Quote from: RPGPundit on February 11, 2021, 06:38:43 PM
They lost again.  Of course, they'll keep trying.

Well of course, real Sword Dream has never been tried anywhere. It'll be different next time.

Oh, I thought this thread would be bumped because it was still a thing. Okay. 

Seriously, it is dead, and here is a serious argument why. After all, there is an itch.io content creation community that's half wokeSR and half storygames (and storygamers were communists from the start, of course), and they are obviously real people releasing real products.

However, most of the stuff they produce are half-baked thought experiments with no appreciable gameplay relevance. There is no powerful design ethic to steer these ideas, and as they drift further from the old-school D&D core in an effort to distance themselves from its "toxic legacy", the designs they champion become ever more muddled. Systems like Troika! are OK, but seem to be too freeform / unstructured without a framework like D&D (or other successful game). What we get are mostly bits and pieces of (retro-)avantgarde artwork, with substance based on combining geekosphere tropes ("What if... lovesick sky pirates and alienated robots?") with a veneer of hipster-flavoured lefty politics ("What if they are also GAY? Or fight for causes that agree with our First World Big City politics?"). There is a serious lack of real substance. Most of the output takes the worst excesses of the one-page dungeon idea, with mini-products giving way to micro-products, and runs it into the round.

That is not to say there is no greatness in that sphere; you get things like the UVG or Mar-Milloir (although many of these are claimed to be part of the scene only retroactively), but that seems to be individual talent, not a fruitful design movement. I honestly expected better when it started, but it disintegrated fairly badly.

Quote from: Brigman on February 11, 2021, 09:14:46 PM
It's the whole "if you're not part of SWORD REAM, you're a fascist!" thing.  I mean, come on.   

Isn't that how cults operate? If one is Woke, then one can only associate with other members of the Woke, since anyone not Woke "is literally a fascist."

I believe what we're seeing with Woke-ism is a secular cult, and others have pointed it out. It has some similarities to communism in being a secular cult, but in other ways it has done a better job of sneaking up on society before many of us realized what is going on with Woke-ism. With communism it took over the role of the state and made promises of utopia by which it could be judged. Woke-ism is working mostly through language and peer pressure. It also lacks a centralized leadership which most cults have.

With the recent anime thread that the rpg.net mods locked due to a lack of snitches, the mods realized they had a community of the un-Woke on their site that the mods feel the need to attack/convert. I believe part of the anger at the users by the mods is that they assumed their users were Woke enough that the bad posters would have been reported on. Realizing they have a bunch of un-Woke users in their midst carrying on a fast moving discussion probably terrifies them a little bit. Of course, being Woke is a moving target, so there will always to heretics to discover at a later date of one kind or another.

Quote from: wmarshal on February 12, 2021, 02:55:12 PM
I believe what we're seeing with Woke-ism is a secular cult, and others have pointed it out. It has some similarities to communism in being a secular cult, but in other ways it has done a better job of sneaking up on society before many of us realized what is going on with Woke-ism. With communism it took over the role of the state and made promises of utopia by which it could be judged. Woke-ism is working mostly through language and peer pressure. It also lacks a centralized leadership which most cults have.

With the recent anime thread that the rpg.net mods locked due to a lack of snitches, the mods realized they had a community of the un-Woke on their site that the mods feel the need to attack/convert. I believe part of the anger at the users by the mods is that they assumed their users were Woke enough that the bad posters would have been reported on. Realizing they have a bunch of us-Woke users in their midst carrying on a fast moving discussion probably terrifies them a little bit. Of course, being Woke is a moving target, so there will always to heretics to discover at a later date of one kind or another.

Indeed. The similarities between the Cult of Woke and the Chinese Cultural Revolution are eery.

The Purple Wardens are concerned about the non-Woke segment of their prison population, but what really keeps them up at night is the fear of not being Woke enough-- that one day they will be deposed by someone of greater virtue. Its why virtue signaling is so important. They must find others to throw to the cancelmob lest it come for them. It's why they have yearly purges in Trouble Tickets, threads with titles like "How can we make the forum better?"

Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend!

