woke?

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1104027But who gets to decide what is great? There are lots of musicians and singers who appeal to a narrow selection of critics, or who appeal to other musicians, because they seem to be carving new ground, or because they are doing things that musicians find interesting. And there is definitely a place for that. But there is also something to be said for people who can appeal to a much broader audience. I think greatness operates on multiple levels here: technical skill, audience appeal, how inspired the person is, how innovative. I don't think you can just pick 'innovation' as the thing to measure. It is one thing, and it is often important, but innovation for its own sake, without thinking of the other categories, points you in the direction of something with very narrow appeal.

Well, you can take a look at how often an innovation is being imitated, for example. Also, how different an innovation has been from what was before, how much was added.
I will concede that sometimes the invention is in the right mix of things that have been invented by others before. But even then the mix has to stand out from others' mixes, I think.

Again, I'm not saying that Cook is a bad designer. I guess I just see some divergence between his notoriety and his actual design merits (by which I mean D&D 3E in particular). But then again... name recognition definitely comes with being a lead designer of any D&D core rulebook - so... good for him!

Quote from: Scrivener of Doom;1104078Rich Baker is a great designer.

Even Chris Perkins said that Rich was the best adventure designer at WotC. (And, yes, adventure design is only a subset of RPG design but it's the one where everything else comes together.) It's hard to believe Rich got booted but the spammiest of OGL spambots was retained. Maybe Rich wasn't interested in going woke?

Judging by the Sasquatch corporate blog discussion of what Primeval Thule was supposed to be, Rich doesn't seem very Woke (the published product is much tamer). AIR his personal blog is pretty un-Woke, too.

I agree he's The Best Adventure Writer. My current campaign/adventure line up - stuff I'm currently running:

5e Primeval Thule - Rich Baker
5e Red Hand of Doom - Rich Baker
5e Princes of the Apocalypse - Rich Baker
5e Shattered Star Dead Heart of Xin -  Brandon Hodge

3 out of 4 ain't bad!

Edit: from Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Baker_(game_designer)
Rich Baker was born and raised in Florida, then moved with his family to New Jersey at age ten.[1] Baker graduated from Virginia Tech in 1988 with a degree in English.[1] He received a commission as an ensign in the U.S. Navy, and served as a deck officer for three years on board the USS Tortuga; he qualified as a Surface Warfare Officer and was a lieutenant (junior grade) by the time he left the Navy.[1] Baker married his college sweetheart, Kim Rohrbach.[1] They have two daughters, Alex and Hannah.[2]

You can kinda see how he might not be too Woke. :)

Another edit: Looking at Wikipedia, frankly it's clear his design talents go far beyond RPGs. He seems to have produced most of the best D&D stuff over the past 30 years!

Quote from: ligedog;1103750Say what you will about Mao but I don't think worrying about consent and other peoples feelings were really part of his governing philosophy.

Nor are they part of the governing philosophy of the people who wrote this thing.

Oh, my goodness! I got banned when trying to make my second post on this topic at rpg.net. I asked alittle about what romance, explicit was. I feel violated now. I was just about to add to my post with this when I got a message that I was banned:

I also thought of another thing. The list is kind of filled with potential spoilers. How do you work around that? Lie? "No, Billy, listen to me. Calm down. It's not that kind of horror game. I promise on my mother's grave that there will be no eyeballs in this scenario. Zero, zip, zilch, nada."

Spoiler

(https://jarviscity.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/friday-the-13th-part-3-eyeball-scene.jpg)

GOTCHA, BILLY!!! WHAT'S THE MATTER? SCARED?

Quote from: jeff37923;1104067The thing that sticks in my craw is that the act of creating a guidebook on consent in an RPG is declaring that your average gamer is an incompetant at socialization and needs this. Same with the X-card. If the person you are gaming with is that pathetic at human interaction, then they probably shouldn't be involved in the hobby.

Yep. It's not clear to me if the people pushing the stuff really believe most gamers are so deeply fucked up that this sort of hyper-anxious policing of behaviour is necessary, or they're just so in love with the idea of being saviours that they'll pretend the world is far more dangerous than it really is on order to burnish their reputation.

Gonna call it: some troll GM is going to use the list to find out just where to strike. I mean just using this list is kinda exposing your own weaknesses to someone else. Some people you're concerned enough about to require an explicit no-no list at that. Which actually vulnerable person is going to consent to any of this?

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1104120Gonna call it: some troll GM is going to use the list to find out just where to strike. I mean just using this list is kinda exposing your own weaknesses to someone else. Some people you're concerned enough about to require an explicit no-no list at that. Which actually vulnerable person is going to consent to any of this?

And it also leaves that vulnerable person open to questions like: "So eyeballs are out, Billy? Completely? Ok. Just wondering, what is it about eyeballs that's so scary, Billy? Don't want to talk about it?", followed by the rolling of scary eyeballs around the gaming table.

Quote from: Scrivener of Doom;1104078Rich Baker is a great designer.

Even Chris Perkins said that Rich was the best adventure designer at WotC. (And, yes, adventure design is only a subset of RPG design but it's the one where everything else comes together.) It's hard to believe Rich got booted but the spammiest of OGL spambots was retained. Maybe Rich wasn't interested in going woke?

Some of Baker's comments on various forums have seemed pretty woke to me, but that might be him trying to avoid a lynch mob. Not that that ever helps.

Quote from: GIMME SOME SUGAR;1104131And it also leaves that vulnerable person open to questions like: "So eyeballs are out, Billy? Completely? Ok. Just wondering, what is it about eyeballs that's so scary, Billy? Don't want to talk about it?", followed by the rolling of scary eyeballs around the gaming table.

I have to admit, this is exactly the kind of thing I'd do to a friend who had this issue. I realize, not for the first time, that I'm an asshole friend.

Quote from: Scrivener of Doom;1104078Rich Baker is a great designer.

Even Chris Perkins said that Rich was the best adventure designer at WotC. (And, yes, adventure design is only a subset of RPG design but it's the one where everything else comes together.) It's hard to believe Rich got booted but the spammiest of OGL spambots was retained. Maybe Rich wasn't interested in going woke?

And then he co-designed the disaster of 4e D&D Gamma World. Id like to hope that he was not involved in the stupider segments. :o

Quote from: Haffrung;1104118Yep. It's not clear to me if the people pushing the stuff really believe most gamers are so deeply fucked up that this sort of hyper-anxious policing of behaviour is necessary, or they're just so in love with the idea of being saviours that they'll pretend the world is far more dangerous than it really is on order to burnish their reputation.

Both.

The problems started when people began to believe insane sociopaths and grifters. This on top of listening to the paranoid nuts out there who see OFFENSE!!! and DANGER!!!! in everything.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1104120Gonna call it: some troll GM is going to use the list to find out just where to strike. I mean just using this list is kinda exposing your own weaknesses to someone else. Some people you're concerned enough about to require an explicit no-no list at that. Which actually vulnerable person is going to consent to any of this?

Sadly this is not exactly new. I'd talked to a fellow DM several years ago who recounted having a new player who on arrival handed him a list of things that could not be in the campaign or any session.

What is going to be the end result of this?

Lets assume they manage to make it mandatory on all cons.
Then what? You think the crowd will be the same, smaller or larger?

Lets assume also they manage to make all the big publishers to include it in their products. Then what? How are they gonna make anybody use it at home?

I might be alone in thinking that this is good news for the hobby in general, the more the zealots expose themselves as the crazy idiots they are the sooner the less vocal among us will start opposing them, the more people will speak against them, the more the general public will notice just how totalitarian and intolerant they are.

I think they believe that managing to make this mandatory in all cons is a victory for them. And it is, but a Pyrrhic victory, maybe the beginning of the end for their control on our corner of the culture.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1104144What is going to be the end result of this?

Lets assume they manage to make it mandatory on all cons.
Then what? You think the crowd will be the same, smaller or larger?

Lets assume also they manage to make all the big publishers to include it in their products. Then what? How are they gonna make anybody use it at home?

I might be alone in thinking that this is good news for the hobby in general, the more the zealots expose themselves as the crazy idiots they are the sooner the less vocal among us will start opposing them, the more people will speak against them, the more the general public will notice just how totalitarian and intolerant they are.

I think they believe that managing to make this mandatory in all cons is a victory for them. And it is, but a Pyrrhic victory, maybe the beginning of the end for their control on our corner of the culture.

I think the end is to make this normative everywhere that isn't literally dudes around a table chucking dice all by themselves. So it's going to be mandatory at the Cons, at the Game Store, online in any form (either technically implemented or via TOS clauses), etc. so that most users in most public-facing outlets are subject to this regime and thus give the appearance of normalcy while accounts gainsaying this narrative are snuffed out with extreme prejudice.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;1104156I think the end is to make this normative everywhere that isn't literally dudes around a table chucking dice all by themselves. So it's going to be mandatory at the Cons, at the Game Store, online in any form (either technically implemented or via TOS clauses), etc. so that most users in most public-facing outlets are subject to this regime and thus give the appearance of normalcy while accounts gainsaying this narrative are snuffed out with extreme prejudice.

Well they can try to make it mandatory online

https://www.rptools.net/ (https://www.rptools.net/)

http://rolisteam.org/ (http://rolisteam.org/)

Something tells me they won't succeed.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;1104156I think the end is to make this normative everywhere that isn't literally dudes around a table chucking dice all by themselves. So it's going to be mandatory at the Cons, at the Game Store, online in any form (either technically implemented or via TOS clauses), etc. so that most users in most public-facing outlets are subject to this regime and thus give the appearance of normalcy while accounts gainsaying this narrative are snuffed out with extreme prejudice.

That is how they have operated in other fields.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1104144I might be alone in thinking that this is good news for the hobby in general, the more the zealots expose themselves as the crazy idiots they are the sooner the less vocal among us will start opposing them, the more people will speak against them, the more the general public will notice just how totalitarian and intolerant they are.

Except normal people wont oppose them because everyone treats these nutcases as if they were sane and their insane demands are reasonable and should be followed.

