CHA, huh, what is it good for?

[Celebrim]

No, I disagree, while Charisma is the indicator of a high possibility of such things, it's not the be-all, end-all of them. Said "attractiveness" is not specified to be universal, you could be the hottest she-orc in all the lands, but humans still think you're repulsive. That said, they'll still listen to your eloquence when you try to convince them of something.

Ok, that much I agree with. Because Charisma bundles a bunch of things together, physical attractiveness isn't necessarily a universal feature of high charisma.

But, if we have a Comliness score, then that is exactly what we are expressing. My point is that neither having Comliness be absolute or physical attractiveness be relative is objectively right when it comes to talking about fantasy.

I think it's rather subjective to say that orcs or X other race actually see themselves as less attractive. The attractiveness "standard" is, as was said above, put forth by the "beauty god". She ranked them lower, but that still doesn't mean they see themselves as lower.

Possibly. I think you have the wrong idea of what it means to be the 'beauty god'. It doesn't mean you are someone who is beautiful and that you have an expert opinion on it. Still, there is a measure of subjectiveness in this, to the extent that the question then becomes 'How highly do we prize this attribute of beauty?' Is it something that you can live without, or is it something which - when missing - has as tangible effects on the environment as missing water or oxygen. The question for the hideous race isn't so much whether or not they are beautiful, since objectively they aren't, but whether they should care and perhaps even if they can avoid caring. Personally, I find both caring and not caring potentially interesting. I find it interesting that a race may see themselves as objectively hideous and care, and I find it interesting that a race may see themselves as objectively hideous and find this irrelevant, amusing, or proof of the valuelessness of beauty. Either metaphor for me is an interesting idea to explore.

Again, I diagree, I think "attractivness" still falls within specific societal contexts. Because there either are those contexts, and every society has different ideas of beauty, or there are no contexts, and all societies are the same.

Which is fine (and for the record I agree as well), but let's suppose for a moment that that is not what attractiveness means. There is nothing wrong with supposing and exploring the idea of that attractiveness is a universal idea that we can inspect and measure with absolute certainty the way we measure width, mass, or temperature.

Since all D&D societies are not the same, they must not have the same social standards for beauty. Therefore, charisma only makes one attractive within those contexts.

That is not something I think you can conclude. I think that depends on your previous axiomatic assertion being true, and it can be invalidated simply by assuming a universe of different axioms.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Yes.

It is after all a fantasy. You are allowed to do things like that. In a fantasy, the shadows on the cave wall are cast by things with an absolute and tangible existance. In a fantasy, Beauty gets to be a personified sentient being and holds the absolute right to judge what is and isn't beauty, and her judgment when so rendered isn't an opinion. If you disagree with it, you are literally wrong.

Now, we can argue over how Beauty is or ought to be personified, but in a fantasy you don't have much grounds in claiming that there is no objective truth. Truth will show up and tell you otherwise.

Except every time beauty has been personified in fantasy or fiction or anything it's been done so in an intensely ugly and objectifying manner.

I don't want that in my game. Nobody should.

Edit: And if you tie appearence to something that some races have positives and others have negatives to, you are absolutely doing this.

 

[Celebrim]

I don't want that in my game. Nobody should.

For some one that declares your opposition to absolute standards, you sure declare a lot of them.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

For some one that declares your opposition to absolute standards, you sure declare a lot of them.

Are you disagreeing with my statement that "nobody should want ugly and objectifying implications if not outright statements in their tabletop game?"

Really?

That's the fight you're going to choose

 

[Sunseeker]

Ok, that much I agree with. Because Charisma bundles a bunch of things together, physical attractiveness isn't necessarily a universal feature of high charisma.

But, if we have a Comliness score, then that is exactly what we are expressing. My point is that neither having Comliness be absolute or physical attractiveness be relative is objectively right when it comes to talking about fantasy.

Certainly, though again, the value of that score and how "attractive" it makes you depends on your own perceptions, the perceptions of the NPC(s) you're dealing with, and the societies that your character comes from.

I think there are interesting ways that beauty could be made subjective without attempting to say that any race is objectivly more or less beautiful. IE: humans would have say, a DC 25 for a diplomacy check when an orc is talking, but say, Gith, would only have an 18. The repulsion towards orcs is not indicated by saying "orcs are objectivly ugly" but by demonstrating that society has trained humans to see orcs as ugly. Perhaps a human society could have an "Orc Equality" group, that strives to break those perceptions.

Now we have set up societal constructs that make a certain race "ugly" in specific contexts, but not objectivly ugly.

