Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="MGibster" data-source="post: 9446986" data-attributes="member: 4534">But...but...the people....they demand the random harlot table!  I admit I'm not particularly offended by the random harlot table, though I don't really want to see it make a comeback, but I'm just surprised by how often it comes up these days.  Back in the day, it just wasn't something any of the people I gamed with were particularly focused on.  In fact, I remember an anti-D&D tract that specifically quoted the random harlot table as evidence for how bad the game was.  Even back then, I felt they were cherry picking their quotes to give the most negative spin possible.I tend not to care much about the personal lives of authors, actors, directors, etc., etc.  As a huge fan of Star Trek, I knew very little about the personal lives of William Shatner, DeForest Kelly, or Leonard Nimoy.  i.e.  I had no idea Shatner was a ham who tried to steal lines from other actors on the series.  I'm a little more interested in how the sausage gets made these day than I was when I was 15, but as someone who studied history, I'm comfortable with the idea that even people who created things I like might have been bastards and I'm happy to acknowledge their bastardity.I am unsure why it's so important to paint Lovecraft as particularly racist even for his own day.  It's true, many of his contemporary peers (other writers), didn't share Lovecraft's views on race.  However Lovecraft's ideas on race were not radically different from that of millions of Americans during the 1920s and 30s, which is considered by many historicans to be the nadir of race relations in the United States following the Civil War.  Lovecraft could have traveled to Ohio, Texas, Vermont, or Kansas and found plenty of white Americans who agreed with him about race and immigration.We human beings love a good narrative and sometimes it just makes our lives easier when historical narratives center around individuals.  By the time I really started getting into AD&D, when I had the money to purchase my own books on a regular basis (it took me two weeks to save up for an $18.00 PHB), Gary had been outsted from TSR for about five years.  In spite of Cyborg Commando, I always respected him for being the creator of D&D only learning much later that others deserve credit later.  Dave Arneson is almost like Bill Finger only it didn't take as long for Arneson to get the recognition he deserved.  In our little narratives, we like having heroes (Gygax) and villains (Lorraine Williams).  And we like to use those narratives to teach us important lessons.</blockquote>

Verification