D&D 5e has failed

[Prak]

Yeah, I don't really think anyone (worth mentioning) here is finding it amusing because they're sexist, I didn't make it clear I was just examining the use of transvestism/transexualism in general humour.

Hell, I'll admit to finding it mildly amusing the first time I saw it, for essentially the reason Frank explains.

[Night Goat]

SJWs want to feel important, but they want to do so without any effort or risk being involved. So, they berate people on the internet for saying anything that could possibly be interpreted as non-PC, then pat themselves on the back over how much of a difference they're making.

[brized]

Huh. That's weird, I always thought feminazi was a term used to distinguish the man-hating extremists from feminists who just want equal rights and do it by empowering women rather than tearing down men. I'm pretty far from alone in this...yes, there are people using the term to paint with broad strokes, but those seem to be the minority.

[Prak]

It can be hard to tell who's the majority and minority, and your perception can be coloured by a lot of things. There are people who think faux-feminists, women who want to replace male dominance with female dominance, are the majority, but that is itself far from the case. There are also people (like my mother) who think that's what feminism is.

[fearsomepirate]

I think a campaign where the Big Bad is a dragon who is burning peasants and gathering a hoard so he can pay a team of doctors to invert his enormous dragon dong (couldn't find anything on dragon dong size in the 4e books, WHICH MAKES IT NO DIFFERENT FROM AN MMO) sounds pretty sweet.

Also, feminism is whatever a feminist says it is, and if two different feminists define it in contradictory ways, the correct thing to do is back out of the room slowly while affirming they're both right about everything and you're sorry.

Also, I read the free 5e pdfs on the flight home, and it seems like the entire game is based around the angry tears of forum warriors. You know, like how it so deliberately avoids mentioning miniatures or a grid, like that hasn't become a staple of d20 gaming in the last 15 years.

Also, hi everyone, I'm fearsomepirate and found this forum by Googling "I hate Pathfinder."

[Silent Wayfarer]

Well, technically speaking it would be more of paying some wizard to research a spell to permanently polymorph himself into a hot and sexy lady version of himself, because if you want to give yourself a body that matches your soul, why stop with your genitals? And then the wizard would probably demand services/favors/etc. and make it binding with geas or some shit and now you have a literal dragon to be your Dragon. Or a sex slave, if he likes that sort of thing, but if he's a proper 3.x wizard he can planar bind damn near anything he wants into his harem with contemptuous ease.

I'm surprised there isn't some magic institute that researches spells like these. Having actual magic to deal with body/mind mismatches would ensure a lot of body dysmorphia cases ended on a much happier note.

[Username17]

Feminazi just isn't a word you want to associate yourself with at all under any circumstances. Yes, it's trivially easy to find people stepping into misandry or misogyny nomally in the name of feminism, and it might be useful to have a word that distinguished self-declared feminists you agreed with from the ones you didn't, "feminazi" simply isn't that word.

People use feminazi to try to wedge in the idea that feminism has gone "too far" (now that woman make a whole 81 cents on the dollar compared to their male counterparts I guess). It's pretty much owned by Rush Limbaugh and his ilk, used to try to make coming out against letting women get treated for endometriosis seem like a fight for freedom rather than being callously monstrous. It's just not a word you want to associate yourself with.

"SJW" is more complicated, because it's a word primarily associated with Reddit. And as we know, all people on Reddit are horrible. So the people who identify as SJWs are horrible, and the people who fight against the self-identified SJWs are horrible. Basically, you do not want to associate yourself with having a position on that word, because that involves you being in some capacity involved in a fight on Reddit, and that is not a place you want to be.

-Username17

[fearsomepirate]

Well, there's the Girdle of Masculinity/Femininity in Baldur's Gate. I gave it to Dynaheir because I hate her stupid voice and hoped it would change it, but no dice.

Also, an SJW is just the left-wing equivalent of a religious fundamentalist who turns any and every conversation into a lecture about sin and salvation.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Also, an SJW is just the left-wing equivalent of a religious fundamentalist who turns any and every conversation into a lecture about sin and salvation.

It's been my experience that SJW is the new communist/hard environmentalist/hippie. A team of useful idiots blown way out of proportion in importance because people find them to be useful strawmen/slippery slopes. See the quote in my signature? Let me show you the full context of it.

'jrterrier' made this comment 12 hours ago:

"Do you think that Rev Al Sharpton would have a cable show if he were white? I don't."

A standard-issue, low-rent, racist spewer of rightwing talking points.

Now i'm a racist too? You are a genius that you can tell I'm a "fuckingmoron" without an IQ test. That I'm a racist without knowing my race, That I'm unfit to post here without knowning the level of my educational background. WOW.

There are certain disreputable arguments that travel in clusters. If you voice any of them, your listener suspects you have the rest on the shelf ready to go in the right context, so you lose a lot of credibility immediately. A biologist who says she doesn't believe in evolution is going to have a hard time advancing any argument among biologists.

