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I dont know about the rest of you, but when I started gaming... it was a considered an evil and rebellous hobby. Banned by churches and put right up there with satanic heavy metal music as something no child should ever be allowed to enjoy.... and me and Jack Black loved em both and at the same time.

I think that greatly enhanced the attraction of D&D to new and young gamers... gaming was evil, the quick and attractive lure of the dark side worked very well for TSR and brought about what we now call the golden age of gaming (right durring the iron age of comic books for that matter)...

Now I know Hasbro isnt going to let us go all satanic etc, or start putting bare nippled slave girls on the covers of every book...

BUT..

I wonder how the system will handle more adult themed issues in the game.

lets be honest... the best TV shows on right now are "Game of Thrones" "Boardwalk Empire" "Dexter" "Sparticus" "true blood" "strike back" "Sons of Anarchy" and all the other shows which come on after 10:00 PM, mostly on cable due to serious adult content.

Just like these shows I want my game to include "some" sex (though generally I'm too embarassed to describe the details of this in a game), gory violence, brutal and depraved antagonists, serious moral delemas (what does the paladin do when the anti-paladin burns his daughter alive and screaming right in front of him and says if he dosent want his other daughter to die, he'll kill an innocent child and loose his soul etc.),

and all the standard evils common to great fantasy and horror books and novels...  human sacrifice, rotting corpses and necromancy, demonic rituals, vile and evil alien gods, etc. etc. 

you guys got any thoughts on this? will there be another "book of vile darkness" or have we seen the end of adult themed D&D books?    

I have nothing against a more "mature" line of products, but I would rather they keep that stuff separate from the main product line.  

In general, if a story can be told without those elements, then including them will not enhance it in any way.

Your initial premise is as wrong as can be.  Much of the so-called 'mature' tv out there if derivative hackwork which mistakes T&A and blood for character development.   Don't get me started on what passes for 'mature' books. 

On the contrary, in the wake of the Harry Potter phenomenon, and the breakout of Disney channel and Nickelodeon, this is the golden age of children's media and literature. 

Turning D&D into one more gore and sex fest would be a disaster.

I don't think this is necissary. A DM could easily run that type of thing if he wanted to, but it doesn't need to require the R&D team's attention.

@ Professor- I guess the shoddy hackwork is the reason these shows sweep the emmys every year and win almost every major award for television exellence, sorry your arguement is not holding water.


@avric- then why is there a "song of fire and ice" RPG? clearly somebody saw the sales potential in making RPG rules specifically to cover the adult themes in those books.

I think this is very much a subject that should require the R&D team's attention. If its what people many people want (regardless of if they admit it publically or not), and it will sell more books, why wouldent WotC want to put out another "book of vile darkness" complete with the hack n slash crit charts, fun with corpses necromancy guide, etc. I'd buy it, so would most gamers I think...  

how high were the sales of BoVD in comparison with the other 3.0 titles anyway? I seem to remember it was one of the highest selling books in the line, and people were greatly dismayed when they refused later printings as hasbro didnt like it... If I remember right...   

As a HUGE fan of low and dark fantasy like Game of Thrones and the works of R.E. Howard, I would LOVE to see a more mature line of D&D products.

But, I'm totally cool if it never happens, too — because I can keep making my own mature-themed campaigns (and I have for a long time).

Oct 5, 2012 -- 6:32PM, Baalbamoth wrote:

@avric- then why is there a "song of fire and ice" RPG? clearly somebody saw the sales potential in making RPG rules specifically to cover the adult themes in those books.

I think this is very much a subject that should require the R&D team's attention. If its what people many people want (regardless of if they admit it publically or not), and it will sell more books, why wouldent WotC want to put out another "book of vile darkness" complete with the hack n slash crit charts, fun with corpses necromancy guide, etc. I'd buy it, so would most gamers I think...  

how high were the sales of BoVD in comparison with the other 3.0 titles anyway? I seem to remember it was one of the highest selling books in the line, and people were greatly dismayed when they refused later printings as hasbro didnt like it... If I remember right...   

The Song of Fire and Ice RPG exists precisely for people who want that playstyle. If you sit down to play that RPG, you know what you're going into. D&D is not a Song of Fire and Ice.

As for selling more books, I'm dubious. It's a novelty, I'll admit, and it might get a boost from that, but I never bought it, since it seemed like a waste of money. As a DM, I have the ability to include that stuff in my game, if I want to, without buying that book. As a player, It doesn't do anything for my enjoyment of the game, so I'd be much more happy to save my money.

To me, it seems like the thing that takes away from the game more than it adds, because it tends to be used as "mature themes for the sake of mature themes." I have no problem with the stuff, like sex, drugs, gore, torture, and the like used when it contributes in a meaningful way to the story or to the atmosphere (see ASoFaI), but when it's used for it's own sake, it brings to mind the gaming equivalent of a 14 year old kid, who draws pentagrams and inverted crosses and circle-As everywhere, because it's "hardcore" and "extreme." And I think we've grown as a hobby from that state, or at least, I'd like to think we have.

D&D was never evil, but instead just an easy target until the next easy target (i think that might have been Nike shoes) came along.

@Baalbamoth

'Adult' subjects such as love, sex, rape, perversion, real moral dilemmas (as opposed to fantasy ones), slavery, suffering and deep psychological stuff have all been part of our D&D campaigns at points. It's up to each group to chose to play such a game.

Nothing is stopping anyone from playing a dark and gritty campaign with current rules.

While it would be interesting to see some materials in that vein I feel that it is quite remote from the 'standard setting'.

Books like 3.5E Vile Darkness just felt a bit silly in my opinon.. 

While putting rules on adult stuff (2ed carnal guide) makes for a very funny read, it is more comical than really 'adult' or dark or gritty. We did use some spells from the carnal guide just to give  some captured spellbooks a bit of flavour (Unseen Pervert and Power Word: Strip ftw) and once also the rules for damage to the child if the mother uses magic while pregnant although modded a bit.

Still, if I would really want to play an RPG going off the deep end.. then I would play Kult or something instead of D&D..

OD&D was for ages 12 and up.
AD&D 1E was for ages 10 and up. This was the edition that spawned the "angry parents" era.
AD&D 2E was for ages 10 and up, despite the removal of devils, demons, and all nudity.
4E was for ages 12 and up.

Looks like D&D has always been built with children in mind...even at the height of the satanism / occult / drug-induced idiot phase. It was seen as "evil" because idiots got high, killed each other, and mommies across the country found D&D a wonderful scapegoat under the leadership of paranoid conspiracy-theorist Patricia Pulling. In turn, churches condemned it, adding to the craze. I'll never forget that episode of 60 Minutes that had both Pulling and Gary Gygax on it.

She died of cancer in '97 (the same year WotC purchased TSR...hmm...), and shortly thereafter the devilish / suicidality buzz died off. By the time 3.5 came around, it was just a funny joke to the new players and a sore memory for those of us who went through it. It is a tradition as old as money...controversy creates cash. I have no doubt the media buzz about D&D stimulated sales during 1E. However, simply slapping boobs and devils all over the D&D books will do nothing positive for either WotC or Hasbro. That and, as most of us know, most things labeled "mature" are about as far from mature as something can be. It's more typically sophomoric attempts at sexuality and shock-value, none of which carry any value for the game.

While I did enjoy the 3.5 BoVD (far more then the 4E version) for the rules it had that i wouldn't have thought to introduce into my game otherwise I would never say the entire DnD line needs to go the direction your suggesting. Sure, let their be some books that offer "official" drugs of the DnD world, rules for sadism, masichism etc etc. Yes its easy enough to figure such things out for ourselves, its what i did for 4E when necessary. But If you have books like the 3.5 and 4E line it is alot easier to add in the "dark" and "mature" (i use that term loosely) into a game then it is to remove such prevalent themes as having demons eating babies and devils raping mortals on every cover.

Now i won't go so far as some to say that the elements that make Spartacus, Song of Fire and Ice, and other similiar shows popular wouldn't help in any way shape or form, but i agree that making such elements the focus of DnD would, in fact, hurt the brand. Everything in moderation.

I have nothing to add to this discussion other than to point out that it's a Song of Ice and Fire. Come on, people.

"I guess the shoddy hackwork is the reason these shows sweep the emmys every year and win almost every major award for television exellence,sorry your arguement is not holding water."


No, they sweep the awards for the same reason the New York Times created a new subcategory of bestseller for children's works: because if they didn't exclude children's works, they might not be able to compete with them.  The dominance of children's media, particularly in books, is unquestionable. 

The hobby was never "evil."  Some games and some gamers were, no doubt, but not D&D as a whole.  And that's a good thing.  If you want to play Fatal, it's elsewhere.

OK I lied. I will be serious for a second just to say this:

Writing a D&D book "for mature readers" is much like playing an evil character in a D&D campaign. When done well, it can be fantastic and add a lot to the game (see The Complete Book of Necromancers). Sadly, most often, it is done badly - as an excuse to be controversial for the sake of controversy.

In other words, write a good book first. Don't let the need for a "for mature readers" label stop it from being published. But don't print up your "for mature readers" label first and then write a book to stick it on.

actually found my own info on wiki under reception...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Vile_Darkn...

Ken Gustafson of Silven Publishing authored a positive outlook. "Overall," Gustafson wrote in August 2003, "Book of Vile Darkness is quite possibly the best supplement that Wizards of the Coast has put out in recent memory."^[11]

Much of the content and concepts of Book of Vile Darkness have since been reprinted or adapted in source books without the "Mature Audiences Only" label. Rules for drug use had in fact already been printed,^[12] while later material included corrupt spells,^[13] vile feats,^[13] possession,^[14] and detailed discussions of demon lords.


Hmmm... so it seems that books containing "adult" subject matter not only sell well... they can out sell everything else...


knock knock knock... hello dev's, are you hearing this? 


@professor, if you think the dora the explora rpg would be a great seller, go for it, but personally not a show I wanna watch, not a game I wanna play.     


           

Nobody is suggesting that D&D has to be toned down to the toddler level.  But making supplements which require black plastic covers and a driver's license is going to make it harder to market the game as a whole to the broad audience it needs to succeed.

Because a wikipedia article says it. it must be so! Nay, Because a quote from the critical reception section of a wikipedia article says it, it must be so!

Seriously, the Book of Vile Darkness is a novelty. It's not an important thing R&D should be focusing on. Especially as an early release. Anyone who wants to run a more "mature" game can, without that book's help (and I put mature in quotes, because if you think that adding gratuitous sex and gore and drug use, and all the other "goodies" that the Book of Vile Darkness provides, you probably don't have a firm grasp on what maturity really is). However there are plenty of things that the developers should be focusing on, and this is not one of them, in fact I can do a list of all the things that come before it in priority, and I'll still have probably left stuff out

Core rulebooks (Including not only the basic core rules, but the various different modules that they promised us from the get-go)
Advanced Rules Modules (because you know they're going to make books for these; you're deluding yourself if you think all the modules will be in the core rulebooks)
At least one Iconic campaign setting 
Several non-iconic campiagn settings
Advanced non-module books (complete X a la 3.x, X Power a la 4e, PHB II, ect)
More Monster Manuals
Prepublished Adventures
Campaign setting guides (Manual of the planes, cityscape, Book of the underdark, ect)
Equipment guide

That's a ton of things to get to before you get close to focusing on stuff like "The Book of Vile Darkness." 

