Thought-provoking piece by Ron Edwards here:
http://adept-press.com/ideas-and-discourse/other-essays/naked-went-the-gamer/
Sums up a lot of my feeling about what is lacking in modern fantasy gaming. Instead of the very free-flowing mix found in the 1970s, we have a rather hide-bound and apologetic PG rated version (and the correction of the OSR has been partial at best). Edwards really got the point about how the nudity in the art of the early games was not transgressive but emblematic of quite a different psychological environment, the polar opposite to the monthly 50-page drag-downs on "cheesecake" art found on TBP.
In b4:
I think people tend to be nostalgic for the period they were introduced to gaming. I grew up in the 80s and 90s, so my first gaming experience was probably around 1985 or 1986. Basically played as a player with 1E and GM'd using 2E. I loved a lot of the material coming out during the 2E era and still have fond memories of it.
Just in general, I think the 80s was a great time to be around if you were into fantasy. D&D was pretty popular, and (in the early 80s at least) there were a ton of fantasy films coming out (many of them quite gritty).
Heh, well, there's always Otherworld miniatures.
On the other hand, my feelings are mixed. Does this mean FATAL and The Book of Erotic Fantasy are healthier aspects of the hobby? I think not.
I'm pretty conservative and my general preference is for modesty. My games will not be featuring balls, cocks, vaginas or even uncovered titties. That doesn't mean I don't think there's no place for them in the works of others.
I'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.
Quote from: David Johansen;449581On the other hand, my feelings are mixed. Does this mean FATAL and The Book of Erotic Fantasy are healthier aspects of the hobby? I think not.
I don't think Edwards thinks that, either, and he makes clear the divide between porn and genre appropriate art in the article.
Both FATAL and TBoEF fall into the "porn" category because they don't serve any other purpose other than the tickle the fucked up fancies of their creators.
I sympathize with a great deal of what Edwards is talking about, but I think he's confusing a number of different cultural shifts. The "Protect the Children" movement of the eighties that remains with us today (and is seen most strangely in the useless attempts to protect anyone under the age of 18 from ever seeing a nipple or hearing the word fuck) is everywhere. Everything with a visual or audible component has been seperated into "All Ages" and "Adults Only", to the detriment of the culture. Novels are the only exception, grandfathered into public libraries through the credentials of Mark Twain and Kurt Vonnegut and a reflexive repulsion towards book burning that somehow endured through the hysteria of the last thirty years.
The other, completely unrelated thing that has happened is that RPGs have become increasingly profit driven without becoming any more mainstream. Edwards expresses contempt for game designers that capitulate to save themselves, but these decisions have been made for business reasons, and no one should expect anything different.
When he dismisses White Wolf as "so compromised by branding and target marketing as to nullify any actual underground content or importance", though, I have no idea what he's talking about. Anyone?
I never thought I'd say this about something RE had written, but the dude's right. So right. I've seen it for years, been guilty of it myself. Gamers are shit scared of gaming becoming scary again, and the amount of reflexive self-censorship and shouting down of anything that dares break that self-imposed moral flinch is as predictable as clockwork.
And it ties right into what I've been saying about the death of an un-self-censored creativity in gaming. People have forgotten what it was even like to just do some shit because it sounds cool, they're all too busy ironically parroting geek cliches and don't even understand or fathom how to actually create.
The very fact that someone thought an "old school primer" was needed is emblematic of the failure of imagination endemic to the hobby. That someone felt they needed to be told "how" to imagine again, it's mind-boggling.
Geek culture, not just here but everywhere, but especially here, has been basically creatively dead for a while. Just pick a genre, check off the list of tropes, and if you're feeling really "creative" that day, tack on some totally unrelated element like Cthulhu or Zombies or Steampunk, and call it a day.
It's the Changeling: the Dreaming model of creativity.
Yeah, it's a broader cultural shift than just RPGs.
QuoteWhen he dismisses White Wolf as "so compromised by branding and target marketing as to nullify any actual underground content or importance", though, I have no idea what he's talking about. Anyone?
I think he's referring to Black Dog Press. WW had a tendency to ghettoize the really outre books and concepts to it's secondary label where they were sold out of reach in shrink-wrapped plastic, though the corebooks toed the line at times.
It's also important to remember that Edwards does hold a bit of a grudge against Vampire (it was the target of the infamous "brain damage" and "child molestation" remarks).
Quote from: J Arcane;449587Geek culture, not just here but everywhere, but especially here, has been basically creatively dead for a while. Just pick a genre, check off the list of tropes, and if you're feeling really "creative" that day, tack on some totally unrelated element like Cthulhu or Zombies or Steampunk, and call it a day.
Is there a possibility the "well has run dry" for new ideas, which are not just a "thinly disguised" recycling of generic tropes and cliches?
Quality of the title aside, I wonder if the whole "Dragon Age 2 isn't made for straight-male gamers" bs is somehow an extension of this type of conservatism into modern video-game culture? Although it's probably just the dude getting taken out of his comfort-zone.
Quote from: ggroy;449591Is there a possibility the "well has run dry" for new ideas, which are not just a "thinly disguised" recycling of generic tropes and cliches?
Somewhere, some writer (whose name escapes me) said that nothing is original. Everyone knows that line. But he also said that when you do steal, you need to steal lovingly and honestly.
Only steal what speaks to you personally. Because if you do that, then your own vision of those elements will create something worthwhile.
The problem is when certain tropes or genre elements are just taken because they're subcultural memes rather than the designer or author considering how they want those elements to interact, and what about it speaks to them on a personal level. They're used because they're popular and familiar, not because the elements used moved the creator in some way.
Quote from: J Arcane;449587Geek culture, not just here but everywhere, but especially here, has been basically creatively dead for a while. Just pick a genre, check off the list of tropes, and if you're feeling really "creative" that day, tack on some totally unrelated element like Cthulhu or Zombies or Steampunk, and call it a day.
The question has become "What will sell?" not "What would be awesome?" But we need to move forward. This is how I stalled out on Dark Passages (which needs a better name since there's also Dark Dungeons out there) I want to create my own stuff not regurgitate someone elses. It's not as much a reaction to D&D's mechanics (which I've never been overly fond of) as much as the thought of transposing dozens more spells and monsters that already exist in dozens of other games. Realizing this is actually getting me back in the mode of doing some support for it (maybe I'll call it Passage Punk)
For me rpgs have always been about the creative exercise which is why board games do nothing for me. I love miniatures games not because I win but because I get to paint figures and build scenery. I wonder if that might not be a better angle for packaging a starter set.
Not modular plastic figures (which I can't afford to produce) but unpainted metal ones. Possibly with separate heads and weapons. Not printed cardstock scenery but discussions of creating scenery and plans. Huh...I think that's coming together in my head pretty well.
A starter game as a box full of possibilities and ideas not heartless, effortless toys. Games Workshop is smarter than I thought.
Quote from: J Arcane;449587Geek culture, not just here but everywhere, but especially here, has been basically creatively dead for a while. Just pick a genre, check off the list of tropes, and if you're feeling really "creative" that day, tack on some totally unrelated element like Cthulhu or Zombies or Steampunk, and call it a day.
It's the Changeling: the Dreaming model of creativity.
I call bullshit. Geek culture during the time we're talking about has included Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Joss Whedon, Neal Stephenson, Edgar Wright, Grant Morrison, Garth Ennis, Pixar, Mike Mignola, Jeff Smith, Matt Groening, Dave Sim, Philip Pullman, Guillermo del Toro, Terry Gilliam, Genndy Tartakovsky... cross off anyone you think is garbage and I'm sure you can put five more names in its place.
Creative, imaginative geek culture is alive and well, even if inventing new genres is not happening at the rate it seemed to be in the early seventies. If originality is the standard, Shakespeare is a third rate hack and literature has been stagnant since Verne and Wells. Quality is better than newness, and good, thought-provoking, subversive fantasy has been doing just fine even with all the silly titty restrictions.
I feel bad for people who aren't enjoying their gaming.
Seanchai
It's difficult to explain to rational, educated people what it was like in the early 80s, when people were seeing the devil everywhere. Record burning parties, comics confiscated off trucks, D&D on 60 Minutes. I'm glad it's not like that now.
At the same time, though, that kind of opposition is required for any kind of a feeling of "underground" to emerge. People have to be hysterical in order for the devil's influence in pop culture to be meaningful. RPGs can be underground anymore, because everyone understands how harmless they are. Mission accomplished. Even comparatively outre products like Carcosa or The Book of Ebon Bindings aren't going to really irritate anyone anymore.
I was refered to Ms. Seal's office for Reading the Book of Ebon Bindings at lunch. She called me in and I cooled my heels for 40 minutes as she browsed through it. Her disappointment was palpable as I explained that it was some kind of nerd stuff. She was hoping for devil cult, I'm sure. But in a public school in these less hysterical days, your rights to be in a devil cult are secure, as long as you're not reading gun magazines. No one cared about the gun magazines I read in high school.
It's a cultural shift. People are now afraid of teenagers for things they actually do, rather than the devil's magic manifesting when they play their records backwards. It's sad to me. But it's not mysterious or inexplicable.
What you've just listed off is like a checklist of post-modernist nonsense. Some of it good post-modernist nonsense, but it is all exactly what I am talking about.
Gaiman, Moore, Whedon, Mignola, Wright, even Tartakovsky are expressly about reacting to existing cliches instead of inventing something of their own.
Even Del Toro, much as I love the Faun's Labyrinth, was doing a very self-referential thing with the way he deconstructs a child's fantasy to question it's reality. It's a brilliant piece, but it's a piece that works by playing on hoary memes well established in the audience's psyche.
I don't know how you can say it's a Reagan thing. The main movement was led by Tipper Gore, a Democrat. And it's continued, mainly with Democratic supporters, in the expansion of political correctness into all aspects of life.
Quote from: Seanchai;449596I feel bad for people who aren't enjoying their gaming.
Seanchai
Right, I forgot that offering a critique of gaming trends prevents you from enjoying, playing, or making (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE_msAKWdOs), games.
It was a Reagan thing. It started before Tipper Gore and her insidious PMRC. I'm glad you brought her up. One of the things that makes me happy I grew up when I did was seeing Dee Schnieder, Frank Zappa, and John, by god, Denver sitting together at a table before Congress giving her the business. Her beady little eyes shrivelled to pinpricks.
oh--and Arcane's right. There isn't any geek culture anymore. The geeks that built it got older and disproportionately affluent, and the things they enjoyed became money-makers. It's all about slef-reference, collectabilty, and kitch now. There's absolutely nothing novel in it anymore. Which again--isn't a mystery. These cutting edge things belong to younger people. But like any self-respecting curmudgeonly old fart, I don't know what the underground is anymore. I followed the skatepunks for a while as they surfaced from underground to mainstream. Hopefully, whatever it is eschews the internet.
The censorship of American culture, especially youth culture, has been a pretty thoroughly bipartisan affair.
As a youth, it was one of the sources of my ultimate disenfranchisement from the American two-party system.
Quote from: Peregrin;449605Right, I forgot that offering a critique of gaming trends prevents you from enjoying, playing, or making (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE_msAKWdOs), games.
Is this how it's going to be? You're going to be a little bitch every time I say something because I don't agree with your ridiculous view that we need rules to roleplay?
Seanchai
Quote from: stu2000;449599At the same time, though, that kind of opposition is required for any kind of a feeling of "underground" to emerge. People have to be hysterical in order for the devil's influence in pop culture to be meaningful. RPGs can be underground anymore, because everyone understands how harmless they are. Mission accomplished. Even comparatively outre products like Carcosa or The Book of Ebon Bindings aren't going to really irritate anyone anymore.
...
It's a cultural shift. People are now afraid of teenagers for things they actually do, rather than the devil's magic manifesting when they play their records backwards. It's sad to me. But it's not mysterious or inexplicable.
I've noticed even amongst the "evangelical" types I've met over the years, the non-irrational ones think all that "satanic" stuff in the media, music, etc ... is largely a joke and only really elicits a chuckle by them these days. They thought these artists, musicians, writers, etc ... were trying "too hard" to be scary and offensive, and just looked silly in the end.
Quote from: Seanchai;449609Is this how it's going to be? You're going to be a little bitch every time I say something because I don't agree with your ridiculous view that we need rules to roleplay?
Seanchai
No, I'm not stalking you, you just offered up a smug comment that I felt like responding to. This is a message board, after all, so if you're going snipe threads with comments that amount to implying that people here don't game, and then get all bitchy when someone responds with a bit of 'tude, I don't know what to tell you.
I can certainly not respond to your posts, if you'd rather that.
Quote from: stu2000;449606It was a Reagan thing. It started before Tipper Gore and her insidious PMRC. I'm glad you brought her up. One of the things that makes me happy I grew up when I did was seeing Dee Schnieder, Frank Zappa, and John, by god, Denver sitting together at a table before Congress giving her the business. Her beady little eyes shrivelled to pinpricks.
oh--and Arcane's right. There isn't any geek culture anymore. The geeks that built it got older and disproportionately affluent, and the things they enjoyed became money-makers. It's all about slef-reference, collectabilty, and kitch now. There's absolutely nothing novel in it anymore. Which again--isn't a mystery. These cutting edge things belong to younger people. But like any self-respecting curmudgeonly old fart, I don't know what the underground is anymore. I followed the skatepunks for a while as they surfaced from underground to mainstream. Hopefully, whatever it is eschews the internet.
I think that there is more of a focus on success now, instead of just being in the underground as an end in and of itself. There is still that aging strait edge / goth / nerd scenes, but a lot of the underground now - tattoos, music, martial arts - is all about making it big without selling out to a big company, and the easy access to self promotion makes it simple to get popular if you are good enough, without joining a big group or label.
I think popularity by virtue of greatness is the new culture, which is a good thing, and has killed the idea of a hopeless self contained underground.
Quote from: J Arcane;449601Gaiman, Moore, Whedon, Mignola, Wright, even Tartakovsky are expressly about reacting to existing cliches instead of inventing something of their own.
Is there anything recent (by any author) which could be in the category of "inventing something on their own" ?
Most of his complaint, when boiled down, is that he's upset the vast majority of roleplayers aren't interested in his and his pal Baker's rape fantasies.
Quote from: Cranewings;449612is all about making it big without selling out to a big company, and the easy access to self promotion makes it simple to get popular if you are good enough, without joining a big group or label.
