Whatever happened to the made-up profanity? Options

[knasser]

QFT

However, your argument has been that it is about the censorship. I think it has much more to do with marketing. Whereas before you were more likely to lose customers due to swearing now you are differentiating your product and potentially gaining a new group. Censorship doesn't enter into it -- it is a business decision imposed by the customers and market.

IMHO SR doesn't really care too much about the young gamers anymore. Swearing in the books to me is an indication. So that leaves them catering to us crotchety old people (as you so wonderfully put us) or else players 5 years from now who graduate out of D&D. It is actually surprisingly well situated to take advantage of player migration. On one side you have D&D which is fantasy and PG. On the other side is WW which is mature and modern. Stuck in the middle is SR which is fantasy with guns and a rulesystem like WW. The only problem I can see it having is general lack of notice and the fact that its rule system doesn't do a great job of modelling its fluff (which the other two do really well).

I think it is much more likely that the developers of 4e just felt they did not need to worry about outside pressures on "obscene" language and wrote as they pleased. They don't strike me as a crew that are overly concerned with such matters.

Also, you have several preconceptions in this and earlier posts that may not apply to others. For example your equation of "fantasy" with PG and and modern with mature. I don't see Shadowrun as being caught between two poles. The poles are ones you see but others may not. I don't especially regard WoD as being mature either. I used to run it when I was around 16-21. It was fun. Still would be I'm sure. But I don't equate gore and sexually explicit things with maturity. More teenagerdom, if anything. Not that it is a bad thing. But a setting that just takes them as a given and doesn't feel the need to showcase it as its central selling point seems more mature to me. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

As to the stuff about SR4 not modelling its fluff well, where did that suddenly come from? SR4 does a very good job with its rules system creating a realistic feel. Increasing injuries of the condition monitor, abilities that are roughly well extrapolated from real world abilities, seems good to me. And it certainly can't be compared in this regard with D&D 4e, where any geriatric wizard who happens to be great in magic must also be able to swim great rivers and hop up and down mountains like a billy goat because of the way the level bonuses work. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[knasser]

Read the caption (mouse-over).

Now how was I supposed to know I could do that? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Yeah - funny cartoon. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Larme]

Read the caption (mouse-over).

GDI! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/mad.gif) I've read almost all the back issues of xkcd after someone linked it here, and I've missed every single mouseover caption cuz I didn't know to look >.<

[Larme]

QFT

However, your argument has been that it is about the censorship. I think it has much more to do with marketing. Whereas before you were more likely to lose customers due to swearing now you are differentiating your product and potentially gaining a new group. Censorship doesn't enter into it -- it is a business decision imposed by the customers and market.

Sometimes language is really aggravating. I use a word like censorship, and then I have to spend three pages describing that I don't mean government censorship, and then it turns out people still didn't understand my meaning, because instead of reading all the words, they just read the one that interests them, and the overall meaning is lost because I used a loaded word. However, I don't think you're actually disagreeing with me. I called it self-censorship, based on the designers' worries that parents wouldn't let their kids/teens own books with swearwords in them. That's the same thing as a business judgment to try and sell the game to a younger crowd. In retrospect, I don't think it was a wrong judgment necessarily, because at the time there were vast numbers of RPG gamers younger than 18. However, it was still a judgment based on the game being "for the kids." The audience has changed. So shouldn't the product change as well? Maybe games are acquiring more mature themes and language because their audiences are more mature and they expect it.

I understand that mature themes and language don't automatically make a product more mature. However, what can be said of actively deleting mature language? Could that possibly make it more mature? By using an unexplained, unrealistic profanity substitute, are they proving that they're so mature they don't even need to swear? That's just silly, that's basically saying that you don't need to prove you're not childish, because of how childish you act. IMO, there's a big difference between being realistic and being gratuitous. Shadowrun uses profanity, but not on every other page. It uses it where people would probably use it. They're not throwing in F-bombs everywhere just to attract teenagers, that would be immature. They're using it in some approximation of real life, in a world where modern swear words would not have died out suddenly and completely for no reason. Instead of ducking the issue, they are confronting it head on. They don't beat us around the head and neck with profanity, they use as if we were adults, as if we could hear it without any serious reaction to it, as if it were a normal thing, as if we weren't worried that our parents would find the book and take it away. And that, I think, pretty well defines maturity.

[Cheops]

In retrospect, I don't think it was a wrong judgment necessarily, because at the time there were vast numbers of RPG gamers younger than 18.

News flash. Just because you aren't under 18 anymore doesn't mean that there aren't still vast numbers of RPG gamers younger than 18.

Also, not to devolve this into an SR vs. D&D debate but there's a reason that geriatric old wizard can still do that stuff. It's called Epic Destinies. And when your choices are things like Demigod or Archlich or Immortal it gives you a very good idea of what you are supposed to be doing at high levels. D&D has really evolved in this latest edition and if people could supress their bias against it they'd find all sorts of neat innovations there.

SR doesn't model the fluff well IMHO because it encourages a style of play that is very similar to D&D. In a vanilla game of SR you have a Hacker, a Mage, a Street Sam, and a Face. While you don't play those "classes" you have to follow a certain "build." The GM then has to go out and design a high-tech dungeon and be sure to include Karma level specific challenges for each of those builds to keep everyone interested. Vanilla also seems to involve tons of combat from what I've seen IRL and from other posters on this board.

All of this wouldn't be as big a problem for me if the ruleset was much better than what it currently is. As it is the ruleset blows and it is only the fluff that keeps this game unique at all. I LOVE the fluff.

[Larme]

News flash. Just because you aren't under 18 anymore doesn't mean that there aren't still vast numbers of RPG gamers younger than 18.

Doi, really? Do you usually treat people over 18 like they were 5? You must think I'm a moron if you think my logical basis for saying the RPG population is more adult was my own age. I don't think it can be disputed that the RPG population is aging, just like the comic book population. Fewer and fewer kids are getting into them. That doesn't mean none. But by all means, if I'm wrong, I'd love to know the basis for it. Just don't accuse me of being an absolute retard, please.

I also can't see any reason for you to turn the previous post into an off-topic discussion of D&D, plus an obtuse and provocative broadside against SR4 as a whole, but I won't take your flame bait and get sidetracked onto either of those issues.

[Cheops]

Doi, really? Do you usually treat people over 18 like they were 5? You must think I'm a moron if you think my logical basis for saying the RPG population is more adult was my own age. I don't think it can be disputed that the RPG population is aging, just like the comic book population. Fewer and fewer kids are getting into them. That doesn't mean none. But by all means, if I'm wrong, I'd love to know the basis for it. Just don't accuse me of being an absolute retard, please.

I also can't see any reason for you to turn the previous post into an off-topic discussion of D&D, plus an obtuse and provocative broadside against SR4 as a whole, but I won't take your flame bait and get sidetracked onto either of those issues.

Well I do think you are an idiot but that's also off topic. And I do accuse you of being a retard when your first post in this thread is to call everyone who disagrees with you "crotchety" and "old." You brought up the GAMEPLAY aspects of D&D not me -- I was talking about D&D and WW in terms of market positioning. So I'm fine ending it on this note.

[Caine Hazen]

I'm just going to make this simple... thread locked, probably scheduled for deletion and warnings to be issued. You all can't play nice anymore, so we're taking it all away.