Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Frazzled wrote:
Read the post, don't stop at no.

Just because I quoted the relevant part didn't mean I stopped there. I didn't quote the rest because I never suggested D&D is about slaughtering villagers.

 Frazzled wrote:
Because I'm an OP (Original Playa).

So what? You played some D&D a bazillion moons ago and ... ?

 Frazzled wrote:
If people are going around playing out rape fantasies then they're 100% on point. I'm frankly shocked because we never ever did any of that. Thats just fethed up.

All this talk about "playing out rape fantasies" is way OTT. Yeah, there are some people out there who have been major creepers at the table. I don't think we can learn a lot about D&D by citing the extreme cases. On point, there is a lot of "taken for granted" stuff about rape in D&D. As Orlanth pointed out -- half orcs and yuan-ti and drow ... all examples of rape in the background that is just assumed, whether or not some uber creeper is describing it in lurid detail to the table. That stuff has been there, in one form or another, since 1974 and before. As Trammell points out, go to Appendix N and you'll find the same kind of stuff. And yet Appendix N is not a bibliography of rape porn.

Thing is, rape is assumed to be a bad thing in D&D. You can't be a lawful good rapist. But rape is certainly in D&D as a subtle background element. Rape is something the fictional women of D&D fantasy worlds have to worry about.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
These days, people oppose things by subverting them from within.

Like, for instance, the people that opposed D&D now oppose gay marriage, or the legalization of marijuana, by subverting it from within.
I am not convinced.

Microsoft's Embrace, Extend, Extinguish policy.
Occupy.
The Tea Party even.

First couple things that come to mind.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
I am not convinced.

I am not surprised ... considering you missed my point. The people who used to be "in power," speaking in terms of perceived moral legitimacy, (i.e., the Christian Right) are now widely ridiculed as wackos. Their method of straight up crusading against whatever has totally failed; in fact, it is a big part of why people call them wackos. The method of the people currently "in power" is subversion. It has been super effective.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
So, you are saying those peoples that play D&D want to transform D&D into something they find acceptable?

I don't think you can have it both ways. Either

"those people that play D&D" are misogynistic creepers who need the "values of inclusivity, plurality, and compassion" forced on them by blog activists and compliant corporate employees

- OR -

"those people that play D&D" are already champions of Good Things (TM) and blog posts like Trammell's are unnecessary.

 Manchu wrote:
The method of the people currently "in power" is subversion. It has been super effective.

What did the people in power in term of perceived moral legitimacy have been super effectively doing through subversion? I am pretty sure this is not Microsoft or the Tea Party you are talking about.

 Manchu wrote:
I don't think you can have it both ways. Either

"those people that play D&D" are misogynistic creepers who need the "values of inclusivity, plurality, and compassion" forced on them by blog activists and compliant corporate employees

- OR -

"those people that play D&D" are already champions of Good Things (TM) and blog posts like Trammell's are unnecessary.

Can I have “There are some problematic things in D&D like everywhere else in our culture, there are people that cares about those issues that plays D&D just like there are in any hobby, and the people that happen to both care about those issues and play D&D wants to fix theses issues in D&D”, instead?

Try to apply the reasoning you did replacing “D&D players” with, say, U.S. culture. So, either there are no problem of sexism in the whole of U.S. culture, or every U.S. citizen is a dirty rabid sexist. Anyone saying something about sexism in the U.S. wants to destroy the U.S.
Seems a bit of an extreme viewpoint to me.

I think the Tea Party is actually a great example. The libertarian element in US politics had been sidelined for ages. Now their caucus runs the GOP even despite being in the minority.

Back to D&D - it's very telling that you use the phrase "want to fix these issues in D&D." Trammell does the same thing by talking about "the problem" with D&D. For a lot of people who play D&D, there are no "problems" that need to be "fixed," in terms of gender ideology. The people who do see those problems want D&D transformed for EVERYONE not just themselves.

So, those peoples have different opinions from yours on what is good. Okay. Still, some D&D players having different opinions from yours on what is good and wanting D&D to be better seems very, very different from when people tried to have D&D banished because it was turning people into satanic worship, is it not?

 Manchu wrote:

Back to D&D - it's very telling that you use the phrase "want to fix these issues in D&D." Trammell does the same thing by talking about "the problem" with D&D. For a lot of people who play D&D, there are no "problems" that need to be "fixed," in terms of gender ideology. The people who do see those problems want D&D transformed for EVERYONE not just themselves.

This. I'm reminded of my favorite C.S. Lewis quote.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
wanting D&D to be better

As Reagan said, there you go again. "Better" according to who?

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
So, those peoples have different opinions from yours on what is good. Okay. Still, some D&D players having different opinions from yours on what is good and wanting D&D to be better seems very, very different from when people tried to have D&D banished because it was turning people into satanic worship, is it not?

