From: Jon S Green (jonsg@harlequin.co.uk)
Date: Wed 11 Dec 1996 - 15:30:53 EET
On Wed, 11 Dec 1996 06:45:03 GMT, Jim Chapin wrote:
> 1. I was rather amused that Martin Laurie and MOB, who between them have
> provided us detailed accounts of necrophilia, coprophilia, murder, incest,
> disembowlings and various kinds of human sacrifice, as well as mild flame wars
> over both Onslaught and the Vadeli, can join hands in finding, respectively, the
> nature of the posting and the type of the posting to be in "extemely poor
> taste." Guess it proves Nat Hentoff's point that everyone favors some kind of
> censorship.
With an effort of will, I am not going to reply to this comment with the
flamage that it deserves. The news media will no doubt, after the
advent of this story, attempt to lambast RQ and RPGs in general,
claiming that the individuals concerned cannot make the distinction
between fantasy and real life.
You are not helping: in this comment you yourself blur that
distinction. A fictional story told, whether written or evolved between
role-players, is not real life, and - regardless of the excesses of
violence, sex or evil inherent in it - no-one _real_ gets hurt. A very
real allegation of (alleged) very real hurt, by a very real person,
against another very real person is a very different matter. This
mailing list is about Glorantha. And only Glorantha. That Oliver has
had allegations made against him should only impinge upon this list
inasmuch as it may affect the future of Glorantha-related products.
(Yes, I accept that this posting isn't Gloranthan - but I'm trying to
help get the discussion back on topic, and I can't do that by Gloranthan
analogy.)
Censorship has nothing to do with it. The group has a set objective,
and the posting - clearly malicious, otherwise the coward who posted it
would admit of their identity - had only marginal relevance at best.
> 2. Generally, I don't think that people's personal business belongs on this
> line, but news that has been disseminated to some 200 million people repeatedly
> this week can hardly be considered "personal" any more.
Is it Gloranthan? If not, it shouldn't be here. A simple report of
As a general point - Shannon, can we close the list so that only
"Oliver has been implicated in serious criminal charges, and the
progress of RQ:AIG and related projects is therefore in jeopardy" would
have sufficed, would have kept some degree of dignity, unlike the lurid
details to which we were subjected, and contained all the information
_we_ needed.
postings from list members (or at least their domains) can be accepted?
I don't see that that would make a jot of difference to the real content
of the list, and it would prevent this kind of debacle recurring.
Jon
- --
Work: jonsg@harlequin.co.uk http://www.harlequin.co.uk/
Private: jonsg@pobox.com <*> http://pobox.com/~jonsg/
PGP key available on request -=- Opinions stated may not be Harlequin's!
Junk email utterly unwelcome. See http://pobox.com/~jonsg/junkmail.html
------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.7 : Fri 13 Jun 2003 - 16:55:31 EEST