PrimeJunta

It would be awesome to see other areas besides combat see some real development. I have high hopes for T:ToN in this respect, actually. Personally, I don't think 'sandboxiness' is crucial in a cRPG. It's a possibility, and can work quite well, like in Fallout and perhaps to a somewhat lesser degree in Arcanum and Morrowind. Quite often sandbox games end up as hiking simulators though, with not a whole lot of reactivity nor choice in the world. Quests are usually linear and of limited impact, so beyond "accept or reject, succeed or fail" there's not much there, there. If the sandbox really reacts to your actions, it can be a very powerful experience. On the other hand, a branching narrative has much the same effect for me. The turns you take give a feeling of agency and make your choices meaningful. The difference is that in a sandbox game the agency emerges from the systems, whereas in branching narratives it's been written in. I think branching narratives are better for telling strong stories and exploring them from multiple perspectives; emergent agency is a bit of a different experience. On balance, I don't think I've played a sandbox game that's quite as compelling on an emotional level as the best branching-narrative games. I'm quite intrigued about CD Project Red's attempts at fusing the two in The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk.

I don't think a cohesive narrative and roleplay are necessarily opposed. You can have branching storylines with shades of gray morality and delayed consequences (e.g. The Witchers). You can have a loose main story arc with lots of smaller stories with a variety of resolutions, which affect the way the world works (e.g. Fallout). Or you can even have a more or less linear story but with reactive companions and NPC's, and your ethical choices reflected in your character mechanics (e.g. Mask of the Betrayer). You're always constrained by something in the game, of course, but then so are we in real life. But yeah, player-driven is the key phrase here I think. The game has to give you at least a believable illusion of agency, with meaningful choices and their consequences. Half-Life is not a role-playing game, because you have no agency; you're just progressing through the areas in a predetermined fashion. Deus Ex has some role-playing elements, since the ending is determined by your choices and there are characters in it that attempt to influence you, and react to your choices, but it's by no means a core area of the design: you don't get to do much, but you get to make up your mind about what it means. The Witchers already have a quite a lot of this type of reactivity. And from there on out, it's all up.

You could always add papier maché boobs on top of the plate!

Good questions. I do roleplay, in the sense that I have a character concept in mind, including traits and some facets of personality, and try to stick with that. However, if this has no support in the mechanics, I tend to drop it pretty quickly; that turns into "larping" which I don't find appealing. For me the defining characteristic of a RPG is a system of mechanics that do support roleplay. Specifically, choices with consequences. Action/adventures are usually very limited in this respect. Most IE games and their spiritual successors are a bit thin in the role-playing sense actually. The BG's have the basics down with the companion interactions and the mid-game fork in BG2, but IWD has virtually nothing beyond picking an original alignment. PS:T has its own take on the whole thing, and is in fact the only one where I manage to really immerse myself into the character, even if, curiously, the mechanics don't give role-play much more support than in BG2. IMO Mask of the Betrayer did it best -- I've played it through both as a generally well-intentioned type and as a ruthless, cold, power-hungry sociopath, and the experiences were really different, both from a storytelling and a mechanical POV. I would like to see this kind of reactivity further developed in P:E.

Wel-l-l, since men drive tanks with that big phallus pointing up and out... (Inb4 anyone brings up Tank Girl...)

There are plenty of examples of functional armor that's extremely pleasing aesthetically in this and the Armor Designs thread.

About 10,000. Most of them in my city though. Plus we get a healthy fresh supply from Bulgaria and Romania every summer these days. There's a pretty vocal political movement who wants to send them right back where they came from, by the way. I don't think that would solve anything. Really? The various historical "gypsy laws" systematically discriminating against them have nothing to do with it? You know, I have no easy, pat solutions either. How I'd approach it, though, is that I'd try to make the barriers to integration for anyone who wants to integrate as low as possible. Currently they're pretty high. Some of those barriers are, no doubt, from social mores among the Roma communities. There's not a whole lot I can do about them -- stamping my foot and going "Integrate, you fools! Integrate!" is unlikely to help -- so I'd try to figure out what I could do about the barriers on my side. I'd also attempt to identify where there is obvious discrimination against them, and crack down on that. For example, Roma are subject to pretty crazy police brutality in most European countries (certainly including both the Czech Republic and Finland). I would crack down hard on that. Hey, here's a gypsy joke for ya, since you're so into that sort of thing. "How many cops does it take to beat up a gypsy?" "None. He fell down the stairs." I would provide better educational opportunities. I would recognize Roma culture and language at school; for example, I would offer classes in Roma for those who want them. I would also attempt to work with the Roma communities themselves, to find out what it is these communities actually lack, and then see what could be done about it. That sort of thing. And I would recognize that this would be a slow, long, uphill slog, with lots of setbacks and very little progress.

