Oh come on. Like you have never killed a prostitute...

Everybody is mistaken about this... it's actually supposed to be about the other notorious Jack the Ripper... you know, the one known for ripping the "do not remove" tags off of mattresses.

It's a brilliant game, regardless, but I think Mr. Jack might have avoided whatever distaste some people have for its theme by leaving out the reference to the murdered prostitute and "Jack the Ripper" and the Whitechapel District from the rules and background copy. They already went part of the way by calling the game "Mr. Jack" instead of "Jack the Ripper". So why not just describe the background like this: "Mr. Jack, the notorious criminal, is on the loose on the streets of London..." Keep it simple and more open to interpretation. Sure, you could identify him as Jack the Ripper if you like, but considering the game includes obviously fictional characters like Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, and the other cartoonish characters and artwork, you'd be more likely to think of Jack in that kind of playful sense. Villainous, sure, but not necessarily tied in to any real-life murderous history.

I thought its previous name, which translated as "Shadows over Whitechapel" was awesome, and I wish they'd have kept the name.

No kidding! My DM rolled up a "Slovenly Trull" on the random harlot table out of appendix C in the 1st edition AD&D DM Guide way back in 1981.

She wasn't worth a lot of XP though....

Good point -- I NEVER thought about the fact that the Nazis use a Cross instead of the swastika in this game. I wonder if there was a debate at MB that led to that decision.

Can't he just pretend they're Canadians?

What about Heroscape? i know you've said you play it, and while alot of it is fantasy in nature, there are "real-life" figures like the Roman Legion and the 4th Mass Line.

Sounds a little bit like you are picking and choosing what you choose to call an "actual death"....

What happened with Axis and Allies was: they did not want to use the swatstika, for reasons given above. So they used Air Force insignia for ALL units. Look at the USA symbol, for instance, only the Army Air Corps used that symbol(the USA not having a seperate Air Force as such during WWII).

This meant using a red star with a hammer-and-sickle on it for the Soviets, but their symbol is apparently ok to display in public. Even though the Communist dictatorship was arguably worse and certainly killed more people. Aeroflot displayed it for years after the Soviet collapse( just recently got rid of it). They said it was 'heritage'.
OK, I have a great idea on how Lufthansa can punch up their logo. Are you with me?

PRICELESS!!!

Ha, yer SO would like my SO.

If I may wade in here (rolls up his pantslegs):

I would like to make a comment on the post early on in the discussion about people not wanting to play a (hypothetical, I assume) "concentration camp" variation of Axis and Allies, but being ok with playing games containing simulations of the historical slave trades.

I understand the point, but it is a fallacious argument. In a lot of these games, slavery was a facet of war and production, and as such is integral to the game, in some form (even if it is abstracted. The concentration camps were, generally speaking, unrelated to the military campaigns and as such, to add them to a game that is strictly a wargame would smack of sensationalism.

Having said all of that, I can understand the sentiments of those who dislike playing wargames for the reasons stated above. I disagree with it, myself, but that's not because I think such games have "historical value;" rather, it is simply that I enjoy playing them, and the fact that I am recreating real battles with real casualties doesn't bother me, and I am one who has the highest respect for men and women in uniform. (Also the question of black slavery doesn't provoke a visceral reaction in me, what with me being a middle class white Canadian of Mennonite descent.)

Essentially, it all boils down to what Games Workshop calls "The Most Important Rule:" gaming is about having fun. If your opponent would be uncomfortable to the point of not having fun when you bust out a game dealing with slavery, then play something else.

As a final point, I would like to extend kudos to the posters in these topics. So far as I've read (which is about to this point) you all have treated an emotionally charged and divisive subject with a degree of intelligence and sensitivity which is unusual to say the least, even in a relatively mature community like BGG.

I've played this and puerto rico with other black family members and we never take offense to it. It's apart of history.

The One World

Talking of Aztecs, SimCan released The One World, in which various Aztec clans fight each other in order to capture prisoners for sacrifice (known as the "Flower Wars" for some mind boggling reason).

Those Germanic peoples who were slaves in the Roman Empire are the ancestors of most modern (Western) European citizens. Isn't it as offensive?

First game that popped in my mind when I read the title of the list

What I don´t understand is, that some of them don´t understand, that I can!
Or in other words: It´s perfect for me if some people have no desire to play certain games, because the game happens to offend them. I would just play another game with them - there are, as one can see to the left, enough games to choose from.

The difficulties start when they try to tell me that I have to stop playing these games, too.

