At abbi1993

Was the book truly that bad. Not often one hears that about many rpg products.

Quote from: blackstone on October 14, 2022, 07:31:35 AM

Quote from: jhkim on October 14, 2022, 01:57:13 AM
This is shown false by history, though. Lucy Hicks Anderson lived for decades as a woman, and was only outed when required to undergo medical examination. Lili Elbe also lived for years as a woman, often introduced as her wife's sister-in-law.

Examples of two people. Two. They're the exception and not the norm for the era. all of the examples you give are outliers. It's true, in your avant-garde sub cultures, such people would have found a place. The fact of the matter is for the greater part of society at the time, people who were homosexual and/or trans would have been considered deviants and would have been treated as such.

With that being said, Chaosium replacing "Sex" on the character sheet with "pronoun" is nothing more than self-serving virtue signalling and serves no purpose beyond that.

We may be miscommunicating here, because I don't disagree with this. Yes, the greater part of American and European society at the time considered transgender people to be deviants. That's what I said earlier. I also said that the change in the character sheet made no difference, specifically that it would have no effect on my campaign. So yes, it is a token statement.

My point with the two examples wasn't that they were accepted by society. They weren't. Anderson was thrown in jail when her transgender status was revealed later in life.

Where I disagreed was with MeganovaStella's statement that without HRT, "any transgender character would be outed extremely quickly".

Quote from: jhkim on October 13, 2022, 05:04:11 PM

Quote from: PulpHerb on October 13, 2022, 12:22:57 PM
It recently became the first RPG set in the 1920s that encouraged characters to let people know their preferred pronouns.

Quote from: Xanadu on October 13, 2022, 02:38:17 PM
Ugh, I see. Did the edit the 7e core books and everything or what?

As far as I know, there is no change to the rules. They revised the official character sheet PDF downloads so that there is a space for "pronoun" that replaces "sex".

From my view, I don't see that this would encourage anything in my gaming either way. I'd still run my 1920s game as the 1920s. Historically, there was no tradition of asking for pronouns, but there were still transgender people, as there have been throughout history. If someone had a transgender character, they'd put what pronouns they use in that space. If outed, they would be discriminated against by most of American society.

The choice of pronoun to replace sex instead of gender is a performative act to signal they're "good people" IMHO. If they were interested in the situation you describe gender would be a more useful block to indicate the social presentation they made regardless of physical morphology.

Quote from: jhkim on October 14, 2022, 01:57:13 AM

This is shown false by history, though. Lucy Hicks Anderson lived for decades as a woman, and was only outed when required to undergo medical examination. Lili Elbe also lived for years as a woman, often introduced as her wife's sister-in-law.

As conjecture, historical European clothing was far less form-fitting than modern fashions. Also, with historical medicine and disease, people more often had irregular features from ill health or developmental issues. Those are only conjectures, though. However they did it, there were transgender people who were not noticed for years - and probably some more who were never outed.

Probably some could pull it off. I also think there were situations where everyone knew something was different but nobody wanted to be the first to suggest it.

Quote from: wmarshal on October 14, 2022, 08:49:57 AM

Quote from: Abbo1993 on October 14, 2022, 08:18:45 AM
My understanding is that Lynne Hardy is the one behind all of these changes and the one to run Chaosium recently, most of the shitty changes to the books have her name on it.

The responsibility for the nonsense lies with the company ownership. If not Lynne Hardy  Chaosium would have just had another person in a similar position do the same nonsense. Don't fall for the fantasy that "if it wasn't for that dratted employee everything would be fine."

It is notable that this did not happen until the founder was dead.  Even though there were periods where he was not involved (and may not have had ownership) it seems like Greg's presence was much larger in the company than we realized.

Quote from: Abraxus on October 14, 2022, 11:12:21 AM
At abbi1993

Was the book truly that bad. Not often one hears that about many rpg products.

Ok, I will say that the book is very well researched, there are a lot of details on asian mythology and cultures, Hardy definitely flexed her academic muscles in this but the way the campaign plays feels completely wrong, I have only skimmed the book so far and didn't focus too much on the specific encounters but as someone who spent 6 months playing it, I can say that it was the worse CoC campaign I've ever played and the keeper was not at fault here, I might actually post a review once I finish reading it.

