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That was a great post Etherwind. Thanks for taking the time to put your thoughts into words. Speaking as a woman that has been in groups and communities that have had those exact attitudes it can be really, really draining. Even when it manifests in little ways - like being pigeonholed into playing a certain kind of character (always the healer or the face!) - it can be really frustrating. You do find a lot of examples of that stuff in nWoD sadly. Like the undead menses, which frankly strikes me as a perverse way of invoking the "eww, periods!" response from a presumed group of guys. The Abyssal sex orgy palace is another, or the Underworld sex orgy palace (seriously why are there two). Or count up the casual mentions of rape or vagina-related body horror poo poo that boils down to "vaginas/girls sure are gross!" On the other hand I feel like nWoD and tabletopping in general are in a unique position to explore those kinds of social issues if handled properly. There are a few places where this is handled in supplements, but it'd be difficult to do in your average group not only because there's a lack of understanding and acceptance of the underlying premises but also because the material itself isn't currently presenting itself in a way that makes it conducive to that kind of setting. You have a few rare gems, like that Victorian woman-era Mage Legacy I brought up the other day, but it's outnumbered by the dumb poo poo. I don't think gamers as a whole are there yet really, but the only way they will get there is by changing the little aggregate factors that play into the idea of harassment and shaming and gaming just not being a place where women belong. Maybe the new nWoD stuff coming out will surprise me, though. It's my favorite roleplaying game and setting by far, so I'm hoping it will.
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Oct 23, 2012 08:56
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I've always taken (and played/run) "vampires don't grow emotionally" as a social rather than a metaphysical statement. It's not so much that dying and the Beast immediately and magically arrests your development as an emotional being, it's that the facts of vampiric life (immortality, inhumanity, and doing predatory violence to survive) have led vampire society and culture to develop in such a way that encourages arrested development. This isn't the way it's meant to be read, I don't think, but the alternative feels really limiting, like you said.
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Oct 23, 2012 08:57
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Error, just to check - with your mage armour rules, did you mean that the armour absorbs all damage until the shield breaks?
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Oct 23, 2012 09:54
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Waaaah the Christians are out to get me
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Well, the sexmurder thing is tricky. Vampire fiction generally features sexy vampires who kill people. As an erotic symbol, vampires are popular because they represent a dangerous form of sexuality. They can be entertaining in that context, which has certain limits and conditions attached. The reader can put down the book or stop the movie. The characters cannot be mistaken to represent the specific individual audience member. The transaction by which one buys a book or sees a movie involves audience consent -- enthusiastic consent, because money and/or effort is required. You do not need to deal with other human beings to have the experience. And within this context, vampire fiction is pretty popular among women. Vampire erotica is popular among women. Sadomasochistic erotica is even popular, and we live in a world where, as we speak, a dodgily-written sadomasochistic erotica series inspired by vampire fiction is incredibly popular among women. I won't speak for women who enjoy these things (and lots of them do) buy I will hazard a guess that film and books set things up so that people come to it willingly, and enjoy a number of cues to separate it from any sense of real danger. Roleplaying games exist in a different context -- in multiple different contexts, in fact. Players feel social pressure to carry on through difficult things because it's social. The player/character divide is inescapably ambiguous in roleplaying games, no matter how much we impose a customary divide, so you can't be sure how much someone else is talking to you, not your character. The improvisational nature of play means that you cannot be entirely sure of what you signed on for, and you must always deal with other human beings. This doesn't make it impossible to deal with the same themes, but it does mean that you can't approach it with the same attitude as film or literature. You can