Quote from: FingerRod on August 19, 2021, 05:29:11 PM

Quote from: Dropbear on August 19, 2021, 07:00:21 AM

Quote from: Ocule on August 10, 2021, 02:07:52 PM
...
Red
Woke,These people probably despise you if you don't fall in line and they aren't afraid to let you know it.

• ...
  
• Gallant Knight Games (Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells, the Tiny RPGs Owner Diogo Nogueira threatening to punch Venger at a the next con he sees him at, also wanted to to get companies to put "game not for fascists" on the cover of every title.
• ...
  

I've got their Tiny Frontiers, Stranger Stuff, For Coin and Blood stuff as well as all of the SS&SS and SB&CS stuff. Not seeing a woke message in print in any of them.

Also, I don't keep up with the authors as far as their personal politics. So long as it's not embedded into the materials, I simply do not care what they believe politically.

Quote
Lovecraft, The Mythos & Racism is a both a simple topic, and yet one fraught with complication.

H.P. Lovecraft was undeniably and factually racist. There is explicitly racist content, as well as racist overtones, in the Mythos texts he wrote.

Full stop.

Enjoying the Mythos, liking the Mythos, and wanting to tell your own stories in the Mythos does not make you a racist.

Full stop.

But it does present a necessary challenge to the GM and players. Our guiding rule at GKG is that no one should feel excluded, left out, insulted, or harmed by the content presented in our games, and we strongly hope that you feel the same way regarding the content at your table.

We'd encourage you to take a look at the material you are presenting, the parts of the Mythos you are drawing on, and consider how your game, stories, and characters impact others at your table (especially those already fighting in the real world for equal and fair treatment.)

Racist, misogynistic, discriminatory, or any other form of exclusionary behavior at your table is wrong. If you're engaging in that behavior at your table, you are in the wrong.

Full stop.

It's possible to take flawed art and flawed artists and build upon the valuable parts of what they created to make something new, better, and inclusionary.

We hope that Tiny Cthulhu will provide you with the tools you need to do so.

That is the extent of the politics inserted into the most recent Tiny franchise. I agree with you. While calling it out like this to start your book is a head scratcher, I wouldn't call it 'woke'.

The Full Stop stuff is a little cunty given that is literally what a period accomplishes, but whatever, I have seen him in other settings and he comes across as somebody I could easily get along with.

Yeah I don't buy anything Cthulhu that's not from Chaosium, so that whole deal never really registered with me. I guess that kinda sorta points to yellow for GKG. I only heard about the Evil Hat stuff with Cthulhu from reading posts about it here.  Not that I'd buy anything from them, anyway. I don't like FATE in the first place, regardless of their politics.

Here's a question: looking at the RED "woke" companies- when did it happen? Were they always like that? Were they YELLOW at some point?

If so, then how long before the GREEN and YELLOW start shifting?

Quote from: GriswaldTerrastone on August 19, 2021, 07:04:10 PM
Here's a question: looking at the RED "woke" companies- when did it happen? Were they always like that? Were they YELLOW at some point?

If so, then how long before the GREEN and YELLOW start shifting?

I think pretty much most companies in the red category were at some point yellow or even green. It's only in the last few years since like what 2016 or so this shit has gotten out of hand. I don't know if it's just buying into the bullshit or if they secretly were these fucking assholes and now have permission to act on it. Like wizards were closet shitbags for a while, or even good. They only really started once Crawford and mearls took control. Similar cases for old white wolf and green ronin imo. Paizo at one point was green, until around when they made wrath of the righteous and went downhill from there

Quote from: FingerRod on August 19, 2021, 05:29:11 PM

Quote
Lovecraft, The Mythos & Racism is a both a simple topic, and yet one fraught with complication.

H.P. Lovecraft was undeniably and factually racist. There is explicitly racist content, as well as racist overtones, in the Mythos texts he wrote.

Full stop.

Note how they stumble right out of the gate. True, Lovecraft racism is a topic fraught with complication. This automatically denies any "written on Mose's Tablets" full stop. Sorry but it doesn't work this way.

I guess FULL STOP is CLAP HANDS but dialed back one notch. Either that or game prefaces are the new telegrams.

That Tiny Cthulhu disclaimer is yellow stuff I think, but I need to pick at it. Or I want to.

