klecser

If you are in the audience and you are wondering if there are gamers out there who will respect who you are, know that the answer is yes. There is room in the hobby for all.

Bravo to all panel members for continuing the conversation on a critical part of growing the hobby. Thank you Chaosium for highlighting the work that key industry collaborators are doing to increase respect and engagement!

Check it out. They keep doing amazing work. My print copy is ordered and a quick perusal of the PDF left me impressed, again. And not just because they printed my letter about Issue 1. 😜

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/246849/Bayt-al-Azif-2-A-magazine-for-Cthulhu-Mythos-roleplaying-games

Highly anticipating the Switch release.

Just...wow. Well done Chaosium!

2 hours ago, JonHook said:

I meant to type "extraterrene". It may have been unrecognized by Word and autocorrected. 

Stuff happens. I wasn't trying to Grammar Police you or anything.

2 hours ago, bloatedman said:

Excuse me,

Page 5 , Shabti Figurine (Red Jasper)

" by any extra-terrine creature" extra-terrine is what does that word mean?

 

I think Jon probably meant extra-terran, a play on extra-terrestrial. Terra being the classic science fiction name for Earth, coming from the Latin terra firma. "terrine" exists in French/Italian cuisine and I think maybe it was phonetically close to what he was going for, even if it isn't the right word.

Wonderful.

Extremely helpful, Jon. You didn't have to do this, and I greatly appreciate that you did!

Keeper's Companion 2 has an earlier codex that lists adventures by "threat" type.

19 minutes ago, Mike M said:

How long is a piece of string?  Play time of scenarios varies by Keeper and group - I see scenarios that I would run in one or two sessions being talked about on forums as taking some groups 8 or more sessions.

In my view, I could run this over 2 two sessions, but equally could condense timing to a convention single slot. I'm sure some groups could take 3-4 sessions.

Thanks Mike. I agree with you. What I'm trying to gauge is how successful someone might be in running it as a one-shot. I'm curious as to what advice I could get from Keepers who have successfully run it that way. I could have been more explicit in my post asking for that.

Thanks Rick. One last question: In my brief skim I didn't see any suggestions for approximate length. What time frame is this intended to be run within?

@JonHook always does a great job of fleshing out the Pre-gens with connections to the story. I'm running What's In The Cellar? for an FLGS right now and it really encourages the role-playing for strangers.

Will the final print/pdf be in color, or black and white? 

As someone who is a professional in teaching and learning, an enthusiast of Chaosium products, and an advocate for writing/publication for all audiences, this sounds like a win-win-win for everyone involved. 

There are a couple pretty simple life axioms that people can follow to have a sense of perspective about their hobbies.

One is that if you aren't in the driver's seat, you don't get to drive the car. Nobody likes a back seat driver. 

You don't get to pick other people's ice cream flavors. And if you are the sort of person who complains about the ice cream flavor another person chooses, you need to reevaluate your priorities.

If the ice cream shop starts doing really well off that flavor you don't like, with an ad campaign that you don't like, complaining to the ice cream store about selling it and how they sell it is nothing but noise.

It's a great way to get the shop and the shoppers to ignore you.

I'm confused as to why you might think this is a problem.

I just ran five people through What's In The Cellar at an FLGS. Nine people showed up. I had to arrange an overflow game for four of them (they were good sports about it).  Three of the people who played referenced the Critical Role episode as what inspired them to try CoC.  They had a blast experiencing the tension. One player set himself on fire failing a Pushed roll. He loved it. 

This is all the justification that I need that a "all players welcome" mentality is what is going to grow this game. And if growing the game isn't one of your personal goals, kindly step out of the way of the rest of us who plan to take action to grow it.

To what extent should anyone's generalized distrust of expertise guide any policy?

To what extent should anyone's lack of experience with diversity in gaming drive their opinions about what level of diversity is "appropriate" in gaming?

From my perspective, this is all about how some people with very little verifiable table experience with diverse perspectives seems to want to set policy for everybody else about diverse perspectives at the gaming table.

What exactly makes Keepers without any successful experience with political correctness the judge, jury, and executioner for the hobby? People may object to that question, because how do I know they haven't been successful? I don't. I also don't consider "politics isn't allowed at my table" to be success. It's avoidance, not success.

1 hour ago, Cultist of Sooty said:

Yes, this is a site where I feel unwelcome and unwanted. I might read here for Chaosium news but I won't be posting here as it stands.

I've been a fan of RuneQuest  and Call of Cthulhu since 1983. But I don't feel totally comfortable posting here because someone might object if I (horrors!) mention that I'm gay, or if I call out sexism or racism. And it feels like the moderation/ownership would be on their side instead of mine.

And, frankly, I'm nervous about sticking my head up and posting this because I feel sure I will be attacked for it. But it's how this forum comes across.

It took a lot of courage for you to post this. I hear you. You aren't the only one that I've heard from who has expressed concern to me. 

I repeat the concern that @Addison raised: it appears as if there is uneven moderation. I find it a hard sell that anyone reads consistent, insulting, hurtful language from a particular individual, and no action is taken whatsoever by mods. Maybe I should unhide that person so that I can report. Because just in the quotes, I'm seeing some pretty shocking language that is not being mirrored in the comments of others involved. Whether intended or not, it can be perceived as enablement. Is that perception wrong? Then change the perception through action.

