Of all the changes I thought Paizo would make to Pathfinder.....

[thejeff]

Kobold Cleaver wrote:

Yeah, this is a silly thread. If the OP wants to be taken seriously about this, maybe some willingness to defend their "Jewish people need to take one for the team here so I don't have to change my vocabulary" take would help.

I don't feel strongly about this issue, but I'm not Jewish. The history of the item certainly seems bonkers, and Gary Gygax deserves the benefit of negative fifty doubts. It seems like a perfectly reasonable change to make. Why get offended at a change that's already in the past? You're the ones getting outraged over nothing at this point.

Yeah, I could seem some rallying around in defense of it not being a big deal if this was a complaint thread demanding Paizo change it, but this seems like defending Paizo against a woke mob threat that never even existed. Unless I missed some huge outcry demanding this change before they made it.

[Terevalis Unctio of House Mysti]

That being said, part of the human experience is being able to tap into the mythologies and symbols of other peoples and cultures. Respect needs to be maintained. Etmologies are important to understand but so are the applications of how those words grew and developed and what they may or may not mean for the present.

[TheGoofyGE3K]

Freehold DM wrote:

Andostre wrote:

Tender Tendrils wrote:

Though, I do prefer "Soul Cubby" to "Soul Cage".

Soul Snuggie

Great. Now I wanna see lich infomercials.

Check out starfinder!

[BigNorseWolf]

Kobold Cleaver wrote:

Yeah, this is a silly thread. If the OP wants to be taken seriously about this, maybe some willingness to defend their "Jewish people need to take one for the team here so I don't have to change my vocabulary" take would help.

No one is obligated to defend a position they do not hold.

Which is what you get when you take something from someone elses paradigm that this isn't a big deal, and insist that that CAN"T be true, it IS a big deal, it MUST be a big deal, so every argument must go with the idea that it is a big deal.

They don't. That is YOUR starting point. That is not everyone's starting point.

The idea is there there is no harm. There is no hit to take. Its a gust of wind.

Judging by the number of "I'm not Jewish but..." seen in this thread there is a significant divergence between the groups "offended by this" and "Jewish people."

Restore those original value into the F(x)

The tiny vocal minority of people offended by this* need to leave over because its nothing, so I don't have to change my vocabulary

and its a much more reasonable position. More reasonable is usually how positions seem when you're not trying to cram them paradigms they're not made with. Its like trying to run a windows program on a mac.

[GM_Beernorg]

Alright, going to give this my one and only go

1. Gary was not a perfect human, and purposefully or not, many elements in the original TTRPG he in part created (you know, along with a gent named Dave and a small circle of others) are imperfect creatures at best.

2. The nature of TTRPG's today is VERY different, excellent example, phylactery swiftly morphed in the game from a very obvious real world religious object to any number of forms that were not that at all. This happened before Paizo even existed. What this means is that TTRPG's change and grow with time, and through the people that play them. This is a good thing.

3. When one goes looking hard enough for fault, one will always find it. What do I mean by this? What I mean is that there are hundreds of terms in TTRPG games that in theory could be found offensive to someone. Knight...does this offend those real people in this world who have been knighted? Barbarian, dwarf, monk, commoner, long sword (due to the fact it is not a real sword, the term would be military sword...are real life western martial arts practitioners offered...), halfling, paladin, golem, cleric, druid, Varisian. The list can go on and on. But the real question is should it? Terminology in the game is very often not at all like what the real world term was, is, or meant. Knights...in reality were over-privileged jack wagons who took horrible advantage of the peasants (see commoners) they ruled over in the feudal system. Does that mean that the term should be stricken from the game and changed to something else? IMO no.

4. In closing, I pose this, where does the line get drawn regarding what is truly offensive and hurtful to others regarding game content? If you can offer a fool proof way of measuring this, then you are better than I, because I cannot. I am an old school gamer, I have been playing since 1991, I have seen a great many things change in the game, often for the better. However, it is all too easy to take the desire for positive change to a level where it is no longer positive. I am personally fine with Paizo removing phylactery as the term for an extremely evil being's soul receptacle, I get it, I get why it was a bad choice then, and why it is a flash point now.

However not all terms are created equal, removing/changing say barbarian or monk (because one is a term that was or can be used in a derogatory manner, the other an real world religious title) just because they are such, is not something I would want. Food for thought, the way most modern TTRPG’s portray barbarians is far better than the origin of the word. Barbarians (in many TTRPG’s today) are often semi-nomadic people with a deep sense of tradition, they often live in harmony with the land they inhabit, and have a strong sense of family/community. None of these are bad things, even if the root word was.

GM Beernorg out.

[WWHsmackdown]

I'm down to change my word use to something less insensitive. I don't like soul cage so I'm going to use anima phialam. Soul vial in Latin seems adequately metal.

