Cliches you can't stand

[ArlequineLunaire]

weird thought. you can make the argument that the intelligence stat is ablest or problematic or whatever (which I definitely think you can) But in a way you can also say its inclusive as it lets people (like me for example) who never got formal secondary education and struggle with some dyslexia related issues to roleplay as some cool mastermind or powerful wizard without actually having to show my intellect in real life just like you don't have to be able to bench press a horse to play a barbarian or whatever. Or similarly a flat stat lets someone who struggles with social situations or perhaps even has a speech impairment to have fun pretending to be a super charismatic bard or politician.

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I honestly never thought about it that way, but that's pretty insightful. I now admit that the obvious difference between Intelligence Stats in games as opposed to real-life IQ scores is that in tRPGs (and most computer RPGs) the player is completely free to assign Intelligence, which is in turn up to them (and obviously the DM) to define, unlike IQ scores which get assigned for you based on questionable criteria.

 

[Reveen]

Why do core states even need to be physical? You can replace any of those skills with something that more implies something learned or trained. Like 'conditioning' instead of 'strength or endurance' or knowledge instead of intelligence.

I suppose the counter argument is that those don't work as well to give a character flavour. But you could also just have stuff like traits or perks for that.

 

[Valmond]

Eventually you run into the problem of complexity.
Strength and Intelligence are easy to understand, or atleast easy for people to think they understand them.
Conditioning, and then adding half a dozen perks and traits to make it clear that, yes, this person is super strong, takes lot more time.
More nuanced a game system is, more time it takes to learn, and higher the bar of entry is.

 

[VolantRedX]

I find the concept of the "Klingon Promotion" to be utterly baffling and I don't understand why so many sci-fi and fantasy settings use it. It doesn't make the culture look hardened and warlike. It just makes them look stupid for encouraging underlings to kill their commanders at the first opportunity.

 

[Entropy Judge]

I find the concept of the "Klingon Promotion" to be utterly baffling and I don't understand why so many sci-fi and fantasy settings use it. It doesn't make the culture look hardened and warlike. It just makes them look stupid for encouraging underlings to kill their commanders at the first opportunity.

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It identifies certain leaders as good at their jobs - when Leader X has been in charge for so many years, and either isn't bumped off or successfully defends himself, it shows that either he's a Certified Badass or his underlings like him (presumably for being successful). It also lets you potentially identify Good Guys, who don't Klingon their way up the ladder and just advance normally by being Actually Good at their job. Because the corollary to 'anyone can ascend to the top if they can just take out the person above them' is that anyone can be removed from the top - effectively and permanently - if the people below them aren't happy with the situation. (And not liking Leader X and thinking you can do a better job than him if only you could be in that position is a common fantasy, I think. Side-eyes current political situation.)


EDIT: I mean, the original point probably was much the point you bring up: it shows the group in general to be short-sighted and barbaric. Some authors might still be using it the same way. I'm just trying to think up reasons for why it might be used in a less explicitly bad fashion. For example:

Let's say that Leader X is sickly, can barely walk, etc. If someone wants to off him, they almost certainly can (especially if the culture has requirements for Klingon Promotions to be official - death needs to be public and using only certain methods, for example). And Leader X probably can't just hire a champion, since that should make the champion the leader. But his subordinates, if they're loyal, probably can step in and force any challenger to go through them first - and if they're not near-crippled for one reason or another, any would-be challenger might be less willing to try. On the other hand, if Leader Y is a corrupt bully who's running the country into the ground, then it allows for an official change of leadership without the stigma of a coup by someone who is more qualified.

I am not terribly familiar with franchises that actually have Klingon Promotions, but I expect there are some rules/protocols most have to prevent total societal collapse, even if they aren't spelled out for the reader/viewer. Otherwise there would be nothing preventing ... *looks up names* Vaako from just killing Riddick after the death of the Necromonger Lord Marshal at the end of The Chronicles of Riddick. 🤷

 

[VolantRedX]

It identifies certain leaders as good at their jobs - when Leader X has been in charge for so many years, and either isn't bumped off or successfully defends himself, it shows that either he's a Certified Badass or his underlings like him (presumably for being successful). It also lets you potentially identify Good Guys, who don't Klingon their way up the ladder and just advance normally by being Actually Good at their job. Because the corollary to 'anyone can ascend to the top if they can just take out the person above them' is that anyone can be removed from the top - effectively and permanently - if the people below them aren't happy with the situation. (And not liking Leader X and thinking you can do a better job than him if only you could be in that position is a common fantasy, I think. Side-eyes current political situation.)

