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"You can take that ancestry, but be aware that some people have never seen anyone like you before and may be either overly curious or standoffish. You won't be denied services, but you may have an awkward interaction now and again." That's about as far as "fantasy racism" should ever go IMO. It should also completely vanish as soon as the party gains an iota of reputation. Now if the player says "I want to play the ostracized outsider who has to work hard to win people over," well, that's on them. (And doesn't even have to involve ancestry at all.)
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Oct 2, 2023 16:05
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Mirage posted:"You can take that ancestry, but be aware that some people have never seen anyone like you before and may be either overly curious or standoffish. You won't be denied services, but you may have an awkward interaction now and again." Agreed. This is about as far as my GM for Abom Vaults has taken it with my party of Pixie/Grippli/Leshy/Azarketi, and there's been more positive/curious interactions than negative/standoffish ones to boot. If anything the leshy has had the least issues because they just go outside and plant roots to sleep.  No one complains about the random pine cone sleeping in their garden.
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Oct 2, 2023 16:08
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Froghammer posted:This is a really important point, and the touches on the thing that bothered me the most about the post that kicked this whole thing off. Being the victim of systemic oppression should be a thing you opt into or out of in a roleplaying game context, and that decision should 100% be divorced from wanting to be a lizard person or having devil horns. Yeah some of my favorite games both video and tabletop I've played have centered racism or discrimination as a thing to face or deal with, loved it in BG3, in Mafia 3, and in some of the tabletop games I've played where there was an arc about like my Drow warlock in Waterdeep facing it, but like yeah the GM cleared it with me and the rest of the table and we had safety tools. But yeah you spring discrimination and racism on my black rear end without a heads up or giving me a veto and I am leaving your table immediately.
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Oct 2, 2023 16:10
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Lucas Archer posted:My friends and I started a Pathfinder 2E campaign this past weekend. Our first campaign together was Rise of the Runelords in PF1E. Our second campaign was Reign of Winter, but run in D&D5E. And now we've moved back over to Pathfinder now, and it's a homebrew campaign of my own making in the Eberron setting. The exploration phase took me a minute to run in a way a like. There are a ton of options for exploration activities, but my players use the same one the majority of the time. Avoid notice, search, investigate, detect magic and scout are the major ones we use because were playing a dungeon crawl. Follow the expert can be helpful to remind your players about because it can help with those weird things that only one player is really good at. Alot of the activities are more relevant to overland movement so you wont be using them all the time. I asked my players for a default exploration activity, and if they were confused, I recommended one for them. I always assume they are doing that action in exploration unless they specify otherwise. Edit: I agree with Hunter Noventa, you can give them free archetype to shore up any weaknesses in a particular class, or if they don't feel they need it the player can always go for a more thematic archetype. gurragadon fucked around with this message at 16:16 on Oct 2, 2023 |
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Oct 2, 2023 16:13
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Lamuella posted:There's also specific racial hostility in 1e adventure paths like Giantslayer, and characters who are described in text as hating half orcs, but I would be surprised to see much of that in recent 2e books. The beginning of Sky King's Tomb has the characters doing level 1 dipshit odd jobs around town, and one of them is dealing with a Knight of Lastwall who happens to be a half orc, and the intended resolution is that you overcome dwarven racism and help this noble half orc recruit some strong warriors to go off and fight tar baphon. Our all-dwarven party completely misunderstood the asignment and turned the racism up to 11 and basically ran him out of town pitchforks in hand.
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Oct 2, 2023 16:22
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Downtime has been tricky for me, but my group is playing a converted version of Reign of Winter and that doesn't have too many chances for it. I'm definitely going to have to set them aside more often and go "Okay you've got a few days, do some downtime stuff rather than immediately launching yourself at the dungeon/the boss/book 4". Exploration doesn't come up too often either, but the latest upgrade to foundry has given me an excuse to 'force' them to learn it and enjoy all the benefits from things like scouting and having their shield pre-raised ect. They seemed to like it last session after messing with it a bit, and hopefully they'll be more proactive with it in the future as well in terms of considering what would be most useful.
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Oct 2, 2023 16:22
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https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6siev?Introducing-the-Season-of-Ghosts-Player-s-Guide Season of Ghosts Players Guide, an unusual 4 book Adventure Path that finishes with the 200th Adventure Path volume edit: Volume 200 is something else secret apparently. With it being set 100 years before the current timeline I’m wondering about a Sixth Sense tweest HidaO-Win fucked around with this message at 19:59 on Oct 2, 2023 |
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Oct 2, 2023 19:10
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Hopping Vampires or we riot!
