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I was half-tempted to point out that there are plenty of people working in OSR/OSR adjacent places and modes that don't really fit that racist mold, but loving CARCOSA?
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May 12, 2019 16:56
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Der Waffle Mous posted:isn't that the one where the one of the evil magic rituals involves the repeated rape, murder, and resurrection of, and I remember it being incredibly specific about this, a white child? Yes. The specific justification is "the common races were bred as magical sacrifice fodder by ancient snake men" but just loving don't.
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May 12, 2019 16:57
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Arivia posted:Linking Geoffrey McKinney's Carcosa in defense of accusations of racism in OSR products is some ninth-dimensional chess poo poo. SIR YOU ARE COMMITTING SLANDER AND DEFAMATION AND LIBEL AND SAYING NOT NICE THINGS ON THE INTERNET ABOUT ME. I LITERALLY JUST GOT OFF THE PHONE WITH MY LAWYER AND HE IS A REAL PERSON AND AGREES WITH ME!!!!!!
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May 12, 2019 17:08
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:SIR YOU ARE COMMITTING SLANDER AND DEFAMATION AND LIBEL AND SAYING NOT NICE THINGS ON THE INTERNET ABOUT ME. I LITERALLY JUST GOT OFF THE PHONE WITH MY LAWYER AND HE IS A REAL PERSON AND AGREES WITH ME!!!!!! Carcosa is actually not by Zak, just in the same LotFP product line. But yeah, unless you have a really really well-put together argument I wouldn't even start with "blue men, green men, and jale men" as a repudiation of racism.
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May 12, 2019 17:12
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Arivia posted:Carcosa is actually not by Zak, just in the same LotFP product line. I will happily grant you that Carcosa sucks, and will happily edit it out of my reply, but the rest of the stuff listed there is explicitly OSR, and is neither clinging especially strongly to DnD, or perpetuating racism.
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May 12, 2019 17:17
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:I will happily grant you that Carcosa sucks, and will happily edit it out of my reply, but the rest of the stuff listed there is explicitly OSR, and is neither clinging especially strongly to DnD, or perpetuating racism. I was kind of on your side but you just started this off completely on the wrong foot to the point where it is totally radioactive. I think it's best if you just drop this and take the loss.
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May 12, 2019 17:18
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I know this discussion is all originating from perceptions of Tolkien's work but Middle Earth doesn't really have mono-cultures because even the elves are culturally different. Lothlorien elves are culturally different from Rivendell elves but not in a racial sense but in a cultural sense based on their natural surroundings. Even with humans, race or nationality isn't a determination of anything because Aragorn is racially the same as the people of Umbar. The people of Harad as well aren't inherently evil, they are shown to be noble when fighting for Sauron and it mostly came down to their leaders being lied to and controlled by what amounts to the prince of lies. They make peace at the end of LotR's and it mostly goes fine other than some normal territorial squabbles that flare up. Humans all have a common ancestry too in Middle Earth, the only thing that separates Numenoreans from the rest is that they took up the offer to move to not-Atlantis when it was created for man as a thank you present. Aragorn's people are responsible for the whole rise of Sauron as well because they listened to Sauron and became obsessed with living forever. The elves are responsible too for Sauron still being around. This is because they held onto their rings and this allowed him to keep a foot in the door because he no longer had a body due to being caught in the destruction of Numenor. The ultimate hero of the story is an orphaned relation of a hero, who was also a hapless nobody, who was able to saved the day because he had no desires for greater power. Even then, Samwise is the greatest hero because he really values nothing other than his friendship. I'm sure Tolkien had some lovely beliefs and some bad takes for today and even that time but I don't really think Middle Earth is an ode to racial determinism and segregation. RocknRollaAyatollah fucked around with this message at 18:08 on May 12, 2019 |
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May 12, 2019 18:02
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Meinberg posted:Even in Glorantha, one of the best fantasy RPG settings for presenting a living, vibrant world, has most of its nonhuman species live in cultural isolation and has its human nations have relatively little ethnic diversity, except in the case of the conquered peoples living under imperial rule. I think that this might be because in Glorantha the species are so different. Like Trolls can eat air and stone and have difficulty working with Dwarves or Elves because they taste delicious. Elves are literal humanoid plants and don't understand that "farming" can be a thing etc. At least there is a reason for it other than "dwarves live in mountains" etc. Also it does sadden me that we don't get to see more of the interactions in like Vanch which serves as a crossroads between two culture groups and takes bits and pieces from both.
