...Now Apparently Dungeons and Dragons is loaded with Anti-semitic Secret Codes

[Stephen Tannhauser]

Therefore they can never admit that other people are capable of thinking for themselves. They will attack anyone bringing it up because it forces them to face that inadequacy in themselves.

That's one explanation, and it may well be true for some among the movement. I do think that there are those who have lost their trust in other people's judgement through legitimate and bitter personal experience, however (though not as many as I would once have credited).

I myself spent much of my twenties quite sympathetic to the ideas of restricting hate speech, for example, because I was subjected to a lot of verbal bullying and humiliation as a child and teenager, so the notion of "you shouldn't get to say things that make others feel inferior, helpless and worthless, just because it amuses you to do so!" resonated very powerfully for me, as did the idea that speech could be a form of violence. It took time and distance from those experiences before I could get a more balanced perspective on the issue, and ask myself questions like "but who would you trust to enforce that?" and "is everything that hurts others' feelings necessarily false or said solely for that end?", and so on.  (It helped that I have a virtually-Aspergian addiction to logic and consistency, and couldn't help noticing that the people who most agreed with me that words could do real emotional damage still seemed perfectly happy using damaging speech themselves on the right targets.)

That's not to say there aren't those who are lying to themselves or others about the sincerity of their motivations. But I find that calling this out is seldom a productive tactic unless it's done for very specific people for whom it can be as close to proven as possible; otherwise, it's basically Bulverism -- implying that the only real reason anybody could disagree with me is their own personal weakness or stake in the issue, which I consider something of a rhetorical cheat because it's unfalsifiable.

[moonsweeper]

Therefore they can never admit that other people are capable of thinking for themselves. They will attack anyone bringing it up because it forces them to face that inadequacy in themselves.

That's one explanation, and it may well be true for some among the movement. I do think that there are those who have lost their trust in other people's judgement through legitimate and bitter personal experience, however (though not as many as I would once have credited).

I myself spent much of my twenties quite sympathetic to the ideas of restricting hate speech, for example, because I was subjected to a lot of verbal bullying and humiliation as a child and teenager, so the notion of "you shouldn't get to say things that make others feel inferior, helpless and worthless, just because it amuses you to do so!" resonated very powerfully for me, as did the idea that speech could be a form of violence. It took time and distance from those experiences before I could get a more balanced perspective on the issue, and ask myself questions like "but who would you trust to enforce that?" and "is everything that hurts others' feelings necessarily false or said solely for that end?", and so on.  (It helped that I have a virtually-Aspergian addiction to logic and consistency, and couldn't help noticing that the people who most agreed with me that words could do real emotional damage still seemed perfectly happy using damaging speech themselves on the right targets.)

That's not to say there aren't those who are lying to themselves or others about the sincerity of their motivations. But I find that calling this out is seldom a productive tactic unless it's done for very specific people for whom it can be as close to proven as possible; otherwise, it's basically Bulverism -- implying that the only real reason anybody could disagree with me is their own personal weakness or stake in the issue, which I consider something of a rhetorical cheat because it's unfalsifiable.

I can understand that...

...for me that mindset got burnt out early and replaced by the 'who would I trust to police this' very quickly because (a)I always had a very 'free to do what you want mindset as long as you allow others to do the same' and (b) I saw someone's life get destroyed by what today would be similar to cancel culture for something they didn't do. (It was basically a greed/power-trip thing for the person doing it.)

[SHARK]

Does this mean I have to stop telling my Jewish players that if they bitch about the rest of us ordering Hawaiian pizza they're going in the oven?

BTW, we need MANY more articles like this one. The most exciting way forward for WotC to receive its much deserved total collapse is for nobody other than SJW freakjobs to consider playing their games because WHO THE FUCK would want to hang out with anyone like the fucknuts who write these articles and Twatter garbage who support it?

Greetings!

Exactly, brother! WOTC can choke on all of this stupidity.

