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The Gatewatch needs to stop grabbing members from the CW casting agency. Everyone is way too white, way too young looking, and way too pretty.
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Oct 29, 2019 23:16
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dwarf74 posted:There's a key context here, and that's that Gygax didn't think highly of "lawful good". In fact, his protagonists are all Neutral in the "both law and chaos are actually bad" varieties. In the context of this quotation he's explaining why Paladins 'aren't stupid' and thus know enough to commit massacres. He's pretty clearly stating that Chivington's policy is rational, even if he personally doesn't play those characters? He calls Chivington's observation 'an observable fact.' That's what I'm pointing to.
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Oct 29, 2019 23:19
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dwarf74 posted:There's a key context here, and that's that Gygax didn't think highly of "lawful good". In fact, his protagonists are all Neutral in the "both law and chaos are actually bad" varieties. Yeah Gygax felt that "what is lawful" and "what is good" was from the character's god or setting's perspective and not at all from some real-world player consensus perspective. He said so explicitly IIRC, when talking about an arthurian knight, to be "lawful good" could totally include doing something we'd find repellent because of what chivalric knighthood rules demanded of them. I think he felt that trying to evaluate "good" from a real-world perspective was obviously impractical and stupid, because different people clearly disagree on what is good and bad anyway. Part of the failing here is that Gygax thought this was obvious and anyone who thought differently about it was stupid.
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Oct 29, 2019 23:20
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Sailor Viy posted:I gotta say that while I love Kamigawa, I don't know about holding it up as an example of deep cultural sensitivity. Yes it was unusual and certainly inspired by Shinto mythology. But the whole plot point of "the kami are going to war against the humans and demi-humans" seems like something imposed from the POV of western high fantasy traditions. I'm not an expert but I don't think Shinto has any conception of "the spirits" as a united political faction. Nor would they really recognise the distinction whereby, for example, the Kitsune are *not* spirits, they're just literally people with fox heads, and therefore fight on the side of the humans. The spirits aren't a unified faction, though, and it's not even really a war from most of their perspectives. The war is kicked off when the emperor of the main human nation decided to rip out a chunk of the spirit of basically the entire plane and the resulting imbalance is driving an increasing portion of the spirit populace mad, but a decent number of the stronger spirits are running their own plots to enhance their personal power at the expense of the bigger picture. The kitsune are mostly furry humans though, I admit, though they aren't exactly on the humans' side either- they're their own faction and mostly just help the princess because of personal connections and because she's the best chance for ending the conflict.
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Oct 29, 2019 23:25
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I mean, D&D has always been Gygax's treatise of objectivism in three parts (with goblins). It's not at all surprising that he believed the concept of what is Objectively Right could be arrived at rationally.
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Oct 29, 2019 23:36
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Zurui posted:I mean, D&D has always been Gygax's treatise of objectivism in three parts (with goblins). It's not at all surprising that he believed the concept of what is Objectively Right could be arrived at rationally. He didn't, though; he believed the opposite, that it'd be so difficult for anyone to agree on what was Objectively Right that it's stupid to think D&D characters with Lawful or Good as alignments should be judged based on any objective standard. Instead they should be judged based on the attitudes of what is right that prevail in their particular setting and genre. That's a pragmatic approach, albeit one that he utterly failed to lay out in the rules; and then you know, there's the whole thing where kinda thank goodness for that, because his ideas of what things in the Real World are right/wrong were pretty problematic! e. One of the things I'm pretty convinced of about Gygax is that he wasn't a pure objectivist, he had a mishmash of incompatible and not well thought out beliefs that he did not particularly care to examine or try to reconcile. Perhaps because, as previously mentioned, he was such an alcoholic that he used to give alcohol to his underage son whenever they were together in order to cope. That article his son wrote about him paints a pretty gruesome picture.
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Oct 29, 2019 23:44
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Terrible Opinions posted:The Gatewatch needs to stop grabbing members from the CW casting agency. Everyone is way too white, way too young looking, and way too pretty. Mad TV had a skit about this.
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Oct 29, 2019 23:48
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I’m still hung up on ‘objective fact’ there even if he was a moral relativist about D&D. He’s not arguing from the perspective ‘this is what makes sense to them’ as regards that particular quotation from Chivington, he’s arguing that it’s clearly true that the children of your enemies are themselves a threat and rationally you shouldn’t be ‘stupid’ and let them live.
