Frum's page

So, what happened? Anyone know?

I was enjoying working through the first adventure in the series, and I heard Scott had converted most of the campaign - and then he stopped posting, and stopped updating his blog.

Does anyone have his conversions of Crimson Throne to 4E? Or contact information? Barring that, has anyone done a complete job of converting this campaign into 4E?

Thanks in advance.

I would disagree, and I think several people in this thread will also. Despite not having any fleshy bits, companies still do have character and either have or lack integrity. And that doesn't have very much to do with the run-of-the-mill peon working for them, either. The run-of-the-mill peons might be great folks, but the company they work for might have different priorities, goals, mission statement, and methods than those employees do individually. All of those things together go to make up the "character and integrity of the company." For a couple of analogs... in Gazetteer books, countries are given an alignment. How is that possible? It's an amalgamated impression gleaned from the government structure, the education level, the alliances, etc of the nation. Obviously a country - a legal geographic and political designation - can't have a personality or an alignment, but we feel free to put this kind of thing in a Gazetteer. In a similar way, we can say that "Wal-Mart is an evil megacorp." Why? They benefit from near-slave-labour in third-world countries so they can sell crap to (relatively speaking) rich...

I agree with some of what you said here, but my points still stand, in large part.

As far as peons in companies go, you are exactly right. A company may have different goals from its peons (if by peons you mean "company workers who have little or no say in the company's direction and policies"), and thus a criticism of a company is not implicitly a criticism of the mail-room guy. Here, you're right.

With the rest, however ...

We may find it a useful shorthand to give nations alignments in gazetteers, but I think you must admit that such a designation is very ambiguous; it is a merely useful fiction, in the way that calling Saudi Arabia a muslim country is just a somewhat useful fiction. The description, when we get into the details, is just too fraught with ambiguity. In calling Saudi Arabia a muslim country, do we mean that only muslims live there? That the country is governed by muslims? That the country is governed by a ideologically muslim constitution and laws?

But in any case, what we do in a gazetteer is useful for a game; what I am talking about is very different. I will use your Wal-Mart example, because it is relevant. When we say "Wal-Mart is an evil megacorp" we may, superficially, be making a comment about the company. However, a little digging creates the same ambiguities as I mentioned above. Do we mean that the company's policies are morally abhorrent? That the company practices business in a way that is hypocritical or against its own moral code? What can we make of such questions?

The answer, though, leads back to the point I made originally. If we are to criticize Wal-Mart by calling it an evil megacorp, it is impossible to avoid marking employees of said company as evil themselves. The company is not a robot or an evil intelligence itself; its decision makers (in this case, Satan) are responsible for the company's acts because they decide the directions and actions of the company. I agree, peons are exempt. But when I say Wal-Mart is evil, I am not really criticizing Wal-Mart, or if I am, I am not only criticising Wal-Mart; I am criticizing the characters of those who make decisions for the company.

That was a long way around, but we come finally to my point, which is that by criticising WOTC or Paizo as "lacking integrity", we are of necessity making the same claim against the individual decision makers in the companies, that is, those who have made the decisions we believe lack integrity. And given that in the case of Paizo, which seems to be a small group of happy gamers who happen to be making money at it, these criticims, of necessity, would rest with them. Even for WOTC, which, despite its market share, is still relatively small, and more importantly, has its business decisions made by those who are actively involved in the design of its games, such criticisms of character and integrity draw the same implications. Such implications are themselves reprehensible. I find it hard to even imagine a game design decision that could be considered immoral; even if we allow for the possibility, there are certainly no decisions made by gaming companies, that I know of, regarding the direction of their games that would ever justify a condemnation of the integrity and character of the individuals making those decisions. Such characterizations are slander, or libel, depending, and should be, as I argued before, entirely excised from these gaming debates.

Oftentimes when consumers are faced with a two product dillema, they look to the character and integrity of the company and support the one that provides the best customer care.

I trust you're able to take it from here...

See, this is one thing that should be eliminated from all of these kinds of discussions. Once we go from discussing the merits of a game system, or a setting, to calling into question the motives and moral character of individuals in companies, the discussion has gone too far.

For that is certainly what is implied here. Companies, being at best legal persons, and certainly having no consistent goals other than, perhaps, "making good profits", have no character or integrity. Companies are made up of individuals, just as societies are, so it makes little sense to talk of a company's "character and integrity."

What we are left with, then, is a comparison of the character and integrity of individuals making decisions for companies. It is very clear what you have implied, but considering that most of us a) have little or no knowledge of the character and integrity of the individuals involved and b) have little reason to judge any of the individuals involved in the decision making of the companies at issue here, these criteria seem irrelevant.

Moreover, this kind of subtle disparaging of individuals at different companies is wrong from what we know. We have no reason to believe that Eric Mona secretly hates puppies, or that Mike Mearls drowns kittens. We do have reason to believe, for all of the individuals involved, that they like gaming, want gaming to succeed and prosper overall, and want their game products in particular to excel (sell?)

You may disagree with the way that individuals in a company take a game; you may disagree with the way that individuals choose to stick with the familiar and tested, or try out the new and unfamiliar; you may prefer slightly more simulationist, narrativist, or gamist styles of game; you may prefer that games and worlds are consistent with familiar tropes, themes, characters, and lands, or not; but whatever you decide about these issues, describing those who take gaming in a direction you don't like or prefer, even a direction you find foolish or dull, as lacking character and/or integrity because of those decisions, tells more about your character than theirs.

No one is immoral or vile for making business decisions about a game, for profit. Particularly in this case, where all of the individuals involved would probably be doing this game design in this way even if they weren't paid for it; it just so happens that they are, so profit tells as part of the equation in both cases. Let's tone down the accusations about people's characters, and discuss the games as games; even though they may be described as "Edition Wars", these discussions have never approached that level of moral significance. In fact, it is best if we excise discussions of ethics from this issue entirely; at best, it is an erroneous distraction, and at worst, it shows that you are willing to judge an individual's character by how he or she designed a game.

I hope you're able to take it from here ...