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Halloween Jack posted:OK but do they do the Wilderlands of High Fantasy thing of "Has dark skin = really mean, takes slaves?" The drow are still evil slavers, so yeah to a degree at least. Arivia could say if there's more races that fall into that stereotype.
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Mar 9, 2017 04:59
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Nuns with Guns posted:I didn't realize taking a less unfortunate stance on slavery or whatever was a substantial setting change In the minds of the grogs who got pissed off when the 4e version of FR got rid of the racist stereotype regions, that would probably be something they would be upset over, yes. If you're asking my personal take, I think they should wholesale ditch all references to slavery, and anyone who objects can gently caress off.
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Mar 9, 2017 05:06
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Nuns with Guns posted:The drow are still evil slavers, so yeah to a degree at least. Arivia could say if there's more races that fall into that stereotype. This is an example of the kind of stuff Golarion had tons of earlier, but it's been downplayed since. The jungle-dwelling dark skinned Mwangi people of the southern content do indeed have their darkest people as slavers. From page 17 of the Inner Sea World Guide (still the current main book on Golarion): quote:Least known of the Mwangi are the Bekyar, whose tribes inhabit the Desolation Cape of Southern Garund all the way up the coast to Sargava. The Bekyar are exceedingly tall -- many topping 7 feet -- with skin tones ranging from dark brown to coal black. They wear their wiry hair long but often straighten it into elaborate coifs. This group consists largely of slavers who prey upon their fellow Mwangi and just about anyone else they can catch. Same page calls them barbarians and says they often worship demon lords. Yeah.
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Mar 9, 2017 05:08
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poo poo's rough out here, so I reckon that when it comes to criticizing your own employer you've gotta be really careful about what you say. That's just survival.
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Mar 9, 2017 05:10
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By downplaying it, I mean Paizo just hasn't focused on the Bekyar since and is kind of just ignoring them (in comparison to their not-Arabic region, which Jessica Price just wrote a supplement for). I also checked the updated book on the Mwangi/Bekyar (Inner Sea Races) and it does flesh the Bekyar out a bit more, but doesn't do anything to make them less stereotypical, it just adds qualifiers. Now they're isolationists, conquerors as well as slavers, and they practice juju as well as outright demon worship. So yeah, they are the straight up racist stereotypes from pulps that both Halloween Jack and Jessica Price point out as a bad thing. Not surprising seeing how pulp-inspired Golarion is, just disappointing.
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Mar 9, 2017 05:22
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Slavery as D&D and medieval fantasy usually presents it is for the purpose of signaling the area is exotic, often the assumption is that players will exploit the slaves, and overall it comes straight from the depths of the Nadir of American Race Relations where Howard and Burroughs originated it. That being said, Dark Sun and Glorantha and very heavily historical settings shouldn't be thrown out with the bathwater, since they have good reasons to include it and don't fall as prey to it as generic stuff does.
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Mar 9, 2017 05:33
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Serf posted:poo poo's rough out here, so I reckon that when it comes to criticizing your own employer you've gotta be really careful about what you say. That's just survival. My counter-argument would be that you probably shouldn't speak out on a topic that you know your own employer is also involved in, because you either omit or downplay your employer's own faults, which makes you look disingenuous, or you risk your employment by badmouthing your employer.
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Mar 9, 2017 05:35
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I was reminded by this of a talk I was watching with Martin Ericsson where he was questioned about whether or not White Wolf would continue to have gender / race exclusivity as a thing in their games, and he did a lot of handwringing about "Oh well we have to be historical and accurate to the real world..." But then my first Vampire: the Masquerade game had the local coterie struggling against a mad scientist who was obsessed with making a superior robot vampire, so "realism" hasn't really been something that occurred to me in a game setting with a magic chainsaw that can raise the dead and three-eyed anime knockoffs.
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Mar 9, 2017 05:57
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I expect a thoughtful and respectful portrayal of fictional parasitic monsters.
