Quote from: Omega on Today at 04:11:55 AM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on May 29, 2024, 07:22:16 AMBullshit.  I'm not letting you get away with your duplicity.  First, point out where in my quote I said "some stories could be racist - but this couldn't apply to Howard."  This is a blatant misrepresentation, and you know it.  Nowhere in that did I say Howard couldn't be racist.  In fact, right below the passage you quoted, I said,

He only reads what fits his narrative.

True, but it is fun to watch him squirm in his mental gymnastics.

Quote from: SHARK on Today at 08:54:13 AMGreetings!

Nice counter-analysis, Krazz!

Thanks. I'm glad you liked it. And I agree - we have to stand up to any claims about the foundations of the hobby that aren't well substantiated. Racism is an easy accusation to throw out, but much harder to prove.

Quote from: SHARK on Today at 08:54:13 AMResisting sophistry is an important skill. I circle back to my collection of Conan books. I don't believe I have read anything within REH's Conan books that I would label as racist. Robert E. Howard was a great author, and a fantastic founding creator of Fantasy and Sword and Sorcery Pulp genre of fiction.

You've inspired me to add a signature to my posts. I hope you like it!

Quote from: swzl on Today at 07:31:35 AMI would encourage author's of rule sets to be more forth coming of design influences, compatibility, and divergences in their advertisements, blogs, and introductions. As an example, Rob Conley does an excellent job making sure you know on all of his material that they are designed from S&W.

Appreciate the compliment.

Aside from giving proper credit when due, I think it helps to be explicit about one's creative choices. It been my observation that most kitbash the rules they use for their campaign. Sure they start with a single system but afterwards add in whatever they think is cool and/or fun to have in the campaign.

So as an author why not make it easy to kitbash? My Majestic Fantasy Rules work as is but I know portions can work with other ruleset based on the classic editions. Largely because much of my stuff is an adaptation of Finch's Swords & Wizardry.

Quote from: swzl on Today at 07:31:35 AMI notice many posters have a "pure" concept of rule sets. This is not my remembrance of the the time period, rules used, and campaigns we played. Our games were mish mashes of rules from AD&D (we also raided earlier editions for rules that we liked), Arduin, C&S, any interesting articles from several different gaming magazines, ICE with Arms Law/Spell Law/Claw Law, and various gaming supplements that my Alzheimerish mind fails to recollect at the moment.

You should read my actual post. I literally said exactly this. But the difference we're proposing now is synthesizing the design school that emerged from that era so we can re-examine and have a new era that leverages those systems into new things. OSR is doing just that with B/X. The Renaissance is when we get off our collective asses and do it with other systems.

As an aside - I'm consulting on the Heroic RPG which is a continuation of the MSH game. And it has the "blessing" of Jeff Grubb and Steve Winter, which is a proto-example of this. It's in the vein of the OSR, but not OSR. I think we can push this further.

Quote from: swzl on Today at 07:31:35 AMI like renaissance because I like the creativity in the movement. I really like BX and derivative rule sets, but I'm not comfortable limiting my old school self to that narrow confinement.

I would encourage author's of rule sets to be more forth coming of design influences, compatibility, and divergences in their advertisements, blogs, and introductions. As an example, Rob Conley does an excellent job making sure you know on all of his material that they are designed from S&W.

Last thought, just do it. Make what you like and want. It won't get done if sit on your ass.

Yes.

Thank you for your purchase, and I'm glad you're happy with it!

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on May 28, 2024, 08:47:22 AMAnd if I correctly recall the discussion at 5E's launch, this was intended to be common for more experienced players--Levels 1 and 2 were meant as 'training levels' for players new to the system, and to go by very quickly.

Yeah. 5e basically "starts" at 3rd level. It's one of 5e's design issues. The game doesn't do well for high level play(not a problem limited to 5e) and then they killed the starter levels. So you have this very narrow band of the game, levels 3-7 or so where the game actually functions well.

It doesn't matter to me how much time someone wants to take futzing with a character as long as they don't hold up the start of the game or waste other people's time with it.

Quote from: Krazz on Today at 05:29:25 AMThanks for the detailed claims of racism. Let's take them one by one.

Quote from: jhkim on Today at 02:17:44 AM

Quote from: R.E. HowardThe black race was doomed. They were destroyers, not builders. When they slew the white men, progress ceased. The blacks reverted to savagery. They did not even know the art of making weapons. They had destroyed and could not rebuild. And they were going back to bestial savagery, and to a slaughtering of one another which even their animal-like rate of birth could not control.

