Mod+ Mythic Polynesia

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CRKrueger said:
There’s a direct line to how we got here. The Pub allowed the discussion of stuff like MAR’s background because “saying Nazi’s are racist isn’t a political position”. An unfortunate decision, but 100% understandable. No one wants to leave open a line of attack of Nazi Apologia or defense.

But…now that we get to call people racists, we either accept all claims of racist in gaming unchallenged, or we allow the discussion of what is racist. Either of which allows people to push their political beliefs under the cover of the hastily erected ”We Don’t Defend Nazis” umbrella. Unfortunately, while under that umbrella, the Pub is allowing clear political debate to occur.

Even worse, it’s allowing, based on one Tweet, the author, and by extension the company, to be branded racist.
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So while from a philisophical point of view I suspect I largely agree with a lot of your points about Mythic Polynesia in general, I don't think I agree with this argument about how these issues are discussed on the Pub. Certainly as a new member not from what I've seen so far.

Specifically in this thread we have had a robust and I think sensible discussion that addresses the accusation of racism and stereotyping of cultures and the counter point that the book ultimately relates to a fantastical (one might say Mythic) world and so such accusations ring hollow.

At that point because of the correct application of the no politics rule the debate more or less reached a stalemate. The next line of discussion is about how fantastical depictions can (or can't) cause real world harm which was very correctly ruled to be veering into an explicitly political discussion/debate.

If I am being frank, and I hope this isn't political in the context of the rules, but in the social media age the mere accusation of racism regardless of the source now holds less credibility than it once did. And I think it is in this context that accusations of racism can be made, some counter points made and then we can move on before it becomes genuinely political beyond the scope of the forum.
 
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Séadna said:
Yeah, just to be clear I haven't reached those parts yet in my posts here. In most cases Liam's tweets I've covered so far do have him say something like "this was strange/unknown to me, is this an islands thing?"
The only issue not of this type I've hit yet were his ones about the f/wh sound.
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You are reaching the point where he moderates a lot. There is a bunch more of this “this doesn’t apply to Māori” sort of statements.
 
Raleel said:
You are reaching the point where he moderates a lot. There is a bunch more of this “this doesn’t apply to Māori” sort of statements.
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I can see what you mean, I might accelerate ahead then a bit with less of an exposition on those points (i.e. papers etc) and get to the more contentious issues.
 
Séadna said:
I can see what you mean, I might accelerate ahead then a bit with less of an exposition on those points (i.e. papers etc) and get to the more contentious issues.
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I’ll take what you got, though I think the discussion here is following exactly the same pattern of his analysis :smile: I think you won’t find too many more. I think the big one is a discussion of the Moriori if I remember correctly.
 
Séadna said:
I can see what you mean, I might accelerate ahead then a bit with less of an exposition on those points (i.e. papers etc) and get to the more contentious issues.
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Well, since you’re serving as an academic review here, I really would appreciate the full version. Yeah Liam says ”this doesn’t apply to Māori” a lot, but you’re also doing a good job of showing where Shirley’s research was correct.

Seeing the intense scrutiny this is being looked at, dismissing where his scholarship is good leaves a biased accounting.

Do what you do brother, you’ll get to the big ticket items soon enough.
 
CRKrueger said:
Well, since you’re serving as an academic review here, I really would appreciate the full version. Yeah Liam says ”this doesn’t apply to Māori” a lot, but you’re also doing a good job of showing where Shirley’s research was correct.

Seeing the intense scrutiny this is being looked at, dismissing where his scholarship is good leaves a biased accounting.
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One of the issues is that Liam gave up after a certain point (I think when he got to the stereotypes chart) and then dismissed the whole book with some....hyperbolic comparisons...

So it is kinda hard to get a sense of what percentage of the contents he takes issues with, or is otherwise perfectly fine.
 
TristramEvans said:
One of the issues is that Liam gave up after a certain point (I think when he got to the stereotypes chart) and then dismissed the whole book with some....hyperbolic comparisons...

So it is kinda hard to get a sense of what percentage of the contents he takes issues with, or is otherwise perfectly fine.
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What Liam thinks or believes is of zero importance to me once he engaged in social media blackmail. What I care about is the evaluation from a neutral academic source.
 
