#LIKE WHAT??? i was two steps removed from fucking native north america my all time favourite album since i was in middle school???

[muirneach]

if native north america vol 1 is so good how come they can’t make a vol 2

[ask-jumblr]

Goy Asks For Help Un-Fucking a Video Game

The game in question is “Crusader Kings 2: After the End,” which takes place in a post-apocalyptic North America which has regressed to a medieval state due to a deliberately-unspecified global disaster some six centuries ago.

Its an overhaul mod, with “Crusader Kings 2″ being the base game which takes place in the actual middle ages, but I’m only concerning myself with “After The End.” For clarity’s sake, I’ll be referring to the base game, which I will not be concerning myself with altering, as “CK2,″ and I will refer to the mod, which I am altering, as “AtE.”

So CK2 has a lot of baked in Cultural Christianity, much of which is carried over to AtE. I am creating a Submod, and as part of that I want to get AtE’s depiction of Judaism to be less, you know, christian. I want to carve out the ingrained antisemitism so that neither I, nor any Jewish players of the game, will have to look at it anymore.

I’ll be cutting this post up into several parts, each one dedicated to what I, as a gentile, think is probably an issue with the way the game portrays Judaism and my best idea of how to fix it. I’m posting this here with the hope of being corrected about everything I’m definitely getting wrong, and help figuring out how to go about actually fixing things.

Mod of @ask-jumblr briefly interjecting: (1) Putting the rest below the cut so this doesn’t clog dashes, and (2) submission is from @frustratedasatruar because tumblr doesn’t credit submissions once they’re posted.

Part 1: Orthodox, Reform, and… Meshichist?

So the way CK2 handles religion is cut up into a few tiers. The largest categories are the so-called Religious Groups, such as “Christian” or “American-Native” or “Muslim.” Judaism comprises one of these groups.

Then there’s the Heresy mechanic, which exists with the intent to model Catholicism’s whole snake-eating-its-own-tail thing with them, especially back in the middle ages. The way the mechanic works is that you’ve got one Religion that is considered the “main” religion with several others associated with it which vie for control. If things are shaky for the main religion, members of that faith may be prompted to join one of the Heretical movements.

I actually think the way AtE applies this mechanic to Judaism is fairly representative in practice. “Orthodox” is granted the position of main religion, with Reform relegated as a Heresy. But! Both Orthodox communities and Reform communities are scattered across the map at the start of the game. Further, Orthodoxy’s position at game-start is very fragile, so a Reform player can fairly simply supplant them as the dominant branch without even needing a military confrontation with any Orthodox factions.

This combination of factors creates a situation where Jewish communities within the game can ebb and flow between the different sects over time, which wouldn’t be possible if the two religions weren’t tied together with the Heresy mechanic.

One problem though, at least as far as I can see; there’s a third sect in the mix. Again, I’m a gentile, so correct me if I’m wrong, but its really weird for the Meshichists (explicitly the people who believe this man to be the Moshiach) to be depicted as a major faction within Judaism, literally on par with Orthodox and Reform, right?

As far as I, as a gentile, can tell from my research on this subject, the Meshichists are a subset of Chabad, which is itself a subset of Hasidic Judaism, which is a subset of Haredi Judaism, which has a complicated relationship with Orthodox Judaism.

So, assuming I’m not out of place in my assessment that the Meshichists are the odd man out, my question is if I should simply remove them from the game, leaving in-game Judaism to Orthodox and Reform. Or if I should replace them with a different third faction, and if so whom? I understand that Conservative Judaism is another major faction, but I know absolutely nothing about them, including how I would distinguish them from Orthodox.

Help, please.

Part 2: Zealous/Cynical

So CK2, as mentioned, has a lot of structural Cultural Christianity.

Individual characters in the games, that is to say Rulers or associated courtiers, have a list of traits, each one modifying their aptitudes and how the AI will direct them. Things like “Gluttonous,” “Charitable,” “Craven,” “Shrewd,” and so on. There’re hundreds of them.

Some of these traits are set as opposites of one another, which means that if a character has one the game won’t allow them to have the other. You cannot be both “Just” and “Arbitrary,” that sort of thing.

