Card name change suggestion

Ankha wrote:

Not necessarily. It is like saying "through this rulebook, we will consider that the player's cars will be the blue ones, while his opponent's will be the red ones.", or "the player to the left is called prey, and the player to the right is called predator".

In the existing convention, a pronoun is replacing the specialized language that was previously defined. So there's an extra layer added for the reader to understand (Vampire = a crypt card you can play = he, Methuselah = term for a player = she). In your examples, you are defining the specialized language not using additional pronouns (blue = player, red = opponent; prey = left, predator = right). It's the pronouns and the explanation of how the pronouns will be used in the rulebook that's causing the awkwardness.

Trust me, when one reads that part of the rulebook cold without knowing anything about the game, it is super, super confusing. There's a number of different ways to achieve the same goal without introducing gender-specific pronouns.

I wonder if the convention was introduced with an eye toward removing gender bias; if "he" means vampire and "she" means methuselah, it ensures that the feminine pronoun will be used, thus ensuring that the usual (or old-fashioned, depending on opinion) default of using "he" as the pronoun of choice when referring to either sex could not be done.

As Clerks taught us, a Racial slur, even when used as a term of endearment, is still a racial slur.

Now, there are different levels of racial slur. Dont believe me?

I've been white for quite some time. All my life in fact. But, neither "Honkey" or "cracker" have real malice or force behind them, because seriously, white people aren't typically persecuted and in fact are to blame for what could be calculated as a large amount of terrible things throughout history.

Slurs such as "chinc" "spic" or "wetback" all carry serious "get the fuck.out of my country" tones, and in the western and southwestern United States, similar slurs have historically been leveled at native indigenous peoples, but due to time, shrinking of individuals not being used to native Americans, or possibly just lack of it being heard of much, it's less prevalent.

Of course, "kike" has just as much spite as the above mentioned slurs to many Jews, and depending on circumstances probably has more ramifications in Europe than my side of the pond. I would cite proximity to the holocaust as reason for this assessment.

The n word, carrying 200+ years of slavery and outright removal of status as a human being (again for multiple centuries) carries a large amount of ugliness and hatred with it.
Africans know this un the states, and use it to fling at African Americans. Any American living somewhere without African immigrant presence will have to take my word for it, there is a sometimes unsubtle divide between them and black Americans. Now, that's bad, but not as bad as white people using it. Again, 200+ years of enslavement and being treated as not human. Not persecuted like some races, not driven to near extinction of race and culture like indigenous Americans. Abducted, herded, sold, bred, brutalized. Multiple generations of humans treated like this.

In an ideal world, racism only would still exist in jokes, but we don't live in that world and people are pricks.
In my opinion, there are countless reasons to not like someone without considering the color of their skin or some inherited alleles or where they were born.

I don't live somewhere gypsies are a common slur for a whole chunk of people. If someone from such a group voices an opinion, I'll take notice.
I know nobody from India or Nepal who has to date made any statements about the word gypsy, so it's safe to say in Columbus Ohio, with large communities fromNepal, Ghana and other parts of west Africa, Somalia, and Mexico, I might just live somewhere the peoples in question exist to be offended by such words.

But I also agree with Karl, that much pool for a +1 stealth ally is kind of self banning.......

Malachy wrote:

Unbelievable... What will be next? We have more male vampires then female, so let's equalize sexes?

Better not look at the demographics in Lost Kindred.

Do we have enough races represented among the crypt cards?

I haven't done a demographic count of the WotC and WW era cards, but we're doing pretty well with that in the VEKN and BCP sets.

Do we have under-age vampires?

Christopher Houghton. (EDIT: Embraced at 13, but that was 450 years ago.)

Is this cardgame homophobic because we do not have openly gay crypt cards?

Lucita, Fatima, Alex Camille...

BenPeal wrote:

Malachy wrote:

Unbelievable... What will be next? We have more male vampires then female, so let's equalize sexes?

Better not look at the demographics in Lost Kindred.

Do we have enough races represented among the crypt cards?

I haven't done a demographic count of the WotC and WW era cards, but we're doing pretty well with that in the VEKN and BCP sets.

Do we have under-age vampires?

Christopher Houghton. (EDIT: Embraced at 13, but that was 450 years ago.)

Is this cardgame homophobic because we do not have openly gay crypt cards?

Lucita, Fatima, Alex Camille...

Transcreatures and bod-modders are even represented through the Tzimisce!

Frankly, as tone-deaf as WhiteWolf has been over the decades, I'm amazed the Ventrue weren't implicitly written and correlated as stereotyped Jews (as the Ventrue are bankers, lawyers, politicians.) But even WhiteWolf is apparently not that dense. Still, it boggles the mind how the vaguely racist material that was clans Giovanni, Assamite, and Ravnos got to print. (Let us try to forget that Kindred of the Ebony Kingdom or Kindred of the East happened.)

Also, just throwing this out there, the best way to avoid claims of racism (over-representation of white European people, under-representation of POC) would be to make the VTES vampires primarily white Europeans. Combat any claims of racism by pointing out that, in the setting, vampires are evil, evil, bad, bad people secretly controlling the world and are the most privileged wealthy group. If you associate Vampires = Villains = White Europeans, all claims of racism should fall flat, in theory, no?

I realize there's a lot of very problematic tropes in Vampire: The Masquerade's canon, and it's difficult to escape because some staples rely on awful stereotypes: The Giovanni. The Assamites. The Ravnos. Alll of these rely on shitty stereotypes to really 'work.' But, as a community, don't we want to get as many people playing this game we love as we can?

Ankha: Gypsy is a slur, even if there are other uses. People of Roma descent consider it a slur, so how does the game benefit by using it? It's a shitty card with a shittier name. It could very easily be renamed 'Romani Travellers' and lose none of the flavor and not use what can be perceived as racist terminology. where's the loss?

Malachy: Do you have a problem with not using an ethnic slur? in what way does the game benefit from using it? how is using the term "Gypsy" vital to capturing the essence of the World of Darkness? please show your work

For me, it's pretty simple: use of the word 'gypsy' can limit who plays this game, it's in generally poor taste to begin with. Not using it makes the game more inclusive and doesn't hurt the overall theme of the game. Seriously, what is lost besides casual racism?

And for the record, as a straight white dude, I'd like to see even more Inclusion with regard to race and sexuality. Representation matters, and there's a huge bloc of people who are willing to hand over cash for a game that makes it a point to include them. It's not just smart business, it's being kind to other people who love what we love.