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Pen & Paper Roleplaying Central => Pen and Paper Roleplaying Games (RPGs) Discussion => Topic started by: RPGPundit on April 01, 2021, 08:33:33 PM

Title: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: RPGPundit on April 01, 2021, 08:33:33 PM
I'm sure I'll be pissing off a lot of people with this one. But racial power-fantasies always make stupid ttrpg settings.


Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: jhkim on April 01, 2021, 10:36:45 PM
So, regarding Coyote & Crow,

https://coyoteandcrow.net/

So, your two points for claiming that it is "racialist" are:

1) It's simplistic propaganda because it says "a meteor kills all the white people" (repeated at 22:30)

2) It presents the 1400s-era Native American cultures as a utopia

But neither of those are in the preview. The 2100-era cultures are explicitly *not* a utopia, and the 1400s-era cultures aren't discussed at all. And, of course, there is no meteor killing only white people. There was a meteor that had disastrous and strange effects across the world, but the only thing specified about Europe is that they didn't invade and conquer the Americas.


As a parallel, I'd bring up the RPG 7th Sea. In the world of 7th Sea, there are no American continents - they simply don't exist. So, my question is - is this racialist against Native Americans, wiping them out just to have a world that never actually existed? Or is it just that the premise of the game doesn't include them?
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: GeekyBugle on April 02, 2021, 12:15:56 AM
So, regarding Coyote & Crow,

https://coyoteandcrow.net/

So, your two points for claiming that it is "racialist" are:

1) It's simplistic propaganda because it says "a meteor kills all the white people" (repeated at 22:30)

2) It presents the 1400s-era Native American cultures as a utopia

But neither of those are in the preview. The 2100-era cultures are explicitly *not* a utopia, and the 1400s-era cultures aren't discussed at all. And, of course, there is no meteor killing only white people. There was a meteor that had disastrous and strange effects across the world, but the only thing specified about Europe is that they didn't invade and conquer the Americas.


As a parallel, I'd bring up the RPG 7th Sea. In the world of 7th Sea, there are no American continents - they simply don't exist. So, my question is - is this racialist against Native Americans, wiping them out just to have a world that never actually existed? Or is it just that the premise of the game doesn't include them?

A much better comparison would be to myfarog and you know it.

Lets see, a meteor strikes and doesn't wipe out white people, it just makes things harder for everyone... But at that time Europe, China and the Califate were much more advanced technologically speaking than anyone in the Americas. With the African slave trade by the califate already centuries old.

How then do you explain the Europeans never discovered the Americas? Or China, or the Califate?

How come with their newfound magic wakandan powers the "natives" didn't engage in their usual shenanigans of killing each other and commiting genocide?

If, as you claimed, the "natives" aren't the "choosen ppl", how come there's not an European superpower with better tech AND magic powers?
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Chris24601 on April 02, 2021, 01:00:52 AM
So, regarding Coyote & Crow,

https://coyoteandcrow.net/

*blah blah blah*
We get it. You NEED to bite down on the shit sandwich before you'll admit its a shit sandwich.

Those of us with common sense can determine it from the smell from a fair distance.

When the creators tell you they hate you; BELIEVE THEM. Lukewarm "can't we all just get along" types are just used as cover by the raging Leftist assholes. Stop being their cover in the vain hope they'll actually let you into their club. They won't. You post here.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Kanyenya on April 02, 2021, 01:40:09 AM
As a parallel, I'd bring up the RPG 7th Sea. In the world of 7th Sea, there are no American continents - they simply don't exist. So, my question is - is this racialist against Native Americans, wiping them out just to have a world that never actually existed? Or is it just that the premise of the game doesn't include them?

7th Sea includes the "Americas":

(https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-9zhx02uo/images/stencil/1280x1280/products/2123/3606/The_New_World_-_Front_Cover_-_700x900__72208.1558217897.jpg?c=2)
https://www.chaosium.com/7th-sea-the-new-world-hardcover/
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: jhkim on April 02, 2021, 01:51:38 AM
As a parallel, I'd bring up the RPG 7th Sea. In the world of 7th Sea, there are no American continents - they simply don't exist. So, my question is - is this racialist against Native Americans, wiping them out just to have a world that never actually existed? Or is it just that the premise of the game doesn't include them?

7th Sea includes the "Americas":

(https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-9zhx02uo/images/stencil/1280x1280/products/2123/3606/The_New_World_-_Front_Cover_-_700x900__72208.1558217897.jpg?c=2)
https://www.chaosium.com/7th-sea-the-new-world-hardcover/

Whoops! Sorry about that. I've only played 7th Sea first edition, which didn't have any New World despite being based on the Age of Sail.

To be fair, 7th Sea came out in 1999, and it looks like the New World expansion didn't come out until 2018 as part of the second edition.

The point can still apply to the first edition. i.e. Was the first edition racialist for not having any Native Americans?
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: SHARK on April 02, 2021, 02:02:00 AM
So, regarding Coyote & Crow,

https://coyoteandcrow.net/

*blah blah blah*
We get it. You NEED to bite down on the shit sandwich before you'll admit its a shit sandwich.

Those of us with common sense can determine it from the smell from a fair distance.

When the creators tell you they hate you; BELIEVE THEM. Lukewarm "can't we all just get along" types are just used as cover by the raging Leftist assholes. Stop being their cover in the vain hope they'll actually let you into their club. They won't. You post here.

Greetings!

Right on, Chris. Like the details of the game that *have* been mentioned, along with quotes from the producer of the game--it just drips with Leftist propaganda and woke bullshit.

But no, no. Don't be too hasty now in judging the game! ;D

The obscurantic density and grasping at the flimsiest straws in an effort to defend the game is mind-boggling.

The game is woke, Leftist bullshit. Like you have said, the stench is real, and you can tell it from a mile away! I don't need to get the book; I don't need to read more.

I've seen--and smelled--plenty enough already.

The game can die in a fucking fire.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: jhkim on April 02, 2021, 02:17:41 AM
The 2100-era cultures are explicitly *not* a utopia, and the 1400s-era cultures aren't discussed at all. And, of course, there is no meteor killing only white people. There was a meteor that had disastrous and strange effects across the world, but the only thing specified about Europe is that they didn't invade and conquer the Americas.

Lets see, a meteor strikes and doesn't wipe out white people, it just makes things harder for everyone... But at that time Europe, China and the Califate were much more advanced technologically speaking than anyone in the Americas. With the African slave trade by the califate already centuries old.

How then do you explain the Europeans never discovered the Americas? Or China, or the Califate?

How come with their newfound magic wakandan powers the "natives" didn't engage in their usual shenanigans of killing each other and commiting genocide?

If, as you claimed, the "natives" aren't the "choosen ppl", how come there's not an European superpower with better tech AND magic powers?

Given weird science and superhuman powers, there are all sorts of explanations possible. The game has made it explicit that it's up to individual GMs to decide what the rest of the world (including Europe, Africa, and Asia) are like, if they want to include them. If I were running it, many possibilities come to mind:

1) The Europeans were closer to the crash which was by the North Sea, and the survivors developed stronger psychic powers. With these, they advanced past needing colonies for raw materials during the climate crisis, becoming a psychically-superpowered people like the Organians from Star Trek.

2) The crash happened in Africa, and surviving Africans became an Organian-like psychic superpower. They have kept the different continents separate using their advanced psychic abilities. The Europeans have a highly advanced civilization, but they are kept in by psychic barriers.

3) The crash happened in Central Asia, and all of Asia, Africa, and Europe have been busy fighting with the beings that came out of the asteroid crash. However, the creatures hate water, which is what has kept the Americas safe.

But none of these explanations are necessary for the game. The game could simply stay focused in the Americas.


I discussed about American civilization in the other thread. In an alternate history that was restricted to only real-world science, I don't think Native American civilizations would advance to high technology in seven hundred years even with isolation. However, this is science fantasy - not hard sci-fi. With psychic powers, there are lots of ways for culture and technology to develop. Having telepaths could promote egalitarianism and cooperation, and telekinetics could have intuitive knowledge of some physical principles like gravity, force, chemistry, and electricity. It depends how the powers manifest and what effects they have.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: jhkim on April 02, 2021, 02:41:50 AM
The game is woke, Leftist bullshit. Like you have said, the stench is real, and you can tell it from a mile away! I don't need to get the book; I don't need to read more.

If you don't care about it and don't want to read about it -- then why are you on the thread ... reading about it?

Personally, I thought the concept was cool. I'm not sold that the execution is going to be a good design - but I just talked to my son and he backed it, so I'll probably see his copy when it comes out.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Ratman_tf on April 02, 2021, 03:41:48 AM
The game is woke, Leftist bullshit. Like you have said, the stench is real, and you can tell it from a mile away! I don't need to get the book; I don't need to read more.

If you don't care about it and don't want to read about it -- then why are you on the thread ... reading about it?

Hi jhkim! You must be new to the site. Since you haven't read any other threads on the site yet, let me catch you up.

There is this little thing going on we call the 'culture war'. Aspects of this culture war have been seeping into RPGs for some time now. Some of us like to observe and comment on such issues, since it affects the products available.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: RPGPundit on April 02, 2021, 04:25:09 AM
So, regarding Coyote & Crow,

https://coyoteandcrow.net/

So, your two points for claiming that it is "racialist" are:

1) It's simplistic propaganda because it says "a meteor kills all the white people" (repeated at 22:30)

2) It presents the 1400s-era Native American cultures as a utopia

But neither of those are in the preview. The 2100-era cultures are explicitly *not* a utopia, and the 1400s-era cultures aren't discussed at all. And, of course, there is no meteor killing only white people. There was a meteor that had disastrous and strange effects across the world, but the only thing specified about Europe is that they didn't invade and conquer the Americas.

In the video I pointed out that to be fair, it doesn't say that explicitly, but that seems to be the implication.

Quote
As a parallel, I'd bring up the RPG 7th Sea. In the world of 7th Sea, there are no American continents - they simply don't exist. So, my question is - is this racialist against Native Americans, wiping them out just to have a world that never actually existed? Or is it just that the premise of the game doesn't include them?

If the game 7th Sea suggested that by Native Americans never existing that would somehow have made the world a better, fairer and more just/advanced place, you'd be absolutely right.
But I'm pretty sure that's not what happened there, and therefore the game is not a parallel to coyote & crow.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Tantavalist on April 02, 2021, 05:14:25 AM
7th Sea in first edition seemed to want to have Age of Sail high seas adventure without having the questionable issues of colonialism. So it just had their version of Europe sealed off from the rest of the world and somehow an Age of Sail with pirates and everything happened anyway, just clinging to the coasts and inside the Mediterrenean.

Frankly, I find that on a logical world-building level Coyote & Crow offends my suspension of disbelief less than 7th Sea 1e. It at least admits what it's trying to do up front and accepts that a magic meteor Deus ex Machina is what it would take for that to happen.

Beyond that? Screaming that it's a sign of the End Times isn't much better than embracing it as evidence that RPGs are no longer played by KKK members. It's a game that's not even out yet. Every single thing we know about it comes from developer posts and the hype these have generated. Is anyone actually going to claim that this is an accurate way to judge a game?

Don't get me wrong, I won't be buying this game. But I'll likely hoist the Black Flag when it does come out because, I happen to believe that you shouldn't be too critical of something you've only heard about second hand. I don't anticipate having a positive opinion of the game but I'm willing to give it one chance to convince me as long as it doesn't cost me money.

Realistically, given my own experience of getting excited about games based on pre-release hype then being disappointed with both the game and the setting that I finally got... Even devoid of Culture Wars stuff I see a real possibility that the setting or the system won't be very good when it comes out and that all the people who decided they were fans ahead of time will stubbornly refuse to admit this and blank out any criticism of either.


Oh- as one example of these disappointments? I backed the "Abney Park's Airship Pirates" RPG on the strength of... Well, Steampunk Airship Pirates. Who can't see why that would be fun? Abney Park apparently. Their Steampunk future is an illogical mess created by people with trendy anti-colonial sentiments and no idea of sociological cause and effect.

Despite the British Empire never happening the 1800s are called the Victorian Age and the styles and fashion Steampunks love still came about. The trans-atlantic slave trade never happened but there's still people of African descent in the Americas, in large numbers. The nations of West Africa became more advanced than Europe in the space of a few decades due to an infodump by a time traveller, but then never exploit this by expanding beyond Africa to become world powers. (Also- "West Africa". Not Ghana, not Mali, not Songhai- the writers who came up with this couldn't even be bothered to look up the names of the major nations of the region prior to to colonial era.)

The world is technologically stagnant and becoming a human-free wilderness because a single tyrant took over the world and decided both technology and humans are bad for the planet. He was able to take over the world and enact this agenda because... Look, he just was OK? Stop being difficult!


A better title for this thread would be- Ideological Propaganda RPGs are Always Bad. Because an ideology doesn't have to be based on race to screw things up in exactly the same way.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: TJS on April 02, 2021, 05:56:24 AM
I can't for the life of me understand why people have can't wait for the game to be released to condemn it.

I mean, even if you're pretty sure you know what it will be like, it's always possible you could be wrong.

And it's not as if you anyone's mind is going to be changed by obviously leaping to conclusions.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Ratman_tf on April 02, 2021, 06:30:24 AM
I will say, they funded in 45 minutes, and as of my last look, they have just over a million bucks. Even if it turns out to be a shelf-warmer, they can dry their tears with the kickstarter money.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Reckall on April 02, 2021, 08:49:32 AM
So, regarding Coyote & Crow,

https://coyoteandcrow.net/

*blah blah blah*
We get it. You NEED to bite down on the shit sandwich before you'll admit its a shit sandwich.

Those of us with common sense can determine it from the smell from a fair distance.

It is like what happened with "Fate of Cthulhu". The authors felt the need to point out in  the intro that the game needed "Content and Consent" (OK...?) and then that "Lovecraft was a racist and and an anti-Semite. There we said it." (they then ranted a bit about his racism and the current wokeism surrounding his work).

Well, welcome to the rest of the World. We hope that you will have a good journey.  :)

Note how these two quotes (and the short rant) do not automatically imply that the game will be shitty. To me they are both ridiculous and something from Mr. Obvious, but if the authors felt the need to include them, good for them. There is no reason for the following ruleset not to be as good as CoC.

It turns out that the game is totally shitty.

Also, scratch what I said: from the very moment you see these quotes you just know that the game will be shitty. And there is no reason why.

Mussolini was a great writer. He is mostly remembered for his bombastic speeches, but in normal life he had an unusual mastery of the Italian language. Historians are attributing to him many "anonymous" articles that appeared on the newspapers of the era due to the quality of writing alone.

Mussolini was still the initiator of an aberrant ideology. The two things should not be connected.

And yet, I bought "Fate of Cthulhu" out of curiosity (my bad) and it is dire. I bought "Winter Tide" to give a chance to the writer before sinking her and it was trashy fan-fiction (she is currently sunk).

"Get woke - go broke" is one of the wisest suggestions to anyone who wants to engage in the creative arts in the current climate. The number of flops suffered by historic franchises from the whole spectrum of the arts when they went woke is too much to name. We can only conclude that wokeism thinks that the ideology alone is enough to succeed. No hard work and bloody sweat needed to master your craft and convey your ideas in the best possible way.

I remain of my opinion: a lot of screaming and smoke, but little success or substance. IMHO, the real strength of wokeism is that people are overestimating the whole brouhaha.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Thorn Drumheller on April 02, 2021, 09:47:19 AM
I will say, they funded in 45 minutes, and as of my last look, they have just over a million bucks. Even if it turns out to be a shelf-warmer, they can dry their tears with the kickstarter money.

Exactly. The creator's are sitting on a bunch of money. I didn't back it. I'm not offended by it. But I got a sense of anti white from the beginning. It's a dice pool system is my understanding but being in the hobby as long as a lot of us have we've seen trends. And this feels like a trend. What I'm actually astounded by is the virtual dick sucking on big purple. There's so much high fiving of each other like look how inclusive we are.

I have no evidence and I'm not a prognosticator but I hope these backers just didn't get bilked out of a lot of money.

I know I'm not the awesomest bestest game master. And I know someone will be able to run entire campaigns.....er I mean epics cause campaigns is an evil word, in coyote and crow but if all you're doing is being first nation with tech fighting monsters......how is that different than any other number of rpgs? You could do the coyote and crow setting with gurps for crying out loud.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: WillInNewHaven on April 02, 2021, 10:37:35 AM
About Myfarog: The setting is racist and intentionally so. The system doesn't seem to have any racist elements, at least that saw and a friend used it for a campaign set in the Fertile Crescent with no echoes of the Thule setting. I don't think the system is anything special but the campaign was good. I never bought any material for the game and I wouldn't recommend the system.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: jhkim on April 02, 2021, 11:00:42 AM
About Myfarog: The setting is racist and intentionally so. The system doesn't seem to have any racist elements, at least that saw and a friend used it for a campaign set in the Fertile Crescent with no echoes of the Thule setting. I don't think the system is anything special but the campaign was good. I never bought any material for the game and I wouldn't recommend the system.

It seems to me that the race rules are fairly, well, racist. Darklings, Weaklings, and Foreigners all have across-the-board penalties compared to Native Thulean characters. Here is the racial mods table from page 8, for example:

(https://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/theory/race/myfarog-race-table.png)

Maybe your friend replaced the race rules in the Fertile Crescent campaign?
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: jhkim on April 02, 2021, 12:14:48 PM
But neither of those are in the preview. The 2100-era cultures are explicitly *not* a utopia, and the 1400s-era cultures aren't discussed at all. And, of course, there is no meteor killing only white people. There was a meteor that had disastrous and strange effects across the world, but the only thing specified about Europe is that they didn't invade and conquer the Americas.

In the video I pointed out that to be fair, it doesn't say that explicitly, but that seems to be the implication.

You briefly mention that it isn't explicit earlier on, but your specific words from 22:02 to 22:57 are:

Quote from: RPGPundit
In terms of depth, they suck. Because the problem of propaganda as setting is that propaganda always has to be simplistic in ways way beyond anything else has to be simplistic. You don't have to be simplistic with myth. Myth can become very complex. You don't have to be simplistic with history. History is super complicated. But with... You can have lots of general trends with both of those but also lots of subtleties.

There's nothing subtle about "A meteor kills all the white people" or you know "black people and Jews are evil subhuman invaders" or something like that. Those are disgusting, hideous concepts... They have no attempt to provide any depth whatsoever.

This is bullshit comparison. In Myfarog, there's an explicit table showing how Darklings and Weaklings are lesser than Native Thuleans. But in the preview of Coyote & Crow, nothing is said about white people whatsoever except that they don't invade and conquer the Americas.

It seems to me you're trying really hard to be offended here.


If the game 7th Sea suggested that by Native Americans never existing that would somehow have made the world a better, fairer and more just/advanced place, you'd be absolutely right.
But I'm pretty sure that's not what happened there, and therefore the game is not a parallel to coyote & crow.

Again, not something said. And even though it *isn't* said, are you actually arguing that for Native Americans that their world was better because of white people arriving? Of all the places in the world, the Native Americans really haven't fared well under contact.

It's certainly possible for Afro-futurism or this Native-American futurism to portray white people as evil, but it's not necessary - and there's nothing in the C&C preview that says this. I haven't read Swordsfall's Tikor, but, for example, I don't think Stan Lee's Wakanda is racist against white people. It's not a historical projection - it's a fantastic invention like most things in superhero comics.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on April 02, 2021, 12:28:45 PM
are you actually arguing that for Native Americans that their world was better because of white people arriving? Of all the places in the world, the Native Americans really haven't fared well under contact.
If we want to be pedantic, then the First Nations people probably wouldn't have died of the plagues after Columbus came if the viking colonists had stayed in the Americas and gave them domesticated animals to build up a tolerance for the plagues.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: wmarshal on April 02, 2021, 01:19:20 PM
This will probably fail to deliver. This is the lead person’s first Kickstarter, and it looks overly ambitious for being such. The team consists of over 20 members. Most of them are artists, so if some of them fail to deliver I suppose they could be replaced, but there are six who have titles of designer/writer/developer. The stretch goals promised include language development, and a software program to be developed. It’s also supposed to deliver in 8 months. If this was a Kevin Crawford project I wouldn’t worry, he has track record, but his Kickstarter also wouldn’t have added some of the bells and whistles this one has.

As to whether this project is racist or not it’s hard to be sure, but it sounds iffy. “Let’s imagine an alternate future where THOSE people aren’t around” doesn’t sound like a non-racist game. Imagine the reaction if someone created a cyberpunk game where Muhammad and Islam never came to be, and those areas Islam conquered/colonized remained dominated by Christianity? The reaction would rightfully be poor, or at least I hope it would be. Would such a game be thought as not racist if written by a Lebanese Christian?
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: oggsmash on April 02, 2021, 01:40:00 PM
I will say, they funded in 45 minutes, and as of my last look, they have just over a million bucks. Even if it turns out to be a shelf-warmer, they can dry their tears with the kickstarter money.

  Timing is everything.  And when stimulus money is flying around is the best time I think.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Shasarak on April 02, 2021, 05:11:43 PM
I can't for the life of me understand why people have can't wait for the game to be released to condemn it.

I think that if Kickstarter has taught us nothing, waiting until it may or may not be released is a fool games.

Best get your condemnation in early.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: RPGPundit on April 02, 2021, 05:13:55 PM
I will say, they funded in 45 minutes, and as of my last look, they have just over a million bucks. Even if it turns out to be a shelf-warmer, they can dry their tears with the kickstarter money.

If they ever ship at all.  It's increasingly seeming like Leftist SJW RPG Kickstarters have a very peculiar culture: the SJW writers pretend they're going to make a book which will never arrive, and the clients pretend that they care about the game.  But the whole time the REAL transaction that is going on is a kind of Selling of Indulgences: SJW Race Grifters are offering mostly-white SJWs a fee for Racial Absolution and the right to Virtue Signal it. THAT'S what's REALLY being bought and sold.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Valatar on April 02, 2021, 05:22:58 PM
Here's where I apply the "good for the goose" test.  If I kickstarted a game where a weird meteor fell and gave western Europe superpowers and Albion is now full of lily-white knights who fly around with lightsabers and no other culture on the planet is ever mentioned as so much as existing, would these same people buy it, or mass-report it to try to get it tossed off the platform?
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: HappyDaze on April 02, 2021, 05:25:09 PM
Here's where I apply the "good for the goose" test.  If I kickstarted a game where a weird meteor fell and gave western Europe superpowers and Albion is now full of lily-white knights who fly around with lightsabers and no other culture on the planet is ever mentioned as so much as existing, would these same people buy it, or mass-report it to try to get it tossed off the platform?
Give it your best shot and let's see how it goes.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: RPGPundit on April 02, 2021, 05:27:02 PM
But neither of those are in the preview. The 2100-era cultures are explicitly *not* a utopia, and the 1400s-era cultures aren't discussed at all. And, of course, there is no meteor killing only white people. There was a meteor that had disastrous and strange effects across the world, but the only thing specified about Europe is that they didn't invade and conquer the Americas.

In the video I pointed out that to be fair, it doesn't say that explicitly, but that seems to be the implication.

You briefly mention that it isn't explicit earlier on, but your specific words from 22:02 to 22:57 are:

Quote from: RPGPundit
In terms of depth, they suck. Because the problem of propaganda as setting is that propaganda always has to be simplistic in ways way beyond anything else has to be simplistic. You don't have to be simplistic with myth. Myth can become very complex. You don't have to be simplistic with history. History is super complicated. But with... You can have lots of general trends with both of those but also lots of subtleties.

There's nothing subtle about "A meteor kills all the white people" or you know "black people and Jews are evil subhuman invaders" or something like that. Those are disgusting, hideous concepts... They have no attempt to provide any depth whatsoever.

This is bullshit comparison. In Myfarog, there's an explicit table showing how Darklings and Weaklings are lesser than Native Thuleans. But in the preview of Coyote & Crow, nothing is said about white people whatsoever except that they don't invade and conquer the Americas.

Right. So you're arguing that "the world is a VASTLY BETTER PLACE because white people were unable to interact with anyone else and may be extinct now" is not a ridiculously simplistic and hideous concept with no depth?

