An Inner Darkness (Kickstarter)

[Joe Kenobi]

Is anyone else following An Inner Darkness on Kickstarter?

I'm pretty excited about this one. Mixing real-world horrors with the Mythos sounds like a great recipe for scenarios. And I like the idea of using structural injustice as a sort of moral analogue to cosmic horror.

[10baseT]

Yup, sounds interesting. And a little darker like what Stygian Fox is doing which i am really liking.

[klecser]

Backed at a high level. 

Edited March 26, 2019 by klecser

[Bohemond]

While I appreciate the desire to make social justice an issue in tabletop gaming (especially given Lovecraft's notorious racism and antisemitism), I have to say that I think this idea completely goes against the grain of Lovecraftian horror. Compared to the idea that we exist in a cold, uncaring universe whose true nature drives us to insanity, a scenario that revolves around, for example, righting the wrongs of institutional racism feels like small potatoes. If Cthulhu is about to wake up and eat everyone, racism is the least of our worries. 

That's not to say that social justice issues aren't relevant to horror--horror films have often touched on social justice issues (going back at least to Night of the Living Dead and most recently, Get Out). But I think it's a poor fit for specifically Lovecraftian horror. 

[Joe Kenobi]

1 hour ago, Bohemond said:

While I appreciate the desire to make social justice an issue in tabletop gaming (especially given Lovecraft's notorious racism and antisemitism), I have to say that I think this idea completely goes against the grain of Lovecraftian horror. Compared to the idea that we exist in a cold, uncaring universe whose true nature drives us to insanity, a scenario that revolves around, for example, righting the wrongs of institutional racism feels like small potatoes. If Cthulhu is about to wake up and eat everyone, racism is the least of our worries. 

That's not to say that social justice issues aren't relevant to horror--horror films have often touched on social justice issues (going back at least to Night of the Living Dead and most recently, Get Out). But I think it's a poor fit for specifically Lovecraftian horror. 

I see your point, but I think it depends on how it's handled. My assumption is that the scenarios won't be dealing with "righting the wrongs of institutional racism,"
 but rather with the oppressive force of institutional racism and the way any individual's actions to combat it feel insignificant and fruitless.

That's part of why I think structural injustice could be such a nice match for Lovecraftian horror. It's not about helping granny recover her stolen purse, it's about large, pervasive, structural injustices that if handled well will compound the horror rather than present a do-gooder silver lining that can end things on a high note.

Of course, I'm speculating here based only on what I know of the project. But the grounding in dark, real-life events rather than fictionalized injustice suggests to me that there won't be a lot of injustice-conquering in these scenarios.

[klecser]

12 hours ago, Joe Kenobi said:

My assumption is that the scenarios won't be dealing with "righting the wrongs of institutional racism,"
 but rather with the oppressive force of institutional racism and the way any individual's actions to combat it feel insignificant and fruitless.

This. The purpose of these adventures is not to "solve" these problems. The purpose is to experience real-life horrors right alongside Mythos ones to help people to understand the gravity of what exists. If anything, I think they are more in line with the game in that it effectively doubles the insurmountable terror. Talk to these authors and it'll be clear that this isn't intended to be Savior-complex stuff. Far from it.

Edited March 28, 2019 by klecser

[Bohemond]

I guess for me, the core of the problem is that racism (and other forms of prejudice) make sense in human terms. I can wrap my head around how people can embrace a world-view like that precisely because it seems so human to do so. (Not saying I agree with it--I 100% don't.) The fact that humans can be like that is terrible.
Cthulhu et al, on the other hand, are monstrously beyond human comprehension. Cthulhu-kitsch aside, no amount of human thinking can make sense of what Cthulhu and the other beings in that class are. They are terrible precisely because they are so far beyond humanity in scope and so utterly alien in terms of what they want. Nor can they really be defeated--just held at bay briefly. 

So these are very different flavors of horror. It seems like watching a film that is trying to be both a spooky traditional Western ghost story a la The Haunting of Hill House (original version) and a work of gory body horror simultaneously--they just seem so completely at odds to me in terms of genre that I can't picture how it would work.

I don't think that's necessary true of all horror genres. For example, I think J-Horror ghost stories (The Ring, Uzumaki) could fit quite well with Lovecraft, because both ultimately offer a problem that has no actual solution except to never get involved in the first place, and both are often about inexplicable events that defy rational understanding. 
So I guess what I'm saying is that I can't see this working for me. There's definitely nothing wrong with the idea of trying to use horror to illuminate the problems of racism and bigotry. And I think there could be very interesting stories that try to deconstruct Lovecraft's racism by making a black man the protagonist of a Mythos tale, for example. But if some people find this a good way to shine a light on an issue that table-top gaming has tended to ignore, great!

[klecser]

As with any product, if someone doesn't desire the product, they just don't buy the product.

[Joe Kenobi]

Thanks for fleshing that out, Bohemond. That elaboration helped, and I can see where you'd see a contradiction between "cold, uncaring, incomprehensible universe" and "injustice that's grounded in a clear sense of right and wrong."

I still ultimately land in a different place, I think for two reasons:

1) I see structural injustice issues as inherently different from personal injustices--and much closer to cosmicism in effect. Rather than being about preventing or bringing to justice individuals who have done wrong, structural injustice is often about big, overwhelming forces that have a sense of inevitability to them and are often without clear evildoers. We've mentioned racism, but other issues on the scenario list include war and PTSD, as well as poor working conditions that result from unfettered capitalism. These are the types of issues where responsibility is diffuse, and where the horror can be about confronting the fact that the universe defaults to running in a certain cold, uncaring way that resonates with more Lovecraftian themes.