Moreso because these cultists can, have, and will paint anyone speaking out against them as racist, sexist ist-ist, everything-ist and of course "allways believe the victem." So who are they going to believe? You? Or the person cryinging crocodile tears of victimhood? We see this more and more in gaming and other venues.

Letting this stuff stand and fester is worse than stupid.

It didnt work the time before this, or the time before that, or probably the time before even that. These movements continue to gain momentum the longer you let them run rampant and lose steam far slower even as they eventually turn on eachother and someone gets a personal wake-up call. Possibly with false charges jail time.

And this is what tends to be the more telling brake on the PC wagon. Supporters or bystanders get attacked and sooner or later start opposing them. This is why the art circuit is so over the top now for example. And we are gradually seeing this creep into RPGs.

Quote from: Omega;1104197Except normal people wont oppose them because everyone treats these nutcases as if they were sane and their insane demands are reasonable and should be followed.

Sounds more like 2009 than 2019. The Great Awokening post-2012 has been accompanied by much greater understanding and resistance. If people don't oppose them these days it is much more likely from fear and from desire for a quiet life, than from ascription of moral virtue to the Woke. I do see some 'nice Liberals' who still think like that - "They're wrong/taking it too far, but they're coming from a Good Place" - but those guys are a dying breed.

I think the situation today resembles that behind the Iron Curtain when Communism still ruled, but had lost all moral authority among the general population.

Quote from: jeff37923;1104067The thing that sticks in my craw is that the act of creating a guidebook on consent in an RPG is declaring that your average gamer is an incompetant at socialization and needs this. Same with the X-card. If the person you are gaming with is that pathetic at human interaction, then they probably shouldn't be involved in the hobby.

This is the kind of crap that sucks the fun right out of a RPG.

Browbeating, shaming and guilt-tripping people is a tried-and-true method of exercising control. Making them stay in line through the implied threat of social ostracism and mob violence - losing their support network in one swoop - is "outsourcing" the same control mechanism to a faceless, hysterical and ultimately unaccountable crowd. It results in a stifling environment that feels suffocating. And it does suffocate people, spiritually and eventually physically. People who believe they are guilty, or would be found guilty if they were singled out don't speak up and don't stick their necks out for other people. They obey and stay silent. They don't fight. When someone is targeted, they stay quiet like a mouse, secretly glad it is not them. When they get targeted, they are easily broken.

Obviously, nobody actively pushing for these guidelines here and now believes him- or herself to promote totalitarian thought control.* Nevertheless, totalitarian methods and worldviews produce totalitarian results.

__________
* Some do revel in destroying "bad people" - there are your future Nazis and Bolsheviks.

Quote from: S'mon;1104084Another edit: Looking at Wikipedia, frankly it's clear his design talents go far beyond RPGs. He seems to have produced most of the best D&D stuff over the past 30 years!

Whichever bozo wrote that wikipedia entry left out Baker's most important contribution, creating and then writing the best D&D world ever, Birthright.

As for the whole business of the OP, I am fairly pessimistic about the current state of affairs.

Things have been deteriorating, not getting better. I was a teacher in a big ESL school from 2007 to 2014. In my time there, me and 3 other guys were the only straight men out of a group of about 30. Several of the women were lesbian as well. Prime human material for SJWdom, right? But in all that time, only one of the women was an in-your-face feminazi, and only two of the gay guys were sorta into the SJW stuff.

Since I left, a friend of mine that continued working there tells me the situation has radically changed. He can't even talk to people anymore, since they have essentially all turned into mega-SJWs that don't tolerate even a whisper of a different opinion. He has decided to ignore everyone, since they all either ignore him or decry him as the worst of the worst. This doesn't look like improvement to me.

In RPGs, I haven't been to a convention in many, many summers, and the International RPG Meeting in São Paulo (which, for a while, was second only to GenCon in terms of visitors) has been gone since 2015, so I don't have a way to gauge the overall situation here in Brasil. My friends don't really do the SJW thing, even though one is an actual communist and most are lefties. However, I can imagine how bad things are among the younger crowd, who has grown up during the upswing of the SJW movement.

To sum it up, I think things will get worse before they get better....if they get better.

Quote from: BronzeDragon;1104219Whichever bozo wrote that wikipedia entry left out Baker's most important contribution, creating and then writing the best D&D world ever, Birthright.

No, it's missing from the Bibliography but the career section says

Baker and Colin McComb co-designed the Birthright campaign setting.[3]:29 The Birthright Campaign Setting boxed set won the 1995 Origins Award for Best New Role-Playing Supplement: "I'm very proud of it. It represents an entirely new approach to the traditional fantasy roleplaying campaign, and the world itself is filled with a strong sense of history."[1] Baker also oversaw the development of the Player's Option series of second edition AD&D manuals, stating "I greatly enjoyed the work I did on the World Builder's Guidebook".[1]

Monte Cook is the most overrated game designer in the history of the hobby.  He is also a leftist SJW loon and so is Shanna Germain.  I generally ignore the garbage that spews forth from them.

Quote from: Melan;1104217Obviously, nobody actively pushing for these guidelines here and now believes him- or herself to promote totalitarian thought control.* Nevertheless, totalitarian methods and worldviews produce totalitarian results.

Most, even the vast majority of them, fit that profile.  That's where the phrase "useful idiots" applies.  There are exceptions, though.   Most of the people in any cultural revolution think that it won't be their proverbial necks on the line.  There is nothing special about RPGs that will play out any different in that respect.  If anything, the lower stakes (compared to everything else in life) makes the outcomes more predictable.

It's no coincidence that a BDSM-loving succubus wrote the consent guide for MCG. An adult life filled with weird, unnatural, deviant behaviour probably bit her on the ass (in a figurative and unwelcome sense) so she suddenly discovered that rules were required to deal with the creeps her perverse lifestyle attracted.

Quote from: S'mon;1104084(snip) Another edit: Looking at Wikipedia, frankly it's clear his design talents go far beyond RPGs. He seems to have produced most of the best D&D stuff over the past 30 years!

Agreed.

My last campaign was basically an expanded version of Reavers of Harkenwold and Search for the Diamond Staff so it's fair to say it owed a lot to Rich's work.

Note that he was arguably the only WotC designer who wrote decent 4E adventures from the get-go. Everyone else there failed - including Bruce Cordell who once had a reputation as an excellent adventure writer.

Quote from: Omega;1104139And then he co-designed the disaster of 4e D&D Gamma World. Id like to hope that he was not involved in the stupider segments. :o

I rather like GW7E/GWD&D4E - other than the collectible cards that were Slavicseked on to the design team.

Quote from: BronzeDragon;1104219Whichever bozo wrote that wikipedia entry left out Baker's most important contribution, creating and then writing the best D&D world ever, Birthright. (snip)

Birthright was genuinely innovative and interesting.

Quote from: S'mon;1104220No, it's missing from the Bibliography but the career section says

Baker and Colin McComb co-designed the Birthright campaign setting.[3]:29 The Birthright Campaign Setting boxed set won the 1995 Origins Award for Best New Role-Playing Supplement: "I'm very proud of it. It represents an entirely new approach to the traditional fantasy roleplaying campaign, and the world itself is filled with a strong sense of history."[1] Baker also oversaw the development of the Player's Option series of second edition AD&D manuals, stating "I greatly enjoyed the work I did on the World Builder's Guidebook".[1]

He was also the only WotC designer who could write decent fiction. His Forgotten Realms novels, especially the Last Mythal trilogy, were surprisingly good both as novels and as lore dumps for FR fans.

I didn't quite understand where the BDSM angle was coming from, but after looking up Shanna Germain's home page (http://www.shannagermain.com/) - hoo boy, now those are some red flags, and you don't even need to open the 'Erotica' section to find a bunch of them.

Explains a few things.

Quote from: Melan;1104386I didn't quite understand where the BDSM angle was coming from, but after looking up Shanna Germain's home page (http://www.shannagermain.com/) - hoo boy, now those are some red flags, and you don't even need to open the 'Erotica' section to find a bunch of them.

Explains a few things.

Yes, and Jezebel has found her Ahab.

The succubus has, so far, been declared the winner of that relationship.

Harlot, succubus, Jezebel? Did she harshly turn you down for a date or something?

Quote from: Bren;1104412Harlot, succubus, Jezebel? Did she harshly turn you down for a date or something?

Hehe... it might seem that way but, no.

I just find it interesting that the people lecturing others on how to live their lives are the same people who are making profoundly self-destructive life choices. And that, of course, is why going woke simply doesn't work.

Quote from: Scrivener of Doom;1104413I just find it interesting that the people lecturing others on how to live their lives are the same people who are making profoundly self-destructive life choices.

Yeah I've noticed that too, but lot's of people still buy into organized religions.

Quote from: Bren;1104415Yeah I've noticed that too, but lot's of people still buy into organized religions.

This guy gets it.

Fundamentalism is always bad, whether it be in the form of woke SJW's, Evangelical Neo-Puritans, or Islamist jihadists.

Fundamentalism and zealotry take many forms, and every one of these forms is extremely self-destructive and leads people down the path of misery and self-destruction.

Quote from: Bren;1104415Yeah I've noticed that too, but lot's of people still buy into organized religions.

Except organized religion held societies together for millennia and look how well ours is holding together without it.

One of the biggest problems with a lot of fantasy RPGs is they rip one of the central elements that built the medieval world out of it, replace it with a hodgepodge of extraplanar psychic vampires with super powers who can be killed and replaced by mortals at random intervals and then expect it to look just like Medieval Europe.

Quote from: Chris24601;1104424Except organized religion held societies together for millennia and look how well ours is holding together without it.

One of the biggest problems with a lot of fantasy RPGs is they rip one of the central elements that built the medieval world out of it, replace it with a hodgepodge of extraplanar psychic vampires with super powers who can be killed and replaced by mortals at random intervals and then expect it to look just like Medieval Europe.

Damn. There is NO fat in that post. Well done.

