Big Changes At White Wolf Following Controversy

*Deleted by user*

billd91 said:

But I would agree that making light of atrocities or giving a fictive cause to real and ongoing atrocity is bad judgment. (I do like allegorical parallels, though.)

Click to expand...

+1

I could write up a villain who was a (minor) participant in the Yugoslav Civil War / breakup today. I would not have done so then, while the bloodshed and atrocities were ongoing.

I believe the relevant phrase of choice among certain comedians is, “Too soon?”

Alan Alda once said, “Comedy is tragedy plus time”, and he might as well have substituted “Entertainment” for comedy. Because there are countless works of fiction in which historical figures have been altered from their RW roots in order to entertain us, be it dramatically or comically or somewhere in between.

After all...Count Dracula is infamously based on the RW Vlad Dracul. But that was more than 400 years after his death.*

At some point in the future, the Chechnian purge of LGBT individuals may make fine fuel for (skillful) storytelling, but right now, because it is ongoing?

Too soon.








* assuming, of course, he wasn’t actually a supernatural creature.

ASchmidt said:

I worked at CCP on the World of Darkness MMO *snip* I simply cannot imagine the people I worked with being accused of the things they're being accused of.

Click to expand...

This was not material written when CCP had the license, so rest easy. No one is saying what you think they are.

Jester David said:

Clue has a narrative. There is the murder of Mister Body and several suspects. Is it art?

And while I think one could easily argue a performance of D&D and other roleplaying games would qualify as "art", do the rulebooks governing play benefit from that. Is a book on ballet or the technical aspects of theatre craft also art?

Click to expand...

First, thank you for the reasoned and interesting discussion.

Second, Tim Curry is great in Clue!

As for the board game....I don't know if I'd say it's a work of art. There is art involved....graphic design and layout and game design. Those seem to be artistic endeavors to me. But is a board game itself art? I'm not sure. I don't think I'd ever expect to see a Clue board hanging on someone's living room wall.

But when it comes to an RPG book, very often the book includes fiction in addition to the technical aspects of play. I consider crafting of fiction to be art, so in most cases, I would consider such books to be art. Creative writing versus technical writing.

Jester David said:

Society as a whole.
Just like EVERYTHING ELSE where we decide if it is appropriate or not. It's what we're taught by our parents every day of our childhoods, which is reinforced by society and popular culture.

The audience and reviewers also decided when several of them independently raised the issue. Followed by the management who themselves agreed the text was inappropriate. And everyone else who was upset or thought the material was in poor taste.

If it had been a few upset people making a big deal about nothing, the story would not have spread as far and the management might have agreed it was much about nothing. Clearly they disagreed.

Click to expand...

Whose society? Chechen society?

How often is society wrong about what is or should be acceptable? Things change over time, and what was once acceptable becomes unacceptable, and vice versa. One of the major factors in the drive for such change is art. And very often allegory.

And although you are right about some members of the audience and reviewers, and about the management decision....is it the actual audience? And as someone who found the book distasteful, I can say that not everyone who felt that way thinks the book needs to go away. It's distasteful....I simply won't buy it. If someone else is not bothered by the content, I don't want to stop them from buying it.

Again, the realities of capitalism and the potential PR nightmare they were facing....I get the decision and why things played out the way they did. I just don't know if I can agree that this is the preferred way for things to proceed.

Jester David said:

Here's the thing... he's figuratively monsterous, but he's not literally monsterous. Making him and actual, literal monster makes it easier to accept. Because he's just evil. He's a monster. It's almost an excuse. You don't hold the mad or hungry dog accountable for its actions.
It's simply easier to accept someone being terrible to human being when they're not human and see humans as convenient and tasty food. It removes culpability.

Reinforcing that the person behind and responsible for the purging of homosexuals in Chechnya is and always has been human is important.

Click to expand...

Well, we could get into a debate about the proper use of the word monstrous here, but I think each of us understands what the other is saying.

I don't agree that anything written in the book in any way changes how I view Ramzan Kadirov. I don't think it does what some are claiming. It in no way makes me unsure that he and his regime are awful.

I do think it's a sensitive subject and was handled without sensitivity....but I don't think that the fiction of the book in any way diminishes the real world events.

Jester David said:

Fair enough.

Will you buy future books from the line? Will you buy future books from the author(s), who thinks it's okay to be crass and to exploit an ongoing tragedy?
Because if you wouldn't... that brings up the business aspect. White Wolf and their owners want to continue to sell books. But if people move from boycotting to book to boycotting the line, then they lose money. Which is their sole reason for publishing the books.

Click to expand...

I don't play the game, so chances are I would not buy any products for it. I would possibly buy something from the authors if it was a work that appealed to me in some way. Because even if I disagree with how they handled this topic, that doesn't mean they can't produce something that I would enjoy.

And this also brings up an interesting question....how many people who boycotted or put social pressure on WW are actual paying customers?

