Paizo Leadership Team Update

I mean... if we go that way, we will have to say that every government of Earth was Evil-aligned before at least the Enlightment and presumably thereafter as well for a long time. Applying modern moral codes (especially when they are evolving so quickly as they are now) to historical governments is not the best idea, IMO.

Luckily, Golarion isn't Earth.

I mean... if we go that way, we will have to say that every government of Earth was Evil-aligned before at least the Enlightment and presumably thereafter as well for a long time. Applying modern moral codes (especially when they are evolving so quickly as they are now) to historical governments is not the best idea, IMO.

Slavery has always been cruel and heinous. We have everyone from Moses to John Brown to show us that some people of their times knew what it was, to say nothing of the fact that I’m certain just about any slave would probably tell you if they could be asked.

magnuskn wrote:

I mean... if we go that way, we will have to say that every government of Earth was Evil-aligned before at least the Enlightment and presumably thereafter as well for a long time. Applying modern moral codes (especially when they are evolving so quickly as they are now) to historical governments is not the best idea, IMO.

Slavery has always been cruel and heinous. We have everyone from Moses to John Brown to show us that some people of their times knew what it was, to say nothing of the fact that I’m certain just about any slave would probably tell you if they could be asked.

Not disputing in any way that it was always cruel and heinous. Just that societies at large didn't view it that way until pretty late in history.

Retrospectively labeling all past societies as evil because they didn't adhere to modern concepts ignores the concept that modern moral codes evolved over time and in the past many of those concepts didn't even exist. I know that is a difficult concept to wrap ones head around (took me a while to get used to it during my time at college studying history).

If there was a time machine and a modern person would travel back to the middle ages to talk to an average person of that age, both sides would probably think they'd be talking to an alien (outside of language barriers and such).

Just that societies at large didn't view it that way until pretty late in history.

Perhaps, but there is also some [arguable] evidence to indicate that a wide majority of society disapproved of slavery in many areas including the US, but for a number of reasons allowed it to continue anyway.

magnuskn wrote:

Just that societies at large didn't view it that way until pretty late in history.

Perhaps, but there is also some [arguable] evidence to indicate that a wide majority of society disapproved of slavery in many areas including the US, but for a number of reasons allowed it to continue anyway.

Sure and the US is a nation which began its lifetime during the Enlightment. As such, the start of modern values were a part of the foundation of that nation.

But the US is not the only location where slavery happened throughout history. It was everywhere.

There's really no reason for fantasy worlds to simulate our history, and doing so only opens the door for people advocating for other bad takes based on our past, such as the "should women be even allowed to adventure, ain't their place at the hearth caring for kids and cooking".

I don't think they were arguing that "we should have Golarion match real life history", they were warning about considering past countries as blanket evil which from historical study perspective is frowned upon.

Either way I do think that is also getting bit off topic

White people from countries that got rich off colonies and slavery will naturally gravitate towards frowning upon any statements to the effect of "that was bad" and will advocate for a nuanced look back that considers what was morally acceptable and what wasn't back then. No surprise here.

Rahadoum is kinda in weird place because its oppressive anti religious government that does remind of real life religious oppression, but its considered LN despite being portrayed as bad guys because... I guess they aren't as malicious as the actual Evil governments?

(That and Pathfinder has weird habit of treating religious worship and cultures separately while real life religions are usually heavy part of cultures even if member of culture isn't religious. I think its side effect of "gods are real and kind of role models rather than faiths per say")

Like... In early Pathfinder lot of neutral governments are actually quite bad on moral side, they just aren't openly malicious than stuff like Nidal and Cheliax is

There could be a more nuanced rewrite of Rahadoum.

But for now we have militant nu-atheist youtubers given their own country.

Rahadoum's problem is that during early development Golarion you literally had to have a country of, erm, "mindless savage primitive orc barbarians who KILLMURDERR-WORD because that's what all orcs do and that's why you kill them on sight" to qualify as Evil without asterisks.

Even Cheliax got the "yeah they're evil but the queen is smarter than devils and she wants good for her people and oh and there are LG paladins of Asmodeus" tint to its LE.

