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Halloween Jack posted:You're pretty much exactly write. He leaned heavily on the "phobe" in xenophobe. Just a nervous wreck who was terrified of everything. It really makes you wonder how much of his racism was the result of anxiety and other mental issues, rather than ideology. Certainly there was some of both, along with an overbearing upbringing and good old fashioned 100-year-old zeitgeist. Would he have written the same stories if professional help had been available at the time to treat his phobias?
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Feb 10, 2015 01:53
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Siivola posted:There's the Tianxia setting for Fate Core and the Book of Jade for Ironclaw. Oriental Adventures used to have a China-alike way back in the AD&D ages. Besides those, I'm drawing a blank. Seconding Tianxia, it's probably one of the best wuxia settings out there until Fengshui 2E comes out.
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Feb 10, 2015 01:55
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Hyper Crab Tank posted:It really makes you wonder how much of his racism was the result of anxiety and other mental issues, rather than ideology. Certainly there was some of both, along with an overbearing upbringing and good old fashioned 100-year-old zeitgeist. Would he have written the same stories if professional help had been available at the time to treat his phobias? Even Lovecraft's contemporaries at the time thought he was crazy racist. It definitely wasn't just him being a product of the time.
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Feb 10, 2015 02:04
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Kai Tave posted:Even Lovecraft's contemporaries at the time thought he was crazy racist. It definitely wasn't just him being a product of the time. Of course not, and I didn't say that. But it probably didn't help.
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Feb 10, 2015 02:08
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Hyper Crab Tank posted:It really makes you wonder how much of his racism was the result of anxiety and other mental issues, rather than ideology. Certainly there was some of both, along with an overbearing upbringing and good old fashioned 100-year-old zeitgeist. Would he have written the same stories if professional help had been available at the time to treat his phobias?
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Feb 10, 2015 02:09
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Hyper Crab Tank posted:Of course not, and I didn't say that. But it probably didn't help. Yeah, I wasn't trying to imply that you were or anything, it's just that while with some period writers you could look at the era they were writing in and go okay, this is kinda racist buuuut this is sorta how people thought back then, doesn't excuse it but it might explain it. Not so with Lovecraft. That dude was genuinely mental and racist.
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Feb 10, 2015 02:13
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Kai Tave posted:Yeah, I wasn't trying to imply that you were or anything, it's just that while with some period writers you could look at the era they were writing in and go okay, this is kinda racist buuuut this is sorta how people thought back then, doesn't excuse it but it might explain it. When talking about their personal lives, Lovecraft's wife wrote in a letter their trip to New York City. Upon arriving, he realized that there were a lot of minorities around the place in comparison to his rural all-white Massachusetts community and got a genuine panic attack as this realization dawned on him. I may be remembering this wrong, but there was another letter where Lovecraft shared his opinion on Jewish people. Near the end his anecdote sounded like one of those Internet Tough Guy spiels where he "true story for realsies!" got in a fight with 12 Jewish gangsters at once and won. Someone once said that if Lovecraft where alive today, he'd most likely be a message board/comments section troll. Libertad! fucked around with this message at 02:24 on Feb 10, 2015 |
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Feb 10, 2015 02:19
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The more I read about this guy, the more I feel...I can't get angry at him over his racism and xenophobia. He just sounds pathetic and sad. (Says the guy who's in two different Nyarlathotech games and is apping to a third  )
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Feb 10, 2015 02:22
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To be fair, all of us from Massachusetts still do that.
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Feb 10, 2015 02:23
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Lovecraft was a miserable, mentally ill person and I sympathize with his mental illness while still finding his views disgusting. That's really all you can do. When I say miserable, I mean everything about the man's life just feels sad.
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Feb 10, 2015 02:24
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Libertad! posted:I may be remembering this wrong, but there was another letter where Lovecraft shared his opinion on Jewish people. Oddly enough, he also married a Jew, so go figure. The rampant mental illness does make you feel some sympathy for him though, yeah. It's kind of why I wonder what he would have been like if he had been more, y'know, sane. Maybe he would still be a flaming racist. Maybe not being mortally terrified of strangers would've eventually led him to temper or extinguish whatever ideological prejudice he had. Not to play armchair psychologist or anything, but being exposed to racist influences and then having your sad, anxiety-riddled brain confirm all those disgusting things about other people probably only entrenched and exacerbated those influences. And, of course, in the end, he withered away from intestinal cancer and died unknown, impoverished and malnourished at the age of 47. Really the only reason we know about him now is because of August Derleth (and pals) bringing it into the spotlight after Lovecraft's death. It really is sad more than anything, I think. 
