I’m hosting a pair of scientists for a quality audit of my lab on Wednesday and Thursday (I’m a Quality Officer in a Genomics service lab). I’m more or less focused on this so I have little creative juices for this here blog.
But never fear dear reader, let’s see what excellent stuff I browsed lately that might be of interest to you.
Lawful Stupids vs Chaotic Jerks
Vanir of StupidRanger.com talks very passionately about the D&D alignment system. While I do not currently share his apprehensions on the subject, he makes excellent points on the ‘Always and Never’ that some players use to rationalize their, often stupid, actions. The discussions in the comments is very interesting. See this Trope, also very ‘à propos’.
Your inner Halfing
Have you tried Yax’ Inner Character quiz yet? Apparently I’m a Lawful Good Hafling Rogue (told you I was crazy!)
Save or Die, but read this 1st!
Have a look at Greywulf’s new RPG Ezine. It’s called Save or Die and it’s worth the read. I enjoy his House rules and I have already stolen a few. Greywulf has a great way with words, graphics and Photography. A man of many talents it seems.
Harrassed Webartist
Finally, it seems that Shamus of Twenty Sided has hit some very heavy controversy already with his new webcomics Chainmail Bikini. In the last few strips, a male character groped a female character (both played by guys). This has exploded on both the comics’ forum and on Shamus’ blog.
I’m in the ‘you guys need to take a chill pill’ camp. The act of rape is totally unacceptable period. Talking about such a strong subject and tackling it with humour is okay in my book, and legal last time I checked our respective constitutions.
Immature/objectionable sexually-themed issues have been seen in most if not all Role Playing games table. Just look at these examples:
- The Farador Skit
- Jeff Rient’s Tale from the Dorkside
- Martin’s All holes filled with Harn post (in theory this was consensual with all players)
I believe It’s a function of having mostly male players with varying degrees of issues to work out about the opposite sex (we all have them). I think that if this happens in your group to a level that causes discomfort or worse in some of the players, there’s some serious Storming issues going on that should be addressed really fast. Talk openly about it with the DM or players if it affects you, and leave the group if no compromise can be reached.
Shamus took quite a risk in tackling this so early in a very scrutinized strip. But it needed to be approached. Pity the debate became so crystallized so fast. Go Shamus!
On a lighter subject
This is such a stupid game, totally unrelated to RPGs but I somewhat keep playing it…
Oh well, I guess the juice does come out when the fruit is pressed…. See you on on Thusrday night!
Thoughts on ‘Harrassed Webartist’…
I found it amusing, in the ‘Knights of the Dinner Table’ sense of amusing, which translates as ‘Man, I’m glad I’m no longer in that kind of group’.
While I disagree that the comic is a big issue, I have some comprehension of why some people are so upset.
Several years ago, I used to be an assistant GM of sorts on an online, text-based MUSH. One of the characters that I played was a bad guy – and this MUSH really explored a lot of social issues pretty fearlessly.
To make a short story even shorter, this (GM)PC raped another PC, with the player’s consent aforehand. It was brutal, interspecies, nearly fatal, and most certainly NOT played out.
Did I mention that he was a Bad Guy?
People went ballistic.
The GM stood by his decision to let it happen, and did his best to mitigate the upset that was being slung around. There was a lot of upset.
Lesson learned: there are some topics that for some people are simply too ugly to ever have happen in an RPG setting. You just have to see where that line is for each person/group.
I agree with you Noah that some subject will always trigger strong emotion.
These behavior do exist as chattyDm and you pointed out.
But i found it surprising to see that much of a strong reaction when reading a satire…
The artist is obviously making fun of it, not condoning it. (as some as accused him of doing)
The point of a satire is to improve by making blatant ridicule of some aspect of your intended material in this case RPG.
Total agreement here, Yan. I kinda forgot to put that ‘Uh, it’s satire, folks!’ part in. 🙂
While our group has matured, and tackled heavier subjects than before, we all drew a line and Rape is definitively on the other side of that line.
Your Bag Guy example is freaky. I respect the GM’s call but I would not feel comfortable with such a scene was I a player.
Poor Shamus…
Yeah, I don’t think I’d ever want to play out a rape scene at a tabletop group – heck, not even online, where the anonymity makes it easier to get into character.
What was fascinating about that whole thing was that there was no-one in the scene except the Bad Guy, the Victim, and the Head GM. We got to the part where there was obviously no escape, then ‘faded to black’. The strong reactions from others were to just knowing that it had happened.
And he was a pretty freaky Bad Guy.
So the topic seems to have been closed with Shamus figuring out just why it may have been misinterpreted.
Reread comics 6 and 7, going from panel 1 on page 6 to Chuck’s comment in panel 2 on page 7.
That was the way the joke was originally written.
Apparently they didn’t decide on the three-panel format until later on, and recut some previous comics, inserting punchlines along the way (such as the “Improved Stamina” line).
Rereading it in the way it was meant, Chuck comes off as much less of a jerk, and it becomes much more reminiscent of the Aragorn – Legolas (or “Leggo-my-ass”) interactions at the council of Elrond in DMotR.
Good set of links you got there. I’ll be chasing them all up today.
Thanks for the linky to Save Or Die too. I’ve put up real, honest-to-goodness proper .pdfs of each issue today along with instructions how to make your own on my blog.
Oh, and here’s a sneak peak of what’s going into Issue 3. Don’t tell anyone I told ya!
Introduction
A closer look at…..Rats
– Riding Rat
– Ratling
— Ratling Characters
– Ethereal Rat Swarm
– Amorphous Were-Rat
Bookshelf Essentials
– The Mother of All Treasure Tables
– Ptolus
– The Book of Templates Delux Edition
– World’s Largest Dungeon
– The Burning Plague
A thousand gleaming spears
– Decisive surgical strikes
Meet the Badgers
– Brocka characters
Occam’s Role-player
Problem Monster Number Uno
I love me some rats! 🙂
Seems rat-a-licious… 😉
I’m a big fan of rats, too (need some scifi Skaven real, real bad); ratling sounds like it might be fun.
‘Amorphous Were-Rat’ however…that’s messed up, right there.
For making .pdfs, I find OpenOffice to be quite good as well. The built-in “export to pdf” function retains all the formatting. And since the free, open-source OpenOffice can open MSWord docs as well, you can even convert those straight to pdf.
Thanks for the tips!
Heh. It’s good to see all this rat love. And I mean that in the best possible taste.
Boy, are you guys going to enjoy the next issue of Save Or Die. It’s rattalicious 🙂
Open Office is great, mainly for it’s pdf creation abilities. The OOCalc, the spreadsheet, is pretty good too. Normally I don’t like word processors, etc, but I’m willing to make an exception 🙂