The Gaming Den

FrankTrollman wrote:That being said, whether any particular group are nominally mushrooms or not is completely immaterial to any discussion of how bad they are. The Orks in particular are actually one of the most reasonable factions in the setting, and you can in fact make peace with them and conduct mutually beneficial trade and shit. But that determination is wholly independent of whether they were born out of a womb or spawned off of a rock.

I think the reason this was brought up is because of the idea that things born of wombs spend time as infants, infants cannot be evil, infants require care, such care is ostensibly provided by evil adults, and therefore womb-born races come with the danger that killing evil adults indirectly causes the death of non-evil infants. Spore-spawned races avoid this very specific issue... sort of.

Even without considering immediate progeny, this sort of impact happens all the time with humans. Killing someone you thoroughly dislike, especially if that person is in a position of power, can easily lead to the death of people you didn't mind. If you have any sort of complex society where people depend on each other for resources or protection, making them spawn as adults doesn't get around the problem at all.

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Personally I don't think "Evil" is sufficiently well defined for there to be enemies that are irredeemably Evil and thus available for qualmless murder.

If something values your suffering and that cannot be changed, but it also values staying alive and eating cupcakes, that's not actually too different from a given society and you have a set of rules and punishments that gets that thing some of what it wants and gets you some of what you want and if you also value your suffering and you trust it to follow rules for its own good you can even have some funtimes together.

If something has values that conflict with yours (desiring your suffering, wanting the world to be made of tasty tasty diamonds, wanting to get rid of all those annoying plant things, whatever) and none that are sufficiently similar to bargain or otherwise interact and that cannot be changed, then you can kill them because you don't really have a choice, but you're not gonna universally have players be fine with that. It's still a tragedy.

If something values your suffering and nothing else and that cannot be changed, then you do what you need to to protect yourself but there's no moral issue at all. It's not even Evil at that point, as far as I can tell. If you put your baby in the same room as this thing, your baby will die. If you put your baby in the same room as lava or a sufficiently intense gamma radiation emitter, though, your baby will die just as much. And I'm pretty sure I've never encountered lava as Evil (though radiation is sometimes seen that way, admittedly, and I don't understand why). Point is, at that point the thing is merely an impersonal force, not a moral actor.

That's not necessarily a bad thing for a game - overcoming non-Evil challenges can be fun. Years ago my mother decided it was time to get rid of a giant cactus in our back yard and I had a ton of fun chopping it down. It's just that if you make orcs a single-minded natural force like that, you're getting the same fun out of killing them as of chopping down a cactus or using dynamite to blast tunnels through mountains. You get catharsis, you get challenge, you get accomplishment, but you don't get revenge or virtuous justification. The people who go out and keep the orcs away are important, just like the people who get rid of the city's venomous spiders or the people who keep buildings from falling in on their inhabitants or the safety inspectors at the geothermal energy plant.

OgreBattle wrote:Frank, how can I improve my dot connecting skills to the level of you and K writing Races of War or any of those other fun to read TOME compilations? I like the conclusions you drew about the weird everyone-steals-so-its-like-sharing goblin society or just figuring out that the sahaugins are the sore winners of the setting.

Is there a certain mindset to have, or certain pitfalls to look out for?

Well, for starters you could be talking about a role playing game rather than a wargame. The Warhammer universe is not a set of story seeds that are intended to make coherent stories out of. It is instead a set of deliberately incompatible statements that allow each player to mix and match the backstory of their own army as they see fit.

There is no, and can be no reconciliation of the fluff in Warhammer, because the purpose of the fluff is not to promote a cooperative storytelling game but an antagonistic storytelling game. When I bring my Crystal Tokyo Planetary Defense Force army, I get to pick and choose and make up whatever fucking backstory I want. And if someone else brings a Khornate Cult army, they too get to write whatever fucking fluff they want. And we don't "reconcile" these two stories, I get mine and the other person gets theirs and that's that.