White people from countries that got rich off colonies and slavery will naturally gravitate towards frowning upon any statements to the effect of "that was bad" and will advocate for a nuanced look back that considers what was morally acceptable and what wasn't back then. No surprise here.

Academic circles needing reform is likely also off topic, I want to avoid summoning academics who are going to be like "well actually, we do have reason for it, you see-" and so on

...Wait is rahadoum also off topic? Dagnabbit I wanted to comment on it more. Frick I'll just go off topic myself then until we create new topic

But yeah as an apatheist(aka the weird hipster group between agnostics and atheists who are like "Eh who cares") I'm in the weird spot where I don't particularly mind Rahadoum's lack of nuanced atheism representation personally.

Like, thing that makes Rahadoum bad guys is that they ENFORCE atheism instead of it being culturally popular belief or encouraged by government. Any form of religious enforcement infringes on sapient rights to religious freedoms. I'd personally prefer if nuanced atheism portrayal was more common elsewhere than Rahadoum being "bastion of it", but I don't feel strong enough to care if Rahadoum did end up being retconned to be more friendly.

But I can say that I definitely never was big fan of their "all gods bad, good evil lawful chaos neutral doesn't matter, gods have no nuance, insert lot of symbolism about believing no individual should have power over others while still being a government with basically oligarchy" approach. Like, I do think that as LN country it would be more preferable if Rahadoum had more nuanced take on why government believes ALL gods are bad besides them just being "powerful individuals that people follow blindly" :p

Rahadoum's problem is that during early development Golarion you literally had to have a country of, erm, "mindless savage primitive orc barbarians who KILLMURDERR-WORD because that's what all orcs do and that's why you kill them on sight" to qualify as Evil without asterisks.

Isn't that Belkzen?

Totally Not Gorbacz wrote:

Rahadoum's problem is that during early development Golarion you literally had to have a country of, erm, "mindless savage primitive orc barbarians who KILLMURDERR-WORD because that's what all orcs do and that's why you kill them on sight" to qualify as Evil without asterisks.

Isn't that Belkzen?

Yep. Not-Gorbacz is talking about how early pathfinder's solution to "wait why is this bestiary entry listed as 'always evil'? Lore makes it sound like hobgoblins are at worst neutral" was "well reason why they are evil is that they are culturally super duper cartoonishly evil"

Like its origin of "all bug bears are serial killers, culturally". Early 3.5 and first few years of 1e pathfinder up to jade regent at least(probably afterwards too) was really into shocking and edge.

Academic circles needing reform is likely also off topic, I want to avoid summoning academics who are going to be like "well actually, we do have reason for it, you see-" and so on

Too late. :p Also, modern activism has no place in the objective accounting of history. The interpretation of history is of course another topic and it's there where viewing history through a modern lense makes more sense.

Yeah, I meant that Paizo's baseline at the time was that since Belkzen is evil, anything that isn't cartoonish savage primitives that eat babies alive deserves at least a shot at Neutral.

And Corvus is right, early Golarion was a lot of edge and just moderate amount of point, clearly a "this isn't your daddy's Forgotten Realms of wussy bright colours this is our slightly anime edgy murky brown take with hooked cannibal sex ogres!" pitch aimed at a target audience that wasn't exactly known for its diversity or sensitivity at that time.

Some of those early elements were good (I really wish the anime esthetic would continue, I can't get over how one early freelance artist for Paizo got dropped because grogs groaned about anime and then moved on to be the main artist for Overwatch), some were fine but overplayed (splatter horror has its place, but maybe not as front and center) and some were eye-roll inducing (slavery is LN as baseline).

Wait really? D: The early pathfinder animeish art was my favorite! THAT is what happened to them? They moved to work for the devil known as blizzard?

CURSE YOU ANTI ANIME PEOPLE! D:<

...Anyway, one more thing about what is problematic about Rahadoum for real: Rahaduom is really more about misotheism than even Golarion version of atheism.

So I assume actual atheists feels same way about Rahadoum I feel as self proclaimed(but aren't all philosophies so?) nihilist about pathfinder version of nihilism. Aka "All writers clearly believe nihilists are CE people who want to kill everything because life doesn't matter" brand of "nihilism" :p

Okay, yeah, the slavery convo is getting way off topic. If no one else steps up, I'll make a new thread after work tonight.

