Wednesday, March 24, 2010

D&D Should Be Dangerous

The other day, TARGA asked for feedback on the recent OSR kerfuffle. My response to that is a bit sideways to the actual issues they raise, because it's hit on something that I've been thinking about lately, since Grognardia posted the TSR Code of Ethics, and Trollsmyth pointed out why the whole endeavor was ridiculous. In short: I don't want D&D to be Disneyland.

Disneyland is "family friendly." Kids love it. Their parents at least tolerate it, and a lot of them even enjoy it; the point is something that the whole family can enjoy together. It's fun, it's exciting, it's safe.

Teenagers hate it.

Dungeons & Dragons, on the other hand, has always been that weird, slightly dangerous game that your older brother played. In reality, it isn't actually any more dangerous than Disneyworld--a good deal less so, I'd say, when you start looking at what it teaches kids and the kinds of skills and attitudes it encourages--but man, do parents ever love to flip out about it. Even if yours didn't (Mine loved it; even with no more than a vague idea of how it all worked, they could see that it involved math, imagination, and social interaction, so they were all for their shut-in daughter getting involved with the hobby.) there was always that possibility that some do-gooder adult would try to make a fuss over it, which would have been the absolute height of teenage glory.

Even more important than that, I think that Grognardia is right when it suggests that D&D has always done best when it's been branded as an "adult" game, even if the true audience is somewhat younger than that which the box describes. That was certainly the impression I had of the hobby before and as I entered it. All the other D&D players I ran into around that period were adults, friends of my parents or parents of my friends, people who played D&D now or had back in college.

Which isn't to say that everything the OSR publishes should be Carcosa. Whether it's described as "for adults" or not, the vast majority of the material that any fantasy adventure game produces will, and should be, perfectly fine for kids--the weird, smart ones who'd be interested in such things, anyhow. But having Carcosa, a succubus illustration or two in the Monster Manual, and even the occasional porn star as a part of the scene can't, I think, hurt, in giving D&D that bit of an edge that it needs to be really successful as that adolescent entertainment that it's always been.

Maybe, in the long term, D&D is destined to be Disneyland. I've certainly heard tell myself of more than a few guys playing D&D with their kids. But personally, I can't see that as a long term central focus of the hobby. Thirteen years old is just too good an entry point, for a whole host of reasons. And thirteen year olds, by and large, aren't too interested in Disneyworld, in playing games with their parents, in safe. Their parents don't want them involved in anything that's actually dangerous, naturally, but that's the real genius of D&D. You're hanging around in your parents basement, eating chips, and learning a bit about reading, acting, and statistics, but overhear a few stories about The Book of Vile Darkness in your FLGS and you imagine that you're doing something edgy.

37 comments:

  1. My motto: If it doesn't have buttfucking orcs in it, it just isn't D&D.

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  2. Hmmm...some intriguing points, but I have to wonder about this statement, which seems to be your premise:

    "Teenagers hate it (Disneyland)."

    In my experience, this is not always true. In fact, some of my experience indicates that a lot of today's teens DON'T agree.

    I taught quite a few college students while in grad school. For one class (taught several times over the years), I often showed a documentary critical of Disney and its products. The VENOM from those 18-22-year-olds directed at me for DARING to show them anything contrary to their beloved company was, to be frank, stunning. Those kids love them some Disney.

    Likewise, when I often brought up the phenomenon of sex in advertising (complete with examples), I was likewise STUNNED by the amount of disgust they displayed at even being shown what, to those of us who actually pay attention to popular media, were common visual depictions in advertising.

    But were those people the audience for D&D? Probably not.

    But I think blanket statements about what the average teen likes or wants have many contrary examples that should make one pause and reconsider.

    Because, like I said, I was SHOCKED by the open disgust I encountered from so many of my students. And this was at a typical, working class type "state school," not some freaky, private religious school. And boy did they have nothing nice to say to me at course evaluation time. ("Pervert" may have been written more than once.)

    I think this is a why a nice, middle-of-the-road approach is wise. You won't please everyone, but just don't poke the sleeping dragon.

