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Lovecraftian Corruption In Your Role-Playing Campaigns
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<blockquote data-quote="Gradine" data-source="post: 7736694" data-attributes="member: 57112"><p>I've struggled with this topic recently, as I have a love of aberrations in D&D and the types of stories that one can tell with them (and other Lovecraftian sorts of creatures and concepts), but I'm having trouble squaring that with my experiences as an activist for mental health. See, Lovecraftian corruption is really tied to sanity. Lovecraft's characters were driven insane because what we all fear, universally as human beings, is the unknown, and at that time we didn't really know a whole lot about mental health.</p><p></p><p>Now we know a <em>great deal</em> more about mental health, and sanity effects have always to me smacked of being somewhat exploitative. AS someone who has struggled with mental illness and has many friends and loved ones as well, I cringe every time I see our symptoms used as short-hand for "scary" and "corrupted." </p><p></p><p>I've tried, in adventures I've written, to steer clear of terms like "sanity" or "insanity" or any specific symptoms associated with them in favor of a more generic "corruption", but even that plays on a fear of the unknown tied directly to the fear of insanity, the fear of changing irrevocably who you are into something you no longer recognize. And isn't that just as exploitative as if I were being more direct and just calling it "insanity"? Is it less so? Or is more exploitative, because it's less direct and more insidious?</p><p></p><p>The thing is, even though I experience it, I fear it also. My other friends and loved ones do as well. I think that sort of all-too-real dread is what tends to draw me to Lovecraft in the first place. But does playing it off as some sort of existential, supernatural dread (or possibly worse, tying that to "corruption", as if the mentally ill are all "corrupted") any worse?</p><p></p><p>I'm not sure I have any answers to these, but they are things that I've been giving a lot of thought to for a while. Thanks for the article and the topic!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Gradine, post: 7736694, member: 57112"] I've struggled with this topic recently, as I have a love of aberrations in D&D and the types of stories that one can tell with them (and other Lovecraftian sorts of creatures and concepts), but I'm having trouble squaring that with my experiences as an activist for mental health. See, Lovecraftian corruption is really tied to sanity. Lovecraft's characters were driven insane because what we all fear, universally as human beings, is the unknown, and at that time we didn't really know a whole lot about mental health. Now we know a [I]great deal[/I] more about mental health, and sanity effects have always to me smacked of being somewhat exploitative. AS someone who has struggled with mental illness and has many friends and loved ones as well, I cringe every time I see our symptoms used as short-hand for "scary" and "corrupted." I've tried, in adventures I've written, to steer clear of terms like "sanity" or "insanity" or any specific symptoms associated with them in favor of a more generic "corruption", but even that plays on a fear of the unknown tied directly to the fear of insanity, the fear of changing irrevocably who you are into something you no longer recognize. And isn't that just as exploitative as if I were being more direct and just calling it "insanity"? Is it less so? Or is more exploitative, because it's less direct and more insidious? The thing is, even though I experience it, I fear it also. My other friends and loved ones do as well. I think that sort of all-too-real dread is what tends to draw me to Lovecraft in the first place. But does playing it off as some sort of existential, supernatural dread (or possibly worse, tying that to "corruption", as if the mentally ill are all "corrupted") any worse? I'm not sure I have any answers to these, but they are things that I've been giving a lot of thought to for a while. Thanks for the article and the topic! [/QUOTE]
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