Ewen Cluney posted:

This hobby definitely needed someone like Mikan who would get ideas for games from Kanye West songs. I do what I can to help make RPGs weird though.

Halloween Jack posted:

Do the designers explain anywhere in the text why they did that? Does it contribute to some notions of realism, like in Phoenix Command, or is it something they did to get the exact probability curve they want? (JAGS has you roll 4d6-4, or 4d6 drop 6s, which I believe they did to add a bell curve to a D20 roll.)

Tollymain posted:

she's retiring from the business after meeting obligations on her last kickstarter. as for what she's doing now, i'm not too clear on it and if i were i probably wouldn't share it anyway

Antivehicular posted:

I own GURPS Vampire and GURPS Mage, and they are fantastically, transcendently ill-advised products. I almost want to create GURPS Fate D20 in their honor, maybe with a fourth system thrown in for actual world flavor (GURPS Fate D20 Monsterhearts, anybody?).

Tollymain posted:

literally the post after your last post

paradoxGentleman posted:

I understood that part; I wanted to know what caused her to do that.

theironjef posted:

You ever want to get into the real poo poo of math guys designing games, find yourself a copy of Don't Look Back. It's some lovely horror genre book from the 90s, and it has weapon damage represented as multiplying the result of your skill check by the weapon's modifier, which is a decimal. So like you get 4 on your roll and multiply that by a pistol's damage of .6 to get how much you deal.

Oh and skill resolution is adding your stat (which ranges from -3 to 3) to your skill number (which starts at zero and goes to 2) and your skill difficulty (which all start around -2 and drop from there). Then you determine the absolute value of your result, add 3 to it, roll that many dice, and take either the top or bottom three depending on if you had a negative or positive score before determining absolute value, then compare that final result to a success chart. Woooo!

OtspIII posted:

Not going to lie, I'm tempted to steal this for any horror games I run in the future.

Except it'll just be Dread-style. You have 10 seconds to do all the math and roll all the dice. In the end, everybody audits the numbers you came up with. If you did everything right, you succeed. If you hosed up anywhere, you fail. It's meant to emulate the feeling of being a character in a horror movie desperately trying to start a stalling-out car before the killer breaks through your window.

BatteredFeltFedora posted:

You're unlikely to get an informative answer, because (as I understand things) that would run into the kind of privacy issues that are part and parcel of why Mikan left the hobby.

gtrmp posted:

GURPS Mage, for all its mechanical and tonal shortcomings, at least does a better job of actually explaining the setting and its core concepts than the actual MtAs rulebooks bothered doing.

OtspIII posted:

Not going to lie, I'm tempted to steal this for any horror games I run in the future.

Except it'll just be Dread-style. You have 10 seconds to do all the math and roll all the dice. In the end, everybody audits the numbers you came up with. If you did everything right, you succeed. If you hosed up anywhere, you fail. It's meant to emulate the feeling of being a character in a horror movie desperately trying to start a stalling-out car before the killer breaks through your window.

quote:

We had a situation like that once. Had to stop by an apothecary for some medicines and there was an attractive female elf assistant and this old elf guy. A buddy and I decided to woo the female elf. I rolled pretty well on a charisma check, while my buddy rolled a one I think. GM decided I won the girl while my buddy passed out from some "mysterious substances" and woke up the next morning naked next to the old man doctor. Had a great time laughing at him and then we moved on.

TLDR: Friends PC got roofied.

quote:

The biggest minefield I've had to deal with as far as sex in a role-playing game? I run a father/son game, and one of the teenage boys is gay, but his conservative religious father doesn't know it. The boy's trick? He plays female characters, and then asks about "hot guys in town." I guess the father glosses over it because on the surface it's just role-playing a straight relationship. Still, try being a man in your 40s, as a homosexual teenage boy passes you a sexual note, right in front of his homophobic father. It doesn't matter that the note is intended for an NPC of the appropriate gender -- that can be a tense moment. It can be difficult to ensure that the kid has fun and the father doesn't murder me.

quote:

If the father finds out about these notes, he could take it as evidence of an actual relationship between you and his son, press charges, and ruin your life. Just being accused can be enough to ruin your life.