I mean... if we go that way, we will have to say that every government of Earth was Evil-aligned before at least the Enlightment and presumably thereafter as well for a long time. Applying modern moral codes (especially when they are evolving so quickly as they are now) to historical governments is not the best idea, IMO.

People who view the past through their modern lens are often guilty of presentism. They condemn the actions taken by the people of the past when viewed through the 21st century lens. It's a huge mistake. The people of the past operated in a world different than our modern one. They based their actions on what they knew then and the morality of their time period. There is nothing anyone living today can do to change the past unless they have a time machine.

I would like to politely repeat that this slavery topic feels distinct from the current thread.

If nothing else, there’s probably folks who would like to know about the letter and Erik’s reply who aren’t nearly twenty pages deep into an old blog post.

This is entirely on par for crappy management issues and its so infuriating because Eric didn't learn a single thing from last year. I know the team is smart enough to realize what he was doing was a horrible mistake so either one of two things happened. Either he just didn't care about the potential concerns which he has admitted to ignoring his employees in the past. Or his constant shuffling of the book's schedule meant that no one had the opportunity to edit the book correctly because of perpetually being on such a tight schedule. This also would match with the fact that there were a few copy errors in the book that you would think be easily caught.

EDIT:
Also, the whole issue of him trying to befriend Zak S kind of rings huge massive warning bells about him and does not make me inclined to trust him at his word.

The people of the past operated in a world different than our modern one. They based their actions on what they knew then and the morality of their time period.

Owning another person as property is and has always been immoral, regardless of whether or not the free people of the time thought so, or the institution's legal status.

People who view the past through their modern lens are often guilty of presentism. They condemn the actions taken by the people of the past when viewed through the 21st century lens. It's a huge mistake. The people of the past operated in a world different than our modern one. They based their actions on what they knew then and the morality of their time period. There is nothing anyone living today can do to change the past unless they have a time machine.

Partly true. But the games are intended for TODAYS audience with TODAYs values. In order to be playable, good and evil have to more or less sort of kind of agree with what we currently consider good and evil.

I mean, its historically accurate to play a paladin as a xenophobic character who will put you to the sword for worshipping the wrong god, who will happily murder babies etc. But that isn't a game that I personally want to play.

Paizo has a very long history of defining as neutral things that really ARE evil, at least to todays players. At least, to any reasonably enlightened todays players (there are quite a few gamers who's online persona, at least, seem very very very sketchy and skeevy to me)

Paizo has a very long history of defining as neutral things that really ARE evil, at least to todays players. At least, to any reasonably enlightened todays players (there are quite a few gamers who's online persona, at least, seem very very very sketchy and skeevy to me)

Yes this is a good summary of the issue, but is the appropriate response to just stop mentioning those things instead of re-labeling them as evil?

To your paladin point, this is pretty much why we have tenets of evil for the champions. So that you can still play your CG champion while battling an LE one as a villain. They didn't just say "welp, we will just stop mentioning paladins because the real ones weren't actually good". They put in some thought, redefined what a paladin means in the game and it worked fine. Why not do the same with slavery / edgewatch / folca / other issues?

Haven't posted in a few days because the conversation is now about the morality of slavery.....

Arguing semantics about society making it ok to do evil things to define morality isn't the look you think it is.

I get it, another one of those 'morality is based on perception' arguments.

If someone's perception is that a human either doesn't exist for whatever reason, or is property? That is evil. Trying to say society made it morally right is wholey incorrect. They justified an evil act by saying it is moral. That doesn't make it moral.

Base definition of Moral:

concerned with the principles of right and wrong behavior and the goodness or badness of human character.

holding or manifesting high principles for proper conduct.

------

If someone says society says it is right to own another living sentient being, then that isn't moral, it is a justification. Paradox of Tolerance in prime example right here. Justifying an evil act is the action of making something that is evil, acceptable. Doesn't make it moral.

Gonna leave this here for absolutely no reason at all.

