For the record, in the utopia for lefties that is latinamerica, I don't see many people here defending Stalin. He's pretty reviled by most everyone except the occasional lunatic.  Lots of people down here still defend the USSR itself, but not Stalin.

And of course, Che Guevara is practically seen as a messiah down here.

RPGPundit

I'm sure I'll get blasted for bad-mouthing the competition (since I publish THRILLING TALES --Now available in print!  Check it out!  Yowza Yowza!), but:

Using the pulp genre to impart a social lession or to make meaningful commentary just misses the entire goddamned point of the genre.

Pulp = escapism.   Nothing more.   That's what it was at the time, that's what it is now.   Pure escapism.

But then again, Bruce is a designer who set Adventure! in the 20s, rather than the actual heyday of the pulps (the 30s), because, according to him, he doesn't like Nazis, and felt that by the 30s, the coming war was far too inevitable for heroes to make any difference.

Nice, but again, misses the point.....and as a result a shit-ton of gamers now think that "pulp=20s."

So yeah, when I heard about this supplement, I said "Meh."   I'll continue to do so.

There is a difference between the various left-sympathizer activists of the age (so including real communists, but also the anarchists, IWW, etc) and the politicos running the Communist "utopias". I think you can fairly say that the former were oppressed, and the latter were very oppressive. So I think you can create politically-repressed-yet-courageous-and-fightin' pulp heroes who were of the leftist persuasion, who were motivated by their [noble/doomed/misguided/wrong] poltical ideals.

(Then there's the matter of opinion: will the communist ideology tend towards the rise of Stalins? IMHO "no shit yeah of course" but that is in fact just conjecture.)

Quote from: GMSkarkaI'm sure I'll get blasted for bad-mouthing the competition (since I publish THRILLING TALES --Now available in print!  Check it out!  Yowza Yowza!), but:

Using the pulp genre to impart a social lession or to make meaningful commentary just misses the entire goddamned point of the genre.

YES. Welcome aboard Mr.Skarka.  I've got a feeling that, when I come back from my "Currently Smoking: Canada" Tour, you and I will have many a conversation on here.

QuotePulp = escapism.   Nothing more.   That's what it was at the time, that's what it is now.   Pure escapism.

But then again, Bruce is a designer who set Adventure! in the 20s, rather than the actual heyday of the pulps (the 30s), because, according to him, he doesn't like Nazis, and felt that by the 30s, the coming war was far too inevitable for heroes to make any difference.

Nice, but again, misses the point.....and as a result a shit-ton of gamers now think that "pulp=20s."

Again, YES.

RPGPundit

Is it really 200 pages? I can't see it.  Two chunky chapters at most (one on sexual politics, one on racial).  It appears that it needed more of a mention in the corebook (they wimped out) and a bit more in the players guide or equivalent book

As far as I can see, the only way he'll be able to get 200 pages out of this is by getting "political"

If you look at Alan Moore's work in "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" and "Top Ten: the Forty-Niners" you can see how one master storyteller used this material

Quote from: RPGPunditAnd of course, Che Guevara is practically seen as a messiah down here.

Quote from: WerekoalaPulp isn't in and of itself "historically accurate" unless there were fleets of robot airships I missed in history class. Of COURSE people can act differently in Pulps (or any genre) if the players want them to. I'm just saying that people and periods should be represented accurately unless its a whole cloth "gee I wish it were THIS way" supplement. And it may be. Its just my personal preference in dealing with historical settings.

I get what you're sayin'. As long as something is historically accurate, I would prefer it - by this I mean I would run games with it that reflects the times, good and bad - that there is no revisionist tinkering.

But if a game/genre is not entirely historically accurate (fantastical elements in it), than I don't care what folks - designers -do to it. As long as their ideas remain "true" to the spirit of the genre, I'm cool with it. Which is why I don't really have a problem with the idea of this supplement. Of course when it is released this may change, but than again I'm participating on a online forum, so it's to be expected

Regards,
David R

If anyone can read Spanish (or French), I strongly suggest getting the following comics: Spaghetti Brothers and Green Harvest ("Cosecha Verde"). Picture is mildly NSFW, btw.

Quote from: jhkimModulo the editorial comment that it's usually left-wing, I'd agree with this definition.  But that just points out that it was irrelevant to bring up political correctness in the first place.  How exactly is this supplement censorship?

The term has several related meanings that I don't think are all that difficult to understand or sort out.  Perhaps if you are inside the fishbowl, so to speak, it's harder to see the whole picture?

Quote from: jhkimAccording to the initial explanation on Bruce's LJ, the supplement is precisely about the marginalization of such groups.  It specifically mentions that the heroes it covers are marginalized by Western society -- denied rights, forced to go through the servants entrance, and so forth.[...]