So the Alpha Legion is portrayed in different sources as either a bunch of blood drinking rapacious sadists who get hard erections from inducing people to commit cannibalism and as a bunch of anti-Chaos underdog heroes using powers of prophecy to enact a fifteen thousand year plan to bring about the Great Hydra. And these are wholly incompatible, and obviously so. And the thing is that it is up to each player to decide which is true for their army. If you want to use the plotline where you're totally the good guys but you still get to use the weapons out of the Chaos Codex, you can do that. And if you want to use the plotline where you're gratuitous villains who also get to take detachments of unarmored cultists, you can do that too.

For Warhammer, there's no cooperative story, so there's no fluff reconciliation. Each player buys models and in doing so literally owns the backstory of those models and can declare it to be whatever they want.

-Username17

Yes, there are many cases of incestuous leaders. There are also cases of vegetarian humans, even though we have evolved to like the smell of bacon.

Still, Wikipedia claims that
[quote="Wikipedia]The incest taboo is and has been one of the most widespread of all cultural taboos, both in present and in many past societies.[/quote] with a citation.

What you say about wanting to play such a game is interesting. I'm not sure I completely agree with you.

A historical game, or a game with historical inspiration can be set in a world with justification for slavery or racism, and I wouldn't necessarily mind playing it. I'd have a problem if the game was based on fulfilling slavery/racist fantasies, but not if these elements were there for flavor and historical accuracy.
But I understand that some players wouldn't enjoy it. After all, very few Hollywood movies set in cultures were slavery is normal have heroes who'll hold that view from beginning to end. Or even if they do, they'll treat their slaves the way an average 21st century American is supposed to treat his employees.

But let's switch to fictional worlds. For example, Shadowrun will have racism against metahumans. Racism is said to be bad, but it's still there, and many people will from time to time play someone who's racist or at least prejudiced against one race or another. So they're fine with playing someone who's prejudiced against a race. Are they bad person for this? I doubt it.
So would they be bad persons for being ok with playing a character who's convinced that a race is evil/soul-less and that killing them is no problem?

*From orcs to incest in 10 pages

FrankTrollman wrote: If you write in a bunch of incest, it's because you wanted to talk to modern audiences about incest. And that makes you a skeezy pervert.

Funny thing, a person's emotional reaction to incest depends on if they were raised with siblings or not. Only children usually don't have that same negative emotional reaction to the idea. As someone who has never had a sibling in the half+seven age-range, I don't find the idea even slightly skeezy or perverse. When I read about it, my reaction is generally "so what?" It doesn't really ring my skeeze bells. I can throw it into a universe as an afterthought without fleeing even slightly perverse.

I'd rate the idea as less kinky than bondage, by a wide margin.

And really, dynastic sibling marriage as a background element, implied or explicit, is probably less disruptive than a whip and chain succubus is.

I'm also a bit wary of the idea that you shouldn't ever have bad things happen in a story written for modern audiences. There's little point in having a story where nothing bad ever happens. Even Friendship is Magic has bad guys who do bad things (I'm pretty sure that Queen Chrysalis qualifies as a rapist).

Of course, I know that you're obviously talking about the protagonists doing bad things. In which case, you know, that's something that happens in stories, both classic and modern. Protagonists don't have to be perfect. Stories tend to be better when they're not perfect. And roleplaying lets you create characters who are not like yourself, who have prejudices and imperfections that you don't have, whose through processes are alien to you.

I'm fairly certain that Anthony Hopkins is not a cannibal serial killer. I don't think that Bruno Ganz started World War II. Playing characters who do bad things does not make you a bad person. The idea that you can't explore uncomfortable themes is quite harmful to storytelling, roleplaying, and the human experience in general.


FATAL isn't bad because it contains bad things. It isn't bad because it lets PCs do bad things. It's bad because it's stupid, juvenile, and poorly thought out; and because it treats those bad things in a stupid, juvenile, and poorly thought out way.

RaHoWa is bad not because it contains genocide, nor because the PCs can commit genocide, but because it was made by insane racists who genuinely think genocide is a good thing in the real word. It's also stupid, juvinile, and poorly thought out.