Paizo.com is not going to be hosting discussions with people trying to justify or be an advocate (devil's or otherwise) for slavery. Unfortunately this has been how many discussion threads about slavery, including this one, have ended up going.

Slavery is something that has caused multigenerational damage to real, human, people. It has inflicted trauma on countless lives, directly and indirectly, and the repercussions and the racism it has fueled still reverberate across our society and people’s lives today. Human trafficking continues to perpetuate the injustices and cruelty of slavery to this day.

It’s part of our mission to encourage and support gaming environments where people feel welcome, included and safe. When a topic like slavery comes up and people try to justify it, it reads as trying to justify hundreds of years of pain, suffering, countless indignities, rape, and murder inflicted upon the lives of other humans. While one person might feel that they are discussing theory or abstract subjects, for too many people the subject of slavery is not some abstract concept, it is an active painful reminder that there are other humans who would try to excuse or justify this awful practice. Coming across this type of thread on our forums when simply trying to read about a roleplaying game causes harm to people in our gaming community and it is unacceptable.

So maybe, just maybe, stop.

Gonna leave this here for absolutely no reason at all.

Sara Marie from nearly three years ago wrote:

Paizo.com is not going to be hosting discussions with people trying to justify or be an advocate (devil's or otherwise) for slavery. Unfortunately this has been how many discussion threads about slavery, including this one, have ended up going.

Slavery is something that has caused multigenerational damage to real, human, people. It has inflicted trauma on countless lives, directly and indirectly, and the repercussions and the racism it has fueled still reverberate across our society and people’s lives today. Human trafficking continues to perpetuate the injustices and cruelty of slavery to this day.

It’s part of our mission to encourage and support gaming environments where people feel welcome, included and safe. When a topic like slavery comes up and people try to justify it, it reads as trying to justify hundreds of years of pain, suffering, countless indignities, rape, and murder inflicted upon the lives of other humans. While one person might feel that they are discussing theory or abstract subjects, for too many people the subject of slavery is not some abstract concept, it is an active painful reminder that there are other humans who would try to excuse or justify this awful practice. Coming across this type of thread on our forums when simply trying to read about a roleplaying game causes harm to people in our gaming community and it is unacceptable.

So maybe, just maybe, stop.

Fair enough but I'll say again a big help IMO would have been not to give someone who's backstory of terrible things that includes slavery a redemption ark. (Especially since I see people who are full on condeming slavery as they should here going on elsewhere about how good said characters redemption has been handled.)

Fair enough but I'll say again a big help IMO would have been not to give someone who's backstory of terrible things that includes slavery a redemption ark. (Especially since I see people who are full on condeming slavery as they should here going on elsewhere about how good said characters redemption has been handled.)

Given that this whole thing started with talking about Paizo handling slavery badly, that seems reasonable.

Also and meaning no disrespect to Sara Marie it seems pretty hypocritcal for the company to take that stance when there the ones who put the option for players to buy slaves in PFS (You know the program were evil options generally werent supposed to be allowed) to begin with

Also and meaning no disrespect to Sara Marie it seems pretty hypocritcal for the company to take that stance when there the ones who put the option for players to buy slaves in PFS (You know the program were evil options generally werent supposed to be allowed) to begin with

Or we could just say that Sara Marie was ahead of the curve.

Also and meaning no disrespect to Sara Marie it seems pretty hypocritcal for the company to take that stance when there the ones who put the option for players to buy slaves in PFS (You know the program were evil options generally werent supposed to be allowed) to begin with

A company is not a monolith. Blaming Sara Marie, in that role she played for Paizo, for the PFS option to buy slaves is grossly misinformed and at worst deliberately malicious. Her putting that statement out is a clear indication of where the company stands on the issue, nearly two years after Assault on Absalom 001 was published.

The reason that folks have tunnel visioned on Erik is that he had the last call on a product that has come out this month, he added a good amount of content (if the freelancer is to be taken at their word) and the buck really stops with him.

The best we can do is acknowledge our wrong doing, make a clear declaration of what the community will allow (which is what Sara did), proposing improvements(which is what Erik promised to do in his response to the freelancer), and most importantly successfully implement the improvements.

