No. Not even a little bit. There's a new subforum on Gaia specifically for the supernatural and as a part of the header, whoever designed it has lumped witches in with vampires, werewolves, ghosts, UFO's and other not-real stuff (though I personally am on the fence about UFO's and have my share of ghost stories). I found a forum moderator and sent them the following message:
Hi there,
In the header for the Supernatural Subforum in the Lifestyle Discussion forum, I noticed that witches are lumped in with UFO's, werewolves, vampires and ghosts. I was wondering if there's any way to get the word 'witches' removed, as many Pagans who are practising refer to themselves as witches and I personally find it harmful to have real people lumped in with that which is very likely not real (I'm on the fence for UFO's and ghosts). By doing so it trivializes many Gaians spirituality and practise and associates it with bad 50's horror movies. Thank you for reading and I look forward to hearing from you.
Me
More as it develops.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Thursday, January 7, 2010
RPG and the Witch class
I love to play role-play games (RPGs). Getting away from it all for a few hours a week by imaging I'm someone and somewhere else gives me a much needed break from teaspooning, school & homework, and the everyday stress of being a parent and wife. Also, I love to get together with my friends around the table, chat about our days and have some real laughs. RPGs are some of my most social time, especially now since I have a Thursday night class and wont be able to make it to Pagans Night Out for a while.
We (the group) have recently switched from Wizards of the Coast's "Dungeons and Dragons" game to Paizo's "Pathfinder." WotC created a 4th edition of D&D that was an obvious cash grab and tried to play a pencil and paper game like World of Warcraft. 4th edition is also completely not backwards compatible with the 3.5 version of our previously favorite game, so the hundreds of dollars in books on the shelves are now obsolete. We were not impressed. Paizo, on the otherhand, took what was great about 3.5 D&D and improved it, as well as took the things that were overly complicated/rules heavy or broken and fixed them. They also released a lot of their content for free online so those of us with low or fixed incomes could still play our favorite game.
New content for playtest has been recently released and includes a full 20 level progression for a Witch. I read it over and I have to say that I'm disappointed. Not only is the class not very well created mechanically, but when it comes to flavour, it reinforces a lot of the negative stereotypes created during the Inquisition, stereotypes that persist to this day that many witches and Pagans such as myself are working hard to overcome. The image of the hag stirring a cauldron and hexing those who offend her is strong within the Pathfinder class and I feel needs to be changed or eliminated altogether. However, I'm fearful of voicing how I feel on the boards over at Paizo because I'm pretty sure I'll be shouted down as hyper-sensitive. An email to the developers personally probably wont do enough either.
We (the group) have recently switched from Wizards of the Coast's "Dungeons and Dragons" game to Paizo's "Pathfinder." WotC created a 4th edition of D&D that was an obvious cash grab and tried to play a pencil and paper game like World of Warcraft. 4th edition is also completely not backwards compatible with the 3.5 version of our previously favorite game, so the hundreds of dollars in books on the shelves are now obsolete. We were not impressed. Paizo, on the otherhand, took what was great about 3.5 D&D and improved it, as well as took the things that were overly complicated/rules heavy or broken and fixed them. They also released a lot of their content for free online so those of us with low or fixed incomes could still play our favorite game.
New content for playtest has been recently released and includes a full 20 level progression for a Witch. I read it over and I have to say that I'm disappointed. Not only is the class not very well created mechanically, but when it comes to flavour, it reinforces a lot of the negative stereotypes created during the Inquisition, stereotypes that persist to this day that many witches and Pagans such as myself are working hard to overcome. The image of the hag stirring a cauldron and hexing those who offend her is strong within the Pathfinder class and I feel needs to be changed or eliminated altogether. However, I'm fearful of voicing how I feel on the boards over at Paizo because I'm pretty sure I'll be shouted down as hyper-sensitive. An email to the developers personally probably wont do enough either.
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