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The "inclusion" and "sensitivity" changes for GURPS 4th Edition Revised could have been made silently.
They could have just gone through and eliminated the so-called offensive references without making an announcement they were making sensitivity changes.
They virtue signaled.
I'm part of a weird, in between, where I'm OK with not offending people, even fringe folks, but am getting sick and tired of the announcements that they are making changes to be less offensive...
While missing that the announcement is what's offending me.
I know, "straight white male, who cares if you're offended?"
My wallet cares.
What really pisses me off is that SJGames used to be the different gaming company.
They stood up against The Man and didn't do things like everyone else.
And here they are, in lockstep with all the other game publishers.
I kinda feared this when the theater kids took over gaming after Critical Role started their show.
In hindsight, that almost guaranteed we'd get a more "Hollywood Safe" crowd, or at least the companies would aim at this much smaller and more vocal market.
It was their market share to keep.
I'm gonna just keep playing with my version of the game with the racially insensitive references.
They don't bother me.
My four main worlds are an alternate WW2 with magic and LITERAL Nazis, an alternate history where magic became real after Trinity, an alternate history where WW3 started in 1997 and a conversion of Traveller.
All have bigots in them. All of them don't care about the sensitivities of the groups being oppressed by the bad guys.
Nazis murdered people by the, literal, box car.
Racism and bigotry is a core part of Funny New Guys!
The Soviets don't love their children too in Twilight: 2000.
Traveller is so casually racist that there's hundreds of intelligent species that are called "minor races."
The move to inclusivity and sensitivity is a move away from dramatic conflict.
Without such conflict, the story is stale and boring.
I gave up on SJG a long time ago because they'd gotten PC. I had a big fat 6th Edition Car Wars box still in shrinkwrap on my shelf until I just simply put it in an "orphan game" pile at a local gaming con. They just can't stick to games, can they?
ReplyDeleteI was on their Kickstarter email list for Car Wars 6e. I was a long time player and after seeing what it was becoming, I didn't even bother. I don't want a card game to go with my tactical game.
DeleteI am going to continue to use and play GURPS 4e, but they're done getting my money. Their decision to go all pdf all the time means that copies of anything "must have" will be out there.
Not that I expect there to be anything "must have". I don't think I've gone outside the Basic Set, High Tech and Magic for a while. Plus some smaller supplements like SEALs in Vietnam and Funny New Guys.
Continuing to use the old stuff while being all "offensive" to them... Priceless.
The really sad thing is how much respect Mr Punch just burned with this.
The official SJG reply to the outcry over their Illuminator article on the Dobbs decision convinced me that their worldview is incompatible with mine. They see offending me or making me uncomfortable as a positive thing. I don't see why I should give my money or attention to support them.
ReplyDeleteAt the time I cut ties, their forums had already chased off anyone remotely interested in anything other than the groggiest of grogs picking the tiniest of nits in the rules and virtue signaling. I can't imagine it has gotten better since.
My choice was to go to another game, but if I decided to stick with GURPS I certainly could play for the rest of my life with all the stuff I currently own. They won't miss me. GURPS has been undead for a long time, kept animated by the money from Munchkin and various other card games. GURPS itself doesn't have much of an audience and I would be shocked if the line turned a profit.
As for bringing in politics, I want escapism from the real world. I deal with plenty of crap in real life and don't want to bring in any with me. Racism should be between elves and dwarves.
Daosus
I started putting separation between me and them after that. Their response to BLM should have been a warning, but I didn't heed it.
DeleteI should have.
There are a few GURPS products I still want, but I can buy them second-hand on eBay or somewhere like that, and not put more money into SJGs' pockets. I'm really tired of the majority of us having to endlessly walk on eggshells for fear of offending some hypersensitive soul.
ReplyDeleteSJG's headquarters are within abuot 20 miles of me. Austin is a very liberall area. Despite that, I've never found ANY gaming group here that uses GURPS. So all this virtue signalling doesn't seem like maybe it is really even working. Part of it may be that as McThag points out, pretty much all the big players like WotC, etc., are doing it, so it doesn't really even stand out. That pretty much relegates SJG to being a smaller follower rather than a leader. Of course they haven't gotten any of my money in years. The few things I've gotten from them since buying a few GURPS 4e books like 20 years ago I think was limited to some Cthulu Munckin realated dice game. That I bought more for the box than anything else, since I don't think I've ever played it.
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I'm embarrassed that it took me so long to make this connection, but I finally figured out that I've seen this before. Video game producers made similar changes, and emitted similar virtue signals, in pursuit of a so-called Modern Audience. The old audience hated the changes, and did not read the signals as virtuous, so they stopped buying from those producers.
ReplyDeleteOh, and that Modern Audience who those things were meant to appeal to? They didn't start buying video games. I'm not sure why SJG thinks this plan will work better in the tabletop gaming space (I suspect the same mental defect behind "REAL socialism has never been tried", but I'm not a psychiatrist), but the outcome should be amusing.
The thing about "real socialism/communism has never been tried" is it is true. But there is a reason for it. If you actually read Marx, which I would assume you probably have, the scenarios he lays out of a utopian society where there are big excesses of production, etc., are crazy pie-in-the-sky rose colored pipe dreams and everyone knows it. So the people who would try to enact socialism know the only way that they can get participation with their controlling plans is by the force of arms. But that shortcut isn't "true socialism". And ultimately it never works either. What has always happened and probably always will is that things quickly devolve into a bleak totalitarian hell which ends up basically the exact opposite of what the fantasy of socialism/communism promises. Of course they're all hoping things will be different this time and they won't get fooled again. But the new boss is always the same as the old boss.
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