At my last job, which was in a relatively poor city troubled-youth school, our otherwise-intelligent head nurse was still handing out anti-Halloween Chick tracts in 2006. I'm sure he still is, poor deluded soul. Those kids didn't need to be filled with anti-fun propaganda as rough as their lives already were.LadyRhian said:I remember living in those times, and the bad, stupid Jack Chick tracts. In the D&D one, the girl has a spell to make her Dad buy her $200 worth of gaming books and minis, and all I ever thought was "Where do *I* get that spell?" In short, all the movies and whatnot and all the stupid Chick Tracts in the world didn't turn me off gaming.
It's available on DVD via Amazon. Oddly, the distributor doesn't appear to hold the rights to the movie; it's a bit of a murky subject.Harkonnen64 said:Hehe, I kind of want to go on Ebay and find this now, along with The Room.
Well, Ota, if you need motivators for violent, evil behavior in your films next time, ones that have been proven true and ones which can be used to tell a story with actual effort, may I suggest...Skullduggery wasn't made to present a coherent, logical argument. It existed to make money, and the best way to do that was to latch on to a popular trend. It didn't have to be gaming as Satanic conspiracy, but Ota needed something acceptably Satanic to stand in as a hate figure so he could sell his movie. If ice cream had the same social stigma, Adam would have smothered his victims in Ben and Jerry's. Gaming was a convenient target, nothing more.
Actually, here's one idea: What about someone who discovers gaming to be a way to relieve themselves of troubles that have plagued them for years prior? They get into the roles they make and through some gameplay with others, they find a way to cope with their troubles. Besides, isn't it a proven fact that inspiring films, like Schindler's List, Lean on Me, Back to the Future, ect., are held higher than films which just latch onto hysteria like this one you made?"...a witch hunt is, in part, motivated by guilt and projection of 'sins.' There is plenty of guilt among parents today, and it is guilt related to those precise objects of their resentment... The ideological targets of Satanism witch hunters are things which are believed to shape the minds of children: child-care centers, schoolbooks, popular music, and even games."
TBH while I do have a lot of sympathy for that position, I couldn't help but think as I was Youtubing bits of the movie that it really deserved a MST3K treatment, and the best people to do that'd be the LRR team. After all, the movie's a Canadian product; it's only fair that Canadians should suffer.Formica Archonis said:After all the lives I've seen destroyed by the Satanic conspiracy moral panic I just don't know if I could enjoy stuff like this anymore. After all, the same hysteria that fueled Skullduggery led to the McMartin trial [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMartin_preschool_trial].
I would disagree.Therumancer said:I think White Wolf did a lot of damage to the perception of gamers, especially back in the 1990s. Their attitude and trying to justify themselves in an obtuse "it's art, we're beyond criticism" attitude didn't help either. I still remember their "Montreal By Night" book which has a picture of a vampire dominatrix licking blood off a bloody abortion hook, with a female victim bleeding between her legs chained to a urinal in the backround... combined with a statement in the back of the book pretentiously claiming "oooh, is it art?" about the whole thing. Not to mention one of the clan books ( Tzimisce if I remember ) famously featured a fanged vagina on the back cover.
I'm a big believer in free speech, and actually encourage that kind of content (I mean it IS horror) but the attitude about it, the antics of the fanbase, and similar things certainly did not help the reputation of PnP RPG gamers. Had it been defended maturely, and without the defensive pretentiousness, I think a lot of the pressure against RPG gamers would have ended a lot sooner. I also don't think that people in fandom media (RPGs, Video Games, Movies, etc...) would be walking on eggshells quite as much right now since they wouldn't have dealt with a period of being pursued quite so vigorously.
AgentBJ09 said:I would disagree.Therumancer said:I think White Wolf did a lot of damage to the perception of gamers, especially back in the 1990s. Their attitude and trying to justify themselves in an obtuse "it's art, we're beyond criticism" attitude didn't help either. I still remember their "Montreal By Night" book which has a picture of a vampire dominatrix licking blood off a bloody abortion hook, with a female victim bleeding between her legs chained to a urinal in the backround... combined with a statement in the back of the book pretentiously claiming "oooh, is it art?" about the whole thing. Not to mention one of the clan books ( Tzimisce if I remember ) famously featured a fanged vagina on the back cover.
I'm a big believer in free speech, and actually encourage that kind of content (I mean it IS horror) but the attitude about it, the antics of the fanbase, and similar things certainly did not help the reputation of PnP RPG gamers. Had it been defended maturely, and without the defensive pretentiousness, I think a lot of the pressure against RPG gamers would have ended a lot sooner. I also don't think that people in fandom media (RPGs, Video Games, Movies, etc...) would be walking on eggshells quite as much right now since they wouldn't have dealt with a period of being pursued quite so vigorously.
White Wolf didn't put on a "This is art, and above criticism." shtick way back when, near as I can tell. In fact, they had to put disclaimers in their LARPing books, and some of their RPG rulebooks, to warn people just glancing them that this was strictly gaming, not a rulebook on being a vampire.
However, yes, the Montreal book was creepy and the body horror was gross, but at the same time, that was one book. The entire Vampire line then was cheeky humor and dark settings. Having one book that pushed the bounds is often enough for overzealous people to tag them with, so I blame bad/guilty parents and an overzealous media at the time for making the issue worse.