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Author Topic: The Importance Of Diversity And Representation In The Hobby  (Read 27436 times)

Jaeger

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Re: The Importance Of Diversity And Representation In The Hobby
« Reply #225 on: October 06, 2021, 03:01:33 PM »
..
This paragraph is chillingly accurate, and took me a long time to admit. It isn't about money. It's about bringing down the system. That is becoming increasingly obvious. If it isn't subservient, then it needs to be destroyed.
...

Yes. When they converge a company and it starts to: "get Woke, go broke"....

"Go Broke" is a victory condition for them.


What puzzles me -- and mind you, I don't think you're completely wrong -- is how many OTHER people who seem willing to join in on this even in the face of financial ruin.

It's literally signing up for the Poisoned Cocktail. Doesn't ANYONE look at the sales figures and say, 'Hey guys, why are our numbers down?'

They are all either true believers that think the cause is more important. Or they are afraid of them, and are just trying to hold on to their jobs as long as they can.


We think of companies as logical things, but I'll use Blizzard as an example since they've been in news a lot lately, and the SJWs are now dismantling their game piece by piece with no resistance, driving away many of the few remaining players.

Back when Blizzard founded it was a bunch of geeks at Blizzard North, and a bunch at Blizzard south. Two groups of geeks, one working on Diablo, the other on Warcraft, then Starcraft. These were small companies. Startups.
...

Blizzard is a real good example of what can happen to WotC and D&D.

EverQuest was the first mover in the MMO sphere. Straight up King. But Blizzard saw that they were doing some things that could be really improved upon, and came out with the WoW MMO.

EQ couldn't keep up. The King is Dead, Long Live the King!

WoW has been the King since release in 2004. And it has taken a market leader dominating position that has been regarded as basically unassailable.

But enter Final Fantasy 14, or: FFIXIV (WTF kind of acronym is that? I know right? Damn Japanese...)

Canceled once, then relaunched again in 2013. Voicing the idea back in 2013 that FFIXIV would go on to have more players than WoW would have gotten you laughed out of the room.

WoW is the 800,000lb gorilla of the MMO hobby. Someone coming in and beating them straight up? Ridiculous!

Except that it happened:
https://www.denofgeek.com/games/final-fantasy-14-vs-world-of-warcraft-differences-player-count-subscribers/
https://in.ign.com/final-fantasy-xiv-online-shadowbringers/160109/news/final-fantasy-14-vs-world-of-warcraft-most-played-mmorpg

Why? Just search: Why Players Are Leaving World of Warcraft
This is one of many replies:
https://www.wales247.co.uk/why-players-are-leaving-world-of-warcraft-after-17-years

This is one of the few that tangentially touches "Blizzards Politics".

And while many articles list many reasons how Blizzard is screwing the pooch, they never mention the underlying reason why they are no longer able to creatively match FFIXIV.

Because Blizzard had become SJW converged. And all their issues are a result of the creative bankruptcy of SJWs who are unable to relate to what their normie audience actually likes anymore. So as a company they have become unable to properly serve their largest customer base.

It doesn't help that the developers obviously no longer play the game, let alone the issues they are facing in the form of lawsuits due to the toxic SJW gamma-male "feminist's" that are in positions of power in Blizzard.


As for WotC...

It is increasingly obvious now that they are both Converged and creatively bankrupt.

WotC staff should be lining up to kiss Mike Mearls bare ass each time he enters the office, and his bare feet should touch nothing but rose petals as he walks around...

For all its issues, 5e hit the right level of complexity to take advantage of the big pop-culture nostalgia wave that D&D is currently riding.

But now that he is no longer in charge of D&D we are starting to see all the indications that WotC is starting to embrace their inner SJW.

They won't make the same mistakes they made with 4e. But they will make all new ones...
« Last Edit: October 06, 2021, 08:53:23 PM by Jaeger »
"The envious are not satisfied with equality; they secretly yearn for superiority and revenge."

tenbones

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Re: The Importance Of Diversity And Representation In The Hobby
« Reply #226 on: October 06, 2021, 03:31:20 PM »
I would further posit something when using the WoW analogy... especially as it relates to EQ.

One of the things WoW did was make the assumptions of EQ play *easier*. EQ was designed specifically to emulate the experience of AD&D. And it's adherents that formed the kernel of the first raiding guilds were the most hardcore segment of the players. Many of those raid-leaders ended up being hired into the industry (some went on to Blizzard).

