Quote from: palaeomerus on February 07, 2022, 09:09:35 AM

Quote from: Jam The MF on January 21, 2022, 11:22:28 PM
The Tentacles in this adventure do not see color, race, nationality, sex, or gender.  They are blind, therefore they are fair.  You see, in the end everyone dies.

" These tentacles attempt to assimilate and colonialize by erasing the identities of minorities. "

I would say eating them would very efficiently erase their identity.

On the one hand the Cosmic Horror of Lovecraft isn't actually that far removed from the philosophical roots of the current post-modern 'everything is subjective there is no higher truth' orthodoxy espoused by some far left extremists.

On the other hand the progressive obsession with "rehabilitating" and sanitising Lovecraft and the Mythos is somewhat baffling. Part of the horror is precisely the idea that sacred truths (be they scientific, religious or political) are revealed to be futile and infantile delusions.

I say 'somewhat' because a sad truth is there are some people who simply can't separate reality from fiction and so something like Lovecraft is a little much for them to engage with in a gaming session and then leave at the gaming table.

Quote from: Plotinus on January 20, 2022, 09:32:02 PM
They're making a woke Cthulhu game, when a woke Cthulhu game is already one of the top five most popular RPGs in the world? What need is this serving?

If you are talking about Call of Cthulhu 7E, it is not "woke". There is the obligatory note about how a realistic portrayal of the 1920s would imply colonialism, racism, misogyny and the usual suspects - and thus it is better for all players to agree to it. That's all (we play in "realistic" '20s). Considering how the World is going today, we CoC heads are still lucky.

It is true that the videos with news and previews from Chaosium stink a bit of wokeness, but with 40+ years of compatible supplements they could become full woke tomorrow and the game would not suffer a bit.

Quote from: Visitor Q on February 13, 2022, 08:43:36 AMI say 'somewhat' because a sad truth is there are some people who simply can't separate reality from fiction and so something like Lovecraft is a little much for them to engage with in a gaming session and then leave at the gaming table.

I wouldn't always call that a "sad" truth; as a Catholic that's pretty much my stance-- I can enjoy Lovecraft's horror in occasional small doses through short stories, but accepting the premises with the active, long-term personal engagement of an RPG campaign simply doesn't sound like any fun for me, so I don't do it.

The difference is that I don't make a social advocacy campaign out of cancelling everyone who disagrees with me on that.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on February 13, 2022, 02:46:35 PM

Quote from: Visitor Q on February 13, 2022, 08:43:36 AMI say 'somewhat' because a sad truth is there are some people who simply can't separate reality from fiction and so something like Lovecraft is a little much for them to engage with in a gaming session and then leave at the gaming table.

I wouldn't always call that a "sad" truth; as a Catholic that's pretty much my stance-- I can enjoy Lovecraft's horror in occasional small doses through short stories, but accepting the premises with the active, long-term personal engagement of an RPG campaign simply doesn't sound like any fun for me, so I don't do it.

The difference is that I don't make a social advocacy campaign out of cancelling everyone who disagrees with me on that.

I think what you're describing is a preference and level of engagement based on real world beliefs which is perfectly reasonable and happens all the time.

What I meant, probably clumsily articulated on my part, is that it seems that some people literally can't separate reality from fiction. In other words if there is a percieved injustice in a fictional setting this needs to be solved with the same ardour as if it were a real world injustice.

Quote from: Visitor Q on February 13, 2022, 07:07:28 PMWhat I meant, probably clumsily articulated on my part, is that it seems that some people literally can't separate reality from fiction. In other words if there is a percieved injustice in a fictional setting this needs to be solved with the same ardour as if it were a real world injustice.

Fair point, my apologies if I came across as prickly. I think it's not so much that these hyper-advocates can't distinguish fiction from reality as that they believe fiction is inevitably connected to reality through the audience's minds, thus influencing it.  Depicting an injustice in a fictional setting in any way that suggests it's "normal" or "nothing unusual" is considered to contribute to "normalizing" it for the audience, so solving fictional injustices is just as important as solving real ones because the former will inevitably contribute to the latter coming to pass if not countered.

If your setting features slavery, for example, but your story isn't about how evil slavery is and your plot about how it was ended, you're subconsciously influencing people to think slavery is just another form of human law and culture, and thus making it more likely that it might be deemed widely acceptable in the future and thus once again instituted. Or so the thinking goes.

