TSR Problematic Faves and Early D&D

Hussar

Legend
I'm not a Lovecraft apologist and I don't believe "it's just the way people were" is ever an excuse but I do think a lot of his American contemporaries would have agreed with a lot of his attitudes and beliefs. i.e. He wasn't that radical for the time. I base this opinion on my graduate work on lynching and American culture in the early 20th century.



As I said, you're under no obligation to enjoy his work and I can certainly understand why you want to steer clear of it. I warn people who are unfamiliar with his works before they dive in.

I REALLY wish someone had done that for me. When a lot of the early pulp works became freely available on sites like the Guttenburg Project and whatnot, I dove right in, wanting to get a good solid grounding in genre fiction and the early works that form and shape a lot of fantasy and SF.

And, very quickly, wanted to wash my eyes out with bleach because HOLY CRAP that stuff can be a real cesspool.
 

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JEB

Legend
I'm not a Lovecraft apologist and I don't believe "it's just the way people were" is ever an excuse but I do think a lot of his American contemporaries would have agreed with a lot of his attitudes and beliefs. i.e. He wasn't that radical for the time. I base this opinion on my graduate work on lynching and American culture in the early 20th century.

Guess we'll have to agree to disagree there. As I said, I think it's telling that even Robert E. Howard - whose racism was fairly typical for a white dude in the 1920s American South - reportedly found Lovecraft's views extreme at times.
 

MGibster

Legend
Guess we'll have to agree to disagree there. As I said, I think it's telling that even Robert E. Howard - whose racism was fairly typical for a white dude in the 1920s American South - reportedly found Lovecraft's views extreme at times.

I think the important thing is that we both realize why people might have a hard time with Lovecarft.
 

Got a sec now.

I admit, I love Conan stories.

I noticed that my Primeval Thule setting, which I adore, is set on a fantasy Greenland before the last Ice Age. Yet, other than the one black community (the Lomari which are invaders from a far away place) all the inhabitants are described as Caucasian. Actually, ALL the humans and playable humanoids are invaders from other lands and the "native" race of humanoids is the beastmen. It's really hard to unsee after you've seen it. I don't think for a moment it was intentional, but, it really, really is problematic.

Well, the best numbers I can find is the last Ice Age ended around 11,500-12,000 years ago and the first people to arrive in Greenland did not happen til just 5000 years ago. In the setting's time period in the real world, there were no humans at all in Greenland, so throwing in a fantasy non-human race for the game is not being racist toward the peoples who later became native to Greenland.

 

Hussar

Legend
Well, the best numbers I can find is the last Ice Age ended around 11,500-12,000 years ago and the first people to arrive in Greenland did not happen til just 5000 years ago. In the setting's time period in the real world, there were no humans at all in Greenland, so throwing in a fantasy non-human race for the game is not being racist toward the peoples who later became native to Greenland.


OTOH, the parallels are kinda uncomfortable. The organized, civilized white people come to the New World and the locals are all barely sentient savages barely a step up from animals, and thoroughly depraved and evil.

I mean, it's not exactly a stretch here.
 

Coroc

Hero
In reading the discussions that have been popping up about Oriental Adventures, Orcs, Drow, alignment, and so on, and then (thankfully!) mostly avoiding them for a few days, I began to think of the prior conversations about so-called "problematic faves" that have been previously had and explored, and how these play into our understanding of TTRPGs in general, D&D specifically, and 70s and 80s D&D more specifically-er.

Introduction: Problematic Faves and the Dungeon Master's Guide

I'd like to give a h/t to an excellent podcast called FANTI (at maximum fun) which I've been blowing through recently- it's a series about how to reconcile being a fan of things that don't always love you back. It provided some of the impetus and underlying thoughts for this post.

