The Gaming Den

Mask_De_H wrote:Fuck, you're stupid.

Just because it is the Den, can you be very specific when you're calling people stupid?

FrankTrollman wrote:Much depends on how weird you want your weird west. If magic is a big enough deal, the West will be largely unrecognizable and you might as well go high fantasy or set it in space or some fucking thing.

On the other hand, the actual Wild West had unreconstructed slavers and genocide against Native Americans and deeply shitty treatment of Chinese people and so on and so on. Tough call.

-Username17

Its hard to find a culture in any period of history earlier then about 40 years ago that wasn't deeply "problematical" if people are looking for reasons to be upset and you don't bolderize the hell out it. Even the most progressive people of 1863 had pretty shockingly racist and sexist views by modern standard, and it appears that a very large percentage of people were not really sure if black people or Chinese were really human. I'd bet that most hard-core racists in the US today are more progressive than the most progressive people of 1863 US.

kzt wrote: I'd bet that most hard-core racists in the US today are more progressive than the most progressive people of 1863 US.

In 1865 the French Anti-Slavery society had enough public support and clout to begin building the Statue of Liberty for the United States as a demonstration of France's joy over the U.S. freeing its slaves and beginning to treat black americans like human beings.

I get why you would want to think the way you do but the neo-nazi's that somehow exist today really are that fucking wild. There were absolutely very many people, organized into politically powerful groups, from two centuries ago that would be willing to fight and kill actual 21st century americans of today for how awful their beliefs are.

Yeah in 1775 the British tried to outlaw slavery in America but Washington wasn’t gonna tolerate his freedom being trampled on

There were Spanish priests who said the Aztecs were being treated in an inhuman manner

Mark Twain thought Roosevelt was a piece of shit murderer and newspaper trolled a missionary in china to death

kzt wrote: I'd bet that most hard-core racists in the US today are more progressive than the most progressive people of 1863 US.

Hard core racists in the US today are calling for mass murder, or personally committing murder, or at least angrily defending and supporting murderers. The most progressive people of year X weren't.

Now, if you were to say that racism is a serious issue, but lesser than what it was 2 or 10 generations ago, fine. Even saying anywhere more than 40 years ago was problematic would've seemed wise, if you'd not used quote marks and the phrase "looking for reasons to be upset".

Thaluikhain wrote:

kzt wrote: I'd bet that most hard-core racists in the US today are more progressive than the most progressive people of 1863 US.

Hard core racists in the US today are calling for mass murder, or personally committing murder, or at least angrily defending and supporting murderers. The most progressive people of year X weren't.

Now, if you were to say that racism is a serious issue, but lesser than what it was 2 or 10 generations ago, fine. Even saying anywhere more than 40 years ago was problematic would've seemed wise, if you'd not used quote marks and the phrase "looking for reasons to be upset".

At the extreme's you are probably right. But mainstream thought by the pre-civil war abolitionists pushing to end slavery was still pretty damn racist and full of nonsense.

I'm not saying games can't be unreasonably offensive. To chose an absurdly awful example, a "Final Solution" game where you play the SS with an objective of killing all the "subhumans" illustrated with period Nazi propaganda would be totally deserving of the criticism it would get. I'm not talking about games intended to be offensive.

I currently think you pretty much can't avoid offending at least someone if you use any historical period in any sort of vaguely realistic way Lots of stuff in the past was, by modern standards, pretty horrible. Heck, lots of stuff today is pretty horrible. And focusing on those aspects is likely to be pretty offensive to people. But people in law school have gotten offended at having to learn sexual assault laws and how they work, and if that is the standard then you might as well give up.

So what is the standard?

kzt wrote:But people in law school have gotten offended at having to learn sexual assault laws and how they work, and if that is the standard then you might as well give up.

this'd be you misremebering or misconstruing "people in law school have been the victims of sexual assault shortly before the lecture on sexual assault laws and have needed time to process their own trauma before catching up on that bit of the course", which doesn't speak well for your competence on the matter of how much offensiveness is acceptable collateral damage.

This thread has become so sophomoric that I have no choice but to profess at the lot of you. Lessee...

[*] Indentured servants were not treated near as bad as slaves. I'm 100% in favor of solidarity between the descendants of slaves and the white working class; and, there are mixed race populations in the Americas descended from racially integrated (black and Irish, substantially) communities and not from owners raping their slaves. BUT, at the same time, the whole Irish slave thing has become a hobby horse of white nationalists, and it is essentially false, because slavery was...

[*] One of the most profitable and productive (in economic terms) institutions in history. Slavery made the US the richest country on the planet, by brutalizing the agricultural workforce to an extent not seen even in European peasant societies.
https://oxfordre.com/americanhistory/vi ... 9175-e-262 goes into considerable detail, but evidence is that white supremacy was developed post-hoc to justify this tremendous wealth (along with the genocide of native peoples, and European colonialism more generally); as an "anti-intersectionalist" strategy, it developed much later. There is not evidence that it was originated in a conscious way or with any sort of solidarity for poorer whites in mind.

[*] Finally, the standards for an RPG - which is a form of collaborative, group entertainment - and a history class are very different. The post Civil War period, including the wanton violence of civil war veterans on the frontier - needs to be covered. You don't need to have a game in which the players take on such people as alter-egos, and you shouldn't white wash the racism of the period either. This doesn't mean you can't set a game in the weird west, but it does mean that the gun-slinging, steely-eyed white cowboys have to be the villains.

EDIT: I'm having the damndest time finding a good picture, but Populous: The Promised Lands had this figured out way back in 1990. There is a "Wild West" landscape with cowboys and indians - and the cowboys are straight-up team evil. This is not a novel insight, people.