pre-censor play to prevent this stuff from ever coming up (which reduces the amount of freedom you have to do stuff), you can build in a custom to stop play when it blunders into upsetting territory (creating another locus for power and interpersonal conflict) or you can treat it as an ongoing, group development issue, where it gets handled by building trust and player debriefings (which takes time), or you can systematize in such a way as to divorce it from the interpersonal experience (which removes emotional investment). So the question becomes one where we ask what writers and developers are responsible for, exactly. I don't think we are responsible for upholding the reputation of the community by censoring certain topics, though we are responsible for upholding certain basic ethical stances. In plain terms, that means it's not reasonable to take menstruation off the table as something to write about, but it is reasonable to eradicate some kind of message that menstruation is a sign of female inferiority. This gets tricky when it comes to things that might be implied or reasonably inferred by an audience reading in good faith, and maybe things that have a tremendous historico-cultural weight that maybe we ought to ease up on, no matter how well-constructed the premise (like dark skinned dark elves). When you buy into contemporary vampire tropes, dangerous sexuality is part of that package, with side helpings of body horror, amoral wish fulfilment and supernatural symbolism. Straightforward, nonconsensual sexual violence is actually pretty uncommon -- it was more part of Vampire: The Masquerade, and was given a very specific treatment in The Guide to the Sabbat that is well worth reading. There is a point, though, where a gamer should realize that something about vampires is going to juxtapose sex and violence, because that's the tradition. On the other hand, we have to do something about people for whom this rationalizes general bad behaviour. For decades, it has been the custom in writing RPG material to assume that you'll be primarily playing with fairly close friends in a private, face to face venue that would be so small that declaring some kind of moral stance to defend people from hosed up power relations would be seen as intrusive, prudish and censorious. But this is less true than it ever was, and given the anecdotes, it was a mistake to lay off in the first place. So our responsibility seems to be to provide a healthy context for play with these elements, practical strategies for dealing with them, and to clearly spell out the power to withdraw consent to explore them. And in fact, we have often done this. The worst perpetrators are, unfortunately, folks who are not going to read this kind of stuff unless it is organized in a very specific way -- as virtual rules. That may be a solution. I personally don't write a lot of sexually-charged material. My personal preference is to explore metaphysical horror, the fear of death, and the political dimensions of horror and dark fantasy. But I have thought about this, because even those themes can lead to some unpleasant places. At my own table, I have usually worked with these things in the context of group development. We affirm good will and engage in plenty of pre- and post-session briefing and friendship affirmation. I have often wished for a project that would let me outline this stuff. But this serves a specific type of play. The other strategies I've talked about may work for you, but when I say that, I am not absolving writers like myself of responsibility. We need to do more work without damaging the vital, good experiences that are possible. But it's complicated, and an overly-cautious approach would probably leave us all with something worse.
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Oct 23, 2012 11:08
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And then there's knowing with 100% certainty that Stephenie Meyer won't follow you out to your car or leave you creepy voice mail.
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Oct 23, 2012 12:44
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Etherwind posted:If that was the reaction (I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt and assume not), they'd be missing the point entirely.  This is going in the OP. Good show. Quantum Mechanic posted:Error, just to check - with your mage armour rules, did you mean that the armour absorbs all damage until the shield breaks? [Out of Combat] your shield eats one attack, no matter how strong, completely and then fails. (Mana is powerful poo poo) [In Combat:] Each arcana dot eats a success of damage (like regular armor does) each turn. if you have a 5 dot shield, and I roll 7 successes, you only take 2. this works every turn until the shield fails. this is why I call it an airbag, you're still going to get hurt, but you won't instantly die.
