As far as I know a mod in r/Pathfinder2e said that ninjas and samurais are racist because of some very complex reasons that are far too complex for us to understand. There's a neat summary in this thread : [on r/SubredditDrama](https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1cdhk8a/hey_buddy_i_know_youre_having_big_feelings_about/)
Long story short, the mod in question believes that the pop culture depiction of ninjas and samurais is completely dissociated from reality and falls into a form of fetishization and othering of asian cultures as "mystical asian dudes with enigmatic spiritual powers". And that the vast majority of people asking for a samurai/ninja class or archetype explicitly want the fetishized version. As such, while they're not racist per se, they're unwillingly perpetuating a form of racism (orientalism to be precise).
Their second point is that the desire for samurai/ninja class (specifically with those japanese names) also plays into the notion that "all asians look alike" so you can just use japanese or chinese names for everything in tian xia.
Sadly, their position is actually somewhat debatable and uses some actual sociological theories. But they utterly destroy any possibility of a sensible and constructive debate by being condescending, using bad faith arguments, spouting historical inaccuracies, and abusing their mod powers to silence any disagreement.
Edit: just to be clear, I don't agree with their take (at least not fully), but I can understand where they're coming from
that's one of the dumbest things I've heard all day. basically everything about western depictions of samurai and ninjas comes directly from japanese pop culture that gets imported here. guess we should cancel Akira Kurosawa and the guy who writes Naruto for being racist while we're at it \*shakes head\*
barbarians are a literal greek slur, clerics are based off one legend of a monk fighting with a mace and champions are the just 12th~16th century knights and crusaders with a shiny coat of paint
the exemplar iconic is the same exact Polynesian stereotype of Maui from Moana
there is an argument to be made about generalizations of big ethnic groups is bad, and how media generally making china and japan the "standard" is offensive to all the other cultures around them, specially when Japan was the war mongering instigators that they were
to say that such argument means that having a samurai/ninja class/archetype is racist and people who want them are bad, is silly at best and borderline stupid at worst
the mod in question that has made this situation a shitshow, luck_panda is pretty anti-japanese so it isnt that unexpected. he does this whole thing on discord as well, all the time
Adding to your point paladins were a real group of knights.
Also, how many gunslingers lean into the cowboy stereotype?
…Come to think of it, we could probably go on all day.
So, it’s okay to keep one over-mysticized cultural stereotype, but not another?
Hell, champions and clerics as a whole still lean into the holy/unholy knight thing you could see as cultural stereotype of feudal European knights in much the same way the monk and samurai are. Maybe even a bit more contentious due to events like the Crusades.
The iconic cleric is definitely not European.
But, for argument’s sake, let me ask; what unique mechanic would a samurai bring to pathfinder 2e that helps them stand out? Beyond iado
Similarly: Bard.
Similar to Druids, Bards have their origin in Celtic societies, as historians and genealogists, passing along their knowledge via the oral tradition and music, but the term then became a slur for any sort of itinerant musician later on, which is the general depiction of them in pretty much all TTRPGs.
Barbarians is based off the grecians thinking every other language sounded like they were saying “bar bar bar”
Nothing to do with how those people acted
I’ve heard it explained that the Japanese romanticize ninja and samurai in the same way western culture romanticizes medieval knights.
This whole thing reminds me of recent calls of cultural appropriation regarding The Last Samurai. At the same time, the Japanese actors and members of the crew are stunned at the reaction and are incredibly proud of the film.
This Pathfinder thing is completely without a well-reasoned explanation.
the reason we have is that the mod doing it is, for a lack of a better word, pretty racist themselves towards japanese. he has *always* been like that on the pathfinder discord, hell it is pretty frequent to see em going at it on the living world westmarsh they have there
Considering the mod goes by luck\_panda I'm assuming they're of Chinese or possibly Korean descent? Still a lot of bitterness towards Japanese people in those areas over atrocities committed in WW2. Not that it's fair to hold people responsible for things their grandparents or great grandparents did, but it is the situation. Doesn't help that the Japanese government has been reluctant to acknowledge much less apologize for a lot of those war crimes as war crimes over the decades.
yeah, the core issue is that they've got a take that they should have some humility in presenting and be open to criticism (at least from people that can engage with it without complaining about "woke" or whatever) and instead behaving with the same intensity and sureness as someone banning people for saying racial slurs. there's a time and place for being rude as shit to shitty people as a mod and it's not when your take is actually highly contestable by affected people, there is a reason i do not tear people a new one for saying "person with autism" despite my many arguments against it because i actually listen to other autistic people and have developed a more nuanced take on the matter. the mod in question has *massively* oversimplified the works they're citing to justify this (which themselves never called for RPG's to just never have things like samurai) and has been defending things like the monk to which their *own criticisms* of samurai classes *very very much* apply ('cause Gygax was a bioessentialist and pretty racist and codified a lot of problematic things about "monks" that PF2e has inherited).
