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Warhammer Fantasy Role Playing 4th Edition Starter Set Wrapping things up so I don't burn out Honestly, I'm not really feeling like putting a lot of effort into the final three adventures for Ferdinand, Else, and Salundra. They're not bad, really. They'd be a perfectly fine collection of plot hooks to throw at a GM from them to develop. But most of the page is spent on additional details that mostly don't add much. They are also all pretty generic, so it's not like they tie into the character specifically either. Old Blue Eyes Is Back Quality: 3 Guidance: 3 Let's start with Old Blue Eyes Is Back, the scenario for Ferdinand Gruber. Ferdinand is a Amethyst Wizard, death magic that is similar to but legally and mechanically distinct from Necromancy. He also has a bit of backstory about being the first born son of a Baron, but had to give up his right to inherit when he became a wizard. There's a town called Flechtben that is part of the domain of Baron Arschloch (...yeah) but has self-ruled for 300 years. According to local myths, a hero named Blaue Augen won the town's freedom and promised to return if the town was threatened. Arschloch is threatening Flechtben, and strange lights and blue fires are appearing around the town, and now Arschloch wants you to deal with the ghost. That's the full extent of Ferdinand's tie into the adventure, he's a Wizard Who Bust Ghosts being hired to investigate a Ghost That May Need Busting. Anyway, the 'haunting' was a scheme by the mayor of Flechtben to scare the Arschloch that's threatening them and drum up some tourist business. Except the engineer he hired accidentally discovered and opened the tomb of Blaue Augen. Turns out that Blaue Augen is actually an evil Cairn Wraith that a heroic Arschloch trapped 300 years ago, and gave Flechtben their charter in return for protecting the containment site. When Arschloch finds out about this, he eagerly revokes the charter and invades, since the town didn't protect Blaue Augen's tomb and he's an Arschloch. I kinda like the idea of a scooby doo mystery, but the "Haha you're working for Baron rear end in a top hat, how did you think it would go?" ending tempers my excitement. Anyway, the Cairn Wraith is Ethereal and can only be hurt by magic. In order to let the rest of the party participate, I'd gin up something in the tomb that could be used to weaken Blaue Augen, but Ferdinand should be able to handle things by himself. So not a huge amount of reworking is necessary. Ash In The Wind Quality: 3 Guidance: 2 Next is Ash In The Wind, the adventure for Else Sigloben the Witch Hunter. Her backstory is that her mother was also a witch hunter, and took her along on witch hunts. The connection to this adventure is that Else visited the town before with her mother, but left after they were told the witch had already been burned. Anyway, Hugeldal is a nearby town that has a rash of witch signs. The local ruler is Baron Matthais von Jungfreud, and considering his House Jungfreud relations in Ubersreik have all just been deposed for treason, he's very eager to make this go away. 20 Gold Crowns eager, to be exact. As mentioned, Else visited Hugeldal before with her mother, and suspects that the 'witch' the town had burned 20 years ago may have been part of something more. She's both right and wrong. 20 years ago there was a witch, but it wasn't the woman who was burned. Instead, the witch was working for the burgomeister at the time, who orchestrated the framing. The burgomeister admitted all of this to his granddaughter on his death bed, who is the current burgomeister. The witch, Klimmer, is also dead after being murdered by his own apprentice, who is still in the town. There is also an aging Hedgewitch, and a wealthy merchant who dabbled with - and quickly abandoned - necromancy after he realized he couldn't actually bring his beloved back from the dead (she was framed for being a witch). Good move, Ex-Necromancer. The actual Witch tried to recruit the ex-Necromancer into being his new apprentice, but was rejected. Also, the witch signs aren't being caused by any of these people, but instead by two anti-Jungfreud agitators trying to oust the baron. There is SO MUCH detail and character notes packed into one page that it doesn't have enough room to actually, you know, offer guidance on running a mystery adventure. Also, the adventure solves itself as the ex-apprentice Witch tries to frame people, is discovered, murders the people who discovered him, and flees town. I'm really not a fan of adventures that resolve themselves with no real way for the players to intercede and save the victims. Memories of Blood Quality: 1 Guidance: 2 The Salundra adventure I described as generic and incoherent! The village of Grauner needs to hire some adventurers to train up a militia. Salundra is the cousin of the local baron and knows one of the villagers, that's the entirety of her connection. The baron refuses to allow a militia because he suspects there is a Dark Cult in the village, but he doesn't want to order a purge and lose the taxes either. So