Furthermore the orcs are a people that comes from somewhere else to wage war with the humans who were already there. Turned up even more in Warcraft where they literally come to a New World and start battling the natives.
Or the Huns in the V century, or the muslims circa 700-1800 AD [wikipedia.org], or the Mongols , or the Bantu [wikipedia.org]... we could go on and on
More seriously, the Orcs are usually depicted as tribal and less technological than the Humans, so they are a bad fit for Spanish conquistadores of Portuguese adventurers.
Well, the Muslims aren't a good fit, because they were as technologically as advanced as both Europe and the Byzantine Empire (and were more limited by more mundane problems like long supply lines and having to leave considerable forces in conquered regions). Huns, maybe, though again, the Huns weren't that far behind the Romans, but by and large, because they were a confederacy of numerous tribes; some from the Asian Steppe, some from Eastern Europe and the Urals, and Germanic tribes as well, so in the end while they could do a lot of damage, it wasn't a sustained invasion in the long run.
Probably the best parallels might be the Germanic tribes of the 1st century, who definitely were not as advanced as the Romans. Other possible parallels might be confederacies like the Sea Peoples of the Bronze Age, or possibly earlier groups like the various hill peoples north and east of Mesopotamia in the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Age periods, who were a constant scourge on the civilizations of Anatolia and Mesopotamia, who definitely were not as materially advanced, but numerous enough to be a constant danger against the nascent city states and kingdoms of the time.
I was simply mocking this "white men baaaad" attitude, I was not trying to draw real life parallels for the Orcs, which is, in my opinion, a task that only AmiMoJo could undertake successfully (successfully from his point of view). The Orcs from fantasy literature are based on legendary creatures from the Indo-European folklore, their real life parallels (if any) are shrouded by the mist of time. As a side note, if, talking about violent invasions, one can only think about white Europeans, there is somethin
You nailed it. Orcs are barbarian hordes prowling outside the walls of the civilized world, always trying to breach those walls and tear down civilization. They represent the absence of culture, the enemy of civilization. And let's not forget that they are LITERAL MONSTERS! Unambiguous foes you can imagine killing without having to worry about whether you're doing the right thing.
âoeRacism was not a problem on the Discworld, becauseâ"what with trolls and dwarfs and so onâ"speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green.â
Didn't hold later with Rimwards Howondaland but still....
Anybody who thinks this SJW craze is just politics as usual is in for a rude awakening. Its a full blown religious cult. You will bow down before it at all times. And if you don't they will pursue you into any field you go and any past time you try to escape to and make you bow down.
Anybody who thinks this SJW craze is just politics as usual is in for a rude awakening. Its a full blown religious cult. You will bow down before it at all times. And if you don't they will pursue you into any field you go and any past time you try to escape to and make you bow down.
Good to see they don't have a monopoly on over-reacting to inconsequential things. I was worried for a second.
Also for the stand-up comic that risks being targeted with a stasi-style cancel campaign every time they tell a joke, inconsequential is a relative term.
by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Thursday June 25, 2020 @02:46AM (#60225330)
This isn't racism. I know you really, really, really want it to be racism, but it's not. You're stretching really hard to make it taht.
WOTC changing this does nothing to people who want to keep using it for "racist analogies", whatever the fuck that means. Sounds like you're trying to police how people play the game. Fuck off.
Yes, SJWs are a problem. It's a fucking cult. And trying to equate this to actual racism is really disgusting and shameful. I can't tell if you're a weird extremist or just some troll; functionally, there's really no difference.
FYI racism has occasionally been a problem for me (or so I thought at the time; it's now hard to be sure), but I still try to confront virtue signalling claptrap when I see it happening. Antiracism and SJW are not the same thing, just as antiracism and Antifa are not the same thing.
It's important to remember that they used to call themselves "social justice warriors." The name wasn't invented for them, it was invented BY them. Tumblr was infested with them.
Their over-the-top screetching about every microaggression imaginable made them ridiculous, and when formerly normal people start acting like SJWs, calling them SJWs isn't a dog whistle or a sekret Internet code. It's accurate, and descriptive.
You may be too young to remember, but at one time anybody who said something like "man, modern pop music is pretty degenerate" would be called a member of the Moral Majority. This was an actual thing whose members got agitated if Prince sang about how he liked to bone women. It got turned into an insult because of how crazy the organization was. I can only assume that if you got zapped back to 1984 you would be angry about misusing the Moral Majority label too.
It certainly looks like we're seeing the beginning of real revolution, I'll grant you that. This has been a long-time in the making. We really should have seen this 30 years ago, after Rodney King. I guess we still had some growing up to do.
The good news is that it won't be the Khmer Rouge -- quite the opposite. (Unless you think it's your side that's going to emulate the Khmer Rouge. That makes a lot more sense, but that's probably not what you mean. Of course, that's a fantasy as well. If we've lea
Look at what this woke crap has done to other industries, like comics.
Sure, the MOVIES make zillions.
But the actual comics industry is now in the toilet, in the process of being flushed.
And it's starting to metastatize in gaming.
The PC Patrol hit Cards Against Humanity today. A co-founder was forced out because he fostered a bad work culture if you can believe that. I guess the complainers never saw the company product before accepting that job.
Care to provide specifics for what exactly the worker complaints were in regards to? From the Cards Against Humanity statement, I can only assume they're management and bias related. The nature of the game has no bearing on whether there is actual bias against some of the workers in the office. If there was no verifiable bias, and it was completely only about non-pc banter, then you might have a point saying they should have known when joining the company. That said, there are still laws in place for protec
Tolkien's orcs were a *classist* trope. Tolkien had a splendid ear for dialect, his heroes speak in hifaltun' dialect because it sets them apart, not because he couldn't write differently. T.A. Shippey points out two characters in Tolkiens' published works speak in a completely modern dialect: Saruman and Smaug. They sound like 20th Century politicians.
So when Tolkien makes his orcs sound, well, working class, it's not an accident. It's alright to be a rural bumpkin, but anything that suggests you might earn your bread in a factory is the Mark of Cain.
If you're an orc, you stand up tall and REPRESENT the fucking horde. Who are these people who play orcs and feel bad for themselves? Do they even roleplay?
I don't disagree. The problem is that WOTC is catering to pre-teens and teens who don't have a well developed sense of morality and an understanding of the world. They are prone to following the tropes they see in pop culture, good and bad. If you are fed a steady diet of Cops, the TV show, and you have the righteous pale white elves and dark, dirty, evil orcs, it's not hard for a kid to start applying what they see in the real world to the game.