Possibly. I think you have the wrong idea of what it means to be the 'beauty god'. It doesn't mean you are someone who is beautiful and that you have an expert opinion on it. Still, there is a measure of subjectiveness in this, to the extent that the question then becomes 'How highly do we prize this attribute of beauty?' Is it something that you can live without, or is it something which - when missing - has as tangible effects on the environment as missing water or oxygen. The question for the hideous race isn't so much whether or not they are beautiful, since objectively they aren't, but whether they should care and perhaps even if they can avoid caring. Personally, I find both caring and not caring potentially interesting. I find it interesting that a race may see themselves as objectively hideous and care, and I find it interesting that a race may see themselves as objectively hideous and find this irrelevant, amusing, or proof of the valuelessness of beauty. Either metaphor for me is an interesting idea to explore.

I agree, though I still dislike the concept of "objective" beauty, because it's never really "objective", it's really "human standards". Orcs are ugly 'cause humans don't like orcs, aasamir are pretty because heavenly things are prettier. It's all a human standard, and worse than that, it's a stereotypical fantasy human standard.

Which is fine (and for the record I agree as well), but let's suppose for a moment that that is not what attractiveness means. There is nothing wrong with supposing and exploring the idea of that attractiveness is a universal idea that we can inspect and measure with absolute certainty the way we measure width, mass, or temperature.

Yes, but not in a tabletop RPG, I don't think there's room for it here. I think that racism, sexism and other-isms can be explored in sjbective contexts. Why do humans of Cityland find orcs ugly? Why do dragonborn of Dragonville not?

That is not something I think you can conclude. I think that depends on your previous axiomatic assertion being true, and it can be invalidated simply by assuming a universe of different axioms.

Of course, but isn't D&D a universe of varying axioms? All D&D really is is the barebones structure to a world. The finer details, things like social constructs within human, elven, orcish socities, are left up to the GM building the particular world for that particular adventure.

 

[Celebrim]

Certainly, though again, the value of that score and how "attractive" it makes you depends on your own perceptions, the perceptions of the NPC(s) you're dealing with, and the societies that your character comes from.

Well, if we axiomaticly accept that beauty is 'in the eye of the beholder', then it must come from somewhere and those are as good of explanations as any.

I think there are interesting ways that beauty could be made subjective without attempting to say that any race is objectivly more or less beautiful.

I'm not saying that the concept of beauty is uninteresting if we make beauty subjective. That's an interesting thought as well, and the more interesting because at least at a surface level it appears to be true. But, I am saying that I find the concept of objective beauty to also interesting, and the more interesting because at least on a surface level it doesn't appear to be true. To me, exploring what isn't tells me often as much about what is as exploring the thing directly. Indeed, I consider this one of the great virtues of speculative fiction generally. We can firm up our notions of the real by contrasting it with the unreal. And we may discover every once in an while some counterintuitive suprises - like non-Euclidian geometry, general relativity, and Hisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.

I agree, though I still dislike the concept of "objective" beauty, because it's never really "objective", it's really "human standards". Orcs are ugly 'cause humans don't like orcs, aasamir are pretty because heavenly things are prettier. It's all a human standard, and worse than that, it's a stereotypical fantasy human standard.

Ok, fine. If that's what you dislike, all the more reason to play with this particular toy. What if we imagine a world where the objective standards of beauty show humans to be rather ugly things? What sort of other standards of beauty might we have? What would their basis be? What is an alien standard of beauty, and what within it might we find in contrast and in common with a humans love of (for example) the curve of a well turned ankle?

Yes, but not in a tabletop RPG, I don't think there's room for it here. I think that racism, sexism and other-isms can be explored in sjbective contexts. Why do humans of Cityland find orcs ugly? Why do dragonborn of Dragonville not?

I'm not at all saying that that racism, sexism, and other-isms can't be explored with a subjective standard of beauty. I'm suggesting that there are perhaps other things, which, to be honest I'd find less well explored and less trite than your typical critical theory inspired deconstruction. One of the reasons fantasy generally seems so trite to me, is that people seem little inclined to take much risk with it. (That's about the only thing in this thread I agree with ProfessorCirno on.)

Of course, but isn't D&D a universe of varying axioms?

Not just the D&D universe, but every universe. That's one of those surprising bits of counter-intuition that turns out to be true. My feeling is most people give relatively little thought to what those axioms ought to be when they slap the label 'fantasy' on the setting. Science fiction writers tend to be somewhat better in this regard which is why I find that genera to have a little more breadth to it.

 

[Celebrim]

Are you disagreeing with my statement that "nobody should want ugly and objectifying implications if not outright statements in their tabletop game?"

I don't recall you making that statement earlier, so this is the first oppurtunity I've had to disagree with it.

I disagreed with the statement: "Except every time beauty has been personified in fantasy or fiction or anything it's been done so in an intensely ugly and objectifying manner." I also disagreed with the judgment of what people should want, and I think that the currents of stories you find "ugly and objectifying" usually run a couple of levels deeper than you seem to consider.

