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KingKalamari posted:It kind of makes sense in context? It's basically supposed to be a "Conan with the serial numbers filed off" setting, so it's referencing the same Theosophist occult bullshit Howard was drawing upon for his Hyperborean stuff. O yeah, wasn't accusing them of it. It's less that I'm worried they're Nazis and more just continuing to be baffled by weird nerds not thinking through the implications of what they're writing. Yeah, sure you got there by a logical and innocent chain of logic, but at some point you should stop and have some meta-awareness about what it might look like to an outsider. Let's say I'm making a new logo for my grocery store. I'm particularly proud of my selection of produce and really want to emphasize that, so I want to have fruits and vegetables as part of my signage. All things being arbitrary, I pick two oranges and a cucumber because why not? I like those. And I'll put the cucumber in the center because it'll have natural symmetry and then I can have the oranges on the bottom surrounding the cucumber to give it some nice vertical movement. Perfectly sensible decisions, but everyone would wonder why my logo is a giant cock and balls when I had the option of picking literally anything else. Edit : What a weird snype.
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Oct 19, 2021 21:00
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Xiahou Dun posted:O yeah, wasn't accusing them of it. It's less that I'm worried they're Nazis and more just continuing to be baffled by weird nerds not thinking through the implications of what they're writing. Yeah, sure you got there by a logical and innocent chain of logic, but at some point you should stop and have some meta-awareness about what it might look like to an outsider. Sorry but that sounds like a pretty sweet logo.
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Oct 19, 2021 22:37
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Xiahou Dun posted:O yeah, wasn't accusing them of it. It's less that I'm worried they're Nazis and more just continuing to be baffled by weird nerds not thinking through the implications of what they're writing. Yeah, sure you got there by a logical and innocent chain of logic, but at some point you should stop and have some meta-awareness about what it might look like to an outsider.
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Oct 19, 2021 23:04
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Yes as I mentioned in the first post. I have one of their knives. Edit : notice how I didn’t actually say the association but you knew what I meant.
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Oct 19, 2021 23:08
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It might be because we've discussed it in this thread before.
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Oct 19, 2021 23:25
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neaden posted:Thule is a pretty big outdoor gear brand, if you google the word it’s pages of that before you see it in any other context. I think it’s negative association is a lot less common then you think. For most, yes. For those writing "Conan with the IP filed off," it is intended to evoke. Edit: not suggesting that the Sasquatch Game Studio folks are Nazis -- just that they should have reason to know. Eastmabl fucked around with this message at 23:48 on Oct 19, 2021 |
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Oct 19, 2021 23:45
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PoontifexMacksimus posted:This is not just not another "accept a mission in the tavern, go to the dungeon, walk from room to room clobbering the usual monsters" kind of adventure. Expect the unexpected. The adventure they're pitching is literally Mummy's Mask, Adventure Path #14. However, there are puzzles, social interactions, and monsters, which are all new to D&D.
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Oct 20, 2021 00:30
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gradenko_2000 posted:Does Chauntea do a monologue about why socialized healthcare is bad So it wasn't just an Honor Harrington thing then. For context, the big bads for 90% of that series are an evil conquering empire because they give people Universal Basic Income and the money just kind of...vanishes somewhere, so they have to spend trillions having a big space navy to conquer other planets to 'make the economy bigger' to continue to throw money into the bottomless pit of....people's bank accounts. If they don't the people will rise up except around book 9 or 10 when they actually do cut off the free money and the people don't rise up and in fact are extremely happy to work and cast off the chains of being welfare slaves. Also they don't have a good education system because they're far more interested in giving out participation trophies than actually TEACHING these kids, man! Also, having a fast metabolism means you can eat a hundred pancakes and drink thirty milkshakes and grind all of those carbohydrates into pure muscle at the gym, you basically never have to eat well or healthy so I can have funny scenes about musclegirl eating like goku and then going "tee hee, genetics!' as to why she's a jacked supersoldier. The space battles and war parts are very good. Kai Tave posted:I mean, large-value (six figure+) RPG kickstarters haven't only just come about, I think Mentzer's failure here has more to do with other factors than it just being the asking price. It's the same pitfall you see a lot of Kickstarter projects run into where someone looks at Kickstarter, goes "wow, a magic website where people give you all the money you want just for asking, how can I lose?" and proceed to immediately faceplant because they've done zero research, their project isn't enticing, and/or they've seriously overestimated their personal cachet. Given the pitch for Worlds of Empyria was "Frank Mentzer makes a generic D&D hexcrawl