Now, blacks are described as strong when here at their prime, but they are clearly mentally and morally inferior to the whites. Physically, there is some see-saw described. Whites are described as superior physically at first, but they lost their physical edge, only gaining it back towards the end.

I don't see anything that says that blacks are "mentally and morally inferior". They're fighting a war, and the weapons factories of Europe and then the Americas are destroyed. The book doesn't suggest that blacks were unable to learn how to make weapons. And I don't see anything that questions their morality. Indeed, it's made clear in the story that the blacks have a reason for their all-out war:

Quote from: R.E. HowardAnd a new, strong race had risen. A race whose people had been enslaved for ages.

So they're not fighting because of a moral failing on their part.

Quote from: jhkim on Today at 02:17:44 AMOn other fronts, the blacks are clearly inferior, except for their "animal-like rate of birth" which I don't think is intended as a positive trait.

Isn't it? It's what gives them the edge and lets them win the war. The story also says:

Quote from: R.E. HowardAnd the white race was exhausted by dissipation; birth rate almost ceased.

So there you see that the whites are doomed even without the other races fighting them, because of their almost non-existent birth rate. I think a higher birth rate is clearly something good to have in the world of this story.

Quote from: jhkim on Today at 02:17:44 AMBeyond the direct description, though, the events of the race wars show this. The blacks lead the charge to wipe out all the white of Europe, then invade the U.S. to invade there. That is a negative portrayal of black people, which demonstrates their desire to "slaughter and plunder" even if the story hadn't used those exact words to describe the black race.

As I pointed out, the blacks in the story are given a reason for their actions beyond some inherent badness. You could just as easily claim that it's a negative portrayal of white people because they enslaved another race for ages, or because they became decadent and:

Quote from: R.E. HowardHe ... gave them white man's weapons, furnished by Americans and Europeans who would have as quickly and readily sold their own sisters' souls if the price were high enough.

The story gives a mixture of good and bad actions to all races, often rising and falling as they degenerate or become better people. I don't see any evidence that one race is treated particularly badly in that way.

Quote from: R.E. HowardAlso, in the end, they charge using only spears - which illustrates how they are unable to create weapons like rifles. The story says that they can't create weapons, and it also illustrates it by how they attack.

Because the weapon factories were in Europe and the Americas, which is where the fighting was. And the story makes clear that the blacks increase in number, so once the factories are destroyed, there are going to be fewer and fewer good weapons and more men, so of course it's going to become rarer and rarer for blacks to have good weapons. On the other hand, I doubt the titular last white man knows how to build a rifle either. He's got a weapon and ammo from a prior time, presumably passed down through his dwindling family. If his family had had lots of children at each generation, he'd probably have had to make do with a spear.

Quote from: jhkim on Today at 02:17:44 AMThe general theme of the story is the danger of the black race, who will wipe out the whites if given the chance. That is the future being portrayed, which he described to his friend Tevis Clyde Smith via letter as a "warning to the white races" (from jeff37923's link).

It's a story in which the blacks wipe out the whites. That doesn't make it inherently a warning that such a thing will happen in the real world. And I'm going to ignore Howard's letter; we've gone from "overt racism" in the Conan stories, to overt racism in his wider body of work. Please don't try to shift the goalposts to covert racism in Howard's wider body of work. If it's overt, you don't need substantiating evidence, you can just point to the quotes that make it clear.

Quote from: jhkim on Today at 02:17:44 AMThe leader of the blacks was not black himself, but that isn't a counter to the idea of black inferiority.

All that shows is that the blacks are open minded enough to allow themselves to be led by a non-black. I'd say that was another positive for them. And the blacks win the war; they're clearly not inferior. The leader is described as "a mixed-breed Arab". It's not clear what "mixed-breed" means there, but I think it means he's part Arab and part black. So we see someone with black ancestry having great mental abilities. So much for the claim of them being mentally inferior in the story!

Quote from: jhkim on Today at 02:17:44 AMAs the story describes the leader:

Quote from: R.E. HowardThey were a strong, young race. Their day was yet to come. All they lacked was a leader.

And a leader had risen. A mixed-breed Arab, whose ambition was without measure, whose genius was Satanic.

