"Reductio ad Hitlerum, also argumentum ad Hitlerum, (dog Latin for "reduction to Hitler" or "argument to Hitler," respectively)...The tactic is often used to derail arguments, because such comparisons tend to distract and anger.[1]
Please, as a genuine request, don't bring the term 9/11 and the name Hitler into this.
markusdark said:
Deadlands said:
Imagine the s*** storms that would have happened historically, and currently, if people could and did choose to change their race?
Why stop it there? Imagine how the world would have been with Ressurrections. "We got Hitler cornered. What? He killed himself? Damn, which circle is he heading to?" Lincoln, Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Sadam Hussain and dozens of others would still be with us today that would make a major impact on the world. (I always said the hardest job in the Alliance universe is assassin).
Not to mention the day after such things like Jonestown. And forget about hostage negotiations. Nuke the whole place and sort it out at the circle. 9/11 wouldn't have been nearly as bad with everyone popping back up at the circle in St. Patrick's Cathedral. Of course the biggest thing would be the fact that there would be no religion so you wouldn't have such things as jihads.
Imagine how much more bloody (and yet more humane) wars would have been:
"Quick, Medic! This guy's got his legs blown off by a landmine. Wait, his dogtags say he's only hit the circle once." *BLAM* "It's all good, he'll be back on the front in half an hour." Of course some Restore Limb spells would work better but I'm just focusing on ressurrections here.
Good thing that the stuff in this game doesn't happen IRL hence why we should never compare things from the two.
I don't feel that weighing how people could possibly react to someone changing their race, in real life, to how we choose to react in the game, is justifiably comparable to real people dying in a real event, and their lack of ability to resurrect in a Catholic Church.
“...with everyone popping back up at the circle in St. Patrick's Cathedral.”
Come on, man. That’s a piss poor choice of subjects for a metaphor.
And regardless, to answer your question of “why stop it there”:
First, I wouldn’t mind getting rid of resurrection.
The intent of my comments with regard to players reflecting on how IG people and cultures look at race change was to incite RP consideration.
My hope would be that people would stop to ask themselves if the way they respond to race changes is based on how their character would respond, given the IG circumstances, (such as the culture in which the character grew up in) or is the response based more on OOG friendships, or other OOG influences.
In the Alliance, it seems to me, we have often used racial prejudice and pride as a central plot element. Dark elves, for example, appear racist in that they seem to often assume racial superiority, and I know, for instance, that one particular dark elf was severely, if not murderously, displeased with a particular person race changing into a dark elf. This reaction does not seem common to me. Perhaps in chapters I haven’t played that is not the case.
From my perspective, very little ostracizing happens when race changes occur. I do not feel this is in-line with the cultural guidelines laid out in the race packets I’ve read. I feel that the reactions would more than likely be pretty severe.
I don’t feel we should never look to our real lives and the real world when we think of how things unfold in our game world. In fact, to encourage realism and believability it’s often a pretty useful tool. I think there are limits, and those limits should be set by what we want the in game world to look like. I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that hopefully we want the game to have deep, compelling and challenging plot, which was all I ever thought the absence of race changes would encourage.
That is just my perception as a plot writer, and I see no utility in countering the stance with a rhetorical argument that seems to amount to “why not just whimsically reduce the game to be as close to real life as possible?”