Quote
If the game 7th Sea suggested that by Native Americans never existing that would somehow have made the world a better, fairer and more just/advanced place, you'd be absolutely right.
But I'm pretty sure that's not what happened there, and therefore the game is not a parallel to coyote & crow.

Again, not something said. And even though it *isn't* said, are you actually arguing that for Native Americans that their world was better because of white people arriving? Of all the places in the world, the Native Americans really haven't fared well under contact.

In the long run, it absolutely was. Which doesn't discount a whole lot of cruelty and injustices committed against them; but you see in all of history cruelty and injustices were normal. Their lives were FILLED with cruelties and injustices before the white people showed up. In fact, they had an Evil Imperialist State (the Aztecs) who were INFINITE TIMES WORSE to everyone who wasn't Aztec (and to most Aztecs) than even the shitty Spanish were. As I point out in the video, that's why entire armies of non-Aztec rebels CHEERFULLY joined Cortez in giving the Aztecs what they fucking deserved.

Quote
It's certainly possible for Afro-futurism or this Native-American futurism to portray white people as evil, but it's not necessary - and there's nothing in the C&C preview that says this. I haven't read Swordsfall's Tikor, but, for example, I don't think Stan Lee's Wakanda is racist against white people. It's not a historical projection - it's a fantastic invention like most things in superhero comics.

No, Wakanda is not racist against white people. But settings where "the white people are all dead/missing/unaccounted-for and so we created a SUPER SOCIETY" is racist against white people.

I mean, it's very simple: Imagine if someone (maybe Varg) made an alt-history game where he invented some calamity that made all the Jews die or disappear in the middle ages, and then claimed that in the 21st century Super State where the Jew-free Aryans were able to bring about a worldwide alliance now expanding out to the stars.
Would or would that not be racist?
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: TJS on April 02, 2021, 05:56:01 PM
I can't for the life of me understand why people have can't wait for the game to be released to condemn it.

I think that if Kickstarter has taught us nothing, waiting until it may or may not be released is a fool games.

Best get your condemnation in early.
If it never ships than who cares?  It seems pointless to condemn content if it never arrives.

In that case the story would not be about the continent about the failure to be any.

Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Ratman_tf on April 02, 2021, 06:07:40 PM
I can't for the life of me understand why people have can't wait for the game to be released to condemn it.

I think that if Kickstarter has taught us nothing, waiting until it may or may not be released is a fool games.

Best get your condemnation in early.

Never kickstart, crowdfund or early access. Buy released products, if at all.*

*I have kickstarted once, and considered it a donation. I did not expect anything in return.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: BronzeDragon on April 02, 2021, 06:32:20 PM
Never kickstart, crowdfund or early access. Buy released products, if at all.*

*I have kickstarted once, and considered it a donation. I did not expect anything in return.

This is the only rational way to deal with KS.

Same with Early Access and Pre-orders for vidya.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Thorn Drumheller on April 02, 2021, 08:38:35 PM
If they ever ship at all.  It's increasingly seeming like Leftist SJW RPG Kickstarters have a very peculiar culture: the SJW writers pretend they're going to make a book which will never arrive, and the clients pretend that they care about the game.  But the whole time the REAL transaction that is going on is a kind of Selling of Indulgences: SJW Race Grifters are offering mostly-white SJWs a fee for Racial Absolution and the right to Virtue Signal it. THAT'S what's REALLY being bought and sold.

This. I agree with this. It is what is being bought and sold.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: jeff37923 on April 02, 2021, 09:30:33 PM
If they ever ship at all.  It's increasingly seeming like Leftist SJW RPG Kickstarters have a very peculiar culture: the SJW writers pretend they're going to make a book which will never arrive, and the clients pretend that they care about the game.  But the whole time the REAL transaction that is going on is a kind of Selling of Indulgences: SJW Race Grifters are offering mostly-white SJWs a fee for Racial Absolution and the right to Virtue Signal it. THAT'S what's REALLY being bought and sold.

This. I agree with this. It is what is being bought and sold.

Not just Racial Absolution, but if Thirsty Sword Lesbians is any indication, then LGBT Absolution as well. Any kind of Absolution for a Leftist Ally can be baked into a game system if you try hard enough.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Omega on April 02, 2021, 11:26:21 PM
I will say, they funded in 45 minutes, and as of my last look, they have just over a million bucks. Even if it turns out to be a shelf-warmer, they can dry their tears with the kickstarter money.

They played the "outrage advertising" market well. Intentionally or not. And reading some of the designers comments its leaning slightly to being intentional.

Pundit and others are promoting the game for them.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Reckall on April 03, 2021, 07:01:07 AM
Meanwhile Extra Credits is getting mauled for their "Evil Races are Bad Game Design" video.

Fun fact: some negative comments are from... black people!  ;D
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Ratman_tf on April 03, 2021, 07:46:16 AM
Meanwhile Extra Credits is getting mauled for their "Evil Races are Bad Game Design" video.

Fun fact: some negative comments are from... black people!  ;D

(https://i.imgur.com/8gcRhMB.png)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_asNhzXq72w

Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Reckall on April 03, 2021, 07:56:55 AM
Meanwhile Extra Credits is getting mauled for their "Evil Races are Bad Game Design" video.

Fun fact: some negative comments are from... black people!  ;D

(https://i.imgur.com/8gcRhMB.png)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_asNhzXq72w

When you see Newspeak like "Bioessentialism" you just know that it will not end well.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on April 03, 2021, 09:26:14 AM
They’re outright comparing orcs to black people. If you didn’t know any better then you’d think this was a parody.

Who the hell is promoting stereotypes that black people are “ugly, warlike, and malevolent”?
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Reckall on April 03, 2021, 10:11:42 AM
They’re outright comparing orcs to black people. If you didn’t know any better then you’d think this was a parody.

Who the hell is promoting stereotypes that black people are “ugly, warlike, and malevolent”?
Some stray racist does, no doubt. It is their generalisation that led to this whole new fiasco.

Actually, their "reasoning" fails on an incredible number of basic levels.

Let's consider D&D. In D&D "alignment" can be considered as "how a specific behaviour is seen from the point of view of a normal neutral human." Orcs developed they culture according to their natural characteristics: they are neither intelligent nor wise but they are very strong. Their natural desire of survival as a species depends, as with any other species, from using their strengths and avoiding their weaknesses. To our neutral-aligned human they are evil and chaotic - because "laws" require both wisdom and intelligence. In the Orc culture the strongest win, laws, respect and social order be damned.

Failing to understand this undermines a key pillar in this new EC failure: Orcs can "choose" just fine what to do! Within their cultural upbring of course, they psychophysical nature and their understanding of how the World works. Ironically, a simple check of the Monster Manual gives their alignment as "Often Chaotic Evil", not always. In the Forgotten Realms you can find pacifist Orcs, followers of Eldath.

(One could point out how there are "stupid lawful evil creatures". Look closer and you will see how often they are embedded in societies ruled by intelligent LE creatures - keeping their heads down and follow the rule is their way of surviving).

One could sum everything up by pointing out how on our reality only human beings are intelligent and advanced. A fantasy world has a lot more races and cultures. You simply can't do a 1:1 comparison.

Once you grasp this, it becomes easy to see how true "racism" can very well exist - within a race. White men can be racist towards black men. Sun elves can be racist towards Wood Elves. And "Red Hand Tribe" Orcs can be racist towards all other "inferior" tribes. Ironic, uhu?

Why something so simple was so hard to grasp is beyond me.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on April 03, 2021, 12:22:16 PM
My favorite portrayal of orcs has always been Warcraft 1 and 2. They were depicted as essentially conquistadors. They weren’t inherently evil, they were conquistadors. In WC2 they even convinced persecuted ethnic minorities like goblins and trolls to join them in exchange for revenge on those nasty humans, elves, and dwarves who oppressed them.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: wlake.gmtn on April 03, 2021, 12:46:14 PM
wait (cause i've never read it) so the rpg coyote and crow denigrates black people? i would've thought it was an argument for affirmative action in general. Hating charter schools and casinos seems to be on par with slavery, the question being ultimately a comparison of evils. coexist is cool, a good resolution.  america beginning with batholomew de las casas is cool, interesting that the church opposed slavery but christianity is seen as responsible for elimination of tribes with cholera and influenza and stuff. deus ex machina is uncool but speaking of norse mythology could be seen as a ragnarok instead. the question falls on whether colonialism is really real, and that's attached to things like "everything america produces is invalid from a colonialist perspective," i.e. there is no bangkok. i definitely favor racial equality and believe the land to be native land, but the palestine/israel question is a little more difficult. not sure why, they just are.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: VisionStorm on April 03, 2021, 12:54:06 PM
Who knew that the thing you needed for a bunch of stone age primitives in the "Americas" to become a technological superpower in just 700 years time was for a near-extinction level event to send EVERYONE back to the stone age 100 years before Columbus set sail to the "New World"? Or that the best way to represent "Native American and Indigenous populations that have been continually underrepresented or misrepresented in western media" (https://coyoteandcrow.net/blog/) is to build a madeup timeline that presents their culture in a super advanced, high-tech way that bears ZERO resemblance to what these cultures could've possibly ever being like?

I'm sure that this game isn't just woke nonsense, though, cuz it hasn't come out yet, and we're not allowed to judge things based on what the authors tell us is going to be there, cuz educated guesses and speculation are bad, m'kay.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: TobiasP on April 03, 2021, 02:16:11 PM
The basic strategy of the American political elite is to rule the country the same way the the British ruled India: by playing divide and conquer. They want to encourage as much racism and hatred as possible in order to get everyone fighting each other. Donald Trump and the woke are too halves of the same coin. The goal of wokeness is to divide the country and make everyone hate each other. They don't want to work together or really build anything. The basic philosophy of wokeness is that people with the wrong ideas deserved to be punished, which is Fascism 101. 

This is why the woke can't create good fiction. At  the end of the day it's a top down movement. The woke are trying to impose their values via control of Hollywood, the Academy, and other key cultural institutions. Normal people don't want this garbage because people are basically good and they aren't interested in something hateful. 

Coyote and Crow looks like basically a Black Panther knock off. Native American culture was very primitive and low tech. The culture we associate with native Americans involved furs, primitive weapons, people worshipping the great coyote spirit, et cetera. If Native Americans had developed an advanced culture then they wouldn't be doing any of  that stuff, they would be fighting with aircraft carriers like everyone else. But if you made an RPG where Native Americans wear normal military uniforms and ride around in aircraft carriers, it wouldn't like real world Native American culture. So they have to invent this kind of fantasy ultratech to explain why there's this high tech civilization that still uses tomahaks. Black Panther basically invented this style, for much the same reasons.

Black Panther wasn't actually woke though. It was a movie about two men fighting for control of the kingdom. The movie was about masculinity as much as race. At the end of the movie Wakanda decides they need to engage with the rest of the world. This is actually a really good message! Will Coyote and Crow have a good message? We'll find out. My guess is it will go like Swordfall: A lot of cool art and not much else.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on April 03, 2021, 02:25:47 PM
The basic strategy of the American political elite is to rule the country the same way the the British ruled India: by playing divide and conquer. They want to encourage as much racism and hatred as possible in order to get everyone fighting each other. Donald Trump and the woke are too halves of the same coin. The goal of wokeness is to divide the country and make everyone hate each other. They don't want to work together or really build anything. The basic philosophy of wokeness is that people with the wrong ideas deserved to be punished, which is Fascism 101. 

This is why the woke can't create good fiction. At  the end of the day it's a top down movement. The woke are trying to impose their values via control of Hollywood, the Academy, and other key cultural institutions. Normal people don't want this garbage because people are basically good and they aren't interested in something hateful. 

Coyote and Crow looks like basically a Black Panther knock off. Native American culture was very primitive and low tech. The culture we associate with native Americans involved furs, primitive weapons, people worshipping the great coyote spirit, et cetera. If Native Americans had developed an advanced culture then they wouldn't be doing any of  that stuff, they would be fighting with aircraft carriers like everyone else. But if you made an RPG where Native Americans wear normal military uniforms and ride around in aircraft carriers, it wouldn't like real world Native American culture. So they have to invent this kind of fantasy ultratech to explain why there's this high tech civilization that still uses tomahaks. Black Panther basically invented this style, for much the same reasons.

Black Panther wasn't actually woke though. It was a movie about two men fighting for control of the kingdom. The movie was about masculinity as much as race. At the end of the movie Wakanda decides they need to engage with the rest of the world. This is actually a really good message! Will Coyote and Crow have a good message? We'll find out. My guess is it will go like Swordfall: A lot of cool art and not much else.

It seems really racist to assume that non-white people wouldn’t develop guns and democracy on their own.

Wakanda relying on trial by combat to determine their leader seems pretty racist. There weren’t any checks and balances to prevent an undesirable leader from assuming command and taking over the world like there are in a modern democracy.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: jhkim on April 03, 2021, 03:12:02 PM
Coyote and Crow looks like basically a Black Panther knock off. Native American culture was very primitive and low tech. The culture we associate with native Americans involved furs, primitive weapons, people worshipping the great coyote spirit, et cetera. If Native Americans had developed an advanced culture then they wouldn't be doing any of  that stuff, they would be fighting with aircraft carriers like everyone else. But if you made an RPG where Native Americans wear normal military uniforms and ride around in aircraft carriers, it wouldn't like real world Native American culture. So they have to invent this kind of fantasy ultratech to explain why there's this high tech civilization that still uses tomahaks. Black Panther basically invented this style, for much the same reasons.

Black Panther wasn't actually woke though. It was a movie about two men fighting for control of the kingdom. The movie was about masculinity as much as race. At the end of the movie Wakanda decides they need to engage with the rest of the world. This is actually a really good message! Will Coyote and Crow have a good message? We'll find out. My guess is it will go like Swordfall: A lot of cool art and not much else.

Yeah, I agree that Coyote & Crow is certainly in the genre of Wakanda. As for whether it will be good - I'm not familiar with Swordfall, but it's a first-time Kickstarter and a first-time game design from the author. I think it's likely to have problems. But I think the concept as presented in the preview is cool and could be turned into a good game in the right hands. Contrary to Pundit, I don't think the concept is disgusting hideous racialism.



It's certainly possible for Afro-futurism or this Native-American futurism to portray white people as evil, but it's not necessary - and there's nothing in the C&C preview that says this. I haven't read Swordsfall's Tikor, but, for example, I don't think Stan Lee's Wakanda is racist against white people. It's not a historical projection - it's a fantastic invention like most things in superhero comics.

No, Wakanda is not racist against white people. But settings where "the white people are all dead/missing/unaccounted-for and so we created a SUPER SOCIETY" is racist against white people.

I mean, it's very simple: Imagine if someone (maybe Varg) made an alt-history game where he invented some calamity that made all the Jews die or disappear in the middle ages, and then claimed that in the 21st century Super State where the Jew-free Aryans were able to bring about a worldwide alliance now expanding out to the stars.
Would or would that not be racist?

But by your logic, Wakanda is exactly this hideous, disgusting racialism. Coyote & Crow is a direct parallel to it, as TobiasP wrote.

1) Unlike the rest of Africa, Wakanda was not invaded and conquered by white people
2) Wakanda developed its own technology and society more advanced than Europe

By your logic, this is racialist propaganda that white people are evil devils who held back Africa. Now, one could say, "it's not *because* Wakanda wasn't conquered by whites that it is advanced - it is advanced because of the fictional vibranium". But if one grants that to Wakanda, then one would have to grant the same thing to Coyote & Crow. The advances are due to the psychic powers from the Awis, not because of the lack of white people.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: jhkim on April 03, 2021, 03:15:34 PM
(https://i.imgur.com/8gcRhMB.png)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_asNhzXq72w

This seems like a different topic to me. I disagree with the video, but I don't see that it connects to either Myfarog or Coyote & Crow. Could we start a new thread if people want to discuss it?
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: jeff37923 on April 03, 2021, 03:34:43 PM
Meanwhile Extra Credits is getting mauled for their "Evil Races are Bad Game Design" video.

Fun fact: some negative comments are from... black people!  ;D

(https://i.imgur.com/8gcRhMB.png)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_asNhzXq72w

When you see Newspeak like "Bioessentialism" you just know that it will not end well.

OK, I watched the video (because I have gotten a lot of good ideas from Extra Credits before) and my conclusion is that this video was made after reading through some online discussions of racism in RPGs, while having never read or played those RPGs.

Poor form, Extra Credits. Poor form.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: ScytheSong on April 03, 2021, 04:55:05 PM
Confession time: I backed and am excited about Coyote and Crow.

The main thing that has me excited is the experience system (that supposedly isn't an experience system, but meh) where each "levelling" event is actually adding to your legend -- the story that people will tell about you for years to come. I want to see how that's accomplished.

It looks like they're using a variant on the Storyteller System (OWoD 2.0, or possibly Revised) only with d12s rather than d10s, which leaves me less than impressed, but means that they have less work to do than if they built a system out of scratch.

I'm all for the alternate history timeline -- it's an interesting counterfactual no matter what the author's reasons for it -- but I'm also someone who unironically loves SkyRealms of Jorune for its gonzo setting, so it might be that my taste is all in my mouth. 
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: WillInNewHaven on April 03, 2021, 08:39:49 PM
About Myfarog: The setting is racist and intentionally so. The system doesn't seem to have any racist elements, at least that saw and a friend used it for a campaign set in the Fertile Crescent with no echoes of the Thule setting. I don't think the system is anything special but the campaign was good. I never bought any material for the game and I wouldn't recommend the system.

It seems to me that the race rules are fairly, well, racist. Darklings, Weaklings, and Foreigners all have across-the-board penalties compared to Native Thulean characters. Here is the racial mods table from page 8, for example:

(https://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/theory/race/myfarog-race-table.png)

Maybe your friend replaced the race rules in the Fertile Crescent campaign?

He evidently did. I imagine that we would have all been some lesser race in a Thule campaign.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: GeekyBugle on April 04, 2021, 02:11:17 AM
Meanwhile Extra Credits is getting mauled for their "Evil Races are Bad Game Design" video.

Fun fact: some negative comments are from... black people!  ;D

(https://i.imgur.com/8gcRhMB.png)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_asNhzXq72w

When you see Newspeak like "Bioessentialism" you just know that it will not end well.

OK, I watched the video (because I have gotten a lot of good ideas from Extra Credits before) and my conclusion is that this video was made after reading through some online discussions of racism in RPGs, while having never read or played those RPGs.

Poor form, Extra Credits. Poor form.

They jumped, the shark, drank the koolaid a while back, IIRC a video about how a WWII PvP Vidya where you could end up playing as a bad guy would somehow turn you into a neo badguy.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Reckall on April 04, 2021, 04:41:12 AM
Meanwhile Extra Credits is getting mauled for their "Evil Races are Bad Game Design" video.

Fun fact: some negative comments are from... black people!  ;D

(https://i.imgur.com/8gcRhMB.png)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_asNhzXq72w

When you see Newspeak like "Bioessentialism" you just know that it will not end well.

OK, I watched the video (because I have gotten a lot of good ideas from Extra Credits before) and my conclusion is that this video was made after reading through some online discussions of racism in RPGs, while having never read or played those RPGs.

Poor form, Extra Credits. Poor form.

They jumped, the shark, drank the koolaid a while back, IIRC a video about how a WWII PvP Vidya where you could end up playing as a bad guy would somehow turn you into a neo badguy.

I really liked their historical videos. The serie about Catherine the Great made me buy some books. They were creative, informative and fun.

The first time that I felt a chilly wind was when they pushed out a video about "Representation of women in videogames". It was unneeded and full of crap. I'm now wondering if it is their videogame branch that went rogue and got woke. All their biggest fiascoes are born from it.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on April 04, 2021, 08:54:10 AM
Meanwhile Extra Credits is getting mauled for their "Evil Races are Bad Game Design" video.

Fun fact: some negative comments are from... black people!  ;D

(https://i.imgur.com/8gcRhMB.png)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_asNhzXq72w

When you see Newspeak like "Bioessentialism" you just know that it will not end well.

OK, I watched the video (because I have gotten a lot of good ideas from Extra Credits before) and my conclusion is that this video was made after reading through some online discussions of racism in RPGs, while having never read or played those RPGs.

Poor form, Extra Credits. Poor form.

They jumped, the shark, drank the koolaid a while back, IIRC a video about how a WWII PvP Vidya where you could end up playing as a bad guy would somehow turn you into a neo badguy.

I really liked their historical videos. The serie about Catherine the Great made me buy some books. They were creative, informative and fun.

The first time that I felt a chilly wind was when they pushed out a video about "Representation of women in videogames". It was unneeded and full of crap. I'm now wondering if it is their videogame branch that went rogue and got woke. All their biggest fiascoes are born from it.

Even their so-called educational videos may not be as accurate as they claim. Their video on some native American folklore, the Wendi-go, depicted it as a deer skeleton monster when that’s actually from online misinterpretations of the monster made by non-native people. Five minutes on Google scholar would’ve showed that was wrong.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: TobiasP on April 04, 2021, 02:27:21 PM

Yeah, I agree that Coyote & Crow is certainly in the genre of Wakanda. As for whether it will be good - I'm not familiar with Swordfall, but it's a first-time Kickstarter and a first-time game design from the author. I think it's likely to have problems. But I think the concept as presented in the preview is cool and could be turned into a good game in the right hands. Contrary to Pundit, I don't think the concept is disgusting hideous racialism.


The core fantasy of Coyote & Crow is that Native Americans are the only ethnic group and they own all the land. I realize there are also psychic powers and whatever else but fundamentally it looks like a fantasy about race.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: RPGPundit on April 04, 2021, 02:41:29 PM


It seems really racist to assume that non-white people wouldn’t develop guns and democracy on their own.


Guns weren't invented by white people. They were invented by the Song Chinese. But of course, many many cultures would NOT come up with Gunpowder; because it requires a complex background of certain resources, the previous development of certain technologies, and the prior discovery of certain knowledge.
A civilization that didn't come up with basic mining probably won't come up with gunpowder, for example.

As for democracy, it isn't particularly racist to think that democracy might never have been developed elsewhere. I mean, perhaps, over the course of thousands of years, it might have again with all the right conditions. But it's clearly super rare: in all of 200000 years of human history only ONE civilization (the West) came up with Democracy.
It is vastly harder to come up with (in the sense of requiring more complex and delicate preconditions) than even gunpowder.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: RPGPundit on April 04, 2021, 02:48:37 PM
Coyote and Crow looks like basically a Black Panther knock off. Native American culture was very primitive and low tech. The culture we associate with native Americans involved furs, primitive weapons, people worshipping the great coyote spirit, et cetera. If Native Americans had developed an advanced culture then they wouldn't be doing any of  that stuff, they would be fighting with aircraft carriers like everyone else. But if you made an RPG where Native Americans wear normal military uniforms and ride around in aircraft carriers, it wouldn't like real world Native American culture. So they have to invent this kind of fantasy ultratech to explain why there's this high tech civilization that still uses tomahaks. Black Panther basically invented this style, for much the same reasons.

Black Panther wasn't actually woke though. It was a movie about two men fighting for control of the kingdom. The movie was about masculinity as much as race. At the end of the movie Wakanda decides they need to engage with the rest of the world. This is actually a really good message! Will Coyote and Crow have a good message? We'll find out. My guess is it will go like Swordfall: A lot of cool art and not much else.

Yeah, I agree that Coyote & Crow is certainly in the genre of Wakanda. As for whether it will be good - I'm not familiar with Swordfall, but it's a first-time Kickstarter and a first-time game design from the author. I think it's likely to have problems. But I think the concept as presented in the preview is cool and could be turned into a good game in the right hands. Contrary to Pundit, I don't think the concept is disgusting hideous racialism.

The point of the people who made it was to suggest that white people were the source of all their problems and without them they would have had a super-society. That's exactly the argument of Myfarog.

Quote

I mean, it's very simple: Imagine if someone (maybe Varg) made an alt-history game where he invented some calamity that made all the Jews die or disappear in the middle ages, and then claimed that in the 21st century Super State where the Jew-free Aryans were able to bring about a worldwide alliance now expanding out to the stars.
Would or would that not be racist?

But by your logic, Wakanda is exactly this hideous, disgusting racialism. Coyote & Crow is a direct parallel to it, as TobiasP wrote.

