Recent Dragon Mag Article Pulled?

[jdrakeh]

Actually, that's something the original 'complainer' wrote on LiveJournal, and then later retracted after deciding it wasn't a fair thing to say. That's not something he said.

Yeah, what the article's author wrote was "Instead of blaming men for violence, blame the wives who leave men with no choice but being violent." So much better.

 

[nedjer]

The posts seem to contain some of the worst advice on working or gaming with children I've ever come across. The apparent focus on manipulating children's behaviour on multiple levels and through meta-gaming looks particularly unfortunate IMO.

How WoTC could publish any of it? How they could let any of it stay up after reviewing the posts?

 

[NewJeffCT]

I have a wacky idea: how about if WotC stop wasting its time trying to figure out how they can get women and kids to play their game and start making a game that is fun and interesting. I'll go out on a limb here and make another stereotype: men, women, and children regardless of their age, sex, race, religious belief, or sexual orientation enjoy playing games that are fun and interesting. If WotC spent more time thinking about the next thing they can do to make DnD fun and interesting, then they would have more products to sell and people will happily buy them. As I look at the list of WotC products for the rest of 2011, I count only four game supplements for DnD: Neverwinter Game Setting, Madness at Gardmore Abbey, Heroes of the Feywild, and Book of Vile Darkness. The rest of the crap is stuff that uses the DnD brand without actually adding anything to the game.

WotC just needs to stop letting their marketing division steer the boat. There needs to be less hand wringing about how they can get more people of a particular demographic to buy their stuff and more of letting the designers create good stuff. What's next, articles on how we can get more homosexual Native Americans to play the game? I know a gay Native American and all he wants is for DnD to stop sucking.

The problem is, though, that D&D's original demographic was nerdy/geeky young white males. That demographic is a dwindling part of society in the United States - society is both aging and increasingly less white.

For the long-term survival of the game, D&D needed to appeal to people beyond their original demographic. Hence, it is why women no longer get a penalty to strength in game and the cover art is not of a scantily-clad blonde in the grasp of a demon. You might well have put a sticker on the books "He-Man Woman Hater's Club" feature of the month.

Something must be working, though. Because, while women are still a distinct minority in the game, there are a lot more female gamers than their used to be when I started gaming in the late 70s. Heck, I never even saw a female gamer until I got into college in '85-'86 and never saw a non-white gamer until the late 90s. My 3.5E group whose campaign ended last year had two women in it. (I know it's anecdotal evidence, but I know somebody had posted stats on it a while back)

 

[Holy Bovine]

umm, he paints himself as a misogynist pretty effectively, and then only apologizes to anyone he hurt.

I'm sure there are plenty of men at WotC who might agree that women who are victims of violent abuse from their spouses deserved it for forcing their husbands to physically assault them.

I could say a lot more on this subject, but I would hope that WotC would disassociate themselves with this person completely.

That wasn't the guy who made the misogynist comments apologizing. That was the LJ writer who was quoting Uri apologizing for having made a statement about other WotC staffers. Uri doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who apologizes for anything. So yeah - it sure as hell wasn't cherry picking or misquoting or whatever else people want to call it. It was this Uri guy being a colossal douchebag in an open forum and then getting nailed for it.

 

[Relique du Madde]

I actually thought some of those comments were funny. That is in the "omg, look at the fool commit career suicide, someone bring out the popcorn cause this will be a spectacular trainwreck/flameout" sort of way. On the bright side, maybe this means WOTC will have to lay off one less person.. since if this Uri guy was a full or part time staffer, it looks like he's about to be fired for a breach of policy (no doubt WoTC has a social media claus or will have one as a result of his postings).

Moral of the story: You should never use facebook , twitter or any social media if you have any any beliefs or ideologies that is contrary to the average "Westerner/American" mode of thought*.


* I'm pretty sure that there are cultures around the world that would agree with some of what he wrote; however, it would be very un PC to point it out which ones.

 

[Jhaelen]

Moral of the story: You should never use facebook

Yup.

 

[DeadlyUematsu]

Actually, Uri commented somewhere that those quotes were posted on a shock comedy blog that he used to run while attending school. Funny that Kynn failed to mention that. Oh well.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I know this is a weird statement coming from a grown man who spends roughly 8 hours a week pretending to be a magical gumdrop elf...

But Uri needs to grow the frig up.

Shelly can't drag us out of the basement by herself, folks!

(and for what it's worth, my all-male group includes an eladrin paladin invariably described as sparkling, two half-elves (one of which is a fey pact warlock that is also sparkling, and the other one is a ranger, and BOTH of them prefer to make friends with my horrible monsters rather than stab them), and a human rogue (who prefers the stabbing)...they're at least 3/4ths bishie as heck.)

 

[Relique du Madde]

Actually, Uri commented somewhere that those quotes were posted on a shock comedy blog that he used to run while attending school. Funny that Kynn failed to mention that. Oh well.

Ask Tracy Morgan what happens if you keep using a shock comedy schtick for part of your act. People don't care if it's shock comedy, since once they become offended, and start throwing "-ists" and "-isms" out, it's over.

 

[DeadlyUematsu]

Perhaps that's because Krynn didn't get them from a shock comedy blog, she got it from his Google Buzz.

Which could have very well served as the shock comedy blog. People use terms interchangeably.