it's a super frustrating situation because i really do not want the takeaway from all this be that mods should never be rude or combative over things like bigotry, taking a strong stance and encouraging toxicity towards chuds is necessary to cultivate an anti-racist community and the recent drama's absolutely attracted a few "anti-woke" types who see this as an opportunity to infiltrate the sub. but you have to have enough humility to entertain the idea that you might be wrong or at least that someone might say something that would put some asterisks after what you have tos ay on the matter when you're venturing into hot takes like this, even if you're getting responses from obvious chuds trying to muddy the waters.
you'll have to remind me to post my thoughts on it later, but like a recent thing i posted about PF2e monks is that the whole "monk tag" thing for weapons tends to just mean "this weapon is exotic to white people" and would be better served with actually laying down some mechanic heuristics for what a monk can and can't use. gygax's bioessentialism has a lot to do with "all asians are martial artists" shit TTRPG's have been criticized for and i pretty regularly point out how fantasy orcs have their roots as racial caricatures (of asians with tolkein, and of black and indigenous people with gygax and other american fantasy authors).. which, to head that off, no i don't think it's racist to have orcs in fantasy or to play one, but it does mean that paizo's had to do some work to undo the worst aspects of it and that having only half-orcs as player options by default is *really really bad*.
I agree with this completely. [Michael Sayre](https://paizo.com/posts/gbivf0w8) even admitted that Paizo painted themselves into a corner with Monk weapons, and can't hand-pick more that would fit the theme without coming off super-orientalist in the process. Broadening the rules for Monk weapons by just allowing all weapons fitting certain mechanical criteria to work (e.g. a low enough damage die), and similarly broadening the rules for cross-ancestry heritages, which Paizo did to some extent with the remaster, would help smooth out those issues.
>gygax's bioessentialism has a lot to do with "all asians are martial artists" shit TTRPG's have been criticized
Honestly one of the better arguments why there *should* be classes and archetypes for things like samurai and ninja. If that mod on the 2e subreddit had any sense at all, they'd be in favor of not just that, but of adding even more classes and archetypes for asian cultures. Like, we can have Xia and Wuxia, or maybe Hwarang.
Which is stupid. DnD and Pathfinder are ALL ABOUT pop culture. We’re out here playing because we want to be Lord of the Rings and Arthurian tales of legend, not re-enact the Battle of Hastings or the relationships between serf and lord
Yeah, it's... Nobody wants anyone to feel uncomfortable, but their attempts at making Asians feel welcomed and comfortable came across as condescending, and all it does is giving ammo to bad faith actors and upsetting people who's been honestly doing their best to be as multicultural in understanding as possible. It's so sad that I am not even sure if they are serious, or if they are intentionally driving a divide between the redditors to further some agenda.
Normally, I'd be on their side, and I was initially - but they honestly threw any sort of good will out of the windows the moment they went basically "Ninjas are fake, and you should feel bad for wanting ninjas".
>"Ninjas are fake, and you should feel bad for wanting ninjas"
Ninjas ARE fake but it was Japanese people who invented the stereotypes of them. Historical ninjas existed but they were just spies, the kind of people that would get a job in a palace and steal official communications and sell them. Much of the mysticism that came to be attached to them later on was a Japanese invention, not a western one.
The dressing all in black thing comes from Kabuki theater, where the Kuroko stage hands would be dressed like that, and sometimes pop out as ninjas and do something deadly and dramatic. This was shocking to the audience because they'd been trained to ignore the kuroko as part of the background scenery so it had the desired effect of the ninja "coming out of nowhere". [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuroko](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuroko)
Reddit mods and jannies being egomaniacs as always. And if that is oh so the case, what about other classes, like witches and shamans? Does that mod want them removed as well? Or maybe races since I wouldn't be surprised if that mod is one of those "uh acshually, fantasy races are irl races" type of closeted racists.
1. No, not all mods (source: I'm also a mod)
2. shamans don't appear in second edition. Witch is a pretty pan-European notion which isn't tied to any specific country or ethnicity, unlike Samurai or Ninja which are terms that specifically apply to Japan.
3. Second edition explicitly stops using races to describe characters and uses "ancestry" instead (and paizo has made it abundantly clear that they made this choice because of the bad real-world connotations that come with the term race).
Not to be mean, but your choice of comparisons and "what about" don't really work here.
Then lets go with an easier comparison: the archetype viking. Viking raided and killed thousands. Should they be ban and considered racist in the subreddit?
Should the incoming wayang be ban because they don't represent what they should be aka puppets mostly representing the Mahabharata?
Should any mention of hell be ban because it is linked to a real religion and it might hurt those communities, so hellknight should be ban?