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Oct 23, 2012 17:42
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MalcolmSheppard posted:Well, the sexmurder thing is tricky. Those are an awful lot of words, with a whole bunch of qualifiers, to justify the use of creepy and misogynistic language in RPGs. What's interesting is that you tacitly admit there's an association between poo poo like naming the playtest for a game line "sexmurder" and including material on undead menses. What's annoying is that you conflate the call to cut out spurious, unnecessary poo poo (like naming the platest for a game line "sexmurder") with a call to censor content: no such call has been made. I wrote a short outline of why, as an example, the Undead Menses Merit is fundamentally flawed. Nowhere in the outline did I say "This subject should not be allowed to be written about," though I offered several strong reasons why it may not be in the best interests of a writer to attempt it (primarily due to the breadth of audience appeal and the high likelihood of getting it wrong). Nor, to my knowledge, has anyone outright said "Ban this sick filth." It is not right to equate flippant poo poo like titling something for public release "sexmurder" with authorial freedom to tackle complex subjects in writing. I'd go so far as to say it's outright disingenuous and undermining to the discourse to do so. If you are genuinely incapable of distinguishing the difference - incapable of separating complaints about immature treatment of mature subjects from complaints about there being mature subjects - then, yeah, you've got problems. Etherwind fucked around with this message at 17:48 on Oct 23, 2012 |
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Oct 23, 2012 17:45
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Error 404 posted:Sorry. I'll clarify. Oh. Then I don't unequivocally support your mage armor house rules. I literally thought they were "Mage armor works exactly like it does in the corebook, with one proviso: the second the armor dots are applied (by reducing the dicepool of an incoming attack, or reducing the automatic damage of an unrolled environmental hazard like a burning building, or by reducing the total rolled damage of an incoming attack because you're using the God Machine combat rules), the armor spell ends, and must be recast." Basically, I wouldn't want to actually have to track the duration of shields cast in combat, or indeed have a good reason to spend turns recasting shields in combat, which I would if they could still last through multiple turns and therefore multiple attacks. Maybe it'd be okay if Mage Armor lasted at most one turn rather than one attack, so you spending a turn recasting it on yourself is the magical equivalent of taking a Dodge action...
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Oct 23, 2012 18:01
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No one says you can't write about menses or rape or whatever, they're saying you shouldn't be a ponce about it. Rule of thumb: if I can clearly tell the gender of the author and/or the gender of their intended audience, that is a problem. The undead menses thing? That is a dude talking to other dudes. It alienates other readers by reminding them, subtly or not, that this hobby isn't made for them. And frankly dude, there is a wealth of untapped material about women that isn't about their availability for sex, childbirth, or how gross vaginas are. Use it.
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Oct 23, 2012 18:08
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Ferrinus posted:Oh. Then I don't unequivocally support your mage armor house rules. quote:I literally thought they were "Mage armor works exactly like it does in the corebook, with one proviso: the second the armor dots are applied (by reducing the dicepool of an incoming attack, or reducing the automatic damage of an unrolled environmental hazard like a burning building, or by reducing the total rolled damage of an incoming attack because you're using the God Machine combat rules), the armor spell ends, and must be recast." This is pretty much exactly what my Out of Combat shields do, no need for a roll, for the cost of one mana. quote:Basically, I wouldn't want to actually have to track the duration of shields cast in combat, or indeed have a good reason to spend turns recasting shields in combat, which I would if they could still last through multiple turns and therefore multiple attacks. Maybe it'd be okay if Mage Armor lasted at most one turn rather than one attack, so you spending a turn recasting it on yourself is the magical equivalent of taking a Dodge action... I wanted shields in combat to be something players have to worry about/track, I just wanted to make it less complicated to use. I'm probably not explaining it very well, but it really does work out well in play.
