Cedric said:
...consider this particular work improper?
The only thing you know about this particular work is a press release blurb, a few informed by biased opinions, and a slew of rumors. Perhaps people should wait until they have seen the final product or at least a reasonable representation of it before declaiming it as blasphemous to the ideals of gaming.
I think the press release and other releases make the nature of this work quite clear but that's beside the point. What I'm objecting to is the principle that it's always ok (or, as some people seem to think, praiseworthy) to blur the lines of acceptability as a previous poster put it. There are lots of lines of acceptability that should not be blurred and if a defense of this product--even if everyone is wrong and this is a good and valuable product for every game--cannot differentiate between lines that should and lines that should not be blurred then that defense is pernicious.
As for considering no work to be improper...
Do you mean improper for print? or improper for use in my game?
Improper for print (although I'd extend the concept to using in one's game too). I presume there are a number of things we would both consider to be improper for print (although from your post, most of the things you consider improper for print are probably also illegal to print). I think the idea of something being objectively improper (for me, you, or any other person) is one that is essential to society.
I already consider this to be improper for use in my game, and as such will exercise my right as a consumer to not purchase this product.
But to consider it unfit for print is an entirely different matter. As long as the subject matter is not constrained from print by right of law, then I consider it to be fit for print. You can guarantee that someone will find the product valueable to them.
That's precisely the problem. I can guarantee that, no matter how vile the subject you wanted to print, if it were legal, there would be a significant market for it--heck, there's a significant market for a lot of things that are illegal to print. So being vile or destructive is obviously no obstacle to marketability. Lots of someones find the vilest kinds of illegal material [specifics left out due to moderation] valuable to them. That doesn't make such material fit to print. This is obviously not the same thing but if we come to believe that marketability=printability in this case, we are likely to continue to believe it in others.
The second part of the problem is this--in most western societies, it is the people (usually indirectly) who decide what is legal and what is illegal to print. Hopefully that decision is based on an idea of what is fit to be printed. In that case, having a defining what is fit for print as what is legal to print is a hopelessly circular bit of logic. It also offers no hope for increasing the justice of laws. By that logic, if it were illegal to print D&D books, we would have no way to argue that they were fit to print. (Illegal=unfit to print, if D&D books=illegal, D&D books=unfit to print). Nor would we have an argument to make something that IS legal [like the publication of digitally altered pornography that is made to look like the boys or girls involved are underage] illegal. The equation of legality with propriety (in any area--not just the area of printing) makes principled resistance to injustice impossible it also makes.
That is why I consider the incautious arguments used to defend this book to be far more dangerous than the particular book itself. If people buy a copy of the sex book it won't be the end of the world. On the other hand, if people seriously begin to think that ANYTHING that there's a market for should be legal, we're in a world of trouble. And a system of thought that equates illegality and wrongness so closely that saying it is illegal because it is wrong is functionally the same as saying "it's illegal because it's illegal" is likely to encourage that.
In summation, if you don't like it, don't buy it. But arguing against it's right to be in print is futile and goes against 30 years of effort to make the products we enjoy weekly accepted in the marketplace.
I don't see how saying that there are things that shouldn't be printed means that D&D is automatically one of them. When I explain to people why D&D is OK, I'm not telling them I approve of Big Breasts Small Waist or Nymphology. Saying that the publishers should have been better than to [plan to] print this goes against none of the efforts I've made to make the products I enjoy accepted in the marketplace.
