Quote from: sureshot;1097473He expected everyone on the forum to no longer think for themselves, while expecting zero push back on what he posts. The opposite is happening and he is having a  immature public meltdown.

All because some posters here when he asked the question would you allow this person to join your game at post #410. Some here said yes and cue the mental breakdown.

Based solely on that very unflattering picture, they give me a bad vibe. I could certainly be wrong about them and wouldn't be rude or mean to them out of hand if I met them in person. If we got along and had similar tastes in gaming, they'd be welcome to throw dice. That said, it's odd to present something so clearly drastic as a metric for acceptance. A better one might be, I dunno, Blair White? Or better yet, everyone stop trying to one-up the "Gotcha!" over phantom people with ephemeral problems chased by a very real, and bizarre, outrage.

Quote from: GIMME SOME SUGAR;1097428I didn't expect the wokeness, the inclusiveness and the lack of honesty. I expected someone to feel like I feel. But I am the only prejudiced asshole in this forum it seems.

We have many members and many lurkers. Many of them probably agree with you. Only a couple of us disagreed, and that's good. You don't want an echo chamber. They are fucking boring. It's why RPG.net sucks ebola soaked donkey balls.

Yes, I'm "inclusive" in regards to judging gamers only by what they bring to the game table. I'm certainly not woke and I post honestly because why the fuck not? It's way more fun to give blunt and honest answers. And I'm all about the LOLz.

Understand my perspective. I live in Hollyweird. California prided itself on being the home of fruits, nuts and flakes 50 years ago and the hippy attitude of "its all good man" has morphed into "look at me, look at me, I demand you salute my freak flag".

Due to how I've arranged my life, my gaming is a combo of "sporadic and intense", aka I'll game 8-12 hours a month, often in just one day. I attend cons and FLGS game days so my gaming crew is a combo of my regular beloved scumbucket of hellish bastards plus random strangers.

Strangers in LA sometimes come in many weird flavors. Convention etiquette demands GMs offer seats to players who show up. However, I stack the deck. I'm a headbanger whose wardrobe is mostly concert shirts. Not a "listened to metal when I was a kid" guy, but a "moshed last week, got pit tix to Behemoth" guy. I'm the guy who wears the fucked up Cannibal Corpse shirt that panics soccer moms in grocery stores and I absolutely love it. And then I'm upfront about the game I'm running which weeds out even more people. So when a bizarro person shows up to my table, hears my pitch and then sits down? Most likely they are there for the game and most behave just fine for the next 4 hours.  

But like I said, I stack the deck. The vast majority of people I don't want to game with don't go near my table. Those curious few who don't belong usually run when they hear my pitch, or when they see the wretched hive of scum and villainy who would be their fellow players. Those who jump through all those hoops are mostly good players...or players who bail after 10 minutes which is also cool. I'd rather game with 2 good players than 6 crapsack players.

That's all I'm asking out of my game table. Can everyone roll dice and add to the play experience? If so, that's awesome and I want them back for the next session. If not, then they're useless to me.

Quote from: GIMME SOME SUGAR;1097428Well, fuck you all then. I can be my on my own team.

We're all on our own team. We're all born alone and die alone. The best we can hope for are "imperfect allies", people who we can tolerate and work with enough to push the ball in the general direction we would prefer.

Quote from: tenbones;1097480You because you're too chicken shit to call the duck a duck.

Dude! Ducks know each other. That means the ducks can contact Howard and nobody wants to risk that.  

And plenty of ducks have memorized the Firearrow rune. You can't be too careful around ducks.

Or geese!!

Quote from: jhkim;1097482To loop back to tenbones - You've been making a lot of ad-hominem attacks, but I think the core is that we're talking past each other because of different assumptions.

Not exactly. They became ad-hominem because the only conclusion that can be drawn is you're being purposely OBTUSE or you're actually stupid. I've said repeatedly I don't think you are stupid. But it's like you're insisting that you are, because you simply, until now, won't admit what is patently obvious about the position that this thread is *actually* about... but we'll talk about this below...

Quote from: jhkim;1097482No one person represents the RPG world, but overall, it is represented by a collection of people and products. The issue is how do we generalize?

I'm going to parse this for your own edification. I agree with you here. You just drew a nice generalized circle I can agree with. It's big and general. Fine. We'll start with this.

Quote from: jhkim;1097482Binary answers of either "the hobby was welcoming" vs "the hobby was unwelcoming" are largely meaningless.

