Shouldn't publishers be able to have a say in the topics they want to publish?  The storytellers aren't being censored just because a company doesn't want to publish their work.  A Publisher shouldn't be forced to include something in a book against their wishes -- especially if it will damage their business.

The PR fallout from a major company publishing a book in the US that let you buy slaves without any sort of context suggsting it was wrong would be spectacular.  Same story with depicting a current, real-world religion (eg. Islam, Judaism) as "Evil".  I wouldn't be at all surprised if stores (eg. Walmart, Barnes & Nobles) stopped carrying the books altogether.  That could lead to people losing their jobs at the publishing company.

If the storyteller doesn't want anyone restricting their creative freedom -- they can always self-publish, and deal with any PR (and possibly legal) issues on their own.  A publisher saying "This is what we will / won't publish" is perfectly reasonable.

Quote from: StuartShouldn't publishers be able to have a say in the topics they want to publish?  

In a word? No.

Sorry, Stuart, I'm gonna break with another sacred cow. See, publishers do fuck all but put the story out there.  Some time in the last hundred years or so, some publishers got it into their fucking head that they were the important people in the business, and that has become the standard for some industries.

Like Music for example. The recording industry feels they have some sort of right to decide what should be popular, and what should be 'out there' for the public to listen to.  It is a perversion of the natural order, and the result is as plain as the nose on your misshapen human face:  Shitty, soulless 'music' and a thriving 'indie' community that most folks agree is where the cool shit is... even as the Indie threatens to become part of the industry itself.

But where the fuck are the musicians?  The Industry is a shit poor method of making art... and storytelling is an art.

Now, move this to books. Regular books are less restricted by publishing houses, though there does exist some measures of self censorship from the publishers...

The exception being, of course, RPG books.  If a creator (E.G.G. for example) says, this is my world and this is how I want to do things, that's fine. He's the writer, it's his say. Its his story. When the publisher (TSR in the example) decides from a business perspective that's when my hackles rise and I get ready for an almighty smiting.

TSR doesn't write shit, TSR doesn't tell stories. Authors and writers do, and TSR had no business telling them how to fucking do their jobs. TSR's job was to print the fucking books, no more no less.

Quote from: StuartThe PR fallout from a major company publishing a book in the US that let you buy slaves without any sort of context suggsting it was wrong would be spectacular.

Eh, Exalted? Slavery is part of life in the Realm, taken for granted by everyone as an unfortunate necessity, and there's no emancipation movement whatsoever. How the PCs choose to deal with that is entirely up to the players.

I'd like to hear what folks think about the morality and/or ethics in a setting like Midnight for example.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: David RI'd like to hear what folks think about the morality and/or ethics in a setting like Midnight for example.

The only big difference I see to standard fantasy fare is the implied hopelessness of the PC's actions. And this is something that most DM's won't neccesarily stick to anyways.

Other than that I don't see that much in the setting that is particularly "questionable", it's just that the setting starts out worse. Even Dragonlance started with a world where good lost, a-bit-evil reigned and quite-evil was about to take over.

Quote from: SosthenesThe only big difference I see to standard fantasy fare is the implied hopelessness of the PC's actions. And this is something that most DM's won't neccesarily stick to anyways.

Other than that I don't see that much in the setting that is particularly "questionable", it's just that the setting starts out worse. Even Dragonlance started with a world where good lost, a-bit-evil reigned and quite-evil was about to take over.

Although I don't think that the hopelessness is implied  it seemed pretty overt when I read the first edition, I was thinking more of the morality it encourages? sustains? creates?  during play, if one does stick close to the source material.
I mean living in a post apoc fantasy world where distrust and paranoia is the default assumption. Where altrusim is rewarded not with gratitude and glory, but by betrayal and exile.

Where at the end of the day, doing good comes with an extremely high price and concepts like honour and ethics although not explicitly stated in the core rule book, is something which is considered an extremely dangerous indulgence, considering, the Enemy you are up against. This seems so at odds with trad heroic fantasy.

I was just wondering, where it fits in. I mean, certain moral questions are buried deep beneath the fun of most if not all rpg campaigns. It's just a matter of digging them up.

But, all this is a slight derail, from the discussion at hand. When I'm a bit more clear, I'll weigh in

Regards,
David R

Quote from: David RI mean living in a post apoc fantasy world where distrust and paranoia is the default assumption. Where altrusim is rewarded not with gratitude and glory, but by betrayal and exile.