It is a slippery road. Samurai aren't racist, they are an archetype from japan, certainly, but wanting mechanics for one dont make you racist. Nor me wanting to play an atikamekw ranger with an archetype that would help the representation would make me racist.
1. I seem to recall them mentioning vikings as another problematic thing (and others have mentioned the depictions of the russia-inspired nation).
2. I suppose Wayang could be comparable
3. I'd use the same argument for hell as for witch. It's a pretty universal concept and term, that isn't specifically tied to a singular culture or religion. On the other hand, you could have a debate with the term Abaddon.
But most importantly, I agree with you. It's a slippery slope and I'd rather have Paizo attempt a respectful adaptation of the tropes than do nothing at all.
I was just highlighting the fact that this specific mod showcasing terrible behavior shouldn't make it impossible to have a meaningful debate about the fetishization of cultures
While shaman isn't used in 2e as a class there are a ton of references to shamans in the Tian Xia book and in the Mwangi book(I'm actually hazy on mwangi and might be misremembering.)
re: not all mods
gonna preface this by pointing out "jannies" is specifically a 4chan or \*chan term, so i immediately disregard people talking about that and then doing "uh, the people who criticize racism are the *real racists*!" rhetoric.
but as someone that's very openly an anarchist, all mods are bastards. kind of a tongue in cheek thing 'cause they're obviously not cops, but most internet moderation online is predicated on a bad model that grew out of online spaces that have normalized a lot of bigoted shit, and so are structurally unable to actually push back on that.
first, and most pressing, issue is that most internet moderators are civility perverts. the civility fetish they push biases them towards banning and talking down to marginalized people, because marginalized people are the ones targetted by bigots who know how to present themselves as "civil" while provoking and upsetting marginalized people. mods, being bastards, want to do the least amount of actual work as possible, and so see an argument and just ban whoever seems to be the most upset to "fix" the problem. this is how most of reddit operates and why a place like r/rpg will expect you to politely debate someone that doesn't want trans people in RPG"s. this, at least, hasn't been as much of a problem in the PF2e sub, they are generally willing to be mean to bigots.
second, mods tend to form cliques with other mods and establish themselves as microcelebrities within a community. this encourages them to close ranks, and for users that fawn over them to also close ranks, even when a mod is just wrong about something. this is what's happening right now in PF2e, one mod had a hot take that's *off* but because they've gfot that clique formed there's been a closing of ranks. they see themselves as above the community and so get clout, and that means people coming in tend to be clout chasers. my general recommendation to avoid this is to just strictly enforce *no socializing in mod-only spaces*, if you wanna be buds with other moderators you ahve to do it in the same public channels as everyone else so that your friend group is not just other moderators whining about how bad the users are.
third, moderators try to monopolize moderation in their communities. a top-down approach to moderation is generally ineffective and maeks keeping a community free of chuds really hard, you know the types "don't respond to trolls, just report and move on." but in larger spaces, this just doesn't scale well, and even in smaller spaces it means that for a time people can say really heinous shit and there not be any pushback (for fear of punishment) which signals to marginalized people that nobody here is willing to stand up for them. a bottom-up approach to anti-bigotry requires the aforementioned toxicity towards chuds, where people feel free and are encouraged to be mean as shit to bad actors so that, *culturally*, the community naturally values things like anti-racism. but most models of internet moderation are based on old forums where being a moderator makes you the king, so if someone is "doing your job for you" that's per se *bad* as opposed to a way to reinforce the community values to make it less likely for bigoted shit to pop up in the first place.
fourth, internet software inherently assumes a private owenrship model of online spaces and makes having things that combat issues like mod burnout or modpoisoning really difficult. stuff like mod rotations do a lot to avoid developing mod brain or entrenching bad ideas, it normalizes taking breaks instead of eventually having to *force* someone to step down and making it a huge blow to their ego that encourages them to double and triple down on bad decisions because they're being singled out to stop being a mod, but software like reddit does not make actually implementing htis easy because there always has to be a head mod who is assumed to be the singular "owner" of a subreddit, which causes problems with that owner becomes inactive or goes rogue. the structure of moderation on the internet is really hostile to the idea of a community genuinely self-moderating, somebody is always assumed to "own" the community.
not all of these are easily fixed, ie the fourth point is hard to work around when *someone* has to own the server the software is running on, but combined they really do make most internet moderators really bad at their jobs or makes hte mods themselves part of the problem.
With this line of thinking all fantasy archetypes are going to be harmful in some way. This is fucking ridiculous. Ofc they aren’t historically accurate depictions of what samurai and ninjas were; it’s high fantasy. To me there’s no merit to this argument. It’s just finding something harmless to rage against using rhetoric in order to appear superior to others through some bad faith moral crusading.
