Re: Other Resources
I'll keep reading the review after this little piece of crap but I'l have to breath heavily first. BTW, I'm the father of three. Two are girls. I'm taking this into consideation when I mean that "The defult unisex designator, "Prince," needlessly narrows the appeal of the game to half of its potential audience" is just PC crap.
What do you want? Princesses' Kingdoms? In which sense would that increase the appeal to more than half of its potential audience? Or else, Princes and Princesses' Kingdoms? Still sexist. Princesses' and Princes's Kingdoms? No less sexist (but of course, today sexism against males is perfectly ok).
Not only PC crap. It's also logical crap. How is it possible for a person to write "The defult unisex designator, "Prince,"", and next imply that it is sexist? How can "unisex" be sexist? If defies logic.
I really mean, I need a good breath to get out of this paragraph of crap and keep reading the review. I'll do it.
Strictly speaking, there are a number of ways the system can incorporate PC crap. A PC really could have "a piece of crap," even an AWESOME piece of crap (d8), as a belonging. Whether to allow that kind of thing is up to the individual play group. I think fourth graders might really go for it, though their parents might not. You could even, again, depending on the level of magic and silliness you want in the game, let a PC have a TALKING piece of crap, like Mr. Hanky the Christmas Poo from South Park.
If you've clicked through to my Carnation Island writeup you'll see that it has
NPC crap in the form of the boys who fling manure at the sailors.
Somewhat more edgily, a PC wanting to deal with self-esteem issues could have "I am a piece of crap" as a quality, and the hell of it is, it doesn't have to be a troublesome quality, it could be a strong one. That's pretty powerful! On the other hand, if one of my kids wanted to make that PC, I would think I had a parenting issue before I had a gaming issue. (Consider also the possible quality, "Princess Morgan is a piece of crap." If the player of Princess Morgan is the "crapper's" real life sibling, well, looks like somebody has some anger issues to work through.)
A player who gives his PC a quality like "I have trouble crapping" though, is just being silly. This isn't
The Princes' GRANDPARENTS' Kingdom, after all.
OTOH! Remember the kid from On Golden Pond, the one who's always saying "Bullshit?" You could base a PC on him, and he could have a quality like "EVERYTHING is crap." And again, it could be a Strong OR Troublesome quality.
My favorite passage from that movie is where the kid says "Bullshit!" for like the thirtieth time and Henry Fonda looks at him and says, "You like that word, don't you?"
And the kid looks right back at him and half-shouts, "Yeah! I do!"
And then Henry Fonda pauses a second and just says:
"It's a good word."
Best,
Jim