Quote from: Chris24601;1104424Except organized religion held societies together for millennia and look how well ours is holding together without it.

One of the biggest problems with a lot of fantasy RPGs is they rip one of the central elements that built the medieval world out of it, replace it with a hodgepodge of extraplanar psychic vampires with super powers who can be killed and replaced by mortals at random intervals and then expect it to look just like Medieval Europe.

   +1. And the crowning irony is that many of the folks who profit from this will turn around and complain about misrepresentation and cultural appropriation. :)

(There are numerous reasons why I look at Dragonlance through my Anti-Canon lenses nowadays, but this is among them.)

Quote from: GIMME SOME SUGAR;1104102Oh, my goodness! I got banned when trying to make my second post on this topic at rpg.net. I asked alittle about what romance, explicit was. I feel violated now. I was just about to add to my post with this when I got a message that I was banned:

I also thought of another thing. The list is kind of filled with potential spoilers. How do you work around that? Lie? "No, Billy, listen to me. Calm down. It's not that kind of horror game. I promise on my mother's grave that there will be no eyeballs in this scenario. Zero, zip, zilch, nada."

Spoiler

(https://jarviscity.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/friday-the-13th-part-3-eyeball-scene.jpg)

GOTCHA, BILLY!!! WHAT'S THE MATTER? SCARED?

To their credit, some of the posters over there seem to have taken this criticism seriously. Handing a malicious GM a list of your personal issues, is probably not a great idea.

Quote from: Chris24601;1104424Except organized religion held societies together for millennia and look how well ours is holding together without it.

One of the biggest problems with a lot of fantasy RPGs is they rip one of the central elements that built the medieval world out of it, replace it with a hodgepodge of extraplanar psychic vampires with super powers who can be killed and replaced by mortals at random intervals and then expect it to look just like Medieval Europe.

What if they can't be replaced by mortals and they WANT it to look just like medieval europe? Problematic?

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1104446To their credit, some of the posters over there seem to have taken this criticism seriously. Handing a malicious GM a list of your personal issues, is probably not a great idea.

Because God forbid the person has enough common sense to only game with a malicious GM once (and leaves the table when shit gets obviously uncomfortable).

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1104492What if they can't be replaced by mortals and they WANT it to look just like medieval europe? Problematic?

Psychic vampires are always problematic (and are still theoretically killable if you eliminate everyone who believes in them; ex. Mab in the 1998 Merlin miniseries).

A counter-question though is WHY would they want it to look like Medieval Europe? Why wouldn't the war god want gladiatorial games played in his honor? Why wouldn't the goddess of sexy times demand more public displays of sexiness and ritual prostitution? Why would the god of drunkenness and orgies not insist on drunkenness and orgies?

And why would creatures that feed off belief want ANY type of advancement that puts the focus of humanity on anything other than worship of them as the end all and be all of Creation? Only an utterly self-sufficient God would allow focus on anything else.

I think a lot of the post-Christian completely underestimates the degree to which the teachings of Jesus Christ (whether you believe he was the Son of God or not) has influenced what we even think of AS morality. Whose followers started the concept of hospitals? universities? the scientific method (no point in even bothering if you don't believe in a God that created a rational universe)? who copied and transcribed a lot of the ancient texts which are the only reason we even remember the likes of Greek, Roman, Celtic or Norse mythology or the works of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle?

The Post-Christian world is living on the inheritance of Christian civilization without really comprehending what the world looks like once it is forgotten as a common point of reference. Where you can't use intrinsic worth of a human life as justification for why the strong shouldn't just enslave the weak and why you aren't ground down into paste to feed all the other slaves the moment you cease to be productive for whomever holds the reigns of the power at the time.

Frankly, a far better portrait of what your standard D&D polytheistic society should look like is either Rome (if civilization is flourishing in your setting) or the post-Bronze Age collapse period (if its the Dark Ages in your world). Chattel slavery, women and children as property of the male head of household, gladiatorial games and human sacrifice, honor killings, state and religion as one and the same with rulers often worshiped as living gods. Christianity is almost entirely responsible for wiping those things out of what we consider a civilized society and a lot of people in the West don't even comprehend how unique those things are to Christianity and how little there is to support not going back to them without it.

@Chris - well, conveniently, in a typical D&D world the G-aligned deities (and most of the N ones) do adhere to Christian morality, and keep their followers on the straight & narrow. :)

Quote from: S'mon;1104518@Chris - well, conveniently, in a typical D&D world the G-aligned deities (and most of the N ones) do adhere to Christian morality, and keep their followers on the straight & narrow. :)

   That is a good point, but it can run into conflict with the 'gods depend on worship' and 'Balance is all-important' tropes that have been woven into most of the D&D cosmologies since late 1st Edition or so.

Quote from: S'mon;1104518@Chris - well, conveniently, in a typical D&D world the G-aligned deities (and most of the N ones) do adhere to Christian morality, and keep their followers on the straight & narrow. :)

But a big and notable difference is that they are just a few gods out of many. No unified set of belief for everyone.

The Greco/Roman pantheon had what could be termed G-aligned deities.

Yet Still:

Quote from: Chris24601;1104507Frankly, a far better portrait of what your standard D&D polytheistic society should look like is either Rome (if civilization is flourishing in your setting) or the post-Bronze Age collapse period (if its the Dark Ages in your world). Chattel slavery, women and children as property of the male head of household, gladiatorial games and human sacrifice, honor killings, state and religion as one and the same with rulers often worshiped as living gods. ....

But in all honesty, D&D doesn't even do pantheons right.

What it really boils down to is that some people seem to want Christian morality without the whole "Christian" part.

Very much like the SCA who like to pretend to live in "The Middle Ages as they ought to have been".

Quote from: Jaeger;1104523But in all honesty, D&D doesn't even do pantheons right.

  There are reasons I refer to D&D's religious structure as "Symbiotic Neutralist Monolatry/Henotheism." :)

If you do not agree with "Consent in Gaming", what are YOU gonna do?

Silent Dissent = Silent Agreement. Don't pretend otherwise.

With every purchase, we vote with our wallets. Each of our dollars is a vote.

If you give Monte Cook or WotC your money, you are voting FOR more bullshit like "Consent in Gaming".

Quote from: Koltar;1103736This is shit we don't need in RPGs.....

100% agree, but welcome to 2019 where our hobby is neck deep in this shit.

Quote from: Mor'du;1103794I guess the best way to deal with it is laugh 'em off and then ignore the flaming rage that will soon follow. It's like a toddler who wants something at the market and throws tantrums.

Sorry Mor'du, but "joke'm if they can't take a fuck" is pre-2016. Back then, I'd agree with you 100%. It's exactly what I used to say, but back then I never imagined Monte Cook would bow to psycho fringe assholes who represent 90% of online screeching and 1% of actual players.

Today, anyone who doesn't want to be ruled by raging toddlers needs to step up with more than a shrug and a chuckle.

Quote from: S'mon;1103802This seems likely to encourage Snowflake Escalation - in the Country of the Woke,  the Most Easily Triggered Is King.

Its high time for citizens of that country to learn how unwelcome they are in our hobby.

Time for EXCLUSION, not inclusion.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;1103837Nearly all of the vast social media posts make it clear that no dissent will be brooked on this topic

Which makes LOUD DISSENT even more important.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1103919Fuck, if WOTC has gone woke, the hobby is fucked.

The hobby as business? Yes. "Go woke, go broke" is coming for the hobby.

The hobby itself? No.

Conventions who impose restrictions on GMs will lose GM volunteers and then lose players who show up and can't play because there aren't enough GMs to accommodate the number of players. So "go woke, go broke" will hit them.

Cons which trust their GMs to deliver the fun will become known destinations for GMs and the players will follow.

But more importantly, the core of the hobby is friends around a table. As long as you can gather a handful of people who can leave their politics at the door, you can have a gaming group focused entirely on gaming.

Quote from: VincentTakeda;1103987My Cook of choice is Zeb.

Hell yeah!

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1104120Gonna call it: some troll GM is going to use the list to find out just where to strike.

Guilty as charged!!! :D

Quote from: Omega;1104197Except normal people wont oppose them because everyone treats these nutcases as if they were sane and their insane demands are reasonable and should be followed.

Most people are sheep. "If I stay quiet, the wolves won't eat me!"

Quote from: Omega;1104197Letting this stuff stand and fester is worse than stupid.

Everybody read that? Let's read that again. Omega nailed it.

"Letting this stuff stand and fester is worse than stupid."

Let's not become worse than stupid.

Our wallet is our weapon.

Quote from: Haffrung;1103818It's not politics, it's religion. Some people just need a place in their mind for piety, orthodoxy, and moral certitude. It's surely no coincidence that this credo has taken deepest root in the demographics that have turned away from traditional religion.

This was a hard lesson for me to learn, but its actually in the Bible. According to the tale, God rescues the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt and Moses settles them at the base of mountain while goes up for a chat with God. What do the Hebrews do the moment Moses is out of sight? They carve a golden calf and worship it with fuck dances. That's humanity. Our species needs "religion" and if we don't have a religion at the moment, we'll quickly make one...and quite often, a very fucked up "religion".

Quote from: Chris24601;1104424Except organized religion held societies together for millennia and look how well ours is holding together without it.

The track record of organized religion as a force force for good is mixed at best. The only groups that have killed more humans than organized religions are other groups who try to impose their irrational beliefs on other people while simultaneously making profoundly self-destructive life choices, .e.g. the various communist and fascist parties.

Quote from: Chris24601;1104424One of the biggest problems with a lot of fantasy RPGs is they rip one of the central elements that built the medieval world out of it, replace it with a hodgepodge of extraplanar psychic vampires with super powers who can be killed and replaced by mortals at random intervals and then expect it to look just like Medieval Europe.

I don't see it as a problem. A bit silly and kind of boring, but not a problem. It's not like creating a different setting that doesn't do that is all that difficult and there have long been other games that don't serve up warmed-over medieval European kitsch beneath a patchwork of disconnected deities.

