Posts made by Ghost

@Roz said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

The conversational thread prior wasn't about whether or not people should be forced to bend their setting to be ahistorical. It was about the idea of not allowing certain fundamental types of identities to be played at all, sometimes despite them definitely existing

I apologize for derailing, then. Moooooove along. I was just self-checking "Under what circumstances would denying these demographics be reasonable" and all I came up with was "historical accuracy". So I went bleh blah blah historical accuracy and was sharing my brain. I derailed. Mea culpa.

ON POINT: I think it would be a poor decision for a MUSH, given the number of LGBTQ+ mushers, to deny agency to those player concepts or create settings that refuse them. I think it's risky with playerbases and popularity. I also think that the social politics of demographics in canon characters is a bias minefield that people arent ready to handle in any way that is truly open-minded, which is a particular danger for superhero games.

@Meg said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

Feel free to disagree as you want, but I do think wanting to run a game based in an era where they can exclude people of color and LBTQ+ people does have a basis in bigotry.

I'm not saying you are a bigot if you want to run that game, but I am saying I think that action is bigoted and has a basis in bigotry.

There's my hot take for the day.

Counterpoint:

To some degree I agree with you. It's reasonable to ask "Why the focus on an era that would deny these character types?" However, I know way too many military realism dorks that be like: "* Ennnhhhhh, I'm not racist but if this is supposed to be a military realism game it's weird that a Samuel L. Jackson PB is an officer.*"

This is why I think BSG was fucking rad. Their military set up gave zero fucks. Multicolor. Multilifestyle. I wouldn't want to personally run a "historical realism" game myself because the boundaries of holding to history are too constricting.

@Roz said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

...is actually an entirely different conversation than the one people were talking about. It's definitely come up on the board in the past for people to chew over, talking about the value and feasibility of flexing history to set certain oppressions to the background, but it's not really related to the points that were being discussed. Which is more "these people have existed everywhere in every point of history, even if they haven't been publicly presenting as such."

Okay, sure. I hear ya, but I also think there's a heavy weight of bias in play that lends to the assumption of prevalence.

What's truly at play is simply that people want their own personal demographics to not be excluded. No one wants a game, even fictitious, denying them access to play a demographic that they personally identify with.

I'm just saying that if said setting didn't allow for a certain demographic without good reason doesn't really automatically make it bigotry. I think there's some reasonable wiggle room.

Let me put it this way...

Say a game wants to "realistically" recreate WW2 in the invasion of Normandy. The game is designed because the game-creators want to play in an era of realism during WW2 that captures the era, military hardware, squad tactics, etc.

While it may not be a popular decision with certain members of community, historical fact is that whites and non-white units were segregated during WW2. IIRC in the British Army soldiers could be prosecuted if caught having gay sex, and capture by the Nazis was horrible for everyone around.

Would non-white and queer concepts exist during WW2? Of course. However no one wants to RP eras where segregation and discrimination were fact. However...the thought exercise is to ask the following question:

"Is it bigotry if a person wants to run a historically accurate WW2 game and does not allow black officers, mixed-race units, or openly gay/trans soldiers during the game?"

I think that it would be unfair to call that person bigoted if what theyre trying to achieve is historical accuracy.

Which is why we play in mostly fictional environments, because playing historical realism in the past would be a minefield of bullshit.

@Quinn said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

There were definitely non-straight people in 1941 Berlin

Oh, I'm sure there were! However a story about trying to write about living life as that character would please in an environment where they had to constantly risk being discovered and thus sent to a death camp would be less than enjoyable. Not that anyone would want to really RP "Hey, let's write in the Nazi era of Berlin!" as a game concept, but realistically...it would be shit.

On this particular topic, when it comes to LGBTQ, I think it's easy to assume that people matching those demographics existed during the era, but whether or not those demographics could be roleplayed in the open as accepted while maintaining historical integrity wouldn't be very feasible.

This topic is currently a minefield of bias.

Setting bias aside, there are settings where various demographics don't make sense, and others where it does, regardless of the popularity of said demographic.

Example: You're going to have about as few likely LGBTQ characters represented in a MUSH that takes place in 1941 Berlin as you are going to have allowed Neo-Nazi characters in Fights n' Tights.

