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TheLovablePlutonis posted:I do what I want because I'm a free man. Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. 
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Jun 5, 2015 17:49
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NO WAI T PERHAPS PLUTONIS IS ONTO SOMETHING PERHAPS THE MERCILESS MAILED FIST OF ETTIN HAS STRANGLED THE TRANSNATIONAL GRIMES SUBFORUM FOR TOO LONG LET US RISE UP, BROUGHT TOGETHER BY A SINGULAR RALLYING CRY "Morte Alla that fuckin nerd ettin Italia Anelia"
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Jun 5, 2015 17:53
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Davin Valkri posted:Hey! Be nice to Ettin! Ettin is nice! I will destroy him and take his Mod star in accordance with Necromonger law, unban happyelf, etherwind and liesmith, cull the Exalted thread of those who don't love the drat product and start a thousand year utopia.
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Jun 5, 2015 17:54
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Yes, those things are boring while small text and heart emotes are extremely good and fun.
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Jun 5, 2015 17:54
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:I will destroy him and take his Mod star in accordance with Necromonger law, unban happyelf, etherwind and liesmith, cull the Exalted thread of those who don't love the drat product and start a thousand year utopia. And get backstabbed by Karl Urban, only to strand on a deserted wasteland of a planet?
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Jun 5, 2015 17:56
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Fsmhunk posted:Yes, those things are boring while small text and heart emotes are extremely good and fun. Be the posts you want to see in the thread.
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Jun 5, 2015 17:57
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The second half of that movie was so bad. It should just be Riddick and his alien dog hunting for stuff to eat instead.
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Jun 5, 2015 17:58
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Fsmhunk posted:Yes, those things are boring while small text and heart emotes are extremely good and fun. W-well, i was just using tinytext because it's environmentally conscious but i'm pleasantly surprised that you agree! Let's be good+fun together, okay?~
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Jun 5, 2015 18:00
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Fsmhunk posted:Yes, those things are boring while small text and heart emotes are extremely good and fun. My experience with Call of Cthulhu is limited to a lot of hearing it second hand, and also my general antipathy toward Lovecraft, which has turned into this giant nerd thing that I just sort of go  at. There's not really much you can do if no one really knows about it, but I'm not really sure why talking about dry business decisions would be 'fun'. Interesting or edifying, yes, but 'fun' isn't really a word I'd use for that, unless 'fun' is some kind of blighted wasteland of a standard rather than an emotional state of being.Besides which, as mentioned, talking about those things in a chat thread seems a bit out of place. Not necessarily because the chat thread can't have serious conversations, but these serious conversations tend to be about personal moments and what the people in the thread are doing at the time, which are slightly off-topic things that don't really fit in any other thread. If we wanted to talk about that kind of thing, we have a lot of options, whereas if we shitpost or talk personal poo poo in other threads, we'll just be derailing them. Make sense? Also, every poster needs a gimmick, right? I just chose the non-racist, non-meme, non-shitposting, non-insulting kind. Stormgale posted:Be the posts you want to see in the thread. Yes, thank you, Gale.
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Jun 5, 2015 18:02
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Queen Fiona posted:Yes, thank you, Gale. poo poo i'm not Ningyou I can't do this super cutesy posting um.... think think. On August 15, 2007, Wizards of the Coast created a countdown page for a product called 4dventure, suspending all other D&D articles on their site.[citation needed] IVC2 announced on August 16, 2007, that this was the announcement of D&D 4th edition.[citation needed] Unlike 3rd edition, which had the core rulebooks released in monthly installments, the Player's Handbook, Monster Manual, and Dungeon Master's Guide were all released in June 2008.
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Jun 5, 2015 18:05
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Stormgale posted:poo poo i'm not Ningyou I can't do this super cutesy posting um.... think think. Well, that seems to make sense. I mean, I'm not sure why'd you release one third of a game at a time over three months, because that just means everyone has to wait ages to actually use their shiny, high-quality Third Edition hardbacks. (Some of which I still have, for reasons which entirely escape me!)
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Jun 5, 2015 18:07
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Queen Fiona posted:Well, that seems to make sense. I mean, I'm not sure why'd you release one third of a game at a time over three months, because that just means everyone has to wait ages to actually use their shiny, high-quality Third Edition hardbacks. (Some of which I still have, for reasons which entirely escape me!) Youd think that but D&D 5th ed spread them out over 4 months IIRC?