That said, I don't see what this has to do with anything I've said in this thread or how it relates to the first half of your reply. :confused:

Quote from: jeff37923;1104494Because God forbid the person has enough common sense to only game with a malicious GM once (and leaves the table when shit gets obviously uncomfortable).

Of course not. It's not their personal responsibility to do so. It's everyone and anyone else fault that they remain seated.

Quote from: Jaeger;1104523What it really boils down to is that some people seem to want Christian morality without the whole "Christian" part.

At the very least, most people want a setting where their personal morality is viable. So for fantasy they want some Good aligned gods who agree with them. They typically want Christian/post-Christian morality to have a solid place in the setting, even if the Evil guys over there don't agree.

Even running Primeval Thule or Wilderlands, I frequently get players wanting to create Christianity-based moral norms within the setting, and looking around for any setting elements which support that.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1104541(snip) Time for EXCLUSION, not inclusion.

Agreed.

Tolerance is not a virtue.

Quote from: S'mon;1104565At the very least, most people want a setting where their personal morality is viable. So for fantasy they want some Good aligned gods who agree with them. They typically want Christian/post-Christian morality to have a solid place in the setting, even if the Evil guys over there don't agree.

Even running Primeval Thule or Wilderlands, I frequently get players wanting to create Christianity-based moral norms within the setting, and looking around for any setting elements which support that.

Oh, I do think upper class Romano-Greek moral norms in the 1st century BC were not THAT far from today's post-Christian moral norms in many respects; Rome 44 BC is a pretty playable/familiar setting in a way that say Athens 444 BC really is not - in some ways the 5th century BC Greeks are 'false friends' in that they often appear superficially familiar to us while really still being quite alien. But a few centuries of philosophical progress changed that, and laid the foundation for Hellenic Christianity.

Quote from: Chris24601;1104507Psychic vampires are always problematic (and are still theoretically killable if you eliminate everyone who believes in them; ex. Mab in the 1998 Merlin miniseries).

Agreed. It's why I took a playbook out of some classical drama instead - with the gods being ultimately incomprehensible in their transcendental nature, although they clearly enjoy toying with mortals. As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, and all that. It wouldn't work if even one actual dark god could be killed by the PCs or some non-divine NPCs - it would mean that there is reason for hope, when the point is in setting up a universe in which there is no hope, arguably even less than in Warhammer 40K. Same reason why mortals can't ascend to divine status.

Quote from: Chris24601;1104507A counter-question though is WHY would they want it to look like Medieval Europe?

Valid question. And one that ultimately won't be answered for the reasons alluded to above: it's not to be comprehended by anyone in that world nor any of us. I would add though as an author that from my point of view it's like that monkey that can type forever on a typewriter - sooner or later he will type in the Bible. And not just once but an infinite number of times. Maybe it's just now one of those medieval times before the mood of the gods changes for something else.

Quote from: Chris24601;1104507Why wouldn't the war god want gladiatorial games played in his honor? Why wouldn't the goddess of sexy times demand more public displays of sexiness and ritual prostitution? Why would the god of drunkenness and orgies not insist on drunkenness and orgies?

I don't think that goes counter to medieval europe. Remember that in the context of fantasy we're not talking medieval europe but mythical medieval europe (and even that just in broad strokes); and the myths of europe were in my estimation still influenced by the classical era.

Quote from: Chris24601;1104507And why would creatures that feed off belief want ANY type of advancement that puts the focus of humanity on anything other than worship of them as the end all and be all of Creation? Only an utterly self-sufficient God would allow focus on anything else.

Yeah, I think it does undermine the sense of divinity when they need to be worshipped for subsistence. Which is why I shifted from a need of worship to a need of entertainment for staving off ennui.

Quote from: Chris24601;1104507I think a lot of the post-Christian completely underestimates the degree to which the teachings of Jesus Christ (whether you believe he was the Son of God or not) has influenced what we even think of AS morality.

Yeah but then again you need to consider how alien you want to make your setting from what your players/readers are used to (https://awesomeliesblog.wordpress.com/2019/08/25/deja-vu/)? (Very insightful quotation by M. A.-R. Barker in that blogpost... and good reading anyway.)

Quote from: Chris24601;1104507who copied and transcribed a lot of the ancient texts

Only the ones deemed useful in spreading the faith. ;) Still way better than nothing though. But, yeah, you're preaching to the converted here. Let's not forget either that, starting during the high middle ages, the pope in Rome was the highest court of appeal - and good thing too, since Rome usually was not politically involved in local affairs and could function as an impartial arbiter. That's how the pope meant actual, tangible hope to a lot of people. A notion completely buried today.

Quote from: Chris24601;1104507Where you can't use intrinsic worth of a human life as justification for why the strong shouldn't just enslave the weak and why you aren't ground down into paste to feed all the other slaves the moment you cease to be productive for whomever holds the reigns of the power at the time.

I'd like to see what people gonna play like in a setting where there is no incentive to being good and there is no hope for being ultimately rewarded for being good. Will they try to be noble in a world of darkness? Will they go all-out depraved? Or will they just look out for their own? In a way an interesting social experiment to me. Pretty sure there will be a mix but will one approach be more common than the others?

Quote from: Chris24601;1104507Chattel slavery, women and children as property of the male head of household, gladiatorial games and human sacrifice, honor killings, state and religion as one and the same with rulers often worshiped as living gods.

Check on all of it and more, depending on locale.

It sounds like your system is your standard nihilistic fantasy dystopia, not something actually unique at all. In fact, quite depressingly common in the fantasy market at the moment because, while it generally sells like crap, it appeals to the elites who hand out literature awards.

In answer to your question...

"I'd like to see what people gonna play like in a setting where there is no incentive to being good and there is no hope for being ultimately rewarded for being good."

... the answer is most likely, "stop playing entirely after a few sessions because that style of play literally only appeals to about 5% of the general public."

In fact, I think if you were plain with your players that this is the concept you wanted to explore, most would ask to play something else instead. If I wanted to be depressed about the state of the world... how the powerful prey upon the weak and justice largely goes un-served and there's nothing I can really do about it... I could just turn on the evening news.

Its like the rank hideousness of Forgotten Realms' cosmology makes me only interested in it to the degree I can create a plane-travelling Lich to help ferry the hapless mortals in that Hell dimension out of the grips of the powers in charge of it because that is literally the only moral approach to its cosmology (along with recruiting whoever you can find from beyond that universe to come in to curb stomp and replace Ao... because some even Lovecraftian Old One as Supreme God couldn't devise a system any worse... even better if you can abuse the Epic Level rules to Pun Pun yourself into the thing that does it).

Good luck with your game and all, but realize going in that the audience for Nihilism is VERY VERY tiny and your sales will match the potential market size for the product.

Quote from: Chris24601;1104603In fact, quite depressingly common in the fantasy market at the moment because, while it generally sells like crap, it appeals to the elites who hand out literature awards.

The genre is called dark fantasy and Shadow of the Demon Lord, Shadows of Esteren and Symbaroum seem to be selling just fine. You can add WFRP to the mix. Another world that has been doomed from the outset and in fact we know that it gets leveled at some point in time, "thanks" to Age of Sigmar.

Quote from: Chris24601;1104603... the answer is most likely, "stop playing entirely after a few sessions because that style of play literally only appeals to about 5% of the general public."

I hope you won't mind if I don't take too much stock in your opinion here, especially in the light of our recent discussions in this forum about design vs development and idea vs implementation. So, in short: only one way to find out for sure.

Quote from: Chris24601;1104603In fact, I think if you were plain with your players that this is the concept you wanted to explore, most would ask to play something else instead. If I wanted to be depressed about the state of the world... how the powerful prey upon the weak and justice largely goes un-served and there's nothing I can really do about it... I could just turn on the evening news.

I take it that you don't like the cyberpunk genre either but cyberpunk RPGs have been sufficiently successful nonetheless. So, again, you may turn out to be correct here but I intend to put those predictions to the test.

Quote from: Chris24601;1104603Good luck with your game and all, but realize going in that the audience for Nihilism is VERY VERY tiny and your sales will match the potential market size for the product.

Okey-doke.

Depends on the flavor of Cyberpunk. There's a difference between dark and nihilistic and while much of cyberpunk is dark, nihilism (a story where the message is that life is pointless and without meaning) is a far rarer beast.

More commonly in Cyberpunk the setting is dark, but the protagonist manages to accomplish something for their struggles and have some in their lives. The bleakness of the setting serves either to make the victory sharper (victory is achieved despite all the setbacks) or temper it with the knowledge that this was a battle not the war.

Blade Runner isn't nihilistic, nor Robocop (though it borders on black satire), nor Altered Carbon, nor Alita... the list goes on. The system is often messed up but, no matter how remote the possibility, the idea that the protagonist can at least bring about some small change to it (if not bring it down entirely) is what keeps it from turning into nihilistic garbage.

I think a lot of Cyberpunk RPGs sometimes get lost in the notion of "status quo is God" in presenting a setting the PCs can't hope to change which is often counter to what the actual fiction it is derived from portrays, but ekes by on the personal survival and advancement of wealth and ability for the PCs.

Basically, Cyberpunk mostly exists as an oppressive system for protagonists to rail against, and in actual fiction, eventually overcome whatever obstacle is the real opponent of the particular story.

The same applies to dark fantasy. I think you're confusing dark for hopeless. Take the setting for New Adventures of Monkey (basically a variation on Journey to the West). It's a very dark setting. It opens with thd supposed last hope being murdered. The gods are either dead or in hiding, the demons rule over mankind and the only hope is a selfish jackass whom the gods locked away because he was potentially worse than the demons and after a 500 year timeout his powers are on the fritz. But it's not hopeless. The earnest protagonist is already starting to win Monkey over by the second episode.

The problem with the setting you describe is that the gods dick you with you for shits and giggles and there's nothing you can do about it. You're a pawn in a game played by others and can't even attempt to break free of it (vs. the extremely common trope of playing along until the opportunity to break free occurs and then the protagonist is able to take the fight to their tormentors). It's not a dark situation... it's a hopeless one. It's the difference between playing Russian Roulette with a revolver (dark) and an automatic (hopeless).

