Elon Musk hints at buying Hasbro in order to make D&D less woke

[Best]

4 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

 

 

 

In addition to the whole “the species with the darkest skin is literally the most evil race” thing, fantasy generally and D&D specifically have for ages grappled with the notion that “race” is perfectly defined and is with rare exception an indelible trait down to the individual level. Dwarves love digging for gold because they’re born that way. Orcs like to fight because they’re born that way. Elves are near the pinnacle for beauty and craftsmanship because they’re born that way. Hobbits love things that grow and are homebodies who like creature comforts. Take any one of them outside their typical habitat and a longing to return to those things is often built into them. As Shader mentioned, there are of course exceptions to this (Drizzt, Bilbo, Frodo, Merry, Pippin) and while those are often the focus of their respective tales, they exist to show the contrast between them and the typical members of their “race.”

 

“Race” gets tossed in quotes because in genre it’s often conflated and blended with “species” in ways that aren’t always perfectly mapped to the way those words are used academically or scientifically which makes the affair more confusing.

 

Apologists, well intentioned and otherwise (the latter group tends to be louder and more outspoken as always, but the former absolutely exist) tend to gloss over this to varying degrees of success. Yes it’s a fantasy setting and the conflicts often do boil down to good vs. evil. Yes some of these species are literally created by literally evil aligned characters and their creations have no say in the matter.

 

Buuuut it’s also difficult to split these things from reality as cleanly as said apologists occasionally claim. Again, it’s probably not a coincidence that the “races” most often associated with goodness and virtue are white / European / Western coded and the “races” most often associated with barbarity, evil, and oftentimes literal ugliness are darker skinned / African / Asian / Eastern-or-Southern hemisphere coded. It is probably not a coincidence that we hear way more about how something like black elves are “immersion breaking” because they “don’t belong in something inspired by Middle Ages Europe” but rarely hear about how things like references to crops, foods, pigments, language, etc., that come from the Americas break immersion. People will lament the existence of wheelchairs in a D&D setting, claiming that they’re anachronistic and immersion breaking despite some historical evidence suggesting that something akin to them has existed since well before the end of the first millennium. One of the modules for D&D that came out in 1985 was called Oriental Adventures. It has aged about as well as you’d expect given the name.

 

Some of the attempts to make the scene more inclusive have stumbled; analog gaming isn’t immune from lousy manifestations of good intentions. And it’s generally those attempts that are thrown under electron microscopes by bad faith actors and grifters like Musk who’s far from the first person to do this. In recent years Wizards has even employed… gasp… CULTURAL CONSULTANTS, which as people here likely know is like turning on Bat Signal except it’s fuckin losers and grievance grifters that show up in your DMs telling you to kill yourself instead of Bruce Wayne.

 

Also if anyone’s watched Stranger Things, the satanic panic concern about D&D was absolutely real. D&D is like the analog DOOM, people got big worried about it because it was gonna make their kids devil worshippers or some bullshit.

 

Anyway the TLDR is that D&D is like any nerdy property started by some white guys several decades ago that’s endured and gotten more popular than anyone could have guessed. Kinda problematic in origin which is occasionally used as justification for ongoing shiftiness, gatekeeping by assholes masquerading as well intentioned concern.

 

The good news is that RPGs in general right now have experienced an enormous boom and if you’re curious about them there are so many cool ones! People have mentioned Pathfinder which hey, some people like! There’s also Burning Wheel if you feel like Captain Crunch is for pussies. If you want something pretty cool that would only take a couple hours for the whole thing and you don’t actually SPEAK at all, Alice is Missing is awesome if the theme doesn’t seem like it would be too much. If a one shot where you talk gender roles seems cool, Women are Werewolves is cool if you’ve got the right crowd. If you want to kick the tires on something new-ish that has some good guardrails for your first time running an RPG and has some physical components and maps so your first go isn’t solely a theater of the mind thing, the Arkham Horror RPG Starter Set is a lot of fun and Edge just came out with the core rulebook if you end up liking that and wanna make up your own bullshit (Edge’s Star Wars Roleplaying beginner sets are also a nice way to ease into the narrative dice system which I like a lot, and fuck around in Star Wars, which I also like a lot). Blades in the Dark just came out with a digital supplement that seems awesome and I wanna run. Chances are if there’s a big game property you like, someone’s made an RPG version of it by now. Witcher, Fallout, Aliens (didn’t start as a videogame, I know  ) Cyberpunk (same comment as Aliens) and other obvious ones I’m sure I’m forgetting.

