Veradux21's page

I don’t know that I would call anything I’ve seen in 2e “dark pulp fantasy.”

Seriously, when I read that my first thought was "Am I in the right forum?" and also "Are we playing the same game?"

I am fully appreciative of Erik Mona's quick response. I would rather it be a priority that Paizo do their best to be open and clear, and I am disappointed that so many critical of the change jumped so readily to conclusions. I don't want Paizo's lesson here to be, "keep your mouth shut". Let those who often complain of political correctness walk the walk and seek clarifications before attacking.

Also, I do want to say, as I often do: The Paizo forums are a good place. They've been pretty unpleasant lately, but this is in large part because we are able to expect better here. I'd rather stay on a well-regulated Paizo than a well-regulated Reddit board any day.

Thank you to Aaron for clarifying that changes are underway. I think a lot of us got really worried when the biggest change recently was the promotion of one of the most trusted moderators off of the team--which, y'know, I'm super happy for Raychael, and I'm glad that she gets to get away from all this, it just unsettled us that the moderation team seemed to be getting shorter- and shorter-staffed.

It seemed like a change in the wrong direction, and it came around the same time a few two-week suspensions ran out and gave us some unexpected and unpleasant reunions. Bad timing.

Thank you both KC and Ace for clarifying my post. You both totally read my mind, excuse my poorly made point.

My only wish is that you all can be that transparent without having the forums descend into the "bloody flamewars", as Gorb described them, and resulting in someone as incredible as Owen being harassed. The transparency is incredibly valuable to me.

Let's be honest: No matter how many well meaning folks who actually believe in a just and equal world try to guide the forums, there are a number of equally loud contrarians who scream whenever anything changes.

Someone made the point yesterday about the slaver issue: if Erik never responded to the freelancer and just implemented the changes he proposed we wouldn't have had a bunch of "how could you censor history in my fantasy game" and "I want my edgy slavery quests" come out of the woodwork and clog up every thread even mildly related.

Only active moderation will keep these boards usable which is not going to be easy to do when you only have two mods and one of them is at a director level and the other has other critical job responsibilities.

These forums have been an incredible source for information for me, even as a lurker for years, but right now the fact that we have chuds who are willing to argue against a person's right to life and liberty (re the transphobia issue) is indicative of the state of the forum.

It needs to improve, and it won't without more moderation and more aggressive moderation. Bad actors are apparent and they need to go. Hate has no place here.

Edit: Aaron beat me to the punch... I appreciate the input. I will say that the hard stance on transphobia was a welcome step, and I hope these hard pushes for explicit boundaries continue.

Opsylum wrote:

Could we get one of the developers to clarify this? Is slavery going to stop existing as an institution in Golarion, or is it just something that's not going to be talked about? If the latter, then that's a change that's a lot easier to work with. If the former, I've got a follow-up question.

It's the latter. We've got no shortage of other plots to explore going forward, and won't be using slavery as elements of those stories. This is a good thing, and it's something I'm glad we're doing, and am grateful for the change.

James, thank you very much for your input and hopefully it'll help put this to bed.

Looking forward to more of your folks' work.

Veradux21 wrote:

the nerve-eater of Zur-en-Aarh wrote:

There seems to me to be a difference in scale between "we expect DMs to make tactical-scale changes to an AP according to the needs and preferences of their table" and "we have been detailing a major negative social force in our entire campaign world and that is about to vanish."

If that's the argument, I'd say anyone asserting that needs to believe in themselves more as an effective DM. we all have the potential to improve, but making a change to a setting (even a significant one) when you have some prep time is not impossible.

I am reasonably confident in myself as an effective DM, thank you. One part of how I care about being that is having high (possibly excessively so) standards for consistency and coherency in the fantastic worlds I present, and it is pleasing to be able to deliver that for players who feel likewise.

Then I'd refer you back to my "suspend your disbelief" point. Continuity is what Erik specifically called out in his response. Customer preference changes, acceptable content changes.

Racism was okay back in the day, today it's not. That's not a bad thing, that's progress, that's society changing to things that we are recognizing as flawed.

Just because we aren't releasing Song of the South 2 doesn't mean that we should be upset that Hollywood isn't being consistent.

Veradux21 wrote:

I'm not saying that they should have gaps all over, nor that the goals of the APs should not be clear and at least somewhat well guided, but that the DM should be able to bridge those gaps to a reasonable degree. This includes adding slavery if an especially edgy DM just must have slavery in their setting.

There seems to me to be a difference in scale between "we expect DMs to make tactical-scale changes to an AP according to the needs and preferences of their table" and "we have been detailing a major negative social force in our entire campaign world and that is about to vanish."

If that's the argument, I'd say anyone asserting that needs to believe in themselves more as an effective DM. we all have the potential to improve, but making a change to a setting (even a significant one) when you have some prep time is not impossible.

