Quote from: walkerp;256101"Fear and Self-Loathing in a Lost Subculture" by RPG Pundit.  

You're such a social winner you had to flee your homeland to make friends.

Dude, you're really grasping, aren't you?
I am surrounded by friends, in Canada and here.  So many that I'm always exhausted trying to see them all when I go back to Canada for a visit.

And unlike the Swine, my friendships aren't based on a mutual ego-wanking of pretending to be hipster beatnik "artists" or pseudo-intellectuals.

RPGPundit

Quote from: James McMurray;256102Wouldn't they be the nerd-raging grognards?

No, because the nerd-raging grognard is motivated by fear of change and resentment due to dismissal of his preferences.  The catpissmen are socially underdeveloped.  They are so far down on the social totem pole in real life, that they must make up false enemies on the internet to loathe and revile and put underneath them.  Thus we see hear the constant and strangely hateful attacks against furries, anime fans and anyone who has stood near something that has the whiff of sexual deviancy.  They don't go after LARP'ers that much, probably because they can't use the same moral fervour that they can with sub-sub-cultures that have a sexual element to them.  They've learned from the christian fundamentalists who went after the hobby in the '80s that it's always a good attacking point in North America.

Ultimately, nobody gives a shit.  The issue never comes up in the real gaming world.  I just get worked up when I see judgemental garbage like this on this site.  It makes my blood boil.

Quote from: RPGPundit;256048Droog, you're so estranged from the fucking mainstream that you wouldn't recognize it if it slept with you're sister.

My good man, the world of RPGs is not the mainstream. Mainstream people do not write extensive blog posts about the Legion of Superheroes. Mainstream people make jovial, uninformed comments about 'Dungeons & Dragons'. In my experience, mainstream people are sometimes attracted by the idea of RPGs, and subject matter of said RPGs will then depend on Mr/Ms Mainstream's tastes and personality.

It's actually my business to follow the main stream of culture and be able to relate to people of all sorts. I am, in fact, able to talk to both Catpiss Man and the tender object of his hebephilic fantasies on an equal basis (the little girls are usually better company).

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;256103So, you've read 'em both, walkerp?

No, neither.  But I'll read and may end up buying Maid at some point.  I have no interest in Poison'd.  But I don't need to read them, because I'm not afraid of them.  I know that no matter what the content, there is nothing in either that will bring the slightest harm, commercial or cultural, to our hobby.  

It's those of you who are so frightened by this material that should be reading it, in order to find the offensive material, point it out to us and explain why it is dangerous.

This has not been done yet.  Because everyone who is offended is approaching it with a pre-conceived emotional reaction, one that was awaiting an excuse to come out.

By the way, Elliot, 'uninformed' and 'prudish' are by no means mutually exclusive.

Neither is 'pretentious' and 'Skarka's Law'.

Droog--true. Of course prudes tend to overreact based on partial information (or downright wrong information). But let's put that aside.

walkerp keeps nattering on about the bum rap games are getting. This is true with Maid--for the most part--there may be elements that are borderline, but somewhere between cultural differences, genre tropes, and an oversight on the part of the adaptors, the game isn't as bad as it's been made out to be. Certainly not in the form that the translators intend.

(Again, I'm taking Andy's comments at face value.)

However when it comes to Poison'd, there's no denying the nature of the game because the creator and the fans come right out and say it: it's inspired by a desire to quantify depravity, and it delivers in black & white.

This isn't a bum rap, so all walkerp's left with is cries of "Prude! Censor!"

That works--to a degree. I mean, I sure don't want Ed Meese or Michael Medved telling me what to watch. Even if they don't have the coercive power of the law, or the social power to push publishers and broadcasters around (as reportedly happened with the TV show Soap), I think people like them are clownish at best.

But that has to do with what they're attacking, not with the concept of expressing extreme distaste--that is, drawing a line somewhere at what you find reprehensible.

Otherwise it's impossible to discuss what's acceptable, and you are indeed on the slippery slope to rape video games. Why shouldn't they be translated? I'll bet there's a market.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;256015It's worth noting that the word "hentai" actually means pervert in Japanese.