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The problem is that one it doesn't matter how skilled or well-liked you are any ambitious idiot could get lucky and slit your throat, leading to a total break down of command and two it means that there will be no stability to leadership, leading to a confused military response to any action. The whole thing just seems dumb from the outset. Especially since it means that in times of war your leaders will have to spend as much time if not more time focused on coups and power struggles as they will in leading the war effort.

 

[Entropy Judge]

The problem is that one it doesn't matter how skilled or well-liked you are any ambitious idiot could get lucky and slit your throat, leading to a total break down of command and two it means that there will be no stability to leadership, leading to a confused military response to any action. The whole thing just seems dumb from the outset. Especially since it means that in times of war your leaders will have to spend as much time if not more time focused on coups and power struggles as they will in leading the war effort.

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I just finished editing my post above with some other thoughts, one of which is that there are some rules regarding who gets to take control under what circumstances. Most groups wouldn't actually turn around and declare for an enemy warrior who managed to kill their leader in the middle of a battle, for example. On the face of it, or taken too literally, yes, it's a bad idea. On the other hand, trial by combat used to be an accepted form of judicial settlement, too.

 

[Xexilf]

I actually wonder whether you could hack a lot of traditional Stats-based games to instead just have lists of skills? Still probably somewhat generalized and abstracted, but more specific? I'm sure it's been done, but it's also 10 PM, so eh.

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The Dresden files RPG makes do without stats, and mainly does such things entirely via skills (before character-specific stunts and supernatural powers), but i dont think that adresses the core "problem" entirely. Since it still needs to generalize a lot of different things into singular numbers that end up pretty broad, even if it avoids a blunt "this one is smarter inherently".

 

[Robert Liguori]

The problem is that one it doesn't matter how skilled or well-liked you are any ambitious idiot could get lucky and slit your throat, leading to a total break down of command and two it means that there will be no stability to leadership, leading to a confused military response to any action. The whole thing just seems dumb from the outset. Especially since it means that in times of war your leaders will have to spend as much time if not more time focused on coups and power struggles as they will in leading the war effort.

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On the flip side, you're also building a culture which is incredibly hardened against shocks to the system caused by enemy agents assassinating your command.

One instance of it being taken semi-seriously is the orc culture from the Shadows of Mordor games. There, it makes a lot of sense for Sauron to encourage that sort of thing, because when he's not paying attention he gets lots of Darwinian churn, and when he is he can elevate and empower the orcs he actually cares about. (And, of course, this philosophy ends up biting him hard when the protagonist team really get into things.)

It's a structure I'd expect in fantasy worlds, where there is an overlord who can't be meaningfully knocked off by their underlings. It makes a lot less sense in other worlds, or outside of very specific honor cultures where formal duels are imbued with the same reverence as respect for the royal family and similar. (Or, alternately, where it's the official rule, but there is a cabal of rulers who have independently discovered government and cheerfully dishonorably assassinate any who try to topple any one of them with honorable murder.)

 

[The Laurent]

The Dresden files RPG makes do without stats, and mainly does such things entirely via skills (before character-specific stunts and supernatural powers), but i dont think that adresses the core "problem" entirely. Since it still needs to generalize a lot of different things into singular numbers that end up pretty broad, even if it avoids a blunt "this one is smarter inherently".

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But that was the original complaint? About generalizing intelligence, drawing back into its racial origins?

 

[DAv]

I find the concept of the "Klingon Promotion" to be utterly baffling and I don't understand why so many sci-fi and fantasy settings use it. It doesn't make the culture look hardened and warlike. It just makes them look stupid for encouraging underlings to kill their commanders at the first opportunity.

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DS9 would expand upon this a bit for Star Trek, showing that the Klingons would only go for this type of thing under specific circumstances such as the commander showing cowardice or incompetence and so on. Couldn't just shank a guy and claim his stuff.

 

[The Laurent]

It's basically an exaggeration of things that happen IRL, which is a common thing that these kinds of stories do. Take actual human systems--because damn if there wasn't a lot of murdering your way up to the top in human history--and making it a verified system/etc.

Plus, as far as I can tell, in many works of fiction it's portrayed as a bad thing? The Sith don't exactly get widely praised for their hiring and advancement practices.

E: And I'm pretty sure the Klingons are portrayed pretty negatively as a society, for that matter.

