I spent two hours arguing with my sister over if Degenesis is racist. I think it's just the fact that the game portrays races a bit oddly, and that racism is just a fact of the game worlds highly divergent races. Her opinion was that the game desingers were just plain racist and that's why they portray a few races in a poor light.
What do you think Veeky Forums? And Degenesis General I guess.
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There is no racism in degenesis
Racism exists in the game in the tribalism sense.
The world is butt-fucked so mankind has gone back to what it has done for optimum survival for tens of thousands of years: congregate with those most like themselves.
Inclusion and tolerance in the "everyone gets along and is treated equally regardless of color, culture, etc" is something that has only been widespread for maybe what? 60 years? 60 years out of the 80,000 that homo sapiens have been running around. It seems perfectly logical that when you have a complete breakdown of civilization and all of its trappings that we fall back on what worked before globalization, electricity, and mass communication/transit became things.
Does anyone have the Degenesis Rebirth PDFs? I've wanted to take a look at it but I can't really find anything about it.
But every race is portrayed "truthfully" in a warts and all kind of way. Every race and culture has its flaws which are not shied away from. Some races and cults are more divergent, perhaps, from the humanity we know, and are stranger, but there isn't what you'd call modern day racism.
Except in the tribe-to-tribe descriptions at the end of the each tribe's chapter where there is the brief description of how each culture views others.
I wish I had it. Does anyone know the reasoning behind why this game is so damn expensive?
In what way? Like, what are her examples for it being racist?
The African culture more or less being highly violent and their stereotypical ' sneaky underhanded ways'. She more or less felt the designers put down on most the cultures that weren't like their own.
The truth is pretty racist.
Has she been to Africa? Honest question. Tribal violence is extreme there and always has been. Hell, even the Masi will tell you the nearest tribe are baby eaters and no better than dogs. Most Sub-Saharan cultures are like that as the environment never necessitated large scale cooperation.
No, she hasn't been to africa. We're two nobodies in Dublin. The farthest she has been is Germany.
I got em, shoot me an email and I'll send you them tomorrow
[email protected]
Making shit up doesn't make it true.
The Africans in Degenesis are pretty well developed. I don't feel like they fit the common racist themes. They are far and away the richest, most powerful, and most inclusive culture. Because of the psychovore they are literally driven to come together as a community. They all speak the same language and they all look out for each other. Their technology is better than almost everybody in the setting (I mean they have tanks and nanobots for fucks sake) and they are actually pretty accepting of other cultures so long as they see something to gain. They work along side the Spitalians and their Anubian Sickles venture into Europe to kill Psychonaughts. The only reason that they get called out on the racists card is because they are aggressors. They know that they have superiority so they push into Europe and take their resources and people. That isn't racist. That is just colonial history. If you are tougher than they guy next door and resources are scarce you go take his shit.
Yes, just like how colonial Europeans were often highly violent and there was lots of sneaky bullshit going on. The idea is that the Africans are doing reverse colonialism of Europe because now they're the economic center of the world.
Your sister sounds like she's being a wanker, especially because everyone in the setting is kind a bunch of shitbags.
>yuro
Well that makes some sense.
Just remind her that it's not saying one group is better than another but that "modern values" are just that: modern.
The major society she lives in is european with a smattering of Mediterranean government and legal concepts regardless of the type of people that live there. Same with the States and much of the rest of the 1st world.
What seems abhorrent or barbaric to "us" is not the same to other cultures. Most Arab societies respect strength for instance. Coming to the table with negotiations being your opening move tells most of them that you are weak since if you had strength you would use it. That's why the US struggles with many of the tribal groups.
Tell her she cannot hold her European cultural lense to other cultures and decry what is wrong or evil in their representation. If it is based on real history then it is what those societies valued and she is the one being racist for subjectively and morally comparing her society to theirs.
Okay, why not put them on Mega or Google Drive?
