Am I the only person who actually really liked the orxploitation segment in SOTA 64? I thought it was a nice bit of levity as well as a completely plausible form of "social activism."

And I liked the ED link too. Thought it was a darn good segment.

Yeah, I had heard about the Orc language, but couldn't find a reference to it. Nice to see some rules for it.

It just made me think that the Shrek 16 sim is going to be really popular....

Though I do feel at least one orc named Dolemite coming on.

No, no, no, the Orc version is Dolomite. Dolomite, he's rock solid!


EDIT: That makes it offical, i hang around too many geologists.

Then again dolomite is a white rock (at least the stuff I say at the store was)

Heh. I thought it was a good thing.

Was more pointing out the disparity between the classic blacksploitation character and the mineral

And besides, Dolomite is a carbonate. Acidic putdowns should cause festering bubbles of rage, and eventual dissolution of integrity.

Not to mention he has to have the Flaws:
Compulsion:Rhyming Speach pattern
Distinctive Style: Pimp Cane and gold chains

Probably a phys-ad with a weapon focus (the pimp cane of course)

I just realized how cool it would be to take Resources A and blow a million nuyen on an army of martial arts prostitutes level 3 contacts.


Evil NPC: "Ah hah, now I will kill you!"

Dolemite the Ork: *snaps fingers*

Evil NPC: *promptly gets +100 TN penalty as 100 kungfu ork prostitutes drop down on him from the ceiling*

I'll work up "Ninja Ho" stats this afternoon.....

lol

Well, it's nice to see the ork ~ black connection "outed" about as much as it's going to be.

...another reason i went with Dolomite, "whiteness" and all. Ya, there definately seems to be a very strong link between orcs and blacks in people's minds. Or perhaps more a link between "gangsta" and orc? *shrug*

No, the former.

I liked it quite a lot too. Nice, brief, but offers quite a good number of possibilities, both as background and as a plot hook.

Well, I wish I didn't stay quiet for so long. At times it's been pretty obvious (when it's not ork~Latino), and pretty ... I don't know how to describe it. I don't like it.

Orks have a bit in common, but not everything in common. Orks are big and strong, but not as big and strong as trolls. Orks are considered ugly, and lots were killed as infants, or became ostracized; especially the goblinized ones. Orks grow old faster than anybody. Orks were enslaved, but that doesn't mean anything these days because that happened so long ago it's barely a rumor. Orks /do/ have a tendancy toward multiple childbirth, which combined with everything else tends to lead to poverty.

So. Poor, short life span, and mostly disenfranchised. Yeah, that's Black in America, but it's the minority in tons of other countries too. Consider Rani from Streets of Blood.

Yeah, but...

I don't like thinking about race, but I do because other people do, and that's... kind of expected of me to knwo what other people think. But I think it's interesting that you can draw parellels between race in the enthocentric context and SR supspecies races. And the most apparent thing is that the authors don't even realize that they've gone away from the ork~black. Like I mentioned above, it's become ork~Latino (esp. whenever conversations turn to comparative birth rates), and troll~Black, and Elf~East Asian, and Human~Anglo. And I think about it because I wonder who else might be doing the same.

It's like reading SoNA and reading chapters about the NAN that are IC written by American Indians, but which read, from my POV, as something not even close to reaching the empathy of a Felix Cohen. I mean, I can buy it when we're talking about TT, but...

It's just remarkable how well they've spent the last 15 years avoiding the elephant in the room, and by the time we get to a point like with SSG where race and metatype is dealt with, it's... It's a joke. Real racism rules and discussion didn't exist until the CFS book. But then you get things like the 20Q in SR2 that say ethnicity/race is almost a dead issue. WTF...