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Oct 2, 2023 19:22
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They specifically call out the jiang-shi-descended dhampirs as the most relevant subtype, so I have a feeling your expectations will be met. Anyway, this player's guide really makes me want to play this AP, so it's accomplished it's goals.
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Oct 2, 2023 19:56
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Season of Ghosts looks interesting. My first thought was that the two things you'd want for a party would be someone to deal with spirits (an Animist if your GM is allowing a playtest class, otherwise a Cleric or Thaumaturge), and someone with primal magic to deal with season-related logistical problems (a Druid or Kineticist, especially a Wood Kineticist). The author of the Player's Guide seems to have had similar thoughts regarding Druids and Thaumaturges, at least. Edit: Volume 200 is supposed to be a standalone adventure, but double-length for an AP volume, called Seven Dooms for Sandpoint. Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 20:18 on Oct 2, 2023 |
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Oct 2, 2023 20:06
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One interesting thing I noticed about the Player’s Guide is that its recommendations for alignment are basically “you probably shouldn’t be evil, but anything else is probably fine,” whereas a lot of the Player’s Guides for previous APs seemed worried about the possibility of PCs being “too lawful” or “too chaotic.” I wonder if the planned removal of alignment with the Remaster has led Paizo to reevaluate that sort of thing and they decided it was a bit silly.
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Oct 2, 2023 20:27
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I thought lawful and chaotic don't exist as concepts in the remaster, so there'd be no need to mention them?
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Oct 2, 2023 20:29
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Dick Burglar posted:I thought lawful and chaotic don't exist as concepts in the remaster, so there'd be no need to mention them? The APs are still technically pre-Remaster for now, though, I believe. (Note that the Player's Guide refers to "evil alignments," not "sanctification to unholy.")
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Oct 2, 2023 20:31
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do aeons do holy or unholy damage now
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Oct 2, 2023 20:32
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Silver2195 posted:One interesting thing I noticed about the Player’s Guide is that its recommendations for alignment are basically “you probably shouldn’t be evil, but anything else is probably fine,” whereas a lot of the Player’s Guides for previous APs seemed worried about the possibility of PCs being “too lawful” or “too chaotic.” I wonder if the planned removal of alignment with the Remaster has led Paizo to reevaluate that sort of thing and they decided it was a bit silly. It's also that the last two adventure paths are Stolen Fate (which is all about, well, fate, and being Lawful has some implied beliefs in the relative importance of freedom and how orderly fate should be that would make the adventure awkward) and Sky King's Tomb (which is all about Dwarven society which is extremely lawful, so you need to either fit into that or knowingly choose to diverge from it in a way that still works). Even then, Sky King's Tomb doesn't make it too hard of a suggestion, and Gatewalkers before it just does the standard "don't be an evil rear end in a top hat". I assume post-remaster player's guides will still have a short paragraph on what kinds of things your PCs should be invested in to make the adventure path feel right. They'll just say "you should be someone who cares about personal freedoms, and probably the freedom of others" instead of "you should be Chaotic (ie, someone who cares about personal freedoms, and probably the freedom of others)".
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Oct 2, 2023 20:59
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Dexo posted:Define pretty modern, because uh, "Others" have been discriminated against/forced to assimilate in various societies, for a pretty large chunk of human history lol. While this is true we're also talking about a game where there's like...17 flavors of elf and dragon men and Hobbits and they're all considered by that one poster to be normal enough to not do the fantasy racist shtick at them. The game rules and setting writing aren't law you can just have the more uncommon races...not be that uncommon. The only real reason to do what they did as a gm is that you want to either punish the player for picking something you find too fantastical or you just wanted to do fantasy racism for your own sake.
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Oct 2, 2023 21:18
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ZenMasterBullshit posted:While this is true we're also talking about a game where there's like...17 flavors of elf and dragon men and Hobbits and they're all considered by that one poster to be normal enough to not do the fantasy racist shtick at them. The game rules and setting writing aren't law you can just have the more uncommon races...not be that uncommon. The only real reason to do what they did as a gm is that you want to either punish the player for picking something you find too fantastical or you just wanted to do fantasy racism for your own sake. Or the third option, which is that you personally find the idea of a Fleshwarp who gets treated like a lovable uncle in some random backwater town to strain the credulity and versimilitude of your elfgame. Some styles of games simply do not work if someone is a unicycle-riding half Kitsune gnome Magus who speaks purely in haiku. Others are fine with it. The idea that there's two reasons for a gamemaster not to let a player be a fuckin' Dragon and both of them make that gamemaster a bad person is just sanctimonious horseshit.
