Quote from: droog;257686Hope you do a better job of it than some of the idiots in this thread.

He's asked some interesting questions in fairness.

Quote from: droog;257686Hope you do a better job of it than some of the idiots in this thread.

I make no promises!  


TGA

Quote from: Balbinus;257676Your point is valid, but I'd note he was responding to a query of mine, and his response was to the point of my query.

So noted.

I was simply mentioning that, while 'fixing' the passages is possible, it's not really a remedy to the problem of having those passages to begin with.  I know you already understood that point, but I wanted to clarify.

Quote from: Balbinus;257666Geoffrey,

I'd be grateful if you could take a look at my post 39 and let me know if you have any thoughts on issue 2 there.

Thanks if so.

Do you mean post #39 in this thread? David R posted number 39. Please point me to the post you mean, and I'll be happy to share my thoughts.

Quote from: Geoffrey;257692Do you mean post #39 in this thread? David R posted number 39. Please point me to the post you mean, and I'll be happy to share my thoughts.

Sorry Geoffrey, my mistake, 49.

Quote from: StormBringer;257691So noted.

I was simply mentioning that, while 'fixing' the passages is possible, it's not really a remedy to the problem of having those passages to begin with.  I know you already understood that point, but I wanted to clarify.

I don't like the sound of those passages, my interest though is in how much I can ignore them and still get something useful to me from it, given how fond I am of S&S material and how poorly it tends to be served.

Quote from: RPGPundit;257681Yeah, except that I've seen the Book of Ebon Bindings. It was a supplement, basically a spellbook, written as an imitation of a "Sorcerous Grimoire" in an almost academic level of detail. It wasn't written from the point of view of saying "look how cool it is to play these evil sorcerers! You get to strangle 11 year old girls with their own hair!"

It certainly wasn't written from the point of view of the average Tekumel PC being the one who'd do these rituals. Whereas it seems in your game, the average magic-user has little option but to do so, unless he wants to be powerless (what with there being no regular D&D spells in the game- oh, and only 2 classes).

Also, my memory escapes me, but did Prof. Barker's original work anywhere specify the ages of the virgin sacrifices in question? Or go into detail about exactly how many times they were supposed to be raped before being murdered?

RPGPundit

M. A. R. Barker's The Book of Ebon Bindings is full of unflinching, clinical detail of human sacrifice, torture, and rape. Neither his book nor mine has the attitude of "Kewl! Blood and sex! Yeah!" Let us compare two passages from each work:

From the section on how to summon Gereshma'a, He of the Mound of Skulls (pp. 28-29 of The Book of Ebon Bindings): "In each of these three spaces let sacrifices be bound: in the northern pentagon a male human, in the western a female, and in the eastern an infant of not more than seven years...Then shall the evocator praise the Demon Lord and make the sacrifices. The infant shall be held head downward, and its belly shall be slit with the Ku'nur [the jag-edged sacrificial knife of the temple of Sarku'. When the blood is drained, the body shall be flung outside the diagramme."

From the ritual of The Primal Name of the Worm (p. 29 of Supplement V: CARCOSA): "This one-hour ritual requires the sorcerer to stand in cold, waist-deep water and to there drown a Jale male baby. He must rend the corpse with his own hands and spill the blood upon a stone taken from the phosphorescent cave in hex 0607."

From the section on how to summon Ka'ing (p. 66 of The Book of Ebon Bindings): "[T]wo of the evocators shall go to a female sacrifice, and while one engages in sexual congress with her, the other will slay her with a garrote made from her own hair. Then the other female sacrifice shall be treated in the same wise, and thereafter two female evocators shall perform the same act with the two male sacrifices, save that the garrotes shall be of the hair of the evocatresses instead."

From the ritual of Summon the Amphibious Ones (p. 31 of Supplement V: CARCOSA): "This eleven-hour ritual can be completed only on a fog-shrouded night. The sorcerer must obtain the root of potency found only in ruined apothecaries of the Snake-Men. The sacrifice is a virgin White girl eleven years old with long hair. The sorcerer, after partaking of the root, must engage in sexual congress with the sacrifice eleven times, afterwards strangling her with her own hair. As her life leaves her body, 10-100 of the Amphibious Ones will coalesce out of the mists."

"I have sent for your smelling salts my lady."

Quote from: Balbinus;257678Would I then be correct in assuming you won't be bringing out a Carcosa supplement for FtA?

You would be quite correct.

Holy shit, you know, I had worried occasionally that my writing for my own setting for FtA! (The Setting) might have some questionable stuff in it.  I go into some detail in cultural areas about the sexual mores of some of these cultures, and in a few cases they were fairly non-standard (some races in The Setting are fairly alien to man, and some places are fairly horrible by modern standards of living).

You know, stuff like "In the Bowlands among the nobility a young woman's virginity is considered sacrosanct, but its common among the peasantry for young people to fool around", or "landrest is so cosmopolitan that all varieties of romantic and sexual unions are common", or "children on the streets of diablo's point are lucky if they find their way into the Thieves' guild, the rest are usually doomed to a life of begging, petty crime, or prostitution".

But boy was I naive.  There is nothing that comes even close to the sort of shit that we've seen in the last two weeks, between Maid and now this game.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Balbinus;257694I don't like the sound of those passages, my interest though is in how much I can ignore them and still get something useful to me from it, given how fond I am of S&S material and how poorly it tends to be served.

To that point, I would speculate that you would have likely gotten more use out of it were it not to contain such passages at all.  With those passages intact, I will hazard a guess you will be unlikely to locate or retain a group if you use it as written, and one with your abilities should be able to glean as much or more from the source material with little effort.

