Editorial RPG Codex Retrospective: Roguey dismantles white privilege in Tim Cain's Temple of Elemental Evil

[Cosmo]

Not too long after this actually. Gamergate and some revelations about Lesi made me realize feminism/"social justice" is a fraudulent ideology pushed by selfish hypocrites who don't follow their own rules.

Maybe you should have seen it from the get-go ?
People who confine their moralizing to the specific arena of pop-culture (pure fetishism and escapism) only have one thing to say : they're not interested in changing things in real life.
And determining if those people are disingenuous or just wrong, even that is just irrelevant.
Blame their pseudo cultural marxism, which in this case is just another face of post-modernism (everything is a disjointed cultural product, with nothing to give context or meaning), or even the american love of moralizing (which is what little's left of political thought in a country where capitalism has already leveled the playing field ten times over). And consider the fact that, on an individual level moralizing has absolutely no negative consequence : it makes you feel great and superior, risks are minimal, and you don't have to deal with the complexity of reality. What's not to love ?


TL;DR : people who think they're lefties when staying in a comfortable niche prearranged by capitalistic consumerism are utter morons and/or hypocrites

 

[Infinitron]

I've always thought that Roguey was trolling all along with that stuff.

Now he gets to troll by claiming to have not been trolling then.

Anyway I hope he writes more Codex reviews someday.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

I've always thought that Roguey was trolling all along with that stuff.

Now he gets to troll by claiming to have not been trolling then.

Anyway I hope he writes more Codex reviews someday.

Certainly sounds plausible reading this stuff years after the fact. “Gamergate made me lose my faith in feminism” seemed like an invitation to take none of this seriously, but who can tell? All the more reason to come up with a new schtick.

Alas, Roguey’s lamentable distaste for sexually explicit content/crass sex jokes seems sincere.

His recent Tyranny write-up certainly put a smile on my face. Have you dragooned any of our resident eurojank experts into reviewing Kingdom Come yet?

 

[Infinitron]

Have you dragooned any of our resident eurojank experts into reviewing Kingdom Come yet?

Nope. Wanna volunteer?

 

[MicoSelva]

Have you dragooned any of our resident eurojank experts into reviewing Kingdom Come yet?

Nope. Wanna volunteer?

I can volunteer if you obtain review copy from Warhorse.

 

[Sacred82]

Naturally, it does retain many of the problems featured in other D&D-based crpgs. The pseudo-simulationist ability scores result in outright-dump, less-important, and must-have stats for certain classes, making the process of assigning those scores a rigid, uninteresting routine. There are outright statistically-inferior weapon and armor choices (and exclusive to ToEE are wearable items that don't actually do anything but still add weight). Ultra-specialized feats like weapon focus and favored enemy are a blind guess without metaknowledge. Since this is 3.5, clerics can become better fighters than fighters through the use of self-buffs. Hard counter spells that make certain status effects completely negligible are present, though the times when they're useful to have are few and far between. The array of degenerate, go-to tactics are also here: HP mechanics can be bypassed entirely through coups de grace and the slay living spell, you can summon up to five summons at a time to soak and deal damage, and there are plenty of buffs you can cast before combat, such as the ever-overpowered haste, a spell that gives you an extra attack with the full base attack bonus and +1 to your attack and armor class scores. Par for the course, nothing stops you from resting after every fight by either demolishing any random encounters that interrupt you or backtracking to a safer place.

Was this just blind Sawyerism, or would you like to put this into perspective

 

[Infinitron]

Have you dragooned any of our resident eurojank experts into reviewing Kingdom Come yet?

Nope. Wanna volunteer?

I can volunteer if you obtain review copy from Warhorse.

They're probably not giving out review copies at this stage, but we could ask DU to buy one.

 

[MicoSelva]

They're probably not giving out review copies at this stage, but we could ask DU to buy one.

Nah, I don't want to risk Codex money, that would mean too much responsibility. I plan to buy it myself, but only when the bugs are fixed, by when the review will probably be irrelevant.