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Oct 29, 2019 23:50
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Joe Slowboat posted:I’m still hung up on ‘objective fact’ there even if he was a moral relativist about D&D. He’s not arguing from the perspective ‘this is what makes sense to them’ as regards that particular quotation from Chivington, he’s arguing that it’s clearly true that the children of your enemies are themselves a threat and rationally you shouldn’t be ‘stupid’ and let them live. Playing in Gary's first edition game: Player: "I apply poison to my weapon." DM: "In full view of the town guards? That's an inherent evil action per the written rules on poison! They will immediately rush to get more guards, again, per the poison rules." Player: "I patiently explain that the poison is for the children of my enemies." DM: "Right, okay, nevermind. The guards are impressed with your rational goodness."
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Oct 29, 2019 23:56
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I'm struggling to find the article I read (I think) last year, written by or heavily sourced from one of his sons (can't remember which) that went into detail about how that son grew up, binging on coke and beer with his dad, and the total kind of depravity and hosed-up way that turned out. My memory sucks so I don't recall where the article appeared and google is failing me.
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Oct 29, 2019 23:59
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Pretty sure it was Luke Gygax who wrote it
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Oct 30, 2019 00:02
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The only copy I was able to turn up was a copypaste on the dreadful Your Dungeon Is Suck sitequote:Ernest G. Gygax, Jr. on Facebook permalink
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Oct 30, 2019 00:14
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Ahh, facebook! No wonder I wasn't finding it. Thanks, that's the juicy stuff there.
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Oct 30, 2019 00:15
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Western fantasy also really loves potatoes.
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Oct 30, 2019 00:19
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MtG needs more PoC, more ugly people,and more old people. Both as distinct groups and mixes of any three of the group.
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Oct 30, 2019 00:21
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Joe Slowboat posted:He's pretty clearly stating that Chivington's policy is rational, even if he personally doesn't play those characters? I have no insight into Gygax’s beliefs, but a rational policy is not necessarily a moral one.
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Oct 30, 2019 13:40
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Subjunctive posted:I have no insight into Gygax’s beliefs, but a rational policy is not necessarily a moral one. please do tell us more about the rationality of genocide e: more generally I am completely uninterested in hearing defenses of Gary Gygax, comma, the guy who explicitly based liches and their phylacteries on anti-Semitic portrayal of Jewish tefillin.
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Oct 30, 2019 13:47
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Mors Rattus posted:please do tell us more about the rationality of genocide I did not say that genocide was rational, as you will be able to tell by reading the words in the post. I said that something can be deemed rational without that necessarily being an endorsement of that thing as morally good. Please read and post better.
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Oct 30, 2019 13:59
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Subjunctive posted:I did not say that genocide was rational, as you will be able to tell by reading the words in the post. I said that something can be deemed rational without that necessarily being an endorsement of that thing as morally good. Please read and post better. okay but the context of the thing you're talking about is he's talking about genocide
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Oct 30, 2019 14:08
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Mors Rattus posted:okay but the context of the thing you're talking about is he's talking about genocide Yes, and I edited my quote down to the thing I was actually talking about, and explicitly distanced it from Gygax’s specific beliefs. Whether he’s talking about genocide or fashion doesn’t change whether rationality implies morality or not, and the latter is what I quoted and explicitly responded to. It also doesn’t matter that I think genocide is neither moral nor rational, so I didn’t talk about that either. I’m sorry that I made a different post in your mind. I hope there weren’t too many typos.
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Oct 30, 2019 14:28
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hi i'm the guy that walks into a conversation about a dude defending genocide as rational to explain how a thing can be rational but totally I am not talking about the actual topic of conversation, I am just talking about rationality in the abstract, unrelated to anything actually being talked about or any topic currently under consideration
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Oct 30, 2019 14:32
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Subjunctive posted:Yes, and I edited my quote down to the thing I was actually talking about, and explicitly distanced it from Gygax’s specific beliefs. Whether he’s talking about genocide or fashion doesn’t change whether rationality implies morality or not, and the latter is what I quoted and explicitly responded to. It also doesn’t matter that I think genocide is neither moral nor rational, so I didn’t talk about that either. Genuine question: what was the point of your post then? I was specifically addressing the genocide part of this equation, which is a bit different from ‘sometimes rational self-interest says be a dick.’ Nobody was arguing, Kantlike, for an identity between the rational and the moral. Just that framing the logic of genocide as common sense and rational behavior is hosed.
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Oct 30, 2019 14:34
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LOL just LOL at doing the devil's advocate/Just Asking Questions/"Well, actually" dance in defense of genocide.
