RPG designer discovers that the 70s were less prudish than every other decade since, film at 11.

I like my topless houris as much as the next red-blooded heterosexual male, and I too love the grittier aesthetics of older fantasy. I'm of two minds on the OSR Carcosa debacle, though; I do think the response was exaggerated, but I also think that much of the violent sexual material felt a bit gratuitous.

But to say that excising the more sensual figures and/or the scarier monsters was the beginning of the end is fairly silly. There's more to role-playing games than softcore fanservice and fugly monsters.

Quote from: The Butcher;449763There's more to role-playing games than softcore fanservice and fugly monsters.

Correct.

Unless, of course, you are a game designer who relies on softcore fanservice and fugly monsters.

Quote from: Esgaldil;449762Question for non-Americans and citizens of the world: Is the Reagan-era flinch - the segregation of fantasy art (along with everything else) into family friendly and adults only just something the United States is hung up on, and affects y'all only to the extent that our exports are so ubiquitous?

Hailing from a country in which nudity gets open TV primetime broadcasts every Carnival, I'm not sure I'm the best person to answer this, but it does strike one as a definitely American (and British) phenomenon.

The thing is, the local output of fantasy art is slim to none, and mostly irrelevant to the local gaming community. But the first Brazilian RPG, Tagmar (1991), a class-and-level-based color-coded chart-resolution fantasy heartbreaker, had plenty of risqué art, usually fairly amateurish, of the sort that would look right at home in the LBBs or Arduin.

Americans are puritan pussybitches.

WTF is new? We live in a culture where war images are scrubbed from television because dead soldiers aren't patriotic except when hidden under manicured lawns.

I think folks are reading too much into the monsters and nudity aspect... and the fact that Ron Edwards' name is on the article.
I took it as his giving voice to the same joy/frustration I get whenever I look at something that is new, raw and unsullied by marketing 'know how'.
Such as... why I enjoy college radio more than the commercial stuff... BECAUSE of (not despite) the DJs being amateurs who have no clue about sounding 'professional' (I kind of hate that word). I like the awkward silences, the lack of training/oversight that lets each announcer be unique... not to mention the willingness to play music that has no huge fan following yet. It has the air of 'anything can happen'.

Anything truly new goes through that period before the suits find it... before anyone obsessed with money takes notice of it... where the energy is high even if the talent is low. Money can buy the talent... but it can't replace that creative thrill, that willingness to experiment... commercial concerns are inimical to it.
Television started out with a lot of experimentation too... not so much nudity and monsters but live shows... all the Chicago School of Television stuff.
Now, at least in the U.S., it's overproduced and stuffy... it's a wonder anything interesting ever gets on. The old days of local TV shows just making stuff up on the fly is pretty much gone... replaced with infomercials.

Same with Hollywood, the Silent Era movies are wonderfully quirky in the things people would try... amazing and innovative stuff coming along so quickly... now Hollywood is synonymous with movies designed by accountants. Safe and boring.

It's not so much that games were better back then... it's that they had that pirate-radio/closed-circuit TV/fanzine energy that happens when no one is sure there is an audience out there... 'so lets do whatever the fuck we want.'

Now everyone is worried about 'the children' and being family-friendly... "for god's sake let's not have anything at the game store that might scare little Timmy (or somehow offend his parents)."
It's not like I want to play gang-rape RPGs... but I do enjoy stuff that feels less safe and familiar... has more of that DIY energy that MIGHT lead me to something unexpected.  
Having a big naked demon (badly drawn) on the front is no assurance of anything... but I'm gonna pick that up and look at it long before the shiny 4-colour thing with the Larry Elmore cover... because Larry Elmore costs a lot of money... which means the people behind it were probably a lot more nervous about what someone else would think.

I'm not so much a fan of the OSR as I am LOW FI/DIY.

QuoteIt's not so much that games were better back then... it's that they had that pirate-radio/closed-circuit TV/fanzine energy that happens when no one is sure there is an audience out there... 'so lets do whatever the fuck we want.'

Bingo, my good man.

And I think that, more than any specific game or reconstruction of the past, that people should be seeking to recapture.

Quote from: Esgaldil;449762Question for non-Americans and citizens of the world: Is the Reagan-era flinch - the segregation of fantasy art (along with everything else) into family friendly and adults only just something the United States is hung up on, and affects y'all only to the extent that our exports are so ubiquitous?

Few other countries match American puritanism. Indeed, the places I witnessed parallel developments included Islamic countries, with Arabia and Iran leading. There, unless they came to me in diplomatic pouches, images in the magazines and periodicals I received through normal postal services were invariably censored by the Mutawa. Images were crudely blacked out, or even hacked out with scissors, and some pages were removed.

I was quite surprised that even though my Samsonite luggage was almost completely destroyed at customs in Dharan and my magazines hacked up and defaced, that my 1e DMG, PHB, and MM had survived the ordeal unconfiscated and unmodified. Score one for the Giant Demon on the cover of DMG.

Germany, Paris, a breath of fresh air compared to that. Also not that bad yet here in the U.S.

The side effect of emphasizing prudery to that degree is the same in all the countries that practice it, the population that is repressed expends extra energy to emphasize the extreme opposite which is equally distasteful.

It's just not the focus, so doesn't become an issue.

Quote from: One Horse Town;449636Batdick researchers.

FIFY.

Ron Edwards says something wrong, and stupid.  In other news, sun rises in east, sets in west and water found to be wet.

Quote from: Esgaldil;449762Question for non-Americans and citizens of the world: Is the Reagan-era flinch - the segregation of fantasy art (along with everything else) into family friendly and adults only just something the United States is hung up on, and affects y'all only to the extent that our exports are so ubiquitous?