[Tonya Woldridge]

Happy Saturday! We don't have staff in the office on the weekends, so our ability to keep on top of the forums is difficult. For now, I'm locking this thread. I will come back and clear flags, then reopen the thread. This won't happen for a few hours, as I'm having a family brunch right now. I encourage everyone else to take a step away from the keyboards to do something relaxing/enjoyable in the interim. Thank you all.

[Tonya Woldridge]

It took me longer to get back to this today than expected, as family brunch turned into family afternoon. I got pumpkin pie and movie time out of the experience. I hope the rest of you had time that was as relaxing.

I removed several series of posts. Some were baiting, others were repeating discussions in other threads that were tangential here, still more were personally harassing. I am going to unlock this thread now that moderation occurred. If you wish to discuss the change, alternate terminology, or other related topics, the thread is here for you. If it turns into baiting and attacks, the thread will be locked. Please help me have a Sunday off by keeping your posts within the community guidelines. Thank you!

[BigNorseWolf]

CorvusMask wrote:

There IS often tendency of people in internet put responsibility of being civil at one side of conversation when it really should be shared one. Breaking that usually leads to things just escalating until nobody wants to be civil.

Right. But if your argument is "Its nothing get over it" calling someone a krutarking rutabaga isn't self defeating. Its nothing, get over it.

If your argument is that all hurts matter, that all words matter, then calling someone a krutarking rutabaga undermines your own argument. Clearly it's ok to use language and words some people don't like despite the prohibition on words hurting. It's just convenient that the circumstances allow it when you want to do it but not when the people opposed to you want to do it. For varying values of you.

[John Lance]

"Yeah, this is a silly thread. If the OP wants to be taken seriously about this, maybe some willingness to defend their "Jewish people need to take one for the team here so I don't have to change my vocabulary" take would help."

I'm trying to think if there could be a less charitable interpretation of my original post and I'm coming up blank. My original post was simply stating that, for me, I've been having trouble figuring out what is going on with Paizo (and Wizards of the Coast as well) when it comes to changes, modifications, etc.. Believe me, my fellow VOs and I used to lobby for all kinds of changes back in the day, especially when new material came out, and it was usually in vain. Understandably so, in some cases, Paizo had a lot on their plate back then (and still do, from all accounts) and you have to have priorities. So anytime I see a change in any system I play, I usually have the reaction of either "Oh yeah, that's been an issue for a while, glad they finally got around to it" or "Why did they spend time and effort changing that? What that really a priority?" For me, the soul cage change was more of the latter. It does provide some clarity in the differences between items but I can think of a dozen changes or clarifications that would make more creative and mechanical sense.

That's it, that was the reasoning behind my original post. The change makes some sense, but is so far down on the list of things I think need modification that I never saw it coming. Plus, since I'm a first edition diehard, it'll never be an issue for me or my home game. It just struck me as an unusual choice, nothing more than that.

[captain yesterday]

I'm fine with the change, Soul Cage just sounds more badass.

[MiqoRems]

John Lance wrote:

So anytime I see a change in any system I play, I usually have the reaction of either "Oh yeah, that's been an issue for a while, glad they finally got around to it" or "Why did they spend time and effort changing that? What that really a priority?" For me, the soul cage change was more of the latter. It does provide some clarity in the differences between items but I can think of a dozen changes or clarifications that would make more creative and mechanical sense.

... exactly how much time and effort do you think is spent on "we're going to call them soul cages instead of phylacteries going forward"? Because it ain't much. It's certainly less than the cumulative time and effort this thread has spent talking about it.

[Cori Marie]

Mechanical and creative aren't the only reasons to make changes.

[Kobold Catgirl]

Sorry, John, I inferred from others' posts that you hadn't posted since the OP and assumed this was another bad faith troll attempt. We've had a lot of them lately and I've gotten cynical. Thank you for posting to clarify. I still disagree, but it was unfair to reduce your position so glibly if your question was in earnest. That's my bad, actually.

Also, while I do think there's valid criticism of the way golems have been homogenized over the years, I also don't think they compare to taking a religious symbol associated with an often persecuted religion and turning it into a symbol of one of the most evil and dangerous monsters in the entire game.

Like I said at the start, I don't feel strongly about this, but I'm not Jewish. I'm not really up for debating this in-depth. That said, the change seems perfectly reasonable to me.

[Terevalis Unctio of House Mysti]

In the end does it bot boil down to people are going to do what they are going to do at their table despite official name changes?

[Ella_Shachar]

Long-time lurker who always thought it was wiser not to interact at all on here, but it's frustrating to watch gentiles telling Jews how we should feel about portrayals of our culture doing so and speaking for us.