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May 12, 2019 18:24
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Correction, Dwarves taste bad, Elves get them high, and humans taste good. Also they're cursed to be hungry forever which becomes an issue when you're surrounded by walking talking people that are also food.
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May 12, 2019 18:34
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Josef bugman posted:I think that this might be because in Glorantha the species are so different. Like Trolls can eat air and stone and have difficulty working with Dwarves or Elves because they taste delicious. Elves are literal humanoid plants and don't understand that "farming" can be a thing etc. Yeah, Glorantha handles it well, despite it still being a thing. The different species are distinctly different species, not just metaphors for real-world human races, and that makes it play a lot better. I would definitely be interested in seeing some focus on those places of cross-species communication as well, though. Thinking on it, I also appreciate the way that Spire handles race. While the aelfyr and the humans and the gnolls are generally presented a bit one-sidedly, that's because the perspective is inherently rooted in that of the drow, who are presented as vibrant, multi-cultural, and with very real internal politics and practices that make them pop with a degree of verisimilitude that is often lacking in all RPGs. Some supplements to expand on the humans or the gnolls might be interesting, but I can also appreciate the work grounded itself in its specific explorations.
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May 12, 2019 19:03
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Yeah the only thing I would really consider a serious failing in Tolkien's depiction of race/s is how he used 'short and swarthy' as a major marker of the corruption of the orcs, compared to the fair and tall elves. Even if he had more empathy for orcs than most of his copycats, that particular way of depicting corruption was a really, really bad move which has shaped fantasy as a genre in unfortunate ways. Also, the dwarves are mostly a monoculture, though they have various settlements; they're also very much modeled on the Jewish diaspora, which was his attempt at incorporating Wagnerian elements without being incredibly antisemitic. So that's complicated, even though it's clear his intention was to promote goodwill with things like the Legolas/Gimli friendship framed in his letters as his attempt to write an archetypal friendship between Jew and Gentile. The idea that that needs a specific archetype involving elves: weird and uncomfortable. The sentiment behind it? Less weird and uncomfortable. E: also by just declaring 'the noble peoples of the east were all duped by Sauron off-screen' he wasn't being super racist but he was constructing a scenario that reinforces racist assumptions and ensures no non-Western characters appear as heroes. It's stuff that would get an author these days talked to in a 'hey, JRR, maybe consider getting a sensitivity reader' rather than, I hope, "HERE IS MY CALLOUT THREAD" Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 19:10 on May 12, 2019 |
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May 12, 2019 19:08
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Pretty much anything in the LotFP line is gonna be awful and fash-adjacent, because the company making it is run by James Raggi, who is pretty loving fashy.
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May 12, 2019 19:36
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I was like "who the gently caress is James Raggi" and googled him and found this blog: https://vengersatanis.blogspot.com/2018/11/free-speech-hate-speech.html So uh, I guess throw that guy in too.
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May 12, 2019 19:46
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Corrode posted:I was like "who the gently caress is James Raggi" and googled him and found this blog: https://vengersatanis.blogspot.com/2018/11/free-speech-hate-speech.html 
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May 12, 2019 19:49
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OSR defenders will always prove whoever they're arguing with right, basically every single time, goddamn.
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May 12, 2019 19:54
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Corrode posted:I was like "who the gently caress is James Raggi" and googled him and found this blog: https://vengersatanis.blogspot.com/2018/11/free-speech-hate-speech.html wow what the gently caress is this poo poo posted:clinical psychologist, philosopher, best selling author, and free speech advocate Jordan B. Peterson.