Out of courtesy for you, I would probably do my best to stop using it around you. If you managed to explain to me why the word "cabbage" is offensive to your group of people, I might even attempt to stop using the word altogether. Actually, I can and I do. If someone states that something I said offended them, I take them at their word (assuming they're not saying it as a simple rhetorical trick, that is). If several people independently state similar things for similar reasons, then I'll attempt to change my behavior. When I was growing up, for example, the word "neekeri" (Finnish for "Negro") was not considered offensive, and it was a regular part of my vocabulary. Over time, it took on negative connotations of words in other languages and people started using it with offensive intent. So I dropped it. Given that I'm blonde too I'd say that don't care at all. You're a woman? I wasn't aware of that. Good on ya. Do you think that gives you license to offend others who may be more sensitive about these topics? I'll quote the Buddha at you: "If something is untrue and pleasing to hear, the Tathagata does not say it. "If something is untrue and displeasing to hear, the Tathagata does not say it. "If something is true and pleasing to hear, the Tathagata knows the right time to say it. "If something is true and displeasing to hear, the Tathagata knows the right time to say it." Not bad advice IMO. I'm actually really bad at knowing the right time to say it, but I'm practicing. Denounce away. That doesn't make them less real. Good, there's a goal we can share, then. A social climate or reason would be very welcome! That's the paradox of tolerance -- the only thing it can't tolerate is intolerance. This tends not to go down well among champions of intolerance.

Helsinki, Finland. If that's true... (1) How do you think it got that way? (2) What kind of structures do you think might maintain those attitudes? (3) What, if anything, do you think could or should be done about it?

Yup, the Roma issue in Europe is a textbook example of structural, institutionalized racism. It goes deep and has roots that are centuries old. It will take a long time and a lot of determined effort to change that. It's not that long ago that Roma were hanged if caught inside city limits in many European cities. I've no doubt many Roma are themselves pretty cynical about any such attempts, and act accordingly. That won't change quickly either. In the meantime, yeah, it is going to be a problem. But in my opinion it's unreasonable to ask the Roma to behave like good little law-abiding citizens as long as these structures are in place. Dismantling them will take effort from all sides, but the ones with more power -- i.e., the majority -- bear commensurately more responsibility.

Then you're a highly unusual person. Most humans don't have that kind of control over their emotions. Have you considered asking a few blondes how they feel around a group of guys telling each other blonde jokes? I disagree. If you know something is likely to offend and you do it regardless, then that's still a **** move -- even if your primary purpose wasn't to cause offense. Unless, of course, your reasons for making that move are more important than the offense being caused. In my opinion, getting a laugh isn't good enough reason to cause offense. That is quite true. If you get too afraid of hurting someone's feelings, then you get afraid of expressing yourself, and that's not good too. You have to strike a balance somewhere. I disagree. The effect of microaggressions -- such as offensive jokes told "in good fun" has been studied a quite a bit. They actually do more psychological damage over time than overt aggressions. The reason is that it's socially costly to react to them. Just swallowing those little insults day after day wears down your self-esteem. Then you build defenses, such as taking it out on some other group. That's depressing and totally unnecessary. Wel-l-l... you're not so much attempting to shift the social climate as maintain it. There's been a huge shift already. A few years ago, this kind of discussion we're having would've been inconceivable in gamer/geek/atheist/F/OSS circles; all of these groups are now grappling big-time with these issues. I don't see any sign of this shift slowing down or reversing. Heh, well, I wasn't exactly expecting you to go "Wow, PJ -- you know, I think you're right. I see the evil of my ways now and will start doing my best to feel everyone welcome in the social space I inhabit, instead of maintaining hostile environments like I've been doing until now." So you do your thing, and I'll continue to do my thing, i.e., to be the occasional party-pooper when someone acts all offensively. If you want to call me names because of that, go right on ahead -- being straight, white, male, rich, first-world etc. I have very little of that sort of thing to deal with and might as well use that capacity for something constructive. (Also, as a PS -- I hope this discussion won't stop us from talking games in a friendly manner, despite our disagreement on this topic.)