It's not really worth noting. Most Japanese anime & manga terms have different (often very different) meanings in Western translation & fandom. Mecha, kawaii, otaku, yaoi, yuri, ecchi for example. Hentai wouldn't be the proper term in Japan, but outside of Japan it would be. More accurate terms like H or ero haven't caught on in the West.

This does highlight the issues and difficulty of a translated game however. There seems to have been something of a rush to release at Gencon. Translations should not be rushed if possible.

Which leads me to:

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;256021where the GM gets his jollies describing the nasty shit while the players squirm

From the Maid RPG Google Group:

Quote from: Andy K"Creepy sexy"... it's just not what the game is about, or what the author was meaning to write. Because of differences in cultural references, language, conversation and the like, we found that a lot of words, sentences, or even concepts that would be "funny sexy" in Japan, came out as simply "creepy sexy". This is the kind of stuff that would, if dropped, bring uncomfortable silence to a game, perhaps shutting it down for good. Maid isn't a fetish game to be used to get all aroused in front of other players. If you see someone playing it like that, please don't get involved, just walk the fuck away: They're doing it wrong.

Quote from: James McMurray;256102Wouldn't they be the nerd-raging grognards?

NERDRAGE

Quote from: walkerp;256101Look at all those media that have suffered from having tasteless or potentially shocking content:  music, movies, literature, comics.  How they have suffered!

I have to go with Walkerp on this one.

Our hobby would be FAR better off if we spent time talking about games we do like.   If you really want to marginalize a product, the best you can do is ignore it.

Threads like this one only result in selling more copies of Maid.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;256141However when it comes to Poison'd, there's no denying the nature of the game because the creator and the fans come right out and say it: it's inspired by a desire to quantify depravity, and it delivers in black & white.

Indeed. It is utterly reprehensible. There is nothing worthwhile to redeem it.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;256141However when it comes to Poison'd, there's no denying the nature of the game because the creator and the fans come right out and say it: it's inspired by a desire to quantify depravity, and it delivers in black & white.

You are driving me to spend my money on Poison'd just so I can quote it and prove you wrong. This is a 'just so' statement, and I don't buy it. My impression is rather different.

Go ahead and buy the game, I'm sure you can prove me trivially wrong by rigging things a certain way. Heck, I wrote upthread that I reckoned I could play a non-messed-up version of the game.

If you like you can split hairs over the nature of the game per se versus the inspiration and intention of the author, and the play reports that have appeared. I'm not especially interested in that here. The point I wish to make is that walkerp is on a slippery slope to an intellectual and moral wasteland where everything and everyone is entitled to "tolerance" and freedom from being judged--except for the "intolerant" of course.

Some idjit thinks the scene is cool where his pirate lost a fight over who'd get to rape a native girl, so he smashed her face in. That's not cool, it's messed up. So are many of the other anecdotes drawn from play of the game, which One Horse Town compiled a while back.

But somebody points that out, and all walkerp has to say is, "Prude! Censor!"

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;256153Some idjit thinks the scene is cool where his pirate lost a fight over who'd get to rape a native girl, so he smashed her face in. That's not cool, it's messed up. So are many of the other anecdotes drawn from play of the game, which One Horse Town compiled a while back.

But somebody points that out, and all walkerp has to say is, "Prude! Censor!"

This isn't the first time, either. Walkerp was spouting the same nonsense when the actual play reports of Poison'd first came out.

QuoteGo ahead and buy the game, I'm sure you can prove me trivially wrong by rigging things a certain way.

I would be willing to bet money that if I gave an unknowing person that game and one of a number of other RPGs I can think of, that Poison'd is not the one that will draw the most fire. Sorry, Elliot, but I just think you're wrong here, trivially or not. In the end, empirically, it's an entry in a table.

Now, I've seen a bloke in real life smash a door over a game of D&D. I've known people to break down in tears (and not in a good way) and go into screaming rages over other games of that type. I don't know about you, but a fictional representation of terrible violence disturbs me less than real world domestic violence.

On the other hand, I've also seen quite a few fictional atrocities in games like D&D and RQ.

However, I'm not drawing some tenuous line from that to saying that D&D and RQ are bad influences on players and the RPG industry/hobby/clubhouse.