Quote from: ArrozConLeche;1086761D&D is a setting with fire breathing sentient dragons, elves, magic, orcs, oozing jellies, half-spider/half-elf beings, ect, etc. What's so implausible about a magical sentient dick? It's your job as a GM to accommodate the players and work with them.

So... you have watched "The Marquis" havent you? :eek:

I think its more a factor of the setting and what the setting will and wont allow, and what the DM will and wont allow.

example: when I did the RPG for a comic there were some specific guidelines to follow on what was allowed and what was not. Simply because that was how the setting worked. I could though suggest a few alternatives and possible workarounds. Had I done Wyman's Xanadu setting instead there would have been very different setting rules. Certain species just do not have hands. That is part of the setting and there were no workarounds to that. In other areas it was more flexible.

Or in Dragon Storm we had a player want to play a character that was not a shapechanger. That was not part of the system but Mark and Susan did create a new flaw where the PC believed they were not a shapechanger so much that they could never volontarily assume their true form unless they RPed and bought off that flaw. This made the player happy and introduced a new character element into the game.

D&D itself has alot of flex right out the gate in the older versions. It was up to the individual DMs to decide what they wanted in their campaigns or not. All the way up to clipping everything supernatural and playing something like Robin Hood or historical campaigns. And if a DM is running a non-magic historical campaign and a player wants to play a class or race that isnt allowed or doesnt fit then the DM is perfectly within their rights to say "No" if there are no viable workarounds.

Quote from: WillInNewHaven;1087302I second that recommendation. I'd play in such a campaign, although I am not a horror fan.

That is one of CoC's strengths. You can easily play it without the supernatural elements. In fact alot of campaigns start out that way. Wayyyy back there was a magazine module for CoC where it looked like something supernatural was going on. But in reality it was just a very clever murderer.

Quote from: Omega;1087339That is one of CoC's strengths. You can easily play it without the supernatural elements. In fact alot of campaigns start out that way. Wayyyy back there was a magazine module for CoC where it looked like something supernatural was going on. But in reality it was just a very clever murderer.

Excellent idea. I ran a search for Bigfoot campaign once where Bigfoot was a fraud.

Quote from: S'mon;1087227To the extent this was ever a societal issue (as opposed to some bad individual) in the USA, it was a feature of the 1950s not the 1920s. The 1950s saw a great increase in mobility as men moved across the country for work, taking their wives with them. At the same time, increasing wealth + a backlash against the 1940s + middle class values saw these women out of the labour market. The result was social isolation as the wife was expected to stay home all day, getting ready for their husband's return, with often no developed social circle. And labour saving devices had replaced servants for the middle class. A Golden Age for married men, but not so great for married women.

Edit: As for Mississippi Burning, unless you have black PCs in 1920s Mississippi or similar, I don't know why this would come up.

Whoa. So white males never oppressed their women? C'mon.

You are NOT being honest, at least historically.

It's you saying "Them N-s beat they wives. They can't be civil like us white folk."

Do Not play that card.

Quote from: Theory of Games;1087521Whoa. So white males never oppressed their women? C'mon.

You are NOT being honest, at least historically.

It's you saying "Them N-s beat they wives. They can't be civil like us white folk."

Do Not play that card.

What the fuck are you on about?!?

Edit: are you mixing up my edit comment about racism with the main post about sexism? I was responding re two separate issues.

Quote from: Theory of Games;1087187it's hard to run Call of Cthulhu accurately without it being "Call of Cthulhu + Mississippi Burning".

Actually, it's really easy to run CoC without any racism, sexism or other modern handwringing or meaningless self-flagellation.

I've been running CoC since 1e without any of these concerns at my table, regardless of my players.

And "accurately" is laughable. Most people can't remember the 1990s accurately. Now we're to expect GMs to be "accurate" about the 1920? LOL. Nope. The end result will be weird racist fantasies or virtue signalling misery tourism and very few actual CoC players want that nonsense at their table.

But Delta Green does kick ass.

In my Hyperborea there is considerable amount of sexism. Especially towards women outside privilegged positions. I couldn't immerse fully without it, the world wouldn't feel real without forms of prejudice, fear and intolerance. I privately asked the ladies in our group if they are bothered by it and they said no. Thing is, the ladies know me personally so they know I'm just portraying the world, not expressing my own views towards them. At a convention or in any other circumstances I'm playing with strangers I'd probably be more reluctant with such features. I don't know however if it'd be because of self-censorship or because of politeness

I think I wouldn't describe rape, I have my limits, but a brutal, pagan-like world needs to have such features. And I believe it's more cool to be one of the good guys in such world than in a world that is inclusive and shiny and everything that is evil resides in the depths of the dungeons with its tentacles and stuff, waiting to be slaughtered.

Quote from: Theory of Games;1087187At the other end, many players and Keepers are probably terrified to engage how the 20's "really was" - at least the sexist, racist aspects - for fear of alienating certain players.

While bad things certainly happened and laws either were obstructive or conducive (far worse in some areas that others, and broader in scale in some areas than others), 'the 20s' wasn't a land or game setting, but a snapshot in time in a very diverse nation that was mostly 'country'. Depending where you were, if you were a minority or a woman you _could_ run into a difficult situation. But you were not guaranteed that will happen merely by stepping out your front door anywhere in America.

