So, Rpgnet just keeps wantonly lying about me again, this time in a thread about Blue Rose. Specifically James Hargrove (among others, mind you) described me as a "crazy homophobe".
Let's just test that out, shall we?
Here are actual things I said as far back as TEN YEARS ago, back in 2005-07, on the subject; and again a couple of years after that.
But when confronted about this, that lying jackass Hargrove chose to double-down on his slander, and the site in general kept right on wallowing in their blatant fantasizing in the safety of their heavily-moderated hugbox. I guess I could expect no better.
So, for the sake of you clueless fuckers who've just written over 20 pages of thread without getting anything even approaching a fucking clue: while there were some people who hated Blue Rose because they were stupid enough to think boys-kissing-boys-is-yucky, my problem and the problem a lot of us had with it was that it was preachy as all fuck (just wiccan downtown-seattle culture's answer to Narnia; meant to proselytize first and be playable only a distant second), presented a personal ideological utopia of the authors, had a bunch of game-designer-ex-machina that made it clear you were not supposed to play it any other way (like, there was no way to stop the Magic Deer), and it presented a world where people who believed in democracy were inherently evil on an absolute and meta level.
Certain people have tried to engage in rebuttal with the claim that there was no more promotion of personal ideologies in Blue Rose than in other major RPG settings. But this just isn't true. The difference between what Blue Rose did and most other games is like the difference between an album by a rock star who happens to be christian and an album by a Christian Rock Star. In one, its about the music first, in the other it's about pushing an agenda first and the music is just the tool being used for the purpose of that agenda. Which is why Christian Rock sucks ass, and why Blue Rose's setting did too; in both cases any reader who isn't already a true believer can inherently recognize they are being preached at.
Furthermore, Blue Rose sucked ass because the authors were not creating a gameable world first, they were first and foremost creating a world that promoted an idea of what they defined as good and evil, what they defined as good religions and bad religions, what they defined as a good society/government and bad society/government, and imposing that into the game.
What's even more unforgivable is that Blue Rose wasn't just a smug preachy setting that idolized the Collectivist delusions of its creators, on top of that, it wasn't even a good "Romantic Fantasy" genre game! Most romantic fantasy novels are nothing like Blue Rose's setting. In most of that genre's novels, the young heroine is required to overcome an unfair, intolerant (sexist, or classist or racist or homophobic) and deeply imperfect society to make something better. Most young romantic-fantasy heroines if put into Blue Rose's gameworld would find themselves with nothing to do.
Ironically, the only really meaningful campaign of Romantic Fantasy you could run with Blue Rose would be some kind of Libertarian Romantic Fantasy; where a brave young girl who studied for her noble exams with dreams of doing great things found herself suddenly shut out from all the circles of power forever because a magic stick said she was "Shadow Alignment", and she then sets off to use her wits and self-determination (along with a ragtag group of other rejects who become her friends) to prove that the entire system is hopelessly corrupt and has kept the society stagnant for centuries under the power of a vile entity (the magic deer) intent on breeding out all sense of self-will in humanity by redefining rebellious self-realized Individuality as "evil" and complacent Collectivism as "good".
The only good romantic fantasy story you could tell with Blue Rose would be the one where the plucky young heroine overthrows the Magic Deer.
(sorry, Objectivists, but any RPG where this would be the heroine the setting demands is not a great game)
Currently Smoking: Ashton Old-Church Rhodesian + C&D's Crowley's Best
Are you advocating that Blue Rose is the prequel to the Hunger Games? Because I can totally see that.
ReplyDeleteMaybe so, yeah. With Objectivist Katniss out to fight the oppressive regime of the Magic Deer.
DeletePersonally, I don't like heavy-handed philosophies pushed in the form of a game either, even if I agree with them. However, all I know about this particular issue is this post here. Hadn't heard of it before. But then, I don't post on RPG.net all that much anymore. It bears further investigation, in any case.
ReplyDelete(On a side note, no one cares what you're smoking, hipster. Stop being kewl and post stuff that's relevant.)
I was posting about what I'm smoking before it was cool.
DeleteNever heard of Blue Rose. Sounds dopey.
ReplyDeleteMagic Deer ? WTF ?