 

[Night]

Imitating the action of a tiger is actually pretty common in human systems, it's just, well, it's not simple to actually pull off. Ambitious idiots who get lucky mostly die well before they can progress far enough up the ladder to be a real threat to the organization, because once you do it, you have to turn around and survive everyone else attempting the same action. You have to not only win, but win quickly and convincingly.

 

[NMR-3]

The Klingon Promotion thing is used in a bunch of crack fics that start as follows:

[POV Character] stared while [Big Bad] lay dead on the floor, and everyone stared at them. Whoops.

"I guess you're the boss now!" [Wacky Character] said.

It's almost a template, really.

 

[DAv]

The Klingon Promotion thing is used in a bunch of crack fics that start as follows:

[POV Character] stared while [Big Bad] lay dead on the floor, and everyone stared at them. Whoops.

"I guess you're the boss now!" [Wacky Character] said.

It's almost a template, really.

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Worked out well for Dorothy, in a way.

 

[Sunder the Gold]

I actually wonder whether you could hack a lot of traditional Stats-based games to instead just have lists of skills? Still probably somewhat generalized and abstracted, but more specific? I'm sure it's been done, but it's also 10 PM, so eh.

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There was some kung fu game I never played and don't remember the name of. Weapons of the Gods?

If I remember right: All 25 traits belonged to five kinds of Chi, and the Chi stat's size only determined how much of that energy you could spend, but was not added to rolls with its associated Abilities. Each Ability represented your total developed proficiency for a thing, both muscle and skill.

Not all Abilities were made equal, though. When you enslave yourself to a 5x5 framework, you can need to make dubious choices like separating Athletics and Climb into two separate abilities for the Physical Power set. Or at least it seems that way to someone who didn't read the full rules.

But at least there's no Intelligence stat like people are hating on. Just a sort of "Intelligence Chi reserve" and the five different kinds of Thinky Abilities that people would use, which lets some people have really good Theoretical Booksmart Intelligence and others have really good Practical Engineering Intelligence.

 

[Valmond]

I don't think int stat is in and of itself a bad thing.
Some people just are smarter than others. I've met a lot of people who are smarter than me, and lot of people who are very much not.
But it is easy to do in a way that is a bad thing.
Like in DnD, racial int bonuses or penalties are a thing, and when you then couple them with racially charged stereotypes from the real world, if not actual cultural expies, things get, iffy, fast.

That said, there are plenty of good systems that just don't bother with stats like strength and int and such, and instead of things like, violence, and a character can be good at violence, without necessarily being strong, maybe they are just fast, or experienced, or studied anatomy, or lucky, who knows, what is known is that they are good at violence.

 

[Morphic Tide]

The griping over Intelligence as an individually variable statistic smacks of "equality" cultism, to me. The idea of treating everyone equally isn't grounded in any "tabula rasa" notion that all people are equal in essential potential, it's grounded in the idea of universal human rights, as derived from all humans being equal before God (as the philosophers behind it were indeed quite religious) and the concept of having the best-suited do the task rather than judging suitability by unrelated metrics like ethnicity.

The Classical Liberal response to Intelligence being an objectively measured quality that strongly varies by ethnicity (the +2s of standard D&D "races" amount to a five percentage point change in achievement, hardly what I'd call strong variance) is "so what", not "that's racist" like you lot. Because the underlying ideas are rewarding merit and valuing being human at all, science turning up that different ethnic groups are genuinely different in ability has no impact on the source of these ideas.

If your acceptance of the idea of universal human rights rests on a "tabula rasa" idea of psychology, not only is your view wildly unscientific due to the existence of genetic disorders that result in proper medically-recognized mental retardation, to say nothing of the studies on heredity of personality (both disorders like bipolarism and the "Big Five" traits of psychology), it shows you don't actually hold human value as a principal in its own right. That you hold the idea of universal human rights on the back of wild misconceptions of "science", rather than ideals that are largely independent of demographic particulars.

If the horribly low academic achievement of Blacks in the US is because they actually are lesser in mental ability due to their demographic's genetics, that doesn't change my opinion on them deserving some actually fucking working anti-poverty measures instead of more of the shit the Democrats have been feeding them the last 50 years, because it's still a range capable of producing geniuses, they still have able-bodied men and women, and they are still human.

In multi-species settings, this changes to an inherent value placed on sapience, but the point is that non-discrimination came from the idea of there being universal rights yet simultaneously thinking there to be profound ethnic differences. Like shitting on Germans for being hyper-collectivist nutcases, or feeling the Irish to be beer-obsessed savages.