Doing something offensive because you didn't know better happens all the time. If someone points it out to you, you feel bad for a little, you aplogize, you try not to do it again, and you move on. At least that's the way most decent people function. Doing something offensive when you know it's offensive is, IMO, just a **** move, unless there is just cause. (Yeah, sometimes there is.) Telling racist or sexist jokes about minorities is such a **** move. I'm sure there would be some circumstance where this rule doens't hold, but as a general guideline it's pretty solid. This isn't that complicated, really. All I'm saying is that it's a **** move to knowingly do stuff that makes people uncomfortable (without due cause). Acting in ways that tells members of minority groups that they're lower-status makes them uncomfortable. Ergo, it's a **** move and you shouldn't do it. That's really it. Personally I don't bring up a minority member's minority status at all unless they do it first, and then I do my best to listen to what they have to say rather than trying to talk about it. Being a member of an oppressed minority doesn't give you license to be a **** to other minorities. Regrettably it's a very human thing to do. If you're picked on, you find someone weaker than you to pick on in your turn, which makes you feel better. This happens all the time and is behind a lot of the nastiness that goes on in human society. Being, say, black doesn't give you license to pick on, say, gays. I think it's a better approach all in all to flip that right around. Instead of going "I have to put up with this **** so they should too," go "I don't enjoy putting up with this ****, so I shouldn't pour the same **** on them." Exposure is exactly what I'm attempting here. I'm simply expresing my disapproval of what I consider dickish attitudes, in the hopes that it will shift the social climate so that such dickish attitudes become less socially acceptable. It would be groovy if you saw the error of your ways but, as you say, that's unlikely to happen overnight. However, I think it's conceivable that this little discussion has left a little mark somewhere, with you or with someone else, so at just mmmaybe they'll feel a teeny bit less comfortable the next time they want to crack a real funny nignog joke. Also, prejudices. You can't ever get rid of them. That's just how our minds function. You can, however, watch those prejudices -- make room for the possibility that they don't reflect reality, and make an effort not to act reflexively on them.

You're right, it doesn't. Being black, brown, or yellow does though. That's the problem. I agree. You shouldn't. What you should be doing, though, is taking into account the point of view of whoever is speaking. We're rather self-interested creatures, you know. If a member of a given group is saying something that strongly favors members of that group, it's reasonable to consider that the two things may be related. I am now, since you said so. Please explain: what part of what I'm saying constitutes a microaggression? Yes, I am aware of that possibility. I'm also aware of the possibility that it might help. Look, you guys were whining about your "white knights" for a quite a while here before anyone spoke up. You clearly don't enjoy that being challenged much. That's a form of privilege too. Whose ass am I kissing, exactly, by the way? I'm not saying people don't have the right NOT to be insulted or angry. Hell, if people didn't have the right to be angry, I'd never get out of jail. Does my stating my disagreement with you somehow infringe on your rights to be insulted or angry? Uh... I dunno. Most people don't actually enjoy going out of their way to hurt people's feelings, as a general rule. Personally, I consider people who derive enjoyment out of doing that bullies, and I don't care much for them. How about you?

Says the white, stra Says someone belonging to a gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation least likely to ever experience the negatives of such an arrangement.

Oh, lots of ways. Cut a woman off in conversation. Change the subject in a discussion from racism to "reverse racism." Tell a joke that paints Roma as thieving gypsies and assume that everyone laughs. Act all offended if someone tells you it was in poor taste. Move a job application from the "invite to interview" pile to "reject" pile because you just have an 'off' feeling about it and it has nothing to do with the fact that the name on it said Jamilah Brown. And so on and so forth. Whoo, this canard does come up a lot. No, there is no point in feeling bad about being a straight white male. Feeling guilty about being called out for abusing your straight white male privilege is another matter. Very, very, very, VERY slowly, and at highly inequal rates in different parts of the world. I'm also not sure how much good many of those laws are doing; there are a few that are obviously necessary (e.g. laws that forbid business owners from discriminating in hiring or regarding their customers based on race, sexual orientation, or religion), whereas others I find a lot more dubious; laws about 'hate speech' only seem to lead to circumlocutions and endless pointless debate about what 'counts' as hate speech.

