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food court bailiff posted:Is there some like....Eberron primer somewhere? I have always wanted to run a game in Eberron, it's the only "official" setting that I've really thought was interesting enough to want to play in, but I think the setting requires a fair amount of lore buy-in from the players to really "click". I'm never going to be able to get my players to read a whole splatbook just for setting details, so I'm thinking of compiling a quick list of important facts/factions/dates/landmarks/etc for a handout and was wondering if one exists already that I can crib from instead of reinventing the wheel. There's something like three different aborted FATAL & Friends Eberron reviews (including one of mine) which might prove to be a good starting point. In general, though, I don't really feel like the bit about requiring players to know the lore is really true. For the most part, all you need to know is:
Rather than knowing the lore, your players need to have specific fictional/genre touchstones if they don't know enough about pulp, westerns or Cold War spy fiction to make it up as they go along. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Jan 22, 2020 |
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Jan 22, 2020 20:02
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Coolness Averted posted:The vampire line I think was the only one really guilty of that, the games without the virtue systems usually weren't so bad (in that regard) the more problematic bit about disabilities was definitely people trying to min/max merits and flaws. Yeah the supernatural templates replaced it completely so it was easy to overlook. Even Vampire, the only real issue I can think of is the malkavs. Its the Mortals in WoD that were what explored that, and have issues the most as a result. Vampires Humanity being more about not succumbing to the beast, and Mages about using magic not carelessly or selflessly was a much simpler thing. But I do like the idea of cosmic horror in roleplaying, and the mental effects seem inherent to it. But again, I totally agree with the criticisms, its a tough subject. Even if written well, tabletop gamers may handle it poorly. But then the same is true of roleplaying in general, if you game with lovely people their lovely opinions will come out in the game.
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Jan 22, 2020 20:03
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Zaphod42 posted:Yeah the supernatural templates replaced it completely so it was easy to overlook. Even Vampire, the only real issue I can think of is the malkavs. Its the Mortals in WoD that were what explored that, and have issues the most as a result. 1) You were wrong and said a false thing. 2) As stated, the most recent version of Unknown Armies does without bizarre, ableist assumptions like I must be a deranged psychopath because I need to take some Lexapro. Have you played a game that came out after 1996? Like if you haven't that's totally cool and I'm not trying to be a hipster or nothing, but did you really expect everything to stay the same for most of 30 years and not change.
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Jan 22, 2020 20:10
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food court bailiff posted:I have literally all of those books* but they're not super helpful as a quick look to start playing. Even 4E's distinctive split between the Campaign Setting and the Player's Guide just meant that if players wanted to have any knowledge or history of the world they'd have to skim through another book on top of the one with their character options. Does the wikipedia page help at all for getting the gist without being too spoilery or or baked on the assumption you already know the setting? I vaguely remember there was a little of that in the 4e player's guide, where it felt like the sections were missing or I'd skipped a book I should have already read. I think it may have been published with the assumption readers would've already read the free setting previews/teasers that preceded it.* *this is the vibe I got having started 4th just before gamma world launched.
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Jan 22, 2020 20:10
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Part of what makes the horror cosmic is how deeply it personally resonates with the observer. Looking into Hastur's face isn't scary because he's got a scary face, it's scary because it's an impossible sight to parse. Instead, your brain rolls d% on a chart and you'll never eat vegetables ever again for reasons you're too terrified to even consider. I don't think that's a portrayal of PTSD, or even trying to be - that's just Hastur being cosmic.
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Jan 22, 2020 20:12
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Xiahou Dun posted:Have you played a game that came out after 1996? Like if you haven't that's totally cool and I'm not trying to be a hipster or nothing, but did you really expect everything to stay the same for most of 30 years and not change. Where is this even coming from? In what way did I say I wanted things to stay the same?  1. You were wrong and said a false thing.
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Jan 22, 2020 20:13
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^^^No you just call people who've played a game in the last 30 years mentally ill.moths posted:Part of what makes the horror cosmic is how deeply it personally resonates with the observer. That is totally cool and fair and actually interesting as a take. But if the book calls it PTSD that reading kind of falls flat. Death of the Author only gets you so far.