It's not just creaky old neckbeards who play this game. WOTC i
Yeah, this is utterly absurd. Worrying about racial stereotypes of imaginary races is just plain stupid. Nobody is hurt if orcs are presented as 2-dimensional bad guys. People are not going to mistreat people of other ethnicities because of how imaginary ethnic groups are portrayed.
And since it's a pen and paper RPG, any GM can insert whatever nuance they want! If someone wants to have a scenario where players are protecting gay dark elves from a pogrom, just make one up! D&D is just a framework
YOU are the one comparing Orcs to black people not the people creating the orc race as a foe to be defeated in a fantasy environment.
If you are going to bitch about that, why are you not also bitching about all of the other actual racism being intentionally put on display. This is a fantasy environment and eventually people will just move to a more subtle form of it just to rile you up. The old fashion half-elf racism, the elf vs dwarf racism... or how about the demon race or angel race, I mean you fucking name it... racism is all over the fucking place.
It's one thing to avoid direct implications of racism by removing cards made by an actual racist that look like klan clothes and another to make up racist links where none exists because your own mind can fabricate racism in a situation.
Are you actually wanting racism to go away? Or are you looking to keep the issue front and center and make sure that anything you don't like gets a cleansing from the public eye like the CCP?
Don't worry. As I said, because of this idiocy, I'm not going to be giving them any more money.
They can rely on the wokies for future revenue. You know, the ones who'll buy the first product or two in "solidarity", and then disappear into the ether. Having done their damage to the product.
And yeah, fuck me for loving the property enough to wish it weren't being derailed in this idiotic fashion.
A company is changing it's product. Don't like it? Well don't buy it then. That's the way the free market works.
People are exercising their speech to criticize the decision and form of the change, and the company making it.
Don't like it? read a different page, or scroll on by.
And if there's a big enough market for republican-aligned tabletop gaming, then someone will enter that niche and rake in the sweet dollars. If there isn't then you've proven that the WotC made a sound business decision to move away from that niche.
What the heck have Republicans got to do with anything here?
Liberalism (as in, a love of liberty - where you're not being told how to act, think, feel etc by ideologues) isn't specific to Republicans or to the right.
People are exercising their speech to criticize the decision and form of the change, and the company making it. Don't like it? read a different page, or scroll on by.
Eh? That defeats the purpose of a discussion forum. I'm not going to pipe down just because I upset a bunch of snowflakes. I have as much right to point out how foolish I think they are as they do to point out how foolish they thing WotC are.
What the heck have Republicans got to do with anything here?
Eh? That defeats the purpose of a discussion forum. I'm not going to pipe down just because I upset a bunch of snowflakes. I have as much right to point out how foolish I think they are as they do to point out how foolish they thing WotC are.
I was mirroring the same dismissive attitude you had about people reasonably complaining to your dismissal itself. It's terrifying that I had to explain that to you.
because right wingers generally are strongly in favour of the free market and it's invisible hand. When it's working in their favour of course.
Only some right wingers. There's also a bunch of right-wingers who believe in preaching (yes, preaching) and moralizing and pearl-clutching in response to every moral panic that comes along.
WOTC for example
Personally I'm a liberal. I believe in liberty, an extremely broad range of opinions and viewpoints being allowed to be heard and expressed,
And if there's a big enough market for republican-aligned tabletop gaming
"Republican aligned" because it isn't designed by a bunch of paranoid morons who invent connections that don't even make sense? What are you smoking and how much are you paying for it?
You invented a group of people who believe black people = orcs. Imagining a connection that has no foundation in the source material or, to anyone's knowledge, any scenarios players have come up with.
Just because you assigned the comparison to a straw man of your own invention doesn't mean you didn't make it. You absolutely, literally did; then you tried to distance yourself from it. Since you created both the comparison and the people who believe it, whose idea is it? It sure wasn't mine. Whose pro
Not only did you, but you said you think that not because of their complexion, but because they are "incapable of making good decisions, inherently violent, inferior and beyond help because they will always revert to type."
That's what you said. Nobody else said that. You said you think they represent black people because they are "incapable of making good decisions, inherently violent, inferior and beyond help because they will always revert to type", not because they have dark skin.
"in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types"
Which is pretty hilarious from a historical point of view, since it wasn't even a century earlier that Europeans were waxing poetic about Xanadu, Kublai Khan and golden cities.
Orcs are a "a stock or store of money or valued objects, typically one that is secret or carefully guarde"?? Who would have thought that an Orc horde was a hidden stock of valuables???
Yes, "hoard" and "horde" mean different things....
That's because "racism" has become these people's "42" (the answer to everything).
Good morning! RACISM! 1+1 is NOT 11! RACISM! I agree with most of what you say, but points 3, 5 and 7 need more nuance. RACISM! It's irritating having you label everyone a racist. That's because you're a RACIST!
Yet what're we seeing with "equality" movements. Segregation and privilege according to race...
I don't wanna have to deal with this during my free time.
The word "racism" has always been defined as the belief that one race is superior to another. The phrase that people should be using when they yell racism is actually "racial discrimination". You can discriminate based on race without being racist, and you can be racist without discriminating based on race; the two are not mutually dependent.
Of course ideologues prefer to misuse the word "racism" because they know that they don't have to defend it. If you accuse someone of racial discrimination, you'll g
It's good confirmation, but not particularly enlightening since it just matches my own observations. SJWs will tell you're they're the purest and least biased beings on this planet (except, of course, for the minorities who must be even less biased), but when you actually look at what they say and how they act they display a level of prejudice that's absolutely incredible.
I dunno, but if people equate a certain group of people with low level monsters in a RPG whose main reason to exist is to provide combat experience to player parties, it's not the RPG monsters that have problems and are in dire need of a change...
Peak SJW; virtue signalling so hard, so desperate to find fault in others, that they become the very thing they supposedly hate.
Racism is alive and well in the US, but it's socially acceptable because it's the "right" kind of people doing it ( like our friend AmiMoJo here ). Don't get me started on systemic racism ( politely termed "affirmative action" ).
These are exactly the issues I rant about the most on here, and exactly the issues I get modded down the most on.
