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I have never in my life seen the statement "you can't play a character of a different sex from yourself", at least when stated with the lovely implication that doing so is somehow weird or perverted, survive the objection "but why is it magically okay when the GM does it?" Coming from the other side of things, when I was a teenager I was really uncomfortable with the idea of playing a character of a different sex to myself (even as a GM) because I was worried that I would do it badly and offend people, and that those people would be right to be offended. I think this is a fairly reasonable concern common to people who attempt to interact with identities that are not their own, particularly when there's a real-life power disparity; even now, I would approach such a thing with a certain degree of wariness because, well, because I don't want to accidentally be the type of male writer who describes his female characters in terms of their boob size and that's a thing that could theoretically happen so I should probably keep an eye out. and in terms of other categories (race, gender identity, etc) it seems reasonable to me that many people would feel an even greater degree of trepidation? part of being respectful about such things is being aware of your own limitations and the theoretical (say) straight while male might have way more understanding of how to non-shitly play a female character than to non-shitly play a black or gay character, and might be aware of such.
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Jul 17, 2019 12:44
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I've seen a lot of that particular pathology in MMO spaces, especially in roleplaying servers and the like. There's a scary amounts of nerds out there that react badly at best, outright toxic at worst at the concept of someone playing a character whose gender doesn't match their irl ones. It's not a shock to say that many of these same players tend to be incredibly transphobic and their response to discovering someone crossplaying is remincient of a trans-panic lashout. The accusations of malicious duplicity, accusations of sexual misconduct, pretty much 1-to-1.
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Jul 17, 2019 14:16
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Admiral Joeslop posted:With Gencon coming up, are there any major jerks to avoid in the vendor hall? Gencon is pretty good about keeping those kinds out but not always. If you see Hambly let the staff know, he's still banned last I knew and is likely going to show up and make a scene to stir up donations.
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Jul 17, 2019 14:20
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Liquid Communism posted:If you see Hambly let the staff know, he's still banned last I knew and is likely going to show up and make a scene to stir up donations. I tried googling about this but there's so much alt-right anti-feminist garbage that immediately comes up I can't find a straight report I'm confident in. What happened? Something about this guy getting punched or claiming he was when at a bar somewhere? Harvey Mantaco fucked around with this message at 14:50 on Jul 17, 2019 |
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Jul 17, 2019 14:41
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Harvey Mantaco posted:I tried googling about this but there's so much alt-right anti-feminist garbage that immediately comes up I can't find a straight report I'm confident in. What happened? Something about this guy getting punched or claiming he was when at a bar somewhere? Roughly: -Goes to Gencon to be a prick to various game devs, particularly the WotC lot due to a personal beef after he got a lifetime ban from MtG for organising a harassment campaign against a cosplayer. -Gets asked to leave politely after he tries to get in peoples' faces. -Encounters some WotC bigwig in a bar, tries to provoke a fight and gets thrown out the bar. -Films himself on periscope running away from the bar, claiming he got punched. His story switches between "a gang of SJWs attacked me" to "this one particular dev attacked me". -Goes viral on CHUD twitter, GoFundMe for legal funds fills up. The people he claims to be involved counter claim he's full of poo poo. Gencon tells him to gently caress off and bans him. -GoFundMe is closed, he starts bragging about a new truck he bought a month later.
