Quote from: Brad on January 24, 2024, 08:28:10 AM

If I'm eating a hamburger and the first bite has a roach and/or hair, you can bet your ass it's getting a bad review, IDGAF if the rest of it is prime beef prepared by a master chef. Saying this module sucks because it starts off in a retarded manner and you have no desire to finish is fine; the idea that you must waddle through the muck to the bitter end or else you're "jumping to conclusions" is moronic at best.

Your analogy doesn't work here. The complaint was that the child abuse folder didn't describe the child abuse.

Tyranno posted the exact passages from the book that amounted to "The folder is full of child abuse, don't get into the specifics of it, child abuse isn't cool."

And Tyranno's exact reaction was..

"So I have a plot relevant folder that provides some contextual horror. But I'm not allowed to describe it at all. Maybe in the vaguest sense. I still don't know what exactly is in the folder. I think based on some very vague, very myopic hints elsewhere in the book that it's supposed to be full of ritual sacrifice, mutilation, and rape of children. Which I can absolutely understand is something people might be bothered by. But as a GM I'd have done my due diligence of reading the book cover to cover. "

Followed by him saying..

THIS IS NOT HOW YOU RUN A HORROR CAMPAIGN YOU ABSOLUTELY SPINELESS LITTLE BUGMAN!

Tyranno wanted to dunk on SJWs and in the process failed to realize in this case, the SJW was right.... and later on when another poster came on and said "I didn't like this book it's full of child abuse, but the author also has trump derangement syndrome" changed his tone completely.

Now he's trying to save face and his own ego by not just saying, "Okay yeah, maybe I was wrong and jumped to conclusions."

Quote from: Orphan81 on January 23, 2024, 12:11:55 AM

Yes, I have that book. It has nothing to do with actual Orphans or Grinding them. It's part of the limited series called "Orpheus" and refers to a character type, redeemed Specters.

Edit: It was also written by John Goff, whose way more notable for his work with Deadlands. He chose the name because he thought it sounded cool.

Yes. But its still the title of one of their books and One of the Sabbat books did deal with child prostitution and worse. In theor drive to be "edgy" WW covered about every possible touchy subject under the sun at some point.

Quote from: Omega on January 24, 2024, 03:30:32 PM

Yes. But its still the title of one of their books and One of the Sabbat books did deal with child prostitution and worse. In theor drive to be "edgy" WW covered about every possible touchy subject under the sun at some point.

I'm not sure what that has to do with the current topic. The topic of complaint was not that the Delta Green Adventure has child abuse in it, but that it didn't describe the Child abuse.

I own every single World of Darkness book that's been published before Paradox and 5th edition took over. Yes, White Wolf had edgy material... but in the example I gave for "Rage Across New York" which specifically has a Wyrm Cult of Child Abusers, they handled the subject with tact for 1992... and even had the adult survivors of the cult having formed a Vigilante group that was trying to take out the cult. The PC werewolves could ally with them and also help them heal from their own trauma. It was also only one plot line among many in the New York sandbox.

Edit: As I've mentioned before on this forum, most people played WoD games as "Superheroes with Fangs" and Werewolf was the most "Superhero with Fangs" out of all the games.

Quote from: King Tyranno on January 22, 2024, 09:10:14 AMThat's the really frustrating thing about this adventure. Multiple times it builds to a crescendo where some horrific thing is meant to happen and then the author doesn't tell you what it is, tells you off for wondering what it might be, and then tells you to not tell the group what the thing is. Instead, players just roll on a table that then tells that player what to feel about the thing they can't see or describe or even think about for risk of causing meta harm to players.

Quote from: OmegaThe topic of complaint was not that the Delta Green Adventure has child abuse in it, but that it didn't describe the Child abuse.

This seems to be the point of contention. How much detail of a horrific event/situation/phenomenon is considered "appropriate" to depict in order to evoke the desired degree of horror without violating standards of taste or (for those who rightly or wrongly consider this a topic of concern) psychological "safety" in the audience?

Quote from: Orphan81 on January 24, 2024, 03:14:06 PM
Your analogy doesn't work here. The complaint was that the child abuse folder didn't describe the child abuse.

Tyranno posted the exact passages from the book that amounted to "The folder is full of child abuse, don't get into the specifics of it, child abuse isn't cool."

Well he's right, though. Some people think sending a kid to be without supper because they're being an absolute ass, or spanking them because again being an absolute ass, is child abuse. Like on the same level as, well, you know...the bad stuff. So WHAT constitutes "child abuse" is actually fairly important to a game devoted to horror because if I'm some investigator of totally fucked up shit and I find a folder with pictures of "child abuse" that is nothing more than a kid getting the strap for valid reasons and a video of him getting dressed down by his dad for starting a fight at school, as an investigator, IN GAME, I could care less. If it's, well, you know, then I'd care.

If I'm supposed to be worried about legitimately evil threats and the GM throws out a scenario to solve the mystery of a hobo stealing pies from window sills, that's useless crap. Tell me the hobo is murdering the ladies baking said pies then raping their corpses, I care.

