|
Well that's some loving Blizzard grade racist bullshit in Golarion's world. I asked a goon friend about a setting detail that I thought I had correctly from its appearance in a sidequest I'll be covering but thought surely that's too racist to be in a modern DnD setting. Nope. There will be ranting in the next update.
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 03:27
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 8, 2024 03:40 |
|
|
Gun Jam posted:Apropos of nothing - anyone know which game brought this innovation into RPGs? The first game to do this particular style was Pillars of Eternity, and I had a lot of hate for the concept back then - I still do, really, because it forces you to get pulled out of the game to read a dictionary definition instead of using context clues to give you information. But it was the natural progression of things with the domination of in-game Codices and being forced to read through them if you wanted to understand any proprietary conceits of the settings.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 04:00
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:Well that's some loving Blizzard grade racist bullshit in Golarion's world. Removing racism from D&D and its derived settings has been... let's call it an ongoing process. I do feel like a lot of progress has been made in the last couple of decades, but there's still a ways to go.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 04:47
|
|
|
I have a feeling I know what you plan to talk about.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 07:31
|
|
|
idonotlikepeas posted:Removing racism from D&D and its derived settings has been... let's call it an ongoing process. I do feel like a lot of progress has been made in the last couple of decades, but there's still a ways to go. Decade. Singular. Nobody even bothered trying to remove racism from the mainline D&D settings until fairly recently. And of course you're always going to have the neckbeards and grognards screaming about how they want real-world politics kept out of their tabletop gaming, even when those settings involve expies of real-world ethnic groups and include all the stereotypes and racism (see: Greyhawk's Rhennee, Forgotten Realms' Gur, Eberron's Shifters, Golarion's Varisians) and never see the irony in their screaming.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 10:24
|
|
|
Oh boy, and like a fool I thought we wouldn't get any fun Cyth rants this time around! I'm so glad to be wrong.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 14:04
|
|
|
And it's not just racism either- Pathfinder's APs have had... issues in their presentation of women, which I might get to once Act 2 begins/during Act 2.MonsterEnvy posted:I have a feeling I know what you plan to talk about. Same, especially it's an Act 1 sidequest- if it's what I'm thinking about, then it's been present in the setting since at least 2008. CommissarMega fucked around with this message at 15:13 on Feb 28, 2024 |
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 15:01
|
|
|
RelentlessImp posted:Decade. Singular. Nobody even bothered trying to remove racism from the mainline D&D settings until fairly recently. Eh, I don't really agree with that. I've been playing D&D for... gosh, over thirty years now, and I've seen a lot of change and growth. There's definitely more to point at very recently, like removing the concept of some types of beings (like orcs and goblins) always having to be chaotic evil, not using the word "race" to describe the different types of player beings ("species" is now the preferred term), etc, but I also remember some of the earliest baby steps like R.A. "Maybe the Elves with Black Skin Aren't Always Evil" Salvatore and "maybe lawful good paladins wouldn't be allowed to kill (minority-coded) goblin babies" and so on. And even with all that improvement, we still have stuff like the Hadozee in the recent Spelljammer books (which was bad enough that WotC had to apologize and revise later editions - I don't want to poo poo up this thread by going into that too deeply, but anyone who is curious can google it). I think the thing that really has kept it slow has been that tabletop in general (not just D&D and Pathfinder) has been primarily under the control of white guys. They're both the stereotypical customer and the stereotypical employee of tabletop companies, and regardless of how well-intentioned both groups may be (and I do believe there are a lot of positive intentions around), having a single point of view like that is going to make it awfully easy to ignore and dismiss the issues that need to get fixed, which are a lot more visible to people who aren't in that group. Those demographics have been shifting more lately (I hear we're up to 40% women playing D&D, for instance), which is why I think change is accelerating; the customer base is demanding it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 15:18
|
|
|
idonotlikepeas posted:"maybe lawful good paladins wouldn't be allowed to kill (minority-coded) goblin babies" Order of the Stick has one of the best paladins (and one the very best deconstruction of paladin) in D&D related media.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 15:22
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:Well that's some loving Blizzard grade racist bullshit in Golarion's world. It is if anything the other way around - Blizzard had D&D levels of racism. D&D always had more, and it was always worse. As I said previously, Gygax's model of lawful good behavior was committing genocide on Native Americans, which is who he modelled orcs after.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 15:56
|
|
|
RelentlessImp posted:Decade. Singular. Nobody even bothered trying to remove racism from the mainline D&D settings until fairly recently. And of course you're always going to have the neckbeards and grognards screaming about how they want real-world politics kept out of their tabletop gaming, even when those settings involve expies of real-world ethnic groups and include all the stereotypes and racism (see: Greyhawk's Rhennee, Forgotten Realms' Gur, Eberron's Shifters, Golarion's Varisians) and never see the irony in their screaming. Eberron is 20 years old this year and a significant part of it was removing racism, starting with the first step of decoupling alignment from race. They didn't succeed perfectly, but there's a lot of actual work done in it to accomplish that goal. Hell, back in the 90s, Greyhawk introduced the Scarlet Brotherhood whose whole idea is they were literal no-poo poo human white supremacists who were also incredibly vile villains. Planescape loved using the tieflings and to a lesser extent the aasimar to have a go at how racism creates criminality and privilege permits people to get away with poo poo. D&D isn't some monolith and it does have a history of its writers trying to tackle racism to varying levels of competence and accomplishment.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 17:55