If I was you I'd make the kid stop that poo poo and find a more healthy outlet. It doesn't matter that it's roleplaying it's still a sort of sexual interaction between you and an underage boy. It's dangerous.

quote:

As a rule, any seriously disturbing, antisocial habits or personality traits require DM approval at character creation. Is your character a psychopath or pedophile? Do they habitually sexually harass/assault people? Are they a kleptomaniac or a pathological liar?

Any of these traits could seriously impair other players enjoyment of the game. They can also make for very powerful, nuanced storytelling if handled in the right context. But unless it is very clear to all players from the post that that particular game is going to be about exploring those types of dark themes, they really should not be a huge element of the game.

With that said, if a PC is a bit of a pompous flirt, bends the truth sometimes, or has some other minor character flaw, that's just good characterization.

quote:

The druid in my campaign made innuendo after innuendo. Eventually, circumstances such as they were, he had access to a slave girl for his pleasure. He chose to rape her in honeybadger form. Needless to say his deity abandoned him after that escapade.

quote:

Free reign. One of my players has a half orc who derives sexual pleasure from defiling (that is the safest way I can describe it) corpses after cutting them open and climbing inside. There's lots of eye-rolling from the group but nobody complained about it.

quote:

Fertility rolls

quote:

Well... in the games I play, a friend and myself usually end up playing somewhat sexualized characters (Currently two games: Modest yet flirty lesbian monk/Former prostitute, transfixed lesbian leaning wizard; and Dominant, sadistic, noble-brothel mistress/Her flirty and forward male bartender). I imagine that if my girlfriend were to play, she would also manage to end up with a very open character as well. Much of how we choose to play off the sexuality, however, is somewhat in the background. In the first case, it shows up as quips and mild banter with some actions in game acknowledging the attractions (my monk undressing to her skivvies to wade through some water to inspect bodies; other character cat called her, which resulted in a mutually accepted non-lethal punch to the face).

In the more recent game, there are some in character references sex and masturbation that had happened along long stage coach rides or sexual exploits at the brothel. These are all strictly background flavor things, but do come up fairly often as this group is just myself and two friends. Our DMs have mostly just stuck with it and let the RP flow, but as none of us have push a girl to the floor and told her to eat up/suck...

Argh, basically it's just been something we've allowed to pass on by without much thought as we tend to restrain such actions to the fringes. I think many attempts to bring sexual content beyond the fringes with be met with groans and an "Aaaaamberrrrrrr!"

quote:

Man, screw STDs. It's one thing if I have a player who OCCASIONALLY wants to gently caress around in-game; that's fine and totally role-playable. The minute they turn into a total perv or ruin the experience for everyone else, or creep on another character, I will gently caress them. Literally.

Perv player won't shut up about how his character wants to gently caress elves. Fine, I'll set him up so he can gently caress an elf, and I will talk through every salacious detail, and watch his lame boner creep up over the edge of the table. I will talk through the elf in first person and talk about how I'm lapping at his balls, with appropriate tongue motions. I make sure he's butt-naked and has his dick INSIDE the elf, and then I go completely cold and he has to roll a reflex save because the elf was a mimic. Yes, you just took 13 points of damage to the dinger. No, it's not still attached. No, you can't retrieve it. No matter what lovely, pervy, Mary-Sue idea the player has, the DM can always use the game system to punish the player for being an rear end in a top hat by letting them actually HAVE what they want, and inflicting the worst-possible punishments for having turned your game into a personal wank-fest. What's that? A geas in a magic-poor world that binds you to chastity until death and makes suicide impossible? The secret is to NEVER let the character die once they've crossed the line.

quote:

I'm about to start dming a an evil game for a bunch of new players and one of them already told me he wants to be a rapist. Its going to be a cluster gently caress but this thread is giving me some good ideas on how to deal with it.

quote:

Yea I mean I'm ok with it if it's his character's back story because they're all starting as criminals but I straight up told him I'm not rping it at all. If he wants a grapple check then maybe that's ok but that's the line. The other players don't seem to care it would definitely make this uncomfortable. I'm hoping he doesn't push for it otherwise I'll have to set out some very specific rules.