Wrong. It's meaningful because in point of fact - people of differing races, gender, sexual proclivities, legal status, genetic malfunction, religion, race, nationality, cultural background, social class, parentage, and probably a host of other conditions and statuses I can't think of, have *never* expressly been forbidden from engaging with this hobby at its inception.

THAT a demographically identifiable pattern emerged is *irrelevant* to this claim because there was no overt push towards it by *design* or by coercive means.

Quote from: jhkim;1097482Even individual people aren't a binary of perfectly unbigoted versus completely bigoted. The underlying question isn't - but how much prejudice there was in the hobby. However, it's not clear how to quantify that. It's not like we can even argue whether the hobby was 40% prejudiced versus 10% prejudiced, because there's no clear meaning of what X% prejudiced is.

Read my post above. That renders this IRRELEVANT. Because as you're going to say - you can do whatever the fuck you want with your makebelief elf-game at your table. No one is overtly telling you how to engage with the game. The game at its inception and for many years did not advocate for any kind of specific narrow band of players to engage as a policy. So this point you're making is POINTLESS.

Quote from: jhkim;1097482I do think that the RPG hobby has historically been less prejudiced on many fronts than mainstream society, but prejudice still existed. As I noted, anti-LGBT prejudice was common and mainstream in the 1970s, so I think it was also in the hobby.

So you're going to castigate the entire hobby because you believe that it was mainstream and common to castigate LGBT's in the 70's. Despite the fact that the "culture" of gaming is itself at its inception an outlier, and non-sexual, non-racial, non-gendered, non-everything as a conceit, you're playing this game of cultural relativism and *massive* over-generalization for the purposes of making an assumption that you can neither prove, nor support reasonably. But we CAN look at how the fandom of RPG's has reacted *since* gaming companies and their employees have politicized all of these things in the gaming-space online and anecdotally in real-space.

Quote from: jhkim;1097482I have commented on this, but you continue talking past me. I am not denying that WotC has promoted politics. Companies do express politics. I am saying that WotC should be able to express whatever politics they want - just as Pundit expresses *his* politics while promoting *his* games. Regardless of what politics WotC says, it's not mind control that forces anything on you.

Very good. But you're making the Pathological Post-Modern mistake of asserting "all politics" are equal. WotC isn't promoting inclusivity. Pundit's products are for everyone to play. He is the Employee and publisher. WotC's employees are actively *against* people of certain belief, and *race* - not just in the game, but AS a business practice https://twitter.com/mtg_lee/status/1148371234897326080?lang=en

Oh and we can provide more, but *WHAT'S THE POINT*? We already know all this. Why is it such a leap of logic to see that this is racist and if this kind of shit was how D&D was going to be marketed from the inception, it likely wouldn't exist. But this is why I call you being obtuse to the point of lunacy. You're literally dancing around it like it's not a thing. Worse: you pretend it ISN'T what it actually IS. This is extremely bigotted, and it's extremely short-sighted of WotC - so much so, by you ignoring it, it calls into question the very definitions of what you think "SJW" and "Conservative" means when you're pretending to engage in these discussions.

Quote from: jhkim;1097482To summarize my position again, I don't think that RPGs are an important vector for political ideas. So I'm fine with SJW companies making SJW games as well as conservative companies making conservative games, and other companies making further variations. I might disagree with a company's politics, but that means I'll either ignore it or express disagreement with it - not that I'll bitch that they're exercising corporate fiat over me.

Way to peripherally stay on topic and dance around the gorilla under the floor-mat of the room.

Quote from: tenbones;1097496WotC isn't promoting inclusivity. Pundit's products are for everyone to play. He is the Employee and publisher. WotC's employees are actively *against* people of certain belief, and *race* - not just in the game, but AS a business practice https://twitter.com/mtg_lee/status/1148371234897326080?lang=en

Holy fuck.

If anyone reads that message from WotC and still buys their products, you know what you're supporting.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1097500Holy fuck.

If anyone reads that message from WotC and still buys their products, you know what you're supporting.

They could pull a Jessica Price and shit-can the guy for taking to Twitter promoting views that don't align with the company's high moral and ethical standards. That'd make me happy enough to overlook it.

Quote from: jhkim;1097482No one person represents the RPG world, but overall, it is represented by a collection of people and products. The issue is how do we generalize? Binary answers of either "the hobby was welcoming" vs "the hobby was unwelcoming" are largely meaningless.

I agree, but I think it's worth noting the context in which this particular discussion is taking place. This thread and others like it didn't start in response to someone saying that the gaming/rpg hobby in the 70s (or 80s or whenever) reflected to a large extent the common attitudes and prejudices of that era. If that's all that was being said I doubt anyone would object.