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Oct 2, 2023 22:16
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Fleshwarps are a special case, because "people react negatively to them because they're horrifying-looking" is pretty core to the concept. That said, if someone had been a respected citizen of said backwater town for a long time before being turned into a Fleshwarp, it makes sense that they would be treated as a loveable uncle rather than a monster.
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Oct 2, 2023 22:31
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Or the third option, which is that you personally find the idea of a Fleshwarp who gets treated like a lovable uncle in some random backwater town to strain the credulity and versimilitude of your elfgame. Some styles of games simply do not work if someone is a unicycle-riding half Kitsune gnome Magus who speaks purely in haiku. Others are fine with it. The op stated they could not conceive of a reason some.random innkeeper would have every met the rare ancestry before and defaulted to "Well obviously they're going to be racist about it" in a setting where there are multiple multinational if not intercontinental companies of freaks and weirdos who people consistently hire out to do jobs ranging from "Hey those wolves are really giving our livestock the business" to "Hey a whole nation lost to time suddenly popped back into existence can you help us normalize trading relations with them" to "Hey I think my neighbors are a demon and an angel and in love and there's a while lot of people mad about it from their relative sides". The fact that the GM cannot imagine an innkeeper in a frankly stupid and goofy sci-fi and fantasy setting thinking "Oh this guys also a horse? Little weird but his gold spends" and has to jump to racism as a petty spite move against the player for doing something he didn't personally think was serious and real enough is stupid. Especially combined with earlier posts from.them about players having to 'earn' playing things he considers too strange or silly by first appeasing him by playing a 'normal' character. Sorry, it just sucks rear end every way you look at it. Like I said, he sounds like an absolute chore to play with. ZenMasterBullshit fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Oct 2, 2023 |
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Oct 2, 2023 22:35
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Baldur's gate 3 is making a killing right now precisely because it understands that "campy bisexual elf vampire with trauma" is the minimum of fantasy nonsense a player wants to have going on with their character.
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Oct 2, 2023 22:46
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Also what verisimilitude is it breaking? They're in the game. They exist in the setting. People move around for a lot of reasons, circumstance draws people everywhere. It's pretty easy to come up with reasons why Happened all the time in actual history
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Oct 2, 2023 22:50
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I think I've figured out what's giving me the cognitive dissonance: it's referring to these unusual characters as freaks and weirdos, but then asking them to be treated as though their existence in a certain area is the most normal thing in the world. Thus functionally making the freaks and weirdos neither freaky nor weird. I just can't get behind that, but if you can: more power to you. Like, in Dragonlance there's an entire island of minotaurs, they definitely exist, but if you find one on the mainland it's going to cause a lot of open mouths. Likewise if Farmer Bob wakes up one morning and goes down to the market and a living doll says "howdy" he might not say "howdy" back.
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Oct 2, 2023 22:51
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:I think I've figured out what's giving me the cognitive dissonance: it's referring to these unusual characters as freaks and weirdos, but then asking them to be treated as though their existence in a certain area is the most normal thing in the world. Thus functionally making the freaks and weirdos neither freaky nor weird. I just can't get behind that, but if you can: more power to you. Nobody said that random NPCs shouldn't act like they're weird as gently caress. They said the NPCs shouldn't default to real-world racism and prejudice. Seriously, can you not read? It's like you saw that one sentence out of this entire discussion completely absent of context and are going off on a continuous tear about how evil we all think GMs are for not treating our outlandish characters as just-another-Joe-on-the-street. NOBODY IS SAYING THAT.
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Oct 2, 2023 22:57
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Ok, well, the histrionics have started. See ya.
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Oct 2, 2023 23:03
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:I think I've figured out what's giving me the cognitive dissonance: it's referring to these unusual characters as freaks and weirdos, but then asking them to be treated as though their existence in a certain area is the most normal thing in the world. Thus functionally making the freaks and weirdos neither freaky nor weird. I just can't get behind that, but if you can: more power to you. Buddy if you read the rest of that post I even had the innkeeper call the imaginary horseman weird. You are arguing with points that weren't made and only exist in your mind. And you're still losing ground. This histrionics are all in your own mind and posts. Like you do understand the difference between having people see them as weird or strange and going full on "We don't serve your kind, which I've literally never seen before today, around here" at the very first interaction they have with an npc like in the example that poster themselves gave? ZenMasterBullshit fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Oct 2, 2023 |
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Oct 2, 2023 23:07
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Dick Burglar posted:Nobody said that random NPCs shouldn't act like they're weird as gently caress. They said the NPCs shouldn't default to real-world racism and prejudice. Seriously. The little kid breathlessly pointing at my character and being all "mom! mom! do you think she knows the tooth fairy?!?" was definitely a consequence of my character being weird as gently caress without it being hostile or exclusionary.
