Demon the Fallen

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 9:35 pm

I'm actually a bit confused as to how the virtues/vices thing is offensive. Maybe it's because I had forgotten nwod did it and was considering implimenting it. But moreover, don't a lot of the vices show up as societally disapproved traits in most cultures?

Second question, would it be less offensive if it were a more open ended "positive trait/negative trait" system that was just called virtue and vice for reasons of theme?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 10:07 pm

Prak_Anima wrote:I'm actually a bit confused as to how the virtues/vices thing is offensive. Maybe it's because I had forgotten nwod did it and was considering implimenting it. But moreover, don't a lot of the vices show up as societally disapproved traits in most cultures?

Second question, would it be less offensive if it were a more open ended "positive trait/negative trait" system that was just called virtue and vice for reasons of theme?

If it only used the words "virtue" and "vice", no one would care. Since it instead comes out with specifically the virtues and vices from the Catholic Catechism and then tells you that no matter what culture you are actually from or what beliefs you have, you nonetheless have to conform to Catholic moral thought, that is instead deeply offensive.

If you were allowed to select virtues like honesty or productivity I doubt anyone would have a problem with it. But you can't. Because honesty is not a Christian virtue, so you can't select it. Justice is sort of closeish, but it's not the same thing. You also can't have your virtue be Pride, because Pride is a sin. And don't let Malcolm X or Aristotle tell you different!

New World of Darkness, p. 100 wrote:The seven Virtues and Vices detailed below are ostensibly drawn from Western, Judeo-Christian beliefs (e.g., the Seven Heavenly Virtues and Seven Deadly Sins), but it's important to note that nearly all cultures value these ethics and revile these sins.

-Username17

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 10:37 pm

That's....actually really weird that honesty isn't a Catholic virtue. Though justice totally is, at least according to Wiki

The Seven Catholic Virtues

The Cardinal Virtues
Prudence
Justice
Restraint/Temperance
Courage/Fortitude
The Theological Virtues
Faith
Hope
Love/Charity

[/pedantry]

There's probably some bullshit about how one of those seven includes honesty, or how it's so simple they don't think it needs to be included, just like how love and charity are somehow sorta the same thing. somehow.

But yeah, I agree they're way too narrow.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 11:07 pm

Catholic philosophers developed the doctrine of mental reservation specifically so that they could lie without technically lying, much like Obi-Wan with his certain point of view.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Mar 23, 2012 6:40 am

In Christian teaching, "bearing false witness against your neighbor" is a commandment breach. That means that if you say falsehoods to or against other Christians, you are breaking one of God's laws. But you're not obligated to tell the truth to or about heathens and you're allowed to keep potentially important truths away from even other Christians if for some reason you want to. Straight up honesty and truth seeking are not particularly praiseworthy. Straight up book burning is biblically condoned (Acts 19).

It's really not a moral system I feel comfortable with having shoved on me in any context.

-Username17

John Magnum · Post by **John Magnum** » Fri Mar 23, 2012 6:40 am

Yes, Frank said that Justice is a virtue and that it's close-ish to Honesty, but if you're looking for a virtue that actually IS honesty you won't find it.

jadagul · Post by **jadagul** » Fri Mar 23, 2012 9:22 am

FrankTrollman wrote:In Christian teaching, "bearing false witness against your neighbor" is a commandment breach. That means that if you say falsehoods to or against other Christians, you are breaking one of God's laws. But you're not obligated to tell the truth to or about heathens and you're allowed to keep potentially important truths away from even other Christians if for some reason you want to. Straight up honesty and truth seeking are not particularly praiseworthy. Straight up book burning is biblically condoned (Acts 19).

It's really not a moral system I feel comfortable with having shoved on me in any context.