It would be an issue of enclaves and "safe vs. danger" zones, which surprisingly plays well toward the Dungeon "Level as Lethality" metric (similar to "Closeness to Civilization" Wilderness travel metric). Which actually would be rather interesting to map for CoC cities in the past, if the players are ready to explore such layered horror. It gives greater pathos to CoC investigators' heroics, contextualizing how Mythos horror exploits, feeds off of, exceeds and eventually pales all other human evils by the end.

But again, not all tables could do it.

Quote from: Lynn;1087802While bad things certainly happened and laws either were obstructive or conducive (far worse in some areas that others, and broader in scale in some areas than others), 'the 20s' wasn't a land or game setting, but a snapshot in time in a very diverse nation that was mostly 'country'. Depending where you were, if you were a minority or a woman you _could_ run into a difficult situation. But you were not guaranteed that will happen merely by stepping out your front door anywhere in America.

If you were a respectable class of woman (which given the PC roles in CoC, is likely) you wouldn't have a particularly tough time of it in the 20s. The lower-class bumpkins and labourers, police, etc. would actually be quite deferential to you. It wouldn't be the waking nightmare it's portrayed as in modern entertainment, where every police officer or guy slinging coffee at a diner makes sneering sexist remarks out of the blue. The social pressure for a woman to conform to her expected role would largely come from family, and if you ignore family (as most players do), your female journalist/historian/archaeologist could pretty much carry on doing her thing. Women made up 40 per cent of college students in the 1920s, so it's not as though a woman in those fields would be unheard of. I could actually see a female character having some advantages in CoC:

Respectable female PC: "Officer, those men down at the old sawmill made appalling remarks to me when I inquired about the provinence of the property. I won't repeat what they said, but it was shocking."
Cop: "Did they, now? We'll get right over there m'am and straighten those boys out."

Come to think of it, historical class barriers and attitudes might be more alien to modern players than racism or sexism. The notion that the educated were almost all the children (and grandchildren) of the affluent, and lived in a completely different social world from the average person on the street, were treated differently by police, the press, courts, etc.

But of course one of the aims of progressive identity politics is to shunt aside considerations of class, for just that reason - it thwarts their narrative to recognize that affluent women have always had higher social status than working-class men.

Quote from: Haffrung;1087824I
Come to think of it, class barriers and attitudes might be more alien to modern players. The notion that the educated were almost all the children (and grandchildren) of the affluent, and lived in a completely different social world from the average person on the street, were treated differently by police, the press, courts, etc.

I find it hard to imagine that it would appear alien to most Americans.

Most College Students pursuit of a degree is correlated to their parents education attainment.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;1087827I find it hard to imagine that it would appear alien to most Americans.

Most College Students pursuit of a degree is correlated to their parents education attainment.

It's a difference in degree. A pretty dramatic difference. A world where 10 per cent of people pursue higher education and they're almost all the children of the wealthiest 10 per cent is is different from a world where 60 per cent of people pursue higher education and they're mostly the children of the wealthiest 60 per cent.

Quote from: Opaopajr;1087818It would be an issue of enclaves and "safe vs. danger" zones, which surprisingly plays well toward the Dungeon "Level as Lethality" metric (similar to "Closeness to Civilization" Wilderness travel metric). Which actually would be rather interesting to map for CoC cities in the past, if the players are ready to explore such layered horror. It gives greater pathos to CoC investigators' heroics, contextualizing how Mythos horror exploits, feeds off of, exceeds and eventually pales all other human evils by the end. But again, not all tables could do it.

That actually sounds like an interesting rules supplement. Maybe you should run with it?

Quote from: Haffrung;1087824If you were a respectable class of woman (which given the PC roles in CoC, is likely) you wouldn't have a particularly tough time of it in the 20s. The lower-class bumpkins and labourers, police, etc. would actually be quite deferential to you. It wouldn't be the waking nightmare it's portrayed as in modern entertainment, where every police officer or guy slinging coffee at a diner makes sneering sexist remarks out of the blue. The social pressure for a woman to conform to her expected role would largely come from family, and if you ignore family (as most players do), your female journalist/historian/archaeologist could pretty much carry on doing her thing. Women made up 40 per cent of college students in the 1920s, so it's not as though a woman in those fields would be unheard of. I could actually see a female character having some advantages in CoC.

I think so as well, and it wouldn't just be the wealthy that make up that class.

Consider for example, Sonia Greene, the woman that HPL actually married. She worked as a milliner and made enough money to support them. She did try to make it on her own and start her own business, which was a disaster. But she was a respectable older Ukrainian Jew in America at this time.

Quote from: Lynn;1087802While bad things certainly happened and laws either were obstructive or conducive (far worse in some areas that others, and broader in scale in some areas than others), 'the 20s' wasn't a land or game setting, but a snapshot in time in a very diverse nation that was mostly 'country'. Depending where you were, if you were a minority or a woman you _could_ run into a difficult situation. But you were not guaranteed that will happen merely by stepping out your front door anywhere in America.

Exactly. And let us not forget that women held alot of social power and were oft the real motivator for keeping women where they were. Right where they wanted to be. Also in that era it was not so much there was racism but a pervasive sort of divisionism, sometimes enforced by the minorities themselves for whatever reasons.

And this is the other thing that gets overlooked ALOT. There were really two opposing factions at the time. One wanting to enforce divisions and one wanting to encourage integration and acclimation. There were many a place that did not care where you were from as long as you fit in. Learn the language, learn the local customs. What these folk did not like were those who did not want to join in. Otherwise they treated foreigners willing to be "american" as anyone else.