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  3. And yet, to counter The_Myth, both Paizo and BioWare seem to think you're on to something, Oddysey. Paizo certainly seemed to wallow in the accusations that some of their early Pathfinder books were "torture porn" and have peppered their stuff with teasingly risqué material.

    And BioWare is notorious for wearing their "M for Mature" label with pride, and skirting right up to the ragged edge of what is acceptable. Frankly, it's almost a joke how they don't ever actually deliver on the promise, but I'm sure fans of a certain age have that same thrill of doing something forbidden.

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  4. (By the way, The_Myth, that's an awesome internet handle. :D )

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  5. To "The_Myth":

    18-22 year olds are not teenageers. They are adults, I could see the line of 18 and 19 year olds being teenagers as technically true.

    But even then, given that a 19 year old may have served a tour in Afghanistan and have a wife and kid Im not sure if I would consider an 18 year old a teenager.

    I was sure as hell an adult at 18.

    And adults tend to have a nostalgic view of being a child that teenagers fresh from the clutches of "babydom" do not have.

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  6. Yeah, when I say "teenager" here, I'm very much not talking about people my age. My roommate loves Disney--she threatened to cover my side of the room with her calenders, Pez dispensers, and other trinkets. But she went through a period, between 13-15, where she loathed it, and thought it was dumb and immature.

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  7. I think any claims that D&D has always "done best" when it does X is highly subjective. Done best at what? Appeal to an individuals current tastes, or represent a favourite nostalgic moment from their youth? That's not the same as looking at when it's objectively done best (e.g. The Mentzer "Red Box" with 10+ on it was the best-selling edition), or is currently most popular (4e).

    I can't see that as a long term central focus of the hobby.

    I no longer believe there's anything close to a single "the hobby" with a monoculture and anything like a centralized focus. We have a lot of different hobbies that overlap in many places (DIY, Edition of Rules, Genre, Painting Minis, Storytelling, etc). I think that's true now as much as it was back in the 80s, maybe even 70s. I didn't have the experiences of being persecuted for playing D&D that so many other bloggers my age (mid-30s) seemed to have. My parents are working class, didn't go to church, listened to Rock / Metal, and thought D&D was perfectly acceptable. So trying to recapture some sense of being a rebel by playing D&D just isn't part of the games appeal to me.

    It's kind of amusing that this big brouhaha about Strippers and D&D took place during the same week they launched GameCrush. Be sure and read the comments on any of the news items about that to see where on the edgy vs lame spectrum people consider mixing gaming and naked chicks. :D

    @Zzarchov: I teach students in that age-range. 18-22 year olds are all individuals, but a great many are like were-teenagers. One minute you think you're talking to an adult, the next they're most definitely… not. :)

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  8. Perhaps once one reaches 40+, is a parent, and has dealt with street-youth, junkies, and reprobates, the glamour of trashy, 'It's a demon, duh It's cool.'-chicks (whose sole claim to self-image is receiving an award for Gang-Bangs and Facials), just has yellowed a bit in the process of aging.
    --Maybe porn-happy 30-something dads who'd gladly wank to any teen-looking girl except their own is exactly the constituency of the OSR? I don't know, and frankly, I don't want to know.

    I remember bitching at the 80's D&D scandals and being a general rotten terror about any sort of infringements upon my personal freedoms, and the idea of Authoritarianism being itself the grandest devil there could be.
    --I'm not certain exactly when that changed for me. When I may have 'grown-up' as my parents would say, but I do have these ideas that:

    1). Game systems are game systems, not gospels.

    2). Not everyone celebrates porn, not does that make them an uptight fascist, or G-d-forbid, 'do-gooder'.

    3). I'd expect folks to be able to keep their rods in their pants long enough not to still drool over the bare-chested (and poorly drawn) Amazon in the LBBs and encourage more of the same from others.

    4). That folks who just absolutely need to join-up, or band-together are eventually going to self-destruct, so let them.

    5). If someone voices a contrary opinion, for whatever reason, that doesn't make them *wrong*, any more than holding to RaW, or BtB, or the Old Ways as preached from blog pulpits makes one *right*.