ReplyDeleteYour idea for a meanningful Blue Rose campaign sounds a bit like the Tribe 8 RPG, just sayin'...
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ReplyDeleteIf I'm not mistaken Blue Rose is the game that
ReplyDeletehad its setting ripped out and became True 20
Yes, in one of the weirdest sagas in the history of RPG publishing. Green Ronin didn't want to do that; they wanted to keep doing it so that the only way you could get the rules for the true20 system is if you bought Blue Rose. I raised a massive pressure-campaign to get them to release True20 as its own rules, and it very quickly beat out Blue Rose in popularity.
DeleteThen, as if out of spite, they did a series of settings for True20 that were all mostly unsuitable, and True20 eventually vanished.
Green Ronin's entire history of publishing True20 seemed like an exercise in reluctance and self-sabotage out of spite that people didn't accept Blue Rose.
I find this pretty interesting. I really loved the little True20 system and keep hoping that it will be resurrected and updated in some format. When I first discovered it, I thought it was the "solution" to all of my "problems" with d20; now I just think that it is one of the more unfairly neglected game systems out there.
DeleteYeah, it's a pity that it was mismanaged. Out of spite, I suspect.
DeleteIf I'm not mistaken Blue Rose is the game that
ReplyDeletehad its setting ripped out and became True 20
"...the Magic Deer's Venisonocracy: an embodiment of Collectivist Wish-Fulfillment of their fantasies of getting to run everyone's life..."
ReplyDeleteNow that was a fun line to read.
I know I played the world of darkness for over a decade and it had been the gaming system I used the most. That said I would LOVE to see you tear it apart with a review from you, or a post explaining why you hate it.
ReplyDeleteSeriously I made a post about it in my blog (http://paperlaboratoryofdreams.blogspot.com/2015/02/fixing-world-of-darkness-in-general.html). Though to be honest I only stuck with mechanics which is the most objective thing I can do. I mean you can't lie about mechanics.
So yeah if you can point out the flaws in World of Darkness I would happy to read it because it is a long time coming. Hell I never thought you do a Blue Rose review, but here I am looking at your post.
I don't know. Picking on Blue Rose is kinda like picking on that quiet kid in the back of classroom. Sure he might be a slow and not very social, but he plays guitar and at least knows some cool bands.
ReplyDeleteBlue Rose is a product of it's time. I was never a great seller and far, far more people talk about it than ever actually played it.
I played it. I liked it. The Magical Deer never once showed up.
I later took and turned it more into a Gothic Horror Pastiche, http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/search/label/black%20rose.
Though I took the plucky young heroine and turned her more into the morose guilt filled "last girl".
Given that I ran a 3-year long weekly campaign using the Blue Rose rules, I may technically have run the longest campaign of all time with that book (though I didn't use the setting).
DeleteWhich makes it really amusing how on rpgnet they kept claiming that the people complaining must "never have read teh book"... I've never heard of a single one of these hipster slacktivists talk about having actually run a campaign of it. Most never ran a session of it.
Yet they have the gall to pretend that I'm the one who just didn't understand it.
Anything that involves the Pacific Northwest but doesn't involve a moose is invalid. You can quote me on that.
ReplyDeleteRPG.net once banned me for quoting the dictionary, so what do you expect?
ReplyDeleteJames Hargrove. He and a female friend recently tried to slander myself and my fellow admin from the Tabletop RPG One Shot Group by calling us Rape Apologists because we defended Alpha Blue when it was up for censorship review on DriveThruRPG. Seriously, Fuck that guy.
ReplyDeleteI got blocked by James Hargrove for not agreeing with him on Facebook over which Metallica songs were best, despite pointing out that opinions on art are subjective and that we can hold different opinions yet the world keeps spinning! Next thing, block. I think the man must be intolerant in general. He would often post about how he was 'done with rpg net' and how he had 'blocked more assholes', I guess these were actually warning signs.
ReplyDeleteThe header at the top of every RPGnet post says it all. Over at the Hero Forum if you defend the police Simon silences you. Do as Sinon says or else! Wont tell you what rules you broke, just calls you abusive and throws the 1984 switch he/she/it has entrusted his/her/itself with. What a f-up clown world.
ReplyDelete