To start with, I'd like to build on this brief article from 2017:

I'm going to use the following pullquotes to move this along for those that don't like to go to other websites:
While I do agree with Taylor’s baseline definition that a problematic fave is something you have to recommend with a caveat—such as noting that Lovecraft is a big ol’ racist when recommending At the Mountains of Madness—Donnelly provided the best explanation by way of metaphor. Specifically, the metaphor of ice cream. Ice cream is delicious and easy to love, but eating ice cream all the time will leave you malnourished. This doesn’t mean you can’t have ice cream, of course, you just have to be upfront about what it is and incorporate it into a diverse diet.

More importantly, there is a detour into the idea of "affect theory." Basically, it provides a good description of why these debates over "offense" and "problematic issues" cause such a ruckus, and so many knee-jerk reactions:
So when someone comes along and points out its flaws—an “affect alien,” per Ahmed—we can feel threatened. Ahmed uses the stereotype of the “feminist killjoy” as an example of this. It’s not just someone yucking on your yum. Someone else being unable to find happiness in your happy object, especially for unassailable reasons like, say, “this story says terrible things about women,” can feel like a commentary on your own enjoyment of it. That your happy object is completely unworthy or that you’re wrong or a bad person to enjoy it all. To go back to Donnelly’s metaphor, you feel like you’re not allowed to eat ice cream and that you’re a bad person for even wanting it at all.

That is, IMO, a useful framing mechanism for conversations; it's the natural defensiveness a person feels when something they like is said to be harmful.

All of this circles back around to the interminable debates; what, precisely, is a problematic fave? When is it okay to still derive some pleasure from it, while acknowledging the problems? When is it permissible to keep liking a problematic fave? Or, to put it more precisely, when can you say, "I like Kanye, but ...." or "I read HP Lovecraft, but ..." or "I mean, other than the whole child thing, Michael Jackson had some good music ..."

In that context, I'm going use the following pullquotes from the Dungeon Master's Guide (AD&D, 1979) written by Gary Gygax:

Goodwife encounters are with a single woman, often indistinguishable from any other type of female (such as a magic-user, harlot, etc.). Any offensive treatment or seeming threat will be likely to cause the woman to scream for help, accusing the offending party of any number of crimes, i.e. assault, rape, theft, or murder. 20% of goodwives know interesting gossip.
DMG p. 192.

(Note: I could use a number of things, from the "Asian form" titles after the Northern European ones, to the terribly bad description of mental illnesses, but this will suffice).

I am going to use the "Goodwife Passage" ("GP" for short) along with some other pertinent examples (including the Oriental Adventures examples) to look at some of the common issues and points of contention I have observed when discussing "problematic faves" and, more importantly, what it means to be "problematic" or "offensive."

My goal is primarily to outline the areas of contention; while I will provide some of my thoughts, I'm mostly looking at where the primary fault lines of disagreement occur.

Finally, I would ask that anyone reading this please read the entirety before seizing on any small point to argue. I tend to state one position strongly only to then contradict it- and I'd rather not have to argue with people disagreeing with a point I've already contradicted or modified. :)


1. Who is offended? Does it matter?

During the discussions regarding Oriental Adventures (OA), one topic that came up extensively was the question of who, or what group, should be taking offense to the book in question. This was partly because most evidence indicated that Asians (as in those currently living in Asia) were not usually offended by the content (with exceptions), and that the primary offense was caused to Asian-Americans (or Asian-Canadians). But one example of the objectionable content in OA (that Asian cultures were blended together, with ) is unfortunately mirrored in this criticism; that a (for instance) Asian-Canadian of Chinese heritage would speak for an Asian-American of Laotian heritage, and make demands concerning the cultural appropriation from a culture that does not feel appropriated.

...and yet. To dwell too long on this raised the specter of Snyder-ism. Dan Snyder is the owner of the Washington DC American Football team. For years, he commissioned studies and gave money to try and keep his offensive team name by insisting that there were some Native Americans that were not offended; he was probably right! No group is a monolithic whole. We often refer to the LGBTQ (plus or minus some letters) community, yet it is a given that the experiences and views of a 50 year-old "G" man in Georgia will likely be different than those of a 33 year-old "L" woman in Vermont, and those will be different than a 21 year old "T" woman in Los Angeles, and so on. Nevertheless, you can speak generally about a community and their interests, even when they aren't monolithic. If someone used a homophobic slur, I doubt people would get caught up in demanding to know exactly what part of the LGBTQ community was "really" offended.