|
|
|
ProfessorCirno posted:It is if anything the other way around - Blizzard had D&D levels of racism. D&D always had more, and it was always worse. As I said previously, Gygax's model of lawful good behavior was committing genocide on Native Americans, which is who he modelled orcs after. And Pathfinder is supposed to be a modern DnD setting whose makers said they wanted to fix the problems with DnD. Now I've spent some time this morning making sure I have the facts right about the Curse of Ham in preparation for the next post.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 17:58
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:And Pathfinder is supposed to be a modern DnD setting whose makers said they wanted to fix the problems with DnD. i'm shocked to hear that the Pathfinder devs uncritically reproduced all the major problems with DnD while claiming they were setting out to fix them there are One Hundred And Sixty One possible player classes in Wrath of the Righteous btw
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 18:05
|
|
|
I... assume that "Curse of Ham" is not some kind of take on Odysseus and Circe? It's almost weird how orcs went from Tolkien's not particularly racist version to D&D hyper racist version. Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:there are One Hundred And Sixty One possible player classes in Wrath of the Righteous btw 
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 18:49
|
|
|
The developers of Pathfinder originally just wanted to streamline and preserve the overall gameplay of the 3.5 edition of D&D when Wizards of the Coast released 4th edition. Efforts to improve on the D&D setting and rules is mostly a later development, and this PC game is an adaptation of a Pathfinder 1st edition adventure, which was published before Paizo began any sort of organized attempt to revise their setting and rules beyond changes specific to individual adventures.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 18:51
|
|
|
Poil posted:It's almost weird how orcs went from Tolkien's not particularly racist version to D&D hyper racist version. anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Feb 28, 2024 |
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 18:54
|
|
|
Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:there are One Hundred And Sixty One possible player classes in Wrath of the Righteous btw No there's not. You can't for instance multiclass Armiger and Two Handed Fighter, because they are the same class. They are different Archetypes of Fighter, but they are still Fighter. If they were different classes you could multiclass them together.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 18:54
|
|
|
Poil posted:I... assume that "Curse of Ham" is not some kind of take on Odysseus and Circe? Short version: something something bible, something something and that's why black people are are ok to enslave. anilEhilated posted:Tolkien's orcs are still pretty drat racist, though. Admittedly, he regretted writing them like that later in life. "(orc are) squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types" - The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 210 (if the wiki ain't lying to me)
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 19:12
|
|
|
Gun Jam posted:Short version: something something bible, something something and that's why black people are are ok to enslave. Would it kill y'all to wait when I've made it clear that I'm going to explain something in some detail in the future?
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 19:13
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:Would it kill y'all to wait when I've made it clear that I'm going to explain something in some detail in the future? Understood; I'm sorry.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 19:30
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:And Pathfinder is supposed to be a modern DnD setting whose makers said they wanted to fix the problems with DnD. Gnooble posted:The developers of Pathfinder originally just wanted to streamline and preserve the overall gameplay of the 3.5 edition of D&D when Wizards of the Coast released 4th edition. Efforts to improve on the D&D setting and rules is mostly a later development, and this PC game is an adaptation of a Pathfinder 1st edition adventure, which was published before Paizo began any sort of organized attempt to revise their setting and rules beyond changes specific to individual adventures. Yeah, this is still PF1e, which if anything was more reactionary, as it was a backlash to D&D making a new edition thread I see you typing do not make this an edition war. Golarion as a setting also started as a weird "horror-fantasy" which adds to that. Believe it or not, Wrath here isn't even close to the worst adventure path along these lines PF2e has been trying to make ground against that, and in some cases has been succeeding! But, well. Welcome to PF1e.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 20:33
|
|
|
ProfessorCirno posted:Yeah, this is still PF1e, which if anything was more reactionary, as it was a backlash to D&D making a new edition thread I see you typing do not make this an edition war. Golarion as a setting also started as a weird "horror-fantasy" which adds to that. Believe it or not, Wrath here isn't even close to the worst adventure path along these lines Oh boy, I know exactly which AP you're talking about. If Cythereal allows it, I could talk a little about that AP, since I'm guessing the next update will still be at the tavern or thereabouts.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 20:45
|
|
|
