In a complex discussion like this one, I always like to start with broad goals and ideals and work down. Here are mine. As a fantasy world, Elanthia is and should be a mental sandbox in which to play-act a range of normative and non-normative ideas. The ethics of Elanthia will naturally always reflect the real world, but they should not be tied to a particular system of thought. Instead, a range of actions and consequences should be supported to encourage exploration, role-play, empathy, and cultural growth, but they should not force people down either a prejudicial or unprejudicial path. One of the problems with the racial system as it stands in the Elven Nations and in Trading is that it enforces stereotypes. Instead, I would like to see a more nuanced system that enables choices, conflicts, and creative resolutions. I don't know what form that would take exactly, but here's an initial suggestion. Characters have a limited ability as it stands to set DEMEANOR to other races. What if this system were developed more fully into a BIAS system that interacted with other characters, NPCs, INF, and Trading? I think this system should break the box somewhat, so what if, instead of the pawnshop keeper in Ta'Illistim privileging elves, he's actually a misogynist? Or a misandrist? Or perhaps he only hates people who hate elves? Let's break the mold a bit here, be creative, and enable new ways to roleplay and interact with our sandbox gameworld.


~ Nuadjha, the Briar Fox

You inhale deeply upon your pipe, puckering your lips as you send out three rings of smoke before you, then puff out a small vine of smoke that darts right through all three which causes them to disperse in a hazy shroud!

A point of clarification I was informed may be helpful: our internal discussions and plans were being formulated and discussed prior to the recent thread regarding changing the EN. This is not a direct response to that, for whatever worth that has.

~Kveta

Instead of changing mechanical aspects couldn't you work on ADDING things to celebrate other races/cultures, like more towns and hunting areas (post cap) for any races that might be slighted (a dark elf capped area/town, half-krolvin capped area in RR, an trading outpost in zul logoth, etc, etc. Any mechanical advantages and disadvantages you might tweak to be more PC will effect peoples characters choices they have possibly spend decades of their lives and money on. Someone choosing a dwarf for the advantage of selling gems on teras island may have effected their choice over dark elf for a higher dex and now it's 20 years too late and they are heavily invested in their character and when you remove that, are you going to buff the other races to make up for it? Will everyone have the same racial stats so one race isn't superior to another at something? I'm sure lots of other races would enjoy swinging a lance in 5 seconds or not having encumbrance from picking up a feather but they chose their prefered race for many different reasons, and where does it stop after that? You can be any color or gender human/elf/dwarf etc, etc with no difference mechanically in game, people need to realize "race" in the real world is different than in game, it seems like instead of celebrating diversity you are trying to make everyone the same mediocrity and taking away choices. Tinkering with the mechanics at this point just seems totally unbalanced and unfair sorry if this opinion offends anyone but I think tweaking with racial mechanics is a HUGE mistake.

I want to second FudgeHJ's comments about just how much of the GS4-Elanthia universe has for racial tensions.

The Aelotoi, the Winedotters, Half-Krol, GoS.... not to mention the haughty-snootiness of elves in general towards the other races, the racial biases that shops have in the various towns, etc.

Seriously, just how much of the game is going to be retconned to deal with the tensions?

~Cylnthia Kythnis Ardenai
~Paragon of Kuon
~Rose Guardian, House Sylvanfair

>The funds will be used to purchase bloodscrip and distributed to Dark Elves around Elanthia so that social equity is brought into balance.

Hey wait, Dark Elves will be receiving millions of bloodscrip from all of this?

I may be on board with this after all!

>Do you feel like the feelings of others who are viscerally bothered by these things are also valid?

Again have there been any complaints from people who took offense to the made up history and lore of a fantasy game? Have there been any players who actually reached out to the GMs to say "I can no longer play this game because of the history of racism and slavery mentioned in the documentation"?

This honestly sounds like something the GMs decided to change.

>There are reasons behind this and to alter that seems to take away from many people's STORIES that they have worked diligently on to create who they are.

We do not intend to take away from anyone's stories.

Our goal is actually to stop forcing the normalization of racism in our game, so that people can choose how they react to it at will. In many ways, it's more like updating the documentation/mechanics to match what is already happening via roleplay.

~Kveta

I just want to say thank you to Wyrom and the rest of the staff for listening. I love the thoughtfulness and sensitivity with which this is being treated.

As I said in the other thread, I have always enjoyed the ability to play out issues of persecution within the game, race-related or otherwise, from both mechanical and RP perspectives. For me, it's mostly been fun. But when others are saying, no, this is not fun for me, it's taking more from the game than it's adding to it and it's too much reality in my escape, I hope I can also listen.

I see the situation as analogous to PvP. Before my I took hiatus from GS in the mid-2000s, killing each other was a much more common way of playing out conflicts than it is now. I happen to miss it. But I also happen to have not been someone who was frequently stalked, harassed, and killed over and over again in the name of "RP," as many of my friends were. I think it's appropriate to let the people who are most affected by something guide the discussion.

