Quote from: GrimGentFrankly, I don't think that anyone seriously expects it to compete even with Amber.

or even with Nobilis...

Sorry...couldn't resist...

Quote from: James J Skachor even with Nobilis...

Nob is fundamentally cooperative rather than competitive, unlike Amber (especially in its Throne War mode).

Quote from: chucklesPoison'd says it's Christian to rape someone's throat?  That seems hard to support.

No, what it does is deflect the real horror of violence by making it an excuse for syrupy soul-searching. As in: "Gee whiz, I sure feel deep fucking that throat. Ain't I a conflicted, twenty-first century angsty middle-class snowflake (with a dash of nineteenth-century Christianity for added weirdness)."

As somebody called it in that Holocaust RPG thread we had: emo tourism, masquerading as profundity.

You want the real thing, don't chicken out, dare go there. Read American Psycho. Read Dispatches. Check out that TV interview with the Iceman. Watch the odd documentary on atrocities. Those things are nearly unbearable. Poison'd fails not because it's brutal but because it's not brutal enough.

What was that point you were making about GTA again?

Quote from: WarthurNot to mention that, again, if you want a good STORY then by definition different characters are going to have different ultimate desires - victory for one may be a miserable second place for another.

Almost certainly, after all one of the goals expressed by the designers of these games is to force the Story down unexpected paths. It can't be unexpected if everyone is aiming for (and reaching) the same thing.

It suddenly strikes me that Poison'd may be a failure for the same reasons I felt kpfs was a fantastic success.

In kill puppies for satan, the PCs are horrible people who do horrible things for crappy little bits of power that probably won't be enough to save their asses once the consequences of those horrible thing come up. They know up front that they're going to meet a horrible end and the roast in Hell for all eternity. They're given pretty much exactly enough rope to hang themselves. Not so much Grand Theft Auto as Jackass. It's also a frickin' perfect skewering of Vampire as I remember it being played in high school. I'd love to play or run a game, except that I couldn't deal with the whole animal murder thing, and it doesn't work without it.

Poison'd sounds like it does pretty much the same thing, but replaces "pathetic animal murderer" with "cool pirate." It negates the cockroach-under-a-microscope effect and becomes naked masturbation.

A lot of moral righteousness here. I'm sort of surprised.  I really don't know anything about the game but what I've read in this thread (though I'm going to go back and find that thread now for sure) but minus syrupy soul-searching, it sounds like it could be kind of fun for a one-shot to play totally evil (like real evil, not D&D evil) pirates that rape and torture and kill.  It'd be a bit like being the vampire family in Near Dark.  

Assuming Gleichman's summary of the original thread and Poison'd's game mechanics is accurate, any moral refutations of that AP do seem to fly in the face of the System Matters ideas.  But it sounds like many of the people over there are expressing the same kind of kneejerk faux-morality that I'm hearing here.  It's a natural human reaction for us wealthy citizens of the world.  Theory doesn't come into play.

oops, my bad, I thought it was on Story-Games, not the rpg.net.  I misread the OP.  Even better!  I can't wait to see righteousness-trumping by the mods!

Quote from: ghost ratNah. Then you'd just have, "I rape the corpse / while doing a backflip / in the conservatory / with the candlestick," or whatever.

Winner!

Quote from: walkerpA lot of moral righteousness here. I'm sort of surprised.  I really don't know anything about the game but what I've read in this thread (though I'm going to go back and find that thread now for sure) but minus syrupy soul-searching, it sounds like it could be kind of fun for a one-shot to play totally evil (like real evil, not D&D evil) pirates that rape and torture and kill.  It'd be a bit like being the vampire family in Near Dark.  

My point was - do you need a whole ruleset devoted to that particular form of evil in order to simulate it? I say no.

Making a game SOLELY to be neck-raping pirates is pretty sick. If thinking that = moral righteousness, then guilty as charged.

Quote from: WerekoalaMy point was - do you need a whole ruleset devoted to that particular form of evil in order to simulate it? I say no.

Well now that's a whole nother argument.  I wasn't naming any particular names, I just saw a lot of "that's sick" comments.  Pointless moralizing, in my opinion.

QuoteBut it sounds like many of the people over there are expressing the same kind of kneejerk faux-morality that I'm hearing here. It's a natural human reaction for us wealthy citizens of the world.

Are you implying that the poorer citizens of the world would be more prone or accepting of the idea of raping someone's bloody neck stump?

Or that a morality that disapproves of raping someone's bloody neck stump, or getting off on such fantasies, is somehoe the sole domain of the rich?

Quote from: Pierce InverarityWinner!

Thanks! I was beginning to think that one had just bombed.

To begin with, Brian is correct, this is clearly a case of people wanting to have it both ways. It's been pointed out before: if you have an awful time with D&D, or you disapprove of how someone plays D&D, it's the fault of the game; if you have an awful time with Forge game X, or some AP grosses you out, it's your fault.

