Gypsy Job question

Mike Ventrella said:
I think there is such a thing as being too sensitive.
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This. So many things can be associated with religion. Tarot has been allowed IG. It is currently used by a number of players in a respectful way.

siriuslyyellow said:
(Also, if someone asked me not to wear a sun on my armor because they worship Ra, I would change my armor. Just saying.)
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I am glad you would go to that length but I wouldn't. At some point we have to just let some things go or we end up with a very dull game and a lot of finger pointing. We have magic in the game. Some people believe in and practice magic. By that logic we should remove magic from the game or stop playing casters to be respectful.

We could come up with a laundry list of no nos that PCs already do or the game uses. No character should be allowed to meditate, templar should not be the name of a class, no sigils or symbols can be used as group emblems, no psychics or mind powers, no blood letting, no more fae (come on it's our tricky way of saying gods), no more magic, no more mythological creatures (there goes 90% of our monster database), no names that mean "god" or are god names (here's a link to a gigantic list of names we can no longer use: http://www.thinkbabynames.com/search/1/god), no more magic items (idol worship), etc, etc, etc.

Your heart is obviously in the right place, which is great but at some point we have to say: "It's just a game. We have no gods in it and no religion. We do our best not to incorporate OVERTLY religious themes but we just can't appease everyone."
 
evi1r0n said:
a laundry list of no nos that PCs already do or the game uses. No character should be allowed to meditate, templar should not be the name of a class, no sigils or symbols can be used as group emblems, no psychics or mind powers, no blood letting, no more fae (come on it's our tricky way of saying gods), no more magic, no more mythological creatures (...)
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wands, rituals, circles, astrology, "The Earth," drawings or pictures of people, heck, I could even make an argument for written language (re: the reason most people learned to read in this time period was to read the bible). This one is the slipperiest slope.
 
Fair points, all. Let me ask you this: If a player came up to you and said in a polite and respectful manner that your character using tarot (for example) in game bothered them and asked you to stop, what would you do? I only see three options. One, stop. Two, tell them no and they continue playing our game but are uncomfortable. Three, tell them no and they stop playing our game.

I'm just saying that I think the best solution is to be respectful to other players out of game. But I would like to know what the rest of you would do if that situation came up.

(Full disclosure: I have had my tarot read in reality and in my opinion it is not something to be played around with. I would also ask a player to not pray in game, even though I'm Christian. I just think that everything in game should be non-religious, since that's the rule. Just throwing my two cents in! XD)
 
Sarah: In the practice of my religion, I cast a circle, use the elements, use a wand... the list goes on and on. I do all of those things at game, as well.

The idea is that some larps have gods and entire religious systems that go along with them. In Alliance, the idea is to avoid going in that direction. Not avoid every possibility of ever insulting/offending everyone in every possible situation.
 
I would tell them "no." If they're that sensitive to being offended by make believe, they are going to be offended by something at our game. I refuse to limit the scope of my game or cater to the whiniest denominator.

We are in the minority as far as LARPs go by not having religion. Last month I was playing in a "historically accurate" LARP with some of the people on this forum. There wasn't just religion, there was Catholicism, with mass on Sunday in Latin and everything. I'm not talking about potentially offending a tiny minority of players who practice an already marginalized religion, I'm talking about potentially offending Christians, the biggest and loudest group in our country. Know what happens? Nothing. Everybody buys it as a pretendy-time make-believe game, and no one gets bent out of shape about the religion thing. Alliance is one of the few LARPs that I've played that has no religion, and other games get by just fine with it by treating their game as a game, so I really don't feel that asking people to see running around in the woods with capes on as not especially serious times should be a major request. If people want to be offended, there's absolutely no force on this earth that's going to stop them, but I can point out that they're taking a game way to seriously, and if that causes them to quit, I'll take it as a win.
 