Further, one trait can have more than one opposite. “Slow,” “Quick,” and “Genius,” are all inter-incompatible, for example.

Which brings me to the Zealous and Cynical traits.

Their descriptions are thus:

Zealous: This character burns with religious fervor and cannot tolerate heretics, infidels, or heathens.

Cynical: This character is a cynical unbeliever, disliked by the clergy but good at intrigue.

I’ll shy away from describing their exact in-game modifiers and just leave it that Zealous is considered an overall very desirable trait, while Cynical is undesirable unless you’re playing a spymaster. Zeal makes you more popular with priests of your religion, while cynicism makes you commensurately less popular with the same.

Furthermore, unlike Cynical, being Zealous also precludes you from having any of the “Sympathy for [Insert Other Religion Group]” traits.

Now as I understand it, Judaism rather encourages questioning everything, which feels like a third pole on that little alignment graph. I’m essentially asking if I should try and create a “Pious Skepticism” trait to represent Jewish characters who don’t mindlessly-accept-writ-dogma-and-hate-unbelievers but also aren’t unbelievers themselves, while at the same time arguing with and about established scripture.

This hypothetical “Pious Skepticism” trait, name subject to change, would also allow for characters to be both on good terms with religious authorities and still have access to the Sympathy traits.

I feel like the current system of Zealous/Default/Cynical probably doesn’t represent the Jewish experience, but as a gentile I obviously need advisement to be sure.

TLDR: I feel like CK2 lacks a way to represent the whole arguing-about-everything thing that, at least from what I’ve read following Jewish blogs, is considered so important to your community. Then as an addendum on that point, is my proposed solution of making a new trait to represent it, and slotting it into the zealous/cynical dynamic.

Part 3: Depicting Antisemitism in the Game

CK2 has a limited system for dynamically depicting sexism. For what I feel pretty safe to assume are reasons regarding processing power, the degree of sexism within your in-game territory is boiled down to the “Status of Women” modifier in your nation’s lawcode, with five options.

“Traditional: Women are prohibited from holding all [government] positions. Some government types will be restricted to Agnatic inheritance law.”

“Marginal: Women are allowed to hold some power, occupying background positions behind the people in charge.”

“Significant: Women have been granted official power and are allowed to hold public offices.”

“Notable: Restrictions on female power have been officially repealed. All career paths are open for prominent women.”

“Full: Powerful legislation removing old restrictions has finally had the effect of affecting the general opinion on women in positions of power across society.”

These laws are pegged to different benchmarks in the game’s technological progression system, which has the effect of spacing out the reforms over the coarse of your game.

As you try and move women’s rights forward, powerful men in your nation will fight you tooth and nail to prevent that from happening.

As things stand in the game, antisemitism is represented as identical to every other form of xenophobia. Which obviously downplays the the shear length and breadth of impact antisemitism has on society.

Essentially, my notion to represent the special form of bigotry that is antisemitism is to apply a similar system to the one already applied to sexism.

In the sexism system, your nation is quantifiably better off for every step further you advance down the road to equality. The only real reason not to pursue equality is the hope of placating powerful special interests within your state who want a larger slice of the pie for themselves or have other ideological motivations, at the expense of weakening your nation as a whole.

Which I think would be a pretty good angle for representing antisemitism. I’m not advocating for a 1=1 switchover from the sexism system, of course, indeed one of the things I’d want help with is determine what the five stages would be in a similar antisemitism system.

Anyway, for all that this system is really incapable of handling the magnitudes of sexism or antisemitism, its something I can implement without crashing the game and, I think, a significant improvement over the current situation.

But before I started into the in-depth process of trying to code this, I wanted to seek out some Jewish voices to run my thoughts by first.

Part 4: Ethnoreligion

CK2 has a very christian perspective on the relationship between culture and religion, to the extent that I as a pagan am repeatedly jarred by it. And I’ve learned that Judaism’s view of the subject is even less like that of the christians. Making it, I presume, a bigger problem with the game.

So in the game culture and religion are considered completely distinct from each other, the conversion of one not having any effect on the state of the other. The only direct connection of any kind that I know of honestly just makes the problem worse: if you find yourself in control of a county which is both a different religion and culture from your own, you must actively convert the religion before it will be possible for culture to passively convert.