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Jun 5, 2015 18:09
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I don't know about all that, I feel plenty insulted. Also, I'm more of a Glorantha guy than a CoC one. Greg is probably one of the most important people in the history of RPG's, and his wiki page refers to him as a practitioner of shamanism. He created Chaosium to get the first ever Glorantha project published, and after years he and Sandy are back at the helm. (Sandy also made a bunch of levels for DOOM.) I might consider doing a FATAL and friends write-up for the Guide if anyone else hasn't already done it. It may be a good way to renew interest in Glorantha on this forum since it doesn't seem very popular here. On the note of Lovecraft and racism though, people never seem perturbed about vampire games, but Lair of the White Worm is twenty times more racist than anything Lovecraft ever wrote.
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Jun 5, 2015 18:11
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Fsmhunk posted:On the note of Lovecraft and racism though, people never seem perturbed about vampire games, but Lair of the White Worm is twenty times more racist than anything Lovecraft ever wrote. I'd argue that Vampire fiction as we know it today is descended from the repressed sexuality line of Vampiric fiction more than anything else, hence why racism dosent really come up.
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Jun 5, 2015 18:12
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Yeah the difference is nobody except real Bram Stoker nerds knows or cares about Lair of the White Worm, while Lovecraft's stuff is everywhere.
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Jun 5, 2015 18:13
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Howard wrote Conan yelling at an african-like tribal chief holding a white woman hostage that black dogs shouldn't lay their hands on white women but people don't hand wring enough at Conan and low fantasy barbarian stuff as much as they do to Lovecraft and it's retarded that people keep reading stuff made by a New Englander from the early 1900s and trying to apply 20th century racial sensibilities, not to mention that a lot of Lovecraft's racism was too goofy to be even offensive (passing a white gorilla as your wife by putting shoddy makeup and claiming she is Portuguese lmao)
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Jun 5, 2015 18:19
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Fsmhunk posted:I don't know about all that, I feel plenty insulted. Also, I'm more of a Glorantha guy than a CoC one. Greg is probably one of the most important people in the history of RPG's, and his wiki page refers to him as a practitioner of shamanism. He created Chaosium to get the first ever Glorantha project published, and after years he and Sandy are back at the helm. (Sandy also made a bunch of levels for DOOM.) I wasn't actually referring to Lovecraft antipathy as being based in his racism! More that I had antipathy toward the Mythos due to overuse and memes and such, and a general dislike of horror. But assuming that was true, vampires are a long-standing part of folklore, while the Mythos is entirely Lovecraft's invention. (Also, plenty of people are perturbed about vampire games - I was one of them, until I played Bloodlines and twigged to the undertones that drew me into such things.) One vampire story being racist, or even several, doesn't really make for a very good equivalency against one guy who was racist writing a bunch of stories about specific things. I forgot about Sandy Peterson being a part of iD, actually, but they have a long-standing relationship with tabletop gaming (like a lot of companies at the time), with Romero in particular making heavy use of such inspirations. (Which...didn't really work out terribly well, if Daikatana is any indication.) I don't know about Greg Stafford, but I'd be happy to read a bit about him if you'd like to write it up, and I'm sure FATAL & Friends would be happy to see more Early RPG Writeups (which happen to be some of my favorites). Gygax's personality and writing style had a huge impact on the industry at the time, but a lot of older RPGs have fallen through the cracks, even if their later versions persist, thanks to the age of the works and the nature of the TSR juggernaut. I actually got to look at some old first-ed AD&D books in my high school library, and they're pretty much incomprehensible by modern standards. I wasn't meaning to be insulting, but coming in here and being all 'HEY YOU PEOPLE ARE POSTING WRONG' is a pretty hostile thing. I'm willing to chat about things that meet my interest, and I imagine a lot of other people are - just because we're doing a bit of stuff you don't enjoy doesn't mean we can't have other discussions on the side. TGD is a diverse community, after all  TheLovablePlutonis posted:Howard wrote Conan yelling at an african-like tribal chief holding a white woman hostage that black dogs shouldn't lay their hands on white women but people don't hand wring enough at Conan and low fantasy barbarian stuff as much as they do to Lovecraft and it's retarded that people keep reading stuff made by a New Englander from the early 1900s and trying to apply 20th century racial sensibilities, not to mention that a lot of Lovecraft's racism was too goofy to be even offensive (passing a white gorilla as your wife by putting shoddy makeup and claiming she is Portuguese lmao) Except that a whole bunch of people do hand-wring at Conan, especially on TGD! I'd say people do it more for Conan than Lovecraft, likely because you can remove the racial overtones from the latter and still have most of the appeal, where the former generally is uh...less that. Also, racism being goofy doesn't make it not racism. We can apply a certain amount of relative morality for Lovecraft, but it's still something to acknowledge rather than wholly ignore.