1) Unlike the rest of Africa, Wakanda was not invaded and conquered by white people
2) Wakanda developed its own technology and society more advanced than Europe

By your logic, this is racialist propaganda that white people are evil devils who held back Africa. Now, one could say, "it's not *because* Wakanda wasn't conquered by whites that it is advanced - it is advanced because of the fictional vibranium". But if one grants that to Wakanda, then one would have to grant the same thing to Coyote & Crow. The advances are due to the psychic powers from the Awis, not because of the lack of white people.

Yes, Wakanda has partly got the same anti-white fantasy (I mean, we KNOW what happened to lands that weren't conquered by Europeans in Africa and Asia: nothing special; not one turned into an Enlightened semi-utopian super-state, and the ones that fared best were the ones who enacted huge reforms by themselves to become MORE LIKE EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION and thus enjoy the benefits of those advances), but at least it doesn't make all the Europeans die from a meteor or just 'no one knows' (which is what fascists say when they make someone disappear) like Coyote & Crow does, or describe Europeans as "subhuman" who need to be exterminated as a story feature the way Myfarog does of all non-aryans.

I notice you didn't respond to my question to you, though, so I'll repeat it:
 Imagine if someone (maybe Varg) made an alt-history game where he invented some calamity that made all the Jews die or disappear in the middle ages, and then claimed that in the 21st century Super State where the Jew-free Aryans were able to bring about a worldwide alliance now expanding out to the stars.
Would or would that not be racist?

Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: RPGPundit on April 04, 2021, 02:54:01 PM
I can't for the life of me understand why people have can't wait for the game to be released to condemn it.

I think that if Kickstarter has taught us nothing, waiting until it may or may not be released is a fool games.

Best get your condemnation in early.
If it never ships than who cares?  It seems pointless to condemn content if it never arrives.

In that case the story would not be about the continent about the failure to be any.

Because it would mean that the hobby has a problem with Race-grifting con-artists.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on April 04, 2021, 03:18:02 PM
As for democracy, it isn't particularly racist to think that democracy might never have been developed elsewhere. I mean, perhaps, over the course of thousands of years, it might have again with all the right conditions. But it's clearly super rare: in all of 200000 years of human history only ONE civilization (the West) came up with Democracy.
It is vastly harder to come up with (in the sense of requiring more complex and delicate preconditions) than even gunpowder.
You mean the Ancient Greeks developing one form of democracy? The West isn’t a monolithic civilization. It’s a bunch of civilizations, and was hugely influenced by the Eastern and Mesopotamian civilizations via the Silk Road.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: wmarshal on April 04, 2021, 04:28:03 PM
As for democracy, it isn't particularly racist to think that democracy might never have been developed elsewhere. I mean, perhaps, over the course of thousands of years, it might have again with all the right conditions. But it's clearly super rare: in all of 200000 years of human history only ONE civilization (the West) came up with Democracy.
It is vastly harder to come up with (in the sense of requiring more complex and delicate preconditions) than even gunpowder.
You mean the Ancient Greeks developing one form of democracy? The West isn’t a monolithic civilization. It’s a bunch of civilizations, and was hugely influenced by the Eastern and Mesopotamian civilizations via the Silk Road.
Athens became a democracy in 507 BC. Rome became a republic two years earlier in 509 BC. I don’t think one came assume with certainty that Rome was only a democracy because of the Greeks. I think that there was “something in the air” as to how the city-states developed in the Mediterranean that allowed a few to begin experimenting with democracy beyond tribal and village councils, that eventually led to democratic states. If someone can point to examples of democratic governance in the ancient world beyond the tribal/village level outside of Europe I’d be very much interested in learning about it. It’s been a subject I’ve had some interest for since I was in college many decades ago. I asked a history professor of Chinese descent if he knew of any examples, and he came up with nothing. More progress in history since then may have revealed an example, or he might not have known because his focus was on ancient Chinese philosophy as a historical topic rather than governance.

(I don’t say this to pound my chest to say “Hooray, I’m part of the West, and we invented democracy!” Nobody alive today invented democracy. We’ve inherited it. At best some of us have expanded or reformed it, but I think it’s also quite possible we may turn away from it.)

I think we (and I include myself) sometimes forget that democracy is not the norm of human governance throughout history, and until fairly recently it wasn’t even that common.

Could democracy have developed in the Americas in the 700 year period where the native people advanced from Neolithic technology to what we have to call science-fiction levels of technology? Perhaps, but what I find even more difficult to believe is that on the technological front they compressed about 5,000 years of technological advancement in only 700 years, especially with the presence of psionics. Psionics is basically science-fiction magic, and the existence of magic would retard the advance of science and technology.

The real problem with the setting isn’t whether or not it’s ideas for how technological and societal advancement would progress. If someone wants to suspend their sense of disbelief that’s not really a big deal. We all do it in games and fiction all the time. The real problem is that they’ve created a setting centered on getting rid of the unwanted Other, being non-Native Americans. They even did it clumsily. Nothing prevents them from having a setting with advance technology centered on the Americas 50,000 years in the past. Plenty for fiction has supposed advanced civilizations existing a very long time ago, that then later fell before the current ones we know about. But that wouldn’t have the same jump to the creators endorphin levels of removing the Other, and this project does seem to very much be motivated by bigoted thinking that wants to imagine a alternate “current” world as a kind of racist wish fulfillment without having to consider non-Native Americans.

At least since Star Trek science-fiction has included the idea of multiple races being part of the future. Science fiction that was all-white was either pre Star Trek laziness in that regard, or deliberate racism. Coyote and Crow is making the deliberate step to exclude non-Native Americans. This goes beyond imagining an alternate history where the Americas weren’t colonized by the European powers.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Ratman_tf on April 04, 2021, 05:37:54 PM
The real problem with the setting isn’t whether or not it’s ideas for how technological and societal advancement would progress. If someone wants to suspend their sense of disbelief that’s not really a big deal. We all do it in games and fiction all the time. The real problem is that they’ve created a setting centered on getting rid of the unwanted Other, being non-Native Americans.

Yeah. I don't even mind that angle, (It's about offsensive as acat with a Hitler moustache) but it really shouldn't be glossed over that the setting is based on a racist premise.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: TobiasP on April 04, 2021, 07:17:54 PM

Because it would mean that the hobby has a problem with Race-grifting con-artists.

We're obviously in for a lot of RPGs with explicitly left wing themes. I just hope they don't get D&D.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: crkrueger on April 04, 2021, 08:29:30 PM
Ever since Shadowrun, Native American futurism has been interesting to me.  I kind of doubt this game will be worth it, but will take a look if it ever hits the Trove.  I’m thinking the White “Cherokee” Connor Alexander is going to take his million dollars and vanish, but who knows.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: jhkim on April 05, 2021, 02:06:11 AM
No, Wakanda is not racist against white people. But settings where "the white people are all dead/missing/unaccounted-for and so we created a SUPER SOCIETY" is racist against white people.
Yes, Wakanda has partly got the same anti-white fantasy (I mean, we KNOW what happened to lands that weren't conquered by Europeans in Africa and Asia: nothing special; not one turned into an Enlightened semi-utopian super-state, and the ones that fared best were the ones who enacted huge reforms by themselves to become MORE LIKE EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION and thus enjoy the benefits of those advances), but at least it doesn't make all the Europeans die from a meteor or just 'no one knows' (which is what fascists say when they make someone disappear) like Coyote & Crow does

OK, so you're changing your position on Wakanda here - or at least clarifying that Wakanda is also anti-white fantasy - but it's less extreme anti-white fantasy. It seems that this is because for Wakanda, it's just one small African country that wasn't invaded and developed advances, rather than the whole continent.

Your logic is that the fictional advance of vibranium is anti-white, because the setting should stick to history where technological advances come from Europe. I would ask - what about setting where non-historical advances happen in Europe, like Space 1889 where fictional science in Europe gives them massive advances like spaceships in the 1800s? If Wakandan vibranium is anti-white fantasy, doesn't that imply that fictional advances for Europeans are white supremacist fantasy?

Fictional elements like the Space 1889's ether drive, or vibranium, or the Awis -- these aren't inherently racial. Yes, they change the balance of how different civilizations balanced compared to history - but there are lots of reasons one might be interested to explore that, not just racial supremacy. For example, my friend Madeline ran an Amber Diceless campaign that for a while was in a shadow where the nazis won WWII with supernatural aid. I don't think this means that Madeline was a nazi and was promoting nazi supremacy. It was just an interesting world to game in.


I notice you didn't respond to my question to you, though, so I'll repeat it:
Imagine if someone (maybe Varg) made an alt-history game where he invented some calamity that made all the Jews die or disappear in the middle ages, and then claimed that in the 21st century Super State where the Jew-free Aryans were able to bring about a worldwide alliance now expanding out to the stars.
Would or would that not be racist?

You're positing a cause-and-effect here. In your hypothetical, *because* there were no Jews, therefore the Aryan Europeans were able to create a utopian Super State. And sure, if that was explicitly the premise of the game, yes, that would be racist.

But there are tons of histories that produce skewed results compared to reality - where certain civilizations are more dominant, like the Nazis winning WWII which is a common alternate history. While Nazi authors may well write alternate histories where the Nazis won, there are also other authors who have written such alternate timelines with different intent.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: S'mon on April 05, 2021, 03:23:47 AM
Wakanda - I got the impression that the director of the Black Panther film was a bit racist (I still loved the film), but I think Kim's right that the concept of Wakanda as a super-science magitech African country is not inherently racist; neither is Space: 1889 (though both have been called such, Space: 1889 more for being supposedly pro-Imperialist).

Democracy - definitely rare and unusual IRL (& I like that Wakanda is resolutely non-Democratic). Hunter gatherer bands all over the world are highly egalitarian and function quite a lot like participatory democracies, but normally as agriculture develops societies 'advance' through chieftainships, kingships, empires, becoming progressively less and less democratic. Some unusual features of Europe/Europeans seem to have resulted in the frequent retention of relatively high egalitarianism far beyond the hunter-gatherer stage.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on April 05, 2021, 10:23:27 AM
Wakanda - I got the impression that the director of the Black Panther film was a bit racist (I still loved the film), but I think Kim's right that the concept of Wakanda as a super-science magitech African country is not inherently racist; neither is Space: 1889 (though both have been called such, Space: 1889 more for being supposedly pro-Imperialist).

Democracy - definitely rare and unusual IRL (& I like that Wakanda is resolutely non-Democratic). Hunter gatherer bands all over the world are highly egalitarian and function quite a lot like participatory democracies, but normally as agriculture develops societies 'advance' through chieftainships, kingships, empires, becoming progressively less and less democratic. Some unusual features of Europe/Europeans seem to have resulted in the frequent retention of relatively high egalitarianism far beyond the hunter-gatherer stage.
So democracy is a primitive holdover from hunter-gatherer lifestyles? That’s the most interesting and ironic way I’ve seen it put.

So Wakanda’s advancement to monarchy is ironically worse than not advancing to monarchy.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: S'mon on April 05, 2021, 10:53:56 AM
So democracy is a primitive holdover from hunter-gatherer lifestyles?

Yeah, seems to be.

I'm guessing low population density is a factor for democratic elements + settled agriculture. The strong warrior culture ethos of the European peoples may also be a factor, and the idea that being a warrior meant you had a right to speak freely in the assembly/thing. But I don't think anyone really knows.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: jhkim on April 05, 2021, 11:34:59 AM
So democracy is a primitive holdover from hunter-gatherer lifestyles?

Yeah, seems to be.

I'm guessing low population density is a factor for democratic elements + settled agriculture. The strong warrior culture ethos of the European peoples may also be a factor, and the idea that being a warrior meant you had a right to speak freely in the assembly/thing. But I don't think anyone really knows.

Characterizing it as a holdover seems off, since medieval Europe was less democratic/egalitarian than either modern democracies or hunter-gatherer societies. Indeed, while there is some, there isn't much difference in egalitarianism between most of medieval Europe and medieval China, for example. There was the Icelandic democracy, but that was very much the exception and not the rule.

I think it's worth looking at the more egalitarian exceptions in other societies. While the European Enlightenment was unique, it's always tricky to extrapolate from a sample size of one. The Haudenosaunee (aka Iroquois) were agricultural and warlike, but also relatively egalitarian and had a functional confederacy of five nations that was an influential model for the United States.

https://www.history.com/news/iroquois-confederacy-influence-us-constitution

18th century Korea was a monarchy that was very insular, but there was an internal reform movement known today as Silhak - that included steps towards the abolition of slavery and reduction in the power of nobles (yangban). It's worth noting that Silhak thinkers did not oppose monarchy. They tended to favor a more powerful monarchy, actually, but more egalitarianism among the main population. The yangban who were seen as more oppressive to the common people than the king.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silhak
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: wmarshal on April 05, 2021, 12:10:13 PM
Wakanda - I got the impression that the director of the Black Panther film was a bit racist (I still loved the film), but I think Kim's right that the concept of Wakanda as a super-science magitech African country is not inherently racist; neither is Space: 1889 (though both have been called such, Space: 1889 more for being supposedly pro-Imperialist).

Democracy - definitely rare and unusual IRL (& I like that Wakanda is resolutely non-Democratic). Hunter gatherer bands all over the world are highly egalitarian and function quite a lot like participatory democracies, but normally as agriculture develops societies 'advance' through chieftainships, kingships, empires, becoming progressively less and less democratic. Some unusual features of Europe/Europeans seem to have resulted in the frequent retention of relatively high egalitarianism far beyond the hunter-gatherer stage.
So democracy is a primitive holdover from hunter-gatherer lifestyles? That’s the most interesting and ironic way I’ve seen it put.

So Wakanda’s advancement to monarchy is ironically worse than not advancing to monarchy.

Democratic governance is not a holdover from hunter-gatherer/small village lifestyles. It is something that gets abandoned for theocracies and monarchies as the city-state develops. Only in a few instances does democratic governance arise again at either the city-state or state level. Throughout history autocratic governance is the norm. The proliferation of democratic governance is a relatively recent development. Wakanda isn’t “worse” for advancing to a monarchy, they’re just being par for the course in the big scheme of things. Wakanda not continuing to advance through monarchy to democratic governance could be viewed as a negative, but Wakanda is also an isolationist (xenophobic even) society that is inherently small ‘c’ conservative and slow to change. It’s also a comic book country intended as a background for a superhero, so I’m not sure  how deep we want to get into it’s development and interaction with the wider world.

“Hey Wakanda, there are a lot of slavers running around your borders, think you might want to do something to address that?” — “Nah, we’re good.”

“Hey Wakanda, there are a lot of Europeans turning your neighbors into colonies, think you might want to do something to address that?” — “Nah, we’re good.”

“Hey Wakanda, there are a lot of German and Italian fascists taking over the world and running about Africa, think you might want to do something to address that?” — “Nah, we’re good.”

“Hey Wakanda, with your advanced technology you could help the world cure cancer, treat AIDS and so much more, think you might want to lend a hand with that?” — “Nah, we’re good.”

I think it best to just interact with Wakanda at a very superficial level with it being the home of a cool superhero, and not dig too deep. Wakanda, other than being a country of origin for a black superhero, probably wasn’t intended as a deep political statement in itself when created. Black Panther himself was the political statement.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: ScytheSong on April 05, 2021, 12:24:56 PM
While we're on the topic of why the European conquest of the Americas was so successful, I have a theory that the Reconquista was much more important than what was taught me in school. Granada falls in August, and Columbus sails in October of 1492. If there weren't a bunch of out-of-work soldiers who were prone to see any conflict as an us-or-them for their very souls, I think there would have been a very different result in the New World. If anyone has done any actual scholarship on the topic, I'd be interested to know about it..
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on April 05, 2021, 12:30:03 PM
I often get the impression that popular historical discussions are cherrypicking to serve a point (cultural posturing) rather than analyzing the whole of recorded human history to receive insights about what innovations are likely for a civilization to develop.

To use one example: we think of the Aztecs as uniquely cruel and evil in human history, while ignoring or downplaying comparable cultures who practiced human sacrifice or other atrocities (e.g. European witch hunts, the Inquisition, public executions) and not taking into account that the Flower Wars were a recent (and unsustainable) development... like every period of atrocity and religious reformation in recorded history.

That's equivalent to assuming that, say, since the Axis Powers were fascists and committed atrocities then they had always been evil... even though those were recent developments that only lasted a few decades and even people within those regimes disagreed with what happened.

The Aztecs even engaged in book burning to erase all evidence of their history prior to the Flower Wars.

All this important political and cultural leadup is completely absent from mainstream school history textbooks.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Reckall on April 05, 2021, 01:03:39 PM
Does anyone here knows Evan Winter's books? He does seem to have built an African (well, Zambian)-centered fantasy setting, but I never read him.

https://threecrowsmagazine.com/interview-evan-winter/

(https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1553927196i/41952489.jpg)
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: SHARK on April 05, 2021, 04:53:52 PM
Greetings!

Hmmm...in the Middle Ages, the Republic of Novgorod, in northern Russia, embraced many Democratic traditions. The Veche was a democratic assembly of normal citizens that elected the Prince of the Republic. In addition to the people electing their ruling Princes, The Posadnik was the mayor of the city of Novgorod, which was also elected by the Veche. Tysiatskii's were an important local military commanders which were elected by the Veche. The Republic of Novgorod organized and maintained such democratic traditions and institutions for some 450 years.

There are also various elements of Democratic thought within the Germanic tribes. If enough people--ordinary people--opposed a Chieftain, the Chieftain was retired, exiled, or killed, and replaced with a chieftain that had more regard and respect for the people. The point being, Germanic peoples were accustomed to enjoying personal freedom, liberty, respect, and protections of traditional tribal laws. Such protections applied to men and women alike.

So, there are certainly more influences of democratic ideals than just from Iceland.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: RPGPundit on April 05, 2021, 06:11:07 PM
Ever since Shadowrun, Native American futurism has been interesting to me.  I kind of doubt this game will be worth it, but will take a look if it ever hits the Trove.  I’m thinking the White “Cherokee” Connor Alexander is going to take his million dollars and vanish, but who knows.

Are you trying to suggest he's somehow faking being Cherokee like Elizabeth Warren style??
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: WillInNewHaven on April 05, 2021, 06:18:26 PM
Greetings!

Hmmm...in the Middle Ages, the Republic of Novgorod, in northern Russia, embraced many Democratic traditions. The Veche was a democratic assembly of normal citizens that elected the Prince of the Republic. In addition to the people electing their ruling Princes, The Posadnik was the mayor of the city of Novgorod, which was also elected by the Veche. Tysiatskii's were an important local military commanders which were elected by the Veche. The Republic of Novgorod organized and maintained such democratic traditions and institutions for some 450 years.

There are also various elements of Democratic thought within the Germanic tribes. If enough people--ordinary people--opposed a Chieftain, the Chieftain was retired, exiled, or killed, and replaced with a chieftain that had more regard and respect for the people. The point being, Germanic peoples were accustomed to enjoying personal freedom, liberty, respect, and protections of traditional tribal laws. Such protections applied to men and women alike.

So, there are certainly more influences of democratic ideals than just from Iceland.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Until William the Bastard, the Saxon nobles elected the King. That isn't democracy or it's a very limited democracy but warm-body democracy has been the exception, not the rule. By the way, that's why Harold couldn't have simply given the throne to William if he had promised to, which he probably hadn't.

For that matter, the Athenians chose most of their office-holders by lottery among the citizenry, which was a very small subset of the population. Yet we call them the first democracy.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: RPGPundit on April 05, 2021, 06:26:03 PM
No, Wakanda is not racist against white people. But settings where "the white people are all dead/missing/unaccounted-for and so we created a SUPER SOCIETY" is racist against white people.
Yes, Wakanda has partly got the same anti-white fantasy (I mean, we KNOW what happened to lands that weren't conquered by Europeans in Africa and Asia: nothing special; not one turned into an Enlightened semi-utopian super-state, and the ones that fared best were the ones who enacted huge reforms by themselves to become MORE LIKE EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION and thus enjoy the benefits of those advances), but at least it doesn't make all the Europeans die from a meteor or just 'no one knows' (which is what fascists say when they make someone disappear) like Coyote & Crow does

OK, so you're changing your position on Wakanda here - or at least clarifying that Wakanda is also anti-white fantasy - but it's less extreme anti-white fantasy. It seems that this is because for Wakanda, it's just one small African country that wasn't invaded and developed advances, rather than the whole continent.

That right there is absolute bad-faith nonsense on your part. I get it, you're a critical race theory enthusiast aren't you? You think non-white people "can't be racist", correct?
It infuriates you to realize that the hatred of any race that feels resentment at their lot and blames some other race is identical, regardless of what race it is.


Quote
Your logic is that the fictional advance of vibranium is anti-white, because the setting should stick to history where technological advances come from Europe. I would ask - what about setting where non-historical advances happen in Europe, like Space 1889 where fictional science in Europe gives them massive advances like spaceships in the 1800s? If Wakandan vibranium is anti-white fantasy, doesn't that imply that fictional advances for Europeans are white supremacist fantasy?


Man, you must really be feeling desperate because of how sloppy you are getting. "vibranium" is not "anti-white", it is a make believe metal. The anti-whiteness is the suggestion that somehow, if left uncolonized by the Evil White People, non-white races would have developed not just technologies but complex scientific discoveries and social evolution that would have made their cultures Vastly Suprerior to Evil White Men's Culture. When we know that's not the case and would not have been the case based on historical context.

The "Vibranium" there is irrelevant, unless one of the powers of Vibranium was making Wakandans spontaneously know the Western Scientific Method and how to jump-start Western Industrial Revolution as they did. 
Of course, when that's true, it means that stuff like vibranium or other magic-gadgets, if they not only provide a resource but also somehow "enhance" a people to be able to become better than Europeans, is actually SUPER RACIST but NOT the way you think: it's suggesting that Black People or Native Americans or whoever require an artificial deus ex machina to be enhanced because somehow in their native state they would never be the equal to white men.

So is that what the "stuff" in Black Panther, Tikor or Coyote & Crow do?  If so, I think those settings are in some ways more white supremacist than Myfarog.
If not, those settings are obviously racist because they suggest that "we were kings" fantasy that the non-white race in question is actually vastly better mentally and ethically than Europeans and would have created a near Utopia of Supertechnology and Social Justice  if the Evil White Man hadn't come along and ruined it just as it was no doubt about to start happening.



Quote
I notice you didn't respond to my question to you, though, so I'll repeat it:
Imagine if someone (maybe Varg) made an alt-history game where he invented some calamity that made all the Jews die or disappear in the middle ages, and then claimed that in the 21st century Super State where the Jew-free Aryans were able to bring about a worldwide alliance now expanding out to the stars.
Would or would that not be racist?

You're positing a cause-and-effect here. In your hypothetical, *because* there were no Jews, therefore the Aryan Europeans were able to create a utopian Super State. And sure, if that was explicitly the premise of the game, yes, that would be racist.



So if a game setting where DUE TO THE LACK OF JEWS, Aryan Europeans were able to become vastly more advanced and create an ethically superior culture by the 21st century is racist.... How is a setting where DUE TO THE LACK OF WHITE MEN, Native Americans were able to become vastly more advanced and create an ethically superior culture by the 21st not racist?

Please explain the difference.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: ScytheSong on April 05, 2021, 06:30:36 PM
Ever since Shadowrun, Native American futurism has been interesting to me.  I kind of doubt this game will be worth it, but will take a look if it ever hits the Trove.  I’m thinking the White “Cherokee” Connor Alexander is going to take his million dollars and vanish, but who knows.

Are you trying to suggest he's somehow faking being Cherokee like Elizabeth Warren style??

Unlike Warren, who only claimed "ancestry" (which she has, at about 5%, as I understand it), Alexander has said multiple times that he is a "Cherokee Citizen." I'm pretty sure that it would have hit the fan if he was lying about that. Looking at him, he has some facial features that look Cherokee (dear God, his ears!), but adopting a roach (a hairstyle which has specific meaning to some tribes, but *not* Cherokee) is a weird choice for someone who claims to be speaking for a chunk of Native Americans.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: RPGPundit on April 05, 2021, 06:37:45 PM
While we're on the topic of why the European conquest of the Americas was so successful, I have a theory that the Reconquista was much more important than what was taught me in school. Granada falls in August, and Columbus sails in October of 1492. If there weren't a bunch of out-of-work soldiers who were prone to see any conflict as an us-or-them for their very souls, I think there would have been a very different result in the New World. If anyone has done any actual scholarship on the topic, I'd be interested to know about it..


