Quote from: Daztur;1049268Well he wrote this:

When, long ago, the gods created Earth
In Jove's fair image Man was shaped at birth.
The beasts for lesser parts were next designed;
Yet were they too remote from humankind.
To fill the gap, and join the rest to Man,
Th'Olympian host conceiv'd a clever plan.
A beast they wrought, in semi-human figure,
Filled it with vice, and called the thing a Nigger.

Pretty damn racist and if he were alive now I'd feel pretty bad about giving him money. But he's dead so I don't see how it hurt anyone to enjoy his writing and make use of his ideas.

There are a lot of hypocritical  lefties making coin of Lovecrafts creations how do you feel about them?

Welp, just saw the AMA. White Wolf is done. All their moves will be dictated by the most outraged at this point, and I can't see how they'll weather the storm with Werewolf after this.


And who the hell was this game designed to appeal to anyway? Because it seems intentionally designed to alienate as many potential customers as possible. From the art and font choices to the tone deaf presentation.

And they're competing with their other products and creating significant market confusion in the process. I'm sorry but you need to start consolidating your brand, regardless of how much you like Onyx Path, because not doing so is hurting both of you. People are still uncertain as to whether they should be playing Original Masquerade, Requiem, Masquerade 20th, or Masquerade 5th, or what the differences even are.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1049160it is possible write stories where the characters have different values than yourself without endorsing those values. If you are trying to write accurate historical fiction, then many of your characters have to hold repulsive values by modern standards (e.g. slavery, patriarchy, pedophilia, etc) or else your story will be inaccurate. (If you are not trying to be accurate, then all bets are off.)

It goes well beyond accurate historical fiction and into any with the depth and nuance worth reading.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1049160Were the stars right at the time or was Cthulhu sleepwalking, as it were? Was he even trying to attack the boat or did he want to give them a hug and a pleasant "hello"? Unlike Nyarlat, not every deity is actively malevolent. Are the cults actually losing every time a group of investigators stop them (then die or go crazy for their efforts), or were their attempts doomed to failure even without the investigators showing up?

These are the kind of questions that keep me engaged.

But as I've said on #Reddit, there's a segment of the market who wants certain questions answer (usually moral) rather than asked, and are deeply uncomfortable with any ambiguity regarding those. For these people, Cthulhu needs stats, motives, and an origin story.

Quote from: waltshumate;1049366There are a lot of hypocritical  lefties making coin of Lovecrafts creations how do you feel about them?

I don't give a crap.

Quote from: Simlasa;1049305It's worth pointing out that he wrote that early on, around 1912 IIRC... and I think his writing shows a degree of softening of such tendencies as time went on. Compare it to the final revelations of the doomed protagonist in In The Walls Of Eryx (1936) and I think some change of attitude can be seen. The ending of The Shadow Over Innsmouth (1931) even shows the main character embracing his mixed heritage.

Not that he ever left ALL his bigotry behind, but people can and do change... I certainly wouldn't want to be held to account for the nonsense I said and wrote as a teenager/young adult.

Yeah you can see a softening of the racism in his 1930's stuff even compared to his 1920's stuff but it's still there and it drives a good bit of his work.

I don't care about that personally but I'm not going to deny it either. If Lovecraft was alive today and supporting racism with the money I paid him to buy his stuff I might care but he's dead and his writing is out of copyright so nobody's getting hurt and no racism is getting funded so I don't care.

Quote from: Daztur;1049404I don't give a crap.

Yeah you can see a softening of the racism in his 1930's stuff even compared to his 1920's stuff but it's still there and it drives a good bit of his work.

I don't care about that personally but I'm not going to deny it either. If Lovecraft was alive today and supporting racism with the money I paid him to buy his stuff I might care but he's dead and his writing is out of copyright so nobody's getting hurt and no racism is getting funded so I don't care.

So your ok with lefties make a profit from racism, got it.

White Wolf was done a long time ago. All this is just necromancy now.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1049391Welp, just saw the AMA. White Wolf is done. All their moves will be dictated by the most outraged at this point, and I can't see how they'll weather the storm with Werewolf after this.

I forgot about Werewolf until you just mentioned it. That is a disaster waiting to happen.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1049391And they're competing with their other products and creating significant market confusion in the process. I'm sorry but you need to start consolidating your brand, regardless of how much you like Onyx Path, because not doing so is hurting both of you. People are still uncertain as to whether they should be playing Original Masquerade, Requiem, Masquerade 20th, or Masquerade 5th, or what the differences even are.