    Just play the damn games and report back on your findings and keep the rest of it for other blogs.

    Seriously...

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  9. @Timeshadows:

    You seem bitter.

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  10. So I grew up in Southern California, which may account for this huge difference in my experiences. Anyway, the people I knew loved going to Disneyland; many friends of mine went at least once a month, and it was a blast to go during Halloween if you didn't have other plans. If you were able it was just a hang-out place akin to the mall. Also, D&D was never a mysterious game for adults. Everyone knew what D&D was, and that was a game for friendless 13-year-olds who wanted to pretend to have sex with an elf princess. My group in high school played Vampire: The Masquerade because that was seen as "dark", and had more of a focus on serious politicking.

    Not that I'm trying to invalidate your experiences. I'm just pointing out that things are very different in other places, and that the OSR's efforts to, I don't know, rebrand D&D will be difficult in areas that have a collective unconscious image of D&D as the bastion of the uncool, even among geeks.

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  11. @nextautumn: Wow, awesome contribution. You should post comments on YouTube.

    D&D was never a mysterious game for adults. Everyone knew what D&D was, and that was a game for friendless 13-year-olds who wanted to pretend to have sex with an elf princess.

    Absolutely, and that's still how a lot of people in the general public see it. Take a look:
    Lets Make Dungeons & Dragons sexy...again?
    Fear of Girls
    1-900-Nerd-Girl

    The mainstream image of D&D is that it's a game for desperate loser guys.

    And somehow many OSR bloggers think that by promoting an image of the game as being for "cool" adults who like strippers and weird ritual sex in H.P. Lovecraft inspired fantasy worlds that will somehow make the game seem cool? Yeah. If you didn't watch those links above yet, do it now. That doesn't mean you can't like that stuff, but it's not going to make the game seem any cooler to anyone.

    On the bright side, there's recently been a lot of press coverage of D&D being a great game for kids, families, after school programs etc. That's something new and good to see in the mainstream press. That's something *different* than the stereotypes we've been hearing about for a long time.

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  12. "@nextautumn: Wow, awesome contribution. You should post comments on YouTube."

    The dizzying heights to which your wit ascends astound me.

    I just call em like I see em. More thoughtful posts garner more thoughtful replies.

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  13. @nextautumn:

    You seem bitter.

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  14. "@nextautumn:

    You seem bitter."

    Clever.

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  15. I'm not sure how to respond on this subject.

    A long time Anime Fan who grew up on Disney features, I found I couldn't stand them once I was introduced to the idea that animation could be about more than talking bunnies and everyone lives happily ever after. And yes, I was around 14 when that happened.

    At the same time, my love of Japanese Animation is not based on schoolgirls and tentacles. Its just as much born of Miyazaki (Spirited Away) as it is Tomino (Mobile Suit Gundam). What I grew tired of was the filmmakers treating me (the audience) like we're idiots and children, instead of treating children like youthful, creative thinkers filled with wonder.

    I often get teased and criticized by my players that some of my games, especially my Superhero campaigns, are notoriously non-graphic and Silver Age-y. I'll admit it, I want my heroes heroic. I'm much more interested in seeing them save people from a burning building than beating the villains into a bloody, gorey pulp. How is that a Superhero? How is that better or 'far beyond' mortal man?

    At the same time I'm a red-blooded, heterosexual American male of 41 years of age. Do I think cool fantasy paintings of scantily-clad young woman
    are sexy. Um...yeah, if painted well.

    One person's too much gore is another's just enough. One person's porn is another's art. I'm very much of the 'Let it Be' attitude. Having said that I second alot of what Timeshadows said. I'd love it if our blogosphere could get back to discussing our games.

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  16. Echoing and agreeing with timeshadows. this is a good post but rpgs in general I think should be accessible to as wide a range of an audience as possible.

    A code of conduct and accessibility is a good idea, especially in a social game that consistently brings together groups of former strangers.