I like my games dark and/or mature, and the most fun I've ever had in D&D was playing evil characters.  With that in mind, I'd love to see the evil option get quality support.  That's not to say that we need a whole lot of mechanically evil options, though there should be some.

There are a few things that a quality "evil option" book needs to focus on.
1) Evil alignments.  The book needs to clarify the difference between evil and omnicidal.
2) Evil groups.  How to assemble, maintain, and motivated groups of evil-aligned characters.  How to choose adversaries for evil groups.
3) Evil societies (or evil institutions, like slavery, in non-evil societies).  How do evil societies work?  What holds them together?  Why do non-evil societies tolerate evil institutions? etc.
4) Ritual sacrifice.  This is one of the rare mechanical elements.  Evil magic is about blood, and bone, offering human (often virgin) sacrifices.

Actually, the wikipedia article doesn't even say that.  The review quoted by Baalbmoth ifs from a vanity press self publishing operation.  It says not one word about sales.  Apparently he's simply making that part up.

What it *does* mention, at length, is the ugly controversy which surrounded Vile Darkness' publishing, including the apology eventually issued by Paizo for printing excerpts.

This idea is just getting worse and worse, isn't it?

Oct 5, 2012 -- 9:30PM, professordaddy wrote:

Nobody is suggesting that D&D has to be toned down to the toddler level. But making supplements which require black plastic covers and a driver's license is going to make it harder to market the game as a whole to the broad audience it needs to succeed.

As long it's it's supplements (and by that I mean a limited set of supplements) and not material in the required books, I don't really see the impact on the overall audience the game can target.

Black plastic covers? Whoa...whoa...whoa..."mature" does not mean "D&D Gone Wild!" or "Elves Do it in the Dark! Vol. 3"

It just means "mature" as in MATURE; That is, mature people can handle some nudity or adult themes here and there, they can handle some graphic violence, and they can certainly handle themes of drug use. In other words, something the ESRB, might consider.

Oct 5, 2012 -- 7:09PM, Sesdun wrote:

@Baalbamoth

'Adult' subjects such as love, sex, rape, perversion, real moral dilemmas (as opposed to fantasy ones), slavery, suffering and deep psychological stuff have all been part of our D&D campaigns at points. It's up to each group to chose to play such a game.

Nothing is stopping anyone from playing a dark and gritty campaign with current rules.

While it would be interesting to see some materials in that vein I feel that it is quite remote from the 'standard setting'.

I agree with this completely. This can be done in the current rules. Most of this thematic stuff is for the DMs and the players.

Do you need rules to do this?
No. The closest thing may be a morality system - but mostly it is up to the DM to give these situations rise.

Does the presented background include this?
No, not specifically, but you write the background for your own world.

Are there alien gods? Deities who like nothing more than killing/enslaving/torturing innocents?
Ummm. Yes... Heard of the creatures of the Far Realm?

So, should it be in the books, no - not when we can cater for those who don't want it in there. 

really finding myself agreeing with Mecha and bahel

@ professor: um actually no... the WIKI article says is...

Paizo president Johnny Wilson issued a statement defending the magazine material.^[6] He drew comparisons between the growing Book of Vile Darkness controversy and that involving the video game Mortal Kombat. He also argued that "publishing a guide to the atrocities and perversions that put the VILE in EVIL" allows role-playing that is "truly heroic" in contrast, while citing real-world examples of horror and heroism, such as the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Vietnam War, and World War II. Nevertheless, he did offer a partial apology, remarking that the introductory content outside the sealed sections was "as offensive (or more so)" than what was within them.

so a 90% defense and 10% "partial" apology, only for what was written on the outside of the article. It seems the only thing getting worse here is your ability to fact check.

@ avric: its clear to everyone that Gygax sold his soul to the devil so that he could create the most successful tabletop RPG of all time...

Over the years and after the intellectual rights have changed hands over and over, also seeing Pathfinder's sudden success, I think now is the time that the devs have to step up to the plate and re-commit themselves to honoring the original agreement with the dark one. 

All I'm asking for here is for Perkins and the other devs to find a crossroad, draw a circle in chalk, sign in blood a contract offering their souls for the guarenteed success of D&D Next, set it on fire, toss it into the center of the circle, then whip off their clothing and dance naked while yelling "come and get it! come and get it!" to the denezins of the netherworld.... and maybe killing a goat or something...

I mean really, these people already work for division of Hasbro, you seem to think that I'm asking for them to do something unusual for them, or trying to get more work out of them or something.  sheesh...


all kidding aside.. I think Mecha is dead on when she says there needs to be sections in the core books outlining both how to play and run for an evil party, as well as some suggestions as to how a DM can get the vile in their villians, and their antagonistic societies, after all, true diabolical evil is part of the "living world" these people are creating. 

Later we can hope for a BoVD (lol book of VD strikes me as funny) but seeing as how most players will be adults, I am hoping for more adult material right from the get-go and will only serve to increase sales.

btw.. pathfinder is rated as being 13 and up, but I am playing in rise of the runelords AP right now, and we are going through runeforge and each section of the dungeon is devoted to one of the 7 deadly sins.... what we found in "Lust" I'll just say... I dont think I'd repeat the book description to my 13 yr old nephue...  

just because something isnt labled or marketed "only" to adults, does not mean there cant be more adult content.

I've never found any particular need for book support in order to make a game gritty/violent/ADULT SEX TIMES, even though puttin' sex times into the elf fighting game is basically the dictionary definition of a mature thing that mature people want to do, so obviously a mature mature individual like myself is all over that. There's approximately one useful bit of support they could give evil campaigns, and that's DM advice, because running evil campaigns has quite a few special challenges, both in terms of general party cohesion and in terms of managing discomfort. (Non-evil campaigns have discomfort management too, of course, but it rarely comes to a head the way it does in evil campaigns.) What rules do mature mature adult sex situations need, exactly, that aren't more generally covered by the system's very light interpersonal interaction mechanics? Ink drawings of succubus full frontal aren't a rule. They're a picture of boobs. A random roll table of synonyms for "viscera"? A list of fifty hardcore spooky things that could totally happen in a dungeon or something, and there's like chains and stuff, because chains are hardcore and mature?

D&D, I feel, has actually generally been fairly grim for a product marketed to people so young. (Age suggestions are typically a bit conservative, not permissive). This is especially true if your defintion of grimness involves a lot of reading between lines, rather than "the axe goes all the way into his skull and his brains GOOSH OUT THROUGH HIS EYES."

I've gamed... near, if not exactly with, enough fifteen-year-olds to know that people who want Game-of-Thrones-style sex 'n' violence generally tend to figure it out without needing grimness sugar-pasted onto every page. It's possible to put together an argument regarding appealing to a "mature" audience, but I'm guessing based on how the game's been put together recently that this is an Our Market Research Shows thing in the other direction.

@Lesp- well, I dont really know what rules or optional rules sex may need to have, maybe the chances of pregnancy/disease? Rules for what happens when some races breed with others? (dwaf gentics not creating half dwarves when mated with humans etc) I think a little of that could be necessary.  

As to what rules "evil" needs... I think the BOVD had some good stuff in there about torture, etc. some was a bit over the top but I'd rather have it than not have it. and if you've got evil devil/demon and evil god worshipers, it might be good to descibe what some of their rituals, goals, and activities may be, after all this is a pretty standard BBEG territory for most campaigns.

and seeing as D&D next is totally trying to appeal to old grogs like me... some of this would be part of their targeted marketing strategy.

after all, I remember at age 14 or so, just after looking at the Deities and Demigods nude and gory pictues... that it and all AD&D books were rated for ages "9 and above" lol.

I'm sorry I am categorically against anything that makes D&D more like F.A.T.A.L so no thank you. 

let me put it this way...

you have two choices, your villian can be the ever cheezy skeletor or jack the ripper...

Skeletor may be fun for the PC's to fight, and eventually defeat if nothing more than the corny dialog, but it will always be kind of a meh victory, because Skeletor is kind of a meh villian. 

but Jack the ripper... more books have been written him than about jesus, he is iconic, he is the epitome of an evil psychotic rapist and killer of women. If you run this right, your players will come to HATE jack... not their characters... the players themselves, and when they finally bring the justice and end him. that emotion of victory and right being might will be much much more rewarding than if they faught just another hokey filled with ebil villian. This is why horror and revenge based movies have such a huge emotional draw, they are morality plays where you worry for the victems and cheer for the hero and they bring a sense of relief and rightness when jason or freddy meets their end. 

I dont want games with skeletor, he bores me.   


@mesterwart3 - had no idea what F.A.T.A.L was before I read it here, so looked it up and...

because I suggested I want my game more like a conan book, or because I want adult topics and themes like Game of Thrones, your suggesting that would make D&D more like an RPG where the only goal of the PC's is to rape or be raped? really?

you sir are ridiculous, and I forbid you from ever posting again. 

Developping demonology with its specialists in a neutral way is enough for D&D.

Writing down what is obvious from the described profiles of evil D&D material is a waste of paper IMO. Because if some people do not find it obvious, it's useless to put their nose in it.

In short, D&D should just do what they do with half-humans. We all know what should be the life of most of them, but a lot of people prefer to think about half-races as perfect diplomats between their parents instead of outcast having to fight twice to have the same consideration.

I'm not saying that one way or the other is better, just that D&D should stay coherent and stop these poor "evil" supplements that are just guides to upgrade the violence level and bring more modern monotheism stereotypes than real exploration of ultimate evil.

Just an example of preconception, the Pandora's box myth.
Modern conception : Pandora obeying her curiosity made a terrible mistake, and all the evil that escaped the pithos is the worst thing that could happen to humanity.
Ancient conception : Pandora was the instrument of Zeus, and all the evil that escaped the pithos is the best thing that could happen to humanity, as adversity is what made the humanity able to evolve and gave it the potential to become better.

I think D&D should stop beeing ambitious on the philosophical side, being hindered with alignments as it is.

This entire discussion suffers from the idea that adding gore and porn somehow add depth to the game, or to anything for that matter. 

Happily, the market has already spoken on this.  I don't know how many products D&D publishers have actually had to publicly apologize for, but it's not many.  There will be no torture porn rules for the new edition. 

Dead topic.

The primary demographic that needs to be captured to make D&D financially successful is males 14 to 21. Go back and look at the history of the hobby.

Is this good, or politically correct, or fair, or moral? No. It's just accurate. You need that audience, and the best way to get them is to appeal to the fact that this demographic prides itself on rebelliousnes. Load the books with things that make anyone outside that demographic purse their lips disprovingly, and those inside will love it.

