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Fanatics & Zealots: How to Use Extremism in Antagonists and Villains in Your Campaigns (+)
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<blockquote data-quote="Ixal" data-source="post: 8540352" data-attributes="member: 7030132"><p>Not quoting all the small snippets.</p><p></p><p>The problem with those examples is that they often mostly or completely ignore the type of extremism they want to represent. The example of political extremists are not political at all. Likewise the goals of the religious and philosophical extremists are not really religious or philosophical either. All of them come down to genocidal race war.</p><p>That they come from an established campaign setting does not make them better examples.</p><p></p><p>And in my opinion the entire article is not helpful much because the large disconnect between our understanding of extremism, which is a modern term, and the pseudo historic state of most RPG settings, especially D&D.</p><p>What the article fails to do is to explain how political extremism looks like in a setting where politics mean absolute or feudal monarchs and similar systems of government.</p><p>Political extremist, as I wrote in my last post, would not only be those who want to abolish nobility, but also those nobles who try to change the established order, by installing a pretender to the crown, etc. Certainly not the type of person most people today associate with political extremists.</p><p></p><p>Translating religious extremism is even more complicated because of the weird way of how religion is handled in D&D with there being a near global polytheistic pantheon but each church operating more like it is monotheistic. Sure, there is room for extremism when two pantheons meet, but what about extremism within the pantheon? How would that even work?</p><p>Additionally in D&D every cleric gets direct feedback from his chosen deity when he strayed too much, so how would this work with religious extremists?</p><p></p><p>Painting extremists as always evil and the enemy is also problematic especially as the term is often used to discredit everyone who wants something different than you. As I said above, the abolitionist would be a political extremist.</p><p>Saying that extremism is always evil would require you to create a default system of government, religious practices, etc. which is normal and everything outside it is extremist. And good luck managing that. Are monarchies the default or republics? And which monarchies, feudal, absolute, elective? And which elective system is normal and which extremist? Is it generally evil to seek change, which is what extremists want?</p><p></p><p>So in my opinion this article fails to show how extremism would work within the constrains of a D&D like setting which also giving ill fitting examples which are not the kind of extremism it claims them to be and instead always goes back to genocidal race war.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ixal, post: 8540352, member: 7030132"] Not quoting all the small snippets. The problem with those examples is that they often mostly or completely ignore the type of extremism they want to represent. The example of political extremists are not political at all. Likewise the goals of the religious and philosophical extremists are not really religious or philosophical either. All of them come down to genocidal race war. That they come from an established campaign setting does not make them better examples. And in my opinion the entire article is not helpful much because the large disconnect between our understanding of extremism, which is a modern term, and the pseudo historic state of most RPG settings, especially D&D. What the article fails to do is to explain how political extremism looks like in a setting where politics mean absolute or feudal monarchs and similar systems of government. Political extremist, as I wrote in my last post, would not only be those who want to abolish nobility, but also those nobles who try to change the established order, by installing a pretender to the crown, etc. Certainly not the type of person most people today associate with political extremists. Translating religious extremism is even more complicated because of the weird way of how religion is handled in D&D with there being a near global polytheistic pantheon but each church operating more like it is monotheistic. Sure, there is room for extremism when two pantheons meet, but what about extremism within the pantheon? How would that even work? Additionally in D&D every cleric gets direct feedback from his chosen deity when he strayed too much, so how would this work with religious extremists? Painting extremists as always evil and the enemy is also problematic especially as the term is often used to discredit everyone who wants something different than you. As I said above, the abolitionist would be a political extremist. Saying that extremism is always evil would require you to create a default system of government, religious practices, etc. which is normal and everything outside it is extremist. And good luck managing that. Are monarchies the default or republics? And which monarchies, feudal, absolute, elective? And which elective system is normal and which extremist? Is it generally evil to seek change, which is what extremists want? So in my opinion this article fails to show how extremism would work within the constrains of a D&D like setting which also giving ill fitting examples which are not the kind of extremism it claims them to be and instead always goes back to genocidal race war. [/QUOTE]
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