For a palate cleanser, here's what Rich Burlew (author of Order of the Stick) has to say on the subject:
ttrpg
Tabletop Rpg posts, content, and recruitment posts.
Recruitment posts should contain what system is being played, CW for any adult/serious themes players need to be aware of and whether a game is beginner friendly.
An obvious reminder of no racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia and transphobia.
Emphasis on small independent rpgs like the ones in the TTRPGs for Trans Rights in Texas but not against dnd stuff.
I was expecting this to be shit. Pleasantly surprised
Rich can be an abrasive dick at times, but he's always been vocally opposed to the "genocide good" section of TTRPG players (and has gone on record saying that alignment shouldn't be listed in racial stat blocks).
Alignment is kinda dated. I'm glad people are moving on from it. My game I'm in now we basically ignore it.
Pathfinder 2e has gotten rid of alignment entirely as a tangible concept
Everything is based around edicts (things a character, culture or organization approve of and strive towards) and anathema (things that piss off said characters, cultures and organizations)
It's another good move forward
I'm aware. I just haven't had time to run a PF2e game.
Alignment is for Outsiders in my group.
Yes, that demon is literally a concept of Evil given physical form. No, that orc is not, stop being racist.
a concept of Evil given physical form
"Is it sexy?"
Yeah that's the only real reason to use it imho
It really feels like older DnD players can either be super chill, or super fucked up.
Guess which of the two Gary Gygax was
As far as i know, Dead.
To my knowledge fucked up.
"If my players aren't genocidal freaks like me, my thinly veiled racist caricatures will try to convince them"
Gary Gygax was the proto-chud for this sort of thing, declaring that a Lawful Good paladin must murder the children of "evil" races or else he isn't being Lawful Good.
Pinging @UlyssesT@hexbear.net because I know you hate this stuff too
Damn right I do. "Goblin Slayer" is loaded with nazi shit from the get-go and it's all narrator declared worldbuilding.
I HATE THE THERMIAN ARGUMENT
I HATE THE THERMIAN ARGUMENT
To be fair, chuds hate the thermian argument too; if you have a fantasy or sci-fi setting with an advanced race of humans who aren't white, they get upset.
Perhaps, though far more often than not (including on Hexbear) I see it being used to justify reactionary shit, from Goblin Slayer and Shield Hero and Gate and Attack on Titan's narrator-driven ideologies to increasingly-stale anti-creativity bottlenecks like Nintendo's insistence that "the prophecy(tm)" from a roughly 30 year old game requires endless repetition of the same primary beats of Zelda games forever and ever with Zelda pretty much forbidden from having playable character agency since after the CDi era except with metaphysical asspulls like, so I hear, Link's spirit allowing her to swing a sword but only then, and silliness like that.
(I was kidding; I was implying chuds only hate the thermian argument when it's an opportunity to be bigoted)
I'm so glad I play DND with queer theater kids
best DM i ever had was one of those.
Smh, fake D&D fans getting their morality from Goblin Slayer. Real D&D Racists get their morality from Gary "I am Adolf Hitler" Gygax.
CW: 19th century racism
I saw some DND guy say that the way WOTC is handling the game is making Gygax spin in his grave, which as much as I'd hate to praise WOTC, they are doing a very good thing by making him spin in his grave.
Smh, Hasbro is disrespecting the guy who saw fit to include a Random Harlot Table in the AD&D DMG. Has Big Woke gone too far!?
Random Harlot Table
That straight-up sounds like something you'd see in FATAL
You're underselling it. Fantasy Adventure To Adult Lechery aka F.A.T.A.L. has [Sex Worker] as a playable class! They gain ~~XP~~ AP for getting people off.
No, really.
i pirated a copy of that game as part of a big package years ago. flipped through it out of curiosity because i had always heard the rumors
and it was just so fucking lame. i say this as a very sex positive person. just absolute incel levels of sexuality.
wouldn't surprise me if it was cobbled together as a group effort on 4chan.
i've seen far better fan made hornystuff modules for D20 (and even they are just too much)
wouldn't surprise me if it was cobbled together as a group effort on 4chan.
FATAL actually predates 4chan (released in 2002, 4chan was founded in 2003).
Pathfinder's CRPGs can be quite horny without being F.A.T.A.L. shit. They're neat.
Wrath of the Righteous makes demons horny and terrifying at the same time from the first chapter, too.
They are then sent off to their reward before they can backslide. :D
40k paint-huffing fascist prototype brain there.
Goblins usually being chaotic mischevious troublemakers because of the material conditions and cultural stigma that other races have against them is fine but that's it. Pathfinder handles that a lot better.
Eberron does it well too; the goblins in the city of (can't remember) were once majorly advanced, but then ~~white~~ barbarian people happened, now they live poverty stricken in slums.
I'm kind of reminded of a game from childhood, Radiata Stories, where they handle goblin as sentient people with their own culture and agency. Unfortunately the plot forces a zero sum game upon the human and humanoid (non-human in the game) people for their survival.
Speaking of, Runescape does the goblin thing quite well with the variety of tribes from what I remember of the quests.
The catch is that if you're ruthless towards goblins, their natural enemy (kobolds) will spiral out of control and turn the entire world into a murderhole
I dont understand any appeal to make a race "inherently evil" like if you want something players can kill without remorse just add bandits or asshole knights.
For years, I've established justifiable targets for violence and they were never born that way but chose to be assholes. My group was more than happy to slay them. Well, except for a few notoriously bad players that I've ranted about before. One was so chuddy that he got mad at the idea of evil sometimes looking pretty and good maybe sometimes being ugly. "I'm so SICK of that politically correct bullshit!"
Racism. Racism is the appeal.
A good DM won't let you massacre the demon children. A great DM will ensure you don't forget about the moral implications of killing demon children. I remember my party thought the best tactic to stop a fascist invasion would be scorched earth tactics on a critical town. However, they scorched the earth with people in it and ended up massacring the townspeople. I tried to have an arc about trying to atone for that and dealing with the fallout but I wasn't quite good enough to pull it off.
Mfer talks about a show that could have come out of Goebbels' ass or be some greasy racist 1980 porn movie like it's a source of inspiration for his next play at the duke's court
Your innately evil force in your game that exisrts for people to have something to stab shouldn't create circumstances wherein the players have the opportunity to commit crimes against humanity.
I have been kicking around a campaign idea where the BBEG is an evil wizard that has sucked all the evil out of the world to use for himself, so anything evil is instantly vaporized. Of course, the Wizard is evil and controlling, but it also upsets the natural order, so he must be stopped. Goblins are aligned neutral evil (As they often are) but along the way, the adventurers find a village of goblins who have learned to be good, but are under constant temptation do to bad things. So as the adventurers walk around the town, if they don't stop a goblin from biting them or pick pocketing them, POOF, goblin gone.
Of course this leads to a meditation on good and evil, and what that really means. Also all of the goblins are named after military contractors.
It's be funnier if the goblins being good was disturbing the natural order of the universe so the adventurers have to turn them back to evil to save the world from disharmony.