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Mar 9, 2017 06:02
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I was reminded by this of a talk I was watching with Martin Ericsson where he was questioned about whether or not White Wolf would continue to have gender / race exclusivity as a thing in their games, and he did a lot of handwringing about "Oh well we have to be historical and accurate to the real world..." Ah, the good ol' "verisimilitude" trap, where we can have as much magic and weird science and high camp as we want, but if anyone plays a minority without being constantly stigmatized, it's MY IMMERSION!! time On a pleasanter note: I got my copy of MASHED yesterday, and it actually goes out of its way to discuss how to handle issues of diversity and race/gender/sexuality in the game, including suggestions about playing diverse character types (like female doctors and surgeons, whom the U.S. military historically didn't station in Korean M*A*S*H units, but whom the book suggests could be from other UN nations who did send in female medical professionals). It's really nice, especially for a modern/historical war game that could so easily have leaned on verisimilitude excuses for limited PC diversity.
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Mar 9, 2017 06:19
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gradenko_2000 posted:My counter-argument would be that you probably shouldn't speak out on a topic that you know your own employer is also involved in, because you either omit or downplay your employer's own faults, which makes you look disingenuous, or you risk your employment by badmouthing your employer. This, pretty much. Okay, she's not willing to risk her position of relative incredible comfort to accept critiques about the things she posts about regarding her own employer to the point that she lashes out at people on Twitter that bring it up. Why is that laudable, again? I'm sure she tries her best within Paizo to promote the best environment she knows how, but being employed by them and writing for their lovely settings does make her complicit, no matter how much lipservice she extends to diversity on her Twitter account. It just strikes me as her doing the exact same performative milquetoast handwringing about ~problematic writing~ she's talking about in the least self-reflective way possible. Reene fucked around with this message at 11:35 on Mar 9, 2017 |
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Mar 9, 2017 11:31
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gradenko_2000 posted:My counter-argument would be that you probably shouldn't speak out on a topic that you know your own employer is also involved in, because you either omit or downplay your employer's own faults, which makes you look disingenuous, or you risk your employment by badmouthing your employer. Yeah, that's a given.
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Mar 9, 2017 13:27
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Wait, PCs exploiting slavery? Where does that come from? Isn't slavery just supposed to provide targets for PCs,  style?
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Mar 9, 2017 14:10
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Rockopolis posted:Wait, PCs exploiting slavery? Where does that come from? Isn't slavery just supposed to provide targets for PCs, I was using an old Judges Guild supplement to generate villages and the results came up that the next town over had two Slavers, because 80s random generation tables, am I right? I turned it around and made them the bad guys and let the players burn that plantation the gently caress down, and I gave one of them a cool Stovepipe hat and "the Emancipator" title. The players then lead the freed people to the site of their first adventure: a cleared-out orc fortress, and they turned it into their new town and base of operations.
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Mar 9, 2017 16:23
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Rockopolis posted:Wait, PCs exploiting slavery? Where does that come from? Isn't slavery just supposed to provide targets for PCs, Not really? I mean, there are adventures and settings where that's true, but many of the adventures are about "white slavery". But it's far more common to have slaves as essentially decorations to show off exoticism and the PCs may be waited on by slaves or there'll be a dancing girl or whatever. Hopefully many players engage in some good ol'-fashioned abolitionism in response, but the way the games are written is distinct from that.
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Mar 9, 2017 16:34
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Depiction isn't Endorsement in any case
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Mar 9, 2017 16:35
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Positive depiction is tacit endorsement though, and you can't tell me that Pathfinder doesn't have that when it comes to a lot of unpleasant topics.
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Mar 9, 2017 16:37
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I'm not sure attacking Price on the basis of her employer's actions (most of which being noted here predate her Paizo employment AFAIK) is particularly productive. That is, I'm not convinced some hypothetical situation where she quits Paizo in protest would result in greater progressive change at that company, whereas having her present seems more likely to see progressive notions being forwarded there. And given Paizo is easily in the top three or so RPG manufacturers, I'd rather have the latter. In any case, hypocrisy wouldn't necessarily do much to invalidate her points to begin with.
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Mar 9, 2017 16:59
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hypocrisy is dead anyways. might as well enjoy it
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Mar 9, 2017 17:01
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lol if you think people are motivated by anything but spite
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Mar 9, 2017 17:06
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I used to be motivated solely by spite, but then I got put on Cymbalta! Now it's 50% drugs, 20% positive feelings, 10% spite, and the rest is pain and miscellaneous.
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Mar 9, 2017 17:08
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Bar Crow posted:lol if you think people are motivated by anything but spite Anti-Life justifies my gaming.
