Book of Vile Darkness

[Furn_Darkside]

Cmon folks..let's keep this civil....

Another serious question...does anyone forsee the local bookstores who carry WOTC product shrinkwrapping the item? I know in mine, all the D&D stuff is mixed up with all the comic books...errr..excuse me..graphic novels...

The cover pics that are floating about right now are pretty silly looking. I doubt there will be any mass move to do anything special with the book.

FD

 

[Buttercup]

Please, people! Can we stop sneering and sniping at each other? Nothing is gained by it.

I suspect that parents who are inclined to see satanism hiding everywhere don't let their children play D&D anyway. Those who are less fearful about passtimes that rely on imagination aren't going to be phased by this book. This whole issue is most likely a tempest in a teapot. But even if BoVD turns out to realize the worst fears expressed in this thread, each one of us has a way to send a message that we don't like it. Just don't buy it.

None of us can control what other people think, we can only try to influence others' opinions by logical argument. For those segments of the public lost to logic, there is no hope. So don't lose sleep over them. Life is too short.

Now, let's lower the hostility quotient, ok?

 

[Hakkenshi]

the classic gamer approach.

At least he's being consistent, since he IS a gamer

The fact of the matter is that soccer moms (or dads, for that matter) won't sink the industry. Gamers beget more gamers somehow. The geeks of the world congregate one way or another.

I started gaming when I was 12 as well (although that only means 10 years' experience in my case ), and my mom didn't care, despite the fact that I played soccer. Her only concern was (and still is) that I make sure not to play D&D to the exclusion of everything else. She still wouldn't have spontaneously bought the books for me.

Yet somehow I hooked up with some friends who turned out to be gamers. There was no planning to it, it just happened. And many others I know have had the same experience.

To take a bad example (and I know it is one), most soccer moms wouldn't approve of their kids looking at internet porn either. But every male teen still does it somehow. Go figure.

As long as there are gamers who want to game, the game itself can't fail. The industry could come crashing down around us, and we'd still go online to bitch and moan and praise and argue about so-and-so's take on this-and-that.

We geeks are like that

Oh, and as a side-note, I'm MUCH more worried about what blatant exploitation like Afghanistan d20 can do for the "industry" than the BoVD. Gimme a friggin' break.

 

[Tiefling]

Well, old Howard Philips was likely sick as well as twisted, but not necessarily in the way people think (rather the opposite, actually...)

Hmm. Cancerous and scoliotic?

 

[Henry]

Hmm. Cancerous and scoliotic?

poikilothermic, actually.

 

[Sammael99]

Hmm. Cancerous and scoliotic?

I was thinking along the lines of xenophobic, extreme puritan and mysoginistic (sp ?). Not exactly the definition of "sick" that people usually imagine.

At least until the last few years of his life. Fortunately, these traits do not appear much in his short stories, although they are readily apparent in his letters.

Fascinating character, that Lovecraft. And a brave enough man to face his faults later in his life and actually study the cultures he had dismissed as "inferior" earlier on...

 

[Dr Midnight]

The fact of the matter is that soccer moms (or dads, for that matter) won't sink the industry. [/B]

D&D's initial surge of popularity went wild for a few years, and then died off. There are many reasons for the trend, but ONE of those was the soccer moms and dads of the world launching a full-out assault. This of course prompted some people to buy the books- BECAUSE of the controversial nature- but overall it was damaging. D&D is now a closet hobby for most players, just because they've been distanced and stereotyped.

Plus, some of them don't bathe.

 

[barsoomcore]

Man, there's too much free porn on the internet for me to use an expensive gaming book as masturbatory material and risk getting it all messed up. (I learned that lesson with some of my high school yearbooks.)

Man, I wish I'd gone to YOUR high school!

 

[CBS Brian]

Monte Obsessed? I don't think so!

Dr. Midnight, you say MC has an unhealthy fascination with evil. OK, let's look at the "evil" products he's produced.

DMG? Not evil

BOEM I &II? Not evil

Demon God's Fane? No more evil than any other high-level adventure produced by either WotC or another d20 publisher.

Call of Cthulhu d20? OK, evil. Or at least scary enough to be called evil.

The Banewarrens? OK, evil.

Book of Vile Darkness? Yes, evil, evil, evil!

Now let's look at those three products. Both CoC d20 & BoVD are Wizards products he had already started while employed at WotC. When he left, all the projects he wound up having to finish his projects as a freelancer (read his message board posts, website articles, and interviews with Morrus).

Did he choose to do them? Well he's a huge CoC fan by his own admission, so he probably jumped at the chance to do a d20 version. But the product itself was created by Wizards & Chaosium, not Monte.

Yes he pitched BoVD to Wizards. He also pitched a Book of Exalted Deeds. If you read his interviews he thought instead of class splatbooks (Sword & Fist, Song & Silence, etc.) that Wizards should try something new and go for alignment splatbooks. Didn't pan out that way, but Wizards dug evil. So again, he wound up doing that.

The Banewarrens, the least evil of these three (OK, I haven't seen BoVD, but I the title alone makes it more evil than the Banewarrens). I own it. It's not that evil. And it seems to have been an adventure he designed to run his victims-I mean players-through.

Add to that the facts that in one of his interviews he actually said he was looking forward to NOT doing any more evil products, and how they just kind of snowballed up on him, I'd say that adds up to proof that he's not obsessed.

Simply put, you're so wrong, ignorant, and out of line you owe Monte Cook an apology.

 

[Desdichado]

I suspect that parents who are inclined to see satanism hiding everywhere don't let their children play D&D anyway. Those who are less fearful about passtimes that rely on imagination aren't going to be phased by this book. This whole issue is most likely a tempest in a teapot. But even if BoVD turns out to realize the worst fears expressed in this thread, each one of us has a way to send a message that we don't like it. Just don't buy it.

Besides, the Book of Fiends series from Green Ronin already has all those rules (with the exception of Demon Princes -- it only has Demon Lords

You've got the thaumaterge class that sacrifices something depending on your patron for dark powers, you've got nude fiends (esp. Sam Wood's illustrations in Legions of Hell you've got about the most vile torture and drug abuse imagineable (granted, their use isn't statted out, though.) Nobody's up in arms about Green Ronin, to the best of my knowledge. What makes this so special?