As such, sometimes the inquiry of who is offended can be of some usefulness in order to determine what is the cause of the offense or "problematic issue," but too often it is simply an excuse to deny the subjective experience of the person that cannot be experience by the person who is demanding the explanation.

Turning to the GP example above, this would be an example of misogyny in the following ways (and I apologize if I miss any): a) that a typical married woman is indistinguishable from a prostitute; b) that women (not men) are the ones to get gossip from; and worst of all c) women will make up accusations such as rape in response to offensive treatment.

The existence of one, or more, women that might defend this does not lessen the impact of this language; and if someone should point it out, it would be weird, indeed, to have to go through a poll and justify which women are offended and how offended they might be.


2. What about facts? Can someone be offended by something if they are wrong?

This is a little bit tricky, in my opinion. One common issue that you see in "offense" and "problematic faves" is the so-called "mistake of fact" debate. The reason that this is tricky is that individual offense is, by definition, subjective. Think of it in terms of horror films, or "the sexy," or the amount of violence you like in your action movies. The amount that one person loves and enjoys can be too much, or even offensive, to another person. In a weird way, therefore, it doesn't matter to the person offended if they are right or they are wrong about what is causing the offense, because their subjective offense is the same!

...but. To paraphrase the great friend of D&D, Sir Mix-A-Lot, there's always a but. If we accept that, pace (1) above, that groups aren't monolithic, yet we can try and evaluate language without having to demand the bona fides of those people who are hurt or offended by the language, that means that we have view offense in at least a somewhat objective manner; in other words, there has to be an actual basis for it that is not based solely in a mistake of fact.

This semi-objective standard is, however, cabined by having to separate out what are true issues of facts.

Since all of that is somewhat vague, I will use the "comeliness" example from the recent OA, and contrast that with the "Oriental" title. There are those who argue that "Oriental" isn't offensive (not many, but some, still). That is ... well, it's an opinion I guess, but it isn't a mistake of fact. Whether "Oriental" as applied is an offensive slur can be discussed (not productively, perhaps, but discussed) but it's not something amenable to a factual, dispositive, objective resolution.

On the other hand, the idea that comeliness was put into OA specifically as a feature of "Asian" D&D is a mistake of fact; while comeliness was a bad idea, it predates OA and has nothing to do with the Asian nature of the campaign material. It is no more specific to OA than "wisdom" is.

To take offense at comeliness in OA is to make a mistake of fact, in the same way that someone could be truly offended by a "Lee High School" and later learn that it was not named after ... a slaveholding Confederate general.

The issue, of course, is twofold:
1. Offense is subjective; a person can be offended even if they are mistaken in their belief.
2. People will often say that they are arguing about the underlying facts ("Is Oriental offensive? I just had Oriental Ramen Flavor!") when they are really reflexively disagreeing with the subjective offense.


3. Can we place the work contextually? Where does it rank in the context of its time? What about for its place?

This is where we can get into the GP more extensively, since this issue has been beaten to death in the OA threads (16 Candles, etc.). As a general rule, historical materials (defined not as "oh my, that's so important" but only as materials from the past) are, by definitions, products of their time. Some of them will seem incredibly advanced or "modern," and other might seem retrograde. But one of the ways that we sometimes view how problematic material can be is by determining how much better, or worse, it was than standard material for its time.

