Quote from: Zelen on June 26, 2022, 07:27:31 PM
No one really believes that Lovecraft's work harms people.

Who said that? I certainly didn't. It's nothing we've talked about.

That's called moving the goalposts.

Not just moving, you're running off the field with them and chartering a starship to take them to the Galactic Cup on Betelgeuse.

And you're doing that to defend racism.

Yay. You're a hero. You defended a racist.

Quote from: Tubesock Army on June 26, 2022, 03:41:46 PM

Quote from: Pat on June 25, 2022, 11:54:40 PM

Quote from: Zelen on June 25, 2022, 10:45:35 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.

LOL!

Quote from: Pat on June 26, 2022, 11:28:38 PM

Quote from: Zelen on June 26, 2022, 07:27:31 PM
No one really believes that Lovecraft's work harms people.

Who said that? I certainly didn't. It's nothing we've talked about.

That's called moving the goalposts.

Not just moving, you're running off the field with them and chartering a starship to take them to the Galactic Cup on Betelgeuse.

And you're doing that to defend racism.

Yay. You're a hero. You defended a racist.

I don't think HPLs work could make anyone a racist. I don't think it could harm anyone. I do think he was quite racist but again mostly a product of his time.

And while a lot of his stories had racist elements many did not. At the mountains of madness, the colour out of space, the whisperer in darkness and others never touched on it.

Also HPL looked a little strange and clearly had mental issues, many brilliant people do. I'm sure he suffered some ostracism and cruelty early on, this may have made him seek  targets to vent his anger at.

I never wanted his work banned, and I was pissed when the fantasy writers Guild dropped the Howie awards. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Fantasy_Award

Ironically the first person to object to the howie refused to accept one due to considering ut an insult to HPL.... 

Back to fucking up new editions, a friend I steered towards pathfinder long ago has said he won't get the new edition as it eliminates 'slavery' because it offends some people and is making some entities gender neutral.

Quote from: I 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.

Thanks for bringing back on topic.

I don't think we're in any real danger of major RPG books disappearing at this point. There was a time when I was concerned that the end of an edition was the end of meaningful access to a book. We're now at the point where these books live on indefinitely in PDF no matter what.

The only thing to consider is that if a publisher decides to make a new edition, it'd be nice if they divested the rights to continuing to publish the older system to some kind of rights-holding entity or license. Kind of like OGL but as a semi-contractual clause that if the developer fails to provide updates the contract lapses and ownership reverts to commons.

Quote from: Battlemaster on June 27, 2022, 04:25:41 AM
Back to fucking up new editions, a friend I steered towards pathfinder long ago has said he won't get the new edition as it eliminates 'slavery' because it offends some people and is making some entities gender neutral.

There's a reason I refuse to pay money for some of these games.

Eliminating slavery from the setting was just stupid. Hey, Paizo, maybe players want to fight the slavers and destroy the institution! Y'know... be HEROES.

Quote from: Ghostmaker on June 27, 2022, 09:48:11 AMEliminating slavery from the setting was just stupid. Hey, Paizo, maybe players want to fight the slavers and destroy the institution! Y'know... be HEROES.

Paizo thinks slavery is bad, so they scrub it from their setting.

Chaosium thinks racism is bad, so they make a point to tell everyone that HPL and the 1920s in general were racist.


I don't know but I find it funny that when confronted with two similar situations, the two companies react to it in the exact opposite way. It is one of the reason that I don't bother with corporate RPG settings. The companies that control them are making decisions based on what will make the authors safe from cancellation, not on what will make the game setting more interesting or fun. Another reason why companies insist on fucking up perfectly good game settings.

Quote from: Ghostmaker on June 27, 2022, 09:48:11 AM

Quote from: Battlemaster on June 27, 2022, 04:25:41 AM
Back to fucking up new editions, a friend I steered towards pathfinder long ago has said he won't get the new edition as it eliminates 'slavery' because it offends some people and is making some entities gender neutral.

There's a reason I refuse to pay money for some of these games.

Eliminating slavery from the setting was just stupid. Hey, Paizo, maybe players want to fight the slavers and destroy the institution! Y'know... be HEROES.

Word!

Quote from: Ghostmaker on June 27, 2022, 09:48:11 AM

Quote from: Battlemaster on June 27, 2022, 04:25:41 AM
Back to fucking up new editions, a friend I steered towards pathfinder long ago has said he won't get the new edition as it eliminates 'slavery' because it offends some people and is making some entities gender neutral.

There's a reason I refuse to pay money for some of these games.