It is absolutely and totally linked. There was an enormous incentive for the Spanish Crown to mobilize people and especially soldiers to the Americas because soldiers left with nothing else to fight tend to be a destabilizing influence. It was also seen as an ongoing part of Spanish Catholic Fervor.
The biggest historical error we see pushed in modern history talks about the initial Spanish conquests of the America is to suggest that somehow the religious component was just pure lip-service. It absolutely was not. The religious fervor of the Spaniards was one hundred percent real, born out of centuries of a people struggling to hold on to their religion under the threat of "heathen" Moorish invaders, and then fighting to reclaim all of Spain for Christ. They saw the Americas, and the mandate to convert the people of "the Indias" to the true religion as a sacred and holy mandate. Of course there was also enormous profiteering and personal agendas, but pretending the religious element was just 'all an act' rather than the FIRST reason to be there ends up causing an enormous error of understanding of the motivations for the expansion to the Americas.

Especially after discovering the Aztecs.  I mean, consider how the Aztecs would have looked to devout Catholic spaniards: an empire based on the ritual sacrifice of thousands of people a year to demonic-looking gods. It was literally biblical, it was like they were seeing the cult of Moloch or Baal in real life once more. For them, to crusade to put an end to that which was clearly in their eyes an unquestionable evil of the highest nature would have been self-evidently doing the work of God.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: RPGPundit on April 05, 2021, 06:49:58 PM
I often get the impression that popular historical discussions are cherrypicking to serve a point (cultural posturing) rather than analyzing the whole of recorded human history to receive insights about what innovations are likely for a civilization to develop.

To use one example: we think of the Aztecs as uniquely cruel and evil in human history, while ignoring or downplaying comparable cultures who practiced human sacrifice or other atrocities (e.g. European witch hunts, the Inquisition, public executions) and not taking into account that the Flower Wars were a recent (and unsustainable) development... like every period of atrocity and religious reformation in recorded history.

But almost all indigenous American civilizations appeared to perform some degree of human sacrifice at most points in their history. And large amounts of human sacrifice were happening before the Aztecs started doing the Flower Wars (in fact, there's some suggestion that at first the Flower Wars might have been started as a way to try to avoid bloodshed; though later the demand for ever more sacrifices probably made it worse than what they were doing before).

There's nothing special about human cultures of all kinds being brutish and murderous. ALL of them were. Only ONE of them had an Enlightenment and developed concepts like fundamental human rights, equality of all human beings, individual rights and liberties, that allowed atrocities to be effectively morally opposed. THAT is the Exceptional thing.

Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: ScytheSong on April 05, 2021, 06:51:52 PM
While we're on the topic of why the European conquest of the Americas was so successful, I have a theory that the Reconquista was much more important than what was taught me in school. Granada falls in August, and Columbus sails in October of 1492. If there weren't a bunch of out-of-work soldiers who were prone to see any conflict as an us-or-them for their very souls, I think there would have been a very different result in the New World. If anyone has done any actual scholarship on the topic, I'd be interested to know about it..


It is absolutely and totally linked. There was an enormous incentive for the Spanish Crown to mobilize people and especially soldiers to the Americas because soldiers left with nothing else to fight tend to be a destabilizing influence. It was also seen as an ongoing part of Spanish Catholic Fervor.
The biggest historical error we see pushed in modern history talks about the initial Spanish conquests of the America is to suggest that somehow the religious component was just pure lip-service. It absolutely was not. The religious fervor of the Spaniards was one hundred percent real, born out of centuries of a people struggling to hold on to their religion under the threat of "heathen" Moorish invaders, and then fighting to reclaim all of Spain for Christ. They saw the Americas, and the mandate to convert the people of "the Indias" to the true religion as a sacred and holy mandate. Of course there was also enormous profiteering and personal agendas, but pretending the religious element was just 'all an act' rather than the FIRST reason to be there ends up causing an enormous error of understanding of the motivations for the expansion to the Americas.

Especially after discovering the Aztecs.  I mean, consider how the Aztecs would have looked to devout Catholic spaniards: an empire based on the ritual sacrifice of thousands of people a year to demonic-looking gods. It was literally biblical, it was like they were seeing the cult of Moloch or Baal in real life once more. For them, to crusade to put an end to that which was clearly in their eyes an unquestionable evil of the highest nature would have been self-evidently doing the work of God.

We don't even have to imagine their response to the Aztec religion. Now that you're reminded me of it, I've read an excerpt from the journal Cortez or one of his close companions wrote where he describes Moctezuma showing off the sacrifice chamber at the top of one of the pyramids -- the smell of burnt flesh was said to be like frankincense and the gouts of dried blood as beautiful as a picture of the Blessed Virgin to the Aztecs. Which, of course, led the guy who was writing the journal to completely freak out.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: VisionStorm on April 05, 2021, 07:38:42 PM
I often get the impression that popular historical discussions are cherrypicking to serve a point (cultural posturing) rather than analyzing the whole of recorded human history to receive insights about what innovations are likely for a civilization to develop.

Funny how this applies to you.

To use one example: we think of the Aztecs as uniquely cruel and evil in human history, while ignoring or downplaying comparable cultures who practiced human sacrifice or other atrocities (e.g. European witch hunts, the Inquisition, public executions) and not taking into account that the Flower Wars were a recent (and unsustainable) development... like every period of atrocity and religious reformation in recorded history.

An example taken right out of a discussion in another thread where I explicitly stated that the Spanish Conquistadors were evil AF and almost as bad as the Aztecs. And where I also explained why the Aztecs truly were uniquely cruel—to the point were other Mesoamerican tribes, when faced with a technologically superior invading force (the Spaniards), rather than shit on their pants and start running for the hills to gather their forces and unite against this vastly better armed invading army, they actually thought “These people could help us against the Aztecs!” Then united with the Spaniards to defeat the Aztecs and unwittingly gave Spain a foothold in Central America.

THAT’S how bad the Aztecs were!

And this isn’t “posturing” or judging ancient peoples by modern standards. This is what other contemporary Mesoamerican tribes thought of the Aztecs at the time. They were so violent, bloodthirsty and out of control that other tribes sided with a bunch of strange alien invaders with superior weaponry to fight against them, rather than realize the impending doom that was ahead the moment the Spanish set foot at their shores.

But I’m sure me pointing out the FACT that most European cultures (or ANY other culture anywhere for that matter) that practiced human sacrifice usually used volunteers and that human sacrifice was uncommon, while the Aztecs went across sacrificing war prisoners by the thousands, was just me “downplaying” stuff. Cuz that’s what FACTS are: “downplays”.

That's equivalent to assuming that, say, since the Axis Powers were fascists and committed atrocities then they had always been evil... even though those were recent developments that only lasted a few decades and even people within those regimes disagreed with what happened.

The Aztecs even engaged in book burning to erase all evidence of their history prior to the Flower Wars.

All this important political and cultural leadup is completely absent from mainstream school history textbooks.

Who the hell doubts that the Axis Powers were evil? Isn’t that the entire reason everyone calls everyone else a Nazi these days? And how does comparing the Aztecs to the Nazis (a group NOBODY denies was evil) make the Aztecs not evil? Or is it that they’re the wrong color?
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Shasarak on April 05, 2021, 08:13:13 PM
I often get the impression that popular historical discussions are cherrypicking to serve a point (cultural posturing) rather than analyzing the whole of recorded human history to receive insights about what innovations are likely for a civilization to develop.

To use one example: we think of the Aztecs as uniquely cruel and evil in human history, while ignoring or downplaying comparable cultures who practiced human sacrifice or other atrocities (e.g. European witch hunts, the Inquisition, public executions) and not taking into account that the Flower Wars were a recent (and unsustainable) development... like every period of atrocity and religious reformation in recorded history.

Aztecs: We are uniquely cruel and evil

CCP: Hold my beer.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: jhkim on April 05, 2021, 08:19:03 PM
Hmmm...in the Middle Ages, the Republic of Novgorod, in northern Russia, embraced many Democratic traditions. The Veche was a democratic assembly of normal citizens that elected the Prince of the Republic. In addition to the people electing their ruling Princes, The Posadnik was the mayor of the city of Novgorod, which was also elected by the Veche. Tysiatskii's were an important local military commanders which were elected by the Veche. The Republic of Novgorod organized and maintained such democratic traditions and institutions for some 450 years.

There are also various elements of Democratic thought within the Germanic tribes. If enough people--ordinary people--opposed a Chieftain, the Chieftain was retired, exiled, or killed, and replaced with a chieftain that had more regard and respect for the people. The point being, Germanic peoples were accustomed to enjoying personal freedom, liberty, respect, and protections of traditional tribal laws. Such protections applied to men and women alike.

So, there are certainly more influences of democratic ideals than just from Iceland.
Until William the Bastard, the Saxon nobles elected the King. That isn't democracy or it's a very limited democracy but warm-body democracy has been the exception, not the rule. By the way, that's why Harold couldn't have simply given the throne to William if he had promised to, which he probably hadn't.

For that matter, the Athenians chose most of their office-holders by lottery among the citizenry, which was a very small subset of the population. Yet we call them the first democracy.

I concur with WillInNewHaven here. I did cite medieval Iceland, but I wasn't claiming it ​was the only thing vaguely democratic. My point is that democracy was the exception rather than the rule in medieval Europe. For the most part, medieval Europe was not significantly more democratic or egalitarian than medieval China, medieval India, or other civilization.

Exceptions like Iceland and Novgorod were important for later on during the Enlightenment - but during the medieval period they remained exceptions.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: jhkim on April 05, 2021, 09:03:18 PM
The "Vibranium" there is irrelevant, unless one of the powers of Vibranium was making Wakandans spontaneously know the Western Scientific Method and how to jump-start Western Industrial Revolution as they did.
Of course, when that's true, it means that stuff like vibranium or other magic-gadgets, if they not only provide a resource but also somehow "enhance" a people to be able to become better than Europeans, is actually SUPER RACIST but NOT the way you think: it's suggesting that Black People or Native Americans or whoever require an artificial deus ex machina to be enhanced because somehow in their native state they would never be the equal to white men.

So is that what the "stuff" in Black Panther, Tikor or Coyote & Crow do?  If so, I think those settings are in some ways more white supremacist than Myfarog.
If not, those settings are obviously racist because they suggest that "we were kings" fantasy that the non-white race in question is actually vastly better mentally and ethically than Europeans and would have created a near Utopia of Supertechnology and Social Justice  if the Evil White Man hadn't come along and ruined it just as it was no doubt about to start happening.

So regardless of what the explanation is, you judge it to be racist. If vibranium enabled the Wakandan advances, then it's racist against blacks because clearly blacks shouldn't need enhancements to equal whites. If vibranium *doesn't* enable advances, then it's racist against white people because it says that blacks are naturally better than whites. I tend to think that you're just seeing racism everywhere.

I don't see any sign that Africans or any other peoples are any less genetically intelligent or capable than white people. The evidence of history is that they lacked the circumstances of Europe that enabled greater technological advances. For technology - the key seems to be first the Eurasian exchange, then the Columbian exchange.

The civilizations along the Eurasian band -- the Mediterranean, Middle East, India, and China -- all grew more advanced than other parts of the world, by exchanging crops, domesticated animals, and other discoveries along an East-West axis. It is difficult to use and adapt along a North-South axis because the climate changes so much - making things difficult for Africa and the Americas. For history prior to 1492, it was mostly a toss-up to say which was the most advanced along Eurasia. In 1000 BC, Egypt was the most advanced. In 0AD, Rome was the most advanced. In 500 AD, China was the most advanced. In 1000AD, perhaps Persia was the most advanced. It was only after 1500AD, that Europe unquestionably pulled ahead to be the most advanced technologically. I think it is fair to say that they benefited greatly from the Columbian exchange - i.e. the influx of new ideas, raw materials, plants, and animals from the Americas.

Based on this, I think it is not racist to suggest that a fictional influx of new ideas - like psychic powers or enhanced abilities - would allow a civilization to grow more advanced technologically. I don't think that Wakanda's history is particularly realistic, but it isn't based on an assumed racial superiority or inferiority. The vibranium meteor is portrayed a chance occurrence. If the meteor had hit elsewhere, things would have gone differently.

----

For the record, yes, vibranium has enabled advances. In Wakanda, after the vibranium-laced meteor fell thousands of years ago, a native plant - the heart-shaped herb - adapted to absorb much of the vibranium that now leeched into the soil. Early peoples discovered that by drinking a concoction of the heart-shaped herb, they gained superpowers - which evolved into the line of Black Panthers. The Black Panthers were not inherently super-smart, but they do have superhuman abilities and super-senses. (There's also sometimes been hints of spiritual effects from it - like T'Challa's out-of-body experience in the movie.)


So if a game setting where DUE TO THE LACK OF JEWS, Aryan Europeans were able to become vastly more advanced and create an ethically superior culture by the 21st century is racist.... How is a setting where DUE TO THE LACK OF WHITE MEN, Native Americans were able to become vastly more advanced and create an ethically superior culture by the 21st not racist?

Please explain the difference.

There is a huge difference between:

1) A game with no fictional premise other than lack of European conquest, which claims that it is a realistic projection that Native America civilizations would develop advanced technology in 700 years.

2) A game where there are superhuman psychic powers, billed as "science fantasy", that has Native America civilizations developing advanced technology in 700 years.


In #1, the game is making a false claim about where Native American civilizations would go. In #2, though, it's just a "what if". I could imagine a series of "what if" games which each had what if there was a fictional source of advancement for different civilizations. i.e. What if India got superhuman powers and technology? What if Australia gained superhuman powers and technology? What if Europe got superhuman powers and technology? These aren't racist, because they aren't saying that the *cause* of the advancement is racial superiority.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: GeekyBugle on April 05, 2021, 09:25:37 PM
I often get the impression that popular historical discussions are cherrypicking to serve a point (cultural posturing) rather than analyzing the whole of recorded human history to receive insights about what innovations are likely for a civilization to develop.

Funny how this applies to you.

To use one example: we think of the Aztecs as uniquely cruel and evil in human history, while ignoring or downplaying comparable cultures who practiced human sacrifice or other atrocities (e.g. European witch hunts, the Inquisition, public executions) and not taking into account that the Flower Wars were a recent (and unsustainable) development... like every period of atrocity and religious reformation in recorded history.

An example taken right out of a discussion in another thread where I explicitly stated that the Spanish Conquistadors were evil AF and almost as bad as the Aztecs. And where I also explained why the Aztecs truly were uniquely cruel—to the point were other Mesoamerican tribes, when faced with a technologically superior invading force (the Spaniards), rather than shit on their pants and start running for the hills to gather their forces and unite against this vastly better armed invading army, they actually thought “These people could help us against the Aztecs!” Then united with the Spaniards to defeat the Aztecs and unwittingly gave Spain a foothold in Central America.

THAT’S how bad the Aztecs were!

And this isn’t “posturing” or judging ancient peoples by modern standards. This is what other contemporary Mesoamerican tribes thought of the Aztecs at the time. They were so violent, bloodthirsty and out of control that other tribes sided with a bunch of strange alien invaders with superior weaponry to fight against them, rather than realize the impending doom that was ahead the moment the Spanish set foot at their shores.

But I’m sure me pointing out the FACT that most European cultures (or ANY other culture anywhere for that matter) that practiced human sacrifice usually used volunteers and that human sacrifice was uncommon, while the Aztecs went across sacrificing war prisoners by the thousands, was just me “downplaying” stuff. Cuz that’s what FACTS are: “downplays”.

That's equivalent to assuming that, say, since the Axis Powers were fascists and committed atrocities then they had always been evil... even though those were recent developments that only lasted a few decades and even people within those regimes disagreed with what happened.

The Aztecs even engaged in book burning to erase all evidence of their history prior to the Flower Wars.

All this important political and cultural leadup is completely absent from mainstream school history textbooks.

Who the hell doubts that the Axis Powers were evil? Isn’t that the entire reason everyone calls everyone else a Nazi these days? And how does comparing the Aztecs to the Nazis (a group NOBODY denies was evil) make the Aztecs not evil? Or is it that they’re the wrong color?

And ritual cannibalism, do not forget the ritual cannibalism, it wasn't just the priest eating the still beating heart of the sacrificed, the people ate their flesh. Pozole, a traditional dish for the end of harvest was originally made with human meath. And there's reason to think other traditional dishes around México have a similar dark origin.

But the Aztecs were singular in the ammount of human sacrifice they engaged in.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: This Guy on April 05, 2021, 09:56:32 PM
Feels like this is all built on the assumption of a lack of internal conflict in the run-up to the creation of the advanced technological state in the setting, and also a bunch of embittered TBP castoffs with an axe to grind about their hobby forsaking their tastes.

Mostly the latter, but a bit of both.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: ScytheSong on April 05, 2021, 09:57:40 PM
I will say that one of the things that's in the (tiny) amount of actual Coyote and Crow game text that I've seen (a blow-up of the jpeg about equipment) is an explicit call out that gunpowder never made it to the Americas. It also says that most of the "warfare" in North America was isolated small units usually working from ambush, and that the weapons of Cahokia reflect that.

At this time, the one thing that comes close to breaking my willing suspension of disbelief (again, I love me a good counterfactual setting) is the existence of an Azteca Empire -- if c. 1400 is the timing of the meteor strike, the three-way alliance that formed the Aztec Empire in 1427 is significantly less likely to have happened.

Of course, having said that, I'm now coming up with an idea: The Aztec religion, which was already present in the 14th century (and this is as I understand it, so take this with a grain of salt), had as one of its core tenets that human sacrifice was needed to keep the sun from going out and to keep the world in order. So what happens when the sun actually does "go out" and the nature of the world changes due to an asteroid strike? A religious crisis, that's what. So does the religion double down, as people are wont to do, or does it decide that maybe the entire human sacrifice thing was a bad idea? Or do we get a good old fashion schism where some people/groups go one way and others go the other way?

I'd say that the schism is the most likely path, with one group doubling down, and the other group moving away from human sacrifice, but the catastrophe making it impossible for one group to beat the other. Several hundred years later, one group could emerge victorious and (seeing as this is humans we're talking about) takes up wide-scale expansionand forms an Aztec Empire that looks familiar from history, but higher tech -- a hegemonic/tributary empire that takes tribute slaves and defeated enemy warriors and sacrifices them to keep the world turning. Needless to say, these would not be the good guys in my setting.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Shrieking Banshee on April 05, 2021, 10:18:59 PM
Back to the topic at hand:
I don't believe this sort of roleplay is isolated to races. I think this sort of 'worldbuilding power fantasy' is always....kinda pathetic. And il state it with 'my' preferred type of politics so I can argue in good faith. Making a world where all the sins of mankind vanish because we embraced decentralization, and a focus on free trade and individualism I would find as pathetic as a world around how awesome communism is.

I think it very much differs from individual power fantasy because that represents a desire to change the world through yourself or experience a new set of circumstances through yourself. And done moderately, I think is perfectly healthy.
But 'world power fantasy' is I find generally much more of an unhealthy sort of fantasizing because it starts with making assumptions about the world, and I find is a more unhealthy kind of escapism.

Now, this is very different from a 'What if" scenario. 'What if Julius Ceasar was more loyal to the republic' is a very different kind of worldbuilding then 'I wish FDR never poisoned everybody's minds with lies'.

I don't think there is necessarily anything wrong with the scenario of 'I want to play in a sci-fantasy world in purely indian trappings'. I think the issue is the execution and the real underlining motivation of its creation. It's the current year. The guy making this isn't doing this out of some deep-seated interest in theoretical sci-fi, but out of racial theory wish fulfillment. Just as most characters can be expressed out of interest or narcissistic wish fulfillment, so can worlds.

For instance, Gurps Infinite Worlds has a world that's 100% communist (Lenin 1) with an alt-history. But it never feels like the author wish fulfillment. Alongside Lenin 1 is Lenin 2 which's a commie ecological hellscape.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: S'mon on April 06, 2021, 02:27:04 AM
So regardless of what the explanation is, you judge it to be racist. If vibranium enabled the Wakandan advances, then it's racist against blacks because clearly blacks shouldn't need enhancements to equal whites. If vibranium *doesn't* enable advances, then it's racist against white people because it says that blacks are naturally better than whites. I tend to think that you're just seeing racism everywhere.

Have to agree with JH on this - probably best to keep 'racist' to a much narrower definition if it's to be a useful concept at all. Eg within the Black Panther film, Killmonger is a Black Supremacist, he talks a lot like Hitler - he's racist. The racism in the film is more around how he's portrayed sympathetically by the director, who seems to think that gripes over 'over policing' south central Los Angeles is an understandable reason for wanting your own Thousand Year Reich. Black Panther's sister is shown as mildly racist, calling the white CIA agent 'Coloniser' seems to be just a racist slur. But the Wakandan society itself isn't racist - if anything it gets criticised for its *lack* of solidarity with the Black Race. As I said, Wakanda isn't a racist concept, "magical supertech country" isn't a racist concept wherever it's set (and Wakanda is hardly a utopia); the film director seems to be somewhat racist.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: RPGPundit on April 06, 2021, 05:55:46 AM

There is a huge difference between:

1) A game with no fictional premise other than lack of European conquest, which claims that it is a realistic projection that Native America civilizations would develop advanced technology in 700 years.

2) A game where there are superhuman psychic powers, billed as "science fantasy", that has Native America civilizations developing advanced technology in 700 years.


In #1, the game is making a false claim about where Native American civilizations would go. In #2, though, it's just a "what if". I could imagine a series of "what if" games which each had what if there was a fictional source of advancement for different civilizations. i.e. What if India got superhuman powers and technology? What if Australia gained superhuman powers and technology? What if Europe got superhuman powers and technology? These aren't racist, because they aren't saying that the *cause* of the advancement is racial superiority.

:rolleyes: OK, sure. In a setting where there is no white men and some kind of magic or super-science that could make a non-European culture outpace the development of the Europeans. But what does that actually achieve? Because the claim always seems to be "and that's why we're BETTER! If we had just had a Magical Wizard come and give up Power-Ups we'd have outpaced Whitey AND we'd have a more virtuous and just society".  It sure looks from here like a ridiculous and self-defeating claim.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: RPGPundit on April 06, 2021, 05:58:38 AM
I will say that one of the things that's in the (tiny) amount of actual Coyote and Crow game text that I've seen (a blow-up of the jpeg about equipment) is an explicit call out that gunpowder never made it to the Americas. It also says that most of the "warfare" in North America was isolated small units usually working from ambush, and that the weapons of Cahokia reflect that.

Yes. And the text also says that thanks to the Super-meteor the Native tribes just plain SKIPPED mining, industrialization and fossil fuels and went straight to having totally environmentally-friendly green energy and 3-d printers that could make anything.

But this totally isn't Leftist Wish-Fulfillment/Revenge Fantasy
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: RPGPundit on April 06, 2021, 06:01:16 AM
Back to the topic at hand:
I don't believe this sort of roleplay is isolated to races. I think this sort of 'worldbuilding power fantasy' is always....kinda pathetic. And il state it with 'my' preferred type of politics so I can argue in good faith. Making a world where all the sins of mankind vanish because we embraced decentralization, and a focus on free trade and individualism I would find as pathetic as a world around how awesome communism is.

Yes, absolutely. Libertarian quasi-utopia or Catholic quasi-utopia would be every bit as stupid as (insert race here) quasi-utopia. But the difference is those others would be brutally attacked by the Ruling Left as being "hate speech", while this is lauded as a paragon of social justice.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Spinachcat on April 06, 2021, 06:21:47 AM
RPGPundit, how would you classify Rifts China and Rifts Japan? And where do you draw the line between "racialist propaganda" and "fanboy authors"? AKA, in games like Legends of the Five Rings or Bushido or those Rifts books, the authors are clearly enamored with the subject matter and back when those books were written, we just called their exuberance awesomesauce, but how would they be seen if published today?
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Ratman_tf on April 06, 2021, 06:53:41 AM
RPGPundit, how would you classify Rifts China and Rifts Japan? And where do you draw the line between "racialist propaganda" and "fanboy authors"? AKA, in games like Legends of the Five Rings or Bushido or those Rifts books, the authors are clearly enamored with the subject matter and back when those books were written, we just called their exuberance awesomesauce, but how would they be seen if published today?

