If you really believe that the mere verbal description of something risks doing real harm and makes your players unsafe, then you should leave it out of your games entirely.

Quote from: yosemitemike on January 22, 2024, 07:23:19 AM
If you really believe that the mere verbal description of something risks doing real harm and makes your players unsafe, then you should leave it out of your games entirely.

Greetings!

Yeah, Yosemitemike! We have an entire generation of fragile, weak pussies in our entire society. The men and the women are fucking pathetic and weak nowadays. Words hurt their feelings and send them into triggered shrieking where they need a "safe space" to go curl up in, clutching a fucking stuffed animal.

That isn't hyperbole, either. Universities around the country testified that numerous *adult* college students reacted in that exact manner when Trump was elected as President. These "adults"--often crying hysterically--needed therapy sessions from the trauma...in addition to medication, counseling, and the stuffed animals.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

The crux of the matter is this, I believe both I and my group are rational and emotionally intelligent enough to handle the depiction of fictional child abuse so long as it is not gratuitous, pornographic, and needlessly edgy. And I am confident that if any of my group did have issues with the content they'd inform me and either deal with it, or leave. That would be their choice. I'd respect it with no judgements as they'd have communicated this to me respectfully. I do not want to force harrowing content on people. None of us want to see what amounts to Snuff content IRL. But a vague, verbal, matter of fact description will not bother the vast majority of adults and serves it's purpose of telling us what's in the folder and why we should be upset about it. It should go without saying that such things are bad. And they are being used to show off how vile and disgusting the villains are. I do not believe that it will cause "real harm". In fact "real harm" is VERY nebulous and vague term that could mean several things.   

My main fustration with this book in a nutshell is the author's insipid need to avoid controversy. I understand that depicting child abuse at all is a touchy subject to some. The author's responsibility begins and ends with a warning on the storefront and a warning in the book itself. From that point on, the group are going into the game with full knowledge of it's content. How they feel about it is their responsibity. Not the author's. But the author wants to have his cake and eat it. He wants to write an upsetting and horrific campaign. But doesn't want people to get upset at the horrific bits. So censors them, tells the GM to tell the players how to feel about that, and makes several outright demeaning and insulting assumptions about me, my group, and anyone who wants to run this. Key among them that everyone is as emotionally stunted as the author, incapable of either processing horrific things or presenting it in a way that respects a player's mental wellbeing.

That's why I called the author a manchild. Only a child assumes everyone is as bad at dealing with their emotions as them. And this manchild wrote a complete waste of a campaign. Vacuous and hollow. As useful as a soup sandwich on a rainy day.

Quote from: jhkim on January 22, 2024, 07:19:18 AMBasically, in the quotes, the authors don't come across as "spineless" or "manchild" -- they come across as inconsistent.

That makes sense to me. For a long time I have believed that much of the driving impulse behind that particular school of creative (and sociopolitical) thought is the attempt to eat one's cake and have it too -- to obtain the benefits of a situation or subject without having to pay the cost. In this case, the authors clearly want the PCs to be righteously motivated by empathy for suffering without actually risking the evocation of trauma from directly triggering that empathy.

QuoteThe players can and will be imagine horrible stuff without the description, which would be just as harmful, I would think. If a player has a problem with child sexual abuse, say, I just wouldn't use this material at all rather than using it without vague description.

Fair point. I was operating on the presumption that vagueness allowed the listener to engage with the concepts only to the degree that he or she feels comfortable -- nobody has to imagine anything worse than they feel up to handling as long as the specifics aren't forcibly jammed home, I was thinking. But the entire point of the horror genre is to evoke reactions of fear or horror, so I suppose one shouldn't hide behind tricking other people's imaginations into doing that for the author rather than trying to do it directly.

That said, as others have already observed, if one isn't prepared to tolerate distress, one shouldn't engage with material likely to be distressing -- wanting not to evoke trauma is a respectable motivation, but at some point, you gotta say, "If you can't take the heat, it's better to stay out of the kitchen."

