Some cowardly people decided to have a thread attacking me over at RPG.net, where I could not post a response myself. To be fair, a couple seem to be trying to give credit where credit is due.

In any case, this thread is to respond to this thread, where a number of points are made that I will be responding to.

1. "Blue Rose was always a 3-book Series". That's a cop-out and everyone knows it.  Had Blue Rose been the runaway success the RPG.net hype implied it would be, and no doubt GR hoped it would be, there's NO FUCKING WAY that they would have dropped the series after just 3 books. So you can't then turn around and claim that if they only did 3 books, its not a failure.

2. "Aldis is an objectively good society": If that were true, why does it need a fascist metaphysical device to engage in societal control? If the point of the Magic Deer was to say "look, Aldis is really GOOD", then the Magic Deer would really be utterly unnecessary. Its there because of the typical Nanny-state implication that if one does not allow "the elite" to govern and rule over the "mobs" then those mobs will inevitably bring all kinds of chaos to governance.  Its the "we know what's best for YOU" mentality.

3. This one's my favourite: "No one seems to have a problem with the "Objective Evil" of the Shadow in Midnight; so people's issue with the Magic Deer is really just a childish hatred of Goodness".
Look, I'm pretty sure that if the designers of Midnight had said: "The Shadow is objectively evil and embodies everything that is evil, like cruelty, malice, kittens, and environmental stewardship", you would have had cat-fans and environmentalists up in arms.
So why are you surprised that when Blue Rose said "The Magic Deer is objectively good and embodies everything that is good, like love, kindness, and collectivism", you ended up getting classical liberals a little upset?
Especially when you turned around and also said "There's also an objectively Evil alignment, and its pretty well defined by people who value individual freedom over the collective will. That's pure evil".

So its got fuck all to do with people having an evil-fetish, its just the opposite, its the fact that Blue Rose had an utterly fucked-up utterly politicized perspective of what "Good" and "Evil" are. "Good" is the nanny-state, "evil" is valuing individuality over collectivism.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPunditSome cowardly people decided to have a thread attacking me over at theRPGsite, where I could not post a response myself.

RPGnet, surely?

Quote from: GrimGentRPGnet, surely?

Argh. Too early in the morning.

RPGPundit

Maybe they need the Law and Chaos axis added to their alignment system.

Yes, the existence of the Deer undermines the entire premise that Aldis is good. It's hard to claim a free choice about being brave, sincere, kind to others, etc. when there's a Magic Deer who kicks your ass if you aren't.

Quote from: PseudoephedrineYes, the existence of the Deer undermines the entire premise that Aldis is good. It's hard to claim a free choice about being brave, sincere, kind to others, etc. when there's a Magic Deer who kicks your ass if you aren't.

I suppose this is all just rehashing, but I fail to see the once-a-century appearances of the Golden Harte to be terribly significant to any campaign.  The Golden Harte is considerably less interventionist than D&D gods, who constantly monitor the alignment of all their clerics and strip them of powers if they shift away in alignment.  

Similarly, having the "good guys" be organized as a state with an autocratic King or Queen (as opposed to a constitutional democracy that guarantees civil rights) is really pretty darn common in fantasy fiction and RPGs.

Quote from: jhkimI suppose this is all just rehashing, but I fail to see the once-a-century appearances of the Golden Harte to be terribly significant to any campaign.  The Golden Harte is considerably less interventionist than D&D gods, who constantly monitor the alignment of all their clerics and strip them of powers if they shift away in alignment.  

Similarly, having the "good guys" be organized as a state with an autocratic King or Queen (as opposed to a constitutional democracy that guarantees civil rights) is really pretty darn common in fantasy fiction and RPGs.

I dislike the conventional D&D pantheons for the same reasons. Here's my take on religion in the D&D game I'm running:
http://www.therpgsite.com/forums/showpost.php?p=71563&postcount=18 Suffice to say, there's no giant wise old men with lightning bolts running around.