We suspend our disbelief in an incredible degree to actually play, so why not try for the removal of something as abhorrent as slavery?

Have that conversation with your players if they're concerned with the sudden lack of peoples being sold. Or just leave it in, it's your table.

Just look at this thread though, between a few folks we've already brainstormed an easy solution for Katapesh eliminating it's slave trade in a relatively reasonable and easily implementable way.

You're right, why even bother with setting books at all? What Is the purpose of these things called "AP"? GMs have to do worldbuilding and creative writing anyway. It's a wonder why Paizo even tries to put such useless products on the market. Also no one on these forums has ever complained about having to fill in any gaps, which Is why the most popular products have plenty.

Good golly, the APs are not a Choose-your-own-adventure book. It is a map to aide the DMs in describing a story. They are not all inclusive step by step walkthroughs of every possible option a player may possibly attempt.

I understand you're just taking my point to its illogical extreme but you've just made my argument for me.

Every session a DM has to ad-lib something they didn't plan. Every session a DM must describe a part of a room or an item left around that was not explicitly stated in the book. Every session a DM must make up a shop, or a path, or something to help guide their players.

If you are 100% reliant on a book for narrative then your sessions are gonna be real short.

I'm not saying that they should have gaps all over, nor that the goals of the APs should not be clear and at least somewhat well guided, but that the DM should be able to bridge those gaps to a reasonable degree. This includes adding slavery if an especially edgy DM just must have slavery in their setting.

edit:added a point.

Veradux21 wrote:

MindFl*yer98 wrote:

because they have also shown a lot of improvement over the years, their most recents products are a blast and some, like the Mwangi one, fixed some poor narrative choices of the past in an excellent manner. If this trend continues i can't see why they should not be able to handle slavery appropriately. They have the skill to handle anything else so why not that?

Ironic that there are complaints that the concerns about slavery are stifling the artistic vision of the creatives, now the concern gets turned right around when the creatives decide that they agree with that direction.

I'm not sure why this is still an active argument. Not only did Erik Mona say what they're planning to do, that he agreed with the perspective of the freelancer, but the freelancer wrote back thanking him for his response!

So the better question is why are the folks who are so adamant about slavery in their setting unwilling to let the creative team decide whether or not to include slavery in the setting?

Quoting myself here: "Every DM is a creative story teller, its up to you to decide what you do at your table. Even if you're in the wrong about what you present." If the writers are trusted because they're professionals and they've been "showing improvement" as you put it trust that the team at Paizo are going to do fine, and that the decisions they make are the correct ones for the setting. Otherwise stop griping and write your own setting.

Time to move on folks. ✌️

Because they decided to leave some pretty important threads hanging to avoid grappling with the issues they cause. This Is the core of the issue, they took an easy way out for them that leaves anyone want a better exploration of those themes unsatisfied. It shifts the effort from them to the customers and that Is not acceptable.

You mean... running the game, being a creative story teller, and telling the story you want at your table is not acceptable?... in a game where that is some of the primary efforts of a DM?

Wowee, i'd love to listen into one of your sessions.

I regularly fill in gaps of AP, I'm sure that's not an uncommon practice.

because they have also shown a lot of improvement over the years, their most recents products are a blast and some, like the Mwangi one, fixed some poor narrative choices of the past in an excellent manner. If this trend continues i can't see why they should not be able to handle slavery appropriately. They have the skill to handle anything else so why not that?

Ironic that there are complaints that the concerns about slavery are stifling the artistic vision of the creatives, now the concern gets turned right around when the creatives decide that they agree with that direction.

I'm not sure why this is still an active argument. Not only did Erik Mona say what they're planning to do, that he agreed with the perspective of the freelancer, but the freelancer wrote back thanking him for his response!

So the better question is why are the folks who are so adamant about slavery in their setting unwilling to let the creative team decide whether or not to include slavery in the setting?

Quoting myself here: "Every DM is a creative story teller, its up to you to decide what you do at your table. Even if you're in the wrong about what you present." If the writers are trusted because they're professionals and they've been "showing improvement" as you put it trust that the team at Paizo are going to do fine, and that the decisions they make are the correct ones for the setting. Otherwise stop griping and write your own setting.

Time to move on folks. ✌️

drumlord wrote:

But if you really are concerned with non-slavery topics, this is exactly where lines and veils, x-card, and Monte Cook's Consent in Gaming forms shine. Everyone should use at least one of them

I think that this is really the bottom line.

You (hopefully) know your own group and its limits. If not, you can ask. So, in a home campaign pretty much anything goes AS LONG AS EVERYBODY AGREES TO IT. Yes, that means there are likely quite a few home games that I would not be comfortable with. Thats fine.