Hi Emile - I don't think you're trolling and in fact, I'm very happy that everyone in this thread seems to be expressing their points very politely!

As to your question...Ultimately, all we're doing is pushing chits and cubes across a table. I saw a comment once - about "Mesopotamia", I think - that someone didn't want to play it because there was a card that said "Sacrifice to Marduk" or something. I remember thinking, if the card just said "Grow Flowers", it would be the exact same card with the exact same effect in the game, just different text at the top, so what is the difference? Obviously, when we play these games no one is actually sacrificed, no soldiers die, no one is enslaved. I'm gaming with friends who know I don't condone human sacrifice or slavery in real life. I don't understand what people fear about playing a card.

But I understand the point you're making...and I'm not sure if I know where my personal "line" is. I do know that I disapprove of ignoring or hiding from selective bits of history. I was going to say that if the subject is treated respectfully then it's OK, but I can also appreciate dark humor. Maybe it's when the game is actually endorsing the offensive behavior...as in Juden Raus...but I can't think of all that many games that are in that category.

That's right! I demand equal time for pink, freckled cubes. Before the African slave trade really kicked in white slaves outnumbered black slaves. They were usually rounded up off the street in European cities for being guilty of the crime of being poor or homeless. And there was the occasional Irish or Scottish village plundered where the populations were sent to the New World as slaves.

Funny as so many people talk about Eurogames pasting a theme onto some game mechanics!

The dark humour is what sold this game to me; unfortunately I don't feel the game was that good. It suffers far too much from Supremacy syndrome for a kick-off and furthermore it's just a little too long for what it is.

For me the part that wrecks it is my experience in the war on terror. I know many veterans from Vietnam in my family and elsewhere who will not play games recounting battles in that theater. Its just a too close to home issue, the sarcasm doesn't really bother me, its the things that we don't want to remember.

The humour is the best part of this game. The game itself is only so-so.

The game is very good. The theme is terrific. I know many of you don't share that view, and that's OK. I just happen to think that everything can be made into a joke, and that laughter is a good medicine for everything.

The best part of this game is the fact that open negotiation is allowed.

To the best of my knowledge, "The War On Terror" board game is NOT a simulation of any actual battles in Iraq or Afghanistan but is rather a darkly satirical overview of the politics and war profiteering that are perceived to be the actual engine of the war machine driving the conflict that is broadly called "The War on Terror" even though Iraq was never contextually or legitimately a part of the original war-on-terror equation. (Iraq only belatedly became a centrally-located greenhouse for terrorists in training once the Iraq War got under way.) In fact, during the last years of his reign, none other than Saddam Hussein himself was said to have been growing a bit uneasy about the growing prevalence of more and more women wearing the berka (religious full-head covering) in Baghdad as it seemed to signal an ever growing influence of conservative Islamic belief (not to be confused with militant Wahabi Islamic terrorism).

And why would this have concerned Saddam Hussein of all people?

For one thing, it meant a diminishing reading audience for his trilogy of romance novels. (Yes, *romance novels* written by the mother of all would-be romance novelists, Saddam Hussein himself!) For Saddam Hussein's romance novels, though a bit chaste by Western standards, would still have raised a disapproving eye brow of a conservative-bent Muslim. Nonetheless, Iraqi bookstores were "compelled" by governmental edict to showcase Saddam Hussein's romance novels, sometimes even in store-front window displays. Who knows, if our intelligence agencies had taken an approach similar to that used to reform Libya's Mohammar Khadafy, all that might have been necessary to begin the similar process to reform Saddam Hussein's attitude toward the West would have been for our intelligence agencies to have presented Hussein with black-intelligence (doctored) reports of conservative Islamic clerics' condemnation of the content of Saddam's romance novels on religious grounds. (No, Saddam was NOT a devout Muslim by any measure of the imagination.)

For more about Saddam Hussein's aspirations as a romance novelist, check out this selection of entries at:
http://www.google.com/search?as_q=saddam+hussein+romance+nov...

As to the not-so-funny war engine behind the Iraq War, all one need do is to find its blueprint entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses", the September 2000 report (available for free download in .pdf format) of the Project for the New American Century think tank ( www.newamericancentury.org) founded by William Kristol, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and other neo-conservatives who also hailed from and had financial stock in such war-materiel investment groups as the Carlysle Group and such military services companies as Halliburton/Kellogg, Brown & Root among others. It should come as no surprise then that the leading lights of the George W. Bush administration mostly hailed from the Project for the New American Century think tank co-founded by his own Vice President.