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Jan 22, 2020 20:14
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Personally I feel like a huge part of the problem is that even theoretically genre-appropriate ‘staring into the face of god broke my brain’ and it have learned a horrible truth and it has scarred me’ gothic stuff gets mechanized as a completely random effect from a list, or something like that. So it becomes a weirdly generalized theory that inevitably puts ‘obligatory cannibalism’ on a list with ‘general anxiety’ or something. The more genre-specific the forms of brain-influence are, the less it’s going to stumble into bad territory. There’s really no such thing as a generic model for this stuff - Bluebeard’s Bride has and needs a totally different approach to mental and emotional breakdowns from something like the Chronicles of Darkness or Unknown Armies.
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Jan 22, 2020 20:22
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Relevant to this discussion, Fate of Cthulhu (which has a pretty cool “12 Monkeys vs the Mythos” angle rather than the generic Lovecraft adaptation the title suggests) specifically ditches “sanity/insanity” terminology and instead parses Mythos-induced degeneration as Corruption (in the sense of becoming a Mythos creature and thinking/acting/existing as they do) and spends a little time on why it’s a poor idea to frame this game mechanic in terms of IRL mental illness. This angle also means you can just sidestep the whole issue and have Corruption be purely or primarily physical mutations. Parkreiner fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Jan 22, 2020 |
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Jan 22, 2020 20:24
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Froghammer posted:Casual reminder that Unknown Armies' stress meters are the best mental health / sanity rules ever printed I'll stick up for CoC's sanity mechanic, because it evokes a certain kind of early 20th pop cultural portrayal of insanity, where people go generically "insane" and begin babbling and running around and screaming and not making any sense, and it's time to call the guys with the butterfly nets and the jackets with the extra long sleeves. It's the exact opposite of realistic or well-grounded, of course.
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Jan 22, 2020 20:34
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Parkreiner posted:Relevant to this discussion, Fate of Cthulhu (which has a pretty cool “12 Monkeys vs the Mythos” angle rather than the generic Lovecraft adaptation the title suggests) specifically ditches “sanity/insanity” terminology and instead parses Mythos-induced degeneration as Corruption (in the sense of becoming a Mythos creature and thinking/acting/existing as they do) and spends a little time on why it’s a poor idea to frame this game mechanic in terms of IRL mental illness. Seems like a good way to go
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Jan 22, 2020 21:09
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RE: polearm chat - what, no love for the Voulge? RE: existential horror and insanity - I think part of the issue is that the mind is a terrible and poorly-understood place to begin with, so making blanket assumptions about how someone's brain will crack when exposed to mind-bending creatures from the outer dimensions just falls flat. And I agree that the old 1920s Cthulhu idea of "he became a gibbering madman" is thematic, but not terribly realistic. But a lot depends on what you want to get out of your gaming experience. There's a huge difference between "My character once looked upon the face of Hastur. Now I have fewer hit points and have to roll WILL saves to not snap at people all the time, poor health and irritability brought on by the fact that I haven't had a single decent nightmare-free night of sleep in the last 15 months" and "My character once looked upon the face of Hastur. I rolled on a random chart and now I'm a raging dendrophobe, LOL."
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Jan 22, 2020 21:12
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The reason that most of Lovecraft's protagonists become "crazy" after encountering the unknown is because Lovecraft himself had many mental illnesses, including a deep-set, pathological xenophobia. In reality, while trauma can induce PTSD, the sort of trauma that occurs from being exposed to the actual horrible truths of the universe (cops are evil, capitalism is rendering us all to serfs, climate change is going to cause extinction if not stopped) tends to lead to emotional states that are not a form of mental illness, but that are merely the effect of rationally trying to cope with such a huge and terrible revelation. This is the sort of thing that can be directed into healthy directions with the right sort of education, i.e. more knowledge about the terrible thing, which tends to be the opposite of how it works for Lovecraft. The idea that things like mood or personality disorders or schizophrenia can emerge as a result of acute environmental factors, meanwhile, is pure garbage theory that, in many cases, works to dehumanize those with mental illness. And don't even get me started on how nerd media in general treats neurodivergence and other forms of disability. There's probably an academic paper about how media demonizes facial disfigurement alone. I'm a firm believer that games really shouldn't have mental illness as a major theme, unless it is the major theme of the game, see for example Senua's Sacrifice. Most of the TTRPGs focusing on topics of mental illness are more likely to be indier, more narrative games, as more traditional games prefer to be more escapist in general and you can't really have escapism when dealing with incredibly real poo poo.