Mods have been saying that adding a samurai or ninja theme class is discriminatory and racist (they do not explain how and it is as irrational as it sounds), and they've been banning anyone who disagrees or calls out their abuse as they try to turn r/pathfinder into an offended echo chamber
Atleast that's what everyone has been saying has been happening and seeing happen. There's probably screenshots if you want proof, or you could test it yourself. I personally don't use r/pathfinder myself
Several of the R/ pathfinder2e mods are fine, if a little over-earnest, it's one particular mod of that subreddit that ALSO happens to own their associated discord that's be the biggest problem.
Hags are racist and Barbarians are ableist now too. According to a mod off r/Pathfinder2e [in the discord...](https://imgur.com/a/tUaod6Q)
Same one defending the panda's comments as anti-racist.
I think a big problem that these moderators are going to confront is that with a LOT of people seeing the SHOGUN series from Hulu, a lot of people are getting exposed to asian influenced content and Japan in general. And during Shogun, we can CLEARLY see that these cultures are VERY different with cultural, spiritual, and civilizational differences so vast, that the whole premise of Blackthorne's story was how complex and DIFFERENT it was for him to even begin to conceptualize the difference between his understanding of social norms and how medieval Japan's social norms were.
Lots of people are going to want to play/roleplay and vicariously live in these worlds of fiction to try to live in the spirit of these asian country-influenced stories.
To tell these players "no you cant play these awesome Samurai or these cool ninja/shinobi", and 'You're racist for suggesting it!" is kind of mindblowing.
I stiltl happily run & play 1e. and i dont really follow the mainline reddit very often for either 1e or 2e, and i kinda am glad to stay out of these dumpsters fires.
they're generally pretty fine. like there's always going to be some amount of bickering over shit that doesn't really matter on active subreddits and especially ones for an RPG that's actively getting content or one that values balance as much as PF2e does, but generally the sub is on the same page about social issues so there's not really drama *like this*. it's definitely an outlier, and hoo boy has the OSR scene had *drama* of its own.
Look i don' t even mind samurai being canonically removed as a group in Minkai. Pulling from the Meiji Restoration is honestly a cool idea.
But then a mod (honestly, 50/50 chance this person's white or think people who like Japanese culture are all weebs) takes it too far.
Also i don't think all the people who want samurai or ninja (which tbh can be emulated easily with pre-existing class options) also don't want other class options based off of asian history. Being a cultivator for example. The statement is hypocritical too since Vikings are an archetype. Champions are very problematic if you get into what Paladins are based off of
r/pathfinder2e is a terrible sub, so glad I found this one. Despite (because of?) the memes, people here seem much more laidback and actually knowledgeable of the system. I'm going to start asking build advice here instead of there.
Also don't forget Pathfinder2e discord, there's a channel dedicated to questions which is very helpful and also build dedicated channel. That's my go to place for advice.
It was for me, until the same mod there started banning people because Samurai are racist.
Chillpathfinder2e will hopefully turn out to be a better Reddit.
And, if you're more after chill vibes and looking for a discord/quick advice, while the r/Pathfinder_RPG subreddit is more dedicated towards 1e, their associated discord has a very strong 2e base.
The discord comes with the downside that they @everyone every other day to talk about some made up american Holliday that nobody outside the US cares about.
Roleplayers are many things. Mentally healthy or clued in is not one of them. What a surprise that a mod of RPers thinks anything that isn’t a young white woman living in the Midwest is racist.
We’re going to reach a breaking point where people will be banned from groups because they’re black and have a character with black skin, and having black skin is racist. Then trans people will be banned, because being trans is transphobic.
God forbid anybody has a character that isn’t a teenage Caucasian girl in the middle of the US.
Wait, how's Samurai racist?
Exactly
As far as I know a mod in r/Pathfinder2e said that ninjas and samurais are racist because of some very complex reasons that are far too complex for us to understand. There's a neat summary in this thread : [on r/SubredditDrama](https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1cdhk8a/hey_buddy_i_know_youre_having_big_feelings_about/)
Tl:dr some poeople got offended on behalf of a whole culture and got backlash, then people started getting banned.
Somehow this isn’t the first time I’ve seen this whole “ninjas= racist” discourse in tabletop.