Would it be awesome if the game could appeal equally to all genders and ages? Absolutely! I would LOVE that. But that kind of soft universality runs the risk of of not appealing to the "engine" that will drive sales.

So the question is, do you gamble on trying to make everyone happy, or do you target a narrower market you think you can domiinate?

Whichever way it falls, there is only one unquestionable truth; the descion will be based on market analysis and financial projections and not morality.



Capitalism is awesome.

If you think the future of the hobby should be limited by those to whom it has appealed in the past, you're thinking too small.  Women and girls, ages 10 & up, make up a much larger portion of the reading public, are much more likely to engage in social and imaginative play than males, and these days play more games than boys do to.  WotC is not going to alienate them to appease a few goons who think guts and porn are "mature."

I respect that you have a differing viewpoint professordaddy. I don't think our discussion can really proceed meaningfully until one of us can provide RPG market research to support our anecdotal theories though.

again, why are people (like you professor,) so fixated on porn? sex happens, even in fantasy, but sex and violence are not the only two things that make content "mature." murders, are not necessarily "violent" but it is part of the adult content, so is blackmail, so are many crimes... but all you want to bring it back to is porn porn porn.

but no, of course sex cant be part of a fantasy story, I mean, the idea that a dragon may only want to have virgins sacrificed to feed its evil hunger has never been a part of a fantasy story right? 

come on man, and if the market has spoken as I showed very clearly earlyer... its shown that adult situations ARE what most gamers want.

how about this, Jamie lannister was just a so-so villian, up until he had sex with his sister the queen, and shoved a child out of a window for witnessing it. At that point, Jamie and the story got interesting.

Until then it was just another swords and knights fantasy. you think incest and the brutal crippling and/or murder of children is something your going to see on the next installment of the wizzards of waverly place? you think that isn't adult content?

adult and mature content has its place in D&D, all I'm asking for is

1) that they devote a few pages to running evil parties in the core books.
2) that in the future they devote "some" adventure paths to mature or adult content similar to whats seen on these award winning shows with the off the charts neilson ratings.
3) that they include a few more details about evil religions, cults, and monsters motivations, goals, tatics, and more nefarious abilities.  

why is that such a bad thing? why does that make me a pervert and some how turn D&D into F.A.T.A.L?

I agree with Hocus smocus; the label "mature" usually just means gratuitous sex and violence, usually mashed up together in an unsettling way.  Actual maturity means dealing with difficult issues with multiple implications.  Instead of an antipaladin burning the paladin's daughter to death and coercing him to murder kids (pretty ham handed), what if the villain tempts or tricks the hero into commiting a seemingly small sin for what appears to be a greater good?  Then the hero learns of the greater implications of their actions; will they tell everyone what they have done and try to fix it? Will they pretend they don't notice? Will they try to cover it up and fix it themselves?  That could be an interesting and really mature story.  It could have all kinds of sex and violence in it, but also some actual tension.

I do think the core of the game should stay rated PG.  I play this game with my kid as well as with other adults.  I don't want to have to constantly screen out the wildly inappropriate stuff.

but Grey does that mean we cant have a few pages on running evil parties in the core books? or some supplements that do target more mature themes? cant we have a PG-13 game with some R rated optional rules or non-core encounters?

As long as it's not another book that defines 'Evil" mechanics as "You must be this big of a **** to the other players to get this benefit." I'll be fine.

Again, the market has already spoken on this issue.  The one time D&D ventured into this territory, they got protests from their own authors and ended up apologizing.  Not going to happen again just to please a few who think torture and incest need to be covered by official imprimatur. 

Dead issue.

and again professor, you dont read the links you claimed to examine...

Much of the content and concepts of Book of Vile Darkness have since been reprinted or adapted in source books without the "Mature Audiences Only" label. Rules for drug use had in fact already been printed,^[12] while later material included corrupt spells,^[13] vile feats,^[13] possession,^[14] and detailed discussions of demon lords

yes, again the market has spoken and what the market said was...

we want more!

the "mature" material was REPRINTED AND SOLD AGAIN! so IT DID HAPPEN AGAIN and WAS COVERED BY OFFICIAL IMPRIMATUR.

can you please try to find a way to keep being more wrong? its actually becomming entertaining now.

dead opinion.  

Oct 6, 2012 -- 8:44AM, Baalbamoth wrote:

1) that they devote a few pages to running evil parties in the core books.
2) that in the future they devote "some" adventure paths to mature or adult content similar to whats seen on these award winning shows with the off the charts neilson ratings.
3) that they include a few more details about evil religions, cults, and monsters motivations, goals, tatics, and more nefarious abilities.  

why is that such a bad thing? why does that make me a pervert and some how turn D&D into F.A.T.A.L?

I agree with you.
Evil and its methods belong in D&D and the DM in particular need to understand evil to make believable villains. This is not easy and material would help.
I also think the PHB shouldn't, as they have earlier, rule out the evil alignment for players. When one player is evil and makes the other players suffer for it (one way or another) that's ****ing annoying, but evil has its place. All evil parties can be great fun and are often more complicated. But evil is harder to do right, which is merit for officiel material on the subject.
The good alignment is really much simpler: you want to help people.
Neutral: prosper, survive.
Evil: What do they want? To see the world burn? To kill all living things?

I would like to know more about what drives evil creatures and people and how they reach their goals.

Sex in D&D, on the other hand, has no interest for me. I don't think it's inappropriate, it just doesn't bring me anything. I once tried to make a female NPC sexually interesting, but on her first meeting with the "heroes", my gamers immediately nicknamed her "Urtesækken" which means Herb Bitch, because they are lazy with their interaction and notation with the world.

The OP makes one pretty huge mistake in his argument:

Oct 5, 2012 -- 5:54PM, Baalbamoth wrote:

I dont know about the rest of you, but when I started gaming... it was a considered an evil and rebellous hobby. 
...
I think that greatly enhanced the attraction of D&D to new and young gamers... gaming was evil, the quick and attractive lure of the dark side worked very well for TSR and brought about what we now call the golden age of gaming
...
lets be honest... the best TV shows on right now are "Game of Thrones" "Boardwalk Empire" "Dexter" "Sparticus" "true blood" "strike back" "Sons of Anarchy" and all the other shows which come on after 10:00 PM, mostly on cable due to serious adult content.
...
you guys got any thoughts on this? will there be another "book of vile darkness" or have we seen the end of adult themed D&D books?

You cannot make something adult just by making it inapropriate for children. Making D&D "evil" solely by adding sex and violence doesn't make D&D any more mature; in fact, it likely appeals to a more juveline audience.
The examples are adult for other reasons, and the sex and violence is there because it does not shy away from that content. But just sex & violece is empty, and shows with nothing else to offer vanish. It's just inflamitory. And needlessly so. 

In terms of shock value, D&D has lost its edge and cannot compete with the internet and video games. Period. Trying to compete with that content on its own level is foolish and will only risk losing what sets D&D apart and makes PnP RPGs special and interesting.  

The super-adult stuff should only be added if it goes towards making the theme of what it's in better, or only if it fits/relates to the theme. It should not be added just for the sake of it being in there.

Baalbmoth, you will nor that what for reprinted were new mechanics, none of it related to actually playing evil characters, torture, incest, or the other material you've expressed admiration for in this thread.
It simply won't happen in D&D.  Good.

Oct 5, 2012 -- 5:54PM, Baalbamoth wrote:

you guys got any thoughts on this? will there be another "book of vile darkness" or have we seen the end of adult themed D&D books?    

I certainly hope so.  The so-called 'mature/adult' books were invariably the most immature, childish, rancid things I'd ever encountered.

If you want to play F.A.T.A.L., go play F.A.T.A.L.

Its interesting that almost no one here is saying "well maybe there can be something like that for you, as a module" when more and more of us are slowly moving towards that attitude for everything else. I don't want DnD to be what the OP describes. But I don't see a book directed at giving fluff and mechanics to the stuff the OP talks about. Drugs, torture, advice on running evil campaigns/PCs/NPCs, etc etc.

Just responding to the OP:

I agree, D&D had that real stigma attached to it. They even went so far as to get rid of all overt mention of demons and devils from 2e (course they showed up but their role was significantly reduced).

I remember when my mom told me she mentioned that all we wanted for christmas were D&D books to her coworkers and they got really funny with her.

And I think D&D can and should have a mature undertone. It's a mature game that requires maturity to play successfully. The groups got to work together socially outside the game to make the game work in play, everyone's got to be big enough to set some of their own preferences aside to make the game work. That's mature behaviour. This isn't really a kid's game, basically.

But I don't think WOTC/Hasbro has the balls to do it. I think they'll chicken out on that front and try to keep the game "for kids" and it'll be up to the players to bring the maturity back into it. I'm sure that maturity will be worked in by the fan base because we're mature people and enough of us aren't shy about dealing with mature content in a table top rpg.

And that's probably OK. High fantasy isn't especially gritty stuff, and apart from the plate mail bikini most of the conventions are pretty tame. I don't really want to see a D&D book that's got some kind of ultragoth dark fantasy theme in its artwork 'cause that's not really D&D to me, but it'd be nice if they didn't shy away from the nasty stuff when it's called for, like a supplement on the nine hells or a necronomicon sort of supplement should be pretty grim stuff.

As an aside, one thing I've never been very comfortable with is sexual stuff in game. My basic level of involvement with D&D sexual encounters is to have the player in question roll a fort save to see if they get the clap.

Oct 6, 2012 -- 3:21PM, Salla wrote:

Oct 5, 2012 -- 5:54PM, Baalbamoth wrote:

you guys got any thoughts on this? will there be another "book of vile darkness" or have we seen the end of adult themed D&D books?    

I certainly hope so.  The so-called 'mature/adult' books were invariably the most immature, childish, rancid things I'd ever encountered.

If you want to play F.A.T.A.L., go play F.A.T.A.L.

This.

Essentially the way I look at it is that there can be ways to use gore, sex, drugs, more truely evil stuff, and other "mature" things, in D&D. In fact I've ran many a campaign which touch upon stuff along this vein, but the way it seems to me, is that a DM and gaming group mature enough to know when this type of stuff works, and how to make this type of stuff work, doesn't need a book for it.

sex has a place in D&D just as much as violence, I agree with Lokiron that sex makes people uncomfortable around a gaming table, makes me a bit too which I already stated is why I dont get graphic in its description but...

ancient societies punnished prostitution and adultery, often with death... why? because the behivior led to people having sex outside of wedlock, often with forigners or military who often carried diseases. These diseases with no antibiotics or treatments were a serious threat to a small community. from that you get wacky cults and outragous religions and the view of sex itself being evil.

incest has been mentioned as well,  anybody see the mini-series "Rome" royals and affluent familes seemed to engage in it quite often, and yes it was severly looked down on. it could also provide story hooks and plots as it does in Game of Thrones.

saying if sex is in any way a part of a plot your game, your really playing F.A.T.A.L is ignorant and stupid.

its kinda funny, everyone here is saying they are ok with almost silly levels of graphic gore and violence, but having a king cheating on his wife with a succubus from the evil church down the street means your a sick pervert who should be playing F.A.T.A.L the rape rpg... seriously whats wrong with you guys? 

