Quote from: jhkim on February 01, 2023, 07:27:28 PM
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.

Okay, first, I'm not talking about "respecting" Lovecraft.

Second, lets not try this particular dodge, shall we? Commentary, satire and criticism are not what we're talking about here. This is not someone writing a scholarly paper about Lovecraft's xenophobia and racism, this is not someone making a web comic where they portray Lovecraft as a cartoonishly bumbling racist parody of himself, we're not talking anything like that. We're talking about someone taking the original IP of someone else that they claim to find repugnant, and going "Hey, this guy is a total piece of shit, but heres my fanfic based on his work, now pay me for it."

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

I'm not concerned with what Lovecraft would have wanted. He's dead, I don't care. What annoys me is that people will, with one hand, say "Lovecraft was a HyperSuperRacist, and he's awful, and his works are full of racism", and then with the other say, "So lets monetize the shit out of it and regurgitate it to as many people as possible to keep his racist legacy alive!" Either you care, or it's performative virtue signaling .

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on January 30, 2023, 10:23:07 PM
Lovecraft wouldn't have written his fiction if he wasn't a paranoid, racist, and closeminded man (with a loose grasp of the science of the time). This isn't a "puppy kicker develops a cure for cancer on the side", where you can view the person poorly and respect the work.
This is a "Puppy kicker develops a cure for cancer: it's kicking puppies". Then using the cure he developed, while sneering about it. Don't take it if you think it's unethical. Develop a new one.

A very apt analogy.

Lovecraft wasn't just racist, but xenophobic, and that phobia is foundational to his work. Without it you just have weird monsters devoid of the existential gravatas they embody. You simply cannot be Lovecraftian without 'otherness'.

Yup. And as what we call Art means something thats made with hate and fear can still have value gained from it.
Stuff like Innsmouth is a great metaphors of a fear of alienation and change (which contrary to pop culture isn't always good). And then one day you look yourself in the mirror and your not even the person you thought you where anymore.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan on February 01, 2023, 09:24:44 PM
Lovecraft wasn't just racist, but xenophobic, and that phobia is foundational to his work. Without it you just have weird monsters devoid of the existential gravatas they embody. You simply cannot be Lovecraftian without 'otherness'.

I agree, but that otherness doesn't have to be drawn along the same racial lines that Lovecraft had. I've played and run a lot of Call of Cthulhu games that ran directly counter to Lovecraft's racial thinking. He even had the self-awareness to question that in himself, like how "The Rats in the Walls" made English heritage into horrific monstrosity instead of it coming just from darker races. His horrors were often linked to other races, like the white ape, the Pacific Islanders, and more that he considered other. But he also looked at the dark side of himself and his peers.

I greatly enjoyed GMing an adaptation of John Tynes' campaign module The Golden Dawn, because it reverses a lot of standard CoC tropes - where the PCs are prospective members of what is often considered a cult, and the horrors are from English heritage. And it does so in a way that is at once Lovecraftian but also questioning his take on things.

The two choices aren't "keep on promoting Lovecraft's stories exactly as they were" or "forget Lovecraft ever existed". You can have Lovecraftian stories that run counter to his racist values.

Quote from: Bruwulf on February 01, 2023, 09:18:35 PM

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

I'm not concerned with what Lovecraft would have wanted. He's dead, I don't care. What annoys me is that people will, with one hand, say "Lovecraft was a HyperSuperRacist, and he's awful, and his works are full of racism", and then with the other say, "So lets monetize the shit out of it and regurgitate it to as many people as possible to keep his racist legacy alive!" Either you care, or it's performative virtue signaling .

Your assumption here is that anyone who cares must want Lovecraft forgotten, but that isn't what everyone wants. Someone can want Lovecraft remembered, but remembered for what he was - and when running RPGs, don't run them in a way that maintains his racism.

Quote from: jhkim on February 02, 2023, 01:52:21 AM

Someone can want Lovecraft remembered, but remembered for what he was - and when running RPGs, don't run them in a way that maintains his racism.

