Quote from: jhkim on December 22, 2021, 01:52:22 PM
To take a specific hypothetical case (c): suppose that in a future D&D 6th edition, the dwarf race were considered offensive to real-life Little People, and so were renamed as the Moradain, cut out of the core rules, and put in a supplemental book of expanded races like Tabaxi and Goliaths.

You keep going back to this. Demons and Devils were not removed from 2e AD&D. They are right there in the Monstrous Manual.

QuoteWould you be saying "Well, that's not that big a deal -- what they did to Volo's in 2021 was far more important." ??

No I'd be saying that altering someone digital copy to comply with the woke mob is a bad thing all around. You know, like they just did in 5e yeah you apparently don't see as that big of a deal.

Okay.

Keep talking about Fifth edition "D&D". Because you can't stop. Keep advertising the Beast.

I've been in marketing for nearly 30 years.

Keep talking about 5e and please imagine it disappears.

This forum founded by RPGPundit. When they kicked him out of Big Purple.

But Pundit carried WotC here to this site. Like a carrier of a deadly virus to the RPG hobby. RPGPundit thinks the "Communist/Marxist Left" is the problem but the followers of Marx & Lenin are dead and gone. These now are the children of Makhail Bakunin. They are ANARCHISTS. They mean to destroy the entire system. I know because I am an Anarchist. Your Constitution and Bill of Rights mean nothing to those seeking a greater definition of "PERSON".

Do you really think your Conservative ideals are strong enough comfort to protect you? Conservatism embraces the warm ground of Patriotism. Anarchists despise Patriotism. You cling to ancient shadows for defense from an enemy who uses light only to destroy everything before it. You think you have the upper hand when the anarchistic proponents of Adolph Hitler continue today to disintegrate any notion of government. And government defends the Bill or Rights and the Constitution.

What world will you find yourself in when the "freedoms" you so desperately defend have no meaning? Imagine a world where corporations decide what being human is.

Ready?

To fight this foe you need to make your morals greater than the degenerative philosophical ideals of the radial Left. You will have to stand and fight TALLER.

You're right of course, in an anarchy the big and tall will fight to keep the small and weak down.  Yeah, I'll stick with smart rich guys using systems to keep the foolish in check.  You can have your violent barbarism.  Hope you enjoy being cooked alive so the next biggest guy can enjoy your girl.

Anarchists are idiots.

Quote from: Willmark on December 27, 2021, 07:49:54 PM

Quote from: jhkim on December 22, 2021, 01:52:22 PM
To take a specific hypothetical case (c): suppose that in a future D&D 6th edition, the dwarf race were considered offensive to real-life Little People, and so were renamed as the Moradain, cut out of the core rules, and put in a supplemental book of expanded races like Tabaxi and Goliaths.

You keep going back to this. Demons and Devils were not removed from 2e AD&D. They are right there in the Monstrous Manual.

  It should be remembered that the Monstrous Manual is a 1993 release; the creatures were not included in the original Monstrous Compendium in 1989, and only reappeared (with the new names) in the MC8 Monstrous Compendium Outer Planes Appendix in early 1991.

   In the long run, I don't know if the removal was good for the game or not. They certainly seemed to be a bit on the overused side in what I've seen of 1st Edition, but their much-trumpeted 'restoration' when WotC took over (which basically amounted to 'we'll call them demons and devils again and use some of the biblical/mythological names') has produced a cancerous, game-dominating effect that may not have occurred if they'd been left alone.

Quote from: Jam The MF on December 15, 2021, 08:01:24 PM
I hope someone is working on a non-wussified Clone, of D&D 5E.

Why would you need that, are your core three books broken or something?

Quote from: Theory of Games on December 27, 2021, 08:19:39 PM
Okay.

Keep talking about Fifth edition "D&D". Because you can't stop. Keep advertising the Beast.

I've been in marketing for nearly 30 years.

Meh. People are going to talk regardless of what we do here. The genius of outrage marketing is that there are a lot of angry nerds who will respond.
Of course, you can't pay the bills with outrage, and we've seen outrage push product in a different direction.