I'm just morbidly curious about which is going to wind up getting the more sympathetic treatment by Chaosium: Weimar Berlin or Regency England.

Anybody that writes zer, zim, or the singular "they" on their character sheet automatically starts with maximum Insanity. Because obviously they are.

Quote from: Effete on October 14, 2022, 05:37:33 PM
Anybody that writes zer, zim, or the singular "they" on their character sheet automatically starts with maximum Insanity. Because obviously they are.

Honestly? I wouldn't even give a single fuck about it, we are all meeting with strangers online to play pretend so I would try, if you are a nice person, to indulge you (I have a few players that do the they thing and I don't mind it since they are good people), thing is most of those that do the pronouns thing are colossal cunts, I have seen these little shits derailing games, trying to get people kicked out of servers and in some cases even fucking doxing so my current policy these days is to stay as far away as possible from these assholes.

Quote from: Effete on October 14, 2022, 05:37:33 PM
Anybody that writes zer, zim, or the singular "they" on their character sheet automatically starts with maximum Insanity. Because obviously they are.

There is a difference between the player and the character. The insane often pretend to be sane to get along in life, why not in the game as well?

Quote from: Ruprecht on October 14, 2022, 08:49:01 PM

Quote from: Effete on October 14, 2022, 05:37:33 PM
Anybody that writes zer, zim, or the singular "they" on their character sheet automatically starts with maximum Insanity. Because obviously they are.

There is a difference between the player and the character.

Of course. But I've seen "self-insert characters" often enough where I'm not sure there's a distinction in some cases.

QuoteThe insane often pretend to be sane to get along in life, why not in the game as well?

If that's the case, then they'd just use he or she for their pronouns, am I right?

Quote from: wmarshal on October 14, 2022, 08:49:57 AM
The responsibility for the nonsense lies with the company ownership. If not Lynne Hardy  Chaosium would have just had another person in a similar position do the same nonsense. Don't fall for the fantasy that "if it wasn't for that dratted employee everything would be fine."

Well.......It's weird how this happens. Sometimes whole companies just bend over backwards because one or two employees screech about being discriminated against. You could still say that's it's their fault for doing that, but it's bizarre what I have seen sometimes; it's as if a couple of people are holding the rest hostage.

Quote from: MigRib on October 10, 2022, 02:17:22 PM
The Basic Expert has a great channel, and he is a terrific artist. He already did four covers for us. He just released a new game, Atomic Punk 2160.

I had no idea he was an RPG artist. And hugely talented at that!

Quote from: Trond on October 15, 2022, 01:10:42 AM

Quote from: wmarshal on October 14, 2022, 08:49:57 AM
The responsibility for the nonsense lies with the company ownership. If not Lynne Hardy  Chaosium would have just had another person in a similar position do the same nonsense. Don't fall for the fantasy that "if it wasn't for that dratted employee everything would be fine."

Well.......It's weird how this happens. Sometimes whole companies just bend over backwards because one or two employees screech about being discriminated against. You could still say that's it's their fault for doing that, but it's bizarre what I have seen sometimes; it's as if a couple of people are holding the rest hostage.

Yes and no. I follow the RPG Design Panelcast, not because it's good, but because I need to know what my opponents think and how good they actually are at game design. (Spoilers: The answer is Not Very.) As such I can actually comment on this in a broader sense, and not just with Chaosium.

Practically every developer on this panelcast should go straight to Red. Almost every panel gets derailed at some point by woke politics, and the people who invoke politics on these panels are almost invariably one of the junior or weaker designers of the panel who also lack good on-topic comments to add. This is not just about injecting politics; it's also being used as a filibuster and a smokescreen to cover inexperience, ignorance, or incompetence. Sometimes all three.

There are some genuine kool-aid drinkers mixed in, but I think incompetents trying to network by virtue signalling and floating by on bare minimum effort outnumber them by about a factor of 3. I also find creativity distinctly lacking, potentially because the truly creative people involved have realized that the political establishment actually thinks of creativity as a threat, so they either jump ship or (more likely) keep their mouths shut.

I have a feeling you may be right. Several board game reviews in the recent years  do something similar where whenever there's a euro game they'll frequently go on random tangents about "capitalism" to pad the runtime.

Have you published anything? I'd love to take a look!