You mean, they wanted an “Alan Smithee”?
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Really disappointed in Modiphius for doing this. I stopped buying Paizo’s products due to this type of ■■■■. Guess I’ll be skipping the Wanderer.
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I frankly have no idea, but maybe since they put a “like” on my thread on facebook (Conan Gaming Group), it may mean something … we know what books they can write (and we have read them) and their book, Conan the Wanderer, has been definitively “Vandalized”, at least for my humble opinion.
By the way, all of these are just hypotheses and conjectures.
I expect and I really hope Modiphius to be explicit about these matters as soon as possible in a decenty open and sincere update on the KS page.
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It would be okay for an original setting, because it is their own setting in which they can do anything they want. But it is not okay for a setting based on a certain franchise, especially if they promised to stay true to the source material.
Well, Paizo is known to be progressive in that regard and included LGBTQ+ characters in their products for years. I don’t think that this is much of a problem (except for conservatives and homophobes). The problem of Pathfinder 2e is that the rules were changed such much that it could be seen as a betrayal of the fans who bought Pathfinder because these were the D&D v.3.5-rules they liked.
I doubt that this will happen. It looks as if they hope that we will eventually accept these changes.
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They replied, and I frankly feel that my fears just confirmed by their words.
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Basically “we do it our way and we don’t care about costumers”. Seems that, in the near future, Modiphius will be targeting the woke role players only…
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They should have stayed true to REH.
There was a times when books and movies have FORE-WARNINGS like “Racial preconceptions are bad but this book/game shows them in order to reflect the original sources. We do not encourage racism”.
But the system is now too fanatic: they just censor reality and change REH’ worldview.
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so that players inhabiting eastern characters in their games aren’t just a stereotype of strange, unknown people,
ALL of the characters in such a genre as Sword&Sorcery Fantasy are stereotypes of strange, unknown people.
All of them.
Stereotypes and cliches are what makes this whole genre.
We have already seen a lot of stereotypical presentations of people in Conan that are described from middle-eastern-like cultures, from african cultures, from scandinavian cultures, etc.
All of them stereotypes. Very stereotypical. Extremely stereotypical - as they were described in REH’s stories.
Apparently, Modiphius felt the “need” to somehow “protect” far eastern folks from being presented in the usual stereotypical way as every folks were presented in Conan.
Why?
What makes them so special, that they need this kind of protection which others didn’t get?
This is very inconsistent behaviour on Modiphius part. Sadly, it does not make things better, it raises tensions and strains customer relations without any positive effect at all.
I wish, Modiphius would continue the way of presenting the people of the Hyborian age as stereotypical as they did in all the other source books.
The Sword&Sorcery Fantasy genre in general and Conan in specific is not a setting of fine-grained well differentiated treatment of any element found in REH’s stories. It is based on very stereotypical presentation - the stereotypes are, what makes those stories so powerful and so remarkable even nearly 100 years after they were written.
Don’t change a good thing to make it weaker.
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I would also add something.
Off course REH thinks in terms of the stereotypes of his age and place.
However, even if seen through its context (where “orientalism” was not seen as a problem), I feel that REH really shows a deep love for describing ethnics and peoples.
They are not all “generic Easterners” but they are Vendhyan, Kithans, Ghulistani, Wazuli, Hyrkanians, Kosalans, etc…maybe each of them was a single stereotypes, but they were many and different.
I just feel that poor REH has been charged with a degree of negativity which he did not have.
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The decision of the original authors to have their names removed was the right one and should have been a sign for the people in charge at Modiphius that there is something fundamentally wrong with the revised version of Conan the Wanderer!
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What you said is so true and so sad… Right now I’m afraid what will happen to other gamelines and books to be published…
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Well, maybe Modiphius will employ a cultural sensitivity reader to ensure that the presentation of Germans in Achtung! Cthulhu is not so awfully stereotypical?