To Ash and Cinder Defender's Heart is considered a safe (more or less) hub area. When you leave a hub, you can select your party from the available roster.  The campaign map is fairly self-explanatory, though some locations won't allow you to travel there until you discover the route via a node location that links to it. The Market Square is my first destination, as there are some interesting things to find there.  Kenabres has seen better days.   "But I had nothin' to do with it, I swear!" "Brother Gort, is that you?" "Brother Woljif? I thought you'd pegged it in Irabeth's jail." "Happy to see you, too." "Who are you?"This guy runs up to you the first time you enter the Market Square.  "Just don't hand me over to Irabeth, valiant crusaders! Please, in the name of all the gods there ever were!" "Gort here is a new addition to the Thieflings. So far he's swiped around five thousand gold. He's got a long way to go before he catches up with me, mind." "They made me do it." "Never mind that. An underground passage to the Gray Garrison? Tell me more." "Right, so the temple round here — the temple of Iomedae — has a cellar, and a passage leads from it right to the Gray Garrison. The Thieflings, my pals, drat the lot of 'em, have been using this passage on and off to sell all sorts of stuff to the soldiers in the Gray Garrison. So when the demons burst into the city, we thought we'd check up on the Gray Garrison to... uh... see how the soldiers were faring. And to offer our assistance." "Don't gimme that look. This is the first I'm hearin' of this. Thieflings keep secrets from each other too, y'know." "If his story checks out, this is exactly what Irabeth wanted. You are free to go." "Cheers for lettin' me go like this, I'll remember you a hundred years, I will. I'll name my firstborn after you..." (Under your stare, the tiefling falls silent and then runs off.) ...What? I wasn't here to enforce Mendevian law. The market square is full of enemies.  And loot.  Including bandits! Don't worry, it's for a good cause when we do it.   "I don't know... Can we really do this?" "Listen, we don't have a choice. There are demons everywhere, what else would you have us do?"Oh dear.  In Iomedae's name, we're sorry, girl, but it is our duty. We have to do this — not for our own sake, but for the sake of everyone who can still be saved from the demons. If we don't win this battle, you won't have long to live anyway!" (The knight brings his sword up above the girl's head.) "They're insane!" (Seelah looks at you, terror in her eyes.) "We've got to do something!" ""I understand. You're scared. You feel powerless. You think this will help. You don't have to justify yourselves to me — just do what you've decided to do." (The girl smiles serenely, as though she isn't at risk of imminent death.) "What's going on here?"This is one of the reasons I came to the Market Square first.  "Our weapons barely scratch the demons' hides! We're sacrificing this girl to Iomedae so we can consecrate our weapons with her innocent blood and gain the power to destroy the spawn of the Abyss! It's extreme, but we have no other choice. We have to defend this city somehow, or else we'll all perish — including her!" [Lore: Religion - 10] "That's ridiculous! The teachings of Iomedae directly prohibit the killing of innocents! The goddess will curse you for making this so-called 'sacrifice'!" [Success!] "Exactly! What were you thinking? The goddess would never allow this!" "Good point, whose idea was this?" (The knight looks at his comrades in suspicion.) "I think it was yours!" "My idea? I was against the whole thing right from the start! Who said we needed to make a sacrifice — wasn't it you? You can't blame anyone else for that!"There's a number of ways to approach this encounter, and one of them reveals that - the dude gung ho about killing the girl - is indeed a cultist who almost duped the others into this.  "The little girl is defending the people who wanted to slaughter her a minute ago. She's either a saint or she's insane... Maybe the two together." "Hey, I know her! I see her all the time on the street — she's a couple cards short of a full deck, if you know what I mean." "Hi!" (The girl waves at Woljif with a bright smile.) "Remember how we used to play together when we were little? But then you went and got all big, and I stayed the same for some reason..." "Huh? I played with you? Ha! Pull the other one!" "You did! We played tag, and hide and seek... Then you and the bigger boys came up with the game where you all threw stones at me. You laughed so hard, it made me happy too... But then you grew up and went away to do grown-up things. Want to play with me now?" (The tiefling turns away, covering his reddened face with his hand.) "For the love of... Kenabres is too drat small..." "As for you... Go to the Defender's Heart tavern, that's where the survivors are gathering. And don't even think of doing something so disgusting ever again."You might think that sending a cultist in disguise back to base would be a mistake, but you'd be wrong. Remember how I've talked about how one of the big themes of this game is nature and identity? That includes the potential for the good to fall, and the evil to rise. We've already seen two cultists turn their back on the Abyss when Yua rekindled their hope.  (The elf girl smiles at you. The crow alights on her shoulder and looks at you with eyes that are much too intelligent for an ordinary bird.) "They're gone. And they all lived. I was sure that someone would die today! So many people have died here already — but we're still alive for some reason... Strange, isn't it? (The girl shrugs, smiling serenely.) "But... You shouldn't listen to me. I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm just a silly girl, really." "I don't think you're an ordinary girl. And that crow you have there - it's not ordinary, either." (The elf girl strokes the crow's beak: its eyes narrow in satisfaction and it makes a cooing sound.) "No, don't be silly, I'm very ordinary. Well, I know different types of tricks, but Soot taught me those. Now Soot here — she truly is unusual! She's clever and she can talk, but only to me. She teaches me magic tricks, and lots of other stuff... I don't know what I'd do without her!" "Who are you?" "Call me Ember. I live here, on the streets. For many years now... But there's nothing to say about me!" "Magic tricks, you say? You could prove useful when fighting the demons, and I'll be able to protect you from insane soldiers on the streets. Come with me." "I must have misheard — this girl, join our party? What could we possibly want with this dirty little beggar?" (The girl gives you a smile, joyous and untroubled, like a child's.) "Sure! Let's go!"In case all this didn't already tell you, Ember is the newest addition to the party!  