JcDent posted:

The opposite would be a dude joining a book club or something (I'm not very good at stereotyping female social activities) to pick up chicks and skipping on reading books, analysis and talking about books. Well, that's what the author has in mind... and that would lead to sorority members joining in to make fun of the other women and to pick up dudes. Of course, that doesn't happen and women definitely don't join games for attention. They also want some bit of that 'a small team of enlightened heroes violently overcome The Enemy and assert the correctness of their world-view by use of force', 'cos it's fun.

quote:

No surprise here, there simply weren’t too many games willing to go up against the 500 pound gorilla of tabletop gaming, the venerable Dungeons & Dragons. Besmirched in the minds of many gamers by a divisive Fourth Edition, the Fifth Edition has won back hearts and minds by sticking to the well-trod basics of what D&D is while innovating just enough to please the new generation of gamers. The new D&D focuses on cutting away the cruft of extra rules that the game had accumulated in favor of playing as fast as older editions of the game. With a focus on readable, clear rules and easily understood character options, this might be the fastest playing edition of D&D since 1981, and certainly has as much depth as anything published in between.

The game’s core three books are all artfully illustrated and consistently written, with the Monster Manual especially being a lovely book and a master class in how to inspire good adventure. The new mechanics, like the Advantage/Disadvantage system, all make the game quicker and more enjoyable, allowing you to focus on story and not on stacking modifiers to your rolls. Characters have a new focus on background and story elements, filling in parts of the roleplaying experience that D&D has awkwardly ignored for decades. There are problems, sure, and if you’re not interested in high fantasy gaming this isn’t going to change your mind, but the remarkable completeness of this game’s execution cannot be ignored. Nothing has been left out, nothing forgotten, and tradition respected. This is how you make a new edition of a game. It’s a model for years to come – years where we’ll still be playing Fifth Edition Dungeons & Dragons.

gradenko_2000 posted:

Nothing has been left out, nothing forgotten, and tradition respected.

Covok posted:

If you want an anime game that is better than BESM in everyway, try OVA.

inklesspen posted:

Better than BESM is not exactly difficult. I had a look at one of the sample characters. It uses an advantage/disadvantage system and apparently powering up from solar energy is exactly as much a hinderance to your character as a megacorporation trying to hunt you down and dismantle you.

comments slap fight in the November 2014 preorder for Far West posted:

How very disappointing that the attitude of entitlement so prevalent in online and console gaming has filtered down into tabletop roleplaying...anyone who's been a roleplayer for a while knows that a certain degree of patience is required when waiting for a particular product. Lest we forget, Far West has been a long time in development, but not due to a cynical desire to rip off gamers, as seems to be implied by the posters below. There have been setbacks of both a personal and business-related nature, but the process would take as long even without those setbacks. This is a roleplaying game. A written medium developed by creators. And the creative process is a slow one. I for one will be giving the game a chance before I demonise GMS, having already pre-ordered it, and am choosing to believe that the delays mean a better product will be the outcome. The rest of you can treat it like you're being denied something you have a right to if you want, but you are going to be disappointed with the rest of your lives, believe me. When my wife was pregnant, I didn't stand over her swelling tummy every day, bemoaning the fact that my son 'wasn't ready fast enough'. Anything worthwhile takes time, and I believe Far West is one of those things. You can vote with your wallets, but keep the character-assassinations to yourselves.

loving typical. A blogger decides to paint FAR WEST as racist, doesn't ask me for comment, absolutely misrepresents my position. Lovely. posted:

Since the character assassination by pffft no didn't allow me to defend myself in comments, I'll respond here:


The reason we have no Native Americans in FAR WEST is fairly simple:

1) The game is a mash-up of Spaghetti Westerns (Note that I said "SPAGHETTI Westerns", not "Westerns") and Wuxia. The reason for this is because I noticed that the two genres are analogous, and wanted to explore that.