-Username17

For what it's worth, when I was in Catholic religious education I never heard that interpretation; it's fine to mislead, I'm pretty sure, but they interpret the commandment to ban lying to anyone. Whether that's textually and historically accurate I have no idea.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Fri Mar 23, 2012 10:15 am

Once you get into the commandments though, that's not a matter of the 7 Virtues and 7 Vices that were probably made up after the release of the first-edition ruleset texts the Bible was based upon. There are 613 of the fuckers. Yeah, forget "ten".

>Not to test the prophet unduly (does "unduly" cover the "Get three dudes together to ask me to appear and I shall" power?)
>To emulate His ways (how the fuck does this mesh with "Thou shalt not kill"?)
>Not to embarrass others (someone tell the fundamentalists this)
>Not to speak derogatorily of others (whoops!)
>Not to make human forms even for decorative purposes (gingerbread is heresy... that would make a great rock album)
>To burn a city that has turned to idol worship (and not to rebuild it. If football-worship counts, I have some great news for Australia.)
>Not to bow down on smooth stone (no really)
>Not to be superstitious (HAHAHA OH WOW)
>Not to mutter incantations (except prayer!)
>Men must not shave the hair off the sides of their head (SIDEBURNS OR HELL)
>Not to eat fruit of a tree during its first three years
>To examine the signs of locusts to distinguish between kosher and non-kosher (you can eat locusts, as long as they're kosher)
>Not to plant diverse seeds together
>To blow the Shofar on the tenth of Tishrei to free the slaves
>Not to climb steps to the altar (stairs are heresy)
>Not to vex a stranger (Tzor is fucking guilty)

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Fri Mar 23, 2012 11:43 am

"Pride" is a really bad translation. The original is much closer to "vainglory".

"Vexing" stranger means misleading them, not irritating them.

Here's a description of catholicism's position on lying:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09469a.htm

Nothing even suggests that lying to 'outsiders' is okay.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Mar 23, 2012 12:27 pm

John Magnum wrote:Yes, Frank said that Justice is a virtue and that it's close-ish to Honesty, but if you're looking for a virtue that actually IS honesty you won't find it.

...wow, I even checked that while I was typing and I misread. I feel dumb.

Whatever · Post by **Whatever** » Fri Mar 23, 2012 4:42 pm

Koumei wrote:>To blow the Shofar on the tenth of Tishrei to free the slaves

The Shofar is like a trumpet, it's not a person. It's made out of a ram's horn.

You left out a bunch of the good ones, like not wearing mixed fabrics, or that you have to kill all the Amalekites.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Fri Mar 23, 2012 6:06 pm

jadagul wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote:In Christian teaching, "bearing false witness against your neighbor" is a commandment breach. That means that if you say falsehoods to or against other Christians, you are breaking one of God's laws. But you're not obligated to tell the truth to or about heathens and you're allowed to keep potentially important truths away from even other Christians if for some reason you want to. Straight up honesty and truth seeking are not particularly praiseworthy. Straight up book burning is biblically condoned (Acts 19).

It's really not a moral system I feel comfortable with having shoved on me in any context.

-Username17
For what it's worth, when I was in Catholic religious education I never heard that interpretation; it's fine to mislead, I'm pretty sure, but they interpret the commandment to ban lying to anyone. Whether that's textually and historically accurate I have no idea.

The problem though is that words get parsed extremely literally. I'm sure at some point that commandment was interpreted to literally mean *only* your neighbor.

I mean, they burned people because "the church abhors bloodshed", and burning people alive doesn't spill a drop of blood. And that's tossed aside in the name of Crusade. And up until the 1500's for the right price you could buy a dead person out of purgatory, and be indulged in just about any sin you could imagine, if the price was right.

Actually, having just read a bunch of history on that era, an RPG set in/among/around the first half of the 16th century would be incredibly interesting. For 20 years there was nearly constant war, if not between the principalities of Europe then with the Ottomans, lots of political intrigue going on with the Germanic Prince Electors, and that pesky (and amazingly bombastic and melodramatic) Martin Luther.

