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I love Delta Green. I love the lore. I think personally the majority of pre-made campaigns, splat books, and other supplemental material are some of the best ever seen for Lovecraft adjacent games.

A year or so ago I ran a very successful campaign of Impossible Landscapes for a PUG made up of complete strangers from online. But we met IRL, face to face for all our sessions. At the end we all agreed that Impossible Landscapes was one of the best horror campaigns for any RPG. And we were all ravenous to consume more Delta Green content. So of course we start hearing about God's Teeth before it released. About how great it is, how horrific and unsettling it was. Eventually the game came out. I got the PDF which included myriad warning about how icky and gross and triggering this campaign might be. Which only heightened my interest.

Within the first few pages I was presented with the most myopic, hand wringing, pearl clutching, outright cowardly content for a horror campaign I think I've ever seen. Of course people are going to bring up Candela Obscura but I don't think that's nearly as downright insulting as this campaign. Throughout, the author seems to have made the assumption for us all that we're all as emotionally stunted and irresponsible as the author himself. So much so that any horrific aspects of this campaign at all are censored heavily to the point where the horrific things are not described at all and the author lectures us to not even wonder what those horrific aspects are. Lest we unintentionally trigger a member of the group. I'll give an example.

At the very start of the campaign, only one of the party members is a true Delta Green agent. Having just lost their whole team. They are contacted by a mysterious member of another Delta Green cell. A woman who is clearly cagey and hiding things. She tells them to recruit the other players who are all Friendlies attending a fake seminar. And then plot and carry out the murder of the adult staff of an orphanage. The player is not made aware that this woman, Agent Clove has just witnessed and ran away from the murder of her fellow operatives by a sinister cult. But they should be made aware that Agent Clove is acting shady as fuck.  If that player has any questions as to why they've been given these orders, the GM is encouraged to make the NPC evasive. And not answer the question. Okay fine, but any player worth their salt will ask

"What am I even doing here? What's my motivation beyond a spooky mystery that's mysterious for the sake of being mysterious"

Instead, the player is meant to look at two folders. A manilla folder and a  red folder. The Manilla folder has info on the other players, and various tid bits of the orphanage including it's members. But doesn't quite say WHY these guys all need to die.  For all the answers they need Clove tells the player to look at that red folder for "motivation" as the book says. So what's in the folder? Allow the book to tell you.

Quote

Describing the Folder
Never—NEVER—describe the specific contents of the cartoon cat folder.
Doing so risks real harm. Actual child abuse is as close to sanity-blasting
unnatural knowledge as we get in the real world. Keep everyone safe at the
table with the provided indirect descriptions. That way, players stay in control of
their Agents' actions while acknowledging the fact that they cannot control what
their Agents feel when confronted by such nightmares.
Furthermore, keeping the exact contents at a remove ser ves a vital purpose
for the campaign: the folder is a Pandora's box of motivation. The operation
looks wrong from the start because it is wrong. The Agent and the Friendlies
have good reason to be uncomfortable with the situation. The cartoon cat folder
is why they're going to shut up and plow ahead anyway.

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. Understanding the content inside and then informing my players of potentially mentally triggering things, so THEY could make an informed decision on whether that content bothered them enough so they could opt out of the campaign. So I should be able to describe even in the most abstract of terms what exactly is in this folder, and how it's relevant to the plot. But if I were dumb enough to run this RAW here's how any exchange between the GM and this player regarding this folder will go.

Quote
GM: Clove gives you this red folder. She tells you that if you have any real questions. You should look at it's contents. It'll give you all the motivation you need.
Player: Okay, that's spooky. I take the folder and open it up. What's inside?
GM: Dunno.
Player: What?
GM: Dunno. The campaign doesn't say. It says you should just make something up that's personal to you and motivates you.
Player: What the fuck? I don't even know what could be in the folder to make up anyway because Clove hasn't told me anything.
GM: Yeah Clove is being really evasive. She's actually already left so you can't question her anymore.
Player:Can you at least tell me what's in the folder?
GM: Dunno, the book told me off for even wondering what was in there.
Player: Jesus fucking christ.
GM: Here, roll on this table that vaguely tells you what emotion you feel whilst looking at the folder that I'm not allowed to describe the contents of.

Now to be absolutely fair to the book, it does at least say this if your players want to take a closer look

Quote

Close Viewing: The Pictures
Closer study costs 1/1D4 SAN from helplessness. That
is the Agent's last SAN loss from the folder.
Foolish Agents may want to inspect the photographs
in the cartoon cat folder for more details. Keep in
mind the rules for handling the folder and the general
guideline that the contents should never be described
explicitly.
An Agent with Art (Photography) at 20% or higher
or Computer Science or SIGINT at 40% or above
realizes that the photographs can't be fake. Technology
capable of simulating the poor lighting conditions
of the photographs does not exist. The quality is
consistent in every Polaroid. The scene depicted is the
same from multiple angles.
The photos carefully avoid the faces of adult
participants. Some seem young, some elderly. Some fit,
some decrepit or obese. Some men, some women. A
few tattoos are visible, as is a penchant for the adults
to be castrated. The tattoos clearly come from the
Russian prison tradition, though they skew closer to
Eastern Orthodox symbols. Castration, on the other
hand, isn't common in even the hardest gulags. Men
and women alike show those terrible scars. An Agent
who succeeds on a Forensics or Medicine test studying
anatomical features suspects no more than half a
dozen in all.
Agents with History 80% or higher or Occult
60% or higher, or who succeed at either test at −20%,
can correlate the symbols and the tendency toward
genital mutilation to legends of a group known as the
Skoptsi, a Russian Orthodox splinter sect that began
in the 18th century and was reduced under constant
persecution to a few rumored communities by the
1990s. The Skoptsi are well documented as preaching
the holiness of castration and sexual mutilation.
Interested players can find information on them
online. Vague and sourceless rumors accused some
Skoptsi communities of darker pursuits, gaining life
and power from devils. Agents with History or Occult
skills higher than base but who fail the test still realize
something is there to be investigated further.

Okay so I'm still being told to not describe the contents. But I can at least say these are pictures. And they have people in them. And if they pass another roll I can say they're cultists.

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

I could go on. There are actually several instances where the campaign seems to be building to some horrific scene or exposition. But you are yet again told not to describe it. Not to wonder about it. And just side step around it.  So my question as a GM to the author then becomes this.

"If you're so certain that this game is triggering to the point you as the author are self censoring all the horror bits in a HORROR campaign, thus retarding all horror aspects. Why are you even making this pointless campaign that can't do what it's actually meant to do? SCARE THE FUCKING PLAYERS! Why are you making a campaign when you can't even depict the horror at all for fear of being cancelled? Why bother even making this? It's pointless."

It just pisses me off that this book bakes in several assumptions about mine and potentially your GMing style. Assumes everyone is as much of an arrested development manchild as the author clearly is. Assuming that you're just going to unintentionally trigger someone and thus because of that, you don't get to even look at the horror elements. It completely ignores any autonomy or personal responsibility as an ADULT that someone choosing to play a horror campaign might have. Let me be absolutely clear, as a GM I wouldn't run this for anyone who was truly traumatized by sexual assault and child molestation. Having a warning about that on the DTRPG page and inside the book is absolutely fine. But that's the beginning and end of the author's responsibility for a group's mental state. I'm the GM. I have final say on who is in the group for a session. And the players themselves can make an informed decision on whether a horror campaign centering around very dark and adult themes. I can trust myself to be respectful and mature enough about a person's mental state to advise them that a particular campaign may not be for them. But we all have to live in this world where SJWs assume everyone is as irresponsible, immature and unsympathetic as them. And frankly that pisses me off to no end when it's directly ruined what could've been a good campaign.

I swear this is a mental game of "I'm not touching you."  It's like he's deranged and gets off on getting as close as he can to the subject mater without getting flagged as a pervert. 

