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Kestral posted:It's just a heightened-for-drama version of the actual pattern from our real history: warlike, frequently nomadic peoples preying upon their settled, city-dwelling neighbors - who are usually the descendants of warlike nomadic peoples who had conquered those cities generations in the past, gave up the martial traditions that had made them a terror upon the earth, and became vulnerable to conquest. In Howard's version of events, the phase coinciding with being as far from barbarian martial tradition as possible is Extreme Decadence, usually with sorcery thrown in. I'm suspicious of how historically accurate this impression is, largely due to having read a set of posts over on A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry on what the author calls "the Fremen Mirage." The general thesis is that the impression that decadent civilization did not know how to prosecute wars against non-civilized, rural societies is largely a fiction constructed by misreading or misinterpreting of sources; I am not a historian so he may have left some hole in the argument but I remember his reasoning being sound.
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Jun 26, 2023 21:44
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Constant civil war within the empire could be seen as a type of decadence, but this has little to do with the drunken orgies and art people like to bitch about.
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Jun 26, 2023 21:48
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i guess you could call elite capture and the progressive inability of the ruling class to compromise because their own internal hierarchies favor the most selfish and short-sighted among them "decadence" but at that point the term is probably more likely to confuse the issue than clarify
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Jun 26, 2023 21:50
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I think I missed it. Which of the proposed definitions of "degenerate" design mentioned in the last page or two is the right one that is apparently very rigidly defined?
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Jun 26, 2023 21:51
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Terrible Opinions posted:Course of Empire is pretty well bullshit though. It's obviously what Howard believed in, and was more mainstream in his time but doesn't represent real history. In the late 19th and early 20th century, white people were delving into Africa (and to a lesser extent, south america) and discovering remnants of collapsed kingdoms and asking very reasonable questions about how that happened. Also some very racist questions, like could black people really have done this or are these lost civilizations of white people who were ultimately torn down by the savage black people around them. Yeah. But still: "people have come to ruin before" was a Big Idea that pushed its way into the public consciousness of the West during this time. Comparing to what they knew of western/european history and drawing from what they saw as social parallels to darwinism, the prevailing opinion had been that there was a regular, inevitable course of advancement of humanity up a chain, interrupted by the fall of the Roman empire and the so-called Dark Ages but recovered by their descendants in the Rennaisance, etc. etc. Finding huge cities choked by vines in the jungle surrounded by small tribes living in thatched huts was shocking and challenged the world view that evolution and development towards some supreme bright goal was inevitable (as long as you don't let the savages drag you back down). From that perspective, it was reasonable to mythologize about cyclical civilization, and also wonder or even predict an inevitable downfall for Western civilization. Then World War I happened and another means by which Western civilization might conceivably collapse was printed on the front page of every newspaper in the world for several years. Howard was writing in the 1930s, witnessing the rise of fascism in Europe, the Great Depression in the US, and looking around at the Texas oilfields of his home state and wondering if the relentless exploitation of the resources that fuel war might be taking everything in the same direction as the Mayans or the people who built the Great Pyramids went. You are completely correct that "course of empire" does not represent real history, and I don't think Howard actually believed in the Age of Hyboria he wrote about - it was a compelling fiction in which to place some of his stories. But it sold really well and caught the imagination of a broad audience in part because it was a very believable idea. And while Conan is the poster-boy of the sandals & sorcery genre, Howard also wrote a bunch of stories about a vengeful puritan preacher named Solomon Kane, who is absolutely not a iron-thewed half-naked dude, and the themes of the Solomon Kane stories have little to do with cyclical civilization. It was an idea Howard obviously put thought into, but I don't think it'd be fair to say he was obsessed with it. I think he just - correctly - recognized it as a useful device for setting some stories, that had obvious parallels in the real world, and put some thought into why. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 21:57 on Jun 26, 2023 |
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Jun 26, 2023 21:52
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Nickoten posted:I think I missed it. Which of the proposed definitions of "degenerate" design mentioned in the last page or two is the right one that is apparently very rigidly defined? perverse incentives to play in a way that is dull and un-fun, but mechanically optimal.
