Right. Is this one of those articles where they’re claiming Disney World is on fire? You’ve got to be kidding me. They’re getting rid of the Portuguese in the equation? Why? Are they conservative-leaning and passionate about a hobby you’ve set out to destroy? Are they holding up money but all you’re hearing is the “shut up and take it” and you’re somehow morally offended by not glancing upward from your pot-induced haze of grayscale smoke to verify all those fists clenched with cash you are being offered and yet obviously no longer deserve?
Slick, I’ve died to Cloudkill. Twice. By the same Dungeon Master who not only hated me, but inspired me to theorize that it was probably me and I should find a gaming group who’ll entertain Frank & Keith Tomes if I ever want any sort of gaming balance, let alone courtesy, during sessions. And I don’t even smoke dope, never have, never will, never smoked cigarettes, and I’ve never had any excuse for whatever behavior that the dungeon master deemed aberrant when all I wanted to do was hunt and kill illithids. Am I somehow morally reprobate for wanting to kill off a horrible cave-dwelling squid-faced horror, the same guys who are the preeminent villains in the latest Baldur’s Gate game? Why the Cloudkill, again? Well, I’ll tell you:
The Cloudkill Spell was inspired by the selfsame dope that you’re smoking!
Cease, and desist, Wizards of the Coast. Fire the translator and get a new one who’s thrice as good and who’ll take a pay cut or five if you’re actually into money-saving strategies, unlike this one! If Wizards of the Coast can’t find someone who can inspire glory and greatness in the preeminent progenitor of the tabletop format and maintain the periphery demographic of a goofball language like Portuguese, then Pawtucket, RI must be the wiriest wiener for never kicking Hasbro out of its city for all time. I can’t imagine a company with finances like these is paying enough taxes to keep them within the city lines.
Perhaps good old Pawtucket is doing everyone a favor by tolerating Hasbro’s presence thanks to the mutually agreed-upon premise that, if it tried to kick them out, everyone else would keep passing the buck and say, “Sorry Hasbro, but you’re just not profitable enough or safe enough to set up shop in our town! You’ll have to fend for yourself.” And I can’t imagine them not making dummy corporations on tiki torch islands out in the Caribbean to duck a couple brackets here and there, so why do they require a physical stateside address? Meanwhile, is everyone else in the states somehow just watching and waiting for some country to request extradition of all assets and personnel of both Wizards and Hasbro? Because, if so, and whether a coordinated effort such as this is even legal, why hasn’t anybody in Antarctica bit the bullet and do us all a great service? Dr. Jekyll could never imagine being as picked on as these guys are.
But the biggest dorks in the room, the selfsame pathetic losers who smile and nod to anti-trust laws as much as the incestuous merger between government and business, are those stupid so-called TSR-ascendant types who want to orchestrate a rival tabletop role-playing product after squandering their chances of rescinding licensing and rights to Dungeons & Dragons from the errant parties mentioned thus far. Why haven’t they stepped in and filed a class action lawsuit for defamation across at least three decades’ time? Wizards of the Coast is front and center responsible for the sort of makeshift, grassroots harassment that moral crusaders in the seventies and eighties indulged in at game players’ expense. Every last business decision has been predicated at making us foam at the mouth in such a way that bystanders will step away unconsciously without ever having heard a physical gunshot.
It’s just what it is: these people are baiting us into justifying their position of picking apart a laudable franchise and humping the American dream. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?
Of course, it is perfectly possible that they never filed documentation that could allow a portion of their products to bypass toy and luxury taxes in the shifting landscape of Brazilian tax law. That might be the key to a wholesale uprising of fans to just march the offices out in Pawtucket and demand its dismantling brick by brick. Forget about this thousand-cut demise the suits have orchestrated for themselves in hopes of a government buyout or whatever. The only thing that can save D&D from the Grand Master Dragons and Nantuckets of the world is to lay siege upon them with innumerable orders for all the pizzas in a fifty-mile radius from their offices. That they have to pay upfront. And it has to be those fanciful square party pizzas, preferably a couple with peanut butter and jelly. None of that grease-at-the-bottom-of-the-box bottom-feeding you’re-not-allowed-to-pay-your-way-to-high-stats gate-keeping shit. Just plain-old pizza rallies once we’ve identified their bank accounts and go for broke. Hey, we don’t even need to get their accounts. I mean, if we all chip in and order them and have them deposited en masse, it’s still a symbolic gesture.
One of the best stories (probably not true but very feasible) ever released in the bowels of 4Chan was how a kid showed up with a pizza to play D&D with a new gaming group and beheld a litany of abuses from most (save the fat guy–he was kind of cool though ineffectual in restraining) participants who obviously went off the deep end: a fish-mouthed Karen, a predatory homosexual, a toothless beta male, and a dungeon master ripping off X-Men. As the disgruntled inhabitants of a ghost town orchestrated against the new kid’s simple-minded, good-intentioned queries over his new neighbors’ obnoxious behavior towards him, he righteously engineered a wizard player character patterned after Dumbledore and not only savaged the master’s campaign twice ala Old Man Henderson (look the name up and be ready to laugh), but the only way he could be stopped is when said master kicked him out of the group just before a third damningly humiliating victory could be reached. The price of trying to play with the same sort of people who invariably rendered the tabletop landscape a scorched wasteland? One tab for good pizza and five hours of wasted time.
I think we can collectively fit bills like those to wave fingernails face forward to Wizards and Hasbro. Brazil might do so, given they’re already trying to experiment with Socialism and the inner rim of their coastal cities are proof enough. They can certainly do this, especially since this announcement coincides with their national RPG day. Of course, the only way it will stick is if normies begin to order pizzas onto Hasbro and Wizards since fan outrage is insufficient in curtailing their excesses. You have to bite them in the market they are obviously appealing to, given said market is still disinterested as the current iteration lacks the soul of the original. You have to make the disinterested normie incensed. Maybe restricting rabid Portuguese fans from an official translation out of pure negligence or even contempt (of, again, potential conservative leanings–after all, Brazil has that big statue of Christ and outsiders can’t just assume everyone there is somehow on board with the government’s lefty inclinations) will inspire some introspection and ire among people outside of the hobby and have them reconsider purchasing all those pop culture versions of Monopoly that isn’t fan-made for the Angry Video Game Nerd (and his alter-ego, Board James).
Look, I’m not that observant of and don’t know enough about Brazil and Portugual in particular, but if Sk1ka and Sgt. Mark IV are any indication, then Wizards and Hasbro should buck up and do their taxes and forms on time and clearly without skipping a beat. Everyone has to do their taxes. ACDC has to do their taxes! Yeah, but why is Wizards and Hasbro still around after not doing so? Oh, they used a get out of jail card? Yeah, but didn’t they kill their meal tickets or something?
“IT WASN’T ME, IT WAS THE FUCKING PHONE! FUCK YOU! EVERYBODY, FUCK YOU!”
Okay. That reminds me….