Likewise, as soon as you bring up Al Sharpton to make the points a) black people have it relatively easy, b) implicitly, high visibility black people are of low character, c) implicitly, black people are of low character (this is the best they can do?), d) political correctness is something you struggle with, then you've sort of given away the game.

Come back to me when SJWs are able to file a major lawsuit, make a significant lobbying effort in government, or at least bomb a clinic. Otherwise people talking about SJWs in any way other than irreverently immediately pegs my and many other's bullshit meters.

[Seerow]

Also, hi everyone, I'm fearsomepirate and found this forum by Googling "I hate Pathfinder."

I like you.

[DSMatticus]

See the quote in my signature?

You changed your sig a few days ago. Al Sharpton is most certainly not the context of my statement about Gordian knots.

[Windjammer]

I think a campaign where the Big Bad is a dragon who is burning peasants and gathering a hoard so he can pay a team of doctors to invert his enormous dragon dong (couldn't find anything on dragon dong size in the 4e books, WHICH MAKES IT NO DIFFERENT FROM AN MMO) sounds pretty sweet.

Don't forget the sidekick NPCs! Up first: Hagrid, a clumsy if hearty half giant who swoops by every now and then to lecture the PCs in a tearful, accusational tone on how their martial efforts de-protagonize the BBEG: "dragons... such misunderstood creatures" (tears up). Next up, Hermione, the village witch campaining for universal gender freedom - universal as in, for all creatures - and bestows on the starting location (aka "village") awareness campaigns like "House Elf liberation day" which the PCs have to skilfully navigate. Bonus points if you play the dwarf from the 5e starter set, who feels repressed when told (s)he can equip her sole magic item, a 3rd level soap box, in just one body slot.

[Lago PARANOIA]

You changed your sig a few days ago. Al Sharpton is most certainly not the context of my statement about Gordian knots.

Oh, dammit. That's right, I changed that shit. Why do you have to be so quotable?

[fearsomepirate]

Also, an SJW is just the left-wing equivalent of a religious fundamentalist who turns any and every conversation into a lecture about sin and salvation.

It's been my experience that SJW is the new communist/hard environmentalist/hippie. A team of useful idiots blown way out of proportion in importance because people find them to be useful strawmen/slippery slopes. See the quote in my signature? Let me show you the full context of it.

'jrterrier' made this comment 12 hours ago:

"Do you think that Rev Al Sharpton would have a cable show if he were white? I don't."

A standard-issue, low-rent, racist spewer of rightwing talking points.

Now i'm a racist too? You are a genius that you can tell I'm a "fuckingmoron" without an IQ test. That I'm a racist without knowing my race, That I'm unfit to post here without knowning the level of my educational background. WOW.

There are certain disreputable arguments that travel in clusters. If you voice any of them, your listener suspects you have the rest on the shelf ready to go in the right context, so you lose a lot of credibility immediately. A biologist who says she doesn't believe in evolution is going to have a hard time advancing any argument among biologists.

Likewise, as soon as you bring up Al Sharpton to make the points a) black people have it relatively easy, b) implicitly, high visibility black people are of low character, c) implicitly, black people are of low character (this is the best they can do?), d) political correctness is something you struggle with, then you've sort of given away the game.

Come back to me when SJWs are able to file a major lawsuit, make a significant lobbying effort in government, or at least bomb a clinic. Otherwise people talking about SJWs in any way other than irreverently immediately pegs my and many other's bullshit meters.

I confess I am a sinner and would like to ask Andrea Dworkin's ghost into my heart. Can we talk about 5e now?

[Dean]

I find SJW a useful term. A large percentage of my associations are 18-26 year old girls in Massachusetts which means I deal with enormous quantities of liberal white girls, some of which will have terrible values.

If I don't have the term SJW then I have to call them what they call themselves which is "feminists" and I'd rather speak disparagingly about the stupid social justice warriors I know than the stupid feminists I know. By having a separate name for stupid people I know with terrible liberal values it allows me to discuss them separately from the intelligent people I know with important liberal values even if they all use the same group name for themselves.

[Axebird]

I find skeleton a useful term. A large percentage of my associations are 18-26 year old girls in Massachusetts which means I deal with enormous quantities of liberal white girls, some of which will have terrible values.

If I don't have the term skeleton then I have to call them what they call themselves which is "feminists" and I'd rather speak disparagingly about the stupid skeleton warriors I know than the stupid feminists I know. By having a separate name for stupid people I know with terrible liberal values it allows me to discuss them separately from the intelligent people I know with important liberal values even if they all use the same group name for themselves.

This topic is proving that installing this chrome app was the best decision I've ever made.

[Leress]

I find SJW a useful term. A large percentage of my associations are 18-26 year old girls in Massachusetts which means I deal with enormous quantities of liberal white girls, some of which will have terrible values.

