I think part of the issue with Fate of Cthulhu is that the Lovecraft connection feels exploitative in another way, based on the rumor that they just grafted the Mythos elements on to their original 'Terminator Fate' concept when they realized the license for the actual Terminator films was something they could never get. I haven't looked at the product itself, so I don't know if the actual product lives up to this, but this was definitely the impression among a segment of the audience.

Quote from: jhkim on January 31, 2023, 12:13:55 PM
Saying he is "literally a product of his times" is completely meaningless, unless you actually believe that other authors were literal time travelers. Every author is a product of their times. And yes, for classic authors, I consider it normal to read some about their life and beliefs. Nearly every literary book has an introduction that describes the author.

If it's meaningless then why bother to care about pointing out his "racism"? Either people are from the time they are and shouldn't be judged by the obviously more enlightened modern individuals, or they're all just horrible bastards and we should ignore them for their sins.

Quote from: jhkim on January 31, 2023, 12:13:55 PM

Quote from: I on January 31, 2023, 11:33:01 AM
Lovecraft may not make any money off of his stuff, but by making a game based on his work you're encouraging people to read his work and therefore be exposed to his ideas.  I mean, your son now may one day give his cat a politically incorrect name!  Oh, the horror!

You might be full of hand-wringing horror at the idea of people being exposed to different ideas, but I think it's a positive.

Quote from: I on January 31, 2023, 11:33:01 AM
Oh, and nice going, lecturing your kid on what opinions to form while reading Lovecraft, instead of just handing him the book and letting him form his own ideas.   That would be like handing my kid some Stephen King and saying, "Son, this guy's a great horror writer, but you're not allowed to agree with any of his ideas like (a) all Christians are evil, (b) the U.S. government is bad and out to get you, but only when it's run by Republicans, Democrats are OK, and (c) there's no such thing as a bad convict, they're all good people wrongly convicted of crimes and oppressed by a conservative fascist system."  I will give you credit for allowing your kid to read Lovecraft though; most liberals wouldn't even do that.

Do you actually disagree that Lovecraft was racist? I don't consider that to be imposing an opinion. It's like saying that Orwell was anti-totalitarian or that Upton Sinclair was socialist. It's completely obvious from any study of the author. If I hadn't said that, then my son would likely have come back to me saying "Why did you recommend to me these racist stories?"

Quote from: Brad on January 31, 2023, 06:08:06 AM
The hand-wringing is laughable and 100% expected. God forbid you read an author who is literally a product of his time and not care about his personal beliefs that he doesn't profess in great detail in some sort of preface to all his works...

Saying he is "literally a product of his times" is completely meaningless, unless you actually believe that other authors were literal time travelers. Every author is a product of their times. And yes, for classic authors, I consider it normal to read some about their life and beliefs. Nearly every literary book has an introduction that describes the author.

No, Lovecraft was a racist, and as usual you pulled that out of your ass while ignoring the point everyone here is making:  It's hypocritical to make money off a guy you hate.  And yes, as Bruwulf said, you think it's OK for everybody to make money off of a creator's ideas except the creator himself, if you personally deem the creator a bad person. 

If I was an Orwell scholar and wanted to publish some newly edited/annotated/ whatever work of his, I might address his socialism somewhere in it (entirely appropriate) but I sure wouldn't preface the book with my personal manifesto about how much I hate socialism and socialists and go on a tirade against the guy.

Quote from: Valatar on January 31, 2023, 12:08:37 PM
I'm a little late in replying seeing as I brought it up, but yes, my issue is the double-standard at play.  If you think that someone is such an awful human that his corpse should be dug up and paraded through the streets before being strung up as a pinata for black children, you should not be engaging in a financial endeavor based off of that person's work. Nobody remotely sane could ever say that Lovecraft was not racist; you can get into the weeds about how racist compared to general 1920s people, or how his mental illnesses directly led to the work he produced, but dude was all about some racism, so if you're inclined to sob about it while flagellating yourself in a horse hair shirt, maybe write your game about someone else's stuff.

You say (as bolded above) that no one remotely sane would say Lovecraft was not racist, but over the years, I've encountered lots of people who said exactly that. They declared they didn't see anything racist in his stories. In my experience, it's only in the last ten years or so that his racism has been widely acknowledged. Even now, in this thread, by saying he was racist, I've had various accusations like imposing my political views on my son.