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Jan 22, 2020 21:25
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World of Darkness' use of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and any number of other mental illnesses as consequences your character has to suffer through as punishment for moral transgressions is 1) problematic as gently caress for, like, a bunch if reasons and 2) bad game game design also for, like, a bunch of reasons. None of that is to say that if you liked those rules, or had positive play experiences that came from those rules, then you're a bad person. But the industry moved past using non-neurotypical conditions as penalties years ago, and it's good that it did.
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Jan 22, 2020 21:42
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Meinberg posted:I'm a firm believer that games really shouldn't have mental illness as a major theme, unless it is the major theme of the game, see for example Senua's Sacrifice. Most of the TTRPGs focusing on topics of mental illness are more likely to be indier, more narrative games, as more traditional games prefer to be more escapist in general and you can't really have escapism when dealing with incredibly real poo poo. Honestly that seems much more gross and exploitative to me than "I saw a Cthulhu and now I'm a 1920's madman." Genre emulation isn't presenting itself as a genuine approximation of anything - except how these stories work. But gaming out actual mental illness is giving me a serious blackface vibe, along with every other bad feeling I get when people employ DIY therapy as a dangerous alternative to real treatment.
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Jan 22, 2020 21:47
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Ilor posted:RE: existential horror and insanity - I think part of the issue is that the mind is a terrible and poorly-understood place to begin with, so making blanket assumptions about how someone's brain will crack when exposed to mind-bending creatures from the outer dimensions just falls flat. And I agree that the old 1920s Cthulhu idea of "he became a gibbering madman" is thematic, but not terribly realistic. But a lot depends on what you want to get out of your gaming experience. There's a huge difference between "My character once looked upon the face of Hastur. Now I have fewer hit points and have to roll WILL saves to not snap at people all the time, poor health and irritability brought on by the fact that I haven't had a single decent nightmare-free night of sleep in the last 15 months" and "My character once looked upon the face of Hastur. I rolled on a random chart and now I'm a raging dendrophobe, LOL."
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Jan 22, 2020 22:02
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moths posted:Honestly that seems much more gross and exploitative to me than "I saw a Cthulhu and now I'm a 1920's madman." Genre emulation isn't presenting itself as a genuine approximation of anything - except how these stories work. But what if, and this might be a wild one here, the genre being emulated is itself harmful and indeed feeds into narratives that lead to the mentally ill being taken from their communities and institutionalized and overmedicated and all other things that lead to the disintegration of their lifestyle, well-being, and autonomy. Meanwhile, if I, a personal with extreme mental illness, made a game about my mental illness in a way that was accessible and understandable to the players in a way that respected my identity, I don't see how that would be problematic. Obviously, bad games are still bad games, but dealing with the reality of vectors of marginalization in a healthy, constructive way is not bad. Like, c'mon, not every playing RPGs is an abled, white, straight dude, and people have the emotional maturity to play games therapeutically not as a replacement for therapy. I've seen arguments along the line of that second sentence A LOT on these forums, and they seem to imply that the only sort of table that exists for RPG is a bunch of emotionally stunted ultra-privileged nerds who refuse to have an honest emotional engagement with their work. Maybe that is what your table is like, but the people I play with have a wider plurality of experiences and a greater degree of willingness to engage openly with the text on the level that the text is presented at, and its disingenuous to say that my experiences are not reflective of a lot of people's play experience.
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Jan 22, 2020 22:03
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Speaking of Lovecraft being problematic, https://twitter.com/EvilHatOfficial/status/1218223310367903744?s=19 Nice to see someone address it head on in the rulebook. Fate of Cthulhu just came out
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Jan 22, 2020 22:09
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Meinberg posted:But what if, and this might be a wild one here, the genre being emulated is itself harmful and indeed feeds into narratives that lead to the mentally ill being taken from their communities and institutionalized and overmedicated and all other things that lead to the disintegration of their lifestyle, well-being, and autonomy. See also every example of Roma travellers that show up in RPGs which are all about the old fortune tellers handing out curses and thieves and the like. It's totally genre emulation, guys!