What blackmail is that? Demanding that TDM have an answer to his claims of racist content? They can choose to answer or not to answer. Personally, I don’t think it wise to sweep it under the rug and hope people just forget about it.
 
Endless Flight said:
What blackmail is that? Demanding that TDM have an answer to his claims of racist content? They can choose to answer or not to answer. Personally, I don’t think it wise to sweep it under the rug and hope people just forget about it.
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The part about “silence is endorsement” and if they don’t act quickly enough, they’ll be assumed racists.

It’s the old “Great company you have there, be a shame if something happened to it.” threat.
 
CRKrueger said:
The part about “silence is endorsement” and if they don’t act quickly enough, they’ll be assumed racists.

It’s the old “Great company you have there, be a shame if something happened to it.” threat.
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TBF the only people who would live up to that threat have already made their decision on the game.
 
Endless Flight said:
What blackmail is that? Demanding that TDM have an answer to his claims of racist content? They can choose to answer or not to answer. Personally, I don’t think it wise to sweep it under the rug and hope people just forget about it.
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Out of interest does anyone recall where other Mythic books ended up on Drive Thru? At the moment Mythic Polynesia is sitting with a 4/5 rating and around number 30 on the bestseller list. But I don't have enough context to know whether for a fairly niche book like this that is solid or disappointing for the company.

It is worth baring in mind that rpgs can suffer quite a lot from an equivalent of shall we say survivor bias when it comes to getting a sense of public opinion. In other words it is a comparatively small number of dedicated rpgers who even bother to post on forums and give their opinion compared to a much larger group that won't even have heard of the book on release much less the controversy.

Added to that it is mostly a much smaller subset within the community that is driving sales in any given sourcebook, namely Mythic Earth GMs.

And then that's without factoring in the sales that could be lost, depending on the statement made by TDM, by those consumers who are concerned with the impact of baseless accusations on artists and creative works and what that would mean for the artistic integrity of future works in the Mythic Earth line.

Basically if TDM sits tight I am not sure that is necessarily a poor strategy.
 
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Zebraman said:
It is worth baring in mind that rpgs can suffer quite a lot from an equivalent of shall we say survivor bias when it comes to getting a sense of public opinion. In other words it is a comparatively small number of dedicated rpgers who even bother to post on forums and give their opinion compared to a much larger group that won't even have heard of the book on release much less the controversy.
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Yeah, honestly, the fact we all post on a forum makes us all unrepresentative.

I don't know either way because I haven't seen the figures, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if this kind of controversy has no notable effect on sales. I suspect it mostly just validates already determined purchase decisions.
 
Zebraman said:
Out of interest does anyone recall where other Mythic books ended up on Drive Thru?
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Bablylon did extremely well as I remember. Stayed top 10 for a week or so. I don't keep close metrics on that stuff, however. Constantinople, Babylon, and Rome are all gold sellers. Britain, which has been around for a LONG time, is a platinum.
 
Séadna said:
The Maori sound denoted by "wh" is given as /ɸ/ in the IPA. this is essentially an "f" but made through friction between both lips rather than friction between upper teeth and lower lip.
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sounds like a soft f, which I didn't know was a thing. thanks!
 
Séadna said:
This is a bit of a technical aside for people not interested in linguistics.


The Maori sound denoted by "wh" is given as /ɸ/ in the IPA. this is essentially an "f" but made through friction between both lips rather than friction between upper teeth and lower lip.
Under influence from New Zealand English it began to shift from /ɸ/ to either the English "f" or a sound like English "wh" or even "h".

Statistics for speakers in the 1940s are given in Harlow, Ray (2006). Māori, A Linguistic Introduction:
/ɸ/ 50% (pre-contact historical sound)
/ʍ/ 18% (like English "wh")
/f/ 13% (English "f")
/h/ 20% (English "h")

I've seen from later reviews that shifts into English sounds have become more and more common over time as bilingualism has become universal.

The Mythic Polynesia book is basically conveying the traditional /ɸ/ sound as "f" because:
(a) That's what it sounds closest to for English speakers
(b) It evolved from Proto-Polynesian "f", i.e. in the Proto-Polynesian the book uses elsewhere the sound was exactly English "f". So a Maori word that has "wh" today had an "f" in Proto-Polynesian.
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I’m beginning to think Séadna Séadna is a sentient AI. Seriously, dude, did you just happen to have that book on your shelf or do you have complete Computer access to the Library of Congress or something?
 