I stand by my original assertion. It is not a double standard to (a) say that Lovecraft was racist, and (b) appreciate the quality of his writing - including developing based on it, and making money based on that development. I don't make money off it, but I've played and run plenty of Call of Cthulhu games while holding these opinions.

Quote from: I on January 31, 2023, 11:05:44 PM
No, Lovecraft was a racist, and as usual you pulled that out of your ass while ignoring the point everyone here is making:  It's hypocritical to make money off a guy you hate.  And yes, as Bruwulf said, you think it's OK for everybody to make money off of a creator's ideas except the creator himself, if you personally deem the creator a bad person. 

If I was an Orwell scholar and wanted to publish some newly edited/annotated/ whatever work of his, I might address his socialism somewhere in it (entirely appropriate) but I sure wouldn't preface the book with my personal manifesto about how much I hate socialism and socialists and go on a tirade against the guy.

You might not like it, but it's not hypocritical. If someone holds the position "you can't make money off a person you hate" for others, but then makes money off someone they hate - that is hypocrisy. But it's possible to consistently say that making money off someone doesn't require liking the person.

For example, someone might be fine making money off the WotC's SRD even though they hate Wizards of the Coast. I'm fine with that. You don't have to like or approve WotC in order to make money off their IP.

Quote from: jhkim on January 31, 2023, 11:21:33 PMYou say (as bolded above) that no one remotely sane would say Lovecraft was not racist, but over the years, I've encountered lots of people who said exactly that. They declared they didn't see anything racist in his stories.

Quote from: jhkim on January 31, 2023, 11:21:33 PM
I stand by my original assertion. It is not a double standard to (a) say that Lovecraft was racist, and (b) appreciate the quality of his writing - including developing based on it, and making money based on that development. I don't make money off it, but I've played and run plenty of Call of Cthulhu games while holding these opinions.

I disagree, because these same people would be lobbying extensively for, say, JK Rowling's utter cancellation and for her to die destitute in an alley somewhere, and would be utterly aghast at even the thought of licensing her property to make a game, lest she receive more money with which to open womens' shelters and rescue Afghan women from the Taliban.  But now that the original creator is safely dead and they can steal his work for free money, well suddenly it's okay as long as they affirm how much they hated him in the process, while riding on the shoulders of his superior talent at the same time.

Quote from: jhkim on January 31, 2023, 11:21:33 PM
You say (as bolded above) that no one remotely sane would say Lovecraft was not racist, but over the years, I've encountered lots of people who said exactly that. They declared they didn't see anything racist in his stories.

Yeah, I have a Penguin anthology of HPL Cthulu mythos stories I must have read around 30 years ago. I didn't notice any racism in them. I guess they may have been curated. I didn't know about his racism from playing 2e Call of Cthulu around 37-38 years ago when I was only 12-13 (I didn't know anything much about US culture at all back then). It was only being told about it maybe 10 years ago that I discovered it. It was easy enough to then confirm from reading some of his other stuff online, as well as reading about him. I remember reading about how RE Howard in his 1930s letters to HPL criticised his racism, especially his positive view of the Nazis.

Edit: Whether a Cthulu RPG should spend time talking about his racism, I don't know. I think personal attacks against the guy you're making money off feel in bad taste, and I dislike virtue signalling. But if explaining HPL helps the GM run a better game then it might have merit.

Quote from: S'mon on February 01, 2023, 03:02:21 AM

Quote from: jhkim on January 31, 2023, 11:21:33 PM
You say (as bolded above) that no one remotely sane would say Lovecraft was not racist, but over the years, I've encountered lots of people who said exactly that. They declared they didn't see anything racist in his stories.

Yeah, I have a Penguin anthology of HPL Cthulu mythos stories I must have read around 30 years ago. I didn't notice any racism in them. I guess they may have been curated.

I'd have thought the subtext alone of most of his stories would be a hint. But as for The Call Of Cthulhu, Horror At Red Hook, Herbert West Reanimator, or The Haunter Of The Dark...well I don't know how they could curate out the casual racism/bigotry/fear of the foreign, without rewriting whole scenes.

And I say this as a fan of his work, with no axe to grind against the man.

Quote from: Grognard GM on February 01, 2023, 04:08:16 AM
I'd have thought the subtext alone of most of his stories would be a hint. But as for The Call Of Cthulhu, Horror At Red Hook, Herbert West Reanimator, or The Haunter Of The Dark...well I don't know how they could curate out the casual racism/bigotry/fear of the foreign, without rewriting whole scenes.