Quote from: Mistwell on December 27, 2021, 09:27:01 PM

Quote from: Jam The MF on December 15, 2021, 08:01:24 PM
I hope someone is working on a non-wussified Clone, of D&D 5E.

Why would you need that, are your core three books broken or something?

No one ever buys any D&D product after the first three core books. [/s]

Quote from: Willmark on December 27, 2021, 07:49:54 PM

Quote from: jhkim on December 22, 2021, 01:52:22 PM
To take a specific hypothetical case (c): suppose that in a future D&D 6th edition, the dwarf race were considered offensive to real-life Little People, and so were renamed as the Moradain, cut out of the core rules, and put in a supplemental book of expanded races like Tabaxi and Goliaths.

You keep going back to this. Demons and Devils were not removed from 2e AD&D. They are right there in the Monstrous Manual.

The Monstrous Manual wasn't one of the original core books, when 2e was first released. It's a much later book. The original bestiary of 2nd edition was the Monstrous Compendium, the one with a binder and 3-hole punched pages. And there were no demons or devils inside, anywhere. They were completely excised, out of fear of Patricia Pulling. They didn't reappear until the release of the Outer Planes Compendium... except that didn't have demons or devils, either. Yes, it had the monsters formerly known as demons and devils, but they were given new garbage fantasy apostrophe gobblegook names. Even the later Monstrous Manual hardback used the bowdlerized names, and only had a tiny handful of nee-demons and nee-devils.

Quote from: Horace on December 16, 2021, 03:49:11 PM

Quote from: Jam The MF on December 16, 2021, 03:36:43 PM

Quote from: HMWHC on December 16, 2021, 02:52:11 PM
One can always hope Mearls someday releases his own OGL Directors Cut of 5E.

If Mike would have made a clean break, either right before or right after the release of Tasha's Cauldron of Everything; he could have then announced his intention to pursue a new career, releasing his own material and would have gotten a lot of eyeballs on his efforts.  But the farther D&D 5E travels down the woke spiral, the less of a clean break Mike will be able to make from WOTC.  The baggage will follow him.  The wokification of D&D, will be his fault too.

Yep. Although I think the rot started much earlier than Tasha's, probably around 2017. And Mearls is further tarnished by his controversial "You're all fired" tweet from 2018:

Quote from: Mike MearlsFunny how many of the same "fans" who insist on gatekeeping via rules complexity and lore density also have a problem with women in tabletop gaming.

Hey guys! You're all fired from D&D. Find another game.

Source: https://twitter.com/mikemearls/status/955153201434525696

People like to pin WotC's decline on Jeremy Crawford, but I don't see Mearls presenting much of a contrast. In fact, they look like ideological bedfellows to me.

You think Mearls telling people who "have a problem with women in tabletop gaming" that they're fired from the game is portraying the same set of ideological views as Crawford?

I've always thought people who were offended by that tweet were huge pussies who can dish it out but cannot take it.

Quote from: Jaeger on December 16, 2021, 11:49:50 PM

Quote from: rytrasmi on December 15, 2021, 08:41:05 PM
Go to a toy store. They all have starter box sets, pre-painted minis, and even a few books. Visit the official D&D site and look around. It's cartooney and looks like fucking Disney. And yes, you're right, college-aged people are still pretty much kids. Hasbro is aiming for a cradle to grave product line. They don't care about lore. They care about having customers for life.

TSR wanted customers for life too.

I remember the red box B/X in toys R us when I was young.

The Big difference today being that TSR didn't think that their customer base needed to be protected from inherently evil orcs...

Just evil demons and devils.

Quote from: Zelen on December 19, 2021, 11:48:23 PM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on December 18, 2021, 09:06:54 PM

Quote from: jhkim on December 18, 2021, 05:04:23 PM

Quote from: 3catcircus on December 18, 2021, 08:09:47 AM
It's a combination of a 24 hr news cycle, a need to be first rather than correct, and an overwhelming need to editorialize instead of present fact. 