As for the autocratic king, I'm a little more willing to use that, but because of the way my group plays (violent, gritty, and cynical) we tend to have more kings like Henry the VIII and Mad King George than Queen Amidala. For all that, we aren't completely closed off to romantic fantasy, but most of our players are far more interested in subverting the tropes than buying into them.

For those of us who don't own Blue Rose what is the "magic deer"?

Quote from: jhkimI suppose this is all just rehashing, but I fail to see the once-a-century appearances of the Golden Harte to be terribly significant to any campaign.

So that's what this ongoing ranting by RPGPundit has been about? A McGuffin 'scourge' that occurs every 3 or 4 generations?  :haw: :rolleyes:

Quote from: estarFor those of us who don't own Blue Rose what is the "magic deer"?

A Libertarian's worst fucking nightmare.

Quote from: jhkimSimilarly, having the "good guys" be organized as a state with an autocratic King or Queen (as opposed to a constitutional democracy that guarantees civil rights) is really pretty darn common in fantasy fiction and RPGs.

Yes, but its generally pretty fucking rare to suggest that these Kingdoms are the only possible Good that can exist and that anyone who believes in liberal democracy is objectively Evil.

I mean, your comparison isn't apt.  It would be apt if, say, some overzealous SCA member or reaaaallly old-school Catholic wrote a game setting where he tried to argue that rule by the Divine Right of Kings and a Feudalist system of government was the literal and objective definition of "goodness" and that to even object to this system (say, by an uppity serf who didn't know that he was being governed by wise christian rulers appointed by Jesus) was objectively Evil.

RPGPundit

So what you are saying is you don't like the political "what if" of the setting and are having a hard time separating that from real life?  As in "what if there was a an asskicking monster. Let's make him a deer because they are wild and romantic and lets have them come down every once in a while and do a house clearing of all the shitdisturbers like the Allies did with Germany at the end of WWII so that WWIII didn't follow as quickly as WWII did WWI.  So what might that look like?"

Is that what Blue Rose is like?

So the Magic Deer is a uber being that will kill/dethrone any ruler/authority that doesn't conform to it ideals.

Interesting, well this won't bode well for the humans in the society it dominates. No matter what it's intent it will be a form of totalitarian rule.

People response to totalitarian rule has generally been in the form of corruption. The ideals of the system will get a *wink* *wink* *nod *nod but behind closed doors there will be a black market involving whatever pleasures are forbidden. This assume we aren't talking about some form of Zhodani mind control system here.

I would have to read up on the setting to figure out where the cracks would be in such a place. Of course mind control/reading stuff make trying to figure out how people will act in such a place difficult (Federation re-eduction centers anybody?)

Rob Conley

Quote from: estarI would have to read up on the setting to figure out where the cracks would be in such a place.

Er?  Usually this sort of stuff for settings is just glorified handwaving to get a bit of suspension of belief up to justify something or another [EDIT:...in the setting.]. In this case the theme of the setting is a faux medieval utopia fantasy where they can all get along, except for the super evil external threat. *shrug*

EDIT: P.S.  Note my comparison to the Allies and post-WWII Germany (and Japan for that matter). It doesn't sound like the deer has much ongoing involvement.

Quote from: estarSo the Magic Deer is a uber being that will kill/dethrone any ruler/authority that doesn't conform to it ideals.

Interesting, well this won't bode well for the humans in the society it dominates. No matter what it's intent it will be a form of totalitarian rule.

Huh?  Do you have any idea what you're talking about?  As I've mentioned last time,

The Golden Hart is the divine or semi-divine force which by tradition chooses the sovereign in the kingdom of Aldis. Its direct intervention is almost exclusively in choosing and crowning the new ruler.  It has  appeared at three other times in the history of Aldis. It aided the original rebellion which formed Aldis by conferring immunity to sorcery to all those within sight of it. It has also appeared twice in the 300 years since to depose a ruler of Aldis. It does nothing to enforce the sovereign's rule, however.  

The Blue Rose setting descriptive text does have flowery language about how good the Hart's choices of people is and so forth.  Somehow, I didn't think this constitutes a real-world argument for rule by magical animal selection of a sovereign and take offense.