In my own opinion, the problem is not a supplement that deals with marginalized groups in pulps, per se (I think such a book could be interesting), but that Bruce goes on to not only provide a series of examples that are, themselves, stereotypes of the "noble minority" sort and a view of the period that is every bit as romanticized, simply from a different perspective.  And those stereotypes every bit as objectifying as any other "Exotic Other" stereotype.

Sure the woman is strong but is she still going to be attractive and look like a fashion model in the artwork or will she have a build to justify her strength?  Can't have unattractive women as heroes, right?  The black man is "a supernaturally good poet" which sounds either like he's either some sort of proto-rapper or an indirect way of saying he's "articulate".  The gay men sound like they have a Leave It To Beaver monogamous relationship that just happens to be same sex.  And the presumably Chinese brother and sister are both heirs to a family tradition, neatly sidestepping the overt sexism in East Asian cultures of the period that often still exists today.

So here we have a series of groups that either still fall into the mainstream stereotype trap, are sanitized for our protection, or are rewritten to cast them in a better light than the prevailing American culture of the day, even when they were probably worse.  If we can use stereotypes and sanitize the various disadvantaged groups to make them more noble than they often really were, where is the problem with just doing the same for the pulp era and sweeping the sexism and racism of that period under the carpet to make the game less heavy?

Finally, I find the paragraph about the communist heroes not only a bit strange but maybe even a bit offensive.  Bruce writes, "The band of five fought in two wars for liberty, first against invading armies and then against tyrants at home. They free serfs, fight the architects of murder, and have twice stopped mad schemes of genocide. But they’re communists, and can't even get visas to visit other heroes and scholars in the US."  

Yeah, Stalin and Mao together starved tens of millions of those free serfs (do a Google search on "yi zi er shi"), Communists were perhaps the biggest architects of murder in the 20th Century (both in absolute numbers and as a percentage of the population killed), and Communists engaged in genocide of their own, yet somehow I don't expect to see these Communist wonders fighting Stalin and Mao but rather wringing their hands over writers being blackballed in Hollywood, where they, no doubt, had to eat each other's children to survive after losing their jobs.  If they aren't fighting Stalin, I find that plenty offensive -- yet another example of sympathetic people letting Communists off the hook for the murder of 100,000,000 to 170,000,000 people in the 20th Century.  Just what we need.  More apologies for Stalin and Mao.  

And let's not pretend that Communists were the only ones discriminated against for their politics.  One of my grandfathers tried to register Republican to support a fusion ticket in Jersey City during that era and they conveniently "lost" his voting records so he couldn't vote.  And let's not pretend that there wasn't plenty of thuggery in the labor movement during the period.  Communists did plenty of things to give themselves a bad name which is why Orwell, who had worked with the Communists fighting the Fascists in Spain, came back to write 1984 and Animal Farm.

Quote from: jhkimI don't know any more details about it (and indeed its not written yet), but it certainly sounds like it maintains the historical discrimination of the times rather than making an alternate history.  Indeed, discrimination seems to be a focus of this.

Where is the discrimination against women in East Asian culture?  Looks swept under the carpet to me already (based on the "Wonder Twins" in the write-up) because, of course, it wouldn't fit into the vision of the "noble minority", would it?  Nor do I expect it to deal with how gays are treated in black and Hispanic communities for the same reason.  If discrimination, alone, is really the focus of the book, why deal only with mainstream white American discrimination and sweep other forms of discrimination under the carpet?  Does discrimination hurt Chinese women or black gays less than white women and white gays?  Maybe an honest look at discrimination all around would be helpful or some honestly that the book is only about mainstream white male American discrimination during that period.

Quote from: jhkimThe historical discrimination is explicitly ignored in the main book of Spirit of the Century, which gives a two paragraph disclaimer on "Some Ugly Truths" about the pulps, but then doesn't mention discrimination anywhere else in the book.  (Though it does have an archetype for "Primitive/Foreigner")

Correct,  But based on what we've seen so far, it looks like the remedy is going to be a book that presents a very selective view of discrimination and very idealized view of minorities to create an equally artificial view of the period.  It's easier to complain that white Americans were particularly sexist when you sweep the sexism of other cultures and subcultures during that period under the carpet.  It's easier to complain that white Americans treated gays particularly badly when you ignore how they were treated in other cultures and subcultures of the period.  It's easy to make discrimination against Communists sound irrational and immoral if you ignore the Stalinist ties of Communist groups and the piles of bodies and loss of freedom that was produced by the Communism of the period.  

So is this book really about honestly addressing all of the discrimination of the periods or it is only about beating up the mainstream white male America of the period for not conforming to modern sensibilities about sex, race, and a particular political perspective?  