We would do well to do two things:

1. Ban MSM from using social media as source in their reporting.  The only good use of it is by independent reporters like Drew Hernandez, Andy Ngo, Sharyl Atkisson, etc

2. Kill MSM found to have purposely lied in their reporting.  Hang a few Jim Acosta and Rachel Maddie types and the rest will straighten up.

I don't think this is thought through. The big question is - who determines what is truth and what is lies? What this means is that the media are killed if the government determines that they have lied -- which largely means that they can only say the government-sanctioned truth.

Getting back to gaming...

Quote from: Shasarak on December 17, 2021, 09:34:25 PM
Its funny that, for me, switching from ADnD to 2e was pretty seamless considering that it was backwards compatible.

If the 2e core book did not have Assassins and Demons then you just used the rules from ADnD or from Dragon or from your home brew rules.

Because it was seamless, though, I never saw the point of switching to 2e. Why buy everything over again? This especially when I had a bunch of 1e stuff.

More broadly, I agree that lacking a few pages of material isn't that big a deal - one could just patch or homebrew as appropriate. The same thing applies to this case in 5e, though. The few paragraphs removed are easily available on the web if anyone wants them, and even if they weren't easily available, that material can easily be filled in by a GM - far less so than removing demons and assassins.

The question is not the removal of the information from D&D lore.  It is the removal of the information from every digital copy they can.  Hence the "memory hole" reference in the title of this thread.  So do you support the company removing information after publication from a resource that you have purchased?  And knowing how you like to weasel, I'm not asking if they can do it.  I'm asking if you think they should do it, especially when the content is not illegal or immoral.

I wonder if there will be lawsuits. The digital versions of WotC books are now know to be inferior products that might at any time have content subtracted from them without warning or ability for the customer to retain the original. While I suspect there's a clause letting them perform updates to products, a straight up deletion like this resulting in an objectively inferior book stretches the meaning of "content update" past the breaking point.

It's hilarious that you think the changes are "objectively inferior." Like you literally cannot conceive of the possibility your world view is not the righteous just and most correct world view.

Quote from: HappyDaze on December 20, 2021, 12:09:10 AM

Quote from: Zelen on December 19, 2021, 11:48:23 PM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on December 18, 2021, 09:06:54 PM

Quote from: jhkim on December 18, 2021, 05:04:23 PM

Quote from: 3catcircus on December 18, 2021, 08:09:47 AM
It's a combination of a 24 hr news cycle, a need to be first rather than correct, and an overwhelming need to editorialize instead of present fact. 

We would do well to do two things:

1. Ban MSM from using social media as source in their reporting.  The only good use of it is by independent reporters like Drew Hernandez, Andy Ngo, Sharyl Atkisson, etc

2. Kill MSM found to have purposely lied in their reporting.  Hang a few Jim Acosta and Rachel Maddie types and the rest will straighten up.

I don't think this is thought through. The big question is - who determines what is truth and what is lies? What this means is that the media are killed if the government determines that they have lied -- which largely means that they can only say the government-sanctioned truth.

Getting back to gaming...

Quote from: Shasarak on December 17, 2021, 09:34:25 PM
Its funny that, for me, switching from ADnD to 2e was pretty seamless considering that it was backwards compatible.

If the 2e core book did not have Assassins and Demons then you just used the rules from ADnD or from Dragon or from your home brew rules.

Because it was seamless, though, I never saw the point of switching to 2e. Why buy everything over again? This especially when I had a bunch of 1e stuff.

More broadly, I agree that lacking a few pages of material isn't that big a deal - one could just patch or homebrew as appropriate. The same thing applies to this case in 5e, though. The few paragraphs removed are easily available on the web if anyone wants them, and even if they weren't easily available, that material can easily be filled in by a GM - far less so than removing demons and assassins.

The question is not the removal of the information from D&D lore.  It is the removal of the information from every digital copy they can.  Hence the "memory hole" reference in the title of this thread.  So do you support the company removing information after publication from a resource that you have purchased?  And knowing how you like to weasel, I'm not asking if they can do it.  I'm asking if you think they should do it, especially when the content is not illegal or immoral.