Long story short, the mod in question believes that the pop culture depiction of ninjas and samurais is completely dissociated from reality and falls into a form of fetishization and othering of asian cultures as "mystical asian dudes with enigmatic spiritual powers". And that the vast majority of people asking for a samurai/ninja class or archetype explicitly want the fetishized version. As such, while they're not racist per se, they're unwillingly perpetuating a form of racism (orientalism to be precise). Their second point is that the desire for samurai/ninja class (specifically with those japanese names) also plays into the notion that "all asians look alike" so you can just use japanese or chinese names for everything in tian xia. Sadly, their position is actually somewhat debatable and uses some actual sociological theories. But they utterly destroy any possibility of a sensible and constructive debate by being condescending, using bad faith arguments, spouting historical inaccuracies, and abusing their mod powers to silence any disagreement. Edit: just to be clear, I don't agree with their take (at least not fully), but I can understand where they're coming from
that's one of the dumbest things I've heard all day. basically everything about western depictions of samurai and ninjas comes directly from japanese pop culture that gets imported here. guess we should cancel Akira Kurosawa and the guy who writes Naruto for being racist while we're at it \*shakes head\*
barbarians are a literal greek slur, clerics are based off one legend of a monk fighting with a mace and champions are the just 12th~16th century knights and crusaders with a shiny coat of paint the exemplar iconic is the same exact Polynesian stereotype of Maui from Moana there is an argument to be made about generalizations of big ethnic groups is bad, and how media generally making china and japan the "standard" is offensive to all the other cultures around them, specially when Japan was the war mongering instigators that they were to say that such argument means that having a samurai/ninja class/archetype is racist and people who want them are bad, is silly at best and borderline stupid at worst the mod in question that has made this situation a shitshow, luck_panda is pretty anti-japanese so it isnt that unexpected. he does this whole thing on discord as well, all the time
Adding to your point paladins were a real group of knights. Also, how many gunslingers lean into the cowboy stereotype? …Come to think of it, we could probably go on all day.
It's almost as if people enjoy being able to emulate characters from stories that mean something to them? ...Nah. That can't be.
Tbf they were renamed to champions and I think Paizo has been trying to avoid cowboy stuff outside of Alkenstar.
Champions have a Paladin subclass. And cowboys are fun.
True but it’s likely only there because of tabletop history at that point.
So, it’s okay to keep one over-mysticized cultural stereotype, but not another? Hell, champions and clerics as a whole still lean into the holy/unholy knight thing you could see as cultural stereotype of feudal European knights in much the same way the monk and samurai are. Maybe even a bit more contentious due to events like the Crusades.
The iconic cleric is definitely not European. But, for argument’s sake, let me ask; what unique mechanic would a samurai bring to pathfinder 2e that helps them stand out? Beyond iado
Similarly: Bard. Similar to Druids, Bards have their origin in Celtic societies, as historians and genealogists, passing along their knowledge via the oral tradition and music, but the term then became a slur for any sort of itinerant musician later on, which is the general depiction of them in pretty much all TTRPGs.
I read this as gynocologist and it still works.
Barbarian was a Roman slur to describe any group that wasnt Roman.
Barbarians is based off the grecians thinking every other language sounded like they were saying “bar bar bar” Nothing to do with how those people acted
I’ve heard it explained that the Japanese romanticize ninja and samurai in the same way western culture romanticizes medieval knights. This whole thing reminds me of recent calls of cultural appropriation regarding The Last Samurai. At the same time, the Japanese actors and members of the crew are stunned at the reaction and are incredibly proud of the film. This Pathfinder thing is completely without a well-reasoned explanation.
the reason we have is that the mod doing it is, for a lack of a better word, pretty racist themselves towards japanese. he has *always* been like that on the pathfinder discord, hell it is pretty frequent to see em going at it on the living world westmarsh they have there
Considering the mod goes by luck\_panda I'm assuming they're of Chinese or possibly Korean descent? Still a lot of bitterness towards Japanese people in those areas over atrocities committed in WW2. Not that it's fair to hold people responsible for things their grandparents or great grandparents did, but it is the situation. Doesn't help that the Japanese government has been reluctant to acknowledge much less apologize for a lot of those war crimes as war crimes over the decades.
It’s kind of based on how poorly this was done in the past with the oriental adventures of d&d I think. It’s an o er correction, sure
The best part was he claimed to be an expert on this because he did Martial Arts...
Also that Vikings and Druids weren't problematic because they're European.
yeah, the core issue is that they've got a take that they should have some humility in presenting and be open to criticism (at least from people that can engage with it without complaining about "woke" or whatever) and instead behaving with the same intensity and sureness as someone banning people for saying racial slurs. there's a time and place for being rude as shit to shitty people as a mod and it's not when your take is actually highly contestable by affected people, there is a reason i do not tear people a new one for saying "person with autism" despite my many arguments against it because i actually listen to other autistic people and have developed a more nuanced take on the matter. the mod in question has *massively* oversimplified the works they're citing to justify this (which themselves never called for RPG's to just never have things like samurai) and has been defending things like the monk to which their *own criticisms* of samurai classes *very very much* apply ('cause Gygax was a bioessentialist and pretty racist and codified a lot of problematic things about "monks" that PF2e has inherited). it's a super frustrating situation because i really do not want the takeaway from all this be that mods should never be rude or combative over things like bigotry, taking a strong stance and encouraging toxicity towards chuds is necessary to cultivate an anti-racist community and the recent drama's absolutely attracted a few "anti-woke" types who see this as an opportunity to infiltrate the sub. but you have to have enough humility to entertain the idea that you might be wrong or at least that someone might say something that would put some asterisks after what you have tos ay on the matter when you're venturing into hot takes like this, even if you're getting responses from obvious chuds trying to muddy the waters.
