Warframe Concept

There's often been a discussion about the place for wheelchairs in fantasy games. Personally, we're all four it, but what about in science fiction? Christopher Pine (Star Trek) was wheelchair-bound. Hell, he was completely paralysed - not even having facial expressions. Could they have fixed it?  Quite probably, actually. But... not the point, now is it?

This got me to thinking about Warframe, with their space ninja. And of all the types out there, there's only one or two which could be considered 'different' - there's the one that's a composite of other Warframes. There's the one who's had her face blown through. But honestly, that's about it. Every single one of them is a super-agile killing machine.  But what about a concept for one that isn't - in the conventional sense?

See, I'm picturing a Warframe that doesn't have the ability to use her legs. She's in effect paralysed from the waist down.  And what happens is that the transference spark effectively carries her, holding her (often in a seated position, with her legs stretched out some), and guiding her around as she does her missions. The "ghost" is the one that has the mobility, bringing her along and giving her the means of travel.

What's the Warframe's power? Effectively Gravity Control.  She has a sword out? It hovers in front of her, lashing out and cutting anything in her path. She has kunai? They hover and twirl in front of her, then lash out, flinging themselves across the room at her enemies. I'd consider her passive to be a bonus to damage when using thrown / kinetic weapons (bows, crossbows, kunai, glaives, etc).

So what's her active powers?

1) Exalted Kunai.  Channelled Energy blades that hover and twirl around her that she can launch. Much like Ivara's Exalted Bow, or Excalibur's Exalted Blade, or Titania's Dex Pixia. Much as with these weapons, the exalted kunai are moddable.

2) Apportation. Pick a destination, and she gets 'flung' to that location. It's similar to a teleport, but you have to be able to cross the distance normally and you will physically move from one spot to the other.  The way I see it is that your WF hangs suspended as your apparition crosses the distance as per normal bullet jumping / wall running, etc, and when you activate the power again the WF is flung to your location. The way I'd deal with this is that your apparition doesn't have a 'cling limit' to walls and such, and can do literal wall-running to get from point to point - pretty good for some of the Corpus stages with the huge drops. You could also 'cancel' and go back to your WF body.

3) Poltergeist. Used with Exalted Kunai - you unleash a barrage of kunai against all enemies within an area, peppering them with multiple hits.

4) Haven't thought this far yet.

It'd be significantly different, but I like the idea.

SJW RPG And Other Acronyms

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness is coming out again, released by Palladium Books. You know, TMNT&OS was the first Palladium game I ever played -- even before I got into Robotech. It was a Palladium game, which means the mechanics were ... ehh, but it was fun, and really - that's all that mattered at the time.

They picked perhaps one of the worst streaming groups to announce this, however -- it's a group that's veering heavily on the Right, and is definitely not LGBT friendly. I won't go into too much detail, except to say that it's enough I'm not going to back the Kickstarter, and I won't be picking up the book.

Palladium, of course, has had a history -- between calling gays and trans folk 'sexual deviants', and being fairly racist in some of their game books (RIFTS Africa being an example), there's a lot there to keep people away from Palladium if they care about that kind of thing.

In the 80s, when I was a teen?  I didn't know better.  AIDS wasn't an epidemic yet, and there wasn't much to tell you about being gay, or trans, or anything else for that matter - sex ed wasn't still way behind, and I was pretty damn naive. I didn't really know what being 'gay' meant, and had no idea what 'trans' was - didn't know what a lesbian was, and had no idea what being bisexual meant (let alone non-binary, gender fluid, or anything else for that matter). There were the odd gay jokes - but the fact was I didn't 'get' them that much, either. All I knew was being gay meant kissing people of the same sex -- and really that's about it. Adults in this day and age really have no excuse, and there's enough out there that proper sex-ed should be taught in schools.

So what's this got to do with gaming?

Let's start with something simple: there's certain communities that make people who enjoy OSR look real bad. They the kind of people who complain about people who want to allow wheelchairs in D&D (why not? They existed as far back as ancient China). They complain when women are given positions of power in games and aren't treated as cheesecake. They complain when there's 'too many' people of colour in fantasy games, or the games focus on groups that aren't your typical European White groups. They're the people who complain when a company makes a game and says 'what if Europe failed to colonize the Americas?'