What's interesting to me is that the focus of the discussion is about fitting the popular/biased demographics into the scenario, but (not that I'd want to play one) demographics in opposition to said popular/biased demographics aren't welcome.

Interesting experiment could easily be performed on a Superhero game...

@Runescryer said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:

@Ghost Yeah. Although I think WildFire (publisher) is dissolved/out of business now. And I have all the books on PDF. So coding in all the splat and keeping it in a password protected game probably isn't going to be problematic.

Dont think so, either. Just checked the website and they mention a v2 Cthulhutech. Is that old old news on a defunct website? I have a bunch of the pdfs too so I'm golden.

@Runescryer God, +5 for Cthulhu Tech, -2 for them charging almost 50 bucks for some of their splat books that aren't even 200 pages and almost 30 for PDFs.

Great game, beautiful books and artwork. Bad call on MSRP.

@Auspice I was the village idiot Fremen today.

"Hey guys! Let's go ride a worm in WINTER COATS!"

@Sparks Yeah I don't have a remote start. This weekend I'm parked at a hotel which is basically a concrete slab that has heat coming off of it at 114°. Totally awesome me had to go somewhere and was like "I'm a manly tough guy man's who can survive the extreme heat while driving and waiting for the AC to cool the car. SUPER MANLY MANS FEARS NOTHING."

Well, his holy majesty super manly mans is currently sipping water in a Starbucks recuperating. Like the Dead Kennedys, I fought the law and the law won. In this case? It was the law of thermodynamics.

@Alamias

Wait. Cant post that gif it isn't a mac gif. I'll wait a few rounds.

106° outside and you get inside a car that has got to be 130°

Yay heatstroke.

Paddy's back alrite!

@Auspice said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@deathbird said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@Auspice shiiiit! I'll cruise with you then.

Cowboy hat from Gucci

You heard the Diplo remix? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3TC2qW-75c

Diplo, baby! Dude is part owner of my football club. My football kit for Phoenix Rising FC has "Mad Decent" on the front.

Also, that song remix is a hot jam.

Also, RL peeves:

1. Wanting to binge Stranger Things but I find myself to be a grown-ass adult with grown-ass shit to do at 8am and am not going to be able to continue until Monday because I have a grown-ass weekend of gaming ahead of me.

2. Clever/hackneyed code words used as ways to define racially demographic-focused entertainment.

@Admiral said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

urban music community

For those not in the know, urban means city.

On the left is "urban" Mac, and on the right is "country" Mac.

So urban music = city music. Bands who come from big cities, like Alice Cooper, who is from Detroit or Motley Crüe who are from Los Angeles.

Sidenote: Both urban Mac and country Mac are members of the LGBTQ+ community. Urban support is strong.

List of the DOZENS of FINAL Fantasy games

Final my ass.

@Rinel said in Good TV:

It's true that most of those series are very, very white (WoT has a pretty diverse cast, though not really in the main characters). Which is fine in and of itself, but it's sort of a Bechdel-y systemic issue.

The problem of course is that if you change someone's race (e.g. black Siuan Sanche instead of vaguely Mediterranean) you'll have an explosion of angry nerds screaming about the SJW menace.

There's a whole thought process on this topic thats probably better for the Politics board. FYI I'm in the camp that says "if racial identity is important, then replacing one ethnicity for the other is the same social crime regardless of ethnicity".

I think once you get away from the typical blah blah conservative vs sjw dogma, philosophically it's a worthy discussion over coffee/tea.

I want this series to kick ass; I do.

I worry that (like so many things these days) fanbase entitlement is going to take a hardcore Montezuma's Revenge shit all over it: "blah blah dont like Cahill blah blah wig blah blah too many white males blah blah put the color red on a sign that was blue in the video games blag blah someone's twitter account said a thing blah blah ratio of x to y demographic blah blah doesnt use two swords blah blah Siri doesnt look like she does in Witcher 3"

Luckily, some fan-loved shows didn't get entitlement wrecked, like the Expanse, Deadly Class, etc, but every nerd-loved setting coming to tv/movies I always brace for it. Amazon's Expanse is coming, Wheel of Time, LotR, etc.

tl;dr I'm gonna watch the Hell out of Witcher. Very excited. Hope entitlement doesn't fuck up me getting a full show run.

Damn it I was just saying I wanted more single theme anime games.