Strictly speaking, no, Kelewan was: the Riftwar was the result of a homemade crossover between standard OD&D (Midkemia) and Tekumel (Kelewan) through portals.Wait? Midkemia was loosely based on Tekumel?
To be honest, I am the kind of person who punches nazis, such as at thunder bay, a berkeley ca dance club on industrial dance night, someone who I vaguely knew, confessed to me they were a nazi and I laid them out, caused a mini riot between mine and another crew. Granted this was the early 90's, and about Barker or Gygax, I have nothing good to say, except they were a product of their times, but death has evened the score, so I don't care anymore. It's the other people, people around now that knew.It is disappointing that the author of that blog @darjr posted, Dave Morris, sat on his knowledge of "Serpent's Wake" for a decade. I don't know who Dave Morris is . . . a fan? A writer? Someone in the tabletop gaming industry?
But I do know that if someone I knew personally revealed to me that they wrote a neo-Nazi fantasy novel they were having trouble shopping around . . . . I'm not sure what I'd do with that information. I would certainly express my disgust to them. But would I "out" them? And exactly how would I go about it? Especially if I wasn't convinced that the existence of this novel made this person a Nazi sympathizer.
This does speak to a larger problem in certain spaces . . . a neutral acceptance of Nazism and other horrors of history. I get the impression that the blog author, Morris, isn't sympathetic to Nazi views himself, but does view that exploring these issues is a legitimate literary exercise. And that he extends this to Barker's motivations. It reminds me of some of the things Gygax is quoted saying, showing that Gygax admired certain historical figures that were responsible for some pretty awful stuff, not that Gygax approved of the awfulness itself, but could admire the effectiveness from a "neutral", historical point of view. It seems that more than a few folks who came out of the "old school" wargaming scene that predated D&D share this amoral viewpoint on history and historical figures. A weird perspective I can't get behind, personally, and one of the reasons why I'm not a huge Gygax fan.
Not being in wargaming circles I've never heard this term and now I'll be thinking about it for the rest of the day.With war games, there has always been that certain set, now they get called "wehraboos"
Compartmentalization. Yup, that's what I was searching for. The tendency for some old school wargamers to compartmentalize history. I think that might partly explain Barker's Nazi novel . . . but still, I think it goes beyond that.I don't know that I'd call it cynical. It's compartmentalized. Most WWII-era war games are concerned with the battlefield and, sometimes, logistics (at least with respect to supporting things on the battlefield). Some, like Advanced Third Reich, also delve into high level views of wartime diplomacy. But they usually don't deal with other aspects of the war - massacres of civilians in Eastern Europe, intentional mass starvation of Soviet POWs, and the Holocaust. Non-WWII games also tend to skip over the epidemics, famines, and other mass depopulations that wars typically inflict.
Most of those wouldn't be good topics for games (though there is a scenario for Advanced Squad Leader that involves an uprising in a Warsaw ghetto) and so get glossed over in the tabletop wargames. That may give the impression of cynicism, but I really don't think that's the right description.
With some degrees of separation. Midkemia itself was based on some kind of extremely house-ruled D&D, which among other things involved planar travel to an Asian-inspired setting called Kelewan. Kelewan had its roots in Tekumel, but I don't know to what degree. I know Feist has talked about how much of the flavor of the book version of Kelewan comes from his collaboration with Janny Wurts on the Daughter of the Empire series.Wait? Midkemia was loosely based on Tekumel?
Yes, but since these days Dave is flogging crypto currencies, perhaps the thinking was that he may as well defend Barker to attract as much ill-feeling as humanly possible.Wait - it's THAT Dave Morris? Fabled Lands/Blood Sword/Dragon Warriors Dave Morris?
Well ... ouch.
Ouch. MEDIC MEDIC.When will you do that?
Please state the nature of the medical emergencyOuch. MEDIC MEDIC.
The separation of political/moral from aesthetic value is at the core of fantasy as a genre.This does speak to a larger problem in certain spaces . . . a neutral acceptance of Nazism and other horrors of history. I get the impression that the blog author, Morris, isn't sympathetic to Nazi views himself, but does view that exploring these issues is a legitimate literary exercise. And that he extends this to Barker's motivations. It reminds me of some of the things Gygax is quoted saying, showing that Gygax admired certain historical figures that were responsible for some pretty awful stuff, not that Gygax approved of the awfulness itself, but could admire the effectiveness from a "neutral", historical point of view. It seems that more than a few folks who came out of the "old school" wargaming scene that predated D&D share this amoral viewpoint on history and historical figures. A weird perspective I can't get behind, personally, and one of the reasons why I'm not a huge Gygax fan.