VelvetViolet
Adventurer
PF is great and all, but I don't find the official setting particularly original or thought-provoking. I'll list my complaints below:
While I know Paizo is never going to address this, I would like to see a 3pp setting that addresses all the different problems with this warped fantasy nightmare worldview. You don't even need to change the setting: simply providing well-reasoned justifications could create a far darker setting a la Neon Genesis Evangelion or Puella Magi Madoka Magica.
Thoughts?
- Various races like drow, orcs, goblins and so on are arbitrarily evil, cartoonishly so. Ogres are rapist hillbillies. Half-orcs are rape babies. Rape is a common way of identifying evil creatures, despite being both cliche and offensive. Furthermore, there is no contraception to prevent half-orcs from being born if rape by orc is such a common fear for women. The ancient greeks harvested a contraceptive herb to extinction, so the faux-medieval setting is no excuse. (A feminist blog mentioned these problems, and the Paizo writer who responded basically said they won't change it.)
- The entire escapist premise revolves around colonialist narratives, ethnic cleansing, and crime fantasy. Orcs and goblins are stand-ins for the ethnic "other" who the PCs systematically murder and loot.
- Non-white, non-heterosexual, and non-gender binary characters are added for PR reasons, without any critical thought given to how prejudice operates in the setting. It contrasts hugely against the colonialist narrative mentioned above.
- The disturbing morality of the game world has nothing in common with morality in real life. Whether something is good or evil depends on how "icky" it is rather than any rational reason. This leads to numerous tautologies and contradictions in the metaphysics and societies, like the lack of moral agency.
- There is a magic potion of sex change in one book, which is too expensive for transsexuals who aren't mid-level adventurers to afford because the item rules don't model an actual economy (e.g. an average peasant farmer is 50% likely to fail at his job everyday).
- Taking everything together, any attempt to critically examine the setting causes it to fall apart pretty much everywhere. The metaphysics are contradictory, the morality is repugnant, the sociology is nonsensical, the economy couldn't possibly exist, and so on.
While I know Paizo is never going to address this, I would like to see a 3pp setting that addresses all the different problems with this warped fantasy nightmare worldview. You don't even need to change the setting: simply providing well-reasoned justifications could create a far darker setting a la Neon Genesis Evangelion or Puella Magi Madoka Magica.
Thoughts?
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