Again, thank you.

Juspera's player



Juspera's Good Ole GS4 page: https://juspera.github.io/

Making the races identical in this game in all mechanical aspects would be the point where a lot of players would bow out. I do hope that option is not being seriously considered. They are more akin to different species than human races, so I don't think differences in ability should be scrubbed out because there really isn't some IRL parallel here. Removing mechanical racism that is too similar to IRL racism narratives is fine (like the dark elf trading stuff). Redoing some lore that is too close to the same is fine (like some historical aspects of dark elven skin color). Redoing some lore that is just horrifically offensive is fine (half-krolvin history). But I think that's where it should end.

I'm in wait and see mode. Details are too scant (intentionally) for me to pick a side. I'm neither cautiously optimistic nor cautiously pessimistic, just cautious in general. So instead here's a concern from each angle:


1) Erithians, Winedotters, and Vylem are problematic to me.

Erithians - With their thin builds, Eastern-style clothing, and balding heads that (at least to me) evoke imagery of Buddhist monks and the like, they seem very stereotypical.

Winedotters - One of the matriarchal gnome societies is basically a culture of house servants to elves. I hope this is self-evidently problematic.

Vylem - Here's another matriarchal gnome society whose wiki entry says: "Many Vylem men chose a life of chastity, for reasons best left unsaid." I'm not sure I even want to know what this means, but I doubt the implications are good.

Please note that the above comes from someone who has never once thought of half-krolvin or dark elves as problematic (nor do I think so even now, other than the details of half-krolvin reproduction), so I don't see problems just anywhere. These cases, though, I do find odd. If anything's problematic, I'd put these near the top of my personal list.

(By the way, I hope that nobody has ever mistaken my character's pretty well-known desire for the Turamzzyrian Empire and Ta'Vaalor to burn with me as a player seeing them as problematic. It's actually the opposite; I've loved Chaston's Edict and Vaalorian NPCs specifically because they gave my character systemic problems to oppose and denounce. If the Empire and Vaalor manage to right their course, then I'll have to radically re-envision who and what Leafiara is--which isn't necessarily a problem, mind you, but I'm simply bringing it up as a reality and illustration that my character is not me.)



2) Conversely, from the other side, I found it extremely odd that there was backlash on Discord against the idea of having languages over ESP. For more reasons than I have the time or ability to articulate, I sincerely hope that we aren't headed in the direction now that talking in languages other than Common is problematic.

The short of it is that I see having and using several languages as diversity, not discrimination.

I do understand the argument that maybe thoughts aren't language per se. However, I don't want to see the inversion of a series of misunderstandings from just over a year ago when a new player encountered two people speaking sylvan in TSC and things escalated both in-game and on Discord until she quit.

While the circumstances were unfortunate and could have been better handled, I'll reiterate again that I think having different languages in the game adds far more than it takes away. Even if the choice is made not to have languages on ESP, I hope they continue to remain an option--and not a discouraged one--in everyday face-to-face RP. Languages are one of the key RP reasons to pick one race over another at all, along with of course verbs. These things would only be even more important in the hypothetical scenario that stats get decoupled from races (which honestly is an even scarier thought to me than languages being discouraged, but I'm just hoping it's outright implausible).

>While the circumstances were unfortunate and could have been better handled, I'll reiterate again that I think having different languages in the game adds far more than it takes away.

We will not be removing different languages, so that's not something you need to worry about.

~Kveta

Respectfully, this is a GAME. Not REAL LIFE. You are erasing history and now suddenly replacing it and the lore. People that can't sort the worlds of a fantasy world and real life shouldn't be playing. An Elf is just that - an elf. Same with a human, halfling etc etc. It's not pointing at anything in Real Life.

So now.. I suppose this means, good bye Guardians of Sunfist. Voln? I suppose that is now somehow going to be "racist" since they "kill" the "undead" .. and on top of that the undead are crying afterwards. Council of... somehow that's going to be "racist" now because light will somehow translate into "white" so now it needs to be dark or something else.

My heart is sinking from this. It truly is. No, I am not a racist. I believe in RP. I believe in the history, and of the lore. You may rewrite it, but that does not change the fact that things have happened. You don't suddenly just screw with the lore and people forget about an event or a storyline. Every character is special and every character has their own unique story to tell from the adventures they've had and the challenge they had to face and to suddenly change that is just wrong in my opinion. Does not every character life matter? Does not every character history matter?

This just saddens me. People who ignore history will be doomed to repeat it - and that includes the mistakes as well as the acomplishments.
__________________________
- Kobold in Disguise Falvicar, Blade of the Night

You swing a silver-edged black veil iron katana at Sevynne!