HP Lovecraft lived in a pretty racist time! There were people that were a lot (a lot!) more racist than he was .... but even so, he was pretty virulently racist. On the other hand, a book like Uncle Tom's Cabin, which today seems really racist, was an admirable book of abolition ... for its time. Things change. Not to mention places! The views and opinions espoused by someone in Korea in 1900 are going to be different in many ways than those of someone in South Africa in 1900. The past is a foreign country, and foreign countries are also foreign countries. :)

When I brought up the GP in another thread, remarking that it wasn't controversial at the time, another poster mentioned that it came up in the 80s Demon/Satan/Corrupt the Youth scandals (aka the Pat Pulling special). But back then, it was used because it was one of the two (2) places in the DMG that mentioned sexual assault; in other words, the misogyny of the section was completely passed over, instead it was used to show that D&D was all about sexual assault and prostitution. Now, of course, that context has shifted mightily.

So how was GP in the context of its time? Well, as terrible as this is to say, it was not great, but it wasn't particularly bad in the context of the time. I say this hesitantly, because I am using something that should be glaringly obvious to most people. And yet- in the late 70s, the idea that a woman might lie about sexual assault was not that bizarre; that they might gossip was fairly well-entrenched in popular culture; and the casual mixing between a woman and a prostitute ... well, that might have been a little bit odd, but not outrageously so in a sexist time.

On the other hand, it's not too hard to find things from that era that were better, demonstrably so. So while it wasn't much worse than the time, it was certainly no better.

It's a delicate balancing act; acknowledging the context of the time and the place does not make an excuse for it or otherwise mean that those mistakes would be acceptable in something published today.


4. Is the problem the text, or the creator? The act or the intention?

One of the issues that often gets played out and is rarely reconciled is the distinction between the text and the creator of the text; to put it another way, when does the quality of the artist overshadow the work? When can a work be excused by the good intentions of an artist?

To put that more concretely- think of any number of important artists from the past (Picasso, Micheal Jackson, Polanski, etc.). Many of them have issues that make them unpalatable personally, but those issue are not reflected in all (or most) of their work.
On the other hand, you might say that a text is problematic despite the best intentions of the creator (due to changing times, lack of knowledge, etc.); examples might include Oriental Adventures, or To Kill a Mockingbird. The creator was working with good intentions within the constraint of their time, but times change ... or maybe the creator was simply unaware of their own constraints despite their good intentions.

The reason that this matters is that it's important when evaluating the offensiveness of content to determine if the offense is caused by a dislike of the creator, or a dislike of the content- the two things can be, but are not always, intertwined.

Moving to the GP, the offensiveness is obvious within the text; arguably, however, it reflects the attitude of the writer at the time. Gygax was not known as being overly progressive when it came to those issues for the time; most people are familiar with the hiring practices of TSR, with the gender-based caps on attributes introduced by Gygax, the "fantasy" art used in early D&D products, and his sometimes-questionable statements regarding gender.


5. Is it a sin of commission, or omission?

This is a brief problem, but also worth detailing. Very briefly, errors of commission come from the inclusion of material, but it is done in a way that is offensive. Errors of omission occur because material is never included.

So, early TTRPGs might have an error or commission by including racially or culturally insensitive materal (such as a Dragon Article about the incorporation of themes from African folklore that refers to the "Darkest Continent" or the "Dark Continent"). On the other hand, early TTRPGs rarely, if ever, included material about LGBTQ characters- an error of omission.

Both issues can cause offense; both a lack of representation, or incorrect representation, but they also present very different issues.

6. Is there an issue with the whole or the part?

This is where most disagreements over offensive content and problematic faves, even those in good faith, tend to get bogged down. How much racism can you tolerate in an HP Lovecraft story before you say, "That's too much." Or do you measure it by his entire oeuvre? Does the racism in "The Horror of Red Hook," mean "The Colour Out of Space" is a no go? Or how about all of the Cthulhu mythos? Can I play Call of Cthulhu in an ethically responsible manner?

And how does this impact AD&D and the DMG? I pull the GP as one passage, but there are other problematic parts of the DMG. How many problematic parts does it take to make the DMG, as a whole, offensive? AD&D? When do the parts subsume, or become, the whole?