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  17. @Timeshadows, I basically agree with your feelings about porn in general, but I don't think there should be any effort to "distance" the OSR from Zak's blog. The fact is that it's a pretty good blog and the personalities involved give it an interesting aspect you don't see elsewhere. If this were dreamed up by a committee at WotC or by the board of directors at TARGA, as a way to market D&D, I'd have a problem with that, but since it's basically just a guy and his friends playing a game and sharing his thoughts on it, I think that the people in the OSR who complain about its possible effect on children are in serious error. The OSR's a big tent, and tolerance should be the watchword.

    Now, if tomorrow afternoon, Swords & Wizardry suddenly changes its name to Swords & Pornstars and Grognardia starts doing retrospectives on Debby Does Dallas, well, I guess I'd probably not find the OSR scene so appealing.

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  18. Mike: A code of conduct and accessibility is a good idea, especially in a social game that consistently brings together groups of former strangers.

    Uh, please tell me that you're not suggesting that a code of conduct should be applied to my personal campaign. Because that's what it sounds like you're saying there.

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  19. Okay. I'm aware that this is dangerous territory we're treading on here, so I probably should have been more clear.

    I am not saying that everyone needs to start putting porn and grimdarkgritty anti-heroes into their games. Barking Alien and Kaeosdad, you are absolutely, positively, one-hundred-percent right when you say that RPGs ought to be accessible to pretty much everyone.

    I happen to think it's possible to do that while still making a place for things like The Book of Vile Darkness and Carcosa. And I absolutely think there ought to be a place for that, for reasons that are, yeah, largely based on my own experience.

    I'm calling this out now because I want people to think about what would happen if we said, nope, not going to let those guys into the clubhouse anymore. Better to keep everything innocuous so no one can come after us. There are disadvantages to that strategy.

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  20. @trollsmyth: hm, I think I rephrased that wrong. I'm not saying some block of words should police how others game, more that gaming should always be accessible to all. common courtesy? common sense?

    I may have gone on a tangent with the code of conduct going on about something completely different from the current "fiasco", which to be honest I'm not exactly sure what all of it is about.

    My personal code of conduct can be found here http://www.obsidianportal.com/profile/kaeosdad which basically amounts to be respectful and show respect to others.

    @oddysey: I totally agree that mature products should always be available and non censored as well. So long as producers are at minimum aware and responsible about what they are creating it's all good.

    I feel that if a mature product is constantly assaulted by an immature audience that's the problem of those who have a problem with it not a general group as a whole...

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  21. I'm calling this out now because I want people to think about what would happen if we said, nope, not going to let those guys into the clubhouse anymore. Better to keep everything innocuous so no one can come after us. There are disadvantages to that strategy.

    This is one of those times when the metaphors we use for talking about the web don't adequately reflect how things really work. There *isn't* actually a clubhouse… if anything it's a series of individual clubhouses (websites) networked together. We all have different networks around our sites, and while there might be a lot of overlap there's also a lot of variation. We all get to choose what we post on our own sites and who is in our individual networks.

    I think it's not unreasonable that if I'm posting articles about gaming and kids that I might choose not to link to adults only material. You might choose something else, which is okay because we each have our own sites.

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  22. @Stuart

    At first glance (can't read every comment in detail, too many and too many pointless ones) you seem to have said the funniest "You should post comments on YouTube." and correctest "There *isn't* actually a clubhouse" things in these comments.

    No one (well none of us anyway) gets to choose what others put on the Internet, what others say, what others or link to, etc. Or, who is or is not in / out of the "OSR".

    You only get to decide what you do*, everyone else's actions is off limits.

    * And since it's the single thing you have control over you should really pay attention and consider what your doing before going ape shit all over the Internet.

    Oh and "D&D should be..." whatever each group playing it together wants it to be.

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  23. Mandy and her wife got married at Disneyland.

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  24. This is a big topic and covers many issues but several key points have been missed.

    1) 'Adult' does not mean naked flesh and crude references to sex.

    RPG are perfect vehicles to investigate truly adult subjects like racism, slavery and genocide.

    RPGs will gain more credibility across all age groups if we can lift the hobby beyond arguments over who has the biggest sword.