I think popularity by virtue of greatness is the new culture, which is a good thing, and has killed the idea of a hopeless self contained underground.
It's always been about that. Look at Nirvana. They purposely wrote a bad album to try and get out of being famous. But it became popular anyways.
Arcane - Do you agree, then, that it's all been downhill since Wells and Verne? Who since then invented anything original?
I submit that the crap that always defined most of mainstream culture has been the unreactive perpetuation of existing cliches, while the most original, exciting, and imaginative works of art have been reactions to existing cliches.
Quote from: Peregrin;449611...you just offered up a smug comment that I felt like responding to.
There's nothing smug about. It's genuine: I
do feel bad for who aren't enjoying their gaming.
And that's all this is - a feeling of discontentment and someone searching, what's likely to be in vain, for the source of said feeling. They're not happy with what they're doing now, they remember being happy and excited way back when, and so they search from some differential scapegoat on which to pin the blame.
Seanchai
'Originality' is way over-rated, but something I've noticed over the years in various media I've worked in... stuff that's done purely for profit, designed to be 'popular'... is just about always crap.
It might be well-done crap... but it's crap just the same.
That's not the same as saying that just because something becomes popular it's garbage...
As for Reagan and Tipper and their ilk... most artists will agree that having some restrictions often helps with creativity.
I remember 1982 well.
Mazes and Monsters was a made for TV movie. Nobody watched TV anymore by then anyway, at least the big three, ABC, NBC, and CBS. I only watched it to see if they would accurately depict RPG gaming. It didn't even come close. It was instantly recognized in our circles for the mainstream anti-D&D propaganda that it was.
Everybody was cruising to the tune of the cable channels, and the hottest shows were on HBO... and the best music, with scores of new bands, were being viewed on MTV, and the second breaking in the monopoly of the record companies was initiated in 1980 and was really gaining power in 82.
Conan the Barbarian was the hot movie of the year, loaded with scantily clad sultry women, wolves, warriors with swords and bows, thieves, wizards, and horses. It was not just good entertainment, it was great entertainment!
And D&D had been around for awhile by then.
In our social circle there were at least four other established gaming groups that ran different games than what I ran. These were games that I played in. One GM ran freeform fantasy games based on no rules set at all, except what the group agreed to during play... He also ran the world politics games, modeled on the original Origins National Decision Making Game where each player takes on the role of the leader of a world Power.
One GM ran a Gamma World/D&D mashup set in Spain as well as a Bushido game from time-to-time.
In our group one GM ran a mix of games including D&D, Tunnels and Trolls, and The Fantasy Trip.
In our group one GM ran a Star Wars homebrew created using D&D rules.
In our group one GM exclusively ran a historical fantasy game using Chivalry and Sorcery.
We all played different wargames as well.
None of us, in any of the groups expressly focused on playing games to push the envelope, to stretch the limits or even explore what was socially acceptable at that time. We played to learn about history. We played to bring life to our vision of what a fantasy world should be like and what it should include. We played in friendly competition, to outplay each other.
We of course, were quite aware about the sexual references in the early RPG editions, but didn't overtly address them using our games. In our discussions we were pleased that adult elements had been included with our games, but chalked up any unrestrained focus on that to eccentric GMing. In short, in our games we sought to be the Gamemasters instead of letting any individual game master us.
Our World was bigger because of RPG games. No one even thought of focusing on just one aspect of RPG's, because that would limit the game. And no one thought of using them to break any preconceived social limits. We already had enough on our plate with the unrefined and often undefined prejudice exhibited by other social groups, directed against D&D ...for no good reason other than it was different. To this day, I'm still not sure whether that may have been a campaign deliberately orchestrated for the sole purpose of limiting our freedom to dream and explore.
I'm inclined to believe otherwise now, because if it was, it didn't work, and D&D, and RPG's have been accepted in the majority of social circles.
I never saw any good reason to counterattack the right-wing ultra-conservative groups, and believed it would only serve to fuel the fires and create more opposition to my favorite recreational hobby.
As for the Reagan-era flinch. It was the RPG companies response to the gamers that insisted on pushing the limits just to see if they could. More gamers equal less responsible gamers. Instead of the well-educated and geniuses, the common people were entering the hobby in great numbers, and bringing their emotional baggage along with them.
Quote from: GameDaddy;449634Instead of the well-educated and geniuses, the common people were entering the hobby in great numbers, and bringing their emotional baggage along with them.
Batshit crazy.
I think what you're misunderstanding Esgaldil, is the difference between influence and pastiche, and between a natural evolution from existing sources and inspiration, and deliberate post-modern deconstruction.
It's like the early days of any gaming console. The first games for a new device usually suck horribly, because the people making games for it usually aren't making a game because they've had some idea, they're making it because they want "the RPG" or "the shooter" or whatever.
They're filling genre holes, instead of just focusing on making an interesting game.
Similarly, I find RPGs are downright chronically guilty of same. They're constantly making "a SF game" or "a postapocalyptic game with Cthulhu in it" or "This game that someone else already made except now there's a duck".
There's always bright spots, and sometimes good stuff comes out of this process, but it's not a natural one, it's a conscious one, done with the express intent of fulfilling ancient cliches.
Design by checkbox, as it were. Like all those NWN persistent worlds, where the designer has just gone through a list of "this feature makes it an MMO", checking them off one by one so they can make for a nice bullet list on the Vault, but without actually ever stopping to consider whether it's actually fun or interesting or has anything to offer over a million other identical products.
Indeed, that very word "product" is part of the problem. The language and ideas of monetization have become so endemic nobody seems to think outside of them anymore, so it's all built as if by a focus group or a committee.
It's one of the reasons why I sometimes wish stuff like Lulu and RPGNow had never come along at all. The vibrant homebrew and DIY communities of the web in the 90s have given way to "well, I may as well slap a price tag on it and throw it online".
If Heavy Ordnance came out now it'd have an SEO-optimized website, banner ads on all the web sites, and you could buy it on Lulu for the low low price of $30.
Quote from: One Horse Town;449636Batshit crazy.
...Some of them even went on to become game designers because they didn't like the way we made and played our games.
Most of them ended up not making any games better, and busy themselves these days with name calling and insults.
Quote from: One Horse Town;449636Batshit crazy.
It's remarkable, isn't it. He just seems to get nuttier by the minute.
Quote from: Seanchai;449630There's nothing smug about. It's genuine: I do feel bad for who aren't enjoying their gaming.
And that's all this is - a feeling of discontentment and someone searching, what's likely to be in vain, for the source of said feeling. They're not happy with what they're doing now, they remember being happy and excited way back when, and so they search from some differential scapegoat on which to pin the blame.
Seanchai
Two thoughts:
One, they may not want your pity.
Two, even if all of this is spurred on by "back in the day" feelings, there may be some valuable critique in it all. If you've ever seen the 70-minute review of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, you'll know what I'm getting at. It was obviously motivated by someone who was disillusioned with the new stuff, and who very obviously loved the old stuff. But despite that bias being present, the entire review is full of golden nuggets in terms of actual film critique regarding the writing and composition of the film.
Even then, the 12-year-old me, the supposed target audience for the film, it didn't take much for me to see that the film wasn't very well put together. I couldn't express why as well back then, but I could feel it. If you go through the history of the development of the films (from the originals through the new trilogy) and the crew of writers and directors that changed, you can also see why this is the case. Edwards has done something similar, here. He's not saying "It was all gold and now it's all poo-poo", he's analyzing why things changed and whether or not there was any rational rhyme or reason behind it all. At that point saying "nostalgia" or "doesn't game" won't cut it as a counterpoint, because the person has offered specifics that now have to be looked at on their own merits.
Anyways, having tons of fun is great. I have tons of fun every week playing video and tabletop games with my friends. I try out new stuff all the time and love it. But that doesn't mean I'm not going to be critical of what I consume, even the stuff I like, nor am I going to discourage others of being critical of what I like. I like a ton of half-baked stuff, but the fact that it's half-baked doesn't speak to how much I actually enjoy it. It also doesn't excuse the creators for making something half-baked.
Quote from: J Arcane;449639It's remarkable, isn't it. He just seems to get nuttier by the minute.
I actually agree with him about keeping more unseemly aspects out of gaming. Anyone who's seen me attack Poison'd knows this.
But i have no time for the kind of retarded elitism displayed above. "Common" people?
Shit, i thought that kind of thing was from the Britain of the 20th century.
Quote from: One Horse Town;449642I actually agree with him about keeping more unseemly aspects out of gaming. Anyone who's seen me attack Poison'd knows this.
But i have no time for the kind of retarded elitism displayed above. "Common" people?
Shit, i thought that kind of thing was from the Britain of the 20th century.
While tied up quite a bit in his own special brand of personal neurosis, on the whole it's just bog standard "I knew this before it was popular!" nonsense, really. The proto-hipsterism of old-guard Tolkien fans at the dawn of "Frodo Lives!", before the reflex was adopted by wider culture through the lens of the music scene and the hipsters' ironic co-opting of geek culture.
It's sad, really. His persecution complex regarding his fellow gamer must make it terribly difficult to find groups. I know I'd have a hard time getting any real gaming if I thought my fellow gamers were all secretly plotting the next Holocaust.
Quote from: Peregrin;449640Anyways, having tons of fun is great. I have tons of fun every week playing video and tabletop games with my friends. I try out new stuff all the time and love it. But that doesn't mean I'm not going to be critical of what I consume, even the stuff I like, nor am I going to discourage others of being critical of what I like. I like a ton of half-baked stuff, but the fact that it's half-baked doesn't speak to how much I actually enjoy it. It also doesn't excuse the creators for making something half-baked.
Dear God, I pray that in your infinite wisdom, you will bestow upon me the knowledge to create a device that can transmit this paragraph directly into the brains of every geek and nerd, every film-goer, every music lover, into basically every person who has proudly and unironically attacked criticism as if it's very pursuit were immoral.
Amen.
Quote from: One Horse Town;449642I actually agree with him about keeping more unseemly aspects out of gaming. Anyone who's seen me attack Poison'd knows this.
But i have no time for the kind of retarded elitism displayed above. "Common" people?
If you do something first, before anyone else does it, you are elite... retard.
In our social circles we were the first to adopt RPG games.
See what I mean about the baggage? In this case it's cultural instead of emotional, but it tends to produce the same results. Disharmony, dischord, and chaos.
Quote from: J Arcane;449645I know I'd have a hard time getting any real gaming if I thought my fellow gamers were all secretly plotting the next Holocaust.
They are also suppressing miraculous Tesla technology.
Quote from: GameDaddy;449648If you do something first, before anyone else does it, you are elite... retard.
In our social circles we were the first to adopt RPG games.
See what I mean about the baggage? In this case it's cultural instead of emotional, but it tends to produce the same results. Disharmony, dischord, and chaos.
In the context of the culture of the age, all that means is you had less of a life than the rest of them.
That really doesn't stand you on very solid high ground.
Quote from: GameDaddy;449648If you do something first, before anyone else does it, you are elite.
That's...not at all what elite means.
Arcane - I submit that A) pastiche, B) deliberate post-modern deconstruction, and C) "built as if by focus group" are three very different things, and I still haven't heard any examples of late twentieth century creations that deserve the label "natural evolution from existing sources and inspiration". I also stand by my use of Shakespeare as an example of the unimportance of easily identified originality (even though I think there needs to be something similar to Godwin's Law about using Shakespeare to defend the merit of anything that isn't Shakespeare). The only people who are not self-aware about their use of source material are schizophrenics - strike that, even Daniel Johnston is self-aware about his use of source material...
I'm not really arguing with your lamentations about RPGs (although you can't claim that the RPGs in the seventies were not pastiches of their literary and mythological sources, whatever else they might have been), but the larger claim that "Geek culture... has been basically creatively dead for a while" is a huge assertion worth defending or retracting.
Quote from: J Arcane;449645I know I'd have a hard time getting any real gaming if I thought my fellow gamers were all secretly plotting the next Holocaust.
That's hilarious. Only because some of my fellow gamers are actually plotting to prevent the next Holocaust.
Quote from: GameDaddy;449648If you do something first, before anyone else does it, you are elite... retard.
In our social circles we were the first to adopt RPG games.
See what I mean about the baggage? In this case it's cultural instead of emotional, but it tends to produce the same results. Disharmony, dischord, and chaos.
Okaay....
Yesterday upon the stair.
Quote from: GameDaddy;449653That's hilarious. Only because some of my fellow gamers are actually plotting to prevent the next Holocaust.
:teehee:
You're probably my favorite poster here. Never change, man!
Edwards reminds me a lot of a certain far-right Satanist I've encountered online on a political site, who makes a lot of good points, but combines them with lies and half-truths in his overall plan is to encourage the disaffected into depravity. Likewise, Edwards laments the decline of naked succubus pictures in his scheme to get everyone RPing the neckfucking of decapitated cabinboys.
Quote from: Cranewings;449612I think popularity by virtue of greatness is the new culture, which is a good thing, and has killed the idea of a hopeless self contained underground.
That may happen sometimes, and I can't fault it. But more often, I think the you have branding by virtue of niche. What would have been the underground becomes the marketplace. What would have been an emergent scene coming up with its own criteria for evaluating success becomes a mad scramble for whatever dollars are available at your point of entry, without having to particiate or develop within your scene. I see that in games, comics, music, film and graphic art. I don't know much about underground literature and even less about body art.
The underground wasn't hopeless. Underground movements get a little self-defeating at the end of their life cycle, as the members who can sell out. And there's a lot of baggage with that term that may as well be dispensed with. I'm not against people making money with their art. But when they do, and they need to produce to make money, as opposed to having something to express, then they're sell-outs and hacks, however you look at it. They can still be enjoyable, but they have to leave the underground.
I can't say if I think all this is bad or not. I'm not sure we can see the back edge of how the internet is going to affect these things. I definitely think we've lost something, but I also think there's usually something else coming soon.
I don't really think the assertion needs defending at all. It's pretty self-evident if you're actually aware of the wider culture as it has evolved, especially in the last ten years.
The echo chamber effect of the internet, as well as it's tendency to exaggerate culture accretions by necessity in the post-Google, post-SEO environment of it, has served to reinforce a culture that focuses on collective memes and stock genre ideas as an easy means of identification.