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May 12, 2019 19:58
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Here's a good thing:  The latest Afrika Korps dice and tokens no longer feature the prominent swastika from the historical DAK emblem. Everyone has a different tolerance for this. I'm ok with an appropriate swastika on a painted model. There's only a handful of places you'd ever see one accurately anyway. But dice and accessories? Not at all the place for that. So good move Battlefront.
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May 12, 2019 20:04
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ChaseSP posted:Correction, Dwarves taste bad, Elves get them high, and humans taste good. Also they're cursed to be hungry forever which becomes an issue when you're surrounded by walking talking people that are also food. specifically, humans taste better to trolls the younger they are
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May 12, 2019 20:32
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ChaseSP posted:Correction, Dwarves taste bad, Elves get them high, and humans taste good. Also they're cursed to be hungry forever which becomes an issue when you're surrounded by walking talking people that are also food. I think it's actually dwarves taste bad but get them high, and elves taste really good, but humans just taste fine? God, Uz are the best.
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May 12, 2019 20:43
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I think you may be correct on that, but we should probably cut Glorantha chat before it consumes this thread like Chaos.
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May 12, 2019 20:49
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Mors Rattus posted:Pretty much anything in the LotFP line is gonna be awful and fash-adjacent, because the company making it is run by James Raggi, who is pretty loving fashy. Every single author who has specifically written for LotFP is probably pretty fashy, but definitely deserving of social ostracization. I won’t try to link any modules because you never know which will be generically bad OSR products and which will make you want to remove your own eyes with bleach. Ifyou want an example of the later go read the Fatal & Friends for Blood in the Chocolate. It won an Ennie, furthering how much of a joke that award is. Edit: Does anyone know anything about Patrick Stewart, the guy who runs the False Machine OSR blog and who wrote Deep Carbon Observatory, Veins of the Earth, and Maze of the Blue Medusa? He writes for LotFP so, uh that, but I don’t know much about him elsewise. jakodee fucked around with this message at 21:21 on May 12, 2019 |
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May 12, 2019 21:15
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jakodee posted:Every single author who has specifically written for LotFP is probably pretty fashy, but definitely deserving of social ostracization. I won’t try to link any modules because you never know which will be generically bad OSR products and which will make you want to remove your own eyes with bleach. Ifyou want an example of the later go read the Fatal & Friends for Blood in the Chocolate. He used to stan for Zak S on rpg.net but idk if he’s fash
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May 12, 2019 21:24
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Corrode posted:I was like "who the gently caress is James Raggi" and googled him and found this blog: https://vengersatanis.blogspot.com/2018/11/free-speech-hate-speech.html Oh, that dude. An actual Satanist (as, I Warship Satin, not the atheist trolls or whatever) who also worships Cthulhu, maybe? I forget. Was eventually ran out of RPG.net (after being let back on RPG.net after he was kicked off for casting a Purple Hex Spell) for declaring himself transgender. 'Transgender' in this case meant he was turning into a giant blob of tentacles and who needs that around.
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May 12, 2019 21:49
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Desiden posted:Final Fantasy XIV. There's a bit of the art book, even, that points out the distinction between "beastmen" and "humans" is an entirely arbitrary political distinction given than the definition of "human" is very broad. moths posted:Here's a good thing: There are, of course, versions of the original nazi symbol ones selling for hundreds on Ebay because of loving course there are.
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May 12, 2019 22:34
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Dawgstar posted:Oh, that dude. An actual Satanist (as, I Warship Satin, not the atheist trolls or whatever) who also worships Cthulhu, maybe? I forget. Was eventually ran out of RPG.net (after being let back on RPG.net after he was kicked off for casting a Purple Hex Spell) for declaring himself transgender. 'Transgender' in this case meant he was turning into a giant blob of tentacles and who needs that around.
