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Author Topic: why do companies insist on fucking up perfectly good systems?  (Read 7949 times)

mightybrain

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Re: why do companies insist on fucking up perfectly good systems?
« Reply #45 on: June 26, 2022, 12:08:17 PM »
We used to call it xenophobia. Not his only phobia. A lot of people have a phobia of spiders, insects, or snakes. Imagine if we routinely labelled all such people as speciesist bigoted alt right fascists. But this is where we are now apparently.

GeekyBugle

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Re: why do companies insist on fucking up perfectly good systems?
« Reply #46 on: June 26, 2022, 12:12:00 PM »
I think it's bullshit to attack CoC 'woke' because it states that 1920's America (and most other countries in even the western world)  was unbelievably racist by today's standards. I mean, fucking read lovecraft sometime!

That's just the right saying truth makes them look bad.

I do agree about pronouns. I mean I can call Chelsea Manning she, tho I see Bruce Jenner as more of an it,  but I absolutely refuse to call an individual 'they'. I just cannot use what has always been the plural to a known individual.

That's what separates people like me from the woke, there are limits to how far I'm willing to go cater to extremist groups. I'm not willing to rewrite my entire vocabulary to appease small fringe groups.

A leftist disingenuous twat? Aren't they all?

We don't criticize CoC's publisher for stating that there WAS racism back then, we criticize them for pilloring H.P. Lovecraft as a terrible human being, his works as racist works from a racist author AND then profiting from it.

It would be akin to me pilloring Marion Eleanor Zimmer Bradley for being a fucking pedophile enabler at the very least and likelly a pedophile herself and then profitting from her works.
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Here is why this forum tends to be so stupid. Many people here think Joe Biden is "The Left", when he is actually Far Right and every US republican is just an idiot.

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Visitor Q

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Re: why do companies insist on fucking up perfectly good systems?
« Reply #47 on: June 26, 2022, 01:00:47 PM »
We used to call it xenophobia. Not his only phobia. A lot of people have a phobia of spiders, insects, or snakes. Imagine if we routinely labelled all such people as speciesist bigoted alt right fascists. But this is where we are now apparently.

If this is your argument then I hate to break it to you but xenophobia doesn't mean what you think it means.

Zelen

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Re: why do companies insist on fucking up perfectly good systems?
« Reply #48 on: June 26, 2022, 01:40:09 PM »
It's a weird kind of intellectual bankruptcy to be so myopically focused on the particulars of word choice of a genius author from a century ago. If every single artist has to pass this same kind of purity test, there isn't much left in any intellectual field whatsoever. Virtually every man of note in the history of humankind had views that would be unacceptable.
No, H.P. Lovecraft is a bit of an extreme case. Even accounting for his time.

Sure, and there are thousands of historical figures that were significantly more of whatever you'd want to call Lovecraft, which don't receive the same treatment. May as well throw out every single historical figure with an outlook that either precedes or doesn't derive from the French Revolution.

I

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Re: why do companies insist on fucking up perfectly good systems?
« Reply #49 on: June 26, 2022, 02:05:27 PM »

Sure, and there are thousands of historical figures that were significantly more of whatever you'd want to call Lovecraft, which don't receive the same treatment. May as well throw out every single historical figure with an outlook that either precedes or doesn't derive from the French Revolution.

Jack London, for example.  But he almost never gets criticized.  I wonder why.  Oh yeah... he declared himself a Socialist.  He was on "the right side of history."  Like Margaret Sanger, Jane Swisshelm, William T. Sherman, Karl Marx -- the list goes on and on.  Lovecraft also embraced a sort of modified Socialism, but it was very late in life when he did that so I doubt that his critics are even aware of it.

Pat
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Re: why do companies insist on fucking up perfectly good systems?
« Reply #50 on: June 26, 2022, 02:28:43 PM »
It's a weird kind of intellectual bankruptcy to be so myopically focused on the particulars of word choice of a genius author from a century ago. If every single artist has to pass this same kind of purity test, there isn't much left in any intellectual field whatsoever. Virtually every man of note in the history of humankind had views that would be unacceptable.
No, H.P. Lovecraft is a bit of an extreme case. Even accounting for his time.

Sure, and there are thousands of historical figures that were significantly more of whatever you'd want to call Lovecraft, which don't receive the same treatment. May as well throw out every single historical figure with an outlook that either precedes or doesn't derive from the French Revolution.
You can claim he's equivalent to "every single historical figure" that wasn't inculcated in whatever you think the French Revolution represents.

