Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9441294" data-attributes="member: 18">Flatly no. That's not a reasonable position. It's ignoring the world and world-building entirely.Old people, women, sick people, small people, people who have been injured or harmed by disease, people born without limbs and so on all exist in this fantasy setting. All of them, who together are easily the majority of humans, would be directly disadvantaged by a religion that put physical labour, and particularly competitive physical labour, at the heart of its teachings, and what it honoured most.It's not even that good as fantasy concept, because even if a religion did this, the reality is it would grade on a curve, within like, decades of emerging, or it'd be DOA. This is part of why I question whether Matt has really thought these through, or whether his particular worldview has prevented him from doing so.I get that you seem to what to turn this into some irrelevant discussion about wheelchairs in D&D, but this is about world-building.I don't think he would. It absolutely tells you a huge amount about this god and his worshippers. Why on earth would you think otherwise?Also the god doesn't celebrate "physical skill" (which offers much more potential for diverse capacity), but rather "physical labour", and Matt's specific example was that they had tree-cutting-offs to determine legal disputes under than religion. Obviously anyone who is small, weak or in ill-health is going to lose such a contest, unless they're so much more skilled at tree-cutting that it's incredible.The point is that IN SETTING, this god would be extremely creepy and oppressive, and lead directly to a very patriarchal society.The god is literally ableist and pretty much all kinds of -ist by celebrating physical labour above all else. Sure, a guy who was physically weak or whatever could worship him, but if he got into a legal dispute with a burly moron, he'd lose. It's not like there have never been religions which are -ist in various ways in human history, but this one is pretty special in that it manages to hit virtually of them, and further, the fact that's obviously going to lead to an oppressive and probably very patriarchal society where this religion is practiced is absolutely something that should be acknowledged. On top of that the focus on physical labour and agriculture really seems awfully close to Pol Pot's ideas. To be clear, I'm not saying it doesn't mirror themes and ideas that have appeared through human history - it does - but what it takes them to an extreme without seemingly realizing that at that extreme, they're potentially extremely destructive and oppressive.I'd also argue it's not really appropriate for "heroic fantasy", theme-wise, because it's got too many negatives. It'd be one thing if the god celebrated physical labour, and thought it was great and honorable and to be praised - but Matt was careful to describe (and I suggest you watch the video if you're going to continue to argue specifics) that this god's worshippers didn't just think physical labour ruled, they actively thought people who did more physical labour and were better at it were more honest and better people, and people who were worse at that, couldn't be trusted. That's road to Year Zero stuff which more befits a Dark Fantasy setting.</blockquote>

Verification