    2) You cannot be mainstream and edgy at the same time.

    Ever since the mid-eighties, D&D has aimed itself squarely at the mainstream. Desperate to avoid the wrath of middle-America Mum's who think any nudity or mentions of devil worship will corrupt their little Timmy. This is sound business sense and it is not going to change anytime soon.

    If we want RPGs to be seen as 'dangerous' we have to ditch D&D and focus on products that are not middle-America safe.


    3) We are stuck in a ghetto of our own choosing and the way we spend our £ / € / $ is forever making the walls higher.

    The medium of RPGs is filled with Tolkien (and latterly WoW) style fantasy. Why? Because we keep buying it. If you want RPGs to be challenging, put your money where your mouth is and support writers who are producing genuinely challenging games.



    Arguments over whether it is OK to show a bit naked flesh does the medium of RPGs no good at all. It just shows to the rest of the world how juvenile the hobby is.

    If we want RPGs to be taken seriously we, like other new mediums such as cinema and comics, have to learn how to produce meaningful and intelligent work.

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  25. Asking people to exercise mutual respect in a social setting or parental responsibility may be difficult depending on perceptual filter. Making it easy to do so is good so I'm in favour of things like kaeosdad's code of conduct and rating systems for games.

    Individual codes of conduct are that - individual. Don't like how something is done? Exercise the right to do something else.

    Being dangerous or provocative is a double-edged blade, sometimes it works (Lady Gaga), sometimes it doesn't (Justin Timberlake/Janet Jackson/GTA's Hot Coffee mission).

    However if you're going there, do it tastefully and with respect for the people involved.

    @Chris - Points 1 and 3 are really salient. Until we start making those games a reality, people will keep going with what they perceive as working. Dragon Age and A Game of Thrones are examples of how to create mature fantasy and stay true to its core conceits.

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  26. Chris: 1) 'Adult' does not mean naked flesh and crude references to sex.

    But I don’t think Oddysey is talking about “adult” content here. She’s talking about titillating content. And that, also, doesn’t need to mean "naked flesh and crude references to sex," but it has to have the appearance of danger in it.

    Let me give you another example she’s probably not as familiar with as I am: Boy Scouts. Sure, Boy Scouts are as wholesome as apple pie and John Wayne. But that’s not why most teenage boys are interested in being involved. They're in it for the guns and the bows-and-arrows, the camping, the running through the woods and swimming in rivers. It’s about knives and hatchets and lighting fires and doing all those things your mother would kill you for if she caught you doing them around the house.

    2) You cannot be mainstream and edgy at the same time.
    Large swaths of ‘80s pop disagrees with you. Yes, D&D is considered the game that lonely guys who can’t find a date play. It’s as much a lie as it being a gateway to Satanism. And there’s no reason it can’t change again.

    As far as point 3 goes, the aim is *not* to be artsy and high-brow. That’s not what Oddysey is talking about, though if you want that, there are certainly arguments for it. As satyre points out, the goal is more BioWare games, with their sly wink-wink, nudge-nudge coupled with a deeper and richer experience, rather than The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

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  27. @Trollsmyth: I was finally able to find a definitive answer as to what the intended age for WotC D&D is -- Age 12+.

    Promoting products for ages 12+ with strippers and porn stars is just stupid.

    I was a Boy Scout (Chief Scout actually) and my parents were fine with the camping, knives (they bought them), fires and so on. If they'd promoted that with strippers and porn stars I doubt they'd have been quite so impressed.

    Again - this isn't about whether you can have a mature content RPG. This is about marketing a brand name that's sold to children with content that's not suitable for children.

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  28. @Stuart

    Who "here" is playing WoTC D&D?
    Who "here" is promoting WoTC D&D?
    Who "here" is marketing WoTC's brand name?

    Not I, not IHIWMA, not TARGA as far as I can tell, not most people in the "OSR". I utterly fail to see the relevance of your latest post.

    Also, have you seen how WoTC portrays females in their art. As close to porn as they can get away with is how I'd describe it.

