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Speaking of racial issues, that's another area where there's dissonance between "modern" values and RPGs - racism is abhorrent to us, but it makes a lot more sense in which there are actually multiple intelligent species with objective, observable differences.
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Speaking of racial issues, that's another area where there's dissonance between "modern" values and RPGs - racism is abhorrent to us, but it makes a lot more sense in which there are actually multiple intelligent species with objective, observable differences.
Well, part of what muddies the waters is you have two different definitions of "race" involved.
The real-world racial issues are about distinct ethnic classifications. They're all the same species.
On the other hand, "race" also means species (and, in fact, first came into usage because of the thought the various races of humanity are different species), and the racism in-game would be driven by an entirely different set of standards.
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So you are trying to say, that John Carpenter's Mars is Earth 2014? "John Carpenter's Mars was our world." It seems you are, which is a demonstrably false claim. Fantasy Mars is not Earth now.
I get what you are trying to say (and pull) and that by going as broad brush strokes as possible, and humans being involved you are trying to say fantasy worlds are mirrors of our own. It is b+~!%!~s. Simple and utter b~!+&!*s. Middle-Earth is not our world either.
Imagined constructions in part influenced by our world is not the same as being our world. You try to say mirror, I prefer to discuss influences without claiming mirrors.
Which brings us right back round to modern values. If a setting is not our (post)modernity, why would it have our modern values? I don't think it makes much sense other than providing comfort and not pushing too much difference. Difference after all can be scary, better make it not so different to now. Fantasy can be more concerned with excitement and difference than being the same old same old transplanted into a game.
It also bears mentioning that America is not in my fantasy games. So modern American values don't have much place nor will I throw them in for extra blandness in a setting that could be so much more.
You seem really, really, stuck on my use of the word mirror. "Mirroring" does not mean, nor imply, that it is exactly our world. It means that it reflects some or all of what our world is. Melnibone was not literally the earth circa 1970. It was strongly influenced by that world.
Middle Earth is similar enough to our world that it has often been argued that LOTR was an allegory for the world wars. I don't personally agree with those views, but for you to just handwave the vast similarities - including similarities in values - between the two worlds as "b+~!%!~s" makes em think that you are being intentionally obtuse.
In your unwillingness or inability to understand what I meant by "mirror", you have chosen to instead imply that by mirroring, I mean that the world must be exactly the same. I fully agree that differences can be scary. They can also be interesting. They are, again, part of the way that we use fiction to explore ourselves. Differences can be, as tacticslion so well put, cathartic. You seem to refuse to understand that by exploring difference in a fantasy setting, in a storytelling setting, that we can actually learn something about ourselves and our values.
If you presented a hero who murders nuns for fun, who cackles as he burns kittens alive, I doubt your players would accept it as a hero. It's too different. It's too alien. Your heroes can have different values than ours, but they can't be that different, or you alienate your audience.
You say that the fantasy world doesn't need "modern American values" because that will throw in "extra blandness". I have yet to see a person in this entire ridiculous thread actually define what they mean by that (granted, it's a really long thread and perhaps I missed it). It has reached a point that I suspect "modern values" might be a dog whistle to which I have been previously blissfully unaware.
Fantasy fiction is full of just kings. Is justice not a "modern value"? Fantasy is full of good guys struggling against evil that is cruel, that rapes and pillages and tortures. Is the struggle against cruelty not a "modern value"? Are your worlds full of heroes that slay innocents? Or is that the realm of the villain?
Modern values, to me, include treating people with dignity. Discretion in battle. Honor. Caring for my countrymen. Diligence. Compassion. Justice. Mercy. Respect. I honestly see little difference between the values of today and the values of yesterday, save perhaps that my personal monkeysphere is broader than that of my grandmother's generation.
Earlier comments (not yours, that I specifically recall) in this thread implied that, perhaps, "modern values" is some sort of slur against people who don't see a reason to make a person playing a female fighter start off with a lower strength score.