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Oct 23, 2012 18:17
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Error 404 posted:This is pretty much exactly what my Out of Combat shields do, no need for a roll, for the cost of one mana. It seems like out of combat shields being absolutely, perfectly effective while in-combat shields are only normally effective would create weird situations in which a mage's enemies would not only know not to put too much faith in a surprise attack, but deliberately avoid putting any effort or resources into a surprise attack because they know that effort and those resources will be totally cancelled out. Why doesn't mage armor do the same thing out of combat as it does in combat? quote:I wanted shields in combat to be something players have to worry about/track, I just wanted to make it less complicated to use. I'm probably not explaining it very well, but it really does work out well in play. It's definitely an improvement over the core regardless. I just strongly prefer "Once" or "Until the end of your next turn" to "Until X turns have passed" nowadays. (And anyway, even Transitory duration factors can end up extending a shield to way beyond the end of a combat - what kind of fight lasts more than eight turns?) Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 18:31 on Oct 23, 2012 |
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Oct 23, 2012 18:29
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Etherwind posted:If you are genuinely incapable of distinguishing the difference - incapable of separating complaints about immature treatment of mature subjects from complaints about there being mature subjects - then, yeah, you've got problems. I didn't take MS's post to mean that. It didn't seem like "Can't you handle it?!?" to me. I'll let him speak for himself, but it sounded more along the lines of this: The social context in which you play a RPG matters greatly to what kind of content is appropriate and how that content is treated, and RPGs are generally completely silent on this, or, if they're not, give very bad advice about it. So what is right for you in your club situation is going to be different from someone working up a GenCon demo, is going to be different from someone working on an "introduce a new person to roleplaying" scenario, is going to be different from an "introduce a lifelong D&D player to Vampire" scenario, is going to be different from a "my close friends and I play this game alone in a room and have since 1991" scenario. When RPGs have an assumption, normally they assume something very close to the latter. And they don't even consider the idea that even among close friends there can be unhealthy dynamics that are exposed in different ways. (You have a friend who's a jerk, don't you? Sure ya do. If you don't, you're the jerk in your circle of friends.) I think your point, and it's excellent, is that publishing should take the broadest possible view of potential social contexts for a game and as a result should not take the approaches/make the assumptions White Wolf/Onyx Path has in this situation. I didn't see your post and his as being much at odds at all.
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Oct 23, 2012 18:30
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Ferrinus posted:It seems like out of combat shields being absolutely, perfectly effective while in-combat shields are only normally effective would create weird situations in which a mage's enemies would not only know not to put too much faith in a surprise attack, but deliberately avoid putting any effort or resources into a surprise attack because they know that effort and those resources will be totally cancelled out. Why doesn't mage armor do the same thing out of combat as it does in combat?
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Oct 23, 2012 18:46
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Error 404 posted:Sorry. I'll clarify.
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Oct 23, 2012 18:49
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Probably a stupid question, but I've seen it mentioned several places online that the H:TV core book contains information on how to construct antagonists. I don't know if I'm looking in the wrong place or if I'm misinterpreting what it's saying, but can anyone point me towards that point in the book. I know there are some examples of various types of antagonist you can use, but I'm looking more for something along the lines of "Don't stat an enemy up as you would a player, throw 3 points here, 2 points here and calculate their health like this..." as opposed to "here are some stats for a drug dealer, why not change him into a crocodile monster?"
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Oct 23, 2012 18:53
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Halloween Jack posted:I think I really like the effect that Plot Armor would have on the story. Hopefully it would lead to the kind of Vertigo Comics plots where mages carefully lay metaphysical traps for their opponents, so you have a good reason for the bad guys to try to trap a PC in a prison composed of his own fear rather than hiring a few crackheads to beat him to death with tire irons. They'd just hire a crackhead to shoot at him once with a cheap revolver, and then attack him in earnest, since once the combat music starts playing he stops being invincible.
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Oct 23, 2012 18:56
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Hey again. So.... Yeah. That name. As promised, I mentioned it upstairs. The book won't be called that. Absolutely will not. We don't know what it WILL be called, because it's so far off the proper employees (not mercenary wordsmiths like me) still haven't decided. Soon as they do, it'll be al over everywhere. There wasn't any intention to creep anyone out. It was a reaction to how "the Strix Chronicles" isn't the most exciting title in the world for what will be a pretty drat revolutionary book. I'd tell you what it'll do to Requiem, but they would stop paying me.