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Oct 30, 2019 14:43
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We had a big discussion in Discord. I should have worded this differently and it was not intended to be a dig at Mors. In my mind, I was differentiating between "people who have a vested interest" and "people on the internet who have opinions", not calling Mors' faith into question. I see now how the latter would be the predominant interpretation. Apologies. I have been schooled. Flail Snail fucked around with this message at 15:30 on Oct 30, 2019 |
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Oct 30, 2019 14:54
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Flail Snail posted:I looked into this the first time I heard it a while back. Actual real Jewish people say that's full of poo poo. I am an actual real Jewish person, and I'm pretty sure that its explicit description the first time it came up was, indeed, a small box containing scripture. Phylactery is a Greek word - but also one that is historically used to refer to tefillin, particularly by non-Jews. e: specifically, the reason it's used to refer to tefillin is that the Gospel of Matthew, written in Greek, uses the word to refer to tefillin. e2: like, if the dude wanted to use the word "reliquary" or "amulet" or "periapt" he would've. Dude was intimately familiar with his Bible. Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 15:12 on Oct 30, 2019 |
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Oct 30, 2019 15:06
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Mors Rattus posted:I am an actual real Jewish person, and I'm pretty sure that its explicit description the first time it came up was, indeed, a small box containing scripture. I'm bored at work, so here's a quick history dive on liches and phylacteries. I don't claim this is exhaustive, but it might be somewhat relevant. The first mention of liches as "undead wizards," at least according to Wikipedia, is the OD&D Greyhawk booklet--which says nothing about phylacteries at all. Not explicitly in relation to liches, but the Glossary in the AD&D 1e DMG describes a phylactery as "An arm wrapping with a container holding religious writings, thus a form of amulet or charm." So yeah, pretty clearly referencing at least shel ya, and every single phylactery-type magic item describes its user as a cleric (even though there's nothing I can find specifically saying that they're cleric-only magic items), making the religious element even clearer. Of the three example phylacteries in the magic item section, one is a cursed phylactery of monstrous attention, the other two are beneficial. In the 1e Monster Manual, liches "retains [their inhuman, undead] status by certain conjurations, enchantments, and a phylactery," which is not otherwise defined here, but we can assume it's using the same definition as the DMG glossary. It's not until the 2e Monstrous Manual, at least as far as core-book material, that we get the full-on experience of "if you don't destroy the lich's phylactery after you kill it, it's not really dead," which is pretty clearly inspired by the myths of Koschei the Deathless. Here the lich entry explicitly says a lich's phylactery can be any item at all, as long as it's ornate and valuable. The 2e DMG, meanwhile, still has the same three magical phylacteries in its magic item section, but omits any description of what a phylactery actually is. So, TL;DR, yeah, it definitely seems like around AD&D 1e a phylactery was meant to be a specific reference to tefillin, but somewhere around 2e, whether deliberately on the part of the writers or just by virtue of omitting the glossary, it seems to have been decoupled from its Jewish roots.
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Oct 30, 2019 15:36
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My main argument is basically Gary Gygax didn't use big words randomly. The word phylactery is rare - Jews never use it within ourselves. We use tefillin. It's a word used pretty much exclusively by Christians, and before D&D pretty much exclusively in reference to tefillin, because of the aforementioned use in a Greek-language gospel. Gary Gygax was an active Christian who was obsessed with big words that made him sound smart, to the degree that he cared about the differences between a glaive and guisarme. If he wanted to use the word periapt, the word talisman, the word reliquary, the word amulet - anything but this word that was in exclusive use for tefillin and largely limited to his religious community - he would've.
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Oct 30, 2019 15:44
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Mors Rattus posted:My main argument is basically Gary Gygax didn't use big words randomly. The word phylactery is rare - Jews never use it within ourselves. We use tefillin. It's a word used pretty much exclusively by Christians, and before D&D pretty much exclusively in reference to tefillin, because of the aforementioned use in a Greek-language gospel. Gary Gygax was an active Christian who was obsessed with big words that made him sound smart, to the degree that he cared about the differences between a glaive and guisarme. If he wanted to use the word periapt, the word talisman, the word reliquary, the word amulet - anything but this word that was in exclusive use for tefillin and largely limited to his religious community - he would've. You're absolutely right, and I think the most telling evidence of that is that he did also use all of those other words, and still kept phylacteries around. I have no idea whether the lich's version or the magic-item-for-PCs version came first (there are no magic phylacteries in OD&D Book II: Monsters and Treasure), but as of AD&D 1st Edition the term is clearly referring to tefillin.
