NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Essafah" data-source="post: 8326707" data-attributes="member: 16472">Well speaking as a African American male who has been playing DnD regularly since 1989 and dabbling prior to that I have never encountered racism or problems at any gaming table and this was long before WOTC's diversity push.  I am not Conservative. In fact, I am Liberal to the point of being socialist but I have gamed with people of various colors, creeds, religions, genders, and political philosophies that are vastly different from mine with no issue.    To be clear, I am not saying none of the various "isms" don't exist in society but I never experienced them at a gaming table.  Also, did I mention that I live in the Southern United States and still I have had no issues (gaming wise).One of the reasons I think this is true is because what Ernie said about the gaming table being for nerds of all origins is true.  I am in my mid-40's.  When I started gaming and was in high school DnD was not the Critical Role worshipping Geek Chic full of models looking crowd that it is now.   At that time DnD despite a surge of popularity was still looked at as a nerdy thing and nerdy was not cool at that time. Far from it in fact.   Due to nerdy not being cool the gaming crowd traditionally excepted anyone because being in a glass house no one threw stones so to speak.   So Ernie's experience in high school was not all that unique.   I never got bullied in school and I pretty much got along with with all the cliques that existed but the gamers were by far not the "cool" crowd.   Stranger Things is a far more accurate representation of the historical DnD experience of those of us that have been playing DnD for years moreso than Critical Role and its facisimiles are.I don't think what Ernie said in his Bunker interview was THAT bad.  It was a bit naive and I don't understand why he would even bring it up at all in an interview.   I don't think he said anything just in that one interview that he could not make amends for.   That being said I know he said other stuff on Twitter and Facebook. I don't know how bad (or not) those statements were as I don't have a Twitter, FB, IG, or TikTok, account as I think social media is basically an exercise in narcissism that distorts peoples reality far more than any illicit drug ever could and is also an echo chamber where ideas are  not challenged but simply reinforced by like minded people (I know on Twitter that statistics are something like 3% of people do 90% of the Tweeting or something like that).Whether he can redeem his statements or not I don't know.  My point is I have no reason to believe that I would feel unwelcome at a table ran by Ernie Gygax.  I probably would not hang out with the LaNasa guy as he seems more brash and dogmatic in his political views which are vastly different from mine.  That being said, while I want diversity in the game via representation (i.e, characters of different colors being portrayed, women being present, varying sexual orientations being present) I don't like people forcing their politics into DnD.  I play RPGs to escape the issues of the real world not explore them.  I never looked at Orcs (in DnD) as representative of me and I have no problems with alignment or good and evil races being present in the game.  The only DnD race that was problematic was the Drow and that is because their origins in Monster Mythology almost verbatim Hamitic Race Theory but I never looked at Krusk from the 3E PHB and said, "Man! That looks just like my cousin Petey."  That just didn't happen.  So I agree with Ernie's sentiments on wokeness and not being the focus of the game but rather the game itself regardless of a players politics, race, gender, and thus forth being the focus of the game.All that being said I am holding out on whether I support the new TSR3 or not but not because of his statements.  I am holding out because it remains to be seen whether they can actually deliver Giantlands and also how good Giantlands will be.  TSR3 has not mentioned anything regarding the rules mechanics of this Giantlands RPG.  They say it is Old School vibe....which is whatever. I like Elmore art—love it actually especially his female characters.  Yes I know it is evil of my as a heterosexual "cis" guy to like looking at beautiful women yet I much prefer new school mechanics such as 5E.   Then the game seems trying to appeal to old school/OSR games but from what I gather it has a LARP mechanic to it.  LARPing is not a part of the OSR and I highly doubt most fans of old school DnD and the OSR crews are just dying to go LARPing.  So I at some point MAY support them depending on ) what they can actually deliver and ) how good the product is when it is released.  Them not talking about the mechanics of their premiere game is not helping their promotion of it.   Star Frontiers I would love to see and would definitely support that.</blockquote>

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