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Oct 23, 2012 19:22
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I see you did this thing where you thought you were having an argument with me, then to win that argument removed what you thought was my argument, so you could invent my contribution wholesale, respond to it and then feel like you won. Trouble is, I was on your side. Let us say that you really hosed it up and should listen to Corley, before I go on. Naturally, I didn't justify misogynistic language and you are completely wrong to import this meaning to my statements. The associations of something like sexmurder, or something like menstruation as a horror or supernatural element depend on the context to make them objectionable or not, unless (as I specifically said, in what you were too lazy to read) misogyny or something similarly objectionable is coded in the text, in sn inescapable inference. To pick up your point, which I am able to do because I read what you wrote and was not lazy, as you were, you may think that Undead Menses exists in the category of things that are textually misogynistic because they can't be reasonably read another way. I can't address that directly, because I have only read an online summary of the Merit to bone up because I wanted to, out of respect for you and your concerns, provide a thoughtful reply -- the one you didn't read or respond to. And hey, in what you didn't read I said writers and designers *were* responsible for setting that context, and we couldn't rely on just talking about genre they way books and movies often can, because we are no making books and movies, but social experience driving things that can be unpredictable and intense. I didn't say there was a call for censorship, but that in the set of available tactics to address this, it has flaws. I said that making a strong, rule-like statement about how something should be implemented ethically can be useful. I talked about my personal preferences in that regard.No did not at any point make a hackneyed statement that writers need to be free!!!! Or something, r deny accountability, because I do not believe those things. But of course, you didn't read that, or maybe didn't want to, because you wanted to let everyone know that you were a good boy fighting for justice, and the point of your screed was not to respond, but perform. Maybe. You tell me. I will actually read your response. Etherwind posted:Those are an awful lot of words, with a whole bunch of qualifiers, to justify the use of creepy and misogynistic language in RPGs. MalcolmSheppard fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Oct 23, 2012 |
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Oct 23, 2012 20:05
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JDCorley posted:I didn't take MS's post to mean that. It didn't seem like "Can't you handle it?!?" to me. I'll let him speak for himself, but it sounded more along the lines of this: There is that, and also that yes indeed, some things are either just bad, or cannot be read as anything but bad because of a locked-down set of associations.
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Oct 23, 2012 20:18
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MalcolmSheppard posted:I see you did this thing where you thought you were having an argument with me, then to win that argument removed what you thought was my argument, so you could invent my contribution wholesale, respond to it and then feel like you won. Trouble is, I was on your side. MalcolmSheppard posted:We need to do more work without damaging the vital, good experiences that are possible. But it's complicated, and an overly-cautious approach would probably leave us all with something worse. That it's sort of hard NOT to recast the entire rest of the post as vaguely-disingenuous handwaving and equivocation. Like, what's the overly-cautious approach? Not writing poorly about magical period blood? Not writing about BvD? Not writing vast swaths of the owod Sabbat stuff? Not approving That Bathroom Picture from Montreal by Night? I really, really don't think that "overly-cautious" is something that can, could, or will ever describe how Vt(R/M) approach sexuality, so closing out your (again, thought-provoking) post with it just strikes a sour note. And likely invites further responses that feel like your final word is what you meant all along, instead of all the much better, much smarter words before it.
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Oct 23, 2012 20:59
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:I'm sure Etherwind's got this, but I think part of it is when you (you in particular, in your post, not generic-plural-"you-of-an-argument") close out a thoughtful post about the creative tensions felt in trying to adhere to a line's thematics without encouraging creeps, with this: I think you read a lot into a single sentence and mentally copypasted in content that you figured, whether I meant it or, not could sure show *me* something. Yesiree. But you're barking up the wrong tree. I provided a framework earlier, when I talked about the strategies you can use to deal with this stuff in play and how none of them are ideal, and how context can affect whether something is problematic. What I mean by overcaution is to: 1) Choose one strategy and make it mandatory, coded into the rules. Some games do this and people like them, but I know that this would feel like a hindrance to groups like mine. 2) Talk *around* problematic things instead of unpacking them not to "avoid the PC police" or some other inane motive, but because when we're talking about established themes, that stuff is already there, whether or not we talk about it. It has nothing to do with what you may think of the creative people and company, and everything to do with the fact that that it just doesn't work. In any event, it doesn't have anything to do with the kind of self-indulgent, "I must be free to express myself," twaddle that you may have heard elsewhere. As you know from grogs.txt, the worst things in the world can find an audience anyway. This concern is largely internally driven. The people who write WoD stuff care about these issues. Freelancers and developers take this seriously of their own accord, and feel strongly about doing the right thing. By reading his casual social media stuff, I know Russell Bailey thinks social justice and gender issues are pretty important. I can't think of any current writer who *doesn't* care about these things for reasons that have little to do with what you might think of them. Listen kids, I understand. You want to use me as a handy way to demonstrate that you're conscientious people, but I am not fighting you here.