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Jun 5, 2015 18:23
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Queen Fiona posted:Well, that seems to make sense. I mean, I'm not sure why'd you release one third of a game at a time over three months, because that just means everyone has to wait ages to actually use their shiny, high-quality Third Edition hardbacks. (Some of which I still have, for reasons which entirely escape me!) Queen Fiona posted:My experience with Call of Cthulhu is limited to a lot of hearing it second hand, and also my general antipathy toward Lovecraft, which has turned into this giant nerd thing that I just sort of go also i feel like i should be in the core audience for Lovecraftian whatever because I sort of like weirdunsettlingalien whatever and body horror and general strangeness but so much of it is just either boring and racist or d u l l or goony saccharine TEEHEE CTHULHU-CHAN stuff and it's like ehhhhhhhhhhhh I guess what I'm saying is that it seems like a really fiddly thing to Get Right?
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Jun 5, 2015 18:28
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Shocking newsflash: Trying to write literal unknowable horrors is hard.
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Jun 5, 2015 18:29
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:Howard wrote Conan yelling at an african-like tribal chief holding a white woman hostage that black dogs shouldn't lay their hands on white women but people don't hand wring enough at Conan and low fantasy barbarian stuff as much as they do to Lovecraft and it's retarded that people keep reading stuff made by a New Englander from the early 1900s and trying to apply 20th century racial sensibilities, not to mention that a lot of Lovecraft's racism was too goofy to be even offensive (passing a white gorilla as your wife by putting shoddy makeup and claiming she is Portuguese lmao) howard literally wrote in a letter that he knew what burning black flesh smelled like because he went to a cross burning and like half of conan's about how black people are lower than animals. lovecraft definitely was racist but in a super academic way instead of i literally watched a man burn to death and probably enjoyed it
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Jun 5, 2015 18:34
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don't actually know which one's worse but yeah the fact that people wring their hands about how awful lovecraft was and give howard a pass because it's low fantasy is like, what
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Jun 5, 2015 18:36
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Now that I think about it, I might actually have to deal with racial issues in RPGs right now, with my campaign writeup. Melding D&D with real Europe, and putting both real polytheism and D&D polytheism into the fore, stands to be a minefield of racial issues if handled poorly. I think I'm doing okay myself, but I scrapped a similar campaign set in an uncolonized New World because I'm pretty sure I couldn't actually write those cultures up in an interesting, well-informed manner. (Or, in other words, I'm not Monte Cook.  )Ningyou posted:~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~episodic gaming~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Other than Telltale and similar formats, has Episodic Gaming ever actually worked? Stormgale posted:Shocking newsflash: Trying to write literal unknowable horrors is hard. “we are their creatures. we belong to them as the tongue belongs to the speaker. we are remade as slaves for that is our destiny. they call to us and we will answer. Masters, we hear, and we can only obey.” Fungah! posted:don't actually know which one's worse but yeah the fact that people wring their hands about how awful lovecraft was and give howard a pass because it's low fantasy is like, what Again, I'm pretty sure this isn't a thing that actually happens.
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Jun 5, 2015 18:38
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Queen Fiona posted:Other than Telltale and similar formats, has Episodic Gaming ever actually worked? Is that a quote? Fungah! posted:don't actually know which one's worse but yeah the fact that people wring their hands about how awful lovecraft was and give howard a pass because it's low fantasy is like, what Realtalk where are people doing this?