I, for one, do not particularly care to have my hobby a source of scorn and derision again.
 
It's Dungeons and Dragons, not Debasement and Deviltry.

If people want/need rules for whether their character is good in the sack, then sure, make a little splat book for them. 
The same for the people who want/need rules for nipple piercings and conditioning behaviour through torture.  

I'd rather be able to play/run my Heroic Adventure game without wasting page after page on how eating disorders are a Vile Feat, or what the gestation time for an Elf raped by an Orc would be, and what the chances of conception are besides...

I have other games I can spend time and money on.
One that deals with the mature themes of duty, self-sacrifice, personal advancement vs upholding the well-being of your family or society, and the virtues of social stability weighed against freedom and truth.
So, no, I won't be buying FATAL, nor will I be buying FATAL if it has a D&D logo.

kadim- yeah AD&D had rotting corpses all over the place, demon lords, full frontal succubi, but it had an age rating of 9 and above... lol. I think its always been the worst kept secrete that D&D says its for kids, but really its got a lot of adult (or heck juvinile) subject matter, and your right, I think the balls on this donkey are about the size of BBs and they wont risk anything that could pull any controversy, but one can hope.

side note, somebody was saying that D&D does not want to try and compete with videogames etc? thats a lot of hogwash, 4e was all based around the VTT getting up and running so it could directly compete with WOW. and regardless of the subject matter if your going after kids and teens, your in competition for their time and interest, so yes D&D is in competition with X-box, all video games, etc.

which is another thing I find funny... people seem totally ok with their kids playing mature rated videogames like Halo, MoH, assassins creed, dishonored, borderlands or GTA (with the prostitution murder killing innocents and endless profanity) but even suggest that an RPG may contain even a smiddgion of the same sort of material and suddenly your a threat to society. wtf?

so Verd- so does that mean all reproduction in your game happens by asexual budding, IE if an elf and a orc accidentally bump into eachother somebody's pregnant? theres no such thing as marrage in your world or having children? is it like people are assumed to be having sex but if you have a PC that wants to marry and have kids with an NPC then you have to plug your ears, close your eyes, and start yelling "NA NA NA I'M NOT HEARING THIS IM NOT HEARING THIS!!!!"

Oct 5, 2012 -- 5:54PM, Baalbamoth wrote:

..."window.parent.tinyMCE.get('post_content').onLoad.dispatch();" contenteditable="true" />lets be honest... the best TV shows on right now are "Game of Thrones" "Boardwalk Empire" "Dexter" "Sparticus" "true blood" "strike back" "Sons of Anarchy" and all the other shows which come on after 10:00 PM, mostly on cable due to serious adult content.

  

I'd rather watch Adventure Time than some of those (especially True Blood. That show is a joke.), but some of them are quite good. Sherlock is easily better than any of them, though.

Either way, DnD has been, and should be, just as much Adventure Time as it is Game of Thrones, and should certainly allow for Sherlock.

Oct 7, 2012 -- 12:49AM, Baalbamoth wrote:

so Verd- so does that mean all reproduction in your game happens by asexual budding, IE if an elf and a orc accidentally bump into eachother somebody's pregnant? theres no such thing as marrage in your world or having children? is it like people are assumed to be having sex but if you have a PC that wants to marry and have kids with an NPC then you have to plug your ears, close your eyes, and start yelling "NA NA NA I'M NOT HEARING THIS IM NOT HEARING THIS!!!!"

No -moth.
It means I don't need page space wasted for rules on it.
We use D&D for, surprise surprise, Adventure games, not dating simulation.
If you really need rules for how to run a dating sim game with swords, I can link you to some good Sengoku Rance TTRPG translations.

Oct 7, 2012 -- 1:07AM, Verdegris_Sage wrote:

No -moth.
It means I don't need page space wasted for rules on it.
We use D&D for, surprise surprise, Adventure games, not dating simulation.
If you really need rules for how to run a dating sim game with swords, I can link you to some good Sengoku Rance TTRPG translations.

I tend to agree. It being an rpg there is scope for a lot of pretty freaky stuff, but as much as I want a game to include as many options and encourage as many ideas as it can, I think D&D being high fantasy and relatively tame is OK. At the most, a few supplements that hook into the system is all I want to see.

I should be clear: I don't want that stigma back. I don't really see what constructive purpose that could serve.

@verd then dont buy the mature "supplement" and (clearly there are many who will.)  but your also saying you dont want pages "wasted" on demons, demon lords, really evil and vile monsters, which have ALWAYS been part of D&D. btw what fantasy books do not contain the subject sex in some fasion? toklen had it, in conan books it was all over the place, so what are your games like; wizard of ozz? harry potter (oh yeah there was sex in that too) um... what? what books do you pattern your game on where sex is not some form of plot device?

@Doc- heh get ready for people demanding you go play F.A.T.A.L seems to be a pattern here... btw ya made me think... gender equality... there was this fantasy show I remember, it had plots and elements based on rape, homosexuality, bizzare sexual acts, seduction, orgys and group sex,... oh yeah and it was also played in a prime time time slot, on a non-cable channel, was rated as PG and was called "Zena the Warrior Princess"... I sort of remember it being slightly popular...  there was also this show called buffy the vampire slayer, and another called Angel... then there was a show called "beauty and the Beast" where romance scenes came close to beastiality... come to think of it, there are a lot of fantasy shows like that...

Nobody has issues with demon lords or scary monsters. A lot of that stuff has been in every edition but 2e, it just that the graphic stuff isn't explicitly stated.  This is for very good reasons.  It keeps the content age neutral and gives audiences who don't want to get to graphic an easy out without taking away a lot of the fun toys (demon lords, Savage monsters, ect.)  without in any way hampering folks who want things more graphic.

And the reson we are bringing up F.A.T.A.L is because it is what you are asking for.  Juvinile shock value graphic sex and violence to show off how "dark", "cool", "mature" and "hardcore" the game is (and by extension you the player are).  That is pretty much F.A.T.A.L's MO and the game is widely ridiculed as one of the worst games every published because of it.

Mature content isn't darker or more graphic.  Mature content is more complex and deep story that explores important questions and concepts in an adult manner. If you want to put that in a book go for it.  Sex and gore?  Not unless you want to get equated to a F.A.T.A.Lite.

I am not surprised that many people don't want to buy supplemental material with extra evil, dark, sexual, and violent themes. I am, however, surprised at how many would actually oppose such material from even being printed.

And the F.A.T.A.L. argument is ****ing lame (excuse my language, but sometimes cursing is called for), as that game's features are stupidity smeared in blood and semen. It actually has an item, a jar, that forces every man touching it to, unless they save, ejaculate in it with a chance of impregnating it in which case it gives birth to a boy whose lack of of penis (not testicles) makes him ever frustrated.

If any of you really think that is what Baalbamoth, or I for that matter, would want to see in dark supplemental material, you are either complete morons with no capacity for empathy or insulting beyond what I think is acceptable within this forum.

So please, voice your opposition in a way that does not insinuate that Baalbamoth is a sick, perverted, deviant, rapist, psychopath who might as well play the garbage that is F.A.T.A.L.

That said, I do see your point in preserving the image of D&D, and not being american, I probably don't see the same issues with (let's call it) "dark material".

What exactly do people want to see? Every edition has demons in it. That's not new. "Roll for getting knocked up!" is exactly the sort of silly, juvenile sort of thing that people roll their eyes at. D&D can and does have orgies, weird sex stuff, and any sort of creepy demon gore you could want, if you want it; it just doesn't have random rules for that kind of thing, because they're not important. It doesn't have orgy rules, and it also doesn't have normal fancy party rules. It doesn't have rules for getting the clap, and it doesn't have rules for congenital or foodborne illness.

I actually think that, while they'd never, ever do it, rules for sex/splattergore/spoooooky demons and stuff might actually sell fine as a supplement, because when you're fifteen a table for interspecies sexy times is edgy to tha max, and the notion that now it burns when your character pees because you bungled your sexy time check is hi-larious instead of a source of rolling-based eyeball strain, and mom would probably faint if she read about how depraved these cultists are. Yeah! Mountain Dew!

But seriously, kids like feeling like they're pushing boundaries. It's part of growing up. It just that that isn't really the sort of business I suspect WotC considers themselves to be into.

" I am, however,surprised at how many would actually oppose such material from even being printed."

For the same reason I would oppose airing an explicit sex and gore show on a child-friendly or even teen -oriented television network during primetime hours.  It would mean parents, and consumers mature enough not to need that trash, could no longer trust material from that source.  It would taint the whole brand.

  Happily, the adults in charge of the D&D property will likely be mature enough to avoid such infantile material.

Oct 7, 2012 -- 12:54AM, DoctorBadWolf wrote:

Either way, DnD has been, and should be, just as much Adventure Time as it is Game of Thrones, and should certainly allow for Sherlock.

I personally think that people mistake what it is about Game of Thrones that makes it so intriguing. It's not the blood or rampant sex or violence (those are significant factors, but lots of shows have all of that). What makes it so intriguing is that once you know enough about a Song of Ice and Fire, you understand that the writer truly hasn't pulled punches, and you truly can't expect traditional narrative queues to protect characters or kill them. It's so intriguing because it's a story that is brutally fair to all parties. And it would be as powerful a story even if there wasn't nearly as much sex and violence, so long as it continued to be brutally fair. Sex and violence are merely very common factors in politics of human society. Adventure Time actually has a bit of this brutal fairness too.


And as for the main topic, branding D&D as "evil" is really dumb. Kids become interested in D&D because it offers them a cooperative storytelling experience. They'll feel like they have freedom to do all kinds of stuff you either aren't supposed to do or can't do in regular life. It's a joy. Framing that as something that's popular because it's wrong is unfair to the medium, and it's unfair to the kids. We shouldn't be teaching people that spending a night imagining a shared story with your friends is inherently wrong. It's one of humanity's oldest skills.

@Caeric: not me sir. I got into D&D specifically because my mormon parents told me it was evil and my other-side-of-the-tracks buddies, who they didnt like me hanging out with, all had the red boxes.

Next thing ya know I'm playin D&D durring lunch and recess in gradeschool at age 10 and intoducing all the rich OC kids to it, and aparently causing a quite panic among the PTA (which I didnt find out about till after my teens) when most of the guys at my school asked for the demonic satanic D&D for christmas. ahh.. memories...

@ Meste- humm... so in Game of Thrones, the evil preistess seduces the would be king, so she can get pregnant, then strips and flops on the ground where in great pain she gives birth to a shadowy demonspawn, which then appears from nowhere running the the admirable hero and enemy of the preistess/would be king through with some kind of smokey shadowsword.

dark? most definately, cool? yeah I think that sorta nailed it, mature? couldent get much more, hardcore? yeah extremely... goofy rape mechanics and innane juvinile depravity, no pretty much the exact opposite of that. 

would I like to see and pay for rules covering how an evil preistess could give birth to a demonspawn, the rituals and materials required, the chance of survival for both mother and child, the cost to the father (level drains maybe?) absofrigginlutely I would, and again... clearly there are a lot of other gamers who would too. 
  