Tolkien made his Dwarves with a nod towards being similar to the Jews? Fucking good! Jews should rejoice, and be proud. Tolkien's Dwarves are widely and deeply beloved by millions of fans world wide.

Clannish, grumpy, pragmatic, passionate Jewish Dwarves are fucking awesome! YES! The stereotypes, such as they have been alluded to, are fucking great. Who cares? Lots of them have aspects that have always been true. Any honest Jew will tell you the same. Everyone has stereotypes, and many of them remain accurate. Again, so what? Stereotypes are part of what makes life fun and interesting. Most Jews I know have a good sense of humour--and appreciate very much--and celebrate--their many cultural stereotypes. Just like Germans, Italians, Irish, Mexicans, Russians, Filippinos, Japanese, Greeks, and fucking everyone. Oh my god! Some book uses someone's stereotypes! Oh geesus. Fuck off and die in a fire.  [...]

Shark, my friend, I love your wisdom and witty remarks. This. A thousand times this.

The problem with the type of people that write articles like this is a simple one: they've been raised with a nihilistic, post-modernistic worldview and mindset.

They are incapable to appreciate, admire or even understand myth, symbolism, metaphors and religious thought (which is not the same of being a religious person). Personally I think they cannot even appreciate beauty itself (as defined by Dostoyevsky).

Finding offense with everything is just a symptom of this.

Greetings!

Hey there, Greywolf! Outstanding, my friend! So very true, sadly. So many of these kinds of people that write articles such as this are mind-bogglingly uneducated, and yet, they so often embrace such a smug and self-righteous demeanor. Talking to them or listening to them is often shocking in all the basic concepts, virtues, and legacies from thousands of years of Western Civilization they are not merely ignorant of, but sneeringly dismissive of. Then they bloviate about their theories concerning modern day dynamics. I always feel like I have lost IQ points whenever encountering them. It's like they are angry, bitter, hate-filled 12-year olds trapped in an adult body. Nihilist barbarians!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

[EOTB]

The thing about bullying-with-words, is the recipient must learn through it that both the opinion of word-bullies specifically, and the seeking of others' validation generally, are illusions and false gods respectively.

Is the process pleasant for those who present as targets while young?  No.  And I don't put a false virtue on to the bullies either.  But the alternative we've lived for several decades now does not convince me that sheltering people from that painful stimuli is a net positive.

I don't pretend childhood assholes don't leave real cost in their wake.  There are/were some people who break from mean words they can't seem to negotiate away; who remain convinced into adulthood that the favor of others is critical and worth chasing; that the mean words of the word-bully are too painful to disbelieve.  But sheltering them seems to produce adults who go through life completely attuned to external forces instead of developing the center that can both tell others to buzz off and mind their own business, tuning out others' meaningless insults; and also mind their own business in turn.  There's also the matter of the impact of a shrinking population of those who did make that leap and can mentor their children through it.

None of this is a commentary on physical bullying, and anyone who insists on conflating the two in response is a spaz.

[jhkim]

Political correctness is essentially the psychological equivalent of the Temperance/Prohibition movement: it presumes that people can't handle dangerous ideas safely and thus seeks to remove the temptation to engage them, by forbidding them from the mental marketplace. There should be room to disagree with this approach without denying that some ideas are dangerous and that some people are uniquely vulnerable to them.

The problem for the PC/SJW crowd is that if they accept that idea, then they themselves no longer serve any purpose because people can actually determine what might be dangerous or bad on their own.
Therefore they can never admit that other people are capable of thinking for themselves. They will attack anyone bringing it up because it forces them to face that inadequacy in themselves.  This is why they fight it like a cornered rat.

The same people who decry the Prohibition of Alcohol, though, often insist that (for example) marijuana is evil and needs to be forbidden to people, rather than allowing people to decide for themselves. Within games, the equivalent is those who decry liberal outcry against old-edition D&D, but themselves give outcry over any liberal-themed game that is published.