Quote from: Brigman on February 11, 2021, 09:14:46 PM
It's the whole "if you're not part of SWORD REAM, you're a fascist!" thing.  I mean, come on.   

Quote from: wmarshal on February 12, 2021, 02:55:12 PM
I believe what we're seeing with Woke-ism is a secular cult, and others have pointed it out. It has some similarities to communism in being a secular cult, but in other ways it has done a better job of sneaking up on society before many of us realized what is going on with Woke-ism.

Quote from: Aglondir on February 12, 2021, 05:31:04 PM
Indeed. The similarities between the Cult of Woke and the Chinese Cultural Revolution are eery.

I'm impressed by the quick jump from "If you're not SWORD DREAM, you're a fascist!" to "If you're SWORD DREAM, you're a communist!"

Quote from: jhkim on February 12, 2021, 07:26:31 PM

Quote from: Brigman on February 11, 2021, 09:14:46 PM
It's the whole "if you're not part of SWORD REAM, you're a fascist!" thing.  I mean, come on.   

Quote from: wmarshal on February 12, 2021, 02:55:12 PM
I believe what we're seeing with Woke-ism is a secular cult, and others have pointed it out. It has some similarities to communism in being a secular cult, but in other ways it has done a better job of sneaking up on society before many of us realized what is going on with Woke-ism.

.

Quote from: Aglondir on February 12, 2021, 05:31:04 PM
Indeed. The similarities between the Cult of Woke and the Chinese Cultural Revolution are eery.

I'm impressed by the quick jump from "If you're not SWORD DREAM, you're a fascist!" to "If you're SWORD DREAM, you're a communist!"

I'd appreciate it if you'd stop being a post-surrogate for rpg.net.  Thanks.

Quote from: jhkim on February 12, 2021, 07:26:31 PM
I'm impressed by the quick jump from "If you're not SWORD DREAM, you're a fascist!" to "If you're SWORD DREAM, you're a communist!"

I would not call it quick. This has been pointed out quite a bit that the SJWs function very much like a cult or like some versions of communism.

They also mirror the infiltration and co-opting tactics of various fetish groups when they want to convert some interest into their fetish. Storygamers are all about this.

But as I keep pointing out. This is cyclic to about every 20 years and tends to follow a pattern of moving from one rallying point to the next. With ever more stringent calls for censoring. Think of the children. Think of the women. Think of the gays. Think of the minorities. Think of the blacks. Think of the handicapped.

Quote from: jhkim on February 12, 2021, 07:26:31 PM

Quote from: Brigman on February 11, 2021, 09:14:46 PM
It's the whole "if you're not part of SWORD REAM, you're a fascist!" thing.  I mean, come on.   

Quote from: wmarshal on February 12, 2021, 02:55:12 PM
I believe what we're seeing with Woke-ism is a secular cult, and others have pointed it out. It has some similarities to communism in being a secular cult, but in other ways it has done a better job of sneaking up on society before many of us realized what is going on with Woke-ism.

Quote from: Aglondir on February 12, 2021, 05:31:04 PM
Indeed. The similarities between the Cult of Woke and the Chinese Cultural Revolution are eery.

I'm impressed by the quick jump from "If you're not SWORD DREAM, you're a fascist!" to "If you're SWORD DREAM, you're a communist!"

I'm not saying that "If you're SWORD DREAM, you're a communist!" Being a communist requires a belief and commitment to some strand of Marxism. There are Marxist among the Woke, but not all Woke are Marxist, and not all Marxist are Woke. I would say that if one considers oneself a member of SWORD DREAM, then one most likely considers themselves Woke, and the Woke are very much a cult. I can liken them to religious cults as well, but I made a particular point of likening them to communist due to their shared secular nature. It is due to that secular nature of being Woke that their cultish behavior can go by unnoticed by many, since many think of cults as being strictly a religious matter.

Quote from: "wmarshal"I believe what we're seeing with Woke-ism is a secular cult, and others have pointed it out. It has some similarities to communism in being a secular cult, but in other ways it has done a better job of sneaking up on society before many of us realized what is going on with Woke-ism.

