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.