He welded them into one great mass, gave them white man's weapons, furnished by Americans and Europeans who would have as quickly and readily sold their own sisters' souls if the price were high enough.

Describing him as "Satanic" is clearly a negative."

It's a negative on one man. There's no suggestion that it's a racial Satanic genius, just that one man had it.

Quote from: jhkim on Today at 02:17:44 AMMoreover, it implies that the blacks are unable to have a leader of their own race. I don't think that is a positive for either black people or mixed-breed people.

Where does it imply that? They needed a great leader to arise, but it doesn't say that such a man couldn't have been black. By way of counter-example, I'm British. The majority of Brits are white, yet our Prime Minister is Asian. Does that imply to you that white Brits are "unable to have a leader of their own race"? Or just that they're open-minded people, who don't hate others based on not being the same race as them? And this goes back to your suggestion of moral failings for them launching a race war. They're not anti-everyone else, as their choice of leader shows. The story gives another reason for their war.

Greetings!

Nice counter-analysis, Krazz!

Yes, it is why I generally ignore the Blah Blah claims and assertions that REH was racist! It all comes down to framing and interpretation. According to the typical begaviour and attitudes of the Woke, virtually *everyone* is racist! Whaah, whaah, whaah, you know?

I just dismiss most such Woke assessments quickly. Yeah? Good! I just don't give a fuck who they think is racist. They believe Lincoln was racist, Washington, and you know, the list goes on and on. They are meaningless. Then we see the Woke crying about REH being racist. Yeah, whatever. They should keep believing that BS. As many have mentioned, it all fits into and has roots in the Commie playbook. Label everything and everyone as terrible, racist, otherwise a deplorable human being, institution, or custom. That way it can be thus marked and destroyed. We see the Woke trying to infect, pollute, and destroy so many things in society currently.

Resisting sophistry is an important skill. I circle back to my collection of Conan books. I don't believe I have read anything within REH's Conan books that I would label as racist. Robert E. Howard was a great author, and a fantastic founding creator of Fantasy and Sword and Sorcery Pulp genre of fiction.

Insisting that Woke troglodytes stick to the subject restrains them, because they cannot effectively tap-dance and employ sophistry to try and change the nature of the conversation. By shifting it, they can rhetorically weasel the discussion into a kind of trial mode, where at first REH is depicted as being guilty--and then, at least the implications are so sweetly *hinted* at--for all the people that have loved someone like REH for decades--what does that mean about themselves? And on and on the sophistry and tap dancing goes. It is all Commie BS. Post Modern BS is rooted in the Marxist philosophy as well. That kind of degenerate BS typically gets taught and promoted in every university.

Just as your analysis has shown here, everything that the Woke declare as being examples of racism, whaah, whaah, is really just how they choose to frame it and interpret REH's writing. The Woke *want* to find racism everywhere, in everything, so of course REH is racist.

Say NO to the Jello! *Laughing*

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

I notice many posters have a "pure" concept of rule sets. This is not my remembrance of the the time period, rules used, and campaigns we played. Our games were mish mashes of rules from AD&D (we also raided earlier editions for rules that we liked), Arduin, C&S, any interesting articles from several different gaming magazines, ICE with Arms Law/Spell Law/Claw Law, and various gaming supplements that my Alzheimerish mind fails to recollect at the moment.

I like renaissance because I like the creativity in the movement. I really like BX and derivative rule sets, but I'm not comfortable limiting my old school self to that narrow confinement.

I would encourage author's of rule sets to be more forth coming of design influences, compatibility, and divergences in their advertisements, blogs, and introductions. As an example, Rob Conley does an excellent job making sure you know on all of his material that they are designed from S&W.

Last thought, just do it. Make what you like and want. It won't get done if sit on your ass.

Finally got to see "When the Wind Blows" A UK animation about a couple who are caught up in a Sovier nuclear strike on the UK and their attempts to maintain some semblance of normalcy in the aftermath.

I'd heard of this movie for years, especially on our old Gamma World e-group way back and knew it was pretty harsh. But good lord it pulls no punches! This one should be required viewing before playing The Morrow Project or Gamma World.

The Bloggs are this simple middle-aged couple with no great knowledge of just how bad things are and bumble about to the grim finale. I even recognize some of the precautions Jim takes from the nuclear survival booklet as they are similar to the ones we were given in school back in the 70s. Just not nearly as informative apparently? Might even still have mine.