I disagree. But hey, what do u want for free?
[rant]I guess we’re done here, then. But, please, tell a different joke. Don’t be part of the problem.[/rant]
Okay.
I don’t want to start a flamewar, but I would like to say that I share dfabulich’s views. For a slightly different reason, however. I have nothing against profanity if well used, and the examples he took seemed fairly gratuitous (like the “goddamned” in the response to “wear watches”).
Profanity has the weight it has for a reason. It’s rude by its very nature (and I did not think that the PC himself was rude), it clashes with most writing that is not specifically geared towards using it (by which I mean, mis-use it and it’ll stick out like a very sore thumb). Also, if a game starts insulting me, I honestly start wanting to quit.
I would like you to understand that we aren’t purists. And we enjoy a bit of fun. But for some of us, the profanity in “Castronegro” was badly mis-used, detracting from the experience, from the atmosphere, from the caracterisation of the PC.
But of course, if you want to dismiss this as “It’s just a game”, well. What are we all doing here, huh?
[spoiler]For the record, I enjoyed the profanity-less ending of Brian Timmons much more than the ending of Castronegro. And it’s not because of the word “tits”. It’s because in the former, the detective’s attitude towards everything he’d seen and done and just described is so simple and straight to the point (“Am I gonna get paid or what?”) it was actually a very good moment. I love that sort of awkwardness.
In Castronegro, you obviously tried the same thing, and it fell flat. Because the detective was now much more agressive (use strong language and the characters WILL seem agressive). Not to mention needlessly vulgar.[/spoiler]
I would suggest that instead of dismissing these, you reflect about them. No one’s asking you to change what you did; no one’s pointing at it and saying “That’s wrong, you absolutely shouldn’t do this”. But we do hope to help make your next games better.
I find profanity funny, not offensive, when in the context of a GAME. They are even tagged with “profanity” as a warning to those who get offended easily. I didn’t submit these to any comp (they wouldn’t qualify) so you don’t have to vote against them, nor do you have to pay for them or continue to play them if you start getting offended. I appreciate any feedback, but at times, I feel IFers like to actually just sound intelligent under the guise of constructive criticism. I even had to block some people because their beside-the-point look-how-intelligent-I’m-trying-to-be posts were getting on my TITS.
[rant]To be clear, I’m not arguing that the profanity is offensive. The problem is that jokes like these make sexists feel good, which is a bad thing even (especially!) if nobody who reads your jokes gets offended. I agree that it’s a small thing, but it’s a small bad thing.[/rant]
In a noir piece, I’m not going to try to make everything cozy for everyone. There’s a reason it’s known as a gritty genre. But again, I appreciate your feedback about it and I’m taking your opinions, even if I disagree, to heart as I code the third part. I hope you will give it a chance. But again, no one is going to force you to. 
I played this game and found it to be enjoyable and the light profanity to be amusing. If the writer can’t interject his own artistic license or needs to censor himself just to appease the moral majority, we might as well go back to book burning. What can I say, I enjoy “R” rated movies, if I wanted “G” rated I would go see Snow White.
[rant]I said I’m done, but I can’t help myself. You seem not to be hearing the point, so I’ll try to emphasize it.
There are two kinds of bad things that can happen when you tell sexist jokes: you can make people feel bad (especially women, but other men, too) by offending them, and you can make sexist people feel good. I agree that it’s OK to offend people. It’s OK to make people feel uncomfortable. The problem is that you’re making sexists feel cozy. Those people should not feel cozy.
If you tell a sexist joke in a sexist fraternity house and everybody in the room laughs happily, that’s still bad. It’s not because you offended anyone or hurt anyone’s feelings, but because, in a room full of sexists, you should make them feel bad, and instead you made them feel good about their sexism. You should have offended them, but instead, you made them happy.[/rant]
Well, I’m not sexist. I just have a character who is crass and the narrator sometimes follows suit. Archie Bunker was sexist and he’s one of America’s treasures!
Who started this argument about it being sexist? That’s lame.