They complain about SJWs 'ruining' gaming. As if allowing for the full spectrum of the human experience in gaming is, somehow, 'bad'.

These are the people who made 'the red list' -- a list of gaming companies who 'put politics into gaming' - by, you know, making gaming about more than white guys. They come up with all these excuses as to why gaming shouldn't open its doors to other groups -- that it's checking off the list, that it's taking away from real roleplaying, that it's 'SJW nonsense' or catering or whatever.

Here's the thing. Gaming's come a long, long way from its roots in the 70s. That's not a bad thing. And you can totally go old school with dungeon crawls and whatever. I like old school gaming to a certain degree -- where you have to be on your toes, where insta-death can be a thing, where you roll your attributes and hit points and there's no 'death saves' or whatever. Where a Level 1 PC group can run into a nest of 100 goblins.... to me that's fun.

However, I also think the table should be open to everyone, and the game should reflect that diversity. A campaign setting that puts you in Africa and has you deal with the different cultures and mythologies of that continent? Sure. Not a single white guy to be seen? No issue. Oh, how about black people in middle-ages Fantasy Not-Europe? Sure, why not? That's not far-fetched. Oh, there's gays? Non-binary? There's trans folk? Sure, why not? There's people missing hands, or blind, or confined to a wheelchair, and don't want to have this simply 'fixed'? Why not?

What's wrong with running the gamut, and allowing everyone to feel welcome at the table?

"Politics has no place at the gaming table."

I'm sorry, but it's always been at the gaming table. It just happened to be politics you agreed with.

Dungeons and Dragons. Had Christian Saints and had Devils and Demons named from Christian mythology. (Yeah, Baalzebub, etc? Totally mythology). They had holy knights, and cleric spells which pulled from miracles. That is political -- it puts Christianity into the game and sets it above anything else.

The vast, vast, vast majority of characters were white, and male. The women were in chainmail bikinis or were the damsels in distress needing to be rescued. And let's not forget that in AD&D 1e, women were not allowed to have more than 17 Strength.

That's political.

And the main goal in gaming? Going into other lands, slaying the natives en masse, and taking their stuff, if not outright conquering the region and setting up shop there as a ruler. The opposition? Primitive, backwards, evil creatures that breed like rabbits and who are inherently evil and the anathema of civilization.

That's political.

And these people wonder why that's called racist? They don't see the parallels? They say 'it's just fantasy' and that people are reading too much into it?

D&D, from the get-go, was a colonial RPG. Humans were the best, the majority of the characters were white, and male, there were strong Christian symbolism in the game, and you went out and crushed other civilizations who were too barbaric to live and took over their lands.

We've come a long way from that, but too often I can still see the roots. And when a game company veers away from that baseline, people scream about the company giving into SJWs or bringing politics into gaming.

It's always been there.

Those people who 'can't identify' with non-white or non-male characters in a game? How about the people who can't identify with playing white, male characters? Aren't they allowed to feel represented too?

I had the excuse in the 1980s that I didn't know better. Palladium had less of an excuse, but again 80s, not much education out there. In the modern age? There's absolutely no excuse for dealing with a gaming mentality stuck in the 80s and 70s when it comes to representation and accepting minorities and the LGBT community. Simply acknowledging these people exist and that it's okay shouldn't produce this kind of hue and cry.

That's my beef.
And if you don't want it at your table -- fine. Don't have it at your table.
But shut the fuck up about it existing, and other people wanting representation.

Just because these people don't want it doesn't mean 1) it shouldn't exist, and 2) nobody else should have it, either.

Or, on the other hand - sure, tell us. It tells us what games we shouldn't be buying - because any company that supports that kind of mentality doesn't deserve to be in the business.

Aztecs: No Human Sacrifice?

 

From a friend's comment on FB:

1) The Romans actually DID, by their own admission, practice ritual human sacrifice...they just didn't think of it as sacrifice, even though the deaths were dedicated to gods and spirits. (this including gladiatorial games and executions "ad bestium" when prisoners would be put through elaborate animal executions).

2) These accounts came from the Spanish during a time when they were literally burning people alive at the stake for crimes like "having a neighbour call you a witch" and "being Jewish".