I want BLM remembered for what they are -- a domestic terrorist organization that burnt down half the country in 2020, caused billions of dollars worth of damage (mostly to innocent small business owners), and murdered dozens of people.  You can remember BLM without celebrating what they are, instead of trumpeting their supposed virtues with a big banner hanging from your church.  Don't remember them like that, in a way that maintains their racism.

Remind me again how Lovecraft using a few naughty words in his fiction, and people using his fiction as a basis for games, is bad while a church promoting murderous racist terrorist groups in real life is good? 

Quote from: jhkim on February 02, 2023, 01:52:21 AMI agree, but that otherness doesn't have to be drawn along the same racial lines that Lovecraft had. I've played and run a lot of Call of Cthulhu games that ran directly counter to Lovecraft's racial thinking. He even had the self-awareness to question that in himself, like how "The Rats in the Walls" made English heritage into horrific monstrosity instead of it coming just from darker races. His horrors were often linked to other races, like the white ape, the Pacific Islanders, and more that he considered other. But he also looked at the dark side of himself and his peers.

That isn't the enlightened self-reflection you're presenting it as. Lovecraft was incredibly xenophobic, probably even more than he was "simply" racist. Lovecraft distrusted all the "other", whatever form they took, and "degenerate" roots and branches of WASP culture were just as alien to Lovecraft as anything else.

He was also an elitist wannabe-academic.

If you pay attention to his stories, the only people that ever really come across as "wholesome" people are academics and a few others that operate in a very similar, narrow band of society. The wealthy are morally degenerate, rural people are inbred and morally degenerate, cities are presented as dark, decaying places full of squalor and degeneracy, and so on.

I mean, just as an example... Lets take one of Lovecraft's more well-known racist descriptions of a black man, in Reanimator:

He was a loathsome, gorilla-like thing, with abnormally long arms which I could not help calling fore legs, and a face that conjured up thoughts of unspeakable Congo secrets and tom-tom poundings under an eerie moon. The body must have looked even worse in life—but the world holds many ugly things.

That's... pretty bad. I think we can all agree. But, now lets look at his description of a (white) laborer:

It had been a sturdy and apparently unimaginative youth of wholesome plebeian type—large-framed, grey-eyed, and brown-haired—a sound animal without psychological subtleties, and probably having vital processes of the simplest and healthiest sort.

That's better, certainly, no question, but... it's also not great. It comes across as very elitist and almost condescending. The narrator knows literally nothing about this body, except that it belonged to a laborer. From that, he concludes that he was "apparently unimaginative" and lacking "psychological subtleties". Even the descriptive term "plebian", while not precisely derogatory, is not - and was not, even at the time - generally something you called a person in polite conversation. The fact that he prefaces plebian with "wholesome" only turns it from simply possibly elitist to patronizing.

It's not really "counter" to his values to have the horror come from anglo-saxon sources - the aforementioned Rats In the Wall is  a great example. It's not Lovecraft being out of character or introspective or something, he just viewed men of the past as alien too.

Quote from: jhkim on February 02, 2023, 01:52:21 AMYour assumption here is that anyone who cares must want Lovecraft forgotten, but that isn't what everyone wants. Someone can want Lovecraft remembered, but remembered for what he was - and when running RPGs, don't run them in a way that maintains his racism.

"Someone" can want that, but not cancel-culture-promoting wokeists.

Quote from: Bruwulf on February 02, 2023, 09:08:50 AM

Quote from: jhkim on February 02, 2023, 01:52:21 AMYour assumption here is that anyone who cares must want Lovecraft forgotten, but that isn't what everyone wants. Someone can want Lovecraft remembered, but remembered for what he was - and when running RPGs, don't run them in a way that maintains his racism.

"Someone" can want that, but not cancel-culture-promoting wokeists.

Sure. I agree that there are wokists who want Lovecraft forgotten. The point is that someone detailing Lovecraft's racism isn't proof that they want Lovecraft forgotten.

Quote from: Bruwulf on February 02, 2023, 09:08:50 AM
If you pay attention to his stories, the only people that ever really come across as "wholesome" people are academics and a few others that operate in a very similar, narrow band of society. The wealthy are morally degenerate, rural people are inbred and morally degenerate, cities are presented as dark, decaying places full of squalor and degeneracy, and so on.

