This is why we can't have nice things.
I've been involved with this TARGA thing since the summer, and two things I've been pushing in our conference calls are:
A traditional gaming site which is completely neutral, just giving factual info about games, current publishers and releases, linking to reviews, and so on. A central place for information and a handy link to send newcomers and the curious, but no message boards. If I could do it myself, I would have already, but my site here is the extent of my web skills. The message board bit is important to keep controversy off the "basic info" page. Just the facts, no dirt slinging.
Also, a traditional/simulacra version of IPR. A store that's by us and about us, for people interested in us. I think IPR's existence was a real boon to its core scene, and I figured a nice version for us would do the same. If I lived in the States I would have already started this. (probably best that I don't live in the US and didn't start it. :P)
Dan Proctor of Labyrinth Lord/Mutant Future fame stopped waiting for others to do something and stopped making excuses and started to do something along these lines. He details his intentions in this blog post, and the storefront he's set up is here. Not the perfect solution (we need something real, not Lulu), but it is action, and it is a start.
But then certain other people decided to shit all over it. The idea was publicized here by Matt Finch of Swords and Wizardry fame. I saw the thread before I left for my game today (well, yesterday now) and it had 7 posts. I come back from my game, and it's three pages long. I knew what had happened before even looking.
This shit. Obviously some sort of "sock puppet" from a guy too chickenshit to put his real name on his comments (all of that username's posts are in that one thread), and doing his damndest to make sure that any suggestion of anything resembling unity goes down in flames and it derailed the entire subject. I've ranted about this before, but...
... the Old School Renaissance goes nowhere if censors and limiters of imagination are allowed any say in the proceedings at all. A scene built on nostalgia will quickly return from whence it came. We can't let ourselves be limited to what's already been released (25+ years ago!) or there's no point to it all. This scene moves forward on the strength of ideas and people who are willing to take bold risks and reach for the sky while keeping their feet firmly in the traditional. Some of the results will be bad, Some of the results will be ugly. But that's the beauty and the risk of creativity.
Can't wait to see what the reaction to the Carcosa (and Duvan'Ku) material in the next Fight On! is going to look like. Hell, I know what I submitted as far as Duvan'Ku and I've seen Mr. McKinney's Carcosa submission, and I wonder how edited they will be...
I've been involved with this TARGA thing since the summer, and two things I've been pushing in our conference calls are:
A traditional gaming site which is completely neutral, just giving factual info about games, current publishers and releases, linking to reviews, and so on. A central place for information and a handy link to send newcomers and the curious, but no message boards. If I could do it myself, I would have already, but my site here is the extent of my web skills. The message board bit is important to keep controversy off the "basic info" page. Just the facts, no dirt slinging.
Also, a traditional/simulacra version of IPR. A store that's by us and about us, for people interested in us. I think IPR's existence was a real boon to its core scene, and I figured a nice version for us would do the same. If I lived in the States I would have already started this. (probably best that I don't live in the US and didn't start it. :P)
Dan Proctor of Labyrinth Lord/Mutant Future fame stopped waiting for others to do something and stopped making excuses and started to do something along these lines. He details his intentions in this blog post, and the storefront he's set up is here. Not the perfect solution (we need something real, not Lulu), but it is action, and it is a start.
But then certain other people decided to shit all over it. The idea was publicized here by Matt Finch of Swords and Wizardry fame. I saw the thread before I left for my game today (well, yesterday now) and it had 7 posts. I come back from my game, and it's three pages long. I knew what had happened before even looking.
This shit. Obviously some sort of "sock puppet" from a guy too chickenshit to put his real name on his comments (all of that username's posts are in that one thread), and doing his damndest to make sure that any suggestion of anything resembling unity goes down in flames and it derailed the entire subject. I've ranted about this before, but...