To David R's question about whether I see this supplement as just an exercise in "PCness", I think the way it's been described so far, it sounds like it will be but I don't think such a book inherently has to be.  But if the books isn't "politically correct" enough, then it will bother those who are and in order not to offend those offended by SotC, it's likely going to have to be extremely politically correct and I think that will limit its appeal.

I think David R was on to something when he said more Guess Who? and less Jungle Fever and I think one of the best treatments of bias that managed to both recognize the bias and treat the source material respectfully is the Justice League cartoon episode "Legends".  And I think there is something to be said for the Space: 1889 piece about Victorian culture that describes both the bad side and the good side of various Victorian attitudes.

And as a disclaimer before people start making assumption, my gaming groups are (and for at least two decades has been) racially, sexually, ethnically, religiously, and politicaly diverse and, yes, I've even role-played with people who aren't straight.

Quote from: BalbinusWould you object?  I'm not sure myself to be honest, to me that is in genre, but it's also pretty awful, I'm a bit ambivalent on the whole issue.

I would.  I can't think of any good reason for a modern-day GM to use clearly racist language to describe an opponent in a role-playing game.  There are plenty of ways to describe an opponent as a frightening savage without restoring to racist imagery of the worst sort, even if that's what some pulp writers did.

Quote from: John MorrowIn my own opinion, the problem is not a supplement that deals with marginalized groups in pulps, per se (I think such a book could be interesting), but that Bruce goes on to not only provide a series of examples that are, themselves, stereotypes of the "noble minority" sort and a view of the period that is every bit as romanticized, simply from a different perspective.  And those stereotypes every bit as objectifying as any other "Exotic Other" stereotype.

Sure the woman is strong but is she still going to be attractive and look like a fashion model in the artwork or will she have a build to justify her strength?  Can't have unattractive women as heroes, right?  The black man is "a supernaturally good poet" which sounds either like he's either some sort of proto-rapper or an indirect way of saying he's "articulate".  The gay men sound like they have a Leave It To Beaver monogamous relationship that just happens to be same sex.

These seem to be based on your imagination of what the product might be like rather than Bruce's text.  For example, Bruce writes about the woman:

She is the strongest human being alive, her muscles super-charged by her own scientific processes. She’s fought dinosaurs barehanded and lived to tell the tale. But she can’t join any professional society for engineers, or even hold the patents for her inventions in her own name.

There's no mention of her looks one way or another.  Similarly, there's no mention of the gay men save that they are partners who love each other, which says nothing about their monogamy vs. polygamy.  And claiming that there is a stereotype of blacks as supernaturally good poets seems like a stretch.  

Now, it's perfectly possible that the final product will turn out to be full of objectifying stereotypes which you find offensive.  I don't know.  However, I find it interesting what you come up with given the text.

Quote from: Hastur T. Fannon

Yup, there is that, but of course, there's also this:



It really expresses the weird relationship latinamerica has with the US.

RPGPundit

Quote from: GMSkarkaUsing the pulp genre to impart a social lession or to make meaningful commentary just misses the entire goddamned point of the genre.

Pulp = escapism.   Nothing more.   That's what it was at the time, that's what it is now.   Pure escapism.

Hey, Gareth.  Howya been?

Welcome to The RPG Site, and I throw you a parade.

Big, hulking, apelike brutes can be of any ethnicity, can't they?

Quote from: Dr Rotwang!Big, hulking, apelike brutes can be of any ethnicity, can't they?

Watching the WWE, I am inclined to say yes.

Quote from: jhkimThese seem to be based on your imagination of what the product might be like rather than Bruce's text.

To a large degree, you are absolutely correct.  And I'd love to revisit my expectations vs. the reality a year from now and be proved wrong.  

Quote from: jhkimThere's no mention of her looks one way or another.

Correct.  But when you read the write up, did you imagine a woman who looked like the Hulk or maybe even just plain and a bit heavy like a Rosie O'Donnell or someone slim and attractive?

Quote from: jhkimSimilarly, there's no mention of the gay men save that they are partners who love each other, which says nothing about their monogamy vs. polygamy.

It whole description strongly implies monogamy and gives the impression that they aren't doing anything else that might cause them to be "shunned by decent people everywhere".

Quote from: jhkimAnd claiming that there is a stereotype of blacks as supernaturally good poets seems like a stretch.

No, I really don't think it is.  Is poetry something that white pulp heroes are normally noted for and is there a similar emphasis in any of the other characters?  

And I notice that you left out my point about sexism in East Asian culture.  Do you think that was a fair point or not?  How about my complaints about Communists?

Quote from: jhkimNow, it's perfectly possible that the final product will turn out to be full of objectifying stereotypes which you find offensive.  I don't know.  However, I find it interesting what you come up with given the text.

At the very least, I didn't see anything particularly imaginative or compelling in them and I find it just as interesting that people are raving about it.