I forgot to add that the 30 pct, found not only in industrialized countries but even developing ones (Reich reports that as early as the 1990s many Western companies were partly or majority owned by rich people in the latter, including those in the Middle East, and now in China), rely on the 70 pct to earn, borrow, spend, and consume more because their own wealth is dependent on increasing production and sales of all sorts of goods and services.

Meanwhile, more of the 70 pct become richer and take over.

Quote from: Aglondir on April 24, 2024, 10:40:12 PM

Quote from: Domina on April 24, 2024, 10:37:41 AMGC is correct.

Who is GC?
Why is he correct?

Or, more importantly, why is someone  necro-ing a 12 year-old thread?

Quote from: oggsmash on April 24, 2024, 08:44:13 AMDoesnt China still use the "World" standard (as in 3rd world) standard for poverty?  Meaning it might have gleaming shiny cities but its poverty line is on the order of 700 bucks a year or there about?  So I am not so sure the population was lifted out of poverty in the developed world sense.  I think they created some rich people and developed something that looks like a middle class but also have people living in way deeper poverty than anything the USA understands.

I think the international threshold was set by the World Bank, and it's around two dollars a day.

If one uses $10 a day, then the world poverty rate goes up to over 70 pct.

Given that, what should be noted is the degree of change from one period to the next. In the case, of China, most of its people were lifted out of poverty. And it's the same worldwide:

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-22956470

That means the size of the total economy of BRICS and the Global South are growing at a very fast rate (two decades vs. a century for the West, and the former will eventually take over, leading to a multipolar global economy.

Also, this has nothing to do with race, cultural superiority, and so on. Rather, increased industrialization and the effects of the Triffin dilemma (the U.S. holds the global reserve currency, which is a double-edged sword: it makes its exports too expensive for most and imports too cheap, which explains why it has had trade deficits since the mid-1970s) will eventually lead to a shift in power, and this time to those who used to be have-nots.

The catch is that that industrialization is based on incredible levels of energy and material resources, both of which are commonsensically limited in a physical biosphere characterized by gravity. That's why the same economies are experiencing the effects of diminishing returns: increasing amounts of energy needed to get smaller amounts of new material and of lower quality.

From what I remember, Tolkien saw Gondor as Avalon, or the England that he missed, with trees, etc. Mordor, on the other hand, is the modern world, with industralization, profit, greed, mechanization, and specialization. That must have been prompted by his experiences of WWI, when he fought in the trenches and where many of his friends died.

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Quote from: Domina on April 24, 2024, 10:37:41 AMGC is correct.

Who is GC?
Why is he correct?

Looks great, but for somebody who bit on SWD and bought all the Last Parsec and the SWD companion I'm not 'upgrading'. This is the bane of any otherwise good line from a great company, SWD had lots of great products and there not enough juice for the squeeze of SWADE.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on April 24, 2024, 08:20:38 PM

Quote from: ForgottenF on April 24, 2024, 09:03:17 AM... To my mind, the holy grail of good RPG design is to have it that a player can make decisions entirely based on understanding the game world and in-game situation, without even needing to understand the rules, and the rules will bear out the effectiveness of that decision as it would be in the fiction. The point of all of this weapon and armor realism is not simulation for it's own sake, but to produce the same incentives in equipment and combat choices as would exist if the game world was real.

Agreed... that would be ideal.

OK, if we accept that as the ideal for a moment, let me ask you both a question.  Would you settle for rules/mechanics that caused the players to emulate the weapon and armor realism, but without really understanding how this pertains to simulating the fiction? That is, what if players end up choosing weapons and armor that would make sense due to real-world concerns, but not necessarily for those reasons?

Yep, I'm taking that thought a little sideways, because I think the ideal is unobtainable, and then the question becomes what becomes an acceptable, pragmatic result short of it.

It's disappointing to see DEI-Free games list be empty.

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on April 23, 2024, 03:05:14 AMWhat's this ? But the opening post of this wonderful thread on reddit, of course.

(quoted for posterity if this thing should disappear)

QuoteOk, I like the Greek Gods, or at least thought I did. But I'm starting to think I need a sanitized version, since they are too problematic in their original form, even for the Black Dog line.

How can I rationalize that they are morally more progressive (in that no means no, among other things) for players at the table. They don't need to be something from a Disney Cartoon, but I want them to feel authentic and believable, while not being HORRIBLE.

Now, on a scale from 0 to brain dead clam, how many neurons did you have to lose to write something like that ? I'm literally speechless.

"How can I rationalize that they are more morally progressive... not HORRIBLE"...

HUH?

History of the progressive movement in America: eugenics, eugenic killing, racism, plot to, and I quote word-for-word from a progressive Hillary Clinton proudly says she's in the spirit of: "exterminate the negro population", anti-semitism, segregation, and lots of stuff that were pretty horrible.

Making the Greek gods more progressive is pretty scary.

The horrible thing I thin is openly using the word "Sanitized".  to me that means to strip away parts of reality you can't handle.