"One mustn't point out the Emperor's pea-sized cock, even if it goes a long way towards explaining the 8" diameter exhaust pipes on his diesel pickup." Or something.:)
if you want a "complex morality" race, there's nothing wrong with that
if you want a one-dimensional punching bag, there's nothing wrong with that, except maybe taking writer shortcuts
what do you think zombies and skeletons are? they are hero fodder, a stand-up cardboard cutout for Shit What You Beat Up, the absolutely simplest easiest (and not PC-able except by hollow virtue theater) most direct route to crafting a Bad Guy shell, utilitarian minimalistic spartan bare single-purpose "role"
back in the day we also used nazis as disposable BadGuyz, a super-shallow vacuum with nothing inside, zero research zero effort zero "complexity", so i'm curious as to whether anyone is lining up to "address" that doublebad problem
And there's nothing wrong with taking the one dimensional hero fodder and playing it as a robust, complicated society.
I have fond memories of creating a lizard man campaign where the PCs played as the one-dimensional lizard men. Except we built a society for them. Culture. Habits. Likes and dislikes. Conflict with the other races. They'd start the morning sunning themselves on the beach, then go looking for merchant ships to pirate. (They swam really well, so they didn't bother with their own ships. Just swam up and swarmed over the sides.)
When the local merchant fleet got tired of that they launched an invasion against the lizard men, and treated them like one dimensional hero fodder. But that was vicious and cruel and women and children were murdered, and it drove the PCs to take their people deep into the swamp, and then had to revert to hunting and gathering to keep from starving. But they rallied, and led their people into the sewers under the local city, and created a new empire there. Ultimately they undermined the city and sank it into the sewers, and drove the humans out, and claimed it for their own.
I've also run a campaign of a secret cabal of vampires keeping a town (and their secret) safe for centuries. Sure, they needed to regularly feed on the people in the town, but they are incredibly powerful and keep the town an idyllic, quaint backwater. But the world around them is rough, and kingdoms rise and fall, armies march, and the one-dimensional hero fodder comes at the town. But through it all the vampires valiantly fight to keep the town safe. Until the townspeople start to figure out their secret, and decide to uncover and kill the vampires in their midst.
And I've run elves as the eco-taliban trying to kill the other races around them. Ruthlessly slaughtering humans, dwarves, and halflings to keep them from farming and mining and building roads. They became the anti-progress, death to the infidels, militant enemy of all people. Launching raids under the cover of darkness, burning towns and crops, drawing in the wild animals to prey upon any who dared to light a fire or cut down a tree. Enslaving the other races, and putting them to work rewilding what they had domesticated.
On one hand I absolutely abhor the fact that WOTC is doing this. Good DMs and players did this decades ago. On the other hand, there's no exam to pass before you can use their materials. And good DMs and players are few and far between. It kills me that they had to, but god if I don't know the base. And they had to.
Glad they did it. But they could have saved a bunch of work if they had just asked a bunch of us a decade or two ago for some ideas about fleshing out those races to make them more interesting.
What is happening is people like you are reading the descriptions for Orcs and going "They are thinly veiled black people! Racism! D&D is RACISTS!!!!" CANCEL D&D!!!!" So please shut the fuck up.
That someone imagines that some people see other groups that way means exactly nothing (and I have a hard time believing there are enough people who might do so to matter).
We're talking about a game featuring literal monsters that want to tear down civilization and eat humans. They do not represent any extant group of humans, they are literal monsters. They exist in the game so players have unambiguous enemies they can fight without feeling guilty. Because it is a game. For fun. Not a complex moral a
It's not that people look at an Orc and see a black person, it's that Orcs are a 1 dimensional mindless hoard that sounds a lot like the way certain people around here talk about black people.
Jesus fucking Christ. Do you ever read what you write before clicking submit?
Incapable of making good decisions, inherently violent, inferior and beyond help because they will always revert to type.
It's not that people look at an Orc and see a black person, it's that Orcs are a 1 dimensional mindless hoard that sounds a lot like the way certain people around here talk about black people. Incapable of making good decisions, inherently violent, inferior and beyond help because they will always revert to type.
Yeah. That's still a problem with the reader. Orcs have never to my knowledge been presented as even vaguely linked to black human "races". Indeed, their keenness on the subject of slavery and conquest is much more suggestive of them being a parody/symbol of the worst aspects of Western civilisation.
I'm tired of companies pandering to people like yourself who seek out and invent offence and then insist that everyone else agree with your twisted and rather sick versions of things. Maybe you should just leave
Again, you forget that he's a troll, and trolls have high regeneration. You need fire to kill trolls, not small cuts with bladed weapons. Everyone knows that.
Calm down snowflake. We are calling it out as a troll not stealing its lunch money. Racism involving imaginary beings. This is a whole new level. I think there is a smuge on that windmill over there which kind of looks like a Hitler stash.... GET IT!
Years ago they made a kind of starter pack adventure with a companion CD. The CD had actors playing the roles of the pre made characters. Not a terrible idea really.
Anyway our DM wanted to work it into our campaign but didn't realise the character who threatened to slit someone's throat on the CD was replaced by a hammer welding paladin in our party.
In hindsight it wasn't that funny but we had a good chuckle at the over the top acting, especially the reaction to the giant spider.
Sorry, I've been having this shit preached to me my entire life.
I, personally don't care what color your skin is, what your reproductive equipment looks like, who you love (exception for Pedophiles), how you love them, etc.
NONE OF THAT SHIT is important to me.
I just care that you're a good human being who tries to get along with others, follow the law, and generally tries to leave the world a slightly nicer place than you found it.
If you can simply answer "Yep!" when I ask you about that, good enough.
I just care that you're a good human being who tries to get along with others
This is where you get confused. See, it's not just other people that need to make an effort to get along with others. You have to make an effort as well.
But that simply isn't enough for some people. And I have no time or patience for obnoxious hall monitor types.
This is that sounds like to ordinary people: "Isn't it enough that I told them how they should behave? They want me to put in the same effort that I expect them to make? How obnoxious! I see no reason why I should have to change!"
I don't know how to get you to understand the necessity of cooperation and emp
I'm sorry that you don't understand. You can't dictate to people to unconditionally love their fellow man and take an active interest in their lives.
The best you can hope for is a sort of well-meaning apathy. Because when you try to FORCE people to pay attention to you, most of the attention you get is NOT the sort you want.
And, having been DRIVEN to paying that sort of attention, of COURSE you're going to be subject to discernment on various levels. Whether you like it or not.
Well, since it's even easier to ignore that kind of bull in RPG than it is in computer games (by virtue of you not having to accept anything written in a RPG source book compared to having to play a computer game mostly the way it was written, barring any kind of modding ability), and knowing that RPG gamers are pretty much used to rewriting game rules that they don't like anyway, I dare say that this will be even more ignored in RPGs than in any other medium so far.