It's not as stark in Canada, but it does exist. Actually, it's funny because a woman can walk around topless in Toronto, but you have to wait until 9pm to show boobs on TV.

QuoteBatdick researchers.

That never gets old. :cool:

Quote from: Simlasa;449783Anything truly new goes through that period before the suits find it... before anyone obsessed with money takes notice of it... where the energy is high even if the talent is low. Money can buy the talent... but it can't replace that creative thrill, that willingness to experiment... commercial concerns are inimical to it.
...
It's not so much that games were better back then... it's that they had that pirate-radio/closed-circuit TV/fanzine energy that happens when no one is sure there is an audience out there... 'so lets do whatever the fuck we want.'

Yes, I am on board with this, and this is also why the essay almost finds an important point but misses it. It is not really about risqué content, since transgression is just as safe and commodified as any form of mass entertainment, it just comes with a different sort of advertising. Nakedness - I mean, in the age of ubiquitous free pornography for every possible taste? That's not the issue. User-driven gaming, participative imagination, the spirit of collaborative fun, and the joy of creating something outlandishly imaginative, is the issue, whether it has naked boobs or not.

Quote from: Esgaldil;449762Question for non-Americans and citizens of the world: Is the Reagan-era flinch - the segregation of fantasy art (along with everything else) into family friendly and adults only just something the United States is hung up on, and affects y'all only to the extent that our exports are so ubiquitous?

In Britain: When Political Correctness took hold in the late '80s, nudity was progressively banished from comedy TV shows, where bare breasts had been fairly common, and restricted to "serious" TV  drama, where full frontal nudity - female, or male sans erection - remained fine.

It was certainly nothing to do with Thatcher & Reagan - the Thatcherites & Reaganites don't give a damn about culture, unless maybe the Red Dawn/Rocky IV type movies were Reagan influenced.  The Right in Britain, like your US establishment Republicans, only cares about economics, there is no significant Religious Conservative Right; and the culture war that does take place is between:

(a) Marcuse/Adorno "Transvaluation of All Values" New Left cultural Marxist perverts like Edwards, who seek to maximise depravity to awaken us from our False Consciousness, and

(b) Second-wave feminists, Stalinists, Nanny Staters and other orthodox-Left prudes, like your Tipper Gore, who are more about keeping their boot stamping on our faces forever, to paraphrase Orwell.  

Type (b) are generally dominant in the BBC and reigned unchallenged in the New Labour era, 1997-2010.  Type (a) were more prominent in the '80s, are traditionally influential at the Channel 4 TV station, dominate the theatre and some other arts, and may enjoy a resurgence now we have a Tory government again.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;449800It's not as stark in Canada, but it does exist. Actually, it's funny because a woman can walk around topless in Toronto, but you have to wait until 9pm to show boobs on TV.

My understanding is that Canadian women don't actually *do* that unless they're making a political statement, they just want the *right* to do that.  Whereas if you visit a city park in Hamburg you'll often see women sunbathing topless.   And it's still pretty ubiquitous on French beaches, at least outside Islamised areas.

Quote from: David Johansen;449581I've said for years that the best thing that could happen to D&D is for it to become subversive again.  Yes, visually nudity is part of it.  But I think the glossy, professional groomed look in general is a weakness and a sign of the wider malease far more than a few stray tities.

No fucking shit.  I think that is honestly part of the underlying turn-off for 3.x and later.  I have an instinctive and visceral negative reaction to four-colour glossy.  While recent map products are average or better in the design, the pretty colours and battle-mat styling cancels out any good qualities from the cartography.  Same with the books; if there is a glare on the page that I am reading, and I have to adjust or shift around to read it, scrap it and go with acid-free plain white, please.

Quote from: S'mon;449845In Britain: When Political Correctness took hold in the late '80s, nudity was progressively banished from comedy TV shows, where bare breasts had been fairly common, and restricted to "serious" TV  drama, where full frontal nudity - female, or male sans erection - remained fine.

It was certainly nothing to do with Thatcher & Reagan - the Thatcherites & Reaganites don't give a damn about culture, unless maybe the Red Dawn/Rocky IV type movies were Reagan influenced.  The Right in Britain, like your US establishment Republicans, only cares about economics, there is no significant Religious Conservative Right; and the culture war that does take place is between:

(a) Marcuse/Adorno "Transvaluation of All Values" New Left cultural Marxist perverts like Edwards, who seek to maximise depravity to awaken us from our False Consciousness, and

(b) Second-wave feminists, Stalinists, Nanny Staters and other orthodox-Left prudes, like your Tipper Gore, who are more about keeping their boot stamping on our faces forever, to paraphrase Orwell.  

Type (b) are generally dominant in the BBC and reigned unchallenged in the New Labour era, 1997-2010.  Type (a) were more prominent in the '80s, are traditionally influential at the Channel 4 TV station, dominate the theatre and some other arts, and may enjoy a resurgence now we have a Tory government again.

I don't recall bare breasts being remotely common in the 1970s and '80s on British tv. When Channel 4 introduced its blue triangle stuff in the '80s it was a big deal precisely because it meant that (late night in the context of foreign arthouse movies) there was on screen nudity.

As for the Thatcherites, they certainly did care about culture. They were generally hostile to any form of non-traditional art and regularly browbeat the Beeb about it (a popular hobby for politicians of all stripes and it took New Labour I admit to finally break the Beeb).

That aside, Ron Edwards writes yet afuckinggain about sex. Does he have no other topics?

Edit: The Right isn't a monolith. Some cared only about economics. Some cared a very great deal about social issues (some more than they did about economics). Like all movements it's a broad church. That said I'd say more care about social issues than don't.