"Ooh, this has zombies in it, it must be cool!" is a statement I have seen, more and more, as time has gone on, and the very idea of it is so ghastly I scarcely know where to begin. It is not just self-aware and self-referential, it is uncaringly so, it knows it's shit, and easily manipulated, and revels in it.
It is a culture of endlessly crawling inside one's own ass.
It goes so far as to create a reflexive anti-reaction to the few things that come along that aren't so easily codified. When a game comes along that doesn't easily fit, that can't be easily described as "X genre/film/game meets Y genre/game/film", it's met by a profound bafflement and often derision for failing to meet expectations.
Alpha Omega, to take an RPG example, isn't an especially creative game, even, but it's one that stands out in my mind where, for the sole crime of not being immediately and obviously categorizeable, was roundly mocked in this sphere and others for daring make such a huge fuss and hype of something that didn't immediately trip all the current geek buttons. The wider audience even attacked it's pre-release hype for not being something it never claimed to be (for some idiotic reason film nerds were convinced it was somehow about Cloverfield, and so for no reason at all, what was a clever little ARG unveiling the game setting piece by piece got attacked by "exposés" from Internet Matlocks for daring to actually be what it was about all along.)
It happens in video games as well. Sure a handful of critics will praise the hell out of a game like Shadow of the Colossus or Psychonauts, but does it actually sell? Fuck no.
Give us guns and spaceships and elves and steam-powered robots and we're fuckin' there, but dare not take our carefully selected and pre-defined categories of acceptable desire into account and you'll be lucky if you're not broke in a week.
Oh, and this...
"...Nobody watched TV anymore by then anyway, at least the big three, ABC, NBC, and CBS. I only watched it to see if they would accurately depict RPG gaming. It didn't even come close. It was instantly recognized in our circles for the mainstream anti-D&D propaganda that it was.
Everybody was cruising to the tune of the cable channels, and the hottest shows were on HBO... and the best music, with scores of new bands, were being viewed on MTV, and the second breaking in the monopoly of the record companies was initiated in 1980 and was really gaining power in 82."
For you young people out there, be aware that GameDaddy's definition of Everybody and Nobody might apply to himself (I doubt it) but little else in there has any connection to reality. The hottest shows were on HBO? HBO had movies, stand up comics, and boxing. That was it.
QuoteFor you young people out there, be aware that GameDaddy's definition of Everybody and Nobody might apply to himself (I doubt it) but little else in there has any connection to reality.
I pretty much assume this a priori with any of his posts.
There's a big difference between the echo chamber of the internet and the actual culture in which works of art (some of them games) are being created and experienced. The internet's reaction to things is not Geek Culture.
The last ten years is far too recent and too short a time to talk about as a culture, and also has no relevance to Edwards' lament, since things like the segregation of nudity from from fantasy art were all firmly entrenched before the twentieth century ended. The only thing new that I am aware from approximately the last ten years is the hypersensitivity to anything that could be described as terrorist violence.
Nuh uh, party foul.
You asked me to defend my statment, I did so. You don't get to suddenly switch theses in the middle of the argument as excuse to ignore the post.
Further, cause and effect, baby. Culture begets culture begets culture. It all goes back to the same well, and the same source problem that goes deeper than some tits and cunts, and has continued to worsen over time, largely as a result of the greater interconnectedness of culture.
I think you've rather misunderstood what Edwards is really getting at in his piece if you took the point as solely about succubus titties.
Quote from: Esgaldil;449662Oh, and this...
For you young people out there, be aware that GameDaddy's definition of Everybody and Nobody might apply to himself (I doubt it) but little else in there has any connection to reality. The hottest shows were on HBO? HBO had movies, stand up comics, and boxing. That was it.
Hrmmm?? For the young ones here a better comparison would probably be having HBO in 1982 is like having Netflix, On Demand Video from Cable, and TiVo now.
It was a world of difference in quality of programming options available, and it even got better, HBO rolled out more channels, and kept adding special interest cable channels as well at least through 1985.
Quote from: J Arcane;449664I pretty much assume this a priori with any of his posts.
Incorrect as usual, as I was recalling all of the gamers and game communities that I knew then, and remarking on their preference and habits as well as mine.
I think my dog is smarter than you.
Quote from: GameDaddy;449668Incorrect as usual, as I was recalling all of the gamers and game communities that I knew then, and remarking on their preference and habits as well as mine.
I think my dog is smarter than you.
Does the dog talk to you? Does it tell you to kill the president?
Quote from: misterguignol;449669Does the dog talk to you? Does it tell you to kill the president?
Dogs don't talk, they bark. She's smarter than you as well.
Quote from: GameDaddy;449670Dogs don't talk, they bark. She's smarter than you as well.
Does she know the secrets of Tesla's free energy system?
Quote from: misterguignol;449672Does she know the secrets of Tesla's free energy system?
Q.E.D.
Any more questions, One Horse Town?
Quote from: Peregrin;449640One, they may not want your pity.
Then they can keep quiet and not blog about it. Weren't you saying something similar just a few posts ago in this thread?
Quote from: Peregrin;449640...he's analyzing why things changed and whether or not there was any rational rhyme or reason behind it all.
Spouting off a bunch of nonsense about the lack of boobies being the death of creativity in the hobby, et al., isn't analysis.
Seanchai
Quote from: Seanchai;449677Then they can keep quiet and not blog about it. Weren't you saying something similar just a few posts ago in this thread?
I didn't say you couldn't give it, I said they may not want it. I just think it's a waste of pity if they really don't enjoy their gaming.
QuoteSpouting off a bunch of nonsense about the lack of boobies being the death of creativity in the hobby, et al., isn't analysis.
Seanchai
I don't think he said anywhere it was the death of creativity in-and-of-itself -- otherwise his own comments about
Over the Edge and other weird games being "innovative" would be extremely inconsistent with his own views. I do think he is getting at how a certain pop-moral outlook in society has bounded that creativity and experimentation, kinda like comparing the experimentation of American cartoons in the 90s to the relatively tame media we air on Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network nowadays.
But if that's all you got out of it, then I dunno, man. *shrug*
Quote from: Peregrin;449679But if that's all you got out of it, then I dunno, man. *shrug*
Of course that's all he got out of it. Older versions of D&D were the product of that earlier fantasy era, 4e is a product of the Post-80s culture with another 20 years of corporate and computer influence. If there is anything at all to what Ron is saying, then it's a criticism of 4e by extension.
He's 4venging by proxy. :D
Quote from: CRKrueger;449684Of course that's all he got out of it. Older versions of D&D were the product of that earlier fantasy era, 4e is a product of the Post-80s culture with another 20 years of corporate and computer influence. If there is anything at all to what Ron is saying, then it's a criticism of 4e by extension.
He's 4venging by proxy. :D
You realize that you talk about 4e more than the people who actually play it, right?
Fuck. And we're only on page 7.
Quote from: Seanchai;449677Then they can keep quiet and not blog about it.
It looked like a new product intro article to me.
Sheesh, no one can take a joke. :D
Seriously though, I do think Ron is on to something other then reminiscing through rose-colored glasses. I think it's more a larger cultural and technological shift though then just a lack of creativity in fantasy. I think many forms of modern culture have become self-referential, not just fantasy.
As for the nudity, well in the early days we had tits, bush and the occasional frank & beans, but it was realistic. Conan slave girls - tits and silk loincloths. Succubi - tits and bush. Nudity wasn't fan service, it was placed where it would have been.
Now we have the Photoshopped fantasy cheesecake, and the infamous Exalted Cameltoe.
Of course Ron is probably the only one besides Baker himself who would claim that Poison'd and Apocalypse World are anything other then the latter.
Quote from: J Arcane;449661It happens in video games as well. Sure a handful of critics will praise the hell out of a game like Shadow of the Colossus or Psychonauts, but does it actually sell? Fuck no.
Oh, man, I loved 'Shadow of the Colossus'! One of my favorite games to just run around in.
Here's the final conclusion of Ron's article:
Quote from: RonEdwardsI hope the OSR can take that content more seriously. I'm not only talking about pictures. I'm talking about the cracking-open of "the normal," into the hallucinatory, gory, gleeful, sexy realm of fantasy before it became Reagan-era teenfic, Hollywood's PG-rated bitch, and canonical fantasy-RPG motifs. The visuals matter too. Let's see monsters in motion, fully present, engaging the viewer rather than merely posing for them. Let's see bodies as they are, the whole form in its positions at rest and in action, with titties by all means, but especially pussy, and cock and balls.
Quote from: Peregrin;449679I do think he is getting at how a certain pop-moral outlook in society has bounded that creativity and experimentation, kinda like comparing the experimentation of American cartoons in the 90s to the relatively tame media we air on Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network nowadays.
But if that's all you got out of it, then I dunno, man. *shrug*
I think it is easy to read in one's own preferences for earlier decades into the essay. Indeed, that seems to be the point of the essay - to link up broad nostalgia and anti-political-correctness with the sexuality of his games like S/Lay W/Me.
Personally, these days my games have a lot less focus on titties than when I was a teenager in the early 80s. That has nothing to do with political correctness, and more to do with my having had a lot of real relationships and 12 years of marriage since then. My games also have a lot more relationships in them than in my teenage days. I have zero interest in S/Lay W/Me, and roughly as much interest in modern fantasy as 1970s fantasy (much more if we're talking about movies and television rather than books).
While he may have scattered in a few points that I agree with - like dislike for actual censorship - I don't agree at all with the main thrust of the article. It's not like sex in 1970s fantasy pulp was all about artistic freedom. Many pulp authors had stories rejected and were told to spice their story up with more kink. That's no better or worse than editors who ask to tone out the sexuality.
I think that the mainstream crap, the noise to the signal is more important than people realize. All that generic, category fitting stuff is more like a foundation or perhaps an aether the good stuff does not exist in a vacuum nor does it find its audience quickly.
Most of the great works take time to find their place among the great works and all the better because if the creator succeeds too soon or too cheaply we get retreads and sequels instead of more powerful and original work by the poor schmuk who's still trying to reach for success.
There's a reason artists only become great when they die. The true work of the poet is suffering not words.
Quote from: jhkim;449703I think it is easy to read in one's own preferences for earlier decades into the essay. Indeed, that seems to be the point of the essay - to link up broad nostalgia and anti-political-correctness with the sexuality of his games like S/Lay W/Me.
Of course he has a motive. You don't waste your time writing for an indie mag full of people who aren't already interested in your work without having a reason. ;)
However, I still sympathize with him on a broader level when it comes to the whole conservative/liberal cycle that societies get caught up in, even though I really dislike the type of weird S&S fantasy he's referencing, much like how I appreciated the fact that cartoons were so weird in the 90s, even though a lot of them weren't my thing.
Personally, I hated Ren & Stimpy, and my favorite fantasy books are the Chronicles of Narnia and The Hobbit (with LotR trailing close behind) -- pretty conservative fantasy.
Quote from: Seanchai;449677Spouting off a bunch of nonsense about the lack of boobies being the death of creativity in the hobby, et al., isn't analysis.
Seanchai
Seanchai gets it.
So?
Ron Edwards misses his poorly-drawn porn hidden in fantasy RPG books and apparently really wants to see cock & balls as well as tits & pussy. Why should we care that he has nostalgia for his bi-sexual leanings?
Damn.
He sould stop writing essays for the internet and go out on a date - then good 'ol Ronnie Edwards can get laid with or stare at the gender of his choice.
- Ed C.
Question 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?
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 (http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/F/four-color-glossies.html). 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.
Quote from: S'mon;449846My 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.
It crops up once in a while, but yes, it's not common because of custom, even amongst prostitutes. You mainly see it at BDSM festivals, Pride parades and other alternative sexuality celebrations.
D-503, S'mon, about nudity on British TV, I'd think Benny Hill would be a data point. Usually brief and/or sped up and/or not close up, but it was worth tuning in to late night TV. Not sure how much was after Thatcher came into office.
About the article, y'all know it's recycled from Fight On!, right? RE had been invited to contribute something so he did his usual self promotion, grandiosely pretending to champion some suppressed value of the Golden Age while pimping his latest game. It caused a huge argument on odd74 (which was suppressed) and may have marked the high tide of the infiltration of the OS by Forgers.
Quote from: Peregrin;449679But if that's all you got out of it, then I dunno, man. *shrug*
What I got out of it was just what I said: some dude is unhappy with his gaming and looking for a scapegoat.
He can blame prudish society, of course, but that's just dumb. If his premise were correct, the most creative thing on TV would be porn. Or the creative shows would all appear on networks that allowed the use of excessive profanity and nudity. The best books would all be chock full of graphic sex and violence.
Of course, that's not the case. Spartacus, when it was all about titillation (get the pun?) was dumb. It didn't become good until it started focusing less on T&A and more on story. One of my favorite shows, Avatar: The Last Airbender, appeared on a network for children. I'm reading Wise Man's Fear, the follow up to a book that, despite not being very graphic at all, is one of the best I've read in a long while.
Peregrin, if I recall correctly, you're young and haven't been gaming for very long. You're still in that fresh phase. After three decades of gaming, however, you've saved the princess a million times. That's what I think lies at the heart of the article: the author wants gaming to be new and fresh again.
Seanchai
Quote from: Seanchai;449894Or the creative shows would all appear on networks that allowed the use of excessive profanity and nudity.
This part, at least, is actually true. HBO, bro. ;)
Quote from: Seanchai;449894Peregrin, if I recall correctly, you're young and haven't been gaming for very long. You're still in that fresh phase. After three decades of gaming, however, you've saved the princess a million times. That's what I think lies at the heart of the article: the author wants gaming to be new and fresh again.
Seanchai
2001 with 3e...so...less than ten years, yeah. Although I can certainly understand wanting to "go back", since high-school and my first few D&D campaigns had the "magic" going on, and it's been harder and harder to get that.
Although I just figure it would take longer than, say, getting tired of video-games, which I've been playing since I was 4 or 5 (which makes that about 18-19 years). And I'm not tired of video-games at all, even though they're pre-packaged experiences with tons of "Fantasy Game/Sci fi X" or "JRPG 12131". I figured RPGs and their open nature would take longer to burn out on.
Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;449898This part, at least, is actually true. HBO, bro. ;)
HBO does have some great shows. As does Showtime. And so on. Of course, so does ABC Family, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, the USA Network, FX, the CW, ABC, NBC, and CBS.