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Jan 22, 2020 22:10
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Meinberg posted:Meanwhile, if I, a personal with extreme mental illness, made a game about my mental illness in a way that was accessible and understandable to the players in a way that respected my identity, I don't see how that would be problematic. Obviously, bad games are still bad games, but dealing with the reality of vectors of marginalization in a healthy, constructive way is not bad. Like, c'mon, not every playing RPGs is an abled, white, straight dude, and people have the emotional maturity to play games therapeutically not as a replacement for therapy. I've seen arguments along the line of that second sentence A LOT on these forums, and they seem to imply that the only sort of table that exists for RPG is a bunch of emotionally stunted ultra-privileged nerds who refuse to have an honest emotional engagement with their work. Exactly what I was saying earlier. But then, someone else could still find your depiction problematic or uncomfortable for them. These things are not simple or obvious nor are they clearly black and white and we shouldn't try to reduce them to that.
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Jan 22, 2020 22:14
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Genre Emulation is perfectly fine and good and never needs reexamining which is why my PBTA Pulp Adventure game has a Perfidious Oriental playbook.
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Jan 22, 2020 22:14
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Parkreiner posted:Relevant to this discussion, Fate of Cthulhu (which has a pretty cool “12 Monkeys vs the Mythos” angle rather than the generic Lovecraft adaptation the title suggests) specifically ditches “sanity/insanity” terminology and instead parses Mythos-induced degeneration as Corruption (in the sense of becoming a Mythos creature and thinking/acting/existing as they do) and spends a little time on why it’s a poor idea to frame this game mechanic in terms of IRL mental illness. I mean, is it really a step up to say it's actually just the physically disabled that are the scary ones? I'm not saying Fate is doing anything really 'bad' but it is a little weird to shift it to 'well we can't use the mental damage elements of Lovecraft, that's unhealthy, but we can sidestep it by making it just so that the signs of being evil and dangerous are just being physically deformed'. As someone with some pretty strong issues I always just kinda liked how Gumshoe did it, the idea of mental strain and fantastical elements combining to damage the mind in lasting ways, but also those ways to be treatable and able to work through and all. It feels a little patronizing to act like the only good way to handle it is make me do a therapy session or whatever. sexpig by night fucked around with this message at 22:27 on Jan 22, 2020 |
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Jan 22, 2020 22:21
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sexpig by night posted:I'm not saying Fate is doing anything really 'bad' but it is a little weird to shift it to 'well we can't use the mental damage elements of Lovecraft, that's unhealthy, but we can sidestep it by making it just so that the signs of being evil and dangerous are just being physically deformed'.
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Jan 22, 2020 22:31
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Splicer posted:If I'm reading the quoted post correctly then being physically deformed is the non evil and dangerous option. See a cultist with tentacle arms? Probably an alright dude. See a handsome fellow in a suit? He rolled "brain replaced by a colony of evil space ants", get him! ok I guess I need to read the book because this makes zero sense to read
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Jan 22, 2020 22:33
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Meinberg posted:But what if, and this might be a wild one here, the genre being emulated is itself harmful and indeed feeds into narratives that lead to the mentally ill being taken from their communities and institutionalized and overmedicated and all other things that lead to the disintegration of their lifestyle, well-being, and autonomy. The thing is that there's zero way for you do do that without bias and enough certainty that you're not putting out harmful misinformation under the pretense of it being a productive tool. And that you're not even considering this should be a warning flag. Some genres are poo poo. Most are toxic somehow if you examine them closely enough. But they also come with the stated or implicit acknowledgment that they're fiction. If I understand the real-world mental illness game you're describing, it doesn't do that. It does the opposite, purporting to have correct and valid information about mental illness as described by an amateur. Nobody IRL is getting tossed into institutions because they saw a cthulhu. But there's no shortage of unqualified self-help, advice, lies, learning tools, etc to provide bad information as a alternatives to effective treatment. Even with the best of intention, it's irresponsible to just put your take out there where it'll be sought after by those it may harm.