Conclusion

In raising the questions, i am not looking to provide a definitive answer, but only to outline some of the issues and thought, especially in regard to older material. I am, and always will be, a fan of OD&D and AD&D; but I also recognize that, as a product of its time, it contains problematic parts and is thus a problematic fave. I can still enjoy it, but I also understand that I cannot enjoy it uncritically.


So, for purposes of discussion:

A. Do you have an RPG "problematic fave?"

B. How do you handle it?

Very thorough analysis, though your one of your comparisons sticks out: the

a) that a typical married woman is indistinguishable from a prostitute

because as always if you assume a typical moral compass this goes both ways:
Has a married woman to be pictured differently than a prostitute and if, in what way?
And if we picture her differently does that down-value a woman who is - forced into / takes pride in caring for lone man in a social way by - being a prostitute?

If forced she should be displayed as a victim, but hey wait, some women are forced into marriage also!

If doing it free-willed (and also for the money) so what about women marrying (freewilled) a man just because he is rich?

Why is one better than the other? Is it somehow (from a modern ethics viewpoint) bad if a woman decides to have many partners?

Summary:

If you depict married woman indistinguishable from prostitutes in your game you maybe might offend some married woman.

But if you depict prostitutes as being worth less than married women in your game, because of their profession, you might offend one of them instead.

On your A and B questions:
In my games I use old school stereotypes, and everybody I play with is cool with it. I do not use offending stuff resembling RL racist behavior, but stereotypes I do use. And yes there are the bad guys in my games, who are evil by nature.
But my players and me know that one for sure: It is a fiction scenario - any resemblances to RL are pure coincidence and dramatic potentially offending topics are to create an intellectual problem, and not to push any RL agenda.
 

briggart

Explorer
OTOH, the parallels are kinda uncomfortable. The organized, civilized white people come to the New World and the locals are all barely sentient savages barely a step up from animals, and thoroughly depraved and evil.

I mean, it's not exactly a stretch here.

It's been a while since I read Thule, but most human ethnicities did not strike me as something a Northern European or US American would classify as "white", being described in terms of copper, bronze, golden hues. Also, I alway looked at the serpentfolk as the native Thule population.

But again, given that in my country was not involved in colonialism at the level of other European nations (it actually did not exist back then), I noticed I tend to draw different parallels compared to people coming from the above countries.
 

There is no such thing as "problematic". Something is ether offensive or not offensive*. In order for something to be offensive people (multiple) have to be offended. You cannot be offended by something you have never seen, read or heard.

*This changes with time. Something that is offensive in 2020 may not be offensive in 1980 or 2050 or visa versa.
 

Hussar

Legend
There is no such thing as "problematic". Something is ether offensive or not offensive*. In order for something to be offensive people (multiple) have to be offended. You cannot be offended by something you have never seen, read or heard.

*This changes with time. Something that is offensive in 2020 may not be offensive in 1980 or 2050 or visa versa.

Let's be honest here though. There are degrees. Like I said, the Thule thing isn't terribly offensive, it's certainly not intended and it's not so bad that you can't largely just ignore it.

It's never just binary. Some things are far more offensive than others.
 

Aldarc

Legend
As I said before in another thread, when it comes to the creators (and players) of D&D, I don't necessarily think that we are mostly dealing with people who actively held truly objectionable or repugnant views. I think that large swaths of D&D's problems when it comes to offensive material has more to do with how these concepts/tropes were inherited, transmitted, and propagated without much critical reflection. They were white Midwestern boys who grew up playing "cowboys and Indians" and watching Hollywood Westerns in the cinemas and on television. They grew up reading pulp action adventure and science fiction stories, Flash Gordon serials, and the stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs, J.R.R. Tolkien, H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard and the like. They knew what they liked but they never thought much about the problematic elements of race, gender, sex, colonialism, etc. that were often embedded in their childhood nostalgia. It was just harmless fun. But sometimes our fun is not as harmless as we imagine or remembered.