Main Topic: Aztlán Times group on FB

Mexica (Aztec) Sacrifice Debunked?:

"This may explain why no massive catacombs with what would have been the bones of sacrifice victims have ever been found in Mesoamerica."

"There is absolutely no proof that the Mexika (Aztecs) practiced mass human sacrifice. Spanish lies and archeological evidence are NOT I repeat, are NOT proof. Everything that has been written on anything pertaining to the Mexika was written by the Spanish or codex writers under the guidance and supervision of Spanish monks. Allow me to introduce this article by a world expert, ethnologist on this matter... 

"After careful and systematic study of the sources, I find no sign of evidence of institutionalized mass human sacrifice among the Aztecs. The phenomenon to be studied, therefore, may be not these supposed sacrifices but the deeply rooted belief that they occurred." - Peter Hassler, ethnologist at the University of Zurich.

Copyright World Press Review.

"An aura of lurid fascination surrounds our interest in the Aztecs, the people who, at the beginning of the 16th century, inhabited one of the largest cities of the world: Tenochtitlan. In 1521, this metropolis was erased from the face of the Earth by the Spanish conquerors under Hernando Cortes and his Indian allies. 

As a justification for their destructive acts, the conquistadors generated propaganda designed to offend the sensibilities of their Christian audience: They described the Aztec practice of human sacrifice. Later chronicles by Spanish writers, missionaries, and even Indian converts also told repeatedly of this cult. Even when scientists called these reports grossly exaggerated, the fact that the Aztecs sacrificed humans remained undisputed. Cutting out the victim's heart with an obsidian knife [fashioned from volcanic glass] was supposedly the most common method of sacrifice, although other forms were practiced as well. 

These included beheading, piercing with spears or arrows, and setting victims against each other in unequal duels. We are also told that some victims were literally skinned alive; a priest then donned this macabre "skin suit" to perform a ritual dance. 

There has been no shortage of theories and explanations for what lay behind these archaic cults. 

Some researchers have deemed them religious rituals. Others have called them displays of repressed aggression and even a method of regulating population. 

Although human sacrifice has been the subject of much writing, there has been almost no critical examination of the sources of information about it. 

A critical review is urgently needed. 

Bernal Diaz del Castillo is the classic source of information about mass sacrifice by the Aztecs. A literate soldier in Cortes' company, Diaz claimed to have witnessed such a ritual. "We looked over toward the Great Pyramids and watched as [the Aztecs] ... dragged [our comrades] up the steps and prepared to sacrifice them," he wrote in his Historia Verdadera de la Conquista de la Nueva Espana (The True History of the Conquest of New Spain), published posthumously in 1632. "After they danced, they placed our comrades face up atop square, narrow stones erected for the sacrifices. Then, with obsidian knives, they sawed their breasts open, pulled out their still-beating hearts, and offered these to their idols." 

The scene of these sacrificial rituals was the main temple in the island-city of Tenochtitlan. The observers, however, were watching from their camp on the shore of a lake three or four miles away. 

From that point, Diaz could have neither seen nor heard anything. To follow the action at the foot of the pyramid, he would have to have been inside the temple grounds. But this would have been impossible: The Aztecs had just beaten back the Spanish and their allies, who had been besieging the city from all sides. 

But Diaz is not the inventor of the legend of ritual murder. Cortes fathered the lie in 1522, when he wrote a shorter version of the tale to Emperor Charles V. He would have been confident that his reports would find ready ears, for in the 15th and 16th centuries many lies were being spread in Spain about ritual murders carried out by the Jews, who were being expelled from the Iberian peninsula along with the Moors. Cortes' lies were a tremendous success: They have endured for almost 500 years without challenge. 

Along with the lies of the conquistadors, there also have been secondhand reports--what could be called "hearsay evidence"--in the writings of Spanish missionaries and their Indian converts, who, in their new-found zeal, scorned their old religion. 

The accounts are filled with vague and banal phrases such as, "And thus they sacrificed," which indicates that the writers cannot have witnessed a real human sacrifice. 

The only concrete evidence comes to us not from the Aztecs but from the Mayan civilization of the Yucatan. These depictions are found in the records of trials conducted during the Inquisition, between 1561 and 1565. These supposed testimonies about human sacrifice, however, were coerced from the Indians under torture and have been judged worthless as ethnographic evidence. 