Quote from: BadApple on January 21, 2024, 09:09:25 AM
I swear this is a mental game of "I'm not touching you."  It's like he's deranged and gets off on getting as close as he can to the subject mater without getting flagged as a pervert.

I suspect a lot of this comes from the game SJW's have designed to catch people out so they can cancel them. Whereby simply describing or depicting something, even in the most neutral and matter of fact way is somehow an endorsment of that thing in the "everything is political" sense.

SJWs in general are very defensive and sensitive about child molestation in a way that is extremely telling. They love to project their sins onto others that they can then punish instead of themselves. And then assume everyone is like them. A rational human being who doesn't fiddle with kids doesn't need to be constantly told that kiddy fiddling is wrong because they inherently know it to be true. And know that depicting that in an RPG is being done to show how horrific and vile the antagonists are. That should all go without saying but this is the shitty world we live in.

Sad to see the state of affairs.


This reminds me of the Candela Oscura PDF that waggles the finger at the Players about not "gamefying" insanity and mental illness because its offensive and terrible and kills puppies every time you do it. And, on the same breath, lists a lot of ways to gamefy physical illness and disability. So, gamefying physical disability is fine, but gamefying mental disability is something only horrible people would do and you should feel bad for wanting to do it.

...all of this in a supposedly "horror" game.

You can't make this BS up.

I backed this one as well, and I don't get why there's such squeamishness when it comes to Delta Green ops being disturbing as hell. It's always been part of the attraction. DG has frequently been super gross, going all the way back to it's first appearance in The Unspeakable Oath in '92 or so. That protomatter in the very first Groversville scenario. Man, I was hooked.

That said, to be fair, when Caleb first ran this for the RPPR gang, I recall that he made the Hello Kitty folder a more supernatural seeming macguffin that just instantly made any investigator who gazed into it immediately compliant with the agenda.

Here's a link. Give at least the first episode a listen when time permits, and see if you come away with a similar opinion of what he was doing with the Hello Kitty folder:

https://actualplay.roleplayingpublicradio.com/gods-teeth-a-delta-green-campaign/

Timestamp is 17:10 to 19:45 for the first PC to view the folder's contents.

Edited for formatting and to add timestamps

Quote from: King Tyranno on January 21, 2024, 08:20:01 AMThere are actually several instances where the campaign seems to be building to some horrific scene or exposition. But you are yet again told not to describe it. Not to wonder about it. And just side step around it.

To be fair, as a fan of horror and a sometime writer of horror stories, I can confirm there is a good case for the "less is more" school of exposition. In Danse Macabre Stephen King describes the "ten-foot-tall bug" effect, which is that when the horror to which you've been building -- a ten-foot-tall bug standing at the door in a thunderstorm when you throw the door open, say -- is finally revealed, the audience screams, but in the scream is always a note of relief. "A ten-foot-tall bug is pretty bad," they're thinking, "but I can handle that. I was afraid it might be a hundred feet tall." So in the next movie the writer throws open the door to reveal a hundred-foot-tall bug standing there, and the audience screams, but again they're thinking, "That's bad, but it could've been worse -- it could've been a thousand feet tall." And so on.

The great advantage of not being specific is that the audience can usually imagine for themselves something much worse in the gaps. Had I been writing that section I would have told the GM to read something like this in the event they did open the Kitty folder:

Quote"You've all seen more than you want to of the ugliness of reality. Eldritch beings whose very footsteps distort the space and time through which they move. The wreckage of human beings who seized hold of cosmic forces they had the arrogance to think they could control ... or the despair not to care if they couldn't. Good men and women who died in agony for no reason other than not moving quick enough, or for being in the wrong place at the wrong time ... or who'll be living the rest of their life in a straitjacket, eating through a straw, because they kept their eyes open just a few seconds too long.

"This is more than that. This is worse. Because this is nothing more than people doing what people are capable of doing.

"The photographs are carefully arranged to conceal the faces of the adults in shadow. In its own way that's almost the worst of it: the care, the genuine artistry, with which these pictures have been taken. The light shows only what they've done. And the only faces visible are those of the victims they've done it to. The children.

"Further study for clues will require a SAN roll."

Man, when it comes to Child Abuse, call me crazy, but I don't think anyone should be describing that in any kind of detail at their table.

Even Werewolf 1st edition, back at Whitewolf's most edgy, had a wyrm cult of child abusers called "The Seventh Generation" and was like, "Don't get into the details of what they do."

I think if fucking Whitewolf back in 1992 with "Rage Across New York" was saying, "Don't do detailed child abuse scenes" I'm going to give Delta Green in 2024 a pass in saying, "Don't detail what's in the red folder about the Orphanage victims." It's not rocket science to say, "You look in the folder, it revolts you, causes you sanity loss, and fills you with determination that the folks running this Orphange NEED TO FUCKING DIE."

"What's in the folder?"
"Pictures of people murdering children."
"Okay, let's go get them."

TAH-DAH.

Quote from: Valatar on January 22, 2024, 02:22:13 AM
"What's in the folder?"
"Pictures of people murdering children."
"Okay, let's go get them."

TAH-DAH.

Greetings!

Exactly, Valatar.

I guess the company that does the book are too stupid to speak or write effectively.

Just sad.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Orphan81 on January 22, 2024, 01:18:00 AM
Man, when it comes to Child Abuse, call me crazy, but I don't think anyone should be describing that in any kind of detail at their table.

Even Werewolf 1st edition, back at Whitewolf's most edgy, had a wyrm cult of child abusers called "The Seventh Generation" and was like, "Don't get into the details of what they do."

I think if fucking Whitewolf back in 1992 with "Rage Across New York" was saying, "Don't do detailed child abuse scenes" I'm going to give Delta Green in 2024 a pass in saying, "Don't detail what's in the red folder about the Orphanage victims." It's not rocket science to say, "You look in the folder, it revolts you, causes you sanity loss, and fills you with determination that the folks running this Orphange NEED TO FUCKING DIE."

Can't help but feel you're deflecting my criticism. I'm not asking for details. I've no idea what made you think that. It's not that I want to see child abuse. I'm asking the ability to describe a horrific scene at all. If I feel it's too graphic I can decide as GM to tone it down myself. Preferably without a tedious lecture. If a player doesn't like ANY depiction of child abuse no matter how vague they can choose not to participate. Hell if the author had a problem with it he could've chosen to just not write this waste of paper. And I don't know why he didn't. I don't see an issue with a simple description

"This folder contains images of adult men and women. They are wearing strange robes and several pictures depict them engaging in the vile and horrific abuse of children. Roll 1d10 SAN from the horrific."

As I said before. If I play as written I can't describe the fundamental exposition. "This is bad because it makes you feel bad." I just have to TELL the player what they're feeling and then move on hoping that's enough and the player isn't confused. Instead of them deciding and roleplaying what they feel for themselves after being told what's in the folder. Because robbing the player of agency is the only way to move the campaign forward. By not just communicating one thing the players will have no reason to engage with the campaign at all. A horror campaign where the horror is scooped out and replaced with lectures multiple times throughout the book. What good is a horror campaign that censors it's own horror? Imagine a DnD campaign that censored any depiction of combat and violence in a dungeon crawl. What good would that be? Y

This all seems rather academic to me.  They can lecture and wag their fingers all they want but they can't actually enforce any of this.  They can say "never ever" all they want to but they have no way of making that stick.  They can't really do anything if the GM just says, "No" and blows them off.

Why the fuck is the author writing a scenario for a horror game if he's unwilling to put horror in the games?

Now don't get me wrong, I don't want or need him to go into gritty perverse detail but 'imagine it yourself' is just shit.

Quote from: Orphan81 on January 22, 2024, 01:18:00 AM
Man, when it comes to Child Abuse, call me crazy, but I don't think anyone should be describing that in any kind of detail at their table.