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Oct 30, 2019 15:51
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GimpInBlack posted:So, TL;DR, yeah, it definitely seems like around AD&D 1e a phylactery was meant to be a specific reference to tefillin, but somewhere around 2e, whether deliberately on the part of the writers or just by virtue of omitting the glossary, it seems to have been decoupled from its Jewish roots. I wouldn't call it decoupled, as its still using the jargon of a Jewish faith-object to epitomize an evil pervision of death. Feels more like the 'Beaner is the name of people who live on the giant beanstalk' thing- the setting usage is still using a signifier that drags more subconscious references into it.
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Oct 30, 2019 15:52
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Is it more that he thought that using Jewish religious traditions would make things seem more exotic that the normal Christian stuff he was more familiar with?
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Oct 30, 2019 15:55
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Lord_Hambrose posted:Is it more that he thought that using Jewish religious traditions would make things seem more exotic that the normal Christian stuff he was more familiar with? That would also be bad. "Jews aren't evil death dodgers exactly but they sure are exotic and mystical!"
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Oct 30, 2019 16:03
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GimpInBlack posted:It's not until the 2e Monstrous Manual, at least as far as core-book material, that we get the full-on experience of "if you don't destroy the lich's phylactery after you kill it, it's not really dead," which is pretty clearly inspired by the myths of Koschei the Deathless. I'm pretty sure that was first used in Tomb of Horrors, back in 1975.
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Oct 30, 2019 16:09
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Lord_Hambrose posted:Is it more that he thought that using Jewish religious traditions would make things seem more exotic that the normal Christian stuff he was more familiar with? Cultural appropriation? 100%, see also Golems, the incorporation of Hindu gods into monster manuals, etc. But I don't think we can draw a straight line from "Gygax used a term that was used regarding tefillin, and repurposed it as a soul repository for ancient dead wizards, and therefore intended liches to be Jewish." That seems like a few big steps to me when we know full well that Gygax just grabbed a bunch of fantastical-sounding crap he thought was neat, peeled it out of its cultural context, and just jammed it into Greyhawk. It's by no means admirable, but I think it's another check in the "cultural appropriation by a clueless white christian guy" box rather than a deliberately antisemitic slur. I could be wrong, tho! theironjef posted:That would also be bad. "Jews aren't evil death dodgers exactly but they sure are exotic and mystical!"
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Oct 30, 2019 16:14
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Mors Rattus posted:I am an actual real Jewish person, and I'm pretty sure that its explicit description the first time it came up was, indeed, a small box containing scripture. Well, yes and no, but mostly kinda yes. The first time the lich's phylactery is mentioned, in the Monster Manual, it's not given any description at all. However, three phylacteries appear among the magic items in the Dungeon Master's Guide, and they are described as "arm wrapping"s (well, technically only one was explicitly described, but they were supposed to be indistinguishable, so presumably that description applied to all of them). Which, yeah, does suggest that he was thinking of tefillin when he used the word "phylactery", and didn't mean to use the word in the generic sense of any magical charm. You know, it had never actually occurred to me before that referring to the lich as using a phylactery could come across as anti-Semitic, but now that you bring it up it's pretty obvious. I mean, if it wasn't intended that way, it's at best tone-deaf. I really should have seen that before; I guess I'm not as sensitive to this sort of thing as I should be. Cessna posted:I'm pretty sure that was first used in Tomb of Horrors, back in 1975. Tomb of Horrors didn't have a lich in it. It had a fake lich that was actually a zombie, and it had Acererak, who was a demi-lich. Neither had a phylactery. e: Edited to correct a reference to "a tefillin, since tefillin is plural. Oops. Jerik fucked around with this message at 16:52 on Oct 30, 2019 |
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Oct 30, 2019 16:42
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theironjef posted:That would also be bad. "Jews aren't evil death dodgers exactly but they sure are exotic and mystical!" Yeah, yikes...
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Oct 30, 2019 16:42
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Jerik posted:I mean, if it wasn't intended that way, it's at best tone-deaf. It was made by a bunch of white midwestern nerds in the 70's for other white midwestern nerds in the 70's.
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Oct 30, 2019 16:55
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I'm not inclined to be charitable towards Gary Gygax, Genocide Defender, myself.
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Oct 30, 2019 16:56
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I feel like a bad nerd for asking this, but what's the difference between a lich and a demilich?
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Oct 30, 2019 16:57
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Zurui posted:I feel like a bad nerd for asking this, but what's the difference between a lich and a demilich? About 50% I imagine
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Oct 30, 2019 16:58
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It seems incredibly consistent with D&D that an evil wizard's evil magic would involve using a defiled holy thing. I just don't read liches as attempted anti-semitism even if they are (mis)using the concept of tefillin. E: A demilich is powerful enough that it no longer needs as much of its corporeal body. So it's like a pile of really mean magical bones.
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Oct 30, 2019 17:06
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