I think the comparisons to holy water are in bad faith. The problem isn’t that tefillin are in the game--it’s that one of the three major pieces of ritual apparel for Jews (the others being the kippah and the tallit) is portrayed as a marker of pure evil. Maybe 99% of players don’t know what “phylactery” means. It’s not even a term Jews usually use for tefillin, although it may have been when Gary Gygax learned it, since he grew up during the days of abandoning Hebrew terms and adopting English ones in an attempt to appear less scary and foreign to gentiles. But when players look it up, the first thing they’re going to see is that phylacteries are something Jews wear.

As far as other uses of Jewish folklore:

I’m not happy at all about Tolkien’s portrayal of dwarves, but Pathfinder dwarves have departed enough from Tolkien’s antisemitic stereotype to become their own thing, and dwarves aren't portrayed as inherently, emblematically evil in the way liches are.

I think it's funny that a company founded by gentiles decided to use as its mascot a figure from Jewish folklore best known for protecting Jewish communities against gentile violence, but that’s also not a purely negative portrayal.

Both of these are different from choosing a distinctive visual marker of Jewish practice as an identifier of an evil, undead spellcaster.

There’s a long and sordid history of associating Jews with evil sorcery (and witchcraft—the familiar image of the Halloween witch with a tall black hat and black robes and a prominent nose has antisemitic origins), the undead (ranging from vampires to Cornish knockers), and drinking the blood of children (the blood libel). All of these also figure into lichdom in early D&D. None of those details by themselves make the portrayal antisemitic, but once the lich is coded Jewish via phylacteries, they look a lot more suspect.

It’s not "offense" (finding the association insulting) but harm that’s at issue here. These are associations that have been used as justification for forced conversion and genocide for millennia. They weren’t harmless then, and they’re not harmless now.

Not when almost 1 in 5 Americans subscribes to Qanon, a nest of conspiracy theories promoting the same blood libel popular in the medieval era.

Not when American politicians defend marchers shouting “blood and soil” and “Jews will not replace us.”

Not when synagogue massacres and murders of Jews for being Jewish are an annual occurrence in the US.

In Pittsburgh.

In Poway.

In Jersey City.

In New York.

In El Paso.

Stop claiming that talking about us and our culture in these ways isn't harmful, that treating these associations as normal doesn't affect how people see us. Do you think the literature and art that causes people to view Jews negatively enough to look the other way when we're the victims of violence has always been as obvious as cartoons of a big-nosed man wearing a magen david and leering over a pile of coins?

It’s incredible—and frightening—to me that you all are spending so much time and energy opposing an attempt to mitigate harm by changing the use of one word it seems like none of you cared about until you found out it was derogatory toward Jews, at which point it became something important to you to keep in the game.

Games are supposed to be fun. They're a lot less fun when there’s a completely unnecessary detail in them that is a reminder that the game’s creators saw my culture as evil and monstrous, and the game loses nothing by changing one word.

Thank you to the devs for changing the terminology.

[Rysky]

Well if the sides are

Treat people with respect

and

Don't

there's only one moral way for that to slide, there's no "meeting in the middle/common ground" to be had.

[TwilightKnight]

Its posts like that, that make it really hard to convince people of the importance of free speech ideology and why it is so incredibly important for public discourse. Even I have to admit that post should not be allowed to stand. We should not be afraid of being offended, but there is a social contract when it comes to the free exchange of ideas and part of it is no personal attacks or name-calling. *sigh*

[Rysky]

Ignoring all the events and conversations just blurting out stock phrases of "common ground/meet in the middle/educate" doesn't show yourself as unbiased or enlightened, it just shows how out of touch you are.

Actually read what's being said, why people are angry, and what people are defending, it's not a black and white board with a perfect center that everyone is just "choosing" to ignore.

[keftiu]

TwilightKnight wrote:

Its posts like that, that make it really hard to convince people of the importance of free speech ideology and why it is so incredibly important for public discourse. Even I have to admit that post should not be allowed to stand. We should not be afraid of being offended, but there is a social contract when it comes to the free exchange of ideas and part of it is no personal attacks or name-calling. *sigh*

This is a wild sentiment coming from someone who favorited mikeawmids post.

Are you opposed to transphobic name-calling or not?

[Kobold Catgirl]

TwilightKnight wrote:

Its posts like that, that make it really hard to convince people of the importance of free speech ideology and why it is so incredibly important for public discourse. Even I have to admit that post should not be allowed to stand. We should not be afraid of being offended, but there is a social contract when it comes to the free exchange of ideas and part of it is no personal attacks or name-calling. *sigh*

You just Favorited the post, so color me confused. Are we talking about the same post? Did you Favorite it by accident?