If not a straight historical RPG, a fantasy "fig leaf" setting would be kind of fun to play in. It's an unbelievably rich period of history.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Fri Mar 23, 2012 6:19 pm

Whatever wrote:
Koumei wrote:>To blow the Shofar on the tenth of Tishrei to free the slaves
The Shofar is like a trumpet, it's not a person. It's made out of a ram's horn.

You left out a bunch of the good ones, like not wearing mixed fabrics, or that you have to kill all the Amalekites.

Yeah are we talking Leviticus? That's where the evangelicals keep going for all their intolerance justifications, and that book has some whoppers in it.

- Women during their menstrual cycle are unclean and not allowed into the temple until 7 days after they have been cleansed by a priest.
-Men who touch women during their menstrual cycle are unclean and forbidden the temple until cleansed by a priest
- Men who touch things that women during their menstrual cycle have touched are unclean and forbidden the temple until cleansed by a priest.
- If a man has sex with a woman on her period, they are both to be "cut off from their people"
- People who have flat noses, or is blind or lame, cannot go to an altar of God
- Cross breeding of animals is forbidden
- Planting more than one crop is forbidden

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Fri Mar 23, 2012 6:34 pm

Fun as it is to go on about Christian/Jewish ethos, let's be fucking honest: originally Vampire: the Masquerade was riffing off of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, O'barr's The Crow, and the "punk-gothic-vampire" thing you see in films like The Lost Boys and Near Dark, and a good chunk of those books was a puberty-analogue as the characters came to terms with their new bodies, powers, etc. and realization that they could stay out as late as they want at night. It's adolescent rebellion fueled by "holy shit, powers" and the Humanity stat was just a marker to represent the whole slippery slope nonsense. It was also so silly and hamfisted that it was subverted and suborned pretty damn quickly with the different "paths" in the Sabbat book and clanbooks - which is where things start to go fish-shaped, because they were written by people that still think the Satanic Bible is cool and edgy. It didn't really get wiggy until Vampire: the Dark Ages with its different Roads - and then the revamp Dark Ages: Vampire gave actual stats and powers and shit tied into Road ratings, which is what basically served as a dry run for the bizarre crappola in Vampire: the Requiem.

You could argue that V:tM's whole Humanity stat owes its ultimate origin in D&D's alignment system, but let's be clear: its conception and development are more rooted in "hey, this is cool!" than any serious consideration of effects on gameplay or theology, Christian or otherwise.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Mar 23, 2012 6:39 pm

To be fair (while showing what putzes christians are) the two commandments of the new testament were really supposed to overwrite the ten of the old. Seriously. Jesus said "I give you two new commandments; love God, love your fellow human beings." Basically, he's saying "alright, you've grown up, so the old rules are out, these are the only ones you need to follow."

FatR · Post by **FatR** » Fri Mar 23, 2012 7:39 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:In Christian teaching, "bearing false witness against your neighbor" is a commandment breach. That means that if you say falsehoods to or against other Christians, you are breaking one of God's laws. But you're not obligated to tell the truth to or about heathens and you're allowed to keep potentially important truths away from even other Christians if for some reason you want to. Straight up honesty and truth seeking are not particularly praiseworthy. Straight up book burning is biblically condoned (Acts 19).

It's really not a moral system I feel comfortable with having shoved on me in any context.

Why you have any issue with warping the truth, if that (as is easily verified by Googling Acts 19, for starers) is what you're doing here, except in a more direct way?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Mar 23, 2012 7:50 pm

FatR wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote:In Christian teaching, "bearing false witness against your neighbor" is a commandment breach. That means that if you say falsehoods to or against other Christians, you are breaking one of God's laws. But you're not obligated to tell the truth to or about heathens and you're allowed to keep potentially important truths away from even other Christians if for some reason you want to. Straight up honesty and truth seeking are not particularly praiseworthy. Straight up book burning is biblically condoned (Acts 19).

It's really not a moral system I feel comfortable with having shoved on me in any context.
Why you have any issue with warping the truth, if that (as is easily verified by Googling Acts 19, for starers) is what you're doing here, except in a more direct way?