2) Spaghetti Westerns seldom featured Native Americans -- most often they were set in border locations, and featured Mexican peasants. (Reasons varied for this -- 1960s desire to do political revolution stories -- another feature echoed in wuxia -- and Spanish and Italian actors more readily able to play Latinos rather than Native Americans)

3) Our world is a FANTASY world -- not the historical West. This will be more obvious when people see the game itself. It's not even an alt-historical West. It's pure fantasy -- like King's Dark Tower "Midworld."

4) In Wuxia, there is no analogue of the "displaced indigenous culture" in their stories. Given that, and the Spaghetti Western lack of Native Americans, it seemed odd to include such a culture -- since I'm specifically going for a blend of those two specific things. The only reason to include them would be to avoid bullshit charges of racism from folks like Mr. Chinn.

FAR WEST does have ethnic minorities. Absolutely. What we don't have is an analogue to "indigenous displaced people", for the reasons I cite above.

Charges of racism particularly piss me off, as we're being purposefully circumspect in this regard. The art directions for FAR WEST very specifically read: "Use your entire palette -- I want more than just "white guy gamer". Conversely, I don't just want Asian-fetish, either. I want black, latino, asian, caucasian, as wide a variety as possible." Same went for gender.

For gently caress's sake -- check the cover of TALES OF THE FAR WEST for example:

http://www.drivethrufiction.com/images/92/99022.jpg

Ahahahahahaha it loving never gets old (even tho these posts are from *two years ago*) posted:

Funny thing: My lawyer is actually seriously suggesting a libel suit.

quote:

Sorry -- that was a response to someone else. I've deleted it (and the snarky comment I was responding to)

To directly answer your question: It's more than just fury. FAR WEST is a valuable brand (already worth tens of thousands of dollars), and currently the subject of negotiations for much wider exposure. This guy has been engaged in a sustained effort to paint it as racist (multiple posts going back to 2011) -- which, aside from being libelous, has the potential to directly damage my brand and threaten the negotiations I'm involved in.

If it was just some bullshit RPG thing, in this backwater-swamp of a niche hobby industry, I wouldn't give a poo poo. But FAR WEST was always intended to be more than that -- and most of the movement that has been occurring behind the scenes on it have been outside of that niche, and involves deals which could result in life-changing income for me and my family.

Hence the lawyer suggestion we shouldn't gently caress around.

Mors Rattus posted:

Man, that looks like the artistic equivalent of pasting someone's face over a photo. The arms and face even have drastically different skin tone.

Mors Rattus posted:

Man, that looks like the artistic equivalent of pasting someone's face over a photo. The arms and face even have drastically different skin tone.

The enemy within posted:

I usually keep away from commenting on the whole gamergate issue unless it is something that warrants highlighting as is the case of this article brought to light to me by +Tracy Hurley last week. The article titled "Misogyny and the Female Body in Dungeons & Dragons" develops some points by misquoting the original articles. Tracy's response to me highlighting those points was, should I say, less than professional, and eventually led to a blocking (apparently a common habit of hers). Now if the whole gamergate issue arose from questioning journalistic ethics it is simply unacceptable to support the cause of women through the same unethical journalistic practices. This leads me to believe that Tracy isn't interested in the well being of women, she's interested in the well being of the fight. The fight gives her purpose and to perpetuate the fight women can never be seen as equal, she is the enemy within.

The article addresses two old Dragon Magazine articles and raises a few points: female characters are limited in classes they can be and taking the thief as an example it claims the thief character is sub-par to its male counterpart. Added to that Tracy claims the rules are portrayed as "special" as if women were an appendix or afterthought. The article as written seems pretty convincing unless you happen to have copies of those two Dragon Magazine issues, as is my case. When you read the original articles you get a different and much broader picture.