Blizzard softened a lot of the harder edges of EQ to make it more accessible to players. They put more effort into streamlining a lot of the analog processes like having to actually LOOK for NPC's to take quests from by putting a big glowing Exclamation Point! over their head. Putting in built-in radar. And in-game map. And a whole host of little features to make life in the game "easy".

At first it was great, but then they kept going - the same hardcore raiders came over to WoW, and soon instead of fleshing out their world, after a few expansions they were effectively just creating raid-content and slap-dashing zones around those raids, and creating dumbed down versions of the raid so they could appeal to the casual raiders so they could get a Candyland version of the raid and pretend they too were like the hardcore raiders. They watered down all the socialization needs by automating them. They watered down all the classes so that each class could nearly operate in any role. And this was being driven by the least active players. Not the hardcore ones.

Then all the politics starting decaying this whole process and Blizzard is where it is now - dying from the inside due to the non-stop whining and appeasement of those whiners whose politics became part of Blizzard if only by coercive force.

Meanwhile - Everquest has been legally released in its original form to Project 1999. And it has reawakened something missing from the MMO scene, a hunger for difficulty and with that the immersion of in-game exploration and socialization requiring people to work together organically, not because some system randomly slammed you together with people playing for different reasons.

The point being - yes there are many casual nobs that think playing D&D is just playing modules and throwing dice. There are more now that believe it's about performative showing off how woke they can make the game into their own image and demand such from the company. Some are in the company... and likewise catering their tokenized view to their new constituents (with the unspoken threat of being called Racist/Phobe). There are the hardcore D&D players that left trying to recapture that Old School vibe. And many left for other pastures looking for other RPG experiences to emulate D&D by other means.

It's very much the same thing here. Even now Pantheon - Rise of the Fallen is in development as the spiritual successor to EQ (helmed formerly by Brad McQuaid himself before his passing) and it's basically EQ with modern production values.

Maybe D&D will get this. For me - it's already done. I like the pastiche of D&D fantasy, i don't need the system. I need a system that will let me play all of the flavors and settings of D&D interchangeably, and I got that in SWADE.

D&D to me is like WoW. An IP riddled with ideological cancer eating itself and trying to outgrow the malignancy of its own creation.

kidkaos2

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Re: The Importance Of Diversity And Representation In The Hobby
« Reply #227 on: October 08, 2021, 06:55:27 PM »
I learned more about what women suffer, what it's like to be a minority, and what it's like to have power and privilege in Faerun and Krynn than I ever did the real world. I knew what they meant by Ladytowers. Do you have any idea how much giggling happened across geeky basements at that single word?

Huh huh. Huh huh huh. Ladies. In a tower.
I think it is difficult to credit an RPG with stuff like this.  I think it's more the players than the game.  You say you learned more about what women suffer from Krynn than from the real world.  My question to that would be whether you would have learned that from playing #Feminism.  From #Feminism you would have learned that 99% of men are misogynists who lead problem-free lives of privilege and plenty while they keep women under their jackboot heels.  While lots of people obviously think #Feminism absolutely wonderful for highlighting women, I myself see it more as a risk of stunting proper emotional growth amongst boys with demonization and guilt of their gender rather than teaching them anything accurate or valuable about understanding the female experience.  I think in most cases, how valuable a game is so far as lessons about life and society goes is dependent more upon the group than it is on the game.  Learning good lessons from a game requires having good players.  I don't think a good game itself is powerful enough to overcome bad players, nor is a bad game powerful enough to overcome good players.  If you use playing a game to learn good lessons and accurate things about history and society you'll benefit, but usually the same game could be used to teach misinformation and poor social skills.  Macho Women With Guns, if taken seriously, would probably have the polar opposite effect on a still-growing and still-developing boy than #Feminism, as it presents a mocking caricature of women, and that would be just as bad for producing an emotionally healthy man.  If you want to use RPGs as an educational tool for kids, I think it's all in how you play the game, I don't think any game is going necessarily be good straight out the box.