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Feb 10, 2015 02:45
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Hyper Crab Tank posted:And, of course, in the end, he withered away from intestinal cancer and died unknown, impoverished and malnourished at the age of 47. Really the only reason we know about him now is because of August Derleth bringing it into the spotlight after Lovecraft's death. It really is sad more than anything, I think. It's like poetry. It rhymes.
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Feb 10, 2015 02:47
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It always struck me as genuinely fascinating that the two most eccentric and bigoted writers of the Weird Tales pulps, Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, are the ones who's work took off the most. Yes, they were innovators, but still. In comparison, contemporaries who held much more typical beliefs such as Clark Ashton Smith, Manly Wade Wellman, Seabury Quinn have become obscure, even in cases when their work is arguably superior, such as Smith vs Lovecraft.Hyper Crab Tank posted:Oddly enough, he also married a Jew, so go figure. I swear I read somewhere that Lovecraft considered her to be "one of the good ones" (It was in an ST Joshi book, and the actual quote is that his wife, Sonia Greene, was "well assimilated".) Lightning Lord fucked around with this message at 02:53 on Feb 10, 2015 |
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Feb 10, 2015 02:50
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Lightning Lord posted:It always struck me as genuinely fascinating that the two most eccentric and bigoted writers of the Weird Tales pulps, Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, are the ones who's work took off the most. Yes, they were innovators, but still. In comparison, contemporaries who held much more typical beliefs such as Clark Ashton Smith, Manly Wade Wellman, Seabury Quinn have become obscure, even in cases when their work is arguably superior, such as Smith vs Lovecraft. I don't know if Clark Ashton Smith should be considered all that obscure; alongside Howard and Lovecraft he's probably the #1 most referenced when it comes to weird fiction. Still, you have a point, because I'm hard pressed to remember particular stories he's written. With the other two, it's easy to pick out one or two stories you remember quite well (Shadow over Innsmouth, Call of Cthulhu, Tower of the Elephant) that have left particular impressions of what might be considered iconically Lovecraftian/Howardian. It perhaps also contributes that both have left legacies that are strongly associated with their influence - the Mythos and Conan the Cimmerian, respectively - and which are reinforced by generations of imitators and extrapolators. What I'm getting at is that while it is kind of fascinating, I think it can be explained independently of the views of the authors.
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Feb 10, 2015 03:03
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Oddly enough, Howard's racist sensibilities actually waned over the years due to his correspondence with Lovecraft. That's right, Lovecraft was so crazy racist that he got someone born and raised in the American South to take a step back and look real hard at his life. It's sort of like if Lovecraft was a big crazy sponge of racism, absorbing other people's prejudices by just being so Goddamn hateful that it made them think "am anything I like that?" That's the true horror of Lovecraft
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Feb 10, 2015 03:05
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I was under the impression that Howard wasn't exceptionally racist for his time, at pretty much any point in his life.
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Feb 10, 2015 03:10
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ProfessorCirno posted:If it's any consolation, as a fellow Californian, snow is something we desperately need right now, at least in the mountains. Plague of Hats posted:No, the Kickstarter was for 3E. The one that's relatively most available is 2E, as far as I've seen. 1E is lost to the mists of tiny mid-80's vanity publishing. Actually I have a copy right here. It seems to be 2e with worse layout and no cyber and presumably some other changes but I am not gonna compare these things,
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Feb 10, 2015 03:12
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Could always try digging a canal or something. Tianxia seems like it's the fastest to pick up, though I never did figure out Fate. Guess I had to start sometime. Thanks! Same system again if I want something for my other favorite (awful) period of Chinese history, the Warlord Era? AKA the "kung fu gangster commie show".
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Feb 10, 2015 03:17
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As someone born and raised in Atlanta, the chip the Chamber of Commerce implanted in my palm burns in situations like this until I mention that the American South isn't really all that hideously racist anymore, except for the swamp people*. *South Carolinians
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Feb 10, 2015 03:21
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I am a huge fan of Seabury Quinn's Jules De Grandin stories as well as Talbot Mundy's adventure stories. I've also always understood that Arthur Ward (a/k/a Sax Rohmer) wrote his Fu Manchu stories in a way that made the great white hero, Sir Denis Nayland Smith, and his allies look as incompetent as possible while the good Doctor always won. Smith's sidekick, Dr. Petrie, seemed far more flexible and less racist in his attitudes and ended up never being completely hosed over.