@Lokiron  high five and I'm always kinda shocked when there are people who just chime in "your a pervet go play F.A.T.A.L." because they think its building their junor moral nazi credit points or something. I dont care really if people disagree with me I only wish they'd actually voice their own real well thought out and hopefully open minded opinions rather than just jumping on a band waggon.

@Lesp: Kids? I'm 42, and I think the average watcher of Thrones, Rome, Deadwood, etc. all. is probably around middle age... what do you think the average age of a gamer currently is? I'll tell ya this... I see a LOT of grognards at conventions. Just because a gaming company may want to attract a younger audience to keep the game selling far into the future does not necessarily mean that is who their core consumers are (likely 26-35 year old males, who would drop cash in a second for a book like this regardless of how much they may protest it in public or online).

@Professor then why did the adults release the 3.0 version in the first place? ya know a lot of those same guys are probably still on the payroll... and saying "it was the best suppliment WotC had released in a long time"... and likely had very high sales figures... I think your going way out of your way to convince people of a lie you really wish was true. "I think thou doest protest too much..."

Oct 7, 2012 -- 9:06AM, Baalbamoth wrote:

I dont care really if people disagree with me I only wish they'd actually voice their own real well thought out and hopefully open minded opinions rather than just jumping on a band waggon.

I can supply you with my own very honest opinions, and I have always been referred to as open-minded. Also, I have never played F.A.T.A.L., so I have no comparisons that I can make to it.

Age Range of D&D: OD&D and 1E AD&D were written for players 12 and up. 2E AD&D was made for players age 10 and up. I don't know about 3E/3.5...I skipped those. 4E was, I believe made for ages 12 and up. The D&D game has always been engineered with the idea that young, preteen children will pick it up and play it. OD&D and 1E were rife with nudity, so I don't know how they came to the "12 and up" conclusion, but whatever. If it were a movie instead of a game, it would've needed an R-rating instead of the G-rating it was given.

The demons, devils, and angry mothers era: I was playing D&D only briefly when the D&D = Satanism craze erupted in my area.  I was spoken to by preachers of various faiths. I had my books confiscated at school as they were considered "occult material". My principal suggested to my parents that I be psychologically evaluated for other "deviant" behaviors. Fortunately my parents were very cool about it and ignored the idiots. Their mindset was, "When he and his friends are playing D&D, they're in the den. They're not out roaming the streets. They're not out getting into God-knows-what. They're here, at home. We know where they are and what they're doing. We'll take that over the alternative any day." Still and all, the angry-mothers era was a very uncomfortable time to be associated with D&D. For some odd reason, we could play d6 Star Wars, RIFTS, and all of the other RPGs without anyone even batting an eye...but if they found out you played D&D, you were not trusted. Especially where I grew up (in the heart of the bible-belt), it was better to not even mention that you knew anything about D&D to avoid scorn.

Why I don't think overt sexuality and other "mature" themes should be pushed in D&D: First and foremost, I don't want my kids having to go through what I went through.  One is 17 and one is 8, and both of them play D&D. The oldest has been playing for 8 years now. No one cares anymore that they play D&D. Teachers don't care. Preachers don't care. Other parents don't care. I'd like to keep it that way. If my oldest leaves his DMG open on a desk and someone walks by and sees "how to kill a demon", they wouldn't care. However, if they walk by and see "how an ogre raping a human can result in the infant tearing its way out of the womb and killing the mother", then they very likely WILL care. Since the front of the book will probably say "for ages 12 and up", there will be many questions raised. In this uber-delicate day and age of everyone getting offended by the slightest things, don't fool yourself into thinking that the angry-mothers era wouldn't or couldn't return with a vengeance. It most certainly could and would, if the right elements were there.

An acceptable comprimise: Leave the super-overt material out of the core books. The DMG and PHB are about the rules needed to play the game, not necessarily supplemental rules for specific play-styles. If they (and by "they", I mean WotC or third-party publishers) want to publish super-mature-related material, they can do so via splats. Those who want it can by it and enjoy it. Those who don't won't ever have to look at it. Parents buying books for their kids won't have to worry about them being judged because the DMG mentions "demonic rape and incest for fun and profit", because the mature books would be plainly labeled as such. I see this as a win-win for everyone involved. I'm not opposed to the inclusion of mature/adult-rated material at all, but I don't want it front and center in the core books.

Oct 7, 2012 -- 7:37AM, Caeric wrote:

Oct 7, 2012 -- 12:54AM, DoctorBadWolf wrote:

Either way, DnD has been, and should be, just as much Adventure Time as it is Game of Thrones, and should certainly allow for Sherlock.

I personally think that people mistake what it is about Game of Thrones that makes it so intriguing. It's not the blood or rampant sex or violence (those are significant factors, but lots of shows have all of that). What makes it so intriguing is that once you know enough about a Song of Ice and Fire, you understand that the writer truly hasn't pulled punches, and you truly can't expect traditional narrative queues to protect characters or kill them. It's so intriguing because it's a story that is brutally fair to all parties. And it would be as powerful a story even if there wasn't nearly as much sex and violence, so long as it continued to be brutally fair. Sex and violence are merely very common factors in politics of human society. Adventure Time actually has a bit of this brutal fairness too.


And as for the main topic, branding D&D as "evil" is really dumb. Kids become interested in D&D because it offers them a cooperative storytelling experience. They'll feel like they have freedom to do all kinds of stuff you either aren't supposed to do or can't do in regular life. It's a joy. Framing that as something that's popular because it's wrong is unfair to the medium, and it's unfair to the kids. We shouldn't be teaching people that spending a night imagining a shared story with your friends is inherently wrong. It's one of humanity's oldest skills.

Exactly. Game of Thrones is dark fantasty taken just beyond what I would call realistic, to the point of "All the people are ****ty. No. Seriously. All of them. ", but not so far that it becomes a joke, but the point of the story isn't just to do that for it's own sake. The story is interesting because of the characters, and their struggles, and the sure knowledge that by the last book/season, every single character you've loved in the show/books could be dead, broken or become a villain.

That's not what I want DnD to only be, but I'm glad that it's something DnD can be.

Adventure Time is the more "magic all over, the heroes are really cool and pretty much no chance of long term shifts to evil, or death, etc." sort of fantasy. Bad things happen to every character, but you always know that Fin and Jake are going to make it out in pretty much one piece. That's another thing that DnD has to be capable of, in order to remain DnD. In most DnD campaigns with that sort of feel, there's still not that same level of plot armor, of course.

You pretty much have to play 4e on easy mode (optimized parties never fighting above level monsters) to get that much plot armor. 4e played right (above level encounters being fairly common, but not super high) has just enough chance of death that it doesn't make sense to frontal charge the gigantic angry dragon with no strategy, but it's reasonable to devise a strategy, and use tactics and teamwork to take down that very challenging threat, for the good of...whatever thing you care about the good of.

And that's also something DnD has to be capable of.

Nevermind that 4e was capable of all of those, and did them each quite well...

Oct 7, 2012 -- 10:58AM, Hocus-Smokus wrote:

Oct 7, 2012 -- 9:06AM, Baalbamoth wrote:

I dont care really if people disagree with me I only wish they'd actually voice their own real well thought out and hopefully open minded opinions rather than just jumping on a band waggon.

I can supply you with my own very honest opinions, and I have always been referred to as open-minded. Also, I have never played F.A.T.A.L., so I have no comparisons that I can make to it.

Age Range of D&D: OD&D and 1E AD&D were written for players 12 and up. 2E AD&D was made for players age 10 and up. I don't know about 3E/3.5...I skipped those. 4E was, I believe made for ages 12 and up. The D&D game has always been engineered with the idea that young, preteen children will pick it up and play it. OD&D and 1E were rife with nudity, so I don't know how they came to the "12 and up" conclusion, but whatever. If it were a movie instead of a game, it would've needed an R-rating instead of the G-rating it was given.

The demons, devils, and angry mothers era: I was playing D&D only briefly when the D&D = Satanism craze erupted in my area.  I was spoken to by preachers of various faiths. I had my books confiscated at school as they were considered "occult material". My principal suggested to my parents that I be psychologically evaluated for other "deviant" behaviors. Fortunately my parents were very cool about it and ignored the idiots. Their mindset was, "When he and his friends are playing D&D, they're in the den. They're not out roaming the streets. They're not out getting into God-knows-what. They're here, at home. We know where they are and what they're doing. We'll take that over the alternative any day." Still and all, the angry-mothers era was a very uncomfortable time to be associated with D&D. For some odd reason, we could play d6 Star Wars, RIFTS, and all of the other RPGs without anyone even batting an eye...but if they found out you played D&D, you were not trusted. Especially where I grew up (in the heart of the bible-belt), it was better to not even mention that you knew anything about D&D to avoid scorn.

Why I don't think overt sexuality and other "mature" themes should be pushed in D&D: First and foremost, I don't want my kids having to go through what I went through.  One is 17 and one is 8, and both of them play D&D. The oldest has been playing for 8 years now. No one cares anymore that they play D&D. Teachers don't care. Preachers don't care. Other parents don't care. I'd like to keep it that way. If my oldest leaves his DMG open on a desk and someone walks by and sees "how to kill a demon", they wouldn't care. However, if they walk by and see "how an ogre raping a human can result in the infant tearing its way out of the womb and killing the mother", then they very likely WILL care. Since the front of the book will probably say "for ages 12 and up", there will be many questions raised. In this uber-delicate day and age of everyone getting offended by the slightest things, don't fool yourself into thinking that the angry-mothers era wouldn't or couldn't return with a vengeance. It most certainly could and would, if the right elements were there.

An acceptable comprimise: Leave the super-overt material out of the core books. The DMG and PHB are about the rules needed to play the game, not necessarily supplemental rules for specific play-styles. If they (and by "they", I mean WotC or third-party publishers) want to publish super-mature-related material, they can do so via splats. Those who want it can by it and enjoy it. Those who don't won't ever have to look at it. Parents buying books for their kids won't have to worry about them being judged because the DMG mentions "demonic rape and incest for fun and profit", because the mature books would be plainly labeled as such. I see this as a win-win for everyone involved. I'm not opposed to the inclusion of mature/adult-rated material at all, but I don't want it front and center in the core books.

this....is awesome.....

Oct 6, 2012 -- 8:18AM, professordaddy wrote:

This entire discussion suffers from the idea that adding gore and porn somehow add depth to the game, or to anything for that matter. Happily, the market has already spoken on this. I don't know how many products D&D publishers have actually had to publicly apologize for, but it's not many. There will be no torture porn rules for the new edition. Dead topic.