Even Werewolf 1st edition, back at Whitewolf's most edgy, had a wyrm cult of child abusers called "The Seventh Generation" and was like, "Don't get into the details of what they do."

I think if fucking Whitewolf back in 1992 with "Rage Across New York" was saying, "Don't do detailed child abuse scenes" I'm going to give Delta Green in 2024 a pass in saying, "Don't detail what's in the red folder about the Orphanage victims." It's not rocket science to say, "You look in the folder, it revolts you, causes you sanity loss, and fills you with determination that the folks running this Orphange NEED TO FUCKING DIE."

If a subject is too taboo to discuss, don't make a fucking rpg campaign about it.

I'm a survivor of a lot of cults in real life. It's hard to describe the sheer sense of helplessness and isolation being subjected to that does to a person.

Regardless of my own sense of perversity, I've never thought before now about even the remote possibility to translating that into adventure material of all things. The horrors in my head stay in my head. And I don't feel comfortable sharing them with others. There is no catharsis for me that serves as good enough excuse to subject others to my own personal demons.

This is why I have not bowed to the temptation and written horror adventures featuring Christianity as the mad cult with aspirations of world domination. I prefer my horror adventures to be firmly steeped in the mythical. There are plenty of ancient legends to mine and put a new twist on. So I'll never run out of material to mine.

I haven't read God's Teeth. But from the description here, I can tell it is just not for me.

Quote from: Grognard GM on January 22, 2024, 06:32:02 AM

Quote from: Orphan81 on January 22, 2024, 01:18:00 AM
I think if fucking Whitewolf back in 1992 with "Rage Across New York" was saying, "Don't do detailed child abuse scenes" I'm going to give Delta Green in 2024 a pass in saying, "Don't detail what's in the red folder about the Orphanage victims." It's not rocket science to say, "You look in the folder, it revolts you, causes you sanity loss, and fills you with determination that the folks running this Orphange NEED TO FUCKING DIE."

If a subject is too taboo to discuss, don't make a fucking rpg campaign about it.

I take all this with a big grain of salt because I haven't read the module, and seeing selected quotes isn't the same thing as reading it in context. That doesn't mean I disagree with the OP -- I might agree more strongly with the OP, but just that my opinion isn't firm until I've read it myself.

I think I agree with both Orphan81 and Grognard GM to a degree. I agree with Orphan81 in that the original post used terms like "spineless" and "manchild" to criticize the advice of not describing the child rape being described, when I think it is totally and completely reasonable approach. I might disagree with the tone of how it's advocated, but if I was running a horror scenario that included child rape, I'd strongly consider not describing it.

On the other hand, I also agree that if the scenario authors feel that "real harm" is risked by describing child rape, then it doesn't make sense to include it as a central subject in the adventure. Basically, in the quotes, the authors don't come across as "spineless" or "manchild" -- they come across as inconsistent.

---

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on January 21, 2024, 10:18:07 PM
To be fair, as a fan of horror and a sometime writer of horror stories, I can confirm there is a good case for the "less is more" school of exposition. In Danse Macabre Stephen King describes the "ten-foot-tall bug" effect, which is that when the horror to which you've been building -- a ten-foot-tall bug standing at the door in a thunderstorm when you throw the door open, say -- is finally revealed, the audience screams, but in the scream is always a note of relief. "A ten-foot-tall bug is pretty bad," they're thinking, "but I can handle that. I was afraid it might be a hundred feet tall." So in the next movie the writer throws open the door to reveal a hundred-foot-tall bug standing there, and the audience screams, but again they're thinking, "That's bad, but it could've been worse -- it could've been a thousand feet tall." And so on.

The great advantage of not being specific is that the audience can usually imagine for themselves something much worse in the gaps.

I agree with this, but it also suggests that keeping things vague doesn't protect the players from the ostensible "real harm" that the first quote cites. The players can and will be imagine horrible stuff without the description, which would be just as harmful, I would think. If a player has a problem with child sexual abuse, say, I just wouldn't use this material at all rather than using it without vague description.


TLDR: Nothing wrong with the "keep it vague" approach, but the description of why to use it sounds wrong.

If you really believe that the mere verbal description of something risks doing real harm and makes your players unsafe, then you should leave it out of your games entirely.

Quote from: yosemitemike on January 22, 2024, 07:23:19 AM
If you really believe that the mere verbal description of something risks doing real harm and makes your players unsafe, then you should leave it out of your games entirely.

Greetings!

Yeah, Yosemitemike! We have an entire generation of fragile, weak pussies in our entire society. The men and the women are fucking pathetic and weak nowadays. Words hurt their feelings and send them into triggered shrieking where they need a "safe space" to go curl up in, clutching a fucking stuffed animal.

That isn't hyperbole, either. Universities around the country testified that numerous *adult* college students reacted in that exact manner when Trump was elected as President. These "adults"--often crying hysterically--needed therapy sessions from the trauma...in addition to medication, counseling, and the stuffed animals.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

The crux of the matter is this, I believe both I and my group are rational and emotionally intelligent enough to handle the depiction of fictional child abuse so long as it is not gratuitous, pornographic, and needlessly edgy. And I am confident that if any of my group did have issues with the content they'd inform me and either deal with it, or leave. That would be their choice. I'd respect it with no judgements as they'd have communicated this to me respectfully. I do not want to force harrowing content on people. None of us want to see what amounts to Snuff content IRL. But a vague, verbal, matter of fact description will not bother the vast majority of adults and serves it's purpose of telling us what's in the folder and why we should be upset about it. It should go without saying that such things are bad. And they are being used to show off how vile and disgusting the villains are. I do not believe that it will cause "real harm". In fact "real harm" is VERY nebulous and vague term that could mean several things.   

My main fustration with this book in a nutshell is the author's insipid need to avoid controversy. I understand that depicting child abuse at all is a touchy subject to some. The author's responsibility begins and ends with a warning on the storefront and a warning in the book itself. From that point on, the group are going into the game with full knowledge of it's content. How they feel about it is their responsibity. Not the author's. But the author wants to have his cake and eat it. He wants to write an upsetting and horrific campaign. But doesn't want people to get upset at the horrific bits. So censors them, tells the GM to tell the players how to feel about that, and makes several outright demeaning and insulting assumptions about me, my group, and anyone who wants to run this. Key among them that everyone is as emotionally stunted as the author, incapable of either processing horrific things or presenting it in a way that respects a player's mental wellbeing.

That's why I called the author a manchild. Only a child assumes everyone is as bad at dealing with their emotions as them. And this manchild wrote a complete waste of a campaign. Vacuous and hollow. As useful as a soup sandwich on a rainy day.

Quote from: jhkim on January 22, 2024, 07:19:18 AMBasically, in the quotes, the authors don't come across as "spineless" or "manchild" -- they come across as inconsistent.

That makes sense to me. For a long time I have believed that much of the driving impulse behind that particular school of creative (and sociopolitical) thought is the attempt to eat one's cake and have it too -- to obtain the benefits of a situation or subject without having to pay the cost. In this case, the authors clearly want the PCs to be righteously motivated by empathy for suffering without actually risking the evocation of trauma from directly triggering that empathy.

QuoteThe players can and will be imagine horrible stuff without the description, which would be just as harmful, I would think. If a player has a problem with child sexual abuse, say, I just wouldn't use this material at all rather than using it without vague description.

Fair point. I was operating on the presumption that vagueness allowed the listener to engage with the concepts only to the degree that he or she feels comfortable -- nobody has to imagine anything worse than they feel up to handling as long as the specifics aren't forcibly jammed home, I was thinking. But the entire point of the horror genre is to evoke reactions of fear or horror, so I suppose one shouldn't hide behind tricking other people's imaginations into doing that for the author rather than trying to do it directly.

That said, as others have already observed, if one isn't prepared to tolerate distress, one shouldn't engage with material likely to be distressing -- wanting not to evoke trauma is a respectable motivation, but at some point, you gotta say, "If you can't take the heat, it's better to stay out of the kitchen."

