TheRPGSite

Ok, recently asked about CoC, and was told it didn't go woke, so I read a review of 7e.

Good news: sounds like it wasn't 'woke' in it's candid handling of the 1920-30s era.

But I got a surprising bit of bad news.

If the reviewer was  accurate and his review's prose suggested competence and fairness, chaosium took its perfectly good rules system and basically fuckified it severely.

It seems a lot of changes complicated, adding dice pools or eliminating the simple resistance table. Others seem fair, like allowing players to push some rolls,  or keeping POW from being the most vital stat.

But in general the changes seem to have fucked up a perfectly good system.

Why do game companies insist on ''fixing'' what is working fine?

Just to sell a new edition?

I've not played much CoC 7E, but what do you mean by dice pools in context of the game? I know they added advantage/disadvantage by rolling an extra 10s die. There are also rules for Hard and Extreme successes, which I actually like. However, I didn't see any rules for dice pools.

Did I miss something?

Yes. This is why I've become completely disillusioned with any at least moderately complex rules systems. Every new edition will make some good changes that streamline previously convoluted mechanics, but at the same time they'll introduce more unnecessary complexity elsewhere. It's a constant balancing act that serves only to keep your frustration with the rules consistently high.

Why did the Coke company mess with its formula, producing 'New Coke'?

If I'm not mistaken, CoC 7E gives you a big chunk of luck points to spend on critical rolls to avoid disaster. However, those luck points are hard to regain. It reminds me quite a bit of how the old West End Ghostbusters game worked. So it may have been 'let's give players a little agency in avoiding a disaster that occurs solely because of crap dice'.

Quote from: Battlemaster on June 23, 2022, 12:24:47 PMBut in general the changes seem to have fucked up a perfectly good system.

Bear in mind that the learning curve on any change usually makes the new process initially seem worse than its predecessor. Trying the updates out in practice is always a good thing.

QuoteWhy do game companies insist on ''fixing'' what is working fine? Just to sell a new edition?

That is part of it. After all, if nothing's thought to need changing then no need to write a new edition in the first place.

I suspect it's also as much a product of responding to user feedback, with the caveat that it's entirely possible they've forgotten what I call "the King criterion" for evaluating criticism -- this came from an article written by Stephen King about writing, which I read decades ago but still remember. Basically, if you're getting feedback from many different users and reviewers, only pay attention to the parts where most of them agree; if most are criticizing something different or everybody's suggesting their own improvement, you can safely ignore all of them. But the temptation to try to please everyone is always a strong one.

I've heard nothing but bad things about the changes made for 7th edition....

And none of them have anything to do with Wokeness or not. Just sounds like they tinkered too much with the system and it ended up in a state nobody liked... Kind of like the newest edition of Shadowrun.

Lots of people are advising using Delta Green's system instead.

You know you're in trouble when there's a box for pronouns on your character sheet.

Quote from: Ghostmaker on June 23, 2022, 01:38:35 PMIf I'm not mistaken, CoC 7E gives you a big chunk of luck points to spend on critical rolls to avoid disaster. However, those luck points are hard to regain.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that rule from Pulp Cthulhu? I seem to remember it there (where it at least made sense).

But to answer the OP's question, when a company hires someone to write a new version of the rules, they aren't going to hire someone that thinks the current version of the rules works fine. Hence they will find people that want to "improve" the game whether you like it or not. Also, when people are satisfied with a game's rules, they tend to avoid forums so those forums become filled with people complaining about certain aspects of the rules, which gives companies a false sense of how well the current rules work.

I saw the same thing with Hero System. They addressed the needs of the hardcore players but completely ignored all the people that had abandoned the game because of core issues that the new version never addressed. I call it the "Fan Survivor Bias".

Quote from: hedgehobbit on June 23, 2022, 02:14:59 PMI saw the same thing with Hero System. They addressed the needs of the hardcore players but completely ignored all the people that had abandoned the game because of core issues that the new version never addressed. I call it the "Fan Survivor Bias".

What were some of these unaddressed core issues with HERO, out of curiosity?

Quote from: mightybrain on June 23, 2022, 02:07:57 PM
You know you're in trouble when there's a box for pronouns on your character sheet.

I though you were joking, so I looked. Holy shit what a bunch of shitheads.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on June 23, 2022, 01:39:30 PM

I suspect it's also as much a product of responding to user feedback, with the caveat that it's entirely possible they've forgotten what I call "the King criterion" for evaluating criticism -- this came from an article written by Stephen King about writing, which I read decades ago but still remember. Basically, if you're getting feedback from many different users and reviewers, only pay attention to the parts where most of them agree; if most are criticizing something different or everybody's suggesting their own improvement, you can safely ignore all of them. But the temptation to try to please everyone is always a strong one.

No kidding.  It's an axiom of feedback from anyone that's every dealt with it systematically that "users" are good at knowing what they don't like and terrible at telling you why.  So lots of smoke tells you there is fire, but woe onto you if you trust their feedback on where exactly it is or what is causing it.  This is a truth that is very difficult for designers dealing with feedback to accept, and game designers are hardly exempt, even in the unlikely event that their feedback is evaluated systematically. 