Which can result in situations which, given my knowledge that Judaism is specifically an ethnoreligion, are very strange. Like Anabaptist Yiddish counties.

Or the way any prospective Jewish rulers, if they want to ensure a firmer political position in a majority-gentile kingdom (if they manage to establish such a thing), demographic shift is fastest achieved not by, say, some mechanism to attract Jewish immigrants from neighboring countries, but by relentlessly proselytizing until the goyim convert, and only then the process of cultural shift may start.

Can you tell that this system was designed for the catholics.

I’m not really sure what exactly I could do to fix this, but I believe I can:

Disable the proselytizing mechanic for Jewish characters. I’d need to replace it with a “dispatch debate team,” or something, mechanic so that Jewish players won’t be left helpless in the face of grassroots Heretic movements.

Code a new system for gentile-counties-with-Jewish-rulers to passively convert culture and religion at the same time, but at a slower pace. And maybe, if I’m feeling ambitious overconfident, some mechanic by which you can try to inspire immigration by Jewish populations, potentially causing a brain-drain in nearby Kingdoms if you invest enough into it.

Create an opposite system, so that if a county of both Jewish religion and culture is converted to a different religion group, the county’s culture will autoswitch to an off-brand version of itself. If I’m feeling cheeky, I’ll call the off-brand culture “Goyim” or something.

I think that these three things in conjunction with each other would adequately solve the problem.

But, you know, I don’t know, because I’m not Jewish.

Part 5: Education

The game’s current system has it that as a monarch you can offer your vassals to have their children educated in your court, which usually results in them adopting your culture and religion if they haven’t already.

I feel like Jewish rulers would be less blaze about that than everyone else. Because, you know, experience. I want to set things so that Jewish rulers will either auto-decline those offers or maybe set it so Jewish characters are ineligible for the events that cause culture/religious conversion during childhood. I don’t really need a perfect solution, I just want to stop the phenomena of the idiot AI selling out to the big homogenizing power every single time.

Unless I shouldn’t do that, and I should leave things as is for whatever reason, or do some completely third thing.

Part 6: Logo

So in CK2, religions have their own individual logos so you can tell at a glance what religion a character is affiliated with. Heresies of the same main religion share a logo between each other, which will be a red version of the main religion’s logo.

Should a Heresy grow powerful enough to usurp the main religion’s position, the former-Heresy will get the full color version and the former-main-religion will get the red version.

Long story short, Judaism is represented by a Menorah. Because I learned that gentiles massively over inflate how important Hanuka actually is, I was wondering if that was a good pick, or if it should be replaced with the Star of David, or some other third thing.

Part 7: Terminology

This one is essentially Part 6: Part 2. The game has a shorthand way of copy-pasting in default terms from the different religions, so that a generic piece of in-game text can vaguely refer back to the character’s religion without needing to be rewritten for each religion.

For reference, here’s what that looks like for the christians:

Scripture Name = The Bible Priest Title = Priest High God Name = God God Names = God, The Lord, Jesus, The Blessed Virgin Evil God Names = Satan, Lucifer, The Devil

So in-game text in various places will be coded to say something like “We found a secret chest of gold, praise [Insert=god_name]!” and the game will insert something from the appropriate category at random.

You’ve probably guessed where I’m going with this: as a gentile, I want to double check that the terminology assigned to Judaism is actually appropriate.

However, as the game’s name lists for the three “god” categories drops several names I don’t recognize, and I know that Judaism is against copying certain things in this regard down, to be safe I’m not going to post the specific list unless asked. Instead, I’m just going to ask how those three categories should be filled out.

What I assume to be safer to directly repeat is that the priest title for Judaism is entered as “Rabbi,” and the scripture name is listed as “The Torah.” At least as a gentile, the only question that leaps out to me between the two of those is if “The Torah” might be better switched to “The Tanakh.”

End:

Thank you all in advance for your patience and assistance! I will of course answer any questions.

My thanks to @queerdo-mcjewface, @terulakimban, @miriams-well-of-jewish-thoughts, and @hermione-walked-out-of-a-yeshiva for helping me already when I couldn’t figure out how to submit this Ask.