Quote from: King Tyranno on January 22, 2024, 08:01:07 AMMy main frustration with this book in a nutshell is the author's insipid need to avoid controversy.

Out of curiosity, is the cartoon-cat folder's contents the only thing in the adventure so censored?  Or are there other parts where the authors issue similar injunctions, e.g. "don't get into details of what the monster looks like because this is a very common nightmare image that some players may have been traumatized by", etc.?

What's interesting me about the emerging consensus is that nobody has a problem leaving out the details of genuinely horrific real-life abuse -- it's the virtue-signaling browbeating lectures on why one should do this that are annoying everyone. I have to admit that the more I think about it, the more I think these lectures are as much self-protective greengrocer's signs (q.v. Havel) as sincerely intended warnings or instructions, i.e., they are less worried about how they might hurt others and more worried about how others will accuse them of not caring about how they might hurt others. One side effect of spending a lot of time in cancel culture is that one becomes very attentive to not giving excuses to others for cancellation.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on January 22, 2024, 08:32:06 AM

Quote from: King Tyranno on January 22, 2024, 08:01:07 AMMy main frustration with this book in a nutshell is the author's insipid need to avoid controversy.

Out of curiosity, is the cartoon-cat folder's contents the only thing in the adventure so censored?  Or are there other parts where the authors issue similar injunctions, e.g. "don't get into details of what the monster looks like because this is a very common nightmare image that some players may have been traumatized by", etc.?

No it is not. That's the really fustrating 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. It's so awkward. You're robbing the players of agency, creating an issue where the campaign stops dead unless directly forced forward in a meta way, and then moving on as if that horrific thing that can't be described did happen. You just can't show it to the players. It's so messy when you could just say

" you find some video tapes on the table.  Somehow one is playing on the nearby monitor. Upon looking at that monitor you realise you are watching a graphic snuff film of a cultist doing unspeakable things to a child. Roll 0/5 sanity from the horrific."

There you go. I didn't outright describe exactly what was going on because I don't need to. But I have made the players aware the cultists are filming fucked up snuff films that are a huge part of the unfolding plot. And if the author didn't want to show that why did he put it in the adventure only to censor it?

Quote from: King Tyranno on January 22, 2024, 09:10:14 AM
And if the author didn't want to show that why did he put it in the adventure only to censor it?

You may as well ask other crazy questions of them and their ilk like:

Why do you make money off of HP Lovecraft, while loathing and besmirching everything about the man?

Why are you in a hobby you like so little that you want it to massively change, to the point of being unrecognizable?

Why do you constantly shit on your own customers?

Why do you write horror, when you're a pearl-clutching prude?



The answer to most of these are "I'm waiting on the Modern Audience to arrive, then my diceless game about Trans-feelings will be bigger than D&D. Until then I parasitize healthy IPs till they die, then move on."

Quote from: yosemitemike on January 22, 2024, 07:23:19 AM
If you really believe that the mere verbal description of something risks doing real harm and makes your players unsafe, then you should leave it out of your games entirely.

If they believe that, maybe they shouldn't be playing RPGs at all.

Quote from: King Tyranno on January 22, 2024, 09:10:14 AM
No it is not. That's the really fustrating 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. It's so awkward. You're robbing the players of agency, creating an issue where the campaign stops dead unless directly forced forward in a meta way, and then moving on as if that horrific thing that can't be described did happen. You just can't show it to the players. It's so messy when you could just say

" you find some video tapes on the table.  Somehow one is playing on the nearby monitor. Upon looking at that monitor you realise you are watching a graphic snuff film of a cultist doing unspeakable things to a child. Roll 0/5 sanity from the horrific."

There you go. I didn't outright describe exactly what was going on because I don't need to. But I have made the players aware the cultists are filming fucked up snuff films that are a huge part of the unfolding plot. And if the author didn't want to show that why did he put it in the adventure only to censor it?

Crazy. The author's approach is clearly vague and stupid, and I'd argue it works against the author's intentions of keeping everyone "safe". Some player is going to blurt out what he thinks, and it may come as an unwelcome surprise to other players. In other words, you can't tiptoe around a topic unless you know what the topic is!

Quote from: Grognard GM on January 22, 2024, 06:32:02 AM

If a subject is too taboo to discuss, don't make a fucking rpg campaign about it.

Don't be disingenuious. You played/play WoD games just like I did.

Killing Pedophiles in a horror games is like killing Nazis in a Pulp game. They're an enemy the players don't have to feel any sort of guilt over when it comes to ending their lives.

You just don't need to get into graphic details about the pedophile's crimes in the game. It's enough to say, "You see evidence of them committing horrific crimes against children" and leave it at that. This is one area where you just MIGHT have someone at your table who went through this abuse, and is all for killing the Pedo bad guys as catharsis but doesn't need the detailed descriptions of the broken children added in.

Hell, last game session I did a romeo and juliet take between a Lizard Man and a Bullywog Princess, where the party snuck the princess out to the Lizard Man and he ripped her head off to establish his tribes dominance over the swamp, the look on one of the younger gamers at the hobby shop not my table, totally worth it.

Quote from: Orphan81 on January 22, 2024, 03:00:44 PM

Quote from: Grognard GM on January 22, 2024, 06:32:02 AM

If a subject is too taboo to discuss, don't make a fucking rpg campaign about it.

Don't be disingenuious. You played/play WoD games just like I did.

Killing Pedophiles in a horror games is like killing Nazis in a Pulp game. They're an enemy the players don't have to feel any sort of guilt over when it comes to ending their lives.

You just don't need to get into graphic details about the pedophile's crimes in the game. It's enough to say, "You see evidence of them committing horrific crimes against children" and leave it at that. This is one area where you just MIGHT have someone at your table who went through this abuse, and is all for killing the Pedo bad guys as catharsis but doesn't need the detailed descriptions of the broken children added in.

Who's being disingenuous? I never suggested graphic detail is needed, or wanted. But from King Tyranno's description, this is like a horror adventure written by Tipper Gore. "Some icky meanies are doing the nasties. I won't even hint at what they are, because I know you agree that horror games are no place for horror!"

KT listed plenty of ways they could handle it in an oblique manner, while still providing information. But then KT actually enjoys horror, unlike, apparently, the author.

If the writer can't write that material, then either write something else or hire a different writer. This isn't rocket science.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on January 22, 2024, 03:42:11 PM
If the writer can't write that material, then either write something else or hire a different writer. This isn't rocket science.

Exactly. Can't handle the heat? Stay out of the kitchen.

Quote from: Orphan81 on January 22, 2024, 01:18:00 AM
Man, when it comes to Child Abuse, call me crazy, but I don't think anyone should be describing that in any kind of detail at their table.

Even Werewolf 1st edition, back at Whitewolf's most edgy, had a wyrm cult of child abusers called "The Seventh Generation" and was like, "Don't get into the details of what they do."

I think if fucking Whitewolf back in 1992 with "Rage Across New York" was saying, "Don't do detailed child abuse scenes" I'm going to give Delta Green in 2024 a pass in saying, "Don't detail what's in the red folder about the Orphanage victims." It's not rocket science to say, "You look in the folder, it revolts you, causes you sanity loss, and fills you with determination that the folks running this Orphange NEED TO FUCKING DIE."

This is the same White Wolf that did Orphan Grinder.

Quote from: Omega on January 22, 2024, 11:51:59 PM

This is the same White Wolf that did Orphan Grinder.

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.

God's Teeth is the only Delta Green product I've regretted purchasing (I purchased it before the TW was on the DTRPG description). The author had previously published a very sexual Delta Green module featuring alien penis monsters with some uncomfortable rape scenes described in more explicit detail. That older one was overall a fine module and most of the objectionable content that wouldn't work for my group I fixed or cut without much fuss. Where the penis monster adventure is a little weird but still fun, this campaign pretty much confirmed for me that this author has a weird sex thing he can't help but have influence his work. All in all it just makes me uncomfortable - not in a horror fun way but in a way that ruined my day. I'm not buying anything else from the author unless I know it's dramatically different in theme and tone.