If the position is, "people can think for themselves and decide" -- then there should be both liberal-themed games and conservative-themed games (and any other type), and there doesn't need to be outrage over what is published. But outrage fires people up, and gets them posting.

[moonsweeper]

Political correctness is essentially the psychological equivalent of the Temperance/Prohibition movement: it presumes that people can't handle dangerous ideas safely and thus seeks to remove the temptation to engage them, by forbidding them from the mental marketplace. There should be room to disagree with this approach without denying that some ideas are dangerous and that some people are uniquely vulnerable to them.

The problem for the PC/SJW crowd is that if they accept that idea, then they themselves no longer serve any purpose because people can actually determine what might be dangerous or bad on their own.
Therefore they can never admit that other people are capable of thinking for themselves. They will attack anyone bringing it up because it forces them to face that inadequacy in themselves.  This is why they fight it like a cornered rat.

The same people who decry the Prohibition of Alcohol, though, often insist that (for example) marijuana is evil and needs to be forbidden to people, rather than allowing people to decide for themselves. Within games, the equivalent is those who decry liberal outcry against old-edition D&D, but themselves give outcry over any liberal-themed game that is published.

If the position is, "people can think for themselves and decide" -- then there should be both liberal-themed games and conservative-themed games (and any other type), and there doesn't need to be outrage over what is published. But outrage fires people up, and gets them posting.

uuhhh...yeah...what did you think I meant. 

Problem is, if you believe that then you actually have to support the idea that no object is evil in and of itself.  That means drugs, food, guns, porn, etc...The only issue that occurs is that you need to accept the consequences of your actions.

Unfortunately, on one side of the argument there are too many moral busybodies (SJW or otherwise) who want to tell others how they have to live...on the other there are all the people who don't want people to have to deal with the consequences of their actions.

What's absolutely hilarious is how often either of those groups flip their attitude based on the situation.  I have no problem with people who make games that are liberal or conservative...I have a problem when those people tell me what I can or can't play...

[Stephen Tannhauser]

But outrage fires people up, and gets them posting.

And games which get posted about are likelier to find purchasers.

Which touches on a general change in entertainment markets overall that I've been seeing, and that others have written about: It used to be that most entertainment products and entertainers would generally try to take a bland, middle-of-the-road approach so as to maintain the widest possible audience base. But as Western culture in general has gotten more and more politically polarized over the past 20 years or so, more and more entertainers have shifted their approach from "trying to win the largest possible audience base" to "trying to solidify and sustain the loyalty of the polarized base they want". Most North American late-night comedy shows, for example, have blatantly taken sides in the political divisions of the day and have accepted a smaller audience share in return for a more loyal one.

Ironically, it occurs to me as I write this that RPGs may not be able to manage the same tactic, because our hobby is already so small that a fractured base of any type may well be an economically unsustainable one. (But then again, if only a tiny minority of game designers make their primary living off their games anyway, this may be less of a concern.)

[Melan]

Honestly, the "game industry" was already dying before they got on the woke train, because the goods they were offering were not useful in actually helping play/run a game. It was a cynical racket run by people who didn't game, employing badly paid people who didn't game, to write elfie-welfie for people who largely didn't game. Then their business model died, and good riddance.

[jhkim]

But outrage fires people up, and gets them posting.

And games which get posted about are likelier to find purchasers.

Which touches on a general change in entertainment markets overall that I've been seeing, and that others have written about: It used to be that most entertainment products and entertainers would generally try to take a bland, middle-of-the-road approach so as to maintain the widest possible audience base. But as Western culture in general has gotten more and more politically polarized over the past 20 years or so, more and more entertainers have shifted their approach from "trying to win the largest possible audience base" to "trying to solidify and sustain the loyalty of the polarized base they want". Most North American late-night comedy shows, for example, have blatantly taken sides in the political divisions of the day and have accepted a smaller audience share in return for a more loyal one.