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Jun 26, 2023 21:56
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Nickoten posted:I think I missed it. Which of the proposed definitions of "degenerate" design mentioned in the last page or two is the right one that is apparently very rigidly defined? I don't know but I've got the phrase "degenerative gaming disorder" floating around in my head now
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Jun 26, 2023 21:58
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Nickoten posted:I think I missed it. Which of the proposed definitions of "degenerate" design mentioned in the last page or two is the right one that is apparently very rigidly defined? Is this detailed enough for you?
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Jun 26, 2023 21:59
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I'm just reminded of how DnD 3e was deliberately written with trap choices in its design as a way to punish newbies. Like Toughness, or the entire Monk class
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Jun 26, 2023 22:02
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I like to be charitable and think they were just designed without the rest of the game being considered. Or, y'know, the other way around.
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Jun 26, 2023 22:04
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Leperflesh posted:In the late 19th and early 20th century, white people were delving into Africa (and to a lesser extent, south america) and discovering remnants of collapsed kingdoms and asking very reasonable questions about how that happened. Also some very racist questions, like could black people really have done this or are these lost civilizations of white people who were ultimately torn down by the savage black people around them. Yeah. But still: "people have come to ruin before" was a Big Idea that pushed its way into the public consciousness of the West during this time. Comparing to what they knew of western/european history and drawing from what they saw as social parallels to darwinism, the prevailing opinion had been that there was a regular, inevitable course of advancement of humanity up a chain, interrupted by the fall of the Roman empire and the so-called Dark Ages but recovered by their descendants in the Rennaisance, etc. etc. Finding huge cities choked by vines in the jungle surrounded by small tribes living in thatched huts was shocking and challenged the world view that evolution and development towards some supreme bright goal was inevitable (as long as you don't let the savages drag you back down). I think this sort of hits on one of the things I find so interesting about comparing and contrasting the worldviews embedded in the works of Robert E Howard and HP Lovecraft. The racism in Howard's works, to my eyes at least, feels much more like a product of the time and place in which Howard lived and him transposing those cultural norms onto his work. Lovecraft, by contrast, has a much more active and consistent ideology that informs his work that was very unique to him and also kind of weird and off-putting even to garden variety racists of the day. Basically Howard comes across to me as a writer who never had the opportunity or thought to heavily interrogate the racialist beliefs of his time and reflected those in his work. Lovecraft had a manifesto that seeped into every facet of his work... ninjoatse.cx posted:I like to be charitable and think they were just designed without the rest of the game being considered. Or, y'know, the other way around. Honestly I think it's an outgrowth of the kind of unspoken philosophy that had come to dominate certain corners of the RPG space in the 90s that every facet and feature of your character has to be explicitly represented in the text of the rules. You can't just say your character is a tough guy, or speaks an extra language just as a flavorful narrative detail: That has to be a mechanical power you spend a type of character creation resource on. This leads to a lot of game systems of the time approaching things like feats from a narrative-first angle, and then trying to come up with some kind of bonus to ascribe to that narrative quality. It's basically the Merits and Flaws systems that were popular in the 90s taken to their most mechanically cumbersome extreme. KingKalamari fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Jun 26, 2023 |
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Jun 26, 2023 22:08
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KingKalamari posted:I think this sort of hits on one of the things I find so interesting about comparing and contrasting the worldviews embedded in the works of Robert E Howard and HP Lovecraft. The racism in Howard's works, to my eyes at least, feels much more like a product of the time and place in which Howard lived and him transposing those cultural norms onto his work. Lovecraft, by contrast, has a much more active and consistent ideology that informs his work that was very unique to him and also kind of weird and off-putting even to garden variety racists of the day. Enh... Ish? Lovecraft was also heavily influenced by his area and up-bringing. They're different, yeah, but that's because they had different ones, being different social classes from across a continent and all. You're also eliding the fact that Lovecraft would denounce and lament many of his prior views as he got older. Like dude was a monster and I'm not saying that makes it all better (because it doesn't), but that happened. He also married a Jewish woman. Dude was hosed up, but he was hosed up in complicated weird ways. I think you've got the bones of a good point there, but Lovecraft wasn't actually a dark pillar of pure racism who happened to be able to hold a pen. He was a bad person, but still a person with all the complexity that entails.
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Jun 26, 2023 22:22
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Xiahou Dun posted:Is this detailed enough for you? It's not about detail, I just don't know which one is what was being referenced originally. But if this is the right one, thank you.