Horseshit. Lovecraft was exceptionally racist, even for his time. He used very negative stereotypes, fear of miscegenation was a major theme across multiple works, and by all accounts he held very strong beliefs on the subject in his personal life. He is not equivalent to (to pick a few random names) Burroughs, Howard, Smith, or any other contemporary peer you could name.

It's amazing how discussions on this topic bring out such unthinking blindness, on both sides of the aisle. On the one hand, there's the completely irrational attempt to erase every historical figure who doesn't adhere to the TrendyIdeologyOfHate. On the other, there's this attempt to excuse exceptionally terrible beliefs with false claims of "everyone did it". Partisanship is the mind killer.

Pat
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Re: why do companies insist on fucking up perfectly good systems?
« Reply #51 on: June 26, 2022, 02:44:20 PM »
Jack London, for example.  But he almost never gets criticized.  I wonder why.  Oh yeah... he declared himself a Socialist.  He was on "the right side of history."  Like Margaret Sanger, Jane Swisshelm, William T. Sherman, Karl Marx -- the list goes on and on.  Lovecraft also embraced a sort of modified Socialism, but it was very late in life when he did that so I doubt that his critics are even aware of it.
I read a lot of London when I was younger, but only his stories, not what other people wrote about him. So I never ran across anything about socialism or whatever vague negative things you aren't specifying. So I looked it up.

He did write about the "yellow peril", including what sounds like a nasty sinophohic story. He did express support for eugenics. So he hardly meets modern standards, either of the left or the right. But how about the standards of his time? Unfortunately, eugenics was the "scientific consensus" about a century back. To be exceptional for his time, London would have to be a really ardent advocate. And he's not. He writes positive portrayals of Mexicans, Hawaiians, and Japanese, including some held up as almost superhuman exemplars. He supports intermarriage, saying "little Hawaii, with its hotch potch races, is making a better demonstration than the United States".

So he certainly had some views that would not pass muster in polite society today. But he seems like a product of his times, rather than an exception like Lovecraft.

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Re: why do companies insist on fucking up perfectly good systems?
« Reply #52 on: June 26, 2022, 03:41:46 PM »
It's a weird kind of intellectual bankruptcy to be so myopically focused on the particulars of word choice of a genius author from a century ago. If every single artist has to pass this same kind of purity test, there isn't much left in any intellectual field whatsoever. Virtually every man of note in the history of humankind had views that would be unacceptable.
No, H.P. Lovecraft is a bit of an extreme case. Even accounting for his time.

Yeah, when even other people in the 1920s are like, "Damn, that dude racist af", you gotta be pretty damn racist.

Omega

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Re: why do companies insist on fucking up perfectly good systems?
« Reply #53 on: June 26, 2022, 04:11:31 PM »
Oh waaah waaaah!  It deals with the reality of the 1920's!  It makes white people look bad because it tells tge truth about America a cebtiry ago!  Waah!  Waaah!

This is a thread that you made complaining about unnecessary rules changes, but now you are defending the same company for wasting time and effort adding unnecessary historical commentary into the rulebook.

At least the guys pointing out Wokeness are being consistent.

That is because he is just another SJW trolling for dirt.

mightybrain

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Re: why do companies insist on fucking up perfectly good systems?
« Reply #54 on: June 26, 2022, 06:54:41 PM »
Miscegenation theory has an interesting history. The term was coined by the democratic party in a hoax pamphlet listing a policy goal of the republicans to promote interracial marriage. At the time they thought this an idea so shocking that even anti-slavery voters would withdraw their support for the republicans.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Zelen

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Re: why do companies insist on fucking up perfectly good systems?
« Reply #55 on: June 26, 2022, 07:27:31 PM »
It's amazing how discussions on this topic bring out such unthinking blindness, on both sides of the aisle. On the one hand, there's the completely irrational attempt to erase every historical figure who doesn't adhere to the TrendyIdeologyOfHate. On the other, there's this attempt to excuse exceptionally terrible beliefs with false claims of "everyone did it". Partisanship is the mind killer.

Lovecraft's sins amount to ... having the wrong opinions. He was weird, creative writer who has the misfortune of being popular among the RPG/TTG crowd. The people who are "triggered" by HP Lovecraft are the same people who trip over themselves to excuse violent murderers and rapists.