I have no intention to offend, but you are grossly oversimplifying.  Mature themes doesn't mean gore and porn any more than evil automatically means chaotic stupid.  Also, the existence of mature themes in no way dictates that they must be played out in graphic detail (though some will likely want to).  For example, an evil PC torturing an enemy for information doesn't need to include graphic descriptions of the actual acts of torture.  The DM and group can easily be comfortable with cutting away from the action where menacing words and actions become actual torture.

Oct 6, 2012 -- 3:21PM, Salla wrote:

Oct 5, 2012 -- 5:54PM, Baalbamoth wrote:

you guys got any thoughts on this? will there be another "book of vile darkness" or have we seen the end of adult themed D&D books?    

I certainly hope so.  The so-called 'mature/adult' books were invariably the most immature, childish, rancid things I'd ever encountered.

If you want to play F.A.T.A.L., go play F.A.T.A.L.

Actually, the BoEF was pretty good until it got into applying mechanics to sex.  It would have been much better if those pages had been replaced with advice about how to incorporate romance (and I do mean romance, not just the down-and-dirty) into adventures/campaigns.

It's a pretty simple calculation, in my mind.  Mature content is easy for people who want it to add, but hard for people who don't want it to remove.

".... the existence of mature themes in no way dictates that they must be played out in graphic detail (though some will likely want to). For example,an evil PC torturing an enemy for information doesn't need to include graphic descriptions of the actual acts of torture. The DM and group can easily be comfortable with cutting away from the action...."

If it's going to be that vague then it doesn't need to be covered in official game materials at all.  Good.

Oct 7, 2012 -- 12:34PM, MechaPilot wrote:

Oct 6, 2012 -- 3:21PM, Salla wrote:

Oct 5, 2012 -- 5:54PM, Baalbamoth wrote:

you guys got any thoughts on this? will there be another "book of vile darkness" or have we seen the end of adult themed D&D books?    

I certainly hope so.  The so-called 'mature/adult' books were invariably the most immature, childish, rancid things I'd ever encountered.

If you want to play F.A.T.A.L., go play F.A.T.A.L.

Actually, the BoEF was pretty good until it got into applying mechanics to sex.  It would have been much better if those pages had been replaced with advice about how to incorporate romance (and I do mean romance, not just the down-and-dirty) into adventures/campaigns.

Now THAT's something I'd like to see. Romance is a quintessential part of heroic fantasy, but as a DM I've never had any idea how to deal with in it a campaign.

Oct 7, 2012 -- 3:48PM, Koga305 wrote:

Oct 7, 2012 -- 12:34PM, MechaPilot wrote:

Oct 6, 2012 -- 3:21PM, Salla wrote:

Oct 5, 2012 -- 5:54PM, Baalbamoth wrote:

you guys got any thoughts on this? will there be another "book of vile darkness" or have we seen the end of adult themed D&D books?    

I certainly hope so.  The so-called 'mature/adult' books were invariably the most immature, childish, rancid things I'd ever encountered.

If you want to play F.A.T.A.L., go play F.A.T.A.L.

Actually, the BoEF was pretty good until it got into applying mechanics to sex.  It would have been much better if those pages had been replaced with advice about how to incorporate romance (and I do mean romance, not just the down-and-dirty) into adventures/campaigns.

Now THAT's something I'd like to see. Romance is a quintessential part of heroic fantasy, but as a DM I've never had any idea how to deal with in it a campaign.

I'd want that as well, but romance is hardly "Evil" as Baalbamoth wants. It seems like what he wants, based on his description of how he got into D&D, what he wants out of D&D isn't a more "mature" game, but a game that has controversy. At least the way I'm reading into his posts, D&D seemed to be his way of rebelling against his ultra-strict, ultra-traditional Mormon household, and it's that sense of rebellion that he wants back.

Coming from someone a bit younger, who only barely had to deal with the "D&D is Satanic" mindset, and even then, it was more of a legacy than a contemporary thing, what I want out of D&D is a game that is more grown up. By now, D&D shouldn't be the rebelling teen. It should be grown up enough to recognize that more "mature" concepts can be added without requiring rules for STDs or stuff like that, and, even more than that, that these "mature" concepts are best handled, outside any codified rules. They require significant care, in their implementation, that is best handled by a DM and not by standardized rules.

Oct 7, 2012 -- 10:58AM, Hocus-Smokus wrote:

Oct 7, 2012 -- 9:06AM, Baalbamoth wrote:

I dont care really if people disagree with me I only wish they'd actually voice their own real well thought out and hopefully open minded opinions rather than just jumping on a band waggon.

I can supply you with my own very honest opinions, and I have always been referred to as open-minded. Also, I have never played F.A.T.A.L., so I have no comparisons that I can make to it.

Age Range of D&D: OD&D and 1E AD&D were written for players 12 and up. 2E AD&D was made for players age 10 and up. I don't know about 3E/3.5...I skipped those. 4E was, I believe made for ages 12 and up. The D&D game has always been engineered with the idea that young, preteen children will pick it up and play it. OD&D and 1E were rife with nudity, so I don't know how they came to the "12 and up" conclusion, but whatever. If it were a movie instead of a game, it would've needed an R-rating instead of the G-rating it was given.

The demons, devils, and angry mothers era: I was playing D&D only briefly when the D&D = Satanism craze erupted in my area.  I was spoken to by preachers of various faiths. I had my books confiscated at school as they were considered "occult material". My principal suggested to my parents that I be psychologically evaluated for other "deviant" behaviors. Fortunately my parents were very cool about it and ignored the idiots. Their mindset was, "When he and his friends are playing D&D, they're in the den. They're not out roaming the streets. They're not out getting into God-knows-what. They're here, at home. We know where they are and what they're doing. We'll take that over the alternative any day." Still and all, the angry-mothers era was a very uncomfortable time to be associated with D&D. For some odd reason, we could play d6 Star Wars, RIFTS, and all of the other RPGs without anyone even batting an eye...but if they found out you played D&D, you were not trusted. Especially where I grew up (in the heart of the bible-belt), it was better to not even mention that you knew anything about D&D to avoid scorn.

Why I don't think overt sexuality and other "mature" themes should be pushed in D&D: First and foremost, I don't want my kids having to go through what I went through.  One is 17 and one is 8, and both of them play D&D. The oldest has been playing for 8 years now. No one cares anymore that they play D&D. Teachers don't care. Preachers don't care. Other parents don't care. I'd like to keep it that way. If my oldest leaves his DMG open on a desk and someone walks by and sees "how to kill a demon", they wouldn't care. However, if they walk by and see "how an ogre raping a human can result in the infant tearing its way out of the womb and killing the mother", then they very likely WILL care. Since the front of the book will probably say "for ages 12 and up", there will be many questions raised. In this uber-delicate day and age of everyone getting offended by the slightest things, don't fool yourself into thinking that the angry-mothers era wouldn't or couldn't return with a vengeance. It most certainly could and would, if the right elements were there.

An acceptable comprimise: Leave the super-overt material out of the core books. The DMG and PHB are about the rules needed to play the game, not necessarily supplemental rules for specific play-styles. If they (and by "they", I mean WotC or third-party publishers) want to publish super-mature-related material, they can do so via splats. Those who want it can by it and enjoy it. Those who don't won't ever have to look at it. Parents buying books for their kids won't have to worry about them being judged because the DMG mentions "demonic rape and incest for fun and profit", because the mature books would be plainly labeled as such. I see this as a win-win for everyone involved. I'm not opposed to the inclusion of mature/adult-rated material at all, but I don't want it front and center in the core books.

This.

I pretty much agree with everything Hocus said up there,

I dont think D&D will ever get back to the "That Johnny kid is BAAAAD... I bet he listens to satanic metal music, smokes pot, and plays D&D!" (and I did) though I do have nostalgia for the era...

by my teens my room was covered in DIO, Ozzy, and D&D posters, when I'd walk by in a biker jacket in school kids would make the sign of the cross with their fingers, and I'd use sharpies to draw upside down crucifixes on my palms to flash back... and this was in grade school... yeah D&D was part of the rebellion, and I'd agree it isnt really now... (and I'm not sure what is... republican party support? go green or death? no idea) and wont ever be again.  

(PS. I once threatened a fat-camp counselor with a knife when he threw chewing tobacco and cooking oil all over my Gigax signed AD&D books, and got kicked out of fat-camp... had I known it was that easy I would have done it earlyer and maybe saved the books!)

BUT (back on topic..)

Evil parties (running them playing them etc) need to be covered in core, including hooks on how to keep the evils together (blackmail, magic contract, under penalty of death, etc).

Demons, devils, undead, summoning, and necromancy as well (assuming a monster manual is part of core)

Personally I think brothels and courtisans should have some minor coverage (an NPC class etc) but nothing much more than that.

and I would like to see some info on how marrages, political unions, churches etc each handle the topic of marrage (does god XYZ demand celebacy, are marrages open or monogamous, etc) even if this is handled from setting to setting.

Likewise I'd like to see how crime is handled from place to place. (judical champions? trials, high courts and low courts?) and what the crimes are and encur what penalties (death for adultry or not even a crime?) I have supplements that offer some good guidelines for these, but never really seen anything in D&D go into too much depth and wish they would.

but when it comes to splat books third party and otherwise... yeah I'd like it to be open, go ahead and cover pregnancy = death in ogre rape, litters of orks killing most of their weak brothers and sisters before they can walk etc. as well as everything else, sex magic, plague bringers, vile cult practices, rules for torture, gods and neither creatures making pacts for souls and sacrifice, devil worship for fun and profit etc.   

Oct 8, 2012 -- 3:01AM, Baalbamoth wrote:

I dont think D&D will ever get back to the "That Johnny kid is BAAAAD... I bet he listens to satanic metal music, smokes pot, and plays D&D!" (and I did) though I do have nostalgia for the era...

Yeah, because the ebst thing for D&D right now is to get compared to satanic music and pot.

Are you even reading what you write?

lol what do you have against people who use their religious freedom to choose to be pagan rather than the christian norm? and if I have a medical card and live in a state where it's legal for someone of my age, who are you to tell me what medication I can and cant use?  do you consider yourself a biggot?

but the point of that statement was that those were the things people associated with D&D at one time, and some of us had to deal with a lot of crap for participating in this hobby.  now days in a lot of places, medical marijuana, sweedish deathmetal, and D&D are all mainstream.

I love progress...

Oct 8, 2012 -- 5:16AM, Baalbamoth wrote:

lol what do you have against people who use their religious freedom to choose to be pagan rather than the christian norm? and if I have a medical card and live in a state where it's legal for someone of my age, who are you to tell me what medication I can and cant use?  do you consider yourself a biggot?

Not once did you mention Paganism, in your above post. Paganism is not in any sense Satanism. And even Satanism isn't particularly related to Black metal, besides the fact that artists borrowed from it to add "shock value," where many of the artists themselves did not adhere to that ideology, and were often simply atheists or agnostics.