@Merikir, are you familiar with the notion of derailing? It's also know as the "what about the menz" gambit. Thing is, most of the time we assume white straight male as the default. If you're having a discussion about anything that's not strictly about white straight males in an open forum, it won't take long before someone starts whining that the discussion isn't about white straight males. Sexism? "Oh, what about reverse sexism." Racism? "A black guy called me a mean name once." I.e., if it's not about white straight male me, it doesn't matter. Privilege! It's kinda ironic that even here most of us talking on all sides of the issue are white straight males. Nobody hogs the floor like us. Privilege!

Nah. It's just that I've heard opinions like yours many, many, many times, and never once from anyone who isn't white. There are non-whites who subscribe to the same ideological worldview as you, mind (Steele much?) but they tend to express it noticeably differently. So it would take more than a simple assertion from you to convince me that you are, in fact, not a white male first-worlder. Present sufficient evidence -- for example, demonstrate that you understand something of what it's like to be a non-white non-male non-first-worlder -- and I'm certainly open to changing my mind. If you mean, do I think that people should watch their behavior differently depending on where they stand in the power structure, then yeah, I do think that. A white making a joke at the expense of blacks is reinforcing those power structures; a black making a joke at the expense of whites isn't. Ergo, whites should be more careful about making jokes at the expense of blacks than vice versa. I don't feel guilty about being white at all. It's not something I can change. However, I try to be mindful about it and the impact it has on what I do and say. Are you familiar with the notion of microaggressions, and the cumulative psychological effect they have on people? You mentioned fat white men earlier. Overweight people get to endure a lot of microaggressions all the time. If you know one – or happen to be one – perhaps you'll have an idea of how nasty that can feel. I'm not talking about overtly hostile stuff like people pointing and laughing; it's daily small indignities. Things like racism and sexism are quite similar. Why would you need to make any jokes about Jews and blacks? Isn't that best left to Jews and blacks? Then we can all laugh about them together.

Sorry, Barthomuk. "Privilege" is a word that describes a phenomenon. It is not an explanation of the phenomenon. The phenomenon itself is an objective reality. Whites and blacks do get treated differently, even when all other things are equal. For example, write a job application and send it to 100 companies. Write your name as Jamilah Brown on one, and Timothy McMillan on the other, with all qualifications otherwise identical. Then count how many of the companies invited you to a job interview. This experiment has been made lots and lots of times, and the white-male sounding name will get more invitations for interviews than the black-female sounding name.

One more thing: I'm not making any value judgment about "white" individuals. "White" does equal "privileged," though. That's not insulting. It's simply a fact. Because I'm white, male, and straight, I never encounter any number of problems that non-white, non-male, non-straight people do on a daily basis. For example I've never been pulled over by the cops simply because I 'look suspicious,' my boss doesn't talk past me to one of my coworkers when asking about the status of that project, and if I fall ill, my wife will automatically be treated next of kin, to pick three real-life examples. [No, Finland doesn't -- yet -- have marriage for all, although I have hopes we'll join the civilized world some time this decade.] And yeah, I do find it helpful to be aware of this privilege and try not to abuse it. (Also, just so you know -- almost everybody's privileged in some circumstances, and being a member of a minority doesn't give you a free pass to abuse your majority status when you happen to be in those circumstances. It's just that white straight men are in the privileged position almost all the time so we need to deal with this more than most other groups.)

Summa summarum, to get this back onto the topic of games -- I don't like characters that pander to (negative) stereotypes, espespecially negative minority stereotypes. This doesn't mean you can't have a villain who's black or a hero who's white. It just means that it's a big turn-off for me if everyone -- more or less -- is written to stereotype. I find it stale, predictable, boring, and -- often -- just plain mean. Why would you even want to do this stuff at the expense of a group that's already being shat upon?