And there is an endgame method to the madness behind the "Rebuilding America's Defenses" report: He who controls access to the oil spigots in the Middle East holds sway over the developing nations of East Asia, namely China. The only problem is that just like in a real game of Chess, once you've publicly tipped off your opponent as to what your game plan is, that makes it all the easier for him to counter it with one of his own to trump yours. And China has indeed done just that, making ever more lucrative deals with Iran for oil consumption.

If they'd only kept this all hush-hush and publicized it, who knows, then it might have been a bit more palatable and do-able even though it still smacked of naked greed. For as it stands now, American oil companies have claimed the overwhelming lion's share of exclusive oil contracts with Iraq. We certainly didn't share much, if any, of those spoils of war with our ally Britain for Tony Blair had to return home to Parliament empty-handed and chastened after failing to prevail with George W. Bush in getting a comparable share of lucrative contracts for British oil companies.)

I've never played this game. I have this perception of it as possessive of a "Why, we're just as bad as they are!" mentality, which I only find unintentionally hilarious.

I never got achance to play that one, my girlfriend wanted me to trade it away quickly, she felt the images (pictures)were too... disturbing.

Got Pimp instead, didn't get to play it yet, but she feels cartoon are not as disturbing as lunch money's pictures.

I wouldn't play this game if it was the only game ever invented. Maybe you were a bully when you were growing up and it was really funny, but I'm one of the kids that got threatened, it's not funny at all to me.

Most people have been bullied at one time or another (yours truly, included), but this game is not about children, or bullies.

It is about violence, so if you don't like violence definitely move along, there is nothing to see here.

But if you realize it's a game, and just a theme on a great combat system then don't let anyone else fool you into thinking this game is about either "Bullying" or "Children Fighting."

Saying it is about anything other than a fight is simply bullshit.

LA

The disturbing quality of this game I think has much value in approaching the reality of how children can act without understanding and appreciating all the consequences. Reminds me of Lord of the Flies.

Have to post on this one. Had heard good things about the game, got a copy for my sister. Sat at the table with her and her two eldest daughters playing it. Once. I'm sure, if she hasn't thrown it out, it's buried in the deepest closet.

All because of the pictures. Every one of the people at that table had been affected, directly or indirectly, by child abuse. None of us could bear to look at it without being so disturbed, we couldn't concentrate on the game.

I have nothing against violence or creep-factor in a game, generally -- my favorite RPG is Call of Cthulhu, and while I don't like graphic violence in films, it's just due to the gross-out factor. (Non-graphic and off-camera violence is usually scarier.)

But that camerawork... I can't look at it. It's like owning a game covered in human skin. I can TALK about it, but keep it away from me.

Carmilla

Poor fashion sense?

Bingo

There's BINGO in this game?!? How did it ever see cardboard?





Although, as a fun excersize, try picturing an army of blue-haired old ladies with daubers sitting down in a hall to play 'Pimp, the Backhanding.'

I can't wait for the sequel--

BOBBITT: The Peniscutting

That sounds like a good Turtledove novel.

made me think of "In the Presence of Mine Enemies" by Harry Turtledove, at least in the Nazis winning the war

I enjoy Turtledoves writing and his ideas. But I simply cannot bring myself to read any of the series anymore. The man has a serious case of diarrhea of the keyboard at times.

Turtledove's writing style is abysmal in series format. His writing as a series goes on becomes highly repetitious, and he jumps from a large number of characters who are reduced to mostly stereotypes.

Also he has a knack of making the main protagonists highly unlikable. In the original Worldwar Series, the only character I really liked was Lars Jensen, who spends the whole series having his life slowly get worse.

Anyway, his ideas are great, but his execution falls apart badly when he writes more than one book. Thankfully, we can make his book ideas into good game ideas!

If Lars Jensen is who I think he is (it's been a while since I read the series), then the way Turtledove treated that character is the reason I stopped reading his books.

The guy heroically crosses half of the United States, much of it occupied by the aliens, to deliver an important message, then has another harrowing journey to rejoin the research group. Meanwhile, his wife leaves him to shack up with some dweeb of a soldier, and when Lars finally catches up, everyone treats him like the bad guy for being upset with that situation? Even former colleagues who should be more loyal to him than some idiot grunt dumped on them?

I could also have done without there being a sex scene just about every 10 pages. I've got no problem with sex scenes, but I don't need them in alternate history military sci-fi.

But what is the contoversy about this game? I'm guessing it's the incredibly lame title and cover art!