In God's Teeth, it's impossible to cut out the abuse of children. It's the foundation of the campaign and it drives the action in every act. It's hard to describe but just avoid the product, it's not worth it. There's like 10-15 pages of otherwise interesting police procedural and conspiracy stuff that would be fun if it wasn't ruined by the campaign's rotten and inherently unpleasant foundation.

Content aside, it's an adventure that is heavily biased towards the modern railroad-centric narrative style of play rather than a freeform investigation. The folder isn't the only hard railroad you get slapped with if you stray too far afield. Impossible Landscapes would sometimes do this too but often times it was done in a more natural way that points back at the central mystery. Besides, the idea of a railroad at least that fits with the themes of that campaign and the central threat. If you researched deeper and deeper with Impossible Landscapes everything was also referencing other events, people, and places of importance so it worked really well to give a sense that everything fits and makes sense in this centuries-spanning history. With God's Teeth the railroad is there to rescue poorly structured scenarios that put players in a position to derail the campaign in the first place. The research options also seem mostly tangential and irrelevant to what's happening in the game. There are a lot of elements (and some events in the plot itself) that seem to be there because Impossible Landscapes did it. It's not integrated as part of the greater whole and it falls flat.

I'm surprised you didn't call out the author's sort of unhinged letter to the reader where he vents about his time as a teacher, his feelings about trump stuff, the "kids in cages" thing, and other stuff. The campaign plays out pretty much the way you'd expect once ICE gets involved.

Quote from: Old Aegidius on January 23, 2024, 05:33:21 AM
God's Teeth is the only Delta Green product I've regretted purchasing (I purchased it before the TW was on the DTRPG description). The author had previously published a very sexual Delta Green module featuring alien penis monsters with some uncomfortable rape scenes described in more explicit detail. That older one was overall a fine module and most of the objectionable content that wouldn't work for my group I fixed or cut without much fuss. Where the penis monster adventure is a little weird but still fun, this campaign pretty much confirmed for me that this author has a weird sex thing he can't help but have influence his work. All in all it just makes me uncomfortable - not in a horror fun way but in a way that ruined my day. I'm not buying anything else from the author unless I know it's dramatically different in theme and tone.

In God's Teeth, it's impossible to cut out the abuse of children. It's the foundation of the campaign and it drives the action in every act. It's hard to describe but just avoid the product, it's not worth it. There's like 10-15 pages of otherwise interesting police procedural and conspiracy stuff that would be fun if it wasn't ruined by the campaign's rotten and inherently unpleasant foundation.

Content aside, it's an adventure that is heavily biased towards the modern railroad-centric narrative style of play rather than a freeform investigation. The folder isn't the only hard railroad you get slapped with if you stray too far afield. Impossible Landscapes would sometimes do this too but often times it was done in a more natural way that points back at the central mystery. Besides, the idea of a railroad at least that fits with the themes of that campaign and the central threat. If you researched deeper and deeper with Impossible Landscapes everything was also referencing other events, people, and places of importance so it worked really well to give a sense that everything fits and makes sense in this centuries-spanning history. With God's Teeth the railroad is there to rescue poorly structured scenarios that put players in a position to derail the campaign in the first place. The research options also seem mostly tangential and irrelevant to what's happening in the game. There are a lot of elements (and some events in the plot itself) that seem to be there because Impossible Landscapes did it. It's not integrated as part of the greater whole and it falls flat.

I'm surprised you didn't call out the author's sort of unhinged letter to the reader where he vents about his time as a teacher, his feelings about trump stuff, the "kids in cages" thing, and other stuff. The campaign plays out pretty much the way you'd expect once ICE gets involved.

I'll be completely honest, I didn't finish reading God's Teeth. I was so disgusted with it I just put it down after reading the first act. I'm sure there's all kinds of other things that would piss me off about it. But I just couldn't read anymore without getting more fustrated. The book lecturing me about how to run content in my own damn campaign was enough for me. I wasn't aware of the author's Trump rant or his weird sexual shit. But it just goes to show that I was right and this guy is one of those Adam Koebol types who needs to police himself but polices others because he thinks they're as emotionally stupid as he is. As I keep saying, he's a manchild and he has no business writing horror campaigns.

Speaking of Impossible Landscapes, as I said I've run a full campaign of it and I'm going to make a thread with some tips and tricks for GMs to run it in cool ways. You bought up a very common complaint about it being railroaded. And I have an interesting way to think about that. I want more people to run it and not be put off or intimidated by it. So stay tuned. 

Quote from: King Tyranno on January 23, 2024, 06:15:16 AM
I'll be completely honest, I didn't finish reading God's Teeth. I was so disgusted with it I just put it down after reading the first act.

It's probably for the best. I'm only going from memory of the weird stuff that stuck with me and the sense of disgust I walked away with. I kept reading because I was trying to find a way to rescue the content and strip out the objectionable stuff like I normally can do, but this book is just totally unsalvageable without dragging in the objectionable content too. With every other DG adventure I've ever run it has been straightforward to find a way to contextualize the essential content in a way that can work for my table (even Ex Oblivione), but yeah the subject matter here was just too disgusting and all-pervasive.

I also ran Impossible Landscapes and regard it as a masterpiece. The ironic thing about the campaign is that even though it sometimes railroads players, its super thought-out structure and abundance of supplementary information and handouts makes it safe and easy to just let the players pull at the threads that catch their attention and see where it takes them. The railroading, when it's overt, serves the themes of the campaign and fits the in-world logic of what's happening. Pretty much anything the players do - even if its just getting themselves killed - is easily used as a pretext to advance the plot or introduce another lead that somehow leads back to the main plot in a natural way. The only ass-pull railroad that I had to employ was the ending of Act 1 where if the players don't take the hint things can drag so at some point you just have to make it super clear that they need to GTFO and cut their losses. If players are suspicious and treat the GM as an unreliable narrator and/or distrusted opposition in future acts (as they did in my game) that actually works out fine and in some ways better.

My strongest critique of Impossible Landscapes is that the final acts start to break down structurally (somewhat understandable, given the plot events) and becomes freeform to the point where you as a GM need to put a lot of effort into either rolling with the punches and improvising a ton of material or you need to take a firm hand and railroad people through to the ending. I ended up improvising and other than one or two errors I made, it worked out fine and players were happy. A less experienced GM would definitely flounder, because you need excellent prep skills for earlier acts, and excellent improv skills for later acts.

Quote from: King Tyranno on January 23, 2024, 06:15:16 AM

I'll be completely honest, I didn't finish reading God's Teeth.

So basically, you started an entire thread complaining the game DIDN'T talk about the Child abuse... and when a guy who actually bought the book came in and said "This book is full of Child Abuse" you go, "Oh uh, I didn't read it and I was totally disgusted by it guys, promise!"

Right...

Edit: I'm not insinuating anything about you here... but maybe go and read point 1 of my signature.

Quote from: Orphan81 on January 23, 2024, 12:20:44 PM

Quote from: King Tyranno on January 23, 2024, 06:15:16 AM

I'll be completely honest, I didn't finish reading God's Teeth.

So basically, you started an entire thread complaining the game DIDN'T talk about the Child abuse... and when a guy who actually bought the book came in and said "This book is full of Child Abuse" you go, "Oh uh, I didn't read it and I was totally disgusted by it guys, promise!"

Right...

Edit: I'm not insinuating anything about you here... but maybe go and read point 1 of my signature.