Character Overview: Ember No one's coming to help you, there's just us. The gods have abandoned - er, what was I saying? Do you want to play? Neutral Good Witch (Stigmatized Witch), atheist Romance: No Can I Fix Her: Yes... sort of. Incompatible Paths: (spoiler) Background: Mendevian Orphan (add Lore: Religion as a class skill, +1 bonus if already class skill, +1 to saving throws against demons) Ember provokes strong reactions from players, people tend to love her or hate her. I'm generally in the love camp, though even I find her a bit much at times. Ember is the most extreme pure as the driven snow character in the entire game, a mystical waif with strange powers, a talking (only to her) animal companion, a tragic backstory, and an extremely powerful kit for an already powerful class where that kit was created just for this game. Most characters in this game have at least one potential power-up depending on the resolution of their character growth and quest, but Ember has three, and only one of them actually tells you for real what Soot is and where Ember gets her power from - I will discuss that later. Ember is that odd case of a character where it's obvious that the character has secrets and mysteries about her, but she herself doesn't know it. Mechanically, Ember is a powerhouse. She's a full progression Charisma-based divine caster based on the druid spellbook, and it's possible to build her into the single most devastating combat character in the game (short of an optimally built custom character like the PC) once her build comes fully online. Even without that it's hard to go too wrong with Ember as long as you emphasize her spellcasting.  Because we can't have nice things, I blood Ember on some nearby cultists with a cast of Ear-Piercing Scream.  "I know who you are. You're Kaylessa, a cultist of Deskari." "That's a lie!" (Her crimson eyes flash, and she says firmly,) "I loathe demons and I'll kill any I come across!" [Perception - 10] "(Take a closer look at the elf) (She's clearly holding something back, but... she doesn't appear to be lying either. Whatever it is she's hiding, her claim that she hates demons sounds quite convincing.) "You're not lying, but you're not telling me the whole truth." "What, was I supposed to pour my heart out?" (She looks at you defiantly.) "You have your war, soldier. I have mine. You're fighting chaos and madness, and I... I'm fighting lies and hypocrisy. But we are both willing to die for our cause, aren't we?" "Why would Forn slander you?"So, Forn Autumn Haze and Kaylessa here are a kickstarter backer's NPC and sidequest.  "I believe you. Forn is at the Defender's Heart, you should keep clear of the place." "It was never my intention to set foot in there. Farewell, soldier, and... thank you for believing me."Now, if you just kill her, Forn gives you a reward and that's the end of it. Instead, I've set in motion a subplot that will last for quite a long while. When I was taking notes to prepare this update, I asked a friend of mine who knows a lot about Pathfinder for details because I was sure that I'd misunderstood. Surely a modern DnD setting wouldn't do this. They did, in fact, do this. CYTHEREAL RANT INCOMING So what we're dealing with is how drow elves work in Pathfinder's world, and it's very simple: when an elf turns evil, they transform into a drow. It is a literal divine curse placed on evil elves by one of the gods and it is completely incurable. Once an elf turns into a drow, they are evil forevermore and cannot turn back (unless your campaign decides otherwise). Drow also breed true, so drow children are also inherently evil from birth. This is not implication or 'oh dear the writers didn't think it through.' This is explicit, acknowledged fact.  By itself this would be bad enough, but there is a long and very ugly precedent for the idea of 'dark skin is literally a divine mark of evil, and you can be turned black when you sin.' Intentionally or not, Pathfinder's writers chose to bring a fantastical version of the Curse of Ham into their setting. You see, there's a bit in the Book of Genesis where a dude named Canaan, who is the son of a dude called Ham, commits a sin and so Noah (yes, that Noah) curses him and his descendants to serve those they had wronged. By itself, a brief and not very interesting story unless you're into trying to dissect the historiography of the Bible and how stories within it came to be. But that last bit, about how Canaan and his descendants were cursed to serve those they had wronged, reemerged in Judeo-Christian theological circles in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, when colonialism and the slave trade started. Slavery is kind of hard to reconcile with the whole 'The first and greatest commandment is to love thy neighbor as thyself' deal, and so some very racist theologians came up with the idea: black people were the descendants of Canaan and white people were the descendants of Noah. Dark skin was God's curse on Canaan, and so it was right and proper for black people to serve white people in slavery. In case you think that this is just ancient history and no one took the Curse of Ham seriously in modern times, you'd be dead wrong. Martin Luther King, Jr. and many other black Christian leaders railed against the pernicious idea of the Curse of Ham being invoked and used by racist white people to justify slavery and ill-treatment of black people, and one of the larger offshoots of the Abrahamic family of religions in the United States, the Church of Latter-Day Saints, enshrined it in their scripture. Joseph Smith wrote that an Egyptian pharaoh was descended from Canaan, and through him all Egyptians, and that Noah had cursed them to be banned from the priesthood (which is also full membership in the LDS). Smith's successor, Brigham Young, confirmed that all people of African descent were under the Curse of Ham and barred from the priesthood. The Mormon church only overturned this ban in 1978, and only denounced the Curse of Ham in 2013. So yeah. Whenever I hear about fantasy settings going "These people are literally cursed with dark skin and monstrous features as a mark of their evil, setting them apart as inherently evil and irredeemable" my hackles bounce off the ceiling. It is utter, irredeemable garbage and I was pissed off to learn that it was put into this game. CYTHEREAL RANT OVER  Anywho, the way across the chasm is by building a bridge here. Now we'll be able to pass through the Market Square on the campaign map on our way to and from other places.  