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Oct 2, 2023 23:11
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Eh. I mean, that is one possible reaction. If in your fantasy world you can have a evil wizard bent to enslave people by stealing their soul, you can also have some racist innkeepers here and there.
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Oct 2, 2023 23:16
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:I think I've figured out what's giving me the cognitive dissonance: it's referring to these unusual characters as freaks and weirdos, but then asking them to be treated as though their existence in a certain area is the most normal thing in the world. Thus functionally making the freaks and weirdos neither freaky nor weird. I just can't get behind that, but if you can: more power to you. I've always been in the same boat here, the way the primary settings of D&D and PF treat the fantastical elements as fairly ubiquitous just makes them seem kind of boring to me. Like if magic is so prolific that you have wizards going to wizard school to get a cushy job casting Sending for the government, then congratulations on making wizards into loving salary-men. Dick Burglar posted:Nobody said that random NPCs shouldn't act like they're weird as gently caress. They said the NPCs shouldn't default to real-world racism and prejudice. How would they act then, though? Like if someone got super specific and had NPCs only barely reskinning real-world tropes than that would be crass as hell, but in a world where a surprisingly large amount of the bestiary is "thing that pretends to be a kind stranger so it can literally eat your children" it doesn't seem like trust and understanding would be a super popular approach. If a guy's never met a tiefling before, why wouldn't he assume that one was a literal demon from hell when those are a real thing to worry about in his world? Vanguard Warden fucked around with this message at 23:19 on Oct 2, 2023 |
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Oct 2, 2023 23:17
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ZenMasterBullshit posted:The op stated they could not conceive of a reason some.random innkeeper would have every met the rare ancestry before and defaulted to "Well obviously they're going to be racist about it" in a setting where there are multiple multinational if not intercontinental companies of freaks and weirdos who people consistently hire out to do jobs ranging from "Hey those wolves are really giving our livestock the business" to "Hey a whole nation lost to time suddenly popped back into existence can you help us normalize trading relations with them" to "Hey I think my neighbors are a demon and an angel and in love and there's a while lot of people mad about it from their relative sides". The whole thing with mind the walrus throwing racism into his games and dogwhistling about "certain demographics" makes a lot more sense when you look at his rap sheet and see he has multiple probes for being pissing and moaning about trans people and accusing them of being pedophiles.
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Oct 2, 2023 23:18
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:The idea that there's two reasons for a gamemaster not to let a player be a fuckin' Dragon and both of them make that gamemaster a bad person is just sanctimonious horseshit. But what everyone is leaving out is that in the original story the GM DID let the player play that character, he just made every NPC racist. That's why it feels like someone trying to mete a "clever" punishment for the crime of trying to be special. If you don't want someone to play something other than human or pointy-ear human, just veto the character.
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Oct 2, 2023 23:18
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YggdrasilTM posted:Eh. I mean, that is one possible reaction. If in your fantasy world you can have a evil wizard bent to enslave people by stealing their soul, you can also have some racist innkeepers here and there. However if you're going to do so you should make it exceptionally clear at session zero that you're planning to to do so, so it can be part of your conversation about expectations, lines and veils, etc.