You're so fundamentally misrepresenting everything I say so you can make a nitpick that I know you're doing it on purpose you disingenuous weasel.  I have explained multiple times that my problem isn't that I want to see Child Abuse but that I want the ability to depict horror in a horror RPG without overwraught lectures and instructions to not depict horror in a horror RPG. I even gave an example of how I'd depict those horrific things without being gratuitous or vague.. I read enough of this shitheap of a book to know what the rest of it was like. And had that confirmed to me by other posters in this thread. You know that. You're purposefully being obtuse in such an obvious way I'm surprised you're even doing it.

Quote from: King Tyranno on January 23, 2024, 02:01:26 PM

You're so fundamentally misrepresenting everything I say so you can make a nitpick that I know you're doing it on purpose you disingenuous weasel.  I have explained multiple times that my problem isn't that I want to see Child Abuse but that I want the ability to depict horror in a horror RPG without overwraught lectures and instructions to not depict horror in a horror RPG. I even gave an example of how I'd depict those horrific things without being gratuitous or vague.. I read enough of this shitheap of a book to know what the rest of it was like. And had that confirmed to me by other posters in this thread. You know that. You're purposefully being obtuse in such an obvious way I'm surprised you're even doing it.

Bro, it literally says don't describe the *exact* contents of the folder full of Child Abuse.

It literally told you what was in the folder. Child Abuse. It then went on to say, Don't get into the details. You quoted the exact passage for us.

But you're so busy wanting to dunk on "Bug men" as you called it, you started an entire thread on "How dare this Horror game not give me enough to be Horrific!" When the exact passage from the God Damn book tells you, "It's full of Child Abuse."

Listen, I don't think you really wanted to talk to your players about Child Abuse or go into horrific details about it. I don't think that at all.

What I *DO* think is you're so caught up in the culture war, you misrepresented what was actually in the book and got worked up on it so you could make a post about dunking on SJWs.

It was only when another poster came in and talked about the book and said "Hey, I didn't like this. It's full of Child Abuse." You changed your tone... Dude the other poster even went on to say they were surprised you didn't talk about the author's rants on Trump and Kids in cages.

This is what I'm getting at. You're not actually upset the book didn't give you enough to work with.... Because it more than fucking did. The Book didn't even tell you NOT to say what was in the folder, it said to not specify the SPECIFIC details. But you ignored that because you again, wanted to score some points in a culture war.

I'm saying, use a little more nuance in your reading of things... If you wanted to dunk on the guy, his weird ass screed about "Kid's in Cages" when Obama and Biden did the exact same thing and his obvious Trump Derangement syndrome are the more fertile ground to attack and bring up.

The passage in a book saying, "Hey this is about child abuse, don't specify the specific details of child abuse." is not the part to attack.

Quote from: Old Aegidius on January 23, 2024, 05:33:21 AM
The author had previously published a very sexual Delta Green module featuring alien penis monsters with some uncomfortable rape scenes described in more explicit detail. That older one was overall a fine module and most of the objectionable content that wouldn't work for my group I fixed or cut without much fuss.

Yeah, "Lover In The Ice" was a sufficiently creepy scenario that was poisoned by the 'edgy' sexual content. Caleb Stokes has interesting ideas that apparently get polluted by his politics and fetishes.

Quote from: Old Aegidius on January 23, 2024, 05:33:21 AM
God's Teeth is the only Delta Green product I've regretted purchasing (I purchased it before the TW was on the DTRPG description). The author had previously published a very sexual Delta Green module featuring alien penis monsters with some uncomfortable rape scenes described in more explicit detail. That older one was overall a fine module and most of the objectionable content that wouldn't work for my group I fixed or cut without much fuss. Where the penis monster adventure is a little weird but still fun, this campaign pretty much confirmed for me that this author has a weird sex thing he can't help but have influence his work. All in all it just makes me uncomfortable - not in a horror fun way but in a way that ruined my day. I'm not buying anything else from the author unless I know it's dramatically different in theme and tone.

In God's Teeth, it's impossible to cut out the abuse of children. It's the foundation of the campaign and it drives the action in every act.

I commented before that the approach sounded inconsistent. I don't see any problem with leaving the acts vague - which puts it in the imaginations of the players. As Stephen Tannhauser said, an unseen monster is often more horrifying than a well-described one.

I think it's pretty normal for someone to say "No thanks" to a horror adventure centered on child rape, regardless of whether it is detailed or vague. It's not a sign of being weak. The part that I don't get is that if it's an issue, it's still seems like an issue even if it isn't graphically described.

I wonder if after the author upgraded from penis monster as a piece of the horror to child rape as the foundation, editors came back and said that he needed to tone it down somehow, and the published product had the awkward compromise that resulted.

Quote
Agents with History 80% or higher or Occult 60% or higher, or who succeed at either test at −20%, can correlate the symbols and the tendency toward genital mutilation to legends of a group known as the Skoptsi, a Russian Orthodox splinter sect that began in the 18th century and was reduced under constant persecution to a few rumored communities by the 1990s. The Skoptsi are well documented as preaching the holiness of castration and sexual mutilation. Interested players can find information on them online. Vague and sourceless rumors accused some Skoptsi communities of darker pursuits, gaining life and power from devils.

So the bad guys are... a cult of child molesters with a penchant for removing their own genitals?

...

Well that's awkward.

Quote from: King Tyranno on January 22, 2024, 09:10:14 AM
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.

This is what total failure of the art looks like.

When I was a child, there was an exhibitionist driving around town looking for children.  You know what?  Our parents and teachers explained the situation to us in an age-appropriate way.  One of Radical High's scenarios is based on such a person.  It was uncomfortable for me to write, though it's actually rather tame from and RPG standpoint, but RPGs are storytelling.  You can't tell a story when you handcuff yourself from telling it.  I wrote a main idea sentence to start off that the particular scenario has a theme of child abduction.  No "WARNING!" or anything, because, like the aforementioned parents and teachers of my childhood, I understand game masters are smart enough to decide whether or not a scenario is appropriate for his gaming group, and how he wants to approach the storytelling it if he does.

Quote from: Orphan81 on January 23, 2024, 12:20:44 PM
Edit: I'm not insinuating anything about you here... but maybe go and read point 1 of my signature.

This is why I prefer to wait for a full accounting of the facts before jumping to conclusions. Both sides of the political aisle are terrible about this.

You're free to criticize something without finishing it, nevertheless. First impressions are a valid target of criticism.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on January 24, 2024, 08:21:35 AM
You're free to criticize something without finishing it, nevertheless. First impressions are a valid target of criticism.

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.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan on January 24, 2024, 04:32:16 AM

Quote
Agents with History 80% or higher or Occult 60% or higher, or who succeed at either test at −20%, can correlate the symbols and the tendency toward genital mutilation to legends of a group known as the Skoptsi, a Russian Orthodox splinter sect that began in the 18th century and was reduced under constant persecution to a few rumored communities by the 1990s. The Skoptsi are well documented as preaching the holiness of castration and sexual mutilation. Interested players can find information on them online. Vague and sourceless rumors accused some Skoptsi communities of darker pursuits, gaining life and power from devils.

So the bad guys are... a cult of child molesters with a penchant for removing their own genitals?

...

Well that's awkward.

Quote from: King Tyranno on January 22, 2024, 09:10:14 AM
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.

This is what total failure of the art looks like.

I did have that thought that this cult seemed suspiciously similar to certain shall we say people of gender and their proclivities. 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: Brad on January 24, 2024, 08:28:10 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on January 24, 2024, 08:21:35 AM
You're free to criticize something without finishing it, nevertheless. First impressions are a valid target of criticism.

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.

You're arguing in good faith with people who are arguing in bad faith who are oddly trying very hard to deflect criticism of a book. I will not engage with their behaviour after explaining my point as well as I can 3 separate times. They aren't looking for a discussion. They're looking to catch people out so they can feel better about themselves.

Final words on this shit heap of a book. 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. Do not attempt to cowardly have your cake and eat it by having controversial themes and then censoring those the themes so much you cause more problems for the GM than you solve by just saying what it is that's so bad and horrific and icky and gross and stuff out of fear of causing "real harm". if you genuinely believe such subject matter will do that to the point you need to make several lectures in your book about it, save us all some time and don't write the damn book.