Whereas a lot of this other media has received a tremendous amount of critical reflection from outside and inside voices, D&D (and its kin) has not really gone through a similar degree of critical reflection. Some, but comparatively little. However, one reason why we likely are seeing so much critical reflection now is because there is a large enough amount of the playerbase who are emotionally removed from the nostalgic factor of the original source material that they are asking questions about the continued embedded presence of the problematic undertones that influenced the early creators and writers of D&D.

I noticed that my Primeval Thule setting, which I adore, is set on a fantasy Greenland before the last Ice Age. Yet, other than the one black community (the Lomari which are invaders from a far away place) all the inhabitants are described as Caucasian. Actually, ALL the humans and playable humanoids are invaders from other lands and the "native" race of humanoids is the beastmen. It's really hard to unsee after you've seen it. I don't think for a moment it was intentional, but, it really, really is problematic.
I also remember how my internet searches for the game Primeval Thule also brought up links involving Thule and Nazi ideology (i.e., the Thule Society).
 

ccs

41st lv DM
A. Do you have an RPG "problematic fave?"
According to others, Yes - Dungeon & Dragons.
In particular, my favorite edition,1e. Complete with all it's warts - alignments, stat requirements for classes, stat mins/max based on race & wether male/female, etc etc etc.
Pick something in D&D, especially in 1e. I'm sure you can find somebody here in 2020 that has a problem with it.
Heck, pick something not necessarily in D&D & there's somebody out there with a hangup about it claiming it's present & thus "problematic". Or "problematic" because it's actually not present. It's like looking at clouds or star gazing. You can see any patterns you want....

B. How do you handle it?
This'll probably sound horrible to some of you, but;
I don't seriously worry about peoples opinions on the subject beyond those present at the table with me.
As this seems to have worked well enough over the last 4 decades, I expect it'll do for the next 25 yrs or so.
 

briggart

Explorer
I also remember how my internet searches for the game Primeval Thule also brought up links involving Thule and Nazi ideology (i.e., the Thule Society).
Thule was a Greek-Roman concept, referring to a land in Northern Atlantic, several days of sail North of Britain and possibly above the Arctic circle. there's no agreement on modern day identification of Thule (candidates include Faroe, Greenland, Ireland, Norway,... ), or even if the original accounting of a voyage to Thule actually happened.

I'd say the connection between Primeval Thule and Nazi ideology is at the same level as the connection between Nazi ideology and Hinduism, due to both using Swastikas.
 

Snarf Zagyg

Notorious Liquefactionist
Very thorough analysis, though your one of your comparisons sticks out: the

a) that a typical married woman is indistinguishable from a prostitute

because as always if you assume a typical moral compass this goes both ways:
Has a married woman to be pictured differently than a prostitute and if, in what way?
And if we picture her differently does that down-value a woman who is - forced into / takes pride in caring for lone man in a social way by - being a prostitute?

I didn't want to go to into the weeds on the example, but it's common to see misogynistic references to women as "prostitutes" (and/or various less neutral terms terms for that, similar to 'horror') in either the literal or figurative sense. In addition, the idea that either all women are prostitutes, or that you can't tell the difference, tends to be a misogynistic theme; sex as a commodity that women are withholding from men.

That doesn't mean that, for example, there aren't powerful arguments that are made today regarding normalizing and/or destigmatizing sex work. That's beyond the scope of what I was writing about, and I don't think that the particular passage (or the companion random harlot table) is a good argument regarding the moral value and worth of sex workers.

But AD&D (PHB, DMG) was written from a distinctly male point of view, and is unlikely to be seen as (and was not seen as) particularly inclusive toward women in subtle and not-so-subtle ways at the time. This was already a very long piece, and I didn't want to go into the other structural issues.
 

Aldarc

Legend
Thule was a Greek-Roman concept, referring to a land in Northern Atlantic, several days of sail North of Britain and possibly above the Arctic circle. there's no agreement on modern day identification of Thule (candidates include Faroe, Greenland, Ireland, Norway,... ), or even if the original accounting of a voyage to Thule actually happened.