Those two examples don't mean that all RPGs that contain uncomfortable themes are automatically bad. You can honestly have thought-provoking and nuanced examinations of genocidal race wars. You can have thought-provoking and nuanced examinations of rape, slavery, and a thousand other terrible things. And having that, no matter how uncomfortable at be, doesn't make you a bad person. Quite the opposite, really.

Racial Holy War the RPG may be terrible, but the appropriate counterpoint to it wouldn't be racial cooperation the RPG. The appropriate counterpoint would be Downfall the RPG. Or perhaps American History X the RPG. You can totally challenge racism by making your protagonists horrible racists and starkly showing the consequences of that. It's uncomfortable, but sometimes being uncomfortable is a good thing.

hyzmarca wrote:Funny thing, a person's emotional reaction to incest depends on if they were raised with siblings or not. Only children usually don't have that same negative emotional reaction to the idea. As someone who has never had a sibling in the half+seven age-range, I don't find the idea even slightly skeezy or perverse. When I read about it, my reaction is generally "so what?" It doesn't really ring my skeeze bells. I can throw it into a universe as an afterthought without fleeing even slightly perverse.

Anecdotal counter: I have five siblings across a variety of ages and I'm not particularly disturbed by it either. Obviously a lot of real life incest ends up being rape, and I don't think that's remotely ok, and that's arguably a point against incest even though the two are not inextricable, but I don't have the 'yucky' emotional response you're talking about.

Of course maybe that just makes me a skeezy pervert. I dunno.

momothefiddler wrote:

hyzmarca wrote:Funny thing, a person's emotional reaction to incest depends on if they were raised with siblings or not. Only children usually don't have that same negative emotional reaction to the idea. As someone who has never had a sibling in the half+seven age-range, I don't find the idea even slightly skeezy or perverse. When I read about it, my reaction is generally "so what?" It doesn't really ring my skeeze bells. I can throw it into a universe as an afterthought without fleeing even slightly perverse.

Anecdotal counter: I have five siblings across a variety of ages and I'm not particularly disturbed by it either. Obviously a lot of real life incest ends up being rape, and I don't think that's remotely ok, and that's arguably a point against incest even though the two are not inextricable, but I don't have the 'yucky' emotional response you're talking about.

Of course maybe that just makes me a skeezy pervert. I dunno.

Gonna go out on a limb and assume that Frank was saying you had to have the desire to present incest/rape/etc in order to qualify for automatic skeeze and pervert status.

Frank Trollman wrote:If you write in a bunch of incest, it's because you wanted to talk to modern audiences about incest. And that makes you a skeezy pervert.

I'm gonna call bullshit on the incest thing, what with Game of Thrones being so massively popular. It might trip Frank's personal skeeze alarm, but I don't think there's much evidence for it being a universal turn off.

Red_Rob wrote:

Frank Trollman wrote:If you write in a bunch of incest, it's because you wanted to talk to modern audiences about incest. And that makes you a skeezy pervert.

I'm gonna call bullshit on the incest thing, what with Game of Thrones being so massively popular. It might trip Frank's personal skeeze alarm, but I don't think there's much evidence for it being a universal turn off.

No, but it would be if you wrote a story where the protagonists are in incestuous relationships and those relationships are treated as perfectly normal or where people who object are made into villains.

Just its existence isn't enough, the work has to treat it as acceptable. (Of course, maybe I'm wrong and we'll have a popular sitcom next year about dating siblings. It does hit the proper drama points )

TiaC wrote:

Red_Rob wrote:

Frank Trollman wrote:If you write in a bunch of incest, it's because you wanted to talk to modern audiences about incest. And that makes you a skeezy pervert.

I'm gonna call bullshit on the incest thing, what with Game of Thrones being so massively popular. It might trip Frank's personal skeeze alarm, but I don't think there's much evidence for it being a universal turn off.

No, but it would be if you wrote a story where the protagonists are in incestuous relationships and those relationships are treated as perfectly normal or where people who object are made into villains.

Just its existence isn't enough, the work has to treat it as acceptable. (Of course, maybe I'm wrong and we'll have a popular sitcom next year about dating siblings. It does hit the proper drama points )

Angel Sanctuary cometh to mind.

Omegonthesane wrote: Angel Sanctuary cometh to mind.