I'm unclear on your point. Are you saying that the depiction of the burning of books in Acts 19 is not condoned? Or are you saying that it doesn't count because many translations put the burnt objects as "scrolls"?

-Username17

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Fri Mar 23, 2012 9:40 pm

Acts 19 wrote:A number who had practiced sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly. When they calculated the value of the scrolls, the total came to fifty thousand drachmas.[c]

With the footnote that a drachma is a day's wage in silver.

Keep in mind that sorcery is the ancient equivalent of a buzzword here, and just means "conflicts with Christian teachings." They got together and they burned a bunch of non-Christian religious and philosophical texts. That is what that is saying.

koz · Post by **koz** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 1:52 am

DSMatticus wrote:
Acts 19 wrote:A number who had practiced sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly. When they calculated the value of the scrolls, the total came to fifty thousand drachmas.[c]
With the footnote that a drachma is a day's wage in silver.

Keep in mind that sorcery is the ancient equivalent of a buzzword here, and just means "conflicts with Christian teachings." They got together and they burned a bunch of non-Christian religious and philosophical texts. That is what that is saying.

So they burned books scrolls to the value of something to the tune of 5,000 people's annual wages? Wow.

Neurosis · Post by **Neurosis** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 2:51 am

FrankTrollman wrote:
Prak_Anima wrote:I'm actually a bit confused as to how the virtues/vices thing is offensive. Maybe it's because I had forgotten nwod did it and was considering implimenting it. But moreover, don't a lot of the vices show up as societally disapproved traits in most cultures?

Second question, would it be less offensive if it were a more open ended "positive trait/negative trait" system that was just called virtue and vice for reasons of theme?
If it only used the words "virtue" and "vice", no one would care. Since it instead comes out with specifically the virtues and vices from the Catholic Catechism and then tells you that no matter what culture you are actually from or what beliefs you have, you nonetheless have to conform to Catholic moral thought, that is instead deeply offensive.

If you were allowed to select virtues like honesty or productivity I doubt anyone would have a problem with it. But you can't. Because honesty is not a Christian virtue, so you can't select it. Justice is sort of closeish, but it's not the same thing. You also can't have your virtue be Pride, because Pride is a sin. And don't let Malcolm X or Aristotle tell you different!

New World of Darkness, p. 100 wrote:The seven Virtues and Vices detailed below are ostensibly drawn from Western, Judeo-Christian beliefs (e.g., the Seven Heavenly Virtues and Seven Deadly Sins), but it's important to note that nearly all cultures value these ethics and revile these sins.
-Username17

As a non-Christian, and also pretty fucking far from being a whitewolf fanboy, I actually found that mechanic to be really nifty, interesting, thematically appropriate, and completely non-offensive.

*shrug*

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 3:39 am

Mister_Sinister wrote:
DSMatticus wrote:
Acts 19 wrote:A number who had practiced sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly. When they calculated the value of the scrolls, the total came to fifty thousand drachmas.[c]
With the footnote that a drachma is a day's wage in silver.

Keep in mind that sorcery is the ancient equivalent of a buzzword here, and just means "conflicts with Christian teachings." They got together and they burned a bunch of non-Christian religious and philosophical texts. That is what that is saying.
So they burned books scrolls to the value of something to the tune of 5,000 people's annual wages? Wow.

Wait, what... huh? Wouldn't that be closer to 100-200 people? Assuming you work every day, that's 365 drachma per year, and 50,000/365 = 137. Throw in some days off here and there, no more than double that.

Also, I'm not sure how expensive books and paper were back then, but given low literacy and difficulty of copying text it had to be expensive. It's hard to get an idea exactly how many books they burned there. I'm gonna guess it was measured in high hundreds, low thousands though. Not nearly as many books as we could burn with 100-200 people's annual wages today, which would measure in the hundreds of thousands.