That is, of course, your prerogative, and it’s therefore logical that you would use profanity in a game that you wish to be funny. But I think that the guy who came up with the final scene of Brian Timmons is capable of something much better than resorting to profanity for laughs. It’s not really that it’s offensive, it’s… cheap. Demeaning. I much preferred your description of the woman being “poured into the dress and they didn’t know when to stop”. I find THAT amusing because it’s at the same time a great pastiche and also completely out of whack. It’s “Dangerous Curves” gone crazy.
True, but you’re not making it gritty this way, you’re making it juvenile. Please don’t confuse them.
The thing is, he doesn’t come across as crass. He comes across as suffering from Tourette’s - not because he keeps swearing, but because when he does it’s apropos of nothing at all. A swearword has power and comes after a certain build-up, or maybe it exists to emphasize something. Your character just swears sometimes because, well, because the author remembered that he has to swear to be funny.
Narrator following suit is tricker, much tricker, because you run the risk of insulting the player. The guy who is, you know, actually playing your game.
Now, when all this is said and done, these are just opinions. I repeat that our intent - well, mine at least - is to help you make better games. I’ll tell you what I think of these two games: I think they are the work of a guy that shows promise. A guy that has scenes in his head and has found a good way to share them with others. The plots aren’t 100% original, I understand - the first is an adaptation, the second owes surely a lot to Anchorhead (you might tell me it doesn’t, but practically everything about it screams “My author played Anchorhead and loved it!”). But there’s time enough for originality; as of now you’re getting games made, and that’s the important thing.
I also understand that this is about a very recent game. I’d be willing to bet that, within a few months, after you’ve released a few more games, you’ll look back on this whole discussion and see it in a different light. It’s understandable to defend what you did like that. I just ask that you don’t write these criticisms off completely, even if we sound like a bunch of purist ninnies. 
Peter, I appreciate the comments, as always. I wonder, though, why no other aspect of the game is being discussed. Also, as per the “credits” of my game, Castronegro is based on a CoC scenario, not Anchorhead, although, what you say is true, I did play Anchorhead and I loved it, lol.
Really? That is amazing. I know that many of the points of contact are shared by Lovecratian stories, like the closed villages, the obelisks, the ancient horrors, but the flute? The sarcophagi? The ever-present ancient town father? Well, I suppose maybe I just have to read more Lovecraft.
Haven’t played the game, but ‘making the wrong people feel good’ is not really a good reason not to do or say anything, because no matter what you do or say, some wrong person is going to feel good about it. Just ask Nietzsche.
It also makes you an unwilling pawn of the ‘wrong people’. All they have to do is declare they like something and that it makes them feel good, and suddenly that forces you to abandon it. They’ll be able to play you like a fiddle.
Yeah, it’s a scenario called The Secret of Castronegro which was at least in the 3rd edition rules (back when I was a wee lad) so maybe Mike Gentry read/played the same scenario? I think the scenario can now be found in a supplement for Call of Cthulhu called Cthulhu Classics.
[rant]That’s an oversimplification of my point. Telling sexist jokes makes sexists believe that they’re correct, and that society in general agrees with them. I abbreviated that to “making sexists feel good.” One can argue whether any particular action makes sexists believe they’re correct, (or whether Nietzsche’s philosophy did or should have emboldened the Nazis,) but sexist jokes clearly do encourage sexists, and so they should not be told, even/especially in environments where no one is offended and everybody agrees that they’re funny.[/rant]
You’re missing my point, but that’s okay. I didn’t really want to argue about the text itself, as not having played, I can’t really judge it. I just don’t think trying to avoid making bad people feel good is a sustainable ethical principle; I certainly would never adopt it. It isn’t a persuasive reason for what you’re arguing.
That’s not the ethical principle I’m espousing. “feel good” is shorthand. How about: you should not encourage people to hold bad beliefs? And, you should not encourage people who hold bad beliefs to continue holding them?
That one doesn’t really work for me, either, for the same reasons.