There's very little incentive to DO anything in such a setting. Don't stand out so the gods don't notice you and make your life even worse is the winning strategy in such a world. If the gods are gonna make your life miserable until you die, deprive them of their fun by making your death as boring and anticlimactic as possible.

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1104624The genre is called dark fantasy and Shadow of the Demon Lord, Shadows of Esteren and Symbaroum seem to be selling just fine. You can add WFRP to the mix. Another world that has been doomed from the outset and in fact we know that it gets leveled at some point in time, "thanks" to Age of Sigmar.



I hope you won't mind if I don't take too much stock in your opinion here, especially in the light of our recent discussions in this forum about design vs development and idea vs implementation. So, in short: only one way to find out for sure.
.

Grimdark fantasy is an underserved genre in the rpg market, considering it's popularity as a literary genre.

And most of that which does exists eg Shadow of a Demon Lord, Symbaroum, hews a lot closer to D&D tropes then the current trends in fantasy literature.

Quote from: TJS;1104749Grimdark fantasy is an underserved genre in the rpg market, considering it's popularity as a literary genre.

And most of that which does exists eg Shadow of a Demon Lord, Symbaroum, hews a lot closer to D&D tropes then the current trends in fantasy literature.

Agreed. The works of hugely popular authors like Joe Abercrombie, Steven Erikson, and Mark Lawrence don't seem to have had any sort of impact on tabletop RPGs. Heck, I'd suggest steampunk has a bigger influence on fantasy RPGs today than grimdark. Not sure why that's the case, but it's odd.

Quote from: Haffrung;1104762Heck, I'd suggest steampunk has a bigger influence on fantasy RPGs today than grimdark. Not sure why that's the case, but it's odd.

World of Warcraft has a good bit of steampunk in it... as did the later wargame versions of Warhammer... lots of steampunk in Harry Potter as well.

Steampunk is something that mostly works in visual media.

Rpgs are not a visual media.

But rpg books are.

Quote from: Chris24601;1104661Basically, Cyberpunk mostly exists as an oppressive system for protagonists to rail against, and in actual fiction, eventually overcome whatever obstacle is the real opponent of the particular story.

This is all good and fine but I fail to see the difference between this and Knights of the Black Lily. Particularly since I mentioned before that one pathway for the players is to try to be noble and valiant in the face of hopelessness. You can try to overthrow a local tyrant (although they kinda all are). You can try to save the peasant's daughter. There's no difference in that regard.

But, by canon, you're not going to lead the continent to democracy nor will you overturn the dark gods or some such. No more than you're going to save the Imperium of Man in Dark Heresy from the Chaos Gods. No more than you're going to end the reign of megacorps in Shadowrun. (I mean even if you could, you would end the setting as-is, so it would be self-defeating.)

Quote from: Chris24601;1104661There's very little incentive to DO anything in such a setting. Don't stand out so the gods don't notice you and make your life even worse is the winning strategy in such a world. If the gods are gonna make your life miserable until you die, deprive them of their fun by making your death as boring and anticlimactic as possible.

I am adapting Mike Pondsmith here for Knights of the Black Lily; this quote encapsulates it just perfect.
https://imgur.com/gallery/VJ0RpHr (https://imgur.com/gallery/VJ0RpHr)

As for your winning strategy: if only it was that easy. It's the strategy that fearful peasants pursue - and it works for them, to differing degrees. The eyes of the gods, our players, however, don't enjoy that (dubious) luxury.

Quote from: Scrivener of Doom;1104573Agreed.

Tolerance is not a virtue.

Tolerance is a virtue. I don't think the right reaction to this is to embrace intolerance. Any virtue can be taken to an extreme. I think the PDF is advancing ideas that are not very workable for most people, and counter productive for many, in the name of laudable ideals. But don't trip yourself and attack good ideals just because they are being mishandled by people.

Exactly. The whole point of eudaimonia is the competition of virtues to achieve excellence in the individual. You don't hang everything on a single virtue alone - you have to use them with reason to prioritize them for your life circumstances to become better as a person. Spread that out across your community as individuals and your civilization flourishes... with Most Excellent People /guitar riff.

When you focus on one virtue pathologically - you inherently create imbalance because circumstances of reality are not monolithic.

It probably doesn't help that being a collectivist inherently dehumanizes people.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1104839Tolerance is a virtue. I don't think the right reaction to this is to embrace intolerance. Any virtue can be taken to an extreme. I think the PDF is advancing ideas that are not very workable for most people, and counter productive for many, in the name of laudable ideals. But don't trip yourself and attack good ideals just because they are being mishandled by people.

The problem is intolerance works. If you're intolerant, and your opposition is tolerant, they will tolerate your ideas, and you will not tolerate theirs. It's the prisoner's dilemma on crack.

Quote from: tenbones;1104844Exactly. The whole point of eudaimonia is the competition of virtues to achieve excellence in the individual. You don't hang everything on a single virtue alone - you have to use them with reason to prioritize them for your life circumstances to become better as a person. Spread that out across your community as individuals and your civilization flourishes... with Most Excellent People /guitar riff.

When you focus on one virtue pathologically - you inherently create imbalance because circumstances of reality are not monolithic.

It probably doesn't help that being a collectivist inherently dehumanizes people.

It's almost like no one has ever read Aristotle...

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1104855The problem is intolerance works. If you're intolerant, and your opposition is tolerant, they will tolerate your ideas, and you will not tolerate theirs. It's the prisoner's dilemma on crack.

LOL. This reminds me of that terrible bit (one of many) in the Last Jedi:

Spoiler

Rose: "That's how we're gonna win. Not fighting what we hate, saving what we love."

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1104855The problem is intolerance works. If you're intolerant, and your opposition is tolerant, they will tolerate your ideas, and you will not tolerate theirs. It's the prisoner's dilemma on crack.

Well, that and "tolerance" is merely a secondary virtue.  It's valuable because the primary virtues of justice and mercy are often in conflict where ideals hit reality, and tolerance lets people acknowledge that while not going ballistic.  As soon as you make tolerance more important than the other two, you start coining ideas like "social justice" to explain the inversion, and pretty soon you are doing stupid stuff like being complete unjust and unmerciful to people that play games differently than you do.

Quote from: Antiquation!;1104860LOL. This reminds me of that terrible bit (one of many) in the Last Jedi:

Spoiler

Rose: "That's how we're gonna win. Not fighting what we hate, saving what we love."

  The confusion of this bit is compounded by the fact that we'd just seen a similar attempt work in the last act. Apparently it was meant to be more clearly futile or pointless than it came across on screen ...

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1104867The confusion of this bit is compounded by the fact that we'd just seen a similar attempt work in the last act. Apparently it was meant to be more clearly futile or pointless than it came across on screen ...

Yeah, it was a bit of a mess. It makes slightly more sense if you look at it with the perspective that Finn is a PC and Rose is the GM's deus ex machina to keep him alive, already knowing the outcome of the battle. Ridiculous rationalization, but there you have it... I digress. :o

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1104855The problem is intolerance works. If you're intolerant, and your opposition is tolerant, they will tolerate your ideas, and you will not tolerate theirs. It's the prisoner's dilemma on crack.

Tolerance can still have limits though. I mean, a person can be tolerant of a person who disagrees with them about politics living next store, but draw the line at the person knocking on their door at night shouting political slogans. Tolerance doesn't mean you have to meekly allow people to walk over you. Nor does it mean you don't get to debate other people ideas. It just means you tolerate people being different from you. Again, any virtue taken to an extreme, isn't a good thing. Doesn't make intolerance a good thing.

Quote from: Brad;1104859It's almost like no one has ever read Aristotle...

In their defense, the Nichomachaen Ethics isn't exactly a scintillating read. I had to read that thing like three times just to understand it. And even then, I am sure I've forgotten most of it.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1104855The problem is intolerance works. If you're intolerant, and your opposition is tolerant, they will tolerate your ideas, and you will not tolerate theirs. It's the prisoner's dilemma on crack.

Depending on one's definition of "tolerance", I don't think this is true. If "tolerance" means letting someone physically beat you up and take your stuff, then obviously that's unworkable. But if "tolerance" means allowing someone else to preach intolerance, then this isn't necessarily true. If they preach intolerance, it can still be workable to ignore them and instead just preach your own message -- rather than preaching intolerance of them.

So, for example, I go to a Unitarian Universalist church. We're very big on tolerance. Suppose a new fundamentalist church opens in town and they start preaching that UU are evil and shouldn't be tolerated. It's still possible for us to tolerate them - in the sense that we don't say anything bad about them, and just continue to exist and keep doing our community and outreach work. We don't have to preach that fundamentalism should be banned. We would be countering their message not by being intolerant of them, but by showing who we are, and how our approach of tolerance is better.

Is this the best approach? I can't prove it, but it's not impossible.

Quote from: jhkim;1104907Depending on one's definition of "tolerance", I don't think this is true. If "tolerance" means letting someone physically beat you up and take your stuff, then obviously that's unworkable. But if "tolerance" means allowing someone else to preach intolerance, then this isn't necessarily true. If they preach intolerance, it can still be workable to ignore them and instead just preach your own message -- rather than preaching intolerance of them.

So, for example, I go to a Unitarian Universalist church. We're very big on tolerance. Suppose a new fundamentalist church opens in town and they start preaching that UU are evil and shouldn't be tolerated. It's still possible for us to tolerate them - in the sense that we don't say anything bad about them, and just continue to exist and keep doing our community and outreach work. We don't have to preach that fundamentalism should be banned. We would be countering their message not by being intolerant of them, but by showing who we are, and how our approach of tolerance is better.

Is this the best approach? I can't prove it, but it's not impossible.

Do you actually do that? or do you just talk about it?

Quote from: Brad;1104859It's almost like no one has ever read Aristotle...

