My point, exactly, Psion.
Regardless of the vile stuff already out (the Green Ronin books for example) the BoVD will have the D&D logo squarely on its cover. This means linking that material to the game in a very definate way.
As a personal note, my mother thought D&D was the work of satan based upon what her church group said. She was surprised to hear that I played it. I explained to her the entire concept and the myths and rumours and their origination. She said, 'oh, that's not so bad' and left me to it. Would she have said that if she knew about the BoVD?
As another point, my FLGS places a little 1'x1' card on the D&D shelf explaining to parents the wheres and why-fores of D&D and how it benefits your child (the three R's) and can be a family activity. The BoVD will throw the good that comes of that practice out the window, as it blatantly proclaims its contents and cover under a D&D logo. Welcome back to the '80s and the concept that D&D is for sociopathic rejects with a disgusting fascination with the profane.
Yeah, a lot of you don't give a rats a33 what the other people of the world think. This attitude, of course, exacerbates the problem and perpetuates the 'sociopath nerd' stereotype, but the real point is that the world doesn't work like that anymore. You can't depend on people just forgetting the thing exists like you could before the advent of the internet. Fact is, with society as 'hooked in' as it is, you can bet that a media frenzy will descend on the game as soon as some depressed teen kills some classmates and they find the BoVD in his room. Then Hasbro will drop it and you can kiss D&D goodbye, because it hasn't become mainstream enough to survive such attacks, unlike computer games. And why hasn't it? Because some of you don't want it to be.
Is the above example extreme? Maybe. But so are a lot of other 'hysterical historical events' that ruined many great things (Muslims blowing up ancient budhist art, for example). Call me 'prophet of doom' or whatever you will, but I think one should take a bigger picture view on the way our hobby is percieved in society, especially todays 'think less, accept what the news tells you' society. Greater things than D&D have gone the way of the Giant Space hamster for lesser offenses...
