Quote from: Simlasa;755082Religion isn't worth worrying about... there's no telling what the fundy nutters will freak out about if they're in the mood for a bonfire... if D&D got under their skin again it might be a good thing.

Quote from: Haffrung;755112I'm a parent, and I can say from my perspective it is different. 2014 is a world away from the 80s in terms of kids, parents, and entertainment. I think you're projecting your own experiences from 30 years ago to today. Besides the religious fundamentalists (who nobody expects to ever be on board with D&D, or Lord of the Rings, or the Avengers, etc.) nobody today cares about that religious stuff anymore. And people have been harping on about the dangers of World of Warcraft since it was released, and it hasn't had any apparent effect on its popularity. Franky, I think most parents today would regard a tabletop D&D game as a healthy and welcome respite from video-games.

I'm a parent too, and my peers seem to regard me as too hands-off, so maybe their treatment of me and my wife is coloring what I expect others believe.  I'm no pollster.

As for the value TV people place on religion, I'd point you in the direction of Duck Dynasty.

...and my prior example of the Sam and Cat star demonstrates modern moral panic.  Or at least anticipation of it.

It really is a thing, even in the "enlightened modern times" we now enjoy.

Quote from: Warthur;755075You keep saying that but I don't know what you mean and Google isn't helping. Do you have any citations?

Bing? http://www.bing.com/search?q=no+war+toys+for+children&qs=AS&sk=AS1&pq=no+war+toys&sc=2-11&sp=2&FORM=QBRE&cvid=5a74c154997640b7a1a28760ff384048 it is a fairly common thing now when you do charity drives, that they ask for no war toys.

Quote from: mcbobbo;755124...and my prior example of the Sam and Cat star demonstrates modern moral panic.  Or at least anticipation of it.

Well yeah, cause that's SEX... and folks are still freaking out about that. So don't put naked bewbs on the cover (unless you're Mr. Raggi)... two guys in a knife fight is perfectly fine.

The parents I know send mixed messages. The two families I'm closest to are extremes. One set of parents are college professors. The entire family are vocal atheists and, while the parents do keep a pretty close watch on the kids, the sorts of books and movies they'll allow are fairly 'adult'. No overt, grisly horror films... but nightmarish films about the Holocaust? Sure.
The other family are Pentecostals... and they freak out if a woman cuts her hair or exposes her knees/elbows. No TV allowed (but violent videogames seem to squeak by... as long as they're about 'real soldiers' and not zombies/demons).

Quote from: LibraryLass;755117What, you mean like two Star Wars cartoons, one of which regularly had arcs focusing on the clone troopers' perspective, airing within a couple of years? A year out from the most outright violent and realistic Transformers continuity yet?

And I hate to harp on Avatar again and again, but I wish to emphasize that this is a cartoon that got away with featuring a near-total genocide in its backstory, and that was almost ten years ago, to say nothing of the populist revolution and civil war in Legend of Korra's first two seasons.

Yeah... I just get the impression that a lot of criticism of modern cartoons in this thread are from people who haven't seen modern cartoons. Cartoons are not just allowed to be more violent, they are allowed to hit on a lot more complex themes than they were when I was a kid.

There was one story arc in the Clone Wars cartoon, about a Jedi General who takes command of Anakin's unit while Anakin is returning back to Coruscant for reports. And he is consistently ordering the troops into suicide attacks on the enemy with the excuse of expediency and duty. Over the course of 4 episodes, he ignores repeated plans proposed by the increasingly frustrated clone troopers to continue to order them in the most direct, suicidal way.

Eventually, they find out he is a corrupted Jedi, and is intentionally killing them in an attempt lose the planet to the Separatists, at which point they attempt to arrest him for treason. After a prolonged battle, after which he taunts them after he is captured and put in chains, one of the clone troopers pulls his pistol and shoots him dead. And this wasn't played as badass. It was played as the character being desperate and not knowing what else to do. The clones have to arrest their brother for executing the Jedi, and then there is some conversation about what what will happen to them all after the war is over.

My synopsis is kind of crappy compared to the actual story arc... but the thing is... I just, no cartoons outside of anime adaptations/manglings (like Robotech) from when I was a kid come close to the level of storytelling depth. Cartoons are just allowed a lot more leeway than they ever were before, and its making it a legitimate storytelling medium instead of something to entertain the kids.

Again, I doubt most parents watch the cartoons at all.  They just catch a whiff of something they don't think they should like and overreact.

Quote from: mcbobbo;755131Again, I doubt most parents watch the cartoons at all.  They just catch a whiff of something they don't think they should like and overreact.

But I just don't see any proof that this happens to an appreciable level to matter. Do a few goofball parents freak out at things? Probably, but I just don't see any momentum behind it.

