Dungeon magazine says maybe more vile. Huzzah!

[Henry]

FIRST OF ALL

This can certainly do with out name-calling -- "Harcore Conservative Pansy" or otherwise. There are ways to tell someone that you diagree with someone other than insulting their ideals or their stance on an issue.

By the same token, those who want more mature content are not "gratuitous or unoriginal" necessarily. There is such a thing as naming a graphic action without going into gruesome detail.

If this discussion is to continue without blowing up and being closed, everybody here needs to GIVE A DOSE OF RESPECT TO THE OPPOSING SIDE.


However, those who are against more vile content have a large point I want to explore. A magazine which changes its content focus needs to state it outright a few months BEFORE it does so. This is because there are many subscribers out there who want an advance warning before resubscribing to a magazine they may not be interested in buying any more. Furthermore, content that does not appeal to the subscriber is ALWAYS an issue in subscriptions, whether its vile content, or a balance of underwater adventures. If your campaigns always take place on dry land, how is a magazine full of underwater-dependent adventures going to help you, other than for a few raw ideas?

A subscriber balances the reduced cost of the magazine with the possiblity of getting material in each that he or she will not use.

Now, if there are enough readers who want more adult-oriented content, Paizo needs to do something to categorize it as such, without flashy "vile" logos, or they apparently risk turning off the readers that do want the content. I'm kind of favorable of an iconic system, similar to the ones hotels use for rating their establishments - maybe the latest adventure has icons for underwater scenario; low level; roleplay-intenstive; adult content? Or some such system?

 

[rounser]

By the same token, those who want more mature content are not "gratuitous or unoriginal" necessarily. There is such a thing as naming a graphic action without going into gruesome detail.

I disagree, Henry. There is no need to go into detail in order to be gratuitous; the presence of an ugly idea is often enough.

SPOILER SPACE




















I didn't have to have it described to me in detail to find the idea of a bound, insane ogre mage who enjoys being dissected by sadistic bar patrons distasteful and gratuitous. I didn't need graphic descriptions of a polymorphed monster being raped by pirates to find that an ugly idea either.

The point is not that I'm offended by this stuff, but that I don't like the tone it illicits. I don't want a game with that feel to it, nor do I really want to read it. That doesn't make me a prude any more than it makes the people who like it blood-hungry perverts. It's a matter of taste....or lack of taste, as the case may be.

The knee-jerk response to my complaint here is "okay, you don't like it, don't open the sealed section then", but it's still taking away pages from those of us who don't want that content. Big deal, you may say, and I'd agree to an extent...but alongside Polyhedron there's more magazine that some of us are paying for and don't want. Dungeon has a history of being the best deal in gaming, and it's a pity to see that formula getting watered down from bread & butter D&D adventures into...other stuff which you can take or leave. I thought that was Dragon's job, and I don't subscribe to Dragon for a reason.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

It's not about censorship, it's about what some of the audience want to read and use, and others don't. Every page of vile content that needs to be ignored steals pages from the non-vilers. Again, enough with the rhetoric, this isn't a free-speech and censorship issue, it's a what-we-want-from-Dungeon issue.

Give up, I've been accused of censorship for deciding not to see The People Vs Larry Flint based on the previews...

Vile content isn't just wasted pages, its activly annoying pages. Its funny how the whole "don't buy/use what you don't want" is coming up in a thread about changing the content of something many of us already buy. Which just happens to be considered a standard of sorts of the game. Gee, I'll just can my subscription and go out and buy the magazine each month or not based on some stuff that you want ADDED. And if I'd perfer to keep a subscription for the same magazine I'm used to, I'm censoring... typical.

This reminds me of pet food... no really. I work at a pet supply shop and we sell a lot of high end foods. Once in a while, some company will figure it has enough market share or name recognition as a high end food and start cutting corners. So one day I go to show a customer the ingredients list on a "good low fillers" type of food and just gape at the almost total change. Now people COULD say "hey, lots of people like or don't mind those ingredients in pet snacks and you don't have to buy them and blah de blah" but they would be missing the point. It is unethical business practice switch content on a customer who has a standing order for a product.

Dragon is not a series of unconnected books that you buy one and not the other, making a consumer decision every time. its a magazine that many people subscribe to. Changing its tone and content is different than putting out a book.

I think a bimonthy mag with a name like "deeper dungeons"* which dealt with R rated gaming content might sell well. But it would not be the flagship/basic/semi-official/entry level magazine for the game.

*that would be a fun name IMHO, since it would imply the more r rated content without sticking some dumb "mature" or "adult" lable into it, and would make everyone think of that old tract....