Quote from: King Tyranno on January 22, 2024, 08:01:07 AMMy main frustration with this book in a nutshell is the author's insipid need to avoid controversy.

Out of curiosity, is the cartoon-cat folder's contents the only thing in the adventure so censored?  Or are there other parts where the authors issue similar injunctions, e.g. "don't get into details of what the monster looks like because this is a very common nightmare image that some players may have been traumatized by", etc.?

What's interesting me about the emerging consensus is that nobody has a problem leaving out the details of genuinely horrific real-life abuse -- it's the virtue-signaling browbeating lectures on why one should do this that are annoying everyone. I have to admit that the more I think about it, the more I think these lectures are as much self-protective greengrocer's signs (q.v. Havel) as sincerely intended warnings or instructions, i.e., they are less worried about how they might hurt others and more worried about how others will accuse them of not caring about how they might hurt others. One side effect of spending a lot of time in cancel culture is that one becomes very attentive to not giving excuses to others for cancellation.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on January 22, 2024, 08:32:06 AM

Quote from: King Tyranno on January 22, 2024, 08:01:07 AMMy main frustration with this book in a nutshell is the author's insipid need to avoid controversy.

Out of curiosity, is the cartoon-cat folder's contents the only thing in the adventure so censored?  Or are there other parts where the authors issue similar injunctions, e.g. "don't get into details of what the monster looks like because this is a very common nightmare image that some players may have been traumatized by", etc.?

No it is not. That's the really fustrating thing about this adventure. Multiple times it builds to a crescendo where some horrific thing is meant to happen and then the author doesn't tell you what it is, tells you off for wondering what it might be, and then tells you to not tell the group what the thing is. Instead, players just roll on a table that then tells that player what to feel about the thing they can't see or describe or even think about for risk of causing meta harm to players. It's so awkward. You're robbing the players of agency, creating an issue where the campaign stops dead unless directly forced forward in a meta way, and then moving on as if that horrific thing that can't be described did happen. You just can't show it to the players. It's so messy when you could just say

" you find some video tapes on the table.  Somehow one is playing on the nearby monitor. Upon looking at that monitor you realise you are watching a graphic snuff film of a cultist doing unspeakable things to a child. Roll 0/5 sanity from the horrific."

There you go. I didn't outright describe exactly what was going on because I don't need to. But I have made the players aware the cultists are filming fucked up snuff films that are a huge part of the unfolding plot. And if the author didn't want to show that why did he put it in the adventure only to censor it?

Quote from: King Tyranno on January 22, 2024, 09:10:14 AM
And if the author didn't want to show that why did he put it in the adventure only to censor it?

You may as well ask other crazy questions of them and their ilk like:

Why do you make money off of HP Lovecraft, while loathing and besmirching everything about the man?

Why are you in a hobby you like so little that you want it to massively change, to the point of being unrecognizable?

Why do you constantly shit on your own customers?

Why do you write horror, when you're a pearl-clutching prude?



The answer to most of these are "I'm waiting on the Modern Audience to arrive, then my diceless game about Trans-feelings will be bigger than D&D. Until then I parasitize healthy IPs till they die, then move on."

Quote from: yosemitemike on January 22, 2024, 07:23:19 AM
If you really believe that the mere verbal description of something risks doing real harm and makes your players unsafe, then you should leave it out of your games entirely.

If they believe that, maybe they shouldn't be playing RPGs at all.

Quote from: King Tyranno on January 22, 2024, 09:10:14 AM
No it is not. That's the really fustrating thing about this adventure. Multiple times it builds to a crescendo where some horrific thing is meant to happen and then the author doesn't tell you what it is, tells you off for wondering what it might be, and then tells you to not tell the group what the thing is. Instead, players just roll on a table that then tells that player what to feel about the thing they can't see or describe or even think about for risk of causing meta harm to players. It's so awkward. You're robbing the players of agency, creating an issue where the campaign stops dead unless directly forced forward in a meta way, and then moving on as if that horrific thing that can't be described did happen. You just can't show it to the players. It's so messy when you could just say

" you find some video tapes on the table.  Somehow one is playing on the nearby monitor. Upon looking at that monitor you realise you are watching a graphic snuff film of a cultist doing unspeakable things to a child. Roll 0/5 sanity from the horrific."