the adventure suggests that they pretend to be hunting beastmen. Then a Witch Hunter shows up, and... actually, let me just post the whole quote: "Next morning, an agent of the baron — Witch Hunter Hedwig Tiermann — arrives with 6 soldiers. Tiermann claims the Characters are heretics, and provides Baron Ruprecht’s testimony that Salundra is a rebellious cur who chooses the soldier’s life over the duty of being a noble scion! She must reveal herself now!Fortunately, Hebamme offers to smuggle the party from Grauner as Gavrich and Elder Bloch delay the Witch Hunter." Please note that Salundra is both a noble and an officer in the State Army, meaning she's somewhat above the law, and the Else Sigloben is also a Witch Hunter. But, whatever. It turns out that there is a cult to the Blood God, lead by Hebamme who ambushes the party. "No one believes Habamme's betrayal unless the party brings proof: proof that is heretical to carry." So yeah, a pretty drat generic beastmen and cultists in a rural village adventure that squanders the potential of re-enacting the Seven Samurai. It doesn't really make sense either, and it's just a series of events that happen. It's not bad, but it feels deeply, deeply 'Meh' to me. So the only thing left to review is the Ubersreik Guide Book, and I don't really feel like it. It's a perfectly fine setting book, with a lot of emphasis on being useful for adventures. Every section and location has plot hooks you can use. For example, the Locksmith's Guild is a single man with a monopoly on all lock work in Ubersreik, who is actually the front for a Ranald cult where they train aspiring thieves in lockpicking. It does a lot of work turning Ubersreik into an interesting place, so it's a little disappointing that the adventures fail to take advantage of this for the most part. But I think it's pretty good. And... that's it. I disliked the pre-gen characters, was indifferent towards the introductory adventure, and while the guidebook is pretty good, the rest of the starter set doesn't manage to take advantage of it. I think the starter set would have worked better if it had leaned more heavily into Cop Time Adventures, and let players get a real feel for Ubersreik in particular and the Empire in general. It's not bad, for the most part, just mediocre and not great at introducing people to the setting or the system. And uh, that's all I have to say about it. The End
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Jun 1, 2020 05:23
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Death magic is nothing like necromancy! It is the magic of being able to accept the end of things, of realizing and understanding that all things die and all people are mortal and life has value despite (because of) this. That is like the absolute opposite of necromancy, the magic of 'gently caress you, no, I'm staying and I don't care who has to die for that to be true' and 'I am going to make hellish puppets out of your body'.
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Jun 1, 2020 05:31
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Falconier111 posted:
It turned out later that at the point in time that MoEP Infernals was published, John Chambers was developing Exalted unpaid in what free time he could scavenge while doing full-time work on the WoD MMO. I honestly feel super bad in retrospect for all the poo poo I gave him at the time. Also, funfact: That picture above that's censored? The art note did not instruct the artist to draw the middle priest topless. That was a surprise when the art came back.
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Jun 1, 2020 05:33
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What the gently caress kind of way is that to run a company?
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Falconier111 posted:E: I wish this book had more illustrations because goddamn that’s a wall of text. I think I’ll just be stealing spare ones from the last book. Compass: Autochthonia is 140 pages long and all the other Compasses are 160, even though they all have the same wordcount of 100k words -- the extra pages in the first five compasses account for space dedicated to illustrations that Autochthonia doesn't have because of reduced budget. It was a fun project to work on, and I don't mean that ironically -- difficult, rewarding work, given the conditions.
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Jun 1, 2020 05:40
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Night10194 posted:Death magic is nothing like necromancy! It is the magic of being able to accept the end of things, of realizing and understanding that all things die and all people are mortal and life has value despite (because of) this.
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Jun 1, 2020 05:44
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Yeah, I just get annoyed easily because Death Magic actually being very, very different (if kind of mechanically undertuned in 2e) is one of the really cool things in the setting. In general I really love the Winds of Magic and they make playing Hams Wizards way more fun.