That's the point. "I don't like this, change it" has shifted from being something that comes in the form of direct opposition into something subversive that changes it from the inside.

To them. I thought it was pretty goddamn obvious considering how the first sentence was on how what they consider good is different from what you consider good.

You also assume that such people actually PLAY, and don't just come in from external sources to rabble rouse.

 daedalus wrote:
That's the point. "I don't like this, change it" has shifted from being something that comes in the form of direct opposition into something subversive that changes it from the inside.

But it has not. People have always wanted to change what they were a part of, because it affected them directly. Those are two different things with one presented as the evolution of the other while really, they are just completely different.

It is "pretty goddamn obvious" that all this talk about "fixing issues" and "making D&D better" assumes that D&D has been bad and wrong all these years.

That's exactly what the Christian Right used to say: D&D is bad and wrong. The people who oppose D&D nowadays are more clever: they say "D&D can be changed."

 Manchu wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Read the post, don't stop at no.

Just because I quoted the relevant part didn't mean I stopped there. I didn't quote the rest because I never suggested D&D is about slaughtering villagers.

 Frazzled wrote:
Because I'm an OP (Original Playa).

So what? You played some D&D a bazillion moons ago and ... ?

 Frazzled wrote:
If people are going around playing out rape fantasies then they're 100% on point. I'm frankly shocked because we never ever did any of that. Thats just fethed up.

All this talk about "playing out rape fantasies" is way OTT. Yeah, there are some people out there who have been major creepers at the table. I don't think we can learn a lot about D&D by citing the extreme cases. On point, there is a lot of "taken for granted" stuff about rape in D&D. As Orlanth pointed out -- half orcs and yuan-ti and drow ... all examples of rape in the background that is just assumed, whether or not some uber creeper is describing it in lurid detail to the table. That stuff has been there, in one form or another, since 1974 and before. As Trammell points out, go to Appendix N and you'll find the same kind of stuff. And yet Appendix N is not a bibliography of rape porn.

Thing is, rape is assumed to be a bad thing in D&D. You can't be a lawful good rapist. But rape is certainly in D&D as a subtle background element. Rape is something the fictional women of D&D fantasy worlds have to worry about.

Well its kinda what the thread is about....I'm actually defending DnD.
Maybe they're right.

 Manchu wrote:
It is "pretty goddamn obvious" that all this talk about "fixing issues" and "making D&D better" assumes that D&D has been bad and wrong all these years.

That's exactly what the Christian Right used to say: D&D is bad and wrong. The people who oppose D&D nowadays are more clever: they say "D&D can be changed."

Let us do that again.

It is "pretty goddamn obvious" that all this talk about "fixing issues" and "making the U.S. better" assumes that the US has been bad and wrong all these years.

That's exactly what the communists used to say: the U.S.A. are bad and wrong. The people who oppose the US nowadays are more clever: they say "the US can be changed."

Hence feminists and communists are somehow the same, but feminists are just more clever in achieving their malicious goal of attacking the US.
Still feels a pretty damn extreme viewpoint.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

But it has not. People have always wanted to change what they were a part of, because it affected them directly. Those are two different things with one presented as the evolution of the other while really, they are just completely different.

There's no current source material I'm aware of that has any of the things that were complained about in the article. I read it last night, and can't get to it from work (apparently that site is work-filtered. that usually says something itself there) but I'm pretty sure all those charts were from 30-40 years ago, and all the quotes from Dragon articles were ancient sounding, volume number-wise.

So there's nothing in the game to change, apparently. Must mean that there's nothing affecting the presumed player directly then other than what people do in their own private games and behind closed doors.

 Frazzled wrote:
Well its kinda what the thread is about....I'm actually defending DnD.
Maybe they're right.

Don't know what you mean by "its" or who you mean by "they're" and I certainly don't think you're defending D&D or that you know very much about it.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
Hence feminists and communists are somehow the same

You seem lost in your own world now.

 daedalus wrote:
There's no current source material I'm aware of that has any of the things that were complained about in the article. I read it last night, and can't get to it from work (apparently that site is work-filtered. that usually says something itself there) but I'm pretty sure all those charts were from 30-40 years ago, and all the quotes from Dragon articles were ancient sounding, volume number-wise.

So there's nothing in the game to change, apparently. Must mean that there's nothing affecting the presumed player directly then other than what people do in their own private games and behind closed doors.

So, do you mean he is not trying to change anything? Awesome then, that means you have nothing to worry about from him .

 Manchu wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Well its kinda what the thread is about....I'm actually defending DnD.
Maybe they're right.

Don't know what you mean by "its" or who you mean by "they're" and I certainly don't think you're defending D&D or that you know very much about it.