Aglondir

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Re: The Importance Of Diversity And Representation In The Hobby
« Reply #228 on: October 08, 2021, 10:12:07 PM »
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion departments didn't even exist when I worked software. Now they are larger than HR, and neither of those two entire departments does anything to make the product better. How many other departments is that true for?
One might say that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion departments make companies DIE.  8)


ChrisFox

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Re: The Importance Of Diversity And Representation In The Hobby
« Reply #229 on: October 09, 2021, 12:14:37 AM »
I learned more about what women suffer, what it's like to be a minority, and what it's like to have power and privilege in Faerun and Krynn than I ever did the real world. I knew what they meant by Ladytowers. Do you have any idea how much giggling happened across geeky basements at that single word?

Huh huh. Huh huh huh. Ladies. In a tower.
I think it is difficult to credit an RPG with stuff like this.  I think it's more the players than the game.  You say you learned more about what women suffer from Krynn than from the real world.  My question to that would be whether you would have learned that from playing #Feminism.  From #Feminism you would have learned that 99% of men are misogynists who lead problem-free lives of privilege and plenty while they keep women under their jackboot heels.  While lots of people obviously think #Feminism absolutely wonderful for highlighting women, I myself see it more as a risk of stunting proper emotional growth amongst boys with demonization and guilt of their gender rather than teaching them anything accurate or valuable about understanding the female experience.  I think in most cases, how valuable a game is so far as lessons about life and society goes is dependent more upon the group than it is on the game.  Learning good lessons from a game requires having good players.  I don't think a good game itself is powerful enough to overcome bad players, nor is a bad game powerful enough to overcome good players.  If you use playing a game to learn good lessons and accurate things about history and society you'll benefit, but usually the same game could be used to teach misinformation and poor social skills.  Macho Women With Guns, if taken seriously, would probably have the polar opposite effect on a still-growing and still-developing boy than #Feminism, as it presents a mocking caricature of women, and that would be just as bad for producing an emotionally healthy man.  If you want to use RPGs as an educational tool for kids, I think it's all in how you play the game, I don't think any game is going necessarily be good straight out the box.

Back in the 90s we had lots, and lots of amazing novels to go with the RPG, and those novels are what taught me strong moral lessons. Dragonlance. Shadowrun. Dark Sun.

Tanis had mixed heritage. Prior to reading that book it had never once occurred to 10 year old Chris that a person with parents from different races might be discriminated against, or mocked. Half-elves seemed cool. I knew half-race people in the real world and had never looked twice. That book showed how neither culture accepted him, and how he had to fight for everything he earned.

The Rifts novels were some of the worst edited books I have ever read...but they were amazing. Among the various characters were a number of women, who faced discrimination from men, especially superior officers. I had no idea what it was like to be a woman, until I started reading books where the protagonist was a woman.

That taught me empathy, which is antithetical to the modern feminist, unfortunately. I lived with one. My wife's sister spent five years living with us. She never once looked for a job. Never once took responsibility, or agency for her life. Gleefully hated on men, and freely admitted that she was glad we were discriminated against in areas like car insurance. She wanted revenge, and I'm not even clear what she wanted revenge for.

Note that this girl had been put through a great university by loving parents...who are still carrying her since I tossed her out. Feminism was amazing in its time, and needed. 4th wave feminism is downright dangerous, and I completely agree with you that it will destroy the self-esteem of young boys, while ruining young women.

I remember being told that everything bad that had ever happened had been committed by someone who looked like me, but I didn't hear it until my senior year of high school. They're getting that in elementary school now =/

ChrisFox

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Re: The Importance Of Diversity And Representation In The Hobby
« Reply #230 on: October 09, 2021, 12:15:02 AM »
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion departments didn't even exist when I worked software. Now they are larger than HR, and neither of those two entire departments does anything to make the product better. How many other departments is that true for?
One might say that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion departments make companies DIE.  8)

That was really clever. I laughed IRL lol

Pat
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Re: The Importance Of Diversity And Representation In The Hobby
« Reply #231 on: October 09, 2021, 01:29:17 AM »
Back in the 90s we had lots, and lots of amazing novels to go with the RPG, and those novels are what taught me strong moral lessons. Dragonlance. Shadowrun. Dark Sun.
You might not want to re-read those books as an adult. You probably got more out of them than was really there.

ChrisFox

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Re: The Importance Of Diversity And Representation In The Hobby
« Reply #232 on: October 09, 2021, 11:29:03 AM »
Back in the 90s we had lots, and lots of amazing novels to go with the RPG, and those novels are what taught me strong moral lessons. Dragonlance. Shadowrun. Dark Sun.
You might not want to re-read those books as an adult. You probably got more out of them than was really there.