That doesn't support your point at all.

MGuy wrote:

momothefiddler wrote:

hyzmarca wrote:Funny thing, a person's emotional reaction to incest depends on if they were raised with siblings or not. Only children usually don't have that same negative emotional reaction to the idea. As someone who has never had a sibling in the half+seven age-range, I don't find the idea even slightly skeezy or perverse. When I read about it, my reaction is generally "so what?" It doesn't really ring my skeeze bells. I can throw it into a universe as an afterthought without fleeing even slightly perverse.

Anecdotal counter: I have five siblings across a variety of ages and I'm not particularly disturbed by it either. Obviously a lot of real life incest ends up being rape, and I don't think that's remotely ok, and that's arguably a point against incest even though the two are not inextricable, but I don't have the 'yucky' emotional response you're talking about.

Of course maybe that just makes me a skeezy pervert. I dunno.

Gonna go out on a limb and assume that Frank was saying you had to have the desire to present incest/rape/etc in order to qualify for automatic skeeze and pervert status.

Well I was talking to a modern audience about incest...

But it was intended to just be a joking way of saying that maybe I'm just unusual in feeling that way.

When I play an RPG, I'm there to throw dice and call abilities out off my sheet. In an orc fighting game, I usually have to kill the orcs because that is mechanically the only thing that solves orc problems. In Flower, my spells send the youkai and spirits I fight home with a slight headache once they're reduced to 0 HP, because in that game, most problems are solved with non-lethal spell card duels.

The skeeze for me comes in when the GM is like, "Okay, put down the dice, what are you going to do about these EVIL orc babies (that no civilized orphanage will ever take in)" or "Okay, put down the dice, let's talk about incest."

Sakuya Izayoi wrote: The skeeze for me comes in when the GM is like, "Okay, put down the dice, what are you going to do about these EVIL orc babies (that no civilized orphanage will ever take in)" or "Okay, put down the dice, let's talk about incest."

Aren't the solutions to those problems "open an Orc Orphanage" and "cast Polymorph any Object", respectively?

Both of the last posts have merit.

"I don't want to play DUNGEONS AND CONSEQUENCES" is a thing which is totally understandable especially if not discussed pregame.

Being able to find solution to things like that is pretty goddamn awesome as well, but some people seriously take that type of thing as a subtle dm "Fuck you" right up there with "paladinGOTCHA!" and they're not wrong for feeling that way.

Yeah, I'm much more okay with it if the orc orphanage is a viable solution (and not just one that bites you in the ass later because lol those babies had the Evil Gene).

Red_Rob wrote:

Frank Trollman wrote:If you write in a bunch of incest, it's because you wanted to talk to modern audiences about incest. And that makes you a skeezy pervert.

I'm gonna call bullshit on the incest thing, what with Game of Thrones being so massively popular. It might trip Frank's personal skeeze alarm, but I don't think there's much evidence for it being a universal turn off.

Context is important.

Frank Trollman wrote:The thing is: when you write an RPG world and create a society in which epic incest is a thing that not only happens but is encouraged - you're a pervert and I don't want to talk to you. Not because there haven't been societies that worked like that - there totally have been. But because you know damn well that your stories are not being produced in or for whatever fictional universe you've written up - they are being prepared for a modern audience. If you write in a bunch of incest, it's because you wanted to talk to modern audiences about incest. And that makes you a skeezy pervert.

And the same goes for rape, slavery, or genocide. If you write an RPG world where there's an in-world justification for rape, slavery, or genocide, it's because you, the author, wanted to write about justifications for rape, slavery, or genocide to a modern audience. And that means you're a bad person.

AFAIK Game of Thrones is a tv show not a TTRPG (note I don't know anything about GoT).

The only RPG link between GoT and a TTRPG that I know off is that Brevoy (in Golarion, the pathfinder setting) can be summarized as Russian Westeross. But I don't think they mention incest at all.

ishy wrote: AFAIK Game of Thrones is a tv show not a TTRPG (note I don't know anything about GoT).