The star of the thread (as I skimmed it) was David R (who seems to have stopped posting here, I hope that's not permanent), when he said he'd go ahead and buy the game because he was sure his group would make something enjoyable and not-gross out of it, same as happened when he compared DitV AP reports with his experiences. This points up the weakness of Forge theory & culture in the area of what they call "social contract"; a cursory nod is given to the importance of having the right people and the right "attitude" going into a game, but then the actual discussion is all about using game mechanics to legislate social relations.

However, there's a bit of a problem with how some people (e.g., KenHR here) are identifying literary story as the goal of the "thematic play" of "narrativist games". Certainly in Forgist terms, that's wrong: it's not the story, but the moment-to-moment opportunity to make "moral statements" that they're after. On the other hand, I think one could make the case that "moral statements" really don't carry any weight outside of a narrative--that is, without the nonmechanical framework & constraints of plot, continuity, and suspension of disbelief (including coherent characterization), the "moral statement" of decapitating a cabin boy is no more than gratuitous vulgarity. This doesn't mean that Poison'd can't produce meaningful experiences which justify the horrific content: merely that it will depend on the sensibilities and social skills of the players to achieve that. Same as D&D.

Now this goes back to the recent thread on Gygax's Roleplaying Mastery and/or the Story Games thread that Kyle linked from there. It's clear to me that the core of the "original" RPG hobby aesthetic was one of viewing most or all of the mechanical rules not as a framework guiding play, but as an adjunct to two fundamental "deep rules":

1) Make Believe, or as Sett calls it, the Method of Roleplay. Meaning that "by and large, we are making this stuff up socially, not through a mechanical procedure".

2) The GM plays the world and has final say on what happens, while the players control their characters.

[I refer the reader to the account of the original Braunstein game, through Blackmoor, and into D&D.]

Under this aesthetic, the mechanical rules are basically just expressions of areas where the group does not wish to rely purely on human input/judgment. (E.g., rolling a die to see if you find a secret door, because there are limits to the ability of the GM to describe the room, limits to the ability of the player to realistically control the character's action, etc.)

Again, the Make Believe or "freeform" interaction of (1) and (2) was the original heart of hobby RPGs, and--of course--its presence means that "thematic play" is always possible...with the right group of people, right attitude, etc.

On the other hand, the ideology often expressed for Forge games is that the role of the mechanical rules is to shape social interaction, not merely act as an adjunct. Whether successful or not from a design standpoint, this is a wholly different philosophy from the original RPG concepts, and it's easy to see why it fails as a framework for critiquing "traditional" games: "the rules" in "traditional games" don't necessarily define what the game is about, and trying to treat them as such leads to a reductionist view which completely misses the point. (At best, it leads to a critique of excessively involved rules sets, which arguably exhibit hypertrophy for an element which is allegedly peripheral to the main point of the game: roleplaying.) And as far as design goes: again, the goal of "shaping social interaction" can never free itself entirely from the need for a group of players who are socially compatible with each other and with the game itself. Otherwise the natural freedom or "wiggle room" found in any RPG will allow the group to work around the rules and either mess themselves up or thwart the designer's intent.

I got over my 'upping the ante talking about sick shit until we can't stand it' phase when I was about 14. It's really funny seeing grown adults trying to pass off juvenile exhibitionism and rebellion as meaningful drama.

I'd really like to see the books on the shelves of these self-styled sophisticated storytellers. I have the feeling we'd see more Koontz than Kundera.

Okay, gang, while I think all of your "swine" talk is a bunch of bullshit, I do think I have found a prime example in that thread of what you are talking about:

Here:

Quote from: Ian Noble

Quote from:  Posted by Christopher V. BradyHmm, given Hollian's description of what the game entails (Without the lurid savagery they are so fond of, apparently) there's nothing in it that I can't do with Pirates of the Spanish Main.

Moving on then.

Happy gaming!

Except PotSM doesn't enforce anything with its rules so comparing Poison'd to it is missing the point entirely.

and

Quote from: Ian NobleThe great thing about this thread is that it's probably provoked more sales of the game in the past few days than Vincent would have seen in a year.

It's the one-two punch of intellectual snobbery and stealth marketing, all within two pages and by the same poster.  

It's all true! :eek:  

Quote from: J ArcaneAre you implying that the poorer citizens of the world would be more prone or accepting of the idea of raping someone's bloody neck stump?

Minus all the false extremes and forced extrapolations that you put in your phrase above, yes.

Quote from: J ArcaneOr that a morality that disapproves of raping someone's bloody neck stump, or getting off on such fantasies, is somehoe the sole domain of the rich?

Again, minus the word "sole" and the general tone that forces an excluded middle, yes.