I'm not strongly invested in the controversy about this particular game.

However, I do want to clear up what is behind "misery tourism" as a concept, at least for me. And from reading Chauncy DeVega's post about this, I think he and I have a similar intellectual perspective on this.

It's not a question of defining fun. It's not even a question of defining "entertainment". It's a matter of the pretentious, self-indulgent, and voyeuristic quality of seeking to "experience" pain and suffering by inflicting it on yourself. The questionable element of "misery tourism" in games is that, in Mr. DeVega's words, you're "reducing hallowed ground to a tourism destination". That's a human and spiritual offense.

On top of that, and probably of far less concern to people in general, is the aesthetic offense of exploitation: appropriating tragedy for your own profit (social or monetary, it doesn't matter), and using high-minded impulses to fortify bad art against criticism. When writers do this, it's bad enough; when RPG designers do it, it's even worse, because the nature of the activity is such as to co-opt the participant-actors, making it even harder for them to critique what's going on.

Quote from: One Horse Town;403982Dunno what my point is now i've written that out, except it would be nice to have one place where we can talk about the shit we want to talk about without true-believers coming out of the woodwork to tell us we're wrong.

Your point is that cute rhetorical games and ideological cant aren't shielded by rules of politeness or heavy-handed moderation.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;403989Your point is that cute rhetorical games and ideological cant aren't shielded by rules of politeness or heavy-handed moderation.

That's certainly part of it. The other is that the proponents of said rhetorical games and idealogical cant don't seem to be able to resist the lure of a place that doesn't prescribe to their newsletter.

Quote from: Drohem;403965Great post.  :hatsoff:

Hey,thanks!

Thanks for the explanation, One Horse Town. I hope I'm not being inappropriate or offensive. I see people in this thread reflexively vilifying a game I know pretty well and know to be worthwhile, so I'm offering a different perspective than "bad game. Shouldn't be written." Other people seem genuinely perplexed, and with them I can have a conversation informed by my experience.

Eliot, that position has been articulated before and there's not much to say. My play has never felt exploitative, something I'm very sensitive to, and that's the only measure I have. Well, I guess in my case as a designer I also have the blessing and approval of the Warsaw Uprising Museum, who reviewed and liked Grey Ranks.

Quote from: One Horse Town;403982Now, don't get me wrong, without dissenting views things turn into a circlejerk

Quote from: One Horse Town;403982Dunno what my point is now i've written that out, except it would be nice to have one place where we can talk about the shit we want to talk about without true-believers coming out of the woodwork to tell us we're wrong.

Quote from: One Horse Town;403991That's certainly part of it. The other is that the proponents of said rhetorical games and idealogical cant don't seem to be able to resist the lure of a place that doesn't prescribe to their newsletter.

So what are you really saying? You've been writing very different things all along this thread.

Is therpgsite open for debates or not? Are people who enjoy story-games welcome to join the debate or not? You can't have the cake and eat it at the same time. You can't have the PundUtopia of freedom of speech and at the same time be protected from people telling you stuff you don't want to hear.

FYI story-games (the board) isn't better or worse than therpgsite when it comes to censorship. Both place have internalized rules of conduct and appropriate speech. In both place divergent speech is either ignored or suppressed. I don't know what facts make you feel like therpgsite is better about censorship. You can discuss aspects of D&D there, while here a forge game thread will be labeled "non-rpg". To sum it up: you're quite full of shit.

"I'll show 'em! I thought. "

This is it.

This game offends because it was not designed to be fun but to further a social/historical agenda. Thank you very much but I do have an education and I do know about the period in question. What I don't need is someone trying to hijack the hobby as a way of showing me, or anyone else for that matter. There are plenty of avenues for social discourse in our society but Role-Playing Games are not one of them, nor should they be.

Quote from: Jason Morningstar;403980Our agenda was to ruin a particularly cruel overseer, and we engineered not only his downfall, but a proper ass-beating for him as well. We were lucky and took a lot of dreadful risks but we made it happen, and I think as players we were really glad to have a little wish-fulfillment revenge in our story.

So did the GM use the N-word at the table? Were there consequences to your actions? It took the GM naming your character to really let the reality of Black opression sink in? I mean, my parents picked my name for me and I don't feel that I have any greater understanding of being property because of it...