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Jan 22, 2020 22:36
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sexpig by night posted:I mean, is it really a step up to say it's actually just the physically disabled that are the scary ones? It wouldn't be whatsoever. But I don't think that's how they were saying it works? Its not that seeing Cthulhu gives you a limp or a glass eye. Its that you get some magical whatever on you and that poisons your body and mind. Its not illness or deformity, its just completely alien. But I haven't read the rules, just guessing based on the quoted post.
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Jan 22, 2020 22:38
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Therapeutic roleplaying also requires an extremely explicit buy-in from everyone at the table, and frankly, there are very few situations where I'd actually be comfortable with that, even with friends I trusted. Real-world mental illness treatment is an immense burden to put on the table.
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Jan 22, 2020 22:40
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Antivehicular posted:Therapeutic roleplaying also requires an extremely explicit buy-in from everyone at the table, and frankly, there are very few situations where I'd actually be comfortable with that, even with friends I trusted. Real-world mental illness treatment is an immense burden to put on the table. yea I actually kinda really hate the 'actually maybe YOUR group isn't mature enough to handle it...' stuff because it's not about 'mature' it's about comfort. My group IS mature enough to do dumb CoC stuff without being all 'lol crazybrain' about it, I don't particularly WANT our session to be 'sexpig works out the realistic causes of anxiety disorders and the crippling effects of them' because that's not really a situation I'm comfortable with or they'd likely be. That'd be a really hosed up thing to do to them, actually.
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Jan 22, 2020 22:45
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Zaphod42 posted:Speaking of Lovecraft being problematic, After the bolded quote, the entire rest of the text could be replaced with "But there's profit to be had so"
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Jan 22, 2020 22:52
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sexpig by night posted:yea I actually kinda really hate the 'actually maybe YOUR group isn't mature enough to handle it...' stuff because it's not about 'mature' it's about comfort. My group IS mature enough to do dumb CoC stuff without being all 'lol crazybrain' about it, I don't particularly WANT our session to be 'sexpig works out the realistic causes of anxiety disorders and the crippling effects of them' because that's not really a situation I'm comfortable with or they'd likely be. That'd be a really hosed up thing to do to them, actually. Not sure anybody actually framed it like that though? I even tried to address that already Zaphod42 posted:But then, someone else could still find your depiction problematic or uncomfortable for them. These things are not simple or obvious nor are they clearly black and white and we shouldn't try to reduce them to that. This thread is a little too ready to tell each other we're "WRONG"
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Jan 22, 2020 22:54
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Zaphod42 posted:Not sure anybody actually framed it like that though? I was specifically talking about Meinberg posted:Like, c'mon, not every playing RPGs is an abled, white, straight dude, and people have the emotional maturity to play games therapeutically not as a replacement for therapy.
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Jan 22, 2020 22:58
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Zaphod42 posted:Not sure anybody actually framed it like that though? Meinberg posted:Maybe that is what your table is like, but the people I play with have a wider plurality of experiences and a greater degree of willingness to engage openly with the text on Same energy though.
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Jan 22, 2020 22:59
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sexpig by night posted:I was specifically talking about Yeah, but they were responding to something too, you gotta take it in context. To say that some people have the maturity to handle these topics is not to inherently say that everybody wants to nor that that's the only thing that would stop you.
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Jan 22, 2020 22:59
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food court bailiff posted:Is there some like....Eberron primer somewhere? I have always wanted to run a game in Eberron, it's the only "official" setting that I've really thought was interesting enough to want to play in, but I think the setting requires a fair amount of lore buy-in from the players to really "click". I'm never going to be able to get my players to read a whole splatbook just for setting details, so I'm thinking of compiling a quick list of important facts/factions/dates/landmarks/etc for a handout and was wondering if one exists already that I can crib from instead of reinventing the wheel. If you can find a copy of it somewhere, the Adventurer's Guide to Eberron was released in 3.5 but is purely a "visual guide" with no stats that just talks about the locations, nations, and major players of the setting. Very good, probably the only Eberron book I should hold onto.