Two Dragon Magazine articles are referenced "Len Lakofka. “Notes on Women & Magic — Bringing the Distaff Gamer into D&D.” The Dragon 1.3 (October 1976), pp. 7-10." and "P.M. Crabaugh. “Weights & Measures, Physical Appearance and Why Males are Stronger than Females; in D&D. The Dragon 2.4, pp.19-20. (October 1977)"

With these two magazines at hand lets go point by point:

Female characters are limited in the classes they can be.

Aaron, the article's author, makes an issue of the usage of the word may. Lakofka, the Dragon's article author wrote "There will be four major groups in which women may enter. They may be FIGHTERS, MAGIC USERS, THIEVES and CLERICS.", so based on this Aaron claims it is "clearly sexist language employed in this article (where Lakofka allows women to participate in game fictions through his use of the word “may”)".

Aaron fails to lookup the characters at the time and realize that at the time those were the available classes. If we reference the Moldvay Basic Red Rules (January, 1981, five years after the Dragon article) page B9 clearly reads "A human may be a cleric, fighter, magic-user or thief" Take note that Moldvay uses the word "may" regardless of player or character gender. Lakofka isn't limiting women; fighters, magic users, thieves and clerics was all there was back then.

The thief character is sub-par to its male and basically a sex symbol.

Aaron goes on showing how female characters are less capable when fighting than male ones by using the thief as an example and also focuses heavily on the charm and seduction powers of the thief to drive the point that this is stereotypical and portrays women as using their beauty and body to get what they want. Once again reading the Dragon Magazine article and knowing the rules of the time we see that that thieves did not have the fighting skill of the fighter class, and in particular the female thief requires less XP per level and is multi-classing with magic user. Magic users don't have the fighting skills of fighters, is it no wonder this is conveyed in the rules to these thief-magic-users as well? Aaron focuses on a set of spells he deems sexist, but hides the fact that the female character also has the following spells light, read languages, tarot reading, sleep, mirror image, detect magic, ESP and knock. So less with XP per level and magic use, no wonder fighting skills get hit a bit. Aaron does not do a comparison adjusted by XP and magic power, he just claims "Lakofka works to show the ways in which women fight at a disadvantage to men in a variety of contexts" and leaves it at that.

As a player who, like many of you, has played more than the uber strong fighter I know there's more to overcoming challenges in a dungeon than sword swinging yourself out of a problem. Is Aaron actually reducing the options of women by stating that the only relevant feature of a character is her fighting skill? I believe there's more potential to a thief-magic-user than just sword fighting.

Women rules are portrayed as "special" as if women were and afterthought.

Since the article focuses only on women Tracy goes on to claim this is sexist because "the default is thief is male whereas special rules are needed for a female thief".

Now aside from Lakofka's modified XP levels and spell powers, the second Dragaon article by Crabaugh brings up some modifiers like + 2 CON, + 1 DEX and - 1 STR for female characters. Tracy sees this as "special rules", now she needs to be reminded that math lacks gender and

women + 2 = men + 3, is just the same as: women = men + 1

If the article provides + 2 CON, + 1 DEX and - 1 STR modifiers to women, it could very well been written as - 2 CON, - 1 DEX and + 1 STR modifiers for men. The article would then be centered around men and the so called "default thief" in the rulebook would then be female. All it took was to multiply everything by - 1 and your whole argument got debunked Tracy.

The default is not male as Tracy claims, the default is male and female and only after the Dragon Magazine modifiers are applied does the reference points change, and the reference can be either male or female.

Afterthoughts

After pointing out the issues with the article Tracy's response came along with some unfit language and when I asked for a structured rebuttal or comment on my comment I got this and was quickly blocked afterwards.

Now I've never played with gender differences like the ones mentioned in the article nor of any other type. Yet that doesn't mean I'm going to accept an article like this as valid. You can't prove the right thing by the wrong means Tracy and your means are obviously wrong.

I see comments out of context to make them seem sexists. I see parts of the articles hidden to emphasize the difference between men and women to make women seem "less" than men. I don't see a thorough analysis that would show that women are equal if not better than men. A tunnel-vision focus on fighting without portraying the other aspects of the character class and its impact on roleplay.