I'd say the connection between Primeval Thule and Nazi ideology is at the same level as the connection between Nazi ideology and Hinduism, due to both using Swastikas.
I’m aware, but NASA recently in 2029 renamed an object from Ultima Thule to Arrokoth due to Third Reich connotations that the former had. Regardless of whether Swastikas or Thule have more innocent origins, sometimes it doesn’t matter when the symbols are re-appropriated by far more problematic ideologies. And the Thule Society has incredibly strong Third Reich links.
 

Snarf Zagyg

Notorious Liquefactionist
Mercurius- I appreciate the very long and thoughtful points you made. I think your reasoned points (whether I agree in full, in part, or not at all) are articulated well, and I enjoyed reading them. I just wanted to address one thing-

I would question that last part. "Cannot?" Why not? I mean, like you, I like to know about all of the factors involved, and to make informed choices in what I vote for or "consume," but I question the idea of adding "shoulds" to artistic consumption. What you enjoy in terms of your artistic and hobby life is entirely up to you, as is how you enjoy it (as long as it is within the bounds of law, of course!). I don't have to like it or agree with your take on it, but the experience is yours.

This was in response to my statement, "I can still enjoy it (AD&D), but I also understand that I cannot enjoy it uncritically." I didn't fully explain this, but this kind of goes to the heart of the idea of problematic faves, or even placing historic material within context.

Let me start with a quick analogy. Think of a musician - Michael Jackson, say. There is a difference between saying that I can no longer enjoy his music, and I can no longer enjoy his music uncritically. If I hear Billie Jean or Dirty Diana or Beat It, I don't start punching myself in the face so that I can feel pain equal to the enjoyment I get from the music. But I also recognize that there will be people that cannot put aside those issues; that cannot enjoy his music to the same extent that I do. Different people have different thresholds (for me, its the aforementioned Marion Zimmer Bradley; I will never, ever read a Darkover book again).

So it is with AD&D; if I am playing AD&D, I don't don a hairshirt. I have fun! It is always fun!

But I am also cognizant that there were people that did not have the fun I did; people that did not feel welcome (and I remember times I did not feel welcome as well). I am open to the idea that there are people (for various reasons) that are unable to enjoy it; either because of experiences that they had at that time, or because of the way that parts of it can appear today.

To me, it's a process of engagement. It's like HP Lovecraft; the red flag, to me, isn't people that can still enjoy Lovecraft (I do), it's when people can't, or won't acknowledge that some of his horror and themes of alienation derived from a very specific and dark place.

EDIT: And I don't mean to be either reductive or prescriptive in these matter; a while back I mentioned the example that I keep thinking about- that Dave Chappelle famously quit his show when he was doing a skit that involved him donning blackface, and hearing an audience member laughing too hard, and too long at it. Laughing at, laughing with; mocking stereotypes or reinforcing them; enjoying Toto ironically or enjoying them ... um, yeah .... Anyway, there are few easy answers.
 
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Doug McCrae

Legend
They were white Midwestern boys who grew up playing "cowboys and Indians" and watching Hollywood Westerns in the cinemas and on television. They grew up reading pulp action adventure and science fiction stories, Flash Gordon serials, and the stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs, J.R.R. Tolkien, H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard and the like.
We know Gary Gygax read the strip Gookum in Mad magazine #2 (1952).

The Tarzan parody Melvin in the same issue features the Ookaballakonga, a tribe of cannibals "on the warpath" depicted with pointed teeth and nose bones.
The same tribe are on the warpath again in Melvin of the Apes in #6. An almost identical tribe, the Ookabolaponga, appear in the King Kong parody, Ping Pong, also in #6. They "need woman for sacrifice". In The Lone Stranger Rides Again in #8 the hero battles the Ookabollawonga, a "tribe of bloodthirsty injuns". When they capture the Lone Stranger, they take him to "Chief Wonga for exquisite torture".