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Jun 1, 2020 05:45
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Stephenls posted:Also, funfact: That picture above that's censored? The art note did not instruct the artist to draw the middle priest topless. That was a surprise when the art came back. Everything I hear about getting art done for RPGs has left me horrified.
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Jun 1, 2020 05:49
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LatwPIAT posted:Everything I hear about getting art done for RPGs has left me horrified. A long time ago there was an article about the experience of art-directing this-or-that Magic: The Gathering expansion. I haven't been able to find it for years, but it made an impression when I first read it. Something like a decade ago. If anyone can find it, please post a link. Female characters drawn in pinup poses even though the art notes specifically said not to, pointy ears on characters described as human, "Give this one a darker skin tone" resulting in a character's skin being turned blue.... A good artist who will follow art notes is worth her or his weight in gold. At least the naked priestess pic done on a short turnaround time for a book with a reduced art budget (for the first installment of a project being released serially, so it's not like there was time to send it back) is otherwise appropriate for a picture of the Autochthonian priesthood. Stephenls fucked around with this message at 05:58 on Jun 1, 2020 |
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Jun 1, 2020 05:53
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Tibalt posted:The End I think this is the end of the all the current Warhammer RPG reviews here as well. At least until Mors Rattus comes back.
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Jun 1, 2020 06:03
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Stephenls posted:
God, why are people so allergic to non-white characters in fantasy settings? Back when Baldur's Gate II was the new hotness and had an active community, there were at least a few mods to turn Valygar's model and portrait *green* because "A black man is unrealistic" And of course on other RPG art, there's a huge issue of copying and plagiarism, like the infamous Dante Hunter lift.
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Jun 1, 2020 06:26
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Stephenls posted:A long time ago there was an article about the experience of art-directing this-or-that Magic: The Gathering expansion. I haven't been able to find it for years, but it made an impression when I first read it. Something like a decade ago. If anyone can find it, please post a link. There's an absolutely classic 3E D&D one showing a very white, very conventionally pretty druid lady against instructions reading to the effect of 'she's black, fearsome looking, and put this detail in the talisman she's holding'. My favourite M:tG art goof is Hyalopterous Lemure, which the artist apparently misread as 'lemur'.
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Jun 1, 2020 06:26
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For all I don't like Pathfinder, they're pretty cool with diverse and badass art. Not perfect, but well above industry standard.
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Jun 1, 2020 06:36
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Stephenls posted:It turned out later that at the point in time that MoEP Infernals was published, John Chambers was developing Exalted unpaid in what free time he could scavenge while doing full-time work on the WoD MMO. I honestly feel super bad in retrospect for all the poo poo I gave him at the time. Jesus, I had no idea.
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Jun 1, 2020 09:37
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Robindaybird posted:God, why are people so allergic to non-white characters in fantasy settings? Back when Baldur's Gate II was the new hotness and had an active community, there were at least a few mods to turn Valygar's model and portrait *green* because "A black man is unrealistic"  As for Exalted stuff, I think that part of what made things deranged is that due to the interactivity with the fans, you got this weird thing where the reaction and the thought and the rhetoric got turned towards whatever arcane horseshit was being advanced on the forums at that time, rather than people, like, trying to play the game or engage with its themes or its systems or whatever the gently caress. Infernal Exalted were built in an interesting way. Something I see more clearly now is that in a sense their various Charms (there is literally nothing more important in Exalted than long lists of Charms - not even titty pictures!) were being lent narrative aspects by their massive devil patron. So when they got really REALLY powerful, they would start having their own narrative abilities... I get the feeling that someone somewhere said "when you reach Essence 10, heh. now you can play Nobilis."