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  29. Stuart: I was a Boy Scout (Chief Scout actually) and my parents were fine with the camping, knives (they bought them), fires and so on. If they'd promoted that with strippers and porn stars I doubt they'd have been quite so impressed.

    Which is exactly my point. Strippers and porn stars for Boy Scouts would be silly, because Boy Scouts is already (what's the title of this post again?) dangerous. It's already full of things your older brother gets to have and use that you are forbidden to touch until you're old enough. And that danger (which equals adventure of course) was reinforced constantly, in the need for fire buckets, the earning of your Tot'n Chit, in the rituals of the rifle and archery range.

    And again, as Oddysey points out, it's not so much that your parents disapprove but that:

    ...there was always that possibility that some do-gooder adult would try to make a fuss over it, which would have been the absolute height of teenage glory.

    Do I expect (or even want) WotC to make a porn star the official spokesperson for the game? Of course not! Do I expect them to make Carcosa an official setting for 4e? Not only no, I don't even expect them to hire Raggi to write modules for them! But I don't doubt for a minute that the existence of such things is good for the hobby in exactly the same way all the "torture porn" controversy was good for Paizo's first series of Pathfinder books.

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  30. @Norman:

    What "here" are you talking about?

    I've played WotC D&D. My friends play WotC D&D. Blogs I read play WotC D&D. I'm planning on picking up the WotC D&D Starter set when it comes out in September for my kids.

    Anytime you talk about D&D online you are promoting WotC D&D. RPG is generic, D&D is not. WotC D&D is the only D&D you can go into the store and buy.

    WotC, The Escapist and IHIWMA are marketing WotC D&D. The Escapist has a marketing company involved, press releases, money, etc. It's not the same as what we're individually doing with our blogs.

    @trollsmyth:

    Take a look at those videos I posted earlier. Anything that perpetuates the stereotype that D&D and RPGs are for desperate loser guys is not good for the hobby or the industry.

    I mean... look at the fake adventure they're playing in "Fear of Girls". Listen to how they go on about playing more "mature" games or whatever. Why do we want to actively do the things people think are really lame about the hobby already? :)

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  31. trollsmyth: Thanks for making the Boy Scouts connection. That's exactly the kind of thing that I'm talking about. Particularly in the sense that this is specifically a young teen/pre-teen phenomenon.

    Stuart: Is it just my (admittedly, provably idiosyncratic) Google results that have the main Wikipedia page for D&D and then the "Editions of D&D" page pop up as the first two results? And even the main page starts off talking about Gygax and Arneson and the history of the game, not the current edition.

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  32. @Chris Tregenza - I largely agree with what you're saying although I personally feel the following statement may be a bit too simplified.

    "2) You cannot be mainstream and edgy at the same time."

    Actually you can. Marvel Comics does it all the time with characters like Wolverine and the Punisher. Actually most of Marvel's most popular recent works would fall into that category and as much I hate to admit it, Marvel makes more money than DC in overall sales figures.

    It can be done but it isn't easy and unless its done very well it often isn't worth it as you end up missing the mark one way or the other.

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  33. Oddysey: Be sure to check out Grognardia's post on "disturbing" elements in fantasy.

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  34. Stuart -I don't think I get what you are arguing. If the stereotype of D&D players is stupid loser guys, and I Hit It With My Axe is showing that it's played by attractive women and successful modern artists with Yale degrees and art in the Whitney... that would seem to disprove the stereotype, and be a good thing.

    Unless of course the argument is that the actors are not "real gamers" and that somehow the "fakeness" thus proves the stereotype. But the only evidence that the actors aren't real is...the stereotype that they disprove. Isn't that self-defeating to think that way?

    Spend an hour with Zak, Mandy, Kimberly, and so on. Or listen to Connie and Satine arguing over who's going to MAP. They are gamers. The only one who is a newbie is Sasha Grey, and the show makes that clear - she's listed as a "guest star" and episode 1 is about her learning to play.

    As for whether we are "marketing D&D" we talked to WOTC about being a sponsor of the show, and they specifically passed because of the 12+ age factor. So certainly at a corporate level they knew it wasn't the right fit for their stated audience. But they wished us well, for sure.

