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Whoa whoa whoa you don't reference multiple passages at once, that's crazy. Every individual snippet in isolation is the way to truly understand the word of god.
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# ? Oct 25, 2020 15:29 |
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# ? May 26, 2024 23:11 |
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I mean another possible humorous interpretation would be is that Saul is just incredibly annoying. The next few verses have Peter going around and doing basically the same thing in slightly different Jewish communities, but everyone likes him and no attempted murder is to be had.
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# ? Oct 25, 2020 15:32 |
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Dragonlance is really just Tolkien by way of Midwestern Mormons. It might not be overtly Mormon, say to the degree of the original Battlestar Galactica was, but it is definitely informed by it and the history of Krynn shares some similarities to the Book of Mormon. It's not a 1 for 1 or something on par with Narnia but it's an undeniable aspect of the setting.
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# ? Oct 25, 2020 18:09 |
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LatwPIAT posted:I suspect they take literally anything put in the antagonistic position in the Bible and make it evil-aligned. Some Hellenistic Jews throwing stones at some righteous person or whatever? Now there's a card called Hellenistic Jews that's evil-aligned.
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# ? Oct 25, 2020 18:13 |
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I know most of them live in Israel, but it must suck for any Samaritan who lives in Christian influenced parts of the world where they are exclusively known for the saying.
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# ? Oct 25, 2020 18:18 |
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Halloween Jack posted:This was featured in the first issue of Inquest I ever bought. I've never been able to find a scan of it. I really regret tossing my Inquest magazines lo those many years ago. I bought an issue that would have been one of the earlier issues I would have had at the nerd tat store yesterday and while it was pretty dumb, it was still fun to look through something I loved so much as a kid.
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# ? Oct 25, 2020 22:16 |
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There's someone in the MTG thread who has been scanning old gaming magazines for archival. You could probably ask there.
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# ? Oct 25, 2020 22:22 |
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well poo poo
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# ? Oct 25, 2020 22:39 |
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Terrible Opinions posted:I mean another possible humorous interpretation would be is that Saul is just incredibly annoying. The next few verses have Peter going around and doing basically the same thing in slightly different Jewish communities, but everyone likes him and no attempted murder is to be had. The idea that Paul (nee Saul) was a weirdo with gigantic hangups that he never got over is honestly pretty well represented in mainstream Christian thought.
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# ? Oct 26, 2020 01:06 |
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paradoxGentleman posted:Finally caught up with like a week's worth of discussion. On top of what some others have said, Tracy Hickman's religious convictions are also the reason Kender exist, to be an "acceptable" choice for the party thief outside of an evil game. There's also something uncomfortable about gully dwarves (which are traditionally noted as coming from the mixing of tinker gnomes and dwarves) being the mentally stunted, semi-feral creatures they are in relation to the historical (ie prior to 2013) attitude of Mormonism to miscegenation and interracial marriage, but it's not clear if that's intentional or not.
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# ? Oct 26, 2020 01:07 |
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Nuns with Guns posted:There's also something uncomfortable about gully dwarves (which are traditionally noted as coming from the mixing of tinker gnomes and dwarves) being the mentally stunted, semi-feral creatures they are in relation to the historical (ie prior to 2013) attitude of Mormonism to miscegenation and interracial marriage, but it's not clear if that's intentional or not. although this is ironically blunted by them being arguably the least annoying short people race in the game because the other options are particularly generic dwarves, self-gaslighting thieves, and assholes who make dangerous exploding machines all the time.
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# ? Oct 26, 2020 04:02 |
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Capfalcon posted:The idea that Paul (nee Saul) was a weirdo with gigantic hangups that he never got over is honestly pretty well represented in mainstream Christian thought.
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# ? Oct 26, 2020 06:40 |
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I'm not super familiar with the tenets of Mormonism but I don't understand how the kender constitute a good aligned alternative to the traditional rogue. Is it because they're not aware of what they do? Something about the intent behind the action, maybe?