Maybe a closer comparison would be Rifts Spirit West. For all his faults, racism isn't one of Siembieda's. He loves cultural stereotypes, but they're never done in a mean spirited way.  Or ideologically driven. Race doesn't drive his decisions to make person X the good guy or the bad guy, and most societies in Rifts have their good points and bad points. Even some of the Vampire Kingdoms are shown to be relatively benign to it's slave caste of humans.

Notably, the thing I dislike about these alternate history settings like Coyote and Crow, is the idea that whitey was the cause of all the world's problems, and if they'd just dissappear, everyone else would flourish and invent non-polluting rocket belts to fly around in their near-utopia with.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Steven Mitchell on April 06, 2021, 08:36:03 AM
While we're on the topic of why the European conquest of the Americas was so successful, I have a theory that the Reconquista was much more important than what was taught me in school. Granada falls in August, and Columbus sails in October of 1492. If there weren't a bunch of out-of-work soldiers who were prone to see any conflict as an us-or-them for their very souls, I think there would have been a very different result in the New World. If anyone has done any actual scholarship on the topic, I'd be interested to know about it..


It is absolutely and totally linked. There was an enormous incentive for the Spanish Crown to mobilize people and especially soldiers to the Americas because soldiers left with nothing else to fight tend to be a destabilizing influence. It was also seen as an ongoing part of Spanish Catholic Fervor.
The biggest historical error we see pushed in modern history talks about the initial Spanish conquests of the America is to suggest that somehow the religious component was just pure lip-service. It absolutely was not. The religious fervor of the Spaniards was one hundred percent real, born out of centuries of a people struggling to hold on to their religion under the threat of "heathen" Moorish invaders, and then fighting to reclaim all of Spain for Christ. They saw the Americas, and the mandate to convert the people of "the Indias" to the true religion as a sacred and holy mandate. Of course there was also enormous profiteering and personal agendas, but pretending the religious element was just 'all an act' rather than the FIRST reason to be there ends up causing an enormous error of understanding of the motivations for the expansion to the Americas.

Especially after discovering the Aztecs.  I mean, consider how the Aztecs would have looked to devout Catholic spaniards: an empire based on the ritual sacrifice of thousands of people a year to demonic-looking gods. It was literally biblical, it was like they were seeing the cult of Moloch or Baal in real life once more. For them, to crusade to put an end to that which was clearly in their eyes an unquestionable evil of the highest nature would have been self-evidently doing the work of God.

To extend that:

Finding the unemployed soldiers something to do is huge.  Roughly equally important is that now that Granada has fallen, the crown isn't having to scrape up every spare coin to pay for the Reconquista.  Before that happens, expeditions aren't an option.  Then the expeditions are viewed as a way to do an end-run around the Portuguese routes to India around Africa.  And when that doesn't pan out, exploiting the new world takes over.  What usually happens when people that have been scraping by have dangled in front of them a chance for immense wealth?  Arrogant nobles aren't immune to the psychological effects of such a reversal.  With a chance for more power involved, if anything the effect is enhanced. 

Basically, the powers that be in Spain had a lot of short-term reasons to push for the expeditions that created a perfect storm.   Long-term, it was a more mixed bag, but it still made Spain the world power for over a century.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Shrieking Banshee on April 06, 2021, 10:24:10 AM
There is a huge difference between:

1) A game with no fictional premise other than lack of European conquest, which claims that it is a realistic projection that Native America civilizations would develop advanced technology in 700 years.

2) A game where there are superhuman psychic powers, billed as "science fantasy", that has Native America civilizations developing advanced technology in 700 years.

In #1, the game is making a false claim about where Native American civilizations would go. In #2, though, it's just a "what if". I could imagine a series of "what if" games which each had what if there was a fictional source of advancement for different civilizations. i.e. What if India got superhuman powers and technology? What if Australia gained superhuman powers and technology? What if Europe got superhuman powers and technology? These aren't racist, because they aren't saying that the *cause* of the advancement is racial superiority.

I have no real dog in this fight, but this is clearly a bitter race-fueled power fantasy and not a 'what if' scenario. I outlined that the difference is execution and the result.

'What if WWI Germany became a utopia and conquered everybody' as a purely what-if scenario with the only difference is the absence of jews is this sort of questionable scenario.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: jhkim on April 06, 2021, 12:03:29 PM
Have to agree with JH on this - probably best to keep 'racist' to a much narrower definition if it's to be a useful concept at all. Eg within the Black Panther film, Killmonger is a Black Supremacist, he talks a lot like Hitler - he's racist. The racism in the film is more around how he's portrayed sympathetically by the director, who seems to think that gripes over 'over policing' south central Los Angeles is an understandable reason for wanting your own Thousand Year Reich. Black Panther's sister is shown as mildly racist, calling the white CIA agent 'Coloniser' seems to be just a racist slur. But the Wakandan society itself isn't racist - if anything it gets criticised for its *lack* of solidarity with the Black Race. As I said, Wakanda isn't a racist concept, "magical supertech country" isn't a racist concept wherever it's set (and Wakanda is hardly a utopia); the film director seems to be somewhat racist.

I can see arguments over how particular characters are portrayed or lines in the movie -- but as you say, Pundit's claim is that just the *concept* of "magical supertech country" is inherently racist - either racist against whites or racist against natives.

Regarding the movie - I thought Killmonger was quite well-portrayed as villainous. He is more evil than in the comics, I note. Also, is there anything other than that one word that made you think Shuri was racist? To my mind, she was remarkably accepting of having a foreign *intelligence agent* in her frickin control room. That was actually a problem of believability for me. I read "colonizer" as mild slur at being an American CIA agent. She didn't seem to have any problem with Bucky later on, or call him names. The local kids called him "White Wolf", but that doesn't seem to be a slur - and it's a reference to a Wakandan in the comics who rose to be head of their secret service, who was a white man adopted after his plane crashed in Wakanda when he was a baby.


I will say that one of the things that's in the (tiny) amount of actual Coyote and Crow game text that I've seen (a blow-up of the jpeg about equipment) is an explicit call out that gunpowder never made it to the Americas. It also says that most of the "warfare" in North America was isolated small units usually working from ambush, and that the weapons of Cahokia reflect that.

Yes. And the text also says that thanks to the Super-meteor the Native tribes just plain SKIPPED mining, industrialization and fossil fuels and went straight to having totally environmentally-friendly green energy and 3-d printers that could make anything.

But this totally isn't Leftist Wish-Fulfillment/Revenge Fantasy

I would agree that it's wish-fulfillment. That's what a ton of fantasy is. Superman is wish fulfillment for what if a corn-fed all-American boy was more powerful than anyone in the world. Spider-Man is wish-fulfillment for nerdy kids who got picked on in school. It's the same with Robin Hood, Merlin, and lots of older character. And yeah, this seems like wish-fulfillment for Native Americans - what if they got magic superpowers instead of being conquered and colonized.

But as "revenge fantasy"? That's claiming "I live out a fulfilling life and never see my attacker" is a personal revenge fantasy.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: This Guy on April 06, 2021, 12:38:53 PM
But as "revenge fantasy"? That's claiming "I live out a fulfilling life and never see my attacker" is a personal revenge fantasy.

That's what the aphorism says anyway. Clearly that is indeed a personal revenge fantasy.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Shrieking Banshee on April 06, 2021, 12:57:36 PM
But as "revenge fantasy"? That's claiming "I live out a fulfilling life and never see my attacker" is a personal revenge fantasy.
Agreed. It's a wish-fulfillment fantasy, not a revenge fantasy.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: wmarshal on April 06, 2021, 02:17:08 PM
But as "revenge fantasy"? That's claiming "I live out a fulfilling life and never see my attacker" is a personal revenge fantasy.
Agreed. It's a wish-fulfillment fantasy, not a revenge fantasy.
I think we’re missing the forests for the trees. I don’t think what’s significant is that it’s wish-fulfillment fantasy instead of revenge fantasy. It looks like it’s racist wish-fulfillment fantasy. If someone wrote an alternate setting where a pagan Europe developed super science because Christianity was averted by having the Jews never return from exile and eventually assimilate like so many other exiled communities, there’d be no doubt this person was writing racist wish-fulfillment. While not a revenge fantasy because the super science European pagans didn’t act against the Jews, I award no points for being a racist wish-fulfillment fantasy instead. Even if the author claimed his “real” problem is with Christianity, he chose to rationalize his super science setting by eliminating a population that stood in the way in his mind to the wish-fulfillment fantasy he desired.

Coyote and Crow is basically doing the same thing, except it’s especially lazy about it. They could have created a science fantasy setting that that centered on Native Americans without essentially stating “and we’re not interacting about or with other races at all…because…reasons.” Plenty of settings focus on one part of the world or a specific community, but I can’t recall seeing the setting deliberately and completely ignoring the wider world. Shadowrun was initially focused on North America, specifically the Pacific Northwest if I recall correctly. Later they expanded to looking at other areas. It would have been weird if Shadowrun deliberately and purposely decided to ignore that there was a wider world outside the Pacific Northwest. Coyote and Crow seems to be doing so in order to have their fantasy of a pan-Native American mono-ethnic society because even thinking about the Other is bad to them.

Hell, it looks like the setting will basically genocide the idea of a Latino/Hispanic race from ever occurring since those don’t start to come about until 1493 as part of the Spanish coming to the Americas.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: This Guy on April 06, 2021, 02:19:54 PM
What would be the non-genocidal way to imply the non-existence of a Hispanic population because European colonizers never showed up?
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Brad on April 06, 2021, 02:25:55 PM
Shadowrun was way cooler...Indians used magic and blew up some mountains, kicked all the white devils off their lands. And not only cooler, more fucking plausible than this tripe. All Native Americans are magically living in harmony? What the hell are these retards smoking?
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: This Guy on April 06, 2021, 02:27:28 PM
"Now, 700 years after the world was brought to the brink, a new chapter has begun. Your characters enter a world that is healing but is no less dangerous. The ice sheets are retreating and the seas are calming, but what lay out beyond your borders? The treaties and alliances that made so much sense during the long winters are now eroding and old grudges between nations are not so easily forgotten. New technologies arise almost every day and the rate of change is frightening for some. And then there are the stories. Talk of spirits, monsters, beings of legend. For so many they were just tales to be told around the fire. But now there is talk that these legends may be far more literal than you may have previously believed. Has something awakened them?"

Oh hey internal conflict in the setting nice.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Pat on April 06, 2021, 02:29:13 PM
Superman is wish fulfillment for what if a corn-fed all-American boy was more powerful than anyone in the world.
Except he isn't, because he's Kryptonian. He's not human, and technically is an illegal alien because he was smuggled into America as an infant.

Though that's a whole 'nother discussion, because Superman stories never really reconcile his status an a wholesome American ideal with his fantastic off-world origin. The two aspects exist in parallel, without ever really being integrated.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: This Guy on April 06, 2021, 02:30:18 PM
Superman is wish fulfillment for what if a corn-fed all-American boy was more powerful than anyone in the world.
Except he isn't, because he's Kryptonian. He's not human, and technically is an illegal alien because he was smuggled into America as an infant.

Though that's a whole 'nother discussion, because Superman stories never really reconcile his status an a wholesome American ideal with his fantastic off-world origin. The two aspects exist in parallel, without ever really being integrated.

I know when I read a Superman comic I think to myself "Boy, I wish I had those powers" and then follow that up with setting-specific pedantry to quell the urge.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: wmarshal on April 06, 2021, 02:30:44 PM
What would be the non-genocidal way to imply the non-existence of a Hispanic population because European colonizers never showed up?
I don’t know, but I think it’s ironic that the Woke community demands representation no matter the setting or lack of rationale, and here the setting (which is very much backed by the Woke) is telling Latinos “Hell no you won’t see yourself in this setting, and that’s a feature!” The Latinos’ identity is just collateral damage in the creators’ desire to ignore all things non-Native American.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: This Guy on April 06, 2021, 02:33:57 PM
What would be the non-genocidal way to imply the non-existence of a Hispanic population because European colonizers never showed up?
I don’t know, but I think it’s ironic that the Woke community demands representation no matter the setting or lack of rationale, and here the setting (which is very much backed by the Woke) is telling Latinos “Hell no you won’t see yourself in this setting, and that’s a feature!” The Latinos’ identity is just collateral damage in the creators’ desire to ignore all things non-Native American.

So like if the designer's implication in the pitch wasn't that this is specifically about Native representation, and if this was presented by some theoretical neutral party as a setting idea they thought of, would the lack of that implication not raise the same flags about the absence of Hispanic characters? They are doomed by authorial intent?
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: ScytheSong on April 06, 2021, 02:35:55 PM
Shadowrun was way cooler...Indians used magic and blew up some mountains, kicked all the white devils off their lands. And not only cooler, more fucking plausible than this tripe. All Native Americans are magically living in harmony? What the hell are these retards smoking?

Yeah. You aren't describing Coyote and Crow. As I said earlier, the text plainly says that combat has been mostly small groups and ambushes, not that they have been living in harmony.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: GeekyBugle on April 06, 2021, 02:37:23 PM
But as "revenge fantasy"? That's claiming "I live out a fulfilling life and never see my attacker" is a personal revenge fantasy.
Agreed. It's a wish-fulfillment fantasy, not a revenge fantasy.
I think we’re missing the forests for the trees. I don’t think what’s significant is that it’s wish-fulfillment fantasy instead of revenge fantasy. It looks like it’s racist wish-fulfillment fantasy. If someone wrote an alternate setting where a pagan Europe developed super science because Christianity was averted by having the Jews never return from exile and eventually assimilate like so many other exiled communities, there’d be no doubt this person was writing racist wish-fulfillment. While not a revenge fantasy because the super science European pagans didn’t act against the Jews, I award no points for being a racist wish-fulfillment fantasy instead. Even if the author claimed his “real” problem is with Christianity, he chose to rationalize his super science setting by eliminating a population that stood in the way in his mind to the wish-fulfillment fantasy he desired.

Coyote and Crow is basically doing the same thing, except it’s especially lazy about it. They could have created a science fantasy setting that that centered on Native Americans without essentially stating “and we’re not interacting about or with other races at all…because…reasons.” Plenty of settings focus on one part of the world or a specific community, but I can’t recall seeing the setting deliberately and completely ignoring the wider world. Shadowrun was initially focused on North America, specifically the Pacific Northwest if I recall correctly. Later they expanded to looking at other areas. It would have been weird if Shadowrun deliberately and purposely decided to ignore that there was a wider world outside the Pacific Northwest. Coyote and Crow seems to be doing so in order to have their fantasy of a pan-Native American mono-ethnic society because even thinking about the Other is bad to them.

Hell, it looks like the setting will basically genocide the idea of a Latino/Hispanic race from ever occurring since those don’t start to come about until 1493 as part of the Spanish coming to the Americas.

It's only mono-ethnic if you think all the "natives" were part of the same ethnic group, they weren't.

But I do agree it's racist wish fullfillment, there are tons of ways they could have gone about it without erasing every trace of those evul whites, from the top of my head:

Alternate world where, when the Europenas reach "America" find societies just as advanced as their own, where human sacrifice was banned, maybe even have a society where there's no longer serfs.

Instead of conquest trade ensues since it's the smarter thing to do.

But then again, it would also lead to interbreeding, which goes against their wish fullfillment fantasy since they are also racial supremacists.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Brad on April 06, 2021, 02:41:06 PM
Yeah. You aren't describing Coyote and Crow. As I said earlier, the text plainly says that combat has been mostly small groups and ambushes, not that they have been living in harmony.

Which is completely unlike how tribes interacted historically.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: This Guy on April 06, 2021, 02:44:23 PM
There will always be a new thing to be mad about I guess.

Anyway I'm flipping through the pitch page and I'm guessing the climate disaster is going to lead to a big shrug and a "Figure it out yourself DMs" response when asked where all the colonizers went instead of a "Haha they're all dead fuck you YT" tone. That doesn't seem to mesh with the style they're putting forth.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: wmarshal on April 06, 2021, 02:51:17 PM
What would be the non-genocidal way to imply the non-existence of a Hispanic population because European colonizers never showed up?
I don’t know, but I think it’s ironic that the Woke community demands representation no matter the setting or lack of rationale, and here the setting (which is very much backed by the Woke) is telling Latinos “Hell no you won’t see yourself in this setting, and that’s a feature!” The Latinos’ identity is just collateral damage in the creators’ desire to ignore all things non-Native American.

So like if the designer's implication in the pitch wasn't that this is specifically about Native representation, and if this was presented by some theoretical neutral party as a setting idea they thought of, would the lack of that implication not raise the same flags about the absence of Hispanic characters? They are doomed by authorial intent?
I’m not sure I understand your questions. Can you rephrase?

Are you saying that Latinos in this setting are doomed to non-existence because of the authorial intent for Native representation? By the manner in which this group of authors are centering Native Americans they are eliminating Latinos. The path they’ve chosen isn’t the only way to center Native Americans. They could have done so in ways that still acknowledged the existence of the other races, and had interactions with the other races. They could have placed the setting 100,000 years in the past. They could have posited an alternate history where European didn’t dominate the Columbian Exchange and colonize the Americas. The fact that they took this path has me believing this is a racist setting.

It’s perhaps not striking some people that way because we don’t often encounter racism from a Native American suprematist perspective. We’ve seen examples of white supremacy so often it’s easily recognized (and sometimes thought found when it seems a real stretch to find it as in the redneck valkyrie tangent in another thread) when encountered. There’s been enough instances of black supremacy in recent history that most of us can recognize that when it occurs. Native American supremacy is rarely encountered.

Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: This Guy on April 06, 2021, 02:56:27 PM
Quote
I’m not sure I understand your questions. Can you rephrase?

Are you saying that Latinos in this setting are doomed to non-existence because of the authorial intent for Native representation? By the manner in which this group of authors are centering Native Americans they are eliminating Latinos. The path they’ve chosen isn’t the only way to center Native Americans. They could have done so in ways that still acknowledged the existence of the other races, and had interactions with the other races. They could have placed the setting 100,000 years in the past. They could have posited an alternate history where European didn’t dominate the Columbian Exchange and colonize the Americas. The fact that they took this path has me believing this is a racist setting.

It’s perhaps not striking some people that way because we don’t often encounter racism from a Native American suprematist perspective. We’ve seen examples of white supremacy so often it’s easily recognized (and sometimes thought found when it seems a real stretch to find it as in the redneck valkyrie tangent in another thread) when encountered. There’s been enough instances of black supremacy in recent history that most of us can recognize that when it occurs. Native American supremacy is rarely encountered.

Okay so take those alternatives and discard them. They don't exist. Look at the setting with the information you've got. Eliminate the bits where the author says "We're doing this for the sake of Native representation" and other statements of author intentionality. You just have the premise: Climate disaster stops colonization, 700 years pass, by the time it's ended we have a high-tech Native society. Where are the Europeans? Who knows, setting doesn't say.

Is this a racist game without that additional statement of intent, or just some what-if setting?

Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: wmarshal on April 06, 2021, 03:03:01 PM
But as "revenge fantasy"? That's claiming "I live out a fulfilling life and never see my attacker" is a personal revenge fantasy.
Agreed. It's a wish-fulfillment fantasy, not a revenge fantasy.
I think we’re missing the forests for the trees. I don’t think what’s significant is that it’s wish-fulfillment fantasy instead of revenge fantasy. It looks like it’s racist wish-fulfillment fantasy. If someone wrote an alternate setting where a pagan Europe developed super science because Christianity was averted by having the Jews never return from exile and eventually assimilate like so many other exiled communities, there’d be no doubt this person was writing racist wish-fulfillment. While not a revenge fantasy because the super science European pagans didn’t act against the Jews, I award no points for being a racist wish-fulfillment fantasy instead. Even if the author claimed his “real” problem is with Christianity, he chose to rationalize his super science setting by eliminating a population that stood in the way in his mind to the wish-fulfillment fantasy he desired.

Coyote and Crow is basically doing the same thing, except it’s especially lazy about it. They could have created a science fantasy setting that that centered on Native Americans without essentially stating “and we’re not interacting about or with other races at all…because…reasons.” Plenty of settings focus on one part of the world or a specific community, but I can’t recall seeing the setting deliberately and completely ignoring the wider world. Shadowrun was initially focused on North America, specifically the Pacific Northwest if I recall correctly. Later they expanded to looking at other areas. It would have been weird if Shadowrun deliberately and purposely decided to ignore that there was a wider world outside the Pacific Northwest. Coyote and Crow seems to be doing so in order to have their fantasy of a pan-Native American mono-ethnic society because even thinking about the Other is bad to them.

Hell, it looks like the setting will basically genocide the idea of a Latino/Hispanic race from ever occurring since those don’t start to come about until 1493 as part of the Spanish coming to the Americas.

It's only mono-ethnic if you think all the "natives" were part of the same ethnic group, they weren't.

But I do agree it's racist wish fullfillment, there are tons of ways they could have gone about it without erasing every trace of those evul whites, from the top of my head:

Alternate world where, when the Europenas reach "America" find societies just as advanced as their own, where human sacrifice was banned, maybe even have a society where there's no longer serfs.

Instead of conquest trade ensues since it's the smarter thing to do.

But then again, it would also lead to interbreeding, which goes against their wish fullfillment fantasy since they are also racial supremacists.

Well the idea any kind of pan-ethnic group runs into problems in reality. It doesn’t stop people from trying to promote pan-Arabism, pan-Slavism, etc. in this setting they mention there is still conflict, but from what I read it’s low level, and not in terms of one Native American civilization trying to destroy another. Even in the book of Judges the different tribes of Israel fought against each other at times, but they were all still Israel and made sure to not destroy each other. I’m thinking the authors here don’t really see whole campaigns being based on warfare between the Iroquois and Cherokee in a fight to the death of one or the other.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Pat on April 06, 2021, 03:07:42 PM
Superman is wish fulfillment for what if a corn-fed all-American boy was more powerful than anyone in the world.
Except he isn't, because he's Kryptonian. He's not human, and technically is an illegal alien because he was smuggled into America as an infant.

Though that's a whole 'nother discussion, because Superman stories never really reconcile his status an a wholesome American ideal with his fantastic off-world origin. The two aspects exist in parallel, without ever really being integrated.

I know when I read a Superman comic I think to myself "Boy, I wish I had those powers" and then follow that up with setting-specific pedantry to quell the urge.
What does that have to do with anything?
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: This Guy on April 06, 2021, 03:10:05 PM
What does that have to do with anything?

All the extra details about him not being really American and shit don't make it not a wish-fulfillment. It's pedantry that doesn't impact the larger wish-fulfillment role.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: wmarshal on April 06, 2021, 03:16:55 PM
Quote
I’m not sure I understand your questions. Can you rephrase?

Are you saying that Latinos in this setting are doomed to non-existence because of the authorial intent for Native representation? By the manner in which this group of authors are centering Native Americans they are eliminating Latinos. The path they’ve chosen isn’t the only way to center Native Americans. They could have done so in ways that still acknowledged the existence of the other races, and had interactions with the other races. They could have placed the setting 100,000 years in the past. They could have posited an alternate history where European didn’t dominate the Columbian Exchange and colonize the Americas. The fact that they took this path has me believing this is a racist setting.

It’s perhaps not striking some people that way because we don’t often encounter racism from a Native American suprematist perspective. We’ve seen examples of white supremacy so often it’s easily recognized (and sometimes thought found when it seems a real stretch to find it as in the redneck valkyrie tangent in another thread) when encountered. There’s been enough instances of black supremacy in recent history that most of us can recognize that when it occurs. Native American supremacy is rarely encountered.

Okay so take those alternatives and discard them. They don't exist. Look at the setting with the information you've got. Eliminate the bits where the author says "We're doing this for the sake of Native representation" and other statements of author intentionality. You just have the premise: Climate disaster stops colonization, 700 years pass, by the time it's ended we have a high-tech Native society. Where are the Europeans? Who knows, setting doesn't say.

Is this a racist game without that additional statement of intent, or just some what-if setting?