However, almost as soon as nerdy interests became acceptable in mainstream culture a subset of clickbait online writers began to declare that the people previously participating in nerdish hobbies (before the enlightened writers showed up) are worse than Hitler. The pushback is against the bullshit claim that people who spent years minding their own business playing elfgames that the rest of the world dismissed as pathetic were all along actually evil elitist gatekeeping bullies who were shutting out the wretched unwashed masses who desperately wanted to play rpgs all along.

I wouldn't claim that rpgers are uniquely free of attitudes and prejudices that are part of the larger culture, but at the same time I don't see any need to humor a bunch of twits who apparently are incapable of enjoying any activity unless they have a victim narrative to go along with it.

Quote from: tenbones;1097496WotC's employees are actively *against* people of certain belief, and *race* - not just in the game, but AS a business practice https://twitter.com/mtg_lee/status/1148371234897326080?lang=en

Quote from: Spinachcat;1097500Holy fuck.

If anyone reads that message from WotC and still buys their products, you know what you're supporting.

Quote from: SavageSchemer;1097504They could pull a Jessica Price and shit-can the guy for taking to Twitter promoting views that don't align with the company's high moral and ethical standards. That'd make me happy enough to overlook it.

I wish I could say this was anything but entirely expected. I see videogame developers spouting this kind of crap all the time.

I'm doubtful this will have any meaningful impact on the employee in question, but hey.

Quote from: GIMME SOME SUGAR;1097428I get to be what I want to be. Some pissy little gnome on the other side of the Atlantic won't dedice how I will feel about something. If I want to be shocked and surprised, I will be. I didn't expect the wokeness, the inclusiveness and the lack of honesty. I expected someone to feel like I feel. But I am the only prejudiced asshole in this forum it seems. I wanted some sugar, I got salt. Well, fuck you all then. I can be my on my own team. Hell, I might even form an unholy alliance with rawma or whatever his name is.

LOL, dude I have gay and lesbian friends and family members, used to get my haircuts in a salon owned and staffed only by transpeople (until I decided to buy the trimmer and never comb again). I'm mixed race so not white enough for the natzess and not brown enough for the SJWs.

Why would I be on your team? Or Rawmas?

If you're not man enough to handle the answer don't ask the question.

Quote from: Antiquation!;1097506I wish I could say this was anything but entirely expected. I see videogame developers spouting this kind of crap all the time.

I'm doubtful this will have any meaningful impact on the employee in question, but hey.

This is not unique to the RPG's - this is RPG's, Boardgames, Comicbooks, Movies, Videogames, Book Publishing, Television, etc. This is not hidden from view. This is precisely why I say jhkim and anyone trying to play down what *IS* happening in RPG's (alone) is being intensely obtuse and/or stupid. It's hard to claim ignorance of it at this point.

These are the leaders of the mediums speaking directly at the consumers, and while sure we can choose not to consume them - we're also being relegated as the *majority* demographic onto islands where these issues can only be spoken about in relative isolation.

It's not case of RPG's generally being hostile to LGBT/POC's etc. at the inception of the hobby. It's the case of *PEOPLE* consuming the game, playing the game as they see fit without overt coercion from the creators - amongst those of like mind who are invested in those things (for whatever reason - or no reason at all).

But now? It's wrongthink and outrage to not accept other people's issues as your own... even in make-believe.

Quote from: Dimitrios;1097505However, almost as soon as nerdy interests became acceptable in mainstream culture a subset of clickbait online writers began to declare that the people previously participating in nerdish hobbies (before the enlightened writers showed up) are worse than Hitler. The pushback is against the bullshit claim that people who spent years minding their own business playing elfgames that the rest of the world dismissed as pathetic were all along actually evil elitist gatekeeping bullies who were shutting out the wretched unwashed masses who desperately wanted to play rpgs all along.

This whole thread is a good example of create an argument by using a false dichotomy.

There are people like Gimme Some Sugar who are PROUD that they might be excluding awesome gamers based solely on appearance and are SHOCKED that more people wouldn't admit that others would do the same.  Clearly, he (presumption on my part) thinks this is the kind of environment where various bigots like to hang out.

Quote from: Dimitrios;1097505I agree, but I think it's worth noting the context in which this particular discussion is taking place. This thread and others like it didn't start in response to someone saying that the gaming/rpg hobby in the 70s (or 80s or whenever) reflected to a large extent the common attitudes and prejudices of that era. If that's all that was being said I doubt anyone would object.