But that's not even the point. You specifically mentioned those examples as things that were "rebellious." You can't just say something with one connotation, then feel insulted when the person responds to that.

but the point of that statement was that those were the things people associated with D&D at one time, and some of us had to deal with a lot of crap for participating in this hobby.  now days in a lot of places, medical marijuana, sweedish deathmetal, and D&D are all mainstream.

I love progress...

So you'd prefer them to remain "rebellious?" I don't know about you, but to me, that seems the most childish approach. D&D shouldn't be something that you like because "the man" doesn't. If your enjoyment of D&D depends on how socially acceptable it is, then I have to question whether you actually like D&D for what it is, or whether you like it for being an outlet for rebellion in an ultra-traditionalist household.

1) satanism is paganism, as is any religion not christian.
2) but the point above was that D&D is no longer capable of getting to that "rebellious" status it once had. English's comment had missed the point entirely, the mention of paganism and metal and "medical marijuana" was outlining why things that were once rebellious are now acceptable even if some older folks and southern conservative republicans still hold on to traditional fears, and I dont think those people have changed much in their opinions on D&D either.
3) pattern recognition experts who work in marketing will tell you a product's "coolness" can be a big indicator of its potential and ongoing sales. a product that is percieved as rebellious is also often associated with being cool. so a little rebelliousness to D&D wouldent be a bad thing, and could lead to higher sales... not saying it has to become porn or anything like that.

by the way are you familiar with Zac Sabbath? The guy who wrote the Vornheim supplement that won all the origin awards? this is one of the coolest OD&D/AD&D blogs around, clearly he dosent have a problem with D&D being marketed as slightly rebellious... 

dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/?zx=445220... 

heres his awesome acceptance speech...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8jfxuNjeZU&t=3m...

Oct 8, 2012 -- 11:31PM, Baalbamoth wrote:

1) satanism is paganism, as is any religion not christian.

Not even close.  At its most restrictive, Paganism refers to all non-Abrahamic religions.  Which makes Judaism, Islam, Christianity, and Satanism non-Pagan.  Satanists will disagree to distance themselves from their origins, but it is pretty clear that without Abraham, you wouldn't have Satanists.  While they would be different in some ways, you would still have Wiccans, Neo-Pagans, and many other religions without Abraham.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paganism

Oct 9, 2012 -- 8:12AM, Chakravant wrote:

Oct 8, 2012 -- 11:31PM, Baalbamoth wrote:

1) satanism is paganism, as is any religion not christian.

Not even close. At its most restrictive, Paganism refers to all non-Abrahamic religions. Which makes Judaism, Islam, Christianity, and Satanism non-Pagan. Satanists will disagree to distance themselves from their origins, but it is pretty clear that without Abraham, you wouldn't have Satanists. While they would be different in some ways, you would still have Wiccans, Neo-Pagans, and many other religions without Abraham. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paganism

Arguably Buddhism and Hinduism are excluded from "Pagan" as well
I've seen it used to reference non-Abrahamic, Non-Big 5 (The Arbahamic + the aforementioned) or Non-Big 7 (Add Shinto and Zoroastrianism to the Big 5).
As the word originally meant rural, it was used to describe religions prohibitted in Roman cities, Pagan faiths were practiced beyound the Pageus, which marked the outer limits of the City. In the earlier Empire, the Christian faith was Pagan for some time, at least the times when it was banned.

As for my own games, moth, I am more inspired by Grimm's Fairy Tales than anything else. But that is not a basis, it is inspiration. Just because characters migth have sensual relationships, does not mean rules are required for it anymore than rules are required for seeing if a character develops diabetes from eating sugary foods, or insomnia from wierd watch schedules. I understand your D&D is illustrated by Frank Frazetta, which is fine and dandy. I like some Edgar Rice Burroughs on occassion. You like gritty and dark Sword and Sorcery, also nothing wrong with that. However, that no more needs to be force fed in the core offering than Anime style, or Romantic Fantasy(Mercedes Lackey, Tamora Pierce and Diane Duane) style.
If you want a special supplement to deal with all the special "Evil" stuff that helps you recapture your rebellious youth, fine, have your little black book. 
You ignore the mature themes people mention that aren't related to ways to aggrivate parents and conservatives, so I can only imagine you are more interested in being edgy than actually making a quality product.

I agree with the general sentiment of the OP, DnD should not be afraid of having edge what can I say we have edge by default just look at the classes:

• Fighter: the cleanest one in the book.
• Wizard: sorcery = pacts with evil spirits in all the religions I know are  abig no-no, if there is one where wizards not clerics are kosher please tell me.
• Cleric: is he a cleric of my RL god X, no? but he does supranatural miracles ? clearly a devil worshipper in disguise.
• Rogue: thou shall not steal pretty clear by default.
• Warlock: like wizard with the added bonus of pissing of wiccans.
• Warlord: you mean like those horrible tribal chiefs from africa ?
• Druid: god damned hippies...spends 5 minutes researching... Caesar said they performed human sacrifices EVIL.
• Bard: trying to enforce the liberal agenda "that being gay is ok", I mean showtunes the class, does not belong in a children's game.
• Monks: ah so it's Budism the game, clearly this is aconversion tool, get's burned everywhere but in budhsit countries for the monk alone.

Just look at HP no matter how you cut it have spells in your book/game/thing it doesn't matter if you fluff it as their powers comming from loving bunnies, if their power doesn't explicitly mention [insert RL object/person of worship here] it's heresy.

ok to settle the first part... "From its earliest beginnings, Christianity spread much more quickly in major urban areas (like Antioch, Alexandria, Carthage, Corinth, Rome) than in the countryside (in fact, the early church was almost entirely urban^{[citation needed]}), and soon the word for "country dweller" became synonymous with someone who was "not a Christian," giving rise to the modern meaning of "pagan."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paganism

@verd: I have given up gaming a few times, and after a 2yr long 4e campaign I decided never to play again and walked away from the kitchen and gamestore tables for about a year and a half. What brought me back? that 5.0 was being designed to re-embrace what D&D was to so many of us and bring the grogs back into the hobby...

so D&D next is supposed to embrace all gaming styles, it will be all things to everyone who has ever loved any edition of D&D. well... me and my peers grew up with AD&D we started playing at 10 and the group didn't break till our late 20's when new editions of the game came out, we stuck with AD&D but incorporated a few of the rules we liked but generally just kept playing the game we knew and loved.

now, we did incorporate the rolemaster crit charts (crush foe's skull, watch brains goosh out of eyes,etc) which were extremely fun, and we did make up rules for anything that wasnt covered by the rulebooks (chances for pregnancy, chances for disease for that barbarian who seemed to live at the brothel, etc)

but the one thing we didnt do with our games is dumb them down to a "teen" esrb rating. when our orcs, pirates, and vikings raided villages they raided villages. It was called "rape and plunder" for a reason. our orks didnt just set fire to a town and skip away singing nursery rimes, our orks were Evil with a capitol E.

Evil wasnt just something to dislike, it was someting worth hating, not just on a "my character dislikes people of evil alignments" but as players... you hated our DM's villians as a player, you felt good when you ended them, and I think thats sort of whats been found with these after 10:00 PM shows.

As a viewer you've become jaded "oh great another big bad villian, gee wonder what nefarious highjinks this one will get up to... yawn" but when the villian starts grabbing a hero's kids and lighting them on fire in front of them, or when they torture and dismember innocent victems just to make a point...

yes it shocks the hell out of you and yes the shock value is there... but thats not the only effect.... it makes you watch, it makes you interested, it draws you in in a way that skeletor or cobra commander never will, and it makes you as a person want to see justice done and feel good when it does. 

so would I like rules for dismemberment? yup, do I want rules for torture? yup. Do I want rules for all kinds of things I havent even mentioned here? you bet. will this ruin the game for other people? not at all.

Will this harm D&D Next's public image? now that IS a big question, honestly I could care less.

D&D never had a good public image when the majority of us started playing it, and I dont really care if mothers dont want to buy D&D for their 9 year old kids at christmas. hopefully I wont be gaming with them anyways. I have had games I got invited to where there were 6, 30+ yr old gamers sitting around a table, and dad brought out his 6 yr old who every five minutes said "daddy up" and we had to stop using the bad language and pretend we were all playing fairytale games, and she got to roll the dice, taking about a minute a roll and half of em ending up on the rug... or later had the young child play a character "uh he's only 9 but he's going to be playing a barbarian named Thrudd".... ugg... no I really got no desire to engage in that again.

so why should I care about D&D's public image? convince me...

Oct 10, 2012 -- 4:54AM, Baalbamoth wrote:

@verd: I have given up gaming a few times, and after a 2yr long 4e campaign I decided never to play again and walked away from the kitchen and gamestore tables for about a year and a half. What brought me back? that 5.0 was being designed to re-embrace what D&D was to so many of us and bring the grogs back into the hobby... 

so D&D next is supposed to embrace all gaming styles, it will be all things to everyone who has ever loved any edition of D&D. well... me and my peers grew up with AD&D we started playing at 10 and the group didn't break till our late 20's when new editions of the game came out, we stuck with AD&D but incorporated a few of the rules we liked but generally just kept playing the game we knew and loved.

now, we did incorporate the rolemaster crit charts (crush foe's skull, watch brains goosh out of eyes,etc) which were extremely fun, and we did make up rules for anything that wasnt covered by the rulebooks (chances for pregnancy, chances for disease for that barbarian who seemed to live at the brothel, etc)

but the one thing we didnt do with our games is dumb them down to a "teen" esrb rating. when our orcs, pirates, and vikings raided villages they raided villages. It was called "rape and plunder" for a reason. our orks didnt just set fire to a town and skip away singing nursery rimes, our orks were Evil with a capitol E.

Evil wasnt just something to dislike, it was someting worth hating, not just on a "my character dislikes people of evil alignments" but as players... you hated our DM's villians as a player, you felt good when you ended them, and I think thats sort of whats been found with these after 10:00 PM shows.

As a viewer you've become jaded "oh great another big bad villian, gee wonder what nefarious highjinks this one will get up to... yawn" but when the villian starts grabbing a hero's kids and lighting them on fire in front of them, or when they torture and dismember innocent victems just to make a point...

yes it shocks the hell out of you and yes the shock value is there... but thats not the only effect.... it makes you watch, it makes you interested, it draws you in in a way that skeletor or cobra commander never will, and it makes you as a person want to see justice done and feel good when it does. 

so would I like rules for dismemberment? yup, do I want rules for torture? yup. Do I want rules for all kinds of things I havent even mentioned here? you bet. will this ruin the game for other people? not at all.

Will this harm D&D Next's public image? now that IS a big question, honestly I could care less.

D&D never had a good public image when the majority of us started playing it, and I dont really care if mothers dont want to buy D&D for their 9 year old kids at christmas. hopefully I wont be gaming with them anyways. I have had games I got invited to where there were 6, 30+ yr old gamers sitting around a table, and dad brought out his 6 yr old who every five minutes said "daddy up" and we had to stop using the bad language and pretend we were all playing fairytale games, and she got to roll the dice, taking about a minute a roll and half of em ending up on the rug... or later had the young child play a character "uh he's only 9 but he's going to be playing a barbarian named Thrudd".... ugg... no I really got no desire to engage in that again.

so why should I care about D&D's public image? convince me...