Quote from: Brad on January 24, 2024, 04:24:39 PM
Well he's right, though. Some people think sending a kid to be without supper because they're being an absolute ass, or spanking them because again being an absolute ass, is child abuse. Like on the same level as, well, you know...the bad stuff. So WHAT constitutes "child abuse" is actually fairly important to a game devoted to horror because if I'm some investigator of totally fucked up shit and I find a folder with pictures of "child abuse" that is nothing more than a kid getting the strap for valid reasons and a video of him getting dressed down by his dad for starting a fight at school, as an investigator, IN GAME, I could care less. If it's, well, you know, then I'd care.

If I'm supposed to be worried about legitimately evil threats and the GM throws out a scenario to solve the mystery of a hobo stealing pies from window sills, that's useless crap. Tell me the hobo is murdering the ladies baking said pies then raping their corpses, I care.

This is being completely disingenuous and you know it. Don't even try to say otherwise, this is pedantic bullshit 101. Not even the fucking Werewolf the Apocalpyse Child Abuse cult from 1992 went into detail about What the Child abuse entails. If it's a god damn Call of Cthulut/Delta Green or World of Darkness book and it says "These children were the victims of abuse." You god damn know very well what kind of abuse they're talking about.

To pretend otherwise means you're being willfully dishonest or an idiot.

Quote from: Orphan81 on January 24, 2024, 05:38:11 PM
This is being completely disingenuous and you know it. Don't even try to say otherwise, this is pedantic bullshit 101. Not even the fucking Werewolf the Apocalpyse Child Abuse cult from 1992 went into detail about What the Child abuse entails. If it's a god damn Call of Cthulut/Delta Green or World of Darkness book and it says "These children were the victims of abuse." You god damn know very well what kind of abuse they're talking about.

To pretend otherwise means you're being willfully dishonest or an idiot.

Circa 2000, sure, I know. But 2024? The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

Also, LOL @ calling me pedantic when you've been nothing but in this thread. But, hey, it's the internet; wouldn't be any fun without pure retardation.

EDIT: You ever read Watchmen? The Alan Moore one? There you go. Rorschach has no qualms about being graphic in his descriptions, so as a reader you feel quite a bit of empathy with him even though he's essentially a vigilante murderer. This module could have used some sort of script/dialogue to express this same sort of sentiment to get the point across, but it looks like they just said YOU KNOW!!!! and...yeah. Why even bother?

Quote from: Brad on January 24, 2024, 07:11:34 PM


Also, LOL @ calling me pedantic when you've been nothing but in this thread. But, hey, it's the internet; wouldn't be any fun without pure retardation.

And you return to your usual dumbassery. Maybe one day you'll be better and actually contribute something meaningful, but I'm not holding out hope.

Quote from: King Tyranno on January 24, 2024, 10:44:13 AM
But there are already people in this thread trying to focus in on nitpicks and making things oddly political by creating a strawman that they then argue against when I just wanted my RPG book to let me GM as I want without being insulting and patronizing. So I didn't want to give them more ammunition.

Quote from: King Tyranno on January 24, 2024, 10:44:13 AM
Write horror, write it as vague or as graphic as you want. That's your choice as an author. You have absolutely no responsibility for how others react to your work beyond that. You inform people of the subject matter and let people make their own choices on whether to engage with the material or not. And not engaging is a valid option for a mature adult.

In the parts I bolded above, the module isn't stopping you from GMing how you want. Many if not most modules have instructions for the GM in some places about how to run the adventure. If a GM doesn't like the instructions given, they can ignore it just like they can ignore any other part of the module.

As I said, the reasoning about harm sounds dumb to me, but that's irrelevant to the usefulness of the module. The idea of leaving things vague is a perfectly reasonable approach that is often used in horror, where the horror itself isn't seen.

Quote from: jhkim on January 24, 2024, 11:18:33 PM

Quote from: King Tyranno on January 24, 2024, 10:44:13 AM
But there are already people in this thread trying to focus in on nitpicks and making things oddly political by creating a strawman that they then argue against when I just wanted my RPG book to let me GM as I want without being insulting and patronizing. So I didn't want to give them more ammunition.

Quote from: King Tyranno on January 24, 2024, 10:44:13 AM
Write horror, write it as vague or as graphic as you want. That's your choice as an author. You have absolutely no responsibility for how others react to your work beyond that. You inform people of the subject matter and let people make their own choices on whether to engage with the material or not. And not engaging is a valid option for a mature adult.

In the parts I bolded above, the module isn't stopping you from GMing how you want. Many if not most modules have instructions for the GM in some places about how to run the adventure. If a GM doesn't like the instructions given, they can ignore it just like they can ignore any other part of the module.

As I said, the reasoning about harm sounds dumb to me, but that's irrelevant to the usefulness of the module. The idea of leaving things vague is a perfectly reasonable approach that is often used in horror, where the horror itself isn't seen.

Greetings!

