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Post by 3catcircus on Jul 1, 2020 21:52:31 GMT
I wouldn't object if ENW were to lose their provider due to someone more woke than him complaining about the site... Even better, if someone were to buy the domain name out from under him. As far as I know, Morrus is now doing EN World full-time. I definitely wouldn't want his livelihood to be threatened. And I suspect he would feel the same.
EN World is a site for roleplaying nerds and mostly intended to be about roleplaying. All that political shenanigans is just ancillary bullshit. Take it or leave it, no need to wish economical harm to anyone over it.
But, you'd be ok with someone losing their livelihood on the other side of the political spectrum? The cancel culture bullshit won't end until it happens to someone prominent on the left. Morrus promotes a leftist cancel culture atmosphere on ENW, where those who don't believe in the same groupthink are piled on, but reasonable commentary is strongly repressed by any and all means. Orcslayer78 posted a response on the thread about SJWs wanting to force the removal of 1e AD&D Oriental Adventures from digital marketplaces. His response was that he felt it was the same as old-fashioned nazi book burning and that this is just a "race panic" that should be looked at the same as the "satanic panic" back in the 1980s. His post was labeled as anti-inclusive content. I didn't realize that not wanting book burning was anti-inclusive... Or that treating false moral outrage with derision was anti-inclusive... |
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Post by 3catcircus on Jul 1, 2020 21:54:02 GMT
I wouldn't object if ENW were to lose their provider due to someone more woke than him complaining about the site... Even better, if someone were to buy the domain name out from under him. That's not likely to happen. The service provider doesn't give two shits*. Though I have been wondering for a while if Morrus' sharp turn to the extreme left was due to not wanting to run afoul of the Communications Act 2003, and thus he's supporting extreme far left nonsense as a "so I don't go to jail/lose my livelihood" measure. But he is really damn consistent if that's the case. I mean super consistent. * If I remember correctly ENWorld is also hosted by Proboards, just that Mo pays for ENW, while CM is on the 'free plan'. And Proboards don't give a shit, as long as you aren't breaking any US laws. Doing the minimum required to adhere to a repressive regulation is one thing. This is different - he appears to be gleefully all-in. |
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Post by 3catcircus on Jul 1, 2020 22:11:36 GMT
EN World is a site for roleplaying nerds and mostly intended to be about roleplaying. All that political shenanigans is just ancillary bullshit. Take it or leave it, no need to wish economical harm to anyone over it. There's a bit to unpack here... The problem is, just like with RPG.net. ENWorld has chosen a political stance and has said (disingenuously) "No Politics" while advocating, supporting, and posting from one side of the political spectrum. The side they've chosen is 'infecting' our hobby in ways those of us in the middle (not to mention the other side) don't like. The Progressives are allowed to signal boost, propagandize, and recruit at ENWorld (and most sites) and the other side (not to mention us middlers) aren't allowed to argue against them. Which rubs a lot of us wrong. Even those who might be on their side, but who take a stronger stance in favor of Free Speech, are against this. This. It went from "don't be a dick by name-calling or ad hominems" to where we are at now. RPG.net has always been a cesspool, but ENW previously allowed people to engage in raging debate as long as there weren't personal attacks. Now - questioning any aspect of the leftist agenda is grounds for Umbran or Morrus to come in and declare you to be an enemy of the people. |
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Post by Lanefan on Jul 2, 2020 8:23:48 GMT
I don't recall ENW ever encouraging "raging debate" even on gaming matters - look no further than all the effort they put into shutting down the edition wars some years back.
One thing I noticed in a still-active thread (one of the Oriental Adventures ones, I forget which) is that even though one of their hard-core supporters in theory got a threadban s/he probably didn't see it, and is still posting away. I guess I'm just not enough of an asshole to flag it...  |
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Post by evileeyore on Jul 2, 2020 13:16:52 GMT
I don't recall ENW ever encouraging "raging debate" even on gaming matters - look no further than all the effort they put into shutting down the edition wars some years back. If I recall correctly the Edition Wars are what led to the kiboshing of serious and strong debate. A couple of nerds slapping each other over Two-Handed Swords in 4e is one thing, but something that mobilizes the majority of the board to take up sides gets knocked really quick since then. I detect a failure in Rules Lawyering. Give us a thread link... someone else might take care of it.  |
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Post by voadam on Jul 4, 2020 5:12:35 GMT
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Post by 3catcircus on Jul 4, 2020 13:18:07 GMT
Most of the turds who are on ENW are annoying. Its just that Morrus and Umbran now actively cater to their fucked-up leftist viewpoints. |
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Post by hawkeyefan on Jul 4, 2020 15:50:00 GMT
So I only just saw all the recent threads posted about the old Oriental Adventures book, and only because they were linked here.