Lovecraft, The Mythos & Racism is a both a simple topic, and yet one fraught with complication.

Anything is fraught with complication if some drama llama wants it to be. I dunno maybe lama is old stale lingo. That discriminates against the young who don't use it I guess. 23 skidoo.

H.P. Lovecraft was undeniably and factually racist. There is explicitly racist content, as well as racist overtones, in the Mythos texts he wrote.

The trouble is that I also hear people saying that Steve Ditko was undeniably and factually a racist as well and they don't bother with any nuance when they use the word. Are we talking about a virulent racist out to hurt people or a reluctant racist struggling with shame and honest confusion, or someone who has attitudes common to his era, a recluse, someone speaking mostly in a framework of layman's anthropology works or what? It doesn't matter. ROBOT HAS DETECTED RACISM SO ROBOT MUST SQUAWK. As long as hypersensitivity is in play there is no reasonable handling of ANYTHING and that's just the way it is. I think that is how various activists like it. It's a feature not a bug.

Full stop.

Is this like when someone is wrong or outrageous but they stand by what they say and that means everyone else has to pretend they are right? Why not just type Q.E.D. after every statement while T posing for dominance? Surely that is how rhetoric and suasion and philosophical discussion work, right? Childish pomposity is the posture of authority! JINX! NO BACKS! YOU OWE ME A COKE AND TWO FOR FLINCHING!

Enjoying the Mythos, liking the Mythos, and wanting to tell your own stories in the Mythos does not make you a racist.

YET, but we're working on that. Airbrushed commissars are steps on the road to paradise comrade! Cognitive hygiene is the key!

Full stop.

CLOWN HONKS HORN FOR EMPHASIS

But it does present a necessary challenge to the GM and players.

Citation needed. GM and players can handle things. If they screw it up, not much will happen. They don't need hazmat suits and a MSDS binder and OSHA inspectors to prevent gaming table injury.

We can decide what we like and what we don't and vote with our feet. Tabletop Gaming is not a dating app. It doesn't need its own legal code and law enforcement entities and TOS and codes of conduct and access withdrawal tribunals. You sell books. That's it. You don't have a whistle and striped shirt and some hand signals and a brightly colored weighted rag to throw. Nobody "needs" this, few want it, and there is no reason for anyone to feel pressured to comply with any of this. You sell books. You are not at the table. I bought the book so...you go home now. 

Our guiding rule at GKG is that no one should feel excluded, left out, insulted, or harmed by the content presented in our games, and we strongly hope that you feel the same way regarding the content at your table.

I don't have to care what you want at my table or what your rule is. Sorry. I'm not out looking to scar players for life if that makes you feel better but you aren't invited to the table.

We'd encourage you to take a look at the material you are presenting, the parts of the Mythos you are drawing on, and consider how your game, stories, and characters impact others at your table (especially those already fighting in the real world for equal and fair treatment.)

I'd encourage you to mind your own fucking business and stop pestering me with your hang ups and taboos and goofy cartoonish inspirational posters about the human condition in your head. This is not defending anyone, it is trying to rope me into enforcing a lot of hooey and claptrap on the grounds that people might be offended if they play Cthulhu or the 1920s so we need to make SAFTEY CTHULHU or else we'll be rounded up as suppressive elements and FULL STOPPED or something. 

Also try not to overreact. It really gives the whole scam away. This is Lovecraft stuff not the %$%^ing Turner Diaries. In terms of a volume knob, 2 is certainly on a continuum with 11 (if you have a Peavey or like Spinal Tap) but 2 is not 11 and taking 11 precautions for a 2 seems...well...vapid and disruptive. Or worse, it seems like cynical cowardly boilerplate to attempt to appease activists that you know are out there and will use the smallest excuse try to ruin your company or for not kowtowing to their demands sufficiently. Maybe they won't let you into GENCON. 

Racist, misogynistic,

We need to standardize these terms before we whack gamers over the head with them. People who think Mitch McConnell is a nazi and want to punch him might well be totally bananas when it comes to determining what is racist or misogynist. I consider CRT to be patently racist for instance. Meanwhile I don't see any worries about misandry  or ageism, you boomer, and does that make Gallant Knight a bunch of WRONG FULL STOP people who hate older folks or men?