Kahuna Burger

 

[Kahuna Burger]

The very use of the word "vile" as a promotion only makes me more doubtful. "Vile" carries the connotation that something horrible is done gratuitously. So "vile content" immediately drives home the idea of gratuitously nasty content.

I perfer it to "mature" or "adult" because as mentioned earlier, most things labled that way aren't either. However, if you need a non-loaded term, I'd go for "r rated" or maybe "R+". We've likely all seen R movies that got that way because the story had certain mature themes, and R movies that are just gratuitous.

BTW, as a former psych student, I just have to make my standard comment to these debates. You can winge about "conservative prudes" or whatever all night long, you can talk about how able you were to "handle that stuff" as a kid, but issues of how different kinds of media content effect kids' (and adults) brains aren't boogymen invented by Concerned Women For America. Modeling, desensitization, all these things that get thrown around and exagerated are nonetheless basically founded in science. People may look like idiots when they assume D&D will make your child sacrifice the family cat, but to someone who knows the basics, people who claim "as long as you tell them its fantasy it won't have any effect" look just as dumb.

(I know for a fact that some of the misogynistic fantasy I read as a preteen messed with my emotional development. The fact that I eventually recognized and moved past those problems doesn't mean I would want my (theoretical) kids anywhere near that crap.)

Kahuna Burger

 

[zoroaster100]

"vile" was just a marketing ploy

I don't mind mature content in Dragon. But the whole "vile" stuff I think was just a marketing ploy to tie into the Book of Vile Darkness, which I thought was in and of itself mostly a marketing stunt to sell ordinary D&D rules as something out of the ordinary.
Rules for slavery, drug use, possession, etc. are not that different from the regular content in D&D. I don't really find such rules in and of themselves "vile." The only real vile part about it was the way the marketing for the book and related material seemed to have a purile, immature "we're giggling 'cause we're doing something naughty" feel to it.

Marketing a whole book and a whole category of content in a manner that seems to glorify evil is kind of immature in my opinion (mind you I'm not saying the book itself was immature, but the marketing was). It was also foolishly begging for backlash against Dragon and D&D in general from people outside and inside the gaming community. I think Dragon has foolishly managed to put themselves in the middle of an ideological war. I don't really feel strongly on either side of that war, but I regret Dragon's foolishness in risking the success of a good magazine I enjoy by setting themselves to anger one group of subscribers or another no matter what they do at this point.

In any case, I don't really care that much whether they include such content or not, but if they do include it, just please let them not put those stupid "sealed" sections that mess up the magazine. As if somehow someone not "mature" enough that gets his or her hands on the magazine will somehow be "protected" from opening the sealed section. That was just a marketing ploy also, to get people to think they are getting to use something forbidden, and therefore, impliedly, better than other material.

 

[rounser]

but issues of how different kinds of media content effect kids' (and adults) brains aren't boogymen invented by Concerned Women For America.

Yup. Tell an Advertising Director that what people watch doesn't affect what they think and do, and they'll probably laugh in your face...

 

[Kahuna Burger]

Yup. Tell an Advertising Director that what people watch doesn't affect what they think and do, and they'll probably laugh in your face...

every time I see some hollywood shill going on about how violence or drug use or whatever in movies can't possibly influence people, I wanna jump into the screen and ask them how much money their studio took for product placement in the last year.

kahuna burger

 

[tonym]

I like that the BOVD is used in the campaign I'm playing in. A lot of that "vile" stuff is scary. And being scared in a dungeon is fun.

For example, my Fighter/Paladin ran into an evil cleric not long ago, and THAT was scary. The cleric had a weird demonic arm grafted in place of a regular arm. In any campaign, I bet, this arm would have been plenty creepy...but knowing that my DM uses the BOVD made it terrifying.

Man, I'm still glad I walked away from that one. There are a lot of HORRIBLE ways a BOVD-enhanced cleric can kill your character.

Horrible, horrible ways.



Tony M

 

[Dinkeldog]

I hope that Paizo never prints another article about (fighters). You see, I don't play (fighters) and have no interest on having (fighters) in my games.

Oh, and hi, everyone.

 

[rounser]

I hope that Paizo never prints another article about (fighters). You see, I don't play (fighters) and have no interest on having (fighters) in my games.

As Kahuna Burger pointed out, vile articles are actively annoying pages. Articles about (fighters) aren't...

Unless you're a bit weird.

Besides, your "argument" is reductio ad absurdum...there seems to be a reasonable section of D&D's audience which doesn't like vile material, and comparing that to not liking something at the core of D&D like (fighters) is, well, "proving" a point which doesn't apply here, IMO.