Yes, it’s racist. I think it’s just as racist as a European designer creating a pagan super science setting that exists because the author changed history so that the Jews never returned from the Babylonian Exile. One can’t just “take those alternatives and discard them.” You have to account for what their goal seems to be. It’s not merely that they want to have a setting centered on Native Americans. I find nothing wrong with that. There are a gazillion settings centered on faux Europeans. Their goal also seems to be “Imagine something like our current world with super science, and with there being no other people in the world to even think about other than us.” They could have achieved a Native American centered setting set in the far past, but that wouldn’t require the erasure of the other races. They could have centered the setting in the far future on a different planet, similar to what was done in Star Trek, but that wouldn’t require the erasure of other races. Erasure of the other races in an alternate current world/near future, not merely having them being tangential, is a goal of this setting. It’s racist, eliminationist wish-fulfillment. At first I was willing to give the setting a small chance it wasn’t racist, but the more I examine it the more convinced I am that it is.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: This Guy on April 06, 2021, 03:19:25 PM
Yes, it’s racist. I think it’s just as racist as a European designer creating a pagan super science setting that exists because the author changed history so that the Jews never returned from the Babylonian Exile. One can’t just “take those alternatives and discard them.” You have to account for what their goal seems to be. It’s not merely that they want to have a setting centered on Native Americans. I find nothing wrong with that. There are a gazillion settings centered on faux Europeans. Their goal also seems to be “Imagine something like our current world with super science, and with there being no other people in the world to even think about other than us.” They could have achieved a Native American centered setting set in the far past, but that wouldn’t require the erasure of the other races. They could have centered the setting in the far future on a different planet, similar to what was done in Star Trek, but that wouldn’t require the erasure of other races. Erasure of the other races in an alternate current world/near future, not merely having them being tangential, is a goal of this setting. It’s racist, eliminationist wish-fulfillment. At first I was willing to give the setting a small chance it wasn’t racist, but the more I examine it the more convinced I am that it is.

Okay but absent the statement of intent how do you define the goal from the text. What elements of the text are you drawing from it to give the impression absent those statements?

Edit: I'm not trying to get into Lit Analysis 101 hours here, I just divine any racist intent from the representation of the author's statements as such, and figure any ethno-futurism can also be framed in neutral terms. Game itself is probably racist but the art looks cool so I'll probably pirate/buy it when it's available anyway, assuming the team doesn't fragment amid the usual RPG project sex-crime accusations.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: jhkim on April 06, 2021, 03:30:02 PM
I think we’re missing the forests for the trees. I don’t think what’s significant is that it’s wish-fulfillment fantasy instead of revenge fantasy. It looks like it’s racist wish-fulfillment fantasy. If someone wrote an alternate setting where a pagan Europe developed super science because Christianity was averted by having the Jews never return from exile and eventually assimilate like so many other exiled communities, there’d be no doubt this person was writing racist wish-fulfillment.

The bolding is mine above. Your assumption is that the advances are because of real-world beliefs about history. i.e. Stan Lee really believed that an African country would develop super-science if only not for white people. But in super-science settings like Wakanda and Makasing (from Coyote & Crow), the premise isn't that they realistically developed super-science. The super-science comes from overtly fictional divergence from the real world, like vibranium and/or space-borne psychic powers.

A better parallel might be a Marvel Universe alternate timeline - what if the ancient Norse inherited technology from the Asgardian aliens who had lead them in the past? Then there could be a viking-themed super-science world with dragon-prowed nuclear aircraft carriers, power-armored berserkers and so forth. Giving vikings *fictional* Asgardian alien technology isn't the same thing as believing that the real-world vikings were genetically superior supermen who lost out only because they were Christianized.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: wmarshal on April 06, 2021, 03:34:52 PM
Yes, it’s racist. I think it’s just as racist as a European designer creating a pagan super science setting that exists because the author changed history so that the Jews never returned from the Babylonian Exile. One can’t just “take those alternatives and discard them.” You have to account for what their goal seems to be. It’s not merely that they want to have a setting centered on Native Americans. I find nothing wrong with that. There are a gazillion settings centered on faux Europeans. Their goal also seems to be “Imagine something like our current world with super science, and with there being no other people in the world to even think about other than us.” They could have achieved a Native American centered setting set in the far past, but that wouldn’t require the erasure of the other races. They could have centered the setting in the far future on a different planet, similar to what was done in Star Trek, but that wouldn’t require the erasure of other races. Erasure of the other races in an alternate current world/near future, not merely having them being tangential, is a goal of this setting. It’s racist, eliminationist wish-fulfillment. At first I was willing to give the setting a small chance it wasn’t racist, but the more I examine it the more convinced I am that it is.

Okay but absent the statement of intent how do you define the goal from the text. What elements of the text are you drawing from it to give the impression absent those statements?
I believe I can ignore any statements of intent and reach that conclusion. I refer to their stated intent to address what I believe is a false cover.
Create an alternate history that:
1. Isolates a race from contact it had with any other race historically speaking.
2. Have the setting show how much things would be better for the centered race without any interaction with the other races. Not just a change in the interaction, but a complete and total separation.
3. Above points cause the elimination of other races, but that doesn’t matter to the authors even though we are living in a time when the zeitgeist is very much “representation matters.”

There are no statements on intent I’d need to parse or judge in the above. It’s perfectly reasonable for one to conclude the setting is being made with racist goals. One could attempt this setting with any number of races or ethnic groups, and it’d be racist. The setting itself is way “We (could be Chinese, Swedish, whatever) are better with off with a history where our development was not impaired (old school racist would say ‘polluted’) by contact with other races/outsiders.”
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: This Guy on April 06, 2021, 03:37:11 PM
I believe I can ignore any statements of intent and reach that conclusion. I refer to their stated intent to address what I believe is a false cover.
Create an alternate history that:
1. Isolates a race from contact it had with any other race historically speaking.
2. Have the setting show how much things would be better for the centered race without any interaction with the other races. Not just a change in the interaction, but a complete and total separation.
3. Above points cause the elimination of other races, but that doesn’t matter to the authors even though we are living in a time when the zeitgeist is very much “representation matters.”

There are no statements on intent I’d need to parse or judge in the above. It’s perfectly reasonable for one to conclude the setting is being made with racist goals. One could attempt this setting with any number of races or ethnic groups, and it’d be racist. The setting itself is way “We (could be Chinese, Swedish, whatever) are better with off with a history where our development was not impaired (old school racist would say ‘polluted’) by contact with other races/outsiders.”

Cool thanks for clarifying, I understand your reasoning now. It tracks but I'd personally need more information than we have in the pitch for me to reach the same conclusion.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Pat on April 06, 2021, 03:43:04 PM
What does that have to do with anything?

All the extra details about him not being really American and shit don't make it not a wish-fulfillment. It's pedantry that doesn't impact the larger wish-fulfillment role.
I didn't say it was. I was talking about the all-American part. That was literally the one thing I addressed, I didn't say a thing about wish fulfillment. Not once. You're just displaying your inability to follow a discussion.

Plus, it's not pedantry to talk about the topic of a conversation. It's literally the point.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: This Guy on April 06, 2021, 03:44:45 PM
I didn't say it was. I was talking about the all-American part. That was literally the one thing I addressed, I didn't say a thing about wish fulfillment. Not once. You're just displaying your inability to follow a discussion.

Plus, it's not pedantry to talk about the topic of a conversation. It's literally the point.

Further pedantry, appalling. Who cares about the all-American part next to the powers?
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: SHARK on April 06, 2021, 03:45:23 PM
Greetings!

Yeah, a game setting that promotes only Native Indians throughout the Western Hemisphere which never has contact with white Europeans, so conveniently gets rid of the white race, and any European influence.

The game setting also therefore gets rid of hundreds of millions of Latinos.

*SNAP*

Just like that.

No Latinos.

Nah, they wouldn't want anyone to think this game is a fucking racist power-fantasy.

*Laughing* ;D

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: This Guy on April 06, 2021, 03:46:02 PM
I'm sure other people have asked this before but why do you write all of your posts like emails?
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Pat on April 06, 2021, 03:46:55 PM
I didn't say it was. I was talking about the all-American part. That was literally the one thing I addressed, I didn't say a thing about wish fulfillment. Not once. You're just displaying your inability to follow a discussion.

Plus, it's not pedantry to talk about the topic of a conversation. It's literally the point.

Further pedantry, appalling. Who cares about the all-American part next to the powers?
If you're just trying to be an asshole, you should try to make sure the shoe fits when you try to insult someone. When it clearly doesn't, it just makes you sound stupid.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: wmarshal on April 06, 2021, 03:47:45 PM
I think we’re missing the forests for the trees. I don’t think what’s significant is that it’s wish-fulfillment fantasy instead of revenge fantasy. It looks like it’s racist wish-fulfillment fantasy. If someone wrote an alternate setting where a pagan Europe developed super science because Christianity was averted by having the Jews never return from exile and eventually assimilate like so many other exiled communities, there’d be no doubt this person was writing racist wish-fulfillment.

The bolding is mine above. Your assumption is that the advances are because of real-world beliefs about history. i.e. Stan Lee really believed that an African country would develop super-science if only not for white people. But in super-science settings like Wakanda and Makasing (from Coyote & Crow), the premise isn't that they realistically developed super-science. The super-science comes from overtly fictional divergence from the real world, like vibranium and/or space-borne psychic powers.

A better parallel might be a Marvel Universe alternate timeline - what if the ancient Norse inherited technology from the Asgardian aliens who had lead them in the past? Then there could be a viking-themed super-science world with dragon-prowed nuclear aircraft carriers, power-armored berserkers and so forth. Giving vikings *fictional* Asgardian alien technology isn't the same thing as believing that the real-world vikings were genetically superior supermen who lost out only because they were Christianized.
I don’t think that’s what the Coyote and Crow crew are doing here. They aren’t just imagining a world where Native Americans avoided the impacts of colonization through super science. They are eliminating the other. For your example to hold true to what Coyote and Crow are doing the Norse don’t just inherit super science and maintain their pagan ways. They also have to somehow avoid contact and interaction with Christianity. To maintain that the Norse maintain their culture pure and unchanged while existing alongside Christianity is hardly believable. That’s why the author of racist Cyber-Norseland would change history to keep the Jews exiled. It’s a far more believable alternate history. What Coyote and Crow are doing is the same thing in terms of the setting they’re trying to achieve. It’s a different flavor of racism of the pure blood.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: This Guy on April 06, 2021, 03:48:39 PM
If I were trying to be a real asshole, I would be both stupid and not care about whether the shoe fits or not because my egotistical worldview would assume it obviously does. In this regard I think I'm doing real well!
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: wmarshal on April 06, 2021, 03:49:19 PM
I'm sure other people have asked this before but why do you write all of your posts like emails?
Who is that question to? The board in general?
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: This Guy on April 06, 2021, 03:49:42 PM
Oh, Shark, sorry for lack of clarity.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: ScytheSong on April 06, 2021, 03:52:28 PM
Yeah. You aren't describing Coyote and Crow. As I said earlier, the text plainly says that combat has been mostly small groups and ambushes, not that they have been living in harmony.

Which is completely unlike how tribes interacted historically.

So. I'm not sure what you're going for here. You claimed that it's unrealistic for all the tribes to be coexisting peacefully. When I point out that Coyote and Crow talks about intertribal conflict as ongoing with small-scale warfare being relatively common, you say that isn't historical either -- a claim that is easily debunked if you have paid any attention to Native American history at all.

I can't tell if you're deliberately shifting the goalposts or if I just don't get what you're saying.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: This Guy on April 06, 2021, 03:53:51 PM
So. I'm not sure what you're going for here. You claimed that it's unrealistic for all the tribes to be coexisting peacefully. When I point out that Coyote and Crow talks about intertribal conflict as ongoing with small-scale warfare being relatively common, you say that isn't historical either -- a claim that is easily debunked if you have paid any attention to Native American history at all.

I can't tell if you're deliberately shifting the goalposts or if I just don't get what you're saying.

Just let 'em post through their feelings.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: SHARK on April 06, 2021, 03:58:40 PM
I'm sure other people have asked this before but why do you write all of your posts like emails?

Greetings!

Yes, others have asked me that in the past, for sure. It is a style I embraced as being what I would like to think is a bit more respectful and formal, while also being more personal. I have always used such a style since the first days of using AOL. ;D

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: This Guy on April 06, 2021, 04:00:27 PM
Greetings!

Yes, others have asked me that in the past, for sure. It is a style I embraced as being what I would like to think is a bit more respectful and formal, while also being more personal. I have always used such a style since the first days of using AOL. ;D

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Cool, thanks for answering.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Shrieking Banshee on April 06, 2021, 04:22:16 PM
I think we’re missing the forests for the trees. I don’t think what’s significant is that it’s wish-fulfillment fantasy instead of revenge fantasy. It looks like it’s racist wish-fulfillment fantasy. If someone wrote an alternate setting where a pagan Europe developed super science because Christianity was averted by having the Jews never return from exile and eventually assimilate like so many other exiled communities, there’d be no doubt this person was writing racist wish-fulfillment.
I actually brought that up before. I just think it's important to make a consistent argument is all.
To a certain extent its just sad that Wakanda and stuff like it became such a massive racially charged cliche.

Like holy hell, this sort of story was a cliche in 1961 when Wakanda was first written:
Quote
Black Panther: 'To me he was more than a father, he was like a god!'
Ben: 'Look kiddo, why don't you save yourself the trouble? I know the rest of the story by heart! Everything was hunky-dory until the greedy ivory hunters made the scene!
Wakanda wasn't actually secreted away, hidden utopia through all of history. It was revolutionized by the Black Panther after foreign invaders were driven off by him and he reverse-engineered their technology (Klaw). Also, the black panther was a genius who revolutionized his nation by his very words 'For a lark'. And they made money by TRADING vibranium. Its not the core technology for everything in the friggin world. And then at the end of the story he becomes a superhero in the service of all mankind.

It was an anti-colonialism story to be sure, but it was one with a twist and a whole lot less bitterness that was attributed to it later to fit our more bitter times.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Brad on April 06, 2021, 04:30:22 PM
So. I'm not sure what you're going for here. You claimed that it's unrealistic for all the tribes to be coexisting peacefully. When I point out that Coyote and Crow talks about intertribal conflict as ongoing with small-scale warfare being relatively common, you say that isn't historical either -- a claim that is easily debunked if you have paid any attention to Native American history at all.

I can't tell if you're deliberately shifting the goalposts or if I just don't get what you're saying.

The only reason most tribes didn't have balls-out warfare and enslave other tribes is because they lacked the means to do so; this is indisputable. You give some Comanches rifles and horses, they start murdering people and stealing their shit. If you gave them tanks 100% they're blitzkrieging all over the map. Trying to say that, oh yeah, all these tribes have now advanced technologically but instead of engaging in actual battles and stuff, they just do small skirmishes and pretty much co-exist in the same areas as they would have without the tech is fucking stupid as hell. Unless you want to say everyone has unlimited resources and holodecks where they can act out all sorts of perverse shit, but even then they'd probably get bored of that after a few years and resume the slavery. Hence my statement that the setting makes no sense from a historical viewpoint is valid. It's so implausibly stupid given what we know about real history. Just like removing slavery from Deadlands but pretending the Civil War would have been fought in exactly the same manner is dumb as fuck.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: wmarshal on April 06, 2021, 04:50:35 PM
@Brad: Are you referring to v1 of Deadlands where the CSA abolished slavery on their own, but continued to fight the drawn out war? Or are you referring to v2 of Deadlands where the CSA is defeated, but the Civil War took longer?
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Shrieking Banshee on April 06, 2021, 04:56:51 PM
It's so implausibly stupid given what we know about real history. Just like removing slavery from Deadlands but pretending the Civil War would have been fought in exactly the same manner is dumb as fuck.

Il argue that wanting a sci-fi universe but with Native American trappings isn't necessarily in any way wrong. It's a kitche idea that doesn't inherently have any real issues.
Its more just an idea brought to prominence because of current year politics and the like. A lighthearted kitche cartoony version of a real-world element isn't necessarily problematic, its just how its creators present it as a work with any sort of cultural merit.

I'd say it would be just a mediocre idea I wouldn't be interested in (because I hate the idea of spirituality somehow lending itself to ecological balance), if the creators weren't pinning it as some work of cultural importance. To a certain degree, I feel this is just cynical opportunism that makes money through controversy. This sort of product wouldn't really make anybody notice if it was a Christian Wakanda or a Scandinavian Wakanda.

By virtue of even discussing it I think we kinda just work as free marketing for mediocrity. We are the 'haters' that SJWs need to give money to mediocre projects like this.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Shrieking Banshee on April 06, 2021, 04:57:19 PM
Double Post
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Brad on April 06, 2021, 05:18:20 PM
@Brad: Are you referring to v1 of Deadlands where the CSA abolished slavery on their own, but continued to fight the drawn out war? Or are you referring to v2 of Deadlands where the CSA is defeated, but the Civil War took longer?

I'm not that familiar with the 2nd edition; I liked 1st obviously, but always felt the slavery issue was just whitewashed to make the setting more palatable to gamers. I have no real, fundamental problem with that because it's a game, but to think it makes sense historically is dumb. I mean, I like the episodes of Star Trek where they go to an alien planet that has gangsters, so it's not like I honestly care too much. Then again, Deadlands just went okay yeah slavery yeah yeah okay now you get to play a gambler who can actually do magic! It wasn't a central point of the game, unlike whatever this current game seems to be doing.

Il argue that wanting a sci-fi universe but with Native American trappings isn't necessarily in any way wrong. It's a kitche idea that doesn't inherently have any real issues.
Its more just an idea brought to prominence because of current year politics and the like. A lighthearted kitche cartoony version of a real-world element isn't necessarily problematic, its just how its creators present it as a work with any sort of cultural merit.

I'd say it would be just a mediocre idea I wouldn't be interested in (because I hate the idea of spirituality somehow lending itself to ecological balance), if the creators weren't pinning it as some work of cultural importance. To a certain degree, I feel this is just cynical opportunism that makes money through controversy. This sort of product wouldn't really make anybody notice if it was a Christian Wakanda or a Scandinavian Wakanda.

By virtue of even discussing it I think we kinda just work as free marketing for mediocrity. We are the 'haters' that SJWs need to give money to mediocre projects like this.

Well isn't that the whole point? It seems to be made specifically to drive home some sort of agenda about the WHITE DEVIL, not, "Hey, it'd be cool if Indians got actual magical powers and the Eurotards never came over on a boat." No issue with that fundamentally, I do have a problem with it pretending to be anywhere close to historically accurate, which quite a lot of people have pointed out is pure stupidity. I can deal with stupidity if it's fun and well done, but this new product seems to take itself too seriously.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: jhkim on April 06, 2021, 05:45:56 PM
Your assumption is that the advances are because of real-world beliefs about history. i.e. Stan Lee really believed that an African country would develop super-science if only not for white people. But in super-science settings like Wakanda and Makasing (from Coyote & Crow), the premise isn't that they realistically developed super-science. The super-science comes from overtly fictional divergence from the real world, like vibranium and/or space-borne psychic powers.

A better parallel might be a Marvel Universe alternate timeline - what if the ancient Norse inherited technology from the Asgardian aliens who had lead them in the past? Then there could be a viking-themed super-science world with dragon-prowed nuclear aircraft carriers, power-armored berserkers and so forth. Giving vikings *fictional* Asgardian alien technology isn't the same thing as believing that the real-world vikings were genetically superior supermen who lost out only because they were Christianized.

I don’t think that’s what the Coyote and Crow crew are doing here. They aren’t just imagining a world where Native Americans avoided the impacts of colonization through super science. They are eliminating the other.

This is mixing completely separate topics. Your original claim was that the super-science was because of the lack of white people. i.e. Stan Lee hated white people, and believed in the real world that Africans like Wakandans would develop super-science if only they weren't conquered by whites. As opposed to... Stan Lee thought it would be a cool and fun fictional reality if there was an African country that developed super-science because of a fictional super-metal.

As for eliminating the other - I don't think that is inherently a bad thing. Not every setting needs Hispanic representation, nor is it "genocide" if the setting doesn't have them. Pendragon isn't flawed and anti-Asian if it doesn't have Asian people represented. Sengoku isn't flawed and anti-white because it doesn't have white people in it. If a *fictional* reality doesn't have America invaded, that's not a real-world crime of genocide of Hispanic people as you describe. I can think of a number of "Lost World" type settings that have human groups developing in isolation - and they are not inherently racist (though it is possible for them to be).
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: VisionStorm on April 06, 2021, 05:49:08 PM
A better parallel might be a Marvel Universe alternate timeline - what if the ancient Norse inherited technology from the Asgardian aliens who had lead them in the past? Then there could be a viking-themed super-science world with dragon-prowed nuclear aircraft carriers, power-armored berserkers and so forth. Giving vikings *fictional* Asgardian alien technology isn't the same thing as believing that the real-world vikings were genetically superior supermen who lost out only because they were Christianized.

That would actually be a cooler concept than Coyote and Crow, because it's at least plausible. If the concept had been that Quetzalcoatl came back to Earth with an alien race and gave Mesoamerican tribes technology, so you could have a futuristic sci-fi world with Native Americans in powerarmor riding rainbow colored flying snakes, it would've been fucking awesome. But instead it's all this wishy-washy BS about a magic rock falling from space and setting the Europeans back, so they couldn't conquer the New World, while Native Americans skipped metal-working and the Industrial Age, and went straight to futuristic super science right out of the stone age. Because "psychic powers". Which apparently make people want to discover advanced science and develop high-technology when they can already do all of that with just magic.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Shrieking Banshee on April 06, 2021, 05:55:56 PM
Well isn't that the whole point?

Reading the Kickstarter....It isn't. To a certain degree, it's actually respectable.
Quote
Everyone involved in Coyote and Crow is deeply passionate about our game and we felt that it was time for Indigenous folks to have a game that didn't see them as secondary, as adversaries, or intertwined with colonialism.

I think its pretty respectable to want a game with natives just doing 'native' stuff with somekind of magic/sci-fi skin or whatever. It explicitly doesn't have 'The evil army of invading white men'. I find that a very respectable goal to celebrate your own culture or iterate on it with kitsch fun stuff, without needing to depend on an oppressor / oppressed narrative.

I'm not nordic but imagine like....'Vikings IN SPAAACE!' type story. What happened to the rest of the world? Doesn't particularly matter. Why are nords from the 600s a society that became a stellar empire? I donno. And that's fine.

It's actually a product where there is outright no victim/dominator mentality. That's incredibly refreshing. And very not SJW.
And to a certain degree, I don't see a problem with some level of revisionism for the harsh truths. You don't need every setting to go into the graphic details that underpin the horrific serf conditions if its about a mystical royalty for example.
I don't think LOTR is an advocate for eugenics because it's a setting where there just are bloodlines of royalty that are more important/ better.

The only real eye-rolling part of this it plays into intersectionality crap, and its still a product largely made of spite.
Quote
Our team features people from across the LGBTQIA spectrum, including two spirit folks. It's not even a question that this game is political. If you have a problem with a game where there are no people of European descent represented, than this game is probably not for you.

I actually think that this is a product more on the right track of how to handle this sort of idea if the people behind it weren't doing it out of spite, and had to check off all the other intersectional checkboxes.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: GeekyBugle on April 06, 2021, 06:07:13 PM
Your assumption is that the advances are because of real-world beliefs about history. i.e. Stan Lee really believed that an African country would develop super-science if only not for white people. But in super-science settings like Wakanda and Makasing (from Coyote & Crow), the premise isn't that they realistically developed super-science. The super-science comes from overtly fictional divergence from the real world, like vibranium and/or space-borne psychic powers.

A better parallel might be a Marvel Universe alternate timeline - what if the ancient Norse inherited technology from the Asgardian aliens who had lead them in the past? Then there could be a viking-themed super-science world with dragon-prowed nuclear aircraft carriers, power-armored berserkers and so forth. Giving vikings *fictional* Asgardian alien technology isn't the same thing as believing that the real-world vikings were genetically superior supermen who lost out only because they were Christianized.

I don’t think that’s what the Coyote and Crow crew are doing here. They aren’t just imagining a world where Native Americans avoided the impacts of colonization through super science. They are eliminating the other.

This is mixing completely separate topics. Your original claim was that the super-science was because of the lack of white people. i.e. Stan Lee hated white people, and believed in the real world that Africans like Wakandans would develop super-science if only they weren't conquered by whites. As opposed to... Stan Lee thought it would be a cool and fun fictional reality if there was an African country that developed super-science because of a fictional super-metal.