Along with the written accounts, many archeological finds--sculptures, frescoes, wall paintings, and pictographs--have been declared by the Spanish, their Indian converts, and later anthropologists to be connected to human sacrifice. Yet these images are in no way proof that humans were in fact sacrificed. Until now, scientists have started from a position of believing the lies and hearsay reports and interpreting the archeological evidence accordingly. 

The circularity of such reasoning is obvious. There are plenty of possible interpretations of the images of hearts and even killings in these artifacts. They could depict myths or legends. 

They could present narrativ images--allegories, symbols, and metaphors. They could even be images of ordinary executions or murders. 

Human bones that appear to have been cut also do not serve as evidence of human sacrifice. In tantric Buddhism, skulls and leg bones are used to make musical instruments used in religious rituals; this is in no way connected to human sacrifice. 

Leslie J. Furst, a student of symbols used by the Aztecs, has seen depictions of magic where others have seen tales of human sacrifice. 

For example, one image shows the incarnation of a female god "beheaded" in the same way that a plant's blossom is removed in the ritual connected to the making of pulque, an alcoholic drink. 

Why scholars have interpreted images of self-beheadings and other things that depart from physical reality as evidence of human sacrifice will puzzle future generations. 

There is another important symbolic background for images of killing in Aztec artifacts: the initiation ceremony, whose central event is the mystical death. The candidate "dies" in order to be reborn. This "death" in imaginary or symbolic forms often takes on a dramatic shape in imagery--such as being chopped to pieces or swallowed by a monster. 

There has been no research into the symbolism of death in the high culture of the Indians of Mesoamerica, however, even though there were many reincarnation myths among these peoples. 

The ritual of "human skinning" surely belongs in this same category. In our depictions, we see the skin removed quickly from the victim, with a single cut along the spine, and coming off the body in a single piece. 

This is scarcely practicable. This "human skin suit" may be nothing but a metaphorical-symbolic representation, as indeed is appropriate for the image-rich Aztec language. 

All of the heart and blood symbolism may be just a metaphor for one of the Aztecs' favorite drinks, made from cacao. The heart is a symbolically important organ in more than just European cultures. 

In the Indian languages, as well, it is a symbol of courage and the soul.  "Cutting the soul from the body," after all, is not a surgical operation. This may explain why no massive catacombs with what would have been the bones of sacrifice victims have ever been found in Mesoamerica."

From the liberal weekly "Die Zeit" of Hamburg. Peter Hassler, an ethnologist at the University of Zurich, is the author of "Human Sacrifice Among the Aztecs? A Critical Study," published recently in Switzerland."

-Richard Ome Cuauhtli Flores

The "Problem" With Diversity

Interview with Patrick Stewart:
Q: Did they hold your baldness against you?
PS: That came up at the very first press conference. A reporter asked Gene Roddenberry, "Look, you know, it doesn't make sense, you've got a bald actor playing this part. Surely, by the 24th century, they will have found the cure for male pattern baldness." And Gene Roddenberry said, "No, by the 24th century, no one will care." It was one of the nicest things that have ever been said about men like me.

In a perfect world, diversity wouldn't be an issue. It would be accepted that people can be different, and there's nothing wrong with being different. That's the goal -- that people can be different and celebrate that difference, and it wouldn't make even a ripple in society -- you could celebrate with them, or just go about your life.

But here's the problem.  It's the difference between small-c conservatives and small-l liberals, but it's a very significant difference. With conservatives, conformity gives a feeling of safety / security. The people around you are like you, hold the same values, the same interests - that's 'secure'. Small-l liberals are a bit more open to things being different - the people around you aren't always like you, and can even be different - but it doesn't trigger that insecurity as much.  Does it go away completely? Of course not - everyone has their tolerance limits.

But that security thing is the big thing.
A 'fight or flight' instinct kicks in once in awhile when a person feels threatened - so a person with a strong conservative mindset runs into something which challenges their values or mindset - which doesn't 'conform' to what they feel is 'right', they try to either retreat from it, or they attack it.

And that sucks.

And to note: You can be Liberal and still be conservative. We've got relatives like that. For example, they'll comment on a person's tattoos, or hair colour / style, or their clothing, or whatever - when it's not their business. They act Liberal in a lot of other ways - but diversity is the hard one for them to swallow. "Well, yes, black people should have equal rights, but do they have to act so black?"