2) I appreciate the attempt from the creators to develop scenarios that tackle the warts of the 1920s. It's the era my group roleplays in, so it will be nice to sprinkle in some added realism via mixing in these scenarios.

At the end of the day, klecser of course has it right--we're all going to land in different places as to what products appeal to us and that we choose to buy. I don't mean to debate you on these points. But I appreciated your thoughtful, well-reasoned post and wanted to put a bit more meat on the bone regarding my perspective.

[EricW]

Quote

That cult would never die till the stars came right again, and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth. The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom. Meanwhile the cult, by appropriate rites, must keep alive the memory of those ancient ways and shadow forth the prophecy of their return.

http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/cc.aspx

I get the impression the Great Old Ones and their acolytes don't care about human racial or social divisions, if anything their goal is to sweep aside divisions and bring humans together in one great holocaust of ecstatic self destruction. It surely simply wouldn't occur to them to leave any group of humans out of their plan because of  something as absurdly insignificant as human skin color.

Edited April 1, 2019 by EricW

[klecser]

3 hours ago, EricW said:

I get the impression the Great Old Ones and their acolytes don't care about human racial or social divisions, if anything their goal is to sweep aside divisions and bring humans together in one great holocaust of ecstatic self destruction. It surely simply wouldn't occur to them to leave any group of humans out of their plan because of  something as absurdly insignificant as human skin color.

Eric, you're always quick to jump in with quotes from HPL's writings as if they, in of themselves, should be justifications for a position. I think it's worth noting that not everyone treats his writings as gospel. Nor should we in this case. Remember how HPL was pretty racist himself?  That is kind of the whole point. Authors are writing these scenarios because they want to make it very clear that, while we love HPL's writing and his contributions to literature, we don't support his personal ethics. The "turn the Mythos on its head" movement is deliberate and it has multiple goals. "Abiding by canon" is not one of them. None of us should be looking to HPL for moral codes or primers on engagement on social issues.

[EricW]

1 hour ago, klecser said:

Eric, you're always quick to jump in with quotes from HPL's writings as if they, in of themselves, should be justifications for a position. I think it's worth noting that not everyone treats his writings as gospel. Nor should we in this case. Remember how HPL was pretty racist himself?  That is kind of the whole point. Authors are writing these scenarios because they want to make it very clear that, while we love HPL's writing and his contributions to literature, we don't support his personal ethics. The "turn the Mythos on its head" movement is deliberate and it has multiple goals. "Abiding by canon" is not one of them. None of us should be looking to HPL for moral codes or primers on engagement on social issues.

Obviously everyone is free to create their own interpretation. Some have suggested August Derleth reinterpreted Cthulhu in terms of Christian dualism, replacing HPL’s amoral horror with .good guys vs bad guys.

OTOH why call it Cthulhu if you want to do something completely different? Why not invent your own pantheon of gods who represent human failings?

[klecser]

2 hours ago, EricW said:

OTOH why call it Cthulhu if you want to do something completely different? Why not invent your own pantheon of gods who represent human failings?

Why tell people how they should feel about/interpret something? Why must there be an "entry fee" (in this case, "canon" interpretation) to love and consume something? How do we ATTRACT fans to a hobby?

Edited April 1, 2019 by klecser

[Joe Kenobi]

11 hours ago, EricW said:

I get the impression the Great Old Ones and their acolytes don't care about human racial or social divisions, if anything their goal is to sweep aside divisions and bring humans together in one great holocaust of ecstatic self destruction. It surely simply wouldn't occur to them to leave any group of humans out of their plan because of  something as absurdly insignificant as human skin color.

I don't get the impression that the Inner Darkness scenarios embrace the conceit that the people behind the evils of this world are all secretly Cthulhu cultists. Frankly, if the point of these scenarios is to pretend cultists were behind the injustices of the 1920s the whole time, I'll be disappointed.

My impression is the scenarios take some of the true-to-life horrors of the 1920s and layer on Lovecraftian events. For example, this update makes pretty clear the immigrant deportation scenario isn't going to pretend it was a cultist infiltration of the U.S. government that led to the round-up of immigrants; rather, it's going to set a story in the framework of those actual, real-world horrors, and drop a Cthulhu mythos creature of some sort into that event. My impression is these are historically-driven scenarios that spotlight some of the darker, more horrific truths of the 1920s, then drop Cthulhu elements on top of those historical realities.

EDIT: By "drop in," I mean either (a) take a historical situation and place a Cthulhu element in its midst, or (b) take a historical event and have Cthulhu elements exploit those realities for their own ends. I'll myself be fairly frustrated if the implication is that any of these historical events only happened because Cthulhu elements and/or cultists were at work.

Edited April 1, 2019 by Joe Kenobi
Additional clarity

[10baseT]

16 hours ago, Joe Kenobi said:

2) I appreciate the attempt from the creators to develop scenarios that tackle the warts of the 1920s. It's the era my group roleplays in, so it will be nice to sprinkle in some added realism via mixing in these scenarios.

I really like this a lot as well. A different angle to hit the PCs with. I also wouldnt mind a straight 1920s era scenario that just dealt with the evils of mankind. Sprinkle a few red herrings and let the PCs mind run wild. And at the end of the day, it's just human evil. Not everything has to be mythos slanted, but the PCs sure will think it is... and they'll run with it. Anyway, i'm like these different types of scenarios.