Endovior · Post by **Endovior** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 3:56 am

FrankTrollman wrote:Telling people that everyone has to and does fit into the virtues and vices schema of the Catholic Church is offensive in a way that merely having Jesus be the literal son of god who is also god made flesh who died to convince himself to forgive you for a crime you didn't commit which he would otherwise feel compelled to punish you for eternally in his literally limitless mercy and justice would not be.

...That has to be the most succinctly awesome summary of my personal objections to Christianity that I've ever seen anywhere, to date. Reading that made my day brighter, thank you!

Also, sigged.

koz · Post by **koz** » Sat Mar 24, 2012 6:24 am

DSMatticus wrote:
Mister_Sinister wrote:
DSMatticus wrote: With the footnote that a drachma is a day's wage in silver.

Keep in mind that sorcery is the ancient equivalent of a buzzword here, and just means "conflicts with Christian teachings." They got together and they burned a bunch of non-Christian religious and philosophical texts. That is what that is saying.
So they burned books scrolls to the value of something to the tune of 5,000 people's annual wages? Wow.
Wait, what... huh? Wouldn't that be closer to 100-200 people? Assuming you work every day, that's 365 drachma per year, and 50,000/365 = 137. Throw in some days off here and there, no more than double that.

Also, I'm not sure how expensive books and paper were back then, but given low literacy and difficulty of copying text it had to be expensive. It's hard to get an idea exactly how many books they burned there. I'm gonna guess it was measured in high hundreds, low thousands though. Not nearly as many books as we could burn with 100-200 people's annual wages today, which would measure in the hundreds of thousands.

I need to lern2count. Thanks for that.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sun Mar 25, 2012 6:59 am

DSMatticus wrote:I'm gonna guess it was measured in high hundreds, low thousands though. Not nearly as many books as we could burn with 100-200 people's annual wages today, which would measure in the hundreds of thousands.

I think someone has to ask it: how many millions is that?

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Sun Mar 25, 2012 7:55 am

Ancient History wrote:Fun as it is to go on about Christian/Jewish ethos, let's be fucking honest: originally Vampire: the Masquerade was riffing off of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, O'barr's The Crow, and the "punk-gothic-vampire" thing you see in films like The Lost Boys and Near Dark, and a good chunk of those books was a puberty-analogue as the characters came to terms with their new bodies, powers, etc. and realization that they could stay out as late as they want at night. It's adolescent rebellion fueled by "holy shit, powers" and the Humanity stat was just a marker to represent the whole slippery slope nonsense. It was also so silly and hamfisted that it was subverted and suborned pretty damn quickly with the different "paths" in the Sabbat book and clanbooks - which is where things start to go fish-shaped, because they were written by people that still think the Satanic Bible is cool and edgy. It didn't really get wiggy until Vampire: the Dark Ages with its different Roads - and then the revamp Dark Ages: Vampire gave actual stats and powers and shit tied into Road ratings, which is what basically served as a dry run for the bizarre crappola in Vampire: the Requiem.

You could argue that V:tM's whole Humanity stat owes its ultimate origin in D&D's alignment system, but let's be clear: its conception and development are more rooted in "hey, this is cool!" than any serious consideration of effects on gameplay or theology, Christian or otherwise.

In theory humanity is a decently thematic kludge mechanically to stop PCs from becoming super power murderators (which is definitely in the theme of vampires), but probably could have been implemented better. The thing that kind of drove me nuts was spilling the morality meter across all the nWOD lines.

I had endless arguments with other players, for example, about killing other vampires and supernaturals. The general storyteller consensus was "fair game on supers", which I usually argued with, because it didn't make sense that being a brutal, sadistic fuck when it comes to other vampires doesn't put you in the habit of being a brutal, sadistic fuck with everyone else. The general argument back was "that means that vampires with humanity 8 can't even defend themselves against other vampires without degeneration rolls", which I thought was kind of the point: being a high humanity vampire means you're a pussy and you've more or less dropped out of vampiric society.