Quote from: King Tyranno on January 24, 2024, 10:44:13 AM

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

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on January 24, 2024, 08:21:35 AM
You're free to criticize something without finishing it, nevertheless. First impressions are a valid target of criticism.

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.

You're arguing in good faith with people who are arguing in bad faith who are oddly trying very hard to deflect criticism of a book. I will not engage with their behaviour after explaining my point as well as I can 3 separate times. They aren't looking for a discussion. They're looking to catch people out so they can feel better about themselves.

Final words on this shit heap of a book. 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. Do not attempt to cowardly have your cake and eat it by having controversial themes and then censoring those the themes so much you cause more problems for the GM than you solve by just saying what it is that's so bad and horrific and icky and gross and stuff out of fear of causing "real harm". if you genuinely believe such subject matter will do that to the point you need to make several lectures in your book about it, save us all some time and don't write the damn book.

I'm not trying to deflect criticism from this book, if you're pointing at me. The inclusion of child abuse is a big red flag for me all by itself.

I think it depends on the situation. Sometimes you don't need to go further than the first impression, but other times the initial impression of a situation ends up being proven wrong because viewers jumped to conclusions before all the facts were available.

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!  :o Too cruel!  :-[

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

Quote from: Anon Adderlan on January 25, 2024, 03:32:32 AM

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.

Greetings!

Very insightful, Anon. It i precisely the editorial "need" to smugly lecture the readers, and proceeding to judge anyone that embraces some different approach or level of detail. Not merely judging--oh no, but going on to imply that anyone that doesn't abide by the author's dictates, must of course shamefully be some kind of monster.

I can see why that kind of editorial attitude would piss people off, royally. Personally, if I was to read some nonsense like that, yeah, it would be insulting to me. I would promptly throw the book in the trash, or if possible, return it to get my money back.

Yet again, sadly, this whole approach by these oh so thoughtful and safety-minded authors is just another Woke tentacle in our hobby.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: jhkim on January 25, 2024, 08:20:43 AM

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_.

Greetings!

Well, ok, Jhkim. I concede there is a difference there. *Shrugs* I still think though that instead of being some sanctimonious Woke "safety Gutu"--and lecturing anyone that approaches the material differently from what the author has deigned "appropriate"--that a brief commentary simply outlining to the reader about such disturbing material in a respectful manner would be far better.

I'm seeing the same kind of "Safety Tools" and "Hall Monitor" attitudes across the board in many books, about whatever topic in RPG's==colonialism, sexism, homophobia, trans fuckery, and on and on. And here, we have *Horror* I can understand why some people have a reflex to breathe fire about this. I don't really think that the people are responding so much to the topic of *child rape*--so much as the moral lecturing and barrage of shrieking and judgement for people that choose to think or handle the material differently from the author.

My feeling, really, is I just don't buy Woke fucking books, by Woke fucking authors. Safety Tools, sexism, colonialism, blah, blah, blah. I'd throw the fucking book in the trash, you know?

I've been playing RPG's for four fucking decades or more now. I am an adult. I don't appreciate being lectured to or spoken to like I am some giggling, smirking, bastard adolescent that has no clue how to run a fucking game.

As far as a Horror Book with *Child Rape* in it, well, ok. Again, not my thing. I think it would be sufficient to simply say that the child or the children have been brutalized in horrible ways, sexually brutalized, tortured, whatever.

Hell, in my own games--not Horror games--just normal D&D--I have narrated war scenes, the aftermath, or what have you. I've told the players that adult victims, as well as the very young and old, men or women, have been brutally raped, tortured, or executed. Mass piles of dead bodies, or skulls, covered in gore and ashes. Similar stuff, as appropriate to the adventure. Players get it just fine.

I'm not sure what more detail is needed, right? Being brutalized, raped, tortured, killed by foreign enemies, oppressors, psycho killers, savage gangsters, what ever. I tend to describe some of this stuff taking cues from say, how Tom Brokaw might have described such scenes back in the day, when he would do the news program. I remember watching him as a kid.

You know what I'm saying? I haven't even seen this damned book, and I already don't like it. *Laughing* Just as well, though. I'm not really into "Horror RPG's".

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

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.

Let's consider this from the player perspective, now.

Stop playing my character for me. Don't tell me how my character should feel about the contents of the folder, don't tell me what my character thinks about the contents of the folder, and don't tell me what my character wants to do about the contents of the folder. Those are my decisions. They are not the GM's decisions, they're not the adventure author's decisions, and they're not the publisher's decisions.

What was described in the opening post isn't "keeping it vague". It's not a cunning ploy to evoke horror by letting the players imagine it for themselves. It's a preachy screechy trigger warning to virtue signal to everyone that the publisher doesn't endorse doing bad things to children and acknowledges that words in a page cause real world harm by brainwashing readers into right wing white supremacy and eventually leading them to kill John Lennon.

If the reader needs a trigger warning, then horror is not "for them". You know, kind of like how the all-female Ghostbusters movie wasn't "for me", or how Star Wars isn't "for me", or how the MSHEU isn't "for me", and on and on.

But if I'm going to be motivated to kill these evil cultists, I need to know what they've done. I don't need a three page description of demons sexually defiling a prepubescent girl so what the White Wolf freelancers can show me how hip and cool and edgy they are, but I'm going to need the basics. You can dance around the subject with something like, "We don't want to get too heavy on the details. Just imagine Epstein's Island, and sprinkle in a bit of evil apocalypse cult shenanigans." Or, if you're writing to a different type of crowd, you could phrase it as, "Inside the folder is a complete photo record if the villains acting out all of the worst stereotypes of Catholic priests and altar boys." You can even use a politically neutral route that doesn't rile up anyone's religious sensibilities by writing, "Remember the plot to the movie Taken? Now cut the age of the victims in half."

As the writer of an adventure module that some GM is going to interpret and run for their players, you don't have the luxury of "keeping it vague" beyond a certain point. The GM needs to know what the plot is, so it* can tell its players what they discover, allowing those players to decide how their characters react.

*This sentence just sounds fucking stupid. It's grammatically incorrect, and we all know it.

Quote from: Corolinth on January 25, 2024, 12:26:26 PM

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.

Let's consider this from the player perspective, now.

Stop playing my character for me. Don't tell me how my character should feel about the contents of the folder, don't tell me what my character thinks about the contents of the folder, and don't tell me what my character wants to do about the contents of the folder. Those are my decisions. They are not the GM's decisions, they're not the adventure author's decisions, and they're not the publisher's decisions.

What was described in the opening post isn't "keeping it vague". It's not a cunning ploy to evoke horror by letting the players imagine it for themselves. It's a preachy screechy trigger warning to virtue signal to everyone that the publisher doesn't endorse doing bad things to children and acknowledges that words in a page cause real world harm by brainwashing readers into right wing white supremacy and eventually leading them to kill John Lennon.

If the reader needs a trigger warning, then horror is not "for them". You know, kind of like how the all-female Ghostbusters movie wasn't "for me", or how Star Wars isn't "for me", or how the MSHEU isn't "for me", and on and on.

But if I'm going to be motivated to kill these evil cultists, I need to know what they've done. I don't need a three page description of demons sexually defiling a prepubescent girl so what the White Wolf freelancers can show me how hip and cool and edgy they are, but I'm going to need the basics. You can dance around the subject with something like, "We don't want to get too heavy on the details. Just imagine Epstein's Island, and sprinkle in a bit of evil apocalypse cult shenanigans." Or, if you're writing to a different type of crowd, you could phrase it as, "Inside the folder is a complete photo record if the villains acting out all of the worst stereotypes of Catholic priests and altar boys." You can even use a politically neutral route that doesn't rile up anyone's religious sensibilities by writing, "Remember the plot to the movie Taken? Now cut the age of the victims in half."