Eliminating slavery from the setting was just stupid. Hey, Paizo, maybe players want to fight the slavers and destroy the institution! Y'know... be HEROES.

That's a very good reason, but not the only reason. Slaves, servants, thralls, serfs, indentured laborers, etc. are a pillar of human civilization. To paraphrase Dan Carlin it's very likely that everyone alive today has ancestors who were slaves and ancestors who were slaveholders.

How the hell does D&D's pseudo feudalism work without serfs? How can you have a Duke if you don't have a massive hereditary labor class? These were people who were lumped into the transfer of the land they worked, like your fridge gets included when you sell your house. Can you have the Renaissance without the backbone of slavery? Would you achieve democracy in Athens if the citizens were working their own fields and cleaning their own shit?

I'm not trying to be an edge lord here. Erasing slavery negates the contribution to civilization made by the people of that class. Hey look, we invented the printing press and we didn't have to enslave anyone! Rubbish. Every tier supported the one above it and we didn't get the good shit without the bad.

Yes, there could be many fantasy worlds without slavery, but they would look very different from the typical friendly feudalism of D&D and similar games. Once you remove a pillar, you need to fuck with the whole structure to prevent collapse. And, yeah, I get it, some people just want to play the fun bits and ignore the "icky" stuff.

If anyone knows a good, believable human-centric game without a large laboring underclass, I'd love to hear about it.

Quote from: rytrasmi on June 27, 2022, 05:51:34 PM

Quote from: Ghostmaker on June 27, 2022, 09:48:11 AM

Quote from: Battlemaster on June 27, 2022, 04:25:41 AM
Back to fucking up new editions, a friend I steered towards pathfinder long ago has said he won't get the new edition as it eliminates 'slavery' because it offends some people and is making some entities gender neutral.

There's a reason I refuse to pay money for some of these games.

Eliminating slavery from the setting was just stupid. Hey, Paizo, maybe players want to fight the slavers and destroy the institution! Y'know... be HEROES.

That's a very good reason, but not the only reason. Slaves, servants, thralls, serfs, indentured laborers, etc. are a pillar of human civilization. To paraphrase Dan Carlin it's very likely that everyone alive today has ancestors who were slaves and ancestors who were slaveholders.

How the hell does D&D's pseudo feudalism work without serfs? How can you have a Duke if you don't have a massive hereditary labor class? These were people who were lumped into the transfer of the land they worked, like your fridge gets included when you sell your house. Can you have the Renaissance without the backbone of slavery? Would you achieve democracy in Athens if the citizens were working their own fields and cleaning their own shit?

I'm not trying to be an edge lord here. Erasing slavery negates the contribution to civilization made by the people of that class. Hey look, we invented the printing press and we didn't have to enslave anyone! Rubbish. Every tier supported the one above it and we didn't get the good shit without the bad.

Yes, there could be many fantasy worlds without slavery, but they would look very different from the typical friendly feudalism of D&D and similar games. Once you remove a pillar, you need to fuck with the whole structure to prevent collapse. And, yeah, I get it, some people just want to play the fun bits and ignore the "icky" stuff.

If anyone knows a good, believable human-centric game without a large laboring underclass, I'd love to hear about it.

You add the qualifier of "believable" which is always going to be subjective, but we are also talking about game settings where pervasive magic seems to have had minimal impact on human development,  so that's already a moot point.

Quote from: hedgehobbit on June 27, 2022, 12:13:53 PM
Paizo thinks slavery is bad, so they scrub it from their setting.

Chaosium thinks racism is bad, so they make a point to tell everyone that HPL and the 1920s in general were racist.

I don't know but I find it funny that when confronted with two similar situations, the two companies react to it in the exact opposite way. It is one of the reason that I don't bother with corporate RPG settings.

So you have a problem with Chaosium saying that the 1920s in general were racist, but it sounds like you'd also have a problem if Chaosium was revisionist and portrayed the 1920s as *not* racist. What is your preferred approach?

Quote from: rytrasmi on June 27, 2022, 05:51:34 PM
How the hell does D&D's pseudo feudalism work without serfs? How can you have a Duke if you don't have a massive hereditary labor class? These were people who were lumped into the transfer of the land they worked, like your fridge gets included when you sell your house. Can you have the Renaissance without the backbone of slavery? Would you achieve democracy in Athens if the citizens were working their own fields and cleaning their own shit?

I'm not trying to be an edge lord here. Erasing slavery negates the contribution to civilization made by the people of that class. Hey look, we invented the printing press and we didn't have to enslave anyone! Rubbish. Every tier supported the one above it and we didn't get the good shit without the bad.

