DC and Marvel have both been selling access to their back catalog for years now. As for whatever Mercurius may have written, I can't really address that. Do you think it would be appropriate to ask that DC stop selling Wonder Woman because of the unfortunate depictions of African Americans and Asians in the 40s and 50s? Should we petition Penguin Press to stop selling the works of H.P. Lovecraft because of his harmful depictions of African Americans and others throughout many of his works?
Should they stop selling modern Wonder Woman? No. Should they stop selling those issues? I don't know.
Frankly, I really don't know. I'd never buy and read a work of Lovecraft directly by this stage, I've seen and heard far too much about what some of his works are like, and I can get my existential horror somewhere else. If they stop selling his works, because no one buys them, because the consensus is that the racism is too much to stomach... isn't that still censorship like has been claimed here? Silent and slow, but it is still a product no longer being sold because people find the subject material objectionable. Does doing it that way somehow make it more morally justified than pointing it out to people and removing it quickly?
I don't know. But I can't say that calling for something to no longer be sold is the same as banning books.
I don't think these have much to do with OA, though. First of all, it is a PDF and requires no up-keep to remain available. Removing it would be entirely due to pressure from offended parties.
That would be false, there is some upkeep and cost to keeping it for sale on the Guild. It is a minor cost, but it is there. And sure, it would be removed now do to that, but what about in 2040 or some other arbitrary date where the site has gotten enough content on it that they have to start deleting old content to fit new, or buy new servers. What if it was removed then?
Secondly, the reason OA is available now is because in 2014, WotC decided to be as inclusive as possible in terms of the D&D community, and made old products available. I remember many people--players of older editions--being quite pleased by this, feeling that they were being invited back into the fold.
Okay... so what?
There seems to be this weird corollary being drawn between the people and the product. Like if this book got removed the the store suddenly every player over the age of 50 would have "racist" stamped on their license.
There are schools near where I live that probably have some troubling names, definetly some stereotypes that could one day be called out and changed. If they are, does that suddenly make every student who ever graduated from that school a racist? No. It means the school's name was probably a little racial insensitive and it was time that got changed to something better. It has zero reflection on the students.
So, yes, players from 1e liked having this book available again, especially if their old copy was destroyed in a flood or fire or whatever, but removing it would not have reflected badly on those players. So, I don't understand why telling me that old players liked having old stuff available is supposed to change anything.
AD&D has not improvised weapon rules. The closest it gets is the rules for pummelling in an Appendix to UA.
Okay, so why did OA need to introduce a weapon like that then? Fighting with bar stools was still a trope, but not one worth exploring, but fighting with chopsticks was?
Cavaliers (in UA) have restrictions about weapon use, armour use and who and how they fight in battle. But there is no numericaltracking system like the honour score in OA.
I skimmed the breakdown so I might have missed the armor use and who they could fight. The how seemed to just be "no ranged weapons" and "no big weapons until high levels"
But, not having the numerical tracking system was the point that I was making.
This isn't an accurate description of the OA honour system.
Well, every honor system I've ever seen as applied it broadly and statically to all levels of society. Did OA's honor system give different types of systems and rewards for different classes or social groups? And, did everyone have to deal with it or just the highest echelons?
Because, again, honor was a thing in Europe too. There were many tropes of honorable individuals, but there was never an "honor system" made for them. That only ever seems to come up, with point tracking for your honor score, when we go to the Fantasy Far East.
In OA for a samurai it is katana, wakizashi and daikyu. For a cavalier in UA it is lance, one-handed sword (broad, long or scimitar), and one-handed hafted (horseman's flail, mace or pick). I can go and look up rangers and barbarians if you like.
Not needed, you really are proving my point here. Though, if that Daikyu is a bow like I think it is, I'm pleasantly surprised.
But, while the cavalier got lances, swords, flails, maces or picks (all of which they might have actually used) the samurai were limited to two swords and a their bow (which again, I'm surprised they actually put in there) but the samurai also used polearms (the Yari or Naginata if you were a noblewoman) and great clubs.
And I'm sure the barbarian and ranger lists are also extensive.
"The public" is a reasonably broad notion. I'm not sure it's precise enough to support this sort of analysis.
When I was a teenager I could make a pretty good guess at which set of folk beliefs varioius OA creatures came from based on whether the name seemed Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese or Malay. Given my lack of linguistic skills not a perfect guide, but it's not the case that everything was "oriental" and washed in a beige hue.
Well, I'm glad you tried guessing which name was which, but I don't see why it is so hard to ask that they actually pay attention to the differences between them going forward.
So does that mean I'm a bad Canadian for having Hockey Stick on my list of weapons?
If yes, then tough, as it's been there for 35+ years and ain't coming off anytime soon.
(never mind that the hockey Stick is a holy symbol to one of our game's deities...)
1) I laughed at the holy symbol bit, especially since it is probably true
2) You are not a major publisher of a game system being sold across the country. So, I don't care what your weapon list says.