However, almost as soon as nerdy interests became acceptable in mainstream culture a subset of clickbait online writers began to declare that the people previously participating in nerdish hobbies (before the enlightened writers showed up) are worse than Hitler. The pushback is against the bullshit claim that people who spent years minding their own business playing elfgames that the rest of the world dismissed as pathetic were all along actually evil elitist gatekeeping bullies who were shutting out the wretched unwashed masses who desperately wanted to play rpgs all along.

I wouldn't claim that rpgers are uniquely free of attitudes and prejudices that are part of the larger culture, but at the same time I don't see any need to humor a bunch of twits who apparently are incapable of enjoying any activity unless they have a victim narrative to go along with it.

Bingo.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;1097517This whole thread is a good example of create an argument by using a false dichotomy.

There are people like Gimme Some Sugar who are PROUD that they might be excluding awesome gamers based solely on appearance and are SHOCKED that more people wouldn't admit that others would do the same.  Clearly, he (presumption on my part) thinks this is the kind of environment where various bigots like to hang out.

What you're talking about is what happens at someones table. There is ZERO evidence this is some widespread pogrom of bigotry. And no one is under any mandate to claim a "right" to play at any table they'e not wanted for any reason.

Nor is anyone *required* to invite anyone that would be counterproductive to the type of game they want to run at their table.

The problem is the people working in the industry itself are making those declarations. What *you* think is an "awesome gamer" doesn't necessarily mean anything to me. The reverse is true too. If a guy shows up at my table with a "tail" plugged into his pants and in his anus because he's a "furry" that identifies as a "fox"... he might be a great guy, but I'm in no way obliged to cater to his views or desires in my game at my table.

If I have an employee that goes on social media saying "CIS-White Men, and non-Furry/friendly-Allies are not welcome in my game/company" etc. How exactly is  a consumer supposed to take that as being anything other than exclusionary at face value? Anyone with a modicum of logic should be able to see it. Those that don't, do not need to be making those decisions on behalf of others. This is what is going on.

Worse - and the larger point of this thread - because of the SJW "movement" the places where you can have this discussion is is pitifully small. Because it's the politics of power taking precedence over the mediums themselves.

It's not hard to follow. They don't have to punish you at your table. They have to punish you publicly and silence you into submission. This is not some new tactic.

Quote from: tenbones;1097520There is ZERO evidence this is some widespread pogrom of bigotry.

I think this statement is very different from the OP - which seems to imply that there has NEVER been any kind of EXCLUSION, contrary to some people's lived experiences.  Something doesn't have to be organized and directed to exist or even to be pervasive.  

I think Pundit would have been on much firmer ground saying something like 'Some people say RPGs have always been insular and exclusionary, but there are lots of well documented examples of RPG players being more accepting and open-minded than other hobbyists'.  That would probably even be true.  

Players of RPGs are used to imagining themselves as someone else - someone green-skinned and scaly, or brutish and dumb, or agile and witty - or whatever, so it stands to reason that GENERALLY they'd be more tolerant of differences.  But clearly there are exceptions.  I don't think recognizing that creates problems.  Instead it opens up a useful discussion of how gaming can be true to the experience it offers but still try to be inviting to others.

I'm actually very sure that MANY posters on this website have talked about how modern RPGs need a 'starter set' that is accessible to all kinds of people - to reduce the barriers to entry and make the hobby more welcoming of newcomers.  There's nothing wrong with pointing out that being more welcoming of newcomers almost by necessity implies being more welcoming of people that haven't traditionally played at the same rates as geeky teen-aged white boys in suburban high schools.  

Quote from: deadDMwalking;1097524I'm actually very sure that MANY posters on this website have talked about how modern RPGs need a 'starter set' that is accessible to all kinds of people - to reduce the barriers to entry and make the hobby more welcoming of newcomers.  There's nothing wrong with pointing out that being more welcoming of newcomers almost by necessity implies being more welcoming of people that haven't traditionally played at the same rates as geeky teen-aged white boys in suburban high schools.  

What does a starter set have to do with anybody's race or gender?

Why would you go there?

And even race baiters have said they grew up playing some TTRPG or another, non-white race baiters mind you.

Yes, you need to lower the entry point level, but mainly by lowering the price and rule complexity. Now, unless you're saying only people that aren't "geeky teen-aged white boys" would benefit by that I don't see the relevance of the race or gender of anybody.

Those poor wahmens and not-honkies. They just can't learn games without a dumbed down version!