The Gaming Den

Torko wrote:What is it about miscegenation that causes every generation of old white people to flip the FUCK out?

Conservatives like it when the lines are clearly drawn. Mixed raced indiuals are harder to fit into their great chan of being.

Plantation owners had no problem with miscegenation when they were raping their slaves and selling their own children down the river.

Shrapnel wrote: Which tells us in the first sentence that "this hardcover Monsterous Manual(TM) was created in response to the many request to gather monsters into a single, durable volume which would be convenient to carry". I will say that that is not quite the truth: For the entire, what 15+ years I've had this thing, the spine has been steadily falling apart, and it's also somewhat heavy. So, no, it is not easy to carry nor is it terribly sturdy. First sentence in and already the book is lying to me.

Of course what they mean here is "a volume that is durable and convenient to carry in comparison to our initial retarded idea for a 2e monster manual." And relative to a huge-ass 3-ring binder with pages that were, like the pages in every 3-ring binder ever, likely to get ripped out at the drop of a hat -- the Monstrous Manual is indeed portable and durable.

The only good thing about the 3 ring binders was that you could move the pages around into something that made sense to you. Like, decide for yourself whether to put Weredragons under Lycanthrope or Dragon. Some of the layout decisions of monster books are necessarily arbitrary, but the AD&D monster books are perhaps more arbitrary than they have to be.

I mean, I don't really think that your "monster" book should have an entry for "Aborigine" at all. Because that's fairly offensive. But it's actually somewhat more offensive to have the entry be called "Aborigine/Cave Man". And it's just plain inexplicable that this monster entry is alphabetized under "M".

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:I mean, I don't really think that your "monster" book should have an entry for "Aborigine" at all. Because that's fairly offensive. But it's actually somewhat more offensive to have the entry be called "Aborigine/Cave Man". And it's just plain inexplicable that this monster entry is alphabetized under "M".

-Username17

Is that actually a thing that TSR made take place, please tell me that was a humorous statment and that wasn't something they actually made take place.

Maxus wrote:And now you have to review it all man.

::manly clap on the back::

::stumbles, crashes into table, spilling beta fish into dress of hostess::


As for Mistborn's inquiry... there is in fact an entry for aborigines, under the main entry for Human, and it is indeed listed in fact as Aborigine/Caveman. It is awesomely racist.

Shrapnel wrote:As for Mistborn's inquiry... there is in fact an entry for aborigines, under the main entry for Human, and it is indeed listed in fact as Aborigine/Caveman. It is awesomely racist.

And they still thought that was A-Ok in 1993. Jeez if a modern RPG company did something like that they'd get the the full FATAL treatment.

Lord Mistborn wrote:

Shrapnel wrote:As for Mistborn's inquiry... there is in fact an entry for aborigines, under the main entry for Human, and it is indeed listed in fact as Aborigine/Caveman. It is awesomely racist.

And they still thought that was A-Ok in 1993. Jeez if a modern RPG company did something like that they'd get the the full FATAL treatment.

Pop quiz: does that say more about the enlightenment of the RPG industry, or the intolerance of RPG fans?

FrankTrollman wrote:The only good thing about the 3 ring binders was that you could move the pages around into something that made sense to you. Like, decide for yourself whether to put Weredragons under Lycanthrope or Dragon.

Or in the bin.

You, ma'am, have implicitly insulted basically the entirety of my favorite strategy RPG series.

(That's right, there are weredragons I like too. And this totally beats admitting my brain crossed wires and read weredragons as dragon-centaurs!)

Lord Mistborn wrote:

Shrapnel wrote:As for Mistborn's inquiry... there is in fact an entry for aborigines, under the main entry for Human, and it is indeed listed in fact as Aborigine/Caveman. It is awesomely racist.

And they still thought that was A-Ok in 1993. Jeez if a modern RPG company did something like that they'd get the the full FATAL treatment.

would you prefer they used Neanderthal and offend all the stupid mouth breathers walking around today?

tried reading a dictionary to see what aborigine actually means, or are you all most interested in linking it with Australia?

Native Americans = Aborigine
Inuit = Aborigine
Na'vi on Pandora = Aborigine
Humans on Pandora = NOT Aborigine

check the definition of the world and it fits even with caveman...

want to use something offensive try using PC terms like calling a proud Mexican, "hispanic", and then see how many stitches you walk crawl away with!

Koumei wrote: (That's right, there are weredragons I like too. And this totally beats admitting my brain crossed wires and read weredragons as dragon-centaurs!)

Come now, that's just sil- what is wrong with these people

Not only is "Aboringine/Caveman" a Monserious Compendium entry, but in both the AD&D Monster Manual and the 2nd edition binder, humans come under "M". For "Men". Not even "Man" the generic term for humans and also fitting under the singular standard used by the rest of the book. "M, E" for "Men". Comes after Medusa.