I don’t have the endurance to read through the entire thread for the handful of posts that might actually be thoughtful.
Does anyone here have any kind of summary of why folks are resisting removal of the old book?
I mean, it seems this is only really an issue due to the advent of digital books. Before that, something like this that didn’t age well would simply fade away once they stopped printing new copies.
Should a company be obliged to sell old and potentially outdated material indefinitely?
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Post by evileeyore on Jul 4, 2020 16:53:29 GMT
Does anyone here have any kind of summary of why folks are resisting removal of the old book? Stupidity. They claim the depictions are racist, and infer them to be deliberately so. Now this is an interesting topic... mind If I slide it over tot he Senate where we (all five of us who are left) can chew it properly? Who am I kidding, it's being reposted regardless... ;) |
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Post by voadam on Jul 4, 2020 17:22:32 GMT
1 I am against removing access to D&D books. I was mad at WotC when they removed access to PDFs before, I would be mad at it here.
2 The request is from a guy who bases opinions on inferences from mistakes of ignorance. He mistakenly thinks comeliness was introduced in OA to caricature asian sexiness tropes and otherize asians versus western people when it was actually introduced in Unearthed Arcana as a generic terrible agency removing beauty mechanic that did not target any ethnicity. He literally spends half his first two hour podcast on it (of 13 or so) on that issue and keeps directing people to that episode. I wasted my time watching it months ago when someone said it was a good discussion of what is wrong with OA. I was interested in hearing such a discussion of what was considered problematic, but the two guys in the podcast are just preaching to their own choir assuming everything is self-evidently problematic. I really hope he does not get an Ennie for this poor analysis of a D&D product (he is nominated this year).
3 The complaints are in part that Kara Tur is taking all oriental lands and mashing them into one generic place that eliminates the beautiful nuances of their individual cultures (Kwan's words from his twitter comments) and also that Kara Tur is just taking multiple individual asian settings (D&D imperial China, two takes on D&D Japanese themes, other place(s)) and lazily presenting them as exotic foreign places to go that are not in core D&D. Also that it is more focused on Japan and China and not other countries. I do not find these complaints persuasive as a basis to perceive OA as harmful or racist.
4 I own OA 1e and used it. I think it has a great martial arts system for D&D (probably the best one across the editions IMO), fun classes and magic and weapons and monsters. I feel it is a worthwhile sourcebook for AD&D/OSRIC OSR games that want those types of thing. Nonweapon proficience were a neat innovation. I feel the honor system is crap and nothing I ever wanted to roleplay or game as a system. I never got enough into the six pages on Kara Tur to have a significant opinion on them, though I found the Imperial Shou fine as a faction in Spelljammer and read the Horde trilogy of FR books and they did not strike me as racist portrayals of not-China. I have not read the seven module/sourcebooks on the individual asian realms/countries and the big boxed set enough to really judge the worth of it as a setting. From what I read I did not have a problem with them.
5 I am all for generating new and different D&D stuff that people feel are better, I am against taking away everybody's access to the old stuff. I think it was a poor thing to ask for and I think it would be terrible if WotC acceded to the request.
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Post by hawkeyefan on Jul 4, 2020 17:56:58 GMT
Does anyone here have any kind of summary of why folks are resisting removal of the old book? Stupidity. They claim the depictions are racist, and infer them to be deliberately so. Now this is an interesting topic... mind If I slide it over tot he Senate where we (all five of us who are left) can chew it properly? Who am I kidding, it's being reposted regardless... ;)Just to clarify....you’re saying that the initial call to remove/ban/change the product is due to stupidity, right? I was more asking about the other side. The resistance to removing it. More along the lines of what Voadam offered. I don’t really see the big deal. I’m all for free speech and I’m not a fan of censorship....but I don’t think that’s the case here. I admit to bot having strong feelings about the book one way or the other. I’m familiar with it from when I was a kid, it’d come into play every now and again, but it was pretty rare. I suppose that’s part of why I don’t fully understand the resistance to the removal from the DMs Guild. I mean, those who are fans of the book likely already have a copy, in one format or another. It’s not like they can erase the book from existence. They simply don’t have to make the PDF available for sale. I suppose many would make the slippery slope argument, and I’m sure that’s at least a little bit valid. I suppose it largely depends on how many people seem to actually want this change? One loud dude on the internet? Who cares? Lots of people calling for change? Probably worth a listen. I personally have no idea the scope of the requested change. |
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Post by evileeyore on Jul 4, 2020 17:57:09 GMT
I own OA 1e and used it. I think it has a great martial arts system for D&D (probably the best one across the editions IMO), fun classes and magic and weapons and monsters. Ditto, played quite a bit with it back in the day. The classes felt just different enough to be cool, but stuck close enough to still be "D&D" back then. The setting is a bit lazy and mediocre by today's standards, but that could be updated quite well. I really liked that it was one bug mish-mosh rather than twenty different countries all vying for resources/space... but I also see where taking a more nuanced/realistic approach would work great. |
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Post by voadam on Jul 4, 2020 22:16:49 GMT
I don’t really see the big deal. I’m all for free speech and I’m not a fan of censorship....but I don’t think that’s the case here. I admit to bot having strong feelings about the book one way or the other. I’m familiar with it from when I was a kid, it’d come into play every now and again, but it was pretty rare. I suppose that’s part of why I don’t fully understand the resistance to the removal from the DMs Guild. I mean, those who are fans of the book likely already have a copy, in one format or another. It’s not like they can erase the book from existence. They simply don’t have to make the PDF available for sale. I suppose many would make the slippery slope argument, and I’m sure that’s at least a little bit valid. I suppose it largely depends on how many people seem to actually want this change? One loud dude on the internet? Who cares? Lots of people calling for change? Probably worth a listen. I personally have no idea the scope of the requested change. The scope of this entirely is whether someone who does not have it should be able to not get it because this guy finds it racist. Not because WotC is not selling PDFs, because they will not sell this PDF because they do not want people to get it and read it.
