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We kind of need them.
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Classical example of why punctuation or respective lack thereoff matters. :P
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This has been gnawing at the back of my head. I think stuff like racism and xenophobia and the way it is depicted are important conversations to have about Pathfinder, but there's also an issue of timing and context. Right now, we're fresh off the heels of a pretty impacting controversy, where a lot of developers who've spent ten years of their life working to develop this brand have had to deal with other people's bad decisions overshadowing their legacy and what they've worked to accomplish. People fresh from reading Jessica Price's tweets might come on here and see a thread about this phobia or that, and draw conclusions. Meanwhile, when you've got a thread with words like "racism" in the title applied to one of your creations, you're gonna feel obliged to keep an eye on it. This all in the background of these developers struggling against the executives-that-be to gain livable working conditions, all so they can have the joy of making cool games. There's just...a lot of stress.
Could we...I don't know. I think these conversations are constructive to have, but could we avoid using trigger words in thread titles at least? I know the motive is to reduce stress, but I think, the way they are currently being set up, threads like these can also add to it, and Paizo's creatives got a lot of that going on right now already. They've done so many fantastic things with 2e, despite the occasional slip, and I think it's fair to say what they've shown us so far has earned this community's confidence and trust. Words have a lot of impact, especially when they are about you, about your livelihood, and are in public, while you've already got a lot of eyes on you. This is the most front-facing place people can go to learn about these creatives' works. When we talk about Pathfinder's legacy, could we try to keep in mind the context of what these awesome creatives are dealing with right now, and emphasize focus on the new rather than the old? This is just a general suggestion – this community's been awesome and I've loved conversing with ya'll. Just gotta be tough to be a creative right now. I'm saying as much to myself as anyone else. There are a few changes I wish I could make to some recent posts of mine.
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could we avoid using trigger words in thread titles at least?
I don't think it does anyone any favors to be coy about the actual topic of a thread. I think it's be less triggering to know what threads to avoid at a glance vs having it be an unpleasant surprise that's sprung on you when you click on a seemingly innocuous thread title.
That's fair. I guess the point would be to redirect the focus. Rather than putting the spotlight on earlier problematic content, you'd see "here's what I'd like to see," or "here’s what I think developers are doing right, and what I think they can improve." When problematic content is referenced, people will at least be reading it in context.
Maybe I'm off base, though. Want to reiterate I fully support recent threads about phobias in Lost Omens and the conversations happening about them. They are needed, and I'm grateful to the brave people initiating them.
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I do think that the discussion has become unhealthy and stressful for pretty much everyone participating in it. In a lot of ways the issues are so much larger than Paizo and they revolve around things that very much aren't settled, and aren't necessarily things anyone at Paizo is equipped to effectively moderate.
'What does the presence of justice look like, and who has the authority to determine that?'
'What does the right to free expression look like in a just society and in what ways is it limited?'
'Is the authenticity of one's identity a source of authority, is the experience of suffering a self-validating source of authority?'
'How do large groups feel about certain kinds of representation, and who has the right to speak on behalf of the larger group?'
'Is inter-textual adoption of cultural elements by people of different cultures negative?'
Don't try and answer these, that's not the point, its not about your ability to be convinced of an answer-- whether you think its a matter of freeze peach or sensitivity, its about the very idea of answering them and the way that involves taking power over others, and what we even think it means to take power in the first place, and about who has to be put in their place for your vision to be realized.
I don't think anyone who works at Paizo Publishing, not the management, not the designers, not the freelancers, not the CS team, not the forum users, are equipped to be able to address these questions in a definitive way-- how could they? they're the very questions people have been struggling with since always. Those of us who come from migrant families literally exist at the intersection of a few of them, and our identities only exist at the margins and compromises between the principles that strive to answer them.
So instead, the questions become constant sources of conflict and stress, where wrongs lead to wrongs, and rhetoric that serves as an infrastructure for punching down or sideways, and frequently/sometimes but certainly not always, up. The infrastructures we create gather themselves into power structures and circle the wagons, deploying tactics to consolidate their power and ability to take action, becoming defined by their need to defeat the enemy. The presence of bad faith actors and the nihilism they bring makes it worse, because they need to be fought and have no intention of listening, but of course not everyone who might oppose us is some kind provocateur here to destroy us. Power and control become necessary for justice, whatever that happens to mean to whoever the nine hells is actually reading this, because our understanding of justice, society, ourselves and each other is relentlessly positional.
Forums are discursive spaces, the game is itself a discursive work of art (the text of the books and how they represent the world), and a tool to create other works of discursive art (the games we use them to create around the table, how we as GMs and Players address these ideas through our play, and through the fiction our play creates), and the company, as a place where people with differing answers to these questions exist, is itself a discursive space. All discursive spaces are in conflict until our society hashes out a consistent set of values, and some consensus about how those values are to be performed, and it happens throughout.
I ended up meandering a bit and I'm not sure I really have a thesis statement, but I'm absolutely saving this post in case this thread gets nuked, because its a summary of a growing feeling of frustration I've been getting reading the discourse for months now.
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This is your monthly reminder that MonkeyStunts, Stuntmonkeys and any other random similar accounts you see liking terrible posts are not actually me the online VO who uses the alias Stunt Monkey on discord, but rather puerile sock puppet accounts from someone we should feel sorry for.
Back to your regularly scheduled bait thread!
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I’d like to invite all those decrying the state of the forums to post in any of the many lively and pleasant threads in the lore subforum. I’m lonely down there!
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I’d like to invite all those decrying the state of the forums to post in any of the many lively and pleasant threads in the lore subforum. I’m lonely down there!
I'll join you.
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Just gonna put this out there: None of the people typically working to hold Paizo and their leadership accountable started this thread. This thread wouldn't exist if not for the desperate need for some to do everything they can to resist change to their status quo. We weren't hassling devs. We weren't making posts. You all did. The ones who say we're hurting the devs. Another thread that went up after Seattle office hours. Another thread when CS would broadly be out of the office. The script writes itself.
Almost like "caring for the devs" isn't the goal. Shame.
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Ya'll we were asked to stop posting in this thread, up-thread by one of the team, lets do that.