It's not only stupid and offensive, it's inexplicably hard to find.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:It's not only stupid and offensive, it's inexplicably hard to find.

it's sexist, too.

FrankTrollman wrote:Not only is "Aboringine/Caveman" a Monserious Compendium entry, but in both the AD&D Monster Manual and the 2nd edition binder, humans come under "M". For "Men". Not even "Man" the generic term for humans and also fitting under the singular standard used by the rest of the book. "M, E" for "Men". Comes after Medusa.

It's not only stupid and offensive, it's inexplicably hard to find.

-Username17

Oddly enough, in my book, it's listed under Human. Perhaps I have a somewhat different version of the Manual?



Also, to shadzar: if you don't like my review at all, then why do you continue to read it? Just do what everyone does with you and ignore it, instead of just filling the thread with hateful fishrage.

And finally, I apologize for the fact that I have been... lax in my reviewing. I'm just getting over a bitch of a cold, but I should have more MONSTRUS Manual-y goodness sometime tonight.

I've known a couple aussies that would be offended that aborigines would be considered a human at all (they insisted that they evolved from a different primate than white people and therefore weren't actually human at all. What is this I don't even)

I am anxiously awaiting the next review of MONSTROUS MANUEL.

Shrapnel wrote: Oddly enough, in my book, it's listed under Human. Perhaps I have a somewhat different version of the Manual?

Same with mine. I think what he's talking about is the 1e Monster Manual and the binder that was the precursor to the 2.5 Monsterous Manual

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:I've known a couple aussies that would be offended that aborigines would be considered a human at all (they insisted that they evolved from a different primate than white people and therefore weren't actually human at all. What is this I don't even)

It's been mentioned before, but unfortunately, the culture in Australia is one of racism. It's rampant, particularly against the aborigines. Now, not everyone is a horrible racist, and it tends to gather in certain areas, much like America has racist hot-spots in the South (and I imagine most countries have the same issue).

But yeah, there is a lot of hate for our natives. I bet they complained about boat people when Europeans arrived (and to be fair, we gave them something to complain about). There's also a fair amount of hate for immigrants, so basically there is a very thin line of "acceptable Australian" in this country. And it's fucking stupid.

That being said, I love how shadzar completely failed to get the point. "They're not saying native Australians are cavemen, they're saying all native/indigenous folk are cavemen!"

You guys are going to love my Let's Play of Island of the Lizard King, which I'm doing after I finish Citadel of Chaos (shameless self-promotion,) since it's got Pygmies, Headhunters, and Cavewomen to fight.

Also, forgot to request Cloakers; IIRC their Ecology section (I think it was Ecology, something in their entry made them out to be like the most mysterious creatures ever) was fucking ridiculous in 2e.

Desdan_Mervolam wrote:Same with mine. I think what he's talking about is the 1e Monster Manual and the binder that was the precursor to the 2.5 Monsterous Manual

Monstrous Manual was released for 2nd 3 years prior to the Revised or black books, with a white cover. It was an effect of people not liking how they could not truly sort the pages alphabetically because monsters were printed on both sides, so depending on which you tried to place, you would always have half the book out of order unless you had two copies. so they said screw it and went with a hardback bookm and continued with a few MCs in perfect bound form where you weren't intended to take the pages out.

The main thing the MCs did was to make a singe monster per page, and MM continued with that... until WotC came along and fucked it up.

I keep coming back because this sounds like the same shit and drivel on the Something Awful reviews... a pile of ignorance without a point to it.

If you want to review something and be negative, at least have candor and go into a review unbiased and give it a fair shake. Kind of hard for people that disdain 2nd to do, but...

this review has a much journalistic integrity as Gamer_zer0 had on the WotC forums....as his name implied.. ZERO.

To be fair, RPGs are still very racist in that one's race determines both cultural and biological attributes.

Shadzar, if the internet runs on any principle, it's that fair and unbiased reviews are never as entertaining as ranting, angry, profanity laden reviews that focus on the stupid things in a work over the things that are good, cool, or make sense.

The reason for this, usually, is that the particular work wouldn't have been chosen if the cool and interesting things about it were more noteworthy that the stupid shit in it.

(Also: Anyone want to lay bets on how long until Shadzy brings up the Invisible Stalker and how much worse the 3e illustration is than the 2e one? That's a popular grognard complaint.)

Desdan_Mervolam wrote:(Also: Anyone want to lay bets on how long until Shadzy brings up the Invisible Stalker and how much worse the 3e illustration is than the 2e one? That's a popular grognard complaint.)

Man, those guys have their heads screwed on backwards. The 1e illustration is obviously better than either.