I don't have stats to show it, but I suspect this is more about numbers than loyalty. In these more charged partisan times, a comedian might pull in a lot of additional audience by having political humor of their chosen side, and that more than makes up for the lost audience of the other side. i.e. A modern middle-of-the-road comedian may get only a small number of liberals and a small number of conservatives, while a politically-charged comedian gets more than double the audience but only from one side. Outrage sells a lot.

I think it's mostly a few big industries that are forced to straddle the middle, because they can't double their potential audience on a given side. For example, I feel a lot of blockbuster movies have tried to straddle the middle. They'll throw in some token inclusion of some minorities as side characters, but the core action is still traditional.

Ironically, it occurs to me as I write this that RPGs may not be able to manage the same tactic, because our hobby is already so small that a fractured base of any type may well be an economically unsustainable one. (But then again, if only a tiny minority of game designers make their primary living off their games anyway, this may be less of a concern.)

I think almost any non-D&D small-press RPG can potentially use the same tactic of selling better to a single side. The OSR selling to conservatives, for example, while hippy story games selling to liberals. Currently, I think D&D is mostly still trying to straddle the middle - because it can't double its potential audience.

[jhkim]

Honestly, the "game industry" was already dying before they got on the woke train, because the goods they were offering were not useful in actually helping play/run a game. It was a cynical racket run by people who didn't game, employing badly paid people who didn't game, to write elfie-welfie for people who largely didn't game. Then their business model died, and good riddance.

From everything that I hear, D&D is at one of its peaks of popularity right now -- with top sales, and a lot of media coverage and wide popularity. Kickstarters are regularly pulling in tens of thousands of dollars - or even hundreds of thousands. I'd say the reports of the industry's death are greatly exaggerated.

https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/47547/2020-was-record-year-magic-d-d

[Ratman_tf]

Honestly, the "game industry" was already dying before they got on the woke train, because the goods they were offering were not useful in actually helping play/run a game. It was a cynical racket run by people who didn't game, employing badly paid people who didn't game, to write elfie-welfie for people who largely didn't game. Then their business model died, and good riddance.

From everything that I hear, D&D is at one of its peaks of popularity right now -- with top sales, and a lot of media coverage and wide popularity. Kickstarters are regularly pulling in tens of thousands of dollars - or even hundreds of thousands. I'd say the reports of the industry's death are greatly exaggerated.

https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/47547/2020-was-record-year-magic-d-d

They usually are. I remember when computer games were supposed to "kill" TTRPGing. And then it was MMORPGs that were supposed to "kill" TTRPGing. Wasn't Magic supposed to "kill" TTRPGing?
Etc...

[Melan]

Honestly, the "game industry" was already dying before they got on the woke train, because the goods they were offering were not useful in actually helping play/run a game. It was a cynical racket run by people who didn't game, employing badly paid people who didn't game, to write elfie-welfie for people who largely didn't game. Then their business model died, and good riddance.

From everything that I hear, D&D is at one of its peaks of popularity right now -- with top sales, and a lot of media coverage and wide popularity. Kickstarters are regularly pulling in tens of thousands of dollars - or even hundreds of thousands. I'd say the reports of the industry's death are greatly exaggerated.

https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/47547/2020-was-record-year-magic-d-d

In the 1990s, the "game industry" sustained a stratum of specialty stores, distributors, and several mid-range publishers publishing splats in volumes inconceivable for anyone today - perhaps even WotC. Today, it supports a much more distributed ecosystem of small publishers largely publishing games as personal projects, often as a side job or even a hobby. That's nice; I like it much better than the old model. But this cloud-shaped thing seems much smaller than what used to be "the industry". This has been documented extensively by people like James Mishler, and other people in trade organisations. James described them as "extinction-level events", and that was several years ago.