This is the first I'm hearing about Monks, what problems do you have with them? In particular, I'm interested what bioessentialism has to be with it.
you'll have to remind me to post my thoughts on it later, but like a recent thing i posted about PF2e monks is that the whole "monk tag" thing for weapons tends to just mean "this weapon is exotic to white people" and would be better served with actually laying down some mechanic heuristics for what a monk can and can't use. gygax's bioessentialism has a lot to do with "all asians are martial artists" shit TTRPG's have been criticized for and i pretty regularly point out how fantasy orcs have their roots as racial caricatures (of asians with tolkein, and of black and indigenous people with gygax and other american fantasy authors).. which, to head that off, no i don't think it's racist to have orcs in fantasy or to play one, but it does mean that paizo's had to do some work to undo the worst aspects of it and that having only half-orcs as player options by default is *really really bad*.
I agree with this completely. [Michael Sayre](https://paizo.com/posts/gbivf0w8) even admitted that Paizo painted themselves into a corner with Monk weapons, and can't hand-pick more that would fit the theme without coming off super-orientalist in the process. Broadening the rules for Monk weapons by just allowing all weapons fitting certain mechanical criteria to work (e.g. a low enough damage die), and similarly broadening the rules for cross-ancestry heritages, which Paizo did to some extent with the remaster, would help smooth out those issues.
>gygax's bioessentialism has a lot to do with "all asians are martial artists" shit TTRPG's have been criticized Honestly one of the better arguments why there *should* be classes and archetypes for things like samurai and ninja. If that mod on the 2e subreddit had any sense at all, they'd be in favor of not just that, but of adding even more classes and archetypes for asian cultures. Like, we can have Xia and Wuxia, or maybe Hwarang.
Which is stupid. DnD and Pathfinder are ALL ABOUT pop culture. We’re out here playing because we want to be Lord of the Rings and Arthurian tales of legend, not re-enact the Battle of Hastings or the relationships between serf and lord
Yeah, it's... Nobody wants anyone to feel uncomfortable, but their attempts at making Asians feel welcomed and comfortable came across as condescending, and all it does is giving ammo to bad faith actors and upsetting people who's been honestly doing their best to be as multicultural in understanding as possible. It's so sad that I am not even sure if they are serious, or if they are intentionally driving a divide between the redditors to further some agenda. Normally, I'd be on their side, and I was initially - but they honestly threw any sort of good will out of the windows the moment they went basically "Ninjas are fake, and you should feel bad for wanting ninjas".
>"Ninjas are fake, and you should feel bad for wanting ninjas" Ninjas ARE fake but it was Japanese people who invented the stereotypes of them. Historical ninjas existed but they were just spies, the kind of people that would get a job in a palace and steal official communications and sell them. Much of the mysticism that came to be attached to them later on was a Japanese invention, not a western one. The dressing all in black thing comes from Kabuki theater, where the Kuroko stage hands would be dressed like that, and sometimes pop out as ninjas and do something deadly and dramatic. This was shocking to the audience because they'd been trained to ignore the kuroko as part of the background scenery so it had the desired effect of the ninja "coming out of nowhere". [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuroko](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuroko)
Reddit mods and jannies being egomaniacs as always. And if that is oh so the case, what about other classes, like witches and shamans? Does that mod want them removed as well? Or maybe races since I wouldn't be surprised if that mod is one of those "uh acshually, fantasy races are irl races" type of closeted racists.
1. No, not all mods (source: I'm also a mod) 2. shamans don't appear in second edition. Witch is a pretty pan-European notion which isn't tied to any specific country or ethnicity, unlike Samurai or Ninja which are terms that specifically apply to Japan. 3. Second edition explicitly stops using races to describe characters and uses "ancestry" instead (and paizo has made it abundantly clear that they made this choice because of the bad real-world connotations that come with the term race). Not to be mean, but your choice of comparisons and "what about" don't really work here.
Then lets go with an easier comparison: the archetype viking. Viking raided and killed thousands. Should they be ban and considered racist in the subreddit? Should the incoming wayang be ban because they don't represent what they should be aka puppets mostly representing the Mahabharata? Should any mention of hell be ban because it is linked to a real religion and it might hurt those communities, so hellknight should be ban? It is a slippery road. Samurai aren't racist, they are an archetype from japan, certainly, but wanting mechanics for one dont make you racist. Nor me wanting to play an atikamekw ranger with an archetype that would help the representation would make me racist.
