how is asking someone on the internet their gender NOT personal? :)Mikaze, are you a guy or a girl? Nothing personal, I'm just curious.Plus, the fact that some races are always X alignment bothers me. Isn't killing on sight every orc teaching intolerance and, I'll just say it, genocide?
Just interested in everyone's take on this. Thanks.
No worries there; genocide is treated as evil in the game. It's why there are daemons that represent that sort of hateful outlook and not angels. Team Good goes for redemption rather than extermination. :)
Regarding your concerns there, I remember being deeply uncomfortable with the idea of Always Evil mortal races and all the things that resulted from that approach as a child, especially when some bad early play experiences pushed the genocide=okay thing.
Getting the Monstrous Manual afterwards to see things for myself not only sparked the imagination, but seeing "usually/often evil" and the implications that had sent that imagination into overdrive AND was a relief. Pathfinder's Bestiary may lack those words, but notes on alignment in the beginning of the book mention that alignment listings aren't set-in-stone absolutes.
So really, the primary thing kids would need there is a GM that presents those possibilities: Not just members of races not being locked into a single alignment but also options for heroes beyond just killing to resolve conflicts. :)
If it is personal, he/she can just decline to answer, or ignore the question altogether. I'm certainly not going to argue.
But that's his/her call to make.
You know what, on second thought? This was really stupid of me. It's not my business to even ask those kinds of things.
Sorry, Mikaze.
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Whaaaaaat? Dude, don't worry about it. It doesn't bother me. :)
I was all set to give a straight-foward answer but after Jessica's post I kinda like feeling ambigeautiful. (Just coined the @#$% out of that word!)
[/reininginmyusualbehaviorinathreadaboutfamilyappropriateness]
how is asking someone on the internet their gender NOT personal? :)Mikaze, are you a guy or a girl? Nothing personal, I'm just curious.Plus, the fact that some races are always X alignment bothers me. Isn't killing on sight every orc teaching intolerance and, I'll just say it, genocide?
Just interested in everyone's take on this. Thanks.
No worries there; genocide is treated as evil in the game. It's why there are daemons that represent that sort of hateful outlook and not angels. Team Good goes for redemption rather than extermination. :)
Regarding your concerns there, I remember being deeply uncomfortable with the idea of Always Evil mortal races and all the things that resulted from that approach as a child, especially when some bad early play experiences pushed the genocide=okay thing.
Getting the Monstrous Manual afterwards to see things for myself not only sparked the imagination, but seeing "usually/often evil" and the implications that had sent that imagination into overdrive AND was a relief. Pathfinder's Bestiary may lack those words, but notes on alignment in the beginning of the book mention that alignment listings aren't set-in-stone absolutes.
So really, the primary thing kids would need there is a GM that presents those possibilities: Not just members of races not being locked into a single alignment but also options for heroes beyond just killing to resolve conflicts. :)
If it is personal, he/she can just decline to answer, or ignore the question altogether. I'm certainly not going to argue.
But that's his/her call to make.
I'm sorry i was just joking with you:)
Thanks guys. I was starting to think I'd made a terrible mistake.
Thanks for the thread here.
As for myself I am a over 50 something male who been gaming for almost 40 years.
And despite the stereotype of Old gamers I live in my own home, been married long enough to start planning on what to do for my wife on our 25th anniversary , have several Kids, Im a veteran of the US armed forces and now have decent Job and have never been arrested.
Not all old gamers live in their parents basement, work in comic book shops and never been kissed by a real girl. In fact most Old gamers I hang around lead normal lives with normal jobs.
so any parent should not worry how their kid turns out if they takes up gaming, there are far more important things that are going to effect how he turns out.
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As far as the Evil races versus good thing goes.
When I started playing Runequest, I stop using the they are evil we are good mentality and never went back. in Runequest for those who never played it, there is no good evil alignment. The "bad guys" just have a different view point on how thing should work, which might include you being a good lunch.A troll in Runequest might eat humans, but then that trol will point out how is that any different then a Human eating a pig?
And in Pathfinder I run my Orcs and Goblins like Vikings and Mongols, which means they are not all that pleasant to have visit the local village, but they dont torture puppies and Kittens for no reason. And they can have a personal sense of honor, can show great kindness to their families, if you befriend one you can have a loyal ally.
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And as to the scantily glad females in gaming.
I really dont care much for them. First is the fact that I prefer to keep my games as realistic as possible.Yes, I know playing a game with multiton flying reptiles that breath fire lacks a lot in realism. but I prefer to keep the fantasy elements down to those needed to play the game. Traveling across a vast wilderness , with Poison ivy, thorns and monster, wearing a costume more suited for a honymoon night is not needed for game play.
the second is I taught my two daughters to game. having one of my Kids or nieces pick up one of the female figures and give me that eww look is something I can live with out.