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Jun 1, 2020 10:00
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 Mutant 2089 Forget everything you have learned about games. Like any game worth its name there is a basic question that always must be answered: What is a roleplaying game? So the book launches into the usual spiel about just what a roleplaying game is. I’d be tempted to quote in verbatim since it’s actually kind of nice. Surprisingly casual in tone all throughout, there is a lack dressing it up as something grand and kinda majestic. A tone I’ve felt I’ve picked in other later books. In a way it answers the question within the second paragraph. quote:“A roleplaying game is not a game in a regular sense, but instead it’s about that you, together with some friends can get to experience a series of adventures that take place in a world beyond your everyday jog.” The rest of the introduction follows the same line in describing the basics of how to play roleplaying games, from your character to using the rules. Everything is contained within one page as well, so it’s very concise and to the point at the same time. It can be rather dense though. The book is not shy about admitting that the Game Master is the one who should know the rules and the players should concentrate on playing their character. It’s an amicable thought, even if I wouldn’t completely agree with it fully. Players should at the least know the basic rules to make things flow smoothly. After that the book reinstates the goal that the game is a cooperative one and you’re there to tell a story and help each other. Interestingly enough, that section ends with an encouragement that you shouldn’t play two characters simultaneously, to ensure you have the right level of engagement for your character. Makes me wonder where that came from originally. The tone of the game, as the book explains, is action and having cool adventures. Where the characters are tough adventurers who will be fighting against organized crime, trigger happy mutants, street gangs and the decay of society. quote:“Be vigilant and have your pistol easily accessible in your holster.” This is a marked difference between Mutant 89 and Neotech 2. As unlike N2 the writers are clear and upfront what they expect the basic characters to be. Whilst in N2 it was very vague and they were never fully upfront about what they wanted to promote. Here we have a basic premise already established on page 9 and you already have some idea what to expect. Something I know I complained about at length. Mutant uses BRP or Basic RolePlay system. And it’s here I come across a rather noticeable issue, it’s very bad explaining the basics mechanics in the introduction. It breaks down the various types of dice, d4, d6 and d10. As well as a couple of special cases such as d2, d3, and d20. The latter is rolled with the help of a d6 and a d10 interestingly enough. As well as d100 percentage dice (two d10’s obviously). But what is missing is an explanation of the game's basic conflict resolution mechanic. Which is a weird oversight to make. There is a 12 page booklet including a number of tables for both equipment and combat, as well as a very sizable table for opposing rolls.  Finally we get a list of various abbreviations of terminology we’ll encounter throughout this book. Nothing particular of note here other than the main currency used is EuroDollar. Next Time: Making the New You.
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Jun 1, 2020 11:53
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The Lone Badger posted:The Charms were supposedly very mechanically interesting and thematic. The fluff chapter... the less said the better.
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Jun 1, 2020 12:03
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Yggdrasil Part Seven: Norse-ern Exposure  CONTENT WARNING This section includes references to slavery (including sexual slavery), infanticide, homophobia and misogyny, and assorted patriarchal bullshit. It's not explicit or glorified--it's about what you'd find in a history textbook about the Viking Age, but it's there. Family and clan are the backbones of Norse society. Family, in this instance, means those people you can trace an actual relation to, by blood or marriage (though fosterage also plays a pretty strong role here), while clan refers to a looser collection of families who can trace their ancestry back to a common, notable ancestor. Two things to note here: first, and one of the things that's probably the hardest to grasp for modern people in western society, is that in Norse society, the family, not the individual, is the fundamental social/legal unit. In other words, everyone in a family is responsible for the actions of every individual member. If you kill someone in a quarrel, that person's entire family is obligated to seek vengeance against you--or, more accurately, your family. Norse society sees nothing wrong with, say, killing your brother or son or cousin in revenge for someone you killed. It doesn't matter that your relative had nothing to do with the killing, they're part of your family and therefore legally responsible. Likewise, if someone kills your brother, you are obligated to settle that debt, either via revenge killing or by pressing your case for financial recompense at the thing. Second, unlike, for example, Scottish clans, Norse clans aren't strongly tied to particular territory--neighbors often belong to different clans, and there's no real sense of a clan "homeland" to speak of. If this sounds like a recipe for endless blood feuds that make the Hatfields and McCoys look like a polite disagreement at the opera, well... you're