Quote from: Bruwulf on February 02, 2023, 09:08:50 AM
It's not really "counter" to his values to have the horror come from anglo-saxon sources - the aforementioned Rats In the Wall is  a great example. It's not Lovecraft being out of character or introspective or something, he just viewed men of the past as alien too.

I didn't say that it's out of character, but I do think it is introspective. Past anglo-saxons are his own ancestors, so viewing them as alien is different than denigrating other races, given the importance he puts on genetics. I'd compare with, say, how young Robert E. Howard writes about white people in his story "The Last White Man". Howard explicit extols the superior genetics of white people. Lovecraft doesn't extol even modern anglo-saxon academics that way.

Lovecraft is more positive about cats and maybe penguins than any humans.

My point was that while Lovecraft was racist, I think it is possible to run games that are Lovecraftian without promoting racism.

Quote from: jhkim on February 02, 2023, 12:53:04 PMMy point was that while Lovecraft was racist, I think it is possible to run games that are Lovecraftian without promoting racism.

Once again with this bizarre patronizing view that is straight out of the modern left. Why do you even need to mention it's possible to run a game in his setting without being racist? It's not possible, it's an almost certainty.

Much like making convention going males sign promises not to sexually assault female con goers, it starts with a premise that bad things will happen without a heroic lefty swooping in to educate the lumpen proles.

It's a roleplaying game where people solve clues, and battle cosmic horrors. Just what exactly is going to even vaguely cause people to become racist? If your son picked up CoC without you giving him a purity lecture before hand, just how do you imagine it would radicalize him?

The fact is, without a disclaimer that Lovecraft was an awful old racist, people could easily roleplay in a setting based on his works and never for an instant encounter racist ideology. You are installing your self as an unnecessary moral arbitrator because people like you do not trust others to make good decisions. 

This is veering off topic. The question is not whether Lovecraft's personal racism is tolerable in the name of enjoying his fiction, but whether it's hypocritical for a company to take the public stance of deeming the man and his philosophy intolerable while still making money off products that, to at least some degree, require buying into that philosophy to work. (As I have said many times, if one assumes a vast, incomprehensible universe that cares nothing for our morality, there is absolutely no evidence to assume anti-racist beliefs in human equality must be right any more than religious beliefs in a benevolent God or an immortal soul must be right.)

For my own part, I think it is hypocritical, at least when done to the degree and manner that Evil Hat did it. I would normally give people benefit of the doubt for putting up whatever greengrocer's signs they felt necessary to avoid censure (q.v. Havel), but the viciousness with which the company staff treat those who object undermines that option for me.

Quote from: Grognard GM on February 02, 2023, 02:55:59 PM

Quote from: jhkim on February 02, 2023, 12:53:04 PMMy point was that while Lovecraft was racist, I think it is possible to run games that are Lovecraftian without promoting racism.

Once again with this bizarre patronizing view that is straight out of the modern left. Why do you even need to mention it's possible to run a game in his setting without being racist? It's not possible, it's an almost certainty.

I said that because I was arguing against Bruwulf's claim, which was this:

Quote from: Bruwulf on February 01, 2023, 09:18:35 PM
What annoys me is that people will, with one hand, say "Lovecraft was a HyperSuperRacist, and he's awful, and his works are full of racism", and then with the other say, "So lets monetize the shit out of it and regurgitate it to as many people as possible to keep his racist legacy alive!" Either you care, or it's performative virtue signaling.

This presumes that Lovecraftian RPGs "keep his racist legacy alive". If that isn't true, then these positions aren't contradictory.

In general, it seems I'm being argued against from two contradictory sides here. One side is that Lovecraft is so thoroughly racist that no one could possibly fail to notice his racism simply from his stories - and indeed that it is essential to his stories (as Anon Adderlan and Shrieking Banshee have agreed). Another side is that Lovecraft's racism amounts to nothing more than a few naughty words (as "I" puts it) and is largely irrelevant to Lovecraftian horror.