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Oct 23, 2012 21:20
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MalcolmSheppard posted:I provided a framework earlier, when I talked about the strategies you can use to deal with this stuff in play and how none of them are ideal, and how context can affect whether something is problematic. What I mean by overcaution is to: MalcolmSheppard posted:I think you read a lot into a single sentence and mentally copypasted in content that you figured, whether I meant it or, not could sure show *me* something. Yesiree. But you're barking up the wrong tree.
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Oct 23, 2012 21:23
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Dave Brookshaw posted:Hey again. I don't think anyone was actually worried that the book would be named that. Rather people are concerned with how easy the term "sexmurder" is being flung around and used.
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Oct 23, 2012 21:25
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Volume posted:I don't think anyone was actually worried that the book would be named that. Rather people are concerned with how easy the term "sexmurder" is being flung around and used. Short version - I don't like it either, have had plenty of conversations around the virtual transatlantic watercooler where my peers have expressed misgivings about it, and brought it up with the people who decide whether I continue to get work or not *because* I don't like it. Fortunately for all fans of overly-complicated nMage metaphysics, those people aren't assholes and I got a "yeah, sorry, we'll change it". The longer version is that I've been in some decidedly R-Rated Vampire games, well to the "few trusted friends" side of M's scale, and when I take inspiration from them for the books I consciously tone them down. Because what's suitable for a game among roleplayers who've known each other for decades isn't really suitable for a wide audience. On the other side of that, we have to - at some point - assume that neither ST nor players in our readers' games are asshats, but there is a happy medium. We can look at sexuality without enabling the worst LARPers or sanitizing what is, fundamentally, a game about people who commit aggravated assault *at best* to survive. It's a learning process, every freelancer and developer is different, we don't get handed a Company Line and fuckups happen. I wouldn't write *that* merit, either, but I know both of the guys who wrote Gangrel and know they weren't coming from a "girl biology is scary" view. I still think BvsD is horribly appropriate for the WoD in a terribly bleak way, though. Dave Brookshaw fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Oct 23, 2012 |
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Oct 23, 2012 22:34
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MalcolmSheppard posted:Listen kids, The first part of that custom title appears to be quite accurate. Is the second? Stay tuned and find out!
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Oct 23, 2012 22:52
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MalcolmSheppard posted:I see you did this thing where you thought you were having an argument with me, then to win that argument removed what you thought was my argument, so you could invent my contribution wholesale, respond to it and then feel like you won. Trouble is, I was on your side. Speaking of people whose whole point is to perform rather than respond, goddamn. No real dog in this fight, but gonna say the whole "game designer as imperious douchebag" gimmick only really works if you have the chops to back it up; say Luke Crane or John Wick.
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Oct 23, 2012 23:04
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Pumpkin_Paine posted:Speaking of people whose whole point is to perform rather than respond, goddamn. No real dog in this fight, but gonna say the whole "game designer as imperious douchebag" gimmick only really works if you have the chops to back it up; say Luke Crane or John Wick. How much politeness do you expect? I engaged this in a civil tone and took Etherwind's concerns, and his story, completely seriously. I responded respectfully. I was rewarded with him, then others, just kind of making poo poo up about my statements and motives. And yeah, when people do that, I am no longer quite as nice -- but I still laid my position out because I think the ideas are important. I think this conversation has reached its peak though, now that things have degenerated from arguing that I am a terrible person based on several paragraphs, to arguing it based on one sentence, to now, arguing it because of two words.