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Jun 5, 2015 18:38
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Queen Fiona posted:I wasn't actually referring to Lovecraft antipathy as being based in his racism! More that I had antipathy toward the Mythos due to overuse and memes and such, and a general dislike of horror. But assuming that was true, vampires are a long-standing part of folklore, while the Mythos is entirely Lovecraft's invention. (Also, plenty of people are perturbed about vampire games - I was one of them, until I played Bloodlines and twigged to the undertones that drew me into such things.) One vampire story being racist, or even several, doesn't really make for a very good equivalency against one guy who was racist writing a bunch of stories about specific things. I have no problem with discussing race dynamics on literature, just with making that discussion overtake everything else and dismiss the authors just for that. It's a phenomenon that arrives on certain circles where you can't admit to like certain stuff without being pelted with accusations and what else. I don't care if Lovecraft would retch at the sight of a semitic-looking half-breed latino like me, I still like a lot of his works, and I still agree with a lot of Marx' theories even though he called Ferdinand Lassale something really nasty.
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Jun 5, 2015 18:39
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Stormgale posted:Realtalk where are people doing this? i;ve seen people do it on sa before and i've read short essays from people who defend robert howard's racism because it's just fantasy, chill out. i'll admit though, don't have any of it in front of me and i didn't see it in here. mostly wanted to bring up the cross burning thing becauise not many people know about that letter
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Jun 5, 2015 18:42
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:I have no problem with discussing race dynamics on literature, just with making that discussion overtake everything else and dismiss the authors just for that. It's a phenomenon that arrives on certain circles where you can't admit to like certain stuff without being pelted with accusations and what else. I don't care if Lovecraft would retch at the sight of a semitic-looking half-breed latino like me, I still like a lot of his works, and I still agree with a lot of Marx' theories even though he called Ferdinand Lassale something really nasty. I, uh...you did read the part where I said that Lovecraft has an appeal beyond the racism and that the racism isn't why I'm 'meh' on Mythos stuff, right? This seems oddly defensive over something that no one's actually really saying, at least in the thread. If Lovecraft weren't racist, I still wouldn't like his poo poo and have antipathy toward stuff, so... Fungah! posted:i;ve seen people do it on sa before and i've read short essays from people who defend robert howard's racism because it's just fantasy, chill out. i'll admit though, don't have any of it in front of me and i didn't see it in here. mostly wanted to bring up the cross burning thing becauise not many people know about that letter On the subject of essays, I'm pretty sure people do that for Lovecraft, too. It's more the bit where people give Howard a pass but not Lovecraft, which seems...unlikely? I can see the other way around, since that's kind of already happening, but. The letter is pretty hosed up, though, I'll grant you that.
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Jun 5, 2015 18:44
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:I have no problem with discussing race dynamics on literature, just with making that discussion overtake everything else and dismiss the authors just for that. It's a phenomenon that arrives on certain circles where you can't admit to like certain stuff without being pelted with accusations and what else. I don't care if Lovecraft would retch at the sight of a semitic-looking half-breed latino like me, I still like a lot of his works, and I still agree with a lot of Marx' theories even though he called Ferdinand Lassale something really nasty. yeah this is basically where I am too. it's very important to acknowledge that stuff but lovecraft still wrote some of the best horror ever, howard was a master of pulp fiction and so on. good poo poo comes out of disgusting people sometimes and it's not worth throwing that out because the source is toxic as poo poo
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Jun 5, 2015 18:46
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Fungah! posted:howard literally wrote in a letter that he knew what burning black flesh smelled like because he went to a cross burning and like half of conan's about how black people are lower than animals. lovecraft definitely was racist but in a super academic way instead of i literally watched a man burn to death and probably enjoyed it Good Lord.
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Jun 5, 2015 18:47
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Queen Fiona posted:On the subject of essays, I'm pretty sure people do that for Lovecraft, too. It's more the bit where people give Howard a pass but not Lovecraft, which seems...unlikely? I can see the other way around, since that's kind of already happening, but. i'll see if i can dig some of it, this was poo poo i read literally years ago though
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Jun 5, 2015 18:47
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If Lovecraft were alive today he'd just be posting funny memes on /pol/
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Jun 5, 2015 18:49
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Fungah! posted:yeah this is basically where I am too. it's very important to acknowledge that stuff but lovecraft still wrote some of the best horror ever, howard was a master of pulp fiction and so on. good poo poo comes out of disgusting people sometimes and it's not worth throwing that out because the source is toxic as poo poo It's also important not to drag race into discussions of authors because of the automatic assumption that someone disliking or criticizing a source is automatically doing so is doing so because of their personal life or views. I never mentioned race when I said 'hey I don't like Lovecraft', it was Fsmhunk who did so by making assumptions on my reasoning, and everyone else coming in to say their piece about YO HOWARD WAS WAY WORSE LAY OFF LOVECRAFT. It's sort of...projecting, I guess? At least, that's how it feels. It didn't really need to be brought up at all, but people felt the need to do so anyway, which seems oddly telling.