I couldn't disagree more, and seeing dismissive, post-modernist attitudes like this saddens me.

Reading about Drizzt taught me what it was like to be judged for the color of your skin, to have everyone assume that your entire race is evil. The dude was black on the cover. It hit hard.

Reading the Shadowrun novel Changeling the main character is a human who devolves into a troll. He loses intellect, and is treated radically differently by society because of his new race.

I could go on, and on, and on about specific books that taught racial injustice, the horrors of unchecked colonialism, and countless other lessons.

Sure, some of the books are trite on a re-read. Tanis is a whiny, wishy-washy, terribad leader...but I still learned from his choices, from his mistakes. And it wasn't just me. It was my friends as well.

Pat
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Re: The Importance Of Diversity And Representation In The Hobby
« Reply #233 on: October 09, 2021, 03:23:40 PM »
Back in the 90s we had lots, and lots of amazing novels to go with the RPG, and those novels are what taught me strong moral lessons. Dragonlance. Shadowrun. Dark Sun.
You might not want to re-read those books as an adult. You probably got more out of them than was really there.

I couldn't disagree more, and seeing dismissive, post-modernist attitudes like this saddens me.

Reading about Drizzt taught me what it was like to be judged for the color of your skin, to have everyone assume that your entire race is evil. The dude was black on the cover. It hit hard.

Reading the Shadowrun novel Changeling the main character is a human who devolves into a troll. He loses intellect, and is treated radically differently by society because of his new race.

I could go on, and on, and on about specific books that taught racial injustice, the horrors of unchecked colonialism, and countless other lessons.

Sure, some of the books are trite on a re-read. Tanis is a whiny, wishy-washy, terribad leader...but I still learned from his choices, from his mistakes. And it wasn't just me. It was my friends as well.
There's nothing postmodernist in what I wrote. Not a word. In fact, I don't even know how you made that connection, because it doesn't seem to logically follow. It should have been pretty obvious I was pointing out that we absorbed media in very different ways when were children, compared to when we are adults. The books we read as a children may be trite rehashes of tropes that adults have seen endlessly, but if it's your first time coming across the trope, then it can be revolutionary. But that says more about who you were, than the overall quality of the books. They just hit you at the right and time, and in the right way.

That's why I recommended against reading them again. You're not the same person, so they won't have the same impact. It's easier to see the flaws and weaknesses, and harder to see what you originally found so moving. So people are often disillusioned when they re-read their childhood favorites. That's why many choose to let them endure as fond but distant memories, instead of trying to revisit them.

So I strongly the premise of your response.

ChrisFox

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Re: The Importance Of Diversity And Representation In The Hobby
« Reply #234 on: October 09, 2021, 03:59:22 PM »
What I mean by a post-modernist bent is the idea that books I treasured in my childhood that taught me important lessons haven't aged well. That they are somehow now problematic, or lesser. I've re-read quite a few of them, some very recently.

2XS and Burning Bright are just as impactful to me as Neuromancer was, and re-reading them takes me back to where I was at in life when I first read those books. It allows me to contrast my current self against my past self. They don't have the same impact, you're right, but I still learn from them

I'll say again...many of those books hold up extremely well. I've reread:

Dragonlance (first 2 trilogies)
The Chronicles of Prydain
The Prism Pentad (Darksun)
2XS, Burning Bright (Shadowrun)
Eye of the World

If you want to leave the books in the past that's certainly your prerogative. But they are just as important as they were then. I hear what you're saying about first encountering a trope, and know that these books aren't important to everyone in the same way. Older gamers read a different set, as younger gamers are immersed in Sanderson.

But they were important to me, and a lot of other people, and helped shape the direction of that aspect of American culture. I just hate seeing them denigrated, especially when many people today are standing on the shoulders of giants, but also hate the people they're standing on. Not accusing you of that, but I see it a enough that I almost expect it now.

Shrieking Banshee

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Re: The Importance Of Diversity And Representation In The Hobby
« Reply #235 on: October 09, 2021, 04:16:41 PM »
What I mean by a post-modernist bent is the idea that books I treasured in my childhood that taught me important lessons haven't aged well.

Outgrowing certain things is not a post-modernist thing. Somethings retain value even when your 95 and other things where made by the Hasbro corporation to sell toys for instance.
I can think of media and things from when I was 5, 10, and 15 which I think are still great, or are terrible.