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Oct 23, 2012 23:24
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The problem is that Undead Menses never should have got a merit. If it was just a line in a sidebar on blood magic and ancient tradition alongside vampire eucharist, the significance of blood to different cultures, modern and ancient, I don't think it would be a problem. Maybe there's a little bit at the end hinting at evidence that vitae drawn from the throat chakra of a former Yogi is qualitatively different to the vitae of an Aboriginal Australian woman and isn't vitae weird? Include optional rules for dice bonuses on symbolically resonant vitae sources and blood magic. The problem is we got this instead: Undead Menses posted:Some Savages still bleed like this regardless of (or more appropriately, in spite of) their unliving state. The blood that flows is black, thick, a musky elixir. It does not come once a month as it does with humans, but instead flows whenever the vampire wills it: by expending a point of Vitae, she may expunge this undead menses from her body. There's people out there who are genuinely interested in the blood symbolism of vampire menses without being creeps about it, but there's so few of them that you could never justify including this in a book. The other problem is it's a really boring merit. A mild hallucinogen expressing itself as -1 to all dice pools, a +1 bonus to Cruac rituals, marking territory, and more words than you could justify on the "heady aroma" of menstrual blood. Everyone loses. The people who were interested don't get any use out of it because what reasonable person would acknowledge this merit in public and the people who weren't interested get three paragraphs of lovely mechanics and horrific fetishistic prose on the thick, musky elixir that is vampiric menstruation. It just gets worse and worse the more you look at it. The hallucinogenic effect and the -1 penalty just seem tacked on to justify feeding your menstruation to people in-game. The writer sets up all these groovy bits of symbolism in the beginning (The tides, the Moon, feminine power, anti-life) only to throw them out in favour of a +1 bonus to no Cruac ritual in particular. You feel cheated. You feel like you could have gotten something more than vampires writing on the wall in menstruation. +1 bonus, -1 penalty, take 1 aggravated damage, "free" menstrual blood. It's a depiction of feminine power that could only have been written by someone who has no idea what feminine power is, weird and unnecessarily sexual, like the expression of a guy's deep seated fear of women.
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Oct 24, 2012 00:22
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MalcolmSheppard posted:I responded respectfully. MalcolmSheppard posted:To pick up your point, which I am able to do because I read what you wrote and was not lazy, as you were, MalcolmSheppard posted:I think you read a lot into a single sentence and mentally copypasted in content that you figured, whether I meant it or, not could sure show *me* something. Yesiree. But you're barking up the wrong tree.
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Oct 24, 2012 00:33
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Bootstrap Beefstud posted:It's a depiction of feminine power that could only have been written by someone who has no idea what feminine power is, weird and unnecessarily sexual, like the expression of a guy's deep seated fear of women. Yeah this is a good way of putting it and reiterates my point: that merit very overtly reads like a man writing about periods to other men, and that's a problem. Maybe instead of being snarky to Etherwind you could address what I said?
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Oct 24, 2012 01:59
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Yawgmoth posted:Really? I'm referring to the very first thing I wrote on this topic.
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Oct 24, 2012 02:04
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You're all retards who need to take your dumb poo poo to the minority gaming thread in the gas chamber archives.
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Oct 24, 2012 03:06
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Ralp posted:You're all retards who need to take your dumb poo poo to the minority gaming thread in the gas chamber archives. 
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Oct 24, 2012 03:24
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its hilarious that Malcom affects this tweedy professorial tone to respond to valid criticism that a publishing company of the Year Of Our Lord Two Thousand And Twelve's current branding is sexmurder. its like a anthropologist intellectually justifying creepy PUA codewords as "a valid subculture worthy of study"
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Oct 24, 2012 06:17
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I think everyone here would've been happier to see Malcolm Sheppard openly repudiate the game elements being criticized rather than (or in addition to) expound at length on the difficulties of writing about tricky material in general, but he is obviously not making any attempt to intellectually justify this stuff. I mean, like, the obvious actual enemy here is visionary forums poster "Rape". He's right there. Look!