Yeah, glancing the the box cover, I thought I was looking at Munchinland for a minute.

You know what that cover needs? Less.

I met the artist of the cover, Mark Heike, once. Nice guy, even did some art for me on a fanzine project many years ago. I think this was his "George Perez" period, trying to get as much in an illustration as possible. Yes, in this case too much.

I think the cover is awesome.

That's not Princess Leia??

Actually, their opinions don't matter much because they (the women) are considered lesser beings. Basically, in a polygamous society, the women are legally inferior to the men ("witty" professorial anecdotal "data" notwithstanding).

The women have all the power in this game: they choose who they want to be with, the guys are breaking their nuts trying to get what the women want...

...not exactly anything against women here

Game is too random though, that is the problem. If you dress really spiffy and a women comes up who is interested in power rather than dress, you're screwed.

I may be wrong, but it sounds like the anecdote was in reference to a society (I think Polynesian) in which the women have multiple husbands. In this case, the women are certainly not legally inferior - I think your statement holds true for a lot of Middle Eastern societies, but not the one in reference to above.

I don't think the story is about Polynesian polygamy. A woman who has to be with her husband every day doesn't get the respite she would get if he had another wife seems to be his point.

I wonder if a Mount Saint Helens version of this game would have sold well in the mid-80's Pacific NorthWest.

Well.. I would have bought it but I lived on the opposite side from the blast zone.

Are there any great India Ocean Tsunami games out there?

I was a child in Washington State when Mt. St. Helens erupted and I can tell you that there were in fact games about it. My grandma bought a self-published one that some guy near her made. It had painted volcanoes made out of clay for player pawns- they kind of looked like my daughter's preschool art projects.

Unfortunately, it was a horrible roll-and-move affair and has long since disappeared. I wish we still had it, because I'd add it to BGG. If a good game (like the Downfall of Pompeii) had been available in 1980, I'm sure that many of them would have sold here.

FWIW, Mt. St. Helens in 1980 AD was much less fatal than Vesuvius in 79 AD, 57 people vs. 10,000+. And there was quite a bit of warning, so most people anywhere near that mountain had to realize the potential. That doesn't make their deaths less tragic, but somehow it makes it seem less sinister. Mt. St. Helens always seemed more like a curiosity than a killer. Of course, with the passage of time, I guess Vesuvius seems that way now, too.

Incidentally and interestingly (and incorrectly according to that old punching bag, 'science'), my mother-in-law believes Pompeii was Sodom and Gomorrah (yes, both) and that the residents werwe killed by Vesuvius because they were sinful, and left petrified as somber reminder for all time.

I am sure both will be made into games.

If they did do a Saint Helens version would that mean some of your relatives closest to the volcano would refuse to leave. Sort of like that old guy that was killed because he absolutely refused to leave his home.

Yeah, this one bugs me. Maybe it's the whole "beheading a child" thing.

I'm glad that I am not the only one: I mostly hate this game because it is so random, but whenever I also happen to remark that it is so cruel as well, no one understands me! Everyone just keeps on laughing at the nicely drawn pictures of doomed people!

It's certainly a cruel game, but unlike Puerto Rico and some other games, it is at least honest: it portrays people being executed in Revolutionary France, it doesn't pretend to be about something else. I like it because it doesn't pretend to be about something else.

Robin

The Guillotine was, for the times, a rather humane way to conduct executions. Every other manner of execution: hanging, burning, dunking, cruxifiction, breaking on the wheel, draw & quartering, etc, all involved a certain amount of torture. Beheading was a rather gruesome affair, in that it rarely took one stroke of a sword or axe to cut off the head. There was usually a lot of hacking.



Then the Guillotine came along, and the design was such that it guaranteed a single, swift stroke. It was also used on commoners & nobles alike, thereby being looked on as an "socially equaling" device in a time when the execution method depended on your social rank, not your crime.

See, kids! History is fun!

During the terreur, it's not so far from the reality anyway !

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximilien_Robespierre

since when are boobs controversial? half the population have them....

A GP?!? Not where I'm from - that's surgeons' job!
[I guess you meant PG? ]

Besides, most women have more than two boobs. Two by birthright, and usually at least one more, by association...

Now that was Funny... I know because my Wife said it was...

The MPAA rating system originally used "M" for "mature," which was replaced by "GP" for "general-parental discretion advised" in 1970, which became "PG" "Parental Guidance" in 1972.

Busen Memo just looks like it was cribbed, poorly, from porn, and some types of porn is controversial in many circles (even in groups where women go bare breasted).