This gives us an insight into not only Gary Gygax’s reading material in his formative years but, as a parody magazine containing several short strips per issue, the wider culture of the early 50s. It goes some way to explaining the Tribesman entry in the 1e MM: "Primitive tribesmen are typically found in tropical jungles or on islands. They use large shields…. These men dwell in villages of grass, bamboo or mud huts… There is a 50% chance that there will be 2-12 captives (food!) held in a pen." And how Gygax may have extrapolated from "tribes of Orcs" in OD&D Book 2 Monsters & Treasure to the many evil tribal humanoids with less than human intelligence in the 1e MM.
 
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briggart

Explorer
I’m aware, but NASA recently in 2029 renamed an object from Ultima Thule to Arrokoth due to Third Reich connotations that the former had. Regardless of whether Swastikas or Thule have more innocent origins, sometimes it doesn’t matter when the symbols are re-appropriated by far more problematic ideologies. And the Thule Society has incredibly strong Third Reich links.
I disagreed about Ultima Thule name change as well*, for pretty much the same reasons.

I think that context is fundamental to justify use. In Italy, we have a law specifically forbidding "apologia del fascismo", which roughly translate to "making excuses/defending Fascism". Among other things, it forbids the glorification of "members, principles, facts, and methods" of the Fascist Party. A significant part of Fascist iconography was inspired by Ancient Rome symbols and institutions, so it's perfectly ok to refer to those symbols to discuss or even glorify Ancient Rome, not to promote Fascist ideology.

"Banning" these kind of words or symbols regardless of context looks to me as a too simplistic solution, which focuses on fixing form rather than substance.

* IIRC, it was never actually named UT. That was what the team wanted to propose to the naming committee, the proposal was changed to Arrokoth before submission. Not that this changes anything about your point, simply my OCD flaring up :).
 

Aldarc

Legend
I understand the importance of context @briggart. I am not suggesting that we ban these things in their entirety. Context matters. My point is that we should use these things with caution and be cognizant of how their use may have unintended implications.
 

MGibster

Legend
A. Do you have an RPG "problematic fave?"



Call of Cthulhu: We all know the problems with that, I think.

Legend of the Five Rings: Mostly written by a bunch of white people, some of the language is incorrect, and at least one particular word to describe social class of people is very offensive.

Deadlands: An old west setting where the Confederacy still exists (in practical terms that means they won) and they willingly emancipated their slaves.

B. How do you handle it?

Call of Cthulhu: To address to Shoggoth in the room, it's pretty easy to avoid pitfalls by not depicting all people with skin darker than an eggshell as degenerates, somehow closer to primeval truths, or villains. And while I typically set games in the 20s or 30s, I tone down the vitriolic racism that existed at the time. It exists, but none of us are going to have fun if one of the PCs can't access an area in game because of skin color.

Legend of the Five Rings: I just play the game and don't sweat the problematic aspects.

Deadlands: You know what's even more unrealistic than demons invading Earth and feeding off our fears? The Confederacy still being around in 1876. The authors' were attempting to create a setting where you could have fun spy vs. spy intrigue in the old west, but the conflict between the CSA and USA was never a big theme of any Deadlands campaign I ever ran or played in. Pretty much every major component of the setting works just as well without the CSA's existence that it boggles my mind that it was even there in the first place. Personally, I think they expected the spy vs. spy aspect to have a bigger role than it ended up having. In my games, the CSA may as well not have existed for all the impact they had on the campaign.

Update: The latest edition of Deadlands has the CSA collapsing around 1871. The war was prolonged because of supernatural nonsense but they eventually lost anyway.
 

Doug McCrae

Legend
One aspect of HP Lovecraft's writing I'm uncertain whether to ditch: the progeny of the coupling between humans and non-humans being cursed by their heritage. Examples include The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Dunwich Horror, and Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and his Family. It's very similar to fears about miscegenation and non-white ancestry. Lovecraft may also, consciously or otherwise, have been channelling his fear of hereditary syphilis.
 
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