A Return for Central Casting
Torm
Explorer
I actually called Amarillo Design Bureau a few years ago about this very thing, and the guy I spoke to there told me that the rights to the Central Casting properties belonged to Mr. Jaques himself - up until he lost them in a divorce settlement. The guy seemed to find it dubious that the wife would do anything with it, and seemed to consider it a shame. I agree to an extent, but I hardly think it would keep any other industrious soul who wanted to put together something similar for D20 from anything other than using the name "Central Casting". IANAL, but it seems to me there is plenty of prior art from before Central Casting - in the history of improvisational acting, in the rules of Original D&D itself, and in those little paper games little girls use that are supposed to tell what their later lives will be like, just to name a few examples......Henry said:
Man in the Funny Hat
Hero
Clearly they are not universally needed or desired. But NO plausible character could come from them? Perhaps you failed to note that it is a RANDOM generator and is not intended to dictate a background but to rather serve more as a source of inspiration.wingsandsword said:
That said, this is why they could stand to be REDONE. The originals suffered from insufficient details/options and thus the rather interesting habit of creating characters that weren't merely interesting but instead were hopelessly over-the-top. You know, heir to the kingdom, son of a deity, born in poverty in another kingdom altogether, with two special pets, blessed by a fairy, cursed by a witch, and born in a travelling brothel on a night that signalled the apocalypse occurring the next day though living long enough to spend 5 years in jail for a crime he didn't commit as well as an 8-year hitch in the military. - Again however, this was only possible if you simply took it all absolutely literally rather than using as a tool to assist you in creating a background.
HoT in particular seemed to simply have random generation that repeatedly created some real horrors. It needed a revised version - or at least a greater willingness to ignore/reroll results.
ShinHakkaider
Adventurer
Torm said:Not that I agree with the notion of homosexuality as a mental illness, but in his defense, Jaques may have simply been working from older references that included these things. Homosexuality, for example, was not removed from the DSM until 1986, and one might have still found a copy that listed it on their library shelves when the Central Casting books were written. He should have proofed better, but it is easy to imagine that when someone is writing a book with that many list, they might crib a few things, and let some oddities slip through.
I like giving people the benefit of the doubt - unless you know something more specific? (Share, share!)
This is definitely not the case.
From page 81, Central Castings HEROES NOW:
"REAL WORLD STUFF
Despite "popular" trends in culture and psychology, the authors of this book believe the following three statements to be true:
A. Any sexual relationship other than tha between a husband and wife is wrong.
B. Perverse sexual desires are a form of learned and ingrained behavior and as such can be controlled, overcome and eventually replaced by healthy desires and behavior.
C. Using roleplay to vicariously experience wrong behavior is a bad idea.
While we are not called to be judges, it is our belief that those who chose to continue in perverse behavior will ultimately be held accountable for thier actions. Those who seek to brainwash society into accepting such behavior as normal are only making the problem worse for themselves and others"
That's verbatim form the book.
Man in the Funny Hat
Hero
Heroes of Legend was published in 1988; Heroes for Tomorrow was published in 1989. Jaquays certainly wasn't trying to preach (at least not in my perception), but with each successive book he DID make it clearer that he was not exactly burying his personal religious perspective either. In the first two books he listed homosexuality under the broad personality category of "Sexual Disorders" which also included transexualism, complete disinterest, shyness, bisexuality, transvestitism, nymphomania/saytrism, domination, sadism, masochism, prude, voyeur, fetish/fixations, and xenophilia. These were associated with the term "darkside personality traits" as opposed to lightside and neutral (as well as some that would be randomly generated between those three categories.) So, he's a clueless, offensive git for calling homosexuality a "darkside" sexual disorder - but not for classifying shyness and prudism as also being "darkside" sexual disorders? The preface to the table, before the instructions paragraph itself stated [emphasis mine] {additional wordage in Heroes for Tomorrow}:TheAuldGrump said:
In the section on "Roleplay" along with other notes he starts by reiterating:
IMO, his choices here can be attributed to a simple need to categorize a wide variety of... atypical behaviors for purposes of random generation as much as any personal bias. He may have drawn some offended responses - perhaps even deservedly - but it seems to me he was attempting NOT to offend and to at least provide valid reason to handle the category differently if your own real-world perceptions differed from his quantifications.
in 1991 in Heroes Now! the table for "Sexual Perversions" was gone entirely. In its place was a short paragraph position statement and some explanation, essentially amounting to saying, "This is what *I* believe. If you really want to include sexual perversion in your roleplaying games AT ALL that's your own affair. I'm not even going to list the possibilites anymore so just pick something appropriate for this result and move on."
Maybe he could be given a LITTLE slack...
Torm
Explorer
Funny .... after ShinHakkaider's post I was going to reverse MY position, and opt in to the notion that the author was a jerkwad. I never noticed that part in Heroes NOW before, but then, it is the CC book I've used the least. Still some fun books, though, that aside.Man in the Funny Hat said:
Ragnar Carter
Villager
The supplements are fantastic. The "Heroes Now" is the weakest; we found the religion and homosexual bashing bits were worse in it. But many great events in our games came directly from them. The space book gave me a character who was genetically engineered to have psionic powers, her parents were a test tube, and she had a corporation hunting her since she was a prototype!
Here's an interesting bit though. Paul Jaquays, who slammed homosexuality in these books, is now Jenelle Jaquays. She was involved in an iOS app called "Background Noise" which does the same thing as the "Heroes of Legend" book did on a much smaller scale. I keep hoping for more from her - I want a space version!
Here's an interesting bit though. Paul Jaquays, who slammed homosexuality in these books, is now Jenelle Jaquays. She was involved in an iOS app called "Background Noise" which does the same thing as the "Heroes of Legend" book did on a much smaller scale. I keep hoping for more from her - I want a space version!
MNblockhead
A Title Much Cooler Than Anything on the Old Site
Why not dungeons? It is the one book of theirs that I still have and use.
Penny Dreadful
First Post
She has said that she was under the influence of conservative religion at that time and that her views have since changed.Not that I agree with the notion of homosexuality as a mental illness, but in his defense, Jaques may have simply been working from older references that included these things. Homosexuality, for example, was not removed from the DSM until 1986, and one might have still found a copy that listed it on their library shelves when the Central Casting books were written. He should have proofed better, but it is easy to imagine that when someone is writing a book with that many list, they might crib a few things, and let some oddities slip through.
I like giving people the benefit of the doubt - unless you know something more specific? (Share, share!
