Avoiding slavery related terms with familiars?

[3-Body Problem]

Ravingdork wrote:

I'll just leave this here.

What does that have to do with a game company choosing to remove potentially harmful language from their product?

[Darksol the Painbringer]

MadScientistWorking wrote:

Temperans wrote:

MadScientistWorking wrote:

Ravingdork wrote:

I'll just leave this here.

You do realize George Carlin didn't particularly like people in comedy to exploit and attack marginalized groups. Seriously, you spouting out his words is an insult to the man and what he worked against.

Who is attacking anyone? We are talking about a word. A WORD! A word that quite literally means, "boss".

Yeah and I said before it shows an extreme lack of empathy and caring to complain about it. Seriously, as I said before why do you care? Why go to so much trouble? Why say its a big deal when in the grand scheme of things you are the ones making it an issue?

I like this fingerpointing going on here, because it makes no sense and is hypocritical.

We have someone who makes a thread about this, then we come in and state that it's not really an issue as a response explaining that it's taken out of context (since it's clear they wanted either input or insight behind the topic), and that changing it either does nothing to stop the issue from taking place, or is being done for a completely different unrelated reason, thereby making the original reason they argue for irrelevant, then they (and others) argue against us because we disagreed with their initial (and only) reason, then we argue back and forth.

Meanwhile, you people are saying that "It's not an issue to change it, so why are you making it an issue," which is hypocritical to it being an issue, because if it wasn't an issue, this thread wouldn't exist. You people instigated the topic by making a thread about it. Therefore, you people are the ones making a big deal out of it. Not us. Stop victimizing yourselves and villainizing others just because we disagree with your flawed premise of "The term 'master' promotes IRL slavery" as being a reason to change it.

[aobst128]

Eh, master seems fine to me.

[CynDuck]

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

3-Body Problem wrote:

Temperans wrote:

<snip>

That might be a valid argument if this whole conversation wasn't about the use of the term master as it relates to the relationship between a familiar and the character who controls it. In that context, Master does strongly connote superior and inferior positions in a relationship, and to some people this conjures up images of slavery. If you're going to argue definitions at least argue about the ones relevant to the topic at hand.

So you're saying the Familiar should be either a dominant or equal position to the character, even though the game is expressly designed to not allow this simply because of how the rules for minions/summons as a whole function?

Don't get me wrong, Familiars being able to act like a character does isn't really gamebreaking, given how weak they are mechanically, but a core design principle of PF2 was to eliminate the "OP Summoner" builds that would ruin games either by slowing down to a crawl or trivializing encounters.

Mechanical strength is an entirely separate thing from position in a relationship, I don't know why you're equating those two things.

[Temperans]

3-Body Problem wrote:

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

So you're saying the Familiar should be either a dominant or equal position to the character, even though the game is expressly designed to not allow this simply because of how the rules for minions/summons as a whole function?

Don't get me wrong, Familiars being able to act like a character does isn't really gamebreaking, given how weak they are mechanically, but a core design principle of PF2 was to eliminate the "OP Summoner" builds that would ruin games either by slowing down to a crawl or trivializing encounters.

I'm saying that having them take on a default Master/Servant relationship rubs some people the wrong way and that something like a Seeker/Spirit Guide relationship wouldn't have the same issue. Mechanically you can explain the minion rule by having the spirits that animate familiars have difficulty operating their quasi-real form that animates as a familiar. The guide has to call commands otherwise the animating form gets overwhelmed and freezes up.

The default relationship is that you have complete control over the familiar. Which makes you the master of your familiar.

A seeker/spirit guide that requires the seeker to have full control of the guide still has the seeker be the master of the guide. The two are not mutually exclusive.

You being friends with the familiar still has you be the master because its not mutually exclusive. You still have full control.

You letting the familiar boss you around still has you as the master of the familiar. You are in full control and do what it says because you want to, not because it has power over you.

So the issue is not the word, its the mechanics.

[Sandal Fury]

No sugar coating: a line has to be drawn somewhere. At a certain point, sensibilities need to be recognized as too delicate and, frankly, beneath consideration.

This topic is past that point.