That is why i switched to a different vampire game, one that was not fixated on edition wars or political gobbledygook.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1049391But as I've said on #Reddit, there's a segment of the market who wants certain questions answer (usually moral) rather than asked, and are deeply uncomfortable with any ambiguity regarding those. For these people, Cthulhu needs stats, motives, and an origin story.

The Call of Cthulhu states his motives rather clearly:

Quote[At the proper time,] the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from his tomb to revive His subjects and resume his rule of earth [...] Then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom.

Cthulhu sounds like a pretty swell dude, all things considered.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1049440White Wolf was done a long time ago. All this is just necromancy now.

Yeah they're in the sandbox at the far end of the playground where the weirdos like FASA play now.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1049446\The Call of Cthulhu states his motives rather clearly:



Cthulhu sounds like a pretty swell dude, all things considered.

Well, Cthulhu never states anything, let alone clearly. That's just what priests trying to impress their cults say.  

It really isn't clear in The Call of Cthulhu that Cthulhu has any need for a human cult or even pays attention to it. There are humans who pick up on his psychic frequency and make religions about it, but I doubt he really cares. He mostly just seems pissed that someone woke him up from his nap.

Quote from: waltshumate;1049431So your ok with lefties make a profit from racism, got it.

It's rather silly to judge the past through the lens of the present.  Sure, we're supposed to be better than that, and many are.  However, if you're pushing to get rid of all that stuff from the past, well, those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.  That's why you keep all those uncomfortable books like 1984 and To Kill a Mockingbird around... because they make you uncomfortable, and if you don't want the world to be like those two books, you need to be reminded of how shitty it can get if you ignore it long enough.

Quote from: pdboddy;1049478That's why you keep all those uncomfortable books like 1984 and To Kill a Mockingbird around... because they make you uncomfortable, and if you don't want the world to be like those two books, you need to be reminded of how shitty it can get if you ignore it long enough.

So is that why schools try to ban those books so often.

Quote from: Baulderstone;1049477Well, Cthulhu never states anything, let alone clearly. That's just what priests trying to impress their cults say. It really isn't clear in The Call of Cthulhu that Cthulhu has any need for a human cult or even pays attention to it. There are humans who pick up on his psychic frequency and make religions about it, but I doubt he really cares. He mostly just seems pissed that someone woke him up from his nap.

That's right. HPL loves to have very disturbing reveals shared by seemingly unreliable sources. In this case, it is "Old Castro", an old sailor cultist. Since the island sank about 150 million years before, real reasons are lost to the depths of history.

Quote from: S'mon;1049133That's pretty much my feeling too. There's no indication he subscribed to any Nazi style ideology, which is what the r-word implies.

Read Lovecraft's correspondence with REH and you'll have indications aplenty.

Quote from: REH Jan 1934You seem to take it for granted that Fascism would guarantee absolute freedom of thought and mental research. I wonder if this faith is justified. I don't notice any hilarious renaissance emanating from Germany or Italy or Austria resulting from the exhilarating freedom of dictatorship. It had always seemed to me, erroneously perhaps, that suppression of speech and thought generally accompanied dictatorship.

Quote from: REHYou accuse me of 'hating human development' because I mistrust Fascism. Well, there can't be much tolerance about a system whose advocates denounce as 'enemies of humanity' anyone who disagrees with them. According to that, you consider as 'enemies of humanity' every man and woman in the world who is not a Fascist. I do not condemn the reforms you say would be possible under Fascism.

Quote from: REHYou say that the type of Fascism you advocate is without despotism and persecution of intellectual freedom; you might as well say you advocate a cobra without its venom, a skunk without its stench, or a leper without his scabs.

The funny part is how REH is also considered a bigot;).

Does it matter? Nowadays every old white male author is considered a bigot.

Quote from: AsenRG;1049653Read Lovecraft's correspondence with REH and you'll have indications aplenty.

The funny part is how REH is also considered a bigot;).

OK so REH definitely considered him pro-Fascist! I guess would need to see the HPL quotes to be sure.

I guess I've seen enough here to change my mind* and say I would consider HPL a racist by any reasonable definition, at least for much of his career.

*It can happen!

Quote from: AsenRG;1049653Read Lovecraft's correspondence with REH and you'll have indications aplenty.

Lovecraft died before WWII got going, had no inkling of the horrors that would come to light.
Like a lot of other Americans and Germans, he saw Hitler as a lesser evil in the face of Communism. The list of better educated and informed Americans who threw in with the Nazis early on is pretty long.
 
So what's the point of singling out Lovecraft?
What's the point of flogging the dead when we have plenty of nasty folks right here among the living?