Overall I see a construction of arguments based on false or biased quotes of the reference material. When this is pointed out the response is to block me so the article deficiencies can't be refuted. To what purpose if not to perpetuate the fight? To what purpose if not to support biased journalism?

We need more than awareness to "level the field between men and women in D&D" as Tracy mentions in her post. We need to move forward and provide working solutions to achieve this. From Tracy I get the following: a misquote of some 35 year old articles, a refusal to have a conversation and a lack of a "fix" aside from "throw it away". It's 35 years old Tracy, are you trying to regurgitate the past to get more fuel to drive your war?

Many of us want a greater representation of women in the hobby, we want a level field, we want this for minorities too, but you undermine this. This is like court, no matter how sure you are the suspect is guilty you can't make up evidence. If you do, the suspect walks.

Tracy, I've tried to be impartial with your position towards others in the past, but now I see you don't want a level field between men and women, you want a fight. A perpetual fight that leads you to dig deep into the past so you may falsely portray an unlevel field so you may continue fighting. You're not interested in the well being of women, in equality, in representation, you're interested in the well being of the fight. You're the enemy within.

The original exchange can be read here

quote:

I don't really see why someone would dig up decades-old documents when trying to argue about sexism in D&D; there are plenty of contemporary examples of sexism (and racism) in roleplaying games.

That said, I do have to point out a place where you have missed Tracy's point:

"If the article provides + 2 CON, + 1 DEX and - 1 STR modifiers to women, it could very well been written as - 2 CON, - 1 DEX and + 1 STR modifiers for men. The article would then be centered around men and the so called 'default thief' in the rulebook would then be female. All it took was to multiply everything by - 1 and your whole argument got debunked Tracy."

Math lacks gender, sure, but the point here is the language. Men are the reference point -- the default -- onto which so-and-so modifiers may be applied to create women. If they had instead provided modifiers to go from women to men, that would be treating women as the default; the situation would be mathematically identical but have completely different connotations. In order to be gender neutral, both should have been listed, or perhaps some kind of table could have been used.

The enemy within posted:

Actually it doesn't. The careful observer will note that such modifiers allow for values such as 20 CON and 19 DEX for women, but don't allow 19 STR for men. This centers the game's balance so to speak on another range of values. The thing Tracy calls "default male" is something else now. This is like floating in space. When you push something both you and what you push move not just what you push. When these modifiers get added to the women, the reference (what you call men and claim is doing the pushing) get's moved too. The game has changed.

quote:

You're still talking about numbers to the exclusion of their connotations. This is not about power level or statistics. It's about portraying women as "others" rather than putting them on symmetrical footing to men.

Let's look, analogously, at race. In AD&D, being an elf gives you +1 Dex and -1 Con. Those numbers are as compared to a human. Humanity is normal, while being an elf is special. Maybe it's better, maybe it's worse, but it's definitely notable and requires an extra step of arithmetic during character creation.

It's fine for elves to have bonuses associated with them because there's no real-world symmetry between humans and elves. The same cannot be said for men and women. When you add an extra step into character creation to create a woman, it paints them -- inappropriately -- as exotic and unusual.

The enemy within posted:

So multiply all by minus one and add that to men or write the rules as plus one str for men and plus two con and one dex for women. A plus one never stopped me from creating an elf it won't stop me from creating a male character.

There's an implication derived from the space analogy I find troubling. I'll develop it when I get back to my laptop. 

quote:

Sure, there are a bunch of ways that you could solve this problem. The fix would take 10 seconds. The point of bringing it up is as an example of sexism in the RPG industry -- to the writers, it wasn't a problem that humans and men were defaults and women and elves were fantastical spin-offs, so they didn't bother to fix it.

The enemy within posted:

How do you come about saying that humans and men are the default? You mean to say the rules as published is the default for men (without considering these to Dragon articles)? So when you quote AD&D and mention + 1 DEX and - 1 CON for elves you're talking about male elves?

quote:

When you roll up stats, they are the stats for a male human. If you want to be an elf, you have to apply changes (per AD&D). If you want to be female, you also have to apply changes (per the Dragon article).