* Sevynne drops dead at your feet!
* Sevynne just bit the dust!

and.. something else just hit me.

Since we are mixing RL now with RP (we all know this timing isn't a coincidence): Does that mean there's going to be affirmative action in place now? For example, if you are minotity race in Teras (where the majority are dwarves) does that mean x amount of other races have to have a spot on the town council? Or how about the Adventure Guild? I, mean, gosh... we are (from this silly point of view) police that are giving the death sentence to bandits!

I'm sorry, this is really sickening me. So.. I'll stop while I"m ahead but I think I have my point made at just how ridiculous this is.

__________________________
- Kobold in Disguise Falvicar, Blade of the Night

You swing a silver-edged black veil iron katana at Sevynne!

* Sevynne drops dead at your feet!
* Sevynne just bit the dust!

<<To rectify this, we plan to review and re-write documents, update mechanics, messaging, and storylines to make this a better experience for everyone.>> - Wyrom

The original sin was equating the cultures and civilizations with "races." Then the continent map was dominated by mostly homogeneous civilizations, so the conflicts between them ipso facto are racial, and the documentation elaborating it all focuses on the races. I'm not sure you can do more than soften its edges at this point. We could do away with the mechanics, but all of that remains. What stands out to me is Shadow World had these bad "-ism"s but it's much more heterogeneous. There's no "human empire".

In the future the factional structure of other continents (or even the southern wastes) should not follow this pattern. Maybe one realm is ruled by an evil theocracy, another was conquered by a lesser dragon who has legions, another is cosmopolitan with a merchant prince, whatever, just not the human country and elf country and dwarf country.

My genetic disposition has within it Native American, specifically Cherokee. Am I a minority in North America? Hell yes. Do I flaunt it or hide behind it? No. I do not. Do I expect special treatment because of my genetics? No, I do not. Do I demand that descendants of the Europeans who came to America give back my peoples native lands? Once again, no, I do not. Do I desire a formal apology for events that happened because of greed and ignorance over the past several hundreds of years, including numerous massacres, the Trail of Tears and epidemics from foreign diseases? No, I do not. And do you know why I say no to all those things? Because I am a realist, and as such I know it is a part of history; and so long as we remember history we should not repeat it. But to demand whole peoples be held accountable for the deeds of others throughout time is ludicrous, at best. Normally I would use some very colourful vernacular straight from any R Lee Ermy movie to get my point across, but I won't.

I joined the Marines before I ever graduated high school, leaving behind a disappointed mother and a stack of acceptance letters to universities from all over the United States (my mothers disappointment evaporated when she saw me in dress blues the first time). I fought and bled for the rights of those who are now protesting, whether peaceably or not. I lost friends, I lost brothers in arms, I lost a piece of my soul. You want to see discrimination? Toss on a set of Marine dress blues, wear all your medals and ribbons, and walk through an airport sometime. Do I agree with what is happening across America and, now, in our beloved game? No, I do not.

I was raised to be totally colour blind (and yes, colour is spelled that way here in Canada, where I now proudly reside) and respectful of others rights and opinions. How I perceive people is not by the colour of their skin, their sex, or their creed, but by what is between their ears and in their hearts. I do not judge, I analyze. I accept people at face value. I trust no one until I earn their trust.

I do not agree with the path taken by some, nor with their methods for gaining their objectives. My brother, also a Marine (yeah, my mother raised two of them), is a policeman in Ohio. Though we are not close, in either distance or bonding, I worry about him every day. Wearing the uniform of a police officer makes him a minority, and not just a minority, a visible minority. And, as things are now going, it makes him a target to some.

And now to my point. Why are the problems of the world being drug into the game? Can some of you not separate the game from real life? One of my favorite characters is a half Krolvin. Does it bother me that he is discriminated against? No, I knew what he would be up against when I rolled him up, as did all of you when you rolled your dark elf, or your Aeletoi, or your half elf residing in Solhaven.

I guess what I am trying to say is, if you can't separate fiction from reality, if you can't draw the line between what is and what is not important, if you think that "equal rights" in Elanthia is so important, then maybe you should get out more. America is very close to tearing itself apart, and you are worried about whether or not a non-existent character in a text based game gets a 50 coin penalty at the local pawn shop or can textually stroll into a bar in Ta'Illistim.

General Radeek Andoran
Drakes Vanguard
Defender of Wehnimer's Landing
Black Raider of the Mir'Sheq

Only the dead have seen the end of war - Plato

http://radeekandoran.blogspot.ca/

http://thetehirchronicles.blogspot.ca/

Thank you Radeek. Well written.
__________________________
- Kobold in Disguise Falvicar, Blade of the Night

You swing a silver-edged black veil iron katana at Sevynne!

* Sevynne drops dead at your feet!
* Sevynne just bit the dust!

