Quote from: Antiquation!;1120524Decolonization successful! "How Tabletop RPGs Are Being Reclaimed From Bigots And Jerks!"

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/y3mw5b/how-tabletop-rpgs-are-being-reclaimed-from-bigots-and-jerks?utm_source=reddit.com

I'm so grateful that Evil Hat is saving this hobby!

"Evil Hat Productions recently told me they felt it was important to create distance between themselves and Lovecraft!" By... publishing a new CoC game? Huh. Anyway, I certainly can't wait for all you evil fascists to be forcibly purged.

For those of you non-fascists, grab your BDSM checklists boys and girls!

I followed a link on that article to what I guess is Evil Hat's twitter account, and found this lovely post by Fred Hicks:

QuoteSince the predictable edgelords and apologists have now shown up, a quick reminder:
If you don't like the politics included in our games, don't buy them.
We literally do not want your money.
We are committed to diverse and inclusive gaming.
We're not perfect, but we're trying.

Anybody else unsurprised, then, that Evil Hat recently very nearly went out of business? That it now only survives because Mr. Hicks had to fire all his woke buddies to pay the bills? He'd rather sit on his high fucking horse and reject your money than take a hard look at the fact that his own bullshit and politics have chased his customers away.

So fucking sad.

Quote from: RandyB;1120564Nah, they also need to apologize on behalf of TSR, whom they purchased in toto, for the previous 26 years of the same.

No, TSR was actually willing to include Christian characters in things like the Historical Reference series. WotC, though? Not a peep.

Quote from: SavageSchemer;1120606Anybody else unsurprised, then, that Evil Hat recently very nearly went out of business? That it now only survives because Mr. Hicks had to fire all his woke buddies to pay the bills? He'd rather sit on his high fucking horse and reject your money than take a hard look at the fact that his own bullshit and politics have chased his customers away.

So fucking sad.

FATE wen't out of Buisness? Huh. Can't say I will shed any tears with that kind of douchebaggery. And I didn't like FATE anyway.

Quote from: jhkim;1120476To keep this on topic for RPGs,





In my experience of RPGs, it's rare for the heroes to be indigenous locals fighting off colonizers. But that said, I'd be interested in a setting of Tlaxcala and Spaniards versus the Aztecs. There's a recent RPG that sounds similar to your idea, called Dragons Conquer America.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/270512/Dragons-Conquer-America-Core-Book

I ran an alternate history campaign for a while about vikings in the New World -- where the PCs were mostly Icelanders allied with local Algonquian tribes against the invading Haudenosaunee (Iroquois).

You both fall short, very short on the number of kingdoms that joined the Spaniards to fight the Aztecs (who were at this point one of the more genocidal regimes known to man), it began with the first kingdoms they encountered in what it's now Veracruz all the way to Tenochtitlan. Doña Malinche was a princess among her people and was given as a slave to Cortez, she helped him beat the Spaniards in many ways, and he built her a mansion in Cuernavaca.

From the text there that game has shit to do with what you want.

But there's a Mexican RPG in development that I guess will be something better for that. Unless it's a woke shit.

Quote from: SavageSchemer;1120606I followed a link on that article to what I guess is Evil Hat's twitter account, and found this lovely post by Fred Hicks:



Anybody else unsurprised, then, that Evil Hat recently very nearly went out of business? That it now only survives because Mr. Hicks had to fire all his woke buddies to pay the bills? He'd rather sit on his high fucking horse and reject your money than take a hard look at the fact that his own bullshit and politics have chased his customers away.

So fucking sad.

Fred Hicks is a fucking cunt. I will be making myself a drink to celebrate the day his company finally croaks for good.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1120608FATE wen't out of Buisness? Huh. Can't say I will shed any tears with that kind of douchebaggery. And I didn't like FATE anyway.

Didn't go out of business; narrowly avoided doing so. He got through it via a combination of canceling a bunch in-flight projects, firing (ahem! layed off) his woke friends, and then had something of a fire sale to move old and now discontinued product.

I very much doubt the company will survive the next iteration of that. I have zero doubt it will come again. And while I for one have enjoyed my share of Fate games over the years, I feel obligated to honor the man's wishes and not give him a single red cent of my money. Ever. There are plenty of other game companies out there that will value me as a paying customer even if / when I do disagree with their politics.

Quote from: Antiquation!;1120611Fred Hicks is a fucking cunt. I will be making myself a drink to celebrate the day his company finally croaks for good.

There was a time when he was a relatively level-headed, reasonable guy. He's become increasingly more insufferable as the years have worn on in his pursuit of all things woke.

Quote from: jhkim;1120476In my experience of RPGs, it's rare for the heroes to be indigenous locals fighting off colonizers.

Forgotten Realms. Orcs periodically sweep into the region and lay waste to swaths of civilization untill pushed back again.

Eberron is a series of this with demons or humans displacing goblins, other races displacing demons, goblins displaces someone else, and so on.

Known World has various kingdoms occasionally trying to move into other folks lands. At one point apparently gnomes were making a bid to push halflings out of their lands. And so on. Gnomes are not a PC race in BX. (That changed later with BECMI D&D. But overall it and Greyhawk for example and even Eberron at the time the PCs come on the scene, are all mostly in a state of stability either after a migration, or after the last in a series of migrations.

FR is the closest with its orc kingdom problem.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1120542There's Torg (and the current Torg Eternity) that lets you fight all manner of colonizers from different realities.