It may have been the only think saving them. Comic books are a dying medium. Kids don't read them. They watch moves and play video games. If they read, they read on their phone or tablet. They sure as hell aren't picking up the latest issue of superman at the grocery checkout. From what I can tell, the market is mostly 40-something nerds. Maybe comics should go digital.
I'm an outsider looking in here, but my point there is that comics, like other print media, are very likely hurting for reasons unre
Attitudes that were fine in the 90's are taboo today. We've evolved. We're more inclusive, tolerant, and empathic. We expect our media to reflect our values.
I'm glad social media didn't exist in the 60's, because "we" would have strangled Star Trek in the crib just in order to virtue signal how righteous we are. All because it was far too liberal and how dare they show an inter-racial kiss on TV. The same kind of self-righteous moral busybodies and religious zealots are hard at work today to subversively ruin anything and everyone who doesn't toe their ideological line.
It's only a matter of time before TNG also becomes problematic too, because those addicted to
"Black skin" is about the only feature a Drow has in common with a black skinned human. White hair, red eyes, purple teeth, slightly shorter than the average elf, generally incredibly slender...
Am I really the only one who never even came up with the idea to equate a Drow to a black human person?
It is true that some artwork they only have black skin in common, but other artwork has more in the way of racial features. This is especially true with some of the artwork for Liriel Baenre and some early Drizzt artwork; see for example the artwork I linked above. Over the last few years, WoTC has deliberately adopted a general approach to make the dark elves really just look like standard elves with dark skin. But that's somewhat new.
It's not freaking new. Dark Elves were always depicted as _Elves_ with dark skin black as night with a blue|purple hue, -- such a tone of color doesn't exist at all in humans.
What's next, *Lolth [fandom.com] the Queen of Spiders or the Queen of the Demonweb Pits is not evil she's just misunderstood.
(*) Lolth -- the most influential goddess of the drow, within the pantheon of the Dark Seldarine.
What's next, *Lolth the Queen of Spiders or the Queen of the Demonweb Pits is not evil she's just misunderstood.
Isn't that more interesting anyway? Having a character that's "just evil" is pretty bland from a narrative point of view. They can only serve as a backdrop to other characters. Having more nuanced characters is always more interesting.
I generally agree. Black and white morality tends to be less interesting. This is a more recent trend in thought, though. Think Beowulf and most classics. There are great current works with "just evil" characters, like Zykon from Order of the Stick. Hilarious, but even his origin story was designed to keep him "just evil" and not sympathetic.
Another great example of a "just evil" character was Darth Vader. He was "just evil" until right before he died. We didn't have much time to see him as a complex charac
Obviously not. But why bother explaining shit you already understand?
You're not interested in genuine dialog. You're just a fucking troll. Your M.O. is to purposefully misrepresent a simple statement to bait a reply, knowing that reasonable people will give you the benefit of the doubt and try to explain the misunderstanding. You repeat this until you can pretend to trap them in a contradiction or they realize you're worthless and ignore you.
So, no, whatever nonsense you wrote is obviously just empty non
They have very dark skin, and in at least some official artwork look pretty close to what one would expect an African American person might look like
Drow are not visually the Elven equivalent of Africans. They're obsidian black by description, and usually some shade of actual black. Even in that picture, she is greyish in color.
Second, part of the objection concerning the orcs and species in general is the sheer idea that there are "evil" intelligent species.
The problem here with the "evil" nature of the race is that those racial traits in the books include societal traits. They don't do the best job of making that clear, but they do explain that some groups or individuals of the races are not necessarily aligned with the race as a whole.
When the Eberron setting came out back during the 3.5 edition era, it was noteworthy for being a setting which had complicated characters and where individuals were not determined by their species. And even then, it included complicated aspects of orcish culture.
The Drow are "evil" in the sense that they are backstabbing, Machiavellian master schemers, out of necessity because their society is pretty much built like that. "Byzantine" isn't even coming close to the level of ruthlessness going down in Menzoberranzan and the average wall street wizard and Fortune 500 CEO wouldn't survive (or remain a free person) for longer than a day there.
They are a product of their society. You get born into this world and you adapt to its rules, or you're dead, a slave or a drider
To be clear for others, you're speaking of Forgotten Realms Drow. The Greyhawk Drow, from what I can see, are basically the same society but without the FR specifics.
The Eberron Drow are quite different. Like much of Eberron, the different races are broken up into different societies. This even includes Drow that are melded with the rest of the civilized races as part of the common society of Eberron. Eberron does at least a halfway decent job of making sure the races aren't monodimensional. However, using
So you can't tell the difference between your examples and AC's right?
Give me a break. Do you honesty think anyone is going to take you seriously? I doubt it. You're just a fucking troll. Interestingly, you use the exact same tactics as another well-known troll. Hmmmmm.....
Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but if you look at an Orc, Troll, etc and think "Black Person", it's YOU who are the racist.
The whole point of the game is to give you enemies who aren't necessarily other PEOPLE to fight.
This is stupid virtue signaling, turned up to 11, and nothing more.
Look at what this woke crap has done to other industries, like comics.
Sure, the MOVIES make zillions.
But the actual comics industry is now in the toilet, in the process of being flushed.
And it's starting to metastatize in gaming.
Oh well. A 40-odd year player of D&D. I won't subsidize this sort of idiocy.
Oh well, I guess I now have the misfortune of having spare cash for other things...
Sigh....
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Furthermore the orcs are a people that comes from somewhere else to wage war with the humans who were already there. Turned up even more in Warcraft where they literally come to a New World and start battling the natives.
The orcs are the Europeans in the 1500s.
Re:Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:5, Informative)
The orcs are the Europeans in the 1500s.
Or the Huns in the V century, or the muslims circa 700-1800 AD [wikipedia.org], or the Mongols , or the Bantu [wikipedia.org]... we could go on and on
More seriously, the Orcs are usually depicted as tribal and less technological than the Humans, so they are a bad fit for Spanish conquistadores of Portuguese adventurers.
Re:Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, the Muslims aren't a good fit, because they were as technologically as advanced as both Europe and the Byzantine Empire (and were more limited by more mundane problems like long supply lines and having to leave considerable forces in conquered regions). Huns, maybe, though again, the Huns weren't that far behind the Romans, but by and large, because they were a confederacy of numerous tribes; some from the Asian Steppe, some from Eastern Europe and the Urals, and Germanic tribes as well, so in the end while they could do a lot of damage, it wasn't a sustained invasion in the long run.
