New Horizons

[thebitterguy]

Man, it's odd, looking at the reaction to something as simple as an RPG supplement.

Okay, not simple. This isn 't quite the second coming of Charnel Houses of Europe, but apparently if you stick a little cheese flag into pulp going "man, the 20s were full of the douchebaggery", you'll get some really retarded responses (although he seems to be proving the general theme of the book). I guess we can see why his girlfriend comes with a patch kit.

BR has a slightly less nutbar examination of the concept at his blog.

Comments

[doc-mystery.livejournal.com]

And for a RPG supplement that hasn't even been written yet...

Despite my earlier comments, I'm much more ambivalent about this proposed supplement than many others you've linked to; like you I'm surprised at the polarizing furore.

While some may feel excluded from the tropes prevalent in the American fiction magazines of the 1930s and 1940s, and use this an excuse never to play a game in that genre, you can still break with problematic aspects of that same historical past (such as racism, sexism, and ethnic stereotypes) in order to play a fun game set in that near past.

I think, however, that the the genre that some has dubbed 'pulp' (a term that is becoming increasingly meaningless it seems) is being unfairly singled out, ditto SoTC, a role-playing game which isw inspired by the best aspects, and not the worst aspects of this genre and historical period.

Much of SF and Fantasy that was written in that same era (and beyond into the 1950s, 1960s and even 1970s for that matter) has a paucity of non-white and non-male protagonists. I don't see the same finger-pointing currently being directed at the fantasy fiction and later RPGs inspired by Robert Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, or even Tolkien for that matter. Yet the very first RPG, D&D, mined heavily from this same rich vein of pulp fantasy so heavily laden itself with racism, sexism and worse.

Even classic SF RPGs such as the original Traveller borrowed most of its tropes from SF from the 1950s-1970s that wasn't as forward thinking and enlightened as the SF we have today. Yet no one is flogging and wailing on the various online fora demanding that representation be present in any updated version of this RPG in regards to the example characters used as well as the pronouns used in describing the game to the reader.

I think that this proposed supplement, assuming that it ever gets written and finished, may generate a lot of positive noise and publicity. But will a supplement that deviates so far from the source material it is supposed to represent ever translate into increased sales for itself or for the base rules for SotC remains to be seen. Right now it seems to early to say.

::B::

[brand-of-amber.livejournal.com]

Actually, that's part of the issue. In many games of other genres there has been a lot of change. Modern D&D has done a much better job at representing all sorts of folks and including roles and ideas and images that make women, for example, feel far more included. This despite the fact that it comes out of Robert "the Aryan is the supreme fighting man of the earth" Howard genre of rippling thews. Traveller may have been born from less enlightened times, but you don't get a lot of space-whores on the covers of Traveller games. (At least not that I've seen.)

But try to do the same with pulp, a genre that had a lot of diversity in the actual source material (even if it was often done in a rather exploitative way) and you get the response of "that isn't pulp!"

Well, aside from the fact that I don't agree with that, I do think that if we can make D&D have a place for girls other than doing them, we can probably do the same with pulp.

As for increased sales and such, we will indeed have to wait and see. Early internet noise doesn't mean a lot on that front one way or the other.

[brand-of-amber.livejournal.com]

Oh, as a note to the above, I actually like some of Howard's work. I've got the whole Wandering Star collection. I just happen to like it in perspective and like to play with it in games because I can use the assumptions of the genre to play against themselves. (Its always fun to just do a simple assumption of superiority switch and make the brown people the superhumans and the white folk the dour and superstitious ones. Always leads to something interesting happening at the table.)

Just to be clear that I wasn't just kicking Howard in the nuts for no reason at all.

[doc-mystery.livejournal.com]

You made a very polite and elegant reply with the above ideas. I'll try and do the same, because the subject is very thought provoking.

Both Fantasy & SF fiction has certainly progressed in this matter of gender (and other) equality since the 1970s, the period when RPGs first came about. As the fictional source material has changed and evolved to become more inclusive, so too have the RPGs inspired by them. I’m rather doubtful that it was those persons writing role-playing games themselves who have lead the way, and I suspect it was those SF and Fantasy fiction authors who broke free of the restrictions of sexism, racism and other -isms that appear so strange and distasteful to us today.