ChrisFox

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Re: The Importance Of Diversity And Representation In The Hobby
« Reply #236 on: October 09, 2021, 04:53:58 PM »
That's a fair point. I'm definitely defensive about it.

For five years I've watched them tear down Dungeons & Dragons, Star Wars, Terminator, and many of my other favorite franchises. I'm told how everything I've ever loved, and all the people who made them, are evil and problematic.

When someone warns me not to go back and re-read something great I tend to assume they're doing it to discredit the work. That's not a fair assumption.

Shrieking Banshee

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Re: The Importance Of Diversity And Representation In The Hobby
« Reply #237 on: October 09, 2021, 05:04:35 PM »
That's a fair point. I'm definitely defensive about it.

For five years I've watched them tear down Dungeons & Dragons, Star Wars, Terminator, and many of my other favorite franchises. I'm told how everything I've ever loved, and all the people who made them, are evil and problematic.

I feel on the defensive as well, so I get it. I personally am glad for the SJWs that shoock parts of me out of a consumer mindset. I do not get attached to franchises, or engage in what I call 'franchise thinking'.
I like creators, ideas, and genres. Not properties owned by soulless corporations. Doesn't make what SJWs are doing any less disrespectful of course.

Pat
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Re: The Importance Of Diversity And Representation In The Hobby
« Reply #238 on: October 09, 2021, 06:22:09 PM »
What I mean by a post-modernist bent is the idea that books I treasured in my childhood that taught me important lessons haven't aged well. That they are somehow now problematic, or lesser.
I never said anything was problematic, and I explicitly emphasized that the lessons were valid. I just said a lot of books we read as children aren't that good, from an objective standpoint. So it can be better to keep them as fond memories rather than trying to revisit them and being disappointed.

That's a fair point. I'm definitely defensive about it.

For five years I've watched them tear down Dungeons & Dragons, Star Wars, Terminator, and many of my other favorite franchises. I'm told how everything I've ever loved, and all the people who made them, are evil and problematic.

When someone warns me not to go back and re-read something great I tend to assume they're doing it to discredit the work. That's not a fair assumption.
Yes, it's not a fair assumption.

So let's drag your list through the mud.

I never read any Robert Jordan or Shadowrun, though I do remember hearing good things about Nigel Findley's stories.... and it looks like 2XS is one of his. I picked up the Prism Pentad in recent years, but haven't gotten around to reading it. The original Dragonlance series was... I'm going to go with "acceptable". I'm not trying to either downplay or upplay it. Except for being the first big RPG epic, it's not particularly ground breaking. The writing isn't amazing, the characters aren't full of endless layers of nuance, and some are so thin they'd blow away in a stiff breeze (Riverwho and Goldwhat?). The structure gets strange, with some odd jumps, and can feel a bit scattered. But it had a big epic story line, and a good number of memorable/appealing characters, and not just the (very large) main cast (even after all these years, secondary and tertiary characters like Fizban, Astinus, Soth, and Kitiara come to mind). That's probably its biggest strength. It has some emotionally appealing storylines, like Sturm, or the silver dragon romance. The Time of the Twins is more of a character study, so it had some more depth, but I felt it got a bit tiresome by the end. Ironically, my favorite Dragonlance stories were a couple that appeared in Dragon. The one where Tas meets Demogorgon (believe it or not, it's fairly subtle story), and feels a tinge of fear. And the one detailing Raistlin's test.

The Chronicles of Prydain isn't game fiction, it's a genuine classic. (The cauldron-born are one of the reasons why I found the magen in X2 so interesting. No surprise the series shows up in Moldvay's recommended reading list in the B/X Basic Rulebook.) So are Star Wars and Terminator, for that matter.

So based on the ones I'm familiar with, you have at least one series that stands the test of time, a fair but not great fantasy RPG series, and a game novel by a fairly highly regarded author in the RPG world. That's a decent list; there's nothing abysmal like Quag Keep or the Avatar trilogy. But excluding Prydain, they're probably just okay. That tends to be the top bar reached by gaming fiction.

Aglondir

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Re: The Importance Of Diversity And Representation In The Hobby
« Reply #239 on: October 09, 2021, 08:46:22 PM »
       
Reading about Drizzt ...
What's the best book for the Drizzt saga? There is a large selection, and I don't want to pick a mediocre book.