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?   

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?   

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.