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The only one that will not be affected will be STA because CBS has to approve everything and if Modiphius decides to butcher it, the license is gone…
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As a German myself I do not care how they depict Nazis in an RPG (as long as not all Germans are Nazis… 
)
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This is quite honestly the mental disease of Presentism. The more this movement seems to grow in the TTRPG arena, the less I recommend TTRPGs to new players. When did people forget to just play within the context of the setting itself - FREE FROM THEIR PERSONAL BIASES?
Ok Modiphius, time to remove the Red Pit from print - it deals with slave revolt that may or may get quelled.
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I’ve seen this same conversation in forums for every other game, but all I have to say here is, if you’ve got time for all of these revisions, how about clarifying some of the sloppy rules in Core, since as it is the largest group being excluded from this game are non-English majors.
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This whole issue of overlaying real world politics and activism in fantasy roleplaying games is getting out of hand.
If identity politics are going to become the norm with this company, then you can count me out.
Next thing they will tell me are that Orcs are not evil but just misunderstood.
I went deep on this Kickstarter cause they said “authentic” You can change what ever you want AFTER you fulfill your obligation to the terms of the kickstarter… but you let it drag on in the mire and allowed it to get caught up in this SJW BS.
How can I not look at this as a bait and switch!?
As a customer, I want the actual promised books that I paid for…
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I was thinking of a couple questions:
-
Who is the target audience for this game: fans of Conan or brand-new players? (If brand-new players, how significantly do they outnumber the traditional fans? Probably not at all.)
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If most of the Conan stories are more or less from Conan’s point of view, wouldn’t the entire world be somewhat “exotic” to a person like Conan?
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Regarding the target audience: Conan the Wanderer is only the latest of a meanwhile very large number of sourcebooks published over several years.
The target audience has been the target audience of the original Kickstarter, which did spend quite a bit on these books already. It is now only to fulfil what the Kickstarter backers financed in the first place.
Therefore changing the way how to treat the setting presentation right at the end of wave 3 of a several year long delivering Kickstarter is simply a very bad decision.
If it were a completely new product line, then it could target a very different audience. But this is the continuation of a well-introduced product line. This needs to keep the form of presentation - especially the writing - as the preceding products in this line.
I have read that Modiphius changed the line manager for the Conan line. Maybe this new line manager has very, that is: VASTLY, different ideas how to treat this product line he took over?
Then, I suggest, this new line manager needs to set aside his personal and private preferences for certain types of fashionable activisms and continue the line as it was presented before. That is what I would expect from any professional in any product line.
The changes in Conan the Wanderer were significant. That is the reason why there is currently such a storm of displeased customer comments on Kickstarter - some even going as far as wanting refunds, stepping back from their backed Kickstarter altogether.
This is a DISASTER for Modiphius!
It should be obvious, that introducing activism-driven political “speech hygiene” has not only not prevented anyone from being offended, but offended a significant part of a very engaged and up to this moment brand-faithful customer group.
Could it become any more clear, that those changes need to be rolled back, the whole “cultural sensitivity reader” activism which the Kickstarter backers - unwillingly! - paid for in the end needs to stop.
Other product lines, especially NEW product lines, are probably the better place for such fashionable ideas.
(As I am longing for a Dune RPG which is true to the literary foundation, my hopes of Dune 2d20 becoming that kind of game actually sank quite a bit after this whole Conan the Wanderer disappointment.)
Again: this needs to be rolled back.
You can never “win” against a customer, you can only lose - often the customer forever.
Forcing activism on people who don’t want that in their relaxing, escapist hobby is a huge mistake.
Modiphius might still save this product line, if they act soon, if they roll back this disappointment and - what I find quite justified - offer an apology to all the Kickstarter backers they cause a lot of anger, distress and offense by this.
The chance to win back your customers is there - but it might pass, if it is not taken.
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I absolutely agree but see very little chance of success (aka Modiphius publishing the original wanderer book). Because they will then risk losing future players due to the enragement that will certainly take place as they bowed to “old fashioned gatekeepers, traditionalists” or whatever it will be labeled.
From my point of view I’d just like to know if there is any chance for a non Kickstarter but avid conan enthusiast to buy the “original” wanderer book. They should release both and see who buys what, as well as having Kickstarter backers choose what they want to have.
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