I own this one. I have it. I do not have everything old yet that I am interested in getting. I pick things up over time on a reasonable personal monthly gaming budget. I am sure lots of the old stuff I want to eventually pick up is considered problematic by someone. I still want to get it and read it even if some individual thinks it is problematic.
In general I want others to be able to with OA 1e as well.
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Post by Ovinomancer on Jul 4, 2020 22:30:07 GMT
Stupidity. They claim the depictions are racist, and infer them to be deliberately so. Now this is an interesting topic... mind If I slide it over tot he Senate where we (all five of us who are left) can chew it properly? Who am I kidding, it's being reposted regardless... ;)Just to clarify....you’re saying that the initial call to remove/ban/change the product is due to stupidity, right? I was more asking about the other side. The resistance to removing it. More along the lines of what Voadam offered. I don’t really see the big deal. I’m all for free speech and I’m not a fan of censorship....but I don’t think that’s the case here. I admit to bot having strong feelings about the book one way or the other. I’m familiar with it from when I was a kid, it’d come into play every now and again, but it was pretty rare. I suppose that’s part of why I don’t fully understand the resistance to the removal from the DMs Guild. I mean, those who are fans of the book likely already have a copy, in one format or another. It’s not like they can erase the book from existence. They simply don’t have to make the PDF available for sale. I suppose many would make the slippery slope argument, and I’m sure that’s at least a little bit valid. I suppose it largely depends on how many people seem to actually want this change? One loud dude on the internet? Who cares? Lots of people calling for change? Probably worth a listen. I personally have no idea the scope of the requested change. I don't care about OA, or if WotC offers it on DMsG or not. My problem is the use of bully tactics to try to force the issue. I think the best course WotC could come up with would be to keep selling 1e OA, but donate the proceeds to a charity (preferably one that actually does stuff). Maybe a cover note. That would make the bullies' attack fail because they'd then be forced to attack a product being used to do good. Whether or not OA is still available doesn't affect me at all, but the bullies be emboldened by another win will. Just to put it out there, I think there's a big difference between the statements of wanting to reduce/eliminate racism and the tactics increasingly used nominally for that end. |
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Post by evileeyore on Jul 5, 2020 0:59:20 GMT
Just to clarify....you’re saying that the initial call to remove/ban/change the product is due to stupidity, right? I was more asking about the other side. The resistance to removing it. More along the lines of what Voadam offered. Sorry, misread what you were asking. The reasons against from the thread? Not 100% sure, I'm not interested in reading a 40+ page thread in which any response I make will likely result in banning... The one reason I did note (end of the thread) mirrors mine: OA is a sloppy, schlock, pastiche of asian cultures with as much "accuracy to source material" as FR has to European cultures*, that is to say minimal. What it does, it does pretty well, offers a 'kitchen sink' Asian campaign setting and does it pretty well (as well as FR, which many people like). OA is not racist in it's presentation, the youtuber's rant is horribly off-base, and he's basically full of shit. * But no one gives a shit about that right? This is true. However, I have a thread in the Senate begun to explore that side tangent. While I agree, no one should be 'forcing' them to continue sales, but if I want legal access to buying it... It's a movement. One 'loud dude' is quickly backed by the SJWs. This is the sort of thing they love, get the corporations to censor this, then it's something else, then it's "Orc Lives Matter"... |
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