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# ? Oct 26, 2020 07:15 |
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paradoxGentleman posted:I'm not super familiar with the tenets of Mormonism but I don't understand how the kender constitute a good aligned alternative to the traditional rogue. Is it because they're not aware of what they do? Something about the intent behind the action, maybe? I see the whole "Hickman's Mormonism inspired him to create Kender" but I never see any primary sources, so I chalk it up more to scuttlebutt than more blatant inferences such as Goldmoon's hair and skin color. Yes I know that Christianity says that theft is wrong, but in terms of sinning in fiction doesn't rate that much worse than other non-sexual crimes in Dragonlance and Mormon fiction to the point that they'd censor it like they do mentions of sex. It may very easily be just Hickman's personal reservations on the issue, religion or no. Like how some people may view drug-dealing as a greater evil than murder and theft, or infidelity to be as bad as murder, and some may be less willing to occupy the headspace of such a character in an elfgame. Speaking of which, Dragonlance is pretty raunchy as far as Mormon-influenced fiction goes, so I take it that Hickman was more candid than other LDS authors out there. Libertad! fucked around with this message at 09:24 on Oct 26, 2020 |
# ? Oct 26, 2020 09:21 |
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Libertad! posted:I see the whole "Hickman's Mormonism inspired him to create Kender" but I never see any primary sources, so I chalk it up more to scuttlebutt than more blatant inferences such as Goldmoon's hair and skin color. Yes I know that Christianity says that theft is wrong, but in terms of sinning in fiction doesn't rate that much worse than other non-sexual crimes in Dragonlance and Mormon fiction to the point that they'd censor it like they do mentions of sex. It may very easily be just Hickman's personal reservations on the issue, religion or no. Like how some people may view drug-dealing as a greater evil than murder and theft, or infidelity to be as bad as murder, and some may be less willing to occupy the headspace of such a character in an elfgame. I wouldn't know Mormon theology if I fell over it - but Kender more strike me as a case of bad RP sucking than anything specifically to do with the Mormons. They're absolutely tailor made for that jerk who thinks that it's funny to steal from the party to be given excuses for doing so - and to such a precise level that I don't think there can be a second motivation.
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# ? Oct 26, 2020 11:02 |
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neonchameleon posted:I wouldn't know Mormon theology if I fell over it - but Kender more strike me as a case of bad RP sucking than anything specifically to do with the Mormons. They're absolutely tailor made for that jerk who thinks that it's funny to steal from the party to be given excuses for doing so - and to such a precise level that I don't think there can be a second motivation.
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# ? Oct 26, 2020 11:39 |
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Libertad! posted:I see the whole "Hickman's Mormonism inspired him to create Kender" but I never see any primary sources, so I chalk it up more to scuttlebutt than more blatant inferences such as Goldmoon's hair and skin color. Yes I know that Christianity says that theft is wrong, but in terms of sinning in fiction doesn't rate that much worse than other non-sexual crimes in Dragonlance and Mormon fiction to the point that they'd censor it like they do mentions of sex. It may very easily be just Hickman's personal reservations on the issue, religion or no. Like how some people may view drug-dealing as a greater evil than murder and theft, or infidelity to be as bad as murder, and some may be less willing to occupy the headspace of such a character in an elfgame. You can find the explanation with citations on the Kender's Wikipedia page: quote:The original concept of the kender held that they were "savage, warrior children, ever curious, ever alert."[3] This concept was altered dramatically when Janet Pack became involved in dramatic readings of the works, as Pack's personal characteristics had a strong impact on how those involved in the process viewed the kender. According to Jeff Grubb, she, "and as a result all kender since her, was cute. Extremely cute. Sweetly, lovably, frustratingly cute.... And it's hard, after seeing Janet play Tas, to imagine them any other way."[3] Two of the other key characteristics of kender—their curiosity and kleptomania—were introduced by Hickman.[4][8] Hickman was uncomfortable with the notion of a "race of thieves" in his games, but still wanted the skills typically associated with thieves, so he added their "innocent tendency to 'borrow' things for indeterminate periods of time."[3] I suppose it doesn't explicitly say it was due to his faith, like he might have objected to stereotyping an entire race as thieves or been uncomfortable on other grounds? But obviously in the long run they're still a race of thieves, just ones who lack any malicious or wicked intent in constantly pocketing objects. So it looks like the act of intentional theft itself was what bothered him, even though he wanted the thieving skills available in the game. Nuns with Guns fucked around with this message at 12:09 on Oct 26, 2020 |
# ? Oct 26, 2020 12:04 |
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ITT more thought being put into kender than was ever by their creators
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# ? Oct 26, 2020 12:43 |
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Sodomy Hussein posted:ITT more thought being put into kender than was ever by their creators Right? I always wonder about fiction settings that grow out of tabletop RPGs (Dragonlance, obviously, but also things like Leviathan's Wake, etc.), because entire empires are created out of one off-the-cuff comment about why somebody's character isn't wearing pants.
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# ? Oct 26, 2020 15:12 |
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Other races could take the thief class in Dragonlance, right? No one was forcing them to create a race that made sense as thieves?