However, authors of contemporary pulp RPGs inspired by the ‘pulp’ writings of such pulp word-smiths as Lester Dent, Norvell Page, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert Howard, Seabury Quinn, Hugh B. Cave, George F. Worts, E.E. “Doc” Smith, and so many disparate others, are no longer alive and writing any more stories. All the original pulp stories have been written, with everything else either pulp-inspired, pastiche or neo-pulp. None of these pulp authors are going to be writing any more stories that will be always appropriate for any contemporary era that will be quick to criticize.

Another one of the problems of the so-called pulp genre is odd blurring it has with its rather nebulous definition. Is it a just a pseudo-historical era, one set between the two World Wars? Is it the world ‘way back then not as it was, but really the way it should have been depicted in the very best of the adventure fiction, radio shows and serials of the time? Is it anything that has flivvers and gats, masked villains and Zeppelins, weird science and radio-inspired gadgetry? I suspect it's "All of the above" for many.

I personally welcome anything that would allow persons to feel more inclusive in our gaming hobby. Sure, why not have Jungle Queens & Crime Mistresses as examples of characters or NPCs? Why not have fewer Evil Ethnic Madmen plotting world domination and have instead more culturally neutral villains? Why not have Cherokee Detectives, Black Gadgeteers, or Polish Super-Scientists?

But why make such a big deal out of it in the main rules or supplements for a pulp RPG? What’s wrong with the players deciding for themselves they want to play a female private detective, or an Asian two-fisted hero, rather than having rules to spell this explicitly out? Surely this is something the players and the GM of any game can do, that is be allowed the privilege of changing published PC templates if they want to, as long as they are making such characters extraordinary, rather than part of some bland cultural wall-paper in a retro-fitted variant history where nothing ever bad ever happened to anybody unless they were a Nazi.

To use a crude analogy, re-naming “Cowboys & Indians” to “Cowgirls & Native Americans”, while it may be an earnest attempt to bring some parity to a previously one-sided genre like your typical Western, may have some unwanted side-effects, such as driving away those persons who simply want to play a conventional Western game.

Or a conventional Pulp game.

And simply reinterpreting the historical 1930s and 1940s as an enlightened era for gender, racial and cultural equality to satisfy a few persons upset at the historical injustices of the era hinted at in a pulp RPG would be a big change. Such an approach may actually take away opportunities for player-controlled PCs to strike a blow against racism, bigotry and other intolerances *if* this the direction they wish their pulp game play to develop into, and if they want to play it.

(Whew, I went on and on and on.)

Who's right? I dunno. But I do agree with you that this is all just Internet froth and chatter right now. It'll be interesting to see what does come about in the end after all. While I would be just as happy to see a 'conventional supplement' playing to 'conventional pulp tropes' come out, any supplement is better than none. This has been one of the great failings of nearly all previously published Pulp RPGs; skimpy to no supports, supplements or adventures to show persons how much fun a pulp era RPG can be to play.

::B::

[brand-of-amber.livejournal.com]

These are all excellent points, and I think we probably disagree less than it might seem.

The only point I will talk to is the "Can't groups just do this on their own?" issue -- because I don't think that I can speak much to your mastery of pulp (which is vast), but I do know a thing or two about game design and what people do and don't do at their table.

The very first thing I did when I got Spirit of the Century was to make The Brothers Rajput (http://games.spaceanddeath.com/yudhishthirasdice/64). It was no problem at all for me to just whip out some South Asian folks who had a compelling story that was kinda pulpy-exotic but still gave props to the historical culture without trivializing or overly orientalizing it. (There was a bit where they were Rajput princes who cared about the common people, which wasn't common, but....) So yea, obviously it can be done.

The thing is, I don't know how easily everyone that plays Spirit could have done it. I was living in India at the time that I wrote the characters, and when I wanted to know how an actual Indian would feel about them I went out and found one and asked. I have a degree in History with a focus on South Asia. I've read a billion books on the subject and written a 300,000 word RPG supplement based on India. So I could make the Rajputs both interesting, non-bland, non-orientalist, and with enough history to give them what, to me, is a real pulp flare (because the pulp writers were smart guys and did research). No problem for me, but for someone else with no knowledge of India, getting the mix of history, politics, religious and political observance and everything else that makes the characters pop out of "Cowgirls and First Nations" might take some work.