box set that looks utterly indistinguishable from a hundred other similar projects" I would say it's actually kind of impressive that it got the $60,000 in pledges it did before Mentzer pulled the plug in a huff, and that's before you factor in that Mentzer himself is a lovely creep that posts like the Comic Book Guy. I actually enjoyed his antics because they were completely outrageous, especially the whole "the fact that you are even asking me where the money is going is a BIG fuckup, you better apologize RIGHT NOW or I will put you in the campaign setting as a named monster and also I will make sure you are BANNED FOR LIFE from every convention and gaming store! You'll never roll 4d6 and drop the lowest in this town again!" attitude. The jessica price stuff was less good, thats creepy old man poo poo 101, but the "I am the sherriff of tabletop gaming", boy was a truly enjoyable spectacle. Especially the "yes, I did post those things, but it wasn't me, it was a nasty troll who got onto my computer!" defence. TheDiceMustRoll fucked around with this message at 02:41 on Oct 20, 2021 |
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Oct 20, 2021 02:36
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:The space battles and war parts are very good. Essential to reading David Webber is realizing that all of his characters are human shaped aliens with completely inhuman thought processes.
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Oct 20, 2021 02:46
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Ego Trip posted:Essential to reading David Webber is realizing that all of his characters are human shaped aliens with completely inhuman thought processes. I feel like his Safehold books are more readable because they're what he wanted to write in the first place; sailing ships fighting but also there's some sci-fi. Except instead of all the nonsense he had to make up to do Age of Sail but in space, he can just write about sailing ships.
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Oct 20, 2021 03:19
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Oh, don't get me wrong. I love me some Honorverse. It's not high art but I like it when the missiles go pew. But real people do not work that way.
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Oct 20, 2021 03:36
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Ego Trip posted:Essential to reading David Webber is realizing that all of his characters are human shaped aliens with completely inhuman thought processes. You don't think a commander stupid enough to realize he's been baited into a trap and then decide to engage in a battle and get thousands of men killed and trillions of dollars of hardware destroyed because he thinks women aren't capable of strategy, especially not the woman who has never lost a naval engagement in her life isn't how normal humans think?
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Oct 20, 2021 03:37
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:The space battles and war parts are very good. ...for the first, like, 6-10 books maybe, and then they just turn into people talking in conference rooms and the designated bad guys getting blown up by infinity missiles, sometimes literally without even describing the engagement and just jumping straight to more conference rooms with the good guys talking about the aftermath.
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Oct 20, 2021 04:45
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CitizenKeen posted:Ed Greenwood is the Tom Clancy of RPGs. That remark makes me remember this Simpsons bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h2gAN4kr1A And now I'm wondering who the Maya Angelou of RPGs is?
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Oct 20, 2021 05:06
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Nuns with Guns posted:And now I'm wondering who the Maya Angelou of RPGs is? Arivia.
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Oct 20, 2021 08:27
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Nuns with Guns posted:That remark makes me remember this Simpsons bit: Can someone decode this weird reference for people not from the US?
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Oct 20, 2021 08:33
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Mr.Misfit posted:Can someone decode this weird reference for people not from the US? the joke is that Tom Clancy's military fiction always has very detailed technical descriptions of warfighting hardware, so when Lenny comes up and asks a question about the B-2 bomber, the expectation is that Clancy is the one to answer the question ... that expectation is subverted by Lenny saying that he's actually asking Maya Angelou ... ... and subverted once more when Angelou actually has a germane response
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Oct 20, 2021 08:44
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Also to fully explain the joke at the end, Amy Tan's book The Joy Luck Club is absolutely about the mother-daughter bond, but a major theme of that book is characters being overly critical.
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Oct 20, 2021 09:59
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:Especially the "yes, I did post those things, but it wasn't me, it was a nasty troll who got onto my computer!" defence. So that's where Zak's roommate wound up, huh.
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Oct 20, 2021 14:47
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Ego Trip posted:Essential to reading David Webber is realizing that all of his characters are human shaped aliens with completely inhuman thought processes. I eventually stopped reading them because the main character was far too omni-competent, and especially because they talk so much about how hot she is but in an unconventional (Asian) way so she is bummed about it. Weird. Booked series peaked with Lt Stromboli in the first one. Bring that guy back.