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# ? Oct 26, 2020 15:13 |
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theironjef posted:Other races could take the thief class in Dragonlance, right? No one was forcing them to create a race that made sense as thieves? Yet another reason why racial stat adjustments are an awful idea: they gave us kender
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# ? Oct 26, 2020 15:21 |
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As with many things, the best version of "race" (god I loving hate using that word) was in house-ruled DTAS 4e so far as D&D goes because with the ability score bullshit management gone, all it meant was that you got a power that was trying to be evocative of your background. Elves are good shots so they get a bonus to accuracy, dwarves are hardy so they can use healing surges easier, eladrin are weird so they can teleport a little bit kind of like cats, etc. The implementation wasn't always great and there are some groaners in there, and this specifies having already house-ruled the game, but the foundations are there for something cool and interesting : if we must have mechanical differentiation of various fantasy species, then it being cool powers rather than "better at lifting heavy things and also ugly" is a better choice.
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# ? Oct 26, 2020 15:31 |
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theironjef posted:Other races could take the thief class in Dragonlance, right? No one was forcing them to create a race that made sense as thieves? You're coming at this backwards, I think. The issue as I understand it was that thieves were seen as a pretty necessary part of an adventuring party, and Hickman was uncomfortable with what he perceived as the game saying "one of you has to play an explicit criminal in order to have the skills the party needs to survive the dungeon," and so created kender as a way for characters to have the necessary thief skills without having to be explicit criminals.
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# ? Oct 26, 2020 16:01 |
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I also thought Kender were an effort to something with the "short sub-race of inoffensive yet dextrous people" archetype that weren't just Hobbits with the serial numbers filed off. A lot of Dragonlance's distinctive features were efforts to add a little spin to standard D&D setting elements. Like having the magic be tied to the moons (and to alignment), or having the currency be "steel pieces" and not "gold pieces", or not having any orcs in the setting (they were replaced by Draconians).
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# ? Oct 26, 2020 17:05 |
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Warthur posted:Apparently the "We will approve no drafts" thing - they quote exact wording in the complaint - was made in a group call which had PRH representatives attending, so there's a third party witness involved too. I feel like the only remotely plausible interpretation of this other than WotC is about to get lawfucked is if the conversation went something like: WotC Lawyer: we find your [really offensive in a modern context] idea really problematic and you need to rewrite the draft H&W: that idea is too core to the entire outline you already approved and it's equivalent to rejecting the entire idea, we're happy to tweak bits but we won't change the core story that you already approved and we wrote XX thousand words for WotC: in that case we will approve no further drafts I'll be curious to see what WotC comes back with because if the H&W presentation is correct then it's a really flagrant breach of contract while trying to be cute about it in ways judges really don't appreciate.
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# ? Oct 26, 2020 17:51 |
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It'll be a month or three before we see any Answer filed, though.
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# ? Oct 26, 2020 17:59 |
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Notahippie posted:I feel like the only remotely plausible interpretation of this other than WotC is about to get lawfucked is if the conversation went something like: It'd certainly raise the questions of "Why wasn't this listed among the previous requested changes?", and "Why drop this on Weis and Hickman in the middle of a meeting with PRH, rather than using the agreed processfor raising this sort of issue?", but I think it'd at least be a case where Wizards' backs weren't completely up against the wall.
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# ? Oct 26, 2020 18:24 |
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Mors Rattus posted:It'll be a month or three before we see any Answer filed, though. WotC actually has thirty days since the initial filing to respond because it a summons to court was included, iirc. We’ll be seeing it soonish
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# ? Oct 26, 2020 18:59 |
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Nuns with Guns posted:You can find the explanation with citations on the Kender's Wikipedia page: Yeah, while I think that the creator's faith potentially informed the creation of Kender in a subtextual way, the Wikipedia article makes it sound like it was much more akin to how writers used to flesh out the Star Wars Expanded Universe back in the 90s: Janet Pack played a character in their home game that everyone liked, so they made an entire race that was nothing but that character (And gave absolutely no consideration as to how that race would look in practical play outside their original group!).
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# ? Oct 26, 2020 19:33 |
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Nuns with Guns posted:I suppose it doesn't explicitly say it was due to his faith, like he might have objected to stereotyping an entire race as thieves or been uncomfortable on other grounds? But obviously in the long run they're still a race of thieves, just ones who lack any malicious or wicked intent in constantly pocketing objects. So it looks like the act of intentional theft itself was what bothered him, even though he wanted the thieving skills available in the game. If Kender have no concept of theft or of taking property as bad, why would they learn thief skills like hiding and sneaking?