 

[Reveen]

The Classical Liberal response to Intelligence being an objectively measured quality that strongly varies by ethnicity (the +2s of standard D&D "races" amount to a five percentage point change in achievement, hardly what I'd call strong variance) is "so what", not "that's racist" like you lot. Because the underlying ideas are rewarding merit and valuing being human at all, science turning up that different ethnic groups are genuinely different in ability has no impact on the source of these ideas

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Yeah that's because the Classical Liberals had slaves and thought that was okay because they thought they were all dumb dumbs who needed the magnanimous guiding hand of the White master.

Which is still a hell of a lot better than what people who go around calling themselves "classical liberals" in the modern day think.

 

[Pidl]

The Classical Liberal response to Intelligence being an objectively measured quality that strongly varies by ethnicity is "so what", not "that's racist" like you lot.

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The Not-Alt-Right response, however, is:

 

[10ebbor10]

Oh, boy. We're doing this one again.

 

[Suzu]

The griping over Intelligence as an individually variable statistic smacks of "equality" cultism, to me. The idea of treating everyone equally isn't grounded in any "tabula rasa" notion that all people are equal in essential potential, it's grounded in the idea of universal human rights, as derived from all humans being equal before God (as the philosophers behind it were indeed quite religious) and the concept of having the best-suited do the task rather than judging suitability by unrelated metrics like ethnicity.

The Classical Liberal response to Intelligence being an objectively measured quality that strongly varies by ethnicity (the +2s of standard D&D "races" amount to a five percentage point change in achievement, hardly what I'd call strong variance) is "so what", not "that's racist" like you lot. Because the underlying ideas are rewarding merit and valuing being human at all, science turning up that different ethnic groups are genuinely different in ability has no impact on the source of these ideas.

If your acceptance of the idea of universal human rights rests on a "tabula rasa" idea of psychology, not only is your view wildly unscientific due to the existence of genetic disorders that result in proper medically-recognized mental retardation, to say nothing of the studies on heredity of personality (both disorders like bipolarism and the "Big Five" traits of psychology), it shows you don't actually hold human value as a principal in its own right. That you hold the idea of universal human rights on the back of wild misconceptions of "science", rather than ideals that are largely independent of demographic particulars.

If the horribly low academic achievement of Blacks in the US is because they actually are lesser in mental ability due to their demographic's genetics, that doesn't change my opinion on them deserving some actually fucking working anti-poverty measures instead of more of the shit the Democrats have been feeding them the last 50 years, because it's still a range capable of producing geniuses, they still have able-bodied men and women, and they are still human.

In multi-species settings, this changes to an inherent value placed on sapience, but the point is that non-discrimination came from the idea of there being universal rights yet simultaneously thinking there to be profound ethnic differences. Like shitting on Germans for being hyper-collectivist nutcases, or feeling the Irish to be beer-obsessed savages.

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Last time I checked scientific racism was considered relevant or, you know, actually scientific as opposed to pseudo-scientific nonsense around seventy years ago. You really should read up on stuff from time to time, dude.

 

[Mechasaurian]

I'm pretty sure D&D already solved this problem to a degree by having "Intelligence" and "Wisdom" as separate stats.

A high INT low WIS person will beat a normal person in a game of speed chess after midnight while on a drunken bender without even trying, but they can still make astoundingly stupid decisions. You see this in real life - esteemed scientists who know their own area of expertise better than anyone else on the planet can become convinced by bullshit pseudoscience in areas outside said field of expertise.

Also, I really don't see any link between INT stats in RPGs and long-discredited "scientific racism."

 

[Yaminator]

The griping over Intelligence as an individually variable statistic smacks of "equality" cultism, to me. The idea of treating everyone equally isn't grounded in any "tabula rasa" notion that all people are equal in essential potential, it's grounded in the idea of universal human rights, as derived from all humans being equal before God (as the philosophers behind it were indeed quite religious) and the concept of having the best-suited do the task rather than judging suitability by unrelated metrics like ethnicity.

The Classical Liberal response to Intelligence being an objectively measured quality that strongly varies by ethnicity (the +2s of standard D&D "races" amount to a five percentage point change in achievement, hardly what I'd call strong variance) is "so what", not "that's racist" like you lot. Because the underlying ideas are rewarding merit and valuing being human at all, science turning up that different ethnic groups are genuinely different in ability has no impact on the source of these ideas.