not wrong. The concept of wergild (literally "man-price," i.e. the compensation that is expected for the death or maiming of an individual) is theoretically supposed to mitigate this, but all too often it's ignored in favor of vendetta. The sagas are full of this kind of thing, and also negotiations when the two sides finally decide to settle like "okay, I killed three of your cousins and you killed four of my sons and cut off my brother's arm, you owe me one and a half times the value of a free man." At the same time, life in early iron age Scandinavia is hard, and on a purely practical level family means having extra hands to work the fields and extra spears to defend the farm if the neighbors get acquisitive. Norse society has a strong caste system, although there's a fair bit more mobility between the classes than in, say, later medieval Europe. At the top of the heap are the jarls, the hereditary nobility. Most of them trace their ancestry back to some noble (mythical or otherwise--see for example the royal houses of the three kingdoms who claim descent from the gods) progenitor, but really the thing that makes someone a noble is wealth and influence. A jarl has the resources to do things like build ships and finance expeditions, grant land to followers, and perhaps most importantly, to pay for a body of full-time warriors called a hird. They also have to be charismatic enough that other people will actually listen to them, as they don't really have any de jure executive power. They usually own the largest plots of land in the community, and a decent chunk of their income often comes from fees and taxes accrued from the use of those lands. For example, a jarl who owns a good stretch of land at the mouth of a fjord might lease allotments to local merchants and permit trading vessels to dock there in exchange for a cut of the profits. Likewise, they're often the ones who organize and provision raiding expeditions in exchange for a share of the loot. Below the jarls are the bondi, the free men and women who make up the bulk of Norse society. Feudalism never really took hold in Scandia, at least not until well into the later Middle Ages, so Norse culture doesn't really have a peasant or serf class per se. The Norse world is an agrarian one, and nearly all bondi are farmers in addition to whatever else they do: in some of the larger merchant towns you see dedicated craftsmen, and some skills are rare enough that a person can make a living as, say, a traveling blacksmith or a boat-builder, but in general farming and animal husbandry are the ways of life, and most people are pretty self-sufficient. Most bondi own at least a small plot of land, but others work as hired hands on larger farms. Importantly, the bondi are free people, with all the rights and privileges thereof, whether or not they own land. They can participate in the thing*, buy and sell property, get married, and start a family without any permission required from the upper class*. The book also tells us that bondi are required to work the lands of their jarls, which sounds suspiciously like later medieval manorial feudalism to me, and I'm not aware of this being mentioned in the sagas. Certainly jarls will have hired hands working their lands along with slaves (on which more in a moment), but a jarl who tries to force people to work his lands for him is probably on a fast track toward not being jarl any more. * Both of these statements come with a big old caveat of "unless you're a woman." In the most "this section was clearly written by men" moment in the whole book, Yggdrasil tells us that "the rights of men and women are much the same," then immediately goes on to say how women have no voice at the thing and don't have any say in who they marry. Finally, the lowest class in Norce society are the thralls, who are slaves. Most thralls are prisoners of war, taken during raids, but you can be forced into slavery as punishment for a crime (usually defaulting on a debt), and the children of slaves are also considered slaves. Thralls have neither property nor rights**--they don't even have a wergild, killing a slave is treated, legally, as destruction of property. Yggdrasil tries to muster a lukewarm defense of this practice, and it's honestly one of the cringiest parts of the book: Yggdrasil posted:However, although there are exceptions, the life of a thrall is not a hellish existence; a well-treated slave is more productive, and the Norse are not so stupid as to pointlessly destroy a human being, no matter how servile, if he can still be of use to them and their clan.  with that "it wasn't that bad" bullshit, Yggdrasil. Slavery loving sucks, period, and if you're going to include it in your historical game you should drat well own up to that fact--especially since, while Yggdrasil doesn't acknowledge it specifically, sexual slavery was very much a part of slavery in the Iron Age. And also, if you look at the sagas and historical law codes, it almost certainly was a pretty hellish existence: slaves were given the most physically demanding, tedious jobs, out in the sun or the bitter cold with inadequate protection. In fact, the most consistent term used to describe slaves in the sagas is "sunburned" (older translations usually render this as "swarthy," which  , but that's more about 19th century racism than anything else), and when they are named, their names usually translate as things like "Ugly," "Bad-Smell," "Lazy," and similar abusive terms. Whether that's a literary conceit or the way slaves were actually addressed is unclear, but it definitely shows how they were thought of.Even being freed didn't fully end the bullshit. A freed slave was required to vote in accordance with