Probably the best parallels might be the Germanic tribes of the 1st century, who definitely were not as advanced as the Romans. Other possible parallels might be confederacies like the Sea Peoples of the Bronze Age, or possibly earlier groups like the various hill peoples north and east of Mesopotamia in the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Age periods, who were a constant scourge on the civilizations of Anatolia and Mesopotamia, who definitely were not as materially advanced, but numerous enough to be a constant danger against the nascent city states and kingdoms of the time.
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Re: Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:2)
Furthermore the orcs are a people that comes from somewhere else to wage war with the humans who were already there.
That's just human propaganda. You have to listen to the Orc Israelites if you want to know the true history of Orc Kind (spoiler: Jesus was an Orc).
Re:Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:4, Interesting)
âoeRacism was not a problem on the Discworld, becauseâ"what with trolls and dwarfs and so onâ"speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green.â
Didn't hold later with Rimwards Howondaland but still ....
Re:Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:4, Insightful)
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WoTC did not give a fuck about MADD, but cave in to these assholes.
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Anybody who thinks this SJW craze is just politics as usual is in for a rude awakening. Its a full blown religious cult. You will bow down before it at all times. And if you don't they will pursue you into any field you go and any past time you try to escape to and make you bow down.
Good to see they don't have a monopoly on over-reacting to inconsequential things. I was worried for a second.
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Good to see they don't have a monopoly on over-reacting to inconsequential things. I was worried for a second.
Death of a thousand cuts. [chicagotribune.com]
Also for the stand-up comic that risks being targeted with a stasi-style cancel campaign every time they tell a joke, inconsequential is a relative term.
Re:Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:4, Insightful)
This isn't racism. I know you really, really, really want it to be racism, but it's not. You're stretching really hard to make it taht.
WOTC changing this does nothing to people who want to keep using it for "racist analogies", whatever the fuck that means. Sounds like you're trying to police how people play the game. Fuck off.
Yes, SJWs are a problem. It's a fucking cult. And trying to equate this to actual racism is really disgusting and shameful. I can't tell if you're a weird extremist or just some troll; functionally, there's really no difference.
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FYI racism has occasionally been a problem for me (or so I thought at the time; it's now hard to be sure), but I still try to confront virtue signalling claptrap when I see it happening. Antiracism and SJW are not the same thing, just as antiracism and Antifa are not the same thing.
Re:Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:4, Insightful)
Your whining about "SJWs"
It's important to remember that they used to call themselves "social justice warriors." The name wasn't invented for them, it was invented BY them. Tumblr was infested with them.
Their over-the-top screetching about every microaggression imaginable made them ridiculous, and when formerly normal people start acting like SJWs, calling them SJWs isn't a dog whistle or a sekret Internet code. It's accurate, and descriptive.
You may be too young to remember, but at one time anybody who said something like "man, modern pop music is pretty degenerate" would be called a member of the Moral Majority. This was an actual thing whose members got agitated if Prince sang about how he liked to bone women. It got turned into an insult because of how crazy the organization was. I can only assume that if you got zapped back to 1984 you would be angry about misusing the Moral Majority label too.
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It certainly looks like we're seeing the beginning of real revolution, I'll grant you that. This has been a long-time in the making. We really should have seen this 30 years ago, after Rodney King. I guess we still had some growing up to do.
The good news is that it won't be the Khmer Rouge -- quite the opposite. (Unless you think it's your side that's going to emulate the Khmer Rouge. That makes a lot more sense, but that's probably not what you mean. Of course, that's a fantasy as well. If we've lea
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Look at what this woke crap has done to other industries, like comics.
Sure, the MOVIES make zillions.
But the actual comics industry is now in the toilet, in the process of being flushed.
And it's starting to metastatize in gaming.
The PC Patrol hit Cards Against Humanity today. A co-founder was forced out because he fostered a bad work culture if you can believe that. I guess the complainers never saw the company product before accepting that job.
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Which is REALLY wild. Since CAH has been a fairly "woke" organization for quite a while now.
Then again "Get woke, go broke."
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I'm honestly waiting for the first "Ork lives matter" painted on some walls in Phlan.
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Was already addressed in Shadowrun years ago chummer.
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Not to mention the unjust prejudice from both Elves and Humans they have to live with.
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Re: Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:2)
Re: Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:2)
Re:Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:5, Interesting)
Tolkien's orcs were a *classist* trope. Tolkien had a splendid ear for dialect, his heroes speak in hifaltun' dialect because it sets them apart, not because he couldn't write differently. T.A. Shippey points out two characters in Tolkiens' published works speak in a completely modern dialect: Saruman and Smaug. They sound like 20th Century politicians.
So when Tolkien makes his orcs sound, well, working class, it's not an accident. It's alright to be a rural bumpkin, but anything that suggests you might earn your bread in a factory is the Mark of Cain.
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Society's global lack of philosophical maturity makes it hard for fictitious creations to not be compared inevitably to some marginalized group.
It's too bad humans are so primitive, such that we can't discuss fictitious creations without worrying about whom we're offending.
Re: Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:2)
If you're an orc, you stand up tall and REPRESENT the fucking horde. Who are these people who play orcs and feel bad for themselves? Do they even roleplay?
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I don't disagree. The problem is that WOTC is catering to pre-teens and teens who don't have a well developed sense of morality and an understanding of the world. They are prone to following the tropes they see in pop culture, good and bad. If you are fed a steady diet of Cops, the TV show, and you have the righteous pale white elves and dark, dirty, evil orcs, it's not hard for a kid to start applying what they see in the real world to the game.
It's not just creaky old neckbeards who play this game. WOTC i
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3.5e was the last good D&D version anyway. So who cares? And there's always Pathfinder.
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And since it's a pen and paper RPG, any GM can insert whatever nuance they want! If someone wants to have a scenario where players are protecting gay dark elves from a pogrom, just make one up! D&D is just a framework
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But the actual comics industry is now in the toilet, in the process of being flushed.
Sorry, people were hoarding toilet paper and I just had to go.
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The Drow with the Heart of Gold
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"The whole point of the game is to give you enemies who aren't necessarily other PEOPLE to fight."
When they came for MTG, I didn't play MTG so I said nothing and they took it away.
When they came for Chess, I didn't play Chess so I said nothing and they took it away.
When they came for Clue, I didn't play Clue so I said nothing and they took it away.
Then they came for D&D. There were no gamers left so say anything -- so they took it away.
Yeah... it's not exactly happening that way -- but it's sure on th
Re:Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:5, Insightful)
no, you didn't read his premise.