As the writer of an adventure module that some GM is going to interpret and run for their players, you don't have the luxury of "keeping it vague" beyond a certain point. The GM needs to know what the plot is, so it* can tell its players what they discover, allowing those players to decide how their characters react.

*This sentence just sounds fucking stupid. It's grammatically incorrect, and we all know it.

You've done a good job explaining things without getting bogged down in pedantic minutiae. Certain people keep getting into this weird idea that me being frustrated at a Campaign making it harder for me as GM and the players to roleplay or even just understand the content is somehow the same as wanting to look at fully fleshed out Child abuse. It's not that I want to see Child Abuse. I want the ability to describe a horrific situation as I see fit. ANY horrific situation. If I as GM feel the need the censor that, I will. But more likely if I have a group that I know won't like those kinds of themes I will ask individuals not to participate or simply not run the game. Instead the author of this book makes that decision for us. Lecturing and demeaning the GM and players for even wanting another option. That makes me angry. I'm an adult and so is my group. We can all collectively decide if something causes "real harm" for ourselves. Is this idea of personal responsibility really that foreign a concept to certain people in this thread?  That it was child abuse doesn't matter to me. I would've have been just as angry, disgusted and annoyed if it was any other kind of horrific thing. Hell, if the campaign wasn't even horror I'd still be upset because the author made a meta decision on how I should run my campaign and how my players should feel about it. The book tells you to tell players to roll on a table that then tells the player what they feel about a subject that I can not describe or visualize in any way for them. Instead of giving an answer to the question "what is that?" It is taking their agency away for the sake of an author who wants to make something edgy and controversial but doesn't want to get in trouble for making something controversial.  Because as written this campaign is simply not playable without serious modifications. And when I have to seriously modify a pre-made campaign just to make it playable why don't I just run my own game?

Just as a personal note, I find "being vague" about horror to be the height of pretentious bollocks. Cut from the same cloth as Airport pulp novelists like Stephen King and Dan Brown. I agree with Sandy Petersen that Stephen King is overwrought and cumbersome.  I think being "vague" about horror just means you can't write a scary thing and have to cop out.  I can only see being vague working in very specific instances of cosmic horror where you are looking at something so alien it defies explanation. But even then, the horror does things. It moves the plot forward and it makes your audience feel scared. I can not see how not describing plot critical details and exposition even when the players ask directly for it is a good idea. I've no idea why people are defending that.

Quote from: BadApple on January 25, 2024, 08:57:36 AMIs the guy suffering from his own repulsive intrusive thoughts and writing them into an adventure as a way of indulging?

That is possible, but it's also fundamentally unfalsifiable, so I suggest it's an unproductive avenue of discussion.

I don't buy a scenario to get a finger-wagging lecture from the author about how I am a bad person if I run my game in a way they don't approve of.  Just give me the scenario and spare me the moralizing.  Who the hell is this guy to be lecturing me anyway?   

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on January 25, 2024, 04:03:38 PM

Quote from: BadApple on January 25, 2024, 08:57:36 AMIs the guy suffering from his own repulsive intrusive thoughts and writing them into an adventure as a way of indulging?

That is possible, but it's also fundamentally unfalsifiable, so I suggest it's an unproductive avenue of discussion.

It was intended as a rhetorical question; I seriously doubt there's any answer forthcoming.

Quote from: yosemitemike on January 25, 2024, 05:48:18 PM
I don't buy a scenario to get a finger-wagging lecture from the author about how I am a bad person if I run my game in a way they don't approve of.  Just give me the scenario and spare me the moralizing.  Who the hell is this guy to be lecturing me anyway?   

8) They (I have sublimated beyond assuming their gender) are The Nanny-Harpies. Their Committee of Virtue Everlasting Nyah-nyah-nanny-booboo (CoVEN) is protecting gamingdom from the contagion of badwrongthink and the badwrongfun -- for your own good!  >:(
/dramatic reveal orchestra hits
Dunt-dunnn-duuuuuh!

/off in the distance you hear their smug rejoinder to their handiwork,
"You're welcome!"

Quote from: Opaopajr on January 26, 2024, 06:04:54 AM

Quote from: yosemitemike on January 25, 2024, 05:48:18 PM
I don't buy a scenario to get a finger-wagging lecture from the author about how I am a bad person if I run my game in a way they don't approve of.  Just give me the scenario and spare me the moralizing.  Who the hell is this guy to be lecturing me anyway?   

8) They (I have sublimated beyond assuming their gender) are The Nanny-Harpies. Their Committee of Virtue Everlasting Nyah-nyah-nanny-booboo (CoVEN) is protecting gamingdom from the contagion of badwrongthink and the badwrongfun -- for your own good!  >:(
/dramatic reveal orchestra hits
Dunt-dunnn-duuuuuh!

/off in the distance you hear their smug rejoinder to their handiwork,
"You're welcome!"

Greetings!

"The Nanny-Harpies!" *Laughing*

Ahh, yes. So true!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

As someone who's read it through and genuinely want to run it, the Cat folder is really not that bad, and is a fun way to get people on board for the mission.
I love Caleb's games, but the full page complaints about Trump at the end (It was two pages in the draft version and at the beginning) even though he wrote and ran the game in 2005 before Trump was even elected is a bit much.
Then there's the crazy cop guy who is a hardcore MAGA conspiracy nut and everyone evil is pretty right wing.
They drop the LatinX thing near the end of the book to describe a doctor.
And what I think people forget is Dennis Detwiller was probably the one to add all this in, considering he does the art and has final edit control.

It's still good and creepy, and having the children you save become the game's villains 10 years later is very unique for an RPG.

Quote from: epople on February 09, 2024, 02:15:25 AMIt's still good and creepy, and having the children you save become the game's villains 10 years later is very unique for an RPG.

WTF would you post this?

What?

Quote from: King Tyranno on January 23, 2024, 06:15:16 AM
Speaking of Impossible Landscapes, as I said I've run a full campaign of it and I'm going to make a thread with some tips and tricks for GMs to run it in cool ways. You bought up a very common complaint about it being railroaded. And I have an interesting way to think about that. I want more people to run it and not be put off or intimidated by it. So stay tuned.

I passed on God's Teeth, but Impossible Landscapes - you have my attention. Do that shit up.

Quote from: epople on February 09, 2024, 02:15:25 AM
As someone who's read it through and genuinely want to run it, the Cat folder is really not that bad, and is a fun way to get people on board for the mission.
I love Caleb's games, but the full page complaints about Trump at the end (It was two pages in the draft version and at the beginning) even though he wrote and ran the game in 2005 before Trump was even elected is a bit much.
Then there's the crazy cop guy who is a hardcore MAGA conspiracy nut and everyone evil is pretty right wing.
They drop the LatinX thing near the end of the book to describe a doctor.
And what I think people forget is Dennis Detwiller was probably the one to add all this in, considering he does the art and has final edit control.

It's still good and creepy, and having the children you save become the game's villains 10 years later is very unique for an RPG.

I promised myself I wouldn't argue anymore but I have to say, you are huffing copium like Tariq Nasheed at a Buck Breaking convention. I was able to get a draft of God's Teeth from a dodgy Telegram and sure enough, the lectures about the Cat Folder are right there. They weren't added in. That was always the bizarre intent of the author who wanted to have his cake and eat it. If you want to like it that's your business but you're having to construct a narrative that isn't real in order to do that. Think about that.

Quote from: Grognard GM on February 09, 2024, 11:06:55 AM

Quote from: epople on February 09, 2024, 02:15:25 AMIt's still good and creepy, and having the children you save become the game's villains 10 years later is very unique for an RPG.

WTF would you post this?

My dude, why would anyone write this scenario in the first place?

To be fair though abuse victims often become abusers themselves. The question is the level of nuance the issue will be treated with.