Impromptu Stream with Ed Greenwood, Tim Kask, & TSR CCO

[J.Quondam]

Starting at 153:30 they start a discussion mocking "wokeness," then trigger warnings, then inclusivity, then rant about demons and orcs being evil, then back to making fun of trigger warnings

It never ceases to amaze me how triggered these people get about...

Spoiler: trigger warning!

trigger warnings.

 

[MGibster]

....but if you've run it recently, it doesn't work so well. I mean, most of it does. But ... there's a whole lot of children and women of humanoids that either need killin', or are going to attack the party. If you know what I mean.

And, honestly, I can tell you that I don't remember it bothering me way back when. But when I tried to run it again recently, I had to get rid of that. Because ... no no no no no no no.

The first time I played Grand Theft Auto III I took my sniper rifle, blew off an NPCs head, and laughed at the geyser of blood that spewed forth. I'm not a sociopath. I promise. But it was so over the top that whatever horror might have been present evaporated. And that's how I am with D&D. I ran Keep on the Borderland as part of my first 5th edition campaign* and it still doesn't bother me. But that's because I think pretty much the entirety of D&D is silly and I just don't take it seriously.

*My first 5th edition campaign was weird. I was running a meta campaign where the PCs figured out they were just avatars created by powerful beings from another world. They journeyed to Seattle where to consult the mighty Wizards of the Coast only to stop the Raiders from the bay down south with the help of the Seahawks.

 

[Dausuul]

He is referencing the exact context in which Gygax made the comments. I went back to find the exact time (YOU'RE WELCOME). It's here (~2:15:45)


Starting at 153:30 they start a discussion mocking "wokeness," then trigger warnings, then inclusivity, then rant about demons and orcs being evil, then back to making fun of trigger warnings

sigh Don't know why I bother trying to think up excuses for why somebody might have said a thing. It's a pointless exercise. It always turns out they knew what they were saying, and they said it anyway.

Thanks for going through to find that spot. Your stomach is stronger than mine.

 

[MGibster]

Gygax referenced that saying in its original context of "massacring children." He even name-checked the real historical colonel who used it when ordering a massacre of women, children, and elders. He was explaining why it's cool for a paladin to kill baby orcs.

Okay. I understand that.

here's really no way to defend that. I tried starting from the proposition that Gygax was a wargamer who enjoyed strategizing toward the optimal path to victory, and so he wanted to have "bad guy" races where you didn't have to consider the moral dimension of your strategy.

I hope you weren't under the impression that I was defending Gygax's statement. I am most emphatically not in agreement with him.

 

[Malmuria]

The first time I played Grand Theft Auto III I took my sniper rifle, blew off an NPCs head, and laughed at the geyser of blood that spewed forth. I'm not a sociopath. I promise. But it was so over the top that whatever horror might have been present evaporated. And that's how I am with D&D. I ran Keep on the Borderland as part of my first 5th edition campaign* and it still doesn't bother me. But that's because I think pretty much the entirety of D&D is silly and I just don't take it seriously.

*My first 5th edition campaign was weird. I was running a meta campaign where the PCs figured out they were just avatars created by powerful beings from another world. They journeyed to Seattle where to consult the mighty Wizards of the Coast only to stop the Raiders from the bay down south with the help of the Seahawks.

but in GTA your character is explicitly a criminal, right? So the over-the-topness is sort of like in Scarface.

 

[MGibster]

but in GTA your character is explicitly a criminal, right? So the over-the-topness is sort of like in Scarface.

Sure. And in D&D I can have a character immune from falling to death from any height because he has more hit points than the maximum possible damage. It's not the fact that your character is a criminal that makes GTA over-the-top it's just everything about the game. And I feel the same way to a large extent about D&D. It's a game where my character can mow down dozens upon dozens of human beings (to say nothing of demi humans) and feel not an ounce of remorse. And any game I can do that in is rather silly. If it weren't then it'd be super horrible.

 

[Dausuul]

I hope you weren't under the impression that I was defending Gygax's statement. I am most emphatically not in agreement with him.

Oh, no, I wasn't. You were clear that you weren't defending it. Your post seemed to be coming from the perspective of "What goes through somebody's head that leads to this output?" I was concluding that the answer could not be anything good.

Speculating... I don't think Gygax consciously believed that Chivington's massacre was okay. Like, if you asked him straight-up, he'd say no, it was an atrocity. But I suspect there would have been hemming and hawing and "well, but" on the way to that answer. I think there was a lot of compartmentalization going on, ideas that Gygax had internalized and embraced without really thinking about where they came from or what they implied. And so he busted out with something jaw-droppingly awful and it didn't even register with him what had come out of his mouth (or typewriter).

Or maybe Gygax really did think the Sand Creek Massacre was totally okay, and I'm just making excuses again for why somebody said a thing.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Ugh, because of course there is an even worse splinter group...

This shouldn't be a surprise. Five seconds of looking at WordNerd's twitter and you'll see that he's part of War Campaign, you know, the splinter group that felt that Comicsgate wasn't genuine enough about culture war and harassment. So this and the ten minute+ rant at the beginning of the video seems on point for what they do.

I might point out that one of the problems with "keeping politics out of gaming" is that it seems to be just the one side that wants to get to decide what counts as "politics" and what doesn't. While I think we can all agree that a discussion of the debt reconciliation process is politics, why is it that including LGBTQA+ couples in games is "politics," but slavery is not?

 

[Sacrosanct]

why is it that including LGBTQA+ couples in games is "politics," but slavery is not?

You're expecting consistency by a group that refuses to be consistent and is rife with double standards.

I've said it many times, and I'll say it again. If the mere inclusion or representation of LGBTQ+ folks in a game is political, and you're (general you) saying to keep politics at the door, you are literally saying those people are not welcome to game. You can't have it both ways.

I am of the firm belief that people saying to leave politics at the door are speaking from a position of privilege because you can't escape politics (since it permeates nearly everything we encounter), and they aren't the ones being disparately impacted.

 

[nedjer]

The comments earlier on discussion over argument make the point that, while the unacceptable has to be called out, extended finger wagging just leads to everyone sharpening up their existing arguments. Reminded of a BLM group in NY set up by black and brown moms. Their eager white allies felt they knew best and took all of a couple of months to hijack the group, hold an event of their own and start to gather cash. Convinced to this day how they helped out. The moms not so much.

Relatively speaking full on smiting Tim or Ernie for want of a quick cmos update seems kind of harsh.