And I say this as a fan of his work, with no axe to grind against the man.

Subtext really wasn't on my radar. The one thing I did find weird was the trust in the benevolence of the US government!

Edit: I grew up in Northern Ireland in the 1980s. No other races so no racism. But Bigotry/Fear of the Other was very much part of the culture! When people around you are killing each other over religious differences within Christianity, the idea of machine gunning the diabolical swamp cult hardly seems strange.

How many IVSP (Internet Virtue Signal Points) do you think jhkim got from the posts in this thread? 50? 100? Wonder if he's saving up for the large plush tiger or perhaps a life-sized George Floyd doll.

Quote from: jhkim on January 31, 2023, 11:21:33 PM
You might not like it, but it's not hypocritical. If someone holds the position "you can't make money off a person you hate" for others, but then makes money off someone they hate - that is hypocrisy. But it's possible to consistently say that making money off someone doesn't require liking the person.

For example, someone might be fine making money off the WotC's SRD even though they hate Wizards of the Coast. I'm fine with that. You don't have to like or approve WotC in order to make money off their IP.

Except that the same people who engage in hand-wringing about how awful the creator of their meal ticket is, are the same people who insist that the people who actually create those meal tickets have no right to make a living, because they disagree with their politics. If you don't want to call it hypocrisy, call it a moral failing. If you think the author and their works are so problematic, then leave them alone. Invent your own property, or steal from someone you don't find fundamentally repulsive.

... or is it they don't really give a shit? Could it be that all that hand-wringing is just performative? If so, we're back to hypocrisy.

Quote from: Grognard GM on February 01, 2023, 04:08:16 AM
I'd have thought the subtext alone of most of his stories would be a hint. But as for The Call Of Cthulhu, Horror At Red Hook, Herbert West Reanimator, or The Haunter Of The Dark...well I don't know how they could curate out the casual racism/bigotry/fear of the foreign, without rewriting whole scenes.

Eh. Most people don't read for subtext. And not all of Lovecraft's stories make his racism explicit. Some are worst than others, and some you really have to read to find any. The Music of Eric Zann is one of my favorite stories of his, for example, and I don't think there's any racism at all in there.

But yeah, then there are other stories.

Quote from: Omega on January 25, 2023, 02:54:54 PM
Worst companies?

Chaosium: Went off the woke end and now has stepped up the game to internet bully as well. Used to be a pretty decent company. But they also jumped on the edition treadmill craze. This was honestly the last company I expected to see start threatening people. WTF.

When/where did this happen? I know they have been slipping into the woke cesspool, but threatening people?

As a fan of RuneQuest since 1981, this saddens me to no end.

Quote from: Bruwulf on February 01, 2023, 10:36:38 AM
Except that the same people who engage in hand-wringing about how awful the creator of their meal ticket is, are the same people who insist that the people who actually create those meal tickets have no right to make a living, because they disagree with their politics. If you don't want to call it hypocrisy, call it a moral failing. If you think the author and their works are so problematic, then leave them alone. Invent your own property, or steal from someone you don't find fundamentally repulsive.

I don't think there is a moral obligation to respect any given creator in using their material. For example, people often mock and skewer a creator in a parody. Some parodies are loving and respectful, but they don't have to be. That also goes for other transformative works, too. For example, Lovecraft would despise the Harlem Unbound book for Call of Cthulhu, for example, given that to him it's all about n***ers as protagonists. But it's not immoral for author Chris Spivey to do so. I think he's pretty on-point for doing it.

The same goes for conservative takes on liberal material. For example, Geekybugle recently suggested:

Quote from: GeekyBugle on January 20, 2023, 12:08:44 AM
Exactly, but it would be the funniest thing if someone were to take them at their word and using ONLY the mechanics published "Nazi Vixens from the Moon the ttrpg" and since they are using the mechanics listed: "Mechanics CC By Wizards of the Coast".

There's nothing unethical or immoral about using WotC's CC material in a product WotC would hate.

Quote from: jhkim on February 01, 2023, 07:27:28 PM
There's nothing unethical or immoral about using WotC's CC material in a product WotC would hate.

Stop conflating legality with moral and ethical concerns. This bending of concepts to match your imaginary view of reality is quite annoying. It is LITERALLY a dick move to do such things; i.e. unethical, and possibly immoral if you go too far. Parody and satire are definitely legal, but it's fucking ludicrous to make blanket statements that it's not wrong to so certain stuff just because you're protected by the law.