Really, so saying DnD isn't a bunch of wack jobs running around playing rape fantasies is not defending DnD?

 daedalus wrote:
and all the quotes from Dragon articles were ancient sounding, volume number-wise

Yeah this is a weak point in the article. Trammell doesn't really explain how these articles from the 70s are relevant to gaming today. I think he means that "this is the root of the problem" but he doesn't bother to trace sexism in the 70s to sexism today. I think he just assumes that's correct.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Frazzled wrote:
Really, so saying DnD isn't a bunch of wack jobs running around playing rape fantasies is not defending DnD?

It could be but it's not what you're doing. What you actually claim is you would yell at or hit anyone who did that and that you never did that when you played D&D as a "comic book age kid," whatever that means.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

So, do you mean he is not trying to change anything? Awesome then, that means you have nothing to worry about from him .

I mean to say precisely that he's not trying to change D&D source material, because none of his cited material is relevant.

Personally, I am fething terrified of anyone who, in an apparently completely serious manner, will assert that one cannot rightly place the "ideology of simulation" above "values of inclusivity, plurality, and compassion", that there are universally quantifiable "values of inclusivity, plurality, and compassion", or that it is nothing less that a "problem" that there exist things in this world that don't conform to said "values of inclusivity, plurality, and compassion".

Is anyone else getting bored with these bandwagons?

How about something original? Like...

Imaginary Misogyny and Social Justice Bandwagons?

 Manchu wrote:
It is "pretty goddamn obvious" that all this talk about "fixing issues" and "making D&D better" assumes that D&D has been bad and wrong all these years.

Well yes, just like any other customer asking for changes is assuming that the product has been bad and wrong all these years. Are you similarly outraged about D&D players asking WOTC to fix the endgame balance issues where fighters cap out at "professional athlete" level power, while wizards become gods? Did you post angry complaints about "class justice warriors" who demanded changes when 4th edition left out popular core classes that had been around for decades? If not, why is it suddenly wrong when customers (or potential customers) ask for changes involving gender issues?

Frazzled, is this supposed to be your defense of D&D?

 Frazzled wrote:

Systemic rape happens. In D&D and Warhammer both its kept to the background.

It didn't happen in role playing in DnD when I played it.

 Peregrine wrote:
If not, why is it suddenly wrong when customers (or potential customers) ask for changes involving gender issues?

Suddenly wrong? Are you arguing with me or your imaginary friends?

Here's what I said bud:

 Manchu wrote:
In Olden Tymes, when you wanted to get rid of something you tried to marginalize it. Anti-D&D campaigners portrayed D&D players as freaks on the fringes of society who no one should trust. These days, people oppose things by subverting them from within. Instead of banning D&D, today's moral crusaders want to transform D&D into something they find acceptable.

 Peregrine wrote:
Well yes, just like any other customer asking for changes is assuming that the product has been bad and wrong all these years. Are you similarly outraged about D&D players asking WOTC to fix the endgame balance issues where fighters cap out at "professional athlete" level power, while wizards become gods? Did you post angry complaints about "class justice warriors" who demanded changes when 4th edition left out popular core classes that had been around for decades? If not, why is it suddenly wrong when customers (or potential customers) ask for changes involving gender issues?

Actually, there's been a lot of people that got pissed off about that too.

 daedalus wrote:
Actually, there's been a lot of people that got pissed off about that too.

He doesn't dispute it; he's just strawmanning me about how if it's okay to complain about mechanics then it is okay to complain about gender politics even considering I never argued that either was not okay.

 Manchu wrote:
Here's what I said bud:

 Manchu wrote:
In Olden Tymes, when you wanted to get rid of something you tried to marginalize it. Anti-D&D campaigners portrayed D&D players as freaks on the fringes of society who no one should trust. These days, people oppose things by subverting them from within. Instead of banning D&D, today's moral crusaders want to transform D&D into something they find acceptable.

So, are you implying that the Anti-D&D campaigners of Olden Tymes were, and I am quoting here, “ customers (or potential customers) ask[ing] for changes”?

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
So, are you implying that the Anti-D&D campaigners of Olden Tymes were, and I am quoting here, “ customers (or potential customers) ask[ing] for changes”?

Why are you quoting Peregrine while asking about what I am implying?

In any case, what I am saying (not implying) is that people used to oppose D&D by demanding it be banned (and it was censored as a result) and people now oppose D&D by demanding it be changed (or, to use another word, censored).

Have you recently seen "feminist" stuff at Tumblr? It's crawling with mentally handicapped SJW who have no idea what the word even means. Stuff like this is just one example. It's as with everything that's "in" nowadays - there's bandwagons and people happily jumping on it.

 Sigvatr wrote:
Have you recently seen "feminist" stuff at Tumblr? It's crawling with degenerate SJW who have no idea what the word even means.

Dude, you need to slap a trigger warning on that stuff. Remembering that Tumblr exists is traumatic!