YOU are the one comparing Orcs to black people not the people creating the orc race as a foe to be defeated in a fantasy environment.
If you are going to bitch about that, why are you not also bitching about all of the other actual racism being intentionally put on display. This is a fantasy environment and eventually people will just move to a more subtle form of it just to rile you up. The old fashion half-elf racism, the elf vs dwarf racism... or how about the demon race or angel race, I mean you fucking name it... racism is all over the fucking place.
It's one thing to avoid direct implications of racism by removing cards made by an actual racist that look like klan clothes and another to make up racist links where none exists because your own mind can fabricate racism in a situation.
Are you actually wanting racism to go away? Or are you looking to keep the issue front and center and make sure that anything you don't like gets a cleansing from the public eye like the CCP?
Re:Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, I see enough of this crap IRL.
And while I agree we're better off without racism, I'm sick of ideologues preaching to me in my passtimes.
And yes, I read the premise.
I've also seen the original arguments.
And you CANNOT control what people do in the privacy of their own lives.
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1. Identify a respected institution.
2. kill it.
3. gut it.
4. wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect.
--iowahawk
Re: Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:3)
Eat a big cock.
Wizards is going to destroy this product. This happens with companies enjoying too many profits with another.
Donâ(TM)t worry, they are destroying their magic base too.
Get woke; go broke could be written as a law at this point.
The vocal minority do not buy the products they infiltrate.
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Wizards is going to destroy this product.
That's their prerogative, it's their product. If they destroy it, it won't be the first time a company has done such a thing.
This happens with companies enjoying too many profits with another.
Let the free market do it's thing then.They'll go out of business or be superseded by a hungrier company.
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Don't worry.
As I said, because of this idiocy, I'm not going to be giving them any more money.
They can rely on the wokies for future revenue.
You know, the ones who'll buy the first product or two in "solidarity", and then disappear into the ether.
Having done their damage to the product.
And yeah, fuck me for loving the property enough to wish it weren't being derailed in this idiotic fashion.
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A company is changing it's product. Don't like it? Well don't buy it then. That's the way the free market works.
People are exercising their speech to criticize the decision and form of the change, and the company making it. Don't like it? read a different page, or scroll on by.
And if there's a big enough market for republican-aligned tabletop gaming, then someone will enter that niche and rake in the sweet dollars. If there isn't then you've proven that the WotC made a sound business decision to move away from that niche.
What the heck have Republicans got to do with anything here? Liberalism (as in, a love of liberty - where you're not being told how to act, think, feel etc by ideologues) isn't specific to Republicans or to the right.
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People are exercising their speech to criticize the decision and form of the change, and the company making it. Don't like it? read a different page, or scroll on by.
Eh? That defeats the purpose of a discussion forum. I'm not going to pipe down just because I upset a bunch of snowflakes. I have as much right to point out how foolish I think they are as they do to point out how foolish they thing WotC are.
What the heck have Republicans got to do with anything here?
Be because right wingers generally are stro
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Eh? That defeats the purpose of a discussion forum. I'm not going to pipe down just because I upset a bunch of snowflakes. I have as much right to point out how foolish I think they are as they do to point out how foolish they thing WotC are.
I was mirroring the same dismissive attitude you had about people reasonably complaining to your dismissal itself. It's terrifying that I had to explain that to you.
because right wingers generally are strongly in favour of the free market and it's invisible hand. When it's working in their favour of course.
Only some right wingers. There's also a bunch of right-wingers who believe in preaching (yes, preaching) and moralizing and pearl-clutching in response to every moral panic that comes along.
WOTC for example
Personally I'm a liberal. I believe in liberty, an extremely broad range of opinions and viewpoints being allowed to be heard and expressed,
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And if there's a big enough market for republican-aligned tabletop gaming
"Republican aligned" because it isn't designed by a bunch of paranoid morons who invent connections that don't even make sense? What are you smoking and how much are you paying for it?
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Yeah, and they also have white hair. Do we construct a bit of ageism into that now, too?
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Just because you assigned the comparison to a straw man of your own invention doesn't mean you didn't make it. You absolutely, literally did; then you tried to distance yourself from it. Since you created both the comparison and the people who believe it, whose idea is it? It sure wasn't mine. Whose pro
"there are black people, and then there are ni... (Score:3)
Not only did you, but you said you think that not because of their complexion, but because they are "incapable of making good decisions, inherently violent, inferior and beyond help because they will always revert to type."
That's what you said. Nobody else said that. You said you think they represent black people because they are "incapable of making good decisions, inherently violent, inferior and beyond help because they will always revert to type", not because they have dark skin.
And you're talking abo
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"in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types"
Which is pretty hilarious from a historical point of view, since it wasn't even a century earlier that Europeans were waxing poetic about Xanadu, Kublai Khan and golden cities.
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Orcs are a "a stock or store of money or valued objects, typically one that is secret or carefully guarde"?? Who would have thought that an Orc horde was a hidden stock of valuables???
Yes, "hoard" and "horde" mean different things....
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Like you, couched in second hand non-cited aspersions. Like just now.
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That's because "racism" has become these people's "42" (the answer to everything).
Good morning! RACISM!
1+1 is NOT 11! RACISM!
I agree with most of what you say, but points 3, 5 and 7 need more nuance. RACISM!
It's irritating having you label everyone a racist. That's because you're a RACIST!
Yet what're we seeing with "equality" movements. Segregation and privilege according to race...
I don't wanna have to deal with this during my free time.
Re: Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:2)
The word "racism" has always been defined as the belief that one race is superior to another. The phrase that people should be using when they yell racism is actually "racial discrimination". You can discriminate based on race without being racist, and you can be racist without discriminating based on race; the two are not mutually dependent.
Of course ideologues prefer to misuse the word "racism" because they know that they don't have to defend it. If you accuse someone of racial discrimination, you'll g
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You can discriminate based on race without being racist
You might find this enlightening [psypost.org]
Re: Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:2)
You might find this enlightening
It's good confirmation, but not particularly enlightening since it just matches my own observations. SJWs will tell you're they're the purest and least biased beings on this planet (except, of course, for the minorities who must be even less biased), but when you actually look at what they say and how they act they display a level of prejudice that's absolutely incredible.
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Yep. One of the definitions of "discrimination" is "making a choice".
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You can discriminate based on race without being racist
The hoops that racists will jump though to not see themselves as racist is, frankly astounding.
Re: Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:2)
I see that basic logic still escapes you. It's nice to know that in this topsy turvy world, some things remain constant.
Re: Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:2)
Congrats; you've shown exactly rhe kind of revision of language which we were talking about. Thank you!