Let's take something that I think you can relate to easily, because its surface level is exactly where you seem to be at. One of the classic explorations of the subjective nature of beauty is Rod Sterling's "The Eye of the Beholder", in which face of the woman who has undergone plastic surgery is revealed to be the beautiful Donna Douglas who revolts her monsterous surgeons with her horrifying appearance.

But we can go deeper and deeper into this story. Below the first level reading of the story that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, there is a fairy tale reading of the story. The girls beauty reflects her true beauty, just as the ugliness of the surgeons reflects their true inner ugliness. So maybe the story actually uses a beautiful girl in the role of its heroinne to express the inherent evil in rejecting someone on the basis of their appearance, or the evil in the insentivity that the surgeon pay to the young girl's ugliness, or the ostracism she experiences on the basis of only her appearance. The story isn't an inversion at all, since it is in fact the beautiful girl with which we sympathize. It's actually then a story very much like the tale of Fairyfoot.

But that's just one level down. We can go further into the story. The story ought to have the exact same meaning if the girl is hideous and the surgeons are beautiful. Afterall, isn't the point of the story that appearances are superficial? So maybe the story is judging us for giving our sympathy to the girl merely because she is beautiful. Maybe we ought to be sympathetic to the surgeons after all, since aren't we rejecting them primarily because they are hideous?

And we can keep going inward, alternating our viewing between objective and different subjective frames, finding new angles at every level. A good story is like that. Far be it from me to take a story like Cinderella or Beauty in the Beast or Iron Hans and say, "Except every time beauty has been personified in fantasy or fiction or anything it's been done so in an intensely ugly and objectifying manner." I have no basis for saying that at all, and I suspect you'd be rather hard pressed to defend such a universal denounciation of all of literature. Feel free to try, but my guess is that you are denouncing by rote because someone taught you to say so. You strike me as the sort that thinks we ought to look at a story in just one way and if we don't look at it that way, then we are evil, because you've littered this thread with comments exactly of that sort.

Which is why I was disagreeing with: "I don't want that in my game. Nobody should."

What are your qualifications to tell me what I should and shouldn't think about?

Now you say, "nobody should want ugly and objectifying implications if not outright statements in their tabletop game" and dare me to disagree with that as if you've made the fight hard for me. But you went ahead and threw the beauty word in as if there really was some absolute standard of beauty and you knew what it was, and as if beauty was a really good metaphor for something. So why exactly should this be kicking against the goads for me to point out that not only is it maybe worth while to think on ugly things from time to time, but if you are willing to call something ugly you must think there is something valuable to equating physical appearances with something deeper than the skin. If that's the case, then a fantasy setting is just about begging for some objects that personify our types of beauty and its absence so we can dig a bit into that theme.

 

[Sunseeker]

Well, if we axiomaticly accept that beauty is 'in the eye of the beholder', then it must come from somewhere and those are as good of explanations as any.

Sure, of course they do. But they have different sources, not one "Beauty God".

I'm not saying that the concept of beauty is uninteresting if we make beauty subjective. That's an interesting thought as well, and the more interesting because at least at a surface level it appears to be true. But, I am saying that I find the concept of objective beauty to also interesting, and the more interesting because at least on a surface level it doesn't appear to be true. To me, exploring what isn't tells me often as much about what is as exploring the thing directly. Indeed, I consider this one of the great virtues of speculative fiction generally. We can firm up our notions of the real by contrasting it with the unreal. And we may discover every once in an while some counterintuitive suprises - like non-Euclidian geometry, general relativity, and Hisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.

Eh, I think part of our problem is that you're interested in the math, and I'm interested in the theory.

Ok, fine. If that's what you dislike, all the more reason to play with this particular toy. What if we imagine a world where the objective standards of beauty show humans to be rather ugly things? What sort of other standards of beauty might we have? What would their basis be? What is an alien standard of beauty, and what within it might we find in contrast and in common with a humans love of (for example) the curve of a well turned ankle?

But that's the same thing, only claiming it's from another perspective to sound intellectual about it. And by "human perspective" I was unclear, I didn't mean humans in the game, I meant human designers.

I'm not at all saying that that racism, sexism, and other-isms can't be explored with a subjective standard of beauty. I'm suggesting that there are perhaps other things, which, to be honest I'd find less well explored and less trite than your typical critical theory inspired deconstruction. One of the reasons fantasy generally seems so trite to me, is that people seem little inclined to take much risk with it. (That's about the only thing in this thread I agree with ProfessorCirno on.)

Eh, I think objectivism is trite, but hey that's me.

Not just the D&D universe, but every universe. That's one of those surprising bits of counter-intuition that turns out to be true. My feeling is most people give relatively little thought to what those axioms ought to be when they slap the label 'fantasy' on the setting. Science fiction writers tend to be somewhat better in this regard which is why I find that genera to have a little more breadth to it.