What did I say that was made up? Many tribal groups are like that. Some are violent towards each other and have been for hundreds of generations. Others say shit but it's just banter and will still have a beer with another group. Africa is more triablised than most Europeans realize and much of the modern viilence is compounded by colonialism arbitrarily making "national" boundaries with no regard to tribes or cultures of which there are hundreds.
High production value.
This. Degenesis attempts to be anti-racist in that great German way that actually ends up causing more shit.
And despite that, people still accuse them of hating the blacks.
This.
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Oh god. My QR code reader is on my phone, but so is the QR code.
All these are correct.
Someone dump Degenesis pictures?
That is an excuse on par with GW charging 100 dollars for figurines that are more fragile than plastic.
That fucking book cost more shipping it to me in Convictland than it did for the actual book. I'd do it again too.
I got ya buddy.
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I often imagine there is a miniature story between and this image.
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I miss the Degenesis Generals...
Short question about the mechanics of the game:
Are they good, or at least usable?
All collected degenesis files I have
Its pretty much shadow run.
Silly OP. Everything is racist when you're an idiot.
That's a bit of a stretch. It uses d6 but it's nowhere near as crunchy.
Every Degenesis party will eventually run into a situation where they're in a pinch and only overcoming their preconceptions about others will save them. Racism a theme in the game, a central one, but it is in no way justified.
Degenesis also deals with slavery, balkanization, religious violence, and the end of society. It inverts the North-South slope, throws Europe back into tribal anarchy, and kills everyone beyond the map horribly. It is an artsy and critical game written for the European market. It does not adhere to US PC sensibilities. That's what makes it so interesting.
It isn't reactionary. It offers no right or wrong. And intolerance is very much a problem in the setting, keeping mankind from facing its decaying situation effectively for small individual advantages.
It isn't for children. It certainly isn't for US teenagers raised on a US media context. It can offer a route into understanding different cultures based on different assumptions with alternate traditions. But that's not what it sets out to do. It sets out to offer adult European players a morally challenging setting to play larger-than-life characters in. And it does that very well.
Calling Degenesis racist while at the same time vilifying all of Islam, raining random murder on 3 continents, supporting violent regimes and totalitarian despots all over the map, and dividing the own population into blacks, gays, women, gun nuts, fundamental Christians, and bleeding heart liberals to be set upon each other appears comical.
I recently started running a sort of bounty hunt campaign. I could storytime in a few hours when i get off work, provided the thread is still up.
I would seriously love to hear these.
bump
Cant mention a story time with out posting user
Mechanic wise it is not spectacular and sometimes feels dull, but yeah, it's far from unusable. I've been trying to convert the rule to Savage World tho. I hope this makes the game more enjoyable.
I don't understand. I've read through both books and none of it seems particularly racist.
I think your sister is racially sensitive - she's the real racist here.
Dude, Africa is INSANELY VIOLENT.
I went there on volunteer work for six months, and I was threatened with a home-made gun. A co-worker got stabbed by a screwdrive.
Rwanda would like a word.
In game racism yes. Game design xenophobia yes.
>tfw everyone wants to be hfy dr.nazis
Apologies on the delay. My shift is only half way over. It'll be about another 5 hours before I can get into the meat of it proper. However, I can give you guys a bit of a sample of how we started now, if you'd like.
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Starting out, only half of my players have properly read the rules or lore, so my primary goal in the two sessions I've run so far has been to teach both quickly. The table consists of, in no particular order:
>Borcan Scrapper who just wants to make money and see the world
>Balkhani Scrapper that again wants dosh but he enjoys the swindle more than exploring
>Franker Judge who wants to study abroad to better himself and his codex
> African Scourger who hates slavery and wants to unite the world into one great tribe
> Borcan Chronicler who seems like he just wants to serve the cluster and gather as much Intel as possible.