This effect is so strong it can even persist down to the anecdotal, personal micro level.  I recently did a rough, crude "playtest" with 6 players that I knew very well.  They all agreed that X didn't work.  They all had suggestions what to do to fix it.  None of their suggestions were useful or in some cases even possible.  Yet they were correct that X was a problem.  The solution looked nothing like what they suggested, and in fact required a moderate rewrite of a completely separate sub system to fix.

Relating back to the main topic, this is part of why tinkering with something that "works" imperfectly enough to suggest a rewrite is actually a very hard thing to do.  You should expect in the normal case that it has some problems.

Maybe: because they do not consider previous versions to be "perfectly good".

TBH overall I see no problem in having 10 editions of CoC to pick prefered one.

7th. edition is the best edition of Call of Cthulhu, actually.

Quote from: Batjon on June 23, 2022, 06:27:02 PM
7th. edition is the best edition of Call of Cthulhu, actually.

  I own the 6th edition and a supplement or two (Dark ages I know, cant remember the others it sits low on the shelf) but have never played or run a game.  What makes 7th edition the best? 

Quote from: rytrasmi on June 23, 2022, 03:24:29 PM

Quote from: mightybrain on June 23, 2022, 02:07:57 PM
You know you're in trouble when there's a box for pronouns on your character sheet.

I though you were joking, so I looked. Holy shit what a bunch of shitheads.

Yeah, it threw us for a loop on character creation, but mercifully that's the only bit of blatant virtue signalling I've spotted so far.

I thought they were proud of the fact hat the game was essentially the same with slight cleanup over the years.

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.

"This game is awesome! I can't wait to change everything about it!" - The Table Top Gamer Creed

Changes are made solely on avoiding paying any royalty fees. This is how franchises have always worked.

Quote from: Battlemaster on June 23, 2022, 12:24:47 PM
If the reviewer was  accurate and his review's prose suggested competence and fairness, chaosium took its perfectly good rules system and basically fuckified it severely.

It seems a lot of changes complicated, adding dice pools or eliminating the simple resistance table. Others seem fair, like allowing players to push some rolls,  or keeping POW from being the most vital stat.

But in general the changes seem to have fucked up a perfectly good system.

Can you link to the review, Battlemaster? I've been playing Call of Cthulhu since the first edition, and I switched over the 7e for the last campaign I played in (we ran through Masks of Nyarlathotep). In general, there were a lot of 7e changes that seemed more like change for change's sake. However, I didn't think it was overall more complicated or any more fucked up than previous editions. I like the system overall both earlier editions and 7th edition, but still have a bunch of gripes with it.

Speaking of new editions broadly, unfortunately, there is a company profit bias to put out a new edition just to get players to buy the core rulebook over again. 7th is annoying in that the previous editions were extremely minor such that you could easily play with the new edition and not notice any change. 7th edition is compatible - so it is still easy to use material for older editions, but there was just enough cosmetic changes that it motivates players to buy it.

About new editions broadly, the best reason for a new edition is that player feedback and new material in the game has suggested a bunch of improvements. While I disliked the politics of it, I thought in terms of rules, D&D 2nd edition was well handled, though for me the best example is Hero System 4th edition which was excellently handled. They cleaned up a lot of the cruft and incorporated new material published.

Still, the frequent bias is to go for the profit of getting the player base to buy the core book again, which carries with it the bias of aiming the game most at the die-hard players rather than newbies. Hence a lot of new editions get more and more complicated.

Quote from: Battlemaster on June 23, 2022, 12:24:47 PM
Ok, recently asked about CoC, and was told it didn't go woke, so I read a review of 7e.

Good news: sounds like it wasn't 'woke' in it's candid handling of the 1920-30s era.

But I got a surprising bit of bad news.

If the reviewer was  accurate and his review's prose suggested competence and fairness, chaosium took its perfectly good rules system and basically fuckified it severely.

It seems a lot of changes complicated, adding dice pools or eliminating the simple resistance table. Others seem fair, like allowing players to push some rolls,  or keeping POW from being the most vital stat.

But in general the changes seem to have fucked up a perfectly good system.

Why do game companies insist on ''fixing'' what is working fine?

Just to sell a new edition?

Bolding mine.

Your critical thinking skills are seriously deficient. Do you know anything about the reviewer? Could this be a hit piece written by someone who hates Chaosium? Have you compared this review to any others of CoC 7th to see if it is just copypasta or other reviewers have the same complaints? Have you done the breathtakingly obvious intelligent thing and looked at it yourself to see if is worth buying?

Or are you just going to go with some random reviewer's opinion because they have a command of written English?

As far as why do publishers put out new rulebooks that make the old ones obsolete, that's called business. If you don't like it, don't buy it. Nobody is forcing you to buy. More often than not, older editions of RPGs are better.

The wokeness of Chaosium permeates everything they produce and for good measure they have been going back and wokifying old adventures too.

The last edition of CoC I glanced through had a section earning the reader of how wacist all those horrible white peoples were back then! ghasp!

So the odds of them not inserting some into 7e or going back and "fixing" 1-xe are rather high at this point.

As for fucking with the system. That ones easy.

