@BESW Yeah. Admitting I know virtually nothing about comparative religion, is that sort of notion of godhood original to the Hebrews? (At least, among surviving religions?)

@nitsua60 That's a subject for PhDs-worth of argument.

@nitsua60 There are a lot of debatably monotheistic ideas rattling around the ancient world, like Egyptian Atenism, the Great Spirit/Mystery in some Native American faiths, and a number of Central and East Asian faiths which mostly got rolled into Buddhism and Shintoism later on. See also maybe Quetzalcoatl? And Christianity in early Rome had monotheistic competitors.

Many of those belief systems endure in small pockets, or as parts of other faiths. But for ancient religions with popularly recognised contemporary devotees, well, Zoroastrianism isn't monotheistic but looks a heckuvalot like the typical Christian "God vs Devil" dualism except the Devil is a god in his own right (ish; it's more complicated than that).

And it's worth noting that there's a lot of disagreement on just what kind of monotheism "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" was enforcing.

(Hinduism is monotheistic, but not exclusively so; many forms of its teachings consider its expansive pantheon to be metaphorical rather than literal, each god representing a quality or attribute or truth of a single all-encompassing being who is easier to understand via allegories about how its various facets interact.)

@BESW yeah, that one is probably not easily categorized with labels like "Monotheistic"

Being one of the oldest surviving religions in the world, it's almost impossible to define Hinduism rigorously without excluding some portion of itself.

But it does include distinctly monotheistic qualities for values of monotheism that are more akin to modern Christian and Muslim sensibilities than, say, Zoroastrianism or Atenism.

...Comparative religion is hard.

We often don't even have words in English which mean the right things for talking about other religions--"god" being a prime example.

@BESW We often don't even have words in English which mean the right things for talking about our own religions =)

(I'm looking at you: "sacred mysteries.")

@BESW Do you have a sense of whether the distinction between "there is only one/my god" vs. "there is only one/my god, and that god is all-powerful" is terribly meaningful? I mean, did other debatably-monotheistic religions of antiquity assert omnipotence/omniscience the way the ancient Hebrews did?

@nitsua60 Yes, it's a useful distinction. Zoroastrianism, for example, distinguishes between "almighty" (yes) and "omnipotent" (no).

??

I'm not grokking that one...

Neither am I, frankly.

Fairy nuff =)

I am pretty sure when people make particular distinctions like that, between two words no one will be able to tell the difference between, they are literally just making ***** up

@trogdor It seems a lot more likely that this is an issue where terms with a meaningful distinction in the original language have been translated into their closest equivalents in a language which doesn't have a meaningful distinction between them.

fair enough

also, I am biased because I sort of believe there is a God, but I don't particularly believe that said God would ever support the silliness that many organized religions allow to be done in their name

Let's see if Momen can tell me anything...

@trogdor ideological hijacking is something that has been a major bugbear for organized religion throughout history

and it isn't so much that I hate ALL organized religion, as that I really hate how individual people, and groups, take advantage of them

@Shalvenay yeah words right out of my mouth, more or less

@trogdor you mean like when you put five asterisks in a place I'd expect a swear? =)

like, I don't hate Catholosism, or Catholics, but we have some local problems here that crop up, and seem to be similar to less "local" problems within the Catholic Church, it isn't a problem with their Ideology it's a problem with people

@nitsua60 I think it's trying to get at the same idea Christian apologetics struggle with when reconciling God's benevolent omnipotence with the Devil's continued hassling of humanity.

@nitsua60 yes

part of me wants to run a "Speak Up and Take Back Islam" PSA on Al-Jazeera because that's what I see needs to happen -- the normal and sane folks in the Muslim world need to tell their loonies quite firmly to go fly a kite, so to speak

@trogdor Unfortunately, any organization is made up of people :(

@Shalvenay well, but that isn't the issue

@Miniman I know,...... it's not great like that

Aaand this is the point where we stop or take it to the Not A Bar.

and I want to point out I don't hate people I hate what people often do

fair enough

← 39 messages moved from RPG General Chat

@BESW I totally need this right now

I still want to make a game based on that concept.

But I have no idea where to start.

@BESW I was about to say, this has a problem in implementation

On Ganesh fighting Nazis specifically?

and it hasn't even started yet XD

@Miniman well, also the specific reason why

I imagine at least

@Miniman For a high-concept version, yes. More generalised versions will run into... problems... with 'acceptable targets.'

because not only are Nazis bad, but they literally stole and perverted a symbol

@BESW Yeah, that's a tricky field.

I'm thinking some kind of high-concept one-shot game with great fistfuls of dice.

Also, stars are maintained on migrated chat posts. Interesting.