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Jul 17, 2019 16:03
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Harvey Mantaco posted:I tried googling about this but there's so much alt-right anti-feminist garbage that immediately comes up I can't find a straight report I'm confident in. What happened? Something about this guy getting punched or claiming he was when at a bar somewhere? What SteelMentor said, but he also has a history of far-right hot takes. Like one of his most well-known is when he got super-upset about the new She-Ra cartoon because the main character didn't have D-sized breasts and "was drawn by a lesbian" (his words, not mine). And in theme with the thread title, he also got really upset  for some reason when Tim Schafer said "gently caress white supremacists," and also when a black Mortal Kombat character went back in time to stop the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. The latter was a video that is now deleted from YouTube.He also alleged that he was going to write an article for Stormfront before even his own fanbase turned against him at the time:  And yes, he also covers tabletop games. He used to cover Magic the Gathering before he got kicked out of just about every major Con for that when he was stalking a female cosplayer. Libertad! fucked around with this message at 17:48 on Jul 17, 2019 |
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Jul 17, 2019 17:37
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SteelMentor posted:Roughly: It wasn't a wotc bigwig. It was small time dev Matt Loter, who Hambly had gotten into it on Twitter with over the usual gamergate stuff. Hambly claims there was a bar fight, although the cops venue disagree and he did a YouTube video right after unharmed save for a shirt button so it couldn't have been much of one. He got his fans involved to harass Loter's day job teaching game design until they fired him, and went after him in civil court with donated funds grifted from the altright since nobody would listen to his histrionics about a criminal case. Loter settled earlier this year, presumably to avoid paying to defend a long out of state court case, and issued a public apology. Both are banned from GenCon now. I personally assume the fight was Hamblys intended fundraiser due to statements made on his twitter and the fact that he was peddling t shirts about it within 24 hours.
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Jul 17, 2019 17:51
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Admiral Joeslop posted:I'm not sure if this is the right thread but it sure feels right, even if the discussion has probably been had before. I agree with everything said so far about it being totally fine and even encouraged but in the high-profile arena I think it's a bit less cut-and-dry. The most obvious caveat is that higher audience = higher responsibility. When you gently caress up in your home game it causes a lot less harm than when you gently caress up with an audience of thousands. That doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, but you need to be more aware. The second half of that (and this applies to the McElroys in particular) is that when your entire podcast is straight white dudes but you get a huge audience in part because of how diverse and progressive your game is... it's kind of unfortunate? It's not a huge problem but there's definitely an appropriative element to it. I think the conclusion is just try to have your games not be all straight white dudes, especially if you're gonna try to make money off of it.
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Jul 17, 2019 18:48
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I have never encountered a "you can't play as any sex/race/gender/etc other than your own" rule with any group I've played with, but if one exists it probably points to a larger dysfunction with how the group handles problem players (tolerate them but try to moderate how horrible they are) than the initial problem of the dumb rule. I'd see that as a red flag for sure, even if it's ostensibly well-intentioned.
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Jul 17, 2019 18:49
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Liquid Communism posted:It wasn't a wotc bigwig. It was small time dev Matt Loter, who Hambly had gotten into it on Twitter with over the usual gamergate stuff. Hambly claims there was a bar fight, although the cops venue disagree and he did a YouTube video right after unharmed save for a shirt button so it couldn't have been much of one. I stand corrected. Holy crap what a shitshow.
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Jul 17, 2019 19:42
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SteelMentor posted:I stand corrected. Holy crap what a shitshow. Yep. Hambly would have almost undoubtedly lost had the suit been played out (as he was using theoretical lost revenue from not being able to attend the rest of GenCon 18 and thus not getting more viewers as his source of damages since he sustained no documented injuries), but it would have cost Loter tens of thousands of dollars to see it though with no chance of recouping those costs. Court docs are here: https://www.docketbird.com/court-cases/HAMBLY-v-LOTER/insd-1:2018-cv-03071 Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 20:15 on Jul 17, 2019 |
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Jul 17, 2019 20:12
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Also to further clarify on the "got fired from his day job" bit... Loter apparently taught an occasional game design seminar class some semesters at the school. He was listed as "part time faculty" on their website until things got lovely, and apparently had a single class he was planning to teach in the spring. While I have no idea on the Quinnipac specific pricing, he was an adjunct teaching a single "intro to game design" class, which likely meant he was getting little to nothing. After Hambly and his moron brigade raised a stink, they took his name off the page and canceled said class, thus depriving Loter of, I dunno, a couple of nights of ordering delivery instead of cooking for himself? Naturally, chud-media turned this in to "feminist professor gets FIRED because WE R LEGION!!!!". I suppose now that rotten tomatoes won't let them review bomb anything starring a woman, they have to claim victories where they can get them.