Seanchai
Quote from: Seanchai;449949HBO does have some great shows. As does Showtime. And so on. Of course, so does ABC Family, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, the USA Network, FX, the CW, ABC, NBC, and CBS.
Seanchai
Except that I hear about the ones on HBO while they are still on... vs. the ones on network TV that I discover years later... all six episodes that aired before they got cancelled, replaced by a show about a talking chimp.
When I was a kid I loved watching Masterpiece Theater on Sunday nights... partially because my parents hated it and partially because there was a decent chance of seeing some nudity or racy content... Poldark and I Claudius were good for that IIRC.
Quote from: Simlasa;449969Except that I hear about the ones on HBO while they are still on... vs. the ones on network TV that I discover years later...
Shrug. There are plenty of great shows on right now. If you hear about them late, that has everything to do with you and little to do with the networks and nudity.
Seanchai
Quote from: Seanchai;449975Shrug. There are plenty of great shows on right now...
What I'm getting at is that HBO aims for quality and supports/promotes it... whereas on network TV it seems more like an accident that is quickly buried once discovered. Not that there aren't exceptions to that... and no, it has nothing to do with nudity, but knowing the programming isn't constrained to being 'family friendly' leads me to think I'm more likely to find something interesting there... sometimes.
But you're right, I don't watch much current TV... so I hardly ever know what's on till word of mouth gets around... and then I watch the shows on Netflix.
Well, an interesting experiment may be coming up that'll test out the notion of moral constaints on a medium.
In Japan there's a very vocal senator who is trying to censor and "clean up" the anime and manga industries. See, while there are manga and anime produced for every age group, from children to businessmen, a large chunk of anime and manga (much more manga than anime, tho) aimed at 20-30 year-olds is explicit in nature. This goes from T&A in explicit fantasy series to just plain old porn. In fact, a lot of production companies do shady work on the side to make more money.
Underneath the professional layer there's a thriving "doujin" scene -- fan-made PC games, manga, and anime. There's a huge (and I mean, huge huge) convention every year called Comiket where people premier these materials. Again, not all of it is explicit in nature, but most of the fan/indie stuff is, a lot of times explicit material relating to already existing series that are not explicit (say, porn for FLCL, Evangelion, or whatever). Even by the standards of our porn industry, a lot of this shit is weird.
Now, while I'm personally not into the kinky stuff that's out there, I have found that most "normal" or "mainstream" anime that airs on TV in Japan is still far more willing to push boundaries to get across certain themes or messages (if a series is good and not just fanservice), and they're also far more willing to cater to niches because "This shit is cool, let's just fucking do it." Well, that, and they can get away with more adult content on prime-time than we can due to cultural differences.
So, while not all anime is fucked up, while not all of it is groundbreaking, and while not all creators seek to create something shocking, there's a lot more experimentation going on because these people generally don't have the government or censorship boards looking over their shoulder. They can air a show on normal hours where a child is turned into a homunculus and subsequently turned into a pile of ash and blood. And I think part of that is because where all of these creators come from they have free reign to do pretty-much whatever as an indie artist until they get good enough to work for a legit company.
Quote from: Simlasa;449981What I'm getting at is that HBO aims for quality and supports/promotes it... whereas on network TV it seems more like an accident that is quickly buried once discovered.
Does HBO aim for quality and supports/promotes it because they're free from moral constraints?
Seanchai
Well, I can totally understand if someone prefers HBO to other channels. Tastes differ, after all. Someone might love teen comedies, and someone else might like gory horror films, and another might like erotic material. That seems perfectly reasonable to me. I do start to question it when someone says that gory horror films have objectively more creativity and quality than teen comedies.
I'm not familiar with television production in Japan, but I have seen nothing to suggest that films/shows with nudity are any more artistically free than those without. My best friend from high school is a writer-director of independent films, and when he makes an explicit film, the executives are usually breathing down his neck with demands for who to cast, how many sex scenes, how they should be shot, and so forth. There are venues that are more artistically free than others, but they have nothing to do with how much titties are shown.
Third, there are no censorship boards in tabletop RPG publishing. From what I've seen, overwhelmingly if there is negative response to an explicit RPG, it is from segments of the fans. i.e. We don't have much sexual material because fans seem to not want sexual material, not because it is being censored out of the books and kept away from demanding customers.
The boobies are just symbolic...
Going from what I've heard/seen/read... creative folks in general, given the choice, would rather work in an environment with fewer constraints of any kind. Give a writer his choice and, given the same budget and pay, my guess he'd rather develop a program for HBO than ABC.
That doesn't mean they all want to write porn.
Quote from: Simlasa;450064Going from what I've heard/seen/read... creative folks in general, given the choice, would rather work in an environment with fewer constraints of any kind.
I've heard that. I've also heard creatives say that limitations stimulate creativity, forcing them to look for solutions, implementations, etc., the would otherwise would not have considered. From what I gather, there isn't one standard answer, just individual preferences.
I'm sure a writer would rather work for HBO, too - the pay has to be better. As you know, HBO is a premium channel. Broadcast TV is free.
Seanchai
Quote from: Seanchai;450066I've heard that. I've also heard creatives say that limitations stimulate creativity
That's true, but I don't know any artists that purposefully go looking for projects with lots of constraints on content. They'd much prefer to assign their own... such as with the Dogme 95 Collective.
I've no clue about the relative pay between HBO and network TV.
Quote from: jhkim;450055Third, there are no censorship boards in tabletop RPG publishing. From what I've seen, overwhelmingly if there is negative response to an explicit RPG, it is from segments of the fans. i.e. We don't have much sexual material because fans seem to not want sexual material, not because it is being censored out of the books and kept away from demanding customers.
I think that's partially because a lot of those people are programmed to think "this is not ok," especially since you don't see that sort of reaction in other media industries. It's also a shrinking industry with relatively narrow tastes in content (when it comes to games that actually sell).
Like I mentioned before, I'm not a fan of Ren & Stimpy. I'm also not a fan of gory films (or games, or whatever). I can directly attribute that to two factors:
1) Going to Catholic school through elementary
2) Being raised in a household where gory, R rated horror movies were verboten until I was in my mid-teens, even when some of my friends were watching them at much younger ages.
Even after years of being exposed to them, those sorts of raunchy, violence for the sake of violence, gross-out films and games just don't do it for me, even if other people find them entertaining. I won't even touch tabletop games like Dread because I just find that type of focus on violence and creep-out-factor repulsive. Movies like SAW I find sickening, but I know plenty of well-adjusted people who like them.
I especially like the pirate radio analogy that's come up. A little more swashbuckling panache is called for.
Quote from: D-503;449882Edit: 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.
IME the Thatcherite Right shared with the classical Marxists the assumption that economics determines everything. They read Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom" but ignore his "Political Constitution of a Free People". The vast bulk of the British Right have Capitalism as their sole ideology, they may get an initial 'yuck' reaction to the latest cultural Marxist stuff, but they adapt soon enough. Social values stuff, or really any concern with societal wellbeing beyond economics, seems very much a minority pursuit - Ian Duncan Smith is as much an outsider in the Tories as Frank Field is/was in New Labour.
Quote from: D-503;449882I don't recall bare breasts being remotely common in the 1970s and '80s on British tv.
Post-watershed comedy - Spike Milligan, Hale & Pace, I recall one Fast Show episode. Maybe "common" would be exaggerating. I recall Channel 4 broadcast the unexpurgated version of the boobs-in-every-episode US comedy "Dream On" - happy days for a teenage S'mon! :)
Quote from: Esgaldil;449586When he dismisses White Wolf as "so compromised by branding and target marketing as to nullify any actual underground content or importance", though, I have no idea what he's talking about. Anyone?
Sure, allow me translate from Swine doublespeak to Actual Intentions. Just like the article as a whole is written to highlight for everyone how "transgressively" hip is Ron himself (and Storygaming/theory swine as a whole are), the shitting on white wolf is to point out that the Storygaming/Theory Swine are actually much more "Legit". The White Wolf Swine are their direct competition in the Pretentiousness/hipster-edgy arena, Ron made his career out of claiming that White Wolf were not in fact the legitimate intelligentsia of roleplaying, so he needed to demonize them as "posers", whereas he and his cronies are the real "Beat Poets of gaming" on the real cutting edge.
Its why White Wolf could get away with making games about gothy types in black leather and obscure bondage references, while Forge games have to go full-bore into the territory of being about playing pedarastic necrophiliac fantasies. Its because to them, whoever is "edgier" wins.
This article, in other words, is both a pathetic attempt to claim that the open degeneracy and bottom-feeding of the Forge is somehow the "original intent" in RPGs, and at the same time a desperate plea to try to claim some kind of lingering relevance in the face of the Forge's failure and collapse.
RPGpundit
Quote from: Seanchai;449894Spartacus, when it was all about titillation (get the pun?) was dumb. It didn't become good until it started focusing less on T&A and more on story.
Spartacus is fucking terrible. Like, worse than Stargate, or Legend of The Seeker, or that Beastmaster series that came out a few years ago. Every minute I've spent watching Spartacus is a minute I wished I spent watching Rome, and worse (given the focus of the show) I'd pick every single character on Rome in a fight over every single candy-ass backflipping gym-muscled character on Spartacus, up to and including Octavia and young Augustus Caesar, tridents, nets, the whole nine yards, though of course everybody in Spartacus TWFs and shit.
That new Camelot series, on the other hand, that is actually pretty badass so far.
Quote from: Simlasa;450064The boobies are just symbolic...
Going from what I've heard/seen/read... creative folks in general, given the choice, would rather work in an environment with fewer constraints of any kind. Give a writer his choice and, given the same budget and pay, my guess he'd rather develop a program for HBO than ABC.
That doesn't mean they all want to write porn.
My point is that boobies are a bad symbol, because racier/edgier content doesn't mean less creative constraints. It just means a different target audience. For every producer/editor who blocks racy/edgy material, there is a producer/editor who demands that the story be "spiced up" with more racy/edgy material to help it sell. I have no idea about whether artists have more control in an HBO program or an ABC program.
Regarding RPG fans rejection of sexually explicit material...
Quote from: Peregrin;450074I think that's partially because a lot of those people are programmed to think "this is not ok," especially since you don't see that sort of reaction in other media industries. It's also a shrinking industry with relatively narrow tastes in content (when it comes to games that actually sell).
Sure, we are all partly products of our environment and culture, but I think this applies just as much to our taste in erotic and/or gross material as anything else. I don't think that following Ron Edwards' call to have more nudity and racy material would make us any less programmed.
Quote from: jhkim;450157Regarding RPG fans rejection of sexually explicit material...
I don't think that following Ron Edwards' call to have more nudity and racy material would make us any less programmed.
I wouldn't go quite so far as that. Yes, there's a built in biological factor that very definitely affects our judgements, and no one is entirely immune to it's influence, however to say we collectively are programmed is simply fiction.
It's a surrender of free will, choice, and reason, to passion, preference, and circumstance.
Sexual obsession is a recurrent failure (pattern) to resist impulses to engage in acts of sex. It's defined and treated medically as an addiction that has many ties to repeatedly and compulsively escaping emotional or physical discomfort.
RPG's are often played for enjoyment, amusement, and pleasure as well, but the difference is that RPGs are recreation, leisure, a healthy refreshing of the mind and body, it allows for individuals to consider and reflect on the values and realities that are missed in the activities of daily life, thus being an essential element of personal development, and of civilization.
All that is broken when RPGs themselves become the obsession, or sole focus, or single reason, and especially broken when it is also mixed with the failure to resist impulses to engage in acts of sex.
Quote from: jhkim;450055From what I've seen, overwhelmingly if there is negative response to an explicit RPG, it is from segments of the fans. i.e. We don't have much sexual material because fans seem to not want sexual material, not because it is being censored out of the books and kept away from demanding customers.
Exactly.
I love movies a great many movies and TV shows with explicit sex, but I don't want it in my RPGs for a couple of reason.
Reason 1: We know the kind of fringe groups that would enjoy this sort of thing a little too much. I want nothing to do with those people nor do I want to be publicly identified as being in the same subculture as them. We've already seen what happens when you head down that path (furries).
Reason 2: It's just icky. I do not want to be discussing anything remotely sexual with the people I game with. It'd be one thing if I was running game night down at a sorority house or whatever, but with the group I have I can't think of anything more vomit-inducing that having to discuss anything sexual. The turn-off factor there approaches "talking about sex with your grandma" level.
Quote from: jgants;450168Exactly.
I love movies a great many movies and TV shows with explicit sex, but I don't want it in my RPGs for a couple of reason.
Reason 1: We know the kind of fringe groups that would enjoy this sort of thing a little too much. I want nothing to do with those people nor do I want to be publicly identified as being in the same subculture as them. We've already seen what happens when you head down that path (furries).
Reason 2: It's just icky. I do not want to be discussing anything remotely sexual with the people I game with. It'd be one thing if I was running game night down at a sorority house or whatever, but with the group I have I can't think of anything more vomit-inducing that having to discuss anything sexual. The turn-off factor there approaches "talking about sex with your grandma" level.
Even in games I've run or been in with mature themes, the sex stuff is always off camera, because the players don't want to describe sex acts to each other, or role play an encounter. I recently ran a modern mafia campaign where the PCs were soldiers that made a lot of money in prostitution. All the sexually graphic stuff was behind the scenes. My sense is that this kind of content is fine, but few people want to go into details at the gaming table.
"my" D&D has nudity and graphic violence in the art; the actual mechanics regarding either are largely left to the imagination of the DM and player.
I wouldn't care a fig about their obvious removal in later D&Ds if it wasn't so pathetically obvious (particularly with the TSR standards and practices letter that got out) or the "side-boob-hey-we're-still-racy" artwork of 3rd edition.
But insisting that the solution is to go the other way as hard as possible just makes you into FATAL or the Book of Erotic Fantasy - IOW, goddamn fucking stupid and ridiculous.
Which is what Ron Edwards uses to pass as noteworthiness and forward thinking so...touche to him.
Quote from: jhkim;450157I don't think that following Ron Edwards' call to have more nudity and racy material would make us any less programmed.
Or cause us to produce more creative material. Or magically return us to the late 70s and early 80s.