As for eliminating the other - I don't think that is inherently a bad thing. Not every setting needs Hispanic representation, nor is it "genocide" if the setting doesn't have them. Pendragon isn't flawed and anti-Asian if it doesn't have Asian people represented. Sengoku isn't flawed and anti-white because it doesn't have white people in it. If a *fictional* reality doesn't have America invaded, that's not a real-world crime of genocide of Hispanic people as you describe. I can think of a number of "Lost World" type settings that have human groups developing in isolation - and they are not inherently racist (though it is possible for them to be).

LOL, so fantasy settings of a far flung (and fictional) past are the same as a setting where by the hand of manitou the evul white man never sets foot in the Americas?

Do you really believe that or are you just bullshitting to defend a woke product?

Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: This Guy on April 06, 2021, 06:30:40 PM
They're both fiction, and therefore lies, so yes.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Ratman_tf on April 06, 2021, 07:25:23 PM
@Brad: Are you referring to v1 of Deadlands where the CSA abolished slavery on their own, but continued to fight the drawn out war? Or are you referring to v2 of Deadlands where the CSA is defeated, but the Civil War took longer?

I'm not that familiar with the 2nd edition; I liked 1st obviously, but always felt the slavery issue was just whitewashed to make the setting more palatable to gamers. I have no real, fundamental problem with that because it's a game, but to think it makes sense historically is dumb. I mean, I like the episodes of Star Trek where they go to an alien planet that has gangsters, so it's not like I honestly care too much.

I can't be the only fan who wanted a TNG epsiode where the Enterprise D runs into the Iotians, who now are crusing around the galaxy in TOS era uniforms and gear.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: wmarshal on April 06, 2021, 07:33:17 PM
Your assumption is that the advances are because of real-world beliefs about history. i.e. Stan Lee really believed that an African country would develop super-science if only not for white people. But in super-science settings like Wakanda and Makasing (from Coyote & Crow), the premise isn't that they realistically developed super-science. The super-science comes from overtly fictional divergence from the real world, like vibranium and/or space-borne psychic powers.

A better parallel might be a Marvel Universe alternate timeline - what if the ancient Norse inherited technology from the Asgardian aliens who had lead them in the past? Then there could be a viking-themed super-science world with dragon-prowed nuclear aircraft carriers, power-armored berserkers and so forth. Giving vikings *fictional* Asgardian alien technology isn't the same thing as believing that the real-world vikings were genetically superior supermen who lost out only because they were Christianized.

I don’t think that’s what the Coyote and Crow crew are doing here. They aren’t just imagining a world where Native Americans avoided the impacts of colonization through super science. They are eliminating the other.

This is mixing completely separate topics. Your original claim was that the super-science was because of the lack of white people. i.e. Stan Lee hated white people, and believed in the real world that Africans like Wakandans would develop super-science if only they weren't conquered by whites. As opposed to... Stan Lee thought it would be a cool and fun fictional reality if there was an African country that developed super-science because of a fictional super-metal.

As for eliminating the other - I don't think that is inherently a bad thing. Not every setting needs Hispanic representation, nor is it "genocide" if the setting doesn't have them. Pendragon isn't flawed and anti-Asian if it doesn't have Asian people represented. Sengoku isn't flawed and anti-white because it doesn't have white people in it. If a *fictional* reality doesn't have America invaded, that's not a real-world crime of genocide of Hispanic people as you describe. I can think of a number of "Lost World" type settings that have human groups developing in isolation - and they are not inherently racist (though it is possible for them to be).
The development of super science isn’t a direct consequence of a lack of white people. I apologize if I came across as saying that somehow the mere presence of white people somehow emits a nullification field that prevents super science at all, and that super science would spring into being a priori if there were no white people. I do think that the setting has the Native Americans able to develop their super science because there are no white people introducing new diseases, new technology, etc. that overrun and displace the Native Americans. In Coyote and Crow their super science used by the Native Americans must be pure to meet their vision. Their version was of Native Americans can’t develop super science, and then apply it to interactions with other cultures because that would betray the racial purity of their vision. They don’t want Native Americans learning to apply their super science to firearms because that violates their vision. They could have achieved something similar by placing the setting 100,000 years ago, or by putting their setting in a hallow earth untouched by the surface world. Those won’t do because part of their kick is eliminating the Other. It’s pure-blood style racism which not only imagines a racially pure homeland, but eliminates the Other in the current/near future world.

No, not every setting needs representation, but that’s not the world of the Woke that the creators and backers live in. They certainly do cast aspersions on Pendragon and similar faux European settings for not reflecting every identity. But Coyote and Crow go beyond centering Native Americans. What they do is akin to Pendragon saying we’re going to do without there being any Jews or Moors because we have an alternate history that conveniently writes them out completely.

I’m not claiming Coyote and Crow are committing real world crimes. By that measure I suppose you’d give Racial Holy War a pass, since the game doesn’t commit real world crimes. Myfarog is cool too in your view since no real world crimes are committed. Racist screeds are all good fun so long as the game itself doesn’t commit a real world crime?

Taking deliberate steps to eliminate the Other so that one can live out one’s racist fantasy is indeed an inherently a bad thing because it is a dehumanizing action. It’s essentially no different than a white suprematist writing a setting where all the other races are conveniently disappeared one way or another.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: DocJones on April 06, 2021, 07:40:50 PM
This is supposedly a fantasy game with a fictional culture.   
And yet the author will has different instructions/rules based on the supposed race of the players?!

While no one can control what end users do with a product, there will be specific instructions and guidance given to Native and non-Native players in the book.

I don't recall ever seeing specific instructions/rules in D&D (and most other games) for Native and non-Native players. 
Should players that have roots in Africa or Asia require specific instructions/rules and guidance in order to properly play characters in a largely inspired European medieval fantasy RPG?
What is supposed to happen when a black player crosses the line and portrays an English knight in Lion & Dragon as a negative stereotype?
Should they be cancelled on social media?  /sarc


Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: wmarshal on April 06, 2021, 07:52:24 PM
This is supposedly a fantasy game with a fictional culture.   
And yet the author will has different instructions/rules based on the supposed race of the players?!

While no one can control what end users do with a product, there will be specific instructions and guidance given to Native and non-Native players in the book.

I don't recall ever seeing specific instructions/rules in D&D (and most other games) for Native and non-Native players. 
Should players that have roots in Africa or Asia require specific instructions/rules and guidance in order to properly play characters in a largely inspired European medieval fantasy RPG?
What is supposed to happen when a black player crosses the line and portrays an English knight in Lion & Dragon as a negative stereotype?
Should they be cancelled on social media?  /sarc

These Woke are racist as hell. There shall be a correct way for Natives to play the game, and there shall be a different correct way for non-Natives to play the game.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Ratman_tf on April 06, 2021, 08:08:49 PM
This is supposedly a fantasy game with a fictional culture.   
And yet the author will has different instructions/rules based on the supposed race of the players?!

While no one can control what end users do with a product, there will be specific instructions and guidance given to Native and non-Native players in the book.

I don't recall ever seeing specific instructions/rules in D&D (and most other games) for Native and non-Native players. 
Should players that have roots in Africa or Asia require specific instructions/rules and guidance in order to properly play characters in a largely inspired European medieval fantasy RPG?
What is supposed to happen when a black player crosses the line and portrays an English knight in Lion & Dragon as a negative stereotype?
Should they be cancelled on social media?  /sarc

Yeah, that's a new one to me. While most setting specific RPGs have sections on how to run the campaign, none that I know of have segregated their advice.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Ghostmaker on April 06, 2021, 08:15:49 PM
This is supposedly a fantasy game with a fictional culture.   
And yet the author will has different instructions/rules based on the supposed race of the players?!

While no one can control what end users do with a product, there will be specific instructions and guidance given to Native and non-Native players in the book.

I don't recall ever seeing specific instructions/rules in D&D (and most other games) for Native and non-Native players. 
Should players that have roots in Africa or Asia require specific instructions/rules and guidance in order to properly play characters in a largely inspired European medieval fantasy RPG?
What is supposed to happen when a black player crosses the line and portrays an English knight in Lion & Dragon as a negative stereotype?
Should they be cancelled on social media?  /sarc

These Woke are racist as hell. There shall be a correct way for Natives to play the game, and there shall be a different correct way for non-Natives to play the game.
Here's my correct way to play this game.

*dumps the book in the trash*

Who's up for some Battletech? :)
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: ScytheSong on April 06, 2021, 08:28:26 PM
Here's my correct way to play this game.

*dumps the book in the trash*

Who's up for some Battletech? :)

Considering BattleTech isn't even an RPG in my world, no thank you. I made some characters for MechWarrior back when it first came out, though. :P
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Spinachcat on April 07, 2021, 12:17:49 AM
While no one can control what end users do with a product, there will be specific instructions and guidance given to Native and non-Native players in the book.

I scalp Timmy's character with my lazer throwing axe!
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Shasarak on April 07, 2021, 12:27:46 AM
I'm sure other people have asked this before but why do you write all of your posts like emails?

Dear This Guy

I guess it is just habit at this point.

Sincerely

Shasarak
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: RPGPundit on April 07, 2021, 04:31:11 AM
RPGPundit, how would you classify Rifts China and Rifts Japan? And where do you draw the line between "racialist propaganda" and "fanboy authors"? AKA, in games like Legends of the Five Rings or Bushido or those Rifts books, the authors are clearly enamored with the subject matter and back when those books were written, we just called their exuberance awesomesauce, but how would they be seen if published today?

RIFTS China is better than a lot of asian-themed products. But the Palladium Mystic China is incredibly well researched. That one was written by the late Erick Wujcik.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: RPGPundit on April 07, 2021, 04:33:40 AM


But as "revenge fantasy"? That's claiming "I live out a fulfilling life and never see my attacker" is a personal revenge fantasy.

The fantasy is "If it hadn't been for the civilization that invented Democracy and Human Rights, we would have actually been vastly superior to them in every way: intellectually, spiritually, morally and technologically".

If you prefer, you can call it a "resentment fantasy", or just a "hate fantasy".
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: wmarshal on April 07, 2021, 05:17:46 AM


But as "revenge fantasy"? That's claiming "I live out a fulfilling life and never see my attacker" is a personal revenge fantasy.

The fantasy is "If it hadn't been for the civilization that invented Democracy and Human Rights, we would have actually been vastly superior to them in every way: intellectually, spiritually, morally and technologically".

If you prefer, you can call it a "resentment fantasy", or just a "hate fantasy".
It’s a fantasy that has as a key component avoidance of ‘pollution’ by other races and cultures. That’s a pretty standard racist trope that would be widely recognized in this instance if it was not coming from Native Americans, but whites instead.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Brad on April 07, 2021, 09:01:24 AM
I can't be the only fan who wanted a TNG epsiode where the Enterprise D runs into the Iotians, who now are crusing around the galaxy in TOS era uniforms and gear.

I want a piece of that action!
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: DocJones on April 07, 2021, 11:44:11 AM
While no one can control what end users do with a product, there will be specific instructions and guidance given to Native and non-Native players in the book.

I scalp Timmy's character with my lazer throwing axe!
I rip out Timmy's character's heart, eat it, and scream out "Hail Tonatiuh!"
 
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: wlake.gmtn on April 07, 2021, 01:11:41 PM
seems like a game about maya and the americas in general would be about runes and scalping, not to mention wounded knees (the classic courtney means kneecourt). i haven't checked out the game in a long time but it seems like you couldn't get further from an exalted-esque western than neumenon. i'm not too read up on kant but the silhouette rouge has just enough of that cthulhu-inflected abstraction to be akin to a lazer hatchet, a bricolage of distance rules. the key diff is that locomotion would be really interesting in the sense of insects while in the west they'd be plagued with dust-bowl like conditions before money was really a thing. gotta make that hatchet a gold one and invite montezuma into the picture, allowing for the discussion of oppressed groups in the americas while ignoring oppression elsewhere. it's the classic philosophical aside: colonialism is what you make of it, if you bring it into the picture are you supporting it / what is colonialism in the context of war. and in the west there's a plethora of proto-wars to justify a brutality unparalleled outside of blood meridian, which was a recent book selection for our book club. amazing read, depends on whether you think that colonialism is structural or sandboxy.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: crkrueger on April 07, 2021, 01:57:09 PM
seems like a game about maya and the americas in general would be about runes and scalping, not to mention wounded knees (the classic courtney means kneecourt). i haven't checked out the game in a long time but it seems like you couldn't get further from an exalted-esque western than neumenon. i'm not too read up on kant but the silhouette rouge has just enough of that cthulhu-inflected abstraction to be akin to a lazer hatchet, a bricolage of distance rules. the key diff is that locomotion would be really interesting in the sense of insects while in the west they'd be plagued with dust-bowl like conditions before money was really a thing. gotta make that hatchet a gold one and invite montezuma into the picture, allowing for the discussion of oppressed groups in the americas while ignoring oppression elsewhere. it's the classic philosophical aside: colonialism is what you make of it, if you bring it into the picture are you supporting it / what is colonialism in the context of war. and in the west there's a plethora of proto-wars to justify a brutality unparalleled outside of blood meridian, which was a recent book selection for our book club. amazing read, depends on whether you think that colonialism is structural or sandboxy.

I think an AI got loose.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: jhkim on April 07, 2021, 02:07:59 PM
To a certain extent its just sad that Wakanda and stuff like it became such a massive racially charged cliche.

Like holy hell, this sort of story was a cliche in 1961 when Wakanda was first written:
Quote
Black Panther: 'To me he was more than a father, he was like a god!'
Ben: 'Look kiddo, why don't you save yourself the trouble? I know the rest of the story by heart! Everything was hunky-dory until the greedy ivory hunters made the scene!
Wakanda wasn't actually secreted away, hidden utopia through all of history. It was revolutionized by the Black Panther after foreign invaders were driven off by him and he reverse-engineered their technology (Klaw). Also, the black panther was a genius who revolutionized his nation by his very words 'For a lark'. And they made money by TRADING vibranium. Its not the core technology for everything in the friggin world. And then at the end of the story he becomes a superhero in the service of all mankind.

It was an anti-colonialism story to be sure, but it was one with a twist and a whole lot less bitterness that was attributed to it later to fit our more bitter times.

Do you really think that the 1960s had less bitterness around race in the U.S. than modern times? I find that kind of hard to fathom. It seems to me that the 1960s were a high point of racial violence and division within the U.S.

Regarding Wakanda - it's true that the original Fantastic Four story has a ton of details that were changed in the later comics - but most of those changes were overseen by the original co-creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in the 1970s. It's still true even in the 1961 Fantastic Four story that Wakanda was (a) not conquered by whites, (b) highly isolationist and secretive, and (c) a superscience land of wonders. In the Fantastic Four story, the superscience happened within one generation - but that was changed to happening over centuries. Also, in the later revisions, Wakanda was more clearly *not* a utopia - while in the original story there was no sign of internal problems, the Black Panther comic shows more internal divisions and problems.

Personally, I'm a fan of the Black Panther comics, especially the 1990s run by writer Christopher Priest. What I especially disagree with is the idea that even the *concept* of a fictional isolated nation like Wakanda is racist. It is anti-colonialist, as you say, but that doesn't make it racist. Wakandans aren't implied better because of genetic superiority - they have the advantage of superior circumstances from their country's natural resources.


The fantasy is "If it hadn't been for the civilization that invented Democracy and Human Rights, we would have actually been vastly superior to them in every way: intellectually, spiritually, morally and technologically".

If you prefer, you can call it a "resentment fantasy", or just a "hate fantasy".

It’s a fantasy that has as a key component avoidance of ‘pollution’ by other races and cultures. That’s a pretty standard racist trope that would be widely recognized in this instance if it was not coming from Native Americans, but whites instead.

wmarshal - You haven't been explicit about this, but do you also agree that Wakanda is racist, because it is an isolationist country that developed without pollution by other races and cultures? Your claim is that any fictional isolation of cultures is racist, which I disagree with. Sure, racist fiction often includes less intermingling of races and cultures - but that doesn't mean that any isolation of races or cultures is *inherently* racist. I also cites various "Lost World" fiction which has humans developing in isolation. Do you think those are inherently racist as well?

To me, complaining about the isolation seems disingenuous.

Suppose a setting gives fictional advantages to non-whites like vibranium or psychic powers, but does *not* isolate them from Europeans. It seems to me that this is far more likely to read as a revenge or hate narrative, since it means that there will be war between whites and non-whites where the whites are conquered. There could be a narrative of "oh, if we couldn't slaughter the Native Americans, then we'd live in peace with them and nicely give them our cultural advances" - but that is unrealistic to both European culture and Native American culture.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: wmarshal on April 07, 2021, 02:30:36 PM
seems like a game about maya and the americas in general would be about runes and scalping, not to mention wounded knees (the classic courtney means kneecourt). i haven't checked out the game in a long time but it seems like you couldn't get further from an exalted-esque western than neumenon. i'm not too read up on kant but the silhouette rouge has just enough of that cthulhu-inflected abstraction to be akin to a lazer hatchet, a bricolage of distance rules. the key diff is that locomotion would be really interesting in the sense of insects while in the west they'd be plagued with dust-bowl like conditions before money was really a thing. gotta make that hatchet a gold one and invite montezuma into the picture, allowing for the discussion of oppressed groups in the americas while ignoring oppression elsewhere. it's the classic philosophical aside: colonialism is what you make of it, if you bring it into the picture are you supporting it / what is colonialism in the context of war. and in the west there's a plethora of proto-wars to justify a brutality unparalleled outside of blood meridian, which was a recent book selection for our book club. amazing read, depends on whether you think that colonialism is structural or sandboxy.

I think an AI got loose.
I was thinking the same thing. The writing style is certainly different from the user’s earlier posts. He no longer uses capitalization or paragraphs.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: wmarshal on April 07, 2021, 02:34:19 PM
@jhkim: I’ll try to reply later. I’m at work, and your quoting two different messages in the same post makes it difficult for me to untangle using only my phone.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: jhkim on April 07, 2021, 02:40:50 PM
@jhkim: I’ll try to reply later. I’m at work, and your quoting two different messages in the same post makes it difficult for me to untangle using only my phone.

No problem. I'll try to keep in mind simplifying for a phone interface in future posts.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Ghostmaker on April 07, 2021, 03:58:49 PM
seems like a game about maya and the americas in general would be about runes and scalping, not to mention wounded knees (the classic courtney means kneecourt). i haven't checked out the game in a long time but it seems like you couldn't get further from an exalted-esque western than neumenon. i'm not too read up on kant but the silhouette rouge has just enough of that cthulhu-inflected abstraction to be akin to a lazer hatchet, a bricolage of distance rules. the key diff is that locomotion would be really interesting in the sense of insects while in the west they'd be plagued with dust-bowl like conditions before money was really a thing. gotta make that hatchet a gold one and invite montezuma into the picture, allowing for the discussion of oppressed groups in the americas while ignoring oppression elsewhere. it's the classic philosophical aside: colonialism is what you make of it, if you bring it into the picture are you supporting it / what is colonialism in the context of war. and in the west there's a plethora of proto-wars to justify a brutality unparalleled outside of blood meridian, which was a recent book selection for our book club. amazing read, depends on whether you think that colonialism is structural or sandboxy.

I think an AI got loose.
I was thinking the same thing. The writing style is certainly different from the user’s earlier posts. He no longer uses capitalization or paragraphs.
He stated he was smoking weed in a prior post. My guess is he's been into the ganja, and will wake up a few hours later with the munchies.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Shrieking Banshee on April 07, 2021, 04:07:42 PM
Do you really think that the 1960s had less bitterness around race in the U.S. than modern times?
Less bitterness in the writing. In the writing of the specific comic.

Quote
I find that kind of hard to fathom. It seems to me that the 1960s were a high point of racial violence and division within the U.S.
Bitterness is a thing you can generate however and keep it going for whatever ideology hucksters make money off of this.
Gender relations for instance get embittered by the decade despite increasingly more concessions and placations.

As to bitterness, the kind of race stories told have indeed become more bitter (for mainstream audiences anyway).

Quote
What I especially disagree with is the idea that even the *concept* of a fictional isolated nation like Wakanda is racist.

And I didn't say it was. I listed many many multiple times how I don't have a problem with the idea, just in relation to Crow & Coyote it's pretty clearly made as a product of spite, revisionism, and intersectional desires.

If it didn't take itself so seriously, and the creators didn't state their intent of 'You must be this native to make up tribe stuff' I said I would have found it downright commendable.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: jhkim on April 07, 2021, 05:04:05 PM
It was an anti-colonialism story to be sure, but it was one with a twist and a whole lot less bitterness that was attributed to it later to fit our more bitter times.
Do you really think that the 1960s had less bitterness around race in the U.S. than modern times?
Less bitterness in the writing. In the writing of the specific comic.

Gotcha. Your original phrasing of "our more bitter times" sounded like it wasn't just about the specific comic. I would agree that the Fantastic Four comic in question had little bitterness.


What I especially disagree with is the idea that even the *concept* of a fictional isolated nation like Wakanda is racist.

And I didn't say it was. I listed many many multiple times how I don't have a problem with the idea, just in relation to Crow & Coyote it's pretty clearly made as a product of spite, revisionism, and intersectional desires.

If it didn't take itself so seriously, and the creators didn't state their intent of 'You must be this native to make up tribe stuff' I said I would have found it downright commendable.

OK, fair enough. I think I may have associated your criticism of Wakanda with some of what Pundit and/or wmarshal said. We can agree to disagree about some specifics of Black Panther, but I agree with most your points quoted below:

I think its pretty respectable to want a game with natives just doing 'native' stuff with somekind of magic/sci-fi skin or whatever. It explicitly doesn't have 'The evil army of invading white men'. I find that a very respectable goal to celebrate your own culture or iterate on it with kitsch fun stuff, without needing to depend on an oppressor / oppressed narrative.

I'm not nordic but imagine like....'Vikings IN SPAAACE!' type story. What happened to the rest of the world? Doesn't particularly matter. Why are nords from the 600s a society that became a stellar empire? I donno. And that's fine.

It's actually a product where there is outright no victim/dominator mentality. That's incredibly refreshing. And very not SJW.
And to a certain degree, I don't see a problem with some level of revisionism for the harsh truths. You don't need every setting to go into the graphic details that underpin the horrific serf conditions if its about a mystical royalty for example.
I don't think LOTR is an advocate for eugenics because it's a setting where there just are bloodlines of royalty that are more important/ better.

The only real eye-rolling part of this it plays into intersectionality crap, and its still a product largely made of spite.

This mostly fits my points. That it's "made out of spite" seems like a subjective judgement of the author's emotions - which seems tricky to argue in any case.

Out of curiousity, are there any examples of similar concepts other than Fantastic Four #52 that you like - or specifically that you don't think are bitter/spiteful?
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Ratman_tf on April 07, 2021, 05:25:03 PM
To a certain extent its just sad that Wakanda and stuff like it became such a massive racially charged cliche.

Like holy hell, this sort of story was a cliche in 1961 when Wakanda was first written:
Quote
Black Panther: 'To me he was more than a father, he was like a god!'
Ben: 'Look kiddo, why don't you save yourself the trouble? I know the rest of the story by heart! Everything was hunky-dory until the greedy ivory hunters made the scene!
Wakanda wasn't actually secreted away, hidden utopia through all of history. It was revolutionized by the Black Panther after foreign invaders were driven off by him and he reverse-engineered their technology (Klaw). Also, the black panther was a genius who revolutionized his nation by his very words 'For a lark'. And they made money by TRADING vibranium. Its not the core technology for everything in the friggin world. And then at the end of the story he becomes a superhero in the service of all mankind.

It was an anti-colonialism story to be sure, but it was one with a twist and a whole lot less bitterness that was attributed to it later to fit our more bitter times.

Do you really think that the 1960s had less bitterness around race in the U.S. than modern times? I find that kind of hard to fathom. It seems to me that the 1960s were a high point of racial violence and division within the U.S.

That's an interesting question. Watching the news nowadays, you'd think America in 2021 was full of roving bands of racists attacking asians while police gun down minorities in the streets.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: GeekyBugle on April 07, 2021, 05:27:41 PM
To a certain extent its just sad that Wakanda and stuff like it became such a massive racially charged cliche.