90% of the time its not because they want to improve the system. You could do that with errata and supplements. No. The reason is marketing pushing the edition treadmill to try and gouge players of a few more bucks rather than trying to oh, I don't know, do something sane like just selling the game to new players.

Greedy morons will inevitably kill the goose that lays the golden eggs because they are greedy morons. This is not like say pre-2e TSR where Gygax just loved to create new systems and tried to keep everything more or less compatible and the changes such that you had essentially basic and advanced rules sets.

Sometimes you will see a new edition though for oddball reasons like the prior designer is gone and the company either can not use some aspects of the rules or setting or do not know how to. Or the company changes hands and the new owners want a new edition under their branding. And other reasons that are outside the range of greed.

And on rare occasions the new edition is really just a face lift. New art. Same rules, or same rules with errata added.

Quote from: jhkim on June 24, 2022, 10:12:36 AM
While I disliked the politics of it, I thought in terms of rules, D&D 2nd edition was well handled, though for me the best example is Hero System 4th edition which was excellently handled. They cleaned up a lot of the cruft and incorporated new material published.

I loved 4th edition Champions/Hero System and had a great number of the books.  Ended up selling it because the system was way too overcomplicated and way too much math for most players.

The later editions of Hero Systems only seemed to make the game even more overcomplicated.

Quote from: Omega on June 24, 2022, 11:52:45 AM
The wokeness of Chaosium permeates everything they produce and for good measure they have been going back and wokifying old adventures too.

The last edition of CoC I glanced through had a section earning the reader of how wacist all those horrible white peoples were back then! ghasp!

So the odds of them not inserting some into 7e or going back and "fixing" 1-xe are rather high at this point.

As for fucking with the system. That ones easy.

90% of the time its not because they want to improve the system. You could do that with errata and supplements. No. The reason is marketing pushing the edition treadmill to try and gouge players of a few more bucks rather than trying to oh, I don't know, do something sane like just selling the game to new players.

Greedy morons will inevitably kill the goose that lays the golden eggs because they are greedy morons. This is not like say pre-2e TSR where Gygax just loved to create new systems and tried to keep everything more or less compatible and the changes such that you had essentially basic and advanced rules sets.

Sometimes you will see a new edition though for oddball reasons like the prior designer is gone and the company either can not use some aspects of the rules or setting or do not know how to. Or the company changes hands and the new owners want a new edition under their branding. And other reasons that are outside the range of greed.

And on rare occasions the new edition is really just a face lift. New art. Same rules, or same rules with errata added.

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!

Jesus the woke can be annoying AF but some of the people who constantly bitch about woke are as bad. Yes, America in the 1920's had open racism even in the east. If telling the truth about it is woke to you, fuck you.

Here's a review I saw.   https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/16/16242.phtml

CoC hasn't improved since its first edition.

Very few games ever do.

At best, they do some stuff differently and maybe clean up some wonky bits.

At best.

Quote from: Battlemaster on June 23, 2022, 12:24:47 PMWhy do game companies insist on ''fixing'' what is working fine?

Just to sell a new edition?

Yes.

I guess my question would be, "What were you looking for in a new edition?"

Your older edition books still exist. I lean toward the idea that newer editions should try to do something different, if they are to exist at all, simply because the older books exist and won't disappear.

If you write anything in your pronouns section you should take a penalty to sanity (if there is such a thing) because your grip on reality is tenuous at best.

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.

Quote from: Battlemaster on June 24, 2022, 11:08:07 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!

I've read Lovecraft -- every story and novel ever published in fact, and I can only imagine that people harping about how "racist" his works are have never themselves read them.

There is almost zero mention of race ... anywhere. No mention I can recall of anything regarding racial traits, comparisons, or denigration of any kind. The only "racism" I've seen in his stories is the very occasional use of words that were fine at the time but now deemed terrible because the Word Police change the "correct" terminology every 8 years just to keep you off-balance (to the point where it's now correct to say "People of Color", but woe to the bigot who says "Colored People". Even Gary Trudeau had a jab at that one.)

Quote from: Battlemaster on June 24, 2022, 02:46:05 PMOh 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.

It's not unecessary.  Most gamers today really don't know what things were like in the 1920s.  Have you see how Americans score on history tests?

Do you know what a TWK sign meant in the 20s?  Have you ever heard of D. C.  Stephenson?  Ever see ''Birth of a nation''?  Can you even imagine hundreds of thousands of KKK members in full robes marching thru Washington DC?

The world was different then. Unbelievably different. Giving people a few pages of data on the real world along with hundreds of pages about the mythos world is not 'woke'. 

Quote from: Battlemaster on June 25, 2022, 10:20:57 AMThe world was different then. Unbelievably different. Giving people a few pages of data on the real world along with hundreds of pages about the mythos world is not 'woke'.

The last version of CoC I have is 5.5 and it has very little historical information: a price list, some sample travel times, and a list of dates of various historical events that could potentially be mythos related. And that's it. Anything else is best left to the GM to research on his own. This is especially true today with so much historical information is available online, with a vast amount of novels, movies, records, and magazines in the public domain.

Cherry picking historical facts that support the author's current-day political narrative is the definitive example of woke writing.