There you go. I didn't outright describe exactly what was going on because I don't need to. But I have made the players aware the cultists are filming fucked up snuff films that are a huge part of the unfolding plot. And if the author didn't want to show that why did he put it in the adventure only to censor it?

Crazy. The author's approach is clearly vague and stupid, and I'd argue it works against the author's intentions of keeping everyone "safe". Some player is going to blurt out what he thinks, and it may come as an unwelcome surprise to other players. In other words, you can't tiptoe around a topic unless you know what the topic is!

Quote from: Grognard GM on January 22, 2024, 06:32:02 AM

If a subject is too taboo to discuss, don't make a fucking rpg campaign about it.

Don't be disingenuious. You played/play WoD games just like I did.

Killing Pedophiles in a horror games is like killing Nazis in a Pulp game. They're an enemy the players don't have to feel any sort of guilt over when it comes to ending their lives.

You just don't need to get into graphic details about the pedophile's crimes in the game. It's enough to say, "You see evidence of them committing horrific crimes against children" and leave it at that. This is one area where you just MIGHT have someone at your table who went through this abuse, and is all for killing the Pedo bad guys as catharsis but doesn't need the detailed descriptions of the broken children added in.

Hell, last game session I did a romeo and juliet take between a Lizard Man and a Bullywog Princess, where the party snuck the princess out to the Lizard Man and he ripped her head off to establish his tribes dominance over the swamp, the look on one of the younger gamers at the hobby shop not my table, totally worth it.

Quote from: Orphan81 on January 22, 2024, 03:00:44 PM

Quote from: Grognard GM on January 22, 2024, 06:32:02 AM

If a subject is too taboo to discuss, don't make a fucking rpg campaign about it.

Don't be disingenuious. You played/play WoD games just like I did.

Killing Pedophiles in a horror games is like killing Nazis in a Pulp game. They're an enemy the players don't have to feel any sort of guilt over when it comes to ending their lives.

You just don't need to get into graphic details about the pedophile's crimes in the game. It's enough to say, "You see evidence of them committing horrific crimes against children" and leave it at that. This is one area where you just MIGHT have someone at your table who went through this abuse, and is all for killing the Pedo bad guys as catharsis but doesn't need the detailed descriptions of the broken children added in.

Who's being disingenuous? I never suggested graphic detail is needed, or wanted. But from King Tyranno's description, this is like a horror adventure written by Tipper Gore. "Some icky meanies are doing the nasties. I won't even hint at what they are, because I know you agree that horror games are no place for horror!"

KT listed plenty of ways they could handle it in an oblique manner, while still providing information. But then KT actually enjoys horror, unlike, apparently, the author.

If the writer can't write that material, then either write something else or hire a different writer. This isn't rocket science.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on January 22, 2024, 03:42:11 PM
If the writer can't write that material, then either write something else or hire a different writer. This isn't rocket science.

Exactly. Can't handle the heat? Stay out of the kitchen.

Quote from: Orphan81 on January 22, 2024, 01:18:00 AM
Man, when it comes to Child Abuse, call me crazy, but I don't think anyone should be describing that in any kind of detail at their table.

Even Werewolf 1st edition, back at Whitewolf's most edgy, had a wyrm cult of child abusers called "The Seventh Generation" and was like, "Don't get into the details of what they do."

I think if fucking Whitewolf back in 1992 with "Rage Across New York" was saying, "Don't do detailed child abuse scenes" I'm going to give Delta Green in 2024 a pass in saying, "Don't detail what's in the red folder about the Orphanage victims." It's not rocket science to say, "You look in the folder, it revolts you, causes you sanity loss, and fills you with determination that the folks running this Orphange NEED TO FUCKING DIE."

This is the same White Wolf that did Orphan Grinder.