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May 12, 2019 22:41
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Meinberg posted:I think it’s telling that both of the examples of games that handle multi-culturalism in fantasy right are video games. I feel like, to a very serious degree, that the legacy of Dungeons and Dragons has encouraged monoculturalism in TTRPGs in traditional fantasy settings. Even in Glorantha, one of the best fantasy RPG settings for presenting a living, vibrant world, has most of its nonhuman species live in cultural isolation and has its human nations have relatively little ethnic diversity, except in the case of the conquered peoples living under imperial rule. Part of the problem with art is that builds off of earlier problematic art is that a) It inherits the bad assumptions of the previous art by default and b) It can inherit the audience of the previous art that wants to make regressive interpretations. So, if you are writing, for instance, OD&D, it's hard to spend the time necessary to describe the cultures of fantasy races due to space restriction. Our regressively programmed brains interpret fantasy races as monocultures because we we trained by growing up in an institutionally racist society. I don't blame Gygax for this, but he could have done better. It's easy, on the other hand, to not write a black and white alignment system cribbed from Elric, and then actively make it more racist. I do blame Gygax for this. I don't think that the average OSR designer is intending to be inherit the problems of D&D, they just haven't challenged their own assumptions on fantasy media. BTW, after my earlier "How do we reduce the colonial issues of D&D?" question I've been spending some time looking at Glorantha. I like it a lot. jakodee posted:Edit: Does anyone know anything about Patrick Stewart, the guy who runs the False Machine OSR blog and who wrote Deep Carbon Observatory, Veins of the Earth, and Maze of the Blue Medusa? He writes for LotFP so, uh that, but I don’t know much about him elsewise. Patrick publicly distanced himself from Zak after an instance in which Zak tried (and I think temporarily succeeded?) to drive Paolo Greco off the internet. (Notably, Paolo Greco ran the largest OSR competitor store front to LOTFP at the time. Now there are several good ones.) It's a lovely both sides repudiation, but Patrick never made another product with Zak after this. http://falsemachine.blogspot.com/2017/09/gently caress-all-of-you.html This is Patrick's response to Mandy's post, which is not exactly an apology, but it's certainly a "Yeah, I guess that makes sense." http://falsemachine.blogspot.com/2019/02/you-should-read-this.html That was enough for me, but I would understand if it's not enough for other people.
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May 12, 2019 22:54
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DalaranJ posted:Part of the problem with art is that builds off of earlier problematic art is that a) It inherits the bad assumptions of the previous art by default So I both just remembered why I remember Patrick Stewart’s name and read some of his stuff online for awhile. Don’t know if he’s fash or not, but he’s one of the most immature and unpleasant people I’ve had the displeasure of forcing myself to read in a long time. He writes articles entitled gently caress All Of You and thinks the 90’s were the most artistically sophisticated time in history. He also uses his own mental illness as proof he knows when other people are lying about having their own. Edit: Actually, is using SJW’s univocally enough to be fash?
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May 12, 2019 23:13
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I'd call it a very strong hint in that direction given the crowds that tend to bandy it around. Fash-adjacent at least.
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May 12, 2019 23:25
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Schadenboner posted:I mean, the Orks in Skyrim live pretty monoculturally but that’s because the Nords are by-and-large racist pieces of poo poo? #notallnords. The Stormcloaks are a bunch of fascists, which is why we must support the liberal monarchy establishment in Solitude. Just ignore the Thalmor drone strikes in Elsweyr. 
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May 12, 2019 23:43
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jakodee posted:Edit: Actually, is using SJW’s univocally enough to be fash? Setting yourself against social justice is... it sure is a thing, right? "I am opposed to the concept of social justice" is a fascist thought (or so close as for the distinction to be meaningless) when you're using the term "social justice" in the original intended sense (ie, fairness in distribution of wealth, privilege, opportunity, etc). Someone using it to dogwhistle "purple haired screeching feminists with 137 genders*" though? You want to think of them as someone who's tone deaf and being hyperbolic for effect, or at worst a fuckwit reactionary edgelord. But there's a much bigger chance than you want that they're either being recruited by actual fash or radicalised by the youtube rabbit hole. *not my words! Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 00:26 on May 13, 2019 |
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May 12, 2019 23:52
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I know people that use SJW that are extremely left wing, they just hate the internet beyond anything and it's just a way to launch invective at it. They look at it like SJWs only exist online in the same way RWNJs and Kekistani ten year olds do. So yeah, for them SJW is a pejorative for slacktivists and keyboard warriors.
