Should everyone be considered vulgar because they can't or don't want to spend the time to make their insults witty enough?
If they don't care to invest any effort into it and the subsequent result is indeed vulgar, then yes, they should be considered vulgar. This is hardly much of an impediment.
Also, related to Bowie, you mentioned Shakespeare and that there were times that the characters in his plays were vulgar. Do you consider Shakespeare vulgar because of it?
Shakespeare is one of the most vulgar playwrights I've ever read. But he was writing characters, just as we are. The fact that I could write a vulgar character doesn't make me vulgar. It just makes me aware of what vulgarity is. It's just a tool.
I doubt it, and that should also be applied to Bowie's situation.
What you are essentially saying is that 'because none of us can be Shakespeare, why should any of us be penalized for not trying,' and this is certainly a good question. But why do we bother with any medieval trappings? Why don't we just play the game as team Caglia vs. team Dakra? We've decided to dress it up as a medieval-ish game and this is a small part of it. Vulgarity doesn't ruin characters and you won't lose anything from being vulgar that you can't get back from fighting a battle or two. The 'crowd-sourcing' of the definition of vulgarity is one of BM's brilliant moves, IMO, in that Tom is saying 'here is a basic definition, now you decide whether it applies.'
Most people I know in real life aren't as clever as Shakespeare, but most of them can also crack a joke without taking about sex, rape, and being drunk. There is a lot of room in between these things and a really sharp wit. I'd much rather try, fail, and land in that space than not try, because it doesn't improve me as a human being to be good at Battlemaster. It improves me to have an opportunity to deal with situations I will never deal with in real life and to do so in a manner I will probably never experience in real life. It may seem totally irrelevant to us in 2013 but you can learn a lot about people today by looking at how and why people in 1300 did things, and to the extent that that requires effort, yeah. Most worthwhile things do.
