I read somewhere that the Tome of Corruption's second printing has been given a little red sticker warning of "RPG 18", as in "not for minors", because apparently its so gory and disturbing.

Ignoring the fact that apparently its a mother goose tale compared to the old 80s Chaos books by Games Workshop (which were really extreme shit), is this something genuine or just a marketing ploy? Has it been done everywhere or only in certain countries?
I don't have enough info about it, but I want to know.

Personally, I think almost ANYTIME this is done its nothing but a blatant marketing ploy...

RPGPundit

Didn't DnD's Book of Vile Darkness have a warning label?
Anyway, it didn't do anything to deter me at the time. Wasn't too terribly shocking either.

Um... so yeah. Seeing as it doesn't actually stop anyone from buying it, they either caved due to pressure from concerned teachers/parents/censors (unlikely, considering no one on the outside actually gives a shit about this hobby) or they think it'll get 'em more business, especially in the 17 and under group.

Some bloke on the internet said? :melodramatic:

Is this what you're talking about? It's the only reference i recall seeing.

http://forum.blackindustries.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=8208

Again I wish I had access to Slaves to Darkness and the Lost and the Damned.  I would love to see all that old-school GW crazy in one place and time.

I wonder how useful of a marketing strategy it is, anyway. Just how many under age 18 roleplayers are there nowadays?
Can't be too many, but I could be wrong. I'm about to be 34, and have no kids of my own, so I'm out of touch with what you youngins think these days.

Yeah, the Book of Vile Darkness had a completely unnecessary warning sticker on it. I don't have access to marketing reports, but I doubt it was a very worthwhile ploy, and I seriously doubt there were a lot of game store owners out there carding people.

Quote from: mattormegI wonder how useful of a marketing strategy it is, anyway. Just how many under age 18 roleplayers are there nowadays?
Can't be too many, but I could be wrong. I'm about to be 34, and have no kids of my own, so I'm out of touch with what you youngins think these days.

Nah! You are a youngun. I'll be fifty within a month.

-clash

The original Books were far more shocking at the time because they were pretty much the only widely produced gaming books at the time  dealing with Chaos and nastiness.  By todays standards they are still great books but I don't think it's shocking anymore.  Sure some parents may find it offensive if they stumbled across it and I think thats where the worning really comes into play.  But that's an entirely different debate.

The new book does contain a lot of gore and nastiness dealing with orgiastic feats, human sacrifice and well all gross things that are Nurgle.  But hell it's fiction. I personally haven't seen anything about the 18+ rating being given to it but I can see it warranting a 'For Mature Readers Only' blurb on it.

Flipping through it I didn't see anything that would warrant 18+ here in the States (meaning nipples, mostly.)

Pretty gruesome stuff, but we let kids watch Hostel and shit over here...

Quote from: James McMurrayYeah, the Book of Vile Darkness had a completely unnecessary warning sticker on it. I don't have access to marketing reports, but I doubt it was a very worthwhile ploy, and I seriously doubt there were a lot of game store owners out there carding people.

Over here, we called it The Book of Vile Dumbness. What a waste of a book: 2 tea spoons of good stuff mixed with a oil barrel of shit.

And I really, really wanted to like that book.

I liked it. Didn't use all of it, but then again I never use everything from a WotC book. I thought it had some good ideas, loved the spells and some of the items. I definitely expected more out of it because of that label.

I know White-Wolf had their Black-Dog Gamefactory label. They used it when printing their more "objectionable matieral". I could only see one or two of the books being really considered "more objectionable" than your standard WW fare. The Black Hand and the Salubri come to mind. However, I don't think even those compared to the non-Black-Dog Tzimtze book with the "vagina-with-teeth face" on the back.
 
Black-Dog It made gamers go "huh?" and probably didn't affect sales one bit. White-Wolf pretty much stopped with the Black-Dog stuff after they realized it was stupid.

I kinda miss the Black Dog Game Factory.  HoL was genius, even my fifteen-year-old-dipshit self could tell that.  Years later I would even lie about having played HoL to earn geek cred.

Quote from: JongWKOver here, we called it The Book of Vile Dumbness. What a waste of a book: 2 tea spoons of good stuff mixed with a oil barrel of shit.

And I really, really wanted to like that book.

Really?  I find that you can make some neat NPCs with it.  Some of the spells are cool, and so are some of the PrCs (if you get rid of the relation with the demon/devil lords).

And I like those possession rules.

Obesity is now a feat.

Something about that is more sad than evil.