... the Old School Renaissance goes nowhere if censors and limiters of imagination are allowed any say in the proceedings at all. A scene built on nostalgia will quickly return from whence it came. We can't let ourselves be limited to what's already been released (25+ years ago!) or there's no point to it all. This scene moves forward on the strength of ideas and people who are willing to take bold risks and reach for the sky while keeping their feet firmly in the traditional. Some of the results will be bad, Some of the results will be ugly. But that's the beauty and the risk of creativity.
Can't wait to see what the reaction to the Carcosa (and Duvan'Ku) material in the next Fight On! is going to look like. Hell, I know what I submitted as far as Duvan'Ku and I've seen Mr. McKinney's Carcosa submission, and I wonder how edited they will be...
Probably a good idea to label 'mature' content as such. I know when I run a PBEM I give it a movie-style age rating (eg U, PG, R) in line with its expected content, eg the Carcosa books could be R-rated. That way people have some idea what they're getting.
ReplyDeleteI started reading that thread this morning and quickly got that sick "here we go again" feeling in my stomach. I've found that particular forum a pretty negative place to be the last year or so and this thread convinced me to stop wasting my time there. There are plenty of more important things in life to get angry about, let the nay-sayers stew in their own little pot.
ReplyDelete@S'mon - the very fact that your comment is about Carcosa shows you just missed the point of James' post here. Let's hope you didn't miss the point of Dan Proctors idea, because it's a good one.
Is Carcosa's magic system all those people think about, or what?
ReplyDeleteGeez, add an 'Adults Only' section to the site, along with 'rules,' 'modules,' and so on, and get a volunteer or two to place content wherever it seems appropriate. Same as places like Doomworld (link is text only, by the way) have been doing for well over a decade now.
Also, seriously, when are these people going to realise that the moralists don't give even the slightest of shits about P&P games anymore, and would much rather concern themselves with so called rape simulators like Mass Effect? Or the fact that even if they did, the loonies would pretty much spend all their time chasing after such obviously-aimed-at-children stuff like the Book of Erotic Fantasy?
Meh. Ignore the douche and his self-righteous schtick. I see no reason for RPGs to be bound by some Comics Code Authority-like BS. As long as we continue to give people a head's-up about possibly offensive content, who's really getting hurt? Aside from the fictional characters, I mean.
ReplyDelete@S'mon - the very fact that your comment is about Carcosa shows you just missed the point of James' post here. Let's hope you didn't miss the point of Dan Proctors idea, because it's a good one.
ReplyDeleteI think you are misreading S'mon's post, it is not about Carcosa, it is about whether things should be rated in degrees of potential offensiveness. Whilst I am pretty sure James is happy for folks to be exposed to anything that they may come across, irrespective of age or content, not everyone shares that perspective and would prefer some sort of guidance as to what they are looking at.
For my part, when I answered Matthew's question "does anybody see any downside with this?" I had in mind principally poorly written "turn a quick buck" material, rather than morality issues. I would not suggest (nor did I) that Daniel should "not do it" because there is a downside; very few things lack drawbacks.
Whilst I can appreciate choosing not to frequent Knights & Knaves on the basis that there is too much negativity, for that is surely subjective and everyone should decide for themselves what it constitutes, but I think the thread in question is a poor reason, given that most of the negativity came from one newly joined poster with an axe to grind.
>>Probably a good idea to label 'mature' content as such. I know when I run a PBEM I give it a movie-style age rating (eg U, PG, R) in line with its expected content, eg the Carcosa books could be R-rated. That way people have some idea what they're getting.
ReplyDeleteI am all in favor of the type and tone of content being disclosed up front, but I do believe that should be up to the author to provide that description and I would avoid requiring simplistic codes/ratings or "explicit content" labels.