Quote from: Balbinus;257602Just Fighting Men and Sorcerors is pretty limited, and means someone will almost certainly play a Sorceror.  Sorcerors need not be evil, but if they're not they lose most of their abilities, therefore the odds are anyone playing a Sorceror will eventually be tempted to evil (arguably a feature, not a bug).

In my home campaign some players have played wicked sorcerers. Things work out something like this:

1. The sorcerer starts searching for a way to bind a given Cthulhoid entity. After must effort, the sorcerer will learn what is required:

A. the specific time at which the ritual will work

B. the specific place at which the ritual will work

C. the material components required

D. the type of sacrifice(s) necessary for the ritual to work

Oftentimes, upon learning "D", the player will cease his quest to bind the Cthulhoid entity. Sometimes the wickedness required is too much. The price is too high. Other times, the player will procure all the necessities and perform the ritual. It plays out something like this:

Judge: The specified time for the ritual has arrived.

Player: I do everything required to perform the ritual.

That's it.

Quote from: Geoffrey;257711Oftentimes, upon learning "D", the player will cease his quest to bind the Cthulhoid entity. Sometimes the wickedness required is too much. The price is too high. Other times, the player will procure all the necessities and perform the ritual. It plays out something like this:

Judge: The specified time for the ritual has arrived.

Player: I do everything required to perform the ritual.

That's it.

So, your argument that the need to include such details is to deter players from pursuing it, or if they do, they will ignore it anyway?

Quote from: Geoffrey;257697M. A. R. Barker's The Book of Ebon Bindings is full of unflinching, clinical detail of human sacrifice, torture, and rape. Neither his book nor mine has the attitude of "Kewl! Blood and sex! Yeah!" Let us compare two passages from each work:

From the section on how to summon Gereshma'a, He of the Mound of Skulls (pp. 28-29 of The Book of Ebon Bindings): "In each of these three spaces let sacrifices be bound: in the northern pentagon a male human, in the western a female, and in the eastern an infant of not more than seven years...Then shall the evocator praise the Demon Lord and make the sacrifices. The infant shall be held head downward, and its belly shall be slit with the Ku'nur [the jag-edged sacrificial knife of the temple of Sarku'. When the blood is drained, the body shall be flung outside the diagramme."

From the ritual of The Primal Name of the Worm (p. 29 of Supplement V: CARCOSA): "This one-hour ritual requires the sorcerer to stand in cold, waist-deep water and to there drown a Jale male baby. He must rend the corpse with his own hands and spill the blood upon a stone taken from the phosphorescent cave in hex 0607."

From the section on how to summon Ka'ing (p. 66 of The Book of Ebon Bindings): "[T]wo of the evocators shall go to a female sacrifice, and while one engages in sexual congress with her, the other will slay her with a garrote made from her own hair. Then the other female sacrifice shall be treated in the same wise, and thereafter two female evocators shall perform the same act with the two male sacrifices, save that the garrotes shall be of the hair of the evocatresses instead."

From the ritual of Summon the Amphibious Ones (p. 31 of Supplement V: CARCOSA): "This eleven-hour ritual can be completed only on a fog-shrouded night. The sorcerer must obtain the root of potency found only in ruined apothecaries of the Snake-Men. The sacrifice is a virgin White girl eleven years old with long hair. The sorcerer, after partaking of the root, must engage in sexual congress with the sacrifice eleven times, afterwards strangling her with her own hair. As her life leaves her body, 10-100 of the Amphibious Ones will coalesce out of the mists."

Yeah, again, I can see where (I think) Prof. Barker was going with his book, the style of his writing being in imitation of ancient grimoires, and his book having been crafted in the context of a sophisticated fantasy world he created (tekumel) that he's famous (in the gaming world) for. As a sourcebook, not as his primary work.

You, on the other hand, have come out of nowhere, and this is the first thing you fixated on.

It feels a little like someone claiming that because there's some mention of incest in The Silmarillion (I don't remember if there is, but let's say there was, for arguments sake) then it justifies him writing elf-incest-porn on his blog.

RPGPundit

Quote from: StormBringer;257719So, your argument that the need to include such details is to deter players from pursuing it, or if they do, they will ignore it anyway?

That's part of it.

The level of detail does indeed make player characters LESS LIKELY to perform human sacrifice.

Quote from: Geoffrey;257685Personally, I have never had a good time reading campaign journals. That's why I fictionalized the account, to make it something more readable. I included the grisly detail so as to underscore just how wicked Yogthag and his band were. That makes the deaths of Yogthag and company all the more satisfying. In short, it was poetic justice. Those wicked reprobates who abused and murdered the girl got what they deserved.

To be frank, your answer seems a bit disingenuous, Geoffrey.  Most people would not find the AP more interesting or readable by your inclusion of this sort of content.  One is forced to consider the possibility that it made it more readable to you alone, which is the source of my concern.  For that matter, why include the details at all?  The same effect could have been achieved without them, and you apparently edited out the *really* questionable parts by the time I got to read it, which again makes me wonder why you included them in the first place.  Forgive me, but your explanation that it underscores poetic justice just doesn't ring true.

Quote from: Geoffrey;257685As for vile wish fulfillment fantasies, I never think that a man who imagines dark things must himself be wicked. For example, I don't think H. R. Giger must be a bad man because his art is so dark. Neither do I think that a man who imagines good and noble things must himself be righteous. It is all merely imagination.

Thoughts do not make one wicked.  Actions do.  But it is also true that those who surrender themselves to these most vile of fantasies often act out on them.  I see the results of the damage this does to children every day, and I do not take it lightly.  Neither should you.


TGA