The group all started in separate areas in and around Justitian. Starting with the Chronicler and continuing with the Judge, the two Scrappers, and finally the Scourger: everyone in the group saw a female Chronicler bolting out of the cluster and headed south, first past the Steelmasters and then southeast towards the Cartel controlled Scrapper district in the south of the city. All of the people who spotted this maskless woman running the streets was told by wheezing, elder Chroniclers attempting to make chase, "Catch her! retrieve the artifact! 200 drafts, bring her to the cluster!"
I'm posting from my phone so I doubt I'll be able to get more posted before I get home. Apologies fatgents
Pretty intresting so far. Can't wait for more.
Why?
> we fall back on what worked before globalization
Any sort of trade really. The middle-east was a great place of racial tolerance for a little period there. At least relative to the views on racism elsewhere in the world at the time. And that's because they did business with Africa, the west, and India.
Persian culture was awesome and way ahead of its day. Too bad we found oil so useful, we got it through proliferating Wahhabism. Those schools the Saudis are building all over the Muslim world? That's the US and Britain fucking over the Middle East for oil to wage wars with. Wahhabism was a marginal hillbilly cult before the Quincy Agreement.
Who wants to be a tribal shit when you could have a Trailblazer?
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Who would want to be interesting when you can be a generic solider man, right.
You can be interesting without gimping yourself. You can still roleplay while possessing one of the strongest weapons in the entire game, which is better than roleplaying some shitty Jehammedan fuck that can't do shit for shit.
The Hellvetics are tied to their keeps. Doesn't make for a very good campaign if your soldier man has to keep checking in with their superiors and making grocery runs to collect more bullets.
Not that a Hellvetic couldn't go out on ADVENTURES! but it is a lot harder to justify versus a clanner (which you can pretty much tailor make to be from a tech VI cult) who is allowed to just cut out on their own.
Really, every cult has their merits. Putting any of them in a tiered list is asinine.
>some shitty Jehammedan fuck that can't do shit for shit
The Arianoi would like to have a word with you, fisherman.
The thing is if I would want to play a solider I would play a different game, they are just the most boring clan.
Do I really need to have the best weapon and munchkin as hard as I can to have fun?
If you can't play a game without having the absolute best weapons and armor then maybe stick to video games. I hear there are cheat codes that let you get all the best stuff right off the bat.
As much as I'm for everybody playing what he enjoys, I still find the goat-fuckers useless. Chroniclers for life.
Because following orders sucks?
You have to follow orders unless you're at the top rung of whatever cult you're a part of.
>Africa building a powerful empire by its own volition, dominating the weak surrounding nations by competent use of force and diplomacy.
"Dass racist, why they not begging for our handouts!"
Roman views on citizenship are another example of differing approaches to tribalism - it's almost a point of pride in Roman literature that your skin colour didn't matter; Roman ways were so clearly superior that it's astounding that anyone would want to be something other than Roman.
but as a Hellvetic you really gotta keep up on that shit. Then there's the whole 'counting every single shot and one misplaced round or misuse of your gear earns you serious punishments' part of the deal.
It's really better to not rely heavily on having enough bullets to kill all the bad guys. I've been running Degenesis for a few weeks and I good sword has made a lot more difference than the 5 bullets you get per month.
that's true for any faction though when I ran it I really played it fast and loose and my party was all munchkins save one very hellbent spitalian who eventually blew himself up after being memetically hacked to become a 'johnny' and implanted with a sepsis bomb by a very very insane marauder.
If you look for racism you'll always find it regardless if it was actually intended or not
Naw man, if everybody just played Blue Rose it would be a better world.
I just got home. I'll get what I can typed up and post a dump shortly.
Cont.
Of course, the Chronicler wants to pursue the traitor because orders, and the Judge follows moments later do dole out his judgement and dispense justice. As the chase went on, more and more people began following first in ones and twos but quickly by the tens. The rogue Chronicler running across the city to the South managed to break line of sight 5-6 of times from the two PCs engaged but they led the pack of nearly 50 bodies chasing this flighty woman picking up the trail each time it went cold.