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Mar 9, 2017 17:08
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That sounds like something a skeleton would write.
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Mar 9, 2017 17:12
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Hypocrisy means you're at least half right, which is at least better than being all wrong.
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Mar 9, 2017 17:16
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Covok posted:That part read to me as "someone above me or too many people below me are against changing it" or "we've released so many sourcebook we can't change it without a 2nd edition" or a mix of both. MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 17:30 on Mar 9, 2017 |
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Mar 9, 2017 17:25
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Agent Rush posted:Hey, this is going on the Level 99 store, right? I haven't seen it yet, either it's not up or I'm looking in the wrong place. https://www.level99games.com/shop/the-world-of-millennium-blades
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Mar 9, 2017 17:44
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Plutonis posted:Depiction isn't Endorsement in any case  Except replace satire with depiction
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Mar 9, 2017 17:53
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Ominous Jazz posted:
I'm from a country that despite being third-world has a decent education system so nah.
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Mar 9, 2017 17:55
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Plutonis posted:I'm from a country that despite being third-world has a decent education system so nah. The logic of this statement does not add up. A + B does not equal C, so to speak. The facts brought up don't lead to the conclusion reached, to be more direct.
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Mar 9, 2017 17:57
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I didn't realize they started teaching Poe's law in schools.
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Mar 9, 2017 17:58
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Covok posted:The logic of this statement does not add up. A + B does not equal C, so to speak. The facts brought up don't lead to the conclusion reached, to be more direct. Plutonis is saying Americans are unable to understand media because of a dysfunctional educational system. Can't say I disagree.
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Mar 9, 2017 18:03
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Plutonis posted:I'm from a country that despite being third-world has a decent education system so nah. its good to know that people are being failed by "decent" education systems regardless of nationality
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Mar 9, 2017 18:07
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Serf posted:its good to know that people are being failed by "decent" education systems regardless of nationality 16 words for a signature is a bit too long, man. If you cut it down by two you'd at least have a meme.
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Mar 9, 2017 18:09
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I'm legitimately not sure why depicting slavers as villains is a problem?? Emancipation through the overcoming of tyranny or slavery is a classic, resonant story.
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Mar 9, 2017 18:17
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Brainiac Five posted:16 words for a signature is a bit too long, man. If you cut it down by two you'd at least have a meme.  never change effectronica
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Mar 9, 2017 18:18
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fool_of_sound posted:I'm legitimately not sure why depicting slavers as villains is a problem?? Emancipation through the overcoming of tyranny or slavery is a classic, resonant story. The short of it is because slavery was a real rear end thing and it's weird how only the dark skinned ~exotic~ races in elf games seem to practice them considering history
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Mar 9, 2017 18:23
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Ominous Jazz posted:The short of it is because slavery was a real rear end thing and it's weird how only the dark skinned ~exotic~ races in elf games seem to practice them considering history The Mind Flayers aren't dark skinned and if you want a setting where humans can own elvish slaves well that's your problem.
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Mar 9, 2017 18:26
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Ominous Jazz posted:The short of it is because slavery was a real rear end thing and it's weird how only the dark skinned ~exotic~ races in elf games seem to practice them considering history Murder, war and injustice are also things that happen to real people in the real world. They have emotional weight because they aren't pure fantasy, and roleplaying making a difference against those things is positive. The latter is absolutely a problem, yeah.
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Mar 9, 2017 18:28
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fool_of_sound posted:Murder, war and injustice are also things that happen to real people in the real world. Okay, but all the murder and war isn't exclusive to the ~exotic~ dark skinned race. I'm not saying that you can't or shouldn't talk about slavery in elf games but I'm saying we're doing a poo poo job if we we're doing it like this. Edit: and Plutonis I thought mindflayers were more like hellraisers Ominous Jazz fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Mar 9, 2017 |
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Mar 9, 2017 18:36
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Ominous Jazz posted:Okay, but all the murder and war isn't exclusive to the ~exotic~ dark skinned race. I'm not saying that you can't or shouldn't talk about slavery in elf games but I'm saying we're doing a poo poo job if we we're doing it like this. Yeah, I agree on that point, but extending that to 'all depictions of slavery in fantasy are bad' is dumb as hell.
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Mar 9, 2017 18:38
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