No kidding.

Our school system these days...

Quote from: tenbones;1104929No kidding.

Our school system these days...

The line is 'What do they teach them at these schools?' :)

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1104930The line is 'What do they teach them at these schools?' :)

heh I was being rhetorical. My last kid just went into college. I handled all the classical education part of their "education" which did little more than teach them to take tests.

The standards of the public education system is abyssmal.

Quote from: jhkimSo, for example, I go to a Unitarian Universalist church. We're very big on tolerance. Suppose a new fundamentalist church opens in town and they start preaching that UU are evil and shouldn't be tolerated. It's still possible for us to tolerate them - in the sense that we don't say anything bad about them, and just continue to exist and keep doing our community and outreach work. We don't have to preach that fundamentalism should be banned. We would be countering their message not by being intolerant of them, but by showing who we are, and how our approach of tolerance is better.

Quote from: tenbones;1104928Do you actually do that? or do you just talk about it?

I'm not sure I understand the question. The fundamentalist church is hypothetical, but yes, I go to a Unitarian Universalist church, and yes, we have community and outreach work. I volunteer at a food distribution once a month, and we collect funds for various causes.

Quote from: tenbones;1104931heh I was being rhetorical. My last kid just went into college. I handled all the classical education part of their "education" which did little more than teach them to take tests.

The standards of the public education system is abyssmal.

Feature, not bug. The goal is "compliant and complacent workers", not "trained thinkers and leaders".

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1104897In their defense, the Nichomachaen Ethics isn't exactly a scintillating read. .

Yeah - I'm very interested in his ideas - the Golden Mean, two vices for every virtue, et al. But my lazy 21st century Internet-addled brain has never been able to get far into the Nichomachaen Ethics.

Quote from: S'mon;1104956Yeah - I'm very interested in his ideas - the Golden Mean, two vices for every virtue, et al. But my lazy 21st century Internet-addled brain has never been able to get far into the Nichomachaen Ethics.

I remember getting a few different translations till I found one that was engaging and going with that one. Also it is a book that often required reading sections over again in order to get them (at least for me). But I will say I did find it very rewarding once I got into it.

Quote from: S'mon;1104956Yeah - I'm very interested in his ideas - the Golden Mean, two vices for every virtue, et al. But my lazy 21st century Internet-addled brain has never been able to get far into the Nichomachaen Ethics.

   There are some good introductions to Aristotelian thought out there; Mortimer Adler might be a good place to start. Once you get a handful on the core concepts and terms, the actual texts may be less difficult.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1104855The problem is intolerance works. If you're intolerant, and your opposition is tolerant, they will tolerate your ideas, and you will not tolerate theirs. It's the prisoner's dilemma on crack.

There is no question that intolerance works excellently.  

The gaming community spent decades being incredibly open and accepting, far beyond simply tolerant. Our reward? Invasion by the intolerant who demand absolute obedience to their increasingly insane credos. SJWs attack the RPG community because intolerant communities aren't susceptible to their bullshit.

Our communities' "virtue" of tolerance has proven to be our key weakness. Sanity in our community, or the larger culture, will never be restored with more tolerance. That's what got us here in the first place. The solution is healthy dose of intolerance directed at the SJWs and companies who promote their ideologies.

And yes, we must be aware enough to not allow the pendulum to swing to the other extreme. The far end of either side is drenched in dumb.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1104995I remember getting a few different translations till I found one that was engaging and going with that one. Also it is a book that often required reading sections over again in order to get them (at least for me). But I will say I did find it very rewarding once I got into it.

Can you recommend the specific translation you liked?

Quote from: Chris24601;1104424One of the biggest problems with a lot of fantasy RPGs is they rip one of the central elements that built the medieval world out of it, replace it with a hodgepodge of extraplanar psychic vampires with super powers who can be killed and replaced by mortals at random intervals and then expect it to look just like Medieval Europe.

Sounds like you need Lion & Dragon!

Quote from: RPGPundit;1105051Sounds like you need Lion & Dragon!

God, no!

The system I'm writing (and have been running and playing in campaigns with for a couple years now) embraces crazy in the vein of Thundarr the Barbarian in the post-apocalypse of a magitech utopia. Where the bastions of humanity are the well fortified ruins of the lost civilization (because being someplace as undefended as a peasant village at night is suicide).

Where the central tower of Castle Blackspire is the bottom 25 floors of a burnt-out skyscraper where steam-powered airships dock at its peak as warriors on wyvern-back circle. Where the 100' ruin of a burned out dreadnought golem resting on a pedastal in the harbor serves as warning to those who would seek to take on the Free Cities.

Where minotaurs, centaurs and wolfen of the nearby Beast Plains come to trade with the dwarven arcane cyborgs from The Deep and the eldritch-blooded Toria barbarians from along the Hydra River. Where trolls and crocodin and malfeans work the docks as elven refugees from the tyrannical theocracy of El-Phara disembark from ships in search of a new life. Where deformed troglodytes, skittering kobolds and even bands of mischievous sprites live in the cracks between the common folk and even the occasional giant, talking lion or even a dragon might be found buying or selling in the common market (and all of the above a playable).

Where beyond this dot of civilization lies endless miles of monster-haunted wilderness laden with ruins and treasures and lost knowledge of the past age. Treasures and knowledge that might make the difference between civilization's survival or extinction. Brave adventurers are needed to brave the wilds, slay the forces of darkness and bring those lost things back to keep the lights of civilization burning.

There's a monotheistic religion (The elemental themed Old Faith that worships The Source who intercedes through His primal spirits) in the setting that belongs to the barbarians and persecuted outcasts. The dominant religions are the properly polytheistic Via Praetorum (based on Roman religion as practiced during the Empire), Bestianism (the ancestor of the Via Praetorum introduced by the Beastmen after Man's defeat and still held to by the Beastmen) and the newcomer Astral Court (the rigid caste-based religion of the elves led by their God-Kings; literal embodiments of their gods on Earth). No one's sure who's right (it could even be the Arcanists who claim the gods are just ascended wizards working through the Arcane Web to control reality).

So, no, an all-human low-magic OSR-based setting holds zero appeal for me and mine.

Give me my world where the sorceress quarter-elven daughter of Blackspire's First Warden, her human bodyguard, a minotaur warrior-priest, a centaur knight, a werewolf, deep dragon and pair of plucky gnomish tricksters can have their adventures together fighting sky pirates from an air ship en route to a ruin in the heart of the Dreadmire.

Quote from: S'mon;1105050Can you recommend the specific translation you liked?

This was back in 2005, so I don't remember the name of the translation. I do remember there being purple on the cover. I can dig around and see if I still have it. There might be a better translation though that has been put out since then.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1105051Sounds like you need Lion & Dragon!

AND/OR - more RPG's need the internal consistency of Lion & Dragon as a core design standard.

Quote from: tenbones;1105086AND/OR - more RPG's need the internal consistency of Lion & Dragon as a core design standard.

Yup. Starting from first principles and not designing by committee helps a lot. A lot of the hodgepodge of D&D in general is likely simply due to all the piecemeal additions of multiple chefs in the same kitchen preparing the same meal (and the tendency to treat every unique creature and every possible word for a creature type as a separate species) and insisting on it all being one meal instead of multiple worlds where only a few particular elements were present.

Still, the notion of the fantasy kitchen sink is established enough that the obvious plot holes are known so if you're going to do it, you can at least put in the effort to try and fill those in.

My entire setting started from the premise that humans are the only native sapient species in the world so quite a bit of the mytho-history conveys how all the other species came to be (it also presumes that this is not a static situation... the influx of non-human species all occurred within the timespan of our own recorded history and if you advanced the timeline you'd see many of them go extinct as they fail to compete for resources with other species... essentially, the multitude of species available is because of the particular snapshot in time chosen for the setting)

The other premise in the design was what I call the "heliocentric planar model" (as contrasted with the Great Wheel or World Axis) that explains the origin of extraplanar beings and powers behind the religions of the setting with an eye towards there being an underlying truth behind all the competing myths and legends and religions of the Mortal World (ex. there is a planar element called The Source, a region of infinite power at the center of the cosmos from which all creation sprung and where souls are born and return to in death. The Old Faith says that The Source is the one true God who created the Cosmos out of love and that souls return to Him in death to live forever in paradise. The Via Praetorum says that The Source is merely a font of power with no mind or will behind it and that souls which return to it are broken down/destroyed by it and so only by worshipping the gods and earning a place in their astral realms can you avoid this fate... same cosmological feature, but very different interpretations of what it is).

The point though is that I've only got such a consistent setting because I don't have decades of multiple cooks adding contradictory details to it. The first bits of D&D growing out of Medieval war gaming were had a lot more internal consistency simply because piles of stuff hadn't been added yet and that which was added largely only applied on a table-to-table basis.

Throwing in just the LotR elements on top of generic medieval warfare wasn't a problem because Tolkein was an excellent world-builder and the Christian ideals of his setting meld well with notions of Arthurian chivalry, Beowulf, Robin Hood and similar British myths and legends.

Similarly, throwing in JUST the Norse or just the Greco-Roman myths and legends onto the rules and you could shift the setting elements to match those myths and legends without references to Christianity (the original cleric concept kept the notion of following a specific God or gods vague) and it still runs fine.

It's when you start having to combine all the elements of Tolkein, Norse, Celtic, Greco-Roman and Middle Eastern mythology into the same setting with an idea that it must still somehow end up looking like Medieval Europe c. AD 1100 that it breaks down into something with very little internal consistency.

Lion & Dragon works for what it is because it has one cook with one specific vision behind it. My setting works for similar reasons (though I suspect quite a bit more work went into getting logical conclusions in my setting to work because one of the design parameters was actually that it had to be a fantasy kitchen sink rather than simply adhering simply to a "medieval authentic" ethos).

You sound like you're definitely on the right track!!!

I'm working on something KINDA similar... more sci-than-fantasy. But you're spot on in terms of the creative process. It's not that you can't have others chiming in - it means that someone has to be the stern hand on the rudder and knows which star in the sky this ship is sailing towards.