Convince you that we don't need to spend space in the core book on torture rules?
You ever seen a kid get lit on fire? You heard their screams, smelled the stench of smoldering hair and then flesh, seen their parents rush to them just to get thrown down and forced to watch? 
It loses a lot of it's magical appeal once you're not living in your ivory tower.
So no, it doesn't shock me when some sheltered person plays out their torture fetishes in front of me. It doesn't make me want to watch, it isn't so horrible you can't look away, it's so horrible you look away, but you can never block out the sound. The reek of the charred body never leaves the nostrils. Nothing, no amount of "justice" ever makes it go away.

But no, I can't convince you that there doesn't need to be mechanics for how to keep a victim alive while you slowly dismember them.  You obviously will need, for your gaming pleasure, rules for what the saving throw is to avoid waking up screaming for a decade after witnessing some act of atrocity. For you to gain your thrill, you need to have some standardized system to tell you, mechanically, how loud the virgin screams as you rape her, and what the chances are she will commit suicide afterwards. 

You want torture porn, fine. I may not like Saw, but everyone else is free to watch it.  
But it's not common fare. You want to force feed your sick fantasies on the whole game. This is material that doesn't belong in the core books. Just like rules for menstration. It's not relevant to day to day adventuring. You want a game where you get to explore your darkest desires that you've been priviledged enough never to encounter in person. Find a gaming group and have fun. There are plenty of game systems custom made to cater to that sort of lust. Don't game in homes with children if it's an issue. 

But you ask if this will ruin the game for other players.
You've already gotten enough response in this thread to indicate it will. But you don't care.
This is just about your very personal gratification. Your need to offend, and your need to play at horrors you can only imagine.

Forget what you assume are my sick twisted needs, thats your own demons talking. If you need a game of singing trees and skipping elves to help you deal with your damaged psyche fine.

All the things you mention are the REAL after effects of what happens when a loved king starts a campagin to raise a crusade into the holy lands. Its not fantasy, its history.

All I want is the slider on my game to be able to go deeper into the real than the game you want to run. Thats it. its not perverse its not wrong its just prefrence.

How is my desire to run a more realistic game, with a more realistic world, and my desire to have realistic rules for the worst aspects of human nature going to ruin your game where such rules can easily be ignored, or such rules must be bought as a supplement?

I've already worked on the SED unit (serverly emotionally disturbed) ward of a mental hospital on and off for four years, and I've seen and heard the worst that humanity has to offer, your little stories arent frightening to me, and my tower is far more dark than ivory.

Ok, let's try and make this simple.

1. I agree with baal in that I would like to see much of what you are asking for. As long as it is a supplement. Which is a concession I think you seem to be ok with.

2. What's with these competing horror stories? You can't trust the other is telling the truth any more then you could believe me if I claimed to be a syrian rebel (spoiler: I'm not).

3. Baal, you want us to convince you why you should care about things like DnD's image with the public? Let's try this, WotC knows its target demographics, they know what they need to do to try and make a game most of us will like. Their willingness to scrape ideas or add things when we complain proves this. If WotC ignores. The PC social climate of today then they look bad, they lose money and then they fail to bring DnD back to anything even mildly reminiscint of popular. If DnD fails then you donMt have a game to play, except for what you already own and can continue to happily play regardless of what WotC does. you. Manage to write a third party BoVD I might actually be one to buy it. But deciding all you care about is what will make the game good for you alone is anti-thetical to the idea of what DDN is supposed to be. Everyone will have to make some sort of concession, at least yours might be something you can add in to DDN just as easily as you would have to ADnD.

4. Everyone else against Baal, what is with the hyperbole? Half the stuff you acuse him of wanting he hasn't mentioned. (Whether he actually does want rules on screaming virgins I can't say) but atleast try abd act appropriatly civil. The rest of these boards have figured out how to respectfully disagree. (Mostly) you guys here are all stuck somewhere in Meliore it would seem.

How about no, how about we make gaming so acceptable that there is no social stigmata against it at all?  Make tabletop gaming as socally acceptable as videogaming, a lot of people do it and videogamers are as broad of a spectrum as any other hobby.

Gaming should be about acceptance and openness not "lets go in the corner and play games that exclude.

With that said, there are places for "adult" games.  much like every other hobby.  but that shouldnt mean that every game should.  there is a game for a song aof fire and ice?  good does D&D need to emulate it now?  probably not.

if anything D&D should try to become that all encompasing gateway game that leads people to more games, and it can only do that if it doenst try to become an outsider. 

No, I do not need rules for screaming virgins... I like Sparticus, I liked Troy, I liked 300 and am looking forward to the sequil, when I invision whats going on in combat thats what I'm imagining. I understand if other people want to see a tiny cut and somebody falls over, etc. ok, but I'd actually like to get some realistic combat rules in there... its always bugged me a bit that an ork can chop away at somebody like 40 times knock em to negitives, and they suffer nothing for that (no disablement, no problems just getting healed popping up and goin back to fightin.) 

regarding the openess of D&D... I've played in a lot of different DM's games, no two were alike (assuming they wernt focusing on some adventure path or something, honestly I try and avoid non-sandbox games) and thats kind of the beauty of 5e its supposed to let us ALL do what we want and I know there are a lot of people out there who share some of my desires for 5e and entertainment choices.  

about videogames... there are some flagship games but for the mostpart the market is open, if were looking at fantasy MMO's its WoW... and I hate WoW... and AOC did nothing for me but annoy the crap out of me with all its bugs. if anything that is acceptable in a videogame is acceptable for a rule in D&D we got no problems.. ya ever play mafia? how bout GTA, how bout "the godfather" how bout any one of the "real crime" games... everyting I mentioned is going on in those, and parents still buy them for their kids completely ignoring the "mature" lable. did you even recognize whats on the ESRB for Halo?

MATURE
Titles rated M (Mature) have content that may be suitable for persons ages 17 and older. Titles in this category may contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language

and thats all that I'm looking for as a supplement to D&D, intense rather than cartoon violence, blood and gore, some sexual content, and strong language suitable for a 17 yr old.

@ahern- good points, I'm very torn on the whole "gotta make da moolah or the game will die" idea... I saw what happened with 4e as the perfect example of what happens when you decide to go for money, try and make a game only for mass appeal, and how it can corrupt an entire system and company. not saying anything about the mechanics really, just that there was a severe disconnect between the previous editions of the game, and 4e, and there wasnt any sort of effort or concessions to bring along their core grognards. now their seeing the error of their ways and trying to make a game for everybody, I still dont know if I'm going to love or hate what they end up with, but your right, if somebody doesnt print up the rules I want, I probablly will.

I can understand reservations to the "make money or die" scenario. And I don't mean to say DDN is the make or break edition. But each "failed" edition means that the next one has to do even better. I think a main difference between 4E (my preferred edition) and DDN is WotC tried to make money with 4E. DDN they still want to make the money but they realized they can't do that by focusing on that goal. So now they are focusing on making people happy, assuming that if they succeed they will make the money they need.

And just for fairness sake. I already called others on hyperbole with things like screaming virgins, but your being just as bad saying everyone else wants little cuts and skipping orcs. I don't imagine sparticus in my DnD games, but I don't imagine looney toons either.

Easy answer.  Release Ravenloft after the 5e Forgotten Realms base game comes out.

Oct 10, 2012 -- 9:22AM, Baalbamoth wrote:

about videogames... there are some flagship games but for the mostpart the market is open, if were looking at fantasy MMO's its WoW... and I hate WoW... and AOC did nothing for me but annoy the crap out of me with all its bugs. if anything that is acceptable in a videogame is acceptable for a rule in D&D we got no problems.. ya ever play mafia? how bout GTA, how bout "the godfather" how bout any one of the "real crime" games... everyting I mentioned is going on in those, and parents still buy them for their kids completely ignoring the "mature" lable. did you even recognize whats on the ESRB for Halo?

A few points, yes, video games are full of an extremely wide varity of games.  everything from farmville to GTA and everything inbetween and on either side.  And that in itself is a huge point.  I dont look at halo and complain that there is not enough 1900's pulp action like mafia or the godfather.  I dont complain that GTA doesnt have enough farmville in it.  The same point can be made for the most part for TTRPGs.

Yes, TTRPGs are much more flexable and there are some very good examples of using one game to substitude for a genera it was not intended for but it's always better to play a game that is designed for the feel you are going for.

You complain about "cartoony" combat.  That is a side effect of the HP system that D&D has traditionally used.  

Can D&D be used in any kind of genera or setting?  Yes of course!  is it the best choice?  maybe for you but for me, Hell No!  Personally D&D is crappy for horror, there are much better games out there that can evoke the feel of horror much better then D&D.

what does this mean?  Well, IMO D&D while it's possible to play any game or genera, D&D itself should not be a GURPS, it should carve out it's own niche and do what it does the best, Heroic Fantasy. 

Oct 10, 2012 -- 6:02AM, Verdegris_Sage wrote:

Convince you that we don't need to spend space in the core book on torture rules?
You ever seen a kid get lit on fire? You heard their screams, smelled the stench of smoldering hair and then flesh, seen their parents rush to them just to get thrown down and forced to watch? 
It loses a lot of it's magical appeal once you're not living in your ivory tower.
So no, it doesn't shock me when some sheltered person plays out their torture fetishes in front of me. It doesn't make me want to watch, it isn't so horrible you can't look away, it's so horrible you look away, but you can never block out the sound. The reek of the charred body never leaves the nostrils. Nothing, no amount of "justice" ever makes it go away.

But no, I can't convince you that there doesn't need to be mechanics for how to keep a victim alive while you slowly dismember them.  You obviously will need, for your gaming pleasure, rules for what the saving throw is to avoid waking up screaming for a decade after witnessing some act of atrocity. For you to gain your thrill, you need to have some standardized system to tell you, mechanically, how loud the virgin screams as you rape her, and what the chances are she will commit suicide afterwards. 

You want torture porn, fine. I may not like Saw, but everyone else is free to watch it.  
But it's not common fare. You want to force feed your sick fantasies on the whole game. This is material that doesn't belong in the core books. Just like rules for menstration. It's not relevant to day to day adventuring. You want a game where you get to explore your darkest desires that you've been priviledged enough never to encounter in person. Find a gaming group and have fun. There are plenty of game systems custom made to cater to that sort of lust. Don't game in homes with children if it's an issue. 

But you ask if this will ruin the game for other players.
You've already gotten enough response in this thread to indicate it will. But you don't care.
This is just about your very personal gratification. Your need to offend, and your need to play at horrors you can only imagine.

Bravo!

Howdy folks,

This thread is sailing dangerous waters.  Discussion of illegal activities and religion are both against the Code of Conduct.  

The thread will now be closed.

Thanks.