Quote from: Zalman on June 25, 2022, 08:26:38 AM

Quote from: Battlemaster on June 24, 2022, 11:08:07 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!

I've read Lovecraft -- every story and novel ever published in fact, and I can only imagine that people harping about how "racist" his works are have never themselves read them.

There is almost zero mention of race ... anywhere. No mention I can recall of anything regarding racial traits, comparisons, or denigration of any kind. The only "racism" I've seen in his stories is the very occasional use of words that were fine at the time but now deemed terrible because the Word Police change the "correct" terminology every 8 years just to keep you off-balance (to the point where it's now correct to say "People of Color", but woe to the bigot who says "Colored People". Even Gary Trudeau had a jab at that one.)

Herbert West, Reanimator. Part III. The description of Buck Robinson, "The Harlem Smoke".

Hpl wrote a poem called  ''on the creation of ni--ers''.

He owned a black cat named ''ni--er man''.

In ''the rats in the walls'' the character had a cat named that.

He used the term ''negroid' to describe some people in call of cthulhu.

Hpl was a product of his day and his day was full  of casual racism. I do not condemn him  as I understand being a product of your times. (That's why I'm not woke)  But yes,  most people have a sanitized idea of the 20's if any based on hollywood.

I've gamed--as both player and GM--for a long time and have explored many, many systems. In all that time, I've never seen a "perfectly good" system.

Gaming rules generally have a tendency toward complexity (Megatraveller anyone?) then a shift toward something simple before the trend sets in again. That's a very interesting analogy of biology in fact, with creatures tending toward specialisation to succeed in their environment only to discover that the environment has changed and they're now part of the fossil record.

The big change in the environment lately has been 'woke' which to my mind is another manifestation of a minority desire within western society toward role reversal (You might disagree but I'm not going to discuss that here). Demonisation of history is another less than mature change in society too. Pushing the statue of Edward Coulton into Bristol Harbour hasn't done anything for racism or modern slavery whatsoever, just a futile public gesture in social affiliation. In fact, it serves the reverse purpose, because it replaces knowledge and memory with hatred and denial. I got accused of being a liar and racist because I challenged a popular opinion about the American Civil War on one forum, it isn't pleasant.

But at the end of the day - we are not slaves to rulebooks. Or at least, I don't think we should be, but then I got castigated on a certain RPG website not so long ago because I dared to voice my individualism :D

So many were racist from HPL time. Some of you act as if he were the exception and not the rule. Don't let such a thing as context or he general attitudes of many white people of the time in any way try to deter your carefully constructed personal narratives.

I don't need some pearl clutching Wokescold of a developer giving me a history lesson in an RPGs. If I want history I can you know read an actual history book. Simply say the 1920s were a racist period in history.

Take the woke historical racial dissertations or novels and shove them up your collective asses.

As for new edition Chaosium had to do something new. Recycled rehashed rules with new cover and interior art was imo simply not going to cut. Especially when Trailbof Cthulhu fixed C0C flaws.

Quote from: Battlemaster on June 25, 2022, 10:56:41 AM
Hpl wrote a poem called  ''on the creation of ni--ers''.

He owned a black cat named ''ni--er man''.

In ''the rats in the walls'' the character had a cat named that.

He used the term ''negroid' to describe some people in call of cthulhu.

Indeed as I said, only a few uses of words that were not themselves derogatory or even particularly controversial at the time:

The Rats in the Walls is written in 1924, at the very nascence of the N-word being seen as derogatory. It wasn't until the late 1920's that the term's new designation was even known to most people.

The poem you cite was written in 1912.

The cat died in 1904, when Lovecraft was 14 years old.

The word "negroid" does not appear in the story Call of Cthulhu. Fake News. (Nor was it exclusively a racist term.)

Quote from: Zalman on June 25, 2022, 02:14:26 PM
The word "negroid" does not appear in the story Call of Cthulhu. Fake News. (Nor was it exclusively a racist term.)

Technically correct, but here is a relevant quote from The Call of Cthulhu:

QuoteExamined at headquarters after a trip of intense strain and weariness, the prisoners all proved to be men of a very low, mixed-blooded, and mentally aberrant type. Most were seamen, and a sprinkling of negroes and mulattoes, largely West Indians or Brava Portuguese from the Cape Verde Islands, gave a colouring of voodooism to the heterogeneous cult. But before many questions were asked, it became manifest that something far deeper and older than negro fetichism was involved. Degraded and ignorant as they were, the creatures held with surprising consistency to the central idea of their loathsome faith.

From The Horror at Red Hook:

QuoteThe population is a hopeless tangle and enigma; Syrian, Spanish, Italian, and negro elements impinging upon one another, and fragments of Scandinavian and American belts lying not far distant. It is a babel of sound and filth, and sends out strange cries to answer the lapping of oily waves at its grimy piers and the monstrous organ litanies of the harbour whistles.
...
From this tangle of material and spiritual putrescence the blasphemies of an hundred dialects assail the sky. Hordes of prowlers reel shouting and singing along the lanes and thoroughfares, occasional furtive hands suddenly extinguish lights and pull down curtains, and swarthy, sin-pitted faces disappear from windows when visitors pick their way through. Policemen despair of order or reform, and seek rather to erect barriers protecting the outside world from the contagion.