Gotta agree with you on that one.

 

[Celebrim]

Sure, of course they do. But they have different sources, not one "Beauty God".

Yeah, but I'm just saying that there is nothing wrong with supposing that there is one 'beauty god' and then wondering what the universe would be like in that case. That creates a world with different rules, and that is what interests me. Just as a really shallow example, what would the world be like if physical damage to your beauty, scarring for example, tend spiritual and emotional damage to you. Would it be because of the spiritual and emotional damage that the visible scar was evident? Would the truly pure hearted be unscarrable? Or would they in effect now be wearing a disguise, however permenent of one? What if we really lived in a beauty and the beast world, were inner ugliness turned you ugly but inner beauty could redeem you again? What would we make of beautiful monsters in such a world, and could any really exist?

Persumably, I'd take that as a tag line of a campaign over 95% of the stuff I see thrown around as campaign ideas.

But that's the same thing, only claiming it's from another perspective to sound intellectual about it. And by "human perspective" I was unclear, I didn't mean humans in the game, I meant human designers.

Ok, I'll take that lump. You're right, and I should have seen that swing coming. We can't ever leave our human perspective. Even in our imaginations we are trapped in that. But I'm a person who is very much intrigued with the striving for the (perhaps unattainable) perspective of The Other. I like science fiction because it creates aliens of various sorts by imagining, haltingly and often failing I admit, what something would be like if it had some characteristic not found in ourselves or lacked something we think we have. I like fantasy for much the same reason. It's in this mirror of The Other that I think we see ourselves more clearly, even if in truth we can never see anything but ourselves. I'm not sure we ever see ourselves without that attempt at a reference point of the non-human, and if science-fiction and fantasy don't serve that purpose then I'm not sure that they serve any good purpose at all.

Eh, I think objectivism is trite, but hey that's me.

Maybe it is. But, it's certainly less hip right now and there is something to be said for being unhip.

 

[Sunseeker]

Yeah, but I'm just saying that there is nothing wrong with supposing that there is one 'beauty god' and then wondering what the universe would be like in that case. That creates a world with different rules, and that is what interests me. Just as a really shallow example, what would the world be like if physical damage to your beauty, scarring for example, tend spiritual and emotional damage to you. Would it be because of the spiritual and emotional damage that the visible scar was evident? Would the truly pure hearted be unscarrable? Or would they in effect now be wearing a disguise, however permenent of one? What if we really lived in a beauty and the beast world, were inner ugliness turned you ugly but inner beauty could redeem you again? What would we make of beautiful monsters in such a world, and could any really exist?

Now, supposing on the outset that the "Beauty God" was the case, it would indeed be interesting, because while it would be auspiciously objective(a god making the decisions), we'd also have to remember that said god may be subjective themselves.

Persumably, I'd take that as a tag line of a campaign over 95% of the stuff I see thrown around as campaign ideas.

Inner impurity/purity visually affecting your appearance is IMO, a little boring. I find the world much more interesting when your "spirit" has no effect on your physical appearance.

Ok, I'll take that lump. You're right, and I should have seen that swing coming. We can't ever leave our human perspective. Even in our imaginations we are trapped in that. But I'm a person who is very much intrigued with the striving for the (perhaps unattainable) perspective of The Other. I like science fiction because it creates aliens of various sorts by imagining, haltingly and often failing I admit, what something would be like if it had some characteristic not found in ourselves or lacked something we think we have. I like fantasy for much the same reason. It's in this mirror of The Other that I think we see ourselves more clearly, even if in truth we can never see anything but ourselves. I'm not sure we ever see ourselves without that attempt at a reference point of the non-human, and if science-fiction and fantasy don't serve that purpose then I'm not sure that they serve any good purpose at all.

Likewise, we can still work with the "human standard" in the base D&D world. None of the other races, save Elves and Dwarves have a comprable society, and those two keep to themselves as much as possible. It would be fairly simple to set up your world as one where human empires are so vast, that they define beauty for even those who are not their subjects. Seeing creatures with past empires and obviously non-human features(such as dragonborn) attempting to meet up to human standards would be interesting. Not that they aren't designed to by D&D designers anyway(lizard-women with boobs what?) but still.

Maybe it is. But, it's certainly less hip right now and there is something to be said for being unhip.

But when it's hip to be unhip then isn't it still hip? You don't really have to answer that. It just kinda reminded me of all the "non-conformists" who conform to the norms of non-conformity. As my page also says, I live in one of those towns where it's hip to be unhip, so it gets old incredibly fast.

To be honest I'm playing more of devil's advocate here, as I generally vouch for objectivity in most things. I'm not overly fond of the vein of feminist theory that advocates looking at all things from a subjective, personal point of view. Interesting and useful at times, but overall, it just leaves people incpable of understanding each other.