It would make me think that you're lying, actually. Ah, but "equal in what sense?" is the crucial question. I believe very, very strongly that we're all equally deserving of human dignity. However, I observe that in practice we're very much unequal about actually receiving the same. Any ethics that doesn't take this reality into account becomes a bleak Spenserian "liberty to stay at the Ritz or sleep under a bridge." Yes, we privileged tend to reserve that right a lot. Actually, if they were all fat white dudes, then yeah, I very likely would have spoken up. But if they were all slim, able, and dressed in suits, then no, I probably wouldn't have. Give me a Che shirt to wear with my AK-47 and I'd have been blasting away at the forefront.

That's too bad, since that pretty much precludes the possibility of meaningful discussion between us.

I'll put this in a separate message since it might get a bit longer. Bold claim. Let's see you argue it. Incorrect. I'm stating there is an oppressor and an oppressee. I am not stating this relationship is one-sided, nor that it never changes. I am stating that it is this way 'by default' when examining any particular situation in which it is, indeed, this way 'by default,' such as with institutionalized racism or sexism. How these relationships originated is irrelevant to my argument. If I was looking at the historical roots of such systems, though, I would point out that people tend to use their power to improve their lot, which leads to a feedback cycle where the powerful use their power to gather more power, and consequently human societies (at a larger than tribal level) almost invariably tend to self-organize as feudal structures. Our very recent experiment with large-scale democracy is very much the exception! I most certainly do not condone, say, black on white violence motivated by the race of the victim. I just think it is confusing and incorrect to treat both as 'the same.' The power relations make all the difference. I wouldn't consider violence by an invading army 'the same' as violence by a resistance movement resisting the invasion 'the same' either. This doesn't mean that I'd consider it justifiable for the resistance movement to, say, blow up a school full of children -- but it does mean that I would be even more outraged if the occupying army surrounded a school, lined up the children, and shot them. Oh, but it's entirely generalizable! All it's doing is adding a variable to the ethical equations: that of power relations. For example, I would say that "it is generally undesirable for a member of a privileged group to use that privilege to marginalize and objectify members of minority groups." See?

@Merikir, what part of the moral implications of the outlook I outlined do you find objectionable? The take-home ethical message is just something like this: if you find yourself as a member of the majority, be mindful of how what you say and do looks from the POV of the minority, and try not to be a ****. That's not very onerous IMO. Surely you're not claiming that power relations don't matter? 'Cuz that strikes me as patently absurd.

Re racism or sexism, I think the problem is that people are using different definitions of them. Personally I think it gets very confusing if you try to disassociate these concepts from power relations. So the way I use them, I don't try to do this: I define racism as something like "prejudices held by a higher-status group about a lower-status group, associated with markers designated 'racial.'" So by this definition a 'black' person could be racist about 'white' persons only in a context where blacks were the higher-status group. Same with sexism. (Edit: the notion of 'whiteness' could be a pretty interesting tangent in its own right. In practice 'white' isn't a race, even less so than 'black;' it's simply synonymous with 'the privileged majority;' its definition has shifted as new groups have been accepted as 'whites.' So under this definition, a 'black' could never be racist about 'whites,' since if that happened, the 'whites' would not be 'white' anymore!) This isn't to say that blacks can't have prejudices about whites, or women can't have prejudices about men. The consequences are just drastically different depending on the power relations, and I think it's unnecessarily confusing to lump both under 'racism,' even if qualified with 'reverse' or somesuch. I also think that almost invariably the prejudices held by minorities about majorities [defining 'majority' as 'the dominant group' and 'minorities' as 'subordinated groups,' even if they don't always match the numbers, as with sexism for example] are simply reactions to and mirror images of the prejudices held by the majority. Don't like 'reverse racism' or 'reverse sexism?' Do something about racism and sexism, and it will start to fade. This is why I don't have a problem with even pretty vicious humor if it's punching up (i.e., at the expense of a higher-status group), but I do have a problem with the 'same' jokes if they're punching down (at the expense of a lower-status group.) Or, put another way, I'll start telling jokes about gays, blacks, and Romany the day I'm absolutely 100% certain gays, blacks, and Romany are suffering no discrimination at all from the majority. And if I say something that offends a gay, black, or Roma I'll try to figure out what it was and not to do it again, and if it really was due to prejudice against straight white first-world males on their part, well, that's a pretty small thing to have to deal with compared to, say, being regularly pulled over/hassled/beat up by the cops simply for being somewhere they don't expect you to be.