The best we can do is acknowledge our wrong doing, make a clear declaration of what the community will allow (which is what Sara did), proposing improvements(which is what Erik promised to do in his response to the freelancer), and most importantly successfully implement the improvements.

The bolded section is something I wanted to comment on. Erik, to his credit, did promise this and did not make excuses. But he also promised after it came to light that people had concerns about AoE that he would listen to those concerns. Reading between the lines of the open letter, it sounds like the exact same thing happened again (or alternatively, no one thought about the implications of previously raised concerns).

So I believe Erik wants to do the right thing. I know he will say he will do the right thing. But at this point I don't know he'll actually, ya'know. Do it. I don't mean this as an attack on Erik's person or character, but it is an observation of history, if not repeating itself, certainly rhyming. It is a big part of why I have decided I need to take a break from Pathfinder for the foreseeable future.

Hey, let's move this discussion away.

As an aside, I would appreciate if the moderators would leave this discussion un-deleted. It's useful to refer back to. Please don't make us rehash everything. XD

There's really no reason for fantasy worlds to simulate our history, and doing so only opens the door for people advocating for other bad takes based on our past...

For some perhaps, but there are plenty of other people who enjoy pursuing the stories that can come from "edgy" or "unpleasant" themes. I, for one, do not want my fantasy to be sanitized to the point where there is nothing and no one to oppose out of some sense of morality. I want my fantasy to include all the tropes, memes, and situations that influence so many of our heroic stories. If Paizo's intent is to purify all the evil races, ignore or resolve all classic conflicts and create a Shangri-La campaign, then I guess I need to re-access whether Golarion is the best setting for my own campaigns.

It's weird how often this comes up.

Fumarole wrote:

Xathos of Varisia wrote:

The people of the past operated in a world different than our modern one. They based their actions on what they knew then and the morality of their time period.

Owning another person as property is and has always been immoral, regardless of whether or not the free people of the time thought so, or the institution's legal status.

We may say it is immoral, but in other societies it has not been as such. Your statement is an example of presentism.

Gonna leave this here for absolutely no reason at all.

Sara Marie from nearly three years ago wrote:

Paizo.com is not going to be hosting discussions with people trying to justify or be an advocate (devil's or otherwise) for slavery. Unfortunately this has been how many discussion threads about slavery, including this one, have ended up going.

Slavery is something that has caused multigenerational damage to real, human, people. It has inflicted trauma on countless lives, directly and indirectly, and the repercussions and the racism it has fueled still reverberate across our society and people’s lives today. Human trafficking continues to perpetuate the injustices and cruelty of slavery to this day.

It’s part of our mission to encourage and support gaming environments where people feel welcome, included and safe. When a topic like slavery comes up and people try to justify it, it reads as trying to justify hundreds of years of pain, suffering, countless indignities, rape, and murder inflicted upon the lives of other humans. While one person might feel that they are discussing theory or abstract subjects, for too many people the subject of slavery is not some abstract concept, it is an active painful reminder that there are other humans who would try to excuse or justify this awful practice. Coming across this type of thread on our forums when simply trying to read about a roleplaying game causes harm to people in our gaming community and it is unacceptable.

So maybe, just maybe, stop.

Cori Marie wrote:

stop

So, we cannot permit examples of slavery in our fantasy

Or maybe Paizo just isn’t having discussions about slavery in their fantasy on their forums?

False equivalents are False.

The more I see people post what is clearly hurtful content in complete oblivion it makes me even closer to cancelling subscriptions.

Paizo shouldn't have to make a specific rule about hate speech dog whistling but now at this junction I am feeling that it may be needed.

Just because you are incapable of understanding how something can be hurtful does not make it any less so. It just shows your inability as a human to understand that 1: there may be things in the world you don't know and 2: your lack of empathy for a fellow human being when they speak up to what hurts them.

Oh, noes, my car was stolen, lets stop playing games that allows someone to steal carraiges!

Is no where near:

My family and culture and history is derived/impacted from/by slavery and I would rather not live out that pain in a game I use to escape those realities.

and if you think it is? I fear for society.