Yes, there could be many fantasy worlds without slavery, but they would look very different from the typical friendly feudalism of D&D and similar games. Once you remove a pillar, you need to fuck with the whole structure to prevent collapse. And, yeah, I get it, some people just want to play the fun bits and ignore the "icky" stuff.

If anyone knows a good, believable human-centric game without a large laboring underclass, I'd love to hear about it.

In all the D&D settings that I'm familiar with, slavery is not portrayed as matching historical medieval reality. Rather, things tend towards a Tolkienesque culture which has little resemblance to medieval history. Village of Hommlet from 1979 doesn't have serfs. It has free farmers all in nuclear families. More broadly, in settings like Greyhawk there are good kingdoms don't practice slavery, and never have - and don't appear to suffer anything from its lack. Slavery is something done only in evil kingdoms and/or by evil races.

I think you are correct that it isn't believable. The economics and cultural development of D&D has never made sense - though also, given that moral codes are conveyed via active gods and magic, there's no reason things should be at all close to medieval history in development.

Quote from: jhkim on June 27, 2022, 08:22:44 PMSo you have a problem with Chaosium saying that the 1920s in general were racist, but it sounds like you'd also have a problem if Chaosium was revisionist and portrayed the 1920s as *not* racist. What is your preferred approach?

I don't have a problem with either, I was just pointing out how two different companies reacted to modern political pressure in the opposite way. Of the two approaches, I would say that Paizo is definitely the worst choice as all it is doing is removing a potential bad guy from the game. What Call of Cthulhu did, OTOH, was just a virtue signal. Instead, they should have simply stated that the game takes place in an idealized, fantasy version of the 1920s and left it up to individual GMs as to whether or not they wished to address any sort of social issues in their game, be it racism, sexism, exploitation of workers, treatment of the mentally ill, etc.

Of course, neither thing would actually affect a GM that wants to write his own adventures. But, from what I understand, more Pathfinder GMs use official modules than CoC GMs so Pathfinder players would be more affected  (although I have no actually data to base this on) .

Personally I do not have a problem with either. If you do not want to have a game with slavery, then don't. If you want a game fighting slavery, then do.
I prefer not to have it in fantasy games and don't mind it in games set in our own world. The simple reason being, that fantasy games often expect me to roleplay someone who is down with the system, serve a king etc. and I personally find that hard to stomach for a medieval king. If your game is about starting a slave revolt though, I am on board.

As for fucking up systems... greed mostly I guess. It seems to be easier to churn out a second edition than make a new and exciting game.
I mean, CoC had 7 editions and they did not manage to get it right in their eyes? Why should I think they get it right this time?

Corollary to the Options treadmill is the Splat treadmill, and so too is the Edition treadmill. They want you to re-buy their content to cover their company bills next year and keep them from working a more dreary, less glamorous job.  Easy story to understand. But it is a strategy that has diminishing returns. Hence the push to make it seasonal, community-based restricted, and even competitive... because CCGs already paved the ground on those treadmills (set blocks, play formats, tournaments).

You could always choose to not run the treadmill, though.

Quote from: Opaopajr on June 28, 2022, 11:53:19 AM
Corollary to the Options treadmill is the Splat treadmill, and so too is the Edition treadmill. They want you to re-buy their content to cover their company bills next year and keep them from working a more dreary, less glamorous job.  Easy story to understand. But it is a strategy that has diminishing returns. Hence the push to make it seasonal, community-based restricted, and even competitive... because CCGs already paved the ground on those treadmills (set blocks, play formats, tournaments).

You could always choose to not run the treadmill, though.

Hence why Wizards, Paizo and Paradox decided to make their own store fronts under OBS where fans can publish fanfiction with an official stamp of approval. It removes competition by brainwashing upcoming writers into being compliant consumers who will never publish original work. I think they can take their monopoly and shove it up their ass.

Quote from: David Johansen on June 23, 2022, 07:25:11 PM
Ultimately print systems can't function as living rulebooks but the business model is dependent on core book sales and compatibility eats into sales and history has shown the print book game industry can't survive without incompatible new editions.

Most of GURPS' money over a couple of decades came from worldbooks. When they set that aside, handed the writing over to a particle physicist (lovely guy, but not so great at simple and accessible) and did 4e, well it's all fizzled out now. That and of course Dark Sun and Forgotten Realms and all the Imperial Traveller stuff likewise show what you're saying to not be so.

People like good rules systems, and will pay for them. They also like good settings, and will pay for them.

If what you were saying were true, then nobody could make money selling chess sets.