Midnight is a setting with a _huge_ gap between the heroes and the rest of the world. While the rest of the world is in its death throes with lots of infighting and treason, all the source material and the general style of both rules and setting strongly suggest that the characters are true heroes.

In my experience, such a contrast between the world and the characters often results in very moral heroes (or anti-heroes) or a total breakdown, often resulting in the death of the character.

Midnight has a very clear enemy, enough apparent hope and lots of suffering. Most players react to this with a more clearly heroic (and thus moral) portrayal of their characters.

Spike, do you seriously think that if Garth Ennis had decided to write "The Boys" with the real Justice League as the baddies instead of a parody, DC should have been obliged to publish it?

Quote from: GrimGentEh, Exalted? Slavery is part of life in the Realm, taken for granted by everyone as an unfortunate necessity, and there's no emancipation movement whatsoever. How the PCs choose to deal with that is entirely up to the players.

Tekumel is another example

I'm sorry to drag YotZ into yet another discussion, but we're talking about ethics, difficulties in getting controversial stuff published and specifically the issue of slavery so I think it's justified

Tim had serious difficulties getting YotZ published and we continue to get points knocked off the reviews because of the content.  Heck, we even have a sourcebook dedicated to slavers - Fleshmongers.  Many of the locations we've written - even the "moral" ones - have some sort of enforced servitude(Silo City and the Raft leap to mind and the Voss is borderline)

But (intro to Fleshmongers makes it clear and I'm not sure if it was Tim or me that first used the phrase "every setting needs it's orcs"), we always present it as a serious evil that should be abolished and most Havens that survive to year ten or fifteen of the Rising have done so

So you can present it both as a fact of life and as an evil.  I think we've pulled it off, but that's for the reader to judge

Quote from: SosthenesMidnight is a setting with a _huge_ gap between the heroes and the rest of the world. While the rest of the world is in its death throes with lots of infighting and treason, all the source material and the general style of both rules and setting strongly suggest that the characters are true heroes.

I have not read much Midnight supplements, but from what I've heard, your last sentence in this paragraph accurately sums up the tone of the setting from what I've heard from others.

I got a much bleaker picture when I read the first edition core rule book. Indeed, what attracted me (and pehaps a lot of folks), to the setting was it's overall bleakness and the fact that the heores were waging a losing war...and the issue's which arose because of this fact.

QuoteIn my experience, such a contrast between the world and the characters often results in very moral heroes (or anti-heroes) or a total breakdown, often resulting in the death of the character.

Sure. Which is what I think is interesting about this whole thread. Midnight is an example, where the setting encourages (for most folks) a certain kind of heroic play. There is a very apparent moral conflict (at least from what I got from the first edition) with regards to how to survive and fight the Enemy.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: David RSure. Which is what I think is interesting about this whole thread. Midnight is an example, where the setting encourages (for most folks) a certain kind of heroic play. There is a very apparent moral conflict (at least from what I got from the first edition) with regards to how to survive and fight the Enemy.

Now I see where you're coming from. Yes, the methods used to fight the Enemy and the moral implications thereof are rather interesting. Does the end justify the means and all that...

I'd say that Midnight by itself is rather open in that regard. Pure, all-out heroic battles against the hordes of the black lord won't work, though. It's slightly skewed towards small missions and guerilla tactics. Terrorist acts are a definite possibility. Someone of Mr. Hickman's nature would probably suggest more background material to fight player's urges to do this.

If I remember correctly, the Midnight city book (something something Shadows) has some guys fighting Izrador in a decidedly non-heroic way.

Quote from: SpikeIn a word? No.

Sorry, Stuart, I'm gonna break with another sacred cow. See, publishers do fuck all but put the story out there. Some time in the last hundred years or so, some publishers got it into their fucking head that they were the important people in the business, and that has become the standard for some industries.
...
TSR doesn't write shit, TSR doesn't tell stories. Authors and writers do, and TSR had no business telling them how to fucking do their jobs. TSR's job was to print the fucking books, no more no less.

I don't really know what your background is Spike, you could be a college student doing the usual college student thing, or you could be someone a bit older with experience in the publishing industry. I can't tell from a saucy pika picture.  

I think I know where you're coming from -- being sick of the publishers taking all the control (and money) and exploiting the artists, who are the ones producing the actual thing people want to have.  Why should the publishers have so much control?  That sucks, right?