To me, these are both overstated. Lovecraft's racism is deeply set and is clear in many of his stories, but I think it is possible to have Lovecraftian horror that doesn't convey that racism.

Quote from: Grognard GM on February 02, 2023, 02:55:59 PM
It's a roleplaying game where people solve clues, and battle cosmic horrors. Just what exactly is going to even vaguely cause people to become racist? If your son picked up CoC without you giving him a purity lecture before hand, just how do you imagine it would radicalize him?

The fact is, without a disclaimer that Lovecraft was an awful old racist, people could easily roleplay in a setting based on his works and never for an instant encounter racist ideology. You are installing your self as an unnecessary moral arbitrator because people like you do not trust others to make good decisions.

Calling Lovecraft racist isn't a moral lecture or judgement. It's a plain fact. Lovecraft is someone who spoke up to defend Hitler, and wrote poems about how n***ers are a blight on Creation. If one talks at any length describing Lovecraft, then it would be natural to describe his racism.

There are gamers who are interested in making their adventures genuinely Lovecraftian, but at the same time don't want to convey his views. I've had a number of discussions with other Call of Cthulhu gamers about how to balance between, and they've often appreciated advice and discussion. If you're not interested, then don't read it.

I'm seeing a pattern here:

Me & everyone else:  Evil Hat is hypocritical for making money off a guy they hate, when they could have made another game altogether

jhkim:  Lovecraft was racist!

Everyone else:  Nobody argued that

jhkim:  It's not hypocritical to think Lovecraft was a good writer and a racist

Everyone else:  Again, nobody said that

jhkim:  Did I mention that Lovecraft was racist?

Everyone else:  *SIGH*

What's going on is these 'woke' people don't really believe it. They didn't care about any of those causes. They just liked Lovecraft.

Then because they were either incels or having very limited sex, they started bending over backwards trying to think of how to make the hobby more inclusive, because the only way they get any social contact at all is in a game session, so the only possibility they have to talk to women is if women play games.

So they invited feminists in. And they do whatever the feminists tell them to.

But they still want to play the games that they like, and read the stories they like.

There's nothing about justice or equality or anything like that going through their minds. It's very basic- "How can I play Call of Cthulhu and also get some pussy?"

Quote from: migo on February 03, 2023, 08:06:52 AM
What's going on is these 'woke' people don't really believe it. They didn't care about any of those causes. They just liked Lovecraft.

Then because they were either incels or having very limited sex, they started bending over backwards trying to think of how to make the hobby more inclusive, because the only way they get any social contact at all is in a game session, so the only possibility they have to talk to women is if women play games.

So they invited feminists in. And they do whatever the feminists tell them to.

But they still want to play the games that they like, and read the stories they like.

There's nothing about justice or equality or anything like that going through their minds. It's very basic- "How can I play Call of Cthulhu and also get some pussy?"

I think it's much simpler than that.  Many SJW's are racists.  They know it.  So they become desperate to assume that everyone else is just as bad as they are, thus the projection.  Throw in a few narcissists and cynical opportunists riding the train, and you get what we have now.  Which is why there are so many candidates for Worst Rpg Company.  Many of them are run by the same clique.  It used to be that they wanted to keep this more or less hidden, which is why some of them could sometimes utilize whatever natural talent and imagination, constructive processes, etc. that they had to produce something.  As the desperation rises and the environment coddles their own delusions, the ability to be productive atrophies. 

That's why it's a race to the bottom, and hard to say who will hit it first.

That explains SJWs yes, but not gamers specifically. Most gamers aren't racist - or any kind of bigot - they're the most inclusive and accepting people you will find, who really just want to be accepted themselves and have friends (and sex, of course). That's what makes them so susceptible to the influence of SJWs. They believe if they just follow what is being preached to them, they'll have more friends (and benefits). 

Quote from: migo on February 03, 2023, 08:06:52 AM
So they invited feminists in. And they do whatever the feminists tell them to.

They need to realise that sex with a feminist is worse than no sex. Or at very least, once you've had sex with a non-feminist, you are NEVER NEVER going to want sex with a feminist ever again.