The Red Dragon's Interview is up!

[billd91]

OK, EVERYONE! TIME TO TAKE ALL COMICS AND HUMOR OFF YOUR COMPANY'S WEBSITES AND CORPORATE-OWNED FANSITES!

-O

Perhaps a better piece of advice would be: Take off humor or comics making light of controversies broiling among your customers about different products of yours.

Do we see companies like Microsoft poking fun of people sticking to XP vs adopters of Vista even though there are plenty of vehement Vista detractors out there? They've got much stronger tools at their disposal to discourage XP usage than WotC has to discourage 3.5 hold-outs and, in theory, more power to get away with that kind of behavior because, in order to get important software support, you really do need to eventually upgrade.

WotC should leave the humor to 3rd parties who aren't directly involved and keep away from any impression of fanning the flames.

 

[billd91]

I think that depends on what you think, "act mature" means.

Last time I checked, a sense of humor was required for maturity, and the ability to self-critique - and sometimes those things go together. Mature people keep a sense of perspective and proportion most of the time.

And maturity also requires the wisdom to know when to unleash that sense of humor against whom to unleash it. I'm not sure WotC PR has that wisdom.

 

[Maggan]

Thinking about it, one of my favourite sections in Dragon used to be Dragon Mirth. With lots of bizarre jokes set in a D&D context. I seem to remember a lot of jokes about death and dismemberment and some even about dragons eating adventurers.

If it was good enough for Dragon, even Dragon when Gygax had the helm, I think it's good enough for me now.

/M

 

[Maggan]

Do we see companies like Microsoft poking fun of people sticking to XP vs adopters of Vista even though there are plenty of vehement Vista detractors out there?

Thew jury is still out on whether the Mojave Experiment is or isn't calling Vista critics and XP holdouts morons. As for the Seinfeld/Gate ads ... I'm not really sure they are meant to bolster the XP crowd.

/M

 

[El Mahdi]

Thew jury is still out on whether the Mojave Experiment is or isn't calling Vista critics and XP holdouts morons. As for the Seinfeld/Gate ads ... I'm not really sure they are meant to bolster the XP crowd.

/M

I thought XP holdouts were "modrons", not "morons".

 

[Leatherhead]

So let me see if I understand. You're positing a situation where someone who doesn't know a thing about D&D happens to go to the horribly-designed D&D website, picks the cartoon link at random, sees a flash cartoon which is clearly for entertainment value, and mistakes the cartoon for the actual game of Dungeons & Dragons?

You are getting closer. It's not that random a choice to click on that link for information. It is labeled as a behind the scenes interview about 4th edition. It is a flash cartoon, but it is not unheard of for companies to use cartoons as their spokespersons or to get information out about their products (just look at insurance commercials). So someone clicks the link possibly expecting something along the lines of an interview with the game designers and instead they get dragonpoo dropping on peoples heads. What kind of impression of DnD do you suppose this with give them?

OK, EVERYONE! TIME TO TAKE ALL COMICS AND HUMOR OFF YOUR COMPANY'S WEBSITES AND CORPORATE-OWNED FANSITES!

Or just be more aware of what you are putting into them and whom might be viewing them.

 

[Scribble]

You are getting closer. It's not that random a choice to click on that link for information. It is labeled as a behind the scenes interview about 4th edition. It is a flash cartoon, but it is not unheard of for companies to use cartoons as their spokespersons or to get information out about their products (just look at insurance commercials). So someone clicks the link possibly expecting something along the lines of an interview with the game designers and instead they get dragonpoo dropping on peoples heads. What kind of impression of DnD do you suppose this with give them?

Again what I think you're missing is target audience.

Ever see the Scion little deviants ads? They feature these little monsters running al over driving scions and ripping the heads off of the "sheeple."

Seems pretty offensive, but again you have to consider Scion's target audience.

Scion was Toyota responding to the negative image of "cars for old people kind of like the Honda but not as good."

As a result thwe scion marketing has always been about people who are "rebels" and want their own image.

Or just be more aware of what you are putting into them and whom might be viewing them.

I think they are very aware.

 

[Obryn]

You are getting closer. It's not that random a choice to click on that link for information. It is labeled as a behind the scenes interview about 4th edition. It is a flash cartoon, but it is not unheard of for companies to use cartoons as their spokespersons or to get information out about their products (just look at insurance commercials). So someone clicks the link possibly expecting something along the lines of an interview with the game designers and instead they get dragonpoo dropping on peoples heads. What kind of impression of DnD do you suppose this with give them?

"This is a fun game that doesn't take itself too seriously."

Or just be more aware of what you are putting into them and whom might be viewing them.

...I think they have a better idea than you do.

-O

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Personally, in reality, I find D&D closer in tone to SLAYERS than say RECORD OF LODOSS WARS.

Sure, we all want to play an epic serious campaign like RoLW, but usually, the campaign's tone is closer to Slayers (lots of laughs with small scenes of grim which quickly get made fun of)

I find it to be this way too. I think part of the problem is if you never allow cinematic descriptions of things happening and instead always play by the book with dice rolling, which will frequently work to actively ruin any such moments, IME.

Heck, just ran a game last night, and had some goblins trying to attack Brixashulty for food, after murdering the halfling shepards tending to them. The PCs walked into it and decided to just watch at first instead of get involved. I described a Brixashulty killing a goblin w/o rolling, cause the goblins should have been in deep s*@t. Instead, once I actually started rolling, the poor Brix couldn't get above a 5 on the d20, and the goblins kept getting huge rolls and crits, slowly winning until the PCs intervened.

 

[justanobody]

To put this into perspective for some, and it has already been expressed well by a few.

To make humor is one thing, but the context of which it was done is another.

I have been in a comic store before where a father brought in his son for some comics. Now this boy was not allowed to read them because of the lewd costumes and outfits of the females in them. The reason he was being allowed to get some was that his school had an art project/report to make.

The father was not too happy with the reason or the assignement chosen by his son but agreed.

The son had decided to write about the different art styles of comics from a viewpoint of someone that does not read them.

This father did not have much problesm with half of the comics, but when it got down to scantily clad and excessive blood he had a problem.

His son was able to convince him to buy about 10 total for the school assigment even those including the blood and lesser dressed women in order to show a range of atristic styles.

Now is a middle school (guessing here) boy not the target audience for comic books? You have anime from Japan that is family programming that is reduced in blood for American audiences.

It isn't so much the target audience for these things as it is how such a thing promotes the game by exitance on the official website.

The boy buying comics never returned to the store, and didn't really want the comics when done so his father returned them for a consignment fee to resale them.

Would someone like this allow his child to participate in a game who goes around telling poop jokes?

What about other parents. The target audience is something like ages 11 and up right? So is D&D targetted at only blue collar families?

Also the problem is not so much the poop jokes, but the treatment of the customer base and after Glemax took a turn for the worse from making Wizards have a home for gamers and then turn around its views and say we don't care but a select few types of gamers.

This seems an elitist attitude and may serve to explain why Gleemax was unable to be fully realized.

I would wonder what Mr. Rouse as the brand manager of D&D has to say about what this cartoon says about D&D itself as a brand name.

I will read back through this thread and other places to see if he has anything to say about it, but I suspect he is taxed with working on the revisions to the GSL in addition to his other duties.