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Jul 17, 2019 20:19
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This is a fairly tangentially related thing, but since YouTube recommendations are being discussed, people interested might want to listen to the podcast Behind the Bastards, episode 67. It goes into some of the stuff that's been discovered about how the recommendation algorithm works (spoiler: it's super not good!) and why you tend to see awful things show up in your recommendations no matter what. Anyway, kind of barely on topic, but it will probably help explain why you see an assholes videos recommended after someone who isn't equally awful.
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Jul 17, 2019 21:23
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The Gate posted:This is a fairly tangentially related thing, but since YouTube recommendations are being discussed, people interested might want to listen to the podcast Behind the Bastards, episode 67. It goes into some of the stuff that's been discovered about how the recommendation algorithm works (spoiler: it's super not good!) and why you tend to see awful things show up in your recommendations no matter what.
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Jul 17, 2019 21:27
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Not quite fascism but still loving awful: notable MtG personality Conley Woods is a rapist.
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Jul 17, 2019 21:52
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Gyro Zeppeli posted:Not quite fascism but still loving awful: notable MtG personality Conley Woods is a rapist. Yeah you'd think that, and then the second comment on the article is someone who says it "sounds like a "white supremacy", setup" because of course.
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Jul 17, 2019 22:52
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Gyro Zeppeli posted:Not quite fascism but still loving awful: notable MtG personality Conley Woods is a rapist. Heya do you have this from a different source? I can't view this because I am in the EU.
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Jul 17, 2019 23:27
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https://www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2019/07/former-mtg-pro-conley-woods-arrested-for-sexual-assault-in-santa-fe/
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Jul 17, 2019 23:33
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Thank you!
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Jul 17, 2019 23:41
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SteelMentor posted:I've seen a lot of that particular pathology in MMO spaces, especially in roleplaying servers and the like. There's a scary amounts of nerds out there that react badly at best, outright toxic at worst at the concept of someone playing a character whose gender doesn't match their irl ones. I used to play (and ultimately mod) in a chat RP site a really long time ago and there was a similar dynamic. Characters were usually perceived as more like personal avatars than a role being used for a story, but the most extreme place that came out was when someone was crossplaying and other people found out. Even if there hadn't been any romantic or, uh, graphic entanglements with characters, people would get really offended and worked up over the situation as if it was some sort of deliberate deception or trickery, and it often imploded whatever storylines were involved. People who were upfront about it or widely known would still be regarded unfavorably by a lot of people. This was pushing 20 years ago now, and I regret that I didn't manage those situations the way I would have now (crossplaying has never bothered me, but when I was a mod I should have just banned the people who got gross about it).
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Jul 18, 2019 03:19
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Deified Data posted:I have never encountered a "you can't play as any sex/race/gender/etc other than your own" rule with any group I've played with, but if one exists it probably points to a larger dysfunction with how the group handles problem players (tolerate them but try to moderate how horrible they are) than the initial problem of the dumb rule. I'd see that as a red flag for sure, even if it's ostensibly well-intentioned. Yeah, the solution to the larger problems presented by playing against your own identity is not to roleplay with bigots, morons, and creeps. Everybody else should be able to do so, have a good faith dialogue if anything ever feels unpleasant or makes someone uncomfortable, and adjust their character (as a player) or abandon a gross NPC (as a GM) or whatever. I guess some people don't have the good fortune to have a regular play group and have to take their chances on game store randos.
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Jul 18, 2019 05:41
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Nessus posted:I'm guessing it's because they know a lovely video will make you angry and thus paying attention and staying on the platform, perhaps even seeing an advertisement or two. Close! But it's mainly because the types of people that listen to someone like Alex Jones, or other assholes like him, will listen to a 4 hour insane rant, and then cue up another. That's more time for ad revenue! So the algorithm sees that people who watch terrible poo poo often watch A LOT of terrible poo poo, decides that's how to get everyone to watch more YouTube, and starts feeding it to you in recommendations.