From Herbert West, Re-animator:

QuoteThe match had been between Kid O'Brien—a lubberly and now quaking youth with a most un-Hibernian hooked nose—and Buck Robinson, "The Harlem Smoke". The negro had been knocked out, and a moment's examination shewed us that he would permanently remain so. He was a loathsome, gorilla-like thing, with abnormally long arms which I could not help calling fore legs, and a face that conjured up thoughts of unspeakable Congo secrets and tom-tom poundings under an eerie moon. The body must have looked even worse in life—but the world holds many ugly things. Fear was upon the whole pitiful crowd, for they did not know what the law would exact of them if the affair were not hushed up; and they were grateful when West, in spite of my involuntary shudders, offered to get rid of the thing quietly—for a purpose I knew too well.

From The Rats in the Walls:

QuoteThese myths and ballads, typical as they were of crude superstition, repelled me greatly. Their persistence, and their application to so long a line of my ancestors, were especially annoying; whilst the imputations of monstrous habits proved unpleasantly reminiscent of the one known scandal of my immediate forbears—the case of my cousin, young Randolph Delapore of Carfax, who went among the negroes and became a voodoo priest after he returned from the Mexican War.

Beyond direct language, one of Lovecraft's most common horror themes is tainted ancestry. The Shadow Over Innsmouth is about a town contaminated when a sea captain brought back a bride from the South Seas. The Arthur Jermyn story is about an ancestor bringing back a monstrous bride from Africa.

Quote from: Zalman on June 25, 2022, 02:14:26 PM

Quote from: Battlemaster on June 25, 2022, 10:56:41 AM
Hpl wrote a poem called  ''on the creation of ni--ers''.

He owned a black cat named ''ni--er man''.

In ''the rats in the walls'' the character had a cat named that.

He used the term ''negroid' to describe some people in call of cthulhu.

Indeed as I said, only a few uses of words that were not themselves derogatory or even particularly controversial at the time:

The Rats in the Walls is written in 1924, at the very nascence of the N-word being seen as derogatory. It wasn't until the late 1920's that the term's new designation was even known to most people.

The poem you cite was written in 1912.

The cat died in 1904, when Lovecraft was 14 years old.

The word "negroid" does not appear in the story Call of Cthulhu. Fake News. (Nor was it exclusively a racist term.)

In CoC he used negro in various bad terms.

Duty came first; and although there must have been nearly a hundred mongrel celebrants in the throng, the police relied on their firearms and plunged determinedly into the nauseous rout.

...

Examined at headquarters after a trip of intense strain and weariness, the prisoners all proved to be men of a very low, mixed-blooded, and mentally aberrant type. Most were seamen, and a sprinkling of negroes and mulattoes, largely West Indians or Brava Portuguese from the Cape Verde Islands, gave a coloring of voodooism to the heterogeneous cult. But before many questions were asked, it became manifest that something far deeper and older than negro fetishism was involved. Degraded and ignorant as they were, the creatures held with surprizing consistency to the central idea of their loathsome faith.

He did use negroid in 'the horror at red hook'. I got them confused as it's been forever since I read either. mea culpa.

Now here's a quote from 'herbert west reanimator'

The negro had been knocked out, and a moment's examination shewed us that he would permanently remain so. He was a loathsome, gorilla-like thing, with abnormally long arms which I could not help calling fore legs, and a face that conjured up thoughts of unspeakable Congo secrets and tom-tom poundings under an eerie moon. The body must have looked even worse in life—but the world holds many ugly things.


I can say hpl was a racist, by today's standards he would be intolerable to all but the kkk/white nationalist crowd. I can also say he was a product of his times. In his day racism was the default setting.  Things like 'miscegnation' were considered horrors beyond belief. Why do you think the central element to 'the shadow over innsmouth' was non human creatures wanting to mate with white people and produce inhuman offspring?

HPL also had obvious mental issues. Lots of creative types do. I can let his racism pass due to those factors.

Plus I love some of his work. 'At the mountains of madness' is a masterpiece. It also lacks any racist content.

I can accept that 100 years ago things were different. I can also say maybe people  should be shown the truth. Let them choose how to react to it.

A lot of people want to burn the book the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain because it uses a racial slur throughout the book, yet the book is not racist nor does it promote racism.

Quote from: jeff37923 on June 25, 2022, 09:02:32 PM
A lot of people want to burn the book the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain because it uses a racial slur throughout the book, yet the book is not racist nor does it promote racism.

Huck Finn is anti-racist. Not in the modern sense, where anti-racist is code for double-dog down racism. But the in the real sense. It deals with the issues unflinchingly, and with humanity.

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.

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.

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.

To clarify this and note it isn't an opinion but a fact, Lovecraft's Jewish wife went on record to note his extreme antisemitism and the fact he became almost livid with rage when having to mix with people from other races on the streets of New York. Furthermore this was corroborated by some of his friends.

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.

Quote from: Battlemaster on June 24, 2022, 11:08:07 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.

Quote from: mightybrain 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.