If you claim that your worlds are so wildly different from our own that they can't possibly in any way be considered to mirror our world or our values, but a strong woman is your sticking point, then I don't even know how to communicate with you. I don't recall you specifically championing that cause, but I've very little to work with, since "modern values" has yet to be defined.
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I wonder how many of you have read the books that John Carter of Mars was based on? Aside from Anklebiter, I mean.
The books were written around 1914. In fact, the book the movie is based on was written in 1911. And were placed just after the Civil War, when white man's burden was at its highest prevalence in thought (no, seriously, it was; that's why some of the generals who thought slavery was wrong fought for the South anyway). And written from the viewpoint of a Confederate soldier.
Yeah, John Carter fought to preserve slavery. That's only one of several ways he was most definitely not a nice guy before the reader meets him.
In general, Edgar Rice Burroughs made no efforts to describe John Carter as being anything other than racist (in fact, he makes a special point of bringing up Carter's racist views at a few points). On the other hand, being tossed into a situation where he's stuck on a dying planet that is slowly running out of oxygen and in a situation where tribal warfare is the rule of the day... Well, Carter learns the hard way that different skin color doesn't mean lesser. And that the biggest enemy can have white skin.
Yeah, the books were massively, massively better than the movie. And, if anything, they are probably one of the greatest stealth messages about racial issues that you can find. They have their own unintended racist undertones... but for a book series started in 1911, they are amazingly progressive.
Those books are also a great source to draw on when writing a fantasy game where racial issues are the plot.
Love the books, so disappointed in that attempt at a movie
So you are trying to say, that John Carpenter's Mars is Earth 2014? "John Carpenter's Mars was our world." It seems you are, which is a demonstrably false claim. Fantasy Mars is not Earth now.
I get what you are trying to say (and pull) and that by going as broad brush strokes as possible, and humans being involved you are trying to say fantasy worlds are mirrors of our own. It is b+*##!*s. Simple and utter b$+#~!@s. Middle-Earth is not our world either.
Imagined constructions in part influenced by our world is not the same as being our world. You try to say mirror, I prefer to discuss influences without claiming mirrors.
Which brings us right back round to modern values. If a setting is not our (post)modernity, why would it have our modern values? I don't think it makes much sense other than providing comfort and not pushing too much difference. Difference after all can be scary, better make it not so different to now. Fantasy can be more concerned with excitement and difference than being the same old same old transplanted into a game.
It also bears mentioning that America is not in my fantasy games. So modern American values don't have much place nor will I throw them in for extra blandness in a setting that could be so much more.
He's saying that regardless of your attempts to not have your own personal experience influence your campaign world, your own personal experience influences your campaign world.
If you present a campaign world based on medieval values, you're actually presenting a campaign world based on your interpretation of medieval values, because not being a person from that era, your values will never be perfectly in sync with those of that era.
The study of the study of history tells us that modern values directly impacts how we view the past. Often times, analyzing how people interpret the past tells us just as much about the era that that person is in.
One of the clearest examples from American history is John Brown, the...
Well I have a firm opinion on this because fantasy sometimes drops the ball, and it is so inspired by something everyday or fantasy tropes. It goes for the bland ctrl c ctrl v from our world; yet really good fantasy innovates and makes something soon.
I will give you an example of copy pasting, Lamashtu. I like this goddess, she is pretty cool and unusual and I thought she was something new, but it turns out she is just a copied Mesopotamian monster goddess with a few of her aspects more emphasised. Lame paizo, very lame. The beliefs section in the campaign book is also very short and could have a lot more than green philosophy and devil's manipulations.
When I get a hold of a new setting I always flip to gods and beliefs and see what is different to what I have heard before and what is in our world. Sometimes I get a pleasant surprise, but not always. I find the minor gods (Zyphus, Groetus) are far more interesting and new than the major gods, which seem mostly taken from previous games.
Fantasy can lift its game, or it can be repetitive and based on this world.
So you are trying to say, that John Carpenter's Mars is Earth 2014? "John Carpenter's Mars was our world." It seems you are, which is a demonstrably false claim. Fantasy Mars is not Earth now.