Maybe I'm too sensitive or thoughtful or superstitious or whatnot, but I would avoid tarot cards both IG and OOG. But that's just me. And I guess these things can be handled on a player-by-player or chapter-by-chapter basis. To each their own! :)

Going back to the original intent of this thread, I'm not sure how much PCs make IG with fortune teling. I would ask your local chapter's gypsies how well they do with it. If it's not a good source of income for them, perhaps be a gypsy blacksmith instead? :p
 
I would avoid tarot IG. If as an NPC I was forced to interact with a PC who tried to get me to use tarot, I would either play it so I got out of it ("I can't touch those cards! I'll destroy the magic!" "Pssh what could a card know about the future?" etc) or I'd go OOG to say I was uncomfortable. I don't think there's anything wrong with someone having beliefs IRL and I wouldn't want anyone to do anything that made the game not fun. I was asked to not curse at an event, and I apologized and continued on. I saw an NPC doing tarot and I walked by without interacting. As long as everyone is respectful, that's the main goal.

So, if someone has an issue, I'd respect that even if it meant I avoided the PC in the future. Because pulling RL issues IG is no fun at all. (BTW if I was doing fortune-telling, I'd get a bag of rocks, sticks, & leaves and go from there. Not sure how much money it'd make me though. ;))
 
siriuslyyellow said:
Maybe I'm too sensitive or thoughtful or superstitious or whatnot, but I would avoid tarot cards both IG and OOG. But that's just me. And I guess these things can be handled on a player-by-player or chapter-by-chapter basis. To each their own! :)

Going back to the original intent of this thread, I'm not sure how much PCs make IG with fortune teling. I would ask your local chapter's gypsies how well they do with it. If it's not a good source of income for them, perhaps be a gypsy blacksmith instead? :p
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1 Ag per rank per day? :ninja:
 
kowaiyoukai said:
I would avoid tarot IG. If as an NPC I was forced to interact with a PC who tried to get me to use tarot, I would either play it so I got out of it ("I can't touch those cards! I'll destroy the magic!" "Pssh what could a card know about the future?" etc) or I'd go OOG to say I was uncomfortable. I don't think there's anything wrong with someone having beliefs IRL and I wouldn't want anyone to do anything that made the game not fun. I was asked to not curse at an event, and I apologized and continued on. I saw an NPC doing tarot and I walked by without interacting. As long as everyone is respectful, that's the main goal.

So, if someone has an issue, I'd respect that even if it meant I avoided the PC in the future. Because pulling RL issues IG is no fun at all. (BTW if I was doing fortune-telling, I'd get a bag of rocks, sticks, & leaves and go from there. Not sure how much money it'd make me though. ;))
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Thanks for posting! Great points! :D
 
Avaran said:
siriuslyyellow said:
Maybe I'm too sensitive or thoughtful or superstitious or whatnot, but I would avoid tarot cards both IG and OOG. But that's just me. And I guess these things can be handled on a player-by-player or chapter-by-chapter basis. To each their own! :)

Going back to the original intent of this thread, I'm not sure how much PCs make IG with fortune teling. I would ask your local chapter's gypsies how well they do with it. If it's not a good source of income for them, perhaps be a gypsy blacksmith instead? :p
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1 Ag per rank per day? :ninja:
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I don't know what that means, but I like your ninja face. :funny:
 
siriuslyyellow said:
Avaran said:
1 Ag per rank per day? :ninja:
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I don't know what that means, but I like your ninja face. :funny:
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Ag is short for Argentum, a reference to silver on the periodic table, suggesting that if you take a craftsman other "fortune telling", you'd get 1 silver per rank of craftsman per day.