his former owner at the thing, and if they die without an heir, their former owner inherits their property. It takes two to four generations before a freed slave's descendants are considered bondi. ** This is what Yggdrasil says, but the old Icelandic law codes and the sagas paint a slightly different picture, though by no means a rosy one. Slaves were entitled to accrue property and could in time buy their freedom, they could marry (with their owner's permission, of course), and men were allowed to pursue vengeance for their wives. After the section on social classes, Yggdrasil reiterates its view that Norse society was basically feudal, with the jarls owning all the land and the bondi working it for them (again, not at all the case even in the Viking age, and certainly not in the 4th-6th century when power was even less consolidated), and then we move on to "The Role of Women." Now, in general, if you had to be a woman in Iron Age Europe, there probably were worse places to be one than in Scandia. Norse women can own property, have the rights to move and travel freely, and can be businesswomen in their own right. Divorce is also a right for both men and women, for a variety of reasons including domestic abuse, and in theory it's as easy as announcing the divorce in front of witnesses. In reality, though, divorce is pretty rare, just because surviving on your own is pretty drat hard. On the other hand, as mentioned above, women don't get a vote at the thing and get no say in who they marry--that's handled entirely between the prospective groom and her father (and often her first indication that these negotiations are even happening is when they conclude and her father says "BTW, you're marrying this guy"). Widows in theory can make their own determination about future marriages, but again the reality appears to have been that there was still a great deal of pressure from the families to marry appropriately. In general, Norse society divides labor pretty firmly down gender lines, and the dividing line is basically that everything inside the house is a woman's domain, and everything outside is a man's. That's about all that Yggdrasil really says about women in society, aside from a vague mention that, in the absence of sons, noble daughters are sometimes raised the same way as boys and even become rulers in their own right. As far as a historical primer on women in Norse society, it's decent enough as a half-page summary, but it's pretty poo poo in terms of options for female PCs. Hell, the term "shield-maiden" doesn't even come up once (and yes, there is fierce academic debate over how common woman warriors "really were" vs. how often they appear in the sagas, but this is a game where jotnar and krakens are presented in the Antagonists chapter and magic is real, we can base things on the saga accounts). I'm not going to go into a ton more detail because a) I'm not an expert and b) I'm a cishet white dude and I'd rather amplify the voices of women on this topic, so instead I'll recommend to anyone interested in a more in-depth look at the roles of Norse women in the sagas check out Valkyrie: The Women of the Viking World by Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir. It's an excellent book and very accessible even for non-scholarly readers. Next Time: Fed and washed Should one go to the thing.
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Jun 1, 2020 12:54
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Robindaybird posted:God, why are people so allergic to non-white characters in fantasy settings? Back when Baldur's Gate II was the new hotness and had an active community, there were at least a few mods to turn Valygar's model and portrait *green* because "A black man is unrealistic" There's also the Dragon Age II mod that gives Isabela lighter skin because she... I dunno, looks Mediterranean? Although all props to John Chambers. I've heard enough horror stories of how the WoD crew were dragooned into working on the MMO so I can easily imagine what he went through.
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Jun 1, 2020 14:55
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Robindaybird posted:God, why are people so allergic to non-white characters in fantasy settings? Back when Baldur's Gate II was the new hotness and had an active community, there were at least a few mods to turn Valygar's model and portrait *green* because "A black man is unrealistic" Because all too many people don't realize Europe was never really lily white. Also racism.
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Jun 1, 2020 15:02
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Night10194 posted:Because all too many people don't realize Europe was never really lily white. Ironsworn has this as an explicit rule of the game, which I love: Ironsworn posted:There is a diverse mix of peoples and cultures within the Ironlands, even within a single community. You can envision your character and those you interact with however you like, unbound by considerations of geography, lineage, sexual orientation, and gender. It also does a pretty decent job of diversity in its art, especially given that it's all stock photos of people in quasi-Viking clothes and armor.
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Jun 1, 2020 15:13
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Night10194 posted:Because all too many people don't realize Europe was never really lily white. To the point that owning swords that look like a Roman gladius is kind of a thing in right-wing communities, if an uncommon one (if you heard about the guy who charged protesters the other day with a sword, yes indeed the sword was a faux-gladius).
