Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celtavian" data-source="post: 6765205" data-attributes="member: 5834">Yet you can't prove what I'm saying wrong, so disagreeing is meaningless. As I said, you are stating the world as you would like it to be, not as it is.Yes, it does. That is why racism or some form of prejudice has existed in every human culture and continues to exist. It is part of the character a culture and humanity in general. It has been impossible to breed out.And you can prove this how? Lawful Neutral or even Lawful Good societies can have slavery. It depends on the nature of slavery. There were no mass prisons back in the ancient days, so when you defeated your enemy taking them as a slave was often more merciful than massacring them. Once again, you are imposing your view upon a complex issue. I get it. Modern people don't want to believe slavery in any form could be a more "good" option than the alternative. I don't like slavery either. I don't delude myself into believing that it was always "evil." It was sometimes a more merciful option than the alternative when dealing with competing human groups.You want a concrete change to the game to suit your personal belief of what you consider good and evil. I want a game based on historical mythology and religious philosophy to increase verisimilitude. That means having constructs like the Wall of the Faithless that even "good" gods support. In essence, the traditional view that there is a punishment for being faithless.Provide historical examples or you can in the mirror on this one. I read quite a lot. That is why my arguments are usually framed with real world examples that I'm not much seeing in your arguments given how well read you claim are.Almost all gods act like jerks to a person that doesn't like the rules they require.I doubt a person with a degree in anthropology would make the statements you make. The Golden Rule? What would The Golden Rule be to a Viking? Let me see. If you as a modern human attempted to say tell the Viking you would prefer to die in bed with family, he might tell you that is a weak way to die. He would prefer to die in battle, so that he could ascend to Valhalla. So would you follow The Golden Rule and give him battle so that he might die the way he wishes and possibly get you killed or would you practice  your personal point of view? Or what of the variety of other cultures who say don't like to be treated in the same manner that you do due to different belief systems?I learned in anthropology a thing called The Platinum Rule which said "treat others as they wish to be treated." That meant you should learn their cultural beliefs if you go to their home or area and learn how they want to be treated according to the standards of their culture including ideas of good and evil. I guess a person with an anthropology degree like yourself never learned that rule, even though it is an extremely common teaching among those that are truly learned and understand human culture and the psychology of human beings. Not people that attempt to impose their idea of good and evil on people, when it provably does not exist.At best you could say each culture considers certain things good like feeding the hungry or not murdering another without cause. That does not mean their idea of good and evil is the same. It only means that certain ideas of what is considered good behavior might be considered common to human cultures. If you walk into another culture thinking, if I just feed a few people and manage not to kill anyone for no reason then they'll think I'm good, well, you will be in for quite a surprise because good and evil are extremely complex ideas in each culture. What you might consider good, might be a problem in another culture. What you might consider evil may well be completely acceptable in another culture.So don't try to sell me on something that any basic student of anthropology would learn was a false supposition.I'm not interested in changing opinions. I'm interested in you supporting yours with evidence, which you have not done. You have requested a change to the game based on your personal beliefs that have no basis in history or the real world. I have answered your statements with proof that you are wrong about things like The Golden Rule and the idea that good gods can be jerks and often do cruel acts to enforce their religious dominance. This is historical and mythological fact. The only reason to change the game would not be to create verisimilitude based on real ancient mythology, but to be politically correct to suit those people that don't like the ancient ideas found in religions and the idea of an afterlife being a reward for worship as well as acting in accordance with a deities ideas of good and evil. I'd rather just have those folks state quite clearly they don't like the idea of gods judging people faithless. It's not right by modern standards. They would prefer a sanitized view of religion that is almost like a Big Bang Theory of creation where good and evil are universal forces like gravity that allow them to be good without the heavy-handed ideas found in ancient religions. That at least would be intellectual honesty rather than this ridiculous back and forth on things like The Golden Rule and D&D not modeling religion on ancient mythological polytheism. I do not care for intellectual dishonesty. When I see it, I can't help but challenge it. You are engaging in an intellectually dishonest discourse with no foundation in history or even modern anthropological viewpoints.I'll leave it at that considering in my own game worlds, I don't even worry about when a character dies. I do play the gods as though they are real. And faithlessness is a sin that causes you to end up on The Wall of the Faithless in the Forgottem Realms or an unprotected soul wandering a place where other beings are looking to harvest you for their purposes. You want protection, you better choose a deity or pantheon to follow. Or you better be so powerful that you can challenge gods and demons to battle. Or you have simply obtained immortality and never, ever die. Plenty of ways in D&D to circumvent the judgment of deities. If they continue to sanitize D&D to suit the modern crowd that doesn't want any history or myth in their D&D, the game becomes less enjoyable for me.</blockquote>

Verification