Like holy hell, this sort of story was a cliche in 1961 when Wakanda was first written:
Quote
Black Panther: 'To me he was more than a father, he was like a god!'
Ben: 'Look kiddo, why don't you save yourself the trouble? I know the rest of the story by heart! Everything was hunky-dory until the greedy ivory hunters made the scene!
Wakanda wasn't actually secreted away, hidden utopia through all of history. It was revolutionized by the Black Panther after foreign invaders were driven off by him and he reverse-engineered their technology (Klaw). Also, the black panther was a genius who revolutionized his nation by his very words 'For a lark'. And they made money by TRADING vibranium. Its not the core technology for everything in the friggin world. And then at the end of the story he becomes a superhero in the service of all mankind.

It was an anti-colonialism story to be sure, but it was one with a twist and a whole lot less bitterness that was attributed to it later to fit our more bitter times.

Do you really think that the 1960s had less bitterness around race in the U.S. than modern times? I find that kind of hard to fathom. It seems to me that the 1960s were a high point of racial violence and division within the U.S.

That's an interesting question. Watching the news nowadays, you'd think America in 2021 was full of roving bands of racists attacking asians while police gun down minorities in the streets.

2021 America IS "full of roving bands of racists attacking asians", that those racists happen to be black isn't my fault.  8)
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Shrieking Banshee on April 07, 2021, 07:35:45 PM
This mostly fits my points. That it's "made out of spite" seems like a subjective judgement of the author's emotions - which seems tricky to argue in any case.
Well its a subjective judgement of the author's statement of saying that only natives can make up pseudo-realistic mumbo jumbo about tribes, and if your not a native then know your place because your made-up tribe would be illegitimate. Which I feel is very rich considering the number of liberties they take to create their world.
Also that point they make that this is explicitly made to be a political work.

But spite exactly, no. I don't find the stated motivations the best for inspired fun, but I don't know if its spite 100%

Quote
Out of curiousity, are there any examples of similar concepts other than Fantastic Four #52 that you like - or specifically that you don't think are bitter/spiteful?
As I said: I find the baseline idea of the world fine enough. As I would with nords in space or a magic focused Africa.
But the general story of 'Spark against the oppressor' storylines I find incredibly played out even if it took place entirely with fantastical creatures unrelated to any direct parallel.
Something like Kingdom Come: Deliverance is purely an example of trying to convey historical fiction (though its wonky in places, but all historical fiction is to a degree).

I just think the power fantasy of 'World where my group is teh rules everybody else drulz' is just cringeworthy and embarrassing no matter the group that does it (doesn't have to be race-based). The nature of such a setup goal means that all story elements are only really in service of said power fantasy.

Wakanda, at least the way it was executed in FF, wasn't that as much as a neat pulp location like hollow earth or atlantis. Im pretty sure DC has the same sort of idea with magical sentient gorilaz. Thats why it didn't come off as bitter to me.

I generally dislike stories about some species with all the money in the world or super science or magic or whatever passing judgement on humans for being greedy or warlike or whatever.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on April 08, 2021, 01:43:47 PM
Also that point they make that this is explicitly made to be a political work.
All art is political, but this is specifically partisan.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: jhkim on April 08, 2021, 04:06:03 PM
Out of curiousity, are there any examples of similar concepts other than Fantastic Four #52 that you like - or specifically that you don't think are bitter/spiteful?

As I said: I find the baseline idea of the world fine enough. As I would with nords in space or a magic focused Africa.
But the general story of 'Spark against the oppressor' storylines I find incredibly played out even if it took place entirely with fantastical creatures unrelated to any direct parallel.
Something like Kingdom Come: Deliverance is purely an example of trying to convey historical fiction (though its wonky in places, but all historical fiction is to a degree).

I just think the power fantasy of 'World where my group is teh rules everybody else drulz' is just cringeworthy and embarrassing no matter the group that does it (doesn't have to be race-based). The nature of such a setup goal means that all story elements are only really in service of said power fantasy.

I can't think of any examples other than Myfarog where the fantasy is "everybody else drulz". In general, there are (1) broad multi-cultural / global games where there is cool stuff from cultures of different continents, like Torg or Numenera or most modern games, or (2) more limited-culture games, like Pendragon or Sengoku or Legend of the Five Rings or the original 7th Sea where only one region is represented.

A game like Torg explicitly covers multiple cultures in the same game. So you can be a monk hacker in the Cyberpapacy, or a super-science whiz in the Nile Empire, or a magician in Aysle, and so forth. Each of those are cool in different ways - so it's explicit that multiple cultures are cool. Still, there is potential for stereotyping or problems in the comparisons.

In the original 7th Sea, though, the focus was on making Europeans cool (or at least faux-Europeans). Germans got to have magic armor, Italians got to have mysticism, etc. There wasn't anything in the game to say that Native Americans or Africans are uncool - they just weren't covered in the original game. I learned there was a 2017 expansion that covered their version of the New World - but I haven't read it yet. I found some parts of 7th Sea cringe-worthy, but I don't think the concept was inherently cringe-worthy or racist.

It's certainly possible to expand 7th Sea to include Native American characters and African characters, along with other continents - as was done for the 2nd edition. That would make the game more like Torg and other global games. However, I don't think those are necessary. Not every game has to cover every culture.


As for Coyote & Crow... It seems to me that the concept isn't different in principle from other limited-culture games. On the one hand, someone could have created a general non-colonial science fantasy RPG. Perhaps psychic fault lines divided the world and held back colonization, and each region developed their own unique technologies using their new psychic powers. But I don't think every game has to be global in that way. It's fine for someone to just have a game about Australia, for example, or just a game about the Americas, or just a game about Europe.

I think limited-culture games are good in having a definite focus. It's tough to do all cultures well, so an author can just focus and do one culture right.


Wakanda, at least the way it was executed in FF, wasn't that as much as a neat pulp location like hollow earth or atlantis. Im pretty sure DC has the same sort of idea with magical sentient gorilaz. Thats why it didn't come off as bitter to me.

I generally dislike stories about some species with all the money in the world or super science or magic or whatever passing judgement on humans for being greedy or warlike or whatever.

I agree about the latter. Art always has judgment, but it's better for the judgment to be implicit from the characters / setting itself rather than from an external mouthpiece for the author. As far as Wakanda, I don't think it was a neat pulp location that just happened to be in Africa. It was very specifically about anti-colonialism and Afro-futurism. The original was for kids and was very disconnected from any sort of reality and sense. Once you have material for adults set in something closer to the real world, I think there is inherently going to be more darkness and bitterness - but that's not a bad thing.

That said - I think it's much better to have stories about what's positive rather than focusing on wrongs done or oppression.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: jhkim on April 08, 2021, 04:06:39 PM
Also that point they make that this is explicitly made to be a political work.
All art is political, but this is specifically partisan.

I could do without the political commentary in general in RPGs, but if there is political commentary - I'd prefer it to be genuine rather than bloodless "no one is wrong, everybody is right" nonsense.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Dropbear on May 08, 2021, 08:02:52 PM
What is this spirit folk thing I see referenced towards some writers/artists in this project? Closest thing I can guess at is two-spirits? They don’t have their native terminology down very well if they are calling themselves that. I’ve never heard two-spirits being called spirit folk before.

I have read a great deal on the project, and my initial reaction to back it because it sounded kinda Shadowruny was reversed, and I canceled my pledge. It really did sound racist to me after having read the whole spiel and the tone of the bit about advice to Native and Non-Native gamers on how to correctly play the game.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: thedungeondelver on May 08, 2021, 08:16:54 PM
You know I learned a long time ago to not talk about RPGs I hate, all that much, lest people get curious.  Even Gary Gygax understood - and stated - "They have to buy the books to burn 'em!" and therefore no publicity was bad.  After the hack job 60 minutes did, D&D sales skyrocketed.  Every controversy that came up only redoubled their sales.

If Pat Pulling had kept her yap shut about D&D, if Thomas Radiki (the former doctor and proven charlatan who tried to tie D&D to anti-social psychology) had stuck to stuffing his female patients and giving them bogus scripts for drugs, yea verily if 60 Minutes had simply done a profile piece on a guy with gonzo imagination from some backwater southern Wisconsin town, D&D never would have seen those spikes of popularity.

I guess what I'm saying is: don't clutch at your pearls, don't pull a Donald Sutherland, just don't talk about it.  'Cause honestly, I would hate it if suddenly I saw this shit at a few tables at Free RPG day or high up on the con game list at GaryCon or whatever, because suddenly everyone wants to have a gander at the disaster.

(https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia.giphy.com%2Fmedia%2FpoZnXsKLvTVGo%2Fgiphy.gif&f=1&nofb=1)
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Zalman on May 09, 2021, 10:10:38 AM
What is this spirit folk thing I see referenced towards some writers/artists in this project? Closest thing I can guess at is two-spirits? They don’t have their native terminology down very well if they are calling themselves that. I’ve never heard two-spirits being called spirit folk before.

Seems like they meant "there are even two-spirit folks among us!", not "there are exactly two spirit-folk among us."
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Zalman on May 09, 2021, 10:13:40 AM
This is supposedly a fantasy game with a fictional culture.   
And yet the author will has different instructions/rules based on the supposed race of the players?!

While no one can control what end users do with a product, there will be specific instructions and guidance given to Native and non-Native players in the book.

"White players go to the back of the table!" Nasty, nasty racists.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on May 09, 2021, 10:36:24 AM
I thought actual indigenous folks would be wiser to this woke nonsense and its cultural appropriation, but these guys have drunk the kool-aid.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Ghostmaker on May 09, 2021, 11:38:22 AM
I thought actual indigenous folks would be wiser to this woke nonsense and its cultural appropriation, but these guys have drunk the kool-aid.
Actual people of indigenous descent probably don't even know about this. Betcha money the 'indigenous' people backing this have about as much ancestry as Elizabeth Warren.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: jhkim on May 09, 2021, 01:51:10 PM
I thought actual indigenous folks would be wiser to this woke nonsense and its cultural appropriation, but these guys have drunk the kool-aid.
Actual people of indigenous descent probably don't even know about this. Betcha money the 'indigenous' people backing this have about as much ancestry as Elizabeth Warren.

The lead designer, Connor Alexander is a member of the Cherokee Nation. From what I read, the Cherokee Nation don't have a percentage genetic requirement per se, but they requires that you prove descent from a member listed in the 1914 Dawes Roll of Cherokee membership. Given that Alexander looks around 50-ish, that means he is at least one-eighth descent. On the other hand, I don't think DNA ancestry matters as much as cultural connection, which is harder to confirm.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Trond on May 09, 2021, 03:12:16 PM
$1,073,453 pledged of $18,000 goal
16,269 backers


Holy smokes.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Trond on May 09, 2021, 04:07:42 PM
I just happened to find an interesting article on Native Americans (Comanche). Interesting, because it does not paint them in very flattering light, so before even checking I knew it had to be several years old (it's from 2013).

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2396760/How-Comanche-Indians-butchered-babies-roasted-enemies-alive.html
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: The Thing on May 09, 2021, 06:12:48 PM
$1,073,453 pledged of $18,000 goal
16,269 backers


Holy smokes.
HOLY FUCKING SACRED MOTHER OF GOD!!!!

This got over a million dollars in support???

Fuck this world. Somebody fucking shoot me, in the fucking head, with a .50 fucking  cal, NOW!
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Zelen on May 09, 2021, 07:31:12 PM
Wonder if the game will touch on the people who were in the Americas before the Clovis cultures ("Native Americans") arrived? Bet they will shamefully erase that bit of history.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: This Guy on May 09, 2021, 07:35:33 PM
$1,073,453 pledged of $18,000 goal
16,269 backers


Holy smokes.
HOLY FUCKING SACRED MOTHER OF GOD!!!!

This got over a million dollars in support???

Fuck this world. Somebody fucking shoot me, in the fucking head, with a .50 fucking  cal, NOW!

you insist

where to and also do you have a .50 cal I'm a little out of pocket
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Trond on May 09, 2021, 09:57:40 PM
Wonder if the game will touch on the people who were in the Americas before the Clovis cultures ("Native Americans") arrived? Bet they will shamefully erase that bit of history.

I doubt it. You don't have to go that far back though. They were relentlessly fighting each other well into the 1800s. Raiding and stealing each other's women was a favorite tactic. Human sacrifice was practiced in some areas such as in Central America and the Mississippi region. But I doubt they will talk about any of this.

It's weird, I have actually read some history books where many of these things were brought up, but the only time the author made clear moral judgements about the historical people involved, was when they were white. 
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: RPGPundit on May 09, 2021, 11:06:42 PM
$1,073,453 pledged of $18,000 goal
16,269 backers


Holy smokes.
HOLY FUCKING SACRED MOTHER OF GOD!!!!

This got over a million dollars in support???

Fuck this world. Somebody fucking shoot me, in the fucking head, with a .50 fucking  cal, NOW!

A lot of people want to virtue signal.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: wmarshal on May 10, 2021, 12:03:52 AM
$1,073,453 pledged of $18,000 goal
16,269 backers


Holy smokes.
HOLY FUCKING SACRED MOTHER OF GOD!!!!

This got over a million dollars in support???

Fuck this world. Somebody fucking shoot me, in the fucking head, with a .50 fucking  cal, NOW!

A lot of people want to virtue signal.
It’s the age old idea of buying an indulgence to wash one’s ‘sins’ away.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: yancy on May 10, 2021, 04:45:45 AM
HOLY FUCKING SACRED MOTHER OF GOD!!!!

This got over a million dollars in support???

Fuck this world. Somebody fucking shoot me, in the fucking head, with a .50 fucking  cal, NOW!

you insist

where to and also do you have a .50 cal I'm a little out of pocket

I sold my one and only .50 years ago, but I got a bunch of 12 gauge slugs you can have.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: The Thing on May 10, 2021, 01:28:11 PM
$1,073,453 pledged of $18,000 goal
16,269 backers


Holy smokes.
HOLY FUCKING SACRED MOTHER OF GOD!!!!

This got over a million dollars in support???

Fuck this world. Somebody fucking shoot me, in the fucking head, with a .50 fucking  cal, NOW!

A lot of people want to virtue signal.

Thanks for making it a little easier to understand there. Still bums the shit out of me. I mean the whole premise of this is that, as i see it, evil white people made the world bad and if only they weren't around all these other people would have created heaven on earth. Kinda  like that bullshit in 'black panther' about how if it weren't for white men oppressing them africans would be colonizing alpha centauri or something by now.

Anyway, as bad as this game sounds at least it's got to be better than (ugh) Rahowa.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Omega on May 10, 2021, 09:59:27 PM
I really liked their historical videos. The serie about Catherine the Great made me buy some books. They were creative, informative and fun.

The first time that I felt a chilly wind was when they pushed out a video about "Representation of women in videogames". It was unneeded and full of crap. I'm now wondering if it is their videogame branch that went rogue and got woke. All their biggest fiascoes are born from it.

1: same. Their history pieces were really good.

2: Theyve been inserting little woke jabs into their Authors series now and I pretty much quit them. I suspect eventually it will creep into their History pieces as well, if it has not already.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on May 10, 2021, 10:03:48 PM
I really liked their historical videos. The serie about Catherine the Great made me buy some books. They were creative, informative and fun.

The first time that I felt a chilly wind was when they pushed out a video about "Representation of women in videogames". It was unneeded and full of crap. I'm now wondering if it is their videogame branch that went rogue and got woke. All their biggest fiascoes are born from it.

1: same. Their history pieces were really good.

2: Theyve been inserting little woke jabs into their Authors series now and I pretty much quit them. I suspect eventually it will creep into their History pieces as well, if it has not already.
And we’re absolutely sure this isn’t a “broken clock is right twice a day” thing? We’re absolutely sure that there isn’t a single kernel of truth to anything they say?
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Omega on May 10, 2021, 10:33:29 PM

Because it would mean that the hobby has a problem with Race-grifting con-artists.

The hobby, and increasingly more areas of entertainment have had this problem of race-grifting or race-baiting for a few years now as its come into vogue. Unfortunately it also isnt a new trick either.

Around the start of the current wave of this cult of stupid there was at least one board game called "Darkies in the Mellon Patch" over on BGG that was supposed to be an old racist board game that had been rediscovered. Truth was it was all a fabrication to sucker people out of their money. Im not sure they even produced an actual product aside from some screeners to lure the gullible.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: The Thing on May 11, 2021, 03:01:15 AM
Darkies in the melon patch may be a fake, but the rest of these weren't.

https://www.bestplay.co/8-really-quite-racist-board-games/
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Brad on May 11, 2021, 10:22:59 AM
Darkies in the melon patch may be a fake, but the rest of these weren't.

https://www.bestplay.co/8-really-quite-racist-board-games/

Some of those were obviously designed by black people; they look exactly like the sort of blaxploitation stuff from the 70s. The other ones are basically just a product of their time I doubt anyone blinked an eye at their existence. Not even the people depicted in the games. In fact, surely not them because they literally didn't give a fuck. Anyone remember Blacula? That thing made a ton of money and I remember seeing it years after it came out as a kid and thought it was funny. Now, I should be insanely offended or something.

People need to get the fuck over about past stuff and focus on the future.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Zalman on May 11, 2021, 10:52:37 AM
The other ones are basically just a product of their time I doubt anyone blinked an eye at their existence.

50 years from now all of our games and literature will be condemned for using horribly racist terms like "African American". People seem unable to comprehend that what constitutes "offensive" language is entirely arbitrary, and intentionally inconstant.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Trond on May 11, 2021, 11:42:08 AM
Darkies in the melon patch may be a fake, but the rest of these weren't.

https://www.bestplay.co/8-really-quite-racist-board-games/

Blacks & Whites is almost certainly a racist left-leaning game, politically speaking.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: jhkim on May 11, 2021, 11:55:41 AM
This seems to be getting off-topic of RPGs. Regarding the Extra Credits videos...

I really liked their historical videos. The serie about Catherine the Great made me buy some books. They were creative, informative and fun.

The first time that I felt a chilly wind was when they pushed out a video about "Representation of women in videogames". It was unneeded and full of crap. I'm now wondering if it is their videogame branch that went rogue and got woke. All their biggest fiascoes are born from it.

1: same. Their history pieces were really good.

2: Theyve been inserting little woke jabs into their Authors series now and I pretty much quit them. I suspect eventually it will creep into their History pieces as well, if it has not already.

There's a thread specifically on Extra Credit's "Evil Races are Bad Game Design".

https://www.therpgsite.com/pen-paper-roleplaying-games-rpgs-discussion/extra-credits-evil-races-are-bad-game-design/
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: This Guy on May 11, 2021, 11:58:18 AM
Darkies in the melon patch may be a fake, but the rest of these weren't.

https://www.bestplay.co/8-really-quite-racist-board-games/

Blacks & Whites is almost certainly a racist left-leaning game, politically speaking.

yeah they didn't do their research on that one or life as a black man, thirty seconds on boardgamegeek made its goal clear
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Trond on May 11, 2021, 02:02:18 PM
Darkies in the melon patch may be a fake, but the rest of these weren't.

https://www.bestplay.co/8-really-quite-racist-board-games/

Blacks & Whites is almost certainly a racist left-leaning game, politically speaking.

yeah they didn't do their research on that one or life as a black man, thirty seconds on boardgamegeek made its goal clear

You remember the woman whose life was ruined because she called the police on a black guy who filmed her not having a leash on her dog in the park? Everyone seemed to assume that she was a right winger (giving rise to lots of jokes about right wing Karens) but I immediately called that she’s a democrat voter. I could tell from the way she believed that the police would actually treat any black man badly (and her choice of words etc.). 
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: yancy on May 11, 2021, 04:48:33 PM
That's quite some read, that article there:

"I must confess that I can hardly find any information at all. I spent weeks in the national archives and trawled through every private collection and public library in the country and couldn’t find a scrap of info about the golden oldie.

I even Googled the name and everything.

Looks quite racist though, doesn’t it?"

After visiting every private collection and public library in the entire country, possibly every single country in the whole wide world, the writer pulled out all the stops and *Googled the name* but it was all for naught. The horrors of the racialist crimes committed by the "Wa-hoo" board game gonna have to be left to your fevered imagination :/
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: This Guy on May 11, 2021, 07:08:44 PM
Darkies in the melon patch may be a fake, but the rest of these weren't.

https://www.bestplay.co/8-really-quite-racist-board-games/

Blacks & Whites is almost certainly a racist left-leaning game, politically speaking.

yeah they didn't do their research on that one or life as a black man, thirty seconds on boardgamegeek made its goal clear

You remember the woman whose life was ruined because she called the police on a black guy who filmed her not having a leash on her dog in the park? Everyone seemed to assume that she was a right winger (giving rise to lots of jokes about right wing Karens) but I immediately called that she’s a democrat voter. I could tell from the way she believed that the police would actually treat any black man badly (and her choice of words etc.).

we've established I'm a cretin so I'm kinda not seeing the point here.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: jhkim on May 11, 2021, 07:11:03 PM
That's quite some read, that article there:

"I must confess that I can hardly find any information at all. I spent weeks in the national archives and trawled through every private collection and public library in the country and couldn’t find a scrap of info about the golden oldie.

I even Googled the name and everything.

Looks quite racist though, doesn’t it?"

After visiting every private collection and public library in the entire country, possibly every single country in the whole wide world, the writer pulled out all the stops and *Googled the name* but it was all for naught. The horrors of the racialist crimes committed by the "Wa-hoo" board game gonna have to be left to your fevered imagination :/

Yeah, the article is poorly written and researched. The game seems relatively easy to find out about. It has a Wikipedia page and a seemingly active company promoting it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahoo_(board_game)

https://wahoogames.com/


(https://www.moonmarble.com/images/product/large/467.jpg)
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Trond on May 11, 2021, 10:07:39 PM
Darkies in the melon patch may be a fake, but the rest of these weren't.

https://www.bestplay.co/8-really-quite-racist-board-games/

Blacks & Whites is almost certainly a racist left-leaning game, politically speaking.

yeah they didn't do their research on that one or life as a black man, thirty seconds on boardgamegeek made its goal clear

You remember the woman whose life was ruined because she called the police on a black guy who filmed her not having a leash on her dog in the park? Everyone seemed to assume that she was a right winger (giving rise to lots of jokes about right wing Karens) but I immediately called that she’s a democrat voter. I could tell from the way she believed that the police would actually treat any black man badly (and her choice of words etc.).

we've established I'm a cretin so I'm kinda not seeing the point here.

Heh. I guess it was a bit cryptic. :D

"Racist" shit is often presented such that everyone assumes it always comes from the political Right. It's often lefties who tries to find racism everywhere. But sometimes, in both these games and in the news, it's kinda obvious that much of the racism comes from the Left, if people only took a couple of seconds to check what's actually going on.
Title: Re: Racialist Propaganda RPGs are Always Stupid
Post by: Wntrlnd on May 12, 2021, 01:40:41 AM
Darkies in the melon patch may be a fake, but the rest of these weren't.

https://www.bestplay.co/8-really-quite-racist-board-games/

Blacks & Whites is almost certainly a racist left-leaning game, politically speaking.

yeah they didn't do their research on that one or life as a black man, thirty seconds on boardgamegeek made its goal clear

You remember the woman whose life was ruined because she called the police on a black guy who filmed her not having a leash on her dog in the park? Everyone seemed to assume that she was a right winger (giving rise to lots of jokes about right wing Karens) but I immediately called that she’s a democrat voter. I could tell from the way she believed that the police would actually treat any black man badly (and her choice of words etc.).

we've established I'm a cretin so I'm kinda not seeing the point here.

Heh. I guess it was a bit cryptic. :D

"Racist" shit is often presented such that everyone assumes it always comes from the political Right. It's often lefties who tries to find racism everywhere. But sometimes, in both these games and in the news, it's kinda obvious that much of the racism comes from the Left, if people only took a couple of seconds to check what's actually going on.

Right, like how there is a city in my country where the news reports an increase in the hostility towards jews and how they are starting to move out from there. Doesn't say who are persecuting them, just lets you draw your own conclusions. And while it certainly have its fair amount of neonazis -its not really them, but another group of people who have ties to the left that the hostility originates from.