@BESW yeah, which Nazis are actually crazy people, and which ones are just trying to hide in a messed up society because other options are "be branded a traitor and sent to a camp and or executed"

branding all Nazis as literally evil incarnate, especially literally in Nazi Germany,..... means ignoring the fact that at least some of them probably are only putting on an act to avoid a horrible fate

or even just straight up assuming all Germans are evil, or even ignoring that you could possibly change the minds of at least some actual Nazis

it is more of a minefield than it might look like

@trogdor I dunno... it looks like a hell of a minefield.

still, I think he is justifiably angry about the theft of a religious symbol

also: his shirt

@nitsua60 well, maybe to us because we are thinking about it in this way

but a lot of people just say Nazi = bad and end the idea there

Yeah, I guess "Nazis=bad" isn't a formulation that typically gets a lot of critical analysis in modern conversation.

(or: what you said)

=)

and while that idea isn't entirely wrong, thinking about it in that shallow of a term,... in many ways actually enables the evil of Nazism

if you keep labeling someone as evil, cut off any conversation with them, and in no way actually treat them as a person or try to change their minds, you are fully allowing, in some sense, for them to continue being "evil"

I won't say it would actually be easy for me to implement in this way, but if I met a modern Nazi, I would think the best response I could have would be "you really shouldn't believe this stuff" in some form or other, rather than "oh you are a Nazi huh? guess you must just be an irrideemably evil person who can't ever be helped" in some form or other

@trogdor I'd probably start in on the "We're All Mutts Here" spiel (at least on this side of the pond)

that is a fair argument XD

I don't know how the theoretical individual in question would respond, but the start of the reasoning seems sound to me

I feel like everyone needs to be shown,... whatever the information in your DNA that shows all of your ancestry is called

it obviously probably wouldn't fix all problems, but it might show some people that some of what they think is actually totall Bull

@trogdor A lot of people aren't going to believe their results, though.

not that I think I need it to fix any bias against mixed ancestry myself, but just the mix I think I have is already blood from a lot of different places, not counting any other parts of my ancestry that I just don't know about XD

@Miniman yeah, again, not going to fix all problems, likely

Mmm, by using DNA to show that one's ancestry isn't what one thought it was, we'd be tacitly validating the idea that one's ancestry is significant to one's value in the first place.

@BESW well, that is a fair enough point, but I feel like there are a lot of people who hate any kind of mix of ancestry at all, and might need to see that it is actually unavoidable

It might blow up a person's flawed sense of where they fit in the ancestry hierarchy, but it wouldn't explode the notion that an ancestry hierarchy is a valid conceit.

but I guess this way of showing that is,... flawed in a way I didn't consider

@BESW but also,... I think there is almost no way of removing ideas of value in ancestry from out society in it's current state

This is actually exactly what Colonypunk is about: in order to engage with a paradigm in ways its adherents understand, you usually have to reinforce some part of that paradigm just to get your point across.

heck, some conversations we have had validate that idea to some extent

It's very hard to confront a flawed idea constructively without validating it by the very fact you consider it worth confronting.

I certainly wish myself that no one actually cared about anyone else's ancestry (in specifically negative ways I mean), IE you can still be proud of yours but you don't hate other people for theirs, and can still even maybe think at least aspects of other people's ancestry are cool

but we are certainly not there yet

@BESW well, you could validate something only as a problem that needs to be in some way adressed

I don't validate a phyiscal injury by having it be treated to be healed

Mm, it's troll logic: making you waste time on an idea means the idea has power over you.

I acknowledge it exists sure, but if I don't it could cause permanent damage or kill me,.... sooo

@BESW fair enough, but some ideas, such as ethnic/racial/wtv word you want to use identity have both negative and positive aspects to them

it's a "good thing" to practice cultural identity that is even likely tied to ethnicity or nationality, it's a bad thing to practice racism ect.

Aye, "where you come from" is a very important thing. So it's very messy to sift through all the awful baggage which has been attached to it.

there are strange distinctions inherent in the whole societal issue

@BESW no doubt -- "where you come from" is neither good nor bad, just is

@Shalvenay sort of, I think it might be better to think of it as it all being "good" just with no measurement of value over anyone else's "where I come from"

it's all different, but not technically neutral

it just shouldn't be labeled as "bad" or "better" either

lol wrong place XD

it was frustrating at certain points, but overall it was great

@trogdor Yeah, I absolutely hear you on that.

The first time you get to the Rapax castle, and have that ridiculous fight in the courtyard...*shiver*

like, the game doesn't necessarily properly explain what you are generally supposed to be doing at certain points, but that never made me just outright hate the game

and the story was cool, they had an overall cool concept and didn't forget to add the little details, and I liked the combat system, even thought it, itself, was sometimes also frustrating XD

I liked it despite it's obvious flaws, basically

@trogdor It's a lot closer to what I think open-world games should be like - you can go almost anywhere, and everywhere you go you find part of the story, rather than being forced to go everywhere even though it's completely pointless.