But Paizo (and especially PFS) has to aim for something closer to what is universally acceptable to everybody. Given that the game is still fundamentally about magic, weird religions, violence in (hopefully) a good cause etc there are quite strict limits on how universally acceptable a game they can make. Pathfinder is PG-13 by its very nature (note, there are other RPGS that HAVE eliminated violence, that can be played by younger children. Pathfinder is just not one of those games).
....

Really well put. I'd echo Erik on this again:

So while I suspect the word may come up a time or two in the future, we're just not going to be covering it going forward. A few in-production items might reference it still, but it's no longer going to be a notable part of the Golarion campaign setting.

If you want to write a big adventure where people burn Okeno to the ground to have it all make sense within the fiction of the campaign world, you are free to do so.

But we are not going to.

If you want to run Against the Slave Lords, by all means, its your table. But Paizo wont be publishing content to that effect. Not sure what the concern trolling is about.

Every DM is a creative story teller, its up to you to decide what you do at your table. Even if you're in the wrong about what you present.

The Emperor declares a new crusade: Shipping fees!

The shift to free shipping is pretty recent, as others have mentioned. If you just compare the revenues of Paizo and Amazon you will notice that your expectations are a little out of the realm of reasonable.

Amazon in 2020 made a net revenue of 386 billion USD.
For Paizo, a private company who isn't obligated or practices transparency for their financials, lets just say somewhere between 10-50 mil USD annually.

You can stick any reasonable number there but the reason that Amazon can support free shipping is because of their unprecedented amount of liquid capital (And worker exploitation, lets not forget that). Not to mention that Amazon has their own shipping fleet who does it for them, built into the financial model.

You're comparing apples to an M1 Abrams tank.

Edit: I will echo the point being made that fair treatment of workers are not important than your entitlement to free shipping. My comments are only to indicate that complaints that its unacceptable that they dont provide free shipping is a farce. Paizo is not obligated to share their financials so you're shouting about something that you're only seeing one side of.

They seem to have had trouble in the past affording office cleaning services, so why are you expecting free shipping?

If you're going to start writing content out of your setting, at least write it out. Take a scalpel and slowly excise it going forward instead of taking a cleaver to all future content right now.

As others have already said, its not an enormous component of the setting where it will be an earth-shaking change.

As usual the proposed intent is being blown out of proportion.

We will not be writing adventures to tell the story of how this happened. We will not be introducing an in-world event to facilitate this change.

We’re just going to move on from it, period.

Please, we're looping, go be mad about something else. If nothing else, go post in the right thread.

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.

Thank you, but no thank you. I feel this is a legitimate concern about something that could spiral into a Dangerous policy fast. After all, moderation is to keep healthy conversations safe, not silence victims with legitimate concerns.

Cool, I always love being presented with a slippery slope and being associated with efforts to try to silence victims.

Something happening once does not make a trend, and to be clear I think the most recent changes have done a great job of allowing victims and marginalized individuals a place to speak their truth.

KC asked for it specifically so it wasn't just moderation gone wild. (I see KC already spoke to this so disregard this.) Just take a breather, friend.

I have a concern that a trend of early and fast locking may become a trend? And as such be weaponised by trolls to stifle discussion?(a clear win for some of previous trolls) If we instead say, suspend rule breakers instead of halting conversations. We might catch more bigots that way.. which is honestly a win my book

I'm sure moderation will show discretion on when to actually close a thread. Rule breakers will show their colors whether or not a particular thread is closed. Heather specifically stated that there were other threads that were similar, so not sure why you'd open another one?

At the point the thread was closed the topic had moved to whether or not bolding text was an offensive thing to do. Its usefulness had run its course.

I'd also refer you to the "Better Thread Titles" thread.

Edit: several typos

Having a post telling people that they need to show that they are sorry for harming the community rather than simply saying they are sorry being taken down shows to me that the Moderators, again, are part of why there is an issue on the boards.

What are you on about?

Yeah sucks that you may have a post removed isn't an immediate indicator that the mods are causing the problem. Inaction has been allowing hateful peoples influence the conversation, no need to be offended that you got caught in the crossfire while the mods (who are still understaffed and underfunded) are actually doing something.

Ninja edit: if you have a problem with something that was removed you may want to reach out to the staff via the email that has been indicated in other threads. Frankly, it probably isn't worth the effort, there are going to be roadbumps

Terevalis Unctio of House Mysti wrote:

Kobold Cleaver wrote:

I suppose whether an abusive poster develops a better attitude is secondary to me to the priority of ensuring they aren't posting abuse and harassment on my forums.

KC, while I don't disagree with the message of the post, one thing to point out, these are not your forums.

I don't know if I can think of a better example of the importance of reading people in good faith than assuming that the use of "my" to indicate the forums I inhabit was instead an attempt by me to seize control of the forums.