No one really believes that Lovecraft's work harms people. It's just a stage on which people can jockey for status by pretending to be more moral.
« Last Edit: June 26, 2022, 09:23:50 PM by Zelen »

Zalman

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Re: why do companies insist on fucking up perfectly good systems?
« Reply #56 on: June 26, 2022, 08:55:22 PM »
No one really believes that Lovecraft's work harms people. It's just a stage on which people can jockey for status by pretending to be more moral.

Indeed, most of the complaints ("his wife said ...", "he had a cat as a child ...", "there was this letter he wrote ...") have nothing to do with his work at all. The OP claims his racism is evident to anyone who "just reads Lovecraft", and then demonstrates how far beyond "just reading" one has to go to dig up any real dirt.
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Abraxus

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Re: why do companies insist on fucking up perfectly good systems?
« Reply #57 on: June 26, 2022, 09:43:44 PM »
Not to mention many white were racists towards other whites at the time. Go ask how the Italians and Irish were treated at the time.

The make HPL out to be the only most racist person of of his time and no one else.

After all one cannot go against the carefully constructed personal narratives can we.

I

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Re: why do companies insist on fucking up perfectly good systems?
« Reply #58 on: June 26, 2022, 10:58:33 PM »
Jack London, for example.  But he almost never gets criticized.  I wonder why.  Oh yeah... he declared himself a Socialist.  He was on "the right side of history."  Like Margaret Sanger, Jane Swisshelm, William T. Sherman, Karl Marx -- the list goes on and on.  Lovecraft also embraced a sort of modified Socialism, but it was very late in life when he did that so I doubt that his critics are even aware of it.
I read a lot of London when I was younger, but only his stories, not what other people wrote about him. So I never ran across anything about socialism or whatever vague negative things you aren't specifying. So I looked it up.

He did write about the "yellow peril", including what sounds like a nasty sinophohic story. He did express support for eugenics. So he hardly meets modern standards, either of the left or the right. But how about the standards of his time? Unfortunately, eugenics was the "scientific consensus" about a century back. To be exceptional for his time, London would have to be a really ardent advocate. And he's not. He writes positive portrayals of Mexicans, Hawaiians, and Japanese, including some held up as almost superhuman exemplars. He supports intermarriage, saying "little Hawaii, with its hotch potch races, is making a better demonstration than the United States".

So he certainly had some views that would not pass muster in polite society today. But he seems like a product of his times, rather than an exception like Lovecraft.

I agree that he doesn't meet modern standards of left or right, and I too don't tend to judge people of the past by modern standards.  I brought London up as a comparison of how modern people damn one writer's opinions and pretty much ignore another's.   For myself, I'd argue that in a comparison between London and Lovecraft as people, not just as writers, London comes off worse because he actively applauded political assassinations, believed in wiping out the Chinese with what we'd now call biological warfare, and stuff like that whereas Lovecraft had low opinions of non-whites and Jews but I don't recall him ever advocating killing anybody.  For example, even though he disliked Jews, people who knew him reported that he was appalled when the Nazis started beating them in the streets and worse.   I think London would have happily joined in Bolshevik-style executions of his political enemies.   And his cherry-picking of certain non-whites as "OK" doesn't cut much ice with me; even Hitler admired Arabs and the Japanese.   But I don't advocate banning London's writings and I can see good things in the man as well as bad ones.

I

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Re: why do companies insist on fucking up perfectly good systems?
« Reply #59 on: June 26, 2022, 11:10:38 PM »
Aaaaand since I just realized that my above post is wildly off-topic and doesn't have anything to do with gaming, I will try to make amends and actually post something relevant to the thread title:

Companies fuck up good rules systems because they make money selling rule books.  Every player tends to buy the rules, whereas only the GM will typically buy support materials, scenarios, etc.  If the rule books only change in very minor ways, like Call of Cthulhu did for six editions, you get people like me who quit buying them after the fifth edition because that's the only one I need.  And I COULD easily have kept running the game with my original 2nd edition rules (the only other edition I own).  I thought the CoC rules were fine as is and there was no reason for a 7th edition, but I don't depend on publishing games for a living and the folks at Chaosium do.  I've played 7th edition and it's a downgrade IMO, but some people prefer it.  And with their new 7th edition rules they now get to re-publish and re-sell nearly 40 years' worth of old, but now updated for 7th edition, splat books and scenarios.