Little Fears is often one of the first games that many gamers will think of when the subject of controversial RPGs comes up. Published in 2001, it dealt with the subjects of child abuse, abduction, and children fighting back against their monsters, and made some gamers very uncomfortable.

Here is the disclaimer from the front of the Little Fears rulebook:



Jason L Blair tells us about working on Little Fears:

Little Fears was terrifying. Not just to read or play but to write and publish. It touched on topics and themes that previous games hadn't. There wasn't a precedent for a lot of this stuff so I had no idea how folks would react. As with most of Little Fears, I was finding my way in the dark. The game is full of disclaimers but this one, from the credits page of the book, was really me laying down my honest feeling on the matter. It's a bit overwritten, maybe a little too thick, but it's sincere.

I have two more left from my own collection. If you know of any other great (or even not so great) RPG disclaimers, scan them and send them to me!

(See all of the other RPG disclaimer posts.)

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The first Tell Me About Your Character interview of 2010 is up - don't miss the Q&A with Charlie Etheridge-Nunn!

Look like fun? Then tell us about your character, too! Get a copy of the interview questions, and do your own self-serve interview!

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Jason L Blair's magick-in-the-'hood RPG Wyrd is Bond (2004) had not one, but two disclaimers in its opening pages. This one appeared at the bottom of the credits page:



But a page before it, the first thing the reader sees when they open the book is this:



Jason tells us a bit about this latter disclaimer, and his reasons for writing it:

Wyrd is Bond is not a commentary or thesis on poverty, gang violence, drug use, or music culture and I wanted this to be clear. Folks would still try to call me on the things I "got wrong" but this disclaimer addresses that directly. Perhaps the meaning was obscured by my phat rhymes. I had a lot of fun writing this disclaimer and I think it touched on everything it needed. My intent was to set the tone for the books right from the beginning.

(See all of the other RPG disclaimer posts.)

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It's a revisiting of a revisiting - Ken Denmead is re-posting his series of posts on a box of classic Dungeons & Dragons modules that he found in storage while searching for some Christmas decorations. His commentary on the ins and outs of each module is well worth the read (or the re-read, if you caught these posts when they first appeared two years ago).

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3

More posts are coming, so keep reading GeekDad!

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Since I've started posting scans of disclaimers from roleplaying rulebooks, I've had more than one request to put up the disclaimer from Witchcraft, C.J. Carella's 1999 modern occult horror RPG.

Due to the controversial subject matter, Witchcraft had a pretty lengthy disclaimer, with a few verbal jabs at the common-sense impaired near the end. Because of the size and quality of the image, I've posted a link, rather than displaying it here in the blog.

Witchcraft disclaimer

(See all of the other RPG disclaimer posts.)

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The family and I will be spending New Year’s Eve and Day with friends (gamer friends, of course), and won’t return until tomorrow evening.

Here’s hoping for a brave New Year to all, full of adventures both real and imaginary!

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Our next RPG disclaimer comes from Visionary Entertainment's 1997 RPG The Everlasting: Book of the Unliving, one of a series of urban fantasy RPGs similar to White Wolf's World of Darkness.



The more of these I post, the more amazed I am that these sorts of disclaimers were ever necessary, and just how uncommon common sense really is.

I've been saving the more controversial disclaimers for last, one of which will include some commentary from the author. Stay tuned!

(See all of the other RPG disclaimer posts.)

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The following video is a clip from the TruTV series Forensic Files, from an episode titled "Holy Terror" that aired on August 14th, 2009:



(I've been trying to find more facts on the suspects and the bombing incidents in general, but I haven't had any luck. If anyone can help out, please contact me.)

To recap (because these videos have a tendency to get pulled without notice): A church bombing incident in eastern Illinois leads investigators to two teens, 18 year old Jimmy Morris and 16 year old Phil Ryan, as possible suspects. When the teens were initially questioned, they had no alibi and denied the charges. But in later questioning, each teen began to implicate each other, as a sort of prank against the investigators. When a second bombing incident occurred, their ruse was revealed.

The show starts out with the old canard of making D&D look sinister and dangerous, and linking it to real-life violence without giving any specific examples:

Narrator: Investigators also learned that the boys were heavily involved in the game Dungeons & Dragons, a fantasy oriented game played by more than twenty million people worldwide. It allows participants to assume imaginary, often violent, identities.