There is too much subjectivity, too much freaky motte-and-baily fallacy gaslighting, fuzzy terminology, Kafkaesque witch-finder overreach at play for me to let a game designer try to control my gaming table from afar. I mean are you concerned that a KKK rally will be a sea of hoods and torches holding up TINY CTHULHU above their heads? Will the book be used to drive people into self harm using the 20's and cosmic horror and some rude cultural and racist assumptions in the subject matter that you have presumably already sanitized anyway apart from you saying the fetid, befouled, and poisonous name of Howard Phillips Lovecraft which causes migraines and seizures in many who hear it,  risking that he might appear and start spreading misery and chaos and knocking the dice on the floor?

discriminatory, or any other form of exclusionary behavior

Whoah! Hold up now! Fucking excuse me? Now you fine people at Gallant Knight are in full control of all my associations? I have to game with child molesters and arsonists and nihilists or anyone at all or else I get the FULL STOP? This is ridiculous overreach and shows why the timid game designer afraid of injuring anyone at all is doomed to banal absurdity in the best of cases.

I just bought a book from you; I didn't sign any contracts in blood. I don't owe you anything. And what do you imagine I'm going to do, have a smaller separate but equal table for anyone with the wrong junk or skin color or name or whatever? Dogs and fire hoses? Do you think there is some kind of Bull Connor problem in tabletop gaming and this kind of pestering is the cure? Get serious. 

at your table is wrong. If you're engaging in that behavior at your table, you are in the wrong.

Full stop.

STFU about my table. It's my table. And I don't like people who think they get a piece of it because they say they have good intentions. No. It's as simple as that. Get away from my table.

Does this mean I am pro racism? I mean I won't help you fight the racism so that means I work for H. P. Lovecraft and want the world to be like the 1920s right?

No.

If you tell me that I need to stand on my roof and windmill my arms counterclockwise to fight cancer and I refuse, that doesn't mean I'm pro-cancer. It means you're a weirdo with a dumb idea so I am refusing your request for authority over whether I get up on the roof or not. 

It's possible to take flawed art and flawed artists and build upon the valuable parts of what they created to make something new, better, and inclusionary.

Say inclusive instead of the tortured "inclusionary please", and is C'thulhu stuff really "new" or is it mostly public domain and popular? Be honest. Is Tiny C'thulhu better? Than what? Why? According to which standard? And what good is " it's possible" ? to people? It can be both possible and HIGHLY UNLIKELY.

We hope that Tiny Cthulhu will provide you with the tools you need to do so.

Just sell books or don't. People will buy read and use them or they won't. It's a book for a rules-lite rpg based on some fiction, not an eplosive, or a shotgun, or a barrel of 6 Molar acid. It doesn't need a lock-out/tag-out, or a license, or an inspector to make sure it is kept out of the wrong hands.

Greetings!

Fuck these wankers. I'm having Ghengis Khan, Attila the Hun, and Qin Huang-Di at my game table.

Would that make these bitches cry? Some people might feel "offended" or "excluded"!

Geesus.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Since the topic of Cthulhu mythos games came up, I would put Arc Dream as yellow tbh. Aside from the tirade against Trump and "authoritarian populism" in the Delta Green Handler's Guide, and them including an "other" category in sex on the DG character sheet, there aren't really any other woke-isms in their content from what I've read (honestly I think they should've just left 2016 and beyond out of the book, but whatever). Hell, in that same book they go over how the Tcho-Tcho use the guise of anti-racism to subvert the populace to the point where big purple whines about them.

Quote from: Ocule on August 19, 2021, 07:32:39 PM
I think pretty much most companies in the red category were at some point yellow or even green. It's only in the last few years since like what 2016 or so this shit has gotten out of hand. I don't know if it's just buying into the bullshit or if they secretly were these fucking assholes and now have permission to act on it. Like wizards were closet shitbags for a while, or even good. They only really started once Crawford and mearls took control.

Pre-Woke Times is hard to assess because the cultural forces were different. WoTC is an East Coast company and was always Left Liberal, but that meant something very different in the 1990s. Mike Mearls is your classic yellow-bellied Nice Liberal, the type who always bend the knee to SJWs like Crawford. I'd definitely peg 2014 WoTC as Yellow not Red. They* transitioned to firmly Red ca 2016-18 as Crawford took full control. There had been a similar dynamic at Paizo a few years earlier. 2007-2010/11 Paizo was Yellow, 2013+ Paizo was and is Red.