Seanchai
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;450179Even in games I've run or been in with mature themes, the sex stuff is always off camera, because the players don't want to describe sex acts to each other, or role play an encounter. I recently ran a modern mafia campaign where the PCs were soldiers that made a lot of money in prostitution. All the sexually graphic stuff was behind the scenes. My sense is that this kind of content is fine, but few people want to go into details at the gaming table.
I completely agree. It's not that the subject never comes up in my games, it's just that it's hinted at rather than explicit. For example, the first session of my Rifts game involved saving one of the PCs from a biker gang intent on kidnapping her and making her into their slave. But we didn't go into anything with it, it was just implied.
Hinting at is one thing. Graphic exploitation is another.
Quote from: Seanchai;450194Or cause us to produce more creative material. Or magically return us to the late 70s and early 80s.
I always thought the general consensus was that graphic exploitation was the result of a lack of creativity. The whole theory of grind house, blaxploitation, slasher horror, etc was that the people weren't all that creative at what they did and added a bunch of graphic violence and sex to make up for it.
Quote from: Simlasa;450069That's true, but I don't know any artists that purposefully go looking for projects with lots of constraints on content.
Help me out here: how does their looking for constraints or not matter if, as we agree, constrained or not, whether an artist will produce in a particular environment is dependent on the particular artist?
Moreover, the writers are HBO are constrained. First and foremost, like network TV, they face budgetary constraints. They can't script anything they want - they have to be reasonable about what they put in the script because someone has to pay for it. Second, there's a line even at HBO. Nudity, coarse language, and violence may be on the acceptable side of the line, but the line still exists.
Certainly, as HBO writers can use nudity, coarse language, and violence, they face fewer constraints. There are three, in fact: they can use nudity, coarse language, and more graphic violence.
But in the end all that is meaningless.
We noted that creatives aren't necessarily less creative with constraints. As we know, there are plenty of creative projects - TV shows, movies, books, comics, et al. - that don't use nudity, coarse language, and graphic violence.
And I suspect HBO's acclaim in the quality department comes from factors other than the nudity, coarse language, and violence of their shows. For example, they have a stable of far fewer shows and thus are able to spend more time, money, and effort on each. As a premium channel, I imagine their budgets are bigger. And, as people have to pay for their channel, they really have no choice but to make sure everything they offer is excellent.
(In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the constraints on HBO writers is that they have to use nudity, coarse language, or graphic violence as that's what people pay for.)
But really we're talking about what's more creative, material with or without adult content, not HBO.
Here's a quick litmus test: Are R rated movies always or usually better than PG-13, PG, and G movies? If Edward's theory holds true, the R rated movies, which are less constrained, should be consistently more creative, etc., than other movies.
Of course, that isn't the case. There are plenty of R rated stinkers. And there are plenty of great G, PG, and PG-13 movies.
Seanchai
So the little boys who couldn't get laid in high school have become the adults who fear sexual images?
How not surprising.
Quote from: Spinachcat;450199So the little boys who couldn't get laid in high school have become the adults who fear sexual images?
How not surprising.
How shallow and simplistic of you. :rolleyes:
Quote from: Spinachcat;450199So the little boys who couldn't get laid in high school have become the adults who fear sexual images?
How not surprising.
I don't think that is it. Plenty of my players are fine with stuff like that in movies. I myself love horror films, and have no issue with sexual content. Same with shows like the Sopranos.
The issue I think in RPGs, is their interactive nature. graphically describing sexual acts at the table is just too intimate for some people. I definitely don't game with a group of puritans, and their characters have absolutely done some depraved things, but it is all usually handled off camera. In the last campaign they were expanding their skin trade empire and an NPC was whacked at a sensual parlor. The graphic stuff was all implied though.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;450202I don't think that is it. Plenty of my players are fine with stuff like that in movies. I myself love horror films, and have no issue with sexual content. Same with shows like the Sopranos.
The issue I think in RPGs, is their interactive nature. graphically describing sexual acts at the table is just too intimate for some people. I definitely don't game with a group of puritans, and their characters have absolutely done some depraved things, but it is all usually handled off camera. In the last campaign they were expanding their skin trade empire and an NPC was whacked at a sensual parlor. The graphic stuff was all implied though.
Right. In my group, there's often a lot of sex-related OOC jokes going on even. We just don't want it in the game itself.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;450202The issue I think in RPGs, is their interactive nature. graphically describing sexual acts at the table is just too intimate for some people. I definitely don't game with a group of puritans, and their characters have absolutely done some depraved things, but it is all usually handled off camera.
I think this nails it. The only caveat I could add is that when you leave out the graphic descriptives, it allows the Players' imaginations to fill in the blanks and personalize for their character what has happened. When it gets personalized in this way, it becomes more of a powerful GMing tool to use to make the game more fun for the entire table.
Quote from: jgants;450204Right. In my group, there's often a lot of sex-related OOC jokes going on even. We just don't want it in the game itself.
Same here. Plenty of filthy humor, but it tends not to make its way into the actual game.
A previous group of mine had a great deal of mirth over the "Rod of Vecna".
Quote from: J Arcane;450213A previous group of mine had a great deal of mirth over the "Rod of Vecna".
Orcus's Wand is topped by a bulbous head.
I mean, the joke makes itself, you know?
Quote from: thedungeondelver;450180"my" D&D has nudity and graphic violence in the art; the actual mechanics regarding either are largely left to the imagination of the DM and player.
That's pretty much my position. I wasn't happy when WoTC banned pictures of bare-breasted amazons from "d20 License" 3e stuff like Necromancer's Wilderlands products in reaction to BoEF, but I definitely don't want BoEF-style complicated game rules for sex, either.
Gotta spend a moment here defending Tipper Gore. All Tipper wanted was warning labels so that people could know what they were buying. I happen to think that warning labels are misguided because artists will then shape their work for the label they want for commercial purposes. This is why the MPAA rating system has been so much worse for American film making creativity than the Hayes office ever was. You try to slip things past censors, you try to accommodate warning labels. But Gore was not thinking that way. Gore was thinking about her own transgressive tastes and larger society (when VP and running for President her ex-husband carefully presented himself as a faithful Baptist, out of public life he couldn't identify his religious beliefs but Tipper named Baba Ram Dass {Richard Alpert} as an influence). Tipper Gore was misguided, but she was no prudish censor regardless of how she has been presented by her opponents; today she might be bit more enlightened.
The thing about that division between family friendly and adult is that it is pernicious in both directions. Not only has "pop" been neutered and bowdlerized but "art" has been debauched. Modern art photography looks a lot like underground fetish porn from thirty years ago. I think Edwards suffers from this phenomenon as a designer. He rejects the constraints of "pop" games and designs "art" games that go too far in the other direction.
Quote from: Professort Zoot;450217...................but Tipper named Baba Ram Dass (Richard Alpert) as an influence. Tipper Gore was misguided,....................
She wanted to join the 'Others' or the Dharma initiative?
Damn, those guys were everywhere.
(Saw that name, couldn't resist)- Ed C.
Quote from: Professort Zoot;450226The thing about that division between family friendly and adult is that it is pernicious in both directions. Not only has "pop" been neutered and bowdlerized but "art" has been debauched.
I can't comment on the specific example, as I'm no expert on art, modern or otherwise. But speaking as someone who has zero formal education on the topic, this is how I feel towards modern art sometimes.
It's not that transgression is a bad thing, but the necessity to acknowledge the value of transgressive artists and artwork, has given rise to a subculture of transgression for the sake of transgression, and cheapened its use as an artistic element, as if it were no longer a means to an end, but an end and a value in itself.
Quote from: The Butcher;450230I can't comment on the specific example, as I'm no expert on art, modern or otherwise. But speaking as someone who has zero formal education on the topic, this is how I feel towards modern art sometimes.
It's not that transgression is a bad thing, but the necessity to acknowledge the value of transgressive artists and artwork, has given rise to a subculture of transgression for the sake of transgression, and cheapened its use as an artistic element, as if it were no longer a means to an end, but an end and a value in itself.
Much like the rash of art that came out after "Piss Christ".
A couple of pertinent examples just came to mind - Ralph Bakshi's Wizards and Bruno Bozzetto's Allegro non Troppo. Released in '77 and '76 respectively, they were presented to audiences of all ages (Wizards was PG, not sure if Allegro non Troppo ever got an MPAA rating, but it played in the child-friendly daytime of cable networks) and being animated I'm sure children saw these films to the extent that anyone did. Both of them have considerable psychedelic erotica, titillation, bloody violence, imaginative leaps, scatological humour, and a kind of DIY esthetic. For anyone who wants to know what Edwards is talking about, I would point to these two films.
Today, I suspect the makers of these films would be offered a great deal more money to make them either family friendly enough for the modern PG rating, or raunchy enough to earn a hard R.
Quote from: StormBringer;450232Much like the rash of art that came out after "Piss Christ".
Which, based upon my understanding of the artist's intent, I saw as a legitimate work of art.
Regardless of his past nonsense I saw nothing in this essay where Mr. Edwards was promoting people role-playing sex acts during their games (unless it was that feeble bit of self-promotion at the end).
He merely chose a couple of things, monsters and nudity, that... by their absence... signified... to him... the domestification/taming/commodification of RPGs... going from people expressing their desire for adventure to people desiring to make money off of other people's desire for adventure. Spending way too much time worrying about fonts and layouts and color processing and how the thing would sell and making sure it didn't have any pictures of dicks in it (because if someone sees you with a book with a demon penis on the front they might think you're gay!).
It was the same basic rant about how business concerns often manage to suck all the life out of a thing if not held in balance against the creative side of the equation... about why Thomas Kinkade sells well but 'Piss Christ' is exciting (and also probably sold well).
And yes, I think it's just as lame to put in more cocks and cunts as it is to take them all out... if selling/money is your only reason for doing so.
Maybe there is some parallel to be seen in why some of us would rather read/post on this forum vs. TBP... and how it's about more than just wanting to call each other 'fucktards' all the time (though surely that must be part of it).
Esgaldi, I remember going to see Wizards in the late 70's or early 80's; it was at a local university film club. According to Wikipedia, "Wizards received a limited release".
They were both underground films, certainly (not necessarily by choice). My main point was just that they are representative of the esthetic Edwards is talking about.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;449575I think people tend to be nostalgic for the period they were introduced to gaming. I grew up in the 80s and 90s, so my first gaming experience was probably around 1985 or 1986. Basically played as a player with 1E and GM'd using 2E. I loved a lot of the material coming out during the 2E era and still have fond memories of it.
Just in general, I think the 80s was a great time to be around if you were into fantasy. D&D was pretty popular, and (in the early 80s at least) there were a ton of fantasy films coming out (many of them quite gritty).
The only part about my "beginning" era that I'm nostalgic for is that I had more time to play, and more people to play with.
Most of my favorite games came out in the last ten years...I've been playing for about 17 years now.
Quote from: Tommy Brownell;450268The only part about my "beginning" era that I'm nostalgic for is that I had more time to play, and more people to play with.
Most of my favorite games came out in the last ten years...I've been playing for about 17 years now.
I agree a lot of great games came out in the last ten years. Right now I am actually playing a 2E game just to see how it holds up after all these years, but I am also having tons of fun playing newer RPGs.
Quote from: Tommy Brownell;450268The only part about my "beginning" era that I'm nostalgic for is that I had more time to play, and more people to play with.
Most of my favorite games came out in the last ten years...I've been playing for about 17 years now.
I hear that. I've been gaming for at least thirty years now. All I long for from the old days was the amount of time and number of people available. I've been running a Labyrinth Lord game for the past couple of months, but I am rapidly losing interest in it. I've done it all before when it comes to those types of games. Sure, we've had fun exploring the retro clone thing but it is boring me much more quickly than I could possibly imagine when we started.
Esgaldi--
Well, in that case, throw in Heavy Metal (Canada, 1981) and Gandahar (France, 1988), also released as "Light Years" in a somewhat-bowdlerized version. Bakshi's Fire and Ice (1983) probably should also be included, but I haven't seen it yet.
There are certainly areas where pop culture became more conservative toward sex & weirdness in the 80's. E.g. Playboy and other adult magazines increasingly moved behind the counter, to the top shelf, and/or wrapped to prevent browsing (by kids, I suppose, but maybe also by cheapskates).
In film, I don't think so. You had Troma, or higher up the scale you had Carpenter and Cronenberg. In comics, definitely not, as underground/alternative comics thrived, while the comics code was increasingly weakened and ultimately discarded.
Fantasy, and fantasy gaming in particular, I think was somewhat influenced by a backwash from Tolkien-derivative-fantasy in the vein of Shannara. A lot of this I think has to do with the mainstreaming of D&D along with a rise of romantic celtophilia among geeks. In turn this probably helps account for the popularity of Vampire--fantasy was in somewhat of a rut. On the other hand if you look outside of D&D, in other words to the alternative press among RPG publishers, I don't think the change was as great--it was more in line with general evolution of popular tastes, not a radical "flinch".
It should be remembered that a lot of the sexual stuff of the 70's wasn't seen as obscene so much as adolescent and possibly low-class. I mean does this stuff (http://gammillustrations.bizland.com/monsterkid7/models.htm) look mature? Granted with the benefit of nostalgia and ironic-hipness, it seems cool. At the time, the college kids wanted to grow up and play Runequest.
Quote from: Elliot Wilen;450274I mean does this stuff (http://gammillustrations.bizland.com/monsterkid7/models.htm) look mature?
Fuck 'mature'! That stuff looks FUN!
Quote from: Simlasa;450257Regardless of his past nonsense I saw nothing in this essay where Mr. Edwards was promoting people role-playing sex acts during their games (unless it was that feeble bit of self-promotion at the end).
He merely chose a couple of things, monsters and nudity, that... by their absence... signified... to him... the domestification/taming/commodification of RPGs... going from people expressing their desire for adventure to people desiring to make money off of other people's desire for adventure. Spending way too much time worrying about fonts and layouts and color processing and how the thing would sell and making sure it didn't have any pictures of dicks in it (because if someone sees you with a book with a demon penis on the front they might think you're gay!).
Well, true, he didn't specifically talk about role-playing sex acts. But then, what would the point be of including such art?
Including more "adult" art would simply make the products seem more adolescent, turning off a fair portion of adult gamers while at the same time making the products more popular but less friendly towards underage gamers.