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Oct 20, 2021 15:06
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Xiahou Dun posted:O yeah, wasn't accusing them of it. It's less that I'm worried they're Nazis and more just continuing to be baffled by weird nerds not thinking through the implications of what they're writing. Yeah, sure you got there by a logical and innocent chain of logic, but at some point you should stop and have some meta-awareness about what it might look like to an outsider. While it comes naturally to most people, a whole lot of people do not have that level of self-awareness, for various reasons, and a lot of them end up in nerdy hobbies because they are The Weird Kid that only the other weird kids will tolerate. Then, in their social circles, a combo of GSFs and just plain shared ignorance builds an attitude of "Well, I didn't know that, and neither do any of my friends, so it shouldn't matter." (Or just "Well people should just know that I'm not doing it in a bad way.") As a recovering Oblivious Weirdo, it's really difficult and stressful to try to navigate the minefield of "There's this shared common knowledge that you just don't have, and at any moment you could make a wrong step and Oops Fatal Faux Pas! Now everyone thinks you're terrible!"* I can't blame people for just deciding to opt out of the headache and doing whatever the hell they want with the hope that it'll be clear (at least to other nerds) that you didn't mean it That Way. It's still kind of a problem, in that it gives camouflage opportunities to lovely people, but I think it's an understandable response. *To try to make it really, really clear, imagine if being colorblind and mixing up red and blue sometimes led to actual social upset from others.
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Oct 20, 2021 15:11
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:You don't think a commander stupid enough to realize he's been baited into a trap and then decide to engage in a battle and get thousands of men killed and trillions of dollars of hardware destroyed because he thinks women aren't capable of strategy, especially not the woman who has never lost a naval engagement in her life isn't how normal humans think? 
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Oct 20, 2021 15:12
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mllaneza posted:Arivia. Thank you, I think?
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Oct 20, 2021 15:40
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:So it wasn't just an Honor Harrington thing then. For context, the big bads for 90% of that series are an evil conquering empire because they give people Universal Basic Income and the money just kind of...vanishes somewhere, so they have to spend trillions having a big space navy to conquer other planets to 'make the economy bigger' to continue to throw money into the bottomless pit of....people's bank accounts.
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Oct 20, 2021 15:44
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When I first read HH I thought the Republic of Haven was an interesting idea, a quasi-communist state with economic issues that was trapped by its own ideology. Then I realised Weber wanted you to understand they were evil because they made their populace lazy with filthy welfare payments and communism. What they needed was a solid dose of starvation and patriotism to restore their self-respect, then they'd fight like real men! I bowed out of Honor Harrington when Shadows of Saganami spent four. entire. pages. in a narrative infodump telling the reader how wonderful and progressive the Manticoran (good guys') tax system was, and how this created an incredible economy that turned the nation into a technological paradise and an eternal bastion of freedom. This system was "you can claim welfare payments but you lose the right to vote. Only people who make a net contribution to the state's finances can vote, because they aren't parasites". I dunno what it is about American SF authors and welfare states, but good lord do they love to lecture you about it.
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Oct 20, 2021 15:52
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Puppy Time posted:*To try to make it really, really clear, imagine if being colorblind and mixing up red and blue sometimes led to actual social upset from others. This just sounds like what being neurodivergent is like. Also, people take violent offense to the idea that it isn't obvious, including your parents.
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Oct 20, 2021 15:57
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Jedi425 posted:I feel like his Safehold books are more readable because they're what he wanted to write in the first place; sailing ships fighting but also there's some sci-fi. Except instead of all the nonsense he had to make up to do Age of Sail but in space, he can just write about sailing ships. Except they're about a mile more political, and that's saying something. Rather than picking on history, he just goes ahead and names his big bad Clinton.
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Oct 20, 2021 16:02
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I don't know exactly why, but a lot of New Wave American SF writers seem to come from the Sun Belt petit-bourgeois that threw its allegiance behind Barry Goldwater. The archetypal example is Robert Heinlein: a guy who was educated and employed by the Navy, worked for Upton Sinclair, then married a Republican and spent the rest of his life coining phrases like "There's no such thing as a free lunch."