I can only speak for myself. My goal here has been to encourage gaming for ALL. That has generally been Chaosium's message as well. That concept seems to be so frightening to some people that they are willing to post in ways that chase people away. Which is a PR problem for the game. So why is it tolerated on the forum?

Chaosium games should welcome all people. Period.

28 minutes ago, g33k said:

But when playing CoC... there is no car, no machine.  It's all people at the table, playing roles.  And people (are supposed to) care about one another.  Are they playing out century-old racism & sexism & similar bigotry... accurately reflecting those biases?  Accurately being bigots?

Even if it makes the game non-fun or less-fun for others at the table?

(n.b. "But that's what my character would do!" is infamous now, if used as an excuse to ruin other players' fun).

The game plays differently at the table.

The car (as a customer experience) is in no way analogous to the game (as a customer experience).

This is what bothers me. If you say that "social issues shouldn't have any bearing on role-playing games," you are either 1) devaluing those social issues or 2) unaware of those social issues. And no matter which of those is true, I don't see people being able to offer a positive table environment to people. That is, unless, you only game with people who have the same views as you.

People have different views. And when you say "ideas that people want to explore that I don't want to explore shouldn't have a place at a role-playing table," you are gate-keeping the hobby. You are effectively saying that the only ideas and perspectives welcome at the table are ones that don't "bother" you. And you aren't welcome at the table if you want your views expressed in the game. 

I'm suspicious that that is what we are really talking about here. At least, that is basically the message that I am receiving, and that attitude is really bad for the hobby. 

If we're gonna be fully real here...Call of Cthulhu has a "good 'ol boy" problem. I stopped posting on Yoggie because you could impale yourself on the upward pointing noses. Many games have this problem. I think that, since CoC has been around for so long, it may be more pronounced. There are a lot of people that take HPL criticism incredibly personally. I see many players of the game that act like if you aren't already "part of The Club," you aren't getting into the Club. That is POISON for games. And the reason I'm posting here is to prevent that attitude from dominating the discourse. It won't attract new players. To be fair, I've also encountered many positive people in both places. But the negative ones are just SO negative. It is unfun, a lot of the time. If Call of Cthulhu fails to grow, it won't be Chaosium's fault. It will be the fan base's fault. I don't think many players understand how caustic they are to the average new fan. And this thread pretty much sum's it up for me: "You play the game MY way, without any of your foofy political correctness, or you don't play AT ALL. It's my way, or the highway." That is not a sustainable perspective for growth of the hobby.

3 hours ago, rsanford said:

There goes that divisiveness (spic?) again. I try to use language when I'm on this site that doesn't offend people and brings them together to talk about RPGs. Having an us against them attitude on the site is not condusive to the site's health in my view.

Feel free to use the ignore feature. What you call "divisive," I call holding people accountable for gatekeeping the hobby. I'm thinking that some people aren't used to having their ideas questioned.

I really admire the fact that you (and others) are trying, g33k. I think its pretty clear that we're wasting our time. They aren't interested in learning. The fact that someone equates "batshit insane" with "neurodiverse" shows what kind of social experience we're dealing with.  I think this thread has accomplished what it needs to accomplish: to show the community that the incredibly aggressive attitudes espoused by some do not need to exist in role-playing groups.

Don't like something? Don't participate with it. But just know that you being ignorant of something doesn't make it wrong. Meet more people. Part of this reaction can be explained by a simple limitation of life experience. Salt of the Earth. Just because someone hasn't experienced something doesn't mean it isn't a thing. 

14 hours ago, g33k said:

Yeah, I can get behind this, too!  I've been occasionally advocating for years now that people should just rip UA's "Madness Meter" and use it to replace CoC's insanity rules.  Better still, of course, would be to find some gamers who ALSO have professional psych degrees, and some more with personal experience of non-neurotypical states, and do a redesign of these mechanics from scratch.

I don't even call it Sanity. In my game, the mechanic is replaced with a "Cosmic Trauma Resistance" (CTR) meter that essentially functions the same way, but it is all about how characters deal with the trauma they get from the Mythos. "Make a CTR check." My entire group is non-neurotypical, and subtle changes like that make the world of difference. Call of Cthulhu attracted them because (with some massaging) it allowed us to explore cognition in a fictional space. We know the history. We're re-writing the Mythos as we see fit.

So, leave it to the other crowd to just assume that we aren't cognizant of these things. Maybe people aren't aware of it because they never asked? Because they assumed we run a progressive playbook that we get when we join?

"I can't imagine it, so it can't be a thing." "I don't see the market being viable, so we should resist the market." The evidence is there (Harlem Unbound, the success of the Inner Darkness KS). The writing is on the wall. You can either accept the evidence, or pretend like it doesn't exist. 

At the end of the day, the question g33k posed is the real critical one. Whether someone likes something or not isn't the issue here. The question is why people would stop other people from liking what they like? Why do you feel a need to try to STOP people from approaching something a certain way? The argument most frequently lifted is "it will chase people away from the game." Nope. All evidence to the contrary. So what now? What is your big justification for stopping people from having fun if it isn't YOUR way? Why is this YOUR space and not EVERYONE's space? You know that freedom means everybody, right? Not "freedom so long as I get to define what the freedom is."

This thread makes me want to pick up The Lost Expedition as my next AoC product...

Went to The Little Shop of Magic and LOVED it! Thanks @Simlasa

Really nice art on the cover!