I just think that there's a problem with SR--a pretty inherent one, and it didn't dawn on me until years later why a high school classmate of mine was so incredulous at the status quo in SR with regards to metatype "race." And it goes to something that bugs me about SR... For every gritty step forward (reading the UCAS chapter of SoNA eats me up inside), it's like the line is pulling itself back into a liberal idealism in other regards, and the alienation of the line is being subverted by a more cartoonish ideal of how people relate when they do. I don't see race relations now getting better, and given the fact that real life is looking more and more like SR, I can't fathom how it could in SR. But for some sort of ethical or commercial compromise (It's like how they admitted in Awakenings that they didn't want to deal with religion, and for good reason) they're holding back. And we really do now have a good idea about how America acts when it's paranoid and afraid and willing to sacrifice its ideals for "no surprises" I just wonder why we can get a chapter on the UCAS which paints it as even more of a neo-fascist Hell than NAGNA (which is saying something), but doesn't ... It's getting better! Why? Why, and how?

Things should not be getting better. Period.

As far as the SINless and runners are concerned, I think of them in terms of prison gangs. Sure, people will deal with each other when it suits them, but there's no community. There's no neo-Aanarchist movement (or rather, ever was... Luckily that bit of stupidity has been left for dead), and just because they're all generally screwed doesn't mean that the races will intermingle. The SINless are potrayed as a gasp of freedom. It's not. It's desperation. Sure, the words say it, but they don't mean it. The line keeps undercutting itself with... hope, or somesuch nonsense.

But like I said, RL is becoming SR. And hope is something that is becoming a less useful commodity. Hope that this subject can be treated positively is just... silly.

You are correct about the kidgloves FASA used on a number of sensitive issues such as race and religion, it was a sign of the times, but the trend under FanPro has been to swing the other way and delve into those areas in a well thought out and integrated manner. I personally doubt, though I may be wrong, that FASA would have been comfortable with us doing the coverage of the Catholic Church and the ethnic and religious descrimination in SoE and the detailed stuff on modern Neo-pagans and the Orxploitation stuff (even though it's partially tongue-in-cheek) in SOTA64. That being said writers do have to deal with what has been established - in a game like SR continuity is both a boon and a problem. So a little schizophrenia in the setting is a natural result.

However, I would like to go out on a ledge and say you're in for a big surprise with one of the upcoming releases.

I guess that's it. Now that you can finally address it, you have more than a decade of backstory to deal with. The OOC stuff can be dealt with.

For some reason, something about SR is bugging the hell out of me (obviously). Maybe it's because it's become more and more predictive of future activity and behavior, but something's weird. At the same time, my opinion of the game varies on a daily basis. Last night was ... not a positive one.

Short of half of the East Coast being flooded as a result of the Winternight/Deus Network conflict with Proteus coming to the rescue, though... I don't imagine I'll surprise easily.

Good luck, though.

i demand a new age funkenstein meets the harlem globetrotters and black to the future

And the Switzerland chapter, written from a racist POV, is surely not your vanilla Shadowlands doc...

Feh.

What, race wars between the sprites and pixies?

-Siege

Lets' do this the hard way then. Shadows of Asia is still in production so it would be premature to draw any conclusions about it. SOTA64 is just out, next up should be the new critter book Running Wild, so that leaves... the book formerly known as Sixthworld.org. With a working title like that what do think they were going to put in it?

Finally got the copies. I love that several art pieces make references to Orxploitation.

This thread should be in the SotA64 folder, I think.

The problem is with a written text to work from, even if that text is authentic, you can only translate the the written part of the Ork language. For the verbal part, you would have to arbitrarily assign sounds to the letters of the written language. Any resemblance to the actual spoken language would be wildly unlikely.

Not necessairilly. The Linear alphabets deciphered using ancient Greek texts gave a rough approximation of the verbal language simply from certain linguistic oddities and when the Greeks phonetically translated certain names. The same could work here with Sperethiel, in at least a limited sense.

Anyone run with any concepts on this? I'm thinking that the Atlantean Federation or the DIMR could have more texts of Orzet laying around. Maybe the Orkland Community Center wants to take a look at them? What else have you all come up with?