Isn't the whole point of art in RPGs supposed to be evocative of the kind of game you want to play? I'm not playing Gorn: The RPG, so I'm not interested in having that kind of art in my game books. I'd rather have non-offensive art that keeps the games family-friendly and accessible to younger gamers.
As for his monsters argument, that's just silly. We've hardly gotten washed-out, family-friendly there. If anything, the current problem is that everyone is enamored with using EXTREME marketing with them (we're not quite to the level of silliness of "Extreme Corn Nuts" yet, but we're getting there).
I agree with others - this whole thing is less about Edwards raging against "The Man" than a mix of nostolgia combined with "games like Maid and Poison'd are high class and intellectual, honest".
Quote from: jgants;450348Well, true, he didn't specifically talk about role-playing sex acts. But then, what would the point be of including such art?
Because it fits the genre and/or time period?
QuoteIncluding more "adult" art would simply make the products seem more adolescent, turning off a fair portion of adult gamers while at the same time making the products more popular but less friendly towards underage gamers.
As with anything, it depends on how it's done.
QuoteAs for his monsters argument, that's just silly. We've hardly gotten washed-out, family-friendly there. If anything, the current problem is that everyone is enamored with using EXTREME marketing with them (we're not quite to the level of silliness of "Extreme Corn Nuts" yet, but we're getting there).
Extreme != evocative or explicit. In fact, "extreme" is usually viewed as more childish/adolescent by the general public due to how it's marketed. I don't see that as any better than having explicit material readily available.
I also think there's a misperception here about Edwards. I don't think he thinks lots of people should be consuming this material. I also don't think he thinks it's going to revitalize anything. I think his point is, just make the content because you want to make it, express yourself however the hell you want, and whoever wants to buy it will.
Quote from: Peregrin;450351Because it fits the genre and/or time period?
So would a picture of a guy defecating in the middle of the street. I don't really want that in my RPG art either.
Quote from: Peregrin;450351As with anything, it depends on how it's done.
I don't disagree, necessarily, but in practice I usually see it as exploitative rather than evocative. I'd prefer more subtle suggestions of sensuality.
Quote from: Peregrin;450351Extreme != evocative or explicit. In fact, "extreme" is usually viewed as more childish/adolescent by the general public due to how it's marketed. I don't see that as any better than having explicit material readily available.
Oh I agree with that 100%. The Extreme thing is silly. Years later, I'm still laughing at Maddox mocking Corn Nuts (http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=xtreme_bullshit).
My point was more we went lame in a different direction than becoming happy and family friendly.
Personally, I never found early D&D art all that evocative. I'm an Elmore fan. The Earl Otus stuff was too cartoony for me.
Quote from: Peregrin;450351I also think there's a misperception here about Edwards. I don't think he thinks lots of people should be consuming this material. I also don't think he thinks it's going to revitalize anything. I think his point is, just make the content because you want to make it, express yourself however the hell you want, and whoever wants to buy it will.
Isn't "Just Be Yourself" kind of a trite and cliche'd message for a self-styled intellectual to be giving, though?
Perhaps we do read too much into his writings - but it's more fun (and funny) to assume he's an idiot or insane rather than that he's just giving us some afterschool special advice.
Quote from: Peregrin;450351I think his point is, just make the content because you want to make it, express yourself however the hell you want, and whoever wants to buy it will.
Do you think he'll follow his own advice? Or do you think when his next game comes out he'll try to convince people to buy it, telling them that it's trendy, etc.?
Seanchai
Quote from: Seanchai;450427Do you think he'll follow his own advice? Or do you think when his next game comes out he'll try to convince people to buy it, telling them that it's trendy, etc.?
Seanchai
If the game he makes is true to his aesthetics he doesn't betray that by promoting it once it has been made... even if his advertising is full of lies.
An artist who paints giant penises (because that's what he wants to paint)... but makes money by convincing suburban couples that they're really pictures of bananas and would look wonderful over their sofa... is still an artist.
Quote from: Simlasa;450438An artist who paints giant penises (because that's what he wants to paint)... but makes money by convincing suburban couples that they're really pictures of bananas and would look wonderful over their sofa... is still an artist.
But people aren't buying his work because they want giant penises. They're buying it because the artist convinced them to do so. The artist could have painted giant vaginas, giant rectums, or giant nuns and done the same.
Seanchai
Quote from: jgants;450376So would a picture of a guy defecating in the middle of the street. I don't really want that in my RPG art either.
Not quite what I meant...
QuoteI don't disagree, necessarily, but in practice I usually see it as exploitative rather than evocative. I'd prefer more subtle suggestions of sensuality.
Sure. Subtlety is a good tool to use. But I would say what cheesecake art we have left is more exploitative than the type of art Edwards is speaking of, even if the character is clothed (see Exalted as a prime example of extremely childish depictions of the female body). Women aren't afraid of seeing nude women. Women do not like seeing idealized bodies displayed as if they were actually human. If I'm reading Edwards article correctly, he wants pictures that display anatomically correct body fat placement, sagging breasts, along with other natural imperfections, and less of the skinny-mini-bikini type models we see used for most RPG females (and most art of the female body in pop culture).
Quote from: Seanchai;450444But people aren't buying his work because they want giant penises. They're buying it because the artist convinced them to do so. The artist could have painted giant vaginas, giant rectums, or giant nuns and done the same.
Seanchai
So? The point is that the artist painted what he wanted to paint... not what he did to sell the paintings afterward.
Quote from: Seanchai;450427Do you think he'll follow his own advice? Or do you think when his next game comes out he'll try to convince people to buy it, telling them that it's trendy, etc.?
Seanchai
I don't see anywhere where Edwards has ever said he thinks his games should be trendy, popular, or The Next Big Thing. I have seen him claim lots of pompous things about how good his ideas are, but never suggestions that his work is something that the many will enjoy.
Quote from: Simlasa;450448The point is that the artist painted what he wanted to paint...
He did. But it was for a commercial end. And it wasn't what the people wanted. He had to convince folks to purchase the penis.
If I understand Peregrin/Edward's argument, we are lacking a vital element in today's games. Evidence of this is the lack of nudity and creativity, among other things, from today's product. Companies are producing games simply because they think that's what will sell instead of creating products to stoke the muse within. If we return to a creative, boobie-filled paradise, people will snap up our glorious endeavors as we are providing something that returns to them the missing vital spark.
If we write and publish Maze of the Boobie Lord, which is full of nudity, simple drawings of minotaurs, and simple drawings of minotaurs with boobs, and people don't buy it without having to be convinced to do so, doesn't that abrogate the premise that this is something people want?
Moreover, if the artist creates his Maze masterpiece and puts effort into selling it - perhaps as much or more than he did creating it - doesn't it really stop being a creative exercise and becomes more of a commercial one?
Seanchai
You like taking things to extremes, don't you, Seanchai?
First, nudity is only one part of the whole.
Two, I never said vital. I just don't think it's irrelevant to the going ons of the rest of the industry, especially given how other artforms and mediums handle such subject matter.
Third, I'd rather see the Dead Kennedys in concert than U2. There is something to be said for a rough, raw, and energetic aesthetic.
Quote from: Peregrin;450456Third, I'd rather see the Dead Kennedys in concert than U2. There is something to be said for a rough, raw, and energetic aesthetic.
Jello Biafra is as much of a tedious blowhard as Bono.
Quote from: thedungeondelver;450458Jello Biafra is as much of a tedious blowhard as Bono.
But at least he makes music worth listening to.
Quote from: Peregrin;450460But at least he makes music worth listening to.
Agreed...
Besides... one man's 'tedious blowhard' is another man's 'messiah'.
Quote from: Peregrin;450456You like taking things to extremes, don't you, Seanchai?
First, nudity is only one part of the whole.
How is using nudity as an example at all "extreme" when Edward using it as an example, too? And, as I said, "...the lack of nudity and creativity,
among other things..." Note that highlighted bit.
Quote from: Peregrin;450456Two, I never said vital.
No, you didn't.
Vital means "full of life and vigor." You don't think Edwards is saying that products pre-prude were full of life and vigor and that now, under some kind of self-imposed censorship, they're not?
Seanchai
Yes I know vital can mean that, vital also (and more commonly in vernacular US English) means "necessary." In the specific grammatical context used, it's easy to mistake what you're implying.
Also, the reason I said "extreme" is because your dead-panning just goes "Ass, and titties" when Edwards point goes beyond just that.
And yes, self-censored media, when trying to cater to pop-moral norms, does have a tendency to become stale and boring. Even children's fantasy literature has the tendency to be more risque than RPG fantasy worlds. I've repeatedly praised 4e's clean presentation when it comes to actual play advice and DMing procedures, but the type of fantasy world it implies is boring. It makes Rowling look like Dostoevsky, and Pullman like Nabokov (well, if you own the British texts of His Dark Materials, anyway. Some of the passages were too offensive for the US).
Quote from: Peregrin;450487It makes Rowling look like Dostoevsky, and Pullman like Nabokov (well, if you own the British texts of His Dark Materials, anyway. Some of the passages were too offensive for the US).
Hm. I wasn't aware the US versions were edited. Do you know, or have a link to a synopsis of, the edits?
Quote from: Cole;450491Hm. I wasn't aware the US versions were edited. Do you know, or have a link to a synopsis of, the edits?
According to wiki, they removed the passages dealing with Lyra's early pubertal sexuality in
The Amber Spyglass.
Didn't Gary Gygax say that his favorite D&D artist was Larry Elmore? I'll bet that the key point to him about Eldritch Wizardry was not the tits per se but that the tits and everything else looked a lot better than Greg Bell's ham-handed copies of Ditko and Steranko.
There was the "Mothers from Heck" editorial in The Dragon (which I only vaguely remember). The big, obvious point I see is that TSR in particular had come to see its audience as significantly made up of minors.
It sure looked to me as if that was increasingly the case. What had started out with guys in their 30s or so had spread to colleges, then high schools, then the Toys R Us chain with boxes for "ages 10 and up". Each younger demographic seemed a bigger market segment than the one before.
Now, there is a big deal in the U.S.A. about "protecting children" from material seen as sexually titillating. At times, there has been some concern about depictions of violence as well, but sex is always a hot topic. Show a succubus and a type V demon kissing, and you'll really be in for it!
Anyway, the "kid stuff" categorization was once a big drag on American comicbooks. Now I think the puffed-up "grown-up geek" focus is more of a drag on a business that used to thrive (and apparently still does in Japan) by offering products for all ages.
In between, we had the "underground comix" fad. D&D wasn't really any kind of hippy protest thing, though. It was just riffing off of stuff with, pretty often, a "spicy pulp magazine" kind of aesthetic.
The May, 1981, issue of Dragon included a couple of variants for SPI's DragonQuest game. One of those offered the following "items of apparel sufficient to avoid violations of any indecent-exposure laws, but much lighter than regular clothing (and, incidentally, more in line with most of the 25mm miniature figures available)."
Harness: Favored by John Carter and (in a metallic version) by Red Sonja.
Ribbons (female only): Worn by Elinore of Montagar.
Body Stocking: Worn by Rifkind of Asheera, Oscar Gordon and the Empress of Twenty Universes.
Loincloth (male only): Worn by Tarzan of the Apes, Conan of Cimmeria and others.
Burroughs, Bakshi, Abbey, Heinlein and Howard (and Roy Thomas & Co. with inspiration from Howard) -- that's a mix fairly representative of the 1970s fantasy-fan scene as expressed in gaming.
It's not entirely representative, of course. "Sword & Sorcery" figured more, and Tolkien and Lewis less (and of course post-D&D latecomers like Brooks and Eddings not at all) in the origins of D&D than in the minds of many enthusiasts.
Thus, the trend toward a style more influenced by what Moorcock called "Epic Pooh" might have come about in any case. As pop culture goes, it seems for some time to have been more popular.
In the event, though, the "kid stuff" pigeon-holing meant that bare nipples were out and Wonder Bras were in. (For a fairly recent example, see the cover of the 4e PHB.)
I don't see it as much more profound, though, than a matter of fashion. I have a hard time seeing "He-Man" as some kind of radical resistance against right-wing pressures for conformity.
(http://pixhost.info/avaxhome/2006-10-23/heman_1024.jpg)
Quote from: Peregrin;450487Yes I know vital can mean that, vital also (and more commonly in vernacular US English) means "necessary." In the specific grammatical context used, it's easy to mistake what you're implying.
Okay. You don't think Edwards considers creativity, et al., necessary to the endeavor? Why write the article? Why create the game he did if he doesn't believe folks should embrace his view?
Now, I understand he may not be talking about a denotative view of "necessary," but surely his insistence implies a casual or connotative one...
Quote from: Peregrin;450487Also, the reason I said "extreme" is because your dead-panning just goes "Ass, and titties"...
"...the lack of nudity and creativity,
among other things..."
But, er, "Two powerfully important aspects of that material were the monstrous and the naked." Edward listed two aspects. Two. He called them powerfully important. Nudity is one. I mentioned the minotaur (monstrous) and nudity.
Seanchai
Point conceded about what part two of your post was responding to.
Also gathering what I'm trying to express, because I've done a shit job of communicating thus far.
Now I notice that both He-Man and Skeletor lack nipples.
Hmmm...
The MotU toys were originally to be a line of Conan the Barbarian toys.
Then someone at Mattel actually watched Conan the Barbarian and that was that. Stuck with all the molds and tooling they came up with their own stuff.
Quote from: thedungeondelver;450515The MotU toys were originally to be a line of Conan the Barbarian toys.
Then someone at Mattel actually watched Conan the Barbarian and that was that. Stuck with all the molds and tooling they came up with their own stuff.
I've read that as well.
Tangentially, this is an interview (http://www.donaldfglut.com/MOUinterview.html) with the writer who was hired to work up the early narrative behind those characters.
Quote from: Phillip;450493There was the "Mothers from Heck" editorial in The Dragon (which I only vaguely remember). The big, obvious point I see is that TSR in particular had come to see its audience as significantly made up of minors.
This reminds me of a point made by the incomparable Jeff Freeman (http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/columns/acksep97.html) way back in 1997:
QuoteTSR, Inc. adopted a different strategy to get gamers out of the hobby that was even more spectacularly successful: They wrote the game for twelve-year-olds. This is sheer brilliance, because even twelve-year-olds aren't interested in anything written for twelve-year-olds. For example, 1st edition AD&D was written for adults, the vocabulary alone insisted on a college reading level. Game modules, the monster manuals and so on, contained adult themes and pictures of bare breasts, sans suckling infants. Naturally, lots of twelve-year-olds were attracted to it.