After cutting through some more baddies, I stumble across this curious encounter.   (Even the huge pile of junk isn't enough to block out the exclamations coming from beneath it.) "Reveal oh dearest darling beauty mine, why didst thou turn thy gaze on me, pray tell? Thy husband I called friend a time, but love 'tis like an ocean, friendship — a well!" "Hey, who's there?" (The pile of junk seems to shake. A stage whisper drifts up from below:) "Granny, let's not answer! Methinks those be demons calling down and trying to trick us!" "In that case, there is nothing for us to do but accept our fate! Madam, demon or not, we are actors from the finest theater in Kenabres — the Next-Door Theater! We were trapped in this cellar during our rehearsal..." "Wait, what? We're trapped in here? I thought we'd barricaded ourselves in here away from the demons! Deliberately!" "If you didn't nap through the start of every rehearsal, Master Kemh, you would be better informed!" (The ensuing exchange degenerates into a stream of unintelligible bickering.) [Athletics 10] (Move the pile of junk)Oh, theater people.  "Look, the door is open, and now we are completely at the mercy of whatever's up there. If it really is a demon..." "We have nothing to fear — we have the power of inspiration, after all! But hand me over my ladle. And that rolling pin."You know, having grown up around a lot of amateur community theater sorts, I'd absolutely believe they'd react like this during an apocalyptic demonic invasion.   "Granny! That's not a ladle! That's one of the props for the Malevolent Lich performance, the one Tinna made! It's a scepter or something..." "She made it out of my ladle. She wanted to use a broom handle, but I put paid to that daft idea." (says the dwarf with dignity.) "Oh, I've seen your show! You are very funny! Especially your play where the woman slowly climbs onto the chair while singing, and then falls off again." (Ember claps her hands in delight.) "Well, it is actually a great tragedy about unrequited love. The chair, you see, it represents a tower of rock rising up above the raging sea like the finger of a giant. And the woman, she isn't supposed to fall, but rather gracefully cascade into the swirling abyss below, just like I showed her a hundred times... But I'm glad you liked it." "What were you doing down there?" "We were rehearsing. Our art distracts us from our fear and panic." (The dwarf waves her ladle emphatically, doing a fair impression of a conductor.) "Really? When I'm scared, I eat." "We tried that too, but our supplies ran out. But art — oh! Art is eternal!" "Can you get somewhere safe?" "Oh, don't worry on our account! We'll be going to our basement in the next street, that's where our Lambkin is! We're not afraid of demons with Lambkin around!" "Lambkin?" "Lambkin," (says the dwarf readily.) "Our male lead. He'll protect us. Don't worry, we know what we're doing!We will, of course, meet these people again. There's an achievement for keeping them alive for the whole game.  I'm kind of sad they don't react to a bard PC.  For a change of pace, zombies come pouring out of the nearby graveyard when you approach!   I'm told this is actually a pretty legit miniboss fight on higher difficulties! As it is, it still takes a few rounds of Inspire Courage backed shooting from Yua, Lann, Woljiff, and Ember to bring down the necromancer while Seelah and Cammy chopped through the zombies.  Yoink! Next time, we'll continue exploring the Market Square. The Crimson Path (this update) Abrikandilu 2 Bandits 9 Cultists 8 Dretches 5 Ghouls 4 Giant Centipedes 2 Giant Flies 2 Shadows 2 Zombies 11 Total 45 Cythereal fucked around with this message at 22:42 on Feb 28, 2024 |
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 21:01
|
|
|
to give the faintest of all possible praise to that take on the drow, it is while incredibly lovely slightly more dignified than the origins of D+D drow, which was Ed Greenwood hearing that norse mythology held there were light elves and dark elves, and then deciding that since D+D already had 'light' elves straight out of Tolkien, the dark elves would 1. live underground like the Norse ones 2. have a civilization composed entirely of Ed Greenwood's femdom BDSM fantasies, plus spiders for some reason. people who have played Baldur's Gate 3 may be familiar with a character who pops up in it named Elminster. he was Ed Greenwood's self-insert, and the canon list of Forgotten Realms rulers and goddesses he has had sex with goes past funny and well into the realm of depressing. i like the God of War: Ragnarok take on dark elves, though. the dark elves are small, bearded, live underground, and forge weapons. in other words: they're just dwarves. why the gently caress did you think we were two different types of thing, you weirdos
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 21:18
|
|
|
I had a feeling the Drow transformation was gonna be the thing that was discussed. I need to check and see if it's still a thing in PF2E or if they changed it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 21:30
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:Well that's some loving Blizzard grade racist bullshit in Golarion's world. This is why you should have done a Battletech LP, you wouldn't have had to deal with-   never mind
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 21:45
|
|
|
I was right it was about Drow. The change in color is actually slightly less racist than it seems as Pathfinder Drow are consistently portrayed as having very pale blue skin to a darker blue. This game describing her as having Black Skin is inaccurate in that regard  Still I don’t like the Drow origin in Pathfinder as I agree it’s distasteful. It’s actually no longer a thing as the Drow are being written out of Pathfinder in their effort to divorce themselves more from D&D. Their role as the primary scary humanoids from underground is being taken by the Serpent Folk (who I am not a big fan of as they kind of seem like Yuan-ti but lamer).