If I don't have the term SJW then I have to call them what they call themselves which is "feminists" and I'd rather speak disparagingly about the stupid social justice warriors I know than the stupid feminists I know. By having a separate name for stupid people I know with terrible liberal values it allows me to discuss them separately from the intelligent people I know with important liberal values even if they all use the same group name for themselves.

See, I'm lazy I would just call them idiots.

[TiaC]

I find SJW a useful term. A large percentage of my associations are 18-26 year old girls in Massachusetts which means I deal with enormous quantities of liberal white girls, some of which will have terrible values.

If I don't have the term SJW then I have to call them what they call themselves which is "feminists" and I'd rather speak disparagingly about the stupid social justice warriors I know than the stupid feminists I know. By having a separate name for stupid people I know with terrible liberal values it allows me to discuss them separately from the intelligent people I know with important liberal values even if they all use the same group name for themselves.

Isn't this what the word Moonbat is for?

[fearsomepirate]

This app is changing my life. Holy smokes.

Before fighting the tranny dragon, the party should encounter his/her chief henchperson, a homosexual Nazi who runs an abortion clinic in a mosque and can only be defeated by rolling coal and causing enough global warming to make all the GMOs in the world mutate and turn everyone in the world who made the mistake of getting a vaccine into a zombie that illegally immigrates across the border and attacks the Nazi using assault weapons with 50-mag full-caliber clippazines that they got from an illegal war for oil. And then when the Nazi dies, the sovereign of the realm, who was elected by a bunch of people with no ID, is so happy that he raises taxes on the rich and declares the month to be National Teach Intelligent Design In Public Schools Month.

As a reward, the party receives a homeopathic medical marijuana brew that gives you +7 to Save vs Racism.

[DSMatticus]

What a substantially clusterfuckish derail this is turning out to be, though I'm not sure if we even have anything new to say about 5e right now anyway.

It's not that stupid people don't champion noble causes poorly. It's that while SJW started as a pejorative label for stupid people championing noble causes poorly, it's since become primarily a conservative dog-whistle for anti-egalitarianism. Once the bigoted assholes realized there was an internet meme about liberals being crazy, they picked it up and ran with it. And since the number of bigoted assholes is simply larger than the number of stupid people championing noble causes poorly under the label SJW plus the number of people who want to make fun of stupid people championing noble causes poorly using the label SJW, the bigoted assholes are winning the battle over what that term means. I suspect a few years from now it will have even more uncomfortable implications than it already has.

[Night Goat]

I am a straight white male, and SJWs hate me for it. Even though I'm living in poverty, they think that I have "privilege", and that I'm somehow oppressing everyone else by existing. Fuck 'em.

[Prak]

DSM: That's the curse of 5e here, it's so astounding uninteresting, that supposed discussions of it always diverge into more interesting discussions.

Night Goat- think how much worse that experience would be if you weren't a straight white male. That's what privilege is, it doesn't mean you win, it means that whatever life is throwing at you, you're playing on a lower difficulty level than someone else.

To put it another way-
Straight White Male: Wizard. You can do practically anything and everything. Whatever you want to do, you can probably do it, save for hugely role protected things, like giving birth, it's just not something your class does, even though your class does everything. But there's nothing saying the DM won't arbitrarily take away your spellbook.

Gay White Male: Sorcerer in a game run by Skip Williams. Still White and Male, but being Gay does mean the game's not as easy for you as the Wizard. You can hide that you're Gay, though you shouldn't have to, and that could make things a bit easier, but it won't necessarily.

Straight Minority Male/Straight White Female: Probably rogue tier. There are things that you probably could do if you worked hard enough, but there's no guarantee the DM won't just arbitrarily say "no, you can't." Also Society thinks you're a bad person for things that are completely neutral. (the whole "your class name is synonymous with Thief" thing)

Gay Minority Male/Straight Minority Female: Bard. You are going to be prevented from doing a lot of things. The place where this analogy breaks down is that GMM/SMFs aren't prevented from doing things because they can't, but because society doesn't want them to.

Gay Minority Female: Fighter. You really gotta find a niche, or suck a lot of GM labia.

Replace Gay, Minority or Female on any of the above with Non-Binary individual, instantly drop a tier, except Genderqueer White "Male" is roughly equivalent to Gay White Male, two bits of privilege and the ability to get by on a third if you hide a part of yourself.

[Night Goat]

Actually I can't do practically anything and everything, because I wasn't born rich. I also have mental health issues that make doing things extremely difficult for me, which is why it fucking makes my blood boil when people think my life must be just peachy because I'm not a homosexual, woman or minority.

[Prak]

Privilege is not "Well you're not a minority! You must own a yacht and never have to worry about a thing!" It's more "You're not a minority. Think about how much worse shit could be if you were even more disadvantaged."

[Night Goat]

Have you looked at the unemployment rates lately? Being a minority or woman would be an advantage; these people receive preferential treatment based on the erroneous assumption that they're being oppressed.