As illustrations of this principle, take `teen' magazines. Who reads them? Not teenagers. Pre-teens read them, because they deal with issues that are inappropriate for pre-teens. For example, sex. The surest way to get youngsters disinterested in anything is to write-down to them. TSR, Inc. realized it, did just that, and young boys, along with everyone else, stayed away from the game. School game clubs followed chain-mail bikinis right out of the hobby. TSR's strategy was so successful that they nearly went out of business and had to sell-out to a card-game company.
And that's right: even as impressionable twelve-year-olds, we realised TSR was talking down to us in 2nd edition and its associated products. What we longed for was what some of the older gamers had - anti-paladins, evil wizards, assassins, half-orcs, half-orc assassins (the ultimate combo), demon-summoning spells and so on. Thus, we treasured every bit of that when we could find it, read Jack Vance, Howard and John Caldwell, while laughing at the sanitised Forgotten Realms/Dragonlance fantasy we were being offered. Of course, we were not "mature" at all. But we wanted to be.
The Angry Mothers From Heck editorial was one of TSR's dumbest moves, and they had had a few.
Quote from: Peregrin;450492According to wiki, they removed the passages dealing with Lyra's early pubertal sexuality in The Amber Spyglass.
There's a reference to her having a smoochy session with the male protagonist at the end of the last book, in the UK version. Very non-offensive. Some other stuff in Pullman offends me hugely, eg it turns out it was fine for her dad to commit a literal ritual human sacrifice (of Lyra's best friend!) at the end of the first book, because it was all in a 'good cause' - Satanic rebellion against the decrepit Catholic God. Or how he preaches the virtue of rebellion for 3 long books, then at the end his protagonists unthinkingly do whatever Satan tells them to, simply because authorial fiat has declared that Satan, Asriel & co are the 'good guys' (compare Moorcock: "Screw all you gods, we're doing it our own way"). Pullman's POV reminded me of the crowd in Life of Brian yelling "We're All Individuals!" in unison. Compared to Pullman's sick Maoist worldview I find CS Lewis a paragon of healthy moral outlook.
Quote from: S'mon;450555... it turns out it was fine for her dad to commit a literal ritual human sacrifice (of Lyra's best friend!) at the end of the first book, because it was all in a 'good cause' - Satanic rebellion against the decrepit Catholic God. Or how he preaches the virtue of rebellion for 3 long books, then at the end his protagonists unthinkingly do whatever Satan tells them to, simply because authorial fiat has declared that Satan, Asriel & co are the 'good guys' (compare Moorcock: "Screw all you gods, we're doing it our own way"). Pullman's POV reminded me of the crowd in Life of Brian yelling "We're All Individuals!" in unison. Compared to Pullman's sick Maoist worldview I find CS Lewis a paragon of healthy moral outlook.
Current reading schedule be damned! On the strength of this review I am going out to pick up
His Dark Materials today.
Quote from: Cole;450519Tangentially, this is an interview (http://www.donaldfglut.com/MOUinterview.html) with the writer who was hired to work up the early narrative behind those characters.
I find this interview vaguely depressing.
Quote from: two_fishes;450606I find this interview vaguely depressing.
You shouldn't check out interviews with the writers for GI Joe then. Pure hate.
Edit: Here's Buzz Dixon explaining the stupid shit Hasbro put him through: http://www.joeheadquarters.com/interviews_dixon.shtml
Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;450608You shouldn't check out interviews with the lead writer for GI Joe then. Pure hate.
I found the simpering, obsessive fan-boy desperate for any scrap of detail about his cherished childhood toy way more depressing than the writer. The writer, he seems like, you know, just a guy who had a job. I feel like I wanna slap the fan-boy and tell him, goddammit, grow the fuck up, y'know?
Quote from: two_fishes;450612I found the simpering, obsessive fan-boy desperate for any scrap of detail about his cherished childhood toy way more depressing than the writer. The writer, he seems like, you know, just a guy who had a job. I feel like I wanna slap the fan-boy and tell him, goddammit, grow the fuck up, y'know?
LOL, I had the same thought.
It's like, "How many times does the guy have to tell you he just slapped stuff together and came up with names that sounded good so he could eat that month?"
The fanboy seems to think that somewhere out there, there is a hidden tome of the secret lost stories of Eternia that are deeply inspired works of art. Instead of, you know, some guy being paid $50 to slap something together over the weekend so a big corporation could sell more toys.
The writer's description sounds pretty much how I expected it would (being a very cynical person, I am rarely surprised at how businesses work).
I find the fetish for the cartoons of the 80s generally sad, and indicative of a generation reaching it's mid life crisis.
GI Joe, Transformers, He-Mandate, and on and on, worshipped like fucking classics, when what they really were was cheap garbage to sell toys to clearly easily impressionable kids.
Quote from: jgants;450623Quote from: two_fishes;450612I found the simpering, obsessive fan-boy desperate for any scrap of detail about his cherished childhood toy way more depressing than the writer. The writer, he seems like, you know, just a guy who had a job. I feel like I wanna slap the fan-boy and tell him, goddammit, grow the fuck up, y'know?
LOL, I had the same thought.
It's like, "How many times does the guy have to tell you he just slapped stuff together and came up with names that sounded good so he could eat that month?"
The fanboy seems to think that somewhere out there, there is a hidden tome of the secret lost stories of Eternia that are deeply inspired works of art. Instead of, you know, some guy being paid $50 to slap something together over the weekend so a big corporation could sell more toys.
The writer's description sounds pretty much how I expected it would (being a very cynical person, I am rarely surprised at how businesses work).
Quote from: J Arcane;450625I find the fetish for the cartoons of the 80s generally sad, and indicative of a generation reaching it's mid life crisis.
GI Joe, Transformers, He-Mandate, and on and on, worshipped like fucking classics, when what they really were was cheap garbage to sell toys to clearly easily impressionable kids.
This sort of reminds me of guys around my age, who still look for greater "meaning" in movie scripts, tv shows, and in lyrics of heavy metal songs.
(I don't know whether I should feel pity or scorn for such individuals).
Quote from: two_fishes;450612I found the simpering, obsessive fan-boy desperate for any scrap of detail about his cherished childhood toy way more depressing than the writer. The writer, he seems like, you know, just a guy who had a job. I feel like I wanna slap the fan-boy and tell him, goddammit, grow the fuck up, y'know?
I found it funny but I'm pretty cynical.
My own feeling is that while those eighties cartoons are dumb, badly written, and goofy they were head and shoulders above what came before. Scooby Doo and the Archies anyone?
And where and when they could, the writers did the best they could with what they were given. Taken as a whole, and forgetting the crappy 90% leads to the 10% pure distilled awesome that the fanboys are sure they remember.
And there is good stuff in there if you squint and hold your nose long enough. It's really not much different than the comics of the sixties in that regard. The art was poor, the storytelling was chopping but some great and enduring legends like Spiderman's failure to save Gwen Stacy arose from it.
Quote from: Cole;450519I've read that as well.
Tangentially, this is an interview (http://www.donaldfglut.com/MOUinterview.html) with the writer who was hired to work up the early narrative behind those characters.
That interview is like the extended dance version of Orson Welles' comment when he was asked about his work in the Transformers movie (the last thing he did): "You know what I did this morning? I played the voice of a toy." [...] "I play a planet. I menace somebody called Something-or-other. Then I'm destroyed. My plan to destroy Whoever-it-is is thwarted and I tear myself apart on the screen."
Quote from: J Arcane;450625I find the fetish for the cartoons of the 80s generally sad, and indicative of a generation reaching it's mid life crisis.
GI Joe, Transformers, He-Mandate, and on and on, worshipped like fucking classics, when what they really were was cheap garbage to sell toys to clearly easily impressionable kids.
Hehehe... I have fond memories of watching
Speed Racer when I was kid (along with
Giant Robot and
Kimba the White Lion). It's been years ago now, but my friend bought the
Speed Racer DVD with all the shows and we sat down to watch it with great anticipation. I was sorely disappointed because watching it as an adult shattered the fond memories I had of watching the show when I was a child. Some things are better left in the past, and it is better to cherish fond memories rather than trying to recapture that fondness later in life.
Quote from: Drohem;450641Hehehe... I have fond memories of watching Speed Racer when I was kid (along with Giant Robot and Kimba the White Lion). It's been years ago now, but my friend bought the Speed Racer DVD with all the shows and we sat down to watch it with great anticipation. I was sorely disappointed because watching it as an adult shattered the fond memories I had of watching the show when I was a child. Some things are better left in the past, and it is better to cherish fond memories rather than trying to recapture that fondness later in life.
I attempted to rewatch Robotech recently.
That lasted all of half an episode before even my much more tolerant companion decided this was a bunch of hacky garbage.
Quote from: Drohem;450641Hehehe... I have fond memories of watching Speed Racer when I was kid (along with Giant Robot and Kimba the White Lion). It's been years ago now, but my friend bought the Speed Racer DVD with all the shows and we sat down to watch it with great anticipation. I was sorely disappointed because watching it as an adult shattered the fond memories I had of watching the show when I was a child. Some things are better left in the past, and it is better to cherish fond memories rather than trying to recapture that fondness later in life.
Same here. When I was younger, I really liked the D&D and Transformers cartoons from the mid 1980's.
When I watched the D&D cartoon dvd a few years ago, I was sorely disappointed.
Awhile ago I picked up the mid-1980's Transformers cartoon DVDs. For the most part, I was sorely disappointed too.
I've noticed the same thing when I recently pulled out some old music records or cds of stuff I use to listen to decades ago. I was wondering how the hell I ever found these heavy metal records fascinating, that I was able to listen to them over and over again when I was younger.
Quote from: J Arcane;450643I attempted to rewatch Robotech recently.
That lasted all of half an episode before even my much more tolerant companion decided this was a bunch of hacky garbage.
I attempted Thundercats, and have not had a moment of nostalgia for any of this shit since.
Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;450645I attempted Thundercats, and have not had a moment of nostalgia for any of this shit since.
Same here, when I attempted to watch Beavis and Butthead recently.
(A friend loaned me his Beavis and Butthead dvds).
Very little to no nostalgia whatsoever.
Funny; I acquired all of the original '67 Spider Man cartoons and...yeah. Yeah not very good. The 3 year old me was a lot easier to impress.
Behold, for example, the mighty Magneto...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kkc_Myyye20&feature=player_embedded
Jeebus.
That is just . . . whole new levels of bad.
Not only just older stuff from decades ago.
I've found that even more recently produced stuff, seems kinda meh or outright crap.
I use to watch CSI a lot back in the early-mid 2000's, but haven't watched in a awhile. Decided to watch CSI last week, when I was bored and came across it via channel surfing. Came to the realization how awful it is nowadays.
Quote from: hanszurcher;450558Current reading schedule be damned! On the strength of this review I am going out to pick up His Dark Materials today.
On entertainment value: The first book is very good, the second book is good, the third book is bad, a total mess, and way too long.
Quote from: thedungeondelver;450655Behold, for example, the mighty Magneto...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kkc_Myyye20&feature=player_embedded
That's... that's just something. :rotfl:
"The very sight of that sign offends me!" :rotfl:
I am happy I was a teenage snob who thought those 80s cartoons were beneath him. :cool:
Quote from: J Arcane;450625I find the fetish for the cartoons of the 80s generally sad, and indicative of a generation reaching it's mid life crisis.
Well, in all fairness, I can think of plenty of equally ridiculous things from the 60's that my parents still liked when I was growing up (sadly, I have achieved an age I can actually recall my father being - *shudder*)
Quote from: J Arcane;450643I attempted to rewatch Robotech recently.
That lasted all of half an episode before even my much more tolerant companion decided this was a bunch of hacky garbage.
I had the same experience a couple of years ago with Voltron - my nostalgia slammed into the harsh wall of reality. Since then, yeah, no more rewatching kids cartoons. I'll just keep with my memories thanks.
Dangermouse is where it's at.
Well, I was in my late teens when Robotech came on. I liked it then, and I liked it just as much, if not more, a few years ago when I went back and watched the original three Japanese series. Not sure how much that has to do with seeing the series with better music and without the annoying narration.
At the same time (early '80s) I thought most of the other action cartoons were silly kids' stuff, so I have no nostalgia for GI Joe, He-Man, or Transformers. Vehicle Voltron (Dairugger XV) was borderline, but I don't think I'd want to go back.
Still have a fondness for Speed Racer, and I was especially happy to be able to finally see the opening episodes a few years ago, since I'd never seen the "origin". At the time, though, (early '70s) I grew out of it pretty quickly. Would prefer to see the original, which I've heard is a bit rougher (i.e., Speed is a little more of a tough guy), but I'm not under any illusions. That said, the underlying concept & story really is quite good, and could probably be updated if only it weren't given the silly over-the-top nostalgia/parody treatment. I.e., more Sam Raimi, less Wachowski.
The 67 Spiderman is really outstanding for what it is. The animation is poor but the writing is a fair bit above other shows well into the eighties and the watercolor skies and funky jazz beat background music are brilliant. There are some really trippy episodes like the one where he's trapped in a walk in freezer and hallucinating or the one where he encounters the alien power of Dementia 5.
Really though, yes, I think many of these concepts had more potential and accumulated value than individual episodic value.
Quote from: two_fishes;450612I found the simpering, obsessive fan-boy desperate for any scrap of detail about his cherished childhood toy way more depressing than the writer. The writer, he seems like, you know, just a guy who had a job. I feel like I wanna slap the fan-boy and tell him, goddammit, grow the fuck up, y'know?
The same thing can be said about guys (now in their late-30's or 40's) who latch on to everything Gary Gygax ever said, as if Gygax was an "Oracle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle) of Delphi". :rolleyes:
Quote from: ggroy;450686The same thing can be said about guys now in their 40's who latched on to everything Gary Gygax ever said, as if Gygax was an "Oracle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle) of Delphi". :rolleyes:
This too.
I actually strongly believe they are related impulses.