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 21:51
|
|
|
Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:
Huh the God of War Dark Elves are insect elves. You are talking about Dwarves.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 21:53
|
|
|
I like this guy. Kind of an inversion of the necromancer in Hexen 2, who used to terrorize the local village until a demonic invasion happened, at which point he decides to fight the demons so people can go back to being scared of him.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 21:53
|
|
|
And You Were Doing So Well Before So I think I know what a major point of discussion (if not THE major point) will be, and if you're horrified? Good. This is one quest that should have never made it in, especially since it was never part of the original AP. Yep, Paizo might have laid the foundation, but whoever did the writing at Owlcat laid the rotting building on top. That said, let's focus for a moment on the one shining part of the update, Ember.  How to build a child soldier in one easy quest! The black bar is to cover up a spoiler character. She's very obviously built primarily on the encounter above, which is virtually unchanged apart from the fact that she's one of your best spellcasters and the woman in the encounter above is a civilian. Also, anyone who doesn't react positively to Ember is a bad person- even Wenduag respects her, and one of the biggest signs that CamCam is a bad person is because she is the only member out of your entire party, both present and future, who doesn't like her. And yes, I think that applies to anyone IRL who doesn't like her either  But let's put that aside. In fact, let's put all this aside- both Wrath the game, and Wrath the AP. I'm going to talk about another AP, Second Darkness. Now, I admit I got into Pathfinder kind of late (I think it was around the mid-2010s or so) so if there was a lot of discussion around this AP, I might have missed it. And I admit, I'm not really a ultra-hardcore-hyperforce-megamind loremaster either, as Pathfinder has a million extraneous sourcebooks and if there was drow lore in one of them, I must've missed it as my brain is too full of bad anime and Warhammer lore to expand much further. So you can imagine my shock when I decided to read this old-rear end AP for a lark, only to find that it's not just an actual goddamn plot point, but a climactic event for a regular elf who opposes the party at almost every turn and is generally a jackass overall, to turn into a dark-skinned drow as a "ohmigosh, he's EVIL™ you guyz!  "Oh man, I thought this dude ran the local no-kill shelter, but it all became clear when his skin got darker! Gee, I should really cut bigger eyeholes in my white hood!" - hopefully said by no playtester ever. And that's not getting into how the players are supposed basically put on blackface (it's a spell to make them look like drow, but in the context of the other drow lore, it's blackface) to infiltrate an entire noble house of underdressed drow for an entire book before this. And that's assuming that the players aren't bored as poo poo beforehand since Second Darkness isn't really all that interesting, and reads more like a series of one-shot adventures that the writers had to put together because their bosses were breathing down their necks.  I'm not kidding about the blackface, by the way. See those two female drow on the right? The one with long hair is Seoni, the one with the big sword is Amiri. Yyyep. But again, those sins are forgivable- Pathfinder was new on the scene, they didn't have a lot of established writers, and this was a part of the product life cycle where they were trying to innovate on D&D 3.5, I get that. I can forgive mechanical and narrative roughness, that can be papered over. But what cannot be papered over is that while Paizo was establishing their original IP world, where they were stablishing their original racial mechanics, they chose to just stick that Ham bullshit in there and think it was cool and good. The worst part is though? That as far as the player base is concerned, Paizo didn't really do anything wrong. I googled discussions about Second Darkness to write this post (especially since another aspect of the drow hasn't come up yet in the LP), and boy howdy, it was disheartening. Most people thought it was 'flawed but good', and even in the negative reviews they mostly thought it was mechanically bad. Some even mentioned their 'fond memories' of the AP! And I'm nost just talking about Reddit here, ut the Paizo forums themselves as well. I only saw one person mention the Curse of Ham on Reddit, and he got downvoted to 0- not surprising to be sure, and maybe even pleasantly so considering it's not a negative number, but still. And I think this has to do with something that is STILL an issue with the big-name cultural producers, not just games, and certainly not just tabletop RPG products either. It's that the people at the top are the same kind of jackasses that have been in power for way too long. I'm not just talking about white dudes here, but a certain, specific breed of reactionary white dudes who want the status quo to continue and only change when it is: A: Most profitable for them personally, and B: Least painful for them personally. And it's not just PF either- D&D, White Wolf/Onyx Path, it's all the same kind of sheltered rear end in a top hat think modern gameplayers are too soft ans sensitive while recoiling at the very thought of someone with dyed hair playing their games. Don't get me wrong, PF has come a long way since then, and future APs are a lost better with their representation and portrayal of minorities, but they still have a lot of issues (namely their portrayal of women, which I'll cover in Act 2/3 of the LP), and regardless of how much I personally enjoy PF's mechanics, the fluff leaves a lot to be desired. CommissarMega fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Feb 28, 2024 |