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Feb 10, 2015 03:28
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Libertad! posted:Someone once said that if Lovecraft where alive today, he'd most likely be a message board/comments section troll. I can see a modern Lovecraft writing anime fanfiction and having meltdowns in RPGnet OSR threads and it works so well 
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Feb 10, 2015 03:28
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Plague of Hats posted:I was under the impression that Howard wasn't exceptionally racist for his time, at pretty much any point in his life. It's kind of interesting, because Howard was Irish and proud of being Irish... in early 1900s America, where there was still quite a bit of racial discrimination against the Irish. I'm not saying it's comparable to what some other groups have endured or anything, but you'd think being part of a minority group himself would've had some impact on his beliefs about other ethnic groups.
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Feb 10, 2015 03:31
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Hyper Crab Tank posted:It's kind of interesting, because Howard was Irish and proud of being Irish... in early 1900s America, where there was still quite a bit of racial discrimination against the Irish. I'm not saying it's comparable to what some other groups have endured or anything, but you'd think being part of a minority group himself would've had some impact on his beliefs about other ethnic groups. what would make you think that? the Irish side of my family, especially those who grew up in dust bowl Nebraska, are the most virulently racist people I've ever known.
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Feb 10, 2015 03:54
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I'm back to thinking about my Persona tabletop RPG. The main choice I'm stuck on is how detailed I want the combat to be. I know I don't want to go full-on tactical 4e combat with it--that doesn't seem consistent with the Persona feeling. What I'm considering is either cyclical initiative with light tactics (basically 13th Age, with rough zones and breaking up most attacks into discrete powers) or just going all-in on making this a PbtA game. For any of you who'd want to play or GM a Persona RPG: which seems like what you want out of a Persona game more? Would you want lists of powers to choose from as you level up (Agi, Hama, Brave Blade, Hassou Tobi, all those classic skills) with clear combat turns, or would you want things to be a little more abstracted, with some of the more iconic powers turned into more generalized moves and a more cinematic take on combat? I can absolutely see the appeal of both, and I'm having a hard time seeing which would provide a more "Persona" experience for players.
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Feb 10, 2015 03:55
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Yeah, a given group's own disenfranchisement has never been a special compass towards empathy for others.
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Feb 10, 2015 03:56
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Hyper Crab Tank posted:It's kind of interesting, because Howard was Irish and proud of being Irish... in early 1900s America, where there was still quite a bit of racial discrimination against the Irish. I'm not saying it's comparable to what some other groups have endured or anything, but you'd think being part of a minority group himself would've had some impact on his beliefs about other ethnic groups.
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Feb 10, 2015 03:58
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grassy gnoll posted:As someone born and raised in Atlanta, the chip the Chamber of Commerce implanted in my palm burns in situations like this until I mention that the American South isn't really all that hideously racist anymore, except for the swamp people*. Also Mississippi, also Florida, also
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Feb 10, 2015 04:24
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Look, the southern US has to deal with a poisonous legacy of centuries of institutional cruelty, but Florida's not our fault.
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Feb 10, 2015 04:50
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To be fair poo poo is just as bad in the northern US, they just get away without being stereotyped for it.
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Feb 10, 2015 04:56
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Halloween Jack posted:We can only hope that 80 years from now, our era won't be judged based on some GamerGater who can't get laid but can write a decent horror story. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7z65s0fqDw4&t=29s Also while there is obviously racism in the North, if Lovecraft had been a Vermonter maybe things could have worked themselves out. "These disgusting half-breeds DO have excellent soil conservation strategies...and their maple cakes are beyond compare!" Wait now I am doing one of those comic book supervillains Twinkie ads Hmm, gonna need an out-of-left-field reference to end this post  Oh Ram and Shyam, what won't you do for delicious Parle(tm) brand Poppins(tm)? remember you must look for the silver stripes on the package to know you are getting authentic Parle(tm) brand Poppins(tm)
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Feb 10, 2015 05:08
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Tollymain posted:To be fair poo poo is just as bad in the northern US, they just get away without being stereotyped for it. At least in the Northwest, to say it's an elephant in the room would be an understatement. More like the cufflinks on the Emperor's New Clothes.
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Feb 10, 2015 05:21
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The talk of weird rpgs on the previous page reminded me of something about myself. I was raised on weird rpgs. My first RPG Book? Tri-stat Sailor moon. I infact own most of the Guardians of Order catalogue. Second RPG i ever played? Rifts. I think the first D20 game i played was in fact D20 modern. Other notable rpgs i played were Deadlands, Gurps and Hero System. All of which i played before playing Dungeons and Dragons. I didnt get into Dungeons and Dragons 3rd edition until 3 and a half years after i started playing RPGs. I have more palladium books than i do DnD Books from multiple editions. A friend told my school principal at the private christian school i went to that he was concerned i was going to be a school shooter. Because i owned a Spycraft book about guns. I have actually sat down and played the Robocraft RPG. Looking back on it, im surprised I ever really got into DnD in the first place. I wasnt incredibly fond of 3rd edition, and until i started playing RPGs online and played 4th edition with Maptools, i was not heavily into Traditional Fantasy RPGs. I preferred most other genres.