I was so shocked to see it I posted almost immediately to express how disappointed in you I was (then deleted when I saw your most recent post and realized I had no idea what was going on), so I'm inclined to assume it was a mistake. I certainly hope so. We disagree on plenty, but you've never stood by abuse that I can remember.

[Cori Marie]

Ashbourne wrote:

Cori Marie wrote:

If someone is calling me and my friends "it" there is no common ground I wish to find with that person.

then you'll never find it. Finding common ground might be what's needed to change their mind about calling someone it.

Why should it be on ME to try to find common ground with someone who sees me as subhuman? Why is it on the VICTIMS to be the bigger person and try to find common ground? I wish to have NO relation to a person who treats me like garbage, and that includes my own family, just ask my mom how involved she is in my life now.

[Kobold Catgirl]

Yeah, instead of expecting trans people to befriend transphobes and transphobic people to "redeem" them (I've been in relationships like that, they're terrifying, exhausting, and sometimes dangerous), I think it's better to ask that cis allies be the ones to undertake that particular climb. Safer, too.

[Terevalis Unctio of House Mysti]

It is always expected that the minority has to educated the dominant culture on the minority experience, only for how many times for the dominant culture to turn around and say, that is not true, I have never seen it, as they eat our foods, use our slang and cultures like music.

[Ella_Shachar]

keftiu wrote:

Time to see if the moderation team will care about intentional rules-breaking and misgendering of trans users. I hope they ban you - this is cruel and deliberate, and makes this space unsafe for queer users.

And for those liking this post - you’re taking the side of open hate.

It seems to me that if gentiles are going to appropriate the golem--a creature designed to protect Jewish communities against hate from gentiles--the least they are obligated to do with it is to use it to protect minority communities in their midst.

And with that, I'm back to lurking and looking for answers to rules questions.

This is awful.

[TwilightKnight]

keftiu wrote:

Are you opposed to transphobic name-calling or not?

Yes

I did it in response to someone saying they wanted to bite anyone who favorited it. Challenge accepted. If *you* can joke about physical violence, then I can joke about it too. I did not seriously think someone was going to actually bite me, nor do I agree with what mikeawmids* posted.

I flagged his post as we are supposed to do and when I responded to the content of the post I did not quote it and measured my comments in a way that the moderators would not be burdened by having to purge my post in addition to the bad post.

*unlike most "questionable" posts, this post is clear and not a case of misinterpretation. This might be a case for a ban of some kind, but I am not Paizo nor do I know mikeawmids' posting history. It might be they scrub the post, warn the poster and move on. It might be they scrub the post and temporarily ban the user. It might be there is a history of this behavior and the user needs to be permanently banned. I lack the information to make a judgment and have to leave it to Paizo to take appropriate action. Unfortunately, my experience leaves me with little to no confidence that they will meet my expectations and those expectations are probably not going to be the same as yours.

[Ixal]

Ella_Shachar wrote:

I think the comparisons to holy water are in bad faith. The problem isn’t that tefillin are in the game--it’s that one of the three major pieces of ritual apparel for Jews (the others being the kippah and the tallit) is portrayed as a marker of pure evil. Maybe 99% of players don’t know what “phylactery” means. It’s not even a term Jews usually use for tefillin, although it may have been when Gary Gygax learned it, since he grew up during the days of abandoning Hebrew terms and adopting English ones in an attempt to appear less scary and foreign to gentiles. But when players look it up, the first thing they’re going to see is that phylacteries are something Jews wear.

So when Jews don't usually use it and the name not coming from Jews/Hebrew but from a general term from the Greek, why is it a Jewish term? Just because you have been told by others that it is and you have to feel offended by it?

[Terevalis Unctio of House Mysti]

Ixal wrote:

Ella_Shachar wrote:

I think the comparisons to holy water are in bad faith. The problem isn’t that tefillin are in the game--it’s that one of the three major pieces of ritual apparel for Jews (the others being the kippah and the tallit) is portrayed as a marker of pure evil. Maybe 99% of players don’t know what “phylactery” means. It’s not even a term Jews usually use for tefillin, although it may have been when Gary Gygax learned it, since he grew up during the days of abandoning Hebrew terms and adopting English ones in an attempt to appear less scary and foreign to gentiles. But when players look it up, the first thing they’re going to see is that phylacteries are something Jews wear.

So when Jews don't usually use it and the name not coming from Jews/Hebrew but from a general term from the Greek, why is it a Jewish term? Just because you have been told by others that it is and you have to feel offended by it?

The term is used in the Septuigant, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures.

[CorvusMask]

...I don't disagree with cold hard logic of "threatening others with violence is never acceptable", but I'm annoyed at you for choosing that method to bring up your principle instead of just mentioning it out loud.

...I kinda hate how system that can be used to shower people with appreciation is really easy to turn toxic in message boards. Even without "dislikes" being allowed.