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Jun 26, 2023 22:26
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I am a little skeptical about the letters where he goes "Hooboy, I sure a bigot huh? Big oof! I am very sorry about it! Anyway, I like socialism now." but I haven't actually seen anyone disprove them.
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Jun 26, 2023 22:30
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Xiahou Dun posted:Enh... Ish? I think I likely explained the point poorly as the latter point you mention is closer to what I was going for. I guess the point I wanted to get across was that Lovecraft felt like his racism was more considered, for lack of a better word? It's like Howard reflected the narratives of his contemporaries, while Lovecraft had his own narratives that made sense only to him.
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Jun 26, 2023 22:32
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Lovecraft was deeply screwed up in a lot of ways and his racism was an expression of that screwed-up-ness. He grew up under the specter of his own father's mental health problems and fearing they'd come for him, with an overbearing mother and aunts who kept him from exercising any independence or growth for at least the first couple decades of his life (he tried to join the army for the Great War, as I recall, and passed his medical exam just fine but then his... mom, I think, came and badgered the recruiter about how weak he was until he was released from recruitment), and an inability to actually make a living from anything he was passionate about. He was afraid of so much and made to fear so much more. Doesn't excuse a drat thing but oof I can pity the man and be a little amazed he got better at all in any dimension later in life.
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Jun 26, 2023 22:51
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Terrible Opinions posted:Constant civil war within the empire could be seen as a type of decadence, but this has little to do with the drunken orgies and art people like to bitch about. The thing that everyone misses here is that the decadence people rant about is why empires survive, not how they die. What kills them is listening to the people ranting about decadence. When Hannibal won at Cannae he expected the rest of the Italian city states to rise up and throw off the Roman yoke the way the other North African city states would later when Scipio came calling. But they didn't - and they didn't because Rome, unlike almost anyone else, was pretty free with its citizenship to the point that it was something any reasonably successful person in the Roman sphere of influence had a reasonable chance of getting for their children and most of the movers and shakers had it for themselves. Which meant that when Hannibal tried to convince them to rebel against Rome the powerful ones were Romans and the rest wanted to be - it would be fighting against their home team. (Again courtesy of acoup). Also the Roman Empire ran its armies basically on professional mercenaries who as part of the pay for their terms gained Roman citizenship - and as people who'd earned it were some of the most loyal citizens. But of course when you have new people coming in from outside they aren't actually following the ways of their forefathers. And this is why the Roman reactionaries kept, century after century, ranting about decadence. Each generation had new waves of people who thought of themselves as Romans but didn't trace their bloodlines back and had grown up with strange ways. And while Rome kept assimilating it survived things such as the Crisis of the Third Century that would have shattered most empires. They had disagreements but were all still Romans. And then in 358 Julian the Apostate got the brilliant idea of inviting the Franks in as foederati, that is a client state settled within the bounds of the Roman empire but without being Roman citizens and with the rights of Roman citizens. Twenty years after that, in 378 the Romans lost at Adrianapole to an army of foederati. By 408 (a mere half century after Julian's brilliant idea) Rome was besieged by an army of visigoth foederati and had to ransom itself with most of the money in Rome (Rome would be sacked in 410, and the Romans gave up on even lip service to keeping Britain in 411).
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Jun 26, 2023 22:53
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I'm just glad that random shots across the bow in the old edition war these days are met entirely with bemused rejection. I bet it must hurt that they don't just work like a comedian shouting the name of the local sports team anymore.
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Jun 26, 2023 22:54
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theironjef posted:I'm just glad that random shots across the bow in the old edition war these days are met entirely with bemused rejection. I bet it must hurt that they don't just work like a comedian shouting the name of the local sports team anymore. It was legitimately at it more confused than anything else
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Jun 26, 2023 23:06
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theironjef posted:I'm just glad that random shots across the bow in the old edition war these days are met entirely with bemused rejection. I bet it must hurt that they don't just work like a comedian shouting the name of the local sports team anymore.