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Feb 10, 2015 07:54
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Plague of Hats posted:The DBZ RPG is seriously one of those things you read once to your friends so you can all laugh at it, maybe play it once if you all have free time to smear yourselves with poop "just 'cause", and then you never look at it again. That said, the humor in it can be substantial depending on your friends' grasp of basic game design and also simple math. I have a tenuous grasp on basic math and i took a look at that book and said "nope".
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Feb 10, 2015 08:12
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Plague of Hats posted:Yeah, a given group's own disenfranchisement has never been a special compass towards empathy for others. I suppose you're right about that. fosborb posted:the Irish side of my family, especially those who grew up in dust bowl Nebraska, are the most virulently racist people I've ever known. Well, in the near 100 years since Howard's time attitudes towards the Irish has thankfully improved. There are racists in every ethnic group though, and I'm sorry to hear your family has a bunch of them. Anyway let's talk about RPGs and not 80 years dead racists. Harrow posted:I'm back to thinking about my Persona tabletop RPG. I think it would be a shame not to include the iconic skills and abilities from the Persona series, and I would be disappointed with the system if it didn't let me, eventually, just up and Megidolaon a motherfucker. That being said, Persona has always worked on the principle of including almost every permutation of element, damage, area of effect etc. as a separate skill. You have Agi, Agilao, Agidyne, Maragi, Maragion, Maragidyne... repeat for every element. Including the physical ones. On one hand, I expect a Persona game to have those skills, but on the other, it makes some of them feel kind of... mechanical and repetitive, and just having a massive matrix of like, "this is what a [target] [element] [strength] spell is called" sounds really boring. I've never associated Persona games with deep tactical combat (beyond "hit the weakness to get more turns"), so I think you're right not to go the 4E route. But I also think it takes a bit more specificity than the completely cinematic look, so clear combat turns in some way or another is what I'm leaning towards.
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Feb 10, 2015 11:35
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Sion posted:Some friends of mine would like to play a roleplaying game but they stalwartly refuse to tell me what kind of game they are interested in. I have gone with Shadowrun.
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Feb 10, 2015 12:12
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Sion posted:Some friends of mine would like to play a roleplaying game but they stalwartly refuse to tell me what kind of game they are interested in. My mostly serious suggestion would be Apocalypse World - the combination of playbooks they pick will tell you what the game is about. (You might want the "bloodless" playbooks - i.e. the ones without the sex moves).
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Feb 10, 2015 12:46
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This is a general design musing on healing and the "15-minute workday": how about just making combats self-contained? It occurred to me that WoW has undergone many, sometimes major revisions to its mechanics such that every fight almost always starts with the characters at full health and mana and all their abilities readied, but the game doesn't really have a problem with generating tension and difficulty, although all the tension and difficulty is just inside the fights themselves. If an RPG already does this, I'm probably just missing it, but it seems like it'd cut a lot of the cruft out of things like recharge mechanics and spell availability, and especially the gameplay vs versimilitude tug-of-war of "well why CAN'T we rest here?!"
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Feb 10, 2015 13:40
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gradenko_2000 posted:This is a general design musing on healing and the "15-minute workday": how about just making combats self-contained? It'd be very tempting if I still gave a poo poo about 3e D&D (or D&D in general) to convert every caster to psionic style power points but that would be an assload of work for basically no benefit.
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Feb 10, 2015 14:52
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gradenko_2000 posted:This is a general design musing on healing and the "15-minute workday": how about just making combats self-contained? It's also worth considering that in an MMO, players can be regularly pushed to the edge of their capability, because it's easy to pick back up and have another go when the first one fails. In tabletop it's a lot harder to do, because overstepping that boundary means death, and that's at best a much larger time sink.. and rare is the encounter that can be done (or that players want to do) twice. It's certainly doable, but it's a lot harder to do right than leaning on attrition and resource management to do the dirty work for you.
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Feb 10, 2015 15:15
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Yawgmoth posted:It'd be very tempting if I still gave a poo poo about 3e D&D (or D&D in general) to convert every caster to psionic style power points but that would be an assload of work for basically no benefit. Unearthed Arcana took a swing at that back in the day: http://www.systemreferencedocuments.org/resources/systems/pennpaper/dnd35/soveliorsage/unearthedSpellPoints.html
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