It wouldn't be too surprising if the vast majority of D&D/AD&D stuff produced by TSR during the Gygax Gygax era, wasn't much more than "throwing spaghetti against the wall and seeing what sticks" just to meet deadlines.
ie. Everything was done "flying by the seat of their pants".
Quote from: ggroy;450686The same thing can be said about guys (now in their late-30's or 40's) who latch on to everything Gary Gygax ever said, as if Gygax was an "Oracle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle) of Delphi". :rolleyes:
This is awesome reading (http://www.knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=5987&hilit=zeb+cook), particularly when that Semaj character gets his dander up.
Quote from: KenHR;450691This is awesome reading (http://www.knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=5987&hilit=zeb+cook), particularly when that Semaj character gets his dander up.
Hehe. I remember that thread.
Kinda funny.
Quote from: KenHR;450691This is awesome reading (http://www.knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=5987&hilit=zeb+cook), particularly when that Semaj character gets his dander up.
It gives a lot of insight into the world of the TSR wage-slaves too.
Quote from: J Arcane;450687This too.
I actually strongly believe they are related impulses.
I wouldn't be surprised at all, if they are the same underlying (obsessive) compulsions.
Other areas where I've come across similar compulsive behavior, are amongst fanatics of numerous stripes (ie. religious, political, other fandoms, certain music genres, etc ...).
The big problem from my perspective was (and is) not the people who, in the Talmudic discussions that are entertaining in forums, will consider everything Gygax ever wrote.
The big problem was (and is) the turkeys who try actually to rules-lawyer on the basis of misreading an unrepresentative portion of what Gygax wrote.
The turkeys who insist on cluttering the thoughtful Talmud discussions with their ignorant rules-lawyering are a particularly annoying variety, especially when they become agents-provocateurs devoted to attacking the game on the basis of "straw man" ideology.
Even more hilarious are the guys who (selectively) take Gary Gygax's words and the 1E AD&D core books as "holy writ".
"Unarmed combat system? No way, that was the BLUMES, man. Gary would never write something so overly complicated and clunky....wait, what? Why yes, that is a complete set of Mythus books behind me..."
Quote from: KenHR;450719"Unarmed combat system? No way, that was the BLUMES, man. Gary would never write something so overly complicated and clunky....wait, what? Why yes, that is a complete set of Mythus books behind me..."
LOL Indeed.
I got through half an episode of Land of the Lost, a show I loved as a kid, before realizing that my tastes in entertainment had in fact changed.... A LOT.
Quote from: David Johansen;450637My own feeling is that while those eighties cartoons are dumb, badly written, and goofy they were head and shoulders above what came before. Scooby Doo and the Archies anyone?
And where and when they could, the writers did the best they could with what they were given. Taken as a whole, and forgetting the crappy 90% leads to the 10% pure distilled awesome that the fanboys are sure they remember.
And there is good stuff in there if you squint and hold your nose long enough. It's really not much different than the comics of the sixties in that regard. The art was poor, the storytelling was chopping but some great and enduring legends like Spiderman's failure to save Gwen Stacy arose from it.
There was a lot of crap (and remains a lot of crap) in the annals of Scooby-Do but He-Man, GI Joe and their ilk at their best are nauseatingly worse the Scooby at its best.
Quote from: Professort Zoot;450906There was a lot of crap (and remains a lot of crap) in the annals of Scooby-Do but He-Man, GI Joe and their ilk at their best are nauseatingly worse the Scooby at its best.
Scooby-Do at least had a nugget of an interesting idea to start with (dumbed-down Johnny Quest)... and as a kid I found the stories fairly involving (I eventually lost interest because there were no 'real' spooks to be had).
He-man, GI Joe, Thundercats were just toy marketing schemes from the get go. One farther step down into the cesspool of advertainment.
Quote from: Simlasa;450910He-man, GI Joe, Thundercats were just toy marketing schemes from the get go. One farther step down into the cesspool of advertainment.
Not to mention Thundercats sowed the seed for an entire generation of furries.
(http://cartoonswoon.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/cheetara01-300x240.png)
Frankly I think all children's cartoons in the 80's were crap until Disney hit the scene with things like Duck Tales, which I can still watch and be entertained. And the fact that the Transformers movies can pull in millions without much of a change from their cartoon relatives makes me sad and hungry.
And I have to defend Land of the Lost. Most of Sid & Marty Kroft's stuff was too insipid for me, but Land of the Lost can still manage to hold my attention, at least until the third season. Very few shows can boast having Ben Bova, Larry Niven, Walter Koenig, and Theodore Sturgeon in their writing credits. In fact, it was probably the most intelligent and mature show I can remember watching as a kid.
Anyway, the kind of naked I think we've lost at this point is the raw, intimate, honesty that use to exist. Sure it wasn't always pretty... actually, it was
rarely pretty, but the rawness had value in itself. These days I think a lot of entertainment in inherently dishonest and avoidant. In fact, I even think some people use transgressive displays to avoid the truth rather than pursue it.
But man, at least the cartoons are SO much better now. Batman, JLU, X-Men Evolution, Dilbert, Clerks, South Park, Cowboy Bebop, Gurren Laggan, even Bleach and Naruto. Yu Gi Oh was surprisingly good for a show based on nothing more than a card game. Regardless, whatever crimes it committed can be forgiven because it led to the Abridged Series (http://www.yugiohtheabridgedseries.com/).
Quote from: The Butcher;450230It's not that transgression is a bad thing, but the necessity to acknowledge the value of transgressive artists and artwork, has given rise to a subculture of transgression for the sake of transgression, and cheapened its use as an artistic element, as if it were no longer a means to an end, but an end and a value in itself.
Well said. There are times where simply being transgressive to see what's beyond works, but most of the time you end up with meaningless crap devoid of any satire, irony, or implication.
It's easy to be transgressive. Just look at what's culturally acceptable and do the opposite. What's difficult is giving the act some sort of
merit.
Quote from: CRKrueger;450916Not to mention Thundercats sowed the seed for an entire generation of furries.
(http://cartoonswoon.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/cheetara01-300x240.png)
I've always thought Chetara was hot. Her and Felicia from Dark Stalkers (:
Quote from: CRKrueger;450916Not to mention Thundercats sowed the seed for an entire generation of furries.
(http://cartoonswoon.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/cheetara01-300x240.png)
What's so weird about that image is she's wearing a belt, and there' the outline of what appears to be a high cut leotard seam on both hips... but unless she's wearing a sheer outfit that covers 100% of her body, including her face, then
she's not wearing any clothes at all.
Or just a belt and panties. In which case, however, she doesn't have any nipples. Stay classy, 80s!
That He-Man interview reminds me of the painful commentary track on the old 80s Flash Gordon DVD. The interviewer kept asking a Lou Scheimer a whole bunch of intricate questions about Flash Gordon, and the guy's answers were all:
"I don't remember."
"We didn't really think about it that much."
"Who knows at this point?"
I think the interviewer was getting a bit frustrated by the end.
Another humorous moment from a commentary track for the D&D cartoon DVD -- they had two artists and some NBC PR flack. The flack kept talking about their "branding" and their products and yadah yadah, and one of the artists says "yeah, the network was extremely dictatorial," and the PR lady sort of sputters and goes quiet for the next twenty minutes.
Quote from: Patrick Y.;450984What's so weird about that image is she's wearing a belt, and there' the outline of what appears to be a high cut leotard seam on both hips... but unless she's wearing a sheer outfit that covers 100% of her body, including her face, then she's not wearing any clothes at all.
:rotfl:
I remeber this scene from the feature-length pilot (or was it a prequel?). This confused the hell out of me, too, and I must have been 8 at the time.
Well, not to put down crapping on much loved geek institutions, got my own dead horse to flog, but let's look at some of the concepts from beyond the results.
Masters of the Universe - Cosmic level sword and blaster show drawing on Jack Kirby's fifth world and Moorcock with Eternia being a central realm much like Amber. Also hot girls in skimpy outfits.
GI Joe - Elite American military force fights a war with a previously invisible enemy. One day things are normal and the next day a well armed and organized hostile terrorist force materializes from within the borders of the United States. On the whole the enemy is better armed and higher tech bringing expendible robot troops on line fairly early in the conflict.
Transformers - Alien robots, stranded on earth re-fight an ancient war to obtain enough resources to return home to claim victory. Due to limited numbers and resources they are unable to directly confront Earth's armed forces so they resort to diguising themselves as common vehicles.
Thundercats - Hot cat girl molests young boy. Okay, I've got nothing, never did like Thundercats. Sorry
Anyhow, I guess what I'm saying is there are some entertaining concepts in there with very poor execution.
Quote from: David Johansen;451043Well, not to put down crapping on much loved geek institutions, got my own dead horse to flog, but let's look at some of the concepts from beyond the results.
Masters of the Universe - Cosmic level sword and blaster show drawing on Jack Kirby's fifth world and Moorcock with Eternia being a central realm much like Amber. Also hot girls in skimpy outfits.
GI Joe - Elite American military force fights a war with a previously invisible enemy. One day things are normal and the next day a well armed and organized hostile terrorist force materializes from within the borders of the United States. On the whole the enemy is better armed and higher tech bringing expendible robot troops on line fairly early in the conflict.
Transformers - Alien robots, stranded on earth re-fight an ancient war to obtain enough resources to return home to claim victory. Due to limited numbers and resources they are unable to directly confront Earth's armed forces so they resort to diguising themselves as common vehicles.
Too true! :hatsoff:
Quote from: David Johansen;451043Thundercats - Hot cat girl molests young boy. Okay, I've got nothing, never did like Thundercats. Sorry
More like "sympathetic high-tech catfolk flee dying world to resettle in backwater shithole planet, patronizing the local population of robotic teddy bears, steampunk walrus-men and other rejects, and waging a war of attrition with ugly non-catfolk mutants and creepy super-mummy dude."
And in my defense, I was 8 or 9 at the time. :D
Quote from: David Johansen;451043Anyhow, I guess what I'm saying is there are some entertaining concepts in there with very poor execution.
Absolutely. I don't know what is it that kids are watching Saturday mornings these days, but I'm sure it's just as bad.
Quote from: The Butcher;451075Absolutely. I don't know what is it that kids are watching Saturday mornings these days, but I'm sure it's just as bad.
I'm pretty sure Saturday morning cartoons died in the late 90s.
I might razz Filmation a little, but it's out of love -- they were a tiny American animation studio that didn't outsource, and turned out material on tiny budgets and limited resources. The stuff they made was not all gold, to be sure, but I have a lot of fondness and respect for them.
Quote from: Insufficient Metal;451081I'm pretty sure Saturday morning cartoons died in the late 90s.
Hrmmm? No sorry... cartoons haven't died,
They have evolved! What you are witnessing is not the decline of cartoons, but the decline of the influence of the big three broadcasting companies et.al. ABC, NBC, and CBS.
First programming is no longer just limited to Saturdays, it runs around the clock 24/7 on several cable channels, with limited programming (mostly afterschool, but also afterschool and on the weekends on dozens of additional cable channels and also 24/7 online on the Internet...
nick.com
cartoonnetwork.com
disney.com
sony.com
animenewsnetwork.com
pbskids.org
nationalgeographic.com
kidswb.com
Anime Networks Listing of cartoon related companies...
Companies (http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/company.php?list=all)
Google's listing of cartoon networks related to cartoonnetwork.com
Related Networks (related:www.cartoonnetwork.com/%20cartoon%20networks)
I'd wager that cartoon programming and networks have a much larger share of the broadcast market as a whole, than they used to. More cartoons are shown at more times by more companies than ever before... There is more crossover as well, cartoons are heavily embedded in many movie and game franchises too.
Yeah, I was really talking about "Saturday morning cartoons" within the context of the thread, i.e. the 1980s, not cartoons in general. I should have been a bit more clear.
The Butcher posted "I don't know what is it that kids are watching Saturday mornings these days," and my first thought was that if anything, they're probably out somewhere watching Superjail on their smartphone.
Pretty much all the cartoons I've seen lately... Spongebob, Ben 10, Power Puff Girls, Flapjack... are vastly better than the ones I watched as a kid... in art and writing and concept. Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network make some great stuff.
CN's stuff is pretty good. I always found the cartoons produced by Spielberg to be some of the better stuff, though, in terms of comedy shows.
I'm jealous of today's kids, though. Wish I could've grown up with something like The Last Airbender on TV. TMNT didn't really cut it as a martial arts/action cartoon (for me, anyway).
Quote from: Peregrin;451132I'm jealous of today's kids, though. Wish I could've grown up with something like The Last Airbender on TV. TMNT didn't really cut it as a martial arts/action cartoon (for me, anyway).
Yup. I wish we'd had stuff like the later Justice League cartoons, Young Justice, or even the Teen Titans back in my day; instead of "superfriends".
RPGPundit
Quote from: RPGPundit;451341Yup. I wish we'd had stuff like the later Justice League cartoons, Young Justice, or even the Teen Titans back in my day; instead of "superfriends".
RPGPundit
Honestly, DC has just had some mindblowingly good cartoons since they put Dini and Timm on it with Batman oh so many years ago.
I still watch those, every damn one. They're just fantastic, which blows me away every time I think about it.
It's a shame they've been kind of pissing that record down the drain with all these terrible direct-to-DVD releases.
Well, direct-to-DVD is always the refuge of the damned, for the most part. The series are what matters, and Young Justice (their newest one) is spectacular.
Fucking shame that of all their recent shows the only one that utterly sucked ass had to be the LSH.
RPGPundit
Quote from: The ButcherI don't know what is it that kids are watching Saturday mornings these days, but I'm sure it's just as bad.
Well, really little kids today have
Dora the Explorer, which for them probably ranks up there with classics Mister Rogers' Neighborhood and Sesame Street (probably the most effective innovation in education of the 20th century).
Of course, many of them can enjoy the classics as well. It usually takes a few years to get the acculturation to see things as 'dated'.
Quote from: J ArcaneHonestly, DC has just had some mindblowingly good cartoons since they put Dini and Timm on it with Batman oh so many years ago.
What I have seen of the DC shows has been excellent, quite stylish and rather intelligently entertaining.
Not that this has much to do with Reagan-era D&D, but what the hey.
Quote from: Peregrin;450460But at least he makes music worth listening to.
He makes music?
Quote from: Elfdart;451658He makes music?
Well, made. The stuff he's doing now? No clue.