So a few years ago my friend and I decided we were going to change that -- at least for the comic book world.  We were going to setup a company that would do pretty much exactly what you're advocating.  A publisher that would just print the books, no more no less.  We'd only take enough to cover costs, including our labour, and give indie comic creators a print-on-demand comic publishing company that they'd love.  We wouldn't tell them what to do with their books, and we wouldn't make *any* claim to their intellectual property.  A business by indie comic creators FOR indie comic creators.  Just to keep you interested -- we had a lot of early interest in publishing RPG books as well.

My friend's background was working in a printers, and he took out a loan to buy some digital press stuff that he moved into his home office.  My background is web / e-commerce and a bit of business and legal, so I got the website going and helped plan out some of the workflow and numbers.

It was a fantastic learning experience -- it didn't take us very long to realize why traditional publishers do a lot of things the way they do.  I can also categorically refute your claim that "TSR's job was to print the fucking books, no more no less."  That's not a publisher -- that's a printer.  A publisher does a lot more than that, including paying for the printing, promotion, negotiating with distributors, etc.  Unless you want to spend all your time helping other people for free (which we began to realize that, no, we didn't) you need to either NOT do those things (be a printer) or be compensated for those things in some way (shit, we're turning into a traditional Publisher!)

When you're publishing books -- that is putting your name on them and promoting them -- you start to become concerned about a couple of things.  Are the books any good?  We had great books, and some went on to be published by larger companies.  We also had a lot of bad books.  TERRIBLE books.  Books so bad, we were concerned if anyone ordered one, they'd think it represented the overall quality of the rest of the books and not order anything else.

Worse than the terrible books were the horrible books.  Ones we weren't sure we could even publish without running into legal problems.  My friend and I had a lot of discussions about those kind of books and the direction we wanted the business to go in.  My position was that if we started publishing adult content (some stuff was WAY beyond Heavy Metal) then we would start to lose potential customers / clients at the other end of the spectrum.  We'd also risk spending time fighting off indeceny charges in court and would probably need to rely on the Comic Book Legal Defence Fund... a lot.  My friend, having a family with small kids, wasn't all that happy with having to print really distasteful stuff from his home either.

It's also one thing to take a stand on something you believe in.  It's something else to have to take a stand behind anything any writer / artist who find your website wants to publish.

Even though we didn't want to, we had to start looking at saying "no" to things people wanted us to print and publish.

Anyway, Logan is still running ComiXpress.com and if you're looking for a POD indie comic friendly publisher / printer that mostly fits your philosophy, check them out.

Now, if I'm mistaken and you really do have some experience in the publishing business (even if it's small-press, like me), I'd love to hear about it (seriously).

Stuart,

I am aware of the difference between a printer and a publisher, but thanks for the reminder. These internet discussions often gloss over the nuances of what we are discussing.

My expirence with the publishing industry is primarily as a consumer, and while I hope to change that someday it's not a crisis of epic proportions.

We are essentially discussing the horns of a dilemma. To me the legislation of morality, by law or company fiat is a terrible thing, leading to society rotting from within.  To you, apparently, there needs to be some sort of enforced line that shall not be crossed.

Both are meritorious arguments with valid fundament behind them. Wiser men than we have been forced to resolve freedom vs. morality with...
"I know it when I see it."

If we keep arguing the way we have been, we risk taking... if we haven't already, such extreme stances that we make caricatures of ourselves.


Hastur: Re: YotZ and fleshmongers... I think you have an overly optimistic view point.  Slavery, as a cultural instituition, tends to be a tad... addictive. Those people that reject it always won't pick it up, but I suspect that those who make the decision to take/buy/use slaves won't be so fast to give them up later.

Quote from: SpikeHastur: Re: YotZ and fleshmongers... I think you have an overly optimistic view point.  Slavery, as a cultural instituition, tends to be a tad... addictive. Those people that reject it always won't pick it up, but I suspect that those who make the decision to take/buy/use slaves won't be so fast to give them up later.

It's also tremendously inefficent if mechanisation is available.  All those guards...

The Raft had a group of people that had demonstrated that they were untrustworthy and the Sisterhood made the decision that it was either enforced labour or throwing them over the side.  Eventually they either died off or are recruited into the Excursion Squad.  If they survived they became fully part of the community

In Silo City all newcomers spend six months in the hydroponics farms and then several weeks of each year once they are full members of the community (which is serfdom rather that slavery precisely, but I think only Gary Gygax would make that distinction)

YotZ has plenty of communities that will still keep slaves, even into the second post-Rising generation (Vosstown, GM-City, the Republic of New Texas, the Apocalypse Guard, etc., etc.), but they are presented as enemy groups rather than places that the PC's are expected to hang out on a regular basis

Quote from: RPGObjects_chuckYeah, the company that makes Mad Magazine was really destroyed.