TristramEvans said:
One of the issues is that Liam gave up after a certain point (I think when he got to the stereotypes chart) and then dismissed the whole book with some....hyperbolic comparisons...
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"Hyperbolic comparisons" is a sad and coward euphemism.
 
Sharrow said:
As for the Moriori, their enslavement and genocide occurred in the mid-late 1800s, and is thus part of the upheaval post-contact with Europeans, during the 'musket wars'. I don't think it has any place in a 'mythic polynesia' at all, and that is does suggests that the author is using the old narrative (a European one) that the Moriori were the original inhabitants of New Zealand proper and were driven out (and mostly killed and eaten) by the Māori when they arrived.
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People have been coming up with reasons for displacing and killing other people since the first Homo Sapiens came up with a casus belli against the Neanderthal. The only thing that matters is whether or not it is correct.

It seems clear, and I’m sure @Seadna will get to it, that the Moriori came to New Zealand after the Māori, and then migrated to the Chatham Islands, where the Māori then attacked, enslaved and slaughtered them during the late 1800’s. It seems there he did use outdated sources.
 
Sir Pom-Pom said:
Request for censorship and threat of boycott. Insulted and threatened. Cool. And this is the good guy?



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in my world, the computer security world, it is very common for researchers to work with a software manufacturer to fix the bugs. they work in private, they notify the company in private, they point to the errors, and even offer fixed if they can. This is mostly done without payout, though "bug bounties" are offered by some companies to incentivize this behavior.

At some point, it goes public because company's have a habit of not fixing stuff, so it provides an incentive. But that period of time is normally a fair bit of time - 3 months is pretty common. I've seen much longer when the researchers are working with the company and they are making headway and the problem is tricky. It's a show of good faith. If it doesn't get made public before, it is often made public after the patch, when they are rolling it out, so folks will know that it is important to install.

I think I would have preferred a process like this - reach out privately to a game publisher, offer the support. Especially with small companies like TDM, it's a couple of guys doing it as a hobby and love of the games. The expectation that they not only have the knowledge to recognize a potential issue, but the financial resources to cover a cultural consultant is, frankly, unrealistic. It's a couple of guys writing out of their houses and freelancers who likely are making literal pennies per hour for the work they put into it. This expectation will lead you to not having games outside of the big boys.
 
Raleel said:
Bablylon did extremely well as I remember. Stayed top 10 for a week or so. I don't keep close metrics on that stuff, however. Constantinople, Babylon, and Rome are all gold sellers. Britain, which has been around for a LONG time, is a platinum.
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Mythic Canada will blow them all out of the water, though, I'm sure...

s-l1600.jpg
 
Just continuing my detailed review and read through of Mythic Polynesia, having now read the Chapter Friendly Alliance in quite a bit of detail, can I say that with the exception of the previously discussed link to character creation this Chapter is a really strong piece of Paleo-Fantasy writing and world building.

There are about 120 separate locations given their own entry with pretty concise but detailed descriptions of the geography and the inhabitants, supernatural or otherwise.

All of this builds to a very evocative villian; The gigantic Demon-King Puna of the supernatural Island of Hiti-marama. His lieutenants, court, minons and motivations are well described which will give plenty of material for GMs. I particularly liked the swordfish so massive it might be mistaken for land.
 
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AsenRG said:
If you notice, in his posts in the thread, Séadna Séadna notes repeatedly that Liam's criticisms are based on New Zealand and that what Liam says indeed isn't correct for NZ culture...but that the book is correct for the broader region.
So Liam is correct that his culture is misrepresented, but that's because the book isn't accounting for how New Zealand/Maori differ from the rest of the region. And there's after all only so much space in a book...