Rally the wagons! The Kobold Coup is coming!! The devious monarch will censor all our speech! (/sarcasm)

Totally Not Gorbacz wrote:

It's 2021 and some people still do the "Intolerance against trans people? Well what about intolerance about left-handed people? Ginger people? Welsh people? Help, I'm a Welsh left-handed ginger man but nobody will help me, because not all lives matter, apparently! Help!" thing?

Which seems wrong. There is no Hierarchy of the Persecuted. All expressions of intolerance, WHOEVER it is directed at, should be responded to with equal severity.

Y'all remember how folks were saying literally last night that if you lay down the line on what qualifies on transphobia people will find a way to start pushing the line and trying to creep and figure out when exactly they'll get punished?

Watch it happen, live. "There is no hierarchy of the persecuted" is like 2 steps from some primary transphobia talking points, like those KC laid out here.

But it still boggles my mind that going to a website, who literally just posted a blog about zero policy for intolerance, and then completely ignoring it? I mean.... Why bother posting at all if you know you are just going to get banned?

If the community isn't something someone wants to contribute to in a meaningful way? It is just trolling and at that point why bother? I just don't get it.

I will engage fights/arguments with people who pick them with me. Sure. But to go out of my way to just make people feel bad? Well it makes sense if there is unhealed trauma there, but it doesn't make it right just because I can reason out why.

The point is control, if they can push the line and they don't get real pushback by moderation it becomes a space for them to spread their ideals into a different community.

Its a slog but moderation is a perpetual battle to remind bad actors that this is not a space for hatred or bigotry. Part of it is with a rhetorical battle of pushing back when external forces try to redefine words, like trying to make "bigot" an insult.

Raychael wrote:

As for the posts about trans people and religion, it's less about religion and more about how people use religion. There's an important distinction.

This seems like hair-splitting and a niche carve out. I'm not interested in your opinions on my religion, or how it's "used".

Frankly, if you're having trouble finding the line it may be easier for you to not discuss religion here at all. No religious opinions expressed here ought to infringe upon or invalidate the existence of others.

keftiu, nothing direct other than they were not consulted.

I do not think it is not too much to ask. The Paizo of yesterday is not the Paizo of today or tomorrow. Internal conversations continue. My latest suggestion is to have a Playtest-style survey about what the community wants the forums to be. We've created the products in partnership with the community. I see no reason why we should not visualize the Forums in partnership with you too. But nothing has been decided. My idea might be terrible. I share it as an example that we are seeking to be better.

I love this idea, assuming there are certain mechanics preventing multiple sources of input from a single source. Thanks for chiming in Aaron.

Changes implemented from recent blog is a great example of community collaboration, in this very thread and a few others, being implemented. Collaboration is not out of reach and I think we may be able to find a reasonable solution that protects our community from further harm, especially considering that the moderation team has (up till now) been inactive relative to what the community is hoping for.

Great job folks.

Whoever drafted this blog post should probably be asked to do future blog posts updating us on any issues around UPW, Forum moderation, etc. Acknowledgement of the problem, clear statement of where the team stands on the issue, and a clear change in policy(action paired with the clear enactment of that action). Very well done.

It's really nice to see movement towards progress.

Oh phenomenal, glad that the forums are going to be host to medicinal misinformation that's actively contributing to the primary "things suck, worldwide" source

I'm sorry that your life is harder because you can't make even the smallest effort of getting a vaccine.

BadEye wrote:

Terevalis Unctio of House Mysti wrote:

Ya, so far I am not impressed, not even able to log on after my account has been validated.

We got hammered by 1000%+ higher traffic for a little while there, so we had to get some reps under our belt to make adjustments.

If you give it a little while and still have problems, our Support team is eager to help (support@demiplane.com).

Please define a little while because it has been about an hour.

Its been live for literally only an hour and a half, patience is a virtue. Take a look around the product and try again later maybe?

Hands down my favorite TTRPG actual play podcast. Southern Tomfoolery's infectious excitement and strong chemistry really makes Starfinder shine. Honestly I wasn't super excited for AtAT, but after listening to Adam (the DM) bring the unique NPCs to life and listen to the players dig into their characters I was SOLD.

Don't pass up STF, it's very much worth the time.

As a side note, their discord community is amazing and the crew does a great job interacting with the community. I'm looking forward to every new episode!

Hands down my favorite TTRPG actual play podcast. Southern Tomfoolery's infectious excitement and strong chemistry really makes Starfinder shine. Honestly I wasn't super excited for AtAT, but after listening to Adam (the DM) bring the unique NPCs to life and listen to the players dig into their characters I was SOLD.

Don't pass up STF, it's very much worth the time.

As a side note, their discord community is amazing and the crew does a great job interacting with the community. I'm looking forward to every new episode!