The enemy within posted:

So what you're saying is that without taking into consideration the Dragon article you, Nah, can only play male characters in D&D? Am I understanding you correctly?

Because the way I've always played it has been that those rules as they were published were for male or female characters, be these human, elves, dwarves, etc.

If you play D&D how do you get around to playing a female character? Do you play a female character?

quote:

You are not understanding me correctly.

The rules of AD&D are (as far as I recall) gender neutral.

On the other hand, the author of the Dragon article felt that the default rules were only suitable for male characters, and that "female" is something unusual to stat up, as if they were adding a new race. That's an example of sexism.

The enemy within posted:

Right, the original rules are gender neutral and thus can't be "the male default" you claim them to be. When the Dragon article authors add the modifiers there's a new middle ground, a new "center of gravity" for humanity. If women have +2 CON then on the average they have one hit point more than men. The average first level human fighter has 4.5 HP instead of 4. The average human has slightly better defense due to the + 1 DEX and is slightly weaker with the -1 STR. The center of power for mankind has shifted. The game has changed. This of course if you play a fair amount of female characters in your party.

This takes me to the space analogy. I see the application of the rules as a star splitting into a binary system. Neither star is better than the other, they're different, but of equal value. Lets remember that not everything in an RPG is about fighting. Is that the only way to solve things?

I don't see you catching on to this. I think you see the original rules with the modifiers as the international space station being men and women as an astronaut that pushes and hardly budges the station while projecting herself deep into space. This happens in games in which women have no representation by its players and GMs.

In a game with equal representation of men and women these modifiers shift the default by the sheer weight of the female characters in the game.

quote:

I understand your physics analogy perfectly; the problem is that your analogy doesn't capture the important part of Tracy's point about the Dragon article. Let me try something more direct.

Suppose I published an article about making black characters. I say that black people are taller and more handsome, so they get +1 STR and +1 CHA. Do you see how this is not as simple as changing the center of gravity of the game?

I, as a white man, living and publishing in a country with an ongoing history of racism, have just referred to blackness as a novelty. My implicit assumption is that nobody would have thought to play a black character before. I am also saying to all of the black players out there: "if your character looks like you, you need to change its stats because it no longer falls under the default character creation rules."

Such an article would be unequivocably racist. Doing the same for women instead of black people is unequivocably sexist.

The enemy within posted:

Your argument is totally off the mark as there is no evidence that there's a distinction in race that gives + 1 STR and + 1 CHA. There is though evidence for the differences mentioned about men and women. I can vouch for that in two ways.

One is that I run I small restaurant and I always open the shutters. My girlfriend simply can't lift that weight. All I have to do is breath every day to have that strength. Same applies to my sister who's about the same height. Men have a natural tendency to be stronger. Sexism isn't about having or not having that difference, it's about abusing it. The other way I know women have lower STR is by a friend who's a transgender woman. Hormone treatment made her lose a lot of muscle mass. I'm sure you can look that up on the internet yourself. Now while I understand Tracy's point, I doubt she's been though hormone treatment. So on this matter I'd rather follow the advice of a person who's been in both bodies than the advice of one who hasn't.

Another point that has been stirring in my head is that attitudes like these presented by Tracy are a hindrance to women and gay or effeminate men. After all is said and done there is still less value for the feminine aspect of a persona. Tracy tries to equalize things by saying "look women can do what men do", men being the reference point. So when women dress in men's clothes (jeans, shirts, tight leather bike outfits, etc.) its ok. When men dress up or act more feminine they're called queers, fags, or worse and may get beaten up.

Say I have an effeminate character that is weak, but enjoys the benefits of DEX due to being an excellent ballet dancer. He could be a kickass Russian KGB agent undercover in the ballet company, but it's still awkward for many. If he is a she all of a sudden it's less awkward for many, and if she wasn't a ballet dancer but a spetsnaz special operative jumping high in the stratosphere for an infiltration operation it's all super cool.