I mean, TF: Prime had a slew of episodes that just felt like the premises were ripped from horror movies. If there really was this brigade of parents out to revolt at the slightest provocation, they would have done it the first time they glimpsed one of those episodes.

I mean, one episode was about one of the human characters running through the foggy woods being chased by Airachnid, a Spiderish Decepticon, who was practically a serial killer who was creepily talking about how she would kill him, accompanied by flashbacks from Arcee's past where Airachnid had tortured Arcee's partner to death for the fun of it in front of Arcee. (Weird Trivia: apparently this is all made even more creepy in the Japanese dub, where Airachnid is written as incredibly flirty and wanting to marry him and chasing him in a pepe le pew sort of way. Oh, she was still going to torture and kill him, but only because she wanted him in a sexual way).

If your hypothetical parents existed, I think we would have heard about them by now.

Quote from: Endless Flight;755106They've kept reinventing themselves? How so? It's still the same characters, right? Optimus Prime? Megatron? Robots in disguise? What kind of heavy lifting has Hasbro had to do with the Transformers?

Transformers has gone through about 20 iterations and retained the names of characters and maybee the transforming aspects intact in Japan where the shows kept rolling out long after it ended in the US. A fair portion had no humans in them at all and others sprawled all over the place. Its come a long long long way from its Micro-Man/Micronauts origins.

Actually GI Joe has gone through several iterations as well.

As for what Hasbro has to do with it. Very little. A chunk of the series come from Japan. Some still not released in the US like Beast Wars II and Beast Wars Neo for example. Hasbro just swaps the names out Convoy for Prime, etc.

Quote from: Omega;755141As for what Hasbro has to do with it. Very little. A chunk of the series come from Japan. Some still not released in the US like Beast Wars II and Beast Wars Neo for example. Hasbro just swaps the names out Convoy for Prime, etc.

They are kind of bringing that back though. Prime was US written and produced, as will the next show that is airing next year.

Quote from: dragoner;755120So kids cartoons are getting violent again? Huh, because I noticed in the 90's a definite trend away from violence.

Foxes Spider Man series had several edicts from the execs it had to toil under. Spider Man could not hit anyone, when jumping he could not disturb any birds on rooftops, etc. Reboot is another example of executive meddling.

Fox also did some minor hacking on the D&D cartoon when they aired it.

Quote from: dragoner;755125Bing? http://www.bing.com/search?q=no+war+toys+for+children&qs=AS&sk=AS1&pq=no+war+toys&sc=2-11&sp=2&FORM=QBRE&cvid=5a74c154997640b7a1a28760ff384048 it is a fairly common thing now when you do charity drives, that they ask for no war toys.

Haha, people are getting ridiculous. Everyone I grew up with played with toy guns and GI Joes and not one of us turned out to be a psychopath nor a serial killer. This goes right along with D&D morphing kids into Satanists and sorcerers. Patent absurdity.

I really doubt the no war toys people are actually having much effect, since nerf guns still sell wildly.

Also Nerf Guns are awesome.

Quote from: Emperor Norton;755147I really doubt the no war toys people are actually having much effect, since nerf guns still sell wildly.

Also, parents are nutty with stress, lack of sleep... to much information flying at them all the time. It's not like they're 'professionals'.
I recently had a mom barking at me because her daughter caught a brief glimpse of a Final Destination movie (that her older sister was watching, no concern from the mom about that)... but no thought to the girl watching her brother bloodily slaughter hundreds of characters in videogames. Same mom sat her daughter down and showed her scenes of Auschwitz to convince her she had no reasons for complaining.
There's no discernible consistency there at all... so who's to know what game/cartoon/toy would be OK/NOT OK with them... so play it safe and make it about talking sponge.

I could be wrong about the cartoon's subject matter being too strong for kids. I definitely think that if spongebob is the example, it is, but who knows? As far as the "no war toys" it is a thing; in my household, I taught my sons how to shoot, hunt, fish, camp, etc., so not my thing.

Quote from: Emperor Norton;755147I really doubt the no war toys people are actually having much effect, since nerf guns still sell wildly.

You'd be surprised. Definitely lots of middle-class parents out there who won't let their kids play with toy guns. And nerf guns sell well because they don't look anything like real guns. Try finding a plastic replica M-16 in a store these days. Strangely, a lot of the parents who won't allow toy guns don't seem to mind violent video games, as long as they don't feature realistic gunplay.

Still, I don't see what this has to do with D&D. If anything, elves with swords are a lot more tolerable to the parents concerned about violence than GI Joe or even Clone Troopers with automatic weapons.

Quote from: dragoner;755159As far as the "no war toys" it is a thing

Yeah, the academic/atheist house I mentioned has a general rule against toy guns... but not guns in videogames or other entertainments. There are lots of swords around though.

I'm curious how the recent news about girls trying to sacrifice their friend to Slender Man is going to go down...