ATF Special Agent Kevin Rollins: There had been, across the country, instances where the roleplaying within the game of Dungeons & Dragons, had turned violent in real life.

Then, it attempts to connect the boys' prank to D&D, as if lying to Federal agents during a criminal investigation has something to do with playing the game.

Since the investigators have such a clouded concept of RPGs and D&D (and the difference between causation and correlation, for that matter), it's hard to trust their assessment of the boys' prank. Teens often play pranks, as we all know, and there's no clear way of knowing if they were doing it to waste the investigators' time, because they were upset at being wrongfully accused, playing some sort of role, or any combination of the three.

But then, blaming that weird game that all of those nerds play has always made for some sensational storytelling, so why not go with what works?

(Thanks to the Quilt City OGREs for the link, and Bob Mueller for more information on the episode and the case.)

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Here's another RPG disclaimer, this one from the fourth edition of Ars Magica by Atlas Games, the same people who gave us that great disclaimer in the Over the Edge rulebook:



Coming up: disclaimers from Everlasting, Witchcraft, Little Fears, and (though I may live to regret it) HoL. Do you know of some great RPG disclaimers that haven't been covered yet? If so, scan them, and send them my way!

(See all of the other RPG disclaimer posts.)

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The next in our series of RPG disclaimers: two specimens from Palladium rulebooks.

When Palladium no longer held the license to publish material for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles RPG, they rebooted and expanded it in 2001 as After the Bomb, a post-apocalyptic setting with mutated animal heroes. Here is the disclaimer that appeared in the front of the rulebook - it seems that Palladium wanted to cover themselves against any acts of vigilantism that may have been inspired by their game:



While digging through my old TMNT books, I found this in the adventure module Turtles Go Hollywood, which featured an encounter with a sleazy drug dealer:




(See all of the other RPG disclaimer posts.)

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I've decided that I really don't have enough irons in the fire as far as online projects go (WARNING: SARCASM!), and therefore I've started a new roleplaying blog at the Citadel of Chaos.

Where the Escapist blog covers roleplaying advocacy in all of its forms, this one will be where I write about my personal roleplaying experiences - the games I'm playing, the games I WANT to play, various random items that might be inspirational for plots or worlds, and that sort of thing.

If it sounds interesting to you, feel free to check it out: The Contemporary Quixotist

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What do you know? It's another disclaimer from an RPG rulebook! For this one, we're briefly going back to the World of Darkness, with Mage: The Sorceror's Crusade (1998). For those who don't know: In the mid-to-late 90s, White Wolf released a historical version of most of the main WoD settings, and Mage got the Renaissance treatment.

This one is short and sweet and to the point. I sort of wish they had gone with something a little more period-themed, but I also appreciate the succinct method.



(See all of the other RPG disclaimer posts.)

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Another disclaimer from an RPG rulebook, this one from one of my all time favorites, Over the Edge first edition (1992). This one is unique in that it is meant to be recited by the GM before and after every game (and if I remember correctly, I did exactly that the few times that we got to play it.



(See all of the other RPG disclaimer posts.)

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Uk's Independent just featured a great interview with a teenaged LARPer from South London, who explains the hobby very well, and gives a taste of what makes it so engrossing:

Dressing up as an elf and heading out to the woods to engage in battle with a whole cast of other elves, humans and "half-orcs" is not how you'd imagine an average kid from south London would spend his weekend. But if you knew the feeling you get when it is 1.30 in the morning, it's pitch black, you're in the middle of a forest and you know there's a big nasty monster out there who wants to kill you, then you'd understand why. At this point, you completely forget that you're in character and all you can think is: Oh my God, I'm going to die! It's the best adrenaline rush I've ever had.

Read the full story here: [article | archive]


(In totally unrelated news, this is the 100th post to the new blog! Huzzah!)

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After the last two posts about disclaimers in RPG rulebooks, I've been digging through my collection, looking for disclaimers. Here's one from a game I've always wanted to run, but never had the chance to - Mage: The Ascension:



(Taken from the second edition hardback, 1995)

I checked through a lot of other World of Darkness books from the same time period, but most of them seem to use a boilerplate of the disclaimer from Vampire, with appropriate rewording ("werewolf," "mummy," etc., in place of "vampire").

Over at the Escapist Fan Page on Facebook, former White Wolf author Sam Chupp commented on their disclaimer policy:

"I can't remember anyone requiring us to disclaim this way. People just wrote them because they were fun to write."

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