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Jul 18, 2019 15:04
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The only time I've encountered playing your own gender as a rule was the extremely early days of podcast play, circa 2002-2004. The official reason was to minimize confusion for listeners but I know there was also stuff like not wanting players to do a "voice" even if it is was completely non-offensive one because it gets old real quick over 100 hours of recordings.
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Jul 18, 2019 15:25
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In general I would say don't do a 'voice' for your character, because most of the time it's not going to be good and chances are your well-intentioned accent is going to be either incomprehensible, offensive, or both. Maybe if you are a voice actor or something you get a pass on this, and you can do things like modulate your tone or vocabulary fine, but no one really wants you mush-mouthing scots to better embody your dwarf.
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Jul 18, 2019 16:24
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Naw, naw. You can do a voice, just don't do an accent or Girl Voice. you should always try to differentiate the way your characters speak, in tone, in the way they put sentences together, in how they throw pauses in there, word choice, ect.
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Jul 18, 2019 16:47
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Oh yeah, absolutely! They also generally asked people to not do any accents, but it wasn't an official rule like the gender thing. The rule was eventually removed after a couple of years iirc.
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Jul 18, 2019 16:51
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Starting over-the-top hard then fading to your normal speaking voice is an established film trick. Think of all the times you've seen movie Nazis introduced as speaking German (with subtitles,) but who have full British accents by the end of the film. Ironically, it works less if you do it subtle. Think Costner in Robin Hood, or Keanu in Dracula.
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Jul 19, 2019 12:42
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a computing pun posted:I have never in my life seen the statement "you can't play a character of a different sex from yourself", at least when stated with the lovely implication that doing so is somehow weird or perverted, survive the objection "but why is it magically okay when the GM does it?" In retrospect, this was not the wise policy we thought it was!
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Jul 19, 2019 15:02
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Halloween Jack posted:When I was in my late teens/college age, groups I played with often had a policy against playing the opposite gender. This was never enforced when women joined the group, and was entirely because of not wanting to confront That Guy about his one-note, misogynistic portrayals of women. Severing relationships with people possessed of lousy views rather than pushing them in the right direction a try is an internet thing. Especially at that age people are still plastic about how they interact with people and can change. If he didn't change, and you moved on, there's no reason to kick yourself for trying.
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Jul 22, 2019 19:39
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Severing from people with really poo poo views and/or who actually make people in your group uncomfortable on a regular basis isn't just an internet thing. In fact my life got measurably better when I stopped subjecting myself to people who constantly made me feel bad or violated my boundaries, and having the back of someone in that position is like, the bare minimum action of a self-identified ally. All you teach someone when you tolerate that poo poo is that there is no consequence for behaving that way.
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Jul 22, 2019 19:50
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Reene posted:All you teach someone when you tolerate that poo poo is that there is no consequence for behaving that way. That's important to bear in mind, but not itself a reason to end engagement if the nonsense won't be tolerated. Dedicated shitheads who are a lost cause? Of course. There's no reason to go through the hassle beyond the satisfaction of having them sever when their nonsense gets consistently called out. But for the less dedicated there's probably no faster route back to reasonableness than a firm caution from someone they respect, and who they feel respects them. There's absolutely no requirement to engage. No doubt your decision to sever made sense based on what you faced. I do question the rationalization about severing being a "consequence". For it to be a consequence for them, it has to be a relationship they really valued, which usually involves mutual respect back and forth i.e. the type of relationship where they might be pushed out of their terrible views. Otherwise, they'll probably rationalize the severing as you being brainwashed by whatever "radical" group they don't like. To be clear, that's not a reason not to sever - just that it doesn't teach them anything unless there was the potential there to teach them something, as circular as that sounds.
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Jul 22, 2019 20:43
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It really does wonders for your well-being when you remove someone who is the equivalent of a splinter from your life. I don't think I even realized that it was an option until my 30s though.