 

So yeah, play RPGs, they’re rad. I could run one online for folks here if they don’t mind me sucking shit as a DM (I’ve done it like 3 times) and we could agree on a system.  

 

👏 

[Siebzehn]

9 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

So yeah, play RPGs, they’re rad. I could run one online for folks here if they don’t mind me sucking shit as a DM (I’ve done it like 3 times) and we could agree on a system.  

I might be into this if I could get over the insecurity of my voice. Voice training sucks y'all, don't recommend. If others are interested though I'd be into it

[TheShader]

10 minutes ago, Siebzehn said:

I might be into this if I could get over the insecurity of my voice. Voice training sucks y'all, don't recommend. If others are interested though I'd be into it

Time to invest in a good ol fashioned voice changer 

[SuperSpreader]

The only thing I know about D&D is from Stranger Things

[Siebzehn]

32 minutes ago, TheShader said:

Time to invest in a good ol fashioned voice changer 

Never used one before, might be kinda cool

[TheShader]

1 hour ago, Siebzehn said:

Never used one before, might be kinda cool

There's one I used called Voicemod. It works based on subscription(Well, there's a free version but unsurprisingly it sucks) but worked better than any free one I've ever used as getting a feminine pitch is a lot harder to do without making you sound like a chipmunk vs just lowering your pitch to sound masculine. Including tools that use AI to alter your voice. 

 

Obviously when I'm out in the real world I just have to raw dog the universe and speak with my natural voice, but getting to use a voice changer in discord made me worry a lot less about how I'm perceived based on my voice. Especially because if my voice isn't exactly passing irl I can at least lean on people thinking I'm just a deep voiced woman. I obviously don't have that to lean on in a discord chat. 

 

The only downside is, at least when I was giving it a go, the minimum subscription amount was 3 months. Not sure if that's changed but it's a bummer if you just want to try it out for a month or can only afford month to month payments. 

 

There are also mobile apps for it but they only act as a remote control for the PC version. 

 

Quick edit, looks like they have their one-time 'buy premium for life' option as 60% off. So at 40 bucks you just get the premium features forever. 

[Siebzehn]

13 minutes ago, TheShader said:

There's one I used called Voicemod. It works based on subscription(Well, there's a free version but unsurprisingly it sucks) but worked better than any free one I've ever used as getting a feminine pitch is a lot harder to do without making you sound like a chipmunk vs just lowering your pitch to sound masculine. Including tools that use AI to alter your voice. 

 

Obviously when I'm out in the real world I just have to raw dog the universe and speak with my natural voice, but getting to use a voice changer in discord made me worry a lot less about how I'm perceived based on my voice. Especially because if my voice isn't exactly passing irl I can at least lean on people thinking I'm just a deep voiced woman. I obviously don't have that to lean on in a discord chat. 

 

The only downside is, at least when I was giving it a go, the minimum subscription amount was 3 months. Not sure if that's changed but it's a bummer if you just want to try it out for a month or can only afford month to month payments. 

 

There are also mobile apps for it but they only act as a remote control for the PC version. 

That would be interesting, I'll load some up tomorrow and see if I feel like they sound good enough. 

 

My voice is honestly some of the most difficult aspects of this process. With all the other aspects for the most part I can just see if it's working to a certain extent. For the voice I'll think I'm making progress and then hear it recorded and want to never speak again. The problem is the weirdness that most people have with hearing their own voice. I believe everyone feels that way (??) unless that was always a part of my dysphoria. Just frustrating.

[TheShader]

12 minutes ago, Siebzehn said:

That would be interesting, I'll load some up tomorrow and see if I feel like they sound good enough. 

 

My voice is honestly some of the most difficult aspects of this process. With all the other aspects for the most part I can just see if it's working to a certain extent. For the voice I'll think I'm making progress and then hear it recorded and want to never speak again. The problem is the weirdness that most people have with hearing their own voice. I believe everyone feels that way (??) unless that was always a part of my dysphoria. Just frustrating.

I totally get it because same. One of the worst things is even when I'm making progress and I know, objectively, that I am...I'm still very human and my voice has a tendency to drop when I'm talking to someone in a comfortable situation. Which I hate and is hard to counterbalance. This often REALLY becomes a problem when someone has me on speaker phone and I can hear the feedback of my voice 

 

Also, I stand corrected on them not having a working mobile app. Apparently they've finally updated the mobile app so you can use the voice changer on your phone or pad. Very nice and promising!

[ihavebigtitties]

From tech bro to Hasbro

[CitizenVectron]

14 hours ago, ihavebigtitties said:

From tech bro to Hasbro

 

If and when he buys it, the thread title must be "Has-been-bro buys Hasbro."