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Jan 22, 2020 22:59
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There is nothing unique to games that makes them unable to handle serious topics, including mental illness. All games can be therapeutic, which is different than them being a stand-in for therapy. People with mental illness are going to play games and how they seem themselves reflected in the games is going to have an impact on their well being. A game that handles mental illness respectfully is going to have a better impact than one that handles them as if though they were some pulp horror show.
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Jan 22, 2020 23:04
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sexpig by night posted:I mean, is it really a step up to say it's actually just the physically disabled that are the scary ones? I knew this was coming when I posted, but I had hoped “becoming like a Mythos creature” would have it preemptively covered. Yes, Lovecraft is basically about xenophobia writ large, expressed specifically and textually as racism and treating basically any variance from “idealized WASPness” as a stigma. But, like, I think it’s a stretch to read, say, Seth Brundle’s arc from Cronenberg’s Fly as being ableist, which is basically what FoC Corruption is going for. But if that doesn’t work for you, it doesn’t work for you (and believe me, I get it— I’m the guy who pretty much checks out of any fantasy setting with orcs because I can’t read them as anything but racist signifiers). (And related to this, I actually hate Lovecraft and his work, am bored by its ubiquity in nerd media, and am only interested at all in takes that at least attempt to respond to or recontextualize it rather than just name-check it, which is like, ten things ever) Parkreiner fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Jan 22, 2020 |
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Jan 22, 2020 23:23
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Parkreiner posted:(And related to this, I actually hate Lovecraft and his work, am bored by its ubiquity in nerd media, and am only interested at all in takes that at least attempt to respond to or recontextualize it rather than just name-check it, which is like, ten things ever) Exactly this. The only Lovecraft story I even partially enjoyed was At The Mountains of Madness and that's only because I was fascinated with the archaeological descriptions until it went full orientalist and then...whatever happened at the end. I am just not at all interested in his xenophobic attitude toward aliens/gods/fish-people/prisms. I've found this two-minute clip does a better job grasping the implications of "cosmic horror" than all of the dead trees spilled over Cthulhu. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLZW8Deq8vE
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Jan 22, 2020 23:41
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Meinberg posted:All games can be therapeutic I think the question here is what you mean by "therapeutic." If you mean that games should be respectful on topics of disability/mental illness/neurodivergence/etc., and should provide toolkits to help players treat each other with respect and kindness re: these topics, I certainly agree, although I'd argue that's less therapeutic and more just basic decency. If you're talking about games being used as active tools to help people work through issues and reinforce mental health... well, it's a nice idea and I support attempts to design in that space, but I can't see myself necessarily being comfortable playing games like this. Roleplaying can be a social and emotional challenge even at baseline, and in my experience, entangling personal mental-health issues with it has never ended well, even in mature groups of friends who mean well.
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Jan 22, 2020 23:50
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Antivehicular posted:I think the question here is what you mean by "therapeutic." If you mean that games should be respectful on topics of disability/mental illness/neurodivergence/etc., and should provide toolkits to help players treat each other with respect and kindness re: these topics, I certainly agree, although I'd argue that's less therapeutic and more just basic decency. If you're talking about games being used as active tools to help people work through issues and reinforce mental health... well, it's a nice idea and I support attempts to design in that space, but I can't see myself necessarily being comfortable playing games like this. Roleplaying can be a social and emotional challenge even at baseline, and in my experience, entangling personal mental-health issues with it has never ended well, even in mature groups of friends who mean well. I mean that the act of socializing and being creative in a safe, friendly environment is inherently good for mental health.
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Jan 22, 2020 23:52
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Parkreiner posted:
I agree with you in general, but just thought I'd mention that there is a movement in literature responding to Lovecraft's stuff and there are at least some people of color involved and they're trying to make it slightly less of a white-male nerd party. This was a pretty good collection, I thought, picking randomly from memory. I'm mostly thinking of one story called something like The Dude Who Collected Lovecraft as a direct response, but in general it moves beyond the tired old (and terrible) xenophobia and is more focused on the existential dread. There are some pretty good short stories in there. That collection made me find my current favorite author. HP Lovecrizzle was a garbage person with like 6 good ideas knocking around there amongst the over-flowing tub of racism and his love of ten dollar words. Better authors who aren't loving monsters should take those ideas and do cool things with them and then we can forget he ever existed.
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Jan 23, 2020 03:41
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