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Oct 24, 2012 06:39
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Agreed. Also, whoever bought him that new title? Shine on, you beautiful diamond.
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Oct 24, 2012 06:43
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Gerund posted:its hilarious that Malcom affects this tweedy professorial tone to respond to valid criticism that a publishing company of the Year Of Our Lord Two Thousand And Twelve's current branding is sexmurder. In what part of anything I wrote did I express an opinion on that name other than saying it was "tricky?" In what part of anything I wrote did I say that these criticisms were invalid?
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Oct 24, 2012 06:57
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I'm not saying let's not argue with the writers, but can we not buy avatars like... that, maybe?
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Oct 24, 2012 07:07
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Here's a good example of the design process. David Hill has put a blog up about the nWoD's new Social Skills system (note: not "social combat"), which is still "cooking", as it were, before it gets included in God-Machine. Game Traits don't have their final names, dice rolls haven't been properly tabled out, that sort of thing. http://www.machineageproductions.com/design-wod-socials/ EDIT: Actually, this is a good example of what M's talking about around designing systems to play fair and limit abuses where we can - One of David's goals here is to give players on the receiving end of unwanted "I seduce you" rolls an out. No one wants the nWoD to have Exalted's social combat. Dave Brookshaw fucked around with this message at 07:45 on Oct 24, 2012 |
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Oct 24, 2012 07:36
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Ferrinus posted:I think everyone here would've been happier to see Malcolm Sheppard openly repudiate the game elements being criticized rather than (or in addition to) expound at length on the difficulties of writing about tricky material in general, but he is obviously not making any attempt to intellectually justify this stuff. Dave said something about it. Dave writes Vampire stuff. I don't. I don't even own the Gangrel clanbook, so I can't address the stuff in there. You can ask Chuck Wendig or Russell Bailey, who are super-accessible people because hey, the Internet. I responded to the "sexmurder" name in an ambivalent fashion for a couple of reasons. It's strayed pretty far from its intended use, which as far as I can tell was a semi-internal name for a Vampire book that didn't have a proper name. At some point of "graduated" into branding, and here, into a descriptor of core system revisions. That isn't even accurate -- the Strix Chronicles tweaks Vampire, but core system changes are coming out with the God Machine Chronicle, being tackled by a mostly different team. Tracking how this thing wandered out, and who's responsible, is boring and I don't have all the facts, anyway. It would be idiotic to formally title a Vampire book "sexmurder," and that was never going to happen. If this was actually a name going to print, I would definitely say something -- I have gone to the wall about these issues before. So what's left? The simple fact that this thing *did* wander around and leave its original context behind. That leads to talking about, y'know, context. I did that, and specifically said creators were responsible for making some effort to set up a healthy context, especially since we can't use the tricks of film, novels and short stories. I can certainly agree that "sexmurder" wandered too far outside its intended context. Given the circumstances I'm aware of, and the fact that the people involved are not only not-terrible, but specifically conscientious when it comes to this sort of thing, I'd characterize it as a dumb accident. I'm more interested in design and organization-based ways to prevent these dumb accidents without leading to boring books or play. This is not fear of censorship, but an acknowledgement that what works fine for some, feels like nerf manacles for others. I really wanted to validate Etherwind's concerns, particularly about this sort of thing seeming to give licence to the worst elements in our community. Setting context for what you introduce is really important. Integrating practical techniques to keep play civil is important, and these things work hand in hand -- but as I said, I do noe believe there is a perfect, one size fits all solution. Etherwind said that thoughtless things in games make them less accessible inch by inch, but he also talked from the other end, about abusive people in his club. I tried to globally tackle these things and agree that these were real problems, but that obviously did not serve his purposes -- and he got angry about positions I don't hold and didn't write about, but he certainly wanted to pin on me. Anyway, this is my last word on it.
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Oct 24, 2012 07:37
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