    D&D's halcyon days were the late 70s and 80s, when it was perceived as edgy. I personally think the core error TSR made was to flee from, rather than embrace, the controversy. Consider that if hip-hop had responded to the 80s controversy over gang violence and explicit lyrics by self-censoring the way comic books and D&D did, it would have died rather than become the mainstream's music of choice. It stayed edgy and stayed cool, and society assimilated what used to be fringe.

    Whether D&D's edginess can or should be restored is a different argument, of course. We may be stamp collecting from here on out.

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  35. I don't think I get what you are arguing. If the stereotype of D&D players is stupid loser guys, and I Hit It With My Axe is showing that it's played by attractive women and successful modern artists with Yale degrees and art in the Whitney... that would seem to disprove the stereotype, and be a good thing

    That's not how you're marketing it. Whatever the reality of the game you're playing in real life the promotion of the show and first episode is more like this. So your marketing to the stereotype. Read the comments on The Escapist - I'm not the only person who's rolling their eyes a bit at it.

    Now, having said that I really don't have a quarrel with you guys making your show however you want and doing everything you can to promote it. It makes total sense for you to take that approach, and I honestly hope you guys keep having fun and have a very successful show.

    I'm surprised that WotC would help promote it though. TARGA… I have no idea what their deal is. I think they should figure out who they're for, but I don't really care either way.

    As for whether we are "marketing D&D" we talked to WOTC about being a sponsor of the show, and they specifically passed because of the 12+ age factor. So certainly at a corporate level they knew it wasn't the right fit for their stated audience. But they wished us well, for sure.

    They've got 8+ on the Heroscape box and 12+ on the new D&D box. I was surprised they linked the show from WotC at all. Most companies would have already asked Zak to change the name of his blog to something more generic like "Playing RPGs with Porn Stars".

    I personally think the core error TSR made was to flee from, rather than embrace, the controversy.

    They were selling products with 10+ on the box. They probably wanted to keep their distribution deals.

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  36. Stuart - here's the thing. We're not marketing the show the way you think we are. The interview with WOTC was at WOTC's request, unsolicited. The interview with io9, we had nothing to do with; it came about because they contacted Satine. We didn't do a press release of the show. We didn't do an e-blast. We didn't put any teasers on our site or anywhere on the web. We didn't link the show to the D&D With Pornstars blog. Literally, we just put it up on our website as a video with no warning at all - and if you read our forum comments, you'll see that to be the case, as our users actually ask "where was the marketing".

    The lack of marketing was purposeful in that (a) we knew the show was controversial and (b) we felt this was a show that would snowball over time. Our actual marketing plan called for no active marketing until about episode 5.

    So any/all negative blowback to our "marketing" of the show is in the imagination of the people who are negatively predisposed to the show or its stars.

    If anything, the reception the show has received is a testament to the virality of the internet and the power of stereotypes.

    People are SO CONVINCED that D&D is a game that attractive, sexual women wouldn't play, that even if you have an existing blog about their campaign; a reality video showing them playing; and them actually blogging about the fact that they are playing; and you do no marketing at all; people will still criticize you for being a hustler who's trying to sham people.

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  37. Wow.

    I have resisted making comments for a few days for the most part. And some of those I made in other places were either edited or deleted to stir this pot even further.

    All of this started over the people at my house clicking a link on a blog that didn't have a warning. That is it.

    As "General Pot-Stirrer" (one of the better things I have been called lately online) I really don't care how people play their games, I am not out to change the games. I felt that a presentation could be clean for six minutes or have a warning, that is all.

    To anyone who faults me for that you must be really great friends, my players are my friends and I do stand behind them and respect their families.

    Seriously, the actual reviews on RPGNet of the show were, for the most part, quite scathing and nobody hopped on that...

    I go to Zak's blog, it has a warning, I am fine with that, I have posted there. He is fairly clever and writes well. The whole pornstar bit just gets a bit tedious for me there, but hey, that is his gimmick and I can overlook that.

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