To call something even a cottage industry - a real business - the question to ask as Joe Schmoe is "If I am moderately successful, can going full time support an American family of four?" And as an entrepreneur, "Can I grow a business as strong as Palladium Games in its heyday?" Yes, I see well-managed mini-companies like Sine Nomine. But let's say, something like Palladium was a powerhouse for 15-20 years while being run in a way that could be rightfully called incompetent. Directly and indirectly, Palladium employed dozens of people. WotC now has barely any people in its RPG design department - I bet Palladium used to have more full-timers.

Where are the Palladiums now? How many jobs does a modern game company create? What kind of jobs are they? Just consider what kind of position was IPR - the main indie RPG distribution firm! - offering just a month or two ago. Poverty row conditions in a trailer park on the edge of the desert, that's what.

This is not specific to RPGs. The entire "creative economy" is a racket, and the masses of people who have been promised they will make a living in it are living increasingly marginal existences across the developed world. There are successful niches, but they are very small, and don't make for an "industry".

[Spinachcat]

There goes Melan using facts again!

The "game industry" is much like the self-publishing fiction industry. Mostly vanity press, some people making beer money, a few paying cheap rent and a handful making 6 six figures year upon year.

[Elfdart]

They might have Scottish accents in adaptations, but the Jewish parallel was confirmed by Tolkien himself.

In a BBC radio interview with Dennis Gueroult, recorded in 1964 and broadcast the next year, Tolkien made a statement connecting his Dwarves with the Jewish people. What he said was: 'The Dwarves of course are quite obviously – wouldn't you say that in many ways they remind you of the Jews? Their words are Semitic obviously, constructed to be Semitic.' Also in 1964, he wrote to W.R. Matthews: 'The language of the Dwarves [...] is Semitic in cast, leaning phonetically to Hebrew (as suits the Dwarvish character).'
...
Tolkien had added a remark about 'a tremendous love of the artefact, and of course the immense warlike capacity of the Jews, which we tend to forget nowadays.'

Source: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265759803_Jewish_Dwarves_Tolkien_and_Anti-Semitic_Stereotyping

Though he also had a distaste of nazis and other anti-semitism of his time.

In a letter to Stanley Unwin regarding this affair, dated 25 July 1938, an outraged Tolkien called the racist Nazi laws 'lunatic', adding 'I do not regard the (probable) absence of all Jewish blood as necessarily honourable; and I have many Jewish friends, and should regret giving any colour to the notion that I subscribed to the wholly pernicious and unscientific race-doctrine'

Source: same



EDITED TO ADD:  Which is to say, Tolkien did base his dwarves partly on Jews - though that doesn't inherently make them anti-semitic. He certainly wasn't anti-semitic in the nazi sense, but I could see people saying that his image was helping to stereotype Jews. The point about the lich and the golem are more of a stretch. D&D does butcher the Jewish mythology of the golem, but it does the same to most other mythologies.

Since we're talking about D&D dwarves, I think a word from Gary Gygax might be relevant:

I have recounted this experience before, but I'll do so again: When I was part of a large con panel on the East Coast, one young twit of an editor for a major publisher also a panelist asked me before the audience why I had stolen dwarves from Tolkien. I responded in august tones: "I beg your pardon, Young Lady," but I stole my dwarves from the same source the Good Professor did, Norse Mythology."

She was pretty much silent for the rest of the session.

If any of the D&D books had a +2 dwarven warhammer of Christ-killing listed among the magic items, the dumb schmuck who wrote this article might have had a point.  But apparently Gygax & Co did such a good job of hiding their Jew-hatred that only the silly fumbledick who wrote the article noticed.

[Kyle Aaron]

If the position is, "people can think for themselves and decide" -- then there should be both liberal-themed games and conservative-themed games (and any other type), and there doesn't need to be outrage over what is published. But outrage fires people up, and gets them posting.

I don't get outraged by political themes, only by bad game writing. Well, that and diceless. Fucking abomination.