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

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.

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.

Quote from: Zelen on June 26, 2022, 01:40:09 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.

Quote from: Zelen on June 26, 2022, 01:40:09 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.

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.

Quote from: I on June 26, 2022, 02:05:27 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.

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.

Quote from: hedgehobbit on June 25, 2022, 09:06:27 AM

Quote from: Battlemaster on June 24, 2022, 02:46:05 PMOh 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.

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.

Quote from: Pat on June 26, 2022, 02:28:43 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.

Quote from: Zelen on June 26, 2022, 07:27:31 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.

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.

Quote from: Pat on June 26, 2022, 02:44:20 PM

Quote from: I on June 26, 2022, 02:05:27 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.

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.

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. 8)

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. 8)

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.

Quote from: Battlemaster on June 25, 2022, 10:56:41 AM
Hpl wrote a poem called  ''on the creation of ni--ers''.

He owned a black cat named ''ni--er man''.

In ''the rats in the walls'' the character had a cat named that.

He used the term ''negroid' to describe some people in call of cthulhu.

Hpl was a product of his day and his day was full  of casual racism. I do not condemn him  as I understand being a product of your times. (That's why I'm not woke)  But yes,  most people have a sanitized idea of the 20's if any based on hollywood.

I came late to this discussion, but I have a couple of things to say about CoC 7E - as I'm running a campaign using that ruleset. To give context, I worked on the Italian edition of CoC back in the '90s, I wrote some adventures for it and I ran every edition since 5E.

I like 7E a lot. First, it's so compatible with all previous editions that you can run any module from them and change the stats on the fly, while you are gaming - no need for a conversion guideline or for preparing beforehand.

"Base" 7E is as deadly for body and soul as ever. The players have some more options and both the combat and the SAN mechanics are more structured. I liked the changes and all we needed to understand them was a single session (I ran a one-shot and the plot that emerged naturally from the events was so good that we are planning to write a script for a comic book based on it).

There are some holes. The biggest is that the characters can become "seriously wounded", and, while there are rules for recovering that make this condition harder to heal, nowhere one can find how seriously wounded characters are impaired if the have to clench their teeth and forge on. I had to make up some.

I like how you can plug "DLCs" (my players' definition) to the base game, like Pulp Cthulhu and Delta Green. The supporting material is great both in content and art alone (a player bought the Malleus Monstrorum for the art alone).

I don't know if 7E is "woke". I run a realistic "1920s" and my main reference is the amazing French supplement "Les Années Folles" (https://www.legrog.org/jeux/appel-de-cthulhu/1920-s-1930-s/annees-folles-fr) (never translated in English - and I think I bought the last available copy in Paris back in 2016). This reference starts stating that you can run a "idealised" or "realistic" game - and the latter implies racism and stuff. It is up to you and the volume then gives everything needed for a realistic portrayal of the 1920s.

My feeling is that, yes, Chaosium is slowly embracing wokeness, but I see nothing on the likes of "You must play Lovecraft Country!" in their outings - and if you are triggered by pronouns then just ignore the idea. I use stuff from 6E and before anyway.

Regarding Lovecraft himself, the trilogy "His black cat", "The rats in the walls" and, "The Horror at Red Hook" is so tired that it can barely breath. Yes, Lovecraft was a product of his times. Yes, he was also able to grow out of it and actually become a very progressive person. This is not my opinion but that of Israeli intellectuals that studied his works and his life. We talked about this on this very forum, links to these studies included. No, I'll not repost the links: do your homework ("Lovecraft Country", BTW, was accused of anti-semitism; the schadenfreude was strong when that happened).

To sum everything up, I like CoC 7E mechanics and how the art became finally both rich and modern in quality, but I have some qualms with strange holes in the rules - the kind of question that should come up in no more that two sessions of playtesting. But the most interesting thing is that 7E is so compatible with the earlier editions that you can use 7E stuff with them (a "switch-back" basically). I'm really happy to have bought and ran it and now I have basically everything interesting for 7E.

Quote from: Reckall on June 30, 2022, 11:01:34 AM

Quote from: Battlemaster on June 25, 2022, 10:56:41 AM
Hpl wrote a poem called  ''on the creation of ni--ers''.

He owned a black cat named ''ni--er man''.

In ''the rats in the walls'' the character had a cat named that.

He used the term ''negroid' to describe some people in call of cthulhu.

Hpl was a product of his day and his day was full  of casual racism. I do not condemn him  as I understand being a product of your times. (That's why I'm not woke)  But yes,  most people have a sanitized idea of the 20's if any based on hollywood.

I came late to this discussion, but I have a couple of things to say about CoC 7E - as I'm running a campaign using that ruleset. To give context, I worked on the Italian edition of CoC back in the '90s, I wrote some adventures for it and I ran every edition since 5E.

I like 7E a lot. First, it's so compatible with all previous editions that you can run any module from them and change the stats on the fly, while you are gaming - no need for a conversion guideline or for preparing beforehand.

"Base" 7E is as deadly for body and soul as ever. The players have some more options and both the combat and the SAN mechanics are more structured. I liked the changes and all we needed to understand them was a single session (I ran a one-shot and the plot that emerged naturally from the events was so good that we are planning to write a script for a comic book based on it).