But really, I'm just lazy and referenced silver as "Ag" cause I couldn't be bothered to type "silver" out. :shades:
 
siriuslyyellow said:
kowaiyoukai said:
I would avoid tarot IG. If as an NPC I was forced to interact with a PC who tried to get me to use tarot, I would either play it so I got out of it ("I can't touch those cards! I'll destroy the magic!" "Pssh what could a card know about the future?" etc) or I'd go OOG to say I was uncomfortable. I don't think there's anything wrong with someone having beliefs IRL and I wouldn't want anyone to do anything that made the game not fun. I was asked to not curse at an event, and I apologized and continued on. I saw an NPC doing tarot and I walked by without interacting. As long as everyone is respectful, that's the main goal.

So, if someone has an issue, I'd respect that even if it meant I avoided the PC in the future. Because pulling RL issues IG is no fun at all. (BTW if I was doing fortune-telling, I'd get a bag of rocks, sticks, & leaves and go from there. Not sure how much money it'd make me though. ;))
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Thanks for posting! Great points! :D
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If you want to do Tarot/Fate readings without invoking the actual Tarot, you can always use normal, everyday playing cards and interpret them as Tarot!
http://theraggededge.hubpages.com/hub/H ... ying-Cards
That's a decent guide on that.
 
There are also custom made fortune card decks out there or you can make your own. For my Barbarian's superstition, I use a deck of cards with animals on them that represent different ideas. The animals are all native to Australia and the deck itself is loosely based on the ancient Australian aboriginal culture of bone reading. It has worked out very well in game as a role playing device, but as I use them as racial rp and not for money, I can't say how well it would work for a source of income.

This is the deck I use and the back cover image shows what the cards look like: http://www.amazon.com/Animal-Dreaming-O ... 0980286530
 
I sometimes get into uncomfortable situations as a PC/NPC. In my experience, if you tell someone you aren't comfortable with the RP, they will "fade to black" and discuss the pertinent bits. That's a great way to avoid something you don't want to do IG, especially in a private scene like a tarot reading an what not. Applied player responsibility on both ends can fix a lot of issues. Excuse the self promotion but I recently did a podcast on religion in gaming so this topic is very fresh for me. I totally praised Alliance for not having religion.
 
kowaiyoukai said:
You could probably also just fake a reading--since no real tarot reading could be for a fictional character anyway. ;)
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I disagree, I've done readings for fictional characters and had them come out astonishingly relevant. ;)

The tarot is a complex set of symbols that utilize archetypes. I can get all into Jungian psychology and the idea of archetypes and the collective unconscious (grad psychology student here in transpersonal psych, I heart Jung) but my point is, tarot is psychological, archetypal, and symbolic. Is there something energetic, mystical, and spiritual as well? Depends on your belief system. But from a purely psychological standpoint, I think they can be relevant for stories and characters and fiction; stories and characters are all archetypes and symbols, too, after all.

As for tarot being religious.... Ehh. I have a background in ceremonial magic (which is where the Rider Waite tarot imagery that most tarot decks use comes from), and ceremonial magic (at least Golden Dawn, which is all I can speak to) is not a religion. It pulls imagery from Christianity (especially Gnosticism), the ancient Egyptian religion, and Judaism, among other things, but is actually really agnostic when it comes right down to it. It's a system of philosophy and magic and a wisdom tradition but not really a religion. Thus, if you're using most tarot decks, it isn't religious.

(There are debates as to the pre-Rider Waite origins of the tarot but there's so much folklore and myth about it that it's really hard to say if there were actually ever religious roots of the tarot. Even if there are, most people don't use non-Roder Waite decks. If you had a religious deck like a Norse Gods deck or something, that'd be more religious.)

Heck, I used a Mage: The Ascension deck as my very first and primary deck for years. It was made to be a tabletop DMing tool for storytellers and the booklet even has suggestions for character or plot focused spreads for when you get stuck on plot. No different in that case than using magazine cut outs randomly drawn and spread out for inspiration.

On a side note... Someone mentioned using runes instead of tarot to be less religious, which amused me because runes are actually *more* religiously significant than tarot in the Norse tradition, which is one of the more populous pagan traditions...
 
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