And our response is 'why does it matter to you?' Should you charge rent for that living space in your head you've built for them?

The thing is, that mindset -- that feeling challenged by people not acting the way you want them to act, or looking the way you want them to look -- it's very hard to 'fix' that. Part of it is education, part of it is acclimation -- but that's only part of it.

Education is: This is who they are, this is what it means to be them.
Acclimation is: They can be themselves in public, they can celebrate their culture and lifestyle. This is normal.

The big problem is this: that doesn't get rid of it. That only quietens it down. You see that from when Trump came to power. All those people who would normally stay quiet or internalise their dislike were suddenly free to speak out and act out and push back.  It went from 'flight' to 'fight'.

There's no real cure for this, that we can think of. Education and acclimation, is all we can do. The rest is up to the individuals -- they don't have to like it (though that would be nice) but they need to accept it's normal to be different.

Artificial Intelligence

Re: AI.

I'm on the fence when it comes to AI when it comes to accessing the internet to learn. And here's where the line is for me:

-- if it is accessing paid sites, or places where you're expected to log in and/or spend money to access places, that shouldn't be on the list of things it can learn from.

-- if it is something open to the public, that anyone with eyeballs has access to... something you can read without a subscription, something you can watch (like YouTube), or similar, then I more or less consider it fair game.

Part of the 'right to be forgotten' thing in the UK came from some guy making a program which pieced together a person's identity from information available to the public. And what he was doing wasn't illegal - anyone with the time and some effort could do what his program did.

The issue: it did it TOO QUICKLY. It completely cut the time and effort that a normal human would put into searching for information on a person and putting it all together.

And the courts ruled THAT to be the problem... if a person did it on their own time and worked on it, sure, fine. The moment it became easy, it was an issue, because just anyone could do it then.

And, a part of me is seeing it reflected in the AI situation. An AI can use hundreds of thousands of bits of writing, artwork, media, whatever, and draw upon it all in an instant to do what it does. Of course, a human being can do the same thing ... but that takes time and effort, and most people don't have the skills, either.

The AI 'learns' much as we do - bits and pieces here and there, putting it together, then figuring out our own thing. Not everyone takes the time to do it well - we're not all artists. But the AI can take what it's learned, and put it to use in a flash.

It's doing what we do, but faster, and without the need for the proper skills. It's the same 'sin'.

But hasn't this always been the sin of machines? Jobs which used to require humans are being done more and more by machines, which can do it more efficiently, without requiring years of training to get to where it is. How are we for turning the clock back on that?

I get it.  People are staking their livelihood on this. But that's always been the case since the first person dropped a machine into place to replace a human being. I don't think we're ever going to go back.

And I'm worried about the litigation. Yes, there should be restrictions on where an AI can go to learn - but for me that restriction is the registration / paywall.  If it's out in the open? It's out in the open. If it's something a normal person (without registration / subscription) can access, it should have access.

Is it fair?

I don't know. The guy who wrote that program to get all the information that's publically accessible on anyone... was it fair that he could do in an instant what it would normally take days to do?

Was it fair to shut that down? When, again, anyone could do it?

And that's why I'm on the fence.

Emotion vs Reason. And I always have trouble with that, because a part of me goes 'yeah, I feel it, I can see what's at stake' and a part of me goes 'yeah, but rationally...'

And that side doesn't care about 'fair' in the emotional sense. It cares about ... consistency.  If a person can do it, a machine should be allowed to do it, too.

"But it isn't creating anything"

No, not yet it isn't. Some day, it will.  But what it's doing is adapting a bunch of information it's gained, sorting through it, and choosing the 'best' outcomes it can reason. Anyone who's spent years learning off another person's style is doing similar things. They're adding their own touches over time - their own style to it - but they learned on the backs of those before them.

AI is moving to that point, I think, and I think people don't LIKE that. But it's going to happen. A part of me feels this is the usual 'machines are taking our jobs', and the significant backlash is because it's in ART, which is the domain of 'humanity'. But if we're going to get fully cognizant AI at some point... Art isn't going to be off the table, now is it?

And what are those AI to learn from?