It's a similar thing with a lot of groups in the 20s. Despite the fact that it was less than 100 years ago a lot of people don't know much about the time, and don't realize how different it was. They don't know about the Red Scare of 1917-1920, or the rise of the International Workers Union in the mid 20s. They don't know about America air-bombing its own cities to stop riots by black service men from WWI who returned home with combat training and no willingness to go back to sub-human conditions. They don't know about a lot of this stuff at all, and even when they find it out it isn't always immediately obvious how to apply it to game -- especially if they want to do it well. Most people end up kind of stumbling into Cowgirls and Firstnations because its the easy way.

But, making it Cowgirls and First Nations is a clumsy solution, it's inelegant and rough. That, however, is the kind of solution lots of people come up with when they try to do things easily on their own without putting in the time and effort to really make it work. It isn't what Bruce will be doing though, because he's a professional and is going to put in the time and effort to make his solutions more elegant, more integrated, and less strawmanny than that. The ability to do it well rather than just club your way through it, isn't easy and isn't something every group can do without putting a lot more effort into it than a game is usually worth.

So, you could read dozens of books about different groups in the 20s, work those into your game, figure out enough historical analysis technique to make it combine gracefully with pulp, and then make NPCs and plot hooks based on it -- or you can just buy this book and have the work of others provided for you. For some people it won't be worth it, because they have more time than money. For many it will be, because they have more money than time. And for a lot of people the ability to have one slim book to read that lets you do it in both the time and money that are worth spending on a game is a very good thing.

Of course there will still be folks who want like, want, or need this book. It isn't the pulp game they're looking for. Which is why its cool that its a supplement and doesn't change the base game at all.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

Hm. Just a couple of quotes from your post:

What’s wrong with the players deciding for themselves they want to play a female private detective, or an Asian two-fisted hero, rather than having rules to spell this explicitly out?

[...]

To use a crude analogy, re-naming “Cowboys & Indians” to “Cowgirls & Native Americans” [...] may have some unwanted side-effects, such as driving away those persons who simply want to play a conventional Western game.

I'm a little thrown; the first quote seems to suggest that players shouldn't have any problems reworking the genders or ethnic groups presented in the setting. The second suggests that they should be expected to not bother and will avoid a game which might require them to do so.

Can you reconcile those two for me? I'm honestly curious.

[brand-of-amber.livejournal.com]

I also find it a little odd that there is such an intense reaction. I mean... its a supplement to an Indie game that has sold around 1000 copies. It isn't like its the new edition of D&D or something.

And yet its gotten like hundreds of responses on multiple forums in less than 24 hours, included some that are rather heated for and against. Which just leaves me rather blinking and going, "Um, guys, it isn't even written yet... wtf?"

[rdansky.livejournal.com]

That actually doesn't surprise me at all. At the risk of sounding cynical, it's much easier to comment on this sort of thing when you're commenting on your own speculation, prejudices, and opinion than on the actual object.

A great deal of the negative reaction to Charnel Houses of Europe came long before the book ever saw print, as people reacted to their idea of what they thought the book would be. In many cases, once folks actually saw the material - and WW was kind enough to let me send out advance chapters to critics as a demonstration of what we were actually doing - the tone of the conversation changed radically.

[brand-of-amber.livejournal.com]

Funny enough that pattern continues in real life. The first time I told my wife about Charnel Houses her reaction was instantly negative. When I told her about what it actually did, her reaction changed. She still wouldn't play it (she was barely able to watch Schindler's List) but the level of respect for it changed.

The truth is that in general conversation people are often talking to the demons in their head rather than to you. This effect is made exponential on the net, where your text and the text of ten million other anonymous people all blurs together.

[thetathx1138.livejournal.com]

It never fails to amaze me where people take games THIS seriously. Okay, granted, I can see the point about feminism to a degree...but at the same time, look at the material it's based on. Yeesh!