Get yourself a physical copy of the OED from the '90s, and let me know how it compares to their current definition.
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As always, it's easy to simply accuse someone of being racist.
You don't need proof. You just shit that accusation out and move along.
Re:Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:5, Insightful)
I dunno, but if people equate a certain group of people with low level monsters in a RPG whose main reason to exist is to provide combat experience to player parties, it's not the RPG monsters that have problems and are in dire need of a change...
Re: Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:2)
They also provide cash and some cheap equipment to the players without making them role play out every merchant encounter to get a new short sword.
You're clearly a closeted Orcist!
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Peak SJW; virtue signalling so hard, so desperate to find fault in others, that they become the very thing they supposedly hate.
Racism is alive and well in the US, but it's socially acceptable because it's the "right" kind of people doing it ( like our friend AmiMoJo here ). Don't get me started on systemic racism ( politely termed "affirmative action" ).
Re: Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:2)
"One mustn't point out the Emperor's pea-sized cock, even if it goes a long way towards explaining the 8" diameter exhaust pipes on his diesel pickup." Or something. :)
Re:Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:4)
if you want a "complex morality" race, there's nothing wrong with that
if you want a one-dimensional punching bag, there's nothing wrong with that, except maybe taking writer shortcuts
what do you think zombies and skeletons are? they are hero fodder, a stand-up cardboard cutout for Shit What You Beat Up, the absolutely simplest easiest (and not PC-able except by hollow virtue theater) most direct route to crafting a Bad Guy shell, utilitarian minimalistic spartan bare single-purpose "role"
back in the day we also used nazis as disposable BadGuyz, a super-shallow vacuum with nothing inside, zero research zero effort zero "complexity", so i'm curious as to whether anyone is lining up to "address" that doublebad problem
Re:Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:5, Interesting)
And there's nothing wrong with taking the one dimensional hero fodder and playing it as a robust, complicated society.
I have fond memories of creating a lizard man campaign where the PCs played as the one-dimensional lizard men. Except we built a society for them. Culture. Habits. Likes and dislikes. Conflict with the other races. They'd start the morning sunning themselves on the beach, then go looking for merchant ships to pirate. (They swam really well, so they didn't bother with their own ships. Just swam up and swarmed over the sides.)
When the local merchant fleet got tired of that they launched an invasion against the lizard men, and treated them like one dimensional hero fodder. But that was vicious and cruel and women and children were murdered, and it drove the PCs to take their people deep into the swamp, and then had to revert to hunting and gathering to keep from starving. But they rallied, and led their people into the sewers under the local city, and created a new empire there. Ultimately they undermined the city and sank it into the sewers, and drove the humans out, and claimed it for their own.
I've also run a campaign of a secret cabal of vampires keeping a town (and their secret) safe for centuries. Sure, they needed to regularly feed on the people in the town, but they are incredibly powerful and keep the town an idyllic, quaint backwater. But the world around them is rough, and kingdoms rise and fall, armies march, and the one-dimensional hero fodder comes at the town. But through it all the vampires valiantly fight to keep the town safe. Until the townspeople start to figure out their secret, and decide to uncover and kill the vampires in their midst.
And I've run elves as the eco-taliban trying to kill the other races around them. Ruthlessly slaughtering humans, dwarves, and halflings to keep them from farming and mining and building roads. They became the anti-progress, death to the infidels, militant enemy of all people. Launching raids under the cover of darkness, burning towns and crops, drawing in the wild animals to prey upon any who dared to light a fire or cut down a tree. Enslaving the other races, and putting them to work rewilding what they had domesticated.
On one hand I absolutely abhor the fact that WOTC is doing this. Good DMs and players did this decades ago. On the other hand, there's no exam to pass before you can use their materials. And good DMs and players are few and far between. It kills me that they had to, but god if I don't know the base. And they had to.
Glad they did it. But they could have saved a bunch of work if they had just asked a bunch of us a decade or two ago for some ideas about fleshing out those races to make them more interesting.
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Re: Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:2)
It's "horde", BTW
To be fair, that's how many scumbags characterise their opponents...Trump supporters, antifas, Nazis, Muslims...
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We're talking about a game featuring literal monsters that want to tear down civilization and eat humans. They do not represent any extant group of humans, they are literal monsters. They exist in the game so players have unambiguous enemies they can fight without feeling guilty. Because it is a game. For fun. Not a complex moral a
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Didn't read the summary I see.
It's not that people look at an Orc and see a black person, it's that Orcs are a 1 dimensional mindless hoard that sounds a lot like the way certain people around here talk about black people.
Jesus fucking Christ. Do you ever read what you write before clicking submit?
Incapable of making good decisions, inherently violent, inferior and beyond help because they will always revert to type.
This is a good summary of humanity.
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Didn't read the summary I see.
It's not that people look at an Orc and see a black person, it's that Orcs are a 1 dimensional mindless hoard that sounds a lot like the way certain people around here talk about black people. Incapable of making good decisions, inherently violent, inferior and beyond help because they will always revert to type.
Yeah. That's still a problem with the reader. Orcs have never to my knowledge been presented as even vaguely linked to black human "races". Indeed, their keenness on the subject of slavery and conquest is much more suggestive of them being a parody/symbol of the worst aspects of Western civilisation.
I'm tired of companies pandering to people like yourself who seek out and invent offence and then insist that everyone else agree with your twisted and rather sick versions of things. Maybe you should just leave
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Again, you forget that he's a troll, and trolls have high regeneration. You need fire to kill trolls, not small cuts with bladed weapons. Everyone knows that.
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Mod up
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Calm down snowflake. We are calling it out as a troll not stealing its lunch money. Racism involving imaginary beings. This is a whole new level. I think there is a smuge on that windmill over there which kind of looks like a Hitler stash.... GET IT!
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Years ago they made a kind of starter pack adventure with a companion CD. The CD had actors playing the roles of the pre made characters. Not a terrible idea really.
Anyway our DM wanted to work it into our campaign but didn't realise the character who threatened to slit someone's throat on the CD was replaced by a hammer welding paladin in our party.
In hindsight it wasn't that funny but we had a good chuckle at the over the top acting, especially the reaction to the giant spider.
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You are aware that we're talking about a fantasy world and the "people" are orcs and trolls, yes?
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Ok, then your comment really doesn't make any sense, maybe you could elaborate.
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Melodrama much?
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Sorry, I've been having this shit preached to me my entire life.
I, personally don't care what color your skin is, what your reproductive equipment looks like, who you love (exception for Pedophiles), how you love them, etc.
