Belated Response to Doug re Morality

Dear Doug: Thanks for writing such an interesting response. I
initially found it a long time after you wrote it and it looks like
Google choked on it the first time I posted it. So I will continue
attempting to repost it.
---

Doug wrote:
> OK. This is the first time I've written to the group; so, I hope that I can
> help out.
>

Sorry. I wrote the earlier message about two weeks before your reply.
By the time you had replied, I had assumed the no one would reply, so I
missed your response.

But now that I have a moment to spare, of course I'm going to tell you,
with as much detail as I can muster, why I think your opinions will not
be able to withstand facts.

> And that brings me to my second point. The morality systems for the games
> are purposefully left open with guidelines only. That way the Storyteller
> has a way to apply them to situations that don't quite fit the mold (i.e.
> brainwashing and/or taking away someone's free will). By saying that White
> Wolf enjoys publishing logically flawed rules is simply ignoring that fact.
> Well, maybe "ignoring" isn't the right word, but rather missing the point
> of the rules system. And that is one simple philosophical statement: The
> world doesn't exist SOLELY in black and white; while they do exist, the
> majority of the world exists in varying shades of gray.

Are you saying that as a White Wolf fan who thinks he understands what
they are doing, or as a White Wolf temp who was told a vague mission
statement by the boss, or as the CEO of White Wolf? Shooting this down
will require pinning it down. If the company is willing to state that
it is making such a statement, we can argue. If you're outside the
company and you believe that they think this, you're speculating and
I'll wait until someone from inside the company can say something.


>
> But then again, there is one more thing you have to take into
> consideration, which is my third point. Morality is defined by the
> individual based off of what the individual is taught as moral. For
> instance, an individual raised on a steady diet of Nietzche and Machiavelli
> will grow up to believe that the ends justify the means. Oversimplified,
> yes, I know,

I would let your statement slide if you said, "an individual raised on
a diet of oversimplified power-tripping." I interpret Nietzsche
differently, but you seem to be honestly thinking about the issue and
trying to contribute something meaningful. I don't want to sidetrack
into details.

I would *love* to take a raincheck for an argument about what Nietzsche
and Machiavelli really wrote, but I won't have time to give that topic
the attention it deserves for at least five years. So until I can give
you some good references on that, I guess I'll have to control my
curiosity.


> Nietzche states that it's personal benefit while Machiavelli
> says it's for the benefit of the state.

<Frank Miller>

Clench jaw harder ...

Must ... control ... urge to cite contrasting text ...

I think I just felt a vertebra break from the strain ...

Must ... contain ... preternatural tides of pettifoggery, welling up
within me ...

</Frank Miller>



> In the games, mortals follow the
> path of Humanity because they are taught through the majority of their
> religions that, that is the path of morality.

I'll assume for the moment that your take on this is really what White
Wolf intends the game to portray. Even if that is the case, the
portrayal does not meet my standards of quality. The game mechanics do
not satisfy me.

White Wolf is run by people who are IMHO godawfully ignorant about
religion, logic, and how to make an accurate simulation or a scholarly
analysis of anything. The resulting games may be enjoyable to some,
and I can enjoy shallow involvement with them, but if I try to get
deeply into these games I have to try to ignore everything I know about
how to think. That doesn't work well.



>
> ... Victorian authors, primarily women, started to write novels with
> implied sexual content.

Some of these novels were consciously propagandizing and some of them
were subconscious expressions. In Stoker's case, he claimed that he
intended nothing sexual in Dracula, but he was shocked (or at least he
claimed to be shocked) to see that it could be interpreted in that
fashion after it had been published.

> That way, they could express their sexuality in a
> way that wouldn't get them in trouble with Queen Victoria for being
> "immoral." In fact, what could be argued as the first gothic horror novel,
> Carmen, was written as overtly as humanly possible at the time,

Thank you for saying, "It could be argued." I concede that all your
points *could* be argued, and if you actually got serious in the
library you could probably do a great job. But what you've written
here is just an off-the-cuff first sketch -- you're not doing research
yet.



> Stoker
> took the sensuality a step further by making the act of a vampire feeding
> into something erotic; every woman off of whom Dracula feed experienced a
> limited sexual exstacy, not to mention the eroticism with which he courts
> Mina or the three sisters "attacking" Jonathan in the beginning. I've even
> read some analysts of Stoker's Dracula that equates Dracula's feeding with
> a symbolic form of filatio.

<Frank Miller>

Must ... resist ... Latin pun ...

</Frank Miller>

As mentioned above, Stoker claimed that he did not intend to be erotic
in the least. Of course his audience saw the eroticism, whether it was
put there by Stoker's conscious mind, Stoker's unconscious mind, or the
audience's filthy imaginations.


> But in all three of these works--indeed, in all the gothic horror
> pieces--the monsters that are at the center of the stories fight through
> their own personal house of horrors to find a sense of calm in a sort of
> morality.

That's a good point about the novels. It doesn't excuse the White Wolf
system.

>Take these elements--sensuality, sexuality, personal
> horror, and morality--add a heaping helping of the modern world, blend
> well, and voila! One has the Gothic-Punk genre that is the World of
> Darkness ...

I really do dispute this judgement.


Let's say for the sake of argument that White Wolf is *trying* to do
what you say. I think you're giving them too much credit. They still
released a system that is horribly vague and will produce contradictory
judgements from reasonable players in the same group. They've done it
before, they'll do it again.

I recently read some of "The Book of Mirrors" which typifies the White
Wolf attitude -- it says, and I don't have the exact quote in front of
me but I'll paraphrase,"We will tell contradictory stories, and the
contradictions don't matters, because they add richness to the
stories."

I will find the exact passage and take it apart in a separate thread,
when time permits -- possibly in a month.

In the meantime, I'm sorry that I missed such a good response, and I
appreciate the passion in your discussion of gothic lit. I'll look for
that "Carmen" story -- it sounds like a good read. Thanks.