Now, keeping the above in mind, refer again to my previous post, where I'm saying that Mythic Polynesia needs to be an overview of a whole, quite diverse region, and this is going to impact the exactitude.
I even compared it to writing about East Asia as a region, vs writing for China, which is a single country, but with many sub-divisions, vs writing for a specific Chinese region or sub-region, and how writing about the region would lead to similar discrepancies which might easily offend a Chinese (or Japanese) reader...:angel:
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As I pointed out in my deleted comment Polynesia covers 800,000 square miles, 8 major cultural groups, and 38 languages. Modern Polynesia includes several independent nations as well as direct influence from the USA, UK, France, Chile, and New Zealand. If the related cultures of Melanesia and Micronesia are included then it gets even more broad.

A 200 something page book with pure historical intent would struggle to cover the culture and history of the region, and wouldn't be devoting pages to rules like weather, sailing and surfing.
 
CRKrueger said:
Don’t forget Sharkmen!
View attachment 52940
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This is Ma'o-kariki the main antagonist of the starter scenario the Tide Runs Red.

I really like this piece of artwork. It was a factor in me buying the book. It's one of the few pieces I think really does work in black and white.

The Manavaha (sharkmen) are given a good sized entry in the bestiary along with possible ways in which they will interact with PCs and NPCs...surprisingly this doesn't always involve merely trying to invite them to the sea for dinner.
 
TristramEvans said:
TBF the only people who would live up to that threat have already made their decision on the game.
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Well those kinds of people did help to speed up the process of my buying MP before any potential shenanigans make that problematic.

Threw in Casting the Runes and The Predestination Engine (scenarios for CtR) for good measure. Now I'm just waiting on a slow moving Wendigo to bring my swag from TDM's fortress in the frozen north.
 
Séadna said:
This is a bit of a technical aside for people not interested in linguistics.


The Maori sound denoted by "wh" is given as /ɸ/ in the IPA. This is essentially an "f" but made through friction between both lips rather than friction between upper teeth and lower lip.
Under influence from New Zealand English it began to shift from /ɸ/ to either the English "f" or a sound like English "wh" or even "h".

Statistics for speakers in the 1940s are given in Harlow, Ray Māori, A Linguistic Introduction: (2006).
/ɸ/ 50% (pre-contact historical sound)
/ʍ/ 18% (like English "wh")
/f/ 13% (English "f")
/h/ 20% (English "h")

I've seen from later reviews that shifts into English sounds have become more and more common over time as bilingualism has become universal.

The Mythic Polynesia book is basically conveying the traditional /ɸ/ sound as "f" because:
(a) That's what it sounds closest to for English speakers
(b) It evolved from Proto-Polynesian "f", i.e. in the Proto-Polynesian the book uses elsewhere the sound was exactly English "f". So a Maori word that has "wh" today had an "f" in Proto-Polynesian.
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Scots dialects do something similar.

Typically in English, the "wh" sound is pronounced "w". What and whale are pronounced "wat" and "wale".

Lallans (lowland) Scots pronounces the phoneme as "hw". What and whale become "Hwat" and "hwale".

In Doric, the dialect of Aberdeenshire, what becomes "fit". So "what are you doing [stepbro]?" becomes "fit ee daein'?"

Sadly, I don't have an Aberdonian on hand to talk about whales.

Beyond some mild ribbing (in all directions) it's not a point of contention.

Cone to think of it, "hu" in Japanese is usually transliterated as "fu". I wonder it it's a really common sound mutation!
 
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Other rpg social media sources are still running thick with venom over this publication, and it's unfortunately bad press for TDM.

Just too much a hot potato to be forgotten now

Several online voices seem to be getting their five minutes of fame for their opinions, and they are likely to be hyper-critical of anything TDM does now, just to remain vocal and current.

I really feel sorry for Loz, Pete, and the crowd at TDM.

Sadly I think this may put the nails on the coffins regarding most future developments of the Mythic line for Mythras.
 
Mankcam said:
Sadly I think this may put the nails on the coffins regarding most future developments of the Mythic line for Mythras.
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I really don't think it's going to go that far. They are fighting over scraps. Just a little while ago you could find mostly the same folks declaring they were never going to buy a Steve Jackson Games product again because they chose to work with the same studio Bill Webb works at, and a year later because SJG put out some internal memo saying they'd support their employees who chose to get a certain medical procedure, the exact same folk were declaring how they were going to buy a bunch of GURPs products in support. This stuff is mostly performative, and only lasts until a juicier target comes along.
 
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