Yeah, Jhkim. I tend to agree. I'm not quite *getting* why people moan and fight each other over whether a stupid fucking module is either vague, or super-detailed, or somewhere in between, really. If I got some Horror module, and I thought it was too vague or Disneyfied--I would load it the fuck up with blood, gore, and lots of creepy, disturbing details. In whatever way though, if I didn't like the descriptions provided, I would simply change them.

I don't play with weird, traumatized, or mentally-ill people, so I always feel confident that I can load up whatever kind of detailed descriptions as I see fit. I play with adult gamers, and they have all seen horror movies where women are brutally raped, men are tied down and tortured with saws and electric drills, people are gulped down and eaten by monsters, savagely knifed to death, or chased down by some maniac psycho that is killing people left and right with a chainsaw.

All of these horrific scenes have been included in enormously popular movies, seen by *millions of people* over the last 50 fucking years.

Oh, yeah, and people also being gulped down and eaten by giant sharks, and Orca Killer Whales. And giant Alligators. Those have also been huge hits, beloved by many, many people.

If these supposed "Horror Modules" aren't at least being as graphic and bloody as the many, many movies put out into public movie theaters everywhere, then they need to step it up and stip playing like they are talking to fucking 10-year old children.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

What if the abuse was ice cream... without sprinkles!  Too cruel! 

Quote from: Opaopajr on January 25, 2024, 01:59:25 AM
What if the abuse was ice cream... without sprinkles!  Too cruel! 

Come on, now. Be serious.


It was pineapple on pizza.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on January 24, 2024, 04:14:56 PM
How much detail of a horrific event/situation/phenomenon is considered "appropriate" to depict in order to evoke the desired degree of horror without violating standards of taste or (for those who rightly or wrongly consider this a topic of concern) psychological "safety" in the audience?

That's just it: There's no single answer and everyone has different limits which can even change over time.

The problem is when folks start attributing moral failings to those who don't share their limits.

Quote from: jhkim on January 24, 2024, 11:18:33 PM
the module isn't stopping you from GMing how you want.

But it isn't helping them either.

Quote from: SHARK on January 25, 2024, 01:48:59 AM

Quote from: jhkim on January 24, 2024, 11:18:33 PM

Quote from: King Tyranno on January 24, 2024, 10:44:13 AM
But there are already people in this thread trying to focus in on nitpicks and making things oddly political by creating a strawman that they then argue against when I just wanted my RPG book to let me GM as I want without being insulting and patronizing. So I didn't want to give them more ammunition.

Quote from: King Tyranno on January 24, 2024, 10:44:13 AM
Write horror, write it as vague or as graphic as you want. That's your choice as an author. You have absolutely no responsibility for how others react to your work beyond that. You inform people of the subject matter and let people make their own choices on whether to engage with the material or not. And not engaging is a valid option for a mature adult.

In the parts I bolded above, the module isn't stopping you from GMing how you want. Many if not most modules have instructions for the GM in some places about how to run the adventure. If a GM doesn't like the instructions given, they can ignore it just like they can ignore any other part of the module.

As I said, the reasoning about harm sounds dumb to me, but that's irrelevant to the usefulness of the module. The idea of leaving things vague is a perfectly reasonable approach that is often used in horror, where the horror itself isn't seen.

Yeah, Jhkim. I tend to agree. I'm not quite *getting* why people moan and fight each other over whether a stupid fucking module is either vague, or super-detailed, or somewhere in between, really. If I got some Horror module, and I thought it was too vague or Disneyfied--I would load it the fuck up with blood, gore, and lots of creepy, disturbing details. In whatever way though, if I didn't like the descriptions provided, I would simply change them.

I don't play with weird, traumatized, or mentally-ill people, so I always feel confident that I can load up whatever kind of detailed descriptions as I see fit. I play with adult gamers, and they have all seen horror movies where women are brutally raped, men are tied down and tortured with saws and electric drills, people are gulped down and eaten by monsters, savagely knifed to death, or chased down by some maniac psycho that is killing people left and right with a chainsaw.

All of these horrific scenes have been included in enormously popular movies, seen by *millions of people* over the last 50 fucking years.

All these examples are about a different sort of horror topic, though. Specifically child rape is not something that is graphically shown in popular movies. In almost all portrayals, it's implied but not graphically shown. I think of the child sexual abuse (and incest) in _Gerald's Game_, or the castrastion flashback in _Let the Right One In_.

For me there's two things that I dislike about how God's Teeth seems to be handling this issue.

1.  It's the introduction of the material for use as a subject for entertainments followed by preaching at the audience with harsh judgement. 

2.  The apparent need for the adventure writer to include material for that clearly he has an issue with as a central to the game even though there's a lot of different ways this could be handled. 

It's clear he's trying to make you think about the abuse while at the same time expressing disgust about it all.  There are so many ways you could show that a cult is interfering with the growth and development of a child in order to produce their goals with resorting to dragging up some really horrific RL behavior.

Is the guy suffering from his own repulsive intrusive thoughts and writing them into an adventure as a way of indulging?