EDIT: Also, waiting on GOG release.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Have you dragooned any of our resident eurojank experts into reviewing Kingdom Come yet?

Nope. Wanna volunteer?

::Gulp::

Does the codex have any editorial guidelines?

 

[Roguey]

?

People are rude and sexually harass you. Here's an ancient site that got mad about it http://www.ataniel.org/arcreview.htm

Arcanum is also heavily, heavily geared towards men. Female players should brace themselves for the tired old gaming experience of watching women in this game give you the same flirtatious lines they give the male characters and accidentally call you "him" periodically; the only time the game seems to remember female PC's might exist is in bars and whorehouses, where you sometimes get groped or propositioned by ugly gnomes. You definitely get the feeling that no one at Troika bothered to playtest this thing with a female PC, much less a female player.
...
This game is rated M (for 17 years old and up) due to far more explicit sexual content than you'd ever expect from a Victorian-based gameworld, including at least three quests involving rape, sexual enslavement, and sexual psychopathy; a female PC is frequently sexually harassed and given the option to prostitute herself, while a male PC is given the opportunity to have sex with a sheep. Really. Not a game for kids.
...
Gender: It doesn't really matter if your character is male or female. Arcanum is definitely geared to both male characters and male players, though--if you're female, brace yourself for the tired old CRPG experience of having all the female characters make the same flirtations with you they do with the men, and don't expect any reaction from the male ones (except the occasional "hee-haw" of a dirty old gnome or dwarf sexually harassing you, that is). Sexual harassment, assault, and abuse of females is not taken very seriously in Arcanum at all, actually. If this is really going to bother you, maybe you'd better pick a different game. It was one of my bigger disappointments with it.
...
This page was supposed to be the final chapter of my Arcanum walkthrough (Roseborough, T'sen Ang, Thanatos, Tulla, and the Void). Instead, it's going to be a short explanation for why I abandoned the walkthrough after Caladon.

My first time through the game, I missed several of the quests; among them the Siamese Twins/Halfogre Island conspiracy. On my second play-through, the one I used to write this guide, I discovered that quest, and became quickly caught up in it. I really wanted to find and punish the wicked gnomes. I wanted to rescue or at least avenge the sexually abused human women, and I wanted to do something about the enslavement of the unfortunate halfogres. Unfortunately, the game gives you no option to do anything about any of these things ever. What you get to do is listen to a smug gnome give a very poor X-filesish summary of why you can't do anything about any of it, and then nothing. No option to outwit the gnomes, betray the gnomes, anything. Despite having the ear of two or three of the most powerful men on the gameworld, you don't have the option of mentioning it to any of them. The programmers just assume you're going to be satisfied with "Ha ha, can't do anything about it! Those wily gnomes. Wasn't that a funny plot about kidnapping, rape, and racial enslavement?"

The 'conclusion' to this plot came at a time that I was starting to get frustrated with the slow and tedious movement interface of Arcanum. When I killed the gnome conspirator and the game penalized me because his alignment was 'good,' that was really the final straw for me. Folks, it isn't good to engage in slavery, rape, breeding humans as farm animals, and political sabotage. It's not even funny. It's a pretty darn serious plot, deserving of a resolution. If you're going to allow room in the game for evil characters to kill innocent people, you're going to have to allow room in the game for good characters to care about pursuing things like this.

So I stopped playing. Not in protest or anything; it just wasn't worth slogging through the awful movement screens, tedious combats, and ugly graphics anymore.

Any ideology looks bad when you’re focused on its craziest, least scrupulous adherents, and all ideologies are pushed by selfish hypocrites. Requires Hate is to feminism as, say, Rasputin is to the Orthodox Church.

The reasonable feminist is now a minority with no power or influence. They abandoned reason years ago, to the point that saying "women and men have biological differences" is considered an offense worthy of termination by Google.

Sawyerism just doesn’t have the same stylistic punch as feminism.

I'm not much of a die-hard Sawyerist anymore either tbh.

I've always thought that Roguey was trolling all along with that stuff.