There are some holes. The biggest is that the characters can become "seriously wounded", and, while there are rules for recovering that make this condition harder to heal, nowhere one can find how seriously wounded characters are impaired if the have to clench their teeth and forge on. I had to make up some.

I like how you can plug "DLCs" (my players' definition) to the base game, like Pulp Cthulhu and Delta Green. The supporting material is great both in content and art alone (a player bought the Malleus Monstrorum for the art alone).

I don't know if 7E is "woke". I run a realistic "1920s" and my main reference is the amazing French supplement "Les Années Folles" (https://www.legrog.org/jeux/appel-de-cthulhu/1920-s-1930-s/annees-folles-fr) (never translated in English - and I think I bought the last available copy in Paris back in 2016). This reference starts stating that you can run a "idealised" or "realistic" game - and the latter implies racism and stuff. It is up to you and the volume then gives everything needed for a realistic portrayal of the 1920s.

My feeling is that, yes, Chaosium is slowly embracing wokeness, but I see nothing on the likes of "You must play Lovecraft Country!" in their outings - and if you are triggered by pronouns then just ignore the idea. I use stuff from 6E and before anyway.

Regarding Lovecraft himself, the trilogy "His black cat", "The rats in the walls" and, "The Horror at Red Hook" is so tired that it can barely breath. Yes, Lovecraft was a product of his times. Yes, he was also able to grow out of it and actually become a very progressive person. This is not my opinion but that of Israeli intellectuals that studied his works and his life. We talked about this on this very forum, links to these studies included. No, I'll not repost the links: do your homework ("Lovecraft Country", BTW, was accused of anti-semitism; the schadenfreude was strong when that happened).

To sum everything up, I like CoC 7E mechanics and how the art became finally both rich and modern in quality, but I have some qualms with strange holes in the rules - the kind of question that should come up in no more that two sessions of playtesting. But the most interesting thing is that 7E is so compatible with the earlier editions that you can use 7E stuff with them (a "switch-back" basically). I'm really happy to have bought and ran it and now I have basically everything interesting for 7E.

BRP and GURPS and so on are designed in such a way that it's extremely easy to convert between different editions because the changes are relatively minor and they're also designed to be modular. The task resolution is the same, the way PCs and NPCs are structured is the same, etc.

Quote from: Ghostmaker on June 23, 2022, 01:38:35 PM
Why did the Coke company mess with its formula, producing 'New Coke'?

Well . . . since you asked.

With the "Pepsi challenge" (blind taste test between Pepsi Cola and Coke-a-Cola) people began realizing that they actually DID prefer the sweeter more sugary tasting Pepsi cola!

Coke, realizing that they were losing customers to the sweeter tasting Pepsi, reformulated a sweeter tasting cola and voila: "New" Coke!

And in spite of the fact that most people who took subsequent blind taste test actually preferred the taste of New Coke over the original formula AND Pepsi, the problem was that millions of people around the world had acclimated their taste buds to the caramelized battery acid taste of original Coke!

Those millions rose up in rebellion against "Big Sugar" and demanded their original product!

Note that no one ever did a blind taste test with 7-Up the "un" cola because it was clear. Kinda hard not to realize THAT's 7-Up unless you're blind folded!  But 7-Up also proves that sweetened battery acid doesn't have to be brown if you don't caramelize it.

(Authors note:  While my carbonized beverage of choice has been Mt Dew for many years, I'm currently sipping on a Coke as I write and post this message.  Mmmm, the original caramelized battery acid flavor drink of choice)!

I know.  More than you ever wanted to know about the cola wars.

And no.  I have no knowledge nor opinion about the CoC system.  So no comment about that from me.  Back to your regularly scheduled rant!

Quote from: Mark Caliber on July 01, 2022, 12:16:17 PM
And in spite of the fact that most people who took subsequent blind taste test actually preferred the taste of New Coke over the original formula AND Pepsi, the problem was that millions of people around the world had acclimated their taste buds to the caramelized battery acid taste of original Coke!

That's hilarious. Also depressing.

A lot of consumers irrationally hate change on general principle, even if they like the change while blindfolded.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 01, 2022, 02:37:08 PM

Quote from: Mark Caliber on July 01, 2022, 12:16:17 PM
And in spite of the fact that most people who took subsequent blind taste test actually preferred the taste of New Coke over the original formula AND Pepsi, the problem was that millions of people around the world had acclimated their taste buds to the caramelized battery acid taste of original Coke!

That's hilarious. Also depressing.

A lot of consumers irrationally hate change on general principle, even if they like the change while blindfolded.

It's amazing how many theories are based on the idea that people are stupid and don't know what they want.

Here's a simpler answer. It's true that people preferred Pepsi and New Coke over Classic Coke in the taste tests, but a taste test is a highly artificial environment. Participants are given two drinks, which they drink quickly and judge based on first impression. Naturally, crisper and sweeter tends to stand out.

But in more natural environments, people drink more slowly, over a longer period of time. Turns out a product that's too sweet isn't what most people prefer in those circumstances.