NONE OF THAT SHIT is important to me.
I just care that you're a good human being who tries to get along with others, follow the law, and generally tries to leave the world a slightly nicer place than you found it.
If you can simply answer "Yep!" when I ask you about that, good enough.
But th
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NONE OF THAT SHIT is important to me.
That "shit" seems to be very important to you.
I just care that you're a good human being who tries to get along with others
This is where you get confused. See, it's not just other people that need to make an effort to get along with others. You have to make an effort as well.
But that simply isn't enough for some people. And I have no time or patience for obnoxious hall monitor types.
This is that sounds like to ordinary people: "Isn't it enough that I told them how they should behave? They want me to put in the same effort that I expect them to make? How obnoxious! I see no reason why I should have to change!"
I don't know how to get you to understand the necessity of cooperation and emp
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I'm sorry that you don't understand.
You can't dictate to people to unconditionally love their fellow man and take an active interest in their lives.
The best you can hope for is a sort of well-meaning apathy.
Because when you try to FORCE people to pay attention to you, most of the attention you get is NOT the sort you want.
And, having been DRIVEN to paying that sort of attention, of COURSE you're going to be subject to discernment on various levels.
Whether you like it or not.
Not sure why that's such a hard g
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Well, since it's even easier to ignore that kind of bull in RPG than it is in computer games (by virtue of you not having to accept anything written in a RPG source book compared to having to play a computer game mostly the way it was written, barring any kind of modding ability), and knowing that RPG gamers are pretty much used to rewriting game rules that they don't like anyway, I dare say that this will be even more ignored in RPGs than in any other medium so far.
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It may have been the only think saving them. Comic books are a dying medium. Kids don't read them. They watch moves and play video games. If they read, they read on their phone or tablet. They sure as hell aren't picking up the latest issue of superman at the grocery checkout. From what I can tell, the market is mostly 40-something nerds. Maybe comics should go digital.
I'm an outsider looking in here, but my point there is that comics, like other print media, are very likely hurting for reasons unre
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Attitudes that were fine in the 90's are taboo today. We've evolved. We're more inclusive, tolerant, and empathic. We expect our media to reflect our values.
I'm glad social media didn't exist in the 60's, because "we" would have strangled Star Trek in the crib just in order to virtue signal how righteous we are. All because it was far too liberal and how dare they show an inter-racial kiss on TV. The same kind of self-righteous moral busybodies and religious zealots are hard at work today to subversively ruin anything and everyone who doesn't toe their ideological line.
It's only a matter of time before TNG also becomes problematic too, because those addicted to
Re:Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:5, Insightful)
"Black skin" is about the only feature a Drow has in common with a black skinned human. White hair, red eyes, purple teeth, slightly shorter than the average elf, generally incredibly slender...
Am I really the only one who never even came up with the idea to equate a Drow to a black human person?
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It's not freaking new. Dark Elves were always depicted as _Elves_ with dark skin black as night with a blue|purple hue, -- such a tone of color doesn't exist at all in humans.
What's next, *Lolth [fandom.com] the Queen of Spiders or the Queen of the Demonweb Pits is not evil she's just misunderstood.
(*) Lolth -- the most influential goddess of the drow, within the pantheon of the Dark Seldarine.
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What's next, *Lolth the Queen of Spiders or the Queen of the Demonweb Pits is not evil she's just misunderstood.
Isn't that more interesting anyway? Having a character that's "just evil" is pretty bland from a narrative point of view. They can only serve as a backdrop to other characters. Having more nuanced characters is always more interesting.
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I generally agree. Black and white morality tends to be less interesting. This is a more recent trend in thought, though. Think Beowulf and most classics. There are great current works with "just evil" characters, like Zykon from Order of the Stick. Hilarious, but even his origin story was designed to keep him "just evil" and not sympathetic.
Another great example of a "just evil" character was Darth Vader. He was "just evil" until right before he died. We didn't have much time to see him as a complex charac
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That's like saying not liking polar bears is racist, you're aware of that?
We're not even talking about the same species FFS!
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Obviously not. But why bother explaining shit you already understand?
You're not interested in genuine dialog. You're just a fucking troll. Your M.O. is to purposefully misrepresent a simple statement to bait a reply, knowing that reasonable people will give you the benefit of the doubt and try to explain the misunderstanding. You repeat this until you can pretend to trap them in a contradiction or they realize you're worthless and ignore you.
So, no, whatever nonsense you wrote is obviously just empty non
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You hate my rhetorical style because it's brutally effective [...]
Being a fat baby my comments are above your level[...]
So brutally effective.
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They have very dark skin, and in at least some official artwork look pretty close to what one would expect an African American person might look like
Drow are not visually the Elven equivalent of Africans. They're obsidian black by description, and usually some shade of actual black. Even in that picture, she is greyish in color.
Second, part of the objection concerning the orcs and species in general is the sheer idea that there are "evil" intelligent species.
The problem here with the "evil" nature of the race is that those racial traits in the books include societal traits. They don't do the best job of making that clear, but they do explain that some groups or individuals of the races are not necessarily aligned with the race as a whole.
When the Eberron setting came out back during the 3.5 edition era, it was noteworthy for being a setting which had complicated characters and where individuals were not determined by their species. And even then, it included complicated aspects of orcish culture.
I would say since at least the beginning of 3
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The Drow are "evil" in the sense that they are backstabbing, Machiavellian master schemers, out of necessity because their society is pretty much built like that. "Byzantine" isn't even coming close to the level of ruthlessness going down in Menzoberranzan and the average wall street wizard and Fortune 500 CEO wouldn't survive (or remain a free person) for longer than a day there.
They are a product of their society. You get born into this world and you adapt to its rules, or you're dead, a slave or a drider
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The Eberron Drow are quite different. Like much of Eberron, the different races are broken up into different societies. This even includes Drow that are melded with the rest of the civilized races as part of the common society of Eberron. Eberron does at least a halfway decent job of making sure the races aren't monodimensional. However, using
Re: Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:2)
I know right? And all the Klingons and Romulans are played by humans. It's fucking disgusting.
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So you can't tell the difference between your examples and AC's right?
Give me a break. Do you honesty think anyone is going to take you seriously? I doubt it. You're just a fucking troll. Interestingly, you use the exact same tactics as another well-known troll. Hmmmmm.....
Re: Ideology/Politics infesting passtimes (Score:2)
Of course I can tell the difference: when human actors act like Klingons and Romulans, you don't get outraged. That makes you a racist.