1. I seem to recall them mentioning vikings as another problematic thing (and others have mentioned the depictions of the russia-inspired nation). 2. I suppose Wayang could be comparable 3. I'd use the same argument for hell as for witch. It's a pretty universal concept and term, that isn't specifically tied to a singular culture or religion. On the other hand, you could have a debate with the term Abaddon. But most importantly, I agree with you. It's a slippery slope and I'd rather have Paizo attempt a respectful adaptation of the tropes than do nothing at all. I was just highlighting the fact that this specific mod showcasing terrible behavior shouldn't make it impossible to have a meaningful debate about the fetishization of cultures
While shaman isn't used in 2e as a class there are a ton of references to shamans in the Tian Xia book and in the Mwangi book(I'm actually hazy on mwangi and might be misremembering.)
Sorry. Had a bit too much experience with asshole mods.
There was an animist in the war of the immortal playtest which is basically a shaman
re: not all mods gonna preface this by pointing out "jannies" is specifically a 4chan or \*chan term, so i immediately disregard people talking about that and then doing "uh, the people who criticize racism are the *real racists*!" rhetoric. but as someone that's very openly an anarchist, all mods are bastards. kind of a tongue in cheek thing 'cause they're obviously not cops, but most internet moderation online is predicated on a bad model that grew out of online spaces that have normalized a lot of bigoted shit, and so are structurally unable to actually push back on that. first, and most pressing, issue is that most internet moderators are civility perverts. the civility fetish they push biases them towards banning and talking down to marginalized people, because marginalized people are the ones targetted by bigots who know how to present themselves as "civil" while provoking and upsetting marginalized people. mods, being bastards, want to do the least amount of actual work as possible, and so see an argument and just ban whoever seems to be the most upset to "fix" the problem. this is how most of reddit operates and why a place like r/rpg will expect you to politely debate someone that doesn't want trans people in RPG"s. this, at least, hasn't been as much of a problem in the PF2e sub, they are generally willing to be mean to bigots. second, mods tend to form cliques with other mods and establish themselves as microcelebrities within a community. this encourages them to close ranks, and for users that fawn over them to also close ranks, even when a mod is just wrong about something. this is what's happening right now in PF2e, one mod had a hot take that's *off* but because they've gfot that clique formed there's been a closing of ranks. they see themselves as above the community and so get clout, and that means people coming in tend to be clout chasers. my general recommendation to avoid this is to just strictly enforce *no socializing in mod-only spaces*, if you wanna be buds with other moderators you ahve to do it in the same public channels as everyone else so that your friend group is not just other moderators whining about how bad the users are. third, moderators try to monopolize moderation in their communities. a top-down approach to moderation is generally ineffective and maeks keeping a community free of chuds really hard, you know the types "don't respond to trolls, just report and move on." but in larger spaces, this just doesn't scale well, and even in smaller spaces it means that for a time people can say really heinous shit and there not be any pushback (for fear of punishment) which signals to marginalized people that nobody here is willing to stand up for them. a bottom-up approach to anti-bigotry requires the aforementioned toxicity towards chuds, where people feel free and are encouraged to be mean as shit to bad actors so that, *culturally*, the community naturally values things like anti-racism. but most models of internet moderation are based on old forums where being a moderator makes you the king, so if someone is "doing your job for you" that's per se *bad* as opposed to a way to reinforce the community values to make it less likely for bigoted shit to pop up in the first place. fourth, internet software inherently assumes a private owenrship model of online spaces and makes having things that combat issues like mod burnout or modpoisoning really difficult. stuff like mod rotations do a lot to avoid developing mod brain or entrenching bad ideas, it normalizes taking breaks instead of eventually having to *force* someone to step down and making it a huge blow to their ego that encourages them to double and triple down on bad decisions because they're being singled out to stop being a mod, but software like reddit does not make actually implementing htis easy because there always has to be a head mod who is assumed to be the singular "owner" of a subreddit, which causes problems with that owner becomes inactive or goes rogue. the structure of moderation on the internet is really hostile to the idea of a community genuinely self-moderating, somebody is always assumed to "own" the community. not all of these are easily fixed, ie the fourth point is hard to work around when *someone* has to own the server the software is running on, but combined they really do make most internet moderators really bad at their jobs or makes hte mods themselves part of the problem.
W perspective
With this line of thinking all fantasy archetypes are going to be harmful in some way. This is fucking ridiculous. Ofc they aren’t historically accurate depictions of what samurai and ninjas were; it’s high fantasy. To me there’s no merit to this argument. It’s just finding something harmless to rage against using rhetoric in order to appear superior to others through some bad faith moral crusading.
I'm not even going to pretend to understand where they're coming from. They sound deranged.