I wonder if there will be lawsuits. The digital versions of WotC books are now know to be inferior products that might at any time have content subtracted from them without warning or ability for the customer to retain the original. While I suspect there's a clause letting them perform updates to products, a straight up deletion like this resulting in an objectively inferior book stretches the meaning of "content update" past the breaking point.

Do you actually own their electronic products, or do you just pay a subscription for continued access? This is a gneral "you" not a specific question just for (specific) you.

You're responding to a guy who doesn't even understand the basic premise that WOTC does not themselves offer any digital copies of 5e books. He seems to think WOTC owns DNDBeyond or Roll20 or something.

This is what happens when people who are not even customers of WOTC act like the know all about WOTC from reading vague ramblings on the Internet about WOTC. It is related to the "I am boycotting the company I don't buy from anyway" crowd.

Quote from: Jaeger on December 25, 2021, 05:07:23 PM
Marvel and DC comics print divisions have made all the moves you guys outline here, and they are still in the gutter. Losing market share to un-woke Magna hand over fist. Still.

Tell me you don't read modern Manga without telling me you don't read modern Manga.

Dude, I have bad news for you. Manga is just as woke as Marvel and DC. Getting the same kinds of complaints from some fans (including fans in Japan) about it being woke as Marvel and DC are getting from some fans in America. Demon Slayer appears to be the most popular Manga ever...and has plenty of LGBTQ+ characters in it. If it were the X-Men you'd be freaking out over it.

It's just highly inconvenient for the "get woke go broke" narrative to admit this.

Just like Scholastic kicking butt right now, but also being just as woke as Marvel and DC, doesn't fit the narrative so magically is never mentioned by people who bash Marvel and DC.

Quote from: Pat on December 27, 2021, 09:59:05 PM

Quote from: Willmark on December 27, 2021, 07:49:54 PM

Quote from: jhkim on December 22, 2021, 01:52:22 PM
To take a specific hypothetical case (c): suppose that in a future D&D 6th edition, the dwarf race were considered offensive to real-life Little People, and so were renamed as the Moradain, cut out of the core rules, and put in a supplemental book of expanded races like Tabaxi and Goliaths.

You keep going back to this. Demons and Devils were not removed from 2e AD&D. They are right there in the Monstrous Manual.

The Monstrous Manual wasn't one of the original core books, when 2e was first released. It's a much later book. The original bestiary of 2nd edition was the Monstrous Compendium, the one with a binder and 3-hole punched pages. And there were no demons or devils inside, anywhere. They were completely excised, out of fear of Patricia Pulling. They didn't reappear until the release of the Outer Planes Compendium... except that didn't have demons or devils, either. Yes, it had the monsters formerly known as demons and devils, but they were given new garbage fantasy apostrophe gobblegook names. Even the later Monstrous Manual hardback used the bowdlerized names, and only had a tiny handful of nee-demons and nee-devils.

Yes, and?

As I noted previously the ones in the 1st edition MM and MM2 worked just fine in the transition to 2e and beyond. In fact that was one of teh points bandied about in Dragon that it all still works. The idea was with the binders to keep going with stuff and cycle through everything as noted and low and behold they are in my binders too. I guess I'm one of those folks that doesn't see much daylight between the two editions, they are fairly close.

My point is this as it has gotten turned around so many times: the 1984 style Big Brother of WOTC deciding to capitulate to the wokescolds isn't the same as the great Satan panic of the late 1980s, at least IMO. If people want to see it that way its fine, I'm not going to stop them.

And as a separate thought sure lets go with TSR caved and yanked them and they are equivalent. Is anyone buying for a minute that WOTC is done? No way, this is ongoing and the next moves will likely make this seem small in comparison.

For me its really just watching from afar, nothing WOTC has produced since the start of 3e has been useful or needed really for the type of game I like.

Quote from: Willmark on December 27, 2021, 11:32:09 PM
Yes, and?

You were wrong, I corrected you. Demons and devils were excised from 2e, due to pressure from an outside hate group. Whether you still used your old books doesn't change that.