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# ? Oct 26, 2020 20:19 |
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Because they're small in a big world and people don't like them because of the aforementioned thieving. The real question is why would they learn how to find and disarm traps.
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# ? Oct 26, 2020 20:21 |
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thetoughestbean posted:WotC actually has thirty days since the initial filing to respond because it a summons to court was included, iirc. We’ll be seeing it soonish I’d guess we see a motion to extend first, but I work for an insurance company’s legal section so I may have a skewed view of how often people go with those. I know the lawyers here file them every dang case, but that may be more that we don’t expect clients to necessarily get back to us immediately.
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# ? Oct 26, 2020 20:37 |
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Kwyndig posted:Because they're small in a big world and people don't like them because of the aforementioned thieving. The real question is why would they learn how to find and disarm traps.
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# ? Oct 26, 2020 20:44 |
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"Oops." "Got one."
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# ? Oct 26, 2020 21:25 |
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:Dragonlance is really just Tolkien by way of Midwestern Mormons. It might not be overtly Mormon, say to the degree of the original Battlestar Galactica was, but it is definitely informed by it and the history of Krynn shares some similarities to the Book of Mormon. It's not a 1 for 1 or something on par with Narnia but it's an undeniable aspect of the setting. Aside from Kendar, Dragonlance is very overtly Mormon. The first book of the Chronicles trilogy was sort of a D&D retelling of the fall of Christ's Real Church (referred to by Mormons as The Great Apostasy) and the restoration by Joseph Smith. So you have: Great Apostasy -> Great Cataclysm Platinum Disks of Mishakal -> Gold Plates Riverwind/Goldmoon -> Joseph Smith Mishakal visiting Goldmoon telling here where to get platinum disks -> Angel Moroni visiting Joseph Smith and telling him where to find gold plates King Priest of Ishtar -> corrupt Catholic Church
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# ? Oct 26, 2020 21:33 |
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Halloween Jack posted:You answered your own question! If I knew there were kender around, I'd put some traps out. And the only chance a kender survives in a party I'm in is if we're using them to detect traps. If they spot the trap before triggering it that just means they are reusable.
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# ? Oct 26, 2020 23:13 |
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Kender: Nature's Hirelings
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# ? Oct 27, 2020 02:59 |
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FMguru posted:I also thought Kender were an effort to something with the "short sub-race of inoffensive yet dextrous people" archetype that weren't just Hobbits with the serial numbers filed off. That was a driving motivation, too, as outlined in the Wikipedia page. Hickman initially ran a series of adventures to explore and play with fantasy tropes, in which one of his friends played a halfling thief with a ring of invisibility, which was pure Hobbit energy. So they were considering various ways to make a non-Hobbit-y halfling but all of their suggestions still seemed to twig peoples' Hobbit sensors until the very unique uh... qualities of the Kender were cemented. KingKalamari posted:Yeah, while I think that the creator's faith potentially informed the creation of Kender in a subtextual way, the Wikipedia article makes it sound like it was much more akin to how writers used to flesh out the Star Wars Expanded Universe back in the 90s: Janet Pack played a character in their home game that everyone liked, so they made an entire race that was nothing but that character (And gave absolutely no consideration as to how that race would look in practical play outside their original group!). Even in other adventuring groups, a Kender in a group doesn't really play any less obnoxiously than the pathological stealer types you see across D&D games. At worst, they're easily distracted by shiny things and prone to other twee-but-grating quirks, but they won't knife you in the back or make off with the treasure and leave you to die. Like you say, they really are just an entire race of That Character, and it's a character everyone agrees nowadays is only juuust above a destructive munchkin or catpiss man at the table as far as attention grabby-ness and proclivity to unfunny antics. They're a race built on 3 jokes, which I guess is 2 (no more than 2) than the Gully Dwarves have. Nuns with Guns fucked around with this message at 03:10 on Oct 27, 2020 |
# ? Oct 27, 2020 03:08 |
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I understand your point and agree but want to add "qualities".
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# ? Oct 27, 2020 06:48 |
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# ? May 26, 2024 23:11 |
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Kwyndig posted:Because they're small in a big world and people don't like them because of the aforementioned thieving. The real question is why would they learn how to find and disarm traps. Because they have an obsession with getting in places, and culturally view locks and traps as just people making getting into their houses to visit more fun. I wish I was joking.
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# ? Oct 27, 2020 08:13 |