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May 12, 2019 23:57
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JBP posted:I know people that use SJW that are extremely left wing, they just hate the internet beyond anything and it's just a way to launch invective at it. They look at it like SJWs only exist online in the same way RWNJs and Kekistani ten year olds do. So yeah, for them SJW is a pejorative for slacktivists and keyboard warriors. This is not the man I’m talking about. He is extremely online.
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May 13, 2019 00:05
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Maybe I'm misremembering, but I'm pretty sure SJW started as a slur left wing people used against people who didn't actually do any activism or anything good for the world, but rather would tweet and post about how important social justice was all day. Hence the 'warrior' part, kinda like an armchair general. It was then co-opted by fash and fash-adjectents (gamergates and stuff). Similar to how fake news was an invention by reasonable people, to single out bad news-sites and organisations (fox mainly, early on) which trump co-opted. Regardless, SJW is a great litmus test now. Anyone who uses it in a negative or disparagingly can safely be assumed to a fash, moron or raging rear end in a top hat. Even better, if you tell someone you think social justice is important, you'll usually immediately be able to see if they're chuds by their reaction.
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May 13, 2019 00:18
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jakodee posted:This is not the man I’m talking about. He is extremely online. Oh yeah, I just mean as a pejorative it isn't confined only to the right wing online cretin.
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May 13, 2019 00:18
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The original intent of SJW is straight up dead, there's no reclaiming it at all at this point. It's lost all meaning even among those who use it, a 5 seconds on Twitter will show they'll slap it on anything that mildly erks them. See also: Political Correctness and Virtue Signalling, genuinely useful terms drowned in poo poo.
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May 13, 2019 01:08
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SteelMentor posted:The original intent of SJW is straight up dead, there's no reclaiming it at all at this point. It's lost all meaning even among those who use it, a 5 seconds on Twitter will show they'll slap it on anything that mildly erks them. See also: Political Correctness and Virtue Signalling, genuinely useful terms drowned in poo poo.
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May 13, 2019 12:21
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Nessus posted:Eventually all terms will become meaningless and we will return to shrieking at one another from across the creek bed. Inshallah this glorious future will soon come to pass.
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May 14, 2019 00:54
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Nessus posted:Eventually all terms will become meaningless and we will return to shrieking at one another from across the creek bed. It's even dumber when you read about conservative radio in the 1930s. father coughlin, the rush limbaugh of his day, loved the idea of social justice so much that he named his magazine "social justice". this had a totally different meaning, of course: Father Coughlin, 1939 posted:I am beginning to understand why I have been dubbed a ‘Nazi’ and or a ‘fascist’ by the Jewish publications in America; for practically all the 16 principles of social justice are being put into practice in Italy and Germany. so the meaning has completely changed more than once in the last century.
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May 14, 2019 06:37
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GoluboiOgon posted:It's even dumber when you read about conservative radio in the 1930s. father coughlin, the rush limbaugh of his day, loved the idea of social justice so much that he named his magazine "social justice". this had a totally different meaning, of course: That quote even has what must be one of the first recorded uses of "how dare you call me a Nazi just because I respect and agree with their ideology".
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May 14, 2019 06:53
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SteelMentor posted:The original intent of SJW is straight up dead, there's no reclaiming it at all at this point. It's lost all meaning even among those who use it, a 5 seconds on Twitter will show they'll slap it on anything that mildly erks them. See also: Political Correctness and Virtue Signalling, genuinely useful terms drowned in poo poo. Virtue signalling and woke still effective when used as insults for rich neolib shitheads who pretend to care about marginalized groups when they're actually abusing the hell out of them.
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