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Jul 22, 2019 20:45
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Maneck posted:That's important to bear in mind, but not itself a reason to end engagement if the nonsense won't be tolerated. Keeping someone awful around teaches everyone else that you care more about having that awful person around than you do about how they treat people.
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Jul 22, 2019 20:53
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Mors Rattus posted:Keeping someone awful around teaches everyone else that you care more about having that awful person around than you do about how they treat people. This is the other half, yes. My life and safety are not chips you get to barter away in return for someone's teachable moment. You're free to try telling them to cut it out first - though depending on what is being said or done I don't think that's remotely enough - but you need to do that on your own time and be willing to enforce real, tangible social consequences for the sake of other peoples' safety if nothing else. Fascists and other kinds of predators are not merely annoying or smelly or awkward. They are dangerous. Tolerating them on the off chance they'll figure out fascism and bigotry is bad, or coddling them and making excuses for them that enable them to keep behaving that way, is actively and directly dangerous for people in the groups they target.
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Jul 22, 2019 21:13
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Reene posted:This is the other half, yes. My life and safety are not chips you get to barter away in return for someone's teachable moment. You're free to try telling them to cut it out first - though depending on what is being said or done I don't think that's remotely enough - but you need to do that on your own time and be willing to enforce real, tangible social consequences for the sake of other peoples' safety if nothing else. I would also like to point out that publically calling these people out in the loudest, most critical and aggressive way you're comfortable with is often a great way to make new friends who don't suck! So it's win-win. Also, if people are terrified of loving up and doing a fascism because then they can't play with their dolls at the game store anymore, they're less likely to engage in fascism and who known - it might CHANGE them. I don't know though, I'm not a scientist and I don't understand chud brains. I say go hard and go mean. It's the most compassionate choice.
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Jul 22, 2019 21:34
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Mors Rattus posted:Keeping someone awful around teaches everyone else that you care more about having that awful person around than you do about how they treat people. Fair, as is determining such people a lost cause and moving on. Reene posted:Fascists and other kinds of predators are not merely annoying or smelly or awkward. They are dangerous. Tolerating them on the off chance they'll figure out fascism and bigotry is bad, or coddling them and making excuses for them that enable them to keep behaving that way, is actively and directly dangerous for people in the groups they target. No one outside of mental health professionals should be dealing with predators. The only legal way to reduce the number of fascists is to convince fascists to change. That doesn't mean anyone is obliged to do it, or that everyone should do it. It's never okay to excuse fascist attitudes or behaviours, and unless someone is willing to be persistent in calling it out, then absolutely must sever because otherwise they are tolerating fascism.
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Jul 22, 2019 21:51
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Eh, deplatforming and other antifa tactics are a much more effective than trying to reform individual fascists. If you want to reach people, the only safe way to do it is before they get to that point.
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Jul 22, 2019 21:56
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If some toxic person walks into my life I haven't any issue with nope-ing them back out of it. On the other hand, when they're already involved before things become a problem trying to push back first is an understandable response. The main thing is folks being aware that they CAN just sever like that; even with friends and family there's a limit to how much you might feel obligated to put up with their poo poo and strangers have no "let's give him a chance to change" threshold if things are actually bad (a more typical social mismatch in a newcomer is different of course, but that's not the issue here). Also when dealing with one member of a larger group being aware of how response to that person can affect the group as a whole, and dealing with it accordingly.
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Jul 22, 2019 23:10
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Maneck posted:The only legal way to reduce the number of fascists is to convince fascists to change. You know what encourages people to change? Harsh social consequences for lovely behavior. You know why so many lovely people are emboldened these days? Here's a hint, it's not because they haven't yet been sufficiently educated that being a bigot is actually uncool.
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Jul 23, 2019 02:31
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Yeah the thing people (deliberately, to some extent) ignore is: The way most of these guys stop being the fash is to stop heiling at the game table, apologize if they were lovely to people, and then go do something else. You CAN stop, though there will likely be long term social consequences proportionate to how hard you were heiling.
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Jul 23, 2019 02:32
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