(and I edited the post date - I started writing it about 11:45pm Sunday night, finished 12:15am Monday morning... but Blogger lists posts at the time writing started, which is why some of the listings on the blog rolls seem to appear out of nowhere yet say "2 hours ago" or whatever. So I try to put in the current time before hitting the final post button. But when I changed "1/18/2009 11:45PM" I only changed the time, so it was saying "1/18/2009 12:15PM" which wasn't right at all. :P Just thought I'd put that explanation in, because before the edit it looked like I was commenting on something that didn't get posted for two hours after this blog went up... and to let you know that these blog timestamps are complete able to be manipulated so never truly rely on them.)
I was blind-sided by the hysterics surrounding CARCOSA's release in Oct. 2008, and consequently I was somewhat tongue-tied.
ReplyDeleteSince then, however, I have conclusively shown that (for example) some of REH's Conan stories make CARCOSA's "controversial" content look sissyish. M. A. R. Barker's Tekumel makes Carcosa look like a rather nice vacation spot. (Read my two blog posts of Nov. 14, 2008 for details.)
Any anti-Carcosa verbiage must in the same breath condemn REH's Conan, M. A. R. Barker's Tekumel, and others. Thus, anti-Carcosa verbiage must either operate under a double standard, or reveal ignorance (or disdain) of some of the sword & sorcery literature and some of the old-school RPG books that served as inspirations for Carcosa.
Not to mention that D&D campaigns on Carcosa are merely fantasy scenarios involving nonexistent Green, Purple, and Dolm Men on an imaginary planet 151 light years away.
My prediction is that when the boardgamegeek.com guys get around to opening rpggeek.com, eventually everyone will be there. They may be there AND somewhere else, but they will all be there.
ReplyDeleteI must say that having an Old School equivalent to IPR is a great idea (and a podcast too, please). However, an Adults only "ghetto" leaves me cold. I think as Jim says the author should provide the info on a products maturity in the product description. I also think links to real reviews would help, not just them number of stars a user can click. It then behooves a buyer to become an informed consumer and do some research on the reviewers themselves, I do this all the time with product reviews on Amazon.
ReplyDeleteAnd one final thing, negative reviews are not in and of themselves bad things, they raise awareness. Doing nothing, on the other-hand, fearing failure and or rejection by those "noisy negativists" is failure before before even starting.
I would rather see us try to do something, rather than quibble about possible issues. If an issue pops up, then we can adjust and move forward.
ReplyDeleteWith that said, I like the idea of the author giving a heads up if there is questionable content. I think we are capable of policing ourselves on this issue. I am going to go out on a limb, and say that most of us old school grognards are reasonable folks, so I am not expecting significant issues.
For sake of your own sanity, stay out of threads like that.
ReplyDeleteI hope Mr. Goblinoid goes ahead with his idea and just DOES IT. It was probably a mistake to try to announce it as a good thing because whenever you announce to people that you just shit out a golden egg, there will always be someone bitching that the egg is too small, or it smells bad, or they don't want to touch anything that came out of your butt. Fuck them. People can go to his Lulu shop and vote with their mouseclicks... or they can sit at home and worry about Carcosa.
If it will make them feel better, put a sticker on the cover of every single game product that says, "No children were raped in the production of this product!"
>>or they don't want to touch anything that came out of your butt.
ReplyDeleteWhat a shitty attitude to have. ;)
But the whole thing just boggles my mind, and I can't find any letter combinations that form a word... Carcosa was never available on Lulu, there hasn't been discussion (that I know of) about it being available on Lulu, so this unified Lulu storefront is mentioned and what does someone bring up? Carcosa.
You'd think somebody's relative was sacrificed to Cthulhu as a child or something.
But it's too bad Carcosa didn't get any bad mainstream publicity. Can you imagine Bill O'Reilly ranting against it and one of those talking heads shows pulling McKinney, Mike Mearls, and Gail Gygax on the air to discuss the repercussions of occult necropedophilia in fiction on today's youth? Aren't you dying to know what Jack Chick would do under the influence of Carcosa? Police officers visiting grade schools to warn them against the dangers of sacrificing their classmates to The Great Old Goopy Dude.