Including literally Victorian Era Colonial British.

Let's add this shit to the pile of stupid.

https://evilhat.itch.io/fate-accessibility-toolkit-prototype-edition

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1120607No, TSR was actually willing to include Christian characters in things like the Historical Reference series. WotC, though? Not a peep.

Damn. I love the Historical Reference series, and I completely overlooked them with my comment. Good catch!

Nutter? Figured I'd warrant a commie pinko. But seriously, it's not WOTC that is publishing this, it's a smaller company that got lucky with some publicity. And it's a niche product. And honestly, it'll never show up on drivethrurpg's best seller list. And why get bent out of shape over this in the first place,
 TBP doesn't even have a thread on this book anywhere.

Quote from: SavageSchemer;1120615There was a time when he was a relatively level-headed, reasonable guy. He's become increasingly more insufferable as the years have worn on in his pursuit of all things woke.

Indeed. I am not going to name more names, as I don't need a bigger target on my back via being personally identified and harassed en masse by the loony crew, but many in the Fate publishing community are real dickwads. Both personally and professionally. There are plenty of reasons to despise them beyond their political and moral stances, as despicable as many of those are in and of themselves.

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;1120639Let's add this shit to the pile of stupid.

https://evilhat.itch.io/fate-accessibility-toolkit-prototype-edition

What's funny/tragic about this one is the majority of complaints about it I've personally read have come from disabled people. Not terribly surprising but there you go.

Quote from: TNMalt;1120670Nutter? Figured I'd warrant a commie pinko. But seriously, it's not WOTC that is publishing this, it's a smaller company that got lucky with some publicity. And it's a niche product. And honestly, it'll never show up on drivethrurpg's best seller list. And why get bent out of shape over this in the first place,
 TBP doesn't even have a thread on this book anywhere.

  Evil Hat's fairly well established, the TBP thread was long but has fallen on to the third page, and as of right now, Fate of Cthulhu's #23 on the DTRPG bestseller list. It's not going to be the equal of, say, CoC 7E or even Sandy Petersen's guides to Cthulhu for Pathfinder or 5E, but it has a presence.

  Personally, I don't much care for Lovecraft as a person or a writer any more, but part of that's because I think the TTRPG field has hit the point of saturation and then some when it comes to Cthulhu and ilk. But an analogy:

  Gene Roddenberry was an inveterate philanderer and adulterer, at times a shady businessman, and thoroughly anti-religious--and those elements of his character arguably show up in his work about as much as Lovecraft's racism. Despite that, I can still enjoy Star Trek. Yet if I were to write a Star Trek work, calling those parts of Roddenberry's character out front and center in the introduction would probably seem tacky, ungrateful and hypocritical.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1120675Evil Hat's fairly well established, the TBP thread was long but has fallen on to the third page, and as of right now, Fate of Cthulhu's #23 on the DTRPG bestseller list. It's not going to be the equal of, say, CoC 7E or even Sandy Petersen's guides to Cthulhu for Pathfinder or 5E, but it has a presence.

  Personally, I don't much care for Lovecraft as a person or a writer any more, but part of that's because I think the TTRPG field has hit the point of saturation and then some when it comes to Cthulhu and ilk. But an analogy:

  Gene Roddenberry was an inveterate philanderer and adulterer, at times a shady businessman, and thoroughly anti-religious--and those elements of his character arguably show up in his work about as much as Lovecraft's racism. Despite that, I can still enjoy Star Trek. Yet if I were to write a Star Trek work, calling those parts of Roddenberry's character out front and center in the introduction would probably seem tacky, ungrateful and hypocritical.

This. To pile on, there's also something exhausting, depressing, and fundamentally destructive about this constant dredging up people's flaws and disavowing of them as a result. Especially when they are long gone and there is nothing they can do about it anymore -- which makes it even more likely that whatever the flaw was a product of their time and not an egregious error on their part.

It reduces everyone to the worst aspects of their character, always. So why try? Judgment will always be based on the worst thing about you, rather than anything you ever accomplished, even as people examine and try to be inspired by the best of your work.

It strips context and intentions and judges people by an unknowable standard. What hope does anyone have to ever accomplish anything in a society that attacks people this way, if doing one's best in spite of incomplete information and the inevitable flaws of humanity isn't enough to earn any credit at all?

I'll give a hypothetical example, so that we can consider the time period starting now and going forward, with apologies to Futurama: let's say in 10 years we discover that ocean shrimp are actually hyperintelligent aliens with a well-organized society and we've been murdering them en masse for culinary entertainment for hundreds of years. A protracted human-on-shrimp holocaust, where humanity has committed unspeakable atrocity, due to unspeakable, unforgivable ignorance. We were big, dumb, brutish, hungry, and they were delicious but unable to fight back. Is every historical shrimp-eater ever now worse than Hitler? Does that mean every work by every shrimp eater must be discarded due to guilt by association?

And finally, if human accomplishment stands on the shoulders of giants, who is ever going to try to learn from the past and use that to build something better if they are instantly shot down because the shoulders they chose are problematic? And because of our attempts to always do better, there will always be valid criticism of anyone we choose. The question is fundamentally whether we try to pick the best things and do better, or constantly attack each other, ourselves, and our past for every mistake flawed humanity ever committed.

It seems like this culture  is pushing towards the latter, but I have no idea how anyone achieves anything under that scheme. It looks like a fast track to paralysis and misery.

And no, I don't like Lovecraft or his writing myself, either.