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Oct 2, 2023 23:18
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Vanguard Warden posted:How would they act then, though? Like if someone got super specific and had NPCs only barely reskinning real-world tropes than that would be crass as hell, but in a world where a surprisingly large amount of the bestiary is "thing that pretends to be a kind stranger so it can literally eat your children" it doesn't seem like trust and understanding would be a super popular approach. If a guy's never met a tiefling before, why wouldn't he assume that one was a literal demon from hell when those are a real thing to worry about in his world? It's obvious that they would only say kind and positive things about the six foot tall snakewoman and her mimic companion (who is shaped like a particularly nice wardrobe, except wearing a wizard hat). I want to make it clear that you shouldn't poo poo on the player for their character, I'm not about that. Hell I own a supplement that would let the player be the aforementioned snakewoman or mimic. What I'm simply saying is that if a player did come to me and say "I want to be a mimic" I would just be honest: one they left their local area people would occasionally be not nice about it. No need to bring the Green Book of Mimics or anything but expect some bad attitudes. Some people would relish this. My son, who played the wizard made of spiders? He absolutely loved when people were piss scared of him. That was his whole deal. Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Oct 2, 2023 |
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Oct 2, 2023 23:19
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Vanguard Warden posted:I've always been in the same boat here, the way the primary settings of D&D and PF treat the fantastical elements as fairly ubiquitous just makes them seem kind of boring to me. Like if magic is so prolific that you have wizards going to wizard school to get a cushy job casting Sending for the government, then congratulations on making wizards into loving salary-men. Buddy the whole game is named after the loving paperwork guild built up around adventurers-as-industry. We're 75% of the way to full Discworld. And honestly we'd be much much better for it.
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Oct 2, 2023 23:22
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BTW just on a different note, one of the things I love about the Jewel of the Indigo Islands adventure path is that they have some pretty nasty stuff in there and then suggestions on what to replace it with if you're running the session with kids or people who can't handle horror elements.
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Oct 2, 2023 23:24
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mycot posted:But what everyone is leaving out is that in the original story the GM DID let the player play that character, he just made every NPC racist. That's why it feels like someone trying to mete a "clever" punishment for the crime of trying to be special. If you don't want someone to play something other than human or pointy-ear human, just veto the character. MJ wants to argue with the arguments he made up in his head and not anything anyone was actually talking about. Especially not the actual things posted that started the discussion. Maverick Thwomp posted:The whole thing with mind the walrus throwing racism into his games and dogwhistling about "certain demographics" makes a lot more sense when you look at his rap sheet and see he has multiple probes for being pissing and moaning about trans people and accusing them of being pedophiles. Oh lol. Thats...yeah no things make sense.
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Oct 2, 2023 23:25
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Lamuella posted:However if you're going to do so you should make it exceptionally clear at session zero that you're planning to to do so, so it can be part of your conversation about expectations, lines and veils, etc. If It's a general behaviour of the population, sure. If it's just some individuals, why? It IS within the range of possible reactions. If I go in an elven city and some innkeepers are racist against my human PC and refuse to let me sleep in their inn, for example, the GM should have made clear in session zero?
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Oct 2, 2023 23:25
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i feel like if you want fantasy in the sense of something like wizards to be rare mysterious divine entities you could play one of the lord of the rings rpgs or burning wheel or something. D&D and pathfinder have been about "my wizard hosed the godess of magic and now she won't return his phone calls" for a long time now.
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Oct 2, 2023 23:26
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YggdrasilTM posted:If It's a general behaviour of the population, sure. If it's just some individuals, why? It IS within the range of possible reactions. If I go in an elven city and some innkeepers are racist against my human PC and refuse to let me sleep in their inn, for example, the GM should have made clear in session zero? Again, there's no need to make up new hypotheticals on when it's cool to have racism in the game when we're talking about the specific example posted up thread where this is not the case at all.
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Oct 2, 2023 23:27
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Vanguard Warden posted:How would they act then, though? Like if someone got super specific and had NPCs only barely reskinning real-world tropes than that would be crass as hell, but in a world where a surprisingly large amount of the bestiary is "thing that pretends to be a kind stranger so it can literally eat your children" it doesn't seem like trust and understanding would be a super popular approach. If a guy's never met a tiefling before, why wouldn't he assume that one was a literal demon from hell when those are a real thing to worry about in his world? I'd imagine they'd probably start off not wanting to piss said possible-demon-from-hell off? Which, dunno about you, but I would be by an obvious "we have room but not for you" attitude. Sounds to me a more sensible attitude would be cautious appeasement with a worried "phew, thank gently caress that's over" after they're out of earshot. 
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Oct 2, 2023 23:28
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YggdrasilTM posted:If It's a general behaviour of the population, sure. If it's just some individuals, why? It IS within the range of possible reactions. If I go in an elven city and some innkeepers are racist against my human PC and refuse to let me sleep in their inn, for example, the GM should have made clear in session zero? Some people would prefer to know in advance if a game they are playing will involve themes of race, even if they don't have to know specifics. It's would be on the level of "so you're aware, in this setting there is tension between the elves and the humans because of a war 50 years ago, and we may explore some of that" rather than "so you're aware, Uriel Lothril in Palladium City hates humans"
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Oct 2, 2023 23:31
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