I should buy a few spare copies and send them, with outraged letters, to a few of these Concerned Nosy People organizations.
... or I can realize that if anime survived Urotsukidoji, then D&D can survive something that's not even about what people who haven't read it say it is.
They should press forward. I don't mind an advisory to content, but I hope they go through with it all. I'm hoping this and a unified Old-School booth at Gen Con would be two great additions to getting more gamers into the old-school fold.
ReplyDelete"I should buy a few spare copies [of CARCOSA] and send them, with outraged letters, to a few of these Concerned Nosy People organizations."
ReplyDeleteThat might not be a bad idea. LOL!
Well, I guess we all need to cower in the dark corners of our locked bathrooms and wring our hands in worry about the impending doom that one game supplement might do to the whole Old School Renaissance, and what might ensue if many others might create other such products that might see the light of day and that might be submitted and that might cause over-sensitive people to maybe squirm which might cause who knows what?!?
ReplyDeleteWe'd best just stare at our shoes. Yeah. Good job, fucksticks.
If this 'renaissance' is going to move forward or survive or do..well...anything, people need to stop sitting around and worrying or wondering and just do.
But you're not. I'll bet you won't. You won't do anything. You'll all just talk.
You're gonna shit and fall back in it, that's what you're going to do.
-Eric
I heard that each copy of Carcosa gives cancer to all puppies within a five mile radius, and that pregnant women who so much a look at a copy give birth to hideously malformed children. Some say that if you say Carcosa backwards, a nun will spontaneously combust.
ReplyDeleteThis kind of stuff sucks the fun right out of what I'm doing. I got into this as a hobby.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what is worse, the self-righteous people who do even more damage in the way they approach making their arguments, or the people who seriously discuss some kind of "old-school seal of approval" that the "Grognard Council" would issue to the truly worthy.
>>I'm not sure what is worse, the self-righteous people who do even more damage in the way they approach making their arguments
ReplyDeleteOuch. :)
>>or the people who seriously discuss some kind of "old-school seal of approval" that the "Grognard Council" would issue to the truly worthy.
... I suspect such a thing, with the kind of people that would be accepted as a "Grognard Council," would have stripped Gary Gygax of his accreditation somewhere between 1983 and 1985. :P
David:
ReplyDelete"@S'mon - the very fact that your comment is about Carcosa shows you just missed the point of James' post here..."
No, I think I got his point OK.
Matthew:
ReplyDelete"I think you are misreading S'mon's post, it is not about Carcosa, it is about whether things should be rated in degrees of potential offensiveness. Whilst I am pretty sure James is happy for folks to be exposed to anything that they may come across, irrespective of age or content, not everyone shares that perspective and would prefer some sort of guidance as to what they are looking at."
Yeah, that's all I was saying.
Hey guys, as an outsider but an interested audience member and one who enjoys and has participated in some old-school goodness as part of my greater gaming toolbox, let me just say that the overall idea of unifying somewhat and putting a united front (and portal) to the public is an excellent idea. I don't think the few spastic haters that pop up from time to time is a reflection of your specific sub-culture, but just endemic to any sub-culture these days.
ReplyDeleteSo take a step away, ignore idiots like that Grognard guy and just keep making positive advances like you are. The reality of the matter is that you are putting out a range of kickass gaming material, surrounded and supported by some interesting thought and philosophy on gaming. Both the product and the philosophies behind it are only contributing to the hobby as a whole and non-old school gamers are starting to sit up and take notice.
More power to you and keep up the good work!
So take a step away, ignore idiots like that Grognard guy and just keep making positive advances like you are. The reality of the matter is that you are putting out a range of kickass gaming material, surrounded and supported by some interesting thought and philosophy on gaming. Both the product and the philosophies behind it are only contributing to the hobby as a whole and non-old school gamers are starting to sit up and take notice.
ReplyDeleteThat's probably one of the most refreshing things I've seen said in a while. Thanks. :-)