Now he gets to troll by claiming to have not been trolling then.

Trolling doesn't necessarily mean false opinions. I believe in everything I say.

followed by

Trolling is too broad of a term. We need proper nomenclature, so we can discuss the mechanics of trolling.

Roguey likes to say her opinions in really annoying ways and only bothers discussing her unpopular opinions.

was reasonably accurate.

Was this just blind Sawyerism, or would you like to put this into perspective

Everything in that paragraph is accurate. It's a problem if you consider it such, a necessary evil if you believe those things are unavoidable for ~good gameplay~.

 

[Infinitron]

Have you dragooned any of our resident eurojank experts into reviewing Kingdom Come yet?

Nope. Wanna volunteer?

::Gulp::

Does the codex have any editorial guidelines?

Well, we like reviews that are exhaustive, analytical and detailed, which cover all the bases and cite examples from the game to make their points. Kind of the opposite of the stereotypical "impressionistic" piece you'd see in a more generalist/mainstream site. That's the sort of stuff we've published in recent years, at least. For examples, see reviews by Darth Roxor, Prime Junta, Tigranes, Deuce Traveler, Grunker, sser...

But generally we've done well by just finding people who can write well and letting them do their thing. You seem pretty literate, so feel free to go for it.

 

[Sacred82]

Was this just blind Sawyerism, or would you like to put this into perspective

Everything in that paragraph is accurate. It's a problem if you consider it such, a necessary evil if you believe those things are unavoidable for ~good gameplay~.

I can't think of anything that improves gameplay in my mind but would feel like a necessary evil tbh

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

I've always thought that Roguey was trolling all along with that stuff.

Now he gets to troll by claiming to have not been trolling then.

Trolling doesn't necessarily mean false opinions. I believe in everything I say.

followed by

Trolling is too broad of a term. We need proper nomenclature, so we can discuss the mechanics of trolling.

Roguey likes to say her opinions in really annoying ways and only bothers discussing her unpopular opinions.

Hamming it up?

The reasonable feminist is now a minority with no power or influence. They abandoned reason years ago, to the point that saying "women and men have biological differences" is considered an offense worthy of termination by Google.

Eh, anything is grounds for dismissal when you’re an at will employee. Any large capitalization company will fire a low level employee who generates lots of negative media coverage. I don’t dispute that men have more variability—fatter tails on both ends of the bell curve—but the way this argument is deployed tends to be disingenuous. You don’t need to be a math genius to get most of these STEM jobs.

More to the point, all movements go too far. This ain’t unique to feminism. The internet echo chamber has made nearly everyone on every side of every issue less reasonable. The best lack all conviction, the worst are full of passionate intensity etc...

Have you dragooned any of our resident eurojank experts into reviewing Kingdom Come yet?

Nope. Wanna volunteer?

::Gulp::

Does the codex have any editorial guidelines?

Well, we like reviews that are exhaustive, analytical and detailed, which cover all the bases and cite examples from the game to make their points. Kind of the opposite of the stereotypical "impressionistic" piece you'd see in a more generalist/mainstream site. That's the sort of stuff we've published in recent years, at least. For examples, see reviews by Darth Roxor, Prime Junta, Tigranes, Deuce Traveler, Grunker, sser...

But generally we've done well by just finding people who can write well and letting them do their thing. You seem pretty literate, so feel free to go for it.

Fuck, I’m in. With a compliment like that how could I refuse? Let the studying commence.

 

[Fairfax]

People are rude and sexually harass you. Here's an ancient site that got mad about it http://www.ataniel.org/arcreview.htm

It's valid criticism, especially the poor implementation.

I'm not much of a die-hard Sawyerist anymore either tbh.

Slowly seeing the light, eh?

 

[boobio]

A little too Lesi there, 2014 Roguey.

I still stand by "Troika as middlebrow 3D Realms" though.

Wow I so glad that you changed, but to truly make up for your past behavior you must post a pic of yourself in a bikini at the least; I think I speak for all the Codex in this matter.