Minutes into the chase, an announcement across the areas the mob had been and were likely to go emphasized the 200 draft payday and that turned some ears. Particularly, the ears of the Scrappers, by which I mean both of the PC Scrappers as well as most of the scrappers in the district. At this point there are people all about the area with eyes peeled and ears cocked, all searching for sign of this renegade, who incidentally, the PC Chronicler managed to ID as someone he had worked with on a handful of prior projects, named Stack.
During the chase, the Chronicler and the Scrapper from Balkhan, Viktor, fell behind into the mob which quickly grew to surpass 100, while the Judge and the Scrapper from Borca, Felix, began to actually gain on the woman. Seeing competition, however, Felix decided to try and remove the threat to his pay, and actually managed to trip up the Judge with a well-timed shove, from which he nearly didn’t recover.
Cont.
Nearly the same time, the Chronicler and Viktor made fast friends thanks to the promise of money. See, the Chronicler, desperate for cash & score in the cluster, yelled out in frustration that he’d pay extra if someone were to capture Stack for him. While this made most of the crowd just run that much faster, Viktor trotted up to the Chronicler and said he knew backalleys and sidestreets that would put them ahead of crowd.
This is when things got bad for Stack, as the Judge and Felix, who just wanted to sell the Chroniclers a neat artifact he’d found East, began to cooperate to catch her. After a moment of coordination, the judge managed to pull rank and get several protectors and city judges to about face and stall the mob as the scrapper and he made a quick plan. Felix had rope, enough to make a taut line 3-4 meters across between the two, using this they redoubled efforts to attempt a takedown, and in some sort of tackle, they managed to stop Stack.
Off to the south of all this happening, there is a camp of Africans. Scourgers, Neolibyans, and Anubians alike. They all spot this angry mob of Crows running, what they think to be directly at them. This prompted some certain actions from the Africans, mostly Neolibyans crawling to cover behind and on top of the surge tanks for firing positions and Scourgers forming a shield wall. This is when we cut over to G’bara, N’dwale, and Consandi; two Dufus and a Merchant. The PC, G’bara, was going to attempt to speak to the white man horde that was quickly approaching and talk them down from behind his spear and shield. What he did however, was witness the congregation stop and then shortly after disperse. The Neolibyan merchant he was guarding, Consandi, being the reckless, adventure hungry man he is, decided to investigate the seemingly sudden uprising and its equally sudden end, and so he began to follow the few Europeans remaining to their destination, dragging G’bara, and N’dwale along.
One of the themes in Degenesis is, that history repeats itself in wired ways. In this setting Africa is the imperialistic superpower that exploits the "savages" in in the North, as a direct role-reversal of historic events. The massage here is, that, at our core, we are all equally awful. You could see this misanthropic and cynical but racist? No.
But if this is to subtle for you there a actual disclaimer in the book addressing exactly these concerns.
Shall I continue?
Okay.
Yes please.
Cont.
After G’bara began following his troupe into Justitian towards the Cluster, the Judge and Felix tied up their target. Immediately afterwards our Chronicler player showed his face and decided he would have to extend an offer to the other two as well, and after a little bit of deception and convincing, the four of them, followed ever more closely by the African trio, walked with Stack bound in rope back to the Cluster. The only problem, she had stashed the artifact stolen someplace, and was refusing to talk. One short walk from southern outskirts of the city to the northern Tech Central, and the beginnings of a party had been made. The Africans three followed closely and asked what had happened and the merchant decided he would stick around, if only for the story he could tell later.
