TSR I think we’ve finally made it!

[jdrakeh]

Yo, can we maybe use transgender instead of the outdated transsexual? That’d be great.

Apologies.

 

[teitan]

Not sure at all.

Red Hand Cult? I got nothing.

Abaddon is often a D&D devil or demon based loosely off the Book of Revelations' Abaddon leader of tormenting locust things who torment those without the seal of God.

Yeah Abaddon is an Angel, aka Appolyon and other things, who guards the Abyss. Also, last I checked, Abaddon comes from Christianity and not Judaism. I have studied Angelogy/Demonology for 30 years now and the primary source is Christian texts. Jewish sourced angels have very specific naming conventions with names ending in el/al or eh/ah reflecting upward or downward motion in the manifestation of the universe. Not all follow those protocols like Metatron but he is an example of a special case where he was the prophet Enoch and Sandalphon his twin. This included demons which were just angels that had fallen and their names, like Samael, the archangel of Mars, demon of Gamaliel, meaning "Poison of God". The El being Aleph Lamed, Al, Hebrew (well Semitic root in general, seen in Allah for example) word for God. I don’t see how any of this is anti-Semitic, just a bunch of hooey really and meant to evoke the Christian response to the name moreso than any antisemitic hooey. Poisoned well may be an accusation against innocent people in the past with plagues but it's also not an unfounded one such as the example of the Rajneeshi group in Oregon poisoning the "well", the local dinner buffets, of their enemies with salmonella they cultivated in their own laboratories on their compound, in order to keep them from voting so that the Rajneeshi could stack the local council with their own people after importing hundreds of homeless people into the region and registering them to vote and "housing" them on the compound in very poor conditions. Sounds like an evil D&D cult to me (the leader's knowledge of these events has always been questioned considering he was very isolated by his representative and afterwards he would go on to found a major ashram network in India). The problem with tropes is that they often later transcend their original inspirations and just become general fictional elements that when used intelligently can tell compelling stories or scenarios beyond just the battle with prejudice and xenophobia, even when portrayed as... people poisoning a well.

 

[Maxperson]

On top of it, there's a dogwhistle - a call out to followers - to poison the well. Basically, a deniable call for people to come here just to be disruptive and mess with the community.

I think you're reading too much into it. These guys don't seem bright enough to be that subtle. Far more likely the name is just a petty shot at Morrus directly since he's an influential person in this community that has called them out more than once. Basically metaphorically putting him in a position where he needs to be rescued by the heroes.

Edit: removed the "r" to turn pretty into petty.

 

[Umbran]

No doubt Ernie and Juice Lasagna are tittering about how 'triggered' ENWorld is.

To be fair, if it went completely without comment here, they'd probably say we were so "triggered" that we were speechless.

Their basic position is that they should not care what other people think - so actually understanding what we really think isn't on their list of priorities.

 

[AtomicPope]

Can we get away from naming modules, which are built on a mystery, after the mysterious cult?

 

[dragoner]

They are kind of sad people, glad I'm not like them. The thread title makes me think of a Carpenter's song.

 

[teitan]

To be fair, if it went completely without comment here, they'd probably say we were so "triggered" that we were speechless.

Their basic position is that they should not care what other people think - so actually understanding what we really think isn't on their list of priorities.

yeah it seems with a certain crowd the argument, when you say anything is... why so triggered man or some variation.

 

[Faolyn]

To me, this falls apart as an excuse when you intentionally write offensive content. You don't get to claim that you didn't mean to deliberately insult someone when you deliberately insult someone else.

LaNasa blatantly and intentionally went out of his way to antagonize ENWorld in this adventure. If he also antagonized anyone else, he can't claim that it's an accident. I would consider this the literary allegory of transferred intent.

It's clear that this adventure was designed to be offensive (in an antagonistic way). And I wouldn't put it past the writer of this module to have slipped some deliberately offensive (in a bigoted way) stuff in just to bother any ENWorld readers who decide to fling some money at them (because "ENWorld started it"). And I will not be surprised if any future works they produce (assuming they ever do) contain antagonistic or bigoted material for the same reason.

What I was saying is that, maybe at the time they wrote the "probably not" post (I don't know when they wrote it), they weren't planning on being deliberately offensive, but didn't care enough to actually make sure that they weren't accidentally so. Believe me, I'm not trying to excuse anything these creeps are doing.

 

[John R Davis]

You can't actually buy it. It's one of three pieces of vaporware that NuTSR has announced, but have been unable to deliver on. The Dungeon Crawl board game and Star Frontiers New Genesis are the other two.

Ah. Like investing in a Stygian Fox Kickstarter!!!

 

[Shadowdweller00]

We'll add this to the heap of facepalms sitting over there, shall we?