As an aside I look forward to hearing more about your project!

Quote from: RandyB;1104948Feature, not bug. The goal is "compliant and complacent workers", not "trained thinkers and leaders".

Sith Judo Throw!

Quote from: RandyB;1104948Feature, not bug. The goal is "compliant and complacent workers", not "trained thinkers and leaders".

As a former special education teacher, I can absolutely confirm THIS is the goal of the US education system.

Complaint and complacent as workers / consumers / voters. And it works baby!  Hey look everybody, a new fried chicken sandwich! We can eat that while we make believe the corporate owned government can solve all our problems!

When I see nonsense like Monte Cook's bullshit being gobbled down by clowns, I see the tendrils of idiocy laid down in US schools with its lack of real critical thinking, never being exposed opposing opinions nor challenges to popular dogmas, and a laughable disconnect between the ivory tower curriculum and the student's real world experience.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1105213As a former special education teacher, I can absolutely confirm THIS is the goal of the US education system.

Complaint and complacent as workers / consumers / voters. And it works baby!  Hey look everybody, a new fried chicken sandwich! We can eat that while we make believe the corporate owned government can solve all our problems!

When I see nonsense like Monte Cook's bullshit being gobbled down by clowns, I see the tendrils of idiocy laid down in US schools with its lack of real critical thinking, never being exposed opposing opinions nor challenges to popular dogmas, and a laughable disconnect between the ivory tower curriculum and the student's real world experience.

This is the goal of ALL western education systems, and this includes all of Latin America and big chunks of Asia too. (Not so sure about the African ones)

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1105230This is the goal of ALL western education systems, and this includes all of Latin America and big chunks of Asia too. (Not so sure about the African ones)

IME former British Empire African countries have education systems which still emphasise the imparting of knowledge, as well as the socialisation/obedience training you get in all mass education systems. So my African students tend to come in better educated than those from most other parts of the world - Germans are good too though, but for different reasons I think.

Quote from: S'mon;1105266So my African students tend to come in better educated than those from most other parts of the world

This was my experience at UCLA. The African students (both male and female) were better prepared that most US natives, both for the university academics and being an independent adult in college. Equal to them were the students from Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Quote from: S'mon;1105266Germans are good too though, but for different reasons I think.

I blame Hitler! :)

Quote from: Spinachcat;1105276This was my experience at UCLA. The African students (both male and female) were better prepared that most US natives, both for the university academics and being an independent adult in college.

Yep. It's quite striking. I value a 2.1 (ie good quality) degree from eg Nigeria or Ghana above its equivalent from almost anywhere else in the world. African students from blue collar and lower middle class backgrounds seem to be better educated than the elites from most of the world. I think you're right they tend to have a more mature attitude too (though I used to be surprised by the universal belief in witchcraft/magic - I'm used to that now.)

Quote from: jhkim;1104907So, for example, I go to a Unitarian Universalist church. We're very big on tolerance. Suppose a new fundamentalist church opens in town and they start preaching that UU are evil and shouldn't be tolerated. It's still possible for us to tolerate them - in the sense that we don't say anything bad about them, and just continue to exist and keep doing our community and outreach work. We don't have to preach that fundamentalism should be banned. We would be countering their message not by being intolerant of them, but by showing who we are, and how our approach of tolerance is better.

Do Unitarian's Universalist's still use porn for sex education?

Quote from: Gagarth;1105300Do Unitarian's Universalist's still use porn for sex education?

I'm an agnostic and not real fond of jhkim's common argument tactics, but you can fuck right off with that statement.

Quote from: Snowman0147;1103739Can we all agree to not drag in real life politics into gaming at all?  Can't we just do that?  I guess not thanks to the SJWs.

A SJW would tell you that everything IS political. Which, in my mind means nothing is political, then.

Quote from: tenbones;1105086AND/OR - more RPG's need the internal consistency of Lion & Dragon as a core design standard.

Exactly.

Quote from: jeff37923;1105324I'm an agnostic and not real fond of jhkim's common argument tactics, but you can fuck right off with that statement.

 The reason I ask this is because  I was told this by someone who who's family where members of a Unitarian Universalist church when he was a child and he experienced it. Also he was thoroughly brainwashed with SJW ideology as Jhkim obliviously has been.  So wind your fucking neck in.

Quote from: Gagarth;1105421The reason I ask this is because  I was told this by someone who who's family where members of a Unitarian Universalist church when he was a child and he experienced it. Also he was thoroughly brainwashed with SJW ideology as Jhkim obliviously has been.  So wind your fucking neck in.

Been here a long time and been in many discussions where Jhkim was involved. He isn't an SJW.

Quote from: Gagarth;1105421The reason I ask this is because  I was told this by someone who who's family where members of a Unitarian Universalist church when he was a child and he experienced it. Also he was thoroughly brainwashed with SJW ideology as Jhkim obliviously has been.  So wind your fucking neck in.

I'm sorry that you are feeling butthurt for getting called on your bullshit there, cupcake.

I'm not fond of JHkim debating tactics either. While I disagree with BRB about him being an SJW, what the fuck does his religion have to do with the discussion at hand. I could care less and that just smacks of desperation of not being able to find the right thing to say.

Quote from: jeff37923;1105442I'm sorry that you are feeling butthurt for getting called on your bullshit there, cupcake.

Seconded.

Quote from: jeff37923;1105442I'm sorry that you are feeling butthurt for getting called on your bullshit there, cupcake.

You are the one that made the butthurt outburst.

Quote from: sureshot;1105445I'm not fond of JHkim debating tactics either. While I disagree with BRB about him being an SJW, what the fuck does his religion have to do with the discussion at hand. I could care less and that just smacks of desperation of not being able to find the right thing to say.
Seconded.

When his religion is a leftist cult a hell of a lot.

Quote from: Gagarth;1105565When his religion is a leftist cult a hell of a lot.

I am not unitarian, but I've been to a few unitarian services and have known unitarians. For the most part they just seem like liberal Christians who are actually pretty mild as people go. But they also seem to vary a lot from church to church. I wouldn't describe them as cult-like. Being more accustomed to Catholic and High Episcopal services, they seemed a lot less invested in ritual and not particularly dogmatic. If peoples' religion is causing them to go out in the world and do good works (which seems to be the case with Jkhm) I'd say it is more of a positive force than a negative one.

Quote from: sureshot;1105445I'm not fond of JHkim debating tactics either. While I disagree with BRB about him being an SJW

Seconded.

I think if you think he is an SJW, you need to visit other communities more. Liberal and/or progressive does not equal SJW.

Now I'm left wanting an answer to Gagarth's question. Do those progressive unitarian protestants show porn as part of sex ed?

(http://tvquotes.co/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/South-Park-I-have-no-idea-whats-going-on-right-now-meme-300x300.jpg)

Quote from: Gagarth;1105565When his religion is a leftist cult a hell of a lot.

Besides you no one really gives a huge flying fuck.

I don't like his some of his opinions and he and I will not agree on many subjects. I'm not going to go to trash the guy because of his religion. When it comes to most religions I let bygones be bygones.

Quote from: Chris24601;1104507Psychic vampires are always problematic (and are still theoretically killable if you eliminate everyone who believes in them; ex. Mab in the 1998 Merlin miniseries).

A counter-question though is WHY would they want it to look like Medieval Europe? Why wouldn't the war god want gladiatorial games played in his honor? Why wouldn't the goddess of sexy times demand more public displays of sexiness and ritual prostitution? Why would the god of drunkenness and orgies not insist on drunkenness and orgies?

And why would creatures that feed off belief want ANY type of advancement that puts the focus of humanity on anything other than worship of them as the end all and be all of Creation? Only an utterly self-sufficient God would allow focus on anything else.

I don't much care for the idea that RPG gods depend on belief to power themselves; as you note, they would then be primarily motivated to get more followers, so more likely to grant you that miracle if there's a big audience of potential converts, and I don't know of any game with a mechanic like that. (Maybe conversely mages would get better results in secret.) It is sufficient that gods are constrained from direct action and act through mortals while encouraging whatever agenda they have (or they'd sort things out themselves rather than depending on adventurers).

A game world could have 0, 1, 2 or many gods (once you're above two, there's not much difference in exactly how many).

The one god could be completely uninvolved (and therefore hard to distinguish from having no gods), very benevolent or very malevolent - these correspond to the Impartial GM, the Monty Haul GM and the Killer GM, with the latter two being games to avoid, although they could be toned down as a god who plays according to some rules or self-imposed limits (the more active the god(s), the more limited they have to be, however you justify it, for the RPG to be playable).

The two gods would be good guys vs bad guys or Law vs Chaos or, without judging, our side vs their side.

But in either case there isn't much for the player characters to do by way of appealing to the one or two gods; the pantheon of more than two opens up a wealth of factions and intrigues, where player characters could potentially seek different patrons among the gods, and it can justify rules for game balance (e.g., the other gods mandated that mages can't wear armor or use swords because the followers of the god of magic would have too great an advantage).

Lawrence Watt-Evans' Denner's Wreck has a pantheon of [STRIKE]gods[/STRIKE]humans with advanced technology living on a planet of primitive humans who view them as gods. Long time since I read it, but the "gods" dealt with the colony in a variety of ways.

QuoteI think a lot of the post-Christian completely underestimates the degree to which the teachings of Jesus Christ (whether you believe he was the Son of God or not) has influenced what we even think of AS morality. Whose followers started the concept of hospitals? universities? the scientific method (no point in even bothering if you don't believe in a God that created a rational universe)? who copied and transcribed a lot of the ancient texts which are the only reason we even remember the likes of Greek, Roman, Celtic or Norse mythology or the works of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle?

Pre-Christian hospitals in ancient Greece, India, Sri Lanka and Rome, according to Wikipedia. The Academia from ancient Greece. Pew Research Center says less than half of scientists believe in God; while many scientists have been motivated by their religious faith, religion has often been at odds with science. Preserving Greek works seems based in the idea that the Greeks perfected non-religious knowledge while the Bible answered all religious questions, and woe to those who questioned either (we have three discoverers of non-Euclidean geometry because even in the 19th century Gauss didn't want to risk controversy by questioning Euclid).