I get what you are trying to say (and pull) and that by going as broad brush strokes as possible, and humans being involved you are trying to say fantasy worlds are mirrors of our own. It is b+~!%!~s. Simple and utter b~!+&!*s. Middle-Earth is not our world either.
Imagined constructions in part influenced by our world is not the same as being our world. You try to say mirror, I prefer to discuss influences without claiming mirrors.
Which brings us right back round to modern values. If a setting is not our (post)modernity, why would it have our modern values? I don't think it makes much sense other than providing comfort and not pushing too much difference. Difference after all can be scary, better make it not so different to now. Fantasy can be more concerned with excitement and difference than being the same old same old transplanted into a game.
It also bears mentioning that America is not in my fantasy games. So modern American values don't have much place nor will I throw them in for extra blandness in a setting that could be so much more.
You seem really, really, stuck on my use of the word mirror. "Mirroring" does not mean, nor imply, that it is exactly our world. It means that it reflects some or all of what our world is. Melnibone was not literally the earth circa 1970. It was strongly influenced by that world.
Middle Earth is similar enough to our world that it has often been argued that LOTR was an allegory for the world wars. I don't personally agree with those views, but for you to just handwave the vast similarities - including similarities in values - between the two worlds as "b+~!%!~s" makes em think that you are being intentionally obtuse.
In your unwillingness or inability to understand what I meant by "mirror", you have chosen to...
Middle Earth is similar to our world. Okay, where is Mordor? Or Erebor mountain when it was under Dwarven control?
Please point it out on our map. Or acknowledge they are an imaginative construction not of our world.
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Middle Earth is similar to our world. Okay, where is Mordor? Or Erebor mountain when it was under Dwarven control?
Please point it out on our map. Or acknowledge they are an imaginative construction not of our world.
Mordor would be an ancient version of modern-day Switzerland.
The map of Middle Earth was actually based on Europe, then progressed backwards by Tolkien to what he thought it would have looked like thousands of years prior. He was trying to create a myth cycle for Europe, specifically parts not known at the period for their myth cycles (he apparently was unaware of a people called the Celts...), and wanted a map similar enough to the real world to be obvious what each location is but different enough to suggest a lot of time had passed since the map was drawn.
Of course, he got it entirely wrong, but that's an argument for another day.
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Middle Earth is similar to our world, not in topography, but in the desire for all people to be free from the forces of evil that threaten to overtake us in every age.
It's a deeper similarity than that. ]The map is explicitly based on western Europe, putting the Shire in the rough location where England would be, Gondor roughly in the position of Rome, and so forth. Numenor is of course based on the various Atlantis myths. Et cetera. This forum isn't a good spot for me to present the thousands of pages of scholarship that have been thrown at this particular issue.
I think part of the issue is that a few people are being hung up on the idea of a distorted mirror. If I were to write a story about a young senator from Madison, Wisconsin, named Parack Otama, who rises to be the first Hispanic-American president, no one but an idiot would fail to recognize the real-world base for this story. (The allegory is thin enough that there's a risk I could be sued for libel if Mr. Otama's conduct were sufficiently outrageous.)
Is there really a Hispanic-American senator from Madison who is named Parack Otama? Of course not. But it's pretty clearly a fun-house mirror of a real-world politician.
Middle Earth is similar to our world, not in topography, but in the desire for all people to be free from the forces of evil that threaten to overtake us in every age.
Except where people support evil regimes, find reasons to support them, or insist they aren't so bad or are traditional so they should be supported. Not everyone is chaotic good.
Middle Earth is similar to our world. Okay, where is Mordor? Or Erebor mountain when it was under Dwarven control?
Please point it out on our map. Or acknowledge they are an imaginative construction not of our world.
Mordor would be an ancient version of modern-day Switzerland.