The only RPG link between GoT and a TTRPG that I know off is that Brevoy (in Golarion, the pathfinder setting) can be summarized as Russian Westeross. But I don't think they mention incest at all.

http://www.amazon.com/Song-Ice-And-Fire ... 1934547123

also

http://www.amazon.com/Game-Thrones-D20- ... 1588469417

Red_Rob wrote:

Frank Trollman wrote:If you write in a bunch of incest, it's because you wanted to talk to modern audiences about incest. And that makes you a skeezy pervert.

I'm gonna call bullshit on the incest thing, what with Game of Thrones being so massively popular. It might trip Frank's personal skeeze alarm, but I don't think there's much evidence for it being a universal turn off.

There is one incestous coupling in Game of Thrones and one suggested one. In the first book it is literally code for "These are the bad guys." In the Second Book it is all about how the kids of the incest are shitty people with obvious problems. In the Third Book Jamie stops being a bad guy and starts being someone you like directly in proportion to the amount you see him stop being sexually attracted to his sister.

Using Incest as code for "the fucked up bad guys" is 1) evidence that George R.R. Martin wants to talk about incest. Which is kind of Frank's point. 2) Not evidence that people are totally okay with incest.

I mean, movies about WWII Germans use anti-semitism to show who the bad guys are, and sympathy for the Jews to show who the good guys are. That doesn't mean that people are totally okay with Nazis.

hyzmarca wrote:

ishy wrote: AFAIK Game of Thrones is a tv show not a TTRPG (note I don't know anything about GoT).

The only RPG link between GoT and a TTRPG that I know off is that Brevoy (in Golarion, the pathfinder setting) can be summarized as Russian Westeross. But I don't think they mention incest at all.

http://www.amazon.com/Song-Ice-And-Fire ... 1934547123

also

http://www.amazon.com/Game-Thrones-D20- ... 1588469417

The appropriate response to someone saying "You are completely wrong about X, but I don't know anything about X" is to just put the person on ignore. Why try to correct him when literally typing "Game of Thrones" into google was more work than he was willing to do.

Yup, thats why I have Kaelik in my ignore list.

Uh, yeah, perversion and taboos are social constructs, not universals. I say that not to excuse anything but to simply point out that even if you personally lack a visceral reaction to something you can still understand when a topic makes other people way uncomfortable and is loaded with all sorts of symbolism and baggage. So when George RR Martin willfully pokes at modern western values with a pointy stick via writing about incest and throwing children off of buildings he is being rather perverse regardless of whether or not he is sexually gratified by doing. If it was inoffensive he seriously wouldn't be doing it at all in many instances.

Now, personally, I'm rather anti-censorship and take a dim view of many of the taboos some people cling to--after all, Anita Bryant is still alive and there are demonstrably people who still lose their shit over interracial marriage, so on some topics I'm quite happy to violate people's comfort zones--but that doesn't mean that I'm going to sit here pretending that some things aren't offensive to wide swaths of people. Basically, if you can't handle being called a pervert from time to time then it's probably just best to stay out of the shock art game.

silva wrote:Yup, thats why I have Kaelik in my ignore list.

This is a lie on two completely different levels. Obviously the first is that you would be hard pressed to find anywhere in my thousands of posts on this board an instance where I said that I don't know much about X, because I am a notorious internet blowhard.

But secondly you specifically said why you put me on ignore when you did it, and the reason was "Kaelik said mean things to me." So at least if you are going to lie about shit, lie about something you didn't specifically say the real reason.

I never saw the big deal with incest to be honest. If you've got two consenting adults, why should anyone care? I think we'd all be better off as a species if we'd stop trying to define what kinds of sex are okay and which ones aren't. I mean sure, I find the thought of two gay dudes banging each other to be disgusting, but if that's what they want to do behind closed doors, I don't see any reason to actively demonize them for it.

I never saw the big deal with incest to be honest. If you've got two consenting adults, why should anyone care? I think we'd all be better off as a species if we'd stop trying to define what kinds of sex are okay and which ones aren't. I mean sure, I find the thought of two gay dudes banging each other to be disgusting, but if that's what they want to do behind closed doors, I don't see any reason to actively demonize them for it.