It just seems like self-indulgent appropriation of another culture's suffering for entertainment. Particularly since the scenario sounds more like blaxploitation than a slave narrative.

What's really baffling is not that you guys enjoy this sort of thing, but that you don't understand why anyone else would have a problem with this.

Quote from: Jason Morningstar;403973This is, like, the first rule in the game, the first really basic lesson in institutional slavery. It was actively dehumanizing, and I felt it like a kick in the ribs. On an intellectual level I knew that's how it worked, of course I'd read all about it, but this wasn't reading, and in that moment everything I'd read and thought about slavery took on a different color.

That is sad on a level that approaches pathetic, really.  Maybe you can put a few skill points into something the rest of use fairly regularly.  It's called 'empathy', wherein one does not have to be the direct recipient of an experience to have feelings about it.

Quote from: Jason Morningstar;403994Thanks for the explanation, One Horse Town. I hope I'm not being inappropriate or offensive. I see people in this thread reflexively vilifying a game I know pretty well and know to be worthwhile, so I'm offering a different perspective than "bad game. Shouldn't be written." Other people seem genuinely perplexed, and with them I can have a conversation informed by my experience.

No, not at all, but this place is rowdy.

 You can in short be offensive and inappropriate to a point. Very few people pushed the boundaries too far.

Yet this place is also very anti-story game, which I think is what he was getting at in time, that you'll find very little fertile ground for your counter-arguments. No matter how well reasoned.

Quote from: Silverlion;404004Yet this place is also very anti-story game, which I think is what he was getting at in time, that you'll find very little fertile ground for your counter-arguments. No matter how well reasoned.

I could be wrong, but I think this is less a story game issue than a subject matter issue. It would be as bad if it were a GURPS worldbook.

And if it were a supplement for 4E? The internetz would break...

Quote from: SgtSpaceWizard;403961From that article, the author says.

Yeah, I don't think hero either. Slavery was a monstrous system, and we are still dealing with the repercussions here in America today. Folks my age are but one generation removed from people who lived through segregation. Look at the nasty things people say about Obama. There just isn't enough distance from the past to make this era into an adventure game.

And yet the rpg and board game hobbies have had games about the Vietnam experience on the market for decades, and I don't see a lot of threads talking about how inappropriate Advanced Recon is.

Quote from: SgtSpaceWizard;404001So did the GM use the N-word at the table? Were there consequences to your actions? It took the GM naming your character to really let the reality of Black opression sink in?

We discussed it before we played and none of us were comfortable with it, so no racial epithets were used, Sergeant Space Wizard. The naming thing really affected me, and I thought it was a good example of a game's potential to show the institution of slavery in a different way than a text. Worked for me and honestly took me by surprise.

Quote from: SgtSpaceWizard;404001What's really baffling is not that you guys enjoy this sort of thing, but that you don't understand why anyone else would have a problem with this.

I can't speak for anybody else, but I'm pretty sure I know why informed people have a problem with it. I can't argue against a position like Eliot's, which is founded on subjective personal beliefs and is well articulated, and I wouldn't try.

Oh! And the blaxploitation comment is sorta true. The game has a pretty wide dial, and none of us were really into complete, ugly, brutal reality, because we were all outside our comfort zone to begin with. If that is a 10 and total conjure woman magical fantasy is a 1, we played a 6 or 7.

Quote from: Patrick Y.;404006And yet the rpg and board game hobbies have had games about the Vietnam experience on the market for decades, and I don't see a lot of threads talking about how inappropriate Advanced Recon is.

Well White Dwarf did run a scathing review of Advanced Recon back in the day saying it was a way for Americans to "relive the lie they won the Vietnam war". So maybe you might see threads about it if it hadn't been close to 30 years since that game came out.

However this is comparing apples to oranges IMO. We played "war" as children, we didn't play "slave". Also no one plays Recon as an educational experience to get inside the heads of the people at Mai Lai to my knowledge. If they did, that would be misguided too.

Quote from: SgtSpaceWizard;404005I could be wrong, but I think this is less a story game issue than a subject matter issue. It would be as bad if it were a GURPS worldbook.

Yesh, thats because I'm fairly sure SJ Games has the common sense not to do such a thing.


- Ed C.