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 22:01
|
|
|
Honestly the dumbest thing is, as far as a deeper dive into Norse mythology showed me, light elves are basically barely mentioned as someone living with the Aesir gods in their own place (so they might just be Aesir or gods or something) and dark elves are sometimes interexchangable with dwarves and might have just been an invention of Snorri, the guy we got most Norse mythology from... who was from when Scandinavia was fully christianized. TL;DR: Blame Christianism.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 22:01
|
|
|
Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:to give the faintest of all possible praise to that take on the drow, it is while incredibly lovely slightly more dignified than the origins of D+D drow, which was Ed Greenwood hearing that norse mythology held there were light elves and dark elves, and then deciding that since D+D already had 'light' elves straight out of Tolkien, the dark elves would 1. live underground like the Norse ones 2. have a civilization composed entirely of Ed Greenwood's femdom BDSM fantasies, plus spiders for some reason. I thought Drow went back to Gygax with the Vault of the Drow adventure module.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 22:25
|
|
|
If you were playing as a Paladin, would it be possible to Detect Evil on the Drow and see whats really going on there? That's something that would happen for sure on my old dnd table, removing all tension from the choice.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 22:25
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:CYTHEREAL RANT INCOMING Even if you ignored the racial elements (and you SHOULD NOT), it's also a pretty weird thing to reference in a game that is (at least partially) about redemption. I love this loving guy. It's so hard to find time for your real interests while keeping your career going, you know? Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:i like the God of War: Ragnarok take on dark elves, though. the dark elves are small, bearded, live underground, and forge weapons. in other words: they're just dwarves. why the gently caress did you think we were two different types of thing, you weirdos The most likely reason that's the GoW take is that that's a pretty common theory about the svartálfar amongst actual scholars of mythology. They don't show up much in the original texts and when they do they basically live in the spaces dwarves live in and behave like them.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 22:27
|
|
|
I love Ember. She's the ultimate opposite of your average Avellone NPC - instead of wise, cynical, "there's no difference between good and evil" old woman we've got naive, purehearted, idealist child (I guess? I do not remember her age, she's either a child or acts like one). It's not really a spoiler, but she's basically Carrot from Terry Pratchett books and it will soon become clear why.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 22:28
|
|
|
Ember is awesome. Kudos to her especially for being an inspiring atheist with a take no prisoners level of compassion. I agree with the whole black skin changing to match black heart thing. Gack. Give me Drizzt over that sort of dark elf any day. achtungnight fucked around with this message at 22:35 on Feb 28, 2024 |
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 22:32
|
|
|
You can kind of get away with having a good and evil elf race if you makes them basically Seelie and Unseelie, so fay summer court and winter court. But that still doesn't vibe with the whole "fall" thing plus the physical transformation, so there's really no other good read than to think it's a Curse of Ham analogy, which is obviously awful.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 22:38
|
|
|
I had no idea about that level of Drow bullshit in PF1. Just the regular level of Elf bullshit from PF1. Likely since my group hasn't run a game in Golarion until very recently.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 22:39
|
|
|
A brief history of probably the worst "race" in D&D! Drow originate even before Salvatore. I believe their introduciton is in the AD&D 1e module Against the Giants, where it's hinted throughout the adventures that there's a shadowy force coordinating the giants together, and it's revealed to be evil elves! Who have, uh, all black skin. And worship a demonic spider goddess. And they have black skin because they're evil and their goddess made them evil. Uh. Hm. From there, fast forward a little bit, and bouncer-turned-writer R.A. Salvatore is about to get a deal with WotC, who's releasing a line of novels intended to flesh out their new setting, The Forgotten Realms, created by one Canadian hippie by the name of Ed Greenwood. As I understand, there actually wasn't a ton of detail on the drow in Forgotten Realms at that time. Anyways, Ed Greenwood wants to start his book by having an already established character show up and introduce his actual chosen main character, Wulfgar. Then he gets a phone call from his agent: he can't use that pre-established character, and they need a replacement, now, on the phone call. So he says the first thing that comes to his mind: A dark elf, named Drizzt Do'urden, which at the time is sincerely just vague noises he made in the shape of a name. They ask if he can spell that. He responds that he cannot. Drizzt was never meant to be the big deal of the books, but he very quickly became the big deal, and that meant Salvatore became, weirdly, The Dude Who Writes About The Dark Elf/Elves. There is some good from this - Salvatore establishes immediately that no, drow are not evil by nature. There is a whooooooole lot of bad from this - as I understand, no small amount of the more, uh, sexy BDSM aspects of drow come from him. The worst parts of drow stay the same - they were good elves, then their evil goddess became an evil goddess, and her followers were