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Jun 1, 2020 15:13
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Cythereal posted:To the point that owning swords that look like a Roman gladius is kind of a thing in right-wing communities, if an uncommon one (if you heard about the guy who charged protesters the other day with a sword, yes indeed the sword was a faux-gladius). Likewise, I get real nervous when YouTube algorithms recommend videos about Viking stuff, especially when the thumbnail is a white dude with an undercut.
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Jun 1, 2020 15:17
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Same reason I stay away from history video recommendations on YT, especially when its also military history related.
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Jun 1, 2020 15:20
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Cooked Auto posted:Same reason I stay away from history video recommendations on YT, especially when its also military history related. Hell, at one point I was doing some research for a Paleolithic era RPG, watching videos about archaeology and timelines of human migration. Started watching one that seemed like a relatively innocuous timeline of Neanderthal vs. H. sapiens migrations out of Africa, and all of a sudden 5 minutes in the dude starts in on how this proves that the ancestors of all civilizations were European and I practically dove across the living room to hit the Back button.
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Jun 1, 2020 15:30
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GimpInBlack posted:Likewise, I get real nervous when YouTube algorithms recommend videos about Viking stuff, especially when the thumbnail is a white dude with an undercut. The comforting myth of the noble savage, but everyone is white and doesn't threaten to raise uncomfortable questions about colonialism!
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Jun 1, 2020 15:31
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YouTube has been driving people (especially younger viewers) to the far-right for years.
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Jun 1, 2020 15:35
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GimpInBlack posted:Hell, at one point I was doing some research for a Paleolithic era RPG, watching videos about archaeology and timelines of human migration. Started watching one that seemed like a relatively innocuous timeline of Neanderthal vs. H. sapiens migrations out of Africa, and all of a sudden 5 minutes in the dude starts in on how this proves that the ancestors of all civilizations were European and I practically dove across the living room to hit the Back button. I hope you at least scrubbed your history tab directly afterwards. But yeah, that's not a hole I want to fall down into. Reminds me of the 'documentary' a friend showed me a couple of years ago about secret precursor civilizations that science didn't want you to know about but there were totally proof for. I told him to turn that poo poo off after like 5 minutes. wiegieman posted:YouTube has been driving people (especially younger viewers) to the far-right for years. FB admitted a while ago that people joined various extremist movements because they kept advertising them. 
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Jun 1, 2020 15:37
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I love secret precursor civilizations in fiction, but goddamn if I'm not aware of the Problems with that trope and how it's used to de legitimize and erase the achievements of cultures. I just like fantasy to suddenly stumble on sci-fi, damnit!
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Jun 1, 2020 15:45
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Night10194 posted:Death magic is nothing like necromancy! It is the magic of being able to accept the end of things, of realizing and understanding that all things die and all people are mortal and life has value despite (because of) this. I admit that I'm a little unclear on how spell/miracle Lores work in terms of what you can have in any one character. You can only have any one Arcane Lore - which includes Hedge Lore, Hag Lore and Ice Witch Lore. If you have an Arcane-type Lore, you can still get Chaos Lore with the appropriate result from Tzeentch's Curse. So, could you learn both Amythest Lore and Necromancy Lore? Like have a guy who began as a Necromancer but reformed into an Amythest wizard (or the reverse)? I'd love to take somebody with Necromantic Lore who creates "reversed" versions of various Necromantic spells to use them to debilitate, depower and destroy the undead.
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Jun 1, 2020 15:48
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It's not perfect, but it's basically why I always keep hbomberguy's add-on - to nuke the worst of this poo poo out. I'm a history major, I plan on going into looking at queer history in specific - it's so loving depressing to see these alt-right loons filling up Youtube with garbage in the guise of historiography or fun facts.
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Jun 1, 2020 15:57
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Cythereal posted:To the point that owning swords that look like a Roman gladius is kind of a thing in right-wing communities, if an uncommon one (if you heard about the guy who charged protesters the other day with a sword, yes indeed the sword was a faux-gladius). Ah, yes, the famously lily-white Romans, who never came from North Africa and the people of Rome have always been considered white by anglos.