@Miniman yeah that was not something they needed to handle the way they did

the worst part about the combat was how long each fight eventually started to take

or at least the fights with any stake in them

Yeah, towards the end of the game it gets a bit crazy.

@Miniman yeah fair enough

When random encounters are taking 2 hours, it stops being funny.

like, a lot of modern "open world" games are certainly doing it more wrong than Wiz 8 did

@Miniman exactly

and I really like the idea of trying out different party builds, but I have the same issue as @BESW on that point, IE I tried several different builds and never got past certain points of the game, half because I wanted to try out other builds even still, and half because the dang overall game takes too dang long dang it! XD

heck, even by the time I beat the game I had restarted a whole run once, and then rebooted the one I won with a couple minor times

Yeah, I've had a ludicrous number of playthroughs end after the Monastery.

but I had one where I got,... maybe a third of the way through the game? and I was not liking my position or my party composition anymore after that point

Oh yeah, fave classes?

I actually really like Fighter, Ranger, and Bishop

and Alchemist if only for the free items XD

Interesting.

I love the Fighter and Alchemist.

I don't really like monk or rogue, or psion all that much

Ranger I tend to look at as a sort of unfortunate necessity.

oh, and of course, I like Gadgeteers

partly because they can mean I don't need a rogue

for unlocking doors and chests and stuff

I like Rogues anyway - Gadgeteer I found a little underwhelming.

a Gadeteer, with some possible caster suport, can handle it all just fine

Bishops are one of those things where I know they're better, but they just take so much more work.

@Miniman I like that they can do everything I would actually want a Rogue for, and can shoot and awesome gun and make useful gadgets as well

Also, I love Priests, Mages, and Alchemists to death, so there's no room for the Bishop in my heart.

@Miniman oh yeah the extra work is definitely a thing, I almost tanked my "only Bishop as primary caster" run, but eventually it was the run I actually beat the game with

because he could literally do any one thing I needed him to do at some point

@trogdor Nice - the work definitely pays off long-term dividends.

he couldn't win any fights by himself of course, but for AOEing down large groups of annoying (but weak) enemies, and ALL of the support magic? he could do whatever I needed

Gadgeteer is kinda similar, really. Early on he's basically a slinger, but by the end of the game his weapon can shoot any ammo and cause any status effect, as well as getting a bunch of free spells with gadgets.

@Miniman I used the Gadgeteer partly to get rid of the ammo that I couldn't bring myself to drop, she shot it all out of her gun XD

Lol.

I am a hoarder (in video games anyway), and I sort of saw her as the freind who secretly burns all the stuff I don't actually need to carry around XD

Curiously, thoughts on samurai/ninjas/valkyries/lords/bards?

semi secretly anyway, I did actually know it was happening, because of course I have to hand her things to shoot, and I see her shooting it to boot

@Miniman I tried a bard,... didn't like him, or the rest of the party he was with, very much

@trogdor Yeah, I could never get behind the bard much either. Like the gadgeteer if he only had gadgets, with no gun to fall back on.

Samurai I used almost every time, they were great for some early game tanky type stuff and then still powerful in the late game due to good melee and casting ability

and valks were pretty much the same as Samurai except that they worked differently obviously, I had one at least almost every run

bread and butter classes in my oppinion

Yeah, I love both those 2. Samurai especially, because it has so many things that I really love.

not the coolest guys, but the guys who will technically always at least pull their weight

@trogdor Samurai is the coolest guy, and will hit 8x with instakill crits anyone who says otherwise :P

@Miniman samurai is only missing healing and extra tanky-ness they have some of the best armor, but they don't auto-rez themselves like valks, or have just a wall of health like fighters

@Miniman well fair enough

I think what I mean is, I wasn't personally telling my sams to instagib and multiattack people

they were being cool without my input

same with a valks auto rez

wheras the cool thing about Sleepy the Bishop was, he could do anything I wanted, and I told him every time what that thing was going to be

that was admittedly also annoying on some level, but it was also cool

Ah, yeah. I can see where you're coming from for sure.

I did rejoice every time Ryu murdered something in one hit in melee though

and yeah, he was always a Dracon Sam named Ryu XD

oh, and I forgot until just now, I think it was the team that beat the game but I also had that first sam and then also a halfling one in the same party

→ 2 messages moved to Trash

Please remember that Be Nice applies to politics and public figures.

Sorry, will do

RPG.SE chat has been able to talk about some grisly, controversial topics because of our devotion to the idea that we can strongly disagree with the things people say or do without being nasty to the people who say or do those things.

@BESW my apologies -- I was trying to keep it focused, but wandered slightly off the reservation there

No worries. It's not easy to do. More of a goal to work toward than a sustained reality we've achieved.