The map of Middle Earth was actually based on Europe, then progressed backwards by Tolkien to what he thought it would have looked like thousands of years prior. He was trying to create a myth cycle for Europe, specifically parts not known at the period for their myth cycles (he apparently was unaware of a people called the Celts...), and wanted a map similar enough to the real world to be obvious what each location is but different enough to suggest a lot of time had passed since the map was drawn.
Of course, he got it entirely wrong, but that's an argument for another day.
A Switzerland that threatened to come down from the mountains and conquer all of Europe with orcs, orgres and long dead wraith kings? I really must ask my Swiss friend about this.
Dodgy bankers and toll keepers in the mountains do not make Mordor.
Middle Earth is similar to our world. Okay, where is Mordor? Or Erebor mountain when it was under Dwarven control?
Please point it out on our map. Or acknowledge they are an imaginative construction not of our world.
Mordor would be an ancient version of modern-day Switzerland.
The map of Middle Earth was actually based on Europe, then progressed backwards by Tolkien to what he thought it would have looked like thousands of years prior. He was trying to create a myth cycle for Europe, specifically parts not known at the period for their myth cycles (he apparently was unaware of a people called the Celts...), and wanted a map similar enough to the real world to be obvious what each location is but different enough to suggest a lot of time had passed since the map was drawn.
Of course, he got it entirely wrong, but that's an argument for another day.
A Switzerland that threatened to come down from the mountains and conquer all of Europe with orcs, orgres and long dead wraith kings? I really must ask my Swiss friend about this.
Dodgy bankers and toll keepers in the mountains do not make Mordor.
They don't. But comparing the maps of Middle Earth and Europe, then noting the fact it's based on Western Europe, you end up with Mordor being Switzerland. Or, if Gondor is Rome, Mordor is probably Austria. It's a little hard to tell due to the differences between the Middle Earth and the actual map of Europe.
So, yeah. It's not exactly accurate.
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Middle Earth is similar to our world. Okay, where is Mordor? Or Erebor mountain when it was under Dwarven control?
Please point it out on our map. Or acknowledge they are an imaginative construction not of our world.
You know, I no longer believe you are even attempting to argue in good faith. Your English is otherwise too good for you to fail to understand that "is similar to" ≠ "is geographically or culturally identical to". I suspect, at this point, that you are simply trolling. Maybe "honest communication" is one of the "modern values" against which you are railing.
Similar (especially definition 1)
Mordor and the evil countries could be considered a pastiche of various countries and cultures. The "free peoples" could be seen as an amalgamation of other countries and cultures. I think Orfamay Quest did a good job of making that point. A desire for freedom and a fight against expansionist evil is the argument that has been used to claim that the west in Tolkien's world was roughly equivalent (do not willfully misunderstand the word "equivalent" here to me that the Shire was literally Britain, or some other such obtuse nonsense) to the allies fighting the axis of Mordor, Rhûn, Umbar, etc.
I think we've established that you at least believe that you create your worlds entirely from thin air with no reference to our actual world. I'm sure that your players understand fully your world that doesn't even vaguely reference human history or values. Your player glossary and world guide must be a sight to behold, as you apparently start your players with no assumptions as to what is good and what is evil, what cultures will be similar to, what "law" is ... any of the tens of thousands of linguistic and social shortcuts we make every day to communicate ideas about the world around us. Again, I'd like to see such writing.
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To get more directly back on topic, I hold that values, be they "modern" (whatever the heck that even means) or not absolutely have a place in the game. If you take the opposite stance, you really would have to define for your players "that guy that's going around murdering people, he's 'bad.'" Or, perhaps bizarrely "that guy leading a genocidal war against the kind and pious people of North Fakistan, he's actually the good guy."
If you want to explore a world where unprovoked cold-blooded murder is good, then you are going to have to severely readjust your expectations of the game. It might be a fun experience; I personally don't think I'd dig it, but to each their own.
Expectations and values can be used for great effect in a game. Actually throw a flag when your characters break into a creature's living quarters and then say they are justified in killing the creatures when the creatures fight them - after all, you just broke into their house! - and see the shock. OBviously, if you won't like that sort of game, don't do it. It takes all kinds.
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