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Jun 27, 2023 00:11
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ninjoatse.cx posted:I like to be charitable and think they were just designed without the rest of the game being considered. Or, y'know, the other way around. https://web.archive.org/web/20080221174425/http://www.montecook.com/cgi-bin/page.cgi?mc_los_142
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Jun 27, 2023 00:14
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Xiahou Dun posted:Enh... Ish? Yeah by modern standards someone like Lovecraft would be considered severely mentally ill and his extreme even for the period xenophobia was one of the more obvious symptoms of that, though that's exactly why I'm willing to cut Lovecraft a bit of slack disposablewords posted:Lovecraft was deeply screwed up in a lot of ways and his racism was an expression of that screwed-up-ness. He grew up under the specter of his own father's mental health problems and fearing they'd come for him, with an overbearing mother and aunts who kept him from exercising any independence or growth for at least the first couple decades of his life (he tried to join the army for the Great War, as I recall, and passed his medical exam just fine but then his... mom, I think, came and badgered the recruiter about how weak he was until he was released from recruitment), and an inability to actually make a living from anything he was passionate about. He was afraid of so much and made to fear so much more. Exactly
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Jun 27, 2023 01:02
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theironjef posted:I'm just glad that random shots across the bow in the old edition war these days are met entirely with bemused rejection. I bet it must hurt that they don't just work like a comedian shouting the name of the local sports team anymore.
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Jun 27, 2023 03:37
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Genuinely reminds me of when I got free tickets to a Nickelback show. Dude came out all "Hello San Diego, can you point me towards your beaches because I am ready to surf. Who knows where I might purchase marijuana cigarettes because I enjoy a good puff on them LOOKIT THIS PHOTOGRAPH" and then I was leaving so the impression has to be over. The openers were good though!
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Jun 27, 2023 03:48
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"Decadent" is a really good word to use for describing tasty treats, so I will defend it in that context
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Jun 27, 2023 04:08
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'Degenerate,' sadly, doesn't work quite as well for that purpose.
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Jun 27, 2023 04:21
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This poo poo is straight up lumpen
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Jun 27, 2023 04:49
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one time I got some baklava and then forgot about it in the cupboard for a couple weeks and when I found it the honey had sort of degraded the flakey bready part, so it was kinda like... decayed... but there was no mold or anything and it was still edible and delicious it was a degenerate baklava imo
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Jun 27, 2023 04:56
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I think with Lovecraft there is a huge difference between understand and sympathize. We can see all of the things that dragged him down, but any efforts to pick himself up were pretty short lived.
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Jun 27, 2023 04:58
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Bagels are pretty cyclopean.
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Jun 27, 2023 04:58
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Xiahou Dun posted:Bagels are pretty cyclopean. A wall of bagels, schmeared with cream cheese.
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Jun 27, 2023 05:00
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Love raft isekai where he reincarnates as a black man to learn a lesson.
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Jun 27, 2023 06:19
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MonsieurChoc posted:Love raft isekai where he reincarnates as a black man to learn a lesson. Lovecraft isekai where he comes to the conclusion that, actually, life is pretty sweet. 420 blaze it
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Jun 27, 2023 06:44
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Okay people are talking about the math definition but the Degenerate alignment in that crap game explicitly calls out that enjoying "gaudy art" is degenerate, why are we entertaining this notion
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Jun 27, 2023 08:01
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MonsieurChoc posted:Love raft isekai where he reincarnates as a black man to learn a lesson. Was Love Raft the one where he's stuck at sea after a shipwreck and the only other survivors are the stewardesses?
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Jun 27, 2023 08:12
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sasha_d3ath posted:Okay people are talking about the math definition but the Degenerate alignment in that crap game explicitly calls out that enjoying "gaudy art" is degenerate, why are we entertaining this notion You'll never guess who defined which art was "degenerate"! 
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Jun 27, 2023 08:36
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Drakyn posted:'Degenerate,' sadly, doesn't work quite as well for that purpose.
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Jun 27, 2023 09:05
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actually it probably would be baklava by both the non-racist and the racist reading
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Jun 27, 2023 09:22
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Nah it's when you take a spoon and have a big spoonful of cake frosting right out of the little tubs they come in(or doing the same with a tub of cool whip)
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Jun 27, 2023 10:35
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I once ate an entire tub of Cool Whip once, it was going to go bad and I was like "I have nothing to put this on but I am hungry, so here we go" didn't get sick or hyper or anything. Barely got full, there's not much to Cool Whip.
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Jun 27, 2023 10:40
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