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Jun 5, 2015 18:51
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For example I don't like lovecraft inspired stuff because 9/10 it's a nihilistic suicide run that will end in failure at best, I don't see the point in playing a game about a story that you cant meaningfully alter.
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Jun 5, 2015 18:53
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See, I disagree there- there's value and power in struggling against the inevitable. There are a lot of things that can't be changed by one man that nevertheless must be opposed.
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Jun 5, 2015 18:55
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:Good Lord. fair warning, i'm fact checking and trying to see if i can find the source on that and coming up short. i know i read about it in the introduction to a conan collection that led off with tower of the elephant but it looks like the only way to find the primary source is to either find that collection again or sift through a 200 dollar book with dozens of his letters and nah
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Jun 5, 2015 18:58
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Oh that's true but I generally don't enjoy it in my games that I play for fun, sorry i'll focus that to Lovecraft elf games. I mean I enjoyed polaris because I felt my sacrifice and loss meant something even if it was futile but in Lovecraft works it feels pointless?
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Jun 5, 2015 18:59
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K Prime posted:See, I disagree there- there's value and power in struggling against the inevitable. There are a lot of things that can't be changed by one man that nevertheless must be opposed. never compromise, not even in the face of comiket
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Jun 5, 2015 19:01
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yeah, running Lovecraftian horror well requires a balance - you have to balance the horror of being an insignificant speck in the grand scheme of things with making sure your players know that at the end of the day, specks can still change things, and that dying to save a little girl isn't any less meaningful because one day the stars will be right and all things die.
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Jun 5, 2015 19:02
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K Prime posted:yeah, running Lovecraftian horror well requires a balance - you have to balance the horror of being an insignificant speck in the grand scheme of things with making sure your players know that at the end of the day, specks can still change things, and that dying to save a little girl isn't any less meaningful because one day the stars will be right and all things die. In going to get a glass of milk I had a good way to express it and it's similar to my post r.e. watchdogs and morality: Fantasy games and games that are fantastical (in sci fi for example) let me feel that a noble stand to save a life that might not end the encroaching tide of darkness or buys us barely a glimmer of hope. Lovecraftian feels more real and feels close enough to real morality and the real world where it can get depressing thinking about that.
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Jun 5, 2015 19:05
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K Prime posted:See, I disagree there- there's value and power in struggling against the inevitable. There are a lot of things that can't be changed by one man that nevertheless must be opposed. Doesn't nChangeling go out of its way to make it clear there are things worth fighting for and beauty to behold, even if there are battles that simply cannot be won? What the fight is also matters - and in Cthulhu stuff, it's usually vast, incomprehensible indifference that could snuff you without a thought, which becomes difficult to work with. (Actually trying to expand it into something that can be fought on some level tends to dilute the appeal, so...) I was in a campaign which was planned to have similar elements with a dreaming god, but included elements both directly relating to that god and outside of that plot to make it clear there were things that could be won, and the consequences felt real, as did the motivations. Same with my first Mistborn campaign, which ended with my information broker pledging to fight against Ruin however he could, even as he knew he had no chance against a god. Fighting against inevitable odds requires a certain level of stakes and emotional investment that it's hard to justify in the case of Lovecraft-style entities without some serious work.
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Jun 5, 2015 19:06
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nChangeling is heavily influenced by lovecraftian themes, if not by the actual mythos- the True Fae are basically stand ins for the Old Gods in terms of themeing. I honestly think nChangeling is pretty close to what I would consider Lovecraftian Themeing Done Right. edit: like literally doing a find and replace with "True Fae" and "Nylarthotep," then one with "changeling" and "former cultist/cultist's child/kidnapping victim" and you'd end up with basically a Lovecraft game with a fae twist. K Prime fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Jun 5, 2015 |
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Jun 5, 2015 19:08
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