If your acceptance of the idea of universal human rights rests on a "tabula rasa" idea of psychology, not only is your view wildly unscientific due to the existence of genetic disorders that result in proper medically-recognized mental retardation, to say nothing of the studies on heredity of personality (both disorders like bipolarism and the "Big Five" traits of psychology), it shows you don't actually hold human value as a principal in its own right. That you hold the idea of universal human rights on the back of wild misconceptions of "science", rather than ideals that are largely independent of demographic particulars.

If the horribly low academic achievement of Blacks in the US is because they actually are lesser in mental ability due to their demographic's genetics, that doesn't change my opinion on them deserving some actually fucking working anti-poverty measures instead of more of the shit the Democrats have been feeding them the last 50 years, because it's still a range capable of producing geniuses, they still have able-bodied men and women, and they are still human.

In multi-species settings, this changes to an inherent value placed on sapience, but the point is that non-discrimination came from the idea of there being universal rights yet simultaneously thinking there to be profound ethnic differences. Like shitting on Germans for being hyper-collectivist nutcases, or feeling the Irish to be beer-obsessed savages.

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"Classical Liberals" try to go five minutes without breaking out the calipers challenge 2020

 

[10ebbor10]

The griping over Intelligence as an individually variable statistic smacks of "equality" cultism, to me. The idea of treating everyone equally isn't grounded in any "tabula rasa" notion that all people are equal in essential potential, it's grounded in the idea of universal human rights, as derived from all humans being equal before God (as the philosophers behind it were indeed quite religious) and the concept of having the best-suited do the task rather than judging suitability by unrelated metrics like ethnicity.

The Classical Liberal response to Intelligence being an objectively measured quality that strongly varies by ethnicity (the +2s of standard D&D "races" amount to a five percentage point change in achievement, hardly what I'd call strong variance) is "so what", not "that's racist" like you lot. Because the underlying ideas are rewarding merit and valuing being human at all, science turning up that different ethnic groups are genuinely different in ability has no impact on the source of these ideas.

If your acceptance of the idea of universal human rights rests on a "tabula rasa" idea of psychology, not only is your view wildly unscientific due to the existence of genetic disorders that result in proper medically-recognized mental retardation, to say nothing of the studies on heredity of personality (both disorders like bipolarism and the "Big Five" traits of psychology), it shows you don't actually hold human value as a principal in its own right. That you hold the idea of universal human rights on the back of wild misconceptions of "science", rather than ideals that are largely independent of demographic particulars.

If the horribly low academic achievement of Blacks in the US is because they actually are lesser in mental ability due to their demographic's genetics, that doesn't change my opinion on them deserving some actually fucking working anti-poverty measures instead of more of the shit the Democrats have been feeding them the last 50 years, because it's still a range capable of producing geniuses, they still have able-bodied men and women, and they are still human.

In multi-species settings, this changes to an inherent value placed on sapience, but the point is that non-discrimination came from the idea of there being universal rights yet simultaneously thinking there to be profound ethnic differences. Like shitting on Germans for being hyper-collectivist nutcases, or feeling the Irish to be beer-obsessed savages.

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Anyway, let's address this argument for a bit.

First point to make is that studies claiming racial intelligence gaps often suffer from serious issues, some of which can be attributed to incompetence, though others have to be attributed to willful ignorance or malice. I don't feel like discussing every terrible study ever, so if you want to go into this feel free to dig up whichever study you think is foolproof.

I'm going to engage with the core of your argument, which is your claim that it shouldn't matter. That the question of racial intelligence is irrelevant, because they're human regardless and should receive the same human rights.
This idea is obviously true and that may be why you're so tempted to claim that liberals are the real racists for denying the racial intelligence claim, because you use that to argue that they would be racist they thought would be inferior.

Your problem is that you failed to evaluate the implications and practicalities of "equal application of human rights", and just contented yourself with creating a straw man of the liberal position. Per your explanation further upwards, the underlying idea of human rights is "rewarding merit and valuing being human at all". And there's the key issue, and the thing liberals are actually concerned about. If you believe that black people are inherently less intelligent, then it is only normal that they have lesser rewards. After all, you have scientifically established that they are "genuinely different in ability".

That is the key element of the liberal concern. Not that they think that human rights should be denied to those with lesser intelligence, but that they believe that the claims of lesser intelligence are being utilized to justify and excuse situations that are actually caused by racial and societal discrimination in violation of those human rights.

Edit : Tl'dr :

Because the underlying ideas are rewarding merit and valuing being human at all, science turning up that different ethnic groups are genuinely different in ability has no impact on the source of these ideas.

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This sentence is a massive contradiction.
You can not claim that ideas about who is merit worthy and who is not are irrelevant to a system based upon merit.