10-05-2016, 11:26 AM
Yet more commentary:
Dear Gary
If you read Gary Allen Fine's book "Shared Fatnasy" which examines the culture of role playing games you discover it is not as hopeful or innocent as people think. It forms an outlet for in many cases, brutal, violent fantasies of the inner souls people, all pablamized and homogenized. Indeed the actions of many players are indistinguishable from the monsters who they mug for their money. We have dealt with this before. In one wincing incident Fine recounts how one group of male gamers said to a few female gamers "What' wrong with you women, don't you want to get raped." These were REAL people speaking to REAL people, not gamers to even cardboard characters.
Indeed, as Fine's book points out Don Peterson's "playing at the world carries through on, players live in an amoral if not immoral universe where all that counts is the accumulation of gold, experience points and enjoyment. More pertinent there is almost NO sense of ethics or philosophical restraints imposed beyond the dictates of expediency and bare materialism. Fine notes that those who do role play one role play one that is entirely personal and does not challenge those of othrs, and which allows for their convenient abandonment when necessary. My own research supports this and I note that in Gurps, AD&D and many others I have not once every run into the word "kindness" in any of them, at all. Indeed anything like it in a character or a stat is simply as a "spare can" idea. It's a state to be pitched low so that the points from it witin the normal range can be hijacked for those that produce violence like strength, agility, etc.
Fine also notes that player who attempt this are universally disliked by others who see no real reason for it and resent it as it means a decrease of expediency. The class of "cleric" only requires the player to act as a bigoted user of his power for his or her "God" none of which has the slightest idea of ethics beyond neutral convenient and the latter AD&D class of Palladin is simply more of the same. A paladin engages in his "acts of good" only for his own benefit, not for others, and the proliferation later of "neutral" and "evil paladins" completely slides off the moral edge. It is only necessary to mention the rampant racialism afoot in RPG. Dwarves are greedy for gold and insular, clannish, always seeking revenge for slights imagined, and are workaholics. They resent others wealth and power when they get it and cling firmly to their mountain fastness and are incredibly cheap. Color then Shylock. Elves are tall, thin, beautiful, and sing pretty songs. Color them them the rich or the gay. Orks are evil, smelly, swarthy, speak awful "everyone speak" swear, curse, and delight in brutality and causing harm and crime- We ALL know what to color them!
I remember my most successful dungeon character started as a simple mercenary fighter, like a Landsknecht of the 16th century. The DM made the "origin myth" of the character that I was time/space/dimension/bajooble/ warped here from our world. When he asked what God I served, the answer was "yes" and I explained that if I was time/space/dimension/bajooble warped here I would carry with me my own beliefs as well as skill at war as well. He said he couldn't encompass Christianity within his world, it wasn't set up for that. I explained to him that didn't matter, I would act in accordance with it no matter that it mean't I could gain no game benefits. The character obeyed the picture of a man as portrayed by Huizinga in "The Autum of the Middle Ages" varying between blowing his latest pile of gold on a three day bender with the whores and in the Inns, or the next time, in an excess of piety, giving the money away to the poor an needy. In spite of constant urgings not to, and to not sell some of the nifty magical items to aid the poor, (the party treated the poor with contempt and violence beyond a two-bit donation now and then when a beggar showed up.) I continued to do so and to preach the creed.
The umpire gradually "forced" the character into the role of "paladin" and was completely frustrated when the character would not do so and pick a more regular god from the pantheistic pantheon he had. His concern was always I was missing out on game points. Several times we got into long discussions or why I was doing this, and one player felt I was "pushing my religious values on the group" which of course I was not.
It was then that I realized that the thing that people hated most about Christianity, that turned them against it, was the Sermon on the Mount.
Dear Gary
If you read Gary Allen Fine's book "Shared Fatnasy" which examines the culture of role playing games you discover it is not as hopeful or innocent as people think. It forms an outlet for in many cases, brutal, violent fantasies of the inner souls people, all pablamized and homogenized. Indeed the actions of many players are indistinguishable from the monsters who they mug for their money. We have dealt with this before. In one wincing incident Fine recounts how one group of male gamers said to a few female gamers "What' wrong with you women, don't you want to get raped." These were REAL people speaking to REAL people, not gamers to even cardboard characters.
Indeed, as Fine's book points out Don Peterson's "playing at the world carries through on, players live in an amoral if not immoral universe where all that counts is the accumulation of gold, experience points and enjoyment. More pertinent there is almost NO sense of ethics or philosophical restraints imposed beyond the dictates of expediency and bare materialism. Fine notes that those who do role play one role play one that is entirely personal and does not challenge those of othrs, and which allows for their convenient abandonment when necessary. My own research supports this and I note that in Gurps, AD&D and many others I have not once every run into the word "kindness" in any of them, at all. Indeed anything like it in a character or a stat is simply as a "spare can" idea. It's a state to be pitched low so that the points from it witin the normal range can be hijacked for those that produce violence like strength, agility, etc.
Fine also notes that player who attempt this are universally disliked by others who see no real reason for it and resent it as it means a decrease of expediency. The class of "cleric" only requires the player to act as a bigoted user of his power for his or her "God" none of which has the slightest idea of ethics beyond neutral convenient and the latter AD&D class of Palladin is simply more of the same. A paladin engages in his "acts of good" only for his own benefit, not for others, and the proliferation later of "neutral" and "evil paladins" completely slides off the moral edge. It is only necessary to mention the rampant racialism afoot in RPG. Dwarves are greedy for gold and insular, clannish, always seeking revenge for slights imagined, and are workaholics. They resent others wealth and power when they get it and cling firmly to their mountain fastness and are incredibly cheap. Color then Shylock. Elves are tall, thin, beautiful, and sing pretty songs. Color them them the rich or the gay. Orks are evil, smelly, swarthy, speak awful "everyone speak" swear, curse, and delight in brutality and causing harm and crime- We ALL know what to color them!
I remember my most successful dungeon character started as a simple mercenary fighter, like a Landsknecht of the 16th century. The DM made the "origin myth" of the character that I was time/space/dimension/bajooble/ warped here from our world. When he asked what God I served, the answer was "yes" and I explained that if I was time/space/dimension/bajooble warped here I would carry with me my own beliefs as well as skill at war as well. He said he couldn't encompass Christianity within his world, it wasn't set up for that. I explained to him that didn't matter, I would act in accordance with it no matter that it mean't I could gain no game benefits. The character obeyed the picture of a man as portrayed by Huizinga in "The Autum of the Middle Ages" varying between blowing his latest pile of gold on a three day bender with the whores and in the Inns, or the next time, in an excess of piety, giving the money away to the poor an needy. In spite of constant urgings not to, and to not sell some of the nifty magical items to aid the poor, (the party treated the poor with contempt and violence beyond a two-bit donation now and then when a beggar showed up.) I continued to do so and to preach the creed.
The umpire gradually "forced" the character into the role of "paladin" and was completely frustrated when the character would not do so and pick a more regular god from the pantheistic pantheon he had. His concern was always I was missing out on game points. Several times we got into long discussions or why I was doing this, and one player felt I was "pushing my religious values on the group" which of course I was not.
It was then that I realized that the thing that people hated most about Christianity, that turned them against it, was the Sermon on the Mount.