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Jun 1, 2020 16:04
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Robindaybird posted:It's not perfect, but it's basically why I always keep hbomberguy's add-on - to nuke the worst of this poo poo out. I was watching on a TV, but I did immediately purge my search history and watch a few hbomberguy videos to try to counteract it. Ratoslov posted:Ah, yes, the famously lily-white Romans, who never came from North Africa and the people of Rome have always been considered white by anglos. I did really like that the show Brittania made a point of casting a lot of actors of North African ancestry to play the Roman Legionnaires, since historically the Legions that invaded Britain had previously been stationed there. GimpInBlack fucked around with this message at 16:10 on Jun 1, 2020 |
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Jun 1, 2020 16:08
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Cooked Auto posted:Same reason I stay away from history video recommendations on YT, especially when its also military history related. I find it's useful to periodically go through my viewing history and remove everything that I don't want the algorithm to use when recommending me future videos. Mostly this is just cute animal videos, because I think YouTube weighs high-engagement videos more than low-engagement ones when determining what to base future recommendations on, so that e.g. if you watch one mini painting video and one cute video of an adopted squirrel, the recommendation algorithm will go "More people watch cute animal videos than painting videos, so recommendations based on this person's view of the squirrel video are more likely to generate further engagement than recommendations based on the painting tutorial." And, like, sometimes I want to watch a video of a cute baby squirrel, but I don't then want my entire recommendation feed to turn into The Dodo Little But Fierce. But it's also useful after watching videos about history.
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Jun 1, 2020 16:29
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I have a Chrome addon that lets me blacklist the worst offenders so that they don't pester me either in recommendations or recently uploaded. Also judicious usage of "Don't recommend me this" has probably also skewered things. Even if I've seen some really stupid recommendations either way.
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Jun 1, 2020 16:37
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GimpInBlack posted:I did really like that the show Brittania made a point of casting a lot of actors of North African ancestry to play the Roman Legionnaires, since historically the Legions that invaded Britain had previously been stationed there. You'd better believe the usual suspects in the UK screamed their heads off at black Romans. Never mind we have historical records of their postings, careers, and actual letters home.
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Jun 1, 2020 16:40
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My favorite one is the letter from the soldier at Hadrian's wall to his sister, because all of his fellow legionnaires are jealous of the socks she made him.
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Jun 1, 2020 16:53
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Stephenls posted:Also, funfact: That picture above that's censored? The art note did not instruct the artist to draw the middle priest topless. That was a surprise when the art came back. Can I edit this into that post?
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Jun 1, 2020 16:59
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LeSquide posted:My favorite one is the letter from the soldier at Hadrian's wall to his sister, because all of his fellow legionnaires are jealous of the socks she made him. My favorite is the letters of Trajan and Pliny going 'There's this weird loving cult on my province, Christians or something, what are these.' 'Hell if I know, do they do proper rites?' 'No, and I think they drink blood' 'Well, crime it is, then.' It's a nice reminder of how odd Christianity can look from outside of a cultural context that's totally steeped in its general knowledge.
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Jun 1, 2020 17:02
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Falconier111 posted:Can I edit this into that post? Shrug
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Jun 1, 2020 17:43
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GimpInBlack posted:Most bondi own at least a small plot of land, but others work as hired hands on larger farms. Importantly, the bondi are free people, with all the rights and privileges thereof, whether or not they own land. They can participate in the thing*, buy and sell property, get married, and start a family without any permission required from the upper class*. The book also tells us that bondi are required to work the lands of their jarls, which sounds suspiciously like later medieval manorial feudalism to me, and I'm not aware of this being mentioned in the sagas. We don't really know how things worked before ca. 900. It's known that there was an increase in manorialism and centralization of land ownership from that time onward, but the details are scarce. That said, it might also be a conflation of sources or terms. While some articles on viking society (broadly applicable to the vendel period) describe bondi as free men who typically own or rent land, other describe bondi as people who pay off debts to the jarls by working the land, with karls being the people who are not bound to the land. The structure is then: Thralls: slaves Bondi: "free" men in debt bondage Karls: free men who own or rent land Jarls: nobility This is further complicated by local variations in time and place and changes to what terms mean over time. GimpInBlack posted:In fact, the most consistent term used to describe slaves in the sagas is "sunburned" (older translations usually render this as "swarthy," which The origin myth of the social classes, Rígsþula, from somewhere between 900 and 1250 CE, describes Thrall as "svartan" which, well...
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Jun 1, 2020 18:05
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