Upon reaching the entrance to the Cluster, everyone was greeted by some more of the same elder Chroniclers as before, streamers and fragments, and the Chronicler PC declared that the 7 of them all worked together to collect Stack and return her here, he tried to make up details describing the difficulty and necessity of cooperation the task required, but he faltered. Fortunately most of the party picked up on the attempted deception and finished what our Chronicler started. Earning the group a hefty sum of 200 drafts each, with their collective bargaining. Handled later, Viktor cornered our techboy in an alley while others were discussing things amongst themselves, and pressed the extra 100 drafts promised out of him.
The Cluster’s leadership tasked the group that so clearly worked together on this very difficult task to scout where the woman may have left the artifact, which was a breadbox sized steel container that held important information to the Cluster, as they explained to the ignorant uninitiated. Then were told to report back for the promise of greater rewards.
Cont.
So off the PCs went, retracing the path as best as they could remember, trying to piece each step taken by Stack together by interrogating the locals who witnessed the events from earlier in the day, investigating the scenes where she was seen, drinking distillate because the eggheads and lawmen are boring, picking up a small Scrapper follower named Bernadette to accompany Felix on his travels, and in the case of our Chronicler, watching the download of information from Stack’s memory.
After all their efforts, towards the investigation and not, the group learned that Stack, had been seen in the company of three men: an Anababtist, a Neolibyan, and a Paler near the western outskirts of the city over the past 3 days. They learned that in one of the locations where she had broken line of sight early in the chase, the Anababtist had been spotted looking shifty, and that he had headed south out of town not but an hour before the questions started flying. And the Chroniclers learned from Stack’s download that she had been planning something like this for quite some time, making deals outside her cult and setting the Chroniclers up for a big fall.
From the download and the interrogations they managed to piece together a solid description of the Anababtist’s face and build. A Purgish man, late 30s, brown shoulder length hair, a beard to match, the full steel ring of a large diameter in his nose, three blue dots tattooed (one between his brows, one above each respectively) and a long wide scar that branches from the left side of his crooked grin to just beneath his left ear, perhaps 180cm tall, and built like he could pull plow himself, hence why the people spoken to were eager to call him a bull of a man.
Upon hearing this, the group had decided to convene with the Cluster once more in an attempt to collect on the earlier mentioned rewards.
This was the end of the first session
Has anyone played a Degenesis game which only involved one cult? If so, what were you doing and how did it go? If not, have you wanted to?
cuck
I think I'm done for tonight, but if thread is still up when I get off work tomorrow, I'll go ahead and post the second session.
Where that argument falls flat is the fact that a Degenesis party is exactly like a World of Darkness party: these clans are supposed to hate each other, but the player characters will inevitably be from five different clans. Cult and culture are also treated as different things, even though that makes no sense. It shows that they really just wanted to display as many goofy racial and national caricatures as possible without worrying too much about how much sense it made.
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This is definitely my experience with the game. The real division isn't between cults; it's between PCs and NPCs. The PCs treat each other like family and every NPC like scum because that's the kind of behavior rewarded by the style of play. Nobody actually roleplays cult allegiance or distrust between party members because that will get everyone killed instantly. Even trusting NPCs from your own cult is a terrible idea; they'll just demand more than you can actually give without ruining the game, and nobody will care what a great method actor you are if you ruined their game.
Awesome. Will be keeping an eye out for it.
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Bald Spitalian chicks a hot.
It's a guy.
>farthest on the right.
>visible rack
Yeah, and next you are saying that this awkward boner is actually pubis bone.
Spitalians don't have chicks, man, they are all faggots. Just because this one have fucked up anatomy due to all those drugs he took over the years doesn't mean he is a woman.
Look at picrelated, this is how proper woman looks like, not your filthy traps.
>Choosing a literal whore as opposed to a woman who fights and dies for your continued, sepsis free existence.
You won't be saying that when you're at the back of a seedy bar huffing some Unity with your cock in her mouth.
At least I am not a gay.
I don't recognizes these. What are they from?
The artist who did them also did some artwork for the books and did these cuter ones for his own gallery. They're hosted on deviantart.
Or her cock in yours.