cyst13

Re: Is anyone gaming the Iraq war? Yeah, war correspondents, especially photojournalists, take enormous risks with their lives in order to do their jobs. I once had a long conversation with an ex-photog who covered the world's wars and now edits other war photogs. One of the things he pointed out is that veteran war photographers actually have much more under fire experience than most soldiers (this was before the current occupation). He also showed me how many armies that do not like having their activities photographed are now specifically targetting photogs in the field. He had himself been targetted by Israeli snipers when he was in the Gaza Strip. Dangerous though it may be, though, it still makes for fascinating stories. And fascinating stories and danger are what RPGs are all about.

Re: Is anyone gaming the Iraq war? Yeah, I can see that playing US soldiers in Iraq wouldn't be as stimulating as US soldiers in Nazi Germany. But I wasn't really thinking about playing soldiers. I recently saw The Control Room, a documentary about Al-Jazeera covering the war, and I was thinking how nifty 'twould be to run a team of journalists. They could run around investigating stories, interacting with the population, dealing with military brass. Journalists have the incentive and opportunity to squiggle through every layer of the society. While I agree it would not be possible to have a fully realistic campaign conducted back here in the states, I think it might be possible to research it well enough to give American players a deeper feel for the people whom they see on the news each night. If you move away from the PCs committing violence, I think RPGs can be very useful in extending imaginations to encompass all the human aspects of current events. Also, much less chance of offending player sensibilities.

Re: Is anyone gaming the Iraq war? Oroborous, In order to enlighten me, can you tell me why a current day Iraq War would be f'ed from the start?

This is a pretty straight-forward thread. I'm wondering whether anyone is using the war in their games in any way. I'm tied into a medieval campaign, right now, and thus can't deal with it myself. But it seems like a goldmine of story possibilities. If you are gaming the war, please include as much detail about what you are doing as possible. Also, list the sources you are using for info. Thanx.

Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept? Good points. Though I still wonder why non-mutant superheroes don't get the same flack as the mutants. The Avengers and the Fantastic Four do as much damage as the X-Men, yet nobody calls for their heads on a platter.

Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept? It's just called "New X-Men" and it seriously rocks! There are two large hardcover collections out for it already. I recommend them both. There are like a thousand different X-Men series, so make sure it's the one written by Grant Morrison.

Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept? Gunrunner, Glad to read we're on friendly terms. Don't worry; you didn't hurt my feelings. I expect people with strong feelings to express them strongly. Nothing wrong with that. With a slightly different emphasis, I agree with pretty much everything you wrote in your last post. And thanks for the concern about my peace of mind. I really am a peaceful guy, though (a practicing Buddhist). I've honestly enjoyed this thread. I love arguing the minority opinion! Teflon Billy, You're right. Marvel never does explain why the great mass of Americans who have accepted all humans as equals and generally rejected discrimination and prejudice are suddenly gripped with homicidal rage towards mutants. I don't think it would ever be as bad as they portray it. However, if you look at the rhetoric at some of the people freaking out about genetically modified crops and goldfish, it kinda makes you wonder how people would react to GM humans. The comics are primarily aimed towards kids, though, and they have to make the issues into broad caricatures for the kids to pick up on them. The New X-Men strip written by Grant Morrison does a much better job with subtlety and the strip also goes international to show that prejudice is not an uniquely American quality. Might be worth checking out.

Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept? Teflon Billy, This is an off-topic response to your last post. (Hey, we're on page 13; it's bound to go off-topic sooner or later) You're right. While Anglo-Americans have practiced our share of racism (vs. Natives, Africans, Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans, etc.), we've never gone to the absolute genocidal extremes of Nazi Germany, King Leopold of Belgium, the Hutus in Rwanda, the Turks vs. the Armenians, Stalin vs the Ukranians, the Khmer Rouge vs. Everyone, et. al. The difference between us and those other nations, though, is that we Americans theoretically have the power to affect what our government does. It is far more difficult for the average X-Men fan to have an affect on the Arab govt. in Sudan's efforts to eradicate the Dinka. Some Americans who criticize America may indeed genuinely hate this country. However, speaking as an American who has been critical of this country's policies, when I offer my criticisms, it is in the hope of making our country better. I do not criticisize from a desire to tear it down. The U.S. has promoted a standard of democracy throughout the world that is better at promoting human values than any other form of government. I just want to see us live up to our own values.

Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept? Vanguard00, Of all the people who've posted disagreements with my positions on these boards, you're the first and only one to explicitly say that I do not have the right to do so. If I had not started this thread or others, then all the posters who contributed enlightening and stimulating thoughts to them would not have had the opportunity to do so. I do not believe the RPG community is in any way the worse for my having posted threads to these boards. Nor have I ever admitted to having nefarious ulterior motives. If my thoughts have evolved throughout the course of a thread, that's a natural result of participating in a debate. If my opinions are truly noxious to you, might I suggest that in the future you ignore all threads bearing my name?

Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept? Speaking as some one on the 'Yes' side of this debate, I have to say that Worldmaker has been correct in his recent posts. Those of us who agree that 'evil races' in games is not only a racist concept but possibly promotes real life stereotyping in some gamers have the burden of proof on our shoulders. We are the ones positing a hypothesis which contradicts what most gamers already assume to be true. Worldmaker, Gunrunner and the others who are on the 'No' side of the debate are supporting the status quo. They do not have to prove their argument. They only have to critique our argument, should they wish to do so. If the 'Yes' argument is ever accepted to be true by the majority of the world's gamers, it will then be incumbent upon those remaining in the 'No' camp to support their position. Until that time, those of us in the 'Yes' camp have to provide the best evidence and arguments possible. Worldmaker also makes another good point. As eloquent and articulate as Agamegos has been, he has not offered evidence in a refutable manner. Specifically, if this debate were to be conducted at a professional level, it would be incumbent upon anyone offering evidence from behavioral psychology to footnote exact studies to support one's claims. That would allow those in the other camp to refute those studies on their merits. As it is, those reading Agemegos' posts have to rely on his authority and assume that he is interpreting the evidence to which he refers correctly. Since none of us actually knows anything about Agamegos, there's no reason to believe he's infallible. In his defense, this is not a professional forum. None of us are being financially compensated for our time spent on these boards. And to expect Agemegos to sacrifice significantly more of his personal time to scrupulously researching and footnoting his arguments is more than can be reasonably expected of a person who is not being paid. I don't think the 'Yes' camp will be able to prove or even strongly back up our argument with evidence in the course of this thread. Herogames.com is really not the appropriate forum for scientific progress. Hopefully, though, these arguments have helped to clarify the thoughts of all the participants, whatever their final opinions might be.

Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept? In an attempt to come at this topic in a different way, I would pose a question to all those who answered 'no' to this thread's title. Do you think creators of fantastic fiction can use imaginary groups of 'people' to foster real life tolerance towards others in their audience? Specifically, I'm thinking of X-Men and Star Trek. Both these series have specifically intended to encourage their audiences to be more tolerant through the examples of their characters. Both Professor X and Jean-Luc Picard are the moral voice of those series, and they actively enourage us throughout the series to treat all others with tolerance. Is it possible for this to have any affect on how people who read/watch these series act and believe in real life? If you answer yes, then why doesn't the opposite hold true in treating orcs as homogemously evil?

Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept? Even if the only good thing that would come of this thread would be the opportunity to witness Agemegos maintain his considerable elan in the face of hostility and progressively hone his highly articulate arguments, I think it would still be worth it. This guy would make an awesome Vulcan! Kudos to you, sir.

Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept? I've never met anyone who has posted to this thread, but I am willing to accept that none of us are racists. Is anyone will to admit to an incident in your real life in which you were aggressively confronted by a person of a different race and this caused you to form a brief judgement about all people of that race? Even if you quickly repudiated that judgement, did you have it in your head for a moment? If so, you understand how easy it is to slip into the thought pattern of judging people by group rather than individually. Yes, you were able to quickly repudiate that thought and you probably never acted on it. Good. But what if it were not a one-time experience? What if you were a cop or a soldier or lived in a very violent society and you were exposed to aggression from people of different races on a daily basis? What psychological resources would you fall back upon to restrain yourself from allowing those brief anger-induced moments of racism to grow into a more long-term outlook? Is it possible for good people to adopt hateful attitudes under certain circumstances? Are any of us immune to this?

Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept? As a point: You don't typically prove something before developing a hypothesis. You first have to decide whether this is a possible aspect of reality. If you decide it is, THEN you can attempt to falsify it by experiment. Unfortunately, since I'm not a social scientist, it would be restrictively difficult for me to test this hypothesis. Ergo, I'm going by intuition.

Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept? Techriron, Sorry it took so long for my reply. I haven't been ducking you. I don't own my own computer, which limits my Net access. You asked me to write an essay for you explaining my position in detail. This is a perfectly reasonable request to make. Unfortunately, I am hesitant to comply. I think one of the best aspects of Net discussion boards is that they are emergent phenomena. I may have started this thread, but after my first post, it ceased to be 'mine'. I don't want to offer anything which should be taken as the definitive account of this thread's intent. I prefer to see that arise from the interplay of all the thread's participants. However, I think perusing the past posts made ny Agemegos, Ghost-Angel, and myself will help clarify my intent, if you're still interested. As a concession to Gunrunner, I do think he raised an important point. While I certainly would never support any form of externally imposed censorship on game companies or on gamers themselves, there is some danger that arguments on touchy subjects as race can be abused. If some social action group who is dead-set on destroying the RPG community (and we know from recent history that such groups do exist) were to read this thread, it would be possible to quote my words and perhaps those of Agemegos out of context in the mainstream media in an effort to discredit gaming as a whole. That's really not such a paranoid far-fetched scenario. Trouble is, I have no idea how to raise issues such as this without courting that danger. It's just something we have to live with. Also, while Gunrunner was being deliberately provocative in comparing me to a Nazi, I really can't fault him for that. I also was being deliberately provocative in comparing slaughtering orcs to slaughtering Jews. I pushed an analogy to a logical extreme in order to prod the debate. Both Gunrunner and I may have ruffled some feathers along the way by using extreme rhetorical techniques, but ce la vie. I got over it, and I bet he has as well. One point I do want to clear up is that I am not saying that including an "evil race" in a game has a one-to-one relationship to fostering real-life racism. Both Agemegos and Ghost-Angel seem to have picked-up on this subtle distinction, but I think it's worth repeating. What I am proposing is that there are numerous unconscious influences on our conscious beliefs. RPGs are only one such influence among a wide web of influences, but to many of us here, RPGs are a very significant aspect of our lives. While few of us would admit to being out-and-out racists, I think most of us have a propensity to make absolute categorizations of large groups of people during times of stress. This kind of thing can bring out racist beliefs/behavior during times of extreme stress in the best of people. Example: The Army's investigation into the Abu Graib prisoner abuses found that anti-Arab racism is prevalent among the US soldiers there. (I hope no one misinterprets this as a slur upon US soldiers. I have enormous respect for the work our soldiers are doing in Iraq and the sacrifices they have and continue to make. I also think the soldiers on the ground are receiving an inordinate amount of blame for an institutional failure which was the responsibility of the military brass and our civilian leadership) While I can't prove this, I assume the soldiers serving in Abu Graib were initially no more hostile toward Arabs as a group than any other cross-section of Americans. However, when they were placed in the extreme stress of being shelled daily, seeing their comrades killed on a daily basis, receiving little support from the higher-ups, being removed from their families and social support groups for extended periods, and just the general grind of being in a stinkin hot desert day after day, their ability to rationally override the impulse to negatively stereotype those of another culture was diminished. In that situation, what is that determines which soldiers participate in the abuse of prisoners and which do not? There are, of course, a number of answers to that question. But I do think at least one factor is the way in which each individual soldier had been psychologically trained in the course of his life to view groups of others. When human beings are put in extremely stressful situations as that, what psychological resources do they have to resist the impulse to categorize people as groups rather than indiviuals? To Gunrunner and any other soldiers or relatives of soldiers reading this, it is my sincerest hope that you do not interpret the above example as an attack upon the integrity of the US military or any individual soldiers currently serving in Iraq. Again, I have enormous respect for the sacrifices that they have all been asked to make in these most trying times. So, to conclude. If a soldier at Abu Graib had spent his Saturday afternoons slaying evil orcs when he was in high school, would it mean that he would be more likely to view Arabs as a group as the enemy? No. I do not at all believe that could be made as a blanket statement. What I do believe is that it MAY constitute ONE aspect among many of a soldier's psychological constitution. It MAY be that some soldier in this circumstance MIGHT have the precise psychological balance that one influence in favor of judging an entire group (even a fictional group, like orcs) just MIGHT tip that soldier's view towards judging Arabs as a group, rather than as individuals. Note: this proposition applies to anyone under extreme stress, not just soldiers. Cops have to deal with these same issues, as well as other occupations. Granted, I can't prove that my proposal is right. That's why I formed this thread's title as a question rather than a statement. In my own moral balance, I think that the possibility that pretending fictional groups can be categorized as 'evil' MAY impact my own real-life outlook during periods of extreme stress is reason enough not to include 'evil races' in my game. Whether anyone choose to follow suit is for them to decide.

Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept? China Bob, Yes, I agree with what you said in your last post. I think it is a primal, intrinsic thing. And as such, we have to consciously avert our thoughts from negative stereotypes. Civility is but a thin veneer atop our baser urges. I do blow off steam at work (an absolute necessity). I just don't know that it's such a good idea to blow off steam by reinforcing the same thought patterns of stereotyping groups that I was trying to avert to begin with. That seems a vicious circle. Usually, I just turn up the radio and do a little dancing.

Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept? And as an example of using rational dialogue to convince others, I offer Ghost Angel's above post. He started out agreeing with Gunrunner, who's opinion is opposed to mine. Then at the end of his post, after thinking about what I was actually writing, rather than what some one else characterized my opinion to be, he ended up summarizing my own thoughts much more concisely than I ever could. The system works after all.

Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept? I find it interesting that Gunrunner made his argument that people should not be socially pressured into giving up a given viewpoint by comparing me to a Nazi. I asked a straight-forward question in this thread and many of the people who posted here answered with a yes. This is not my attempt to censor the gaming community. My interpretation of Free Speech is that it should be used in an open forum such as the Internet to argue with others within the bounds of rational dialogue. If you convince someone, through peaceful argument, to adopt your viewpoint, that's not censorship. That's exactly the way the First Ammendment has always been intended to be used. If you read my words that Gunrunner quoted, you can see that nowhere in there did I make a suggestion that individual gamers or game companies should be censored. Anyone here is free to do a search on my moniker. You will not find any such suggestion made by me anywhere on these boards. I am not in favor of censorship. I am in favor of dialogue. And just for the record, I am not now, nor have I ever been a member of the American Hippie Nazi Party.

Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept? To answer Proditor's question: I am not in the media nor am I an academic. I work part-time in a convenience store. I've been playing RPGs since I was twelve, which was over two decades ago. I don't have any axe to grind and I don't think RPGs cause people to worship Satan. I started this thread for the reasons I listed in my last post. Mainly I was curious and I wanted to start a good discussion. Seeing as that we are now on page 5 of this thread, I think I've been successful (pat, pat). I was going to further argue my case, but Agammemos (hope I spelled that right) already said most of what I wanted to say. Just as a last word, though: I consider myself to be as non-rascist as I can possibly be. However, I also think that the impulse to form quick judgements about entire groups (race, gender, class, hippies, cops, etc.) is an intrinsically human quality, and not a very good one. I work nightshift at a convenience store in a downtown area and I get tossed a good deal of crap from both Black and White people on a regular basis. While I don't form snap judgements about White people (I'm White myself), I do tend to break them down into sub-groups and go from there. Something along the lines of "I hate those damn street kids!" As much as it galls me to admit it, I do the same along racial lines as well. When the adrenaline wears off and I cool down, I realize the irrationality of my judgement and try to forget it. The point is, though, that when I (and I assume I'm not alone) get into a stressful situation, my tendency to form aggressive emotions directed toward an entire group comes to the fore. It's something I have to consciously suppress in myself. And if I were spending every Saturday night pretending to slay evil races, it might not be so easy for me to suppress those real life tendencies. I can't prove this to be true, but if there is a chance that it is true, I don't think the pleasure of slaying orcs compensates for taking that chance.

Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept? To respond to the people who think I'm trying to prove that gamers are Neo-nazi male supremacists, that's just downright silly. Rather, I'm trying to take the activity of RPGs seriously. I don't know what the number of gamers currently is, but D&D at its height was being played by millions of kids throughout the world. Any activity that is participated in by millions of people becomes part of the public sphere. When it is in the public sphere, it is open to public debate. Questions of race and sex have been addressed in public for over a century now. All of the genres of fiction & film that feed RPGs (i.e. sci-fi, fantasy, superheroes, etc.) have had to address these questions. And the creators of those genres have all had the same intitial reaction: "What's your problem, man?!" As has been demonstrated not only on this thread but on previous threads addressing race and sex, there are gamers out there who have a problem with the way in which these topics have been addressed in games. If it's important to address issues of racism and sexism in television, movies, and books, then it is also important to do so in RPGs. Many of us got started in games when we were about 12 yrs. old. I think it's reasonable to ask how we are presenting RPGs to adolescent kids. Also, I would like RPGs to be something more than fun, entertainment, and diversion. I think the 'just fun' excuse gets used far too often and quite sloppily to shut down any intellegent debate. I would much prefer to see the RPG community take responsibility for the extent in which we participate in the creation of social values. I spend as least as much time and energy writing my games as many authors do writing fiction or screenplays. I think I have as least as much responsibility for the content of my imagination as do they.

Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept? Does anyone else on this thread think Rage's description of Aryans vs. evil (deluded) Jews is a good idea for a game?

Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept? For those of you who think it is a simple thing to separate one's imagination from reality, would you consider it acceptable to play in a campaign in which Jews are an evil race who are using Kabbalistic magic to enslave the world? It would be the role of the Aryan PCs to stop the evil Jews by any means possible? This would be just imagination, right? So, is this okay?

Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept? Teflon Billy, Beyond your personal annoyance with moral relativism, do you think that in terms of the larger, real-world society in which we all live, it is a good idea for gamers to intentionally create campaign-worlds which justify the existence of "evil races"? Does it make us better people to employ our imagination in this way?

Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept? I really do not buy this hoohah about fantasy games existing in a different reality than our real world. Yes, you can design a fantasy world with evil corrupting magic in which the frame of the fantasy allows for a consistently evil race. However, this does not answer my initial question. Is it a good thing for us in the real world to pretend to inhabit fantasy worlds that are specifically designed to make racist concepts reasonable? I could probably design a Nazi Hero game that posits Jews as being fundamentally corrupted by evil Kabbalistic magic, but I would never do such a thing for the obvious reasons? While I am strongly opposed to the current war in Iraq, I am at least relieved to see that most Americans have been able to make the distinction between a few terrorists and the great majority of good-hearted Muslims. But does anyone remember the racist hysteria that gripped this country when Iran took our embassy personell hostage in 1979? I knew a lot of people at that time who equated the words Iranian and Shiite with evil. Even if it makes sense within the parameters of a campaign to view a given race as evil, I don't think it's a good idea in the real world (which even includes gamers) to create such campaigns in which the concept of evil races makes sense. While we may protest that we are all smart enough to separate fantasy from fact, when a big national crisis comes up and our leaders start tossing about terms like "Evil Empire" or "Axis of Evil", that thin line suddenly becomes quite vague indeed.

Re: Knot Another Magic System! I've totally been thinking about doing a knot-magic system in a steampunk campaign. I was inspired by contemporary mathematical explorations of knots. I also read Brian Greene's two books about string theory in which the fundamental qualities of the universe are determined by the way in which the superstrings are 'knotted'. I pictured my knot-magic system as being focused on teleportation and telekinesis. Essentially, it would be super-genius mathematicians manipulating the super-string fabric of the cosmos through a form of sympathetic magic. Toss in some smooth rubber-science to glide over logical gaps and it sounds pretty cool. It's knot really the same thing that you came up with, but I find it fascinating that we could independently develop two different magic systems based on tying knots. Magic would be so awesome if it were real!