A lot of people espousing such ideas are also utopians with a very Protean view of human nature and a totalizing ideology, so for them, a perfect world is both achievable within Time and the necessary end of every endeavor.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on February 13, 2022, 07:16:38 PM
Fair point, my apologies if I came across as prickly. I think it's not so much that these hyper-advocates can't distinguish fiction from reality as that they believe fiction is inevitably connected to reality through the audience's minds, thus influencing it.  Depicting an injustice in a fictional setting in any way that suggests it's "normal" or "nothing unusual" is considered to contribute to "normalizing" it for the audience, so solving fictional injustices is just as important as solving real ones because the former will inevitably contribute to the latter coming to pass if not countered.

If your setting features slavery, for example, but your story isn't about how evil slavery is and your plot about how it was ended, you're subconsciously influencing people to think slavery is just another form of human law and culture, and thus making it more likely that it might be deemed widely acceptable in the future and thus once again instituted. Or so the thinking goes.

Featuring slavery in a game without challenging it is a form of "making fun" using the concept, isn't it? It's using slavery for spice.

I can imaging gamers being morally tough enough to participate in a game featuring unchallenged slavery, without being corrupted into the type of thinking you mention, but it's still got an icky dimension to it, that challenging it would ameliorate. Evil campaigns are frowned on for a good reason, methinks.

Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on February 14, 2022, 11:52:03 AM
Evil campaigns are frowned on for a good reason, methinks.

Only by those who can't separate fantasy from reality. It's only a game.

Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on February 14, 2022, 11:52:03 AM

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on February 13, 2022, 07:16:38 PM
Fair point, my apologies if I came across as prickly. I think it's not so much that these hyper-advocates can't distinguish fiction from reality as that they believe fiction is inevitably connected to reality through the audience's minds, thus influencing it.  Depicting an injustice in a fictional setting in any way that suggests it's "normal" or "nothing unusual" is considered to contribute to "normalizing" it for the audience, so solving fictional injustices is just as important as solving real ones because the former will inevitably contribute to the latter coming to pass if not countered.

If your setting features slavery, for example, but your story isn't about how evil slavery is and your plot about how it was ended, you're subconsciously influencing people to think slavery is just another form of human law and culture, and thus making it more likely that it might be deemed widely acceptable in the future and thus once again instituted. Or so the thinking goes.

Featuring slavery in a game without challenging it is a form of "making fun" using the concept, isn't it? It's using slavery for spice.

I can imaging gamers being morally tough enough to participate in a game featuring unchallenged slavery, without being corrupted into the type of thinking you mention, but it's still got an icky dimension to it, that challenging it would ameliorate. Evil campaigns are frowned on for a good reason, methinks.

   Having PCs who have slaves is not IMO an evil campaign.  Historically there were lots of people who ended up slaves after getting their asses kicked in military conflict they willingly engaged in.   So if a person tries to kill the PC, and the PC defeats that person and then makes them their slave, is that less moral or more evil than simply killing them in the first place?   A period of bonded servitude is likely preferable for the adversary than death, even if that period if forever.   People like to live.  If not every slave in history would have killed themselves, and prison would not have a single inmate incarcerated for a life sentence. 

    I think it does get fuzzy though, and a Gm should run the idea by the players.   I do not think it somehow corrupts a person (You do not have Tom Hanks at your table do you) unless that person has some sort of mental imbalance and can not tell the real world from the game world.  In that case the issue is not things in the game. 

Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on February 14, 2022, 11:52:03 AMFeaturing slavery in a game without challenging it is a form of "making fun" using the concept, isn't it? It's using slavery for spice.

Only if one considers failure to challenge as equivalent to active endorsement.  I've said before that I wouldn't have much patience for a player who wanted to get his character into the active owning and trading of slaves, however fictional, but that's not the same as simply acknowledging that the phenomenon exists as part of a setting populated by human beings. It shouldn't be immoral to play in a campaign set in Ancient Rome simply because none of the PCs is Spartacus.

The same logic should suggest delegitimizing virtually all roleplaying games, after all, if one considers casual (fictional) violence to be at least somewhat as morally problematic as (fictional) slavery, which most modern bodies of law do in real life.

What exactly would be wrong with playing a S&S game where the players are slavers?

It's not a million miles away from the 'heroic' antics of players who essentially enact genocide on whatever creature(s) get in their way and take their land(s) or treasure.