Whew, I can barely see past all the straw-men. I hope I don't fall down one of these slippery slopes! I'll try to tread lightly.

No one has said you can't play a racist; there's only discussion (and we are still very early in the discussion phase of any changes) of potentially removing the mechanics that reify and glorify in-game racism.

As a player of a character that is part of a canonically racist culture in the game, I have a lot invested in her Faendryl history. The culture, the race, and the languages they speak are so intricately bound to their history that to erase any part of that history would be to remove much of their reason for being. Fortunately, there's been no talk of erasing history but of evolution and growth as the game continues. I have not found it at all difficult to roleplay my character true to her lineage while still interacting with characters of other races and cultures, so I will be able to keep doing what I've been doing. My character will still be Faendryl even if what it means to be Faendryl expands.

No one is unaware that this is a G-A-M-E. I don't know why that's so often used as a reason to leave the choices we make within it unexamined (and by "we," I mean both the players and the GMs who have been with it long enough for our older selves to cringe at some of the stuff our younger selves wrote). A game's a game. A book's a book. A movie's a movie. It's disingenuous to suggest that entertainment doesn't have themes and that these themes are sometimes unwelcoming to people new to the genre, even if it's unintentional. It's worth reassessing that and deciding if we want to head toward greater cultural isolation, concerns with racial "purity," and further fracturing an already small player-base with mechanics that do little to foster roleplay beyond a few stagnant exchanges with NPCs.

I do think any retconning of existing documents is a challenge, one that has to be done with sensitivity, but we've all experienced change with our characters from updated documents before. What makes these proposed changes different? If Ta'Vaalor no longer expects people to produce their papers for entrance, why does this suggest individual characters must change their views? Maybe a character will pine for the old days when they "didn't need no welfare state, everybody pulled his weight." Maybe another will welcome being able to see his half-Elven brother again. It broadens RP choices, not narrows them, if we remove some of the mechanical barriers to communication and connection.

I love how distinct and rich Elanthian races and cultures have come to be, and I don't think anyone wants to lose that in favor of cookie-cutter sameness. But in a world with multiple sapients, why do we assume that the only interaction we should have is one of conflict? I do like some cultural tension sometimes, but only as a backdrop to more complex RP than just "I don't like your kind." That's boring to me. Differences can remain without the need to embrace racism and xenophobia -- which, again, no one's saying you can't do. You just might not have NPCs backing you up.

--- Lauren, Lylia's player

It's worth emphasizing again for people who haven't read to far back:

No one is indicating player role-play is going to be policed or that people will have to change their character background.

So I mentioned this on discord, but I think its a good idea so lets put it here too.

This is a great forum to do so, since it talks about Staff Goals.

Changing it so dark elves don't get a malus to selling stuff for silver in towns is well and good. But how about we do something as well that shows the games committment to combating racial injustice.

I propose this:

Next Duskruin, make a Promotional Item. Sell it for...I dunno, 10k bloodscrip. Make it something people will like. Something scripty and fun.

The important bit: Promise to donate actual money to a charitable organization or cause that actually fights for real world racial equality. If people buy 100k bloodscrip worth of this item, donate X amount. If they buy 1,000,000 worth, donate X*2, and so on.

People who care about this issue can purchase the item to show they support such causes and at the same time, we (gemstone) as a whole can actually take steps that will better peoples lives. Make a promotion of it! Make it a thing! Advertise it in the fliers! Be loud, be proud, and be willing to actually do something other than give some lip service to an actual issue.


Can we do this? Please? I promise right here, right now, to spend 100$ more than I normally do this next duskruin if this is a thing. Yeah I know, its not a lot, but I am not a rich man. But this is something I would like to do...and I would like to challenge Gemstone Staff to actually do.

Im throwing down the gauntlet here.

It will generate goodwill for the company, raise awareness, get people involved, and do something concrete to fix a real problem.

---

AuchandToday at 11:28 PM
I would like to reiterate: Whick is my hero.

What is love? BB don't hurt me05/13/2020
Whick's so helpful! He's our villain even in our backchannel chatter as staff. :smile:

>It will generate goodwill for the company, raise awareness, get people involved, and do something concrete to fix a real problem.

That's fine and good and I support this idea, but it has little to do with the proposed review. It costs nothing to strive toward internal improvement for the benefit of the playerbase. Nothing. Zero dollars.

People are working extremely hard to try and find ways to make the game more inclusive while taking into consideration feedback from a broad range of people, I've no idea why anyone would even want to cast this in a negative light.

---

-- Wheels & Skulls Department

You see Blood Mayor Cruxophim the Blood Reaver.
“Blood for the Blood Mayor! Skulls for the Skull Office!”

[ Storyline: https://goo.gl/HNbwpC ]
[ Order of the Shadow: https://goo.gl/88Ojff ]