The comics company was.

After Gaines butted heads with the CCA, they basically launched a vendetta against Gaines and EC.  Words like 'horror', 'terror' or 'weird' were specifically banned from comic book titles, killing Ed's most popular titles, as distrubitors refused to carry books without the CCA stamp.

And if you beleive that it's mere coincidence that the code hit EC the hardest, then, quite frankly, you're either lying or an idiot.

QuoteEC founder Max Gaines was a CO-Founder of the organization (again, an orginzation the comics industry formed voluntarily) that created the Comics Code Authority.

He did not, however, believe the code he helped create would be enforced.

No, he believed it would be self-enforced.  There's a huge difference.

Nice lie, though.

QuoteWhen it was, and when the CCA began to come up with new rules, Gaines withdrew and stopped submitting his comics to the code for approval.

Since it was strictly voluntary, this didn't stop him from selling them.

Bullshit.  The fact that their titles didn't carry the CCA stamp was the reason why those titles weren't sold through distributors, and were therefore cancelled.  Calling compliance with the Code 'voluntary' is ethically disingenous.

But hey, don't let actual facts get in the way of making your sophmoric diatribe.  Please, continue.

QuoteSales of EC comics plumeted.

Not being allowed to sell your product will do that.  Duh.

QuoteSome people claim the comics were blacklisted, but I never have seen any actual PROOF of this.

Yep, it's just coincidence that everything in the Code pretty much eviscerated EC's ability to put out the product they wanted to sell.  No, really.  Honest.

And the government is only looking out for your best interests.

And the Easter Bunny is real.

QuoteStill, hard to describe the company that makes Mad Magazine as "destroyed".

After having to cancel their most popular titles due to the Code, EC made an attempt to carry on with other titles, only to run afoul of the CCA even when following their inane rules.  The most blatant, and morally reprehensible example was probably when they rejected a story for EC daring to show an astronaut of the future as being *gasp* black.



(I believe the official reason for banning that story was because it showed a black man sweating... and if you actually believe that, you're dumber than Nox)  

Mad, along with Panic, survived, but it's no coincidence that they got moved quickly to magazine format, where they fell outside of the CCA's authority (for the same reason, before the Code got loosened in the early 70's, Marvel published thier Conan and Dracula stuff in magazine format, to avoid having to deal with the CCA's inaneness).  However, by this point EC, as a comics publisher, had went the way of the dodo.  So, yes, the CCA did kill EC Comics; Gaines ability to survive by reinventing his company in a new format speaks to his business skill, not to the lack of damage done to EC by the fucktards at the CCA.

QuoteNice try though.

Certainly better than your feeble attempt to rewrite history.

Quote from: StuartThanks... it's the same text I quoted. :rolleyes:

So here's a question for you -- would you ever consider publishing a game that didn't offer any comment on slavery -- whether it's good or bad -- and simply included a new entry on the equipment table for:  Slave ... 10 gp?

If you say yes -- I'll conceed that you truly disagree with TSR on this point.

If you'd only include that with some kind of context that suggest Slavery isn't so cool... then I think you agree with TSR, you're just arguing the semantics of how they have it worded.

Mongoose Publishing published such a game. It's called "Conan: The Roleplaying Game".

I have the Pocket Edition of the Conan rpg right here (an OGL game), and it gives price lists for various types of slaves. The "Slaves" section provides ZERO moral or ethical judgement about the practice, and is descriptive only. I love this book. It doesn't preach; it merely presents.

Here's another game published by Mongoose: "Slaine". In the d20 Slaine core rule book, you are actually rewarded for killing people, and keeping the severed heads of your enemies as a trophy. The reward is in the form of "Enech", which is related to "honor".

Tir Nan Og, the world of Slaine, is a harsh, unforgiving world existing in another time and place. It's very different from say, Uruguay.

This stuff doesn't bug me. To be honest, I just want a campaign setting that is plausible, rather than moral and ethical. Heroism is nice, but not required. In other words, I let my players make decisions, and then they deal with the consequences of their actions.

Just to let you know, most of my players tend to run self-interested mercenary/vagabond-type characters that occasionally help other people out along the way.

Edit: Just to remind everyone, Stuart was responding to Spike, not to me.