If people can't separate a fictional game concept from the real thing, then I think they definitely have some emotional or logical weakness. Or are hypocrites.

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on February 14, 2022, 03:50:13 PM
What exactly would be wrong with playing a S&S game where the players are slavers?

The same thing that would be wrong with a game in which players had their characters regularly violate female prisoners, to cite a parallel equally disturbing issue. No actual crime is committed against any real being and so nothing objectively immoral is actually happening, but the squick factor involved in contemplating what people are enjoying fantasizing about is real and significant.

Is it proof of real psychological issues? Not necessarily in itself. But keep it up long enough and gleefully enough, and with enough disdain for anybody else's enjoyment at the table, and it's a warning flag.

(Let's acknowledge for the record that a game in which the primary focus of PC activity as a group was running a slave-trading outfit for fun and profit wouldn't be the same as a game where some of the players start off in that job, then abandon it as they find S&S style adventuring is more exciting and pays better. But this is, again, the difference between the presence of social injustices as an element in a background or setting, and the Woke insistence that social injustices in a setting must be (a) either the obligatory target of PC activity to overthrow, or (b) not present at all.)

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on February 14, 2022, 04:25:39 PM

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on February 14, 2022, 03:50:13 PM
What exactly would be wrong with playing a S&S game where the players are slavers?

The same thing that would be wrong with a game in which players had their characters regularly violate female prisoners, to cite a parallel equally disturbing issue. No actual crime is committed against any real being and so nothing objectively immoral is actually happening, but the squick factor involved in contemplating what people are enjoying fantasizing about is real and significant.

Is it proof of real psychological issues? Not necessarily in itself. But keep it up long enough and gleefully enough, and with enough disdain for anybody else's enjoyment at the table, and it's a warning flag.

(Let's acknowledge for the record that a game in which the primary focus of PC activity as a group was running a slave-trading outfit for fun and profit wouldn't be the same as a game where some of the players start off in that job, then abandon it as they find S&S style adventuring is more exciting and pays better. But this is, again, the difference between the presence of social injustices as an element in a background or setting, and the Woke insistence that social injustices in a setting must be (a) either the obligatory target of PC activity to overthrow, or (b) not present at all.)

  Sorry, but not buying that rape in a game is the same, in any way to a PC giving a defeated opponent the chance to be  a slave rather than die.   I guess we can extrapolate this out to Conan and his attempted rape of Atali, but....and this is a comparison that makes me queasy....if she tried to murder him, and he lets her off with a rape given she is a mass murderer....the grey is overwhelming, but the reality is, his sin is lesser than hers.   Now that is not something I think I care to get into at a gaming table, but PCs murder people regularly, especially from the antagonists perspective.  Rarely in self defense too might I add.   I do not want someone at my table who wants to get into violating imaginary women in game, but from a moral angle, considering all the death it is not "more" wrong.   Running a group of complete slavers does imply evil in nature to me, who buy and trade in flesh, but...again assassin is a character class is it not? 

    I would be creeped out if I had a player wanting to violate women in game, and honestly it would never happen as the players are vetted to a degree it is not going to happen.  But I can't really  equate rape to slavery with the conditions I laid out before.   Sword and Sorcery though, especially if we talk Howard, is extremely morally grey, and sometimes really dark grey.

Quote from: oggsmash on February 14, 2022, 05:48:15 PMSorry, but not buying that rape in a game is the same, in any way to a PC giving a defeated opponent the chance to be a slave rather than die.

I think it's probably a good idea not to go down the rabbit hole of which is the "worse" thing for a PC to be: a rapist or a slaver.

Hence my firm belief that it's much better for a game -- as in, something meant to be fun for all the participants -- not to facilitate either as options, or analogous terrible careers/vices (I wouldn't allow a Shadowrun PC who had gotten into dealing illegal BTL chips, either, not unless the player assured me the character's story was going to be about getting out of the life and going straight).

But again, just because I think such things should be discouraged as common or desirable options for PC activity is not the same as saying the only way they can be present at all is as targets of PC activity.  If a particular group of players really wants to go dark, I'm not setting myself up as the judge of whether they should be "allowed to" or not. The Woke, by contrast, are not only setting themselves up as this kind of judge, but appear to be setting the bar for what isn't "unacceptably dark" to be so ridiculously high that nothing grittier than a kindergarten story can easily meet it.