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Oct 20, 2021 16:03
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Turns out that writing for a living requires having enough money that you can support yourself without a full income for at least a couple years!
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Oct 20, 2021 16:36
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Ghost Leviathan posted:This just sounds like what being neurodivergent is like. Also, people take violent offense to the idea that it isn't obvious, including your parents. Bingo.
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Oct 20, 2021 16:38
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Babysitter Super Sleuth posted:Turns out that writing for a living requires having enough money that you can support yourself without a full income for at least a couple years!
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Oct 20, 2021 16:40
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Halloween Jack posted:I don't know exactly why, but a lot of New Wave American SF writers seem to come from the Sun Belt petit-bourgeois that threw its allegiance behind Barry Goldwater. The era also kind of coincides with the rise of the proto-Silicone Valley libertarian ideology. I think a lot of it was that the US was riding high economically in the post WWII era and writing sci fi or studying computer science were the sorts of fields that required someone to have a certain level of outside, disposable income to sustain. Couple that with the government-sanctioned, anti-Communist culture posturing of the Cold War and you've got a recipe for a bunch of libertarian nerds.
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Oct 20, 2021 16:49
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Definitely, and part of that was building a massive welfare state that was the least visible to the people who benefited the most. "I'm a self-made man, government should stay out of my life" says a guy who went to a state college on the GI bill, works for a Defense contractor, and bought a house with a FHA loan.
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Oct 20, 2021 16:52
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You see, I earned everything I have.
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Oct 20, 2021 17:07
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KingKalamari posted:The era also kind of coincides with the rise of the proto-Silicone Valley libertarian ideology. Silicon valley, I think. Silicone valley is a different beast entirely, about 300 miles south, with an entirely different ideology. 
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Oct 20, 2021 17:50
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Well the important thing is I didn't confuse it with Silly Cone Valley...That place is hosed up!
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Oct 20, 2021 18:39
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Halloween Jack posted:I don't know exactly why, but a lot of New Wave American SF writers seem to come from the Sun Belt petit-bourgeois that threw its allegiance behind Barry Goldwater. He's also not New Wave of Science Fiction; he's firmly Golden Age. The New Wave of Science Fiction leaned left-libertarian, broadly speaking, or at least many of its most central figures (like Michael Moorcock) did. Meanwhile, the CIA funded the early Kansas Writer's Workshop due to the rugged American potential of SF and anti-New Deal think tanks were just kicking into high gear, so that pretty much describes how that all came together, IMO. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 01:53 on Oct 21, 2021 |
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Oct 21, 2021 01:48
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Joe Slowboat posted:He's also not New Wave of Science Fiction; he's firmly Golden Age. The New Wave of Science Fiction leaned left-libertarian, broadly speaking, or at least many of its most central figures (like Michael Moorcock) did. The New Wave was pretty much definitionally radical, because it was a reaction to how staid and old-fashioned sci-fi had become (and John W. Campbell's tyranny over the genre). Though with Heinlein there's elements of the New Wave to some of his later work because of its heavy focus on the sexual liberation of cis men to ogle naked women and have sex with more than one partner. Joe Slowboat posted:Meanwhile, the CIA funded the early Kansas Writer's Workshop due to the rugged American potential of SF and anti-New Deal think tanks were just kicking into high gear, so that pretty much describes how that all came together, IMO. Also because they were giant literature nerds. The CIA grew out of the "Oh So Social" OSS and its New York socialites, who did stuff like run T.S. Elliot fanzine/newsletters.
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Oct 21, 2021 03:44
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Thanlis posted:Except they're about a mile more political, and that's saying something. Rather than picking on history, he just goes ahead and names his big bad Clinton. Would you believe that with the stupid misspelling thing he does with all the names in those books that it never occurred to me that he meant that Clinton?  It makes sense though.
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Oct 21, 2021 03:53
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Halloween Jack posted:Definitely, and part of that was building a massive welfare state that was the least visible to the people who benefited the most. "I'm a self-made man, government should stay out of my life" says a guy who went to a state college on the GI bill, works for a Defense contractor, and bought a house with a FHA loan. It's difficult to understate the damage done by an entire generation of the bougie and ruling class who were handed absolutely everything on a silver platter every step of the way, and told insistently that they were rugged individualists who had earned it.
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Oct 21, 2021 10:08
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