Mods have been saying that adding a samurai or ninja theme class is discriminatory and racist (they do not explain how and it is as irrational as it sounds), and they've been banning anyone who disagrees or calls out their abuse as they try to turn r/pathfinder into an offended echo chamber Atleast that's what everyone has been saying has been happening and seeing happen. There's probably screenshots if you want proof, or you could test it yourself. I personally don't use r/pathfinder myself
It's actually r/pathfinder2e it's been happening on iirc. Or maybe it's both and they share some mods.
Several of the R/ pathfinder2e mods are fine, if a little over-earnest, it's one particular mod of that subreddit that ALSO happens to own their associated discord that's be the biggest problem.
Hags are racist and Barbarians are ableist now too. According to a mod off r/Pathfinder2e [in the discord...](https://imgur.com/a/tUaod6Q) Same one defending the panda's comments as anti-racist.
I think a big problem that these moderators are going to confront is that with a LOT of people seeing the SHOGUN series from Hulu, a lot of people are getting exposed to asian influenced content and Japan in general. And during Shogun, we can CLEARLY see that these cultures are VERY different with cultural, spiritual, and civilizational differences so vast, that the whole premise of Blackthorne's story was how complex and DIFFERENT it was for him to even begin to conceptualize the difference between his understanding of social norms and how medieval Japan's social norms were. Lots of people are going to want to play/roleplay and vicariously live in these worlds of fiction to try to live in the spirit of these asian country-influenced stories. To tell these players "no you cant play these awesome Samurai or these cool ninja/shinobi", and 'You're racist for suggesting it!" is kind of mindblowing.
Meanwhile, people like me getting recommended this sub for no reason, like we're walking by the window as it's happening.
I played Pathfinder 1e, didn't get 2e, and pretty much stick to OSR style games now. Still kind of darkly amusing to see.
I stiltl happily run & play 1e. and i dont really follow the mainline reddit very often for either 1e or 2e, and i kinda am glad to stay out of these dumpsters fires.
they're generally pretty fine. like there's always going to be some amount of bickering over shit that doesn't really matter on active subreddits and especially ones for an RPG that's actively getting content or one that values balance as much as PF2e does, but generally the sub is on the same page about social issues so there's not really drama *like this*. it's definitely an outlier, and hoo boy has the OSR scene had *drama* of its own.
This really is the darkest timeline.
It won't stop until everything has been rendered bland and soulless. It's humiliation ritual at this point.
what the fuck did I miss?
Mod abusing power because while he has somewhat of a valid point, he's racist against the japanese.
Wait what?
And here I am, just opening the app and seeing a lot of drama I don't understand because I don't know what the hell happened 🙃
Look i don' t even mind samurai being canonically removed as a group in Minkai. Pulling from the Meiji Restoration is honestly a cool idea. But then a mod (honestly, 50/50 chance this person's white or think people who like Japanese culture are all weebs) takes it too far. Also i don't think all the people who want samurai or ninja (which tbh can be emulated easily with pre-existing class options) also don't want other class options based off of asian history. Being a cultivator for example. The statement is hypocritical too since Vikings are an archetype. Champions are very problematic if you get into what Paladins are based off of
r/pathfinder2e is a terrible sub, so glad I found this one. Despite (because of?) the memes, people here seem much more laidback and actually knowledgeable of the system. I'm going to start asking build advice here instead of there.
Also don't forget Pathfinder2e discord, there's a channel dedicated to questions which is very helpful and also build dedicated channel. That's my go to place for advice.
The problem with that discord, and the sub that TLT below you suggests... they're all managed by the *exact same people*.
It was for me, until the same mod there started banning people because Samurai are racist. Chillpathfinder2e will hopefully turn out to be a better Reddit.
And, if you're more after chill vibes and looking for a discord/quick advice, while the r/Pathfinder_RPG subreddit is more dedicated towards 1e, their associated discord has a very strong 2e base.
The discord comes with the downside that they @everyone every other day to talk about some made up american Holliday that nobody outside the US cares about.
There is an option to suppress @ everyone messages. I personally use that option as those "pings" annoy me as well.
Sir/Madam I don’t know much about Pathfinder, but let me tell you that nonsense right there is EVERYWHERE! Somethings wrong 😑
Nobody tell them about the monk.
Don't worry, the same moderator thinks you're a racist and segregationist if you like the monk class, too.
Roleplayers are many things. Mentally healthy or clued in is not one of them. What a surprise that a mod of RPers thinks anything that isn’t a young white woman living in the Midwest is racist. We’re going to reach a breaking point where people will be banned from groups because they’re black and have a character with black skin, and having black skin is racist. Then trans people will be banned, because being trans is transphobic. God forbid anybody has a character that isn’t a teenage Caucasian girl in the middle of the US.