I wont refuse to play with some one who brings a fighter that is dressed like Res Sonja to the table, but I will not buy them myself.
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And in Pathfinder I run my Orcs and Goblins like Vikings and Mongols, which means they are not all that pleasant to have visit the local village, but they dont torture puppies and Kittens for no reason. And they can have a personal sense of honor, can show great kindness to their families, if you befriend one you can have a loyal ally.
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My two cents: when talking about the concepts of good vs evil in role playing games I think it's actually a good thing to paint wickedness and righteousness alike in broad strokes, especially for kids. I think it's important to understand the basic concepts of an idea before you begin analyzing the intricacies of said concepts. That being said, it's not like it's a concept that you can't or shouldn't leave behind or outgrow at some point. Likewise, look at the racial diversity within player choices, PCs are more often the most accepting characters when it comes to making friends with a racially diverse group. When a townsman yells for help and the half-orc, elf and dwarf spring up with the human the players get the opportunity to judge their companions by the content of their character and to try and make friends with people with a variety of racial and cultural backgrounds that they can interact with. It's a great way to teach kids that in different places people do things differently and that exploring those differences is an adventure not something scary and alien and to be avoided or unaccepted. By playing a game in which you quite literally stand in the shoes of another you really begin to flex that empathy muscle and it can really aid in understanding how to understand.
Thanks guys. I was starting to think I'd made a terrible mistake.
I sometimes wonder what gender people are. Screen names are not a good indication, nor are the chosen avatars.
I started gaming at 9. As I got older, it is what helped me to stay out of trouble. Sure, I knew plenty of people that would do drugs or get into other trouble, but I chose to stick to gaming. Someone having a party? Good for them, I am gonna go game instead!
Seriously, it was a good way for me to help other people to choose to do likewise, go gaming instead of get into trouble. I like to think that I was a good influence on my friends, and others that became friends after joining my gaming group.
Back then it was not "cool" to be a gamer. But I didn't care. I was also on the wrestling team and I could handle my own so I never got bullied like some people. Anyway I still had plenty of friends, and I helped those that had few friends to make friends by joining with us to game. Some people thought that we were devil worshippers, but I think that they read too many Jack Chic comics. The funniest was when I was photocopying some pages from my 2nd Edition AD&D Player's Handbook so that I could make a spell compendium in a notebook binder. A lady saw a picture of a cleric that was turning undead and she asked me if it was for church. :D
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Picking up on the idea that gaming can get you to explore all sorts of other things you otherwise might not have, I want to mention some other stuff RPG's got me doing that I might otherwise never have attempted. I only recently got back into gaming after a couple decades away (which is another story in itself), and when I started putting a new campaign together, I discovered all the amazing new tools that are out there to help a game come to life, stuff that wasn't around when I was gaming as a kid in the 80's. And now I find myself engaged in creative activities I never would have dreamed of a few years back. It started with building papercraft terrain (check out Fat Dragon Games to see what I'm talking about), and from there I learned how to manipulate digital images so that I could personalize terrain to do just what I needed it to do. Then I discovered the (free) program Softrope, which lets you manipulate sound files in sophisticated ways to create a soundscape to run behind an adventure, and soon was tinkering with sound editing software to make the tracks sound just how I wanted them to. And then came the sculpting, and the painting, and so on, until now I don't hesitate to try all sorts of crazy stuff in all sorts of media to get the effect I want on my table. My wife expresses amazement all the time that I not only turned out to be fairly artistic/creative, but that I'm even pretty good. None of this would have happened were it not for gaming, and there's no reason it couldn't happen with a new kid just starting out too.
Oh, and that isn't even to mention the amazing things D&D did for my vocabulary growing up! It's insane the number of amazingly cool words that you can discover through D&D. And if I remember correctly the Pathfinder Gamemastery Guide even includes a long list of great RPG vocabulary words! I loved looking up all the ones I didn't already know.
Yeah, I am certain that gaming helped my math and literacy-related skills. Social skills, too
I don't mind throwing devils and demons at my kids when I have them. Though my view on maturity is a bit skewed since my dad let me watch Heavy Metal when I was 9 ;)
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I learned a lot about history thanks to gaming getting me interested. Also to varying degrees I've learned about statistics/probability, religion/philosophy, anthropology/sociology, geography/cartography, science/technology. There's so much I've learned that I probably never would have encountered if not for RPGs. Of course that might say more about our school system then RPGs.....
the first word i learned to spell was Catapult