QuoteChattel slavery, women and children as property of the male head of household, gladiatorial games and human sacrifice, honor killings, state and religion as one and the same with rulers often worshiped as living gods.

Lots of Christians were or are fine with most of those things.

Quote from: rawma;1105869Lots of Christians were or are fine with most of those things.

None of the once Christian states practices any of these things now unlike a number of Islamic states (and a large number of those who have migrated from those states) but we are not supposed to talk about that.

Get back on topic, or suffer my wrath.

Quote from: Gagarth;1105912None of the once Christian states practices any of these things now unlike a number of Islamic states (and a large number of those who have migrated from those states) but we are not supposed to talk about that.

Fallacy of relative privation (and some cherry picking or false equivalence or no true Scotsman).

Not interested in defending Islam, but in the "Islamic Golden Age" a thousand years ago it was maybe better than both Christian Europe of the time (including on some measures listed by the previous poster) and present day Islam. But (back on topic for the forum, if not the original thread) as soon as you put into your RPG/module that kind of judgement on anything in the real world you risk somebody getting all worked up about it -- arguing you depicted it as worse or better than the critic would like. Unless your game is about that kind of controversy, I think it better to avoid hot-button things like real world religion or current politics. (I haven't waded into that thread on the Deadlands with nearly 300 replies but it'd be unsurprising if that's what's happening there.)

So, a monotheistic religion in a game world is going to be taken by some people as a thinly veiled analogue of one of the major real world monotheistic religions and get them irate, so I see it as another reason a pantheon is better. Again, unless your objective is to get people irate.

In one of my old Rolemaster campaigns a human empire had realized that the gods needed energy from worship so they started working on monotheism and weaponized gods.  One of the artifacts in the campaign is a goad that can be used to force gods to obey.  Anyhow, the Empire of the Divinity of Man died out when the fertility goddess fought back by going into hiding and no children were born for 20 years.  Well, there was one but that's another story.

No they're not.

Quote from: Razor 007;1103744All this Woke thinking keeps springing forth from members of the old D & D design teams.  There must have been something in the water at WOTC?

Wouldn't surprise me: Part 1 (https://www.salon.com/2001/03/23/wizards/) | Part 2 (https://www.salon.com/2001/03/26/wizards_part2/)

Quote from: S'mon;1103791I also noticed that the quotes from another source ("Your Best Game Ever") seemed considerably more extreme than most of the regular content.

Not sure about more extreme, but certainly more toxic as it suggests you shouldn't play with people whose beliefs you disagree with.

Quote from: cranebump;1103923So, is the problem that Monte Cook is forcing anyone to play his game? Or is this another, "Grrr, those people exist!" thing?...let me guess...

The problem are the people who will thoughtlessly demand these policies be adopted by everyone and declare others toxic for not doing so.

Also the opposite.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1104144What is going to be the end result of this?

Well it's already being used as a tool to gatekeep rather than establish consent.

Quote from: Melan;1104217Browbeating, shaming and guilt-tripping people is a tried-and-true method of exercising control. Making them stay in line through the implied threat of social ostracism and mob violence - losing their support network in one swoop - is "outsourcing" the same control mechanism to a faceless, hysterical and ultimately unaccountable crowd. It results in a stifling environment that feels suffocating. And it does suffocate people, spiritually and eventually physically. People who believe they are guilty, or would be found guilty if they were singled out don't speak up and don't stick their necks out for other people. They obey and stay silent. They don't fight. When someone is targeted, they stay quiet like a mouse, secretly glad it is not them. When they get targeted, they are easily broken.

Accurate.

Quote from: BronzeDragon;1104219Things have been deteriorating, not getting better. I was a teacher in a big ESL school from 2007 to 2014. In my time there, me and 3 other guys were the only straight men out of a group of about 30. Several of the women were lesbian as well. Prime human material for SJWdom, right? But in all that time, only one of the women was an in-your-face feminazi, and only two of the gay guys were sorta into the SJW stuff.

Since I left, a friend of mine that continued working there tells me the situation has radically changed. He can't even talk to people anymore, since they have essentially all turned into mega-SJWs that don't tolerate even a whisper of a different opinion. He has decided to ignore everyone, since they all either ignore him or decry him as the worst of the worst. This doesn't look like improvement to me.

Imagine being a child forced to participate in such a system.

Quote from: Scrivener of Doom;1104383It's no coincidence that a BDSM-loving succubus wrote the consent guide for MCG. An adult life filled with weird, unnatural, deviant behaviour probably bit her on the ass (in a figurative and unwelcome sense) so she suddenly discovered that rules were required to deal with the creeps her perverse lifestyle attracted.

Can you show us on this gender neutral doll where she touched you?

Quote from: S'mon;1104565At the very least, most people want a setting where their personal morality is viable.

Not necessarily, and there are plenty of RPGs such as #BurningWheel and #Paranoia where that's not the case.

#SJWs, like all radical authoritarians, want all art to validate their values and beliefs, which is why they consider comedy like South Park, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Seinfeld, Rick & Morty, or anything _featuring characters not designed to be role models_ to be an actual threat.

Quote from: S'mon;1105266So my African students tend to come in better educated than those from most other parts of the world - Germans are good too though, but for different reasons I think.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1105276This was my experience at UCLA. The African students (both male and female) were better prepared that most US natives, both for the university academics and being an independent adult in college. Equal to them were the students from Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Quote from: S'mon;1105295Yep. It's quite striking. I value a 2.1 (ie good quality) degree from eg Nigeria or Ghana above its equivalent from almost anywhere else in the world. African students from blue collar and lower middle class backgrounds seem to be better educated than the elites from most of the world. I think you're right they tend to have a more mature attitude too

At least nobody can accuse yous of being white supremacists.

Quote from: S'mon;1105295though I used to be surprised by the universal belief in witchcraft/magic - I'm used to that now.

Nobody's perfect :D

Quote from: tenbones;1105086AND/OR - more RPG's need the internal consistency of Lion & Dragon as a core design standard.

Alot do. The problem is when you get these group effort RPGs where apparently everyone is on a different page writing a different game. 4e D&D Gamma World is still the poster child for this sort of schizo game design.

Or if you absolutely must have a crowd designing a game. Then at least have everyone on the same damn page or have some sort of hard framework they have to work within.

Doubly so for setting material.

Quote from: Omega;1106738Alot do. The problem is when you get these group effort RPGs where apparently everyone is on a different page writing a different game. 4e D&D Gamma World is still the poster child for this sort of schizo game design.

Or if you absolutely must have a crowd designing a game. Then at least have everyone on the same damn page or have some sort of hard framework they have to work within.

Doubly so for setting material.

It's called an "editor". They are good for consistency of tone and content, too.

Quote from: Omega;1106738Alot do. The problem is when you get these group effort RPGs where apparently everyone is on a different page writing a different game.

Yeah, well, that's one of the reasons why I would never be a regular writer for WoTC or any other big company. It's always going to be "design by committee" and the "author" is really just a wage slave typing into words what he's being allowed or ordered to write by the company.

On the other hand, Shadowrun was written by Charrette/Hume/Dowd. I think it can work, if your vision of the final product overlaps sufficiently.

That is what I said up above. Get everyone on the same page and it can and does work. But for some reason alot of newer group RPGs end up a little, or very, schizo in tone, rules, etc.

Quote from: Omega;1107191That is what I said up above. Get everyone on the same page and it can and does work. But for some reason alot of newer group RPGs end up a little, or very, schizo in tone, rules, etc.

I think it works best when the "committee" is all people sharing an overall vision, but filling different roles.  You need one main writer.  If someone else is the person that consistently cleans up some of the mechanics under that writing, then it can work.  And so on.  

It is very difficult for even two people to do the same role and fulfill a vision.  I think the writing of "Good Omens" by Pratchett and Gaiman is probably the most recent good example I've seen.  Even with that, you can still see their different tones and influences in certain passages as a distinct thing, not the blend.  

Usually what you get is something like the Eagles.  Everyone wants to be the lead singer, write the song, the front guy.  I think Glenn Frey described their constant relationship as a mass fight in a kindergarten.  Thus the "Hell Freezes Over Tour" when they got back together.  They made it work, and almost were ready to kill each other in the process.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1107204I think it works best when the "committee" is all people sharing an overall vision, but filling different roles.  You need one main writer.  If someone else is the person that consistently cleans up some of the mechanics under that writing, then it can work.  And so on.  

It is very difficult for even two people to do the same role and fulfill a vision.  I think the writing of "Good Omens" by Pratchett and Gaiman is probably the most recent good example I've seen.  Even with that, you can still see their different tones and influences in certain passages as a distinct thing, not the blend.  

Usually what you get is something like the Eagles.  Everyone wants to be the lead singer, write the song, the front guy.  I think Glenn Frey described their constant relationship as a mass fight in a kindergarten.  Thus the "Hell Freezes Over Tour" when they got back together.  They made it work, and almost were ready to kill each other in the process.

I very much agree with this.

It's one of the reasons why I stopped feature-writing at Paizo. They loved the fluff stuff, but I'd go hard on trying to "fix" mechanics I thought were wrong with the core system (as did Mearls back then). And we'd butt heads with editorial when they'd neuter mechanics to the point where it didn't even match the fluff in description or effect. And this is *my* problem, not necessarily theirs.

You need someone in charge with a vision to set the design standard and hold everyone accountable to that design standard. I never felt that standard was a thing at WotC/Paizo. Things may have changed now, but you know... I've moved on.

To bookend your analogy to the Eagles - where it was the rare instance where the "committee" made it work (despite hating one another for it). I hold up the Jim Shooter Era of Marvel as the other example of a strong presence that held everyone to his standard and produced something great. And yes... they all hated him for it. A pattern is forming...