Same applies to games. There are a lot of games that look exciting and may be fun to play over a couple sessions, which don't really have legs. Conversely, there are games that look uglier and are harder to get into, which are really good for long campaigns.

Quote from: Ghostmaker on June 23, 2022, 01:38:35 PM
Why did the Coke company mess with its formula, producing 'New Coke'?

They took a PR hit for being fools, then looked like heroes for bringing back what folks loved but...  I'd always felt the move was really intended to hide their switch from actual sugar to corn syrup or whatever other artificial sweetener they decided to use. By the time coke classic was back on shelves there was really no easy way to do a taste test with the pre-new coke version. Otherwise they would have brought out New Coke side-by-side with coke classic and dominated the market. Of course that's just a feeling, I could be wrong.

I drink RC and it's fine.

Quote from: Battlemaster on July 01, 2022, 09:26:29 PM
I drink RC and it's fine.

There's something to be said for RC Cola and other sodas being a decent substitute for Coke. The less we buy into the most popular brands simply because they are popular and recognizable, the less power they have to exploit consumers on the basis of brand, or do crazy stuff due to demand inelasticity. Way to do your part in stopping companies like Wizards from forming in sectors like the soda industry and holding a brand/cultural monopoly. (I am admittedly something of a slave to brand, whether it be McDonald's or Coke I have an irrational emotional attachment that transcends the actual products on offer. So still working on that.)

You think McDonald's has good burgers?  Oh, my friend, get thee to a dairy queen and feast 'pon their cheeseburgers. You'll never be interested in a mcburger again!

Quote from: Battlemaster on July 01, 2022, 10:56:00 PM
You think McDonald's has good burgers?  Oh, my friend, get thee to a dairy queen and feast 'pon their cheeseburgers. You'll never be interested in a mcburger again!

Will have  to try it. I do like their frozen treats, but hadn't yet attempted their warmer offerings.

But yeah, I sometimes blame substandard releases and products on the fact that companies know people will buy, and not solely on the basis of the product itself, but because they liked prior products. Or it's part of their identity now. Or they trust the brand more than they should. Or whatever.

Overcoming brand loyalty is like waking up in the Matrix. It's a good thing, but it feels like hell

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 02, 2022, 11:48:08 AM
Overcoming brand loyalty is like waking up in the Matrix. It's a good thing, but it feels like hell

Now apply this to every weenie who is convinced that D&D 5e is Tha Bestest Game Evar.....

I genuinely think Spheres of Power & Might is the best model so far for designing fantasy character classes under level-based rules. I think the OSR could hugely benefit from it.

Quote from: Visitor Q on June 26, 2022, 10:46:23 AM

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.

To clarify this and note it isn't an opinion but a fact, Lovecraft's Jewish wife went on record to note his extreme antisemitism and the fact he became almost livid with rage when having to mix with people from other races on the streets of New York. Furthermore this was corroborated by some of his friends.

Seems like he likely suffered from an incredibly sheltered upbringing with extreme paranoia, xenophobia, and a highly misanthropic outlook on the world. The racism is a consequence amplified by the current zeitgeist. If he was alive today he'd be ranting about how Trump / Biden / Covid / whatever boogieman is gonna get us all killed.

My issue isn't mentioning his racism when it's relevant, but rather shoehorning in a glib dissertation about the simple fact that racism is in fact bad, into nearly every mainstream product that borrows from his work.

Quote from: Ruprecht on July 01, 2022, 04:17:52 PM

Quote from: Ghostmaker on June 23, 2022, 01:38:35 PM
Why did the Coke company mess with its formula, producing 'New Coke'?

They took a PR hit for being fools, then looked like heroes for bringing back what folks loved but...  I'd always felt the move was really intended to hide their switch from actual sugar to corn syrup or whatever other artificial sweetener they decided to use. By the time coke classic was back on shelves there was really no easy way to do a taste test with the pre-new coke version. Otherwise they would have brought out New Coke side-by-side with coke classic and dominated the market. Of course that's just a feeling, I could be wrong.

You are right on the money.  They hid the switch to high fructose corn syrup.

Quote from: Ghostmaker on June 23, 2022, 01:38:35 PM
Why did the Coke company mess with its formula, producing 'New Coke'?

I know this was an aside but the answer is they switched from sugar to corn syrup because of costs and they knew people would freak so they masked the change behind the new coke switch (and switch-back) which ended with everyone fawning over the 'original formula'. Brilliant really, although it doesn't apply to RPGs.

Quote from: Ruprecht on October 18, 2022, 01:55:55 PM

Quote from: Ghostmaker on June 23, 2022, 01:38:35 PM
Why did the Coke company mess with its formula, producing 'New Coke'?

I know this was an aside but the answer is they switched from sugar to corn syrup because of costs and they knew people would freak so they masked the change behind the new coke switch (and switch-back) which ended with everyone fawning over the 'original formula'. Brilliant really, although it doesn't apply to RPGs.

It actually does, many will use an obvious smoke screen to mask a huge red flag. Using 5e as an example Curse of Strahd used a premium boxed set to resell existing content with needless tweaks. Tasha's Cauldron to distract from changes to the PHB (along with using new subclasses to distract from everything else).