all cursed to join her, and a big part of that curse waaaaaaaas that they're black now. Well ok then. Also they're all evil FEMINISTS who think WOMEN are better then MEN! That's how you know they're bad! Good loving lord. And that's Drow! That's Drow in like, 90% of their appearances in general populous fantasy. It rarely gets any deeper then that. Sometimes they're written even worse; on the very rare occasion they're written slightly less bad. As sexy lady villains, they're also enormously popular, often for entirely awful and frequently fetishized reasons. Not always, I should say! There is the occasional interesting thing done with the concept, there are people who like them for non-fetishizes reasons! But in general, it's pretty grim. Pathfinder's setting of Golarion doesn't have an evil spider goddess, so they did some things different, but not actually better like, in any way. The initial story is that, in the Age of Darkness (we might learn more about that later), the elves that didn't escape into space (yes) went underground, but because the underground is full of Evil Radiation because of the cosmic horror god locked inside the planet, they became infected with Evil and turned into the Drow, which. Ok cool it's still an evil curse that makes them black, that's not better at all. This was later expanded to be such that any elf who becomes Evil Enough (and probably infected with Evil radiation) turns...black. That's actually significantly loving worse! As was mentioned before, Pathfinder's second edition has them changing a whole lot to try to be less horrifically poo poo. Also they're trying to remove a lot of the more vaguely semi-trademarked things in D&D after WotC started toying with the idea of pulling all rights to anyone else to use them. Drow are amongst those changes! They've been retconned majorly, and by majorly, I mean they straight up no longer even exist. The elves that went underground to escape the comet smashing into the planet are now cavern elves (they still have a fancy elvish name but it's not drow) and that's actually just it. They're not all evil, they're not tainted by Evil Radiation, they're just elves who went underground instead of onto another planet, and they see better in the dark, and that's it. Drow are potentially trademarked by WotC so Paizo doesn't want to use the name anymore to ensure WotC can't swipe them out, and while we're changing it, hey, let's maybe remove the horrific Mark of Ham poo poo they had going on. They're still the elves with the black skin who live underground and have vague links to spiders, so you can get the same aesthetics as before, but now you get that without the insane racism attached. It should be noted for reasons of cynicim that people (less then you'd think, more then you'd hope) were mad about this change, because nerds are the worst, always.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 22:46
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 8, 2024 03:40 |
|
|
CommissarMega posted:But again, those sins are forgivable- Pathfinder was new on the scene, they didn't have a lot of established writers, and this was a part of the product life cycle where they were trying to innovate on D&D 3.5, I get that. I can forgive mechanical and narrative roughness, that can be papered over. But what cannot be papered over is that while Paizo was establishing their original IP world, where they were stablishing their original racial mechanics, they chose to just stick that Ham bullshit in there and think it was cool and good. I don't think you can really be all that forgiving with the APs. Second Darkness was the sixth Adventure Path - the third for Golarion, sure, but their sixth overall, as three previous ones had been published in the pages of Dungeon Magazines (which Paizo had been publishing since 2002, taking over the publishing from WotC when WotC made an effort to divest some of their stuff) before they moved to making "D&D 3.75". These earlier Adventure Paths - Shackled City, Age of Worms, and Savage Tide were in the hands of the vast majority of the writers who would go on to make the later APs as well, and who were regular writers for Dungeon and Dragon magazines - and some of which, such as Jason Bulmahn, James Jacobs, et. al., in charge of Paizo and Pathfinder as a whole. Further, these earlier APs were ostensibly set in Greyhawk, with setting notes to move them to Forgotten Realms, Eberron, etc., so they had plenty of opportunity in researching where these would fit to actually, you know, not repeat a lot of this stuff. Szarrukin posted:I love Ember. She's the ultimate opposite of your average Avellone NPC - instead of wise, cynical, "there's no difference between good and evil" old woman we've got naive, purehearted, idealist child (I guess? I do not remember her age, she's either a child or acts like one). It's not really a spoiler, but she's basically Carrot from Terry Pratchett books and it will soon become clear why. Ember is both one of the most mechanically sound and narratively enjoyable characters in the game. She comes with Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot, meaning she can directly contribute to combat with ranged touch spells from the get-go, and has the Witch spellbook which has a delightful mix of healing, damage, crowd control, buffs, and debuffs. She also gets access to Witch Hexes, which in themselves have some very powerful effects - the Slumber Hex is a single-target sleep spell with no HD limit, and sleep is a very powerful effect. She is also not an Adult by Elf standards - she is somewhere just under a century old, and Elves in D&D 3.5/Pathfinder aren't Adult until they reach 110+ years of age (and with the random ages, minimum ages across the 3 categories are 114, 116, and 120). Ember is essentially an idealistic teenager, and along with Seelah, brings a much-needed dose of optimism to this game.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2024 22:49
|
|