The Cult of Woke is a religion because they have a shared coherent conception of what is sacred and what is profane. Belief in the supernatural is not a prerequisite for a religion. The purpose is to make subjective, not objective, sense of reality and provide a map of how to get from the unbearable present to the desired future, i.e. it is not logical in the scientific sense. The Cult is anti-Christian, not anti-religion.

I would argue that the Cult of Woke and Satanism are one and the same thing, since both repudiate and invert cultural norms, which is to say that all references to Satanism or demons in Christianity are wholly applicable. Because the Cult is not predicated on logic, using logic against it accomplishes nothing; its members are not perturbed by failures in their logic, and mocking them for such is useless and shows a failure to understand what one is dealing with. All instructions within Christianity (or any religion that confronts evil) for dealing with evil are effective against it.

Satanism, defined simply as rebellion against the will of God, which is a culture's consensus regarding right and wrong, is a phenomenon that occurs in all cultures. When combined with occult practices (e.g. goddess worship), Satanism can be called witchcraft in the anthropological sense of the word.

QuoteEa [Sumerian Enki] might therefore be reasonably regarded as representative of that part of humanity eternally (and ignorantly) contemptuous of tradition and willing to undermine or destroy the past without understanding its necessity or nature. Those "unconsciously" protected from the outside world by the walls of culture may become irritated by the limitations such walls represent, and incautiously pull them down. This act of destruction, disguised as a blow for freedom, lets the terrible unknown flood back in. The Great Mother [Tiamat] is a terrible force, in the absence of patriarchal protection. The Enuma elish makes this vital point, implicitly... (Jordan Peterson, Maps of Meaning, pp. 116-117)

In The Witch (2015), at the end, after the family falls apart and is destroyed, the daughter goes into the woods and joins a coven of witches and she laughs as she discovers that she can fly. This is symbolic of group neurosis (witch hunts, Satanic Panic, pandemic hysteria, et. al.) degenerating into group psychosis, and it is also a very good mythological representation of the Cult of Woke and how it attacks and deludes young women. Such mythological imagery is more efficient and comprehensive in the transmission of ideas, especially those which have not yet been consciously apprehended by the culture.

"The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth." -African Proverb

QuoteSystems like Troika! are OK, but seem to be too freeform / unstructured without a framework like D&D (or other successful game).

But then aren't old D&D and OSR praised precisely for freeform attitude compared to over-framed new D&D?

QuoteSatanism, defined simply as rebellion against the will of God, which is a culture's consensus regarding right and wrong, is a phenomenon that occurs in all cultures. When combined with occult practices (e.g. goddess worship), Satanism can be called witchcraft in the anthropological sense of the word.

Dude, stop redefining words to suit your wacky philosophical schemes. If you consider "culture's consensus" as "will of God" then damn Christians would be Satanists for ancient Rome or Aztec Empire. Yeah, that's exactly sensible and useful defining - straight from the bat.

Quote from: Brigman on February 11, 2021, 09:14:46 PM
It's the whole "if you're not part of SWORD REAM, you're a fascist!" thing.  I mean, come on.   

Fascism has apparently produced some great RPGs.
Yay for fascism! ;-)

Quote from: DocJones on February 13, 2021, 03:51:57 PM

Quote from: Brigman on February 11, 2021, 09:14:46 PM
It's the whole "if you're not part of SWORD REAM, you're a fascist!" thing.  I mean, come on.   

Fascism has apparently produced some great RPGs.
Yay for fascism! ;-)

Seems like both sides call the other fascist all the time... 

Leftist OSR? Why thou. There are seriously hardcore problematic subjects in this world people could devote their time if they cared. For example, work camps. They still exist, people still die there. SociaL warriors(kek, that name) dont care enough to make a concentrated push. Or to do anything really. Well, im awaiting the next hot topic that will inevitably arise once polluting the rpgs is no longer hip. The soon the.. better?

Quote from: Brigman on February 13, 2021, 04:09:44 PM
Seems like both sides call the other fascist all the time...

The non SJW side did not till long after. And in all honesty should have started calling them out alot earlier.

Quote from: DocJones on February 13, 2021, 03:51:57 PMFascism has apparently produced some great RPGs.

Well, certainly a lot of Roman Empire LARPing.