*By 'they' I mean the D&D game line.

Edit: I went on the official D&D website yesterday to see what was there. They were promoting a charity game livestream, the proceeds to Mermaids, a Trans organisation that 'assists' children to Transition m2f or ftm, no parental consent required of course. They've been criticised by traumatised survivors who recount being emotionally confused teenagers (of whom there are plenty) encouraged to swiftly Transition, and who lived to regret it. I'd say they were one of the nastiest organisations it's possible to give money to.

Quote from: Ocule on August 19, 2021, 07:32:39 PM
Paizo at one point was green, until around when they made wrath of the righteous and went downhill from there

Was their 'first female AP author' who wrote Book #1 of Wrath of the Righteous a Trans ex-Man? It has a really weird unpleasant vibe to it that I'd not seen in the earlier Paizo APs.

Re HPL, his own paranoid racism, with non-Anglos exuding a kind of Miasma of Evil, is extremely reminiscent of modern CRT, where Anglos exude a kind of Miasma of Evil. Hollywood has been doing this for a while - the white Southerners in Mississippi Burning aren't a million miles from Innsmouth's fishy folk, contrasted with the film's beatific black characters & HPL's pure Anglo-Aryan Investigator types.

Conversely, has any RPG company ever turned from Red back to Yellow?

"Once you turn to the Dark Side, forever it will dominate your destiny" - is this always true?

Quote from: PonchoGoblin on August 20, 2021, 12:52:18 AM
Since the topic of Cthulhu mythos games came up, I would put Arc Dream as yellow tbh. Aside from the tirade against Trump and "authoritarian populism" in the Delta Green Handler's Guide, and them including an "other" category in sex on the DG character sheet

I have no problems with "other", mostly because it is a personal choice that I can respect, not to mention something I feel "belonging" to the DG universe... But... Trump??

I got my DG books literally two days ago. They were still in their (*) slipcase. After your post I pulled out the Handler's Guide and I read the tirade against the Big T. What were they thinking? I sometimes like to have bits of political debate in my CoC games set in the 1920s, just to enhance the flavour of the era, but contemporary politics have no place in a RPG.

Quote
(honestly I think they should've just left 2016 and beyond out of the book, but whatever).

Same here. To me, the cut-off in DG should be 2015.

(*) They are transgender books of course.

Quote from: S'mon on August 20, 2021, 04:39:58 AM
Re HPL, his own paranoid racism, with non-Anglos exuding a kind of Miasma of Evil, is extremely reminiscent of modern CRT, where Anglos exude a kind of Miasma of Evil. Hollywood has been doing this for a while - the white Southerners in Mississippi Burning aren't a million miles from Innsmouth's fishy folk, contrasted with the film's beatific black characters & HPL's pure Anglo-Aryan Investigator types.

The "complexity" of Lovecraft's racism (and xenophobia - something that, for some reason, is always forgotten) is the very point that SJWs hysterically refuse to tackle. And yet you can't escape from the fact that the Jews aren't bothered by HPL's anti-semitism. Why? Because any objective analysis shows HPL as someone born in a specific cultural milieu, with the fears of that milieu amplified by his own neurosis; but also someone that, across his life, showed a desire to find his own identity - and who over and over, acted against that "racist" label so easily attributed to him.

Regarding "HPL's pure Anglo-Aryan Investigator types" remember how they always end up insane, or dead, or both. The main character in "The Mask of Innsmouth" doesn't even fit this description. But these characters, more often than not, are simply vessels for HPL to narrate his story. One could even say that HPL always used the same character: himself. And that nothing more should be read from that.

And then, in a period of deep spiritual growth, HPL produces stories like "The Haunter of the Dark" where is the "pure Anglo-Aryan Investigator" that acts out of hubris and gets nuked, and the "poor Italo-Irish Catholic community" the smart ones. And HPL writes this while kickstarting the career of a young Robert Block - a Jew.

Lovecraft died still young while amid a period of personal growth - a sort of positive mid-life crisis, if such term can be used. It's a pity that we will never know how it would have been ended for him.

Ocule, you should probably update the first post whenever you update the list. Make it easier for quick reference.