I mean....should my opinion on this topic even matter to WW from a business standpoint? Should they have to worry about people who are not potential customers? Obviously, they have to , or at least the did so in this case. But should they?

Jester David said:

This gets into a larger issue.

Some people DO challenge the norms. And that's probably a good thing. However, some people like to just shock and be provocative. We need to separate the two. The people testing the limits of good tastes and pushing society for artistic reasons, and the trolls who just want to get a rise from people.

In general, ignoring people and things doesn't help. Because the latter group of trolls wants desperately NOT to be ignored. Which means they just push the envelope further and further until they can't be ignored. They go until you cannot help but notice them. And by that point they're so much worse than they would have been before.
But it doesn't even serve the true artist. They can't push society in different directions or cause people to question if everyone ignores them. They want people to talk and discuss things. Which doesn't happen if it's just their supporters.

Also... ignoring ideas we don't like and disagree with doesn't work out well in the long run. You can see that in the surge of internet fuelled hate and racism. Communities like 4chan and reddit where anything could be posted. When people couldn't get a rise from readers, they pushed farther and farther into racism and misogyny to get a reaction, until only people okay with those beliefs and jokes remained. Which led to online communities that were enabling and aiding radicalisation.
I could say more, but the above paragraph is already pushing the limits of this site's tolerance for politics and current events.

Click to expand...

I don't know if you can or should differentiate such people. Again, removed of the commercial concerns that were relevant in this case, I think that it's pretty clearly been established that protection of the unpopular opinion is more important than protection of the popular opinion. If it's a choice between allowing all opinions to be expressed or to begin picking and choosing, the only rational answer is to allow them all.

There are so many people throughout history that would have been considered trolls of their time who later on have become to be appreciated as great artists.

Rygar said:

Could you please put a large warning when linking to RPG.net? Given the very political nature of that site and its participants, and the actions they've taken over the past few weeks, some of us would prefer to avoid giving them any traffic or revenue.

Click to expand...

Umm, I did, didn't I? All links are quoted with "forum.rpg.net" quite clearly visible to a naked eye.
If you're clicking a link without reading even a plain-text part, the security of your computer may be at risk.

Please do be more careful.

Regards,
Ruemere

*Deleted by user*

lowkey13 said:

There are a few people that were considered shocking, provocative, and offensive for their time that were later considered great artists.

There is a near-infinite number of unremembered trolls that were just jerks and/or a**h****.

I think that the ratio is probably the same today.

Click to expand...

For that matter, even if the ratio were the other way around, this particular provocative work would still clearly fall in the latter category. We don't have to play the numbers game here. We can examine a piece and judge it on its merits.

hawkeyefan said:

FAs for the board game....I don't know if I'd say it's a work of art. There is art involved....graphic design and layout and game design. Those seem to be artistic endeavors to me. But is a board game itself art? I'm not sure. I don't think I'd ever expect to see a Clue board hanging on someone's living room wall.

Click to expand...

Some players have taken to framing their Pandemic Legacy boards.

Clue Legacy... that could work...

Gradine said:

I'm still half of a thread behind, so forgive me if I'm repeating something here, but everyone does realize that this is capitalism working as intended, right? Boycotts and social pressure leading to a change or withdrawal of a product is the very definition of people voting with their wallets. No government entity has stepped in or directly interfered in the process, so there's no actual "censorship" involved (I see that you haven't used that phrase yourself, but others in this thread certainly have).

Click to expand...

Yeah...I get the business reasons for what happened. I don't really blame the company for deciding to pull the book and revise it.

I've purposefully avoided use of the word censorship because I don't want the discussion to become about what is or isn't censorship.

Whether or not this is capitalism as intended....I'm not sure. It may be. But I think capitalism would mostly be concerned with the product and its potential consumer base rather than some kind of general consensus that may consist largely of people who would normally be entirely indifferent to the product. It's a bit odd in that sense.

Gradine said:

I do also think that there needs to be some level of differentiation between "art" and "popular entertainment"; I'll be the first to admit that that line can be fuzzy at times and is ultimately arbitrary, but I don't think anyone here would quibble about which of those categories, say, V:tM or War and Peace respectively belong in. I think, at least in this context, it boils down to authorial intent. I think it can be argued that there is an appropriate time and place for art that it is deliberately shocking or offensive to the senses. Popular entertainment is not, I would argue quite strenuously, the place for such material. Nor is it the place for material that, whether intentionally or otherwise, reinforces oppressive narratives. Especially not present atrocities.

Click to expand...

I won't make a distinction between art and popular entertainment in this way because everyone's line would be in a different place. I prefer to treat them the same, so that there's some level of objectivity to be had. A starting point. There certainly plenty of examples that would fit both criteria, as you say, so why make the distinction?

And I do think that authorial intent does matter. Do we think the authors included this with the intention of controversy? Were they trying to provoke a negative reaction in readers? Or just any kind of emotional reaction? They certainly wound up offending people, that's clear, but was that what they wanted? It's hard to say.