So no, I don't see your argument about blacks as valid. Actually I see it as a racist defense against my argument which has nothing to do with what you're saying. Your country has a history of being racist with everyone, not just blacks. The only ones your country isn't racist against is the rich. So picking blacks to defend your point is in itself a racist position.

Please explain to me how having equal stats benefit women? How it makes being feminine or effeminate look better in the eyes of others, particularly men?

Sexist isn't about having different stats, it's about abusing them. Sexist isn't having my girlfriend be weaker by the rules, it's giving her less shares into the business just because she can't lift the shutters, or can't reach the upper shelves without a stool, or can't carry the same amount of dishes to the kitchen at one time. Sexist isn't about recognizing women need time off work to give birth, it's not paying them those months just because they're women. It's paying them less because they're "less efficient" than men because they need to perform certain functions fundamental to the survival of our species which men can't do. That is sexist.

Plague of Hats posted:

Plague of Hats posted:

That is a piece of the promotional "art" from the Far West website that's meant to entice consumers and buzzword-loving suckerstransmedia enthusiasts.

Arivia posted:

New rule since I'm the OP: No more asking about Mikan. She was harassed out of the hobby by Zak S and his cronies. Feel free to talk about Zak S and his abusive bullshit, just leave her alone.

Plague of Hats posted:

Oh poo poo!

Oh, oh, oh, no. Oh shiiiiiiiit!

Oh poo poo.

Plague of Hats posted:

Oh poo poo!

Oh, oh, oh, no. Oh shiiiiiiiit!

Oh poo poo.

YF19pilot posted:

Everytime I read bullshit justifications for making women "weaker, because I'm stronger than MY GIRLFRIEND," I just think back to my brief stint as a wholesale animal feed delivery driver, and all the nice women, some just "little old ladies", who could tear down that truck faster than I could ever hope to. Yeah, sorry, lifestyle dictates your "stats" not whats between your legs.

There was also a 13 year old Amish girl who could handle a skid-steer better than I could, but I won't get into that.

El Estrago Bonito posted:

As much as I hate how much the Glorantha guy spergs about poo poo, I do support his position on women in his setting. A long time ago on either usenet or RPGnet I read a post by him that was basically: "Look, Glorantha sucks if you're a lady, like, a lot. It's based on the Iron Age, I am very knowledgeable about history, those were a lovely time to be a lady. You can be a lady with exceptional stats and combat prowess, I just didn't write it in the base book because 99% of women in this setting are hella oppressed and kept down by the man, it's how it goes. But on the other hand I am not in your game group dictating what you do so feel free to change or break things if it means you get to tell the story you want to tell." And I respect that idea for something like Glorantha that is so steeped in real world historical analogue and myths, I never got it in D&D which in my mind has always been less based on real myth and much more flexible and egalitarian for the most part than things with a heavily enforced setting like Glorantha or Tekumel.

El Estrago Bonito posted:

As much as I hate how much the Glorantha guy spergs about poo poo, I do support his position on women in his setting. A long time ago on either usenet or RPGnet I read a post by him that was basically: "Look, Glorantha sucks if you're a lady, like, a lot. It's based on the Iron Age, I am very knowledgeable about history, those were a lovely time to be a lady. You can be a lady with exceptional stats and combat prowess, I just didn't write it in the base book because 99% of women in this setting are hella oppressed and kept down by the man, it's how it goes. But on the other hand I am not in your game group dictating what you do so feel free to change or break things if it means you get to tell the story you want to tell." And I respect that idea for something like Glorantha that is so steeped in real world historical analogue and myths, I never got it in D&D which in my mind has always been less based on real myth and much more flexible and egalitarian for the most part than things with a heavily enforced setting like Glorantha or Tekumel.

LatwPIAT posted:

Oh, and it's also pretty dickish to say to every woman entering the hobby that they're not allowed to play physically strong female characters. We're all going to sit around and engage in escapist fantasies, but your escapist fantasy of playing an amazon is simply not acceptable. Instead, you can compensate for your lack of raw skills with these bonuses for non-combat attributes and the ability to bend men to your will with your physical appearance.